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moonundernostalgia · 1 year

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Something rather curious and admittedly nitpicking on my part but something regarding Dick’s origins;

When it comes to the character of Anthony Zucco, the gangster responsible for the ‘accident’ at Haly’s Circus, I think I feather prefer him being an actual leader of the Gotham Mob by the time he made the fateful racketeering attempt.

After all it makes too much sense story wise; Batman operated in Gotham between 3-5 years by the time Zucco dropped by Haly’s, in that time, the other crime lords of the city, mainly Falcone all fallen, obviously leading to a power vacuum for organized crime and a ton of henchmen looking for an employer in that fact. It’ll make sense that Zucco takes advantage of said power vacuum in that time, taking over Falcone’s old rackets and claiming the rewards for himself and getting a very good majority of the GCPD to either look the other way or even be a part of his control. After all, Batman said to Dick that Zucco had most of the city under his pocket when they met, thus Dick couldn’t just simply go to the cops without a guarantee of his safety as a potential witness.

Plus it’s fitting in that in the original Golden Age comics, Zucco was actually the very last opponent of Batman before Joker and Catwoman debuted. So thematically, Zucco being the last of the Gotham Old Guard of Crime and then his downfall via Robin would make the transition from simple gangsters to supervillains

Also, he is known as ‘Boss’ Zucco so why not capitalize on that title

Thoughts on this?

Uuuuhhh that's a very good analysis actually

Yeah i like it

The idea of Zucco just popping out of nowhere and being like "oh heel yea i will be the owner for this circus >:)" without no second intention behind it seems kinda boring to me

So yea i really like this whole concept :D

18 notas - publicadas em 27 de abril de 2022

Curious to ask;

Say it’s 1992, you’re a writer at DC and the editors for both the Titans and Batman books are giving you the keys to figure how to handle Dick Grayson from that point onward. In the Titans books, it’s counting down to his wedding with Starfire but there’s also word of mouth that appeals to Dick getting a solo book of his own.

What’ll be your approach to the DickKory wedding and how Dick Grayson is handled from there? Does the wedding proceed as planned? Dick still get a book to himself? Is he in between Titans and Bat books etc?

If this seems like too much, I apologize in advance

oh wow

Firstly hi and thanks for the question :)

Secondly...i never stopped to think about it because in my head i always went with the original idea and never really thought of a different possibility...but as a dickkory fan I'm going to give a "happy ending" to the two, Dick and Kory manage to get married and go to live in an apartment that is close to the headquarters of the Titans tower but is also an acceptable distance.

I wouldn't introduce the Bats for a while and just focus on the two of them trying to figure out how to deal with this new life, since in my view, Dick would go solo but Kory would still be with the Titans,but they would find a way for sure, these two truly love each other and those who love each other will always do everything to make the relationship work, a reciprocal effort.

To be honest, I always wanted a story where Dick is solo and we only see him not being alone when Kory is in the scene (she can be in their apartment in a moment of peace when he gets finally rest in his home or she can even help in a fight that he needs help or mission) and he can also do some missions with the titans for sure but mainly he would have to move by himself...

at first I don't know if my idea would be approved judging that the writers think Dick can't do anything alone 🤡

eventually he would talk with Batman and after a while Mar'i Grayson would come too :D Well, that would be my idea, it doesn't look so good because well, I'm not a writer and maybe (just maybe) I'm butthurt that dickbabs are being pushed in reader's throat in a toxic and not normal way and Dick became a 1 year old who can't take a step without someone sniffing his neck :) anyway this would be my "plan"

I'm sorry i'm dumb when it comes to timelines and "oh this would happened this year and this would happen at this time" so forgive me if this looks messy and sloppy

⊙﹏⊙ but i hope i give you an acceptable answer hehe

Judge me

19 notas - publicadas em 16 de julho de 2022

Regarding Dick’s origin story (i.e. The Flying Graysons falling, being taken as Bruce Wayne’s foster son, finding out said foster father is a night based crime fighter and helps him take down the criminals and racketeers responsible for what happened to the Flying Graysons, takes a candlelight oath as Robin, etc), I always pictured/preferably Headcanon him being 8 years of age or at maximum 10 years when all that went down since it gives him ample time between him, Bruce and Alfred to bond together as a team and then family so when the time comes for him to move on from the Robin mantle into Nightwing (preferably for me, Judas Contract style but that’s another story) it’s all the more significant after so many years in that Red vest.

Though some creative teams and editorial mandates age him up to commonly 12 years old (most infamous Frank Miller’s All Star Batman and Robin) or even to 15 as the New 52 did.

Your opinion on all this?

Hello :D and thank you for asking

Well i always made it very clear in any media related to batfamily and dc comics i'm in that i pretend the 15 years old Robin doesn't exist 🙂 and in my head there's only a tiny adorable little shit 8 year old Dick Grayson hehe

It makes much more sense in a way that:

1. It proves the point that Dick is the first sidekick to ever exist,because how there will be a younger age than 8 to be going around solving crimes and stuff?

2.Dick and Bruce would have a different relationship. Some people rather to look at them and say they are more like brothers(which i don't really like but at the same time it goes for me when i act like my mom is my sister but i still respect her as my mom)- but they only may say that cuz in almost a lot of medias Dick is 15... But this is stupid,how Dick and Bruce and Alfred are going to be knowing each other and having a deep connection if Dick only came to live with them if he is 15??? That is not enough time (and he leaves when he is 18 so this change they make is trashhhhh)

3. It would pay respect to the original,the beggining of Robin,a child with 8 years old wearing a colorful costume woudln't be suspect or even considered weird. He is a child. And wears colorful stuff. Robin being 8 years old is supposed to not only be Batman's sidekick but to be a confort and light to other children. If Batman is dark,Robin needs to be a sunshine. Gotta have a balance y'know? If he is a angst teenager with anger problems he wouldn't be a very conforting person...(in my opinion tho i was a teenager once upon a time and believe me,i was not good with people ;-; even less with children)

In any media,if we are having a origin for Dick he SHOULD go live with Bruce when he is 8 years old. I understand some people may be like "oh but a little child fighting crime? This doesn't fit right..." Well my friend let me tell you,we are talking about a man that lost his parents and decided to dress as Bat and go flipping in the night scaring criminals,this sure fits right for a real world right? 😃

Lmao anyways- i'm just kidding.

BUT- i should express another opinion. I don't know if i want a live action movie with Batman & Robin...i don't think real people acting wouldn't bring magic to the thing y'know? Besides if we are really following my thoughts,a Robin with 8 years old would be kinda hard to imagine in a live action movie(unless the director is the master of making amazing stuff and manages to make a perfect Robin) so that's why i would rather have a animation on Batman & Robin with Bruce being a new parent with only 25(26?) Years old and a sad and angry 8 year old Dick Grayson that after some weeks becomes a very cute child :)

(even tho i would love if Robert Batman's really became the Batman to have a child Robin in his movie ;-;)

24 notas - publicadas em 3 de janeiro de 2022

Yooo wha-

I never expected them to do something like that 💀

43 notas - publicadas em 10 de julho de 2022

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61 notas - publicadas em 29 de novembro de 2022

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ectonurites · 2 years

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thoughts on todays releases?

OKAY I'm a bit behind on a few books so I don't have commentary for everything but to go over what I did get a chance to read [spoilers ahead!!!!]

Aquaman: The Becoming #4 - Admittedly I've been going into this book with very little knowledge of recent goings on with any of the characters, so it's been a lot of just taking things at face value (which is def different than me approaching Bat comics where I may notice inconsistencies with recent things more) but I thought the lore stuff about Jackson's mom today was really interesting. I'm not the biggest fan of the 'surprise sibling' trope which was how the last issue ended, but it is nice having like, his mom as part of this so we know yes Delilah is in fact his sister it's not a fake-out or anything, and seeing how that plays out. I also just... love complicated family dynamics, so this is interesting and tense in a way that appeals to me. I'm curious how Lucia's side of the story might differ though based on how she said Meeka was twisting things.

Detective Comics #1046 - WE LOVE TO SEE STEPH REFERRING TO HERSELF AS BATGIRL! Like I know she is officially one of 'The Batgirls' but getting to see her use the singular 'Batgirl' for herself just... feels so good. Also getting to see her interact with Helena! We love purple girls, and just the way Steph is always trying to help. In general Helena's stuff in the 'tec run has been really interesting so far, the visions as a lingering side effect from the Vile stuff is really cool and I'm glad they've kept it going. I'm super looking forward to Shadows of the Bat also, which this kinda helped move pieces into position for that since it starts next issue. While I do think that the concept of Arkham Tower- putting a version of Arkham in the middle of the city- is just absurd in so many ways (when I first mentioned to my mom that was a thing she burst out laughing because how the hell does anyone in-universe think that's a good idea) I'm still really curious to see how it's all gonna play out.

DC Vs. Vampires #3 - Hal basically being just the [gunshot warning in video] Eric Andre: Who Killed Hannibal? meme about Barry's death has been too funny ever since the preview dropped. Overall I'm so along for the ride with this, it's just vampire chaos. ALSO ZATANNA.... QUEEN.... queen. Adore her design here. The ending was a fun thing too, I think Hal & Diana choosing Bruce of all people to frame for Barry's murder is gonna be a fascinating choice when we get to the start of the next issue, just seeing the discussion that brings. The guy with the biggest thing against killing being framed. It's bold. Daring. OH also Dinah, Roy & Ollie having their little group... love it. Like last issue we saw the Bats together as a family unit so I'm glad we can see other hero families having a similar idea.

Robin #9 - We love the power of friendship and teamwork! Truly embracing the shonen anime vibe of this whole run so far. Alfred's ghost's presence in the book has been something I've loved so far, and the way he was used in this issue I especially liked. Altho I really dislike Rose being like 'stop flirting!!!' when Damian and Flatline just talk to each other like sgdfhgfh they will just be having a normal conversation and everyone's like 'ugh get a ROOM' like. I'm tired. I hope that stops soon, because otherwise I do really like Flatline & her interactions with Damian. I don't even mind it being a romantic thing between them (like, Damian's 14 now, that's when Tim was having all sorts of romance plots back in his Robin solo) but having others comment on it that way makes it feel forced when there is an interesting dynamic forming there that doesn't need that. Also the ending was such a cool OH SHIT moment I'm so so so curious to see where things pick up with that next issue, and how he's gonna get back to the present/what new things about Ra's he's gonna find out in the past.

Task Force Z #3 - Bringing up Jason's thoughts about killing in direct relation to Alfred's death? Which provides some reasoning that actually... makes his choice to stay away from killing for the time being make a bit more sense for him, connecting it to his own guilt and loss? Then having Hanna suggest he forgive Bane for what he did... and him at the first available opportunity where he knew it'd actually mean something basically saying 'fuck forgiveness' and pushing Bane off a building for what he did to Alfred? Telling his higher-ups that Bane's gone- attempting to ensure that he won't get more Lazarus Resin to come back to life so essentially trying to re-kill him? HELL. YEAH. (solicits for future issues do let us know that Bane's def not staying dead, but hey, Jason tried) Again, I wouldn't have gone down this 'no killing no guns' path with Jason in the first place, I still don't like it as a general direction, but this is at least going down that path in an interesting way. We love revenge, revenge is a very Jason thing. Also the ending! I really hadn't been thinking all that much about who Crispin might be so him actually being Two-Face was a fun reveal. In hindsight, the pair of twin scientists was probably a clue. Like we knew he'd be involved in the book from solicits for future issues but this wasn't the way I expected it.

Teen Titans Academy #10 - So as a whole, I've definitely thought the strongest parts of this book have been focusing on the new students/new characters, and this issue had some Dane & Red X stuff that I thought was at least like, interesting. Dane saying his father is 'The Dark Lord'/Dane being called the Antichrist plus his physical similarities to how DC's Lucifer has been depicted (especially with his wings now like. come on) is just making me 👀 like are they gonna namedrop him? And of course, there's the main reason I'm still reading this book, I am curious what the deal is with Red X. I liked him in this issue being less of the just mysterious shadowy figure and a lot more of a vulnerable kid, plus him choosing not to leave Dane when he could have. I really didn't like the bits with the senior Titans in this issue though, idk. As a whole them being teachers and shit in the first place still feels so weird to me, it's super just not my ideal dynamic for a version of the Titans. All the 'Mr.' and 'Ms.' usage with their hero names just sounds so silly every time. The bit I disliked the most though was Roy misgendering Stitch like.... I get the reasoning, Roy only just got there and hasn't really met them before this moment, but hghghgghhh just didn't like it!! Did not think it was necessary.

so ya! my disjointed thoughts.

#dc spoilers #tuesday spoilers

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maxwell-grant · 3 years

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Cass wouldn’t even begrudingly tolerate [the Black Bat], because she’s even less lenient than Bruce on killing and far more willing to throw down.' - THANK YOU for remembering that.

Cass is my favorite Batfam member, the only one really that I have an active interest in reading about. I'd be incredibly ignorant to not bring bring up such a crucial aspect of her characterization. And even if I didn't personally care for her, well, last thing I'd want is to be another source of frustration for Cass fans. Lord knows there's enough of those to go around.

mousebrass also asked: On that note, how do you imagine a meeting between Cass and the Shadow going?

Fair warning: This one took me 6 hours to write, and it became a hell of a lot longer than I imagined. I liked Cass a lot, but I never quite realized I had this many feelings regarding her until I was tasked with writing this, and a lot of things clicked for me regarding my plans for The Shadow thanks to this ask. @mousebrass, thank you. I mean it. I think I may have found something here I've spent years looking for. Hope you enjoy the post.

I'm thankful that this scenario is only really taking place in a hypothetical fanon where both characters can get a fair shot, because I wouldn't trust DC with this premise. I don't trust DC with either of them as is.

There's a lot of ways that this crossover could go on about taking place naturally, initially because Cass is already connected to some of Batman's pulpier elements, due to her connections to Lady Shiva and the League of Assassins, and one could connect Cass to Myra Reldon (who really should just be race swapped if ever brought back so she can stand out as the cool character she is, without the yellowface gimmick holding her back). There's two things I think are crucial to making the most of this idea, and the first of which has to do with the subject of killing. I usually don't like to come up with hypothetical team-ups for The Shadow that focus too much on the fact that he kills, because it's far from the most significant aspect of his character to focus on, much of it is written from a wrong understanding of the character, and it never amounts to anything other than perfunctory. But here, not only is it completely unavoidable to discuss, here there is actually a very, very substantial grounding as to why this has to be such a big part of the story.

The first and foremost thing that's gotta be established to everyone reading that doesn't know already is this: Cassandra Cain, more so than Batman, more so than any other DCU hero, has a tolerance towards murder lower than zero, and this is completely non-negotiable. She will throw herself on the path of an assault rifle to stop men trying to kill her from accidentally killing each other. The defining moment of her incredibly grim backstory is that she was trained from birth to be the world's greatest murderer, and her first kill traumatized her so badly that she has pivoted as far away from that as possible. I stress a lot that the Shadow should not be written as the trigger-happy maniac comics made him into and that the pulp version killed mostly to defend himself and others, generally left criminals to the police if possible, offered plenty of second-chances, had stories dedicated to the rehabilitation of criminals and so on, but none of this would matter to Cass.

Cass has literally chosen suicide over the prospect of living with murder on her hands time and time again, and The Shadow kills. When he kills, he does so without remorse, with unshakeable certainty. He hates death, he doesn't want lives to be at risk in the first place. But people will die if he doesn't do anything, and what he can do, what he exists to do, is turn the tools of evil against evil, and murder is the oldest tool of evil there is. He doesn't kill because a war scarred him, he doesn't kill because he's got a demon in his soul, he doesn't kill because he's mentally off balance, he doesn't kill because he's evil or sadistic or arrogant or anything of the sort. He kills because the men he fights chose death when they sought to harm innocents and fire guns at him. He kills because he is Death itself.

Regardless of how compassionate he is or can be, regardless of the fact that he's motivated by a desire to protect people, regardless of how justified he is, he is still dropping corpses and laughing maniacally doing so. Cass's real arch-enemy isn't Shiva or David Cain, it's Death, it's the thing that she's fundamentally most opposed to. And guess what The Shadow gets compared to often enough? Literally the very first line of the very first book where we get to see him, this is how we are introduced to him:

So the premise here is that we are taking a character who is defined by her fundamental opposition to death with every fiber of her being, who understands death on a level no other human being does, who is traumatized and hard-wired to detest death at all costs and to choose suicide over it, and asking her to team up with The Grim Reaper.

Even if he received the most abject lesson conceivable on the sheer wrongness of murder, even if he does put down the guns around Cass out of respect for her, he cannot protect his agents and others if he cannot shoot or kill those who try to harm them, and the protection of the agents is absolutely non-negotiable and not at all something he's willing to fuck around with by trying out gadget kung fu superhero alternatives. The Shadow has chosen to throw his life away for their sake time and time again, and no matter how appaling or disgusting Cass finds his deeds, even if he concedes that she's right and should be right on all accounts and that he is fundamentally a monster who has no right to judge others, he would not concede on his mission and he would make it very clear she would have to put him down violently to stop him from protecting others this way, and death has not stopped him before.

And to be upfront in case there's anyone who doubts it, Cass would kick The Shadow's ass, if they had to fight. She is the strongest fighter in the DCU, she lives and breathes fighting and combat in a way no one else does. And The Shadow's not one of those characters who is supposed to be invincible and the best at everything all the time always, he can and does lose fights and scrapes to people far less adept at it than Cass. He's a great fighter, obviously, he hauls bigger men than him through doors and was disabling people with Vulcan neck pinches decades before Spock, and he would definitely have an edge in other areas, but he's out of his league here. Frankly, I don't see The Shadow raising a finger against Cass unless she's been brainwashed into killing people by bad writing. Not because she's a woman, that doesn't really stop him from dealing with evil. But because, for one, she's practically a child compared to him age-wise. Two, he'd obviously know beforehand of her capabilities and how futile it would be to fight or even provoke her. And three, the Shadow's whole thing is knowing. The Shadow Knows and all that. Knowing comes with understanding.

He'd understand very quickly that there is no way someone this young could grow so quickly into the world's greatest fighter without horrific treatment that no one should ever be subjected to. He'd see the movements too practiced and quick, the self-control, the strength and speed far beyond even the trained warriors he's seen, the places where she's been scarred and is good at covering it up. Assuming he doesn't already know about her life story, any meeting between the two would lead to him very quickly figuring out that there's something much deeper about her opposition to killing than just moral reservations, something deeper than Bruce's own gun trauma.

Denny O'Neil's 2nd Batman and Shadow story was about The Shadow secretly helping Bruce overcome gun trauma, and Bruce rejecting The Shadow's intentions to hand him a gun. And to make it clear, people tend to assume that The Shadow only helps people for utilitarian reasons, which is not true as I've tried to demonstrate many times now. I don't want to convey that he would want to help Cass overcome her trauma just so she could be more efficient or something, absolutely no, he'd help her because he helps people in any way he can. I think a story with The Shadow and Cass might involve a similar premise, The Shadow understanding that she has been traumatized very deeply by death and refuses to accept it on any terms, trying to help her overcome it, only to learn that she does not want to "learn" anything she doesn't already know, that she has weaponized her trauma into a source of strength, and wishes nothing more than to help others with it.

And here's where we get to the part that allows the two to be on less antagonistic terms, because one thing that also very strongly defines Cass, at least the Cass I like reading most, is her stubborn, almost desperate need to believe in the best of people, that people can and will change for the better. Like The Shadow, her strength too is knowing, it's perception, the things that she knows about people that words cannot convey. Just as there are many things The Shadow would grow to understand about her that others would not, there would be many things that The Shadow would not be able to conceal from her. Things that no one but her would figure out. Things that, despite her age and lack of experience compared to him, he would have to defer to her knowledge on, which reverses the usual dynamic The Shadow has with people. And perhaps one aspect of that reversal, it's that maybe it's she who winds up secretly manipulating The Shadow into overcoming a deeper issue.

Cass's perspective on killing is shaped not just through trauma, but from a painfully intimate understanding of not just what happens to someone at the time of death, but the cost of murder upon the human soul, the ways it warps people into things they never should have been. Killing is a deeply, deeply serious matter, much more so than fiction seems ever willing to go into. Of course we suspend disbelief for fiction, there's nothing wrong with that, but if a story starts asking questions, starts poking holes into fantasies, they should not be disregarded.

And so it begs a question: How has it affected The Shadow? Is he really as remorseless as he appears to be? Is the fact that he's only killing evil people really of that much use? What's the cost of living as someone who has to know so much about so much evil in so many hearts? Knowledge never comes without price, and knowing evil is his tagline. When he enlists Harry Vincent, he makes it very clear that he has lost lives as he has saved them. From when is that regret coming from? What lives did he lose then? Is he saving people by damning his soul or merely prolonging the inevitable by piling corpses on another end of the scale?

If there's a character that could meaningfully start bringing these questions forth, who could ever truly get The Shadow to stop and reveal things to the audience he never would otherwise, maybe Cass could be that character. A girl who was raised to be a monster, who is treated as a monster and an aberration in-universe (and even outside of it), and turned that into a strength she uses to help others, who cares about everyone and refuses to let others be dehumanized as she was. Who better to know what lurks in the Shadow's heart?

Sometimes when I get an ask, I bullshit my way through infodump walls of text until I can structure it into something vaguely resembling a point. And sometimes, and I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes I get a very, very clear word on my mind related to it before I start writing, that almost seems to be a beacon pointing where I need to get to, and I work my way into getting there. Once you sent me an ask about crossing over The Shadow with Cassandra Cain, the word that came to mind the very second was Language.

It's an interesting relation the two have with language. Language is of course a very substantial part of Cass's character, who does not process language and linguistic development the way most people do, and instead reads body language to the point of superpower. Many stories revolve around Cass's relation to the concept of language, the help she may require from others in getting around things beyond her upbringing, and ways in which she has mastered beyond anyone's scope. Though she is mute, language is her power, what makes her what she is, and she is someone that Batman freely admits could kick his ass if she ever felt like it.

For The Shadow, language is also his power. He speaks all languages and connects allies all over the world, he is an expert ventriloquist, he is able to project his voice beyond what's physically possible, he can imitate voices perfectly to the point of being able to conduct group conversations single-handedly well enough to fool even the people whose voices he's imitating, much of his presence and terror and manipulation are done through his voice, arguably the very reason he exists in the first place is entirely because a radio actor's voice performance was so good and captivating that it tricked people into thinking the character was a real star and not just a glorified narrator. The man you cannot see, but only hear, the perfect hero for radio. And then of course the laugh, which I have a whole separate post on and which, in many ways, acts as a substitute for language in the novels. He uses the laugh so often as a substitute for statements or words, even to himself, that it's pretty much his own personal language. And language is at the core of how he deals with people, as he knows the right language to use to manipulate and move and help them. He knows what to promise, what to reveal, what to omit. He knows what to say, how to say it, when to say it. Language is the strings by which he puppeteers the world around him (and he can talk to animals, at least of one kind).

The Shadow and Cassandra Cain have mastered two different types of Language as throughly as anyone can possibly master them. The Shadow can talk a group of hardened criminals into killing themselves, Cassandra can punch a heart into stopping without killing it. The Shadow echoes his voice "through everywhere and nowhere at once" to whip crowds of thugs into frenzies, Cassandra outraces missiles and was tanking bullets as a child. The Shadow can lie and usurp lives so masterfully to fool even the families of those he's passing off as, Cassandra is a living lie detector who gleams inner conversations from miniscule reactions. The Shadow can speak every language known, Cassandra is the greatest master of the world's most universal language other than music. The two are supposedly human, but every now and then, something comes along to call that into question because of the things they can achieve. They cannot hide secrets from each other the way they do to everyone else. They are driven by a deep desire to help others, to make something out of the circumstances of their lives. To weaponize that which dictates they should be evil and monstrous into a relentless force of good.

Language is the root of understanding. And if nothing else, as impossible as a conciliation of their approaches to crimefighting may be, I think there could be an unique understanding between the two. Perhaps, and this is a bit crazier a concept but one that seems to be where I might have been heading towards all along, even Cassandra Cain finding a calling away from the frayed dynamics of the Batfamily, away from the Bat's looming presence, to become The Shadow's successor, swearing to uphold a mission of justice through non-lethal tactics while he stays on the backseat guiding her. If The Shadow could trust the safety of his agents and the protection of the innocent at the hands of someone as capable and selfless and good-natured as Cassandra, I think he'd be all too happy to be able to trust someone in such a manner, to no longer be the Master of Darkness, but instead to serve the next generation that's weaponized darkness without submerging in it. To achieve, and perhaps return, to his strongest, highest self: A disembodied voice heard, but not seen. Once again the narrator, not the star.

It's a concept I've thought about very extensively for the years I've been a Shadow fan, but now it occurs to me that, if I had to appoint a successor of The Shadow, someone who could take up the mission but shine on their own right, even improve it with the right guidance and circumstances, it would be Cassandra Cain. The Orphan, The Shadow of the Batgirl. Daughter of the greatest assassins, meant to be the world's most lethal murderer, instead pivoted to being one of it's greatest heroes, but never allowed to shine as she should. But in the darker, less restrictive and wilder world of pulp heroes, in The Shadow's world, a beacon would shine all the harder. Perfect strengths attached to perfect opposites, joined together for a greater good, unstoppable after together having weaponized that which most take for granted: the power of language to move worlds.

#replies tag #pulp heroes #comic books #the shadow #cassandra cain #batgirl #i always had a feeling that a successor to the shadow should not be modeled on batman but someone within that range #i never quite found a character i would be happy with taking that role or a similar role #aw shit i just talked myself into a new favorite character #that just so happens to be another character brimming with potential that's denied them by corporate overlords #who could have seen that coming

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stxleslyds · 3 years

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I saw your rant about the Red Hood Movie lol (I agree DC keeps hurting my boy Jason) and you said something that interested me, you mentioned that you don’t like it when Jason is drawn with a bat symbol on him but why? Personally I feel that him wearing the bat symbol makes sense because he’s always tried to fit in with the family and it’s his way of connecting with them because he’s never had a family before. He gets along with his other siblings sometimes so I don’t think it’s ooc. I consider ‘bat symbol’ Jason an era of the past and am perfectly fine with his new Red Hood logo it looks sweet (but I wouldn’t be angry if he had the bat symbol on or not in the future). I’m curious what you’re thoughts are!

Hey there Anon, I have to be honest with you, your ask has been proven very difficult to answer, this here is my third draft. I have decided that instead of explaining my thoughts as I was trying to do in my previous drafts, I will now just link you to some of my past posts when I bring up certain points that make me think Jason should have never worn the bat-symbol on his chest.

Just a heads up, I am not a fan of Batman, the “Batfamily”, or Jason being dragged to any Bat-related content, I think it makes his character bland.

In order to make the answer clear to me as well as to anyone who reads this post, I will be separating my thoughts on how I think Jason’s relationship with Bruce has led me to think that he shouldn’t wear a bat-symbol or be involved with any Batman related content, and how Jason’s relationship with his brothers has led me to think that he isn’t part of any Batfamily or has ever been written as someone with true reasons to consider the others his brothers/allies/friends. I will separate each of those two groups in four different sections: pre-New 52, New 52, Rebirth and Infinite Frontier.

First though I would like to say that Jason as the Red Hood wearing a bat-symbol doesn’t make sense to me from the most basic of things, Jason’s vigilante name has nothing to do with Bats. Who wears bat-symbols? Batman, Batwoman, Batgirl, Batwing… All people that who have the “Bat” prefix on their names, nobody else wears a bat-symbol, Nightwing, Robin, Red Robin (Robin), none of them wear it, so why would Red Hood do it? It just makes zero sense. But anyway, that’s just me being annoying, I guess.

Jason and Bruce’s relationship.

First let’s go back in time to when Jason hadn’t died yet. You said that Jason wore the bat-symbol so he could connect with his family because Jason had never had that before, well, I see things differently, Jason had a family and that was his mother, the mother that he cared for when she was sick and the mother that he saw die to drugs after his father was put in jail. He had a family with her. And then he had a family with Bruce when he was Robin, but because Bruce started to neglect and not pay enough attention to him after he realized they weren’t seeing eye to eye in various things, Jason was pushed to act the way he did when he found that his birth mother was alive and “being manipulated by Joker”.

Jason’s father was abusive with his mother and didn’t care for Jason, Bruce wasn’t ready to be a father (even after Dick) and when Jason started to not want to follow his every rule Bruce neglected him, later his birth mother betrayed him and was one of the people involved in Jason’s death.

My point here is that Jason had a family with one person who died to drugs and then every other “family” that he found ended up betraying him or neglecting him. So, I don’t really think that Jason has much trust in the whole concept of “family” at least not when it comes to any of his experiences outside of Catherine Todd.

Now let’s move to the events of Under the Red Hood where Jason comes back to comics. Jason doesn’t hate Bruce then but he felt betrayed by him and felt like Batman’s whole crusade was not good anymore. Jason expressed several times in that book the fact that he didn’t believe Batman was good for Gotham and that he became a better version of Batman, the Red Hood.

Red Hood could do things that Batman didn’t dare do, he was better. So, why on earth would Jason wear a bat-symbol then? Well, Jason never wore a bat-symbol pre-New 52 when he was wearing his Red Hood suit. NEVER.

Jason didn’t care for Dick or Tim, he saw Dick as inferior to him because of Nightwing’s no killing ways and he was completely indifferent to Tim, his only interactions with him were when he cut his throat a little bit in Batman: Hush and when he called him “the pretender”.

So, Jason wasn’t looking for family he just wanted Bruce to kill Joker for him, and Bruce didn’t. When things got complicated and Jason realized that Bruce was too much of a coward he improvised, he told Batman that in order to stop him from killing the Joker Batman would have to shoot him (Jason). Batman didn’t use the gun, but he did save the Joker by throwing a batarang at Jason’s throat. When Joker detonated the explosives in the building they were in Bruce once again saved Joker from the rubble and didn’t look much for Jason.

That my dead Anon is the first time Bruce betrays Jason in such a big way that made me think that Jason would have never wanted to interact with Bruce in a good way. I will repeat it now, Bruce SAVED the Joker instead of letting Jason KILL the Joker.

After Under the Red Hood we got to see that Jason was alive and well in Green Arrow #69-72, where he made an appearance, there I can say with a 100% certainty that Jason hated both Batman and Bruce. He actively did things that pissed Bruce off and was searching for conflict with the man.

Jason and Bruce don’t interact much after all that because at some point Bruce “died” and that’s where Battle for the Cowl comes in. There is where we see one of the craziest Jason characterizations, there Jason took on the mantle of Batman because Gotham needed Batman (what? Red Hood was created to replace Batman!). But in that book Jason actually harmed both his brothers and left them for dead. In that book we also see a horrible message that Bruce left for Jason where Bruce told him that “Jason was broken and he tried to fix him” and that “Jason was my (Bruce’s) biggest failure”. I don’t know about you Anon, but if my father saw me that way, I would be packing my bags. And Jason didn’t look like he was looking to connect with his “family”.

After all that we don’t see Jason until Batman and Robin vol.1, where we see the weirdest characterization of Red Hood, this Red Hood hates Batman and would kill anyone just because. Jason had zero need to connect with his family there.

I just want to remind you here that Jason never wore a Batman symbol until here in his Red Hood suits, he only wore the symbol when he “was” Batman and that was OOC.

So now I welcome you to the New 52, where Jason wears a bat-symbol on his Red Hood suit for the first time. I HATE New 52 Jason Anon; you will find zero love for him here. That man wore a bat-symbol on his chest even though he didn’t believe in Batman’s ways and while he had this internal conflict about whether he hated or not Bruce. This Jason gave up a memory from his Robin years with Batman because he didn’t care enough to keep it, then he was seen acting like an ass towards Bruce and Barbara in the “Court of Owls” event.

But this whole shit show was written by Lobdell and one day he decided that Jason cared about what Bruce thought and let us know that maybe Jason secretly admired Bruce (in the post I will link here! I talk about what happened in those issues among other things). That story would be followed by Batman and Robin vol.2 #20, or what I like to call “the second time Bruce betrayed Jason in an even more painful way”. I am not going to explain what happened there, but I will like here! the post where I talked about what happened there and why I think that Jason should have never been on good terms with Bruce again from that moment on.

In that post I also discuss how much of an abusive and manipulative person and father, Bruce has and can be. He is a disgusting human being and Jason called him out about it but DC loves to write Bruce being abusive and then swiping it under the rug, Jason being on good terms with Bruce or wearing a bat-symbol on his chest is just horrifying after witnessing that issue, and it normalized Bruce’s abusive behaviour when issues later the same writer (Tomasi) had Jason interact with Bruce as if nothing had happened.

After that Jason was seen interacting with Bruce when the latter lost his memory, Jason even hugged Bruce there, it was OOC, and like I said it normalized Bruce’s abusive behaviour or at the very least made it look as something of no real importance.

Now, we are entering the Rebirth era of Bruce and Jason’s relationship, Jason was still wearing that fucking bat-symbol on his chest and this time around Jason even made a deal where he wouldn’t kill anyone while in Gotham (RHatO vol.1 #6), Lobdell even wrote them as being all buddy-buddy after the mess that was the New 52, absolutely disgusting.

Jason didn’t interact with Bruce in Rebirth that much, in fact the next time that Batman made a big appearance in the Red Hood book was in Red Hood and the Outlaws vol.2 #25, yeah, the issue where Batman beats the living shit out of Jason twice because he thought that Jason had killed Penguin. Father of the year, Jason wasn’t dying to be part of Bruce’s family, he was just brutally beat to be part of it. Bruce also ripped the vat-symbol off of Jason’s chest and told him that he didn’t “belong” with him or in Gotham any more. The AUDACITY of that bitch, can you believe? Jason belongs in Gotham as much if not more than Bruce.

Later when Red Hood and the Outlaws became Red Hood Outlaw, we saw Bruce and Jason interact again when Bruce informed Jason of Roy’s death, hugged him and also told him that he was still not allowed in Gotham, what a swell guy that Batman lad!

After that Batman went after Jason Todd when Jason came back to Gotham (without King Batman’s permission) and told the world that Jason Todd was alive and well and taking over Penguin’s Casino. Jason actually threatened Batman with revealing too much information about himself to the world (meaning, Jason threatened Bruce with revealing his secret identity) and that was that. Jason and Bruce only saw each other a few times when DC needed to make money with one of their boring ass events like Joker War and Bruce was shown “welcoming” Jason to Gotham in Red Hood Outlaw #51 or #52, I don’t remember but either way, it was absolutely hilarious and made zero sense. I am sorry, but after Bruce being a manipulative, abusive and all around a horrible person, I don’t feel anything except rage when they make them interact as if they cared for one another.

Shit hits the fan in Infinite Frontier with Urban Legends: Cheer, once again instead of explaining what happens there, I will just link you to the six posts I made about that mini. Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four, Part five and Part six.

Here I will only talk about the comeback of the bat-symbol in Jason’s life. Like you said Jason used (still has in some books) his own logo on his chest after Bruce ripped off the bat-symbol and told him to fuck off. That Red Hood logo was still done with the bat-symbol in mind and I just thought that it was ugly, like, there is no need for a logo if you are going to give him an ugly one along an even uglier suit. But that’s not what matter here, what matters is that the bat-symbol IS making a comeback because at the end of UL: Cheer, Bruce gives Jason a brand new (ugly) suit that has the bat-symbol again. That gift comes as a slap to the face after the disaster that was that book, from every point of view that mini should have not come out to the public. But it did because it forced the “Batfamily” down our throats through Bruce deciding to welcome Jason back to the “family” by giving him a suit with HIS logo on the Red Hood suit that kinda looks to me like Bruce saying “glad that I own you too as well”. The whole bat-symbol thing doesn’t sit right with him and sadly I don’t see it like a “Jason era of the past”, I see it like a metaphorical jail for Jason’s character, he is not free to be the character that he is supposed to be (a perfect opposite to Batman that shows that duality MUST exist in Gotham), and instead all we get is another Batman wannabe that is just as boring as the Batman himself.

Jason and his brother’s relationship.

The funny ha-ha thing with this is that we are not supposed to see Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian as four brothers (and to be honest I have never seen them four as brothers, as far as I see it, Jason hasn’t had a brother since before died). DC always makes it clear that Damian is Bruce’s only son so yeah, there is a big misunderstanding there within DC themselves, they have no problem with trying to sell us their absolutely nasty version of a family but at the same time they refuse to acknowledge any one except for Damian as Bruce’s son.

Even though I don’t necessarily believe that Jason sees his brothers as such I still call them that way because they were/are all Bruce’s children.

But this is not about Bruce so let me talk about Jason’s interactions with his brothers in the pre-New 52 era. So, as I said earlier in this post Jason didn’t think Dick was a big deal in UtRH because *just* like Batman Dick never killed and his way didn’t work or whatever (if only Jason knew what Dick did), and with Tim, Jason was mostly indifferent, he only hurt him a little bit in Batman: Hush (for the little bit that he took Clayface’s place) and then he referred to him as “the pretender”. Then we jump to the events of Teen Titans for Tim and Nightwing for Dick. In Teen Titans #29 Jason went to Titans Tower and beat the living hell out of Tim just because, now that thing was OOC and written by Geoff Johns but it existed and it further proves that DC writes this “family” through violence every time they can and then they just hope we forget it happened. With Dick, well, there was the Brothers in Blood arc where Jason dressed up as Nightwing and killed people in his name, he did it because he wanted to “bond” with Dick because he thought that Dick had killed Blockbuster, the whole arc was a mess and I can tell you this about it, Jason wanted to bond for all the wrong reasons and Dick was written as actually preferring Jason to be dead.

Then we jump right into Battle for the Cowl and even though (once again) this Jason was extremely OOC he did try to kill both Damian and Tim and fought Dick too, so, so far, I am not seeing Jason wanting to connect with his brothers, it was more like him going “be robin to my weird ass version of Batman or suffer!”. It was just weird.

Then there was Batman and Robin vol.1, where Jason’s Red Hood was just a blood thirsty and crazy and he didn’t want to be part of any family. I might not like Jason being written as part of the family but what this book had going on was not it.

Now, get ready because it is New 52 time again and this is messier than his relationship with Bruce in this timeline. The most recognizable relationship (or lack of thereof) was Jason and Dick. Lobdell just let us know one thing about what Jason thought of Dick and that was HATE. Jason HATED Dick, why, you ask? Oh, um, no one really knows, the only panel we were shown as “proof” of why Jason hated Dick was when Jason was acting like a little bitch when Dick was teaching him stuff during patrol (RHatO vol.1 #6). But, yes, Jason “had” (apparently) a good relationship with Tim. Yeah, no gracias, listen, Jason and Tim having brunch for two pages (RHatO vol.1 #8) isn’t making me believe that Jason cares or sees Tim in a good light, just throwing a brunch between them isn’t proof of them being the best of brothers but then again Lobdell loved giving Jason every character trait and relationship that Dick once had (examples: Tim, Roy and Kory). That brunch didn’t mean much because later on during the Death of the Family event Jason almost killed Tim (Teen Titans #16) to “save” his father from Joker (talk about bad writing). Jason and Damian had a very weird and forced “bonding” moment in that same event (you can include Damian to the relationships that Lobdell borrowed from Dick), all of the sudden Jason cared for Damian and he was acting all brotherly, because “they worked together” as different people in Batman Incorporated #4, this weird interaction between Jason and Damian (it can only be called weird because it looked out of place and you cannot change my mind, even Jason thinks it is weird in those panels) happened in RHatO vol.1 #17. In that same issue is where Jason tells Dick that he was trash because he didn’t want to say hi to Kory and kinda tells him that Dick “underestimates” Kory, listen, New Teen Titans isn’t a book that I enjoy reading most of the time but Lobdell needs to do some re-reading himself, Dick isn’t trash to Kory, Lobdell was trash to Kory. Anyway, at that point in time, Jason had a bad relationship with Dick, a secret admiration for Bruce, and a weird ass relationship with Tim and Damian.

Before we go on let me tell you what I think about the whole New 52 dynamic. Jason was used as a replacement of Dick Grayson. Dick was the one that had good relationships with his brothers and father, Jason up until the start of New 52 didn’t care for Tim or Damian, hated Bruce and kinda had a soft spot for Dick. In the New 52 the tables were turned. Jason’s relationship with Tim was never developed in paper, they for some reason were friends only when they stood together like they did in Robin War and Batman and Robin Eternal, there was never development or a reason as to why they “were in good terms”, they just *were*. The whole Jason and Damian thing didn’t last long because Damian died and then the whole mess of Batman and Robin #20 happened with Bruce.

Ahh, Grayson #12, the time when Jason and Tim’s last braincell died, they threw so much shit Dick’s way and for nothing. I will forever be mad at this, they really thought that Dick of all people faked his death, and because Bruce was conveniently amnesiac nobody dared say “hey, wasn’t it Bruce the one that told us that Dick was dead?”, seems to me like New 52 Jason and Tim can go be friends with that one braincell all by themselves. This is not family; this is people teaming up with whoever so DC can sell another weird comic event. Also at that time Damian was alive and Jason couldn’t have cared less about him being there (maybe it was because Jason was there when Damian was resurrected? Who knows?).

And now we jump to Rebirth because I hate the New 52. Tim was nowhere to be seen. Jason just forgot Tim existed and it wasn’t until the Red Hood Outlaw era in which we saw Jason interact with Damian again. What we did see, was a reconciliation between Jason and Dick, Jason was written as acting completely different in RHatO Annual #1, Jason respected Dick and his work and also said that Dick “had been a better brother than he had given him credit for”. Then Jason appeared once in Nightwing and they talked about Dick’s new girlfriend. And that was that for a long while.

As I said, during the RHO era Jason and Damian shared a couple of issues in the Teen Titans run, I have talked about these issues before in two posts (Post 1 and Post 2) but I will summarize what happened there here quickly.

Apparently, Jason and Damian had been working together in secret (never shown in actual comics), Jason gave Damian targets and intel of people for Damian to put in his secret prison for villains. When Damian and the Titans go after a target something goes wrong and the Titans end up hurt. Damian goes after Jason without a second thought and accuses him of betraying him, a physical and emotional fight ensues and it ends with Jason promising that if he sees Damian again, he will kill him. That’s all for Jason and Damian being on good terms in Rebirth.

But it all changes in Infinite Frontier, in August of 2021 we see the *real* comeback of the “Batfamily” in Robin #5. Dick, Damian, Jason, Tim and Stephanie appear in this issue but the only things of essence happen between Jason and Damian and Dick and Damian. Only one of them made sense, and it wasn’t Jason and Damian.

Jason was there to bring Damian back to Bruce. Listen, the last time Jason and Damian were seen together they were actively hiding their work from Batman and then they ended promising to kill each other, and now Jason came fresh out of Urban Legends: Cheer #6 wanting Damian to go back to Bruce. Damian tricks Jason into a hug, but surprise! it wasn’t a hug, Damian electrocuted Jason to get him of his back.

And that’s all.

I understand that there have been moments where Jason has been written as wanting to connect to one or two people from the “family” but its never developed or based on something of true essence. You might consider it actually strong family connections but I just don’t see it that way.

Jason wearing a bat-symbol after the abuse and manipulation that Bruce put him through in new 52 onwards is just dumb to me. And given Red Hood’s origin, Jason wearing a bat-symbol in the first place is absurd and goes against everything that he once was.

Jason officially started wearing the bat-symbol again in Detective Comic's back up story written by Rosenberg and will continue to use it in the ongoing book Task Force Z.

The bat-symbol is annoying but Rosenberg writes Jason beautifully so yeah, I am biased there...

We just have different opinions on the matter Anon, but don't take this post as an attack towards you and what you think, it is just that I just don't like Jason being involved with anything Batman.

I hope you have a fantastic week Anon!

#jason todd #red hood #tim drake #dick grayson #damian wayne #bruce wayne #batfamily #batfam #dc comics #asksss

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wits-writing · 3 years

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What’s so Funny About Vengeance, the Night, and Batman? – Two Superhero Parodies in Conversation

Back in 2016, the first trailers for Director Chris McKay’s The Lego Batman Movie hit. A spinoff of the take on the iconic hero, voiced by Will Arnett, from 2014’s The Lego Movie. Those trailers spelled out a plot covering how Batman’s life of crimefighting is turned upside down when Robin unexpectedly enters the picture. It was a funny trailer, promising another insightful comedy from the crew behind The Lego Movie. A promise it handily delivered on when it came out in February 2017 with an animated feature steeped wall-to-wall jokes for the sake of mocking Bruce Wayne’s angst filled crusade that can only come from understanding what’s made the character withstand the test of time.

But there was a thought I and others had from seeing that trailer up to watching the actual movie:

“This seems… familiar.”

Holy Musical B@man! is a 2012 fan-made stage production parody of DC Comics’ biggest cash cow. It was produced as the fifth musical from YouTube-based cult phenomenon Starkid Productions, from a book by Matt and Nick Lang, music by Nick Gage and Scott Lamp with lyrics by Gage. The story of the musical details how Robin’s unexpected entrance ends up turning Batman’s (Joe Walker) life of crimefighting upside down. Among Starkids’ fandom derived projects in their early existence, as they’ve mainly moved on to well-received original material in recent years, Holy Musical B@man! is my personal favorite. I go back to it frequently, appreciating it as a fan of both superheroes and musicals. (Especially since good material that touches on both of those isn’t exactly easy to come by. Right, Spider-Man?)

While I glibly summarized the similarities between them by oversimplifying their plots, there’s a lot in the details, both major and minor, that separates how they explore themes like solitude, friendship, love, and what superhero stories mean. It’s something I’ve wanted to dig into for a while and I found a lot in both of them I hadn’t considered before by putting them in conversation. I definitely recommend watching both of them, because of how in-depth this piece goes including discussing their endings. However, nothing I can say will replace the experience of watching them and if I had included everything I could’ve commented on in both of them, this already massive piece would easily be twice as long minimum.

Up front, I want to say this isn’t about comparing The Lego Batman Movie and Holy Musical B@man in terms of quality. Not only are they shaped for vastly different mediums with different needs/expectations, animation versus stagecraft, but they also had different resources at their disposal. Even if both are in some ways riffing on the aesthetic of the 1990s Batman movies and the Adam West TV show, Lego Batman does it with the ability to make gorgeously animated frames packed to the brim with detail while Holy Musical often leans into its low-fi aesthetic of characters miming props and sets to add extra humor. They’re also for different audiences, Lego Batman clearly for all-ages while Holy Musical has the characters cursing for emphasis on a regular basis. On top of those factors, after picking through each of these for everything worth commenting on that I could find, I can’t say which I wholly prefer thanks in part to these fundamental differences.

This piece is more about digging through the details to explore the commonalities, differences, and what makes them effective mocking love letters to one of the biggest superheroes in existence.

(Also, since I’m going to be using the word “Batman” a lot, I’ll be calling Lego Batman just “Batman” and referring to the version from Holy Musical as “B@man”, with the exception of quoted dialogue.)

[Full Piece Under the Cut]

Setting the Tone

The beginning is, in fact, a very good place to start when discussing how these parodies frame their versions of the caped crusader. Each one uses a song about lavishing their respective Batmen with praise about how they are the best superheroes ever and play over sequences of the title hero kicking wholesale ass. A key distinction comes in who’s singing each song. Holy Musical B@man’s self-titled opening number is sung from the perspective of an omniscient narrator recounting B@man’s origin and later a chorus made up of the Gotham citizenry. Meanwhile, “Who’s the (Bat) Man” from Lego Batman is a brag-tacular song written by Batman about himself, even playing diegetically for all his villains to hear as he beats them up.

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Holy Musical opens on a quick recap of Batman’s origin:

“One shot, Two shots in the night and they’re gone And he’s all left alone He’s just one boy Two dead at his feet and their blood stains the street And there’s nothing, no there’s nothing he can do!”

We then get a Bat-dance break as the music goes from slow and moody to energetic to reflect Batman turning that tragedy into the driving force behind his one-man war on crime. Assured by the narrator that he’s “the baddest man that there’s ever been!” and “Now there’s nothing, no there’s nothing he can’t do!” flipping the last lyric of the first verse. For the rest of the opening scene the lyrics matter less than what’s happening to establish both this fan-parody’s version of Batman and how the people of Gotham (“he’ll never refuse ‘em”) view him.

Lego Batman skips the origin recap, and in general talks around the death of the Waynes to keep the light tone going since it’s still a kids movie about a popular toy even if there are deeper themes at play. Instead, it continues a trend The Lego Movie began for this version of the character writing music about how he’s an edgy, dark, awesome, cool guy. While that movie kept it to Batman angry-whiteboy-rapping about “Darkness! NO PARENTS!”, this one expands to more elaborate boasts in the song “Who’s the (Bat) Man” by Patrick Stump:

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“In the darkest night I make the bad guys fall There’s a million heroes But I’m the best of them all!”

Batman singing this song about himself, as opposed to having it sung by others aims the crosshairs of parody squarely on the hero’s ego. His abilities make fighting his villains effortless, like this opening battle is more an opportunity to perform the song than a life-or-death struggle. Even Joker’s aware of that as he shouts, “Stop him before he starts singing!” This Batman doesn’t see himself as missing out on anything in life, even if he still feels that deep down. Being Batman is the coolest thing in the world that anyone would envy. He’s Batman, therefore everyone should envy him.

The songs aren’t only part of the equation for how these two works’ opening scenes establish their leading hero. While both songs are about Batman being cool, they’re separated by the accompanying scenes. Lego Batman keep the opening within the Joker’s perspective until Batman shows up and the action kicks in. Once it does, we’re shown a Batman at the top of his solo-hero game. Meanwhile, Holy Musical’s opening is about B@man building his reputation and by the end of the song he has all the citizens of Gotham singing his praises with the titular lyrics. Both are about being in awe of the title hero, one framed by Joker’s frustration at Batman’s ease in foiling his schemes yet again and the other about the people of Gotham growing to love their city’s hero (probably against their better judgement.)

That’s woven into the fabric of what kind of schemes Batman is foiling in each of these. Joker’s plan to bomb Gotham with the help of every supervillain in Batman’s Rogues Gallery is hilariously high stakes and the type of plan most Batman stories, even parodies, would save for the climax. Neatly exemplified by how that’s almost the exact structure of Holy Musical’s final showdown. Starting with these stakes works as an extension of this Batman’s nature as a living children’s toy and therefore the embodiment of a child’s idea of what makes Batman cool, his ability to wipe the floor with anyone that gets in his way “because he’s Batman.” It also emphasizes Joker as the only member of the Rogues Gallery that matters to Lego Batman’s story, every other Bat-villain is either a purely visual cameo or only gets a couple lines maximum.

The crime’s being stopped by B@man are more in the “Year One” gangster/organized crime category rather than anything spectacle heavy. Though said crimes are comically exaggerated:

Gangster 1: Take these here drugs, put ‘em into them there guns, and then hand ‘em out to those gamblin’ prostitutes! Gangster 2: Should we really be doing these illegal activities? In a children’s hospital for orphans?

These fit into that model of crime the Dark Knight fights in his early days and add tiny humanizing moments between the crooks (“Oh, Matches! You make me laugh like nobody else!”) in turn making the arrival of B@man and the violence he deals out a stronger punchline. Further emphasized by the hero calling out the exact physical damage he does with each hit before warning them to never do crime again saying, “Support your families like the rest of us! Be born billionaires!” Later in the song his techniques get more extreme and violence more indiscriminate, as he uses his Bat-plane to patrol and gun down whoever he sees as a criminal, including a storeowner accidentally taking a single dollar from his own register. (“God’s not up here! Only Batman!”)

A commonality between these two openings is how Commissioner Jim Gordon gets portrayed. Both are hapless goofs at their core, playing more on the portrayal of the character in the 60s TV show and 90s Burton/Schumacher movies than the serious-minded character present in comics, Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy, and other adaptations. Lauren Lopez’s portrayal in Holy Musical gets overwhelmed by everything thrown at him, eventually giving up and getting out of B@man’s way (“I’m not gonna tell Batman what to do! He’s Batman!”) Hector Elizondo’s Gordon in Lego Batman clearly reached the “stay out of Batman’s way” point a long time ago, happy to have “the guy who flips on the Bat-signal” be his sole defining trait. While the characterizations are close, their roles do end up differing. Lopez’s Gordon sticks around to have a few more comedic scenes as the play goes on, where Elizondo’s exist to set up a contrast with his daughter Barbara and her way of approaching Batman when she becomes Police Commissioner.

These opening sequences both end in similar manners as well; the citizens of Gotham lavishing praise on their respective Batmen and a confrontation between Batman and the Joker. Praise from the citizenry in Holy Musical comes on the heels of a letter from B@man read out on the news about how much they and the city of Gotham suck. They praise B@man for his angsty nature as a “dark hero” and how they “wouldn’t want him any other way!”, establishing the motif of Gotham’s citizens in Holy Musical as stand-ins for the Batman fandom. Lego Batman uses the praise of the Gotham citizens after Batman’s victory in the opening scene as a lead in to contrast their certainty that Batman must have an exciting private life with the reality we’re shown. Which makes sense since Lego-Batman’s relationship to the people of Gotham is never presented as something at stake.

Greater contrast comes in how the confrontations with the Joker are handled, Lego Batman has an argument between the hero and villain that’s intentionally coded as relationship drama, Batman saying “There is no ‘us’” when Joker declares himself Batman’s greatest enemy. The confrontation in Holy Musical gets purposefully underplayed as an offstage encounter narrated to the audience as a Vicki Vale news report. This takes Joker off the board for the rest of the play in contrast to the Batman/Joker relationship drama that forms one of Lego Batman’s key pillars. While they take different forms, the respective citizenry praise and villain confrontation parts of these openings lead directly into the number one common thematic element between these Bat-parodies: Batman’s loneliness.

One is the Darkest, Saddest, Loneliest Number

Batman as an isolated hero forms one of the core tenants of the most popular understanding of the character. Each of these parodies picks at that beyond the broody posturing. There’s no dedicated segment in this piece about how these works’ versions of the title character function bleeds into every other aspect of them, but each starts from the idea of Batman as a man-child with trouble communicating his emotions. Time’s taken to give the audience a view of where their attitudes have left them early in the story.

Both heroes show their loneliness through interactions with their respective Alfreds. Holy Musical has the stalwart butler, played by Chris Allen, try to comfort B@man by asking if he has any friends he enjoys being around. When B@man cites Lucius Fox as a friend he calls him right away, only to discover Lucius Fox is Alfred’s true identity and Alfred Pennyworth was an elaborate ruse he came up with to protect Bruce on his father’s wishes. Ironically, finding out his closest friend was living a double life causes Bruce to push Alfred away (the play keeps referring to him as Alfred after this, so that’s what I’m going to do as well.) After he’s fired he immediately comes back in a new disguise as “O’Malley the Irish Butler” (same outfit he wore before but with a Party City Leprechaun hat.) That’s unfortunately the start of a running gag in Holy Musical that ends up at the worst joke in the play, when Alfred disguises himself as “Quon Li the Chinese Butler” doing an incredibly cringeworthy “substituting L’s for R’s” bit with his voice. It’s been my least favorite bit in the play since I first saw it in 2012 and legitimately makes me hesitate at times to recommend it. Even if it’s relatively small bit and the rest holds ups.

That disclaimer out of the way, that conversation between B@man and Alfred leads into the title hero reflecting on his sadness through the musical’s I Want Song, “Dark, Sad, Lonely Knight.” The song’s split into two halves, the first Alfred reflecting on whether he played a part in Bruce’s current condition and the second B@man longing for a connection. The song does a good job balancing between the sincerity over the hero’s sadness and getting good laughs out of it:

“Think of the children Next time you gun down the mama and papa Their only mama and papa Because they probably don’t have another mama and papa!”

The “I Want” portion of the song coming in the end with the repetition of the lryics “I want to be somebody’s buddy.”

Rather than another song number, Lego Batman covers Batman’s sadness through a pair of montages and visual humor. The first comes after the opening battle, where we see Batman taking off all his costume except for the mask hanging out alone in Wayne Manor, showing how little separation he puts between identities. Compared to Holy Musical where the equivalent scene is the first we see of Bruce without the mask on, which may come down to practicality since anyone who’s worn a mask like that knows they get hot and sweaty fast. Batman is constantly made to appear small among the giant empty rooms of his estate as he eats dinner, jams on his guitar, and watches romantic movies alone.

Ralph Fienne’s Alfred coming in at the end of this sequence witnessing Batman looking at a photo of himself as a boy with his parents for the last time. Alfred outlines Batman’s fear of being part of a family again only to be met with Batman denying he has any feelings ever. Pennyworth’s role as a surrogate father gets put into greater focus here than in Holy Musical, as we get glimpses of Alfred reading a book titled “How to Deal with Your Out-of-Control Child.” Also shown in smaller scenes of Alfred dealing with Batman’s insistent terminology for his crime fighting equipment, like calling his cowl an “armored face disguise.”

Batman’s denial of his pain contrasts how B@man wallows in it. Though he’s forced to confront it a little as the Joker’s plan ends up leaving him with no crimefighting to fall back on to ignore his issues. This montage gets set to the song “One” by Harry Nilsson and details Batman, unable to express his true feelings, eventually letting them out in the form of tempter tantrums. There’s also some humor through juxtaposition as Batman walks solemnly through the streets of Gotham City, rendered black and white, as the citizens chant “No more crime!” in celebration, while flipping over cars and firing guns into the air.

A disruption to their loneliness eventually comes in the form of a sensational character find.

Robin – The Son/BFF Wonder

Between both Bat-parodies, the two Robins’ characterizations are as close as anyone’s between them. Each is nominally Dick Grayson but are ultimately more representative of the idea of Robin as the original superhero sidekick and his influence on Batman’s life. The play and movie also both make the obvious jokes about Dick’s name and the classic Robin costume’s lack of pants at different points. Dick’s origin also gets sidestepped in each version to skip ahead to the part where he starts being an influence in Batman’s life.

Robin’s introduction to the comics in Detective Comics #38 in 1940, marking the start of Batman’s literal “Year Two” as a character, predating the introduction of Joker, Catwoman, and Alfred, among others. Making him Batman’s longest lasting ally in the character’s history. His presence and acrobatics shift the tone by adding a dash of swashbuckling to Batman’s adventures, inspired by the character’s namesake Robin Hood, though both parodies take a page out of Batman Forever and associate the name with the bird for the sake of a joke. Robin is as core to Batman as his origin, but more self-serious adaptations (i.e., the mainstream cinematic ones that were happening around the times both Holy Musical and Lego Batman came out) tend to avoid the character’s inclusion. These two works being parody, therefore anything but self-serious, give themselves permission to examine why Robin matters and how different characters react to his presence. Rejection of Robin as a character and concept comes out in some form in each of these works, from Batman himself in Lego Batman and the Gotham citizens in Holy Musical.

The chain of events that lead to Dick becoming Robin in Lego Batman are a string of consequences for Batman’s self-absorption. A scene of Bruce barely listening as Dick asks for advice on getting adopted escalating to absentmindedly signing the adoption paperwork. Batman doesn’t realize he has a son until after his sadness montage. Alfred forces Batman to start interacting with Dick against his will. The broody loner wanting nothing to do with the cheery kid, played to “golly gee gosh” perfection by Michael Cera, until he sees the utility of him. Batman doesn’t even have the idea to give Robin a costume or codename because he clearly views the sidekick’s presence as a temporary measure for breaking into Superman’s fortress, made clear by how he lists “expendable” as a quality Dick needs if he wants to go on a mission.

This makes Robin the catalyst for Batman’s shifting perspective throughout Lego Batman. When Robin succeeds in his first mission, the Dark Knight is hesitant to truly compliment him and chalks up his ward’s feats to “unbelievable obeying.” Other moments have Robin’s presence poke holes in Batman’s tough guy demeanor, like the first time Batman and Robin ride in the Bat-mobile together, Robin asks where the seatbelts are and Batman growls “Life doesn’t give you seatbelts!”, only for Batman to make a sudden stop causing Robin to hit his head on the windshield and Batman genuinely apologizes. They share more genuine moments together as the film goes, like Batman suggesting they beatbox together to keeps their spirits up after they’ve been imprisoned for breaking into Arkham Asylum. Robin’s representative of Batman gradually letting people in throughout these moments.

On the exact opposite end of the spectrum, B@man needs zero extra prompting to let Robin into his life. Nick Lang’s Robin (henceforth called “Rob!n” to keep with this arbitrary naming scheme I’ve concocted) does get brought into his life by Alfred thanks to a personal ad (“‘Dog for sale’? No… ‘Orphan for sale’! Even better!”) but it’s a short path to B@man deciding to let Dick fight alongside him. The briefest hesitance on the hero’s part, “To be Batman… is to be alone”, is quelled by Rob!n saying “We could be alone… together.” Their first scene together quickly establishing the absurd sincerity exemplified by this incarnation of the Dynamic Duo. An energy carried directly into the Act 1 closing number, “The Dynamic Duet”, a joyful ode between the heroes about how they’re “Long lost brothers who found each other” sung as they beat up supervillains (and the occasional random civilian.)

That song also ties into the contrast between the Batman/Robin dynamic and the B@man/Rob!n one. While Holy Musical is portraying a brotherly/BFF bond between the two heroes, Lego Batman leans into the surrogate son angle. While both are mainly about their stories’ Batman being able to connect with others, the son angle of Lego Batman adds an additional layer of “Batman needs to take responsibility for himself and others” and a parallel to Alfred as Batman’s own surrogate father. It also adds to the queer-coding of Batman in Lego Batman as Batman’s excuse to Robin for why he can go on missions is that Bruce and he are sharing custody, Robin even calling Batman’s dual identities “dads” before he knows the truth.

In the absence of the accepting personal responsibility through fatherhood element, the conflict Rob!n brings out in Holy Musical forms between B@man and the citizens of Gotham. “Citizens as stand-ins for fandom” is at it’s clearest here as the Act 2 opener is called “Robin Sucks!” featuring the citizens singing about how… well, you read the title. Their objections to Rob!n’s existence has nothing to do with what the young hero has done or failed to do, but come from arguments purely about the aesthetic of Rob!n fighting alongside B@man. Most blatantly shown by one of the citizens wearing a Heath Ledger Joker t-shirt saying Rob!n’s presence “ruins the gritty realism of a man who fights crime dressed as a bat.” It works as the Act 2 opener by establishing that B@man and the citizens conflicting opinions on his sidekick end up driving that half of the story, exemplified in B@man’s complete confusion about why people hate Rob!n (“Robin ruined Batman? But that’s not true… Robin make Batman happy.”)

Both Robins play into the internal conflict their respective mentors are going through, but what would a superhero story, even a parody, be without some colorful characters to provide that sweet external conflict.

Going Rogue

Both works have the threat comes from an army of villains assembled under a ringleader, Zach Galifianakis’s Joker in Lego Batman and Jeff Blim as Sweet Tooth in Holy Musical. Both lead the full ensemble of Batman’s classic (and not so classic) Rogues at different points. As mentioned before Joker starts Lego Batman with “assemble the Rogues, blow up Gotham” as his plan, while Sweet Tooth with his candy prop comedy becoming the ringleader of Gotham’s villains is a key turning point in Act 1 of the play. Part of this comes down to how their connections to their respective heroes and environments are framed, Sweet Tooth as a new player on the scene and Joker as Batman’s romantic foil.

Lego Batman demonstrates Batman and Joker are on “finishing each other’s sentences” levels of intimate that Batman refuses to acknowledge. Shown best in how Joker’s plan only works because he can predict exactly how Batman will act once he starts playing hard to get. When he surrenders the entire Rogues Gallery (without telling them) and himself to police custody, he describes it as him being “off the market.” He knows Batman won’t settle for things ending on these terms and tricks the hero into stealing Superman’s Phantom Zone projector so he can recruit a new, better team of villains for a take two of his masterplan from the start. Going through all this trouble to get Batman to say those three magic words; “I love hate you.” Joker as the significant other wanting his partner to finally reciprocate his feelings and commit works both as a play on how the Batman/Joker relationship often gets approached and an extension of the central theme. Batman is so closed off to interpersonal connections he can’t even properly hate his villains.

Sweet Tooth, while clearly being a riff Heath Ledger and Caesar Romero’s Jokers fused with a dash of Willy Wonka, doesn’t have that kind of connection with B@man. Though there are hints that B@man and his recently deceased Joker may have had one on that level. He laments “[Joker]’s in heaven with mom and dad. Making them laugh, I know it!” when recalling how the Clown Prince of Crime was the one person he enjoyed being around. This makes Joker’s death one of the key triggers to B@man reflecting on his solitude at the start of the play.

What Sweet Tooth provides the story is a threat to B@man’s new bond with Rob!n. Disrupting that connection forms the delicious center of the Candy King of Crime’s plan in Act 2. He holds Rob!n and Gotham’s people hostage and asks the citizens to decide via Facebook poll if the sidekick lives or dies (in reference to the infamous phone hotline vote from the comic book story A Death in the Family where readers could decide the Jason Todd Robin’s fate.)

With the rest of the villains under the leadership of the respective works’ main antagonists, there’s commentary on their perceived quality as threats. When Holy Musical has Superman talking to Green Lantern about how much B@man’s popularity frustrates him, he comes down especially hard on the Caped Crusader’s villains. Talking about how they all coast by on simple gimmicks with especially harsh attention given to Two Face’s being “the number two.” Saying they’re only famous because B@man screws up and they get to do more damage. Which he compares to his own relationship with his villains:

Superman: You ever heard of Mr. Mxyzptlk? Green Lantern: No. Superman: No, that’s right! That’s because I do my job!

Lego Batman has commentary on the other villains come from Joker, recognizing that even all together they can never beat Batman, because that’s how a Batman story goes. The other villains get portrayed as generally buffoonish, struggling to even build a couch together and described by Joker as “losers dressed in cosplay.” Tricking Batman into sending him to the Phantom Zone provides him the opportunity to gather villains from outside Batman’s mythos and outside DC Comics in general. Recruiting the likes of Sauron, King Kong, Daleks, Agent Smith from The Matrix, and the Wicked Witch of the West, among others. When I first saw and reviewed The Lego Batman Movie, this bugged me because it felt like a missed opportunity to feature lesser-known villains from other DC heroes’ Rogues Galleries. Now, considering the whole movie as meta-commentary on the status of this Batman as a children’s toy, it makes perfect sense that Joker would need to go outside of comics to break the rules of a typical Batman story and have a shot at winning.

The Rogues of Holy Musical get slightly more of a chance to shine, if only because their song “Rogues are We” is one of the catchier tracks from the play. They’re all still more cameo than character when all’s said and done, but Sweet Tooth entering the picture is about him recognizing their potential to operate as a unit, takeover Gotham, and kill B@man. The candy-pun flinging villain wants all of them together, no matter their perceived quality.

Sweet Tooth: “We need every villain in Gotham. Cool themes, lame themes, themes that don’t match their powers, even the villains that take their names from public domain stories.” (Two Face’s “broke ass” still being the exception.)

Both Joker and Sweet Tooth provide extensions of the shared theme of Batman dealing with the new connections in his life, especially with regards to Robin. However, Robin isn’t the only other ally (or potential ally) these Dark Knights have on their side.

Super Friends(?)

The internal crisis of these Caped Crusaders come as much from how they react to other heroic figures as it does from supervillainous machinations. In both cases how Batman views and is viewed by fellow heroes gets centered on a specific figure, Superman in Holy Musical and Commissioner Barbara Gordon (later Batgirl) in Lego Batman. Each serves a vastly different purpose in the larger picture of their stories and relationship to their respective Batmen. Superman reflecting B@man’s loneliness and Barbara symbolizing a new path forward for Batman’s hero work.

Superman’s role in Holy Musical runs more parallel to Lego Batman’s Joker than Barbara. Brian Holden’s performance as the Man of Tomorrow plays into a projected confidence covering anxiety that nobody likes him. Besting the Bat-plane in a race during B@man’s Key to the City ceremony establishes a one upmanship between the two heroes, like Joker’s description of his relationship with Batman at the end of Lego Batman’s opening battle. Though instead of that romantically coded relationship from Lego Batman, this relationship is more connected to childish jealousy. (But if you do want to read the former into Holy Musical B@man, neither hero has an onstage relationship with any woman and part of their eventual fight consist of spanking each other.)

B@man and Superman’s first real interaction is arguing over who’s the cooler hero until it degrades into yelling “Fuck you!” at each other. B@man storming off in the aftermath of that gets topped off by Superman suggesting he should get the Key to the City instead, citing his strength and longer tenure as a hero (“The first hero, by the way”) as justifications. This only results in the Gotham citizens turning on him for suggesting their city’s hero is anything less than the best, which serves both as a Sam Raimi Spider-Man reference (“You mess with one of us! You mess with all of us!”) and another example of the citizens as stand-ins for fandom. Superman’s veil of cocksureness comes off quickly after that and stays off for the rest of the play. Starting with his conversation with Green Lantern where a civilian comes across them, but barely acts like Superman’s there.

One of the play’s running gags is Superman calling B@man’s number and leaving messages, showing a desperation to reach out and connect with his fellow hero despite initial smugness. Even before the first phone call scene, we see Superman joining B@man to sing “I want to be somebody’s buddy” during “Dark, Sad, Lonely Knight” hinting at what’s to come. The note it consistently comes back to is that Superman’s jealousy stems from Batman’s popularity over him. This is a complete flip of what Lego Batman does with the glimpse at a Batman/Superman dynamic we see when Batman goes to the Superman’s fortress to steal the Phantom Zone projector. The rivalry dynamic there exists solely in Batman’s head, Lego-Superman quickly saying “I would crush you” when Batman suggests the idea of them fighting. Superman’s status among the other DC heroes is also night and day between these works. Where Lego-Superman’s only scene in the movie shows him hosting the Justice League Anniversary Party and explaining he “forgot” to invite Batman, Superman in Holy Musical consistently lies about having friends over (“All night long I’m busy partying with my friends at the Fortress… of Solitude.”)

Superman’s relationship to B@man in Holy Musical develops into larger antagonism thanks to lack of communication with B@man brushing off Supes’ invitations to hang out and fight bad guys (“Where were you for the Solomon Grundy thing? Ended up smaller than I thought, just a couple of cool guys. Me and… Solomon Grundy.”) His own loneliness gets put into stronger focus when he sees the news of Rob!n’s debut as a crimefighter, which makes him reflect on how he misses having Krypto the Super-Dog around. (The explanation for why he doesn’t have his dog anymore is one of my favorite jokes in the play and I won’t ruin it here.)

Where Superman’s a reflection of B@man’s loneliness, Rosario Dawson as Barbara in Lego Batman is a confrontation of Batman’s go it alone attitude. Her job in the story is to be the one poking holes in the foundation of Batman as an idea, starting with her speech at Jim Gordon’s retirement banquet and her instatement as commissioner. She has a by-the-book outlook on crimefighting with the omnicompetence to back it up, thanks to her training at “Harvard for Police.” Babs sees Batman’s current way of operating as ineffectual and wants him to be an official agent of the law. An idea that dumps a bucket of cold water on Batman’s crush he developed immediately upon seeing her, though that never fully goes away.

Her main point is that Batman “karate chopping poor people” hasn’t made Gotham better in his 80 years of operating. A contrast to Holy Musical’s Jim Gordon announcing that B@man has brought Gotham’s crime rates to an all-time low (“Still the highest in the world, but we’re working on it.”) She wants to see a Batman willing to work with other people. A hope dashed constantly dealing with his childish stubbornness as he tries to foil Joker’s schemes on his own, culminating in her arresting Batman and Robin for breaking into Arkham to send Joker to the Phantom Zone.

Barbara’s role as the one bringing grown-up attitudes and reality into Batman’s world does leave her in the role of comedic straight woman. Humor in her scenes comes from how she reacts to everyone else’s absurdity rather than anything she does to be funny. This works for the role she plays in Lego Batman, since she’s not there to have an arc the way Superman does in Holy Musical. She’s another catalyst for Batman’s to start letting people in as another character he grows to care about. Which starts after she lets the Dynamic Duo out of prison to fight Joker’s new army of Phantom Zone villains on the condition that he plays it by her rules. Leading to a stronger bond between Batman, Robin, Alfred, and her as they start working together.

The two Batmen’s relationships to other heroes, their villains, Robin, and their own solitude each culminate in their own way as their stories reach their conclusions.

Dark Knights & Dawning Realizations

As everything comes down to the final showdowns in these Bat-parodies, the two Caped Crusaders each confront their failures to be there for others and allow themselves to be vulnerable to someone they’ve been antagonizing throughout the story. Each climax has all of Gotham threatened by a bomb and the main villains’ plans coming to fruition only to come undone.

Holy Musical has Sweet Tooth’s kidnapping of Rob!n and forcing Gotham to choose themselves or the sidekick they hate sends B@man into his most exaggerated state in the entire play. It’s the classic superhero movie climax conundrum, duty as a hero versus personal attachment. Alfred, having revealed himself as the “other butlers”, even lampshades how these stories usually go only for that possibility to get shot down by Bruce:

Alfred: A true hero, Master Wayne, finds a way to choose both. B@man: You’re right, Alfred. I know what I have to do… Fuck Gotham, I’m saving Robin!

B@man’s selfishness effectively makes him the real villain of Holy Musical’s second act. Lego Batman has shades of that aspect as well, where Batman gets sent to the Phantom Zone by Joker for his repeated refusal to acknowledge their relationship. Where the AI running the interdimensional prison, Phyllis voiced by Ellie Kemper, confronts him with the way he’s treated Robin, Alfred, Barbara, and even Joker:

Phyllis: You’re not a traditional bad guy, but you’re not exactly a good guy either. You even abandoned your friends. Batman: No! I was trying to protect them! Phyllis: By pushing them away? Batman: Well… yeah. Phyllis: Are they really the ones you’re protecting?

Batman watches what’s happening back in Gotham and sees Robin emulate his grim and gritty tendencies to save the day in his absence makes him desperately scream, “Don’t do what I would do!” It’s the universe rubbing what a jerk he’s been in his face. He’s forced to take a look at himself and make a change. B@man’s not made to do that kind of self-reflection until after he’s defeated Sweet Tooth but failed to stop the villain’s bomb. He’s ready to give up on Gotham forever and leave with Rob!n, until his sidekick pulls up Sweet Tooth’s poll and it shows the unanimous result in favor of saving the Boy Wonder. Despite everything they said at the start of Act 2, the people want to help their hero in return for all the times he helped them. All of them calling back to the Raimi Spider-Man reference from Act 1, “You mess with one of us. You mess with all of us.”

Both heroes’ chance at redemption and self-improvement comes from opening themselves up to the people they pushed out and dismissed earlier in their stories. Batman takes on the role he reduced the Commissioner down to at the beginning of the movie and flips on signals for Barbara, Alfred, and Robin to show how he’s truly prepared to work as a team, not just with his friends and family but with the villains of Gotham the Joker pushed aside as well. Teamwork makes the dream work and they’re all able to work together to get Joker’s army back into the Phantom Zone but like in Holy Musical they fail to stop the bomb threatening Gotham. Which he can only prevent from destroying the city by confessing his true feeling to Joker

Batman: If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have learned how connected I am with all of these people and you. So, if you help me save Gotham, you’ll help me save us. Joker: You just said “us?” Batman: Yeah, Batman and the Joker. So, what do you say? Joker: You had me at “shut up!”

The equivalent moment from Holy Musical comes from B@man needing to put aside his pride and encourage a disheartened Superman to save Gotham for him. This happens in the aftermath of a fight the two heroes had where Superman tried to stop B@man before he faced Sweet Tooth, B@man winning out through use of kryptonite. That fight doesn’t fit into any direct parallel with Lego Batman, but it is important context for how Superman’s feeling about B@man before Superman finally gets his long-awaited phone call from the Dark Knight. Also, the song accompanying the fight, “To Be a Man”, is one of the funniest scenes in the play. What this speech from B@man does is bring the idea of Holy Musical B@man as a commentary on fandom full circle:

B@man: I forgot what it means to be a superhero. But we’re really not that different, you and me, at our heart. I mean really all superheroes are pretty much the same… Something bad happened to us once when we were young, so we dedicated our whole lives to doing a little bit of good. That’s why we got into this crazy superhero business. Not to be the most popular, or even the most powerful. Because if that were the case, hell, you’d have the rest of us put out of a job!

This speech extends into an exchange between the heroes about how superheroes are cool, not despite anything superficially silly but because of it. Bringing it back to the “Robin Sucks!” theme that started Act 2, saying “Some people think Robin is stupid. But those people are pretentious douchebags. Because, literally, the only difference between Robin and me is our costumes.” The speech culminates in what I genuinely think is one of the best Batman lines ever written, as B@man’s final plea to Superman is “Where’s that man who’s faster than a gun?” calling back to the trauma that created Batman across all versions and what he can see in someone like Superman. So, B@man sacrificing his pride and fully trusting in another hero saves Gotham, the way Batman letting Joker know what their relationship means to him did in Lego Batman.

Each of these parodies ends by delivering a Batman willing to open himself up to a new team of heroes fighting at his side, the newly minted Bat-Family in Lego Batman and the league for justice known as the Super Friends in Holy Musical. Putting them side by side like this shows how creators don’t need the resources of a Hollywood studio to make something exactly as meaningful and how the best parodies come from love of the material no matter who’s behind them.

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slashy-ashy · 3 years

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I love dickkory, dickkory is my favorite ship because those two were literally my first ship. I grew up with watching the Teen Titans and I instantly fell in love with them. It sucks that comic writers did what they did too Dick and Kory, I mean it pisses me off so badly, I hate how they made Dick sleep with Bab’s right before getting married with Kory to perpetuate this idea of theirs that Dick is a ladies man that can’t be chained down to one woman even though he loves the idea of having a family and the fact that Dick loves Kory so unconditionally it isn’t even fucking funny, and Kory loves Dick so unconditionally back too and the fact that she was the one who helped Dick be more open about his feelings and to be more loving towards himself and she’s basically the reason on why the fandom writes him as this mother hen, happy go lucky guy. Kory was the one to bring him out of his shell, along with the Titans because they helped out A LOT with bringing Dick out of his shell because depending on which retcon you want to go with Bruce is definitely not an entirely open guy especially when dealing with his emotions, I hate that when Dick was raped by Mirage (because they did have dubious sex, one party of the duo didn’t know that the other was a shapeshifter who turned into the love of his life and slept with him then turned back into their original form and laughed in his face when she revealed her so called master plan) they had the team, the team of SUPERHEROES WHO DEAL WITH THIS SITUATION IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER POSSIBLY ON THE DAILY VICTIM AND SLUT SHAME DICK, and it says a lot when the fans actually agree with the teammates who slut shame and disrespect their leader and not bat an eye at the fact that the literal SHAPESHIFTER is practically jumping with joy after emotionally manipulating and raping their leader, and people are so quick to say that after seeing Kory yelling and blaming Dick say how in character that is but don’t talk about how in a different issue Kory fucking attacks (as 👏🏾she 👏🏾 should👏🏾) Mirage because “how dare you sleep with Dick” and they don’t site how truly THAT is in character because it is in the character of her. She loves that man so fucking much she really does, and Dick is so fucking gone on her too it isn’t even funny, and I have nothing against DickBabs I love their dynamic too but I didn’t grow up with them and I wasn’t as introduced with them as I am with Dickkory in a sense and I truly just enjoy Dickkory more than Dickbab in my opinion but it’s mostly due to the writers and how they just fucking wrote Barbra like I just feel like if they took the time to rebuild their friendship, and to stop and look at her characterization over the years and learn to write her properly then yeah I would love DickBab’s but as it stands I’m hesitant to follow canon DickBabs and I honestly will accept fanon DickBabs more than likely.

Dickkory is such a wonderful ship because they have so much history with each other and honestly at this point most of my ships for Dick are just him with the fab five, I love DickRoy, I love DickWally, I love DickGarth and I love them even if they’re romantic or platonic, outside of the fab five I will say that I like DickJoey but only for the reason that I don’t really know Joey.

One gripe I have will be the fact that due to how writers have written and mistreated canon, people believe all of what I said up above to be canon behavior for Dick, I hate how hyper sexualized he is and I hate how it comes to a point that it becomes this running gag of “I wonder what I can get away with” and by that I mean the in canon instances of people touching Dick without his consent but it ends up being laughed off because the predator is just so good looking that it makes it okay, or how people will just say how good his ass looks, or even wonder out loud how good in bed he probably is and some old flame will just come out of the wood works with a smirk on their face being all “well ladies I can say that he is fantastic in bed” while Dick just stands there while listening to this all go down and being so used to this but he still will get flack if he says anything to show how uncomfortable he is with the situation because he “asked for it” or something else as disgusting and ridiculous, and after a while it just gets so old like honestly just find a new gag okay, it’s not that hard.

And finally J**Kory , J**Roy and J**KoryRoy are not my favorite ships whatsoever ever. They’re not even my favorite friendships to be honest, because I legit cannot see a world where like my older sibs friends would ever just decide to hang out with me and spend so much time with me and I would just be okay with that. No, no, no,no,no,NO! It just boggles my mind on why DC decided that Jason can’t possibly make friends with people himself and it irks the hell out of me that they nerfed Kory and Roy that hard it isn’t even funny.

Like it kind of is funny when you think about it because if they weren’t then I doubt I really doubt that those two would have just been like “ yep, I’m just going to hang out with the love of my life’s little brother” like I can see, just them from time to time just going to check in sometimes with Dick and him just being like “hey you guys want to come with me while I check in with Jason” and they could be like “yeah sure, I haven’t heard from him in a while” but for the most part no I just don’t see them realistically just deciding to just hang out with Jason because Kory has a planet to run and Roy has a daughter that he needs to parent and Jason has a lot of trauma and anger to get through in a responsible and reasonable way that doesn’t include running a drug empire, killing people, trying to kill his family, and just constantly blaming his actions on his trauma because I don’t want to sound too critical of him but at the same time it’s like when are you going to let go of all of this anger and just try to start healing because you keep taking the easy route of things and you decide to walk away from the problems eating you up inside and you just default to distancing himself away from his problems and family but when are you going to do the most important and difficult step, of beginning the process of healing and coming to terms with your actions and on how they don’t just affect you but also the people around you? If I saw an issue like that than I would most definitely pick up an red hood book but as it stands no. It’s a no from me y’all.

And DickKoryRoy is honestly where it’s at. They have DECADES of content and storylines that you can just be like “hmm, I want to write/draw about the Brother blood arc or I want to write/draw about how Dick went to save Lian and how this affected Roy” the content is there it really is.

I love how this post just devolved into me talking about my love for Dickkory, my hesitance towards DickBabs, me talking about the ships I love and like, how I hate how they (the writers) mishandled Dick and how they mishandled real problems that people go through in real life, how Jason with Kory and/or Roy is my first and ultimate NOTP, and how Dickkory and/or Roy is elite in my opinion.

#dick grayson #nightwing #dc comics #teen titans #kory anders #Star fire #Jason Todd critical #Jayroy critical #jaykory critical #jayroykory critical #DickBabs #Dickkory #the first thing I post in a while on here and it’s this lol #DickWally #DickGarth #dickjoey #Jason Todd

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katara0524 · 3 years

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Impromptu Ramblings about the NEO:TWEWY Demo

In case y'all weren't aware, I've been a pretty big fan of TWEWY for a couple years now, and with the sequel coming out next month, the excitement I feel for this game is greater than ever :) I played the Demo for the first time yesterday, and following a couple views of some livestreams of others playing it, I felt like sharing my (very ramble-y) thoughts prior to the release of the full game. This post WILL contain spoilers for both TWEWY and NEO:TWEWY, so if you want to avoid those from now on, please block the tags: #twewy spoilers, #ntwewy spoilers, #neo twewy spoilers, #ntwewy, and #neo twewy ^_^ Oh, and if you wanna keep up with any other posts I make about my experience with this game, please refer to the tag "kat plays neo twewy" :)

-First things first: I have not watched the Final Trailer and I don't plan on doing so to avoid spoilers, especially after the pre-release era of KH3 where a lot of the later trailers spoiled a lot of the endgame content. That being said, I've seen some minor screenshots from the final trailer including what many believe to be characters from the original TWEWY, namely Shiki and Joshua. That is all I know about the Final Trailer and I would very much like to remain as blind as possible going into NEO :)

-The very first cutscene was quite ominous in the sense that this game is likely going to be about "changing fate" (a recently common theme in Squeenix games, which I do appreciate), perhaps leading off from the end of A New Day in the OG and trying to stop an Inversion of Shibuya. Also worth noting that A New Day had similar aspects in which the main character experienced "future visions" of tragic events, although in A New Day these events were not able to be changed, while in NEO it seems like one of the main "powers" our protagonist has is specifically to rewrite these events and avoid a "bad ending." Very interesting indeed!

-I really like the revamped comic book style dialogue scenes, it's much more fluid and modern, which is an excellent direction for the series to take!

-I would love to have an actual PokemonGO knockoff of Final Fantasy creatures, please Squeenix that would be incredibleeeeee

-Also the LINE stickers??? Are so cute???

-I would just like to point out that Fret is an absolute treasure throughout this entire demo, he's hilarious and I will protect him with my life

-UHHHH don't like that Fret picked up some Reaper Pins just out of nowhere.....or the fact that they're apparently popular all over Shibuya.............did y'all not learn anything from the OG game or what lmao

-Okay so when I first got the "curry or ramen" scene and heard NPCs talking about the new curry place replacing the old ramen place I became IMMENSELY distressed that Ramen Don was totally cut from the game because....well, Ramen Don is a King okay?? But I'm glad to learn that no, he didn't fall off the face of the earth, he's still in business and he's the one opening the curry restaurant lolol. PHEW, crisis averted!

-.....I don't like the sudden appearance of a Wall Reaper and being able to read NPC thoughts. Wtf happened when they left the ramen place??? Are they playing the Game alive somehow?

-Okay so I have my own theories about this "Swallow" character and what they're up to but considering this is only the Demo and I still Have No Idea What's Happening, I'm just gonna say that I think Swallow intentionally led Rindo and Fret to the Crossing so they could join the Game. I mean, add in the fact that Swallow still communicates with Rindo during the Game and you've got yourself a suspicious character right there lol

-"Hey they're shooting off fireworks!" Fret honey that's not fireworks oof (see also: "*laughs* I'm in danger")

-WOOOOOO way to traumatize Rindo right off the bat like that LMAOO

-The visuals for the intro are VERY GOOD, the song is pretty decent until it gets all "screamo" (which I absolutely cannot stand sorry lol)

-Shoka is every Customer Service employee ever and I respect that

-Susukichi went from being "meh" to "WOW THIS GUY IS FUN" in the span of 10 seconds and I also respect that (he is also built like an Absolute Unit which is hilarious)

-The Wall Reapers (and just Reapers in general) seem.....way nicer and more helpful this time around?? Like in the OG the Wall Reapers were SO RUDE gfhjgjdfkhn and yeah I'm sure we'll get some like that but the juxtaposition of the first Wall Reaper in the OG compared to the first one in NEO is insane.

-The puzzles are quite a bit more entertaining this time around even if it's generally the same "fetch quest" formula lol

-"Rindo's Group" way to go Fret HFKJDGHSDFKJ mans really left the default name in there lmao

-OKAYOKAYOKAY so to those who aren't aware I am a MASSIVE SIMP for Sho Minamimoto, he's my absolute favorite and I think about him daily. HIS INTRODUCTION IS. INCREDIBLE. I LOVE IT SM.

-GOD hearing him actually SPEAK FULL SENTENCES is just SO SURREAL I love this sm

-Also the remix of his theme???? NEO TRANSFORMATION????? IT'S SO GOOD????????? It's like gone from a Boss Theme to a more triumphant sounding theme and I am HERE for it (every version of Transformation is just INCREDIBLE and getting a new one is even better)

-I Love Him, Your Honor

-Also idk how exactly but it's kinda weird seeing Sho in the OG vs NEO, cuz while he's mostly the same Insane Math-Obsessed Catboy, he's.....calmed down quite a bit?? Like OG made a whole point of how poorly he cooperates with others (not to mention just being completely unhinged and trying to kill everyone), whereas here in NEO he's......actually kinda working with others??? HELLO???? Sir what happened to you and Neku during those 3 years I would love to know all about it

-I guarantee you Sho is still probably scheming shite and will likely pull some total insane BS later down the road, and I am very much looking forward to that. Also, is he looking for a certain Pin or something??? Cuz he keeps talking about different Pins and even mentions "this is just another Psych Pin" like he's actively looking for a Pin to do something with. Maybe it also has to do with the "latent powers of Players" thing he mentioned as well??? What is this dude UP TO oml (also is he in contact with Neku at all?? they're both technically fugitives at this point right?? WHAT HAPPENED AFTER A NEW DAY I AM BEGGING YOU)

-I seems like Sho ALSO has an idea of what's going on in this specific game (even if he won't admit it straightforward). Per his quote "The game's 142,857. Factor it out," he's essentially saying, "This game is a neverending cyle, figure out how to get out of it" (or at least that's what I got from his "cyclic number" nonsense lolol)

-I do like how Sho mostly stays out of sight until he's needed for a battle or assisting with a mission, that's kind of on par with his whole "uncooperative" quirk from the OG, plus he might literally have to stay out of sight of other Reapers and Players considering he's likely breaking the rules of the Game (not surprising considering him and Neku broke practically every rule in the book during OG)

-The nicknames for Sho- I can't- They're so FUNNYYYY GFHJSDFKJ

-He goes from being called "Pi-Face" and "Tabooty" in OG to "Mr. Minami" and "M-Teezy" in NEO LMAOO

-(Wowee I just realized I've been mostly talking about Sho oopsies sorry y'all, this is what I meant by thinking about him almost daily he is THAT much of a fav of mine ghfkjsd)

-Okay RIP Fret and Rindo for not getting literally ANY explanation as to how the Game works OOF, that is kinda cringe that whoever gets the Pin earns points, not whoever erases the Noise (which like I understand but also URRRGGHHH I WANNA SEE THE SQUAD SUCCEED)

-"I should be going home now it's getting late" Oh you sweet summer child-

-Also love the mention of parents in this game???? KH you could learn a thing or two from TWEWY (poor Rindo's mom fhgjkdh)

-KUBO IS HILARIOUS I SUPPORT HIM AND HIS GROSS FACE (also thank you Final Trailer thumbnail for spoiling my suspicions about him very cool smh)

-Kaie is a LAD I also support him, go King type those funky texts I believe in you

-FRET PLS STOP SCANNING FHGJKSDHKJFGHFKJ he's like me when I scan in OG during Weeks 2 and 3 and see Taboo Noise coming after me ghfjdshfj

-Also Rindo can you stay off your phone for TWO SECONDS ik you're trying to figure things out but Fret is a jelly boi and I don't want him to be upset with you my guy

-Sho being an actual sorta mentor to the kiddos?? Who are you sir this is so unlike you ghfgskj what happened to the guy who tried shooting children in the face 8 times over LMAO (granted he's probably just using them but it's still nice to see him actually cooperating and sharing knowledge with the kiddos aaaaa)

-EYO EIJI OJI THE TIKTOK INFLUENCER IS BACK LMAO

-hgjkfshgkjf "we aren't glorifying capitalism on my watch" THATS SO FUNNY TO ME GFHJFSDGHJKS (also an all-orange ensemble is disgusting you deserve jail for one thousand years fkn Cheddar Goldfish Cheezit ass woman)

-WICKED TWISTERS NAME DROP EYOOO we love to see it

-gfhsgjf Poor Rindo embarassing himself for the sake of the Game that's incredible

-R e t u r n t o M O N K E. That is all.

-Dialogue during boss battles is HELLA cool i love that

-HHHHH THE KANON SCENE MADE ME A N G E R Y FRET STOP SIMPING MY GUY says the girl with a Literal Simp Encyclopedia and simps for pixels on a screen daily

-Can't wait to see the other Reapers :eyes emoji:

-CAN'T WAIT TO SEE NAGI MY BELOVED YEAHHHH WOOOOOO AAAAND that's about it for the demo lolol, I absolutely CANNOT wait for next month, this game is gonna be INCREDIBLE holy hell Prepare for more simping, more screaming, and more vibing from Yours Truly :) I fully intend on sharing more general thoughts like this on both Tumblr and Twitter so it's not just reblog-retweet-reblog-retweet with the occasional comment fhgskjd

If you wanna witness my insanity up close and personal I have a Square Enix Discord server called Sea Side Dreamers! You can look it up on Disboard, or you can add me on Discord @Katara0524#9244 for a direct link :) We have topics about Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, NieR, and ofc TWEWY (as well as other topics!), so if you want some good ol' chaos and chitchat, you're more than welcome to join!

#neo twewy #ntwewy #neo twewy spoilers #ntwewy spoilers #twewy #neo: the world ends with you #the world ends with you #twewy spoilers #twewy rindo #rindo kanade #twewy fret #tosai furesawa #twewy sho #sho minamimoto #long post #also shameless Discord plug lmaooo #kat plays neo twewy

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mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune · 3 years

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Prisoner Of OTP-Love: Sunset Shimmer x Scourge The Hedgehog

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Credit for My Little Pony goes to Bonnie Zacherle

Credit for My Little Pony Friendship is Magic goes to Lauren Faust

Credit for Sonic The Hedgehog goes to Sega

Credit for Archie Sonic The Hedgehog Comics goes to Archie Comics

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

I had to edit this drawing today, because I needed to put my tumblr name on it, as well as edit out Sunset's third arm that wasn't being held by Scourge.

I mean it is possible for some humans to be born with more than two arms, or only being born with one.

and besides that one error I made on this drawing, I also had to edit the ends of Sunset's hair to have some yellow.

I believe that if I remember right,

this was inspired by Shadow Meets Equestria Girls,

it's a crossover and it's on Cryil Smith VA's Youtube Channel,

their channel and works is one of many Youtubers,

I want to be protected from the video/episode stealing shisno.

I really REALLY can not stand those toxic-youtubers,

you do NOT re-upload a episode of Helluva Boss on your channel,

to share it, if your gonna share it, put it in a link to someone.

I’m still not okay with finding out what that youtuber today.

and there is a reason why I put Redacted instead of their real youtube name.

when I was first looking up Helluva Boss, it was to see if episode 6 was out yet, but then I found that there was another episode stealing jerk.

if a youtuber is gonna re-upload a video from another youtuber,

it should only be if the original is off of youtube.

it’s because of most toxic-youtubers, that half of other youtubers

who don’t know where the original videos come from

and don’t bother checking the description below more carefully,

that the original ones end up getting false reported,

and if I had to guess, if you don’t inform that you have a youtube amv you made and uploaded on both youtube and at another video sharing site, and a person sees it over at the other place first

and then see it on youtube, it is possible they will not think they are the same person and will falsely report the video.

that might of been the reason for what happen to one of

the Undertale Amvs. either the person who false reported saw the sub version of it by a person who got permission, or they saw it on another video sharing site and then didn’t bother to ask before jumping the gun.

later I am gonna write about how the Toxic-Youtubers

need to be stop, because of their taking episodes or amv and gmvs

without permission of the other youtubers that end up the victims.

right now I’m just going to post some drawings up on here.

I don’t think Sunset will end up in Shadow Meets Equestria Girls,

at least not to my knowledge.

too bad she couldn’t stop Discord, Celestia and Luna

from turning Cozy Glow, Tirek and Chrysalis to a stone statue.

could of used the Element of Empathy during that battle.

I still love the last episodes and all the other episodes of MLPFIM.

but if characters like Discord, Celestia, Luna, Star Butterfly, Scrooge McDuck (from the ducktales reboot) , Pink “Rose” Diamond,

and Mr Death’s girlfriend Miss Life from Adventure Time series

(worst Mom Ever of all time.)

do a Anti-Hero move, and end up hurting others who for what they believe is the fully the right thing to do.

no matter if Discord had turned Cozy bad or not,

it is possible that the reason why she was trying to get rid of the magic,

was because of how Unicorns (even if it’s not all Unicorns)

treat Earth-Ponies and Pegasus as second class citizens.

the only ponies that seem to higher in rank than Unicorns,

would be Alicorns.

in theory, the Bat-Ponies might be treated third class citizens,

seeing as no filly or colt or equine of the bat-ponies

have ever made much appearances or went to Twilight’s school of friendship.

let’s turn to the Buffalo in MLPFIM,

we know that the earth-ponies took over their lands and planted apple trees.

but it is possible that the Buffalo weren’t the only ones who lived in the land that would then become Equestria II.

before they were driven out, Tirek’s family ruled the land that would then become the new equestria.

and the three wendigos are possibly from the Equestria I,

before Equestria II was founded.

I believe that the wendigos are the spirits of the original sirens

that Stygian met and when he went to get help,

the three original sirens end up tricking three little filly sisters

those being Adagio Dazzle (the eldest sister) Aria Blaze (the middle sister), Sonata Dusk (the youngest sister)

the siren gems end up bonding to the three young fillies,

and transforming them to sirens, while the originals

become the wendigos.

wendigos go after ponies with negative energy/magic,

the dazzling’s use to do the same until their power was taken away,

but it returned to them when they re-learned how to sing,

and it appears their powers might of changed a bit.

find the magic is one of my favorite songs that is sung by the dazzlings.

when the three of those sisters

(and yes they are really sisters in canon)

were tricked by the original sirens who then became wendigos,

Stygian did not see this and because of him and Starswirl and the others, innocent fillies that were overcome by the power that was given to them by the wendigos, were banished from equestria I.

over time the Wendigos frozen the land beyond healing,

and all ponies moved to another land, taking it over,

and driving it’s original ruling family and half of their people

to a new place, possibly underground.

the only ones that were left, was the native animals

such as the bugbear, chimera, cockatrice and other monster type animals.

the animals that weren’t originally from the land that would become Equestria II, were brought from Equestria I by the ponies.

the other natives of Equestria II besides Tirek and maybe even the changelings,

would be the Buffalo.

before earth-ponies became crystal ponies,

they took the original Queen Changelings Crystal Empire,

this was long before they become what they look like when we are first introduce them, in theory, I think they look like their reform selves

but possibly in Crystal form.

I wont force other fans to believe that theory,

but I see it as headcanon.

the earth-ponies that would become crystal ponies,

were welcome into the crystal changelings home,

but then were exiled by them and without the crystal heart,

they slowly became corrupt and starve.

over time the earth-ponies that took over their rightful home

became the Crystal Ponies, maybe by Princess Amore’s Grandmother.

I guess it could be possible that Amore didn’t know how the Crystal Ponies and her grandmother had founded the Crystal Empire,

not knowing it was the original home of the changelings,

and without the power of the crystal heart to share their love that would then in return feed them, they would slowly become the changelings that we end up introduce to.

I also have a theory that Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie

and Rainbow Dash from the human world, might really be the original ponies from Equestria, from the first season of when Nightmare Moon returns.

like what if when any pony finds out the truth about the history of Equestria, they were taken to that magic pool, cloned

and then banished to another portal to the human world

or the mirror to the human world was open by Alicorn Magic.

the only one who possibly didn’t have a human counterpart,

was Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer, well they might have in the fanon.

but we know that most of the humans we see in the human counterpart world, aren’t seen in Equestria.

what if Trixie from the human world, was really the original Trixie

who had used the Alicorn Amulet and after everything seem to work out in the end, Trixie was taken by Celestia to the magic pool,

cloned and then the real Trixie was banished to the human world.

even if most of the humans from the human world,

would be originally born humans, most of the humans could turn out to be ponies who were banished by at first Starswirl and then later Celestia.

at some point Celestia stop that kind of banishment,

and started to turn ponies into stone instead.

I think that half of the pony statues we see along with Discord,

were real ponies once, who perhaps were the original elements of harmony along with Celestia and Luna.

but they were betrayed by Celestia,

and when Luna found out the truth of what happen to their friends,

it gave her the final push (besides the other being jealous that their subjects seem to love Celestia more than her.)

to give in to the negative side of Alicorn Magic,

and transform into her dark half.....which is Nightmare Moon.

the Statue Pony that looks like they are holding a stroll,

might be the element of inspiration.

the book of the elements of harmony, was perhaps rewritten,

to hide the fact there was more than just six elements.

to hide this truth, Celestia took the elements that she and her sister could not use, and destroyed them and threw their shards into the human world, where they would end up in a cave

and then grow into a new tree of harmony for the human world,

and later their power will be given to Sunset and her friends.

Rarity was original suppose to be the element of inspiration,

but because of the word might not be understood,

it was changed to generosity.

it is easy to explain the element of inspiration,

it’s like you get a idea that inspires you, like drawing a fan art

or writing a fan fic or writing a story or drawing that doesn’t have to do with fan art or fan fic and or if you write a song or poem.

that is what is the true element of inspiration is like.

Trixie being the element of forgiveness in Princess Trixie Sparkle,

is awesome.

in theory if she ends up meeting Starlight in that fan series,

I think they would still end up becoming friends because of the bond they shared in the canon.

if my theory ended up being true, and not just a fan theory.

if the shards of the lost elements of harmony were destroyed by Celestia, then thrown into the human world and ended up in a cave,

and then grew into a new element of harmony tree, or what appears like a broken tree crystal rock thing.

then those broken shards would have some of the original powers of the elements that are still in equestria, in them which would grow each of all the elements, first the ones that are needed by Sunset and her friends, then when the time comes the lost elements would grow from that crystal rock tree stump.

one of those who might be the ones who represent the lost elements of harmony.

might be Trixie, Moondancer, Starlight Glimmer, Wallflower Blush,

Juniper Montage, Maud Pie, Vinyl Scratch possibly.

those who are the Neo-Elements of Harmony,

would have to be Smolder, Yona, Gallus, Sandbar, Ocellus

and Silverstream.

and if Cozy ended up forming a friendship and deep bond with those six.....she might of became someone who represented the element of empathy.

and those who represent the lost elements of harmony

might be Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, Diamond Tiara,

Silver Spoon and Silverstream’s brother.

there is always the comic series of MLPFIM,

and maybe Cozy, Tirek and Chrysalis

will be given freedom in the comic series...maybe, I don’t know.

anyway I hope some of you like this drawing that has a ship

of Nicolette x Fiona and Scourge x Sunset.

even if this was partly inspired by Shadow Meets Equestria Girls,

it is still possible that Sunset might not end up in that fan series.

but it be nice if she was, and Scourge fell in love with her.

if anyone can reform Scourge and understand why he became the way he did, it would be Sunset Shimmer.

in this drawing Scourge captures Sunset, that is why he is the only one smiling and she is not too happy,

but it also hints that they will fall in love.

and it is Scourge and Sunset’s love and bonding with each other,

will help Scourge reform, he will still be himself,

but be a bit different too.

well that is how I view it anyway.

#scourge the hedgehog #sunset shimmer #scourge x sunset shimmer #nicolette x fiona fox #crossover ship #one true pairing #archie sonic #my little pony friendship is magic #equestria girls #captured

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

Text

Darkwing Duck Reviews Halloween Special: Fungus Amongus and Ghoul of My Dream

Happy Halloween! Halloween Havoc races to the finish with another Darkwing Double Feature! Love is kinda crazy with a spooky girl like Morgana, and in this case “kinda crazy” means a board of ghouls stealing pizza, sentient mushrooms, grumpy spiders, student lone debt, and a gremlin who somehow sees himself as a valid romantic option. It’s a Darkwing Duck Halloween under the cut.+

We’ve made it! While I got less Halloween reviews done than I would’ve liked, I’m still happy with the ones done and there’s still two more to get in the pocket before the day’s up. So with Halloween today it seemed fitting to talk about the Justice Ducks resident sorcerer and Darkwing’s Girlfriend, Morgana Macawber. Morgana was the only one of the four to stick around as a recurring character out of the four Justice Ducks: Gizmoduck would show up once more after the four parter, and sadly Neptunia and Stegamutt just seemed to vanish but the crew clearly liked Morg a lot and her relationship with Darkwing, so she stuck around for the rest of the series, and is even the focus of the final episode “Malice’s Restaurant”, as well as a sizeable part of the comics. And it’s easy to see why as Kathie Sourcie had great chemistry with Jim Cummings and Morgana’s very presence, being a sorceress raised by the munsters and living in a creepy mansion, allowed for diffrent stories than what Darkwing usually dealt with. While magic didn’t feel like it contrasted with the world, as Darkwing’s world feels like your standard superhero fantasy kitchen sink where anything is possible, most of his foes were either super villains or the kinds of super spies you’d find in a comic book. So fighting ghoouls, goblins, and Satan himself, yes that’s an episode that actually happened, no it’s sadly not on Disney plus, and yes I will be covering it eventually, was a nice out of genre experience and a nice way to put our daring duck of mystery out of his element.

She brought something diffrent to the table, both forcing Darkwing to grapple with letting someone into his life, and with having something to focus on other than Gosalyn or crime. So I wanted to see how this plays out, so expect me to cover all her episodes and not just the Satan one or the Valentine’s Day one, though like my Tom Lucitor retrospective, expect this one to also take some time. So with that all set up, Halloween is the perfect time to begin our journey with her first two episodes.. and Morgana’s Villian Career. Yeah while she only had about 9 episodes to her name, 2 of them are as a Catwoman or Black Cat style antagonist, someone whose likeable and who are hero is attracted to, but is on the wrong side of the law.

She eventually came around, but it’s still an intresting way to start things and an intresting dilema for our hero I wish stuck around for just a smidge longer. These aren’t bad episodes with Ghoul of My Dreams being a pretty good one. If I had to guess though the reason the dynamic fizzled out.. is they simply didn’t have a lot of ideas of how to use her as a bad guy. Part of the reason i’m covering these two episodes together is that they follow basically the same plot beat, the only differences being Darkwing meets Morgana in the first one and they know each other in the second, and that the evil entity who ends up turning against her she works with is different for both. The third act is also entirely unique to each episode, so it feels less like them lazily repeating themselves on an episode and more like they genuinely realized they didn’t have a ton of ideas for Morgana as a villain and thus had her reform with the Justice Ducks two parter. And I can’t blame them: fan would get annoyed if basically every Morgana plot played out the same, and this way she could know Drake’s secret identity, and thus allow the stories to use Gosalyn, though I do wish she’d shown up in one of the villian ones just to see how that played out. But still her time as a Villian is there, and is even a plot point in the valentine’s episode, so let’s see how it played out and see what I think.

Fungus Amongus

The plot here is fairly simple: there’s been a rash of mysterious thefts in St. Canard, and Darkwing is stumped.. until Launchpad asks if they can go for pizza, because he’s hungry and Darkwing is the terrible kind of boss that doesn’t’t care about meal breaks. It makes our hungry hero realize that each of the thefts are connected to PIzza Toppings, and after thwarting the bats and spiders stealing some anchovies, figures there’s only two left: Green Peppers and Mushrooms, and so he decides it’s time to split up gang and while Launchpad guards the peppers, Darkwing goes to visit the head of the mushrom company, who naturally turns out to be Morgana. The two end up taken with one another, to the board’s annoyance as Darkwing is onto them and could stop their whole evil plan and they want to just murder his ass and be done with it. But Morgana proves seduction’s a bit more useful as she sweetalks our hero into leaving, and points out given he’s also a creature of the night in a sense, she plans to turn him.. or kill him if she has to. More on that in our next episode. The facade dosen’t last long as Darkwing goes to help launchpad at the pepper place, and ends up finding out oh no the hot lady he met five minutes ago is bad! While the board plans to feed Launchpad to mutant mushrooms, while Morgana seemingly turns Darkwing into her mindless slave.. but really just played the board and switched sides, not wanting to hurt the guy she just met because he’s cute, they defeat the mushrooms and the board who turn into mushrooms in the light because....

The day is saved though we do get the one standout bit of the episode. Darkwing despite his attraction to her, wants to turn her in, while Morgana simply teleports her house away. And thus the dance begins. As for the episode... as you can tell by how brief I was... for one i’m not doing my usual died in wool recapping for these two to get them out on time. And i’m also not because this one.. is pretty thin. The mutant mushroom and boards’d esigns are cool and Morgana is intresting.. but having seen Ghoul of my Dreams first.. it’s just not as fun, funny or good on the Morgana Darkwing dynamic. Morgana just decides because she wants to ride that dick she’ll be good for a moment, and throw away her hard worked scheme, and the board is turned into mushrooms because.. well see the lex luger pic above. It’s not a TERRIBLE episode, just not a terribly intresting one. It has good elements, but they just don’t come together well and the pizza scheme isn’t as funny as the episode thinks it is. I can kinda see why this one was buried deeper into the series and Ghoul of My Dreams is where they put focus. I just don’t have a lot to say about this one, it’s just bland and uninteresting. It’s kind of why I just sorta plopped it next to Ghoul, I needed to review it for completion’s sake, but lord if I can think of a lot to say about it that isn’t tied into the next one. So since I can’t...

Ghoul of my Dreams:

Now this is better. The basic plot is still simple but allows for a lot more intresting set pieces: It’s a slow night in St. Canard, to Darkwing’s natural annoyance, until a bunch of fire fighters start sleepwalking and throwing gold to some spiders and bats. Something is afoot and since the bats belong to Morgana, Darkwing goes to investigate her. Granted we just MET eek and squeak, but it’s easy enough to assume Morgana struck again off screen and some time has passed. And i’ts honestly what makes this episode more interesting: now it’s more of a cat and mouse game, with Morgana using their chemistry against him, but still being genuinely drawn to him and not wanting to hurt him. It’s better than “I met you five minutes ago might as well throw away my money for you”. Instead Morg truly likes Drake, but wants to keep doing crimes to, in easily the best joke of the entire series “Finally pay off my student loans”.. which makes her already not really a bad guy. I may not haves em but I know people who do. Those loan people do not play around. It’s investing and Sourcie and Cumming’s chemstiry really makes it pop. Sourcie really is what makes the character, giving her energy, sedcutivness when called for and a really sympathetic quality that makes her face turn, sudden as it is, believable. It’s why I really like the character. And I get why some don’t: Her romance with darkwing is sudden, her face turn is even more sudden, and she gets in the way of Drakepad shippers. The first two are valid criticisms, while the last one is understandable.. depending on motive. If your just bummed this relationship you don’t like is forced into the show and gets in the way of the one you actually enjoy.. trust me...

BEEN THERE. And far far worse.. I didn’t start up an entire retrospective on the guy who DIDN’T get the girl here for nothing. But if you say “oh well it’s homophobic or you hate gays” if you don’t ship drakepad, which I have actually heard for both this ship and delpad.. kindly go fuck yourself and stay away from my posts. It’s NOT homophobic to ship a character who is CANOCIALLY into women, with a woman. Launchpad had a girl of the week or two in ducktales, Drake’s attraction to morgana is canon and he also had some ship tease with Neptunia. They both like women.. but there’s nothing saying they DON’T like men, don’t want to date men, or aren’t attracted to them.

Been waiting to reference Schitt’s Creek at some point here now i’ve started watching it. It’s biphobic to say this sort of harmful shit, and it doesn’t’t help there are plenty of gay people who genuinely believe bi and pan aren’t sexualities and harm their own community by doing so. Saying this kind of shit just fuels their fire and bi people like me and pan people like my firend have a hard enough time with straight people being dicks about this. You should know and be better. Don’t bring that shit into this fandom. We’ve already ridden incest out on a rail we don’t need this. I already put up with enough bullshit being a loud house fan and having to deal with ACTUAL homophobic ships like Sam/Lincoln, aka setting up a character you don’t know to be anything but gay, versus her girlfriend whose canocially been shown to be bi if preferring women, whose the proment and well like love interest of a woman, and pair her with her younger brother to clearly troll people. Now that’s a homophobic ship and that you shoudl be angry about, not “oh no the person who likes women in canon.. LIKES A WOMAN IN FANON”. It’s part of what made shiping delpad hard at times because people got really dumb about it to the point someone drew some very horrible fanart just to clog up the tag. Knock. it off.

And if your curious for my actual thoughts on Drakepad: in the classic series.. i’m not a fan, but I get it, and I do think they could work... it’s just. that Drake treats Launchpad really bad, including throwing him out of the house for a year without telling him why over something that really wasn’t his fault, not feeding him, not treating him as an equal after a while. This would have to change for them to work but I could see it happening, as the comics and one of the peisodes make a point that Drake can be a pretty shitty partner to Morgana too.

And just to show i’m equal opprtunity, despite shipping Delpad in the past, i’ve moved on to Penpad and Drakepad , ironcially enough, i’m not as big a fan anymore. LIke the above, Della just dosen’t respect launchpad as a human being. She was willing to keep the Halloween thing up JUST to scare children, looks down on him, and whie is his friend, is not all that close. I could see them happening, and do still think it’d be cute, it’d just take a ton of work and there are better ships for both. And yes I do ship Drakepad in the reboot, but there the two aren’t employer and employee, but equals who genuinely love and respect one another, listen to one another, and value each other. In the Reboot they have genuine chemistry and I could see them together, while in the original Launchpad and Morgana both really deserve better.

Now that’s settled, we get a fun scene of the two primping for each other. then flirting a bit, though Morgana, in AWFUL looking black lipstick wins with the move above and has her spider web launchpad, who hates morgana.. which is one part common sense given how darkwing gets around her and one part ho yay. But yeah this is pretty much Launchpad for both these episodes.

And darkwing dick is calling the shots so fair enough. But Morgana is once again nto wokring alone and is working with a creepy, well designed gremlin, named Nodoff... eh i’ve heard worse, whose giving her sleeping dust to knock out her targets and hits on her constnatly. Naturally he plans to betray her as soon as he can, and is likely only tolerating her because he wants to hit that. There dynamic boils down to this.

There’s also tons of fun dream sequences including one at the top with darkwing being confronted by his enitre Rogue’s gallery before seeing morgana, NOdoff using baseball on Morg’s next target and some great ones at the climax. It’s part of hwy I like this episode better: While someone using dreams for stuff has been done a lot, it’s given a creative spin here as instead of killing them, Morgana’s simply using them to steal. Good stuff.

Darkwing foils their first attempt, though gets blamed for it because St. Canard is about as grateful as New York when it comes to superheroes. Morgana knocks darkwing out with some dust via Eeka and Squeak and admits Nodoff is working for her, though fobids him to harm Darkwing. This.. dosen’t last and we get another great setpiece, of sarkwing on a high dive. Thankfully, Launchpad finds him, and they find Morgana, who gives off the student loans comment. But in the struggle to stop her, Darkwing accidently puts her and the city to sleep.. and Nodoff is now super powerful and imprisons morgana. Darkwing i s back at her house, wondering what to do, but the bats give him a clue.. by flying him thorugh the door to fight Nodoff. It goes about as well as you’d expect with him freeing Morgana.. then trying to murder them both. Darkwing however pulls an Elm Streett 3 and says to think happy thoughts and take control of the dream.. which ends up at Darkwing’s Wedding to Morgana to his horror..... remind me whose the hero again. The woman who, while doing crimes is trying to pay off unfair debts, or the guy who finds the idea of commitment horrifying.

Anyways we get some more great bits, I brush over them so I don’t ahve to talk about them conantly, including darkwing getting a cake on him, before Darkwing turns the tables by finding the hourglass full of the dust.. and in a clever finale, loading it into his gun and firing it on nodoff. This puts him to sleep.. which puts him in the real world, while Launchpad uses a giant alarm clock to wake everyone. They throw NOdoff back into the dream world.. for some reason.. and the episode ends iwth morgana kissing darkwing and the episode possibly having been all a dream.

This one, while I was again breif, is a classic, with a much more interesting dynamic. Instead of a morgana who goes from willing to kill we get one whose conflicted over things, who clearly wants to be a crook but may like darkwing more than that, as evidenced when he talks her out of taking Nodoff’s offer of riches. It’s good stuff and the gags are back to the show’s usual top notch level. It’s a creative, fun episode that really helps Morgana come into her own and I look forward to more of her. Overall i’d recommend skipping fungus amongus, but DEFINTELY check out ghoul of my dreams, as it’s throughly fantastic. I’ll be back in a bit for one last Halloween review and as always you can find my backlog on my blog. i recently covered Tiff of the Titans and there’s regular ducktales coverage every monday. Until then make sure to vote, wear a mask and check your house for gary busey till we meet again! Play us out Gerard Way!

youtube

#darkwing duck #drake mallard #disney afternoon #morgana macawber #launchpad mcquack #halloween #drakepad #drakegana

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thattimdrakeguy · 5 years

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I’ve seen more than one person throwing around the defense for Tim’s possible new alias being “Drake” of comic book fans being resistant to change, but like, at least in my case, that’s not really how it is.

I didn’t complain when Jon got aged up because I saw that as furthering his character when he used to be pretty bare basic.

I didn’t even complain when I heard about “Ric” because I thought maybe id be a short interesting storyline. (Obviously they botched it, and they’re still doing it, sadly)

Even when Bart got aged up, like a decade ago, a character more closer to my heart then Jon, and I found out they did that, I didn’t mind too much. I didn’t mind till I read it because I wanted to give it a chance. It was bad because he was out of character during it.

But there’s good change, bad change, and stupid change.

Jon still has potential to be good even if people are resistant to it. I don’t feel like enough been done yet to really qualify that for either side.

Ric and Bart being the Flash obviously turned out to be bad.

Changing Tim’s Robin/Red Robin to “Drake”? That’s just stupid. There’s not even room for suggesting there’s potential with it, because it was such an empty pointless moment, that it feels like it was only done to satisfy the writer who didn’t like his last name.

---

Name why it’s actually good.

It’s not furthering Tim’s storyline. Red Robin was his coming of age story. Going by Robin more often makes more sense considering he was miserable during Red Robin because he got kicked from being Robin, he wanted to be Robin. If you thought two Robin’s was confusing, he’s still Red Robin every other time to avoid that.

This was a random moment that did nothing for him.

I highly doubt the overprotective bats would just name one of themselves after their own last name too.

The “most dangerous bird” line was just ridiculous considering it’s a duck.

If you give me a “it’s not that bad” argument then it’s probably not that good either for that to be an argument with a point.

When it comes to something like this, it’s not a matter of “oh it’s change”, change happens all the time. Relationships break off, characters move, characters leave or change teams, lately even constant costume changes.

It’s just a matter of rather or not it’s good change.

Something that feels like it was done for the betterment of the character or to further a story.

This name change feels like it has nothing to do with anything because it’s so forced.

Tim been doing fine by going by the name he has for over 20 years (if you think of him as Robin) or 10 years (if you think of him as Red Robin), he’s been doing just fine at being a self-sustaining character and his name never been a problem besides fandom jokes at his expense that are done for giggles instead of actual actual critiques (mostly). It’s been fine without a change.

Especially when the change is gonna be worthless.

You can’t bounce every problem people have with a comic as “oh people are just scared of change”, that doesn’t always apply.

Every now and again change is just bad. You can’t say “people are just afraid of change” like that means the change is good, and people’s feelings are silly.

When you read a character for so long you don’t want them to be treated like they can be changed when ever. That makes it seem like they’re flimsy and not well-respected.

I paid money to read this series for well over half a year now.

Id be nice if more people than just the colorist cared about it.

It’s fiction, but it’s fiction that’s been going on for decades that people fell in love with and put their money into. Like it’s ridiculous to pull a stunt like this. Tim’s something that makes people happy, stop doing random crap to make it so they’re not happy.

Random changes that don’t benefit anything aren’t changes that are good to act like it’s a matter of being afraid of change.

It’s just not enjoying dumb change.

Change only done to satisfy a singular writer that wanted to do what ever he wanted isn’t something to celebrate. It gets obnoxious.

There’s a difference between that and any ol’ change done for the sake of a story. There’s not a story with this, there’s not a point with this. It’s just randomly done.

---

When reading the issue, everyone that hears the name “Drake” in it just goes “Oh yeah that is a good name” like Bendis is patting himself on the back for picking the name out. It played out like a joke in a comedy were the joke is the characters are idiots, except it’s supposed to be taken seriously instead.

(Or maybe it will be a joke and Tim gets to stay Robin/Red Robin, I won’t complain. I won’t be upset I made these posts. Sometimes it’s okay to be wrong.)

It’s not like the name change to “Drake” has any actual relevance to the story yet. It just sort of happens because “oh why not”, and that’s horrendous storytelling.

It’s bad writing. It’s cheap writing. It’s not good. It’s random. It’s contrived.

Of course people are gonna be upset when a writer treats a comic or character like a play thing they can do anything with. It’s a character that lived on for decades without needing to be changed, because that’s how people loved them, and they were great for telling stories as is.

I’m sure Bendis isn’t looking at this like he wants to destroy Tim.

But that doesn’t mean he did a good job.

Why play dumb to it?

#Tim Drake #Robin #Red Robin #Drake?#Wonder Comics #Young Justice #Young Just Us

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pajama-nerd · 4 years

Text

Reading my way through Fazbears Frights, thinking about how none of these protagonists have ever interacted with any kind of horror media.

Reader Beware: Spoilers Ahead

Into the Pit didn’t read like time travel to me. It read more like a particular kind of haunting where the negative energy of all of the bad shit that happened at that location was locked into the one remaining 'feature' of the location: the ball pit. And Pit-Bonnie isn't the ghost of Afton, but rather the entity that was created from the memories of all that bad energy.

And the interesting thing to me about Pit-Bonnie is that - aside from the inherent creepiness of the situation and the fact that he had literally one facial expression (he can’t even blink for cryin’ out loud) - he didn't attempt to harm Oswald until Oswald went back to rescue his dad. Once Pit-Bonnie was away from the negative energy that had spawned him, he did Dad Things™. He did them in the creepiest way possible, granted, but we don't actually know how he feels because of his inability to express.

Maybe he wanted to stay. Maybe he just wanted a break from that place. Maybe that place has a hold on him, and being away from it allowed him a measure of free will.

And the fandom that I’ve seen about the Dashboard has locked onto Pit-Dad-Bonnie because the general attitude of the fandom - as far as I've witnessed - has been 'Oh. A scary thing! Well, now it's friend-shaped.' (or, in this case, Dad shaped) so of course my immediate question is, 'how would the story have changed if Oswald had made a more serious attempt to communicate with Pit-Bonnie?'

The immediate, cynical response is 'well it would have slaughtered him' but that's infinitely less interesting than the possible alternatives.

Perhaps he takes in the fact that Pit-Bonnie can't talk, and proposes an alternate method of communication. I'm talkin construction paper and crayons. And he gets Pit-Bonnie to tell his story a la Nephrite from Steven Universe. About how one day he just was. And how sometime after that, that version of Fazbear's formed around him. And how there were happy, smiling kids laughing in the pizzeria and he was happy, but how every time he tried to be friends with the kids something would happen.

The world would flicker and they would just be in that back room, like that. How he was desperate for some kind of a connection and could never have one because those kids – those memories – were doomed to die by the memory of his hands. How he noticed Oswald because Oswald didn’t fit – he was real – and how he’d wanted Oswald to help him figure out how to change what had happened (or to make it stop), but Oswald had run away. About how he’d tried to fish Oswald out of the ballpit and gotten his dad instead. About deciding to take his dad’s place so that he could get away from that place and how being here with Oswald was nice. Driving him to school was nice. Making him dinner was nice. Cleaning the house with him was nice.

(Imagine Oswald getting less and less afraid as he interprets the story, checking in with PB occasionally to make sure he's getting it right. Getting slightly annoyed tho, because he's not getting rid of this rabbit, is he? But he still needs to rescue his dad, so now what?)

Oswald eventually tells PB that he can stay, which surprises but elates the rabbit. Then Oswald tells him they have to get his dad back.

There's a negotiation. Obviously, they have to get his dad back. Has Pit-Bonnie been going to his dad's job? What about taxes? Things his dad knows how to do? What about Oswald's mom? Is Pit-Bonnie just going to pretend to be his dad around her forever? What if she wants to do...like...parent stuff? With her husband? If you catch my drift (PB does not, in fact).

Eventually PB agrees, and even drives Oswald back to the same block as the pizza place. He doesn't get close to it - definitely doesn't park in the lot - but Oswald just tells him to wait in the car and goes and wakes his dad up from the ball pit. His dad is confused. Disoriented. Way out of it. Let's Oswald lead him back to the car and sits in the back, too out of it to comment on the yellow bunny mascot in the front seat. They return to the house without incident, and his dad passes out on the couch.

Oswald eventually figures out that PB is the one making his dad so loopy - that the connection PB formed so that he could know how to drive the car, how to work the vacuum cleaner, how to make Oswald's meals, is also keeping Oswald's dad borderline comatose. It takes some convincing to get PB to give that up. PB is afraid to give that up - afraid that if he doesn't have an anchor, he'll go back to being an aimless product of rage and murder.

Oswald's solution is to spread the bond out. He'll take part of it. If PB splits his focus, it'll be less of a strain on his dad, and PB will have more than one anchor. This has the added property of giving his dad the ability to see the seven-foot-tall grinning plush rabbit (he doesn't react well. Neither does mom. Oswald has never had to talk so much in his life)

So now Pit-Bonnie is a part of Oswald’s life, and it’s hella weird at first, but everyone gets over it, because eventually you just get numb to weirdness. Except Oswald becomes obsessed with Freddy Fazbears, in an Unsolved Mysteries kind of way. Starts researching the place wherever and however he can.

Pit-Bonnie helps, in his way, after they figure out a way to communicate efficiently (modified Sign Language, because being bonded to Oswald means that Pit-Bonnie knows how to do all the things that Oswald knows how to do. So Oswald learns sign language. Which means that Pit-Bonnie knows how to sign now. He still only has the one facial expression, which makes asking questions a little complicated, but they work it out).

I imagine that Pit-Bonnie is very tuned in to the weirdness/darkness vibe that Freddy’s and its remnants (ha) give off. He starts reading local and then state, and then national newspapers, and whenever he gets the Fazbear vibe, he sets the article aside for Oswald to look at. Also he doesn’t sleep, so in the first week of Oswald’s obsession, he generates a lot of leads for Oswald by going through back issues of...everything.

This is a rambly thing, but my point is that most horror has a solution and most of the time this solution is subverted by having it happen to people who have no experience with horror movies, books, comics, or other mediums, which is…I dunno. Kinda cheap.

‘What if they ever saw Frankenstein and sympathized with the monster enough to have empathy for this thing?’

‘They’re not horror fans. And the ones that are have never seen or read the stories where empathy solves the problem.’

To Be Beautiful (a terrible, one dimensional story with a terrible message about self-image told the way that high school stories in the 80's-90's were told, which wasn't even accurate to how highs schools were in the 80's-90's) could have been solved by literally anyone being more than passively curious about the drastic changes that Sarah was undergoing. (Puberty doesn't work that fast. Her whole freaking face changed). Or by her mom going into her room at some point and asking about the 5 foot robot doll.

Count the Ways has many solutions, although, really? She shoulda chosen starvation. More time to escape or be rescued is always, always, always going to be better than a 'maybe I won't be bifurcated’ any way you slice it (I’m not sorry), but I'm fond of the idea of Oswald coming across an article about ‘theft of proprietary animatronics from a Fazbear Entertainment property’ and it leading him to Milly’s grandfather’s house in time to save her. Along with his seven-foot-tall grinning plush friend who can alter people's perception.

Fetch could have been solved by treating Fetch like a dog. Seriously. He is dog shaped. He is therefore a dog, first and foremost. Dog first, killer animatronic second. Which Greg didn't fundamentally understand (he strikes me as a cat person anyway). But Fetch spent that entire story trying to do what he thought his master wanted, and never got so much as a 'good boy' out of it. He didn't even try to defend himself when Greg went to town on him with a baseball bat because he just wanted to be a good dog for his boy. And even after that, when Greg expressed a desire to see Kimberly, Fetch still wanted to do something to get his master to call him a good boy. Honestly, if - after being warned about Fetch - Kimberly had planted her feet and said 'Sit!' I would bet actual Faz-dollars that Fetch's haunches would have dropped to the pavement out of surprise alone, because it would have been the first time in the story someone treated him like a dog.

Alec was doomed to be a teddy-bear from the moment his parents picked up a ‘how to raise my kids’ book, but he’s still alive. There’s no reason he couldn’t be rescued (by Oswald, who’s on the trail of all the weirdness related to Freddy Fazbear. I’d read that story. I’d write that story. I will probably write that story)

The Plushtrap story...had no flaws. That was the only solution, and good on those boys for making all the right choices except for the initial choices that put them in that situation to begin with. A+. Those teeth, Jesus.

1:35 am could have been solved with an apology. Come on. For a character that was supposedly in the Foster Care system being bounced from home to home, you’d think she could empathize with an entity that didn’t appreciate being thrown away. A sincere apology, a promise to never do it again, and Ella would probably have forgiven her.

I don’t remember where I was going with this. I started writing it before I clocked on for work, but that was eleven hours ago. Who can remember where a train of thought that far back?

#fnaf #fazbear frights #ramble #headcanons #how to change the outcome of a horror story

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palettepainter · 4 years

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What are some of your favourite my hero academia characters and who are some of your least favourite? Both students and teachers/pro heroes

Saying right off the bat, there will most likely be a lot of fans that get annoyed by what I say: And to all those fans I say good for you for having a different opinion! I’m open to discuss if you guys wanna share your thoughts on characters in my ask blog or messages! As long as you don’t hate on my opinions

WARNING: This post may contain spoilers so just be weary

Anyway ONTO THE CHARACTERS!

Top fav hero: Fatgum!

I. Love. This. Hero.

I cannot express enough how much I adore him! I’m not really sure what it is exactly that I adore so much about his character, I don’t think it’s one thing in particular: One thing I love about Fatgum is his design, I find his design really interesting and unique, and I think it’s great we get to see a hero that isn’t a typical comic book buff fictional kind! I think that’s really cool! Also, I love his English voice actor, again I don’t know why, but I just think the voice suits him so well! And watching his animation and seeing his expressions is so pleasing! I think the reason I love his expressions so much is because of that big goofy cartoon grin he has, I just love everything about his character!

Plus I think he’s the perfect role model for Kirishima and Amajiki! I remember reblogging a post that explained more about this, but it’s implied in the anime that Kirishima struggles with some self doubt with his abilities, thinking his quirk isn’t as flashy as compared to others. And then there’s Amajiki, someone who struggles a lot with anxiety and self doubt also - Fatgum is a hero who DOES have a skinny/normal look once he uses all his fat from fighting, a body that someone would consider as fit or even sexy, yet he CHOOSE to stay in his fat form and even name himself after it - Fatgum. Fatgum isn’t put off by his shape because he accepts that’s what his power is, he doesn't try to hide it or feel ashamed by it, and having a mentor that is confident in his own abilities is the perfect match for Amajiki and Kirishima, who could both use the encouragement to become stronger and more confident in their own skills.

Other fav top heroes:

Best Jeanist -

Jeanist was a character at first that I was like ‘he’s okay’, to begin with he wasn’t a character I would get excited about if he appeared in an episode. But now - and this time you CAN blame @hazbinextgeneration for this - I love him! Similar with Fatgum I really like his design, and his outfit - which is all denim - is so stupid and silly that I can’t help but love him even more! Even his dialogue is gold! I love how Jeanist makes metaphors or sayings linking to jeans or clothing, and the things in which he teaches Bakugo during his internship are very admirable points for a hero to take into consideration. He clearly cares for being a good pro hero and role model! Even going as far as to loose a lung from fighting All for One and saving his team mates from his blast!

Gang Orca

His design was the thing that got me to fall in love with his character, even the way his clothes are designed and the colour used to match with his orca appearance is so awesome! His voice is also really cool sounding! We’ve only seen him a few times through out the anime, but I hope we get to see more of him and hopefully more of his backstory! The fact he’s also rated number three in the list of heroes that look as though they should be villains could lead to some interesting episodes or small moments in future episodes!

Kamui Woods/MT Lady:

The first pro heroes we where shown in the anime! Off the bat I loved these two! They where interesting, their designs and personalities caught my attention, and I love theri dnyamic whenever they talk! As I said I’m a sucker for opposites attract ships, and these two have become one of my favourites. They’re already a pretty popular ship, and I can see the appeal behind it! Kamui being strict and well mannered, and wanting to keep up a good hero image. And MT Lady, who comes across as playful, a little carefree at times, and using the appeal of her body to get things (such as during the sports festival when she used her looks to get her a free box of food). I find MT Lady a funny character, I laughed during the episode where her and Midnight get into a fight at the TV interview, I really hope we get to see her and Kamui interact more! If I had to choose what we see more of with these two, I’d say there backstories, mostly Kamui if I had too choose between the two

Also Kamui woods, during the mission at Kamino, told MT that she did her best during the fight, and brings her closer to him. She is the ONLY hero he does this too, and that just fuelled my shipper heart

Present Mic

Cockatoo man

I LOVE his personality! I love how lively and energetic he is! And how he always seems to be gesturing with his hands while he talks, it shows off his energy! The fact we get to see a more laid back and easy going teacher in a popular school like UA is a funny set up to me! Plus I love how his quirk not only works well in fighting, but also for his job on his radio station and as an announcer to the school! Also watching his interactions with Aizawa are some of my favourite moments in the series! Again sucker for opposites attract!

Hounddog

He’s a dog - yes

Similar with how Mic is a more laid back and easy going teacher, I like how more animalistic and gruff Hounddog can be. Also the fact that Nezu hired him as a guidance counsellor is so funny to me! Nezu had to look at this giant beast of a man, who growls and snarls when angry, and wears a literal muzzle, and go ‘Ah yes! A therapy dog!’ - Does anyone else find that funny?? Also even though we’ve only seen a lil bit of him in the English dub of Episode 21 (I know he appears more during episodes in season 4) I can say I adore him even more now! His voice makes his whole character that much more loveable! Yes incase it wasn’t clear I admire the voice acting for this series-

Shoji, Tokoyami and Koda

Just some characters that I really like the look of and want to see explored more!

Now onto characters I don’t like as much

Bakugo

Now- Calm down-

Okay. So there’s a bit of debate around this angry gremlin - whether he is a good character, or just a straight up egotistical ass. And I’ll be honest - I think he’s kind of an ass. YES I know in recent episodes he’s been showing some development of becoming better, but me personally, I don’t really see it. Bakugo is obviously supposed to take up the role as Deku’s sort of rival if you will, childhood friend turned rival as Deku fights to beat Bakugo and become the number one hero. And..yeah, I can see that relationship in the show. What I DON’T see is how these two can be considered childhood friends. I’ll explain why: Bakugo is shown to bully Deku, even give him a name (Deku) that means useless. Furthermore, Bakugo then tells Deku to kill himself by jumping off the roof of the school - that’s not childhood friendship, and I fail to see why Deku would continue to chase after Bakugo, let alone even still want to be near him after all he had done.

As someone who was bullied - granted in no way as bad or severe as Deku was by Bakugo - I can’t help but feel this so called ‘friendship’ they have is toxic and unhealthy. Even if Bakugo is showing signs of being a better person, I still don’t like him. You don’t tell someone to kill themselves, telling someone to do so is just as bad as committing a murder yourself. Plus Bakugo didn’t even have a reason to bully Deku, he did it because he could, because he had power to do so.

And what to the parents of said bully do to stop this? Nothin

What does the teacher in Deku’s old school do when everyone in the class starts laughing at him? Twiddle his thumbs

Also, I think he’s overpowered. I know a lot of people think Todoroki is overpowered, but that may because he’s the son to the Endevour, who’s a very powerful hero - Bakugo’s parents aren’t heroes or in the top 10, so WHY is he so powerful?

I’m sorry, but I just..REALLY don’t see it with Bakugo

Mineta

Do I even need to say anything about this one??

I don’t like his reason or being a hero. He’s being a hero so that women will let him touch them? Excuse me? I didn’t know being a hero equalled consent.

I get it, pervy characters, they’re fun to laugh at if used correctly - but not when they’re constant. Theres a point where it’s funny, and then a point where its not. And right now with this guy, it’s defiantly an ‘ Okay we get it, you like girls and you’re all whinny you don’t have a girl can we move on?’ - I fail to see how Mineta is still on the hero course, or how Aizawa hasn’t kicked him off the course yet

Oijiro

Maybe this is just me, and this isn’t really a hate thing, but I just think Ojiro’s a bit boring. His design is simple, to me his slicked back hair looks a little weird, and he isn’t really that interesting to me, even his hero suit is kinda standard and normal looking compared to the others.

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ectonurites · 3 years

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hey! how knowledgeable are you on stephanie brown? because i got in a bit of an argument with a dc fan on reddit who claims she's all these awful things, but im still relatively new to steph and i want to see what was true and what wasn't. link to screenie right here: https://ibb.co/vh6CYCJ

these may be matters of opinion, but even then, i'd like to know your take. i haven't read her firsthand often enough and i trust your judgement over this random redditor who seems to have some sort of blonde-woman related trauma left untapped.

I'm not necessarily the most knowledgable on her in the world, but I do know a decent amount because she's one of my absolute faves and I love her

But ohhhh boy that screenshot is a lot.

I will say that several of the things this person brings up are based in canon but are taken in the worst faith and framed in the way that makes her look as bad as possible, if that makes sense? It’s ripping things away from any context, because there's a very clear bias against her here.

I'll go through it point by point under the cut

First of all though before digging into this, I want to make it clear she was a 15 year old for the majority of the things this person is talking about. Like just pause for a second and remember she’s a 15 year old victim of abuse. That is something that I think factors into a lot of her behavior! Anyways, I kinda while doing this got into a ranty 'talking at you' format in response to the person who wrote all that, so don't take any of this as me yelling at you who asked the question/you anyone reading this.

"She always acted entitled" - Saying Steph is entitled is absolutely ridiculous to me. Stephanie grew up with a very unstable childhood due to her dad frequently being in prison and her mom dealing with a drug addiction, living in a lower class part of the city. Tim is entitled. I don’t mean that as like a bad thing about him, but he is based on his living situation, she is not. She has wanted life to be better for herself and her mom, and is determined about that, but she is not and does not act entitled.

(Secret Origins 80 Page Giant)

"and stubborn" - I will give you stubborn though, that one is true. She’s stubborn as hell! I don’t really see that as a bad thing though, pretty much every bat is stubborn?

"demanding that Batman and Robin accept her untrained ass" - Steph may have been untrained in fighting but she's shown to have exceptional gymnastics skills from the start, and at one point Bruce even says that with the right training she could be as good if not better than Tim (in Robin #88)! So like... her realizing she enjoys trying to be a hero after she tried it out to deal with her personal business, so she looks to the local experts… and is determined about it… how is that a bad thing? It’s also not like she walked up to them and said ‘im perfect as i am let me in’ what she wanted was a chance to be a hero. But she also wasn't even really looking for approval, either, not having Batman's blessing was never going to stop her. ("So excuse me if I don't jump when you bark, Batman." in Robin #16) Later when Bruce does bring her in to train (and she also gets to train with the BoP) she's excited! She’s stubborn about wanting to be in the hero business, but it’s not like she’s unwilling to work for it.

"advocating leaving criminals to die because they 'deserve it'" - She’s a 15 year old who grew up knowing firsthand how dangerous Gotham criminals can be because of her dad, of course off the bat when they’re in a dangerous situation where any of them could die (because that’s the context here, this is in Robin #35 where they’re trapped in some super dangerous snow) she thinks they shouldn’t go back for another criminal who just tried to kill them and should instead save themselves. But she also literally WITHIN THAT SAME ISSUE then says she realized she learned something after listening to Tim and trying to save the guy! In the same issue! Characters in a story aren’t supposed to be perfect from the start… they learn things along the way???

(Robin #35)

"trying to steal from the shops they just stopped from being burglarized" - She’s 15 and doesn’t have a ton of money. She was gonna take two sodas, and when Tim said not to do it she paid with very little fuss. They stopped people who were robbing the place at gunpoint for prescription drugs. If you can’t understand the difference in severity between those things like… I do not even know where to start. (this situation is in Robin #56 btw)

"forcing physical affection onto Tim despite his visible discomfort and repeated objections (not even stopping when he told her he had a girlfriend)" - This one I will give you because she did cross boundaries with all that! But I do also want to clarify that she didn't start coming onto him until after Tim kissed her first (in Robin #5) while not telling her he had a girlfriend. That doesn’t excuse her later actions but for the first issue that she’s coming onto him from her perspective he expressed interest and she was just returning it! She even specifically says 'Maybe I should pay you back for saving my life the same way you paid me' (in Robin #16) before kissing him. That first time she kissed him unprompted was under essentially the same circumstances he kissed her unprompted, and she literally did not know about Ariana until after the fact. From that point once she knew about Ari she definitely should have backed off and she didn’t, that’s a very fair thing to criticize about her as a character. But Tim lead her on first, and I feel a lot of people like to casually forget that when talking about this situation. The way this is phrased of ‘not even stopping when he told her-‘ implies she was repeatedly doing the bad behavior before he told her, which is not the case. She still did bad things here but don’t misrepresent the situation.

"And lashing out at Tim, her mother, and her classmates in violent fits of anger" - Every comic book character lashes out at other people for the sake of drama like, I dare you to come up with a well-known superhero character who hasn’t done shit like that to a partner/family/friends in a moment of high tension/stress?

"She treated the girls around her like they were stupid bitches" - frankly this ones a little too vague like, I'm not sure off the top of my head exactly what they're talking about? in that era right around her pregnancy and stuff I really don't recall her being mean with other girls? I could be forgetting something I guess but the closest I can think of is a bit after this period of time when she has the confrontation with Greta in Young Justice but that was Greta attacking her first, not the other way around.

"got insanely jealous if Tim so much as expressed concern about another girl" - Steph getting jealous and thinking Tim was cheating isn’t that crazy when STEPHANIE BASICALLY WAS THE OTHER GIRL DURING TIM’S LAST RELATIONSHIP? Tim has cheated a little bit before! Tim cheated on Ari with both Jubilee from Marvel (during a crossover thing where he even mentions Ari specifically so it’s not like this was out of continuity/a setting she wasn't an issue or something) and also with Steph. While most of the kissing between them was Steph coming onto Tim which I wouldn’t count as cheating on his end, he did still kiss her which I would count. Not to mention that the jealousy thing (I imagine they’re talking about the instance with Star, the girl who taught Tim to skateboard, this arc of stuff starts in Robin #80 and continues for a few issues) is happening during the time she’s dating him while she still doesn’t even know his real name. He literally has a whole other life she doesn’t know about, and is someone who has initiated romantic moments with other girls while in a relationship multiple times before! With that in mind I don’t think a 16 (she's def 16 by this point) year old girl being kinda paranoid about how he interacts with girls he might know in his civilian life is that unreasonable? The later big instance with jealousy is the Darla situation- where Steph sees Darla kiss him and gets mad about it (and doesn’t talk to him about it) and thats what prompts her to become Robin. The important thing to remember about Steph in this time frame is that DC decided she had to die and they wanted to make her Robin first to drum up more attention for that death. They were doing ooc things with her to set those pieces in motion, and that needs to be taken into account. I think her getting upset about seeing something like that isn’t even ooc, but her using it as motivation to become Robin and not even saying anything to him about it is. In the earlier instance where she’s upset/jealous about Star, she does communicate to him what’s going on at least a little bit on the rooftop after they’d saved her. She makes it clear the thing she was upset about is that she feels like she can’t trust him because she doesn’t really know him while he knows everything about her, and that’s why she thinks he’s cheating. Her reaction to the Darla thing is not in line with how earlier in canon Steph would have handled the same situation, because they wanted her to die and needed a way to explain her becoming Robin.

"and expressed that jealousy by accusing him of cheating and throwing things at him" - I just addressed the cheating stuff but the throwing things was fucking slapstick oh my god this is a comic book for kids/teens like. ah yes this is horrible abuse in this little funny montage of how Steph wants him to leave her alone because she’s mad at him and he refuses to give her space

(Robin #82)

I don’t think anyone at DC or even in fandom would/should try to argue she’s perfect, because she’s not! And I don’t want her to be because perfect characters are boring. Steph is flawed, Steph has been compared in canon to Robin-era Jason by Cass & Bruce

(Detective Comics #790)

And I think these highlight some of her very real flaws that are an interesting part of her character. These plus her stubbornness and determination are part of what makes her her.

And for fuck's sake the world was mean to her, and to act like it wasn’t is just blatantly ignoring a lot. A criminal father who made her life really difficult (‘when my dad was mad at me he’d lock me in the closet!’), that time she got kidnapped for two weeks and her mom had left her (a 15 year old) alone at home so long she didn't even find out it happened (in text Steph says Crystal was visiting friends, a lot of people interpret that as her mom possibly being in rehab for her addictions again), that whole thing about how one of her dad’s friends tried to sexually assault her as a child, also just how due to her dad's work sometimes criminals would be living in their house (Literally the fucking Riddler at one point!), the fact that we as an audience watched her get tortured for several days because a plan she tried to enact to prove herself backfired since Batman didn’t trust her with important information (something Selina even calls him out on in her internal narration), like… sorry but in what way is all that not the world being mean to her?

She was Robin, she dated Robin, she likes Eggplant (because purple would've looked stupid), and makes jokes. She’s also impulsive, headstrong and determined, and wants to prove to herself and others that she can be more than just the daughter of a shitty criminal, that she can actually be a force to do good in the world.

She’s a complex character, and nobody is required to like her, but to act like she doesn’t have a single redeeming trait is ridiculous. You could write a paragraph like that with the worst moments of basically any character and make them look like shit if that's what you were setting out to do.

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