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sladewilsonisanantihero · 3 years

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The Original Intent of Terra and how Deathstroke got the bad end of the stick for it

Okay, Deathstroke Children (Idk what to call you guys because fellow Deathstrokers would end this conversation immediately), I found the time to do this, so let's get to it!

(Note: My original laptop broke with my comics, so I have no images to spare, so it will be sourced. Another note: Many words will be in bold. Partly so that for those reading will not lose track.)

But if tl;dr:

Cold Hard Truth: Everyone from Terra fans to Deathstroke fans needs to stop seeing these characters as real people.

Original Terra wasn't human trafficked or whatever sob story people want to label her with. The CREATORS intended her to be written as Evil without the mental illness and to die for the shock value. They had Raven, The Literal Empath, spell this out in Judas Contract. As for Deathstroke's involvement, he was shoved into her creation story, and Marv Wolfman himself recognized his mistake in doing that.

And for those calling Deathstroke a nazi, Original Terra had nazi-like beliefs where common people should fear and serve them or be killed off just because they're 'special'. Again, BLUNTLY stated in the Judas Contract. So if you're going to call Deathstroke a Pedophile, we'll call OG Terra a Neo-Nazi. (But I highly advice for Deathstroke Fans to not start that kind of war, but I had to say what I had to say.)

Don't get me wrong. (Hopefully all) Deathstroke fans know that their relationship was wrong just like Marv Wolfman, and we do not support pedophiles! But Slade isn't a pedophile! He was never intended to be written as one! It was a mistake made on many levels and should be rewritten like OG Terra's Evil Neo-Nazi-like personality, instead of being thrown into cancel culture.

Also for Deathstroke fans, don't get upset over their content and begin any argument emotionally. Just enjoy whatever good content we can get and support it if you can. Hopefully we'll get our Deathstroke movies and so on!

So I've briefly chatted with one of you over the matter with Terra/Tara Markov and how upsetting it is about how people refer to Slade Wilson as a Pedophile. That is a serious accusation that would make it very uncomfortable to argue about since it can easily make it seem like we justify the actions of pedophiles, and that we are part of pedophile culture that does exist in social media space.

AND WE SHOULDN'T, AND FOR ANTIS READING THIS WE WON'T.

But there was a time when I used to have a blog called friendlyremindersofsladewilson, where I defended Slade and put the blame all on Terra. I was 14 at the time, and looking back at it, I am not proud of it because I realized now as an adult how I defended it for most of the wrong reasons, but still stand with the fact that SLADE IS NOT A PEDOPHILE.

And since this took place when I was so young, it compelled me to write this post because I fear some of you are really young, too, and may end up in this regretful position.

So to make it clear, what Slade had been written to do is a crime, and we should acknowledge it, but not in the way as if it was a crime acted out in real life.

What I mean by that is that there's a clear separation between fiction and reality where one isn't real (Duh!). In this case, it's about the mistakes made between fiction and reality. In reality, mistakes made by the person responsible is on the person. In fiction, mistakes made is dependent on the creator's intent, and sometimes the creators can make mistakes themselves.

Most notably Terra's:

Tara Markov/Terra was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez.

In Marv Wolfman's literal website, he stated in his online "What the-?" column:

"Which leads to Terra. That was easy. George and I wanted a Titan who betrayed the others. we also wanted to play against every reader conception of who characters are. George and I knew her whole story before we began and we knew she would die. We set the story up with her trying to destroy the Statue of Liberty to show she was the bad girl, but we knew if George drew her as a cute kid everyone would simply assume she would be ‘turned’ from the dark side because that’s the way it was always done which is why that wouldn’t be the way we did it. Tara was insane an stayed that way right until the moment she died. By the way, she IS dead. I don’t know what other writers will do with her – if anything – but if they want to honor the original series they will leave her dead. The Terra from Team Titans was – as stated – some kid the villain kidnapped and physically and mentally altered her into looking and acting like the original. But she was NEVER the real Terra."

And it should also be noted that he stated before this statement that:

"...Only mistake I think I made with him is having him have a physical relationship with the 16 year old Tara Markov. That was wrong."

So Marv Wolfman himself recognizes that what he did was a mistake, but his intent on Terra was never to write a victim.

And quick note: Insanity isn't written as a mental illness here. It's written like how many villains are labeled as insane for having skewed beliefs that deviates from the common good.

Terra truly had some nazi-like beliefs where she BELIEVED that everyone who wasn't 'special' like her and the Teen Titans deserved to be treated like shit because they weren't 'special' like them. She bluntly said it herself in the Judas Contract.

As for George Perez's comment in an interview I found in this website:

"GEORGE: Tara was just a cute little girl, although I based a little bit of that on my wife Carol’s sister, Barbara. A little upturned nose… Barbara does not have the teeth that Tara had. I wanted Tara to be a girl who looked normal. Which also means her death caught everyone even more offguard.

Tara, she was made to be killed; she served her purpose. That was it.

ANDY: You didn ‘t get any attachment to Tara?

GEORGE: No, because I knew we were going to kill her. So I deliberately used all the things to make her as likeable and cute as possible, so people would never believe we were going to kill a sixteen-year-old. And she was a sixteen-year-old sociopath. She was one of our cleverest gimmicks; we deliberately created her in order to lead everyone astray. So we couldn’t build any fondness for her, ’cause we knew full well what her whole motive for existence was. Her existence was basically to keep the stories interesting; we were tossing a curve that no one would have expected.

ANDY: You didn ‘t even love to hate her, huh?

GEORGE: No. I loved handling her, because she was such a good idea. But she was an idea. Not as much a person. She was there to show exactly how much their humanity can be one thing they have to be careful about, the Teen Titans have to be careful about. . . they can be too trusting, or their own weaknesses can be used against them."

Terra was supposed to be a representation of An Evil Betrayal of Trust and That Not All Cute Girls Are Good.

But they took it too far by making her sleep with Deathstroke because they wanted to truly make her look evil by literally sleeping with the enemy. Y'know because this was the 80s, and women having sex was an evil act back then, and that point of view has somewhat or barely improved 40 years later.

Deathstroke was just shoved into this idea, and Marv tried and perhaps failed at trying to undo this mistake with his talk with Beastboy (Tales of the Teen Titans issue #55) and before his confrontation from Wintergreen (Deathstroke (1991); Chapter 35).

So just as I had stated at the top in the tl;dr, it was a mistake made on many levels and should have been rewritten out just as many had done with OG Terra's true personality, and be done with it.

Random person: "He still slept with a 16-year-old."

And it's not that hard to make other heroes and villains do this mistake. Because again, it's all fiction. Deathstroke's fictional. As in Not Real, so we could literally undo the damage by rewriting this mistake. Or make it worse by making Terra the rapist by her using her Earth powers to bind Slade down and force him, and you can't deny that it's plausible. Because she's fictional. Anything can happen. So why didn't Slade tell Beastboy whether he slept with her or not, maybe it was because he really didn't want to but he was forced into it. And that's just something you can't dump on a very emotional man who was trying to kill you a moment ago.

ALL THE POSSIBILITIES BECAUSE IT'S FICITIONAL!

But ANYWAY, I went way too dark there.

Ending on a brighter note: Personally to all Deathstroke fans, please value your mental health, please don't start any arguments that'll compromise it, and continue supporting Deathstroke in whatever way you can!

#Deathstroke #Slade Wilson

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smallblueandloud · 4 years

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HEY HI WHAT'S UP so i'm almost at the point where i can FINALLY read the tww sense8 au, i'm so excited, you have no idea. so anyway- whenever you're in the mood to write for this verse- how did early cj/andy/toby work? how did they meet, and figure out they were in the same cluster (yes including will i'm so in love with him as a part of this)? what were/are the individual relationships like within it? literally talk about anything- any relationship- within this au, i love the concept so much. ❤

(the sense8 au in question)

hmm, okay, so as i mentioned to you i actually had written a bit about their relationship in some snippets that will probably never be posted. but i don’t LIKE what i wrote, so i’m gonna change it, and we’re all just gonna pretend it was like this the whole time lmao.

andy and toby met first, as always, in boston because i am predictable. in this au you don’t know you’re in the same cluster until you make eye contact without being on blockers (which are telepathy-supressing pills, essentially), so they had no idea it was coming, but toby is running a campaign that one of andy’s college friends is working on and andy’s there because her friend was supposed to go to lunch with her an HOUR ago and toby glances up from the papers he’s holding, and-

well. that’s that. toby isn’t so militant about refusing to get close to andy, although he does still feel a bit odd about their age gap and still doesn’t agree to date her for a while. richard schiff is 6 years older than kathleen york, so i’m gonna say that andy was 24 and toby was 29. but, as andy points out: she’s just as smart as he is, and besides, something in their souls said they were equals, and there’s nothing he can do to avoid it. so they date.

they come up with some ground rules for their relationship. no blockers while they’re together in person. no blockers without a good reason, because they both like being connected. if one of them finds one of the other members of their cluster - because the cluster isn’t complete, they know, they don’t know how big it’s going to be but they know it’s not JUST the two of them - they have to call the other IMMEDIATELY. both of them are idealists like that. they know they’re going to share their lives with their other cluster mates, even if it’s not quite romantic.

and then about a year later, when toby is 30 and andy is 25, toby gets introduced to the new press representative of his latest campaign, a 26-year-old cj. and i think they actually even manage to get into an argument before they make eye contact - but it happens, and toby takes a step to the right into the office where andy has a meeting today.

“i found her,” he says. “the third one.”

andy, forgoing any other kind of conversation - that would only waste time - turns to the politician she’s meeting with. “i’m so sorry, something’s just come up,” she says. “we found another member of our cluster.”

“oh, of course,” says the politician. he smiles at her. “we’ll reschedule, naturally. and- good luck.”

andy thanks him and hightails it out of there. back at the campaign, cj and toby are still staring at each other. toby says, “you’re-” and cj says, “come here,” and grabs his arm to pull him into a broom closet, because you KNOW that was cj’s first reaction.

toby’s still kind of staring at her, because let’s be honest, young allison janney. cj says, “are there any more?”

toby says, “what?”

“in the cluster. have you found any others?”

toby blinks. “yeah, i’ve- yeah. she’s on her way. my girlf- my partner, andy. wait, wait, does that- have YOU found any others?”

cj shakes her head. “not yet. i’m cj, by the way.”

“toby ziegler.”

andy breaks SEVERAL traffic laws but gets to the campaign in a record ten minutes, which by the way are possibly the most awkward ten minutes of both cj and toby’s lives. she makes a beeline for the broom closet and makes instant eye contact with cj, because she is NOT going to lose this connection.

later, cj will think that that’s about when she fell in love.

it’s 1985, and bartlet is elected in 1998, so they still have a ways to go. they eventually fall into a collective relationship, as andy and toby realize that their relationship is never going to be able to return to a pre-cj dynamic. they met her a year after each other, but she’s just as important to the relationship as the two of them are.

cj moves to california eventually, fed up and cynical about the public sector. she takes a job with a media consultation firm, as she does in every world, they’re better at communication in this au. hard to be bad at it when you share a soul, bodies, talents. andy and toby move back to andy’s home state of maryland and andy starts to get closer to her goal of running for congress, while toby just keeps losing campaigns for honest politicians. i’ll say that cj moves to california in 1992, and toby and andy get married in 1993.

it’s a lot easier for you to stay in contact when you’re in a cluster. cj watches tv with toby and andy every night. it’s less of a breakup, in this au, and more of cj saying “i want to go work in california, and we have to be more careful”. she’ll only do romantic things in the psycellium, which is where, say, andy would perceive her if cj was visiting telepathically. no one else can see her, is the point. but she sits on their couch and watches tv with them and heckles toby when he makes dinner and goes to lunches with andy, where she sits on one side of the table and eats while andy makes herself at home in the other chair.

and it’s not great but it WORKS, and it works until jed bartlet calls them all in and cj closes herself off even MORE for the sake of andy’s career and andy and toby’s marriage falls apart. and then we get to their approximate relationships in canon.

toby and andy are divorced and spend a couple of years not speaking, but they’re still CLUSTERMATES and that MEANS something. they still hold to their rule of no blockers when in the same room and, once they start talking again (i think around mid s1), they start talking to each other for comfort and catharsis. oftentimes they’ll argue to get out their frustration with everyone else in their lives. it works.

toby and cj are as non-flirty as cj can manage, which is to say that they’re at canon levels of flirting. i would say it’s PRETTY FLIRTY. they’re keeping their cluster under wraps, and they’re even pretty good at it. senior staff knows because one time they got REALLY drunk during the campaign and had a conversation at normal volume about the boston globe. from opposite ends of a bar. but most of the press doesn’t know, except MAYBE danny, and they do their best to keep it that way. exceptions are at rosslyn and other situations like that.

neither of them generally take blockers, so toby’s attempts at briefing are SLIGHTLY less catastrophic than in canon, since cj can stand next to him and quietly advise. she doesn’t take over his body to do it, though, and they try to limit her advice, since it can get really obvious really quickly. toby takes blockers whenever they hide something from cj.

and cj and andy... are the most romantic of the three, just because cj and toby can get away with flirting and cj KNOWS that toby knows she loves him, but andy has always been better about physical affection - and they generally see each other in the psycellium, anyway. (look, i just want them to KISS.) if marriage equality existed at the time, they’d have probably gotten married and toby would’ve had a Crisis about it, but it didn’t and they don’t. they only very rarely see each other in public, generally at balls and the like, during which they both have to pretend they’re not about to burst out laughing. someone ALWAYS tries to introduce them, assuming they’ve never met before, and it’s worth it for the simultaneous “oh, no, we’ve met.” it’s explained by “cj was toby’s best friend while he was dating andy”, but you and i know the Truth.

okay, and then sam goes to california and meets a spirited young speechwriter and sends him back to the west wing, and he walks into toby’s office first.

toby looks up, meets will’s eyes, and something clicks into place. the last piece of the puzzle. the last member of their cluster. and toby goes, “oh no.”

will says, “uh- can we just. uh.”

“come in,” says toby, sighing and waving a hand. “we’ll handle that later. you have an appointment, right?”

they have their canon conversation, in which toby critiques will’s writing and refuses his help on the inauguration speech, and blah blah blah we get to the end of the episode where they’ve both revealed that they respect each other.

it’s the middle of the night, two days after they met, they’re sitting in the mess hall writing, when will goes, “and the cluster thing?”

“what?” says toby, glancing up. “oh, yeah. there’s two more of us. i’ve gotta introduce you.”

“i went home and looked it up,” says will. “there’s nothing on your cluster anywhere.”

“yeah, well, that’s on purpose,” says toby. “and it’s yours too, now. do you know cj cregg?”

he introduces will to cj the next morning, then gets andy to come into the west wing so she can pass will in the hallway and meet eyes with him. they’re very serious about keeping their cluster under wraps, and it would look REALLY suspicious if toby ziegler’s ex-wife came to the white house to meet the california speechwriter that sam seaborn recommended after two months of casual acquaintance. donna is the only one who notices it, but that’s another story.

the dynamics: toby and will are basically the same as in canon, complete with the s6-7 Rift™. toby isn’t as comfortable with will, hasn’t known him for as long, but they understand each other. they’re both writers. it’s something that andy and cj don’t know, even if they love toby more than will ever will.

as for cj and andy, they basically adopt will as their brother and move on. will and cj can’t be seen getting too cozy, but they talk through problems with each other a lot. andy and will can’t be seen in public together at ALL, but they make it a point to sit with each other in the evenings while they’re doing paperwork or reading or writing. it goes more easily with company, and they want to get to know each other.

and everything’s well and good and happy until toby commits treason. but that’s another story altogether.

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tortuga-aak · 6 years

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Trump's lawyers are laying the groundwork for a brazen new legal strategy in the Russia probe

Getty Images/Pool

President Donald Trump's defense team is arguing that Trump cannot be charged with collusion or obstruction of justice — the central threads of the special counsel's Russia investigation.

Two of Trump's key defense lawyers, John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, have said in recent days that collusion is not in itself a crime and that Trump, as president, cannot be guilty of obstruction because he has "every right" to express his views "in any case."

Legal experts largely pushed back on the claims, saying that Trump's lawyers were ignoring the crux of the obstruction case, and that he could be found guilty of crimes resulting from collusion.

President Donald Trump's legal defense team is adopting a bold new strategy as the Russia investigation reaches a boiling point: arguing that a sitting president can't obstruct justice.

The president "cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," Trump's lawyer, John Dowd, told Axios.

The comment seems to confirm previous reports that Trump's legal team was working over the summer to convince special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump could not be found guilty of obstruction because he has the constitutional authority to fire whomever he wants.

Any claim to the contrary, Dowd told Axios, is "ignorant and arrogant."

The question of whether Trump tried to impede an ongoing FBI investigation reemerged in full force last weekend, when he tweeted a potentially incriminating claim one day after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Russia's ambassador.

"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI," Trump said. "He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"

If Trump knew that Flynn was in the FBI's crosshairs when he asked former FBI Director James Comey, whom he later fired, to consider dropping the Flynn investigation the day after Flynn resigned, that could dramatically bolster the obstruction case federal prosecutors are building.

A CNN report published Monday said White House counsel Don McGahn told Trump he believed Flynn had not been truthful either with Pence or the FBI, bolstering the possibility that Trump was aware Flynn had misled the bureau when he asked Comey to drop the investigation. (Trump has denied telling Comey to do so.)

McGahn did not tell Trump explicitly, however, that Flynn had committed a crime or that he was under criminal investigation, according to the report.

Trump can 'tweet anything he wants' — but firing is an action

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Former federal prosecutor Jeff Cramer said that Dowd's argument held some water because the question of whether the president can be charged with obstructing justice is not "settled law" and "you can't be prosecuted for saying things."

"But firing the FBI director is an action," Cramer said. "Trump can tweet anything he wants — that's not against the law. But when he fires the FBI director, now it's starting to take shape."

Trump abruptly fired Comey, who was leading the FBI's Russia investigation at the time, three months after asking him if he could see his way "clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go."

"He is a good guy," Trump said, according to Comey's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June. "I hope you can let this go."

Comey gave no indication that he would let Flynn go. Days after firing Comey, Trump told NBC's Lester Holt that "the Russia thing" was on his mind when he dismissed him.

Robert Costello, who previously served as the deputy chief of the criminal division for US attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, said Monday that he believed Dowd's argument held merit.

"Suppose the president makes a statement about the economy, and various stocks go way up. Can the president then be accused of manipulating the stock price and violating securities laws?" Costello said. "No. He's entitled to do what he's doing."

But other experts pushed back on that assertion, arguing that Dowd was avoiding the crux of the obstruction case.

Jens David Ohlin, the vice dean at Cornell Law School and a criminal law expert, said Dowd was making an "absurd argument that reeks of royal absolutism."

Dowd's argument "basically boils down to the maxim that Trump is the law," Ohlin said. "That's just not true. Even the president has to follow the law."

"Recent historical precedent contradicts [Dowd's] view as well," he added, pointing to former President Richard Nixon's impeachment for, among other things, obstruction of justice.

The idea that collusion could be legal is 'absurd'

Fox NewsThe president's legal team has has also begun to echo a claim that began in right-wing media circles earlier this year: that collusion is not a crime.

"For something to be a crime, there has to be a statute that you claim is being violated," Trump lawyer, Jay Sekulow, recently told The New Yorker. "There is not a statute that refers to criminal collusion. There is no crime of collusion."

Andy Wright, a professor of constitutional law at Savannah Law School, said in a previous interview that if Americans entered into an agreement to assist illegal Russian influence operations, "it could create a conspiracy, which is a federal crime."

Additionally, Wright said, American citizens colluding with a foreign power to illegally affect an election "could constitute aiding and abetting that foreign power’s criminal campaign finance violation."

Ultimately, questions about whether the Trump campaign's encouragement of Russia's cyberattacks constituted a form of collusion revolve around whether Trump and his associates incorporated Moscow's meddling into their overall campaign strategy, according to former White House counsel Robert Bauer.

That includes whether "specific plans" were made to build messaging around hacked emails and WikiLeaks' release of them — and if the campaign made a conscious decision not to denounce the Russians so that the meddling would continue.

"Was the message intended for Russia discussed during preparations for the presidential debate, which would explain Mr. Trump’s special care in refusing to assign direct blame for the hacking to the government or to reject any assistance from the hackers?" Bauer, now a partner at the law firm Perkins Coie, wrote earlier this year.

The idea that collusion is inherently legal, moreover, is "absurd," said Mark Kramer, the program director for the Project on Cold War Studies at Harvard's Davis Center for Eurasian Affairs. He said the form such collusion would have taken — hacking, a clandestine transfer of funds, conspiracy — would be serious crimes on their own.

More broadly, Wright said, the notion that it would be above water for an American presidential candidate to leverage a foreign adversary to subvert an election "would really signal the death of outrage."

And those repeating the talking point are also ignoring the very real possibility that the candidate who colluded would then be beholden to that foreign government — and irrevocably compromised.

"Our national security clearance system relies on being able to vet foreign sources of leverage," Wright said. "Of course, the premise of kompromat is shame. Some of the president's defenders appear to be post-shame."

NOW WATCH: Fox News' Tucker Carlson — a registered Democrat — explains why he always votes for the most corrupt mayoral candidate

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