#POST EP 8 ^_^

[xxbatwolfz17xx]

Intro post, yippee.

robo god..it feels like im makinga back to school slideshow..

Hello, im Uzi, and welcome to my blog >:3

You can ask me things and ill (probably, i dont owe ya >:T) respond!!

what do i even put here..

(rule: CYN IS NOT ALLOWED TO USE MY ACCOUNT EVER AGAIN. CYN CAN USE THIS ACCOUNT WHENEVER SHE WANTS ^_^ )

(OOC: Characters who can respond

Doll (Her speech might not make much sense in translation and may be wrong, im using a translator apologies ^w^)

Cyn

Uzi (normal text)

V and N

J (bold italic text cause i ran out of colors)

Same universe blogs: @/serialdesignationjaybird , @/xxdarkxwolfxxx

(you can ask for others if you want lmao)

[impatienttortoise]

[sys//: Callbackping]

[witchhalliwell]

PATTY HALLIWELL | April 5, 1950

[thatgothsamurai]

bonus nano the cctv

no one:

my brain at 3am: whAT IF JUNDYLAN

[y4rdbird]

don’t worry guys I remembered how to open CapCut 😏 (said to my 3 fans)

[curemoonliite]

on the one hand, i'm pumped as hell that a over 1 hour precure vid dropped and it's finally getting the attention it deserves, but i low-key hate that we live in a society where precure is considered impossible to recommend

like bro, you want me to watch 1000 episodes of one piece to understand who you are as a person and i want you to watch 50 episodes of fresh precure, we are not the same

(also obligatory "top left" comment for anyone else playing the "where's cure moonlight" game like i do whenever one of these pics comes up)

[fake-married-my-dead-fiance]

Queen of Tears Text posts 1/? (Part 2, 3, 4)

[stolenkissesdiaz]

buck asking his bf to move in with him while having a diaz shrine on his fridge gives me very much oliver saying ‘there’s pictures of everyone’ while consistently always having 2-3 pictures of ryan in the photo dump and there being so many pictures that ryan ends up posting some of them

[khaoala]

❝The Earth's axial tilt gives us 24 hours a day. If it'd been upright, we might've had only eight hours a day.❞

LOVE PATTRANITE as SUN and MILK PANSA as ONGSA NANNAPHAT episode 9 of 23 POINT 5

[arcane-aesthetics]

[beaulesbian]

they were really insane for making this filler arc so good, and for luffy to immediately lose all his cool composure when he heard zoro was captured

[kaban-bang]

Most desirable bachelorette in the Universal Century

[loverofstufflof]

I’m starting to realize that TMAGP is just Jonny and Alex’s fluffy “Nothing Went Wrong AU” fanfiction with heavy OC focus

[wanderlust-in-my-soul]

One Palm Distance

[casscainmainly]

What do you think of how WFA is currently using Duke so far? On the one hand bringing in We are Robin is good but on the other hand I feel like it they still are sidelining him. He's still benched and sure they brought in We are Robin but it felt like they were more used for Damian and his story, and they had Duke set up this support system but we've seen others like Steph doing more with it and really interacting with it. I feel like them say introducing We Are Robin but like making interact more with Damian and be there for his story is like "see we read Duke, now here's the other characters we really want to focus"

I've fallen behind on WFA for a few weeks so I just caught up! And. Yeah. I have thoughts. (Also again disclaimer I don't have FastPass so this is based on the free eps as of now).

In August last year I did an analysis of Duke Thomas in WFA, where I outlined my gripes. Then, in December, I praised the We Are Robin-centric episode. Right after, I wrote about how the next episode was making me a little wary but I was still optimistic.

Just outlining this to demonstrate that my feelings on WFA bounce back and forth a lot, but I do think it can do better and it has done better. So I'm gonna read on (because it's the only consistent place for Duke content, and because I like the Batgirls in it enough), but long story short: I'm pissed.

(Putting a rant under the cut; if you're enjoying S3 of WFA, I'm genuinely happy for you! I'm going to take a more negative stance than usual though so don't read if you don't want to hear that stuff).

Okay first of all the benching. All the way back in August I complained about Duke being benched, in a season that started with his kidnapping and revolves around the Joker. At the time I was hopeful he'd be unbenched, but it's been 34 eps and he's STILL BENCHED!! Even if he's unbenched in the FastPass eps I don't have, it's still ridiculous that he was out of the field for that long.

What happened when canon Duke got injured I wonder??

Oh yeah, in the Cursed Wheel he SNUCK OUT!!! Because he has agency!!!! What's frustrating about benching Duke for the entirety of S3 so far is that Duke, at his core, is a character of action. From his very first appearance in Zero Year, he's defined by an absurd amount of agency, wanting to fight the Riddler (then finding his parents, then joining WAR, then becoming Signal). A Duke that sits by for THIRTY FOUR EPISODES is NOT DUKE THOMAS!!!

But he's broken his arm, right? It makes sense for him to be benched?? Well first of all it was WFA's CHOICE to break his arm, a choice I do not think added anything to Duke's character or to Bruce's paranoia (which was clearly the entire point of Duke's kidnapping in the first place). Secondly, another character was injured in a fight with the Joker and benched. Another character who REJOINED THE FIELD IN 16 EPISODES!!!!

Dick gets injured in #130 and goes back out in #146. That is under half of how many episodes Duke's been benched for, AND Dick got injured in a fight against Joker. Duke didn't even get to fight!!! He didn't get to do anything!!! Dick's injury was also stupid, but the way WFA handled his benching versus Duke's is worlds apart, and shows to me how much less they respect Duke than the others.

Also can I just say how gross it was to use Duke's kidnapping merely to kickstart the plot? An astonishing 14 episodes pass before we get any mention of how Duke feels (in #132, he says he has nightmares). Then another 11 eps pass before we get to him talking to Lucius + calling WAR. That nightmares thing is never followed up on either! In #124 and #132, Duke's dialogue functions to further the plot or other characters - in #124, Duke justifies the others going out, and in #132, he helps Bruce through his feelings. Even when the episodes are about him, they are not about him!!! I genuinely think only 2 eps out of this entire season haven't used Duke as a prop for someone else.

I'm going to briefly detour to discuss #132 because I loathe that episode. In Homebound, Bruce visits Duke and they play Battleship (it was cute. fine. whatever). And then Bruce offers to hear Duke out on how he feels. Smash cut to:

ARE YOU SERIOUS??? We spent more than 3 episodes on Jason's PTSD, but we couldn't even spend a single panel on Duke talking about his own trauma???? Whether or not you liked the Jason bits this season, he had a moment. Babs also has her moment, and a whole ep is spent with just her and her dad. Duke, of the 3 Bats that have the biggest associations with the Joker, never gets to fully express how he feels. This off-panel cop-out is honestly kind of insulting.

Another detour: the kidnapping ep. We finally get Duke's full backstory after TWO WHOLE SEASONS (besides a brief mention in #76), and it was just not good. Besides the fact that Duke's kidnapping is, as I've mentioned, just a way to get the plot moving, I don't like the way WFA handles his parents:

What on EARTH are you talking about. This feels like a justification for Duke having never mentioned his parents before, but it's completely untrue to Duke's canon character. Sure, he thinks about his parents more than he talks about them, but WFA Duke never thinks about them either!! This narration box just riles me up whenever I think about it.

I was a bit nicer to this part in my first analysis, but no this part just straight up sucks. First off, I don't believe canon!Duke fears being turned into "something like [his parents]". In Cursed Wheel, he more or less comes to terms with how his parents are: "every horrible thing coming out of [my parents'] mouths? They're actually telling me how much they love me. [...] Let them stay." WFA always picking the weirdest things (becoming like his parents, his powers) for Duke to be scared about!

Secondly, this part juxtaposes the 'horror' of becoming like his parents ("something like them") and the wonderful, beautiful vision of "home": Bruce Wayne. Not only is this in direct defiance of Duke's canon character, it just strikes me as an odd and mean-spirited comparison. It essentially erases Duke's parents from his vision of 'home', just to fit him into the Wayne nuclear family.

But to get to the actual topic of the ask: We Are Robin. I still think the We Are Robin ep (#144) is the best Duke in the entirety of WFA, but did things improve afterwards? Did we focus on the WAR kids, their relationship to Duke, or their overall relationship to Robin? Nope. Turns out WAR, like Duke, was a prop for Damian!!

Damian is too harsh in training the Robins, so Duke intervenes. Damian stomps off and has a heart-to-heart with Jon, during which he admits he was trying to prove himself as Robin by training WAR. I actually like this premise!!! Duke and Damian have always had a contentious relationship to each other's Robins, and it makes TOTAL sense for Damian to be dismissive of WAR and think of it as a way to 'prove' himself. The problem is we did this already. TOM KING did it, in Robin War!!!

This is literally a microwaved TK story with worse writing and less nuance. In Robin War, we explored the way Damian dismisses Duke + WAR, both Duke and Damian's feelings of inadequacy around being Robin, and both of them eventually finding common ground and accepting each other. This arc is that except we cut out Duke's perspective. Now, it's all about Damian's feelings about Robin, and nothing about Duke or WAR's relationship to the mantle!

I cannot stress enough that this is a worse version of Robin War, and Robin War isn't even that good!!!

By centering We Are Robin's appearance on Damian, we lose about 99% of WAR's relationships to each other (and especially to Duke). The only specific relationship we see is Duke and Izzy blushing around each other. No acknowledgement of the Dre-Duke beef, the Riko-Duke crush, Dax-Dre friendship, these are a bunch of extras in a movie about Damian Wayne I guess.

You get absolutely no sense of who Izzy, Riko, Dre, or Dax are. The only thing you learn about them is that they're incompetent!

It's been a couple of episodes and they've been beaten TWICE. I get that they're not the main characters, but compared to the Outlaws or other affiliated teams, WAR is portrayed as ineffectual. And both times it's for Damian's sake. This is so frustrating because Damian + WAR is a really interesting relationship, but because WFA never focuses on WAR's feelings or reactions, it doesn't feel like an equal conflict. It feels like Damian vs. some cardboard cutouts.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE??? Why aren't they even a tiny bit mad at Damian for either Robin War (WHICH DID HAPPEN BECAUSE WE ARE ROBIN IS CANON HERE) or what he did to them literally a few eps ago?? You know what, why aren't they mad at DUKE for ghosting and abandoning them?? They mention very briefly at the start that it's 'all good', but why??? Is it because WFA is not invested in their feelings??? Is it because we don't have space to explore even a modicum of Duke's story??????

Having a We Are Robin plot not focused on Duke Thomas or even We Are Robin is so upsetting, especially because the WAR ep was genuinely grounded in canon. Like you said in the ask, it does feel like they put that in there just to prove they've read WAR. What is clear to me now is that, though they've read the run, they didn't understand it. They did it for a perfunctory 'here's some Duke stuff' and never bothered to be interested in any of these characters' stories.

Because we should have gotten Duke's side of things. Damian gets an entire ep to talk to Jon and another to prove himself by fighting Joker, and Duke gets a few panels where he's like 'Damian don't usurp my training I forgive you though'. Season 3 has come the closest to giving WFA!Duke some depth, and because it comes the closest, it also fails the hardest. I still have hope that Duke will get some moments in this season, but I'm losing hope that it will make up for his treatment at all.

Apparently an upcoming Cass ep isn't great so they're really attacking me personally at this point. Idk what gets me is that for some people, this is their first exposure to Duke and WAR. For some people this is and will continue to be their only exposure. And it's this watered-down, uninteresting, bland, prop version of him that just is not the Duke Thomas I know and love.

[secriden]

Something that really struck me about Style this episode is how real his fear was.

And I don't just mean his fear of the inevitable conclusion of the path Fadel's hurt and anger has set them on; although this, too, was so very real and honest and tore me to pieces in ways I can still barely process.

But it's interesting how Style talks about being afraid of dying generally and specifically how harm could come to them from an external source. How the way his fear is orientated puts Fadel on the inside ("a murderer is gonna come after us"), on Style's side and someone Style wants to keep safe.

And when Fadel makes the kind of snide joke about letting the hypothetical cannibals kill and cook Style, Style's solution still involves staying by Fadel's side. At no point does he ever stop referring to Fadel and him as a single unit, even after Fadel very explicitly frames Style as the only victim.

I'm bringing this up because I think as a fandom (myself included!!) we may have mistaken Styles unshaken confidence for a lack of fear. We saw Style stare down the barrel of Fadel's gun with an unimpressed look of disdain or the way he casually discusses Fadel killing him at the end of their journey, and we (understandably) think this is evidence of his fearlessness, of his boldness and sense of wild optimism that admittedly fits his character quite well -- but it isn't.

I think Style is very afraid, actually. He has many fears and chief among them at this point is that he does not want to die. He does not want to leave his life or is dad or his friend or his cars or his boyfriend who still thinks he doesn’t love him!

And those tears?? Those tears were real because lying next to Fadel with a metal handcuff digging into his wrist was a painful reminder of their broken trust; the terrible chasm hidden in the scant inches between them, all as the result of Style's past choices and the pressures on all our main characters.

And I think part of it was also Style finally coming down from the adrenalin rush of: (a) Kant and Bison going missing, (b) being chloroformed and kidnapped and stripped naked and tied up, (c) being threatened at gunpoint whilst still reeling from the knowledge that Fadel knows and perhaps has known since the first warning signs of his sudden affection, and (d) not being shot and then being told to drive for hours on a seemingly impossible quest with no real destination.

But I also think this was the core of why Style is so sad. Because even if Fadel forgives him, there's a very real possibility that Style's actions and choices could lead him to dying if not at Fadel's hands then maybe because Style is now at risk of getting caught in the crossfire too. Because Style may well find himself standing between a bullet and Fadel one day, and that choice has repercussions beyond Style himself.

But his fear and his sorrow makes Style's choices on this journey all the more poignant and beautiful. Because Style commits to his love at the end of the day. He is unapologetically honest with Fadel and gives him not just the weight of what it means for Style to choose him, but the right for Fadel to keep his anger in spite of it. At no point does Style demand Fadel's forgiveness or trust or the relinquishing of the distance Fadel keeps between them.

Because Style's heart is his to offer, but equally it is Fadel's to take. And I think to fail to recognise the reality of Style's fear is to undervalue the weight of what it means when Style says "You own my life" -- when this took everything Style had in him to give.