#is a great plot point

[grandapplewit]

Given that we know Next To Nothing about the Elder Nie’s, I’ve decided that Nie-Zongzhu is a wife guy, and Nie Huaisang’s mother is Wen Ruohan’s baby sister.

[the-worms-in-your-bones]

What they don’t tell you is that if you get good enough at doctor who tumblr you don’t even need to go looking through the tardis wiki, your mutuals will just know that shit

[eleventh-mugiwara]

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i vote that next year instead of reading Dracula we do a Jeeves & Wooster Book Club. those two never got the rabid tumblr shipping fandom they deserved (disqualified for the sheer technicality of being published a century too soon). we must correct this injustice

[premamelody]

pmd beam go🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[echobsilly]

stand in

[yume-fanfare]

happy halloween! the cast from fist of idol: togenkyo have reunited again to bring us...... a horror movie?!

[limboni]

"Children in the woods" 1/5

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[kurikorso]

nostalgia slapped me upside the head a little while ago so i had to draw my favorite dudes ft. the gecko effect

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Plot bunny that I wish to write but don’t currently have the motivation to work on:

After the who thing with Hush, Tim asks Dick to review cowl footage from the fight in the graveyard when Clayface took on the appearance of an adult Jason Todd.

After watching the footage a few times, he comes to suspect Clayface was only there at the end of the fight. There was someone else at the beginning. Tim admitted he felt the same way and let slip the fact that it was due to that fight that Bruce found out Jason’s grave was empty.

Upset he wasn’t informed of that and suspicious of the mysterious Jason lookalike, Dick ends up doing some research of his own and finds evidence of this familiar looking stranger slowly gathering information and power within the shadows of the city.

Going undercover as someone presumed to be associated with one of the Families, he eventually finds a guy who initially mistakes him for the stranger.

“What’d I do this time? Wasn’t the info I gave you enough..? Wait, you ain’t the guy. What is he? Your brother or somethin’? You two look almost identical.”

That gave Dick momentary pause, but he quickly decided to roll with it. “That’s right, but he unfortunately decided to strike out on his own in a way our family doesn’t approve of. It’s my task to find him. You know how it goes. Care to point me in his direction?”

This leads Dick on a merry chase trying to find Jason while trying to keep up the act

Edit: I was gonna post the little bit I got done a few months ago… and somehow Word deleted it? But I can see the file that was called ‘Resurrected Hope’ and the page/page and a half is gone :(

[bonebrokebuddy]

I get that this is due to people not read comics but, if you want a fun lighthearted batfam dynamic, I cannot recommend enough putting your story and characters in the Silver Ages. I see so much fanon material that would fit in this setting perfectly and it pains me that it’s not more popular or well known.

If you don’t know what the silver age of comics is, I’d recommend checking out this article!

And here for the 1956 Comics Code Authority.

It might not be in continuity anymore but the silver ages were such a large era of comics that defined the characters. And the format & restrictions of the silver ages allows you to easily bypass several common issues folks have with plots. In modern comics, there’s constant interpersonal drama because there has to be, if you resolve all those issues then you can’t sell more comics & they lose a lot of tension.

But due to the Comic Code Authority that is no longer an issue!

Randomly ignoring a dark past that makes connection between characters difficult [the poor aging of Jason’s bag of heads making it difficult for him to reunite with the rest of the batfam, for example] because it doesn’t fit with the theme you want?:

Comics are episodic in this era. Think of it like a early 2000s TV show. Things that happened in past comics/episodes often won’t affect the current story at all as the setting resets to default at the start of every comic. Additionally, literally all gore, torture, or explicit descriptions of murder is banned due to CCA restrictions, so you can choose to have it simply never have happened!

Characters that don’t fit at all in a story but you want a crossover for?:

The Silver Ages had SO MANY crossovers of heroes solely bc it sold comics. How compatible they are doesn’t matter in the slightest. The thinnest of reasons why they met works perfectly. You can even just have the characters know each other already and go “I know who can help me with this case! [Insert character you want here]! I met them in my last trip to Antarctica!” You only need maybe one sentence, two if you’re feeling frisky, to explain why they met and then you’re free to run wild.

Want a character to randomly acquire a superpower or meet a long lost cousin they have for one comic and then it’s never mentioned again?

I cannot state how frequently this happens. Silver Age comics were pretty much written cover first. Meaning the cover was made and the story was written after with the philosophy of “if my comic cover is more bizzare and eye catching then kids will buy it!” Like, there are multiple comics where Superman’s head got turned into an ant and Batman gets powers practically every other World’s Finest issue. Like it’s not even an “au” to do these things. That’s just what the Silver Ages were like.

Comic science and comic physics run rampant as well as bizarre villains! You can have so much fun with this!! Heroes often play the straight-man in bizarre scenarios with over-the-top villains in this era, making that aspect shine brightly can make for an inherently funny plot. You could either keep it fun and light or turn it into a psychological horror as the characters realize they can’t disobey the CCA code and have to follow a specific plot.

Also the restrictions of the CCA at the time would also help create some fun and unique plots if you wanted to keep the plot time-period accurate.

There’s a lot of restrictions but there are still many ways to create conflict in your fic! Plenty can come from the CCA directly!

Canon or HC LGBT+ characters could be pressured to not come out or face tremendous backlash. Time accurate homophobia, essentially.

McCarthyism and paranoia ran wild. Oh no someone suspected your blorbo of being a communist/socialist and now it’s ruining their life!

Characters dealing with how the CCA’s restrictions/their reality is inherently bigoted and can’t be themselves. (See: comics on topics of racial & religious prejudice aren’t allowed, characters can’t speak in “slang” or “vulgar language” and “good grammar” is emphasized (often targeting minorities), and the sanctity of family must be respected (no divorce, no queer people).

Also! Crazy over-the-top villains with deadly stakes are played with a lighthearted tone. Play it straight and suddenly your comic changed genre into horror if you think about it for more than a second.

Characters that used to be antihero’s are just straight up villains now or suddenly wake up with massive gaps in their memory and no one else can tell them why. There is no grey with the CCA. Just good and evil. Because that would make the villains sympathetic and we can’t have that!

If you want to just have a fun, campy and lighthearted tone however, that’s the Silver Age’s bread and butter. While keeping the CCA’s code in mind is good to keep a Silver Age story feeling time accurate and Silver Age-y, it’s definitely not necessary to follow each and every rule.

Here’s some more links to free silver age comics and places you can go to find information on silver age comics if you want to learn more that aren’t fandom wikis but rather made by nerds with a passion to catalogue and share their interest to others.

Your local library has a decent chance of having an omnibus of 50s-70s comics or you can order one from a nearby library if your local one doesn’t carry them.

A local comic shop or bookstore. Silver age omnibuses & “50 year anniversary/best of” type collections are usually present and have a good variety of silver age comics.

Jenny Blake Isabella (the creator of Black Lightning) has delightful reviews of the Batman Silver Age Omnibus on her blog that add context, critiques, and overall are a delight to read

Takes some hunting but this Silver Age Comic blog has a bunch of single issue reviews of Silver Age Batman comics.

Want a specific issue to read? Here’s super brief summaries of soso many issues curtesy of The Comics Archives blog.

The Internet Archive also has a few:

Batman & Superman world's finest. The Silver Age. Volume one

Justice League of America, the Silver Ages volume 1

Batman: the dynamic duo archives. vol 2 (I cannot find volume 1)

A good tip to find legal and free comics decently intact is to search [comic run title/character hero name & issue number if you have it] + “blog” + “review”.

There are so many in-depth reviews of comics in blogs by comic fans out there that practically share most of the comic panels in the post while giving context to past issues while the poster adds personal insight and opinions on the comic. Is it going to give you the whole issue unfiltered? No. But it allows newbies to get insight from old fans and old fans to get a new perspective on a comic they’ve already read. Blog reviews are such an underrated way to get new fans into comics considering how great of a resource they are! Don’t know if you’ll like a comic run? Read a bunch of reviews on it from different blogs! It’s truly so underrated.

I see a lot of dc fans that don’t read the comics because they don’t like the violence and dark tone of modern comics or don’t know where to start. Simple solution: Why are you reading reading modern comics then? Give the Silver Ages a try! They’re utterly corny and campy & I love them dearly.

They fit all of those bills with the CCA. Plus, with the episodic stories of that era, you can just pick up an omnibus, open it at a random issue and start reading. Hell, you can toss a stack of silver age issues in the air 52-pickup style and read them that way and you’re still be fine. You rarely, if ever, need knowledge from previous comics as they’ll often directly explain what happened to you. If you really need previous context, just like modern comics, they’ll directly tell you which issue(s) to read first.

Lastly.

It’s good to keep in mind the “By it’s time. For its time. Of its time” rule of comic analysis when reading old runs. Comics are: relevant during their time of publishing, for its intended audience (in this era, young american boys with a non-nuanced worldview) & with little care of how it’ll age, just that it’ll sell.

How history ties itself to comics is fascinating but also it’s good to be a little “👀👀 uh zoinks scoob that was a bad narrative or character decision that didn’t age well” and not dismiss it because that poor interpretation does have historical value as how it shows the moral, social, and political conflicts of the time in a neat little bow. Even if that bow is like, puke green.

Writers of comics will follow the misogynistic and racist ideals along the historical & social conflicts and ideals during the time of the comic’s publishing date. It’s uh, just kinda something ya gotta deal with when reading a lot of old comics runs. Most collections of silver age Batman/best ofs don’t often have comics that aged super badly but if you end up encountering any, it’s good to keep this in mind.

If anyone is inspired to write something based off of this, please tag me so I can read it!

[vadfannypack]

does anyone else fw him

[aroaceleovaldez]

tbh my latest biggest theory for why HoO and onwards is such a dramatic drop in quality and consistency is just. Rick stopped making teaching guides.

Like, the Lightning Thief teacher's guide is SUPER in-depth with even stuff like sources about middle grade child psychology and exact specifications of where he's applying that, explaining what different character's goals/motivations are, their dynamics with each other and their environments, etc etc. Even specifying which specific myths certain plot elements are supposed to reference or be about.

That stuff just doesn't exist for later books. There's activity guides and smaller, significantly more simple teacher guides for later books but they don't go into anywhere NEAR the same level of depth. The TLT one is a full lesson plan that breaks down the book at every level and explains what's going on and more or less why Rick did that. The others are all basically just glossaries of terminology and some simple question guides.

And they didn't even use the TLT teacher's guide for the Disney+ show because they clearly aren't adhering to any of what's discussed in that breakdown of the book.

By creating a teaching guide alongside writing the actual book, that's forcing you to document what you're doing, why, your sources, and information about your characters and the story they're in. It's like an even more in-depth version of a series bible. But that's lacking for later books (and etc) and it shows because that level of thought and depth and attention just isn't there anymore.

[fadedapparition]

i think that in hindsight, people tend to describe origins as a game where your choices in dialogues mattered, but extrinsically, i don't know that's true. there’s plenty of cases where you can say 5-6 wild things and still get one of the two or three primary responses the npc has available. they matter intrinsically because of the impact on the history of the character. even if the npc the character's interacting with breezes past to ask them to run the same errand they would have anyway, the dialogue doesn’t need to make any noticeable change to the game world for its impact to be felt -- it's still slowly creating a defined past, expressed convictions, a particular mode of speech, and everything else that, in conjunction, turns a vague silhouette of something into a fully-formed person. it turns the player character into an actual character.

a common excuse for placing serious limitations on dialogue (3 potential responses, all communicating the same thing in the same tone with near-imperceptible alterations in phrasing) is that branching plotlines expend highly limited resources, but when people plead for more choice in dialogue, i don’t think that’s actually the ask. the value of varied, specific dialogue choices persists whether or not they're referenced again or even able to impact the direction of the conversation. characterization of this kind can be done entirely through text on a shoestring budget, and it does so much more to invest a player in the fiction that addressing the player directly

[phoenixcatch7]

In love with the idea of captain marvel being Billy's imaginary friend. Like, it'd be so easy. Early depictions had them as almost fully separate people sometimes, like one soul with two minds, rather than just two filters like we mostly see now.

But imagine a Billy down on his luck, hurt and hiding from police and criminals alike, daydreaming the hours away as children do, taking inspiration from all the superheroes rising to fame, making little stories to play out his dreams of saving the world with a generic action doll he found while dumpster diving once. Most of the paint's rubbed off.

Red's his favourite colour, his comfiest jumper is a bright ruby even after all the grime and washes. Gold, too, it's shiny and warmer than silver! A hero cape is a must, big and eye catching! And he can fly, of course, like superman, and in his daydreams, when he's sore and frustrated after a long day's grind, his superhero is smart enough and knows all the right words to get the bullies to stop without resorting to fighting.

His superhero fantasy is one he spends a lot of time on, the first one he goes for when struggling to sleep at night, and he can picture it so clearly. Captain marvel is big and bright and kind, strong enough to lift the boxes for the old lady up the road who's moving all by himself, fast enough to catch Jamie who fell out of the tree on Saturday and broke his leg and couldn't come to class for weeks. He appears at the entrance to alleys when Billy is cornered, he steps up behind to cover for him when he gets caught shoplifting, he sits at the bus stop with him when it's pouring rain and the right bus doesn't seem to be coming.

And then the wizard comes, or rather whisks him away, and like a magician from a fairytale breathes life into his imaginary friend until Billy feels thrice his size and a million times more invincible.

From then on, captain marvel is a real hero, just like Billy is a real boy, and as one they save the whole city, and then the whole world, and get cats down from trees and help Mrs Victoria move the last of her boxes and she gives them a pinch in the cheek and cookies for the road and sometimes it hurts but it's so much better than he imagined.

[charmac]

How are you feeling about S17? I'm getting reaaal worried that it's going to be terrible. No Glenn in the writers room? A crossover episode?? Rob's gradual transformation into pondslime??? Help

Pondslime 😭Lmfao

I'm feeling more than fine about 17, really truly. I don't think anyone should be worried at all.

I think sometimes my interactions with Glenn come off a little more serious or abrasive than they really happened in real life (because we have to shout due to how loud it is in the bars), and my immediate transcription is just to get people *information*, which really doesn't convey tone.

For example, reporting that Glenn said "you don't want to know" in response to me asking for any teasers (as to plots this season) was met with a lot of "oh so this season is gonna suck" on Twitter, and that could not be further than the truth (sorry to the people I split-react blocked for saying that lol). In hindsight I get the reaction, because written out it's a response that can be easily misinterpreted and reads as potentially concerning, but know that when Glenn said "you don't want to know" he looked like this:

And when I was genuinely just asking for script information (regarding writers of individual scripts after he mentioned they had broken already) and mentioned Nina (Inflates) and Ross (DTAMHD), he gushed about both of them and then said, transcribed word for word, "It's been a good room, I'll say this it's been a great room. It's been an all-star room, it's been...like, breaking the stories this year has been really fun. [Me: Yeah?] Yeah. [That's great, that is great to hear.] It's been really fun."

So the idea of "no Glenn in the writers room" is really much more akin to Season 16 than 13/14. He was there to break stories (meaning he was in the room when they were brainstorming plot ideas and when they settled on which plots would be turned into scripts) but Rob and Charlie are taking the brunt of writing their (RCG's) scripts because of Sirens. This is the same thing that happened with The Gang Goes Bowling. Glenn's name is on the script, but Rob and Charlie wrote the majority of it while Glenn was shooting Blackberry. (I remember originally being convinced it was a mistake Glenn was listed as a writer for Bowling, lmfao). And Glenn is definitely still contributing, will be on revisions for the non-RCG scripts, and will classically change or improv whatever he thinks is best for Dennis when he's on set (see: the Risk E. Rats script).

Also, I know the crossover is concerning to a lot of people just given the nature of it, but as of what we know right now it's only on Abbott, so it's really just as if this season's The Gang Cracks the Liberty Bell or The Janitor Always Mops Twice took place on a different show instead of ours...

I promise promise promise Glenn was clearly holding his tongue for good things coming up, and Friday night very much restored my confidence that Season 17 will be good. (But..if you don't think Glenn has good contributions to Sunny or understands the agenda, then sorry this response probably sucks lmfao)