souridealist

[souridealist]

Wait I just processed: Bruce's internal monologue is conveyed by having an initial letter in that one giant cutout font, like illuminated drop caps by way of gas station signs. Dick gets Nightwing-blue, soft-edged internal narration bubbles. And Alfred gets the only serif font in the book. Are you ever so fancy that you force serifs to exist. I want this exact energy.

Okay my interlibrary loan on the comic version of Under the Red Hood / just plain Under the Hood came in, so we're being disorganized about this, and hey. Am I interpreting this opening right. Had Stephanie Brown already been recruited and died by the time this happened. Did Jason Todd come back to life and to Gotham and he wasn't the last Robin to die in those colors. Is that what is fucking happening here. Uh.

Yeah okay so I'm like two pages in and the movie just didn't include any later Robins and I have heard varying reports on his motivations for going after Tim but haven't read that one yet either so I do not actually have any idea if Jason is going to give a shit about any of that! But I sure as fuck am saying that if I were him, I would have skipped right past fucking around with the Joker and just gone straight to trying to put Batman in my own grave, and if he's so fucking opposed to killing -- directly -- then he can go down alive into the dirt.

[souridealist]

Some more-disjointed interim thoughts since that one ended up being long:

Oh one last addendum to that whole long screed: I'm now really wondering how the "hello, small child with the chutzpah to steal tires off the Batmobile, would you like to put on a pair of tiny shorts and fight crime?" conversation looked like and whether there's any callbacks I'm missing. Might be none whatsoever! But I'm wondering.

Jason's more detailed trail of bodies is putting some holes in the later (and this is movie dialogue, but I definitely had the impression this was adapted straight) "I'm not talking about killing Penguin or Scarecrow or Dent; I'm talking about him. Just him." Putting a pin in that!

I'm also going to put a pin in the question of Jason's moral position versus the "no killing people" moral position versus Bruce specifically's moral position versus the moral position of 'hey it's maybe in everyone's best interests that the control freak with the god complex has one goddamn limit on the harm he does' (which, to be begrudgingly fair to Bruce, is I think not too far off from his position) versus the moral position of "this is how you get cops jerking off to the thought of being the Punisher[*]." That can just eventually be its own post.

I have no idea what's going on with Barbara here? She's clearly out of commission in some way, everyone is very uncomfortable and ominous about it, and there's been a shot of her base reduced to rubble, and that is it. I took to Google and found a Reddit thread with the same question that was, uh, 80% people not reading the question and describing the events of The Killing Joke, but which had one person saying that Barbara had faked her death during a concurrent Birds of Prey storyline; there were no details on a) whether any of the other Bats were in on it, or b) if this was a "we, the audience, know from the beginning that she's fine" sort of fake death or a "the lore at the time this book was released was that she was dead, but it later got retconned to be faked" situation -- I'm reasonably sure the Stephanie Brown situation was the latter. But, uh, if she's believed dead right now, on top of the aforesaid Stephanie Brown situation -- well, we have no indication yet whether or not Jason gives a shit! I'd like him to, but who knows! But if it were me, uh, not only would I be shoving Batman alive into the grave he laid me in, I'd give him a deliberately trowel-suitable belt buckle and then grab my Ironic Revenge Crowbar, perch on my tombstone, and settle in for a few rounds of Whack-A-Bat! A hat trick of corpses???

This is one I may want to throw out to the world outside of my personal liveblog tag eventually, but Jason's identity is revealed to the audience at the end of part four. This was... [seven million tabs] a monthly run? I think? So four months of speculation? Early 2000s, forums and such were well and truly off the ground, people had plenty of avenues to speculate. I'd be fascinated to know if fans had generally clocked the Red Hood as Jason by the time it was revealed, or if most people were caught off-guard.

[* Being. Some non-cop out there is flicking the bean furiously to the Punisher face down ass up and I hope they are having a beautiful day.]**

[**Also I haven't read Punisher comics and don't intend to, but after fifty years in an ongoing mythos, the actual text and their role in the zeitgeist are two different things!!]

Okay my interlibrary loan on the comic version of Under the Red Hood / just plain Under the Hood came in, so we're being disorganized about this, and hey. Am I interpreting this opening right. Had Stephanie Brown already been recruited and died by the time this happened. Did Jason Todd come back to life and to Gotham and he wasn't the last Robin to die in those colors. Is that what is fucking happening here. Uh.

Yeah okay so I'm like two pages in and the movie just didn't include any later Robins and I have heard varying reports on his motivations for going after Tim but haven't read that one yet either so I do not actually have any idea if Jason is going to give a shit about any of that! But I sure as fuck am saying that if I were him, I would have skipped right past fucking around with the Joker and just gone straight to trying to put Batman in my own grave, and if he's so fucking opposed to killing -- directly -- then he can go down alive into the dirt.

[souridealist]

Halfway mark thoughts! (Remember when you could fucking do multilevel bullet points on tumblr without pulling your hair out? I miss that. Anyway!) I kind of assumed that the movie might have played up Jason's | Red Hood's sense of humor? It's the exact opposite. Maybe it's partly a result of just having more space and thus more opportunity, but he's constantly fucking hilarious.

This same fact also makes it a lot clearer that he's not just a dramatic person, he's very deliberately showboating like all fuck? Which, you know. Both of these things check out immensely, for an ex-Robin and for someone trying to be the new, improved iteration of Batman. Some of that might be a result of reading with that fact fresh in my head, but I do think it just comes through clearer.

That said, there's a couple of points where he's very clearly playing the role of supervillain specifically -- it stands out most to me in his whole interaction with Onyx, which is just a whole fascinating bit of character work. (Sidebar: I have never heard of Onyx before in my life, and that is actually pretty new for a non-villainous character. She seems cool! She is just also brand new information.) And I had a lot to say about that interaction so, uh, cut.

For anyone without the book in front of them: They have a fairly explicit temporary alliance, and a pretty friendly banter-heavy one, right up until Jason pulls out a fully automatic cannon whatsit and shreds a bunch of guys like tissue paper. Onyx understandably objects, vocally, and Jason turns on her, snarls about how fear is not the answer with guys like this, and then pins her to a wall with a knife through a shoulder he'd noticed she was favoring. For most of this scene, he's leaning over her, boxing her in, but not making physical contact -- he says, and the blocking supports, that she's not going to be able to pull the knife out on her own, and transcript picks up pretty much from there.

Onyx: You son of a... son of a... Jason: [turns away from her for the only time this conversation] Hey, it's going to be hard to learn a great many things about me, but one I'll give you for free... I am no one's son. Jason: [turns back] Choice time. I can pull that knife out and you run away as fast as you can. Or I can pull that blade down all the way from your shoulder to your hip. It'll hurt like fire for about fifteen seconds, then you'll be dead from blood loss... Or... You can join me in my fight. [beat panel] Jason: I'm kidding. Don't you hate it when guys say garbage like that? It always seemed like such a wuss move, y'know? If you want a partner, go find one, put him on the payroll... anyway... [Jason yanks the knife out of her shoulder and slaps a bandage over the wound; he's stabbed her and held a fully automatic whatsit to her stomach, but this is the only time all interaction that he actually touches her.] Jason: Here. This'll hold you. That's a fairly high-end field dressing for the modern soldier. It adheres as well as closes the wound with an antibacterial adhesive agent... stops the bleeding cold. C'mon. Up. This is the part where you try to stop me and I beat the hell out of you. [it turns out to be, instead, the part where Batman shows up.]

So, couple of things could be going on here. (I'm treating "he's stalling for time until / to see if Batman in fact shows up" as something of an auxiliary thing which may or may not be appended to one of the others.) My first thought is that this is all posture -- that deliberately presenting himself as a villain, but also wants to establish that he's unpredictable, more pragmatic than standard, and not easy to get an in with. Option two, though, looking at it, is to wonder if he's like... calibrating? If he's initially sincere, and then gets to "join my fight" and then hears the words that just came out of his mouth and backpedals to fuck. "I slap a wound dressing on you with no promises and then give you a minute to come at me if you're gonna" is sure not among the options that he gave her, after all.

Yeah so, relatedly, the comic so far hasn't explicitly established a timeline, but I have the strong impression that Jason's been pretty consistently put at fifteen when he died, and I remember the movie had five years before his return. If the time gap is the same, then Jason's too young to legally drink. Like, he's most certainly old enough to be making his own decisions and to be accountable them including for all the murder and such that he is doing, but... IRL twenty-year-olds started reading as kids to me, at some point in the last few years. Like, the artist has decided otherwise but he could be conceivably still have some of that unformed baby-face going on under that mask. Thaaaat is just... that's sticking with me.

Okay my interlibrary loan on the comic version of Under the Red Hood / just plain Under the Hood came in, so we're being disorganized about this, and hey. Am I interpreting this opening right. Had Stephanie Brown already been recruited and died by the time this happened. Did Jason Todd come back to life and to Gotham and he wasn't the last Robin to die in those colors. Is that what is fucking happening here. Uh.

Yeah okay so I'm like two pages in and the movie just didn't include any later Robins and I have heard varying reports on his motivations for going after Tim but haven't read that one yet either so I do not actually have any idea if Jason is going to give a shit about any of that! But I sure as fuck am saying that if I were him, I would have skipped right past fucking around with the Joker and just gone straight to trying to put Batman in my own grave, and if he's so fucking opposed to killing -- directly -- then he can go down alive into the dirt.

[souridealist]

Okay my interlibrary loan on the comic version of Under the Red Hood / just plain Under the Hood came in, so we're being disorganized about this, and hey. Am I interpreting this opening right. Had Stephanie Brown already been recruited and died by the time this happened. Did Jason Todd come back to life and to Gotham and he wasn't the last Robin to die in those colors. Is that what is fucking happening here. Uh.

Yeah okay so I'm like two pages in and the movie just didn't include any later Robins and I have heard varying reports on his motivations for going after Tim but haven't read that one yet either so I do not actually have any idea if Jason is going to give a shit about any of that! But I sure as fuck am saying that if I were him, I would have skipped right past fucking around with the Joker and just gone straight to trying to put Batman in my own grave, and if he's so fucking opposed to killing -- directly -- then he can go down alive into the dirt.

[souridealist]

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

[souridealist]

This shit is why I spent fifteen years not opening this door.

tonight's YJ, after a couple of distracted days! (I also need to decide for sure if I'm planning to finish YJ before I start in on project Seriously What's The Juiciest Bat Stuff or alternate.)

Now that is a whole fuck of a lot of identity issues packed into one panel! Not least of which is the Ralph thing, that's, uh, sure making me wonder if Cissie's name is a lot more ironic than anyone was likely to be thinking about in 1999.

Also, yay, Kon is FINALLY CONFIRMED TO HAVE HIS FUCKING NAME. Jesus. Two "can we fucking give this kid the dignity of a name" nickels is ten cents too many.

(Also, I know, I know, if I stop to note every time a female character is drawn A Way, we're never gonna get anywhere, but Jesus, Cissie in particular has a curse upon her spine.)

Things I love: Kon, punk rock too-cool-for-school leather jacket wearer, being the one to go EXCUSE ME? WE'RE NOT HELPING OUR ROBOT BABYSITTER JUST BECAUSE WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO? LIKE HELL? Cissie taking an instant pair of gardening shears to Tim's halfassed attempt to justify orders. Tim subsequently taking like, two seconds to go "okay lemme find a highly semantic loophole... done, plan formulated." The very high odds that I'm going to get to see somebody's ass kicked for this court bullshit by the end of this issue.

[souridealist]

Ohhhhh it takes a special kind of cruel and stupid to try "You should turn in the mist girl because otherwise the silly widdle freak will get the idea in her weird freaky scary head that she gets to be a person and have relationships like a real person which she is not!" 1) on Red Tornado 2) right the fuck now.

(Also, man. You can probably tell that Kon was a significant factor in my getting interested, based on 1) my liveblog so far, 2) literally everything about my blog for the last year and a half, 3) specifically the way I beeline for dehumanized lab-raised supersoldiers every fucking time, but I did not realize he was going to have such extremely direct parallels with Cissie and Suzie both. Curious to see where his relationship with Cassie goes, given that she's the one he has the least in common with.)

Also I will of course be stabbing anyone who says SHIT to Suzie going forwards, obviously.

tonight's YJ, after a couple of distracted days! (I also need to decide for sure if I'm planning to finish YJ before I start in on project Seriously What's The Juiciest Bat Stuff or alternate.)

Now that is a whole fuck of a lot of identity issues packed into one panel! Not least of which is the Ralph thing, that's, uh, sure making me wonder if Cissie's name is a lot more ironic than anyone was likely to be thinking about in 1999.

Also, yay, Kon is FINALLY CONFIRMED TO HAVE HIS FUCKING NAME. Jesus. Two "can we fucking give this kid the dignity of a name" nickels is ten cents too many.

(Also, I know, I know, if I stop to note every time a female character is drawn A Way, we're never gonna get anywhere, but Jesus, Cissie in particular has a curse upon her spine.)

Things I love: Kon, punk rock too-cool-for-school leather jacket wearer, being the one to go EXCUSE ME? WE'RE NOT HELPING OUR ROBOT BABYSITTER JUST BECAUSE WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO? LIKE HELL? Cissie taking an instant pair of gardening shears to Tim's halfassed attempt to justify orders. Tim subsequently taking like, two seconds to go "okay lemme find a highly semantic loophole... done, plan formulated." The very high odds that I'm going to get to see somebody's ass kicked for this court bullshit by the end of this issue.

[souridealist]

oh, good, my first "the situation has changed radically between issues! go read this unrelated comic!" Anyway Kara is here now and having NONE OF IT. also Kon's authority issues are showing.

....sorry, she has flame wings? Was I supposed to know that? Is that a normal thing that she has?

Also someone with MY NAME is coming up. I mean if it was going to happen anywhere it'd happen in superhero comics, but like. It is not a common fucking name. My legal name is also not particularly common, nor any of my pre-Ember nicknames! I am not used to it!

(I'm also very much Looking at all of Suzie's various shit, but that feels less like anything I have something to say about and more like a "you watch it and information is revealed" situation.)

tonight's YJ, after a couple of distracted days! (I also need to decide for sure if I'm planning to finish YJ before I start in on project Seriously What's The Juiciest Bat Stuff or alternate.)

Now that is a whole fuck of a lot of identity issues packed into one panel! Not least of which is the Ralph thing, that's, uh, sure making me wonder if Cissie's name is a lot more ironic than anyone was likely to be thinking about in 1999.

Also, yay, Kon is FINALLY CONFIRMED TO HAVE HIS FUCKING NAME. Jesus. Two "can we fucking give this kid the dignity of a name" nickels is ten cents too many.

(Also, I know, I know, if I stop to note every time a female character is drawn A Way, we're never gonna get anywhere, but Jesus, Cissie in particular has a curse upon her spine.)

Things I love: Kon, punk rock too-cool-for-school leather jacket wearer, being the one to go EXCUSE ME? WE'RE NOT HELPING OUR ROBOT BABYSITTER JUST BECAUSE WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO? LIKE HELL? Cissie taking an instant pair of gardening shears to Tim's halfassed attempt to justify orders. Tim subsequently taking like, two seconds to go "okay lemme find a highly semantic loophole... done, plan formulated." The very high odds that I'm going to get to see somebody's ass kicked for this court bullshit by the end of this issue.

[souridealist]

this is how I respond to all my colleagues giving me instructions, of course.

tonight's YJ, after a couple of distracted days! (I also need to decide for sure if I'm planning to finish YJ before I start in on project Seriously What's The Juiciest Bat Stuff or alternate.)

Now that is a whole fuck of a lot of identity issues packed into one panel! Not least of which is the Ralph thing, that's, uh, sure making me wonder if Cissie's name is a lot more ironic than anyone was likely to be thinking about in 1999.

Also, yay, Kon is FINALLY CONFIRMED TO HAVE HIS FUCKING NAME. Jesus. Two "can we fucking give this kid the dignity of a name" nickels is ten cents too many.

(Also, I know, I know, if I stop to note every time a female character is drawn A Way, we're never gonna get anywhere, but Jesus, Cissie in particular has a curse upon her spine.)

Things I love: Kon, punk rock too-cool-for-school leather jacket wearer, being the one to go EXCUSE ME? WE'RE NOT HELPING OUR ROBOT BABYSITTER JUST BECAUSE WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO? LIKE HELL? Cissie taking an instant pair of gardening shears to Tim's halfassed attempt to justify orders. Tim subsequently taking like, two seconds to go "okay lemme find a highly semantic loophole... done, plan formulated." The very high odds that I'm going to get to see somebody's ass kicked for this court bullshit by the end of this issue.

[souridealist]

ALSO THINGS I LOVE: these fucking Outfits.

tonight's YJ, after a couple of distracted days! (I also need to decide for sure if I'm planning to finish YJ before I start in on project Seriously What's The Juiciest Bat Stuff or alternate.)

Now that is a whole fuck of a lot of identity issues packed into one panel! Not least of which is the Ralph thing, that's, uh, sure making me wonder if Cissie's name is a lot more ironic than anyone was likely to be thinking about in 1999.

Also, yay, Kon is FINALLY CONFIRMED TO HAVE HIS FUCKING NAME. Jesus. Two "can we fucking give this kid the dignity of a name" nickels is ten cents too many.

(Also, I know, I know, if I stop to note every time a female character is drawn A Way, we're never gonna get anywhere, but Jesus, Cissie in particular has a curse upon her spine.)

Things I love: Kon, punk rock too-cool-for-school leather jacket wearer, being the one to go EXCUSE ME? WE'RE NOT HELPING OUR ROBOT BABYSITTER JUST BECAUSE WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO? LIKE HELL? Cissie taking an instant pair of gardening shears to Tim's halfassed attempt to justify orders. Tim subsequently taking like, two seconds to go "okay lemme find a highly semantic loophole... done, plan formulated." The very high odds that I'm going to get to see somebody's ass kicked for this court bullshit by the end of this issue.

[souridealist]

tonight's YJ, after a couple of distracted days! (I also need to decide for sure if I'm planning to finish YJ before I start in on project Seriously What's The Juiciest Bat Stuff or alternate.)

Now that is a whole fuck of a lot of identity issues packed into one panel! Not least of which is the Ralph thing, that's, uh, sure making me wonder if Cissie's name is a lot more ironic than anyone was likely to be thinking about in 1999.

Also, yay, Kon is FINALLY CONFIRMED TO HAVE HIS FUCKING NAME. Jesus. Two "can we fucking give this kid the dignity of a name" nickels is ten cents too many.

(Also, I know, I know, if I stop to note every time a female character is drawn A Way, we're never gonna get anywhere, but Jesus, Cissie in particular has a curse upon her spine.)

Things I love: Kon, punk rock too-cool-for-school leather jacket wearer, being the one to go EXCUSE ME? WE'RE NOT HELPING OUR ROBOT BABYSITTER JUST BECAUSE WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO? LIKE HELL? Cissie taking an instant pair of gardening shears to Tim's halfassed attempt to justify orders. Tim subsequently taking like, two seconds to go "okay lemme find a highly semantic loophole... done, plan formulated." The very high odds that I'm going to get to see somebody's ass kicked for this court bullshit by the end of this issue.

[souridealist]

scars

[souridealist]

Robin, Vol. 2, #86, March 2001

Nightwing, Vol. 2, #54, April 2001

[souridealist]

Not related to the recent DC blogging, but last night I did my annual June rewatch of Promare (you know, for Pride), and I wanted to say thank you for all your Promare fics. They're how I originally found you, and they're great. The late-90s elements of YJ98 are reminding me that I should re-read "Pass Through Those Years" (not the same time period, but both capturing very specific moments), and "not meant to be a crumb" is one of my all-time favorite fics and a perpetual comfort read. Thank you for all your great fic from the Promare era, and Happy Pride!

Thank you <3 I had so much fun with those boys, and "Pass Through Those Years" in particular has such an enormous amount of myself in it. I'm glad you like it, and glad to have your company in this adventure too!

[souridealist]

Just as a note: by a quick-and-dirty search, there have been roughly 5.3 million works posted to Ao3 since chatgpt became available. (I'm just searching since the beginning of 2023, so I think there's a few extra months cut off.) So roughly .0008 of all those works -- or eight percent of one percent -- have been tagged as AI-created.

Is everything on the site that's AI-created going to be tagged that way? No. But still. It is an incredibly small minority.

And if you're tempted to use it, if you ever have been -- I promise you. I promise you. Whatever you create for your own self, out of the love of it, with your own mind and your own hands, will be infinitely more valuable. Try.

Write it shitty, write it scared, write it without a clue but don't you be so spineless and have an AI write fanfic for you.

[souridealist]

having anti punitive justice morals sucks because you want to say "man that guy sucks he should get hit with hammers until he dies" but you also want to make it clear you don't think anyone should be put in charge of the 'hit people with hammers until they die" machine.

[souridealist]

i saw the words “ur not the first person in your lineage to be queer” and it’s rocking me to my core. how many generations down the line did one of my ancestors feel the way i did, feel differently than i did and so damn queerly it was a crime? how many of us were there? did they have hope? did they find peace? i don’t know. at the very least, maybe i am proof their identity was never wasted. reincarnated.