Imagine looking at a character whose entire premise is that in every stage of his life, he's made every version of himself into someone that inspires people to such a degree that EVERY SINGLE VERSION OF HIM has people wanting to literally follow in his footsteps in some way or another.....
And coming to the conclusion that like.....the most important things about him are the sum of all his trappings. His entirely homemade developed from scratch could not exist if not for what he already was and brought with him BEFORE crafting this newest version of himself trappings, with his greatest trait throughout all of it being his adaptability; his ability and willingness to roll with the punches and not try to simply weather any opposition or changes to his life but instead reshape himself as needed to better fit INTO whatever new shape his life and the world around him takes. All while managing to carry the most innate, fundamental and necessary aspects of himself from one version to the next. Thus every single version of himself is different but simultaneously every single version of himself is also undeniably the same person.
The strength of this character, to me, will always be that he can be so many versions of himself, he can become so many things, all without ever actually losing or discarding any of the aspects of himself he considers most essential, the things he's not willing to lose or give up just to keep going. Finding that road not taken by most, usually because most never even think to look for it as an option. But one that he's always able to find because the one trick he's mastered in his tumultuous life is threading that needle of not just digging in his heels in an unproductive way but rather being selective about when and where he makes a stand and decides "this is not a thing I'm willing to compromise about" but here are places and ways I can and will change and evolve and adapt in order to make it possible for me to hold onto these parts and keep them as they are.
And that's why its always so mind-boggling to me that so many writers can't seem to think of anything else to do with Dick Grayson other than invent some new reason for him to just....not be that person, or to like just take the character whose most basic fundamental trait he's NOT about to compromise on is willingly giving up his spot in the driver's seat of his own life.....and make him just a passenger in his own life and stories.
Dick Grayson at age nine....at age nineteen...at age twenty nine....the one core thread running through all versions of him is the only way he's standing back and letting you call the shots for him or putting him on the sidelines in some way is over his dead body.
HOW he goes about that, what that looks like, who he becomes and what aspects of himself he plays up at some times and what traits he lets fall by the wayside at other times when they offer less in service to his primary goal here....that changes constantly. He changes constantly.
But those changes are almost always (or at least they used to be/should be IN MY OPINION) made with the intention of keeping certain things about him or his life as consistent as possible.
That's the duality of Dick Grayson that I'm here for. The inherent contradiction of him that COULD allow for endless conflict and breaking new narrative ground in all sorts of ways if mined properly:
His eternal willingness to compromise....but only ever in pursuit of doubling down on the ways he's not willing to compromise.
Forever walking that tightrope in ways that only a kid born and raised in a circus could ever hope to.
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I know The Founders Cut, generally, is the edited scrubbed over version of genloss from Showfall in-universe (as well as a not-8-hour-long-three-stream-binge-night whenever we want to watch it again) but something that struck me as odd and I haven’t seen anyone mention yet, is this warning
It shows up right at the junction where the third act starts, where it appears the Hero is breaking free of Showfall thanks to Hetch. But here’s the thing, while a LOT less than the previous acts the audience still played a significant role in this act, even when really only given two audience interaction choices. Which makes me wonder, how real is this warning, and who is it for? Obviously the audience involved knows what happens past this point, but the audience is also implied to be an integral part of the Social Experiments, which is part of why things start to tweak out when the Founder removes them in the Founder Cut as the Generation Loss generation loses.
My first thought, was that obviously this is another bait and switch, a way to draw the audiences attention, seeing something that’s secret, something that’s not “meant for them”, which is a tactic I could see Showfall using in universe to keep people’s attention and add an air of mystery to their shows.
But
Showfall is doing all their experiments and these shows with a LOT of help from their censors to show it off, displaying a fun silly show that is definitely not uber fucked up and that is 100% just slime don’t worry about it, it’s kid friendly if it’s green! And I don’t think they’d want to bet all their cards on this one experiment doing well enough to their audience to not question the sudden shift in tone that follows this warning. Which makes me wonder.
They did their test, they did their experiment, and the evidence of this last act? I think it was a one time run, they don’t want anyone seeing this, it isn’t for the audience. Act three is specifically to both test and play with their Hero, Hetch’s new lines add a level to this, never once does he call the Hero by their name, just refers to Ranboo as their Role, and he’s not exactly. Nice? About literally any of Ranboos concerns, which wouldn’t really seem conductive to making an audience trust him, especially with his monologue at the end. Ranboo has escaped before, possibly right before act 1 started, they tightened the security on his mask to be unremovably part of them, Hetch doesn’t like the Hero but they’re a fan favorite so he can’t just get rid of them.
Act three is the cumulation of Ranboo being punished for things they don’t remember, for daring to break free from Showfalls control, this is Hetch taking the Hero and essentially majorly fucking and manipulating them to take his frustration out on a fan favorite they can’t otherwise get rid of or give a smaller role like Slimecicle. which is exemplified by the fact that we now know Charlie most likely was never able to actually able to fully snap out of the control, that even in act three in panic and confusion there was at least still a part of him being influenced by Showfall.
So the first two acts are the usual show, they have their posters, they have Squiggles to introduce them, they have goofs and silliness and only a couple slip ups that’re quickly dealt with, the usual rose tinted curtains. Act three?
Do not watch the following material
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I hope they also take this as an opportunity to diversify their content. The weight of the company should not rest on Shane and Ryan producing the lion share of the content so much. They need other on screen talent so that they don’t burn out the main pull of their channel like they have been.
I personally would love to see them lean into the humanities a bit more since history related things have been a strength of theirs. Maybe have a couple of their many employees have a few small low budget shows about their special interests (art, different aspects of history, music, literature, film analysis… there’s really plenty of things they could do). I mean that’s how buzzfeed unsolved started all of this in the first place, just a guy showing his special interest to his friend and letting us be part of that.
I also think that they need to get better financial and media consultants because this has been a shit show. All in all I’m glad that they adjusted what they decided to do and I hope for the best for them
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i redesigned this shirt and now you can put it on your body
here it is, the final culmination of my fun cool graphic design project where i replace cities with 8balls!! If you want to follow along the process you can check out these posts: one, two, and three :D
if you are interested in wearing this as a shirt i made a teepublic! you can also download the files from google drive if you would like to print the design yourself
thanks for following along!! i have really had a lot of fun doing this (and just following 2our in general, the vibes were sweet) and i'm glad other people enjoyed it too :)
(better quality images under the cut <3)
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uuhhh in other new that lmk s5 trailer dropped and people are very
mixed
for context the new season is being partly animated by wildbrain i think. flying bark is still working on the show but probably due to all the other projects they've been working on like the atla movie the animation is off.
its understandable that people are upset. lmk has some of the most consistently dynamic and lively animation ive ever seen, and going from that to ok animation kinda sucks. as a culmination of a lot of what the series has been building up to people were inevitably going to be disappointed
at the same time people shouldnt harass animators. like ever. no amount of trying to petition or anything will change the s5, people are just trying to do their job and theres no probably no major changing to the finished product by now. and theres still a lot of that lmk charm in there, and we haven't even seen the whole season yet to judge it. flying bark is still working on it, and even if the animation never reaches the peak of the old seasons it still has the same writers so at least the writing has the chance to live up old standards. idk though we'll just have to wait and see
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Okay wait wait wait maybe I’m hallucinating but the dialogue in this show tends to parallel each other so like what if when Swk started taunting Mac about “screwing off to your master, the lady bone demon is waiting” like what if Mac before The Monkey Pancakening said something like that to Swk about “running off to the monk” v different context tho of course. Surprised there’s not much commentary abt how Mac literally doesn’t want to be working for Lbd and doesn’t care even after he said he wanted to be on the winning side and already had a taste of death and wasn’t a fan. He says it like nearly every fight. Is this one of those instances where it’s different for the show characters and I only care about the red flags as an outside viewer not getting attacked by a smoke monster 😭
dw anon you're remembering right! parallels in dialogue is a THING™️ in this show and it makes me so unwell (@imminent-danger-came has a plethora of #lmk parallels on their blog. thank you for all your hard work bestie)
that being said: WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU SAY THAT T^T DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID????? DO YOU KNOW THE DAMAGE YOU INFLICTED ON ME?????
but yeah, it would make so much sense to be a callback from what Macky said in the past to swk. it's like his way of throwing memories and Macky's own hypocrisy. he greeted swk by reminding the other about their argument under the mountain. so why not have that other reminder be from swk??? why fucking not!
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