#[ unfortunately these comics were written in the 90s so there's some things i just DO NOT acknowledge or incorporate because ew. gross ]

[so-i-grudgingly-joined-this-site]

Dream-Killing Bitches, Evil Exes, and Bad Moms: Portrayals of Women in "The Kindly Ones"

So, I've been attempting to write a more formal meta about this for months, but I've not gotten it to ever gel properly, so I thought I'd share my thoughts more informally here.

COMICS SPOILERS AHEAD

Basically, there is something really weird about how women are treated in The Kindly Ones arc of The Sandman.

The semi-official guidebook "Sandman: King of Dreams" basically called The Kindly Ones a #GirlPower arc, but I don't find much particularly empowering about it. Lyta literally goes insane from the stress of being a single mother, albeit exacerbated by supernatural forces. Thessaly is a TERF bitch who serves the role of "spiteful ex" to the protagonist. Nuala is passive and sad and ultimately just pushed around by the whims of the men around her, and when she finally makes a choice of her own it kills the person she cared about. Rose's quarter-life crisis is miraculously "solved" by an unplanned pregnancy. Chantal and Zelda die of AIDS. Even the unstoppable Furies are ultimately a tool in a man's orchestrated suicide-by-magical-cop.

Maybe this is a leftover from when the books were written? Maybe this was the epitome of feminism in the 90s? Or maybe the guide was meaning that the women were powerful as in LITERALLY powerful...women sure do wield a lot of deadly strength and magic in this, even if none of them are particularly EMpowered, if you catch my meaning.

There's also layers as to how we're supposed to interpret this in relation to Morpheus, our doomed protagonist. I've written previously about how we might be intended to see him as an unsympathetic misogynist. If that's the case, then perhaps his doom at the hands of multiple female forces is supposed to be karmic and positive, no matter how questionable those women are. Support for this interpretation is the myth the old ladies (a manifestation of the Kindly Ones?) tell Rose, wherein a deceptive man who abuses and kills his wife meets a karmic comeuppance at the hands of his magically transformed daughters and resurrected wife.

There's also the fact that Overture reveals that Morpheus has MASSIVE issues with his mother. If one decides not to interpret Morpheus's death as a suicide, there is the possible alternate explanation that he frankly underestimated Lyta's threat level to him. Having never experienced a mother's unconditional love, he couldn't fathom that a mother could love her kid enough to literally go insane and kill gods over them.

But even as motherhood is a negative path to stress, insanity, and threatening the fabric of the universe, it's also VERY uncomfortably presented as a cure-all. Rose only gets her heart back by getting knocked up, and we're supposed to see Lyta's suggestion of an abortion as further continuance of Lyta's madness. But of all people, Lyta knows what she's talking about! She knows how difficult single motherhood is! She was going mad even before supernatural intervention... In fact, multiple sequences in The Kindly Ones make it ambiguous what elements are supernatural and what are just her mind interpreting mundane signs as godly while cracking under realistic stress!

This goes outside of the arc I chose to focus on, but I also can't help but contrast the two lesbian couples: Foxglove and Hazel vs. Chantal and Zelda. Foxglove and Hazel end up on the path of traditional motherhood, down to having to choose a child over a career, despite being lesbians! Meanwhile, Chantal and Zelda, as mentioned, die horribly of AIDS. The paths for women are motherhood, tragedy, madness, or some combination thereof.

I'd almost say that the ultimate message of The Kindly Ones regarding women is "no matter what type of woman you are, things will go horribly for you, you cannot win, and no matter what you are at the whim of a violent patriarchal system. The closest you can come to 'winning' is unfortunately by playing into the male-POV fantasy of devoted motherhood." But. like. that was DEFINITELY NOT THE INTENDED WRITTEN MESSAGE. BUT THAT IS THE MESSAGE THAT RESULTS.

Forget asking if Morpheus is a misogynist, the NARRATIVE ITSELF of The Kindly Ones pushes misogyny more than any individual character does!

tagging those who I know like discussing/reading meta:

@serenityspiral @orionsangel86 @violetoftheendless @duckland @notallsandmen

[starfiretruther]

i feel like ever since comics left the silver age there has been this bizarre nearly fetishistic desire to associate robins with this stripping of innocence that has to do with you fundamentally still seeing them as the child robin figure for it to be shocking. like killing robins, having them be in these toxic relationships, showing them being sexualized (often by notably older chars) is all part of this really uncomfortable still ongoing trend. and i’m not saying that as robins grow up they can’t experience sex and sexual exploration or dark themes, i actually think ntt’s take on this was really honoring of dick and explored what it would be like to grow up under the robin mantle and also what it would take to come into one’s own identity afterwards, but usually this trend makes me really uncomfortable, like how dick has been written to be sexually assaulted multiple times (ive never seen it done tactfully), or how more than one adaptation has harley make a comment about how much dick has grown up (ew), or how they wanted to kill tim drake with aids in the 90s (they instead went with extrano). i guess while there is nothing technically wrong with making an adult male character a little sexy, the modern obsession with dick’s ass feels like an extension of this to me still. like dc and it’s fans don’t know how to be normal about robins. idk if that makes sense or maybe i project too much but i just really wish there was more skill and intention with writing robins and less schlock and awe

hm while i don’t disagree i feel like the general ‘stripping of innocence’ happened to most child or at least happy go lucky characters (e.g. bucky barnes), not just robin. Robin stands out cuz they’ve been the most recognisable child/sidekick hero in media. Comics in general took a turn to darker (less fun) “serious” stories in the 80s. Robin in particular has been a target for hate since the 60s because fans thought he made batman campy and gay (there was the whole seduction of the innocent thing where they said batman and robin were coded queer messaging trying to indoctrinate the children). I think rather than Dick, Jason got hit with the most ire of the editorial and fans and when stories kept getting darker and darker, he became an unfortunate victim. Dick (at least in this time period) had a lot of dignity, getting a well-thought out coming of age narrative through nightwing and being firmly cemented as a respectable, reliable adult hero (thanks to the titans and his romance with kory). While comics always had a touch of fanservice, his sexualization really started around the late 90s and had a resurgence during the n52-rebirth era. I think any of his prior sexualization was standard male fantasy stuff (this guy gets all the ladies type thing). I think in Tim’s case they weren’t going for a “let’s destroy his innocence “ thing and more of a way to both modernise him for a contemporary (90s) audience and also distance him far away from the gay allegations (how ironic lol). They still wanted the kid watson to Batman’s brooding sherlock but also just more “normal” so the kids relate. Which is why they made him a cheater etc and i know how tf is that better but they really didn’t want him to be gay fhdjfj. I don’t know much abt the aids story pitch though. Steph and Damian are also better examples of “stripping the innocence” storylines for Robin than Dick and Tim. Steph also had a tragic death, and Damian’s first introduction is as a child assassin (antithesis to innocence). I agree that it’s weird people are so weird abt robins (and child characters in general) but imo it reflects more on an audience’s (and editorial’s) insecurity regarding childish, campy things because why are you mad at the camp medium for being camp? Learn to have some fun LEWSER.

I feel like most dick grayson fans feel so strongly abt this is because they like his prudish and insecure ntt characterisation (and so do i tbh it’s very interesting) and also the multiple SA storylines that a) never got resolved or b) were handled poorly. BUT that dick grayson hasn’t been in comics for a while now. We haven’t seen any acknowledgment from dc’s editorial that dick is a rape survivor, he’s been consistently characterized as a confident metrosexual (eww hate that word) guy both in his civilian and superhero persona (and that agent 37 grayson thing is the biggest culprit here). He’s also retroactively being portrayed as a smooth talking flirt in his robin days now so clearly that’s what they’re going for (imo i think they’re doing what they did with tim to dick's robin just to make him look more “normal” and relatable and straight).

Dick’s robin era is still treated as peak batman&robin era and he’s still a symbol for innocent, “simpler” times. He’s gotten the most grace when transitioning from child to teen to adult hero. On the topic of his sexualization aka the butt issue, it’s only cuz he’s one of the most popular male hero they can sexualize. I genuinely don’t think there’s any malice from the editorial since Dick has been an adult for 40 years now and there’s nothing wrong with sexing up his stories BUT ALSO i get why fans are upset cuz they’re deliberately ignoring his past characterization and sexual history to make him into a more palatable, marketable character. And tbh it’s been going on for long enough that it might as well be his defining character trait now :/ .

[macbethz]

oh man i would love more transmetropolitan-adjacent 90s comics recs.....

omg i got you. I will be bleeding a little into the late 80s and early 2000s here (as transmetropolitan itself did with the early 2000s) but I do think they full of a similar kind of gross edginess (affectionate).

THIS GOT SO LONG SORRY I GOT EXCITED. also sorry for grammar etc i am kinda falling asleep but YAYY comics

first of all i will say MANDITORY DISCLAIMER that Warren Ellis is an awful person and you can find all his works online if you know where to look and/or used on eBay. HOWEVER he has unfortunately written some of my favorite comics, including transmet. which means of course a lot of the best transmet adjacent stuff is written by him. So some Ellis comics:

Desolation Jones: ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVES! which is unfortunately forever unfinished at 8 issues. It follows an ex-MI6 operative working as a private eye in Los Angeles, which acts as a secret prison for the discards of the intelligence community. Jones was put through the desolation test for a full year, which was a form of torture where, among other things, he was exposed to images of violence and death 24/7 without sleep, leaving him with little emotion and a very broken mind. Beautiful page composition and art. Be warned though it is just straight up unfinished

"Superhuman Trilogy": This is the name for 3 completely unrelated comics Ellis wrote that all deal with twisted takes on the creation of superheroes: Black Summer, No Hero, and Supergod. Of these I think No Hero strays a little too much into edge for the sake of it, the other two are very good and unique explorations of different aspects of the genre.

Stormwatch: Ellis' Stormwatch run is basically the lead up to the Authority. You CAN skip it and i recommend most people do because it is VERY 90s and not necessarily the good kind. but if you have a passion for 90s nonsense it is very fun and its cool to see the beginnings of the subversions of the comic industry that come to fruition in the Authority. I cannot emphasize enough that this run is fucking insane and of debatable quality. I believe his run goes from vol 1 #37 through the end of vol 2. and don't forget to pick up wildCATS/Aliens if you want to see the true craziness of 90s comics, where a cash-grab crossover is simultaneously essential to the windstorm universe. yeah they just did whatever back then

The Authority: The superhero comic that defined superhero comics for the next 2 decades. Coined the widescreen comic, unfortunately indirectly led the the creation of the MCU. Superheroes as anarchist gods. The end of the century as the end of the world. A lot of stuff that reads to modern eyes as cliche or overdone because the Authority made it so goddamn popular afterwards.

Now for some non Ellis!

If you enjoy transmet you will probably enjoy the other British Invasion writers. Basically there was a period in comics post-Alan Moore where a lot of British writers started getting hired in American comics and writing weird shit.

Sandman: I don't think I need to describe this one. A lot edgier and more directly goth subculture inspired than the netflix adaptation conveyed

Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol: What if instead of making you a superhero your "superpowers" were more like disabilities? And also you were constantly fighting the most batshit enemies possible? That is this comic. Weird, surreal, and very influenced by modern and postmodern artistic movements.

Peter Milligan's Shade, The Changing Man: imo this is such a British Invasion sleeper hit. No one talks abt this one. A being from another dimension with the power to control capital-M-Madness possesses the body of a serial killer right before he is executed on death row. He then teams up with the daughter of the serial killer's victims to stop a plague of Madness from spreading across the US called the American Scream. All about being weird, gross, and awesome.

Now, I have not read Preacher myself. HOWEVER I have seen the show and really enjoyed it. I am naturally suspicious of Garth Ennis but he is a staple of 90s edge so I feel like I have to say something. I can definitely recommend the show and have heard good things about the comic but again. It's Ennis.

Non british invasion and a little later, but I also really recommend Invincible! A lot of that same early 2000s satire and ultraviolence expanded over a MASSIVE storyline that loves superheroes as much as it parodies them

ANYWAY im probably forgetting some but i am sleepy and got excited abt this lmao. A lot of this is pretty popular so might not be anything new but i hope it helps!

[1800duckhotline]

3, 11, 14 for Mondo Vuoto ^_^

from this ask game

for context, mondo vuoto is a category on my toyhouse in which are categorized a bunch of my ocs, including sub-categories, and generally it is a contemporary-modern setting that is timeline wise encapsulated from the late 1800's to recent times. it's a very "what if certain supernatural events were caused by radiation and aliens, actually" sort of thing.

3.) any recurring images/elements?

surprisingly enough the theme of not being in control of your body, and feeling like/literally having another being "possess" you and "be part of you" from the inside keeps popping up. the lack of self-confidence and being unable to trust oneself. or the opposite on the same spectrum, being so confident in oneself and their abilities that it ultimately morphs into a hubris that will in turn cause a catastrophe and loss of self. there's middle grounds, but these seem to be recurring themes in my characters in this world.

also by accident somewhat a lot of alien-y kind of space supernatural facts, as well as VERY pseudoscientific, comic-inspired lore where "aliens have caused a lot of shit but the aliens aren't like grey aliens they're like rocks and liquids that are sentient".

I unfortunately am a fan of superhero comics, but what I love about them is the utter confidence in which some lore is written to be fun and not always to Make Sense, even if sometimes it does, just enough to give it some depth.

11.) give a general summary of the plot/world/characters.

mondo vuoto itself isn't a story but rather an encompassing worldbuilding situation, though there are some stories set in it (such as the infamous salice story, vermiculous (jenica's) and so on)

im not sure which story to pick but if youre curious to hear more in detail you can ask me about it in another ask! there's a few of them

assassin union (not a story, a group of characters)

kitschionage (specific story set in the early 70s)

vermiculous (jenica's story, set in early-mid 2000s?)

necrologio (salice's story, set in circa 1995)

a 20th century tale (story i need to revamp set in the 80s)

the angels' blessing (set in the late 1800s)

and there's an unnamed project so far where i remake a bunch of 19th century horror novel protagonists into lesbians who are NASCAR racers, one of which is Eden, but he will have at least 2-3 more "friends" to hang out with once i figure shit out

14.) whats your favorite part of this story/project?

i can kind of do whatever i want with it... and it can be comicky and a bit lame and funny... i try not to overdo it of course... but i like throwing in here some supernatural tropes and trying to remake them to make it all make sense in my mind's eye

the lore for demons, angels and witches is very fun so far from what i imagined, even though it is basically 90% in my head

[heraldtim]

ADHD

So, as has happened every time I try to start a journal, diary, blog, whatever... I write one or two posts, and then I disappear for a long time. Here I am, back from the disappearing. I am trying quite deliberately to not disappear any more.

My bio-kids both have ADHD-- diagnosed and under treatment. (My step-kids probably have it too.) A couple of months ago, my 16-year-old said, "Dad, I think you have ADHD too," and he rattled off the many, many traits and habits I have which point in that direction. I think he was right.

I already had an appointment for neuro-psych testing planned, and we included ADHD stuff. That was 7 hours of tests which I took across two days this past week, and totally brain-frying. I don't have "official" results yet, but it seems clear that I'm checking all of the right boxes for ADHD. There are habits and traits that I've had since childhoood. There are some things that I see now were coping mechanisms for manifestations of ADHD. I was very outgoing up through kindergarten, but then I specifically became much more introverted, because my father would become angry if I was "acting out" or being too loud, or inappropriate in whatever other way he felt was applicable. I never had the "hyperactive" part of ADHD, because I was madly suppressing it for my own survival.

That was the 1980s. As I am rapidly learning, the medical profession's understanding of ADHD is alarmingly thin. Back then, it was just ADD, which is sort of ironic, because the definiting characteristic was: (mostly) boys who were out-of-control hyperactive. Until the mid 1990s (what??) many physicians still stated publicly that ADHD did not exist and was simply an excuse for poor parenting and bad behavior. Until the 90s? WTF???

Since my son "diagnosed" me, things have been incredibly difficult in ways that are almost comically typical ADHD manifestations. All the stuff with which ADHD patients often struggle over the course of their lives, I seem to have piling up on me in the last few weeks (in addition to recovering from surgery, and trying to homeschool one chronically ill child who is current sleepint 12-16 hours a day and only has half a brain the rest of the time).

Trying to rearrange my office-- rearranging furniture has always made me happy, and it turns out ADHD brains really like those kind of changes (as long as they are forewarned). Where did i put the power cord for this, that, and the other thing when I took them all off the desk to move it? Why won't the damned computer recognize this stupid monitor instead of that one? I should never have started this, the project is too big and I'm too week/crazy/disorganized/full-of-back-pain/depresed/etc. I literally had the old "I can't even do this simple thing. See how useless I am? Everyone would be better off if I were dead" thought this afternoon.

I am going to a massage-- it's a luxury that I'm going to have to quit, or at least cut down on, with a quarter of my income gone. I'm counting down the days until I no longer have to pay alimony. Unfortunately, that will be right about the time that my bio-kids turn 18, finish high school, and head out on their own (if they want to... I mean, I'm not going to kick them out, at least not immediately). So... I'll have the money to do all the things I always wanted to do with them, right when they leave me. That's another train of thought that's leading me to the "better off dead" station.

I really have been very non-depressed over the last few months. My therapist actually suggested we "discharge" me from her care, since I was doing so well. What changed? Why is everything suddenly so hard?

I will write more soon. I know this is just a rambling mess. The purpose is just to get all of the (crazy ADHD) thoughts out of my head and written down so my kids, and hopefully their kids and so on, can maybe find something useful or helpful in it. So maybe when I die, I can leave behind a little something.

[nightmarecountry-a]

hello i just resurfaced from drowning in comics for a few hours and i’m pleased to report that cori/nthian is described as “a beautiful man” with “a beautiful mouth” (or beautiful lips, i can’t remember which one it was). incredible. canonically fuckable.

[figofswords]

Hi!! Okay for comic recs, if that's okay - I'm not a big comic nerd because I don't like the gritty style as much (not saying that all are, that's just what I've been exposed to). I do love graphic novels.

But I've watched Young Justice and read the Batfam webtoon and am now a massive Dick Grayson fan. Do you have any recommendations for DG content? Thank you!!

ok sorry i saw this when i was busy and then forgot about it but YES i do have recs!

the lost carnival (michael moreci) - you said you like graphic novels so this is my first rec! it's a dick grayson stand-alone graphic novel about dick going back to visit haly's circus and sort of discovering this history of magic and romance and tragedy. i love this graphic novel. it's maybe not the most CANON canon thing but the art is GORGEOUS and it's a really sweet story.

robin: year one (chuck dixon) - this is among my favorite comics. it's a four book series featuring dick right after becoming robin, following the origin continuity established for him in batman: dark victory. it's very cute, it's sort of a coming of age story, and i adore its portrayal of dick and bruce's dynamic. (in general, chuck dixon is a good writer to look out for with robin comics—he has a really good run on tim's robin in the 90s. he is unfortunately annoyingly conservative but his writing itself is really good and he keeps his politics out of his comics, so. death of the author, yadda yadda, it's hard to avoid in comics but again his writing is really quite good)

batman chronicles: the gauntlet - this is a single-issue story, again from dick's early days as robin. the premise is basically he's got this final test before bruce will let him go out as robin officially: make it a whole night in gotham city without bruce finding him. but then! stuff happens! bruce needs to get to him to help him but uh oh! dick still thinks they're doing hide and seek! anyway yeah this comic is really well done and i like it a lot.

batman: year three (batman #436-439) - dick (now nightwing, post jason's death, JUST before tim) comes home for the first time in a while just in time for tony zucco's parole hearing and ends up revisiting the circumstances of his parents' murders. disclaimer that while this has been on my list for a while i haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but it's sort of the first real deep dive into dick's origin story and it's written by marv wolfman who i 100% trust. (anything by marv wolfman is also good to check out - he's responsible for aging dick into nightwing and giving him his own identity outside of being batman's partner during the new teen titans, which i haven't read much of but which is supposed to be very very good)

some other stuff i haven't read yet but have heard very good things about:

-nightwing (1996). chuck dixon's run. i don't like the art style which is why i keep failing to read this but the story is well regarded.

-the new teen titans. again, i trust marv wolfman. i did start reading and loved what i was seeing but haven't gotten very far. this is an ensemble cast and not just dick but you said you started with yj so you should be fine.

-batman: gates of gotham. batman!dick and the rest of the kids dealing with a resurfaced old old gotham mystery. the only reason i didn't finish this is i got distraced bc im trying to read like ten different things at once

-the current run of nightwing written by tom taylor is also supposed to be pretty good. i definitely love the art style but i've been putting off reading until more of it got uploaded to dc universe infinite. if i try and get caught up now i'm going to want to read them as they come out by going to the comics store and buying individual issues and that is bad for my wallet. ANYWAYS. it looks good so maybe worth checking out.

and that's my list for you! this is probably way wordier than you were looking for but who am i if i don't type up paragraphs and paragraphs when asked about my opinions. hopefully this is helpful and have fun reading!

[spenciegoob]

Swing to the Stars

this fic swap is for @reidgraygubler​ ... I really hope you like it, shadow :)

A/N: AAAAH! this is my first fic swap and I’M SO EXCITED!!!!

Summary: Spencer meets someone in his little hiding spot, and desperately hopes to see them again.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Gender Neutral!Reader

Category: fluff with a dash of angst

Content Warnings: mentions of Maeve & William Reid, talk of a case involving teens, mentions of bullying, mentions of guns and pepper spray (not used)

Masterlist

Word Count: 2.4K

___

The first time I climbed that treacherous hill, dirtying my converse for all to see what my night activities truly consisted of, I was alone. I enjoyed it like that, I came here by myself, and I intended to keep it that way. When I sat on the swing dangling by two dangerously flimsy ropes, I thought how ridiculously large the slap of wood used to make it was. My elbows were bent a little over a 90 degree angle just to reach both sides, but I never thought past it. I had other things on my mind that night.

I thought about my mom. I knew she would have loved a secluded, little space like this. She would’ve probably read to me here, using different voices that held deep emotion to convey each story with a precise amount of dedication and love. Each story to her was special, and I silently thank her every day for passing that trait down to me. 

Unfortunately, if I thought about my mom, I thought about my dad. William was never a kind man, and I could pride myself on one thing; I would never be like him. He didn’t deserve to know a place like this. It was too serene, too beautiful to house a man so willing to abandon the two people who should’ve been the most important to him. I was glad he would never get the chance to sit on this swing.

I thought about my family. How Garcia would jump with excitement at the prospect of having a picnic overlooking the city, yet quiet and missing the sounds of cars zooming by or overlapping chatter. I thought about JJ, and how Henry would beg her to push him in the swing, because to a little kid, it was perfect. He didn’t look at the frayed rope and fear that it would snap. I hope he never starts to fear the world like that.

The second time I found myself back at the bottom of the hill, I made it halfway to the top before seeing a couple getting up from the swing they were sitting together on. I realized then why it was so comically large; it was meant for two people. Thankfully when I reached the top only half out of breath, the two were starting their descent to where I came from.

This time when I sat down, I thought about Maeve. I would’ve brought her here, shared the little secret corner of the world I built for myself. She would’ve loved something like this, and I know if life wasn’t so cruel, and I was given the chance to show her, we would’ve talked for hours. So that’s what I did that time; I talked to Maeve. To anyone else, I probably looked like a crazy person talking to himself, but much to my delight, not many people made the trip up the hill to find this place.

Now I go whenever I need a break from my mind, which unfortunately is more times than my schedule allows me to take that leisurely walk. I spend my nights sometimes after a particularly hard case there no matter the time, using the ropes that scratch my hands as my lifeline down to Earth. I watch the stars, screaming and cursing at the world in my head and waiting for the sky to respond. It never did, and the next case always came in the following morning.

This particular time that I found myself at the bottom of the grassy hill waiting to be climbed, the case I just returned from involved kids across the board. A teenage unsub was killing his fellow classmates that have wronged him. Unfortunately, the BAU had to witness his stressor recorded for the whole school to see. It involved vile insults being thrown at the young, defenseless boy only for the bullying to escalate to violence.

It was awful.

As I trudged up the hill with less excitement to look into the vast unknown than usual, I couldn’t stop thinking about the unsub. All he wanted in life was a friend, someone to talk to, laugh with, share memories together. No matter how wrong it was, I saw myself in him. Our souls held the same scars given to us by people who had no right to go digging for such a deep part of ourselves. If I didn’t make it, would I have turned out like him?

When I reached the top, completing my journey once again, I saw them. Sitting there, staring out into the sky, mimicking my thoughts to do the same on the jet ride home. I could only make out half their face lit up by the light casting down from the full moon, but I didn’t need to see more to know they were breathtaking.

I would have turned around to return home to nothing more than books reread thousands of times and stale coffee, but I already made the mistake of stepping on a rather large branch that broke in half. The crunch coming from their right immediately had them on edge, and reaching for their bag that I could only assume had some sort of weapon inside. I hope it was legal.

I felt terrible for breaking them from the trance they were in. They were deep in thought about something that was probably going to become a solution if I hadn't interrupted their musing. 

“H-hi, I’m sorry to scare you. I didn’t expect anyone here this late. Not that you being here is a problem! I didn’t mean to disturb you,” I frantically shouted, although there was less distance between us than I originally thought, and probably seemed crazed by my volume level.

They just giggled at first, but upon seeing my distraught expression, their face turned more kind than humorous.

“That’s okay. I’m just glad I didn’t jump so fast to pepper spray you. That would definitely be the worst case scenario.” I let out a breath of relief for some reason. Here I was, in front of a total stranger thankful that their weapon of choice wasn’t a gun. I’ve been on the wrong end of too many during my years.

“Did you know Chemical Mace, more commonly known as pepper spray, was invented in the 1960s by a man named Alan Lee Litman and his wife Doris Litman at the time. Their reason was actually because one of Doris’s female coworkers was attacked and robbed, so they thought to create a nonlethal weapon with easy accessibility and use, considering not everyone is able to use a gun. It wasn’t until 1987 however that the Litman’s sold their creation to Smith and Wesson where it was mass produced and later sold to law enforcement.”

“Wow, I don’t think I did.” They laughed again, but something in my heart told me it wasn’t meant to come with malicious intent. “Do you do that a lot?”

“Do what?” I asked, even though I had some inclination of what they were referencing.

“Spout random facts. I’m not complaining, that was very cool, but I am fully intrigued.” They smiled again at me fondly, the kind of smile that left me a little breathless, even more so than the 45 degree incline I had to climb to find myself in front of them. There was nothing to convince me they weren’t authentic in every word they stated.

“I do it quite often, yes. It gets annoying after a while though.” It was true, I was told on many occasions that my rambling got old very fast. I suppose that’s what happens when you’re close to me for too long. I tend to stop being the awe-striking genius, and become the nagging, walking encyclopedia.

“I don’t see how that could become annoying.” It sounded sad coming from them, like I had insulted their oddity. I would never, and I was really hoping to find out what it was.

I had nothing further to say that would express my shock, and slight fondness over their praise, wary of its honesty even if it did come from them. I hadn’t known them for more than 4 minutes and 36 seconds, but it was enough to figure out that they weren’t a liar. It wasn’t from profiling either.

“You know, there is room for two people here if you wanted to join me. I’m sure you didn’t climb that hill for nothing.” They continued for me. If they noticed my surprise, they said nothing about it. 

Usually, I would be skeptical of being in a close proximity with a stranger, but as I approached them carefully, even if their hand was no longer reaching for mace, I felt the passing between our eyes. It was as if we had shared every part of ourselves with eye contact, and as crazy as it sounds, I felt the somber thoughts that lingered from their previous reflections.

So I sat down, grabbing onto only one of the scratchy ropes, and enjoying the way I could rest my elbow against my side now that I was using the swing to its fullest potential. I stopped caring about the probability of the ropes snapping under our combined body weight. The worst that could possibly happen was I bruised my tailbone a little bit, but I wouldn’t care past the initial embarrassment. At least I had someone to show that with.

“Do you ever think about what’s out there?” They asked once I was settled on the wood slab as comfortably as I could muster. Being boney didn’t necessarily help. Before I could answer, they continued. “I can tell you’re a man of science, if the fact dump wasn’t any indicator, but I mean beyond the facts, and the known.”

“No, I don’t think about it.” It was a lie, I think about it every time I’m here, but I wanted nothing more in this moment than to know how they saw the stars.

“I do. Quite frequently, actually. I mean, I’ve read every book there ever was about the stars and space, but there is still no answer to my question.”

“What question?” I had to know.

“What’s exactly written in the stars,” they replied, using their hands to showcase the sky above us. I sat back and thought for a while. Like the books they’ve read, I too didn’t have the response to their question. God, how I wish I did.

I don’t know how long we sat there quietly. One of the perks of total darkness in the dead of night is that the moon couldn’t tell time the way the sun did. We got lost in the cosmos together, contemplating sharing our own troubled thoughts with each other. It would have felt right if we did, but alas, the ringing of my cell phone dropped a pin in our reflections.

“I- I’m sorry, I have to take this,” I rushed out before standing up and accepting the incoming call from Penelope. I knew it was a case before her bubbly voice rang through my celular. I allowed the disappointment to bleed through my tone when I told her I would be back at the BAU shortly, hoping that the small release of the emotion would be enough to ward it off in time to turn back around. 

It didn’t.

They were already looking at me expectantly when I made my way back to the swing, bending down to retrieve my satchel I had abandoned on the ground. The amount of guilt on my face must have been enough to tell them I had to leave abruptly, despite the fact that the only thing I wanted to do was stay for even just a second.

“That’s okay,” they spoke softly, giving me a tight lipped smile. “We’ll see each other again.”

“How do you know?” I couldn’t help but be skeptical. Life never did work out in my favor. They looked up at the sky once more before answering.

“Just a feeling.” I let a full grin break out at their response, the first one I’ve had when visiting this place. I turned around to start my journey back to the office where dark, and twisted things lurked behind manilla folders. Before starting my descent however, I spun around quickly, almost losing my footing and taking a tumble.

“Woah there tiger, don’t hurt yourself,” they giggled at me, one that I returned with my own breathy laugh.

“I just don’t know your name.” It baffled me a little bit that I hadn’t thought to ask before this, but they just gave me one last smile, tilting their head in faux contemplation.

“Ask me next time.” I will.

***

It’s been a year since I met them, and I haven’t seen them since. Not for a lack of trying however. After that case, I went there every night until a new one arose, this time taking me to Oregon. They hadn’t been back, and part of me wondered if it was because of me. Did I not try hard enough the first time? Should I have ignored my ringer until my phone had 5 missed calls from Penelope?

But then my eidetic memory swooped in to save me from going down that road, one of the only times it wasn’t the cause of my self destructive thoughts. Because while I replayed the conversation over in my head wondering where it went wrong, I remembered their eyes, and their smile.

I remembered what it felt like to sit with them, and thankfully that was enough to convince myself our meeting wasn’t in vain.

I never was the kind of man to believe in the universe. The whole notion that “everything happens for a reason,” felt like a lie created to somehow blame an external force on the chaos in one’s life. There were so many things in my life that had no reason for happening, and to blame that on anything or anyone but myself would be a cheap excuse of a way out.

But for some odd reason, the universe aside, I believed in them, and strangely enough, I don’t think they would have blamed me for the life I had to live. So, as I sit down tonight on this familiar piece of wood, I choose to stare at the stars instead of the ground, and believe that if I spoke aloud, maybe they would hear me.

And they did, because my efforts to sit on one side of the swing in case they returned to me were not in vain. I didn’t look over, I didn’t have to to know it was them. I had already relaxed once their presence was known in my peripherals.

“Y/N,” they spoke, causing me to change my view on the stars to their side profile. It wasn’t all that different than staring at the constellations spread around us. “My name’s Y/N.”

___

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[jerichogender]

Grant Emerson for the character bingo 💖

THE BOYYY

I fell in love with this kid when I first read Titans (1999). Devin Grayson took the strong foundations he was built on from his previous appearances to tell a truly powerful story. After the arc where Roy takes him camping in the desert, I decided to do something I’d never done for a comics character up to that point and read through every single one of Grant’s appearances starting with his debut in Damage (1994)

At first glance, Grant’s solo book might seem like just an attempt to follow the early-mid 90s teen boy superhero trend. But what makes it special in my eyes is how it doesn’t shy away from putting its protagonist through the ringer. It creates thought-provoking dilemmas about bodily autonomy and personal responsibility and puts a pretty ordinary kid with powers that seem to bring him nothing but trouble at the center of its story. It’s a rare thing, but this kid got consistently good writing three books in a row. I even love his appearances in The New Titans and I wish his interactions with Bart and Kyle had gotten more follow-up besides that one crossover for Sins of Youth. As @miadeardn has pointed out before, Grant was always a bit out of place age-wise among the Titans (don’t get me wrong, I love his time with the team, but I do see that as more of a transitional period in his life) and having him join Young Justice would’ve allowed him to be among heroes that were also going through the unique struggles of being a teenage superhero. Thinking about how he could’ve come into his own on a team like that keeps me up at night

Unfortunately, editorial seemed to decide at some point after his departure from the main cast of Titans (1999) that Damage going to become more and more associated with the JSA because of his connection to the group through his birth parents. I say this is unfortunate mainly because this set him in the direct path of one Geoff Johns who, on account of Justice Society of America (2007), is now my mortal enemy. And I think we all know what happens to comic book characters after they get the Geoff Johns treatment

I was cautiously hopeful when I saw that Grant was being reintroduced to current canon, but the way he’s been written so far in Infinite Frontier and DC vs. Vampires: All Out War makes me skeptical that he’ll ever get his pre-Johns characterization back or have his disability from the events of Infinite Crisis be written in a respectful way. Tom Joyner and Bill Marimon put so much into crafting this character and then it all went so wrong. One book with poor characterization is all it really takes sometimes. My only consolations are the stories I make up for him in my head where nothing after Infinite Crisis ever happened and the small but vocal community of fans on this site that have a lot of love for this kid from Georgia that can’t just help but blow up. Damage lives on in our hearts 🔥

[carriagelamp]

Art of Aardman

I found myself a cheap copy of the Shaun the Sheep movie, so I was rewatching a bunch of Aardman films earlier this month and decided to hunt down some books too. For anyone that doesn’t know, Aardman is a British stop-motion studio that does fantastic work like Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Chicken Run, Early Man… tons of cool stuff. They’re always quirky and funny and warm-hearted. This was just a very nice art book for anyone that’s a fan of Aardman stop motion and wants to see a bit extra; it shows some cool concept art and blows up the neat details in Aardman work, especially in their intricate stuff like The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!

Asterix and the Picts (Asterix and the Chariot Race, and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion)

I decided to try a couple of the new Asterix comics that were done by the new team, just to see if they stand up to the old ones (that and How Obelix Fell Into The Magic Potion cause I’d never read that one before). They were pretty decent! Asterix and the Picts was my favourite of the two though I wouldn’t say either are going to contest for my favourite Asterix comic... but still! The art looks good and the stories felt like what I would expect, they made for a pleasant couple evenings of reading especially since it’s been so long since I’ve read a new Asterix comic. If you’ve never read Asterix it’s one of the biggest name French comic series in North America, as far as I know and very worth the read. It’s about a single Gaulish village that’s holding out against the invading Romans through sheer force of will, slapstick hijinks, and a magical super-strength potion brewed by their druid. Lots of fantastic visuals and cute wordplay, even in the English translations.

Bear

I found out about this bastion of Canadian literature via tumblr post that was losing its collective mind over the fact that some bizarre bear-based erotica novella somehow won the most prestigious literary prize available in Canada. Since I too found this hilarious and unspeakably bizarre I had to give it a read, obviously. And yes, the flat surface level summary is... a librarian moves out into rural Ontario and falls in love with a literal for-real not-supernatural-not-a-joke bear. And I have to say… it is actually worthy of an award, which I was not expecting given that I was there for a laugh. It has beautiful writing, and the subtextual story is pretty interesting… it kind of makes me think of The Haunting of Hill House actually in terms of themes. (Womanhood, personhood, independence, autonomy partially achieved through escaping the male gaze by claiming non-human lovers... listen if I were still in university I would right a paper comparing the two novels).

I dunno man, it’s fucking weird. Actually a well-written book, but sure is about a woman falling in love with a literal bear. Give it a read if you want something bonkers but like… high-brow bonkers.

Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites

Best book I have read in like… a while. A long while. I am not a fast reader, and I consumed 90% of this book over a weekend. It’s not at all like Terry Pratchett, but at the same time it scratched an itch for me that I haven’t had satisfied since Pratchett’s death. A very clever, hilariously funny poly romance between a disabled werewolf, an anxious vampire lord, and an incredibly powerful woman, with heaps of social satire, political commentary, and sinister undertones. The whole thing reads a bit like fanfiction and I say that in the most flattering way possible -- it is so easy to jump right in and be immediately taken over by the characters and the world and the plot, you never feel like you’re fighting to engage even though the world-building is fascinating and expansive. It welcomes you in right away, it was the book equivalent of a quilt and a hug which is something I sorely needed with all this pandemic bullshit. If you read any of the books on this list, go read that one while I sit here in pain waiting for the sequel.

Kid Paddle

I watched the cartoon of Kid Paddle as a kid and was thinking about it recently, so I decided to hunt down some of the original comics online. They’re fun and weird, with a cute art style and fantastic monsters designs. (My favourites are always about Kid either daydreaming or playing games that involve Midam’s weird warty troll creatures. It’s like a cross between Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot with the fun sort of quirks that I love in Belgian comics. Unfortunately, unlike Asterix, I’ve only come across these ones in French, but if you can read French it’s totally worth popping over to The Internet Archive and reading the ones they have available.

The Last Firehawk: The Golden Temple

The lastest Firehawk book. Despite being written for quite young readers, I did enjoy the early books in this series quite a bit. They’re about a young owl and squirrel who found an egg for a magical species that was believed to be extinct. With the newly hatched firehawk, the three of them head off on a mission to find an ancient firehawk magic that could save the entire forest. Very basic adventure story but a good intro to the tropes for children. Unfortunately the quality really feels like it drops with each subsequent book; this will probably be the last one I bother reading.

Lumberjanes: The Moon Is Up

I honestly think I enjoy these Lumberjanes novels even more than the comics just because it really gives time to delve into each story and examine how the camper are really thinking and feeling about everything. (Also I’m always weak for novelizations of anything.) The Moon Is Up is a book that focuses more on Jo, and takes place during the camp’s much anticipated Galaxy Wars, a competition between cabins that goes over several days. While the campers prepare for these challenges though, they also run into a strange little creature with a penchant for cheese and theft. Roanoke cabin needs to keep ahead in Galaxy Wars and somehow deal with the fearsome Moon Pirates that a closing in...

Lumberjanes v4 (Out Of Time)

One of the Lumberjanes comics, a cool, girl-focused, queer comic series. Honestly, this is just a fun series that I never got as into as I should have. My advice is honestly to skip book one because it gets better as it continues, and I’ve really been enjoying the later books now that I’ve given it another go. It follows five campers at Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet’s Camp for Hardcore Lady Types (Jo, April, Molly, Mal, and Ripley) as they handle all sorts of challenges, from friendship to crushes, camp activities to supernatural horrors, getting badges to not being brutally killed. Great if you liked the vibe of Gravity Falls but want it to be queer-er.

Mooncakes

Another queer graphic novel, but unfortunately not a very good one. It really looked appealing and I had high hopes, but the book itself really didn’t hold up… I actually couldn’t even finish it, the plot was just too… non-existent. The art is fairly mediocre once you actually look at it, especially backgrounds, and it feels very… placid. Not much conflict or excitement or even a very compelling reason to keep reading. If you just want a soft queer supernatural you may get more mileage out of it than me, but it didn’t really do it for me. There’s better queer graphic novels out there.

New Boy In Town

One of the worst books I have ever read. My girlfriend had ordered a very different book online but through a frankly stupendous error was sent this 1980s pulp romance instead. Absolutely nauseating on levels I couldn’t even begin to enumerate here. Naturally we read the whole thing out loud. Probably took us 10 times longer to finish than it warranted because I had to stop every two sentences to lose my mind. If you like bad decisions, baffling hetero courting rituals, built-in cultural Christianity without actually calling it that, and gold panning then boy howdy is this the book for you.

(seriously, you better have patience for gold-panning if you attempt this one, because I sure learn that I don’t)

Piggies

This was a picture book I enjoyed as a kid and had a reason to reread recently. Honestly it’s just very cute and simple, and the art is completely mesmerizing. Wonderful if you know a young child that would enjoy a simple goofy boardbook.

Shaun the Sheep: Tales From Mossy Bottom

Related to my Aardman fascination earlier this month. I tried reading a varieties of Shaun the Sheep books — most of which are mediocre at best — but the Tales From Mossy Bottom Farm series is genuinely good. Just chapter books, of course, but the illustrations match the series’ concept art and each story feels like it could have jumped directly out of an episode. They’re just cute and feel-good! Kinda like Footrot Flats but more for kids, and from the sheep’s perspective moreso than the dog’s.

[traincat]

Can you explain the fantastic four volumes? Why are they separated like that, are they different continuities, should i read them all, who wrote which, and such? They‘re very confusing to me

Welcome to the terrible world of comics renumbering, aka the reason we have volumes. The long and short of it is, at some point, the big comics publishers got it into their heads that more people would buy their comics if they had easy jumping spots, the logic behind this being wouldn't it be more friendly for new readers to pick up an issue #1 than an issue #389? Which, sure, in theory, until you have, for example, six different Fantastic Four #1s, some of which were published very close together, and then no one knows at first glance where the hell they should start. But Marvel persists in this practice anyway because for some reason they think that one of these days it's actually going to work. So yes, unless otherwise noted -- because volumes are a publishing quirk and not a specific continuity quirk, so for example something like Spider-Gwen, which until recently took place out of the main continuity, has multiple volumes -- they're in main continuity, with the notable exception of Fantastic Four v2, kind of. I'll get to it. As to who wrote what, it varies -- some volumes have a ton of writers on them, some only have the one, like Fantastic Four volumes 4 and 5. It kind of depends on the length of the volume. Should you read them? It depends on if you're looking to be a completionist or not. If you're still confused, that's because it's unfortunately a feature of this particular system, not a bug. It is not a new reader friendly solution to having a huge series with hundreds upon hundreds of issues, despite the fact that Marvel just will not stop doing it.

If you look at most long running Marvel series, you'll probably note that most of their "volume ones" are actually extremely long -- Fantastic Four v1, for example, lasts from issues #1-416. The first renumbering takes place in 1996, and this one kind of has a good reason behind it. In the mid-90s, Marvel was, how can I say this nicely? A complete dumpster fire, and I don't mean from a storytelling perspective. In 1996, Marvel temporarily outsourced production of two major titles -- Fantastic Four and the Avengers -- to the studios of former employees Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld. This outsourcing took the form of what appeared to be a "hard reset", especially for the Fantastic Four, who during v2 got an updated '90s origin story with updated '90s costumes and updated '90s personalities, essentially brought back to the beginning of their continuity without memories of their previous iterations. This is because, as it was later explained, though the Fantastic Four and the Avengers seemed to die in the main continuity, they were actually sheltered in a bubble reality by Franklin Richards. It's. You know. It is what it is. So essentially, volume 2 of Fantastic Four (1996) takes place in a separate continuity -- you can skip it and not miss much. Volume 3 (1998) picks back up in the main continuity when the Fantastic Four return to their own continuity and try to pick their lives back up while the world has moved on without them. It's VERY good, from a characterization standpoint -- a lot of volume 3 is written by Chris Claremont, who handles all the characters with an extreme amount of nuance. From a plot perspective -- I mean, it's totally fine as long as you don't care about anything making sense ever. Claremont was not here to write a coherent plot; he was here to write extremely an extremely insightful and sensitive Johnny Storm, and I applaud him for that.

This is where the numbering gets messy again, though! Because you know what looks really dramatic on the front cover of your comic book? A big ISSUE #500. So when volume 3 was approaching what would be, in what's called legacy numbering, issue #500, they switched the numbering again. Fantastic Four goes from Fantastic Four v3 #70 straight to Fantastic Four #500. There is no Fantastic Four v3 #71, something that can be confusing for new readers who are JUST trying to follow a book from issue to issue. From my perspective, I'm generally in favor of a return to legacy numbering, because it really is so much simpler to just have whatever number the issue actually is on the cover instead of having to be like "Fantastic Four issue #499 is actually Fantastic Four v3 #70." But Marvel hates simplicity! Loathes it! We need more new readers! Who definitely will pick up anything labeled #1 and not worry about THAT WHOLE MESS behind them! So while Fantastic Four retained the legacy numbering for 88 issues, it soon switched things up again when the entire title of the book was renamed. When Johnny dies in the Negative Zone in Fantastic Four #587, the book was renamed from Fantastic Four to FF (just the initials) to reflect the change. This is a creative decision that I don't personally hate -- I think it makes its point well -- but also it really makes this entire period of Fantastic Four hell to read when the book comes back with Fantastic Four #600 after 12 issues of FF, but the FF title also remains, and the two are supposed to be read interchangeably at that point. Good luck figuring out how that one's supposed to go on first glance and thanks a lot, Marvel.

After Hickman's run wrapped up with Fantastic Four #611, Marvel entered a period where it was relaunching a lot of its main series basically every year. This is why there's a Fantastic Four v4 (2013), closely followed by Fantastic Four v5 (2014). These are basically one writer brief runs that are encapsulated in their own volumes for very little reason, especially since towards the end of Fantastic Four v5 it reverts to legacy numbering once again, with the last four issues of the run being Fantastic Four #642-645. Congratulations, nobody could have thought of a worse system. Then there came the three year Fantastic Four publishing ban (a real thing that happened) and when the book relaunched in 2018, it was with Fantastic Four v6, which is still using its own numbering, with issue #36 just released. It's essentially like that scene from Pacific Rim about how the kaiju keep coming faster and faster, except, you know, with comic book runs.

So here's a very basic reading order: Fantastic Four #1-416 -> Fantastic Four v2 #1-13 -> Fantastic Four v3 #1-70 -> Fantastic Four #500-588 -> FF #1-12 (at which point FF separates into its own book with three separate volumes) -> Fantastic Four #600-611 -> Fantastic Four v4 #1-16 -> Fantastic Four v5 #1-14 -> Fantastic Four #642-645 -> Fantastic Four v6 #1-36.

That brings you up to the present, not counting series like Secret Wars (2015) which slots in between #645 and Fantastic Four v6 #1, or things like annuals, which are issues published sometimes annually that may be standalones or may be important to the main plot, you can never be sure. Comics are terrible.

As for whether or not to read all of that, like I said above, it kind of depends on you as a reader, whether you're a completionist, whether you bounce hard off certain decades or creators, etc. There's really no one right way to tackle a comic series that spans 681 issues and six decades, especially not when the publisher doesn't exactly make it easy for anybody to keep track of what exactly they're supposed to be reading next. I do hope that clears up some of the confusion for you, though, even though the truth is the way a lot of American big two comics are published are, very simply, in an incredibly confusing, extremely new reader unfriendly, archaic way.

[doomedship]

hi hope ur doing well!, the episode just ended, and idk about u but I’m so disappointed, like I have my expectations low and still happened.

I didn’t recognize Lucy in this episode, I mean one of her closest friends gets kidnapped by a serial killer and she just wants to win a bet? And for god sake she was kidnapped by one too all I could think in those scenes with Nolan was just this could be triggering for Lucy, it’s like DOD never happened and it’s just a wasted opportunity to use her character, give her some depth. Idk the show just felt different, I don’t recognize the characters anymore :(

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Hey anon.

I'm sorry. I'm disappointed too. Unfortunately it's not the first time an episode has been billed as Chenford-y by social media promo but actually turned out to contain no more content than was already released. Clearly ABC marketing knows what gets people talking so they milk whatever they can but the show doesn't actually have this content.

As predicted, it was definitely more of the same Lucy-is-comic-relief, Lucy's not not involved in the core police plot, Lucy's not doing anything serious. Lucy's a jokester, Lucy just wants to win a bet with Tim.

I just want to pause and compare her behaviour in this episode with a moment from season 1.

In season 1, Lucy's trying to check all her boxes and she has an easy opportunity to write a woman up for driving without valid plates. Tim tells her to deal with it how she sees best. Lucy's conflicted, and despondent about passing up on an easy win, but in the end she says, "it's not me", to use the woman's difficulties to help herself. She does the right thing and gives a warning. The woman is so grateful.

That was such a simple, basic scene around such a simple, basic police incident and it was a thousand times more revealing about Lucy as a character than the fluffy window dressing we see now. Lucy had principles, Lucy had conflict, Lucy made a difference to people's lives. We saw all that and lived it with her.

Now, who is Lucy? What's she aiming for? What is she even a police officer for?

She doesn't really do anything for anyone anymore. She just serves as background content, a 30-90 second scene of light relief before we get back to Nolan's drama. She used to help people all the time, she was so determined to make the world a better place. Who was the last person she helped on the job?

Now her limited dialogue now is generally about herself, and it usually doesn't frame her kindly. It doesn't help that Tim usually puts her down somewhere along the way too.

The way they used to talk to one another was so varied. Sometimes they would banter but never just for the sake of it. Those moments slotted around the really serious things they did on the job.

Sometimes they would be so profound with one another ("grief is grief. It's a hole that can't be filled" / "addiction doesn't just destroy the addict") They were also angry sometimes ("I need you to train me, not get me killed"l because you can't handle losing your wife" / "you want to rake me over the coals for the next six months? Go ahead"). And just so genuine as well ("honestly, it's probably why you excel at being a cop").

We haven't seen any range of emotion from either character in a long time. It has all been flat, 2D, cookie cutter banter. It's like people who have never written for these characters before were asked to create a scene of generic banter between a man and woman in a police station.

It is such a waste, because we know for a fact both actors have the ability to play the serious stuff so beautifully.

[purplepenntapus]

Rating Versions of Harry Osborn: Updated

Wanted to redo this post with a more comprehensive and inclusive list of Harrys

616 Comics: 

Just such a good and complex character. The OG Harry. His relationship with Peter just adds so much depth to every Green Goblin arc because of the inherent conflict of Peter knowing he needs to take down Norman Osborn, but not wanting to hurt or lose his best friend. (If you’ve read Kindred no you haven’t.) He’s still... ugly... I’m sorry 616 Harry... I love you so much but they did you dirty... Some artists do their best with what they have but... I’m not a big fan of western comic style in general so that doesn’t help. Has three failed marriages by the time he’s 30 because he’s gay and deeply closeted.  8/10

Spider-Man the Animated Series (1994):

The Harry plotline in this show reeeeally doesn’t feel earned, because the first time we see Harry having an active role in the show, he asks Peter to move in with him because Norman wants him to have a responsible studious roommate  (a detail from the comics I was EXTREMELY excited to see play out), and Peter comments that they barely know each other. Ultimately they live together for all of one day before Peter decides to move back in with Aunt May. The next time we see Harry, MJ calls him Peter’s best friend, despite the fact that we haven’t seen Peter hanging out with—or even MENTIONING—Harry since the last episode when they were basically strangers. Really it feels like he’s just there to cause romantic drama as the guy MJ graciously settles for when she gives up on Peter. I found the whole goblin plotline kind of boring and lacking in depth.  3/10

Raimi Trilogy:

I was never interested in Raimi Harry until after I started liking and exploring other versions of Harry, because I just thought he was kinda a shit friend. He’s a pretty strong character overall, but his motivations aren’t as obvious. He’s torn between his love of Peter as his best friend, and his bitterness towards Peter for being the man his father wished he was. I don’t think Raimi Harry really wanted MJ, he just wanted to get back at Peter in a way by taking someone that HE loved. However I feel like his characterization kind of sways back and forth between sympathetic and not depending on how he’s written in the scene, and it disappoints me that the thing that gets him to stop tormenting Peter is the butler telling him out of nowhere that Norman died from his own blade, rather than any real character development on his part. 6/10

Spectacular Spider-Man:

I still haven’t watched all of this show because I... can’t STAND this version of Peter... but I’ve watched many clips with this boy and he’s just... so sweet... He only wants to be loved and keeps getting his heart broken. Deserves better. On everything. He deserves a better father, a better best friend, better love interests, everything. I do really enjoy the way they incorporated 616 Harry’s drug abuse into this show with the Globulin Green, it was a very clever way to incorporate that aspect of his character, but tone it down for younger viewers. I’ve watched the scene of him getting “unmasked” as the Green Goblin about a million times it’s very good. 8/10 

Ultimate Spider-Man:

I love him. Most people fear drifting apart from those close to us, so watching Harry struggle with the new and increasing distance between him and Peter as Peter seemingly makes new, “better” friends is downright heartbreaking. Especially when he overhears Sam implying that Peter only hangs out with him for his money which is something he’s clearly experienced a lot. (Seriously Sam what the fuck.) I also love his struggle with Venom throughout the series as a metaphor for his anger and bitterness, it’s never truly gone even when they work hard to remove it. It’s always there to bubble back up under extreme amounts of stress, especially when Norman is involved. (Also this isn’t a Norman review, but USM Norman is the only version of Norman Osborn that has rights and he works hard to be the father Harry deserves.) Had an honest to God meet-cute with Peter like come on???? Its unfortunate how much they cut back Harry’s role in the third and fourth season, I really would have loved to see more of him. Threw a party specifically so he could ignore Peter to his face because he was jealous and I respect that level of pettiness. 9/10

Spider-Man: The New Animated Series

I didn’t think it was possible to create an uglier Harry than 90s Harry but this blonde, fuck-boy lookin creepass came and proved me wrong. Who the FUCK is this?? Doesn’t have any recognizable characteristics of Harry Osborn besides being rich and hating Spider-Man. Also just... look at him. I wouldn’t trust this man anywhere NEAR my drink at a party. #NotMySon -3/10

The Amazing Spider-Man:

He’s okay. I think he has some very emotional scenes and good chemistry with Peter, but it’s dampened by the fact that he wasn’t present in the first film and had to share the second with like two other main plot lines. Ultimately ends up being the least sympathetic version of Harry Osborn because he became the original Green Goblin and killed Gwen, rather than following in his father’s footsteps. That’s not to say he’s a completely unsympathetic character. He has a strong motivator in his fear of death, and I do think the choice they made for his character were interesting and could have developed really well, but they didn’t get the chance since the franchise was dropped. 5/10

PS4 Spider-Man:

ABSOLUTELY ADORE HIM. WISH WE GOT MORE OF HIM. HAVING YOUR EXPECTATIONS OF HARRY OSBORN BROKEN AS YOU SNEAK AROUND NORMAN’S PENTHOUSE AND LEARN THAT HE’S BEEN SECRETLY STRUGGLING WITH A GENETIC DISEASE HE’S BEEN HIDING FROM HIS BEST FRIENDS FOR YEARS WAS -chef’s kiss- GENIUS. PLEASE GIVE US A SECOND GAME WITH VENOM HARRY. 10/10

Marvel’s Spider-Man (2017):

Still easily my favorite version of Harry Osborn. When I first began watching the show I was startled by their decision to make Harry a science genius like Peter because it was so different from their usual dynamic, and many people who aren’t fans of the show point to this as something they dislike. But I actually ended up really loving the decision. It gives a different flavor to Harry in how he reacts to the events of the show and how we interpret his character traits, while still being very inherently Harry Osborn. Harry is jealous of Peter, he loves him dearly, but there’s always this ember of bitter envy ready to burst into anger whenever the plot creates friction between them. This is one of the defining traits of their relationship and in most versions it’s not hard to understand why. Peter has what Harry wants. He’s intelligent, he has potential, and most importantly he’s loved. Peter is the son Harry knows Norman wishes he had, and that creates a wedge between them. Marvel’s Spider-Man changes this dynamic. Harry can easily stand toe-to-toe with Peter in terms of intelligence, and in fact they often work together to create things or solutions Peter couldn’t have come up with on his own. That initial wedge between them isn’t there, creating a very endearing and loving friendship that we know is doomed to sour because it isn’t enough. MSM Harry could be the person Norman wants him to be, and that places the full weight of his father’s impossibly high expectations on his shoulders, always within reach but never quite achievable. So it makes a lot more sense why Peter initially has a low guard towards Norman (as opposed to some other series where Peter seems oddly dismissive of Harry’s justified complaints) and Harry’s own steadfast loyalty to his father. On the surface Norman seems like a perfectly loving parent, he encourages his son, he created an entire school for him when he was wrongfully accused of sabotage, it’s only when you start to dig deeper into their relationship that you see the subtle manipulations and the issues Harry has from constantly chasing his father’s approval. This creates a Harry who is desperate for validation and extremely sensitive to rejection, which colors his relationship with Peter throughout the show. I’m still mad he got nerfed in the second and third seasons because Disney is homophobic. TLDR: I may be biased ... Infinity/10

MCU:

Where is he? Who knows? Man missing in action.  ?????/10

[impalementation]

Do you have any recommendations on Carl Jung's philosophy, like some sort of a reading guide? I tried to get into Jung's lexicon but I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of context and the book is just throwing terms at me. I considered starting man and his symbols, but apparently it's his last published work.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been using any reading guides myself. So my response probably won’t be super helpful here. Personally, since I can’t know what books the writers of Buffy might have read as part of their research for the show, my own research for my videos has mostly been focused on reading Jung’s most famous works. More specifically, I’ve mostly been drawing from Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Since if I imagine myself going to the library to do some mythological research in the late 90′s, that and Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces are probably two of the first books I’d pick up. Wikipedia was helpful at first, but I’ve been avoiding it lately, due to the fact that Wikipedia didn’t exist until 2001. And that instinct has been validated, since I’ve noticed way more connections to the show since I started on Archetypes.

Man and His Symbols was written to be accessible to a wide readership, so I get that seeming like a good place to start. Though from having read most of it recently, I’m not actually sure it would be the best starting place if you’re interested in reading Jung to understand Buffy rather than for its own sake. Personally, I didn’t find it any more or less accessible than any of his other writing. And although I noticed a lot of connections to the show, it wasn’t as dense with them as Archetypes. It’s probably as good of a place to start as any, but not really a replacement for reading more of his work. 

Jung: A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Stevens might work for what you’re looking for. Though I feel like I need to warn that it contains a fairly dismissive, anti-medicalist attitude towards psychiatric treatment (basically, that drugs etc are a band-aid that don’t fix people’s real problem), which isn’t actually a feature of Jung’s writing. It’s the author’s own attitude. Jung mostly just doesn’t talk about medical approaches--not really surprising, since he was writing in the 1960′s, and most medical approaches at that time were pretty extreme, and mostly only suited towards people with serious problems. Jung’s writing is more of a philosophy of mind. He does think his philosophy has implications for therapeutic treatment, and talks plenty about that, but the philosophy also exists outside of that context. His philosophy, to me, is more suited to the questions you ask about the mind regardless of how it’s been medically treated. Questions that don’t really (yet) have empirical answers. Questions like, what is consciousness? What are symbols and why do our brains make them? In a lot of ways, Jung’s writing might actually be closer to art philosophy than psychology. Since art is a product of the mind and inspires a lot of the same questions: Why do we make these things? What do they mean?

I also feel like I need to state for the record, since I’ve gotten a bunch of asks about Jung stuff lately, that Buffy was obviously not just derived from Jung. And also was not just playing him straight. Especially with regards to stuff like the anima and animus (which in Jung’s writing takes a much more binary approach to gender, again not surprisingly since he was writing in the 1960′s). Buffy was also derived from things like existentialist philosophy, pop culture, movies, comics, and more. It was also the product of original creative minds doing their own thing. I do think that his ideas likely had a significant influence and that that influence has not been very well-understood by most viewers to date. But there are also plenty of other things to talk about with regards to the show. Part of the beauty of Buffy having an intertextual relationship to mythology, is that in a lot of ways you don’t actually need to know its mythological basis to understand the show. It’s obviously fun for me to understand this stuff from an analytical perspective, and fun for me to articulate it so that other people can potentially appreciate it more deeply. But the nice thing about myths is that they appeal to really simple, intuitive symbolism. It’s something I’ve always appreciated about the show. That for all that it has an interesting and complex literary level, at its basis it’s also telling a very simple, human story.

[thatcartoonnetworkblog]

Comic Review: Cartoon Network Presents #6

I said I was gonna do this, so let’s get this rolling!

Okay, so Cartoon Network Presents was among the first lineup of DC’s CN comics, alongside their Scooby-Doo book and The Flintstones and the Jetsons. Those are pretty self-explanatory, but CN Presents was meant to be a grab bag of the rest of their lineup, featuring favorites from the vast Hanna-Barbera library as well as some of their recent hits. At this point, I believe they were just doing Dexter’s Lab and Cow & Chicken, as Johnny Bravo’s first season was more or less written off as a failure at the time. But don’t worry, Johnny will have his day.

Okay, so confession time- this story is not new to me. Way back when, DC released a freebie comic which had stories from each of their three CN titles, and this was featured in there, alongside a short Scooby story where a stalker keeps on doning a costume to get closer to Daphne, and a Jetsons story where George is replaced by a robot version of himself. Needless to say, some serious memories came crawling back to me when I saw the cover.

Anyway, both of the stories featured in this issue are done by regulars in the comic industry, and I’ll bring up how apparent that is in a bit,

That said, I can see this story actually fit in an episode of Cow & Chicken, as it’s a cautionary tale that doesn’t go in the usual direction you’d expect, like many of David Feiss’ cartoons tend to do things. This starts off with Chicken littering, which goes against what his and Cow’s teacher taught them in school. Chicken, as per usual, is apathetic to his loud teacher’s learnings, but he changes his tune when Cow mentions that bringing in metal can bring you some change,

Needless to say, Chicken has some ideas, and he starts scourging around town. There’s a slight detour when he learns that you only receive payments from going to the trash collector directly, but it gives him incentive to have Flem and Earl help him out.

Alongside a dubious reading of Malcolm X’s philosophy.

The three of them find enough metal to hopefully make them a little richer, and they’re greeted at the trash heep by a weird looking Cerberus creature, and guess who they belong to!

Yeah, it’s the Red Guy. It’s not a Cow & Chicken segment without him, is it? 

I had a better screenshot of his appearance, but it came out weird and I don’t feel like taking another, so let’s skip to this part where Chicken is caught cheating the scale, and is about to be rightfully punished along with Flem and Earl. Not by death, but by filling up the Red Guy’s furnace, which is actually pretty fair.

But have no fear, Supercow is on the way to come save the day! This comic even translates her dialogue for us, which the show never did. 

It ends with her beating the shit out of Cerberus and the Red Guy, even though Chicken deserves his punishment. Flem and Earl, not so much.

It’s a fun enough story, and it does seem like a perfect fit for the show. The dialogue fits right in with the show.

Even Flem’s awkward, vaguely racist broken English. I’m not touching that one...

The art style is a little off, though, looking more like a regular DC comic than an episode of Cow & Chicken.

I mean, it looks like Chicken, but doesn’t the penciling look closer to an issue of Robin at the time instead of something? But it’s a minor complaint, as it’s still a fun read.

The b story is new to me, with a Quick Draw McGraw story. It starts off pretty ordinary, as El Kabong OLE’s himself to save the day. Er, not that ordinary, as El Kabong is a bit of a klutz and usually needs Baba Looey’s help, but it’s okay, something’s about to change.

It turns out that El Kabong’s identity may be liable for copyright infringement, as there’s a Canadian crime fighter known as Le Kabong.

We meet him here, and I believe he’s meant to be Loopy de Loop, but he looks more like Hokey Wolf... or maybe Mr. Jinx. Hanna-Barbeta made some nice-looking characters, but they get pretty samey.

Anyway, his agency was the one who ordered a cease and desist to El Kabong, while his French Canadian doppelganger refuses to follow suit, considering it unheroic. Until it’s discovered that someone kidnapped the local hockey team, and he takes action... so I guess he blames the devil we know? That isn’t really explained, as the next panel shows Quick Straw accepting a battle of the Kabongs.

So we’re about to get a WWE (or I guess WWF. Or maybe WCW?) match, until a new challenger approaches, with a German vigilante jumping in.

And then many more. This switches from wrestling to Super Smash Bros to a full on battle royale of the localized knock-offs. Which I won’t lie, it’s a pretty funny idea.

Luckily, what’s a Kabong without a trusty sidekick to save the day? A few of them attempt to team up to find a way to put a stop to this, including one who looks like Boo Boo with Yogi’s hat and Johnny Bravo’s glasses.

So it ends with the Kabong from Mars (no Spiders) threatening all of the puny humans to stop their shenanigans, and go back to their duties. Which hey, it works! And the story ends with Quick Draw attempting to turn the ten million pesos El Kabong received at the beginning from saving the day into cash. Except pesos are basically useless, which is funny haha right?

This reads like a Hanna-Barbera writer from the 90′s attempting to write a classic character in the present day, and mostly works alright. This does show off one problem with Quick Draw though, that its take on Hispanic culture during the period of the Wild West is problematic. Baba Looey for instance has an exaggerated voice, and he probably needs an overhaul to work today (how did that work in Jellystone btw? I still need to see it). And unfortunately, this point in the late 90′s isn’t all that much more sympathetic to Hispanic culture, as their take mostly stays the same.

But away from that, it’s pretty funny. I do really like Quick Draw when it focuses on how pathetic he is as a supposed hero, either with or without the El Kabong persona.

But I wouldn’t have known if this was in if I didn’t pick up the book. I do understand why Cow & Chicken was the main attraction- *insert Malcolm in the Middle “future is now, old man” img here*- but part of the appeal of Cartoon Network at the time was the mix of old and new school. It wasn’t uncommon to see a classic like Quick Draw next to a modern fav like Cow & Chicken.

But oh well, let’s finish this up. The letters column features a 12 year old offering some of his cartoon ideas- I hope John made it; another boy named John who offers a cute drawing of Space Ghost, and asks about Jan, Jase, and Blip, while insulting the latter, which the editor is not here for; and another boy asking if there are plans for stories featuring 2 Stupid Dogs or Secret Squirrel, as well as hopes for a Cow & Chicken comic. The editor shoots down 2 Stupid Dogs happening, and to be fair, I don’t believe that ever happens. Classic cartoons from 40 years earlier? Sure. Something that ended about five years earlier? Old news. But I do believe Secret Squirrel does show up at some point.

The editor then bemoans how no girls brought in letters this month, and offers a preview of the next issue, which involves Wacky Races. And guess what, I have that one too!

The issue proper ends with an editorial about the importance of recycling, which is fine and all, but my reaction to reading this was “blahblahblah put on more cartoons”

Not bad! Oh, and one more thing of note.

I know, I know, they’re the enemy, and I was all over CN at this point, but I have memories of this promotion. Even though I believe it was long over at this point, and Alex Mack should have aired its last episodes before this issue hit stands. 

Here’s an ad! And now it’s in your head. Sorry/you’re welcome!

[plounce]

do u have any reccomendations for how to read only comics involving rictor and shatterstar?? i used to be into marvel comics so i am immune to the usual comic shenanigans but i would like to learn more about these boys

here is a guide to reading xmen comics for rictor and shatterstar, my favorite canon comics couple! they were the first on-panel gay kiss in a marvel comic! they’re very special to me!

OKAY SO... ok. for anyone else using this, here’s a standard disclaimer that obviously there’s gonna be a lot in these that just absolutely sucks because 1. the 90s, 2. comics are an extremely cishet white male dominated industry. i do not vouch for everything written in these comics, but i think the gaycoding that eventually gets canonized is worth wading through a lot of stupid bullshit and very ugly art.

quick backstory on these two: rictor is a mexican teenager who was kidnapped by an anti-mutant terrorist group and was rescued by x-factor (the original 5). he hung around their auxiliary teen group the x-terminators for most of x-factor, being a delightful little punk (wearing a sleeveless leather vest a lot of the time!) and hanging out with boom-boom (who i love) and then got put into the new mutants for a very short time (where he had a thing with rahne/wolfsbane), before it was dissolved and transformed into x-force when rob liefeld took over the title. rictor hates team leader 90sdude cable because he thinks cable killed his dad in front of him. he tends to be the snarky asshole on the team.

the first part of this article has a lot of little rictor moments i’m not covering here. if you want the full rictor experience, check out x-factor (1986) and !x-terminators! x-factor starts very slowly but it picks up and improves when the simonsons take the helm.

rictor left the team. shatterstar was introduced by liefeld - he’s an Emotionless Warrior Guy Who Loves To Fight from mojoworld (a planet run by a despot who produces tv. it’s Commentary), where he was forced to be a gladiator from birth and doesn’t know a lot of earth customs and doesn’t have emotions (or rather, he represses them). 

x-force (1991) feel free to read through all of it, but in case you just want to skip to these two, all of these issues have one or two good little Moments - just do some skimming. i tend to focus more on rictor than star in this era because star is made more interesting than Emotionless Warrior Guy by butting up against rictor:

13-16 (rictor rejoins his old new mutants friends)

19, 21-26 (the first phase of their relationship where they don’t really get along. in one of these issues rictor stares at star’s ass. big moment of star being autism-coded in here too)

29-30 (rictor drives shatterstar around and they seem to get along better, you get to learn a bit about star’s past, adam-x the x-treme is there)

32-33 (just some little moments of them hanging out, a couple good rictor lines)

34 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor backstory issue! AND this has the first big Subtext moment: shatterstar reveals he learned spanish from tv so he and rictor can have “conversations of a highly -- personal nature” HELLO?)

35 (some little moments where you can see star and rictor are now Friends and star is affected by that friendship)

39-40 (more good friendship - rictor asks if star has been watching dating shows and they just seem close. rictor also has gotten a haircut! we learn shatterstar’s mojoworld designation! they ride some motorcycles!)

43 (VERY IMPORTANT - the two go to a club. rictor tells star he’s a virgin then asks him if he has a dick. i am not kidding this literally happens. star learns what sexual attraction feels like and says ‘i don’t know what emotions im supposed to attach to that’, and rictor tells him he’ll help him learn.)

44 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor leaves the team because he doesn’t want to have the team communicate telepathically (VERY interesting for a character who is eventually revealed to have been a closeted gay man). shatterstar begs him not to leave - “you’re my best and only friend.” rictor tells him that if he ever needs him, he’ll come back.)

cable (1993) #22 (follows up directly on rictor leaving the team - star accompanies rictor to the airport and has a lot of Feelings and has great hair. “julio. one last time. please, change your mind. what am i going to do without you?” oh so you’re dependent on your best friend who you’re in love with? oh?)

45, 47-48 (star’s weird biology, star brings up rictor as his emotional touchstone in a situation where he isn’t relevant at all. also, a plotline where tabby gets treated terribly by her friends and the narrative!)

49 (VERY IMPORTANT - star wanders around at night wondering why rictor hasn’t contacted him yet. he goes to the club he and rictor went to in #43 and turns down a girl who hits on him. he thinks “i miss julio...” (in an earlier issue, rictor tells cable not to call him by his first name - “only my mom calls me that”), then beats up some homophobes in an alley. I AM NOT KIDDING.)

51-52 (51 has more weird star biology. 52 has two pages of star and james talking that is a nice look at star’s developing emotional state - the rest of 52 is a fight with one of marvel’s extremely fatphobic villains, just a warning to skip the rest of it. although the letter page of 52 has someone go HEY ARE RICTOR AND SHATTERSTAR IN LOVE? thank you roeland looman from the netherlands)

54-56 (the start of shatterstar’s weird bad benjamin russell backstory that is quickly forgotten, disregarded, and uncared about by everybody. BUT in 54, there is some extremely loud subtext where star’s feelings for rictor are explicitly compared to a het romance subplot!)

58 (star is very chill and flamboyant for like two pages, it’s great)

59-61 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor returns because star Needs him in the midst of his identity crisis!! it’s so joyful and sweet for them both, and the subtext is so LOUD here - there’s just. so much going on, i won’t describe it all, but it’s very good content and their emotionally intimate relationship is very apparent - really excellent gaycoding. the weird shatterstar backstory wraps up circuitously and to no great effect, but the art in the last issue is very nice, and rictor’s plain and uncomplicated concern for star is great.)

63-65 (some little moments - shatterstar and rictor time travel and beat up some nazis, star has a lovely conversation with siryn,)

x-force/cable ‘97 (the team goes to asgard! the important thing is that star says some goofy “ah... warriors...” things, and then rictor teases star for liking delivery pizza. it’s very charming)

67 (they hang out with tabby in a van. shatterstar has pigtails!)

70 (VERY IMPORTANT - rictor and shatterstar exit the team together to go take down rictor’s crime family in mexico! they seem very devoted to each other. shatterstar’s hair is all the way down!)

post leaving x-force:

76 (VERY IMPORTANT - ricstar return for one issue - rictor gets held captive to force shatterstar to fight domino!)

x-force annual 1999 (VERY IMPORTANT - ricstar get their own story about what they’re doing in mexico! shatterstar has an ugly little goatee, but rictor looks great! they choose to share a room rather than sleep separately and then it kind of feels like they shared a bed! rictor has learned star’s alien language! they genuinely just seem so close and comfortable with each other, it’s incredible.) (if you’re using RTO, it’s within the rest of xforce’s issues)

they’re both in comics limbo for the first half of the 00s besides a couple random flavorless appearances. shatterstar at some point goes back to mojoworld to help with the war against mojo. then we hit peter david’s x-factor run in 2006, known as x-factor investigations (xfi). this directly follows the “house of m” event - what matters is that the vast majority of mutants have been depowered by the scarlet witch. rictor is one of them.

rictor is a main character of the team from the first issue (the series opens with him about to attempt suicide), so if you wanna read the run you can start from the beginning. x-factor is... well, there are worse-written comics. it’s an okay read, but i find PAD’s writing insufferable a lot of the time (he writes multiple man as a pretty blatant self insert, and literally every girl on the team wants to fuck him at some point or another). i read the whole thing and it’s decent comics, but you might want to skip to the ricstar.

PAD canonizes ricstar, which is great! but unfortunately: 1. he writes star as  “slutty bisexual just can’t stop wanting to fuck people besides his partner who is uncomfortable with that!”, which is biphobic and sucks hugely, especially since it feels so different from xforce original shatterstar (see this post). rictor also just seems so annoyed with him all the time, which also sucks - they’re best friends!! let rictor like his boyfriend!!

anyway. if you choose not to read all of xfi, here are the ricstar highlights:

first issue of xfi for rictor's horrible mental state after m-day

14 (jamie implies that star would be jealous of rictor hanging out with quicksilver)

43, 45, 49 (star reappears!! he’s mindcontrolled, but it gets fixed, and he and rictor have the first ever on panel gay kiss at marvel!! yaaaay!! then they talk about their relationship a little)

after issue #50 it changes the numbering, so if you’re using RCO youll have to go to xfactor (1986) #200 to continue

200 (SHATTERSTAR FIGHTS THE THING!)

continue to read between here for star apparently being unable to stop kissing people. sigh. star sleeps with adult layla, which... sigh. whatever

207-208 (rictor and shatterstar semi-resolve the stupid biphobic plotline, resolve to work on their relationship, rahne discovers them (she and rictor had been sleeping together earlier in xfi), rahne is pregnant and homophobic, rahne and star fight, star is a delightful bitch)

209 (shatterstar on a pirate ship. that's it)

210 (rictor confirms that he is gay and it wasn’t legit when he’s been with women. there’s a moment where it's like "oh star makes rictor laugh" which is epic)

211-212 (star is said to be frustrated about rictor and rahne, rahne’s baby’s actual dad is revealed)

213 (rictor and rahne mostly resolve their shit)

216 (star and monet hang out, star thinks monet tells him to pee on rictor, spiderman is there)

217 (there’s a joke about the longstanding theory that longshot and star are related, monet is revealed as muslim in a very dumb way)

220 (star and rahne have a pretty nice conversation about their relationships to rictor and rahne’s faith. rictor does an offscreen internalized homophobia)

221 (star and rahne continue to hang out but it’s not as good as the previous issue.)

222 (oh my god, rictor cares about shatterstar being hurt! rahne owns up to how she kind of treated rictor like shit!)

pop over to avengers: the children’s crusade (a young avengers miniseries with good ol’ billy/teddy and i like it! but if you don’t want to read the whole thing - rictor and shatterstar appear in #6, and rictor is the first mutant to be repowered! they’re more tender with each other over their five page appearance than they are in xfi, so it’s a balm)

225-226 (PAD decides the first thing rictor does with his powers is be a scab [DEEP SIGH], rictor and shatterstar discuss rictor getting his powers back, the biphobic plotline is resolved again kind of in a very PAD-y way)

235-236 (shatterstar gets to be the main character of a mini arc. fights a mojo guy)

238 (ricstar go with rahne to help her find her son)

242 (they find her son. not as important imo)

248 (oh my god... they joke together :) they like being around each other :) also shatterstar goodboy moment. then in 249 rictor’s life is spared bc of shatterstar’s goodboy moment)

259 (SHATTERSTAR’S CRAZY CONVOLUTED BACKSTORY THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS TO HIS CHARACTER! YAHOO! and star has a cute little bob)

after xfi wraps up, there’s a couple years of limbo before they appear in secret warriors (2017) #2-3 (end of #2 and most of #3), which is a big crossover event or something. i don’t know, it’s an inhumans comic, and as an xmen person i am contractually obligated to roll my eyes at the inhumans. ricstar both have mustaches, star doesn’t speak, and rictor has the ugliest costume ever (green tracksuit with no socks??) (tabby also has a terrible costume). it’s just more inhumans trying to be a match to the xmen and utterly failing to not look & act like total jackasses (except, of course, for kamala and moon girl). rictor’s jokes that daisy johnson should get more original powers (she also has seismic powers - rictor predates her!), and then daisy blows up the xmen’s jet. while it’s in the air. this is a very neat summary of most mutant-inhuman relations.

now we enter the current era of “on again off again” relationship limbo.

rictor appears next in iceman (2017). in #9 he states that he and star have apparently broken up offscreen! and then he hits on bobby! sina grace is a cool person but this writing decision is so... aghhh. the next issue he and bobby go out on a date and he’s immediately like “yeah i only have my eyes on star”, so it seems to be more “it’s complicated” than “we’re broken up for good.” he sticks around to help out with a mission in #10-11.

they’re on again in new mutants: dead souls, where rictor is a part of the team and he’s hilarious and has so many great lines! shatterstar also makes a couple cameos throughout and they’re all super sweet! they seem very domestic and comfortable and happy, i love their dynamic in this. my favorite shatterstar panel ever is in #6, where he is making rictor pancakes and is only wearing an apron. please ignore all the big plot things that happen at the end of this, especially everything with karma. they are stupid, dumb, and do not matter.

related to nm:ds, rictor appears in multiple man #1 as part of that team and looks very very cute. and he isn’t whitewashed like in nm:ds!

off again in the shatterstar (2018) miniseries. i have a lot of mixed feelings about this because i LOVE all the rictor stuff, the first issue codes shatterstar as autistic in a very characterful way, it doesn’t whitewash rictor for once, and the covers are GORGEOUS! but it also attempts to retcon a ton of star’s emotional backstory AND arc set out in xforce, casting a black woman as his emotionally manipulative ex. also star is a landlord (ew). my advice with this one is to treat all the flashbacks as not-really-canon since they suck.

star appears in extermination (2018) #3-4 and gets mind-controlled into trying to kill the time-displaced teen o5 (timetraveling baby cable is trying to put them back where they came from), and the art looks great and i feel really bad for him. rictor makes a follow-up cameo in uncanny x-men (2019) #9-10, where you can see that he’s at the school in order to visit shatterstar since he’s with cecelia reyes. he then goes to fight nate grey/x-man, where he gets sucked into the age of x-man pocket universe/event.

around half the xmen get trapped and brainwashed in that pocket universe where there is no love or family, merely friendship and comradery (it’s an attempt by nate grey to ‘fix’ the xmen by getting rid of all the soap opera stuff - it’s a bit meta wrt how xmen are the soap opera superheroes). there are a couple different titles for this event: rictor appears in age of x-man: x-tremists #4-5. people have mixed feelings about this title due to the gay characters (northstar and iceman) enforcing no-romance laws that very intentionally parallel anti-gay laws from real life, but rictor is just chilling and running an illegal romance movies theatre, and then he gets drunk and then starts a riot and he’s just delightful in this.

everyone outside of the pocket universe thinks everyone who disappeared was killed. shatterstar is part of the team in x-force (2019) (there are two 2019 x-forces: this is vol 5, written by ed brisson) who are trying to track down young cable (baby cable, or “bable”), who killed older cable, who formed good old 90s xforce. boom-boom is the best part of this entire run, hands down. the art is expressive and interesting but i Hate how they draw warpath (the one time he’s free from comic book limbo!). shatterstar is in full “i only like fighting please let me fight i am a difficult asshole” mode, and talks about grieving rictor in #7 and #10. this is never really resolved since age of x-man is thrown over for hoxpox (BIG status quo changes & current era of xmen comics), but aside from my little ricstar heart i can’t really mind.

rictor is currently appearing as part of the team in excalibur (2019), and has been very... cozy... with apocalypse. at the time of writing (halloween 2020), it’s very heavily ambiguous what exactly their relationship is besides “intense” and i still have no clue what to think about it. he and star have been stated by the writer to be exes, but i also know tini howard is a ricstar fan so im holding out for good things! and it’s cool that rictor is getting a ton of focus and a lot of powering up. i remember reading xfi #1 and being amazed at how rictor described how soul-deep his earth powers were and wanting more of that, and excalibur has that for him in spades. (i am still withholding a lot of judgment wrt rictor’s writing in excalibur until i see how things pan out)

after reading to excalibur #12, switch over to x-factor (2020). read the first three issues because i love northstar and prodigy and rachel. please ignore a couple cringe comments towards poor daken. shatterstar appears in #3, trapped on mojoworld, getting traumatized, and breaking my heart as i write this. that last data page... free my boy!!!!

after x-factor #3, read x of swords: creation. more rictor and apocalypse being Close. after that, read x-factor #4 for apocalypse being very Attached to rictor, and then rictor looking very good and freshly resurrected. then continue reading excalibur. in may, x-factor is going back to mojoworld!!

that’s all there is so far! i think within the next year there will be even more content for us, and im very eager to get to that content. i will update this post as things come out.