#...sorry to maintag but i think it needs to be said

[envymeshi]

I'll be real. The Dunmeshi fandom has a TERF problem.

Or at the very least, it has a problem of good-intentioned people reblogging terf rhetoric without giving it much thought.

Now, someone posting 'It's a shame how mlm content is more prevalent than wlw content in fandom, and that female characters keep getting overshadowed by male characters, and we need to analyze our internalized biases against women when engaging with fiction' is completely a-ok! I completely agree with this sentiment! However, stuff like 'mlm shippers only care about porn and don't even bother to analyse the characters they ship, meanwhile they overlook wlw ships with way more nuance, character, and depth' is terf shit! I'm sorry! We need to be able to spot 'men are inherently more sexual and disgusting than us pure women' out in the wild!

And no, I'm not just making people up to get mad at. There's a reason the people posting about the 'disgusting people sexualizing the female characters' have reccomended blogs that look like this.

[g1ngerbeer]

please don't give martha jones her own doctor that woman has had to go through ENOUGH. she survived an evil codependent qpr where she was always trying to save ten and he was always trying to save her and if she didn't stay he probably would have killed himself three episodes into series 3 and it quite literally ruined her whole life and i don't think she should have to have any responsibility for them anymore. that's not her job anymore she got out. 14 absolutely does need to go apologize to her properly and maybe hang out sometime if she's willing but i think giving her a doctor longterm would just be 1) bad for her and 2) entirely against the whole point of her arc. she already had to be the doctor's doctor all of series 3. she was always the one trying desperately to stop the mentally unstable bus driver from driving directly off a cliff. then she realized that doing that was ruining her fucking life so she got out. she is not going to want to get back in. maybe if they'd met when ten wasn't actively bleeding out emotionally speaking they could've had a dynamic more similar to him and donna and this sort of thing could have worked out but they didn't. so they don't.

[welcometogrouchland]

May I ask about your Jason Todd idea? <3

Hm, okay so. How to lay this out sensitively since I know it might be a tad controversial...

Prefacing by saying I'm not an expert on the minutias of Jason characterization. I like him when he appears, I think the battle for the cowl/Morrison era and some parts of modern era for him are Weird and Bad, but I'm not Jason scholar (for that I'd say maybe check out @/tumblingxelian and their great video essays), I'm just trying to think of what might be an interesting step forward for him.

First, the canon facts

Jason got lobotomized and has panic disorder on steroids. By the end of Gotham War (specifically when Jason was. Flying the batplane into the asteroid. God I can't believe that's the plot) he was finding it in himself to power through said panics

In Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #12, the joker gives Jason a "low dose" of joker venom, which has an ambiguous effect on Jason, allowing him to power through the fear (which joker explicitly states is still very much present, just not physically debilitating, like when Jason couldn't run over in either Catwoman #57 or #58, the one with the kid in the building) even though he'd been able to do that sans venom over in Gotham War, like I previously stated.

The effect of said joker venom seems to be lingering for now, minus the creepy grin side effect it gave Jason over in that man who stopped laughing issue, as seen in the latest batman issue (number is escaping me rn, #147??). He still has the stutter which is a shorthand for fear, he's drawn with fearful expressions by Jorge Jimenez, but he says that he's "working through it" thanks to the chemicals

This is both super interesting and kind of maddening as it doesn't completely remove the consequences of what happened in Gotham War, but is trying to sweep them under the rug and get back to business as usual. I, however, propose making said consequences front and center like a fashionable urn on a mantle piece:

Since it's never stated how exactly the joker venom works, and I think the current answer is "it works how the story needs it to" I've decided that because it's a low dose, it eventually wears off. And when it wears off, Jason's back to square one in terms of mental state. Ergo, if Jason doesn't want to live the rest of his life as quaking shivering husk of his former self...he's going to need more.

(read more for the meat of things)

So, Jason self medicates for a condition given to him by the father he has endlessly complicated feelings towards with a cure invented by a man who represents everything he hates in the world who once tried to take everything from him.

Which, insert poetic cinema gif here, I'm quite proud of myself for that one.

Anyway, there's a lot of directions you could take this. Personally I think it'd be interesting to explore Jason trying to get back into the drug trade like he did in UTRH (FULL TRANSPARENCY I HAVEN'T READ THE FULL COMIC, I KNOW BROADSTROKES BUT IM NOT GONNA TRY AND MAKE PARALLELS) as he tries to use the resources (production plants and other drug runners who can hook him up with samples of joker toxin/similar stuff you can probably find around Gotham) to manufacture his own cure that means never having to go back to the joker again. Maybe he ambushes a joker toxin chemical production plant to get his own supply, and then Jason uses this as his foothold back into that world.

This isn't necessarily me saying we should regress Jason alll the way back to UTRH, that was before his anti-hero era and I'm not willing to fully shoot him back into the past. I just think that's not how you tell good stories in a medium like comics. But it'd inherently be a little different just bc he's doing it for different, slightly more self motivated (depending on your take on villain Jason) reasons and the people around him would have a different reaction to it.

Anyway, all sorts of problems can arise! Depending on how you wanna characterize Jason (wayward son who longs to be back in the fold or black sheep who doesn't play by daddy's rules, etc) he can either a) try and hide this criminal enterprise from his giant family full of nosy detectives (good idea there jay) OR do it out in the open, trying to justify himself but still putting himself on the opposite side of the family again (not the law bc that boy hasn't been on the 'right' side of it since he died)

There's also the fact that Jason now needs to take something 24/7 in order to live his life. He essentially can't be without it, he's dependent on it, in fact he'd get sick without it despite any adverse effects it may have on him (which are guaranteed, I mean. No clinical trials)

I imagine it'd be easy to become addicted to it in some way.

And uh. This is the part where it works slightly better as a fanfic pitch than an actual comic pitch. Because as much as I think it'd be such an interesting beat for Jason's character considering his fraught history with addiction and drugs (looks away from that one urban legends story where he suggests terrorising addicts to get to the suppliers and bruce lectures him. The easiest way to make Mr "we don't sell drugs to children" sympathetic and you beefed it)

I also fully recognise that this is a sensitive topic that DC doesn't have the best track record with (although addicts aren't a monolith and feel a number of ways about addictions portrayals in comics) and that there's probably some pitfalls inherent in the premise, namely bc of Jason's background as an impoverished kid and his grey morality, and how those play into stereotypes of addicts. Addiction is already such a misunderstood and stigmatized condition that I imagine playing with it with an antihero might be enough to turn some people off. Addiction is not a moral failing and I'd hate to write it as a moral failing of Jason akin to his willingness to kill, etc.

But with all that said, I think that stereotypes are primarily harmful because of their shallowness. They inhibit understanding of groups labeled "other" by presenting them in simplistic ways that don't portray richness or complexity. And I think a truly good red hood comic could give both sympathy and complexity to Jason, even as an addict. If anything, Jason is a popular character (mostly) and there could be something nice about seeing a main character go through what you're going through, gritty details and all. YMMV (can we bring that back btw?) and it depends on execution. There's a lot of ways it could go wrong, but seeing as it just lives as a hypothetical rn, I think there's also a lot of ways it could go. I mean, not right, it's a downer story beat for Jason but it's mostly meant to be interesting and a vehicle for more stories as Jason navigates it, ya know?

Anyway, I have a lot of spiels littered in my notes app and discord DMs that elaborate on all this (how this could work as act 1 in a broader Jason story where his little operation goes to shit and he has to hit the road (jack) and maybe do some character development for better or worse. I'm a sucker and wanna say better- not squeaky clean better but. Yknow, finding himself to an extent. I recognise I'm a sap and a fool tho. Or how a new outlaws team could factor into either of those eras (since I do like Jason with an outlaws team. It gives him an excuse to exercise his compelling relationships and dynamics with other characters without having to constantly tip-toe around the elephant in the room whenever he's with the batfamily all the time. He just needs a good lineup) but that's all for another time

... though without elaborating on the vision in my head it kind of just sounds like my pitch is "Jason gets addicted to his hyper-anxiety medication" BUT I SWEAR ITS MORE THAN THAT.

It's like. If Jason has struggled as a character (and this is very subjective on my part so feel free to disagree) because he has compelling relationships with all of the batfamily, but also has compelling grey morality that makes it hard to capitalize on those relationships, without the conflict always coming to "Jason stop killing!" "Nuh uh!" OR just being ignored, and the main way writers have addressed this is via reboots instead of arcs...

Then giving Jason and the bats:

real, legitimate and fresh reason for jay to be mad at Bruce (taking their relationship of love with very little understanding to it's most dramatic conclusion)

give the family a real reason to want to bring him back into the fold (feel bad about the lobotomy and it would be pretty immoral to let Jason waste away slowly and painfully because of something Bruce did)

capitalize on all the ways Jason is sympathetic (bc the addiction is a natural lead into his backstory, which is one of his most sympathetic elements)

And the ways in which he's very out of step with the bats post-resurrection (I'd be mad asf too if i came back to life just for my dad to a) not avenge me and b) LOBOTOMIZE ME meanwhile the cunt ass clown giving me my meds is just lurking out there).

Idk it's not a sophisticated pitch as of this moment but I think a real chef (writer) could cook something w/ this

[jefferythejelly]

punz is the guard dog of yap city. btw

[regicidal-defenestration]

For something that had such a fun first series, the mid-series episodes of Fall of the House of Sunshine were so aggresively. mediocre

[mishkakagehishka]

Korka I'm really so sorry... I at least hope no one has come to hate on you

Don't worry!!! I only reblogged that post of yours bc i kept feeling bad and thinking "i should unblock them and talk to them", and it was difficult to remember that nothing good would come out of talking bc that bridge hasn't just been burnt, it's been disintegrated😅

It's alright, i don't think i need sympathy or anything like that, tbh i feel like they'd need it more. I said a few times that i didn't wanna make anything public bc i know there will be people who will harass them over it, and i'm not even sure if i'm right, but they've been maintagging triggering content and idk. I fear they've gotten nasty anons just because of that. Tho that's not my responsibility, i still feel bad ;;

[cupcraft]

I think personally, it’s not really enough to only tag maintagged posts with crit or discourse, because that’s obviously not the only way people see your posts. There’s been too many times now where I’ve been following a blog I really like and then a piece of discourse comes up and they suddenly have a very different opinion from me to the point that I’d prefer to just not hear about it, and when people ask them to tag it they refuse in a very rude way, saying that they didn’t maintag it so there shouldn’t be a problem, you should just unfollow if you don’t agree. But like, I really liked their opinions on other things! I want to keep following, since this is just one point we disagree on, and otherwise I really like what they post and reblog! But it’s happened multiple times now where I’ve just had to unfollow because they refused to tag it with anything at all, not even with like a lore discussion tag. I’m trying my best to curate my experience, but that becomes difficult when I can’t even rely on the filter to do its job properly. Obviously it’s within their right to refuse to tag things, but I feel like that attitude when it comes to tagging crit and discourse and neg is contributing a lot to how toxic the fandom feels and how toxic any given discourse feels

Hello anon! thanks for reaching out with this point. I did talk about this in my post but like i said i know there needs to be other solutions. I tag all my crit when i can but yeah no one is obligated to if its not maintagged.

Im sorry i dont have a solution for you by reading this so im replying in hopes it will open discussions for more solutions about this. because it is a bit complicated. thanks for feeling comfortable to reach out.