#Fandom flanderization

[prying-pandora666]

Azula And The Tides: The Most Misread Scene in ATLA

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:

“The tides scene shows how irrational and spoiled Azula is! She got lucky! She endangered her whole crew for her pride!”

Or any similar variation.

The only problem is it’s not even remotely close to true. Let’s talk about that.

Here is the scene in question for reference:

Seems pretty straightforward, right? I mean, the Captain warned Azula about the tides and she put her ego before reason and made the crew take a huge risk. Horrible leadership and narcissism on her part, right?

Except for one little detail.

Azula was right.

Remember in “The Storm” when Zuko demands his ship chase after the Avatar and his crew warns him that it’s a fool’s errand because they’ll surely perish in the storm? Zuko stubbornly insists his goals are more important than anyone else’s lives, including his Uncle, and demands they drive recklessly into the storm. Sure enough, the crew nearly perishes in the storm, just as predicted, and Zuko is humbled enough to even rescue his Lieutenant that he disrespected earlier in the episode.

I bring this up so we understand how ATLA sets up and then demonstrates its narrative cause and effect. It’s rather straightforward as, after all, this is being written to be inteligible to children.

So what happens with Azula’s ship when she demands they dock right away despite her Captain’s warnings?

The ship docks without incident or injury.

In fact, they dock stealthily enough that neither Zuko nor Iroh see Azula coming and she’s able to surprise them. How would this be possible if the Captain had been correct in his assessment and Azula had just been acting out of ego?

I’ve seen some people argue that Azula just got lucky, like a drunk person driving home in a car. Not that I expect the average person to have extensive knowledge about docking a ship, but it demonstrates a severe gap in knowledge of the subject matter. When it comes to the tides you cannot half-ass it. Either the tides are in or they’re not. Either they’re high enough or they’re not.

And if they’re not, what happens? The rocks you can’t see beneath the waves will shred your ship apart and you will get stuck or outright sink. Best case scenario, if by an act of divine intervention you avoided all the rocks, you’re still screwed because your ship is going to get beached and tip over. Especially with a ship of that size!

You cannot squeak by here. Even with all of our tech and modern day ships, if you don’t respect the tides, you’re going to have a bad time. There is no avoiding this.

It boggles my mind why people assume Azula is the one in the wrong here and not the Captain who is later shown to be so incompetent that he spoils the mission. He was talking down to her and she rightfully put in his place. Cold and ruthless as her method may have been, she was making it clear that she is not to be talked down to or to have her authority questioned. An important skill for a young leader. Look at the comparison with Zuko who couldn’t wrangle his men. They were about to mutiny and would’ve if Iroh hadn’t intervened! Azula has no Iroh to fall back on. She has to manage on her own. And she does! In this same episode we are shown that Azula is a perfectionist who can’t tolerate a single hair out of place. But somehow we are supposed to believe she is also reckless and incompetent? I don’t think so.

We also know that Azula canonically attended the Royal Fire Academy for girls. This wasn’t some preppy finishing school, it was an intense military academy with survival training so deadly that Rangi described having to eat worse than rats to make it out alive. We know Azula excelled in school. Why wouldn’t she know something as basic as how to read the tides? That’s seafaring 101.

Combine that with the fact that all their best naval officers probably perished at the North Pole and it’s easy to glean that this Captain isn’t exactly their A-Team.

So what IS the point of this scene if not to show Azula being irrational, egotistical, or incompetent?

Remember our comparisons to Zuko? The point of this scene is to show how much better and scarier of a leader Azula is. It’s a simple way to convey to the audience that unlike Zuko, Azula *can* and *does* command like a true military leader. She is therefor a more frightening and dangerous opponent for our heroes to face than the already dangerous Prince they’ve been battling since the previous season.

I don’t think this misinterpretation would’ve ever spread so far if some fans weren’t dead set on trying to tear down Azula for the simple crime of being better at things than fan-favorite Zuko.

And I say this as someone who adores Zuko.

[avelera]

Man, there’s all these little beats in OFMD S2 1-3 where people keep EXPECTING Stede to be upset or horrified about Ed’s actions and then he’s just. Not. In a way that reminded me of how a lot of fanon kept softening Stede into someone who doesn’t swear and is horrified at Ed for setting those ships on fire when imo to my eyes he was horrified for Ed because Ed was still so clearly distressed about it.

- Zheng Yi Sao asks Stede how he’s doing now that he knows Ed did horrible things to his crew and there’s this beat and Stede just pivots to, oh yeah, sometimes Ed is troubled. Like it didn’t occur to him to be upset on the crew’s behalf he’s worried about Ed.

- Izzy keeps trying to spare Stede’s feelings and cover up Ed’s spiral, but Stede clocked what was going on with Ed immediately and wasn’t the least bit intimidated or bothered. The knives brought the room together. Of course Ed’s trying to burn the world down or die trying. Duh. And I genuinely don’t think the STUFF in the Revenge mattered even a fraction to Stede as much as the signs of Ed’s breakdown broke his heart. It’s just STUFF, who cares.

- Lucius had to SPECIFICALLY call out Stede for not being surprised or bothered by what happened to him. What Ed did. Stede has to almost consciously remind himself to express polite concern. He just doesn’t actually care, instinctively or automatically, about what happened to Lucius. Part of it is he blames himself more than Ed. Part of it is he just doesn’t care, Ed is the priority.

They’re little blink and you’ll miss it pauses in some cases. Micro-expressions. The absence of a reaction. But honestly, I will scream it to the end of time, Stede is not some nonviolent creampuff scared or upset by Ed’s evil ways. He wants to join Ed in the atrocities. The man ran away to become a pirate. He asked if Lucius was taking notes during a murderous raid.

Stede’s at least a little on some kind of whackadoodle pirate comedy neurodivergence spectrum to the point where he actually really actually struggles to empathize with people, even people he cares about!, if their feelings conflict with his hyperfixation (piracy) and the love of his life (Ed Teach). He’s always, ALWAYS going to pick Ed over Lucius or Izzy or his crew or even his own feelings, if the option is there. He will literally throw himself overboard to get to Ed’s side. No pause. No consideration of anyone else or even his own safety.

Stede sometimes seems to have to consciously remind himself things like, oh yeah, the crew, I need to see to them. Not because he’s heartless or doesn’t care, but because it takes a bit of conscious effort for him to see beyond the laser-focused spotlight of what and who he does care most about, he has to remind himself of social niceties and other people’s feelings (just see him running away in the first place!) when he gets an idea in his head. It’s as if he had to train himself to consciously care about some things other people care about and as a neurodivergent person myself, that felt very familiar in a comedically writ large sort of way. I’d even argue that’s where all his aristocratic social niceties come from. They were his guidebook for how to do things “right” in a world that otherwise made no sense to him outside his hyperfixations. He practiced being a person through the aristocratic training because it was all so foreign to him from the start, including caring, actually caring, about the needs of others. Not because he’s consciously evil or consciously a jerk. The instinct just isn’t there unless he practices at it until it becomes reflex to ask how others are doing, because on his own his brain just doesn’t really notice or care.

I just… hope the fandom notes and has as much FUN as I do noticing all the little moments where even people inside the story of OFMD expect Stede to act in a normal way and instead he remains unhinged, laser-focused on Ed.

Stede’s not just an Ed apologist, he truly doesn’t blame Ed for any of it. He blames only himself. He doesn’t always voice this but he really really only cares about anyone else including the crew as a DISTANT second and he has to consciously REMIND himself to do so. He is able to rally to take action, to care about their physical needs like safety during the rescue, but he still struggles, deeply struggles, to remember to show empathy in a non-performative way for anyone except his special person, Ed.

Stede’s not a creampuff, not a nice guy, not some emotionally or morally perfect angel. He has to consciously practice caring about literally anything else but what he wants to do and his special person. And to me that’s a thousand times more interesting than shoving him in a box labeled “the blond, pacifist do-gooder good guy” in their relationship.

[waterdeepthroat]

not to be That Person but y’all have got to learn to be more normal about bisexual and pansexual characters. this isn’t 2012. women romancing astarion is not the problem, nor is karlach “lesbian coded”. the real problem is y’all’s bi/panphobia stemming largely from homophobic stereotypes

[cheatsykoopa98]

https://youtu.be/8ZP3AXgdkq0

dad au queenie getting "angry" is just the secular version of this

Jax is sad because Queenie is the one who read him the stories

HELP ME BUY MY MEDS! COMMISSION ME FOR 1 DOLLAR OR DONATE TO MY PAYPAL

TADC DAD AU 41

read dad au | <<prev | next>>

[circotriste]

I think I blocked out a lot of it

[aiqingdemeimiao]

"i'm just left out! who am i going to marry?"

children of divorce [1927]

[flowerbloom-arts]

To be made an Other.

-

I was looking at an old post and a certain line still hits me so I decided to make it a dedicated comic.

[sh-0-w-1-sh]

ok what happened to Sonic and Tails? Why are they villains now?

That’s kinda of a secret for now mostly because I do wanna draw it out!! :) BUT I will say their whole villain arc is inspired by castlevania, The Daily bugle(Spider-man) and Noah Total Drama Fanfics (IM NOT EXPLAINING THIS ONE)

I’ll also add that this may be a villain AU- but I only see Tails as a villain and sonic as a cowardly henchman yk

Example:

[camzverse]

fnaf fans when its time to engage in mischaracterization

[prying-pandora666]

Aang the Segregationist?

I keep seeing this terrible take regarding Aang’s role in “The Promise” claiming he’s some xenophobic segregationist.

Guys, I know we have our grievances with the comics, but this one’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think?

No, Aang wasn’t pro-Harmony Restoration Movement because he hated the Fire Nation or because he was a bad friend to Zuko or because he was brainwashed or whatever other arguments I’ve seen.

It’s because he’s the last survivor of a genocide. As he’s coming into his mid-teens, he’s starting to grasp the depths of what he’s truly lost in a way his 12 year old self couldn’t. He’s desperate to cling to his culture before it’s lost forever, and his fears are well founded! Air Nomad culture could well die out with him.

That’s why we get the plot point with the Avatar Aang fan club. They inadvertently offend Aang by appropriating and misapplying his culture (however well intentioned) and this triggers Aang’s fears of how his culture is being lost. All that will be remembered is a watered-down caricature.

He flat-out says as much to Katara! Saying that the reason the Nations need to be divided is because the stronger Nations will always dominate the weaker nations either through conquest or imposing their culture. Aang is afraid directly as a result of the terrible trauma he’s suffered.

Time-stamped so you can see for yourself:

To try to paint Aang as some kind of xenophobic segregationist is a pretty terrible reading of the text. Especially when the point of the story is that Aang learns he was wrong to try to force the colonies to separate, and that he can better preserve his culture by teaching it to others while he lives rather than keeping it away where no one can potentially corrupt it.

Let’s also not forget he was being advised by Roku, who was also deeply impacted by the genocide and war that followed his failure to stop Sozin. Of course Roku is taking a hard stance! He tried to be reasonable and diplomatic in his time and it led to the 100 year war and the loss of the Air Nomads!

Aang is 14 tops. He’s trying to make sense of an unfathomable atrocity that was committed against his people while the whole world looks to him to mend the rifts of a bloody 100 years of conflict.

To ignore how that’s impacted him just so you can paint him as a bad guy relative to Zuko or whatever is not only a pretty lousy reading of the text, it shows a complete disregard for a horror that, tragically, does happen in the real world too.

[peggingeddiediaz]

Complaining because we're happy about buck finally dating the perfect guy is something… and comparing Tommy to Taylor, please

I really am trying to not be as petty as I can be.

I'll say it again, I actually like Buck and Tommy dating, I like canon bucktommy but the fanon bucktommy fans have made the ship so generic in record time, it's getting insufferable seeing posts about them.

Also, let's not kid ourselves and pretend that the insane fan support for Tommy/Lou that elevates the character to "perfect love interest" in just 2 episodes, is not largely unrelated to him being a hot attractive white man. (I still remember some of those bucktommy fans calling Tommy a Walmart version of Buck when the Tommy/Eddie speculation was a hot topic, and now look at them…) I do admit that both Buck and Tommy look very similar at times🤭

Tommy is not perfect, in fact that 1st date was really uncomfortable to watch and not only because of Buck.

1st: The fact that Tommy knew that Buck wasn't out and that this is literally his 1st date with a man, who had his 1st kiss some days before, which is the reason why Tommy picked a really out of the way restaurant for the date, but still he made a "funny" comment about closet spaces to Eddie, who he's not out to, was a choice. Specially when Tommy knows first hand how hard it is to come out to your friends.

2nd: The fact that not only did he not tell Buck about cutting the date short before leaving the restaurant, but that he called himself an Uber to go home and left him there on the sidewalk?? (Confirmation that Buck drove them there is nice though, passenger princess Tommy is canon 🤭)

3rd: For someone who knows Buck might not be ready to date anyone right now, saying yes to a 2nd date, after the disaster that 1st one turned out to be, and as a guest to his sister's wedding is a little insane.

I can imagine the vitriol and innumerable call out posts had Tommy been a female love interest. Aside from those points, is also deliciously ironic how fanon buddie is the way it is because fans were "tired" of the: bigger guy means he's a top and the smaller one is the bottom dynamic, but suddenly everyone is salivating at it now with bucktommy. Which again, it wouldn't be such a problem if it didn't devolve into stereotypes, just like in fanon buddie.

The one thing both ships have in common is that Buck is never allowed to be a character but just the "your name" tag, stereotypical bottom, infantilized and woobified to the point he's barely recognizable.

I like canon bucktommy and canon buddie (or their potential canon given Buck and Eddie's personalities, and how they are when dating other people), their fanon versions though, where they are stereotypes firsts and characters second? not so much.

In conclusion, I like Tommy and his potential, but he needs a lot of development to be considered a character at all (getting told he's cool is not character building) and awkward dates don't count either (specially when the same benefit is never given to the female love interests).

[twothpaste]

🔥 Kumatora!

Kumatora is so much deeper than she gets credit for. I've made a bunch of analysis posts on her before, apologies to folks who've read all those already, but I'll do a lightning round here. She is the youngest survivor of an apocalypse she'll never remember. She grew up raised amongst gender-nonconforming folks, then had feminine gender conformity suddenly thrust upon her - and hated every second of it. She was given a fabricated "princess" legacy, which she seems to feel she never lived up to anyways. She's both very tough and surprisingly sensitive - the former might even be a front to conceal the latter. She [ definitely ] knew the Masked Man was Claus, and chose not to say anything. She fights on knowing she's gonna lose her whole family, and that she's a part of making it happen. She's got no time to grieve, and she damn well knows it, in stark contrast to Lucas' relationship with loss. M3's writing follows up on very few of these threads, sure. But like! Man, there is so much going on with her!! The amount of stuff that goes unnoticed & unexplored with Kumatora (by both the game itself & the fandom) makes me go hog wild. Fascinating beautiful complex and excellent character. One of the very best in the series.

Bonus: She is definitely a teenager. Idk if this is an unpopular take or not, but I do see a lotta folks assume she's in her 20s during the game. Kid's sprite grows taller after the timeskip, other characters treat her like she's young, she acts like it too. There is no doubt in my mind she's like 16, 18 at the oldest. So when folks portray her as a full-fledged adult within the game's timeframe I'm always like ?? huhhh

[silverwhittlingknife]

Has Tim ever put Dick on a pedestal?

100% yes! This is basically Tim's backstory IMO. Prior to meeting Dick in Lonely Place of Dying, Tim's a kid who's got a distant, idealized, made-for-TV vision of Dick and Bruce - mostly Dick - and he sets out on a quest based entirely around that misperception.

Aaaand then he immediately crashes headfirst into reality, because the Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne he remembers from his childhood memories and daydreams are like this:

But it turns out that the actual real-life human people are a bit more, uh, cranky than Tim's glossy vision - things are tense and neither of them are super-happy to meet Tim:

And Tim has to rethink a bunch of his mistaken deductions as it slowly dawns on him that - far from being a plucky team - Dick and Bruce are actually not getting along at all:

And so Tim has to realize his whole plan of "Dick has to be Robin again!!! That will fix everything!!! :)))))" was actually wrong, and based on a misunderstanding of Bruce and Dick's relationship. And having realized he was wrong, he immediately sets about trying to figure out what he’s failed to understand in the most intrusive way possible—by asking lots of nosy questions!

Actually-meeting-Dick is basically the end of Tim’s super-idealized vision of Dick. It's not a vision that can survive contact with an actual human being who's snapping at you. And kid!Tim is (I love him but) extremely pushy and annoying, and Dick's a prickly young adult who is not above getting annoyed, which means Dick snaps at him pretty regularly.

But Tim does continue to admire him.

So for their various interactions after Lonely Place of Dying, IMO "does Tim have Dick on a pedestal" is kind of a judgment call based on your assessment of Dick's relative strengths/virtues. What's unambiguous: Tim has a consistently higher opinion of Dick than Dick does of Dick, and they argue about it a lot.

I had way too many thoughts about this, so below the cut:

Comics where Dick and Tim have conversations along the lines of Dick: "I suck and I'm failing at everything." Tim: "That's not true!! Actually you're great and you're succeeding at the thing you think you're failing at!!"

So who's right - Dick or Tim?

Dick and Tim's high opinions/expectations of each other: the plusses and minuses

Comic examples

Here are a couple different variations on Tim thinking that Dick is great (often when Dick's less sure):

in Showcase, Tim thinks that Dick’s a way better teammate than Azrael, even as Dick’s thinking himself as a failure who let the Titans down; 

in Prodigal, Dick tells Tim a story about confronting Two-Face which to Dick symbolizes a moment of great failure and which Tim insists was a no-win situation where Dick did the best he could;

also in Prodigal, Dick’s despairing over how badly he thinks their encounter with Killer Croc went and meanwhile Tim thinks it went fine (after all, Dick listened to him and called an ambulance instead of beating up Croc!), and Tim tells Dick to lighten up and Dick talks about how he’s a failure; 

in Nightwing 6, Dick thinks he’s doing badly in Blüdhaven and he’s self-conscious about it and paranoid about what Tim might tell Bruce, and Tim insists that the fact that Dick’s being targeted means he’s succeeding and getting close instead of failing, and Dick retorts that this won’t be comforting if he winds up dead because getting close just isn’t good enough; 

also in Nightwing 6, Tim thinks Dick was a better Robin than Tim is, and Dick thinks he wasn’t that great and that Tim’s better;

post-Last Laugh, Tim’s insistent that Dick's being too hard on himself about attacking the Joker whereas Dick's really haunted by the experience and confides that it feels like he's discovered a terrible dark side of himself;

way later in Nightwing 110, Tim’s seeking Dick out and Dick’s trying to avoid him because he thinks he’s a bad person who’d be bad for Tim;

in BW: Murderer, Tim doesn’t trust Bruce absolutely, but in Red Robin, he does trust Dick absolutely (or at least, more than Tim trusts himself);

etc. etc. etc.

Who's right: Dick or Tim?

So, is Tim being too easy on Dick and looking at him with rose-colored glasses, and Dick’s harsher view of himself is the correct one; or is Dick a perfectionist who’s being too hard on himself, and Tim’s the one who’s actually seeing Dick’s strengths more clearly?  

I don’t think the comics really commit one way or another! These are moments of multiple-perspectives, where we notice that Tim has one attitude and Dick has another attitude and that tells us things about the characters, not moments that are meant to resolve to a simplistic “one person is Right and one person is Wrong.”  I think often you could argue that they're both right? So, like, if you wanted to take the approach of, "Tim's idolizing him but he's not actually as great as Tim thinks," I don't think the comics precisely contradict that interpretation.

... THAT SAID, look, I am a Dick Grayson fan at heart, and I tend to lean toward “Dick’s being too hard on himself.” 

Tim’s not oblivious to Dick’s flaws—he immediately figures out, for example, that Dick’s gonna attack the Joker, and rushes off to stop him; he just isn’t as judgmental about this moment as Dick is, and he doesn’t think it makes Dick an awful person forever.  The point is (Tim says later, practical-minded) that it was made right, and Dick shouldn’t beat himself up about it.  In Prodigal, Tim’s not unaware that their fight with Croc went badly; he’s just focused on how Dick’s morals and teamwork-centric attitude feel right to him in a way that Azrael’s didn’t, and look, Tim didn’t get shot even though he got shot at, and isn’t that the important thing?  Tim gets caught in the same ambush that Dick does in Nightwing 6; he just takes the glass-half-full attitude toward it while Dick takes the glass-half-empty attitude.  And so on.

Tim admires Dick, looks up to him, trusts him, interprets his flaws generously, and doesn’t think he’s a failure. And... this isn't quite in the comics, but it doesn't contradict them: I like to imagine Dick feeling like he's on a pedestal, and feeling kinda uncomfortable with Tim's admiration when he's forced to realize it exists, and feeling like he doesn't deserve it, and sometimes subconsciously braced for the other shoe to drop, convinced that Tim can't possibly really think this forever, that he's deluded somehow, and that eventually Tim will realize who Dick really is and get disillusioned and leave.

And I tend to think of Dick having this problem a bit with everyone in his life who thinks highly of him, but especially with Tim, because he doesn't feel like Tim's ever needed him or that he's done anything worth Tim's admiration. I feel like Dick - despite some insecurities - does know his own worth as a team leader, and he knows he was a good partner to Bruce, and he understands when he's helping people who are clearly floundering, like Damian and Rose. But all he's ever done for Tim is...hang out, and be nice. And he doesn't think Tim ever needed fixing or saving, and he vastly underestimates both the value of his own friendship in general and how much it's meant to Tim in particular. Not all the time, because later in their relationship when they've known each other for years I do think Dick does feel a bit more secure in that friendship and entitled to make demands based on it (and vice versa, for Tim). But I do imagine Dick periodically feeling like Tim lets him off the hook too easily, and thinks more highly of him than he should, and alternating between being grateful for it and uncomfortable with it.

But I would argue that Dick does deserve Tim’s admiration! 

Look, Dick's not a perfect person - no one is. He does screw up sometimes, and sometimes he's petty or jealous, and sometimes his temper gets the better of him. But he is pretty great! He's brave and thoughtful and kind and generous and caring. He takes his own grief and his own suffering and devotes himself to helping other people. And Tim sees that. Tim watches an orphaned kid crying on stage, and has nightmares about it - and later recognizes the hero in him. Tim stops Dick from beating the Joker to death, and he holds Dick back from strangling Hugo Strange, and he talks Dick down from two separate panic attacks, and he listens to Dick monologue about his various perceived failures, and he gets yelled at a lot when Dick's annoyed with him, and his takeaway from all of that is that he believes in Dick, and trusts Dick, and thinks he's a hero.

You could see that as Tim having him on a pedestal and refusing to acknowledge the ugly reality. But I tend to see it as Tim understanding that Dick's flaws and occasional missteps don't define who he is - the fact that Dick's human doesn't make him any less of a hero. Tim can see the hero that Dick can't always see in himself.

Dick and Tim have really high opinions of each other... for better or worse

Tim's not alone in having a high opinion of Dick - Dick thinks Tim's pretty great, too! Dick repeatedly compares himself to Tim and finds himself wanting, whether he's thinking that Tim's a better partner for Bruce, or having a fear toxin nightmare where Tim's a rival who's beating him out of a job, or deciding that Tim would never have let Blockbuster die (and that he'll be better off if Dick avoids him), or musing that Tim would be a better Batman. Dick calls Tim his equal and closest ally in Red Robin; Tim thinks Dick is "the best" in his origin story and basically never changes his mind.

I think nowadays we're sometimes pretty highly-attuned to the way that high expectations can be bad or oppressive, and... I have mixed feelings about this? On the one hand, it isn't untrue! Dick and Tim's mutual high opinions of each other, and correspondingly high expectations, are not an unmixed blessing! They 100% cause problems! Dick and Tim think highly of each other, and expect a lot from each other, and sometimes they're pushy or abrupt or demanding when they could stand to be more sensitive. And the iffy side of high expectations is something I find interesting, and I do think it's solidly canon-based - you see aspects of this in several of their comic conflicts - LPoD, Graduation Day, BftC, RR, etc.

But at the same time, it's complicated! I don't think you can fully untangle the higher expectations from "they rely on each other and have a lot of faith in each other." Love and trust are different things, and Dick and Tim care a whole lot about being trusted, not just about being loved.

I also think it's important that their belief in each other is often a gift rather than an inevitability: Dick and Tim choose to see each other in positive ways. Something they both do is after they have a conflict, they'll apply on a retrospective very positive gloss to whatever just happened. So e.g. Dick starts Resurrection mad at Tim, and ends it by declaring, "I let you make the choice... because I knew you'd make the right one." Tim spends most of Red Robin 1-12 mad at Dick, and ends it by declaring that he knew Dick would catch him because Dick's always there for him. And in both cases, we-the-readers are aware that they knew no such thing! But to me, that doesn't make these declarations meaningless - it makes them more meaningful. Their faith in each other is sometimes genuinely felt, and sometimes it's something they stubbornly brute-force into existence because they want to give that gift to each other.

And I mean... Tim did make the right choice. Dick was there when it really counted. Just because it isn't the whole truth doesn't mean it's not a truth.

Now, does this positivity also put some pressure on them? Absolutely! They're both people who are very upset by failure, so they tend to reassure each other by insisting that there was no failure, could never be failure, failure is impossible, even when they know perfectly well that's not true. They praise each other's skills as a love language, when what they mean is I love you no matter what. They talk about other people's needs but don't always acknowledge each other's. And it'd probably be healthier if they said instead, "Even if you'd made the wrong choice, it'd be okay, because it's okay to make the wrong choice sometimes," or "Even if you're not always there for me, that's okay, because no one can be there for someone else all the time."

And they do not say that, because Dick and Tim are relatively well-adjusted by Batfamily standards but that is a very low bar, and at the end of the day they're still deeply messed-up perfectionists who deal with their emotional problems by punching crime in the face.

But look, they're trying. And isn't that the important thing? <3

[bugswapau]

A part of me is glad the Bugsnax fandom isn’t very big because my worst nightmare is where Bugswap becomes WILDLY popular and everyone gets extremely Flanderized like this

[bugfail]

Lord Hater has ADHD (to me) but y'all aren't ready for that conversation