#HOMECOMING IS CINEMA!!!!!!!

[irondad-defensesquad]

after writing my thoughts on toomes, i also realized something.

the only time in the entire movie that we see him being a decent person, is when it's revealed that he's liz's dad. from the beginning, toomes is a murderer, an egocentric and dangerous dickhead, and that's the toomes - the vulture - that peter knows, that the entire audience knows. sure, there's that one hint when he holds a child's drawing of the avengers, but it's (purposely) hit or miss. after that, toomes is an actual heartless villain all the way through.

but here? the literal vulture is an ordinary dad and husband. and he acts like the dad with peter, making dad comments, not at all threatening. the vulture has a name, has a loving family, very much unlike the big scary monster that dropped peter from very high, and that has tried to kill him multiple times.

that's why the twist works! i NEVER expected it. literally no one in the theater expected it. in an audience reaction on youtube of homecoming, EVERYONE audibly gasps. it's just. oh my god!!!

at the same time the scene is eventually played for laughs, when peter first enters the house we're met with absolute silence. no music, not even a tense tune. there's nothing. peter has been here, but now? he feels like he's stepped in enemy territory (well, pretty much). peter is terrified, so much that he barely pays liz any mind until homecoming.

and when toomes solves the puzzle, he maintains the dad stance... while holding a gun. he still acts like a dad when peter finds him in the warehouse, and then he drops the whole building on him. and boom! that's adrian toomes for you.

honestly, i think he's one of the mcu's best villains, he's not one-dimensional at all. personally he's my favorite villain in the mcu spider-man franchise (we do not speak of no way home in this household shhhhh). but really, homecoming is my favorite movie, so i'm biased lmao.

[sillygirlcine]

[thediaryofabrokenenglishgirl]

Marisa Tomei's outfits in My Cousin Vinny (1992) dir. by Jonathan Lynn.

[eaktionsshaytan]

HOMECOMINGS, BY DIRK DE BRUYN

[deviiancetv]

Cinema Starview Presents Movies (2022 Edition)

Movies I’ve Watched + Scores:

Encanto // SCORE: 9.5/10 ⭐️

Kimi // SCORE: 7/10 ⭐️

Texas Chainsaw Massacre // SCORE: 3.5/10 ⭐️

A Madea Homecoming // SCORE: 5/10 ⭐️

Turning Red // SCORE: 9/10 ⭐️

Fresh // SCORE: 6.5/10 ⭐️

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 // SCORE: 8/10 ⭐️

Dr. Strange in The Multiverse of Madness // SCORE: 6/10 ⭐️

Belle // SCORE: 10/10 ⭐️

Everything Everywhere All at Once // SCORE: 6/10 ⭐️

Thor: Love & Thunder // SCORE: 4/10 ⭐️

The Sea Beast // SCORE: 7/10 ⭐️

Lightyear // SCORE: 6.5/10 ⭐️

Nope // SCORE: 8.5/10 ⭐️

Orphan: First Kill // SCORE: 3/10 ⭐️

Do Revenge // SCORE: 9.5/10 ⭐️

Werewolf by Night // SCORE: 5.5/10 ⭐️

Entergalactic // SCORE: 10/10 ⭐️

Wendell & Wild // SCORE: 7/10 ⭐️

Terrifier 2 // SCORE: 7/10 ⭐️

The School for Good & Evil // SCORE: 8/10 ⭐️

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever // SCORE: 9.5/10 ⭐️

Disenchanted // SCORE: 4/10 ⭐️

Black Adam // SCORE: 6.5/10 ⭐️

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio // SCORE: 9.5/10 ⭐️

Nanny // SCORE: 8/10 ⭐️

Glass Onion // SCORE: 8/10 ⭐️

[sourcinema]

geeking out about movies that make me feel things

So I just saw Top Gun: Maverick a couple of days ago for the first time, which is insane because it came out almost 2 months ago, but I just hadn't had time to go to the cinema. But whatever, that's not the point. After seeing it I just couldn't get it out of my had. Like literally. I was thinking about it non-stop, watching YouTube videos and I even dreamt about it. And it made me think about how can someone identify a good movie. What is even a good movie?

It's different for everyone but for me, the films that I think are the best, the ones I love the most are the ones that just get stuck in my head. I can' go and do anything without thinking about that good movie I just saw, days and weeks go by and I'm still thinking about that one movie, about that one scene. It occupies my every thought, my search history on every platform is that one movie and when it seems that I consumed every information there is, I've read every article, I've watched every video and interview I'm still hungry for more. And I know I can't be the only one.

My favorite movies are ones that make my want to start them over, moments after finishing them. And yes, they can be critically acclaimed film, like La La Land and The Worst Person In The World, or controversial ones, like Promising Young Woman, or old teen movies like 10 Things I Hate About You and Heathers. And I love the feeling I get every time I revisit these films.

And there are also the movies that doesn't make it on my favorite films list, but I still get this feeling the first and even the second time watching them. The last time I watched a movie in the cinema and made me want to go right back (not including Top Gun) was in 2017. I saw Spider-Man: Homecoming and I loved that movie so f*ing much. I don't know what it was, I can't explain it (maybe it was my 14 year old self who fell in love with Tom Holland the second it saw him on the big screen), but that movie made me the Marvel fan that I was for years. And I still kinda identify as such, even though in the last few years the only things they put out that I actually liked were WandaVision and Spider-Man: No Way Home and I'm pretty sure was because it literally is 2 hours of fan service.

But anyway, the thing is I like movies, especially ones that make me so invested that I forget my life because they consume my every thought, so I don't have to deal with my life.

[cinemaronin]

Homecoming (1984)

似水流年 Homecoming (1984)  directed by Yim Ho cinematography by Poon Hang-Sang

[egirl-vrissy]

every “marvels going bad” video starts off with how the infinity saga was good as if any of it was

[tazerweb]

Here we go again - mark your calendars

[sleepys-circus]

I keep seeing critics talking about the fnaf movie being poor but it literally isn't for them. I saw someone else saying the movie's a love letter to the fandom and i WHOLEHARTEDLY agree.

This is how i took it: We, the fans, are Anton Ego, the critic from Ratatouille; the ratatouille was special to us because it was our childhood. I hate ratatouille (the food), but to Anton Ego it was everything. Critics don't like the fnaf movie because they only have the movie as context, but to fans, the fnaf movie is everything and we love it even though it's a little cringey. In fact we love it BECAUSE it's cringey in some cases.

Like no new viewers would get the chica's magic rainbow part, or the MatPat reference, or the whole ongoing bit about Dream Theory sucking, or understand how hype the whole ending part was.

I was lucky to be in a cinema full of fnaf fans, and we were cheering and laughing, and screaming at the references. People got up when the movie ended and SAT BACK DOWN when the living tombstone came on. We shouted the letters of the code, and screamed when Matpat said his line. People clapped and cheered at the end, and people were crying at the parts where they were treating the animatronics with love and affection.

No critics would understand how much fans want to interact with the animatronics in a positive way, or understand how much importance the five seconds of its me on the mirror means in implications of the lore. They wouldn't understand because they haven't been waiting a good part of a decade to see this movie. They came, they saw, and that's it, it was a second of their life, but to us it was everything. This is our ratatouille, made to impress us, not the other people in the restaurant. This was our movie, a love letter to the fandom, not the critics.

I like the changes to the story, because it puts us back at square one. We're fumbling to rearrange lore and timelines. We have to rearrange names, and start with a blank slate, and it feels like a homecoming where to critics, it might feel a little messy.

We've been given a chance to start the journey all over again and i fucking love it so much. Because i'm an adult, and all of a sudden, i'm twelve years old again and we're trying to figure out if phone guy is chica, and struggling our way through whatever the fuck was happening in fnaf 3 to get the good ending. The critics don't get this.

They don't understand how hype the midnight motorists reference is, nor did they care about the references on the chalkboard. Or the code at the end, or the song choices, or the lore implications. They don't understand the sudden lore drop of william afton, or the way he's acting, but we do. They don't understand the vengeful spirit, but we do. Nothing is explained to the audience, because we don't need it to be explained.

This is our ratatouille, and we love the rats in the kitchen.

[teetlezhere]

RISE OF THE TMNT: Homecoming GAME REVIEW SO FAR:

The more I play the Rise of the TMNT game from china (for those who ask: I found it as an APK TMNT: Homecoming), the more I realize this is the game Nickelodeon should have given us from the very start.

The first picture reads Beta, but it's an old pic and they've made some upgrades as the newer version (or at least, the one I currently play) features Mikey.

It's kinda of a long review so, if you're interested, read under the cut:

Brief resume: China got to be a lucky bastard on Rise because not only they had the movie stream in cinemas, they also developed a game around it! I'm sad this game has been pretty much left obscure to the general public. I've only found out by accident on twitter months ago. So I've decided to try and play it to see if it's worth it.

In my opinion. Yes. It is worth it!

Sure, it took me a while to get this working, mostly because China put game restrictions of some kind and region-locked it, but today I've finally made it work correctly and it was all worth it!

The game has sooo much more than what Nickelodeon's games ever gave us! The amount of content and show references and Backgrounds for this game is insane!

It features different modes: Story, Player vs Player and Online Team play vs Boss fights.

Main Story mode follows season 1 and 2, with fights against baddies like Draxum, Big Mama, the Foot Brute and Foot lieutenant and minor villains like Hypno, Warren, Ghostbear, Meat Sweats, Repo Mantis, etc.

Beside story mode, the game features a PvP with it's own league rank system (I played a round as Leonardo against another Leonardo player and I won, lmao). There's also a feature to play as a team vs bosses. Basically, here you can team up with other players (again, I played as Leonardo and was paired with 2 Raph players vs the Purple Dragons. It was fun!).

April and Splinter are heavily featured as secondary characters and don't seem to be playable, but there are plenty of illustrations of them in-game.

Great news? We have Cassandra as a boss fight!

I've not spotted Casey II or Krangs so far, but I'm still on the first few levels and I'll keep an eye out.

All the turtles seem to be playable, with Leo being the first you get to play, followed by Raph. I've unlocked Mikey, though I can't read chinese for the life of me and I hope he'll stick around as playable in the future and not just momentarily. Donnie for now is still locked for me, and I've yet to understand if He's unlocked as a daily reward or not...

All turtle come with their own special slots for upgrades, and at least one for special cosmetics (Leo got some sick tech gauntlets, and Mikey gets a cool nifty cape like his future self for now).

There's also options for skin change and Outfits that include the Hamato Ninjas outfits from Insane in the Mama Train, Big busters suits and a few other like Pirate Leo's outfit and Red Reign Raph from Shell in a Cell.

For the rest, it's pretty much like the other games that include daily rewards and missions, objectives to clear, etc. It also features a three-option gacha system to obtain resources useful to upgrade gear, obtain rare items (blue, purple and gold usually rank from common to rare) and make the turtles stronger.

So yeah. Downloading and playing this is a bit of a hassle, but after cracking the code, it's a really cool game and I absolutely love it!

[jor-elthatendswell]

It's a well worn topic at this point but the imminent release of The Marvels has me thinking about how militaristic the Marvel Cinematic Universe is, with Monica Rambeau aka Photon, a habour patrol member in the comics, reimagined as a captain in the US Air Force.

She follows Hawkeye, who was changed from an argumentative former circus performer with a heart of gold (a character so staunchly against lethal force he once revoked his own wife's Avengers membership because she sort of, maybe, subconsciously allowed a villain to fall to his death) into a hard-nosed black ops assassin.

Sam Wilson/ Falcon made his celluloid debut as an army man with twin submachine guns attached to his wrists. It’s a far cry from his print counterpart’s introduction as a social worker by day who uses his skill at falconry to protect his neighbourhood.

If we allow the argument that modern cinema goers are accustomed to a sprinkling of realism to make their superheroes palatable (and it’s a strange argument really- why should realism be a desirable quality in summer blockbuster escapism?) then what actually constitutes “realism”.

Sure, a man who learnt uncanny skill with a bow and arrow growing up with a travelling show couldn’t possibly hold his own alongside Hulk or Thor in the real world (and, yes, there isn’t a Hulk or Thor in the real world; as I say, this is a strange argument), but if he learned those exact same skills in some kind of military context then that somehow passes the bar for realism? The sinister upshot is that these children’s heroes become more warlike just as, globally, they reach more children than ever before.

Increasing the realism of superhero stories only serves to make them problematic. DC Comics' Batman, who is the frequently subjected to “realistic” treatments, is the prime example. If, in real life, a billionaire tooled himself up with the best weapons and body armour money can buy and began dispensing violent “justice” with no accountability, then of course that wouldn’t be a good thing. If they wore a costume with pointy ears and started calling themselves “Batman” then of course we would question their sanity. But Batman isn’t real; it’s a story. Nobody thinks The Muppet Show advocates animal cruelty. Quite the opposite, if anything. ("Not unless they're watching it", as Waldolf once heckled) Yet if a filmmaker decides they’re going to make a “grounded and realistic” remake where Fozzy is played by a real live bear wearing a pork pie hat and spotty necktie, then that's a whole other story. Suspend your disbelief and superheroes are less like the police or army and more akin to volunteers and activists, doing what they can with what they have to improve the lives of those around them. Their actions take the form of crime fighting only because that’s what makes for exciting colourful adventure stories for children.

In the MCU, even Marvel’s poster boy, Spider-Man (another champion of non-lethal solutions, known for his compassion even to his enemies and who possesses an enduring appeal to young children) is given a literal sheen of the military-industrial complex in the form of “Stark Tech” armour, replete with military grade strike drones. Tony Stark even thought to equip his 15 year old protégé-cum-child soldier with an “Instant Kill Mode”. In a moment played for laughs in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man rejects his on-board AI's attempt to activate this feature but seems untroubled that such an option exists and, indeed, come Avengers: Infinity War, he voluntarily deploys it. It’s not clear if Spidey actually does kill any of his alien adversaries, but it seems reasonable to assume that one doesn’t say “Activate Instant Kill Mode” without the intention of ending lives. Fans are expected to smile or applaud as Spider-Man says these words, recognising the call-back to Homecoming, rather than find it a gross misrepresentation of Marvel’s most beloved character or an alarming depiction of a children’s favourite.

The MCU Avengers as a whole are a US government “initiative “. The reluctant superheroes need to be cajoled into putting their differences aside for the greater good by army top brass Nick Fury. In a tweak from the source material, the ‘H' in Fury's organisation, SHIELD, stands for ‘Homeland’, making SHIELD as explicitly American venture as opposed to it being ostensibly intergovernmental in the comics.

There is a comic book precedent for this military take on Earth's Mightiest Heroes in the form of The Ultimates, a 2002 series by the British team of writer Mark Millar and artist Bryan Hitch. The Ultimates ,however, was satire. Millar was an unreformed lefty of the old school – someone who has boasted of voting Brexit for left-wing reasons, someone who once appeared on Russia Today as a guest of George Galloway. The Ultimates took swings at the gung ho jingoism of post 9/11 America. Captain America's “Surrender!!?? You think this letter on my head stands for France?“ is not supposed to be a badass one-liner, but rather a parody of the kind of things US media outlets were saying as Jacques Chirac proved less keen than Tony Blair to follow George Bush in bringing gunboat diplomacy to the Middle East. As Millar commentated at the time:

“The Ultimates is completely different because it's a character-driven piece and (something only a few people have noticed) my attempt as a left-wing writer to tell stories about an essentially right-wing concept and cast. It's very much the Anti-Authority, if you will. Captain America and so on are fully-paid members of the US military machine and this means a very different book and approach from a gang of slightly arrogrant, left-wing, superhuman utopians like The Authority ".

Wildstorm Comics' The Authority, which both Millar and Hitch worked on (although not together), was a precursor to Ultimates, featuring a team of similarly “any means necessary” heroes, albeit with a left-wing bent. The Ultimates does have something of The Authority’s utopian streak; Nick Fury and Tony Stark genuinely want to make the world a better place for everyone. It’s very idealistic – what if the head of the military and the biggest tech billionaire actually had the people’s best interests at heart? – and arguably closer to true superhero ethos (basically “with great power there must also come great responsibility “) than those characters more pragmatic MCU equivalents.

Yet, as Millar's one time writing partner Grant Morrison (who actually ghost-wrote at least one issue of The Authority under Miller’s name) observed in Morrison’s major nonfiction work, Supergods, the likes of The Authority, The Ultimates and, by extension, the MCU represent a “capitulation” to the view “that it was really only force and violence that got things done and not patient diplomacy, and that only soldiers and very rich people had the world figured out”. If the MCU is realistic, then it’s a sad indictment of the real world where the heroes are the ones with the best tech, the best guns and no compunction about using them.

Regardless of intent, The Ultimates left a door at Marvel’s “House of Ideas” just enough ajar to allow a malign notion to creep in: “These soldier superheroes are pretty cool. What If they were like that all the time? Wouldn’t they be more popular then”?

Certainly the navy SEAL aesthetic Bryan Hitch brought to the costumes (replacing the colourful tights and capes with pouches, straps and body armour) was soon adopted by superhero tv and film productions even pre-MCU. In fact, Hawkeye's journey from carny to commando mirrors the changes in superhero attire. Most famously, Superman's appearance with the red “overpants” derives from that of circus strongmen, but seeing any photography of early to mid 20th century carnival and circus performers makes it clear the early superhero creators had them in mind when they first put pencil to paper.

In an interview (found in Marvel Spotlight: Captain America, published in 2009) Hitch related how he showed an initial Ultimates drawing of Captain America with a machine gun to Grant Morrison, which Morrison then ��described as the most obscene Captain America image [they’d] ever seen”. (NB: Morrison has since adopted gender neutral pronouns). Perhaps Morrison said this with glee, in on the joke with their friends, but in the years since, Cap with a gun became a common sight, even in family-friendly movies (where it was divorced from the irony of The Ultimates).

By a 2015 interview, Morrison lamented the fact that “the Avengers work for the government, and it's been like that since Mark [Millar] did The Ultimates” and said they were “bored with the idea that the best superheroes can represent is some aggressive version of the military. [...] They're supposed to be champions of the oppressed, they help ordinary people, they make things better for people. They don't prop up our grotesque, doddering culture of war and aggression”.

That same year Morrison introduced a new comic book superteam in the pages of The Multiversity. Pointedly the text likens this group, named “Justice Incarnate”, to a “cosmic neighbourhood watch” rather than any formal military or law-enforcement institution.

Millar himself reunited with his Authority collaborator Frank Quitely to create the comic Jupiter’s Legacy, which comes across in part as an apology for The Ultimates and all it begat. It concludes with the protagonists, Chloe Sampson and Eddie "Hutch" Hutchence taking up superhero mantles and promising not to make the moral compromises of their predecessors:

“No more bowing to authority and insitutions. No more deference to people in power”.

“There's a dignity in public service we mistook for old-fashioned, and a humility in having a secret identity, living among the people we protect.“

The Avengers, Marvel’s breakthrough billion dollar box office 2012 movie, by contrast, concludes with Iron Man dropping a nuclear bomb on the “Chitari”, an invading alien army and it seems likely this influenced Morrison’s comments on modern superhero stories.

In Supergods, Morrison

describes their childhood dread of nuclear weapons. The child of “ban the bomb” activists, the “gruesome hand-drawn images of how the world might look after a spirited thermonuclear missile exchange” which illustrated their parents anti-nuclear literature struck terror into the young Morrison. Therefore they seized upon superheroes as being an idea powerful enough to counteract – and overcome – the idea of the bomb.

“It’s not that I needed Superman to be “real,” I just needed him to be more real than the Idea of the Bomb that ravaged my dreams”.

Within the narrative of the movie, Iron Man takes the only option available to him to save New York. Destroying thousands of alien lives to save thousands of human ones. But The Avengers isn’t a documentary; the scriptwriters could have written a satisfying denouement which didn’t involve mass murder. They could at least have included some words of regret by the heroes over what it took to win, acknowledging that killing is not the ideal solution. Instead the Avengers trade banter and eat shawarma, collective conscious clear.

There is a moment in another Grant Morrison work, Final Crisis, which always brings the MCU to mind. In Final Crisis #3, drawn by JG Jones, (published in 2008, the same year the MCU began) “evil gods” from a higher plain of existence have been reincarnated on Earth. In order for the Justice League to counter this threat, a “draft for Superheroes” is implemented. Green Arrow (a Batman-a-like character who was subsequently reinvented to embody the countercultural sentiment of the late 1960s and has since served as the social conscious of the superhero set) responds to receiving his draft notice thusly:

“If anybody falls for this authoritarian, militaristic crap, it’ll prove I’m absolutely right about absolutely everything!... “

Cue the next page, where the drafted heroes have gathered en mass (including Green Arrow, impotently shaking his fist.)

Such an assemblage of characters in usually a triumphant moment in a summer "event" story, but here is framed as a sign that evil already has it’s hooks into reality. This world has fallen to the darkness and the superheroes who inhabit it are too morally compromised to realise it.

[light-lanterne]

random idea i just had:

a small offering @boycattj, @byelerss, @catboy-cabin, @conanssummerchild, @cosmobrain00, @dark-quill, @fenixashes, @fluffyfangirl, @holyvirgilscriptures, @foodiewithdahoodie, @hyperfixationcentralsvoid, @karenchildress @runninguplenorahills, @rotisseries, @saffirez, @willow-lark, @yearninginblue.

au where the party, nerds as they are, spend their afternoons in the school library reading novels and scientific journals, and playing a game of "who can find the weirdest trivia fact of the week". one day, as they are doing this, mike comes across a very unassuming notebook hidden amidst the oldest books in the library, the cover for which has three simple words written sloppily on its cover which read:

"do you dare?"

intrigued, mike opens the notebook and discovers a series of riddles and clues that has him running around the library and unveiling obscure novels and forgotten poetry books, each of them bringing him closer to crack the hidden code until, just in time before the library closes, he manages to uncover a rather confusing message:

"welcome to the hellfire club. you will find your first task inside your locker, first thing in the morning."

needless to say, he immediately discards it as absolute bullshit and goes on with his evening, saying goodbye to his friends and quickly forgetting about the affair as he heads home and busies himself with his homework.

however, he is immediately reminded of it all when he arrives at school the next morning, early for once, and finds a little note folded neatly atop his messy school books, the same handwriting as in the notebook staring him right in the face and he almost freaks out, for no one has his lock combination nor did he see anyone in the library other than his friends so there's no way anyone would've seen him figure out the code.

and yet there it is, and he kind of wants to scream, but he has to keep his composure lest he scares his arriving friends and gets in trouble with them for playing weird games without telling them about it.

thus, he hides the paper and decides to burn it as soon as he gets home, then opens it in the restroom during lunch for he is curious by nature and it certainly wouldn't hurt to just see what it has to say, right? it's only a piece of paper and he's completely and utterly alone here, so whoever's behind it can't possibly know if he read it or not,,, right ?

so he opens it, holds his breath for a moment, then reads it and sighs in relief as he notices it's nothing but a simple challenge:

"graffiti the bathroom stall."

a silly prank indeed. nothing mike hasn't done by himself quite a few times in the past, in fact, nor anything to freak out about considering it's a simple, harmless request.

so,,, mike decides to play along, if only so he can maybe figure out who is behind this and ask how they knew he'd cracked the code, how they figured out his locker combination, or what even is the hellfire club.

and at first, the challenges are rather innocuous: hide mrs. click's textbook before class, "misplace" the basketball's team storage key, put some roses in (will's) a classmate's locker without being spotted, free his neighbour's neglected dog and take it to a loving home, lock troy walsh's bike to a tree without him finding out.

then, they get a little more complicated: spend an entire day inside the cinema without paying a dime or getting kicked out, steal the chief of police's pen from his pocket, walk into a store's fitting room to try something then exit without paying while wearing the garment, make out sloppy with his male best friend in a broom closet during homecoming, take some of his parent's money and donate it to a cause they wouldn't support.

(make out with his best friend again during sunday's morning service at church, then escalate it a little more for extra points, if he dares)

little by little, mike gets lost in the game and soon he stops questioning the origin of the notes, or the increasing amorality of the requests, or how the one behind them always knows when he's succeeded. all he knows is that the notes have promised him a big reward should he complete fifty tasks successfully, and he's not about to give up now that he's come so far.

so he plays, and he becomes obsessed with winning, and it only occurs to him that something's terribly wrong when he reaches the fiftieth challenge and the note for his last task is left on his bedroom's desk, the black ink with which they'd all been written suddenly gone and replaced by red words.

"kill someone,"

his last challenge reads, and mike's much too involved to resist.

- the end -

(pretty sure this type of concept has a name, but i can't really remember it rn and i think the ending for that thing is far darker so let's leave it at this x.x also, feel free to imagine the type of funky business mike gets up to throughout the game; anything that would be "amoral" goes i suppose ~)

[sadiewayne]

i want to preface this with a few things

dick grayson is my favourite character. i am not here to slander him or talk bad about those who like him

fanon is what got me into dc. i have grown since and now have a substantial comic collection (at least for the few months i've been collecting). i still enjoy fanon but i am a canon person

with all of that said...

a pointless rant about dick grayson in fanon

sources listed at the bottom

this discourse surrounding dc, the batfam in particular, has really been irking my lately. i don't know why, it just has. i see so much around these characters and the way fans interact with each other here on hellsite and on tiktok (i avoid twitter like middle-aged cis white british dads avoid talking about their feelings) and i just wanna scream about it

the erasure of dick grayson's character

dick grayson isn't a himbo

this is particularly common in fanfictions given that the barrier of entry is non-existent but the idea that dick is a silly, ditzy, idiot that can't cook is arguably the complete opposite of his character

i have a feeling this idea stems from the nature of dick as nightwing, the cracking jokes whilst fighting, the appearance of not taking things seriously (when he in fact does, just not as outwardly as the likes of batman). this in and of itself is ridiculous given that a similar character, peter parker aka spider-man, also crack jokes and honestly is very similar to dick in the way he is as a hero, and yet, for the most part, is still taken seriously and isn't diminished to the same level that dick is

which could come down to public knowledge of the character

let's be honest, the majority of the public could tell you who peter parker is, have probably seen at least one live action iteration of the character, if not all 3 iconic versions (maguire, garfield, holland) most (and please forgive me for using generations) millenials and gen z can define their teen years based on which spider-man was coming out. which they went to the cinema to see. all live-action appearances are:

the amazing spider-man ('77-'79) played by nicholas hammond

spider-man (also japanese spider-man) ('78-'79) played by Shinji Tōdō

spider-man (1, 2, 3)('02, '04, '07) played by tobey maguire

the amazing spider-man (1, 2)('12, '14) played by andrew garfield

spider-man (homecoming, far from home, no way home)('17, '19, '21) played by tom holland

given that dick has just as many live action appearances, stretching back to before spider-man had even debuted in the comics:

the batman serial ('43) played by douglas croft

the batman and robin serial ('49) played by jonny duncan

batman ('66-'68) played by burt ward

batman forever ('95) and Batman & Robin ('97) played by chris o'donnell

titans ('18-'23) played by brenton thwaites

EDIT: in my excitement i never included the first comic appearances of either character. dick debuted on the 6th march 1940 in detective comics #38, peter debuted on 5th june 1962 in amazing fantasy #15

(i am not talking about animated appearances as for both peter and dick they are much less known to the general public than live action)

i'd say i was surprised to see the same number of appearances, but by comparing when the show/movie came out, you can see a clear difference

every live action spider-man project listed has occurred within the past 50 years, with the movies being in relatively consistent from 2002 onwards. dick grayson is more sporadic, 2 appearances in the 40s, again in the 60s, again in the 90s, and finally in the late 10s. no wonder he's less well known when you have to go back to the 90s for a movie version and even then it isn't really dick grayson (in terms of characterisation)

most people can tell you there's batman and robin, and maybe just maybe they can tell you robin is dick grayson, but that's about it. mention nightwing and they blank. and don't even try to tell someone that there's been more that one robin, it won't end well

i can hear people yelling "but dick is a sidekick and peter isn't"

yes, that is true, but dick hasn't been a sidekick since the early 80s, after he'd been around for over 4 decades. that's a pretty old sidekick. but yes, this does hold some merit but given that dick is a lot older it's interesting. and with the most recent live action appearance being titans, a show that spends the first 2 seasons exploring dick's journey from sidekick to standalone hero, it does pose some questions

that was a long tangent to basically say that an equivalent character in personality isn't erased so much in fanfiction because they have more recent and bigger exposure (probably)

also, random, but in my research i came across this list of best teen heroes and look

fig 1. image showing spider-man and dick grayson in positions 1 and 2 relatively in a fan voted list of best teen heroes, spider-man having 3446 votes and dick grayson having 3191 votes

anyway, back to the rant

a wayne family adventures (WFA) tangent

i see people blaming WFA for this but i really don't think that is the case. he may not be the same as his comic counterpart but he is not out of character. everything he does is still very much him. examples include:

comforting duke after ana broke up with him (ep. 10)

helping damian make a friend (ep. 24)

being torn between his brothers (ep. 27-28)

teasing bruce after zatanna made him superman (ep. 54)

teasing helena into swapping weapons (ep. 63) i just like this one

organising everyone back to the manor when he realised alfred was left on his own during thanksgiving (ep. 68)

picking the rainbow suit for bruce (ep. 77)

talking to a little girl who just lost her parents (ep. 80-81)

annoying wally (ep. 84) birdflash time

helping duke with the kidnapping threat (ep. 99) also like this one

competing with jason over lian and roy (ep. 108)

making tim do all the work in his apartment (ep. 111) + haley

comforting and helping damian when he doubts himself (ep. 113) arguably my favourite episode

ok that was most of them BUT seriously WFA is not the problem here

there's no "fix" for this, i just wanted to tell people to stop blaming WFA for everything wrong with new comic fans; you can enjoy WFA and enjoy the comics, the aren't mutually exclusive

WFA doesn't erase him, they just choose what to show in the limited time you get with him. the only thing i remember being "wrong" is that dick can't cook (ep. 17 - top chef)

and yeah, WFA does play into the golden retriever vibes fanon dick has... in one episode, specifically the haley episode (ep. 111) see below. if it takes 111 episodes to fall on a fanon trope, i think that is fine. if you want to include ep. 17, that's 2 episodes out of 116! that's pretty good going. even the comics have more ooc moments (see the current nightwing run)

fig. 2 screenshot from wayne family adventures showing dick grayson smiling and saying "thank you" whilst a tail wags in the background

fanfiction

unsurprisingly, fanfiction is probably to blame but don't think i'm blaming authors (i kinda am but stick with me here)

i don't think writing a comic canon charatcer should be required, but i do think writers should disclose when they haven't read the comics. from experience, i get not annoyed, but have a "ugh" moment when i read a fic and the character is ooc, but if the author has stated in the notes that they haven't read a comic and the character is probably ooc, i am still going to read the fic

ooc or not, if a fic has a decent plot, at least 6th grade (UK year 7) level writing, and not "want to punch them in the face" characters, i'll enjoy it. throw in a popular trope and it'll be a favourite

and if you tell people "hey, this is probably ooc from the comic canon" they can't get mad or blame authors... just saying

i mean the whole reason this is "the problem" is that people get mad over ooc in fan works. like i'm sorry, have you read gotham war?!?!? the current nightwing run?!?!? lots of ooc in the comics themselves

tl;dr

fanfiction is the root of all evil

no, but seriously, dick's, mis-characterisation is a product of his prevalence in media, the material people have, and a lack of disclaiming ooc in fanfics. the last point could be a solution, but honestly expecting fanfic authors to do that is ridiculous

this rant was for nothing, hope you enjoyed wasting your time

i did tell you it was pointless

(i should've called this section a conclusion bc the word count is 1559 and that is insane. it's literally longer than the essay i have due in next week that i'm only half way through)

(also, this was supposed to be the first part of a longer post about how dick is over-sexualised but at that word count i'm splitting it up)

sources

list of live action dick grayson

list of live action spider-man actors

used for dates of spider-man films in the correct order

wayne family adventures

[fluffyninja91]

tagged by @ratinthevoid, thank you! <3

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black & purple

sweet, spicy or savory:

spicy

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Hazbin Hotel

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Spiderman Homecoming

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my local cinema (to check its schedule)

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Hazbin Hotel, Polish criminal tv shows and musicals

Tagging @nivou, @eksperimentgaj, @gremzon, @sweatersandschoolbooks and @bisexualshitwholovesshakespeare

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[cyberpunkonline]

Unraveling Discordianism in David Lynch's Oeuvre

In the realm of contemporary cinema, few auteurs have embroidered their work with the esoteric thread of Discordianism as richly as David Lynch. Discordianism, a modern, somewhat satirical religion that worships Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos, offers a theological justification for embracing disorder, paradox, and the absurd. It's a cosmic giggle in the face of convention and authority, a sentiment that finds an echoing laughter in Lynch's filmography.

Non-Linear Narratives: The Discordian Storytelling

The traditional narrative arc bends toward order: a beginning, middle, and end where loose ends are tied, and moral lessons are gleaned. Lynch, however, splinters this arc, creating mosaics of narrative chaos. In "Mulholland Drive," he constructs a cinematic labyrinth without a Minotaur, leaving the audience to wander in interpretive circles. This film plays with the very fabric of storytelling, a move reflective of the Discordian principle of creative disorder.

Duality and the Illusion of Order

Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” serves as a beacon of Discordian themes, with the dual existence of its characters (and their secrets) juxtaposing the apparent tranquility of small-town life with a hidden, chaotic underworld. The Double-headed Eagle in Discordianism, symbolizing order and disorder, finds its echo in the duality of characters like Laura Palmer - the homecoming queen with a dark double life, embodying the Discordian belief that chaos and order are two sides of the same coin.

The Absurdity of Existence: Rabbits and Radiators

One cannot discuss Lynch’s foray into the Discordian without a nod to the unsettling sitcom featuring humanoid rabbits in "Inland Empire." Their disjointed exchanges in a nondescript living room, accompanied by canned laughter at non-jokes, invoke the absurdity of existence central to Discordianism. It's here Lynch’s work becomes an Easter egg of sorts, where Bugs Bunny could be the trickster archetype of Eris, albeit more likely to wield a carrot than the Golden Apple of Discord.

The Surreal as a Gateway to Truth

Lynch’s worlds are teeming with surreal elements that break the illusion of reality, a core principle in Discordianism that what we see is but a structured facade over the intrinsic chaos of the universe. “Eraserhead’s” Lady in the Radiator, singing in a dream sequence amidst giant spermatoid creatures, challenges the audience’s comfort with the familiar, urging a confrontation with the chaos that underpins existence.

Chaos Magick and the Artistic Process

Lynch’s creative process itself mirrors the chaotic magick intrinsic to Discordian practice. His reliance on Transcendental Meditation to dive into the depths of consciousness and emerge with the pearls of avant-garde storytelling aligns with the Discordian idea of tapping into chaos for enlightenment. Lynch’s films don’t just represent Discordianism; they enact it.

Conclusion

David Lynch's films are tapestries woven with threads of paradox, absurdity, and chaos, where the audience is often left to their own devices to make sense of the spectacle. While Lynch may not explicitly identify as a Discordian, the parallels are striking. From the double lives of "Twin Peaks" to the unnerving performances of "Eraserhead," Lynch channels the essence of Discordianism, proving that within chaos, there is a strange order to be found - and within his cinema, an unsettling enlightenment awaits the brave. Whether the rabbit hole leads to a hidden lodge in the woods or a lady living in a radiator, Lynch assures us the journey through chaos is never just a wild hare chase - sometimes, it's a pilgrimage to the heart of artistic truth.

- Raz