#also some of these panels are in the same issue but don't follow each other chronologically so take note

[hood-ex]

Hi! :D

I need some good recommendations of Panels for Dick & Jason as siblings (for a school project 😭)

Gonna use them an example

Can you help me pls?

Batman #416

The New Teen Titans (Vol. 2) #31

Nightwing (Vol. 2) #63

Nightwing (Vol. 2) #105

Nightwing 2021 Annual

Red Hood and the Outlaws (Vol. 2) Annual #1

Nightwing (Vol. 4) #15

Batman #16

Robins #3

Robins #5

[pochapal]

32! Do you like HS^2?

i...genuinely do! i think sometimes there's a half-conception that based on the mere premise of my fics that i don't like postcanon all that much (omelette route was misconstrued as an epilogues fix-it fic in certain circles and pickle route is still sometimes seen as a "better version" of hs^2) even though everything i write is in direct conversation with and comes from a place of admiration for hs^2/the epilogues.

with hs^2 in particular i think it had some really electric ideas that we only got to see the very first brushstrokes of (thinking most pertinently here about whatever was going to go down on deltritus that we never saw) that, if they'd been able to get off the ground, probably would have eclipsed the epilogues as the most interesting part of homestuck. from the bits we saw the meat timeline stuff was definitely the weakest. outside of the jade/altcallie possession chapter a lot of that half of the story was fairly unsurprising character-driven extrapolation of the same angst we departed the epilogues with - and i largely agree with @hms-no-fun that some kind of timeskip here would have helped it feel a little less repetitive (although arguably there might have been? three years definitely passed with dirk et al but it was very up in the air as to how long it had been for the pursuit spaceship crew). i get why that never happened - both meat and candy were being told in tandem and candy ended on a buildup to an immediate conflict that needed to be followed in real time versus meat's meandering slingshot towards something more nebulous, so for the sake of structural symmetry that limited things a little.

i think i'm more amenable to a lot of hs^2's storytelling decisions because i wholly and entirely loved the epilogues from the getgo and it was so good to see that theme/tone be carried through to a more "traditional" mspa space, even if i wonder if the comic form damaged the story more than it helped it. i remember a lot of people getting weirdly mad whenever we'd get an extended prose scene instead of visual panels despite hs^2 being a continuation of the text-based epilogues. then again, the mainstream hs fandom as a whole fucking sucked when it came to postcanon and that's even more evident in how they've collectively memoryholed the whole thing so talking about audience reception is maybe not the most useful thing to talk about here lmao. idk i think people forget that homestuck is largely a story about people who suck and then who get better from sucking. it's just that nobody really likes it when that lens is turned inward onto the alphas/betas who outside of a small handful of exceptions in canon never really had any ethical issues that caused problems for them and others so i personally think it was very interesting and refreshing to explore how the kids' complacency wrt their baggage and trauma allowed them and their world to backslide so disastrously! roxy lalonde enabling jane's fascist ascension is fascinating storytelling actually! (side note: read through shadowed eyes)

hs^2's original characterwork is probably where the story shines the most. the fucked up dynamics between the theseus crew was super fun to read because there's honestly nothing more enjoyable than Supremely Divorced people deciding that makes them irredeemably evil now. the egbert gender stuff was really nice! i particularly enjoyed how, even though it came after the june egbert renaissance, it still managed to be its own unique take on egbert's gender arc that i think really encapsulated the originality driving the project. also forever shoutout to the candy kids my beloved candy kids my children who i will die for - for me in particular hs^2 was a fun time because i was developing my own versions of harry/vrissy/tav for pickle route in parallel to hs^2 and it was so enjoyable seeing all the overlaps and divergences with each upd8. also yiffy fucking rules on every level and even though she never got to be more than a promise she sure was one hell of a promise.

that said i do not think it's that surprising that hs^2 ultimately died before its time. the conditions of the story paired with the most demoralising and vicious iteration of the fandom meant the odds were stacked against it in a big way. you can particularly see the strain of that starting to manifest in the final ~6 months worth of upd8s where people were leaving/being pushed out of the project and every part of hs^2 was a completely hostile environment and the quality of the art and storytelling began to get a little shaky - which i can't really blame them for all things considered! it's hard to want to make the best version of a story possible when the overwhelming reception is a bunch of sanctimonious redditbrained weirdos screaming that you're evil and foul for making characters in a piece of fiction do unexpected and surprising things and also being sympathetic to trans women. there were of course issues with the production conditions of hs^2 that would have probably led to some sort of reckoning at some point, but it's very obvious that the traumatic pressure cooker of a fanbase that wanted nothing more than the death of this project and the ruination of everyone that worked on it threw this whole thing off the rails much faster. despite that, you still have to infinitely admire the team for daring to make something challenging and original in a sphere dominated by people who are content to regurgitate the same babybrained 2013 content ad infinitum - for just a brief moment, homestuck was truly allowed to be the literary masterpiece it's been all along. now people just treat it as more fandomslop to consume and that's perhaps the biggest shame of all.

in the end i think hs^2's legacy is best felt in the places haunted by its premature absence. i'm talking about the comic itself of course but also other spaces and people and projects. stuff that really engaged with the meaty thematic frameworks being thrown up in postcanon that now no longer have a mirror to talk back to - stuff like pesterquest and godfeels and the aforementioned through shadowed eyes that all massively are in conversation with the deeper artistic and philosophical principles underpinning this era of homestuck. if anything else hs^2 will continue to serve as a useful prerequisite for getting into some of the best stuff homestuck fans have ever made. we might never see what could have been, but at least the torch is still being carried by people who care.

[chimchiri]

How did the Wonderbolts find out/react to Spitfire and Rainbow's relationship?

Ok I will focus on Fleetfoot here because otherwise it'll be too long. I ended up drawing a few panels but can't finish them right now, so I'm giving you all the sketches.

I hc Fleetfoot to know Spitfire the longest right after Soarin. They're close friends (Fleets considers Spitty her best friend even) and even though she's got a pretty intense rivalry with Rainbow, they also started a close and intense friendship after Rainbow joined. Fleetfoot considers her friendship to both to be very special.

The scene in question happens during some holiday, general WB vacation, or just a weekend. It's one of the AUs where Spitty and Rainbow start dating and get closer while still in the WBs. At some point they don't want to stay at home and want to show physical intimacy in public instead of acting like friends. But both being well known (especially Spitfire) immediately excludes all bigger and nearer towns. They can't just go out and hold hands and kiss without the press immediately writing about it and it ending in a huge scandal for the Wonderbolts.

They end up spending this specific date in a small village which hosts some minor festival that day. It's tiny, not that well known and is perfect for them. People don't recognize them outside of their uniforms and signature outfits.

It's pure happenstance that Fleetfoot is at the same no-name festival, visiting either an old friend or having to spend some time there due to some family issue. She notices the familiar, colorful hair in the corner of her eye. The hair is a lot more vibrant and visible in the up-do Rainbow wears - a bit foolish of her to not wear a cap like Spitfire. But Rainbow being able to test, investigate and discover her own femininity in the safety of their private time is a big part of her. Plus, Spitfire also didn't think it would be a problem.

From the outfit, Fleetfoot wouldn't have guessed it's really Rainbow further down the street. But she recognizes her hair and laughter immediately. As for Spitfire, even with a hat and glasses, she'd recognize her a mile away as well.

It's a bizarre scene for Fleetfoot and seeing them kiss feels like a gut punch. At this point she's often tried to push Spitfire to go out and at least have some sexy flings, some fun nights with nameless girls instead of her just drowning in WB work. Spitfire always dismissed her, saying she can focus on romance later when she can actually date someone in private and not have the press nonstop on her heels. Similarly Rainbow always denied liking someone and wanting to focus on being a great Wonderbolt member, being the newest addition. The most Fleetfoot got out of her, was doing silly "Smash or Pass" games the nights out after training or a big event.

Fleetfoot would never even have guessed that either would be interested in anyone, especially not each other. And seeing them in front of her seems is like a dream. She feels like she's seeing two completely different people in front of her and not her friends: Rainbow with her more delicate and feminine attire than usual, and Spitfire who's acting a lot more flirty, soft and seductive instead of her serious, rough or dudebro-joking attitude as captain.

Fleetfoot considered her relationship to both as special. She's not just "a friend" and that's the first reason why catching them in the act affects her this deeply.

The second reason is that she takes the Wonderbolts, their reputation, and especially the team bond just as serious as Spitfire. Seeing them involved romantically goes not only against the Wonderbolt code and rules, but would raise red flags even if it was allowed. There are a gazillion reasons why trouble could and - in Fleets' eyes - would follow. Can either separate work from relationship? Can they stay neutral? Will there be favoritism? Will Rainbow start to slack off? Will she distract Spitfire form her duties? Will there be silent grudges in the team? Will the team and performance suffer?

Fleets is usually pretty outgoing and wears her emotions on her sleeve. This time she swallows her anger and other complicated emotions and keeps quiet. The desire to just go up to and confront them is big - but she doesn't want this to end in a catastrophe for the team. Also she feels Spitfire could talk and explain herself and Rainbow out of it - probably playing it all down since Fleetfoot doesn't even have evidence.

So Fleetfoot waits for now, hoping to observe and collect evidence she can use against them once her judgement day comes. She's still convinced this is bad and will hurt everyone in the long run. But even with a very close eye on them, she doesn't notice anything. Their performance doesn't falter. They're both as motivated to be peak Wonderbolts as ever. There are no noticeable longer or romantic touches. No special eye gazing. Rainbow gets no special treatment, quite the opposite - Fleets wonders if maybe she gets more criticism and work than the others (which is 100% the case. Spitfire does overcompensate a bit in her attempt to hide their relationship) She doesn't see them meet up in a romantic way. She never sees a kiss or romantic gesture again. And even when she spies on them when they think they're all alone, they don't act differently to regular teammates.

There are days where Fleetfoot wonders if her mind way playing a trick on her and that she saw two other people that day. Only sometimes though. And with time moving on and her not seeing any bad consequences, her emotions towards this secret mellow out and transform into a different, more empathetic nature.

There is more going on and some follow-up with Fleetfoot and Rainbow which also covers Rainbow's insecurity about feminine clothing - but it's a long post already. I might want to doodle something for it as well, when that time comes.

[zypria]

Atla The Rift comic sucks part 1

Comparing apples and zucchinis

The past vs future, change vs tradition is very interesting dilemma to explore. And they've chosen two good representatives for each side - Aang, the last of his kind and the avatar vs Toph who refuses to be bound, creates new style of bending utilizing modern structure, does what she wants really. Secondary are acolytes vs factory, same thing. And my God do they suck at pitting these two against each other. Both of these sides take everything in the world and go me. Like those Katara touches necklace memes "lets eat. my mother used to eat". Connecting things that have very little to do each other just so we can have a conflict. misunderstanding but it's unintentional. They just lost the ability to make comprehensive parallels.

100+ year old ritual = bad parenting

Rituals are rooted in tradition. We do them because they are symbolic, we do what we do because that's how it's done. We honor our roots, ancestors etc etc

The phrase triggers unhappy memories for Toph, particularly of her restrictive childhood. Fair enough. But. Some of these aren't even "tradition", her parents were just like that. "This is how it's done" is no logical response to "why can't I play with other kids". There have to be rich kids with friends out there. Blind kids with friends. This is solely Beifong issue. I despise forced parallels

The following statement is just incorrect:

He didn't forget (although 100+ years are justifiable excuse). He was 10 and wasn't paying attention in the first place, figured there is plenty more festivals to remember. It wasn't celebrated because the peeps are dead. A genocide if you will. The world wouldn't end even if there were no humans around, doesn't mean we should just cease all cultural activities

Also it was ESTABLISHED that we're doing this for AANG. You know, our beloved friend the last Airbender? He wants to honor his long gone culture for a special day. Also also past avatar has something important to say, what if something happens (and something ALWAYS happens)

Instead of addressing any of this Aang goes the air nomad philosophy route. just WHY? These are not insults just for the sake of insulting, they have opposing views and should talk about it maybe. Were not even in the place to have change vs tradition argument, we're just having a field trip atm. Simple "this is really important for me and I want to share this day with my found family" solves everything but noooo. Zen mode, it will sort itself out, I'm not actively getting involved (man. this is TOPH. you should know better. rock beats airbender etc etc)

Toph is mean just to be mean. Not the cuddliest character but when did she go around insulting your every move? Especially since they didn't really ask her to do anything. You don't have to actively participate, why are you complaining in every panel? OOC behavior just to keep that gaang rift nice and divided

I can't spend 30 seconds to explain why we're about to be pulverized but I can do ancient history 101

he doesn't deny this! why. to have aang vs toph and co that's why. the most pointless fight in existence. because we have time for that apparently

the spirit is just asshole in the end

I'm not pulling caps for this. Yangchen did everything to keep her promise, not her fault Sozin happened. And let's not forget people ran away in all directions from fire nation for a century, why wouldn't they inhabit this nice empty land? The spirit was angry about his friend's demise (turns out she did that herself and is very chill. And can manifest freely too). Spirit does not ask for balance in any way, shape or form, humans must die so that I can have this land to stare at. What if some spirits decided to reside in Ba Sing Se, we destroy entire city? I thought that refinery screwing nature was going to be the big plot point but nope. Cabbage restaurant -gone. Houses - gone. You can't even walk here, disrespectful, gtfo. Extreme situation that calls for stupid resolution - spirit dead. Although looking back I can find some appreciation for not managing to tie everything nicely, cookie cutter avatar style. But imagine how much better it would've been if conflicts were well written in the first place

We got another festival so all is well?

[team7-headquarter]

You know, it's funny when people write the girls in Naruto being all jealous of each other and willing to fight for "their man", when in canon you have their dynamics being actually kinda cute and the implications going beyond what they feel for a guy, into "what issues led them to that point".

Take Karin and Sakura, for example. In the canon they were made to feel like trash or like they were not enough, helpless, useless, they were abused from the way they looked and made fun of and beaten up for that. Karin was objectified given her healing abilities and Sakura was objectified as an object of affection, someone to protect and love but not someone with agency, not really. Tsunade and Orochimaru took them in and even when it was not saving (because being their apprentices made it worst in some aspects), at least they were capable of fighting for themselves now.

Yeah, they both loved (or had a crush on) Sasuke and the story made of their feelings a recurring comedy gag, like how "obsessed" they were. The point is that, beyond the comedy relief moments, Sakura and Karin genuinely cared for Sasuke and wanted to help him. They wanted to see him safe and happy, to help him accomplish his dreams or goals. They were not perfect, their intentions can be selfish and flawed, but it's the same for almost every character in Naruto. They are no exception.

So when Sakura and Karin leave their safety to go after Sasuke, to go "help him", it's not just 'cause they want to romantically claim Sasuke. It's also about being useful, about feeling others trust them, about reclaiming the control they lost over their own lives, making their own decisions.

No one forced them to go there or be there, no one forced them to care about Sasuke. To say otherwise is to insult them, okay?

There's no reason why they'd help each other. No reason at all. They're strangers, they are enemies, they are kunoichis. Yet, I love the words of those panels because Sasuke calls Karin useless and he says Sakura can replace her. Sakura's fears are spoken out loud about another girl, in that panel, Karin and Sakura are one, reflected in the other. Sakura knows she won't kill the girl, she must be innocent, her target is Sasuke. She can't tho, for the same reason why Karin tells Sasuke to not kill Sakura. For all their crimes as shinobis and for all the violence they have grown used to, they're still soft, they want to do good, they still believe in the friendships they've chosen or still believe in their own choices.

Sakura saves Karin's life right then and Karin feels Sakura's sadness over her, her tears, it's clear that it affects her for the composition of the panels, for her words. Karin has been used and abused once more by someone she trusted, loved even, and now she's seeing a girl just like her but not breaking, but healing her still.

We don't really see Karin and Sakura interacting after that. That's all there is of them together, but it's the same as the Chuning Exam Preliminaries fight of Ino and Sakura. Their relationships with Sasuke were a part of who they were, but they were so much more than that and their dynamics were based on their experiences, not only a boy.

Karin didn't want Sasuke to hurt Sakura. Sakura didn't want Karin to die. Yes, they were on the same bridge, heartbroken over the same boy, but it spoke also of what is like to be a medic nin and a kunoichi at war, what is like to grow from a life of neglect or abuse or bullying or being sidelined to a life where your choices might have terrible horrible consequences, but they are yours.

Later, Karin and Sakura would decide to trust Sasuke again. Save his life. Fight for him. It's their choice to do so, but also, it's their choice to save Tsunade or Naruto and follow Orochimaru or go with Team 7 to fight Kaguya. Their paths cross because of Sasuke, because he knows them both and had worked with them both, but it's not like they'd fistfight over him in other circumstances.

Sakura worried over Hinata loving Naruto and she worried over Hinata putting herself in danger to confess to him, but she could relate. She knew that type of pain herself. Even when Ino was still interested in Sasuke, she was great friends with Sakura because their rivalry was bigger than him, so was their friendship.

In the serious moments, when it really mattered, those girls had each other's backs. To reduce them to fangirls or jealous bitches is insane, when it's most probable they'd work together to save the world or their interests than to destroy each other to see who could marry the boy.

The kinship they feel given the misogyny of the shinobi world and the severity of the lives they lead is stronger than any romance plot!!!!

[grahamcarmen]

Asking possibly a stupid question, but i don't really understand the opera symbolism of swan lake I understand carmen as foreshadowing for her and grays relationship and the flying dutchman as foreshadowing for grey's role in the finale but I don't understand swan lake.

Also why is your ask box named snapcracklepop.

I dont think its stupid. Lol I was asking the same thing (while mildly acknowledging maybe its just cause like carmen the opera is an easy peasy pun, swan lake is a recognizable ballet even if youre not into ballet) because idk its fun and even if its not meant to be 1 to 1 im trying to give the writers some credit since the thieving magpie and flying dutchman are absolutely not recognizable ones but while not 1 to 1 have a few beats that can be compared

:3

Here's the Wikipedia explanation of whats happening technically

I'm looking at this ending and it looks more like a bow to me ... but point being its something hard that needs all the players to look and dance in unison since they're literally all linked

+ the context of what is happening in the ballet

Siegfried is promising his love to Odette to break her spell so that she and her friends can be free (and cause he's smitten with her aww)

So its their pas de deux and then the little swans [in the version i watched anyway] + some swan company dancing before returning to seigfried and odette

end act

Start next act and storybeatwise the following happens

Rothbart will present odile to him and seigfried promises his love to someone who only looks like odette.

Which technically speaking carmen recruits gray for a mission where her movements for the electric gates/panels...what are they called again...anyway- will have to be synchronized...like a dancer she says ^^ along with player and gray doing their roles perfectly which they manage to do good enough once

However somethings wrong with the feed causing gray to leave his spot

So at the very least its technically a " the working in unison has been broken"

Context wise that I can overthink because I can??...uuuuuuh

Carmen really does not want VILE to have him but is also having a hard time separating graham from gray huh.... and in the mission "keep gray away from anything that could transform him back" plays a part because carmens all set on the idea that these conditions (an extremely dumb plan) keep gray safe from VILE influence, promising to put his safety first but ultimately protecting a VILE constructed persona [WHICH I DO PERSONALLY TAKE ISSUE WITH I DONT THINK GRAHAMS ACTIONS THAT DAY IS SO ENTIRELY WITHOUT GRAYS OWN TRAITS >:0...but yeah lol he usually does not care at all about what the right thing is overall] with a lot of romantic insinuating outside of that dance of little swans

Points i guess for carmens underlying suspicions that she puts to rest for the moment but graham just absolutely gone for her by the end

Little swans squished in the middle of gray very blatantly wanting to be with her and carmen 🤭hoho he likes me😊

Here's a fun one I found via google

...hmmm...idk those people tho so take that with a grain if you instead want to watch and judge the ballet and its themes for yourself.... there's actually a lot of free ones on youtube :D

+ a section in the version I watched where the company talks about how pledging love to odile is odettes doom and the love isn't as pure as they're pretending it is...Carmen! 😑 gray! 😑...but isn't wholly unsalvagable because of the forgiveness and actual true love they do end up showing each other.

With the swan lake ballet having that dichotomy between true self, curses, and a flat out fake who only looks like the beloved

it is a plot point that this happens and almost dooms them ...I mean they die but its like in a ballet dang I guess their souls live then cause they manage to stick it to rothbart

In the end their true selves DO end up together.

+ bonus round

Gray being part of the little swans until he decides instead to be the one who found the red swan (haha...neatcodename) at the heart of a VILE facility and its his constant assurances that he's on her side that help carmen think she can beat VILE and keep him around/ are kinda a point . See him having and then throwing away the crackle rod when she looks all :( to help her instead (seigfried in the forest with a crossbow)

Anything for the kiddos huh...but also lending his expertise outside of the dance of the little swans to help her and her mission

Having a little rendezvous with her beforehand and then after the dance of swans mission only for her to disappear into elusive carmen (sorry watching odette be turned back into a swan)

He actually does fall a bit in love and keeps his interest in this strange girl

+dark! Carmen being chosen for a hot minute before gray sacrifices his own ambitions and loving Carmen for who she truly is is what gives them both a chance at breaking the curse- i mean VILE influence and brainwashing

TLDR: supposed to be working together only for the dance to be interrupted

And looking at beats from the whole ballet is fun to compare actually. Lottsa pledging love but also who is the true self 🧐?

My askbox is like this because

SNAP.CRACKLE POP RICE CRISPIES!...and crackle the dude...

[bearbaitmegs]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers!

The #1 thing that makes me happy is backpacking. Not simply hiking. Long, immersive, multi-weeks-long stretches of it. I love the weight, the sweating, griping, complaining, the views, the satisfaction that comes at the end of each day, no matter how sore. Water is sweeter, beds are softer, my appetite bottomless, the stargazing can't be beat, and I love waking up somewhere different every single day. I enjoy inconsistency. My greatest desire is simply me doing little more than walking all day every day. I expect to lose the ability to do this as I age, due to congenital issues, so it's important to me to do it Now.

The remaining 4 things in no particular order:

I have a Thing for pinecones and other cone-bearing plant seeds. I once met someone who had made a vertically cut pinecone into a necklace and I was just...never the same afterward? I made a handful of art using pinecones as a medium for about a year there. I have a small collection of pinecones from different species of conifer and they're all in labelled ziplock baggies. Forget flowers, just give me a pine bough. (Unless it's an artichoke flower, which is my favorite.)

Being in the kitchen! Herbs and spices! Cooking is one of my favorite outlets for my creativity and affection. I've had a pretty extensive spice collection for well over a decade, but I was introduced to some stunning Middle-Eastern and West Asian cookbooks in the last couple years and I'm obsessed. Without a garden of my own, I live vicariously through friends and fistfuls of the dried stuff/infused butters. One of my favorite ways to spend time with friends is in the kitchen cooking with you, for you, or designing a 7-course meal for fun. I hate the smell of lavender, but oh I love to eat it. Let me make you a tea party, pleaaaaaaase. I don't even mind doing the dishes. Gifting me with dessert is a one-way ticket to my heart.

I suppose cooking falls into this realm also, but just... making things. Painting, sculpting, embroidery, sewing, carving, cutting, glueing, doodling, knitting... put something malleable in my hands. Yeah, yeah, I have chronic tendonitis, who cares it's fine. One autumn I picked up dozens of leaves and just sewed them together into panels and florets.

Antarctica. It became my niche interest because, about 3 years ago, it became the setting for a story I've been chewing on since I was...21? 22? Over a decade ago. I've always got an open tab or bookmark that has to with its biology, geology, geography, etc, though if you ask me, I feel like I barely know anything. I'm not going to go mushy over a penguin or seal plushie or anything; I'm much more interested in the tributaries than the mainstream. I'd like to spend a season working there someday.

Bonus : I sincerely enjoy wearing masks. They're part of my daily wardrobe now and my life has improved in several ways just by having a mask as an extra accessory.

[dwtsfun]

Dancing with the Stars Season 32 Wrap-Up: Let's Talk

Hey everyone! Hope you all are doing okay. Now that I am officially on winter break, I feel like I have the energy to write this post. I know it's a bit late, but the season sucked and I needed to think about why I hated it so much. I also am glad that I waited because I listened to Cheryl's most recent podcast episode with Melissa Rycroft and a lightbulb went off. I'm gonna break this up into sections. So let's start.

The Judges

First and foremost, I think the show is going to struggle to see a high level of dancing without Len being there and with the current panel of judges. I don't think the current 3 can inspire the pros to push themselves and their celebs past what they thought they were capable of. No matter how hard CAI tried (because she is trying to pick up that role as she realizes that it is needed), weeks 5 and 6 were kind of the ceiling for everyone except for Charity. What Len was so good at doing was change up his scoring throughout the season to match the level they should be at and lead have his co-judges follow suit. I didn't always agree with him, but I cannot deny that the man forced the couples to give us out of this world dances by the final third of the season. CAI tried but she is not the person for that job. She's not consistent enough and she wasn't able to have Derek and Bruno follow her lead. While she was trying to shift into gears 2 and 3, Derek and Bruno pretty much stayed in gear 1 up until week 8/9. As a result, Xochitl, Alyson, Ariana and even Jason's dances had a sameness about them. The only person that I saw shift into different gears was Charity because all of the judges were very consistent about her feedback and were constantly pushing her to get better (and not just randomly scoring her down like they would do for Jason).

So with that said, I think the guest judges all (except Michael) were much better at judging this season than the main judges. I am not sure why that is. But it was clear that Niecy, Billy, Paula and Mandy all did their homework before they came in. I think they were better because they only came in once and were coming in with the frame of mind of "oh it's week such and such, we probably should be at this point with these dances by now" and they would judge accordingly. So we got some constructive feedback from all of them that I felt was vital for each of the couples to take with them and use to really push themselves to that next level. The problem? When the main judges aren't saying it, how likely are some of these pros to incorporate that feedback into their dances. We say Rylee do it as Billy was the only one that stated that Harry wasn't moving much. Artem did it, but it's because EVERYONE was saying the same thing about Charity. So he could not ignore as much as he wanted to. But the others? Idk. I'm gonna talk more about judging in a later point, but I think a lot of the problems of this season, for me, started with them. If they had made praise harder to receive, I think the quality of the dances would have been so much better.

The Pros and the Partnerships

As many of you know, I was not happy with most of the pairings this season. Many were mismatched. There were some pros that didn't need to be on the season at all. It was very frustrating to watch. And I was trying to figure out why there were so many issues this season with the pros teaching their partners this season as so many problems were either never addressed or never hidden. And it wasn't until the podcast with Cheryl that it dawned on me. I don't think a lot of our current pros are good teachers. Melissa was talking about how Tony figured out how she learned and was able to adapt to that. I think that was the case for the vast majority of the pros in the past. At least the successful ones. Melissa also talked about how she struggled on tour with Artem because he never truly figured out how she learned. Now Artem is a little different, because he's been a pro for almost 15 years (SCD and DWTS). But outside of Koko, Daniella, Emma (though this was not a great season for her), Val and Peta (and Sasha at one point though he's literally been shitting the bed the past few years), the current pros just haven't impressed me with their teaching abilities. Britt and Brandon have legitimate potential but neither one has really been able to truly show it in a season. Britt was getting there with Adrian. Brandon has had four seasons that were cut short and we weren't able to truly see what was to come from his partners. That's it. And that showed this season and is also why so many of the partnerships just did not work out. Tyson had legitimate potential and Jenna, once again, wasted it. Same with Mira. Ariana and Charity should've been killing the competition and probably could have been some of the best dancers we've ever seen. Instead, they were kinda just there. Alyson could've been a way more competent dancer by the end if Sasha just tried even a little more. In my humble opinion, even Xochitl would've been better and had better choreo if Val had seen more competition from people outside of Jason and Daniella. Idk, we just need the pros to be better teachers. I don't think I can sit through another season of celebs having the same major problems in their dancing all season long. It just can't happen. Not when we've seen the likes of Kelly Monaco, Kelly Osbourne, Rob Kardashian, Joanna Krupa and more become legitimately good dancers, the celebs on this season should've been way better. The only true no hoper we had (not including Matt) was Jamie Lynn.

Job Shifts

Remember how I said that I was gonna come back to the judges' table? Yep, well I'm back. We need either a job shift or an addition to the judges' table. If the show wants to stick with three judges, Julianne and Derek need to swap jobs. Julianne is a better judge. Derek is probably a better host. You know all the stuff I was talking about that CAI was struggling with trying to do at the judges' table? Yeah, Julianne can do that and has done it. And she does it quite well. I think Derek would be a lot better at just talking to celebs. If the show is fine with a four person table (the ideal situation), then add Julianne, keep Derek there as well and bring on another cohost for Alfonso to work with. S/o to @forevertrueblue for that idea, as I think it's perfect. I think Kym, Leah Remini, Drew Lachey, Vanessa Lachey, Melissa Rycroft or Maria Menounos could take over that cohost job. Probably more could, but I would need to really think about some of them some more.

Silly Things

The last thing I'll post about is some of the silly things. A 3 hour and 5 person finale was foolish. Don't do that again. Having the show go into December for the first time ever was not a great idea. If we're gonna do 11 weeks, make sure that we start earlier so the show can be done at least before November ends. This also means that they need to have a much clearer plan of the show before week 1. And finally, the judges have been getting extremely lazy. There should be no reason that I can point out several blatant mistakes in a perfect scoring dance.

So that's my season ending wrap/what went wrong post for season 32 of DWTS. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to bring them up. I want to talk about this because I am still trying to figure out why exactly this season was just not it. I'll be posting a few more times over the next two weeks, so make sure to look out for those. And I will talk to you all soon. So glad to be able to put the lid on season 32 lol.

[empyrean-decay-god-dca]

Hello!!! Your recent ID post has def helped me a lot and I'm slowly adding alt text to past work (and then eventually reblog with IDs in desc :D). However there are some things that I'm still uncertain about:

1) How should someone properly format ID's where you have multiple images that you don't want to/can't separate with IDs (i.e. comics). I'm sorry if I missed an example of that in one of the linked sources ^^;

2) Additionally, as someone with hand/wrist issues I'm really grateful for shortened posts/read mores as it's less strain for my hands to scroll past. That is to say, would it still be rude to place an ID in a read more if the IDs happen to be lengthy (in the event of describing multiple images)? Would it be better to add it as a reblog instead?

I would like to try to make my posts more accessible for others!!! I'm incredibly grateful for those who provide audio captions, so I am very interested in doing the same for visual descriptions :D thank you for bringing attention to this, and providing helpful resources on the topic as well ^w^♡

I'd like to mention there's a Tumblr feature that automatically shortens long posts. Go to Settings -> Dashboard -> Interface --> Shorten long posts.

Hi besties! Also don't worry. There are a lot of links I gave you guys, and even I get lost in the sauce. The most useful thing I found writing IDs for comics is this:

it's for all types of visual media, but it has a comic section. The general formatting is this:

Write comics in a single ID:

Have an introductory paragraph where you describe the context of your comic, or the context of its beginning. This includes your style, the main subjects and how they're positioned, the surroundings (the location), and the basic thing happening between the characters.

Then the later paragraphs will go into specifics of dialogue and action. If there's a visual change, such as a zoom-in or a change of perspective, you're going to describe that, and put that before the dialogue.

End ID

Panel by panel is not good. Comics are narratives and stories and they need a flow. This post talks about it here:

Also, often, describing a comic isn't that long. Unless you're posting multiple full-blown pages at a time, then your typical 4-panel or maybe, 1-2 page comic will span a few paragraphs for the ID. But I answered an anon over at @lab-labrava about comic lengths. If it genuinely is long then @antimonarchy addressed this problem

Put image descriptions first. Don’t hide them under readmores or any other text. If you have something with multiple images and you are the creator, place the description under each image in succession rather than all at the end. Readmores are ableist, as they require someone who has vision problems/one of the conditions described above to do more work to access the message of visual content. 

^^^ This goes more in depth. Check the section with Placement of ID

You guys see me writing IDs in reblogs like this:

ID:

Image 1: (description of image)

Image 2: (description of image)

End ID

This is because I'm reblogging from the OP. I don't own the original post, so I'm forced to format it like this when ideally, I'd place the ID straight after each image. if you have multiple images, then write an ID for each image and place it straight after that image, like the following:

(image 1)

ID: (description of image 1) end Id

(image 2)

ID: (description of image 2) end ID

and so on.

Full-Blown Comics with Multiple Images/Pages

See I'm so conflicted here. When it's a huge ongoing project, then the ID for each page can span multiple paragraphs, and each Tumblr post may have multiple comic pages in a single update. So my formula above, where I place an ID straight after each image can elongate the post severely. In that case, alt text is a good idea. Especially since people using screen-readers may listen to Image image image, and skip past the post, not waiting the lump-sum ID near the end. In this case, you can forgo ID and write alt text. That's what most people do anyways.

I hope that answers some questions

[thehylianidiot]

Hi folks. Just a teensy bit of a slow trying to got the next arc for that Fairy Tail role swap fanfic I've been working on (slow progress, constantly second guessing myself, but you know what? I'll take it at my own pace)

So in the meantime, I guess I'll share progress in the drawing aspect so I can get some feedback, and I've given it my usual over-thinking-it treatment so I might as well share it.

I've been working on making drawing references for the each of the main cast. This is after trying to draw characters for a few chapters and going: I really need a reference to keep it consistent.

Why do that? You already got the canon designs. Two reasons.

One: It's a role swap. The designs fit the canon roles, but may not 100% fit in when a character has to do something else in the story. Take Mavis for instance: her design is based around her status as Fairy Tail's first guildmaster, but it would look a teensy bit out of place as the guild's newest recruit.

Two: Limitations of the artist. I can't draw all the detail the manga's creator puts into these characters at my skill level. Heck, this is the first time I've ever drawn characters beyond just a t-shirt and pants. So, I need some sort of simplified design that fit my skill level so I don't get overwhelmed with every chapter's drawing (I swear I will learn shading eventually).

First time making a character sheet so I set some rules: hands to sides, look at the camera, feet pointing away from each other. Whether or not each character follows these rules is another story, and can help as a characterization exercise as well.

Is there room for improvement? Yes, but nothing's stopping me from making an updated version down the road.

I just got one design in this post, and I guess I'll try for one post like this each arc, but here's the swap design for Zeref (and Happy). I put details/notes in the keep reading section.

I really like Zeref's canon design. It's a good silhouette, and it tells a lot about the character (clothing from another time period, same color scheme as a certain other main character, wears used-to-be emotionally significant item, plenty of triangular shapes in form to represent danger). But I can't for the life of me draw all that loose fabric.

Luckily, I found that the Mildian uniforms were much simpler (and were hilariously enough black-on-white instead of white-on-black), so I used that as a basis. The only issue is that I only have one manga panel (barely a full page!) to go off of.

So make up the shoes (that I did have to look at the canon design for), forget the dang belt in the middle, add dark red for a teensy bit for color (because gold wasn't working, and didn't want dark blue), and uh ... tada I guess.

Happy's got a simple design to begin with that I have no drawing difficulties with. And he's still the tag-along cat (although add in a little bit of being the voice of reason at times, which is really weird for Happy but I feel like it works here). The furball's perfect as is.

Design with notes on a few more details:

Explanations to the words on screen

Unkept (blame Happy): the cat just decided he had a habit of sitting there and I let that habit stay there. Also, I don't know how to hair.

No high colar: Because I can't draw one. I know I can't draw one, so I won't bother trying right this minute.

No eye contact: Did not look at the camera.

Important neck item: Oh look, a parallel to the character he swapped with.

Bit of red: I think this also may be a bit of reference to his debut volume's design before switching to black.

Used to fit: Doesn't even go down to the waist.

Trying not to fiddle: Arms are to the side. Barely.

Again used to fit: A smarter artist would know how to emphasize this in the design. I am not one of them.

Baggy: I tried.

Pointy: Because I don't know how cloth boots work.

Not his cat: It stuck during the writing part.

That's all for this post. Thoughts? First time doing any character design period, so would love feedback.

I got Mavis's design drawn out too (that one took a bit more creativity), but want to experiment a bit more with color first. So I guess I'll post that next arc.

Thank you very much for reading my overly-long post. Best wishes!

[anoldstoryteller]

42 BBY Infestation part three

I walked over and looked at the console monitor. It wasn't a long video. It showed one of the crew near the cargo bay. Then the door opened and some big creature quickly eat him followed by dozens more rushing forward before the video cuts out. I slowly stood up, "Bugs…." I quickly turned my attention to Helen, "Get Sai and Riu back here now!" I tried to open comms to Scabbard but only got static. I looked over to Helen and could tell she was also experiencing comm issues. I looked to Alephi, "See if you can get the ships comms back up-" I was interrupted by screaming coming down where Sai and Riu had gone. Roy walked forward with his rifle drawn, "Captain, that sounded like Sai!" He said as he looked to Helen. She looked at me. I was certain that Sai and Riu were probably dead by now but I couldn't bring myself to say it. I turned my attention back to Alephi. She slammed her fists against the console and utter a string of cursed, "The comms array is shot. There's nothing I can do from here." I was happy that Meri was here with her calming pheromones. Without them I don't think I could keep a straight thought. "Alright. The ship is clearly lost and we didn't bring enough people to take it back by force. We are going to make our way back out the same way we came in. Stick together and watch each other backs and we'll be alright." Roy only turned around for a second when he was grabbed by his leg and dragged under the paneling. Helen screamed out his name and fired a burst of shots at where he was. The other three members rushed over to where he was too. Alephi covered her mouth in horror while Meri got closer to me. She leaned closer and whispered, "Please don't worry Master. I will make sure you and Mistress Alephi make it out even if it costs me my life." I helped Alephi up and looked back at Hex Squad and their captain. "Helen! Get your men together and let's get out of here!" She pinched her nose and moved her hair out of her eyes, "Right. You heard him men. Stick close and let's go!" She took point and led the way we came. I position Alephi and Meri in the middle while me and Xax took up the rear. I thought maybe we could get out without any more casualties but of course that wasn't the case. As we turned the corner to our escape a giant spider-like creature stood in our way. Helen started shooting as we tried to kill it and push past. It wasn't until I heard Xax screaming that I noticed another dozen such creatures had appeared behind us and were already feasting on him. I pumped my pistol to unleashed it's charged shot killing the creature in front, "Helen! Get our people out of here!" She rushed forward to the escape hatch and stood by as Alephi and Meri ran through. Yui and Loy were almost there when smaller creatures fell from the ceiling and onto their heads. I turned my attention to Loy as he was closest and shot the creature off his head. Unfortunately he dropped and didn't get up afterwards anyway. I turned my attention back to the ones that were closing in on me. Helen was screaming my name but beyond that I couldn't understand what she was saying. Her horrified look on her face is the last thing that I remember.

[oliveroctavius]

SSM #64, Cloak & Dagger, is really a filler issue but has a distinct mood that makes me love it. It's not just the muted horror atmosphere, but the tension between two worlds; the pop superhero and the jaded noir. Some techniques to keep an eye out for throughout the issue:

the amount of detail in the backgrounds

the very sparing use of speed-lines

how one flashback has rounded panel edges but the other doesn't, and why that might have been done

how Dagger clips into the whitespace between panels

tilted, off-kilter panels at some key moments

Under the cut, I talk about three specific pages (9, 14, and 21) in detail:

Here's page 9. Feel how steeply the mood shifts from the start of the page to the end, and then I'll break down what I see here.

Art: Most obviously, the amount of shadow and detail changes. Beautiful chiaroscuro in the first row; more emphasis on the setting than our hero. (Did you spot Spidey in panels 3, 4, and 5 right away?) The noir style is cosmic horror in miniature, where people fall between gritty city cracks to be consumed by an uncaring system. The run-down environment is given center stage.

Now check out the contrast between the clouds/glass reflections/building facades of the first row and third row. The comparatively cartoonish, friendly Bugle is as as much a character as Peter is, and our characters are the focus again.

Writing: There's the beat-poet rhythm of the narration in the first half of course, but box placement is important too. General rule of thumb: text boxes which float above panel borders act like a dramatic voiceover. But boxes that share borders with a panel usually give more literal information about the image/moment they're paired with; a label, not a monologue.

By the last panel, all text is dialogue or thought bubbles. (Over-explaining thoughts is also a very pop-hero convention.)

Layout: The THIRD type of storytelling! Look at the panel density: Four per row, then two, then one. The silent narrow panels feel claustrophobic or half-remembered. Peter is gradually given more space to move (though see how in the second row, he's still boxed in by the shape of a window in both panels). By the bottom panel, the room exists only as a background for him.

(Side note: I love the calendar(?) with the phases of the moon hung behind this man. Moons and windows are a recurring motif.)

Let's look at the end of page 13 before we get to page 14.

This is an unusually Silver-Age flavored bit. The layout is an easy to follow sequence of literal moment-to-moment events. The text/art/speech bubbles fit entirely within the panel boundaries. The art and narration are almost redundant, and nothing is hidden.

Then there's page 14. This is unique for being the only page without white gutters. In fact, some panels have no borders at all, letting the shadows and images jumble together unclearly. It's chaos: some objects and panels overlap others.

The dialogue has the same energy. There are no helpful boxes or thought bubbles to explain. The characters already know each other and allude to an event we don't know about. We don't know for sure who's "good" or "bad" in this situation.

Finally, a note about the first panel: this is actually Spidey's view on the scene through the skylight, though that isn't revealed to us for another several pages. Using a window as a panel border to (ha) "frame" the scene: what an interesting concept...

Anyways, here's page 21.

Panel borders used AS the window shape! Okay, it's a bit of a gimmick, but I think it's a cool climactic payoff with the other negative space tricks & the moon/window motifs.

A note about the middle panel: it's breaking a LOT of general rules of good comic art. There's no background, no perspective, you can't even tell if they're falling towards or away from you; the panel reads from right to left (starting at the speech bubble, then to the sound effect and to the man falling into the next panel) and overlaps every other panel on the page. But its purpose is to shock and stick out, and for that, all those things work.

As an ending, this page resolves the tonal struggle between the pulp hero and the noir. It ramps up to a big bright panel with a large cartoony sound effect, but like the moon through the window, it's a fakeout. Spidey hasn't gotten his way; people have died; justice is served?, with a big morally grey question mark. The last three panels sink back into darkness leaving Spidey tiny and lost in a sea of black. Spoken words fall away and the floating boxes narration take over again: tonight, he will sleep with the lights on.

[wickedpact]

A ranking of all the TTT stories in order of how much I liked them.

(Oh god this is so long)

1 My Mother's Axe

BABY ANDYYYYYYYYYYYY. Honestly this one had the trifecta of developing a character's motivations, developing a character's backstory, & developing their personality. The story starting out with Andy teaching Nile to use the axe was so charming and fun, and you could feel that chemistry they had in Opening Fire, the way they teased and bickered with each other so naturally. I loved the wedge between them on the subject of the axe, how Nile was perhaps a little too young to understand Andy's feelings about whether or not its the 'same' axe. I also love how the axe is obviously the symbol of the franchise and hugely important, but you never get a sense of exactly how important it is to Andy until you read the story.

I love the entire Ship of Theseus theme, and how it feels so natural that for Andy she has to get attached to the idea of things rather than the things themselves because she'll always outlive the things themselves-- the axe is symbolically her mom's axe, even if physically it isn't. And I love how she clearly clings to that concept so tightly. "This is the labrys she held in her hands...." IT GETS ME.

And the fact that this sense of BELONGING, of FAMILY, of CULTURE is so important to Andy that she clings to it (figuratively and literally) with both hands. And of course it's important to her, she spent so long alone that the woman doesn't even remember her birth name. That axe (or the idea of that axe) is all she has left of her mother and that family/culture she was born into.

PLUS on that note I love how Andy doesn't remember if her mom was her actual biological mother, but it doesn't matter to her. This woman was her mother in all the ways that counted. And how her mom BETRAYED AND KILLED Andy but Andy loved her so much that she avenged her and carried her axe for thousands of years. THOUSANDS OF YEARS!!!!!!

I also loved how the story transcends the timeline of the whole franchise and seeing Andy through the years. Loved seeing her with the varying squads and with varying axes. Also baby Andy was so cute. It was cool seeing her so young. like holy fuck. Andromache The Scythian, Immortal Warrior (but smol). Love that.

Also I think this one is one of the few ttt stories that doesn't suffer from length problems.

tldr: goddammit greg you've done it again.

2 Zanzibar and Other Harbors

Zanzibar my beloved. I've said before, but it's downright comedic how little regard there was for Joe and Nicky's character designs in this story. The same person who does the colors for the regular comic did the colors for this one too, and you can tell, every panel of this story was Beautiful.

Ik there was A Lot of criticism of this one (lmao @ how the fandom had no idea what was to come) but I thought a lot of The Discourse was a bit dramatic. I did think Nicky came off as a little oblivious to Joe's feelings in this story, but I've said before, I honestly think that was a 'tone not translating' thing. It felt like Nicky was nagging Joe for [checks notes] saving innocent people, but Joe was so amused by Nicky's complaints I really do think it was supposed to come off as teasing.

Plus I know the 'Joe running off into danger and Nicky reluctantly following' dynamic wasn't popular (I'm a pretty meh on it meself) but I did love how Joe's impulsiveness (if you want to call it that) was interpreted as heroism and not hot-hotheadedness. All of the examples Nicky and Joe talked about included Joe explicitly saving people. (and it also took A Lot for the nazi to actually provoke Joe).

I also feel like their characterization here was closest to the movie canon-- the bit where they hear the woman scream and Joe goes running in to save her while Nicky swoops in on Joe's heels to comfort her while Joe and the nazi were fighting reminds me of the train car scene. Joe had suggested First that they go find Nile because she needed to be protected, and Nicky later added that Nile probably also needed emotional support. Similar reactions.

But it was So Good, the themes of queer community and the enduring nature of queer culture are Not themes you see in media that often and it was such a delight how it was done. Also it's one of the few more modern TTT stories that has a completely valid excuse for taking place when it did. Chef's kiss.

3 Passchendaele

I love the Duality between seeing baby Andy and then seeing Mama Andy in the very next issue. This story doesn't have a ton of meat to it, but the entire concept of Andy adopting a war orphan straight off the battlefield PLUCKS MY TENDER LITTLE HEARTSTRINGS, and I think it's especially poignant for comic!Andy. I think most people wouldn't think twice about movie!Andy doing something like that but comic Andy is so hardened and almost cruel sometimes, and seeing that even for her the world hasn't beaten all of the compassion from her yet is SO!!!!!!! this woman contains MULTITUDES okay, she's violent and angry and tired and Done but she's also so kind and compassionate and THE STRENGTH OF HER!!!!! Also the idea of her and Yitzhak co-raising a kid together is so damn cute. It was #mysterious pre-Yitzhak-story but now it's cute. holy fuck. It's cute.

& the headbonk panel of her and Zeus lives in my heart. anyways.

4 Many Happy Returns

I Know people weren't thrilled about Booker being in this one, but I've developed a pet-peeve about that: this story was *not* booker-centric. Booker only exists in this story to the extent required to explain the importance of the gesture Nile makes towards him. If there was a story about Booker making some grand gesture of kindness to Nile no one would be saying it was Nile-centric. bc it wouldn't be! Booker exists in this story to explore Nile's kindness, its not about him. I saw that a couple times and it bothered me. anyways.

AAAAAAAAAA I loved this one, the art was beautiful, I loved how Andy Nile and Booker were drawn (like their comic selves but.. more looking like actual people). I loved Andy and Nile's Bants, how Andy wanted to jump right in and Do Violence but Nile was basically telling her to hold her horses.

I feel like I'm just repeating the post I made on this story a few days ago, but I LOVED how Nile's plan revolves not around violence or Cool Mercenary Skills but on Nile's own life skills (as she canonly did a lot of minimum wage job-hopping before the marines in comics canon). Her plan used her skills, not the skills of an immortal warrior, and HER SKILLS were in fact more useful for the situation! lov to see Nile's resourcefulness and planning skills.

AND HOW NILE WAS PROBABLY WATCHING BOOKER??? it's so Much bc 1.) nile knew booker A SINGLE DAY and yet he made such an impression on her emotionally that she had to keep an eye on him and 2.) she said in the movie she wanted Booker to get off free with an apology. Yes she's a member of the team but that doesn't mean she's necessarily going to follow orders like a good little soldier. I also love how she convinced Andy to go along with it. her HEART, her KINDNESS, her THOUGHTFULNESS, UGH.

5 The Bear

Honestly I have like no negative things to say about this one other than a.) character design issues which is less about the story itself and is more of a 'tog comic in general' criticism and b.) too short, but it was supposed to be a tease, so.

But I loved Yitzhak, I wasn't expecting to really like him at all but like I said in my other post, he tickled me. I love characters who are Kind™, especially if they have little reason to be so given their backgrounds. Chef's kiss. Lov him.

6 Bonsai Shokunin

I know this one was a little controversial bc of the outsider POV but whenever I see people upset about that they never point out that the Outsider Guy (the samurai) existed as a reflection on Noriko. His ideas are explained in the text to develop hers. The whole story follows how she gave mercy to a scared young man and in response he murdered Noriko, repeatedly! Who gave him the right to inflict such pain and suffering on the world? In his opinion, the lack of response from the gods was his permission. And for Noriko-- over and over again she dies and suffers because she gave mercy, which lines up with her ideas in FM about how it's their fate to rule mortals and if they don't align with that plan/fate/whatever then they suffer. It shows some background to those ideas and how they developed in her mind outside of Ocean Madness™. Additionally, his idea of 'the Gods have done nothing to strike me down so it's fine if I do these things' kind of explains how Noriko may justify her own morally corrupt actions-- she's died so many times and it's never stuck. Maybe if she did die any of those times, or while she was in the water, maybe that would've been a sign she was doing something right, or at least doing something normal. But she hasn't died. Fate isn't done with Noriko yet. And maybe there's a reason for that. In her mind, it's just not a very pleasant reason, is all.

There were things I was kind of meh about tho. I did kind of wish we saw something of Noriko and the team, or smth explaining the way she was before her dip in the pool-- personality, likes dislikes, etc. but it wasn't bad or anything. It was super vague tho, I had to read it a few times before I got what it was going for. Liked the art. Liked the bonsai metaphor. And of course I Respect the decision to use the 1300s (1200s? I don't remember off the top of my head) rather than using the last 200 years.

7 Strong Medicine

Honestly looking back, this one made me kind of sad because both this one and Bonsai Shokunin explored character's ideas on Fate and The Divine and how that intersects with immortality and I totally thought that theme would be continued, especially with Love Letters. But Then It Wasn't™.

Admittedly.... I had to re-read this one to remember most of it. I liked Booker's ideas on God, 'The conductor of the symphony just may not be very good at his trade' but the plot itself was kind of forgettable. Some fuckin cowboys try to kill a doctor (their second) because he couldn't save their sickly brother. Book tries to stop them, gets killed, and then comes back and kills them all before they get the doctor. Alright. I liked the artstyle because the characters were ugly in a similar way that leandro's are, but way more bearable.

I love the Irony of Booker concluding that there is no such thing as fate or destiny and nothing has meaning, AS HE UNKNOWINGLY SAVES MERRICK'S GRANDFATHER FROM BEING KILLED. Booker getting fucked over by life/god/destiny yet again. It also kind of explains about where the fuck hell Merrick's interest in immortal mercenaries even came from.

I originally had this one a lot higher and then I thought about it and moved it down like two spots.

8 Never Gets Old

I liked seeing Booker interact with his kid. And we got a name for the kid! Philippe was a little bitch though, he was a little obnoxious. I liked how Booker was so thrilled to experience a restaurant with his kid (and since we know he was there before, it can be assumed he went with all of his kids and yet he was so charmed each time). It fits with his line to Nicky in the moon landing story about how you don't appreciate beautiful things 'unless you have someone to share them with'. It was charming to see Booker interact with his kid, and to see him so happy. Also lmao @ Booker's big fat Ye Olde Crush on Andy.

However at the same time it was like.. of all the things to write about,,, I guess? Booker's Night Out...... alright. Especially since Book had so many stories.

I don't know, it was alright. The old man killing him really came out of nowhere, (but the 'Salut, asshole!' panel was funny tho).

9 How To Make a Ghost Town

I've hit a point where talking about these stories has gotten less fun. I liked this one but I felt like Achilles getting lynched was not really necessary for a story that was already tragic (a story that already involved Achilles doing a lot of suffering at the hand of bigots). When we first got the blurb for this story I thought it would be about Andy returning to the squad and making friends with Booker after losing Achilles and them butting heads on the idea of family and when to cut off ties. So a little bit of my underwhelmedness about this one might be just my expectations being different.

Honestly I was pretty interested in Andy and Achilles' relationship and I would've liked to see more of them-- like, what was their dynamic like? What did they love about each other?

But anyways Andy leaving and Achilles getting killed anyways feels so pointlessly tragic (which I suppose is the point..... I don't like tragedies) she left to save him and yet people killed him anyway. Meh.

I did love the bits about Andy wanting to have a domestic life (Andy and her multitudes again) and the little detail about how she buried her axe near the road but he buried his guns under his bed-- he was an escaped slave, he never had the luxury of assuredness like Andy did. It was a sad story.

10 Lacus Solitudinis

'You put this one above love letters crim??? how could you???' easy, lmao.

There was stuff in this one I liked. But to talk about stuff I didn't like: (I'll keep it brief, I know ragging on this story has been done time and time again)

UH, setting aside the 6 year cold shoulder between Joe and Nicky, I thought their chosen method of conflict resolution was... bad at best. Nicky's inability to talk about his feelings was also annoying, especially since the entire point of this story is a fight Joe and Nicky had, and yet we don't get both sides to the story, which is...... important? That fact is especially annoying bc in the absence of Nicky explaining his side of the story, it's absolutely a possible (and admittedly probably unintentional) interpretation of the text that we do get that Joe routinely resolves conflict between him and Nicky by simply cutting Nicky out of his life entirely until Nicky just. caves? Even if it takes years?

WHICH i could get into that interpretation and how fucked up i find it. but im not going to. out of restraint.

I don't know, I think there are a lot of interesting ways to go about this conflict but 'Nicky wants to kill a guy and Joe refuses to acknowledge his existence until he stops because he thinks Nicky is too much of a Good Boy to get his hands dirty like that' ('I wont watch as the world turns his (...) compassion into something ugly'. ) wasn't.. how I would've done it. (I mean you know Joe doesn't give a shit about what Nicky is doing in a moral way, because Joe doesn't even care or mention that Booker is killing those cops too. Joe only cares because he doesn't like the idea of Nicky changing in a way he finds undesirable.)

admittedly I've said before, I do like the emphasis Joe's reaction puts on Nicky's kindness. Joe has a complete inability to cope with Nicky simply Not Being Kind. It speaks to the steadiness of Nicky's compassion all those years. but still that fact doesn't make it the conflict feel worth it

hm. I said I would be brief and I wasn't.

oh well. basically I thought there was interesting conflict potential there but it wasn't done the way I would've liked, and the way it was done leaves a lot of disturbing (and again probably unintended) interpretations to lie.

What I did like? Andy and Joe having that pessimist/optimist dynamic. Joe nerding out about science. Andy not being impressed by The Achievements Of Man. I loved Booker needling at Nicky about his outdated slang and also trying to give him Older Brother advice practically in the same breath. I loved Booker giving The Worst relationship advice ever and Nicky being like 'I Will Not Do That, Ever, Thanks.' the family vibes were so good. The Joenicky vibes left a lot to be desired tho.

11 Love Letters

I talked about my problems with Nicky in this story (and Lacus Solitudinis). I don't know, the story isn't bad but I do hold a little bit of a grudge towards it because its very existence begs the existence of a solo Joe story and we didn't get one. If we never got this story, then we could happily count Lacus Solitudinis and Zanzibar as The Joenicky Stories™ and move on with our lives. sigh.

I remember when we first got the blurb for this story I was really curious about why Nicky specifically + the setting, and the answer kind of feels like 'the author had an idea for a story like this and saw ttt as a good enough place to utilize that idea'. Plus I was really underwhelmed by the Romantic Sentiment in the letter. If you look at it line-by-line, the majority of the letter is actually Nicky talking about how lonely and disturbed he is, rather than actual,, yknow,,, Romantic Sentiment. I mean, compare the van speech and this letter and this letter is just kind of meh in comparison. I liked nicky calling joe wise! and I liked the brief sun/moon metaphor! and otherwise it was eh. It didn't even have cute squad banter, which is why Lacus Solitudinis is above this one.

12 An Old Soul

Nun orgy. Nun orgy?????? Nun orgy.......

The whole story felt like a setup to have a nun orgy. Why did Booker have abs? Why did they do that to Andy's nose? ?????? the art was good at least.

nun orgy.

[kitsu-katsu]

On kiribaku becoming canon and their evidence:

So I posted this on reddit earlier, but wanted to have it here where more KRBK shippers are, since I just ended up compiling a lot more than I thought I would.

Fair warning: A pretty big text with a compilation of kiribaku moments ahead.

We would all love kiribaku being canon, and I think it's not as much of a longshot as some may lead you to believe.

Honestly, if one of them was a girl, this would most certainly be canon, like, just in the anime we have:

Them becoming friends slowly in the background, leaving us with good development between them that is so seamless it can hit you hard once you notice how close they've become if you hadn't noticed before.

Them arriving and leaving the pool together while walking in the sunset.

They support and compliment each other (both on personality and quirks, like come on).

Kirishima can just lean on Bakugou or side hug him all the time and Bakugou lets him with no problem, which considering who we're talking about is a pretty big thing.

Kirishima can seem even more agitated than Deku about Bakugou being taken, and Deku is the one who idolized him since childhood.

The whole "It has to be you" thing and the precious hand holding (including that little scene after the rescue, where Kiri tries to grab Baku's hand again).

Kirishima bought expensive night vision googles in case they were useful for the rescue even though they had Yaomomo with them (this boy goes through extremes just to ensure his boyfriend's best friend's safety)

Kirishima is officially the one Bakugou considers an equal, and considering his conflicting inferiority and superiority complexes (making him perpetually place people as above him or beneath him) is vital information.

Kirishima is esentially Bakugou's first real friend (as Deku was considered more of an incomprehensible nuisance and his childhood troop seemed more like his followers who just put him up on a pedestal and followed what he did).

Kirishima has jumped in front of danger for Bakugou's sake quite a bit of times (including a time in the movie).

Kirishima is a central piece in Bakugou's character development.

Bakugou was the one who told Kirishima he was strong and gave him his confidence back, reminding him of what he said at the start of their friendship.

Kirishima unlocked fucking UNBREAKABLE because of Bakugou's encouragement.

Going to extra stuff:

Bakugou's favourite hobbie is hiking, and we're shown he takes Kirishima with him sometimes, thing he doesn't seem to do with other characters.

The whole festival thing, with the narrator outright assuming Bakugou must have given his coat to a pretty girl who was cold, only for it to be revealed in another picture that he gave it to Kirishima because as usual, he didn't have a shirt on.

On the movie Bakugou could have taken anyone to I-Island and took Kirishima as his plus one. They share a room. Kirishima bought suits for both of them, with the most detailed one with white roses being for Bakugou, and they decide to go to the party together.

In a BNHA Smash connected directly to the movie, Midoriya notices the white roses in Bakugou's suit and notes that they mean deep respect and "I'm the one for you", which prompts Bakugou to send an explosion his way (not to Kirishima who gave him the suit, mind you), which makes the flowers turn red (from blood), after which Mineta appears to say that red roses mean "beautiful and passionate love".

They are usually seen together in merch stuff.

There's this tumblr post talking about japanese fan's reactions to one of Horikoshi's drawings which I find at least hilarious:

https://exbrodokills.tumblr.com/post/187710597637/here-it-is

There are discussions regarding Kirishima's character sheet and the translation of him liking "tough guys" (here's a podt by aitaikimochi explaining the meaning of the translation: https://www.google.com/amp/s/aitaikimochi.tumblr.com/post/171127708911/amp) where even translator such as aitaikimochi have gotten into, and they have mentioned that there's a japanese stereotype of a type of gay guy who is obsessed with "manly behaviour" and usually stay away from women, prefering tough guys instead, which is interesting to say the least.

Some of the light novel episodes which show more slice of life moment feature some good kiribaku moments, with a prominent one being this one wich details their study date (it seriously seems like fan fiction, not even kidding, and this is supposed to be sort of canon):

https://www.google.com/amp/s/aitaikimochi.tumblr.com/post/171236111166/amp

Also there's a chapter where Kirishima tells Fatgum about Bakugou being extremely happy, and another one where they are arm wrestling between classes and they cheer for one another heavily.

(Honesly, just go through aitaikimochi's whole kiribaku tag, there are some pretty interesting things there)

Here are some analysis on their possible coding, if you guys are interested:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dxO6Y0yK_wxOJDmRsBYvsVWKwsH7tKc92skxJ--R1m4/edit?usp=drivesdk

(Bakugou's one link can be found at the end of that one)

And in BNHA Smash, there are quite a lot of things, and we must not forget that the whole thing still gets approved by Horikoshi before being published, some of my favourite things are:

Kirishima inviting Bakugou to spend christmas together, with the translators noting christmas in Japan to be a romantic holiday in the same panel.

In one issue, Jirou falls for Kiri and him being oblivious just leaves her for Bakugou.

Once Bakugou becomes a shoujo boy after being his with a quirk and just involuntarily talks in flirt, and in one moment Kirishima outright flirts back.

Bakugou works his ass off to repay Kirishima for the night vision googles they used in the rescue.

Kirishima is literally described as the chicken soup for Bakugou's soul!

An interesting thing I found out is that in the chapter where all of 1A minus Bakugou turn into animals, one scene originally had Kirishima (as a dog) getting jealous of Kaminari and Midoriya petting Tsuyu (as a cat - yes I know, a cat) and giving all their attention to her, however, Horikoshi himself changed that scene, noting he didn't think their character relations worked well in that scene, and made it so that the one that ended up in smash contains Kirishima (as a dog) getting jealous because Todoroki (as a koala) has climbed up Bakugou's torso and won't let go. I saw this all in a tumblr post a few months ago, which showed the original scene in a book (I think it was in italian and was translates below) but I can't currently find the link, sorry, if someone finds it, It'd be appreciated if you could reblog with said link.

And in regards to meta stuff, the show already has some LGBT characters in it, with Magne and Tiger being trans and Toga being bisexual, so it's not as much of a lost cause to hope for this as it would initially seem.

(Please kirimina shippers, don't take offence because of this, it isn't my intention to insult your ship, I simply want to analize what has been given to us, so please try to take this lightly):

We should also take into consideration Krishima's first version in the sort of "beta" for the manga (where Midoriya was Yamikumo).

His character sheet mentions he's quite the delinquent and entered UA to impress a girl. Obviously his character evolved tremendously since then, but the girl was most probably intended to be Mina's equivalent. This was later changed to him liking "tough guys"/"hard liners" and his thing with Mina became more of an "I admired your bravery and heroic spirit when in middle school even if I hardly knew you", later seeing each other and establishing more of a little friendship. However, it hasn't really moved further from there, and Kirishima has already established much stronger bonds with our favourite exploding boy. All changes in characters are made for a reason, and Horikoshi clearly changed his mind on Kirishima's motives for wanting to be a hero and his relationship with Mina.

So yeah, all in all, this ship is great, it's precious, adorable, helps both characters grow, is balanced and has good chemistry. So even if after all these things they don't become officially canon, we still have so much canon material for them in the present I'd honestly still be happy, these dorks make me smile and melt my heart, so I hope they both have good endings.

[meadow-roses]

Okay here's the animation thingy, @the-ascendant-doodler ! This is actually a really bad example because the clip only got worse after I added more frames but I can work with that (I should not, however, work with a headache. Lesson learned here ughy)

Also I wanna say, this is the third time I've done it this way? So I don't really know what I'm doing and I'll probably come up with better methods later. It's for fun and practice and I'd love it if it helped other people too but I'm definitely not claiming to be an expert at all.

Anyways

Get a stack of papers. ✨draw your first frame ✨

Lay the next paper over it and you should be able to see the previous drawing showing through

(I used a window to take the pic cause the camera wasn't picking up the shadow on the table.)

Flip as you go. Let me repeat that. Flip as you go. Look back on the drawings and compare the motion and arcs AS YOU GO. pls this will make your life better. You should do this in digital animation too but it's extra important in paper animation cause it's way harder to pinpoint mistakes when you've got a stack of 20 papers. But anyway. Compare the most recent three panels as you add each element. (Head, arms, legs, etc.) Just double check your arcs are working and you don't have things jittering around.

Once you've got a whole bunch of pics (and you can't locate errors just by flipping anymore) is when I've made the gif to see how good it ACTUALLY looks lol

Take your pics as even as possible, all four corners at right angles. Line up your camera box to one side, and later crop off the excess. One frame should kinda look like this:

Then load the pics into a gif maker (I have one built into the gallery app on my phone) adjust the speed and tada!

Some notes on why that animation is bad so you can learn from my mistakes too. 😂

1) Where's his weight? He looks like he bonks his head then flies away.

Alternatively it looks like the moment he touches the ground again the camera angle switches and he rolls along his back.

When you do a squash and stretch you gotta have that delay so they have weight! So he hits his shoulder on the ground and does a kipp up to his feet. He doesn't do... whatever that is. XD

It'd probably be less confusing if I'd finished the sequence and he made it to his feet, but why continue doing it wrong when you can stop and redo it?

2) His back legs aren't following a consistent arch in his dive. They aren't assisting to his movement making it smoother and more believable, they're just kinda along for the ride lol They also ought to tuck in further when he rolls.

3) the sword has inconsistent size/shape

4) and again cause it really bugs me, the bonking head part? That's not a squash and stretch the poor lad just dove head first and hit his poor little head. The impact should land on his shoulder, not his face. :(

5) not an issue with the animation so much as just something I need to keep in mind, keep the camera on the subject. Like I shoulda kept him in the middle of the page instead of moving him across it. I just forgot to do that. 😅 (partly why I stopped cause I didn't have room for him to flip to his feet haha)

Here's the same gif really slow for y'all

Anyways I hope that helped! I'm going to try redoing the sequence and having him roll, THEN grap the sword and stand up.

[bigskydreaming]

Do you ever feel like you're pushing a boulder up a hill defending characters against the same whole-hearted misinformation that keeps getting repeated again & again as if it's canon? I tried 4 times in a chat thread where people kept insisting that Dick Grayson and even the Teen Titans were jerks to Jason Todd when he was Robin. I don't know how you do it. No matter what you say, it just keeps going. No canon is ever enough. Why are some fans so set on the idea that everyone ostracized Jason?

Ooof yeah, that’s a whole barrel of annoying. The big gripe for me, in both my major fandoms, is that so much of the misinformation comes paired with this contradictory insistence on how much people don’t give a fuck about canon.....even while willfully trying to reinvent canon to say what they want it to say, in order to back up their version of events or take on various characters!

Its like, if you don’t give a fuck about canon, THEN DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT CANON. Don’t TELL me you don’t give a fuck about canon, and then GO OFF on how canon does all these things that canon most definitely does not do, thereby casting MUCH MUCH doubt upon your claims of not giving a fuck about canon, and suggesting that in fact, you do give quite a bit of fucks about canon, actually.

Y’know?

fahsklfhalfhkafl

But honestly, I’m not the person to give advice on this front because oof, I make bad choices here. LOLOLOL, no but for real, I can’t really tell you how to just deal with this because I’m like, I do not have mastery of that skillset myself. I have however long since exhausted myself of any illusions about CHANGING the minds of people who are particularly insistent upon things that never happened informing their particular view of characters, because like.....the reality is, people who come into fandoms emotionally invested in views of characters that they derived from other fics or fanons, like......it doesn’t matter that those things aren’t canon, what matters is their emotional investment in this particular fandom is entirely bound up in those particular views no matter WHERE they originated from, and so most of them aren’t changing their minds any time soon because they don’t WANT another viewpoint, their original one is the reason they’re here and invested in the first place. 

BUT at the same time, everybody wants to feel validated in their viewpoints, so the more that viewpoint is challenged by people being like uh no, here’s a thing that says you’re wrong, look, its here, its clear, the facts say shhhhhh the marketing campaign for all the Hateorade you’ve drunk about this character is based entirely on The Sky Is Green If We Say It Is logic.....the more people are like, determined to prove they’re right, even if their own personal conviction ORIGINALLY was not dependent on canon whatsoever and it only retroactively started mattering to them not as a source point for how they view characters but like, rather, a data point for Here’s How I Can Still Win This Argument.

And here’s where being in a comics fandom gets really fucking annoying:

Because there are so damn many comics.

And like, a lot of people in comics fandoms don’t even read the comics, and say so - and I mean, this is fine? If you’re here for the characters you don’t need to be here for the comics, so if you don’t actually like comics, like don’t read the comics, just read fic. Its whatever. BUT the bigger issue in my experience is like.....people arguing about comics canon even when they haven’t read the comics, like....often project onto everyone they’re arguing with, like, their own stance on comics.

What I mean by that is a lot of the people arguing about comics canon even when they proudly haven’t read a comic in their life because there are so many where would they even start and also, eww, I’m not doing all that.....like....there’s this presumption evident in a lot of arguments that the same holds true for everyone else in comics fandoms.....that none of the rest of us have read all those comics either, because how could anyone? There’s so many of them!

Forgetting of course, that many of us come into these fandoms from entirely different trajectories. If you come into a comics fandom because of fanfics, or a cartoon adaptation, or the movies.....upon your first day in fandom, when you look at all the comics canon that’s out there, you’re like holy shit that’s a lot, nobody could ever read all that, I’m certainly not going to read all that, I’m going back to fics.

BUT for those of us who came into these fandoms from the direction of reading the comics......our perspective was entirely different, because it was never some singular monolithic VASTNESS of unread comics that nobody could ever tackle because where would we even begin. For those of us who were reading comics for years or most of our lives......its been a handful of issues a month, month after month, year after year, rather than all in one sitting.

So the point of conflict becomes the presumption from a lot of fans who AREN’T here because of the comics, that comic book canon is this untapped cornucopia of potential validation, Schrodinger’s Canon, it can be basically whatever they want it to be, because who’s to say it ISN’T? If they can’t read all of that, nobody can read all of that, so when you think about it, its entirely plausible that the thing they insist happened in canon actually DID happen in canon, SOMEWHERE in all of that.....because just because they don’t know where it is and can’t point to it as explicitly existing, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist either. Who’s to say, really?

Well. Umm. People who in fact actually HAVE read all or most of the RELEVANT comics. Like yeah nobody’s read every comic ever I bet, lolol, but for lifelong DC readers, canon ISN’T this vast uncharted territory that can potentially contain everything.....its actually quite charted, and there are people who absolutely do know what it does and does not contain.

And this I think is at the heart of the insistence on particular points of argument, like Jason was always perpetually mistreated and Dick and the Titans hated him on sight and that’s why the Knights of the Order of Protection for the Smol Jason Bean hate Dick, because he was a giant jerkface to a little kid who never did anything to him ever. Like it doesn’t matter how much we point out that no, this did not in fact happen and is untrue, COMPLETELY, like.....people who came into fandom because of fics about Jason in which the entire perspective upon his character is uniformly, with virtually no exception, that he was scapegoated by Dick from Day One and he and Dick will always be eternally at odds because of the remnants of what a jerk and failure of a brother Dick was to him at first.......like, I feel like there’s this conviction lying underneath all those arguments, no matter how much canon they’re presented with, that there still exists out there SOMEWHERE, some untapped treasure trove of panels proving what a buttface Dick was to his first little brother, validating everything they’ve ever believed and thought ever, because look all those depictions of Dick being a giant assbutt to Jason in fics had to come from SOMEWHERE after all, didn’t they?

Well, yeah. They did come from somewhere. They came from the writers who wrote those fics that way because they either just hated Dick’s character or they were working through their own sibling angst and projected certain dynamics onto the characters or someone told them this is what things were like in the comics and they didn’t know any different or just didn’t care or a hundred million other possible reasons for why they wrote them that way with none of those reasons being Cuz Canon Said So.....and then those particular depictions caught on and multiplied fruitfully like the offspring of rabbits doing it sans contraceptives.

Because its not like “perpetual black sheep of the family so unfairly hated, so misunderstood, especially by the family’s favored son, the golden boy” is a fan favorite trope on its own, regardless of whether or not the characters said trope is applied to actually FIT that trope.

So in the end, the painful irony was not only did canon have nothing to do with that trend, canon COULD do nothing about that trend, because the reasons people turned to it, despite how often canon gets brought into it....really had nothing to do with canon.

So tbh, my personal stance these days is the best defense to fic-borne and originating views of the characters and their dynamics is NOT canon, its....more fic. Fic that presents a counter-narrative to the ones that are so often the first thing people see when they enter fandom, and thus become engrained as Truth. So that there’s at least more variety out there, because where there’s variety, there’s varied points of view, and the more people internalize THAT, that there are variations to be found in how these characters relate to each other and their shared histories......the more people have to make a CHOICE about what variations they most want to adhere to, from among the OPTIONS they’re presented with, instead of just doubling down on the first thing that clicks for them, no opposition in sight.

And if these counter “Dick’s just the worst like what an uber asshole gonna give a five star rating for Sucking At Life to that guy” fics happen to be inspired largely by canon rather than fanon like....oh no, how strange and unknowable, that’s not the Process, we’re doing it wrong but hey whatever.

But does that mean its not still frustrating as hell to see people just parroting the Dick and the Titans were mean to Jason truism as fact, especially when you know damn well its not? Hell no. That’s annoying as fuck. But don’t worry so much about trying to change peoples’ minds, I say, and instead just find people who ARE open to canon or familiar with it, and just have a good rant. Its fun!

 Here, I’ll start:

UGH AND ANOTHER THING ABOUT THIS WHOLE “DICK WAS SUCH A JERK TO JASON AND THE TITANS ALL FOLLOWED HIS LEAD” CRAPOLA SUMMER SALES EVENT:

Where would that even have happened???

Like what really chuffs my chopped onions here is when people are so suuuuuuuure that the gatekeepers of comic book fandom are keeping the real juicy anti-Dick panels hidden every time they ask “Hey Siri show me proof Dick’s a jerkmonster to Jason”....because like...they’re just SO SURE these panels are out there and its like lololol but where would they even come from? 

Because everybody overlooks that in proper Dickens fashion, pre-Flashpoint Jason was a Tale of Two Jasons, the pre-Crisis adorable child of sunshine and whee, and the post-Crisis I have smoker’s lung at age twelve Jason......and these two Jasons can and do and are MEANT to co-exist within the same body! They’re the same Jason, in hindsight!

See, post-Crisis Jason only existed for like, less than TWO YEARS real world time, before A Death in the Family! People have this assumption that because of how rock-solid the post-Crisis origin for him is and how solidly that’s informed his characterization and stories moving forward, like.....there was this HUGE foundation for it back in the day that was built upon.....but no! We’re talking like, less than twenty four issues IN TOTAL. Post-Crisis Jason was a drop in the bucket compared to pre-Crisis Jason.

So why then, is post-Crisis Jason so much more firmly cemented in peoples’ minds than pre-Crisis Jason even though pre-Crisis Jason had way more material written about him?

Because for once in DC’s existence, they were SMART about a retcon. They didn’t TRY to pit post-Crisis Jason versus pre-Crisis Jason and make people pick between them. Post-Crisis Jason wasn’t an attempt at overwriting pre-Crisis Jason and making it so he never existed. Instead, what they did with their limited amount of time writing post-Crisis Jason was overwrite only two stories specifically: his actual pre-Crisis origin, and how he and Dick first met....and then they let everything else from pre-Crisis stay! It just got folded IN BETWEEN Jason’s new post-Crisis origin and everything that came after that, thanks to some handy non-linear storytelling and flashbacks.

So rather than Jason having two entirely separate storylines and directions, they still kept him at just one....and his post-Crisis origin and A Death in the Family became BOOKENDS surrounding not just the twenty issues in between those two stories......but ALSO surrounding ALL the pre-Crisis issues featuring Jason.....including the times he interacted with Dick and the Titans.

And that’s why there’s no untapped treasure trove of potentially vilifying issues showcasing Dick being such a can of Jerkola to Jason.......

Because post-Crisis only amounted to a grand total of like twenty something issues.....in which Jason interacted with Dick once and only once....the issue which ends with Dick giving Jason his blessing as Robin, his costume, and his phone number to call him if he ever has any problems with Bruce.

But simultaneously, because all those pre-Crisis issues still existed, were still relevant, were still in continuity (as evidenced by Jason himself when he came back as the Red Hood and fought Tim at Titans Tower, referencing how he was briefly a Titan himself.......aka those issues in which he teamed up with the Titans, which ONLY happened before his new origin)....we similarly know that it wasn’t like Dick and Jason never had any contact after their first post-Crisis encounter....we just never saw Jason use that phone number on the page AFTER that issue (because again, there was no time before he was killed off in the comics TO engineer another on the page meet-up, like both characters were busy in unrelated stories in the course of the mere year between that issue and ADITF). BUT by the power of retcon, we do know that Jason still must have used it at some point, or else Dick reached out to him again at some later point off the page......because Dick and Jason’s easy familiarity with each other pre-Crisis STILL EXISTED AS WELL. They had a sibling relationship post-Crisis because they had a sibling relationship pre-Crisis...AND IT WAS THE SAME RELATIONSHIP.

And this is Part Two of why no untapped treasure trove of Jerk Dick and Poor Jason panels exists......because other than that one post-Crisis issue, all their other interactions hail from the pre-Crisis era....where Dick adored Jason and so did the rest of the Titans.

Jason wasn’t resentful of the Titans or scared of them or nursing grudges, he thought getting to hang out with his big brother’s friends WAS THE COOLEST FUCKING THING IN THE WORLD and you could practically see him bouncing on the page the times it happened. He glowed when Dick would ruffle his hair playfully or compliment him, and the Titans’ collective energy towards Jason was very much OH OUR FRIEND’S BABY BRO IS THE MOST ADORABLE SMALL CHILD EVER AND WE WILL PROTECT HIM WITH OUR LIVES.

Like people WILLFULLY misconstrue this one issue where Jason teamed up with the Original Titans other than Dick for a mission against Cheshire, and claim like “oh see, this is the proof that the Titans were mean to Jason because of Dick, they kept giving him shit for not being Dick and hated him for replacing Dick....” which omg noooooooooooo, that is so odiously NOT what happened in that issue. First off, NOBODY blamed Jason for replacing Dick back then, because at the time those issues were written, he DIDN’T....this was when Dick had given Robin to Jason himself, when choosing to move on as Nightwing. And even RETROACTIVELY looking at this issue in light of the retcon where Dick was fired as Robin, this STILL changes nothing about Dick and Jason’s dynamic at this particular time or how the rest of the Titans would have viewed Jason as of this issue.....because that’s where the post-Crisis issue specifically writing Dick and Jason’s new introduction to each other on the page matters so much. As now the ultimate takeaway is even while not making Jason Robin himself, this issue STILL showed Dick giving Jason his blessing.....thus maintaining and stabilizing every pre-Crisis interaction between Jason and the Titans and ensuring that this whole “they resented him on Dick’s behalf” scenario wouldn’t throw any retroactive curveballs into how they were with Jason...because now there still was no need for anything on Dick’s behalf, as far as Jason was concerned, because Dick had given his A-Ok.

So that just flat out never happened, not originally, pre-Crisis, and not even in hindsight after the post-Crisis retcons were factored in, because the HOW of the post-Crisis retcons specifically factored in an avoidance of this potential tangle.

And in fact, what DID happen in the arc where Jason teamed up with the Titans without Dick, to go up against Cheshire.......is that Donna, who was in charge of the team at the time, kept trying to defer to Jason-as-Robin, because subconsciously she was insecure about her leadership at the time and having a Robin at her side was making her think of when Dick had been in that role, and simultaneously been their leader, and thus she was trying to lean into the familiar comforts of being able to turn to a Robin for direction.

And Jason CALLED HER OUT ON THIS. Politely. And cutely. No for real it was adorable. But like, he did it with poise and self-confidence and deliberation, and SHE HEARD HIM. She snapped out of it. Jason laid out exactly what she was doing and why and Donna was like oh shit, you’re right, I HAVE been doing that. And Jason was like, and that’s not fair to me. And Donna was like no, you’re absolutely right, that isn’t fair to you, I’m sorry. And Jason’s like, I can’t be the leader here, I don’t have the experience that Dick does. But you do, and you can be the leader. And Donna was like. You’re three for three kiddo, damn you’re good at this.

AND THEN THEY WENT AND KICKED BAD GUY ASS TOGETHER AND EVERYTHING WAS HUNKY-DORY BECAUSE THE POINT OF THAT ENTIRE PLOT WAS NOT “EVERYONE IS MEAN TO POOR JASON BECAUSE DICK MADE A CONSPIRACY OF MEANNESS” IT WAS “JASON’S A KICK-ASS LITTLE GO-GETTER WHO KNOWS HIS STRENGTHS AND HIS STRENGTH IS TELLING PEOPLE WHEN THEY’RE BEING DUMB AND THEY NEED TO STOP THAT.”

Okay, one caveat here. I must confess, its killing me....there is ONE Titan who was a jerk to Jason.

But uh....that Titan was Hank Hall aka Hawk. And he’s a jerk to everybody. Its kinda his superpower.

And he most certainly didn’t do it on Dick’s behalf, as Hank hates Dick and Dick hates Hank asfhilfhalfhalf. Seriously, they’re basically the hateship that ppl keep trying to make Dick and Jason into, only without the incest makes it spicy or whatever element, but like, if you’re not hung up on that and can ship people without them being related, oh no, oh woe, oh say it ain’t so, like, DickHank is the unsung hateship of dreaaaaaaaaaaams. They’re like:

Hank: As it is a day ending in y, I feel now is the perfect time to let you know, without prompting, that I hate your guts because people like you. And I hate people and everything they like, on account of people are the worst.

Dick: Well, you’re people, and you’re the worst, so that tracks.

Hank: So we’re agreed. I hate you. You hate me.....

Dick: Our hate is so in harmony.

Donna: What is even happening here and do I want to know.

Roy: In reverse order, no, probably not, and I’m not sure, but I THINK they’re getting hate married, and exchanging vows to hate each other in sickness and in health, forever and ever.

Wally: *skidding around corner* I CALL BEST MAN.

Donna: Its not a real wedding Wally.

Roy: Idk they seem pretty serious about it. Which means the best man position should be valid here, which means it should be me, because suck it West, only way you’ll ever be Dick’s best man is over my dead body.

Wally: Get ready to throw down then, Robin Hood, and just call me the Sheriff of Notachanceinhell, that best man position is MINE.

Garth: Whoa, hold up, I have an agreement IN WRITING from when we were THIRTEEN for Dick and I to be each other’s best men at our weddings, so I’m gonna need you both to stand down, I LITERALLY CALLED DIBS. Look. ITS IN WRITING.

Donna: Oh for fuck’s sake, you collective pluralization of buffoons, STOP TREATING THIS AS A REAL THING. ITS NOT A REAL THING.

Dick, eyes dead-locked on Hank: Oh this is real Donna. This is happening.

Hank, stepping forward, eyes equally locked: I have never been more serious about anything in my life. 

Lilith: Sure, you’ve only both saved the world but hey why should that matter. This is definitely the real shit.

Hank: Please. I only did that to prove I could do it better than Dick could. I hate the world.

Dick: Aww, and did you cry yourself to sleep when that flopped?

Hank: Wouldn’t know. It didn’t happen.

Donna: I swear by every god on Mt. Olympus, the first one of you to say I know you are but what am I is getting flung into orbit.

Anyway. I might have gotten distracted somewhere in there. What was your question again and did I answer it? I think I did....fahlkfhaklfhalhfa.