#and so he's just on this quest to prove Bruce wrong at all costs in a one-man war that he will not and cannot win

[danny-chase]

dang it i miss when jason was a self serving asshat of a character that was consumed by his desire for revenge and was willing to do whatever it takes to prove his point

[bigskydreaming]

Hi, I was reading your post about Jason punching Dick in the face when Dick revealed he fake his death was bullshit ( which it was) and it reminded me of an issue/question that has bothered me for sometime.

Why did people believe Dick was actually dead?

I’m not the most avid comic reader so maybe I missed something but it was always weird to me that everyone just accepted this especially given how Bruce was acting or should I say wasn’t acting.

This is a man when his child died another child had to come along and told him sir you are being too violent and emotional you need supervision. When his other child died he went all over the universe to bring him back to life because he knew it was possible ( which was happening at the same time), so why didn’t anyone think it was weird he wasn’t doing that for Dick. Can you imagine Dick really dying that soon after Damian it would be injustice Batman Version. You are telling me that Tim, Jason or Barbara didn’t think it was weird that Bruce didn’t also bring Dick’s corpse to the bring Damian back to life mission or mention it to themselves. Like what more likely Dick dead and Bruce is handling it well or that he fake his death to do something stupid and Dangerous after his partner/brother/ little bit my son the feelings are complicated died after he was knocked out and woke up to his corpse.

Oh man, this is like, the entire nature of my beef?

(Slight derail just to emphasize the fact real quick that Dick DID actually die, he was just revived quickly, but like, the trauma of his death was very real and its not like anyone was clued into Luthor having a resurrection backdoor built into his literal murder of Dick in the actual moment of it happening. So Dick’s death wasn’t fake, and additionally, he didn’t have anything to do with like, telling people about it, because he was literally comatose in the cave and recovering while Bruce was telling people....by the time Dick woke up in the cave, we already know that Alfred at least had already been convinced by Bruce that Dick was dead, so I have a kneejerk need to pushback against the Dick faked his death narrative by reminding people wherever possible that Dick had no agency in the spreading of that narrative. 

It happened without him being involved, and the only actual contribution he ever made to it was just not revealing he was alive before Grayson #12, after Bruce like.....emotionally, mentally and physically badgered him into accepting that doing so would be directly harmful to his family and he didn’t want to be the reason more people died when like, people had just died because he ‘let’ himself be captured and interrogated by Power Woman’s Lasso of Submission, did he?

SORRY TO BE PEDANTIC, just wanted to start this off on a clarification, even though I know the aim of your ask was very much in tune with the rest of my response. A lot of people don’t read the actual comics, so like, I’m never gonna skip over an opportunity to emphasize that the shorthand people use to refer to Dick’s death and the year he was with Spyral, is like, literally just shorthand for describing it. Its not actually an accurate description of how all that went down and who had the most hand in it).

BUT ANYWAY. BACK TO THE MEAT OF THE BEEF.

Okay so like, not only was the entire family and Bruce himself giving Dick shit for his death and Spyral, like, PAINFULLY egregious because it was literal victim blaming in every possible sense of the word....

None of it made a LICK of sense with ANY of their characterizations, and they ONLY all accepted it on face value because the Plot Demanded It, and when you're like, no, as a reader I say The Plot Demanded It is not a good enough reason for me to be like well sure, that makes sense......looking at the characters ACTUAL actions at face value pretty much just makes them all look like assholes?

Like, Tim has never gracefully accepted anyone's death. Ever. This is core characterization for him. He will go to the ends of the earth for his loved ones and to bring them back, prove they're not dead, refuse to let death be the final verdict for them. He was tempted to use the Lazarus Pit to bring his parents back to life. He refused to accept Bruce was dead long before he had any proof whatsoever of that theory. He tried to clone his BFF/future-husband Kon in his fucking basement like, dude was two whole inches away from going Full Dark Side in his quest to bring back a lost loved one no matter WHAT the cost.....and then you've got Dick unmasked onscreen, killed offscreen, and Bruce then reporting to the rest of them with zero inflection 'oh Dick's dead now. Its very sad' and Tim's just like, sure. Sounds legit.

I mean?!?!

And you're SO RIGHT ABOUT THE DAMIAN THING! Bruce LITERALLY LITERALLY LITERALLY went BEYOND the ends of the Earth, like, he full on chartered a fucking space ship to fly his whole family out to APOKOLIPS to bring Damian back from the dead by going to EXTREME lengths.....WHILE everyone else thought Dick was dead....

And not a single person looked at Bruce and was like, okay, not that we're not down to do this for Damian because we miss Stabby Smurf something fierce ourselves, but.....what the fuck is UP with you dude? Why aren't you displaying ANY hint of this same kind of energy in regards to your eldest son that you said you watched die right in front of you?

Like....I don't know that we were actually ever told that Dick's coffin was empty or had a fake in it, but like....this family of detectives who refuse to accept death, defy death, COME BACK FROM THE DEAD....not a single one of them said like, okay, if I'm gonna like, ACCEPT accept that Dick is dead and gone for good, I need to at least just see him one last time? That's literally all it would have taken for someone to realize hey something's a little wonky here. Where's the dead body, Pops?

Since when has Jason ever missed an opportunity to prove Bruce is a) full of shit, b) acting like an emotionless robot and all his kids deserve better especially when they've just like....died, c) just factually incorrect and wrong and jumped to a conclusion before it was conclusively proved, d) lying like a liar or e) all of the above?

Nobody even ASKED if Dick's body could be put in a Lazarus Pit? Yeah, Jason wouldn't necessarily recommend it himself, given what it put him through, but actually fuck that, I take that back, because I'm NOT actually of the opinion that Jason full on hates his life and actively spends every second of every day wishing he hadn't been resurrected, even if it had come with a huge buffet of additional trauma and pain.

And that's kinda what's implied when people just take it for granted that he would never be on board with any scenario involving using a Lazarus Pit to bring Dick back, because it suggests that based even just on his own experiences and feelings, he honestly believes Dick would prefer being dead and not have ANY further opportunities to be with his loved ones, his friends, help save the damn world again at some future point.....that Jason, projecting based just off himself, legit feels Dick would rather be dead than have another shot at life even WITH the downsides of Lazarus Pit usage? Nope. Sorry, I don't buy it.

Speaking of not buying it.....you know what was missing from all those soliloquies the others monologued at Dick about how they felt and were hurt and just devastated by his death, to such a point they can't seem to muster a single shred of happiness that he's NOT dead still -

(seriously, Damian was the ONLY person in ALL THE LANDS OF EMOTION-HAVING who expressed ANY kind of positive reaction to having Dick back. We were so fucking cheated of like.....ANY opportunity to have the characters show just how much they valued him by just being fucking HAPPY he was alive, no matter what else was involved....and then most of fandom compounded that by for years being like mmmm, no, Dick didn't get yelled at enough by his family for what HE put THEM through. Needs more yelling. More punching too. Bad Dick. Bad. This is the only way you'll learn not to die and get shipped off on a mission that you don't want but at least is to protect your family after being beaten into it by your dad whilst victim blaming you for dying in the first place. WHEN WILL YOU LEARN TO THINK ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR FEELINGS FOR A CHANGE, DICK?!?)

- But like, BUT I DIGRESS aside....you know what was missing from all those monologues about how hard DICK'S death and ensuing year of basically exile from his loved ones was for EVERYONE BUT HIM?

We never got a single line of explanation as to what everyone else officially thinks even happened to him in the first place?

Like, did Bruce straight up just say oh bad news kids, your brother umm. Expired. Spontaneously. There's no one to blame, he just keeled over, its all very sad.

Is that how that went down?

You're telling me that the explanation of Dick's death didn't come with a single pointed finger at someone for this family of blame-happy vigilantes to like, BLAME for the loss of this brother they all mourned oh so much, they just couldn't help but blame him for all the hurt it caused them?

The family that in every other fic is like OBSESSED with avenging and being avenged and all things vengeful and even tangentially vengeance-y....like didn't ask for a single detail on whomst the fuck deprived us of our brother-having?

Where were the attempts on Luthor's life by Jason (who I mean, yeah I know it was in a previous continuity, but erasing that timeline doesn't erase my awareness of the time Dick killed Jason's murderer so like.....mmm, just saying, woulda been nice)....where was the rage directed at the Crime Syndicate and references to how seriously and personally the Batfam took making sure that they were PUNISHED for all this and would never be free to wreak havoc on their world or their family again? What did they tell Damian when he came back to life, and how are you going to tell me that this fraternal little ball of fury didn't aim himself like a cannonball at whomever the fuck had DARED take HIS Batman from him when Damian wasn't around to have his back?

Not only does everyone else's desire to be avenged start falling really flat the second you factor in hey maybe Dick feels "mmm what about MY avenging" sometimes, and why doesn't anyone ever care about doing that for him.....but also, y'know what REALLY sucks about the ONLY person we actually SEE being blamed for Dick's death and ensuing absence being like....Dick himself?

Not only were his family all super keen on making all of this HIS fault and HIM the bad guy because of how it made them all feeeeeeel (and meanwhile fuck his feelings, am I right Batfam hfaklshfklahfkla).....

They somehow found a way to justify prioritizing this OVER ever even getting around to blaming some villain for his death in the FIRST place, in the entire year or so they thought he was still dead!

Like, you couldn't come up with a single target in all that time, but Dick's back two seconds, and you don't even give him a chance to EXPLAIN before you're punching him, shutting him down with 'I expected better from you' and turning away with 'I don't want to hear it, why am I surprised Dick Grayson disappointed me again'?

afshklfhalfhalfhla

Make it make sense!

And like, it won't, cuz it doesn't, and it never will, and like I said at the top, the ONLY reason it all played out this way is because DC doesn't give a fuck about character development and deemed it necessary to go down this way for the sake of the plot (which was totes worth it, I mean, glad we sacrificed characters for this A+ plot which was clearly the greatest plot of all time and definitely justified every story choice made or not made around it loooool).

BUT.

BUT BUT BUT.

The problem isn't JUST that DC is stupid, even though that is an eternal mood and quite the problem.

Its that the SECOND large parts of fandom decided to play along with DC and just accept the story at face value, only add to it and play into it exactly as it happened in canon with no significant deviations, and like, heaping on the LITERAL abuse from Dick's siblings while ignoring the LITERAL abuse from his father....

THAT....is when all of this becomes relevant.

Because the second people decided TO engage with the reasoning DC gave for what Bruce did and how and what Dick did and how and just not mess with any of that and have it all play out exactly like that...

The second people are like, okay we're FINE with not just dismissing this story as OOC writing that doesn't make any sense, and actually VALIDATING it to various degrees by engaging with it as is....

That's when 'OOC writing' stops being an excuse or explanation for alllll of the above gaps in character logic and actions.

Because its like, when you had abundant chance to REJECT this story and say nope, this was bullshit from start to finish and I'm not here for it, when you were just as capable of transforming literally ANY aspect of this story you didn't like into something that made more sense to you....

And you chose not to.

That's.....accepting it as valid writing. You were like, okay, I'm game to just treat this as a thing that happened, just like they said that happened.

For the chance to give Dick shit for it, see. For the angst, see.

And that's when I'm like okay cool, so when engaging with this story as is and accepting it on face value and just delving into the characters as they were SHOWN interacting with and around these events......for the angst or whatever....

You guys just all decided en masse to just hop, skip and jump over allllllllll the opportunities for angst inherent in examining even ANY SINGLE ONE of the above lapses in judgment or hypocrisy on the parts of the characters (who don't get to be excused by OOC writing if you're not going to call the story an example of OOC writing, whoops).

And its just like, uh, what's up with that?

[keire-ke]

What does Steve want?

tl;dr going back in time fulfills neither Steve’s narrative wants nor needs, because the former are too broad and the latter are negated by foreknowledge.

Aside from other reasons for disliking how Endgame ended, I find Steve's arc narratively unsatisfying, and it comes down to one simple thing: because what Steve wants to do and what he believes is right were always consistently the same thing, I never had the sense Steve wants anything except doing the right thing, and as such the absolute selfishness of leaving everyone to deal with the present and going back in time to get a life comes out of nowhere.

This is not necessarily the wrong narrative choice, but it also isn't one that feels like an ending of an arc that set a character up to face the difficult choice between the right thing and the consequences of the right thing (and never delivered).

Contrast with the beautifully clear and coherent arc for Iron Man: Tony wants to go home to a family and Tony wants to save everyone. We know this about him from very early on, and his story is consistently about navigating between those two wants, so when the choice comes to sacrifice going home versus saving everyone, we feel the gravitas of the moment. This is the culmination of his two warring wants, finally coming to fruition.

What does Steve want? What does Steve sacrifice on the altar of doing the right thing, what has he given up in his quest to fight for the world that he needs to reclaim to grow and be happy?

I honestly don't know.

He loses certain opportunities as a result of his choices, sure (e.g. being with Peggy), but losing things, especially opportunities, that you might have wanted is not the same as consciously sacrificing something, even opportunity, especially when those things are lost to snap decisions. There is no point at which the right thing is in question, versus the desire for something, in no small part because the right thing is always stopping the imminent danger, and not stopping it would likely also take out the thing Steve wants in that moment: in fact it is no choice at all.

Not putting the Valkyrie in the water was not an option because auto-guided missiles were threatening millions right that minute, not stopping Hydra was not an option, because if the war was lost there was nothing left to want, not fighting Bucky meant letting SHIELDra probably have him back and killing millions. Civil War comes closest to presenting an actual dilemma, but there was never a choice between things Steve wants and things Steve thinks are right: not letting Bucky be killed was the right thing to do and also something he wanted, not signing the Accords proved to be the right thing and also what he wanted. Argument can be made about the conflict with Tony, but jury's out on whether their friendship was sufficiently established in the MCU, at least from Steve's end. Steve never seems to have to choose between losing something he wants by doing what's right, or getting it by not doing it: what's right and what he wants are always intertwined.

It ties in with another facet of Steve to contend with, and that is his inability to not make everything his problem. That is a huge factor of how something drastic needed to happen before he stepped down and got a life, it is, in fact, the clearest example of what Steve needs versus what Steve wants. Steve can't seem to walk away from a fight: for all of his life he was doing the right thing because it was the right thing, which mostly meant fighting. This is not sustainable, and Steve needed to stop to some degree, but stop what, that's the question. Stop fighting all the time, certainly. Learn to enjoy victory, build something instead of throwing everything you have at a brick wall all the time. Learn to accept that there are things you cannot change, that you shouldn't change, because other people's freedom fucking sucks. In that light going to the past may be just what he needs, finally giving up control, giving up the illusion that if he just tries hard enough he will save everyone, because all of it already happened. On the surface that works.

However.

Learning a lesson like "you need to not fight sometimes" can't be "remove yourself from the world and all temptation". It is the narrative equivalent of an opium den. Retreat into a world where none of your choices matter, because all choices have already been made.

Leaving the world he saved would have worked, were he forced to sacrifice or lost that which made him fit in along the way, except that never happened. Time and again we are shown that Steve very much belongs in the XXI century, that he has a life there, friends, family. Even as early as the Winter Soldier Steve was shown to be very much at home in the 2010s. Occasionally it was lonely, sure, but so was Tony, so was Bruce, so was Natasha. Missing the people of his past is not the same thing as missing the past itself. Steve needed to make connections, and by the end of CAWS he did: he had Sam and Natasha, and the ball kept rolling. In fact by the end of Egg Steve has more people anchoring him in 2023 then he had in the 1940s.

The last thing is that we are at no point sold the idea that Steve truly wants anything concrete. He doesn't even particularly want to save the world, or at least doesn't view it as an attainable goal (with good reason – the world will always need saving, that is the price of freedom). Steve never seems to want stability, or a nuclear family, or security, or... seriously, what does Steve want from life at any given point? He says in CAWS he wants to do the right thing, but doesn't know what that is anymore, and that is resolved by the end. Steve never wanted to work for SHIELD for the sake of SHIELD, he just wanted to do his part and SHIELD appeared to enable that. That desire doesn't change. He doesn't give anything up, his wants and needs do not change, only the circumstances do, and even then they don't change enough for him to be forced to adjust his perspective.

Steve’s never been shown to be torn between “I want a normal, happy life” vs “I can’t stand by while evil is afoot”. If anything, his dilemmas tended towards “I can’t stand by while evil is afoot” vs “not standing by causes problems” (further weakened because he always ends up justified in choosing the former). Has this been resolved? Has Steve learned to pick his battles, to weigh cost and benefits of engaging depending on the situation? Has Steve learned to accept sacrifices in the great war against evil, or does he still consider sacrifices a personal failing that he needs to fix and or undo?

In the end we don't know, because we are not shown. Or told. All we know is that Steve existed consciously for another century, and either took the opportunity to re-do things that went wrong the first time (not great in terms of accepting and honouring the sacrifices of people who fought the first time, and also not a retirement), or sat back and not only let evil flourish, but watched his beloved wife take pride in building the place where he knew it flourished (…yikes).

…yeah, I'm gonna guess: no. Steve didn't learn.

There is one candidate for want: Egg tries to sell the idea that it’s Peggy, Peggy personally, which... okay, I buy that Peggy was the singular person with whom Steve ever dreamed of being, so being with Peggy, alright. That’s not nothing. That is a very clearly defined want.

(would help if we knew Peggy spent her whole life waiting for Steve to come back because he was the One Man who could make her happy. Nothing weakens that ending quite like the knowledge that the woman has been regressed into the desired prize)

But it’s also not much, considering Steve is never shown to want the things that going back to be with a woman usually represents, like home and stability and “life”. AoU was a golden opportunity to have Steve wistfully look at children running around a farm and be like “ah, that’s the dream”, but he just looks bemused. So the "want" is just Peggy, the specific person, however here is the final kick: Peggy-the-person represented something when Steve knew her in the 40s: she was the kindred spirit that believed in the same things and validated his wants, because those were the same things she wanted. They both believed in doing the right thing no matter the cost, standing up to bullies, being true to yourself. The thing is, all of that is voided by the fact that Steve needs to go back to be with her: going to the past is not the morally right choice, it is a selfish one. By going back Steve negates the entirety of why he wanted Peggy in the first place, and what he gets is just the shadow of Peggy, really, the undefined shape of a beautiful woman at the end of the day. In the end the fulfilling of Steve's apparent want is like cotton candy. It is pretty, well-shaped, sweet, and exactly what you think you want, except once you get it is nothing but a spoonful of empty calories that melts in the sunshine.

The problem with Steve's arc is that for all the talk about always doing the unselfish thing Steve has never done anything he didn't want to do, and that matters, as context. Steve is never conflicted about fighting, Steve is never shown wanting things other than the things he chooses, because the narrative never puts Steve in a position where he needs to choose between what is good for someone, and what he feels is right. We never see him grapple with the consequences of choosing his rigid morality at the expense of other people, which on one hand is fine – this is not necessarily the right genre for the meditation on the nature of selfishness, but on the other that leaves him with little room to grow, so to have an arc it must be one of selfishness, which would be fine, if it didn't play out as a happy ending. It is a deeply unsatisfying thought, that always choosing the right thing is so taxing that to be happy you need to eschew it altogether.

In conclusion: what Steve needs to be happy is to gain the wisdom to know the difference between the things he can change and the things he cannot change, and the serenity to accept the latter. Going into the past gives him the opportunity for none of that, because as mentioned above, depending on interpretation, he will have to either accept all things, or claim the power to change all things.

[biofunmy]

Why Won’t Anyone Buy the Most Famous Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas?

LAS VEGAS — On Las Vegas Boulevard, nestled between a motel and tattoo parlor, sits what may be the most famous marriage site in the world: A Little White Wedding Chapel.

Charolette Richards, the chapel’s owner and an originator of the 10-minute wedding ceremony, said she has had her hand in more than 50,000 weddings — in the drive-through window alone — since 1991. The weddings of Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Bruce Willis, Michael Jordan and Britney Spears rank among her more notable ceremonies.

She is 86, and, after almost seven decades as the queen of the Las Vegas wedding chapel business, Ms. Richards has put her world-famous site up for sale. Her asking price is $12 million. “I’m retiring soon,” she said, with an expression equal parts saddened and relieved.

The chapel, though, has been on the market since April. And the Las Vegas wedding industry is not the business it used to be. Despite the fact that Las Vegas wedding tourism generated an impressive estimate of $2.5 billion in economic activity last year, according to Lynn Goya, the clerk of Clark County, Nev., that number is at least a billion dollars down from the revenue generated at the industry’s height.

“We’re at about half of what we were at our peak,” Ms. Goya said. “We can’t afford to take our No. 1 status for granted.”

Ms. Goya rounds up the numbers when discussing the toll on Las Vegas’s wedding tourism industry at large, which employs more than 10,000 people. There were 74,534 marriages performed in Clark County in 2018, down 42 percent from the record in 2004: 128,238 marriages.

The sale of Las Vegas’s most iconic chapel, that pinnacle of shameless kitsch and Amour Americana, accompanied by fewer people marrying in Las Vegas, presents an obvious question: Can an industry whose hook is being stuck in the past flourish in the future?

Let’s Get Married (Again)

All you need to get married at the chapel, or anywhere in Las Vegas, is $77, a photo ID and be 18 years old. Great Depression-era legislation allowed for hasty lovers to bypass the usual blood tests and waiting periods and get married within a matter of hours.

For 68 years, 365 days a year, Ms. Richards has been the gatekeeper of an industry built on easing elopement. In fact, it was her entrepreneurial ingenuity that led to the creation of the famed one-stop-shop business model, which became the standard on the Strip.

But it’s no secret that marriage rates in the United States have dwindled significantly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and that shifting social values coupled with the burdens of student debt have made tying the knot for millennials unfeasible or unappealing, and sometimes both.

“I don’t know what the longevity of the wedding industry is,” said Ron Decar, 61, the owner of the Viva Las Vegas wedding chapel, a three-minute walk down the boulevard. Although he was wearing his full Elvis get-up, complete with a bedazzled jumpsuit and black pompadour, his tone was gravely serious.

“March was the 20th anniversary of our being in business here in this location, doing the exact same thing we did 20 years ago,” Mr. Decar said. The chapel’s numbers and revenue, he said, have been decreasing each year for more than a decade.

At Viva Las Vegas, bells chime as you enter. A smiling face will soon inquire about your theme preference. Egyptian? Hawaiian? Harley? Camelot? Intergalactic?

Peek in on an average day and you are likely to witness Mr. Decar emerge from a vertical coffin to officiate a ceremony in a chapel flooded with fog and tombstones. Gothic is one of the most popular themes.

“How many chapels do you know that fly vampires from the ceiling?” he asked triumphantly. Viva Las Vegas performs 2,500 to 25,000 weddings a year, depending on the year, and Mr. Decar has performed half of those as Elvis, James Bond, the Grim Reaper, the Godfather “or whatever else the customer wants,” he said.

His 40,000-square-foot building is the largest free-standing chapel on the Strip. The flamboyant site, once a hotel, has been converted into a wedding complex, complete with a wig-filled costume shop, a 1950s diner for doo-wop ceremonies, and a prop room filled with artificial flowers and all the spray paints used to color them.

Viva Las Vegas is capitalizing on the current saving grace of the industry: vow-renewal ceremonies, which make up half its business.

The tourism industry markets renewal ceremonies aggressively, as yet another fun Vegas activity, and they are proving to be a sustainable way to maintain numbers at the wedding chapels. If millennials aren’t getting married, the reasoning goes, why not convince Gen Xers and their elders to simply wed again?

“People want to do something fun the second time around,” Mr. Decar said. “You know, people worry what their mom will think, but when you’re renewing, the pressure’s off. It’s all about fun.”

Jamie Richards, 58, who is an owner of Viva Las Vegas (and who is not related to Charolette Richards), said that younger and smaller venues — like the Little Neon Chapel, where wedding prices start at $49 — pose an additional threat to their own survival.

“New chapels downtown are really cutting prices and making it difficult for the established chapels,” Mr. Richards said. “A lot goes into maintaining brick and mortar, compared to, say, a cubicle.”

The ease of becoming an officiant through online sites has lowered the barrier of entry for those able to perform ceremonies. Mobile officiants, unburdened with the high costs of venue maintenance, can offer more competitive prices, pulling crowds from the classics on the Strip.

The Old Bricks and Mortar and Ball and Chain

Back at a Little White chapel, Charolette Richards inched her way across her expansive property, pointing to the many facets of her chapel: a flower shop (once, she said, the biggest flower shop in Las Vegas), a tux and gown rental department, a limousine fleet and multiple marriage sites in addition to the main altar.

Employees buzz around the grounds, juggling a constantly ringing phone with a stream of walk-ins, and solving problems as they arise — the flowers are wrong, the dresses don’t fit, the limo driver’s car broke down.

Unaffected by the chaos, Ms. Richards draws attention to her favorite touches: a mural that depicts frogs kissing, corkscrew-shaped topiaries and a plastic life-size, horse-drawn carriage. “Everything I love is love,” she said.

Her waiting room is filled with a diverse array of couples. A pair in cowboy hats sits beside a man with one leg and his wife-to-be. Across from them stands a same-sex couple next to a pair speaking Mandarin.

Ms. Richards makes her grand entrance and begins distributing her complimentary “Recipe for a Happy Marriage,” which includes “2 heaping cups of kindness,” “4 armfuls of gentleness” and “1 lifetime of togetherness.”

The tour ends at a glowing sign commemorating Blackjack Day, July 7, 2007 — that’s 7/7/07, a record-breaking day in which a Little White Chapel performed 547 wedding ceremonies.

Ms. Richards pointed to it with elation, and then sat beside her assistant, who rattled off a number of challenges to address: the sudden death of a bride, a renewal ceremony for six couples at once, the hazards of putting pearl pins in bouquets. Ms. Richards paused business matters to explain that Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner were married in this building several weeks earlier.

The Other Graceland

Dee Dee Duffy, 55, is the owner of Graceland Wedding Chapel, a two-minute drive down the road. She assured a visitor: “We do not do zombie weddings here.”

Rod Musum, 52, the chapel’s vice president, said his chapel is the originator of the Elvis-themed wedding. “We have one of the more quaint, picturesque chapels on the strip,” he said. “We know what our niche is and what we’re good at.”

Their chapel is marked by blue and white gates, exact replicas of the ones outside Graceland. They too are navigating through a lull in the business, but their numbers remain steady.

The bread and butter of the company is a seven-minute Elvis-themed ceremony, which may seem dated. But Ms. Duffy and Mr. Musum attribute their survival of the wedding drought to a personalized approach.

“We never treat couples like numbers,” Ms. Duffy said.

Witness a wedding or 10 there on any given day and you may be surprised to the point of tears by the sincerity of the quickie ceremonies, even in this most saccharine environment.

The Graceland team said that overcoming the quickie stereotype is their greatest challenge. Industry professionals agree that widening global perceptions of Vegas weddings will prove essential in the quest to capture younger markets.

Ms. Duffy and Mr. Musum would like you to know that their weddings are sincere, and that impulsivity contributes to only a fraction of the business.

“Every single day, someone walks in and asks if ‘The Hangover’ was filmed here,” Mr. Musum said. “It’s just not realistic. The business isn’t 24 hours anymore. The graveyard shift ended in 2006, so we rarely get people stumbling in intoxicated, asking to get married.”

“Frankly, it’s illegal to issue a license or marry someone if they’re drunk, otherwise it would be void in a court of law,” said Ms. Goya, the county clerk. “It’s our job to ensure both parties are capable of signing what will likely be the most important legal contract of their lifetime.”

Daniel Vallance, 44, is the director of operations at the Little Church of the West. “We’re a venue that has bookings into 2023,” he said.

The humble structure, modeled after a 19th-century church in an old mining town, was built in 1942 and is thought to be the oldest standing structure on the Strip. The floorboards creaked beneath Mr. Vallance’s feet as he explained the elements of the steady growth of his business, an enviable anomaly in a difficult time.

“People getting married are in their 30s now, which means they have more financial leeway,” Mr. Vallance said. “They don’t want to spend 50 bucks to get married by a fat drunk Elvis. They want something more elegant, and that’s the approach we take and have taken for 76 years.”

Tucked behind vintage candelabras in Little Church of the West are hidden cameras for live-streaming, the mark of a business that has managed to preserve its traditional appeal while adapting to modern demands.

Aside from incorporating cutting-edge technology (Mr. Vallance said he is already looking into virtual reality), the Little Church of the West has made strides to better cater to international couples. The simple act of making its website available in different languages has helped a lot.

“You want to know what the future of the wedding business is?” Mr. Vallance said. “Listen to the brides and be receptive to what they want.”

Venues like the Chapel of the Flowers, the Thunderbird and Paradise Chapel are undergoing major aesthetic renovations. They face the challenge of conveying modernity while maintaining the vintage Vegas feel.

“We want people to know that we’re changing with the times and responding to the new customer,” Ms. Goya said. “The industry is now working together instead of against each other, because we have an opportunity to redefine a global brand.”

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[bigskydreaming]

Ultimately I think the most defining characteristic of Dick Grayson - and the thing that makes him most distinct from Bruce, Jason and Tim (though possibly not Damian)....is that Bruce, Jason, Tim and most of the other Batclans’ morality is based on their worldviews, certain personal codes.

Dick’s sense of right and wrong is based entirely on people.

Don’t get me wrong, Bruce, Jason and Tim all care very deeply for the people they let into their hearts, but they all have certain lines they won’t cross. With Bruce and Tim, its because they’re afraid of what crossing those lines would turn them into, who they might become. With Jason its because he’s always had a personal code of honor, who deserves his righteous anger and who doesn’t....and there are absolutely certain things that a person can do that might result in moving from one side of that line in his head to the other. He partners with morally gray characters all the time, and is fine with them up until the moment he’s not; there are some things he can overlook and other betrayals he won’t tolerate. In ways that are more reminiscent of how strictly Bruce sticks to his personal standards than the way Dick will bend until he breaks in order to make allowances for those same things.

With Dick though...he doesn’t care about right or wrong so much as he cares about people. For the people he values most in his life, there is NO line he won’t cross. People focus on the fact that he freaked out after killing the Joker and that Bruce brought him back, but that doesn’t change the fact that he still killed the Joker. When he went undercover with Spyral while knowing how much it would hurt his loved ones to believe he was still dead, I’ll always emphasize the fact that he was in an extremely traumatized state of mind having literally just DIED and also Bruce was using every tool in his I Know Dick Grayson And How Much He Needs to Be Needed And Valued By Me toolbox to browbeat him into taking the mission, BUT I think in particular, its extremely key that Bruce was able to convince him that was necessary not because the mission required it, but because it was what was safest for his friends and family. 

(And someday soon, I reeeeally need to make a post talking about how the thing on Dick’s mind the entire time he and Bruce fought in the cave in NW #30, and the death he was feeling guilty about...was Damian’s. Because Damian, not that long before, literally died TO SAVE Dick’s life, and there’s no way Dick doesn’t blame himself for THAT in particular. And add in Bruce’s tendency to tunnel vision in his grief, and despite how good he is at comforting his kids when grieving for others he doesn’t have a close personal relationship with, like helping Dick deal with his first parents’ deaths, when Bruce additionally is grieving, he absolutely loses his perspective and fails to EVER factor in the fact that people other than him are grieving too. See his reactions after Alfred’s death, Damian’s death, Jason’s death....at no point does he EVER check in with his kids and acknowledge that many of them have their own feelings about these losses and are grieving, that its not just HIM affected by these things. Taking Jason back to Magdala Valley after Damian’s death, kicking Dick out after Jason’s....Bruce has an unfortunate tendency to compound his childrens’ grief by virtue of the writers making any loss all about being HIS loss and never even considering that his kids are feeling things too. The second someone in Bruce’s family is hurt, the writers are like, well clearly Bruce is the only one who cared about them, and this trend fucking SUCKS, but I progenitor-fucking DIGRESS. 

Anyway, my point being.....Dick absolutely blamed himself for Damian’s death, and fearing someone else getting hurt because of his actions or inactions was I think the pivotal point in getting him to take the Spyral mission, and it being Bruce who expressed that in particular.....matters. Because I also think Dick ADDITIONALLY felt that because of how Damian died, BRUCE blamed Dick for Damian’s death, and Bruce never offered anything to make Dick feel otherwise, or make Dick feel like Bruce in any way acknowledged that Damian’s loss weighed heavily on Dick too, as Dick had freaking RAISED the kid for over a year when Bruce was thought lost....AND I also think its important to acknowledge that the LAST time one of Bruce’s children, one of Dick’s siblings, died.....when Jason died in A Death In the Family....Bruce ALSO blamed Dick for that, verbally and with intent. And never ever walked it back, apologized or expressed otherwise. 

And that’s a HUGE plot/character point that has never been adequately examined in my opinion...that Dick’s tendency to be self-sacrificing when it comes to his siblings’ safety is NOT because he doesn’t care about their own autonomy or wants to take away their choices or doesn’t trust in their own competency to protect themselves....its because history has shown that BRUCE tends to hold Dick accountable for what happens to his siblings, as Bruce desperately attempts to deflect from his own feelings of guilt, and Dick’s the closest/easiest target for deflection. Except given that Bruce sucks at apologies, Bruce also fails to ever point out AFTER the fact that no, Dick isn’t to blame for these tragedies, and without that crucial point....why WOULDN’T Dick believe that deep down, Bruce DOES blame him for these things, and thus Dick considers his own safety less paramount than that of his siblings? 

Also keep in mind that when you factor in Bruce’s death-wish after Jason’s death and quest to bring Damian back to life, versus after Dick’s death sending him into kinda exile where he’d be literally out of sight/out of mind in a constant state of danger rather than where Bruce could reassure himself that Dick was safe and protected by him and the family....and ALSO factor in the period after Dick left home, when they went over a year without talking and which included myriad missions where Dick came very close to dying and there was no acknowledgment of any of this from Bruce or attempt to reconcile on his end or even make sure Dick was doing alright by checking in......and all Bruce really had to do to change this situation was like.....take the initiative to reach out to Dick.....basically I’m just saying, from Dick’s perspective, it looks like history proves that he’s the one kid of Bruce’s that Bruce is most capable of living without. And all that matters in the Spyral discussion. BUT I DIGRESS).

ANYWAY.

Back to Dick and his morality:

For the people he loves, there is absolutely no line he won’t cross, no crime he won’t commit, no betrayal he won’t enact. He might beat himself up for it until the day he dies, never forgive himself, decide he deserves to never be forgiven by anyone else....but he’ll still DO it, first. 

After the Spyral mission and Dick being alive was revealed, Tim accused Dick of being just like Bruce, but I disagree. The lines Bruce crosses in others’ eyes, he crosses for the sake of his mission, for the good of people in the ABSTRACT, the overall populace. There’s never been any mission that makes Dick cross similar lines...unless that mission is saving or protecting or rescuing someone he loves INDIVIDUALLY, a specific person or persons. And at that point, he’ll go much further than even Bruce will, no matter what it costs him.

Because of that, this trait of Dick’s is a flaw as much as its a virtue. DC writes Dick as a multiversal constant, with him being incorruptible across all universes. I agree and don’t agree. I think this could certainly be true, but from a different angle than DC usually goes with. Its not that Dick will always stick to ‘the right side’ in every reality, based on what the majority of people would deem being the right side. Its that what Dick views as the right side is whatever’s on the side of those he loves. THAT’S the way in which he’s truly incorruptible...the one essential truth of what it means to be Dick Grayson that he’ll never betray.

So IMO its not really a given that Dick would always be a hero, no matter what....its more that those who have his loyalty most, earned that by being the people who showed him the most genuine affection when he needed it most. And in most realities, these people are heroes themselves, hence Dick is a hero like them. In a reality where say, Slade Wilson rescued him from juvie before Bruce found out he was in there, if Slade took him on as his apprentice and gave him at least as much praise and attention as Bruce did in other realities.....there’s every likelihood that Dick Grayson would have grown up adhering to Slade’s far more flexible sense of right and wrong.

Back to the various canons however, this is why Dick will never fully separate himself from Bruce, no matter how mad Bruce makes him, or how much he hurts him. It’s also why Dick’s always so prone to trying to play peacemaker in his family....while the times he fails at that are the times someone in his family NEEDED him to take their side, and he’s trying futilely to take ALL sides. He could forgive Jason for anything Jason does....but he can’t defend Jason trying to hurt Bruce or Tim or Damian, who have Dick’s loyalty just as fully. He can understand and sympathize with most anything Bruce does....except for when that leaves Jason out in the cold. He’ll give Robin to Damian because he truly believes Damian needs it more than Tim, but fail at explaining himself to Tim, defending himself, because he doesn’t actually believe he can defend himself, he knows he hurt Tim, he’ll beat himself up for it forever, but he also knows that it was what Damian needed, so he’s just sorta....stuck. 

He’s always on every one of his family member’s side, but never as much as they WANT him to be, because they’re all usually so at odds that sometimes they basically demand that you’re either with them or against them, and Dick just fundamentally can not DO that, make that choice. He just tries to...and fails, because its literally the definition of impossible for him.

And it becomes even more of a problem in the instances where he gives his loyalty to someone who doesn’t deserve it or have his best interests in mind. Its why he gives more second chances than most anyone else, something that’s been to the benefit of many of his friends and family....but also why he gives more second chances than he should to Slade or others that he feels a sense of responsibility or obligation or even just kinship to. 

Look at the fallout of Blockbuster’s death. As much as Dick blamed himself for not saving Blockbuster, that he decided that was his responsibility (based on his perception of the moral codes he lives by when a loved one’s life isn’t on the line, his ‘default’ morality, one shaped by the opinions and values of the PEOPLE Dick values most)....the other side of the Blockbuster fallout was that Dick felt that he’d failed TARANTULA. Blockbuster’s actual murderer and Dick’s actual rapist. This is actually completely in character if you consider the fact that Dick took responsibility for Tarantula long before this. He agreed to take her on as kind of an apprentice, try and steer her away from her tendency towards killing and teach her to be a vigilante in line with the Batfamily’s personal code, someone who could work with them and gain Bruce’s approval. 

Problem is, after Tarantula made HER choice to turn her back on that and go in the opposite direction, it wasn’t that simple for Dick, not a matter of just snipping the thread that connected them in his mind. He still felt responsible for her, and thus responsible for her decisions. Her murder of Blockbuster was his failure because he’d failed to convince her to act differently. He held himself accountable in place of the accountability he knew she’d never accept...because in Dick’s mind, a mind where right and wrong are dependent on how much he cares about the person doing right or wrong, feels responsible for them....he’d already designated Tarantula as someone he’d go to most any length for, and thus he genuinely had trouble accepting her actions as wrong, and something he should turn his back on her for....and the only option that left him was accepting her actions as HIS fault, that HE’D been the one to do wrong, by not keeping things from ever getting to that point.

And the other area where this tends to be a flaw most, is the way this creates such a disconnect between him and people he cares about, who don’t get his reasoning, the fundamental logic at the heart of all his decisions. Because most of the people in his life DO base their sense of right and wrong on certain immutable standards, rather than their morality being inherently flexible, depending on who they focus it on at any given moment, like Dick does.

Again, look at what Tim said when they all found out Dick was still alive. Tim was disappointed, he said he’d thought Dick was different from Bruce, that this was something Bruce would do but he’d never have expected it from Dick.

Except its about context. Dick IS different from Bruce, just as much then as any time before. Bruce would always have done something like that for the sake of his mission, if he felt it demanded it. And Jason, Tim, the rest of the Batclan, they would always say that was wrong, because THEIR code of conduct, their sense of morality was set to different standards, ones that didn’t go as far towards the mission and away from its effect on people. They couldn’t sympathize with ever going to that length, doing that to people they loved, for the sake of the mission. And in that context, Dick would always be on the same side as them, here. Because he would agree, in his mind it would be equally indefensible to do that for the sake of an ABSTRACT, you don’t do that to the people you care about, for some goal or ideal or pursuit that you’ve placed above the actual people you care about. 

But where I think Tim and Jason and Barbara don’t understand Dick is they read his siding with them on matters like that in the past as an indication his sense of right and wrong is right in the same general area as theirs.....instead of being the complete opposite end of the mission vs people spectrum. Bruce is unerringly on the side of the mission, the thing he values most because he bases his OWN worth to people on how well or not he commits to the standards he’s set for himself. The others are in the middle of mission vs people, sometimes choosing one over the other, sometimes the reverse, with it dependent on context - who are the people in question, what is the mission in question, what matters most in this particular instance, someone they know or something they know they’d agree with them is the right thing to do, etc. But though Dick is facing Bruce from the same general direction as the rest of them, resulting in him often taking their side of an argument more fully than he takes Bruce’s.....Dick’s in a whole separate sphere behind them, fully in the people above all zone. 

So Dick never changed position, he never swapped his morality with Bruce’s, he never did anything differently from how he’s always acted...he’d just never before been in a position with his family, where they realized they weren’t as much on the same page with him as they’d thought. Dick understands what he did hurt them, he always knew it would, he accepted the guilt from that....but he never apologized, because he knows he’d make the same choice again. He didn’t do it because the mission demanded it, because Bruce said this was important enough to warrant lying to everyone - because he’d never agree with that. He did it because Bruce said this was the only way to keep his loved ones safe, and that he needed Dick to go on this undercover mission to end Spyral’s threat to the family and hero community at large....and ‘you need to do this for your family’s sake’ are the magic words for Dick. The ones that’ll make him agree to anything. (Such as agreeing to be the Court of Owls’ Talon - even with the intention of bringing them down from the inside, he’d still never agree to that, submit to that, unless someone he loved was on the line, like Damian had been). And that’s the part Tim, Jason and Barbara didn’t get...he acted like they expected Bruce to act, but for entirely different reasons.

Don’t get me wrong - I think Dick knows right from wrong no matter the context. Its not so much as his view of whether or not something is right shifts from one moment to the next. Its more just how much he allows whether something is right or wrong to influence his actions, based on the context around it...THAT’S what shifts. Because again.....his willingness to BE wrong is key. He engages in a lot of actions at times that on the surface might appear hypocritical given how much he talks about those very kinds of actions being wrong in other circumstances....but I’d argue that its not really hypocritical because at no point does he reverse course in what he actually states or believes is the right thing to do, just because he actually does something he’s previously stated is wrong. Its not hypocrisy when he does something he’s said is wrong, because he’s not fooling himself that its suddenly NOT wrong just because he’s the one doing it. Its just he believes its necessary to the point where he’s okay with the consequences or moral conundrums of doing it even WHILE accepting that its wrong.

He thinks killing is wrong. But if it came down to killing someone or letting someone he cared about die, with NO other way out....Bruce might find himself frozen, paralyzed by being faced with an impossible choice that he finally has NO alternative to without plot contrivance, which is realistically all that really keeps Bruce from never ending up in this situation. Thus keeping Bruce from acting, meaning his loved one dies....and then Bruce would torture himself forever with that failure, and with his choice or lack of action. In the exact same scenario though....Dick would have no illusions about what he was doing, he wouldn’t suddenly decide, oh, killing this person is fine....but he wouldn’t hesitate to kill them to save his loved one’s life....and then Dick would torture himself forever with THAT choice, that action, with his failure to find an alternative solution. Similar situations, similar outcomes, entirely opposite motivations and choices.

So yeah, Dick always knows right from wrong, no matter the situation - its just that he doesn’t always CARE. Not when someone he cares about is at stake. The moment that becomes true, the second he can’t find ANY viable alternative to whatever ‘wrong’ thing he’d have to do to save or protect or rescue them....he’ll do what he thinks he has to. He’s the walking epitome of ‘they can hate me as much as they want, as long as they’re alive to do it.’

And similarly....he might lecture or yell or judge or any and all of those things, but again I think that has less to do with hypocrisy and more to do with being caught between a rock and a hard place. I think he KNOWS his moral flexibility works way differently than most people understand. He doesn’t expect people to be like him, or even understand him, it just is what it is. So he doesn’t bother trying to explain it nearly as much as he should, I think....probably because it IS so opposite to Bruce’s motivations and personal code, that Dick decided early on there just wasn’t any point trying to convey how and why he makes certain decisions he makes. 

So yeah, he might lecture Jason about killing, but he’ll never actually give up on Jason, no matter what he does. But at the same time, Dick can’t ever actually give up on Bruce, no matter how much Bruce pushes Jason away because of their opposing stances and how much that hurts Jason. And it all tends to snowball, because as much as Bruce and Jason are frustrated at each other for their opposing stances and are unwilling to concede, Dick’s eternally frustrated with BOTH of them, because the part he thinks is most significant is that they both still care about each other and he just bottom line doesn’t GET why that isn’t enough for them to find an understanding. 

Back to Damian....I said at the start of this that Dick might not be so distinct from Damian here, and I think they actually have more in common than people realize. They DO have a closer relationship than any others in the family, and its not unreasonable that Tim and Jason have concluded that Damian is Dick’s favorite and vice versa...but I don’t think that’s quite true. It’s not that Dick loves Damian more than them or that Damian loves Dick more than their father. Its that they understand each other in a way that the others don’t. (I also think it has to do with the fact that as much as Dick eventually made his peace with Jason, Tim and even Steph being Robin and taking his family name, IMO its still a big deal, even if only subconsciously, that Damian was the first time HE got to give Robin to someone, to choose, to say here is my name, my family name, I’m inviting you into my family with this).

But yeah, as much as Damian’s learned to question the teachings he grew up with, I think ultimately that’s only been possible to the degree that its happened, because Damian is like Dick in that his morality revolves around people. Whether or not this is because Dick was the one to first break through the walls he put up, the first one to truly show Damian the affection he’d been starved for his whole life....who can say. He definitely played a formative role in who Damian’s become, but I think it comes down to the nature vs nurture argument, and where you stand on that. Is Damian like Dick because Dick’s the first one to really care about him and make him WANT to be different? Or is Dick the one who got Damian to care and want to be different because Dick was the one most like Damian in this particular way?

Regardless, yes, Damian knows right from wrong now, he understands his family’s stance on killing...but his abiding by those rules and overriding everything he’s been taught about killing, I think has less to do with him AGREEING with this new stance and everything to do with him wanting to be who they want him to be. Refraining from killing because he knows its what Bruce - and Dick - and the others he cares about want from him and for him. But no matter how far in the future, or how long he lives with Bruce and the family and goes without killing, if it came down to a choice between killing someone and letting someone he cares about die - Damian wouldn’t hesitate. And I think a lot of people both in universe and in fandom would point to that as him reverting to form, or character regression, or have them say he hasn’t changed as much as people thought after all....but I think that’d be just as much a mistake as the way Tim said Dick was just like Bruce now. Because if that happened, it would be because Damian NEVER changed....in the sense that he was always going to do what he thought was right based on what was at stake for the people he values. And he always has.

I think it fits perfectly that Damian was the only one who didn’t give Dick any shit about his death and Spyral when he returned - and not just because Damian had been dead when that happened and thus Dick hadn’t actually ever lied to him. It was because at the end of the day, Damian instinctively GOT IT in the way the others didn’t. He understood Dick’s reasoning because he knows Dick in ways the others don’t, because the things Dick taught him that resonated most with Damian, Damian in turn knew Dick only said because he understood they would resonate, and why. Damian didn’t judge Dick for it, because Damian would have done the same thing. And for the same reasons Dick did it, not because Damian’s any more like Bruce in that regard than Dick is.

So yeah, for all that the various members of the Batfamily have very different specifics to their personal moral codes, I think Jason and Bruce are actually the most alike in WHY they do what they do, and Damian and Dick are the most alike in the opposite regard. And Tim I think is in between them, not AS flexible in his morality as Dick and Damian, but not as rigid as Jason and Bruce are either. His flexibility has more to do with Tim NOT wanting to be anything like Ra’s and keeping a tighter leash on his own views and choices. Tim’s probably the most introspective of the Batfamily, and I think he’d likely be closer to Dick and Damian in this way if not for the fact that he’s also so analytical and constantly evaluating his own choices and reasoning in ways Dick and Damian - both more intuitive and emotional people than Tim - don’t necessarily bother with as much. Tim’s also come closer to making decisions he REALLY isn’t proud of or comfortable making than either Dick or Damian, and thus like Bruce, he’s more afraid of who he might become if he doesn’t keep such a tight reign on his actions.