#arrow discussion

[starstruckloversweets]

I love Damian Wayne , sm but honestly, I don't want to see him with a lover or anything . Like as a fan I want him to be happy as a doctor, like i want his personal growth without partners getting in the way. As a fan, I don't care about his relationships with other characters like Jon k, Stargirl, or anyone else like flatline; my main thing is his well-being and development. Bc I WANT to see him break free from being Robin's and probably still have a connection to the Batman mantle or the league of assassins. I want him to stay single, yk to allow him to grow without any setbacks or repeating his father's mistakes, like having a new partner every year. Please, let him stay single forever so he can achieve permanent growth. As a fan, I'm ✨manifesting✨ this shit cause that’s how I want it to go to just leave him be so ppl won’t get pissed with whoever he’s shipped with bc EITHER WAY ppl are never gonna be happy so I just find this outcome to be the best so he can have a normal life for once and not be tied with his father and if he does have to go to the Batman mantle or Ras let him stay single cause idc let him have his growth so ppl won’t see him as the angry Robin like PLEASE. DC PLEASE.

If you don’t like it then please scroll bc this is my rant that I hope dc gets like please 🥀

💔

Please don’t attack me if you don’t like it then leave me alone

[suguruslut]

Still think it's super fucked up that all the sexual assault scenes againat males in the DC universe (Nightwing, Green Arrow, etc.) are completely normalized in the comics. Like, imagine what kind of message that sent to young male readers (and even adult aged male readers) when they saw and continue to see male victims being blamed for their own assaults, writers shrugging off the assault/writing it as no big deal, the assailant getting away scotch free, never even being dubbed an assaulter because they're a woman. The male characters are never seen as victims, never asked if they're okay after being SA.

Idk, just something that always bothered me. Kinda sad even the modern comic writers never point it out or try to correct it...

[liedownquisition]

Hi, Hello, and welcome to:

Snowbirds Don't Fly is Kind of Good, Actually, and You Should Read it and Rethink Your Biases About The Story It's Telling You

By yours truly.

OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER: now like a lot of people who read older comics, I do have my beefs with dear ol' Denny, but there are a handful of things that your criticism starts to teeter into more than a little bit of a red flag. I'm going to discuss why that is, alongside why I think more people need to learn the core message of this arc.

I HIGHLY encourage people to read Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85-86, which depending on where you read might just be listed as part of the Green Lantern (1960) series because it is in fact technically part of that.

And when you do so I want you to actually read what's being said in the comic, in particular I want you to read Roy's lines. Because it is so, so important to acknowledge that, as a whole, this particular arc SIDES WITH HIM. Which is, honestly incredible.

Like, guys, I'm not going to say you're wrong when you say this is an anti-drugs PSA. I'm saying that if you read this comic and saw it only as an avenue for the "War on Drugs" then I'm not sure you really processed some of the messages in this comic. Because most War on Drugs propaganda is NOT interested in empathizing with the addicts in question, and encourages isolating them ("Just say no, and stop hanging out with people like that" being a familiar refrain from school assemblies over the years.)

Listen, I'm American, I've been having anti-drug PSAs preached at me my whole life. War on Drugs all around me. Grew up in somewhat poorer neighborhoods, literally was told to my face by multiple people that they were surprised how well I turned out because they thought that despite everything I was going to grow up to become a "drug whore." I'm not fucking joking about that one. I had family members say that to me, even.

Anyways, just, keep that in mind. I grew up around dealers and addicts and I have a lot of feelings about their portrayals in media. This whole thing was originally going to be part of a different media but it's probably best to split it up this way anyways.

TW: Slurs, drugs (obviously)

SO, without further ado,

Dennis O'Neil, in addition to comics, has a background in Journalism and some investment in social activism. He actively stated that he thought that he could use this in his comics, especially because, at the time, Green Lantern comics were potentially getting cancelled so he had a bit more freedom to do whatever he wanted. Basically, if it flopped in a probably-cancelled comic anyways, nobody had anything to lose. Think something along the lines of that Flinstones Comic by Mark Russel and Steve Pugh.

Ignore the goddamned cover, it's sensationalist and meant to get your attention, and it does the job. READ the WORDS. The above image is straight off the first page of the book. O'Neil takes off running with the utmost of compassion for the addicts in question, emphasizing their humanity, their mistreatment, and their suffering.

Now, lets be realistic with ourselves: Not every addict is so nobly tragic* as are depicted in Adams & O'Neil's story, but if you've heard people talk about addicts, both then and now, you'd know that it really does mean a lot that they come into this from an empathetic angle. *Yes I'm aware that I called them "nobly tragic" despite actively betraying Ollie & Hal and helping to drug them & leaving them to get caught by the cops while drugged up. Though they do express some hesitation at different parts along the way. The fact of the matter is people often ascribe a certain "nobility" to "victims" that they have enough distance from - whether by them being fictional or by not knowing them personally or changing their narratives after people's deaths to support themselves. in real life it's not uncommon for victims to be unpleasant to be around, they can also be perfectly pleasant people. They're human, and humans cover the whole range of personality and experience. Even if they are not "noble" & even if you do not have that distance, they deserve dignity.

Now, while our first introduction to the addicts (who we don't immediately know are that) they are trying to mug Ollie for money for dope (the dope part is implied). The second time we're introduced to one, however...

We are immediately thrust into the struggle of: quitting. Not using, but how difficult it is to quit. That's the worst part. This won't be the last time we discuss this.

Now, this is an arc where we see Green Arrow, who's typically the more liberal voice voice to Hal's politically neutral straight man, but I have to admit that as a Flawed Ollie enjoyer, I like to see him make a mistake, and he makes a LOT of them here. He is, in particular, harsher with the kids than he should be, and he holds a very very common position of seeing addicts simultaneously as "victims" of their dealers, while also refusing to sympathize with them.

The world is hard for everyone, why can't they Just Say No?

Up to this point, we're looking at pretty standard War on Drugs-style propaganda. But near the end of the story in #85 and for the bulk of #86, this is where I'm going to flat out say that the most important voice in this entire comic, is Roy's.

Roy doesn't at any point hesitate to stand up for himself (verbally) and call his generally well-meaning guardian out for his bling hypocrisy and ignorance. We see that neglect and loneliness led him here, but lets go back a bit and look at the reasons from a few of the other addicts:

Discrimination, cruelty, a need for an "escape." Any even mildly sympathetic media will have addicts explain that's their motivation, and I worry sometimes that people hear this and don't process it, because it's only one part of the circumstances that lead them there. the War On Drugs not only took the people who needed the "escape" the most and shoved at them a bad "solution" then imprisoned and profited off them.

From here we go back into Green Arrow's flawed logic:

He's a good, flawed man. He's like many parents who bring up their kids a certain way, a way they think is right perhaps because it's not unlike how THEY were brought up and absolutely missing the ways that they're harming them. Ollie will eventually see the error of his ways and regret these mistakes, but they're very common and very mundane flaws for him to have.

Alright, I'll admit I included this page mostly because that composition makes me giddy. Like, holy SHIT that's gorgeous. And now we are once again introduced to the idea of the struggle we were shown at the beginning: Quitting Cold Turkey.

It's extremely painful. It's dangerous. It could potentially even kill you as sure as the dope does. This is not something for everyone, and definitely not something to handle alone, which Hal himself expresses some uncertainties over, before inquiring what led Roy to this.

Is he wrong? Are the things he's saying any less true now than they were back then?

Even now there is plenty of pro-war propaganda (Just the other day I overheard someone talking about how their grandfather was in a war "Not World War 2, but one of the other Good Ones."). Even know there's lots of explicit and implicit racism that is treated as if it's justified and really MEANS anything about our humanity (Immigration/border control/ect). Even now we have people who believe that wealth is a measure of a man's worth to society or that it makes them inherently better (... I mean, I don't think I have to explain this one).

Hell, this doesn't even touch on gender (Whether discussing strictly feminism or if it's a trans issue) or sexuality or ableism (Whether physical or mental). Do you know how many people I've heard tell me they won't go to a therapist because they don't want to be reliant on a drug that might get prescribed to them? (ignoring the distinction between different branches of the psych field here, they never know the difference)

These are all things that get parroted to kids. We've seen the rising resurgence of gender essentialism, we've SEEN the rise of neo-nazi-ism, and TERFdom, and all these extremist views and movements and they ALL originate in the exact same place.

"What does that have to do with drugs?"

It's the same story. They're dismissed, they're disdained, they're not treated as equal living and learnign human beings. They are TOLD but they are not EDUCATED and they aren't treated with the kind of respect that leads them to think that they can even believe adults when they ARE being taught.

That neglect will be filled, whether by ideological groups preying on the vulnerable or by drugs or something else.

And here we meet our villain. We see society tossing the children away... and a man profiting off their despair. A CEO of a pharmaceutical company, even. Though, that's not really revealed until a few pages later.

... I'm so obsessed with this page you guys have no idea.

Our villain could have been a foreigner, a slumlord, a stereotypical drug kingpin, but it's not. It's a man with an abundance of wealth and a pristine reputation. A man so well known that he's on TV.

Denny O'Niel may or may not have known about the deliberate efforts to put drugs into black communities and prosecute them for them, but he clearly did see that the root of the issue was NOT someone among them, but something that someone else who could exploit them was bringing down to them.

Bringing this back to the dismissal of the youth and Roy's voice being the single-most important one in the story. Roy explicitly states that he only made it because he had support. Kicking a habit when you're on your own isn't impossible, but it's sure as hell not that far off. And, as I've mentioned, going "cold turkey" can also be deadly.

Now, yes, we have managed to create pharmaceuticals that can be useful for getting people off the harder drugs, and sometimes you can even find it for fairly "cheap"... but in our current day and age I don't think I should have to explain how predatory "Big Pharma" (and the health insurance industry) tends to be for those who have a need.

Like many things these days, even something like a rehab center is an industry - largely for profit, and the ones that aren't are often religiously and ideologically motivated. Even THOSE have issues that many result in incredibly dehumanizing conditions. (I was trying to find an article I read a while back including a few interviews from people discussing the conditions and treatment they faced while in rehab to link here, but I can't seem to find it. Must've gotten lost in all my other links and bookmarks.)

Despite there being places online you can look for how to spot a bad rehab center, the fact that these places will continue to exist with bad treatment methods and a complete lack of regulation and many people fall prey to them especially because they don't know to look for this stuff remains. Even still, and this particular one might be a bit outdated, It's not fully understood how best to treat addiction, especially since the one thing we do know of for absolute certain is that it has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Though there have been good outcomes recently using MORE.

Social stigma and discrimination Including in media and news journalism plays a huge role in perpetuating these systems. And most people have this mentality of thinking it can be "cured", rather than being a chronic disorder with a management system. Here's another page discussing addiction treatments. Have I made my point yet?

My point is that this comic only reads as war on drugs propaganda if you're only listening to Ollie, who is FREQUENTLY being challenged on this throughout the entire arc by every person around him. Ollie in this is someone who has heard and fully bought into the propaganda, despite being a good person who typically tries to help those in need, He Is Not Immune To Propaganda.

There is a reason that this comic starts with a statement emphasizing that the story is about humans being mistreated, and ends with Roy calling Ollie out.

Ollie comes away from this with a changed perspective. It's not outright stated at this point but it's strongly implied because of how proud he is at the end there, and the ways he tries to repair his relationship with Roy down the line without (mostly) being too overbearing.

I would definitely say the worst part of this comic is that the solution our "hero" (Roy) uses is going cold turkey, which is a miserable, godawful, and dangerous experience. I will allow some forgiveness because it's likely that better addiction treatments weren't well understood back then.

So, in conclusion, Denny O'Neil is not without faults, but if you're issue with his works are "He wrote one of the most human-focused anti-drug propaganda pieces of his time, if not also compared to a lot of our time as well" or "He incorporated a lot of social justice topics into his comics" then I genuinely think you need to reevaluate yourself. Maybe he's a little heavy-handed with it, but have you SEEN people's reading comprehension even TODAY?

Sometimes a heavy hand reminding you that other people are human too, and you need to face the "ugliness" of our society and how it treats them and how YOU treat and think about them is the kind of kick in the ass people need.

I'm not even mad that they used Roy, because nobody is above addiction - not even a hero. It doesn't ruin him, because addicts aren't ruined. It's interesting and dynamic. If later writers take this history and write dehumanizing storyline that frame Roy as the villain of his own addiction, that's their biases, not the original story.

Anyways, ending this on my favorite moment that's not fully relevant but not irrelevant, from Justice League of America (2006) #7:

[puhpandas]

finished the Henry danger movie and it had its moments mostly with Henry and jasper but the end of the movie was very unsatisfying and I know Henry has never been the most perfect friend but he just felt so ooc and assholeish in this movie and it never really gets resolved. the silliness was completely gone almost and jasper's personality was sanitized except for his obsession/loyalty to henry, which henry didnt even get to react to or acknowledge that much in a way he would have done in the OS because he was too busy mewing and standing there looking attractive. I think this ending for Henry danger as a whole is unsatisfying with Henry saying "I lost my whole childhood to being kid danger, I dont want to be captain man" and then leaving swellview to just become. captain man 2 but not. hes still a superhero he just didnt take over for swellview. I thought that the arc between jasper and Henry was going to end with Henry realizing how much he needs jasper and how theyve been friends for years and years and hes been a shitty one and that jasper deserves to be treated better by him but instead it just had Henry give jasper the torch to protect dystopia when jasper never wanted to be the big hero he just wanted to be equals with henry. and then its treated as a satisfying ending for jasper and Henry to separate for them both to be superheroes

[krispdreemurr]

kinda branching out from this post and some discussion I had in the replies of it, since that post is more abt "fandom dynamics" and this one is more about "what I think is going on"

i think all the weird romantic stuff going on w Deltarune (the Snowgrave route most notably) has less to do with putting Kris in a masculine role and more to do with putting them in a "null" role. like a character in a game with character creation and playersexual romances; a blank slate without any preferences except those pushed through them and who can date anyone because no one else's preferences matter either. gender is a factor in that noelle seems very much only into women, but i think it's more important that she's only into Susie. the personality a player-controlled Kris expresses is nothing like what she wants (very much the bad kind of scary) and she seems to have had no romantic interest in Kris prior but that just doesn't matter. it's been abstracted into "the player chose her romantic route and now she and Kris are romantically entangled" and no aspect of Kris or Noelle matters in that light.

kris is the party leader, kris is the center, kris is the element through which all choices must be made, and they are rendered into nothing but a blank mutable transmitter for those choices. the characters around them become objects to be acted upon. kris' gender and orientation and Preferences and such aren't misread, they're just nullified, unimportant, not a relevant factor in the choices offered.

it's kind of fucked up honestly !

[multifandomhellhole]

I rarely say my takes unprompted but I genuinely can't stand modern fandom and need to scream into the void over it to thug it out.

it genuinely feels like fandom is in its gen alpha age of regression. I've noticed this heavily with other fandoms, for me I've seen it most in resident evil but now I'm seeing it in arcane too of ship wars being taken WAAAAY to seriously and just everything in general being surrounded by weird purity culture. Not to mention someone always trying to find some deep controversial reason into why you don't like a popular character or treating it like it's a direct attack. That weird portion can be left in 2020 with kinnies and IRL character shit.

What really pisses me off is that people especially on twitter, scream for fandom culture to be back, but the slightest mary sue, terrible animatic, out of character x reader, large age gap, weird fanfic, horrible but fun take, insensitive joke about a well loved character, and/or rare pair art gets crucified there. And y'all wonder why fandom is dead. Genuinely who wants to provide any material for an ungrateful bible thumping community and a hostile one at that? Or one that's so obsessed with canon.

Fandom etiquette is absolutely dead on any other website minus this one and even then I'm seeing some popular tweets that erase the fun of it here on Tumblr for some reason. Since I'm focused on arcane right now I'll be using that as an example. So what if people want to think jinx and Jayce would be friends? That doesn't mean they didn't understand the show or are less superior watchers to you. That means they don't have a stick up their ass. Who cares If someone makes a Viktor coughing joke? He does in fact cough a lot and it's placement can be funny. You are not morally ascended cause you didn't laugh at pixels fictional lung cancer. In fact you are morally shity for telling someone to kill themselves for joking about it.

Who cares if someone ships cait and Maddie over vi or vi with maddie. Or cait with ambessa or Viktor with sky or Viktor with silco. Literally the world kept spinning. Genuinely who gives a fuck it's an animated show about league not a real time war documentary 💀 Creepypasta literally turned a bunch of murders into a found family let's not forget how being delusional makes fandom more fun.

Like I said, Unfortunately since Im in an arcane place of focus this post will be using arcane examples but this does apply to every fandom.

[revisitingfandoms]

In Idea 11, did Dark Choco stay voluntarily or was he forced?

Answered

Dark Choco did not willingly stay. At least in the beginning . That’s why the whole thing with caramel arrows “he’s…. Adjusting..”

The thing with this Au is that in a way- the further the distance and the more conflicting the relationship the more unstable both soulmates become, of course that’s only after they meet. The only way to mitigate this is to have them close nearby each other. Atleast that’s on the quick and easy side.

Now why the population is the way it is. For one, the older generation had to fight bigger and worse battles then the younger did mainly because they didn’t even have the dark chocolate wall- they had walls yes, but none of strong as the dark chocolate wall. Hence, unfortunately more people and warriors were likely to die. The side effect of this was that a whole bunch of people went heavily unstable.

From there kidnapping your soulmate semi formulated into a sort of trend as a way to keep them safe. It wasn’t until the wall began getting activitly built that this trend began to die down. Meaning this current generation (aka crunchy Chip, Carrow and Dark choco) didn’t really have to deal with the whole kidnapping soulmates thing.

But of course things happened.

Now this also a little detail thing that just sticks out a lil to me. The way the COD overall treat dark choco cookie (mostly pomegranate) but to me it’s like- he’s the lowest of them. He’s the lowest of their totem pole. Considering that idea, I would not be surprised if he was deeply mistreated by them.

Form that well, you can guess how an unstable, overprotective and downright pissed, dark cacao is treating this entire situation.

Tldr: Dark choco is being held against his will, the dark cacao kingdom has a habit of kidnapping and the COD overall was a very bad place for dark choco to stay in.

[rmbunnie]

I am alone on this barren earth (Jason Todd liker and Mia Dearden liker who honestly thinks issues 69-72 of the 2001 Green Arrow run are fun and good and would really like to talk about them beyond "Jason Todd was ooc and irredeemable there because he was trauma-dumping on Mia but also everything he said was fake and made up and he was manipulating her to become his sidekick and he blew up her school in retaliation because she didn't so really we should ignore the whole comic as bad writing /or agree he should just be read as an sadistic sidekick killer" (None of which is true and over half of which is directly stated to be false in the comic's text) but all people ever have to say about the comic is weird wrong takes about the three pages in which the gym fight happens ripped out of the very interesting and fun surrounding context)

[romanticatheartt]

Antis: "Feyre destroyed Spring Court and now its citizens are homeless, while she has five mansions and Velaris has slums to be fixed."

My honest reaction: Please leave her alone...

🎀she's just a girl🎀

She's innocent your honor. Every girl deserve to destroy her ex's home once in her lifetime. IT'S HER RIGHT!!!!

[phoenix]

Imagine a workplace style comic set in the Arrowverse about the staff at Jitters.

Just the everyday Central City barista dealing with Flash's bullshit from the street level.

[fuckmeyer]

hot tip: EXCLUSIVE behind-the-scenes content available to those who livechat my fic to me

[arrowmaker15]

We all agree that Arrow S5 was one of the best seasons of Arrow, right? Okay...

Has anyone else ever thought about the fact that technically... Prometheus won, in the most minor way?

He had Dinah's partner (Vince) killed and broke her, after the explosion Diggle had nerve damage, Felicity wasn't the same (plus he tricked Oliver into killing her boyfriend), Samantha died, William learned his dad was not only Oliver Queen but also the Green Arrow, Lian Yu is gone, Adrian Chase convinced Oliver that he was something he wasn't..

Prometheus technically beat Green Arrow. While figuratively Oliver came out on top but literally... Adrian Chase won. He caused irreversible damage to *everyone*, emotionally or physically. He made Oliver feel like everyone he touched got hit or died, and his sins destroyed lives.

[4lbon]

im gonna be so mad if they drop logan before i can see him race in canada one month more minimum i beg

[sukibenders]

Suzanne Collins saying that she only writes/will only create a new Hunger Games book when she has something to say, now announcing the release of her new upcoming book AND its film release? Interesting.

[irregularjohnnywiggins]

Really funny how More Fun Comics #73 introduced two of DC's most popular superheroes, both of whom had wildly different Golden Age origins than any other origin since, and yet both origins are on completely different axis of 'would be cool if they were an Elseworld story someday'.

To whit, Aquaman's Golden Age origin sees his father as an undersea explorer who discovers the ruin of Atlantis, and uses their advanced technology to grant his infant son the ability to breathe underwater and communicate with sea-life. I'd be really interested in a modern take on this idea - I did see a fanart a few years back that reimagined Golden Age Aquaman as a tech hero, old-school divers suit and all, and hell it would even be cool to have an Aquaman story not focused on Atlantis, but instead on Aquaman as Protector of the Seas.

On the other hand, Golden Age Oliver Queen is a white guy who has... ahem, ""gathered"" a huge collection of Native American* artifacts and cultural relics, which he keeps for himself and used to train himself in archery and the like, before all of the artifacts are destroyed when criminals burn his house down. Oliver seeks out a secret, long-lost Native American* city and runs into Roy Harper when his plane crashes. Roy has been on the island the city is buried under for years, with his only companion being Quoag, his Native American* ""manservant"" who talks like every racist Asian caricature from the Golden Age because I guess the writers were too used to writing WWII propaganda to be creative in their racism. Anyway, thieves show up, Quoag dies and is immediately forgotten, they force in some really painful references to Green Arrow and Speedy (like, if you thought the reasoning for Speedy's name in Arrow being 'Oliver's sister does drugs' was painfully forced...) and eventually Oliver and Roy find the Native American* city, which is made out of solid gold because... reasons. Rather than tell anyone about it, Oliver and Roy decide to dismantle the city, sell it brick by brick, and use the money to become wealthy, and also fund their superhero exploits because apparently they decided that was a good idea.

If DC ever brings back Golden Age Oliver Queen under any circumstances and the story doesn't end with Modern Ollie and Roy teaming up to shank him and redistribute his wealth, I'm going to kill someone.

*I say 'Native American' knowing that it's incredibly broad, but the comic doesn't offer a specific group. It also... doesn't call them Native Americans, which I'm pretty sure you can guess.

[violetquiver]

no lies were told