#at some point we gotta make a comprehensive list of which of his villains are just doing this for him and mark the percentage

[emma-d-klutz]

Realistically, how much crime do you think would be prevented if Batman agreed to a scheduled weekly hour of one-on-one hanging out with every individual member of certain subset of his Rogue’s Gallery?

[elliot-orion]

Character Introduction: Oliver Heart

Okay, FINALLY we can get to Oliver’s intro post!! And by finally I mean i finally have some fucking power in my house and time to write. It’s been a time this week guys. So let’s just jump right in!

Fast Facts

Supers Name: Time Master

SA Classification: Rogue Party, on Watchlist.

Pronouns: He/Him

Age: Officially 18, but he can’t remember for certain

Birthday: He celebrates January 12th because that’s the first day he remembers. I’ll explain later.

Height: 6′1″

Powers: Time Elemental  so time manipulation; precognition, etc

Favorite Food: Applesauce

Favorite Animal: Dogs.

Bio

Like Morty, Oliver’s got a bit of a memory problem with his childhood. He can’t remember a darn thing about himself prior to when he turned ten (and got his powers technically). He woke up in the SA hospital, and was told his name was Oliver and that he’d been in a car accident that killed his parents. He has no idea if that’s true or not, because One Eye does have a habit of kidnapping Elementals and erasing their memories to make them loyal to the Supers Association, but Oliver also has a habit of not realizing he’s walking into streets. Mind you no one but the other Elementals actually know he’s an Elemental, I explain that more here, but I wouldn’t put it past One Eye to know anything ngl. He’s pretty sure it was One Eye honestly, considering he can see into the past, and his own past... but not the first ten years. He’s not really happy about it, but there’s not much he can do, and he doesn’t particularly care, in all honesty.

Since he had no where to go and was just a kid, Oliver wound up staying with the Supers Association. He went to one of their schools for a while, though the Director in charge of the branch nearest to the school often came to him for predicting the future. He wasn’t particularly a fan of that, but he didn’t know how to say no. The more they asked him for help seeing the future, and the more he had to use his powers in school, the more unstable he got. He started forgetting what time period he was in, forgetting long gaps of time, getting confused about what had already happened, and so on. It wasn’t too bad yet, and they thought he was just forgetful.

But then he collapsed time. Oliver’s a nerd, to put it really simply, and he always has been. He loves history, which is part of why Time chose him, he loves learning, and he’s curious about everything. He was 100% that kid in class who asked so many questions the teacher got annoyed and his favorite words are “well actually...”. And in a Supers school, where cliques are huge and determined by power, he tended to get bullied. His powers weren’t fighting based and he was annoying, so they didn’t like him. When he was thirteen, there was an incident and it scared him enough his powers lashed out, and time collapsed. It was only for a few minutes, he fixed it easily enough, but it terrified the SA when they realized just how powerful he was. If he collapsed time fully, then the world would basically be destroyed because physics doesn’t like that much. So... yea.

The Supers Association, in all their shitty government organization with little to no oversight way, took Oliver to a facility for older Supers who could no longer control their powers. Overall, it was a nice place. He got taken care of, there was a big garden, it was just a retirement home, essentially. Except for the small fact that they drugged him to the point he barely knew his own name. At thirteen. Without any real consent (his legal guardian was the SA as a whole, and as a minor he didn’t have any say in it). Sparky found out about this, because of course he did, and, well, he made a fuss. Stole all Oliver’s case files and plopped them in the lap of a nonprofit legal group that worked to protect Supers rights. They made a case to get him free considering it was completely unlawful, the SA argued that he was dangerous and they were allowed to deal with dangerous Supers as needed, yadda yadda yadda, it goes to the Supreme court and is super televised, and in the end Oliver’s case wound up securing a ton of rights for minor Supers. A lot of the shit the SA had been doing, like the kidnapping Elemental kids and erasing their memories, essentially arresting powerful young Supers without calling it that (they’d put them in facilities that were similar to juvie but called a training thing, not a jail thing even though they weren’t allowed to leave), stuff like that, it was no longer allowed. At all. Young Supers did have rights before hand of course that protected them, but the loopholes were officially closed. It was a HUGE deal, especially for Morty and Ben, though neither of them actually knew Oliver at that point. But Morty was kidnapped and had his mind wiped, and was held essentially hostage by One Eye, and Ben is a powerful Super with scary powers that would definitely have been targeted by the SA earlier. So this was really big. A lot of strong Super kids got released, and soon after the case an oversight committee was created to protect minor Supers. It’s probably the only comprehensive oversight the SA has (and even then, comprehensive is a bit wishy washy) but it’s so much more than previously.

As for Oliver himself, he got released and was no longer being drugged, but the damage had been done. The drugs destabilized his powers, and his confusion increased exponentially. He started losing himself in time, when he’d see, hear, feel, and fully believe he was in some moment in the past, sometimes for hours at a time. He rarely could tell you the date, started living a few minutes behind or a few minutes ahead even when he was present, had a few instances of things from the past showing up in his place... not great. As a compromise with the SA, the court decided to assign him a full time carer, Emory, who made sure he ate, drank water, and didn’t hurt himself. Which he did. A lot. Always on accident, of course, but things happen when you were in your living room and then you’re suddenly experiencing a battlefield. Lots of running and falling because objects that are physically there are not there for him. Not a lot of fun. He also got a service dog who he named Edison, just to help keep him calm and ground him.

Things were pretty okay after that, other than dealing with the whole, getting lost in the time stream thing, until time collapsed again. Again, it wasn’t Oliver’s fault, he got panicked because he saw a Really Bad Future and thought he was trapped there since he doesn’t normally realize that the time he’s seeing isn’t the right one. It was an apocalypse, and in real time bodies suddenly appeared in the streets, buildings collapsed because another building shoved itself into it which tends to break some laws of psychics and all... yea. no one got hurt, just terrified, and he brought it back after about twenty minutes with Edison and Emory’s help. But yet again, the SA was scared, and since it could technically be considered a Villainous attack, since no one could tell if the bodies were from the present time or the past and there was property damage,and technically he was an adult then since he’d just turned eighteen, so technically they were allowed to put him back into a facility all drugged up. Which they did. Again. This time though, he did have an adult who was on his side, and Emory busted him out. Sometimes having temporary amnesia powers and being a retired spy comes in handy for her. ;) She brought him to the Lily Pad Inn for safety until she could get the SA off his ass, which is where his story picks up in the book!!

Sorry that got so long, ugh, but Oliver’s story is complicated and a load of not fun. There’s a lot of not fun in general. Tragic backstories anyone? Every Supers gotta have one! But at the very least, his pain wound up helping a lot of people, and if you ask him, that means it was worth it. Anyways, here’s the tag list: @shadow-maker​ @merigreenleaf​ @albatris​ @ageekyreader​ @mo-is-writing​ lmk if you want on or off as always, either for this story or in general!! or the DHU in general there’s a list for that too lolol.

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/the-gang-confronts-me-too-in-one-of-the-most-explosively-funny-sunnys-in-years/

The Gang confronts Me Too in one of the most explosively funny Sunnys in years

Kaitlin Olson, Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, Rob McElhenney, Danny DeVitoPhoto: Patrick McElhenney/FXX

“I feel like we should clap.”

Okay, let’s talk about one of the funniest moments in It’s Always Sunny history.

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First a word about spoilers. Hey—don’t read a review unless you’ve seen the thing that’s being reviewed. And, if you do, don’t complain about the review needing to discuss things that would have been great to see without being “spoiled” by you making the inexplicable choice to read a review before seeing the thing being reviewed.

Okay.

It’s Always Sunny In PhiladelphiaSeason 13

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So “Time’s Up For The Gang” sees Mac, Dee, Charlie, Dennis (returning after being MIA last week), and Frank attending a sexual harassment seminar because Paddy’s has been put on an internet “shitty bar list” of Philly establishments hostile to women. The intrepid and unsuspecting moderators (Marypat Farrell and Humphrey Ker), after enduring a barrage of inappropriate, profane, and otherwise point-missing interruptions, separate the Gang for some breakout sessions, perhaps thinking to dilute their charges’ obvious awfulness with a little distance.

That . . . does not work.

The male moderator, Alan, tries out a little roleplaying to address Mac and Dee’s clear lack of comprehension about appropriate workplace behavior. Asking Mac what his function is at Paddy’s elicits Mac’s traditional inflated sense of himself as the bar’s badass peacekeeping resident Swayze, although Dee and Charlie (also in the session) note that he’s just supposed to check IDs, which he doesn’t do. (Continuing the ongoing meta-jokes about Mac’s evolving—or devolving—role, Charlie muses, “He’s just, like, our gay guy now.”) Dee, being Dee, peppers the patiently befuddled Alan with questions about her motivation for playing someone going into a bar (“To get a drink?,” he suggests), settling finally and inexplicably on “revenge.” Alan, to get things rolling, says fine, and then the seemingly simple scene begins.

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Rob McElhenneyPhoto: Patrick McElhenney/FXX

Now—and just to prolong the lead-up to the gag for one more delicious moment—one might imagine that one knows where this is going. Dee and Mac are deeply into their roles here, and those roles are informed by the characters’ deep-rooted delusions about how they’re seen and who they are. Dee is a great actress. Mac is the “Sheriff of Paddy’s.” They’re both awful people. The episode, written by Megan Ganz, is about how awful people either deliberately or through societal conditioning turn any discussion of sexual harassment, consent, and rape culture into a boorish, facile intellectual shitshow. So Dee—seen entering the seminar singing a gloating “Time’s Up!” chant at the guys’ being called out in public—will (ineptly) play at being superior, while Mac will say something inappropriate under the guise of trying to score the “points” he thinks Paddy’s needs in order to get off the internet’s shit list.

Instead, Mac greets Dee’s opening line by hoisting Dee fully into the air by her vagina.

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Now, there’s a lot going on here, and all of it works to produce the biggest out-loud laugh I’ve gotten from a TV show in a long time. There’s the way in which Mac’s action echoes a phrase Donald Trump cemented into the American lexicon and elevates it (along with Dee) to shocking, absurdist heights. There’s the execution of the gag, which would have fallen flat if it didn’t look so seamlessly, impossibly actual. There’s the joke of Mac’s ridiculously buff new body, yet another physical transformation whose obvious offscreen effort on the part of Rob McElhenney is tossed off along with the Gang’s perpetual dismissal of Mac. There’s Dee’s awestruck reaction to Alan’s horrified assessment about Mac’s grab being designed to make Dee feel small, where she marvels, “It made me feel tiny, like Thumbelina!” There’s the abruptness, seizing the joke (and Dee) before we have a chance to imagine what’s coming.

Kaitlin Olson, Charlie Day, Danny DeVito, Rob McElhenney, Glenn HowertonPhoto: Patrick McElhenney/FXX

And the thing is, that’s only the first great, lunatic surprise of “Time’s Up For The Gang,” as, in yet another classic example of Dennis Reynolds’ meticulous hyper-masculine madness, it’s finally revealed that the entire exercise—involving two professional moderators, a viral awareness campaign, a Bond villain-worthy PowerPoint presentation, and dozens of Philadelphia business owners dragged to the Hyatt—is all Dennis’ doing. Throughout the episode, we see each member of the Gang but Dennis having their own particular sexual creepiness brought out into the open, leaving them each, in turn, suddenly drenched in panic-sweat. Frank (who returns from a hasty call to his lawyer in a dry, inadequately belted bathrobe) has a long history of hiring attractive women, sleeping with them, and then promoting them to shut them up. (“It’s a win-win,” he protests, “Except for the wives.”) Mac’s embrace of his long-repressed homosexuality has left him finally expressing his lust for Dennis and other men in very unwanted handsiness. Charlie’s fifteen years of stalking the Waitress is thoroughly deconstructed by Dennis, not as the actions of a “hopeless romantic” that Charlie would have it be, but as those of “a sad, pathetic wretch of a man so desperate to be loved that [he’ll] actually go rifling through somebody’s garbage.” And Dee, it’s revealed, isn’t as off the hook as her head-nodding female smugness would have her be, since Charlie explains that their one sexual encounter had enough distressing consent issues to lead him to think of it as “molestation.” (Charlie’s still in deep denial about Uncle Jack, though, The Nightman Cometh notwithstanding.)

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Charlie DayPhoto: Patrick McElhenney/FXX

Delivered with the maniacal precision of a supervillain, Dennis’ unveiling of his complex scheme is the culmination of the episode’s smartly subversive dissection of the issue at hand. I’ve said it before, but looking to Sunny for social commentary is a tricky proposition. For every feint toward flat-out pronouncements on cultural issues (gun control, abortion, racism, ableism, homophobia), It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia is, at its tarry black heart, a character study of human weakness. The Gang forms five points of the same Vonnegut-esque cartoon anus in their various embodiments of the bottom-scraping worst in all of us. So here, while there are passing shots at mens’ rights talking points and male panic about the Me Too movement (“I don’t know if you noticed but women are on a little bit of a rampage right now and anyone could be taken down at any moment,” lectures Dennis), the episode functions most eloquently in its takedown of the base self-interest that drags man-woman interactions down to the Philly mud. We don’t need Sunny to come out and say rape culture is insidious, that men have serious issues when it comes to women, and that Mac’s idea of the cosy coolness of “locker room talk” is self-justifying misogyny, because Sunny—for all its gleeful and skillful comic scandalousness—operates on the principle that basic human decency is a good thing.

But the Gang is us at our venal, cruel, human decency-eschewing worst. So when Frank’s old school, underling-banging behavior is aired out, or when Mac perks up when female moderator Kate gives way to Alan (“Oh, here comes the boss man.”), or when Charlie’s squirmy obsessions are shown to stem from incel-style male entitlement, or when Dee gloats while ignoring her own abuse of sexual power dynamics, their sweat-soaked comeuppance indicts the “just saying what everybody’s thinking” crowd without itself breaking a sweat. (Dennis’s presentation also trots out the whole “women only report ugly harassers” argument as part of his mission to include every rape-apologist cliché.) That’s what Sunny does at its best.

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Glenn HowertonPhoto: Patrick McElhenney/FXX

As for Dennis—the Gang member most in need of this particular moral correction—the fact that he engineered the whole enterprise as part of his ongoing campaign to skirt the law while continuing to indulge his truly unsettling fetish for questionable consent play is a masterstroke worthy of the evil genius he is at such moments. When the rest of the Gang, outed by Dennis’ plan, object that Dennis has “Dennis-ed” more women than any of them, Dennis’ smug response comes wrapped in his layers of self-insulating preparation. As his culminating presentation goes on, Dennis reveals that he—unlike the rest of the Gang—keeps his life “tight,” complete with congratulatory and legally binding exonerating texts from his conquests. “Their phones did,” responds Dennis to objections that no woman would write a sexual partner that “I am saying YES to everything that happened last night,” Glenn Howerton expertly switching off whatever light exists behind Dennis Reynolds’ eyes. When Kate, informed that her well-intentioned expertise was merely a part of Dennis’ ploy to preemptively solidify alibis for his life of deception and abuse, shouts “You’re a monster,” Dennis Reynolds, tossing the PowerPoint remote aside in triumph, fixes her with a snakelike gaze and says, “Prove it.” It’s chilling, it’s masterful, and, as Charlie—anticipating the response of those all too willing to latch onto any powerful man’s excuses for accusations of sexual misconduct—puts it, “I gotta be honest, I didn’t follow most of it, but so cool, man.”

Stray observations

Frank to his lawyer, after his robe pops open in front of Kate: “How soon can you get to the Hyatt? My dong fell out.”

Mac defends his obsession with scoring points, rebutting, “Everything is graded by points, otherwise, how did the Eagles win the Super Bowl?”

Dennis’ intimate knowledge of pending statute of limitations laws and legal definitions of consent and harassment (he even knows who Carmita Wood is) recall nothing so much as how the manager of Alec Baldwin’s jailbait-chasing movie star in State And Main keeps a copy of statutory rape precedent in his car.

Another huge director-crafted laugh: After Alan rightly defines what Mac just did as actual sexual assault, Mac looks to Charlie for backup, only to see Charlie’s empty seat and the closing conference room door. Well done, Kat Coiro.

Dee uses Me Too paranoia to clear all of the men out of the buffet line.

Illustrating his “ugly men don’t get accused of harassment” point, Dennis flashes a picture of Cricket, punctuating the truly horrifying evidence of the Gang’s decades of abuse on the poor guy’s face by assuring his audience, “He was born this way.”

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Source: https://tv.avclub.com/the-gang-confronts-me-too-in-one-of-the-most-explosivel-1829270618