#but I remember his funeral

[canisalbus]

i've returned for 2 seconds to tell you that they're not leaving my head. (sort of unrelated but i've been thinking as well. what if vasco died before machete ? what would go down)

.

[svtskneecaps]

lukewarm take of the evening: y'all care too much about being ""outdated"". fellas this smp moves inhumanly fast. it is ok to CHILL holy shit CHILL. y'all are like "(posts BANGER ART) super late guys sorry" friend i am hitting you with a blanket i am snapping you with my metaphorical towel WHAT DO YOU MEAN SORRY. "(posts BANGER FIC) rip this is outdated now" WHO CARES???? I LOVE YOU, OK. ohhhh woe is us as the fandom at large for having MORE HAPPY PILLS ARC CONTENT oh no how outdated!! how could you be writing speculative fiction about how forever felt during happy pills :( slash SARCASM!! WHAT DO YOU MEAN!!!! THERE ARE SO MANY BANGER ARCS, WHAT, YOU THINK WE'RE COMPLAINING????? FOR GETTING MORE OF THE CONTENT WE LOVED????? oh no we're past the period where everyone thought green gay ninjas were like Dead Dead, my work is now outdated and noncanon :( WDYM. GIMME. A BANGER IS A BANGER IDC IF IT TAKES THREE MONTHS. you think rome was built in a day?? fuck you, baltimore, GIMME. my ass has been cooking a goddamn backflipo family fic since july when it was ALREADY outdated do you think i fear god??? "oh no, you're making an edit of slime's (attempted) egg murdering spree?? how could you, that was months ago it's irrelevant" SAID NO ONE EVER.

save your wrists kidlings ok carpal tunnel is no joke. CHILL!!!!! CHILL!!!!!!!! TAKE YOUR TIME SHEEEEEESH OK LOVE YOU <3

[silverwhittlingknife]

How do you feel about Jack Drake?? What are your thoughts on him and Tim’s relationship?

Anon, I hope you were interested in a novel, because look, I am fascinated by Jack Drake.  He’s key to a whole lot of what I find compelling about Tim as a character, and if I were in charge of DC, I’d bring him back to life.  This would make Tim unhappy but would IMO make for good plotlines.

Jack and Tim’s relationship is Complicated (TM)...

Jack and Tim hug in Nightwing 20 / Jack impulsively yanks a TV out of the wall in Robin 45 / Tim grieves in Identity Crisis

“I could tell the truth.  But I don’t.” - Robin 66

...and it involves a whole lot of Tim lying, and feeling guilty about lying, and thinking about telling the truth, and choosing again and again to keep lying.

And I think that’s great.

Below the cut:

Shorter version - key points about Jack

Really long version - my gentler take (vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports) vs. my harsher take (Jack has some major flaws)

Final thoughts

Shorter version - key points about Jack:

He’s a bad parent.  He’s self-centered, he consistently prioritizes his own comfort and interests over his son’s, and when upset, he does things like order Tim off to boarding school.

But he’s never a bad parent in an actionable way.  He’s not like David Cain or Arthur Brown, who are abusive monsters.  Jack’s not a monster!  He just...kinda sucks.

He genuinely loves Tim. If Jack’s aware that Tim’s disappeared or is in trouble, he’s always worried and upset.  He periodically resolves to be a better dad, and IMO he’s always sincere.

And Tim loves him, a lot.  Tim’s protective of him and worries about him when he’s kidnapped or in danger, and when they’re reunited, Tim’s really relieved and usually hugs him (and Jack hugs back!). 

...But they have very little in common, and that’s a problem. Jack doesn’t value the things that Tim values, or respect the people that Tim admires, or care about the things that Tim’s interested in.  Tim lies to him a lot, but that’s partly because he correctly guesses Jack wouldn’t respond well if he knew the truth of what Tim’s up to.

The Batfamily is a surrogate family that Tim’s drawn to because of the ways his real family doesn’t meet his emotional needs…but also he feels guilty about that and disloyal. (And to the extent that his dad recognizes what’s going on, he's jealous and resentful!)

Very long version:

(LISTEN I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS)

Okay!  So first: Jack’s a character who IMO is pretty up for interpretation.  You can interpret him very charitably, and make excuses for the bad behavior, and fill in the blanks sympathetically when situations are ambiguous; or you can interpret him uncharitably, and emphasize the bad behavior. I don’t think either approach is invalid - it depends on what kind of story you’re interested in!  I have enjoyed Bad Dad stories and also stories that redeem Jack.

My personal take on canon is that Jack and Tim’s relationship is in a gray area.  Jack's definitely neglectful, and he does prioritize other things over Tim, but he’s never so bad that Tim can easily reject him, and he's never so bad that Bruce could justify taking Tim away.  He's just...not great.  Tim loves him, and feels loyal to him, but it’s a very mixed-up complicated love.

I have a gentler take and a harsher one which I switch between as the spirit moves me. xD

My Gentler Take (tl;dr: vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports)

Here’s the core conflict: Jack and Tim are very different people with different values.  Tim idolizes Bruce and Dick and vigilantism, and secretly gets involved, knowing his dad will hate it. He gets increasingly wrapped up in his secret world and lies to his dad...because if his dad finds out, he’ll make Tim quit.

This is a great setup for an ongoing comic.  It’s practical, because it provides endless potential for plotlines, and it’s nicely thematic, because it maps closely onto relatable real-life situations with extracurricular activities:

Tim the drama nerd whose dad thinks he’s playing football and not in the school play; 

Tim the closeted-queer kid secretly getting involved in his school’s politically-active Gay-Straight Alliance; 

Tim the choir kid whose dad only values making money and wants him to go into the family business (and Tim keeps promising himself he'll give up choir soon, definitely soon, but maybe he'll stay in just a liiiittle longer, because they need him, you see, the last tenor left town, so...); 

Tim the computer geek with the sports-obsessed dad (this one’s just canon);

etc. etc.  

The extracurricular metaphor works pretty well for Tim’s relationship to vigilantism.  Tim's involved in his "extracurricular" because he genuinely thinks it's important and fulfilling, and he values it and wants to be good at it. He idolizes Bruce and Dick because they're good at it. He's been collecting information about it since he was a little kid, and hiding it from his parents because he knows they wouldn't approve. And mayyyybe there's also an element of low-key rebellion against his dad, and maybe that's secretly part of the appeal. And yet also as Tim gets more and more invested, he starts to daydream: maybe I could tell my dad and he'd be proud of me and supportive. But he doesn't, because actually he knows his dad would be upset and angry and make him quit.

And - again, just like with lonely kids and extracurricular hobbies - one of the things that happens is that Tim starts getting his unfilled emotional needs met ... by people he knows through this secret hobby. And people like Bruce and Dick start turning into a surrogate family. Which Tim feels guilty about. And also as Tim gets more and more wrapped up in their world, he has to lie to his dad even more, which means the distance between Tim and his dad gets bigger and bigger and more and more unfixable.

I love this dilemma. It's simple, it's recognizable, it provides endless sources for conflict, and there's no obvious solution! Tim can't tell Jack: he'll make Tim quit! And Tim doesn't want to quit, because he loves choir / art / theater / whatever.  Yeah, it’s difficult, and there are challenges, and sometimes he has doubts...but at the end of the day, he cares about it a lot.  And everything he values is there, and all the people he admires and cares about are there, and all he wants in the world is to feel like he's one of them and belongs there. So he has to lie, even though he doesn't want to lie, and he feels guilty about it...

...but also he ends up lying more and more.

(Sidenote: I think it's important that Tim chooses to keep lying - Tim's narration often glosses this as "I have to lie to my dad," and that's certainly how it feels to Tim, but this... isn't quite true. He has to lie to his dad, because if he doesn't, his dad will get mad at him and try to stop him, not because he literally has no choice about it.)

Other Reasons Why I Like The "Secret Extracurricular" Interpretation

(tl;dr it complicates not just Tim's relationship with his dad, but also all his other relationships)

Tim's problems have some obvious parallels to Steph and Cass, who both become vigilantes while rejecting their evil supervillain dads. But Jack isn't evil. And that means the Tim-and-Jack relationship is ambiguous and complicated in ways that I like. Steph and Cass can just leave their Bad Dads in prison, and say good riddance, and feel very righteous and triumphant about it! Tim’s more complicated. Tim gets into vigilantism ostensibly out of duty and altruism, but secretly, he's also involved for straight-up selfish self-fulfillment reasons. He's lonely, and bored, and his life feels pointless, but he thinks that Bruce and Dick are cool and amazing and he wants to be a part of the things that they do.  When his dad gets jealous of Tim’s relationship to Bruce, and feels like Tim’s looking for a surrogate family, he’s... not wrong.

And the ways in which Jack is not Actionably Bad complicate things from Bruce's POV.  If Jack was a straight-up villain, it’d be an easy call to keep in touch when Jack finds out and makes Tim quit...but he’s not a villain, not really.  So what do you do?  Do you try to surreptitiously stay in touch with Tim even though you’re ignoring his dad’s express wishes and thus forcing Tim to sneak around?  Do you respect his dad’s wishes and stay away from Tim even though you have a years-long relationship at this point?  

Again: a bit similar to the extracurricular analogy.  Say you’re the choir director and you’ve built this whole relationship with a kid in the choir, and you’re an important mentor to him and you care about him etc. etc. etc.... and then right before a big performance, his dad finds out he’s been secretly involved, and yanks him out.  How would you react?  Well, maybe kind of in some of the ways Bruce reacts.  You replace him. You’re annoyed with him. You miss him. You want him to come back. You’re also worried about him.  You’re upset with his dad.  But also... what should you do, exactly?

Bruce and Alfred and Dick care about Tim as if he were part of their family, but he’s not part of their family, and there’s a lot of interesting tension there.

My Harsher Take

Jack never hits his son.  But his temper is a big deal.

In his worst moments, he takes out his anger on Tim’s stuff - wrecking his room, or ripping his TV out of the wall and confiscating it.  When he’s worried about Tim, he usually expresses that fear by yelling at him / punishing him / sending him away - threatening to send him to boarding school in Metropolis in Robin III, or threatening to send him to military school abroad in Robin 92, or actually forcing him to go to an all-boys' boarding school post-NML.  

This is bad behavior!  It is Not Good!  

And you can easily connect the dots to a bunch of Tim’s terrible coping mechanisms, like the constant lying and or the fact that Tim’s go-to methods for dealing with interpersonal conflict are 1) repress it and pretend it never happened (most of his fights with Bruce), 2) withdraw from the relationship until he can pretend the conflict doesn’t exist (when his friends get mad at him in YJ, he quits the team for a while), or 3) literally run away from home.

Also, Jack is a Manly Man with firm opinions about how men behave vs. how women behave, and he thinks boys shouldn’t be scared and thinks Tim should date hot girls and pushes Tim to work out and wants him to play football and expresses period-typical sexism, etc. etc. etc. ... and though obviously this wasn’t what the writers had in mind at the time, all of that is certainly interesting to read backwards in the light of Tim as a queer character.

More Disorganized Thoughts on Jack Drake

Tim’s our hero, so we’re naturally more sympathetic to him, but it’s also true that relationships are a two-way street, and Tim doesn’t value any of the things his dad values, either.  Jack at various points is shown to care about grades, business, money, boarding schools, archeology, football, a kind of macho bragging-about-dating-hot-women ethos, and a very public and performative kind of caring. Tim tends to respond with discomfort or disinterest or even disgust.  When Jack gets on TV to try to rally the government to save his son from No Man’s Land, Tim isn’t touched—he’s mortified.  When Jack makes some bad investments and loses money, Jack’s deeply upset and his self-image is majorly impacted, and far from being sympathetic, Tim’s annoyed and kind of contemptuous of the idea that this is a problem.  Jack thinks fishing in the early morning and going to tennis matches is a fun father-son activity; Tim finds it exhausting and tedious.  And so on.

This means that Tim often longs to be closer to his dad in theory, but this longing is more tied to fantasy than to reality. He rarely seems to enjoy spending time with His-Dad-The-Actual-Person.  So for example, when Tim’s deadly ill with the Clench, he has an extremely poignant fever dream about telling his dad the truth and getting hugged…even as he insists in real-life to Alfred and Dick that he does not want them to tell his dad what’s going on.

The same is true of Jack, who IMO genuinely wants to be closer to his son and is continually declaring that he’s going to turn over a new leaf and get closer to his son…and just as continually backs out of activities or loses his temper when faced with spending time with his actual son.

Tim and his dad sadly get along best—by far—in Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder situations.  When Jack gets kidnapped or is in danger, Tim worries for him (and Tim grieves him deeply when he dies).  When Tim disappears or runs away, Jack’s genuinely worried about him.  So e.g. they have a really moving emotional reunion and hug when the earthquake hits Gotham, and Tim panics about his dad’s safety and comes running home (and meanwhile Jack’s been panicked about Tim’s safety!).  It’s the day-to-day, regular life stuff where they don’t connect.

Jack's written quite differently by different writers. Mostly, Tim's parents are at their least likable in his early appearances and early miniseries (this is where you get, for example, Jack and Janet being nasty at each other while a pained employee looks on, and Tim disappointed to once again get news of where his parents are via postcard - "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they’re going to be–or when–or even how long!” - and Tim alone on school break, and Bruce and Alfred thinking there's something weird going on with Tim's parents, etc. etc.). Jack's more sympathetic but still often unlikable in most of Tim's Robin solo, and he's almost invisible (but positively treated if he does show up) in Tim's team books.

For obvious reasons, Jack's remembered way more sympathetically after his death. Tim's completely devastated by Jack's murder, which he arrives moments too late to prevent, and he basically never gets over it. We see him grieving Jack again and again in Robin, and also in Teen Titans, and also in Resurrection, and again in the Halloween Special, and again in Batman: Blackest Night, and all the way up to the end of Red Robin. Tim also grieves for an extended time over Janet - he hallucinates a happy reunion with her when he's feverish in Contagion, and hallucinates her in the final issue of Robin, and the reveal-your-buried-emotions song in Robin 102 brings up his grief for her too (meanwhile, other characters dance or laugh or otherwise get giddy).  Tim’s grief over his parents’ deaths is intense and long-lasting.

I'm not going to clip comic panels because this is long enough, but if you're curious, here's a nice and fairly lengthy compilation of comic panels with Tim and Jack.

If you're interested in a Jack-centric story with a softer-but-still-recognizably-canon take on Jack, I really like the way Jack’s narration is written in the one-shots Heart Humble (set shortly before Jack dies) and Never a Hero (Ra's resurrects him during Brucequest, and Jack's archeology skills turn out to be unexpectedly useful).

[cometrose]

one of my favorite things about zhongli is that he doesn’t shut up like i know we like to compare him to neuvillette and alhaitham but zhongli is like inverse of their signature traits. social awkwardness? quiet and reserved? zhongli does not care he will talk like he understands liyue’s social customs very well he just does what he wants. like yeah he’s calm and reserved but he’s not quiet and he enjoys socializing with humans like it’s one of his favorite things to do. the people of liyue describe as someone who is a little odd but very helpful and knowledgeable so he understands people and he seems pretty good at reading their intentions and behaviors so yeah he’s weird but he’s very popular cause he’s always doing shit

tldr zhongli is a yapper he will talk about anything and everything if you give him a chance he does not care if it’s weird or socially unconventional

[lesbian-space-fish]

or the one.

[slashify]

Okay but what if Mr. Clarke had Eddie in his class when Eddie was in middle school? He took note of Eddie talking to his friends about his guitar amp and asked him if he wanted to join AV club. Eddie did, and when he’s old enough, his first legal job is at RadioShack. Bob Newby is the first manager Eddie has ever had, but he thinks he might always be his favorite. He takes an interest in Eddie’s hobbies, listens to his music even though Eddie can tell he doesn’t like it, and when the store is slow they do funny voices at each other. He makes more money dealing, and sometimes the jocks from school come into the store to hassle him. The only thing keeping him there is Bob. But then Bob dies. Eddie goes to the funeral, comes home and sits closer to Wayne than usual on their couch. He puts in his two weeks notice the next day.

[strawberrycamel]

ninjago seabound hurts. so much. what the fuck

[francy-sketches]

What does osfryd kettleblack even do. Like what is his purpose why is he there

[kitkatsudon]

A brief foray into the military ranks of TKEM characters…

It’s no secret that our favourite boys from the Kingdom of Corea have a history in the military - but apart from Gon being bottom of his class in the Naval Academy (as confirmed by Choi Gitae in Ep4), what else do we know? As with every tiny detail that sparks my interest in this show, I took it upon myself to find out, and gave myself a headache in the process. Let’s have a look, shall we?

Lee Jihun:

I’m starting with him because he’s the only one I could find a concrete answer for, thanks to him being from a universe very similar to ours. Though we only see him very briefly in Ep16, from that short scene we can glean a little bit of information about what he was doing:

To find his rank, one needs only to look at his epaulettes. You can see that his are black, with three gold stripes: two thick ones, with a thin stripe in the middle. This identifies his rank as follows:

He’s a Soryeong, which is the equivalent rank to a Lieutenant Commander.

However, what I find perhaps more interesting for Jihun is this badge he’s wearing:

Though it’s blurry when you zoom in, I’m pretty sure it’s this one:

You heard it here first, folks. Lee Jihun is a Navy SEAL. They didn’t have to include this detail - you’d probably have to be quite familiar with the military to recognise it straight away, and I doubt that even most Korean fans would be able to recognise it, because I can tell you for a fact that I wouldn’t be able to recognise the equivalent for my own country. Someone on the production team decided this, and I want to give them a big kiss on the mouth, because now it’s confirmed that the sweet little Jihun we saw grew up to be totally badass after his abusive father passed away. I sincerely hope that it was a good life that led him to joining this branch of the military, and not some combination of horrible factors that pushed him into joining one of the most intense and dangerous branches… hm. I’m not going to dwell on that, actually. You can all make your own conclusions here.

Now… to the Kingdom. *sigh.* This is where things start to get more vague and confusing. I’m going to start with ranks first, and then go onto what they were doing as one big section because, spoiler alert, I haven’t got any sort of concrete idea.

Lee Gon:

His rank is easiest to determine, because Choi Gitae says it explicitly when they met at his father’s funeral in Ep4. I cross-referenced this with the closed-caption Korean subtitles, and everything adds up nicely: though he’s the Commander-in-Chief of all the armed forces in the Kingdom, thanks to his position as the monarch, while he was actually serving, he rose to the rank of Daewi, or Lieutenant - the highest rank of the junior officers - before leaving the navy.

Jo Yeong:

When we see Yeong in his navy uniform in Ep6, this is what we can see:

Once again, that same pattern emerges on his epaulettes of two thick stripes surrounding a thin stripe - he’s a Soryeong, a Lieutenant Commander. This means that Yeong ranked one rank higher than Gon before he left the navy, which is something that brings me quite a lot of joy.

However, something I like even more than that is Yeong’s current title, as the leader of the Royal Guard. We all know him and love him as Captain Jo, but in Korean he’s referred to as 조영 대장 - Jo Yeong Daejang. This is what Gon calls him in the iconic “Are you having fun, Captain Jo?” and you can also see that title of Daejang on his character page on the official TKEM website. On WordReference, this is what happens if I search for 대장:

Ignoring the results about other things, it doesn’t seem to mean “Captain” explicitly, it’s more like a general kind of leader title. His rank isn’t necessarily “Captain,” it’s whatever Daejang is equivalent to. So… how good is a Daejang? Looking at the South Korean armed forces, in the army, air force, and marine corps, Daejang is equivalent to General, and in the navy, Daejang is equivalent to Admiral. To put this into context a little better, the only rank in the South Korean navy higher than Daejang is Wonsu, and this rank only exists on paper and has never been given to any officer of the South Korean armed forces. To achieve this rank of Wonsu, you’re appointed from the rank of Daejang when you have “distinguished achievements.”

In conclusion: Yeong has an incredibly high rank in the armed forces, second only really to Gon himself, assuming no one from the Kingdom has ever been appointed the rank of Wonsu either. However… there’s a first time for everything, and though I’m only speculating and of course could never say anything for sure, if anyone was going to get those distinguished achievements needed to be a Wonsu, it would be our Jo Yeong Daejang.

Choi Gitae:

I’m including him briefly because I have a bone to pick with the subtitles. In English, he’s Captain Choi. In Korean, Gon refers to him as Hamjang, which, as far as I can tell, doesn’t exist in the South Korean navy of our universe. In the Korean subtitles in Ep4, he’s named as 최 소령, Choi Soryeong, and he’s just… he’s not that. Let’s take a look at some pictures:

The epaulettes on the first picture and the star badge on the second tell us that his rank should be this:

He’s a Junjang, equivalent to a Rear Admiral (lower half). Not a Captain, and not a Lieutenant Commander. As for the Hamjang/Junjang disparity, I’m going to suggest that Hamjang is the Kingdom of Corea’s equivalent to the Republic’s Junjang.

So, what was everyone doing in the navy?

The only clue we have is a badge:

This is from Yeong’s uniform, but in Ep6 Choi Gitae was wearing the same, and Gon was wearing a gold version of it. However, for the life of me, I can’t seem to figure out what it is! The design seems to be that of a ship sailing through the waters, but that just gives ✨navy✨ in a general sense. Browsing google images, I’ve noticed the same golden badge that Gon wears on other high ranking members of the South Korean navy, so maybe it signifies a high rank? Or maybe it just means that the wearer is in the navy? I don’t know! I can’t work it out! What it tells us at least is, if Yeong isn’t wearing a “specialised” badge like Jihun… it’s unlikely that he served in any kind of special forces… which I feel is a piece of information that might break some hearts in the fandom as their headcanons shatter into pieces. I’m disappointed too, because when I saw Yeong’s badge without paying attention to any of the other characters, I thought that the two shapes on the sides looked a little like submariner dolphins, so I’ve spent half a year or so thinking that’s what Yeong did in the navy, before I realised that Gon and Choi Gitae had the exact same badge.

So, if anyone has been bothered enough to read this far and also happens to be a Korean military buff, I would love you forever if you could tell me exactly what this badge means, and whether it gives us any indication of what Yeong or Gon or anyone else was doing in the navy. However, maybe it’s good that it’s unclear, because that leaves fic writers plenty of room to wonder about what Gon and Yeong were doing in the military - whether they were doing different things, strengthening their bond as best bros doing the same thing, and if you’re on the same side of this fandom as me, whether they were repressing some big feelings at seeing each other in their military uniforms, or whether they were engaging in certain activities that are maybe stereotypical of sailors cooped together on the same boat without women to spend their nights with… there’s plenty of room for interpretation :D

[thompsborn]

post nwh road trip for all the wrong reasons fic

[isa-ah]

yall ever end up thinking back on periods of ur life and ur like. bro what

[thedeafprophet]

Death comes up a lot in my oc stories, as backstory,as a driving force, as a constant. Perhaps too much, maybe, but to me i've always considered that just a facet of life.

Ive witnessed loss since I was very young, those that affected me, and those that affected those around me. Everyone reacts differently to grief, the way we process and mourn, and how we choose to remember people. Loss comes in different shapes and forms, to different affects, and different levels of grief. Some are spoken on bitterly, some wtih great joy, some in whispered, fond memories.

So to me, i don't know, it just seems like a fundamental aspect of a character when coming up with them; who did they loose, and how did that affect them.

[benoits-neckerchieves]

Watched Four Weddings yet again last night just ‘cause it was on, and may i just say that bespectacled Hugh Grant is a delight to behold

[theinfinitedivides]

well. Dunki's going to f*ck me over isn't it

[berryblu-soda]

Anyways update i just didnt bother to post earlier:

fr God is good and the whole car crash my parents got into last week was so incredibly mild in terms of injuries!!!! worst was a bruised knee im pretty sure

ALSO-

*taps mic* HUG YOUR FREAKING LOVED ONES OR SO HELP ME!!!!!!!

[naomiknight-17]

I am currently getting ready to go to a funeral for a man I do not know, but probably should have

He was at my wedding, almost 13 years ago. His wife is a friend and coworker of my mom's. They gave us the artificial flowers from their recent-at-the-time wedding to decorate our venue, saving us a lot of money and trouble. Our wedding colours were even the same, by a wild coincidence.

But I don't remember him. Mom and his wife (now widow) still work together and are still close, but I haven't seen them in so long and I've forgotten.

I am going to the funeral mostly because my mother cannot travel alone and I am her de facto support person. There are going to be people there who I am supposed to know, but I don't. I am faceblind and have a poor memory.

Whatever powers that be, please don't let me turn this funeral into a social fiasco