#but yeah a lot of dc writers also get this point confused

[oifaaa]

I'm not following your logic. Every piece of media Judd created about why Jason did what he did in UTRH was centered around the Joker being alive and every piece since has stated Bruce killing the Joker would heal Jason in some way. The only reason he breaks down and destroys is room after being healed by the Pit is that he learns the Joker is alive and killing people. 1-2

I'm starting to wonder if I'm the only person who's actually read this stupid book considering Jason literally says very clearly to the Joker in utrh that this isn't about you and that he is only bait - honestly tho alot of people get confused about this so I'll try to explain it

The Joker isn't important the only reason he is in the story is bc he killed Jason, if he was killed by literally any other person and that person was still alive by the time jason came back to life nothing about utrh would change apart from maybe the name red hood - the story of utrh is about Jason's relationship with Bruce that's what Jason cares about everything else the way jason thinks crime should be handled and his morals on killing are all secondary - jason doesn't actually want Bruce to kill Joker and he doesn't really expect him to, it's all theatre

If Jason actually wanted Joker dead or just to prove his system works better then Bruce's he wouldn't have to go through the whole show and dance of the stand off - he could of killed Joker when he had him tied up like Joker literally asked him why am I not dead and that's when Jason's says bc this isn't about you - I don't know how Judd could write that whole scene out and people still don't get it

So then we get to my point about Dick killing the Joker and how that wouldn't mean anything to Jason since Dick isn't Bruce and its really as simple as that - Jason wants to prove a point to Bruce, Dick killing the Joker before Jason has a chance to prove said point wouldn't help him at all it would of just made it more difficult for Jason to get the resolve he needed with Bruce and that's it

[zahri-melitor]

I don't know if it's just me but it feels like alot of the points people use to criticise Tim are things that can actually be seen with early Damian writing. The too smart, dangerous, over-competent and slightly murderous character doesn't really fit Tim as a character even though he's ascribed to that and criticised for it but it can easily be seen with Damian.

I don't hate Damian as a character, but I get what you mean about it being tiring that DC keeps pushing him to the top of the totem pole especially since the way the do that is by making other characters seem incompetent and by ignoring other characters. Also correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Cass, Barbara or Tim have been on the Justice League but Damian as a teen younger than them technically is/was?

Oh boy. Late response on this, but I've been playing with it for a while.

Starting with the last point first: Tim’s actually the only one of those three who hasn’t been on a main universe Justice League at any point.

Barbara was a member of the JLA after the Morrison reboot for quite a while between 1998-2000. She’s also got the tendency to pop up in JL stories and events as one of the computer folk helping maintain their systems. She’s certainly more focused on her OWN team and I don’t think she’s ever been a member as Batgirl, but as Oracle? As Lian Harper says in Titans #1 (1999), she’s secretly running the League.

Cass was a member of Justice League Elite, a morally ambiguous Justice League spinoff coming out of one of the more confusing JLA arcs. She was placed on the team undercover as ‘Kasumi’ by Bruce essentially as a spy. In tone it feels like DC trying their hand at a The Authority ripoff before they gobbled Wildstorm up. Is it a good series? No, but it does mean Cass has been on a Justice League team with Wally, Ollie, and a bunch of Z-listers you’ve never heard of. (Someone is now going to defend oh Manitou Dawn to me and while I DO like her, she's a Z-lister, sorry)

Digression aside!

I think a lot of the time when people are arguing against a character, they are frequently complaining about the flanderised, fanonised version of that character that they trip over in fic all the time more than the character on page in comics. Not always! But those do tend to irritate people more.

In terms of "what people want to argue fanon Tim to be, Damian already is" sort of? I mean there are multiple fanon versions of Tim, but yes, "too smart, dangerous, over-competent and slightly murderous" is a common one among people who want to really insist Tim killed lots and lots and lots of people in Red Robin #8 (a reading I do not subscribe to). It is equally an okay but not great description of Damian, in that I would mostly place even early Damian as 'dangerously violent' not 'murderous' by BFTC.

I don't think it's great in terms of complete accuracy for either of them, but yeah, if you boil things down, it's closer to Damian's actual character than Tim's.

In terms of DC pushing them: yeah, Damian by being THE Robin between 2009 and 2019 or so got a solid editorial pitch as a central character, because 'Robin' as a title has that extra cachet outside of intense comics nerd circles. There were events and storylines that centred his position as The Robin, but equally it comes out in basic things like...which characters are prioritised to appear in anthologies! If we are writing a Batman Christmas story, let's have it feature Bruce and Damian, or Bruce, Dick, Damian and Barbara. And so on.

Now whether Damian's getting prioritised over every other 'kid' of the family is a murky discussion - there's a place for the conversation that certain writers in particular had a tendency to focus on Damian being Bruce's biological kid, over and above the adopted children - but generally it comes and goes in waves and with what stories are pitched. It's very clear when you read comics that some writers just like using particular characters more than others. There's often stories written where to make the story work, someone has to be left holding the idiot ball or being needlessly aggressive, to provide conflict, and writers who do this obviously have to choose someone to do it for them. If a story is centring Damian, generally he isn't going to be the one who finds out he's wrong after providing the conflict. If it's centring say Tim, then Damian might be used to push the narrative forward. And when a writer does like one character more than another, they might choose the one they don't intend to write often as the one who gets stuck being idiot ball.

TL;DR: on some occasions Damian might be being prioritised. On others he isn't. He got a lot of spotlight to himself during the 2010s; that's been more balanced since then (honestly Dick has been the one hogging spotlight for the last few years, if anyone).

[webginz]

Recs for a budding jason fan?

okay!!!!

a little disclaimer: this is a really long list (sorry ;_;) but it isnt anywhere near all of jasons appearances (though thats not hard to find of you want it after reading these ehehe)

in fact this basically turned into a webginz approved jason reading list!! which wasnt my original intent but.... 👍

im gonna sort them with little stars. 1 star = tecnically skippable, but i still think it should be on this list. 2 stars = important. 3 stars = ESSENTIAL. my favorites and the most important!

as robin:

batman 408*** jasons first appearance and origin

batman 409-413*** continuation of jasons origin story

batman 416** nightwing drama, but warning- this is writen by starlin, who hates robin and esp jason (more on him later). so just be aware while you read, lol. i have mixed feelings with this comic..

detective comics 569-570*

dc 571** vs scarecrow

dc 572* sherlock holmes crossover

dc 573-574** the focus is more on batman in 574 but still

dc 579**

batman 424-425** this is the infamous comic where jason may or may not have pushed a guy off a building. BUT, disclaimer, this is written by starlin and was meant to make jason look bad. so keep in mind that this isnt a "killing rapist good" comic, and more of a "wow robin is so evil!!" comic. #jasondidnothingwrong

death in the family aka batman 427-429*** a big disclaimer for this one!!! its also written by starlin and another thing about this guy is that he likes to shoehorn in modern politics into whatever story hes writing, being really insensitive to the point of it looking like a joke. so yeah. warning for the biggest whiplash between child murder and insane irl politics being basically mocked.

post resurrection:

batman: hush* his first post resurrection appearance technically, but its very brief. no number bc the parts that matter are included in the utrh omnibus.

under the red hood*** i could give you the exact issues but, JUST READ THE OMNIBUS. its the collected stories, plus a couple extra.

some parts of this story can be a bit confusing without context, but to get full context youd have to read a metric ton of stories, none of which include jason. so just use context clues for anything you dont get (or dm me and ask, lol).

theres an animated movie based on this story, but a few things are cut out/changed.

batman annual 25*** flashback/explanation for how jason came back. one of my favs of all time (also included in utrh omnibus)

red hood lost days** prequel, but read after the others. shows jasons life between his resurrection and utrh stunt.

these both take place after utrh, not necessarily jason focused, and they are pretty out of context. nevertheless, here they are:

green arrow 69-72* dont judge jason too harshly for this... he had a weird role in the sidekick ecosystem at this point.

outsiders 44-46* this is a brief appearance but i like it, interaction with nightwing

NOW... my final recommendation is:

robin 80th anniversary, specifically jasons story- "more time" *** really short and was written really recently, but its by winnick who's the author of like half of this list and basically THE post-resurrection jason writer. so you can read it with only the knowledge of this list and understand it! please do! IM BAWLING!!!!

---

on modern (2011-now) comics:

i dont remember enough about new 52 to give recommendations. the only jason centric story is rhato, WHICH SUCKS. SO BAD. SKIP IT, IM SERIOUS. in fact, skip anything written by lobdell.

however.. as much as i hate to say it, lots of the new 52 stories set up his relationship with the rest of the batfamily, and these dynamics stayed to this day.

i have no specific recommendations, though... maybe "batman and robin eternal" and "robin war" ???

for rebirth and infinite frontier id have to make a whole new post if i wanted to be in detail because i have a lot to say. ill just say- i liked the urban legends issues that focused on jason, task force z was weird but alright jason characterization, despite hating lobdell and it being shitty i also like the beginning or rhato rebirth. gotham war is a poorly written ooc mess but i must admit i love the angst LOL. jason also makes a ton of small appearances in batman/nightwing/etc which (though i havent read all of them) seem to mostly be good.

---

I AM ALSO A HUGE FAN OF ARKHAMVERSE JASON. this is an alternate universe (the video games) and so none of the comics on this list are canon to that universe, and none of the arkhamverse stuff has any connection to 'main canon' BUT THAT DOESNT MATTER. i think arkhamverse jason is almost perfect.

for arkhamverse jason: play batman arkham knight, then read arkham knight genesis! also theres a red hood dlc! i love him so much 😭❤️😭❤️❤️😭😭❤️❤️❤️❤️

i have some fluffy non-canon recommendations, but ill make a new post for them later because this has taken me forever and its way too long!!!!!

thank you for the ask and for reading!! yay for new jason fans!!!!!

[paperconsumption]

okay so. so this so mild. but the first thing I thought of when i actually started playing this game in like late september/early october. is there is a very similar mindset amongst the many who I had met at the time that they just, didn't need to read the source material.

this can be found in many many fandoms. this isn't a enstars/dc specific thing. DC has a VERY huge barrier to entry and for enstars it way less so.

so you have to find fan translations of the older enstars stories and the way the timeline works it is kind of hard to parse through. where do you start when you weren't there for the whole thing. with enstars there is a (in my mind) objectively good starting point for the whole franchise. ! main story. not like kisaki or the later stuff. like the revolution to ensemble sections. then it's pretty vague. "follow your favs" is the fandom wiki's advice paraphrased and I remember that exact advice when I tried getting into DC. and the confusion when all these pre established characters came in like whhhaat. with Superman there's this image of him. you can get that pretty well if you follow some american pop culture stuff. but if you start to dive into DC with something like, Young Justice (1998) you meet robin and superboy and impulse. and they have all these people they know. and sure you can keep following young justice but you don't really understand what's going on over with say, Robin, who's apparently the 3rd robin? and the second robin. you don't. im off track.

I haven't gone through a decent amount of any of enstars so im incredibly sorry. but The EP:Link and like. the transition to !! it all reminds a bit about Crisis on infinite earths. and post crisis era. except like can i really say that as an exclhsivelt post crisis reader. hmm.

but yeah I'd say the japanese release of !! is the post crisis on infinite earths. and !! to english is having an effect of nu52 to the incoming fanbase (to an extent) but the content is the same... ish. so no where near asbad as nu52. more like rebirth or something. but these thigns are not equivalent.

enstars fans havetrouble finding translations, and after !''s main story it's a lot of "decide for yourself" what reading order if you wanna try and keep track of things happening. DC fans have a hard time finding copies of a decent amount of the older comics, you can't keep track of things no matter what you do. oh and enstars also has a bit of the same problem that dc has about dofferent writers to a tiny extent because Akira doesn't always write the stories, so they sometimes contradict(? don't remember seeing that butI know some say so.)

also enstars english ads are to enstars as Wayne family adventures is to any actual batman stuff.

have a good morning I am so brain dead 👋 thank you for listening ;w; one thousand high fives brigid, one thousand high fives

this is such a cool connection!! when you get really into media like comics and games you start to expect confusing timelines and such but it really isn’t a problem that many other mediums experience you know? they usually always start at chapter 1/episode 1 so attempting to get someone who’s used to that to adapt to enstars or dc would be pretty rough. i’ve already accepted the strangeness of enstars and kinda (?) understand the timeline now but if you asked me anything about how dc works i would not be able to answer. and just because of the nature of how dc comics and enstars stories are created and released, it’s really hard to fix the confusion without a sort of reset—which both of them did—and even then the problem doesn’t go away.

you can’t really think of a definite solution, and neither can anyone on the creative team so it seems, so everyone just gets used to it. it’d be cool to look at other franchises that have similar issues and compare the way each fandom adapts and finds solutions for the other problems you mentioned (finding translations, getting copies of older material that’s out of print, etc). i wonder if there’s consistent methods everyone follows along with, or everyone just does it in their own weird way🤔

[straightbaittournament]

only the option with the LEAST votes will be eliminated. propaganda under the cut (and more always welcome!):

tyler rake and nik khan:

They’re very close, have lots of chemistry, but have never been acknowledged in canon. At this point they are just work friends who save each others’ lives on the regular.

lisa cuddy and gregory house:

The show spends 7 seasons hinting that House is going to end up with Cuddy, and then writes her out in season 7. In the finale, he has a flashback of people who impacted his life and she doesn’t even show If House and Wilson can’t be together, then House and Cuddy should

kipo oak and benson mekler:

It only lasts a few episodes, but this is a very clear INTENTIONAL straight bait from the writers, as it's a female main character with a male major supporting character, and Benson even takes Kipo to a carnival, which Kipo interprets as a date, until she confesses attraction to him, where he tells her he's gay and just wants to be friends.

tan:

ok so it's complicated? like he's the lead love interest in a show that was very explicitly marketed as queer but I'm calling him straightbait because he literally straightbaits like every character in the show? So there's this girl (Jane) and everyone jsut assumes that he's dating her? Like she gets (spoiler!) murdered in ep 1 and the police are like "the body was found by the victim's boyfriend" and they mean Tan. Bun the main character drunkingly kissed Tan in the first episode as well and then saw Tan and Jane at an event holding hands and he was like....... wow this is awkward and also is he cheating on her with me??? (he was best friends with Jane). Anyways like this continues with Tan being under suspicion for Jane's murder because he's was her lover apparently and Bun is like living with this guy now and Tan is like laying it on thick about his attraction towards Bun but Bun is still suspicious and then Bun's talking to one of the kids that Jane and Tan taught and the kid is like "yeah so Miss Jane's boyfriend...." and Bun is like "right, Tan." and the kid is like "what??? mr tan never dated miss jane she was with this other guy." and Bun is confused (rightly) until like a few episodes later or so they're staring at their red string board and Tan is like "yeah so I was literally never with Jane we were just good friends" and is then also implied to be like gay as well so he's not even bi. Which ok straightbait over right? Wrong! Jane's actual boyfriend gets murdered and Tan gets arrested for it and he's like "what motive do I have to kill him??" and the police are like "well you two were fighting over Jane's love clearly" and he just kinda scoffs and smirks with a whole "these idiots have no idea that i'm currently planning on how to propose to my boyfriend of like a week" but just doesn't say anything?!?!?!?! he actively makes himself more suspicious and a greater target by pretending to be straight instead of just being like hey guys you know I was just buddies with Jane right? and i'm currently hooking up with the doctor who keeps giving you guys problems?? Anyways he's not straightbait in the sense that it was any surprise to the audience that he ended up with a boyfriend. but he did pretend to be straight for no real reason and literally endangered himself by doing so (this universe didn't seem to have like any actual homophobia stuff)

bruce wayne and selina kyle:

So a while back there was a whole thing about their wedding with SO much buildup. Like a whole mini series, a couple arcs in the main batman run, Superman and Nightwing threw him a bachelor party. Then when it was time for them to get married Selina fuckin left him at the altar. She left him at the altar man

himmel and frieren:

https://official.lowee.us/manga/Sousou-no-Frieren/0030-015.png https://official.lowee.us/manga/Sousou-no-Frieren/0030-016.png https://official.lowee.us/manga/Sousou-no-Frieren/0030-017.png https://official.lowee.us/manga/Sousou-no-Frieren/0030-018.png https://64.media.tumblr.com/ccb9c16bab47d917d2e11dd22c9b88e7/828182d720d735af-ea/s500x750/210c55d7128139c2ce032383b34ad487df067514.jpg

hardwon surefoot and moonshine cybin:

They’re DnD characters so they’re bi disasters canonically. Just not for each other The best way to describe Hardshine is this: “They’re soulmates” “Platonically or romantically?” “Yes” Literally they care so much about each other. Moonshine cured Hardwon’s vampirism by reincarnating him into a half elf and he told her “I’ve been half elf ever since I met you”. Moonshine is a high level elf druid which means she’ll basically live forever and literally the most emotional scene where she asks her mom “How long do half-elves live?”. Hardwon was always a fish out of water who never really fit in until he found Moonshine and the Crick. Are they dating? Queerplatonic partners? Siblings? Idk man they’re just in love it doesn’t matter how.

willow park and hunter:

THEY ARE NOT STRAIGHT THEY R BI4PAN BUT IT IS AN M/F RELATIONSHIP They are an M/F relationship in The Gay Show and they are hinted and teased but never confirmed

tim drake and stephanie brown:

Tim and Steph are a thing for most of their history. Then stuff happens and they break up and soon after that Tim is confirmed to be bi and starts dating Bernard (former random side character who nobody thought would ever be relevant again)

rowena macleod and sam winchester:

Their relationship was clearly going in that direction before the writers killed Rowena.

good luck everybody! now go vote!

[norcalbruja]

On liminality, and the stuff Tony Stark says

Anyway, Tony seems to give me very Classic Comic Book vibes despite physically looking like Robert Downey Jr. This one time he said something like "Look honey, we're not really 'people' anymore, but we also can't be gods. We are what people WANT TO BE, and that is a very finicky place in the spirit-world."

Sometimes Tony just confirms my suspicions that "Superheroes are modern mythology."

...And then he says shit like "Come onnnnn, just ask me for help! Pleassssse!!!! I'm fucking rich, there are a LOT of ways I can help a broke writer!"

--

It seems you need a certain level of "standing" to be a LIKELY pop-culture spirit. The more prominent a work is in society, the more likely the characters start "answering calls." Ie, Marvel and DC.

There are HUNDREDS of media works out there and it seems spirits need enough "focus" to become egregores/embodied/"full spirits." I don't see anyone (admitting to???) meeting the Fullmetal Alchemist characters, but I HAVE seen at least one person who believes that they accidentally met Magneto.

Like, they did a semi-joking "summoning" ritual for the X-Men and they did not expect to MEET SOMEONE.

If that isn't the start to a horror movie, I don't know what is.

But given my current works dealing with colonization myself, if I met Magneto IN THE VERY FAR FUTURE, WITH NO SIGNIFICANT METAL AROUND, I would absolutely tell him that he has some great points.

And maybe it's not only "how prominent" a story is in general, but the nature of the story itself? Maybe the superheroes are more likely to get embodied not only because they're popular, but because their whole genre involves "helping people," so folks are more likely to "invoke" them. Meanwhile FMA is ultimately a war-story/series and like... nobody's "calling on" Roy Mustang.

--

Speaking of the Avengers, the rest of them showed up last night in the meditation. The moment Other-Thor came, I just lost it, hugged him, and started crying. Not sure if I was happy or sad, it was probably both.

The doofus just smiled and went "Well, this is a lovely welcome!"

Cap was laughing and went, "She didn't even cry when I came here the first time!"

Thor and Loki are going to be VERY important characters in the modern side of my Marvel fanfic, so maybe that's why I reacted like I did.

Or maybe it's because Movie-Thor has a recovering-from-depression arc?

Honestly, Thor is my PERSONAL favorite Avenger and I never could figure out why. Maybe because he and Cap are just NICE?

--

This one time I was YET AGAIN trying to sleep, so Tony rolled up with some spiritual-whiskey and gave me some shots. It didn't work, so when Spirit-Me wandered back to the Water-Spirit just completely shitfaced and crying, Hera got mad when she saw us and she yelled, "TONY! WHAT. DID. YOU. DO??? SHE'S A MESS!!!"

And Tony was like "She can't sleep. I gave her some shots, but she is WIRED, man."

So she ordered him to get out so I could sober up, but Tony just snapped at her, "Hera, I am not a god and I'm sure as hell not Greek! You have no power over me!"

And yeah, she couldn't actually make him LEAVE, unless she wanted to start a fight with a very drunk and squishy bard in the room, so she just settled for chaperoning me for a while.

--

If I had to lock down the superheroes as anything "properly spiritual," they feel a lot like intermediaries/intercessors. So many of them are human-turned-something-else, and their ties to humanity are a constant theme, plus there's a thin line between "invoking a spirit ON BEHALF OF a god" and "invoking someone AS AN ACTUAL GOD."

The Tagalog pantheon supposedly said that most gods were "agents of the supreme deity Bathala," but they all ended up being treated as deities by the time the Spanish came along, so I wonder if a similar confusion between "really powerful intermediaries" and "deities" are happening with the likes of Marvel and DC.

[astrologista]

i hate to say it but all bruce does these days is whineeeee. which i feel like is antithetical to how i understand him as a character. like yes, he broods and he does obsess, but he doesn’t really whine unless some of the time if only alfred is there to witness it lol.

like, fr. i haven’t really been keeping up with comics, so maybe i’m off base with some of this, but here’s what it looks like from the outside

bruce’s relationship with dick is under-served or just basically ignored, when they do bring it out, it’s only for very quick angst fuel then right back to business like they don’t know each other at all

bruce accepting jason back into the family was rushed and handled by sub-par writing which didn’t support the emotional gravitas that said reunification should have involved. i’ve seen a lot of fics that did it way better than what they did. it feels shoe-horned. also, why is bruce tacitly rubber-stamping jason as batman-affiliated when he’s still using GUNS? like WHAT. how does that make any sense. do bruce’s emotional boundaries matter at all? does everything have to be jason’s way or the highway? bruce is notoriously stubborn. much as he loves jason, i can’t see him letting that slide IF this were to work. DON’T SKIP OVER THE IMPORTANT CHARACTER WORK. like, set up the foundations and then build on top of that. don’t just jump to the payoff and try to walk things back as you go! it’s lazy and shows where editorial mandate stymied good storytelling. and there are way more issues with it that i have than just that. of course i love to see bruce and jason caring about each other and getting along as much as the next fan but the way they chose to go about it raises SO many questions

tim who?

no tim has been flanderized so fucking bad. actually he’s been transformed more into the fandom-lite version of himself, which i do kind of hate. oh yeah, he’s with bernard now. WHOOP TEE DOO! the fans have been clamoring for that pairing for years i’m sure.

there have been an assortment of good-to-middling damian comics since the 2010s as at least some writers seem vaguely interested in that dynamic with bruce but for every 2 mildly tolerable issues they drop one that’s got fucking jack shit bonkers writing in it and relies on only the most tired of “U LIED TO ME” tropes. nothing will compare to the tomasi 2011 batman and robin run and that was like the single decent output of the new 52 and the best thing dc has released in years. i’m right

among the newer characters they’ve released, it’s sad that they never really seem to... stick? PLEASE INVEST IN SOMEONE. more duke! more harper! more LITERALLY ANYONE!

bring the fun back to comics. where’s the storytelling. decide whether you want to create a new shitty joker and/or riddler iteration, or a new army of jokers and/or riddlers and/or scarecrows. or just create a new poo poo shitty villain of the week who will age like milk. why not have one based on social media. that’s a new one that i’m sure no one will ever see coming.

STOP SOFT REBOOTING EVERY ISSUE. we know, you’re going to start the next new groundbreaking run, take everything back to basics so nobody is confused, bring on the new readers with this cool new jumping on point, simple just batman alfred and the joker with juuuust enough of a new “modern” twist to it to differentiate it from the thousands of other times you did this. great job dc. doing great. when you’re done with that let’s do another mass cataclysm event across 20 books. im sure people will want to collect all those variant covers.

and i love how there are SO many fics that do it so, so, so much better. jesus fuck. and fic writers aren’t even being PAID! we’re not even being PAID!!

so, yeah, i’m kind of done with comics for time being. i’ve been dabbling in anime and games again, getting back to roots, but so far, it’s mainly been independent web content free of advertisers, executives, editorial and other bullshit that’s caught my fancy lately. the artistic freedom is really needed to tell a good story now. the multiverse / soft reboot / re-configure the universe every year bullshit that marvel popularized has infiltrated, like, everything, as well as the netflix model of “let’s cancel immediately after season 1”. there is no buildup. there is no excitement. there is no story. mba’s and boardrooms do not understand “story”. they don’t know what creativity is. they know what numbers, profits, engagement look like, and they are optimizing for that curve. i do not know why they are shocked when that curve sinks lower and lower every year. i just simply do not understand.

im so mad. kevin conroy’s dead and we’ll never get something like b:tas ever again. media has been my life since i was a baby. so i have to find some kind of stories to try to enjoy even if i have to eke it out in the margins of society lol

[stxleslyds]

Also, the writers' failure to understand, every crime Jason committed had a motive. Attack other criminals? Holy warrior destined to purify the world of evil. Attack Bruce? Joker's still alive. (Oh, Jason, it's much worse than that.) Attack Tim? A parody of what he once was. He wasn't just a "bad boy". He was dangerously insane.

Hi, Anon! Yup, there seems to be a lot of things that writers have gotten confused about Jason Todd/Red Hood and the biggest one is his motivations to kill certain criminals.

Let’s be honest, Judd Winick set a golden path for the upcoming Red Hood writers. But each and every writer that used Red Hood in their stories completely missed the point of Jason’s character. All of them. It’s so incredibly wild to me that every other writer read UtRH and came up with whichever version of Jason they came up with.

Let’s list the writers that completely missed the point.

Geoff Johns in Teen Titans vol.3 #29.

Geoff Johns was one of the first to completely mischaracterize Jason, why on earth would Jason go to the Titans Tower to beat up Tim? This is not me saying that Jason would never do that because Jason thinks of Tim as his brother or a friend or the person that he can trust the most from the Bat-Clan (can you believe Lobdell tried to sell us that one?), this is me saying that Jason wouldn’t have done that because he couldn’t have given less of a fuck about Tim’s existence.

When Jason found out that Bruce had another Robin he wasn’t bothered by his “replacement” he was mad at Bruce for having another child playing hero after he lost his life as a fifteen-year-old. Jason didn’t even think of Tim as his replacement as fandom likes to make us believe, Jason called Tim “pretender”. And that was that, but to go from minimal recognition to go out of his way to beat him up at Titans Tower is a massive mischaracterization.

Paul Dini in Countdown (to Final Crisis).

Paul Dini in Countdown did absolutely nothing with Jason, I am sorry but that’s all he did. Him writing Jason was like watching a dog trying to catch their own tail. He started with a pretty basic take on UtRH Jason, then he added a bit of Jason being an annoying man with Donna, then we had the jealousy arc because apparently, Jason had the hots for Donna but she didn’t want anything to do with him and he was all angsty when she paid attention to Kyle instead of him, and then, later on, he had that whole Red Robin bullshit (I am sorry about this, but I absolutely hated that, it was so dumb, I am so glad it didn’t last long because it was just too bad), and after all that mix of just not interesting stuff he went right back to the Jason that he had at the very start. It was a waste of time, but I guess that he had to be there because he was an anomaly and all that. I just think that was DC’s first try at making Jason Todd/Red Hood something more than just a street-level vigilante and they failed miserably.

Tony S. Daniel in Batman: Battle for the Cowl.

Even though the first two did make mistakes with Jason’s characterizations, this man was the first to just throw UtRH out of the window and make up his very own version of Jason Todd. And his version was horrendous, that Jason had no problem with attempting to kill children and innocent people, he also really wanted to be Batman because Gotham needed a Batman and he wanted to be the person to wear the Cowl and he was looking for a Robin for himself.

I know, the whole concept is the perfect opposite of what Jason Todd and Red Hood were in UtRH. Every aspect of BftC Jason is based on nothing.

Jason wanting to be Batman because Gotham needed Batman is just the beginning of what’s wrong in this book. Jason became the Red Hood (in part) because he believed that Batman and his ways weren’t what Gotham needed so he made a better version of Batman with Red Hood (according to him) because Red Hood did what Batman refused to do. Another thing that is just wrong is Jason wanting, Damian, Tim or Dick to be his Robin, there is just so much wrong with this, first of all, Jason wanted Batman to stop having Robin because child soldiers ran the risk of dying at a very young age and that’s exactly how he saw the whole thing because that was what had happened to him. Second, if Jason was mad at Bruce for getting another Robin why would he now want one of his own to team up with his Batman? Damian was a child, Tim was someone that apparently Jason hated (because Jason beating Tim was mentioned in this event), and then Jason actually asked Dick Grayson, Nightwing, to be his Robin? Listen, there is no way that was Jason, nothing about him makes sense, even taking into account that Jason had beaten Tim already in this event Jason actually tried to kill both Tim and Damian (it might have been just one of them but yeah, it still doesn’t make sense).

I just don’t think that Tony S. Daniel knew who Jason Todd was, maybe he got confused but the thing is, his “villainous” and deranged version of Jason Todd allowed a villainous and deranged version of Red Hood to happen with the next writer that I will be talking about.

Grant Morrison in Batman and Robin vol.1 #3-6.

This was the birth of the villainous, deranged and bloodthirsty Red Hood. There is absolutely no trace of UtRH Jason here, not even if we are looking at the opposite of things like we could do with Daniel’s Jason. Grant Morrison wanted Dick and Damian to have a villain to match their Batman and Robin and they decided to give us a red-haired-pill-headed-red hood. Everything from Morrison’s characterization of Jason is crazy, from the red hair (hello pre-crisis) to the awful Joker’s Red Hood looking suit, everything was just weird.

I still don’t believe that was Jason, to be honest, I would rather think that version of Jason was actually a rouge Skrull that came all the way from the Marvel Universe and lost his way in Gotham City. Maybe when he made the jump between universes, he got too much information and got confused and took the form of the wonkiest Jason Todd he could come up with.

This Jason was absolutely deranged, he knew exactly what he was doing and he didn’t care if innocents died. This Jason was the one that got locked up in Arkham. This is the Jason that Dick put in Arkham for Jason and everybody else’s safety.

Dick putting that Jason in Arkham wasn’t a bad thing or something that anyone can use to shit on Dick Grayson (not on this house). This Arkham was reformed and that Jason knew that if he stayed in that new Arkham he would stay away from trouble, but here is the thing, that Jason loved trouble, so he took all the tests to prove he wasn’t insane and asked to be transferred to Blackgate (where all the Red Hood’s enemies were). That Jason didn’t ask to be sent to Blackgate because the Joker was a cell away from his in Arkham, he did it so he could go on a killing spree in Blackgate (which he did when he got there).

Skrull Jason was just bloodthirsty and nothing like UtRH Jason, he had no motive other than just killing for fun or whatever. He didn’t want to protect Gotham and he couldn’t have cared less about the drug trade in Gotham. In Batman and Robin vol.1. Jason Todd was unrecognizable. And luckily, we never saw him again.

Scott Lobdell in Everything that he ever wrote about Red Hood.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Lobdell was the king of overpowering Jason, he was the one that drove Red Hood farther and farther away from his street-level vigilante status. He continuously added more to him, he was a big deal because he was meant to take down Ra’s al Ghul, he was a big deal because he was the only human to train in the All-Castle and learned to summon the All-Blades.

This Red Hood’s morals and ideals were kind of gone, there just wasn’t any kind of interest in Jason to get rid of drugs or try to control its trade in Gotham, he just had no interest in street-level threats, everything was extraordinary in both New 52 and Rebirth. If he wasn’t in space he was in some mystical land. His friends and allies became even more and more powerful, his level of power was completely off compared to the others. His personality was ever-changing and quite honestly you could barely see the Jason that he once was.

This Jason also was very inconsistent in the way that he felt towards people (obviously because Lobdell is a shitty writer), he wanted to follow Batman’s rules and was shown as someone that still had fond memories of his life with Bruce before he died but was also willing to let those memories go, to move on? Maybe? I don’t know. But he changed his mind about Bruce and following his rules or not for a very long time. Jason was also a little bitch about Dick, and he was a little bitch because he (Lobdell) never gave the reader or anyone a concrete reason as to why he hated him so much and then in Rebirth he decided that Dick wasn’t that bad. Also, Jason went from “Willis Todd, abusive husband and father that deserved to die” to “Willis Todd abusive husband and father but he sent me letters when he was in prison and Penguin had him killed so now, I really want to avenge him”. Yeah, I don’t really know why that happened and like most of Lobdell’s arcs and stuff it was never really completed or well thought out.

Lobdell’s Jason characterization was a mess for ten years and that’s the prime reason why Jason is a character with no solid background, story or future.

James Tynion IV in Red Hood and the Outlaws.

Tynion’s Jason Todd was a hero, he was like a mini Tom King Batman. Everything he did was right and there was just no way that you could bamboozle him. This Jason was able to hold to Blades that drained his soul as well as hosting the Untitled in his body (that were able to drain his soul too) and on top of all that he completed his journey of the Chosen One by making those ancient martial arts moves that he learned before he was Robin even though Talia hadn’t been able to master it yet.

Scott Snyder, Tim Seeley in Batman Eternal and Batman and Robin Eternal.

A mess, this was pure New 52 levels of bullshit and they all just wanted to push the “Batfamily” and while Dick was gone, they were trying to make Jason fill the void that Dick left in Batman events. It didn’t work at all and all they did was mess around with Jason’s characterization more.

Geoff Johns in Three Jokers.

I have talked enough about Johns’ takes on Jason Todd and Red Hood, but let me tell you something real quick, if a writer thinks that the best they can do with a character is make them give up their morals/ideals for an unrequited love interest, then they can keep that idea for themselves. Geoff Johns wrote a book that was absolutely not needed and then proceeded to butcher every characterization that he could, Three Jokers was three issues long and he managed to add more trauma to Jason’s torture, push the narrative of Jason being at fault for his own murder and make Jason’s motivations to be the Red Hood weak enough to make him want to give up his work for a woman that he barely knows (and doesn’t like him at all).

Joshua Williamson in Future State: Red Hood and Robin #5.

Now, with Williamson I have issues only when he writes Jason, not because his stories are bad, don’t get me wrong, I would have completely enjoyed FS: Red Hood if it weren’t for the completely unnecessary Rose/Jason side plot he had going on. Jason was clearly working undercover for some people that he hated working with. He had to arrest or kill “masks” (vigilantes, just like he “used” to be) for the Magistrate.

His ideas were pretty solid, Jason did the job but he never killed the masks and actively didn’t trust the Magistrate but he was working there to tear them apart from within, and that’s amazing if Williamson had given us Jason Todd/Red Hood working undercover to dismantle an organization I would have been really happy.

But that’s not all he gave us, even if I just forget about his failed attempt at giving Jason a relationship, I can still see that Williamson is the kind of writer that wants (or is just following DC) to make the “Batfamily” happen no matter how dumb and out of place it looks in comics’ canon. So, I am a little bit weary, any writer that leans too much towards making Jason and Bruce work together and become a family makes me want to scream, but I do understand that is just me, many people want those two to be buddy-buddy, I, personally, would love to see Jason kick Bruce in the balls and tell him to lose his number.

Chip Zdarsky in Urban Legends: Cheer.

Ah, yes, I remember the days in which I thought that this could have been something good. Well, I was utterly wrong and I suffered all the way through this mini. I feel like now I can safely say that Zdarsky only wanted to write a Batman book but DC told him, “Hey you can write Batman but it has to be within a Red Hood story, but don’t worry, you don’t have to know much about the Hood guy, just come up with something and write Batman around that”.

I know that’s what happened because I read that story and all we got from it was horrible characterizations for pre-Robin Jason, Robin Jason, Jason Todd and Red Hood. I don’t know how he did it but yes, he managed to mess it all up.

From Jason not really wanting to be Robin and acting recklessly every step of the way, to secret desires of a perfect family with Bruce and so many other people that he couldn’t care about, Urban Legends: Cheer is the perfect book to avoid at all costs if you believe that the concept of “Batfamily” is the biggest lie, DC is trying to profit off this time around.

Zdarsky also nerfed Jason in ways that I thought DC only wanted to nerf Dick Grayson. But I was able to see that I was wrong. Zdarsky’s run also pushed some of the most disastrous narratives that DC really wants readers to believe like: Robin Jason wasn’t good at his job, he was too reckless and ultimately his death was his own fault. Yay! I want to cry!

I will give Zdarsky two points for at the very least showing that Red Hood wants to protect children and that he has a huge issue with how the drug trade is controlled and abused in Gotham City, it had been a while since we had seen that aspect of Jason’s Red Hood make an appearance.

-

It’s just too many writers completely missing the point of Red Hood’s character or simply writers agreeing to destroy Jason’s uniqueness in the DC Universe so DC (as the publisher) can further push the abomination that is the “Batfamily” in comics’ canon.

I do agree with you Anon when you say that Jason isn’t just a “bad boy” but I also don’t think that we can call UtRH Jason “dangerously insane”. Personally, I will only use that last description for BftC and Batman and Robin Jason, those two were dangerously insane indeed.

UtRH Jason was very meticulous in who he wanted dead and who got to live. He entered Gotham’s most dangerous world and he had to make a big entrance, he invited the eight most prosperous street dealers to a meeting, showed up with the decapitated heads of each of their right-hand men and an AK-47 and said:

“I am offering you a deal. I will be running the drug trade from now on. You will go about your business as usual. You will kick up forty percent to me. That is a much better deal than the Black Mask will give you. In return, you will have total protection from both the Black Mask and Batman. The catch? You stay away from kids and schoolyards. No dealing to children, got it? If you do, you’re dead.”

This was Red Hood! Red Hood wanted to control the drug trade in Gotham because he knew that Gotham is far too corrupt and filled with drug lords for him to just want to eradicate drugs from Gotham. If he had tried that he would have been a dumbass, but he wasn’t. He didn’t want to start a gang war and get innocent people killed because of it, he wanted to set the rules of his new Empire and he had to start with the street-level drug dealers, from there he grew until he became a major pain in Black Mask’s ass.

We went from Jason wanting to control the drug trade and take over Gotham’s underworld so people like Black mask couldn’t have people work for him (or being dependent on him) when they were still in high school or were in a vulnerable position, to Jason fighting a war for a mystic land because he was their “Chosen One”. DC really wanted to do something grand (yet boring) with Jason instead of sticking to a street-level vigilante that could have become a Drug Lord to control the drug trade of a city that is so filled with crime and corruption that it can’t be saved by anyone.

Batman doesn’t eradicate crime, he “controls” it, puts a blank it over it, lets it nap up until it wakes up once more to make more mess.

Red Hood had other plans, certain criminals didn’t get to nap, or, better said, they would get to nap forever.

So, no. I wouldn’t call that “dangerously insane”, I will call that “vigilante that believes himself judge, jury and executioner” of a city that is drowning in crime and corruption.

Anyway, I hope you have a really nice week Anon and thank you so much for sending me this ask!

[lilyhoshikawa]

Babs for the character ask thing?

Overall opinion

Babs as Batgirl was definitely one of my favorite characters as a kid. As a young trans gal in denial I think I definitely projected at her in the Batman media I consumed and tended to favor her pretty often. I liked her a lot in The Batman, the cartoon series. That said, these days I really don’t find her especially interesting as Batgirl. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with her as Batgirl. She’s a fun character and she works well with the other Batfam members. The problem for me is that she’s not so good at Batgirl that she needs to be Batgirl, but for some reason that’s become DC’s stance, or at least was briefly.

To be clear, Babs has been dealt a lot of shit as a character. The Killing Joke is genuinely not that great of a story, even Alan Moore himself agrees with that, and it sacrifices Barbara’s agency completely to provide motivation and development for the rest of the male cast of that comic- Batman, the Joker, and Commissioner Gordon. The fact that DC decided to make this spinoff story further compounded the misogyny of that decision and their stance on Babs’ character. But talented writers and creators who actually cared made gold out of that bad situation and introduced Oracle, a character who has served as one of the best pieces of disabled superhero representation in mainstream comics. Babs was a good character before but in my opinion she REALLY shines as Oracle. I love her snarky and sarcastic attitude, her badass tech knowledge and the fact that she’s able to assist every Batfam character from afar in various stories giving her a cool navigator and home base type role. She’s fantastic, and I’m always happy to see a story where she’s active as Oracle.

Then, for some goddamn reason, DC fucked over their female characters once again during the New 52. Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown, the second and third batgirls, were erased from the timeline so that Barbara could take over as Batgirl again. This decision also has the further effect of undoing Babs’ disability and removing her status as an iconic disabled superhero. Which is really shitty, given the years of history and hard work creators put into crafting her character’s evolution. And like I said, Babs is fine as Batgirl. The problem, for me, was that she wasn’t my favorite Batgirl. In fact, I think both Cass and Steph are FAR more interesting and compelling characters in that role that Barbara is. And sure, despite my frustration, it was possible that the new Batgirl run would be so good that it was worth the change. The problem is it just… wasn’t. It was messy and fairly boring, they seemed confused even on Barbara’s own history in this version of the timeline, with her apparently having been shot and injured but just… getting over it at some point I guess, and having apparently been Oracle for some amount of time but having gone back to being Batgirl? It was confusing, and I lost interest. They’ve since brought back Cass and Steph as batgirls in their own series with Babs reprising her role as Oracle to mentor them, but she’s still no longer disabled which means that representation has still been erased. Not only that, for as much as I’ve liked the bits and pieces I’ve seen of the batgirls comic, there’s waaay too much of a focus on Babs and Dick having a relationship, which I just… do not like. And it’s also not what I want out of a story focusing on Cass and Steph.

Ultimately it was revealed after some time that a lot of the misogyny in the New 52 and the removal of women from their roles probably had something to do with allegations of those in power at DC at the time, and while I can’t say if that directly affected them erasing 2 of the 3 batgirls while keeping all of the robins… yeah, I can’t help but think it’s related.

Babs is a really messy character at the end of the day and I say this as someone who loves her and considers her one of my favorite DC characters. She’s a victim of terrible writing like all comic characters tend to be but I think she’s one of the characters who they’ve had the hardest time getting right. Sometimes they make her too flat or boring, just a voice to give information, sometimes she’s a bit too much of a jerk, and more times than I can count she’s been the victim of writers fucking her over for their own misogynistic writing decisions. And that’s just an awful shame when you’ve got such a badass concept as “a genius super hacker who feeds info to Batman and has her hideout inside a fucking clock tower.”

It’s here where I really have to shout out The Oracle Code, the graphic novel I read recently that does a fantastic job of introducing her as Oracle and making her a super compelling character. It’s this story that’s really really gotten me invested in her as a character again, and kept me interested in expanding on this version of her. It’s a wonderful story that I highly recommend. She’s also fantastic in the WFA webcomic and I think that version of her character kind of feels like a natural evolution of the version we see in The Oracle Code. Which I enjoy.

Oh also, obligatory note that her dad is a cop and I hate cops so I have to by nature have complicated views on Jim/James as a character and Babs’ relationship to him depending on the iteration of their characters. Obviously I never enjoy it when Babs is made to be either an active or aspiring member of the GCPD but I can deal with it if the story is good.

Gender / sexuality

Gender-wise I do like seeing her as transfem bc she’s a female character I like and u know how I am abt any character I like! I trans their genders! I also like to think of her as a lesbian for the most part dhdjf.

Favorite moment in canon

There are a lot of great moments with her during Cass’ run of Batgirl books to be honest, but assuming The Oracle Code counts as canon my favorite moment with her definitely has to be when Jena comes to her in the night asking for help and she begrudgingly decides she needs to get involved, needs to help, and dedicates herself to solving puzzles again.

Favorite moment in a fan work

Once again I don’t typically read fan works in general and in particular with Batman comics I think it would be super intimidating to find a good one and super hit or miss a lot of the time but I’ve absolutely considered working my own Babs-centered fix expanding on how she starts working with Batman after The Oracle Code.

Favorite line

“Day I-Wish-I-Could-Tell-You-A-Story. But there are only ghosts and secrets here. And I don’t know how to make my stories true.”

Characters I love seeing them interact with

She’s great with the full Batfamily but in particular I enjoy her mentorship over Cass and Steph and her dynamic as their sarcastic, exasperated mentor dealing with these two very traumatized girls and their plethora of troubles. She’s also great when acting as direction for Bruce, so their dynamic can be a fun one. And of course she’s one of the few characters to have a really intimate and more soft relationship with Commissioner Gordon, so we get to see a different side of him when he’s with her.

Last thing before bed

I think she’s probably on her laptop or her phone riiight up until she cuts herself off and says she has to go to bed, but she has a hard time putting it down and trying to actually sleep. Recognizing that Jena’s stories used to help her fall asleep I think she starts taking to listening to podcasts while she falls asleep, that way her mind gets to stay active and she’s at least a little more able to settle down for sleep. And like I mentioned with Cass, I think she has a wacky schedule due to being a nighttime crime fighter, so she’s up and back to bed at random intervals all through the day.

Sleeping habits

I think she gets naps wherever she can, between her work as Oracle and the shifts I assume she takes at the library once getting her job there. She’s usually more than a little sleep deprived and gets by on lots of coffee, and whenever Bruce tries to call her on this she calls out his hypocrisy and they get nowhere. She’s probably got little sleep dens in all her usual hideouts- one in the clock tower, her room at home, a guest room in Wayne manor, and a secret closet in the library for her to sneak naps in.

First thing after waking up

Babs is definitely the sort who needs to get her brain up and rolling immediately, so she probably has a ton of different daily puzzle apps on her phone for her to solve the first time she wakes up for the day and at the various intervals in the day if she’s feeling groggy. Likes to get her mind going, even if she’s not needed for any cases. Puzzles just make her happy.

Favorite locations

I think she’s really fond of the clock tower after establishing it as a base of operations, sets it up with all her favorite stuff and lots of fancy nice computer monitors so she can do tons of work all at once. She’s turned it into her personal little den and she’d probably never leave if she didn’t have other places to be, like at home or the library. I think she absolutely feels a little out of place in her own home given her tough relationship to her father, and she definitely sees Wayne manor as a second home she’s comfortable in full of people she considers her brothers and sisters and dear friends. She’s also probably got a couple different favorite cafés around Gotham to get a cup of coffee whenever her energy is running low.

[saintclay]

Have I actually finished reading The Dreaming? No (I’ve read like. maybe half of it. shut up). Do I have thoughts and feelings about it getting removed from continuity in favour of The Dreaming: Waking Hours and Sandman Universe Presents: Nightmare County? Yes, and those thoughts and feelings are fairly negative. yes I will elaborate

Waking Hours just. It actually started fairly strong and I enjoyed the first half of it (also can we talk about how Ruin is literally a lab grown blorbo. like DC said ‘we need to make a dude who is so pathetic and yet so OP’ and they delivered. He’s actually interesting as a concept and I would like to see more about him). However. I have. Problems. With the second half of Waking Hours. These problems basically just boil down to ‘so you’re really going to throw the limited characterization we have for Daniel out the fucking window, huh?’. Like his whole thing is that he’s a kinder Dream than Morpheus was. That was basically the only cannon characterization we had left for him. I find it hard to believe that he would have taken the actions that he did, it feels out of character and inconsistent with what even the first part of Waking Hours characterized him as. that’s weirdly worded but whatever you know what I mean. They did my boy Daniel so fucking dirty and I am mad. Also the kinda transphobic true name thing. I get what they were going for and I appreciate it, but they kinda missed the mark on the delivery. And by missed the mark I mean they turned around and shot in the opposite direction. The end also feels a bit rushed, but I think thats because of the whole, y’know, pandemic thing. So I’m conflicted on judging because like yeah its not really their fault but at the same time it makes it unfun to read so I think I am somewhat justified. Actually a lot of my problems feel like the writer(s) were told that editorial wanted them to do something and they kinda had to figure out how to work it into the story that they wanted to tell, to mixed results.

Sandman Universe Presents: Nightmare County pisses me off for a multitude of reasons. The first being the name. Like of all the things to name your comic. Of all things. WHY in the fuck did they decide to name it after a story arc from The Sandman. Like ok I get that its supposed to be a callback to the introduction of the first Corinthian because he was introduced in that arc but like. You cannot abbreviate the title of this comic at all if you want to avoid confusion, unless you’re shortening it to SUP:NC which does not flow off the tongue at all. Like there are plenty more things that can and do piss me off but this is just a sticking point and I hate it. Like why not just call it The Corinthian since it seems to just be about him?  Also speaking about the Corinthian god DAMN do I hate his characterization in this. They just went ‘yeah he’s actually just as unrepentant as the first one and would probably be a serial killer if he could get away with it’ which is BORING and UNINSPIRED. I preferred the characterization that The Dreaming gave him which actually made him interesting, and I would much prefer to see a (second) Corinthian who would 100% deck his predecessor on sight than one that kinda idolizes his first incarnation. I walked into the series like ‘okay, I’m gonna withhold judgement until the first arc concludes so that I can judge the story on its own merits’, read the part in the first issue where it was like ‘oh yeah, he treasures the dream/memory-fragments of his past life’ and decided that I was no longer withholding judgement. I think it would have been super interesting to see the second Corinthian and Daniel set up as foils, considering that both of them are taking the place of a known figure, and both of them could be argued to be Morpheus’s last creations in a way. Also this is 100% a me thing but where is my boy Mathew? Where is he? 90% of the reason why I even cared about the Corinthian in the first place was because I liked his dynamic with Mathew. 

Anyway, I think everyone should read The Dreaming. Also it is my hyperfixation and I get to choose the continuity so actually I have simply decided that the new Sandman Universe stuff is out and The Dreaming is in. Thank you for your time. 

[onlyhereforangst]

WWR

I’m baaaaack bitches 😘 let’s be honest the last two episodes were shit & you wouldn’t have wanted that wwr anyways. SO let’s get into the ✨angst✨ that was Nick’s episode under the cut…

Oh but before I start, why yes, yes I called this theory too. Me and this writer share a goddamn brain or something because I’ve literally always guessed big plot points of his episodes correctly 😅

Ok Nick’s dad leaving like that, with poor bby Nick all sweet asking if he promises to bring him back his favorite pastry and him hesitating before he’s going to promise- NO. 

*picture Michael Scott gif here*

It’s not faaaaaair, little Nick deserved so much better- so MUCH better. And it’s only going to get worse as the episode goes on, so strap in for the walk down emo lane. 

Quick pit stop for cute banter because duh. Nick giving the real estate agent Ellie’s number cracks me up because bro you want this house with her don’t you 👀 you still keep her business cards on you when you could have just as easily gotten your own (or McGee’s) by this point 👀 you just want to maaaaarry her and move iiiiiiin with her I knooooooow it 👀 Ellie’s reaction the split second we see also has me dying because she’s like ha ha this is funny you had to talk to real estate agent you drew the short straw hey wait what the fu— you did not! Before McGee interrupts any protest she can hurl back Nick’s way and that’s just gold right there. Pure middle school flirting as per usual for them and I love it.

Oooooooh Kasie’s lab scene. The growth in this one. Nick worried his family and by extension him, is going to get implicated for murder (or is guilty) even though it sounds outrageous to him, he’s got PTSD from Mona Lisa (and who wouldn’t tbh). But Ellie immediately, like IMMEDIATELY goes and defends him. Is like uh-uh don’t even GO there, it’s not a possibility its just person of interest I don’t care if it’s literal hair at the scene of a man stabbed brutally seven times, he’s not a murderer. The grooooooowth Ellie, I’m so proud of you 🥺 we went from using that logical head to realizing it’s ok to listen to your heart and wade into situations with empathy (especially for the boy you ~*looOOoOoOve*~) And then Nick talking about his dad being dead and a deadbeat and walking out when he was 5, he looks at Ellie almost the entire time, only barely glancing over at McGee like he needs to have that connection with her, she grounds him when this is suddenly very jarring having a relative by semi-involved in a murder. And Ellie isn’t the slightest bit shocked when Nick dumps this news so clearly she’s heard it and by her look, not only has she heard this, but she does not like the man for what he did to Nick. She looks pissed his father hurt Nick like that because how dare any one hurt her man 😤

And oh here it is, we back on emo lane. Nick recognizing and seeing his dad for the first time in 30 years. It’s gonna hit like a 🎵freeeeeight traaaain🎵 at first he can’t even believe its him, he blinks like a thousand times because *surely* his eyes are deceiving him and then his dad goes and uses his nickname, his nickname people the CRUELTY. YOU DON’T GET TO JUST SHOW UP THIRTY YEARS LATER AND CALL HIM BY HIS CUTE LITTLE NICKNAME YOU GAVE HIM AS A CHILD. YOU DON’T MIGUEL. NOT IN THIS GD HOUSE. Ok and now nick is in pure shock because he just got confirmation that his dad is not only *not* dead, but he’s here in front of him, in DC no less, possibly a murderer no less. AND he’s finding this out by chasing him down *not* by Miguel reaching out to him while in DC. The shock and confusion and hurt my poor baby.

And when that shock wears off and it’s just barely contained rage, my heart 🥺 so of course Ellie goes in there with him and nows she needs to immediately be the support she knows he needs but he won’t admit to needing. Nick tries to deflect with a joke at first but oh honey it’s no use. But quick comedic relief for us on emo lane “sit down, no I don’t like sitting” AHAHAHA like father like son I’m cackling because the look Ellie and nick share and nick’s eyes warn her like don’t you dare fucking say it and she’s like yep yep nope I wasn’t gonna say a damn thing I’ll just look down and try to contain my laughter because now is NOT the time. But see I’m on my couch and I can laugh all I damn well please at this scenario that was gold from the writers thank you. On a more serious level this probably hurt nick even more seeing that he’s even got the smallest something similar to his dad. He’s probably desperate to be the exact opposite, he doesn’t want to even consider being capable of what his father was capable so this - while seemingly insignificant - thing like not wanting to sit in a chair will hit deep for him without him realizing it. If something so trivial is the exact same, wouldn’t something much much heavier like commitment to relationships and family be the exact same? Wouldn’t it?? And good god poor nick for going through that mental anguish, on emo rollercoaster lane. Because it just gets better when Miguel’s excuse for being in DC is “visiting family” like call your BULLSHIT Miguel you certainly ain’t visiting family and Nick now knows oh he lies too, great, another win for the Torres blood, fan-fucking-tastic. 

Quick peek at viewing room and we don’t believe in personal space, Ellie wants to be as close as possible to her hurting bby 🥺

But back to the emo stuff - Miguel just lying off his ass and Nick fed up with his father’s games because it’s truly just twisting that knife in his back that’s been stuck there for 30 years deeper and deeper. AND THEN Miguel has the audacity to yell out for “Nico” like bitch you do NOT get to call him that either. You walked out on him and never came back gtfo. And Ellie is trying so hard to keep it together but man she wants to do one of two things if not both at the same time - wrap Nick up in her arms and shield him from this deadbeat and/or punch this man through the glass to cause just a fraction of the hurt he caused Nick. But instead she just has to keep her cool to be the supportive girlfriend she is and ask nick what he thinks and then. Then. “He’s lying…because his lips are moving”

Well FUCK. Murder me right now. The anguuuuuuuish. Poor five year old Nick in a 35 year old Nick’s body. That little boy who was promised a big hojaldre in the morning from the next town over is right there. Right there to witness the father he thought he had, hasn’t changed. One of the only memories Nick probably has of his father is him leaving. Him lying and leaving. And what does he do when he finally shows up again? 

HE LIES AND LEAVES. HE FUCKING LIES AND LEAVES. (I know I’m getting ahead and technically at this point we don’t know he’ll leave again but whatever sue me because this shit is too much.)

Side note: Ellie talking about a “conflict of interest” that Nick didn’t interrogate his father is laughable considering she should have never interrogated Xavier but ok. 

Ooooo lets see some pissed off Nick. Let it loose baby, you deserve this. And I know I wrote about this in the tags somewhere but can we take a second to appreciate McGee’s growth??? Like bro went from straight up denial to acceptance and giving Ellie the look of “go talk to your boyfriend ok we need to make sure he’s alright and we both know your support is going to go a lot further than my support” and Ellie wordlessly kNOWS EXACTLY WHAT HE’S SAYING. She’s like yeah, of course I’ll go help my man why wouldn’t I. 

I don’t know why but Ellie asking Nick if he’s talked to his “mom and sister” is just so 🥰 I can’t explain this one to you but I love this dialogue ok. Actually I love this whole ensuing conversation. Nick still is bitter (he has every gd right to be), Ellie playing the supportive girlfriend but *tiiiiiniest* bit of devil’s advocate with saying he might be innocent. Once again, so much growth because honestly she knows what it’ll do to Nick if his dad actually *is* a murderer. Like can we for a second imagine if his dad actually was guilty, right? Nick already saw he was like his dad in trivial things like not wanting to sit in chairs. Nick has already had serious, serious doubts to what he’s capable of aka worried he could, if the right buttons were pushed, be a murderer on multiple occasions. Ellie has been there with him for all of that, she knows how low his confidence is when it comes to his perceived “goodness” and she knows just how much it would break him if he learned his direct bloodline IS capable of murder. She knows how he’d spiral if that was true and so she’s gripping to any small possibility his dad is innocent. But nick, oh poor Nick my heart- he’s done. He opens up to Ellie without literally any prodding. He’s baring his long buried soul to her, that troubled, broken childhood that he surely keeps locked away in fear of letting anyone see a weakness. He bares it without question because he feels so safe in her presence he can let her in to see his deepest shame and by extension his deepest worry 🥺🥺🥺 and poor Ellie, she’s a little lost at how to go about helping him because she does have a good relationship with her dad, so yes all she has here for him is saying his father was guilty of a crap dad but it’s because she’s still trying to convince them both he has to be good. He has to be good for Nick’s sake. Buuuuuuut it doesn’t really work does it, because oh shit pissed the fuck off Nick is a site to behold isn’t it 🥵 kicking down doors once again and his smart “still think he’s innocent” oooooooo damn. Ellie’s face says it all- she’s trying so hard to hold out hope for Miguel, so hard. She needs him to be innocent she’s willing to speak it into existence a thousand times but her face is like fuck this is going to kill him and I can’t do a damn thing about it other than just watch. 

More pissed off Nick 🥵 but when you think about it is so so painful, all I can picture is that little 5 year old boy who woke up the next morning waiting, waiting, and waiting. Staring out the window at each car that slows down but ultimately passes. Tugging on his Mami’s shirt asking for the hundredth time when papi is coming back from the bakery with his hojaldre, oblivious to the tears that are slowly sliding down her cheek because she still can’t find the words to tell him what she knows deep down. That little boy who when the sun starts to set the confusion sets in with it. Why hasn’t my papi come back yet? Where is he? He promised. The sadness and sense of rejection that starts to fill his little heart when his mami tucks him and his sister into bed and he asks one final time where papi is and will he say goodnight to them and his Mami has to say she’s not sure when he’s coming home and quietly to the side, “if he’s coming home.” The little boy who weeks later has finally abandoned watching out the window every, single morning. The little boy who had his heart ripped out and thrown to the side of the road when he realized his papi didn’t go to the bakery and instead he was thrown out by his father like a day-old hojaldre. So yeah pissed Nick is fine af but good god the angst underneath is suffocating. Because Nick in this moment doesn’t know the *true* reason Miguel left. He knows what he lived and what he lived is a piece of shit. Nick’s response to “is that what you think of me” is amicable because OOF he could’ve gone the fuck off right there and told him what he really thought of him but he stuck with only a slight dig. TO WHICH MIGUEL. FUCK YOU MIGUEL. IT HASN’T HURT YOU MUCH. FUCK YOU MIGUEL. FUCK YOU. SOUNDS LIKE YOU WERE A SHIT DAD SO YEAH PROBABLY A GOOD THING YOU LEFT. THANK HIM NICK WITH YOUR FISTS BECAUSE HE’S A LITTLE SHIT. FUCK YOU MIGUEL. TOUGHENED HIM UP SO MUCH HE SHUTS EVERYONE OUT. YEAH FUCK YOU. 

And then man here is the point where it all just muddies in Nick’s mind. The poor dude. He knows this line of work, hell he was undercover for almost a decade. He understands how that leaves almost no room for a family. He gets it, so deep deep deep down a tiny part of him realizes why Miguel likely *thought* it was ok to ditch his family. But for thirty years he’s felt abandoned- no reasoning can change that. 

“It’s good to know he was making a nice living while my family was starving” fucking GET HIM NICK. Damn I wish Miguel had been in the room for that. He deserved to hear that one. Ruthless. 

I do not know how I missed this the first time around but holy shit Nick asked to be removed from the case. Nicholas Torres- a man who does not back down. A man who bullied his way into finishing his first ever case with this team that he was arguably way too close to that one too. This is how much pain Miguel brings him. A man who does not quit, not in his vocabulary - was so pissed at getting sent home back when Reeves died, he asks to get sidelined. He actually asks to get sidelined. Holy shit Miguel did a number on Nick and I mean we knew this but 🥺😭😭 poor bby. No wonder you don’t trust yourself in a serious relationship. It’s not the girl you’re worried about it’s you. You don’t think you’re capable of staying, you’re terrified you’ll be just like your dad and leave. once again, you’ve seen the similarities with trivial things and so this just cements your fear of failing at commitment. And this is Nick in just so much pain he asks to step back. oof. I do love Leon stepping into a slight fatherly role for Nick right there though, he shows his support, his pride in Nick and in that moment I think Nick realizes while his father by blood is shit, he’s got several other strong role models in his life that care and that’s why he agrees to work with him. 

Nick’s smarts comment about leaving the note behind 🤣 oh classic Torres move. Also do yourself a favor and pause it on Ellie’s reaction to him. GOLD hahaha she’s like ooo-kay did you really feel the need to say that, let’s not. Honestly I think I’ve given this look to my husband almost daily. They married y’all. 

So married that she overhears Miguel trying to talk to Nick and her hackles raise!!! She’s like hold the fuck up do not traumatize my baby even more, Nick do you need me??? Because I will get you out of this, I will be here for you, I will fight this man, just say the damn word!!!! And Nick ugh, his look. They can communicate with just a simple look, he knows all that she would do for him in that moment and still nods her off, but that tiny bit of gratitude is present. Then we find out that yes Grace is really good at guessing theories “in order to keep his young family safe, it means he has to leave. Of course he can’t *tell* them why he has to leave so that they continue to stay innocent and safe. So he plays it like he’s a deadbeat dude who was “too young” to be a father and is just now realizing it and leaves his wife, little daughter & son behind. Flash forward thirty years and the NCIS case leads them to him. A piece of evidence pops up with his alias, they go knocking down doors to interrogate a potential suspect (Nick’s father) before our lovely CIA agent interfere and claims he’s innocent because he’s a CI…” like DAMN, I’m good. Hahaha any ways the reason I bring this up is because I feel like I predicted/analyzed Nick’s feelings really well back then in this theory and after seeing his expressions, they hold true. Nick is just absolutely warring with himself during this explanation, searching for anything to confirm his dad truly is a deadbeat (and yes he is still absolutely a piece of shit for what he did, but there’s a “good” reason for his leaving and that’s what makes it so- hard.) and as I said when I first broke this down, Nick understands undercover work and his dad (being the POS he is) brings that up to Nick. Like he should “get” it because wouldn’t he do the same thing since he’s in that life? But here’s where (and Nick doesn’t totally realize it yet) Nick and Miguel are different. Because Nick came back, Nick stayed. He stayed y’all and he says it here but he does not realize the implications of his words quite yet. He is NOT the same as Miguel. Yeah he doesn’t like to sit in chairs but he has stayed. He has stayed through some tough shit too but he’s stayed nonetheless. More than Miguel could ever fucking say, that’s for sure. So yes, when Nick has the come to Jesus and realizes that he is not the same as his dad and he can and will stay? Damn I can’t wait for that moment. Also I wanted to slap Miguel when he called Nick “mijo” because BITCH YOU DO NOT GET TO CALL HIM THAT. YOU DO NOT GET TO CALL HIM YOUR SON. NO. “I’m not perfect but I did the best I could” well fuck you too Miguel because look at this broken five year old boy inside a thirty five year old man’s body. Does that look like the product of a “best you could”?? Does he look “ok” to you??? Fuck you. 

But yes here’s my take on where Nick is at: how do you forgive someone you’ve despised for thirty years once you know they “didn’t have a choice” (even though it will always feel like they had a choice or they could’ve explained it to you even if you were only five) and left in reality token you safe and give you a better chance at life? How do you reconcile the real dad and the one you lived with in your head for so long?? How???

And then you’re stuck still reeling from the night before and the bomb that was dropped and the reconciliation you’re attempting to your dad bringing in the ONE THING. The ONE THING he promised to bring home in the morning thirty years prior. How the actual fuck does one come back from that. Can I give another big FUCK YOU to Miguel Torres? Because seriously??? Why do you ever think that’s ok??? Hey I promised my kid I’d bring him hojaldres in the morning for breakfast thirty years ago so may as well make good on that promise right, only thirty years late that’s totally fine right? He won’t tell the difference right?

Fuck you, Miguel. 

And they’re still clearly Nick’s favorite because he’s brought Jimmy to a restaurant specifically for them and that just makes my heart break for the man he had to become without a father. He still held onto that love for them even though they were probably always associated with a horrible, horrible memory of being abandoned 🥺🥺 god damn Nick you’re so broken I’m so sorry. 

Ellie is still as supportive as ever and good god we clearly have lost all pretense of personal space at this point, what is her we don’t know her isn’t this normal for coworkers? But this conversation implies he called her after his talk with his dad and ugh yesssss 😩❤️ I still think he called her immediately after leaving the building, talked the entire car ride home and while getting ready for bed, needing the comfort of her voice on the other end of the line as he worked through his whirlwind of emotions and tried to come down off the cliff he felt himself on. All pretenses of a bad boy with a mysterious flare forever gone, his heart is open for her to see and he doesn’t give two shits about it anymore. But Ellie does a damn good job of girlfriend duties here and not only supports him but also gently prods him to see if he can maybe one day have a relationship with his father. The parallels she brings up makes him think (and also makes him look at her lips twice 👀 he’s just so close to her how could he not I mean right 😅) and I love that she’s still being v supportive but also trying to help him grow. 

And then Ellie giving Nick the option to go with his dad or go to the other location because she’s not going to push anything on him he doesn’t want and then when he chooses the embassy to avoid his dad her reaction had me laughing 🤣 but she respects it. And yet shortly after Miguel tries to team up with Nick and Ellie hears it from the other side of the bullpen, immediately all ears to step in if he wants to avoid him again despite giving him flack for it earlier. Nick can sense her worry and support and this is the moment he takes her advice in just a tiny step and accepts teaming up with his dad. But OMG KILL ME WHEN NICK THINKS HIS DAD IS DEAD BEFORE HE GETS TO TRY AT A RELATIONSHIP AGAIN. HIS WHISPERED “papa’s” I CAAAAAN’T. 

Ugh and then his last conversation with his dad while Ellie is checking on him constantly. It’s just too much, that little boy is back, desperately hoping for his dad to stick around. And Ellie is just so happy she can’t contain it for him and it’s perfect. He walks right to her, her hand on his back because they just need to touch each other after such a heavy couple of days and Nick echoes her advice back at her because he’s showing he listens and he values her insight and I just love it. 

AND THEN MIGUEL HAS COME TO RIP MY HEART OUT BECAUSE HE’S A PIECE OF SHIT REMEMBER. 

My poor bby Nick’s face when he realized his dad LIES AND LEAVES. REMEMBER. HE LIES AND LEAVES. God Wilmer killed it because Nick is literally on the verge of tears and my heart breaks and then yes he goes to Gibbs to see his pseudo-father who he then realizes is more of a father figure than Miguel will ever be and hell that’s okay but STILL. 

I will end this WWR with a I love supportive girlfriend Ellie and another big Fuck You to Miguel Torres.

Goodnight.

[stranger-who-writes-fiction]

Back at it again with my self-indulgent comic posts. This time! It’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #3, perhaps the most tonally-distinct entry yet, with shades of The Twilight Zone. 

Spoilers!

So, as mentioned, this issue is the most deliberate in terms of both its pacing and its tone, IMO.

What is that tone, you ask?

To quote Alex Danvers, from “Midvale”: Hello, darkness.

THE STORY:

Kara and Ruthye are still looking for Krem Clues in the alien town of Maypole.

(Which is actually just Small Town, USA, complete with vintage 50s aesthetics.)

But the locals are clearly hiding something! So Kara and Ruthye continue to investigate, and they eventually discover what it was that the residents of Maypole were so keen to keep hidden. 

Genocide, basically. 

As I said, this issue struck me as very Twilight Zone; a genre story involving the build-up to a dark twist, all set against the backdrop of an idyllic small town. (Think, like, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” but instead of focusing on the Red Scare, it’s classism and racism.)

The wealthier blue aliens kicked all of the purple aliens out of town, and when space pirates showed up to pillage and plunder, the blue aliens made a deal with them: the lives of the purple aliens in exchange for their safety.  

Which is where the episodic story connects to the larger mission; it was Krem who suggested the trade, and then joined up with the Brigands (space pirates) when he was freed by the blue aliens.

The issue ends with no tidy resolution to the terrible things Kara and Ruthye discovered, but they do have a lead on where to find Krem, now, as well as Barbond’s Brigands.

KARA-CTERIZATION:

Ironically, it’s here, in the darkest chapter yet, that we get the closest to what might be considered ‘classic’ Kara. 

Which I think comes down to that aforementioned deliberate pace--this issue is a little slower, a little quieter. It gives the characters some room to breathe.

That’s not to say Crusty Kara is gone. Oh no. She is still very much Crusty. XD 

But anyways. A list! Of Kara moments I loved!

I mentioned a few of these in a prior post when the preview pages came out: I like the moment where Kara blows down the guy’s house of cards, and I like that the action is echoed later in the issue when she grabs the mayor’s desk and tosses it aside. A nice visual representation of the escalation of Kara being, like. Done with these creeps. (Creeps is an understatement but you get the idea.)

Another one from the preview pages: Kara explains to Ruthye that her super hearing won’t necessarily help her detect a lie, especially if she’s dealing with an alien species she’s not familiar with.

It not only reveals her level of competence and understanding of her super powers, it also shows that, you know. She’s a thinker. She’s smart. 

Amazing! Showing, rather than telling us, that Kara is smart! Without mentioning the science guild at all wow hey wow.

(Sorry, pointed criticism of the SG show fandom.)

Anyways.

I dig the PJs! 

And Kara catching the bullet! Not only are the poses and character acting great, it’s also a neat bit of panel composition:

We start with Ruthye’s POV, and then move to the wide shot of the room. The panel where Kara actually catches the bullet is down and to the side of the wide shot panel--we move our eyes the way her body/arm would have to move to intercept the bullet. Physicality in static, 2D images!

Also, like. It’s a very tense moment, life-or-death, but. Ruthye’s wide-eyed surprise at the bullet in Kara’s hand? Kind of adorable. 

I was pretty much prepared for the page of Kara shielding Ruthye from the gunfire to be the highlight--it was one of the first pages King shared and I was like, ‘yeah, YEAH.’ But, shockingly? The TRUE highlight of the issue?

Where do I BEGIN?!?!

EVERYTHING. About this moment. Is lovely.

From Kara holding Ruthye above the bench to explaining the concept of a piggyback ride, to telling her:

“I’m going to hold my hands here, and these hands can turn coal into diamonds, so they’re not going to let go. I’m going to keep you safe.”

HNNNNNNNNNNNG.

Ruthye’s narration--about how Kara had avoided flying as she was concerned it would freak Ruthye out--just adds a whole additional layer of YES, GOOD, YES, and her line on that splash page is great: “You see, all that time, she was worried about me.”

HNNNNNNNNNNNG. AGAIN.

To say nothing of the STELLAR ARTWORK.

And SPEAKING of that stellar artwork, Evely and Lopes continue to knock it out of the park. Each issue is distinct and beautifully crafted, a true joy to look at.

Before I jump into more of the art, a few final notes of character stuff in general.

Ruthye is the one most affected by the experience in Maypole, as she can’t comprehend how a society of people that look so nice and gentle and peaceful could have been party to such a horrible act.

One of the big criticisms of the book thus far is that Supergirl is not the main character, and I guess I can agree with that observation. Typically, in Western media, the main character is the one who goes through the most change in the story. 

And, yeah. That’s Ruthye.

As I was reading the end, where Ruthye sits on the curb and Kara hugs her, I was imagining how the scene would’ve played, had King stuck with the original idea for the series: Kara as the one learning to be tough/experiencing all of this for the first time, and while I think that could certainly work...

I continue to appreciate that King literally flipped the script; that Kara, especially in this issue, is like, ‘I’ve seen this, I know this,’ as opposed to being the one going through a loss of innocence.

*Marge Simpson voice* I just think it’s neat!

Because Kara’s been a teen in DC comics for so long--ever since she was reintroduced to the main DCU continuity, actually--so this is all brand new territory, here. Having an older Kara who’s SEEN SOME STUFF.

(Alsoooooo, since Bendis made the destruction of Krypton not just inaction and climate disaster, but rather, genocide, and the subtext of a Kryptonian diaspora text, the waitress’ derogatory comment regarding the the destruction of Kryton, as well as Kara picking up the bad vibes the entire time, suggests not just a broad commentary on discrimination in all its forms, but specifically allegorical anti-Semitism. The purple aliens being forced out of their homes and into substandard living conditions, then the blue aliens--their neighbors and once-fellow residents--essentially allowing the space pirates to kill them, making them literal scapegoats, Kara discovering the remains of the purple aliens, and Ruthye’s horror at the ‘banality of evil’...yes. A case could be made, I think.) 

(Which would probably require a post unto itself and a lot more in-depth discussion, nuance, and cited sources.)

(Should mention that King has brought up that both he and Orlando--the other Supergirl writer he talked to--are Jewish, and for him personally, that shaped his views on Kara’s origin story.)

I guess my point is that this issue is perhaps not as out-of-left-field as some might think, and just because there isn’t as obvious an arc for Kara, doesn’t mean there isn’t some sharp character work at play. 

(I could be WAY OFF, of course, and I’m not suggesting it’s a clear 1:1 comparison. I’d actually really love to hear King talk about this issue in particular.)

Anyways.

Here’s the final page, which I think works, because as I mentioned before, there is no easy answer/quick wrap-up to the story of Maypole:

THE ART:

I mean. How many times can I just shout ‘ART! AAAARRRRRRRRRRRTTTT!’ before it gets old?

I dunno, but I guess we’re gonna FIND OUT.

There are some panels in this issue that I just. Like ‘em! From a purely artistic standpoint! Because they’re so good!

Like, I just really love the way Kara is drawn in that top panel. Her troubled, confused expression, the colors of the fading light, the HAIR. 

Evely draws the best hair. I know I’ve said this before. I don’t care. I will continue to say it, because it continues to be true.

The issue I find myself running up against when I make these posts is that I really don’t want to post whole pages, as that’s generally frowned upon (re: pirating etc.) but with something like this, you just can’t appreciate it in panel-by-panel snippets.

(Guided View on digital reading platforms is a BANE and a POX I say!)

Anyways.

LOVE the implied movement of the cape settling as Kara speeds in and stops. 

And, obviously, Kara flicking the bullet away is just. A+. 

And the EYES, man. LOPES’ COLORS ON THE EYES???!?! BEAUTIFUL.

Also, should note the lettering! The more rounded letters for the ‘WOOSH’ of Kara’s speed (and, earlier, the super breath) work nicely, and contrast with the angular, violent BLAMS of the gunshots. 

And, I gotta say, the editor is doing a really great job of not cluttering up the artwork with all the caption boxes. Which is no small task.

(I assume the editor is placing them, as editors usually handle word balloon/caption box placement, but I suppose it could be Evely? Sometimes the artist handles it. Either way, whoever’s taking care of all the text, EXCELLENT WORK! BRAVO!)

Okay I think that’s everything.

Ah, nope, wait.

MISC.

Just a funny observation, more than anything else: Superman: Red and Blue dropped this week, and King had a story in there, “The Special” (which was very good, btw.) Both Lois and the waitress swear a lot so I’m beginning to think that this is just how King writes dialogue for any adult character who isn’t Clark. XD

This is absolutely a personal preference but when Kara was like, “And my name IS Supergirl,” I was like nooooo. I know King is trying to simplify all of the conflicting origin stories and lore but I LIKE KARA DANVERS, SIR. XD

It’s almost assuredly a cash-grab/an attempt for DC to get all the money it can out of a book they don’t have much confidence in, but I like the cardstock covers! Very classy, much Strange Adventures.

(OH my gosh, can you imagine that issue 1 cover with spot gloss???? Basically the only way you could possibly improve on it.) 

Okay NOW I’m done. For real. XD NEXT TIME: Kara and Ruthye go after Krem and the Brigands!

[seoafin]

Hi Morgan, what do you think about this post? I try to support writers on here as much as I can by reblogging but sometimes I forget and it makes me feel bad when I see these posts :/

anon i don't think op is trying to guilt trip you or anything, i think they're more or less stating an actual point that readers have been rebloging and liking posts less and less while demanding more content, which is a big reason as to why a lot of writers have been leaving. instead of thinking of it as a personal attack, you should take the feelings of a lot of writers on here into consideration and try to understand them.

as to the main point, yes i agree with op but i’m pretty much undecided on the rest of it haha

I understand op wanting to distinguish between different types of posts but I don’t think I completely agree with not including prompts/headcanons/drabbles in the x reader tag. Those posts ARE x reader...unless op is saying that the only posts that should be in the x reader tag should be fics but also I've been tagging all of the aforementioned as x reader for years and I've seen them being tagged as so by others for years so I don't quite understand where this idea came from that it shouldn't be. i think there’s more of an issue in ppl mass spamming different character tags on their posts than i think there’s a problem in ppl tagging their nonfics as x reader. i get it means less exposure, but you also can’t really force people to read one’s long fic either whether or not it stays at the top of the tags for long...

but also i think my perspective is pretty much limited as to what the fandom’s general consensus on what tagging should be bc i don’t interact with fandom as much, but the lack of interaction (and yeah i think it’s more of a lack of interaction rather than exposure that’s the problem tbh they’re related but not necessarily correlated) that a lot of long fics receive is a problem and warrants a discussion or two.

I think another reason as to why i’m kinda confused is because I thought 'imagines' and 'x reader' are pretty much synonymous when it comes to tagging reader inserts on tumblr. it’s been so long since i’ve been actively searching for fics in the tags but op could might be referring to the one or two sentence "imagine your favorite character..." blurbs that i've seen floating around here or there. also i've also seen prompts turned into fully fleshed out fics, and headcanons have always been in the x reader tag too so?? 😭 maybe my idea of drabbles/prompts/hcs are different from other people’s who knows

I understand op’s point that a lot of ppl have capitalized on so called ‘short fics’ most of which utilize the following formula: short, usually headcanon-like, and nsfw to gather as much as notes as possible but those are STILL x readers unless op and the fandom want to redefine the entire established x reader tagging system? granted, it’s a good idea but it’s also an idea that not everyone is going to adhere to. just look at how much DC in the tags are unproperly tagged

honestly, i think it’s an injustice that a couple of sentences can get 4K notes while one of the most stunning long fics I've ever read gets maybe 50 but I feel like at this point no amount of complaining and venting is ever going to spur people into reblogging and liking, or even reading the fic. this isn’t me saying that writers don’t deserve to be upset that something they put their heart and soul into isn't getting notes, i just think there’s a fundamental problem with the way ppl interact with fics and take them for granted in general. i’m just resigned atp to cringing every time I see my couple hundred nsfw get more notes any other thing ive written rip

also to me a reader insert has always been a character in of itself. like there is absolutely no way to make a reader so vague so the many people reading it can imagine themselves as the reader. literally just no way. i think the in the end the goal with any reader insert is that your readers can project onto and connect with the mc whether that be their worries or insecurities or joy, etc. i think one of the benefits of writing a reader insert is that it’s more flexible. instead of projecting onto and making a canon character OOC to write them in a ship, you can just write a x reader or even an OC. i personally have never envisioned myself as a reader. to me, the reader is just another character. that’s why ultimately, i believe that everything and anything written in the second person format is a reader insert. that’s the conclusion i came to after spending my time on quizilla, quotev, and lunaescence anyway lolllllll it’s also why i prefer named mc’s when reading reader inserts tbh. i dislike (y/n) because i don’t like inserting my name into anything. i just replace it with some some generic name instead

ANYWAY!!

i definitely rambled in this one, it’s just interesting to see everyone’s perspective on fandom and tagging culture. long fics really do deserve attention and exposure. some ppl write 40k+ words!! for free!!! make sure you let your favorite writers know you appreciate their hard work!! even a few words in the askbox can make their day and it doesn’t even take long. i feel like that’s the least ppl can do!!!

[midnights-light]

Ladybug and the Hound

So before I begin I need to say a few things

This is my first attempt at writing a fanfic so it’s most likely going to suck and all that jazz

I do not own any characters in the DC or Miraculous universes (if i did everything would make little to no sense so yeah)

Can we all agree that  @ozmav is an amazing writer?

If you don’t like Daminette, don’t read it’s that simple

I am also going to use “Dogs are a Ladybug’s best friend” by @kelelamentia for some inspiration on this cuz I love that idea

All characters are going to be OOC so just be prepared

If ya’ll like it I might write more just let me know if I should write more or if I should never think about writing again (I have low self-esteem so if it look like I am hating on myself it’s because I am but I’ll get over someday but if you criticize me please at least try to be constructive criticism)

Now onto the terrible thing I decided needed to exist

LB-Ladybug

CN- Chat Noir

M-Marinette

Di-Dick

D-Damian

B-Bruce

T-Tim

J-Jason

A-Alfred

The Meeting

It was a normal Tuesday, ya know? Birds are singing, the sun is shining, the Eiffel Tower collapsed, ya know the usual. Well usual for Parisians who had to deal with this for 4 almost 5 years now but for those who just wanted a vacation like the Waynes... well let’s just say they were unprepared to see the Eiffel Tower come crashing down just a few blocks ahead of them as they were walking to get some pastries from Tom and Sabine Boulangerie patisserie for a afternoon snack and to walk Titus (they brought Titus because Damian refused to leave him alone in the mansion for two weeks while they are on vacation so Bruce reluctantly agreed to bring him with them). So them being them ran towards the fallen tower and see a few people dead and some injured. They help the injured, but just as they are about to get the remaining few out of the wreckage a girl in a clearly ladybug themed suit comes crashing to the ground creating a few cracks to form on the ground. She gets up with a groan just as a dog in a fox themed costume came running up to her and helps her steady herself. “Thanks, Hound.” says the spotted girl and as the batfam are about to check if she’s okay a... IS THAT A GIANT BABY?! Well the giant baby comes walking towards the girl and the dog when a voice shouts “If you go on a date with me Ladybug I will come help you just accept your feelings for me already!” 

Damian's POV

As soon as the spotted girl heard that she looked towards the owner of the voice and low and behold it’s a guy in a leather cat suit and on the outside I look indifferent to what is happening but on the inside the only thing I can think is ‘What is going on in this city!’ because I was just expecting a boring two weeks of ‘required’ vacation in the ‘city of love’ I hate the nickname of the city because as Father has shown love is a weakness. But apparently the city of love is not as boring as I thought it would be. The girl (ladybug I think is her name) now has a look of murder in her eyes and the dog (hound is what she called him) growled at him as ladybug said “Chat, you can’t be serious! You just caused the Eiffel Tower to fall and kill and injure people!” CN-“Yes because you can’t realize that we are meant to be together!” LB-”No we are not now either help or shut up so I can focus on gigantitan!” CN-”Fine then i’ll just sit here and enjoy the show” That one interaction makes me question if this is how it is everything something like this happens.

*Time skip because i can’t write smart plans or fight scenes*

Dick’s POV

After ladybug got his watch thing off his wrist she and hound tore it apart which released a black butterfly and the giant baby was now back to a normal sized baby. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?1 I’M SO CONFUSED! After I stopped questioning reality I realized that ladybug was comforting the kid (HE COULDN’T BE OLDER THAN 4 YEARS OLD!) she picked him up and was about to throw her spotted thing up in the air for some reason but was interrupted by the cat boy saying ‘Pound it!’ and acting like he actually helped her and didn’t just sit there on a roof watching ladybug and hound do everything. What the heck? Ladybug walks over to me and asked if I could hold the kid for a sec and I said sure because she looks ready to murder. After she hands me the kid she walks over to cat boy and started yelling at him about how he can’t just be reckless like that but it seemed to just go over his head as he replied saying something about how she owed hit to him to date him but I quickly stopped listening when the kid started crying because of all the yelling going on so I started to talk and play with him to cheer him up until he pointed to ladybug as she yelled miraculous ladybug and tossed the spotted object into the sky. I was confused about what she was doing until I saw a swarm of ladybugs appear and start fixing the damage, healing the injured, and even bringing people back to life. Then she came back over and was about to ask something but then a shrill beeping noise came from her earrings causing her to ask if we could watch over the kid until his mom came and picked him up. Titus and Hound were playing until she called him over to her and then they jumped, yes JUMPED, up to the roof and left. “What the hell was all that and does anyone else want to kill a cat boy?”

Tim’s POV

“So that all really happened, huh? It wasn’t really just a coffee dream?” I say and then look at everyone else has a different reactions to what just happened: Jason is looking at where dead bodies had been but now they were alive, Bruce is trying to understand what just happened, Alfred looks concerned, Dick is keeping the kid happy, and Damian is trying to keep Titus from running after Hound. I notice other civilians just walking around like nothing just happened and I’m just thinking ‘How long has this been happening and how have we not noticed? WHAT IS LIFE!?’

Jason’s POV

I look at everybody that was dead just walk away like nothing happened and I am about to ask Bruce if he know what that was when I feel someone bump into me. I turn around to see a girl around Damian’s age on the ground picking up the stuff she dropped while rapidly apologizing while a dog, presumably hers, was sniffing her making sure she was ok and had what looked like a glare on his face when he looked at me. M-“I’m so so sorry Monsieur! I wasn’t looking where I was going.” J-”It’s alright little lady, but if you don’t mind me asking, what’s the rush?” M- “Well you see I’m supposed to be helping in my parents bakery after I finished walking Captain but we got caught up in the akuma attack so I’m running a bit late. My names Marinette by the way. I don’t think I’ve seen you before are you visiting?” What’s an akuma? I’ll file that away for later for replacement to look at but for now. J- ”Yeah we are here for a family vacation to take a break from work. Would you mind if me and my family follow you to your parent’s bakery? We were heading to one for a snack but it seems we got turned around during the attack.” M- “Sure just tell me your names first so I at least know you to some degree cause I’m not supposed to talk to people I don’t know. I hate life but I’m not ready to die just yet.” She laughs and I swear it feels like the world just got a whole lot brighter, J- “Of course where are my manners name’s Jason. I have a feeling my family is going to love you and your dog.” I say as I hold my hand out for Captain to sniff and after he does he stops giving me what I swear looks like a glare but he’s still standing near Marinette when I notice my family looking at me and Marinette and Alfred asks me, A- “Master Jason are you going to introduce us to the young miss?” J- “Oh right, guys this is Marinette, Marinette this is Alfred he’s our butler/ grandpa, the one who looks like he’s about to pass out is Tim, the one playing with the kid is Dick, the stern one is Bruce, and the  one with the dog is Damian.” I say.

Damian’s POV

I hear Todd talking to someone and introducing us and as soon as I turn to glare at Todd I see the most beautiful eyes in the whole world. they look like sapphires and her hair is like the midnight sky. She looks like an Angel... wait WHAT!?  I only zone back in as soon as Todd told the Angel my name so I did what not even I  was expecting, I took her hand, gave the back of it a kiss and said, D- “Nice to meet you Angel.” I was not smiling when I saw her blush and I for certain do not want to make her blush again... but if I have a chance to then I will take it. Then I hear a low growl and I then notice that she has a dog (yes she loves animals to!) that is looking at me like he’s going to rip me to shreds and I will forever deny that I was a little scared. M- “Sorry Damian, Captain’s just a little protective of me and doesn’t like strangers being around me.” D-”I understand.” I say then I hold out my hand for her dog (Captain I think it was) to sniff and after he does he still growls at me but doesn’t look ready to tear me to pieces so progress towards getting to know the Angel before me. And then my good mood is ruined by the sound of my idiot brothers and father, the traitor, snickering behind us. I turn and scowl at them but they don’t seem to care. Meanwhile Titus and Captain appear to have met and are now chasing each other around making me and the Angel laugh. Her laughter sounds amazing and her smile makes it feel like the world brightens up just a little. M- “So shall we start walking to the bakery?” A chorus of yes comes from my family and then we start walking. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

BONUS

*Whispering* J- “Am I going crazy or did Demon Spawn just laugh and smile at Marinette?”

Di- “No I heard it to *gasp* do you think he has a crush?”

J- “Are we sure he’s capable of having a crush?”

T- “Well I’m sure she will be good for him, but what I’m confused about is how she doesn’t recognize who we are. I mean how does she not know us she didn’t even seem to recognize our faces.

A- “I think Miss Marinette will do Master Damian some good.”

And Bruce is just looking at his youngest son with pride. His first crush and he’s able to witness it.

So as I said in the beginning this is my first fanfic and It’s most likely terrible so let me know if I should never write again, if you want another chapter, or if I should just reevaluate my life choices.

Chapter 2

[redantsunderneath]

DC COMICS: Incoherence as Not-a-Bug-but-a-Feature (Spoilers for Batman 89-100)

Due to the emergence of the new Batman villain character Punchline, I wound up buying the last 12 issues of Batman and reading them in a single sitting. I’ve had trouble following DC comics for a while, constantly feeling that they were in trouble since back in the mid 2000s (with a glimmer of hope here and there). The act of reading DC comics has been a frustrating experience, where individual good stories and runs were laying around in the context of a lot of things that didn’t make sense while the company’s thrust felt chaotic and ideas not well blended. Every status quo change seemed hard to figure out the rules of enough to parse the context.  We’ll get into the background of this, but my reading today of this extended stretch of comics that keeps losing the plot in favor of a fever dream of what’s happening at the moment with specific characters that refuse to cohere, it became obvious that what I had been looking at as subtext or critique was actually the text. I could see the messed up trees but was missing the the forest the universe was trying to describe.

What happens in these issues (Batman current series 89-100, I missed the beginning of the first of 2 arcs) is rolling war between the major Batman villains and the heroes (plus Harley Quinn and Catwoman), which shifts into a Joker and Joker adjacent vs. all as the Joker double crosses everyone then manages to steal Bruce Wayne’s fortune.  We meet 3 new baddies – Underbroker, whose schtick is putting ill-gotten gains beyond the reach of the legal system (with an explicit line to rich globalists drawn), the Designer, who back in the day offered the four A list Batman villains plans to achieve what they most wanted, and Punchline, who is your toxic ex’s new millennial GF who really has it in for you (there is also a new good guy Clownhunter, which is a whole different thing, and a new costumed detective that predates Batman).  This doesn’t convey the chaotic nature of what is happening issue to issue, but there’s more than one Batman hallucinogenic spirit quest, dead characters ostensibly walking around, a plan revolving around the Bat’s origin story that tells some version of it several times, and a no-nonsense declaration that the Joker, as the Devil of the Batman spiritual system, cannot die.   The whole thing has the effect of convincing you there is no definitive sequence of events, only versions.

Alan Moore’s Killing Joke is not a favorite of mine, for a number of reasons.  But the ending holds up.  The Joker has done terrible things there is no antecedent for, and Batman wonders aloud if this never-ending dance they do ends in anything but both of their deaths; can they uncouple from the unhealthy duality the cycle of which simply repeats.  The Joker responds, well, with a joke about two lunatics trying to escape an asylum.  One jumps the roof to the next building, while the other is too scared to try.  The escapee offers to hold a light while the other crosses on a beam but he says no, no you’ll just cut the light while I’m half way across.  This not very funny joke nonetheless has a bunch of resonances – BM and Joker as conspiring co inmates, BM wanting to break out, a commentary about their natures (almost a reversal of the frog and scorpion story where the scorpion won’t go because he knows how this ends), but mostly it implicates BM as the one who is enabling the cycle, the reason why it won’t end.  They both laugh uproariously, and the ambiguous final panels can be read as the fundamental realization of his complicity causing BM to kill J.  A lethal joke indeed… except, next month, we see the both of them again.  In broader context, the ceaseless cycle of the diad is reaffirmed.  This has been hellaciously sticky as an idea in the Batmen universe.

My realization of what DC has been doing is pretty banal in its pieces. Marvel has “ground level” heroes while DC has a mythos, a pantheon.  Their archetypal makeup is strong, the seven JLA members lining up with the pantheon of Greek gods and the Chakras weirdly closely.  DC has big characters that are somewhat flat which they can use tell big bold individual stories that are cool the way legends and fables are cool. But these stories require bold strokes that a bit incompatible with each other. People get attached to these iterations. Meanwhile, Marvel trucks in soap operas where the characters give you an empathetic stand in and are narratively flexible. Marvel events are usually about the writer vs. the company, asking you to sympathize or deconstruct the creative impulse amid efforts to impose control or order.  DC’s events are about editorial vs. the audience, the shapers vs. the forces of the world.  It may seem obvious, given this description, that DC’s focus is on an archetypal tableau though it may be less obvious that this tableau is under extreme pressure from expectations when trying to tell ongoing tales month in, month out (or semi-monthly in some cases). The stories are constantly compared against the big stories that have gone before, and the audience’s ideas of the characters exert pressure to push them in directions that capture “the” version they believe in.  This circle is not possible to square.

DC and Marvel both have a multiverse of sorts.  DC used to tell “Elseworlds” stories which were later tucked into pocket universes.  DC invented crossing over between “realities.”  DC’s continuity is heavy baggage and they began to have “Crises” to resolve the narrative incompatibilities.  These only made things worse as you can’t get rid of the past people have a relationship with – it will come back.  Now you have to explain that away too.  Marvel just lets it lay – forget about the iffy stories, they count, sure, just no one is ever going to talk about them unless they have an angle.  Marvel continuity is all angles and amnesia. This is just easier to do with dating and rent and your ancient aunt’s medical bills than with Gods. Marvel’s multiverse is about sandboxes that you can always dump into the mainframe if they work (and never really mention the sandbox again).

There is a shift that occurred in the industry in the 2004 to 2005 era that is less remarked upon than many upheavals in comic’s history. Marvel had gone through a period of incredible new idea generation in the early 2000s after a late 90s creative cratering but had just fired the pro wrestling inflected soul of that moment (Bill Jemas).  DC was coming off of a period of trying to do moderately updated versions of what they basically been doing all along. The attitude was “yeah we’re under stress from the combined history of these characters, but we got to keep telling the stories.” Geoff Johns was one voice of DC over the 99-04 period that showed potential - he seemed to get how to find the core of characters and push them into a new in sync directions if they over the years have lost a clear identity.  But mostly he had internalized a basic schism between something mean that the audience wanted, and something good and wholesome about the characters themselves, and figured out how to mess around with this in a equilibrating fashion.

Interestingly, the ignition point of the main forces that were going to blow DC over the next decade and a half was a comic that had virtually nothing to do with any of those main forces. Brad Meltzer, a novelist, was hired to do a comic called Infinity Crisis, which sold extremely well and was, justifiably or not, recognized as an event.  At the same time, everyone also kind of hated it because the dark desires of some DC fans were pushed forward just a bit too much for comfort and for a comic with Crisis in the name it didn’t do a whole lot other than “darken” things.  Nonetheless, this lit an “event” fire at both companies.  Marvel chose a shake up the status quo for a year, then do it again, pattern and was off to the races (I have written about this, and more, here) while continuing its Randian framing of beleaguered do-gooders opposed by rule making freedom haters.

As this was playing out, Dan Didio quietly took power in DC Editorial.  His outlook was more Bloomian – he seemed to spark off of writers who exhibited anxiety of influence. He recognized Johns was the one person they had could be promoted into something of a universe architect, starting work on two key projects from which the rest would evolve. The first, was bringing back Hal Jordan as Green Lantern and diffracting the GL universe into its own symbolic system, with parts frisson-ing other parts, and almost a Magic the Gathering color scheme of ideas. The other was to build up to Infinite Crisis, which would become the model for most of their universe changing events until the present day.

The basic frame is this: DC heroes want to be good (in a sense of their inherent nature) but forces outside form a context that makes them fall.  It’s a very gnostic universe, DC.  They  examine reflections of the concepts, invent scapegoats for certain tendencies (see Superboy Prime as entitled fanboy, Dr. Manhattan as editors that try and fail to mend things, etc), make characters violate principles, rehabilitate them, then show that the world if anything is more broken than before.  This is kind of Johns’ thing and it fits Didio’s narrative as historicval tension fetish.  But then came Scott Snyder (not to be confused with Zack) who began to work on Batman in 2011.  Since then, as much as Justice League is pushed as the central title and Lex Luthor has been pimped, Batman has been the core of the universe and the Joker the core villain.

Snyder had the same continuity conflict wavelength but was significantly more meta and able to contain multitudes than Johns.  He was the first to make an explicit mystery of how there could be several Jokers around at one time (who are the same but not, he posited 3 – man, Christians!) that seems prescient given the near future coexistence of filmic Jokers that are not able to be resolved.  I believe he was the first to begin to tease out an idea – that different versions of things in comics are not a diffraction or filter effect, a using the set of things that work best for that story and leaving the rest, but are a matter of the archetypal system of the audience coming apart. From an in story perspective what appears to happen is that multiple versions of incompatible things exist in the collective unconscious of the continuing narrative, and this is something that the characters may become conscious of.  

The run I just read is written by James Tynion IV building on the above trends.  The trick seems to be going all in on the Jungian aspect (at Jung’s most religiously epiphanic).  The Designer was a progenitor and adversary to Batman’s predecessor and his intellectual approach eventually defeated the detective… broke him.  At some point in early Batman history, the Designer brought the top four Bat-baddies together and offered each, in turn, a plan to achieve what they most desired: the Riddler, a way to achieve an empire of the mind; the Penguin, power; and Catwoman, money.  They are all elated as they await the Joker to come out.  The Joker emerges with a furious Designer on his heals and promptly shoots him dead.  He explains that he didn’t like his joke in the form of a fable – the devil offered four people the path to their greatest desire: the three chose earthly things, but the Joker’s wish was to be him, to become the devil.  The story proceeds to suggest that the Joker just exists, he is present as a necessary component in the system.   You can kill him, yet he is alive.

DC has been using physics metaphors for the nature of their reality since Flash of Two Worlds in 1963.  The multiverse as a continuity concept was their idea and the holographic universe of the hypertime was a thing.  It seems like since Dan Didio took over, they’ve been heading towards a concept of broad superimposition, of measurement effect being weak, of the universe being like a quantum computer with all possibilities coexisting and the story instantiating not one reality but a path through all the possible ones.  By making Batman trip balls through quite a few issues and relive his origin from different angles, the story is one of its own instability and the heroic task that confronts our hero is attempting to actualize the world.  The Joker is the Devil in the sense of lack of fixed meaning, of relativistic chaos, of the world not making sense because it’s unmoored nature with ultimately no knowability.  Batman, in this story, functions as a postmodern knight crusading against the impossibility of epistemological grounding.

There’s more going on, sure.  One plot is, literally, defund Batman.  There is rioting, people brainwashed by being exposed to toxic ether, people paid to go to theaters even though they will die as a result, and questions about neoliberalism similar to that one Joker movie. Punchline has no personality yet (Tynion’s not the best at that) but she serves well as a generational foil for Harley – a rudderless ideological vacuum susceptible to Joker-as-idea-virus rather than an unfulfilled MD who felt alienated due to the structures of her life and was seeking escape into structureless possibility.  The Designer stuff is both continuity play (See why they changed from goofy villains to more “realistic” ones! Look how pulp heroes informed superheroes!), a comment on the nature of a longstanding narrative (strong intentions die out as Brownian motion overwhelms momentum), and a lawful evil/chaotic evil setup of the dualism of apocalypses (overdetermined authoritarian vs. center does not hold barbarism).  But the thing that ties this to the past decade and a half of DC is the sense that the reality is fluid and susceptible to change or outright s’cool incompatibility.

This is different than other flavors of meta in superhero comics.  Grant Morrison believes the archetypes are stronger than the forces that seek to bend them.  Alan Moore wants you to deconstruct your sacred cows and probably hates you personally.  Marvel might play with self-awareness, but effortlessly resolves inconsistencies after it’s finished playing.  DC, at this point, allows you to watch the waves solidfy into symbols and dissolve, and the constant confusion and lack of grounding is more of a choice then I thought this time yesterday.  The conflict theory of DC reality has been in full swing but this looks to be turning towards a kind of Zen historicism, holding contradictory things in your mind at once. Warren Ellis’ JLA/Authority book is the nearest comparable text I can think of. I need to call this, but I didn’t even talk about Death Metal, DC character multiplicity as meta-psychosis event extraordinaire.  Comics just keep getting weirder.

[stxleslyds]

EVENT LEVIATHAN issues 2 and 3

EVENT LEVIATHAN BUT IT’S ONLY JASON TODD.

Oh, Anon, I am sorry it took me so long to answer your ask, to be honest with you, I had completely forgotten this book ever happened and when I went looking for it, I saw who was the writer for it and my brain disconnected completely.

Michael Brian Bendis, what a polarizing writer. I had forgotten why I didn’t like his work much but this book made me remember that his writing gives me headaches. I swear, every time I read his work I am left wondering if I missed an issue or a page, it’s like I always lack information even though he makes sure to write a lot in those “monologue boxes”.

But I am not here to complain about Bendis, let’s talk about why Jason appears in this book and how is he characterized in it.

If you don’t know what Event Leviathan was about, in the first issue we are told that a terrorist has been attacking places simultaneously. This person, known as Leviathan collected some of the people that survived the attacks (like Batgirl), and others he let escape (like Green Arrow). All of the attacks were on organizations (A.R.G.U.S, Spyral, D.O) that were the pillars of the world intelligence community.

Because the case is big and operating on a big scale, several detectives and heroes (Batman, Robin, The Question, Lois Lane, Plastic Man, and Manhunter) have come together to figure out who is behind Leviathan’s mask.

In the second issue, their main suspect is Jason Todd after Damian suggests that Jason’s “special war on crime” can be related to this worldwide level of terrorist activity.

Well, If you couldn’t tell by the way that I phrased that, I really believe that DC and Bendis had to do some weird changes to the narratives because Jason hadn’t been really at “war with crime” for a very long time, or at the very least, not on that level (against organizations selling/controlling intelligence). So, right of the bat, I am confused as all hell.

Jason at this point in time was working as the Ice Lunge’s owner, so this was after the events of RHatO (2016) #25 and after Roy Harper’s death. But before I get to explaining why Damian and the others thought that Jason was behind Leviathan’s terrorist attacks, let's talk about Jason’s characterization.

How to write about a character based only on “tropes” that the publisher of the book told you. A Guide by Michael Brian Bendis.

We find Red Hood in Seattle, already investigating Leviathan. So, yeah, to me it was kind of obvious that Bendis put Jason there to build up the reason as to why Jason was the main suspect of being Leviathan or working with them.

We are offered some very casual banter with Batman as well as the ever-present subplot of Jason caring for Barbara Gordon. I am not a fan of whatever DC was and is trying to do when it comes to Jason and his crush on a person that he barely knew and has rejected him before. Bendis was probably told to put that there, I really don’t see Jason going out of his way to ask if Barbara is final but oh well.

In that panel we also see Jason say this to Batman, “can we put away the stuff between us so we can work on the case?” to which Batman answers, “of course”.

What the hell was that? First Batman beats the living shit out of Jason (Jason even says that he never saw Bruce hit the Joker as hard as he was hitting him) and rips the bat-symbol of his suit saying that they no longer work together or whatever, then we have Bruce going to Jason to tell him that Roy is dead, he gives him a hug but then proceeds to tell Jason that he is still banned from Gotham.

DC really reduced all that to “stuff between us”, alright, all I am getting from that is that I was right when I said that DC lets Batman get away with his horrible treatment of his kids as if it just were a subplot. Lovely, I hate being right.

But that’s not really what I want to discuss, I want to discuss the level of detective/investigation skills that Jason has got going on for him in this issue. Suddenly Jason has information about what happens with organizations like Spyral, ARGUS, and DEO? And then Bruce asks Jason if he has been in contact with Talia recently?

I am not mad about those last things, don’t get me wrong, Jason being good at investigating and him being (possibly) in contact with Talia are great things BUT they don’t fit in his story anymore.

Where is this Jason coming from, it must not be from the narrative that Lobdell had going on, Jason never showed much interest in keeping up with that side of the world or in doing detective work. And his relationship with Talia was downgraded a lot, basically, all Talia had done was keep an eye on Jason since she first met him before he was robin (yeah, that was a thing that happened as told in RHatO (2011) #25) and that how she found out that he died, after he came back from the dead, she put him in a Lazarus Pit and then sent him to the All-Castle so he could become Ducra’s apprentice. That’s literally it.

Or are we working with a Jason that maintains his Lost Days origins? There isn’t time on the timeline for that to have happened so his involvement in this book and the way that they are writing him is very confusing to me.

Jason doesn’t say anything about Talia except that he pulls an Uno reverse card on Bruce and asks him if he has been in contact with Talia. But just like many things with Bendis as a writer we never really hear any of them say anything about Talia and they continue talking about something else.

Alright, back to sharing what they found it is! Jason has apparently investigated this very closely because he cannot stop bringing up the fact that the attacks leave no bodies behind. Either people escape or vanish from the attack site.

But here is where the so-awaited “Batfamily” mention comes in. After Bruce tells Jason that he is putting a team of Detectives together Jason asks this, “we can’t keep this in the Batfamily?” Gods, was DC on crack when they wrote this? The Batfamily? Honestly? Two of your best detectives are not around to help you and your so-called family left Dick Grayson all alone in Bludhaven!

What Batfamily are you talking about Jason? You, Bruce, and Damian? I can’t with DC pushing and pushing the wildest concept in their universe.

After all that Batman spends a lot of time explaining what has happened or what was supposed to happen, he talks to Jason about how the other detectives were getting closer to retrieve a body that they needed to study. In between what Batman is explaining the scene of Plastic Man talking with Leviathan happens and there Leviathan says that they know each other. So, that’s a clue, whoever is behind the mask is someone that Plastic Man has met before.

We find out that Batman was retelling that story to Jason, so Jason starts putting the pieces together. Batman already has a team, they know that Leviathan has been spearing some heroes’ lives, there is a cause for all the attacks (“a new world order”), and that the attacks leave no bodies. Jason even begins to put together the list of suspects but then Jason asks Batman if they have their number one suspect and Batman says, “Yes”, and it’s Jason!

This is so funny to me, like what? How did they come to that conclusion? Luckily Bendis “explains” the Detectives’ team’s reasoning, I guess? They take turns to ask Jason basic questions that Jason deflects from some reason? It is so dumb.

From this page the most important thing that I gathered is that Damian (the one who initially accused Jason of being Leviathan) says that he doesn’t “think that you (Jason) know you are doing any of this. I think it manifested itself out of grief”.

What? A terrorist that has some sort of technology that makes explosions that leaves no bodies and spares some people’s lives, is being manifested by Jason because Roy Harper died. Did I understand that correctly? That’s their big idea as to why Jason is their number one suspect?

Team of detectives, yeah, I don’t see it.

It makes zero sense! First of all, what “war with crime” was Jason having at the time, and they also say that that war was “a point of controversy for years”. Excuse me? Are they really calling Jason using guns (with rubber bullets) a SPECIAL war with crime? What are they referring to? Are they talking about the events of Under the Red Hood? Because Jason hasn’t been that version of himself in years! We don’t even know if those exact events happened in this continuity!

I am so lost; I actually don’t know why they are relating a terrorist attack to Jason. I don’t know, to me, Jason’s appearance here is unjustified and lacks logic.

Now, we find ourselves in the third issue, where an unnecessary amount of time jumping is done. First, we are in the present after both Batman and Robin let Jason run away. Listen, I know that they tried to paint it as Jason kicking both their asses but I saw those pages, they threw three punches and one of them connect with Jason’s jaw. Batman and Robin just stopped fighting Jason.

I don’t know, why they had to make Damian say that Batman let Jason get away when he was there too and did nothing.

And then they had Damian say this about Jason, “I have never been a member of his fan club but Jason Todd is one of the great master fighters of all time”. Okay, sure, Jason has had a lot of training and he has been immeasurably overpowered over the years but I still find Damian saying this a bit weird, like why would he say that? The fight that is shown after this look into the present is just like any other fight that any Bat-related hero has had. Dick has had more impressive fights than that one after the New 52 and he was immeasurably nerfed.

I love Jason getting recognition for the things that he does right and that he is good at but I need you to represent those moments better. The fight isn’t that grand and they clearly let him run away!

In the fight there all jumped off of a building, (Jason, Batman, Robin, Manhunter, Arrow, and Plastic Man) Jason shoots at everyone and they have a “fight” midair. Then Batman, Robin, and Jason fall through a glass roof and they continue fighting in a pool, this is where I say that they let Jason ran away, they showed us Damian kicking Jason in the face and Bruce punching Jason in the face. But then Jason electrifies both of them while they are in the pool? Listen, this is very nitpicky but Batman and Robin are wearing proper suits for vigilantism, if their suits aren’t prepared to receive some electric shots then wow, but also, the electricity does nothing to Jason even though he is also in the water? Jason’s Red Hood suit at the time was a pair of pants, a shirt, a vest with a hood, and some bandages on his arms… You are telling me that Jason was wearing a suit that protected him from that? Alright, I will believe it, after all, I am very dumb.

Then Jason fights Manhunter, a simple fight apparently, he doesn’t show much fighting skill because she looked like an easy target and then Jason stops fighting and decides to have a nice chat with Lois Lane.

“Why did you run?” I think he ran because a bunch of people accused him of being a terrorist and threw themselves at him at the edge of a building, what kind of question is that?

This page is just, I cannot describe how confusing it is. Lois finally asks that if it isn’t the Red Hood, then why would Leviathan try to set him up? To that Jason answers this, “I was thinking about that on the way down here. Because I am perfect. All this should be me” then he explains “I lose sleep running the numbers in my head, on how measured response to the criminals of the world brings nothing but more chaos. Batman knows this. If this Leviathan is making a big play to change the world, maybe it is the move the “crime-fighters” just don’t, will never have the guts to take. Maybe.”

What. Is. Going. On? Where did this version of Jason come from, this isn’t really in tune with UtRH Jason, RHatO Jason, or RHO Jason. This take on Jason is completely different, Jason doesn’t involve himself with threats on a worldwide scale, he doesn’t care how all heroes around the world operate, and he is not the only one that does things differently from Batman and other heroes that have similar morals.

What is this Jason saying really, is he suggesting that a global terrorist attack can lead to the reconstruction of how heroes work?

Why does Jason think that what Leviathan has going on is similar to things that Jason has done? What did Bendis read that I didn’t? How did Bendis come up with this characterization of Jason?

Because even though RHatO and RHO Jason went beyond Gotham he still fought for things that were directly aligned with his story, Ra’s al Ghul, the Untitled, Essence, all of that wasn’t on a global scale, why is he so suddenly aware of more than that, I just don’t think that his participation in this book is justified.

In these other panels he also comes off as way too aware of what is going on, and I understand that to a certain level all heroes might keep up with what going on a global scale but it seems like Jason knows way too much for someone that hasn’t been connected to those organizations and or people before.

Jason appears a little more after that but nothing of true importance is said anymore in this issue. After, Lois finishes her talk with Jason she reunites with the rest of the team and is like “It wasn’t Red Hood, let’s move on” and that’s that.

That was all Jason did in those two issues. A mix between nothing, knowing too much and him speculating about what a terrorist would want to do next.

Before I give my last thoughts about Jason and these issues, I want to share with you these panels from issue 5 of Event Leviathan.

There, Zatanna and the others confirmed it. Even though Lois listed the Red Hood as a suspect the other detectives told her that not only none of their suspects were Leviathan but that none of them were Leviathan adjacent.

OF COURSE, JASON HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH LEVIATHAN!

Here is what I think, Jason shouldn’t have been in this book, it makes less than zero sense for him to be there. Jason being set up by Leviathan had no logic whatsoever. Jason and Leviathan’s levels of “disruption” are on completely different levels.

I just don’t know why he was there.

Anon, once again I am sorry for taking so long to do this review, I hope you had fun reading this, and I hope that you have an awesome day!