#character development? Or character regression..

[your-vile-villainess]

This post is long overdue but I finally willed myself to write a university essay-long analysis no one asked for.

Why I think Silco Had Been Jinx's Favorite Person (and Where Does Vi Stand in the Picture)

Okay, here goes. This is just a blah about me seeing Jinx as a character with BPD (borderline personality disorder) and not at all an accurate diagnosis. If you do not see her this way, please keep scrolling.

BPD is often developed among people who are emotionally sensitive, lived or living in an environment that lacks resources for emotional growth, neglected, abandoned, and/or heavily traumatized. Jinx kind of fit all the categories.

She is very much sensitive about criticisms due to her need to contribute, belong, and live up to Vi's legacy. She also lost her parents in her formative years, grew up in the Undercity where they live off scraps, and as Vi and Vander said "everyone has to earn their place". Vander is a solo parent to four children, a bar keeper, and a pillar of peace. He did not have enough time to oversee each of his children that he would often remind Vi to take care of Powder, and Vi is on her teenage, rebellious years from the time their parents died to the end of Act 1. Although she talked to her sister a lot, it can only do so much to stop the cracking.

Vi, I believe, is initially Jinx's favorite person. It is her she didn't want to disappoint. She becomes ready whenever Vi said she is. She gets upset when Vi (as she presumes) says bad things about her. When Vi left her after the incident, Powder resorted to splitting. She had to break down her idealization of Vi to cope with the idea that she is being abandoned. She had to villainize Vi (her saying "she left me, she's not my sister anymore") to get out of that painful situation. We can see after the time skip that she's still looking for Vi even when she said those line years ago, and she still kept the smoke signal. This is a common nuance for people with BPD, most would cope through splitting but would be able to rationalize the situation once the episode is over, and they would go back to idealizing their FPs.

When Vi did not come back, Silco took over the role, and him being Powder/Jinx's new FP is inevitable. For one, Silco is there for her during her worst day. The father-daughter bond they shared is what Jinx needed in the absence of her OG and adoptive family (she's just 10 or 12 back then, with very vulnerable emotions at that). Silco had also been very supportive of her, be it in her passion for tinkering weapons to her doodles and childishness. Manipulation or not, he provided what Powder had been asking from the people she loved for a long time: validation. Okay, Vi gave her validations, but for people with BPD, the need for validation is never-ending, plus they didn't part ways in good terms. Silco, whether due to manipulation or affinity to her situation, had always validated Jinx.

This is the reason why I believed Jinx when she said Silco only saw her blubbering twice. For people with BPD, they would twist and bend their whole persona to please their favorite persons. At one point, Jinx feared that Silco would see her as weak. She resorted to a very risky, very uncalled for, mission just to reclaim his affirmation which she 'perceived' she lost.

Since Silco is an FP for her, Jinx often act childish around him, often invading his personal space. This can be viewed as age regression, another commonality among people with BPD. In those moments, she's going back to being a child.

So why would Jinx harm him, call him a liar, and kidnap him? Well, splitting as well, unfortunately. She had always saw him as this father figure who encourages her, shields her from 'bullies'/critics, and allows her to be who she needed to be. However, when Vi returned, Jinx immediately thought that Silco lied to her about her sister's death, because Vi is also an FP (who she desperately wanted to be with again). This might be how the whole reasoning worked on her mind: Vi is alive > but he told me my sister is dead > he had all the reasons to hide that from me > he killed Vander > he most likely know Vi is alive, Marcus works for him > he is a liar. So you see, the black side wins in her seeing things in black and white.

Another worst manifestation of splitting is what Jinx understood from what she overheard at Vander's statue. It may be confusing how she thought Silco would betray her when he clearly said he is conflicted and that he finally understood what fatherhood did to Vander. However, during a BPD episode, everything that's been said can be taken as a threat. He could flat out say he would not trade her for his dreams and she would still misinterpret it as he would give her up. That's unfortunately, how BPD makes life miserable.

Moreover, Vi is back. Jinx wanted to reunite with her more than anything. So it would be easier to make Silco the villain so she would not feel bad about choosing Vi over him. She's not even really considering Silco's words at the tea party. Every word that gets to her is from Vi.

When Silco died, and it was made clear Vi didn't choose her (as she is). All her idealizations of Vi turned black, again. She suddenly gave up on her desperation to be chosen. At that point, she just wanted Vi to be 'hurt as she hurt her that day' (this is from the song played during that scene).

In conclusion, both Vi and Silco are Jinx's favorite persons, in different timelines and at some point, at the same time. Also, BPD sucks.

[unhingedlesbear]

Retaking this one questionable test I took a couple years ago. Back then my results were pretty much "Wow! You're incredibly normal at this stuff! Almost boringly so!" but mootiepatooties... I fear.

I fear that the results now will be wildly different. I will let you know.

[oifaaa]

It's funny how opinions can change over time for instance I used to want Bruce to be a good parent but then I realised how fucking boring that is to read at the end of the day comics are soap operas and I'm here for the drama

[princess-of-morkva]

S1 Merlin: "Murder is bad!"

S5 Merlin: *killer machine*

-

S1 Morgana: "Only murder if necessary"

S5 Morgana: *unnecessary murder*

[ruporas]

fond of marcille (id in alt)

[burningdreambanana]

We never talk about the fact that Caroline was complaining about people not respecting her grief in season 6 but she couldn't do it for Elena in season 1, she couldn't do it for Tyler in season 4 and 5, she couldn't do it for Stefan in that very same season and she still couldn't do it for Bonnie in season 8. Like where's the growth?

[hood-ex]

World's Finest: Teen Titans #4

[sunshades]

Ok i let the intervallo simmer here's some thoughts:

- it's true this intervallo is comedic and kind of "not that deep" (bear with me a sec) and negative interactions aren't to be taken That seriously like im seeing a lot of people do

- BUT this can also absolutely be a negative thing and i agree theres a lot of bits where it doesnt feel good to read. Sinclair is getting the scaredy little baby writing, Heathcliff is getting the haha delinquent writing, ishmael has this constant "joke about water/ships/whales/whatever"- we kinda know by now the sinners who had their canto already have a noticeable drop in quality (even yi sang whose writing always gets the most care at times falls into a comic relief role)

- at the same time, wondering why the group isn't being That friendly... especially "the sinners are suddenly so mean to heathcliff and treating him like he's stupid" is just. guys. they never stopped. this was how don quixote -the one he's consistently been the kindest towards- was treating him in TKT, barely a couple weeks after canto 6 in universe LOL

- it just... feels disingenuous to say "but they were such good friends in canto 7" when that whole scene came a bit out of the blue? the sinners have never been close friends all the way to canto 7- let's not forget how in MOTWE it was important to see Faust, meursault and ishmael have a couple moments with the other sinners (faust and ishmael with each other, faust with yi sang and dante, meursault with don and heathcliff) because the whole game they barely had any positive interactions. ishmael for example has shot down gregor's attempts at befriending her a couple times in the past, and never really felt indebted towards heathcliff for worrying about her in canto 5 (or at least that never made her want to be nicer to him)- but those aren't writing mistakes when she herself in LCB checkup even jokes about being kinda awful at making/keeping friends. she's just kinda like that. "im not that nice"

- that being said there are a lot of interactions in the checkup that imply they are actually getting closer. hong lu and sinclair are in good terms, meursault apparently now interacts with the others pretty often, ishmael and yi sang watch over don quixote (pretty significant when u consider one of ish's few interactions with don was calling her delusional in canto 5), ryoshu is interested in don, and i think even ishmael and ryoshu's squabble is interesting considering their last interaction was in canto 4 (where they were getting along even less). the intervallo definitely has some writing pitfalls but i think it's absolutely better if you keep in mind what the text has been telling us in all the chapters that lead up to it, not just counting c7's climax as something so completely defining of everyone's characters.

[dickheadcanons]

Your brain is literally gynormous. Do you think Damian's and Dick's relationship is paternal? Because, as someone who has actually had to raise their sibling (do not recommend) it looks more like a guy that had too much in his plate trying to be the best caregiver he could, but not really being a parent, if that makes sense. I feel like the idea of him wanting to adopt him feels like kind of a retcon, couldn't really see it in the og run. But of course, it could be because it's not exactly the same as my experience (abusive father, incapable mother, yknow the drill). What do you think? All your posts are so good.

Also while you're at it, what do you think of Dick as a parent? Some elseworlds have played with the concept, and main continuity did something too with Olivia but T*m Tayl*r fucked that up too. I also wonder how Damian would be as a dad, but I don't think I've ever seen any stories with it.

omg anon thank you and thank you for asking!! this is literally one of my favorite topics!! i was thinking about making a post on this and now you gave me the excuse for it!!

Long story short, I don't think that “parental” is a binary thing. I mean, I know several bio-parents who are just guys with too much on their plates, trying to be the best they can, you know? And people can see parent figures in all kinds of relationships that aren’t blood or traditional moms/dads, especially with people who didn't know each other from birth. There are a million ways to be parented, and a million ways to act as a parent.

The way I think about it is, is Dick Damain's John Grayson? No, I don't think so.

But is Dick Damian's Bruce Wayne? Yes. Totally. Absolutely.

More under the cut bc I have a lot of thoughts.

I think to talk about Dick and Damian, we have to start with Dick and Bruce. So much about Dick and Damian is a reflection of the original Dynamic Duo, and I think that's very much the case with this element as well. From the start of their very long comic history, Dick and Bruce have been dancing around their relationship. We get early comics that say they're "like" father and son, we have Bruce saying he couldn't care about Dick more than if he was Bruce's son, but we also have places where they call each other their best friends, where they act more like brothers, etc etc.

When it comes to who our parents are, I think there is the responsibility, and the result. Certain people have the responsibility, the duty, to be our parents, and sometimes (because death or illness or being shitty people), they aren't able to meet those responsibilities. That never removes the responsibility; they don't stop being the parent. But they aren't able to create the result of us becoming good stable adults. That's where other people can step in, where the parental figure appears, and those are the people that we actually point to when we say "they made me the person I am today."

In fandom, we see a lot of Dick not wanting Bruce to replace his father, of him asking not to be adopted. I think this is a fine characterization that works with who Dick is, but Bruce is actually the one to say that he is not going to replace Dick's father. He says it completely unprompted, too. This is withholding the responsibility of being Dick's parent from Bruce, keeping him at a distance and reserving it as an honor for someone who can't hold it anymore, even as Bruce demands responsibility for literally everything else about Dick.

And I think that it's very telling of what Bruce's idea of a father is. The thing about having a dead parent at a young age is that the person of your parents is still tangled in the role of parent in your life; Mom is mom, not Martha, and because she's dead, the image of both Martha and "mom" is frozen. For Bruce, the relationship of father and son is frozen in the relationship of specifically his father and him. Of course Bruce is not Dick's father; Bruce himself is so different from what his conception of a father is. And as a fellow son, for Bruce, someone who just got back from 7 years abroad studying to be Batman, for whom the nearly 20 year old wound is still fresh, the idea of even wanting another father doesn't make sense, particularly for a boy that Bruce identifies with so hard that he becomes the third person ever to know who Batman is.

This looming memory is even worse when it's Dick's turn to be Batman. While Bruce looks at Dick and sees the memory of his own loss, the shadow of his own grief, Dick is looking at Damian and seeing Bruce. Dick knows very well who Damian lost; Dick is grieving what Damian lost more than Damian is. Bruce couldn't conceive of replacing a father, but Dick is struggling to imagining himself replacing Bruce at his job, much less who he was in his personal relationships.

But even if Damian isn't Dick's responsibility, Dick doesn't hesitate to care about Damian's future. "Who's going to save him if we don't?" At the start of the DickBats era, Dick isn't looking at Damian as a family member, really. He's looking at Damian as a victim, abet a very involved, very dangerous one. It's how Bruce looked at Dick too, before he had any reason to know that this kid would become something more to him. But, like Bruce, what Dick does to save Damian is bring him into the thing that is most precious to him; Batman. The mission. Saving people. A way to live in the world.

I know saying someone is the Batman to their Robin is like, a joke at this point. Something unbelievably cheesy. But you google "iconic duos" and Batman and Robin are one of the first responses. There's a reason for the joke. So imagine you are Robin, and your Batman is dead. And you have to go and find a new partner. Dick making Damian his Robin is heavy, just as heavy to me as adoption papers. Bruce made Dick his partner without any idea of what that meant. Dick, and the audience, had 70 years of expectation on what Dick and Damian could be. Dick making Damian Robin was a very specific claim, far stronger imo than just claiming him as a son would have been.

Because, to be honest (and speak to your other question), I don't think Dick thinks a lot about being a parent. I don't really think it's that important to him. Dick is a leader, a mentor, he deals with a ton of teenagers and kids through his vigilante work, he goes to Tim's sidekick parent's meetings and takes Jason skiing and more than that, he's also young. He's in his 20s. He should be at the club. I think he probably thinks he'll have kids in an abstract way, but it's not something he's looking for, consciously or unconsciously. He's not searching for connection, or to fix his mistakes or his past, the things that lead Bruce to adopting sidekicks. He'd be a great dad, and I think we see him being pretty good with his Elseworlds kids, but Dick is a very practical person, and him taking a kid in (vs finding somewhere else they can go) is not really the practical choice.

Except for one kid. There's just been one kid with legitimately no where else to go, where Dick is truly the only option, because going home meant only bad things for him. Dick made Damian part of his family in the ways that mattered to them both in that moment. With their lives, adoption doesn't really make a huge material difference on custody (if Damian wanted to leave, Dick couldn't have stopped him; Damian has access to basically unlimited money and can feed and clothe and wash himself. and possibly already has a phd.), and Dick wanted Damian to choose, anyway. If I recall correctly, Dick says he didn't think about taking Damian with him until Bruce comes back. He thought about taking Damian with him, thought that Damian might be better with Dick (his partner!!!!) than even with Bruce, his dad, the person Dick loves so much, only in the face of them being separated.

Meanwhile Damian, for all his blustering about how Dick needs to "earn" his respect, warms up to Dick startlingly quickly. For Damian, who had never known a father, who in his initial run hadn't even known his mother for more than two years, whose other male family is Ra’s al Ghul, his father is Batman. Even in Tomasi's kinder depiction of Damian's childhood, Damian only knows the Bat. And when he meets Bruce, the first thing he expresses is disappointment. Bruce the man is underwhelming and then goes and dies. So much for the mythic hero!

And then he meets Dick. Who manages to teach Damian something, who doesn't discount his skills even when he's wrong. Who proves that he is better at being Batman than Damian, and shows that he wants Damian around. And, even more importantly, who doesn't die. Dick is stable in a world constantly in flux. Damian screws up a lot in that run, and he leaves for long stretches of it, but Dick is always there when he gets back. There's no blame here, but the truth is that Dick is the one who stays.

Bruce was Damian's father, but what does that mean to someone whose never met a father at all? Bruce might have tried to connect with Damian before he died, but he doesn’t do it in a way that works. He doesn’t give Damian trust, he doesn’t encourage him in the ways Damian finds important…the first person to do that is Dick. Dick gives Damian responsibility, makes him part of the team. It could be argued that Damian didn’t deserve it, but we’re not talking about deserving. We’re talking about what worked. It sounds like as good an idea as making a tiny 8 year old acrobat a sidekick, but it undeniably worked for both Damian and Dick. Does that mean that either of these relationships were parental in the way that we think of it in the real world, in the way that a child psychologist would say is good and healthy? I have no idea. But they are the most parental in the absence of any other parents, and I think that means a lot.

Unfortunately, we don't get to actually see the dissolution of Dick and Damian's partnership. DC conveniently skips over showing us Bruce coming back and Dick becoming Nightwing again; preNew 52, Dick is still Batman with Damian even when Bruce returns, and in the New 52, he's been Batman "Before" and we don't really see the end, just a vague aftermath. But if it did take that kind of change to make them realize their relationship had a flavor of "parent and child", had the makings of something like a father and son, well, they'd just be following in the original Batman's footprints.

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

hesphael makes me so gngnggnghhhh because on the surface ephael is the stupid and boisterous one, and hestio is the sullen and serious guy with common sense and who keeps ephael in line. And then you peel them back a little and you realise that actually they're both fun-loving little guys - both hestio and ephael will gang up on their nearest victim (tesilid/ash) with lots of cheer. And then you peel back them even more and you realise that actually, much more than Hestio putting up with Ephael's careless attitude, Hestio is the super prissy fussy princess and everyone around him are the ones who are indulging him. And at the same time, Ephael is actually generally very level-headed and calm, and there's been multiple instances of him holding Hestio back. And that in a world where aura users are quite rare, Ephael is a advanced aura user while Hestio is a weak fragile supporter who yells "Hey Ephael!!! Take better care of your delicate supporter!!" with zero shame. Ephael may be the one who's always getting scolded and snarked at by Hestio, but he's definitely the one who's in charge of making sure Hestio doesn't accidentally kill himself. Do you get it do you get it.

[agerefandom]

Kitty regressor sebby mood board? (Black butler)

Big brain moment!!! Absolutely!

[nancywheeeler]

you know your series is running out of steam when you're reprinting the entirety of "the raven" in the fifth book

[twitterdotcom]

I know it's been said before, but I think my biggest gripe with Izzy's death is that it felt like it was written and finished before S1 was even done, and then S2 was written like "ok Izzy dies this season so we have to make sure the audience feels sad about it." So they developed Izzy but never went back to the original script for the death scene and instead just went with the original draft despite literally all of S2 (and some of S1) contradicting what was supposed to be the emotional core of it

[starglaee]

It’s the way the Cobra Kai creators can’t keep character consistency

[celestialtrolls]

anyone wanna adopt a necromancer

[plentyelegant]

thinks about how much better Allison's s3 character arc could have been. thinks about how much better Allison's s3 character arc could have been. thinks about how much better Allison's s3 character arc could have been. thinks abou