#do i think hes a racist no

[a-most-beloved-fool]

makes me a little sad when star trek ignores IDIC. like. vulcans are logical. that is true. But 'logical', for vulcans, does not amount to 'without compassion,' and it definitely doesn't amount to 'racial superiority.' Belief in 'infinite diversity in infinite combinations' should NOT result in the weird racist/speciest stuff we're getting in some of the newer treks. It does make sense that some vulcans are discriminatory. They're still flawed. But that should not be common or expected, like it seems to be in SNW. If it is, then it's a race of hypocrites, which. doesn't seem very true to Star Trek's message.

I think TOS Spock does a pretty good job of embodying this. Not always, it was the 60s, after all, but mostly. He was often trying to find non-violent routes, and get by without killing - even if they were in danger or had already been attacked. (See: the mugato, and the horta (until Kirk was the one in danger, lmao. t'hy'la > IDIC), the Gorn ship). Kirk, in his eulogy, calls him the most human soul he's ever known, and I've always read that as Kirk calling out Spock's overwhelming compassion.

It's just so much more interesting when Vulcans get to be radically compassionate. I want them to believe that everything and everyone has value. I want them to respect all ways of being. I want them to find ways for even very non-humanoid aliens to exist unfettered in society. I want them to see hybrids and think that it's amazing. Also, like, disability rep. I want Vulcans to have The Most Accessible Planet and available resources because they want everyone to feel accepted and valued. It makes for better characters and more interesting stories.

[casscainmainly]

Duke Thomas and the Robin Mantle

There's been some minor discussion about whether Duke counts as an 'official' Robin or not. While that discussion is interesting, I actually don't think it's the crux of the Duke and Robin issue. To me, the question is whether or not he should be Robin. And, to me, the answer is definitively yes.

This is purely my opinion, and I haven't read every single Duke comic so it's possible I've misread/missed things. Any Duke fans, absolutely feel free to add or disprove anything here!

The Changing Robin

The first thing to understand is that Robin, as a mantle, has shifted with each person it's been passed to. Tim's Robin doesn't mean the same thing as Jason's Robin, which doesn't mean the same thing as Damian's. A mark of a true Robin is the ability to shift the meaning of Robin by wearing the colours.

Duke absolutely fulfils this criteria. In fact, him and his We Are Robin crew are the biggest shift in the meaning of Robin since its creation.

Cover from We Are Robin #1. The phrase "We're not sidekicks. We're an army!" signals the shift from Robin as individual to Robin as collective; from Robin as tied to the singular Batman to Robin as a wider movement, a socio-political force. The last question, "are you ready?", is vitally important as well. Duke as Robin is meant to be different. He's meant to be non-normative, a groundbreaking turn in what Robin looks and feels like.

At the end of the first issue, a disguised Alfred (who started We Are Robin) thinks the following:

Alfred infuses the phrase "of color" with two meanings: the Robin colours, and People of Colour. By explicitly linking Robin to POC, the comic is suggesting that not only can kids of colour be Robin, but that they should be Robin. Robins of Colour are the "future of this city," and Duke is the vanguard of this future. It's no coincidence that the Robin before (Damian) and the one after (Maps) are both POC. Duke, however, is the Robin that gives the mantle an explicit direction towards diversity: him and WAR use Robin as a social movement, and in doing so transform the colours of Robin into a symbol for the diversity in Gotham and the world.

Robin as Collective

Duke doesn't change Robin alone. The point of We Are Robin is that Robin is a collective, and it's important that Duke doesn't start WAR (as much as people like to say he did). By joining late, the comic demonstrates that Duke is part of a bigger movement.

The Robin community represents POC solidarity, the necessity and ability of the oppressed to band together. Lee Bermejo ends We Are Robin's final issue with "stress on the word "we"" - Duke's arc, in one sense, is learning to rely and work with others (he initially mistrusts basically everyone). The WAR community is essential to both Duke's character development and his tenure as Robin.

So to have this page, affirming his loyalty and love for them, to be followed immediately by them being written out is... something.

Duke appears next in Batman: Rebirth, where Bruce gives him the yellow suit and tells him he's not looking for a Robin. As soon as he stops being Robin, the community around him quite literally falls apart. Izzy sticks around for a bit but fades into obscurity, Riko and Dax turn evil, Dre ends up in Arkham - all of these fates are antithetical to these characters and genuinely tragic.

Batman: The Secret Files: The Signal is possibly the worst Duke story in existence, but it's important to understanding why Robin!Duke mattered. Riko calls Signal 'Bat-Signal', highlighting his sudden reduction to a Batman acolyte. His friends turning on him shows how, by losing Robin, he also lost the community formed by WAR. In every way, his transition into the Signal was saturated by loss.

Robin Doesn't Need A Batman

Bruce giving Duke the Signal suit is borderline insulting. He already had an identity predicated on the fact that he didn't need Batman.

From Batman (2011) #45, Batman: Rebirth, and Night of the Monster Men. "Robin doesn't need a Batman" is an inversion of Tim's 'Batman needs a Robin' - in many ways, Duke is the opposite of Tim, who's rich, White, and whose Robin is the most focused on helping Batman. If Tim is the ideal Robin-as-partner, Duke is the ideal Robin-as-individual. His idea of Robin is not, and has never been, associated with Batman.

People who say Duke isn't an official Robin since he was never Batman's partner miss the point. He is Robin because he was never Batman's partner. That's what Robin means to him - a mantle free from Bruce and all authority.

"Batman is on the gargoyle. Robin... Robin is on the street." Robin is the person on the ground, who lives and belongs to the people. When Duke becomes Signal, this ground aspect - as well as his separation from Batman - is gone.

In this cover from Batman & The Signal, they gave him a Bat symbol and put him on a gargoyle. They erased every single part of his Robin philosophy.

The Original Robin

Post-We Are Robin, Bruce becomes the Batfam member Duke interacts with the most. Besides the insult of Bruce withholding Robin, this fact also strips away one of my favourite aspects about early Duke - he was tied to the Batfamily through the Robins (especially Damian and Dick), not by Batman.

It's Dick, the original Robin, who chooses him.

Dick recognises that him and Duke have a lot in common. He tells Duke in Robin War that he's "got it," and that he's a natural leader - Dick knows Duke has what it takes to be Robin, and explicitly endorses him.

Not only that, but when Dick sends Duke to jail (along with the other Robins, official and unofficial), he tells Duke that he "take[s] care of [his] family". He basically inducts Duke into the family then and there!

Dick's endorsement of Duke makes it more interesting that Bruce doesn't make him Robin. Despite Duke's disillusionment at the end of Robin War (dispelled soon after in WAR), the events in RW confirm that Duke can and should be Robin. Bruce not making Duke Robin is defying both Duke's potential and Dick's right to choose Robins.

Robin as Family

On the rooftop in Robin War, Dick tells Duke that Robin is about family. This is the fundamental connection between them both: Robin acts as the link to the families they've lost and gained.

For Dick, Robin keeps John and Mary Grayson alive, while also symbolising his connection to Bruce. For Duke, Robin is the intersection of three families: the heroic legacy of his parents, the tight-knit community of We Are Robin, and the newfound friendship of the Batfamily.

In Batman (2011) #45, Duke tries to give his friend Daryl a Robin badge. He says, "you and me, we came up together. We're fam[ily]." Even before Dick, Duke associated Robin with family, and Daryl implies in the next issue that Duke became Robin because of his parents' inclination to help. Signal, of course, also comes from his mom; but unlike Robin, Signal isn't a legacy mantle. As Robin, he constantly inducted people like Daryl, Riko, Damian, etc. into his family. As Signal, his circle shrinks immeasurably, until it's really only the Batfamily and the Outsiders if we're being generous. (Daryl also turns evil - a really unfortunate pattern for Duke side characters).

Lark and Conclusion

I'm going to end with this panel from Batman & The Signal #1, which is emblematic of the way DC has treated Duke and Robin as a whole. Bruce tells Duke that Lark is "too soft" a name. DC was probably debating between Lark and Signal, but it's telling what they went with. How is Lark too soft, exactly? How is it any softer than Robin?

By overtly dismissing the bird-like name, Bruce - and DC editorial, or whoever decided this - is definitively moving Duke away from Robin. And it's a shame. In Duke's transition from Robin to Signal, he has next to no agency. Bruce tells him he's not Robin, Bruce gives him the suit, Bruce tells him not to be Lark, Bruce gives him another suit. It's a stark contrast from his induction into Robin - though Alfred arranged it, he gave Duke a choice. Duke chooses Robin.

Duke being disallowed the Robin mantle is, to me, on par with DC stripping Cass of the Bat symbol during the New 52. The racism behind both these decisions cannot be overstated - both Cass and Duke redefined their mantles, and their mantles defined them. At least Cass' mistake has been corrected, and lots of writers and fans acknowledge how horrible that period was. For Duke, he was never given a real chance. And it's unlikely he ever will be.

This is not a knock against the Signal identity or any writers. However, it genuinely saddens me to think that all of this story potential - Duke's redefinition of Robin, his relationship to Dick, his connection to We Are Robin, and above all his ability to choose who he wants to be - has been neglected and cast aside. Even if they never acknowledge his role as Robin, I hope future stories centre him once again, because it's what he deserves.

[fae-morrigan]

Y'know, I see a lot of people argue that like, Jay is ugly. Why does Jon like him? And I've made it clear I disagree, because, like, cmon:

That is OBJECTIVELY a handsome man, and I'm a lesbian, lmao.

But like. If he was. ... So?

I actually think it's pretty cool that DC was like, yeah, Superman fell in love with a guy who cuts his own hair with dull scissors and dresses like oscar the grouch. He's a little weird to look at, maybe he's not the most conventionally attractive dude, but SUPERMAN found him wonderful and wanted to kiss him on the mouth.

That's... great? Like that's great. There's no universe where that reading of the text isn't awesome and empowering. Queer love should transcend looks and social status, and a huge part of queerness is finding beauty in the 'odd', anyways.

[butwhatifidothis]

I need the people who look at posts talking about Wyll's treatment in both the actual game and especially the fandom and respond with "but i don't like him and I think he's boring" to know that shutting the fuck up is 100% the better option 100% of the time. Him being the only origin character to not have at last 10 hours of content and the existence of mods that literally whitewash him and his dad - among everything else wrong with how Wyll is treated - are not suddenly okay because you, personally, as an individual, don't find him interesting, and your personal individual feelings about him are irrelevant to the issues surrounding his treatment in the bg3 community at large, so like. Stop barging in with your unwanted, unhelpful opinion

[wafflesrisa]

As an actually autistic person who learned English as a second language can I just say this about Yuki:

If your reaction to Yuki’s sincere apology, written in his own cadence and “imperfect” English, is to disbelieve his statement that he genuinely did not know what the R-slur meant and then call for cancelling him on all platforms -

I want you to take a long look at yourself and think hard about where your expectation that he is lying about his knowledge of the term actually comes from. Think about it for a second.

You are not actually helping autistic people. You’re just racist.

[mamawasatesttube]

bruce characterization is so hard because he really has been written all over the place. generally i try to think of him as a man who really does mean well, but whose drive for justice and unprocessed traumas can blind him to his shortcomings and lead to him inadvertently hurting his children. i also think that comics are a medium that doesn't usually lend itself well to character growth, because they to maintain a certain status quo to keep telling stories from, and so the bruce in my mind would honestly develop and learn from his mistakes a lot better than canon bruce actually does, because for someone who espouses the values he does, it makes no sense for him to completely stagnate, right. he's a puzzle you can put together in a lot of different ways and it's fascinating but also can be such a pain because of all the different books writing him in so many different ways, but characterizing him solely as an asshole is just boring and reductive imo...

...but all of that said i still think if martha kent ever found out how he talked to kon in sb94 #85 or in those issues of batgirl '00, she should be allowed to beat his ass with a pitchfork. yknow?

[itgr]

No actually I will say. The latest Marionetta episode is so good in its depiction of racism and colonialism. SOMEONE DID THEIR RESEARCH. You can tell Miriam learned a lot from Hooky because this whole scene was fucking hard to read and earth-shattering for me

Its also the way Mama Yalizah compares Sahed to an animal that felt. Yeahhhhhh 😶

I don't know. Its such a good depiction of growing up as a poc and constantly being expected to always behave and be palatable because if you weren't, you'd just get your humanity taken away from you for acting "animalistic" or "dangerous" (for being a kid)

I CAN NOW SAY I FUCKING ADORE SAHED. honestly Marionetta hadnt clicked for me quite like HOOKY yet but it's getting there. I liked Sahed but I didn't like him that much (also I feel like a lot of his fans tend to fetishise him a little which I feel like turned me off from him) so I've been more into Kamille and Rainah tbh

Like yes there was that scene where Dotty was embodying white feminism by basically invalidating him and being high key racist and that scene hit and conveyed the feeling of being the only poc in the room well but outside of that. Nothing's really hit for me personally UNTIL THIS. LIKE WOW. JESUS FUCK. I actually adore Sahed so much oh my god. He's done nothing wrong ever ive decided/j

[autisticrosewilson]

So do you guys actually think that Jason's entire story, relationship to the others, and philosophy amounts to him being a rebellious teen who wants his dad's attention? Like are you 100% serious? I thought you were joking about that but too many of you are saying it with your whole chest.

And what the fuck is this "Bruce antagonizing Jason is fanon!" Shit I've been seeing? You guys are aware that a parent can love their kid and still be a shit parent right? I know you guys don't want to fathom the thought that maybe your blorbo might also occasionally have to face responsibility for consistently endangering children but let's not start being delusional now.

Bruce does love his kids, that doesn't mean that he hasn't hurt them. And I'd also argue that for the most part he feels in the right for it, and he's said multiple times that he believes it's for their own good, so you can't even argue that he's sorry about it. It's okay for you guys to admit that your PERSONAL INTERPRETATION of the character wouldn't do that but don't sit here and pretend that it's not a facet of the source.

[painfullyprickedandticked]

i dont think striker and alastor are characters who are "precious senpais who did nothing wrong" i just don't think they're as reprehensible as valentino or stella. their actions aren't excusable, no, but they aren't near that level of abhorrent.

[lunarhobbits]

i do think the fact that shane is dressed like a supervillain in the announcement is really funny. when he betrays his audience he goes all out at least.

(credit to reddit user Icy_Arrival4510 on r/WatcherSnark for pointing this out)

[ladystoneboobs]

The princess might even have considered Willas Tyrell, crippled leg and all, but her father refused to send her to Highgarden to meet him. She tried to go despite him, with Tyene's help . . . but Prince Oberyn caught them at Vaith and brought them back. -Arianne II, aFfC

suddenly, out of nowhere, intriuged by what this match would have been like if she'd made it to highgarden, bc every tyrell besides willas is racist toward the dornish. or at least mace and olenna def are and they blame oberyn for will's injury even tho willas himself doesn't. but maybe margaery and garlan could be happy for their union (loras can be kind of a dick so i'm just assuming he shares his dad's racism), a crippled reacherman and a headstrong dornishwoman against the world.

[pinkd3mon]

I can respect the hater mentality

[sapphic-agent]

A New Wish is really bringing back the magic of the early seasons of Fairly Oddparents that the later seasons lost. I'm enjoying the series a lot so far

[butwhatifidothis]

Still baffled that Hopes so blatantly wrote Claude as the typical Evil Vaguely Middle Eastern Man set on destroying the Good White Nation for his Evil Vaguely Middle Eastern Nation that is often seen in fantasy settings - complete with him being seen as worse than a white woman who does many of the same evil deeds he does in-verse, even by his friends (should it be the bad ending route of SB) - and so many in the fandom were so eager to gobble that shit up. INSIST that "Clearly A Racist Stereotype" is LEAGUES better than "Subversion Of A Racist Stereotype" even. Like I don't think I'll ever get over how supremely fucked that is

[kris-mage-fics]

Reese Kelly headcanon please and thank you

This contains mild spoilers, just to be safe I put it under the cut. And heads up, I talk about food quite a bit so if that's a trigger for you, maybe skip this one. This is highly dependent on which Episode 4 ending you get since it's not possible with two of the endings.

One of my Reese headcanons is that now that he can eat anything *cough* he gets really into trying all sorts of foods and learning how to cook and bake. Stella is of course thrilled to teach him! I think Reese finds out he enjoys lots of types of food. He also ends up loving cooking and baking! It's a new way for him to express his creativity, playing with flavors and textures is essentially a whole new medium. And maybe it becomes another way for him to show his love for the people he really cares about.

Just don't ask him to make a normal looking meal, because he styles all the food to look beautiful and macabre. The food is all great, though some folks might be put off by the presentation. I think you'll find that he carves potatoes into skulls before roasting them, or he perfected a tomato and balsamic vinegar based sauce that looks eerily like blood. You know, normal stuff!

Also, I think he has a really high spicy tolerance. Like he's the one white boy who can eat Asian spicy food and be fine! (Not the toned down level of spicy a lot of Southeast Asian restaurants in the west serve, but like the food a Balinese person grew up eating level of spicy.) So he has to learn not to make his food too spicy for other people to eat, lol!

[queeraang]

(CW: mentions of various kinds of abuse)

I finished kevin can fuck himself (recommend it, it has so much fun with genre) which is essentially a dark comedy about a woman breaking away from a narcissistic husband and i keep seeing people having theories of like "i bet he was physically abusing her but we didn't see it" which i think misses the point of the show.

not saying it doesn't happen but it's less common for someone to say "my partner hit me" and be brushed off with a "that's just how marriage is lol". the show is about how someone can subtly abuse and manipulate you for years before you realize how bad it's gotten. combined with how they can downplay their harm so everyone around you laughs it off.

to that point i've seen a few people like "i don't get it, he's not that bad" because the harm he causes is funny or 'not a big deal'. like she can't hate him for ruining her life unless he hit her.

it's similar imo to when all the stuff around nickelodeon shows was coming out where it seemed like people almost wanted dan schneider to have sexually assaulted a child and weren't satisfied with "his conduct was questionable also he was constantly screaming at children" like if all he did was berate kids, that is deplorable enough, things don't have to be the absolute worse case scenario before someone's allowed to complain or remove themself from the situation