Fig: Hah! - Nobody ever expects an Archdevil rockstar to be nice.
Riz: … yeah. - 's just budget work tho. (the stuff I'm working on) - I've heard it's boring.
page 05
Fig: yeah, but you do it…
Riz: It keeps things going, right? - Nothing happens if nobody sits down and - does the thing.
Fig: That's right… - though. Yeah.
page 06
Fig: sometimes it's someone else who - doesn't want the same thing to happen.
Riz: … - mm.
page 07
Riz (off screen): …It took me a long time to get that not everyone likes doing what I do. - 's probably because you guys are so nice– - or. - kind.
Riz (off screen): to anyone too, not just. - the people you /love/.
page 08
Riz: that's not how it is elsewhere. - The world's– not. hostile. - but 's not like it's kind.
Riz: So I'm doing as much as I can now…
page 09
Fig: Hey.
Riz: ?
Fig: Go dig some dirt with me.
page 10
Riz: [blank speech bubble] - oh you meant like - actual dirt. (not incriminating information)
Fig: o yea.
Fig: there's clay in the backyard soil. - sometimes when I'm sun deficient or something I go touch dirt for a bit.
page 11
Fig: here u go
page 12
Riz: uh
Fig: now we make a thing! - 'm pretty good at freehanding a bowl.
Fig: I'll show u
page 13
Fig: just– yep, flatten that out as evenly as u can, then–! - actually ur nails'd be so good at cutting out the strip. [larger than usual space] wait. - wait. wait u can carve patterns with them! we HAVE to try
Riz: uh - What. do I carve?
Fig: anything!!!
page 14
Fig: and– yep just seal the inside uh. seam?
Fig: yep that works - okay time's up! all contestant hands up
You know, when Batman reassured him (was it tho? His way of using words is a bit... confusing.) of bringing in a third person for their common problem, Phantom, Danny, didn't press nor worry.
He regrets it now, just a little bit.
—
Dick liked Danny.
The small guy has been an absolute delight!
(He isn't grinning when he and Damian duke it out, doesnt watch fondly when Danny and Jason exchange the most weirdest ways of insulting someone or when He and Steph gossip, Cass sitting behind him with her hands in his hair.)
(He can see from the corner of his eye the way Tim hides a grin behind his hand, texting Danny someone rapidly and their Guest laughing at random times, the way even Duke, despite wearing the sunglasses, seems to warm up pretty quickly to their new brother friend.)
(It's doesn't help that he has black hair and blue eyes either.)
Danny has been living with them for some time now, temporarily as it may be, and grew on them all pretty quickly.
Bruce told them when Constantine arrived at the cave, seemingly irritated for unknown reasons, and they all were ushered to the elevator.
There is no noise as they arrive, Danny few feet off the ground and engaged on a hot topic with Steph as they go down the stairs.
The moment Constantine is in sight however, has their resident ghost snapping out of the conversation and zooming in on the man from afar.
It's kind of funny? The way his black hair fluffs up like in a Ghibli Movie, the way his eyes narrow to slits, glowing a faint green.
Many shout in alarm at the sight of agitation (?), Dick sees Constantines own eyes glow a eery gold??
It's like two cats staring down one another, a showdown.
(Someone should record this.)
The two meet down in the middle of the cave, Danny is bristling and John scowling.
"Really Bats? A Nightingale?" The blond man scoffs, pushing his hands into the pockets of his coat, hands roaming for cigarettes probably.
"Excuse me? I thought the line of Constantine died out back then, with the way you handle your stuff." The teen hisses back, a hand running through his poofed up hair.
"Hah!" The Hellblazer gives a mocking laugh, cigar already in hand and lit. "'With the way we handle our stuff'? Weren't the Nightingales out of commission not so long ago?"
The glow might have died out, but the tension only rose higher.
Danny turns to Batman, glowering.
"Asking for the help of the house of Constantine? Are you crazy? Those nutjobs have no self-preservation!"
John's eye twitches at the remark.
"No self-preservation, my ass. Nightingales do nothing but mess with stuff they shouldn't, talk about self-preservation when you have it yourself, pipsqueak."
And Danny? Danny growls.
"All you do is trick every being to do your bidding! One day all of this will catch up to your house and me? I will watch as it burns."
The blonds cigarette snaps in his grip.
"Burn? Me? Doesn't the house if Nightingales hunt the beings we 'trick'? It seems to me that your lineage is already going down as we speak."
The argument (?) continues and the batclan does nothing but watch as if its a particularly interesting tennis match.
(John looks like he's about 5 seconds away from strangling Danny and the teen about to bite off John's head.)
"What's going on?" Finally, Batman steps in.
"What's going on? What's going on?? You said you'd bring in a third person! Not a constantine!"
The bat shows no signs of anything really, when both teen and man whip around to face him.
"I thought you'd know better than to involve yourself with the house of Nightingales."
"I was here first! No take backs!"
"And yet I know bats longer, don't I, pipsqueak?"
"Foolish trickster!"
"Imprudent necromancer!"
(Apparently, beef between two houses of dark exists and they had the chance to experience it first hand.)
if you peel him back far enough, there's nothing but a pile of theater masks
like, it's really fun how fontaine starts spiralling out the closer jack gets to him in the final arc of the game and returns to appropriating the image of family (the fake family in the beginning, the flawed father position later) to try and appeal to jack in some way but it's like. buddy. baby. you already took off your mask. anything you try and put on after this is going to come across as cheap and desperate. the magic is gone! and personally? I'm hooting and hollering
Ok so I don’t normally post about Helluva Boss but the newest episode touched on an interesting concept I haven’t necessarily seen represented in media. Back when I was on Twitter (derogatory) a few years ago there was this now deleted viral thread where someone discussed how their struggles with mental health affected their relationship with their partner and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
This is such a good, short example of how anxiety and depression can play tricks on you. It becomes so easy to envision yourself as a nuisance, a constant burden to those closest to you because they cannot possibly genuinely enjoy your company, right? But in doing so you create this arbitrarily cruel version of the people you love, people who would otherwise never behave like this outside of your own mind.
It's mean. Because your mind wants to be mean to you under these circumstances. It wants to put everyone else's emotions and desires above yours, both in worthiness and validity. And that starts bleeding into your understanding of other people, especially those you care about.
Now. Helluva Boss.
"Can I get a fucking MINUTE to think after everything you put me through you pompous rich ASSHOLE? Treat me like one of your little butler imps, you can’t just dismiss me like that! I mean, you royal fucks think you can do this every time, like you can just play with our feelings because we’re smaller and not as important. Well I’m not letting you, BITCH! Let’s go!" - Blitz
I find it really interesting how Helluva Boss decided to approach this conflict between Stolas and Blitz. Obviously, the difference in power matters. It's the underlying tension of their entire relationship and their lives. Stolas is burdened by the mountain of expectations thrust upon him from a very young age while Blitz is constantly reminded that he can NEVER be part of that world, that he is "smaller and not as important" not just in Hell's hierarchy but in his own life and family. Stolas very literally has power over Blitz (through the grimoire, the arrangement, his position in society) and Blitz uses their relationship as an excuse to reverse those roles. But that power dynamic, in one form or another, never truly goes away. And for Blitz, it's a lot easier to paint Stolas as this manipulative symbol of power and himself as nothing more than Stolas' plaything. It's easier to be angry than to be vulnerable and accept that someone might care about him.
"Dismiss" is the keyword in that quote. All that Blitz has been able to process is that Stolas has decided to end the relationship that they have. He feels ls like a choice has been taken away from him so he lashes out because he's not ready to emotionally tackle what the rest of Stolas' offer might entail. If Stolas hates him, just wants to play with him, then he is justified in his anger, his self-destruction, his isolation. If the world is mean, you're "allowed" to be mean back.
But
In that moment he forgets that Stolas is someone he actually cares about. Someone he's known for way too long and clearly wants to keep in his life, no matter how reluctant he can be to admit it. Someone who is not innately cruel or manipulative but sad and desperate for connections in a lot of the same ways that Blitz is. And Blitz immediately sees that he's miscalculated something.
Somewhere along the way the fictional version of Stolas that he's allowed himself to be mad at and the real one that he's not ready to admit he cares about have merged into something real that he has actual power over. Stolas can get hurt and Blitz can be the one who does it. He has once again allowed his greatest fears (which Stolas so frequently symbolizes) to co-opt his loved ones, to give him an "out" even though he didn't actually want one in the first place.
I'm definitely not the first person to say this but I think this is an example of the miscommunication trope done right. Their individual struggles are what cause them to be unable to connect during this conversation or to even have a proper conversation in the first place. There is no convenient misunderstanding or third party fabricating this rift. Both of them have preconceived ideas of what the other one is thinking but those ideas are flawed and rooted in self-hatred. They also both shutdown in their unique ways when the conversation starts heading in the direction they'd feared it would.
Blitz and Stolas work because they're both fucked up in similar ways, because they want similar things. That's the same reason why they're uniquely designed to hurt one another. A fear of rejection and a yearning for happiness. To borrow a quote that has been used by literally everyone from Spiderman to Evangelical preachers, "hurt people hurt people."
anyway, I really liked this episode.
(twitter thread screenshots sourced from this reddit post)
i just know 5 to 6 years after marc retires he’s gonna release the most gut wrenching documentary which timelines from 2015 till the end of his career telling us about all the shit he went though.
been messing around with my drawing process so i decided to do a bunch of cephalopod group shots to get a bit more confident with it
[IMG ID: Image 1 is a group drawing of Shiver, Big Man, Frye, Callie, and Marie from Splatoon. The first four are posing for a photo with Marie in the back. They are in Alterna with the buildings and the hole in the sky visible in the back.
Image 2 is a group drawing of Agents 3, 4, and 8 in casual wear in an apartment all posing for a selfie. Various objects are littered in the background with a backpack, skateboard, and part of a switch being present by 8.
Image 3 is a a drawing of Pearl and Marina dressed in casual wear taking a selfie at night. /END ID]
So we saw Tammy Thompson sing the national anthem in the first episode of s4...
Which prompted Robin and Steve to give each other looks because they remembered Robin's coming out moment in the bathroom, where they made fun of Tammy's singing...
Vickie overheard them joking, and Robin took the opportunity to talk to her, saying that she "used to think that Tammy sounded good because I had this massive crush—um, we took a massively hard class together. We were in Mrs. Click's class together," reminding the audience of Robin's explanation that, in the class, she wanted Tammy to look at her, while Tammy only looked at Steve.
So episodes later, in the boat out on Lovers Lake, where Robin looked at Nancy looking at Steve? Yeah. This was a direct callback.
And it's interesting that even though Robin's crush was specifically mentioned when talking to Vickie, it's this scene with Nancy that we see what Robin referenced in action.
But the question is: why do any of this?
Even though Robin said Vickie is the girl of her dreams, we saw Vickie for approximately 3 min of s4, and it's within the last 20 min of the final episode that they had their first actual on-screen conversation. Meanwhile, Robin had been glued to Nancy's side all season. The writers are smart, they could've inserted Vickie into the main group at any point, to give her and Robin a chance to bond, and to develop their relationship. It's been done before with other characters. If anything, it seems like the last thing the writers would want is to give clear preferential treatment to Robin's dynamic with a character who's (supposedly) not meant to be a love interest for her (especially in the season where the actual love interest is first introduced, and the audience has been mentally prepped for Robin to have romantic interactions). I'm not saying Robin can't have platonic female friends, I'm just pointing out interesting writing choices, and the usage of show vs tell.