#haley discourse

[sdv-confessions]

Sending this in on nations women’s day yay, and in honors of that, WOMEN IN STARDEW VALLEY ARE INTERESTING. Y’ALL IUST DON’T CARE ENOUGH TO LOOK. Hayley has one of the best character arcs in the game but, oh no, she’s “mean” but Shane’s just fine!! (not a dig on Shane, love him, just some of his fans) Maru can be funny asf if you take the time to READ HER DIALOG.

Jodi is one of my favorite characters by far. She loves her sons and husband but also wishes she had more freedom in her life. She’s just a kind soul who cares about her family, just wishes she could’ve had it a different way. Robin has an up and down relationship with her husband which results in a complicated one with her son. IT’S AN INTERESTING DYNAMIC. SHE IS NOT BORING BECAUSE SHE IS A WIFE AND MOTHER.

Penny has her whole Pam thing and not to mention, lots of quirks of her own. Like being bad at cooking which results in some really funny scenes. While I am not a fan of her, Caroline, has interesting family dynamics. And on that topic Abigail is more than a “manic pixie girl” god forbid a woman be into the occult. Again, she has really interesting dynamics. Even though her family dynamics are tense, she still says “I’m wearing our matching family sweater under my coat… Don’t tell Dad!” or something like that. She clearly still loves her family despite the ups complications. And she has a whole friend circle with Sam and Sebastian.

Emily is amazing. She has so many interest and quirks. And her relationship with her filled with so much thought. They’re so different, they argue and tease each other, but they love each other. They are all they have. Leah has a whole life before Pelican Town. She has dreams, hopes, aspirations, messy ex’s. Listen to me and LISTEN TO ME CLOSE. JUST BECAUSE A WOMEN HAS ROMANCE IN HER LIFE. DOES NOT MAKE HER BORING.

And then you got sweet granny Evelyn. Oh my Yoba, I love this woman so much. She loves her husband and grandson so much. Always tending to plants, making cookies for everyone. I would die for this woman. And then, on the opposite end, Jas. She is such a little sweet heart who deserved so much better in life. Her dynamic with Shane is so special. And her friendship with Vincent in Leo. Ugh. There is so much to this kid and she gets so much shit for being “creepy” THATS A CHILD.

Let’s move onto her god-aunt (?) Marnie. I will say it again and I will say it again loudly. JUST BECAUSE A WOMAN HAS ROMANCE IN HER LIFE DOES NOT MAKE HER BORING. Her relationship with Lewis is such an interesting part to the valley that adds so much drama and depth to these characters. The fact she takes Shane and Jas in, the fact she cares and worry’s so much for Shane. The way she cares for her animals.. ugh. I love her.

Moving onto our out of town girlies, we got Sandy and Birdy. Sandy is such a mystery, I love her. I do wish we got to know more about her, but her mystery is part of her charm. She’s just so fun to talk to. I wish I had more to say but unfortunately I only have around 5 hearts with her due to not going to the desert to much. And then Birdy… Her storyline is so tragic. I really wished we got to behind her. Her decision to watch over her husband’s bones is so UGH. No one should force her to move on. She has made her choice and it’s powerful.

And I think I’ve covered all Stardew woman. So maybe take from this rant… to read dialog. Because these woman are strong, flawed, and amazing.

.

[haley-harrison]

tbh the main cause of shipping wars is that jackles is too good at his job. Man has convincing chemistry with most of his coworkers, so depending on which scenes you focus on, you can gather a convincing argument for your ship of choice.

like if you look just at the first three seasons, j2 have such insane chemistry you have to be blind not to notice. (case in point, even my mother, who is otherwise a normal 62-y-o was like 'well that's not a normal brother relationship'). add the lack of significant alternative options, and it's clear why the early days had so many wincest shippers. Like, duh. You see two hot guys who look at each other with adoration (and lip-licking), brain's gonna ship. Fiction isn't reality anyway.

However, then comes s4. Now, I think Misha is awesome and funny and great, and obviously he and Jensen hit it off. Enough that it shows on screen. That said, the script was still written as Kripke intended, which is that Sam and Dean are obsessed with each other.

Because it's a fact, that Kripke read Siken's Crush, and also On the Road, and wrote Sam and Dean very much under that influence. And if you read either of those, you know they're about gay lovers.

So. There's a conflict between the script (which is samdean coded), and the acting (where jenmish actually gets more and more intense with time).

And the thing is, both sides of the fandom have solid 'evidence' on why their ship is (practically) canon. And it sucks to see people actually fight and insult each other.

I am a multishipper: I have an OTP but I see the appeal of other pairings and occasionally read those too. And I wish we could all see that plurality of opinions is good. Fiction is meant to be discussed, there isn't one correct answer.

At the end of the day, we're here to have fun with this trash show (affectionate), so maybe let's do that without judging?

[pathologicalreid]

thinking about how in 3x2 “in name and blood” haley accuses hotch of always needing to be the hero (real) which really hits home when you think about how He Couldn’t Save Her

[anti-transphobia]

Everyone posts about how Stardew Valley is a cozy LGBT+ inclusive game but NO ONE mentions the lack of a platonic option for the bachelors/bachelorettes. Which would be good for aspec people and also just more pleasant for many casual players I believe but that's not even the point. I just want to become best friends with everyone and not only does that require me dating everyone at once and feeling like a sleazebag because of it (ik the bad cutscene can be avoided but I know in my heart they'd be hurt if they knew) BUT it also means the women flirt with me!!!!! Constantly!!!!!!! It makes me sick to my stomach. Truly ruining the characters I liked

[othramblings]

Nathan made mistakes, yes. But, you seem to constantly have to point them down to try to detract from the fact that Haley cheated. They got back together, they got past it. But own up to the fact that your fave cheated, and that Nathan may have flirted but he never cheated. I can love them both. You don't have to tear him down nonstop.

Honestly, I’m not sure where this is coming from other than as a response to the couple posts I made today. I’m not sure what good answering you will do but I guess I will anyway. I do encourage people who disagree with me to talk to me too. I like seeing peoples different points of view. Haley critics often bring up Chris as a way to deflect from Nathan’s mistakes or anyone who criticizes him. That one mistake she made in season three as a 16-year-old does not mean that Nathan has reign to hurt her over multiple seasons without complaint from fans.

If you pay attention to my blog, you will know that I talk about Nathan’s mistakes because they’re not talked about much anywhere else. I also talk about them because if you know who the creator of the show is, so many of his gross ideologies come through in the character of Nathan. Why shouldn’t these issues be talked about? Why aren’t they talked about more? He is a raved about character who rarely gets any critical feedback. At best, it’s one critical comment for five defenses in response. Besides what I have posted, when is the last time you saw someone pointing out Nathan’s wrongdoing on the show? He makes decisions that negatively impact Haley almost every season and they go unremarked on by most people. His wrongdoings also aren’t really acknowledged on the show. Haley worked her way back to Nathan in season three over multiple episodes. The character herself also got less screen time and almost no solo storylines after the tour. That discrepancy doesn’t upset you?

I have said it before and I’ll say it again for you, but Haley going on tour and all the ways she did it wrong are talked about in depth anywhere where people are still discussing one tree hill. She gets hate for that decision all the time. If there was already an equal amount of criticism for Nathan, I wouldn’t be talking about it as much.

I just put out my opinions on this blog and you don’t have to agree with what I say or even read it. Also have I said anything about Nathan that wasn’t true? The recent remarks I made about Nathan and Taylor for example. Maybe it bothers you that I’m talking about it at all, but my commentary is all based on his actions and the fact that the show hardly acknowledges them and the fandom even less. Nathan, as a character gets so much exploration and depth on the show that it’s particularly messed up imo that what he puts Haley through gets overlooked in the narrative and by fans. I’ve said this multiple times. I could make post after post about Lucas, but there’s no need because the Internet has that covered. There is a lot of criticism for Lucas out there nowadays actually and I wonder if that bothers you as much as criticism on Nathan does.

I also encourage people who have different opinions to talk to me too. But I’ve made a handful of posts over the last several months, if even that, so my “constant” talk on Nathan is really more intermittent.

Adding this on bc come on people. You must come from the Sophia Bush world of cheating, where only technicalities count. Nathan was not faithful to Haley in season five. He still betrayed her. And unlike Haley, he didn’t just have this one storyline that dabbled in betrayal and dishonesty. 

[2soft2sensitive]

I have two wolves inside me, one is a high femme and the other is a trans man, and every night they fucking kill each other

[luvvyouforever]

thinking about a fem4fem relationship with haley ౨ৎ

❀ she gets so blushy and giddy when you compliment her, especially during the beginnings of your relationship. she'll hide it at first, going back home and thinking about your words all night, but eventually you get to see her sweet smile more and more.

❀ at first, she saw you as competition, or maybe just envy. you're the new farmer, you're pretty, you dress in cute clothes like her, you're drawing attention away from her. she pouts and grumbles everytime someone brings you up.

❀ but then she starts looking for you more. she starts admiring your flower dance dress, she roots for you at the egg hunt, she admires you when you're fishing at the pier while she's tanning. she brings all this up to alex, just rambling, and he looks at her like "seriously?"

❀ alex sweetly informs haley that she has a crush on you. she gets defensive, but when alex starts listing off all these "symptoms" of a crush, she blushes more and more.

❀ even though she knows she has a crush on you, she waits for you to say something first. she'll make hints and seek you out, but in no way will she potentially face the embarrassment of your rejection. when you finally ask her on a date, she's over the moon.

❀ loves loves loves coordinating outfits. you'll have bikinis in the same color, cute silk matching pajamas that she bought out in zuzu, similar winter coat shapes, matching cowboy boots. she always makes excuses like "they were on sale if you bought two!" but you know there's more to it.

❀ she enjoys peaceful nights at the farmhouse where you're doing your nightly routines together in the mirror, haley moisturizing her skin, you applying pimple patches.

❀ likes having you paint her nails. you'll sit on the couch, or maybe the front porch on a swing, her feet lazily perched in your lap while you apply pink polish to her toes. and then you reach for her hands and she keeps them as still as she can for you.

❀ genuinely thrives so much on your praise and love. and she takes it so seriously too! when someone like alex compliments her hair, she smiles, but he doesn't know the work that went into creating the perfect windswept blowout look. but you do.

❀ there's usually never much discourse about who spoons who or who "wears the pants" in the relationship. dating haley is balanced and things just fall the way they do. you know when to be the big spoon for her and she knows when to let you lay your head down in her lap, her fingers running through your hair.

❀ this is so cheesy and typical but she really does like when you give each other makeovers. it's so quiet and intimate and she relishes in your gentle touches on her face as you do her eyeliner. (also imagine this with an alt!farmer, like someone who gravitates towards a darker makeup style than her, and how fun it would be to switch styles for a night in the house).

❀ lowkey though your bathroom is a wreck. a hundred bottles in the shower, makeup scattered along the counter, sweet sticky notes stuck to the mirror, necklaces and jewelry hanging haphazardly on an organizer on the back wall.

❀ no matter who proposes to who and who receives the mermaid pendant, the other will get something of equal significance. haley would opt for a necklace of her own, something with your initials engraved on it.

❀ loves giving and receiving flowers. her eyes just light up so much when she walks in to a fresh bouquet of sunflowers, having just been plucked from your own garden and arranged beautifully. she thinks you would be a florist in another life. she prefers walking around the valley, taking pictures and collecting the prettiest wildflowers along the way to present to you.

❀ speaking of taking pictures, you're her best model! she'll take photos of you working on the farm, photos of you lying next to her on the beach, photos of you posed on the bed, dressed in little to nothing. says you make the prettiest photos for her.

❀ haley's lowk a freak in some ways. she kinda craves to be worshipped, but also wants to worship you. so she thrives on praise in and out of the bedroom. adores having you kiss her, tell her how beautiful she is, and she returns the favor for you.

❀ the easiest way to really get her flustered and needy is to ramp up the praise, making it almost extreme. tell her she's a goddess, she's a queen, nobody else could ever compare to her, you're so lucky to have such a pretty girl in your bed. she'll be like putty in your hands.

❀ the top/bottom and sub/dom dynamics are relatively balanced. i think it depends on the mood and the day and how sleepy haley is feeling. for example, she'd be more of a willing and dominant top if she's had a good day, like when you've laid out on the beach together in the summer and she's gotten the privilege to watch your body in a swimsuit all day long. she'd want to be cared for and treated though if it's a cold winter and she's huffy and overstimulated from her coat and scarf all day.

❀ she loves mutual masturbation, but will never say it out loud. she'll look so pretty with her splayed across your pillows, fingers between her legs, her bright blue eyes looking at you intensely as you pleasure your own self. you notice just how turned on she is and note to return to it again.

❀ loves bathing together and shamelessly running her hands all across your body, chalking it up to just washing off the farm from you (her words not mine), but really she's behind you biting her lips as her hands graze over your breasts and thighs.

❀ she's always watching and admiring you working. she sits on the front porch of your farmhouse, watching you harvest parsnips with your hair pulled back, your usual feminine clothes having been replaced by old farm gear. she's thinking long and hard about everything she wants to do with you.

[sdv-confessions]

I agree, I feel like all of the girls in stardew just fall into tropes for dudes in romance stuff. The one that stands out the most is Leah- she gives me the vibe of a very capable/more dominant woman in terms of relationships, but all her heart events are "oh wow farmer you sure are strong" in different fonts to some extent. Like lifting her into the tree for the apple. The rest are similar (Abi=Manic Pixie, Emily=Hippie Crystal chick, Penny=Tradwife Hayley=out of your league hot blonde girl, Maru= Doesn't get to have a real personality outside of being smart)

.

[priveetru]

Every headline mentions how she lost. Obviously every national news website is going to report on the second primary, that's their job. There's not a lot of ways to say Haley lost.

It is unhelpful and unhinged to read conspiracy into entirely normal and expected behavior.

The amount of coverage a clearly failing candidate is being given from the corporate media - in identical language ("Nikki Haley Vows To Fight On") - should tell you everything you need to know about how much the corporate overlords want her in place to keep the status quo they benefit from rolling on.

[digitalyumeangel]

☆ Hi I'm digitalyumeangel!! You can just call me Kiwi or Kris though! My main is @electricweekendzone and this is my yumeship/selfship blog!

☆ I use any pronouns honestly but I'm currently leaning towards she/he/they :3

☆ No DNI, I block freely, but please keep away syscourse + most discourse. I only interact with discourse of any kind on my own accord ^^;!

f/os list ; boothill (hsr), sebastian (sdv), herta (hsr), arven (pokemon), kaito (both vocaloid/pjsk versions), haley (sdv), acheron (hsr), silco (arcane), rafayel (lads), + more I'm probably forgetting

alter/headmate tags:

☪︎ moonlight serenade (Rei tag)

☆ that's really it I think? anyways thank you for reading and credits to @/lavendergalatic for the kanade graphics <3

[help-me-find-a-name-please-lol]

yeah so this is 95% me harbouring resentment for another post that crossed my dash re: if you hate haley brooks (hotchner) then you don't truly Understand aaron hotchner and are therefore an Inferior Fan™ of his.

(though I did also experience the same issue with fitzsimmons on m:aos. thankfully canon addressed that beautifully though and I can accept they are made for each other, even if I can't personally stand jemma.) anyway ...

I actually believe the one who never understood Aaron Hotchner was Haley.

Uncharitable take but when Hotch experienced love at first sight with Haley in high school, of course she saw something in him in return. He's handsome as hell, from an old family with old money (from what I can gather), and went to what sounds like a military-style (?) boarding school for a time. His upbringing and schooling would help him sweep her off her feet with gentlemanly charm, and his family and ambitions would have helped Haley see the good life ahead of her on top of all of that.

I highly doubt it was the kind of situation where she had to work to support him through law school and then FBI training. Certainly her mention of having a job before she went into witness protection made it sound like it was quite a new thing for her to be working (now that they are divorced). Sure, it's possible she gave up work to have and raise Jack, but as it's never mentioned we won't really know. I get the feeling though that a big driver in them bringing a child into the world was to try and fix some of the deterioration in their relationship from Hotch's travel with work, perhaps by giving her some company while he's away. The tensions in the relationship regarding him leaving for work are clear from the very first episode while Haley is still pregnant. While he clearly loves being a dad, puts everything into it when he can, and no doubt wanted to achieve the "perfect family" to go along with his initial ambitions to one day be FBI Director, I feel like there would have been more hesitation on Hotch's part given his upbringing and his concerns about raising a child while doing his job.

I understand that Haley's life not only didn't turn out as rosy as she expected, but also included some very real challenges that anyone would struggle with. It sucks when you're fully responsible for a child and all housework, family admin etc essentially 24/7/365 with no downtime (though plenty of single mothers do this while also working). It sucks to live in fear that your partner might not come home one day because they're doing a dangerous job. It sucks that their schedule constantly changes at the drop of a hat, and to know you'll always come in second to your partner's job. I get that it's not what she thought she was signing up for - at least at first anyway (though she knew the sitch before bringing Jack into it).

I don't think that excuses her cheating on Hotch. I don't think that sending him videos of his son, or letting him in to see him after he practically begs for it after a hard case, shows how good of a person she is. I didn't think she was particularly "strong as hell" in her last stand with Foyet, when she was so ready to listen to Foyet telling her how this was all Aaron's fault instead of thinking about fighting back against Foyet to at least try to take him out or slow him down before he could get to Jack. Certainly her own mistakes (eg. calling her mother after going into witsec) could have led to Foyet discovering which marshall was assigned to her, and certainly led to her discovery and death at the end (no common sense on that final call - eg. she should have expected the marshall service to know and use her new name, and esp. should not have returned to her old house). And to be the wife of an agent seemingly without learning any self-defence skills (you can accept you're going to die but still try and fight) makes it seem like she was content living in blissful ignorance about any danger extending from Hotch's job or from life in general - and certainly we glimpse some of that ignorance in the episode with the terrorism attempt at the shopping centre.

All of the above was about points raised in the other post that supposedly proved Haley was amazing and worthy of Hotch's love, especially given the amount of time they've invested in being together. But I never felt any depth there, right from episode 1. In suggesting Gideon as the name for their baby, Haley seems to be swept up in the same belief all new viewers of the show are supposed to have - that Gideon is the most amazing agent/profiler etc. Hotch clearly feels differently, and we see why as Gideon's character is deepened, his flaws are exposed, and his mistake ultimately leads to Hotch's suspension. Even then, Haley declares that the team needs Gideon back, not him. (Gideon, who in many ways actively pushed Hotch to neglect his home life, and couldn't be relied on to help with the few things asked of/left to him to take care of, eg. Reid's mentorship and help with his drug addiction).

That fight exposes many of the couple's old misunderstandings and ongoing arguments. When Hotch tells her to keep her voice down, Haley gets affronted as though he's controlling/denying her right to be angry, and adds this to his explanation about the severity of the case to mean that he's trying to make her out to be the monster. In reality, him telling her to keep her voice down is to protect Jack from the kind of volatile upbringing he had, and hints at how controlled he keeps his own emotions at all times for Jack's sake. She tells him that he always needs to be the hero, and him saying "Don't give me that" means it's clearly an accusation she's thrown at him before. We actually know his drive isn't about ego (hence him giving away his chance to move up beyond the BAU) and is about being the hero he never had. What matters to him are the victims, and that either he can help them with his dedication to his skills, or he can be a great example of servant leadership, staying late doing more than his share of the paperwork to facilitate his team to be the best they can be at saving people. It's sad that she doesn't seem to grasp exactly how good he is, and how much of a loss it would be for him to no longer do that work. To her, a job is just something you do (she says as much), and his is just a job she thinks any agent could do, and only Gideon is the real deal while the rest are just supporting characters. All of her lack of understanding about his drive and passion for the work he does is underscored by her saying "Obviously, a happy life isn't enough for you!" - like yeah, why are you only just now figuring this out? If it was, he would have just stayed a prosecutor. Instead, he wanted to make a bigger difference.

I hate that Hotch gets excited to spend his holidays doing house chores to try to make it up to Haley that he's dedicated to his job, so that he can stop feeling guilty for failing to be everything to everyone all at once. I hate that he still gets made to feel like a failure anyway. I hate that he clearly shields her from so many of the realities of his work, because that must get damn lonely for him. I hate that she cheated on him, and still expected to be worth him walking away from his calling in life for. I hate that he had to drag himself over the coals in front of her while he was lying in a hospital bed after multiple stabbings.

Sometimes outside observers can love a person or character more than that person loves themselves, and want them to find the kind of love they deserve in someone actually worthy of them. Sometimes they have a damn good point. Of course, that doesn't mean they get a say, and they'll still have to respect that person's/character's choice. You can do that without needing to agree with them. You can love someone without becoming them.

hot take but you can deeply know, love and understand a person - actual human or fictional character - and still wonder what the hell they see in the person (or character) they choose to love. Or even if you do understand what they see in their partner/love interest, you can still think it's a dumb match. Love isn't logical, but outside observers can be.

[theonethatwatchesalotofshows]

I may have come across as a prude in my other post about the portrayal of sex in That 90s Show and I want to assure you I am not. I was once a sexually active teen myself who had sexually active friends, but still the way they are so casual about it is extremely unrelatable to me. The characters in That 70s Show were also sexually active sooner or later but their arcs were just so much more relatable and true to life in my opinion. And I think that speaks of a bigger trend of how media has changed.

If you watch old shows from 90s and 00s, they are just overall more innocent and wholesome? Maybe sometimes too innocent (*cough* Gilmore Girls*cough*) but overall they just portray the awkwardness and sweetness of it much better. I know there were some problematic storylines that I am glad were buried since then like the whole student-teacher thing (even though I heard Riverdale did it in 2016?) overall I think those shows portrayed teendom better. Nowadays it seems like everything is for shock value and just to create discourse around the show. Think of Seth and Summer's awkward first time on The OC. Or Kelso and Jackie's/Donna and Eric's bad first times on That 70s Show. Blair's drunken first time with an asshole that she regrets at first on Gossip Girl.

(Obviously there were times when these storylines were too prudish to the point it was unrealistic. Aforementioned Gilmore Girls come to mind where Rory had a two year relationship where the furthest they got was kissing with tongue, Dawson's Creek where Joey pondered for months if she should lose her virginity to her long term boyfriend who she had known her whole life and her dilemma was juxtaposed with Dawson's dilemma about whether to unplug a dying guy from his life support, The Secret Life of American Teenager where Amy got pregnant on her first time and Grace's dad died in a plane crash after hers. Then there was the unhinged moment in One Tree Hill where Haley and Nathan got married in high school to be able to have sex. No I am not talking about these specifically.)

Compare that to how Kat was mocked for being a virgin at *gasp* 16 on Euphoria and told she needs to "catch a dick" so she ends up sleeping with an asshole who records it, puts it on PornHub and makes her famous, which prompts her to start making money by doing porn. She's not the only one from her class too, Maddy, Jules and Cassie are all 16-17 year old girls that also have sex tapes of them. Maddy also casually lost her virginity at 14 to a 40 year old man put she was "totally in control". Jules has been sleeping with random grown men from dating apps since she turned 16. Maddy also jumps into the pool at a party with a college boy and starts having sex with him/pretending to be having sex with him in front of everyone and it's not even the most scandalous thing to happen at that party. See how that seems to be made just for shock value with no substance or attempt at relatability?

It's similar with That 70s Show vs That 90s Show- on the former the characters were sexually active but there was that awkwardness about it whereas on That 90s Show apart from Leia everyone seems super experienced, confident and like they've been having sex for years despite the fact that they are even younger that the characters on That 70s Show. Everyone even found it weird that Leia didn't have a first kiss yet at the age of 15 and took her to the mall to kiss a random guy. I really wish the point of that episode was "don't feel pressured and take your time" but no instead that episode ended with Leia literally forcing herself on a guy while he was working just so she can have her first kiss over with. What kind of message is that sending? That 90s Show characters when it comes to sex seem to have the experience of the average college student, not the average sophomore/junior in high school. Same can be said about Euphoria.

"But teen shows have always pushed the envelope" well yes and the aforementioned Gossip Girl and Skins come to mind but even then, it wasn't just constant meaningless fucking everyone all the time. Similarly to Euphoria, on the first episode of Skins, Tony tells Sid that he needs to lose his virginity ASAP because he's almost 17 and it's "embarrassing". Yet Sid doesn't succumb to the pressure and doesn't do it just because. It is implied he only does it once he is in a relationship with Cassie. And he is not even the only character who is a virgin in that generation, there is also Anwar who also loses it when it feels right not because he is pressured to. Yes there are characters that are sexually active (although it is more over the top than in real life) but also virgins, and that is more true to life than Kat being the only virgin left in the entire high school. I even know some people in 2nd or 3rd year of college who are virgins and that's okay. No one really shames them and tells them that they need to "catch a dick asap" and if someone does then they're an asshole.

However I will say that Never Have I Ever is one new show that did it right.

[timdrakeinorder]

Batman #442 (My thoughts)

Alfred has known him for ONE NIGHT and he already gets Master Timothy status. It's unreal how fast he got endeared to this little shit. Alfred and Tim's relationship is so underrated and I will never stop saying it! In a way, Alfred mentored him before Dick or even Bruce did. Alfred has such an important role in teaching him how to be a support for Batman, and accepting how dangerous what they do is as someone on the sidelines

Alfred is so strong, he really doesn't get enough credit for how hard being Batman's guy in the chair, emotional support, nurse, and father is. He could lose his son every single night and he just has to sit at home and hope for the best

Right of the bat (hehe) Tim has SO much respect and appreciation for Alfred and it's really nice to see.

Hey look, it's the profile thumbnail!

It's like Tim can't physically restrain himself from jumping in to help when he sees a problem. He's so worried

This is where we get into one of my biggest gripes with fanon, the "tim forced batman to make him robin" thing, and also a bit of the "bruce was irresponsible and chose to endanger a random civilian child" thing, although the 'are robins child soldiers?' discourse is too heavy for me to get into.

The biggest problem I have with it is when Dick and especially Alfred are portrayed as being against the decision and forced to accept it by Bruce

As with a lot of fanon, it's rooted in canon and then horribly exaggerated. Tim talks Alfred into taking him to save Bruce and Dick, despite multiple attempts to talk him down both in the cave and in the car. Tim followed Dick all the way to Haley's circus to try and talk him into being Robin, if Alfred didn't drive him the little shit absolutely would've found his way to the fight anyways the second the man turned his back. He's extremely stubborn. And, as established in earlier installments, Batman has been reckless to the point where it is VERY likely he'd die out of his own lack of self-regard any day. I really can't blame Alfred for having a moment of weakness here. Bruce means more to him than anything in the world and Alfred can see that in Tim.

This is also where we get into the "did Tim stalk the bats and take pictures of them regularly?" fanon discourse. I definitely don't think there's canon support that he was following them every night on patrol as an extremely young child (he didn't even figure out their identities until he was 9. I've seen writers make him as young as FOUR trying to follow them and as a big sister to a 4 year old, y'all are insane) That being said, I think his use of the word "followed" could be interpreted in a few ways. It would be a perfectly valid interpretation that he means 'followed' in the way one follows the news, as in keeping track of. However, he does have A LOT of pictures of Batman and Robin and, in my opinion, a lot of them don't look like newspaper clippings. Plus Batman and Robin are rarely caught on film, I don't think the newspapers would catch them often enough for Tim to build a collection that big.

Tim also knows when Titans meetings are, where Dick's apartment with kori is and the fact that they're together as well as knowing what angle to peep through the window at and where to view both the tower and that apartment stealthily. He knows where Dick's New York apartment is, he knows how to get in, he knows how to get into Dick's safe.

He DID manage to follow Batman to that fight on the dam and photograph it.

I think that's too much evidence to completely dismiss the idea that he's followed them before

And here's the real kicker about the 'Tim forced them' thing. TIM DID NOT GO IN WANTING TO BE ROBIN! TIM SEES THIS AS THE ONLY SOLUTION TO BATMAN'S SELF-DESTRUCTIVE VIOLENT SPIRAL!

Tim is selfish. He is stubborn. He's reckless. He wants to help no matter the risk. He sees a problem that affects him deeply out of a VERY parasocial relationship and demands to be able to fix it no matter what anyone else has to say about the matter. And he's a 13 year old boy with a heart too big for his chest. Tim was made to be robin

(coming back for part two after work. we're still only on page seven and I have MUCH more to say)

[luxe-pauvre]

What does it mean to participate and benefit from a culture you also want to denounce? Is denouncement enough? It’s a question that’s dominated another arena of online discourse over the last year: literary criticism. There was Lauren Oyler’s viral criticism of Jia Tolentino’s popular book Trick Mirror, where she accused Tolentino of pointing out problems in culture as a means to an end, as if she had no option to actually resist them through behavior. “Tolentino’s elective self-confinement,” Oyler wrote, “is supposed to make her seem like a martyr, but what she sells is not herself; it’s a shoddy mode of thinking that says everything a person does… remains a matter of ‘survival’ rather than a demonstration of priorities and desires.” You’ll find a similar line of thinking among those who defend ‘selling out’ with the idea that it’s everyone’s right to “get their bag,” no matter how much doing so compromises their stated moral framework. Last month, in a piece for The New Yorker called “Has Self-Awareness Gone Too Far in Fiction?,” Katy Waldman made a similar point to Oyler, but about novelists instead of essayists. “These self-conscious times have furnished us with a new fallacy,” Waldman writes. “Call it the reflexivity trap. This is the implicit, and sometimes explicit, idea that professing awareness of a fault absolves you of that fault—that lip service equals resistance.”

Haley Nahman, #24: The Emily Ratajkowski effect

[hero-israel]

It's possible, but only if the Republicans become a lot saner than they've been in the last 30 years.

Poll after poll shows normie America is highly sympathetic to Israel. Our online discourse is not politically real. One of the founding members of the DSA, Maurice Isserman, just angrily resigned over their antisemitism after 40+ years. He's not going to start voting right-wing. I don't think DSA is salvageable and don't particularly want it salvaged, any more than I'd want the Aryan Nations salvaged. Among the normie gentile voting public, I'd like to believe there will be a backlash against leftist support for genocidal terrorism. They deserve it, just like Corbyn's Labour deserved theirs.

Will leftist antisemitism crack the Democratic Party apart? The youth vote is unreliable, and Jewish Americans have an outsized role in philanthropic and political donations. Nearly all Americans are sick of Trump, and of the Trump vs Biden dynamic, and want an end to the fever dream of the last 8 years. But we are almost guaranteed to get more of the same - which means Jewish voting patterns will stay the same, and not abandon Biden for Trump. If 2028 is some DSA paraglider-chud vs Nikki Haley, then I would reasonably expect a change.