#how to handle this problem

[magicalmagecats]

as a reader, I LOVE a slow burn

as a writer, I hate them <3

[metamatronic]

part 2

weird of “hand unit” to go ask michael to investigate the remains of MCM. wonder what he wants him to find down there. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[zombolouge]

The thing is, it's not about the Therapy Speak. It's not that everyone who disliked DAV hates healthy communication as a dynamic in fiction. It's not even about only being allowed to be a good guy, really, because most of us did do that anyways (though the option not being there is a loss I grieve even if I never chose it myself, but that's another rant for another day).

It's that DAV does all that stuff at the expense of being believable. At the expense of characters being permitted to have personalities. At the expense of emotions behaving the way emotions actually work for people. At the expense of letting the plot build tension through the stakes we're forced to grapple with.

Half the fics out there take the conflicts between the characters in the previous games and resolve them. I do it myself ALL THE TIME because I like to find a path to resolution through just about any conflict, that's what fascinates me about telling these stories. But the higher the stakes, the harder a conflict is to resolve. You CAN resolve any conflict, you CAN communicate healthily through any emotion, but you can't skip the time it takes to process it all to even be able to communicate it. As someone whose got CPTSD and recovered from many Traumas, I can tell you that the TIME it takes to work through it is not something you can fast track, and the ups and downs of your emotions on that journey can't be skipped. It doesn't matter if you know exactly how to do it, exactly how it's going to feel, or exactly what the end state will be, you CAN'T speedrun it.

DAV has stakes that are astronomical, but nobody treats them that way. Nobody experiences denial - a common psychological reaction to being presented with information that shatters your worldview. Nobody expresses any distrust in the establishments handing out this information - something common among cultures that have at times been at war, even if those wars are "resolved" in the present. Nobody really ever breaks down - something that any person is capable of under extreme circumstances, especially when facing multiple crises of faith that challenge everything they thought they knew about themselves. Nobody blows their lid because they've been repressing the hell out of everything. Nobody grieves for southern Thedas, the entire thing dying off screen and giving you, the player, NO way to engage with it in any way.

Not to mention there are barely any inter-party conflicts, when there should be a lot more. Why is everyone (except Spite) fine with it if Emmrich sacrifices Manfred to become a lich? Why is everyone fine with Illario potentially being set free if he was working with the venatori and Elgar'nan, two sources that have actively attacked everyone in the party? Why doesn't Neve resent Lucanis if Treviso is picked? Why doesn't Harding get pissed off at Nevarra for having a secret society of liches that never helped during the Inquisition's war against the breach and corypheus? Why doesn't Harding feel ANYTHING about Ferelden and the rest of the south? Shouldn't Harding resent the fact that she's stuck in the north while her home dies?

All of these conflicts ARE resolvable, but not easily. And it's not believable that they're never brought up. It's not believable that these characters skip through everything that happens with like, barely a frowny face most of the time. In DAO, Alistair leaves if you don't treat his conflicts with respect. In DA2, your party members try to kill each other if you don't pay attention to their conflicts/emotional needs. In DAI, people can leave or betray you, Cassandra throws a chair at Varric and tries to body him out a window. ALL of these can be resolved but it takes effort, and the characters get to SHOW that they're bothered by them and struggling the way a person would when faced with those emotions.

The problem isn't the therapy speak, or that everyone is loyal and won't leave, or that they aren't mean to each other enough. It's that it's toxic positivity. It's toxic as fuck to imply that anger or grief should be smiled over or else you're giving up, and it's damaging to people to avoid engaging with their own negative emotional responses to extremely negative stimuli. It's pasting optimism over very real, very weighty issues, sweeping it all under the rug, and you keep waiting for the lid to blow off the pressure cooker that creates, but it never does. It never becomes anything that emulates real emotions, which is why the whole damn thing feels hollow. Everything's dying and nobody cares, not even about themselves, and that's NOT healthy communication.

It's bullshit, half-assed storytelling that didn't tell us the actual story, just the vague idea of what it could have been.

[lygma-nygma]

Being a batfam fan is funny because people will make a post like “here’s my headcanon-“ and it’s just something that’s directly canon to the story then post about major canon events and get everything wrong.

[oh-my-grayson]

An Unnecessary Analysis on Dick Grayson and the Themes of Replacement in His Story

Been re-reading some of the N52 comics (specifically the Batman Vol 1 and 2 TPs and the Night of the Owls collection), and I was reminded that the fear of replacement is such a large recurring theme for the characters more oftenly associated with Batman. Whether it be the characters themselves feeling that fear of replacement or others feeling that fear in relation to the characters, it's reappears so frequently that it's hard not to begin seeing it in everything.

The most commonly referenced examples are, of course, the Robin boys and their very tragic stories. Dick being replaced by Jason when he's fired by Bruce (in the more commonly accepted canon), then Jason being replaced by Tim when he's killed by the Joker, and then Tim being replaced by Damian when Bruce is lost in time and Dick takes over as Batman and needs to give Damian an outlet.

I've talked each of those instances to death already, both on this blog and to my offline friends when they decide to humor me, but a moment that I want to focus on now is one that came up specifically in the N52 comics.

Because Dick's origin at the circus is, in and of itself, a story about replacement.

Vols 1 and 2 follow the Court of Owls making a move on Gotham and those in charge of the city (alongside a few infamous individuals who lack actual control but impact the city itself through other, less savory, means), and in them we learn that Dick's great grandfather, William Cobb, is a Talon, and that Haly's Circus is, and has been for a very long time, a means of scouting and training new Talons for the Court.

Furthermore, in one of the stories featured in the Night of the Owls collection, we're introduced to Alton Carver, a Talon recruited from the circus as a young boy who served the Court for an unusually long stretch of time, but who'd progressively become less and less efficient. When he's told by a member of the Court that they're thinking of retiring him, that they've found his replacement (that key word again), he goes to the circus to see for himself the child that the Court's talking about. This child winds up being Dick Grayson, but what Alton has to say about him is this: "I needed to see him. The one who would take my place. No one had to tell me who he was. I could see it. And I could feel it. It was him. And for the first time in decades... I felt fear."

Emphasis on that fear he says he feels. He knows he's being replaced, and he's looking at the boy that will take his place and seeing exactly why the Court has chosen him to do so.

In the end, this is all just to say that the themes of replacement and the fear of being replaced are concepts that are seemingly ingrained into the story of Batman and its characters, but specifically the character of Dick Grayson.

His legacy is intertwined in unwilling replacement after unwilling replacement, so much so that he's most often referenced as being the first to be replaced in regards to the role of Robin, but he, himself, was originally destined to be the replacement of another man who could no longer service his designated purpose— a man who was no longer wanted.

The story of Robin, beginning with Dick, mirrors the story of the Talons and how the Court replaces them when they can no longer do their job with the required efficiency, and we see this in the same line of thinking in the various Robins as each of them are eventually made to drop the mantle and see it picked up by another, younger boy. Whether it's true or not, the Robins each felt that they could no longer do their job to the standards they were being held to and developed insecurities centered around those feelings of inadequacy when comparing themselves to their replacements.

(For the record, it isn't true, there are all very valid reasons for each boy evolving beyond Robin, and the entire family is just incapable of communicating with one another so the feelings of inadequacy are perpetuated and the real reasons— fear of loss, death and grief, and simply out-growing the lessons and security the role of Robin offers— are never explained which breeds further insecurity and resentment towards themselves and their respective replacements, or those that facilitated the replacing).

I think this also is ironic, or maybe just interesting, when put into relation to the fact that Dick was being groomed to be a Talon like his many predecessors before him, but when Dick is told this by Cobb, he responds by stating he doesn't believe in destiny. Despite the fact that he is the first in a cycle that mirrors the way the Court works, thus, in same way, fulfilling that destiny even if it isn't as a Talon.

Anyways, thanks for coming to my very rushed analysis, I'll see myself out now.

[flawlessflesh]

▒ SHAME ▒

read left to right! set a few weeks after farhang got cecil, who is still struggling with both new and old circumstances.

[niceandshiny]

Ursula using Hades to deliver a potion order and then paying him with a Fire Extinguisher is genuinely the funniest shit to happen in this game in a long time. Ursula, they can never make me hate you.

[jamiesfootball]

One of the things that hurts the most about Roy smacking the fork out of Jamie’s hand at Ola’s — aside from the show wanting to play for laughs what was an incredibly jarring moment. Like, there would have been other ways to accomplish the same joke of ‘haha, Jamie doesn’t know what he’s getting into’ without resorting to as violent a gesture that Jamie — with his known history of abuse and habit of flinching away from sudden potentially violent gestures — had to flinch and protectively cover his hands against his chest, reminding us, the audience, of that history of abuse. Roy could’ve pulled the plate and the fork away. He could’ve eaten the meatball Tom Wambsgans-style. He could’ve even glared him into putting it down.

But no, what hurts the most about that scene at Ola’s isn’t Roy snacking the fork out of Jamie’s hand. Or the waitress admonishing him like making a mess and wasting food was the problem. Or Roy apologizing to the waitress and then telling Jamie to clean up the mess

What hurts the most is in the next cut to him, Jamie actually has cleaned the mess off the wall

[starcurtain]

I don't have the time at the moment to write a full essay but someone should definitely remind me to write a post later on the phenomenon that is Ratio's assholery being sanded away by well-meaning fans.

In a quest to fight against the "Ratio is a condescending jerk" stereotype from Ratio haters, pro-Ratio fans have now swung too far the other way, making him into a saint who loves everyone, isn't disdainful of failure, and believes every single person can equally pull themselves up out of mediocrity.

None of those things are actually true based on the game itself, where Ratio is, in fact, a judgmental person who struggles to accept the mundanity of those around him, believes in an educational elite, and can be exceptionally condescending, whether he means it or not.

He's a flawed character. His own flaws are absolutely central to his character, in fact. And yet none of his flaws preclude him from being meaningful, nuanced, and likeable.

It's okay that he's not actually that nice.

In defending a character from one extreme ("he's a bad person"), we don't have to jump all the way to the other side ("he's an angel").

He can be a little bit of a dick and still be a great character, promise.

[sereinreality]

no thoughts just carol watson telling john that sherlock wants him to win and how the only person who survived the final problem was john watson

[casscainmainly]

Have you and could you do a thought on jason chart? He and cass are my faves

The Feelings About Jason Todd Alignment Chart

Cass, Dick, and Tim versions. This is VERY contestable, Jason's canon history is inconsistent so a lot of these are subject to preferred runs/personal interpretation. So, as usual, open to change!

[trans-axolotl]

i think i recall some info you've posted about suicide hotlines, sorry if i've mixed you up with someone else. with the lgbt youth silo being disbanded under 988 next month, do you think it'll have an impact on people? part of me wants to believe if 988 sucks then who cares. but if lgbt youth have been helped by this subservice then it's another kick in the teeth.

Yeah probably was me you were thinking of, I've posted quite a bit about the problems with 988 in terms of all the ways they collaborate with cops, do "nonconsensual active rescue" and involuntarily hospitalize people.

And honestly this is one of the reasons I said from the beginning that I didn't think hotlines such as the Trevor Project and other independent hotlines should have became part of the 988 network. Mostly because I think that 988 is a deeply unethical hotline and I don't think that other hotlines should have agreed to uphold the mandatory nonconsensual rescue policies that are required to become part of the 988 network, but also because then their operation becomes even more closely tied to federal funding and federal policy changes, and it opened the door to something like this happening.

I certainly don't think it's good that the fed government specifically cut this service and are signaling that they don't care about supporting suicide prevention for LGBTQ and specifically trans youth, but I also don't think the solution to that is pouring more money into unethical hotlines or lobbying into getting this service back into 988. I think the solution is supporting independent hotlines like the trans lifeline or thrive lifeline that don't collaborate with cops, trying to direct more funding to them so that they can support an increased influx of calls, and sharing those hotline numbers so that more LGBTQ youth are aware there are other LGBTQ hotline services out there. I also think there should be more of an organized effort to get other hotlines to quit working with the cops, quit working with 988, and implement the crisis callers bill of rights.

[kaizokuseb]

buffy the vampire slayer is a show about a badass young woman doing everything right while the people around her act like she needs to walk on eggshells to protect their fragile little egos and also save their lives on the daily

[fruitpunchfrog]

Something like this has surely been said before but I really like Shin’s backstory regarding the lab. Like you hear he was raised in a lab and you think “oh shit they probably did weird fucked up experiments on him because he’s clairvoyant and that’s what happens when characters say they were raised in labs” but then Shin says how growing up in the lab wasn’t bad and you start to question before you get to Asakura’s flashback and it’s revealed that yeah life was pretty good for Shin in the lab and things didn’t go wrong until he accidentally drank the clairvoyance solution because the adults in the lab couldn’t handle Shin’s powers. All this just to tell you that the adults in Shin’s life didn’t fail him because they abused him and made him a lab rat but because he was weird and different in a way they couldn’t tolerate, which is so mundane that it might be worse.

[varpusvaras]

Of course Fox likes Luke. He loves Luke. The kid is kind, brilliant, devoted, all of that. Fox loves Luke, and he wishes that he and Leia could've known each other their whole lives.

He is also, secretly, extremely grateful about only having to raise one of the twins, because Leia has already made him even grayer than working on Coruscant ever did, and Luke is giving her a run for her money. And she has a lot of it.

[doctorsiren]

thinking about ???%…but…but with adult mob :(