#including his strength

[nerdpoe]

Kon, in an effort to blow off steam after another argument with Superman, goes to bumfuck nowhere. He meets a small-time hero named Phantom.

Phantom is happy to lend a listening ear, nodding along sympathetically and giving Kon fantastic ideas to fuck with Superman.

Then he stops Kon with an increasingly concerned expression.

"Wait-and all of his friends are saying he isn't normally like this?"

"Yeah, according to Dinah he may be like, projecting or something-"

"On a scale of 1-10, how different is he?"

Kon stops and frowns, thinking.

"I dunno, apparently he's like, super kind and empathetic? Normally? Now he's just an asshole though."

"And this just...happened. Apparently."

"Yeah, he came back after being dead, took one look at me, and decided that being his 'nice and normal self' was too much work."

Phantom looks sick.

"So don't take this the wrong way, but I think I need to actually fight Superman."

OR: Superman was cruel to Kon when he came back because he was possessed, and the ghost possessing him was clever enough to bypass pinging on any of the JLD radar. It was behaving like itself towards Kon because it knew that Kon had no one to report it to that would take it really seriously, so long as it pretended to be kind to everyone else. So it was treating Kon like stress-relief. But Danny realizes it. And the only way Danny knows how to perform a successful exorcism is to punch the ghost out of somebody. Literally. (also the fenton peeler but that thing freaks him out)

[stil-lindigo]

the fox god.

a comic about a trickster.

--

creative notes:

–

all my other comics

store

[captainofthetidesbreath]

[blows a kiss out to sea] for the Mighty Nein pirates arc

[alinelie]

sheet for kian

victor's sheet

[ride-a-dromedary]

The tempests and storms that lurk just beneath Halsin's skin; how ferociously he defends those who cannot defend themselves; how protection and defense is sometimes messy and blurry and blinded by fury even when coming on the heels of passion; how he chooses to be placid and calm and gentle - how he insists that violence is not always the answer - but poke the bear one too many times and he will maul you, no hesitation.

[idolomantises]

there's something so comforting about artists you admire talking about their own struggles and insecurities

[redvelvetwishtree]

[ladyrijus]

Thinking about how Link trembled before Mipha's statue in Breath of the Wild as he remembered who she was to him, and how his heart must have ached in Tears of the Kingdom when he saw her again in the beautiful court built in her name.

[silverwhittlingknife]

Has Tim ever put Dick on a pedestal?

100% yes! This is basically Tim's backstory IMO. Prior to meeting Dick in Lonely Place of Dying, Tim's a kid who's got a distant, idealized, made-for-TV vision of Dick and Bruce - mostly Dick - and he sets out on a quest based entirely around that misperception.

Aaaand then he immediately crashes headfirst into reality, because the Dick Grayson and Bruce Wayne he remembers from his childhood memories and daydreams are like this:

But it turns out that the actual real-life human people are a bit more, uh, cranky than Tim's glossy vision - things are tense and neither of them are super-happy to meet Tim:

And Tim has to rethink a bunch of his mistaken deductions as it slowly dawns on him that - far from being a plucky team - Dick and Bruce are actually not getting along at all:

And so Tim has to realize his whole plan of "Dick has to be Robin again!!! That will fix everything!!! :)))))" was actually wrong, and based on a misunderstanding of Bruce and Dick's relationship. And having realized he was wrong, he immediately sets about trying to figure out what he’s failed to understand in the most intrusive way possible—by asking lots of nosy questions!

Actually-meeting-Dick is basically the end of Tim’s super-idealized vision of Dick. It's not a vision that can survive contact with an actual human being who's snapping at you. And kid!Tim is (I love him but) extremely pushy and annoying, and Dick's a prickly young adult who is not above getting annoyed, which means Dick snaps at him pretty regularly.

But Tim does continue to admire him.

So for their various interactions after Lonely Place of Dying, IMO "does Tim have Dick on a pedestal" is kind of a judgment call based on your assessment of Dick's relative strengths/virtues. What's unambiguous: Tim has a consistently higher opinion of Dick than Dick does of Dick, and they argue about it a lot.

I had way too many thoughts about this, so below the cut:

Comics where Dick and Tim have conversations along the lines of Dick: "I suck and I'm failing at everything." Tim: "That's not true!! Actually you're great and you're succeeding at the thing you think you're failing at!!"

So who's right - Dick or Tim?

Dick and Tim's high opinions/expectations of each other: the plusses and minuses

Comic examples

Here are a couple different variations on Tim thinking that Dick is great (often when Dick's less sure):

in Showcase, Tim thinks that Dick’s a way better teammate than Azrael, even as Dick’s thinking himself as a failure who let the Titans down; 

in Prodigal, Dick tells Tim a story about confronting Two-Face which to Dick symbolizes a moment of great failure and which Tim insists was a no-win situation where Dick did the best he could;

also in Prodigal, Dick’s despairing over how badly he thinks their encounter with Killer Croc went and meanwhile Tim thinks it went fine (after all, Dick listened to him and called an ambulance instead of beating up Croc!), and Tim tells Dick to lighten up and Dick talks about how he’s a failure; 

in Nightwing 6, Dick thinks he’s doing badly in Blüdhaven and he’s self-conscious about it and paranoid about what Tim might tell Bruce, and Tim insists that the fact that Dick’s being targeted means he’s succeeding and getting close instead of failing, and Dick retorts that this won’t be comforting if he winds up dead because getting close just isn’t good enough; 

also in Nightwing 6, Tim thinks Dick was a better Robin than Tim is, and Dick thinks he wasn’t that great and that Tim’s better;

post-Last Laugh, Tim’s insistent that Dick's being too hard on himself about attacking the Joker whereas Dick's really haunted by the experience and confides that it feels like he's discovered a terrible dark side of himself;

way later in Nightwing 110, Tim’s seeking Dick out and Dick’s trying to avoid him because he thinks he’s a bad person who’d be bad for Tim;

in BW: Murderer, Tim doesn’t trust Bruce absolutely, but in Red Robin, he does trust Dick absolutely (or at least, more than Tim trusts himself);

etc. etc. etc.

Who's right: Dick or Tim?

So, is Tim being too easy on Dick and looking at him with rose-colored glasses, and Dick’s harsher view of himself is the correct one; or is Dick a perfectionist who’s being too hard on himself, and Tim’s the one who’s actually seeing Dick’s strengths more clearly?  

I don’t think the comics really commit one way or another! These are moments of multiple-perspectives, where we notice that Tim has one attitude and Dick has another attitude and that tells us things about the characters, not moments that are meant to resolve to a simplistic “one person is Right and one person is Wrong.”  I think often you could argue that they're both right? So, like, if you wanted to take the approach of, "Tim's idolizing him but he's not actually as great as Tim thinks," I don't think the comics precisely contradict that interpretation.

... THAT SAID, look, I am a Dick Grayson fan at heart, and I tend to lean toward “Dick’s being too hard on himself.” 

Tim’s not oblivious to Dick’s flaws—he immediately figures out, for example, that Dick’s gonna attack the Joker, and rushes off to stop him; he just isn’t as judgmental about this moment as Dick is, and he doesn’t think it makes Dick an awful person forever.  The point is (Tim says later, practical-minded) that it was made right, and Dick shouldn’t beat himself up about it.  In Prodigal, Tim’s not unaware that their fight with Croc went badly; he’s just focused on how Dick’s morals and teamwork-centric attitude feel right to him in a way that Azrael’s didn’t, and look, Tim didn’t get shot even though he got shot at, and isn’t that the important thing?  Tim gets caught in the same ambush that Dick does in Nightwing 6; he just takes the glass-half-full attitude toward it while Dick takes the glass-half-empty attitude.  And so on.

Tim admires Dick, looks up to him, trusts him, interprets his flaws generously, and doesn’t think he’s a failure. And... this isn't quite in the comics, but it doesn't contradict them: I like to imagine Dick feeling like he's on a pedestal, and feeling kinda uncomfortable with Tim's admiration when he's forced to realize it exists, and feeling like he doesn't deserve it, and sometimes subconsciously braced for the other shoe to drop, convinced that Tim can't possibly really think this forever, that he's deluded somehow, and that eventually Tim will realize who Dick really is and get disillusioned and leave.

And I tend to think of Dick having this problem a bit with everyone in his life who thinks highly of him, but especially with Tim, because he doesn't feel like Tim's ever needed him or that he's done anything worth Tim's admiration. I feel like Dick - despite some insecurities - does know his own worth as a team leader, and he knows he was a good partner to Bruce, and he understands when he's helping people who are clearly floundering, like Damian and Rose. But all he's ever done for Tim is...hang out, and be nice. And he doesn't think Tim ever needed fixing or saving, and he vastly underestimates both the value of his own friendship in general and how much it's meant to Tim in particular. Not all the time, because later in their relationship when they've known each other for years I do think Dick does feel a bit more secure in that friendship and entitled to make demands based on it (and vice versa, for Tim). But I do imagine Dick periodically feeling like Tim lets him off the hook too easily, and thinks more highly of him than he should, and alternating between being grateful for it and uncomfortable with it.

But I would argue that Dick does deserve Tim’s admiration! 

Look, Dick's not a perfect person - no one is. He does screw up sometimes, and sometimes he's petty or jealous, and sometimes his temper gets the better of him. But he is pretty great! He's brave and thoughtful and kind and generous and caring. He takes his own grief and his own suffering and devotes himself to helping other people. And Tim sees that. Tim watches an orphaned kid crying on stage, and has nightmares about it - and later recognizes the hero in him. Tim stops Dick from beating the Joker to death, and he holds Dick back from strangling Hugo Strange, and he talks Dick down from two separate panic attacks, and he listens to Dick monologue about his various perceived failures, and he gets yelled at a lot when Dick's annoyed with him, and his takeaway from all of that is that he believes in Dick, and trusts Dick, and thinks he's a hero.

You could see that as Tim having him on a pedestal and refusing to acknowledge the ugly reality. But I tend to see it as Tim understanding that Dick's flaws and occasional missteps don't define who he is - the fact that Dick's human doesn't make him any less of a hero. Tim can see the hero that Dick can't always see in himself.

Dick and Tim have really high opinions of each other... for better or worse

Tim's not alone in having a high opinion of Dick - Dick thinks Tim's pretty great, too! Dick repeatedly compares himself to Tim and finds himself wanting, whether he's thinking that Tim's a better partner for Bruce, or having a fear toxin nightmare where Tim's a rival who's beating him out of a job, or deciding that Tim would never have let Blockbuster die (and that he'll be better off if Dick avoids him), or musing that Tim would be a better Batman. Dick calls Tim his equal and closest ally in Red Robin; Tim thinks Dick is "the best" in his origin story and basically never changes his mind.

I think nowadays we're sometimes pretty highly-attuned to the way that high expectations can be bad or oppressive, and... I have mixed feelings about this? On the one hand, it isn't untrue! Dick and Tim's mutual high opinions of each other, and correspondingly high expectations, are not an unmixed blessing! They 100% cause problems! Dick and Tim think highly of each other, and expect a lot from each other, and sometimes they're pushy or abrupt or demanding when they could stand to be more sensitive. And the iffy side of high expectations is something I find interesting, and I do think it's solidly canon-based - you see aspects of this in several of their comic conflicts - LPoD, Graduation Day, BftC, RR, etc.

But at the same time, it's complicated! I don't think you can fully untangle the higher expectations from "they rely on each other and have a lot of faith in each other." Love and trust are different things, and Dick and Tim care a whole lot about being trusted, not just about being loved.

I also think it's important that their belief in each other is often a gift rather than an inevitability: Dick and Tim choose to see each other in positive ways. Something they both do is after they have a conflict, they'll apply on a retrospective very positive gloss to whatever just happened. So e.g. Dick starts Resurrection mad at Tim, and ends it by declaring, "I let you make the choice... because I knew you'd make the right one." Tim spends most of Red Robin 1-12 mad at Dick, and ends it by declaring that he knew Dick would catch him because Dick's always there for him. And in both cases, we-the-readers are aware that they knew no such thing! But to me, that doesn't make these declarations meaningless - it makes them more meaningful. Their faith in each other is sometimes genuinely felt, and sometimes it's something they stubbornly brute-force into existence because they want to give that gift to each other.

And I mean... Tim did make the right choice. Dick was there when it really counted. Just because it isn't the whole truth doesn't mean it's not a truth.

Now, does this positivity also put some pressure on them? Absolutely! They're both people who are very upset by failure, so they tend to reassure each other by insisting that there was no failure, could never be failure, failure is impossible, even when they know perfectly well that's not true. They praise each other's skills as a love language, when what they mean is I love you no matter what. They talk about other people's needs but don't always acknowledge each other's. And it'd probably be healthier if they said instead, "Even if you'd made the wrong choice, it'd be okay, because it's okay to make the wrong choice sometimes," or "Even if you're not always there for me, that's okay, because no one can be there for someone else all the time."

And they do not say that, because Dick and Tim are relatively well-adjusted by Batfamily standards but that is a very low bar, and at the end of the day they're still deeply messed-up perfectionists who deal with their emotional problems by punching crime in the face.

But look, they're trying. And isn't that the important thing? <3

[kaeyapilled]

i read a fic once where diluc used to fight with a sword during his days as a knight and switched to a claymore only after That Day and the concept never left my head

[utytimeline]

I want to think that Dalv was actually protecting Kanako against Integrity. That they were hanging out at Honeydew Resort when Chujin brought the space heater to Honeydew. That Kanako was looking at Dalv's pictures and drawing a picture of him. That Integrity looked at Kanako and grinned and said, "Free EXP." That Dalv saw them coming and knew they were bad news and they were after this small child. That Dalv knew he was strong enough to fight for her, give her time for her father to come rescue her. That he jumped in between them and took the first hit. That he fought back until he was down to the "spare or kill" point. That he gave it his all at that point and struck such a blow that Integrity seemed dead. That he was so mortified by what he'd done that he ran away from the scene, never knowing that he'd left Integrity with just enough strength to get up and run away to hide in Waterfall.

[shubbzebubs]

I swear I need to break outta the manga hatching habit but GEEZ 🫦

Wippy wip, by how Jack is built, im abt to break into his mansion to see him like this 😳🥵

[moe-broey]

I need like. A Don't Make Me Tap The Sign about Alfonse Fire Emblem specifically about his character and how he's perceived sometimes. Like Book 7 Chapter 12 he's just like that. He's always been like that.

I feel like I've def said it more eloquently before probably in Book 5 (regarding Reginn and Fáfnir), where like. He Will try for and favor a peaceful solution, but if it's clear there's no way out without violence and killing the threat/adversary. He won't hesitate. He won't falter. Crit line literally references this actually, "Above all, the mission".

Like I feel like the difference between Alfonse just doing Alfonse things (most recent chapter Seidr having to kill Kvasir, no way out of it -- plus also even considering killing Seidr herself, if that were to end Gullveig) and the Letizia moment was like. The Letizia moment was a BOLD gambit he played, which is WHY it was so shocking in the story and as an audience member, and why I think it left such a deep impression. Still very in character for him and the way he thinks/problem solves on the fly, carefully evaluating the situation and what would be the best move with the highest rate of success. (THAT LAST BIT ACTUALLY........ he'll do this even with low rates of success, out of sheer stubbornness as well. Which is why I still stand by him being rash at times, a LOT of his rashness is disguised as "calculated risks" and he just has the willpower to pull it off. The worst-best type of guy to me LMFAO)

Going back a bit though, the Letizia moment also stands out as an example of how far Alfonse is willing to go to win, especially if his back is pushed against the wall. It gives you a FASCINATING glimpse into his character and into his mind. A lot of times Lif would be an enigma to me, beyond the basics, character wise. Like yeah I guess that would fuck up a guy. But his methods (working and making contracts with gods when especially as Alfonse he knows better than that??) would be inscrutable to me. But everything absolutely finally clicked when Alfonse made that gambit, playing to Letizia's personality and whatever preconceived notions she may have, that maybe Alfonse could find a weak spot in and take advantage of. Lif is doing the exact same thing. His judgement is maybe a little worse for wear on account of, well *gestures vaguely to all of him* but he's still very much doing The Same Thing.

LIKE. I'm def straying from my point which is. Alfonse isn't shy about having to resort to violence. It Is a resort. But if it has to be done, it will be done. Any damage control (such as Sharena's feelings -- she has CLEARLY been extremely upset these past chapters) can be resolved later. (This.... is also fascinating to me..... bc it's always been clear to me his loved ones are the people who ground him, who stop him from losing himself, from becoming cruel in his practicality and tendency for detachment. There Is his morality as well -- but his loved ones are a huge part in what keeps him kind.)

I guess what I'm really trying to say is. Hit me up next time Alfonse is playing 4D chess with the enemy or throwing himself in a ditch on purpose just to indulge his baby sister's current pet project. THOSE feel like standout examples of Alfonse Off The Shits (but still completely in character for him tbh), while like. The rest is just par for the course for him. Just another (especially traumatizing) Tuesday.

[fishnchip3011]

everytime i actually open up sdv to play i get flashbanged with sebastian's white ass sprites because i always forget not everyone sees him as wasian💔 my current hc for him is half chinese (liable to change... but ik for sure he's half asian) but he is Not bilingual he can't rly speak or write the other language he can only understand it when listening but even then he's not very fluent LOL this is just turning into a sebastian hc post might as well go full out. to me sebastian Does have relationship experience but has been thru shitty ones in the past which is part of the reason why he's so pessimistic & brooding </3 and he'd hook up with ppl in zuzu city for a night for a while but it just made him feel shittier so he's stopped since ☝️ also people make him out to be way cooler than he actually is like yea sure he's kinda cool but he's also a Massive Loser especially when he tells you how he hates "seasonal fads" like pumpkin spice and that one line about the potluck soup where he's like "Why ruin the potluck? Hmm... I guess some people feel liberated when the rigid structures of society break down a little. Maybe I'm weird.” WHO ASKED😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 his ass also can NOT cook he can make spaghetti but it's mid. he probably has low ass stamina and yeah he's tall and lanky (rn i see him as around 5'9-5'10) but you could snap him in half over your knee. when he's in an actually healthy relationship he gets really flustered over certain romantic gestures cuz he's not used to feeling valued or being considered someone's #1. he picks up on little things and does acts of service but i also think he can be really callous and insensitive at times because while he can be pretty perceptive he is also Very Emotionally Stunted. he unlearns lots of unhealthy behaviors & mindsets with the help of his partner & family & friends ^__^

[scalproie]

I probably wouldnt have snapped if i didnt went in the notes to see dozens of tags agreeing so wholeheartedly with the most surface-level understanding of those characters

[darubyprincx]

fit check

full set stat combo:

+ 3 armor + 2 health + 7 stamina + 4 strength

(the shirt reads "Middle-Earth's Annual Mordor Fun Run- 'One Does Not Simply Walk'")