#it's high time someone said it

[littlebitofdnd]

Sandra-Lynn and Sklonda are having a "What Do We Do About Kristen" phone call as we speak

[sapphorror]

Y'know... A lot of ZaDr fics have them either gradually drifting into a less contentious status quo or establishing a deeply bizarre multilayered dynamic that is nonetheless very consistent and beholden to its own rules—which works, to be clear, because slavish adherence to the rhythm of their endless 'game' is already their canon baseline.

WITH THAT BEING SAID. I think it would be very funny to depict a ZaDr dynamic in which they're like, on-again off-again nemeses. As they get older theyre gradually forced to acknowledge the true depth of their mutual attachment, but instead of actually improving themselves in any lasting way or compromising the conflicting elements into an ill-definable state of contentious codependence, they just start oscillating wildly between periods of obscenely clingy allyship and devotedly murderous enmity. There's never an in between. They'll dedicate all their energy to trying to horrifically torture each other to death, until one of them gets uncomfortably close to actually dying or an external crisis pushes them together or they just get bored—at which point, they become obnoxiously glued at the hip until one of them relapses into anxiety about their ambitions or an argument escalates past the the point of no return or they just get bored. And every time they both Really Mean It, They're Not Gonna Do This Anymore, before naturally going ahead and doing it again

[thedreadvampy]

my friend invited me to go with them to a show tonight

and the thing is it was not good. it was a cabaret with some amazing circus acts but each of them got like. 5-10 minute slots. and were interspersed with 20+ minutes EVERY TIME of some of the most tedious standup work I have ever seen from the MC and the same 5 physical comedy bits repeated ad nauseum. this guy literally did a Borat bit. in the year of our lord 2024. he sang 2 entire rounds of the Family Guy theme.

and it just KEPT GOING. it was meant to be a 90 minute show, which imo is already a slog for a show starting at 11:30PM but within the bounds of reasonable. it finished. at fucking 1:50 AM. ALMOST TWO AND A HALF HOURS OF THIS SHIT. and it did not help that the 5 bits were all of the 'OH NO SOMETHING HAS DISRUPTED THE SHOW' variety which is funny for a bit, less funny when you're literally 45 minutes past the end of your scheduled finish and still fucking going.

HOWEVER. what I did not realise was that this was in fact. my friend's favourite comedian. and if I had known this I might not have gathered up my stuff and walked out during the curtain call and probably would not have announced on the way out, 'that was the most tedious fucking thing I have ever endured.' and I almost certainly, when someone overheard me complaining about the length and tedium and said 'yeah it ran a bit long huh,' have replied, at the actual near-shouting top of my voice, "I AM GOING TO KILL MYSELF."

I feel. bad for spoiling the show for them.

in my defence I have been very tired this week, I got home at 2:30 AM, and raked seating really hurts my hips so I was in agony by the end of the first hour. but mostly I'm just a bitch who loves to hate tbh.

[whoblewboobear]

They’re not children, they’re Teenagers that live in a world and go to a school where violence and death are highly normalized.

However, underaged doesn’t excuse you from killing your fellow party member to sabotage other students. Being a “kid” doesn’t excuse you from pulling up to your teacher’s grave with a bulldozer to A. Force her hand to find you or B. Cease to exist if she doesn’t reward you for trying to disturb your final resting place. (IMO this is the most chilling and cruel thing KipCop has done that we know of. I paused the episode to breathe and calm down from this bc holy shit?) Kipperlily is old enough to understand right and wrong. She saw the rogue teacher loop hole as a badge of honor to be proud of. She is a teenager, she is not a baby or an infant or a child. She knew exactly what she was doing.

If we’re applying real logic to these fictional teenagers, real teenagers that commit horrific acts of violence or crimes get tried as adults because they were (usually) old enough and coherent enough to understand what they were doing. They were not babies that didn’t realize what they were doing.

If you are a minor and you do something violent and awful to another person or group of people, you don’t just automatically get to go “oh boy- b-but I’m just a child!” You have to face the consequences of your actions, it’s a massive part of growing up. That’s not something that just doesn’t kick in until you’re 18.

The bad kids are pretty much the same age as the rat grinders. They probably went to the same middle and elementary schools, were taught the same things when they /were/ children. In game, they were thrown in jail for their crimes in season 1. Aelwyn was taken to high elven prison. If Penelope or Dane weren’t killed, they sure as fuck would’ve been tried or worse too.

Like- I cannot tell, nor do I care enough to start checking accounts to see if adults or teenagers are making the “they’re just kids!!!!!!!!” Posts but I feel like I know where it skews. Either way, doesn’t matter. Do better. There’s a reason why children and teenagers are not lumped under the same age and developmental umbrella. There are differences.

Pretending that they’re innocent little babies so you can continue to love your villains guilt free or dumbing them down so it’s easier to defend them is a skill issue. Love your villains and all their nasty evil behavior with your whole chest.

[arsonforcharlie]

me: haha someone found my state post from several years ago that starts off with me saying "hey here's me being stupid because i'm high" maybe i will reblog it ha ha

my notes, instantly: HEY DID YOU KNOW ARIZONA ISN'T WET. DID YOU NOT KNOW WHERE MISSOURI IS. HAHAHA HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW WHICH STATE IS WHICH IT'S SO OBVIOUS. HEY DID YOU KNOW ARIZONA ISN'T WET. THIS IS GREAT EXCEPT FOR THE COMPLETELY IMPERCEPTIBLE BEEFS MY STATE HAS WITH ANOTHER COMPLETELY IDENTICAL STATE AND I AM SHOCKED YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THAT. THAT'S NOT MONTANA. HEY DID YOU KNOW ARIZ

[worm-in-a-trenchcoat]

Mutuals!!! Beasties!!!

We went to an antique mall today for my birthday and look at what I found!!

The whole top floor was full of vintage toys and dolls/Barbie’s, I wanted to buy everything 😭

[xcziel]

has anybody else thought about how jk could easily manage sofia's parts of slow dance or is it just me?

[squishosaur]

hey man. i'm just saying. why would we put inexperienced teenagers with over-inflated egos and obvious emotional issues into combat classes and make them claw their way to the top of their dorms and expect things to just run smoothly. who actually thought this

[paradimeart]

I need to see what Lockdown looks like in ur superhero au 🙏 for the betterment of society/lh

physical embodiment of barb wire bicep tattoos

[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

[dangerous-disposition]

My post about storm chasers and people not being familiar with them being a profession was bc multiple people in my notes in another post was like "who doesnt know what storm chasers are?" so I made my post about how storm chasers as a profession are mostly only in the US so like, so it's actually not that weird for people to not know what storm chasers are and some little fucking weirdo decided to read that post in a really negative light

[widevibratobitch]

something about being told im 'the leading person at this whole academy when it comes to interpretation and stage intelligence' by the husband of the woman im trying (not really. but i mean. who knows) to seduce... ok boy you got me. lets make it a polycule.

[turtlecat1440]

Shrimp Played Drums

What if a shrimp line cook (who specialized in fried rice, of course) lost his job during a strike to a scab chicken, and ended up joining a band.

And his name in the band was "Shrimp Played Drums," and all of his songs were about workers rights and he was super pro union.

They really let anyone play drums these days

[froggychair05]

Sorry if this was asked before or already mentioned in the fic, but how did petra and lukas or lukas and aiden meet each other?

No worries!! I think I might have mentioned Aiden (I forget where, so I’ll say it again) but I know I didn’t mention Petra.

Lukas met all of the Ocelots in middle school. They were assigned to a project together and just stayed hanging out. They’d seen each other around before then, of course, but they only became friends then. (Lukas has always felt a little out of place, but he’s also just happy to have friends.)

As for Petra, she and Lukas met in high school. I think Jack and Nurm would have moved around a lot for their job, so Petra was never in one place for long. She was the new girl at school and quickly gained a reputation for being outspoken and hotheaded, so teachers sat her next to Lukas because he was one of the quiet kids. One day Lukas was just really upset for some reason and Petra noticed, so she tried to cheer him up and they became friends. It didn’t take long for them to become as close as they are now.

[sonknuxadow]

sorry i think it would be really cool if it happened but. i highly doubt that jason griffith is going to voice movie shadow . as much as i hate to admit it its much more likely that they get some random hollywood guy

[cervidaecorpse]

Have some silly friends.