Damian Wayne: Interests and Hobbies
note: this post refers exclusively to new earth (post-crisis, pre-flashpoint) damian!
for starters, we can talk about the weapons he prefers to use. his most iconic weapon of choice is a blade - usually described as a katana, but he's not so discriminatory. he enjoys using plenty of different kinds of blades.
(batman v1 #656, by grant morrison)
(batgirl v3 #17, by bryan q miller)
(robin vol 2 annual #7, by keith champagne)
he's also a fan of bows, actually.
(batman v1 #675, by morrison)
(batman v1 #680, by morrison)
(batman and robin v1 #16, by morrison)
and while he hasn't used them much, he's not against using knuckle dusters (which really only adds to the cuteness factor of his friendship with colin wilkes).
(batman v1 #657, by morrison)
another weapon he likes to use is the crowbar, ironically. it's ironic, because he ends up beating the joker with one.
(batman and robin v1 #2, by morrison)
(batman and robin v1 #13, by morrison)
damian has been known to fight unarmed, too, of course - he's partial to martial arts, actually.
(robin vol 2 annual #7, by champagne)
he even has a black belt.
(red robin v1 #13, by fabian nicieza)
now, i'm not an expert when it comes to martial artists, but... i'm actually quite sure this is a poster of bruce lee hanging in damian's bedroom!
(batgirl v3 #17, by miller)
fun fact: damian even keeps martial arts equipment at his bedside table, as well as spy equipment.
(batman v1 #689, by judd winick)
damian has a notable interest in cars.
(batman v1 #680, by morrison)
(batman v1 #681, by morrison)
(don't worry about the fact he hit an ambulance - the joker was driving it, so it's fine.)
he's not only interested in driving them, though, he also enjoys tinkering with them and fixing them up. he even made the batmobile fly! it was actually pretty easy for him, since he already had blueprints.
(batman and robin v1 #1, by morrison)
besides cars, he's also interested in motorbikes.
(batman and robin v1 #2, by morrison)
he even gifts a motorbike (with garage included) to his new friend, colin wilkes!
(batman: streets of gotham v1 #12, by paul dini & dustin nguyen & derek fridolfs)
of course, one could say that he has a vested interest in the batman and robin dynamic itself. he always did wonder - once his father came back, what would happen to batman and robin? what about this life he chose for himself?
(batman and robin v1 #10, by morrison)
he's not only worried about what will happen to his dynamic with dick - they did build up quite a friendship through being batman and robin, after all, and it makes sense it would worry him that they might lose their connection if they stopped working together so closely - but he's also worried about himself, and whether or not he will be allowed to continue on as robin. it's a role he grew to cherish, a job that he grew to enjoy a lot. it became a part of himself, a sort of hobby of its own.
(batman and robin v1 #16, by morrison)
(batman: the return v1 #1, by morrison)
okay, back to the lighthearted stuff...
damian is also into real estate! it's one of his... higher class interests, let's say.
(batman: streets of gotham v1 #4, by paul dini)
equally as high class is his interest in designer fashion. (okay, he doesn't *have* to be very interested in it to merely have the knowledge necessary to distinguish an original from a knock-off, but... let's just say it's a point in favor of him being into fashion.)
(superman/batman v1 #44, by joshua williamson)
but hey, he does dunk on the green undies that dick wore as robin. (that's another point in our favor! huzzah!)
(teen titans v3 #88, by j.t. krul)
he even enjoys many aspects of business. for one thing, he's not against dressing up to attend a boardroom meeting and accusing everybody there of being incompetent and irresponsible with his father's company.
(batman and robin v1 #10, by morrison)
another cute one: damian prefers tea over coffee.
(batman and robin v1 #17, by paul cornell)
(batgirl v3 #17, by bryan q miller)
when damian was younger, he enjoyed playing with matches.
(batgirl v3 #5, by miller)
damian also enjoys a good race, as shown in his presence for the charity race between kon-el and bart allen. (it could also mean, though, that he just really cares about supporting charity. or both!) note, too, that he had no obligation to attend - he had already ended his brief stint with the titans. (the wayne foundation did make a donation to the charity, but damian wouldn't appear as robin if he felt an obligation in that sense, he would just appear as himself.)
(superboy v5 #5, by jeff lemire)
...okay, that will have to be all for now! i've reached the limit of 30 images per post. i hope it gave you a fair bit of insight into what damian is interested in and what he likes to do with his free time. thank you for reading!
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Ketheric continues to be the member of the Chosen I struggle to get a grip on. Like the other three I can tell you the details of why (I think) they grew up to monsters:
Long post.
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Let's start with Gortash: spent his childhood being told he was a selfish monster for his thoughts - apparently from birth - for the way he perceived the world, for *checks notes* wanting his parents attention as an undeveloped human being that relies on its parents to survive and thrive.
Then his parents send him to hell as part of a deal. Because that's where monsters go isn't it? They go to hell to suffer eternal damnation because they were monsters in life.
So you grow up in one of the literal cesspits of the universe, where the only people you meet are the literal scum of the universe, or those you're going to learn to see as weak fools who had to rely on others - and were ultimately willing to commit atrocities themselves - who were taken advantage of by the scum of the universe.
You get to the Hells by committing atrocities, either because you want something so badly you'll fuck somebody over for it (out of greed, or because you couldn't fix it yourself (weak)) or because you did them of your own volition. And curiously, some of these people had their price tags wrapped in such subtle terms they don't even realise they did anything wrong! Lesson learned; anyone will willingly be a monster if you make the evil sound nice.
Every single devil you meet has had the humanity flayed from their soul, and they got to where they are in their existences by fomenting (and committing) hate and rape and murder and everything evil under the sun as a regular Monday morning in the ultimate goal to make the universe an evil place. Devils are also 'self made men', everybody started from nothing as a lemure and clawed their way to where they are now.
Every social interaction in the Hells is manipulation and abuse. Everyone there hurts everyone.
But you do have one example of a good person! There's Hope! Lovely lady, kind and sweet... Trapped in hell being abused forever going insane because of it because your ambitious sister fucked you over. That's where trust and love being a good person gets you.
And that was his entire social life. That was the people he had to look to for examples. All his early experiences were limited to a sample of the absolute worst it has to offer, and he has a very skewed view of the universe.
And the fact that he's apparently so damn good at sex a lady gave him a ring worth everything she owns after growing up around a pleasure devil whose role is harming and corrupting people with sex and has built in charm person at etc is not ringing alarm bells(!) I'm not side-eyeing the boudoir at all.
I wonder why having a child/teen spend their formative years in the evil factory literally designed to spit out monsters... spat out a monster? Kudos to Karlach, though: just how many layers of defence mechanisms has she got in her brain?
Gortash's thought processes are 50% through the lens of engineering and 50% through the lens of a devil's perspective to me. People will sell out others for their own gain, because they're too weak to do it themselves or because they're bastards. If you don't get with the programme you're the victim. You only get ahead by being ruthless. Everybody is untrustworthy, and relying on them will get you betrayed. The world is divided into the weak and the ruthlessly strong who take what they want.
Yes, he's a monster. And so are his parents. And so is everyone.
And then Bane saw this perfect example of his way of thinking and said 'that one.'
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Orin: obviously we've got grooming. The fact that her formative memories include her mother trying to murder her, and the fact that she feels like the only person who has ever cared about her or supported her is her grandfather. Who is implied to have been raping her, or intending to. All she's permitted is to have her brain poisoned by her faith, which her life revolves around, and then her kin 'does it all wrong' and inherits everything she's been groomed to believe is hers. But no, 'they're not wrong,' says everybody around her 'you are!'
She's a Bhaalspawn, so her relationships with her kin are "kill or be killed," as Helena proved. You will please father by slaughtering your siblings, or you will die - or worse. You must be and stay favoured by Bhaal above all the others to be truly safe ("safe"), and Durge outranking her is a threat to her existence. Actually Durge existing is a threat to her well-being.
She has no way to live a life outside the cult, never has and never will. Her life is insanely lonely and mostly consists of paranoia.
But the overlaying theme here is that she's a changeling. She's mirrorkin with no unique physical identity of her own, she can only reflect those of others. To be dnd canon accurate: she has no real facial features, no pigmentation. She's not permitted an identity of her own, and was punished for trying. She's a mirror born and raised to reflect the glory of Bhaal, the glory of her failed grandfather, the rise of Bhaal's favourite child. Never her own.
Gee, I wonder why she literally wears people's skins.
Denied the ability to do anything but live according to what she's told, she does her best to live up to it because to fail is to become her parents and the countless aunts and uncles currently enjoying their damnation in the Throne of Blood. And then she's told she's doing it wrong. By everybody. She's a 'rabid dog'. She, despite having doctrine poured into her ears and probably carved into her flesh her entire life 'doesn't understand Bhaal.' And everybody is insanely patronising about it! You're never allowed to be anything but what we tell you to be, but you're still not good enough! Which is death.
The Temple of Bhaal needs murder feminism.
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The Dark Urge is my favourite little nightmare, and I've talked about them at length: much of Orin's trauma also applies to them, although where she's a mirror made to reflect the egos of others, Durge is only allowed one identity: Bhaal's. Where Orin can never seem to reach the standards forced on her, Durge is never allowed to fail to meet them, or else. Every outside connection they ever had was brutally sabotaged, and they've had 'you're a monster and only I (your abusive Father) can love you' drilled into their mind. They hate themself. We got the threat of sexual exploitation (assuming it didn't happen), there's a subtle undercurrent of incest to some interactions.
The prayer for forgiveness kind of sums it all up: 'I'm sorry for forming an emotional connection that isn't blind love for you father, but don't fret, I'll destroy it with my own hands just like everything else and then finally get to kill myself just like I've always wanted.'
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But Ketheric? Like villains don't need tragic backstories to be terrible people, but it does make them more interesting.
OK, so your bio family is fucked up and I definitely get the impression that they sucked (Malus is giving me vibes that say he'd have been a villain anyway, and might've been secretly Sharran to start with; Gerringothe seems to be drowning whatever her issues are in gold), and then the loving family you made for yourself broke: your wife died, and your daughter died, sure. But plenty of people on Toril probably have similar if not the same stories and didn't go evil overlord! Why are you doing this? What is informing these decisions?
Why does your existence hinge so much on your dead daughter that your son is basically named after her and you seem to hate him for existing and not being her?
Does Shar have something to do with it? Has Ketheric just carved out so much memory and emotion, so much of his own identity, that all that's left is the grief and the hunger for the pain to stop but, as per Shar's intent, it keeps coming back, with less and less positive memories to soften the pain. A wound that festers and never heals. Is the obsession with Isobel because she's the icon of everything that was good in his life, and her loss was the moment everything good was gone? Was he a rational man who turned to Shar to stop the pain in a moment of understandable grief and rage at her sister, and then was trapped in a cycle that destroyed everything that was good in that man until we get the General?
Just guess working my way through his entire backstory...
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I said this in a whole reblog, but just copy-pasting to a separate post because I think it'll give some reading comprehension and reblogs don't show up in the search feature.. again, I'm reiterating what I said in another post.
Go check out @demidokuriya 's post for this; OP's post made me put this all down in like. 20 minutes. Mind went vroom vroom cuz HEY THEY'RE ONTO SOMETHING.
(They also reblogged the post with some hint to some behind the scenes of what led to the ideas if you wanna check that out)
Look below at how, when Mineta told AFO to spare Tokoyami, AFO specifically went "..."
He remembers Jirou and thinks, The braying howls of the weak...
He was going to take Tokoyami's Quirk. He took Hawks'. But after Mineta pleaded with him, AFO just straight-up left and didn't take anyone else's Quirk.
AFO saw Yoichi in Mineta.
These scenes are near-identical to each other.
Mineta and Yoichi (at that time) are both much smaller than the normal person at their age
They're both hurt, yet dragged themselves up from the ground to throw something at AFO, to get his attention and make their voice
Both are considered weak, even if they have a Quirk (Mineta's Pop-Off and Yoichi's undeveloped Factor)
The fact that Yoichi got AFO's attention here by throwing a can at him, while Mineta got his attention by throwing a Pop-Off ball; and it stuck.
Mineta's call for his attention landed and actually stuck to AFO. This is unlike when Yoichi and his can bounced off, and AFO kicked him, not listening to him; AFO listened to Mineta and left Tokoyami alone, technically doing what Mineta wanted—to not hurt this person.
AFO just went on to hurt more people away from Mineta's [Yoichi's] eyes so the small weakling wouldn't see.
Yoichi and Mineta both cried to AFO to not hurt in his ways, when AFO was intent on stealing people's Quirks
AFO even stole Hawks' Quirk during this time.
He had time to steal Hawks' Quirk, and though he could've tossed him to the side, he let Hawks stand in his way.
He had the energy. Right after this event, he flew off and left the scene. But he didn't go for Tokoyami immediately.
And this let Mineta play his part, and remind AFO of Yoichi.
"A putrid, festering Quirk Factor."
That sounds like Yoichi, AFO.
".. such garbage."
Hey hey hey, what did Yoichi throw at him when they were kids?
A discarded can. Garbage.
This chapter (385) where AFO listens to Mineta is literally called [A Youthful Urge].
Mineta told AFO to take his Pop-Off (hurt him) instead. But last time, AFO hurt Yoichi by kicking him; this time, AFO not only listened to Mineta to not hurt Tokoyami, but didn't touch Mineta at all.
Even though this time, Mineta [Yoichi] offered to take that place of suffering.
Yoichi didn't do that back then. AFO just turned on little Yoichi anyway.
Yoichi through his whole existence is literally [the braying howls of the weak]. AFO acknowledges he's weak and idealistic, yet he still loves him.
Side note about this panel, I think it's interesting that in this vision, this was the first time we saw Yoichi's eyes: when he was being defiant, despite being pushed down by someone much stronger than him.
Really characteristic of him, honestly. Yoichi's soft-spoken and frail, but it's always reiterated that Yoichi had a powerful will against his stronger big brother.
Mineta at this moment reminded him too much of Yoichi, because the two scenes are near-identical to each other. Parallels, really.
Reiterating something from OP's post that I reblogged this from;
"The reminder of his brother made him uncomfortable, so he hurried away."
AFO didn't want to hurt Yoichi again.
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