#little drake character nerding out at the end

[key-rk]

Do you have an idea for your own Darkwing Duck arc?

I love your artwork especially the one with Drake and LP fishing! It looks straight out of a watercolor graphic novel. You’ve got the facial expressions of Drake’s grumpy but endearing personality down to a T.

AHH THANKYOU SMM!!! I REALLY APPRECIATE IT :D

I had a lot of fun drawing that piece, I'm glad you enjoyed it (⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

--

As for the question, that's interesting to think about. I don't often think about more potential stories for the Darkwing universe, aside little bits and pieces here and there (mainly a long overdue holiday for the mallard family that doesn't result in fighting crime–they deserve a little break, I think about that cruise Dw wanted to take Lp on in 'All's Fahrenheit in love and war' all the time )

BUT.

There is ONE potential thing I wish was explored and that's a final/ third showdown with Taurus Bulba. I've rambled on about it in a previous post, but Bulba is such an important villain in the show–having a genuine impact on the cast. Not to mention at the end of 'The Steerminator', Bulba says something along the lines of 'This isn't the last you'll see of me', INTENDING we'd get to see more, but that never happened.

I think it would've been very interesting to conclude the story of Taurus Bulba, especially with how 'The Steerminator' ended. We were shown that both Darkwing and Gosalyn struggled with his return, both having a moment of panic when seeing him (which is sososo interesting)

BUT ALSO. Before he became part robot, he was a lot more rational and calculated–which in some way made him a lot more dangerous than let's say megavolt. He's already a lot more threatening than any other villain of the show. But in 'The Steerminator', he's lost parts of himself, being a lot easier to anger, he acts more on impulse. But he's a lot stronger physically. Pairing that with Darkwing's fear of getting Gosalyn hurt or worse, (and kind of dying himself) + Gosalyn's trauma regarding him–it would be incredibly interesting to see just how'd they'd deal with him for a third time. To deal with Taurus Bulba whose only goal is to get to Darkwing and potentially succeed because of how much he knows about them; their fears and weaknesses.

I really do think it could have been such a cool way to end the show, or just have an episode regarding Bulba's final arc and explore Dw's and Gosalyn's characters further. (I know Bulba appears in the comics, but I'm not really counting those here.)

Mmmmmmm

Not much else, though I do wonder what the transition period looked like for Drake after the Darkly Dawns the Duck. He'd spent so long alone, lowk isolating himself (man didn't even have a house 😮‍💨) and suddenly he lived in a neighborhood with a family? I believe that would've been difficult, ESPECIALLY for him. He's shown throughout the show that he finds people to be difficult to be around, not to mention his tendencies to overwork and disconnectment from the identity of 'Drake Mallard' (a clash reunion reference to where he lost his mask. He doesn't particularly value himself without the costume due to years of being unimportant and hardly acknowledged) and in 'Water Way to Go' he claimed to "get manically depressed on the weekends" (do what u will with that)

I know cartoon wise, they wouldn't explore that aspect of Drake re-adjusting to civilian life again, but I still like to imagine it. I think Drake's character is soso interesting and that little period specifically could have been intriguing. I don't think I've come across any fic delving into that yet either 😞.

(bonus detail: Drake actually didn't have his temper as a child. In his backstory episodes, he doesn't really possess it. In clash reunion he is kinda full of himself, but he's not angry to the point of lashing out at someone. This flaw only develops after he'd become an adult and lived in the tower alone for who knows how long 💀)

RIGHT WELL THAT'S IT. I REALLY LIKE TALKING ABOUT THIS SHOW, APOLOGIES FOR HOW LONG THIS IS 🙏

[tragedy-peanut-gallery]

Daeron ii’s family playing D&D cause I’m very bored and have too much time on my hands

(These are my silly hours so I wanted to write something a little whimsical that probably breaks canon. Idc ☺️💖)

Daeron: The Dm, uses all the old school dice and handbooks from when he and Elaena played as kids. All their preset character sheets got burned by Baelor so he spends way too much time helping everyone with their characters. Gets a little too railroad-y sometimes but makes up for it with a good story and funny voices

Myriah: Doesn’t play, but sometimes checks in to ask the kids if they “won” yet. Will occasionally do the voice of a patron or deity if she gets pestered enough

Baelor: Human oath of vengeance paladin 10000000%. Originally chose the class because he thought smite was cool but kept accidentally breaking his oath even if he was technically doing something good. He’s kinda bad at roleplaying but tries to steer everyone to make the right decisions

Aerys: High elf divination wizard. Probably spent two hours hogging all the source books in order to optimize his character to be the best spellcaster there ever was. Loves asking about every minute detail in any new room which annoys everyone- but! On the bright side, he is the best at solving every puzzle the party faces

Rhaegel: Dragonborn drakewarden ranger. Only made the character so he could be a dragon with a dragon friend, but doesn’t really roleplay or keep track of combat. Spends most of the games stacking everyone’s dice into towers, but starts paying attention when he’s finally allowed to fly his drake friend around

Maekar: Goliath beserker barbarian. When he was asked what sort of character he wanted to play he just said he “wanted to hit things really hard”. Doesn’t pay attention to roleplay at all but becomes an absolute beast in combat, the group’s master strategizer at age 6. Has probably accidentally killed a party member once (*cough* Baelor *cough*)

Daenerys: Half elf light domain cleric. Has a 10 page backstory written about her character and will take any opportunity to talk about it. Claims to prefer roleplaying and just being support but has probably dealt the most amount of damage in the party so far and has a consistent pattern of advocating for fights because it levels them up faster

+Bonus!

Shiera: Tiefling college of spirits bard. Originally wanted to play warlock but was mad about the limited spell slots so saves her evil backstory for another character. Most comitted roleplayer at the table, manages to talk the party’s way out of most of the fights Maekar and Daenerys gets them into, even though she’s like- 5, so most of her convincing ends up being “no, that’s mean >:(“

Brynden: Tiefling arcane trickster rogue. Unironically the edgiest character to be made, consistently brooding in the corner of every tavern they go into. Everyone thinks he might be a potential traitor but ends up being the biggest ride or die in the party and probably dramatically sacrifices himself to save them (Daeron writes him as actually escaping because he felt bad lol)

Daemon: Fallen aasimar oathbreaker paladin. Gives Daeron a minor aneurism when he asks if he can betray the party at some point. Otherwise a really well rounded character who only dabbles in the edginess, and puts up with everyone’s shenanigans enough to justify his ascension as the game’s bbeg

Aegor: Hates D&D. Banned from the table for calling everyone a bunch of nerds

[gretahayes]

Hello,

(without judgment) may i know why you like tim? i mean the reasons why he is the "best" robin for many people, (according to you). You seem to really know his character

(my english is really bad, sorry)

Ah, okay, so this seems like a serious ask, so I'll sit down and actually answer it.

I like Tim because, at his core, he believes he is a good person, and does good things. Is this true? Well, in most cases, yes. His morals can be loose sometimes, and he's always this close to snapping and becoming a genocidal dictator, but his conviction that he is a good person and those aren't "good person things to do" stop him. He's silly and dumb and so so complex and seems generic on the surface, but I swear he is so, so much more.

He's undoubtedly a good Robin. He was the first to get the Robin suit pants (thank God for that, though the scaly shorts were cute), and his writers loved him and loved Robin. Tim’s hardworking, a fast learner, kind, canonically the most intelligent Robin and a better detective than Batman himself. (Not to say any of the Robins are stupid, they're all intelligent and amazing detectives, but this is Tim’s thing, y’know?) I consider him the best because he was diligent and reasonably cooperative (at least cooperative enough that it didn't interrupt the mission), intelligent, compassionate, a good fighter, and quippy, all in perfectly Robin-sized proportions. He did a lot as Robin, achieved a lot, and that definitely adds to my conviction.

He's also got his own personal agenda half the time that he pushes secretly or blatantly, depending on if it'll cause problems that will stop him from achieving said agenda. He thinks out of the box to achieve his ends, and has a ruthless streak a mile wide. He's also such a loser yet makes fun of others, and that's hilarious to me.

For me, at least, he's just...relatable. He's flawed and bossy and sometimes paranoid and a Batman and Robin (then later, Nightwing) superfan and he's funny and tends to overthink a lot and he fails, sometimes. The narrative tends to be kind to him, and many characters admit he's likable or at least worth their time (I'm thinking of Lady Shiva here, basically training him because she basically thought he was batshit insane ("thought outside of the box" or whatever) and that appealed to her). He's what I call little-brother shaped, in that he's annoying in a way that you're accustomed to find endearing.

Tim has good relationships with a lot of fan favorites, batfamily members or not, and has a tendency to get in other people's business with the insistence he can help. People, whether with shock, humor, derision or resignation, tend to let him, leading to his genuinely ridiculous amount of teamups. He's friendly and fun(ny) to be around generally, even when he's moping. (See: Red Robin 2009). He was remarkably popular in school but too wrapped up in Robin to take up the many, many invitations to hang out he got daily. He's a nerd but hates school and dropped out. He's unable to stay in one place, maybe partly due to him moving apartments a lot as a child.

...I'm rambling. Anyway, here's posts that get into Tim's relationship with his parents. These next ones are about Jack Drake; one that I agree with probably due to my father being a lot like Jack Drake, one that's kinder to him than I'll ever be, but looks at it from both angles and I agree with the harsher take, and one that's got a lot of Bruce but a lot of Tim about Jack as well. TDLR; Tim's dad was shitty, but not shitty enough for anyone whose name isn't Dick Grayson to really...notice? Or do anything about? Which is relatable to me, at least. Jack dies when Tim’s 16, kicking off the worst year of his life.

Tim's also got average parents that tend to be on the side of bad, in Jack's sake. His parents weren't shown on-panel a lot, but from what we know, they ship him off to boarding school once they can. (Which, hey, no judgement, better than leaving him alone) He stops going to boarding school when he's uhh, 15-16. He's 13-14 when his mom dies and his dad is sent into a coma. He mourns her. Jack gets out of his coma eventually, dates then marries his much-younger physical therapist who's a better mother-figure to Tim than Jack is a good dad, is a shitty dad (he knows barely anything about his kid yet keeps exerting control over him, he lets Tim down time and time again, he's shown to have violent tendencies though it's worth noting he never hits Tim on-panel. Some of this can be attributed to him and Tim just being different, but Tim's his son. He should put in more effort than he does.), makes up for it a bit, then dies.

This sounds like Tim propaganda, and it is. He's forgiving and sarcastic and very quick to make nice with people that've hurt him in the past. He's also got a chronic case of Youngest Child Syndrome due to him being the youngest for so long, so he's there's that undertone of brattiness/entitlement when interacting with the older family members he's close to, that screams he's used to being put first and expects it, even. It's endearing though. He loves his friends and his family, makes sure to let them now, and makes sure they know when he feels unloved so they can fix it. He proudly parallels Dick and quietly parallels Bruce, and is the most Bruce-like off all the batkids. King of compartmentalization for the mission.

(Also, he's bi and I see him as heavily ADHD/autism coded (a bit of both in my opinion) he's also absolutely insane btw.)

He's just!!! I'm so fond of him, and I see why other are too. He seems over-hyped, but like...he's genuinely amazing. He didn't create the Robin mantle, but he gave it so much life and joy and he deserves the world.

Also dw your English is perfect here!

[ritz-writes]

please please please please I know nothing I’m oblivious who are these funky little lads that are apparently Bruce Waynes kids

Was going thru my drafts and realized I never answered this ask im so sorry!!

I started writing a HUGEEEE thing explaining as much as I could (ended up being over 4k) but I felt that was a bit much so ill just explain the basics on the bat kids. Just a long paragraph for each. Keep in mind that canon changes a lot and there are different comics and shows and version of the characters. Ill just explain what I know the most

Dick Grayson: First Robin. Now goes by Nightwing. Was a spy in one comic and went by Grayson but we don’t like that one that much. Also got amnesia at one point and went by Ric. We hate Ric, don’t bring him up. Was part of the flying graysons in Haley’s Circus with his parents but they were killed by Tony Zucco during a performance (their line broke). Bruce was in the crowd and made Dick is ward. Dick was 8 at the time. When he was 18 he had a fight with bruce and moved to Bludhaven. Thats where he became Nightwing. Hes the oldest kid

Jason Todd: Second Robin. Goes by Red Hood. He lived in Crime Alley by himself (father was in prison (later died) and mom overdosed). Wanted to make some cash so tried to steal the wheels of the batmobile. Bruce was honestly impressed and took him in. Dick was a bit upset at first (bruce give jason robin without asking. In most comics robin was a nickname dicks mom called him) but eventually warmed up to jason. I could go on a whole rant about how jason wasnt the angry robin most ppl say, but I wont. Bruce thinks he killed someone and benches him. Jason finds out his mom isnt his bio mom. His bio mom is in Ethipoia and he goes to find her. She sells him out to joker. Joker tortures him with a crowbar and leaves him in a building that explodes (also kills the bio mom). Talia al Ghul (daughter of Ra’s al Ghul. Hes the leader of the League of Assassins) brings him back to life via lazarus pit. Jasons story is very long so ill just say he comes back angry, tries to get bruce to kill joker, almost kills tim (hes next), kinda becomes the head crime lord in crime alley, and is hella hella protective of the kids and working girls in crime alley. Hes also a book nerd. Wanted to be an english major before he died. He and batwoman (mentioned in honorably mentions below) use guns. Sometimes he uses rubber bullets, sometimes he deosnt. In his newest reboot he uses a crowbar and has a different outfit. Not a fan of it. in some versions he doesnt work with the batfam, in others he rejoins them. i like the latter more.

Tim Drake: Third Robin. Currently goes by Red Robin. (yes like the restaurant. Yes its a running joke in the fandom) The smart robin. Smarter than batman in some universes (most imo). Figured out batmans identity by himself when he was like 8-9. when jason dies bruce doesn’t pull his punches at all and tim is like “he needs a robin.” tries to get dick to come back, but he says no. so tim basically forces himself into bruces life as robin until bruce relents. Tim has a hella messed up storyline that I don’t know very well. Jason tries to kill him, Damian tries to kill him (hes next), theres one story line where bruce is lost in time and tim is the only one who doesn’t think hes dead. Lots of stuff happens. Bascially all his friends die, his parents die, he loses his spleen- its a mess. Hes also the ceo of wayne enterprise in some comics. We also joke that hes an immortal 17 yr old cuz hes almost always 17 in the comics. Tim is bi and has a boyfriend named Bernard (I ship him more with kon tho)

Damian Wayne: Fourth Robin. Trained as an assassin since birth. He’s bruces bio son. Son of talia and bruce. Becomes robin when hes 9 I think. In one story, the bruce lost in time one, dick just gives robin to damian cuz “he needs it.” damian was very…. Murdery at first. Has a sword. Very talented artist. Very very smart. Can take advanced college courses at like age 7. smart boy. He has the most character devleopment in my opinion. Calls himself “the blood son.” is best friends with superman’s son, Jon.

Stephanie Brown: Steph. Goes by Spoiler now. is kinda Robin 3.5. or 2.5 idk when in the timeline she was robin, but she was robin for like 2 weeks before getting fired. Idk much about her. Her father is Cluemaster (villain). Isn’t adopted by bruce, but is his kid nonetheless. She and tim dated at one point.

Cassandra Cain: Cass. Goes by Orphan or Black Bat, depending on the comic. Was raised to be a weapon by her father. Idk his name. Her mother is Lady Shiva, another world class assassin. Cass was taught to not speak cuz “weapons don’t have feelings.” she knows sign and when bruce takes her in he helps her find her voice. In some versions she can speak, in others she just says one or two words at a time, and in some she just uses sign. Shes other than jason (by like 2 months) but younger than dick. Not sure if shes adopted or not.

Duke Thomas: Goes by Signal. I know the least about him. Also not adopted. His parents were jokerized (got posioned with joker gas and kinda went insane.) He’s a meta apparently? I learned that recently. Has photokenesis: ability to absorb, redistribute, and manipulate both light and darkness. Is the daytime hero I think.

Barbara Gordon: Used to be Batgirl, is now Oracle. (in some version steph and cass were batgirl at one point) Not adopted by bruce. Shes Commissioner Gordon’s daughter. Very very smart. Very very badass. Is the guy in the chair for the batfam. Joker shot her in her spine when breaking into her apartment and paralyzed her. But she can still kick hella ass in that wheelchair. She and dick used to date.

Honorable mentions: Kate Kane, Batwoman. She’s Bruce’s cousin. Lucas Fox, Batwing. Lucius Fox’s son. Selina Kyle, Catwoman. She and bruce r kinda sorta in a relationship. Its complicated sometimes. Kate Kelly, Robin. Shes in a separate universe I believe. Don’t know much about her at all. She uses a slingshot.

And of course, Alfred Pennyworth. We love alfred. He has guns hidden around the manor in canon. Bruce doesn’t like guns. Alfred knows this and says “youll never find all of them.” hes sassy and we stan.

And those r the main members of the batfam! Sorry this took so long to answer. It comepletely slipped my mind. I probably forgot a few details, but oh well.

[spacelazarwolf]

feeling completely unhinged about batman, this is going to sound insane. but I think making Tim Drake the bisexual Robin was homophobic.

Our options were the guy has been crossdressing since the Golden Age, the guy who dresses like a leather daddy, the kid who has never had a love interest and is constantly dealing with other people's expectations. They went with option number 4 the guy who is essentially written as a blank slate for readers to project onto with little to no thought for whether or not this created an interesting dynamic with other characters. Though Dick Grayson and Jason Todd were both created very deliberately as foils for Bruce Wayne, with personalities that contrasted against Bruce, Tim Drake was designed as a foil for Jason, in opposition to all of Jason's character traits after Jason proved unpopular due to a combination of classism and the editors and writers just wanting a different direction for his character than the readers did. This design decision for Tim Drake ended up with a character whose personality traits are functionally the same as Bruce, but whose purpose is Blank Slate. As a result his character is and always has been a gigantic pile of contradictions, with him simultaneously being an unpopular nerd and having tons of friends and being both relatable middle class and wealthy enough to denigrate the lower class characters in the minds of the writers. Unlike pretty much every other character in Batman, Tim has no special skills that make him stand out as an expert in a particular field or give him a special place on the team, so writers and fans alike both constantly shove him into the roles of other characters, pushing out their expertise and messing with the dynamics. It's incredibly common to see Tim positioned as the """expert detective""" or """techy expert"""" despite this having very little basis in canon when compared to other writers. Yeah whatever Tim figured out Bruce was Batman but Duke Thomas prepared to go toe to toe with the Riddler when he was TEN and figured out Dick Grayson's identity despite Dick literally having face erasing tech and through that was able to extrapolate on everyone else's identities. Tim's fanon position as as the T E C H Y is one that's been stolen from Harper Row and Barbara Gordon, who was the most powerful unpowered character in the DCU but has had her accomplishments gradually and continually downplayed and erased since 1986. This lack of specialization for Tim and his characterization as the everyman relatable blank slate have held him back as the character continues to fail in being given his own identity, which relates to his continuous deaging, a trait largely only shared by women. In fact the deaging of Tim DRake has gotten so bad that the current timeline implication is that Dick fired Tim from being Robin when Tim was TWELVE in order to give Robin to a TEN year old as opposed to the 17 Tim was when the actual comic was released, as Damian is aging but Tim has not.

The common claim that Tim is """""most popular""" and """""""Best""""" Robin is one that's honestly unbacked, and believed only because Tim stans are so goddamn loud. Before his shit, shit run started 2 weeks ago Tim Drake had not held his own solo title in 12 years, whereas Dick Grayson has continually held one for 26 years and spent decades starring in long running back ups and team books prior to that. The reality that Tim stans don't want to admit is that Tim is bisexual because editorial didn't give a shit about him until he came out and it got people talking. They'll often lift up examples of him being "queercoded" prior to him coming out but it's really very notable that all of Tim's instances of "queercoding" are related to shipbaiting with Superboy. On the other hand Dick crossdressed until the Comics Code slammed the ban hammer on queerness because of his existence, openly stated in 2004 that he was alright with homophobes assuming that he's gay, has had several uniforms with influence from queer fashion, and despite being ostensibly straight has been featured on multiple Pride themed comic covers. Next to him is Jason who habitually covers himself in leather and wears a muzzle and said his girlfriend was a good kisser "for a girl". Instead of examining these adult characters relationships to queer masculinity, including Dick Grayson being a gay icon since the 1940s who has literally influenced gay culture, the queer Robin that we got is the run of the mill middle class white high school boy whose writing immediately shifted to QUEER ROMCOM UTOPIA as soon as he came out. The first issue of his solo run is a notable example with complete fluff, Tim claiming that his relationship with his boyfriend Bernard is more "real" than his relationships with his past girlfriends, and Bernard the schlubby conspiracy theorist previously dressed in hoodies suddenly wearing artfully ripped skinny jeans and a statement blazer. Even outside of this issue, the past year sicne Tim came out has seen his and Bernard's flaws and eccentricities scrubbed away in favor of gay cotton candy, rendering Tim somehow even blander and less interesting than before.

But I haven't even gotten to the worst part yet. I haven't slammed the hammer down. Here's the real bombshell on Tim Drake and why him being the lone bisexual Robin for who knows how long is homophobic.

Tim Drake's one solid long lasting character trait until he came out, the ONE aspect of his personality that genuinely stood out, totally unique to him, his place in the family? Was being a fucking asshole. Not only did he break into Batman's house to demand he get over the death of his son, not only did he refuse to allow Dick to grieve his third dead parent when they believed Bruce was dead, but Tim Drake has been cheating on his partners since he started dating. Despite only being created at the very tale end of the 1980s, Tim Drake has had nine love interests in main continuity. This is a feat accomplished by dating three girls at once. Yet it's Dick Grayson - the Romani man - who gained a fandom reputation for being a womanizer and in fanon a cheater, despite having only around a dozen love interests and existing for nearly three times as long as Tim.

tl;dr the bisexual Robin shouldn't be the one who habitually cheats on his partners, there's queercoding besides shipbaiting, Tim Drake sucks, stan Dick Grayson instead

UR CORRECT

[thestrangecarrotcake]

Let's go with 1, 3, 7, 16, and 23 for Gosalyn! :)

ee i got excited and drew a picture

Gos!!

My first impression of them So, as i mentioned in a tag of one of your asks, my intro to the afternooniverse was dt17. I actually thought Darkwing Duck was an original character to the reboot for a while until I started hanging around the fandom tags and hearing people talk about Steelbeak's reveal at the end of Moonvasion and realized there had to be something more there. Pretty sure I found out about Gosalyn around the same time!! From what I gathered of her she seemed pretty cool and when I finally started watching DW I really enjoyed her character! Needless to say I was pretty stoked to see her in Let's Get Dangerous!! I actually had this whole hc ahead of time that she was gonna be a kinda Vanellope Von Schweetz style character coming from the TV show universe and having a glitchy vibe going on. I still think that would have been cool but she was amazing nonetheless!!!

3. A song that reminds me of them Obviously her lullaby,, I'm really coming up blank otherwise I'm afraid 😔😔

7. A quote of them that you remember "It's GOSALYN, actually. And I need your help hero, I figure you owe me one."

16. A childhood headcanon Since she was raised by Waddlemeyer I think she's probably pretty smart! Bet she wore her hair in pigtails when she was little like in her og design

23. Future headcanon Absolutely the jock of the friend group. Like everyone's either a nerd, Louie, or dedicated their physical abilities to adventures only, Gos does actual sports. Closer time-wise to show canon I've been thinking about Dr. Waddlemeyer and I am SO CERTAIN he must be in this world's version of the Negaverse. He's probably caring for the Gosalyn there like DW almost does in the original show. There'd be this whole thing with him not wanting to leave that Gosalyn and our Gos wanting him back so bad but also she's been with Drake and LP for so long that she sees them as family too and she just doesn't KNOW WHAT TO DO!!! I need to think on it more I have so many thoughts about dt17-verse Darkwing

[fenrir-wolf-of-gotham]

What I think of the Batman main cast in a nutshell.

Bruce Wayne: Fun but he’s a bit overexposed right now. The best thing they could do with him now is lean into his fatherhood/mentorship role and ease off the gas.

Alfred: Not my favorite. Not my least favorite. He’s good but honestly dying was the best thing the writers could have done with him at the point he died. He’s either one of the wisest and funniest characters (see Batman Begins) or he’s just kind of… there (see BtAS).

Dick Grayson: Fun but being a cop for a while is a detractor. Not my favorite, not my least favorite.

Barbara Gordon: She’s best as Oracle. She’s been seen as Batgirl but now we need to see her evolve and change. Make her disabled again and let her be Oracle rather than Batgirl.

Jason Todd: They’re also not letting Jason grow. He’s had some good moments but at this point he should have grown past his role as “the edgy one”.

Tim Drake: Way too bland right now to be everyone’s blorbo. He’s sort of become stuck due to his ageless nature. In the 90s he was a rock n’ roll loving nerd. He’s slowly lost that and has become known as “the smart one” despite smartness being a requirement for the Batfamily.

Damian Wayne: Fun little guy. He’s been flanderized by the fandom into just being a little demon who loves animals but he’s more than that.

Duke Thomas: I don’t know enough about him but he’s cool. I need to learn more about him before I form an opinion.

Catwoman: Can we do something else with her character besides just, “isn’t Bruce Wayne hot”? If I ever become an editor at DC, BatCat fans should be aware that’s like the end times for you guys. That relationship will be dead by the next full moon.

There’s more but that’s all for now.

To those wondering why I left out Cass and Steph…

Just read the description of my blog.

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

if brokeness is a form of art

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/QX59Kh2 by timdrakeapologist (http_nyx) 𝘪𝘧 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘳𝘵, 𝘪 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘨𝘺. Of all the things Tim expected to see when he walked into class that day, having Jason Todd as his substitute English teacher was not one of them. And of all the things Jason expected when he went back to Gotham to annoy the shit out of his Replacement, growing fond of the kid was not one of them. But oh well, everyone knows life as a teenage vigilante/crime lord is full of surprises. Words: 7273, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, DCU Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: Gen Characters: Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Jack Drake, Janet Drake Relationships: Tim Drake & Jason Todd, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson, Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne, Jack Drake & Janet Drake & Tim Drake Additional Tags: Tim Drake-centric, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake is Robin, Hurt Tim Drake, Tim Drake is Not Okay, Bad Parents Jack and Janet Drake, Abusive Jack Drake, Jack and Janet Drake's A+ Parenting, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Protective Jason Todd, eventually tho, Bruce Wayne Tries to Be a Good Parent, he's like really bad at it but he's trying, he's also grieving and in pain so, Bruce Wayne is Bad at Communicating, bruce wayne is an okay-ish parent, Dick Grayson is Nightwing, now for the heavy hitters, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Abusive Parents, Broken Bones, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humor, because if i can joke about my traumas then so can my blorbos, Jason Todd is a literature nerd, Jason Todd is an English Teacher, Jason Todd Being a Little Shit, POV Alternating, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Not Beta Read, no beta we die like jason in a warehouse in ethiopea, Hopeful Ending read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/QX59Kh2

[nothieflike]

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3 (2023)

★★★★☆

Written and Directed by: James Gunn

Based on the Comic Book series by: Marvel Comics (Arnold Drake and Gene Colan)

The last film I reviewed for this blog before I sort of let it peter out was 2012's The Avengers. Obviously a lot of Marvel Cinematic Universe... er, stuff occurred in the intervening years. All three Spider-Man movies, for one thing, but also any mention of Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man, even the Infinity Stones. Heck, the first glimpse of Thanos came during the mid-credits bonus scene at the end of The Avengers. And, of course, in between that review and this one, we got two Guardians of the Galaxy films.

I won't get into my thoughts on those two previous films except to say that I understand why these films have been so frequently emulated in the years since the release of the first one. It's a formula for an ensemble movie where the characters are (probably) not known ahead of time, but by the end there is enough work put in to make the audience genuinely care. So with James Gunn apparently signing off from the MCU to take the reigns on a new chapter of DC films, Vol. 3 exists here in a space where the MCU has floundered a bit (or a lot, depending on your point of view) since the conclusion of The Infinity Saga and we see what Gunn's Guardians franchise is going to do to right the ship.

The answer, it turns out, is: nothing. Guardians Vol. 3 does not make any effort to "fix" The Multiverse Saga, Phase 4, or the MCU. Well, except in one specific way: Vol. 3 returns to a strategy that served the MCU extremely well in earlier eras which is that it sets out to make a solid action/adventure film first and leaves all the inter-connected broader universe stuff either to the backstories, the post-credits scenes, or just other franchises/films. And it's fairly obvious that is absolutely the right move to make. Guardians has been a bit of an outlier in the MCU for some time in that they are team movies but not team-UP movies. But the fairly minor flaws of this film don't have anything to do with it feeling distant from any of the Kang/Thunderbolts/Celestials nonsense going on elsewhere. That's a feature, not a bug.

So, what holds Vol. 3 back from true greatness? Mostly it comes from a trend in the cinematic universe model that has been in place since Avengers: Endgame, and that's catering to the most indulgent excesses from the comic book arm of Marvel. See, in the early days of the MCU, Marvel Studios rightly recognized that movies based on comic books needed to do several things simultaneously: firstly, appeal to broad audiences mostly by focusing on being self-contained and well executed films in their own right but secondly, they needed to also be as unassailable as possible by the hardcore comic book nerds who constituted the very core of the movie's audience. Plenty of earlier "successful" comic adaptations (Byran Singer's X-Men films from the 90s, for example, as well as edgier adaptations like Batman Begins and 2003's Hulk) seemed quite often to be embarrassed by their brightly-colored source material. They downplayed the elements that had originally endeared some of the characters to comics fans in favor of mass appeal, often in ways that quickly dated them. Marvel Studios though decided that the thing holding super hero movies back wasn't flashy costumes or somewhat trope-y, goofy fantastic elements but rather a self-seriousness that sucked the inherent fun out of escapism. And, ultimately, they were right.

Very, very right. The problem though? They were almost too right. For about ten years Marvel Studios stuck to a particular formula for making their movies fun and approachable and true enough to their funnybook roots that they avoided hardcore nerd outcry while gaining huge amounts of new fans who maybe otherwise had little to no use for comics themselves. But no one can keep a streak like that up forever. So what happened?

My theory is that Endgame happened. And it didn't just happen, it was (and still is as of this writing) the biggest MCU film in terms of box office grosses. It crushed. Looking at the overall plot of Endgame, it really did feel more like a direct adaptation from a Marvel Comics summer crossover event: time travel, alternate realities, key character deaths, the whole shebang. Up until this point Marvel Studios had been smoothing over some of the more comic-book-y elements of their storylines, running a riff on their Ultimate line where popular, foundational elements of the modern myths they traffic in were given a fresh pass under the guise of expanding the audience. But it worked so well, pleasing core comic fans with it's rootsy takes while gently easing moviegoing audiences into their world, they learned the wrong lesson.

The lesson they should have learned: don't stop doing that.

The lesson they did learn: if everyone loves every risk we take (galactic setting? portal wizards? funny Thor? yes, please!), we got so much more where that came from!

Which starts the straight line that leads us past unmentioned-afterward canon including: dueling myth-gods, literal Zeus, half-hatched god eggs, robot K.E.V.I.N (Feige), alligator Loki, and a giant popped-out eyeball in New York City. Oh and, like, Kang.

Now, to be fair, most of those things would feel a lot more at place in a Guardians of the Galaxy movie. As in, it's pretty weird they aren't the excesses Vol. 3 is guilty of. Rather, Vol. 3 reaches into the vault of dark, over-expository sorta-allegories straight from the fashionable grim-n-gritty late 90s era of the comics. It decides to push boundaries even beyond what a Sam Raimi MCU film felt inclined to push. And it does it all while daring to have a happy ending.

Vol. 3 picks up somewhere after the events of the Disney+ Holiday Special, which is (I believe) where we learned the Guardians had inducted Kraglin and Cosmo the dog and set up shop over in Knowhere with a bunch of... friends? Locals? Refugees? It's not clear. What is clear is that Guardians' leader Peter "Star-Lord" Quill (played with an unexpected complexity by Chris Pratt) is still struggling with the loss of the teammate Gamora (played here with as much nuance as possible by Zoe Saldana given the disservice the script pays her) he'd fallen in love with, particularly in light of the fact that a version of her lives on somewhere out in the universe, at best hostile toward him and at worst indifferent. A gold-skinned guy arrives, wreaking havoc, seeming fixated on Rocket (voiced with a lot less wise-cracking than usual by Bradley Cooper) and manages to mortally wound the mutated raccoon. When they try to heal him, they discover Rocket's creator put a kill switch into him and if they try to operate without removing it, he'll die.

This sends the Guardians on a desperate quest to find a way to save Rocket by digging into the past of his creator, a being who calls himself the High Evolutionary (played with a vulnerable gravitas by Chukwudi Iwuji). As the team crosses paths with Gamora and the Ravager faction she's been running with for the inevitable awkward reunion between her and Star-Lord, the film then begins cutting back and forth to the time when Rocket, well, became Rocket.

It's here that the film makes a choice to swerve hard into the pitch black in tone and visual aesthetic. The scenes of Rocket's creation and the introduction of his fellow discarded experiments are harrowing, ghastly things that might as well flash a bright yellow, all-caps title card: "ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION IS ANIMAL CRUELTY!" Or maybe just, "HURTING ANIMALS IS EVIL!" It's a lot, in all honesty and I was very glad I pre-screened this before taking my kids to see it.

Eventually the Guardians track down the High Evolutionary on a planet called Counter-Earth, which he created as part of his quest to fabricate a perfect utopian society. Here, again with the dark, we get essentially a genocide that occurs without much more than a passing mention by the main characters. And, y'know, narratively it mostly serves as a ticking clock and bit of chaos to keep the team from forming Voltron and making short work of the film's conflict before we can wring a bit more pathos out of the audiences' greater concern for a computer-animated raccoon than an entire planet of sentient and uncomfortably human-adjacent animal hybrid people.

The rest of the movie takes a few more dark swerves which really felt like the movie was setting me up for a huge gutpunch of an ending. I was thinking, fool me thrice, or whatever but I see where this is going. And then it swerves again and says, "actually no, you know what, sometimes things really suck a lot but then it turns out to be some flavor of all right." And it sorta turned out I was right because while I was waiting for the inevitable slug to the breadbasket, I got a different, gentler strike and dammit if it wasn't even more effective because of it.

I know it sounds a lot like I have some pretty major gripes with the film and I did find it's brazen and ballsy approach to the MCU as a bit off-putting. Buuut... the last several tentpole MCU entries that have been trying to stick with "the formula" have been pretty off-putting as well so even if I didn't say anything else positive at all, I'd still have to give it to Vol. 3 for at least failing to stick the landing in a novel fashion. And I genuinely do have a lot of positive things to say about this movie. The dynamic between the characters is loose and feels lived in, no matter what configuration is on screen at the time. I'd go so far as to say the acting is all best in Cinematic Universe for these characters. Not only do Pratt and Saldana do a fantastic job with adding new layers to their performances that carry the backstory in a way that means they have to do only minimal "as-you-know-bob"ing to sell their scenes. Unsung heroes abound as well from Pom Klementieff's smooth portrayal of a woman growing into an affinity for compassionate leadership to Karen Gillan's deft and subtle arc of "How Nebula Got Her Groove Back." Even Cooper manages to deliver a stellar vocal performance, really dragging the audience that extra few feet across the finish line to genuine concern for... well, for a computer-animated raccoon.

The stakes are smaller than expected but the satisfaction of the resolution is so rewarding it feels like it's been a bigger journey than even saving the universe with a dance contest. The soundtrack adds the same kind of welcome texture to scenes as ever, the visual effects are great, and though there are fewer jokes than earlier entries, when they do come they mostly all work. I could cite a few more minor bits of both nitpicking (Groot's regeneration ability seems very ill-defined and at this point amounts to "it's just whatever we need it to be for the current scene") and complimentary (the way they handle the lampshading on Groot's signature dialogue is super satisfying and wonderfully subtle), but I think I can summarize it all with this: it's not perfect, but it kind of feels like exactly what we needed right now. And if that doesn't summarize the Guardians of the Galaxy, I don't know what does.

I recommend Vol. 3, with the minor warning that it has some squirmy, uncomfortable scenes and subject matter. If you have some younger kids who have enjoyed previous Marvel films or if you're a squeamish type who generally finds nothing distasteful about these films, tread carefully because this one takes even some of the shocking moments from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and more or less says, "hold my beer." But if you can stomach it, it's one of the best Marvel features in a long time and well worth the wait.

[danny-chase]

The whole 'Lazarus Pit Madness' sounds like something some author decided to explore in a fic and suddenly BAM, everyone was using that or thinking it was canon. It happens a lot in the fandom, like Stephanie loving waffles or baby stalker Tim Drake. Honestly I'm really curious if the whole "Bruce started using Jason's death as a cautionary tale/he dismissed Jason's accomplishments as Robin" is true or also popular fanon. Any thoughts on that one?

So like... it's hard to say and it's also tricky territory because author's 100% come off as victim blamey when they have characters talk about Jason as Robin because they needed to somehow justify Tim being Robin after Jason died.

Some of this also has to do with the differences between pre-crisis and post-crisis Jason. A lot of the way fandom thinks of Jason's time as Robin seems to be influenced by both - the stealing tires off the Batmobile comes from post-crisis and the happy go lucky kid comes more from pre-crisis. Post-crisis Jason also wasn't around for a ton of time before he died, but he's the one all forms of modern Jason are based off of (in flashbacks as well). (And side note, it's not 100% clear how much of pre-crisis appearances carried over, but I'm 95% sure Jason's appearances in The New Teen Titans/The New Titans carry over because of a few lines surrounding Dick reacting to Jason's death).

Part of the reason fandom claims Jason was turned into a cautionary tale by Bruce is that whenever characters think about Jason they describe him as reckless. These characters do not remember pre-crisis Jason. This is the Jason they remember:

Batman (1940) #415

In this case Jason attacks Crane by himself, putting on a gas mask and throwing a bucket down to smash the glass... despite Bruce telling him not to. He does succeed at taking down the scarecrow but Bruce is annoyed because he didn't follow the instructions and doesn't want him "taking any unnecessary risk before I think he's ready."

It's hardly the only time Bruce scolds Jason for being reckless, in post-crisis, Jason swaps himself for hostages in his very first mission

Batman (1940) #410

(He's also a little nerd which is hilarious like do you mind if i stay up to do extra homework ssbjfjeksks). But I do want to highlight here that at least at first Bruce saw the recklessness not as a problem. In the issue after this he's momentarily dissapointed by Jason losing his temper against Two-Face (he just found out Two-Face was presumed responsible for his father's death).

In #416 Brue calls Jason "sloppy" while narrating and notes that it's not easy keeping him alive. Dick is annoyed because Jason messed up his drug bust (by the end of the issue they do kick ass together and Dick leaves on good terms).

By #421 we're here

Batman (1940) #421

Notably after this is the Felipe Garzonas case and Jason dies shortly after. My point in all this is laying out the context in which Bruce viewed Jason leading up to his death.

Here's some of his narration from #426, the first issue of death in the family.

"I should have known something like this would happen. Robin-- Jason Todd-- had been acting odd of late. Very moody. Resentful. Reckless. That attitude is about to get him killed."

"He obviously has a dangerously high level of aggressive energy to work off."

Basically Bruce comes to the conclusion that he should have like gotten Jason help coping with his parents deaths before he started training him to be Robin and fires Jason from Robin, and from there you know the story. All of this is to point out that Bruce watched Jason steadily grow more violent and reckless up to his death (and before I get angry anons saying all those people deserved it, yes the reason for Jason's actions is understandable, but to Bruce, this is what he's observing). I've seen people almost be surprised when it comes up in recent canon (most recently with the Nightwing Annual). But they started the whole "Jason is reckless" thing right after post-crisis hit.

Now with this added context, when the characters talk about Jason post him dying what they're saying isn't quite as idk damning. Jason dying also recontextualized how Bruce saw his relationship with Dick (remember when he said being reckless was something Dick would have done)

From The New Titans #55

Bruce: "You were lucky. When you didn't listen to me, your injuries weren't fatal. Of course, by the time I properly trained you--"

Dick: "Bruce, c'mon... lay off. I'm not here to fight."

And later

Bruce: "Why did I think I needed a partner? They slow you down! They make you worry about them rather than doing your job! He wouldn't listen. He wanted to do everything his way. He was just like you. In a few years I would have had to fire him as I did to you."

And so to some extent Dick has also been recontextualized as a reckless Robin in the modern era, most notably in his Robin: Year One story and in his origin story which has been told countless times. So this phenomenon isn't unique to Jason it's part of how DC justifies Bruce taking the first two Robins in, in the first place.

Now getting to the times in canon where Jason's been discussed to the younger members of the Batfam. First off we have Tim, who already knows Jason died and wasn't really told anything about it. In his introduction he kind of has a weird bias against Jason.

From Batman (1940) #440

Tim (narrating): "He [Bruce] seemed happier with Dick."

He also is pretty obsessed with Dick. Even recounting their first meeting he talks about remembering nothing about the circus except Dick and the show, and had tons of nightmares due to the whole watching Dick's parents die thing, which cemented the quadruple flip in his brain. So he's pretty biased. Anyways, no one actually told him what really happens and he makes a lot of assumptions about Jason, based on the news reports and clips he's seen of post-crisis Jason (he was also following the news on Dick as well). Here's how he talks about Jason (and remember, Dick and Bruce haven't actually told him anything about Jason):

He's kinder in his analysis of Jason here, Detective Comics #618:

Tim (narrating): "When Gotham needed him, he was there. When the Batman needed him, he was there. He was a hero. But he was nothing special, really. Just a boy, who was taught-- trained-- brought to his full potential by someone who knew how. Just a boy... like me. I can do it. I know I can. One day I'll be as good as Jason. One day I'll wear the suit."

From Batman (1940) #445, he's more judgemental:

Tim (narrating): "You think my anger will boil over, the way Jason's did. I can assure you, it won't."

And in the next issue he hallucinates/dreams (he wakes up at the end) Dick and Jason and here's what his mind conjures up:

Batman (1940) #456

😬😬😬😬 So 100% Jason was turned into a cautionary tale here, but it wasn't by Bruce it was by Tim. It's not completely bad takes all the time, though, the arc shows he feels pressure to live up to the mantle's expectations (Dick making the mantle a world wide icon and Jason dying for it are 2 things he cites).

Now the next time I recall Jason being brought up by Tim is when Dick and Tim have the following conversation, and for context this is also the issue where Dick tells the story of almost getting beaten to death by Two Face.

Robin (1993) #0 aka Tim forces Dick to talk about his trauma because we needed exposition

Dick (about Two Face story): "Look, can we talk about this later?"

Tim: "I'm sorry, Nightwing. It's just that you can answer lot of questions for me."

Dick: "Okay, fire another one at me."

Tim: "How about Jason Todd?"

Dick: "You don't throw softballs, do you? Jason was a different case. He was a street kid, a thief. Batman saw something in Jason-- a toughness. Maybe he decided it was time for a new kind of Robin. Jason had the right stuff. He held his own against the worst Gotham had to offer. But Jason was reckless. The role of Robin turned him into a daredevil. He took chances. Openly defied Batman's orders."

<cutting in for a second, you'll notice Dick is repeating to Tim something Bruce told him back in their fight in The New Titans #55>

Dick: "And that's what killed him. He went solo against the Joker. I never thought there'd be another Robin after that."

And I'm not sure why Dick came to this conclusion, unlike Tim he wasn't following the news, and he met Jason. Bruce never actually told Dick how Jason died, so my assumption is that at some point he read the case file, which may or may not have had Bruce noting that he fired Jason for being reckless right before Jason died. And the whole "he died because he was like you" thing definitely left an impact onto how Dick saw Jason. Dick's not lecturing Tim here though about some kind of cautionary tale, Tim asked about Jason and he answered based off his post-crisis memories of Jason.

Post this, Tim brings Jason up in this argument insinuating he thinks Jason was reckless:

Teen Titans (2003) #6

Bruce: "You need to listen to reason, Robin. You're acting too emotional. Disobeying orders, like--"

Tim: "Like Jason?"

Bruce: "You're nothing like Jason."

And being willing to bring up Jason in arguments isn't a one time thing.

Batman: Gotham Knights #26

Dick: "One: as long as you're with Batman-- or me-- you're safe. Neither of us would ever let anything happen to you. Two: We don't quit. Not once has anyone who knows Batman's mission failed to get up again after being knocked down. And three: Batman doesn't kill. Not ever."

Tim: "One: Jason Todd. Two: James Gordon. Three: So far. Sorry."

Which is off the beaten track of cautionary tale but it's still not very respectful of Jason's memory (at least he apologizes in Gotham Knights though).

So that's it for Tim, moving onto Cass. This is the first time Jason's brought up by Bruce to a protege (that I've found). For context Cass lost her perfect fighting skills and Bruce fires her from Batgirl because he doesn't want her getting killed:

Batgirl (2000) #7

This is a pretty far cry from the Bruce we saw before, talking about how reckless Jason was and how Dick was lucky, etc. etc. Out of universe I think this is partly because we don't need to justify Cass becoming Batgirl the way there needed to be justification for Tim (your average joe) becoming Robin. In universe it could point to Bruce having some growth and accepting that all of them are reckless (unfortunately he looses it by the time UTRH happens). To me Jason isn't a cautionary tale here, rather he's the reason Bruce is so committed to keeping his proteges safe.

However probably the scene that people took and ran with is this one (link) from Detective Comics #790. Bruce draws parallels between Jason and Steph here, describing them both at reckless (again, he's not wrong, but he's still a hypocrite), and saying "maybe it's not too late for Stephanie." But he doesn't use this as a cautionary tale for someone straight to their face, he's telling this to Cass, and only Cass. He doesn't go blabbing this theory to Barbara, Dick, or Tim. And it does come out of a legitimate concern of seeing areas where Steph and Jason were similar. However he is using Jason's death to justify keeping Steph out of action. (Side note: which is complete bullshit, the way he treats Steph screams of misogyny because she's not all that much different than Tim and it's implied by Alfred he used her as Robin to bait Tim into coming back) Anyways, this all happens right before War Games and so... this was basically a scene foreshadowing Steph's death.

Something else to point out is Cass notes that no one ever talks about Jason. They don't bring him up willy nilly - neither Dick or Bruce likes talking about Jason.

Onto Damian. I think if Dick tried lecturing Damian about how he needs to be careful or something because Jason died, Damian would call him a loser. After the events of Battle for the Cowl, Damian does his homework on the Red Hood, as even though no one told him anything, he knows enough to insult Jason.

Batman & Robin (2009) #5

Dick: "Jason Todd. Be careful, he's--"

Damian: "The second Robin, the one after you. He looked different the last time we slapped him around."

<side note: the last time they "slapped him around" jason shot damian in the chest and nearly killed him but go off damian 😂>

Damian: "Back for more? I heard you had your brains beaten out by the Joker, but I had no idea you were this big of an idiot."

<side note again: Jason is firmly established as a villain at this point, Damian has 0 allegiances to him and no reason to be kind, especially because Jason nearly killed him last time>

Later in this issue we get Dick's incredibly brief explanation to Damian being:

Dick: "Bruce thought he could save Jason... and he might have if the Joker hadn't gotten to him first with a crowbar and high explosives."

So to Damian, Jason was very much not a cautionary tale.

As for the other kids? Steph never even heard about Jason, because the writers never took her as a serious part of the Batfam (outside of maybe Dixon, who's own writing was steeped in misogyny). Duke roasts Jason for dying, which is hilarious, but in the new52 and rebirth Jason's alive, so there's not really a point to cautionary tales. I don't even know if Harper knows he died.

TL;DR: In the comics I've read, Jason's not treated as a cautionary tale by Bruce for the most part, with a couple exceptions that I've listed here. It's not anywhere close to the magnitude of what fandom makes it out to be 🤷‍♀️

[emilou-keen-gear]

Say, Mr. Mallard, does Gosalyn have any friends her age in the Saint Canard area? I'm only familiar with her friends on the other side of the Audubon Bay in Duckburg.

Drake: So polite. Mr. Mallard is my father. Please, call me Drake.

As for Gosalyn, she does have many friends. It's been rough for her recently because of the loss of her grandfather and we haven't yet found out how to get him back, but luckily she's had a lot of support from her friends in Duckburg, which she chats and plays games with on-line.

She also started a new school, which she didn't want to go to at first because Dr. Waddlemyer had been home-schooling her, so it took some time to adjust, and now she's making some new friends.

One friend, who is also our next-door neighbor, is Honker Muddlefoot.

He's a bright kid, and not bad, for a Muddlefoot. Sometimes he can be a little annoying when he corrects me. Or when he interrupts me with some facts. Or proves that he is smarter than me about something. But I think he's a good influence on Gosalyn.

On the other hand, she has this other friend that I do not like, but, and as Gosalyn frequently informs me, I am not her father.

Her name is Melody Phoenix, but she goes by the name "Splatter." I may not have been Darkwing Duck for long, but I know trouble when I see it, and this girl is definitely trouble. And Gosalyn has gotten into trouble at school because of her "friend," and I'm at a loss as to what I can do about it. I don't know how to raise kids, much less a teenage girl. I just hope that things will work out in the end.

Emilou's notes: Hey everyone. Thanks for all the questions for the cast of TSoF. It's been fun answering them and drawing the characters again. As most of you know, Drake Mallard has yet to meet Gosalyn in the TSoF universe, but I do plan on making a sequel that will tie in the third season of Ducktales and take place after the season finale. I am very much looking forward to writing more about Gosalyn and her living with Drake and Launchpad as the three of them fight crime in St. Canard.

And here is Honker and Melody Phoenix, or as she is known to us all, "Splatter Phoenix." This is the first time I have drawn either of them, and these are not their final designs but pretty close to what I want them.

I wanted Honker to still have some of his looks from the old series but give him a more modern nerd look, and I actually stole his fashion sense from Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, which I think would go well with how I would like to write him. He's going to be smart, of course, and a year younger than Gosalyn and has skipped a grade. He'll have an almost perfect photographic memory, so he can recall details of everything he's read and seen. I'm looking forward to writing how he and Gosalyn became friends in the sequel of TSoF.

As for Splatter Phoenix, I wanted to her and Gosalyn to be friends at the beginning, which meant making Splatter Phoenix a teenager. She'll be a few years older than Gosalyn, and part of a tagging gang which she invites Gosalyn to. Later, I'll be bringing in an origin story of how she gained the power to enter into paintings and becoming a super villain.

My goal with bringing in the other cannon characters that DT17 hadn't introduced was to give them a new spin but being true to the original content, much like DT17 was. I can't wait to begin working on my sequel story, which I hope to start sometime in the fall of this year.

[altruistic-meme]

AFTG fic recs

Hi all! I just wanted to share some of my all-time favorite fanfics for aftg, for no real reason other than I want more people to read them and send their love to the authors :) 

Under a readmore because it got. A little long. But please enjoy!

WIPs

Dangerous Habits by LovelyLittleGrim ( @lovelylittlegrim )

Andrew has run into problems while on undercover jobs before. None of those problems were anything like the troublesome runaway that is one Nathaniel Wesninski

Aka: the fic where Andrew is undercover as a hitman for hire and Neil is the guy who hires him. Things get complicated from there.

Undercover Andrew? BAMF Neil? Hitman AU?? Absolutely. I’m in love. The story is just *chef kisses*

Chapters: 8/9

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, past rape/non-con, Drake Spear (who is his own warning), Butcher Neil, 

--

Negotiations by elesary ( @elesary )

This is what Andrew Minyard knows: his brother is dead, killed by a petty Raven prince who has never learned to keep his hands off of Andrew's things. His brother's daughters are his responsibility, a job that is made infinitely harder when their shitty grandparents want custody. Nathaniel Wesninski is a liar, but he might be the only way to avenge Aaron and protect his nieces. All Andrew has to do is watch Nathaniels - Neil's- back as he carves out his own life and identity from everyone who thinks they own him.

Andrew has always been good at upholding his end of the bargain, has he finally found someone willing to uphold theirs?

This fic has got me fucked up, honestly. I’m emotional over it. It’s fantastic.

Chapters: 11/?

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, attempted sexual assault, Butcher Neil,

--

the upper hand by plantelty ( @plantelty  )

Shortly after losing his mother, Neil arrives in the small town of Palmetto, South Carolina, alone in the world and with an impossible plan to carry through.

At the age of eighteen, Andrew ends up helping a boy stage his own death.

-

Just two fucked up boys learning to trust each other during the course of a summer, but also: multiple references to songs, twinyard angst (Nicky tries his best), The Plotting of Neil Josten's Gruesome Demise, and shit hitting the fan in a variety of ugly ways!

The cliffhanger has got me on the edge of my seat, but it is 100% worth the read and the wait for the last chapter!! 

Chapters: 10/11

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Canon typical violence, 

--

The Butcher’s House by Fire_Bear ( @fire-bear )

Andrew thought something was odd with the house the Foxes had to move into after their Athletes' House had been burnt down. He just wasn't prepared for what was actually wrong with it.

For this was a house full of monsters.

Ghost story! Ghost story! Ghost story! I literally think about this fic every other day, it’s fantastic. 

Chapters: 6/?

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Warnings: character death (major or minor is unclear), injuries, 

--

Promise of an Unbroken Boy by elesary ( @elesary​ )

Neil is caught by the police with Mary's burning body and is sent to juvie in Oakland where he is assigned to share a cell with one Andrew Doe, who promises him Exy, if only Neil will tell him all of his secrets. With no access to tinted contacts and hair dye, he agrees, it's only a matter of time until he's killed after all. What does he have to lose?

But Andrew's found someone who knows what a promise means, and he'll be damned if he lets that go without a fight.

Ngl this is definitely in my very top favorites -- I LOVE the idea of Neil and Andrew meeting pre-series, and this fic just BLEW my expectations for that plotline out of the waters

Chapters: 14/?

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, Underage, attempted rape/non-con, canon-typical violence, 

~~~~~~~~~

Complete

The Nameless Monster by kanekicure ( @kanekicure )

Nathaniel Wesninski wants nothing more than to see his father dead and buried. But when his father promises him the title of The Butcher, Nathaniel quickly realizes that his destiny of following in his father's footsteps is closer than ever before.

So of course, when he gets forced to go undercover for the Baltimore police, he starts seeing what living could truly be.

-

Andrew Minyard is a newly recruited police officer for the worst precinct in Baltimore, who is dedicated on hunting down the notorious Butcher and his unnamed underling. But when Neil Josten is thrown into his midst as his civilian consultant; he starts to realize some things don't quite appear as they seem.

I love the story telling -- the secret identities, the plotting, everything.

Chapters: 14/14

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic depictions of violence, Butcher Neil, implied/referenced rape/non-con, implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced slef-harm (I believe there is a scene that is somewhat detailed on this subject), some characters also get drugged at one point, 

-- 

that’s just something people say by nanatsuyu ( @theoctopusnods )

Neil makes the mistake of stealing the wrong car. Andrew makes the mistake of offering a ride to a liar. They both make the mistake of turning the whole affair into a road trip ‘home.’

Gonna be honest; the summary does not give a big idea as to what is in store and i am SO GLAD I gave this one a try so i’m telling you that you will be too

Chapters: 24/24

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Warnings: implied/referenced child abuse, panic attacks (somewhat grahic descriptions of)

--

The Story After You by kanekicure ( @kanekicure )

Andrew Minyard does not understand how Riko Moriyama landed Neil Wesninski.

How the snot-nosed, small dick, rich brat, second son of the Moriyama family who also just so happened to own the largest EXY gear and merchandiser company in the world “RAVEN” - had landed smart mouthed, quick witted, stupidly blue eyed Wesninski, was beyond him. Well, unless Wesninski was a gold digger, but Andrew doubted it.

-

Or; how Andrew Minyard says he doesn't get into messy situations, until he meets Neil and suddenly he is in the most messiest possible situation ever imagined in his life - oh and also, he might be becoming a homewrecker.

Ok I am behind bc I haven’t read the final chapter of this but!! I love the story, it’s very emotional and moving, and I love the characterization in it.

Chapters: 10/10

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Abusive Riko/Neil, abusive relationship, implied/referenced rape/non-con, implied/reference child abuse, implied/referenced self-harm, graphic depictions of violence, some descriptions of injuries/scarring, 

-- 

This Complicated Life by 5a5b5p5 ( @andrewsbutterflyknife )

“This is exactly why I don’t want you and Andrew to meet,” Aaron says grumpily. “You two would get along far too well.”

Neil grins. “I just like pissing you off,” he says, “It’s not my fault your brother does such a good job at it.”

—

Neil doesn’t expect much from his Sophomore year of college, but when he becomes a waiter at the Palmetto Bistro, his life gets a whole lot more interesting. As it turns out, maintaining friendships new and old as well as navigating an interesting relationship with the head chef of the restaurant—who just so happens to be his best friend’s twin brother—is a lot more complicated than he’d thought it would be.

A much more light-hearted fic than most of the others! Includes a secret relationship, and also chef Andrew >>

Chapters: 10/10

Rating: Mature

Warnings: 

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When I Fade, Keep Me in Your Memory by demesh 

Neil Josten has a secret: he can flicker out of existence.

He can vanish with the turn of a thought; click his fingers, and suddenly he’s not there anymore. Invisible and untouchable, he becomes a living ghost.

Having promised his mother never to let his ability go, Neil teeters the line between faded and real, a person and an echo. He can’t risk getting hurt.

But then, one day, someone sees him when they shouldn’t be able to.

 A (flower-shop) AU about how a faded and lonely Neil finds it in him to become someone real.

Another fic that I need to catch up on ;; but anyway it’s amazing and I love Neil’s ability in it, it’s so well explained and well-written about

Chapters: 12/12

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Warnings: mentions of past abuse, panic attacks

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12 Ways to Woo a Minyard by NikNak22 ( @knickknacksandallthat )

Neil is a math nerd who, by a stroke of dumb luck, falls into a group of friends that are the closest thing to family he’s ever had. So, when he tells them about his new mysterious crush, he shouldn’t be surprised how immediately they come up with a plan to help win them over. One they insist that if Neil follows it, he’ll have them falling for him in no time. But things don’t always go to plan – or do they?

Nicky wants to set him up with someone else. Matt and Jeremy are confused but supportive. Allison and Seth offer lewd suggestions, while Dan does her best to keep everyone in line. Jean and Renee know something, Aaron doesn’t really care, and Kevin just wants Neil to join the lacrosse team.

But one thing’s for certain – whether Neil’s successful or not, everyone’s got money riding on this.

The romance-trope-filled fanfic of my dreams. Sometimes you just need a fic of pure joy -- this is that fic. 

Chapters: 14/14

Rating: Mature

Warnings: 

--

finders keepers by moonix ( @annawrites ​ )

Andrew meets Nathaniel through a scavenger hunt app. As their team takes part in a hunt that sends each of them to creepy, abandoned places alone to solve clues and gain points, Andrew and Nathaniel begin a little treasure hunt of their own. The anonymity of getting to know each other in small increments, never meeting face-to-face, allows them a level of intimacy neither are used to. Meanwhile Renee’s friend Neil is acting weird whenever Andrew shows up…

This was one of the first fics I read for aftg!! And BOY what a great start!! All of the little pieces and parts that work together, and just the scavenger hunt itself is fantastic! (I also REALLY wanna know if there is an app like this out there because I would be down to do that)

Chapters: 8/8

Rating: Mature

Warnings: (these all come from the author:) “mentions of historical abuse in a mental asylum, mentions of suicide, mentions of murder and kidnapping, morbid facts, creepy abandoned places including a haunted house at a theme park with disturbing rooms, special appearance of a creepy clown doll, fatphobia and some introspection on body image/complicated relationship with food, mention of self harm scars”

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Scared to Live (But I’m Scared to Die) by Major_816 ( @major816 )

Neil Josten goes to the Nest for Andrew, but he stays for a lot more.

~

"I'm sorry Coach," he muttered.

"For what kid?" Wymack shifted. "You've got to give me something to work with here."

Wymack watched the thin traces of sorrow as paper exchanged hands and he was looking down at a contract with the Edgar Allan Raven's.

"I signed them Coach, I'm sorry."

~

The one where Neil doesn't come back from Winter Break.

It is VERY dark, and is one of very few fics that I have actually been almost unable to read one of the scenes, so DEFINITELY pay attention to the warnings -- both these, and the ones provided for each individual chapter. I did go through the fic to collect as many warnings as I could find in the chapter warnings, but be sure to take care of yourself.

Chapters: 36/36

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: rape/non-con elements, implied/referenced rape/non-con, discussions of rape/non-con, canon-typical violence, graphic descritions, physical abuse, panic attacks, descriptions of injuries (often graphic), psychological warfare, dissociating, psychological torture, physical torture, use of knives, alcoholism/alcohol abuse, pain-induced delirium, rape/non-con, emotional self-separation, suicidal ideation/thoughts of suicide, emotional distress (which sums up the whole fic and also me while reading it), handcuffs/chains used as restraints, referenced/implied abuse towards animals, vomitting, begging, excessive use of painkillers, drowning, waterboarding, physical restraint, mutilation of an animal, mild hallucinations, non-con drugging, sleep deprivation, starvation, humiliation, the Butcher, 

Also one of the first fics I read and 100% my absolute favorite fic!!! Which is adfjhsd a little worrying, considering, but it is what it is. Anyway. This fic absolutely wrecked me, and while it is technically complete, there is a sequel in the works! So! But I am so so excited for the sequel, and I am working on rereading this. It’s amazing. 1000/10.

[historyhermann]

Read or...die?: Paper masters, embers of the British empire, and books galore [Part 1]

Anita, Nenene, and Maggie in the first episode of the 26-episode anime in a room filled with books.

On August 29, Amy recommended (in an account which is now locked) I watch "Read or Die," otherwise known as R.O.D, which they called a beloved anime series. Earlier this month, I tweeted about how the 2001 OVA is interesting because one of the protagonists, Agent Paper, is a book nerd (bibliophile to be exact) who is "often too distracted from the task at hand by reading books," and that libraries are bursting out of this anime. She has the power to manipulate paper, perhaps a bit like Paper Star in the Carmen Sandiego series.

Before I get further, let me summarize the plot of the OVA. Basically, this anime takes place in a world where the British Empire is a major superpower, with an intelligence agency known as the "British Library" within the actual British Library, ensuring the empire is maintained. It has a special ops division, the MI6, with the OVA following the story of "The Paper," otherwise known as Yomiko Readman, who is an agent of the library and is part of a team working to track down rare books, keeping them from the hands of evildoers. She lives in an apartment which is filled to the brim with books, so many that she is almost sleeping on them, and is acquiring more all the time. After she is attacked by someone who tries to take her book, Yomiko teams up with a former U.S. soldier, Drake Anderson, and an agent named Nancy Makuhari, the latter who Yomiko falls for, with both expressing feelings for each other. [1] Nancy has the power to phase through objects but cannot control paper like Yomiko. Yomiko reports to the Library's head, Joe Carpenter ("Mr. Joker") while Wendy Earhart is Joker's assistant and secretary, caring for Yomiko's well-being. This Joker is nothing like the Joker in the Batman series, although he ends up becoming a villain. Anyway, the OVA, which was given bad marks by reviewers for Anime News Network as having an awful storyline, but positively by Robert Nelson and Dallas Marshall of T.H.E.M. Anime Reviews, ends in a huge battle. It results in the injury of Nancy as the villainous plan to broadcast the Beethoven symphony across the world by using a rocket, while Yomiko gets away with a parachute made of paper. Later, she visits Nancy, who has suffered memory loss and is living in a house with people who have a similar condition, talking about how nice her "sister" was, as a way of talking about her.

The 26-episode sequel series, known as R.O.D the TV, meant to be a catch-all term to refer to characters from the Read or Die OVA, manga, and light novels, and those from the Read or Dream manga, begins very differently than the OVA. This series happens five years after the OVA and has stronger character development, even though some criticize it for its "hokey plot and premise." I would like to be mention Jennifer Snoek-Brown’s post about library call numbers in the film, noting that these numbers often serve as clues, props, and plot points. I am noting this because, in many of the scenes that libraries are shown, there are also library call numbers as well.

Nenene Sumiregawa is a depressed Japanese writer, with writers' block, who has come to Hong Kong to promote her book, later lives with two sisters (the "Paper Sisters"), Michelle Cheung and Maggie Mui, who are bibliophiles, and their little sister, Anita King, in Japan. None of them are blood-related. Nenene reveals she has a friend who was "important to her" which gave her helpful reviews on her writing, and the three sisters save Nenene from two assailants. The next few episodes are about the growing friendship between Nenene and the Paper Sisters, as the latter are freeloaders who live at Nenene's apartment. In the third episode, "Let's Meet in Jinbocho," we see a bookstore and Yomiko's apartment which has become her bookshelf. We also hear the future villain mentioned, Mr. Carpenter. In the fourth episode, titled "The Seventh Grade Course," Anita joins a book club at the local junior high school that is located in a library, with Hisami Hishishii as the only other member. That library, the first shown in the series, is shown below:

Following this, Anita barely escapes an assailant while holding a book in the library. She is saved by her sister, Michelle, barely. The assailant gets away and does not retrieve the book. This is the beginning of the three sisters, and others, handing out "some wicked papercuts with their paper master skills" as one critic puts it, which is a hilarious way to describe it. This is interesting because Anita hates books but while exhibiting symptoms of a "deeper problem," while she, like the other sisters, have varied powers as papermasters. And yeah there is the "wastage of good paper," as one person put it, but it's for a good cause! That leads to the next episode, "They Shout," where the Paper Sisters get a mission to recover one of the books which were smuggled out of the British Library during a fire four years earlier and are in a Romanian castle. They come across a professor who can manipulate sound, making the abilities of the Paper Sister moot. They figure out how to defeat him, creating a huge silencer, allowing Anita to throw a book at the professor's head, knocking him out. Unfortunately, the professor sends out such a strong soundwave that it deafens Maggie and causes Michelle (and Anita) to fall down. While Michelle recovers, as does Anita, Maggie has lost her hearing, although she still is able to stop a bullet from hitting Anita. They all return to Nenene's apartment and sleep in the living room together. By the next episode, "The Right Stuff", the library is under attack again, with books strewn across the floor:

Later, Junior returns from her mission empty-handed, unable to find the book…

Then, we have another scene in the library where Anita meets Junior, who is an agent for the British Empire, trying to retrieve a book, although Anita does not know this at the time. As they talk, we find out why Anita doesn't like books: they remind her of painful memories, like the burning of books and a shadowy figure standing nearby. At the same time, Nenene (and the audience) learns that the Paper Sisters are not sisters by blood but that they adopted each other, becoming a family unit. Hisami tries to sympathize, saying no one will be coming for her either. She tries the best she can to convince Anita to read a book for school.

The episode ends with her reading a report she wrote about Midnight Liberation Zone, one of Nenene's books. The next episode, "In A Grove," named after a January 1922 short story by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa which Akira Kurosawa used as a basis for his 1950 film, Rashōmon, features the Paper Sisters going on a mission to find a book. Everything goes horribly wrong as one of them is arrested, another is stuck in a coffin, and one more is almost killed by a person posing as one of the sisters. The episode ends with an unidentified person putting a book in what looks to be an archives.

The next episode, episode 8, "Seduced by the Night," features Anita and other students trying to find a "poltergeist" in the library and Nenene traveling to bookstores presumably looking for her book. We also learn about the illegal human experiments by the British government (the villains in this story), on people to get them to "learn" more words. Anita and the other students end up having a "food break" in the library, ha.

Of course, Junior and Anita connect more, with people thinking that Junior is Anita's boyfriend (he isn't). Then, Junior later finds the book but reports to his superiors that he "can't find it," likely looking for an excuse to stay around Anita, which would be my guess. The next episode, "Heart of Darkness," involves the Paper Sisters going on a mission to recover another one of the books taken from the British Library. They are not successful and are more skeptical than ever of the people they work for. In the episode that follows, "A Christmas Carol," we learn how Maggie, Michelle, and Anita met. Part of that includes going into a dimly-lit basement library in a house they broke into, and discovering a bunch of books made to look old but are actually newer, with Maggie and Michelle thinking they have been set up. Then, they meet Anita, who begs to join them, but they reject her pleas, with all of them going their separate ways. The following day, Michelle proposes that all three of them become sisters, which Anita tearfully accepts and Maggie accepts silently, becoming M.A.M. (Michelle, Anita, and Maggie). The episode after that, "Goodbye Japan," features Anita at the school library with Hisa. Anita later gives up a book she had been hiding, with the villains, like Mr. Carpenter, saying that all the pieces are falling into place. There are a couple more scenes in a library later in the episode as well. Anita is given a going-away party, and tearfully embraces Hisa, who says she loves Anita, as they both hug each other. They get to Hong Kong and Nenene gets straight-up kidnapped by her editor, Linho, to write the best story that's ever been told, apparently.

In the next episode, "Twilight of the Papers, Part I," Nenene is subjected to a mind control/hypnotism experiment after she is kidnapped. The Paper Sisters plan her rescue, while Nenene challenges Linho, who is working for Dokusensha, asking if he has been lying to her the whole time, wanting to get her to write for four years so they can conduct some experiment on her. The Paper Sisters break-in and easily move for the facility in their attempt to save Nenene, with Wong stopping them in their tracks. This continues in the next episode, "Twilight of the Papers, Part II," where they work together to help Nenene and get her out of the building. Linho dies in the sinking of the building, as does Wong, while much of Hong Kong Island sinks as a result of the explosion. They all get out alive, and we hear the voice of Yumiko leaving a message on the answering machine of Nenene's apartment in Tokyo. It seems the show is really heating up at this point.

Wendy Earhart, part of the British Library, is trying to resurrect all the information from the Dokusensha building which collapsed at the beginning of the following episode, "Forest of Paper Leaves (or "Paper Leaf Wood")." We also find out that Junior is living with her at her lush apartment, presumably in Tokyo. We also learn that the British worked to find a cure for "Mr. Gentleman," but then realized they had to transfer his memories and knowledge to another body, so they began human experimentation, and collecting genetic samples from historic figures, with some samples successfully "cultivated." During this explanation, we see a library, presumably a branch of the British Library, at one point. Thus begins a sort of clip episode.

The story goes that the resurrection of Mr. Gentleman was put on hold when the place holding the genetic samples was attacked by an unknown force (the superpowered samurai, Gennai Hiraga, in the OVA), destroying half of the samples. Then, in 2001, the events of the OVA occurred, with a fight with the I-Jin. While they "resolved" the incident, they wondered who had been behind the attacks and why, although they suspected that Dokusensha was behind it all. The latter was described originally as serving the Chinese emperors but then tasked with guarding the imperial libraries through many dynasties, studying literature on various topics. They disappeared, then reappeared in 1994, becoming more powerful after Hong Kong was given back to China, with their goal reportedly to "control the world and destroy the British Empire." After that, they began experimentation on people, with an operation titled "sleeping books" to transfer his knowledge to seven people. This plan was put on hold when the British Library was attacked by an unknown person, with the British later withdrawing from the EU and were expelled from the UN. After they worked with Dokusensha to continue their plan. Wendy goes on to talk about the papermasters, saying that Yomiko disappeared after the British Library was set on fire, and noting some archival footage of her abilities. We also get a profile of the three Paper Sisters which the British are trying to get information on and their missions for Dokusensha:

Wendy continues writing her report, concluding that the collapse of the Dokusensha facility gave them an advantage, then transitioning to Joker's speech before members of the British Empire, which is well-received. Joker then tells Wendy they need to look for Yomiko...

In the next episode, "In the Gray Light of the Abyss," the Paper Sisters and Nenene return to Tokyo but are on the run again, accused of helping in the bombing in Hong Kong. All of them work together to find Yomiko, who is in the place where you would find the most books in Japan: the National Diet Library. According to its official website, the library's main building alone has the capacity to hold 4.5 million volumes of materials, while the annex has the capacity to hold 7.5 million volumes. The library was established in 1947 with the National Diet Library Law and opened to the public the following year. It is a bit like the Library of Congress in that it supports the Japanese parliament, known as the Diet, which is its primary role, but it also acquires information and materials to be preserved in a long-term manner, and to provide "easy access to information resources." In the episode, the library director says they have "everything that has ever been published in Japan." Yomiko is said to read her way through the stacks all day. The director basically gives them a bit of a tour of the library, which is pretty cool, to be honest, and something I haven't seen in animation, showing the inner workings of the library. In the episode itself, National Diet Library appears for a total of about 11 and a half minutes, which is about half of the episode! The animators likely worked with/went to the library to put together these animations, which look pretty close to how the library functioned and what was in the stacks.

Some snapshots of the National Diet Library in the episode

Nenene hugs Yomiko tightly and bawls her eyes out, happy to see her once again. Yomiko then takes them to a place she is living... in the stacks itself. She and Nenene talk more, while the Paper Sisters explain what happened. Yomiko expresses doubts about coming with them, then Joker appears, telling her that she should return to the British Library and be Agent Paper once again.

The next episode, "Fahrenheit 451," which has a slightly changed opening, including Nancy reading a book in a library, and a book falling off Yomiko's head, ha, begins with a bang. Mr. Joker is impressed by her "hiding place," and when he tries to convince Yomiko to return to England, and cooperate, she refuses, saying, "Mr. Joker, you are an evil man." What follows is an eight-minute scene in the library, with the Joker claiming he bought the entire library, a fight between his goons and them. Their time in the library itself ends with them flying out of the library on a paper bird, which is so cool:

After they escape, Joker, still in the library, surrounded by slips of paper, reports that the containment mission has failed, and gives orders for a new mission. Wendy tells all those listening to take new orders and begin the mission "Fahrenheit 451." The British Library agents begin collecting all the books from the bookstores and the Jimbocho region. Little do they know, but the Paper Sisters, Nenene, Nancy, and Yomiko decide to return there, so she can say goodbye to bookstore owners and pick up some personal items. She does get back to her apartment, Junior tries to take the specific book the British Library needs. She fails, stopped by Nancy, to her chagrin. They then find out about the awful plans of the British Library to steal all the books in the area, putting them in a huge pile. The citizenry is alarmed and the books burn in a huge fire. These villains are some of the worst! Awful to burn all those good books! Yomiko tells them to stop and put out the fire, asking them how they could do such an evil thing, with Wendy telling it is a "bit like last time," referring to the previous fire at the British Library. Anita has a flashback to the burning of books which traumatized her earlier in her life, and Wendy declares that Yomiko will "pay for" what she did.

Well, that was one depressing episode. In the episode that follows, "Sweet Home," the fire continues, with Yomiko pleading for her to put out the fire. Wendy says they are doing this because "it's necessary." She is shocked that Wendy is staying with them willingly when it is clear she has changed. She continues to plead for this to stop, but what she says falls on deaf ears. Thanks to her old US army pal, Drake, they are able to escape, with a smokescreen enabling them to slip away undetected. The local booksellers also let them borrow their vehicle as well. More of the world falls under the control of the British Library/British Empire and martial law is said to be coming in Tokyo itself, as they set up shop in bookstores across the world, attempting to gain control of knowledge and ideas, rather than a simple military occupation. Joker says that bookstores and libraries are the "fundamental fabric of a nation's collective wisdom," with control of these the "first step" toward constructing a "new world," that people like Joker want. When they get to the house of Yomiko's parents, where no one has lived for years, she turns on the generator, with the paper sisters, Nenene and others impressed by the number of books she has, with books everywhere, which annoys Anita, of course. Later, as Drake sets up traps, Anita comes outside the house and talks with him, with her trauma coming back to the forefront, and she pleads with him if he knows anything about the fire at the British Library. Drake then describes Yomiko as a fool, saying that no matter how much evil someone has inside of them, she tries to reach out to them, but is unsuccessful.

In the episode that follows, "Confession," Junior becomes temporarily allied with the heroes after he finds out that Nancy is his mother. While Michelle is accepting of him, Anita is still skeptical, as is Maggie. Nancy is still comforting Yomiko, who is in a deep funk. Anita explains to Nenene what they are running from, reminds her that they are still fugitives. Drake wakes up from his nap and is still skeptical of Junior, although he comes around, like everyone else. Yomiko reveals the truth to them all, which the audience partially knows, the origin of Junior, and how the British Library agents kidnapped him. Junior is so distraught that he phases into the book and they see the British Library Special Operations Center, for a scene that lasts for about four minutes.

© 2020 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Notes

[1] As Theron Martin writes, this OVA has "a little bit of character development in the way it tries to shape the relationship between Yomiko and Nancy...[but] there is not much room to delve into things deeply."

Reprinted from Pop Culture Library Review and Wayback Machine

[popculturebuffet]

One Year Anniversary: Top 12 Ducktales Episodes!

Happy anniversary all you happy people! Yes it was one year ago today I started reviewing animation and it’s been a ride to be sure. I’d always WANTED to be a reviewer: I love going on and on about stuff I love, really digging into it and picking it apart... but I could never get started. I tried youtube but I didn’t have the money for the equipment nor a proper shooting space to record, so my efforts.. were not great. And while I TRIED text reviews, my own looming pile of self hatred meant every attempt I made was shot down when it got hard as me not being good enough. 

But one year ago I finally got past that. I’d already been reviewing a bit, doing invididual issues of comics... but got way in over my head trying to do the current line of X-Men comics as it came out, and wisely bowed out of that. But that left a gap: I had nothing to cover week to week and with a demanding new job, I drifted into just doing in charcter chats, little fan fictions script styles. Not bad work, I should do some more at some point and I even got a comissoin once in a while, but nothing I could really live on and not what I wanted to do with my life. 

Enter Ducktales. I’d always WANTED to review the show.. and when the double premire happened, I decided fuck it, and put up my thoughts. And then decided.. hey maybe I can do this every week.. and slowly.. my work evolved, getting better and better, getting more and more likes. I picked up Amphibia when that came by week to week.

And eventually.. this went from a hobby, if one I was passionate about to a career. Not a largely paying one, as only one person was really intrested in paying me for it, friend of the blog and our fincial backer @weirdkev27, but .. it’s money and i’m now making about 30 dollars a month due to a comination of comissions and patreon. Other contributers are always welcome mind you, my patreon is here if your curious and comissions are 5 dollars an episode, but i’ts just nice to have money coming in. To have gone from simply WANTING to review things and make a living off it.. to simply doing it. 

And it’s been one hell of a year.. and not just because 2020 felt like hell or 2021 began with a full on insurrection. I feel like i’ve acomplished a lot in the year i’ve been doing this: I finished what I started with Ducktales season 3, getting better and better as I went. And I didn’t stop there with ducks: I started covering what brought me to Ducks in the first place, the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, and while that retrospective has slid a bit on the schedule, I intend to get it back on track this month. I reviewed a bunch of Darkwing Duck episodes leading up to the Just Us Justice Ducks.. chronologically anyway. The actual airing order reads like someone took 50 issues of a comic, made it rain with them, then just started reading whatever ones they picked up randomly. I also covered some of Duck Master Carl Barks work with the classics Night on Bear Mountain, A Christmas for Shacktown and Back to the Klondike, with more to come. 

And the Duck didn’t stop at just reviews I did on my own: Kev comissioned two MASSIVE retrospectives from me: My first for him was Ride of the Three Caballleros where in just a few short months I covered the boys entire televisied careers together from the movie, to house of mouse, to mickey and the roadster racers, to ducktales (again) and finishing with the wonderful Legend of the Three Caballeros. It has probably the worst Daisy imaginable, but otherwise is really excellent and i’m glad I finally watched it. I also covered Don Rosa’s two stories with the boys as part of it. It was a fun ride and I enjoyed every minute of it... okay most of them again Three Cabs Daisy is the worst. And once that finished Kev started up another idea: Shadow Into Light: a look at Lena’s character arc from start to finish that has gone on to be my most popular series on this blog, and that finishes next week. And there’s more to come as after that there’s a short breather with a look at Lilo and Stitch’s crossover episodes.. folllowed by me looking at all three of season 2′s ducktales arcs. And I fully intend to have covered every episode of the series by this time next year, so stay tuned. 

Outside of ducks though I didn’t slow down. I restarted my Tom Lucitor retrospective, covering what i feel to be one of Star Vs’ two best characters, tied with eclipsa, and my personal faviorite as he redeemeed himself, found love and I bitched a lot about the horrible directions the series took and probabably will more as that’s still not done yet. I did what I always wanted to do and started looks at some of my faviorite comics ever, starting with Life and Times and adding in New X-Men and Scott PIlgrim. I also threw in the awesome comic Blacksad. I did pride month for the first time and not only came out publicly, but also did two whole arcs i’m proud of with The Saluna episodes of Loud house and the rednid episodes of OK KO, and generally just had myself a good old fashioned time as an out bi man reviewing childrens cartoons. 

I started Season 2 of amphibia with it’s lows of an endlesss road trip and highs of adding Marcy to the cast and giving us more of the silky voiced keith david. And finally Patreon wise Kev’s taken me on a hell o fa journey: In addition to the restrospectives i’ve covered some additional darkwing duck, and a simpsons homage to the duck comics... but also got a bit weird and obscure with detours like the lost animnaics sucessor Histeria, the apocalyptic comedy where Santa dosen’t know how doors work Whoops! and the adventures of Santa’s bratty teen daughter jingle belle. In short.. it’s been a long year but damn has it been fun and there’s more to come. I’d like to thank all of you for reading, thank my Patreons Kev and Emma for supporting me, and thank my family for doing the same.  So with that out of the way, I figured the best way to celebrate was to do something i’ve been wanting to do for a long time, something honoring the show that gave me this calling in the first place. And with Season 3 sadly being the last, and enough weeks having passed for me to digest it between the finale and today, I could think of nothing better than my top 12 episodes of Ducktales.

Ducktales is one of the best cartoons of the 2010′s. Brilliantly taking EVERYTHING that had come before, the comics, the original cartoon and every bit of duck media period to craft a masterful, unique and wonderful reboot. It was funny, it was insane, and it had damn good character arcs. By the end every member of the main cast along with major supporting cast members like Fenton, Drake and especially Lena, had changed and signifigantly at that. The show was everything I could’ve dreamed of and more and I miss it terribly, hoping DIsney will do a revivial movie at some point. For now though, Frank and Matt’s run on ducktales, as they called it and I do too since i’m a massive comic book nerd, it’s time to look back on my favorite tales of ducks. So grab your sharks, your number one dimes and your friendship cakes with clear gay undertones and join me under the cut as I celebrate one of my faviorite shows and my anniversary in the best way possible. 

12. House of the Lucky Gander! 

 So as i’ve gone on about before and no doubt will again, Donald kinda got the short end of the stick in season 1. While Frank and Matt had good story intentions, keeping Donald away from adventure since he had no interest in it, in practice it meant a beloved Disney Icon who they and disney HEAVILY promoted as part of the series and whose being here this go round was a big draw for fans of the comics.... was only in a quarter of the season and only got TWO plots centered around him in 23 episodes, with only one being the main plot of the episode. The PIlot and Finale both centered around the family more as a whole if your curious how I counted those so while he got plenty of focus in both, it’s still not a day in the limelight sort of thing. 

But unusually for Donald, he lucked out as his one big starring role for Season 1 was both one of my faviorites and one of Season 1′s most inventive outings.  A lot of the episodes enegy comes from a one two punch of a great guest star and one of the series best settings. The guest star is of course everyone’s faviorite overly lucky himbo Gladstone Gander. The show adapted the prick perfectly: The original Gladstone from the comics.. was the worst asshole imaginable, utterly insufferable. And for a villian, and Donald’s rival, that’s all well and good.. but his super luck meant he RARELY , if ever, suffered any consequences for being just...

The 87 series simply made him nicer, while Going Quackers simply removed his luck. No adaptation really got how to make this fucker work.. until this one. Here Frank split the diffrence: Gladstone is still smug.. but he’s no longer actively malicious. While he is an insensitive prick to Donald in this one, unlike the comics he’s not constantly bragging about his luck or how great he is or actively BAITING Donald to fight with him or trying to ruin his relationship or a million other reasons he sucks and I hate him.

This version by contrast... is generous. He’s not the most empathetic, because he doesn’t get how life works, but he does share the riches of the casnio with everyone and in a cameo appearance in “Treasure of the Found Lamp” gladly offers his nephews some diamonds. He’s got a nice surface level charm to him that makes you understand why people like him.. but it’s also clear ther’es nothing UNDER that of value, making you equally understand why Scrooge and Donald hate him. Gladstone in this reboot is a perfect example of why we need reboots or new adaptations in the first place: Because sometimes the original got something wrong or something can be done much better by the new writers. 

He’s perfectly paired with the setting: The House of Lucky Fortune, a mystical casino with an East Asian astatic based in the country of Macaw and provides two great plots. Donald’s really highlights his character: His understandable jealousy at gladstone earning the boys love through nothing while he struggles to make a living for them, and how he feels like a looser and like Gladstone is simply showing that off instead of just not knowing what empathy is. Having Louie be the one to bond with Gladstone was also just pitch pefefct, as is showing some depth for the boy by having himr ealize his hero is an asshole and be the one to help donald in the end. 

The other plot is just pure joy though and is where the setting REALLY shines: Scrooge and the rest of the kids try to leave.. but can’t find the exit. This is where the creative part comes in: The Casino simply morphs to keep people trapped, and caters to them, giving them whatever they want to keep them trapped. In the cases of the kids it’s all hilarious and adorably in character: Huey becomes entranced by a fancy water show, in one of his best bits of the season, Dewey gets a pet tiger who sadly did not come home with him and Webby gets to live the dream we’ve all had of stuffing her face directly in a choclate fountain. Scrooge’s escape is likewise clever: He simply prepares to get a room.. then books it as the check in desk is ALWAYS near the front. 

We then find out Gladston’es trapped get the whole mystical contest with absolutely gorgeous animation, i’ll talk about it in full some time but this episode is just a treat to watch, has a great arc for donald and had some memorable gags. I can’t help but smile when I watch it. 

11. The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee!  As I mentioned before i’m a superhero nerd so naturally Fenton was one of my faviorite parts of the show. Frank and Matt were just damn good at crafting superhero stories, and like gladstone improved fenton turning him from an awkward donald stand in to an awkward peter parker-esque science nerd who just wants to be a good person and the best hero he can be. He got into science not just because he thinks it’s neat, but because he honestly wants to help people and you can’t help but foot for him whenever he pops up. Lin Manuel Miranda is a large reason for that, bringing his incomparable a-game to the character. While we sadly didn’t get a ton of gizmoduck focused episodes, the fatct we got AS MANY as we did and that Lin didn’t drop out for a minute even with his busy schedule was a miracle and I’m acknowledging that. 

As for why this one, I feel it builds brilliantly on the previous Fentoncentric episode Who Is Gizmoduck?! which just BARELY didn’t make this list and uses the fact we haven’t seen fenton in a while as both a plot point and to move some things forward without having to spend screentime they clearly didn’t have. By having Fenton be just burnt out on superheroics it finds a way to both explain where he’s been, he’s been busy with his new job, and give us an interesting angle to the old “superhero is tired of the life” thing. He never once complains about saving people or stuff... it’s just like any job it gets tiring after a while. As someone who has his dream job but has struggled with it from time to time, I vastly relate. 

Though while I love my boy and Lin is game as always, the episodes real MVP is my other boy Huey. The episode has moved Huey up from being simply Fenton’s fanboy to being his best friend, and adorable as hell relationship. The two clearly respect and appricate each other and Huey is looking out for his buddy the whole episode. His love of love is also just really cute. Added in the mix is Webby, who in one of my faviorite gags of the series, finds out Fenton is  Gizmoduck because Huey is incredibly and insanely blatant with his unecessary coverup. But she of course is game to help while Fenton is trying to play it casual. We also just get a waterfall of great gags as everyone overdoes it wingmanning for fenton: Huey sets up an itallian bistro and tries to purposfully create a lady and the tramp situation, and sings opera (With Manny on acordian), the wonderfully 80′s suit from Fenton’s dad his mom gives him to wear, and Launchpad, who gives us a tremendous list of his exes, and plays my favorite song of the series: It’s a Date, a micheal mcdonnel riff. 

This episode also wisely ups Mark’s Beaks game as Fenton’s arch enemy, still keeping him hilaroius, with the guy acting like a bored teenager and guzzling so much nanite jucie he turns into a hulk, as well as said hulk mode leading to a ton of great gags from kidnapping the children (”I got your kids.. are they your kids? I don’t know how this family works), to “take that coach dad” to eating a pie with tins and all and wondering about said tins. But he’s an actual threat now, taking on fenton in one hell of a fight, and having an utterly transcendent scene where he hacks his way past gyro’s security while dancing.. and dabbing because of course he does. It’s a fun, well done character piece that’s mostly here for i’ts laugh but Fenton’s struggle with Gizmo overtaking his life, and finding out someone he truly hit it off iwth only wanted him for that.. it’s really good stuff and Lin’s delivery after Fenton finds out, the pure pain and betryal in his voice, is just excellent. Also that opera scene is poetry. 

10. Quack Pack!

One of the episodes that started my career naturally landed here. Not for that reason though: Quack Pack is a fun riff on sitcoms, specifically the tgif ones of the 90′s that Disney Afternoon Kids no doubt also watched, the kinds Disney Channel still makes today, and most importanly the kind the Disney Afternoon itself made like Goof Troop and well... Quack Pack. 

Riffs on sitcoms are nothing new and the last year has been FULL of them. 2020 gave us this episode, Beef House and the wonderful “The Perfect House” episode of Close Enough, and this year gave us WandaVision, my second favorite MCU project so far, right behind Black Panther, which used the sitcom deconstruction to create one hell of a character study. 

So you’d think with a year having passed and this concept happening as an entire mini series would dull this one.. but no. it’s still damn funny, having fun at the cliches while, again like WandaVision, having one of the main cast be responsible by accident but go along with it. The episode pivots from glorious affectionate parody of cheesy sitcoms, to that plus horrifying “Humans”, and a character piece for Donald. This brings Donald’s hatred and fed up ness with adventure to a head revealing his fondest wish is just to have a normal life and not loose anyone again. 

It takes one of his best friends to snap him out of it. Look Goofy is my second faviorite of the sensational seven, an episode with him was already an easy sell for me.. but the episode uses him really well. First for laughs as he’s gentically dispositioned to be a perfect sitcom neighbor.. but also for heart. With his family preoccupied and a bit hurt, i’ts Goofy who cuts to the heart of the issue, pointing out NO ONE is normal and even his normal domestic life raising Max, who we see go to prom with roxanne eeeeee, has all sorts of chaos. Normal is what you make of it and pining for some ideal that will never happen was just tearing donald apart piece by piece and by letting go of that.. he finally begins to grow as a person throughout the season. It’s also a great thematic tie in to the season’s overall plot with Bradford and what Makes donald, despite also disliking the chaos his family gets into, different. Donald accepted it and grew as a person.. Bradford clung to his hate and it ate him alive. Or turned him into a non-sapient kind of vulture. Before I close this part out Jaleel White is also excellent and I wish eh’d get back into voice acting. He’s so freaking good at it. Seriously man i’d love to see him and ben in a sonic property together as a mythology gag. Same with Jims cummings and carey. Just think about it whoever owns the sonic movies.. think about it. 

9. The Last Adventure!

Look I knew this was coming, you knew this was coming. But it had to be on here. The Last Adventure is not perfect: The lack of a build up episode like the previous two finales had really hurt this one: even at about 70 minutes, it still feels rushed in places and Huey, one of hte main characters of the season, dosen’t feel like he has a full payoff to his character like Dewey and Louie got. 

But despite those flaws.. this episode is just a damn good ending. Almost everyone gets a big moment paying off their character arc, everyone in the party that comes to rescue webby and huey, along with the two themselves, gets a moment to show off, and everything comes together to give us one last epic sendoff. There’s just moment stacked on moment stacked on moment from Launchpads heroic second wind and donning of the gizmoduck armor, to Webby’s tearful confrontation with Beakley, to Huey using the greatest adventure of all line to foil bradford in one of the most deligfhully nuts moments of the series, I could go on for days with just how triumphant this finale felt. While it left a lot of doors open.. that feels like part of the design. It’s the end of the fight with FOWL.. but our heroes will never stop adventuring, never stop going and never stop being in our hearts and the curtain call at the end is now my faviorite bit of end credits ever, perfectly giving the main cast and friends one last chance to take a bow in their own unique ways. I will always miss this show but I will never be disapointed by the note it went out on. 

8. The 87 Cent Solution!

Look some episodes are show stoppers, some are heartfelt tearjerkers, some are all this and more.. and some episodes are just clever and hilarious. The 87 Solution is the second funniest episode of Ducktales with me and my go to episode when watching the show. It’s just pure fun and with a clever premise: Scrooge notices 87 cents have gone missing, and already coming down with a cold, goes mad with paranoia as the kids slowly don face masks, something that has become even eeerier given everything, one by one realizing he needs to stop. 

While David Tennant is an EXCELLENT dramatic actor, his comedy timing is really something that shoudln’t be ignored and i’ts on full display here as his performance gets more and more deranged, to thep oint he thinks an 8th dimensional imp is repsonsible. He nicely balances the disturbing side of Scrooge’s paranoia, his distancing from his family, with plenty of great gags about it too, the standout being when he offers 2 million dollars to whoever took the money like he’s publicly appeasing kidnappers. It’s fucking brilliant. 

But while David is awesome as ever what really, truly makes the episode is my boy, one of my faviorite characters on the show if not my single faviriote FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. Keith Ferguson is ALWAYS a dream as the character but this is his best performance by far. Part of this is the addition of Zan Owlson, Kev who I mentioned earlier’s faviorite Ducktales character. She’s not only throughly likeable in her own right, but provides the one thing Flinty was missing; a straight man.. or woman in this case. Scrooge wasn’t TERRIBLE in the roll, but can easily step away from his shit or foil it. Owlson has to put up with Glomgold’s nonsense while desperatly trying to stop him from undoing all her hard work with sheer force of jackass. The two jut play off each other brilliantly, Glomgold not getting sh’es not his employee but his equal and Owlson constnatly snarking at him. 

And of course both things hit their peak in the climax with the family staging a fake funeral (Though no one told donald it was fake), and we get the funniest scene in the entire fucking show as Glomgold burts in in a white suit, money shades and full dance number to “All I Do Is Win’, which when first watching this I was convinced the song was somehow accidnetly on in the background but nope. They got it after using it in the test phase and the scene is better for it. Glomgold twerking on Scrooge’s casket, trying to get on it to dance, and having to be placated like ac hild is the icing on this very rich cake

And the reveal scene is also gold as Glomgold gets into a YEARLONG staring contest with a baby, fails to steal more than the 87 cents and, in my faviorite touch, put on an imp costume just to make scrooge seem crazier... then keeps the damn thing on the rest of the time for no explicable reason. The episode is the show at it’s comedic peak while giving Glomgold a chance to be a genuine threat and that’s Glomgood. 

7. Let’s Get Dangerous!

Frank’s Rebooted Version of Darkwing Duck is probably his greatest achivment with the show. While this show is a team effort, something I slowly realized as I reviewed the show, it’s very clear from the way he talks, how well he knows the show and how much effort was put into porting Darkwing into the reboot that this was his baby. While redefining ducktales for the 2010′s was clearly a huge dream of his... doing the same for the master of suprise was an even bigger goal. And as a huge fan of superheroes i’ve seen my fair share of half assed takes on laired and complex characters. The XCU alone is one giant grab bag of missed opportunities for me. 

So i’ts no exageration when I tell you Frank.. nailed it. In one of the most brilliant moves i’ve seen for a superhero work Frank worked his love of the show into the reboot.. by having Darkwing have been a show, one Launchpad loved.. and so did Drake, who was inspried by the show to become an inspriation himself and while his attempt to do that through a zack snydery reboot failed, Launchpad encouraged him to do it for real. Drake was still himself, but the meta aspect and the toning down of some of darkwing’s more obnoxious traits that didn’t work in a universe that, while patently rediciulous still took it’s characters seriously, he made a BETTER version of the character.

This is where all that comes to it’s peak, and hoppefully convinced Disney to let Frank , and possibly matt, run the reboot. And no, even if Point Grey is producing that dosen’t stop that: Thanks to Invincible i’ve now realized that Seth and his friend Evan producing the show dosen’t mean it’ll be RAN by them, nor unrelated to this. It just means their helping make it and if anything given how lush and gorgeous invincible’s animation is, it’s a VERY good sign their helping out with it if it’s true. 

But wether this versoin continues or not, Frank gave it his best shot. Part of his diffrent angle is having Drake as a rookie here and as such here we see him truly struggle: he’s had his origin, he ahs the cape, he has the gadgets (in a brilliant turn thanks to fenton, who he actually likes... but is so far the ONLY person to not get he’s Gizmoduck), and the city.. but no crime to fight and no real idea how to go about his lifelong dream. The events of the episode slowly shape him: WHile he already had the spirit for darkwing, never giving up, looking good in a cape etc, this episode gives him the heart the same way it gave his original it: With Gosalyn. Dimantopolis and Beatriz just play off each other perfectly, as the two go from neimies to slowly bonding as Drake realizes this kid needs him and that he needs to fight for more than just filing the ohle inside, and goes to hell and back to help her get her grandpa back, with one of the best moments of the episode to me being when Launchpad helps her realize how hard he’s been working at it, an exausted drake refusing to acccept that he can’t get her grandpa back because he promised. He grows from simply trying to live the dream.. to surpassing the original. We also see more from Launchpad, who grows into his new family and helps push his boyfriend and newa dopted daughter in the right directions. The episode really evolves these characters from the simple disney afternoon versions, who while awesome were made into fully fleshed out characters. Gosalyn still has her edge but now has a hard lesson to learn about doing the right thing, forced to give up someone she loves for the greater good but finding a new family in the process. 

Part of what makes the episode work though as while it is funcitonally one big darkwing duck reboot pilot that’s awesome, heartrending and a joy to watch... it’s still a ducktales episode in parts without either part hurting each other. Huey plays a vital role, figuring the ramrod is too good to be true.. and discovering just how it is, then when captured, slowly unravling why Bradford’s there and being at least in part responsible for outing him as a FOWL agent. While this is largely Drakes story the rest of the cast is still vital to it: Scrooge trusting in huey, Louie serving as his logical counter and Dewey meanwhile bonding with team darkwing and helping Gosalyn, knowing exactly where she’s been and providing a nice foil. The episode is just one long and impressive love letter to the original show while creating it’s own thing and that’s really this reboot in a nutshell. It also has some of the best fights of the series, with the first fight between darkwing and bulba, where our hero, unlike his original counterpart, easily troucnes bulba using his speed and skill, is the standout. 

6. Woo-Ooo!

I covered this one recently so I won’t go on for too long.. but I will say I hold this one up as the gold standard for first episodes. In one hour, hell even in jus the first half we get a sense of the whole cast, the tone of the show, and the world we’ve been thrust into. It gets all the table setting out of the way by weaving it into a compelling story of Scrooge getting back in the game, finding a reason to get back to what he does best in those he loves most and setting up the season long arc effortlessly in the process. The worst I can say about the episode is it sets the bar a bit high for Season 1 and a lot of the first half really struggled to reach these heights. This episode is a masterwork and the perfect showcase for what the series would be at it’s height. 

5. Moonvasion!

Speaking of Golden Standards, Moonvasion is one of the best season finale’s i’ve seen. it’s not THE best.. but that’s a really high bar to clear and that spots currently taken in my heart by “The Crossroads of Destiny” from Avatar the Last Airbender. But while not the best of it’s kind, it’s sitll the best the series put out and is an utterly satisfying epic that ties up season 2. 

While I love the Last Adventure, it had a LOT to tie up and was really hampered by having to do all of that with no direct lead in. Moonvasion by contrast hits the ground running with the Moonlanders arriving on earth and all hell breaking loose, and the episode itself breaking into two stellar plots. Scrooge leading an army of every ally he has against the invaders, and Della seemingly going for reinforcements.. but really just trying to keep the kids safe from it, to their anger once they find out. 

Both sides end up going badly: Scrooge looses most of his army as Lunaris was one step ahead of him and is left iwth Beakly and Launchpad, while Della ends up marooned.. and finds Donald. The reunion between the two is the highlight of the special, as the two argue as you’d expect (And Dewey cutting in seemingly to stop it.. only to rant at Donald for costing him “ten years of turbo” is the best gag of the episode), before embracing. 

Our heroes naturally find ways to bounce back though. Louie, capping off his growth for the season, convinces his mom they can’t just hide.. and in the second best scene of the episode sings the lullabye she wrote.. one Donald sung them every night

And no sooner than Della gets her step back and realizes that dangerous or not she and her newly reunited family have to get back in there, do the cousins show up on Fethry’s giant shrimp/girlfriend Mitzi, and our heroes head back. 

Scrooge’s plot hits i’ts peak though as he’s forced to accept the help of an unlikely and unwelcome ally: Glomgold, who turns out to be exactly what they need: While his plan is as stupid, short sighted and insane as you’d expect, complete with forcing Scrooge to dress up as santa just to piss him off and dressing his sharks in parkas (”I call them sharkas”), the sheer lonacy throws Lunaris off as he dosen’t know how to deal with this and Glomgold not only gets the better of him but gets his company back as part of his scheme.  “You were prepared for our best but not our dumbest!” “And i’m the dumbest theirs ever been! Muahahahaha! Wait...”

And of course our other heroes arrive just in time to save things.. and the episode still manages to pull off what many works struggle to, something tha’ts very hard to: a SECOND climax. Lunaris decides to just say fuck it and blow up the earth and i’ts up to our core family to kick his ass in space. Epic space battles, Della’s girlfriend meeting the family and more insues and an emotoinal, action packed and fully satisfying finale is had by all... and it’s all topped with one of the best sequel hooks i’ve ever seen as FOWL makes themselves known to us.. and prepares to strike. 

4. How Santa Stole Christmas! This one will also be short as i’ve talked about this one.. a lottttt. The initial review, my best christmas specials list and my best of 2020 list. I stand by all of that: this is a unique and wonderful christmas special, i’ll be watching it every year, and i’ts full of charm, humor and gay subtext. In short it’s this series but on christmas footing. 

3. Last Crash of the Sunchaser! 

Another one I covered very recently, this episode is a master piece of suspense, slowly building tension as our heroes get closer and closer to the truth about Della.. and to death, the simple but deadly stakes making this an absolute nailbiter from start to finish. This is some of the series best pacing bar none... but what seals it is the ending: the masterful flashback finally explaning whatever happened to Della duck, our heroes lashing out at each other.. all cumilating in the best Scene of the show. I said it might be in the review but no I can confirm: Scrooge bitterly ruminating over things while we find out just how much he’s lost... ending with him tearfully and angrily sitting once again alone in one hell of a powerful shot echoing Scrooge’s first apperance. Damn fine stuff. 

2. Escape from The Impossbin Only one episode not only matches Last Crash in mounting tension and atmosphere but suprasses it. With FOWL and Bradford’s true nature now out in the wind, this episode uses that to create tension and rattles it’s two most unshakable characters: SCrooge’s normal boundless confidence is shot, not sure he can win this time against an opponent who knows him as well as he knows himself while Beakly slowly unravels, pitting Webby against the boys.. and pitting herself against Webby when Webby sees her terroizing them is only dividing them. Both plots start out funny enough but slowly escalate in tension and stakes until by the end your on the edge of your seat. The Beakly plot is the standout of the two, giving Bentina the starring role she badly needed, having gotten even better in light of the finale. Everyone is at the top of their game and everything builds up to one hell of a twist ending and one hell of a badass boast from our heroes: Their down.. but their far from out and this is far from over. 

1. Nightmare On Kimotor Hill!

I”ll be reviewing this episode in full later this week as part of my Lena retrospective, but I stand by putting it up top. This episode is ducktales in it’s purest form and focuses on it’s best original character as Lena grapples with her self hatred and her past. That core helps anchor an amazing concept: going into the Kid’s dreams and finding out their greatest desires. The results.. are all gloriously rediclous and are easily the best gags of hte series as a whole: Dewey’s high school musical santa claus is going ot high school nonsense from getting a’s in Dewology to running away from the abstract concept of a love intrest, to not getting the sybolism of himself crying a moon made of his own tears. Louie quite literally becoming garfield, and my faviorite scene of the show: Huey, wanting to be the tall older brother..g iving himself horrifcly long leg. While everyone else is just understandably baffled, what makes the scene is the banter between Dewey and Huey, with Schwartz and Pudi at their best as Dewey first freaks out and then asks what the hell man, while Huey defends his weird decision (”I”m not good at imagination stuff okay!”), and then tries to get a jar of pickles. Each dream is just so oddly and wonderfully specific to each kid and each one of the triplests dreams, as well as violets being color coded down tot he backgrounds is a very nice touch. The visuals here are just peak ducktales, using the setting for all it’s worth and the climax is utterly emotoinal and heartbreaking... and Lena’s break from her abuser, finally realizing she has the power now is not only a wonderful metaphor... but also just so damn cathartic. And that’s why this one’s the best to me personally: it just packs so much into 20 minutes: some of the series best and most creative jokes, a gripping emtoinal arc, and so much more. It’s just that damn good and tha’ts why it’s the best... that and starting Huelet for me. Seriously that LIbrary scene is so fucking cute. 

Thank you all for reading. If you liked this artcle, join my patreon and help me get to my stretch goal for monthly darkwing duck reviews, a review of super ducktales and more after! Until the next rainbow... it’s been a pleasure. 

[yellowocaballero]

Your reverse robin au is such an odd take on Tim? I don't hate it though? I am... confused

YES I GET TO TALK ABOUT TIM. Warning that this is probably going to be long, because Reverse Robin!Tim is probably one of the most complicated characters I've ever written, psychologically. Because Tim is my favorite character in comics, just behind Bart Allen, and I've been in love with him since I was 9. Also I'm going to talk about how we write comic book fanfic I am SO sorry you've unleashed a kraken. I'll put a cut later because Tumblr's bugging and not letting me. Content warning for discussions of suicide, self-harm, PTSD, drug and alcohol mentions, addiction, and homicidal urges.

 How do we write comic book fanfic? It's tremendously difficult. Especially for the Batfam: it's such a soap opera, if you take every single little thing as canon everybody ends up a sociopath. In comics, Bruce has PUNCHED Dick in canon. So we make up our fanon. But if we keep too closely to fanon, then you end up with fairly unrecognizable characters, which is no fun to read. And...a lot of Batfamily fanfic is just Bruce as a great dad with a hoard of adorable children. It's boring to me.  So what do we do? Well, I like to keep a character recognizable while still kind of doing what I want and what I find most nuanced and realistic. You can't completely divorce from canon, but you really should just keep to the essentials of the character. This is subjective - I find it essential to Bruce that he's not really a great parent, but he's constantly trying and working on it. Not everyone feels that way - valid. 

 So what I consider essential to Tim is this: he's a socially awkward nerd. He always feels extraneous and neglected, because he's insecure, because he was a victim of childhood neglect. For most of his life, he really doesn't consider himself Bruce's kid. He's crazy intelligent and good with computers. He's a better detective than Bruce. He has a ton of friends who love him very much, but he shows a different face to them than to his family. He has lost basically everybody he has ever cared about at one point or another and just kinda gotten on with his life, which if you want to be realistic about it was probably hugely traumatizing and a huge sign that Tim kind of boxes himself away. That's Tim to me. Everything else is flexible. And although Tim in the Reverse Robin AU is a COMPLETE FUCKING MANIAC, he is still all of those things.

 I've done it differently in other roleswap aus, but the idea behind the Reverse Robin is that everybody is half themselves, half who they were switched with. Damian is reserved and cold, but he is just as much 'oldest daughter syndrome' as Dick. Jason is intellectual and rough (which is canon!), but he is just as much of a mediator who feels like he has to single-handedly keep the family together as Tim (which is canon especially in very early Tim - check Knightfall, the stupid Gotham Earthquake thing, and his introduction). Dick is loving and hyper, but he's just as reserved and resentful and alien to America as Damian. So, Tim is all of the things I listed, so I can establish that he's basically Tim. But he is as batshit crazy as Red Hood!Jason. He's just as cruel, resentful, self-harming, desperate, alienated, attention-seeking, groomed by Talia and Ra's, and just bugfuck insane because of the Pit. He's also been low-key mentally ill his entire life due to his complete and total isolation and childhood neglect. His life ended through torture and suicide. In 'the prophetic spring', he is at Jason's lowest point in his life - and his own.

 But, and this is important, Tim as Red Hood does not work. Jason became a drug lord because he came from that background. Tim's spoiled and rich. Jason had a motivation, a reason to live, a Bruce to hate and a Dick that always reached out. Tim doesn't have this. Tim is listless and purposeless - and I say several times that Tim is cosplaying this life. He's cosplaying wanting to kill his friends, being an addict, being a supervillain. Without Bruce, without that target of hate, Tim is lost. Without his dad, who loved him, Tim is lost.

 It's important to understand that everything he does in 'the prophetic spring' in self-harm. He thinks of himself as a monster (because Tim was raised by Bruce and he's extremely rigidly moral, and he can't reconcile his morality with what he did while he was pit-mad), and as a result he wants everybody else in his life to think of himself as a monster. He wants to be hated as much as he hates himself, because at least that's real and validates his feelings. He thinks of himself as the lowest of the low, so he performs his image of a spoiled party boy - the kind of person he's never been, and who he always hated, because he thinks of himself as the person who ruined Tim Drake, not Tim Drake. The drugs and alcohol are self harm (and I'd say, in my essential interp, that Tim has an addictive personality). Having sex is self-harm for him specifically because he's sex-averse. Alienating everybody who ever loved him is self-harm. Practically begging Damian to put him in Arkham is self-harm. This is a 20 year old unstable kid who wants to self-harm until he dies or his family kills him, because he is suicidal. He's still clinging on because he doesn't want to do it himself, but if someone kills him no big deal, and if he overdoses he probably deserved it.

 It IS confusing! As readers we are used to traumatized characters who seek catharsis, affection, and safety. We want the hurt and the comfort. But I really wanted to highlight how fucking ugly PTSD is. It can genuinely make you into a cruel and hurtful person. Tim is suicidal and he responds by becoming an addict, rejecting his family and friends so nobody can try to help him, and lashing out nonstop because he wants to punish the people who love him for loving a monster. And because he wants to punish the people he blames for his death - Bruce and Damian. The Joker. But Bruce is dead and the Joker’s dead Damian isn't giving him the attention he wants...so what does he do? He's lost. And so 'the prophetic spring' is the story of someone who is so fucking lost that he tries to destroy his own life because he can't bring himself to end it again. 

 Hope that cleared stuff up. I really love Tim. You probably didn't need that amount of detail but I am psychically compelled to share these things...partly because most people take Tim's incredible trauma and just make him a cute woobie..no guys make him mean. People are mean sometimes. Fiction exaggerates and magnifies - so many hurt people WANT to do the stuff Tim does, but their lives aren't a comic book soap opera so they don't. I wanted to highlight that real pain. Thanks for asking!!!

[tonystarksfavoritedaughter]

About Me

Hello and thank you for making your way to my page! If you want to find out a little bit more about me then just keep reading!

A little bit about me:

Hello! My name is Hailey and I am 19 years old. I am going into my year of high school, and then I will be in college! Next year in the fall I will be attending college to be an high school English teacher! I fully speak English and I am currently learning Spanish, so if you have any tips, come and message me if you want! 

I am pretty active on here so feel free to message me, or request something and I will respond/write it fairly quickly (I hope). 

I am an absolute simp for Tom and Simu so you’ll probably be seeing a lot of thirst posts from me. I love the Marvel movies and cast; my favorites are Black Panther, Ant-Man, all Spider-Man movies, Age of Ultron, and Infinity War.

I am a huge book nerd, my favorites are anything from Rick Riodan and Victoria Aveyard. As I said before, I love to draw and you can find my art blog @hailey-drawsthings though I don’t really update it regularly as I should. I also have a K-pop writing blog @hanjisungsbiwife if you like Stray Kids and Seventeen!

What can you send me?

You can send absolutely anything you want! I write for a lot of characters and their actors so you guys will have a wide range to choose from! 

I love interacting with people no matter if they’re anonymous or not, and I highly encourage you guys to request something, or even if you just want to talk! So here is a list of things that I will not tolerate in my inbox:

Racism or homophobia: I absolutely will not tolerate these at all so please do not send in anything that supports this because you will be blocked if you do. This also includes anything related to sexism, transphobia, antisemtic, islamophobia, and any other form of hate. I hate that we still have to put these out there, but here we are.  

Celebrity love lives: Look, I’m just here to thirst over Tom, not to be involved in his love life because that is his business and since he is an actor and has no privacy, I feel that we as his fans owe it to him to not care and just let him be happy. So please do not send in anything Tomdaya or anything celebrity ship related or any hate towards past girlfriends or any of that kind.

Who do I write for?

I write for a lot of people and characters so here we go:

Peter Parker

Arvin Russell

Tom Holland

Simu Liu

Shang-Chi

Florence Pugh

Oscar Isaac

Steven Grant

Marc Spector

Poe Dameron (Star Wars)

Nathan Drake (Uncharted film)

Can you direct message me?

Absolutely! Please I encourage you to, whether you want to talk or request, but yes I am always available so feel free to do so.

Do you take requests? 

Yes I do! I have a ton of school work and actual work in the summer, so writing will take a while. 

I will write fluff, angst, smut, and hurt/comfort. If you do request angst, just expect a happy ending because I am a sucker for them and I hate not writing one. 

Request Guidelines: 

I will not write anything that has to do with sexual assault, domestic/physical abuse, incest, and anything relating to that matter (I don’t know why people write about these, but please don’t send those in), as well as any explicit mental heath issues; I do not have depression or anxiety, or anything like that so if you request something that has these, I may or may not write it depending on what you request because I don’t want to get something wrong. If I do write it then I will do research on what it’s like having it so maybe I will, I don't know yet.

I will write insecure fics such as physical image insecurity fics because I do struggle with that, but I won’t dive deep into a certain mental health issue.

But yeah, so that’s all about me so have fun on my blog!