#maybe ill post it with the first drawing i ever did of bruce

[ryssbelle]

Mickey mouse cartoon reference go brrr

[cryptocism]

So since pretty much everyone agrees that Tim needs a name change, and I think most people dislike the first two RR costumes (I dislike the pretty much Robin one too, because it seems like he hasn’t accept losing Robin, when I feel a lot of his comics right after Bruce W died was about that?) which leads me to: What do you think Tim’s costume would look like if he got a good outfit, and what name?

o yeah i was not a fan of the cowl. and the n52 design is just… so busy and excessively accessorised (excessorised???) - i drew it a couple times for this project im workin on and the whole process was me squinting at reference panels and whispering softly but passionately “what the fuck” - and i agree on the rebirth RR design, it looks more derivative of dick and jasons retconned robin costumes than inspired by tims og 80s design (however. the unternet costume - its simple and appealing and clearly nightwing-inspired and i am a fan, also the giant scythe/halberd/mace thing was so ridiculous i loved it)

which is why i thank pat gleason for my life bc tims new outfit is such a good modernisation of his original robin design. so i mean to answer ur question i think tim has a p good design right now (although not for long i guess since they announced hed get a new look/codename soon) BUT if i were in charge of debuting a new design and name… hm……….

whatever his new name is, it’d preferably have something to do with wherever his personal storyline is headed, which i dont know, and for all my complaining abt how red robin is a shit name i dont actually have great alternatives lol. i did see somewhere the suggestion for the name “Cardinal” which i dont hate, so ill use that as a placeholder for now (although “Halcyon” is an interesting option)

tangentially, my personal preference for his robin graduation would be a miniseries featuring tim and damian both as robin, begrudgingly having to work together to fight some greater enemy and becoming true brothers along the way. ending with tim giving damian his blessing to be robin (a post-mantle blessing but still) with the first amicable passing on of the robin title literally ever

as for Look: his new design should a) accurately reflect his character b) mesh well with whatever tone his personal storyline is going for c) be a natural progression of gleasons newest iteration while still d) able to stand as its own iconic look

i always thought tim would do really well in a more grounded noir-style detective story, both using and especially subverting the tropes of the genre (for instance tim befriends every femme fatale and romances absolutely zero of them. theyre pals and have weekly movie nights or smthn) obvs using some of the mystery elements to springboard into classic comic wild times etc etc. theres also a great opportunity to include some more cyberpunk aesthetics to the look and feel ofthe story

i.e. tim is part of the waynetech r&d teams, working with them to develop new technologies, and proceeding to test out some of the prototypes while doing vigilante work (bc terry had to get his rocket boots from somewhere ok). gotham is still gotham, but its starting to see some of that neo-futuristic/blade runner flavour from batman beyond.

so. cyberpunk detective story starring cha boy tim drake. im not gonna draw it rn but lemme just gather some ref elements here in case i ever do

first off - motorcycle, obviously. redbird is back babey and this time its a two-wheeler. all his gear would be modded the hell out of, but the motorcycle itself would be an approximate balance of 70% ducati and 30% tron lightcycle situation. a speedy bike with ample room for the edgy overkill batfam aesthetic, with maybe a little akira in there who knows

same goes for helmet; 70/30 on this modern/cyberpunk situation. heres a quickly photoshopped “cardinal” helmet lol 

although theres totally room for some daft-punk leds in there. serving as a heads up display AND a fun neon aesthetic. I really want to play into that John Wick neo-noir situation.

besides that… ive got a preference for street style over the superhero spandex, so… detective jacket. every detective has a good jacket. norm breyfogle made a comment on his early tim robin designs that itd be pretty either/or on jacket vs cape, merging the two looked a little silly. for robin they probably decided on cape to keep things classic, but for cardinal i can do what i want

and i want to bring back some of this popped collar.

which i basically did for that other tim design i drew, which i still like, so this one would probably be at least a lil borrowed from that. 

attempting to merge cape/jacket might end up smthn like these:

which admittedly i like. 

admittedly… i do also like the concept of wings introduced in tims n52 design, i just think they couldve been hidden/incorporated better

greig rapson had a sweet robin design that had a sort of flight-suit (which dove into the actual mechanics??? i love) and since id want to dive into tim testing out waynetech prototypes, its a pretty good natural progression from him to terrys glider thing

the whole ensemble would be fairly understated however - enough to semi blend in with any crowd, hero or civilian. after all the story focus would be just as much about solving the mystery as it is punching the bad guy

the various interchangeable gadgets would be both prototypes of terrys eventual batsuit, and also all the failed prototypes that never managed to get off the ground. just to add an element of tension/plot devices wherein tims gear could break or malfunction pretty much anytime.

im fixated on this rocket boot situation though so itd be a paired down version of terrys eventual seamless/invisible design. still noticable and clunky, but working with the sleek modernish style outlined by gleason

smthn almost similar to the prowler actually from spiderverse - as in: Clearly Rocketboots, and clearly diy’d the shit out of, but still working with that Aesthetic

(most of the screencaps of prowler are dark af so im taking this from jesus alonso iglesias concept art) 

im debating on the addition of more overtly birdlike/cyberpunk elements, so ill add this here cause its dope as fuck (from ahmet atil akar). 

and a lot of batclan capes tend to end with that concave spiked look, which works great for bats but not really for birds. a tailcoat might emulate the bird tail, but it also might evoke Penguin a lil too much idk.

also in the interest of keeping everything within the same sort of design language, i would Love to see some new villains emulating deconstructionist/architectural kawakubo fashion:

like could you imagine the supervillain potential

so uhhh yeah. budding cyberpunk detective story with a little noir and a little technological advancement progressing in fits and starts. taking from the gleason foundation with heavy black featuring brighter coloured accents and modern sleekness, made a little dorky via prototype technology, with some extra neon blade runner shit thrown in there.

depending on how much i love or hate the new codename/design reveal i might draw this via inspired motivation or spiteful motivation lol

[girlactionfigure]

He was drafted into the Army in 1943. His fellow recruits remembered him as "simple, bland, unassuming." He described himself as a "nothing, a nobody." No one, including the young man, knew what life had in store for him.

In the Army, he served as a staff sergeant in the 20th Armored Division. Elements of his division participated in the liberation of Dachau concentration camp - Although his unit was near, they did not actually enter the camp.

Although he was proud of his service, he remembered that time as very painful for him - he not only witnessed the horrors of war, but it was also the same time his mother passed away.

His father, a barber, was born in Germany, and his mother was of Norwegian heritage.

He was born on this day, November 26, 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Being the only child, he was very shy. His uncle gave him the nickname, "Sparky" after the horse "Spark Plug" from the Barney Google comic strip.

His mother was bedridden during his high school years, and the young man often heard her cries of pain. Her illness was identified as cancer in November 1942, the same month he was drafted. On February 28, 1943, he used a day pass to visit his mother one last time. He got to say goodbye to her that day, but he said, "I'll never get over that scene as long as I live."

He would also regret the fact that his mother would never see what he would become.

After returning from the war in the fall of 1945, he sold his first cartoons to his local newspaper.

"The first Peanuts strip appeared on October 2, 1950, in seven newspapers nationwide. Although being a professional cartoonist was [Charles] Schulz’s life-long dream, at 27-years old, he never could have foreseen the longevity and global impact of his seemingly-simple four-panel creation," according to the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

In the summer of 1968, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and after corresponding with teacher Harriet Glickman, Schulz made a bold decision, introducing a character named "Franklin" to his Peanuts comic strip. As told in the July post on the Peace Page celebrating Franklin's 50th birthday, Schulz by that time was already a very popular comic strip artist and did not have to acknowledge the school teacher's request to introduce a black character in order to bring the country together and show people of color that they are not excluded from American society.

Schulz carefully thought about it, knowing that his career could be in jeopardy, as other cartoonists had politely declined Glickman's request. But, he corresponded with Glickman's black friends to ensure that he would present Franklin in the best light, smart as Linus and not condescending, even to the point where some would joke that Franklin was too boring and "normal" compared to the other Peanuts characters.

He also received backlash as some newspapers threatened to cut his strip if he showed Franklin in the same classroom as other Peanut characters. He courageously ignored the threats, sitting Franklin in front of Peppermint Patty at school and playing center field on her baseball team. He even told the president of the comic's distribution company that "Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit."

According to The New Yorker, Schulz always worried about the portrayl of Franklin. "He needn’t have worried, though, because Franklin felt real — or at least felt respected — as a kind kid on the beach with whom Charlie Brown plays in the sand. (“Whites Only” pools were not uncommon in 1968.) Though Schulz may have lived a quiet, remote life in his California studio, he was woke enough to realize that all one had to do was care enough about a character for he or she to 'work,' even if the shell of the character wasn’t his own."

Schulz later introduced another black character, Milo, as well as semi-Latino Jose Peterson, one of the first characters of Hispanic descent in U.S. comics. He also gave voice to women in sports in the strip after he became friends with tennis star Billie Jean King, leading to a lifelong interest in the fair treatment of women athletes and a seat on the board of the Women’s Sports Foundation that King founded.

Today, the work of Charles Schulz is still very popular, even though recently the Peanuts' animated Thanksgiving special is embroiled in some undeserved social media controversy designed to divide fans who may not be aware of how Franklin was originally introduced.

In an article in Snopes, Nat Gertler, author of a book about Peanuts, wrote:

That even though the animated cartoon was in a completely different media than Schulz' newspapers, there is an "assumption that Charles Schulz himself planned the admittedly awkward shot being referenced [of Franklin sitting alone on one side of the picnic table]. While Schulz definitely kept a hand in the animated work, by 1973 when the Thanksgiving special aired, the Peanuts characters were starring in not only a steady stream of TV specials, but also a series of animated feature films. Schulz certainly wasn’t laying out every shot himself — he had a day job to take care of, writing and drawing the most popular comic strip going, as well as creating original books, handling licensing materials, and so on. A talented team of animation folks were doing their job on this."

Schulz critics also like to ask why Franklin was drawn to look "dirty" in the first early panels, not realizing that back then every newspaper comic strip was printed in black and white with no option for shading other than drawing lines to depict shades.

Gertler would conclude, "Schulz stuck his neck out introducing Franklin." Others have pointed out that the network which produced the original Peanuts Thanksgiving special is also responsible for cancelling The Smothers Brothers show for being critical of the Vietnam War and the political mainstream. It should also be noted that it was only recently in 2015 that the television academy recognized a black woman, Viola Davis, for best actress in a drama, the first time that award has gone to a black woman in nearly 70 years of award-giving, shedding some light on how ground-breaking the introduction of Franklin was in 1968.

"Despite the over-all racial imbalance of the “Peanuts” cast, this caring is really the secret, mysterious power of Schulz’s entire strip. Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy, Schroeder, Franklin, and everyone else came alive on that page because of Charles Schulz’s ability to make you care about and feel for — and, in Charlie Brown’s case, at least, feel through — nearly every one of them," according to The New Yorker.

Schulz died on February 12, 2000. By the time he retired in "December 1999, the Peanuts comic strip was syndicated in over 2,600 newspapers worldwide, with book collections translated in over 25 languages," according to the Charles M. Schulz Museum.

The Museum also says of Schulz, "The continuing popular appeal of Peanuts stems, in large part, from Schulz’s ability to portray his observations and connect to his audience in ways that many other strips cannot."

"The thoughtful pacing in 'Peanuts' is reminiscent of that of 'Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.' The two also share a rejection of the violence and manic energy that characterize other children’s media of the time", according to the New Yorker.

“Schulz wasn’t an artist because he suffered. He suffered because he was an artist," said writer Jonathan Franzen in the Press Democrat. "To keep choosing art over the comforts of life — to grind out a strip every day for 50 years, to pay the very deep psychic price for this — is the opposite of damaged. It’s sort of choice only a tower and strength and sanity can make.”

Bruce Handy in The Atlantic wrote:

"So if I were asked to pick the character most likely to find happiness if he or she ever grew up . . . I wouldn’t hesitate to pick Charlie Brown. Maybe he does find a form of redemption in his suffering? He feels his failures deeply, he suffers profoundly, and yet he remains ever willing to take another run at kicking the football or trying to get his kite aloft or pitching the next game or hoping this year, finally, to receive a valentine. If he is a blockhead, it is in part because he cares so much; diffidence doesn’t merit the insult. Like his creator, he has passion and persistence. If he were real, I like to tell myself, Charlie Brown would be fine."

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

[sunlitroom]

Gotham, s4e01 – Pax Penguina

As I watched it, and some random observations here and there.

Previously on Gotham.

the Tetch virus was released - enabling lots of people to be ooc all at once.  We had general bedlam.  We had Ra’s.  Bruce killed Alfred. Oswald forgot all his own backstory and talked about the one time love weakened him.  Ed got iced. Bruce was an ass to Selina for no good reason except to enable her to turn to Tabitha.  We are reminded of that poor, poor Crane boy.  Bruce decides to find himself, and finds himself mostly brooding on building ledges

As always, long post will be long - monstrously long.  There are likely to be rambling digressions. Gobblepot will appear – because the Gods have chosen to bless us this week (although I welcome all shippers and non-shippers alike :)). There will be naked favouritism and naked not-favouritism.  Broader comments at the end on plotlines and parallels and general direction.

We open with more moody ledge standing from Bruce, staring down at the city.

Now – seriously: Is there some reason all these well-off couples in Gotham insist on wandering down the fucking dodgiest alleys ever seen?

Bruce spots their inevitable mugging taking place, and leaps into action - complete with an experimental gravelly voice.  Maybe it's be less recognisable if he went for an accent instead of hiding the actual tone.  Southern Batman.  French Batman. Dutch Batman.

Fighting happens. Bruce is wearing a beautifully tailored coat.  Bruce bests them.  The mugger says he had a license for misconduct, which Bruce takes from him.  Bruce strolls off in his expensive clothes, and Ra’s watches from a shadowy doorway in his expensive clothes

I have tailoring envy

The show just rickrolled us. We are at a wedding reception in full flow.  Masked men walk in

They look ill-groomed. They begin to rob everyone – until halted by a whistle. Turning – they see that a relaxed Victor is sitting watching proceedings.  He tells them crime now needs a license.  They don’t like the idea of Oswald-issued licenses, and call him ‘a little creep’.  Victor doesn’t like that.

Proving that they’re cataclysmically dumb as well as probably bad-smelling, they try to intimidate Victor, who promptly shoots the ringleader’s finger off.  He reiterates:

No license; no crime

He tells them to drop the loot and blow.  The bride tries to thanks him – but he tells her not to bother, since the gang that’s just arriving does have a license.  He slings a ‘seriously?’ at the groom for what’s presumably a shabby engagement ring – and then grins.

Best wedding ever!

Oswald in the mayor’s office.  The police commissioner is also there.  They’re telling him they appreciate what he’s done for the city.  Oswald smiles – looking just the tiniest bit manic round the edges – and asks if they really do.

(An aside – Oswald is touchy as hell about gratitude.  It’s possibly one of the reasons he responds reasonably well to Bruce later)

Apparently – Oswald promised to halve crime in the three months since the virus and has done so – bringing the underworld to heel.  

(An aside – it’s kind of frustrating that we hear of all the stuff Oswald achieves in terms of control between seasons – but then see him inevitably crumble in some way.  How many times now has managed to take control of the whole underworld despite his own setbacks?)

They try to interject, and Oswald lunges forward.  Temper, temper.  This is why he gets on so well with Jim.

He tells the mayor he doesn’t envy him, and asks him what he thinks happened to the criminals who used to be on the street.  The mayor points put that he is suggesting professional, unionised crime -which will earn him a profit.  Oswald smiles

God bless America

He tells them they can have calm prosperity, or a return to the bad old days.

The commissioner and mayor say they’ll go along with it – but deny everything to the press.  They agree that the police won’t arrest license holders.

(Doesn’t the mayor just run the city, though?  Isn’t there a difference between ‘normal’ crime and federal crime in the States? Like – isn’t some stuff automatically handled at a higher level?  Or this is what TV and film has taught me, at least)

The mayor and commissioner haggle for their cut.  Everything agreed, Oswald excuses himself and leaves – he has to prepare for the grand opening of his club.  As he leaves, he tells them to smile – it’s a new day.

 A bar being robbed. Jim walks in.  Apparently, Jim gets his morning coffee from a bar.  It’s a licensed robbery – but this is essentially catnip to Jim, who gets to arrest someone, break something that looks suspiciously like a rule, and guarantee himself a nice charged meeting with Oswald later.  And all before breakfast.

Jim brings the guy into GCPD, where the other officers eye him balefully.  In his office, Harvey is talking to a bureaucratic looking guy about how the licenses will work.  He particularly mentions that Mr Cobblepot worries about Detective Gordon – he has a history. 

(Oswald, of course, knows first-hand Jim won’t go along with this - it’s what he gambled on way back when Jim had a gun to his head on the pier.)

The man sniffs haughtily at Jim, leaving as Jim enters the office.  Harvey and Jim talk briefly.  Harvey says that Oswald did help get the city back on its feet by exerting control over the underworld.  Jim says that every day the citizens look to Oswald for protection, they slip further away from GCPD.  Harvey leaves, and Jim has a nice glower to himself.

 At Wayne Manor, Bruce wonders how to turn Oswald's scheme against him.  Alfred tells him he’s supposed to be prepping for Ra’s.  Bruce feels guilty that the city got into such a state in the first place, though – because he was instrumental in the release of the virus.  Alfred warns him against mission creep – but Bruce thinks he can work towards both goals.

Oh no.  Arkham.  I hate this place so much.  I get that it’s a stylised comic book universe, but why must they do this horrible depiction?   

The foul unkempt gang has shown up. One used to be a warden, and remembered Jonathan talking about the fear serum.  That could help them in their vendetta against Oswald.

The deeply repulsive new director, who is virtually a lizard, allows them access. Jonathan is essentially constantly haunted and terrified – which he uses to control him.  He allows them to take the cowering boy away, in queasily paternal tones. I want this guy to die too, please.

(An aside - see - this is one of the things with Gotham. Every other character will view Oswald as the big bad and work towards his downfall - but we see that this doctor, and this gang are infinitely worse and more contemptible.)

At the former Dr Crane’s home, Jonathan is pulling up boards to hand over his father’s fucked up chemistry set.  He insists he can’t be there after dark – but they don’t care.  They’ve brought a scarecrow (the figure he fears most) as a means to control him.  He screams and begs – to no avail.

(See - I'd happily let Oswald kill these guys)

 A bank – where a robbery is carried out by the contemptible bastard gang.  When GCPD arrive – staff are ranting about fiery demons.  Jim and Harvey don’t think that this was a licensed crime – but a deliberate message to defy Oswald.  Harvey says that he hopes Victor comes by to kill them.  Jim decides he’s going to catch them first. Harvey is incredulous that he’d essentially race Victor just to thumb his nose at Oswald.  Harvey is apparently suffering from severe amnesia regarding the last three years.  

Jim says he suspects the fear serum – and points out that they should look for Jonathan.

 At Arkham, Jim and Harvey are interviewing the very vile doctor.  He says that Jonathan’s condition is fragile, and is generally slippery and evasive.  As we enter his office, we see a table with straps and random surgical instruments lying on it.  I want this guy dead so much

Harvey deliberately uses Oswald’s and Zsasz's names.  He tells the doctor that Zsasz is likely to visit soon.  He asks Jim how he’d describe Zsasz – who replies that he has a body that won’t quit is a homicidal maniac and sadist

Of the highest professional standards

The doctor caves

Jim and Harvey go to find the gang but are ambushed – with Jim getting a nasty kick to the ribs. They go on about the license system and call themselves ‘outlaws’.  Jim is kicked in the ribs again and again (please stop that) – I don’t think he’d have been able to spring up quite so quickly as that.

In what turns out to have been a training session, Selina beats up 5 guys in an alley.  Tabitha comes in and takes the last one out – and they go to get pizza.

Back at their apartment, Victor arrives and reminds them about the license system.  He says they’re understandably hard to find – given their shabby apartment, and asks Tabitha if she didn’t used to be rich. Tabitha claims that Oswald took her club.  Victor points out that Tabitha murdered Oswald’s mother and tried to kill him – so she should call it even.  Yes.  Thank-you, Victor.

(An aside – are we to believe that Selina was selectively deaf here?  We know her moral code is a bit different – but I’d like to think she’d draw the line at Gertrud’s murder)

Victor says that Oswald is willing to let bygones be bygones if they come to the club and show that they’re deferential.  He also asks hopefully if that pizza is pepperoni – but Selina closes the lid. Why will no-one let Victor share their food? I’ll commit crimes and order pizza if Victor will come visit me.

Selina is willing to go to Oswald – but Tabitha refuses to ‘work for him’.

(An aside -  I’m really not getting where Tabitha’s high horse is coming from here.  Tabitha is still pretty much the lowest of the low, for me.  She got her jollies listening to Gertrud cry and beg while she was locked up, before eventually stabbing her in the back. She’s never demonstrated any remorse, or ‘well – that’s business’ attitude.  There’s not the complication of mental illness or trauma that you get with Barbara or Ed, either.  If anything, the implication with Tabitha is always that she’s a straightforward sadist. I find it incredibly hard to remotely root for her or care about her.)

Bruce visits Jim at work. A tired and presumably sore Jim is now drinking while he broods, blood on his collar.  The smell of blood is gross – go change that, Jim.  

Bruce tries to find out what’s being done about the license situation, and nudges Jim in the direction of finding the probable master-list of crime and criminals. Jim says that the license system has the official OK – and going after the list would set off too many alarms.  Oswald will catch the gang, and it will reinforce the idea that GCPD is not needed.  Jim’s not happy about the situation - but his hands are effectively tied.  

Bruce suggests using Oswald to lead Jim to the gang.  Jim looks thoughtful.

Before he leaves – Bruce tells Jim to come to dinner sometime.  Jim actually seems vaguely happy at this idea – which is nice to see. He suggests getting something now – but as he turns, Bruce has slipped away.

 Os is promoting his club to the press.

Exclusive but welcoming, urbane but edgy

He’s super confident. He’s asked if he got the club from Barbara and where she might be – but bats the question away.  Ivy watches, smiling and seemingly amiable – which is worth noting, because I think her actions later seemed very out of the blue.

Oswald is asked about the license system.  He waxes lyrical about the Pax Romana.  When criminals start drawing Roman Empire parallels, they’re sort of asking for a hubris smackdown. it’s some kind of dramatic law of the universe. 

He changes the subject back to the club – and has Ivy dramatically light up the Edcicle.  He’s concocted a story about Ed having an incurable brain disease, asking to be cryogenically frozen, and then let him be out among the people.  It was the least Oswald could do to comply with his wishes.

Did he know he was being frozen?

Jim strolls in. Oswald snaps that he has affadavits from Ed’s doctor – if Jim wants to see them.  He walks quickly to Jim – and turns sharply to stop the press following him, because Jim and Oswald like a little privacy when they’re about to invade each other’s personal space.

He tells Jim he’s a little busy – what exactly does he want?  Jim’s here to deliberately provoke a response from him, of course – to get to the gang – and goes about it with some relish.

I’m here to tell you you're a fraud

He tells Oswald the gang have the fear toxin.  They’re not afraid of him, and soon others won’t be either.  

You’ve had a nice run, Oswald, but it’s over.

Oswald grabs Jim and hauls him close.  There’s an initial snarl – and then he switches to his sort of ardent tone for these encounters.

Oh Jim.

For his part, Jim looks like he’s just realised being the grabee is as much fun as being the grabber. This opens a whole new world of possibilities.  Now they can role play Big Bad Gangster and Innocent Detective as well as the usual Stern Cop and Flirtatious Gangster.

Oswald tells Jim it’s so hard to admit irrelevance – but he will find the gang and crush them, because he keeps Gotham safe now.  

Jim smiles at him before walking out.  Oswald calls after him that it’s always good to see his old friend, with an oddly shiny-eyed smile.

That was the most elaborate foreplay ever.

 Meanwhile, at a horrid flat, the gang listen to a statement Oswald made for TV, furious at the insults levelled at them.  Jonathan’s made the serum – but they refuse to get rid of the scarecrow, despite his begging) and shut him in the cupboard with it.

Oswald is monologuing at the Edcicle.  He’s going on about Ed’s accusation of being a slave to emotions (Ed, of course, being a paragon of self-control who strangled his girlfriend).  Oswald says he’s banished those feelings now…..

(Hey, Oswald - remember the last scene?  And then the ones before it?  And pretty much the whole episode?  You’ve banished precisely nothing.  In fact, you’ve seemed extra emotional)

ivy approaches as he continues to monologue.

….but at what cost?  Which of us is truly frozen?

That’s a godawful clunky and pompous line that even the most self-indulgent fanficcer would have hastily edited out – which means Ivy’s interruption works particularly well.

Him - like totally frozen

Oswald is not happy at his overly-dramatic posing being interrupted and tells her to go somewhere else. She does – but she’s pissed about it. It looks a lot like a big brother, little sister dynamic.

GCPD, where Jim is planning their strike at the club.  The other cops seem reluctant, and Harvey has to chivvy them.  Harvey clearly thinks Jim’s plan is reckless – deliberately provoking Oswald (who, let us not forget, is the master of his emotions now), who in turn provoked the gang.   He doesn’t blame the cops for being pissed.  Jim pulls a face and leaves to get the gas masks

(An aside – we seem to have looped back to something resembling season one Jim.  His fellow officers dislike him, and Harvey is going along with his plans under protest.  GCPD is happy with its relationship with the underworld, but Jim refuses to tolerate it.

Again reminiscent of s1 – there’s ambiguity around this refusal.  Jim talks about wanting the law to be in charge – but we know from promos that he’s going to go get help from Falcone, so the talk of law and order and public trust is kind of – you know…. bullshit, if your actual actions involve going to mafia dons for favours.  The whiff of moral hypocrisy here is familiar.  Also – lone wolf behaviour, and bucking against authority – that’s just essentially s1 Jim.)

Poor, poor Jonathan is still cowering in that fucking cupboard.  Why will no-one hug this child and make him tea?

The scarecrow starts talking to him – or at least Jonathan hallucinates this – and things get much worse.

 In the GCPD locker room, four cops corner Jim.  They like the current system – why does he have to rock the boat?  Jim can tell there’s no getting out of this.

Alright then - who wants it first?

He tries to throw some punches – but two of them hold his arms while the others beat him.  It’s quick but still horrible – I hate scenes like that.

 At the Iceberg Club – Oswald greets Bruce, who puts on an avuncular performance.  Alfred prods about whether Ed is still alive in there. Oswald says they’ll never know – but then scrambles to correct himself when Bruce reminds him that a cure might be developed for his ‘brain disease’.  Ha!

Bruce wants to personally thank Oswald for everything he’s done for the city.  It seems sincere – and Oswald seems genuinely grateful.  It’s worth remembering that Bruce – from what we’ve seen – at least tries to be compassionate and understanding with everyone he encounters, even the criminals.  Part of Oswald does genuinely believe that he has acted in the city’s best interests. Bruce is insightful and empathetic enough to recognise and acknowledge that – while still retaining his determination to put an end to his scheme.

He asks about the license. Oswald seems disbelieving that he’d be open to licensed crime – but Bruce points out that if his scheme had existed three years ago , then his parents would still be alive.

Oswald nods – wide-eyed -

Exactly so!

We’re reminded of a parallel between these characters - Oswald and Bruce both lost their parents within the last three years, and in traumatic circumstances. Those losses shaped them both.   Again – it’s an effective moment.  Bruce doesn’t believe in the licenses – his comment about his parents is just a statement of fact – but there’s an openness to the comment: he doesn’t draw the ‘us and them’ line that Jim does.

Oswald tells Bruce he comes up with guidelines, but the nervous bureaucrat – Mr Pen – handles everything else – before leaving to mingle.  Alfred congratulates Bruce on finding out who is likely to have the list.

 Selina is also at the club. Victor approaches with Ivy in tow – and asks where Tabitha is, aren’t they a package deal?  Selina says Oswald has her – and that should be enough, but Tabitha arrives.

We're both in

Victor eyes her.

I should pat you down for weapons

Tabitha tells him he’d lose a hand.  What’s with this show and cutting off hands?

Ivy tries to say hi, but Tabitha rather meanly gets rid of her.  Selina is happy that Tabitha was worried about her.  Glancing round, though, she sees Bruce and Alfred, scowls, and walks away.

 At GCPD, Jim stares at his bloody nose in the mirror.  Jim’s still very upright for what looked to be a horrendous beating – what the hell? Harvey enters.  Jim tells him sullenly that they have no back up. Harvey suggests it was healthy for the cops to let off steam this way – which doesn’t go down well with Jim.

 At the club, the gang is hiding in kitchen, deciding to hit Oswald and Victor first.  Oswald strolls in with Victor, and asks them whether they think gas or a bullet would be faster?

Oswald knew they would be there, and is seemingly amused by Jim's ham-fisted attempt at manipulation. He’ll need to practice his role-play skills.  Possibly with a uniform and handcuffs - Oswald hasn’t decided yet.

Oswald has a special plan for these guys – and smilingly tells them so.

(Jesus - just let him do it: they're vile.)

Bruce has followed Selina to the roof.  She asks what he wants.  He says she knew he’d follow her.  She loses her smile and tells him he doesn’t know anything about her – a call-back to the hospital – for which Bruce promptly apologises.  She forgives him quickly, and tells him to get on the ledge if he wants to talk, which he does – to her pleased surprise.

He apologises again, and she tells him he was a jerk.  Bruce comments on her relationship with Tabitha, and says she’s not a good mentor. Selina says his opinion means absolutely nothing to her.  She’s a bit wobbly in her heels.  Turning – she dangles one foot off the edge, and asks if he wants to say something. He tells her that’s a lovely dress, and she smiles.

Alfred appears, and asks why they can’t just go to the cinema like normal teenagers.  He also tells Bruce they have a situation, and he runs off.  Alfred leaves Selina with a Miss Kyle – and she smiles.

Oswald is making a speech in front of the bound gang – about how he is ensuring peace for the future, and how - without him – this fear and chaos is what you get, the old days.

(An aside – you know – aside from Oswald’s sincerity that what he is doing is actually beneficial, that crime is inevitable, so why not control it – his behaviour is psychologically understandable.  No wonder Oswald is obsessive about control, after his experiences in Arkham, with his ‘family’, during his time as mayor.  He’s also going to have a professional horror of free agents like Ed and Barbara – who brought about complete chaos in the underworld, and who – as he pointed out – wouldn’t have even got to sit at the same table as Fish and Maroni and Falcone.)

Ivy watches, looking disgruntled.  I'm not getting why Ivy is suddenly dubious here, to be honest.

Oswald concludes by saying he keeps the city safe - not GCPD –adding a sarcastic, you're welcome!

Bruce tells Alfred his stuff is in the car. Alfred shakes his head.  Bruce tells Alfred that Oswald will kill those men.  Alfred says there’s a time for As-Yet-Unnamed-Mask-Man, and there’s a time for Bruce.

Bruce steps forward and loudly asks Oswald what will happen.  Oswald says he need not concern himself.  Bruce asks if they will be handed over to the police.

Oswald walks closer.  He says Bruce thanked him earlier – but how did he think this all happened?  He’s willing to do the dirty work required.

Again, Bruce’s response is important

I understand

There’s sincerity there.  He does understand Oswald’s reasoning.  He just can’t go along with it.  He tries again.

I'm asking you not to kill those men

Oswald’s mouth trembles (master of his emotions, everyone), and he looks him straight in the eye

You're young.  You have a good heart

Bruce and Alfred looks taken aback by this response.

Oswald is resolved, though.

No.

 Ivy wanders into the kitchen and switches off the power. This makes not a blind bit of sense – sorry. I can buy that Oswald’s snappishness has been progressively pissing her off. I can buy that they’re in a squabbly sibling dynamic.  But it just seemed to go from 0 to wtf way too quickly.  She’s been around Oswald for just over three months now.  She knew of him earlier than that – in fact, saw very similar attention-grabby behaviour at the opening of Sirens.  I get that she’s childish – and doesn’t really think things through before acting – but the idea that she’s suddenly not OK with that to this extent just feels too convenient.

As the club is plunged into darkness, Jim and Harvey come barrelling in, the gang break free, and Oswald is sprayed with fear serum.  He drops to the floor, screaming, and sees a monstrous, demonic Ed which – given Ed mentally tortured him by digging up his father’s corpse, makes sense.  It’s also interesting that Ed is looming over Oswald – slightly reminiscent of their first prolonged encounter – in which Ed drugged him to keep him docile and captive.

Zsasz and Alfred nearly shoot each other in the confusion, but give each other impressed little smiles.  Someone somewhere just started a side-blog.  Think of all the snacks Alfred could make him.

When the lights go back on, Jim punches the ringleader, who was laughing and gloating over a still yelling Oswald, and arrests him.

Oswald is still terrified and begging for help – but zeroes on Jim’s voice, grabbing on to him to clamber up from the floor, and then clutches at him, hiding his face against him and begging for help.

Jim has his disgruntled ‘I’m not a hugging person’ face on – but doesn’t push him off, and manages to shift his grip to move his hand from grabbing Oswald’s shoulder to press against the back of his head instead.

(An aside – yes, it’s played for some comic relief.  However, the fact remains that after everything, and despite all the bluster on both sides - Oswald still seeks Jim out for safety, and Jim doesn’t shove him away, but holds on instead. In a crappy dark universe, I’ll take what sweetness I can get.)

Harvey drops a newspaper on Jim’s desk – which is running what is surely now many Gobblepotters’ desktop image as their front-page picture.  Harvey shakes his head.

Penguin won't be too happy about that

Well – not publicly, Harvey – but I’m willing to bet that it’s made it into a secret scrapbook.

Jim shrugs

Screw him

(The fanficcers are on it Jim, thanks for helping)

 Mr Pen’s office.  Bruce is waiting at the door.  He manages to easily swipe the list, while Mr Pen ineffectually protests.

(Honestly?  This seems dumb.  Yes – Oswald would avoid seeing the list himself, but he’d have third party muscle guarding it.)

Bruce is on a rooftop, watching a licensed burglary through a glass sectioned ceiling.  Leaning on the glass, he falls through, lands awkwardly, removes his mask in apparent panic – and is only saved by the arrival of GCPD.  Ooops. Maybe he’ll get one of those cool mugshots, though?  David Bowie’s is the best.

One of the loathsome gang returns to the apartment for a more serum.  He opens the cupboard to find Jonathan wearing the scarecrow suit.

Jonathan Crane isn't here anymore.  Just the scarecrow

He sprays him with the serum and – again – fuck these guys, so good.

 General observations

Hard to find an overarching theme here – we’re more checking in to see where everyone is.

 The licensed crime thing doesn’t really work, logic-wise – but Gotham’s not really big on that. What you can take from it that’s interesting is Oswald’s view of crime versus, say…Jerome’s.  

Crime, for Oswald, is business.  It’s what he does.  He’s a gangster and belongs, in that sense, to the world inhabited by Fish, Maroni and Falcone – even given his ‘freakishness’.  From what we see of Gotham – it’s pretty entrenched in terms of rich, poor, etc.  For Oswald – second generation immigrant, wrong side of the tracks, with a mother who needed support herself, and with something to prove – organised crime probably seemed a pretty obvious option.

It does fulfil certain psychological needs for him: power, respect, and the venting of rage when he kills – but they’re sort of by-products of what he does.  Barring when he completely loses his temper, he will tend to kill/assault for business reasons.  An enemy had to be disposed of.  An informant had to be taught a lesson.  Even revenge serves a business purpose as well as acting as an outlet for anger: this is what you will get if you wrong me.

That’s a world with a rulebook and its own logic.  But it doesn’t really work for those who want to break the rules for the sake of breaking the rules.  Oswald’s rule would pretty much be the same to them as the rule of law.  Jerome’s furious at every authority figure he sees – it doesn’t matter who it is.  He needs to lash out at them, exert power.  Equally – it doesn’t really work for people whose murders are driven by psychological compulsion and/or a need to prove that they’re ‘better’ than the law.

Jim and Oswald.  Oh my.  Oswald’s still feeling a little stung – it seems, given his pointed comment to Jim about keeping people safe, but presumably the bulk of the blame has been assigned to the Tetch virus, since Jim is still hale and hearty.  They’re back to business as usual: inappropriate body space, inappropriate baiting, inappropriate grabbing, inappropriate staring, inappropriate clutching – general inappropriateness.

Oswald and Bruce’s interaction is interesting.  We know, from Oswald’s backstory, and his interlude after Arkham, that Oswald does have the capacity to be a good person.  It’s just been knocked out of him so often that he’s learned that it doesn’t get him anywhere.  But he still recognises and values goodness in other people.  It’s one of the major factors in his relationship with Jim (morally ambiguous though Jim may be).  And - like the reasoning behind his crime licenses – this acknowledgement of goodness is something that differentiates him from many of the other ‘villains’.  There’s arguably much more of a sense of ‘might-have-been’ about him, which is what makes him so relatable and sympathetic.

Jim – as mentioned earlier – has looped back to a version of s1 Jim.  I’m curious to see what makes him desperate enough to seek out Falcone.  It’ll need to be something significant, otherwise he’s just going to start to bring back elements of Unappealing Season 2 Jim, who was a massive hypocrite.

Sundries

Victor is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

Jim being the object of derision in GCPD is oddly familiar and comforting.

Poor Jonathan.  

[0n-y0ur-left]

@machine-dove sent me a message yelling about my tags on this post and said I had to write the ficlet.

I’m always a slut for prompts, so...

The thing was, Steve would swear in the years that followed, he really felt like him and Bucky had been dancing around this for months.  They’d been best friends for years, for as far back as either of them could remember, but after the weirdness that had been middle school there’d been a charge there, a spark of something humming beneath the surface of their interactions that both excited and scared the hell out of them.  

Or out of Steve, anyway.  He’d finally gotten the nerve to admit - to himself and his friends and loved ones - that he had a thing for both girls and guys at the start of eleventh grade, and while he didn’t have dates of either sex lining up to ask him out, it had at least cleared the air between him and Bucky.  And when Buck had broken up with his last girl of the month, four months ago (not that Steve was keeping track), and they’d started constantly hanging out together again, like old times… well, there was a nasty little voice in Steve’s head that couldn’t help reading more into it.

Especially when Bucky insisted sharing milk shakes when they went out after school, or popcorn when they went to the movies, or letting Steve borrow his Varsity jacket when he accidentally/on purpose forgot to bring his own coat to the Homecoming game they’d gone stag to.  There was definitely something there, something more than Steve had ever dreamed of hoping for - but while one mean side of him liked to point out the possibility of his best friend becoming something even more, the other, meaner side always shut him down: making sure to remind Steve as harshly as possible just how delusional he was being.

Because Bucky, even if he was single, had never once expressed an interest in being with other guys.  And even if he had, Buck was so far out of Steve’s league that it wasn’t funny.  He was smart - honor council this year, top of their class since he’d first transferred to Brooklyn in elementary school - he was on student council, starting pitcher for the varsity baseball team as  a sophomore, a key player in every drama production Washington High had put on since he’d started there.  People were tripping over the opportunity to hang out with Bucky Barnes, never mind the chance to date him.  And Steve… Steve was just Steve.  Scrawny asthmatic with a chip on his shoulder, painfully average student and GSA representative.  He was a decent artist when people took the time to actually look at his work, and Bucky swore up and down that he was funny as hell, but for the most part Steve knew that the only reason he wasn’t regularly getting shoved in lockers anymore was because he was most famous for being Bucky Barnes’ best friend.

Steve was an idiot for even imagining that he had a chance with someone as perfect as Bucky, but he wasn’t so stupid that he’d go and risk something as important as their friendship by asking him out.

Besides, they hung out so often that Steve felt he could pretty safely pretend they were dating.  In the deepest, darkest corners of his mind.  And if ninety-nine percent of his schmoopy fan art of late was based on an AU of Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne as dorky high school boyfriends that maybe bore a little bit of a resemblance to the dumb shit that the two of them did together?  Well… no one needed to know.

It got more hits to his blog, at least.

That said, there were still nights when Steve’s stupid brain couldn’t help but wish.  So when Bucky had sent his text on the Sunday before the MLK Holiday, when Steve was already pouting about the fact that he couldn’t join him in their volunteer plans because his stupid head had decided to come down with a stupid cold, well… Steve couldn’t help feeling a little reckless.

Text from Bucky Received 09:32 PM

What do you wear to bed?

Steve had been staring at it for a solid thirty seconds, blinking and trying to convince himself that it really wasn’t the Nyquil that he’d taken earlier - that Bucky really was asking him that question.

He had to know how suggestive it was.  Steve had watched Bucky charm girls since they were in elementary school… he knew how to flirt, he knew how people took his words.  Which meant - he had to be flirting with Steve.  It wasn’t completely out of the blue, not really, but it still left Steve such a squirmy mess that he actually had to abandon his tablet on his desk and fall back onto his mattress to read it again.

Bucky had stayed over enough times over the years to know damned well that Steve usually just slept in whatever outsized summer camp t-shirt was cleanest in his drawer and either a pair of old boxers or ratty pajama pants; but he couldn’t very well say that.  Not in response to his first sext.

He bit the hell out of his lip, dismissing the thought as fast as he could, before  finally forcing his fingers to type out an answer.  

Text to Bucky Sent 9:34 PM

depends on the weather

if its summer just a black jock or smth ;)

He held his breath as the ellipses bubble appeared on Bucky’s side of the screen, rereading his response obsessively.  Best case scenario: Bucky really was flirting with him, and they could get it out of their systems the easy way… break the ice on a text screen, then make out like fiends in person the next time they hung out together.  Worst case scenario: Bucky would ask him what the fuck he was talking about and Steve would laugh it off as a joke.

He was golden.

He was really, really fucking hoping for the former - although as Bucky continued typing he couldn’t help but start panicking.

Text from Bucky Received 9:35 PM

k but what about like in the winter

do u wear warm pajamas?

What the fuck?

Steve actually started to type as much, but the rest of Bucky’s responses came in a flurry of messages.

Text from Bucky Received 9:35 PM

my mom is making me throw out my old superman pajamas and i kno theyre about ur size

i swear theyre not gross or anything

ill wash them before

if u want them

i just know u like superman and its dumb to throw them away

Steve finished reading the texts, dropped the phone onto his comforter, and covered his face in his hands because - oh God.  It was so painfully cute, so painfully Buck that he couldn’t help giggling, and immediately picked the phone back up to read the exchange again.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he took a screenshot and hit the share icon for his Tumblr account.  After a second’s debate he added the hashtag #Ur fav would NEVEr #This boy and posted it.

He rolled onto his side, staring at the screenshot and grinning like a crazy person… and then succumbed to the cold meds, finally.

Steve woke up coughing a short while later, blinking in confusion before realizing that he’d definitely fell asleep on top of his covers, with his damned contacts still in.  He reluctantly moved to the bathroom to pop them out (his eyes were already a sticky, awful mess, so leaving them in absolutely wasn’t worth how he’d feel in the morning), then stumbled back to his bed, groaning when he noticed the time on his alarm clock.

He face-planted back into his pillow, only to bash his nose against the cold, hard surface of his phone.  With a curse he moved the damned thing to his nightstand - then remembered how he’d fell asleep in the first place.  He knocked three books on the floor feeling for his glasses on the nightstand, but finally got them on his nose and pulled his phone screen close to his face, blinking in surprise when he saw his Tumblr app notifications.

With a little red bubble that read 1,000+ next to it.

Steve opened the app with shaking fingers, only to laugh out loud when he realized which post it was that had blown up.  He hadn’t imagined the interchange with Bucky, and apparently the entire damned internet was every bit as charmed as he’d felt.  A quick scroll through his inbox confirmed that at least fifty people thought they should get married.

Which… was probably jumping the gun, but was something that Steve couldn’t help preening over, just a little.

Text to Bucky sent 06:03 AM

I PUT THIS CONVO ON THE INTERNET

If nothing else, Buck would get a good laugh out of it in the morning, Steve figured with a giggle.

A giggle that stopped as soon as the blue check mark appeared next to Bucky’s name.

Text from Bucky received 06:03 AM

hmmmmm?

Steve - had definitely not expected Buck to be up yet, but he could hardly abandon the conversation now.

Text to Bucky sent 06:04 AM

I put this on tumblr.  U should see the responses!

It vaguely occurred to Steve that he probably should have asked for permission ahead of time, but it was Bucky.  And it wasn’t as if he’d said anything terrible - if anything, Steve came out looking like the pervy idiot.

Besides, none of their classmates would guess that this random Bucky on the internet was their Bucky: no one outside of their immediate friend group knew that Buck was such a dork, or would believe it in the first place.

Text from Bucky received 06:04 AM

is that ur art site?

Steve hid his grin behind his hand.  His art site.  Please…

Text to Bucky sent 06:04 AM

yeah sort of.  i post on it sometimes

it got huge responses!

more than any drawings :P

PS how old r these pjs?  if they r gonna fit me? XD

Text from Bucky received 06:04 AM

shit

Steve’s heart sank in his chest as the ellipse button appeared immediately under Bucky’s response.  He was in the middle of stumbling out of bed to retrieve his laptop to delete the damned thing when his phone chimed again.

Text from Bucky received 06:05 AM

i lied to millions of ppl on the internet

my mom isnt making me throw my pajamas out

i saw them at target

Steve was about to laugh and make a snarky reply about the ‘millions’ part (he had a grand total of five hundred twenty-three people following his crappy fan art blog, but Bucky always was one for dramatics) but the rest of Bucky’s rant stopped him cold.

Text from Bucky received 06:05 AM

they were on sale tho

i know we already did xmas presents

they just made me think of u

Steve’s smile was so wide his face ached.  The ellipses kept coming.

Text from Bucky received 06:06 AM

no they werent

they werent on sale

thats another lie

sorry tumbler

can they see this now???

Steve was dying.  Bucky was going to actually kill him with adorableness, and he didn’t even seem to realize it.  After smothering a squeal in his pillow Steve got his shit together and started typing back.

Text to Bucky sent 06:06AM

nope! no worries ;)

He gnawed viciously on his bottom lip as he typed up his follow up, started to delete it twice, then finally manned up and hit send.  

Steve was a lot of things, but he sure as hell hoped he wouldn’t ever be called a coward.

Text to Bucky sent 06:07 AM

i got about 50 message overnight tho

they all say i’ve gotta marry you XD

The emoticon, Steve decided when he saw the blue checkmark beneath it, was a nice touch.  If Buck freaked out now, he could just laugh the whole thing off as a joke.

(he wasn’t laughing while the ellipse bubble flashed next to Bucky’s name ten billion times in the next two minutes)

Text from Bucky sent 06:08 AM

we should prob start with coffee first

if ur feeling better i can pick u up tuesday?

is seven okay?

Steve stared at his phone for a solid thirty seconds, gaping in shock, before pressing the call button next to Bucky’s name with shaking fingers.  Seven was perfect, but he could hardly trust himself to type as much.

[thisdaynews]

Joe Biden’s Race Against Time

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/joe-bidens-race-against-time/

Joe Biden’s Race Against Time

URBANDALE, Iowa—One scorching, airless early evening in the middle of August, on the outskirts of Des Moines here at a place called Living History Farms, Joe Biden stood in front of an old yellow barn and talked to a couple hundred people about the past.

“I think that, uh, the behavior of this administration has awakened, uh, a whole new generation to get engaged in ways that they may not have gotten before,” Biden said, referring to President Donald Trump and the current tumult. “Just like in my generation, when I got out of school that, uh, when Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King had been assassinated in the ‘70s, uh, late seven—when I got engaged, um, you know, up to that time, remember the, none of you women will know this, but a couple men may remember, that was a time in the early, late ‘60s, and the early ‘60s and ‘60s, where it was drop out and go to Haight-Ashbury, don’t get engaged, don’t trust anybody over 30. I mean, for real. What happened to them, by the, by the early ‘70s, the late ‘60s, there was a whole generation that said, ‘Enough.’ The war in Vietnam was under way, and it was—a lot of you served in that war—and, uh, we were fighting like the devil to make sure that there was something dealing with cleaning up the environment, which was only beginning. We were in a position where the women’s movement was just beginning to move. We should have, by now, long before, passed the ERA amendment, but that was another issue …”

Story Continued Below

Sticky-squeezed into plastic chairs, the torpid crowd used handed-out campaign paraphernalia to fan their sweaty faces. But at this mention of the equal rights amendment, somebody started to clap, and others followed suit, and the smattering of applause felt like an act of mercy—giving the characteristically discursive Biden a chance to reset and everybody else the opportunity to take a breath and maybe not think too hard about the fact that the former vice president had bungled by a decade the dates of two of the most jarring and consequential killings in modern American history.

After Biden finished talking, he spent the better part of an hour mingling with the many who wanted to stick around for selfies. Clad in brown loafers, trim tan slacks and a snug navy-blue polo shirt that accentuated the lean musculature of his tan upper arms, he worked the rope line with vigor and veteran aplomb, shaking hands, kissing cheeks and smiling to flash his teeth that are an even brighter shade than his wispy white hair.

A young staffer with a clipboard asked a man within my earshot if he wanted to sign up to commit to caucus for Biden.

“Already filled it out,” the man responded. “I think I did that in ’87.” Thefirsttime Biden ran for president—32 years ago.

This event, like every Biden event, couldn’t help but highlight one of the defining realities of his 2020 candidacy: Next month, he turns 77 years old. His age is the subtext, and increasingly the text, too, of not only his bid but the Democratic Party’s primary as a whole. Even as fading poll numbers loosen his status as the favorite and the mounting impeachment fervor over Ukraine threatens to exact a collateral toll, Biden’s age remains an overarching issue.

It’s an issue because of the simple math: Only three presidents have served in their 70s—Trump, Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower—and no president ever hasfinisheda term at the age Biden wouldbeginhis. It’s an issue because of things Biden has said and done—suggesting, for instance, he thought he was in Vermont when he actually was in New Hampshire, dropping that wince-worthy phrase that his “time is up” in the first debate and oddly invoking a record player in the last debate. His lifelong habit of flubs, gaffes and often garbled speaking now can seem less like “Joe being Joe” and more like an ominous indicator of a creeping loss of mental acuity.

It’s an issue because Biden himself has tried in sometimes awkward ways to keep it from being one, inviting a heckler to run with him during a parade and challenging a reporter to a wrestling match. And it’s an issue because opponents, from Trump (“Sleepy Joe”) to those in his own party trying to knock him off, have made it an issue—from Eric Swalwell saying it was time to “pass the torch” to Tim Ryan saying he’s “declining” to Julian Castro (dubiously) accusing him of “forgetting” things to Cory Booker dishing out readymade Republican attack ad fodder by bluntly declaring on CNN that “there’s a lot of people who are concerned about Joe Biden’s ability to carry the ball all the way across the end line without fumbling” and “there are definitely moments where you listen to Joe Biden and you just wonder.” Even the famously gracious Jimmy Carter, who just turned 95, delivered a candid if unhelpful assessment last month when he said he didn’t believe he could have handled “the duties that I experienced when I was president” if he had been 80.

This isn’t just about Biden’s age—it’s about ours, and the tension between a vast cohort of Baby Boomers who have trained themselves to believe they’re only as old as they feel and a couple of impatient generations lined up behind them, wondering when they’re going to get a chance to take over. And yet it’s about far more than simply a number next to a name. Our sense of who is old in this primary has become entwined with our appetite for bold and new ideas. All three of the top-polling Democrats, after all, are in their 70s, but it’s Biden, the centrist who advocates for a return to a pre-Trump time, who is getting dinged the most for his advanced age—not Elizabeth Warren, who wants “big, structural change” and turned 70 in June. Up until this week when he had to have two heart stents implanted, neither was Bernie Sanders, who continues to call for his “revolution” and is in fact the oldest of the lot.

But there is an entire cohort of Biden supporters for whom his age—actual and perceived—is the very thing that recommends him. After the tumult of the Trump years, these voters crave the experience and order and stability Biden promises. For them, Biden is the beneficiary of shifting social and cultural notions that make it harder to pinpoint what it actually means to beold. Federal law protects workers from age discrimination starting at 40. People can join AARP at 50. They’re usually eligible for Medicare at 65 and Social Security at 66. Scientifically, though, a half-dozen aging experts I talked to for this story told me, there’s such vast variability in how people age that it’s ill-advised and even irresponsible to try to draw conclusions about an individual based on a date of birth. “There are people at 80 who perform better than 20-year-olds,” said Christopher Van Dyck of Yale University, “even on these cognitive speed, memory-type tasks.” Furthermore, beyond decades of a healthy diet and sufficient exercise, a significant, intangible, practically mysterious part of the nature of anybody’s aging, said Tracy Chippendale of New York University, is just … luck. Genes. Joe Biden’s father died at 86. His mother died at 92.People, said Denise Park of the University of Texas at Dallas, have to make a determination “based on the behavior that they observe.”

That’s essentially what Biden’s repeatedly asked voters to do.

“Watch me,” he said in June. “Just watch me.”

Over the last six weeks, in three of the most important states in the primary process, I watched him—in South Carolina, in New Hampshire, and here in first-to-caucus Iowa.

In Prole, in an oversized lakeside gazebo, I watched him talk about the 1951 Chevy he drove in high school as he sweat through his shirt. “I think we want to have him in the shade, guys,” said an aide to the cluster of reporters who had gathered around him to ask questions. “I don’t want him standing in the sun again,” said another. Biden was asked if he had thought about pledging to just one term to allay the concerns about his age. “No,” he said.

In Newton, blessedly inside at a renovated brick building that used to be a Maytag plant, I watched him tell a crowd about how he “got elected as a 29-year-old kid” and how he’s “met every single major foreign leader that has existed over the last 35 years.” Attendees I talked to, many of whom had white or gray hair themselves, professed to be impressed. “For a guy that’s as old as he is,” Tom Spidle, 64, teeing up what came out as a backhanded compliment, told me, “he looks incredible.” Chuck Walraven, 66, of Oskaloosa agreed. “To stand up there and talk as much as he did?” he said. “I mean, he’s not gonna fall over dead any more than you are, you know what I’m saying? I mean, you could die tomorrow—right now—talking to me! He could live to be a hundred.” Bruce Hoffmeier is the same age as Biden. He wore hearing aids and leaned on a cane. “He’s not too old,” Hoffmeier said on his way out. “He looks good.”

And at Living History Farms, I watched Biden keep working that rope line before turning to catch up with the man I’d overheard tell the young staffer that he’d committed to caucus better than three decades back.

Tom Rial of Des Moines was enrolled at the University of Northern Iowa, where he was the president of the student group for Biden. He supported him as well when he ran for the second time in 2007. He’s supporting him again now.

“He’s just got stature,” Rial, 52, told me. “Stature, maturity and experience.”

“The good sides of age,” I offered.

“He’s been around,” Rial granted.

We started freaking out about the age of our presidents because of something that happened exactly 100 years ago this week.

On October 2, 1919, Woodrow Wilson collapsed in a bathroom at the White House, felled by a stroke that paralyzed his left side and rendered him incapacitated for the last nearly year and a half of his term. He was, the White House head usher would recall, “helpless.” Wilson, 63 when he was stricken, didn’t hold a cabinet meeting for more than seven months. His aides and his wife banded to do the work of the administration while attempting, too, to obscure the extent of his infirmity. But senators and staff who visited him saw “an emaciated old man” and “a very old man” who “acted like one.” It was, in the assessment of one of Wilson’s biographers, “the worst crisis of presidential disability in American history.”

Wilson was on the mind of Vice President Richard Nixon more than 30 years later, when President Eisenhower had a heart attack in September of 1955. Eisenhower recovered, enough to run for and win re-election the following fall, standing in open cars, waving to clamoring crowds, convincing the public that “suggestions that he was near death’s door were visibly untrue.” His ailing health in his second term, though, helped stoke the rise of John F. Kennedy, still the youngest president ever elected.

But the age-related episode the historians and operatives I talked to for this story brought up first unspooled over the course of two weeks in October of 1984.

Reagan, the oldest president ever elected until Trump, in the first of the two general election debates against Democratic nominee Walter Mondale that year appeared alarmingly ill-equipped and scatterbrained. He looked, according to Peter Goldman and Tony Fuller ofNewsweekin their book about the campaign, “to be searching his mind and coming up empty.” He looked “damaged.” He “lookedold,” they wrote. Reagan was 73, and even the typically friendlyWall Street Journalpublished a front-page article asking if that was too old, quoting a professor of medicine who said Reagan was shifting from “young-old” to “old-old.” A pro-Reagan psychologist added, “I’d be concerned to put him into a corporate presidency. I’d be all the more concerned to put him into the U.S. presidency.” All three networks did stories on it as well, airing an especially discomfiting portion of his performance: “The system is still where it was in regard to the uh, the uh, the uh, the uh …”

In the second debate, though, Reagan the ex-actor uncorked what even Mondale would acknowledge as “one of the great lines in the history of presidential debates.” Asked by one of the moderators about his age and his ability “to function,” Reagan responded, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” The audience laughed.Mondalelaughed. But he knew he was done.

“The joke,” Mondale wrote in his memoir, “completely disarmed people’s doubts about his age and his capacities and allowed them to think, ‘He’s okay.’ They wanted Reagan to be okay and now they could believe it.”

“People didn’t want him to fail,” University of Texas at Austin presidential historian H.W. Brands told me in an email. “His ability to joke about the issue told them it couldn’t be too serious.”

“Everybody laughed,” said longtime Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who led Mondale’s efforts in Iowa that cycle, “and regardless of what the facts were about whether age was impacting him or not, it was over—that question was gone.”

Age matters. Because health matters. “Eventually, something like what happened to Woodrow Wilson is going to happen to us again,” Nixon biographer John Aloysius Farrell said in an interview. “I’ve seen almost everything—an assassination, two impeachments—in all my years as a watcher of politics. But I’ve never seen a president die of natural causes in office—and, you know, we’re due.” But voters don’t think like actuaries. Especially not right now. Democrats just want to beat Trump, and polls still say they think Biden’s the best bet.

Also, the challenge for Mondale in the scenario in ’84 looks in retrospect like a version of what Biden’s opponents are dealing with now: He had to try to diminish Reagan while simultaneously showing something along the lines of deference. The late Pat Caddell, the madcap mastermind who that year was an adviser to Mondale, understood how delicate a task it was and how hard it would be. Mondale, he reasoned in a strategy memo, had to “convince voters that Reagan has ‘lost it’ and that he ought to be retired. … In short, we want to have the American electorate emulate the British electorate in 1945 when they turned on Winston Churchill.” Still, the hit had to be deft. He all but likened it to putting a family elder in a nursing home—“sort of embracing a grandfather,” Caddell wrote, “and gently pushing him aside.”

Mondale couldn’t do it, and none of the younger 2020 candidates have managed it yet with Biden, either.

Last month in New Hampshire, in Laconia, on the top floor of “the oldest unaltered brick textile mill in the U.S.,” according to the adjacent historical marker, I watched Biden tell people the salary for a senator back when he was first elected was $42,000 a year, briefly mix up Reagan with Nixon, and refer to Charlottesville as Charlotte before correcting himself two and a half minutes later.

“I found the vice president inspiring,” David Huot told me outside. Almost eight months older than Biden, he’s still a state representative. “Why the hell should I sayhe’s old?” Huot said. “I’mold.”

More often than not, though, I didn’t even have to ask about age.

After Huot, for instance, I met Dr. Paul Sapir, 91, and his wife, Sylvia, 76, Rhode Island residents with a nearby summer home, and asked them open-endedly what they thought of Biden’s performance.

“I was very impressed,” she said. “You know, I’ve been very worried about him in terms of his gaffes, but he seemed to know facts and figures, and they seemed to come to him easily.” Her husband, a retired psychiatrist, joined in. “It was quite reassuring about him and his intactness and his coherence,” he said. “He seems pretty intact.”

Intact.Sapir sounded like an archeologist describing a papyrus scroll.

That evening, in nippy New Castle over on the Atlantic coast, a man stood at the rear of the crowd in an oceanfront park and poked fun with a held-high sign welcoming Biden back to Vermont. In the question-and-answer session after his talk, Biden called a 24-year-old woman who asked about climate change “kiddo.” She said she found it “patronizing.”

The next morning, at the state Democratic Party convention at the sports arena in downtown Manchester, Biden was the first of all the presidential candidates to take the stage. The crowd was still sparse. He stifled coughs. By far the most memorable part of his speech was when he called Donald Trump “Donald Hump.”

People snickered.

Biden adlibbed. “Freudian slip,” he said.

The malaprop made for a droplet of entertainment. But the more meaningful development of the day, it seemed, happened not out in the open hall but rather in the bowels of the venue, in a stuffy, fluorescent-lit room, in which the roster of Oval Office aspirants could come talk to the assembled throng of reporters. Biden opted not to show up. Virtually everybody else did, though, and what unfolded in his absence was a collective crescendo of talk about the age issue—a preview of sorts of what would come the following week during and after the Houston debate. Ryan, 46, pointed to “a lack of clarity” in the way Biden speaks. Buttigieg, 37, said Democrats traditionally win the presidency with new, fresh faces, not “established and Washington-tenured figures.” Booker, 50, managed to turn a question about climate change into a chance to call attention to his relative youth. “I’ve seen military reports about what’s going to happen in the next 25 years—when, as another one of my colleagues says, I will still be younger than the president of the United States.” And Castro, days before he would unleash toward Biden his “forgetting” fusillade, was explicit. “I believe that we need a new generation of leadership,” he said, citing party presidential antecedents Kennedy, Carter, Clinton and Obama. “I believe people are looking for that again.”

Biden, however, remains the candidate to beat—in spite of the softening of his standing in some polls.

Older political hands think they know why.

“It’s perfectly all right to call for a new generation of leadership,” longtime Democratic strategist Bob Shrum told me. But he warned of “the danger of trying to go after Biden.”

“There is,” former top Obama strategist David Axelrod emailed, “a lot of affection and respect among Democrats for Biden. He is popular. Gratuitous attacks on him are not well received. And in an environment in which defeating Trump is the urgent concern of many Democrats, Biden seems like the safest, least risky choice.”

It’s why Joe Trippi looks at the 2020 primary to this point and finds himself thinking back to the 2010 California gubernatorial campaign. Jerry Brown was pitted against Meg Whitman. Trippi worked for Brown. Whitman was 54 and was coming off a decade of having been the CEO of eBay. Brown, on the other hand, had been around for just about forever, and had done just about everything—governor already before, mayor of Oakland, attorney general, three times a presidential candidate. He was 72. But the political terrain in the state coming out of eight years with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and in the wake of the Great Recession was jangled. Trippi was “blown away” by what he learned from voters in focus groups.

“We would give them this really stellar bio of Meg Whitman, and they all went, ‘No way.’ And you’re like, ‘What?’ And it was like, ‘No way—we tried somebody from outside government who didn’t know what the hell they were doing. … It was just too chaotic. We don’t want anybody new. We don’t want anybody from outside. Just somebody who knows how to turn the lights on in Sacramento. … Can’t you just give me an old shoe? I just want an old shoe.’”

In the case of that race, Trippi explained, they won by looking not forward so much as back.

Maybe that’s what’s at work right now.

“With age comes experience,” he said, “and with a chaotic president, the experience may count more than the age.”

It may. But that’s the exception to the rule. Usually it’s the other way around.

In 1972, for example, Cale Boggs was a two-term U.S. senator from Delaware. He was 63. Reporters in their coverage of the campaign described his “thinning hair” and said he sometimes got “tongue-tied.”

His challenger, meanwhile, a one-term county councilman, was 29. Reporters called Joe Biden “boyishly slim” and noted that he often talked about “how the old guard has bungled things.”

Biden ran newspaper ads yoking the incumbent to imagery evocative of bygone days. “Cale Boggs’ generation dreamed of conquering polio,” one said. “In 1950 Cale Boggs hoped to make Americans safe from Stalin,” a second said. Another mentioned “the 1948 poll tax.” The ads emphasized the need for “new thinking” and “new solutions.”

Boggs was “a helluva nice guy” but “was just not a fighter,” Biden said. He wondered if he had “lost that twinkle in his eyes.”

The steely sketching of this contrast was “pretty much the essence” of the Biden campaign’s strategy, according to one of his best friends and most important advisers. “His basic theory was Senator Boggs was beloved, but these were changing times,” he said. The pitch pretty much boiled down to this: “If Senator Boggs and I could just go down to the football stadium at the University of Delaware and people saw the two of us, they’d pick me.”

They did.

Now, though, at the opposite end of the cycle of his political life, Biden’s presidential candidacy is unavoidably an implicit argument against the very sort of youthful energy and not-gonna-wait rebellion that put him in a position of power in the first place.

I was thinking about Delaware and 1972 a few weeks ago as I pulled in to park in a pecan orchard on the banks of the Little Pee Dee River in rural South Carolina. The first thing I saw on the door of a car was a big placard of a magnet bearing a rendering of the face of Pete Buttigieg. “We can’t look for greatness,” it said, “in the past.”

Up the road a short way, outside the Galivants Ferry general store, vendors in trucks and tents hawked sweet tea, pimento cheese sliders and six-buck chicken bog. A bluegrass band was picking on the porch not far from the lectern made to look like a stump. Sticking out in the growing crowd was a ruddy man wearing flip-flops and a “MAKE AMERICA GROOVE AGAIN” hat and carrying a sign saying he was a “REPUBLICAN FOR PETE.”

“Mayor Pete’s a selfless servant,” John Dabrowski told me. He’s 37, lives on Pawleys Island and works in sales at a brewery in Myrtle Beach. He’s not happy with Trump, whom he called “a bully.” After his wife, Peta, got turned on to Buttigieg by drinking wine and watching YouTube videos, Dabrowski, too, identified the alternative he was looking for. He thinks Buttigieg is the person who can beat the president. “We can’t put somebody that’s gonna ostracize Republicans that are moderates like me, fiscal conservatives but also super liberal in other, you know, social aspects.”

But what about Biden?

“No,” he said.

“He’s old guard. I believe in term limits, and Joe’s not gonna do it for me. I mean, we don’t need somebody that’s been doing it for all these years. I want somebody that’s gonna be around for the policies that they’re gonna write, OK? Mayor Pete, if we put in some type of green policy or some type of coal policy, he’s going to see the repercussions because he’s going to be around for it. Biden’s not gonna be around for 30 years to see the effects of his policies—and that matters to me. Doesn’t that carry more weight? I want somebody to belivingwith their policy.”

Dabrowski’s friend chimed in. Buttigieg “willbe president,” said Ree Lawson, 54, a high school debate and public speaking teacher in Waccamaw. “It might not be this time.” But next time? Or the time after that? And afterthat? “We could go through four more cycles. He could run andstillbe a young man.”

On the docket for the evening at the Galivants Ferry Stump—where Democrats running for office have spoken since shortly after the Civil War—were four presidential candidates. First was Amy Klobuchar, and last was Bill de Blasio, who was a few days from dropping out—but in between was one heck of a Biden v. Boggs-like contrast.

Buttigieg, who was five years old when Biden first ran for president, bounded to his spot behind the stump, dressed in his uniform of dark slacks and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“This is a time to unify the American people. This is a time for ideas that are bold enough to get the job done and capable of bringing us together. And if you think about it, that’s how Democrats win, from John F. Kennedy to Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama. We win when we offer leadership from a new generation, with new ideas,” he said.

“Are you ready to break from the past?”

The cheer that went up from the people suggested that they were.

Then, though, led to the stump by a stomping, gyrating, instrument-waggling troupe from Florence, the energetic marching band from that city’s Wilson High, Biden was ready to respond. He spoke for his allotted 20 minutes, a faster, localized version of his standard spiel, citing another senator he once worked with (the recently deceased Fritz Hollings of South Carolina), stressing “honesty,” “dignity” and “decency,” and extolling Obama not as one of the series of fresh-faced Democrats who won the White House but as the president he served.

“Folks,” he said, “I’m just gonna say it. I don’t think we thank Barack Obama enough for the job he did as president!”

The audience roared. Biden built to a crescendo of his own. Grabbing hold of a past that never fails to invigorate him, he clenched his fist. He raised his voice. “Why in God’s name don’t we pick our heads up and remember who—this is the United States of America!”

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