“no seriously who did you choose?”
“i chose you”
grover and percy are the platonic soulmates. in the most literal sense possible. i mean, literally nobody in the world, including their respective girlfriends, will ever know grover and percy as well as they know each other. and not just because of their empathy link.
grover was the person who was there for percy the most. he helped percy transition from the mortal world into the greek one. he supported percy in tlt when sally was thought to be dead. grover was percy’s first friend. ever. it’s not fair how people keep forgetting that. grover saved percy’s life.
percy literally did NOT hesitate to save grover when he was kidnapped by polyphemus. percy tried his hardest to be there for grover while grover fulfilled his dreams of finding pan. percy and grover travelled through most of the labyrinth together. grover is the foundation of percy’s best traits. percy saved grover’s life.
there is no other friendship in any of riordan’s books that can compare to grover and percy’s. they’re platonic soulmates. there’s no one like them.
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Batman #149 by chip zdarsky is mostly unremarkable, but I'm really fascinated by how it makes a great case for 'good' endings not saving 'bad' stories*. Because there's a lot of interesting concepts in this issue (bruce having to deal with his rapidly aging and decaying clone making him think about his own life, re-establishing a 'nest' so to speak for his family after pushing them away, etc) but bc of the OOC slog that came before it, almost every moment w/ the batfamily comes off as unearned and disingenuous imo.
Like, everything with Damian is the perfect example in this. Because in isolation it's...fine. admittedly it's a missed opportunity to not go deeper into how Damian would feel about a clone of his dad who tried to kill considering Damian's relationships with clones of himself (the heretic rejects and respawn) or with former enemies who wanted him dead but who were manipulated and/or brainwashed (like suren and maya).
Zdarsky doesn't go into any of this but you could maybe excuse it as the issue not being about Damian. However, coupled with the previous bizarre characterizations of Damian in 147 and 148, it ends up not being fine- instead it starts to feel...icky how Damian (who, despite often being drawn and written as white, will never have his connection to the non-white al ghuls forgotten and will always be effected by racism even when not portrayed as a poc) is constantly written as overly violent, uncaring and narrow minded in this run. Coupled w/ trying to recanonize the morrison origin for Damian it's like. OH this is badly written and laden with subtle bigotry, sick**
That's me going into detail on it with Damian but it's applicable to other things in this issue- the way Cass, Steph and Duke have all been ignored or turned into jobbers makes their inclusion in the 'family' here feel hollow instead of satisfying. Bruce proclaiming that Zur was still a part of him and he needs to accept responsibility for his actions (when it means taking in clone son) wrings hollow when just last issue zdarsky was bending over backwards to separate Bruce and Zur bc otherwise the Jason thing would get really awkward. Ends are achieved through means that feel hollow or strange. I'm at my destination but damn why'd the bus have to do all that???
I only really have opinions on this latest arc of zdarskys Batman bc it's the one I've read the closest (bc I'm a hater, masochist and avid follower of even the bad damian storylines) but it's not saying great things.
Bc zdarsky can do one thing good in this book, and it's write Bruce and Tim. And yet this entire story, whether of his own volition or editorial mandate, includes other characters who aren't Bruce and Tim, the fabric starts to unravel in very telling ways.
(p.s, I think pennyworth manor is an interesting idea but I feel like in execution it's just gonna be 'bruce living in a house haunted by the memory of the people he couldn't save' but with a different dead guy this time. Illusion of change and whatnot)
*whether or not the ending is good is up to you ofc, as is your opinion on the proceeding arc! I saw some ppl complain that the ending was too "WFA" for them, which I get even if I dont think it'll literally be the same premise. If anything it's probably a lead into the new tec run. Likewise many ppl who aren't in the weeds of Damian and Jason characterization liked the previous arc! But I have my opinions and rest my case before the bench
**disclaimer, I'm white and portrayals of bigotry in comics are complicated and subjective, but I am basing my point here off what other poc comic fans on socmed have been saying about 149. Also the "sick" is sarcasm incase that wasn't obvious
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early op/dc au fic plot points
in honor of finding my notes finally after five months have passed since writing them and after i just wrote out a huge block of what happens during part one of the fic relying entirely on memory and wit alone, here are some freebie things-that-will-definitely-happen (and just random Things to throw in between) to think over while i'm trying to get back into writing this fic
also tagging @kiteou who created jason/sabo and 100% inspired this verse (please look at their ship art it's all so impeccably goooood)
sabo wears make-up to cover his scar when he goes crime fighting and chooses to hunt criminals in a distant district of gotham to avoid being recognized since he doesn't wear a mask
though he doesn't weak a mask, he does adorn a large tophat with a wide brim and uses the shade to conceal his face from view; when he runs into jason and snarls about a hero not posibly wearing a fucking full-face helmet mask, jason argues back about protecting his identity and accuses sabo of being a hypocrite since his hat also hides his face
jason quotes old literature sabo has never heard of when he's trying to make the most of a situation (so rarely) and sabo scribbles illegible-chicken-scratch words in tattered notebooks when he needs to vent about Life in general (it's maybe his goal at some point to create an autobiography of life in gotham and how much It Sucks, Bad™)
sabo using a metal pipe as his choice weapon reminds jason of damian (he's in his bo staff days) in kind of a fond but wary way - this does not last; at some point the pipe scraping against concrete or brick sets jason off, triggering something in his subconsciousness bad enough to make him lose focus in a fight, and it gets to the point where he tells sabo they can't fight together anymore if he's gonna continue to use the pipe as a weapon
ace and sabo are 19 in the beginning because it takes place in fall, and jason is newly 20 - because of this, sabo is 5'9 and ace 6'0 but sabo wears platform and heeled (the heel is inside so it's not visible) boots when he plays vigilante so he's taller than jason by a couple inches; at some point when ace meets jason he implicates sabo's true height and sabo shouts at him (shut the fuck up, ace!) before ace can finish; even later on, sabo ends up at jason's apartment and when his shoes come off, he stands shorter than jason, much to jason's surprise; sabo admits gruffly that being over six foot makes a person more intimidating, which is his goal at night when facing off with criminals, but also insists that he's still growing (which he is, and eventually he doesn't need the boots to stand at 6'2 properly); even though ace is (barely) taller than sabo (just like he's barely older than sabo), he's still shorter than jason, which rubs him the wrong way (and sets off the comment about sabo's alleged height)
while ace is just trying to survive in gotham, owing nothing to the city that's chewed them both up in childhood and spit them back out again in adolescence, sabo chooses vigilantism in a bid to 'just do what's right, or at least try to'
^ going with this, ace and sabo both have awakened meta-genes that grant them fire powers; ace got his first and is proficient in using his powers - in contrast, sabo develops his after his accident that leaves a portion of his upper body scarred, and refuses to train or even try and control/subdue his powers at all due to his intense fear of fire; this causes daily strife because ace should be able to coach sabo through developing (or at the very least, getting under control) his powers so they don't cause accidents all the time, being the more experienced and honed of the two, but because he's never willing to overstep and always afraid of reigniting sabo's trauma, he never pushes sabo toward what should be the reasonable solution
aaaaaaaa smth smth jason being more experienced in relationships but none of them ever going well, versus sabo who's never been in love and doesn't know how to act, doesn't know how to be vulnerable in front of another person (who's not ace, but even then) or what's considered normal for their relationship status, and eventually having to tell all of this to jason to dispel some worries threatening to make him sick; jason tries his best to insist that sabo doesn't need to act a specific or certain way and that they were going to figure this out together and find what worked for them; in the beginning their "romantic" relationship is super dysfunctional and not much different from their status before when they were just friends, but it slowly becomes more functional when they start to clue in to what they and each other want out of this
i CANNOT find my notes which makes me sick (< actually i did!!! not long after i wrote this which makes me SO mad in hindsight) but in this verse jason runs around with roy harper and artemis crock, who are roughly the same age as him and sabo but have the dynamic they do in earth-16 when they're (sibling) in-laws, meaning, they get along like a tight pair and often will team up to lovingly tease jason whenever the opportunity present itself; when they're introduced to sabo, the initial reaction is them recounting ('oh so this is the boy you're always mentioning') various things jason has said about him and then low-key embarrassing the both of them with their teasing, so it takes a bit for sabo to warm up to them
after sabo is burned by a lighter and his make-up runs, jason believes his old face scars to be part of the fresh injury and rushes sabo to leslie's clinic to get seen; sabo is bandaged up and none of the staff ask questions about the vigilantism that would (tie him w illegal activity) but in the beginning when someone asks sabo a basic question in regards to the injury, sabo clams up; jason has to snap at him that (leslie) was a doctor and not the fucking cops, so would sabo please put an ounce of trust in someone for once and let them take care of him; sabo relents and lets himself be treated
when he arrives home with his eye covered, ace is shocked because sabo never lets anyone but ace bandage him up; ace asks what (the fuck) happened and sabo clams up, flinches back when ace tries to reach for the wrap, and snaps at him to leave it because an actual medical professional treated him for once; ace says smth like 'but you always let me patch you up' and sabo appeases him by saying he can redress the wound later when it needed changing, but right now, he wants it left alone; later ace gets to see the damage and immediately realizes sabo got burned which terrifies him, putting sabo's shying away from him earlier into a new light, and ace takes on a new perspective when he helps sabo tend to the injury in order to frighten sabo as little as possible
sabo lives with ace and rouge until zero year, when their apartment floods and rouge gets sick and eventually dies in the hospital without proper medical care; without rouge, neither of them go back to the house in coventry and instead spend most of the remainder of zero year in a church - despite spending a good portion of their upbringing from that point on around clergymen, sabo refuses to believe in a god that would let him and ace to suffer through life to the extent that they had, and when ace curses 'god damn' or 'oh god' sabo isn't even willing to humor it, always blunting insisting 'there is no god' that ace in turn always counters with 'it's an expression, sabo, it doesn't have to mean anything'
aaaaaaaand since i've been sitting on this intro for a good six months now here's a small actual written pv :)
(if tumblr blurs the ss just click on it and it'll clear up)
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