#until they’re doing this big year end showcase where he needs to choose a variation to perform

[thefactsofthematter]

having random au thoughts but ballet dancer race is so very special to me… mini fic in the tags lol

[bigskydreaming]

how do you think the batfam might react if they find out about Mirage and Tarantula?

Tbh, I’m kinda all plum tuckered out on the Batfam finding out about Mirage and Tarantula against Dick’s most fervent wishes that nobody ever find out about that ever. I’ve talked about this a little in the past, but a survivor having the chance to CONTROL when and where they disclose about what happened to them and to whom, is like......soooo much more important for a lot of us than fic about this stuff tends to like....allow it to be. Its one of the most pivotal and powerful ways many survivors even just START to actually recover and come to terms with what happened, by choosing when and how people find out on THEIR terms, taking back control of their own life and their own agency one major choice at a time. And having that choice taken away from Dick too, with him usually not only having ZERO say in who finds out and when but with it more often than not happening in direct opposition to what he wants in that regard....

So like.....personally, I would just really like to see some more variety here. Some more narratives where people finding out happens because Dick’s READY to tell people, because he’s already done a good deal of healing on his own, been to therapy or like....he’s the one who survived this, so let him SURVIVE it and like.....give him a chance to be viewed as a SURVIVOR by his family and not just a victim when they do ultimately find out. Because he doesn’t need them to save him or patch him up, all he really truly needs is them to support him, and they can do that just as well if he’s already made inroads towards his own recovery by the time they find out or he tells them, rather than it just be like...what we so often end up seeing in fic. Where its like treated as matter-of-fact and a given that Dick’s just flat out self-destructing from this no matter how long its been since it happened, and he’s just refused to deal with it or even try to and he’s been running away from facing it ever since it happened, until....enter the family in fic, as they’re like, no, you gotta face it, and you haven’t been able to do that on your own and that’s why its a good thing we found out even though you really didn’t want us to or not yet or not like this, because you’re not handling it, you’re not coping, so you need people like us to like.....show/tell you how to do it right.

You know what I mean? I don’t think its intentional, but there’s a looooot of tendency in fic to like......just take it for granted that despite the fact that Dick has survived so many traumas and been one of the key figures in helping so many other people survive and process their own traumas as well, there’s just this kinda default assumption that in regards to this he’s just flat out broken and always will be....at least so long as he’s just trying (and failing) to handle it on his own, and that’s where the family comes in, even if Dick would really rather they didn’t, or at least not yet anyway.

And its not that Dick can’t benefit from his family and friends finding out so that they can support him and push back against the things he’s come to believe about himself as a result of internalizing his feelings that those situations were really his fault, etc.....its that there’s only so much he can benefit from their support when he only gets it because of...essentially, another kinda violation that compounds the pre-existing ones, as he’s denied the opportunity and the control/agency to be the one to decide who finds out about this and when and why. 

Like, there’s never gonna be an “Ideal Way” for it to go down, but the one thing that IMO is guaranteed to never be ideal and yet so often seems the only way we ever see this happening in fic is like....Dick yet again having no real say or decision in how his life is upended yet again, since this reveal would inevitably change so much about his dynamics with his family one way or another. 

And the thing is, at the end of the day, nothing about this narrative or how it plays out in fic is set in stone or an inevitability or like...the one true or right way for it to happen.....and yet....it only EVER seems to happen that one specific way: aka, against Dick’s expressed desire to have them find out while he’s still actively either trying to repress it/deny it ever happened or just he’s not denying it happened but he’s not remotely ready to face other people KNOWING.

Because like.....he’s not a real person. He’s a fictional character. And just like every other narrative he’s written into or the ways he’s depicted in both canon and fanfic....no matter how much we talk about characters being in character or mischaracterized, at the end of the day, the reality is there is no Core/Immutable TRUE choice that Dick would make in any given narrative or situation....

Because like every other character, he will only ever make the choices or behave in the ways that like....a writer chooses to write him.

So like much of my complaints/criticisms/whines-in-need-of-some-complementary-cheese about trends around and about him in stories.....

The problem I have isn’t with any one single specific way people choose to write him behaving or reacting in regards to this or any other narrative situation....

It lies more in just......how often there seems to ONLY be ONE way, singular, in which he’s ever shown reacting to this or behaving in regards to this, just like is true of the only like ‘one dynamic/backstory’ we tend to see in regards to Dick and Jason’s relationship in the early years before Jason’s death. Or the ONE way people seem to view the aftermath of the Forever Evil and Spyral situation, or the ONE way that people focus on the Tim and Damian and Robin/Red Robin situation playing out.

Its not that like, there’s NO room for any of these takes or narratives surrounding Dick’s side of things.....

Its that there only ever really seems to be ONE take on any of these extremely complicated and messy events and points in his stories and life, and like....one ONLY. And that’s it. That’s all there is to it, everything for the most part tends to be just a hundred, a thousand minutely diverging variations of what amounts to the one big “True Dick Grayson Reaction/Choice” where its just taken as a given that this is how it would happen here, when it comes to each and every one of these major story arcs/plot points. Fics mostly just seem to differ in execution while the core decisions or behavior driving the story action or acting as a catalyst for the confrontation/conversation a fic seems aimed at showcasing.....like, there’s this underlying sameness to so many of them. Where its treated like a given that There Can Only Be One when it comes to ways Dick might react or behave in regards to a certain event or choice.....that his characterization is so formulaic, so like....rigid and allowing for little to no flexibility in how he’s written because in the eyes of so many in fandom his true characterization is so immutable, so....predetermined that there just isn’t ROOM in his character concept for him to end up making any other choices than the ones its taken for granted he’d make.

So I guess ultimately, much like with every other similarly framed point or event in Dick’s life and stories, my ideal preference here is just more VARIETY. Writers actually flexing their creative muscles and stretching to EXPLORE new ways of Dick reacting to various things and new ways of other characters reacting to Dick. Mixing up dynamics more, subverting the expectations that are SO expected in so many things pertaining to him that like, we often can predict exactly where Dick’s character is going to go next in a fic or what his next move or words are going to be, and there’s a certain point at which something crosses the line from someone’s characterization being spot-on and someone’s characterization being......limited. Confining.

Personally, and this is 100% at the root of my frequent criticisms of Dick in fanon and why I won’t just let it go, lol, is that I’m never remotely surprised to hear fans of other characters say that they find Dick’s character dull or one-note or two-dimensional or just not as compelling as the other characters, not as......packed with potential to be taken in a hundred different directions or to react to things in surprising yet surprisingly-still-fitting ways that readers don’t see coming but don’t feel is like, out of left field when viewed in hindsight either.

Why should it surprise people that so many readers and fans view Dick this way when......he’s so often WRITTEN this way, only ever falling into extremely predictable patterns and sticking to a lane that’s clearly defined as not just HIS lane but like....the ONLY lane most people can - or at least are willing to - imagine for him.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. People find fanon Dick to be dull and uninspired because like.....he’s pretty much oftentimes written TO be those things, particularly in comparison to his more ‘vibrant’ fandom favored brothers. Nobody’s ever going to find themselves pleasantly surprised by a depiction of Dick Grayson when Dick Grayson’s depictions are so frequently limited to being just exactly what most people expect and not a single thing besides that.

So to bring this back around to your initial ask, I think the Batfam’s reaction to finding out, much like is true of any situation if tackled creatively enough.....can be literally anything a writer wants it to be. I would hope most of us would want that reaction to be supportive, lol, but even more than that just in general, for me, personally, I would love to see more where they’re supportive, yes, but that support is expressed not by them taking CHARGE of the situation, but by them, y’know....SUPPORTING. Standing back, waiting for DICK to tell them what he actually needs from them, wants their support to look like or take shape as, because he is in fact a grown man who is extremely capable in his own right and prides himself on being tremendously self-sufficient, and personally, I wish writers would just STOP TAKING THAT TRAIT AWAY FROM HIM. Or worse yet, like....punishing him for it.

It honestly does seem to me like there’s this unspoken undercurrent in so many fandom posts and fanfics where you can kinda just FEEL an author or poster like.....wanting so badly to just come out and say that in their opinion, Dick’s precious autonomy is actually his own worst enemy, and if he’d just stop being so stubborn and insisting on doing things his way or on his own all the time, he probably wouldn’t end up enduring half as much of the traumatic shit he does.

Which, I mean.....kinda inevitably leads directly into the victim-blaming we SO, SO often see with his character, where fans and other characters are both equally in a hurry to blame himself for anything and everything from Having Amnesia Wrong to being tortured, killed and then emotionally and physically browbeaten into making a Bad Decision He Should Feel Badly About but also Totally Responsible For Cuz No One MADE Him Do It, etc, etc. 

It all spills forth from and feeds back into this endlessly repeating loop that people have kinda penned him into with intent, because what better way to imply that Dick should always just do what his friends and family want him to do and tell him to do instead of like, kicking up a fuss and making a conflict out of it.......than by showing without telling that "see what happens when Dick DOESN’T just let his family tell him what to do and go along with their ‘suggestions’/what they want gracefully?” This. This is what happens. Poor guy ends up traumatized YET AGAIN because he insists on making his own choices and those choices as we can all clearly see are so often the wrong choices, so really, stepping back from the driver’s seat of his own life and letting his family take the wheel is only in Dick’s best interests as much as anyone else’s.

After all, whether its Bruce firing Dick or Dick ‘staying away for years’ or not being the best/ideal brother for Jason right there on the page in no uncertain terms or giving Jason carte blanche to do whatever he wants upon his return or making Damian Robin without asking Tim first and not believing Tim when he said he was sure Bruce was still alive or not just refusing to go along with Bruce’s plan to keep everyone believing he was dead after Forever Evil but at the same time also not just caving to Bruce’s wishes and instead fighting Bruce on that so hard that poor Bruce HAD to get physically violent with him to get Dick to do what was right until it wasn’t right later when everyone else hated him for it, as well as not just deciding he was instantly and fully 100% on board with believing these total strangers when they told him, as Ric Grayson, just who he was now and what his life as a superhero was like and how he should have no problem just seamlessly stepping back into the roles and shoes he according to their claims usually fills effortlessly and thus has no reason to object to now, despite having literally no memories or internalized awareness of the decade and a half of life experiences that serve as the foundation all of that was built upon.....

I mean, when you think about it, 100% of Dick’s conflicts with his family (and coincidentally, also 100% of the source of most other fans’ gripes about him) come from one thing only: him making up his own mind about what to do or feel or think instead of just automatically prioritizing whatever one of his family wants him to do or feel or think about any given situation.

So wouldn’t everyone just be so much happier and pleasant if he would just stop being a silly goose and give up making such a big deal about his vaunted independence and personal agency?

BUT I DIGRESS.

LOL, no, but you get what I mean. So going back to topic for the second time, hopefully with a bit more staying power this time.....I think there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever that the Batfam can’t be realistically and believably written as being every bit as supportive of Dick when they find out about Tarantula and Mirage as Dick is supportive of them at other times and in other ways.

So really, its just a matter of WANT, and personal prioritizations of what that support might or should look like.

And for me, personally, on this topic and pretty much every other potential Dick Grayson-centric story topic, but ESPECIALLY on this topic......I personally would just like to see more of the Batfam being supportive of Dick while he’s dealing with a trauma, but with that support taking the form of them stepping BACK and like....waiting and listening for him to tell them what HE needs from them, what HE wants from them, what form their support can take that will be of most use to him according to HIS wants, aims and attempts at recovery. Instead of them - as they so often seem written as - stepping invasively INTO his space without so much as pausing to see if they’re welcome, or like, if they’re just making things worse or potentially just retraumatizing him by barging in all bull in a china shop even while still having only the vaguest clue what the situation even is at this point, which makes their certainty they have a better idea of what Dick needs and should be doing right now than he does himself, like.....pure, unbridled arrogance and nothing else. Hubris.

(Y’know, kinda like how I make a big deal about Jason punching Dick upon his return from Spyral, because its almost like its not even just that Punching Your Family Is Bad And People Should Stop Making Jason Do It, but there’s also the pesky little implications of how Dick might perceive that no matter how calmly he took it......given that like.....he was literally beaten by his father into doing the thing that pissed off and hurt the rest of his family just as Dick had always expected it would.....and now here he was literally getting beaten by his brother for......caving to doing the thing Dick always knew would piss off and hurt the rest of them and thus he only submitted to doing after being physically and emotionally beaten into it by his father. Of course I harp on Jason punching Dick there, it was him punishing Dick for doing not what Dick wanted, but what he had to be essentially punished by Bruce into agreeing to do it in the first place. It wasn’t just gross as fuck victim blaming and heaping further physical violence on a guy who’s been decked by four out of five family members as is, it was literal on the page proof that Dick simply can not win where either the other characters or most of their fans are concerned, because he was literally damned if he did, damned if he didn’t in that situation, and sure enough, he managed to end up damned by everyone around and still without so much as a single “how are YOU doing btw, given everything you’ve been through, are you okay?”)

So just....my plea, my wishlist, my Big-Asks-R-Us inventory manifesto:

Can we get even just a few more fics where Dick’s insistence on his own independence is viewed not as a character FLAW to be excised or failing that, punished for at any possible opportunity, but as something UNDERSTANDABLE, something VALIDATED by his family for Dick even wanting it in the first place, let alone NEEDING it as much as he does, not because he doesn’t love his family or want to be around them, but because wanting to be his own person at the same time is in no way actually in opposition to that and it never was.

And in that vein and in light of that, I would happily give away my non-existent imaginary kingdom and crown for even just a few fics where the Batfam only end up called upon or tasked with supporting Dick about Mirage or Tarantula because he voluntarily GOES to them and says hey, there’s something that happened a long time ago that I never told anyone because I wasn’t ready to, but I feel like I am now, I need to and its time. 

Or like, fics where maybe he’s still not quite ready to tell them voluntarily yet,  reely and of his own volition, but then on a case they come across a rape survivor in considerable distress and empathizing with them and what they’re feeling, opening up about his own past experiences and offering his own story as a talisman for this victim to cling to as a sign it’ll get better for them eventually too, they can heal from this and one day call themselves a survivor instead of just a victim the same as he does......like, that’s still the most natural thing in the world to Dick, the most Him thing he could possibly do in a situation where the tool most relevant to the task before him is pulled straight out of his own treasure chest of trauma, it not even fazing him in the slightest that his family is there with them right now too and that means they’re going to know now, it won’t be a secret anymore......because Dick Grayson does things he’s not happy about all the time, things he doesn’t necessarily like, that aren’t ideal or his first choice, but when it comes down to Do The Thing and thus maybe help someone, or Don’t Do The Thing and instead turn around and consign himself to a thousand years of solitary confinement in the world’s stankest oubliette cuz its what he deserves, says his Brain all Judgingly.....like. I’m just saying. When the choice is clear, so is the resulting Dick Grayson decision: He does the thing, consequences be damned, and just deals with whatever those may be later. Which in this case would be oh crap, my family all knows now, ugh, they’re gonna want to TALK about it now, booooooooooooooo. But also, oh well. I had to Do The Thing.

And like, the thing there is, it might not be his FIRST choice, but unlike scenarios where he just flat out gets no choice in the matter whatsover as his agency is just reviolated all over again by Tarantula or Slade or someone else taking the choice away from him and just telling people what happened to further fuck with his head and retraumatize him.....

THIS STILL LETS HIM HAVE A CHOICE.

And like. There’s just so, SO many ways you can play with that or places you can take that because the more you ALLOW characters to have a choice, to MAKE choices that are beyond just the one singular most obvious or expected choice, the one so predictable there’s barely an actual choice to be made at all when steering a character like Dick towards that....

MORE choices equals MORE avenues of exploration you open up in your story. More roads less traveled, more surprise reveals or unexpected epiphanies, more new ground to unearth and feelings to uncover rather than just more of the same already extensively traveled plot of land and story and reactions/aftermath already so done to death even Jason Todd would consider them low-hanging fruit not worth making a “but I died” jojke about.

Just....MORE. In general. Across the board. In every possible permutation. New. Different. As yet unexplored. Still capable of surprising. Stretch. Reach. Dig deeper. Find the story direction that makes you laugh nervously and say wtf self, where did that even come from, am I Wild One for even daring to contemplate that such a thing could be written? 

And then go, why yes, YES THE FUCK I AM THAT WILD ONE, and plot twist, I LIKE IT!

Or, y’know. Alternatively, people can continue to write how once upon a time, there was this guy named Dick, and he was kinda a dick, see, so this one time when bad things happened to him it was like, do we even care, or should we just like....cut to his family and see how this is affecting them and therein just maybe we might find an actual story worth telling? Ahh yes, good, that’s the ticket. So anyway, once upon a time, there were these guys named Jason and Tim and you will never believe what happened to them on the day their walking dildo of an older brother tripped and skinned his knee. Now buckle up, cuz THIS is quite the story!

[tfw-no-tennis]

mtmte liveblog - 2012 annual

iirc the annual takes place between 7 and 8, or something. whatever, im gonna go for it

shifts in art style always throw me off phewwww

i cant remember what theyre doing but i find it really funny that first aid is there squaring the fuck up to punch shit

ah yes of course how could i forget the time they shrunk down to fight tiny robots in ultra magnus’s head. a comic classic 

poor magnus lmao

HBJSDKFBSHJFDHJSD HIS TERRIFYING SMILE HAUNTS MY NIGHTMARES. LOVE IT

love the continuation of magnus’s law-vision

the fact that everyone is dunking on magnus for smiling ONCE hvbhjdksbfjks

rewind and chromedome ough

i feel like cyclonus spends 90% of his early mtmte screentime staring broodingly out of windows lmao 

tg so precious

lmaooo i love the flashes of rodimus saying ‘til all are one’ All The Time

rodimus just wants to be like his dad ok

rodimus telling drift to go meditate or something vbhjfdbhdsjkf

i love rodimus calling magnus out on referring to himself in the third person lmaoooo but also I'm like Oh I See That [eyes emoji]

wish i had emojis on the computer sigh

lmao so the circle of light is a bunch of pacifists With Big Ass Swords

them betting on how long it'll take rodimus to say ‘til all are one’ vbkjsdhbfjhkhsdf

damn so ambulon rlly did switch sides late in the game 

cyclonus is here!! being an emotionally closed-off fool as usual 

nooo rodimus let tailgate speak

cant believe rodimus graffiti’d tailgate

drift, immediately: rodimus is FUCKING POSSSESSED 

ratchet: ok, no, 

godddd everything abt the galactic counsel here is so funny. ‘its big - its grey - its taxpayer funded’ hvbkjshdbfjkdf and the fact that their ship is called ‘the benign intervention’ lmaooo

also DAMN that is a BIG ASS SHIP 

‘a fleshling in a stupid hat’ i love rodimus and his irrational hatred of hats

magnus comin in CLUTCH with the dry-ass clauses shit 

rewind vhjbdskfbaksdfn ‘the sub-section 7 defense - sneaky’ ily

tailgate hvbhjadkfbjskdf its ok that you don't know what's going on

also tailgate serves a vital role in the story as the audience insert character (or w/e its called), bc he’s often confused which allows for handy exposition that we the audience also need lmao 

i find it so interesting to see how the cybertronians are viewed by the rest of the galaxy - we don't see a lot of aliens but its always fascinating when we do, because of COURSE they’re mostly gonna think of the cybertronians as destructive and war-like when that’s what they’ve been up to for 4 million years 

ooof swerve :( swerve is one of those characters who you’re like ‘haha he’s funny’ most of the time but pretty often he’ll have startling moments of like, deep pain about life or w/e, and you’re like Oh Shit and then you kinda move on, until finally the swearth arc hits and it all comes together. what I'm saying is that this is some nice building towards that 

HGDSBJFKJSJBDF THERE IT IS THERE IT ISSSSSSSSSS

THE PANEL WHERE REWIND IN ALT MODE CAN FLY FOR SOME REASONNNNNN

i fucking love that shot so much. does everyone see this. rewind is a GIANT FUCKIN FLASHDRIVE and he’s hovering ominously thru the air. like, what happened to all the biz from issue 1 or w/e where his husband was roasting him for having a non-mobile altmode? if he can fucking HOVER than Actually rewind is the fucking coolest, no contest 

or like, is the implication that they all teleported there (having switched to alt mode along the way i guess?) and rewind is just like, suspended in midair? bc that's what the speed bubble text implies, but it also totally looks like they're just travelling across the area and rewind can levitate

anyways. that panel has always cracked me up lmaoooo

rodimus calling the council ‘fascists’ hvbhduifbjsdjfajskf sir i love you 

GODDD and there's the joke payoff from a few issues ago - rewind, facing front, hearing drift transform behind him and not only being able to tell its drift without looking, but also being able to tell that drift is upset, JUST like chromedome said he could....fucking PEAK i love that type of payoff humor

ooof and more swerve introspection. i mentioned earlier but i fucking LOVE how this series showcases the extremely wide range of reactions/coping mechanisms that everyone has towards the endless war finally being over - and swerve really nails it here: confusing peace with happiness, and assuming that everything would automatically be better after the war is over, when in reality you still have to work just as hard to build shit rather than break it

also i adore the horror of a guy who is half-embedded in the wall, his face stuck in a rictus of terror & death, waxing philosophical about how peace is about the freedom of choice, and how they should all just feel lucky to have survived...oof, that's very specifically ironic coming from you, dude 

but i do love the little characterization we get here for ore, a character who is literally already dead and has so far been used as a plot device pretty exclusively, but we still get to know little things about him here, and how HE feels about the war and the current peace, etcetc. it really makes the story and characters seem believable, like every character has a story even if we don't take the time to see it 

love cyclonus posing coolly 

kinda love how clear it is that drifts whole hippy schtick is just a front to cover his anger, and a tool to make him seem like an approachable, upstanding autobot

drift dramatically monologuing while pointing his sword at the sky is extra funny with everyone else just staring at him doing this

cyclonus why are you grabbing at the edge of the hole you're falling into, you can LITERALLY FLY, 

magnus finally getting some appreciation for being The most law abiding guy like, ever 

genuinely forgot abt the whole metrotitan plot that happens here 

GOD when rodimus is like BRAIN QUEST TIME and then we smash cut to them at the brain ‘six minutes later’ vhbhkudfjbjksf i live for that shit 

also that would be even funnier animated which further proves that we need an mtmte/ll animated series, please, somebody, 

HBDSJKFSHDJF REWIND IS SO FUCKING FUNNYYYYYY you cant even tell if he GENUINELY didn't think cyclonus could talk or if hes just being a dick but either way? comedy gold 

oh i adore the flashbacks being in a different artstyle, especially one that's so retro 

i love rewind being a history geek, and cyclonus passionately explaining cybertronian creation theory

HHHH i fucking LOVE the myth/lore stuff like....a lot of franchises tend not to dwell in this type of mythology, you tend to get The True Version Of Events, but this kind of explanation rocks bc it totally sounds like the kind of religious mythology that naturally develops based on a species’ progression

and drift and ratchet’s very opposing and polarizing views certainty do make for interesting perspectives, tho i feel like the story sometimes leans too much towards ratchet being ‘more correct’ bc, logic! or something idk i feel like i used to have a couple mild opinions on this but i don't remember

and its funny bc i am, irl, an atheistic medical professional who believes in science above all else - essentially just like ratchet. but i feel like the narrative portrayal skews a little more in his favor than i’d like, despite that 

skids just out here being a bummer, completely unprompted. cant even blame you tho dude 

hhhhhh chromedome talking abt rewind ;_; 

and when he says ‘maybe there’s someone out there who can save your life, too’ and cyclonus is there....hhhh

god i fucking LOVE drift and rodimus’s entire relationship. the layers...the LAYERS!!!

OH HEY ITS THOSE ROBOTS SKIDS FOUGHT 

ah, inconvenient laser time!

ok i fuckgin love how cybertronian’s brains look just like the planet cybertron. that's so fucking great 

of COURSE brainstorm brought his shrink ray 

truly i love the convo between ore and swerve, especially overlaid onto everyone fighting 

oof, the themes and plot threads of this annual are all so nicely tied up (which is something i love abt mtmte, especially early on when the story is smaller), with swerve now choosing to disobey an order from rodimus

oh yeah, the circle of light! that's who you've been looking for this whole time basically! 

and then the ending, hearing that magnus smiled (willingly!) :) i love it

rodimus’s profile says ‘finds it difficult to sit still’ bc rodimus is an adhd icon

lmao i feel like over half of my sentences in this recap - and in most of my recaps - contain ‘i love it’ or ‘i love how-’ or some variation upon that theme. I'm predictable 

anyways - the annual! i love this issue. its really long which is cool and i feel like it does a lot to flesh out the setting and lore, and even the characters as well. also, as i said above, it does an excellent job telling an exciting and well-contained story, with solid story beats throughout and plot threads that emerge and get resolved all within this issue, even while leaving plenty of stuff up for future resolution. that's the Early MTMTE Special, and i adore it. tho i will say I'm glad we’ll be getting back to the regularly scheduled art style, bc this one didn't really do it for me