#whats the first arc even called...

[t4twnyclaw]

for requests - mousefur?

someone also wanted goldenflower so here they are together

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[dirt-str1der]

Just finished Dr Stone Reboot

[necrotic-nephilim]

what's fun about shipping Tim with Dick, Jason, or Damian is he has, at some point, hallucinated all of them to comfort himself. even when he doesn't like them or particularly get along with them, he has to imagine/hallucinate them just so he has the power to go on. Tim's concepts of the Robin mantle and what it should be is so fun, because he respects the others through the Robin mantle. Tim worships Dick because he was the first Robin. he wouldn't be Robin if Jason hadn't died in the mantle. and a lot of his frustration with Damian is he feels Damian isn't honoring the mantle correctly. when you ship Tim with the other Robins you can't divorce their identities as Robin from it because Tim will always see them as a Robin first and that's so fun and fucked up. like.

batman (1940) #456

Tim perceiving Dick as *Robin* cheering him on, not Nightwing, which is the version of Dick that Tim actually knows? that's just. wild of him. he will always view Dick as Robin first, his personal hero but also the original of the legacy. his love for Dick is shaped by that.

and then of course, even when he's hallucinating/imagining Jason cheering him on, it's *still* through the lense of being reminded how Jason failed? subconsciously believing that Jason got himself killed because of his actions, and that being a lesson for Tim to learn from? Jason isn't a person to Tim, he's a moral lesson about how to be Robin. any potential idolization he could have of Jason isn't because he loves Jason, it's because of the lessons Jason's death taught him.

and then, even though him hallucinating TIm is from the New-52, which makes characterization all kinds of questionable, i do think it makes sense for TIm to hallucinate/imagine Damian after Damian's death in an attempt to cope with it.

teen titans (2011) #18

to an extend, he sees Damian's death as in part his own fault. and even hating Damian, Tim needs the comfort from this to cope with Damian being gone. he's angry that Damian even was Robin, and has to learn something from Damian's death and how it impacts the Robin mantle, and teenage heroes as a whole. like, Tim can pretend he hates Damian all he wants, even getting taunted by the image of Damian, but there's still an underlying love to their relationship.

i think that's just the fun of shipping Tim with any of them. you will never divorce Tim's views of them from the Robin mantle and how fucking Unwell he is about anyone else who's been Robin before or after him, to the point he has to hallucinate them comforting him when he's at his lowest. it's always going to be a little unhealthy, a little toxic, and driven by Tim's relationship with being Robin as well. i need more Tim being weird about Robin in these ships.

[bayetea]

I think that something to keep in mind about hazel is that in her first life sammy was the only person in the world who has shown her kindness. her mom was only ever nice to her when she was providing her with income. hazel is living in a society that considers her race subhuman and even members of her own community hate her because of the rumors about marie. she isn't just ostracized at school she's explicitly stated to have experienced violent bullying from other kids and yet she still protects them from being harmed by her cursed gems. she was neglected and abused by her mother and she still gives up elysium so that marie doesn't have to suffer in the afterlife. the very first time hazel retaliated against abuse was when she fought back against gaea - and her retaliation got her killed. her character is so effusively kind in a world full of hatred and injustice because she knows that she can't let herself succumb to bitterness like her mother

I think those months after her birthday when she was abducted to alaska are genuinely the absolute worst of her life specifically because she lost sammy, and his absence etched a crater-sized hole in her chest where his kindness once was. she can't get that from anyone else anymore. the alaskans don't welcome her and pluto can't reach her there and her mother is dying slowly right before her in an evil plot to destroy the world that she feels complicit in. genuinely her only option in this situation had always been to run away so that she couldn't be used as a pawn anymore, which she considered during those horrifying months but couldn't because gaea would retaliate against her mother. so hazel does what she always does: allows herself to suffer for people who have treated her poorly

and this post isn't about frank or percy but I think that this is something to contextualize as it relates to frazel and the percy&hazel dynamic. the foundation of her relationship with them is simply the mutual kindness and trust that they're able to develop in such a short time because they very quickly recognize the good inside of each other. hazel puts herself in harm's way to save frank and percy numerous times and it isn't one-sided like things were in her past life, they emphatically do the same for her as well. frank and percy show her how they care for her in ways that are so earnest and vehement (frank saying "we're not going to let you die again," percy saying "we're not letting anything happen to you", etc). as characters for whom the past is a source of conflict one way or another (hazel's blackouts and intense feelings of guilt over gaea, percy breaking down over his lost memories and getting triggered by things that conflict with his understanding of the world i.e. the evil centaurs, frank redeeming his ancestor's besmirched legacy and figuring out how to use the family gift), they readily offer kindness and understanding in the present without asking each other to suffer for it

and this is especially true of frank: by accessing hazel's blackouts and experiencing the events of her past life, he is sharing her heaviest traumas and burdens so that she doesn't have to experience them all alone. this burden-sharing is transitory; frank gives her his firewood, which is literally his life - and his life is the thing that finally grounds her. his life anchors hazel so that she doesn't get blackouts anymore (and he forfeits the weight of his heaviest burden to a person he can trust to take care of him). this thread of frank preventing hazel from being overtaken by adversaries of her past continues numerous times throughout son of neptune, most significantly when he shapeshifts for the very first time to save her from alcyoneus and when he comes up with the plan that gives hazel the chance to finally defeat her old enemy - and that's when she kisses him for the very first time. I consider this the very essence of their romance: reciprocation. it's not "you make me whole", it's "I love you and trust you to care for me as I care for you", it's "in being with you, I discover new depths within myself", it's "knowing you has given me the strength to grow"

so that's basically my favorite thing about son of neptune and I think a lot of people forget how intense the emotions in that book managed to get. it's not the most popular pjo novel but I don't think any other book in the franchise has evidenced how deeply three people who have literally just met (frank only knew her for 3 weeks pre-son) can touch each other's hearts by virtue of simply being kind to each other. like those boys LOVE hazel and think she's a wonderful person and express that repeatedly and I think that's just so sweet because she finally gets to have this in her second life. she really deserves to be cherished like that <- my longwinded way of saying that hazel was the gem all along, just like her mom finally realized in her last words before they died

[schrodingers-hoarding-problem]

i'll never not be obsessed with feng xin rolling his eyes or mu qing using more swears like YES be changed by the love you share and incorporate the other's habits into your life until its unclear where one person stops and the other begins

[beanghostprincess]

people often treat zoro as this devoted dude who would blindly and without a doubt do anything for luffy. and don't get me wrong, he definitely is! but what people usually forget, too, is that zoro is the one that keeps luffy grounded and realistic. he's his first mate. he's the one to stop luffy from being irrational or if he does something not worthy of being the captain. he trusts luffy with his heart and soul, but whenever the guy is acting stupid, he tells him without hesitation and stops him.

i'm tired of people making it look like zoro is this big, stupid swordsman who would do anything luffy asked him to because he is not. he would follow luffy to hell and back, not because it's luffy, but because he trusts him consciously and willingly. he chooses to trust luffy. he isn't a brainless dude in love with his captain. he literally stops, thinks about what luffy says, and then proceeds to either agree with his idea or to stop him right away.

why? because that's his fucking job as a first mate.

captains can and will be stupid and irrational too. being the captain of a ship is not being the one to decide everything and it doesn't make you instantly the smartest. luffy is human. he can make mistakes and he can fuck up and that's why he needs somebody like zoro with him. luffy knows this. that's why he chose zoro. not because he was the first one to appear in front of him, but because from the moment they met, luffy instantly knew he would be the one to ground him and keep him in his place if he ever got carried away.

i'm also sick of people pretending zoro's love for luffy is this huge, poetic, religious thing (it is, though) and making it seem like luffy's devotion to zoro isn't the same fucking thing. this shit is not unrequited, folks, i don't care if you don't know how to read luffy's character but the guy trusts zoro just as much too.

TL;TR: these two are not as stupid as y'all make them seem. devotion goes both ways. if luffy does something wrong, zoro will stop him. and luffy loves him trusts him just as much.

[1doesnotsimplyhavejust1fandam]

The way it’s been weeks, and I’m still just so angry about how they treated Eddie when it came to Bobby’s death arc. Not only was he not in the two-parter when literally everyone else was, despite being a main, but they treated his return for the funeral like it was a surprise for both Ravi and the audience. Like RG was just some fan-favorite guest star returning for the funeral of an old friend. The camera panning over to him as Ravi realizes Eddie is there, the lack of any true lines for Eddie, it all just feels so gross and underwhelming for the relationship that’s been built up between Eddie and Bobby for years. The call flashback was so short, but that was the energy needed for Eddie. And actually, not just Eddie, but the entire firefam. We spent hardly any time on their grief because of that unfulfilling fake kidnapping plot line, and I will never not be angry about that.

[lord-squiggletits]

What is the Tarnma penpals au? I've seen you mention it a couple times and am super curious about it!

Hiiii

So the Pen Pals AU is an idea that I got a couple of weeks ago. Kind of self-explanatory by the name, but the idea is it's a post-war scenario with a diplomatic ending b/t the Autobots and Decepticons. One of the many efforts to normalize relations is a pen pals program that's set up to pair Autobots with Decepticons under randomized pseudonyms. The goal is to try and create positive relationships based only on these letters and not any preconceived notions based on faction or identity. (Also it's pre-Earth which means it's pre-Delphi for Pharma, so his normal non-traumatized personality features.)

Pharma and Tarn naturally get paired up under this program, and the first part of the AU/fic (yes I'm going to write it eventually) is them basically having their pen pals relationship turn from friendship to heavily implied mutual romantic attachment. Their individual daily lives are also shown bc each of them is dealing with their own identity-related crisis: Tarn struggling with depression and addiction in the aftermath of all the things he did for the DJD and confusion over why Megatron just had them change so suddenly. Pharma with the realization that his whole life has just been defined by his accomplishments and he's lived his life in a way where he's oft-respected and admired, but never loved for who he is as a person rather than what he does.

The whole AU was originally meant to be fluffy and slice-of-life-esque (there was even an arranged marriage component in the very first conception of the idea), but as I fleshed out the setting more, I realized I wanted to actually delve deep into the implications of a post-war setting. So the Pen Pals AU has taken a darker turn recently; not darker as in fluffy romance to dead dove, but it's more like, the fluffy romance develops and then the past/war comes back to haunt Tarn and Pharma's relationship in a way that's very (re)traumatizing, both for them individually and their chances of being able to stay together as a couple.

So the fact that Tarn was in the DJD/oversaw Grindcore and did countless atrocities is very much an element of the story that's explored rather than shied away from. At first he deals with it on his own, and for a while he lives in blissful ignorance knowing that his pen pal is the one relationship he has with a "normal person" (he knows that his pen pal is a doctor, aka not a hardened soldier and criminal). Unfortunately things get complicated when his pen pal asks to meet IRL because he wants them to be more than friends, and Tarn realizes that he can't move forward with this new, blooming relationship without being honest about who he is. On Pharma's end, he has to grapple with the idea of choosing love over reputation, following his heart rather than his fear of social rejection/ostracization. Especially when the consequences of continuing to date Tarn could go from just "people judging him" to.... well, that's what me eventually writing the fic is meant to reveal. :)

TLDR: Tarn and Pharma meet as anonymous pen pals, end up having a lot of shared issues re: loneliness and isolated public personas, help each other solve their personal problems, share a mutual love of music, and fall in love, then realize who the other is. Complications ensue.

[sebbyisland]

akanematic.mp4 (youtube link)

[inact-ice]

Ok to vent a little bit now that I’m past the Hen and Chimney Begins episodes. Guys oh my god.

Guys! You can’t downplay racism and/or sexism because your favourite character who gets redeemed later on is the one doing the racism and/or sexism. Like that’s dangerous! I was lucky enough to already have heard about some of the stuff that happens in those Begins episodes so I knew to prepare myself for it, but if I had just trusted what some of the BuckTommy blogs on here were saying, I’d be thinking that the worst thing that happens is some ambiguous comments and not blatant triggering racism/misogyny. Like I related to a lot of the stuff Hen and Chimney went through and I’m lucky enough to follow poc and other honest 911 fans on other websites/apps who didn’t downplay the stuff that went down, but it would have been so hard to watch if I hadn’t. I don’t mean to be dramatic or whatever, but you can’t love a character so much that you hurt people. It’s like if people were saying that Doug actually never physically hurt Maddie, or if they were saying that Abby’s mom’s experience with Alzheimer’s wasn’t shown much in season 1. Downplaying triggering/emotional things like this is really harmful!

[buds-and-baubles]

(superman: warworld apocalypse 2022)

my review for the warworld arc (issues of action comics (2016–ongoing) 1036-1046 plus 1047 and superman: warworld apocalypse) has arrived! there will be spoilers so warning in advance.

i'll be entirely honest, i genuinely enjoyed reading this arc. missing the original authority roster (v1 or v2) aside, my biggest complaint truly is that... there wasn't enough. for clark it had plenty, but for rebirth's the authority, we could've had more.

it left a sour taste in my mouth that after they were all defeated by mongul and his entourage, that we didn't get to follow along to see what happened to three of the team members.

i wanted to know what happened to manchester black being stuck with teacher, enchantress stuck with mother, and who the fuck if anyone that apollo was stuck with. they never explained who picked him, as mongul handed out two authority members to his finest and most loyal warriors.

frankly, it felt like apollo was shoved off to the side for this arc. he's there for the first fight against mongul, was horribly injured in that fight, and then was off the pages. he wasn't present for most of this arc. quite disappointing, to put it mildly.

even though this was an arc focused primarily on clark and his wanting to save the phaelosians, they could've given just a bit more and i'd have been more pleased than i already am about what i read.

if they'd have done at the back of the issues at least one whole issue each for each team member, it would've felt further fleshed out to me. OMAC coping post-arena fighting and reminiscing about lia. natasha while she worked the forge with leonath and missing her uncle john.

manchester black being moved to teacher's place after teacher declared he picked him and then the torture he endured while there. enchantress being moved to mother's place after mother declared she picked her and torture she endured while there there.

showing who picked apollo. was he picked by mongul as no other warrior was shown with him? was that why people were worshipping him around the throne and chanting 'gaoleng uhl mongul'?. when he was placed on the throne.

when the metal contraptions which kept him stuck and compliant were shoved into his back. that he had seen when midnighter visited him. showing how he was trapped inside while being one of the unmade. his reaction of being made to aid in killing almost an entire planet and those in warworld fighting alongside superman.

on the note of being an unmade, a tiny tidbit more for OMAC on being a willing unmade. i also would've loved an issue of lightray after being resurrected remembering she died and that she's now back, but there's the essence of mother trapped within her body right alongside her. she too, is trapped in being one of the unmade. for lia to have called out to OMAC but she can't be heard.

being made to kill innocent people and how she reacted. how it felt to see OMAC kill innocent people too, as well as apollo. what her and OMAC did after celebrating mongul's defeat since in action comics 1047 it shows OMAC fine like he wasn't near death anymore.

i would've loved a whole issue following midnighter and how he escaped the arena. of showing how it felt for him to leave apollo behind there chained up, knowing he had to do this so he could eventually get him out of there.

him hidden somewhere, enraged at what clark bringing them there had done to them all. especially apollo. midnighter reminiscing about apollo throughout the issue. as he declared when he first decided on his warpath to find apollo and get him out.

with midnighter in mind, i would've loved if he hadn't caved so fast when clark arrived about rescuing apollo. he should've argued longer, gotten in clark's face. that coming to warworld was a mistake. how any team member whose dead or might be dead is blood on his hands.

midnighter as he turned to leave so he could save apollo despite clark's protests, only being stopped by clark apologizing. mid to turn in order to remark again, for clark to gently ask him if having him back now is worth the statistical risk of losing him forever, as there's a high risk that removing him from the star forge could go wrong.

midnighter only agreeing to help with the phaelosians when mongul sent his entourage in after otho-ra, osul-ra and the others if they find a way to get out apollo next. that if he isn't the next they save, he will leave again and find a way to do it himself.

on the topic of otho-ra and osul-ra, i love them. i love imagining that if they hadn't aged jon up, how the interactions from here on out would be like. this arc also made me love both who use the alias of steel and now i wanna read for both of them so i picked up reign of the superman.

my ideas aside, the characterization for midnighter and apollo left much to be desired. it was leagues better than stormwatch vol 3 and while kinder than the shitty characterization i had endured during my wildstorm reading, it felt.. stale.

i would've loved to see apollo being cheeky and with his dry humor to bounce off of midnighter doing much of the same. their whole back and forth quick banter has always been a fond thing to me so i miss it. i wanted them to talk how they used to. how they spoke in this didn't really sound like them.

midnighter's best and closest to his actual characterization i felt was during his back of the comic issues journey we got to see of him searching for apollo and how to get him out. it felt intrinsically midnighter and i wanted more. outside of those tidbits, i wanted his to-the-point statements.

let me give an example of my own writing:

"i know what move you're about to make. my computer had seen it before you had the damn gall to approach me. superman is letting you and your mongul boot-kissing fucks off easy. me? i'm going to find out just what bones you have that earthlings don't. i'm going to break them one by one, stress fracture by stress fracture, until you're crying and begging for mercy like others have done for you at your feet. then, i'll sit and ponder whether i end your miserable existence or leave you to writhe in agony, begging to die. so say the schrödinger's dead."

also this is a teeny thing but i wanted midnighter calling apollo by his name or other nicknames whether romantic or not. babe is cute don't get me wrong, but some variety would've been nice. i say the same for apollo to call midnighter by name or other nicknames whether romantic or not.

all in all, i actually enjoyed reading warworld arc. i wanted more to flesh out rebirth's the authority roster. it seemed like it was good for clark/superman characterization and story wise from the small bits of him during the 90's i have read.

i can't say whether it was good for natasha irons or enchantress as i've never read for them before. manchester black i say much of the same but admittedly i'm not really a fan of him so it doesn't change too much about reading this.

OMAC and lightray (lia nelson) from earth-9 have really grown on me. i'd love to see more of them in the future perhaps doing their own thing heroicially as a duo like midnighter and apollo did. like maybe exploring that tidbit teacher mentioned about 'knowing OMAC's name'.

i got genuinely giddy at the comic issues that explored what was going on back on earth. we need to give lois more alien guns, honestly. john henry irons is such a brilliant character. he's close with clark AND lois. close with the whole superfamily. he is an extremely intelligent man who strives to do good for the environment and people. he loves his niece natasha, who followed in his footsteps. i can't wait to see more of him.

thanks for reading y'all. the superfamily i do say has got me going yippieeee!

[sage-nebula]

So I have only seen episode 90 so far (since subs aren't yet out for 91 and probably won't be until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest I'd wager), but I have to say . . . no offense to his fans, no offense to whoever decided to include him in this show for whatever reason, but . . .

. . . Uruto is mega-fucking-annoying.

[discjude]

Yeah this is about right (as always my thoughts are in the tags so there's actually kei content there lmao)

[elemental-daddy-neos]

Oh oh I've got an idea for a poll, here's one for the dub enjoyers

If you are going to be mean about the dubs in general just simply don't do that

[flowering-darkness]

before I forget again: I’ve settled on a name for my IAYS self-insert! ..Or, at least, a first name. which is Tessa!

Her surname might take me a bit longer to make concrete, due to how she fits into the setting; I usually come up with surnames more or less out of thin air for new self-inserts, but Tessa is a scientist of the Agency, and I envision her being referred to fairly frequently by her surname (as “Dr. (something)”) by those who are less familiar with her. So, it’ll come up a bit more than usual, and therefore it’s more important to me that I give her one I like the idea of her having. Which I haven’t yet settled on.

Thankfully, my not yet deciding a surname doesn’t stop me from making a blog tag for her, and right now I think I will make it “self‑insert: parameters of life (tessa)”. It reflects her role within the Agency, as a specialist in bioinformatics whose role revolves around testing and establishing necessary parameters for maintaining the mutants made by the Agency. After all, there’s no point investing so much into their creation if you can’t then keep them alive properly, right? But there’s no point investing in care facilities if you aren’t sure they’re what those mutants would actually need. So, Tessa’s computational work is valued for allowing things to be messed about with digitally, before then putting the best plan into practice first try.

(She approaches her work with a somewhat passive tone, distanced as she is from the actual implementation of her conclusions.. especially since the higher-ups often can’t be bothered (or don’t want to bother) to actually follow her guidelines properly, despite the fact that if they didn’t have them at all then they’d probably keep losing their mutants over and over. However, she has occasionally seen that there are some few times when her results will actually get implemented properly.. and it always makes her curious to learn something more about those subjects.)

That’s all I wanted to say for the moment ^-^ I’m still pretty set on Tessa’s design, but I may end up changing the details of it a little bit more if I have time ‑ the overall idea will stay the same, I just might swap out some of the parts being used on her reference model.

Thank you for reading, to those who have! I’m well aware that IAYS is not the most pleasant of settings, but it’s nevertheless an interesting one in its own way, and I’m very grateful to my friend Jamie for letting me self-insert into his work again! (also my friend Manor, Camellia’s creator, for being so supportive of my selfship with her in this setting!!)