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Growing up, my brother and I deeply dreaded going shoe shopping. It took hours, especially if it was for winter boots. My dad would examine the stitching, the brand reliability, the temperature recommendations, every piece of information he could get his hands on, and then when he'd finally found the right brand, it was on to making absolutely dead sure they fit properly - he had a particular way of poking the toe of the boot to ensure our foot was where it was supposed to be that always drove me nuts. This was always on a weekend, and it was about the worst punishment we could imagine.

Years later, I found out that he'd spent his entire childhood on the Canadian prairies with cold feet. My grandmother just bought whatever boots looked like the best value, regardless of whether they'd keep anyone warm. They'd kept him from frostbite, probably, but never, ever comfortable.

The reason my grandmother never had a thought about this was because she was buying her kids real boots. There was a sort of magical quality about real, purpose-made boots that meant that of course they'd work, because when she was growing up on the Canadian prairies, they had the kind of no money that meant you just stuffed some newspaper into your shoes and soldiered on.

The last pair of winter boots my dad bought for me was 15 years ago, in preparation for a three-month stint living in northern Quebec in midwinter. They cost $200 then, or something like it. I've worn them every year since, driving out to the remotest locations on the Canadian prairies and never once thinking about my feet.

When I read the Vimes Boots Theory for the first time, it rang a bell that reverberated back three generations.

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The fun thing about Ichi the Witch's premise that I didn't clock until this panel is that I get to assume all characters are women until proven otherwise. In any other series I would assume all these background characters are men, but here I am completely textually accurate in going Yay androgynous women!!!!!

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tumblr user 0neir0z stuns with new irrelevant fanart

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props for possibly my fav comment on AO3 ever

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Taking a break from responsibilities to draw a little Draculina

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One of those insidious little things I notice sometimes is how much the window of 'appropriate for children' content has shrunk within the past 20 years. The range of things it is socially acceptable to show a 10-year-old has never been more limited, and it's happened incredibly quickly.

Take, for instance, Star Trek: TNG. I grew up watching TNG. I was a little young for it as it was airing, but it got syndicated almost immediately and they would show an episode most weekday evenings on the Space Channel, and I'd watch it with my lifelong Trekkie mom. This was a very common thing. I was by no means unusual for watching Star Trek as a child.

Star Trek: TNG has lots of sex in it! It's never explicit (unless you have a particularly niche interpretation of some of the borg stuff) but on many an occasion you'll have a few characters doing a bit of making out followed by a closing door or fade to black, and then they wake up in bed together. If you know what sex is, you know that is what is being implied here. Even my 8-year-old self, whose understanding of the subject mostly came from books of ancient mythology that used words like 'ravish' and 'the pleasures of the couch' a whole bunch, could tell that what was happening was sex.

And I am not bringing this up as a 'see, I watched all this inappropriate stuff and I turned out just fine!'. I'm bringing it up to argue that TNG's level of sexual content is not inappropriate for children (I'm not using the legalese 'minors', because I think that lumping children and teenagers together in this conversation would make it nonsense. Star Trek is obviously appropriate for teenagers. Don't use 'minors' when you mean either children or teens, it just muddies the waters).

The point is that Star Trek: TNG was very obviously designed to be watched by children and teenagers. There's a whole character in the main cast whose role in the show is to be an audience insert for children and teenagers. The moral tone of TNG, its occasional dips into 'don't do drugs, kids' type messaging, and its general avoidance of graphic violence all scream 'we are designing this with an audience of children - but not just children - in mind'. It's a family show. It's supposed to be watched by the whole family.

Which means that, until at least the end of the 90s, this amount of sexual content was generally considered appropriate for kids to see. It's not pornographic - it's not even graphic. Maybe the very most conservative parents wouldn't let their kids watch TNG, but that might have had more to do with all the socialism and atheism.

So, why did that change? Why do we now have such a strong bullwark between 'things kids are allowed to know about' and 'things for GROWN UPS ONLY 18+ Minors DNI', and why have we relegated even the most discreet references to sex to the second category only?

And the next time you find yourself experiencing that knee-jerk 'think of the children' reaction, consider: would what you're looking at have been ok on Star Trek: TNG in the 90s?

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reading comic books provides you with a level of tolerance for not knowing what the fuck someone is talking about and pressing on anyway that is absolutely invaluable to the humanities actually

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big band ryuharu <3

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Closer calls Lufel うちのこ here, which more literally comes off like "our child." うち can be used as like a more generic "our", but- to my poor Japanese skills at least- it also gives off the connotation of our family or our home.

I love it. She's like "oh this weird inhuman creature that speaks like he's 100 years old? He's baby. He's OUR baby"

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"why are you following a pro shipper" so I can get better at shipping? How am I supposed to improve my meta if I'm only watching amateur plays. I'm trying to hit nationals next month

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Dick resurrecting Bruce via Lazarus Pit and his reasons for doing so left a bad taste in my mouth. Especially when Dick tried to talk Tim out of it. I don't like it. I wish Tim found out about it and... Had a serious discussion with him? Hit him? Left? I dunno.

Oh man, it's hard for me to talk about this one without the Doylist approach. I'm gonna come back to these panels, but I just want to leave them here as a contrast between how Dick is written in his solo vs. how he's written in Batman and Robin:

Dick: Tim... I ... where does it stop, right? What about your mom, then? My mom and dad? Bruce's...? (Nightwing 139)

Dick: This isn't just "loved ones," Alfie. It's Bruce Wayne, the Batman. He saved our lives, he saved the city and the world how many times? (Batman and Robin 9)

I have SUCH complicated feelings about the Morrison Batman and Robin run? I like a lot of the Dick-Damian-Alfred dynamics, and I love the idea of villain!Jason as a major antagonist for DickBats, and I love what I think is the concept of the Lazarus Pit arc, which is that Dick's slowly crumbling under the pressure of being Batman and Jason's taunting is the last straw that finally pushes him to make a terrible mistake.

But I don't like the execution of the Lazarus Pit arc, and the disregard for big chunks of post-Crisis continuity and characterization is sooo frustrating. ("I don't like to plan"/pro-Lazarus-Pit!Dick, cartoonishly-evil!Talia, redhead!Jason, etc.)

And yet. AND YET. So many of the concepts are so good! The execution is so messy, but the concepts are so good! I want to tear it all up and then put it lovingly back together but different sdfdsfs

I had a lot of thoughts, so below the cut:

Why characterizations in B&R are a huge departure from previous continuity (Doylist version)

Why the Lazarus Pit arc COULD BE SO GOOD though (and how we can make it work with Watsonian reasoning)

Finally getting back to your question - how would Tim react? (tl;dr probably with concern and worry?)

Characterization Changes

Just to give you a bit of an idea of how abrupt a departure B&R is from Dick's solo, here are some panels showing some major changes.

1) Dick on Lazarus Pits: Pro or Against?

Here's Dick arguing against using the Lazarus Pit and telling Tim it won't bring back the soul in Nightwing 139:

Here's Dick doubling down on the evilness of the Lazarus Pit when Ra's taunts him with it post-Bruce's death in Nightwing 152:

But here's Dick arguing that the Lazarus Pit will be fine and that he doesn't believe in "prophecies of doom" in Batman and Robin 7 (and indeed, also in B&R, he'll kill and resurrect Kate with zero consequences - convenient!):

2) Talia: protective or cruel?

Here's Talia worrying about Damian's safety and teaming up with the Batfamily to try to save him from Ra's in Resurrection:

But here's Talia smirking after telling Damian they're enemies now and she's going to replace him with a clone in Batman and Robin 12:

3) Dick and planning

Here's Dick-the-planner in Nightwing 142:

Tim: That's a lotta ordnance. Dick: Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

But here's Dick the impulsive leap-before-you-look guy in Batman and Robin 9:

Dick: ... Okay, I'm sorry - I don't like to plan, I work without a net... I'm not Bruce.

4) Resurrection: the right choice or the wrong choice (part 2)

Here's Dick telling Tim he made the right choice (not trying to resurrect anyone) in Nightwing 139:

But here's Dick insisting that resurrecting Bruce would've been the right choice in Batman and Robin 9:

This is one of those "clearly some people were writing angry letters to the editor" moments sdfdsfds, because it's awkwardly attempting to address Dick's abrupt about-face but the writer still hasn't read the issues in question because

a) Alfred has no way of knowing Dick's previous stance and it's incredibly weird that he would, b) "cautioned against" the Pit is a lot milder than "had a fist-fight with Tim about it," c) Dick's argument has shifted from "the Pit is an eldritch evil that's untrustworthy and probably soulless" to "look, resurrection is a special thing, and not all loved ones are important enough for resurrection," which, uh, okayyyy, and d) Dick is still full-naming "Tim Drake" as if he's a business associate and they had an argument about how to properly file paperwork and now it looks like Tim Drake was right after all, as opposed to Dick's little brother that he had a huge fight with and who subsequently ran away from home insisting that their dad was alive and that he was gonna prove it and now it turns out their dad is alive

Why This Arc Could Be Great Though

Listen, Dick-driven-to-the-Lazarus-Pits is a great concept. I love narrative foils. I love Dick ending up in the exact same place that Tim was in Resurrection, and even though he knows better. I love Dick being that desperate. Here's the setup:

Damian's back gets broken, Alfred takes him to get emergency treatment from Talia but it's not clear if he'll recover,

villain!Jason taunts Dick about not caring about Bruce,

Dick's been slowly crumbling under the pressure of being Batman and between the guilt of Damian being injured and the blow of Jason's accusations (not to mention having to fight villain!Jason and get him arrested), this is the last straw,

he decides to resurrect Bruce even though he knows perfectly well this is a terrible idea because he was the one who talked Tim out of it

he heads off to do this incredibly stupid thing and nobody stops him because normally on the rare occasions Dick's out-of-control Tim shows up and stops him (Hugo Strange, the Joker) but Tim isn't here and actually the strain of that ongoing estrangement is probably also contributing to Dick's isolation and terrible decision-making

the attempted resurrection goes horribly and Dick has to fight a grotesque parody of his tragically-dead father

I love this idea!! I love it when characters make stupid emotional decisions with terrible consequences!! I love the ways Dick and Tim's arcs intersect and parallel each other!!

And I think this could absolutely be in-character for Dick. He knows it's wrong and a bad idea, but he's desperate and pushed to his limits and grasping at straws? Yeah. I can see it.

BUT yeah, not in love with the execution. My conclusion is that more people should write about this arc in fanfic. <3

How Would Tim React?

I think it depends on where you put Tim in the story?

Options that come to mind:

Tim finds out mid-adventure: Tim's semi-teaming-up with Ra's and underground in a League base - and suddenly he stumbles on Dick sneaking in with (apparently) Bruce's dead body! In this case, I think Tim's first reaction is defensiveness about his own behavior and assuming he's being spied on, and it only slowly dawns on him that Dick's up to something. I'd really want to somehow maneuver a physical fight where Tim tries to stop him, so you get a direct reversal of Resurrection, but mmmm I'm a little stuck on how to get there since Tim's working theory is that the body isn't Bruce's body, so I don't see why he'd be opposed to Dick dumping it in? But anyway, they should have a physical fight and a direct parallel where Tim realizes he needs to back off and let Dick decide, and then they hug ;_; I feel like to make this one work you need Tim really invested in stopping Dick, so uhhhhh maybe for some reason Tim's "rescue Bruce from time" plan requires the body of the clone? So Dick CAN'T put it in the Lazarus Pit, or Bruce will be LOST FOREVER?

Tim gets told about it after the fact: So uhhh for example, Ra's finds out about Dick's botched resurrection attempt and tells Tim about it in an attempt to paint Dick as a hypocrite/ entice Tim into using the Lazarus Pit. I feel like Tim would just straight-up not believe him? But let's say that Tim finds out for sure - either Dick admits it to him, or he sees some League recording, or whatever. I'm not really sure how Tim would react? Worried, probably, because it's out-of-character, and I feel like Tim might wonder if it's really him or if he's under magical influence or something? And uhhhh then ideally Tim realizes that no, it was because he was having a really hard time ;_; and then Tim is worried about him and comforting and/or apologetic and probably Dick is probably also apologetic and then they hug <3.

Alternate third terrible possibility: it is Bruce's body, he was dead and Tim was just in denial, Dick resurrects him but there are some kind of eldritch evil consequences, and then Dick has to call Tim back and they have to fight undead!Bruce together. I like this one >:D

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guy who needs to send an email so he completely isolates himself from the world misses out on every opportunity curls up in a ball and dies. and like 2 months later sends said email finally

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Fun aikawa Fact’s

-breast boobs

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