icouldntthinkofabetternamesook

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

'Bill Cipher fumbled'

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

ms hazel levesque does not get nearly enough acknowledgement in the fandom for having one of the most (if not actually the most, which it is imo) utterly insane and devastating backstories in the entire pjo series like what do u mean u are a little black girl who lived through the jim crow era who is cursed with the power to summon evil gemstones that your mother uses for financial gain even though you know that they bring great harm to anyone they encounter and then your mother gets possessed into forcing you to summon an evil deity from tartarus (btw your mom berates you for being the cause of her misery and your dad is a deadbeat god who is the reason that you are in this position) only to have to sacrifice your life and your mother's life and literally die to protect the world (a racist world that allows your oppression and considers you subhuman i must add) and then you are brought back to life by a half brother named nico di angelo (angsty white boy who has never had a full night's sleep in his life) that you never knew you had and then you once again have to reengage in a perilous life-or-death struggle to protect the world in the modern era knowing that everything you loved is now in the past and you are haunted by blackouts that retraumatize you over and over (you are also at risk of dying again when the doors of death must close)

all she wanted to do was draw and ride horses man

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

there are many things about hazel's povs that have an intensely de-racialized vibe to them (read: divorced from the black girl experience) but I think any black person will tell you that the most obvious sign is the complete lack of attention paid to her hair

like firstly:

she's from the 1930s her hair was definitely getting permed and straightened (it was not acceptable to just wear your natural hair out back then. optics + cultural assimilation/you'll be hard pressed to find photos of black american girls with unstraightened hair in that time period unless they're from like..... harlem)

I do believe that marie was straightening it for her For A Time but then she became more neglectful and stopped so hazel had to do it herself. I'm almost positive that hazel wouldn't have even been permitted to set foot in her school building without straightening it because that's just how much of an expectation it was

ok she comes back from the dead. what's she doing to her hair now bc it's not just gonna be cutesy effortless curls falling over her shoulder no matter what the length is

how does she feel about living in a time period where natural black hair is more accepted (read: more, absolutely not fully)

there are no black people around her At All. in fact she's around a lot of white people on the argo (+nico) so that would probably be giving her some intense feelings of double consciousness (look this term up if you don't know what it means) and that would inform how she feels about her hair

theoretically she ought to be wearing her hair in braids for simplicity's sake but I think it's more likely that she would cling to what she knows (perming/straightening) because it's not easy for a 14 year old girl (PSA hazel is 14.5 in hoo not 13 btw 👍) to go from assimilating to deeply-ingrained white hair beauty standards to just proudly wearing a distinctly black hairstyle all by herself

mind you black women and girls can do whatever they want with their hair and straightening/perming it does not always/have to come from a place of self-hatred or whatever but in this particular case back then straightening one's hair was political And a survival tactic. it was as normal as brushing your teeth. it was enforced through dominant cultural messagings about the Absolute Necessity of conforming to white conventions of beauty. if you don't understand then think of it similarly to how you'd think of 1930s women needing to be perpetually dolled up and modestly dressed in order to be considered "good women" and anyways I'm just saying that this would be a lot to unpack for a 14 year old girl so hazel's probably just continuing to do this impractical thing (straightening her hair all the time) like 60% out of habit and 20% out of shame and 20% she doesn't know what else to do

something something about a missed potential character arc regarding all of this and in general there's so little mind paid to race in hazel's povs which is just ridiculous to me because a black girl from the jim crow era should have at least a few feelings about where she fits into modern society even if that society is camp jupiter. rick demonstrates his capacity to talk about how his characters feel about their race most notably in the kane chronicles so I don't think was too much to ask for. see this quote from an early son of neptune chapter:

^ like....... hazel's feelings of out-of-place-ness are There in the text and important to take note of when understanding her character (note that she's been there for like a year already and she still feels like she doesn't belong) but the emphasis is always put on her Being from a different time or Being undead and is never put on her out-of-place-ness regarding her race as a black girl from segregation times who is literally so out-of-place in this weird post-racial camp jupiter society. it feels like such an obvious thing to consider so its glaring absence really bugs me when I reread her povs and it bugs me when her hair is never talked about by extension because It Matters

you might be thinking "well she had a lot going on and she's not a superficial person maybe she just didn't care what was going on with her hair" and my response is simply that Black girls don't get to "not care" about their hair it is not the same thing as a white person going to school with bedhead it's not the same thing At All (if you aren't black then chances are you've never actually seen what untouched black hair looks like in the morning), especially when it's been beaten into your head for your entire life that your hair is ugly and you have to "do something to it" for it to be acceptable (and again...... she's from the 1930s so that feeling is magnified like 50x over). remember that perpetually dolled up modest 1930s woman I mentioned previously. picture her time traveling to camp jupiter of all places in 2010 and struggling to drop all of her makeup/hairstyling routines and internalized misogyny and conceptualizations of what women are "supposed" to be. this is the kind of fascinating character exploration that we really missed out on with hazel (and tbh regardless of her race she was never believably written as someone from the 1930s. I don't think rick even really tried to be honest)

you might also be wondering "how was rick supposed to know/attempt to portray any of that" and then my second answer is that If you're going to write a character who is not the same race as you then you should do some research and we have the internet now so research has never been easier 👍 this would be especially important to do if that person is a poc from the jim crow era I think! (he could have at least googled black hair 1930s)

anyways what I choose to believe (this is pure fanfiction) is that during hazel's first year at camp jupiter (remember that she was there for about a year before son started) nico would have helped her figure something out after observing her distress over her hair c: like they both secretly watched youtube videos on black hairstyles circa 2010 and then they got attacked by monsters for using a laptop (neither of them know how to use a laptop but he's trying his best for her) but then after killing them he helped her do her hair as something she likes that is easy to maintain <3 (I could also see reyna doing this because she surely knows a thing or two from her spa days)

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

a lot of people hate the hazel mist magic stuff and I won't deny that it was developed and implemented very weirdly but I actually really appreciate that it's partially connected to marie levesque who mind you summoned the lord of death/riches through her own powers. he didn't just meet her on the street and fall in love like other mortals parents she summoned a big three god to come directly to her (and then he fell for her afterwards). thusly it wasn't some late game add-on it was established very early in hoo that marie already had mystical powers of some kind based on new orleans gris-gris traditions and exploring that for hazel is pretty cool actually and makes sense! 👍

(also something something about frazel parallels where they both have special gifts that stem from their chinese/african heritage and not their godly fathers 😌)

for me the thing about it that sucks isn't that it's inherently bad or op as a lot of people seem to think (look me in the eyes and tell me that hazel is written on the page as more op than the likes of percy. rick limits her powers so much still even tho imo big three kids have a right to be op) it's that hazel's magic appears primarily tied to hecate and greek/roman mist magic instead of louisiana-haitian vodou influences (haitian vodou/louisiana voodoo are actual religions that have some key distinctions from each other, I'm just saying that rick could have drawn from either/both of them more when establishing hazel's powers). hecate mentioned marie explicitly when explaining why hazel has potential with magic but it's still pretty much all about nebulous greek/roman magic instead of new orleans-specific magic. let hazel levesque practice voodoo and cast hexes and work with spirits she deserves it (she is already a daughter of pluto so the connection to spirits should be there!!!)

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

We were cheated out of an amazing character Marie Levesque could have been she was written bitter and angry because Pluto left her and that allowed Gaea to enter her mind But what if she hadnt? Imagine if when Pluto left she said good riddance and when Hazels curse became evident she blamed the gods not her daughter? Their relationship would have been different and her anger at the gods would have still allowed Gaea a way in but to protect Hazel from the Pluto not anger at Hazel?

The thing is that Marie wasn’t mad that Pluto left. When she met him, she made a wish for all the riches in the earth which Pluto warned her was dangerous because such big wishes come with a price but she didn’t care. 

“I was so tired of being poor, Hazel. So tired.” 

Then Hazel had her curse, and it worked for a while as Hazel describes how good business was for a time. But then bad things started happening to the people who accepted the riches that Hazel summoned, so people turned on Marie and she started making even less and started being harassed more. Only out-of-towners would come see her and those were very few. 

Obviously poverty is not even close to being an excuse for being emotionally/verbally abusive to your child. But we are talking about a black woman in 1930′s New Orleans who was just looking for a break. And while it was too little, too late, at the end she realized what she had done wrong. She apologized to Hazel, which again isn’t really enough necessarily but that wasn’t all she had to give– she had every intention of sacrificing her life so that Hazel could live. But Hazel being the brave, stoic, and loving person she is, refused to abandon her mom like that. 

She met her mother’s eyes. For once, her mother didn’t look sad or angry. Her eyes shone with pride. 

“You were my gift, Hazel,” she said. “My most precious gift. I was foolish to think that I needed anything else.” 

She kissed Hazel’s forehead and held her close. Her warmth gave Hazel the courage to continue. 

that is not the story of an irredeemable woman, but a woman who was consumed by her circumstances for a time. 

Generational trauma and grief are real and Marie Levesque is not some evil monster who lived to torture Hazel. That’s my only point. Black women never get to rest, even when it’s all they want and the minimum of what they deserve. 

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

Really been mulling this over a lot lately.

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

The thing about trying to do a Fantastic Four deconstruction, in particular a Reed Richards deconstruction, right, is that fundamentally the easiest version of the character to go after is the original flavor Stan-Lee-sexism-infused Leave-it-to-Beaver beat-the-commies-to-space science adventure patriarch. That's the version with the most unaddressed attack surfaces and the version with the least in-house self-awareness of his character flaws. But if you decide to work that angle you're going to need to find something to say about it that The Venture Bros. didn't say with Doctor Impossible. And you are not going to top Doctor Impossible. For that matter you are certainly not going to top Jonas Venture. We did it, it's done. The archetype is beaten to death in a back alley. Pack it in, find a new way to be an iconoclast

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

Now that more people know who squirrel girl is, I think nows a good time to share one of my favorite comic panels

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

I think one thing that is so interesting about the penguinshow is how it inadvertedly reinforcrs a theme that we see in the batman movie. Which is that batman is a fucking weirdo.

The movie makes clear time and again how people think batman is a freak and the camera constantly frames him as a creepy guy that is just out of place. Why is this adult walking atound dressed like a bat all over crime scenes.

So then the penguin show comes in and we get 8 hours of gritty, realistic, grimy, down to earth criminal violence. Is all so grounded and dirty. The stakes are so realistic, the human drama so immediate and visceral. It feels like batman cannot be part of this world. If the batman were to show up at any point in this story it would feel as out of place as the batman showing up in the wire.

But it also emphasizes how much of an out of context threat the batman is for criminals, how much of a nuclear bomb he is on the criminal proceedings if the city because the fact remains that he could show up at any minute. That is just how he operates, while sofia and salvatore and oz are all running around trying to put their ducks in a row batman could have at any moment burst out from the fucking ceiling, beat the shit out of everyone and ruin everyones month.

Oswald and sofia have to plan so much to try and outsmart each other, they are constantly having to maneuver and pull whatever threads of influence they have. They desperatly improvise and play these elaborate games of chess around each other and their families and the city to get a single inch.

They pay so much attention to what muscle they have, and their money and tgeir conections and their reputation. At any given moment how many people you have around you and their guns and your money are vital to keep track of. The batman doesnt care about any of that. No matter how many goons you hire or how feared you are on the streets, the batman can just come and brute force his way through all of it and leave them upside down to a light pole.

With all this in mind going through this show felt like a kind of tragedy, not because of the moral putrefaction of the main character, because ultimatly when you watch a show about the penguin you expect that. It felt lije a tragedy because i knew that no matter how hard oz tries, and no matter how clevers his plans get, and no matter if he wins in the end and he defeats his enemies and triumphes in conquering the city... the batman is waiting for him at the end of this all. It will all prove to be completly futile, because the fate of the penguin is to get hus shit pushed in by the batman.

And i say tragedy, because that is what it felt like as i watched the show. But when i reached the end... well lets just say by the time i reached the end i was begging for the batman to come in, my one biggest consolation from watching this humsn wasteland of a show is that oswald cobb wont get to enjoy this for long because batman will come as thr righteous hero and, truly, the only force in this city capable of stopping him, and will have him taste the mean end of a batarang.

Truly this show did for the penguin what heath ledger did for the joker

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

you could say that the world’s richest man was stupid and impulsive enough to do a nazi salute on stage twice without considering the backlash, but really what I think happened is the world’s richest man implicitly or explicitly calculated that in the current political and medial environment he could do a nazi salute on stage twice and not suffer any adverse consequences. which is worse. a lot worse.

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

a lil love letter to this past june

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

The aspiring prince and the rose bride

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

Existential Nihilism Squad™

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

On how Jason became Robin pre-Crisis versus post-Crisis and how the Robin mantle should be Dick's to pass on, not Bruce's.

I want to talk about how I actually prefer the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths canon of how Jason became Robin. Don't misunderstand me, I do think him steeling the wheels off the Batmobile is 100% a better backstory for him than circus acrobat like in pre-Crisis canon. I just personally prefer the way he receives the Robin mantle in pre-Crisis.

For one thing, in pre-Crisis, Dick is the one to allow Jason to be Robin. Not Bruce. I think that's an important distinction. In the post-Crisis continuity, Bruce fires Dick and gives Jason the Robin name and costume and only many issues later does Dick give his blessing. While in pre-Crisis, Jason puts on the Robin costume without either of their permission and Bruce chews him out for stealing someone else's identity, then Jason wears a non-Robin costume and tries to think of his own hero name, only for Dick to give his blessing for Jason to be Robin.

This got very long so the rest is under the cut.

Let's take a look:

The first vigilante costume that Jason actually wears isn't even a proper Robin costume though it is still implied to have belonged to Dick. This is in Detective Comics (1937) #526.

He doesn't immediately go for the traditional Robin costume because well, Dick is very much still Robin when this happens. Dick hasn't quit yet. And in this continuity, Dick chooses to not be Robin anymore as opposed to Bruce firing him like in post-Crisis. Then when Jason does actually put on the OG Robin costume in Batman (1940) #366, Bruce is angry with him.

Bruce is upset with Jason for being Robin this first time explicitly because he doesn't have Dick's permission. Bruce is saying that being Robin is an identity that has to be earned and given consent by who the identity originally belonged to. He doesn't outright say that Jason needs Dick's permission to be Robin but it is implied (at least that's how I interpret it).

Jason then goes back to wearing the first costume and not really going by a code-name until Dick shows up.

These panels from Batman (1940) #368 show that Jason had tried to be a hero without being Robin. He had a different costume and was brainstorming different names. He does this because he doesn't want to "steal" Dick's identity as Robin. Jason had already used the Robin costume and name without thinking about how that would make Dick and Bruce feel. He didn't intentionally want to cause harm but Bruce was still upset with him for putting on Dick's costume without permission specifically from Dick. So it's important that now in these panels, Dick willingly gives Jason the Robin costume and lets him use the Robin name.

Jason had even asked Dick earlier to be Robin in The New Teen Titans (1980) #37, which Dick initially refused.

The Robin mantle wasn't something that Dick wanted to give up lightly and I think it's very telling that Jason asks Dick instead of asking Bruce.

But Dick doesn't stay Robin for much longer. Just two issues later in The New Teen Titans (1980) #39, Dick decided he no longer wants it. I think it's important that he makes that decision for himself. The role of Robin isn't forcefully taken from him by Bruce.

Dick wants to grow up and be his own person, outside of the shadow of Bruce and Batman. He loves the Robin mantle and is proud of what he did as Robin but he recognizes that it is something that he has now outgrown. What's so important to me here is that Dick willingly chooses to not be Robin anymore. He has agency in what he wants his identity to be, and later has agency over who gets to take on the Robin identity after him.

It's a bit later during the Judas Contract that he chooses to become Nightwing.

Even a few years later (in real time) in The New Teen Titans (1984) #47 it is still recognized that Dick willingly stopped being Robin and allowed Jason to take the mantle.

Compare all of this to post-Crisis on Infinite Earths. That's when Jason's backstory changes to the one of him stealing tires off the Batmobile, and as stated earlier, I do think this is a much better and more interesting backstory for Jason than the copy-and-paste of Dick's backstory of being a circus acrobat. However, what I don't like is how post-Crisis changes how Dick quit being Robin and became Nightwing. Because he didn't quit being Robin. Bruce fired him.

Bruce fired Dick in Batman(1940) #408 because it's a dangerous line of work and Dick disobeyed orders. I can understand Bruce firing Dick for not following orders but the part about it being too dangerous doesn't hold up when he almost immediately lets Jason be Robin, who is younger and far less experienced than Dick. It just doesn't make sense.

The very next issue in Batman (1940) #409 is when Bruce asks Jason to be Robin. It just feels hypocritical and even illogical of Bruce to fire Dick as Robin because of the dangers it brings, just to make Jason be Robin a few weeks later.

Then in Batman (1940) #410, Bruce gives Jason the Robin costume:

Only later in Batman (1940) #416 does Dick give Jason another, identical Robin costume:

Something about this chain of events just doesn't sit right with me. Bruce fires Dick from being Robin when Robin was Dick's own identity that in some continuities came from a nickname that Mary Grayson used for Dick, then Bruce hired a younger less experienced kid as the new Robin without consulting Dick, only for Dick to eventually give his consent at a later time.

I just feel like Dick giving Jason a Robin costume doesn't hold much weight when Jason is already wearing a Robin costume, you know?

I think it's far more logical and respectful when Dick willing stops being Robin of his own free will and then chooses to let Jason be Robin afterwards. Bruce has little to no say in the decision. Because Robin isn't Bruce's legacy. It's Dick's.

While I do generally like those fanon memes of Dick coming home only to find this random kid in his old Robin costume and being like "Bruce who the fuck is this?" and Bruce being like "Oh that's Jason, he's Robin now," they just won't ever compare to pre-Crisis canon when Dick actually gave his blessing for Jason to be Robin before Bruce did.

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

my hobby is reinterpreting gnomes and I hate every minute of it.

[icouldntthinkofabetternamesook]

You know that thing where people out of the loop on social issues will say something ignorant and then rather than using it as a teaching moment, leftist spaces will attack them and drive them further right as a result?

Well, I think people need to be aware that antidoomerism follows the same principles.