#^guy who loves writing comics so much it's unreal. i love comics and i love this process it's so fun genuinely

[blueskittlesart]

hi :] this isnt really a reqest cuz it'll prob be a longer answer but im rlly curious abt ur comic process

i love all ur comics and somehow they always manage to gutpunch me- and ur composition and the way they read is always so beautiful and adds so much to the message youre trying to get across

yeah lol let's get into it! Ive spent maybe 5 or so years refining this process to the point it's at now so it's pretty much my standard procedure now. I'm going to use Now that you're gone as my primary example here since i still have most of the planning stages associated with it (my laptop does not have a whole lot of storage left so i usually delete my planning once the comic is finished lol) but i'll try to throw in some other examples too!

I almost always start with a written script. (the exception for this is longform oc comics which i find easier to write in the moment, but for my shorter character studies I almost always write first.) I use discord to write because it's convenient, but before i had a dedicated discord server for my stuff i was using txt files on my laptop which i do NOT recommend. anyway, this is what the written script for ntyg looked like:

note that some small elements changed in production, like the amount of time that had passed since link's death. the lines "I look at her and i am only afraid. i remember all the ways in which i hurt you. She's almost as old now as you were then. I cannot stand the thought of outliving her, too" were also added during the rough stage because i felt like there wasn't quite enough emphasis on aryll in the initial script, and since this was a major change that necessitated a whole extra page in the comic I went back and edited those lines into the script so I wouldn't forget them. (both these changes were made during the rough stage. i'll almost never make major script adjustments after the roughs are finished.)

more examples of my scripts; specifically the original script for totk: failure and two versions of oot: adulthood (one before some major refining and one after.) with comics like these, where i have a very clear idea in my head of the imagery i want to go along with the words, i'll sometimes include it interspersed in the script, either spolier-marked or denoted with brackets.

with ntyg and some of my other more. canon divergent? i guess? comics, there's sort of a mini phase in between scripting and roughs where I do some minor character studies to get designs nailed down in the early stages. with ntyg I already had a clear image in my mind for aryll, but the central character was link's dad, whose design wasn't quite so solid in my head. I really wanted to make sure that his design was well thought-out and consistent throughout everything, so i did a few mini sketches and studies to ensure I had his design memorized and could execute it consistently:

these are sans hair and accessories because nailing down consistent facial features was my main focus with them, and both these sketches ended up getting used as references for certain panels later on. This isn't a step I ALWAYS take with my comics, but if there's a central character that i'm not super used to drawing i find it helpful to get some practice in before jumping into the real thing!

after the scripting and design phases i move on to roughs, which I consider to be the most important stage in my process. roughs are very very quick approximations of what I want the final pages to look like. they usually don't take me more than a few minutes per page to create, and their sole purpose is to help me visualize the flow of the page and the placement of major elements like panels, characters, and dialog. this is what the 1st page rough for ntyg looked like compared to the final page:

as you can see, all i have laid out is the major text and visual elements, but it really helps me to visualize how the finished comic is going to flow. i do the roughs for every page before i start on the finals so that i have an idea of what the entire comic is going to look like before I really start finalizing it. it's important that these roughs are FAST--i almost never draw fully-fledged characters unless the pose or expression is particularly important to the scene, and that's because the goal is to allow everything to flow quickly and easily from panel to panel and page to page, and getting too caught up on one panel or element often breaks that flow. Nowadays, i have a pretty good idea of how much room my writing takes up so i don't write out the entire script in my roughs, but back when i was a little less experienced i took the time to write everything out in this stage to ensure that my dialog would fit into the space it was given without getting cramped or cutting off other important elements. doing that really helped me build awareness of how much dialog and panel placement matters and how i could use it, so this rough stage is non-negotiable for me even now!

after the roughs i go straight into finalization. I never enjoyed lineart back when i was learning to draw digitally so i basically built my art style to be understandable and visually appealing after one sketch phase, meaning there's legitimately no in-between stage between that rough and that final page, i just sort of. go for it. this is what works for me, but i think most normal people would probably find a second sketch phase helpful LMAO i'm just crazy and i need everything done as fast as possible. the finalization stage usually doesn't contain any major adjustments of script, composition, etc; i make it a general rule to keep most of the major adjustments confined to the earlier stages, for my own sanity. One thing that DOES occasionally change in this stage is my plans for color--ntyg in particular was originally planned to be completely black-and-white with no grays added, but when looking at my completed pages i found them sort of empty and unengaging without the gray, so i added it. usually if my color plans DO change it's something small like that--I'll almost never switch between full-color and grayscale on a whim because the way that i sketch for those two versions differs significantly so it isn't an easy switch to make.

anyways i hope this is what you were looking for! I'm very passionate about making comics and this process is a result of years of experimentation & finding what works for me, but i hope it's of some use to you as well!

[sureuncertainty]

literally tho why are my friends so fucking talented what the FUCK

[gffa]

what order would you recommend reading the batman comics in? also where do you find the comics?

"What order would you recommend reading the Batman comics in?" only has one answer and that answer is for me to immediately burst into tears. Okay, this list is designed around what I think is most likely to get you into comics and having a good time, if you're enjoying the kind of posts that appear on this blog: - Nightwing 2016, you can start from issue #1 and just keep reading (well, once you hit the Ric Grayson arc, you can skim if you want) because it's a fun, light-hearted series that's just very easy to read and is my comfort series in a lot of ways. I enjoy Dick Grayson's character, it does a lot of work to establish him in his own city, but also touches on his relationships with his family, and I think is a great starting place. You can start with Better Than Batman, Back to Bludhaven, Nightwing Must Die, Blockbuster, Raptor's Revenge, The Untouchable, The Bleeding Edge, Knight Terrors (not to be confused with the 2023 event of the same name!), Burnback, The Gray Son Legacy, The Joker War, Fear State Then there's something of a 'soft reboot' where the volume numbering starts over (but issue #s keep going) with: Leaping into the Light, Get Grayson, The Battle for Blüdhaven's Heart - Robin & Batman (2022), a beautifully illustrated series from the early days of Bruce and Dick, where Bruce is not exactly the world's greatest parent, but he's trying, there's an amazingly emotionally satisfying hug, and it shows what a delightful hurricane child Dick Grayson was. - "The Murder Club" is just one story out of many in Batman: Urban Legends but it's a fantastic one, with beautiful art and a story that's about Thomas and Martha Wayne traveling forward in time to see what's become of their son, and they don't necessarily approve--until Dick and Damian are basically impossible to ignore and they see what Bruce is fighting for. For more general Batman stories (rather than ones focused on my Blorbo), I'm enjoying: - The Court of Owls [vol. 1][vol. 2] by Scott Snyder, which is a solid case story and introduces the Court of Owls, which I genuinely like as a relatively recent addition to Batman's rogues gallery! - Batman 2016 is a bit of a controversial pick, because not everyone enjoys the authors writing for this series, but I've had a blast with a lot of Tom King's writing, personally. I especially enjoyed a lot of the run-up to the Bruce/Selina wedding with Rebirth book 3 (there's a double date with Bruce/Selina and Clark/Lois that's just a silly, fun good time!), The Rules of Engagement, Bride or Burglar, The Wedding, and Cold Days. I wasn't really a big Bruce/Selina shipper before those issues, but they really won me over because I love a good hot mess of a couple that have a bunch of thorny issues between them, that Selina loves Bruce not as some mythic figure but as the dumbass guy she loves, and then some bonus quality content with Bruce's kids, especially once the wedding falls apart and he's in such a bad place and Dick Grayson is so good at stabilizing Bruce that it's unreal. (You can also read Preludes to the Wedding in around here, if nothing else the Dick + Hush one was really, really fun! Clark and Dick take Bruce to Batburger for his bachelor's party because they're horrible people who think they're funny, and it's DELIGHTFUL.) - Batman/Superman: World's Finest (2022) by Mark Waid is also more light-hearted, but is so much fun, the characters banter with each other, but you can see their genuine friendship and how it became to be one of foundational relationships in both their lives, and plus Dan Mora's art is always TOP NOTCH. (Plus, volume 2 is out as well.)

I limited myself to anything from the 2016 reboot ("Rebirth") because I think that's easiest to draw someone in and these are the starting places that I would enjoy, though, they do assume a fair amount of pre-knowledge about Batman characters, like personally I enjoyed Batman & Robin Eternal but I don't think it's a good starting point for what the comics are actually like. As always, if someone has a good suggestion for a newer fan, I'd love to hear them! Especially since I tend to be Nightwing-focused, that's where my area of expertise is, if you have some good Tim or Jason or Damian recs, feel free! Though, in general, I think you can pick up almost any trade paperback and it'll be designed to be read without too much confusion, so just find a character you think you'll like and jump in! :D (p.s. I'm linking to Hoopla pages because, if you have a library card with your local library, you can use it to sign in to Hoopla!)

[russetfoxfur]

so i dont usually do liveblogs because i never show up to streams and also im not very good at reacting to stuff. However. i will make an exception because HGCZ IS OUT!! and i have seen so much hype about it that id be a fool to not at least read it. livereact will be under the cut for spoilers and. stuff.

- ok we arent even on the actual ZINE and the opening dedication?? "Of the arts, storytelling is one of the oldest: humanity weaves an endless tapestry of heart, hope, and home that continues to shape us all to this day. To tell a story is to bridge the gap between yesterday and tomorrow; to tell a story is to inextricably connect us all." THAT OPENING PARAGRAPH DUDE

- interesting premise. im intrigued. though i am a little concerned about the "classist violence" and "body modification" warnings. I suspect this is not all Fun and Games

- "I gotta say, "Hot"Guy, this is pretty disappointing. You can be AverageGuy. MediocreGuy." "Oh! "Guy"!" the best part is this is so in-character for them to do

- the ENTIRE EXPLANATION bit omg. joel trying to interject and comic-style getting talked over, lizzie robbing cats instead of cash... and her backstory...

- i. that sudden style shift is not in fact comical and i am now eyeing the unreality warning at the beginning of the zine with sudden alarm. should i be alarmed by this? maybe this is fine. lets say its fine

- JELLIE! hcing her supername is HotCat. she DEFINITELY needs a matching HotGuy costume. and i am somewhat more reassured!

- wait hold on. went back to that first hotguy comic to see the warnings (hidden in the title, missed them) and. WAIT WAS THAT REWRITING FUCKIN MIND CONTROL

- UNREALITY MINDCONTROL SCOPOPHOBIA AND INJURY??? WAIT HOLD ON IM REREADING THIS

- wait. WAIT THAT PANEL. THAT ONE WHERE JOEL SEES HOTGUY REWROTE THE ANIMAL CONTROL VAN TO BE A MONEY VAN. WAIT A FUCKING SECOND WE ARENT EVEN TEN PAGES INTO THE ZINE AND HOLY SHIT

- joels the only one who can SEE HES DOING THIS SO HOTGUY WRITES HIM OUT. JESUS FUCKIN CHRIST. HOTGUY??? UFHODQPHFWJPFAP AND THEN HE "GOES BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD" AND FUCKIN REWRITES REALITY TO MAKE HIMSELF SEEM COOLER. BUT REWRITTEN HOTGUY HAS THE SAME PLASTIC EXPRESSION. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THIS IS ONLY ONE COMIC I THINK YOURE LYING ABOUT HIS SUPERPOWER MUTATION WHATEVER

- ALRIGHT SWIFTLY ON. WE WILL EYE HOTGUY WITH CONCERN BUT MOVE ON NONETHELESS

- :0 cuteguy appears! doody did rlly good work on this one!

- CUTEGUY IS AWESOME!!! those WINGS... agh i love comic bubbles they just have so much personality and those icy words... and cuteguy pointing HOTGUYS OWN ARROW back at him..... you could not have made a better introduction holy shit

- and then he just flies off. awesome. we should all aspire to be the same level of cool as cuteguy.

- ren would be able to just say hotguy like that. also sidenote i am hearing all these lines in my head as im reading so writers youve all done fantastically!

- UNIONIZE! UNIONIZE! UNIONIZE!

- is pearl... a journalist? or is this the wrong gal? if she is a journalist then good for her!

- oh :( everyone hates unionizing the vigelantes. sad but realistic :(

- MUMBLR?? DID MUMBO K JUMBO BECOME THE OWNER OF TUMBLR IN THIS AU? DID HE KILL MATT PHOTOSPACE WHOEVER THE CEO OF TUMBLR IS? DID THEY FISTFIGHT TO THE DEATH? THAT HAPPENED RIGHT. THATS THE ONLY THING ILL ACCEPT AS CANON. IN THIS AU MUMBLR IS TRANS-FRIENDLY! 🎉

- sweetferaline (bahm bahm bahhh)

- ok this is incredibly funny. teeth dog ftw

- CHATTER AND M JESUS CHRIST THIS IS NOW THE BEST SEGMENT IN THE ENTIRE ZINE. AMAZING COMEBACK THIS IS SO REALISTIC

- and the reply sections are always a cesspool! glad they got that right

- PIXLRIFFS RUNNING A BLOG ON TUMBLR TO EXPLAIN HERMITOPIA. THIS IS SO IN CHARACTER

- THE MAPLE PRINCE. THE MAPLE PRINCE

- THIS ENTIRE MUMBLR DASH WAS PURE COMEDY GOLD. FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS & HATS OFF TO THE WRITER

- ARIANA GRIANDE!!!! WOOOOO <3 <3 WE LOVE YOU GRIANDE!!!!!

- and now permit office grian! we are going through so many different iterations of grian... imagine we get poultry man next

- is that GEM??? IS GEM A VILLAIN? also i dont really know who the hippies are... idk its just hard for me to recognize this artstyle ig

- WAIT. HAS GEM BEEN SPYING ON GRIAN'S DETECTIVITY? or am i just reading this all wrong? i might be reading this all wrong

- alright i might have to reread that one-- WAIT MORE MIND CONTROL. AND BODY MODIFICATION??? THE MISSING CUB... guys if this is sculk!cub im gonna maul someone

- AAAA BEHIND YOU HOTGUY (i called it)

- also love how i instantly went "oh a tibbycaps comic!"

- ok i LOVE this panel where they figure out Arson. the way both conclusions are reached in tandem! and also YAY WOOO ARSON THIS BITCH UP 🔥

- OH MY GOD THIS IS HILARIOUS I LOVE HOW THE abrupt cut to disaster WAS DONE IN COMIC FORM

- THAT MERCH DESIGN IN THE NOTES APP ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SENT ME DUDE

- "i use sculk to season my pizza" ah. I see. typical cubfan behavior. carry on

- "None of us are perfect, despite what you say might feel when you look at me" this Bdubs email is SO IN-CHARACTER

- " i replied to some of these but then i kinda got bored and started sending links to cool space facts instead" honestly this is what i would do too. and i would be happy to get cool space facts in return for my hotguy email. i dont see what the issue is here

- oh is cuteguy taking issues with the supernovae. skill issue tbh

- this whole cuteguy-cub email chain is HILARIOUS. scratch that this whole email segment is hilarious jesus christ. grian is being SO BITCHY and im HERE FOR IT

- PEARLIPOP IS A REPORTER! YES! and zedaphs in this au! he isnt even going under wormman??? shocking (< says a zedaph fangirl who is completely fixated on one passing mention of him)

- oh my god this is the best storytelling format ever. the panicked exchanges between cuteguy n cub, pearl reporting as she is wont to do... genuinely i love this so much i am giggling so much im actually gonna stop liveblogging because i just want to read this. ill be with yall in a moment

- actually never mind "if he waits too long to answer it starts to play the whole Lilo and Stitch movie audio" cub i love you so much. hgcz i love you so much i almost forgive you for that very jarring first comic

- it looks like we have seven or so more years before hotguy becomes a reality... new reasons to live. also the chatter discourse is insane from what ive seen doc does just act Like That on twit/chatter

- "sumagram" well i guess we know who owns that now

- :000 HOTCAT APPEARS!!!!! WE LOVE YOU HOTCAT <3333333 EVERYONE GIVE IT UP FOR OUR BELOVED HOTCAT!!!

- THE AWKWARD EXIT. i love it

- I SEE THAT BIG SALMON DONT THINK I DONT

- SHIRTLESS SCAR.... im aroace but like. i can still admire a shirtless man cant i. artist did a good job

- NO YOU DID NOT PUT A LILACS AND POPPIES REFERENCE IN THIS COMIC I AM GNAWING THE ARTIST OF THIS COMIC WITH MY TEETH YOU ARE MAKING ME INSANE DEAR GOD THEY TEAMED UP BUT HOW IS THIS GOING TO END AAAAAA HOTGUY DONT DIE IN THE CACTUS RING PLEASE BUDDY

- CREEPER AW MAN

- horsegirl hotguy... wild stallion cuteguy... someone needs to write this au. i should write this au. actually hold on *scribbles furiously in my "crackfic ideas" notes* carry on

- update: now listening to scheming weasel for atmosphere.

- “Who’s the more foolish: the fool, or the fools who follow him?” stellar line. only a certified HotGuy can produce lines like these

- "after a tick or two" if hermitopians measure time in ticks like minecrafters do then thats such a cool worldbuilding detail

- FOR A MOMENT I THOUGHT THEY WERE GOING TO BURN DOC AND HIS LACKEYS ALIVE. THANK GODS THEY DIDNT

- testing of new weapons montage! i know hotguy is the star of the show here but god i love cub so much more. can cub be the "protagonist" here instead actually

- i. i have suspicions that cub is not sculk-free. or is this a flutterbat situation where it is all dealt with but its not but actually it is but it also kinda isnt? yknow. im gonna write this off as a flutterbat thing but i will still be keeping a very close eye on cub

- *snort* deep enough to hold twelve pieces of bamboo (i am such a sucker for in-jokes)

- grian is warming up to scar... also hotguy bandaids

- AND I GET THAT REFERENCE TOO!! very clever! grian shut up its two in the morning! "Scar doesn’t seem to know how to react, his mouth falling open and then promptly shutting again." same grian why would you bring up the nose hair incident and to an unsuspecting hotguy no less smh learn sone manners

- you know what if grian can learn first aid from the nose hair incident in alaska then scar can get injured in a volleyball incident (i have never watched scar which yes is a skill issue but also if this is also a reference i would not get it). beloved desertduo who cannot lie to save their fuckin lives

- THAT ENDING COMIC IS HILARIOUS. SUCH A SCAR THING TO DO

- alright im gonna take a break from liveblogging rn! i will be back in (my) morning with scheming weasel and a renewed spirit. goodnight yall! <3

[zoobus]

I Shall Master this Family! is a rare princess story where the art is like, outrageously skilled, unique in its consistent level of detail, unreal historical fashion dedication, so much so that it successfully carries what's an overall mid story. You might notice that it's a mid story (I certainly have) but they throw you another sumptuous princess Guinevere sleeves and you're goaded into another chapter.

Normally this isn't enough. If anything I've found too good art highlights bad writing, thoughts wandering to how the artist(s) deserves better than the slog they're supporting.

But I'm stuck with this annoying isekai girl ignoring all the more emotionally intriguing subplots in favor of chapter upon chapter of isekai-based ego-stroking (can you believe this little kid came up with this brilliant business plan? Can you believe a 9yo identified the genius of a commoner? It's like she knows everything before it happens! Lay it on thicker!) because a) artist team that can conceptualize adults over 30??? b) artist team that draws old women??? Real ones???

b2) men too though it's more impressive that they drew a beard like they've actually seen a beard before. Old guys are common but distinguished and healthy looking ones less so

c) you can tell this is based on a historical fashion because nobody invents cultural male-garb unless they're meant to be eroticized. I can't think of another story where any real attention was put into what the guys are wearing unless cleavage was involved

I don't know if I even care for the fashion itself - that there's conspicuous effort into its portrayal puts it in a class of its own. Everyone else is satisfied with the certified male love interest paizuri shirts, cravats with medievallish suits, and generic npc peasantwear.

d) I don't know how many times I've given up on a comic because the artist had a fetish for blondes, making it nigh impossible to tell anyone apart. This story takes place in a Scots-inspired land, so a sizable chunk of the cast are redheads and the endless shades of red and curl textures never gets old. I like that blondes are still sort of gingery and shout out to the colorist for not being weak, blue-eyed apologist.

It came far too late but I finally understood why Shananet fell for this loser's act when he whipped out the brown/blonde puppy combo. Wish the writers were capable of juggling plots so we could have seen more of it.

I'll have to get into it in another post but the writing flaws are grating in a skill issue way, maybe too much ambition that should have been scaled back. For example writing men as being generally less substantial, more hysterical, while making women intelligent, well-rounded, characters with depth of various alliances only works if your story focuses on the latter. If you give me cold, calculating ice queen, I won't be satisfied with the plot spending more time on the dumbass loser 30-something eldest son throwing tantrums when his stupid plans fail. Likewise, how do you think it feels learning that the cool-headed, clever woman who gave up on potentially taking over the clan for a worldwind romance was played for a simp by her (quite obviously) less intelligent husband who doesn't even hide his seething hate for her family well? It makes everyone look like a clown. Writing structure crit imminent

It's a shame but unfortunately I like the way it looks too much to drop it😔

[lord-squiggletits]

I wish to love and appreciate idw optimus more too. But I also don’t want to read through the entirety of IDW 1.0. Can you please recommend me any specific issues/parts?

My best friend and fellow IDW Optimus lover made a post compiling all the comics with major story beats involving Optimus. Her list has a lot of the same things mine does, but also a lot more specific issues because she actually knows which specific issues of which series you can read specifically for ones focused on IDW Optimus. We don't agree on everything (I love some comics she dislikes and vice versa), but I would recommend her list simply because it's the most well-documented and thorough. Link I also have a lot of far less coherent but still genuine posts about IDW OP on my #idw op love tag.

As for specific parts I would recommend... since you don't want to read through all of IDW1, I'll go ahead and recommend you things based on in-universe chronological order rather than story release order, but if anything here interests you then I would recommend reading IDW1 in release order so that you get a better grasp of the story's context and how new lore was given out over time:

Chaos Theory and Police Action by James Roberts (The Transformers 2009 issues 22-23): I love love LOVE the way JRO writes Optimus talking to Megatron during the present day, it's very IDW-Optimus flavored because of how blunt, abrasive, and snappy Optimus is. There's a part in the comic where Megatron claims that he "knows [Optimus] better than anyone else," and he's right, but it's also true that Optimus knows Megatron well enough to see that he's bullshitting and it's very entertaining watching Optimus slowly lose his patience with him. I love the dialogue especially, no one (canon or fandom) has ever quite written the same IDW OP who's in this set of comics. It's also the most MegOP comic of all time because the sexual tension and the subliminal imagery of them doing BDSM together is unreal, plus it really captures their dynamic of two old soldiers who snap together with chemistry despite (or perhaps because of) being such long-time enemies. They just UNDERSTAND each other so well. Also, as a bonus point, Chaos Theory is where the pre-war lore for IDW1 began being published, so if you read Chaos Theory then the context for future pre-war lore makes a little more sense.

Shadowplay by James Roberts (More Than Meets the Eye issues 10-11): More pre-war lore that picks up where Chaos Theory/Police action left off. Important because it establishes a lot of IDW OP's character relationships, especially with "the Senator," Roller, and to a degree Ratchet and some minor side characters. I don't really know what to say about this besides it's just really fucking fun to read and features IDW OP getting to do cool shit like fight bad guys, investigate conspiracies, and do heists while also establishing one of his key character traits: being disastrously gay for suspicious men that he places entirely too much trust in to tell him what the right thing to do is.

Spotlight: Orion Pax by James Roberts: Okay, I'm really sorry for recommending JRO's stuff because it feels like favoritism and I don't even think JRO does the best version of IDW OP, it's just going in in-universe chronological order means that a lot of JRO stuff ends up first on the list. This one doesn't really have much of consequence in it and is honestly one of the weaker Spotlight issues, but like Shadowplay, it involves Orion Pax doing fun action shit and having way too much trust in a suspicious man (a new one from the suspicious man in Shadowplay).

The Autocracy Trilogy (Autocracy, Monstrosity, Primacy) by Chris Metzen: Oh my fucking god this is THE IDW Optimus to me, this trilogy is literally what made my ears perk up to even start liking IDW OP because it's what took me from "Optimus Prime, that's the guy who's the super awesome leader that everyone likes and is a paragron to everyone, yeah I know him" to "Oh.... holy shit this is such a good plot/worldbuilding, Optimus has so much CONFLICT and DRAMA with other people." It covers one of my favorite periods of the general Transformers formula, namely pre-war and early war plot events as conflicts come to a boiling point, there's political conflicts and personal conflicts, the planet is falling to shit and everyone is trying to escape and things are as depressing and scary as you would expect for a war that's literally about to consume a whole planet. I found the general plotlines to be gripping and intense (Autocracy is the weakest in this regard, but the writing gets better with each book) and I really like seeing how Optimus grapples with leadership. Especially the negative parts where people hate/fear him because of his association with Zeta's regime (the previous Prime, who Orion worked for), call his judgment into question, refuse his calls to action or waver in their faith in him, and so forth. I found it to be a really nuanced yet sympathetic view of IDW Optimus that made me fall in love with him. Because really, the thing that humanizes a character the most is making them flawed, and Autocracy trilogy Optimus is so incredibly flawed and conflicted. And also it shows him being shit on by other characters in a way that's well written in a plot that makes sense and doesn't feel like the entire plot is conspiring to shit all over him.

The Death of Optimus Prime by James Roberts and John Barber: This comic is basically the transition from phase 1 to phase 2, it establishes the branching plotlines of MTMTE and exRID, so this is another one of those comics that will help you understand IDW1 better if you want to read for more than just Optimus. Anyways, DoOP is great because it has a similar vibe to the Autocracy trilogy in that society is chaos and full of people who fucking hate Optimus' guts for the role he played in the war. You can also compare/contrast the way OP was before the war and early in the war versus the way he is after the war and see how much the war changed him (Chaos Theory also kind of is like this but it more shows bitchy Optimus specifically in his dynamic with Megatron). It also features a fair amount of Optimus Heroic Moments, Optimus Brooding, and Optimus being so fucking depressed he's literally sad when he wakes up and realizes he's not dead dude get some fucking therapy please I'm begging you--

Punishment by John Barber: This skips ahead quite a bit in the story but I think stands decently well on its own without having to understand the wider context. It's one of Barber's best-written stories and one of the only ones I've come back to reread for its own sake. It features Optimus trying to solve the murder-mystery of a bunch of Decepticons, featuring really cool plot conflicts like Optimus trying to navigate post-war society and the tensions that still linger from the Autobot-Decepticon war. I really like this one because it has that whole "not everyone loves OP and a lot of people hate him for justified reasons" thing that makes IDW OP a much more 3D character, PLUS it has some politics with the way Decepticons are treated post war. And I think it does really interesting things with Optimus in terms of showing how he DOES have this idealistic, merciful side that wants people to choose peace and letting go of vengeance, but of course it's not so easy to expect that of people after a 4 million year war. So when people inevitably choose violence, Optimus gets frustrated and angry and lashes out in a way that feels very real and understandable. It's a really good example of a comic that shows IDW OP in a nuanced way, showcasing both his virtues and flaws in a complicated situation that shows that there's no easy solution to these problems and no way for Optimus to escape without getting his hands dirty. Unlike future comics which involve OP being in complicated situations but instead the plot is super contrived and seems to overwhelmingly shit on OP without ever mentioning the very obvious ways that he could be defended, creating a story that's conceptually fascinating but incredibly mediocre in execution.

If I had to recommend any single one of these to read, I would recommend the Autocracy trilogy the most because it's literally the story that made me love IDW Optimus and made me realize "whoa, this guy is super nuanced and not what I expected of him." That's not to say that no other Optimi have depth and nuance, but I think the Autocracy trilogy was great for me personally as one of the first IDW1 comics I read. It struck a really good balance between "uh Optimus was part of some bad things that warrant being shit on" and "Optimus is struggling to overcome those bad associations he did, succeeding with some people and failing with others" and "Optimus is an optimist who has faith in others even when they don't have faith in themselves." Also, as a bonus, the Autocracy trilogy also features cunty murder-husband Megatron, an interesting character arc for Hot Rod, and the Dinobots as really interesting supporting characters (including their leader, Grimlock, having a cute veteran-rookie dynamic with Hot Rod that I wish we got more of).

[bisluthq]

you have such a weird approach to taylor and travis’ relationship. it’s so interesting to me that you base their level of knowledge about each other on how much you see them out in public - like if they’re not together, you immediately assume they don’t communicate, therefore they cannot know each other. meanwhile, you were writing borderline fanfiction about joe and taylor, despite them never being seen together. i’m well aware that they spent more time with each other as far as we knew but there was zero indication that joe one year in knew more about taylor than travis does now…

to insinuate that he’s with her for that 8 figure deal but then 2 asks later say that you’re rooting for them is just comical lmao

yes we all know you liked her better with joe but times change, PEOPLE change. idk it’s just super obvious to me that taylor is happy and content in this relationship - to question that and imply that she’s still hung up on her fuckass exes is just very strange. it’s her life, if she truly isn’t happy then we’ll find it eventually but there’s no need to speculate about her being miserable.

can you imagine finally getting to a place where you can enjoy your life, feel like you have your shit figured out only to have your fans be obsessed with the idea that you’re faking your happiness? i’d go absolutely insane - you guys are not better than the gaylor who are convinced that her entire life is just performance art…you’re essentially doing the exact same thing - she says something, you say she’s lying, she seems happy, she must be faking it, she has a man love her, he must be in it for the money like……..just stop

bruv I never ONCE said she’s hung up on an ex and have actively said I don’t think she is. I’ve actively said so when people have implied surprise songs are about an ex because that’s an insane thing to think. I don’t think she’s hung up on any ex and I would judge the absolute fuck out of her if she got back together with either of those guys. That’d be a terrible fucking idea.

but like the cupcakeing here is unreal. “Finally”? My sibling in christ, this woman has been single for like 6-9 weeks over the period of the last ten years. She left Calvin for Hiddles (while also lusting after Joe), she left Hiddles for Joe, she left Joe for Matty (who she’d been fucking when she’d met Calvin lol) and Matty left her. After which she was single for like 7 weeks and then she started dating Travis. She dated Travis for about a month before they went super public together and NEITHER of them have had a chance to fucking breathe because this has been an extremely busy time for them.

this has fuck all to do with Joe lol and it’s reminding me of whenever I’d say her and Joe don’t seem perfectly happy in every way, I’d have people say it’s because I’m a miserable Gaylor. Now apparently because I don’t think her and Travis have EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO DECIDE EITHER WAY, it’s because I’m a widow.

have you thought, just maybe, that I… am just quite realistic and know cognitively that she’s a real person and real people don’t get happily ever afters lmao, they just get more fucking life?? Come on.

I also think it’s fuck naive not to see that they’re both mining this relationship for money and positive publicity. Doesn’t make it fake or bad or mean that they’re miserable but totally utterly delusional to somehow claim they aren’t. Doesn’t mean they’re not happy! In fact it’s probably one of the things that makes them happy like it makes sense and it’s constructive to both of them.

I’m just not into cupcake takes, which this is, and if you want a source that deepthroats whichever guy she’s with rn that’s totally fair - that’s your preference - but then go follow those girls? Block and unfollow?

Come on. I don’t like acting like real people can ever be perfectly perfect in every way, because it’s silly - escapist and perhaps enjoyable for you and that’s SUPER FAIR, but ultimately quite silly.

also no I don’t think she’s lying and I don’t think she was lying the last fifty times she said she’s never been happier only to say that was in fact a miserable time. I think that makes her perfectly imperfect and human 🤷🏻‍♀️😘

[marcfrenchie]

DO YOU WANT TO READ MOON KNIGHT?

are you a show fan who's learned about how terrible the MCU did moon knight and you want to check out the comics? did you see him in a teamup book and want to know more about him? are you just looking for more comic recs? are you just interested in the character? then you're in the right place!

okay, to begin, i want to say that this is a character that has had a... varying history. there are no moon knight comics you can enjoy without extensive criticism. critisizing the things that you enjoy is good and gives you a better understanding of the work. please do not idolize any of these comics and please work to be kind to the many minorities (jewish people and systems, primarily, but classism, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia are all explored throughout MK's publishing history) that these comics represent. anyway.

MOON KNIGHT 1980 -

tws - doylist racism (racist villainous charactictures, mostly. a lot of this), ableism (outdated terminology for systemhood, occasional slurs), and sexism. extensive discussion of anti-semitism, specifically neo-nazism, in issues 37 and 38.

what happens - moon knight 1980 is a 38 issue comic book centering on the ex-mercenary and now hero moon knight. almost entirely episodic but there are occasionally multi-issue stories.

moon knight, in the day, is the millionare socialite steven grant, and, at night, the hero moon knight- moon knight also "uses" jake lockley as an informant. marc spector was the mercenary moon knight ran away from. doug moench was NOT intending to write a system at this point- steven and marcs relationship is meant to represent one mans struggle with guilt- but its really really easy to gel this with their current situation of being alters in a system and also some of the specifics of their whole thing make me fucking insane. jake is also there and i love him even if he isnt really a major part of the moral conflict

please dont read all 38 issues- attatched is a list of my personal ratings. everything later calls back to this so its best practice to read it first but its very much a slog if you arent already attatched to this character so make your own choice

nothing from 1980 to 2014 is particularly good (you can read it if you want but i havent) but knowing what happened is pretty important to understanding the later modern runs so a runthrough. throughout the 90s mk continued in the 80s status quo but in 2006 he 1. cut off bushmans (remember that guy from 1980?) face 2. was given a tendency for violence and and 3. became significantly more tense with marlene and frenchie. by 2014 they had completely fallen out. thats all we can continue with the recs now

[Image ID: A list of Moon Knight 1980 issues colored based on their quality. Issues 4, 7-11, 15, 17-20, and 28 are marked as "not good." Issue 27 is marked as "not good makes me insane though." Issues 3, 5, 6, 13, 16, 21, 34, and 35 are marked as "fun." Issues 2, 12, 14, 22 to 26, and 29 to 33, are marked as "good writing." 37 and 38 are marked as "genuinely essential." 1 and 36 are not marked. 29 is denoted as "slightly weird about his DID" and issues 6, 21, and 22, are denoted as "racist." End ID.]

WHAT HAPPENS IN BETWEEN -

MOON KNIGHT 2014 -

tws - graphic violence. do not buy the book new, warren ellis is an awful person. brief (doylist) ableism.

what happens in it - the first six issues are the warren ellis/declan shalvey run, which is what im reccomending. read the rest if you want, its mediocre but i like it

moon knight 2014 is 6 episodic issues centering on a now alone marc spector. steven and jake only show up twice, both lineless appearances in the back of panels. most of the issues are significantly more violent, dark, callbacks to old 1980 issues. most of the run is silent violence from marc but all of the stories are really good and the art is breathtaking.

MOON KNIGHT 2016 -

tws - unreality. mental hospitals. both doylist and watsonian ableism.

what happens - i am reccomending the lemire/smallwood + co run, the 15 issues before the numbers shoot up. i have not read the bemis run.

moon knight 2016 is 15 issues situated in a hallucinatory version of NYC, following moon knight as he struggles against khonshu's attempts to possess him. the thing is a lot of things in 2016 piss me off so i cant exactly sing its praises but its super important to modern moon knight so just. slog through it. highly reccomend reading after 1980 because it refrences A Lot.

MOON KNIGHT 2021 -

tws - violence, discussion of anti-semitism in issue 5.

what happens - i am reccomending the first 16 issues. the annual sort of triggered a falling off for the series and so i have not read after #16. read the later issues at your own risk

moon knight 2021 follows moon knight as he opens the midnight mission, gains multiple new side characters, and reckons with the consequences of the age of khonshu (an event in jason aarons avengers which is explained fine in 2021 so you dont have to read it). most of the series is typical action juxtaposed with MK's SHEILD-ordered therapy sessions. issues 14 and 15 are possibly the first time jake and steven have been written well since 1980. unfortunately, the annual is deeply xenophobic (villianizing the only romanian hero in marvel) and i have stopped reading the series due to this. the first 16 issues are really good though

MOON KNIGHT BLACK WHITE AND BLOOD -

tws - violence.

what happens - mkbwb is 4 issues consisting of 12 noncanon moon knight stories, as is typical for bwb series. most of them are pretty good and fun and also really pretty.

OTHER MOON KNIGHT STUFF -

- ms. marvel and moon knight

- devils reign: moon knight - tw violence, prisons

- west coast avengers 1985, issues 25-41

- hulk 1978 issues 11-20 (not #16), b stories.

- moon knight 2006 issue 3 - for frenchies coming out scene, which is good. not anything else

- heroes for hire 2011 - hes only in a few issues but im not saying which ones because i want you to read the whole thing. because its good

- defenders 1972 issues 47-51 - its Very 70s but its cute and i like it :)

- werewolf by night 32 and 33 - his first appearance!

ENDING THOUGHTS - please god listen to and make a point to be kind to systems and jewish people when you talk about MK.

[antoine-triplett]

Tagged by @robbiedaymonds to post about what you’re reading right now! Thanks bud 💖

…

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuinston - This book is adorable. Some passages are really moving, especially the letters Alex and Henry write to each other. The way it addresses different struggles with mental health pleasantly surprised me. It’s pure fantasy, but in a fun way. Alex’s penchant for hyperbole can be hard to swallow sometimes, but you get used to it the more you get invested in the characters.

Slumber from Image Comics - I picked this up because the comic shop up the road had a poster of the cover of issue #1 in their window for a while and it kept catching my eye. The story itself is somewhat chaotic and maybe trying a bit too hard to be edgy/different while actually recycling a bunch of tropes - angry female main character with a dead daughter/death wish, rugged detective guy who doesn’t play by the rules and is haunted by his dead brother, manic pixie demon guy who can kill anything and speaks only in sarcastic one-liners… nothing we haven’t seen before on every sci-fi show. The art was worth the price of admission though.

Memory Librarian from Janelle Monae - Dirty Computer is one of my all-time favorite albums and this book didn’t disappoint. The collaborative nature of it is wonderful and compliments the message. People should be freaking out over Janelle Monae more honestly, she’s doing some super cool shit as an artist.

Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski - My best friend (who is an extremely avid reader) has been obsessed with this book for years. Finally got around to borrowing it and damn… I was tearing up in the first chapter because I was so excited to keep reading. It’s a thriller (the plot revolves around a murder mystery) so it might not be for everyone, but I get her obsession now, haha.

These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card - Randomly picked this up at the library and got sucked in immediately. The way the story unravels in pieces keeps the tension up even when there’s not much happening in a particular passage; you never know what might be significant later. Full of rich, complicated characters that you get to know little by little.

Haven by Emma Donoghue - Big fan of this author and this book was different from her other ones but I loved it. It’s about three Irish monks in the year 600. Lots of themes and descriptions involving nature and old fashioned survival techniques, both of which interest me a bunch. It’s kind of a character study of these three people with only one thing in common which was interesting. They all have an intense faith in God, but it shapes their lives and thoughts so differently. Got it from the library but ended up buying my own copy!

…

Tagging some folks if you want to share: @thelettersfromnoone @mollywog @unreal-unearthing @thegunlady @loungemermaid and anyone else that wants to post what you’ve been reading lately! Tell meeeee!

[mystxmomo]

Re: the importance of Dave getting to be brothers with Dirk

I see a lot of fics dig into the Angst Factor of trying to befriend/be family with a living reminder of the guy who made your childhood hell, and the unease Dave would experience anytime Dirk displayed any characteristics that were similar to Bro. And like, that perspective does definitely make sense, but I also think there’s an additional layer where getting to see Dirk’s similarities to Bro is actually healing in a way?

Because Dirk is so deeply ridiculous and uncool, and I think having some of Bro’s traits reframed in that context would really help chip away at any of Dave’s lingering childhood idolization of him—without having to turn to flat-out demonizing a guy who, as you mentioned, Dave absolutely at his core can’t actually hate as much as he thinks he should.

And as much as he might have unpacked it on the meteor, “Bro is cool” was one of the foundational axioms for most of Dave’s life, and some honest to god evidence to the contrary would be a thing to behold. Like, Dirk takes his gloves off, and Dave gets to realize that Bro must have had those stupid looking tan lines too.

Dave, watching Dirk (who has only had three hours of sleep in the last week) accidentally soldering his own hand because he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing and only react with the soft, dissociative: "... Oh. Cool.": "Jesus Fucking Christ."

Dave, watching Dirk jump up with a sword because Karkat yelled a bit too loudly from the other room and he got startled so his reaction was "okay sword": "Jesus fucking Christ."

Dave watching Dirk 404 in the grocery store because the dude forgot his orange juice and just realized it and is looking down at his cart like it was the reason he forgot his orange juice, and for it's carnal sin of messing with his plans it must melt in place: "Alright. Dude come on now."

Yeah no you're absolutely right. Dirk Strider is like a hotspot of neurosis, with a head so messy it makes the goddamn DSM look like a check list. He's such a ridiculous fucking person it's unreal.

Here's something contriversal, and perhaps even brave I'll bring up. Apologies ahead of time I have a lot of thoughts on the complexities of how abuse is handled in fiction so you're getting me in my zone.

Even in au's where there's only bro. No Dirk, no game, Dave grew up in Bro's care and has to come to terms with the circumstances of his home life? He needs to come to terms with the fact that Bro is, just, absolutely fucking ridiculous. Just, as a person. Who likes puppets that much? Bro works in the puppet porn sex industry. He centered the entirety of his abuse around the movie Saw and left deranged muppet babies comics around the house for Dave to find. Dave needs to, in any reality, have that moment where he realizes that bro isn't this larger than life hero, and he isn't the be all end all of evil. He's just a horribly fucked up person who did horrible things. Because the grandiose is harder to come to terms with then the humane.

Another mistake I think a lot of people make when writing for abuse, with as tempting as it is to do if you haven't experienced it yourself, is make it so that literally every experience Dave had with Bro is bad. Familial abuse is ridiculously fucking complex like that, and would just add to the mixed feelings Dave would have about bro. We know bro canonically kept up with Dave's comics, and taught him how to work turntables. I think it's absolutely crucial when writing for the Strider brothers to give those moments in there, and not taint them with some looming dread. Having these moments doesn't negate the fact that abuse happened, and only adds to the complexity of the situation.

I think the final thing I'll add is?? I think, bro did genuinely care about Dave. Perhaps even love him. And I don't think there's a catch to that. I think that love and abuse are not mutually exclusive. People, parents especially, can and do often hurt the ones they love in an attempt to "better" them. There's an argument to be had about whether or not that they actually love you, or the idea of you, but it's love nonetheless. And I think THAT would fuck Dave up. Because I think, despite (and perhaps even because of) the way he was raised, his idea of love ends up being incredibly gentle. He's such.. a natural pacifist, who cares so strongly. The fact that someone can love, and hurt the ones they love, would fuck with him. Let alone the fact that it happened to him.

[drabbles-mc]

okay im giving you homework fr with this one . juice: 1, 5, 16, 27. angel: 3, 24, 30. AND because we've been talking about it, carm: 23, 26 & 5 (but in a.. what sort of OC would you put him with way). snorting because this is so much so dont feel like you have to answer all of them LMAO <3

Ohhh the way we are snatching up blorbos from every universe. We love to see it. 😌

1.) First impression of them?: The way I just instantly wanted to put Juice in my pocket and take him home with me. I stood no chance. I was doomed from the start.

5.) My favorite ship of them?: Juice x Happiness 😭 Lmaooo no but in all seriousness, I've got a couple OC ideas bouncing around in my brain for him that I've grown very attached to. Someone also randomly got me thinking about Juice x Happy Lowman and I must admit, I think about it frequently.

16.) A childhood headcanon: Juice was deeeeeefinitely the type to be immersed in comic books. I also personally have an HC that he liked to draw and was actually good at it. But I can easily see him with his nose buried in comics whenever he got the chance. 🥺

27.) If they could meet a character from another show/movie/etc. who would be the most fun for them to meet?: The way I COOOOONSTANTLY think about him meeting the Mayans guys. It would be so good, MJ. It would be so fucking good I'm weeping.

3.) A song that reminds me of them: okay this is 110% because I've been thinking about writing a fic inspired by it butttt I've been listening to the 1 by Taylor Swift and the way it's been putting me in my Reyes feelings is...unreal and unacceptable lmao

24.) What do you think is a secret that they have never told anyone?: I think that there have been a lot of things in life that Angel has tried to do or be because of how much he always feels he's falling short. But if it doesn't work out right away he bails on the idea, and then he just never fucking tells anyone because he doesn't want it to be another thing added to the list of what he's not good enough for. (pardon me choosing violence with this I'm just in that mode apparently lmao)

30.) Funniest scene they had?: Oh man. Angel has had so many golden moments??? But what we were just talking about the other day, all that shit with the Swole Boys, is always going to be some top-tier shit. Like it just doesn't get better than that lmao

23.) Future headcanon: They way I know that the money from the end of the season is going to push the restaurant into a new era. And it's going to be great. And things are going to be going well. But I think that Carmy is going to get so wrapped up in all of that, that all of his trauma and all of that is going to get put on the backburner all over again. Because he's going to think that he's going to be fine because other things are fine. And that's not going to be the case. Like obviously there is still going to be chaos in the restaurant because it's a fucking restaurant but I really can't wait to get deeper into all the shit with Carmy and his brother. I can't wait to watch him rip those old scars open RAHHHHHH I'm losing my mind.

26.) When do you think they were being themselves the most?: I feel like his dynamic with Richie is really and truly what brings out some of the realest Carmy. Like not necessarily when they're screaming at each other (but that too) but also just. The jokes and the banter and the snark and the laughs. Like fuck, man, those two knew each other before all of the grief and they still have each other now and I think that's about as real as it gets.

5.) My favorite ship of them?: I've been thinking a lot about what kind of OC I would put with him. (Because I have...ideas. Like the way I'm lowkey waiting for Whumptober to be over so I can invest more of my brainspace into my Thoughts about him and this mystery OC in my head). But he can't be with someone that's a pushover. Which I feel like putting him with someone soft and all that is a nice thought but he's got some bite and I think he needs to be with someone who can match that. Someone funny, and witty, and definitely someone with their own damage. He can't be with someone who is going into the relationship with the intent to "fix him" because that's gonna drive them to an early grave. He needs someone who is kind and loving but will also call him out on his bullshit because he gets so far into his own head and up his own ass sometimes that he gets lost. He needs someone who is going to pull him out of that. The way I'm rotating through careers in my head trying to see which one fits for a potential partner for him. Someone in the restaurant business, maybe, because they'd have that in common. But I also think that if his partner was someone in a completely different field, he could learn a lot from them and I think that he would appreciate that a lot too. Fuck me I've rambled for so long I'm so sorry 😂😂

MJ I'm kissing you on the mouth this was so cathartic.

Send me a character and some numbers!

[another-tmnt-writer]

You Fell From the Sky

Leonardo x Reader

Author: Admin Mo

Prompt: okay this'll sound real dumb bUT- this universe!reader meets bayverse boys? like maybe reader wakes up in the bayverse and is very aware about the turtles? i dunno it sounds confusing but maybe it's an interesting prompt?

Note: I love this concept. I’ve dipped my toes in the water before, but this time, I’m going all the way. Also, I know you didn’t specify a turtle, but I zoned it in on Leo. I can definitely write another if y’all want more because I’m obsessed with this idea. <3

Warnings: Some language…

Word Count: 1.9k

“Okay, guys, don’t crowd her. I’m sure she’s gonna be disoriented, and-”

“Donnie, is the angel alright? It must have hurt, falling from heaven.”

“Get outta the way, Mikey. Go wash the pizza off your hands.”

“Could we give her some room, please?”

The voices echoed around in your head, which was pounding painfully. You opened your eyes and everything was blurry. You were just about positive you were hallucinating, because when your vision finally started to come into focus, you were surrounded by four very tall, very familiar mutant turtles.

“No fucking way…” you murmured, looking up at each of them. They were even more detailed and lifelike than they were in the movies. Which was to say, very lifelike.

“Not the reaction I expected, but I’ll take it.” Mikey smiled, shifting to present himself to you. “The name’s Michelangelo, but the ladies call me—”

“Mikey, yeah, I know.” You cut him off and he gaped at you, his blue eyes wide.

“Are ya psychic or something?” Raph asked. You stared at him for a long second. His muscles were impossibly large, his eyes just as green as you thought they’d be.

“N-No, not exactly. I…well, I’m pretty sure I’m from an alternate universe. Or something.” You looked at Donnie, who was furiously taking notes and way taller than you expected him to be, and then to Leo, whose arms were crossed, his clear blue eyes analyzing everything you said. “Because where I come from, you guys are fictional.”

“Woah. I did not expect that.” Mikey said, looking at Raph for some sort of reaction from his older brother. “Bro, did you—”

“Shut up for like two seconds.” Raph snapped, his attention turning to you. “Can you say that one more time?”

“You guys are fictional. When I was growing up, I watched your cartoons, collected action figures, read your comics…This is unreal.”

“Comic books?” Donnie inquired.

“Cartoons?!” Mikey’s eyes widened.

You nodded.

“So…you know everything about us?” Leo asked, a twinkle of amusement working its way into his icy gaze. He wasn’t quite convinced yet, but he had to admit you were convincing at the very least.

“I mean, not really. Kind of. Maybe?” You shrugged. “I know you have a bonsai in your room.”

You didn’t think it was possible for them to blush, but after that comment, Leo proved you wrong, chuckling and rubbing the back of his neck.

“Just about everything then, yeah.”

“So what happened, Donnie? Why am I here?”

Donnie straightened up when you addressed him by name. “Uh, well, I was trying to figure that out, actually. We were out on patrol and there was a bright flash in the sky and you fell from it.”

“Leo caught you even though I called dibs.” Mikey pouted.

“You saved my life.” You gasped and looked up at Leo. “Thank you.”

“I couldn’t just let you fall, ma’am.”

“(Y/N).” You introduced. “My name is (Y/N).”

“Well, (Y/N), I hope ya like the smell of sewer.” Raph chuckled. “If not, you’ll get used to it.”

***

The turtles spent the rest of the day asking you lots of questions about your world and the representations of them that were in it. You told them that the universe they were in was closest to a series of movies by Michael Bay, which, Raph and Mikey found exciting given their love of the Transformers movies.

Leo didn’t say much, but he was always in the room, listening. When night came, Donnie was the first to leave the room, retreating to work in his lab. Then Leo went to his room to sharpen his swords and water his bonsai. Raph went to sleep next, and Mikey stayed up the latest, playing Mariokart with you until pretty close to dawn. You’d almost forgotten that the boys usually slept during the day.

When you were out alone in the living room, Leo came into the room, holding a large knitted blanket and a pillow, a tentative look on his face.

“Hey.” He approached you quietly. “I figured you’d need these. It gets kind of cold down here.”

“Thanks, Leo.” You tucked your hair behind your ear. “I really appreciate you guys letting me crash here.”

“Don’t mention it. It’s the least we could do.” He shook the blanket out and draped it over your legs. “If you need anything, my room is over there.” He pointed back towards where he’d come from.

“Thank you.” You smiled. “I’m sure Donnie will figure this all out soon enough and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Well, you’re welcome to stay for as long as that takes.” Leo smiled and then added, “Good night.”

“Night!”

Once he was gone, you laid down on the couch and stared up into the darkness for a little while, thinking about the events of the day. You were stranded in the Bayverse. And…well, actually, you weren’t all that upset about it.

***

When you opened your eyes the next morning, you half expected it to all have been a dream. I mean, that was the only logical explanation, right? Well, then you took a look around at your surroundings and realized that it was three in the afternoon and you were in the lair instead of your bedroom.

Once you stretched and got your bearings, you got up and walked to the kitchen, where Splinter was pouring tea from a teapot.

“And you must be the girl who fell from the sky.”

You had to stop and admire him for a second. Master Splinter, the boys’ dad, a wealth of endless support and wisdom. You’d be lying if you said you hadn’t looked up to him when you were young. Hell, you’d be lying if you said you didn’t look up to him now when you needed advice.

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir.” You were shaking. “I’m not sure if the boys told you where I’m from…”

“They have, yes.” He nodded. “Donatello told me of the alternate universe you came from.”

“You helped me through so much when I was growing up. You all did. It’s really surreal being here.”

Splinter smiled and stroked his beard, that wise twinkle in his eyes. “I’m glad you found your way to us, child. We’ll make your stay here as easy as possible.”

“Thank you.”

“(Y/N), I made eggs.” Leonardo’s voice from behind you scared the hell out of you.

You jumped and turned around, laughing as your racing heart slowed back down to normal.

“Sorry. Do you like eggs?”

“I do, yeah.” You chuckled. “Thank you, Leo.”

“Of course. They’re on the stove.”

“There’s cheese on the counter!!” Mikey added, already sitting at the table. “I saved you a chair over here, angelcakes.”

You had to admit, hearing him say that in person did make your heart flutter a little bit. You put some eggs and toast (with jam, provided by Donatello) on a plate, sprinkled some shredded cheddar on top and settled into the seat Mikey had saved, conveniently located between the youngest brother and the leader in blue.

“So every day, you guys wake up this late?” You asked, still a little bewildered that breakfast was at three in the afternoon.

“That’s just the downside of living in the shadows.” Raph shrugged. “But it ain’t so bad.”

“Right, of course. It’s just different than what I’m used to is all.”

“So what do you do, normally? Like, in your world, I mean.” Donatello asked. He didn’t have his notebook on hand, but you could tell he was taking mental notes.

“Well, I’m a student. I’m in college. I read comics and watch movies, and sometimes I write in my free time.”

“Comics about us?” Mikey raised an eyebrow, smiling knowingly.

Your cheeks burned red and you laughed. “Maaaaaaybe.”

Leo let out a little sigh and shook his head. “That’s still so weird to me.”

“Let me tell you, that’s a two way street.” You chuckled. Even thinking about it was still almost too weird to comprehend. You pulled out your phone, which still worked, fortunately, and went through your photos, scrolling all the way back to Halloween. You held it up to show them. “My roommates and I were you guys for Halloween.”

“And you were Leader Boy, huh?” Raph pointed out. “Noted.”

“I mean, yeah.” You didn’t think your face could get any more red.

“Wait, Leo’s your favorite?” Mikey pouted. “Aww…”

“I don’t think it’s fair to pick favorites. I like all of you guys for different reasons.”

“It’s alright if you admit you had a crush on Leo.” Raph whispered, cupping a hand around his mouth.

“Alright, alright, enough of that. She’s our guest. We’re not gonna grill her. She just got here.” Leo stepped in, a faint blush on his cheeks. He wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t get the picture of you in a blue mask with little foam katanas out of his head.

“Right, there’s a two week minimum before we get to grill her.” Donnie added, grinning as he pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Aww, how considerate.” You laughed.

The rest of breakfast was pretty uneventful. You finished eating and then went out to the living room and settled onto the couch. Luckily, your backpack had made the trip over with you, so you had your laptop and some of your homework. Not that you could get online and get in touch with people from your universe, but at least you could get some writing done if you wanted to.

Leo wandered out, his muscular arms crossed over his chest, a soft look in his eyes. He hovered behind you for a few seconds before finally speaking. “Hey.”

Unaware that he had been there, you jumped. “Jesus! You guys are quiet, holy fuck.”

“Sorry about that.” He laughed, carefully sitting on the opposite end of the couch, giving you space, but still sitting close enough to make your heart flutter the teeniest bit. “And, uh, I’m sorry about them earlier. Raph specifically. I’m sorry if he made you uncomfortable or—”

“No, it’s fine. Really,” you said. “But thank you for checking. I appreciate it.”

“Of course.” He was quiet for a few moments before he asked. “Do you believe in fate?”

“Until yesterday, I’m not sure I did. But there’s gotta be something like that out there for me to end up here of all places.”

“For the record, I’m glad you ended up here, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. His blue, blue eyes met yours. “Is it selfish if I say I wouldn’t mind if you stuck around for a while?”

“Is it selfish if I agree?” You replied, causing him to laugh.

“Glad we’re on the same page, then.”

“Me too.” You smiled and just spent a few long moments admiring him. The movies truly didn’t do him justice. Honestly, it was the truth: you wouldn’t mind sticking around for a while. For a long while…

Part 2

[thevindicativevordan]

On Parasite

Originally I was going to write a Parasite entry after my Metallo ones, but I got caught up in writing about other characters. Which kind of sums up Parasite's status: Around but always passed over.

Like Metallo this is a character with a long history reaching back to the 60s. Parasite is one of Superman's oldest and longest running Rogues, yet I doubt most people could name a single notable story that he's been in. Hell I really love Parasite but I love him for his unrealized potential more than for the actual stories he's been in. There have been a lot of really great and interesting concepts writers have added on to Parasite over the years, but there still hasn't been that one great story that brings it all together and shows why he's such a great villain for Superman.

Personally I believe the root of Parasite's problems lies in his design, how he's used, and how he's characterized.

Design wise I believe Parasite should be a horror character.

This is probably my favorite design for him that I've seen. Thin, creepy as hell mouth, small beady eyes. It's just a rough concept but this is absolutely the basis for how he should look. Seeing this thin emancipated figure shrug off Superman's blows and abilities like they're nothing and pursue Superman relentlessly makes him all the more terrifying, far more so than the body builder or fat Parasite takes in my opinion. Body builder Parasite looks too generic and doesn't convey enough body horror while fat Parasite looks too pitiful rather than terrifying. Love Gary Frank's art but I am not a fan of his Parasite design at all, really hope it gets ditched. Mike Perkins take in the current Swamp Thing arc is far more to my taste.

When it comes to the mouth, Parasite should be using that sucker to drain the life from his victims to fuel himself, rather than just touching people. Totally understand that like Moebius craving PLASMAAAAA over blood in the 90s Spider-Man cartoon, animated Parasite can't be biting people and scaring the kids. Why can't he do that in the comics though? Not like DC shies away from gore and blood in their comics, seeing Parasite chomp down on people with that mouth would really help people to take him more seriously. Up the horror of him so that readers grasp how large of a threat he is.

For his powerset, Parasite really needs an upgrade. Just draining peoples life to get bigger and stronger is boring, as is merely stealing Superman's powers. Way too many villains out there can steal or copy Superman's powers, Parasite needs to do stuff that is much more unique and plays into the horror aspect. Not sure who was the first to come up with the idea, but I love Parasite being able to absorb the skills and memories of the people he consumes. In fact there's someone else who does that too, someone who is the perfect blueprint (or prototype you could say) for what Parasite's powerset should be: Alex Mercer of the [PROTOTYPE] game.

Remember this edgy boy? Perfect basis for what Parasite's powerset should be. Every person Parasite consumes, he should be able to use their skills and memories, he should be able to take their form and mimic them perfectly fooling even Superman's senses. With the excess body mass he has from the people he consumes, Parasite should be able to change his arms into various bioweapons such as Alex's claws or blade or flail. He has an "armored" mode where he converts the biomass into a tough shell covering his body that makes him immune to Clark's blows or powers such as heat vision and arctic breath. All of that would make Parasite a much more terrifying enemy to face for Superman.

And he should be terrifying. Aside from Doomsday, Parasite should be the one foe who scares the shit out of Clark. This guy fucking eats people.

Superman's strength, his powers, his hopes and dreams, they mean absolutely nothing to Parasite, he'll just absorb them all. Superman is food to Parasite nothing more. Now that said, I have a problem with the type of stories Parasite is typically used in.

The typical Parasite story goes something like this: Parasite is hungry and wants food. He goes to a power station or attacks some homeless people and eats them. Superman shows up (wearing a suit if the writer writes him to not be a complete moron) and tries to stop Parasite. The fight goes poorly and Parasite steals Superman's powers, flying around for a bit and causing some minor havoc. Superman lures Parasite to an isolated area when Parasite's hunger flares up again and feeds him more power than he can handle, knocking him out so he can be sent to prison.

This is so boring. There's no interesting conflict going on, Parasite wants to eat stuff, Superman wants to fight him, Superman wins ultimately and Parasite goes to jail. There's no real tension, Superman doesn't get any kind of internal dilemma to wrestle with, Parasite doesn't demonstrate any cool powers or do anything interesting with Superman's if he steals them. There have been a few good stories with him, but they've usually been one off character studies rather than arcs. I can't think of a single arc he's been in that I've read and loved (although to be fair he's rarely given the chance to be the main focus of his own story arc).

So what can be done to make his stories more interesting? Well that problem is tied to his characterization problem. Did you know there's been something like six different Parasites? Hard to really build on a character when you can't even keep track of which version is being used, especially when pretty much all of them are more or less the same character and powerset wise. People keep creating new versions, but the most popular seems to be the second one, Rudy Jones.

Writers don't really seem to have a handle on who Rudy is exactly. Is he a petty criminal like the DCAU? A fat useless "parasite" even before the accident like in Johns Secret Origin? A tragic figure warped by the accident that created him as in the Superman: Man of Tomorrow animated movie? There have been a whole bunch of takes, usually aimed at making him more sympathetic, but personally that is the wrong route to go in my estimation.

Parasite works best when he's a figure of horror, he should not be sympathetic, he should be terrifying and despicable. Also not a fan of making Rudy "lower class" or whatever, that has pretty shitty undertones that cast the poor as leeches. I am a fan of Rudy being a monster pre-transformation, his exterior simply matches his interior now. So to do that lets give him a background that makes him an acceptable target: let's make Rudy a landlord. Before his transformation into Parasite, Rudy Jones operated a bunch of substandard housing complexes in the Suicide Slum borough of Metropolis, where the poor and desperate were forced to live. The idea of Clark living in one of these complexes at the start of his career in Metropolis appeals to me as well, ties the two together in a way that doesn't feel forced. Unknown to the residents however is that Rudy had an under the table deal with Lexcorp. In exchange for Rudy turning a blind eye, Lexcorp got to run a variety of experiments on the residents of Rudy's complexes. Bioweapons to be precise, filtered in through the air ducts to the residents rooms. One of the residents finds out about this after one of the experiments kills his/her family. They find the room where Rudy filters in the bioweapons and lie in ambush. The next time Rudy comes in to release Lexcorp's latest experiment into the air filtration, that resident attacks Rudy, and in the process both are exposed to the bioweapon. The resident dies, Rudy is not so lucky, transforming into the hideous Parasite.

Similarly to Metallo I've got a three stage arc for Parasite to undergo that I'll write in a separate post. But to sum up the way I believe Parasite acts as a foil for Clark: Clark believes in the potential for humans to be a force for good. Rudy knows there's no such thing.

When he devours people, Parasite absorbs everything they are, their essence/souls are laid bare for him. There's no secret thought hidden from Parasite, no dark corner of your soul he doesn't know about. That he's seen the evil in so many people, even ones the majority of the population thinks of as "good", is why he's so callous and merciless. If anyone else were in his place they'd act the same as he does, Parasite truly believes that, and thus he doesn't feel any guilt about needing to kill people to live. Humans slaughter animals for sustenance, why is this any different? Besides do you know how many evil desires people have floating around in their head? They simply lack the courage to act upon them is all. Rudy may be a monster but at least he's an honest one.

This also should play into how he operates. As long as someone gives him victims to feed on, Parasite is happy (initially anyway). He can be hired to assassinate and replace a corporate rival by one of the megacorps, driving the competition into the ground. Organized crime might use him to silence witnesses or pry information out of their rivals. The dark hearted and the desperate will always try to use him for their own advancement, all to often ending up on the receiving end of Parasite's bite once he deems their usefulness to have run its course.

The utter lack of empathy is part of why he's such a terrifying Rogue for Clark. Faith in mankind's inner goodness helps sustain Clark's neverending battle and if that trait isn't actually present why is he even bothering? Someone who was once a "regular" human being turned into such a monster, and being ok with it, is haunting to see. Especially since said monster loves to taunt Clark with all the terrible secrets he's drained from his victims. But another reason is that Parasite drags up the nasty bits of Clark himself. When Parasite gets his hands on Clark and takes a bite, the uglier bits of Clark surface as a result of Parasite's power. Clark loses his temper easily and more often after fending off an attack, he feels much more cynical about the world and his place in it, he feels drained in a way that goes beyond just the physical. Superman worries that all Parasite is doing is stripping away the inner walls he's built around his emotions in order to control them, and letting his true feelings emerge that he can't suppress anymore.

That's my take on Parasite, I have a character arc I'd like to see him undergo, but the basic take on him is he's the base evil in mankind and in Superman himself that Clark is unsettled at having to confront. While Lex is the potential of humanity gone bad, Parasite is the pettiness of humanity made flesh. I think that's a much more interesting Rogue to fight, who brings more to fight both physically and ideologically than just someone who is hungry and wants to eat Superman.

[brundleflyforawhiteguy]

What makes Puppet Master so great?

I can't quite tell if this is a "wow, how is it this rad?" or "why do you never shut up about this?" or the middle-of-the-road "I don't see the appeal" type of question so I'll kind of answer each.

The reason I'm not shutting up about it, right now especially, is that I've been writing a book on the entire franchise for three years without much to show for it, a lot of starts and stops and hard work and wondering if it would ever even get finished. Now Puppet Master Complete: A Franchise History is actually coming out and there's pre-orders at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. so I'm both starting to actively promote it and just overwhelmed with relief that it's finally happening. Almost as much as that, though, is the fact that NECA has released new Puppet Master toys that are stunning and are in stores like Target, something I never thought possible, which has tapped into the childhood fan in me, for whom these puppets, movies, and the original toys were my number one childhood obsession.

But to get into the deeper question, I'll tell you right now, that's a big one. It's a lot to unpack. the first three words of the introduction to the book are "Why Puppet Master?" And I think there are a lot of reasons. For me, it was love at first sight literally the first time I saw the designs of the puppets. Both the way the characters look and the stop-motion and puppetry effects by David Allen Productions are probably the biggest reason we're still talking about these little guys so many years later. But there's a lot I think that makes the franchise, and those early films, special. There aren't many, if any other, horror franchises where your iconic characters can be the heroes or villains from movie-to-movie. And as a kid, and even now, I loved that they weren't inherently bad. They were the first "monsters" I ever saw that let the protagonists go at the end of the movie and killed the larger villain. Then a few movies later, they're the full-blown heroes and they've pretty much been that ever since. The early movies are all wildly different from one another in a way they don't get enough credit for. Sometimes even different genres outright. The first is a deeply Italian influenced, almost giallo-esque movie, the second is a dyed-in-the-wool gothic Universal throwback, the third is a war movie, the fourth and fifth are fantasy/sci-fi.

Looking at a larger scale though, it is amazing that this series exists in 2021. Like, holy shit. It is the most resilient horror franchise in the world. It was designed, specifically, to cater to video stores. That was the function of the first movie, both as a film in general and as the first film from Full Moon. This franchise was specifically designed to cater to a booming video store market and it outlived video stores. In 1997, it received its own action figure series which was even wild at the time, because it was a straight-to-video horror movie series that had been around less than a decade. Getting these characters in comic shops, Suncoast, was wild enough, but then they eventually reached Spencer's and KB. And now, two decades later, there are figures again! And they're in Target! They're everywhere! That feels impossible, that should not exist. A few years ago, it got a comic series. A straight-to-video series got a comic that lasted for almost 30 issues! This is unreal stuff. And it’s a great comic, too.

Puppet Master is also, essentially, the only horror franchise that is inherently Jewish. Christian themes and iconography play into horror a lot and are still incredibly popular. And there are plenty of great horror movies that deal with Jewish themes and symbols, but I think Puppet Master is the only film series defined by those themes. Admittedly, they’re set up most prominently in the third entry with the reveal that the puppets are inhabited by the souls of Jewish victims of the Nazis, taking revenge on their oppressors. There is a deeply ingrained notion of post-war survivor’s guilt, perfectly embodied by this image of an old man who literally carries his dead friends with him wherever he goes. Even the original movie sets it up right in the opening scene, with the puppet master Toulon shooting himself and hiding his puppets away before the Nazis can get their hands on them.

And yet at the same time, it’s still just a fun and quirky B-Movie series, wildly ambitious for straight-to-video, and it’s never really lost that creative spirit even as the budgets have drastically shrank over the years. It’s been through a lot of ups and downs, and the budgetary lows are smaller than most other franchises. But there’s still so much that resonates, from the themes, to the concept and without a doubt most importantly, the puppets themselves. There is no other franchise like it. It’s been through at least three or four things that would have killed any other franchise and even though the movies are now made for pennies and shot in four days, it’s alive and (somehow) thriving, in some ways it’s stronger than it’s ever been. I really couldn’t articulate why I loved it when I started writing that book, but now it’s something I think about a lot. I am grateful it’s still here, grateful for getting to grow up with it, and so excited for all the new fans who are going to see those toys on Target shelves and fall head over heels, just like I did.

[uardito]

In defense of taking and sending nudes

Big budget pornographers and pretty much all advertisers have oddly similar and narrow views on sexy.

These kinds of muscles in these places. These skin colors. These eye colors. Unless we’re doing one of the exotic angles: Can you do the bear? The I-swear-this-isn’t-pederasty twink? (No judgments.) The submissive Asian? The aggressive Black top? Can you do Latin heat, papi?

And honestly, I never could.

As a kid, this would really bother me. I’d beat off to Corbin Fischer-type crap that left me feeling sexually inert, incapable of creating a sexual response in someone. I’m too dark for mainstream stroke material, not Latin enough for the fetishists. Plus, I was never in as good of shape as them. While acne and life’s other peculiarities left their marks on my skin, they somehow never touched theirs; how could I possibly think I was sexy?

I wondered how to find other young gay guys and Corbin Fischer filled the boy I was with such fears of isolation. If that’s who I was looking for, I knew they were nowhere to be found, nowhere within my experience anyway.

If you think about it, that’s a weird place to be in: desexualized, filled with sexual desire and nowhere to put it. I wonder what the fallout from that might be?

The Fall of the Power of Porn

Today, pornographers are going out of business “No one wants to pay for porn anymore.” Honestly, for me, money has less to do with it; I’m just not beating off to their videos. I don’t think they’re hot. I’m not feeling their models. I’m not feeling their videos’ shallow, surreal sexual hookups. It fetishizes sex that’s impossible to have with people who barely exist.

More shallow than Grindr? Yes. Much. Next to porn, even next to the normalizing and desexualizing mainstream gay political discourse, online dating or cruising in general is a thought-provoking and radical reclamation of sexual power.

It starts with writing our profiles. It starts with taking sexualized pictures of ourselves. It becomes dangerous and radical when we send those pictures.

They often play a role in how we negotiate sex with each other. And suddenly we’re not looking to unreal and exaggerated bodies of porn–we’re sexualizing the people we’re actively trying to have sex with as opposed to trying to push our sexual partners and sex to look more like porn.

Randall Munroe, https://xkcd.com/598/

Outside that, it empowers us to see ourselves sexually and have that reaffirmed by other people’s sexual attraction, even if we have no intention or even ability to touch those enjoying our digital depiction. Don’t think for a moment that I’m above this. People have either seen me naked or masturbated with me, people as close as down the street to some on the other side of the world. The latter case was particularly important when I was living in a part of the country where I wasn’t seen as that attractive. I could hop online and be reminded that I had sexual power, though I felt mostly powerless at my digs in Georgia at the time.

Cock blocked by sexual panic

Of course, abandoning the sexual institutions of old doesn’t mean that they’ve abandoned us. Respectability, fear, modesty, shame: they’re all hallmarks of this discussion.

Watch, by way of an example, RJ Aguiar’s Dick Pic Etiquette which in the course of only seven minutes manages an advertisement for a new dating platform AND provides a tour of heteronormative sexual pathology and anxiety. (I pick on RJ here only because I’m a big fan of his work, but what he says there echoes idiotic stuff said on national and international television by every other reputable person in news.) He alternates between classist tropes — like the idea that our sexual propositions not be exclusively sexual but also include some bourgeois notion of artistic value — to cataloging every way sexualizing ourselves could lead to disaster, including legal peril and the fear of exposure should any of our pictures stay on any networkable devices…

Me impersonating RJ safeguarding his erotic self-portraiture in one of the only non-networkable devices in my apartment.

Listening to him and other pundits go off, I’m reminded of the history of hysteria regarding sex that’s haunted us for centuries: The sometimes comical, sometimes downright horrifying efforts to prevent children from masturbating in the 18th and 19th century (Buzzfeed article, MentalFloss article); various sexuality-inspired hysterias in the 20th century like the McMartin trial (about sex abuse in education at the end of the 20th century); and the modern day paranoia about transfolk who need to pee.

Not to say that the anxieties of RJ and his hysterical kin are entirely unfounded, but it’s so easy for him and other people doing the committed monogamy thing to be terrified by the lives of people who are doing things differently. They have no skin in the game. They don’t have to cruise for sex or love when they’re horny or lonely. This fear mongering justifies decisions that they’ve already made and distances themselves from parts of their lives they’re eager to forget. Their hysteria encourages heteronormativity, encourages traditional values, encourages pursuing relationships just like your probably-miserable straight parents did and protects boring porn and a hateful ad industry.

Rejecting this sexual morality and hysteria is not always easy. That rejection threatens pillars of American society (probably only nominally). But by rejecting that we gain power over our sexual fantasies and capacities.

If you’re capable of sexual fantasy, you’re capable of sex. If you’re capable of sex, you’re capable of being sexy, of being seen sexually by yourself and others.

If you’re this far and have a camera phone, you’re a few short clicks away from me and a bunch of other deviants masturbating to you.

Relish that power.

And with it, find sex and love on your own damn terms.

-Santi

Santi fell in love for the first time as a child in Georgia and for the second time as a young man in Brooklyn. Today, he lives in Miami where he’s convinced that derechistas are ready to run him out of town. Santi continues his love of photography, both in the area of auto-erotic portraiture and otherwise, on Twitter and Instagram at @uardito.

[davidmann95]

JJ Abrams Superman Movie officially announced, with Ta-Nahisi Coates writing

Anonymous said: Just a few days after you said you were happy with DC taking a break from Superman movies and just focusing on him being on tv again, they go and announce a new Superman movie. How do you feel? Coates is an exciting choice, I think

Caught me red-handed! But to be fair a couple times I said that I left a caveat of ‘barring extraordinary circumstances’, which I’d say this qualifies as.

There’s only so much to go off of at this point, but even these tidbits open up a lot to think about.

* As out of left field as Coates feels at first blush - he’s a Marvel man! - it’s not entirely shocking that he’d be on WB’s shortlist to be their ‘how to fix Superman’ guy: he got a MacArthur Genius Grant the same year as his #1 bestselling book about what the American Way actually means, after which he got into superhero writing with a run that ended up having elements incorporated into a cultural moment in Black Panther, and then Between The World And Me was cited as the inspiration for the Watchmen show that substantially drew on Superman iconography and won 11 Emmys. People are already talking about him admittedly not being a DC or Superman guy (though in that same interview he notes his love for the DCAU, specifically including STAS), but if he’s here he’s got something to say and, y’know, probably read a decent amount of Superman stuff either since then/prior to this or to get ready for the gig, so can’t say I’m worried.

* Related note: I’m seeing folks concerned about how much control he’ll really have over the project, which is fair. But that it’s his involvement that’s being touted over JJ Abrams’ (the guy who, like him or not, rebirthed Star Wars as a going concern to the tune of over $2 billion), and that they’re formally announcing and hyping it up as TA-NEHISI COATES’ SUPERMAN MOVIE™, COMING 202X before even having a director or lead actor attached, says to me that whatever his vision is it’s one WB’s going all-in on for the time being.

* I’ve seen plenty of discussion already about the appropriateness of this potentially starring a black Superman given both the dynamics/thematics of Superman as a character, and more significantly the implications of Coates maybe only being brought onboard to do ‘the black version’. That is a conversation I have precisely zero qualifications to wade in on with my own takes, but given that he is a dude with enough options that he could probably even turn down an opportunity on this scale, and the aforementioned weight being given to his role in this, I think it’s safe to say whatever we’re going to get is something he’s onboard with.

* Also seen concerns re: his pedigree as a fiction writer - another one I’m not that qualified to weigh in on, I’ve only read the first year or so of his Black Panther and Captain America runs (though I got the rest of his BP on Comixology while it was free, gotta check it out sometime), which were solid if a bit more workmanlike than you’d hope, along with the (other category altogether) Between The World And Me some time ago, which was...considerably more than solid. I know however his fiction novel debut in The Water Dancer was well-received, his Marvel work rather than staying ‘grounded’ hasn’t shied away from the sort of outré high concepts you’d want to see in a Superman movie, and the main criticism of his runs of ‘they’re too slow’ wouldn’t likely have the space to apply in a 2-3 hour Hollywood blockbuster, so again, not too concerned.

* Perhaps time will make me eat my words, but hot take: there is a basically 0% chance this is about Calvin Ellis or Val-Zod. Yes, yes, the DC movies are reportedly embracing the multiverse an excuse to do standalone stuff, but the two examples of that thus far in Joker and The Batman are still broadly rooted in the conventional trappings of those characters even if they’re separated from the ‘main universe’. Maybe someday the options might go further afield, but right now, when Superman hasn’t had an unambiguous silver screen hit in over 40 years? They’re not going to pour a quarter-billion dollars into a movie with the premise of “last son of the doomed planet Krypton, imbued beneath Earth’s yellow sun with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men and raised with the noblest ideals of truth and justice, Some Other Guy Most Of You Don’t Know protects the world...as Superman!” Not even getting into Val-Zod being just one member of an ensemble cast from a largely overlooked book and having the baggage of being Zod’s kid, and the EVERYTHING of making a four-quadrant tentpole film about Super-Obama (when you haven’t even been able to make your regular Super work) - this is either going to be Clark, or if they do make Superman black or brown but still want some distance it’ll be a Jon movie so it’s still got the direct connection to the original and the ‘son of Superman’ pitch in its corner too.

* Abrams is an interesting partner. He’s Hollywood’s big nostalgia guy, and that’s...probably not what Coates is going to be going for here. I assume he’s basically there to keep things familiar enough for WB’s tastes, which itself raises questions about the nature of Coates’ pitch and how it was internally received even if they’re clearly very publicly committed to it.

* Michael B. Jordan probably won’t really be the guy - he apparently talked about it, reasonably concluded he didn’t want to face that inevitable scale of backlash after what he already went through just playing the Human Torch, and the tradition is to cast an unknown in the part - but I guess never say never. Heck, while I sure wouldn’t bet on it I don’t think Ryan Coogler ending up involved is out of the question either; Coates’ previous screenwriting experience was working on a project with Coogler and Jordan that evidently didn’t come to fruition (Wrong Answer, a drama about a 2006 Atlanta public school cheating scandal), and they seem to have maintained a relationship as they had a public discussion regarding The Water Dancer in 2019.

* Ok I know making fun of Snyder people is passé at this point and usually more “NO SUPERMAN MOVIES MAY BE PERMITTED UNTIL THE CIVILIZATION-REDEFINING FIVE-FILM SAGA IS COMPLETE” howling into the void is barely worth notice, and “this is solely WB retaliating against us for bending them to our will!” in response to a Superman reboot would normally be just an amusing side-note too. But trying to get #HenryCavillSuperman/#HenryCavillIsOurSuperman trending in response to the possibility of a black Superman...I mean obviously so fucking many of them are fully aware they’re just not saying the quiet part loud, but what’re the percentages here?

So that’s what I’ve got so far. How do I feel about it all? It’s odd; given that there are basically no actual details beyond a name attached I’d never thought about in this context, and that this came with no forewarning just as the prospect of Superman in movies for the next long while seemed as dead as it ever had been, it’s so ill-defined and seems so unreal that I don’t feel much of anything about it yet? Plus I’m no longer driven on a day-by-day basis by a savage, all-consuming desire to slake a thirst for quality Superman stuff long left unquenched the way I was even a couple years ago, which likely also plays its part. But objectively? This is a guy formally, nationally recognized for being smart who’s also a journalist and comics fan being given Superman, with what sure feels like a lot of leeway and presumably a blank slate, which is basically the abstract concept of a perfect pick. So yes: I formally rescind my “please no Superman movies in the 2020s” plea.