#‘they’re what’s wrong with society’

[scary-grace]

Opposites Attract (Chapter 4) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your quirk lets you capture almost anyone with ease, and you can't believe you let Shigaraki Tomura escape. Shigaraki can't believe it, either, and according to the League, there's only one possible explanation -- you let him go because you've fallen in love with him. He decides to find out if it's true. You decide you won't fail to capture him again. You both get a lot more than you bargained for. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3

Chapter 4

You look at the amount of food in your shopping cart, then force yourself to put half of it back. Food is expensive. You don’t need this much. The only way you’d need this much is if you were feeding someone else in addition to yourself, and you aren’t. At least not all the time. Or even more than once a week. On average. You look at your cart, then back at the shelf you’ve just offloaded half the cart onto. Maybe you can take some of it. Just in case.

Shigaraki Tomura knows where your apartment is. You’re pretty sure your apartment is his favorite restaurant, based on the fact that he keeps coming back for food. You can’t predict when he’ll be there and when he won’t, but he’s been on the fire escape outside your apartment at least once a week for the past month, and last week he was there three times. It’s the same procedure every time. He shows up right outside your window and you restrain him to the landing before you let him in. He’s gotten into scoring each episode of restraining from S to F, although you’ve got no idea what his criteria are and you’re not planning to ask.

Part of you just wants to tighten the restraint around his neck to shut him up, but with your luck, he’d be into that, and you really don’t want to learn something like that about him.

You’ve been learning things about Shigaraki, though. It’s unavoidable, when you’ve spent more than a month having dinner with him once a week or more, and when he’s clearly not trying to play a part in front of you. You’ve learned that while he knows a lot about heroes, there are things that interest him other than utterly destroying hero society. He likes video games. He speaks some English and made you critique his grammar when he found out you were fluent. He’s curious about things – when he found out that you grew up somewhere else, that you only came to Japan so you could go to UA and didn’t really mean to stick around this long, he spent an entire night quizzing you about what it’s like in your home country. Not just the heroes. Everything.

The news called him a man-child, and he isn’t, but there’s something deeply wrong with him – or something went deeply wrong with him, given the number of tiny or innocuous things that flip some weird switch in his head and make him start clawing at his neck. His friends are important to him. His table manners are a mess, although they’re improving. He always wants to discuss, or debate, or argue about things. You couldn’t tell if he was trying to refine his arguments or if he just liked trying to get a rise out of you. Two weeks into this whole thing, you asked.

Shigaraki gave you a weird look over the meal that night – an Italian recipe you were sure he’d hate, but that he tore into the same as he does with everything else you cook. “I don’t like arguing,” he said. “I want to know what you think, so I can figure out why you think it. I can’t convince you if I don’t understand.”

That’s another thing about Shigaraki, one that disquiets you even more than the fact that he’s trying to lure you over to his side: He doesn’t lie. Or at least, he doesn’t lie to you.

You’d lie to him, though. You’d lie if he asked you why you’ve been buying extra food in case he shows up, why you’ve been letting him in. You tell yourself that you’re working an angle, trying to raise the iron concentration in his blood high enough that you can capture him with ease the next time you face him in battle. It’s a good excuse, but it is an excuse. You just don’t know what it’s an excuse for. Shigaraki’s a villain, no question about it, but he’s also a person. A person you’d maybe be friends with if things weren’t the way they are.

But things are the way they are, even if you can pretend to be allies for now – allies, because you’re both interested in seeing the Shie Hassaikai going down in flames. Sir Nighteye’s built a coalition of minor heroes from around the country, all of whom are based out of towns and cities with Hassaikai presences, and all of you are supposed to rule out the bases in your town as possible locations for the creation of quirk-canceling bullets or the confinement of small, tortured children. Of all the minor heroes, you’re the one with the misfortune to be based in the same town as the Nighteye agency.

Nighteye agency is a daylight agency. They take the day shift watching the Hassaikai house. You take the night shift, which means your schedule is unavoidably screwed. You don’t get home until four am most nights, and when you do, you’re not well-equipped to withhold information from Shigaraki. Luckily, Shigaraki doesn’t seem all that interested in withholding information from you.

“I met up with Overhaul yesterday,” he says. He used to get here just as you finished cooking; now he shows up when you’ve barely started. “He’s unhinged. He’s got this crazy plan to destroy society –”

“Which differs how from your crazy plan to destroy society?”

“He wants to go back to before quirks developed,” Shigaraki says. “I just want to tear apart the corrupt system you’ve devoted your life to.”

“Yeah, because that’s so much better.” You roll your eyes and decide to play devil’s advocate. “A world without quirks might be a fairer world. With the way things are right now, a person’s whole life is determined by what quirk they got – or whether they got a quirk at all.”

“And before, your whole life was determined by how much money your family had,” Shigaraki fires back. “That’s any better?”

“There were ways to make more money, at least.” You stir the soup you’re making. “I’m guessing Overhaul’s not trying to make a fairer world.”

“No, he just wants to put the yakuza back on top.” Shigaraki rolls his eyes and steals a raw mushroom out of the pile you’re about to add to the soup. Part of you wishes Kurogiri hadn’t blocked you on Instagram. You’d love to flex your ability to get Shigaraki to eat vegetables on him. “Are you and the other establishment puppets still trying to find his hideout?”

“Maybe.” You activate your insurance policy to stall him as he goes back for another mushroom. “Why?”

“You’re right.”

That one takes you a second. “Wait, it’s here?”

“That’s right. You owe me.” Shigaraki’s smiles always look just a little insane. “That’s not even the only present I got you.”

You’re going to hold off on calling Shigaraki’s intel a present until you can figure out a way to feed it to Nighteye without revealing where you heard it. “Since when do you get me presents?”

“I’m supposed to.” Shigaraki gives you a weird look, like he’s not the weird one for being a villain and giving presents to a hero. “But you have to answer my next question before you get the other one.”

You decide you don’t really need that second present. “Ask.”

“Why’d you name yourself Skynet?” Shigaraki asks. “Skynet’s a villain.”

“You watched Terminator?” You try to keep your voice from brightening, but it only works partway. You love old sci-fi, but nobody ever wants to watch it with you, because nobody else can put up with imagining a world without quirks. “How many of them?”

“There’s more than one?” Shigaraki looks surprised for a second. Then he refocuses. “Answer my question. You’re a hero. You picked your name way before you met me. Why’d you name yourself after a villain?”

“It was my second choice,” you say. “My first choice was Magneto.”

“Magneto,” Shigaraki repeats. “What’s that?”

“A character from a comic book. The ones before there were quirks.” You remember being so excited that there was a character with powers like yours. “But he was, um, not the best guy –”

Shigaraki smirks. “He was a villain, too?”

“In a manner of speaking,” you hedge. Magneto was a complicated guy. “My homeroom teacher knew about him and vetoed the name. So I fell back on Skynet. It sounds cooler anyway.”

You got away with it for a while, but then someone complained to the school. By then it was too late to change it, and even if it hadn’t been, it was a hill you were ready to die on. Shigaraki looks skeptical. “Did you really name yourself after a villain just because it sounded cool?”

“No,” you say, a little offended. “I don’t really know why I did it. And I don’t know why you’d only watch the first Terminator movie when the second one is better.”

It’s quiet for a second. You wonder if Shigaraki’s going to push the point, either to call you out for being dumb in your choice of code name or to look for a meaning that isn’t there, some kind of proof that it’s possible to turn you. “I’ll level with you,” he says finally, “I fell asleep in the middle of it.”

He actually looks wary, like he thinks you’re going to kick him out for falling asleep during a movie you like, instead of all the billions of legitimate reasons why you could and should kick him out. “No kidding. You’re so anemic that you could probably fall asleep standing up,” you say. Shigaraki rolls his eyes. “It’s worth watching all the way through, though. And the second one. The rest of them suck.”

“Yeah?” Shigaraki reaches into the inside pocket of his coat, pulls something out, and slaps it down on the counter. “Present number two.”

It’s a three-count box of microwave popcorn. You look down at it, then up at him. “You don’t have any,” Shigaraki says. “You need it for movies.”

“I don’t watch a lot of movies anymore. Not much time on my hands.” You’re starting to get the sense that you’re missing something. “Um –”

“You have time right now,” Shigaraki says. “I have one and a half Terminator movies to watch. And now we have popcorn.”

He can’t be saying what you think he’s saying. The problem is, you have no idea what else he could be saying. “We also have soup.”

“So we’ll eat that first, and then we’ll have popcorn.” Shigaraki shrugs. “Come on. It’s not like we can go to a theater, so this is the next best thing.”

Why would the two of you be going to a movie theater together? You’d be friends with him, sure, and movies are a friend activity – but they’re a big-group friend activity, not one-on-one. Going to the movies with just one other person is suspect. Really suspect. If this was anybody other than Shigaraki Tomura, you’d assume they were suggesting that the two of you go out.

But it’s Shigaraki Tomura, so you know he’s not asking you out. And you’re never going to turn down a Terminator rewatch. “I’m not starting the movie in the middle. We’re going back to the beginning.”

“Fine.” Shigaraki steals another mushroom. You dump the rest into the pot. “I’ll watch it again.”

The two of you eat the soup on the couch, and you discover five seconds after pressing play that Shigaraki is a movie talker. Or maybe he isn’t – he just reacts to things out loud, and there’s lots to react to, starting with the fact that this movie’s from the 1980s and therefore older than All Might is. “Where did you even find this thing?”

“My grandma was a movie buff. She said quirks made them boring.”

When you were younger, you thought she was just being edgy, but now you think she’s sort of right. There’s a quirk for everything, theoretically, so any conflict in a movie can be boiled down to wondering which quirk would solve it, and that’s not very interesting to watch. Shigaraki doesn’t start picking on your grandma, which is a relief. He focuses on the movie again, and so do you. You can’t tell if he likes it or not.

“I don’t remember this part,” he announces abruptly, just before the start of the police station massacre. “She saw that thing get up after Reese shot it ten times. She should believe him.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

“You wouldn’t,” you say. “If I dropped out of the sky and told you that there was a robot from the future wearing a skin suit and hunting you down to prevent you from fathering the person who overthrows the machines – see, look at the face you’re making. You wouldn’t believe me.”

“Only one part of it sounds stupid,” Shigaraki says.

“Which part?”

“Which do you think?”

“Robots in skin suits from the future,” you say. It’s really hard to stop yourself from adding “duh”.

“Maybe to you,” Shigaraki says, which makes no sense. On-screen, the T-800 drives a truck into the front of the police station. “Damn. That’s one way to do it.”

You really hope you don’t turn on the news one day and see that the League of Villains has driven a semi-truck into the HPSC’s headquarters. And you’re still trying to figure out what’s less believable to Shigaraki than robots in skin suits from the future. It’s not until a lot later in the movie that it clicks. You didn’t think Shigaraki had that component in his personality, but apparently he has just enough of it to think about the prospect of knocking somebody up and decide that it’s not going to happen. You could see him being pretty picky about girls, but if he gets far enough in his plans, he’ll be able to afford being picky. That’s probably it. The other idea, the one that says he’s so insecure that he can’t imagine anyone wanting to sleep with him, falls squarely into woobification territory, and you eject it from your mind as usual.

Besides, it’s not like he doesn’t have game. You could see somebody going for it, somebody who likes banter and a bit of a challenge, somebody who’s not into true romance and fairytale endings. If Shigaraki acts around the right villainess the way he acts around you, he probably won’t have a problem.

You clear away the soup bowls and make one bag of popcorn, dumping it into a big bowl and setting it on the couch between the two of you. “Thanks for bringing this.”

“Yeah.” Shigaraki doesn’t look away from the screen. He’s been quiet for a while, slumped back against the couch, and suddenly he sits bolt upright. “You’re kidding me.”

“Hmm?”

“He’s the father,” Shigaraki says, like he’s on a soap opera or something. You snicker in spite of yourself. “Shut up. The father of the resistance leader. Now I get it.”

“Okay,” you say, wondering what he’s talking about now. “There’s a sex scene coming up. We can skip it if you want.”

“No.” Shigaraki fishes a few pieces of popcorn out of the bowl. “It’s fine.”

When you named yourself Skynet, you didn’t expect that you’d one day find yourself watching an extended soft-focus sex scene, complete with dramatic hand holding, with an aspiring supervillain sitting on the couch next to you. Your life has taken some weird turns. You feel the need to reassure Shigaraki that the gunfire is going to start up again any second now, and get the weirdest look of the night in response. “Do you think that’s all I care about or something?”

“I know it’s not,” you say, deliberately ignoring all the handholding on the screen. “I just – I mean, these are always really awkward to watch with other people. Maybe I just think it’s awkward. I don’t know. Don’t look at me.”

“This shit makes you nervous?” Shigaraki nods at the screen, takes an actual look, double-takes, and glances the other way in a hurry. “Cute.”

Cute? What the hell does that mean? You decide you don’t want to know, and the promised gunfire has kicked up again, so you focus on that, hoping Shigaraki will do the same. You’re sort of offended by the whole characterization of events – you being afraid of sex scenes, which you aren’t, and you being cute, which you also aren’t. You’re not afraid of sex. You’re so not afraid of sex that you’ve actually gone out and had sex. More than once. It’s not the sex scene. It’s more who you’re watching it with.

And that’s weird. Why would watching a sex scene with a villain make you nervous?

You stick your hand into the popcorn bowl, devour a handful of kernels, and reach back in for more. This time, your fingers brush against Shigaraki’s, and you recoil so hard it’s a miracle you don’t fall off the couch.

That was rude. No way to spin it otherwise. You have to apologize. “Sorry.”

“You’d be stupid not to react like that,” Shigaraki says. He doesn’t look offended. “I’m paying attention. Don’t worry about it.”

You’re going to worry about it. You’re not putting your hand back in the bowl until his hand is somewhere else.

The first movie ends with Sarah Connor driving off into the storm, and you press mute over the too-loud credits music. You glance at Shigaraki. “Thoughts?”

“Not bad,” Shigaraki says. “You said the second one is better?”

You nod. “Let’s watch that one,” Shigaraki decides. He tips the popcorn bowl towards himself, then lets it slide back. “We need more of this.”

You get up to make another bag. Shigaraki stayed on the couch while you made the first one, but this time he comes over, lingering next to you, close enough that you’d be worried if you didn’t have four separate insurance policies wrapped around his wrists and ankles. If he comes after you, you can glue him to the ceiling in a split second. “I don’t Decay everything I touch,” he says. “I know how to make it safe.”

“That’s nice.”

“I’ll show you.” A challenging note enters Shigaraki’s voice. “Don’t kill me.”

You’re just wondering what he expects you to try to kill him over when his thumb and forefinger close around your left wrist, lifting your hand from your side up into full view. He keeps it upright with three fingers around your wrist, then raises his other hand. Both his wrists have shackles around them. You can throw him out the window if you want to. Why aren’t you doing it? Shigaraki matches his other hand up with yours, lacing your fingers through his one at a time while leaving his own extended. His hand is open. The only person holding onto anything is you.

You, and if you try to get out before he decides to let go, you risk making contact with all five fingertips. You leave your hand where it is and try to slow your heart rate down. “What is this?”

“Somebody had to do it.” Shigaraki shrugs, but he looks way too pleased with himself. Not smug. You wouldn’t call this look smug. It’s just – pleased. “I told you it was safe.”

Nobody had to do it. What the hell? Your hand is starting to shake. That hand, and the other one, and there’s popcorn popping in the microwave and rain rattling against the window and Shigaraki so close to you, too close to you. You’re panicking. You can’t panic. When you panic, you forget about how dangerous your quirk is, how you can barely control it, how disastrous it would be to let it loose to get yourself out of this. You can’t panic. You have to calm down.

You have to, but it’s not happening, and worse, Shigaraki notices. He lets go of you, but he doesn’t step back, and his hand comes lightly down against your shoulder, index finger raised. “I should have warned you before I tried it,” he says. You nod, looking everywhere but at his face. “I’ve been practicing. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t know for sure. And I thought you were probably tired of waiting.”

What is going on? You need a second to figure that out, a second where Shigaraki’s not right here watching you, clearly expecting a response that’s not the one you’re having. The microwave beeps and gives you an excuse. “Go sit down. I’ll bring this over.”

His hand falls away from your shoulder, and he heads back to the couch. You take the popcorn out of the microwave, burning your hand on a drip of fake butter and doing everything in your power not to scream.

You’re not scared of him. You’re clear on that, at least – in spite of your temporary freakout, containing Shigaraki is still well within your abilities. You check him over with your metal sense, confirming the presence of your insurance policy. You’re not scared of him. You’re scared of what just happened, what it means. It means that you and Shigaraki have very different ideas of what’s going on here. You’ve maybe had different ideas this whole time.

You thought you were a restaurant and a source of entertainment and maybe you’d be friends in another life. Shigaraki thought – something else. Bringing presents something else. Going to the movies something else. Holding hands something else. He’s not just here for the free food. He likes you. And based on his comment about you being tired of waiting, he thinks you like him too.

What do you feel for him? You care, obviously – probably too much, given who you are and who he is. You’d want to be friends if the two of you were ordinary people. When you were thinking about whose type Shigaraki is, it somehow escaped your notice that you were describing yours. How does the thought of him hooking up with some villainess actually land with you? You test it out and a dent appears in your refrigerator door with a dull thud. You smooth it out in a hurry. Not well.

You need to get back over there. You scoop up the bowl of popcorn and settle back down on your side of the couch. Shigaraki looks up at you, and your stomach twists at his expression. He looks so – “How bad did I fuck up just now?”

“It was just a surprise.” A big surprise. The mother of all surprises. A surprise so massive that you nearly tore the endoskeleton out of your apartment building trying to cope. “I kind of thought hand stuff was off the table.”

That’s not wrong. It’s what you’d have thought, if you’d thought about it at all. “I didn’t want it to be off the table,” Shigaraki says. He looks away. “That’s why I practiced. I just – what was I supposed to do? Everything I can think of takes hands.”

That’s a problem. You make the executive decision not to make it your problem right now. “Um – we can sit closer together.”

Shigaraki perks up slightly. “How much closer?”

“Like –” You sit down on the middle cushion, popcorn balanced in your lap. Shigaraki edges closer to you, a few centimeters at a time, until the two of you are side by side, pressed together from shoulder to hip. “Like this.”

“My arm’s stuck.” Shigaraki works it free, fingertips tucked away inside a fist, then drapes it across the back of the couch, where it slides onto your shoulders in short order. You laugh. “What?”

“That’s kind of a move,” you say. You feel insane. “People usually do it as a yawn-and-stretch thing, but this was a lot subtler. Very smooth.”

“It wasn’t a move,” Shigaraki says. You glance up at him and see a flush creeping down his neck. “Are we watching this movie or not?”

“We’re watching.” You summon the remote by the batteries inside it and press play. Shigaraki’s arm wraps a little more tightly around you. If you turn your metal sense on him, you can feel the meager iron concentration in his blood shifting through his body, faster than usual. His heart rate is elevated. “This one’s even better than the first one.”

His arm tightens around you by a fraction of a degree. “Yeah. I can already tell.”

[clownzaf]

DC x Epic But it’s Tim Drake like everything I do

Ok but what if in one of the expeditions of Janet and Jack Drake they brought home a Wind Bag, only leaving Tim with the order of not opening it ever bc it will anger the gods.

Tim, obviously, never opened it. But his parents never counted on the silly creatures that would plague Tim the rest of his life until he opened that bag.

It’s ok tho, they may be annoying sometimes but they offered him company during the nights alone in a big cold house and they were really silly so he allowed it.

Aeolus also visit sometimes, the first few times it was to try to convince him to open the bag, but Tim was born and raised within Gotham’s high society AND Janet Drake. He knows when he is being manipulated and he knows when they’re trying to send him the wrong way.

Aeolus gave up eventually, but they make sure to drop by at least once a year to see if Tim’s still alive and if maybe there’s a chance he wanted to open the bag.

He doesn’t.

Later, when he became Robin, the Winions started to follow him around, hiding themselves from Batman and the rest but playing pranks on them almost every night.

Until one day there’s a fight between the JL and some gods (thanks Wonder Woman! Bc they’re SO EASY to fight for us mere humans!) and who’s one of the gods fighting? AEOLUS.

The Batfam is shocked when Red Robin enters the fight and the winions that were fighting (they seem to silly to fight but those things have CLAWS and bite like a motherfucker) just. Stop. And go to hug Tim.

Sometime after all those years Tim was considered between the Winions like “The Winion Prince” because he would feed every winion that came his way and would also play with them as if they were cats. They love him.

Aeolus also stops fighting for a bit just to hug Tim quickly and then keeps fighting.

Tim goes to fight Aeolus and they just, stop the fight, smiles at Tim direction and says “Yep, mine!”

And that’s how Aeolus became Tim’s patron god, and Tim became known in the Greek community as “The winion prince” (He wanted something cool like “The wind warrior” or the “soldier of the wind” but names fly in Olympus and the next time he encountered a deity (for a mission to Aeolus) they looked at him dead in the eye and say “Welcome, Winion Prince”.

Tim died inside a little that day.

The Batfam is shocked but they eventually started to ask Tim to make their grapple swings more fun, and Damian started to demand seeing his Winions (Which were officially his, he had an army of Winions) and once he tried to steal one, saying that “Drake had enough” and that “he wasn’t gonna miss specifically this one” (which, wrong, 1- That was winion Ctimene and she loved the princess of Ithaca, and 2- All his Winions had collars and silly hats so Tim knew which is which and he does head count every night)

Batman doesn’t like Aeolus at all.

[insectsuspect]

Tbh even tho I’m not rlly tcc this is how I feel. I think we try so hard to make everything black and white a dehumanize people bc it’s easier when it’s wrong. Ask most people and they’ll agree humans aren’t just black and white and can just be human purely evil, but then are in denial of that once it starts to mess with their heads. I’m wording it very well but it’s something I’ve been thinking about.

This isn’t rlly the same at all even, but I’ve been thinking abt it often after having a convo with my black history teacher (he became one because he wanted to find out more about his enslaved great grandmother) and he talked about how the issue we have in society is dehumanizing people. That’s what the white slaveowners did to black people. They acted as if black people were inherently stupid, evil, lesser, etc as an excuse to treat them less than human. We then all agreed everyone is human ofc. He then said that’s why you cannot dehumanize the white slave owners either. He said you need to call out what they did and the issues, but you can’t just wrap it up as “oh they’re just evil”.

Not only is that harmful to them but mainly it’s harmful to black people actually. Same with the holocaust. If we just say “oh that was really bad” and then leave it at that, never dive further into the reasonings and why’s and how’s, it’s going to happen again. It has happened again because we’re so in denial and trying to protect our own minds because writing it off is so much easier. It’s disgraceful to do that in such a serious long situation. It disrespects what happened to those people.

Back to what the professor was saying, basically there’s a fine line you can cross when you starts to go from saying the facts and holding someone accountable to dehumanizing them and then dumbing down a complex, serious situation and affecting the victims even more.

What we need to work on as a society is prevention. Most people agree with this again, but then in the case of people we just wanna claim as evil throw that out the window because it’s easier for ourselves. I don’t want to excuse anything done but I think Kip Kinkel is a good example of the harms of black and white thinking as well as how our focus should be prevention, not just ALLOWING it to happen. We allow it to happen causing unneeded and innocent deaths and then the preventable harm and punishment of a person, who we then just attack and dehumanize. If parents and politicians spent more time working on these issues and mental health and understanding we wouldn’t have this in the first place, instead politicians and people immediately going to dehumanizing and blasting them in the media and public to create a notion about them as pure evil.

Because it’s easier and takes the blame off them.

If we just dumb down cases like that and other horrible events we do more harm for everyone. If you care about victims and about humans taking the time to understand the situation is one of the best thing you can do and what you should do, not dehumanization.

Anyways I have a lot a lot of thoughts on this so I’m sorry for the ranting and rambles it was kinda all over the place. I didn’t delve super into the whole slave convo but if it matters to someone yes I am black and these are the opinions of two black people and is no one undermining slavery, if anything it’s the opposite. Also I just woke up and I’m too tired to like spell check this so my bad maybe I will later I can handle the typo embarrassment for now.

"Tcc is corny please take a shower" is somehow a clear example of an anti having less human understanding and empathy than a tccer and view themselves as too morally superior to view them as humans we all are

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

if I’m honest, I have never seen so much blatant actual antisemitism in my life as I have in the past 2 weeks. overwhelmingly on the left, but on the right too. I didn’t know it was this bad.

[bicheetopuff]

tgck and bkdk parallels make so much more sense when you think of it as Katsuki paralleling Uraraka and Izuku paralleling Himiko instead of the other way around…

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

I think fans want Jason to be a good person or be becoming one. To have a character that is well meaning and compassionate but decided murder is ok and to stand against main heroes who’s beliefs and actions go against the people he cares about and wants in his life. It’s confusing for people. People want their fav characters to be happy. But Jason can’t have his family’s support and follow his moral code. He’s cares about people and Gotham, and he’s an asshole who kills. It’s messy. It’s not black and white. I don’t even think Jason cares about being a good person or in the right anymore. I think he cares about what will save the most people instead.

Oh my goodness gracious I’ve been bamboozled

Batman’s definition of Good is not synonymous with absolute good/right no matter how much dc insists it is. Torture, battery/assault, surveillance, those are all condemnable actions too. I won’t get into the exhausting and frankly dumb debate of comic book morality wrt killing because I’ve already reblogged plenty of posts from other people who explained my thoughts on the matter far better than I ever have the patience to sit down and articulate. I also just think the notion that there’s something to be done about fictional characters who kill nazis and senseless murderers is stupid. Jason’s point is that the “main” heroes’ sanitized definition of right has its unaddressed holes and flaws which ultimately result in more preventable fatalities, and that he’ll work to correct those missing spots.

He doesn’t not care about doing what’s right. What he doesn’t care about (at least during his Winick characterization) is whether Batman thinks he’s right or wrong, because he sees the flaws in Batman’s methodology (and since he has a mind of his own). Batman’s methods alone cannot address Arkham’s revolving door and the rogues that come and go through those doors who have no intention (or capability from the doylist pov) of ever changing or undergoing redemption. Jason knows that he’s minimizing the number of preventable deaths by killing his targets, typically Characters Who Simply Do Fucked Up Shit Just Because, Why The Fuck Not?

Secondly, Jason is compassionate … to a fault. That was his fatal flaw. If he wasn’t so hell-bent on saving his potential birth mother he just met from that bomb despite everything she did to him prior, he could have protected himself instead, however slim his odds of survival were. What about his relationship with his other parents? He was a caregiver during his early childhood years for Catherine, until her death. Even mature adults who are financially stable find being a caregiver to a dying parent to be extremely burdensome on their bodies and minds, but he never complained about it or resented Catherine for being unable to care for him. Despite how none of his parents have really been what he needed them to be, he doesn’t blame them for their failings, and even continues to think highly of them (Bruce included).

And post-death? Enter Lost Days. Despite being dead set on plotting his revenge on Bruce, he constantly sidelines this in order to save other victims who are helpless like he once was. His own anger, trauma, and mission don’t remain his priority. (Sound familiar? Something something my own trauma above my son’s, mission above all else, etc.). Why would he waste precious time and risk his own life to do this if he wasn’t empathetic towards these victims or didn’t care about doing the right thing. He is simultaneously horribly traumatized and full of rage, and also incapable of ignoring what’s happening to victims around him (even as he claims that it’s indeed not his priority). And in that same vein, the entire premise of his rebirth outlaws run was that he doesn’t care if the public views him as a villain, an outlaw, so long as he can protect Gotham. And anyway where is this portrayal of him not caring about being in the right anymore. Almost every modern Jason story is about him grappling with where he stands with Bruce/Batman. During the early 2000s was probably the last time he did not care (hello, tentatodd??).

Jason has very evidently been portrayed as a kind and compassionate character. He is also simultaneously a calculated killer who doesn’t hesitate to kill when he deems necessary, and does so without remorse. It’s called being a Complex Character With An Edge™ that as you said, people so often claim to love. However when he fulfills that latter part, that seems to upset people because “killing bad”, and they then try to shave off and round out all his edges and claim he shouldn’t be that angry. In that case I guess you should just stick to liking traditional one-dimensional characters instead of claiming to like Jason but then encouraging his character assassination attempt by dc. Lol.

Lastly, who said anything about the batfam making Jason happy? Just because he’s written nowadays to want acceptance from Bruce (a shoddy attempt at forcing a non-existent nuclear batfamily), doesn’t mean that it’s a sound decision or that it does his character justice. I certainly don’t empathize with the idea that Jason needs the family’s approval or acceptance to be happy. (And anyway he has enough outlets for angst and pain aside from the batfam hello explore his other sources of trauma and do more deep dives into how he thinks when he’s alone). I don’t want them to magically make up and become one big happy family. This is not disney Lol. Besides, there are plenty of stories from dc that have that type of “wholesome” (hate that word utilization) characterization for Jason (Li’l Gotham, Tiny Titans, wfa, and even new stuff like the brave and the bold mini) and that is sufficient imo. Jason fans who are invested in the character deserve accurate, nuanced characterization and well-written stories, whether they be from his robin days (e.g., Batman: The Cult) or as red hood.

[phantomsies]

getting all the education/degrees I can and planning so I can get the fuck out of this country >>>>

[swordmaid]

i want to start on the drizzt books for the drow content but so much of the drow infos I found from like the old handbook reeks of so much misogyny to me that i just want to stick to my own headcanons LMFAO

[getosugurusbangs]

i think one of my hotter jjk hot takes is that i don’t think kenjaku is gender-fluid

[prisonpodcast]

some ccs are just straight up nuts there’s no other explanation

[navysealt4t]

can we please talk more about queer anger. im so fucking sick of being so angry and having no where to put it. im allowed to be fucking angry with the people and society that failed me

[friendlyfatbee]

I’ve come to realize that as an adult, I can dramatically flaunt around my dorm and wave my labcoat-like cardigan around like a mad scientist, and no one can stop me. What are they gonna do, tell me to grow up?

[starbuck]

I don’t believe in categoric “love languages” but, along those lines, providing is so important for me in my relationships, romantic and otherwise. I love you, so I provide for you, and maybe you’ll do the same for me. I want to be in a constant cycle of giving and receiving with my loved ones. I want to feel safe and appreciated and make others feel the same way. I want to anticipate their needs. I want them to openly express their desires to me without shame. If you want it, it’s yours. I love you.

[aprildiamond9]

continuing to watch the mysterious benedict society tv show with a deepening sense of dread as I realize it's never going to redeem itself and none of the best scenes from the best book are going to make it to the screen

[gxyhxrror]

Orpheus and Eurydice is so…like how does one not feel like Orpheus w everything they love…like ok if I keep going n know ur there maybe it’ll be fine, except if I actually look back at u & try to be *with* you…it’ll be lost

[miscellaneousjay]

This is so disappointing! All these bajillion-dollar companies and corporations gotta do is PAY THEIR PEOPLE!!! It literally shouldn’t be that difficult!!! Honestly, who was allowed to put a price tag on morals? Common sense? Empathy? DO BETTER!!! Because it’s really looking and steadily getting hopeless out here in these streets and the people SITTING ON LITERAL BILLIONS don’t want to do SHIT but ask the folks with shallow(er) pockets to attempt to save the day. ALL YOU CLOWNS CAN LITERALLY POOL YOUR MONEY AND SAVE THE WORLD WITH IT AND STILL (possibly) BE (considerably) WEALTHY!!!!

on the announcement that Disney+ is removing a plethora of shows and films from its service, please read these tweets from Willow writer John Bickerstaff. this is not a tax writeoff like Batgirl, because these projects have already been released. this is a move designed to cut off financial support in the form of residuals, and break the spirit of the strike. here is the deadline article that lists the films/shows that will be removed.

as always, donate to the entertainment community fund, vocally support the WGA online and irl, or join a picket in a major US city if you can. let them know they can't keep getting away with things like this.