#“he went solo against the joker”

[rotten7rat]

So fucking tired of this narrative

[jesncin]

The potential of Ma'alefa'ak; a comics retrospective

Ma'alefa'ak J'onzz, Martian Manhunter's evil twin brother, is considered the most iconic villain of the martian's rogues gallery. Aside from the white martians (which are arguably more often used as Justice League rogues), Ma'alefa'ak is the most frequently revived and adapted rogue to go against J'onn. Readers tend to remember Ma'al as "the Darkseid cultist who genocide-d the entire martian race", and while that's true for his first iteration, I don't believe that's the reason he's persisted as long as he has.

As with much of Martian lore, Ma'al's character and origin has been reinvented many times in both comics and adapted media. I would like to take a retrospective look into how Ma'al has evolved and shifted from his initial origin story, what I find compelling, what works, what doesn't, and where I'd like to see this character moving forward. This post will cover the comics and a separate post will cover his film and tv adaptations.

As we go through these iterations, I want to dig into what the through line of Ma'alefa'ak's character is. What do writers decide to keep and reinvent about him? What makes Ma'al, Ma'al?

disclaimer: Ma'al is frequently coded and sometimes even explicitly written as a disabled martian. While it's not a one-to-one comparable marginalization to any human disability (it's more of a fantasy disability or thematic rather than true representation), I figured it's still important to disclose that I am not a disabled reader. These are observations from an outsider perspective with no personal authority. Additional content warning for discussions of sexual assault (not directly, more like an act likened to rape- with the exception of a brief analysis on Brightest Day), genocide, and ableism.

Let's start with Martian Manhunter's 1998 solo run, issue #0 Pilgrimage. In this storyline, Ma'al is introduced as "the only martian born without telepathy!", and is therefore the only martian immune to fire (famously the weakness to the martian race). He admits to creating the telepathic virus that caused the martians to combust into flames, thereby killing them. Notably Ma'al is described as a "priest / scientist", and he explains that his goal is to wipe out all telepathic martians so that he can no longer be "the freak". The twins fight, presumed they killed one another, and went on their separate paths: J'onn is teleported to Earth, while Ma'al just kind of. Takes the world's longest nap in martian rubble. J'onn takes a pilgrimage to Mars one day, which alerts Ma'al that his quest to eliminate all telepathic martians is not complete.

Ma'al continues to appear as an overarching villain on issues #3-9, infiltrating J'onn's human life as John Jones and eventually impersonating the Martian Manhunter to get the Justice League to turn against his twin. In the process, Ma'al also impersonates several League members, sporting a signature Joker-esque smile to let the reader know it's him. This act of impersonation and trickery becomes a popular staple in future incarnations of Ma'al, as is often the case for shapeshifting villains. Ma'al adopts the "human" name Malefic.

In issue #7 we're given a flashback to a once living Mars, where Ma'al is being tried for the crime of "mind rape". It isn't specified who the victim of his crime is, unlike other iterations would later elaborate on. The reveal here is that Ma'al wasn't born disabled: he was punished to be by the martian council. His memory was wiped to make him believe he was disabled by birth.

[I know I could share other more informative panels of this flashback but I have to share what I consider, as a twin, the funniest panel ever]

In issue #8, it is revealed that while Ma'al's memory was wiped, his hatred was so strong that even though he doesn't remember why he hates he knows that he just does. So he secretly orchestrates the genocide of telepathic martians. J'onn notably defends his brother from the martian council initially, telling them that Ma'al deserves a chance as a new person, only to be proven wrong. By issue #9, the twins have a final battle with each other in the present. J'onn reinstalls Ma'al's telepathic abilities and memories, reactivating Ma'al's weakness to fire and letting him burn in the sun.

And that's Ma'alefa'ak's first debut! A standard trickster evil-twin villain who dies in his very first story. He does show up later in this solo run, but it's with a rebooted origin. So they're kind of like two different Ma'al takes in the same run.

Let's talk about this first version! We're dealing with a very typical evil twin character; he's described as the evil parts of what was supposed to be a whole person, while J'onn is all the good parts. There's a semblance of themes surrounding disability and destined good/evil, but it's only touched upon in this first take. One of the core flaws to Martian Manhunter's longevity as a solo character is his underdeveloped moral code and themes. It's the reason why J'onn doesn't have a stable rogues gallery, because he just kills them. He will SAY he has the basic moral high ground of "killing is bad, life is sacred" but he has no problem tossing his villains into the sun before acting upset about it later. J'onn lets his brother burn, but the narrative feigns him to have concern afterwards over how he couldn't save his poor brother. It's an odd read.

J'onn's "killing is bad" moral code also doesn't bounce off against his evil brother in a meaningful way. Ma'al wants to kill all martians so he won't be the freak martian anymore, but then what? He could go to a planet like Earth with no telepathy where he'd be normal, but instead he just,,, buries himself under some rocks to sleep until he realizes J'onn is still alive- which gives him purpose again. It's funny in a petty way, but meaningless considering he is now 50% of the martian population. While I consider this iteration of Ma'al's motivations to be shallow ("focused hatred" as a core motivation is short lived and unideal for the longevity of a recurring rogue), I do find Ma'al's shenanigans impersonating both J'onn and League members very fun to read.

He's a true equal to J'onn and while his immunity to fire wasn't explored as much as it should have been, it's no wonder this first impression gave Ma'al his iconic status as Martian Manhunter's arch nemesis, there's a personal connection between them as brothers. It's a familial short-hand for a deep relationship between hero and villain, but it's something to work with. Because even after death, Ma'al is still a revisited character.

Honorable mention time! The "DCU Villains Secret Files and Origins" (1999), featured an exclusive short comic on Ma'al's section that foreshadows the shapeshifting shenanigans he's about to pull on the League. His character page describes him as being born without telepathy even though that's proven to be untrue. We'll discuss the ableist narrative of having a disabled martian seeking to destroy all able-bodied martians in detail after looking through more of his backstory. Also, in the Secret Files information, Ma'al's marital status is left ambiguous for some reason. In case any of you were wondering if he was single.

Up next, Ma'alefa'ak returns in the 3-part flashback arc, In My Life (issues #33-35)! This story contains the most extensive characterization of Ma'al in the comics. In this storyline, we get to see J'onn and Ma'al's twinly birth. Sha'sheen and M'yrnn (J'onn and Ma'al's mother and father respectively) give J'onn a blessed name, while Ma'al is given a cursed name that prophesized darkness within him. Great favoritism on the parents, there. As the two grow up, J'onn is treated better than Ma'al-who is ostracized as someone vaguely "difficult". Despite this, J'onn cares about his twin dearly, constantly defending and giving his brother the benefit of the doubt. J'onn confronts his precognitive mother, and asks why she gave his brother a name that alienates him from martian society. Sha'sheen avoids answering directly and instead explains that before J'onn was even born, she had visions of a terrible future where a martian champion who would "embody the very best aspects of our race" will be needed. "Ma'al's name serves as a warning", Sha'sheen says.

J'onn grows up to be a manhunter like his mom, while Ma'al becomes a theologian and quantum physicist. At a big council meeting, Ma'al opens a portal that allows the people of Apokolips to visit Mars. The Apokolips people are friendly at first- asking around for an anti-life equation- but then quickly attack with an army and kidnap a bunch of Martians! They've taken Ma'al and M'yrnn too! J'onn goes on a quest to rescue his friends and family from Apokolips.

In the next issue, J'onn traverses Apokolips to free the kidnapped Martians and meets his love interest: M'yri'ah. He finds a traumatized Ma'al, whose mind has been experimented on by the people of Apokolips. J'onn also finds M'yrnn, who has been so horrifically tampered with to the point he is beyond saving. J'onn manages to save a group of Martians and head back home to Mars.

In the last issue of this arc, it's revealed that Ma'al is feigning being messed up by Apokolips. He's actually working for Darkseid and is snooping around for the anti-life equation! Meanwhile J'onn gets happily married to M'yri'ah, but before they can get-funky-Martian-Style, M'yri'ah feels her mind is being intruded on and is traumatized. An emergency council meeting is called, where we learn several Martians have been telepathically violated. Sha'sheen asserts -because the narrative didn't set up any other suspects- that the perpetrator is Ma'al. J'onn continues to be defensive of his brother and tells his mom they need more evidence before they can accuse him. Meanwhile he orders the manhunters to do a mental patrol while everyone sleeps.

In a sequence that is cosmically funny, J'onn goes to his home where he has it Martian-funky-style with his wife only to hear a cry for help from his mother who turns out to be dead. As a funeral is had in her honor, Sha'sheen's ghost materializes to J'onn. She reveals that she intruded into Ma'al's mind and confirmed her suspicions; Ma'al is Darkseid's servant. Angry, J'onn confronts Ma'al on Venus where the two fight.

J'onn proposes to take some of Ma'al's darkness and offer some of his lightness to heal Ma'al (some sort of Martian fusion I guess?). Ma'al is disgusted at the prospect of being more like J'onn so the two battle it out. I respect an identical twin that wants individuality. Anyway Ma'al loses and is brought back to Mars where his telepathy and memory are wiped away as punishment. J'onn goes home to have it Martian-funky-style with his wife which results in his baby girl K'hym. The ending is very abrupt.

There is a lot to dissect with In My Life. This is personally my favorite Ma'alefa'ak comic because while it's silly, predictable, and really slows down in issue #34 on Apokolips, it has some compelling characterization moments for Ma'al.

"But what am I, dear brother, other than what our mother made me? And what she didn't do to me, Darkseid and Desaad surely did. Am I the villain or the victim in all this?"

Let's discuss! Ma'al is set up to be the dynamic opposite to J'onn. While J'onn is "the best aspects of the Martian race" and is a duty bound to the point he is a law enforcer, Ma'al is an authority-questioning, faith-doubting, anti-establishment, outsider. There's a scene where M'yrnn is teaching young martians the ethics of telepathy: while Martians can read each other's minds, they are still entitled to privacy. To this, Ma'al calls out a double standard: how come manhunters are allowed to break these rules? M'yrnn essentially responds "it's tradition, don't question it." Even J'onn challenged this notion later when the Martian council accuse Ma'al of being the perpetrator of Mind Rape: "in investigating a mind rapist, you propose we rape Ma'alefa'ak's mind as well?". Yet that's exactly what Sha'sheen does to confirm her suspicions. She's allowed to after all, she's a manhunter.

Ma'al's entire reason for opening a portal for people of Apokolips to visit is because he's lost faith in Martian gods- something considered blasphemous by the Martian council. J'onn tries desperately to get Ma'al to assimilate into a society Ma'al doesn't identify with, going out of his way to propose how he could infuse his brother with parts of himself so that Ma'al could be more like him.

"I will not be you! I will not give up who I am! If I am flawed, then I will be flawed! I am Ma'alefa'ak! I will not be you!"

We all yass'd in quick succession. After their fight, J'onn's rebuttal is "You are as you are. Perhaps the only way to change that is to take it all away from you." Absolutely wild that J'onn and the Martian society are the good guys here. There's a story in here about someone who has been Assigned Ostracized At Birth and then dares challenge society's double standards. It's a far from perfect story, Ma'al absolutely victimizes himself as having no agency in following Darkseid's orders- but he came to this point as a result of a society and religion that shunned him. His punishment is to have his rebellious tendencies and memory stripped of him, and in the words of the comic:

"he would be mamed. He would be crippled. He would be given a new identity so that he would become a useful member of our society again. But he would never be fully trusted and he would never know why."

Dystopian!! He's been Martian Unperson-ed like it's 1984 by George Orwell. Of course this doesn't work and continues the cycle of Ma'al feeling shunned by society, this time because he's disabled, causing the destruction of Mars through H'ronmeer's Curse. Maybe Sha'sheen should've just named him something nice.

Immediately I know what the criticism to this is- Ma'al is a Darkseid cultist and telapthic rapist (and eventual perpetrator of genocide), why is it a question whether he is a victim? To this I say, we need to look at the bigger picture: how often are we treated to narratives that frame a rebellious and marginalized character who Has A Point About How Unfair Society Is, but "their methods are just too extreme"? It's the classic MCU villain and respectable-hero dynamic. Villain challenges the status quo, Hero upholds it.

Within the context of In My Life and Ma'al's lore, none of Ma'al's worst actions make any sense. In his first appearance, Ma'al is tried for the crime of "mind rape". However we, as the reader, are not privy to why he did these things. M'yria'h wasn't even written as his victim yet at this point. As she's consoling J'onn over Ma'al's trial, she says "I know how hard this was for you" "he cannot hurt others again". In My Life is meant to show us why Ma'al did those crimes. Ma'al was looking for the anti-life equation for Darksied, which My'rnn explains earlier to the Apokolips guests that "neither me nor my people have any desire for them {the anti-life equation}". Yet Ma'al violates M'yri'ah's and several martians' minds to fruitlessly find the anti-life equation when Ma'al should know that no one on Mars is interested in it. M'yri'ah is re-written to be his victim in this story, because it sure would be messed up for Ma'al to hurt his own twin's wife! Ma'al is oddly unmotivated in his origin stories, was he collaborating with Darkseid all along before opening the portal? Or was he indoctrinated by Darkseid after he was on Apokolips? What about Darkseid's ideas does he find appealing as an outsider?

Then there's Ma'al creating H'ronmeer's curse to wipe out the Martian race so he wouldn't be a "freak" anymore. This is also unmotivated. He had his memory erased, and all that remained was that he may not know why he hates Martians, he just does. So the next logical step was genocide? His motivation is watered down to "vague hatred".

Let's look at the optics of a story about a disabled character seeking to destroy the able-bodied population. Although I don't think Ma'alefa'ak's origin story is as intentional in its implication as some MCU propaganda perpetuates in its "respectable hero" narratives, the story of Ma'al is still the result of something so ingrained and unquestioned. It's reflective of the privileged fear that fights for equality will only result in the oppressed group oppressing the privileged-by doing unto them the same kind of oppression the privileged are used to doing to the oppressed. The privileged cannot comprehend what making space for others looks like, all they know is what it looks like to have that taken away.

No disabled person would go to the lengths a fictional Martian does in their frustration against an ableist society. Historically, it is able-bodied people and ableist society that's sought to wipe out disabled people and their culture. Everything from enforcing laws that ban the use of sign language in schools, discouraging disabled people from marrying each other, and the forced sterilization of marginalized people among many things, all exist with the goal of erasing disabled people. You've heard of fantasy reverse-racism, now get ready for fantasy reverse-ableism.

So why did the writer choose to make Ma'al do these nonsensical things? It's simple; J'onn is the best parts of the Martian race, and Ma'al is the worst parts. In a blogpost, Martian Manhunter writer John Ostrander discuses what went into Martian worldbuilding:

"Tom and I decided we would investigate and explore Martian culture in our version. He [J'onn] was telepathic; his race was telepathic. What did that mean? What were the societal rules? Rape, for example, would not only be physical; it could be emotional and mental. On the flip side of the coin, sex would involve a melding of minds as well as a melding of bodies. With his race dead, J’onn would be forever denied that. He could never again experience physical love on so deep a level."

Yeah their first thought about Martian worldbuilding really was "dang what's sex like for Martians, I guess it's super personal for them". Ma'al telepathic violation of M'yri'ah is not meant to be a deep look at rape culture or how something so vile can happen, it's just a demonstration of what the worst thing someone in a telepathic society could do. It's not even a sexual violation, Ma'al did the equivalent of looking for a secret pie recipe in someone's head, but it's framed as sexual assault by the narrative. That's why it's so unmotivated. Genocide is the next worst thing a person can do, and so that's all Ma'al is known for to most people. These narratively unmotivated actions, detached from a story about marginalization and challenging an unfair society.

And despite all that, telepathic violation and genocide are not what end up being the things future writers keep about his character. So let's continue.

Honorable mention time! In the 2006 comic run: Martian Manhunter The Others Among Us, it is revealed that the Cay'an (a surviving green martian and villain of the story) hates J'onn for letting his brother live! She wishes he was harder on Ma'al so that Ma'al wouldn't have destroyed their home. Ma'al doesn't appear in this story at all, but his influence on Martian Manhunter lore is so strong he still gets a mention and inadvertently spawns another rogue for J'onn.

It sure is weird how the narrative keeps punishing J'onn for caring about his brother. I would understand if In My Life was a story about giving an abusive family member too many chances or how some people are a lost cause, but that doesn't work when Ma'al is marked as an alienated outcast since birth. J'onn caring about Ma'al isn't a flaw to me, it's the one thing no one else in Martian society would do for Ma'al.

Moving along we have 2007's JLA: Classified: The Ghosts of Mars (issues #42-46). So if Ma'al's debut story was about impersonating J'onn and Justice League members to get everyone to mistrust and eventually kill the Martian Manhunter, The Ghosts of Mars is about Ma'al doing all that again but this time he's a dream ghost. Ma'al just possesses J'onn now. The writer, Justin Gray, really did his homework on both Martian lore and Ma'alefa'ak's origin story as there are some very specific callbacks that I enjoyed reading in this run. Rick Leonardi and Sean Philips's art is so appealing too! I love that they committed to Ma'al's edgy design.

So the reason J'onn is seeing Ma'al's Force Ghost (essentially) is that back when J'onn and Ma'al were kids, they partook in the G'amal'Khul ritual- which bonded a portion of each other's souls within themselves. Ma'al has a bit of J'onn's soul within him, and vice versa. What's notable about this incarnation of Ma'al is that despite the fact it heavily calls back to Ma'al's history in the In My Life storyline, it makes one key difference: Ma'al is explicitly labeled as disabled.

Textually it's more like a late-bloomer situation, where Ma'al can't hear The Great Voice in the way J'onn naturally could, but I think it's telling that the writers were willing to label that as a disability. Whereas In My Life and Pilgrimage never even used the word "disability"- Ma'al was only coded that way. You'll notice a still continuing theme of Ma'al needing to "overcome" his "flaws" in order to become a "useful member of society" or "a complete family". This ableist mindset and language is never called out or explored as something flawed in Martian society. It's just a given, acceptable thing.

Ma'al does eventually develop Martian Telepathy enough to hear The Great Voice, and then In My Life events remain the same in their briefly summarized retelling. Except!! For when J'onn is having a ghost-argument with his brother and calls out Ma'al by listing his crimes, J'onn does not mention Ma'al's violation of M'yri'ah or any other Martians. Later on, the ghosts of K'hym and M'yri'ah don't bring it up either. Possibly implying a small but noticeable retcon. Contrast this with his original incarnation, where that was Ma'al's defining crime that led to him being mind-wiped.

[these are from 2 separate pages that I fused together to save up space but please appreciate Ma'al peeping over J'onn's shoulders twice]

However there are some choices in characterization for Ma'al in this arc that are at odds with Ma'al's core themes and origin as a marginalized martian. His goal in this mental-ghost-argument with J'onn is to convince his brother that the Justice League will never accept J'onn as one of them because of anti-alien xenophobia. And in doing so, Ma'al weirdly props up Martian Superiority talking points.

Ma'al talks about how humans can never be faithful to their partners because humans can't shapeshift to keep the relationship spicy and interesting (I'm not joking). Unlike Martians who can change it up every now and then. Ma'al even says that because they're not telepathically open to each other like in Martian cultures, their sense of family "pales in comparison to Martian sensibilities". Having Ma'al flex abilities Martians can do as superior because humans don't have those abilities, in the same arc that explicitly labels Ma'al as disabled, is a bizarre characterization choice. While this version of Ma'al appears to have kinder parents raising him, the larger story beats of In My Life play out just the same. And those story beats rely on Ma'al being ostracized from his family since birth. The entire premise in this arc is J'onn being ostracized from human beings, who judge his more alien-appearance compared to Superman. J'onn even calls this out as racism. Yet no introspection is given over how Martian society oppressed Ma'al as a disabled Martian. So there's a bit of a dissonance in themes here.

Overall while I did enjoy this iteration of Ma'al (his ghost-aura pettiness continues to amuse me), I felt that a better version of this story was told through Martian Manhunter's Brightest Day arc. J'onn is tricked into trapping himself in his mind where he fantasizes about the Justice League sequentially dying off and is given cryptic clues in order to wake himself up. This arc deserves a shoutout because it also continues this Martian ableism tradition, but it's vilified this time!

The villain of this storyline is D'kay D'razz, and she's some kind of Martian scientist who seeks to cure Martians whose minds can't be read but are able to still telepathically read the minds of others, or "cerebrally isolated Martians" as D'kay puts it. She even proposed purging disabled Martians, which the Manhunters didn't like so they imprisoned her for hundreds of years in isolation. We don't get any named disabled Martians, they're mostly props to D'kay's belief and desire to breed the perfect Martian race with J'onn. It's odd that this time ableism is something Martian society and the manhunters disapprove of, since it was something they enforced in Ma'al's origin.

The Brightest Day Martian Manhunter storyline is also another prominent recurrence of Martian telepathic assault. Only for D'kay, unlike Ma'al's telepathic violation that was framed as rape, her goal with J'onn is explicitly sexual. "Rape" by term isn't mentioned at all in D'kay's plot, yet it's absolutely what she did to J'onn: deviously tricking him into hopefully giving her a Martian child. Yet J'onn as a victim isn't something fully recognized by the narrative to the extent that M'yri'ah was for In My Life. There's a larger conversation over the treatment of male victims in DC (and mainstream at large), but I think it's particularly clear in the case of J'onn versus M'yri'ah's treatment.

So our next two versions of Ma'al are more Elseworld takes on his character and they're much shorter to dissect. While I believe Ma'al is at his thematically strongest in these previous comics, I think these are still worth looking into because they continue some interesting staples to his character that we'll see in future adaptations of him. Also this is a Ma'alefa'ak retrospective, we're being thorough.

Get a load of this guy! Ma'alefa'ak appears in 2010's Batman The Brave and the Bold: Invasion from Mars! (issue #18) In this story, Ma'al is reimagined as a white martian. That's right, contrary to popular belief, Young Justice was not the first to make Ma'al unrelated to J'onn and turn him into a White Martian. Oh no, no no. Batman Brave and the Bold paved the way, my friend.

In this version, General Ma'al is trying to bring Martians back by destroying humans on Earth. Even though it can be argued this character only shares a name with Ma'al and little much else, there's some semblance to his character here. Ma'al possesses Batman in the later half of the story, even sporting his Joker-esque smile as he tries to take over Batman's mind. That's just about it, though!

Ma'al being reimagined as an Alien Invader seeking to wipe out humans and replace them with an alien race is a really generic villain motivation (for Kryptonians but especially Martians) so it doesn't stick. This does already show writers trying to freshen up Ma'al as a rogue by changing his Martian race. This Ma'al is the cutest design in the world.

Our last prominent Ma'alefa'ak comic appearance takes us to the infamous New 52, which features a red Martian variant of Ma'al who is once again, not J'onn's twin brother. The New 52 is a reboot where the DC universe gets an overall edgy makeover. For Martian Manhunter, this meant the 12-issue solo Epiphany. While it's easy to write this take off as a dark Elseworld interpretation with no connection to the characters' history, the Epiphany run actually has a ton of call backs to Martian Manhunter history. I like to describe this series as taking all those references and throwing them in an evil, twisted blender. So let's discuss. Since this series relies on a lot of time skips and twists, I'll be describing the relevant plot points as they happen chronologically in the universe.

Long ago, Krypton-uh I mean-Mars, was a technologically advanced society whose people became so arrogant of their progress that they didn't realize their planet was hurting. So the cosmic Spirit of Mars itself decided to psychically send the Martians a vision; a cry for help. Instead, most Martians interpreted this vision as a threat. Many just saw the vision of a large cosmic monster coming for them. Martians like Ma'alefa'ak, weaponized the growing fear and paranoia for his own gain. He convinces the Martian council that they should make a Martian Manhunter; a fusion of all the best Martians to be their weaponized champion against the coming threat. J'onn volunteers to be the soul vessel of the weapon. At the last minute, Ma'al betrays the Martians by slaughtering some of them to perform "Ancient Long-Banned Black Martian Blood Magic" to turn J'onn into a monstrous hybrid.

J'onn is betrayed, but decides to make the most of it by challenging the cosmic monster to a fight. The Spirit of Mars takes the form of J'onn's son and shames Martiankind for responding to its cry for help with violence. It punishes Mars by sucking the planet dry and spitting J'onn off-planet. Ma'alefa'ak seemingly escapes with his troops.

As millions of years pass by, J'onn goes insane and out of loneliness, splits himself up into a bunch of Martians with consciousness of their own and spread them throughout the planet (and the universe I guess). Out of shame, J'onn hides from his past and convinces himself he's a hero with false memories. Eventually in the present day, all of the split parts of J'onn decide they want to return to him as "our god", and they do that through...a fake alien invasion.

The invasion consists of a fake Ma'alefa'ak (constructed by J'onn) and his team of fake White Martians (also constructed by J'onn) who seek to put J'onn into a giant magical beam that would supposedly bring Mars back. J'onn splits himself into 4 new identities to make himself harder to find, but he's found and brought to the beam regardless.

The magic spell goes wrong and instead sends him to a universe where Earth and a resurrected Mars are about to collide into each other. J'onn tries to save both the resurrected Martians and the people of Earth by taking the Martians through a portal back to before the spell happened. Which he does. But as he makes it back to normal Earth, he is treated to the plot twist that none of the Martians (neither the ones that attacked him nor the ones he was saving) were real. J'onn realized he orchestrated the whole thing. And before the reader can think too hard about all the innocent people J'onn killed in his weird roleplay game, the comic ends with a little girl basically telling him "well, at least you tried to do good." J'onn quickly flies away because- yeah I don't think he was convinced by what she said either.

And that's a very brief summary of the New 52 Martian Manhunter arc. I'll go into more detail in the analysis since the story is so overloaded and convoluted that it would take forever to explain every plot point as its presented to us in the comic. So let's talk about themes and how Ma'alefa'ak fits into this story.

One of the other foundational flaws of Martian Manhunter as a superhero character is that he is in many ways, a creatively redundant variation of Superman. Whenever writers try to flesh out the world of Mars, they often end up accidentally re-creating Krypton. In J'onn's limited Rebirth solo run Identity, he's basically a more corrupt Jor-El figure. When both Superman and Martian Manhunter are the last of their kind and powerful, an exciting villain means bringing out another Martian or Kryptonian that seeks to take over Earth to bring their lost planet back. What Epiphany tries to do to differentiate J'onn from Superman is to dip into the cosmic horror idea that J'onn is not who he always thought he was. He's not a hero, he's a weapon designed to attack the Spirit of Mars. The new identities J'onn split himself into are convinced they have fully lived lives and are horrified to learn they're a part of something else. The full horror comes around when J'onn realizes he's constructed all this alien-invasion destruction himself. It's a very unnecessarily edgy end to a story with potential. But how does Ma'alefa'ak fit into it?

Outside of the origin story, the Ma'al we see in this arc is mostly a fabrication of J'onn's mind. Sure he has his own consciousness and we can only assume he's an accurate re-enactment of what the real (probably dead) Ma'al was like, but he's still an extension of J'onn at the end. Ma'al is characterized as a paranoid, violent egomaniac. He casually uses forbidden Martian magic to fuse Martians against their will, and his ultimate goal is to recreate Mars in his image. I highly doubt the writer of this run was referencing Ma'al's more generic re-imagined motivations from the Batman Brave and the Bold comic, but it's interesting that making Ma'al into discount General Zod is a thing that happened twice. So how does this fit into older takes on Ma'al outside of being overly edgy? It's all in the details.

The first time J'onn (as one of his new human identities) meets Ma'alefa'ak in the story, Ma'al and the many White Martians have disguised themselves as humans on Earth. Ma'al takes the form of Leo Chandler, a disabled, wheelchair-using boy paralyzed through motor neuron disease. Out of all the throwbacks to Ma'alefa'ak's disability, this one is the wildest. Leo is introduced as having been kidnapped by his own mother before murdering her himself.

But eventually J'onn learns that Leo is not who he seems. He is Ma'alefa'ak in disguise, and Leo's human "mother" was another Martian in disguise. Ma'alefa'ak's "mother" grew to like humans and decided she didn't want to go through with the invasion. She paralyzed Ma'alefa'ak with her powerful telekinesis into a form he finds disgusting and inferior. Once J'onn's many identities get close to the magic beam, Ma'alefa'ak regains his true form again. This is a surprising mix of many things from Martian Manhunter lore. Ma'alefa'ak being disabled by another Martian, finding humans inferior to Martians, even the part where he kills his own mother, are all callbacks to his original iterations. The missing thematic piece is that Ma'al is not marginalized by the Martians or humans in any way, so we're left with only the cartoonishly evil and generic "bring Mars back in my image" through genocide ritual sacrifice.

This is further contrasted against how J'onn is reimagined in this run. Remember how when J'onn's mother tells him she foresaw how he would become a martian champion who would "embody the very best aspects of our race" way back in In My Life? Well in Epiphany, J'onn is now the ultimate able-bodied best Martian. He is a magic-made mix of the greatest warriors and intellects Mars has to offer. Part of the themes of this run is the way J'onn's unique existence dehumanizes him. After witnessing Ma'alefa'ak slaughter Martians with forbidden magic to complete J'onn's transformation, J'onn tells Ma'alefa'ak "You murdered me!". His new identities have personal crises upon finding out their lives are fabricated. So even though J'onn is Mars' ideal champion, the transformation is a burden on him.

In terms of J'onn and Ma'al's dynamic, we're not given a lot to work with. They're basically council associates until J'onn is betrayed by Ma'al turning him into a hybrid fusion monster. The fabricated-by-J'onn's-mind-version of Ma'al hates J'onn for resisting his destiny as a weapon to bring Mars back. There's something about how Ma'al's hatred of J'onn is characterized in this series that feels strangely familiar. Sure, Ma'al is defined by paranoia and ego, but the hatred almost feels like classic Ma'al's vague and petty hatred. It leads to amazing instances of dialogue like "COME DOWN, MANHUNTER! AND MA'ALEFA'AK WILL RIP OUT YOUR TRAITOR'S HEART AND EAT IT AS HATE FUEL FOR BLACK BLOOD MAGIC!" along with the classic "I HAVE HATED YOU SO MUCH I THINK I LOVE YOU, J'ONN." A real tsundere moment for Ma'al.

There's many other nods to Martian Manhunter lore- but to keep it Ma'alefa'ak centric, I have to point out that the series does end with J'onn talking to Ma'alefa'ak's force ghost. And I find that so amusing as an arguably intentional reference to their JLA: Classified, the Ghosts of Mars arc.

So that's New 52 Ma'alefa'ak. My main criticism for Epiphany as a Martian Manhunter take is that it feels less like a story with a unique voice and more like an amalgamation of annotations, references and citations to other Martian Manhunter stories. There's a great premise at the center of Epiphany; the cosmic horror of realizing you're not who you thought you were, that your existence is fabricated and fake, but it's bogged down with an edgy convoluted story that loses what it wants to say. This is reflected in their take of Ma'al. If you remove all the strange quirky references, he's just discount general Zod of Krypton.

Epiphany is a symptom to a larger core flaw to Martian Manhunter's as a superhero character. If Superman is an allegorical immigrant that symbolizes hope and Batman is vengeance initially motivated by grief that eventually evolves into hope, then what grounds J'onn J'onzz as a character? He may be an alien, but stories exist to describe human experiences. DC recognizes J'onn is a survivor from planet-wide destruction, but its writers don't know what to do with him after the fact. What is heroism motivated by? Why does he choose to protect his new home?

Because they're unable to answer this, we get story after story of J'onn grieving Mars like he's your best friend who can't get over their ex. It's why they constantly revisit his origin story, because they don't have anything else to say about J'onn outside of his grief. This affects his villains too, most of them reverting to just tempting him to bring back Mars. Testing nothing else about his character. This isn't a bad plot to have, but it's J'onn's ONLY plot most of the time. So unless Martian Manhunter gets a major revitalization of his entire character, he can't grow into a self sustaining property. Speaking of revisiting his origin-

It's time for our last honorable mention! With the Rebirth reboot across the DC Universe, we get yet another Martian Manhunter origin retelling. This time, in the form of a limited 12 issue solo series Martian Manhunter; Identity (2019) written by Steve Orlando with art by Riley Rossmo.

Ma'al gets but a single mention in this series, but it's crucial to point out for many reasons. For one, Ma'al is revealed to be a slut. And while I'd love to stick to that one point alone, it's the broader implications of this reimagining that are important to consider in terms of how Ma'alefa'ak has evolved as a character. As of writing, Identity is the most thorough characterization of J'onn's wife and daughter in all of comics canon. It is the first time M'yri'ah and K'hym are fleshed out to have personalities, motivations, occupations and lives. Before this, they were props for J'onn to love and feel sad about. Yes, these two are what Jor El and Lara are to Superman and what Thomas and Martha Wayne are to Batman, but they only got fleshed out all the way in 2019.

In Identity, M'yri'ah works as a nurse who has suspicions about the growing fire virus infecting Martians. After learning J'onn is a corrupt cop who tried to sneak her and their daughter K'hym off-planet before the fire consumed them all, she dies by opening her mind to K'hym's and getting infected. So how does this come back to Ma'alefa'ak? The true origins of the fire virus remain a mystery in this interpretation, so we don't know if Ma'al is still responsible for burning all the Martians through Hr'onmeer's curse. But what we do know is that he's no longer involved with M'yri'ah in any way. Sure she knows who he is, but there's certainly no hint of a violation that occurred between the two. Much like with the JLA Classified: Ghosts of Mars comic, we're seeing the more controversial parts of Ma'al be removed in newer iterations of the character. Because it was never integral to either his character or J'onn's origin story.

I'd love to do a thorough analysis of Identity, since it is both an earnest attempt at revitalizing Martian Manhunter into a solo character while also being a showcase of common pitfalls writers run into when developing his character and world. BUT since this is a Ma'alefa'ak essay, that would be a huge tangent. So that concludes all of Ma'al's current comic appearances, time of writing. Just know that all the stuff we mentioned before about J'onn's lore accidentally recreating Krypton, Superman and Jor El are in this limited run as well.

Earlier in this essay I posed a question about Ma'al as a character; "what is the through-line of Ma'alefa'ak? What do writers decide to keep and re-invent about him? What makes Ma'al, Ma'al?" With the way Martian Manhunter struggles to get a footing in DC comics, it may look like we have an unsatisfying or incomplete answer to that question. When you look at the timeline of Ma'al's comic appearances, it's basically his initial origins, one revisit in a JLA comic, some mentions in other comics, and 2 Elseworld takes. That's not a lot of substantial iterations to see the character properly evolve past a reference. So what now?

This is where we must head into adapted media, because Ma'alefa'ak's story doesn't end with the comics. I think it's crucial to examine the way Ma'al has been adapted because we get to see writers look at the source material and decide which parts of him resonate with the stories they want to tell. It's where we can truly see what aspects of Ma'al endure with time. So join me as we look into the 3 cross-media adaptations of Ma'alefa'ak to finally figure out what is it about J'onn J'onzz's evil twin character that keeps him coming back. In another post!

[kekisu]

a very popular headcanon people have (i Think its popular. at least a lot of my twitter mutuals agreed with me a while back) is that joker comes from inaba, and if youve played p4 you know that theres literally nothing to do there

so a big headcanon that i used to be obsessed with is that he would spend a lot of his days skateboarding or biking around listening to music and exploring old dirt roads.. and he ended up getting a special interest in bugs and reptiles because hed come across so many during his little solo adventures. hes also very well versed in fishing its not a fixation or anything but just something hes pretty good at

this is why i tend to draw joker like some sort of skater boy. i think hes always stood out a lot in this small town even before the false assault charge, like he wasnt disliked or bullied but he just didnt really fit in. and this didnt bother him. i think he only realized how boring his life was when he became a phantom thief and got all these new friends in this new big city that understood him despite the circumstances that led him here. like man i really used to live like that and see nothing wrong with it? i didnt yearn for more?

it makes it even more painful when he has to leave and they naturally drift apart. because they all have dreams and ambitions, and the best years of their lives are waiting for them around the corner. but joker is back in this small town where theres nothing to do but hang out in some food court or poke around in the woods. i imagine this newfound loneliness is really hard on him, not to mention the guilt for feeling like hes somehow to blame for. well, whatever happened with goro

to me personally i think goro lived. i think he mustered up the perseverance to bite and claw his way out of shidos palace after seeing that even someone like him has a chance at being loved, he just didnt really remember this in marukis reality because it was all a blur. so both goro and joker were completely clueless as to what his fate would be if they went back to their true reality, which is what was so scary. the uncertainty. he could very well be dead but how could they know for sure? i just dont like the thought of him dying before he could truly live, even though i understand the tragedy of it can be poetic, i just cant stand for him going out like that because i relate a lot to his struggles. and i think it would go against the overall positive message of p5r. sure not everybody gets to have a second chance or a happy ending, but. man. anyways

joker fully believes goro is dead though. he wouldnt be crazy to assume this considering how they parted ways in shidos palace. but it eats away at him and maybe he really does go crazy. maybe his life feels like its stuck in time and while his old friends are out chasing their dreams, hes stuck. broken and shattered over feeling like he couldve done something to save him, knowing jokers savior/martyr complex

im running out of steam and i didnt mean to ramble on about my post-p5r headcanons but, to wrap it up: goro is in rehab somewhere and has a service dog to help with his dissociation and mood swings. and a couple other stuff. he feels like if he walks back into jokers life itll mess something up like joker will just break down or something. so he keeps his distance until they cross paths again. im just very obsessed with the idea of goro getting his life together vs joker wanting so badly to chase that high of phantom thievery again but failing and being actually so depressed

man morgana must be exhausted

[maximumdante]

TVORNICA KULTURE 10/11/2023

It's still hard for me to process what really happened yesterday. At this point it has been the best concert of my life.

I really thought nothing could beat Tavastia because Tavastia was and always will my first Joker Out concert and the first concert it's always special, right? I was so wrong.

What can I say? The guys were so happy. They had so much energy and you could tell they (Bojan especially) were having a great time in first place. It was fucking great to see them wearing Stožice outfits with my own eyes and to listen finally all the missing songs that were not played on nordic tour. Omamljeno Telo and Padam, I'm talking to you.

Jan proved once again he's one hell of a musician. When he plays he enters in his own world and he transforms. He's crazy, yet sexy, yet so sure of himself because he knows what he's doing. There was a moment where all of them went in the back to leave room for him and one of his solos and my mouth was wide open all the time.

Bojan interacted a lot with us (while both talking and singing) and it was so fun to me because he spoke Croatian the whole time and I was like "whatever you say, darling".

A Sem ti povedal killed me in its entirety because at some point I realised I stopped understanding Bojan words and I realised he had switched to Nisam ti još priznao. He sang it both in Slovenian and Serbian. People died (me). Then came of course our beloved Jance moment and when I saw Jan giving Nace a little friendly puch on his belly and then letting his head against Nace's chest my heart skipped a heartbeat. It felt so intimate.

Last but not least, a special thank goes to @meta1 . We were in touch since maybe a couple of weeks and she agreed to meet me and my girlfriend and we spent a lovely evening together the day before the concert, enjoying Zagreb by night. We even managed to catch before the concert started despite being organised differently (she saw us from the sixth row, we were in the front) and it was so funny. I hope to see you again in the future, you made it twice special.💕

Now, for those who read all of this enjoy my glory moment where Nace saw my sign (Nace, if you love turtles please give me five! With a pic of my turtle on it) and I got a high five plus a pick WITH A TURTLE ON IT.

[creetchure]

Please tell me about your ideas for the fallout for like everyone post gotham war (if not everyone than just Jason is fine too, i am very curious about your ideas for an arc for him)

hi hello!!! my thoughts are more directed to jason because he's the one who went through the brunt of things, BUT i have thoughts on all of them. i also have sort of separate thoughts because of the detective comics anouncement, but they contain spoilers for the future issues of detective comics, so if you don't want that, i'm putting it under read more after this.

also typing this and realizing it's REALLY long, so i'm gonna put a tldr at the end of each character LMAO

first off, dick is never forgiving bruce for this. we know exactly how protective of his siblings he is -- he killed joker for implying having killed tim -- and i can't see him letting this slide, no matter how much bruce pleads the "it wasn't me i was being influenced by the personality i created as a backup". Of course, because they're bruceanddick and they're always in a cycle of coming back to each other, eventually, little by little, dick is going to start working with him again, but i don't think this is something he'll ever *forgive*. or forget for that matter. so to me, this should spark an arc of nightwing becoming more separate from batman than he's been in years.

TL;DR: Dick isn't forgiving bruce for this, but will eventually work with him again

second off. there are a lot of things i would like to see for jason, some more likely than others. ill start by what i *know* won't happen, but would be best for his character imo.

Jason is a character we've seen move forward and backwards so many times, mostly because he sells well, and so the writers keep him stuck in this red hood limbo of eing a loner and making friends, and hating bruce and forgiving him, and it's been the same arc since his resurection, and i'm tired. which is why i think what'd be best for him is an Oracle arc, for lack of a better term.

Jason will never leave Gotham for an extended period of time. it's home to him as much as it is to Bruce. he might go away for a bit (id like to see him in Blud but ill get into that later), but he'll always come back. he also will never give up trying to protect Gotham and the people in it, because he never has. But he can't be a vigilante in the same way anymore, functionally, what Bruce has done to him is profoundly disabling in day to day life, let alone doing things that are made to trigger the panic response.

I don't think that should stop him. Personally, my vision for it is to put him at the head of a spy network, to render Batman obsolete and stop major crime before it even happens (potentially also feeding batman fake info to make him look bad), but like. you could do other things. it's just the idea that i'm going with.

But I do think that unlike Dick, jason is going to forgive bruce for this (against his better sense or wishes. he does understand how fucked this is) because he understands altered states of mind (NOT talking about the pit. talking about good old fashioned brain fuckery). but it's also going to cause a rift in their relationship that i don't see them bridging anytime soon, and Jason *will* be extremely uncomfortable for a long time.

Thats only if they don't walk back the panic thing, though, which i firmly believe they will. a Red Hood solo has been in the works for ages, and is supposed to come p soon, and i doubt they'd start it off with Jason unable to *be* Red Hood. They might not fully fix it, but they'll make it much more manageable.

overall, i'd like to see Jason in Bludhaven after this for a bit. I kind of just want a focus on him and Dick for a while, though I dread what Tom Taylor might write of the two of them. I'd also like a mantle change, but that's just me dreaming.

TL;DR: if it was up to me, Jason would have an Oracle arc and be the head of a spy network. it's not, and all I can hope for is Jason moving to Bludhaven and detaching himself from Bruce for a while

third off, tim. I don't have many thoughts about him, if I'm honest, mostly because he's one of the least directly affected by Bruce's actions, imo. i'm also less of a fan of his character, making it harder for me to see all the implications that this arc will have on him. I do firmly believe that he'll stick to his siblings rather than Bruce, because he does know how to look at reality and call out Bruce's bullshit.

TL;DR: i don't know/don't care enough about Tim to have that many thoughts. he'll pick his siblings side.

fourth! Cass! She isn't really present in the event much (doesn't sell as well i assume) but this is important to me so. To me, this causes damage to her and Bruce's relationship as well, that he'll have to work to fix. She is loyal to the Bat and what the symbol represents before she is loyal to the man wearing the suit, and I think that to her, this is betrayal of the ideals Batman stands for. bruce isn't a hero in this arc, and he's not a symbol of hope like the bat stands for. What I would like for Cass is for her to keep going on the missions, keep doing good, but doing so independantly from Batman. She stops answering to him entirely up until she feels he has made amends and has worked himself back to the standard he used to be. I want her to stay in Gotham, and keep protecting it the way the Bat should, even from the bat himself.

TL;DR: cass should stay in Gotham and be batman and not return Bruce's calls.

Damian is the one i'm not exactly sure i know where the writers are leading, but i can still speculate and tell you what *id* do.

we know that him and bruce are still going to be friendly and on the same side by the end of this from Batman and Robin #1. we also know Damian in that issue is kind of distant, doesn't really stick around Bruce much. Williamson's damian always reads sort of. depressed. so idk how much of that is in reaction to Gotham war or just from the way Williamson characterizes him, but there's that.

Imo, Damian will forgive bruce, but is also internalizing a lot of the bad shit that happen in Gotham war. Bruce leaving him needs to be something that stays, because he's 14 and his dad is his hero and he left him behind *anyway* and that's bound to fuck you up.

So I think Damian is staying in Gotham, and he's staying with Bruce, but he's also going to be dealing with the aftermath of that for a while, potentially up to a boiling point, which i'd really like to see. Also i'd like to see this compound with the fact that Talia left him with his father, and how that computes together in his head etc etc.

TL;DR: Damian will stick by Bruce for better or for worse, and might have a shit time mentally dealing with the aftermath of this.

I don't have many thoughts on steph, babs, or selina, since 1) i don't know selina and babs well enough to speak on their character, and 2) steph hasn't been there much, and i don't have a Vision for her like i do for Cass.

okay. those are my thoughts. Now for those on the tec announcement

right so. forget literally all i've said about bruce, because he's going to die.

I'm not pulling this out of thin air, in issue 1080 of detective comics, it's said that Bruce is killed by the orghams, leading to the entirety of gotham city forgetting him. Now, I have no idea how this is getting implemented, so I can't say much about how the members of the Batfamily will react. But I can say that this is, in fact, the natural progression for bruce's character.

in the past year or so, both Zdarski and Ram V have been talking about how Bruce is getting too old, and putting more tangible, permanent consequences on what he does (losing a hand, zur, etc).

On top of that, he has been made to make amends with Dick, Tim, and Jason over the course of that same year (nightwing 100, cheer, failsafe arc, etc)

To me, this arc is the culmination of months of foreshadowing.

Though i'll admit, i thought they were going to just retire bruce for a little while, not fucking *kill him*. it won't last for more than a few years, he sells too well, but i genuinely thought this would be like a knightfall situation.

when it comes to the question of who gets to be batman (i swear, last paragraph and i'm done), i think that gotham war also serves to tell us that *no one* will be. I don't see Dick picking it up in those conditions, Jason won't either, Tim is scared of becoming batman, and Damian might but they won't really let him. ofc they won't let Cass take up the mantle either.

Woo. hope you're happy with this and tihs wasn't more than you bargained for. i'm a bit insane about this.

[not-goldy]

I think what makes it worse is that while 98% of Jkkers don’t hate Tae, 99.9% of Tkkers hate Jm and actually think this way. I do read aus and the ones I’ve read either have Vmin and solo mates or TKK as friends. The majority are always so wholesome with the drama being between outside characters.

It’s literally a on going thing between OT7 Jikooker fic writer (which are a lot) and OT2 Jikookers about when they choose to support Tae over Jikook. If Tkkers didn’t actually feel that way I don’t think many would have a big problem with it.

It’s the fact that they actually see Jimin as an abusive, homewrecker, who knows no boundaries, that is making people so mad. Also the fact that so many “Armys” are rallying behind the writer/publisher but don’t move like this for Jm or Jk against Tkkers. Jm’s dad was getting dragged for a fan signing that didn’t happen (don’t expect those “Armys to care” but Tkkers were dragging JK’s mom for talking about Jm when Jk spoke to her in the phone…no one care to defend her from Tkkers but you would defend this “book” in the name of “she changed the name”? Who fucking cares about the names being changed? The origin of the book is still what matters.

Did you say 98% of jokers don't hate Tae???

Where🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Were you on Tumblr yesterday????

Didn't see a bunch of them losing it over vminkook comments I kept making on here??

They just as bad. But I don't see them writing fictions painting him as some thorn in Jikook's flesh because he isn't and they know it.

She changed the names to avoid copyright issues. It's just like the After book series on Harry Styles. They even went and made movies out of it. I think 50 shades was fanfic too.

[sizzlingpatrolfox]

Jimin is single single. Not his parents telling him his home looks like a model house lmaooooo

Btw I don’t get why jokers are saying he ignored the elephant in the room regarding the ig pic

He acknowledge it and wished Jk a HB. What was he supposed to say more?!?! The pic is not even romantic. Bros without a shirt hold each other like that all the time

They are ignoring the elephant in the room: Jimin said he called Jk to wish him a HB and it looked like Jk was busy. Does that sound couply to them?

This is proof 35455 that while they are friends they are not updated about each others day to day lives

I've always thought that Jimin's home was uneventful and #plain. I also never really trusted that person who said that Jimin goes to art exhibitions a lot, and even if he did my thought was "he must buy art to give as presents." It's that kind of stuff that only makes sense to me and I could never explain to people why I believed that.

The elephant in the room being shippers' galloping schizophrenia???? As far as I know, he got asked about his moon tattoo and replied to that. There was no question about the photo or about Jungkook being in the photo.

Jimin used to post bon voyage photos only after the episodes were aired. I never expected him to talk about or post photos from the US because it was an official schedule. He was there filming, for work. If he ever talks, or posts about it, it will be once the content has been aired. Which is exactly the way he's moved for the past decade.

A lot of people really forget that they don't see or feel the same way we do about most things. Funnily enough, when it comes to shippers, they usually remember that when it's to talk about their careers or thing "solos" are complaining about. I say "hybe sabotaged Jimin" and they go "Jimin loves Jungkook!!!! You can't dictate how he feels!!!" (which none did anyways, but they immediately assume you're talking about their feelings).

So, they know that what fans feel about something it's not always what the members themselves might think or feel about the same thing. It's the same with these birthday greetings or whatever. They spent years saying Jimin didn't care that Jungkook never posted for his birthday. Well.. the photo might seem scandalous and boyfriend to FANS, but rest assured neither Jimin nor Jungkook see the photo that way.

Not to mention BTS members have been to the bathroom together, they've showered together, they've all seen each other naked, they've punched/grabbed each other's balls. What's even more, both Jimin and Jungkook probably have similar photos with their other friends as well.

I don't even wanna know how they're spinning the fact that Jimin didn't see Jungkook for his birthday, especially considering how they made fun of taekookers and used it against them last year because Taehyung didn't visit Jungkook on his bday. They kept using it as proof that jikook are dating and taekook aren't, but now jikook didn't see each other, so where does that leave them??? Besides, Jungkook might be busy but he was literally out having dinner with other people for his birthday and took photos with fans and then went live. So, free enough to go out for dinner but busy enough as to only fit a phone call with Jimin. That alone tells me it was Jungkook's decision, as almost everything is.

[ryoko-akari]

Heck it gonna continue this with good Joker related batfam angst for ya. Specifically Jason Todd (Robin #1, also Red Hood), Barbara Gordon (Batgirl #1, also Oracle), and Duke Thomas (Signal).

Jason Todd was a golden child and the sweetest kid, to summarize Batman found him in Crime Alley on the anniversary of his parents death after Dick had left to be his own hero and a now lonely bat is looking at this 12 year old street kid who managed to take off all the specially fitted hubcaps off the batmobile and was attwmpting to steal the tires. Bruce adopted him (in Bruce fashion) and he become Robin. This goes on for a while, and Jason is a sweet lil kid whos doing his best, when the Joker decides the mess with him and figures out who he is (there's a whole mess here, basically Jason was trying to find his biomom and Joker figured it out first and bribed her), and this is the famous "Death in the Family" arc. Jason is beaten to death with a crowbar by the Joker and blown up before Bruce can rescue him. Years later however, through the power of necromancy with magic hot springs (the Lazerus Pit) Jason is revived, but he's changed. The pit drove him insane (keep in mind hes 16 physically here) and makes him crave violence. He runs back to Gotham and finds that Bruce is still the Batman, he's been replaced by a new Robin, and the Joker is regrettably still alive. Jason, angry and vengeful, makes up a plan to try to get Bruce to kill Joker, or at the very least, understand why the Joker is alive still, taking on the mantel of "The Red Hood." A callback to what the Joker had used as his alias prior to the vat incident that made him the Joker. There's a good animated film called "Under the Red Hood" that covers this and I highly recommend it. (My only gripe is they went with the modern interpretations that Jason was always the aggressive Robin and destined to be Red Hood at some point which is not at all the case in his original Robin runs)

Barbara Gordon, daughter of Jim Gordon, helps Bruce as Batman, becoming his sidekick along with the first Robin (Dick) and she runs with him late into her adulthood, with her father none-the-wiser. This however changes when the Joker decides to go after Jim Gordon, and finds the best way to do so is through his daughter. The Joker does not know shes Batgirl, just that she's the detectives daughter here. He shoots her in the spine, permanently paralyzing her and nearly killing her (among other unsavory things I'd rather not mention). Jim finds out when the Joker kidnaps him and forces him on a Rollercoaster to watch it all on video screens and through photographs like a messed up carnival ride. Barbara is then on in her wheelchair, but continues to help Bruce as Batman, now as Oracle, in charge of the batcomputer and helping the rest of the family while they're out in the field with research or directions or what have you.

And finally Duke Thomas, one of the newer additions to the family. Duke is a meta-human (think x-man mutant gene) who's ability is to control light and darkness, he can make himself glow, or absorb all light and drown areas in darkness, and as Signal is the only member of the batfam Bruce trusts to act during the day solo (which means a lot when this family is 20+ members and steadily growing). Dukes history with the Joker however is incredibly important to his character, in that the Joker poisoned both his parents directly, driving them to permanent insanity where they went from loving and kind parents to constantly berating, belittling, and downright verbally abusing him and treating it all as "funny jokes." Duke is constantly haunted by what they've become, along with many other gothamites, and considers it his own fault (its not) and has an active grudge against the Joker as a result. However he's generally fairly passive and would rather be the friendly neighborhood daytime bat than seek revenge.

Whooo that info dump is over sorry again, just really love this universe and how fascinating it is to delve into. And this doesn't even cover everything, like the time Dick straight up beat the Joker to death with his bare fists out of pure rage and Bruce somehow managed to save him with CPR in canon (this was prior to Jason's revival), or the Joker Jr timelines with Time Drake (Robin #3, and Red Robin).

There's a lot of really fascinating and interesting lore with these guys and I'm so tired of the live action films constantly making Bruce out to be a "lone wolf" type hero when he's literally not. He adopts kids like someone would collect plushies and has a massive support network of heroes and reformed villains that genuinely help him try to make Gotham a better place to live.

I was kinda shocked to learn the Joker wasn't the person who killed Batman's parent's and it's actually just some guy???? Lame honestly, imagine the angst that could've been

[arachnesbich]

What if Jason didn't reveal his identity to the family after coming back from the dead?

He comes back to Gotham, becomes the Red Hood, but doesn't reveal his identity and ends up building a sort of love-hate relationship with the Bats. Over time, Hood end up working with them more often than against them.

Like, one day he's shooting(rubber bullets) at Batman, and the next he's giving Robin advice on his English homework and how to deal with his classmates.

(Damian and Jason met in the League, before Jason left to train more and become the Red Hood. So Damian knows Jason is alive, but thinks he's still traveling, training, and going on missions.)

Hood does somethings that remind Batman and Nightwing of Jason, but they don't dig too deep on it. (Just because someone makes a comment that reminds you of someone who died doesn't mean they're back from the dead.)

Hood does things that remind Damian of Jason as well, but Damian assumes that Hood may have met Jason in the League and they may have fought alongside each other.

Until Hood makes a reference to something that happened in the League, something Jason wouldn't tell a temporary ally.

(At first Jason didn't care if the Bats found out who he was, but after he started spending more (less violent) time with the Bat he started trying harder to hide his identity.) (Like, he felt like revealing who he was would potentially ruin the small amount of good he managed to make with the Bats and Gotham)

Damian spends his free time looking into where Jason could be and finds evidence to support that Jason was not only in the same city, but around the hotel Hood was staying at when he went on a mission in New York.

(Hood is in a good enough place with the Bats to go on missions with them and trust they can watch Crime Alley when he goes on missions without them)

Looking back further, Damian can find something linking Hood and Jason more than half the time he goes on a solo mission outside of Gotham. Things like: Jason showing up on some camera in the city; various receipts paid with an alias that is some variation of Jason Peter Todd; and, the most pressing, security footage of Jason undercover, sitting with the mission targets, then leaving ten minutes before Hood arrives.

Damian doesn't plan on telling his family, but does plan on confronting Hood and convincing him to let him see Jason. What actually happens is, Barbra finds him using her system to find someone using various alias' based around Jason's name and brings it to Dick's attention.

Dick asks him about it, the truth comes out and a family meeting is called.

(Bruce and Alfred are told first and they call a meeting after digging up Jason's grave)

Finding out Jason is alive is, at first, fantastic and then saddening. Talia brought Jason back with the Lazarus Pit and turned him into an assassin, but Jason was well enough to travel and visit Hood at the drop of a hat. Where was he? Why wouldn't he come back to them? If nothing was stopping him from going where he wanted and doing what he wanted, then why wouldn't he come home?

The only connection they have to Jason is the Red Hood, so they dig into it. The only way they're bringing Jason home is if they find out where he is and why he's staying away.

Putting Hoods behavior since he arrived in Gotham under a microscope with the added context of being close to Jason, a few instances seem to make more sense.

The familiar nicknames Hood would occasionally call Bruce, Dick, and Damian could have been picked up from Jason. The Hood's innate hatred for the Joker and intense anger at Batman for not avenging his second Robin's death, he must know Jason was Robin and about his tragic death. Calling Tim "Replacement" was obviously a reference to the second Robin as well.

With the way Hood acts defensively (protectively?) in reference to everything involving Jason and the fact Jason visits him and tells him details about their family, they must be really close.

It's Stephanie who suggests they're dating.

-

Stephanie: "So Hood met Jason in the League, they train and fight people together, fall in love, start dating and stay in touch when Hood comes to Gotham. That still doesn't explain why Hood came to Gotham and Jason didn't."

Tim: "Fall in love?"

Bruce: "You think the Hood is in a relationship with my son?"

Stephanie: "I thought we were all thinking that. I mean, its clear Hood is very protective of Jason."

Damian: "... Well, Todd didn't seem dis-interested in men. Hood could have drawn his interest."

Tim: "So Hood comes to Gotham, cleans up Crime Alley, where Jason grew up. He wanted Batman, Jason's father, to kill the Joker, Jason's murderer, to prove he cared and when B didn't he tried to do it himself. As an act of love and support?"

Dick: "This... makes an unfortunate amount of sense."

Bruce: "How so?"

Dick: "Jason comes back to life and finds out Tim is Robin and the Joker is still alive, thinking B replaced them would be pretty devastating. He might be too scared to come back to Gotham at all with the Joker still alive, even when you put him in Arkham he gets out. Jason tells Hood and eventually Hood comes to clean up Gotham while Jason does his own thing, away from Gotham."

Bruce: *Grunts sadly in Bat*

-

I want to continue writing this at some point, but I feel like I've fleshed out the beginning of the AU

[bigskydreaming]

Just FYI, with as much as people talk about Dick not doing anything about Damian trying to kill Tim, it really should be acknowledged that Bruce was alive and well when Damian first arrived and tried to kill Tim. Not that Dick shouldn’t have an opinion on that, but it was Bruce’s responsibility to address that situation, and not something that should be retroactively made Dick’s responsibility. And the second time, when Damian cut Tim’s line, there’s literally no indication anywhere that Tim or Damian actually told Dick that.

So no, much like threatening to throw Tim in Arkham, throwing Jason in there and just leaving him to rot, and kicking Tim out of the Manor and Gotham and not caring what happened to him, the reality is not that Dick didn’t do anything about Damian trying to kill Tim, as the common denominator between all those things is that Dick would have to literally care less about his brothers than he does the average villain or criminal to be capable of that level of callousness so if you believe that’s really his character, well I guess I can’t blame you for hating the guy.....

But anyway, just saying, the reality is that Dick only ‘didn’t do anything about Damian trying to kill Tim’ because Damian was actually around (and around Tim) for awhile after that happened before Bruce was believed dead, DICK was the one who wasn’t around 24/7 at that point in time, so its not him who should be getting the flack for that. You think more should have been done to address that, then I maintain it should be taken up with Bruce, aka the father whose actual responsibility it was to address and who set the tenor for not doing more. So even if you think Tim would have a problem with Dick not doing more to address it after Bruce was lost in time, its still secondary there in the sense that it should only be coming up with Dick after the issue is raised first and foremost with Bruce. Otherwise it just looks like you’re not actually all that concerned that Damian tried to kill Tim and this wasn’t addressed adequately, it just seems like you want another bullet point to notch against Dick’s character on your list of ways he - specifically - failed Tim. 

(And again, if you want Dick held responsible for not addressing Damian cutting Tim’s line, please show your work and first WRITE Dick’s response to being INFORMED that this happened, before you leap into just implicitly assuming that he just wouldn’t have an opinion on this, because uh, Facts Not In Evidence, whereas the counterpoint that Dick actually would very MUCH have an opinion about this, in fact, can be supported by the entirety of the 90s Robin and Nightwing solo series, as well as miniseries events where Dick famously did things like beat the Joker to death with his bare fists because he thought Tim was dead and the Joker was mocking Jason’s death on top of that. But again, there’s no evidence Dick EVER knew that Damian went that far. All that was shown was him coming across Tim and Damian in mid-fight, breaking it up, and on the next page, he asks Tim what happened FIRST, and all Tim EVER said was that Damian jumped him. There is no reason to believe Dick ever had cause to assume it was more than just Damian instigating a fight, which Dick WAS shown being concerned about and looking to address, and Tim told HIM that it was fine and he and Damian were likely to just continue being him and Damian. There was no big conspiracy of neglect where Dick just willfully chose to turn a blind-eye to Damian actively plotting Tim’s murder with Dick’s awareness and choice to simply do nothing about it.)

[wesavegotham]

So from what I am reading here, my decision not to read the new comic run for Damian was not wasted? Jesus and here I was hoping DC could prove me wrong.

It's complicated. It's just the first issue out so far, so it's kinda hard to tell where this is going. That's why I wrote that I hope that I'm proven wrong.

I liked the middle part of the issue. The fight against King Snake, Damian reading slice of life manga and talking to Alfred in his mind where all nice and fun moments.

But I was underwhelmed by the first few pages and really disliked the ending. I think I've already talked enough about why I disliked the ending, so I'm going to explain some more why I expected better from the first few pages.

I was slightly annoyed that the book introduced Damian through Bruce's perspective because I think we had more than enough of his perspective on Damian, like, this is not Batman's book, go back to your own 10+ books to tell me about all the bad qualities your son has. Which leads me to my major complaint about the first pages. Is it really so hard to let the characters that are supposed to be closest to Damian say something nice about him?

If my family was searching for me (weeks after I went missing might I add) and all they did was talk about in which ways I suck and how I cause trouble everywhere I go... I wouldn't want to return to them.

What DC has continued to fail at when it comes to dealing with Damian quitting as Robin and leaving the batfamily is making it feel like it had an impact and that the people he left behind even gave a damn.

In Nightwing, after Dick got his memories back they gave us this "lovely" panel:

In Joker War, after Bruce called everyone, nobody even noticed Damian wasn't there:

And we know they didn't even notice because it took Bruce telling them about it in Detective Comics (after Joker War) for them to realize he was missing:

That was their only reaction to that. No worry. No shock. No questions. Wow. Oh, and then Duke changed the topic back to what they had been talking about for the previous two pages. I could talk more about this arc, but there are too many panels and pages I want to use to explain my point for one tumblr post, so I will continue this in my reblog.

Also, let's not forget DC's genius decision (so that you REALLY feel like Damian quitting matters) to have Bruce ask Tim to be Robin again in Young Justice immediately after Damian quit:

And, to really hit home that nothing of value was lost, let's just have Dick call Tim the best Robin, in a situation where we currently have two Robins:

That's not devaluing Damian at all!🙂👍

Sorry Damian, even if you return to your family, you will never be as good as your predecessor. Why do you even bother?

So...yeah. All I wanted from those first few pages of Robin was a bit of love for Damian, you know, because it's his solo book and it should be on his side...and instead I got Bruce listing bad qualities Damian has. Why are they even looking for him now, it's not like it was ever established that they missed him.

[fancyfade]

[image: 2 limited palette (blues and greys) panels from robin 1993 #0 first showing jason todd as robin, bruce wayne as batman, and harvey dent as two face. jason is jumping and kicking two face in the chest. tim drake’s narration reads “But Jason was reckless. The role of Robin turned him into a daredevil. He took chancse. Openly defied batman’s orders. and that’s what killed him. he went solo against the joker.” next panel shows from jason’s POV the joker swinging a crowbar at him. end image]

As opposed to the other Robins, who have never taken chances, defied batman’s orders, or gone up against the joker alone, especially not in one of their own solo miniseries

[kadeu]

Accepted — Hyun Soomin

♣   Hyun Soomin looks like Kim Chungha (solo) ♣    She was December 17, 1918; making her 106 but she appears 25 years old ♣   This Kumiho is Pansexual, Heart Defector, and a Three of Clubs ♣   She is an attendant at the Dragonfire Hotsprings and an errand girl

BIOGRAPHY

Bora was born to a single mother, a three of hearts serf full of dread and regret. It wasn’t always like that, though.

Her mother was a thousand years old kumiho who had been aging quicker than before during the past century, due to the stress and poor quality of life she led after losing all her money and, with that, her previous nine of hearts rank. Being a successful drug merchant wasn’t exactly the safest profession, with fierce and ruthless competition to go against it didn’t come as a surprise, even though it turned into a traumatic, life changing experience, to be framed and driven to bankruptcy. Never married to the father, he took that as a chance to abandon them, since his rank hadn’t been affected by the scandal. She lost everything except for the baby in her womb. All the way down to a three and with the little savings she had outside the Zuihuo Bank -not enough to change her rank- she was left with a huge debt, a large belly and almost no options for a new job. Homeless and having a hard time facing reality she wandered around directionless. She almost didn’t survive giving birth to Bora if it wasn’t for a spade healer that took pity on the kumiho trying to do it alone in an alley, her water breaking in the middle of the Joker moments before. Wondering what would be best for her and the baby, deserting hearts and trying to join spades seemed like her best bet, but she never made it to the spade territory. For some time, other lower rankers in the heart faction helped her and the newborn survive, she didn’t even feed in a long while because the stress caused migraines and slowly drained her power, but the incessant cries of her baby drove her insane until she reached a turning point. If she wanted to survive, if she wanted Bora to do so, she had to let her wild nature as a kumiho come out and be as ruthless as they were to her. The day Bora turned one year old she went into a feeding frenzy. She stole and hunted. She lied and deceived with her illusions. She hid. Every human heart and every human kidney she could get in her hands was split into halves, one for her and one for Bora. She wanted her daughter to come into her power as soon as possible while she gained enough strength and courage to initiate her next move. It came soon as a conclusion that it was either selling her body, taking part in morally dubious business or serving a rich family, and if she was going to do so, then the family she was indebted to was the most reasonable choice. At that moment she didn’t have a place to call home, nor any income. It was a blow to her already humiliated soul, but she would take it for her daughter. You would think an infant wouldn’t notice any of this, but Bora knew and felt, she absorbed all of it as she watched her mother work and take care of her at the same time to the point of exhaustion. Years later, when Bora was old enough, she began serving as well under the name Wisteria. Every serf working for the family received the name of a flower, and she decided to take the meaning of hers as a mantra; longevity and endurance defined foxes accurately. In a fresh bank account, she saved and saved, hoping to one day rise in the social scale and help clear her mother’s debt. It was harder than it seemed though, not earning much as a serf led her to contact people in the darkest alleys of the heart borough whenever she had a chance to go out. She ran errands for the house and for a drug dealing gang always going by Wisteria and not her birth name. A kumiho’s illusions and transformations came in handy for many things as it would appear. Her mother wasn’t happy with her decision, but Bora couldn’t stand watching how the serving life was weakening her day by day. It took decades to take a step upwards. Many times, she thought it would be impossible, but keeping an eye on her own -almost nonexistent- expenses and limiting her social life she became a four of hearts. Did anything at all feel different? No, but it actually gave her the opportunity to consider other means of living.

IN RECENT YEARS

Even though it sounded like a good idea, Bora never left the family she worked for, not even when she made it as far as five of hearts. She couldn’t leave her mother there, still being paid with just food and a bed to sleep on. There were so many things the young vulpe could do now, but she had grown used to the job, the faces and the fake sense of security that even her questionable side job gave her. And still, every once in a while, she could feel a tingling sensation all over her skin, her blood rushing through her veins and her trembling hands trying to reach for something invisible. She couldn’t help but wonder if this life was really meant for her.

Sooner or later things would change -her gut told her- but the way it happened marked her whole existence and dictated her future.

In the middle of the 2023 winter, January, her mother passed away. Depression and anxiety took her slowly over time, but too fast for a kumiho. She hadn’t turned into her fox form in a long while, even though Bora tried to make her. It was like she was giving up and her daughter couldn’t do anything but watch her fade away.

Was it unfair to feel betrayed by her mother and those she worked for? Bora didn’t know. All she knew was that everything hurt. Becoming orphaned and indebted by inheritance, which automatically demoted her to one of hearts, were never in her list of aspirations. Even the family she served for years started treating her differently, even though she was the same person. Her own existence started losing its meaning.-“Sorry for leaving so soon, Bora. I don’t know exactly when it’s going to happen, but I can feel that I won’t stay with you for much longer. Take care. You’re the only reason I haven’t left before. I love you.”

It was written on a letter she found among her mother’s belongings, next to a stack of older looking ones that after inspection revealed the strangely close relationship her mother maintained with a club, and not just a lowranker like her, not even a regular highranker like she used to be, he was a jack of clubs.

Making sure her tears didn’t smear the ink on the letters, she read through all of them, starting from the most distressed looking, the oldest. She learned that they met through work around the time her business saw enough success to branch out to other districts. Their relationship seemed merely professional at first glance, but Bora quickly caught up with the little affectionate terms and endearments they exchanged more and more frequently. It was also very clear that her mother was already involved with Bora’s father, but it didn’t seem to affect their mutual flirtation. She also learned that he was a kumiho as well as they casually talked about feeding, transformation and everything that was quintessentially a fox spirit’s concern.

Bora wondered if they got to meet in person and how often. If their longing for each other ever saw compensation. Hyperfixating on the letters for a whole month kept her from drowning in the despair she felt every time the world reminded her of the current situation and when she finished the last one, already more than ten years old, an epiphany took place.

Maybe this mysterious, at least in her eyes, jack of clubs was her ticket to a new life. All she had to do was leave everything behind, unpaid debt included, and flee towards the club district. They wouldn’t send anyone after her, right? They didn’t care for her mother until she offered herself in exchange for a roof.

Meeting him wasn’t as easy as she initially thought, though, the club borough was recovering for the recent civil war after all, everyone was extra vigilant. It turned out to be hard enough just to find his whereabouts, not to mention he was surrounded by heavy security, a necessity for a drug and gem trader, plus there was no apparent or justified reason for him to direct his attention to a one of hearts kumiho that had nothing but the bag she carried on her back. Unfortunately for him, Bora wasn’t going to give up as she couldn’t turn back. There was nothing but emotional pain waiting for her back in hearts. Yes, in clubs she would have to endure the physical kind, but her determination wasn’t running low.

It was during the third of her futile, middle of the street at night, ambushes that she mentioned her mother for the first time since she died, in a cry for help as his bodyguards slammed her to the ground. That was enough to discreetly take her back to his place and hear her out.

It was then when Bora learned his name, which the letters didn’t mention for privacy matters. Kwon Iseul sounded as serious as he was, at least from what Bora could grasp during the first conversation they had. He agreed to help her, but only under a long list of conditions that included a fake name and limiting most of her activities to the night.

From that moment on she would be known as Hyun Soomin.

Iseul covered her tracks so her debtors back at hearts couldn’t easily find her, a bit of personal rivalry getting in the mix, he also found her a place to stay and immediately commenced the mentoring and training she desperately needed. As kumihos, feeding in clubs wasn’t as easy as it was before, they no longer turned a blind eye much to Bora’s disappointment, but there were still ways that he taught her. Regarding fights, she had no experience, she only knew how to use her powers at a basic level. There was so much to do. A few days later, already in the third month of the year, she was officially a one of clubs under his wing.

Little by little she proved her worth as a warrior, from using illusions to transforming into a beautiful black fox, she used every advantage she had to very slowly raise her rank. Always letting some time pass between battles as the last thing in her interest was to call attention upon herself.

Nowadays she is a three of clubs.

She got a job at the hot springs as part of her façade and to make some money of her own, but until the Dragonfire reopens she just keeps running errands -in the dark and away from the heart district- for Iseul.

PERSONALITY

In the eyes of strangers, Bora is a quiet, observant, maybe even a judgmental person. She usually speaks in a low voice that holds her real personality back, unless provoked. Indeed, this is far from her true self, it’s just a reflection of who she used and fakes to be. Slowly, she is developing a daring and bold attitude that sometimes comes out at unexpected times. She’s simply getting to know herself better now that she doesn’t have to obey anyone. She responds to her sponsor, but she isn’t serving him. Plus, the fights are basically forcing her to be more assertive, she knows that presence and psychological dominance can play a big part when you’re physically smaller than the majority of your opponents. It’s not like she was a submissive small fry before, never acted like one, but it is now she’s finally starting to match her potential.

Smart, cunning, analytical, untrusting, individualistic, dominant, fearless. She is driven by nothing else than proving her own worth to herself, she has found out that she thrives in violence and that she is pretty good at beating people up. Her fighting style is full of tricks and backstabbing.  Sometimes she shows another side of herself, more relaxed, flirtier and charmingly mischievous, a side she’s coming to after meeting new people, mostly those working for Iseul.

Her vulnerable side comes out at the memory of her mother and her mental health, especially during the last few months before dying. She doesn’t like at all talking about her or her past. This also leads to paranoia, wondering if one day someone will manage to take her back to the heart district, her debt still unpaid.

On another note, she rarely shows her fangs, tail, fluffy ears or anything that indicates her nature, which isn’t that common in the club borough and would give her out. Although, when she’s around people she trusts, mainly Iseul, she likes to display her foxy attributes.

She doesn’t discriminate based on ranks, knowing perfectly well what is like to be on the bottom, but she can be very judgmental towards highrankers if they show that very same kind of demeanor.

She has heard of the resistance many times, but she doesn’t care about it unless they mess with her lifestyle. It’s not like she disagrees with everything they stand for, but she obviously can’t accept their policies regarding vulpes’ feeding. Yes, humans are living beings, but she needs it to stay healthy and strong.

Congratulations Kisu your app has been accepted and we’re excited to have your muse on the dash with us.

PLEASE FOLLOW AND WELCOME @cunningtype TO KADEU!

[bandicoot88]

@featherrwbyrnjr, okay, but how can you expect me to see this if you blocked me? Anyway, this is gonna be long, so strap in!

Okay, but it’s not one person, it’s several. I said a friend, but that friend interacts with many like minded folks. I’ve seen it all. I understand what’s going on. I may not be in the fandom, but I’ve witnessed from afar. I’ve seen enough to understand the basics, something you still clearly lack.

Fine, if it wasn’t you, then I take it back that on this occassion, it wasn’t you, tho I’m still doubtful with how much I’ve seen of you and how many enemies you’ve made. It’s not farfetched to assume it’s you. Point still stands tho; don’t shame content creators for making content. Just say you dislike the ship and go (which is 100% valid btw, and if people hate you for it, then those are bad eggs you avoid).

Yeah but... it’s still canon, like, pretty much... While it’s not in your face “I love you”, it’s clear what the intentions are meant to be. One of the VAs did a whole stream, and in one moment, he was asked what he wished he could’ve said that didn’t make it into the game, the line being something along the lines of “we would’ve been great together.”

Sure, VAs are not the creators of the game, but this goes in par with a statement about how the Shuake relationship is supposed to be a love story. It’s not pretty, Goro being an antagonist who is problematic, but... ships are allowed to be problematic. And he even changes and becomes a better person, because of Joker.

Sorry, but that’s false. There are plenty of multi-shippers out there who don’t just “tolerate” other ships but downright engage with it. My friend is one of them, and she even has friends who also don’t like Shuake. What do they do? They mute it and move on, and nothing else is said on the matter. If you’re seeing people that are doing otherwise, then yet again, maybe avoid them and find people who won’t shit on you, which by the way, you seem to bundling all these people in a bucket and labelling them “problematic” when they’ve done nothing wrong. There’s a reason you’re well known...

People have even tried to reach out to you to help you because this is completely not healthy, but all you’ve done is smack away any offered hands. We can only do so much...

Gatekeeping, there’s that word again. Do you not even comprehend what your actions are doing? You’re the one gatekeeping! “Don’t ship Shuake because it’s a toxic ship! Meanwhile, I’m hogging Goro all to myself.” My friend is not a gatekeeper. In fact, she fought back against gatekeepers. She’s a very open person who welcomes all ships and things. She literally doesn’t give a fuck.

Again, if you run into negative people, block them and move on. Not everyone is out to get you, and if you’d only give them a chance, who knows, you might make some friends. Hell, if you realized what you were doing, they might still welcome you, but you are hell bent on burning bridge after bridge until there’s nothing but cinders.

Actually, let me you a story. Last year, there was a BIG ruckess in another fandom I’m in, and it was ugly. Very ugly. Why? Because many of the fans considered one of the characters to be 100% gay. While I also believed he was, I could see the potential of him not being. My friend (same as the above) was also very heavily involved, because she saw him as bisexual.

There’s little evidence that he was anything but gay, but that didn’t mean he just was purely on what we saw. Of course, many did not like this, and a lot of noise happened. I ended up blocking a lot of people and also being blocked in the process, because they couldn’t handle the possibility of a character being bi, even tho it was never stated he was gay, just hinted at.

Besides, it’s fandom, and things change. Sexualities change, gender changes, all things can change. But no, they’re of the purity culture brand, and if you said something that wasn’t the popular thing, you were shunned. It made me consider leaving the fandom, but I remained.

You see... I too have dealt with such people, and there may be a lot of them. If there are, then don’t give them a second look. Seek out people who are open to discussing all and other things. They exist. If you had a bad experience, then I am sorry, okay? No one should feel that way in any fandom. Fandoms are meant to be fun. I want you to have fun. I do. I don’t want you stressing and yelling and pushing people away.

So I had heard that you use to create content for it, but I implore... do it again. Create solo Goro content. By all means, if you truly aren’t ready or don’t wish to, then don’t, but also, don’t let people win. People will welcome your solo Goro content. There’s nothing wrong with solo content of anything. He doesn’t need to be tied a ship 24/7, but he’s still going to be tied to that ship quite heavily, but it’s not 100%. Nothing will ever be 100%, because you’re allowed to hate the ship, and others do too, and that is fine!

2 years then. 2 years... That’s still a long time. Perhaps tho... these people you interacted with have moved on from the fandom, and in turn, in 2 years, many people have since joined the fandom. Perhaps you are comparing people from 2 years ago to people today. If any of those people from 2 years ago are still around, then don’t engage. They aren’t worth your time if you were polite about an opinion that you have no control over. Liking a ship is like liking a genre of music or TV show. You can’t force it.

You are allowed to want to see solo Goro content, and people do, or ship him with someone else that isn’t Joker. It exists. It won’t be as popular of course, because that’s just the nature of their relationship so of course many are going to be drawn to it, but that doesn’t mean everyone is drawn to it.

You realize you don’t have to pay people within the fandom, right? You can just... approach literally any artist/writer and go “hey, this is what I want, yadda yadda”, they create the thing, you get your thing, badda bing badda boom. However, if you did wish approach someone within the fandom, then do so... So long as they aren’t a jackass about your dislike for the ship, they will most likely create the thing you ask for. People like money, so it pays to be open minded about other ships instead of just refusing said money just because they perosnally don’t like it.

To anyone who went after you, that’s still not a reason to lash on other people for them to witness you at your worst. You’re literally not giving any of us a reason to believe you are approachable, but you’re just angry. To anyone who made you feel like shit, then fuck them, okay? FUCK. THEM. But that doesn’t mean others are going to do the same. I don’t think a single fandom is immune to toxicity of some variety. It’s never going to go away, and that’s the price you pay for being in fandoms.

I admit, my sources are not coming from the source, but from what I’ve seen from others. So give us a reason on why you aren’t the person we all think you are. All I see from you is hate, hate, hate. I don’t want you to be unhappy. In fact, I feel bad for you, scared for you even, because there’s nothing but hatred and foulness coming from you. You can’t expect people to see you and go “yeah, this person is totally approachable.” No, you’re intimidating.

If people pushed you out of your lane, then take it back! It’s okay to not like Shuake or any popular ship. If people are dicks about it, then call them dicks, but the others won’t care if you don’t like it. We’re allowed to like different things.

I’ve said my peace.

[mypunkpansexualtwin]

For the hurt/comfort prompts could you do 17/22? If it's not to much of a bother of course.

Absolutely! I was watching Sojiro’s social link again and getting emotional about it again. Apparently I’m just having a Time to Hurt Futaba Week. Sorry in advance? Under a cut cause I have no idea how long this is gonna be, and also trigger warning for references to her past neglect.

17 - “Hey, listen to me. You’re safe. Nothing is going to hurt you.” 22 - “They won’t take you away from me ever again.”

Send me a hurt/comfort prompt and I’ll (hopefully) write you a thing!

It had been three days since Youji Isshiki’s most recent unannounced visit. Three days since he’d threatened to report Akira to the police for having the gall to not let the man deck him. Three days since Isshiki swore he’d sue the clothes off of Sojiro’s back and the cafe into the ground. Three stressful days of waiting and stocking up on medicine in preparation for Joker’s first solo trip into Mementos in the many months since he’d become a Phantom Thief.

Sojiro didn’t know that last part. All he knew was he’d found himself awake in the middle of the night, probably somewhere closer to morning than midnight but not close enough to sunrise to warrant actually waking up. The house was quiet, he was perfectly comfortable, not to mention still tired enough to be sleeping, which meant why he’d even woken up was a mystery. And then something clattered loudly in the kitchen downstairs, followed by a sharp yelp. Futaba. Sojiro didn’t actually think she was hurt, not really. She was perfectly capable of fixing herself a snack and tended to be up at all hours of the night. Nothing out of the ordinary. Really, there wasn’t any reason for him to be concerned, but... it was better to go down and check just to be sure.

He’d expected to find Futaba raiding the fridge, maybe dusting off and muttering curses at an eating utensil that had jumped out of her hand while she was cooking. Instead, she was curled up on the floor, hands pressed to the headphones over her ears and holding on with a white-knuckled grip, tears streaming down her face as she watched the broth from an overturned instant yakisoba spread across the kitchen floor. His daughter shrunk further into herself when she noticed him standing nearby and her shallow, hiccuping breaths were quickly approaching out-and-out hyperventilation. It had been a long while since Futaba had had any issues with food, not like she did when she’d first arrived from her uncle’s care, if one could even call it that. With his surprise reappearance, it wasn’t much of a surprise that she’d relapsed.

In the early days when Sojiro had just taken her in, the only indication she’d eaten anything was the occasional package of instant noodles or container of leftover curry gone missing, “stolen” from their usual spots. A few weeks of reassurances and a well placed sticky note in the lid of a particularly good batch of curry finally got through to her. Sojiro had never once failed in that promise to feed her whenever she asked, no matter what or when, and frequently even made a point of pushing her to eat after she’d started locking herself in her room. Even if she’d healed considerably since then, there were still days the old fear of going hungry or being screamed at for needing to eat lingered and while those scars on her heart may have faded, they never really went away.

It was just one more thing Sojiro hated not knowing how to fix for her. At least he had plenty of practice talking her through it. He stepped over the cooling puddle of broth and settled on the floor next to her, then slowly raised a hand to put on her shoulder. Futaba flinched away at first, but then pressed into the touch. She made no effort to move from where she was hunched on the floor, though, so Sojiro settled for running his hand over her hair.

“ ‘m sorry,” she hiccuped, “I wasted--”

“Futaba.” His voice was gentle, but firm when he cut her off. “Just breathe. You could have dumped out a whole week’s worth of curry for the cafe and I wouldn’t care. Are you alright? Did you burn yourself?” She shook her head. “Can you tell me what happened?” She nodded. “Alright. Deep breaths. Take as much time as you need.” Futaba gulped down a few breaths and inched a little closer to Sojiro as he kept petting her head.

“I had a... had a nightmare. I was at U-uncle’s again because he won... he won custody. He wasn’t letting me eat,” she explained shakily. “Ak-kira was in jail because of me and-and-and you were on the street b-because he took the cafe and... and he was right, I really am cursed--” she sobbed and buried her face in her hands.

“You are not.” Sojiro pulled her into his arms and hugged her tight while she cried. “That deadbeat wouldn’t know a good thing if it punched him in the nose, and you, Futaba Sakura, are the greatest blessing in this old man’s life.” He squeezed her once for emphasis, and she hugged him right back. They sat like that for a few minutes while she got her breathing back under control.

She let out a trembling sigh that shook her whole body. “I just wanted to make myself some food, remind myself that I’m okay. That’s all. Didn’t mean to wake you up. I’m sorry.” Futaba mumbled against his undoubtedly tears-and-snot soaked nightshirt. She took another shuddering breath and tensed in his arms again. “He’s gonna try and take everything from you because of me, because we haven’t been able to--” His arms tightened protectively around her.

“Hey, listen to me. You’re safe. Nothing is going to hurt you. He won’t take you from me ever again. Nobody will.” Sojiro assured her adamantly. “I will do everything in my power to protect our family, understand?” She nodded, arms still locked tight around him.

“Way to go, super dad,” Futaba chuckled weakly, still muffled against his chest.

Sojiro patted her head again with a chuckle of his own. “Nothing super about doing what I should’ve from the beginning.” And then her panicked babbling finally registered in his head. “Wait, what did you mean ‘we haven’t been able to’? Haven’t been able to what?” He asked flatly, pulling back just far enough out of the hug to see the sheepish look on her face. Sojiro fixed her with his best Stern Dad Look in return, then shook his head. “Y’know what, forget I asked. Help your old man up, will you?”

If a bright red calling card turned up with Youji Isshiki’s name on it, Sojiro didn’t need to know anything about it. It wasn’t as though he could be mad, not when he just said he’d do anything to protect the family. Expecting anything else of the two Phantom Thieves under his roof would just make him an old hypocrite.

Futaba disentangled herself and offered him a hand. He pulled himself up to his feet with a grunt and set to cleaning up the sad, cold mess that had been his daughter’s intended comfort food.

“I’ll replace this in the morning.” He said as he dumped the soggy mess into the trash. “So, you have your heart set on instant yakisoba, or can I heat us up some curry before we go back to bed?”

The way her face lit up was answer enough.

[thattimdrakeguy]

TIM DRAKE being ROBIN again IS NOT regression. That’s a misunderstanding.

Tim being Robin again, is honestly the best thing for the character that they could do at the moment. I know a lot of people in the fandom have started after that fact, and therefore aren’t aware why people so many people aren’t happy and want Tim to be Robin again and stay that way, but there’s plenty of reasons why.

---

To me, the argument against it is always based on accepting things without knowing that the events may not have been well-written from the start, or this weird notion that Robin doesn’t mean much and it’s a bad thing for Tim to be it. But to me, that doesn’t make any sense.

I’m not a fan of people who act like it’s weird to want Tim to be Robin again, because they always never really try to process the whys.

They always say “He’s moved on”, or that Robin would be regression.

But that’s all based off of writing that was made to validate the decision, and superficial logic, rather than reading enough to know that the writing wasn’t good, and well, superficial logic isn’t the best.

You can’t just naturally assume all the writing is good as part of the defense to your argument. That’s something I’ve learned just by reading as much as I have.

Robin isn’t naturally regression. Just because Dick viewed Robin as being a kid’s thing, doesn’t mean that’s what Tim thought. 

Just because one person viewed something as one thing, doesn’t mean another will. That’s not how that would work when writing things in a natural manner.

Tim is a fictional character with a certain development and made purpose. To be Robin, he is a character made purely to be Robin, and developed as only wanting to be Robin.

So by that token, what I’m saying is, Tim’s purpose as a character is to be Robin, and the character itself would not want anything else.

That’s generally agreed upon.

But something people accept is that Tim being kicked in the first place made any sense when considering everything.

In the screenshots above, Tim was telling that to Dick Grayson, so Dick would know that if Tim wasn’t Robin, that would mean to Tim that he wouldn’t be a hero anymore. Dick Grayson is incredibly protective of Tim. When he is aware on Tim’s feelings on Robin, and how Dick feels about Tim, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Dick to kick him.

People use that Dick was mourning as well, Damian needed Robin, and that Tim was his equal to defend that. But that’s just the stuff that was written to validate it afterwards, not what made sense.

Tim was Robin for 3 years or so in canon, he is established as not being as good as the other Robins as far as natural talent went. It’s what a lot of his character moments and stories are made out of. Dick was Robin for 8 years at the least, and was a natural talent.

Dick cares a lot and loves about Tim, but he’s also one to shove him out of trouble, and here’s about how not so good he feels. He wouldn’t be blinded by his love to just say he’s his equal when that’s shown to not be the case.

So what I’m saying with that is that them using the idea that Tim is viewed as Dick’s equal doesn’t actually make sense. Tim is still a kid, he was 17 years old at the time, he wasn’t ever as good as Dick and that’s part of his established character, Dick is well aware on Tim’s feelings on Robin, just because one character views Robin in a certain way doesn’t mean another will.

Plus Dick knows and cares about Tim. He’s protective over him. He shoved him out of trouble, technically killed the Joker when he thought he had killed Tim. This is a person who cares a lot about Tim who is his little brother. He isn’t a personality who would just not think about him when they’re both grieving over the same man.

So why does it make sense that Tim would be kicked from Robin in the first place that isn’t contrived?

Who said that Damian needed to specifically need Robin besides what they wrote to validate it?

It’s accepted now because of what they wrote to validate it, but just because they suddenly did it and validated after. Doesn’t mean it made sense or worked.

When by this point they establish that Robin is there to keep Batman level headed, and Damian clearly isn’t going to keep Dick that way. There’s nothing much more than superficial reasons as to why Damian was Robin in the first place.

Not to invalidate Damian’s character, because the thing about Damian’s character compared to Tim is, Damian was made to be Damian, he doesn’t need Robin to work, Tim does.

Nothing really meant Damian HAD to be Robin. He needed a guiding hand and some training. Someone to love him. Robin isn’t needing for that.

If Tim wasn’t ever a thing, of course I think Dick would make Damian Robin, but the thing is-- Tim WAS there, and Dick has too many feelings and personal connection for Tim that makes seemingly ignoring him make sense. Especially when the writers oh so suddenly decided to make Tim equal to Dick, when that doesn’t make any logical sense. Dick may view Robin as one thing, but he isn’t one to just ignore Tim’s feelings on the subject as well. Which makes a lot of difference.

As in, with no Tim, it’s only Dick’s feelings on Robin to go after, and while Dick did make Robin, his personality is a caring one, and he is shown caring a lot and being protective over Tim. Which means that’d he would also consider Tim’s feelings more likely than not. Especially when considering Tim’s clearly very mentally weak. Dick’s the person Tim would call when Tim was depressed, he wouldn’t not know how Tim would feel or treat his feelings as lesser.

In a real world situation, when you have a compassionate person who loves and cares about someone, in a situation involving grief like this, you’re going to take consideration of their feelings to make them feel good.

Damian is there as well, but as said before, nothing specifically meant he had to be Robin. They used a superficial rule rather than using character logic, which isn’t where good writing comes from.

A lot of the people that weirdly get very defensive at people wanting Tim to remain Robin, always use what was written to validate it, while not considering that some people genuinely don’t like the decision, because it goes against what’s already been seen.

Unless you stretch your imagination to make it seem like Dick didn’t care about Tim or some how forgot a very important thing about a person he’s very protective about, or what the established point of a Robin is, it doesn’t make much sense.

(Someones probably gonna look too deep into why I used that screenshot, but it just fit the tone the best.)

Then there’s the assumption that it’s regression for Tim.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Because so much of his character depended on Robin, that he’s been lesser ever sense. At least to a large extent.

Nothing logically make sense about Tim getting a new identity being an actual promotion.

Tim was a character developed to just be plain Robin. He was specifically designed to be the best Robin he could be, and that’s how his character was made, and who he was made to be. A ton of stuff about him was made for him to be ROBIN.

Tim no longer being Robin doesn’t equal bigger and better things, because there’s nothing with substance that says it’s any better.

To put it simply, Tim has flopped since not being Robin, because he wasn’t made to be anything but Robin. His depth, and stories, depended on Robin.

Dick after they aged him up after the cheesy era was developed to stand on his own, practically a different version of himself from the silver age because standards had changed. Him having his own identity wasn’t going to destroy Dick, when at that point, he was more of his own character than the typical ideal of a sidekick.

Meaning that Robin was Dick Grayson, Robin as it stood as a single person’s identity before DC worried about branding, was just Dick in a costume. The specific identity of Robin would not change a thing about Dick besides name and appearance.

Tim’s character was developed to be attached to the hip with Robin. His character isn’t nearly as strong without Robin, because unlike Dick where Robin depended on him, Tim depends on Robin.

Tim was made to be a sidekick. He could stand on his own of course, he did have a solo. But a lot of his solo was based on how he was Batman’s sidekick. That worry of disappointing him. Being kicked from being Robin. Not being good enough to be Robin. Not being good as the others. Robin is so much more a part of Tim’s character than any of the other Robins.

Take Tim away from Robin, and he’s not much. Seeing how Red Robin is based on a very specific reason and time frame, as well as not being as well written as people assume, Tim just flops.

None of that even means Tim is a bad character. It just means he’s a victim of having what made his character worked be taken away.

You make Indiana Jones and take him away from hunting artifacts and he wouldn’t be much either, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad character. He’s just made for stories in a certain way.

When Jason became the Red Hood as well, so much time had passed that he didn’t depend on Robin, and he didn’t depend on Robin as much in the first place. He was made to be Jason, his character wasn’t dependent on Robin either, it was dependent on him being Jason Todd, angsty street kid, who needed more help than he allowed himself to get.

So the reason why it’s specifically Tim that a good deal of fans want to be Robin again, is that because he was so specifically made to be Robin, it’s just when his character works best, and how he even became something else wasn’t even well-written to begin with. He was taken away from what made him work.

Compared to every single of the other Robins, Tim being taken away from Robin takes away depth more than what it gives, because of how Tim was developed compared to them. Tim has the angst of it being taken away, but then what? They just completely changed his character from thought processes, to morals, to general personality. He doesn’t succeed. 

Now that Tim is past that story and all: Who is he and what keeps him interesting?

Red Robin depended on people really buying into his mental breakdown to accept that Tim is more different then ever before. Even Geoff Johns’s Tim who already wasn’t doing the best representing the character.

When the circumstances that made the change in identity is contrived at it is when taking it all in, it doesn’t help it out either.

People will villainize Dick for taking away Robin from Tim I notice, but to me, it just wasn’t in-character to begin with.

I don’t understand the logic of assuming every piece of writing was well-written just because it stuck, because a lot of the time for the past to decades given the standards of DC changing, it just isn’t.

Tim as Red Robin wasn’t the success people think it is. It’s popular in fandom, but it wasn’t a true success. It was something that the readers of really liked, but wasn’t something that caught the world’s imagination. Tim’s former fanbase had left, because you don’t get much out of not truly feeling like you’re reading your favorite character. You expect a dorky, insecure, Robin, and get an angsty, brainiac, loner, and that change only happened through contrived means: A lot of people won’t like that.

Red Robin as a series made Tim the opposite of who he was and developed to be, based on the logic that Tim Drake, a kid who is actually seen in his own series as working past his grief because he’s naturally hopeful things will get better, would have a mental breakdown so great that he isn’t the same personality anymore.

Now that Tim is past that era: Who is he now? What makes him interesting? Where does his depth come from?

He’s a character taken away from what made him tick and work.

That isn’t good character writing. When you give a character in a situation, you have to naturally build on what’s developed about them. Red Robin was written on doing the opposite of that. Hence why a lot of people who knew Tim before hand, didn’t like it.

Why don’t people like serial killer Jason? Cause it was contrived, didn’t go with the natural development of the character, and made you have to really raise your suspension of disbelief to believe that he’d actually go that mad, after already seeing that he only kills criminals.

For Tim, his success came as Robin, his character was made to be Robin, so his character worked best as Robin.

The idea that it’s regression for Tim to become Robin again makes the assumption that him not being Robin made him better, but it didn’t. It took away from him as a character. He couldn’t function properly because of how he was built.

Robin makes Tim more.

Having another identity doesn’t naturally mean he’s a better character. That’s a contrived notion people made because Dick had become a better character as Nightwing, as well as Jason.

The same thing isn’t going to work for everyone, and it didn’t work for Tim.

You can’t naturally assume, just because you only read what happened after, that what happened in the first place was well-written and a good idea.

And there’s nothing to say you can’t enjoy Red Robin.

It’s just that there’s a lot of reasons why Tim going back to Robin is actually a good thing for him.

Just because he’s Robin again doesn’t mean he can’t grow as a character. Tim was more when he was Robin. Robin doesn’t equal no more growth. It’s the position Tim’s best at, he’s still a person, and being a person he’ll grow no matter what. With Robin, it just makes him a fuller character again, and regain his purpose of what he was built for and had most of his popularity with, because he worked best there, and hasn’t worked as well without it.

When you have a job, in the position you wanted, and the position you’re best at, and feel like you’re made for, and you get kicked from it, you won’t feel like you’ve grown, you had something taken away from you and then you’re less.

Tim being Robin again, is only going to add to his character.  Make him feel more like how he was meant to be. And make him a more functioning character with a purpose.

Tim being Robin is a good thing.