#DC fans really need that

[imthenextrobin]

small christmas themed skit before it leaves my mind forever (yes i know it’s november)

The Batfam takes every holiday very seriously. No they don’t i’m lying, they joke every holiday, and it’s the same four people trying to actually make plans within the family. (no i won’t elaborate on who those four are)

However, when it comes to Christmas, they have specifically set rules in every. single. aspect.

Gifts? Rules

Decor? Rules

Invites? Surprisingly lenient in that!

Clothing? SO MANY RULES

(no Dick, you CANNOT wear that sweater. Duke i see you looking online, take it OUT OF YOUR CART!)

Elaborating in the gift rules; Gifting items aren’t required but everyone does it due to the immense amount of guilt tripping everyone does after christmas.

(Jason forgot ONE gift and Steph still brings it up whenever he gets a bit too sassy with her)

Typically, everyone gifts at least 2 per person, one is something bought from a store, no card limit as long as it’s reasonable. (Rule was made after Damian tried buying a whole country. It was for himself.)

However, the second gift would be either self made, or personally altered to fit the person it would be given to. It isn’t an actual rule, being more so something that would be tradition after Cass made everyone cry with a personal painting. (She had teamed with Damian that Christmas)

The second gift would always be more personal, the batfam choose to open those in more private areas in the manor, meeting in sentimental rooms and even privately gifting those to each other prior to the exchange.

Lots of rules are involved in the Christmas fun, and those were just some in the gift giving. Imagine the clothing?

[bitter-hibiscus]

The real truth is that every single Jason Todd ship exists only for his benefit, and not his partner's. It's not just Jayroy, though that may be the most extreme example of it alongside jaytalia. Any character who is romantically involved with Jason has to be bastardized to some level, either because their morality would make it impossible for them to be with Jason (Roy, Kyle, Kara, Steph, Barbara, etc) or because Jason's character would go entirely against what their character needs/is working towards (Rose, Artemis, Kori, Slade, etc). It's always about what Jason needs and what Jason could get from that potential relationship, because he doesn't really... have anything to offer. Jason as Red Hood centers his story in violence and self-isolation. Even in his current The Hill run, where he's learning to trust people yada-yada, he's lonely. Because he chooses to be. And that's why every Jason Todd ship feels forced if you're a fan of whatever partner of choice, because Jason isn't at a point of himself and his life where he can offer anything in a relationship. Idk word vomit sorry

[arielrothbart]

Saw these little figures online, and I decided

Harvey needs one too!!!

lol, anyways, just for fun… not real* sobbing*

[phoenixcatch7]

In love with the idea of captain marvel being Billy's imaginary friend. Like, it'd be so easy. Early depictions had them as almost fully separate people sometimes, like one soul with two minds, rather than just two filters like we mostly see now.

But imagine a Billy down on his luck, hurt and hiding from police and criminals alike, daydreaming the hours away as children do, taking inspiration from all the superheroes rising to fame, making little stories to play out his dreams of saving the world with a generic action doll he found while dumpster diving once. Most of the paint's rubbed off.

Red's his favourite colour, his comfiest jumper is a bright ruby even after all the grime and washes. Gold, too, it's shiny and warmer than silver! A hero cape is a must, big and eye catching! And he can fly, of course, like superman, and in his daydreams, when he's sore and frustrated after a long day's grind, his superhero is smart enough and knows all the right words to get the bullies to stop without resorting to fighting.

His superhero fantasy is one he spends a lot of time on, the first one he goes for when struggling to sleep at night, and he can picture it so clearly. Captain marvel is big and bright and kind, strong enough to lift the boxes for the old lady up the road who's moving all by himself, fast enough to catch Jamie who fell out of the tree on Saturday and broke his leg and couldn't come to class for weeks. He appears at the entrance to alleys when Billy is cornered, he steps up behind to cover for him when he gets caught shoplifting, he sits at the bus stop with him when it's pouring rain and the right bus doesn't seem to be coming.

And then the wizard comes, or rather whisks him away, and like a magician from a fairytale breathes life into his imaginary friend until Billy feels thrice his size and a million times more invincible.

From then on, captain marvel is a real hero, just like Billy is a real boy, and as one they save the whole city, and then the whole world, and get cats down from trees and help Mrs Victoria move the last of her boxes and she gives them a pinch in the cheek and cookies for the road and sometimes it hurts but it's so much better than he imagined.

[tacagen]

one of the things that fascinate me about thawne: yes, he CAN be normal with kids! surprisingly normal!

((not at all times, though. his mental illness still spills through and as usual he, in trying to manipulate or hurt others, spits out at them the exact stuff that would hurt him (or have in his childhood/barry's rejection interpretation) the most in the first place lmao))

but at the same time. his like second instinct when doing his bullshit is FUCK THEM (as) KIDS

(and, well. whatever this classifies as)

[introspectivememories]

tim and bernard who break up and it's nothing big, no one cheated or anything. it's just their lifestyles didn't work out well together. tim cannot give up vigilantism currently and bear cannot handle the level of danger tim puts himself in. and on the other hand, tim cannot handle the fact that bear chooses to run into danger as an emt bc he already worries about everything but now he has to worry if he'll find his boyfriend convulsing from fear gas in a random alley but also bear who felt the life drain out of darla cannot stand the thought of not helping people and runs headfirst into dangerous situation after dangerous situation hoping that every person he saves can somehow make up for the fact that he could not save darla.

(he very pointedly does not think about the fact that there was nothing he could do because if he thinks about that, he'll spiral until they have to lock him in arkham too)

and so they break up but they were tim & bernard in high school and when they started dating they balanced out the worst of each other and they became tim&bernard. and everyone who knows them, knows that they're better together but they cant be together, they refuse actually because they cannot lose another person to the violence of gotham and by the time they figure out that they cant work together as long as the other is an emt or vigilante, it's too late for both them. they've already left too many pieces of themselves in each other.

tim still knows what bear means when he says "tim" in that exasperated voice. tim still goes boneless when he hears bear say "baby" in that firm tone. bear can still read tim like a book. he still knows the right way to massage tim's neck so that tim can go to sleep. everyone at the first responders gala knows not to bother ceo drake-wayne and senior emt dowd when they're talking.

(and if they're standing a little too close to each other than what is normal, who are they to judge? everyone knows that dowd and drake-wayne have history)

and if everyone on the night shift has caught red robin with his head tucked into the crook of emt dowd's neck as emt dowd runs a soothing hand up and down the vigilante's back, well then, they just quietly back away.

(after all, dowd's one of like, five, emts that can get the bats to receive medical treatment so if turning a blind eye to whatever the fuck they have going on is what allows them to give back to their heroes, then the night shift will do it every time)

and of course, tim and bear are practical people. they loved (love) each other sure, but when your lives are fundamentally incompatible, well, you cant get too stuck on the what-ifs, that's for sure. and so they do find love with other people and yeah, maybe it's not what they expected love to be when they first fell in love with each other. it's not the bubbly, stomach-swoopy, cant stop grinning, feeling that permeated tim&bernard's early days or the i Know you/you Know me that was their middle or the quiet despair that was their end but it is contentment. and in a life with as many losses as theirs, contentment is something they hold dearly

and they're happy! truly! but sometimes, at galas when they're making each other snort champagne out their noses or in darkened alleyways when their clothes are both stained with blood or at rallies for stricter gun regulations in gotham where they both sit too close to each other, fingers enclosed around each other in a death grip, when the presenters inevitably bring up grieves

(worst school shooting in gotham in decades, there's blood on their hands and blood in their mouths and darla is dead in between both of them and there is a chasm so wide that they are screaming to get their voices across and she will always be dead and maybe this had always been the problem that she is dead and there is no coming back from that and that there is blood on their hands and blood in their mouth and blood on their han-)

but sometimes, most especially on opposite sides of the street, as life pulls them in different directions, just sometimes, they see each other and just for a second, nothing too long, the flap of a hummingbird's wings, the time it takes to blink, an electron's orbital, they look at each other and for the briefest moment, blue on brown, a barely noticeable stutter in their steps, the space between heartbeats, because this is all they will give themselves because they do not dwell on what-ifs or what-could-have-beens, or what-should-have-beens, or delusions of a softer world, their eyes meet and they think to themselves, god, in another life, i would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with him.

[dailymothanon]

A sketch of Gov in the new episode 🐶! I always kinda imagined Gov to look pretty much how he is portrayed in the episodes tbh so I never bother to make him that much of a separate design 🤔 BUT also this is an excuse to educate y'all on federal land. It will be under the cut for those who wanna learn.

What does Federal Land mean for a state?

Well, this is something I think a lot of folks in here (the fandom) needs to know, because I just see people jump to conclude Gov is horrible towards Nevada. That is not the case.

This is just the basics, but federal land literally just conserves, manages, and protects natural resources and wildlife. For example, national parks are federal lands. You'd notice this because of how western states tend to have more wildlife than the east. And how federal land is mostly administered by agencies such as the BLM, FWS, NPS, and USFS, which all are catered towards handling wildlife and resources.

Federal land also tends to consist of land that states cannot easily manage or utilize, which for Nevada it's pretty easy to notice, as most of Nevada is semi-arid and desert, meanwhile land more available to use, like by rivers and other water sources are not usually federal land.

Historically, up until 1976, you could easily just claim a homestead of hundreds of acres! The Federal Government just ended up taking what nobody else really wanted because they couldn't live there anyways. It's why Nevada has so much Fed Land, and now that land is managed by agencies; and in Nevada's case, most of it is under the Bureau of Land Management. This is why Nevada's population only resides in no more than 20% of the land. Because they bought it as they could use it and live in it, even then they don't use much of the full 20% that is accessible to them.

And it's not as if federal land is completely off-hands, people hunt, hike, camp and fish in federal land all the time! Take Alaska for example, who's 60%+ federal land, in terms of Alaska's size that's a LOT of land, yet Alaska is one of or the best state when it comes to fishing and hunting either way, and Alaska's natural beauty remains largely untouched and unbothered (at least directly).

There is also the fact that if a crime is committed on federal land, it instantly becomes punishable to a higher degree than it would on state grounds, as it becomes of federal interest.

So no, Nevada being 80% federal land isn't bad for him. It's just Gov taking up and protecting what Nevada can't really utilize or manage easily.

[winteriron-trash]

rdj the (whitewashed) electric boogaloo

This is a reminder to everyone who's excited about RDJ's casting as Doctor Doom that this casting is whitewashing. Victor Von Doom is a Romani character and has been a Romani character since his introduction in the 1960s. (Fantastic Four Annual #2 [1964]) Not only that, but his Roma identity and the persecution he and his family faced due to it is integral to his character, it is what forms his identity. (Books of Doom by Ed Brubaker) Even if on the off chance this casting is meant to not be Victor but instead be some variant of Tony or whomever else becoming Doctor Doom, it is damaging to the character to rob him of that important cultural background. Doctor Doom does not exist without that history. Fans have been pushing hard to cast Doom as a Romani actor for years, especially since the MCU has whitewashed other Romani characters. (Wanda, Pietro, etc) This casting is not a celebration moment, it's fucking heartbreaking that the MCU repeatedly ignores the important and nuanced cultural backstories of characters.

I know I can't change anybody's mind on whether or not you want to be excited about RDJ's return to the MCU. But I do think at the very least you should be mad that the MCU is baiting us all and destroying nuanced and interesting characters for the sake of self-referential easter eggs and nostalgia bait. Because that's what it is. Feel how you'd like to feel about RDJ's return, but personally, this is soul-sucking. I had such a deep love for the MCU as a teenager, it was obviously something incredibly formative to me, especially Tony Stark. This isn't recreating what I fell in love with the MCU for. This is turning a well-planned and artistic storyline of adaptations into cheap cash grabs and fan service. Because, I think we're past the point of being able to call the MCU an adaptation of anything. They can use existing characters' names and powers, but to say they're being properly adapted is laughable.

This is not an adaptation of Doctor Doom. This is RDJ the Electric Boogaloo because Marvel's fear of losing the interest of dedicated MCU fans overrides their willingness to tell stories that are genuine to the characters. I don't know what there is to be excited about that. The MCU has lost its authenticity and aside from a few projects, feels heartless. Every movie is a copy of a copy. This announcement isn't something celebratory, it feels like a death knell of a cinematic universe that's so desperate to cling to relevancy it's resorting to nostalgia for a character/actor who hasn't even been dead for a decade. We're not getting anything new, we're just rinsing and repeating the same song and dance.

I get it. I love Tony Stark, his death destroyed me and I to this day, rue the ending he got in Endgame. It misunderstood his arc and it robbed him of a satisfying conclusion. But the solution to that isn't dragging the corpse out of the grave five years later to whitewash an existing character with rich and interesting nuance, just to forcibly tie his existence in the MCU to Tony. Whether he is a variant or not. Why would you want someone else's fave's legacy to be destroyed simply so your fave's legacy can go on? Hell, if we were really all so hellbent on the return of RDJ and/or Tony to the MCU, we have the multiverse for a reason. There were other ways to do it that didn't whitewash and ruin someone else. This just. Isn't something to be happy about.

[strong-with-the-sarcasm]

Revenant!Jazz ideas:

Continuing from this DPxDC prompt of mine, I’ve had some more thoughts about Jasmine Fenton and Revenants, especially where it concerns DC lore and Jason Todd in particular.

———————-

In my original post, @starlightcat04 asked whether or not Jazz’s eyes would glow toxic green too. I propose that, no, they wouldn’t.

While it’s a common head canon that Ectoplasm is heavily influenced by emotions, Jazz’s Ecto-contamination is bone deep and pure, unlike Jason’s. So no, I don’t believe her eyes would glow green.

They turn from the teal she had in life to a smoldering green that reflects light just like a feline, with a heavily damaged sclera that is perceived as black in low lighting, with ash grey veins spreading from her eye sockets down to her jaw like tears.

Her once bright hair turns from a lively orange-ish red to the color of cooling embers.

That which caused her death, a punctured artery is half-way healed by the time Jazz reanimates in the crematorium, so not only is she supposed to be dead still, she also has to be very careful with her movements otherwise she could very well bleed out again before she is fully healed.

What else changes with Revenant!Jazz?

In exchange for a higher mental processing and the high damage absorption of Revenants, Jazz loses most (almost all) of her memories of her life. What she does remember is thankfully not her death, but rather Danny’s, his death scream and ghostly wail overlap in her mind, at times causing severe headaches and nausea.

(According to his wiki page, Jason spent a year in a coma and as an amnesiac vagrant, therefore it’s not entirely without precedent that Jazz wouldn’t keep hers.)

Her Ecto-contamination has to factor in a lot though.

Jason was revived by Superboy-Prime’s Reality Shattering Punch. Jazz was reanimated by her own willpower, aided by Ecto to allow her body to heal and regress the stages of rigor mortis.

———//:///////———-

What does Jazz need to accomplish as a Revenant?

In the original prompt I wrote that Jazz returned to keep Danny safe- broad enough for a prompt, but what exactly does “safe” for a halfa entail?

Let’s list the major threats to Danny’s health, beginning with the obvious: the Ghost Investigation Ward and The Fenton Parents.

The Fentons are capable of tracking Phantom by his Ecto-signature, creating and having created weaponry specifically designed to target the ghost in question, to which they pass that tech on to the GIW.

If Danny remains in Gotham, the ambient Ecto will scramble the tech over enough of a distance, but if Danny were in a line up of three people right next to a GIW agent he’d be clocked almost immediately.

So, the Fentons and the GIW have to go. How does this happen?

The greatest irony I could possibly inflict on these anti-ghosters- becoming ghosts themselves. I won’t go into detail about what my brain jumped to when I thought about that outcome, but let’s just say it was pretty dark.

(And karmically well-deserved.)

#3 on the list depends on where Danny is when Jazz is finished with numbers 1 & 2 on her list.

If Danny is is Gotham and staying there for the long haul, then I believe this girl would take one look at Batman’s rogue gallery and nope them so hard everyone in Gotham gets the sense of their world about to be rocked, but the ones she gunning for the most?

(Joker, Bane, Manbat, Firefly, Madhatter, Riddler…)

They get the sensation that someone just walked over their non-existent graves.

(I got a little gleeful demented imagining Jazz just straight up ripping Manbat’s wings clean off, burning Firefly alive and throwing a detoxed Bane into a crowd of vengeful Gothamites.)

(Jazz learns that Joker killed a young hero with a crowbar and a bomb. She’s fully onboard with turnabout being fair play when it comes to that Pennywise reject.)

(I can’t even begin to list every rogue Jazz cuts down, it she doesn’t kill all of them, just most of their number.)

(Gotham celebrates for weeks.)

(I’m not sure whether or not Jazz kills the four mentioned previously in a couple of nights, one night or over a a few months, but it doesn’t take as long as one might think.)

/://:///////:::/::::///////

What’s next for Revenant!Jazz?

I’m still writing The Regent series, so I doubt I’ll come back to this for a while, but I’ll still be posting ideas and whatnot about Revenant!Jazz. There’s still plenty to explore here, and I have a pretty angst/bittersweet ending for Jazz in mind I want to talk about later.

If you have any ideas to add, please feel free to comment! If anyone does write this, please let me know so I can read it!

[thenonbinarydetective]

No matter how many robins are there, dick grayson is always no.1. Only him and cassandra actually feel like a mirror of Bruce...other robins feel mishandled or having unresolved issues

Well he is the first so sure. But he has some problems right now. Especially concerning age. But if we’re extending to batgirls a little bit which I’m assuming we are with the Cass mention it’s more of a problem with Babs. However, it’s not helping him either. And also displays of his competence and independence which isn’t supported by slotting him back into Gotham whenever some writer feels like it. I’ve said to before that sometimes it makes sense and sometimes they just wanna write dick

Honestly this may be weird but sometimes everyone else feels like half resolved. Damian I don’t mind because he’s literally 14 he doesn’t need his shit resolved right now. He’s basically just realized he has identity issues because his dad is Batman and the multiverse as fixated by tom king decides he can’t have any other purpose. But he wants other purpose (unrelated but ultimately I don’t think he’s ever going to be Batman outside of possible futures/elseworlds)

But they can move past Jason’s whateverness by just doing the shit I’ve said before. Which is simply making the decision they wanna make and put in the effort

With Tim we gotta force the writers to move him from Robin. Yea yea repeated discourse. I know but you brought it up lol. The thing is a lot of the writers we have now were Tim Drake fanboys in the 90s and want the chance to write him as Robin themselves because now they can. Part of me would respect that but another part of me knows that they could write one-shots/elseworlds/whatever’s that have that and remember that he needs to grow the fuck up (with young Justice). Yes this all ties back to Bruce.

Duke is kinda the same ig. He’s supposed to be the daytime hero but they kinda overlooked that and started putting him on the night shift. Without ever saying he stopped day work so…we just need to know if he’s getting bat overtime benefits. Also his mom is totally good again. Totally fine and recovering and flirting with Black Lightning (who could blame her?) and that’s not been talked about. The Thomas family seems to be disappearing into the batfamily which I really do not think should happen. I don’t mind Bruce keeping a room available for Duke if and when he needs it but his family should be prioritized more if we wanna keep them alive. If DC doesn’t, at least give them the honor of a send off. I still don’t think they should though

Steph is probably the only one that will not be fully and truly resolved because of misogyny. I know it might sound like me using it as a buzz word with her at this point but it’s true. A lot of men don’t wanna cover the problems with her because the problems WERE MEN. They know about the sexism leaked into comics and that Bruce and Alfred in particular were so sexist during her time as Robin. And they’ve tried addressing how much he regrets doubting her or mistreating her or whatever but that doesn’t fully address the problem. Like there’s still more and it’s a problem some male writers aren’t comfortable with fixing cause they would cause it in their own way.

[hannibalhasthetardisat221b]

Oh my gosh. Okay. This is what I stumbled upon when I was searching through the Internet.. John Constantine and Ruper Giles meeting eachother. This is such an interesting idea for a crossover. I NEED TO SEE THIS HAPPEN!

Y'all have no idea how much I thought about this interaction. How many eye rolls and sarcastic/snarky comments we would get from Giles as well as how many times Giles would take off his glasses in frustration (i bet it would be around 10 times in one day), and how many times Constantine would be sassy towards Giles and try to flirt with him (at least in the beginning of their meeting), and then it will all go down to them bickering about the use of dark magic, demons etc. British sassiness would intensify, sarcastic comments flying left and right, at the end Sunnydale will be destroyed by British snark 😆 (someone said that they might also hookup, so.. um... 👀) lol

But in all seriousness, I think Giles wouldn't trust Constantine in the beginning, maybe even would go as far as hating him, but perhaps with time he will change his mind about Constantine. Plus it also all depends on when they meet, like Giles from season 1 to 4 would definitely be sus about Constantine and probably will have disdain towards him (perhaps because Constantine would remind him of his younger self, of his Ripper days..). For Constantine it would be similar, he would find that Giles too proper, too by the books guy. So, yeah, they will definitely hate eachother. (I bet Constantine would still continue to "flirt" with Giles from time to time, though, at that point he would probably do it to just to annoy him..) Honestly, their arguments will be a pure delight to read about, but also seeing them teaming up would be so much fun. I can already imagine Constantine's reaction upon learning about Giles' past. My head is flooded with so many different ideas but I'm not a writer, or at least not a very good one :(

Someone please write this 🙏🏻 and if there is such a fic exists then can someone please send me the link to it.

Thank you for reading my small rant on this and have a good day 😅

p.s. I apologise for my english, it's not my first language. (sometimes being multilingual is a nightmare when I try to express my thoughts 😅)

[oifaaa]

I'm not gonna lie I've been pondering for the last 30 minutes or so on what a good animated Robin movie would look like and Im kinda coming up blank I'm even getting stumped on which Robin the movie would focus on and outside of that what story should be the main focus

[shidoukanae]

Hello to the Buddyfight fandom it's been a hot minute but god do i miss this show and have been making fanart for it in the background so i thought i'd post to tumblr too ^^

I swear every year I end up coming back to this show and wishing that it kept going, that it got rebooted, that i could just erase my memories of this show and just watch it all over again from the beginning to enjoy everything once again from Tasuku's own sense of justice twisting against him to Gao's suffering of PTSD and how heartfelt it was handled.

There's something very special about this show that I haven't been able to find replicated elsewhere. It has the most perfect world to exist (so much so that i'd love to be isekai'd into it if i could!!!) and while i have my own gripes with it (hi S3+) i honestly sometimes wish i could go back to my high school years of watching this show just to relive it all again :'D

Anyways!!! I hope there's still people out there who enjoy this show even ten years later who'll like seeing new funny artwork for it!

I wanna add too that i'm hoping to create a rewrite of FCBF (ft. seasons 1-3 + Ace) or at least create more artwork for my interpretation of it and its world!

Because, sincerely, this show is one of the few that, for all its flaws, hasn't disappointed me in the years that've followed unlike many other things i've seen and i wanna try to keep the spirit of it alive while I can thanks to that. And if there are any fans still in existence who love it, i wanna provide some food while its once again in my orbit because damn do i adore this show <3 <3 <#

[raifuujin]

It's been more than 20 years and for some reason I feel that Gosho hasn't given Kaiao any development, how can more than 20 years pass and Aoko dynamics, relationship and feelings remain the same? At this point I feel like Gosho is just going to make them date because "they already liked each other" they remain in the same status quo

Hey, if we go by DC romance progress, they've been going too fast. We've already had suspicion of identity chapters, and that didn't happen until more than 400 chapters in DC. /j

Since heists have taken over any character development recently, I don't even know if Kaito and Aoko will even get any romantic progress. Maybe the actual identity confrontation will happen down the line, since that's thief drama, but atm, it really wouldn't surprise me if they only ask each other on a real date at the very end of the manga.

Like. I'm sure Gosho would love to make MK a love drama as well, but he writes MK so rarely, and usually as hype for something Kid related in other media. So the MK stories tend to be heavy on drama that can only take place at Kid heists. (To the point that the new chapters just. Use Kid as the plot device to show off a new character. Even Hakuba's never gotten so much 'look at this character being a detective' treatment in MK.)

-sighs- I just feel bad for MK as a series at this point. I like the characters, I like the general story idea, but. It's been going down a very steep hill with Gosho wanting things exciting, but not wanting any real progress in. Anything. But unlike old MK, the new stories aren't even nice standalone setpieces of story, they're... mundane. They could be high stakes, if you purely look at the scenarios on paper, but. We all know nothing's gonna happen to Kid. Nothing even happens to him when the actual bad guys show up, much less one-time antagonists.

We need actual character focus and development, not heist drama. Badly. Not even romance, though that'd be a nice change. Just any character expansion of our limited cast of characters. Gosho wants big, all the time, meaningless big stuff, when small would be so nice.

[themyscirah]

Reading shit comics kind of sucks but at least I get the satisfaction of proving my own point w this

[tiffycatblog]

The lonely endeavor of trying to find a niche fic that you know doesn't exist and that if you want to read it you need to make it yourself