#I mean all superheroes do to a certain extent

[atlantic-riona]

Batgirl #9 (2000) // the Iliad trans. Caroline Alexander // Táin Bó Cuailnge trans. Thomas Kinsella

[trainsinanime]

The following post is intended to be seen as levity and joking, not salt.

Chloé this, Chloé that, "Redemption started?", "Redemption interrupted?", "Redemption cancelled?". The discussion is getting old. What I haven't seen enough yet is how the show did Sabrina really dirty, by giving her the worst thing of all: A conscience.

The early parts of the show toyed a lot with how exactly Chloé and her relation to Sabrina works, which was clearly not well established when the first episode came out (hell, they didn't even seem to know who Max and Kim were yet, they only had their character models). Sabrina's deal is easy enough in the abstract, but difficult to pin down in the early episodes: Is she more meek or mean? More of a victim or more of a bully? Does she share Chloé's values whole-heartedly, opportunistically, or is she pressured into it? Does she have scruples or is she just a coward? Those are all elements in her character to some extent, but the exact mixture did not really solidify until she got an episode to shine and be away from Chloé, in Evilstrator.

That episode did the fairly obvious plot of Marinette going, "you can stand up to your bully instead of doing their homework for them!", and then showed us how Sabrina reacted. And the reaction was: Sabrina is every bit as unhinged as Chloé, just in completely different ways, and their dysfunctional relationship might just be the only one in which either of them can function.

This choice is not fully unproblematic, but ultimately okay in my book. I think die-hard Sabrina stans might call this character assassination, but I don't think there are any die-hard Sabrina stans. I feel like I should become one just to even out the numbers. Anyway, the choice clearly telegraphs that the show is not interested in long-running redemption arcs, which, you know, fair enough, it is designed for six-year-old French kids after all. (Yes, season 2 and 3 looked rather different here, but that's later)

The show did not exactly use Sabrina consistently after that, but for a while, they leaned into it. Early Sabrina was often mean, materialistic, codependent (I don't actually know what that word means I'm just guessing) and toxic in her own way. She broke into Marinette's room, helped steal Marinette's designs, lie and cheat for Chloé.

And then that was basically it. The show mostly forgot about her. She was an appendage to Chloé, usually frightened and a bit incompetent, but not much more. When Chloé showed signs of a bit of a hint of a redemption arc, Sabrina was not part of it. When Chloé gained a sister for, I actually don't know (I still maintain that "replacement bee" makes no sense for anything but selling merch), and there were hints that this might be relevant to her story, Sabrina wasn't there.

What did happen in the moments we saw Sabrina was that Sabrina got more meek, more scared of Chloé, and less mean. There were no more hints of her playing superheroes with Chloé and being at least somewhat of a friend, and also none of the meanness of Miraculer, one of the worst Akuma names in the show. Instead she was now in a closet doing Chloé's homework.

As she becomes less effective, she becomes more sympathetic, with some moments e.g. in the New York special, until she finally becomes Miss Hound. At this point we have basically the exact same thing that Evilstrator rejected: Sabrina is really just an oppressed underling who is too scared to tell Chloé to stop, instead of someone with at least some of her own ideas that happen to overlap with Chloé's in all the worst ways.

This all comes to a head in confrontation, when Sabrina's defining character trait is suddenly, out of nowhere, that as a police officer's daughter, she hates lying and stealing and hates that Chloé makes her do it. Since when!? Sabrina, weren't you around for Darkblade!?

Sabrina breaks off her friendship with Chloé and is now officially a good girl. And that sucks.

Old Sabrina had a certain edge to her. She made sense as an Akuma threat on her own, and even as a threat to Chloé as Vanisher and Miraculer. Now, she's only an Akuma effectively when Chloé tells her to, and she stopped listening to Chloé anyway. Her personality is now strictly: A good girl. Not like Chloé.

Ironically, in her emancipation, she has lost almost everything that made her unique, and become entirely defined by Chloé in every way. She's her own person, but with barely any personality traits except "not like Chloé anymore". No hobbies, no meaningful relationships with anyone, she's just there, and nice now I guess.

There are so much more interesting things you could have done with a mean Sabrina, which we know for sure because the show already did some.

But that's really part of a wider issue: When people talk about Chloé, they mostly forget Sabrina, and Sabrina isn't interesting enough to stand on her own. The ideas of a Chloé redemption throughout season 2, 3 and in some form 4 focused on Chloé's relationship with Ladybug, Marinette, a bit Adrien, Audrey, and a bit Zoé. Chloé's super-duper villain arc in season 5 focused on her relationship with Lila. Sabrina, who has been here from day one, who has the longest and most complex relationship with Chloé out of any character, is not a part of it at all.

I think that sucks. I think Sabrina has more potential, but in particular I think Chloé is more interesting if we include Sabrina in the discussion as well. Their relationship is something deeply weird and unique, and any Chloé redemption that brushes it off leaves a lot of very tasty crumbs on the table. It sucks that it ended like that. Yes, Sabrina is now redeemed, but as a result of that, she's boring, and isn't that much worse than being evil?

In short: We should all write more Chloé/Sabrina fanfics.

[threewaysdivided]

compared to the other hero's in YJ how do you think Phantom stands up power wise. like Future Danny ripped the world apart and i know in some fanfiction that it is used as an indicator that he is high up there, but i'm interested in your thoughts.

This is an interesting question nonnie!

I generally agree with the idea that Phantom is in the upper-tier of crossover superhero powers, but I do have more specific thoughts so let’s break it down:

Danny’s power level

Just looking at the variety and strength of ghost-powers that Phantom displays in his show, I would put him in the higher rankings of most heroes when it comes to raw ability.  I alluded to this in my main DP x YJ Deathly Weapons fanfic, but to me Phantom shows signs of a pretty common power-scaling differential that happens when a solo-protagonist hero gets transplanted into an ensemble setting.  Within his own setting, Phantom had to be (or become) powerful enough to solve most problems/ fights all by himself – and some of those ghosts he ended up facing towards the end of his canon were impressively strong.  By comparison ensemble heroes are generally less-powerful because working as a collective means they don’t have the same need for aggressive self-sufficiency and also so that no one character upstages or outmodes the rest of the group from a writing perspective.

There’s also the nature of ghost powers.  Phantom needed to develop the raw strength to fill the role of solo combat heavy-hitter, but his base powers are versatile to the point of unsettling.  He has to physically fight against other ghosts because they have (and to some extent are immune to) the same abilities as him, but in a fight against other species he could potentially avoid, manipulate or exhaust an opponent with strategic use of invisibility/ intangibility/ overshadowing.

The back of Dinah’s neck prickled.  With flight to mask footsteps and intangibility rendering them undetectable by touch…  Nonthreatening as Phantom generally appeared, she was starting to understand why his kind had developed such an unsettling reputation.  The idea that a ghost could be present at any time - eavesdropping, spying, interfering - without any of them being the wiser was… disquieting to say the least. - Deathly Weapons, Chapter 17: Assessment

On top of that, he seems to be in a similar boat to Superman when it comes to physical weaknesses – he doesn’t have that many, and they’re often quite specific or hard-to-find.   The most easily-exploitable one is that Danny can run out of power, be slowly starved of ectoplasm or be knocked unconscious; all of which would forcibly revert him back to his weaker human state.  After that, he’s vulnerable to certain magics and ghostly-artefacts, which are more likely to be accessible to various DC/ Marvel heroes (although they might not know exactly which spells/items will be most effective or why).  Beyond those two, most of his weaknesses need to be specifically known about and actively sought out – anti-ecto-technology is obtainable but not mainstream, blood blossoms naturally repel/hurt ghosts but they seem to be rare in nature (or even extinct in the modern day) and then assuming you acknowledge Phantom Planet there’s ectoranium which is basically ghost-Kryptonite in rarity (and possibly even the same mineral in DP x DC settings depending on the crossover).  Much like with Superman, the most reliable ways to take down Phantom require actively knowing what he is and having prepared accordingly.

Based on those metrics, I want to place Phantom in the same power-band as Superman or the Martian Manhunter.  I’d consider their powers to be equivalent incomparibles – it’s hard to stack their abilities side-by-side and say one is objectively better than the others.  A no-holds-barred, knock-down drag-out fight between those three could get very nasty but it would be hard to confidently call a winner without knowing more about the external factors around them.

That said, I think the thing holding Danny back from being fully at that level is his experience: or rather his lack thereof.   Danny hasn’t had much formal training (except maybe some basic self-defence instruction from Maddie/Jack) and he doesn’t have a proper mentor either.  His personal experience mostly fits the narrow niche of direct open combat with other ghosts, mostly throughout Amity Park and surrounds (although occasionally in the Ghost Zone or further from town). 

Phantom has enough raw power and innate talent as a strategic lateral-thinker to get by, but I think that hyperspecialisation and lack of guidance would leave him with a lot of blind-spots.  His hand-to-hand is self-taught and probably missing a lot of best-practice basic techniques.  He’s also never had an experienced third party to observe him in the field and offer suggestions on alternative approaches to using his powers/ keep him from developing bad habits.  This is something Danny actually comments on in canon; he can take a long time to identify solutions (even obvious ones) that deviate too far from his default throw hands approach to fighting.  His powers could be more effectively deployed as a precision-instrument but a lack of coaching means he tends to falls back on using them as a blunt hammer because that was the pattern that came naturally when he was first starting out, and no-one was around to keep that habit from ingraining.

The place where you can see this lack of experience hurting him the most is in his lack of soft-skills.  Phantom didn’t have anyone to advise him on de-escalation, damage control, comforting civilians, interacting with authorities etc.  Add in the naturally-frightening nature of many ghosts and it was easy for him to fall into a public perception of being “the town menace”.  Danny is pretty decent at rallying both humans and ghosts (even erstwhile enemies) to his side in crisis situations but no-one has taught him how manage public relations outside of that.  He says it himself: he needs a PR agent.

On the other hand, Phantom’s heroics have inadvertently earned him a decent amount of potential political pull in the Ghost Zone.  He has enough positive rapport that some regular rogues will take his side or even actively seek him out for help in the right circumstances, and other more antagonistic ones have at least developed a degree of grudging respect.  There are several powerful ghosts that either have direct debts of gratitude to him/his team (Princess Dorothea, Pandora) or who hold him in high esteem for re-sealing Pariah Dark (The Far Frozen).  It’s possible that defeating Pariah might even have granted him a potential candidature/claim to an official position, and judging by the way the Observants and Clockwork pay attention to him, it seems that Phantom’s slow accumulation of power/influence isn’t going completely unnoticed.  However, again, Danny doesn’t have the awareness, experience or training needed to leverage that effectively – heck, he’s not even doing it on purpose.

With all that taken into account, I think Phantom would rank very highly in terms of overall potential, but at his current level he’d be in the lower ranks of the A-tier.  He could become a much more powerful figure with the right guidance but in his canonical state he’s underutilising or outright overlooking a lot of his most effective tools.

TUE Future/ “Dark Phantom”

The “Dark Phantom” presented in the TUE Bad-Future is interesting to me because while he’s a very powerful figure within that story, I don't think he’s a very good reflection of canon-Danny’s potential to do harm.

Gonna complain about The Ultimate Enemy for a bit: I’ve tag-muttered about this before but I’m one of the Phandom members who finds The Ultimate Enemy to be a frustratingly weak episode.  It has a potentially fascinating core premise (the “evil future/alternate self”) but the execution is so convoluted and driven by improbable contrivances that the whole ends up being far less than the sum of its parts.   

One of the biggest problems is that, rather than being a straight future/alternate version of Danny, “Dark Phantom” is actually a hybrid of Phantom and Plasmius’ worse sides.  He’s a distinct, separate entity which means he can’t work as an effective dark mirror to either of them.  (Compare and contrast the Justice League episode A Better World in which the Justice Lords acted as a dark mirror of what the actual Justice League members could become if they chose to abandon their morals and compassion in favour of seizing control and instating a totalitarian system of draconian crime prevention.)

The episode also tried to graft on a really mismatched moral of “don’t be a cheat”.  Rather than being a lesson on choices/ values/ power/ responsibility, Dark Phantom almost ends up being an offhand biproduct of Danny getting caught cheating on a freshman/sophomore-year career-aptitude test.  Instead of learning a lesson about himself/ his ideals/ his personal faults, Danny comes away from the episode with a cool new superpower after deciding not to cheat on the test after all.  Not exactly satisfying.

That mismatch and the convoluted levels of moon-logic required to make it fit severely undermine the idea that this version of Dark Phantom is “inevitable”.  There are too many steps that are too highly-specific and too easily-avoidable for the threat to feel real: Danny has to care enough about an early-highschool CAT to want to cheat, he has to somehow get the answers which he wasn’t intending to do in the canon timelineand only does as a result of Clockwork’s meddling, making it a self-fulfilling situation, he has to get caught using them, Mister Lancer has to hold the resulting parent-teacher meeting at Nasty Burger rather than a school office for some reason, the Nasty Burger Sauce has to 1. be dangerously explosive and 2. coincidentally explode while not only Danny’s parents but his friends and sister are inside, Danny has to be placed in Vlad’s custody rather than with his Aunt Alicia or closer family-friends, Danny has to ask Vlad to remove his Phantom-half and finally, Vlad himself has to agree to do it.  Take away any of those steps and this version of Dark Phantom doesn’t happen.  That’s not inevitable, it’s contrived.

But anyway, let’s look at Dark Phantom as his own entity:

One of the things that makes Dark Phantom much more potentially dangerous is that he combines Phantom’s raw power with Plasmius’ experience.  Like I was saying before, one of Danny’s biggest handicaps is that he lacks training/guidance and tends to underutilise his most effective abilities.  Vlad meanwhile has had years of relative freedom to practice and finesse a lower raw-power level; he’s much more skilled at advanced techniques like duplication and overshadowing (which he canonically used to force through his fortune-making business deals), as well as ecto-constructs.  Plasmius is also a lot more tactical and manipulative in how he applies their common powers.  Plus, the TUE version of Dark Phantom is a full-ghost, which means he doesn’t have a vulnerable mortal state that can be exploited as a weakness.

This is why I think it would be possible for TUE!Dark Phantom to successfully decimate other heroes in shared-universe crossover situations where ghosts aren’t common knowledge.  He’d be an unexpected, unknown enemy that the heroes have no effective way to fight (outside of a few magic users).  Combine that with many of the most powerful heroes being visible as public figures, and Dark Phantom having inherited Plasmius’ strategic/manipulative traits and it could be very easy for Dark Phantom to basically launch a premeditated paranormal blitzkrieg attack, using Plasmius’ skill with duplicates and overshadowing to subjugate any hero he couldn’t overwhelm with Phantom’s raw power level.  It would also make sense that Amity Park would become one of the remaining bastions in any TUE-style future, since having advanced knowledge of ghostly abilities and access to anti-ecto technology would tilt the balance more evenly and allow them to at least keep the danger out.

Mentally, it’s also worth noting that Dark Phantom is a lot more dangerous than either Phantom or Plasmius.  He’s basically the most toxic traits from both of them, removed from their more moderating/ compassionate instincts.  Based on the canonical explanation given, TUE!Danny had Phantom forcibly removed in attempt to remove the pain/ rage/ grief he was feeling over the death of his family.  This isn’t a model-hero-persona conceptualisation of Phantom a la Splitting Images; the TUE-version of his ghost half is a big ball of churning negative emotion.  And what are some of Danny’s toxic traits when it comes to negative emotions: he lashes out, falls into self-blame and self-destructs.  Then we add in Vlad’s toxic traits: he’s egocentric to the point of narcissism, he projects negative feelings/ blame onto others rather than accept responsibility for his own actions and he has a controlling/ sadistic streak.   

TUE’s Dark Phantom is the worst possible combination of an emotionally devastated teenager and an emotionally immature adult.  He’s a ball of pain and rage that blames the world for that pain, lashes out at it, feels worse for doing so and then blames the world for making him feel worse because he doesn’t have the emotional capacity to accept that he’s the one causing it.  Grief is love persevering but the feelings of love, connection and guilt that contextualise his pain were left in the human shells that remained of Danny and Vlad.  It’s possible that the Dark Phantom presented in TUE might not have the capacity to feel positive emotions or compassion.  He was never meant to exist as his own entity – he was an attempt to destroy Daniel Fenton’s negative emotions which went horribly wrong.  In some ways it seems like his reign of terror could be an angrier version of Dracula’s scheme from Netflix’s Castlevania or Haliax’s goal from the Kingkiller Chronicles – a drawn-out suicide note from an undead being who’s been dead inside for much longer, destroying whatever peace/happiness he encounters in revenge for being denied it himself, until such time as he either attains catharsis or finally ends the pain by destroying reality and himself along with it.  That’s the final thing that makes TUE’s Dark Phantom more dangerous than either Phantom or Plasmius – he has nothing to lose and no “better nature” or personal dreams that other heroes could try to appeal to.

So yeah, the TUE version of Dark Phantom could absolutely rip the world and other heroes apart, but I don’t think he’s a particularly good reflection of Danny’s capabilities in terms of either powers or personality.  There’s too much Vlad in the mix, and even then he represents such a narrow and extreme edge-case for each of their personalities that it’s barely representative at all.  At best he’s a warning for what these kinds of powers could be capable of in the wrong hands.

Meta-question: What is “power” in narrative?

Alright, now that I’ve (hopefully) answered the question, let’s finish with a self-indulgent thought exercise for extra credit.

There’s an anecdote which I’ve heard attributed to the Stan Lee, in which a fan apparently asked him “who would win in a fight between Superman and the Hulk?”  To which Stan apparently replied, “whoever the writer wants.”

While it can be fun to make tier-lists and try to rank how strong different heroes/villains/creatures are based on the rules of their respective universes, I think it can also be helpful to consider that– like all things in storytelling – power is a narrative device.  It’s a tool that the character(s) and storyteller(s) can use to create and solve problems.

A character can be extremely physically strong/ skilled/ knowledgeable/ influential in a specific area but how much narrative power they have depends on how well their abilities allow them to influence or resolve story problems.   And, as the omnipotent god(s) of the narrative, the storyteller(s) can choose whether to confront them with challenges that play to their existing strengths, or that force them to find other solutions.  What’s the best way to kill a vampire?

This is actually part of what makes Lex Luthor such an effective Superman villain.  Objectively most versions of Lex are just A Guy™ – on a physical level he doesn’t have anything close to Kal El’s Kryptonian strength or superpowers.  But he feels like a serious threat because he often comes after Superman in ways that Clark can’t easily steamroll with that brute strength.  Lex uses manipulation, money, influence, connections, politics, public opinion; Superman can’t physically fight him without playing into Luthor’s plans, and trying to face him in those other fields requires tools that Clark wasn’t handed as part of his Kryptonian heritage.  An invading alien army is objectively a bigger physical threat to Earth, but a competent Lex Luthor scheme feels more dangerous because – while we feel confident that Superman can beat down a legion of monsters – when it comes to the question of whether he can outwit Luthor, the outcome is a lot less certain.

Situational disempowerment is another of the ways a narrative can reign in an otherwise “overpowered” character: placing them in circumstances where they either aren’t given many opportunities to showcase their best strengths, or are kept from using them because the drawbacks/ risks/ consequences of using their abilities makes their power(s) a liability.  I’ve mentioned it before, but this is actually one of the tricks I’m personally using to keep Phantom’s massive powerset balanced against the other proteges in Deathly Weapons.  It’s also something I’ve been struggling with when it comes to Conner’s place in that story since the stealth-mission plot structure doesn’t allow as much room to highlight his core powers and personal strengths.   

Stories can create additional stakes for powerful characters by giving them emotional arcs which their powers can’t resolve.   For a published example, consider the series One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100.  Despite how high-ranked Saitama and Mob are within the power-scaling of their respective stories, those powers don’t kill the emotional stakes because the things they actually want/ need can only be gained through self-improvement or making connections in ways separate from their powers (and in some regards their power level actively gets in the way of that).  This is also something I’m doing with Danny’s main grief arc in DW.   

Final Conclusion time

In terms of physical strength and range of abilities, I think Phantom would be pretty near the top of the power-scale in most superhero crossovers.  While the Dark Phantom presented in TUE might not be a particularly good reflection of Danny’s specific potential, a crossover version of the TUE timeline offers a pretty good litmus-test for how dangerous a strong ghost could be in a given universe: the combination of power level, ability range and highly-specific/ inaccessible weak-points poses a strong strategic threat.

On the other hand, physical strength isn’t the only strength.  Phantom has a decent level of potential political sway as well, but he also lacks a lot of the soft skills and experience needed to make use of his toolset to its full ability.

Stepping back further, the answer to how powerful Danny is in a narrative sense is really just “however much the writer wants”.  Phantom’s narrative power depends on the kind of story he’s in and the challenges placed around him – there are as many ways to situationally nerf our ghost-boy as make him OP, all without needing to alter his on-paper powers.

[wherevenusholdssomeofficespace]

Usually when you have a super hero team, you usually only have like. One "brains". Gretel and Hamster have at least three. And yet they all do enough that I don't feel like they really overlap or that they feel superfluous. Kevin who does the actual strategizing and coming up with plans (who also acts as transportation), Fred who gathers the information and actually has most of the computer know how, and Bailey who sometimes helps Gretel with the strategizing when Kevin isn't around and otherwise is a source of eclectic knowledge not unlike Fred.

All the while Gretel is learning how to get better at strategizing herself and thinking things through.

There's probably something to be said about how everyone brings something to the table, but the most important thing they bring is just themselves, another warm body able to help split the workload. They don't need powers to fight evil.

We've already seen a point made of Kevin and Fred being able to handle certain villains without (too much) additional help. Gretel started out claiming she could handle things alone, but now she has been shown that she can, to varying extents.

I thibk it is really selling the idea that it's not really the super powers that make the superhero. Hamster and Gretel have a whole team behind them. They're more of a symbol. An idea. (Which is pretty classic superhero fare). I mean, if it wasn't for Fred, Kevin and Bailey being "superhero adjacent" would they have ever taken the initiative to try and fight the villains the way they did?

Of course even when that that wall of supposed responsibility and capability was been broken, Hamster and Gretel wouldn't stop because they lost their powers. Everyone else on their side has been fighting without powers this whole time.

Now the more Doylist reasoning is probably "We need as many people as is convenient to the story being told", and I think this is definitely applicable to a certain extent. But we've had SEVERAL episodes make a point of a character being able to "handle something on their own". Even Fred showed some emotional attachment to the idea of being able to take care of a villain on her own (though that could also just be her own similar tastes to the villain in question talking).

It's probably only a matter of time until Bailey gets to solo a villain. (Especially with how much of a help she can be to Gretel). We'll have to see next season.

[ewingstan]

So all the wildbow protags seem to have some frog-being-boiled trick about them where you are nodding your head along with all their choices and then look up from where you started and start noticing how bonkers things have gotten. But how exactly that manifests differs between books in pretty interesting ways.

Taylor makes a bunch of choices that read as understandable for an awkward teenager trying to make the best out of a bad situation, but it doesn’t take long before those choices become pretty clearly (although crucially often not to the extent that they would stick out while reading through the first time) indicative of a much higher willingness to use people as tools than the norm, not be motivationally hindered by empathy, etc. And of course in hindsight a lot of her choices are less careful utility calculus and more an expression of her desire for friendship and control as well as her need to be invaluable in whatever circumstance she finds herself in.

Blake has a much more prototypical set of ethics and motivations, and these largely don’t change throughout the text. He starts and ends as your stock angry but fundamentally “good” YA protagonist. He’s just put into situations where the morals of that type of character means he acts like a horror movie monster. Which is a pretty neat thing for a text to do, to take your typical Percy Jackson-esque character and show that “hey if you put him in enough situations then he could end up asking a facebook group of teenage girls if they want him to kill any of their husbands.”

Sylvester is an interesting case because he starts performing actions the audience would consider objectionable well before they’d get acclimated to it as they could in the case of Taylor or Blake. He performs extrajudicial killings of rouge academics for the government using manipulation and underhanded tactics while peeking up people’s shirts. It’d be tempting to say that his gradual transformation is into an okay person, and that might be true to an extent—the seeds to him eventually rebelling from the academy get planted early and slow shifts in his perspective before that point could be detected going a while back. I don’t think that would be the whole story though. It would probably be more accurate to say that you don’t notice how much Sy’s matured until he’s at the point of rewriting his personality to an adult’s persona.

Its much too early in my reading of Ward to be able to say if the pattern is going to hold. But I found it interesting to see one of the big morally questionable decisions be made early, and in a pretty noticeable way. I’m talking about Victoria secretly tailing Rain home after the capture-the-flag game, after he specifically denied her offer to follow him for protection. It doesn’t read as totally unjustified or anything, she is doing it to protect someone’s life when she has good reason to think its threatened. But she’s also doing it because she’s suspicious Rain’s been lying. And she flies in uncomfortable conditions for hours to find out what he’s up to. Its a huge breach of privacy, and while well-intentioned, it does read strongly as Cop Shit™. And while I only have my own response to the text to go off of, it kind of feels like it was meant to be framed as a pretty ethically questionable act on Vicky’s part. So if I was reading this with no knowledge of the story, I might think “Oh, wildbow’s done the here’s-how-being-in-the-social-position-of-the-criminal-puts-certain-behavioral-pressures-on-you story, now he’s doing the here’s-how-being-in-the-social-position-of-the-protector/peacekeeper-puts-certain-behavioral-pressures-on-you story. We’re gonna see how the moral beliefs that make someone strongly want to be a superhero, and the system of designated “heroes” they get slotted into, cause a lot of shitty behaviors.” But from everything I’ve heard, that is very much not the type of story I’ll be getting! This isn’t the “ACAB doesn’t exclude the well-intentioned cops” story, this is the “we do need a carceral justice system because people need to face punishment for past crimes and also some people are just inherently evil” story. And right now I’m not seeing how we get there?

[thefaeriefeatherdark]

I am so glad to hear someone else honest enough to admit the "BBrae" relationship is just not good. While I completely agree with everything you said, I also feel like it keeps persisting because of how it can be shoehorned into one or more of 3 boring relationship dynamics: 1. dog-like man/cat-like woman (i.e.- the sitcom relationship) 2. Turning beast boy into an empty shell for the reader to project themselves into so they can imagine having a hot goth GF or 3. #wholesome girlfriend/boyfriend

I mean. The fact is that there is a larger element to this issue which is.

Raven isn't a goth.

She's not even close to a fucking Goth.

She's probably the least Goth of the Teen Titans. She's distinctly a spiritualist person, her actual clothing she wears is all wool and is made up of bright colors. Even her costume is pretty solidly white for large chunks of the NTT era.

The only place she's ever been Goth is in the Teen Titans 03 show and stuff drawing on it after.

Like, the relationship they want her to have with Gar flies in the face of her actual characterization. At the same time it's just... boring? Like Gar and Raven dating doesn't add anything to the team?

The Starfire and Nightwing dynamic is fairly clearly established by their differing moral codes and expectations.

Starfire is more violent and emotional, but she's also more carefree. Nightwing is tactical and withdrawn, he tends to be more morally rigid, and tends to get caught up in worrying about things. Those present as clear differences, there's conflict there as well as the romantic basis no matter what.

Raven and Changeling don't really have that? I guess Changeling could be argued to be more murderous? Or more lighthearted? But it also just feels wrong? Raven is pretty open about her emotions and lighthearted after the destruction of Trigon and being saved from Brother Blood. She's more certain of herself and more openly emotional both in her joy and sadness. Same deal with Changeling to some extent, but not enough for an actual parallel.

Like where is the conflict or narrative to these characters if they're being written correctly as a relationship? At the same time, where do they actually click?

It's not just empty, it's literally a ship aimed at two different characters.

I'll also just throw out there that I think that most characters are in better places across the board when they're aloud to have romances outside of other Superheroes. Or at least if you're doing two Superheroes in a romance on the team do something interesting with that... but I've never really seen anything interesting done with Raven and Changeling.

[artsydudejude]

Is forcing people to use your pronouns using mind control ethical? I'm leaning towards "yes but no". I can definitely see the concern but certainly less bad than like "spell of explode misgenderer"

I mean is zir comfort that much more important than another person's, even an asshole? Like to subvert their will using magic? Why not just make them go away or something without mind control? (Segue into question about Blythe's powers- Could ze do something like make duct tape materialize onto someone's mouth under certain conditions? Would it be hard?)

Does this question even matter? It's not real and while It could be useful to a discussion about compelled speech, that's a little out of bounds for a wacky superhero thing.

Is this a deliberate character choice that says something about Blythe or (to a certain extent) authorial wish fulfillment?

i was half joking with the pronoun aura thing, but you raise an interesting question. i suppose it depends on how the spell works; if it effects one's mind by changing the words they intend to say before they say it, then yeah probably unethical. if it effects motor control to change the person's mouth movements... eeh, gray area, but still kinda iffy i agree. a morally sound alternative would be for the spell to effect sound waves or auditory perception. but like you said, wacky superhero setting, ethics have little bearing here.

(as for the duct tape: manifesting physical objects isn't something one does on a whim, so surrounding the annoyer in a field of silence would be preferable. blythe already does something similar on a regular basis, dampening the sound in zir immediate area to help with focus.)

and for what it says about blythe that ze would use this spell, i picture it actually being braggart's idea. blythe is a pretty passive person most of the time and rarely bothers to correct people who aren't close to zir or in frequent contact with zir. i'm sure most of us transsexuals can relate; even correcting someone on binary pronouns can be a hassle and potentially opens you up to mockery/violence, to say nothing of singular 'they' and neopronouns users. if it's not someone you're gonna see again, or someone you actually give a shit about, you end up just shrugging it off and putting them out of your mind (that's my experience, at least).

on the other hand, braggart sees this and he's all like 'burn them alive for disrespecting you' and blythe is like 'calm down dude i'm not that bothered by strangers not knowing my pronouns' and braggart's like 'ok but y'know you COULD just do a lil tiny mind scramble on 'em' and blythe's like '...tempting, but no thanks.'

and then at some point ze's like a month into working with CW and geiger STILL alternates between using he and she depending on whether or not blythe is wearing a skirt that day (he's not exactly transphobic, he's just a sixties man and also just not in the habit of self-correcting when outside of a courtroom) and so blythe just... does that tiny lil' mind scramble on him.

he doesn't even notice that he's using completely different words than he intends to until nat praises him for finally coming around.

(also: something i wanted to draw a short comic for was urias {braggart's former wielder and blythe's main foil} obviously not understanding the neopronouns at first because he's from a century ago. and he initially doesn't even try because blythe is his enemy and all that, but then there's some remark like 'well, i guess these concepts are just too obscure for you, what a shame, i thought you were a master of all things esoteric :/' and he's like 'NO NO I GET IT I CAN DO IT' and emphatically genders zir correctly from then on.)

[spirit-x-ing]

— character info sheet.

(repost, don’t reblog)

name: Lorelai ??? ( May/Vivian) Lee

name meaning:  LORELAI - Alluring Enchantress/Siren LEE: Clearing in the Woods / Meadow

alias/es:  n/a, - warden, wardeness

one picture you like best of your chara:

three h/cs you never told anyone: -- ADVANCE LORE/STUFFS

Her soul and other Wardens were a result of Angelic War where the Fallen Celestrials fought with those who served above. Many of the Angels that fell for good, their energy ~ souls: shattered. Death who could not bear witness to see these fragmented souls of their brethren reaped them up and put them in the cycle of life along with other mortals over and over until they were practically new complete entities, almost as strong as their original Angelic forms. ( Similar to tumbled gems ). So technically Lorelai's soul had been reincarnated numerous times until Death thought she was strong enough to elevate. ( She doesn't know any of this. )

I originally created Lorelai and her story to be published for Vertigo.

Lorelai's creation was based on various characters and people I was fond of throughout my life. <3

three things your character likes doing in their free time: 

Stealing. She's extremely good thief. Though, usually does not steal really expensive things or from people who need the items.

Scaring people, every once in a while. Sometimes she gets bored and uses her abilities for not-so-good causes.

She likes to dance a lot. So if there's a club, party, or someplace full of life and dancing she'll haunt there. She likes to even dance by herself when no one is around.

eight people your character likes / loves:

Her Exes

Her Mentors and Friends.

She's a fan of other superheroes even though she'll never openly admit it. RP WISE

@magaprima She really admires Lilith and sees her as a friend and confidant. She respects her above all stronger entities and gods she deals with occasionally.

@arkhampsych Lorelai has a love/hate relationship with Doctor Jonathan Crane. But has grown close enough that she's willing to protect him from harm regardless of the consequences (even though she shouldn't. :P)

@myersbprd She really cares deeply for Mr. BPRD ~ John Myers even though she's not sure he'll ever accept her completely for who she is, including her various flaws. A part of her truly thinks she's not "good" enough for someone as virtuous as him.

@veleluuu Lorelai thinks that the Dullahan has much wisdom and common sense. Deep down she believes when it comes to certain choices Borna will make the right choice. She also appreciates that she can come visit her house from time to time without being kicked out. :P

@talesfromahs For Stan, she truly wishes she can save Stan regardless of his tragic fate. She sees it as one of the souls and painful lessons in life that will cling to her through her Wardenhood.

two things your character regrets:

Being so afraid of love and relationships, not knowing how rare a true connection and love really is. She feels like she's let her fear of loss, pain, and immortality has led her to cut off those she shouldn't have. She regrets not accepting happiness even if it was for a short time.

Not searching for her current family sooner.

two phobia your character has:

Putting some much effort into something, someone, or saving someone for not. She's afraid of failure to some extent.

L 0 V E & R O M A N C E ~ if you haven't figured by her interactions she can come off flirty but if someone actually reciprocates she tends to mess up or playfully side-step from it.

TAGGED: @arxchnoverture ( Thank You! ) TAGGING: JUST STEAL!

[super-hero-confessions]

I don't care for Peggy Carter. I think as a character, she's just okay. I'm pretty indifferent about her. But Jesus Christ. The "Peggy Carter bad because Hayley Atwell bad" discourse is so exhausting. You can dislike a character. I dislike many characters. But going after the actress and accusing her of things repeatedly on this blog is so weird to me because I have no idea what any of us is supposed to do about it.

*If* Atwell is guilty of anything (again, *if*) I'm sorry to tell you we don't have the power to do shit. "But there's evidence-" We still can't do shit. It's not our job. Police exists, judges exist, lawyers exist, etc. Something similar happens with Tumblr's security. Sometimes users and blogs get hacked here, I'm sure you're familiar with some cases. Some people lose their blogs, some others are lucky and get them back/never lose them to begin with because they're still logged in and change their passwords, but I'm sure you're already familiar with the ridiculous amount of bots and... well, sometimes users get hacked. Plenty of people constantly complain about how Tumblr's security is not safe because they have day one exploits and vulnerabilities that staff refuses to fix, which makes this site a laughing stock for hackers. Okay. If staff refuses to fix them, what the hell are we, the users, supposed to do? We can't fix their shit for them. Staff needs to do better, not us. The fuck. There is no use in screaming at me or any other user about it. All I do is reblog superhero stuff. Complain to staff, not to us. Similarly, there is no use in screaming at us about how bad Hayley Atwell is and how bad Peggy Carter is. Because we can't do jack shit. Is it really so hard to understand? We're just trying to watch superhero movies, here. And she happens to be an actress playing a character.

At the end of the day you're just being repetitive. You're not engaging in constructive debate or making anyone agree with you. Giving us 3000 potential "better love interests than Peggy Carter" or repeatedly attacking Atwell is not going to have the effect you think. It's sad. It feels like some sort of wish fulfillment for you. I get it, the MCU has attractive people, we can dream. Self-insert fics exist for a reason and are valid. It's cool. But don't try to censor people or tell them how they should think or feel about a particular character. I am friends with people whose ideas about certain characters are completely different from mine, but we have fun debating because... these characters aren't real.

People are going to like what they like and ship what they ship, just like you do. Maybe you're struggling and feel like this is the only thing giving your life meaning, because I don't understand being this invested and fixated on a particular thing (and I say this as an autistic person. Hyperfixation has been a trait of mine since childhood, but I was never this full of hate - I've hated people, but not to this extent). I get it. No, really. For so long I've been emotionally attached to the GOTG because they are my comfort characters. But I never want to become a shitty person for them. I like them precisely because they make me better. I don't mean to say this in a condescending way, but get help. If you can't accept that people have different opinions, you are going to live a very unhappy life.

No fandom is perfect, clearly. But the world is crazy - wars, pandemics, suffering. Let's maybe try to be a little kinder to ourselves and each other. I expect this advice to be ignored, but I want to put it out there regardless. I think we need to humanize each other more often, especially when we're online. That includes actors, directors, etc. Ignore Hayley Atwell if her existence makes you this angry. You'll be happier. Let's not spend our limited time on this floating rock in space being angry all the time.

And for fuck's sake... it's fiction. Don't forget.

[mcsquared789]

The Detailed Explanation For This

CONTEXT

Hello! Thank you for checking out this post. I greatly appreciate your attention and your support, and I hope to make it your while.

Suffice to say, this is a planned MCU novelization project that will retread one of the biggest global superhero franchises in a new invigorated light: to be BIGGER, LONGER and UNCUT. Putting all the characters and their relationships as the central focus of the narrative. A bunch of individual stories with heroes, villains and in many differing genres that will culminate into enormous showstoppers with the crossover Avengers fics.

There are a lot of reasons why I wanted to dedicate my time to this — become a better writer, improve how I write fanfiction, partly as my means to engage with the fandom — but the main one is that I am frustrated with the limitations of the MCU as it is, the movies and tv shows specifically.

What we have now for the films has to spend most of the time developing plots and creating superficial conflict. But I've always felt the MCU shined best with the characters and the connections to each other in meaningful ways, and that we didn't get enough of that in these movies... especially as actors grew older and then have had to bow out, killing the time they could have to spend with other characters — a problem in phase 4 specifically. I want more of this, so in telling these stories again I get to fill in the gaps and create more satisfying stories, where more screen time is given to everyone.

As well, the MCU is often criticized as shallow entertainment or (as some random guy put it) theme park rides. Whether you agree or not, I wanted to draw meaning from these stories in ways that connect us to these characters and really highlight the arcs they have that is not so apparent in the films... and how they apply those lessons in future projects and with bigger and more complicated threats. I want to put an emphasis on these characters and their arcs, and explore them in depth with additional stories and tales that will flesh out what already exists.

Some character's stories are predetermined, while others are more flexible. But this approach is at the heart of how I will be writing most of them and their relationships with others, and with the universe at large. For example:

How does Tony Stark learn and grow in every story he appears in, so that he both improves his Iron Man suit while using it to make a positive difference in the world?

How do the Avengers come into their own and how does the world react to their presence and the threats they face?

How does certain world-destroying events (yes, including THAT one) impact the universe, and how exactly do our heroes respond to the crisis?

These are just some of the questions I aim to dive deep through this project — to the extent that some of what I cover will feature parts that diverge WILDLY from canon. But my goal is to expand and flesh out, so think of this as less of an alternate universe and more of the one we know, but better on account for including more stories and giving more time to these characters that the movies never will. Hence, why it is considered uncut.

I will say however as I write this (if I'm not sick of the entire project up to this point) is that I do plan to end it at some point — in that once the last big story happens, I will wrap up whatever stories are left instead of introducing new characters (with certain exceptions) and then that will probably be it for me. The best things don't last forever, and what I want to make clear at the top is that I plan to have a beginning, middle and a somewhat open end to these arcs.

You'll see what this is like a little in the slate, but I tell you this now so that no one will expect me to continue this indefinitely. The actual MCU is still going on all the time, but for someone like me, it would be a LOT to keep track of. And there are certain things coming up in Phases 4-6 that are not of interest to me, personally for various reasons that I don't have the character space to get into here... and if I want to in the future, I only tackle them if I manage to get through everything else first. I hope you understand.

Anywaaay, that's the gist of what I have planned! If that is all of interest to you, you are in the right place. I'm not going to rush this or burn myself out, so give me patience and time to create something special, memorable and crafted with love. Please ask me questions, and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability as well as go further into things I plan to do and suggestions for how I do them... as part of a collaborative effort between me and you, the audience.

And again — thank you for reading. It means a lot to me. — (M)

[harlivycentral]

Just wanted to say thanks for breaking down the comics that lead to Ivy’s series. I read some of it before but I knew I was missing something so your post is super helpful. Also I’ve been loving the Kate/Maggie posts as well I’ve been meaning to read more batwoman. 🙏

Thank you so much for sending this ask, I'm glad you've been enjoying it! It was really kind of a pet project for me, since I was in the same boat as you for a long time & wanted to archive for myself the complete backstory. I think seeing how they built up Harley's interest in being a hero for multiple years was really interesting, plus I loved a lot of Ivy's storylines!! So it makes me happy to hear people are appreciating it :)

In 2019, I was a very casual Harley Quinn fan--much more into other comics & hadn't read most of her stuff. I was living in Seattle and going weekly to this awesome comic shop that's since closed (RIP 😢), so I picked up & read all of the limited-run Harley Quinn & Poison Ivy. After that, though, I didn't really keep up with their main storyline. I prefer to read things physically, and I'd buy certain single issues I was interested in (I bought single issues of Joker War and Catwoman: Fear State that I read online had more Harlivy content specifically), but I was always slightly confused/wanted to know the full scope of it. When they finally gave Ivy her own ongoing series, that's when I was like, okay, I'm fully diving in!

(Just a side note, midtowncomics.com is awesome for buying cheap back issues physically. Although I have temporarily subscribed to DC Universe just to catch up on the full backstory & decide which comics I want to own physically. I also hoped excerpting stuff from them would help other people decide which arcs they wanted to read in full for themselves! I can definitely give my recommendations if anyone is interested.)

And I definitely had to do some digging on like old reddit posts and random comic reviews etc. to figure out which comics had their complete storyline over the past few years, so I was like, okay now that I've put this all together, let me put it one place for posterity. There's definitely parts of their storyline I think are way better written than others (though I've tried not to editorialize too much except for Heroes in Crisis lol). I was on vacation last week & had a dental emergency this week (which turned out to be fine as of yesterday woohoo!), but I'd love to make some more text posts with my thoughts on stuff (separate from just archiving it). And I would definitely love to hear from my followers any of their thoughts on specific Harlivy storylines/comics/writers/etc.!

Glad you've been enjoying the Kate/Maggie posts too! I have such mixed feelings about that Batwoman run. It is truly like, sigh, the amount of canonical gay women that DC makes former army or current cops is truly abysmal. And it also definitely has more running themes of violence against women than I expected/wanted (obviously outside of villains physically fighting Kate, I mean, as that's to be expected). But the art is TRULY gorgeous, the storytelling is engaging, and it does represent a lesbian relationship and center a lesbian superhero in a way I haven't really ever seen anywhere else. I love DC Bombshell's version of Kate SO much (the art is also gorgeous for that & her backstory is WAY more appealing to me personally), but sadly they were more focused on including a breadth of characters in that comic than diving deeply into any one character's storyline, including Kate (after like the first six issues). Anyway, I won't go too in depth on my Batwoman thoughts here lol.

But yeah, I was in the Batwoman tag and it was mostly Batfam memes. Which, understandable to some extent, since her last solo comic ended a few years ago, so that stuff is probably just buried. But I was like, well, since I'm reading this anyway, I would like more of the art & relationships from her actual solo comic to be in the tags, at least on my blog for my own reference.

Anyway, sorry, feel like stuff has been running mostly on a queue for the last two-ish weeks, and now I'm back and energized & your ask happened to spark this rambling. Lol thank you for dropping in to my inbox, hope you have a good one!

[rosetyler42]

Huh, Surprising considering your awesome fan work of the franchise. But hey, I've been there myself before with some of my fandoms. XD As for Spiderverse, I haven't seen them, though I personally do like superhero films. Even HT itself I was into it when it came out, but I only really started hyperfixating recently after watching HT3.

They're cartoony and definitely don't take themselves too seriously. And while definitely deeper and more heart-felt than they appear in some ways, they aren't Shakespeare by any means. Unfortunately, that often seems to get labeled as cringe by default in today's world. And anything seen as cringe is written off as annoying, torn apart, and/or forgotten; no matter their merits. This seems to happen quite a bit with Sony films other than Spiderverse, including Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (Not only was it a great movie, it actually had alot more practical effects than you'd think! Many of the ghosts were either played by real people OR represented by real things on set. Worth mentioning in a day and age when movies are becoming almost all green-screen. Really, it's biggest problem was poor marketing and a reactionary fanbase.)

People are allowed, of course, to have different opinions. And it HAS been 10 years. But I've seen people call the Spiderverse films ground-breaking due to the stylized animation while putting down films like HT for being cartoony despite the fact the HT films were one of the first ones to do stylized cartoony CG animation. (Not to mention other good points, like not all the female characters look the same, they're allowed to be cartoony like the guys - including the love interest characters, which aren't all conventionally attractive or look super young, etc.) Even those that DO acknowledge it often do so rather begrudgingly. Some mourned the lost opportunities from the cartoony direction it took in terms of the more realistic past iterations (Which, true, would have been interesting to see. But part of the film's charm IS the unique cartoony take on monsters.)

As much as I believe Spiderverse deserves kudos and they've done great progress in getting animation the respect it deserves. This is not an attack on them at all. It just feels like animation fans at large are kinda forgetting HT existed or dumping on it because "Ew, cartoony and cringe". Which makes the current praise for Spiderverse as if it's the first ever film - or even first ever Sony film - to do stylized animation seem kinda hypocritical. HT's the one that started the trend. It showed that stylized computer animation is possible, that old "It's animation, we can do whatever we want" idea that kinda went by the wayside as Disney and later Pixar got big. And it and gave the animators the tools and knowledge on how to translate cartoony stylization into a computer generated world. Movies like Spiderverse, Inside Out, Trolls, Peabody and Sherman, and Puss in Boots: Last Wish probably wouldn't be NEARLY the same without the innovations made on the HT films. It's like how Monsters Inc revolutionized how clothing, hair and fur are done in animation, or how The Incredibles was with people animation and clothing materials. Yes, HT is very much a clown car made by Ferrari. But the fact this clown car was even fully POSSIBLE was virtually UNHEARD of back in 2012, and it doesn't get NEARLY the respect it deserves for that.

Whether you enjoy the films OR think they're cringe, Genndy and the HT franchise at LEAST deserve more respect from animation fans for introducing cartooniness to CG animation (And to a certain extent, making cartoony animation - Particularly in features - cool again in general.)

[luv4blackbooks]

Why the trauma? 🤨

I recently heard a few black authors online speak about how many publishing companies only seem to be interested in black stories if they incorporate themes about black trauma or the black struggle into them. Those who are just beginning to read diversely also try to read more stories like these. While it's not a bad thing that publishers and audiences are into diverse and authentic stories like this, it still puts black authors (and to an extent, black readers) at a disadvantage.

Believe it or not, not ALL black people face large amounts of race-related trauma or feel compelled to make art about it. Some authors simply want to write original stories that include black characters. When publishers and readers expect certain types of stories to come from black authors, it puts these authors in a box because they now feel like they HAVE to write about their struggles even if their stories don't need to have those types of themes included. When these themes get shoehorned into a story where it's not needed, it makes the work feel disengenuine. Unfortunately, these seem to be the types of stories that are in demand in the reading space. Let's talk about why.

Before more authors of color began getting more recognition and praise from publishers and readers, their stories unfortunately weren't as popular. There were always classic stories or a lucky handful of authors that would black-centered books, but there still weren't as many as there were today. Of these few stories that were out in the past, many of them took place during times where black people were facing a lot of trauma (for example slavery or segregation). Other stories would be more in the present day, but the characters would be living in a lower class neighborhood and struggling to make ends meet. There was nothing bad about these stories that were being told. While they may not have been authentic for certain readers, they were authentic to some. Stories depicting accurate black history are also important because black history is usually either minimzed or erased entirely from some people's cirriculumn. However, when these are the only types of stories you have available, you start to think that these are the only types of stories that CAN be created.

Moving back to the present day, more black authors begin to push the boundaries of what they can write about. Readers are finding more black fantasy novels, thrillers, mysteries, sci-fi stories, you name it. The rise in these types of stories over the years became extremely popular and in demand. However, while the stories were unique and different than what readers were used to, there always seemed to be common themes about racial trauma or the main characters facing obstacles solely due to their race. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with these types of stories being made because of how important they are. But it makes readers feel like that's all that there is. It doesn't help that certain publishers eat these types of stories up because of how "authentic" and "real" they are. It also doesn't help that because of this, these are the types of black stories that also seem to become super popular in reading spaces. Of course, stories that don't do this exist out there. They're just not as in demand as the others which unfortunately makes them very hard to find.

Creating authentic black stories doesn't mean that all of the characters problems, or even any of their problems, have to do with struggles about their race. Authors can create stories about black people riding dragons or being princesses or superheroes without there being some type of strong message about how bad racism is. Of course, this doesn't mean that their race should be ignored entirely. There are other ways to accurately represent it without attaching it to trauma. For example, cultural traditions, common black experiences, types of food, depicting natural black hair, etc. The reason some readers/publishers/authors think that trauma HAS to be included is because they can't separate blackness FROM trauma. Like I stated before, many people thought that the black trauma portrayed in older books were the only types of black stories that could be written. That's why it's so important for authors to go against the norm and write stories where "the black struggle" doesn't have to be checked off on a box for it to be considered authentic. We need more stories about black people doing magic just because they can or black heroes going up against just as black villians and not ones who are non-black and racist. We can create beautiful, fun, and authentic black stories without making trauma the main focus.

The black book recommendation the day is This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron! If you decide to pick this up and you enjoy it, be sure to check out the sequel (This Wicked Fate) as well as the authors other large catalogue of unique stories!

This Poison Heart https://a.co/d/iZRp6IO

[briarruler]

Addressing these tags by @pa-pa-plasma

#okay i feel like Danny would be more mad at them running off & doing shit without him & hiding things#than the actual ''villainy'' going on

#he'd probably just be like ''dont do that it's illegal but also WHY DIDN'T YOU BRING ME?? AREN'T WE A TEAM???''#''sooo disappointed in you guys''#''for being supervillains....?''#''.........sure''

#actually if i may be more angsty for a sec

#if theyre being villains on certain nights they arent there to help Danny with ghost shit#so like. he leaves them out of it because. well. they're not as involved as he is. they need rest & time to do all their stuff

#but like. turns out they had the time & energy to help him & instead of doing that#they were running around destroying shit?? & stealing & whatnot??? & they didnt even think to tell him or let him help at all????

#like he becomes a superhero & totally involves his friends in the process as much as they do or dont want to#but his friends become villains (or antiheroes depending on who you ask) & they purposefully keep him in the dark

#i'd be pissed ngl

Yeah you've basically articulated a good portion of the reason I originally had Danny be aware of, if not really involved in Sam's supervillain side hobby. But continuing thoughts about this version where he isn't aware...

I do think a fight between the trio when Sam's side hobby comes to light is pretty likely but I think in these circumstances it isn't a long lasting one.

Sam and Tucker should have told Danny. At least once it became a repeating thing. But in their defence, they've only been doing supervillainy during times that Sam's parents would have forced her to leave Amity Park anyway.

Plus the Amulet is dangerous. Without practice Sam is more likely to be a liability in a fight then an asset. Practicing in Amity Park is frankly a terrible idea, to many variables, to much potential for collateral damage. The Ghost Zone is an equally terrible idea, although less for collateral damage and more for pure chaos potential.

…Practicing outside of Amity Park is also a terrible idea. Even if they are specifically targeting currently empty buildings. Something can always go wrong, and as carefully as they might check these buildings for occupants before attacking, it doesn't mean they couldn't miss something. Or if a hero noticed what was going down and tried to stop her, things could go bad fast.

But anyway, back to Danny finding out. I think how bad the fight is would depend a fair bit on the circumstances behind the reveal (and how quickly that Sam and Tucker acknowledge they were wrong to exclude Danny.)

Danny finding out because a fight was going badly and Sam transforms to help him? A small argument, Danny is hurt by their secrecy, but also relieved that they won and glad that Sam can now use the Amulet to help in tough fights without to much risk of her becoming something he has to fight.

Danny finding out because they escalate from Supervillainy as practice when Sam is going to out of town anyway to deliberately leaving Amity Park for supervillain activities. Nasty fight, a lot of hurt feelings.

Danny finding out because they tell him that Sam had been practicing with the Amulet before using it to help Danny as Phantom but ever actually got around to mentioning what that 'practice' involved. Hilarious (possibly with a lot of exasperation and maybe annoyance about Sam's double standards of power usage).

Because this is the version where Amity Park is under a media blackout to some extent. I'd say most likely anything going out from Amity Park is being filtered for ghost content but outside media isn't being filtered much as it comes in (seems more feasible that way). So there are a several possibilities for how Danny discovers Sam's out of Amity Park activities.

The Fenton parents have been occasionally detecting Ghost activity outside of Amity Park and realize that is from that Phantom menace's blasted new ghost Dragon ally.

Vlad has realized what is going on and makes some sort of snide remark to Danny.

Valerie watches out of town news and sees something that has her coming after Dragon Sam.

Or what I think is the funniest option- this is how the Amity Park media blackout is breached.

Sam first appeared outside of Amity Park and lets say that by the time she feels in-control enough to help Danny she's already had some sort of encounter with a hero and/or had photos/videos of her in dragon form taken. She's classified as a magical supervillain and as a known entity the Amity Park Media Blackout doesn't filter her from out going media content.

So suddenly whatever algorithm the Justice League uses to watch for supervillains is pinging images and videos of this rarely seen supervillain in an otherwise unremarkable town.

They look into it of course. And either they notice the media blackout but think 'oh shit, a supervillain has taken over this town and we didn't notice'. Or they turn up in Amity Park utterly unaware of the chaos they are about to encounter.

In which Sam is the first member of Team Phantom to encounter the Justice League because she occasionally leaves Amity Park to (take direct action) be a supervillain.

Corporations destroying the environment or abusing animals fear her. She has no fatalities to her name (This is one part morality and two parts practicality. Non-lethal villains tend to be less of a priority and it denies her opponents a method to smear her causes.) but is wanted for massive property damage.

She does this by turning into a dragon. Specifically a black and purple dragon wearing an gold and green amulet.

The Justice League thinks she's a magic user because the amulet she wears is recognized as the one of the long lost Amulets of Aragon.

Tucker is her main backup: making sure they are targeting the right places and occasionally leaking incriminating information they come across, along with using the security systems to help check that the buildings are clear of people before bringing them down.

Danny is her emergency back up, ready to pull her out if something goes really wrong, but otherwise not getting involved.

[concupiscience]

Critical theory has caused the west to be overly self-aware, to the extent that culture can no longer organically develop without obsessive comparison. Its tendency to dissect itself has left nothing but shards of thoughts, fragments of images that were once so tightly interwoven.

Therefore, we shouldn’t be concerned with the current popular trends, or even the forthcoming zeitgeist which is always visible over the waves of those successive trends, each obliterating the last in an endless cycle. Not now, not next, but what comes after that is our objective. What is unseen as of yet, that is our goal.

THE STARS THAT FLOG THE SEA WITH WHIPS OF LIGHT

NOT ME.

ecstatic rites of an elegant, ancient beauty

perishing under sickly skies

NEVER LOOK BACk

WHO FUCKING CARES

If u have formed some type of notion about me please just do us both a favor and just forget that shit because human beings are in a constant state of change

To taste every forbidden fruit,

松の木々を通る夕日の最後の光線 寒さを逃れるために南へ飛ぶ鳥たちを照らす

You are limitless potential. You are the clay at the potter’s wheel.

Is this hell? This is definitely hell.

that dusk-tinged demigod

Industrial society operates under the presumption that resources are infinite

A triumphant, arrogant attitude may be necessary from time to time

The same moon my ancestors and descendants behold

We’re all hoes under the same blue sky

Ephemeral and fleeting as a smoke spirit

Having drunk deeply from the cup of sin

Spoiling the land with hubris and greed

Wow imagine that, In our modern society everything has to be done for money

I think you live longer when you have a good attitude. There’s cases where cancer goes into remission when a person starts believing they don't have it anymore. Likewise, there’s also cases of people dying on purpose from resigning their will to live, like those super old couples who die within days of each other. You can control your health with your mindset, at least that’s what I believe. If your mind is thriving your body is thriving. Right but we do have free will to influence our future. “The system cannot be sustained indefinitely ” Right. Like why did a religious impulse develop independently in every single ancient culture.

Media consumes us. Objects own us. Money spends us.

The flowers bloom without caring if they are observed.

Pattern-Matrix

Mass media, escapism, distraction, bread and circuses, whatever you want to call it. Recorded by studios with more money than some countries, packaged neatly for mass consumption. This is the result of capitalism working flawlessly for over a century. the spectator becomes a mere receptacle for media, they become a consumer, the same way food is consumed then comes out as waste, media consumes us. The more people are emotionally invested in fictional people and fictional worlds the easier it is to distract them from what’s happening in real life- the panopticon of modern life. Your superheroes, singers, actors, exist for one purpose only: to sell you a product. Through our complicity they buy our complacency. They have taught us to be satisfied with “what is” and not think about “what could be” because that’s just the way it is. They exist to sell us an image of what our lives and the world ought to be, and we stupidly buy into it. It’s a drug we regularly take.There’s nothing wrong with enjoying movies, TV, books, music etc but you have to realize what is illusion and what is real. When you watch anything, imagine the processes that go into its production. Could this potentially be used to manipulate people into feeling a certain way? Is this fact or does it reflect the views of its creator? All I’m saying is that if you unplug from this “machine” things seem much more relative.

we are bound to our era. we cannot escape the present. 

The notion of a grand, divine scheme negates the possibility of free will. If God does have a plan for everyone, that would mean we only have the illusion of free will.

Tragic figures such as these

Traditions everywhere are dying, we must forge new ones

Wholly effaced by time

Writ large

Pastoral vibes

I believe there are multiple paths to God. The fact that religion has sprung up independently in so many places over so vast a distance is incredible. Jesus and Buddha weren’t so different in their teachings.

Some got it more right than others, obviously.

So there is actually very compelling evidence that early Christianity was heavily influenced by similar savior-centered religious sects such as Mithraism, Orphism and the veneration of Dionysus (they all belong to the subset of Rising-and-dying gods). We know for certain that in Alexandria, an extremely important centre for early Christianity, Buddhist monks taught at the library of Alexandria around the time of jesus.

Wine was central to the rituals of Dionysus, who was believed to have died and been resurrected.

The real importance is that Jesus and Buddha were real historical figures that established schools of thought that endured for millennia.

They both preached the importance of virtue and morality, sympathy for the suffering and acceptance of the transitory nature of the material world.

The library itself was mostly intact until the 260s AD when it was burned by Aurelian.

There is ample evidence of eastern thought circulating in the near east around the time of christ. Statues of hindu gods were found in Pompeii, in Alexandria itself a tombstone with the Wheel of Dharma was discovered, in the port city of myos hormos in Egypt a sail cloth of Indian manufacturing was discovered. The trade routes between judea and the east were active until the 4th century AD.

Theres a Christian tradition that the apostle Thomas died in India where the church he established still exists.

Paganism is an umbrella term for anything that isn’t Christianity, or more accurately the animistic traditions that predate monotheism.

Judaism is fascinating because we have proof it originally was polytheistic. It’s totally Canaanite in origin but over time yahweh was promoted to the status of one true god. The painted pottery from Kuntillet Ajrud Shows yahweh and Asherah (later ishtar, aphrodite) as his consort.

Religions dont appear from nowhere. They’re the product of thousands of years of tradition, thought, and self reflection.

Do you believe the bible refutes evolution?

I dont think it does either. Those seven days of creation are metaphorical. The bible says our lives are like a single breath of god. Which implies he operates on a much longer timescale than humans. So the space between the first and last days of creation could have been billions of years for all we know.

Because the second to last thing he did was to create humans. Evolutionarily, anatomically modern humans first emerged in east Africa around 100,000 years ago. The first stirrings of human culture were around 20,000 years ago. The pyramids were only built 4000 years ago. Rome was only 2000 years ago. We can’t even comprehend how early on in our journey thru the universe we are.

A mere blip in the cosmic timescale. We might not even survive another million years.

I’m tired of getting hurt

旅に病んで 夢は枯れ野を かけめぐる

Falling ill on a journey my dreams go wandering over withered fields

[moonlightperseus]

I'm going to do my best to answer that SeaWorld question without infodumping lmao, but essentially I was talking to a friend and I said "I have always believed if I went to SeaWorld I'd get banned" and she said "now I need to know you have to go" but I was like have you considered I refuse to give them money? So she told me to break in and I said mmm but the last guy who broke in was found dead, naked and missing body parts? So really I had to do some research to find out if I would end up like Jessie in Free Willy or Craig (the name she bestowed to the dead naked guy- his real name was never disclosed). 

It's honestly pretty impressive that I was such a girly girl, given that I had three older brothers and a tomboy sister. My brother's loved superheroes, and the animated shows (at least the original Teen Titans) and I just refused.

I loved the Avengers (2012) i like made it my whole personality. I WAS younger but like embarrassingly so, and that lead me to seeing most of the Marvel movies in a certain time span. Like I haven't properly seen any of the pre-movies like iron man or the first captain america (but God did I try for Peggy) but I watched the second captain america, the thors, I think pretty Faithfully up to Endgame and now the only marvel movie I even a little bit want to see is The Marvel's. (I DID really enjoy Captain Marvel though I will say that) 

Marvel comics I read ? Black Widow, I HAVE read some captain Marvel, spider woman, and a big like Avengers AU that my teacher lent me. I don't remember what it was called but it was pretty good, part of the plot is that like, Thor claims he's a god but Loki claims he's clinically insane so they all trust Loki (and you trust Loki) until y'know he's actually the bad guy and Thor was Thor all along. It's some darker stuff but it was good.

I will just go into Dollarama and flick open justice league comics to see if they have my favorite blonde in them and if they do I'll buy it. That's like my only rule. My collection is a mess (two Batgirl beyond Burnside, and two injustice: gods among us year 4 volume 2, but one in hard cover and one in soft cover (this was accidental and NOT a sign of my absolute devotion)) I barely even have full runs for most of the comics I read, like Batwoman Rebirth (and absolute favorite of mine) I have volumes one and four. But admittedly I use Issue and Volume pretty interchangeably (though I know the difference) and have very few random issues, however, secret me lore is my older sister briefly owned a comic book store and I think I should've taken more advantage of the cheap random comic collection they had for sale. 

And that is annoying!! Especially with Bat-stories. I LOVE a good throwback (like in the gail Simone birds run when Dinah got kidnapped so it has a bunch of references to the longbow hunters comic and even Babs knowing she couldn't go through that again) but it's annoying with the bats because they're so prominent and big so it's just like "remember in issue 1045 of detective comics?" But not only is that over a thousand issues of something half of them are also impossible to find because it's so numerous that at least pirating sites really only include the most recent couple hundred and that doesn't help if you're reading older comics. 

plus there's SO much Kate Content I can't get because of the way detective comics are. 

​​​​​​I do absolutely love the BOP movie too!! It's honestly kind of annoying because I got it for Christmas- but on exclusively Blu-ray. I have a dvd player, a portable dvd player, AND a laptop with a disc drive and NONE OF THEM can play it. 

I don't have a lot of issues when people don't like something I like. I have very few opinions so I am pretty consistently just chilling to some extent. But I get what you mean, granted I think fitting or not a tractor would've been very funny and they should remake the movie just to do that. 

I don't have like real attachments, I watched one Superman movie when I was little and didn't even like superheroes yet, I've never liked the batman movies. It just really is the consistency? Like look, I don't like Marvel movies anymore, and they've got a lot of problems ethically, but one thing you can say is that they built a universe. DC just starts building one and then throws it to the ground like a toddler mid tantrum. It's SO frustrating even knowing that I probably wouldn't watch most movies anyway. 

I watched both wonderomans, I really liked the first one but haven't really been able to get through it a second time and I don't think I liked the second one that much. Everything else? Was kind of mid I think? That I watched. Like Shazam and Aquaman were all fine but nothing to write home about. Bop I also was a huge fan of. And while I wasn't excited for the Batgirl movie I probably would've watched it (which like genuinely does say something- I barely watch movies) 

I'm not the biggest fan of the Arrowverse shows, I know you are but. I LIKED Supergirl but I never finished it (I'm also had at watching TV) bit if there's one I'd try again it's that one. I also got through most of the Flash and it was enjoyable but I don't think I'd try again. I liked legends? But I didn't get very far because my streaming service short circuited and I don't think I could do it again. Then I watched the first season of Batwoman, I was PUMPED, but once ruby rose left, and Kate left, I was devastated. They were leading up to safiyah!! A KATE plot from the Comics!! I was so excited!! And then the character I was watching it for was gone so I just refused to ever watch it again.  And I have never been able to get through Arrow. I honestly can't get past Laurel or any of that. I hold the green arrow comics way too close to my heart for it to be wrong. But ofc that's just my opinion. 

I have one, and I live in like rural Canada so I feel like that's a good sign. (admittedly though it's an hour away from me and more like pokemon cards at this point. I am physically scared of the store and feel like a fraud when I'm there) it would he nice for you!! I hope you do. 

If I do I will keep that in mind thank you. It really is so exhausting and it's so funny because like? I like them?? Why is it hard?? But it is. Plus sometimes I feel bad because I'll talk to much. Like an example is the BoP run, the new one the ONE issue. I don't/ didn't really have any comic friends so I just like posted a screenshot of the cover on my close friends Instragram story and was like "I will NOT shut up about this" and then I read it and genuinely did not shut up and just kept posting stuff when originally I'd been joking and I just feel? So bad. Like logically I know none of them stopped to read it they were just flicking through but I'm still like guys im sorry you didn't want that I'm sorry I got excited 

I just bought like a very large Funko Bombshells Harley pin that sits by my comics!! Actually!! It was from the dollarstore or I wouldn't have, and honestly I'm not a big Funko fan so it was really just because I also love the bombshells design, but she's cute!! And I have a bombshells Ivy felt banner my sister bought me years ago. So I agree designs good.

And that's completely fair!! Sometimes I daydream about dressing up as like black canary for a con. But I don't think I have the confidence. I think cosplaying sounds really fun just in general. (and honestly good on you for the blonde wig I just used my 'natural' hair which was: blue)

Oh!! I LIKE year Zero, I do think it's good!! (The only injustice things I haven't read are ground zero and versus masters of the universe) HOWEVER I would say since you don't even know if you'll like it you should just start with Injustice: gods among us year one. It's up to you, that's kind of why I put out the disclaimer that I do also like year Zero. But I would personally recommend skipping it for now (or possibly even entirely, my brother never read it). (I read it last but that's because I read it as it came out). 

to restate, I think the best idea would be just start with the main plot because I think that's your best chance at liking just based on the way I know it got me into comics. I don't know about year Zero. 

No pressure to like Injustice obviously but I hope you do!! 

​​​​​​​Have a good day <3 

​​​​​​​​

bestie you are literally always welcome to infodump to me !!

also re:the break in at sea world with the mysterious death, I seem to remember buzzfeed unsolved mentioning that case? though i cannot place episode wise or if i’m remembering correctly. but anyways i think you would have a much better chance of survival so long as you don’t climb into any tanks with orcas or any other similarly large aquatic animals known for being unpredictable.

also yeah i def also got into the avengers movie at least a big, though i never watched the others i think prob just didnt have access to the others? bc i watched avengers on netflix? i absolutely devoured agents of shield and then the agent carter show when that came out. tv shows are easier for me to digest tho.

i had to google what a dollarama is and i gotta say i dont think dollar stores in the US typically have comics but it also has been quite a while since ive been in a dollar store tbh. but i did find a few places near me to potentially check out if i ever feel brave enough (and ever have actual time to go check out bc my life is very very busy rn lmao) i need to do more things branching myself out and trying new things its just very scary and i have a very small comfort zone

also, personally, i think when comics do decide to have a storyline thats gonna have multiple parts across several different comic series at the same time they should at least do something where they like, collect all those individual parts and put them all in like one like, book/volume? so you can easily read the story without having to jump to different series

(boy howdy. did i ramble again lol)

also lkajsdf i have a very complicated relationship with being a "fan" of arrowverse. (its a love hate relatioship i have lol) bc like yeah. a lot of it is. not good. and definitely not super comic accurate but its like. arrow is a dumpster fire and horrible green arrow representation however its what led me to my passion for black canary im not gonna lie and like i think honestly what led me to read actual comics (bc while i loved the animated shows i dont think i picked up comics until after i had started in the arrowverse) and like with arrowverse as a whole i think there was a lot of potential to the idea but a lot of poor execution and bad writing. the first two seasons of the flash are still very dear to me i will say but i also never finished it or... actually i dont think i fully finished any arrowverse shows, except for black lightning (did i finish black lightning???) (i dont think naomi counts as arrowverse) legends i stuck with the longest but i stopped when maisie richardson-sellers left the show (i am gay. i am gay.) i watched the last two seasons of arrow but skipped a huge chunk in the middle that i dont ever intend to go back and watch, i picked back up in s7 bc katie cassidy was a series regular again and while not my laurel i did grow very attached to the e2 version of her who i refer to as siren. (i am gay. im gay) i think i mightve picked up and dropped supergirl a few times?? i think i ended up watching up to the final season though. i never got into batwoman really bc i wasnt a fan of the casting for kate personally. (i got very attached to a fancast of monica raymund as kate kane and honestly im still attached to it) but yeah anyways sorry for rambling about arrowverse lmao i dont know how to be normal. all the parts of arrowverse that i love are my version of arrowverse that is good and exists only in my head and maybe in a few actual scenes on television. (i dont know if any of this made sense and i apologize again for rambling, i totally respect people not liking the arrowverse and completely get why... its not good. its not great. but it certainly was a huge part of my life)

literally no pressure to read the bombshells comics but can i just say you DO have a comic friend now its ME and i will happily welcome any comic book rambling in my inbox that you wish to do, encourage it even!

but i really do get that "i genuinely enjoy this thing why is it hard" like god human brains sure have a lot of design flaws i gotta say. like for me i definitely have that issue with reading in general its like i ENJOY reading I LIKE reading however the thought of starting reading? of keeping up with reading? i used to love going through books when i was a kid and now its like. have i finished 1 book over the span of a whole month? audiobooks helped me a little bit getting back into reading and comics at least, for a majority, feel a little shorter (however the longer series do feel a little more daunting)

(here have a hastily made meme i whipped up in like <5 minutes)

i do have a small funko pop collection i will admit but its mostly women from dc and i have a few different bombshells ones (theyre in a box rn but uhh i know i have bombshells! hawkgirl and batwoman and i think i have a mini bombshells wonder woman?

also finally able to look into my comic collection and it turns out i dont have the first volume of bombshells but i have 2-6 lmao.

anyways i will skip the prequel for now of injustice but keep it in mind to go back and read if i enjoy injustice. i meant to start the first issue of injustice but ive been busy back at my parents helping them pack to move and then i had to drive home and today i had to work and just didnt have the brain space but goddammitt i will find the time to start it and soon. i probably shouldnt start it after finishing responding to this bc it is 1:30am now and i do have to be awake in like. 7 & 1/2 hours BUT i did notice that the second issue of the new bop run is out so i may end up reading that in bed before going to sleep. ooh maybe i should. draft this. go read it and then come back with some thoughts before i finally publish this response

(also, sorry again for the delay in response , like i said life has been busy 😭)

okay. 2:30 am now. BUT i read the new issue and ooooh it was good! continues to intrigue me. also i had genuinely never heard of the megalodons that guard themyscira before. that’s wild (and just like that. the conversation circles back to large marine animals) i won’t say any more bc i don’t wanna spoil it if you haven’t read it yet but if you have or if/when you do please feel free to come ramble to me about your thoughts!!

& i hope you have a good day!! 💕💕