#In the end it didn't matter

[nostalgiamonster]

Correction: Stupendi-dress.

Also good TED Talk.

Btw, ur a really cool bean imo! Thought you should know!

-E.T.S.

At first I was confused- but then I slept on it, and now I see there's nothing else for me to do except agree!

Good TED talk, friend 👍

I haven't been called a cool bean since 2012, good to know the vibe still carries. Right back at ya!

[unknown-cold]

FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT!!

Even if most people are just joking, it bothers me when other people actually think it's all due to a failed relationship when the problem is actually bigger than that. Vi getting to this point isn't because she broke up with Caitlyn. She has bigger, more difficult things going on than just a failed relationship. Adding to that the most painful factor for Vi is when she fights Jinx, which is one of the factors that really affects her. She went from being protective of her sister to "hurting" her sister. (Even though her sister Jinx brought this on herself, but anyway)

"Losing Caitlyn was the last straw, as they say"

Caitlyn was the one who got Vi out of prison, She got her out of the worst place Vi had ever been in. And Caitlyn was the last person Vi could trust and now she's gone.

I mean you can see she wasn't that miserable when she was in prison because she said herself, "The only thing that kept me going, was the thought of getting back to you." Now her sister is gone and Caitlyn is gone, the only two people left in her life. It's only natural that she would come to this point after literally losing everything.

Vi now has no hope no purpose and no one left after all the people she's lost along the way. It's really hard for Vi.

[zishuge]

The only thing I remember is killing people. You say I'm someone who saves people. I won't kill you — but I don't believe you either. Do you think I'm a fool? You're not a fool. Mysterious Lotus Casebook (2023) | Ep. 20

[bixels]

Be honest, what are your thoughts on appledash? Do you hate it or its more of not a big deal

Not a big deal to me. I like it, I see all the appeals, I just personally like Rarijack more.

[silverwhittlingknife]

So you're a go to source for all things Dick&Tim bros and you tend to write primarily from Dick's POV. So, odd question, but if you were to summarize their relationship from his POV in FIVE panels which panels would you pick? Keeping in mind that one specific aspect of their relationship that you love needs to be clearly represented by each panel (loyalty, trust etc). I hope this is a fun challenge and not an annoying question so if you don't want to answer that's cool! Have a wonderful day!

No more talk. The same thoughts run through two minds... (SotB 29) / You're my equal. My closest ally. (RR 1) / I can't stop thinking how much I rely on him. (GoG 3)

25 Feelings Dick Has About Tim

This was such a kind ask & a cool challenge which I totally failed; here are TWENTY-five panels of Dick's POV on Tim sdfdsfds Look, I got carried away! Marcia and Cindy! The boys!!

OKAY SO BEFORE I GET TO THE PANELS A FEW NOTES:

WARNING THAT THERE ARE SOME NEGATIVE EMOTIONS IN HERE because I love conflict but but but you gotta remember those are not the final word!! They are complicated people and sometimes they get mad at each other BUT ultimately their relationship is so hugely important in both their lives & they love each other and rely on each other so much -!!! <3

Also I have CONCLUDING THOUGHTS at the end about what Dick's POV leaves out (mostly: a lot of Dick defending & protecting & supporting Tim, which Dick does instinctively but isn't very self-aware about most of the time)

I have loosely organized my list into 5^5 format (5 categories with 5 examples each!), so if you want to skip to a relevant one, here are the categories!!

Below the cut:

I hate him and find him infuriating (#1-5)

On second thought, he's endearing & fun (#6-10)

Grief is complicated & he's all tangled up in mine (#11-15)

I love him & think highly of him (#16-20)

I rely on him & though it's hard for me, I trust him (#21-25)

I hate him and find him infuriating (#1 - 5)

1) He thinks he’s so smart and can psychoanalyze me and Bruce, but he doesn’t know me at all, he should get lost (New Titans 61)

2) He thinks he’s so smart and can psychoanalyze Bruce but he doesn’t know Bruce at all, he should get lost (Gotham Knights 26)

3) He is so nosy about stuff that is MY business (Robin 0)

4) He sounds like an insincere suck-up half the time... but okay, fine, if you push him he's got a sense of humor about it (New Titans 65)

5) I'm sure he's a better vigilante than me. It's my fault for being a failure, but I resent him anyway. (Nightwing 9 - Dick's having a nightmare)

On second thought, he's kinda endearing (#6-10)

6) He worries too much and gets anxious so easily, but it makes him fun to tease (Robin 67)

7) I'm not that competitive - okay, so maybe I'm a little competitive, I gotta make sure he doesn't get a swelled head (Prodigal)

8) I'm supposed to be his favorite! It is not cool for him to be fanboying over my not-girlfriend's not-boyfriend!! (Birds of Prey 19)

9) We have fun together. I can kick back and relax when it's just the two of us. Plus I get to boss him around a bit. (Prodigal)

10) He’s always trying to reassure me, and I guess it's a little comforting, but also he doesn’t really get it. Or me. He makes excuses that he shouldn't, because he doesn't understand that I suck. (Nightwing 64)

Grief is complicated and he's all tangled up in mine (#11 - 15)

11) He reminds me of everything I try not to think about. Sometimes the memories are so strong it hurts to look at him. (Batman 441)

12) WHY IS HE BEING IMPOSSIBLE ALL OF A SUDDEN??? THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING (Nightwing 139)

13) We're the same. He says all the things I don't let myself think about. It's like arguing with myself. (Nightwing 139)

14) He thinks he gets to tell me what to do but he doesn’t, fuck him (Battle for the Cowl)

15) Life sucks, so what. I sucked it up so he should too (RR 1)

I love him and think highly of him (#16 - 20)

16) He’s the closest thing to a brother I’ll ever have.  If someone hurts him I will hurt them harder. (Nightwing 6)

17) I can't handle the idea of losing him. (Nightwing 97)

17) He’s so good and I’m not. I'm afraid I’m bad for him. (Nightwing 110)

18) He’s better than me, and it’s kind of a relief because I know no matter what he’ll be okay. (Gates of Gotham 3)

19) In my head he’s the responsible one.  (Gotham Knights 10)

I rely on him, and though it's hard for me, I trust him (#20-25)

20) I know I have to trust him but I'm afraid he'll make the wrong choices and get hurt (Nightwing 139)

21) I'm sure I know what he should do because I see myself in him - not that I can take my own advice, but he should (Blackest Night 3)

22) I trust him.  When I’m losing my grip on things, he pulls me back. (Gotham Knights 10)

23) I want him to trust me (Red Robin 12)

24) He can tell when I'm lying. Sometimes he sees my weaknesses better than I wish he did. (Detective Comics 874)

25) He’s always there when I need him. (Teen Titans / Outsiders Secret Files)

Final rambling thoughts:

TIM: Uhh, okay, so I'm just skimming this list - do you really trust me? you're not just saying that? - but anyway, I'm confused because you left some stuff out? Like some stuff that's kinda important? DICK: No? I think I got everything? TIM (starts counting on his fingers): The time I was having a bad day but then I called you. The time I got captured by Two-Face but then you saved me. The time I fell off a train but then you saved me. The time I fell off a building but then you saved me. The time I fell off a different building - DICK: I feel like you're trying to make some kind of point but I'm not sure what it could be.

SO THE THING IS, I put 25 panels in here and not a single one has Dick catching Tim when he’s falling!!! But I think that's a central motif of their relationship from Tim’s POV, not Dick’s. I love Dick, but in some ways I think he is spectacularly un-self-aware.

And I think he especially has a lot of blind spots about Tim. He kinda intermittently gets that Tim admires him, and he enjoys it in a playful I-get-to-boss-you-around way. But Dick tends to consistently underestimate all of his own good qualities & skills, and he meets Tim at a point in his life when he's especially down on himself & his abilities. And so he's unable to see his own influence on Tim, & therefore unable to fully understand a lot of Tim's priorities and loyalties and motivations, because you can't actually understand Tim without understanding Dick's impact on him. There's a fascinating moment in Bruce Wayne: Murderer when Dick's completely blindsided & upset to discover that Tim doesn't entirely trust Bruce, even though this has been a definitive fact of Tim's whole thing ever since he showed up with his Batman needs Robin theory, and Barbara has to actively remind Dick of the obvious-to-everyone-except-Dick fact that a lot of Tim's loyalty is to Dick, and Tim loves Bruce but feels free to be more wary of him. (And to give Bruce credit: this is not something he ever begrudges.) But anyway Babs points this out, and Dick manages to sorta process it for about five seconds, but he cannot actually accept it into his worldview so instead he discards it at the speed of light and goes off and has an argument with Tim instead sdfsfdsf

All of Dick's virtues - Dick's kindness at the circus and Dick's determination to fight through grief and Dick's rigid sense of morals and Dick's vigilante skills and every time Dick has ever backed Tim up or listened to him or protected him or saved him from something or just been casually kind to a stranger in Tim's presence etc etc etc - all these things loom really large in Tim's mental story of Who Dick Is, and What Dick And Tim's Relationship Is. Tim meets Dick before he meets Bruce, trusts Dick more than Bruce, aspires to be Robin instead of Batman. And so in Tim's default version of the story, Dick is the super-special and admirable hero and Tim is... nobody in particular, a tagalong outsider who's barely managing to be a hero, not part of Dick and Bruce's family and not part of their story, who, if he's VERY LUCKY and tries REALLY HARD, might be able to fight his way to proving himself and offering something to Dick that Dick will value, if Dick doesn't get fed up with him first.

But that's not Dick's version of the story!!!

Dick's version of the story is almost the exact opposite, a story where Dick's an outcast failure black sheep who's screwing up everything he tries, and meanwhile Tim is The Sudden New Perfect Robin Who's Better Than Me And Probably Bruce Loves Him More And Probably They Gossip About What A Loser I Am, mixed with a complicated edge of Tim Thinks He's So Smart But He Doesn't Know Me/Us At All. Dick gets much more attached to Tim over time, and Tim gets unnervingly better at the know-it-all psychoanalysis so then Dick gets to have complicated feelings about him being right instead of just annoyance at him for being wrong, plus Dick's relationship with Bruce improves a lot, so Tim stops feeling so threatening. But Dick never fundamentally changes his basic theory of their relationship in which Tim is highly impressive and capable, and Dick is not so much.

And so asking Dick about Tim is kinda like if you asked George Bailey to tell you about Harry Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life; like, you'll be there for five hours while he tells you how great Harry is, and how accomplished Harry is, and how he doesn't really get how or why Harry does the things he does, and maybe George does feel a little resentful or jealous sometimes, but that pales in comparison to all his admiration and trust for Harry who he loves so much, who's better than him in so many ways, and he's not gonna openly gripe but secretly he can't help but feel sometimes like he's such a failure in comparison to Harry, a perfect person who emerged fully formed from Zeus's head with all the virtues and also all the accomplishments, etc. etc. etc. --

-- and he will not actually remember the part where he changed and saved Harry's whole entire life unless you literally send him to an alternate timeline in order to force him to remember it. <3

[criminalflower]

This is the face of a man who's mentally going through all of his exes to figure out which one he got pregnant.

[kineticallyanywhere]

Time & Space pages 1-2 ( This is the start || ao3 (not yet!) || next ) Starts less than 24 hours after the death of Willy Stampler. With the job done, there's finally time to sort some things out. They just need the right amount of space.

[thechibilitwick]

happy birthday shidou cheers to a unchanging tomorrow blah blah blah i hope you fall face flat into your cake

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

First and Last appearances of Poorly-Drawn-MDZS Season 1!

[nelkcats]

Phantom Fever

When Danny left Amity he was pretty sure it would be a quick trip. He wasn't expecting a few days' visit to Gotham to check some annoying "co-workers" of Vlad's, a gala and a serious case of fever.

Being fair, Danny didn't know that ghosts could get sick, or how much damage this could do. His powers went completely haywire, activating and deactivating in the middle of the street, and it was only thanks to Vlad that he was able to come up with an excuse or two.

Vlad obviously didn't expect him to get sick either, if his disgusted face was anything to go by. The two had a truce of sorts but it was obvious they were only on friendly terms thanks to Jack Fenton.

Danny didn't feel like locking himself in a room and drinking soup. He wanted to call Frostbite, but he was too far away from the Realms, and the halfa refused to let Vlad check on him.

So he ended up on the streets of Gotham, spreading early winter and ice stalagmites in his wake. It was just luck that Vlad found him before the bats, who were obviously interested in the new development. Danny wondered how he was supposed to attend the gala in those conditions.

[dykedvonte]

Can you talk about trans!Curly a little bit more? I'm curios if you have any headcanons and the like

-💀

It's just such a thing in my mind because it adds a truthful sadness and differing aspect to mouthwashing.

If Curly was trans it adds the horror of the horribly selfish thought he could have easily been in Anya's situation. It could've been him but it wasn't and he so conflicted on the pit it put in his stomach that brings and the shameful relief it wasn't. In this scenario he is friends with Jimmy for a long time still. Jimmy likely knew him pretransition. Maybe he gave Curly weird looks then, maybe they never stopped after, maybe they seemed meaner. They are guys now, bros, both of them are. He doesn't really have to worry what those looks mean anymore, Jimmy just has that face with him sometimes. It's recontextualizing a lot of things for him that he was in denial about or too ashamed to admit. How naive he was being and how he let that get another person hurt.

Specifically with Anya, it's he knows the dread and fear she's feeling. He can understand it because he had to live with it for a good portion of his life, he knows it cause he still does, just in a slightly different way. It makes him think of all the times he's been alone with Jimmy, all the times he's been way more drunk off his ass and not remember the night, Jimmy was always with him the next day. Makes him think of the comments he would laugh off both because that's what guys do but because that part of being a girl says to laugh so Jimmy doesn't do something. It's the selfish realization that he was never safe and he's uncertain now too. Mad at himself for forgeting that feeling, espcially since for a long time he would've been considered the only woman on a crew (with all that implies) for a long time.

He should've taken those blinders off, step back into that position for just a moment and it's so much more painful that Anya likely came to him because he should've gotten it. Those thoughts don't leave his mind after the crash when he's in an even more vulnerable position than she was...

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.

[factsilike]

I don't know why so many people are coming to LXC's defence recently, like he never did anything wrong or never had a choice or that he was only manipulated, because 'JGY was just that good of a manipulator.'

Like no, the novel makes it clear that at several points that he was being willfully blind and ignorant of JGY's and the cultivation world's faults. The fact that LWJ and WWX found out about JGY killing NMJ after only a little bit of digging because they thought to suspect him, which Lan Xichen somehow didn't think to do despite spending close to twenty years working with him. That's a very long time, and that says more about his tendency to turn a blind eye, to not look deeper, to look away from the uncomfortable truth, than any good about JGY's manipulation abilities.

That is not to say Lan Xichen isn't a good person. He is. The problem is that he's not willing to put in the work to be good. He's unwilling to stand up to anyone. When WWX rightfully calls out JGS for trying to be the next Wen Rouhan, (about which JGY was like 'I mean, you're right, but you're not supposed to say it...."), he convenienly ignores that, opting to irrelevantly comment about how 'his heart had changed'. (Which made no sense?? LXC barely knew anything about WWX at that point!)

He's content to stay in his comfort zone, to go with the easy solution of letting others decide. If there's a problem, he'll go with the flow, and if there's a deeper ugly truth to it? He doesn't want to know about it. The situation of his parents is a perfect example. He says it himself: he doesn't want to know, and thus doesn't want to understand what happened with them.

Also for someone whose whole thing is being nice, he can be unbelievably tactless. Look at the ending events of the Guanyin Temple, where JGY is missing a limb and LXC, without thinking, asks Nie Huaisang of all people to give him medicine to heal. You know, the same Nie Huaisang who, at least to LXC's knowledge, has just learned that this same man is responsible for the death and dismemberment of his brother's body, as well as many others. And he now wants his help. To heal his brother's killer. Yikes. It's a wonder that NHS didn't immediately plan to kill LXC right then and there. And even if LXC was physically and mentally exhausted, it was still an incredibly thoughtless move.

Look at the way he laughs about NMJ (a member of the gentry) taking a third of the prey on Phoenix Mountain- "Oh typical Dage, that's just like him!"- while ignoring accusations against WWX (a son of a servant) doing the same, because he's subconsciously agreeing that it was a problem when WWX did it. He's being blatantly hypocritical and it's frustrating that he doesn't even realise it, or acknowledges it.

One of his redeeming factors can be his love for LWJ, but he's frustratingly careless about that too. For all his teasing (in which we never see LWJ indulging, he just unhappily and sulkily endures that. Teasing is not supposed to be fun or amusing if it's only one sided. Compare that to how he responds with snarky remarks to WWX's teasing, meaning he enjoys their banter) and pushing and advocating for LWJ's happiness, he never seems to deeply consider what actually makes him happy.

Everything he does for LWJ turns out to be the very opposite of what Lwj actually wants; inviting WWX and the others for the Caiyi hunt? Not what Lwj wanted, LXC merely convinced himself of that. His pushing LWJ to go talk to WWX at any chance? Doesn't ask or seem interested in why exactly LWJ would want to talk to WWX, nor help him in not letting their conversations constantly devolve into arguments. Shutting LWJ's protests at how WWX was right at the banquet with the 'his heart had changed'? Convenient for him to say, both hurting (even if it was unintended) his brother and changing the subject. And somehow everyone forgets that it was LXC who led the thirty three Lan elders to the cave after the Nightless City for Lan Wangji to fight against, for 'his own good.' And of course his whole angry, projection and deflection fuelled rant at the Guanyin Temple, where he tries to make WWX feel guilty about his brother's confession (which, you know WWX didn't remember because of the trauma clouding his memories), and make him think that he owed LWJ a relationship, which was exactly what LWJ was most afraid of.

His failings hit harder for me than any other character, because unlike JGY or XY or JGS who have no qualms about their immorality, he's supposed to be one of the good guys, a righteous clan leader who abides by honour and dignity. And yet he fails to do anything of sustenance all throughout the novel, and is a painful reminder of how easy it is to go with the wrong crowd, and that how so many 'nice' people like him exist irl, people whose willful ignorance comes at other's expense, people who want to be good but are too afraid of conflict, too set in their comfort zone to speak up against injustice, people who are all too willing to turn a blind eye and do nothing if the injustice or tragedy to others doesn't affect them.

[gayness-and-mayhem]

Father Mulcahy being a spin the bottle champion is something that's so important to me actually.

[theatre-apocalypse]

[skadoodler]

this has got to be one of the best clips in hs10

transcript:

[Bdubs] It's hamma--please be quiet during the--my moment.

[Skizz laughs]

[Grian] Can you do a different catchphrase this time? You got--you got...

[Tango] It might help, yeah. Yeah yeah yeah.

[Bdubs] Uh... looks like the hammer just found a nail!

[Everyone laughing]

[Bdubs] Ah, dangit! ... What an embarrassment. What an absolute embarrassment. Ah... some chainmail pants.

[Skizz] That's--that's one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

[Tango] I can't stop--[continues to laugh]

[Bdubs] Aaahhh! I--I will--I will not be using a mace as we have demonstrated here...today.

[Skizz] That's so good--that's too good!

[Tango] Oh my goodness.