#best character ever tbh

[oh-hush-its-perfect]

oh alex..... you are my favorite..

[wildtornado-o]

They both needed hugs so bad in this scene. Im drawing that.

[atlasofoverthinking]

rody making it into the first top 20 of the worldwide best hero poll is so funny to me

all we have is a non-canon (?) movie and some scraps here and there but this fandom loves him so much to let him be forgotten

(he’s 17th in the japan top 20 so i guess the japaneses are the one voting for him. than you guys. he deserves it)

[saltyloafy]

im. so proud. of what ive done today.

[somewhereincairparavel]

omfg I just watched "Zuko alone" (season 2 ep7) for the first time and it's so fucking good holy I'm getting goosebumps rn. The flashbacks, Zuko saying "I'm the son of Ursa and fire lord ozai" right after he got a flashback of his mom, the boy Zuko helped saying "I hate you!" After Zuko tried giving him the knife he got when he was younger, UGHH the angst, the feels I'm sobbing 😭💔

I also like how they showed azula being cunning even as a kid, not mourning her grandfather's death, wanting iroh to die so ozai can be king, not caring about lu tens death, etc. Also, how much her dad favoured her over Zuko, and how Zuko inherited his mom's gentleness. Zuko shows empathy so many times throughout this season. The most prominent one being refusing to steal food as soon as he found out it belonged to a pregnant woman. These little stuff show that his empathy, a character trait he always had, was slowly coming back to him and had never left him even after all the abuse he went through.

it also shows how much Azula has been influenced as a child by her own dad's cruelty and becoming just like him, to please him. The firenation is genuinely the best written segment of atla imo, and I'm saying this as a first time watcher.

The earthkingdom family being so quick to turn on Zuko after they found out he's the prince is so realistic but sad at the same time :( it shows how much a hundred year long war affects people. I'd say this is the episode Zuko truly realized the damage his nation, and his father had done to the world.

[cluescorner]

Tim Drake has a weird fucking function

The thing about Tim that I find unique is that his life became SO MUCH WORSE after joining the heroing thing. Everybody else had a mid-to-shit life before becoming a hero/living with Bruce and mostly everybody (except Jason who LITERALLY DIED) had their life improved by being a hero/being Bruce's kid (or at least it is typically portrayed as such.

Tim had the exact opposite trajectory. His life wasn't perfect before he became Robin, but like...multi-millionaire/billionaire (canon is unclear, but he's within Gotham's upper-strata) kid with both natural intelligence + charisma and a bright future ahead of him and parents who were emotionally neglectful but nothing really beyond that (which is also a form of trauma, but all of the info we have indicates that the Drakes were no Arthur Brown or David Cain) and he still had other people he could rely on outside of them. He went to boarding school, which could be something horrible OR something amazing depending on your own thoughts/experiences. I grew up having a commute where we'd drive past a really pretty and rich af boarding school that literally everybody in our area DREAMED of going to, so to me the idea of going to boarding school sounds incredible but mileage may vary. Tim seems like the type of kid who would thrive in that though. Based on what we know in canon atm, his pre-robin life was fucking amazing.

And then he starts being the sidekick and working towards becoming Robin. His parents immediately get kidnapped and poison themselves through drinking tainted water; his mom dies and his dad is in a coma. This is not the fault of Robin, but Tim himself muses about the idea that Robin and dead parents are linked: to become Robin completely, you must lose your parents. And with how fate/destiny/canon events can operate in comics universes, maybe he isn't that far off. Once his dad wakes up, their relationship becomes strained as the man grieves the loss of his wife and realizes that his son has been doing vigilantism as a hobby. It is unclear exactly how good of a parent Jack was before the incident, but the results of Tim's involvement with the Robin mantle has definitely made things worse between father and son. Jack will also die within quick succession of 2 of Tim's best friends, his girlfriend, and his other father. He will also effectively lose like 1/2 his loved ones in the fallout of all of that mess including: his older brother, his other friends (both civilian and superhero), and the stepmother with whom he shared what I would argue is his best parent-child relationship (Dana also may have died, but it's left unclear). He has stopped pursuing higher education (the moment he even applied for college he 'died', and it seems he hasn't made another attempt since) and if he wasn’t a major focus of the media before he sure is now. He tries to quit briefly (in fact he initially was planning on quitting once someone more suited came along) and cannot bring himself to do so. Even when he does manage to get away for a while, his superhero life impacts the pre-robin life he is trying to go back to. Leaving is an impossibility, this is all there is for him now. He also isn’t allowed to make mistakes anymore, not when lives hang in the balance. The one who enforces that impossible standard the most (besides Bruce depending on who's writing) is himself. He’s got TRAUMA now and people want to hurt him constantly. He is constantly questioning his own sanity and morality and place in the world. He almost dies like every month. Tim grows colder and less grounded, he is becoming both a better and a worse version of himself at the same time. He’s saving lives in the same few issues as he’s setting up a Saw movie plot for the man who killed his father. He is haunted by the ghosts of his past and the looming figure of his future. His life becomes SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE after he becomes Robin. Some of it is the fault of others, some is the fault of circumstance, and some of it is due to his own actions. But basically all of Tim's worst traumas and life-changing moments are either tied to or caused by Robin. Dick's parents would still be dead, Jason would still be living on the streets, Stephanie would still have Arthur Brown for a father and a lot of other things that deserve their own posts/IDK if they've been retconned, and Damian would still have been raised in the eco-cult where death is a constant. Those are life circumstances that occur without the involvement of Robin, the only one who even needs Bruce involved at all in their series of events is Damian. But Tim? All of what is considered his 'worst' moments occur after he assumes the role.

This idea is what I find the coolest and most fascinating about Tim as a character. Being a hero is usually portrayed as either an outright awesome thing or a righteous duty that one must fulfill or (maybe in a grimmer and/or more grounded story) a sacrifice to your interpersonal relationships/mental health that is made for the greater good. For Tim, being a superhero actively ruined his life (both because of the general circumstances surrounding being a kid vigilante and the choices he made as part of that role). It's never portrayed that way in canon because we need to come out of issues going 'wow being a superhero is so cool! I'm gonna buy the next issue!', but when you just look at Tim's life literally everything really bad that we know of occurred after he became Robin.

[radioproto]

I had so much fun at AnthroExpo this weekend!!!

Thank you to all these lovely suiters for photos and an unforgettable experience, and a huge shoutout to Wasabi (manokit, @chevvytime), Honey (tortoiseshell cat), Onyx (bnuy), Peaches (doggo), and Alex (fox/wolf [I DONT REMEMBER THE SPECIES IM SORRY]) for spending Saturday with me and creating some awesome memories.

[haeidys]

Made a detour and asked Magnus out instead because he's the one that has been through a lot of ups and downs with my farmer boy

[gnomeniche]

these guys!! i haven’t posted abt them for a while but was thinking abt my snow queen retelling again so i have been redesigning kain because i didn’t feel like the old design conveyed his personality and general vibe well enough + also this one is more fun to draw and has more visual interest. so ofc i had to add glory because they are besties and i needed to see if they looked good next to each other. i think it’s mostly working! they have strongly contrasting designs on purpose but they have enough similar elements that they don’t feel too alien to each other. and then finishing with mask on + hood up designs for kain because that’s usually how he appears unless he’s more relaxed

[potatobugz]

do you think the mess in oshiros hotel is meant to signify that hes been letting his problems pile up until its become too overwhelming to handle.

im thinking about the fact that he's definitely the one who's been making the mess but he doesn't even realize it. he ignores the clutter until it becomes too hard to ignore you know? like when it starts actively blocking the way to the presidential suite. he insists that he and his staff will handle it and that madeline shouldn't clean up his own mess, but he still doesn't do anything about it. does he know that the staff is gone? that it's just him there?

mr oshiro is so hell bent on impressing madeline so that she'll stay in his hotel. he's so in denial of everything. he doesn't even realize he's dead, he still thinks his hotel never got shut down. I think his insistence on her staying is bc he really wants to believe that the hotel is open, and a costumer would affirm that belief. it could also maybe be a mixture of loneliness too. (also, him treating her as a costumer even after she says no is absolutely him being in denial. that man is very unhealthily attached to this hotel,)

and even though it was nice of madeline to clean it up, there's still parts of the hotel she can't fix. the plumbing. the windows. the, hole in the ceiling (oops.) she's not qualified to help him, and that's why I think the chapter ends on a bit of a sour note. madeline is of course not a bad person for wanting to help, the point is that she can't. it is unfortunate but true

anyways mr oshiro is a very good character i like him a regular amount. im normal about that old man

[flyingbroommate]

Another one💜

[elminsters]

this is the video of Swen saying no bg4 btw! I haven't seen anyone post his actual words.

[transgendercastiel]

It’s his day 😇

[trainingdummyrabbit]

iam a firm believer and enjoyer of nuance However i Am victim to something called The Jester's Clause, which proclaims that if anyone comes to me with a wildly off-the-wall take i legally have to double down in the opposite direction for the bit.

[adriancatrin]

i’ll never understand zuko post-spirit-coma in ba sing se, i swear. idk if i’m dumb or if it’s a writing thing but whatever ‘conclusion’ he comes to from his dreams that leaves him so positive towards iroh, but not yet to the point of acknowledging his fathers abuse/helping the avatar, is lost on me. i guess that’s why i like fics that cover it and explain it in more detail

[foursaints]

Saints, I saw your Necrophilia post and I have a fic recommendation for you if you are interested. It is not Rosekiller unfortunately, BUT, it’s arguably a much more fucked up pairing (it’s so good, I know it’s weird but just give it a chance!). It’s called read my eulogy by sassysquatch and it’s 100/10. It has this creepy little Harry who was forever changed by the killing curse and he is soooo your Evan coded. It has tons of Addams family vibes and makes Harry a necromancer. It is really such a well written fic if you’re looking for something unique and a little twisted. If it’s not your vibe that’s all good too! I just saw that post and thought of it immediately

oh wow!! i gave this a cursory once-over as soon as you sent this ask, and was instantly absorbed... thank you so so much for the rec! this is exactly my vibe and i will be reading for the 1-2 business days