#but it's also not wildly off either

[princekirijo]

Every time I think I've finally settled on a Pimpernel design there's always this little voice in the back of my head going "wow it took you three years to come up with that? Lame lol"

[welcometogrouchland]

my Stephanie Brown hot take is that she should get mad bitches now that she's single in comics. Yes yes shipping BUT the one time she had sex she was punished by the narrative via teen pregnancy. I think she should be allowed to have as much sex as she wants with zero consequences. Could be a lot of sex, could be a little. Point is she should get to do it without getting narratively baby trapped this time. she should get them pregnant, actually.

[necrotic-nephilim]

this is not a ship post, but something that frustrates me a lot in fanon concerning Jason Todd that attempts to soften Jason's return to Gotham for the sake of found family domesticity or easy hurt/comfort or just sliding him into the Batfam sooner, is they all seem to fundamentally misunderstand Jason.

because there seem to be a lot of fandom popular concepts of Jason coming home much sooner and just not having his whole Under The Red Hood arc. which in theory is fine and i can see the want to simplify canon to make room for your lighthearted more fluff-leaning concepts. but in everyone without fail, the way they address the clown-shaped elephant in the room is by having some throwaway line that "oh Jason quietly kills the Joker and moves on".

when the Joker being dead or alive is not the *point*. if by some chance accident, the Joker had died prior to Jason's return, whether by ridiculous freak accident, getting whacked by a fellow villain, hell even someone actually doing so to avenge Jason, it *would not* satiate Jason's anger. because Jason's end goal in UtRH is not to simply kill the Joker: it is to make *Bruce* kill the Joker. Jason's anger is directed to the idea that to Jason, if Bruce truly loved Jason, he would've killed the Joker. that is love, for Jason. compromising your personal values for love and not letting someone go unavenged. when Jason was Robin, almost every angry or misguided thing he did was born of love. he wanted to kill/hurt Two-Face because he believed Dent killed his father. he was so angry at Felipe because an innocent woman was dead due to that man's actions. he wanted to save his mother in a situation he knew he shouldn't be in because he loved her. his anger, his violence, it is driven by love and feelings of righting wrongs. that is how he thinks wrongs *should* be righted. that is how you avenge and *love* someone.

because so long as Jason's return to Gotham doesn't end in Bruce killing the Joker (which, it never will bc Bruce is Bruce), Jason will never forgive Bruce. you cannot wave away the layers of hurt and complicated trauma by killing Joker offscreen. because Jason will still be angry that Bruce didn't avenge him. in his eyes, that means Bruce did not love him enough. he was not truly loved by Bruce the way he loved Bruce. bc Bruce was Jason's whole *world*. prior to being taken in, Dick and Tim, they had support systems. they had loved ones. they knew what stability and healthy family love looked like. Jason *didn't*. and that's not to say that Catherine Todd did not love him with her whole heart and thus he loved her, but it certainly wasn't a stable and safe support system for Jason to grow up in. Bruce was Jason's first real sense of a stable, healthy life. and so of course Jason poured everything into Bruce and loved Bruce so devoutly. Bruce was his world. like he says, if it had been Bruce, Jason would've stopped at nothing.

so his betrayal is rooted in that he was not avenged, not that Joker is alive. so long as the Joker does not die by Bruce's hands, it will never be enough for Jason. (in this era, at least.) notably, this is also why i don't think it would change a thing if Jason knew the whole "oh Bruce wanted to kill the Joker but Superman stopped him" tidbit that fanon has really latched onto as a way to pacify Jason's anger toward Bruce. Jason knowing that wouldn't change a thing, in my opinion. because Jason knows Bruce. and a tenant of Bruce's character is that he grapples with murder *every day*. the whole point is how *easy* it would be for him. he is a human weapon, trained by killers, trained to be deadly. he is the greatest strategist to exist. he knows he could kill someone and get away with it. *no* trace, no proof, nothing. and he knows he *wants* to. wants to kill the Joker, Joe Chill, anyone who's hurt him that viscerally.

but he *doesn't*. that's the point. Bruce wakes up every day with that question on his mind, and every day the answer is the same. Bruce's morality is not a decision he made in an alleyway when his parents died, it's a decision he continues to make every day and he *must* continue to make in order to remain who he is. Jason is quite familiar with the fact that Bruce grapples with this daily. i do not think it surprised nor fazed Jason to know that Bruce did *consider* killing the Joker. that he wanted to. maybe even planned to. but a consideration, a want, a plan, is just a thought. it's nothing substantial, and substance is everything to Jason. at the end of the day, Bruce didn't. he was talked down by *Clark* of all people with an excuse of diplomatic immunity, as if Jason and Bruce don't both know that Bruce could've *easily* found a way to make it look like an accident or some other loophole. because he's Batman. there's always a loophole. he always finds a way when he actually intends to. but he never actually intended to kill the Joker. so he didn't. and Jason would know that there was never an intent. it's an interesting piece of fodder to add to the nuance of Jason and Bruce, but honestly, i think it'd make Jason angrier to have that excuse thrown in his face. as if Bruce hasn't beaten Clark half a dozen times by now. it's a flimsy nonsense excuse that Jason would rip to shreds.

so while yes, i understand the wish for easy lighthearted fanfic that doesn't have to deal with the nuances of canon, i think that Jason's character will always be so deeply robbed and altered if you try to fix his thirst for vengeance with an off-page killing of Joker at Jason's hands. it was never the point. the point was that -in his own eyes- he wasn't loved enough for Bruce to make an acception. he realized that not even his *death* would come before Bruce's Mission. Jason truly believed that Bruce loved him and held him as the most important thing in the world, and now he has proof that Bruce didn't. because the Mission mattered more.

i'm not saying i have a solution to this conundrum if you're attempting to solve it for fanfic/fanon, nor am i even saying it's a bad thing it exists. i just think it becoming overwhelmingly common has led to misunderstandings surrounding Jason's motivations and feelings about this arc and it's an unsatisfying solution that only seeks to pacify Jason's rage and his trauma responses for the sake of found family-ification.

[unopenablebox]

lmao i have a call with a wedding venue coordinator tomorrow?? lots of things about this place are appealing but it also has a massively overpriced mandatory caterer and a very late event start time (who has the ceremony start at 6:30pm?? don't people want dinner????) so i kind of just wanted, you know, a quote and contact info in case we wanted to tour later if other things don't pan out. but the person who reached out to me was so confident that we were going to call this week that i guess... i'm going to call her? and ask about chair rental prices or something? idk man. i wasn't prepared for this. i'm not even the one primarily planning this wedding and also we're not even planning yet i just had time to send idle emails this week

[wyvernne]

highkey sad the fontaine designs didn’t go heavier on steampunk/baroque smh

[catominor]

also you know what really pisses me off (especially in the light of the youtube stuff about james somerton). there's a couple popular and really phenomenally bad videos about sexuality in greece and rome by right wing youtubers and people just. blindly believe what they say despite the fact that they use either extremely bad sources or just. make shit up/misinterpret evidence. and badmouth Actual historians like they're part of some Evil Liberal Conspiracy to get you to think that... ancient greeks and romans weren't 2023 modern style homophobic

[mondstadt-hash-brown]

aromantic dehya, what are we thinking folks

[astro-b-o-y-d]

At this point, if there's a villain character in a series who is a chubby weird boy whose actions would likely be better received by the fandom if they were traditionally good-looking (skinny), I'm inclined to adopt them.

[tiredassmage]

Yeah, but at least he was hot????? I’m sorry, Zenith, but also I... will absolutely do it again. >.>

[saturdaynightghostclub]

Literally do not even mind me, just yelling at clouds, but I’m not playing when I say I actually need everyone on the bookish internet to read at least one essay, short story, novel, etc by Ursula K. Le Guin before you complain about how there’s no good fantasy or science fiction these days.

She will ruin your life and your ability to consume genre fiction without seriously interrogating its motives, but I can guarantee you she will put a name to the thing that’s been bothering you and you will finally know why you’re having a hard time with contemporary fantasy.

[phagodyke]

weekend melancholy is starting to kick in >~<

[forge-octarian-jacket]

Shadow N-pacer is either 1) A chaos enabler. Similar to Eging Jr’s personality? or 2) Is very nervous and not a cool, levelheaded knight

[andromedasummer]

Good morning, today im going to pirate 5-7 videogames made by small indie game devs who are heavily dependent on sales 😚✌️

in WHAT world is the sims 4 or fucking crusader kings 3 an INDIE GAME

[oflgtfol]

customer not wearing a mask: *gestures to my mask* do they make you wear it or are you just doing it?

me: oh no one makes me. im just wearing it

him: oh ok. not to shame you or anything. i get it, people are gross, haha

me: haha.

[neverendingford]

.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

just like nato obenkrieger fr if he was never in a garage band