#clutching my fucking head

[everyones-least-favorite-bard]

hey uh actually its time for me to vomit some thoughts on ghostbat

i really do love all the content out here for them in the vein of like divorced-core bitchy snarking and whatnot its funny its classic fandom behavior so its got that nostalgia factor its real fun to see but (non derogatory) but! i feel like thats such a watered down way of observing them. a reflection of a reflection of a reflection if u know what i mean

like obviously this isnt a new thing fandom is doing dynamics get dissolved into the simplest, most consumable caricatures of themselves possible all the time. its like a rite of passage at this point. but there are truly so many fascinating directions you could take ghostbat in particular and seeing it dissolved into just. gesturing at the above paragraph. that. is kind of sad.

i think (and this is just my observations from reading batman the knight and vol 3 of batman inc) one of the keys to their dynamic that really gets me is how modern-era (for lack of a better term) ghostmaker is consistently chasing bruce's shadow. i would say most of his actions can be described as being motivated by a desire to understand and be understood by batman.

like. hes living in batman's shadow not because batman's reputation precedes him or because batman is more capable than he is but because there is something fundamental in batman that ghostmaker believes he lacks. it's a key part of the infamous pseudo-break-up-in-the-rain in issue 105 of batman (2016) when bruce leaves khoa for gotham: bruce says, “you’re sick. there’s a part of you that’s broken and you’re angry that it’s not broken in me.” and khoa is reasonably incensed by this and takes a swing at him. they devolve into a fight that ends with the agreement we saw dick reference obliquely in issue 104.

of course, this assertion is categorically false—bruce himself points it out later in the 2021 batman annual. ghostmaker discusses his latest take-down of a major portion of his rogues gallery and how his successful defeat of all of them makes him a fundamentally better crime-fighter/vigilante than batman since he’s doing it without any of the personal vendettas and attachments bruce has.

but the key is that in his recounting of his battle he inadvertently reveals that he does in fact have a connection with each of them: madame midas and kid kawaii in particular. madame midas took down his fathers business when khoa was young and we see in his memory that this is something that deeply upset him and something he never forgot. in his actual take-down of her he brings it back up when he delivers the killing blow (batman annual 2021). with kid kawaii hes visibly upset by her physical appearance being that of a child and regularly does his best in their fights to take her down in a way that can hopefully allow whatever child-like portions of her remain to be saved (batman 108). i believe one of his battles with her actually contributed to her creators having to put an emotional inhibitor in her since some of what he'd said last time they fought got through to her (batman 107/108).

and bruce points this out!! he's somewhat subtle about it, of course, but he points out that no actually, khoa isn't free from this fundamentally very human part of him that wants to help people because it's good and that wants justice for wrongs slighted against him. still in the batman annual issue, he says, “you spent years focused on a single crime lord. that dedication isn’t about glory or efficacy. there’s a reason why this victory matters to you. a reason why you care.” and khoa (after a flashback) gives an embarrassingly flimsy defense in response to this but it’s still very, very clear that he does, in fact, suffer from the same bleeding-heart syndrome bruce does—if perhaps not as intensely.

obviously i have my gripes and whatnot with khoa being tagged as a psychopath since it seems kind of flimsy at best but i don't know enough about aspd-spectrum disorders to really pin it as definitively good or bad but still!! still!! he does have the personal stake in vigilantism that he condemns bruce for having (not even touching on the whole phantom one/clownhunter arc). at the end of the day ghostmaker believes hes missing this unnameable quality of empathy/desire for justice and he thinks that's what separates him from bruce and what makes them incompatible as partners (vigilante partners but also like. take that as you will): it is not.

the reason they cannot work together is because khoa believes he is missing this part of himself and as long as he continues to believe he's incapable of these things he's never going to measure up to his ideal of batman in any of the ways that matter.

on the batman end of things i feel like bruce is most characterized (at least in the batman the knight era of their relationship) by his desire to see khoa “fixed,” for lack of a better word. he initially takes khoa at face value for things, so when khoa gives his whole "i’m a vigilante for the art, the drama" speech he believes him.

it's actually a very sweet kind of naivete—like, of course, why wouldn't khoa know why he's doing this? bruce is very clear in his convictions regarding his motives for vigilantism and he and khoa are at the very least intellectually matched, so why wouldn't khoa be honest? why wouldnt he know the reason why he fights? if minhkhoa khan, the ghostmaker, says he fights crime because he believes in the aestheticism of a job well done, why wouldn’t bruce believe him?

so it becomes a point of contention between them for a very long time because bruce believes this kind of selfish method/motive and the incompatibility between them because of it will eclipse any relationship they have and, looking at the notorious issue 105 rain fight, it technically has. in their first mini-divorce arc in issue 6 of batman the knight in which they have a fistfight in the snow and khoa leaves bruce after beating the shit out of him he spends much of the fight talking, again, about the artistry of crime-fighting and how he enjoys the challenge of it more than the justice. when he wins the fight, he stands over bruce with a gun and contemplates shooting him (contemplates being used generously here: he stands over bruce visibly anguished before dropping the gun) and his excuse for not finishing bruce off is just that it would be, “too easy" (batman the knight issue 6). again: bruce has no reason to question this—even in a brutal physical altercation khoa continues touting his vaguely hedonistic motives behind joining bruce’s crusade. there is no reason why bruce shouldn’t believe him.

its only when he comes back in issue 8 and leaves with bruce towards the league of assassins that we see bruce kind of begin questioning how true khoa’s cited motivations are. obviously he's still pretty deeply embroiled in his Woe: I the Bat am Alone theatre kid bullshit—“this can’t last. and i think we both know it.”—so he spends most of their time together more observing the idea of khoa he has in mind and convincing himself that anything he sees outside of his established framework isn’t real, but we see when they escape ra's and blow up a major league of assassins headquarters that the illusion is starting to slip (batman the knight issue 9).

in their one-v-one combat for the position of demon’s heir (demon’s heart in bruce’s case) bruce’s monologue switches out of his doom-and-gloom khoa and i are incompatible talk into more of the space we see him in around the issue 105 break-up: during their fight bruce says, “there’s nothing to you! there’s nothing there! you know what’s in me?! everything!” which is a less accusatory version of the 105 quote but still in the same vein (batman the knight issue 10). so we see bruce has moved past taking khoa at face value regarding his joy in “the artistry of crime-fighting” but he still hasn’t quite shifted further into recognizing khoa’s other/true motives.

the rain break-up on bruce’s end, then, shows a further evolution of his interpretation of khoa’s behavior: he believes khoa’s desire to continue working with him is founded from a desire to keep bruce on his level—an action rooted in jealousy over something he will never be able to obtain. khoa believes this as well since, as stated before, he hits bruce in the face immediately after it’s pointed out. but even then he is still taking what khoa says at face value: he still believes khoa is only motivated by his thirst for a challenge and that khoa wants bruce by his side more so he isn’t alone in his empty hedonism than for actual wanting of bruce himself. this informs his reaction in issue 104 after he and robin chase a criminal to singapore: after his undisclosed argument with khoa he is visibly upset over the state of their relationship but believes it irreparable due to the differences in their morals.

i think from there though, bruce only begins picking out the gaps in the mess that is khoa (that we see anyway) when khoa’s telling him about his grand exploits after they meet up again. while their earlier conversations (ie; batman asking ghostmaker to stay in late issue 105) definitely reveal bruce’s newer perspective on khoa, it’s really only the batman annual 2021 conversation where we see bruce make the jump to further filling in what khoa is (very loudly) not saying. another tumblr post also mentioned the scene being the first recorded mention of bruce saying khoa’s name after the rain fight—which considering the last time we saw him say it was The Fucking Rain Break Up Again, sort of thematically implies he’s reached another level of understanding with khoa.

so i’d say on batman’s end he very badly wants to understand khoa, but he’s also only just starting to realize that he doesn’t have enough of the pieces.

this got away from me tbh but the point being: ghostbat has more nuance than a lot of incorrect-quote-y type content has room for.

[garden-ghoul]

GUCCI

[geroya]

sorry i reposted dickzoe kissing but im THINKING ABOUT THEM HAHAHA

[just-null]

i would love to see mitsuri in your art style! im not sure if you post girls to often but i saw you drew daki and thought i'd ask! anyways have an amazing night or dayy!!!

LOVE BEAM CANON

i dont draw women often but i do enjoy the moments when i do, it's very fun!! i really like mitsuri. she scratches the dumb strong airhead with a good heart character type that i adore.

a bonus kimetsu gakuen meme except the version where MY BOYS ARE THERE.

[og image under the cut!]

[feelo-fick]

doodles from varying times :] kicking my feet and giggling. put your hand in my cage youre safe :]

[snowflakeb0ttles]

im fr the biggest ffxv defender in the world. love that game more than anythang and can talk abt the good stuff forever and ever. it also drives me up a wall and i will talk shit about it until the world explodes. if anyone else talks bad about it though ill kill them and then everyone else on earth. ffxv my beloved little meow meow freak of nature. ffxv my fucked up child who has every disease. activate the nuclear bomb immediately

[kitamars]

a mimir

[chronicowboy]

okay pitch for season 8. 911 redux of captain bill hader catching jake and amy making out at work and having a heart attack but gerard walks in on buck and eddie's first ever kiss which inevitably turns into more and just drops fucking dead on the spot.

[jonahmagnus]

Why is nobody talking about this. This rules. This goes hard. Pacifica my blorbo of all time

[butchford]

Hello, self-proclaimed fan of "exploration of darker themes." Can you treat these themes with the appropriate weight they deserve for an extended period of time without cracking a joke that heavily relies on shock value as a punchline. Also can you not shy away from or completely ignore the aspects of these things that are more intimately uncomfortable as they're grounded in reality.

[scaly-freaks]

“Milk Carton” — Self-explanatory, it was the only song I could think of that has the perspective of someone who survived a kidnapping. I also believe that establishing what is going to happen in the beginning helps build up a sense of dread. We know that a kidnapping is going to happen, we just don't know when.

“In the Pines” — A truly haunting song. The song was originally written by Lead Belly, but the first time I heard it was this Kurt Cobain documentary called Montage of Heck, where the final scene is Kurt performing the song at MTV Unplugged. There’s this moment in the song where Kurt makes this face that is absolutely chilling, almost like he’s Colonel Kurtz staring into the heart of darkness. The lines, “you caused me to weep, you caused me to moan, you caused me to leave my home / I wish to my Lord that I’d never seen your face / I’m sorry you were ever born,” also felt pertinent. All in all, I felt it sets the Southern setting, especially the North Carolina region, where you say Aegon takes Amara.

“Rampage” — I felt that this accurately captured Aegon’s demeanour. I don’t know whether they might have known each other prior to her abduction, but most kidnappings occur with someone who knows you. There will be a lot of songs where you just feel looming dread, and this is the first of them. “Milk Carton” is disturbing, but there’s no dread, because there’s no anticipation. Whereas “Rampage,” I’m going to assume, seems to be spoken from the perspective of a lover of a boy whom, it’s heavily implied from the references to the Columbine Shooters and Tate Langdon in American Horror Story, is ultimately going to shoot up a school. When I was a kid, my parents would play this song called, “Six O’Clock News,” about a woman whose lover goes on a shooting rampage, who has just learned she’s pregnant with his child. I always was very shaken by that song, and I can’t imagine what it must feel like to have loved someone who committed such atrocities; just the sheer guilt, the discomfort regarding how to mourn them, the thoughts of I should have known, I should have seen the signs…was unthinkable for me as a child, and is unthinkable now. In “Creek Blues,” another song from the same album as “Rampage,” you sort of get this mosaic of such “signs.” He shows the speaker his daddy’s guns, he kills dogs and leaves them to die by the nearby creek. I think, for me, I wanted to build up a sense of dread over the songs, until it reaches its pinnacle, sort of this mounting pile of evidence that something terrible is going to happen. I discuss the notion of warning signs in relation to violence and abuse in the explanation for “Sometime After Midnight.”

“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” — Chosen mostly because it inspired this creepy, creepy short story that we read in high school, about the immediate moments preceding the abduction of a teenage girl from her home. Incredibly unsettling story, and absolutely heartbreaking. The story, called “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was adapted into a movie in the 80’s. Honestly considering removing it, given that I’m trying to build up dread, and it’s not really a dreadful song. Let me know if you think it should stay.

“Sometime After Midnight”— I wanted to convey a sense of looming doom; there’s this moment in W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants, where there’s this extensive idyllic depiction of Bavaria, and then this war plane crosses the sky. This section starts out with the understanding that it’s the account of a character’s mother, and that she wrote it while awaiting deportation to a Nazi death camp. And this endows the image of the war plane cutting across this clear blue sky above this bucolic Bavarian landscape with a feeling of absolute dread; they have no idea what is going to happen. It’s the equivalent to the tomb in Arcadia, or the ending of Irréversible: it’s a portent of doom. “Sometime After Midnight” is one such prelude; the speaker remarks to herself that she knows that she spent all day getting ready for the date, but that she has this feeling in her stomach that makes her feel uneasy. She remarks that she’s been told that bad things happen after dark, and then looks at the setting sun. It’s the equivalent to a puzzle piece falling into place. I do truly believe that there is an intuition that people have that something’s off, and that many, especially women, choose to ignore this feeling, tell themselves that they’re being silly or paranoid, only to realize that their gut was right. It’s meant to convey dread, and banality. While the speaker may have considered her day preparing for the date innocuous, just a bit of fun, in retrospect, the day will become far more significant.

            I was too young to remember 9/11, but when I’ve asked my parents and my friends’ parents their stories of that day (I grew up very close to New York), they all reacted differently—my boyfriend's dad saw the second tower get hit from the train window, and stayed on the train, my friend's dad was in the South Tower and ran to the Hudson to get on one of the many boats that were trying to take people off Manhattan—but one thing detail was the same in all of their stories: there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky that day. The reason why this detail has crystallized in their head is because they should have known. It was only in retrospect that the day that began like any other became that day. We trace the final day of murder victims, what they wore, their last words to their parents and loved ones, because we want to prepare ourselves for the possibility that our banal, commonplace lives could be torn apart at a moment’s notice, that one day we might walk out of a door and never be seen again. I believe that we have an intuition about people, but not about events. The speaker of “Sometime After Midnight” does not know that this is the last day; she may not have spoken to any of her parents or friends or loved ones but instead spent all of it getting ready for a date that will end in either her abduction or her demise. She may have a gut feeling, but by the time she feels it, it's already too late. This is her last day, and all that she can do is watch "the sky turn black by the window-side."

“Bad Things”— Another song that I felt exuded dread, although in this case, the fear actually becomes realized. The opening riff almost hits like a stuttering heart, with this insistent clapping noise; it immediately evokes both despair and anxiety. The song's chorus reads like a nursery rhyme you tell children: bad things happen, and you are powerless to stop them. The chorus is also apt for a kidnapping: you leave home, and you never come back. I had never been able to decipher the spoken part, but in looking at the lyrics, they’re really chilling, given that they’re spoken by Jim fucking Jones. The lyrics read as such: "You’d have wanted to run, you’d have had to run with them, because anybody could’ve run today, they would have wanted to. I know you’re not a runner and your life is precious to me.” It’s essentially Jim Jones gaslighting his followers in the leadup to their mass suicide, telling them that they actually have agency over their fates. They chose to stay and kill themselves alongside him, he argues, because they didn’t run when they could have. They freely chose to stay with him and die with him. But this isn’t true; the inner circle would punish those who attempted to escape, and the event that precipitated the Jonestown massacre was a group of Jones loyalists gunning down the Congressman Leo Ryan and defecting members of the People’s Temple on an air strip as they tried to leave. Jones manipulated his followers into believing they had a choice, that, if they wanted to leave, they could have, when they never did. I think I recall Aegon using this rationalization in Chapter 10 of YSMMC: it was Amara's choice to go to the cabin, so he bears no responsibility for any of the acts he felt licensed to subject her to as a result of this choice. And, as in Jonestown, Amara’s “choice” in YSMMC wasn’t much of a choice, because it was either that or a confrontation with Jace, and Aegon knew this, and exploited it to his advantage. He helped create the conditions that would cause her to choose. It all reminds me of when I was reading Chapter 17 of YSMMC, and I was reminded of this passage from Lolita:

“Get in,” I said. “You can’t call that number.”

“Why?”

“Get in and slam the door.”

She got in and slammed the door. The old garage man beamed at her. I swung on to the highway.

“Why can’t I call my mother if I want to?”

“Because,” I answered, “your mother is dead.”

In the gay town of Lepingville I bought her four books of comics, a box of candy, a box of sanitary pads… at the hotel we had separate rooms, but in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it up very gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go. (140)

That is to say, Jim Jones, Humbert in Lolita, and Aegon in YSMMC all act as if the decision by their victims to have sex with them was their victims’ choice, when they were the ones who set up the conditions that forced their victims to do what the men say. And, even if Amara freely chose to go to the cabin, she didn't choose any of the acts Aegon subjected her to there. I figured that this would be the approach of Aegon in this AU; tell Amara that it was actually her choice. This song sort of represents the pinnacle of the lead-up: the kidnapping that we've been expecting has finally occurred.

Anyways, as always, thank you for the opportunity for me to sharpen my character analysis approach to get ready for school; the methodology that guides my interpretation of characters is essentially the New Critical close reading method, and requires that I reconcile all aspects of their character and actions with each other, to explain their motivations, etc. It's a great challenge to have to analyze characters when their writer is right there to correct you; you're a lot less likely to cast generalizing statements about characters; it's harder to pontificate falsehoods when God is right there, if that makes sense lol. It forces me to be much more discerning, and therefore hones my analytical process, so I thank you again for that!!! X Caroline

Absolutely insane descriptor behind each song in this playlist, and the thought put into them? Girl, you are going to ace your impending studies. I consider myself lucky that this silly little hobby I picked up attracted people who treat it as something real and genuine which then pushes me to improve.

I only really fix someone's analysis if I think it's interpreting a sensitive topic in a way that I don't think is conducive to open-minded discussion; that responsibility kind of feels like it falls on me to fix since it's my work they're reading.

But your analysis, as well as others who have had their interpretations, I love to ingest, because as a writer, it's so easy to feel like these characters are just mine. But in reality, I read an amazing book and I hold those characters in me in a way that the writer might not recognise or identify with. Someone might extract the gentleness of Aegon and Amara and want to hold that close, whereas I might have written that particular chapter/passage from a place of extreme violence and trauma. Both are correct because both are tangled up with human beings. And when someone gives me their approach, I get to experience this familiarity of my characters from a whole other vantage which is so, so fun.

I'm a fan of every song you've chosen, and even though I know I can't write this AU right now, the lyrics to each are painting scenes into existence. For instance, as I was reading (and listening), a scene came to me where Amara tries to escape from the moving truck, and when Aegon gets her back, he choke-slams her into the horizontal part of the seat, her neck bent at a crooked angle as her head hits the car door. He's kneeling on the gears and the brake, one arm angled up against the roof of the truck, crouched over her like a malignant beast in a painting. The physicality of him filling up the space while she curls up and tries to push at his chest with her feet...yeah.

The Lolita comparison and the instances in YSMMC where Aegon created an inescapable situation and then handed her the illusion of choice...YES. Exactly it. If we're speaking in terms Helaena would use, Amara is an insect missing several legs, and Aegon is the spider slowly spinning the web in circles around her. Or a ladybird around which he's drawing a shape and she keeps trying to avoid the new lines he's putting on the page, without realising she can just step over them. She regularly suffers from what I like to call a fuck fog but there's so much more happening when Aegon decides to actively manipulate her. The Targaryen trauma train is so real, and it's just inconceivable every single one of the siblings hasn't developed their own methods of "playing God" when things don't go their way.

Anyway, urgh, fucking juicy ask. Delicious. Nibbling on it like a chicken leg.

P.S. Before I forget, I didn't envision Aegon knowing her before he kidnapped her at first, but I sort of like that now. There's a scene in Room where she screams at her mother for telling her to "be nice to everyone" and that's why she helped her eventual kidnapper look for his dog that didn't even exist. Maybe Amara gave Aegon a smile in passing a few times at the place she worked, and it was never anything more complicated than that. A scrap of kindness he decided to poison and taint.

[yea-baiyi]

i’m so fucking mad i just realised that the final confrontation between he xuan, shi wudu, and shi qingxuan is perfectly framed like a traditional greek tragedy—it has the three actors, the character between two extremes, the recognition, the reversal, the pity and fear, the catharsis. you can pretty much take the scenes—starting and ending with xie lian performing the soul shifting spell—and directly stage them as a play and they could conform to the Tragic structure. what the fuck man what do i do with this information.

[foolbehavior]

🫶

[burr-ell]

bad idea for me to buy tal'dorei reborn bc i saw "it is a weapon that haunts the mind of its creator, percival de rolo, manifesting as a pain that lives always behind his kind eyes" and i've been going ballistic for the past ten minutes

[m00nc4kes]

you would think with all the black ocs i have and all the black people i draw, i’d be able to draw Hobie. well…

i’m here to tell you that I CANT

[soullessjack]

6am exhaustion posting but it’s very funny to me that jack is compared to so many serpents, the biblical serpent in the garden. the ouroboros. the black snake. and then he loves fantasy movies with heroes that crush villains. he reads fairy tales like sleeping beauty, fairy tales that predominantly have knights in shining armor slaying the dragon or the serpent. obviously with him wanting to be a hero he’d follow the KISH archetype, but also look. serpents are medievally satanic symbols. fairy tales are majority stemmed in European Christianity. He’s literally a dragon that wants to be a knight . A satanic if not Thee Satanic Serpent wanting to be a hero and a Knight In Shining Armor and actively partaking in slaying other beasts for acceptance. this vision came to me with caffeine and zero sleep but do you see it .do you see how this is insane and also funny. Do you understand it …..