#dennis meta

[charmac]

The peak of Dennis' fantasy for obtaining control of his body, for obtaining peace of mind, being stealing a man's heart, turning it into a diamond, and consuming it. While Mac, in his fantasy, was trying to pressure cook a diamond into existence

[angrymac]

DTAMHD predictions and rambles

so the episode starts with Dennis going for a physical again (obvious parallel to Frank’s Pretty Woman) except maybe he goes without Mac this time, or if they go together, now Mac is healthier than he is. Either of this things would bother him, especially coupled with learning about his high blood pressure

Dennis is prone to building up these ideas in his head of what he thinks his life should look like, traditional milestones and experiences that he believes a normal person would have, and that he in turn should replicate.

So he comes up with the newest “scheme” to turn his attention away from the sudden reality of his own mortality and the fact that he only has so much (little) control over his own health. (Look back on his behavior in 7.01, 9.07, 15.06 for reference— Dennis sees physical illness as a personal failure, and in turn, he’s likely going to try to make up for this by forcing some semblance of a normal experience.)

but of course, unfortunately, life doesn’t and never will go according to plan, or to script. And throughout the episode, little things will pop up that gradually chip at Dennis’ resolve, bit by bit, testing his control over his anger and encouraging him to explode.

being away from The Gang may also force him to address the things (and memories) that their company, constant schemes, and involved conversations are always distracting him from.

so all of these memories are coming to the surface along with his own mortality, finally accepting that he gets sick sometimes and that he needs food and that he’s not a Golden God, just a human person in a human body.

which will be a huge body blow. because, and allow me to cross-reference Bojack Horseman for a moment if I may:

if he’s not a Golden God, and the pain that he’s endured and ignored hasn’t turned him into some all-powerful immortal being, “then all the damage [he] got isn’t good damage, it’s just damage. and all the years [Dennis] was miserable was for nothing.”

depriving himself of things that he needed— food, Mac, the ability to be vulnerable, was all for nothing. he wasted so much time for nothing.

and it won’t take much for him to break down after that. hopefully this will be something cathartic for him and will lead to a real breakthrough (his MFHP moment in the rain).

[waywardtrek]

I’ve seen posts about how CEO/Musk guy = Mac/Fat Mac/Hawaiian Shirt Mac, but not sure if anyone’s made this comparison yet:

I interpreted CEO guy also as a “representative” of Dennis himself… Who he could have been, had he the luxury to make different choices in his life. Who he’d be if he had money and power. Sure, he might look pudgy and un-Vitruvian, but he’d be relaxing at the beach and he’d be successful—a winner. Happy. If only he could let go of control in his *actual* existence, if only he could let go of his messed up childhood and trauma etc., he could’ve been somebody… Somebody loved, somebody with someone like Mac at his core, loving him with enough heart to be as rare as a diamond—or at least trying his best to make it that way (video call, pressure cooker). Diamonds are pure, tough, precious, valuable. Diamonds are forever... But as it is, Dennis will just subsume them, take this form of love in the only way he knows how—through fantasy and violence and, uh, eroticism. It’s the only way he knows, the only way he’s worthy of receiving it. (Side note: He IS willing to receive/take it now, though - huge step!)

My other interpretation was that CEO guy is a “representative” of Dennis’ health. The guy who plays the CEO is literally the doctor who walks past Dennis in the final sequence, so this tracks. Also, the fact that Dennis presses the man’s hand to his own heart first shows that kind of intrinsic connection/understanding. And, as his health personified, the fact that the CEO is pudgy but ultimately happy and successful—while Dennis is ‘beautiful’ BUT tormented and rage-filled, no matter how hard he tries (even in a fucking delusion/fantasy of his own making)—of course the only thing Dennis can do is fucking rip his heart out and pressurise it into a diamond.

In other words, in his delusion, Dennis himself is personifying his mental health issues/inner turmoil, whereas the CEO is personifying all other aspects of his health and life. There truly is greatness (diamond) within Dennis; he knows this (and this is where Mac comes in… they are inextricably linked, after all.). But the only way Dennis knows how to extract this greatness and love is through rage, fantasy and violence and, uh, eroticism again... All of which are coping strategies, bc he doesn’t actually know how to achieve the greatness he’s striving for—that level of perfection is a fallacy, and he also knows he’s fucking doomed no matter how hard he tries because the problem is in his own mind--an eternal byproduct of his trauma. (the ‘not your fault’ throughout is, again, a huge milestone for him, imo)

The main reason I thought all of this, btw, was the simple fact that CEO guy is wearing a red Hawaiian shirt, a la:

The Gang Solves the Bathroom Problem

Which, incidentally, is also the only time we ever witness Dennis outright call himself a ‘straight man’ (when he clearly, painfully isn’t), playing up to a false persona of his own creation, with his real feelings being completely irrelevant. As long as he is pretending to be the perfect person -- his trauma/shitty life experience has taught him is the only way to be -- that’s the most important thing of all. with that, he is in control. he is god.

Hmm yes. Thank you for reading my essay.

[absolutely-not-my-main-blog]

Holes. Keys. What Have You.

I have full analyses I've been wanting to actually do and gather images for over the entire past year, but in the meantime, have this <3.

[dryersheetbear]

do u. understand

[soranatus]

Transformers: Earthspark, 1x18: Home (2023) Detective Comics, Vol. 1 #457: There is No Hope in Crime Alley! (1976)

Bonus:

[sunnykeysmash]

[charmac]

Hey! I wanna thank you for your videos and wanted to tell u I watch them to boost my energy hehe.

2 genuine questions:

1-Do you, based on the show and Dennis' character, believe that he hates Mac or he actually Loves him? How do u see Dennis in general bc I see him as a person who doesn't see himself as a person bc he's scared and also doesn't think he'll be loved.

2- when did u start loving macdennis as a romantic pair and noticed the little things between them??

Thanks! I'm trying to dig up old stuff from the old official accounts that's no longer viewable/watchable in my free time so we can keep it alive circulating.

1. I believe Dennis hates that he loves Mac. He's always loved Mac, for some reason he just has, and slowly over time that's caused him to hate him more and more:

I see MADBU as the catalyst for Dennis' disdain toward Mac, when Dee pointed out their codependency and broke their glass closet. It wasn't that he hated Mac for who he was, not right then, but Dennis hated what their relationship meant for who he was. S6-12 is this constant battle of Dennis trying to 'find himself' in so many ways, maybe he should be married; no, he just needs a higher position in the bar, reins on everyone; yeah, it's the gang who have issues: he's perfect, he's the Golden God, a 5-star man, the Master of manipulation. Dennis built his front on being a manipulator, on wearing different faces, on controlling Mac, convincing everyone his cold, hard shell matches his interior, and Mac fell for it. Mac, who's supposed to know Dennis better than he knows himself, no longer knows who Dennis is.

Dennis' front was born out of his insecurities, his trauma, his rejection of labels and his fear of being known, his constant internal battle with himself for control. (DTAMHD kind of illustrates that beautifully, look inside his mind, see what he's going through, all internally, he's trying to reason with the world being against him inside, so on the outside he can present flawlessly (ha).) His front wasn't meant for Mac, Mac was the guy who he could talk to, but Mac is a little stupid and he fell for it, an unfortunate by-product, and Dennis hates that. He hates that Mac sees who he's projecting and not who he is inside.

The sad thing is, Mac is trying. But he's always doing it wrong, proving himself in the wrong ways, trying to get through Dennis' shell not because he wants to know him, but because he wants him. Dennis left, Dennis came back, and Mac had replaced him with a sex doll. An object, Dennis is an object of his affection. An object.

Mac doesn't understand the difference, between lust and love. Mac doesn't understand love outside of neglect and manipulation. Dennis has built his front on manipulation. Would Mac still love him if he knew who Dennis was outside of that? Does Mac even want to know who Dennis is? Or does he just want sex? Does he love him or is it all manipulation at this point? If that was gone, where would they be?

Mac doesn't know that Dennis is Johnny, Mac can't wrap his head around the fact that Dennis is Johnny, he can't be. (Why can't he be?) Dennis is Johnny, he's dropping hints that he is: Johnny likes the same things that Dennis does, but Mac doesn't know that, because Johnny isn't the Dennis that Mac knows. Mac doesn't know Dennis. If Mac doesn't know who Dennis really is, he doesn't love him, he just wants him and Dennis doesn't want sex from Mac, because he loves him, and he hates him for that. (But Mac is in love with Johnny, Johnny who never showed up for sex, Johnny who liked the same things Dennis does...What does that tell Dennis?)

2. This one is really hard for me to pinpoint. Macdennis grew on me gradually, and then hit really hard. Definitely due to the Dennis Front factor. I admit constantly I was very much a dudebro on the subreddit about this show for about 2 years... Oops, lol. (I always liked this ship, um, non-romantically..) When TASP started the conversations there convinced me I wasn't insane to read deeper into this show and I began seeing Dennis meta, that's when I started seeing it romantically, I suppose. The first rewatch you do after cracking through Dennis is absolutely mindblowing, lmfao.

[realbeefman]

idk something abt charlie having poor hygiene and spiders in the soul and feeling so unfathomably dirty and unworthy of love that you feel most at home in a separating layer of grime. and also something abt having friends who dance with you and plan schemes with you and make efforts to read the dream journal you know in the part of your mind that drinking and huffing never quite seems to shut up is unintelligible to people who are smart enough to read properly. getting high and getting sad and maybe you are just the dirt grub until you’re crawling through the vents on the way to the bad room and hear dennis and mac and dee screaming at each other and stop to listen in on the argument. the cats won’t stop screaming but the man-you-wish-was-your-father’s body is warm beside you. the rats are taking over the bar but your best friends just handed you a brand new stick to bash them with and for a moment you feel fucking invincible

[dennisboobs]

I wanted to dig into the Sunny the 13th promos a little bit, because I think they're a really great subversion of expectations that a lot of people have about Always Sunny and Dennis' character in general.

Looking at the comments on various platforms from around the promos were released, a good number of people seem to have taken the promos as if Dennis has "finally snapped" and is going to kill the gang. He is, after all, wielding an axe, wearing a slasher-esque hockey mask, and appears to be threatening harm in all of the promotional images.

But in the video promos, he's more akin to a ghost than a slasher villain, trying and failing to get the gang's attention, for the seven minute Paramormal Paddy's promo. Several times over the course of the promo, he is actively scared by the things happening in the bar, wheras the rest of the gang barely even acknowledges it.

He's the one being pursued in all of the promos, not the other way around. Pursued by his friends' parents, pursued by the Waitress, pursued by Margaret McPoyle. In Dennis' Double Life, he tries to own up to his behaviour and commits to becoming a father, but in doing so, he is running away from his old life, and it all still follows him.

If listening to the conversations that the gang is having, you can also clearly hear them discussing whether or not Dennis actually killed Maureen. Dennis isn't technically there to defend himself, but the general consensus is that he did (even though Dennis originally denies any involvement, and his name was cleared).

In the production script for The Gang Gets New Wheels, they assume Dennis has killed Mandy and Brian Jr. and that is why he's come back to Philadelphia and decided to raise his son "from a distance". Given the gang's perception of him, and his apparent track record with killing Maureen, this would be a fair assumption, but not once does he raise his axe at them, or even make any move to threaten them at all.

In both the Ponderosa Wedding Massacre and Making Dennis Reynolds a Murderer, Dennis' secrecy and suspicious behaviour stems from not wanting others to know that he had sex with Maureen. I don't believe he killed her, and I don't believe he killed Mandy and their son either. I also don't believe he'd kill the gang. Besides, as we know from Mac is a Serial Killer, axes are too messy.

At the very end of the promo, Dennis walks toward the gang with his axe lowered, and Dee turns around to look at him, implying that they knew he was there the entire time. This aligns with their lack of interest in his absence in The Gang Gets New Wheels.

Throughout the promo, he's seen sitting at the bar alone, in one of the booths, rolling across the floor in the chair from the back office, watching them from afar, staring into the camera. He's bored. He's lonely. He's being left out of the gang's conversations. This can easily be seen as a representation of how he felt in North Dakota.

So of course he's wearing a mask, leaning into their perception of him as a psychotic killer, it's easier than being honest and vulnerable. Better than telling them that he came back because he missed them.

[thekillingvote]

No Birds Allowed: Batman without Robin

The usual claim is that Jason Todd was singularly hated by audiences. Dick Grayson, Carrie Kelley, and Tim Drake are proper, beloved Robins—and Jason Todd is the one and only outlier so unlikable that audiences killed him off by popular vote.

But this claim ignores a massive piece of the puzzle—the Robin role has long been treated as an outdated remnant of a childish era, not only by a significant share of Batman fans, but also by Batman creative teams. While there were definitely fans who hated Jason Todd, he was at least partly chosen to be killed as a scapegoat for some long-standing complaints about the Robin role in Batman stories.

The 1988 poll to kill Jason Todd wasn't just a poll to kill Jason Todd—the poll to kill Robin was a poll to kill Robin.

Fan letters columns from Batman #221 and Detective Comics #398, reacting to Dick leaving for Hudson University in Batman #217 (1969):

Denny O'Neil Batman/Detective Comics writer (1970-1980) Batman group editor (1986-2000) on sending Robin away to Hudson University:

Dan Greenfield: Actually, last night I went back through my comics and the one thing that always strikes me is that before you came onto the character, they’d already made the decision to have Robin leave. Robin was up at Hudson University and was used sparingly from that point forward. Denny O’Neil: Well, that was a conscious decision of mine. Greenfield: Oh! O’Neil: Yeah, I mean … I had been offered Batman a year before I did it. Greenfield: No kidding? I wanna hear this. O’Neil: Because that was in the (Batman TV show) camp thing. The comics were very half-heartedly following in the footsteps of the camp because it was having a palpable effect on circulation. That’s not always true but it was in that case. Camp as in the sense — as opposed to the more erudite sense — this one-line joke about: “I loved this stuff when I was 6 and now that I’m 28 and I have a bi-weekly appointment with a therapist and a little, mild drug habit and two divorces, ‘Look how silly it is.'” I would go into the most literary bar in Greenwich Village on (Wednesday) or Thursday evenings and there would be writers and poets and college professors, all looking at Batman! But when that was over, it was over. It was like somebody turned a switch. And that’s when (editor) Julie (Schwartz) said, in his avuncular way, did I have any ideas for Batman? And at that point, I wasn’t going to be asked to do camp. I was going to be asked to do anything within the bounds of good taste, etc., that I wanted to.

O'Neil, quoted from “Notes from the Batcave: An Interview with Dennis O’Neil” in The Many Lives of The Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and His Media:

There was a time right before I took over as Batman editor when he seemed to be much closer to a family man, much closer to a nice guy. He seemed to have a love life and he seemed to be very paternal towards Robin. My version is a lot nastier than that. He has a lot more edge to him.

O'Neil in 2015:

Modern Batman does not do camp. He has to evolve but to stay true to the concept he has to stay lonely. The kids, there shouldn't be many. Keep him the lone, obsessed crusader and the stories will be better. We did a story called Son of the Demon. It told a story where he had a kid, a baby. It wasn't in continuity. These days, the kid came back and became the new Robin, and I hear that Batman's got a few more running around.

Jim Starlin, Batman writer (1987-1988), writer of A Death in the Family:

I tried to avoid using [Robin] as much as I could. In most of my early Batman stories, he doesn’t appear. Eventually Denny asked me to do a specific Robin story, which I did, and I guess it went over fairly well from what I understand. But I wasn’t crazy about Robin.

I thought that going out and fighting crime in a grey and black outfit while you send out a kid in primary colors was kind of like child abuse. So when I started working on Batman, I was always leaving Robin out of the stories, and Denny O’Neil who is the editor finally said, "You gotta put [Robin] in."

In the one Batman issue I wrote with Robin featured, I had him do something underhanded, as I recall. Denny had told me that the character was very unpopular with fans, so I decided to play on that dislike. [...] At that time, DC had this idea that they were gonna do an AIDS education book, and so they put a box out and wanted everybody to put in suggestions of who should contract AIDS and perish in the comics. I stuffed it with Robin. They realized it was all my handwriting so they ended up throwing all my things out. About six months later, Denny came up with this idea of the call-in thing. [...] I didn’t find out about it until I came back [from Mexico] and found out that, just as I expected, my ghoulish little fans voted him dead. But by a much smaller margin than I’d imagined. It was only like 72 votes out of 10,000, so statistically it was next to nothing.

Dan Raspler, assistant editor/associate editor to Denny O’Neil (1988-1990):

Denny wasn’t really interested in comics continuity, and he didn’t like superheroes. And if you read his work, you see his influence was really a pushing away from the conventions at the time—it was growing old, that sort of Golden Age-y, Silver Age-y stuff, and Denny sort of modernized it, and he never stopped feeling that way. Jim Starlin’s Batman appealed to Denny. It was a little more ‘down to Earth. Nobody liked Robin at the time. For a while Robin was not—it didn’t make sense in comics. Comics were darkening, and so having the kid was just, it was silly, and even at the time I kind of didn’t. Now Robin is my favorite all-time character, but at the time when I was twenty-whatever, I accepted kicking Robin out, the short pants and all the rest of it.

Comic shop owner Phil Beracha on A Death in the Family, quoted in The Sun Sentinel (October 22, 1988):

"I got 100 copies, and I don't expect them to last past the weekend," said Phil Beracha, owner of Phil's Comic Shoppe in Margate. "I usually get 50 copies of Batman. I doubled my order, and I still expect to sell out." The readers voted right, Beracha said. "Robin is an outdated concept. He was created in the `40s, and back then in a comic book you could have a kid beating up grown men. I don't think that works today."

Writer Steve Englehart, quoted in "Batman, the Gamble; Warner Bros. is betting big money that a 50-year-old comic book vigilante will be a `hero for our times'" in the Los Angeles Times (June 18, 1989):

Writer Steven Englehart, who did a series of Batman stories in Detective Comics, also worked up some movie treatments. In a letter to Comics Buyer's Guide, he revealed the approach he had in mind, which would have pleased Batfanatics: "My first treatment had Robin getting blown away in the first 90 seconds, so that every reviewer in the country would begin his review with, `This sure isn't the TV show.' "

Michael Uslan, producer and film rights holder for the 1989 Batman film:

I only let Tim [Burton] see the original year of the Bob Kane/Bill Finger run, up until the time that Robin was introduced. I showed him the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers and the Neal Adams/Denny O'Neil stories. My biggest fear was that somehow Tim would get hold of the campiest Batman comics and then where would we be?

"Death Knell for the Campy Crusader" in the Orlando Sentinel (23 June 1989):

For most people, the name Batman summons up a picture of a clown in long johns, a Campy Crusader who - with the young punster Robin - ZAPed and POWed his way into our lives. That's the Batman that appeared on TV in the mid-'60s, and that's the Batman that the world at large knows. Such is the power of television. But this ludicrous image may become obsolete now that the new, $40 million Batman movie has opened. Robin is absent from the film, as are the perky Batgirl and the utterly superfluous Aunt Harriet of the TV series. And though the movie has plenty of sound effects, they don't appear on the screen as words, spelled out in neo-Brechtian absurdity.

Sam Hamm, writer for Batman (1989 live-action film):

The Case of the Disappearing Robin is high comedy. Tim (Burton) and I had worked out a plotline that did not include the Boy Wonder, whom we both regarded as an unnecessary intrusion. Really: Our hero was crazy to begin with. Did he have to prove it by enlisting a pimply adolescent to help him fight crime? Was Bat-Baby unavailable? But the studio was insistent: There was no such thing as solo Batman, there was only Batman and Robin. So, after holding off the executives for as long as we could, Tim and I realized we had better try to accommodate them. He flew up to my house in San Francisco and we walked around in circles for two days, finally deciding that there was no way to shoehorn Robin into our story. [...] We figured that if we managed to squeeze him in, the lame hacks who were making the sequel could worry about what to do with him next. When the film went into production in London, and ran seriously over budget, WB started looking for a sequence that could be cut to save money. And there was one obvious candidate: Intro Robin! So Robin was cut from the movie and shoved back to Batman Returns— from which he was cut yet again and shoved back to Batman Forever.

Grant Morrison on creating Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth (written 1987-1988, published 1989) with Dave McKean (see the annotated script's fourth page):

The original first draft of the script included Robin. Robin appeared in a few scenes at the beginning then remained at Police Headquarters for the bulk of the book, where he spent his time studying plans and histories of the house, in order to find a way in to help his mentor. Dave McKean, however, felt that he had already compromised his artistic integrity sufficiently by drawing Batman and refused point blank over for the Boy Wonder — so after one brave but ridiculous attempt to put him in a trench coat, I wisely removed him from the script.

Paul Dini on Batman: The Animated Series (1992), as told in the 1998 book Batman Animated:

The Fox Network, on the assumption that kids won't watch a kid’s show unless kids are in it, soon began insisting that Robin be prominently featured in every episode. When Fox changed the title from Batman: The Animated Series to The Adventures of Batman & Robin, they laid down the law-no story premise was to be considered unless it was either a Robin story or one in which the Boy Wonder played a key role. Out were underworld character studies like “It's Never Too Late"; in were traditional Batman and Robin escapades like “The Lion and the Unicorn.” A potentially intriguing Catwoman/Black Canary team-up was interrupted in midpitch to the network by their demand, “Where's Robin?” When the writers asked if they could omit Robin from just this one episode, Fox obliged by omitting the entire story. Looking back, there was nothing drastically wrong with Robin's full-time insertion into the series—after all, kids do love him. Our major gripe at the time was that it started turning the series into the predictable Batman and Robin show people had initially expected it would be. For the first season, Batman had been an experiment we weren't sure would work. We were trying out different ways of telling all kinds of stories with Batman as our only constant. For better or worse, having a kid forced him, and the series, to settle down.

Christian Bale, star of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy (2008):

If Robin crops up in one of the new Batman films, I'll be chaining myself up somewhere and refusing to go to work.

Summed up

Among the keepers of Batman, there has been a vocal contingent arguing against the inclusion of Robin. They argue that Robin damages Batman's brooding, solitary persona. They argue that the concept of Robin is too ridiculous and fantastic for the grounded, gritty ideal of Batman. They argue that a respectable version of Batman shouldn't allow, encourage, or train "child soldiers" to endanger their lives fighting against violent evil-doers.

The original and most iconic Robin, Dick Grayson, has definitely benefited from his deep roots in DC lore and his consistent popularity among fans—and yet even he has been shunned from various Batman projects over the decades. When even he struggles to get his foot in the door, his successors face stiffer opposition.

So it's not quite correct to say that Jim Starlin hated Jason Todd. In his own words, Starlin wasn't fond of Robin, and his storytelling (most obviously A Death in the Family) set out to argue against Batman having any kind of "partner" at all. This, following the wildly successful comic that treated Barbara Gordon as a disposable prop. A growing audience welcomed the Dark Age, and the gruesome spectacles made of kid-friendly elements like Batgirl and Robin.

This trend could be broken by the upcoming sequel to The Batman and by the planned slate of upcoming DCU films. But most Robin fans will tell you that many movie-going Batman fans still have their doubts about Robin sharing Batman's spotlight.

[madcapberry]

One sec I need to talk about Shiva.

Lady Shiva was introduced in Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter in the 70s. She was a traveling martial artist hellbent on getting revenge for her sister, who she believed had been killed by Richard Dragon. She lured Dragon into a trap, revealed herself as Carolyn's sister, and tried to fight him to the death. Once she realized that Dragon had nothing to do with it, that Cravat and The Swiss (unimportant villain characters, they killed Carolyn) had been the ones to kill her sister, she helped Dragon defeat the villain (by giving him her shiny belt so he could redirect the beam of a deadly laser that was being pointed at them while they were fighting, don’t even ask) and Richard Dragon and Lady Shiva became allies, friends even. Dragon convinced her it would be a waste to kill Cravat and told her that he had killed the Swiss himself. She accepted this. They shook hands. This all took place over the course of one issue of Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter. It took ONE issue for Shiva to go from antagonist to ally. She then tagged along with Richard because she liked the adventures he got up to, the danger, the challenge, and the thrill of it. Richard even called her later on when he needed help on a different adventure. What I’m saying is she didn’t start out as evil.

Okay, so what do we know about Shiva so far? She’s a thrill-seeking peripatetic martial artist of great capacity and skill. She cared about her sister. She’s willing to kill. She’s an adventurer and a valuable ally. Great. Moving on.

The Question 1987 features THE Lady Shiva. A character capable of both ruthlessness and mercy, cruelty and tenderness. A curious, thrill-seeking, teasing character. She was vicious and nonpartisan and she was working as a mercenary for hire. But she was an ally, even when she was beating the shit out of Vic. She loved the O Sensei. You can tell she even cared about Vic in her way. I’m not saying she had a heart of gold, or that there weren’t tropes she fell into. She wasn’t and there were. But she was a fairly well-rounded, morally gray character that played a key role wherever she showed up. She was closer to a non-traditional anti-hero than anything else. Idfk, just go read The Question.

I read a tvtropes article describing Lady Shiva as “an archetypical Dragon Lady, complete with sinister motivations and exotic sex appeal,” which… she isn’t. She subverted this trope in several ways actually. She never had “sinister motivations” until Chuck Dixon got his grubby little hands on her. Her motivations were pretty neutral. She had her own set of principles, she was very morally gray. She wanted to travel and fight worthy opponents on her adventures for the thrill of it. She seemed to operate mostly on personal whims, and on the basis of building worthy rivals, out of love for the art of combat. And she didn’t use her sex appeal for shit (until the Richard Dragon reboot comic kms), she didn’t tolerate sexual advances or objectification. She just WAS NOT a conniving temptress, I don't understand where this misperception came from (but I do blame Dixon, I’ll get to that in a sec).

This same article states that she began as the arch-nemesis of Richard Dragon? Unless you’re accepting the version of the two of them from the very short lived Richard Dragon 2004 series as their canonical relationship then NO she didn’t. But I digress.

There was a marked change in the way Lady Shiva was written by the time Robin (1991) came out, this is where her character starts to lean towards the Dragon Lady trope imo. She also weirdly, and maybe arguably, leans more into traditional femininity while at the same time being written as more wild and uncontrollable. Chuck Dixon seemed to fundamentally misunderstand Lady Shiva as a character. He turned her (sometimes ironic) disdain for brutes who wouldn’t last a second in a fight with her into stereotypical womanly haughtiness. He turned her capacity for ruthlessness into bloodlust. And he made her into a conniving, somewhat deranged, villainous woman, tempting our young hero towards evil (oh my!). Again, I’m not saying she ever had a heart of gold, but Dixon changed core character traits (namely her respect for other people's personal code) to turn her into a villain.

“Kill him, little bird. Kill him and become a predator…Aren’t you my weapon? My instrument of death? Say you are mine.” Like?? She would not fucking say that, respectfully.

That isn’t even to mention Richard Dragon (2004) where Dixon turned Shiva’s relationship with Dragon into a resentful, sexually charged dick-measuring contest.

Even so, I don’t entirely hate Shiva as a villain, especially in Batgirl (2000). Pucketts Shiva is a bit less egregious imo. So she’s a passively suicidal evil mentor-figure who wants Cass to be a killer like her. Whatever, I can get on board with that I guess. I can enjoy it because I love Cass and this is a great comic run. But the retcon that–Listen, THE RETCON THAT IS SHIVA’S SISTER BEING KILLED BY DAVID CAIN, SHIVA DESCRIBING THIS AS FREEING, SAYING SHE’S GRATEFUL, THEN AGREEING TO GET PREGNANT WITH HIS CHILD IN RETURN?? This boils my blood. Shiva, who was introduced as somebody who cared about getting revenge for her dead sister. Shiva, for whom freedom and autonomy were core character traits. That Shiva?? That Shiva is relieved her sister is dead and is willing to carry her sister's killer's child to term?? What the fuck?

I hate it. I don’t understand it. Why would you take a complex character who makes it difficult to tell who she really cares about, and flatten them into somebody incapable of love?

Okay I’m done, this is getting too long and I don’t even want to get started on New 52 era Shiva. I don’t have a conclusion, I’m just annoyed. Thanks for reading. The Question (1987) is NOT a perfect comic but if you’re interested in Shiva please please please check it out, it’s very moody and philosophical, noir-esque. Also Chuck Dixon suck my dick.

[deeism]

the thing i've learned from extensively lurking on sunnyblr is that so many sunny fans are shockingly analytical and articulate and incredibly good at dissecting the material of the show—to the point where if you had never seen it before and you read a meta analysis from a fan you would be like wow. this show must be incredibly poignant and tragic. only to turn on an episode and be greeted immediately with a scene like this

[canonicallyobserving911]

Buck & Eddie: Chris was looking for his dad.

In season 6, both Chris and Denny were looking for their dads.

Full Disclosure: Before I delve into this parallel, I have to admit that I ABSOLUTELY LOATHED the way the Hen, Karen, Denny and Nathaniel storyline was handled and I mentioned it several times in my Season 6 -Constructive Criticisms posts (main one about stereotypes linked here). I don't believe the show did a good job of capturing most of the things they attempted to illustrate for the audience throughout the season but it's over now and there's nothing that can be done about it. Thankfully, TM is back as the ONLY SHOWRUNNER FOR SEASON 7 so he can fix the mess that was made by KR for seasons 5 & 6.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Over the seasons, I've found many instances where Buddie and Henren were paralleled and so were their sons, Chris and Denny. They're friends and they have been for years just like Eddie and Karen (post linked here) but they're barely shown together anymore. Was it on purpose, maybe but they along with Harry were the youngest of the 118's children until Jee-Yun was born in season 4.

IIRC, the last time Chris and Denny were shown talking to each other was in 5x10 when Hen arrived with Denny and he ran over to talk to Chris.

In season 6, they weren't shown together at all but their lives were paralleled A LOT with regards to their dads!

Reminder, Eddie calls himself Chris' father when he talks to Buck about Chris (post linked here). Even though I completed a post about the way Chris was looking for Buck in 6x11 during Buck's coma dream (linked here), I didn't notice the parallels between Chris and Denny that I'm including in this post until recently but they've been there hiding in plain sight. I think I missed them before because their scenes happened in different episodes starting in 6A and they continued through 6B.

In 6x9, Denny went off on his bike looking for his dad but he didn't tell Hen or Karen where he was going. When he arrived and Nathaniel opened the door, Denny introduced himself and said, "I think you're my dad."

Reminder, for his birthday, he asked Hen and Karen if they had any information about his birth parents and they gave him a folder. Later in the episode, he overheard Hen talking to Chimney on the phone after Eddie and Buck dropped off their four-way call and he started looking for him.

Fast forward to 6x11 and Chris was looking for his "dad" (Buck), not his father (Eddie) in Buck's coma dream. He asked Buck, "Can you help me find my dad?" but Buck told him he wasn't real which means he didn't believe Chris is already his son too even though he's been coparenting him with Eddie for six years.

Reminder, Chris already knew where Eddie was but he asked Buck to help him find his dad because Chris is the son Buck's been searching for since 3x1 - 3x3.

Both Buck and Nathaniel were in the hospital in season 6 and Chris and Denny were both upset by it. In 6x11, Chris insisted Carla take him to the hospital so he could see Buck and in 6x13, Denny and Nathaniel were in a car accident but Hen and Karen didn't know Denny had been spending time with him. Denny got upset and stopped talking to Hen and Karen because he thought they didn't care about the fact that Nathaniel might die.

In 6x10 Buck did die but Nathaniel didn't in 6x13. Chris asked Buck to come back and he did but Hen and Karen went to see Nathaniel in the hospital after Toni had a conversation with them.

The scenes above are similar for two reasons. First, they both happened in 6x13 and second both Denny and Chris were spending time ALONE with their dads. The difference is Eddie KNEW Chris was with Buck and I always wondered why he just dropped Chris off and dipped so they could bake cookies for Chris' whole class (post linked here) but it wasn't the first time he did it (and it won't be the last). The first time was in 3x1 before the Tsunami.

In the scenes below, Chris asked Buck, "Can you help me find my dad?" but after Denny knocked on Nathaniel's door and he opened it, Denny said, "I think you're my dad."

Why is this important?

It's important because Chris has always considered Buck to be his second dad/parent while Denny was looking for his dad. Buck is the one who hasn't realized he already has a son even though Nathaniel did. Reminder, Eva told Nathaniel about Denny and she showed up with him in 2x5 even though she lied to Hen and said she didn't know who his father was.

Also, Nathaniel made an agreement with Hen and Karen that he would follow their lead. He broke the agreement, they didn't.

Eddie put Buck in his will and named him to be Chris' legal guardian but he waited a whole year to tell him about it. One major difference between Buck and Nathaniel is Buck WAS ALREADY COPARENTING CHRIS WITH EDDIE! But Nathaniel was not in the picture and he hid the relationship he wanted to have with his son from Denny's mothers.

Let's be real for a minute because KR did a horrible job of making sure these parallels got recognized and it might have something to do with the fact that there was so much BS included in season 6 that it made everything EXTRA messy. From the sperm donor storyline; to interim captain to Buck wanting to be happy, Hen working towards completing medical school, AA sponsors that were created out of thin air, dating storylines that came out of nowhere, characters acting out of character... just everything overlapped and it was too difficult to determine what they were trying to do.

Will things finally be better in season 7? I hope so but only time will tell.

[sunnykeysmash]

Charlie: "Hey, uh, Dennis, uh, get to Frank as fast as you can. I have Malcolm and his dad."

[nightcrawlerzincorporated]

All of Charlie’s art in Dee Made a Smut film has always fascinated me. But today I want to focuses on a couple that really stood out to me and why I think they help teach the message of the episode.

This painting shows a woman with dirty blonde hair and a halo ripping out a man’s heart while he’s wearing The Boy footie pajamas from Nightman. I think when Charlie painted this, he intended it to be him and the Waitress—she ripped his heart out when she rejected him after his play but he still sees her as an angel.

But doesn’t it also kind of look like Dee and Dennis? Especially with the messy makeup on the woman, the way the man’s face looks like it can have facial hair or be clean shaven depending on how you look at it. In this scene where the painting is shown, Dee is confronting Dennis with his trauma, showing everyone his bloody ripped out heart and acting like she’s doing him a kindness (killing him while seeing herself as an angel). Also super interesting in hindsight when you consider that in DTAMHD Dennis fantasizes about eating a bloody heart to sooth himself, taking the trauma back into his own body in a sense.

Let’s look at some more.

A painting of dogs barking (at a human shape maybe? Hard to tell) and a rat covered in blood. To Charlie, I again think these are pretty straightforwardly about his life—he was illustrating Cricket’s dog orgy and the rats he bashes at Paddy’s.

But in the scene they’re framing Dennis, who is in the middle of trying to make excuses for the CSA he suffered. He’s trapped like a rat who’s being bashed, he wants to scream and howl like those dogs but he can’t. And the dog orgy is literally Cricket being assaulted by dogs and then playing it off casually so that’s also a pretty obvious parallel.

In this scene Dennis also explains that he thinks good art is just whatever the “right” people say is good art. Because he’s never been able to connect with his feelings due to his trauma, Dennis has always had a hard time connecting with art on a personal level (in sharp contrast to Frank, who sees himself in art depicting WWII so deeply he has an out of body experience). Like most things in life, Dennis only sees art for its social and commercial value, not as a way to feel connection. That’s why he’s so dismissive of all art that isn’t porn, because porn at least has an obvious tangible use. But even then, even then, when he tries to make “artistic” porn, his mind immediately (subconsciously) tries to express his trauma, using art to express his deepest wounds in a way he isn’t even aware of. And I think Dee sees that and tries to help him through her own interpretation of his art, continuing the metaphorical conversation he started, but she’s also petty, and bitter about him mocking her art at the beginning of the episode, so she does it in a way that’s vicious and public. Art can hurt you, make you think about things you don’t want to, and Dennis hates that. He doesn’t see the emotional connection he could make with Charlie’s art or Dee’s or even his own because he won’t let himself.