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currentfandomkick · 1 year ago

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Guys. Throw in Uncle Scarecrow as one of Eddie’s friends egging him on and stealing that formula that made him into his monster form from Penguin and have that be a synthetic ectoplasm?

Add that scarecrow is now Danny’s uncle and to a degree danny requires an ecto-variation and a degree of fear (or even have his reaction to fear gas be to get hangry or ‘puddle of goo’).

I know everyone loves Danny with the Sirens (and i do love those, and will ear it up in every form) but if we take Danny’s spectra truama (therapist trauma) and clown trauma from Freak Show the there’s a decent chance Harley Quinn would be a trauma trigger for him.

I propose Danny gets Uncle Ed and Scarecrow to everyone’s confusion.

(please let Fright Knight somehow have partial custody as he isnt trusting mortals with the Heir to the Throne but mever explains why he is bodygaurding Danny besides ‘he is the better candidate’ (for the ghost throne that is split atm between Vlad, Danny, Dan, Ellie (on a ‘mirrorborn = template for five years until stability is proven’ type technicality) as those that have defeated Pariah Dark in ‘one on one combat’… and Vlad shouldn’t count according to Fight Knight but the ghosts are under the impression Vlad and the Phantom Three have a rocky parent-child bond and are not going to force the developmental children onto the throne. Fright Knight is team ‘Realms can handle no king until Danny is done with mortals, no big deal’ and a minority opinion.)

Give Ellie/Danni to Red Hood as one of the meta street kids he keeps an eye on and goes pspspsps at. Ellie is not trusting adults after the Vlad thing and how adults handle homeless kids. Nope. She will take your food and shelter on occasion, but she’s not staying!

Dropkick Jazz to the Sirens. Her idol Harley Quinn is there with her. Selina would absolutely help her learn to be more confident in herself and let others deal with their own consequences and not feel obligated to fix it for them (Eldest Daughter parenting parents and sibs Problem). And later Jazz is learning about bio chem from Poison Ivy and how to make and ethically source various chemicals. Why? Tell me Jazz would not open an apothecary in Gotham and have a side practice as a therapist as it takes time to get certified and she wants to help NOW.

Tell me she would not intimidate Dan into acting as the cashier while she handles the meds, possibly with Sam helping as the plant supplier she uses for a number of ingredients when she later moves to Gotham for college (aesthetics, and goth and ounk scenes there are great.)

If you want add in Sam as a baby eco-terrorist that poison ivy slips ideas too, with Tucker helping her in return for not starting a protest against Meat Itself but animal treatment and gently encouraging her wrath that way and away from his beloved meat industry’s existence. He agrees to let her vet his food sources and handle cooking any meat products in their shared appt in return for her not throwing it out for existing.

Tucker hacks groups for fun, and is probably a Wayne Enterprises intern as a result of Oracle and Red Robin managing to track him… Tim is the one who told Bruce they call dibs on Tucker (mostly knowing him as a hactivist and approving most of what he does.) Tucker is overjoyed and helps with security coding, explains that Amity had the inverse to regular coding and his personal ‘off the books’ coding clearly is doing Something thats a lot harder to track…

Because he uses hieroglyphics as his base coding then the inverse coding with a smidge of magic protection.

Valerie is probably a JL recruit who visits Gotham, sees Danny running around as paradox and just asks Jazz why she hasn’t reigned in Danny yet… only to meet Dan, find out Ellie is STILL refusing standard housing, and Danny at least goes to school, minimizes murder and violence with the rogues he helps (literal contracts) and has Fright Knight guarding him.

Jazz has her limits, and Ellie is Red Hood’s headaches and occasionally Danny’s as he didn’t tell Jazz about her until Jazz caught them hanging out and she asked him if he was using duplicates to try out genders again but messed up this ones age.

Ellie was insulted! Then cackled when she learned Danny forgot to explain the clone thing. Ellie is refusing to be adopted and hates school—online is allowed.

Val just scruffs Ellie in front of Red Hood in her civilian getup and asks her why.

Cue Val vs Red Hood and Crime Alley for Ellie’s custody. Ellie is just a feral stray cat that like certain people, but doesn’t want to Stay.

In the background you see Fright Knight and Danny/Paradox arguing over if they should get involved… Danny just wants ellie safe, but is not sure where Red Hood falls with him as a Rogue’s getaway driver who works with Riddler (new dad for about five years atp) and Uncle Scarecrow (who used to target crime alley a lot… now its more liminals and has gently shooed scarecrow into semi-anti hero tendencies (as he has gone after his students’ abusers when he was a teacher, and could easily be tempted into doing that now and then). Frighty is team ‘Nope. She refused our help before. Natural consequences time.’

Ellie disapproves of this ‘legal guardian’ nonsense.

Jazz just sighs when asked why she isnt throwing her hat in and points to Dan with a simple ‘i’m his Guardian. Danny picked his. Ellie refuses to be forced so she has a room is she wants it, but i know my family does not do ‘listen when force is used’

Alright, since it’s no longer 2 in the morning and my head’s a bit clearer, I present to you:

Liminal Riddler

So, not everyone in the DC fandom knows about this, and I’d bet that even less people in the Phandom do, but at one point, the Riddler had cancer. Had, past-tense, because he cured it. With the Lazarus pits.

And yeah, not everyone who gets dipped in the pits has to be liminal, but one would assume that the sudden replacement of a large number of malignant cells throughout the body is gonna do something.

The Riddler already acts quite a lot like a DP ghost in some interpretations anyways. He’s got a strict gimmick that he genuinely can’t part ways with, he’s campy and fun, he’s incredibly violent, etc.

Also, the way that he would react to this whole thing would be funny as hell.

Do I think the Riddler would really care if the GiW was after him? No. This is Gotham, the government is constantly going after him anyways.

Do I think he would care if Danny was being hunted down by the same people, and his parents were involved? Somewhat. He probably wouldn’t care about Danny specifically, at least not right away, but a young boy running terrified from his own parents would definitely bring back some bad memories, and he would probably give him a hand (if for no other reason than to get back to plotting crimes instead of dealing with childhood trauma).

Do I think the Riddler, whose entire thing is being smarter than everyone else, would care if the GiW somehow let slip that they thought he didn’t have human intelligence? That they believed him to be nothing but an echo of human life?

It’s not even a question. He would be the most insufferable person in Gotham within the hour. Genuinely nothing could stop him, especially not if Danny was helping jailbreak him from Arkham every time he got caught.

Almost every major road is closed. Every warehouse on the Docks is on fire. Somehow, they managed to color the clouds and smog a bright green.

The natives of Gotham would probably get those anti-ghost laws and acts overturned faster than the Justice League, if only to make the Riddler stop. His traps and games aren’t even lethal at this point (due to Danny’s insistence), but they’re so genuinely annoying that the general population is about to beat the GiW agents to death themselves just to get the Riddler to quit it already.

Also, I think that during this whirl of chaos, the Riddler would become quite fond of Danny.

He’s a bright young boy who’s very fond of wordplay, and inventive enough to keep up with him. Aside from the inevitable crisis of “oh god I’m becoming the bat,” he’d probably be happy to take on Danny as his protégé. Even if the boy won’t let him kill anyone (rude), he’s a terrifying getaway driver and can turn the both of them invisible and intangible, making Arkham escapes a breeze.

Hell, the Riddler would probably be willing to make a false identity for the two of them, just so he could get the boy proper schooling.

(Yes, he thinks that the entire education system is a sham and that he could do much better, but Danny wants to go into aerospace engineering, and the Riddler isn’t one to squander someone’s interest in learning.)

(Also, Echo and Query would find the whole thing hilarious)

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dustandjustgettingby · 5 years ago

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Yeah, considering the fact that children of color are by and large viewed as more mature, more violent,and more lazy than not just their white counterparts, but also the white adults around them, (a phenomenon that has been studied by both harvard and the apa among others) it's unfortunately unsurprising that OP could see a traumatized little brown girl as an abuser. And not only is she displaying a completely normal response to truama at age, but even if it didn't exactly match, say, an example of childhood trauma in OP's probably blindingly white social circle that could also be because existing stress factors life race, and class can heavy effect the toll of stress and trauma on a child. (EPI study)

There are plenty of nuanced and indepth critiques on Disney's portrayal of Hawai'i, but OP's colonizer bestie doesn't belong around them. (I'll reblog some ACTUAL indigenous critique later, it'll just take wading though some stuff) But of you want to talk about the scene with Myrtle then let's talk about what happens directly afterwards. Because she reacted Myrtle's intentionally antagonistic behavior she has to sit out of dance class. Dance is something deeply spiritual in indigenous communities. It's how we tell stories. It's how we communicate,connect, and honor our communities and our ancestors. Telling this little grieving girl that she can't engage in that is the very definition of compounding trauma. How does this supposedly manipulating abuser respond to this? We see her quitely tell her teach "I just wanted to dance". It's heart breaking.

On a more personal note, as an indigenous womxn (not Pacific Islander, but still) I really relate to Nani. As much as the movie fuck up on the culture Nani and Lilo's situation is heart breakingly relatable. The foster care system disproportionately targets native communities and as the eldest daughter of a single mother I'd be in a very similar situation to Nani if anything ever happened to my mother. If fact it's one of my deepest fears. Nani is under a lot of pressure, and I can understand that stress and anxiety more than most, but absolutely none of that is Lilo's fault. Nani and Lilo's are real and relatable examples of trauma that probably made some kids out there feel seen when the needed it.

And if you feel the need for a character to have a moral character arc that you can transplant your values on ? That's what stitch is for.

Would you mind sharing a quick summary of why you don't think Lilo and Stitch is a good movie? I didn't get to see the stream and I'm quite curious as I haven't met a person who didn't think Lilo and Stitch was a fantastic movie.

Sure thing, I’ll try to be brief!

So let’s take a look at Lilo and Stitch’s setup. It’s actually a great premise - a kid who thinks the world is set against her, an older sister who’s at her wit’s end trying to care for the kid completely on her own…This scenario happens a lot in real life, where the kid feels as though nothing is in her favor and life itself is unfair. Her ideals aren’t matching up with reality.

The kid and her sister - Lilo and Nani - have a REALLY bad fight, and Lilo shuts herself in her room in a tantrum. Later, Nani finds Lilo wishing for an “angel” to come and save her from this horrible situation she’s in.

Now, here’s where the movie starts to do what it shouldn’t do. Let’s take a look at Lilo.

Lilo isn’t just the bullied weird kid. She’s a brat. Her first instinct when somebody says something she doesn’t like is to get violent… and it may seem funny on the screen, but this sort of behavior is NOT funny in real life; and if you think it is, there is a real problem there. Lilo is horrendously ungrateful for everything Nani sacrifices for her, and gets bitter and spiteful when she’s called on it, so much so that the child throws a tantrum. Poor Nani is left STILL trying to pick up the slack, STILL trying to fix things in Lilo’s destructive wake, and Lilo honestly doesn’t care.

Lilo is of the mindset that it’s Nani’s job to clean up after her messes, and takes that entirely for granted. And the message of the movie, “family means nobody gets left behind,” underscores this and even says that it IS the family’s job to fix its members’ messes… without holding that family member responsible or accountable.

The natural result of that message is a wonderfully horrific movie called The Godfather. I highly recommend it if you haven’t actually ever watched it; it is not a fun movie but it is very eye-opening.

So when Lilo wishes for somebody to arrive to fix all her problems again, somebody who’d reinforce the behaviors that she likes, regardless of how bad those behaviors are for everyone around her… well, she gets what she asked for. She gets Stitch.

Now, Stitch is a monster. Stitch is - and SHOULD be - the physical manifestation of Lilo’s bitterness, self-indulgence, and tendency to lash out at anything that’s set against her. Of COURSE she’d like this little beast. And the movie portrays him as a little beast! …sort of. He should be even more of a monster than the movie claims. It is not Stitch’s narrative role, in this kind of story, to be sympathetic. He needs to be the ultimate result of allowing your kid to become a little monster. Nani continues to indulge Lilo when she should be putting her foot down, and the result is that the household invites in the worst kind of monster there is - one that everyone in the house created together.

Where the story SHOULD go from here is that Lilo and Stitch have a grand old time together, wreaking further havoc on Nani’s life (and the lives of everyone around them)… until finally that havoc actually affects Lilo’s life, and she cannot avoid the repercussions. Her indulgence in allowing this little monster to destroy everything has brought things to a very, very bad place.

Lilo should try to confront Stitch, and Stitch should not care in the slightest, echoing how Lilo responded to when Nani finally tried to confront her… and now the reality of what’s happened should sink in for Lilo, so her only remaining option would be to abandon Stitch, to get rid of the monster. Only at this point would Stitch also start to realize that he’s done this to himself.

Things should then get bad in the plot from here. As is commonly said, acknowledging the problem is only the first step to fixing it. Lilo and Nani are left in pretty much a broken home, where Nani has no idea what to do, Lilo has destroyed Nani’s life, and yet Lilo doesn’t want to accept that the problem was of her own doing (if she did accept it, she wouldn’t have tried to act like it wasn’t a part of her - she wouldn’t have symbolically removed Stitch).

Stitch is up in space or whatever, being brought back to the research lab or something. There, however, he learns of something terrible that’s going to happen to Nani and Lilo, and all the people that put up with his nonsense for so long back down on Earth. What exactly this terrible thing that’s going to happen is doesn’t matter - what matters is the theme, the moral being shown. Stitch tries to ignore it, because “hey, it’s not my problem,” but can’t shake the guilt that begins to eat at him… and at the last second, Stitch changes his mind, makes the RIGHT decision, and arrives to rescue Lilo and Nani in the nick of time.

This would be the first GOOD thing that Stitch has ever done, something entirely selfless for the benefit of another person. Think of how much stronger a message that would be, then, when after the day is saved, Stitch is welcomed back into the family, and things are finally starting to look up for the three of them. It would be a story of personal growth, of how to face your own demons and how to treat your loved ones with the respect they honestly deserve, how to show gratitude when somebody makes a sacrifice for you!

But instead, we get “you should love and take care of your family no matter how they abuse you and take you for granted.” What a HORRIBLE message!

Now, the spiel from my recent stream actually went on from here, and @kaleidraws would be able to speak more knowledgeably about it, but basically the way she put it is: from the depiction of Hawaiian culture in the film, “the person/people who made the movie clearly had no first-hand experience in the era they were depicting, and instead were projecting what they thought it was like based on their own biases and intended messages.” Hawaiian culture from Lilo & Stitch’s time period was, in reality, very much opposite to the way Lilo & Stitch glamorized it… but you won’t hear people talking about that.

At any rate, it’s no wonder people like this movie - it’s so incredibly indulgent and reinforces the notion that a person doesn’t need to be responsible for themself, because somebody else will fix every problem they ever have… what a blissfully irresponsible message.

Watch out for people who get offended at this sort of critique, and who react highly negatively when somebody insults something they like - it often means they’ve attached too much of their identity to that thing, and feel personally called out when somebody points out that it’s a bad message!

^ I shouldn’t have said this.

The point of this response should have been to explain my perspective and opinion on a movie, not to make a qualitative judgement of people who like the film, and it was presumptuous of me to do that. There’s a lot about the film to like - the music is wonderful, the animation is lovely, and there’s a whole slew of other reasons to admire it. Everyone has things from their childhood that they’re fond of, which left a lasting impact on them. Of course people are gonna go “whoa, wait a second” when somebody basically insults it and them for liking that thing.

It was really uncool of me, and I’m sorry.

I’m still not a fan of the movie myself, for all the reasons I mentioned above. I don’t think it’s a helpful message to teach kids - even as young as Lilo - that they don’t need to take responsibility for what they say or do, or that it’s all right to lash out as long as you’ve got a reason for being hurt and upset. But I shouldn’t have insulted people over it, and again, while it wasn’t my intention, that’s exactly what I did.

I’m gonna keep this in mind for the future - it’s foolish to fall back on insults when what I really care about is sharing my passion for storytelling and analysis thereof. Thank you guys for your patience and understanding - I won’t make the same mistake again.

(Side note: @kaleidraws did a wonderful bit of analysis on the Hawaiian culture side of things here.)

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