#feel like such big factors

[dykesynthezoid]

Yknow after so many years of Muslim folks talking openly about how allyship to their safety here in the west always feels conditional it feels like another reminder of how islamophobia and antisemitism are often inextricably linked. Bc in the last year I’ve seen so many people who think of themselves as allies to Muslims engage in the same kinds of thinking and with the same kinds of rhetoric that endangered and continues to endanger so many Muslim Americans, but those “allies” think it’s okay because they’re doing it About Jews.

Idk, it’s one thing to talk about antisemitism coming from Muslim spaces and islamophobia coming from Jewish spaces and how to navigate that; but also I frankly rarely get the vibe that a lot of people who are culturally christian here in the west are ever feeling a tenth as genuinely vigilant and analytical as I feel like I have to be watching out for either form of bigotry.

Like sorry. I just don’t believe them! I don’t. I believe that they’ve remembered some things people tell them to look out for, but nine times out of ten I doubt they’ve ever actually stopped to independently analyze where these things come from. I don’t believe that they’ve really looked deeper, even when they insist they’ve “done their own research.” Bc the forms of activism so many people are engaging in are like, 100% memetic. It’s just repetition. Say this slogan, use this symbol, repeat this argument, use this rhetoric. I know they have more interiority than that. I know they’re not just consuming and regurgitating machines. But a lot of people refuse to act like anything else.

It’s especially obvious when someone starts complaining about something they specifically see as a flaw within Judaism while being so ignorant that they don’t realize Islam shares that given practice or belief or quality. So they’ll be going off on how Jews do (x) while also thinking themselves a passionate ally to Muslims, despite the fact that Muslims also do (x). And that tells me that you don’t really care about Muslims bc you literally haven’t even bothered to learn enough about them or their culture to know any of that. Like nobody wins in that scenario. You just hate Jews and it’s clear that your allyship to Muslims was never genuine.

[vaggieslefteye]

ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ ↳ anonymous asked: HUSK and ALASTOR or angel and valentino?

[turtleblogatlast]

One of the biggest things that makes me see Leo as trans is absolutely the size of his carapace in comparison to his brothers’.

And I’m not talking about height! I’m specifically looking at his shell here, because when you compare him to the others, particularly Donnie who is nearly the same height as Leo, it’s very clear that Leo’s carapace is much longer in proportion to the rest of his body.

Like - standing side by side, even though Donnie is shorter his carapace ends noticeably higher up than Leo’s does. And I like this not only because it really helps push the idea that Leo could very likely be trans (or intersex!), but it’s also just a fun design difference between them.

(It also lends way to future scenarios of Donnie eventually getting taller than Leo, but sitting down still has Leo being the taller one haha.)

[shrinkthisviolet]

Gotta love that the ATLA fandom collectively shifted from Zuko/Katara to Zuko/Sokka during the 2020 renaissance due to a growing appreciation for Kataang…

…but Maiko still gets paid absolute dust 🫠 what, y’all can finally appreciate Kataang (about mf time), but Mai has to either be abusive, cold, or the stereotypical “mean lesbian”? And the most she’s allowed to contribute now is to give birth to Izumi and then not even be her mom (on the rare occasions that Zuko/Sokka fic writers even let Mai be Izumi’s birth mom)? Very progressive…

[yourhighness6]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how so many people miss the point of TSR completely. Like Katara did forgive Zuko because forgiveness is earned and no Katara didn't forgive Yon Rha because she can choose who to forgive/ who not to forgive and no Katara shouldn't have killed Yon Rha because the whole point of the episode is that you don't have to forgive someone to show them mercy. That's why Bryke insisting that Katara "forgave Yon Rha" after the fact is not only fucking stupid because she literally says something exactly to the contrary in the episode and it doesn't just remove her agency it removes the complicated moral theme

[ahappydnp]

i love how since the pholnde reveal everyones kinda agreeing on how phil would be a butch (a princess, but nevertheless a butch) but what about dan?? i dont think lesbian dan would be a femme necessarily but he wouldnt be masc plz help

anon i'm so glad you asked because i have so many thoughts about this because dan is me i am dan. i think dan would have started out more generic goth that led into more femme scene vibes (basic razor cut with clip in extensions that'd she'd mostly wear for pics/going out and specifically vans slip on ballet flats NOT converse because she looks to "boyish" in them and of course a hello kitty phase because how can i be a dyke if i love hello kitty)

then that progressed into 2010s hipster normcore skinny jeans + cami + zip up hoodie combo. still with a razor fringe cut but her hair is long enough that she doesn't wear extensions anymore. makeup is still heavier black eyeliner but now she wears lipstick sometimes when she feels too "lezzy" (obviously she's still deep in the closet and i am once again saying can we talk about phan yuri lipstick gate where fi has lipstick that's not hers on her neck/pillow)

she did a "big chop" post coming out (standard issue new lesbian short bob) and honestly her style is pretty much the same as real life dan because gender is whatever and dan is a formless blob no matter what so like mostly jumpers and basics with some funky luxury pieces thrown in (and also more clothes stealing because butch phil has cooler clothes i think)

[saltyb0ba]

a deep blood moon, a starless night

dark enough to see the light

[ratwithhands]

A shitpost conjured with a friend. The context for this is so convoluted but all you need to know is:

this took an entire day for him to get suitably dressed

he immediately got sucker punched for trying this

This AU is found family and mentorship on the human side and absolute jokes on the demon side. Muzan assumed Yoriichi killed Kokushibo and proceeded to hide in his delusion pit until he came back missing braincells 💀

I'll make Muzan more serious later but until the main cast starts being a real threat, he's mostly just working in the castle and whining about not getting results to his moons.

He is not cheesed to be here.

[monsoon-of-art]

Has anyone ever suspected Hayday of being well.. Hayday, while he wasnt in disguise?

That is one of his biggest fears. He tried to take precautions to avoid it. As an example, he never smiles at work (at least not with his teeth) to try to avoid comments on it. It helps that he tries to cover as much as he can when he's out as Hayday

A big thing is his personality shift: 'Lee' at work is quiet, exhausted, and honestly kind of skittish. A complete 180 from the Hayday that the public knows.

[blujayonthewing]

[langernameohnebedeutung]

.

[pocket-size-cthulhu]

Behold. A tangible representation of 8+ hours of my life: crochet pumpkins made for my sister

[starfire-s]

also like why is a psychological reason like stress and burnout not enough for seok ryu to want to come home and change her life around like why does the plot need a terminal illness for it to be justified

[atalana]

so like genuinely nothing against fiddlestan shippers, i don't quite get the appeal of the ship but you do you, glad you're having fun

i do however find it one of the funniest things to come out of the gravity falls revival

bc like im sure to the people shipping it its perfectly wholesome and above board (and also tends to be set pre-memory gun)

but the only thing i can think every time i see it is "yeah i hit that guy with my car at least twice and im still a better boyfriend than you"

[silverwhittlingknife]

How do you feel about Jack Drake?? What are your thoughts on him and Tim’s relationship?

Anon, I hope you were interested in a novel, because look, I am fascinated by Jack Drake.  He’s key to a whole lot of what I find compelling about Tim as a character, and if I were in charge of DC, I’d bring him back to life.  This would make Tim unhappy but would IMO make for good plotlines.

Jack and Tim’s relationship is Complicated (TM)...

Jack and Tim hug in Nightwing 20 / Jack impulsively yanks a TV out of the wall in Robin 45 / Tim grieves in Identity Crisis

“I could tell the truth.  But I don’t.” - Robin 66

...and it involves a whole lot of Tim lying, and feeling guilty about lying, and thinking about telling the truth, and choosing again and again to keep lying.

And I think that’s great.

Below the cut:

Shorter version - key points about Jack

Really long version - my gentler take (vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports) vs. my harsher take (Jack has some major flaws)

Final thoughts

Shorter version - key points about Jack:

He’s a bad parent.  He’s self-centered, he consistently prioritizes his own comfort and interests over his son’s, and when upset, he does things like order Tim off to boarding school.

But he’s never a bad parent in an actionable way.  He’s not like David Cain or Arthur Brown, who are abusive monsters.  Jack’s not a monster!  He just...kinda sucks.

He genuinely loves Tim. If Jack’s aware that Tim’s disappeared or is in trouble, he’s always worried and upset.  He periodically resolves to be a better dad, and IMO he’s always sincere.

And Tim loves him, a lot.  Tim’s protective of him and worries about him when he’s kidnapped or in danger, and when they’re reunited, Tim’s really relieved and usually hugs him (and Jack hugs back!). 

...But they have very little in common, and that’s a problem. Jack doesn’t value the things that Tim values, or respect the people that Tim admires, or care about the things that Tim’s interested in.  Tim lies to him a lot, but that’s partly because he correctly guesses Jack wouldn’t respond well if he knew the truth of what Tim’s up to.

The Batfamily is a surrogate family that Tim’s drawn to because of the ways his real family doesn’t meet his emotional needs…but also he feels guilty about that and disloyal. (And to the extent that his dad recognizes what’s going on, he's jealous and resentful!)

Very long version:

(LISTEN I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS)

Okay!  So first: Jack’s a character who IMO is pretty up for interpretation.  You can interpret him very charitably, and make excuses for the bad behavior, and fill in the blanks sympathetically when situations are ambiguous; or you can interpret him uncharitably, and emphasize the bad behavior. I don’t think either approach is invalid - it depends on what kind of story you’re interested in!  I have enjoyed Bad Dad stories and also stories that redeem Jack.

My personal take on canon is that Jack and Tim’s relationship is in a gray area.  Jack's definitely neglectful, and he does prioritize other things over Tim, but he’s never so bad that Tim can easily reject him, and he's never so bad that Bruce could justify taking Tim away.  He's just...not great.  Tim loves him, and feels loyal to him, but it’s a very mixed-up complicated love.

I have a gentler take and a harsher one which I switch between as the spirit moves me. xD

My Gentler Take (tl;dr: vigilantism is choir and Jack loves sports)

Here’s the core conflict: Jack and Tim are very different people with different values.  Tim idolizes Bruce and Dick and vigilantism, and secretly gets involved, knowing his dad will hate it. He gets increasingly wrapped up in his secret world and lies to his dad...because if his dad finds out, he’ll make Tim quit.

This is a great setup for an ongoing comic.  It’s practical, because it provides endless potential for plotlines, and it’s nicely thematic, because it maps closely onto relatable real-life situations with extracurricular activities:

Tim the drama nerd whose dad thinks he’s playing football and not in the school play; 

Tim the closeted-queer kid secretly getting involved in his school’s politically-active Gay-Straight Alliance; 

Tim the choir kid whose dad only values making money and wants him to go into the family business (and Tim keeps promising himself he'll give up choir soon, definitely soon, but maybe he'll stay in just a liiiittle longer, because they need him, you see, the last tenor left town, so...); 

Tim the computer geek with the sports-obsessed dad (this one’s just canon);

etc. etc.  

The extracurricular metaphor works pretty well for Tim’s relationship to vigilantism.  Tim's involved in his "extracurricular" because he genuinely thinks it's important and fulfilling, and he values it and wants to be good at it. He idolizes Bruce and Dick because they're good at it. He's been collecting information about it since he was a little kid, and hiding it from his parents because he knows they wouldn't approve. And mayyyybe there's also an element of low-key rebellion against his dad, and maybe that's secretly part of the appeal. And yet also as Tim gets more and more invested, he starts to daydream: maybe I could tell my dad and he'd be proud of me and supportive. But he doesn't, because actually he knows his dad would be upset and angry and make him quit.

And - again, just like with lonely kids and extracurricular hobbies - one of the things that happens is that Tim starts getting his unfilled emotional needs met ... by people he knows through this secret hobby. And people like Bruce and Dick start turning into a surrogate family. Which Tim feels guilty about. And also as Tim gets more and more wrapped up in their world, he has to lie to his dad even more, which means the distance between Tim and his dad gets bigger and bigger and more and more unfixable.

I love this dilemma. It's simple, it's recognizable, it provides endless sources for conflict, and there's no obvious solution! Tim can't tell Jack: he'll make Tim quit! And Tim doesn't want to quit, because he loves choir / art / theater / whatever.  Yeah, it’s difficult, and there are challenges, and sometimes he has doubts...but at the end of the day, he cares about it a lot.  And everything he values is there, and all the people he admires and cares about are there, and all he wants in the world is to feel like he's one of them and belongs there. So he has to lie, even though he doesn't want to lie, and he feels guilty about it...

...but also he ends up lying more and more.

(Sidenote: I think it's important that Tim chooses to keep lying - Tim's narration often glosses this as "I have to lie to my dad," and that's certainly how it feels to Tim, but this... isn't quite true. He has to lie to his dad, because if he doesn't, his dad will get mad at him and try to stop him, not because he literally has no choice about it.)

Other Reasons Why I Like The "Secret Extracurricular" Interpretation

(tl;dr it complicates not just Tim's relationship with his dad, but also all his other relationships)

Tim's problems have some obvious parallels to Steph and Cass, who both become vigilantes while rejecting their evil supervillain dads. But Jack isn't evil. And that means the Tim-and-Jack relationship is ambiguous and complicated in ways that I like. Steph and Cass can just leave their Bad Dads in prison, and say good riddance, and feel very righteous and triumphant about it! Tim’s more complicated. Tim gets into vigilantism ostensibly out of duty and altruism, but secretly, he's also involved for straight-up selfish self-fulfillment reasons. He's lonely, and bored, and his life feels pointless, but he thinks that Bruce and Dick are cool and amazing and he wants to be a part of the things that they do.  When his dad gets jealous of Tim’s relationship to Bruce, and feels like Tim’s looking for a surrogate family, he’s... not wrong.

And the ways in which Jack is not Actionably Bad complicate things from Bruce's POV.  If Jack was a straight-up villain, it’d be an easy call to keep in touch when Jack finds out and makes Tim quit...but he’s not a villain, not really.  So what do you do?  Do you try to surreptitiously stay in touch with Tim even though you’re ignoring his dad’s express wishes and thus forcing Tim to sneak around?  Do you respect his dad’s wishes and stay away from Tim even though you have a years-long relationship at this point?  

Again: a bit similar to the extracurricular analogy.  Say you’re the choir director and you’ve built this whole relationship with a kid in the choir, and you’re an important mentor to him and you care about him etc. etc. etc.... and then right before a big performance, his dad finds out he’s been secretly involved, and yanks him out.  How would you react?  Well, maybe kind of in some of the ways Bruce reacts.  You replace him. You’re annoyed with him. You miss him. You want him to come back. You’re also worried about him.  You’re upset with his dad.  But also... what should you do, exactly?

Bruce and Alfred and Dick care about Tim as if he were part of their family, but he’s not part of their family, and there’s a lot of interesting tension there.

My Harsher Take

Jack never hits his son.  But his temper is a big deal.

In his worst moments, he takes out his anger on Tim’s stuff - wrecking his room, or ripping his TV out of the wall and confiscating it.  When he’s worried about Tim, he usually expresses that fear by yelling at him / punishing him / sending him away - threatening to send him to boarding school in Metropolis in Robin III, or threatening to send him to military school abroad in Robin 92, or actually forcing him to go to an all-boys' boarding school post-NML.  

This is bad behavior!  It is Not Good!  

And you can easily connect the dots to a bunch of Tim’s terrible coping mechanisms, like the constant lying and or the fact that Tim’s go-to methods for dealing with interpersonal conflict are 1) repress it and pretend it never happened (most of his fights with Bruce), 2) withdraw from the relationship until he can pretend the conflict doesn’t exist (when his friends get mad at him in YJ, he quits the team for a while), or 3) literally run away from home.

Also, Jack is a Manly Man with firm opinions about how men behave vs. how women behave, and he thinks boys shouldn’t be scared and thinks Tim should date hot girls and pushes Tim to work out and wants him to play football and expresses period-typical sexism, etc. etc. etc. ... and though obviously this wasn’t what the writers had in mind at the time, all of that is certainly interesting to read backwards in the light of Tim as a queer character.

More Disorganized Thoughts on Jack Drake

Tim’s our hero, so we’re naturally more sympathetic to him, but it’s also true that relationships are a two-way street, and Tim doesn’t value any of the things his dad values, either.  Jack at various points is shown to care about grades, business, money, boarding schools, archeology, football, a kind of macho bragging-about-dating-hot-women ethos, and a very public and performative kind of caring. Tim tends to respond with discomfort or disinterest or even disgust.  When Jack gets on TV to try to rally the government to save his son from No Man’s Land, Tim isn’t touched—he’s mortified.  When Jack makes some bad investments and loses money, Jack’s deeply upset and his self-image is majorly impacted, and far from being sympathetic, Tim’s annoyed and kind of contemptuous of the idea that this is a problem.  Jack thinks fishing in the early morning and going to tennis matches is a fun father-son activity; Tim finds it exhausting and tedious.  And so on.

This means that Tim often longs to be closer to his dad in theory, but this longing is more tied to fantasy than to reality. He rarely seems to enjoy spending time with His-Dad-The-Actual-Person.  So for example, when Tim’s deadly ill with the Clench, he has an extremely poignant fever dream about telling his dad the truth and getting hugged…even as he insists in real-life to Alfred and Dick that he does not want them to tell his dad what’s going on.

The same is true of Jack, who IMO genuinely wants to be closer to his son and is continually declaring that he’s going to turn over a new leaf and get closer to his son…and just as continually backs out of activities or loses his temper when faced with spending time with his actual son.

Tim and his dad sadly get along best—by far—in Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder situations.  When Jack gets kidnapped or is in danger, Tim worries for him (and Tim grieves him deeply when he dies).  When Tim disappears or runs away, Jack’s genuinely worried about him.  So e.g. they have a really moving emotional reunion and hug when the earthquake hits Gotham, and Tim panics about his dad’s safety and comes running home (and meanwhile Jack’s been panicked about Tim’s safety!).  It’s the day-to-day, regular life stuff where they don’t connect.

Jack's written quite differently by different writers. Mostly, Tim's parents are at their least likable in his early appearances and early miniseries (this is where you get, for example, Jack and Janet being nasty at each other while a pained employee looks on, and Tim disappointed to once again get news of where his parents are via postcard - "I guess that sums them up! Never know where they’re going to be–or when–or even how long!” - and Tim alone on school break, and Bruce and Alfred thinking there's something weird going on with Tim's parents, etc. etc.). Jack's more sympathetic but still often unlikable in most of Tim's Robin solo, and he's almost invisible (but positively treated if he does show up) in Tim's team books.

For obvious reasons, Jack's remembered way more sympathetically after his death. Tim's completely devastated by Jack's murder, which he arrives moments too late to prevent, and he basically never gets over it. We see him grieving Jack again and again in Robin, and also in Teen Titans, and also in Resurrection, and again in the Halloween Special, and again in Batman: Blackest Night, and all the way up to the end of Red Robin. Tim also grieves for an extended time over Janet - he hallucinates a happy reunion with her when he's feverish in Contagion, and hallucinates her in the final issue of Robin, and the reveal-your-buried-emotions song in Robin 102 brings up his grief for her too (meanwhile, other characters dance or laugh or otherwise get giddy).  Tim’s grief over his parents’ deaths is intense and long-lasting.

I'm not going to clip comic panels because this is long enough, but if you're curious, here's a nice and fairly lengthy compilation of comic panels with Tim and Jack.

If you're interested in a Jack-centric story with a softer-but-still-recognizably-canon take on Jack, I really like the way Jack’s narration is written in the one-shots Heart Humble (set shortly before Jack dies) and Never a Hero (Ra's resurrects him during Brucequest, and Jack's archeology skills turn out to be unexpectedly useful).

[kitsoa]

The Dystopia That Made Trigun

Ya'll the problem with Triguns insanely long speculative sci-fi timeline is the conundrum of trying to imagine exactly how a dystopian Earth could get so bad that massive amounts of folks needed to yeet themselves blindly into space, but could become so advanced that they single-handedly solve the energy crisis and maybe confirm the existence of god at the same time.

I am not a very skilled dystopia engineer, and there are a lot of flavors but I'd like to think the revolution of Plants on Earth has the potential to alleviate a lot of the aggregators in a full (or seemingly imminent) societal collapse. I'm struggling to work ahead of late-stage capitalism doomer scenarios right now which maybe puts me at a century out. I'm placing Trigun's timeline at 5 centuries out, But the tech advancement can pause at like 3 centuries in since 2 of those are used for space travel before the Big Fall.

So let's hash this out together

Here's what advancements Project Seeds needs to launch:

bioengineering (prosthetics and augmentations)

cloning and gene editing capabilities

cryosleep technology

advanced space travel

gravity control

supercomputing

Here's the rough and estimated environmental factors to cause them to leave Earth:

Resource scarcity

Environmental decline (like global warming and loss of land, and mass extinction)

[speculative] imminent doom from societal factors [like nuclear war and geopolitical unrest]

We know based on the society formed on No Man's Land that capitalism is probably the most familiar and default system used by the immigrants. So we can assume that Project Seeds was created with wealthy benefactors at the helm not only looking for salvation but probably power and influence (cause capitalism gonna a capitalism)-- a true colonial expansion echo despite the optimism.

The Seeds Project strikes me as unaffiliated with a specific country or culture. JuLai and some of the ambiguous ethnicities and lingering languages suggest that it's multi-cultural with English being the primary influence. So it's not a state-sponsored project, but very likely independent-- another point to the wealthy benefactor line of thought. Despite that, those shuttles alone took decades to construct and governmental cooperation to launch so it couldn't have been a completely apolitical endeavor.

Then there's the population. The project's reach is insane, not just in talent, but passenger interest. I'm assuming children were not on board, so you are talking about countless able-bodied adults abandoning their lives knowingly for the promise of a better world. The environmental factors aside, the prep-time for the project had to have been decades in the making. That's a long time to keep the propaganda circling for the promise of better. That kind of interest fades as people age into different stages of life. (Depending on the scenarios we could be looking at a mass draft? Unlikely but very interesting). We know that the survivors of the Big Fall were not specifically tailored to create a society without the comforts they were bringing along or the government of No Man's Land would look a little more stable.

So, what kind of society could form such a vast space immigration project while simultaneously on the verge of collapse?

Well, a desperate one.

The logic follows that as the resources grow scarce and the inequality gaps create vast populations of suffering among disenfranchised people-- fascism rises, which broadly stymies innovation. It's a real roadblock to this scenario. So the jumpstart out of this would be either war or a scientific breakthrough-- or both. There's always going to be interest and innovation in DNA science as a part of the medical field. Even in heavy capitalism that is going to get a lot of money thrown at it. The only thing needed to create Plants is large leaps in gene editing and cloning.

I'll throw out a number, 50 years. We've got cloning and Jurassic Park stuff. Then boom. Angel Mummy discovery. Scientists create the First Entity. But at the same time, geopolitical tensions ramp up because of the destructive potential of this entity. (I mean the First Entity has the Drain ability, that's black hole powers. We're getting wars). But the Plants are developed off of that and the First Entity is destroyed in the Julai foreshadowing lab accident many years down the line. --We've solved the energy crisis and there is probably a huge boom in advancement-- probably those physic-defying advancements to boot. But we have our militaristic flashpoint in technological prosperity, all while the earth is raining hellfire, the cities are flooding, and mass extinction events are occurring. Enough to get Trillionaires with savior complexes to start making Project Seeds.

Aaaand they are probably funding the countless wars so people join the expedition.

Conclusion: Project Seeds is a corrupt colonial project manipulating the hopeful desperation of a beleaguered population, created by the ultra-wealthy to garner absolute control in a humanity reset.

Good thing Nai crashed the ships!