#finishing it is the important part
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somewhere-to-be · 2 years ago
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what keeps me from writing the most is the lack of a plot. i have these characters and situations but no plot to fit them into. and i like a good plot. i like it when stories come together. a well-structured story is a thing of beauty. but i've also realized that bad plots are excusable if you have great characters doing interesting things. it might not be for everyone - there's a vocal criticism of plot holes - but there are more out there to engage with the story despite the plot holes because they like the characters and the world so much. there is fiction that's just a character study and that's fine. it doesn't have to be a traditional story with a three-act structure. it's fine if things don't make sense. it's fine to have plot armor, deus ex machina, some twists that require more hand-waving than usual. at the very least, it shouldn't stop you from completing the story, because a 100% of a story with a bad plot is better than an incomplete snippet that only aims for perfection.
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hawberries · 1 month ago
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GAME START!!
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seven-gill · 21 days ago
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Accidentally deleted all my progress on my other project so here’s a headcrab wearing jorts.
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Based on this image I found
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onaperduamedee · 2 months ago
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Shooting star, as it turned out, never to return once you left our sky.
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gobstoppr · 5 months ago
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Tetris Fanart.
I've been playing tetris while listening to horror podcasts. and yeah
#text#art#eyestrain#cw eystrain#bright colors#cw bright colors#tetris#nintendo#god i dont know what to tag this with. i dont wanna tag it with the podcasts themselves cuz that feels disingenuous. swagever#i actually started this piece a while ago. ok yeah looking at the date that was almost 3 weeks ago wow#but i finally decided to bring it back and finish it#ive been getting back into digital art and its been really nice. its nice having finished pieces.#ive been trying to get weirder with my art. like this piece was weirdly 'personal' in a sense#its been my unique experience listening to these pieces of media. the game in the bg is jsut as important to my experience as the art itsel#the looming sense of dread these podcasts give fit weirdly well with the high tension of some of these games of tetris#i wanted to have that sorta weird ominous vibe to it. have even the pieces feel loud and threatening.#and the gameplay being Past the ds itself is something i thought could be neat#ykno the tetris effect? where you play a bunch and then after you see the shapes everywhere;you play it in your mind?#that was part of what i wanted to channel there. but also like; how your attention works with this stuff#i might be looking straight at the ds but my attention is elsewhere; my brain is in another world#the game is still inescapable tho. tetris effect whatever. these stories stick in my brain just as much.#its all given me some. very very annoyingn anxiety. but i have to go back to them. like a moth to a flame etc. hince the moth climbing out#but uh yeah. that set up was my life for a few weeks whenever i had free time.#the main podcast this is about was magnus btw <- not typing full name so im not on the tag#and uh.#objectum#yeah i think. i think yeah.
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withthewindinherfootsteps · 1 month ago
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Wei Wuxian and Narrative Agency – Part One
For Xiantober Day One: Genius… albeit stretching the prompt so it refers to MXTX and MDZS itself, but at the end of the day it’s still about WWX – so no harm done!
(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)
The narrative is a very active player in MDZS’ story. How it presents information, what it chooses to show and omit, often reflects important facets of its themes and characters – Nie Huaisang, for instance, is so good at hiding behind his mask that not even the narrative can hold him accountable; the present day’s storyline as a murder mystery and the slow reveal of information about the past both prompt the reader to think critically about the truth of events, when the importance of thinking critically is an important theme; and the dangers not thinking critically (and instead basing conclusions on rumours without much evidence) are shown by tricking unquestioning readers into the very same trap the cultivation world falls into, as the information given by the title, summary and in-universe rumours – which contradicts how we see actually Wei Wuxian act – turns out to be false.
But nowhere do I love this trait more than in its treatment of Wei Wuxian – and, more specifically, in its way of emphasising his agency. We’re not just told how much his active choices define his character, and we’re not just shown this in-universe through his personality, worldview and the events he causes. I’d argue that this aspect goes a step further, and shapes the structure of the out-of-universe narrative as well.
There are two main ways this happens: one, in how the aspects of Wei Wuxian’s life that are shown and hidden directly tell us what’s important about his character (which is good writing but isn’t necessarily tied to this shaping of the narrative), which is what we’ll explore today; and two, how what’s shown and hidden reflects what Wei Wuxian himself prefers to dwell on, resulting in the narrative respecting his own thoughts and feelings on matters (which very much is tied to it). We’ll explore this at a later date.
But as for now – let’s explore my favourite aspect of MDZS.
(Here, narrative agency will be considered the ability of a character to meaningfully influence their events and the story they’re in.)
Tragedy, Circumstance, Choice
If we simply look at Wei Wuxian’s backstory in a vacuum, it seems almost typically tragic. His  parents died in circumstances beyond his control, he was left alone as a child with nobody to care for him, he was forced to grow up fending for himself on the streets, he was faced with abuse when he finally was taken in… as with all typical woobies, everything simply happened to him, and none of it was good. It’s just another example of the lack of agency being used for sympathy points, right?
…Except there’s one problem with that idea. We don’t actually see any of this.
It would’ve been easy to start the flashbacks during these times. We’re telling the story of Wei Wuxian in (largely) chronological order, and these are likely important experiences for him! But instead of starting in his street days, or evenat the moment Jiang Fengmian took him in*, we start at the lectures in the Cloud Recesses. That’s not even something mentioned in, and therefore something that’s able to disprove, the rumours at the start of the novel. So why is this the case? 
Well, there are multiple reasons – the main one being that MDZS is also Lan Wangji’s (and Wangxian’s) story, and having the flashbacks open with their first meeting is very satisfying. But I want to focus on something else.
This period doesn’t have to be shown, because what happens to Wei Wuxian, especially out of his control, isn’t what’s important about his character.
We’re not even at Lotus Pier here, where Wei Wuxian certainly has more agency than he would’ve had as a young child, but where the harm caused by Madame Yu is still completely out of his control. Here, he has agency! Though there are consequences, he is free to act, and what happens to him is a result of those actions and not of circumstance. Yes, he gets punished more than others who also take those same actions (due to classism); yes, it’s not his choice to be picked on by Lan Qiren in class (yet look how he responds, twisting the situation to his advantage and ending up tricking Lan Qiren into letting him leave, which is what he wanted to do. He is not at all helpless here!); yes, these choices have been influenced by his learned mindset from Madame Yu that punishment is arbitrary and will happen anyway, so you may as well do what you want regardless. But there is cause-and-effect here. It’s not circumstantial tragedy.
Therefore, instead of our first impression of past!Wei Wuxian being that of an unfortunate woobie, it’s of someone who has the freedom, ability and will to choose and act (and that’s after these initial tragic events have taken place). This is compounded by the fact that before we see any of his backstory, we get a similar impression of him in the present day.
If the purpose of his tragic past was to earn him sympathy points, to make us pity him due to how much he was influenced by events out of his control, this would’ve been a terrible way of going about it… and it’s this that betrays the true reason for its existence. Because now, the flashbacks instead show us how little these tragedies define who he is! From the very start, Wei Wuxian isn’t someone defined by circumstances out of his control, but rather by who he is as a person and by what choices he makes in the present day (which is both a mindset in-universe, and a nice little out-of-universe detail that lines up! Because out-of-universe, this means he’s not defined by sympathy points from a backstory, but rather by his great character writing… aka, by who he is as a person and what choices he makes). And this refusal to be defined by tragedy is a conscious choice on his part, too – but we’ll explore that more later. 
The important thing is that this idea of Wei Wuxian isn’t because of what exists in his past, it’s because of what parts of his past are shown to us (as well as what he chooses to do, with agency, in the present). 
Now, if this relationship between what’s displayed and what’s omitted was just a one-time thing, I might’ve considered it a cool detail or a nice way to establish a character, but not something the narrative is actively focusing on. But it’s a pattern that continues throughout the flashbacks. What, arguably, are the two other most important times in Wei Wuxian’s life where he doesn’t have enough agency to meaningfully influence his circumstances? His three months in the Burial Mounds (before escaping – he managed to assume some control of the circumstances but not enough to substantially reduce his suffering in his time there), and his loss and death during the First Siege. And we’re not shown either of them! We skip to when Wei Wuxian has emerged from the Burial Mounds and is torturing the Wens, or we skip to the present day – both times he has agency once more, because, again, what he’s like without it doesn’t matter enough to be shown. 
Furthermore, I’d argue this does actually contrast the other tragic events we see in Wei Wuxian’s later life. Things do go horribly wrong, but it’s either due to choices he knows the consequences of (see: rescuing the Wen Remnants in the first place), or instances where he still has some ability to act in the situation and influence it within the limitations. If he’d had no ability to influence circumstances at Qiongqi path, he would have died in the ambush; if he’d been unable to do that at Nightless City, he would’ve died then, too (of course Lan Wangji helped him escape as well). The attention drawn to him losing control of his actions in both instances is very interesting, but intentional or not, it’s still his actions influencing the plot. And that influence happens to be detrimental. The very ability to act and influence, at a base level,  is not taken away (though, of course, that doesn’t make these events any less tragic).
So, so far, the narrative seems to be telling us that the ability to act and choose is key to Wei Wuxian’s character. And it’s doing it through omitting his moments without agency in favour of instead showing us his moments with it. 
Let’s see if this is echoed in the text itself before we go further – because even with this pattern, nothing would end up mattering if Wei Wuxian’s agency wasn’t actually that important to the story itself. But thankfully it is, and that first impression we get of Wei Wuxian in the Cloud Recesses turns out to very much be accurate! Though there are defining circumstances out of his control that occur, such as the massacre of Lotus Pier, the majority of the important events of his life are due to his own choices. He didn’t happen to be forced to cease traditional cultivation and solely use guidao, didn’t happen to lose his Golden Core in a fight with Wen Zhuliu or due to some force in the Burial Mounds, it was his own choice to give it and his spiritual powers away. He didn’t tragically happen to get targeted by the cultivation world, it was a result of him acting on his morals and protecting the Wen remnants (a choice which he was fully aware of the implications of). He isn’t a protagonist to whom things simply occur, and that activeness and agency is my favourite thing about him. 
That’s not to say that the times Wei Wuxian doesn’t have agency, or feels like he doesn’t have any, don’t exist at all, either – but they are rare enough to have attention directly drawn to them in his internal narration:
Or else what could he do? He could do nothing. He was powerless. Lotus Pier had been destroyed, both Jiang FengMian and Madam Yu were gone, and Jiang Cheng had disappeared as well. He was the only one left, alone, with not even a sword in his hands. He didn’t know anything, he couldn’t do anything! For the first time, he discovered how little his power was. In front of something as large as the QishanWen Sect, it was the same as a mantis trying to stop a chariot. - Chapter 59, EXR translation
(And even in this circumstance, note that he still does force himself to act – to carry on searching for Jiang Cheng, to place his faith in Wen Ning – and does accomplish his goal (albeit with the help of others)! So even in dire situations, he isn’t simply passive. This is actually also the case with his time in the Burial Mounds, almost certainly the First Siege, and even his days on the streets as well (Chapter 20: he did actively fight with dogs to get food despite their danger and his growing fear of them, rather than just waiting and hoping to somehow receive some more). He can’t influence or immediately influence his circumstances, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.)
Overall, although they do influence him, Wei Wuxian is very much who he is in spite of his circumstances, not because of them. We’re shown the importance of his agency both in-universe by the major impacts his choices have on himself and the plot, as well as by narrative presentation – important periods where he lacks the ability to meaningfully influence anything are often mentioned but not directly shown, which suggests that such moments and circumstances aren’t as important to understanding Wei Wuxian’s character as moments where he does have this agency are. And I’d argue this works very well. Depending on the version of the story you consume, you may end up having different interpretations as to how much circumstances were at play nearer the end of his life – but nobody comes out of MDZS thinking about Wei Wuxian, the poor bearer of yet another generically tragic backstory.
(Part Two | Part Three | Full version on AO3)
*We are shown this moment in more detail in Chapter 23… but even then, it’s through the framing of Wei Wuxian remembering Jiang Yanli’s narration, not through a flashback proper or even him remembering the experience itself!
#there are three parts to this#part two dwelling on how wwx not dwelling on tragedy is a conscious choice#part three about how that choice and wwx’s preferences are ALSO behind what’s shown and what’s not#i originally wanted to post them all at once but life was very busy and they haven’t been finished yet#and i wanted to release SOMETHING on this day (it is after midnight but i haven’t slept yet and in a lot of timezones it’s not yet)#judging by the current length of it it’s probably better to be posting individual parts anyway…#so here we go#a complete version will br put on ao3 when done#also because i’m not sure where to put it in the meta – i’m aware external circumstances did impact this too#eg mxtx not wanting to write power-up/transformation sequences influencing her not to write wwx’s time in the burial mounds#i’m also aware a lot of this could be writing efficiency and not the deeper meanings i’ll (mostly later) assign to it#ultimately there’s not enough evidence either way to say if this was intentional or not#(i don’t doubt mxtx is an amazing writer but *i* feel i’m overanalysing while writing this which i do tend to do)#but even if it wasn’t it’s still a part of the story#and it still remains one of the things i love it the most#so i WILL explore it (taking the approach of death of the author here – i do believe context is important but i just love this throughline-#-so much)#xiantober#xiantober day 1#mdzs meta#my meta#wei wuxian#wwx#mdzs#mo dao zu shi#魔道祖师#grandmaster of demonic cultivation#gdc
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xoxoemynn · 1 year ago
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I am 50000000% here for Ed spending a lot of this season wet. [source]
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demi-pixellated · 1 year ago
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🌻Blade Breaker II & The Rose Noble🌹 - Power Couple of New Fodlan -
I am SO EXCITED to show my full piece for Sunflower, A Leonie zine. What a beautiful book, with all it’s fantastic merch, and I’m so glad I got to be apart of it and show my fav cavalry girl all the love she deserves!! Thank you to everyone who supported the zine, but if you missed out the first time around, don’t sweat it! Sunflower is now having it’s leftover sale!! 🌻 Pick Up A Copy Here 🌻
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d8tl55c · 2 months ago
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almost done with somethin' (edit: IT IS DONE \o/ )
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azaracyy · 9 months ago
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a lesson on good karma digimon survive week 2024 day 4: supporting characters
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possiblyawesometmblr · 5 months ago
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fuck it. dead boy detectives wetbirds/coworkers au. ven's edwin. icarus is charles. ari is crystal. perix and fengari as esther and monty with a bonus enderian as lilith. i have no clue who niko is. have fun
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welcometogrouchland · 1 year ago
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I feel like for the first few years of guardianship Darius and Hunter really struggle to figure out how to refer to each other.
Like it's easier for Hunter, he pretty quickly settles on "guardian" for explaining their relationship to other people and just referring to Darius by name when talking to the man himself. Overtime the phrasing gradually warms, becoming "foster parent" and eventually, once Hunter's already an adult old enough to move out, "Dad".
(Sidenote: he doesn't move out til he's in his mid to late twenties, bc he's under no obligation too, Darius low-key doesn't want him too, and the two of them want to make up for lost time in a sense, since Hunter only had 2 years of legal dependency on Darius before aging out of the system. Darius adopts Hunter retroactively as an adult)
Darius on the other hand has a real conundrum on his hands for those first few years. He has a lot of options! But "ward" is too formal and makes it sound like Darius picked him up off the street like after his parents were murdered, "apprentice/student" isn't really accurate considering the focus of Darius and Hunter's relationship has less to do with Hunter learning magic and more to do with Hunter being housed and fed. "Kid" and "foster son" are there...but...
Look, Darius isn't going to refer to Hunter more familiarly than Hunter refers to him! He's not gonna make it WEIRD. He's not a dad, because Hunter doesn't want/need him to be (and also parenthood is scary <3). Darius doesn't know the first thing about being a dad, despite how his friend group teases him.
Eda and Eberwolf are the two who are worst about it. They torture him with how 'fatherly' he's allegedly being (allegations Darius will DENY til his GRAVE!!!) And Eda specifically compares his journey to hers, saying it always starts off with you referring to them as your apprentice (again, Darius doesn't plan on doing that), as your roommate (...kinda weird in Darius' opinion? But okay Eda), or even your pet (????HELLO???). But eventually, they always become your dumb kid when you least expect it.
She's had a couple cups of appleblood by this point, but Darius knows on some level she's right and he's steadfastly ignoring that fact, even as Eber continues to refer to Hunter as his "cub" (kinda cute but Darius doesn't know how Hunter would feel being compared to an animal). The only people who are even remotely reasonable about all this (besides Lilith who's a bit disinterested in kid talk) is Raine and Alador, who both sort of neutrally, a bit awkwardly refer to Hunter as Darius' Boy.
Darius referring to Hunter as "my boy" is funnily enough what sticks the longest before it evolves to son boy. Hunter's crushing it at a derby match? Darius is whooping and cheering, yelling "THAT'S MY BOY!!!" At the other parents in the stands. Hunter is doing something dangerous or inadvisable where others can see him? "Darius, your boy-" "AHH! MY BOY". Hunter, a year into his stay with Darius finally comes clean about everything to do with him being a grimwalker, and is afraid that he's going to go back to seeing him as just an inferior replacement for Darius' beloved mentor? Darius (who has just had to process some of the most bonkers, emotionally heavy information in his life) gently, hesitantly puts a hand on his shoulder (the 'good' one Hunter doesn't mind people touching), and says that Hunter's much more than that. He's Darius' Boy and he's not going to kick him out or get angry or love him any less for things out of his control. It's good. They're good.
Like I said, it evolves over time and 'boy' becomes somewhat obsolete as the two get caught up in the joy of finally feeling able to explicitly refer to each other as family. But unlike "guardian" or "ward" the word never gets fully retired. Even when Hunter is 30 and is arguing that he's more of a man than a boy now, he is still getting referred to by Darius as "his boy", the way some parents never really stop calling their adult kids baby or kiddo (Camila and Eda respectively btw).
Hunter makes one of those corny matching shirt sets at some point for a father's Day gift when he's 17/18, where the two shirts say "if lost, return Boy to me" (Darius) and "I'm Boy" (Hunter). Hunter mostly did it so he could own a funny shirt that says "I'm boy". Darius openly weeps upon seeing them. Like Oh my Titan he's boy. He's my boy. Oh wow
#ramblings of a lunatic#the owl house#toh#hunter toh#darius deamonne#dadrius#made this instead of finishing my dadrius week day 1 comic. it's okay i have time#i think this post dips it's toes into being one of those 'part writing drabble/part textpost analysis' posts#which I'm okay w/ tbh i love those#i just hope it reads well#the important thing about dadrius + eberwolf to me is that it's just as unlikely a trio as King Eda and Luz are#just as weird and has just as gradual and retrospectively funny a journey as them#i also specified foster parent instead of adoptive parent just bc i read it in a fic once where Hunter was placed in isles foster care-#-post canon and he had a social worker who was a gargoyle named Chantelle. it was delightful#this is my homage to that. the fic was 'the titan laughs in flowers' i think (thank you user yardsards for the rec)#alador still gets the instinct to refer to Hunter as the golden guard and amity gets on his case about it#so referring to Hunter as darius' boy grew out of that and spread to raine who finds it kind of adorable#darius refers to hunter as his foster son for the first time when his (darius' i mean) family comes to visit#not as like a statement of anything they don't deny Hunter as a deamonne. they love him like they love a scraggly cat#but just like. it felt right for Darius in the moment and Hunter got emotional about it#anyway happy early dadrius week I'm rotating them in my mind I'm biting down on them like a chew toy etc etc
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ender1821 · 1 year ago
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A Pearl and Gem clip that didn’t fully make it into their episodes, taken from Pearl’s stream (I loved this part and just had to save it somewhere)
transcript below!
Gem: I’ve put the rest of the packed ice in here for now, but we can grab it here if we need it.
Pearl: Okay, sounds good.
*moment of silence*
Pearl: Did I just say “sounds good” to you putting items in a random chest?
Gem: Yep.
Pearl: What are you doing to me?
Gem: You’re welcome!
Pearl: *anguished cries*
Gem: I’m loosening you up!
Pearl: That’s not how it’s supposed to work…
Gem: Welcome to the GeminiTay Effect, where we’re unorganised and a little bit insane!
Pearl: Who invited me to this nightmare?! Oh wait, you did.
Gem: You accepted!
Pearl: Ah, gleefully so.
Pearl: I’m currently just tweaking the path shape-o!
Gem: Uh-huh.
Pearl, reading the chat: “Not random, it’s a project chest”, okay, that does make me feel better, I’ll take it.
Gem: If that’s all it takes, I can say that about every—
Pearl: No, you can’t, because it never gets organised!
Gem: *laughing*
Pearl: There’s a difference! There’s a difference—
Gem: I mean… I dunno— There’s not— it’s a fine line!
Pearl: No! No, no no. If you have things messy all season, that’s not the same. A project chest is something you make temporarily, and you organise it after you’re done with that piece. Not the entire mega-base! A piece of the mega-base.
Gem: Mhm…
Pearl: Yeah! You know I’ve got a point!
Gem: No… I dunno…
Pearl: No, no, you know. I know you know. No denying it.
Gem: I love the way you say “no”, I just wanted you to say that more.
Pearl: Oh, it’s because it sounds Australian, is that what that is— Do you want me to say “alright”?
Gem: Yeah, ‘cause it sounds Australian.
Pearl: I know you like the “alright” one.
Gem, in an Australian accent: Alright.
Pearl: Alright, mate.
Pearl: What did you say? Oh jeez…
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homura-chu · 2 years ago
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It's my 10 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳
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Have some madohomu! The ship that basically started this account lol
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aalghul · 5 months ago
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when it comes to being willing to make concessions on methods & morality specifically in exchange for gaining batman’s trust & access to the inner bat circle vs rejecting an existing trust & access (because it did exist prior to jason’s death & would have existed had he chosen to walk back in with no radically opposing beliefs after lost days #1)….jason should never choose the first
#re: op’s tags on lrb. but once again this is unrelated to the actual post. It just reminded me#worded it this way bc jason could maybe give up killing maybe. but not for the bats. it doesn’t work bc he made the choice to#not return as a bat and he hasn’t finished justifying that choice yet. in fact it all falls apart if he makes concessions for them now#but whether he’s wrong or right and what he thinks abt that is irrelevant. he made a choice and he’s got to stick by it when it comes to#renouncing an important part of his ideology since his resurrection just for them#the point isn’t the killing itself but whether jason would be see the bats as a good enough exchange for giving up his ideology#and he clearly didn’t the first time he chose to kill (and at that time he was remembering a father that was much more loving than bruce#has been since jason’s death. an older brother who was more supportive than dick currently is — bc well. Jason isn’t doing stuff he Can#support currently lol— and etc) the point is that Jason looked at what is to him the better version of his family and still chose to severe#himself from them (or maintain/exacerbate the severance. since his dying was the initial separation) so why would he go back on it all#these tags should’ve been worded better and also part of the post. I’ll do that sometime when im not sleepy#actually the first is what helena does and it never quite works bc the bats don’t generally grant her the trusted status that most#newcomers are able to attain. and mostly that’s on batman. this isnt even what the post is about#so easily now#jason todd
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legislacerator · 6 months ago
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nothing feels better than defending the 19 y/o i heard the property manager screaming at by telling him that they can’t evict him until they give him proper notice. remember kids just because they don’t like you doesn’t mean they can just kick you out!!!! property management companies and landlords say shit like “you’re going to get evicted” over anything they don’t like just to scare people in their late teens/early 20s, since most of them don’t know their rights as tenants and have maybe never lived away from home before. don’t let them fool you!! property management companies have to follow the rules whether they like it or not
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