#funeral thread

[heartsfms]

" that was kinda the point. " this was her best friends funeral, so lori obviously had to show her face, and she knew better than to prance around drunk off her ass, which is why she had found a quiet area away from things before attempting to drown her sorrows. " i don't understand how anyone does these things sober. " she muttered, looking down into what remained of her drink. " of course i do. "

“ i didn’t actually know you were over here. but good to know you can handle your liquor, lori. “ julien attempted to joke to lighten the mood with how reactive the response had been. but he’d be lying if he didn’t understand where she was coming from. and hell, from his perspective the drinking was well warranted. “ look, i get it. “ he exhaled as he folded his arms over his chest, allowing some silence to pass before saying anything else. “ you really miss her, don’t you? “ 

[1eos]

the author of rest of resistance talking abt her father dying at 55 from heart complications that came from overworking his whole life is so sad....especially knowing how common it is. and its supposed to be wholesome that as he died his whole community he labored for came to see him off as he passed but there's something grotesque abt the way people will use you til your very last drop of life and then watch you die prematurely :/ its a very negative pov of mine and im aware of it but ive been paying attention to things like that and something just doesn't sit right.....

[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).

[enruint]

careful were slender digits as they tended to the flowers,   diligently arranging them into a small bouquet.    to hold something brimming with life while they were so far removed from it had always been    an odd experience    for the vampire but perhaps it was for that reason daiji cherished such little things even more.    it was silent within the funeral home    ━━━    no services for the day yet,    time spend preparing a few things before they would evidently be swamped with work again.    humming softly do deft fingers make quick work with the flowers,    tying thin ribbons around the stem,    tugging it slightly before moving on to the next.    it's then another enters the scene and without looking up does he address the new occupant within the parlor.  

 ❝    i can hear you,   you know.   ❞    there is a certain kind of amusement within soft voice.    ❝    what brings you here,    doctor.   ❞    it's only now that they look up from their craft,    sharp gaze fixed upon the entrance to the reception room as they wave the floral knife within their hand before pointing it at him.    ❝    don't tell me you're finally at death's door and in need of my services for a change ?  ❞   maroon hues glow with    a certain kind of mischief    not often shown to others. ⊱    @tewwor,   sc. ⊰

[that-spider-fan-over-there]

Read a Twitter thread a few days ago how Katsuki, Izuku and Tomura are meant to be the pillars of hope and change for hero society (by Kikibats, go check her out, the thread is her pinned tweet), and that got me thinking about Tomura's birth name, so I looked up the kanji for his name (志村 転弧, for those curious), and I wanted to share.

(someone probably already did make this connection and worded it better but screw it we bail let's go-)

Kikibats' thread has mentioned what "Shimura" could have originally meant In-Universe, especially "Mura", so it's about a paragraph short, because I'm writing what it could mean in the story as it is (again, In-Universe):

So from the name Shimura Tenko, we have:

Shi (志):

"Determination, ambition, intent", which Tenko does have, arguably even more than Izuku has (I mean, running around barely sleeping while facing Gigantomachia for three months? spending four months in a tube and resurrecting by sheer anger?), but ambitious is after realizing his convictions and intends to carry on the League's. It can also refer to “will” as in willpower, the one trait AFO doesn't have, and the reason he was selected as his vessel.

Mura (村):

Mentioned in her thread, but "Village", could be an ironic spin on “it takes a village to raise a child”, since after his family's death no one was willing to take him in, and the one who did only did so to groom him into a monster. It could also refer to a heroic trait he has (yes, even as he was annoyed at Toya and Himiko when he first met them): taking people in when he thinks they're lonely, have been rejected, wronged by society and wanting to carry on their convictions, which leads to:

Ten (転):

a verb; "to shift", and sure enough, he's the one who created the Vanguard Action Squad with the purpose of kidnapping Katsuki, setting off the Kamino Incident and shifting the status quo of society. You could argue he has been since the USJ but no one really feared him until Stain came along. Tomura is also one of the characters whose goals and motivations develop the most through the story.

It can also mean "to turn", from changed from the sweet kid who wanted to play heroes with his friends, to a symbol of fear. And physically, he's the willing participant in Dr. Garaki's body experimentation and his body is constantly shapeshifted depending on his (and AFO's) mental state.

Finally, “Ko” (弧):

The kanji for “arc”, which is admittedly very vague and it could mean nothing, but.

It could refer to the arc he goes through.

From a kid playing with those others ignored who wanted to be a hero, to being groomed into the Symbol of Evil('s puppet), which eventually unravels once he becomes powerful enough to fight Izuku, resulting in the reveal that in spite of all what he’s been through, he’s still that kid willing to extend his hand (well, in a metaphorical way) for those who want/need someone to rely on. Someone who wants to be the LoV's hero.

Not quite a full circle, but still not too far off from his beginning.

A bonus point, since we (readers and watchers who like to read the raws/watch subbed anime) use "Ko" we usually think of "子" as in komodo, the kanji for "kid", this one abandoned by a complacent village. And remember since Izuku wants to offer him a hand, a crying lonely child in need of a hero. With AFO taking control of him, while Izuku (and most of Class 1-A) trying to save him, wouldn't it be neat to see Tomura choosing to take Izuku's hand, especially someone whose identity was forcefully defined by a touch of death?

Not quite the same innocent kid, but still the kid who wanted to be a hero for those left behind.

Would be fitting for this arc to come full circle, wouldn't it?

[isa-ah]

yall ever end up thinking back on periods of ur life and ur like. bro what

[twinge-of-cosmicangst]

Even though Tom’s always been my favourite character I was never that desperate to see him become CEO like I honestly didn’t give a shit about the who will get the iron throne side of succession. But now there’s only like one episode left I’m like crown that bitch, all hail emperor Nero🧎‍♂️🧎‍♀️🧎

[limayde]

15. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End (Season 1)

Frieren is a delightful series. The opening premise of an elf watching her friends die around her is already compelling enough, but the themes and storytelling that follow it just brings the whole thing together. My favorite part of the whole thing is the mother-daughter relationship Frieren and Fern have with each other. It starts off kinda superficial, but watching them warm up and get to know each other on a deeper, almost familial level is just so sweet.

[louisgoldenhour]

worst fucking 24 hours of my life

[stewyhosseini-bf]

one thing I will say that I kind of miss about the previous seasons is how the episodes used to feel a bit more self-contained, like their own little movies, which I'm kind of missing a bit in s4. lucy prebble at one point in the succession podcast described it as them having a sitcom-like feel to them, because each episode is built around one specific event; and while that's definitely still there in season 4, the way each episode does truly pick up almost exactly where the previous one left off time-wise, and the way that Logan's death and the children's grief is the red-thread that closely connects the episodes, kind of makes it feel like one long movie rather then 10 separate episodes. which is interesting and makes sense considering the focus of the season is supposed to be the children dealing with logan's death and consequent absence, and it's puts a slight spin on the formula they've used for 3 seasons and I think they've done that really well - so it isn't even a critique on my part, but I personally still really loved and kinda miss the way the episodes each felt more like their own thing, previously, ig

[yuridovewing]

Imagine if in 2007 or so, some Pokemon Anime writer was answering a bunch of shotfire questions on twitter or facebook or whatever. And they get asked “Hey, who’s related to who in the Pokemon anime? Anyone we don’t know about yet?” And this writer has not revisited the original saga in years, they’re tired and do not care at all, and they just write “Eh Ash’s Mom and Misty’s Mom are sisters and everyone in the show knows this” on a whim. Completely ignoring how that makes absolutely no sense in the OS canon, Ash and Misty don’t know each other and the show actively shipped them, and this take is so stupid that the writer basically immediately takes it back and it’s never implied in any official source, nevermind the actual show, that they were related. But for some reason, the fandom COMPLETELY accepted this take as cold hard canon. A writer had said it, so now it’s gospel. People are arguing over the ship now. If you point out that this is complete and utter bullshit in the actual canon, you are now an incest apologist. Despite this having clearly been a mistake and subsequently ignored for years, everyone is adamant that this has to be the case. That would be stupid, right?

That’s what a lot of WC discourse feels like to me

[scattered-winter]

literally genuinely for real my university should pay me money because i think i deserve it due to the fact that i am still going to class under these circumstances

[widevibratobitch]

the side effects of experiencing all this funeral stuff from this up close is honestly that im just starting to plan my own funeral in my head to entertain myself and it also kinda stopped me from being suicidal because i realised no one but me could do it right

[softersinned-arc]

@gaveldefy / plotted starter.

She's learned a lot, these last months in Charming. How to become a new person and shed old skin. How to budget. How to become invisible. How to aim a gun. The weight of the weapon is familiar, now, even comforting, and that in and of itself is enough to make Astoria wonder how much of herself is what it was two years ago, before any of this started.

Her family wouldn't recognize her, she knows, and she lets out a humorless huff of laughter at the thought. It's not just the new tattoos, the different makeup, the changes to her hair and her clothes—it's in everything. She carries herself differently, and even though she has more to fear now than she ever did back home, she thinks she's less afraid.

Abel is asleep again, soothed by the sound of her quiet singing, and she could go back to her empty bed and hope that Jax will actually get some sleep tonight, but she's never been a particularly patient woman, and even Charming hasn't changed that. He doesn't sleep enough. Hasn't slept enough since before Donna's funeral, but that day seemed to change something in him. She's still not sure what. She'd be a liar if she said she wasn't worried.

He doesn't turn around when he hears the door opening, and Astoria steps out of the house, wrapped in one of his hoodies and with the baby monitor tucked in her pocket, the silence of the night broken by the gentle static from the speaker. Her legs, bare except for the underwear she slept in, scrape against the cement as she sits, but she barely notices, and when Jax doesn't immediately move away from her, she winds an arm through his, and she plucks the cigarette from between his lips to bring to her own.

"You don't have to talk about it yet," she says quietly, and she slips her hand into his, laces their fingers together. "But if you want to, you can. I'm on your side, love. That's not going to change, whatever it is that's on your mind."

[reliquiicis-a]

continued / @lycorisblooms

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━  The archon chuckled, "Well, this time I'm offering." He said, moving to grab his pants from the floor, sliding them on to cover himself up, not bothering with his boxer briefs. "Just sit still, okay?" He asked, making his way towards the little kitchenette.

He quickly got the coffee started, making his way back to the bedroom to grab his hair tie so he could pull his hair back into a ponytail. Once that was finished, he leaned down to press one soft kiss to Guizhong's lips before making his way back out to the kitchen to get started on making a quick breakfast -- Teyvat Fried Eggs with some Fisherman Toast.

[tonyburgessblog]

A Funeral For An "X" Friend Named Twitter

After the recent news that Elon Musk would move Twitter to a paid platform, I decided to delete my Twitter account today. To tell you the truth I should have done it sooner. It was bittersweet because I have been on X/Twitter for a long time. My thinking is that it will die sooner rather than later. I also don’t want something like that hanging around because I don’t know what will happen to the…