#guys help i've put more effort into this analysis of a fictional character than i did for my senior thesis in university

[soleminisanction]

Hey ive been reading through your blog for the past hour and have been loving alot of your analysis. I like how well written they are.

I also want to say that I love Stephanie Brown, shes one of my favorite DC characters but i respect the hell out of you for voicing your frustrations and hatred with her character and the writing around her. You just explain yourself so well. And I completely understand why you dislike her.

But I just wanted write a little hello and let you know ill be sticking around for more of your analysis. You go on a keep writing great stuff!

Thank you! That's very kind of you to say. I hope the experience will not be frustrating for you, as I know I can get a little heated when I'm annoyed about this stuff.

Honestly, the most frustrating thing of all is that I don't like hating Steph. I don't want to dislike her, it would be so much easier if I could at least get to the point where I found her tolerable. And it's not like I came into the comics expecting to dislike her either.

Personal tangent here, but I grew up in the kind of conservative southern town that not only didn't have a comic book shop, the only bookstore available was actually just one-third of the local Hasting's Entertainment, and even that selection was dedicated 25% to Bibles, Christian self-help, and those creepy Amish romance novels. (And let's not even get into the - ahem - "ghetto fiction" shelves.)

So my only access to comics was through the occasional trade paperback at the library and one of my teachers, who let us read his personal collection of Wizard magazines as part of supervising our comics & anime appreciation club. And I've got a vivid memory of reading an article about "the new Girl Wonder!" who was about to make her debut and getting really excited, because at that point I'd read and re-read the first YJ trade paperback a half-dozen times and couldn't decide if I wanted to be Wonder Girl and kiss Robin or vise-versa.

And y'know, I was AFAB and a white middle-class teenager and thought I was a girl, I loved purple and superheroes, most especially Robin, and I went through that phase of thinking that made me different and better than girls who cared about fashion and make-up and real boys. I was primed to be in the Steph audience, I feel like I was precisely what the creators were probably imagining when they thought of her target audience.

And that's honestly part of the reason the writing around her makes me so angry, especially her Batgirl run. It's insulting that Brian Miller and Dan Didio and whoever else was responsible for that book and everything that's come of her since all seem to think that all that audience wants from their comics is to project themselves onto a sexy mean girl who puts in the bare minimum effort, never thinks of anyone but herself, never takes responsibility for her mistakes, and gets rewarded for it all with nothing but adoration, praise, and the love of a nice guy who's never allowed to leave her no matter how badly she treats him.

I want Steph to have an actual story that challenges her and explores her actual character so badly I could scream, and if no one's interested in telling those stories, I wish they'd put her away until they found someone who was. But until I can get my own foot in the door in the industry, all I can really do is scream into the void. If other people get something out of that, all the better.

[pointnumbersixteen]

A Head Cannon Biography and Character Analysis and of the Captain, Part 5: Everything the Captain Does Wrong in the First Flashback of Reddy Weddy in Sixteen Points

Which finally gets us back to the flashback scenes in Reddy Weddy.

Is this about to be over 2,000 words shredding the command performance of my favorite character? Yes, it is, but I do it with all the love in the world.

I’ll start with the first scene, which starts out as a morning brief. It shows just how awful he is at the whole ‘leader of men’ thing. What did he do wrong? This is going to go on for a while. The TLDR version is: literally everything. There is not a single word or action of his in that scene that went right. And it had to be intentional, as Ben Willbond is an admitted military buff, he has to know what proper military bearing is supposed to look like, and he wrote the episode.

I should preface this with saying that I absolutely adore the Captain in this scene, with his silly, over-excitable and ridiculously awkward self. But the first time I saw it, the part of me that spent four years in the US army was screaming inside about how terrible his performance was as a CO. Just picture yourself as one of those respectable and sensible young military personnel sitting in the seats listening to him with the thought, ‘if the Germans come this is the guy that’s going to be responsible for me in battle,’ and try not to cringe just a little.

First, starting with a bit of background: morning briefs are torture. They are the most boring things in the world. Everyone hates them. They’re one of those situations when you can just feel yourself slowly dying. Good commanders know that and try to keep them as short as possible. Bad commanders who don’t mind that their troops are silently hating them the whole time go on a bit longer, but even then, I don’t think I ever sat through one that made it through more than five or six points. The Captain’s very first line in the episode states that he is on POINT NUMBER SIXTEEN (the absurdity of which gave me the handle for this side-blog). His subordinates are blank faced. They’ve probably been tuning this tedious BS out since point number four.  

Second, point number sixteen is, to paraphrase, “Why am I still hearing laughter after hours? We are at war. Fun is banned.” In a stern lecture tone. No, Captain, pet, just because the army probably sucked all the joy out of your life, doesn’t mean that no one is allowed to be happy in the military, even during wartime. My dear, actually you should be encouraging them to decompress however they can, as long as it isn’t inappropriate or interfering with their duties, because war is stressful, even if you’re not on the front lines. The military in general is stressful, even when you’re not at war. Joking and horseplay- as long as it isn’t the sort of thing that isn’t going to get anyone injured- is good for morale. And modern militaries have morale officers for a reason. At this point, the man in the middle of the front row breaks his blank face momentarily to give the woman next to him a ‘can you believe this crap?’ look.  

Third, the Captain goes on and backs this up by essentially saying (again paraphrased), “I understand you all are bored, I’m bored, too, this shit is boring, but this is where the army stuck us so we have to deal.” Which again is the wrong answer. That is precisely how NOT to motivate people to do their best. This is a situation where the officer should try to generate enthusiasm amongst his subordinates for their roles. Even if he wanted to provide a similar sentiment, the word ‘bored’ never should have entered the equation. Everyone is bored most of the time in the military, but it’s not something the higher ranks acknowledge, because acknowledging it helps nothing. His statement should have been something more like, “I understand that some of you are frustrated that you’re not serving in combat, but what we’re doing here in support of the war effort is important, and it will take all of us doing our parts, both out there on the front, and back here in England, to win this thing.”

Next, when Havers comes in with the message for him, he speculates out loud about it being an answer to his pistol requisition. He shouldn’t have done this, and gets two wrong points for it.

The fourth is because while I find his excitement about that pistol endearing, like a little boy hoping for just the right present from Santa at Christmas (and still pining for it 75 years after his death, as noted in the ‘going to the shops’ game with Fannie in s2e4), it probably comes off as foolish or childish to his subordinates. The gun he really wants to have probably should not be the first thing that comes to his mind when communicating with command. There’s a war on. There have to be at least one or two things that are more important.

The fifth is because you’re not supposed to reveal any of your command requests to your subordinates until you know how they’re going to turn out, and then only the ones that are approved, because if you reveal you’ve requested something and it isn’t granted, particularly something as simple as being issued a side arm, it starts to look like higher command doesn’t favor you or have confidence in you. Which in his case is probably true. But that’s not something he should reveal to his troops by way of letting them know he requested a fancy new side arm and then never received one. He might as well have put a sign on his back that said, “Command trusts me so little they won’t even give me a gun.”

Sixth, when he reads the actual message, he just blurts out something to the order of, “good god, France has surrendered.” Which is not how the other people in the room should have received that information. There should have been some sort of measured, more dignified, official sounding announcement. “It’s my duty to inform you all that unfortunately France surrendered to the Germans yesterday,” or something of the sort at the bare minimum. But no, he just blurts it out. Well, Havers asks him what’s wrong after the “good god” part, but he still shouldn’t have blurted it out.

Seventh, and after blurting it out, he doesn’t add anything to it. France surrendering was a disaster for the British during WWII. It meant Germany was coming for them next. This would have been the time to reassure his men- and women- that although things might look grim, he was confident that high command had a plan and would have everything under control and that there was no way Germany would make it across the channel and that even if they did, the army would be ready. But no, he says nothing of the sort.

Eighth, in fact, he says nothing else to the people who had been present for his briefing at all. After Havers enters the room, he has neither eyes nor words for anyone else. Which is not professional at all.

Ninth, the way he looks at Havers throughout this scene, his face lights up, his voice cheers, his whole demeanor changes. He might have well had a neon sign glowing above his head that screamed ‘I’M GAY FOR THIS MAN!!!’ It would have been the only thing that could possibly be more obvious. When, again, being gay wasn’t okay at all in 1940’s England, and particularly not in the army. I love how incredibly unsubtle he is about his attractions while he clearly thinks he’s being subtle, but that’s not the way it would have been viewed by the people in the room.  

Tenth, in his excitement, the Captain just drops the message on the floor. Drops. It. On. The. Floor. He doesn’t even bother to pick it up. Even Havers gives him a funny look for this one. I say again, I find over-excited Cap adorable. His subordinates probably find this ridiculous, though. And if this were a man who was in charge of me and he’d just been giving me a tedious lecture about not laughing at night as part of a sixteen point morning brief, I’d find him ridiculous, too. At best.

Eleventh, then he immediately scrambles to the window and looks around wildly like he expects the Germans might be marching up Button House’s driveway as they speak. Which is plain silly, as Havers has to point to him. It’s obvious to anyone with sense that even if the Germans are going to invade, it will take them a while to organize an invasion, and Button House is unlikely to be one of the early strategic targets. But the Captain seems to forget this momentarily in his excitement and ends up looking silly in front of his subordinates. I’m pretty sure a few of them are laughing at him in the back.

Twelve, the fact that the Captain is clearly ridiculously excited about this development at all is another point against him, because he shouldn’t be. Of course, he’s excited about the renewed prospect of getting a chance to actually fight (see the previous part of this analysis for why he desperately wants such a thing) but that excitement is not good look. He’s thinking about what it means to him personally, rather than what it means to the military and the country as a whole. Again, the fall of France was a disaster for Britain. It means they’ve lost all of the battles they’ve fought to try to hold back the Germans in France. It means they’ve already lost thousands of men attempting to hold back the Germans in France and for nothing. It means they’ve lost their main ally, the ally the spent years successfully holding back Germany with in France in WWI and therefore implies that this war is going to be even worse than WWI, which was already unprecedentedly catastrophic. It means they’re alone against Germany and there’s a good chance that Germany will be invading soon. So, when they get this news and the Captain’s reaction is over-excitement, that does not look good for him. Nothing in this brief looks good for him, of course, but he just keeps digging the hole deeper.

Thirteen, his officer’s bearing (which as I mentioned in an earlier post as one of the indicators before Reddy Weddy of him probably not being a very good officer, as he maintains it well in emotionally neutral situations, but once emotions enter the picture it collapses) starts out fine when he’s actually giving the brief and then goes downhill once Havers enters the room and by the time he’s at the window, his body language is just… what are you even doing? He’s practically bouncing. Also, Cap, why are you randomly shouting? And what are you doing with your hands? (I wonder if he started carrying his pointy-stick everywhere because he couldn’t figure out otherwise what to do with his hands.) Of course, all of this is because he’s a magnificent over-excitable creature, but still… not a good look as a CO.

Fourteen, when they show the rest of the personnel in the room during this part of the scene, you can see clearly on the faces of the two men in from to the left of Havers (at ‘I don’t think they’ll be here just yet, sir’) that they think the Captain’s behavior is a joke… they fix their faces back to blank very quickly, but it’s there. I imagine what most of the men under his command felt for him was either ridicule or contempt, sadly. I feel sad for him, because I want my poor gay son to be loved and respected. But he isn’t in this situation and he doesn’t seem to either notice or care about this.  

Fifteen, Havers has to remind the Captain that protocol states they’re supposed to lock down the estate at this point, as the British actually were expecting the Germans to invade after France fell. He shouldn’t have had to have been prompted, particularly not in front of their subordinates.

Sixteen, Havers also has to pretend that the Captain ordered everyone else in the room to go carry out the lockdown, when he didn’t, just shouted vaguely about it being a good idea. Havers then sends them on their way, as it’s clear that in his own excitement, the Captain seems to have forgotten that he’s the one in charge and supposed to be leading and commanding. But I suppose it’s good that Havers took the initiative to get everyone else out of the room as quickly as possible, as this has been literally only like a minute of time, and I’d hate to see how much Cap could embarrass himself in two minutes.

 And there it is. I made this sixteen points long as an illustration of just how ridiculously long sixteen points actually is.  

 I won’t cover the part where the Captain and Havers were alone at the end of this scene, yet, as I’ll include it with the next written bit, which is going to be my analysis of their relationship. That might be a minute, because we’ve reach the end of the parts I actually had significantly written out. I’ve only outlined the Havers relationship section.

[wasflypaw]

Cant help but notice every single time I've gotten into an argument on here it's from people twisting my words

Like the c!Jack thing?? I still have c!Jack fans who've blocked me from that and I still think about it like every day. This was Before the specific deaths were Confirmed Canon and I was like "it doesnt make sense for c!Tommy to have murdered someone canonically and these canon deaths dont function like other canon deaths do" n people were like "TOMMY STAN??? TOMMY STAN INVALIDATES JACKS ENTIRE ARC???" I am a c!Jack enthusiast who has been watching him since August 3rd 2020 specifically I have made essays going into detail the trauma he's gotten and how that has affected him as a person

The c!Philza thing... when I literally just said Philza sounded more disappointed than mad (not that he's Not mad) and people who are weirdly normalized to responding with hostility in arguments prioritizing defending a fictional character over being nice to the person ur talking to were like "SO UR SAYING HE'S A BAD DAD HUH UR SAYING HE'S PLAYING INTO THE DISAPPOINTED DAD STEREOTYPE" And it's just like huh. What. No 😭 I never even believed c!Philza was c!Tommy's dad

And this??? Me saying it doesnt feel like I'm watching a character that's been tortured for like 3 months because of things like the sudden tonal dissonance and answering one ask that pretty much said "its okay to criticise the acting as Dream himself has not been through that" ("that" being months worth of torture in a prison cell) and ppl come into my askbox like. "YOU INVALIDATE C!DREAM'S TRAUMA? YOU ACCUSE CC!DREAM OF NOT ACTUALLY BEING IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP?" and it's like WHEN the hell did I mention Dream's personal life

God and I just Knooooow the c!Techno apologist side of the fandom thinks of me as "that one guy that was very c!Techno critical" back from when I was admittedly a lot more biased and didnt put as much effort into my analysis. Not only do I not even Dislike c!Techno anymore I barely talk about him

Cant help but think if my fav character wasnt c!Tommy people wouldnt react like this - the same way they react when c!Tommy interacts with their faves. I'm reduced down to "that one c!Tommy apologist" and therefore all my arguments are "c!Tommy stan invalidating c!Jack's character :/" "c!Tommy stan calling c!Philza a bad dad ugh" "c!Tommy stan hating on c!Dream because he hurt their fav" and their shitty "I bet you only watch Tommy's POV" and it's like. Christ some people act like c!Tommy (..and Tommy himself) ruins everything he touches. Anyway if ur wondering why I've been talking about c!Tommy a Lot Less and talking more about other characters I'm an enthusiast for instead its cause I Hate being known as "that one c!Tommy apologist" bc people repeatedly use that as an excuse to ignore every argument I make

I cant help but think...... my reputation from around January-March has permanently ruined how people see my blog and I just. Kinda wanna start over :/