Imagine looking at a character whose entire premise is that in every stage of his life, he's made every version of himself into someone that inspires people to such a degree that EVERY SINGLE VERSION OF HIM has people wanting to literally follow in his footsteps in some way or another.....
And coming to the conclusion that like.....the most important things about him are the sum of all his trappings. His entirely homemade developed from scratch could not exist if not for what he already was and brought with him BEFORE crafting this newest version of himself trappings, with his greatest trait throughout all of it being his adaptability; his ability and willingness to roll with the punches and not try to simply weather any opposition or changes to his life but instead reshape himself as needed to better fit INTO whatever new shape his life and the world around him takes. All while managing to carry the most innate, fundamental and necessary aspects of himself from one version to the next. Thus every single version of himself is different but simultaneously every single version of himself is also undeniably the same person.
The strength of this character, to me, will always be that he can be so many versions of himself, he can become so many things, all without ever actually losing or discarding any of the aspects of himself he considers most essential, the things he's not willing to lose or give up just to keep going. Finding that road not taken by most, usually because most never even think to look for it as an option. But one that he's always able to find because the one trick he's mastered in his tumultuous life is threading that needle of not just digging in his heels in an unproductive way but rather being selective about when and where he makes a stand and decides "this is not a thing I'm willing to compromise about" but here are places and ways I can and will change and evolve and adapt in order to make it possible for me to hold onto these parts and keep them as they are.
And that's why its always so mind-boggling to me that so many writers can't seem to think of anything else to do with Dick Grayson other than invent some new reason for him to just....not be that person, or to like just take the character whose most basic fundamental trait he's NOT about to compromise on is willingly giving up his spot in the driver's seat of his own life.....and make him just a passenger in his own life and stories.
Dick Grayson at age nine....at age nineteen...at age twenty nine....the one core thread running through all versions of him is the only way he's standing back and letting you call the shots for him or putting him on the sidelines in some way is over his dead body.
HOW he goes about that, what that looks like, who he becomes and what aspects of himself he plays up at some times and what traits he lets fall by the wayside at other times when they offer less in service to his primary goal here....that changes constantly. He changes constantly.
But those changes are almost always (or at least they used to be/should be IN MY OPINION) made with the intention of keeping certain things about him or his life as consistent as possible.
That's the duality of Dick Grayson that I'm here for. The inherent contradiction of him that COULD allow for endless conflict and breaking new narrative ground in all sorts of ways if mined properly:
His eternal willingness to compromise....but only ever in pursuit of doubling down on the ways he's not willing to compromise.
Forever walking that tightrope in ways that only a kid born and raised in a circus could ever hope to.
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I feel like Joongi is THE weird guy of the Ichigang. He may look like the most normal, but he is absolutely NOT:
He goes to Hawaii and spends two days wearing thick ass black clothes and a raincoat before someone tells him to go change, but still hates convertibles cause "they get hot when you're at a stoplight". He gets insecure over pimples. He knows he is hot shit and is obsessed with his physique to the point that he sees a chicken and immediately goes 'chicken breasts'. His boss puts him on souvenir duty whenever he travels anywhere. He wants to buy Macadamia nuts for everyone in the Geomijul. He once swam up a whole river upstream. He loves animals. He almost fell for a parrot scam but forgot his wallet so he just smiled and left. He gets super passionate about video games and comics. He once climbed up a whole mountain to get mushrooms for cooking. His hair is silver ash, not white. He thinks building sandcastles is an art and has mastered it. He had an existential crisis cause he forgot to return a DVD before leaving Japan. He can do perfect math. It took him four years to start singing karaoke around his friends. He warns others that the food is hot yet he eats it himself and gets shocked that it is, indeed, hot. He suggested taking out the shampoo and washing his hair in the middle of a gale. He then remembered all the hair care he needs to do and decided against it. He talks to himself at Revolve and goes "People around here are so muscular... You're great Joongi Han! Don't you worry about that!", "I saw some Macadamia nut chocolates on the way here. Man, they looked good. Maybe I should've bought them... No, surely I will find something better. But they looked so tasty...". He once suggested going full power on a static bike to generate electricity.
TLDR: Joongi is my little weirdo and I love him so much.
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(Seeing @i-never-forgot’s tags on this post and now I’m posting this thing much earlier than planned because it’s too funny to me alldhdldhdlehedljsshsjsshsk—)
I was joking with @the-real-obby about an audio clip that always makes me imagine how the Dark Crater fight would have gone if Twig was 2% more concussed than she is in canon, and then i got this gem of a quote that inspired the following doodle:
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Complaining abt Suicide Squad yet again but the fact that they have Waller exposing the alien community to space racist attacks and talking abt how she got to her position through deceit and being a terrible person and stuff is just. Ahsfiwueh JUST SAY YOU DONT KNOW WALLER.
Anyways literally the 3rd mission of the Squad ever (and the first framed as smth Waller picked and not orders from above) was the Squad discrediting and stopping a rogue vigilante who was only arresting POC and funneling white people into white supremacy groups (of which he was the most prominent member) in SUICIDE SQUAD #4. and it's explicitly framed as this mission being personal for Waller that she's hiding from the government bc its illegal like. Guys. Please why are we having her incite (space bc comics) racist attacks now
Also the whole "Amanda got her position through deceit and being a terrible person" NO. she KEPT her position through being shitty and playing complicated political games!!! She wasn't always that way like there is a difference and it is IMPORTANT ppl PLEASEEEE. In Secret Origins #14 we learn Amanda's backstory and she used to be a normal, caring person! Like even after she entered into working in government and politics she wasn't automatically morally bankrupt like please people. She was originally given control of the Squad by Reagan (*sigh* 80s comics...) to distract and get rid of her because she was so successful at pushing progressive social policy in Congress. Acting like she's this static pillar of evil is such a waste of her character and so fucking uninteresting and disrespectful to her arc it drives me MAD.
Like I am NOT saying Waller is all sunshine and rainbows, she fucking SUCKS (said w love <3) but like there's a human being there. It's a progression, she has a character arc like please, DC, please!!! They've fucked up Waller so bad and made her so opaque and uninteresting she can't even be the protagonist of her own story for fucks sake!
Like I don't know how many times I have to scream it until DC hears me or remembers but WALLER IS THE MAIN CHARACTER OF SUICIDE SQUAD. ITS HER BOOK. yet right now she's a cutout to be used as the villain wherever the writers please. Even in her book we get none of her perspective really displayed, no exploration of her thoughts with any kind of understanding of the role she traditionally has played and was made to play in the story.
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Because I like to cause Mihawk emotional strife. I think it’d be fun if he had like a relative or a master, I don’t know just someone older and wiser who was a trusted adult to him, but who abandoned him and he convinces himself that they must have died right? because they wouldn’t just leave him, right?
But it turns out that’s exactly what they did and he knows this because they show back up in his life when he’s a grown man and the greatest swordsman in the world, and expect to just fit seamlessly back into his life. With the only reason given being that they knew it would make him stronger and it must have worked because look how strong he is! He’s Literally the greatest!
And Mihawk is taking 10/10 emotional damage. So much damage that he’s actually emoting and conveying facial expressions outside of smirks and displeased frowns. He is geniunly devastated that his mentor hadn’t just died like any respectable mentor should and is now expecting him to have feelings about it. 😒
He spends the first couple of days deluding himself and treating the mentor like a ghost come to haunt him for his sins. But Mihawk doesn’t do regret so that falls away pretty quickly. Not before he tries to have them exorcised though.
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Back to the Spiderman au I have where Peter has radioactive venom and accidentally bites Miles when the kid is trying to help him, and because he’s so full of guilt at accidentally doing this to the kid (especially in one of those universes where people absolutely hate the x-men and stuff, being mutated might ruin that person’s life), he takes him under his wing to teach him everything about his new powers and before he knows it, Miles is working alongside him as a new hero
For that au, I’m now thinking about that version of Peter trying to rescue Gwen, and in the end the only thing that can help her is for her to be turned, so he shares his venom, and to Peter it’s this incredibly horrible event where he’s dragged another person into this life of being mutated, but Miles, who is next to him and has never once been unhappy about gaining powers, is like “welcome to the web warriors!!! you’re one of us now!!! :D”
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