#he just feels like a character who would have some devine type tears

[thesaart]

Reality in dream

[zitkaplushie]

nightwing secret files liveblog:

this is gonna be a long one so it’s under a cut!

taking wing-

is that jason??

i like this 'a christmas carol' type exposition i'm ngl

i'm not sure if 'jason''s dismissal of the circus is dixon using an unreliable narrator, or if dixon actually believes that

god i hate this art so much

how dare u insult the teen titans in any way 😤 i like the name

also titans cameo!!

more awful jason characterisation (pls dixon just stay 8732894738 feet away from jason)

"without robin i have no family" i guess the titans are just chopped liver huh

"i always thought that one day i'd be batman" nope nope nope nope you have 0 understanding of dick's character if that's what you think mr dixon

i love clark having a part in dick becoming nightwing - i adore it - but the way dixon retcons the importance of the titans, and especially kory, in dick becoming nightwing rubs me the complete wrong way. i'm choosing to read this as a between the scenes moment, but i 100% dixon intended this to replace the titans' importance. and the way ppl just swallow it up w/o thinking about the reasons behind why dixon would want to erase the titans - and kory - pisses me off lmao

"i didn't mean to stay so long [with the titans]" *eternal screaming* he really wants to undermine the titans at every possible turn wow

at least the next page acknowledges the importance of kory in dick's life, but right afterwards we have "lmao she must've liked your costume. all the girls did. you're a chick magnet" (paraphrased) and i'm just back to sighing

also hi i'm mad at the framing of babs being the endgame bc of course they'd do that. and also at kory being shorter than dick. thanks! i hate it! i'm willing to bet that dixon asked for that specifically.

"this is where i came in" i'm confused at this part but tbh i don't care enough to think abt it any more

i'm also ughhhh at the way they're trying to give bludhaven importance. i don't care, i don't like it, he should've never moved there

ok i do really like that last page

the fact files things are good enough, i love the art for the haly's circus one! the pt barnum ref is 😬 though (ik ik it's the 90s but fjskdh why)

lost pages: teen titans-

ok so, i don't like devin grayson. i don't like her writing at all, i don't think she gets the characters at all, and hot take: if you dislike a character who's super important part of dick's life, and helped him come into his own and be who he is, you shouldn't be writing that character. (i'm talking about kory here, but tbh if you dislike any of the characters who dick interacts with frequently and are a huge part of his life - especially his love interests, and his family - you shouldn't be writing dick.) so i'm not going into this story with high hopes. however i've seen ppl talk about this story as being really good so i hope i'll like it too

you can tell she mostly cares about the fab five, which wouldn't be a problem if she treated the ntt characters better but alas ://

kory and vic both say 1 thing the entire page lmao

ALSO KORY NOT KNOWING WHAT DAY IT IS IS ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT I CANNOT BELIEVE

i loooove the parallel between dick grasping wally's hand and young!dick holding his dad's hand 🥺🥺🥺🥺

vic legit says one thing the entire story lmaoooooooo 🙃🙃🙃

i love garth and roy being brought to the tower 🥺

this is def some of grayson's better work, but it suffers from the same thing all of her stories do. she doesn't fully understand all the characters. if one character is off it affects the whole story. a lot of her stories have good ideas and poor execution, and this one definitely doesn't have awful execution but there's still something missing and as someone who loves the titans it's just sad. i get why people like this story - it made me tear up at the end ngl - but the rest of the titans are just as important as dick and it feels like the writer doesn't understand that. (i get this is a dick comic but it's still a titans story.) (it does however make me want to write a fic expanding upon this moment and the aftermath bc the idea of the titans all coming together to cheer dick up is so goooooood. are they gonna have a party celebrating dick's parent's lives? are they gonna eat junk food and watch a comfort movie? are they gonna just sit and talk?? the possibilities are endless!!)

the art is gorgeous as all of jimenez' art is, i love his style so freaking much!!

the next page is of the bludhaven supporting cast and all it does is remind me how much i do not care abt them. i think the only one i actually like is clancy, the others are expendable and forgettable. (i do love clancy a lot though, i wish she'd been written by more people than just dixon). though, i usually love guice's art, i think i actually prefer mcdaniel's take on clancy??? which is 100% a first for me.

i like seeing the set up to dick's apartment, bc i'm a sucker for layouts and maps. i wish this comic was way better written bc the concept of dick living in an apartment building and interacting with his neighbours is one i really like, esp in superhero comics. but again i have to say, alas.

a day in the life of nite-wing/hangin'-with tad:

painful... just painful...

i physically couldn't care less about this if you paid me

the next page is tad's file and i am Not Reading That. nope nope nope. and also fuck you.

next is a map of bludhaven, and like i said, i'm a sucker for maps.

the page after that is brutale's file and again i just do not care. the art is by damion scott who i really like, but the design looks like knock off scarecrow so

the next pages are files for double dare, lady vidc, shrike and blockbuster and i'm skipping them all bc i give negative fucks

next is a spread of what i assume is dick's cork-board? it looks kinda interesting but the writing is hard to make out and i don't care enough to try to decipher it

next is torque's files and same same, idc idc

nightwing's romances/orange you glad i didn't say banana?:

ok so y'all know i hate dickbabs. i hate everything about how it was built on the foundation of tearing down kory and dickkory and i'm a kory fan first and foremost so i hate this whole situation. so i'm already predisposed to disliking anything that talks about how babs is dick's true love, and talks down any of his other love interests. i come into this with an admitted bias. i'd try to be charitable but i don't see why i should when no one involved in the writing of dickbabs is charitable towards my faves so 🤷

i love love love stelfreeze's art! he's drawn babs in something else i read and i loved it then and i love it here!

i adore dick and babs' friendship, so the beginning is really sweet and cute. i also love the concept of baby!dickie being obsessed with watermelons and wanting to eat them forever

dewey decimal system!!! librarian babs reference!! fdjkh she's such a nerd i love it

babs trying to talk about romance and dick's like 'lol nah what abt fighting' lmao

i Do Not like babs hitting dick while talking abt 'i was segueing into talking about romance, hint hint'

this is romance? dick giving exactly 0 fucks?

why are these writers obsessed with hinting at dick and donna??? like first dixon and now grayson??? please stop!!!! i do love how he says he loves her bc 🥺🥺🥺 i love them

ur not being slick having babs call donna 'donna' and kory 'starfire', i see you grayson. i see ur hate for kory.

and reducing kory to just her body, and dick's sexual attraction to her boils my blood

i'm choosing to interpret babs's face in that panel as her being attracted to kory too

i do like that dick talks about being in love with kory, and thinking about still being with her. a) i'll take those crumbs, and b) thats how i see dick's relationship to love as being (though devin views him as kinda flighty and unfaithful so idk how we're agreeing on this lmao)

pls stop talking shit abt huntress devin, ur the one who made dick/hel a thing

since devin loves her brudick subtext, i'm side-eyeing the mention of bruce there

also why are we hinting at cass pls stop

babs being jealous and petty pls stop

the ending was smooth i have to admit it. if it was any other ship i'd probs love it but as it is, i'm tired of everyone else being downplayed in favour of the ~babs is dick's true loooooveee, it's always been herrrrr, from the beginningggggg~

i don't mind babs being dick's first crush though, in fact that's my hc for him because hello?? who wouldn't have a crush on babs??

thank you mr stelfreeze for accurately portraying babs' bitchface bc she's being a petty bitch here (and i love her but lmaooo i hate this whole thing)

next is the files on the bludhaven pd and i do not caaaare

then there's a timeline, but i don't care about any timeline that dixon writes. i'm petty though so i'm gonna read it and talk abt why i don't like the retcons.

i hate the dickbabs reference in YEAR FUCKING 3 jfc. pls stop with the retcons.

also lmao the difference between the way dick's canon relationship from that time is described in the shittiest way possible (though reluctant at first, dick begins a long and tumultuous romance with teammate starfire.) and how he wrote dick and babs' relationship (robin first teams with ... barbara in her guise as batgirl. the two will pair time and again over the course of their careers and develop a burgeoning affection for one another) this was at a time when they weren't even remotely interested in each other!!! there was no affections there dixon! no matter how much you wish it to be true!! and again the contrast with 'starfire' and 'barbara'! like it's dehumanising and i hate it.

and he can't even bother to get the new teen titans' team name right.

no mention of kory's importance in dick becoming nightwing, nope we ignore that bc it's thanks to superman now.

stepping away from the way he hates kory to talk about the way he hates jason! jason's described as a 'troubled orphan' and a 'juvenile delinquent'.

no mentions of how jason and dick bonded but as soon as tim gets introduced he talks about how dick and tim 'switfly bond as brothers'.

another incredibly impersonal description of dick and kory's relationship (the wedding of dick grayson and kory anders (aka starfire) is aborted by the rogue titan raven. dick and kory soon part company and dissolve their relationship.) but at least he calls her kory this time.

also i love how he speeds up through all the 'non important' development for dick but spends a whole page talking about all the bullshit he's been writing for nightwing. i understand why, but it's just lmaooooo 🙃 when you read it like that, it really shows how shitty this comic is.

talks of the 'doomed relationship' between dick and hel and i really hate it pls stop

the last page is dick's evaluation by the police academy and i do not care so i'm skipping it too.

[acahill2-blog]

Asher’s Creative Process

Asher’s creative process is somewhat inconsistent throughout the novel. Sometimes Asher is aware of what he is creating, sometimes he isn’t. Sometimes he has a planned idea of what he’s making, sometimes that idea comes to life after he starts. Sometimes he makes several drafts, sometimes his work is one-and-done. One consistency is that when Asher is painting or drawing, he is completely consumed. Just thinking about drawing or painting leaves him unable to even hear people around him. There is no multitasking for Asher Lev. After drawing the Rebbe in his Chumash, Asher had a serious meeting in the mashpia’s office. During this meeting, Asher was completely unable to stay with the conversation, and unable to fake it.

The mashpia was saying something about Vienna but I would not listen. The darkness was gone from the street and I could see the trees beneath the lashing rain. The rain moved in waterfalls across the asphalt. The curbs were flooded with rushing streams of water. Oh, if I could paint this, I thought. Ribbono Shel Olom, if I could paint this world, this clean world of rain and patterns of glass, and trees on my street, and people beneath the trees. I would even paint and draw pain and suffering if I could paint and draw the other, too. I would paint the rain as tears and I would paint the rain as waters of purification (pp. 134 - 135).

I think this type of absolute focus is really interesting in the context of creativity. Today we have a million things crossing our minds at once - how much more productive would we be and how much higher would the quality of our ideas be if we really eliminate distractions? Our innovation groups have so far been meeting for just 20 minutes per week. With such a small window, we need to absolutely maximize our focus, and we certainly aren’t. I’ve seen members, myself included, take a quick glance at their email, read a text message or periodically zone out thinking about lunch, other classes or whatever else. It used to be that multitasking was a skill, but now it seems more of a challenge to stop multitasking. While Asher employs this laser focus involuntarily, we can still learn something from his process of intense undisturbed thinking and try to be more aware of the distractions we allow to hinder our productivity and creative thinking.

Interlude: Flow

I think Asher’s ability to completely block out distractions when thinking about and carrying out a project is an example something we haven’t yet talked about in class but something I am really interesting in: flow. Flow is characterized by hyperfocus and an increase in positive energy. I was a strong basketball player in high school and played for two years on Wellesley’s varsity squad. There are times that I remember being shocked  after games when my dad told me that someone had yelled something or screamed in a silent gym during my foul shot because I never heard it. Similarly, we had announcers at our games that narrated into the gym speakers who had scored, fouled, etc. Despite scoring 800 points in high school, I could never tell you after a game if there had been an announcer there or not. Apart from this hyperfocus, I would describe my experience of flow as feeling like I was in an alternate universe or dream where I had complete control over the situation, where my reaction time was faster than everyone else’s and I had no knowledge of a world beyond the court, almost like a video game. Interestingly, I only ever felt flow in games, never in practice or doing drills on my own, so I think there may be an intensity factor at play. These days, I’ve been trying to reach this feeling of flow in my running, but haven’t been able to yet. I wonder if running is not a dynamic enough activity to exercise creativity, if there aren’t enough moving parts or junctures to make decisions. I also wonder if to achieve flow you need to have extensive experience performing the activity. I had been playing for over eight years before I began to feel flow in basketball games. Similarly, Asher had been drawing for many years when he began to experience this all-consuming creative process.

It impressed me throughout this novel how Asher seemed to paint entire canvases in one go. Of course, Asher is telling this story by looking back in time and recalling his experiences, so it’s possible that more drafts happened that were not included in his recounting of events. Nevertheless, when the different drafts of a piece were described, it stuck out. One of Asher’s first truly creative works, the portrait of Rivkeh that used cigarette ashes for shading, was the product of several successive failed drafts. Other times, Asher’s drafting process wasn’t so linear. In these cases, the idea of an incubation period where ideas are given time not just to be tweaked but to transform and generate entirely new ideas, comes to mind. Shortly before his painting of Brooklyn Crucifixion I, which was really just a draft of Brooklyn Crucifixion II, Asher began to build and experiment with some of the themes that these eventual masterpieces would stand on.

… I drew the Pietà from memory, and discovered that the woman supporting the twisted arm of the crucified Jesus bore a faint resemblance to my mother. I stared at the drawing in horror, and destroyed it (pp. 314).

It’s difficult not to make the connection here to one of Asher’s main inspirations, Picasso, who described his masterpieces as a “sum of destructions”. This word, “destructions”, always sticks out to me in how violent it makes the drafting process sound. Why were Asher and Picasso so angered by a miscalculated attempt? Jacob Kahn would say it is because both artists drew on their true emotions. As Asher closed in on his ability to convey the anguish of his mother, he also became more sensitive about his work. Leading up to his final show, Asher, for what seemed like the first time, became anxious about other people’s perceptions of him and his work, especially his family. According to Kahn, this was the price he would have to pay to be a great artist, to escape the easier route of becoming a mere “whore” to the art world.

Interlude: Asher’s use of the Muse

Historically, many creatives have been known to have a muse or person who is the source of their creative inspiration. I think Asher had at least two muses, his mother being one. Since he was a little boy, Asher always drew his mother. As he grew older and his relationship with Aryeh became more and more strained, Asher grew closer to Rivkeh. In his teenage years, he developed a special sensitivity to Rivkeh’s pain. By the end of the book, Asher seemed to feel her longing and anguish deeply within himself. While there are a lot of places one could take this in terms of the novel’s literary themes, in the context of creativity, it suggests something of the importance of emotion in creative work. Big C creativity, it seems, must be a product of passion.

Asher’s other muse, in a different sense, was his mythic ancestor. He often saw and portrayed this ancestor, his father’s great great grandfather, as a towering, demonic character. In my eyes, this character, too, represented several of Potok’s literary themes, one being the dichotomy and clash of good vs. evil. Asher’s gift was often said to be a gift from the Other Side, and his pursuit of art a continuous dance with the devil. On his first meeting with Jacob Kahn, Kahn told him, “There is something demonic about such a gift, Asher Lev. Demonic or devine, I do not know which” (pp. 263). This dichotomy often reminds me of the Spider Man quote, “With great power comes great responsibility”. People with power or a gift or fame have influence over others, and this influence must be executed with caution. Some of the world’s most evil people are also the most intelligent, like the Unabomber, for example. A similar “dark side” exists in the creativity field. Malevolent creatives use their gifts in a way that is intentionally harmful. By the end of the book, Asher was certainly a malevolent creative in the eyes of his Brooklyn community. To them, there was no other explanation for his actions than his intention to hurt his community, which led to his being asked to leave. This brings up a problematic question of who gets to determines what malevolent creativity and benevolent creativity is. Throughout history, our ideas of what is good and bad have evolved drastically and different values, temporal contexts and cultures largely determine these characterizations. Like other instances where we make value judgments, the judgment of malevolent creativity must be taken with a grain of salt.