seeing some people begin to fully describe early mcd season 1 garroth as an asshole, and it's making me so,, emo,
not to say he's some ray of sunshine but i don't think he was an asshole considering the circumstances he was in??
you could argue the asshole-ness comes from garroth giving aphmau a lot of tasks with the village and entrusting her with a lot of stuff, but that interpretation directly ignores that aphmau walked into this village and saw their situation and went "i'm going to fix you and MAYBE take you over"
this is a pre- donna/logan wedding post btw but idk HOP OFF MY GOAT
and the matilda thing uhh i dunno cheaters never prosper and garroth you probably WERE the other woman fix urself before u wreck urself
Random goon: Hey boss, were you the one to pick that name as an alias? And why this one?
Red Hood : I used to have another name, before... A long time ago. But that person is dead now. I get to choose for myself now, they can't take that from me. I won't let them.
Goon: Huh.
***
Random Goon: Say boss, why do you never take off your shirt in front of us?
Red Hood: Well uh, I actually have that really fucked scar on my chest and I'm not comfortable with...
Random Goon: Don't worry boss, we get it, you don't have to explain yourself to us.
***
Red Hood, high on some toxin: God, I wish my family...
Random Goon (on boss-sitting duty): why not try reaching out to them?
Red Hood: They would never accept me as I am now... They wouldn't agree with my so-called "life choices". Besides, they don't miss me, they miss the person they think I used to be... I wasn't even a man when I last saw them.
Random Goon: Damn boss, that sucks.
***
And then the goons throw the Red Hood a party on trans visibility day and Jason is so confused he straight up cries.
Batman gives each of his Robins a different code to use when they’re in trouble and need immediate extraction. He promises that when they call, he’ll drop everything just to get to them, come hell or high water.
Jason, during his time with the League, shares his code with Damian, to be used “only in the direst of circumstances, when you have exhausted all other options.” He doesn’t know if Bruce will answer, given how fractured their relationship was before he died, but it is better than nothing. Every tool counts when they live such dangerous lives.
Damian uses it exactly once, and Bruce, who still feels the loss of his son like a yawning chasm in his chest, responds to it even though he knows it can’t be Jason because Jason’s dead. What he finds, instead of Jason, is a boy in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-small feet, with a face that Bruce sees himself and Talia in, requesting asylum from a grandfather who wishes to possess his body. Bruce doesn’t question how this boy who is so clearly his son knew the code. Talia al Ghul is resourceful and places family above all; the code is not beyond her abilities to discover, and she is not above using Bruce’s desperate love for his dead son to ensure that hers does not meet the same fate.
Bruce takes Damian in, because of course he does, and since Jason is dead he allows Damian to keep using the code. After all, it’s not like Jason is alive to use it, right? If someone uses the code, there’s no one it could be but Damian, right?
The next time the code is used, Bruce traces the location to Gotham even though Damian was supposed to be in Bludhaven visiting Dick. But whatever happened that resulted in Damian being in Gotham can wait, because he has already failed one son and he will not fail another, his son is in trouble and he needs to get to him, he needs to—
What he finds, instead of Damian, is a boy (just eighteen, too young, but also too old, but also he will always be a boy to him) in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-large feet (when had he gotten so big), wearing the face of his dead son.
(Who, maybe, just maybe, may no longer be so dead.)
it drives me bonkers the way people don't know how to read classic books in context anymore. i just read a review of the picture of dorian gray that said "it pains me that the homosexual subtext is just that, a subtext, rather than a fully explored part of the narrative." and now i fully want to put my head through a table. first of all, we are so lucky in the 21st century to have an entire category of books that are able to loudly and lovingly declare their queerness that we've become blind to the idea that queerness can exist in a different language than our contemporary mode of communication. second it IS a fully explored part of the narrative! dorian gray IS a textually queer story, even removed from the context of its writing. it's the story of toxic queer relationships and attraction and dangerous scandals and the intertwining of late 19th century "uranianism" and misogyny. second of all, i'm sorry that oscar wilde didn't include 15k words of graphic gay sex with ao3-style tags in his 1890 novel that was literally used to convict him of indecent behaviour. get well soon, i guess...