#i care him immensely
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princema-k · 2 years ago
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bad news: still going thru art burnout
good news: my homosexuality does not care
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berrycontrary · 1 year ago
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The
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turtleblogatlast · 8 months ago
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I love Raph and haven’t said that enough so to be more specific I love that Raph is a soft boy who loves bear plushies, a gross boy who eats an assortment of things that are definitely better left alone, a smart boy who is more than capable of taking down villains through planning and fortitude alike, a strong boy who is dedicated to training his muscles and fighting prowess, a teenage boy who loves his brothers but is more than happy to tease and roughhouse with them, an angry boy who sometimes lets his anger take a hold of him to cover the fear, a gentle boy who is generous with hugs and affirmations to those he loves, a capable boy who takes on more than should ever be expected of a teenager, a good boy who just wants to be a hero and slowly comes to realize the cost of that duty, a good boy who has no reservations about putting himself in the way of harm coming to his family, a good boy who’s a great brother and son and person and deserves only the best the world has to offer.
#rottmnt#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles#rottmnt raph#rise raph#he’s so wonderful frfr#my poor boy is traumatized but still so proud of what they accomplished because they’re HEROES#what started as something fun - Saturday morning cartoon-like heroes vs villains esque - soon becomes his calling#and he loses himself a little along the way#because the world is TERRIFYING now#if they don’t do something about the bad things in the world then worse things will come#and Raph CARES too much to let it happen#even at the expense of his own happiness and youth#and he luckily reigns back that fear - knowing his family is there to keep an eye out with him#and he finally lets himself be a kid again#he’s very well rounded and his flaws are so good because (like the others) they are ALSO his strengths#I like how it’s softly implied that bears are his fav animal too bc that’s cute af#headcanon that he likes them so much because a stuffed bear was the first toy splinter managed to get Raph#but yeah one of my favorite things about tmnt is that the characters are well rounded and rottmnt exemplifies that immensely#with raph being no exception!!#amazing big brother and character#there’s a REASON in my tmnt main character tierlist he’s S tier!!!!#hot take but in terms of who should be leader I think it should be less who’s the better leader-#-and more who’s the better leader FOR THIS SPECIFIC MISSION#bc all four can be great leaders fight me on that#APRIL can as well 100%#doesn’t need a designated leader for them to succeed#they just need ~communication~#one of my favorite things tying Raph and Leo together is that they both *hide*#I’ve talked about Leo’s many masks a lot but Raph has one too#and it’s the mask of a hero - the mask of the protector
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fjordline · 1 year ago
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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 11 months ago
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WAKE UP!
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mamawasatesttube · 6 months ago
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it's like, i really do enjoy most of the bats as characters and i really do like a lot of their comics. but also i am sooooo tired of them being hailed as better than literally everyone else. both in fanon but also in comics (modern ones are esp egregious imo, like WHAT was that shit about batman and the joker being the most dangerous men on the planet. hi. have you heard of lanterns? speedsters? supers? actually if i keep listing groups who could kick batman's ass we'd be here all day). they're like kudzu. that shit needs to stay in its native environment (funky little neo-noir detective stories) and stop being an invasive species (putting down everyone else to make them seem cooler). put bruce wayne back into a murder mystery setting that isn't about saving the world but is about saving one person or one family that no one else would've saved right now or so help me god. the whole invasive species cross contamination thing is unhealthy for both him And the other ecosystems he keeps getting transplanted into. please. it's so dark in here
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fllayvor · 2 months ago
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best friend Tomura who demands you stay in his bed, by his side, for a little while longer after you both unceremoniously fall asleep together after a long night of gaming,,, his voice firm yet gentle…
legs interlocked, his hands wrapped around your abdomen as he lays his head against the nape of your neck, burying his face and resisting the urge to press his chapped lips up against your skin,,,
even though this event is an accident, he relishes in having you so close. he doesn’t need to be your lover, it’s superfluous. no matter your status, you’ll always be the most important to him. platonic or otherwise.
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emry-stars-art · 1 year ago
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You know when babies are so tired that they’re fussing too much to sleep until you put their head down on your shoulder or something and they pass out immediately
Baby shark has been swimming for a long time with no way to take a break. Hello Whalemack 🐋
(More on Whalemack here)
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gingermintpepper · 2 months ago
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One of my biggest pet peeves is the assumption that something has to be sad for it to be tragic.
I've always been a big believer of the 'Apollo has an awful love life'/'Apollo is plain unlucky with love' line of thinking but it does bother me that the general reasoning for that statement is given to the concept of 'Apollo is somehow undesireable and thus rejected' (Cassandra/Daphne/Marpessa) or 'his lovers die young and thus their love is unfulfilled' (Cyparissus/Hyacinthus/Coronis). I personally think that's a very unfortunate way of looking at things - not only because it neglects the many perfectly cordial entanglements and affairs Apollo has had, both mortal and divine - but because it presents a very shallow interpretation of the concepts of love and loss and how loss affects people.
Apollo can still grieve lovers that have a long, healthy life. The inherent tragedy of an immortal who knows his lovers and children will die and cannot stop it does not stop being tragic simply because those lovers and children live long, fulfilled lives. The inherent tragedy of loss does not stop being tragic simply because someone knows better than to mourn something that was always going to end.
What is tragic is not that Apollo loves and loses but that loss itself follows him. Apollo does not love with the distance of an immortal, he does not have affairs and then leaves never to listen to their prayers again. He does not have offspring and then abandon them to their trials only to appear when it is time to lead them to their destinies. He raises his young, he protects the mothers of his children, he blesses the households that have his favour and multiplies their flocks that they may never go hungry. He educates his sons, he adorns his daughters and even in wrath he is quick to come to his senses and regret the punishments he doles out.
Apollo loves. And like mortals, there will always be some part of him that wishes to protect the objects of his affections. Apollo, however, is also an emissary of Fate. He knows that the fate of all mortal things is death. He knows that to love a mortal is to accept that eventually he will have to bury them. There is no illusion of forever, there is no fantasy where he fights against the nature of living things and shields his beloveds from death. Apollo loves and because of that love, he also accepts.
And that, while beautiful, is also tragic.
#ginger rambles#ginger chats about greek myths#greek mythology#apollo#Listen man#I think there's something extremely beautiful about Apollo's affairs#Yes I know that Ares also loves and cares for his daughters but this isn't about him#There's just something about the way that Apollo put his all into it every single time#To the point that even when he does know better he still fights because of the strength of his love#The Iliad to me will always be a love story#Yes Achilles' wrath is said to come from his overwhelming feelings towards Patroclus#but what Achilles does has nothing to do with grief or love#By the end of everything Achilles forsook that love which ought to have defined his actions based on what he was saying#and warped it into a weapon meant to satisfy the void left by his loss#Apollo though - I am always taken aback by the sheer weight of his love#towards not only Hektor but towards all of Troy in the Iliad#And how he is very careful to balance that love and all the ways he wishes he could fight against their inevitably end#with his duties as one who is both aware of the impending end and whose position in the war#has put him in opposition with his elders#That delicate balance between a love so powerful that he is willing to take on the full weight of Athena and Hera's wrath#and an understanding that the battle he fights is not for victory but simply because for love's sake#How could you not think of that as beautiful and awesome and so achingly tragic#I feel the same about both Asclepius' and Actaeon's deaths#Apollo loved BOTH of his sons - Asclepius and Aristaeus - so so SO much#He was so incredibly proud of them both and delighted immensely in the both of their victories and talents#And so when Asclepius dies and it is by his own father's hand - I have always found his act of wrath so fascinating#Honestly this could be its own separate post - but the fact that Apollo does not beg Zeus to reconsider or to bring Asclepius back#when Apollo has made cases for lenience on things like that before speaks of a level of understanding from Apollo that Asclepius was always#going to die because of his pushing of the boundary between life and death#so he doesn't bother trying to reason with Zeus or plea his grief - instead going directly to destroying something important to Zeus
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silverwhittlingknife · 5 months ago
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hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?
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GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE
Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.
I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:
Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?
Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?
Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?
We're gonna go in chronological order!
Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:
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Aww. Such a cute elephant!
Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!
Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:
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SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.
(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)
Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:
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Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.
Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.
Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:
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Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:
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... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.
Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.
For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.
Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?
In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.
Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.
Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?
tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later
Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!
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The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.
(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)
Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.
By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.
So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)
Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?
tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do
Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.
(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)
The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.
Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."
But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.
Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)
Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!
(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)
Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.
Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?
tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.
Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.
So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.
And look, here we are:
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Aww.
Whew - that's everything I could find!
Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3
#dick grayson#anyone with more info feel free to chime in & we can crowdsource <3#i do think the toy elephant is awfully cute though <3#total digression but i was thinking about it as i was writing:#i'm fascinated by the ways that the post-crisis batboys & their stories can intersect with 90s masculinity and all its issues with stoicism#and i'm pro-queering and gender-bending - 90s comics were a total boys' club so i think it's neat that transformative fandom isn't#but i do love 90s masculinity and All Its Issues too & one of the things i find compelling about the dick-tim-bruce trio#& especially dick's place in it - is the unspoken hierarchy whereby bruce is manlier than dick & dick is manlier than tim#and so dick's in the middle as this somewhat softer-character who aspires to be a harsher & more stoic & ultimate manly-man character#caught in the middle between robin & batman & what each role represents#and like. batman is both manhood & the only desirable thing to be AND ALSO it represents this immense narrowing of possibility#because so much of stereotypical masculinity is about reducing the range of emotions you're allowed to have or express#and dick is both incredibly conflicted about bruce AND wants to be just like him & by extension is conflicted about masculinity writ large#so a lot of dick's interactions with tim veer between trying on a frat-boy-ish 'I'm The Manly Guy' persona vs. giving up on it#or trying on imitations of Bruce's Batman persona but also trying to backtrack out of it bc he doesn't like how it feels etc etc#ANYWAY i think what i am trying to say is that if tim had a stuffed animal dick would be entertained & poke mild fun at him#and call him 'teddy' for the next hour or something while tim got increasingly defensive about how the teddy bear was steph's#and/or about how the teddy bear was OLD and tim doesn't even care about it and also WHATEVEr i'm above this#and to an uninformed observer this might look like bullying BUT ACTUALLY#this ritual would IN FACT be very reassuring to both of them + tim would feel WAY better afterward than if dick had ignored it#because by poking fun at him dick shows he still respects tim enough to tease him thus subtextually exorcising the threat of wimpiness#plus allowing tim to defend himself & demonstrate that he can take a joke so they've both reaffirmed their masculinity to each other#& they don't have to be scared of the teddy bear and all it represents anymore#however also afterward dick would have a brief nostalgic flashback to when he was a kid & had a teddy bear & feel weird about the memory#because he would be unable to articulate to himself that what he misses is a past when he allowed himself to be vulnerable#anyway this wouldn't actually happen in comics but it's what would happen in my soul. you know.#ask tag#zitka
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stealingyourbones · 5 months ago
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Gotta love when folks write Superman incredibly anti-clone even though he had good reason in the beginning to Not Like Superboy (HES A WINDOW INTO WHAT CLARK WOULD HAVE BEEN WITHOUT THE KENTS) and decide that forever on he’ll be spiteful towards clones even though he literally Does Not Care if you’re a clone unless you’re Superboy.
#IF YOU LIKE THIS CHARACTERIZATION IGNORE ME BUT I GOTTA VENT#bones speaks#bones writes in the tags#sometimes I wanna bash my head into a wall. SUPERMAN IS INHERENTLY A GOOD PERSON IN EVERY WAY KON EL IS JUST A TERRIFYING REALIZATION-#OF WHAT HE’D BE WITHOUT A LOVING CARING AND NURTURING FAMILY! HE DIDNT LIKE KON BECAUSE HE WAS SCARED)#RAGGGGHHHHH#for the love of god I know it’s an easy way for Danny to hate Superman (SUPERMAN ISNT THE BAD GUY YALL PLEASE) but there can be so much more#have him awkwardly go up to Danny and ask him how he handled having a clone and try to use that info to get along with Kon!#he works with countless clones in the Justice League and I don’t see y’all writing him hating them. make it make sense#just- please. you don’t have to read a comic to know that Superman is meant to be The Best Of Humanity. just write with that baseline#I’m just sad folks are being so gosh darn mean to Supes. he’s a delightful character to read and my favorite big superhero#and a lot of folks in dpxdc do the anti clone stuff and that’s Clark’s entire personality for the comic.#you don’t think he’d be sympathetic because Danny was given immense duty and power and is only a few of his kind? or having an evil self in#another dimension that showed him the destruction he could bring?#Clark is a smartass. he is a seeker of the truth. he is a reporter (and a damn good one too). he is a loving husband. he is an alien.#he is a hero. he is a god. he is a caring friend. he is a genuinely kind and good being.#I recommend reading All Star Superman. Under The Yellow Sun by Clark Kent. and Superman:Grounded
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frenchporkybuns · 4 months ago
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diabolical bozo
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thejasontoddarchives · 1 year ago
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There’s a general consensus that above all else Jason should be homicidal again. However I think what’s also very important is that he should be a fucking hoot.
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There’s nothing not funny about this entire bit.
1. He couldn’t give less of a shit about explaining that he’s single-handedly trying to stop a terrorist attack. Obviously cause he’s short on time, but even if he had all the time in the world he would still be this indifferent towards explaining himself to cops.
2. This bomb is seconds away from exploding but he’s at most mildly annoyed like he’s in the office doing some menial task.
3. The perfectly timed British jokes.
4. Circling back to number 1 on the list. After he throws the bomb into the water he just dips. For all they know he’s the (weird) terrorist. (But as long as everyone’s okay he doesn’t care! The beauty of Jason Todd everybody).
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This one is funny (but it’s also true)? Like yes … that is exactly what you are. (A sweet, kind-hearted goodboy learning how to effectively poison people, shoot guns, and blow shit up with all manner of explosives like a certified pro).
Bonus:
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Red Hood: The Lost Days #5 (2010-)
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Red Hood: The Lost Days #4 (2010-)
“Not so irritating for an American” is a far more impressive title than “genius” if you ask me. Although I think Jason balances both pretty well.
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surreal-duck · 1 year ago
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es rarepair week day 6 - holiday/shopping
i think about the flambé santa bears a normal amount
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hanzajesthanza · 1 year ago
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“what does geralt get from that friendship…”
another post examining the weight of geralt and dandelion’s friendship… because i don’t think people recognize how painful and debilitating loneliness can become.
the witcher as a deconstruction of the genre takes fantasy tropes to their most logical ends—it asks us to consider what The Lone Swordsman feels, looks into the humanity in a Cold-Blooded Killer. and it turns out he’s not cold-blooded at all.
that despite some superhuman abilities, he laments and worries and curses himself, just like any other worker of any other profession. just as the farmer is scorched by the sun, the washerwoman’s back aches, and the scholar goes half-blind studying, a witcher deals with all of the pains and annoyances and dangers of his job in a mundanely human way.
but the farmer, the washerwoman, and the scholar have something the witcher does not have—they’ll always be seen as human and part of their society. at the end of the day after enduring all of their labor, they have their wife to caress, festivities to attend, and taverns to frequent. but for a witcher? after the killing is over, what does he have? no one and nothing. not even a thank you. he is met with fear and hatred everywhere he goes, baseless bigotry and dislike.
I did my job. I quickly learned how. I’d ride up to village enclosures or town pickets and wait. If they spat, cursed and threw stones, I rode away. If someone came out to give me a commission, I’d carry it out.
so he faces not just loneliness, but being deliberately ostracized and cast out from society. geralt can’t even find a polite word in most settlements, much less a friend.
‘(…) Tell me, where should I go? And for what? At least here some people have gathered with whom I have something to talk about. People who don’t break off their conversations when I approach. People who, though they may not like me, say it to my face, and don’t throw stones from behind a fence. (…)’
this kind of loneliness is not a mere inconvenience. it’s completely altering to your self-perception and ability to see the positive in the world.
each day is not lived, but endured.
day in, and day out—forced to the most difficult and lowest labor in order to survive, and knowing that were you to die, no one would search for your body, few would miss you, hell, they might even spit “good riddance”.
in this situation, to find a friend, is not only friendship, but a rescue.
without dandelion, geralt may have drowned—drowned in solitude, amidst a sea of strangeness.
‘(…) And I’m alone, completely alone, endlessly alone among the strange and hostile elements. Solitude amid a sea of strangeness. Don’t you dream of that?’
No, I don’t, he thought. I have it every day.
because dandelion is not only a bright soul, characteristic rippling laughter and the strum of a lute, but someone who will intently listen to geralt, someone who mutually enjoys his company.
‘(…) you almost jumped out of your pants with joy to have a companion. Until then, you only had your horse for company.’
someone who doesn’t see him as strange and at the fringes of society at all, but as an utterly normal man.
and doesn’t impose demeaning, sappy sympathy onto him, but sobering and realistic “quit your bullshit” which ridicules the very thought that he should internalize societal hatred.
Do you know what your problem is, Geralt? You think you’re different. (…) [You don’t understand that] for people who think clear-headedly you’re the most normal man under the sun, and they all wish that everybody was so normal. What of it that you have quicker reflexes than most and vertical pupils in sunlight? That you can see in the dark like a cat? That you know a few spells? Big deal.
dandelion isn’t “willing” to accept geralt for himself—he already has accepted him. and to him, it’s no difficulty, it’s nothing worth discussing, because he sees no abnormality and no strangeness in him.
while others “prefer the company of lepers to witchers,” dandelion has already offered geralt to share his room and board. not out of sympathetic pity, not out of fetishizing curiosity. because… they’re friends.
and what else does this friendship save him from?
not only from others, but from himself.
worse than enduring others’ apathy and hatred is one’s own thoughts—the darkness and negativity which builds from witnessing and experiencing such behavior.
dandelion’s ability to counter and dispel geralt’s pessimism and self-flagellating tendencies—again, not out of pity, but out of friendship—is undeniably invaluable. someone to rescue you from your darkest thoughts, when you begin to spiral.
and in this darkness, all you can do is cry. you cry, beg for someone to help you, please—
Help! Why doesn't anyone help me? Alone, weak, helpless – I can't move, can't force a sound from my constricted throat. Why does no one come to help me? I'm terrified!
to be alone, the saga reminds us, is worse than a death sentence. to be alone is to “perish; stabbed, beaten or kicked to death, defiled, like a toy passed from hand to hand.” to be alone is to suffer, and to be with someone is to save them from that suffering.
'(…) I wouldn't like anything bad to happen to you. I like you too much, owe you too much-'
'You've said that already. What do you owe me, Yennefer?'
The sorceress turned her head away, did not say anything for a while.
'You travelled with him,' she said finally. 'Thanks to you he was not alone. You were a friend to him. You were with him.'
it is true that geralt has saved dandelion countless times, helped him, gotten him out of some scrape… but to ask what did geralt get in return? are you kidding me?
did you ever consider that it is dandelion who saved geralt?
by being with him. by being by his side. by being his friend.
indeed, dandelion has rescued geralt, countless times, from the yawning jaws of endless loneliness. he’s helped him, chased away the danger of geralt’s own rumination. and he’s gotten him out of scrapes, his own insecurities and bitter helplessness.
so what does dandelion give geralt? what does geralt get from their friendship?
an amusing question. what one gets from friendship is the friendship itself. and that is more than enough.
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daily-hanamura · 1 year ago
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#p4#persona 4#p4g#hanamura yosuke#yosuke hanamura#anyone that says yosuke is nothing but mean and awful to Kanji should meet me in the parking lot#we're not going to throw hands im just going to show you my 100 slide powerpoint presentation on their complex dynamic#for me one of the most appealing things about yosuke is how human and realistic he's been written#he is simultaneously capable of immense empathy and care towards his friends while at the same time struggle with his own identity#combined with a difficultly in self expression that results in him making tactless and hurtful remarks at times#thats not to say it makes those remarks ok - far from it!#but i think reducing yosuke to just those remarks makes him a rather empty caricature#which is such a shame especially considering that his entire personal narrative arc has been about confronting himself so he can be better#but anyway yes he cares about his friends he cares about their well being so much#he didnt have any obligation or a responsibility to look out for his juniors but he did so anyway without anyone asking#and it's so!!! because kanji does not look like he needs babying at all. hes taller than both yosuke and yu and he looks way older too#kanji has taken care of biker gangs by himself and is known to be intimidating#not that any of that fazes yosuke? kanji is his friend now hes one of them and therefore yosuke immediately wants to look out for him#god hanamura yosuke you so!!!#AAAAAAAAH#he's good with his queue
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