#i personally think if Barbara has to be relegated to side character of a man it should be Ollie

[alicepooryorick]

I wanna see the Batgirls interact with the Arrows more. I think Steph would fit in great. Ollivier would, knowing that man, probably hand her a bow, ask her how much she wants to piss off Bruce, and bond over them both having a girlfriend that can beat up damn near anyone.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

it’s a fucking metaphor!

Titans 3.08

i’ve finally gathered the mental and emotional resources to do this thing, so let’s go! as always, i’m typing this up as i see the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. on watching this opening scene, i was thinking back to how gar was in s1, or even the early bits of s2. the way he idolised the others, particularly dick, and his readiness to go along with whatever they said, and the way he practically bled the need for acceptance. and here he is now, openly defying dick, fully open to and aware of the flaws of the people he loves and admires, knowing he is accepted no matter what and extending that generosity elsewhere. it’s a remarkable bit of character growth that’s... sort of blossomed in the background and so rewarding to see and acknowledge. 

1.25. i guess what i really love about this conflict over how to respond to jason--as clumsily as it is sometimes written--is how their histories and individual traumas inform each character’s reaction. dick is torn between his guilt over what’s become of jason and his drive to do what batman had essentially given up on doing: he is motivated to track down red hood at all costs but there’s a sense that he’s not completely sold on the idea that the only way to stop him is to kill him. (he might go the comics route and try to put him in arkham? god, imagine if the season ended with jason in arkham.) kory’s never had much of a connection with jason in the first place, and jason has done one of the worst things he could do in her book: track and kill a member of her newfound family and is threatening to kill more. 

and gar... sure. look. the idea of jason and red hood as separate entities appeals to him; that red hood emerged when jason was drugged to the gills by scarecrow and lost his usual inhibitions. gar’s struggled with what he becomes when he’s pushed to his limits, too--he did rip open that experimenting scientist with his teeth way back in 1.07, after all, and he was brainwashed by cadmus in s2 into becoming a literal monster. he needs to think, to know, there’s a dichotomy, a line that can only be crossed under extreme duress or by outside influence. 

and he says--and we say--that he was accepted back into the titans in spite of what he’d done, but was he really? gar’s always struggled with his footing in this group; relegated to the caretaker, the tech guy, the gatekeeper, and sometimes punching bag even though everybody’s paying lip service to how much of a family they all are. perhaps gar reaching out to jason and offering acceptance is aspirational on his part: perhaps this is the effort he hoped the titans put/or will put into getting gar back, even when it would seem like he’s too far gone.

1.5. anyway my point is that i don’t think it’s worth discussing this in terms of right/wrong decisions because all of their reactions make a lot of sense given their backgrounds/personalities. gar is doing a fine job here of tracking down jason’s friends and trying to find him that way, but we the audience know that jason is ultimately going to end up an anti-hero/eventually-hero character, so with that knowledge in mind we know that gar’s reaction is the right one. it’s knowledge that the other characters don’t have, so to judge them on it is... uh, unfair.

1.8. also, molly is awesome, yay!

2. dick and barbara flirting over the phone is so cute! i love to see this side of dick: lighter, peppier, willing (even if somewhat reluctantly) to put his mission aside to go out on a date with his girlfriend. and i love how easy this makes his dynamic with kory too: it’s all very domestic and utterly delightful. 

(also, re: the water leak in barbara’s office--you’re saying GCPD could afford fancy-schmancy table-wide touch screen computers and evil-lair lighting but needs its frickin’ commissioner to catch leaking water from above her desk with mugs and fishbowls????)

2.2225. this is probably a teeny tiny thing and i’m not sure i want to bring it up at all BUT. the fact that dick feels compelled to lie to barbara about not liking fancy gala food and eating something more substantial before the date? not a terribly great sign, though i wouldn’t call it a red flag per se. 

“this from a man who forced his students to eat cauliflower crust pizza...”

3. so.... conner and kom are a Thing. huh.

in theory i really like the idea of them bonding over an innate alien-ness and longing for a place they could really belong. both of them are alien twice-over: conner a mix of kryptonian and human, practically generated in a test tube, and kom being somebody that was born different and rejected by her own people, now stuck on a planet dominated by an entirely different species. i even like them exploring this bond physically. i guess it’s the sense of... uneasiness around what we do and don’t know about kom that makes this scene land slightly left of centre to me. i think titans, especially through s2, has cultivated in its audience a sense of distrust even until the final episode, just in case somebody vital to the season is suddenly revealed to have had ulterior motives (i’m even low-key suspicious of leslie). i really want to see this kom-conner dynamic play out but the anticipation of watching the other shoe drop is sucking out the enjoyment.

4. for fuck’s sake dick, gar’s not your gatekeeper.

TIIIIIIIIMMMMM \O/

4.5. i love this nod to tim’s origins in the comics, the way he just comes in and lays out all his evidence and makes it clear to dick that he needs tim’s help as robin. the fact that he was there at the flying graysons’ last performance, he was obsessed with their acrobatic moves, and was observant enough to connect those moves with that of robin and later nightwing... all of this came together to put him where he is right now.

(i also love how he can’t contain his giddy excitement when talking about the day dick grayson’s parents died... to dick grayson. even if dick weren’t nightwing, that would be a deeply uncomfortable thing! yet tim can’t help himself, and i love him for it.)

4.8. it’s a testament to how much dick’s caught off-guard that he can’t come up with a better response to tim’s allegations other than “uh... he stole my moves! as you know, no two gymnasts in the world are allowed to do the same moves. now, let me escort you out while pretending poorly that i’m not at all shaken by this...”

4.9. i’ve talked about this before, but i find the logic around secret identities in this universe utterly fascinating. the titans don’t make much effort in keeping their identities secret: everybody seems to know that kory is starfire for instance, or that gar is beast boy. dick grayson is seen hanging out with kory a lot, especially at crime scenes. it won’t take a lot of sleuthing to find out that the titans are currently camped out at wayne manor, and to put two and two together.

my theory was that superheroes and villains have become such an integral part of daily society that it’s almost not worth it to seek out their secret identities, or that it’s just not a big deal anymore. like politicians or diplomats, not everybody bothers to look into who exactly their local politician is, but the people who know just... know. it’s a sort of unspoken social contract.

tim’s broken this contract by confronting dick about his identity, and dick’s not ready to deal with it. not entirely.

look at him! *pinches his cheeks*

5. ngl, it was quite satisfying to see jason knock the scarecrow out like that. 

5.5. i guess... the question of jason’s culpability is always going to be a thorny one and would make for a great courtroom drama spinoff. there are a number of factors to consider: jason’s personality, the rough circumstances under which he grew up, his undoubtedly stressful transition to being robin, bruce wayne being... well, bruce wayne, never feeling accepted by the titans and having most of them turn on him, being roundly defeated and almost killed by deathstroke, alfred’s death, a fuckload of ptsd, his violent death, crane’s manipulations, coming back to life, crane plying him with a drug. but there is no easy line to draw between any of these factors to his actions. i think it would be a disservice to jason’s character to attribute his actions entirely to these things and rather irresponsible to do so. i think jason has to reckon with the fact that when he took crane’s drug, he wasn’t reckless and chaotic like the thugs he gave it to; the planning that went into hank’s death was meticulous and the way hank died--dawn essentially tricked into pulling the trigger that blew her lover into bits--is so drawn out and cruel. 

5.75. it’s occurring to me that crane might have given jason a placebo. maybe jason’s dependence is psychological, and he’s externalised his fears in such a way that he believes crane’s drugs literally wipe them out, however temporarily.

in any case, the boy needs (more) therapy.

6. “he walked like robin...” fuck, tim

“gait recognition sweep” god, this show. i don’t know whether to laugh or cry. hey, once we’re done doing this gait recognition thingy, can we get a goddamn plumber in the house??? or move the commissioner’s desk so that sewage water isn’t dripping on her head or the million dollar touchscreen desk???????

6.5. oh no dick!!!!!! i am delighted that you got hurt but i feel ashamed about it! that looked like it really hurt!

he’s really not having a good time of it, is he. from being shot by a sniper to slamming at full speed into an suv, he’s got to be really fucking battered by now. and that’s just the physical side of it.

“can you believe that just over a week ago i was sitting in san francisco eating cauliflower crust pizza and feeling good about myself for the first time in five years...”

7. kory’s having visions again! now that she’s figured what they are, do you think the show’s just dropped justin? it’s curious that HPG hasn’t been brought up in a while after featuring relatively heavily in the beginning. hmmm.

8. dick’s in hospital but... he looks remarkably whole for someone who took a spill like that. you’d think he’d at least have a bruise to show for it. on the other hand, i love that the first thing he says is ‘i need to call home’. reminds me of season 1 dick and his clumsy attempts to explain away his found family as an ‘alliance of necessity’ or some bullshit. what a long way he’s come!

*gasp* dick’s hallucinating again!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m doing the dick’s hallucinating dance! can you believe that we’re carrying over these huge honking issues unearthed in season 2 onto season 3? can you believe?!!! all that time and effort i spent talking about dick’s mental health from last season has not gone in vain!!

... ahem. anyway. more on this later.

“hold on barbara, i think kory gave me the number to this therapist that she kept calling Hot Psychiatrist Guy...”

9. just an interlude to say that i’m barely halfway through the episode and i’ve already written 2k+ words... ugh. i’m going to try and be more concise.

10. man i fuckin love it when titans goes all out with its weird mindscapes and i’m extra glad that kory’s the focus this time. is that baby kom or maybe a secret sibling that neither of them knew about? was that lady luand’r? and is this place where kory was circling where the secret sibling is? it’s all very intriguing. 

(if justin turned out to be that sibling... we’ve a real luke/leia situation on our hands.)

11. aw, i knew that nice security guard was going to die, but it still hurt to see him go :(

12. this show is so bizarre. like i get the mindscape as a narrative device, but jason using sex workers to try and vocalise his guilt about killing hank was just weird. like. i have to use tamil, sorry: idhulaan yaaru pa room pottu yosikara??? some things just can’t be translated into a second language.

i guess one way to interpret jason’s reckoning with what he did to the titans as a sign of him coming off crane’s drug, but i think it’s more to do with the disillusionment of realising that he was a mere pawn in a more sinister plan, and not, as he thought, a player in control of his destiny, rising to the purpose of liberating gotham of its fears in a way batman never could. along the way, he’s done some truly irreversible damage. it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

13. another hallucination! it’s really intriguing that it’s a young dick(?), younger than we’ve ever seen him, wearing an early-era robin costume from way before he even became robin. (this is also interesting in that it gives credence to the idea that ‘robin’ is an identity that dick created entirely on his own, and as a possible homage to his family.)

“old road, old house... it’s all gone.” i wonder what it all means.

13.5. it’s entirely likely dick’s hallucinating because of a brain injury from the accident, though just hallucinations without any other focal neurological deficit is unusual. he might’ve been microdosed with fear toxin at some point, though i wonder when... did jason do so after dick’s accident? did he get dosed at the factory from last episode? 

it’s also possible it’s a continuing manifestation of dick’s issues from last season--which, if you remember, he never told anyone about and therefore never properly addressed. maybe he was hallucinating bruce wayne in a psychotic episode accompanying an acute stress reaction and maybe that’s what’s happening now. nobody’s denying that he’s under an extraordinary amount of stress right now. another way to look at it is that this is how he externalises conflict that he can’t bear to suppress anymore; if in s2 halluci!bruce manifested his insecurities and self-loathing, then these hallucinations... something to do with his fears, no doubt.

yet ANOTHER way to look at it might be: rachel is reaching out to him through their, well, psychic bond. after all, they were able to use that bond unconsciously last season to get the titans back together; maybe rachel has learned to gain a degree of control over it in themyscira and is sending across warnings? it’s all very intriguing.

anyway:

“i hear you skipped over the discowing suit in your evolution to nightwing... how could you??”

14. can you imagine, gar did all the work of reaching out to jason via molly and jason wants to meet dick? smh.

14.5. “i’m just a regular guy doing regular things” he says, standing at the opening of a secret old tunnel, like a secret person doing secret things, confronting someone who can now officially be called his stalker. neither of you guys are ‘regular’

14.8. ‘my dad was a cop and he taught me how to investigate’ - hmmm. i guess they’re trying to Explain Tim but i don’t think that’s really necessary. so he’s smart and he’s obsessed with batman and robin--that should be enough, imo. 

15. that scene with scarecrow and his mother was... wow. i’m just laughing here helplessly, because what the hell? for a while i thought it was an extended dream sequence and i’m still not entirely sure that it isn’t...

anyway. i still love that titans is happy to throw out its plot in favour of extended character-exploration sessions.

15.5. it seems to me that this scene with crane and his mother (i have no idea if there’s anything in the comics similar to this) serves to move forward this season’s theme of harmful legacies and how parents can damage their children in the name of their mission. in a way it’s been the underlying message of the entire show but we’re really seeing it being reinforced this season. the titans, serving as a foil to scarecrow, are using the damage to rebuild themselves and actually work through their issues together, instead of spiralling further and further into the morass of their issues.

other than that... god, that scene was painful to watch. i can’t say i like this version of scarecrow or how this actor plays him at all.

16. i wonder what’s jason’s play here. i think he’s smart enough to realise that the titans aren’t going to just forgive him and let him be a titan again after what he did, and that dick agreeing to it is just a bid to pin both him and crane down. maybe it’s a ploy to trap them, get back on scarecrow’s good books so that he can have the drug again. who knows.

17. i absolutely felt dick when he said “we’ll bring him in and then re-assess the situation.” what the fuck else is he going to say? the priority is to get him.

so kory and dick are both hallucinating while potentially trying to rehabilitate their murderous siblings. CONFIDE IN EACH OTHER ALREADY

18. TIM NOOOO! you beautiful, reckless fool!

18.25. just to quickly address it here because i know it’s been brought up before: i think it’s perfectly justified to not have conner take tim to the hospital via superspeed because a) i don’t think we’ve seen conner do that with anybody so far and b) it’s probably not a good idea to submit tim’s body to that kind of stress without knowing what it would do to him. the paramedics with actual equipment and experience would be there in a few minutes, so on a risk assessment, i would say dick and conner absolutely made the right call.

18.5. i guess we won’t know what jason really intended to when the titans came to the pump to see him, but this is definitely going to set a big wedge in his relationship with crane. then again, crane got what he wanted--using starfire’s powers to blast through to the underground pipes--so jason can argue that this is exactly what he was working towards, too. 

anyway, mortal peril, hallucinations, murderous family members, creepy visions and robins sprouting left and right. time to get rachel and donna on the scene, i think.

[aion-rsa]

Will Batgirl Give J.K. Simmons Something to Do in the DCEU?

https://ift.tt/3zQt8PC

HBO Max’s Batgirl movie has finally started to take shape with last week’s casting of Leslie Grace as its central debutante vigilante, Barbara Gordon. Moreover, the other crucial element in the film’s dynamic was recently revealed by THR, which reports that J.K. Simmons will play the character’s father/foil, Commissioner James Gordon, reprising his role from 2017’s Justice League (and 2021 redux Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a.k.a. the Snyder Cut). Consequently, the casting essentially confirms the film’s place in the DC Extended Universe continuity. So, will Simmons’s Gordon get to field more than rooftop meetings this time around?

Simmons, an Oscar-winning actor, is already a staple in the comic book movie genre from his irreplaceable role as boisterously cantankerous paper editor J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man Trilogy and a recently relaunched iteration of the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe set to take the spotlight in this December’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Yet, he can also effectively play a frightening badass, as anyone who watched his run on 1997-2003 HBO prison drama Oz can attest. Pertinently, Simmons, upon the announcement of his Justice League James Gordon role, stoked serious hype for his then-upcoming contribution to the character’s long legacy with images of his buffed-up physique (then at 61 years of age,) posted by his trainer. Plus, a 2016 EW interview had him promising a more…let’s just say proactive version of Gordon than we’ve seen in the past.

“People of my generation remember Commissioner Gordon as this jolly, ineffectual Santa Claus type, and I think over the years in the comics there’s definitely much more of a badass side to him,” explained Simmons. “One of the things that’s interesting to me is investigating hopefully a little bit more of that badass [side]…You’re living in a universe where it’s pretty tough to be a badass compared to somebody like Batman, but in the universe of non-superheroes I like the idea of Commissioner Gordon as a guy that can take care of himself, a guy that’s a real partner to Batman, not just a guy that turns on the bat signal and goes, ‘Help! Help, Batman!’”

Facebook

Unfortunately, the Justice League gig didn’t get to live up to the hulking hype, and Simmons was relegated to a minor role, primarily for a scene in which Batman and the rest of the assembled heroes meet with Gordon in the familiar backdrop of a Bat-Signal-hosting Gotham rooftop. There, he mostly provided some expository dialogue and played the proverbial straight man in some of the sporadic superhero comic moments. Furthermore, all of Simmons’s social-media-showcased gym work ended up hidden underneath a suit and trenchcoat, leaving his “badass side” in storage for another day that wasn’t exactly promised to arrive. Indeed, it was an anticlimactic result that didn’t even live up to what was achieved with Gary Oldman’s version of the character in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy, who at least occasionally got out in the field to fight criminals, and even had his moment to help save the day in explosive fashion when driving the Tumbler Batmobile in the first film.

Now, with Batgirl, Simmons’s 2016 teases can prospectively come to fruition, belated as they may be. While no details about the plot have been confirmed as of yet, the definitive dynamic of Barbara Gordon has always prominently focused on how her surreptitious nocturnal flights of fancy affect James, who is initially oblivious to the idea that one of the junior vigilantes in Batman’s stable—with whom he regularly deals in his capacity as commissioner—happens to be his own daughter. It’s a potential powder keg dynamic that has been placed in the hands of up-and-coming directorial duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (Bad Boys for Life), who work off a screenplay by Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey, Bumblebee).

Thusly, it will be interesting to see what manifests from this team, especially since the course of the DCEU is now significantly altered from the vision initially set by dismissed story maestro Zack Snyder. Indeed, Snyder not only had grandiose ideas for Justice League to serve as the first part of a time-traversing trilogy, but his plans also involved expanding the roster of solo films, with Batgirl being one of the prominent entries. However, based on what details Snyder eventually divulged in an Esquire interview this past March about his now-nixed version of the story, Gordon’s action hero prospects were unlikely to improve.  

“You see, I always wanted Barbara Gordon to come in the movies. Commissioner Gordon would be on the way out, and we’d have Barbara starting to play a bigger role,” explains Snyder. “My idea was that after Batman sacrificed himself [in the climax of his unrealized third Justice League movie], there would be a window where there was no Batman, and I thought Barbara could fill that until the child of Superman and Lois, who has no powers, would become Batman when he was of age.”

Read more

Movies

Does Batgirl Leslie Grace Casting Point to Burnside Version of the Character?

By John Saavedra

Movies

JK Simmons on Spider-Man: Sam Raimi Movies ‘Will Always Be Highlights of My Life’

By Bryan Cairns

That leaves us to wonder how much of Snyder’s story DNA will remain present in this current iteration of the Batgirl project. Of course, it has already been passed down by many creative hands in the lengthy gestation process, the most prominent of which was Joss Whedon, pinch-director of Justice League’s 2017 theatrical release, which is the version that Warner—despite the film’s underperforming status and Whedon’s personal controversies—still definitively considers canonical for the DCEU. Yet, in Snyder’s slow-burn Batgirl designs, James Gordon would have been in the eventually-realized solo movie just to be quickly phased out as Barbara fills the vigilante vacuum left in Batman’s wake. It wouldn’t exactly be promising for Barbara, either, since she was destined to be relegated—presumably after a time jump—to mentoring the powers-deprived son of Superman and Lois Lane, whose conception was subtly implied exclusively in the Snyder Cut with an ambiguously-worded congratulations to Clark Kent from Bruce Wayne after the latter “bought the bank.”

Of course, while directors El Arbi and Fallah certainly stand to place their own creative imprint onto the mythos, Hodson was hired to pen the Batgirl script back in April of 2018, a time that may have been after Snyder’s tenure came to its abrupt end behind the scenes, but still had Warner working with the immediate aftermath of his playbook. This was notably the case with Aquaman, which featured the key character of Amber Heard’s Mera, who Snyder introduced with his initial work on Justice League, and the Snyder Cut also notably served as the retroactive introduction of Willem Dafoe’s Vulko. Yet, Simmons, even after the disappointing Justice League role, has expressed enthusiasm about returning as Jim Gordon. Perhaps what he’s read of the Batgirl script has given him reason to be optimistic about his desired action prospects.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Batgirl doesn’t have a firm release date to reveal, but the film is set for an exclusive streaming premiere on HBO Max in 2022 or 2023. However, by that point, Warner will have already debuted a different version of Commissioner James Gordon, as played by Jeffrey Wright in the Earth-2-set reboot movie, The Batman, which is currently scheduled to hit theaters on March 4, 2022.

The post Will Batgirl Give J.K. Simmons Something to Do in the DCEU? appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3zRmM2r

[mushbabe]

Mass Cartoon Crossover AU

heyyyyy its uhhhhhh another fucking au writing from me

ties into this comic i did here, which i am making a sequel to

so if you wanted to hear my explanation for how shit like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, CN City, and canon crossovers might possibly work, clicky that readmore friend it’s about to get deep and overly thought-out

so like. basically: when a creator creates something, the universe for this something exists on another plane. the characters are all real, just more or less materially inaccessible to people on our plane. there are points in the various planes of existence where our plane and their plane meet, be the points natural or artificial. these points of meeting were used to film things like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Space Jam, where visceral, fleshy organisms like ourselves could stand alongside the 2-D manifestations of our own minds. both humans and cartoons could enter the opposing side’s realm, but by no means is it natural or healthy for the state of the worlds, not to mention for the individuals crossing dimensions. as such, the scenes in both WFRR and Space Jam where any one person was not in their respective domain were filmed in intervals...

so now we’ve got two planes: ours, and the plane of our creations. like previously stated, each creation has a universe in which it exists and lives, a place where it is given purpose, a story, stuff to do, etc.. compared to our universe, these worlds are all incredibly small.  though the sizes can vary wildly: from the universe of Ed Edd ‘n Eddy, which is more or less encompassed by the cul de sac that they live in, to the universe of Adventure Time (which feels expansive, but really is only made up of the places shown or mentioned in the show, and is by no means infinite like that of our own.) lets imagine that all of these universes are kind of tied together. think about wreck-it ralph when i say that there is a central location, a city probably, that they can all converge in and exist within. 

to keep things homogeneous and as easy to digest as possible, lets assume the only universes that are inherently tied together are the universes from the same kind of media. 2D televised cartoons would all be tied into one place. 3D televised cartoons would converge in a different place. Anime/Video Games/all that good shit would tie in somewhere else respectively. We could imagine that this is because these similar universes are close in proximity as a result of being similar. and because they’re all so close, they all have an established point where they all meet. contrasting this, the convergence of two different kinds of media would be extremely rare and hard to achieve, but is do-able, and has been exploited by characters before (cite the Jimmy-Timmy Power Hour). for the sake of keeping with the natural order, these ties are temporary and will break off easily. 

to illustrate this converging of similar universes, we could imagine this structure as a large central bubble with a bunch of other smaller bubbles surrounding it, each of them connected to the middle one by a thread. 

DIRECTLY CONNECTED WORLDS

but !! these small, individual worlds can also be connected to each other directly! some of these connections are inherent, as they were part of their design upon their creation. a good example of this: the universe of Gravity Falls and Rick and Morty would have a natural thread connecting the two. 

some of these connections can also be forged. these connections are typically the result of a crossover episode, and would exist between the worlds of Futurama and The Simpsons, and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy and Codename: Kids Next Door since they all had crossover episodes with each other. In all likelihood, the lifespan of these connections is probably dependent on factors like the earnestness of the episode(s) in question (whether they were done for a cheap cash-in or because the writers were genuinely invested in these characters meeting) and how compatible these universes are (things like similar visual styles and how much sense the crossover makes. the crossover between The Jetsons and The Flintstones makes way more sense thematically than the crossover between Kim Possible and Lilo & Stitch. 

THE HUBWORLD:

this is best understood when you think about the old Cartoon Network City bumpers that CN used to play in between commercials. They were large, semi-realistic urban environments where all of the characters from the programming of the time would interact with the world and with each other. CN City could be thought of as a district of this larger city where all these worlds converge. this is a place that, regardless of art-style or compatibility, everyone can just exist alongside each other. 

so not all of the cartoons live here. lots of them live in their respective worlds for their own reasons (their show may still be ongoing and they need to actually be there for it to happen, or maybe they just prefer their own world) but they may make trips into town to run errands, visit, attend university or even commute to their city jobs. however, after a character’s show has run its course, plenty of them make the decision to move permanently to the city. 

we know that each character can leave their original universe and travel to the central connecting one, but can they leave the central one to visit another person’s universe? i would say yes. probably not for extended periods though. unless there is an existing connector between the two character’s worlds, visiting wouldn’t feel comfortable, and the characters probably just wouldn’t want to. i imagine that, while it’s not exactly illegal or impossible to visit, staying for a long time is frowned upon. again, we can refer back to wreck-it ralph for comparison. visiting is fine, but eventually you need to go home.

IMPORTANT FIGURES:

a character’s role in the city and to others is determined by a lot of things. usually, one would find a job they can perform with their unique skills and/or powers. I’ve headcanon’d the roles of a lot of characters already. some ideas I’ve had:

The Powerpuff Girls are easily the ones in charge of protecting the city. They head Homeworld Security, the various police departments, and have a lot of people working under them. They can often be seen patrolling. 

the city is headed by a City Council and a Mayor (there is also a Head Judge in charge of the court system, but they don’t determine any legislation, they just enforce it.) The Mayor is kind of shadowy in the au at first, but it’s pretty obvious that it’s Mickey Mouse. He’s concerned with corporate interests for the most part.

the Council is made up of elected representatives, each coming from different big names in the cartoon world (Nick, WB, Disney, Hanna-Barbara, etc.) The Council Chairman tbh has to be Bugs Bunny. he’s iconic, charismatic, and experienced, and so has a lot of sway in how things operate; it only made sense that he go into politics. a crucial part of the “plot” of this au is that Bugs and Mickey are bitter rivals. It’s understood by most that Bugs should be the de facto mayor, but through underhanded means, Mickey stays one step ahead of him. while Bugs isn’t exactly innocent either, he certainly stands for different ideals. Bugs is definitely a man of the people. 

Professor Utonium is the dean of the university as well as the head of its robotics department, their most successful STEM department. he teaches a few robotics classes. Dexter, Edd, and Phineas would have all studied under him at one point

Without a doubt, Warden from SuperJail! is the warden of what’s probably the largest and craziest prison in existence. Only a mind like his could contain the biggest threats to the hubworld’s wellbeing. 

i’ve thought about the placement of a lot of other characters too, but i only wanted to list here the one’s integral to the structure of the city.

with that said, all of the villains original to the connected worlds are very much still real and still able to wreak havoc on this metropolis. some won’t have a reason to concern themselves with it, while others will certainly make it a target. this includes extradimensional entities like Bill Cipher, Him, and Aku, who wouldn’t exactly be contained in the city jail. a main concern of the city government is how to protect the town from these major antagonists. 

CITY DISTRICTS:

i was talking about districts of the city earlier. another district i was thinking about is Toontown, a space relegated to old fashioned, classic “toons”. Like, Animaniacs / Tom & Jerry / Merrie Melodies / Steamboat Willie / Roger Rabbit -esque toons. the one’s we all understand as the physics defying characters who can pull material from nothing (hammerspace) as well as take a shotgun shell to the face and live. The nigh-indestructible, goofy-ass, slapstick, foundational characters of animated comedy. this is gonna be one of the few districts that is actually somewhat segregational. I imagine that society views toons in a weird, kind of split way. on one hand, the Old Toons are to be respected. they forged a path and laid a foundation in entertainment and have helped bring all of this into existence. on the other hand, Toons are also considered outmoded. classic slapstick has largely reached the end of its run. the iconic white gloves, cigars, and dynamite have all come to represent a bygone golden era full of its own problematic ideals. their shows are analyzed now much like modern psychologists would analyze Freud: no one can doubt the significance of the impact they’ve had, but the faults are widely acknowledged. (for example, modern cartoons would probably criticize older toons’ shows’ lack of diverse protagonists, rampant themes of racism / antisemitism / blatant use of tobacco / objectification of female characters, for being unfunny or unchallenging to the viewer, or for just being visually unappealing as some newer cartoons might believe.) as a result of this mindset, older Toons are the target of some prejudice but also some high respect. it depends on which group you’re talking to. 

List of City Districts

New Townsville (the one filmed for the CN City Bumpers). town hall, banks, business hub.

Toontown (the one filmed in WFRR) - area reserved for Toons

Endsborough - slightly evil, run down part of town. bars, gambling, etc. hangout for the unsavory.

University District - the campus, dorms, student accommodations 

Hillwood Metropolitan Area - expansive, unspecific urban area, main marketplace, apartments, schools. underground cultural haven.

Jump District - upscale part of town, nice stores, ritzy condos. opposite of Endsborough. favorite hangout/residence of hero-types. 

Middleville - suburban residence area, lots of families living here.

Jellystone - large park

CITY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS

I am also going to list my ideas for these:

Mayor - Mickey Mouse

Chief Justice - MENTOK THE MIND-TAKER (he’s from Harvey Birdman and he’s a great judge ok google him)

City Councilmen:

Warner Brothers / Chairman - Bugs Bunny 

Cartoon Network - Grim

Metro Goldwyn-Mayer - Pink Panther

Nickelodeon - Phoebe Heyerdahl

Hanna Barbara - Top Cat

Disney -  Stanford Pines (not Stanley)

Adult Swim - Dr. Mrs. The Monarch

THE GUILD OF CALAMITOUS INTENT 

as one might imagine, the hubworld is going to be full of both heroes and villains. to manage the inevitable carnage, i thought i’d borrow an organization from The Venture Bros. the Guild of Calamitous Intent’s purpose (in this au anyway) is to fit villains with their arch-rivals and contain the amount of collateral damage their conflict creates. heroes and villains can only fight one villain/hero at a time, respectively. this is to prevent things like all-out fights between huge numbers of villains and heroes, which would destroy a good portion of the city. as well, there is a limit to how much destruction one pair of arch rivals can cause. charges are incurred otherwise. certain areas are entirely off-limits (schools, hospitals, etc. basically they follow the Geneva Convention here). the presence of the Guild would also be a good explanation for why villains only tend to target one hero most of the time. once one villain/hero is defeated, another one can take be fit to take their place. villains and heroes are both ranked in order of power and resources, and a villain is always paired with a hero of equal rank to allow for the fairest fight. arching outside of guild regulations is strictly forbidden and the Guild will hunt down a rogue villain/hero. groups of villains/heroes that are always together (the Teen Titans for example) will count as a single arch-able entity and will be ranked according to their combined power. So in this universe, Slade would be labeled as the Teen Titan’s arch-enemy. 

while the Guild is originally a service for evil characters run by evil characters, they generally play a neutral role in the struggle between good and evil. 

but there are bound to be evil doers who are too chaotic to follow guild regulations. these characters have to act in the utmost secrecy or simply be too powerful to be taken out normally; otherwise, the Guild will act upon them. the heads of the Guild are totally anonymous, and, while they’ve worked with the City before to impose certain regulations, they are independent of the government. All villains and heroes must be properly registered, but registered villains ARE NOT guaranteed safety from Homeworld Security. heroes and the police often work together to take down bad guys, and its a hero’s responsibility to keep their respective villain in check.

ANYWAY that’s what I’ve thought up so far for the overarching premise. I STILL NEED A NAME FOR THE CITY 

i could just call it Big City a la Sheep in the Big City, but thats.... kinda dumb. idk i’ll think on it.

[randrvstheworld]

36 hours in Puno, the longest day & life aboard the emotional rollercoaster

Since my last post, I have spent a glorious day & a half in Puno, home of the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca; survived 24 straight hours of travelling to Brazil, encompassing the world��s most long & boring layover in Lima airport, & now find myself, suffering acute loneliness & sadness in Rio, of all places.

Let’s start with Puno. The town itself is a bit of a shithole, riddled as it is with trash & mangy stray dogs & half finished buildings & piles of rubble in the street. It is, however, lively, truly a town that never sleeps. We arrived after a long bus journey, late afternoon 3 (? 4? I don’t know anymore) days ago, shattered, & managed a plate of noodles before promptly conking out. The next day was one of my favourites so far. We took an outrigger canoe - a kind of frankenboat hybrid of a catamaran, viking long boat & gondola - out across Lake Titicaca to the floating islands of Uros. It was a beautiful day, & the fantastic views & sunlight glittering off the water more than made up for the somewhat stagnant smell of the lake at the point of embarkation (it improved the further into the lake we rowed). The lake is surrounded on all sides by undulating mountains, & is smattered with thickets of reeds & other small islands, populated by llamas. The sky was a perfect blue & peppered with fluffy looking clouds. The lake itself is home to many different types of birds, including some blue-beaked breed of duck that constantly dives underwater for fish - if only I had David Attenborough on constant hand to help me identify all these exotic kinds of wildlife. They were not mallards. And that is officially as far as my knowledge of different types of duck extends.

So we rowed, across the vast lake, as I half hoped, half dreaded seeing a human hand bobbing about below the surface. A fascination with mafia movies has left me with the assumption that all lakes are secretly riddled with dead bodies rolled up in Persian rugs. But alas - or perhaps, gratefully - my day was free of macabre underwater discoveries. We rowed for about 45 minutes out into the lake to the floating community of Islas de los Uros - a collection of man-made islands that host many indigenous people, who have lived in communities such as these, completely self-sufficiently, for hundreds of years. We visited one small island where we met a delightful native woman named Melina who explained, with the help of a translator as on the islands the people still speak indigenous languages & not Spanish, how the islands are made. Basically they harvest the big blocks of roots from the water reeds, poke sticks through the middle of each one & then lash them together. Then begins the constant process of laying dry reeds over the top & tamping them down. People are invited for sports days when new islands are built as the constant running around of people playing football - what else - helps flatten & compress the reeds. All the houses on the islands are built of reeds also. If you argue with your neighbours you simply saw their bit of the island off & watch them float away. We thought she was joking til she whopped out her island-cutting saw, a ginormous serrated sword specifically for the purpose of separating unsavoury characters from your island. LOL. That’ll teach you to steal my tupperware, Barbara! If only such tactics could be employed back home. I’ve definitely lived with a few people who could do with having their rooms sawn away from the rest of the flat.

People get around from island to island on these amazing boats, shaped like giant bananas, also made out of reeds. Reeds are top currency in Uros basically. The whole island network is run on solar power as obviously you can’t start fires when your house & garden is made of dry grass. They rely solely on tourism for income & make fabulous textiles by hand, from which I bought a cute piece of home decor as Melina was very hospitable, inviting us into her home & letting us try on her traditional clothes, & I felt it my duty as a traveller to give something back to her community by purchasing some handicrafts. Trying on her clothes was one of my favourite bits  - I got a beautifully embroidered felt jacket with puffy sleeves, an incredibly heavy layered felt skirt, a straw hat, & a string of pom-poms that were strewn around my neck but would traditionally worn at the end of long braids. I got decked out in extremely bright colours because I am single - when a woman gets married she is relegated to dark, sombre shades of brown & black & grey which I found quite sad but also interesting as it clearly a reflection of the natural world where animals display colourful patterns etc in order to attract a mate.

In the evening, happily, we were able to reunite with Nick & Merc again who were also in Lake Titicaca as part of their ongoing quest to seemingly stalk me around South America - not that I’m complaining. I know I have waxed lyrical about this before but I enjoy their company so much; every time we meet we have a fantastic time, sharing stories & playing cards & laughing our asses off & I always leave in a great mood, nattering on to Roxy and/or Lucy about how cool they are & how happy I am that we have met. We traded some movies off our respective hard-drives & made plans for film nights back in London when we are all eventually back there. I honestly can’t wait to see them again.

The next day it was up at the frankly gruesome hour of 4am for the first of our two flights of the day, from Juliaca (the closest airport to Puno) to Lima, whereby we suffered through a soul-destroying 12 hour layover before boarding our night flight to Rio. At first it was quite fun because I like airports & enjoy the challenge of seeing how long I can eke out the consumption of a single overpriced muffin at an airport cafe in order to exploit their free wifi. I have also never been in an airport so close to Christmas & it was utterly teeming with people, going to & from their homes for the holidays. The novelty of the airport having worn off quite quickly I decided to kill some time watching a movie, & to make the most of a new film obtained from Nick & Merc, & in an attempt to imbue myself with some festive spirit I decided to watch Love Actually, & that’s when my mood took a sudden & unexpected nosedive & I fell head-first into a deep well of sadness that I am struggling to extricate myself from. It was all the footage of people greeting their loved ones at the airport, followed by live-action viewing of actual real life people greeting their loved ones at the actual real life airport with balloons & banners & bouquets that set me off. I felt so lonely I cried for about half an hour. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that all of my family are having a lovely time in Devon, with a beautifully decorated tree & an excitable dog & I suddenly needed a mum-hug so badly that I couldn’t stand it. We boarded our flight that thanks to time-difference saw us land at what was the equivalent of 3am & I was jet-lagged & sweaty & depressed. We eventually arrived at our hostel this morning & I have spent the day intermittently napping, fretting about money, crying & feeling generally miserable.

Here’s the thing about travelling - everyone you talk to constantly bangs on about how awesome it is that if you feel sad whilst travelling it is almost like you can’t admit t to anyone. It has been my dream for so long to see the world & I planned & I saved & I quit my job but the truth of the matter is it is exhausting, physically & emotionally, & lonely as fuck. The upsides are epic & the things I have seen & experienced fantastic but, it is also the most depressed I have felt in many years; my mental well-being does not do well with a lack of stability & although not especially exciting, my life in London was pretty fulfilling - my job wasn’t the best but I have a wonderful, supportive network of friends there & had finally achieved a balance of finding plenty of time in-between work for all the things that make me happy, like dancing & art. This trip has really made me question myself & things that I thought I knew & perhaps it was naive of me to think that travelling would automatically make me a happy person. It’s crushing to realise that even when I am seeing & experiencing wonderful things that it’s a constant effort to keep the negative thoughts at bay. And I feel guilty for even thinking these things because I don’t want to waste the opportunity that so many people would kill for, or that I have dreamed of for so long, & I certainly don’t want to look back on it & think, ‘oh yeah that was that mountain I went up when I felt fucking miserable’. But no one talks about it, which along with the separation from your friends & family, only contributes to your feelings of intense loneliness. Lucy has been a source of great comfort during these periods of sadness; I have been talking to her a lot as I really feel she truly understands what I’m going through, she said she experienced similar feelings when she was in Asia. I don’t regret coming & would still describe it as the time of my life but the truth is that travelling is an emotional rollercoaster & I am really not finding it easy. I feel like maybe to travel for this long on my first trip was perhaps a slightly overly-ambitious plan. I may have found it easier starting off with a small chunk of say, 3 months & working up from there. For this reason, I am not sad about the prospect of coming home sooner than anticipated. I can always plan & go on more trips but I want these feelings to go away, I need a break from them more than I need to continue travelling for as long as possible in this moment. I have achieved so much of what I set out to do & this makes me happy, but I truly feel like I need a break in which to restore myself. I need love & nurturing & familiarity, at least for a while before I can set off again.

As always during trying times, my mum is truly there for me & I am more grateful for her constant support than I will ever be able to truly express. Hannah also arrives tomorrow & I know it will be so great for my soul to see my best friend. Ultimately, this too shall pass & I do know that; but whenever things aren’t great it always makes being away from home so much harder. It is a real test of my mettle to get through these periods & I know in the long run it will make me a stronger & more capable person so that’s what I’m trying to focus on.