#if different fandoms do things differently and it matters

[luanna801]

I feel like a thing I wish was more generally acknowledged across fandoms is that "I don't find this character sympathetic" and "This character was not intended to be sympathetic" are obviously connected but are, ultimately, two completely different statements that may not overlap at all.

Ultimately what you think about any given character is a completely subjective issue that has no right or wrong answer. The narrative may be trying to evoke sympathy for them, and you may just feel that it flat-out was not successful in doing that. You may look the author straight in the eye and say "Nope, I see what you're trying to do, but f*ck this guy actually, he's The Worst and that's all there is to it". And no one can tell you that you're wrong for doing so.

But when it comes to picking up on what the story is trying to do, whether you ultimately think it did a good job or not, I would argue there's at least some measure of objective reality. And I feel like people sometimes end up conflating them, so you end up with these posts like "I can't believe people sympathize with this character when the story clearly just wants you to hate them!" and it's like... yeah, I think people sympathize with this character because the story is very clearly and intentionally painting them as sympathetic. I could point you at a dozen different scenes that are clearly meant to evoke sympathy for This Character. You don't have to have found any of it compelling, but at a certain point recognizing it's there is a simple matter of reading comprehension.

[kravchikfreak]

while i understand the sentiment and i too like to shake my fist at a generalized soulless crowd that embodies a hypothetical person in a vacuum but still as a creator who mostly writes/draws male characters...

takes like that really bugs me. like... idk. if you want more love for women in fandom spaces maybe spread it? and i really don't think something like "people should love women and stop loving men so much" is going to help with it

and i guess it's just a rant so it's fine but eh i'm a ranter too why not

1,5k reblogs and for what i can tell by briefly scolling through them they're all agree. and again i underatand the gist but at the same time in my arcane era i saw posts about how noncanon mlm ship got more attention than canon wlw ship all while my dashboard was filled with caitvi and i barely saw anything jayvic related (not counting the posts about how popular they are and how it's a misogyny). and i don't try to say they ain't popular or got more attention but... idk, it was literally zero efforts from me, but for some reason there were more appreciation fpr women around me than for men. and for any other fandom i was or am in

and, once again, as a person who gets easily upset when someone thinks differently than i am i get the frustration of seeing more things you don't like than things you do like out in the wild, but idk. when i was into once upon a time and the fandom massivly shipped swanqueen that i disliked (and even was in my homophobic era actually) and it was EVERYWHERE (and i wanna to emphasize that i was a homophobe and my feelings were really fragile as all homophobes' feelings are), i still mostly talked about how it's stupid to participate in ship wars cause we're all different and like different things

anyway. idk what i'm saying really. but more love for women will only be there when people who want love for women will put it out in the wild and show on their example how women in media are actually great and deserve all the attention. not when people who want more love for women would try to forbid (one way or another) others to put out there love for men

(and for whatever reason the people who actually matter to me on all my different social media platforms are mostly women-focused and i love that for me honestly)

really is bizarre the way fandoms largely do not like women at ALL. it’s been happening for ages but when you see people straight up just hating on women characters more often now (+ the general rise in misogyny) and then you come on here and everyone’s just pretending women don’t even EXIST in any media ever. it’s like that’s not much better. fandom isn’t activism but it does reveal people’s internal biases. like women being excluded, sidelined and erased in everythingggg. people will take characteristics that are compelling in a female character and give it to a man in fan content just so they don’t have to engage with a woman ever. fics, fan art, ships, etc. a hollywood produced movie/tv show won’t even sideline a woman as much as the average fandom blogger will

[ptej1980]

Common Sense is a beautiful thing….

Some of us are tired, and I totally get it. Some people in the depths of the sub fandoms “cough cough “ Jakholes! Have blinkers on and….(I am sorry if this is rude) but are kind of stupid and naive.

I like to think of myself as having a great deal of common sense. I spoke about, clarity, perspective and firm belief, but common sense is something that I feel the majority of the Lukolas possess.

When you think about common sense and the overall state of the Lukola situation it will always prevail. You don’t have to do a whole lot of research 🔬 to see the common sense in our two faves. It is what we can see with our two eyeballs 👀. It is the multitude of morsels and the evidence which far out ways uneasy and basic non-sensical nature of the adjacent narrative.

You do not have to look too far on tumblr to find all the information and justification you need to know that our Lukola are just waiting for the right time.

IMO Nic and Newts nearly launched back in October with Luke posting the Polin Oct 3rd mean girls meme, and the coordinated travel posts. Following up with a Polin selfie and paper moon. But something/someone got in the way

We know all of the major common sense factors that are for

Lukola -Pros!

Ring, 💍 Clear PDA, Polaroid, Audiobook, they are shipped by cast, crew and media, matching IG activity, 6 years besties, soulmate matching energy, chemistry on set during intamacy scenes. BN!

(When chupi posted the ring story which the did several times they used the carriage scene song)

Lukola Cons

Adjacent’s, tabloid magazines, subfandoms trolls.

Adjacent Pros

Ummm- Friendship with JD, Likes on SM, tabloid pics and articles, event attendance. Forced support from friends and family (in A’s case)

Adjacent Cons

Well clearly miserable, no PDA, pics look staged, no confirmation, removed any connections, Clearly gay.

Common sense will always prevail for me. No matter how tired of the 🐜 bullshit I get. Luke posted today a pic of Him and Yungblud, and again the difference between him and his friend and him and 🐜 is amazing.

We will probably never get the full back story and even though I am quietly curious, I don’t think we need to know. As long as Nic and Newts are together and happy ( which I think they are) that is all that matters.

[nyxi-pixie]

actually incredibly funny to me that ranpos entire thing centres on how his intelligence is not because of an ability or any other great thing, its just him. hes entirely, completely, inarguably human. and Yet, when it comes to dazai, so many people are Desperate that there just Has to be another explanation. his intelligence cant just be that hes unusual, no it must be a marker of separation, of difference so great it disallows the reality of his humanity.

[deadkaywizard]

It’s currently 4 am and I’m apparently going to be stuck being awake for a bit so here’s a thought that came to me a bit ago and hasn’t left me since

Whether they’re platonic or romantic I think Barty and Reg have one of the most important relationships in the entire marauders fandom

These two just undeniably understand each other on a level that no one else can really understand

They both have this darkness that lives within them, something that only they know how to deal with and live with

Somewhere along the way they realized that no matter how hard Evan and Pandora and Dorcas and even James, Sirius and Remus tried to understand their connection no one really could, not even James and Sirius

James and Sirius were always close, if anyone should understand their bond it would be them, but not even they do

James and Sirius are outward chaos but they handle their emotions differently than Reg and Barty who are known to lash out, who know the things they say in anger are never what they mean, who can only give each other the full brunt of their emotions because they’re so much deeper than anyone else seems to understand

They balance one another out and bear the weight of that crushing, all consuming darkness together. It’s what keeps them from completely losing their minds

Platonic or romantic these two need each other

[eexomei]

I guess that I’m not the only one but it’s so cool to see how to me personally, this interaction always seemed to carry more weight as a rare moment of vulnerability rather than an allusion to his sexuality from my point of view.

Before Tilly addresses him, Karen, Mary-Beth, and Tilly are discussing a romantic novel that, like many of its time, centers around a woman’s struggle in life and eventual success in securing financial stability, to then get it through marriage and some man that whisks them away and saves them. While Karen bluntly acknowledges the reality of the era; that it is real hard to be a woman. Which the other girls seem to agree with of course but also are less pessimistic than Karen at the moment. Tilly then sort of turns the conversation toward Arthur, his response is both vague and layered to me. Rather than a direct confession of romantic preference, it seems more like an attempt— an awkward one at that — to express something deeper about his worldview and the way he sees people. (In my opinion at least.)

Arthur, despite his hardened persona that he plays up and all his trauma, does know love in different forms. He has loved Hosea as a father, Dutch as a father as well, and Mary as a lost dream of a different life and of course her as a person. He may not be quick to admit it, but he does love some people in his life, even if he struggles to articulate it in a way that is less awkward. His phrasing is uncharacteristically thoughtful for a man who outwardly often masks his emotions behind sarcasm and indifference. He plays up the role of the sullen, heartless enforcer because it’s what the gang expects of him, what he believes he has to be in order to survive. But in this rare, quiet moment among the women that obviously is his family, he allows a glimpse of something more, due to how he opens up more easily towards women for a whole lot of reasons.

Arthur’s words seem less like a revelation about his romantic inclinations and more like an admission that, despite everything, he still believes in human goodness deep down, or at least that love is something that exists and people are worthy of. That some people — men and women — are worth loving, not necessarily in a romantic sense but just in general, maybe not even for him personally but that people in general do love and can love. That for all the cruelty he’s known, he has still found connections that matter. And while he won’t outright say it, perhaps this is as close as he’ll ever come to admitting that he is not as cold and detached as he pretends to be, in my humble opinion lol. To me, I’ve always seen it more like a figure of speech and also more so Arthur attempting to state that he believes that women are people too — due to how women was less than second class citizens in many cases back then — than anything else, while also confessing to not being as cynical and heartless he portrays himself as being.

I genuinely love seeing and discussing different views and headcanons (?) that people have I this fandom. I love all the bi Arthur content and ‘speculations’ for lack of better words, and as someone who’s bisexual myself I love the fandom representation. I personally don’t view him as being bi nor do I personally believe (doesn’t make it true just my silly view on it) that Arthur was meant to canonically be anything but straight. So, while I see this more as a expression of him letting his guard down just enough to reveal that he isn’t completely heartless, that he loves people (platonically in some cases and romantically in others) and is capable of love, that people can be worthy of love — it is very fun to see everyone’s else’s opinions and take on things such as this. :)

Also, just because I personally interpreted this as Arthur more so trying to express the fact that he doesn’t necessarily see women as lesser beings in a bit of a vulnerable and somewhat awkward way, rather than alluding to his feelings about men possibly being romantic — that doesn't mean that others can’t see it another way. <3 I saw this as a more ‘women are people’ acknowledgment (shocking revelation I know) and that love exists rather than him showing ‘signs’ that he’s not straight. Then again, it’s a neat interaction that makes the game feel alive and different interpretations of this is what keeps a fandom without any new canon content since 2018 alive for this long and I love it.

(And even if it somehow was supposed to canonically and intentionally make people interpret Arthur as bisexual by the developers, that’s wonderful, but I doubt that sadly and even then, I don’t think Arthur would openly express or rather hint at that he isn’t straight infront of a group of people like that. Because in my own headcanon where Arthur is bi, he probably suffers from some form of denial in the sense that he genuinely doesn’t really see too much difference between men and women in the aspect of them being both people, if that makes sense? It’s the reason why I see him as straight too so it’s funny, but I mean it as Arthur seeing women as people worthy of rights rather than the more normalised view at the time that women were second to men. Then again, I believe that Arthur likes women more than men, I don’t mean necessarily in a romantic manner, but that he just feels more comfortable with them due to his view of himself and persona he plays up, while simultaneously having the mindset that ‘while women are great they’re still softer and meant to protect’ etc.

Basically, I see Arthur as to have the mindset that ‘women shouldn’t be deemed less valued than men’ and ‘humans can be good or bad regardless of what gender they are’ but not necessarily ‘women are equal to men in what they provide, not worse just different’ if that makes any sense?

arthur morgan bisexual canon real and true and legitimate

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

What do you think Rook's fixation with the beastmen is all about? Is it simple curiosity? Fetishistic? Is he planning a hit?

(Reaction image in this post is used with permission from the original artist, @/anbaisai!)

Personally, I think he’s just curious but also overly enthusiastic in expressing that curiosity (and that often doesn’t go over well with his peers). This may or may not be intentionally over-the-top so others underestimate his true abilities as a huntsman/a Real Threat. It could also be Rook overcompensating for his childhood, as he claims that he used to have trouble expressing himself. Now he unabashedly parades his passion for the arts and studying beastmen, merfolk, fae, etc. I understand where he’s coming from, really 🤷‍♀️ cuz I, too, love to speculate on how the heck those fantasy races work + the finer details of how they differ from humans. If Twst could tell us more about them, I’d really appreciate it!!

I really doubt that Rook plans to harm others. The man’s capable of it for sure, but he doesn’t strike me as someone who goes out of his way to do such things. Sure, Rook may provoke his peers, but it’s typically to sate his curiosity. For example, in his own P.E. Uniform vignette, Rook purposefully implies Malleus is a monster to anger him in order to witness Malleus breathing fire. Of course, his behavior still offends his peers, and this should be acknowledged. Still, Rook's harm is also typically limited to his words and sometimes unwanted touching.

I think many in the fandom would suggest that Rook is… Very Eager/Experimental when it comes to *coughs* intimacy. However, I don’t feel comfortable discussing this, so I won’t go into extreme detail. All I’ll say on this matter is that being very fixated on something or expressing yourself in a colorful manner has other potential explanations. It’s not uncommon to see people headcanoning Rook as neurodivergent or LGBTQ+ for the same behaviors we observe in official Twst materials. (All valid takes, by the way!) Simply put, I don’t think that being Loud about your hobbies/interests means it’s something you derive “fetishistic” pleasure from it 💦 I genuinely believe Rook just has a… unique style of communication, shall we say 😂

[sirowsky]

Alright, I've said it before, but I guess it bears repeating:

Hating on someone for what they choose to wear is no different than hating on them for what they like to eat, or which religion they practice, or which sport/team they support etc, etc, etc...

I refuse to believe that Pedro wears anything he doesn't want to wear, no matter what his stylist might come up with.

Furthermore, we know that he likes to use his outfits as political statements, we've seen this many times before, and with the way things are going in the States right now, I would sooner assume that the kinky boots are his way of stabbing at the regression into persecution which the LGBTQIA+ communities are once more facing, than some stunt by his stylist to make him look ridiculous.

Because let's face it, if Pedro had been an out and proud gay or trans man, or someone known to enjoy dressing as a drag queen, this outfit wouldn't have raised anyone's brows.

So maybe, instead of getting butthurt that he isn't showing up in the outfits you want him to wear, either to make him fit into your perception of what he should be and look like, or so that you can use the pictures for your stories, fantasies, and fanart, how about you try and realize the horrible truth that IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU.

I have and will unfollow and block accounts that criticise what Pedro wears, because this is a fandom. We are fans, not critics. Just because he's a public figure doesn't mean he can't be and do the things he wants, however bad a decision it might look to you.

Grow the fuck up and let the man be who he is. Stop expecting him to be who he looks like in your mind, or go ahead and stop calling yourself his fan.

[ginette-de-gallifrey]

Question for my fellow Ao3 writers who are also on Tumblr : does putting out a post with a link to your fanfictions and your updates on them help ? Like, I don't want to put it in the face of peoples not interest in it, but also I want to discuss it with more peoples... :l

Thoughts ?

[crabsnpersimmons]

"Do your best today! I'll be waiting here when you get home, starlight~💕"

had two busy days of work outside of my cave and the only thing that kept me going was the sight of my housewife/househusband Eclipse waiting for me at home

that is, the sketch of him waiting for me to finish drawing him 😂

starring @starriegalaxy's Eclipse from her Fear Factor AU/House Husband AU

[ohhgingersnaps]

I'm seeing some frustration over fandom creatives expressing anger or distress over people feeding their work into ChatGPT. I'm not responding to OP directly because I don't want to derail their post (their intent was to provide perspective on how these models actually work, and reduce undue panic, which is all coming from a good place!), but reassurances that the addition of our work will have a negligible impact on the model (which is true at this point) does kind of miss the point? Speaking for myself, my distress is less about the practical ramifications of feeding my fic into ChatGPT, and more about the principle of someone taking my work and deliberately adding it to the dataset.

Like, I fully realize that my work is a drop in the bucket of ChatGPT's several-billion-token training set! It will not make a demonstrable practical difference in the output of the model! That doesn't change the fact that I do not want my work to be part of the set of data that the ChatGPT devs use for training.

According to their FAQ, ChatGPT can and will use user input to train itself. The terms and conditions explicitly state that they save your chats to help train and improve their models. (You can opt-out, but sharing is the default.) So if you're feeding a fic into ChatGPT, unless you've explicitly opted out, you are handing it to the ChatGPT team and giving them permission to use it for training, whether or not that was your intent.

Now, will one fic make a demonstrable difference in the output of the model? No! But as the person who spent a year and a handful of months laboring over my fic, it makes a difference to me whether my fic, specifically, is being used in the dataset. If authors are allowed to have a problem with the ChatGPT devs for scraping millions of fics without permission, they're also allowed to have a problem with folks handing their individual fics over via the chat interface.

I do want to add that if you've done this to a fic, please don't take this as me being upset with you personally! Folks are still learning new information and puzzling out what "good" vs. "bad" use is, from an ethical standpoint. (Heck, my own perspective on this is deeply based on my own subjective feelings!) And we certainly shouldn't act like one person feeding a fic into ChatGPT has the same practical negative impact, on a broad societal scale, as a team using a web crawler to scrape five billion pieces of artwork for Stable Diffusion.

The point is that fundamentally, an ethical dataset should be obtained with the consent of those providing the data. Just because it's normalized for our data to be scraped without consent doesn't make it ethical, and this is why ChatGPT gives users the option to not share data— there is actually a standardized way (robots.txt) for website servers to set policies for how bots/crawlers can interact with them, for exactly this reason— and I think fandom artists and authors are well within their rights to express a desire for opting out to be the socially-respected default within the fandom community.

[wolves-in-the-world]

the thing about eliot spencer as a character, right. the thing about him.

(and as always your mileage may vary on my analyses so if we disagree that's cool actually)

is that he is in fact a somewhat emotionally constipated idiot who is occasionally sensitive about his perceived masculinity and gets defensive about emotional intimacy around other men (largely hardison, who's much more comfortable expressing affection and embracing a softer kind of masculinity), but eliot displays enough emotional awareness and sensitivity and respect for women etc etc that anyone who's been subjected to that era of television will put on rose-tinted glasses without even looking twice.

(and he is, don't get me wrong, incredibly emotionally aware for a professionally punchy guy with enough trauma to sink the titanic. it still startles me to see.)

on top of which we have the layers and the accessories and the excellent hair with the secret braids and the way he barely has an ego and he's good with kids and protective of his team without taking it too far, and some of us never stood a fucking chance.

[one-chaotic-bee]

Here’s the thing, people always like to say that it doesn’t matter how the fandom characterizes someone because it can’t change the canon and the version of the character you like still exists. And for most media that’s true, it doesn’t matter what you think of the characters from Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or something like that, but comics are different.

Comics have been going on for so long that Dick’s birthday has gone back a day because CELESTIAL BODIES IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM have shifted so much that first day of Spring is the 20th instead of the 21st. And they will probably still be going on when our great great great grandchildren pass away. And guess what? Some of them might be comic writers and their idea of characters will probably first come from fandom long before they ever pick up a comic book, just like how it is today.

So, unlike other media, it does matter how a character is portrayed in fanon because it can, has, and will affect how that character is portrayed in canon.

Why was the Nightwing in Tom Taylor’s run portrayed as a weak and incompetent himbo? Because that’s how Tom Taylor saw him being portrayed and thought it was his actual character.

And it’s not just Dick.

Why are Jason and Harley treated like helpless victims who have never had any agency in their actions and not the complex, morally grey people that they actually are?

It’s because the fandom treats them like they are totally innocent and will even make up excuses like ‘pit madness’ (which isn’t a thing in canon) to justify every wrong thing they do. And because of this canon has started to treat them like this too.

Why is Joker portrayed as some super genius? Because the fandom thought he was and didn’t realize that the reason he was outsmarting Batman wasn’t because he had some genius plan but because he didn’t plan a thing.

Why is Barbara portrayed as never being wrong ever and being the best everything no matter what? Because that’s what the fandom thought of her. (And because we were starved of female characters for so long that we refuse to acknowledge any flaws in that character or any weaknesses, but that’s a rant for another day, one that will involve Cass and Harley in it too)

Even little things like Dick’s blood type being the universal donor were just popular headcanons before becoming canon.

It’s fine if you want to portray a character differently then they are in canon for a fic. It is, at the end of the day, your choice but there needs to be general consensus of what that character is like in canon or we will lose the actual character to the fanon version.

Hi! Sorry about this but you once said Dick was in Arkham or prison during batman RIP?? Why was he in Arkham and i wonder why nobody writes about it?

Oh you’ve hit on one of my favorite grudges, anon! LOL. Yup, Dick was captured by a society of supervillains called the Club of Villains or the Black Glove Society, who ‘checked him in’ to an Arkham under their control under a false name. This was in Batman R.I.P. which was pretty much the last Batman story BEFORE his assumed death in Final Crisis.....which means that uh....add to everything else Dick was going through at the time, that he was also just getting over having been locked up in Arkham in a straitjacket and drugged to the gills and kept foaming and raving and out of his mind for about a week, until he ultimately escaped right before one of the villains was about to give him a literal lobotomy with a pick to his forehead while he was strapped down to an examination table. 

This was all part of some very dubiously explained plan Bruce had hatched in advance in order to foil the Black Glove Society and get all his players into place, meaning that Dick literally ALLOWED himself to be captured in the first place, and stay in Arkham all this time, and only ‘pull the trigger’ on his escape at the literal last moment.....ALL because he put his absolute trust in Bruce and him knowing what the hell he’s doing when he asks stuff like this of Dick. 

(PS, this was still back in pre-Reboot continuity, so given my fixation of the day, I can’t help but point out that Dick consents to getting locked up and going undercover in prisons QUITE a lot for Bruce in that version of continuity, the same timeline as that juvie origin, which.....I’m just saying. There’s a lot of mileage to be milked out of the fact that Dick is asked to put himself in prison situations a ton without anyone checking in on how this affects the mental state of a guy whose formative years at the time included “was a model ten year old prisoner” among his traumatic experiences. 

Just like that whole period of continuity, between the early 90s to around 2010....is chock FULL of times when Dick turns himself into the cops or tries to GET himself imprisoned....as his form of penance when he feels he’s failed in various ways as a superhero. When the secret origin of your son and former sidekick is that people put him in jail and said it was where kids like him belonged, and the go to move of that son and grown up superhero whenever he fucks up or feels he’s let you down is to try and put himself in jail and say its where people like him belong....like, I don’t know how to tell you this, World’s Greatest Detective, but that’s probably not Dick in the driver’s seat at those moments....that’s the trauma, baby! 

“Kid who blames himself for his parents death and ends up in jail cuz that’s where they put bad people so they can’t hurt anyone” and who grows up making a habit of being “Man who blames himself for shit and somehow always ends up in jail where they put bad people so they can’t hurt anyone”......idk guys, I’m just really feeling like maybe there’s some kinda connection there? Almost like the one thing....in his formative years....might have had formative effects.....on forming certain patterns of behavior in Dick Grayson whenever he gets his “oh shit, I made a mistake, guess I gotta go to Hell now” on. 

Like one could almost imagine that the personal Hell Dick envisions for himself as the only suitable place of punishment he deserves....like, seems to probably looks a lot like...prison. But idk, just spitballing here. There’s barely no evidence for this. Its only happened like six times in one continuity and three in another and in the recent Titans show and also this other time and look, I’m just saying, there’s barely anything there to suggest this is A Thing with him.)

Anyway, I’ve included a couple scans of Dick’s time in Arkham, followed by one of the only images we ever got of Jason’s time in Arkham. This is where my grudge comes in, and why you’ve probably never heard about this happening to Dick:

Because fandom loooooooooooooooooves giving Dick’s traumas to Jason (as though the dude doesn’t already have enough of his own) and then for added irony bonus points....making Dick the Reason that Jason is suffering in fanfics in the same way Dick actually suffered and Jason actually didn’t.

Its like. Symbolism or something. See, cuz parts of fandom hate Dick and Dick being Dick is literally the only reason we’ve ever gotten for why, since.....pretty much all of the reasons people give for hating Dick are....things that literally never happened or that worse, happened TO Dick. See? Symbolism!

Or maybe its stupidity. Idk. I forget which. Its definitely one or the other though.

But like, yeah. So Batman R.I.P. happened, and then Final Crisis happened, and then Battle for the Cowl happened, and then Morrison’s Shitastic Adventures In Writing Batman and Robin Shittily happened, and then Bruce came back and Batman Incorporated happened, and then a few dozen stories happened where Dick locked Jason up in Arkham a few cells down from the Joker and threw away the key while Bruce was gone, and also in a bunch he consented to Jason getting shock therapy treatment or put on drugs and in others he just found out way too late that all of this happened to Jason because of Dick putting him in there and never checking up on him because he doesn’t care about Jason and etc etc, and then a bunch more people decided that they really hated Dick Grayson because wow how fucked up to do that to your brother who was literally murdered by the guy, right?

Except....check it out.

That order of events is important, because add in certain key contextual events, and suddenly....things look.....a bit different.

Batman R.I.P. happens (Dick spends the tail end of it locked up in Arkham, drugged, in a straitjacket, strapped down and almost lobotomized. Weirdly, like, almost all the things that fanfics listed as happening to Jason in the year he was at Arkham? All literally things that happened to Dick in a handful of pages in the few days he was at Arkham. With nary a fic about all the things that actually did happen to Dick while he was in Arkham because he consented to doing this even knowing what could happen because Bruce said its what he needed and Dick said thats all the reason he needed. But whatever. We’re Batfandom. We’re here for the angst. Like the angst of voluntarily subjecting yourself to an experience straight out of your worst nightmares and previous greatest traumas, just so you can be where your family needs you to be to win the day, with no thought to how much this will suck or could go wrong and no need for a thank you for putting yourself through this - hey, no, not like that angst, you tricked us, that’s Dick angst! Eww!)

Ahem. Anyway.

Then Final Crisis happens. Bruce dies in that ‘looked like he was incinerated to ash but actually got booted back to the Stone Age by Darkseid’s laser beam eyes which really, when you think about it, should’ve been everyone’s first guess and thus there’s no excuse for Dick not believing Tim when he said no that’s definitely what happened’ kinda way. 

(We are all, of course, expected to disregard the fact that Tim never actually said this or proposed any actual theory FOR Dick to disbelieve and the sum total of their opposing views on Bruce’s death was Tim saying “I refuse to accept Bruce is gone” this one time before he even HAD a theory that Bruce was definitely alive and here’s why, and to which Dick said “yeah I get that, its why I’m in therapy, 10/10 would recommend” before Tim skedaddled from Gotham for his fact-finding world tour about which he shared no facts he found, at least not before the ‘grand reveal’ which Dick literally believed the second Tim said ‘hey btw Bruce is alive’ OH WAIT, DID I PUT MY TIM ARKHAM RANT IN MY DICK ARKHAM RANT POST OMG THAT’S SO AWKWARD UGH STAY IN YOUR LANE, TIM ARKHAM RANT, THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU).

So Batman R.I.P. happened, then Final Crisis happened, and then Battle For the Cowl happened. To be perfectly one hundred percent clear, I pretty much hate all the writing in the Batbooks from this point forward until awhile after Bruce returned, and one of the prime reasons for that hate is how JASON is written. I do not like this Jason, not because I don’t love his character, but because I DO. But this Jason was a total rage monster with NO morals, NO scruples, NO line he wouldn’t cross....which isn’t Jason. The Jason I stand will cross lines the others won’t, without hesitation, but he’s still defined JUST as much by the lines he still WON’T cross as the ones he will. This Jason basically HAS no lines. He’ll willingly hurt children, and has no problem shooting Damian in the chest as a distraction, and gloats about trying to kill Tim a second time here. Also, he dramatically drops himself off a moving train and possibly falls to his death rather than take the hand extended to him by Dick, the brother who has....trauma about watching his family fall to their deaths but whatever that’s probably a coincidence, must be, nobody else ever mentions it.

But also of significance during Battle for the Cowl is.....Arkham Asylum blows up. On the page. The whole thing. A bunch of villains engineer an escape and this all culminates IN THE ENTIRE ASYLUM BEING BLOWN UP AND RAZED TO THE GROUND. ITS GONE. IT DIED. IT DEAD.

A moment of silence for Arkham the First.

Later, Jason returns during Dick and Damian’s run as Batman and Robin, and he’s still all about sowing chaos everywhere he can and fucking with his brothers just because and its like Morrison was trying to play to their favorite theme about people becoming the guises they put on and they were doing their usual meta meta commentary about how Jason naming himself the Red Hood in an attempt to appropriate something that was once his murderer’s and make it his was ironically always in Morrison’s mind doomed to inevitably turn him into the person he ended up emulating despite his initial intentions BUT WHATEVER, ITS NOT LIKE THAT’S KINDA MORRISON’S WHOLE SHTICK AND ALL YOU NEED RIGHT THERE TO REFUTE THEIR VERSION OF JASON AS CRAP INSTEAD OF DEFEND IT LOLOL.

So this Jason clashes with Dick and Damian repeatedly. He takes on a teenage sidekick despite the fact that literally every other version of Jason is in large part driven by his belief that there should be no kid or teenage sidekicks. He kidnaps Dick and Damian and locks them up in front of a video livestream so that everyone can see their attempts to escape - which they’ll only be able to do by revealing their secret identities - and this is how Jason will finally prove he was right to Bruce once and for all....despite the fact that no other version of Jason has ever tried to play the ‘reveal all the Batfam’s secrets and burn all their IDs’ card because that would render them all virtually unable to operate and thus help people, and Jason’s thing has never actually been that he doesn’t think the Batfam don’t do ANY good, its that he believes they don’t do ENOUGH good by not being willing to cross certain lines. He’s never wanted to SIDELINE them purely to prove his way is right, he wants to prove to them he’s right so that they’ll JOIN him in doing it ‘the right way.’ Hell, he’s never been about PROVING he’s right, period....he cares about BRUCE believing he’s right, but just being right in principle? JASON DOESN’T CARE. He’s a grandstanding asshole on main, but his entire ethos is about actions mattering more than easily said sentiments not actually backed up in any actionable way.....NONE of which is in keeping with a full villain version of him with a rationale and agenda that is one hundred percent just about proving abstract points for the sake of vigilante debate team or whatever. 

Also, Bruce is still believed dead and its hard to prove things to a dead man, which Jason of all people would know. Since like, he also has died. Or so I’m told.

BUT AGAIN, WHY JUST REFUTE THIS VERSION OF JASON AS BEING OOC AND SUCKING WHEN INSTEAD WE CAN MAKE IT ALL ABOUT HATING DICK LOLOL.

Anyway. So then Dick and Damian finally beat Jason and leave him with the cops to be locked up.....in what turns out to be Arkham.

Which is interesting, see.

BECAUSE DIDN’T ARKHAM JUST GET BLOWED UP A FEW MONTHS AGO?

Well yes. Yes in fact it did. So what is this Arkham Jason gets locked up in?

That would be the Arkham that not long after BFTC, was rebuilt from the ground up.....by none other than Wayne Enterprises.

Who is in charge of Wayne Enterprises thanks to Bruce being believed dead? Why, that would be Dick Grayson. Who has more reason than anyone to be aware of Arkham’s ineffectiveness and its tendency to contribute to the revolving door of villains that go in and out of it, rather than be of any help? That would also probably be Dick, the guy who has been fighting those same villains since he was a kid. And who also LITERALLY JUST HAD A FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE WITH BEING LOCKED UP AND ALMOST LOBOTOMIZED BY EVIL-DOERS RUN AMOK WITH NO SUPERVISION IN THE ASYLUM, NOT EVEN A YEAR AGO?

Also...Dick Grayson.

So when we find out that Dick was in fact the reason that Jason was put in Arkham instead of general prison population elsewhere, which we do indeed find out - y’see, when Bruce comes back and wants to have Jason moved to general prison population at Jason’s request, the literal first thing out of Dick’s mouth is “but he won’t be safe there!” - well, fandom had two options at this point:

1) They could assume the absolute worst of Dick and write him as a callous, neglectful, insensitive, oblivious jerk who threw Jason to the wolves and never once looked back, until it was made clear to him by people who actually cared about Jason what a horrible thing he’d done and he - for the first time since he’d done this - actually thought thoughts and realized he’d put Jason in the worst place he possibly could, he’s a monster, he should probably just go to Hell right now.

OR

2) They could connect the not terribly far apart dots and assume that Dick Grayson, who had Arkham rebuilt with Wayne Enterprise funding, most likely to do all that he could to ensure that it was done WELL and with SAFEGUARDS and had at least a CHANCE of being effective in its stated pursuits...as well as of course now being in a position to have inside access to the asylum and keep aware of what was going on in there.....well perhaps this dude was like “hey Self, so the brother who displays absolutely no remorse about trying to kill our two other brothers two times and counting, and who even now is laughing about the next time he’s going to try, well....he’s not really a liar, so he probably is going to try again, and seeing as how I’m not really a fan of that, and that for some bizarre reason just saying ‘Jason plz dont kill our brothers though' isn’t getting through to Jason, who keeps insisting 'no I gotta tho, they suck and I hate them so I gotta’.......

Well. There’s noooooooooooot really a whole lot of options there other than: lock Jason up so he can’t kill our brothers and/or other people, or....don’t lock Jason up, and he goes around killing our brothers and/or other people.”

Anyway.

Who wants to guess which option most of fandom picked? 

And for the bonus round, who wants to take a crack at answering “Just spitballing here, but speaking totally hypothetically.....COULD the sheer volume of fans who seem to view Dick as a callous, neglectful, insensitive oblivious jerk have anything to do with how many of them acknowledge they only entered the fandom via fanfic rather than the comics....as well as the teeny, tiny, so negligible-its-hardly-worth-mentioning POSSIBILITY that maybe the reason so many hold this view of Dick is because of how many fics just.....write him that way in order to make tropes like “Dick threw Jason in Arkham” plausible? And then said fans just....neeeeever figure there’s any need to fact-check anything here, even if this is what they’re going to base their entire definitive view of Dick’s character on, to the point of being willing to wade into any and all Dick-centric posts or fics to argue that no, Dick IS the kind of insensitive, brother-hating asshole who would and DID lock his brother up and throw away the key?”

Sigh.

If only there was SOME possible explanation for why so many Dick Grayson fans have gripes about fanon and various popular fanfic takes on him, even though everyone knows fanfic’s a free country and people can do anything they want with the characters and you can’t get mad. Like, imagine if there was a line called “cause and effect” drawn between what some people do or write and various perceptions, reactions or discourses other people have that mirror the specific things written by that first group.....no, no, I’m sorry, its too fantastic, too absurd, I sound hysterical. Please forgive me. I could be drunk.

But whatevs.

Let’s get back to CANON. 

So yeah, maybe there is an element of being somewhat justified when saying ‘hey dude, locking up your brother isn’t ideal brotherly behavior,’ but I kinda gotta say that Tim and Damian would also not be giving out any Brother of the Year awards if Dick had just let Jason go and two weeks later, Jason showed up again to be all “Hey kids, guess what, its MURDER TIME”.....just like he was promising he would. Right there. To their faces. 

So call me a biased Dick Grayson stan, but I do side with him on this one, sorry. At least with the version of Jason that he helped lock up......aka the one with no scruples, no boundaries, no way to appeal to him whatsoever - at least not that Dick hadn’t already tried. 

(Because that also doesn’t get mentioned in stories about this time, weirdly. Locking up Jason wasn’t Dick’s go-to move, it was more like.....last option after he’d exhausted a shit ton of other options and was exhausted and pretty sure that next time he and Jason clashed he would like. Die maybe.)

Anyway. So now the other interesting part of all this comes awhile later in Dick and Damian’s Batman and Robin run. Specifically the end of it when Bruce comes back. See, when Bruce comes back, he checks in on Jason in Arkham. Where Jason’s just chilling. Bored.

Yes. Bored. That is the canon of Jason’s time in Arkham. HE’S BORED. 

All he does in there, he says, is do these mandatory psych evaluations they make him do and then just like...reads in his cell. That’s it. There’s no drugging. No electroshock. No one proposing lobotomies. No straitjackets of any kind, not even the kinky. No. The terrible, awful place where that DICK of a brother of his had had him locked up.....was treating him humanely and giving him no cause to object or complain other than boredom....which was also his stated reason to Bruce, as to why he wanted to be transferred to gen pop. 

(The unstated reason turning out to be that once there, he could enact an escape plan which involved murdering everyone that ate food that day, yes, even the not-so-bad criminals or people who were falsely convicted HMMM SOUNDS LIKE JASON ALRIGHT).

So yeah. Jason was completely and totally FINE the entire time he was in Arkham. The place Dick pulled strings to have him committed to, instead of him ending up in prison. 

(Because once again, it also gets conveniently left out that technically it was the cops that sent Jason to Arkham, given that it was the cops that arrested Jason right there on the scene after Jason lost his last fight with Dick, and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve always been SUPER curious what people figure Dick was SUPPOSED to say when the cops said "okay we’re going to cuff the guy who was just loudly and publicly monologuing about all the murders he’s done and all the murders he would still like to do and all the murders he’s going to go do first thing after he’s done defeating Batman. And then we’ll be taking him to jail on account of.....all...the murdering and also the confessing and the avowed proclamations to keep doing all the murder?” Like, what compelling counterpoint was Dick supposed to offer in that moment, and also, why should he and no, “but Jason’s my beloved little blorbo” is not what we’re looking for at the moment, can you provide an equally compelling alternative defense please.)

But anyway, the cops went to haul Jason off to jail, where Dick felt he wouldn’t be safe cuz of all the murder and stuff and also because of that time Jason was a crime lord that pissed off every other crime lord and gang in Gotham while shouting hahaha come at me bitches....(Ugh, Dick’s such a worrywart)....and thus its not even that Jason only ended up in Arkham instead of some other alternative that would have been much BETTER for him because Dick just didn’t fucking care about his brother.....its the complete opposite! Jason only ended up in Arkham instead of some other alternative that would have been much WORSE for him BECAUSE Dick cared about what happened to his brother, even despite various attempted fratricides (plural! note the plural!) AND after Jason made destroying Dick and everything he stands for his literal MISSION STATEMENT and then BRAGGED about it on NATIONAL TELEVISION.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but considering allllllllll the shit fandom holds against Dick on his various brothers’ behalves (most of it made up, like.....this whole locked him up next to the Joker thing).....

Literally what the hell do Jason and the others have to do before DICK is allowed to hold a fucking grudge, let alone just.....make non-optimal choices in situations largely of Jason’s own making that he left Dick with extremely limited options to choose when dealing with the fallout?

But yeah.

As terrible as “Dick threw Jason in Arkham” sounds, the REALITY of it was Dick had his one brother who kept vowing to kill all his other brothers locked up in the ONE facility Dick could guarantee himself easy access to and keep a close eye on, to make sure Jason was being kept locked up and literally nothing else was being done to him - no experiments, no weird stuff, not even making him draw for therapy time if Jason didn’t want to.

I know. WHAT AN ASSHOLE, huh?

And then we have out of Dick’s own mouth the concern for Jason’s safety and assumption he wouldn’t be safe in a regular prison, as like......literal proof that he’d pulled the strings he did with Jason’s safety in mind. He couldn’t let Jason go free while Jason was actively trying to play Murder Tag with his other little brothers, but that doesn’t and didn’t ever mean that Dick didn’t care about Jason or just acted callously and without thought.

But somehow, all the fics from and about that period of time are unanimous: Dick had his poor defenseless brother thrown in ARKHAM when Jason has done nothing wrong ever okay so maybe there were a couple things but certainly nothing that deserved being thrown in ARKHAM where he was drugged and shocked and tortured and could hear the JOKER laughing at him from just a few doors down and he was terrified every single day and Dick didn’t come and see him even once because he’s a terrible person who never loved Jason.

And if all the fics say it, well it must be what happened, lol. Or else its just like, peoples’ headcanons. Of what COULD have happened. 

Which is true, I guess.

All of that COULD have happened. If Dick.....only did it because he’s a terrible person who never loved Jason and Jason spent his whole time drugged and tortured and terrified of the Joker, who also could definitely have been a few doors down from Jason the whole time (if he wasn’t the primary antagonist for Dick and Damian at the same time). You don’t know!

And if, y’know....all of this hadn’t happened in the same continuity where it was still very much A Thing that Dick most definitely did beat the Joker to death on account of he murdered Jason. Who Dick did care about, allegedly, as he’s not in the habit of going around murdering anyone who kills people he’s just ‘eh’ or kinda so-so about.

But whatevs! Fanfic was clear: Dick is the worst and he has no idea the pain and suffering he inflicted on poor Jason who was unjustly accused of trying to murder his brothers, and ugh, if only Dick knew what it felt like to be locked up in Arkham and drugged and tortured and almost lobotomized, maybe THEN he’d have compassion for what hypothetically could have happened to Jason if literally everything that happened in canon didn’t actually happen.

Me: Stares at the camera like he’s on the Office, and presents the pages I mentioned including earlier:

DICK IN ARKHAM:

JASON IN ARKHAM

And then Jason immediately took advantage of the prison transfer to stage a break-out that only required loosing poison into the food supply to create a massive distraction and oh yeah killed 88 other inmates whether they were in there for murder or possession or who knows and who cares - certainly not Jason. Cuz that wouldn’t be out of character for him or anything.

But again....WHY BLAME JASON’S SHITTY WRITING FOR THIS WHEN WE CAN ALL BLAME DICK INSTEAD AMIRIGHT GUYS?

Yes. Dick, that utter CAD, for the mere crime of repeatedly trying to murder his brothers and his repeated vow to keep doing it, locked Jason up in a place where he had little time to do anything BUT THINK.

But there you have it! That time Dick was in Arkham for a few days of drugged up straitjacket fun with an almost lobotomy for the grand finale, and that time Jason was in Arkham for months of thinking about how he was going to do all the murdering as soon as his asshole brother wasn’t keeping him locked up and unable to murder people anymore.

LOLOLOL but bonus points if anyone can find even a SINGLE fic about that experience of Dick’s or if all the drugging and experimenting and electroshocking is just in fics about Jason suffering because Dick doesn’t care about him and never even thought once about what could happen to him in jail or in Arkham.

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

The fans: Ugh Sonic was just so preachy. I mean obviously he's supposed to be the good guy, so any uncomfortableness I feel here and any way I feel like Sonic's choices are framed as being why some other people have shitty lives is just bad writing because he is obviously supposed to be right always, but this characterization makes no sense. Isn't he right for the things he did?

Ian Flynn, using Kitsunami to say the (barely even at this point) quiet part even louder: Hey it's almost like ever since the Mr. Tinker event we've been purposely running with the critique of Sonic as being more selfish than he appears. Sonic is upholding a system of Eggman v Sonic that currently benefits him and shuts down talk of how to improve the current system because he likes his own personal enjoyment and he's attached enough to Eggman that he'd rather Eggman pretend to be a good person than be stuck in prison for life. He doesn't even quite practice what he preaches. We are trying to show that the current hero v villain system and Sonic's recklessness currently affects some people poorly and that Sonic isn't a perfect hero.

[theyarebothgunshot]

you know, at the end of the day, it comes down to this: these two grown ass men who had a lot of money, decided to be roommates. on purpose. for multiple years. that is not normal boy bestie behavior for actors in their 30s/40s who could definitely afford to live alone.

[neunhofferart]

Howdy, Heidi! You said that some fans picked up things that were done on accident… Were there more scenes like that? Also, were there scenes that you guys made on purpose but fans didn’t pick up / were aware of them? In shipping terms (hihi) and in general terms. Thanks!

I think in every type of media you will inevitably see versions of 'authorial' intent vs audience interpretation that overlap and differ from each other in many ways. (Authorial intent in quotes because in collaborative mediums like film and animation every single person on the pipeline who touches the work probably has a slightly different personal interpretation they're contributing to the final work, even under someone like a showrunner or a director).

Humans are smart and it's in our nature to look for connections and find explainations to questions, so most of the time if someone is putting something down, someone is going to pick it up, so to speak, and a lot of things ARE on purpose.

But this same phenomenon can also lead to us seeing connections in places that even the 'authors' might not have originally thought of while creating the work, and I think that can be pretty neat actually! I don't necessarily think reading alternate interpretations of works is wrong-- it can be very healthy to explore multiple reads of a narrative or a character/character dynamic. On Chaos Theory there were definitely times when we were like 'fans are probably gonna ship this even if it's not the text' haha. Sometimes fans latch onto headcanons you really have no control over. Sometimes things were animated slightly differently from how they were conceived (which is also a natural part of things).

But yes, sometimes I have seen a few other things that were interpreted in slightly different ways from how they were directed or written verbally, but I'm personally of the opinion that it's more fun to leave some things visual and open to a little interpretation rather than beating the words over the audience's head and having the characters constantly announcing 'I'm feeling this because of this!' And going 'this is the only way to interpret the show and the characters and if you don't you're wrong!'

It's usually not a huge deal. I think even as we were working sometimes I'd make connections to myself that weren't necessarily spelled out to us and go 'oh, this is a throughline for this character actually!'

Like for example- if I remember correctly, the original direction behind how Kenji reacted to Ben's apparent death was that it was supposed to the first time he'd ever seen someone he really KNEW seemingly die right front of him, and being unable to do anything about it deeply affected him. Ben is a very important turning point in his character development regardless of which way you read it.

And I think this is actually something that just continued to stack onto his character throughout both shows whenever any of his friends lives are seriously in danger. In Camp when he's still unable to do anything but comfort Sammy while she's poisoned, to deciding it's too dangerous not to trade Wu's laptop for Brooklynn, to eventually throwing himself between the spinosaurus his dad is about to kill Darius with and choosing his friends over his own father and being willing to die with/for them... and then in Chaos Theory it kind of reboots all over again with Brooklynn dying and then his dad dying right in front of him, and his complex of not wanting to be useless and trying to do whatever he can at the expense of even himself to keep the loved ones he has left safe is kicked into overdrive.

I think there are a lot of things like that where the intent is not always verbally spelled out, but the more important thing is that it's still (hopefully) making you feel something.