#just flawed like everyone else

[onebizarrekai]

basement gang activity…

[bigskydreaming]

Imagine looking at a character whose entire premise is that in every stage of his life, he's made every version of himself into someone that inspires people to such a degree that EVERY SINGLE VERSION OF HIM has people wanting to literally follow in his footsteps in some way or another.....

And coming to the conclusion that like.....the most important things about him are the sum of all his trappings. His entirely homemade developed from scratch could not exist if not for what he already was and brought with him BEFORE crafting this newest version of himself trappings, with his greatest trait throughout all of it being his adaptability; his ability and willingness to roll with the punches and not try to simply weather any opposition or changes to his life but instead reshape himself as needed to better fit INTO whatever new shape his life and the world around him takes. All while managing to carry the most innate, fundamental and necessary aspects of himself from one version to the next. Thus every single version of himself is different but simultaneously every single version of himself is also undeniably the same person.

The strength of this character, to me, will always be that he can be so many versions of himself, he can become so many things, all without ever actually losing or discarding any of the aspects of himself he considers most essential, the things he's not willing to lose or give up just to keep going. Finding that road not taken by most, usually because most never even think to look for it as an option. But one that he's always able to find because the one trick he's mastered in his tumultuous life is threading that needle of not just digging in his heels in an unproductive way but rather being selective about when and where he makes a stand and decides "this is not a thing I'm willing to compromise about" but here are places and ways I can and will change and evolve and adapt in order to make it possible for me to hold onto these parts and keep them as they are.

And that's why its always so mind-boggling to me that so many writers can't seem to think of anything else to do with Dick Grayson other than invent some new reason for him to just....not be that person, or to like just take the character whose most basic fundamental trait he's NOT about to compromise on is willingly giving up his spot in the driver's seat of his own life.....and make him just a passenger in his own life and stories.

Dick Grayson at age nine....at age nineteen...at age twenty nine....the one core thread running through all versions of him is the only way he's standing back and letting you call the shots for him or putting him on the sidelines in some way is over his dead body.

HOW he goes about that, what that looks like, who he becomes and what aspects of himself he plays up at some times and what traits he lets fall by the wayside at other times when they offer less in service to his primary goal here....that changes constantly. He changes constantly.

But those changes are almost always (or at least they used to be/should be IN MY OPINION) made with the intention of keeping certain things about him or his life as consistent as possible.

That's the duality of Dick Grayson that I'm here for. The inherent contradiction of him that COULD allow for endless conflict and breaking new narrative ground in all sorts of ways if mined properly:

His eternal willingness to compromise....but only ever in pursuit of doubling down on the ways he's not willing to compromise.

Forever walking that tightrope in ways that only a kid born and raised in a circus could ever hope to.

[redr0sewrites]

i will forever defend these two- NOT to start discourse but they are both so heavily mischaracterized by the fandom its INSANE like omg yes they are flawed but they are also trying their best PLEASE leave them alone 🙏🙏🙏

as usual im yapping in the tags if anyone cares

[lizzieraindrops]

You know what, I figured out why we're having so many errors in Destiny 2 now. It's because with the addition of Micah-10, we've finally reached a critical mass of women with drop dead gorgeous voices, and the game simply can't handle it anymore. It's like Telesto. Too powerful. If they'd actually put Ikora Rey in a rendered cutscene for more than 5 seconds it would have shut down the servers for good

[tadfools]

I don’t want to say this where this comment was added because while it was rb’ed from me, the root post isn’t mine and I don’t want to drag op in a circus tent. Do we really need to put homophobic on the highest shelf up from the tik tok folks?

This is about Kethric and ????? Homophobic coded??? Statistically and logically speaking, there are going to be queer people that you do not get along with and that you don't like in real life. That's just the way people are. And it's not because we're queer, it's because we're human

Kethric doesn’t hate Aylin because she’s a lesbian. He despises her because she is the child of Selûna, because he believes that she corrupted Isobel - not with queer cooties but with the love of a goddess who he felt betrayed him

If Aylin was a man, the hatred would not be diluted at all

[epickiya722]

I know what these last few chapters have taught me about BNHA...

Blocking people is useful! 😐

[beneathsilverstars]

idk it sounds reasonable to me for a teenager to run away bc they didn't want to eat their veggies!

one hopes that by the later stages of childhood a parent will have figured out which veggies and preparation styles work for the kid, and the kid will have resigned themself to what they do and don't have to eat according to their parents, and it's all settled into an equilibrium instead of a daily fight. and hopefully as a teen your palette is expanding and you're even willing to eat more veggies then you did as a child.

however, if the kid is extra picky and stubborn, and the parent is extra determined to make sure they eat a good variety (or just eat whatever the parent prepared no matter what it is), it could absolutely continue to be a regularly-repeated fight. and if something is a continued point of contention throughout childhood then it absolutely makes sense for a teen to go FUCK this, i am nearly an ADULT i am done being told to eat my veggies i am gonna prove my independence and make them realize i don't have to just sit there and let them boss me around!!

like, the childishness of the fight is exactly why a teen would run away about it.

[werewolf-cuddles]

Me, after seeing Joker 2: Well, that was pretty neat. Not as good as the first one, but that was always going to be a tough act to follow, and I can't really say I didn't enjoy this one. I wonder what everyone else thinks...

...

Oh god damn it, not again.

[raayllum]

Callum really just says "Is anyone going to love and admire Rayla?" and then not wait for an answer.

[mars-ipan]

Mars, you have a lot more patience than I would at this point gdhfkjgdsfg. If you'll allow me to choose violence for a second:

-

Hi anon! Did you know you can engage with other people without interpreting every word they use in the worst way possible, making a million assumptions about their background and prescribing opinions to them they've explicitly told you they don't have?

I don't even disagree with all of those rebuttals, but if you want people to engage in discussions with you you have to treat them like human beings, not your opposition in a court case. What are you expecting to get back when you act like this? About nonexistent fingers in his ass guy?

You should at least have got off anon and owned what you said- unless you're using anon to block evade, in which case you should consider respecting people's boundaries.

:D waow…. feeling very cared for in this chili’s tonight

[bambiraptorx]

I know that logically Draxum probably got away with making the mutagen and oozequitos because he was very careful about hiding his research and whatnot, but the much funnier explanation is that he's already so weird that when he rolled up to an academic conference two months after his lab exploded the first time with his 200 page paper on how he's going to bioengineer mosquitos to be the size of his hand (without giving a single reason as to why he wants to do this), the most he was met with was maybe a few raised eyebrows and a couple people wondering how he still gets grant money

[sukibenders]

Look, I enjoy the Targaryens as much as the next person and think that their house, their family mess, all of it is very interesting. I want a dragon so bad and they are one of the reasons, I get it. But, on the same hand, it gets annoying when people say/act like they are the only interesting house within ASOIAF (this rhetoric is mainly on Twitter, from what I've seen) and it primarily has to do with them having dragons (to which, for a time many Targaryens didn't have after the dance and until Daenerys came into the picture). Look, having dragons is cool and all, but if that's all that makes a house interesting then maybe that house is boring. And, could be just me, but by saying that I feel like it's lowkey disrespecting all the work GRRM put into the other houses and their characters. If the Targaryens are your favorite that's fine, but there's no need to act like the lore behind other houses also isn't just as important. I'm new to this fandom, but there are so many aspects that have pulled me in and it's sad that people ignore it just because it's not a part of one particular house.

[scruncheduppaper]

i love stanford pines can we please get an amen in the chat

[napping-sapphic]

pride month is SO funny to me like absolutely nothing dramatically changes with the way i look or act but for some reason my brain is CONVINCED that the chances of a random stranger woman just seeing me and asking me out on the spot are SO much higher when they really truly are not

[lukeskqwalker]

chewing on thoughts about wyll and agency. In his own storyline, he's written as a bit more passive than other characters are. you can often choose lines that are essentially sitting back and letting X companion take over for their personal storylines, but with wyll it's like you talk About Him with him right there. this kind of thing is physically represented when mizora shows up for the first time and quite literally tugs on his leash. In act two, she says "ask wyll about X, I've loosened his tongue for you" which grossed me out SO much. wyll doesn't get the luxury of autonomy. which is why it's FASCINATING that HE'S the one who can leave based off of your choices no matter how high of a relationship you have. wyll is able to stand up for what is right and good, but not for himself, which just leaves me wondering what that means for how he sees himself.

[altocat]

Okay. I feel like I have to say this because I saw this argument earlier. Zack and Sephiroth WERE friends. They were friends caught up in a strained, stressful situation beyond their control. With this said, there's some understandable tension between them during the game. But Zack is NOT cruel to Sephiroth during CC, nor is he at any point responsible for Sephiroth's trauma or actions. When Zack gets annoyed at Sephiroth during the story, there are VALID reasons for him feeling this way. And, moreover, Sephiroth is not the ONLY victim of CC compared to the OCEAN OF TRAUMA Zack experiences.

For starters, Sephiroth is technically dumping all his responsibilities onto Zack, causing him to bear the emotional burden. Sephiroth is also aloof and not always communicative. Zack was mad at him in Junon because Sephiroth was not returning his calls. Zack being pissed at Sephiroth because of Nibelheim? He just murdered a ton of civilians there's realistically no way you can be nice and gentle with someone after that. Zack not checking in on Sephiroth? Well he actually MIGHT have been. How else does he know what Sephiroth is doing in there? How does Cloud have memories of Sephiroth telling him to go away? Zack likely DID express concern for Sephiroth's wellbeing and WAS rebuffed. Zack even expresses concern at the Nibelheim reactor by trying to physically comfort Sephiroth, only for SEPHIROTH to push him away. Zack was also the one telling Genesis to shut the hell up because he could see that Sephiroth was getting upset. Zack DOES care and DOES emphasize with Sephiroth. The game just isn't dwelling on it.

Sephiroth is not the only person in pain during CC. I think Zack had to deal with the MOST shit since he's the one who had to kill Angeal. He got to watch Genesis seemingly die in front of him. I think Zack has MORE THAN A FEW valid reasons for being occasionally upset and angry at Sephiroth. But even AFTER what Sephiroth did in Nibelheim, Zack still chooses to honor him at the end. Sephiroth is shown in Zack's memories of people he loves during his last stand. AND Zack stands in Sephiroth's place when he fulfills Genesis' wish to share the apples. In Opera Omnia, Zack is very clearly upset with what happened with Sephiroth, and doesn't seem to be able to truly hate him. And Sephiroth killed innocent people and tried to destroy the world. I think if Zack can still pity Sephiroth afterwards, it wasn't just an unempathetic relationship.

Also, and this is something that the game tries to convey but doesn't do a good enough job, Sephiroth and Zack spend pretty much 2 years in each other's company. The DMW cutscenes explore this idea as it shows them training together. What you are seeing are only a handful of moments in what is otherwise a period of them actually befriending each other and forming enough of a bond for Sephiroth to have grown some level of fondness for him. Nomura himself has said that Sephiroth really trusts Zack, and appreciates that Zack treats him like a human being and not a hero. He LIKES that Zack calls him out, likes that Zack challenges him. He is THANKFUL for that.

Crisis Core is a flawed game. But Sephiroth is not the only victim or the only one suffering throughout. Genesis and Angeal suffered. And god, Zack MORE than suffered. And no one was nice to HIM throughout. No one cares about HIS mental health. No one gives HIM special treatment. He has to kill his friends and deal with it. And then he dies. I love Sephiroth, you all know that. But part of loving the character is accepting the very real truth that he is STILL a villain and that he is NOT the center of suffering. His pain does NOT invalidate the pain of others.

Anyway, Zack and Sephiroth were still friends despite all this. They weren't as close as they could have been, but they were. It was a relationship with occasional bitterness, drama, and heartache, but they were still good enough friends for it to count. But we need to take into account that Zack is NOT to blame for anything related to Sephiroth's pain and actions. If anything, he is completely blameless.