#like characters are supposed to do

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[bigskycastle]

knights and wizards for hw

[technically-human]

Bisexual crisis Crystal edition

[cosmicredcadet]

"Why is all aspec representation in media AROACE rep?" and is the aroace rep in the room with us right now?

[egophiliac]

YOU MANIFESTED THE TWEEL CARDS CONGRATS

YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYBODY!

seriously though I was probably like. 60-80% thinking we'd get at least one tweel for chapter 10. but I was NOT expecting it so soon! both of 'em! in August! a shame we're not getting a Coral Sea event after all...but I guess I can be resigned to that and ALSO excited for getting shiny sparkly glowing(!!!!) mertwins along with Azul fighting his inner demons and going right for the eyes! AHHHH I CAN'T WAIT

(also heeeey I recognize that rowboat... 👀)

[cry-ptidd]

"Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!"

Lucy Westenra 🦇🪦

[mx-anthropy]

I saw a few people saying don't trust mech repair shops that are clean, and that you gotta go to the ones that are dirty and have crap everywhere 'cause they'll do a proper job and fix your rig cheaper and better.

While I agree in general, it's an even better sign if that shop has that *one* bay and workbench area that is conspicuously clean. Every good workshop has *that bay*.

That's the bay for when they need to go cleanroom on something. Pulling and refurbishing laser arrays, injection pumps, etc. Manually recalibrating gyros. Re-valving joint dampers. Fabbing up "custom" bracketry to fit that aftermarket heat exchanger that's *supposed* to be a direct bolt on OE style replacement and you just *know* it's not going to be that simple cause it never is, but the efficiency is so much better than the factory crap and who the hell wants to pay for a new genuine exchanger anyway, if you can even get one?

The number of absolute cowboy techs I've seen that think that just because they've done a bunch of work on their pa's agricultural mechs for years, they know everything there is to know about mech internals, strip down and reassemble a combat-rated set of hand actuators literally just on the god damned shop floor, only to wonder why all the hydraulics piss fluid out as soon as they run it through a test cycle. They might *look* the same as pappy's mech actuators, but they have way tighter tolerances and they run *way* thinner fluids in them. You get so much as a nick in the sealing surface of one of those rods and it's not gonna seal again. And before any goobers come for me saying "JuSt RuN tHiCkEr OiL" if you put anything thicker than 2W-5 in those things they'll just lock up. Won't leak but you'll not be using that hand for anything but karate chopping your opposition.

Anyway rant over, TLDR next time your stompy death machine needs actual proper work done, and not just entire unit assemblies throwm at the problem, take it somewhere that actually cares to understand the concept of machined tolerances.

[eveningdawn222]

people who act like batman isn't "judge jury and executioner" because he doesn't kill people are like. genuinely so funny to me because. they're very obviously thinking of "executioner" as like. the stereotypical guy with axe who chops people heads off, and not, yknow, the literal definition of the idiom itself, which is about someone who has the ability to judge and then subsequently punish someone unilaterally. which is quite literally what batman does.

he has the ability to decide what is a "crime" to him, he is the one who decides whether people are guilty of those crimes, and he is the one who executes their punishment. the severity of the punishment doesn't matter - he is unaccountable to anyone else, and indeed is allowed to commit as many crimes as needed to reach his arbitrary ideal of "justice."

the ideal of batman is this: a man who is so fundamentally changed by an act of senseless violence that he takes it upon himself to fight back against the rot and corruption in the world. he does this not through political activism, not through ridding himself of his wealth in favor of a greater good, not through community outreach, but through an individualistic fantasy of being a hero.

and you'll say: charlie, but he does do that !!! he donates his money all the time, he funds social programs, hospitals, orphanages, gets people jobs -

and i will say this: so why don't things get better?

because here's the base of it. gotham, at its core, can't get better. no matter what bruce wayne does, there will always be more crime, more villains, more death, more people for batman to beat up in back alleys. because that's what sells.

reoffending rates don't matter in gotham, prison reform doesn't matter in gotham, what actually causes crime doesn't matter in gotham because that doesn't sell books.

and so here it is; dc has unintentionally created a world where batman can't win, but can't be wrong, and where thousands of nameless, faceless, only-created-to-die civilians must be pushed into the meat grinder that is gotham, to fuel bruce wayne's angst and vindicate his constant, tireless, noble fight against the forces of evil.

and then: a new robin, who is poor and who's parents are dead or gone because of this cycle; who is happy go-lucky and hated by editors and fans for being robin, for not being dick grayson, for being poor.

and this robin is written, unintentionally or not, to be angry at the ways in which batman's (the narrative's) idea of justice is detached from its victims. bruce seems perfectly fine to allow countless unnamed women to be at risk from garzonas in his home country, yet robin is the one who is portrayed as irrational and violent.

this robin is not detached from gotham in the way bruce wayne is: this robin is a product of gotham.

(and here's the thing. you can't punch aids. you can't fight a disease with colorful fights and nifty gadgets. and how would robin dying from aids add to batman's story; it would call into question the systemic changes that haven't been made in gotham. how does a child get aids, in batman's city?)

so robin dies, and then bruce (the narrative) spends the next couple of decades blaming it on him. it is jason's fault; he was reckless, he just ran in, he thought it was all a game. if only bruce had seen what was coming, if only he could have known that jason wasn't rich enough or smart enough or liked enough to be robin.

batman gets a little more violent, a little more self destructive. he hurts people more and almost (!!) kills a couple guys. this is bad because it's self destructive and "not who he is." it is not bad because batman should not be able to just beat people up when he's angry.

and then he gets a shiny new robin - who is all the things jason "wasn't": rich and smart and rational and he doesn't put who batman is into question. batman and robin are partners, and jason is a grave and a cautionary tale, and (crucially here) never right.

the joker kills thousands and it doesn't matter because they were written to be killed.

batman beats up thousands and it doesn't matter because they were written to be criminals.

and then jason comes back, and nothing has changed. there is a batman and a (shiny! rich!) robin and the joker kills thousands. (because it sells)

and jason is angry - he has been left unavenged - his death has meant nothing, just as willis' had, just as catherine's had, just as gloria's had, just as -

thousands. ten of thousands. hundreds of thousands. written to be killed.

but one of them gets to come back.

and he is angry - not only at the joker, but at bruce (the narrative) - because why is the joker still alive (when thousands-)

here is the thing - jason todd is right. not because the death penalty is good, not because criminals deserve to die, not because of everything he says -

but because of what he calls into question. why is the joker alive?

because he sells books.

and dc has written a masterful character, through no fault of their own, because jason knows what is wrong, and he knows who is at fault - batman. (the narrative)

so the argument that bruce can't kill because he's not judge jury and executioner; the argument that jason is a cop or that jason is insane or that jason is in the wrong here; they hold no weight.

batman can't kill the joker because the joker sells comic books.

and jason can't kill the joker because the joker sells comic books.

so he will beg and plead and grovel - he will betray everything that is himself, he will forsake his family and his city and kill himself - just so that bruce (the narrative) will let the joker die.

he was condemned to death by an audience, and after he came back he has spent his whole life looking us in the eyes and screaming, asking, pleading; why is the joker still alive?

why are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands (the number doesn't matter, see, because they're just a number. not people. not real.) why are we expendable for his story? why did i have to die just for nothing to change?

and the answer is money. and the answer is the batman can never be wrong. and the answer is shitty writing. and the answer is -

nothing jason can ever change.

which is the worst of it all. he is a victim with no power, and no one else in the world can see it. he is raging and crying and screaming at his father and his writers and you - and it doesn't matter. jason doesn't matter. and he knows it.

[laurellala-comics]

That feeling when you're a whimsical magical teenage girl but your best friend is a dude in his twenties and when you hang out you have to put up with his boring adult conversations with his boring adult coworker :///

[meirimerens]

your dogs and my hounds.

[quiescentdestiny]

thank you so much to the fics that pointed out explicitly that all of Neil's scars that he mentions are on his front, which implies very few of them were received while running and instead imply that he got them while fighting back.

I hate it here.

[galaxymagitech]

The fanonization of Tim Drake is completely unsurprising and actually a core function of his character. Fanonization is often facilitated by particularly relatable or flexibly-characterized characters, often termed “blorbos,” who inspire the audience’s sympathy, recognition, and/or imagination. Considered in historical comics context, the character of Tim Drake—including his hobbies, relationships, and personality—was constructed to be perfectly relatable to contemporary audiences. Over the next few decades, Tim Drake was propped up as a vessel for both readers’ and authors’ projection. It is no surprise, then, that Tim Drake’s fandom takes advantage of this built-in “blorbo” and interprets his character in wildly different, often extreme, ways, ranging from “poor wet cat” to “cold blooded killer” to “the most competent neglected seven-year-old in existence.” In this essay, I will—

[ekyowe]

I just really like the waves

[littlecrittereli]

VERY self-indulgent doodles...

basically my headcannons that I never draw....

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[almondpiglet]

just fooling around at the speed of sound... found a cool brush to play with...