#most of it does stem from the fact that if he's in a context where he feels earnestly accepted

[gyokutoll]

I think one thing I do find unironically charming about Hotaru is how he is in a romantic context. He's an absolute menace to try and date but I also can't in good conscience say that it's for no reason. He does have some very legitimate, deep traumas that make connecting with others difficult. You don't experience the things Hotaru did and come out of it without intimacy issues.

That being said, he's a pain to date due to that, but once you somehow clear that barrier, he's so straightforward it's almost a little jarring. He plays games during the entire process of trying to get into a relationship due to his issues, but once in it, he's so direct? Will just bluntly state that he wanted to see you, or was thinking about you. It's not good for the heart, I think lololol

[ochibrochi]

spontaneous magic manifestation was NOT mentioned in the parenting handbook 😬

I know this isn’t how magic in dc works, but the fact that Damian’s ancestry includes some pretty powerful magic users is… INTERESTING 🤔? Drabble under the cut!

I wanna preface that I'M NOT SAYIN' that Damian should/does have magic powers, but there’s still so much unexplored potential with Damian's character, and the thought that he has a dormant adeptness in magic is somewhat compelling to me. Most importantly it would FREAK! BRUCE! OUT!!!!! What is this, magic puberty 😭??

By DC laws, anyone has the ability to learn magic, but it is also possible to be an innate ability. The Al Ghuls are no strangers to the occult-- Ra's has had increasingly been portrayed as a magic user, and the recent establishment of his mother being a sorceress/witch?? Even Talia dabbled in a bit of magic, I think. There is a catch that their power is suggested to be due to Lazarus exposure, but for arguments sake let's say the Al Ghul lineage is inherently proficient in magic (and Lazarus exposure simply enhances it).

I can't recall "magic" being a part of Damian's training/upbringing (I'm still slowly catching-up on Damian comics so apologies if I miss any canon examples of magic use). Not sure why Talia wouldn't want her little "heir to an ancient assassin empire baby" to learn magic, but it would at least give reason to Damian not knowing about his magic potential, or lack of interest in it.

Through the power of pseudo storytelling, what if Damian's encounter with Mother Soul could have triggered a manifestation of magic that was once dormant; like a pressure cooker waiting to explode with energy when it hasn't been given a safe outlet.

I've yet to read a satisfying arc where Damian truly gets to contemplate his Al Ghul roots outside of "dad is good guy, mum is bad guy". Damian's initial character growth stems from him running away from, and renouncing his association with the League (i.e. "I'm nothing like you, mother and grandfather!").

The most recent thing I've read was Robin (2021), and whilst Damian is much more cordial with his mother, there's still an emotional distance and sense of distrust/resentment (for good reason, even if the context was some cartoonishly evil writing). But there is a silver-lining that they still appear to be fond of each other, in a melancholy kind of way.

Realizing he's "genetically" primed for magic would be especially confronting to Damian. There's no denying his Al Ghul blood, forcing him to confront a facet of himself he can no longer ignore or reject. A family that he likely has to approach for help/guidance.

Damian is put in a position of acknowledging this power could be used for good, to be stronger, to fight crime, balancing it with the implication that what he possesses could be rooted in dark magic (Lazarus enchantment).

If he decides to embrace it, would that be too much of an endorsement of the Al Ghul's dark occultism? Can he separate the two ideas? What if he can't control it? What if he accidentally hurts someone? What if has the ability to save someone where his other skills fall short?

Ideally, I'd love for this hypothetical story to lead into Damian exploring his Al Ghul heritage more intimately, historically, and spiritually (à la RSoB: Year of Redemption adventures). Another little coming-of-age self discovery journey.

I have my own little personal thoughts on what Damian decides to do with his magic powers, but I'd like to leave that open to interpretation... By the end of it I hope that he will at least find some forgiveness over resentment, and a balance between accepting that side of his family a little easier. It is finally a sense of inner peace :)

Any thoughts? Did I get any characterisation wrong? Let's talk over on my DC blog @arkhamochi! I'm currently trying to read all Damian-centric comics until I catch up with the current run. I'm hungry for discussion and analysis!!!!!!

[glitter-stained]

Jason Todd Meta: My opinion on the csa headcanon

Does Jason's behaviour suggest he was a victim of csa?

There is very little, in terms of clinical signs, that’s going to point to csa specifically, because most symptoms, for psychiatric disorders, aren’t specific to one disorder or cause. One thing that’s usually a good hint would be children making very sexual statements/references/jokes/behaviours that are very inappropriate in context (a good example of this would be Roman Roy from Succession); night terrors are bed wettings amongst children/teenagers over a certain age. But that is absolutely not necessary: many, if not most victims of csa don’t display these specific signs, and a twelve years old that suffers from night terrors is not necessarily a victim of csa. The one thing that tells you for sure, in a person with trauma, that they have been a victim of csa, is that they’re telling you they have been a victim of csa. I’m insisting on that part because there’s a whole bunch of therapists (cough cough psychanalysts) that will tell you confidently that your psychiatric symptoms stem from a childhood sexual trauma (cherry on top of the shit cake if it’s incestuous) that you didn’t know about because you’ve repressed it. I repeat, that’s bullshit. If you meet a clinician who tells you that, RUN. So, a warning: this is probably the least “psychological analysis” of my “Jason psychological analysis posts”, because Jason’s symptoms do not allow us to conclude formally for or against a history of sexual abuse. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do some meta, make sure we're on the same page with what's analyzed here, some textual analysis, discuss what the csa headcanon does and does not imply in terms of his behaviour. I think it’s a good idea to start with it so we know where we’re standing with our analysis, regardless of the fact it’s maybe not the most interesting in terms of psychopathology and neuropsychology.

A couple of disclaimers:

I only talk about the comics I want to talk about. This is for two reasons, which are that 1) I do what I want and if I don’t like/don’t find something interesting, I’m not gonna waste time on it; and 2) I’ve been reading comics for a couple of months only, and there are, like, a lot of them. If there are comics you wanna see analysed under that lense, feel free to suggest them! I might not want to, but it also could be that I haven’t read them yet. Additionally, I'm not interested in questioning the morality of Jason's actions here. Ethics are fun, and I like talking about them sometimes, and morality sometimes has a place in talks about demonization but largely speaking this isn't the space for that. I separate talk about morality and psychology stuff as much as I can for a reason, so if you are looking here for excuses for his behaviour or arguments as to why he is a bad person, you're in the wrong place. Moral judgement is irrelevant here for the most part.

On the events of Red Hood: Lost Days:

Jason has, at some point in the comics, been a victim of csa. When Talia kisses Jason before pushing him off a cliff right after he got out of the Lazarus Pit, and when she initiates sex with him in Lost Days, that’s not consent!! That’s a grown woman taking advantage of a traumatized teenager who is, on top of that, deeply indebted to her. That’s a predatory act, with a steep power imbalance, it’s sexual assault, and on top of that there’s an element of suggested pseudo-incest. That decision was retconned, and thank god, because it was a brutal assassination of Talia’s character based on a good bit of racism, and also because the way it was portrayed doesn’t make it clear that Jason is a victim in a situation rather than that super annoying trope of “teenage guy gets to bang a hot MILF and hahaha lucky him”, writing a male character in a situation of SA without acknowledging it as SA or taking it seriously is one of the tropes I hate most, it reinforces stigmatisation and isolates victims. For all of these reasons, I’m not gonna include that element in my analysis, but it’s important to note that if you do include those scenes in your conception of it, then Jason is undeniably a victim of csa and everything discussed about it applies to him.

What if it were a lie?

I’ve said it before (and I’ll say it again), I deeply, violently hate headcanons/tropes where a character lies about being a victim of csa (whether it’s for manipulation, personal gain, any reason really I don’t care). It’s rare as fuck in real life, however it’s a common trope that feeds into fear of being wrongfully accused that causes push-back and increases social stigmatization. CSA is a painful thing associated with intense feelings of shame and already a deep fear of not being believed. Imagine making a considerable effort to seek help after something terrible happened/is happening to you, and you have to brave your fear of not being believed on top of that, and once you’ve made all that effort you get rejected and villainized because it’s just easier for the person you’re reaching out to not to believe it. So I’m awfully weary of this type of headcanon, and I think a general rule of thumb is “if your interpretation of what the character is saying is that he’s talking about how he was abused, especially if he’s talking about sexual assault, then it happened.” If you don’t like that, if you don’t feel like that’s good representation, then you can question the story, think it should be retconned, or rethink your interpretation of what the character says if it’s ambiguous, but hcing that the character lied about his assault is not a hypothesis we’re going to accept here no matter what. So we can start by scratching that one out: Jason never lies about being a victim of csa, or wilfully hints at it even though that’s untrue, at any point.

Two other ideas I’ve seen floating around that I think are worth mentioning:

No, just because Jason lived in the streets as a kid doesn’t mean the only way he survived was through underage prostitution. I genuinely don’t understand that idea, yes being a street kid makes you extremely vulnerable, yes it makes the risk of resolving to underage prostitution to survive higher but it’s absolutely not a fatality. That idea is, quite frankly, weird. Do you automatically assume if a real life person tells you they were in the streets for some time at a kid that they are a victim of csa? Also, I've seen the idea go around that because some people have a strong reading/hc of Jason as bi (which I have no problem with I love bi Jason), that would be an argument in favour of the csa hc. Please don’t do that. There’s no link between queer sexual orientations and childhood sexual abuse, that’s a harmful myth that we should work to deconstruct or, at the very least, not continue to vehiculate.

Another important thing to keep in mind: childhood sexual abuse =/= childhood sexual trauma.

Now, a traumagenic situation is a situation that might induce trauma (so development of, acute stress disorder, ptsd, cptsd, derealization, any traumatic pathology really). These situations exist on a continuum of probability to be traumatized by this situation. For example, a flood, a car accident, witnessing a murder and being sexually assaulted are all traumagenic situations, but the probability of developing trauma from them are very different. It hinges on personal, situational, social, and environmental risk factors (that have nothing to do with being weak, anybody can develop trauma). A definition for traumagenic situations can be found in the diagnostic criteria for ptsd in the dsm-5:

A. “Exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence in one (or more) of the following ways:

1. Directly experiencing the traumatic event(s).

2. Witnessing, in person, the event(s) as it occurred to others.

3. Learning that the traumatic event(s) occurred to a close family member or close friend. In cases of actual or threatened death of a family member or friend, the event(s) must have been violent or accidental.

4. Experiencing repeated or extreme exposure to aversive details of the traumatic event(s) (e.g., first responders collecting human remains; police officers repeatedly exposed to details of child abuse). Note: Criterion A4 does not apply to exposure through electronic media, television, movies, or pictures, unless this exposure is work related.”

Note that the this last criteria has been added from the DSM-5 in order to explain cases of PTSD observed in at-risk jobs like cops exposed to repeated detailed child abuse, first responders collecting human remains, or, crucially, vigilantes repeatedly exposed to brutal crimes. This means that Jason, when he works on the Dumpster Slasher case, when he is horrified to find Gloria in the immediate aftermath of her rape (and later finds her dead body, because witnessing the consequences of these traumatic events is also an important component of that second-hand trauma), is being exposed to a very traumagenic situation. As I said before, that doesn’t necessarily mean you will experience trauma (thank fuck for that), but there are factors that influence that. SA related situations has an already pretty high probability of inducing trauma. On top of that, age is a big factor in that: the younger you are, the less resources, emotional regulation, development and coping mechanisms to face the traumagenic event you have (though there is such a thing as “too young to have PTSD" -when your memory is simply not developed enough for the memory to traumatize you because you will not remember the event.) At fifteen, with his memory fully developed but his brain going through so much changes because of teenagehood and his past history, Jason would be at risk. On top of that, you’re more at risk to get traumatized if you’re already stressed out when the event happens, so Jason’s mental state at this point in his robin run is also a risk factor. All to say, it’s very plausible for Jason to have sexual trauma without being a victim of sexual abuse in relation to canon events. Besides, in headcanon territory when it comes to Jason’s childhood before Robin, there are so many ways to be exposed to sexual violence : witnessing/finding his mother being a victim (considering the position of extreme vulnerability Catherine was in), witnessing assault in the streets, being the victim of attempted SA and escaping, watching street kids get picked up and later find their bodies/being told by other kids, as a cautionary tale, in excruciating detail, testimonies of their own assault… Or for example, if we’re thinking about Arkham Knight, being constantly threatened with SA, it being hinted and joked about and hanging over him like a sword of Damocles is something I could see Joker and other inmates do that could definitely induce sexual trauma even if it doesn’t happen ; what matters most, in trauma, is that the fear is real. Mechanically, when we’re looking at the way trauma works even on a biological level, the overwhelming fear is at the core of the pathology. (This is also why you can develop PTSD after a psychotic episode.) Like, my point isn’t that one of these things happened to Jason, or that he has to have sexual trauma from the events of the Diplomat’s Son or anything -mostly just that this is a possibility, something very serious that happens and an important nuance that I never see in discussions on the csa headcanon, and while it’s not exactly what the debate is about, I think it’s something important to ponder.

Do you consider the csa hc to be canon?

So, there are a lot of Jason stories, and I’m very pro “not take in account what is said in comics you dislike in your conception of canon” because if I did that absolutely no bat character would be readable, I have to believe that no character is defined by their worst writers. And boy, does Jason have a lot of bad writing… On top of the personal retcons, there are also the canon retcons: like Battle for The Cowl is retconned… Unless someone decides to reinject/revamp it into the narrative (please don’t please don’t it’s irrecuperable let it lay with the Flying Todds where it belongs). So, let’s see. There are three writers/arcs that imply/mention the csa hc: Starlin’s writing of Jason’s post-crisis Robin Run (canon though some stuff in it seems to have been retconned), Winick’s writing in Green Arrow: Seeing Red (canon as far as I know), and Battle for the Cowl (retconned). It’s worth noting that one of those are considered to be foundational works for Jason’s character (Jason’s post crisis Robin Run and Starlin’s part in it), and another was written by Winick, who wrote the other two foundational Jason stories: Under The Red Hood and Red Hood: Lost Days. On a personal level, I’m very mitigated about what I like and accept about it. I base my whole love and characterization of Jason about his post-crisis Robin Run, I love that little guy so much, Starlin’s take on Jason’s Robin Run is absolutely canon to me (which does not mean I like Starlin as a writer, thank you very much). On the other hand of the spectrum, the only reason Battle for the Cowl isn’t my least favourite comic ever is because The Killing Joke exists, absolutely not canon, get this thing away from me. And then in the middle, my feelings on Seeing Red (on the entirety of Winick’s Jason really) vary depending on the day, because I do like a revenge story that challenges the status quo with tropes of “bad victim” and it sets up Jason as a character based on love rather than morals which I adore, but there are also some elements of psychophobia in the writing that I (who approach stories through the filter of psychopathology first and foremost) can’t just look past, and also the way it intertwines with classist stereotypes. So do I consider Seeing Red to be canon? In good faith, yes, but whether I’ll accept it as such really depends on the day. In terms of the csa headcanon: it’s heavily hinted in BTFC but not outright said, it’s there as a undercurrent in Starlin’s run because of his intention (to make Jason die of AIDS). And then we have Seeing Red. Basically Jason lists elements about Mia’s life, including her past with underage prostitution (so, just to be very clear, csa), and says they’re very similar, having both lived on the streets, and understand having to do bad things when it’s necessary. This is not the same as saying “I was a victim of csa”, and what he’s saying could be interpreted differently (we know that he was stealing tires, and “only what he needs to survive”, so he could have been referencing small-time theft.) So, it could be a reference to something else, I totally understand why some people want to interpret differently. It just… Feels like such a weird and weak argument to be equating boosting tires to underage prostitution, to me it’s very ooc (in comparison to UTH Jason), and it would feel like weak writing from someone like Winick. Aka it’s not technically canon, and you don’t have to accept it as such(I understand the mentality of "I'm rejecting this interpretation because it feels like demonization of csa victims" perfectly), but personally I think it takes a lot from Jason’s character in Seeing Red and from this story in general.

[thesummerstorms]

So the other thing is, in my headcanon verse, Dick and Jason (Todd) both definitely think Annabeth is dead.

She was a seven year old run away in the streets of Gotham. Neither Batman nor Jim Gordon were ever able to discover a single lead. Just from their mutual experience, the most likely options were death or trafficking that took her out of Gotham.

And at some point, after Tim became Robin (so Bruce and Dick were very tentatively starting to reconcile) but before Jason came back as Red Hood, GPD does finally find something.

Something is a damaged silver bracelet with Anna Elizabeth Wayne's initials engraved on one of the charms and a snapped link where a different charm (the elephant representing Dick Grayson) broke away.

It's an exact match for the gift Dick Grayson gave his baby sister the year she turned six, full of guilt about how little time he spent with her now that he and Bruce were barely speaking.

A hummingbird charm, in part as an indirect reference to Robin, in part because Anna reminded him of a hummingbird with her inability to sit still. A hummingbird in a flock of Robins and Bats.

A star and moon charm, for Kory who Anna idolized and who suggested the gift to begin with. Or for Bruce "I am the night" Wayne. Or as a reference to NIGHTwing. Dick's explanation changed based on his mood and the audience.

A tiny silver disk, engraved A.E.W.

A dog, just because Annabeth so badly wanted one of her own.

The bracelet is found in a crime scene full of teenage skeletons. There isn't a body that can be identified as Anna Wayne's- none are quite the right age, and none match Bruce's DNA sample- but some of the other victims are identified as run away children.

The conclusion seems pretty obvious to Jim Gordon.

Dick accepts it, grieves, and withdraws again, freezing Bruce out while he tries to come to terms with what happened.

Tim knows what's going on, but it all seems somewhat... detached somehow. As if he's watching a blurry bit of film. Like most of Gotham PD, his brain has glazed over most of the other details within the year. He doesn't have enough of a personal connection to see through Athena's manipulation of the Mist.

Bruce Wayne isn't accepting anything as fact until they actually find a body. Some gut instinct, the part of him that hold on to his subconscious impressions of Athena, tells him it isn't that simple.

He's right. The crime scene is actually a monster's nest, and one that Annabeth successfully escaped. But he doesn't know that. And he also isn't convincing anyone, including himself, that his denial doesn't stem purely from his guilt.

And then, with all of this context, a resurrected Jason Todd returns to Gotham in secret.

And, look, it's hard to imagine how his initial reunion with Bruce could have gone much worse...

But finding out that his baby sister, who despite all the other family bullshit he loved deeply, ran away from Bruce and was seemingly murdered in the same year as his own death?

Well... That's definitely not going to help.

[kittyjieunie]

this 'criticism' shit not being valid criticism is so annoying

i am actually so exhausted by what is being said about amandla right now, especially on twitter concerning their acting and portrayal of osha and mae. someone made a dumbass statement saying the difference between osha and anakin both doing force choke is astounding because osha looks 'emotionless' when she's supposed to be 'at her angriest' meanwhile anakin looks just furious enough.

first of all it's actually insane to even be saying this stuff without context of the situation but i just want to say i'm baffled about this switch up on the prequels lol. remember when everyone had a whole ass hate campaign against hayden saying he can't act? what is all this bullshit now. i am happy hayden is finally getting his flowers but we cannot let this shit just keep happening again and again. especially now with amandla. it's actually really fucked up.

second of all, once again, people are completely disregarding the characters amandla is portraying. osha aniseya revolves around repression. meanwhile mae is all about absolution.

osha is completely emotionally detached from the world, this is quite literally made known in one of her first scenes as she is staring devoid into the fire on the ship, her eyes holding just emptiness. she is a character who is incredibly emotionally shut down for the most port and with reason. she has a lot of trauma stemming from the fact she showed her true emotions and intentions. if she doesn't look angry while killing sol, she is not supposed to. it is meant to be chillingly empty because of her utter detachment from everything even slightly emotional in her life, especially if it has to do with her past. osha has many moments where she shows anger and pain and even this is done in a suppressed way but still extreme enough for you to see the shift. and amandla had done an incredible job with this, storing osha's emotionality in their eyes and micro-expressions and even the way osha carries herself.

which is completely different from how mae carries herself. mae lives with her emotions, she does not hold back. it is clearly visible in all her expressions and how freeing they feel meanwhile for osha it's all about the eyes, like i mentioned, the micro-expressions and the smallest movements signifying enormous character shifts. mae is an emotional character because she needs to be, mae is explosive and acts on impulse, she does not repress her needs. this is so well seen in how she is in her scenes with osha. mae has never been detached from anything like osha has, which is so evident in the way mae acts around both qimir and sol. she's not holding back, she's not a character whose shift and arc rely on an emotional repression in the same way osha's do. mae's arc revolves more around emotional control, if we're gonna speak of it but that wasn't my starting point so.

amandla managed to make them two different people. it's awful to see them being so discredited and criticised. and it's really frustrating when this happens out of context or regard for their emotional character arcs. i just think we need to appreciate acting here more and how incredible amandla is at this craft. mae and osha are different characters. like some of you are moving so weirdly about this, especially the 'osha should be angrier and show it' but i won't say anything further.

amandla is an amazing actor, i think we should all feel lucky they're playing osha and mae and are in the star wars universe!

[kathaynesart]

What do you take from the Rise movie’s “This isn’t about me,” message? *It’d be interesting to see this become a Tumblr thread cause I’d love to see what others think too.

That's... an important line to decipher. Deep enough to mean so many things but vague enough to be easily taken out of context. I have a lot to say about it, but I'll keep it under the cut to save others the trouble.

TLDR: Future Leo's a dum dum hypocrite

I think... when Leo used the line in the future timeline. He was trying to remind Casey of the harsh reality that they existed in. That this was a world where they sometimes had to set aside their personal wants for the greater good. It's for that reason that Leo was able to ask Mikey to do the unthinkable and sacrifice himself in turn.

What I find fascinating about the movie, is that it both supports and counters this message. It tries to find that healthy middle ground, between present Leo's narcissistic attitude in the beginning and the downright sacrifice he's willing to make by the end. Because him sacrificing himself was NOT the happy ending. And while we get that "ending" for only a moment. We can see that method doesn't feel right either.

In that way, I don't think "it's not about me" isn't actually the "message" of the movie as some might assume at first glance. Merely a gentle reminder to check yourself before you wreck yourself. Because technically, yes, "it's not about me" does apply to many aspects of life. We can get so caught up in our own worries and concerns and perspectives and it just... muddles reality in a way. We need to see how our actions and words affect others and understand that there's so much more out there than our own little bubbles. But we also should understand our own worth within the big tapestry of life and be willing to fight for the things that matter to us.

That's why I think the actual message of the story isn't "it's not about me." It's about balance. It's about the knowing look Leo and Raph share in the end and the fact that Mikey was able to achieve the true, best ending with his brother's help to save Leo, because they know that the world may mean more in the long run, but they mean the world to each other, and I think it's really important to understand.

But that's just my long-winded opinion on the subject and there’s plenty of other interpretations I think I can totally get behind as well. It will be an element within Replica but let's also remember that Future Leo is kind of hypocrite with this line. He's says "It's not about me" but that's coming from someone who the entire resistance has centered around as its leader. He's probably a little tired of the idolization by now and does not like the idea that he's somehow more important than others. I think that's where that line really stems from for Leo. It's obvious that Casey isn't just talking about his importance as a leader, but Leo with the same line is asking him to set those feelings aside even if he is one of the most important people in Casey's life.

And then Leo turns around and throws one of the most important people in his life through the portal. A damn hypocrite (/positive)

EDIT: I was sort of ending it on a silly note but @dandylovesturtles added such a great point that I haven’t been able to put into words but feel in my heart when it comes to future Leo and definitely something I want to show with the healing process he’s been going through in Replica: and that’s the “not all about you” sometimes just means that bad things happen but you can’t just blame yourself for it, and it’s not some cosmic attack for your mistakes. The world did not come to an end because of Leo’s mistake, even if he might have once felt like that. What’s more it means you can’t put the whole world on your shoulder or always try to fix things on your own like how Leo tried to after Raph’s capture. It’s ok to seek the aid and support and ideas of others your trust. It really lines up so well with a lot of the events in the film.

Thank you @dandylovesturtles and everyone else’s amazing comments! I want to hear all of them and take notes.

[dalliancekay]

Religious Trauma and the GO Universe

I must admit I don't really understand what people mean by religious trauma in GO context.

As someone who was deeply religious as a child/teenager (please imagine any and all problems that might stem from that) and then left church and faith completely around my mid 20s (because they are awful and a lie) I don't really see how it relates to A&C only cos in their universe, God and Heaven and Hell exist. So they can't stop believing in them and find a different way to live etc, like people who leave religions and cults do. If they try to escape or disobey, they will get punished. Both of them. For different reasons, but both of them.

To me, their trauma is more akin to stemming from family-ish trauma. They belong to what is most like a mafia to me (although I have called it dictatorship or like @tiggety-boo recently mentioned to me, a slavery). They were born into it and can't escape because it encompasses everything. Az clearly knew they aren't as benevolent as they paint themselves for a LONG time. He's so anxious over angel!Crowley's innocent remarks in Before the Beginning, already knowing some things are better left unsaid.

(who made you this anxious already baby angel)

Crowley then somehow (we don't know how) ended up in the faction that split from the main, but that one ends up being in many ways worse. While he can now curse Heaven and call them out for being awful, he still has to do what his bosses say or get punished.

So what I'm saying is that religious trauma to me, implies being lied to about something that does not exist and can be ignored. Being manipulated and led to worldviews that are based on something that is imaginary (and needlessly cruel) and coming to terms with the fact of being lied to (even if indirectly). But what Az and Crowley deal with (to me) is more like hoping to break off from family that has no understanding of you, how you feel, think, what you want or your different views - there's no hope they will even try to understand and are just awful (while painting themselves as the good ones in Heaven's case).

I just don't see Az 'believing' in Heaven's goodness and needing to learn how shit they are. As I often see in comments and metas etc. I don't see him fighting within himself to stop trusting them. He knows they should be good and he would like them to be, yes. Absolutely. He would love for the stuff Heaven says they are to be true (this is where his complicated relationship to shades of grey and his learning path to understand this via humanity and with Crowley, comes in - but that's another story). Aziraphale pays lip service to Heaven if he must (to keep safe his little life on Earth) but he absolutely knows the whole time that they (or at least the higher ones, not angels like Muriel) are rotten.

I also feel like people who see Aziraphale’s behaviour as simply being repressed or needing to overcome or admit his own feelings to himself… have never lived through, or considered times when people had to hide their true relationships and true feelings under all kinds of complicated behaviours and lies where they could claim plausible deniability - about their dear ‘friend’ (or housemate) in fear of punishment for their beloved and themselves.

Now Crowley, whatever happened around his Fall, maybe he was lied to, maybe he was just curious and didn't know what exactly he was getting into (I'm going by his remarks), maybe he was simply angry; is deeply disappointed that it turned out so badly and also that he was so completely abandoned by God (who was supposed to love him).

I also feel that people often skip and simplify his relationship to Heaven and God. That Crowley tried to speak to Her in S1 too. Not just Az has tried. That his outburst about forgiveness in the bandstand wasn't as offhand and flippant as he tried to make it. It hurts him. It's why Aziraphale (very thoughtfully imo) changed his 'may God forgive yous' to 'I forgive you'. Crowley's whole world is now Aziraphale really. Not very healthy maybe, but at least we know Az would never stop loving him. Even if he had to leave. Crowley knows he can trust him. It's why he stayed by the car. It's what he spent 6000 years re-learning. Trusting.

Aziraphale (and Crowley) did something that was supposed to be impossible. However much or little they did for the Armageddon't (and I think they did plenty, unlike some memes I've seen), what everyone understood was going to happen, as based on the Plan, Great or Ineffable as it was, did not happen. And no, I think Crowley also did not expect they can actually stop it when he first asked. He just voiced a question, as he is want to do, being who he is. And got Aziraphale in on it. Whether he was just hoping to give it a go or hoping to spend more time with the angel in the last few years they had, or both. But I don't think he truly believed they can stop the Antichrist and the War that was in the Plan before he set alight the little corner of the universe he's been working on. And after? I can imagine how the endless gears in Aziraphale's head kept turning those 4 years after they attempted to kill him. He now had an inkling that bigger things could change. I don't think that he thought he will be the one to do it, until he was forced into that lift however.

Anyway, I went off on a tangent.... to me GO has religious undertones, sure. But I've always (in spite of my own background) found the story more akin to those stories wondering whether fate is set in stone or are we able to direct what happens to us. And don't get me started now on the question of Free Will.... P.S. I know GO fans come from many backgrounds, I know many are atheists, many belong to (and have various complicated relationships to) various religions and many are agnostic. I honestly do not mean to offend anyone by my remarks. Everyone has their own journey after all. Just trying to make sense of mine I guess.

[abearinthewoods]

Speaking as a trans man: I think "transmisandry" is a counterproductive term more often than not. 99% of the time whats being described is just misandry and the trans- prefix is unnecessary. Not to say that there are absolutely no valid uses of the term, but trans men need to realize that most of the bigotry they experience is a result of being men. If more trans men woke up to this fact and stood in solidarity with all men, we could make real social progress on issues such as homelessness, lack of domestic violence shelters, physical and sexual violence by women, etc.

Hope this doesn't come across as combative or contrarian, just giving my two cents. I agree with most of what you say and I appreciate what you do.

I agree with the basic idea that a lot transphobia can be tied to androphobia (a form of misandry), and sometimes trans men can think they are being treated like a trans man but they are just being treated like a man. I just disagree with arguing that point to people talking about their experiences. Especially those already getting it from the other side.

And when you think about it, Like ya, (some) queer spaces being anti-masc is misandry stemming from androphobia, but to a trans man feeling like his safe space turned on him, his transness does contribute to how he experiences that misandry, that androphobia. in the context of the space where one presumes they can go to escape hate, it can amplify the hurt and feelings of aloneness to receive it. Turns it into feelings of betrayal. This unique side of it is worthy of recognition on its own right.

[aihoshiino]

chapter 162 thoughts!

Chapters Since The 143 Kiss Happened And Went Entirely Unacknowledged And Unaddressed Count: 19

Aqua Hoshigan Status: uh oh, gamers

damn they dragged his ass right to hell, huh

I was perhaps overly optimistic in expecting an immediate resolution to last chapter's setup. It's becoming increasingly clear that this handful of chapters covering the Aqua-Hikaru confrontation are intended to be read in one go but because I am pedantic I will continue to review them one by one <3 This chapter very much has all the same issues as the previous chapter without quite as many of the things I liked pulling it up, but Mengo's art is back to going absolutely crazy and I got to see 2.5 new panels of Hoshino Ai so who can say whether it was a good or bad chapter.

Like last time, we're starting with Hikaru again and… basically everything I said I didn't like about this handling of him is still the case but with this almost definitely being his final appearance with no more opportunities to explain anything about him, it really sucks that the note we seem to be ending on is just "damn, bitch be crazy". Given that Tsukuyomi mentioned his previously 'noble soul' last chapter, I was really hoping we might get some sort of flashback or Hikaru POV giving some proper context to his actions but all we got this chapter was him being like "ughh i miss ai. GOD i love killing people" which is, uh, underwhelming as a final note for an antagonist like Hikaru to go out on, to say the least

The thing is, I didn't need or expect Hikaru to be totes 100% an innocent bean or anything like that (ch109 looms large), but if he was going to be the final boss like this, I wanted his antagonism to come from somewhere, to have any kind of connecting thread with the story's themes or to at least tell us interesting things about him both in coming to understand where his behavior came from and why he went down this path. But we don't know anything about Hikaru, really - we know facts about his life but as person and a character in a story, our image of him is shockingly unclear. As far as the story seems to be concerned, he came into existence as an 11yo boy being abused by Airi, blipped out of reality when Ai broke up with him and then idk digivolved back into society into a guy from a yandere otome game when Ai died. Like, how in god's name did Hikaru go from the boy we see being broken up with as a teenager to… whatever the fuck this is? How did he start killing? Why? What is it about killing that makes him feel Ai's supposed presence? And most importantly - why does he pursue killing Ruby as his means of achieving this when the narrative is doing everything it can to convince us she's Ai 2.0 and therefore a living person in whom Hikaru should be able to feel Ai's presence the most strongly since her death? Hello? Can anyone hear me????

We don't get textual answers to any of that - hell, we don't even really have any textual confirmation that he is actually serial killer, despite it being something I guess we're supposed to assume at this point?? Like, whatever happened to Aqua seemingly crediting Yura's death to Nino's involvement? What happened to Aqua saying that Hikaru being the mastermind made no sense? Like, I guess he was right, but jesus

Even things I can take the time to try and infer (which, see last review's discussions on Inferring Things) just make me feel like I'm doing the work the story should have done in terms of trying to get his character to cohere. As it stands, Hikaru isn't in opposition to Aqua because he has harmful beliefs or behaviours born from his participation in society that stem from or are in conversation with the story's wider themes, but because he has one very specific unhinged belief totally disconnected from reality focused on one specific person and manifesting in such a way that caused him to just be Ontologically Evil And Broken.

And it's not like this would even be hard to do! Hikaru is literally, explicitly an affluent and powerful person in the entertainment industry despite being someone who was broken by abuse perpetuated by those very systems of power. Why not lean into that? Why not examine the ways in which Hikaru and Ai converged in their experiences of abuse - Ai able to truly sever the chain and begin healing while Hikaru ends up making Airi's mistakes and enacting abuse and control on people with less power than him to try and regain agency and dignity?

Ryosuke (even post retcon) and ch154 Hikaru work so well because their specific beliefs about Ai reflect real world misogyny and parasocialism that are rife in the entertainment industry (and even outside of it) so they're able to contribute to the story's wider themes pretty well. But as of this chapter, Hikaru's stated beliefs about killing and apparent overall worldview are so fucking detached from reality and so lacking any foundation or grounding in textual events or theming that it doesn't even feel like an exaggeration of real world issues to a logical conclusion like Ryosuke does. He just feels like a cartoon character.

Not only is this shallow in general and really a huge wet fart of an ending for a character who has been built up for 4 actual years and 150 chapters of manga, it's also just bizarrely inconsistent. There's no proper connecting thread in the text between the seemingly emotionally disarmed and remorseful Hikaru of 154-5 and fucking joker slenderman ass here. The story spent so long making Hikaru deeply and viscerally sympathetic through exploring his history of abuse and exploitation mirroring Ai's that I'm not sure of what the point of that was in terms of authorial intent if we were always gonna end at this point of "you are Ontologically Evil and must die". Movie Arc backstory Hikaru flows quite naturally into 153-5 Hikaru but these specific beliefs and fixations on killing almost feel like they popped up from nowhere to force this confrontation to happen.

Ultimately, despite being given ample opportunity to do so, it just kind of feels like Akasaka just kind of lost interest in trying to develop Hikaru into a fully fleshed out and coherent character. We get flashes and teases of what could have come together into a fascinating and compelling antagonist but he ultimately fails to evolve past a vague sketch of a character, full of unconnected ideas and loose threads. In the end, Hikaru is only ever a cipher for the story to enact tragedy through with no real interest in his own feelings and interiority in relation to it - not even his own.

To scooch back a bit into the chapter, I will say that him being dragged down specifically by Gorou is interesting, especially since he seems to have returned to his scary ass Tokyo Blade rage ghost form. This seems to represent Gorou and his rage being sort of 'exorcised' from Aqua now his revenge is complete (as I theorized might happen last week) - his memories and existence obviously live on in Aqua (F… FOR NOW…..) but as a character in a narrative, this feels like a fine enough place to leave him.

Anyway, speaking of Aqua! How ya doing, champ?

that bad, huh

The back half of this chapter revolves around giving Aqua some emotional resolution of his own and even though I've been kicking and biting to get some Aqua introspection for so long now, this one left me feeling pretty cold. After all this time of floating around the 'why' of his reincarnation, the answer we're finally given is….. just that Aqua was reborn to be Ruby's guard dog lol.

The idea that the twins were specifically reborn to be together has been imo pretty obvious for a good long while and I think it's a perfectly fine idea on paper, but this framing of it just kind of falls flat to me. I don't like that it positions Aqua's rebirth not as a second chance for him to love and be loved in a way he wasn't able to as Gorou, a gift from Tsukuyomi to two people who showed her a selfless, thoughtless kindness but as just yet more of the story using other characters and their stories to try and prop up Ruby or imbue her with more importance in a way that I think feels forced and does the characters who are used in this manner a huge disservice. I'm sure we could conclude that this is just Aqua's feelings on the matter and I really, really hope that Tsukuyomi fishes him out and gives him a slap while yelling YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO LIVE FOR YOURSELF AND BE HAPPY IDIOT or something next chapter, but the extremely warm framing this is all given makes me think this is something the narrative both agrees with and approves of and as an Aqua enjoyer I just kind of hate that for him.

I also have to say that like… it doesn't not make sense for the story's finale and this aspect of the reincarnation plot to center Ruby specifically. She is one half of the titular Oshi no Kos and at least hypothetically the co-protagonist of the story. But suddenly making her the answer and central turning axis of basically the biggest ongoing mystery in the story like this feels kind of jarring when Akasaka spent a solid half of this entire manga not really doing her justice. This attempt to tug on our heartstrings via flashbacks to the twins' childhood also doesn't really do anything for me because as cute as it is, it's just disconnected flashbacks to brand new events in their childhood we never saw or heard about before. And it's weird because it's not like we don't have in-story examples of Aqua being over protective of Ruby, so why not flashback to those?

Idk. It's hard for me to articulate why this left me feeling kind of cold, but it feels like a symptom of this being part of an ending that Akasaka set in stone too early on and hasn't compromised for he way the character dynamics and story that made it onto paper have shifted and changed in ways that don't one hundred percent line up with the ending he wanted. If the twins' relationship was going to be this important to the ending and be so central to Aqua's existence as a character, I wish we'd spent more time on it. One of the major critiques of OnK that people had from like chapter 12 onwards that I still agree with is that Aqua and Ruby's relationship doesn't feel like a close knit connection between two people who grew up together for 1X+ years, and that continuing issue makes it kind of hard for me to feel the warm and fuzzy sibling feels right now. Which sucks because I LOVE the Hoshino family trio and I love Aqua and Ruby's family dynamic when we actually get to see it - their chapter of interlude and some of the scenes in their home in early OnK are some of my fave parts of the story for that exact reason. But this just kind of whiffed for me.

It also isn't lost on me that Ai is basically absent from these flashbacks despite them primarily taking part in the part of the twins' childhood they spent with her. I get that the idea was to focus specifically on Aqua and Ruby's dynamic there but it still feels kind of…

I've already written a short essay on this topic as it pertained to the initial reveal of Tsukuyomi's role in AQRB's reincarnation and the TL;DR of that post is that early in the series, Ai is centered as a character of as much significance to the reincarnation plot as Gorou/Aqua and Sarina/Ruby are, with the togetherness of the Hoshino family as a trio and Ai specifically as Aqua and Ruby's mother being emphasized as having a great deal of meaning and importance. But this chapter doubles down on essentially erasing her as a figure of weight and consequence in the twin's reincarnation in a way that is both inconsistent and just kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Like… I'm sorry, but given how much of Ai's character revolves around her being the victim of exploitation, of objectification, sexual and otherwise, of being forced to warp herself to response to the filthy desires thrust on her by the people around her, it's really just gross and a huge misstep for her to be reduced to a convenient walking uterus. It is yet another example of Ai being reduced to just a stepping stone in Ruby's narrative and part of a pattern in this regard I've come to really dislike. Framed like this, Ai's own act of bravery and love in giving not just herself but Sarina and Gorou the family all three of them were denied all their lives is now nothing more than a vessel for Sarina's wish fulfillment. As you can imagine, I kind of hate this too!!

Depending on if volume 16 follows 14 and 15's trend of being 11 chapters long instead of 10, vol16 will end on either 162 or 163 - based on how 162 ends, my guess is that this is our volume ender so I'm curious to see what form 163 will take - straightforward continuation of this scene or focus switch to other characters to maintain suspense? I guess we'll see in THREE FUCKING WEEKS……. Akasaka i swear to god……………………….

sidebar but tsukuyomi just out here floating is kind of wild. what happened to 'it's a normal child's body' ya little twerp?

[genericpuff]

A while back you made a post mentioning Down to Earth is trash and I would like to here your take on it. No pressure on it I just like hearing your opinion on things. FYI I hate Kade lol

I did, and I've been meaning to post about it, but I've been taking some extra time to re-read as much as I can so that I could better collect my thoughts :' )

Now I will mention, I have not caught up to the most recent episodes. Most of my thoughts here will reflect the earliest parts of the series, as I didn't end up sticking with this one. So please take my criticisms as someone who just never got into this series for various reasons, not as someone who was incredibly into the comic and fell off it (like I am with LO). I will try to judge it and review it fairly based on that context.

Most of my issues with Down to Earth don't stem nearly as deep as my issues with LO, Let's Play, or even Big Ethel Energy. Frankly, I think the comic is 'fine', but I don't think it's necessarily all that good either, and the amount of attention it gets from the platform lends to the fact that I really think its success is due to a lot of generated hype. This is one of the other comics on the platform that gets a LOT of priority advertising, not quite as egregious as LO, but still a lot.

The short answer: I think the comic is just overrated and pretty basic in terms of its storytelling and art, and I don't think it's necessarily a good "romance" comic for some of the same reasons I don't think LO or Let's Play are good romance comics. I think the only reason I don't get quite as mad at it as I do with LO or BEE or LP is because (as far as I can tell) it's not really advertising itself as some feminist progressive piece of work. It's sorta just "what you see is what you get", and what you get isn't really all that great (for reasons listed below) but at least it doesn't try to sound smarter than it is most of the time. Read it the same way you would watch a fluff anime.

Moving into my long answer, I will say some of the things that were initially appealing about it: the art is very colorful and cutesy, the comedy (for the most part) is inoffensive and simple, and the story is really easy to pick up and get into.

That said, I do think some of those praises are also part of its weaknesses.

While the art gets better over time, there are certain aspects of its stylization that still feel very "baby's first webcomic" to me. Which is great if you're someone who's into that style, but when I read it, it never really stops feeling like a Canvas comic, if you catch my drift. Nothing really sets it apart from the flood of Merryweather-esque fan service comics that are in the Canvas section.

And boy, is there a LOT of fanservice in this comic. I think the main plot point itself is fanservice in and of itself - cutesy anime alien girl crashes on earth, and winds up living with the depressed NEET-like guy, shenanigans ensue from how "inexperienced" she is due to her alien status. Everything from the circumstances of this character's plot to how she's drawn screams "this is for people who like to read about small titty girls with big asses being put into a situation where they have to rely on a man". The comic takes many opportunities to draw the FL, Zaida, as wide as possible (and of course, the ML Kade loves this trait about her, it's one of the first thing he notices aside from the fact that she speaks an alien language and can do weird alien things like telepathy and flying).

Thankfully this does get a little better in the later episodes, you can tell the creator was struggling with anatomy in places and then honed their skills, but there are still times it regresses back to the extremely-pinched-waist-mega-badonker-hips look.

Don't get me wrong, having a protagonist with wide hips like this is all fine and dandy, but there's a point where you can tell it's purely for fanservice and that's definitely what the comic wants you to know from the starting gun. She fits perfectly into that "born sexy yesterday" trope that so many romance FL's do (cough Persephone cough) while also having that "uwu I'm so inexperienced :(((" vibe that you get from characters like Sam in Let's Play. Shit, Kade pretty much starts sexualizing her before he even knows what her deal is as a person. Does he even know how old she is? Is "she" even a "she", do these aliens have different concepts of gender identity or even different types of reproductive organs than what you would find on Earth?

Look, I get it that I'm probably WAY overthinking it, you can write comics about characters from other dimensions and planets without having to get into the nitty gritty of whether or not they have periods, that's fine. But the real problem is the fact that her being from another planet seems to be used purely for creating an infantilized character with extra steps who's easily laughed at for not knowing things (don't even get me started on how "alien" could be replaced with "someone who doesn't speak English or have access to modern devices" in a lot of this comic, but I feel like that's way too deep of a criticism to be pinning on something that's literally designed to be a quirky fanservice fluff comic.)

Like, you want an alien girl who looks human but still acts reasonably like an alien - while even tackling subjects that come with being an "outsider" - without making her act like a literal baby? Starfire from Teen Titans.

(granted, the whole "smooching to transfer information" thing is definitely a little weird in hindsight, and there are definitely moments of fanservice, but that's about as weird as it gets lmao you don't see Starfire acting like a literal toddler, she is smart and capable, she just isn't from Earth, which is the whole point of her characterization being parallel to that of what foreigners experience ! She's not stupid or incapable of taking care of herself, she's just not accustomed to life on Earth!)

Like, this is in one of the newer episodes and I just-

(I suddenly have to throw up-)

It really dials the creep factor of this whole relationship dynamic to 100 when they drive home just how "babylike" she is through panels like this. It's not really her being unaware of customs around her, it's just her being written as babylike as possible with the fact that she's an alien being used as justification.

But it really makes you think about Kade's intentions when he goes straight to buying lingerie for the girl he just met who's been forced to stay with him in his home. He doesn't even really make efforts to help her get on her own feet, he just accepts this as his fate and goes "welp I guess I gotta make sure I don't get fired from my job" because now he has to support the baby girl that landed in his backyard. So Zaida ends up having no agency as a result. It just feels like a contrived situation meant to force an unaware, vulnerable girl into being taken care of by a guy who's, frankly, a creep.

And boy, Kade is actually kind of a creepy scumbag.

Kade makes for a really uninteresting and frankly pathetic character, he's just sort of a whiny man baby and you just know if Zaida was an earthling who had spent time on this planet longer than a few days, she probably wouldn't put up with this shit LOL Like, deadass he basically threatens to harm her within the first few episodes of the comic-

Like, this is after she's ruined his Playstation or w/e, and it's just like DAMN girl, this is a RED FLAG. But of course, she's an alien girl who's ignorant about everything, so it creates that power dynamic where he basically has full reign to take advantage of her at any time. Ladies, if a guy says you shouldn't trust him, take him at his word.

Zaida's characterization is also very inconsistent between her being an alien and her just being an "uwu baby girl". Often times it just makes the whole "alien" thing feel like it's only there to justify writing yet another "I'm babyyyy" romance. Sometimes she's WAY more privy to things than you'd expect her to be and then other times she's doing the dumbest shit for laughs.

Now to be fair, she DOESN'T put up with his shit here, but the fact that the writing for Zaida is inconsistent makes scenes like Kade being a creep being more about the creator realizing they're leaning too hard into her being vulnerable to abuse and so they quickly have Zaida combat it with some strange amount of awareness despite the fact she's only been living with him for a few days... but not enough awareness to maybe realize this isn't a good living situation. Like, again, she may be able to speak English, but that doesn't mean she's fully aware of what Earthlings are like, so she's suddenly really smart about what it means to be taken advantage of by a human man even though everywhere else in the comic she's written like a toddler.

And of course, like many of these webtoons tend to do, they don't linger on the implications of this scene too long, so they quickly turn it into a punchline to ease the tension. Audience comfort restored.

And that brings us to the comedy. The "jokes" in this comic basically boil down to, "haha, the alien girl doesn't know how to take care of herself on Earth!" , which frankly, I think is just a very thin veil for infantilization. I mean, really, the fact that she's an alien doesn't even really matter in the world of this comic, it takes a while for the comic to even really give us a glimpse of what her life was like off Earth so most of the comic is just typical slice of life cutesy moments you'd find in literally any shoujo or romance webtoon. You could switch out the fact that she's an alien with her being from another dimension, or turn it into an isekai where she was the female character in Kade's favorite video game who suddenly got zapped into the real world, and it would make fundamentally zero difference.

They even sorta lampshade this fact but swiftly move on from it.

There's nothing really that makes her an "alien" in any unique or consequential way, she's just a carbon copy anime girl with pointy ears who could be replaced with any other trope from other romance subgenres like this. She can eat human food just fine, dress in human clothes, and as long as she wears a hat over her ears, she's literally indistinguishable from the humans around her.

I will add as well that there are a lot of little ways they hint towards the implied dynamic between these two, at least in the beginning. The whole "second rule: obey" bit, while passed off immediately after as a joke, feels like it was inserted there JUST to create that imbalanced power dynamic that so many "romance" webtoons rely on, similarly to LO and Let's Play. The fact that he corrects himself from this just feels like, again, lampshading.

And again, after this we do see Kade legitimately acting like a creep and he DOESN'T DO ANYTHING to help Zaida get her footing beyond paying for her room and board and telling her to mind her vocabulary, so this seems more like him trying to create a situation that's beneficial to him where he's effectively trapped this girl into relying on him.

They even lampshade this as well so that leads me to believe they're fully aware of this dynamic and how creepy it is, so they try and play it off as a "haha so funny" joke to ease the tension or create suspension of disbelief.

When it comes to the actual execution of punchlines, again, 90% of the jokes in this comic are "haha alien girl so stupid!"

(I will admit this scene did make me laugh, but it's telling that it was the only one that stood out to me for that because every other joke in this series is very mid and resorts to the same type of "haha she's a stupid alien girl" punchlines.)

(omg mental illness! so funny! /s)

If you really want comedy written around aliens describing human things in weird ways, then just go read Strange Planet. They're actually aliens and they're consistently funny through much smarter writing that doesn't rely purely on "lmao they're stupid because they're not from here". If anything the aliens in Strange Planet are way more welcoming and endearing to the concept of being a fish out of water than simply making them stupid for a punchline.

(i swear to christ, "crisscross flop disc" and "prohibit anxiety" are lines that have lived in my head rent free for like 3 years now, it never gets old and THAT'S how you know it's a good joke LMAO)

And the story, as mentioned, is easy to get into, but ultimately that winds up meaning it's not really all that well done. Like, it's fine! It's a cute comic to read if you're into this sort of thing, there are a lot of sweet little moments that feel good to read between Kade and Zaida, but ultimately because of the focus on the fluff, that's all it ends up feeling like - weekly doses of fluff. Even when it tries to have some semblance of plot, it's quickly undercut by fanservice. So it's just kinda boring and vapid.

Case in point, one of Kade's observations of Zaida is that she apparently looks "just like his ex girlfriend" who he still clearly hasn't gotten over, but we don't actually see even a hint of what his ex-girlfriend looks like until MULTIPLE episodes later after the "sparks" have already started being formed between him and Zaida.

Um... she doesn't really look like Zaida at all aside from them both being generic anime girls, but okay lol by that logic the girl he served at the store in Episode 7 also looks like Zaida.

So it kinda makes the whole relationship feel superficial, like he's only interested in her because she vaguely reminds him of his ex, and it's taking so long to get through any amount of plot through all the fluff that I can't be sure if they ever actually address this. I'd like to think they do eventually, though from what I've heard of the later episodes after his ex-girlfriend makes an appearance, it seems more like they go the LO route of making the two relationship "choices" just be complete opposites where one is actually sweet to the ML and the other is abusive JUST to make the sweet FL seem like the "better option". IDK, obviously my criticism of this is lukewarm because I haven't kept up on this comic in ages, but I have the sneaking suspicion the whole ex-girlfriend-the-ML-can't-get-over plotline isn't gonna be used for his development, just to further propel him and Zaida into a relationship - and by extension, manufactured drama to make their relationship more "interesting".

Overall, I don't think Down to Earth is anywhere near as egregious as Let's Play and LO, but it's definitely cut from the same cloth, and that's why it frustrates me to see it - alongside LO and Big Ethel Energy - being marketed as "new voices in romance".

(also real talk, it's so disingenuous for them to include LO in this "new voices in romance comics" panel when it's been around for so many years that everyone and their grandma who uses WT knows about the comic, if they aren't reading LO by now they REALLY don't want to. It's not "new", if anything it's one of the oldest ongoing webtoons on the platform and it REALLY needs to end already lmao)

Far be it from me to gatekeep an entire genre, but this brand of romance comic isn't really "romance". It's vapid fluff loaded up with egregious fanservice that's meant to give you a hit of dopamine every week, while never lingering on serious scenes for too long because they don't want you to realize just how imbalanced the relationship is between the two main characters. It's not quite as concerning as LO or Let's Play, but it does have a vibe that's really uncomfortable when you start to feel it. So having comics like these held up as the "golden standard" of romance is just... it's really telling as to what WT's priorities are and how unhealthy "romance" has become in mainstream media.

And if I can get a little "old man yelling at cloud" for a second, I miss when romance was sweet and soft and earnest and heartfelt. I think the only mainstream and successful romance webcomic (and it's not even an Originals!) that I've seen in the last several years that isn't loaded up with these problematic tropes is Heartstopper. Heartstopper is sweet and soft and earnest and heartfelt. Heartstopper is way more of a pillar for a healthy romance than what any of these "new voices in romance comics" can provide. It literally couldn't function as an Originals series because the definition of a WT romance comic would undercut the actual point of Heartstopper.

These unhealthy standards and dynamics that we've set in the romance genre have been so pervasive for years now and I really just wish they'd go away.

y'know what, this whole essay is really just a promo post for Heartstopper now, go read it-

[royboyfanpage]

https://www.tumblr.com/big-gay-apocalypse/732547558666289152?source=share

how do these pannels make you feel. they make me feel sad

Hi anon!

For context these are the panels Anon sent me-

For starters, it's totally understandable that these panels make you feel sad! That's clearly what they were written to do.

However.

I can't take it seriously because it's RUDY WEST. Rudy West is not comparable to Oliver Queen! Rudy West is absolutely not a better father than Ollie!

I mean, aside from the fact that it's pretty hard to be a worse father than Rudy West and Roy would absolutely not be "a better person" if he was raised by the Wests, like. Ollie and Roy didn't have that much of a bad relationship when Roy was a teenager. Obviously Snowbirds happened and that changed their dynamic and created a whole lot of tension they had to work through, but this is clearly pre-Snowbirds, and since Ollie still has money+Queen Industries it's also presumably pre-Hard Traveling Heroes, which is where the idea of Ollie not being around stems from. Was there conflict? Sure! But not to the extent that the Teen Titans would be blaming Ollie for how Roy is (actually, the "its not his fault the way he was raised" angle is more accurate for Dick than Roy, but I'm not gonna get into that). And I am doing a lot of explaining and defending for a man who's competition is Rudy West.

Fundamental misunderstanding of Ollie and reducing him to "Batman with arrows" my beloathed.

Also another big issue is the fact that Roy's meant to be some spoilt rich brat, which doesn't really make sense?? I mean, Roy grew up on a reservation, and at this point he's living with Ollie who, based on this panel, is implied to still be at least kinda socialist in this timeline. He's not gonna be some disconnected nepo-baby who shames Wally for his parents' financial status, even at his most insecure, which I guess is the angle they're taking here.

And also why is Garth the one defending Roy? Garth doesn't care about Roy at best at this point, and actively dislikes him at worst. Especially considering Roy's treatment of Garth is arguably worse in this than in the original Teen Titans run. Idk, it feels like it's trying to make Garth into the quiet emotionally mature kid in this scenario, which i don't feel is very accurate to who Garth actually is (I'll admit I'm only recently getting into Aqua comics so I don't have a complete grasp of Garth's character, but I get the impression that he's definitely not as much of a pushover as this comic presented him as- in the original Teen Titans run he was bantering as much as the others were, and he did have moments where he'd get aggressive, such as when the Titans refuse to help him because of their 'vow')

I'm not gonna say I hate this comic. There are some parts of it I really love, like

These panels are cute as fuck and I adore them. I think that the comic really works as its own story outside of the main Teen Titans continuity, with its own interpretations of the characters and their stories. But if you try and apply it to the original Teen Titans series, it does get kinda messy.

So yeah, in conclusion, the panels are sad if you look at them within the story, but I just can't take it seriously in a broader scope because y'know. Rudy West. I'm not even that big of a Flash fan and I still know Rudy West is the worst guy.

[sinful-karateka]

I'll bite and talk about something that doesn't get enough spotlight in general, which are Demetri's and Eli's family life. So obviously several fic authors have their own twists and flavors to this, but if I may sell you something for a sec.

So far into the series, what we've got are these facts:

Demetri's Mom is the only family member to be mentioned in the show.

Eli's parents were mentioned a couple of times.

That should be enough context to deduce two things:

Demetri could be an only child to a single mother, and;

Eli's parents involve themselves in the stuff that he does — including karate, who knows — though they tend to be tone deaf with his actual needs.

There's strong evidence to why the boys act the way they act (brain functions notwithstanding, but this isn't the post for that), which is why I think these deductions make sense. How their hypothetical upbringing is part and parcel to how characters behave in this series. Of course societal influence comes in second because obviously you've got a show that encourages learning karate as defense against bullies, but this show is also about generational chains and traumas! So why wouldn't their home life inform the way it informs the LaRusso's, Lawrence's, and Nichols'? But I digress.

In the span of the entire series, I've held onto this headcanon that Demetri's neuroticism and ability to anticipate his actions carefully stem from a household that needs these systems in place, much more for someone who likes to be on top of things. Since he's just a student, the only authoritative figure who can make executive decisions... is his mom. Add to the fact that she may be a working mom, so when Demetri tells Daniel about certain restrictions in learning karate, what could have made her decide to just write a letter instead vs. taking the time out to go with his son herself? I know I know it's narrative writing but like do you seeeee where I'm at here

Eli's family life is by far gave us early indications of his dynamic with his mother — but not so a father — in earlier seasons. It's possible that his mom is a stay-at-home one, but if I were to push the bounds of this box even further, I'd even speculate that she's retired early if it meant that Eli's dad is the one making most of the living. Like of course they'd get mad at Hawk for getting a tattoo at his age, I think any parent would! But the way he tells Aisha to exclude him from her stories tells us that there's not a lot that his parents know about the life he lives as Hawk. At this point we all know the kind of effort it takes to successfully carry it out because he has to go home every night. It's either he a) puts in a lot of effort into concealing this identity once he gets home, or b) his parents are rarely ever home, which again, feeds into another assumption that maybe Mrs. Moskowitz works certain hours.

All we know is they're never around a whole lot for these boys, which is sad! and also again, very Indicative of their classification as awkward nerds pre- and early karate. When I read along certain fics that consider and include how the rest of their characters besides the found families they've formed, it gives much more depth and potency to writing them, their flaws, and how they think.

For all we know, Mrs. Alexopoulos could be a lesbian making fun of her son for not slinging pussy like she does being rizzless unlike her, but don't let me explain that when we have @demetriandelibinaryboyfriends!

[myfairkatiecat]

nightfall was crazy, but I'm also kind of confused??? It went by sooo fast I was like WHAT? WAIT, WHAT? WAIT WAIT WAIT-

Love the fact that they went on with keefes whole "I'm not worth it, but you are, so I'm going to take over decisions we need to make (as a team) and screw them over so that they cause harm to me and not you!" Kinda vibe, honestly thought that after he came back from the neverseen in lodestar they were just going to forget about it, yk??

Only thing I really didn't like is that like...everyone has a slight distrust to keefe (at least in the start, till he apologized ) but Sophie, the person who was (in my opinion) most affected by his 'betrayal' never once had a doubt???? Like, if someone betrayed me, right? Yk they're my friend whatever whatever, ID STILL HAVE SOME KIND OF LIKE ISSUES WITH THEM???

I feel like her distrusting keefe and then slowly learning to trust him would have made the book MUUUCH better!!

Also, I'm still not getting where the Fitz discourse is coming from, like, his sibling just betrayed him, fell unconscious and WOKE UP WITH NO MEMORY OF ANYTHING?? I can see where the anger issues come from

Holy shit this was long, sorry!

-- @localburntoutkid

Had a blast reading this!

You’re so right about Keefe. That definitely doesn’t get dropped after lodestar, or even nightfall—it’s one of his character’s main flaws, and while it does shift and evolve as the series moves on, it’s kind of there, you know? And I’m really hoping it resolves in some way by the end of the series, because his arc is just… so interesting to me. Because it is NOT arc-shaped. At all.

I get what you mean about Sophie being the only one who doesn’t distrust Keefe when he comes back. I really like that too acknowledge that it’s a Sophie-specific thing, though! Too many people forget that this is a third person limited story told by an unreliable narrator, and act like Shannon Messenger herself is telling us Keefe deserves to be fully trusted. Sophie Foster decides, at the end of Neverseen, not to hate him, and Lodestar is where she has her moments of doubt and distrust, but even in Lodestar, she always believes in Keefe’s good intentions. There’s even a scene where she says something like “Yes, Keefe’s plan is horrible and I hate it, but his heart is in the right place. I have to believe that.” The part about keefe’s plan is paraphrased, but she did say she needs to believe his heart was in the right place, in that wording, and it’s fascinating to me. She’s very attatched to Keefe (obviously) and I think it’s mostly for her own sanity that she chooses over and over to believe that there’s something right about what he’s doing, because letting him go sounds excruciating, even by his own fault.

I actually have no issue with this being Sophie’s perspective, and I actually find it interesting especially in the context of sokeefe, but I wish we got to see this portion through another character’s eyes. For example, Fitz. Someone who does distrust him afterwards, and rightfully so.

As far as Fitz discourse goes, that stuff stemmed less from nightfall and more from flashback and legacy. I don’t hate Fitz in either of those books, but you’ll probably notice the moments that made people kind of go nuts about hating him and ran away with his character (personally, I think Fitz is fully understandable in both books, but don’t fully condone the way he acts in a few scenes, particularly in legacy. I’ll explain later after you’ve read it)

Don’t apologize for length, I’m literally Katie, have you met me? Everything I write is longer than I intend

I’m glad you’re having fun with the KOTLC series. Keep me updated!!!

[azquine]

Do you think Rose Tyler went through a degree of parentification with her mother?

I'm not calling Jackie a bad mother. She clearly loves Rose a TON and did her very best in difficult circumstances. She was a young woman suddenly a widow having to look after a child all on her own in the midst of her grief. Grief that she clearly hasn't gotten over as she attempts to cover over it with lines of new men and a blur of personal, televised, and printed gossip

But it is Rose who was supporting the household in the first episode we see her. Rose who has to find a job once it's been literally destroyed around her. As far as I remember it's never even considered that Jackie would take on Roses load for a bit.

Jackie likely never got a reprieve after Pete died before she was thrown straight into single motherhood, no matter how overwhelming it must have been. This is likely why she has no clue how to offer Rose a rest to get over what was a likely traumatic event. she even describes it as such on the phone (the fact that Rose is not actually in fact going through symptoms of trauma is I feel pretty irrelevant to this, though it contributes to the feeling of Roses mental state being brushed off)

Jackie's dislike for Roses 'airs and graces' from working a high end shop, the negative tone towards how the doctor changed her, even for the better, I think it all stems from the fear of Rose leaving. If Rose becomes better than what she can offer and leaves, she takes Jackie's entire world. The last reflection of Pete, a potential and invaluable source of income, and most of all simply the person she loves and cares for most. She'd have nothing but a council estate flat, friends to gossip with, media to consume, and bills to pay.

My thoughts on all this were triggered by a gif set I saw where Rose on new year's tells her mother something along the lines of 'don't stay out too late' and Jackie's reply is 'you try and stop me'. In most situations this would be the other way round. It should not be the daughter half jokingly cautioning the mother about a night out. The ease and familiarity of the exchange makes me think that this would not have been the first occurrence of this. This isn't to say that mothers shouldn't have proper nights out, my own does, but the daughter should not be the one worrying if they are being safe.

And that episode with the absorbalof (I think that's how it's spelled) where Rose comes out at the end enraged on her mother's behalf. It is completely understandable, and I would probably be EXACTLY the same, but in the context of everything else I'm thinking about, it's a bit too fitting that it is Rose coming to Jackie's defence after a bad not-quite boyfriend.

The woman who sat with Pete as he died, who Jackie uses as a single piece of comfort to pass on to her daughter? That's also Rose.

And the alternate dimension is really more Jackie's happy ending than Roses, though they both get an alternative version of the man of their dreams. But Rose loses a big part of why she chose to leave home over and over. Her monologue at the chippy pre- bad wolf shows that, although the doctor is an appeal on his own, the life of going out there and seeing the universe, making a change, is something that the loss of gets under her skin like a restless itch. And she didn't get a choice, she had to learn to deal with it.

Jackie loses nothing. It's all gain for her. She has her daughter, who she cares about most in the world, her husband, who seems more devoted and successful than he ever was in her reality, and she has the money and big house that she never got previously. She never has to learn to work through her grief without covering it, it is undone for her (though I'm sure the ghost of the 'real' Pete will still linger in her mind)

Again I want to reiterate that Jackie is NOT a bad or neglectful mother. She is incredibly and realistically concerned with Roses safety (in a way that I've only really seen RTD write). But she is a woman who has her own issues to tackle and very few resources with which to do so. Rose would have had to grow up navigating around that.

Feel free to counter or correct any of my points, or to talk about something I missed, it's been lovely to see peoples thoughts on my other rambles! :)

[simplyclary]

To Each Their Own Charm and Beauty

(Photo edit by yours truly)

The idea for this entry stemmed from an magazine interview with Nick that I read earlier today and I knew I just had to write something about it (Twitter/X does not have enough space so I turn here),

To provide context, Nick was asked regarding the feeling of being handsome and having studios wanting him as the lead because of his handsome face, to which he brushed off and said this quote instead:

"Look, I can speak about this 'cause Taylor's a close friend of mine, but Taylor is like an Adonis. It was difficult in some aspects, being so closely compared to him".

While I do appreciate his honesty, I want to agree with him that Taylor is like an actual Greek God. Like you have seen Taylor's physique, right?? That man is cut like a sculpture.

Anyway, let's get back to the main point before I get carried away...

I honestly wanted to tell Nick through the screen that he is also handsome and charming and fit. Like if Taylor is Adonis, Nick is Apollo. They both have their individual charms and they are both loved for it.

To me, they are both charismatic and swoon-worthy gentlemen. Taylor has the gorgeous Latino charm and generally exudes alpha energy. Nick, on the other hand, has this British innocence and shyness to him. I do love both of them and they make me swoon in their own ways.

I can totally understand though where Nick is coming from when he said that statement, because at this point, Taylor is considered as one of the most handsome men of the decade. However, Nick is also handsome in his own cute British way. It also makes sense to me that his being British is why he shrugs off compliments about his physicality and looks, which is humbling in a way.

To be fair though, Taylor also blushes and gets flusters at compliments, especially about those gorgeous eyelashes of his that the world is jealous of. So they are both humble gentlemen that deserves to be loved, supported and protected.

Some other things that I love about both Taylor and Nick includes the facts that they are both so sweet and kind, so approachable, and they are not afraid to be vulnerable and honest.

Bottomline is that Taylor and Nick each have their own individual charms, Of course, it's normal to compare them to one another considering they're currently heartthrobs with lots of fans (including me) who goes feral over them every time they have an appearance. To me, what matters is both the outside and inside personality. They check the box on both of those, so that's a win in my eyes.

[mxtxfanatic]

Why do you think Shen Qingqiu sees himself as selfish and lazy when he is a genuinely kind person ? where does it come from in your opinion, I mean ?

I think this perception comes from a combination of things: fanon, canon, and fandom issues, but I guess I should start by saying that I don’t believe that Shen Qingqiu seriously believes himself to be genuinely selfish and lazy person (also that being selfish and lazy precludes you from being kind).

Canon:

1) Shen Qingqiu has typical millennial self-depreciating humor. Most of what he says about himself is exaggeration and hyperbole. He is not being serious.

2) Shen Yuan acknowledges and accepts that he has inherited the sins of Shen Qingqiu along with his body, so a lot of times he’s also taking into account Shen Qingqiu’s actions as Shen Jiu when talking about his own. He’s considering Shen Qingqiu as a whole, not just from the moment he transmigrated in.

3) Shen Qingqiu never directly brags about himself or his achievements, so the self-depreciation sticks more in the mind of readers. He turned a purely aesthetic created by Shen Jiu into a fearsome weapon. He was accepted into a top civilian school as a teacher as soon as be stepped in, and he taught there for months. He has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the world of PIDW. But because most of these we see through context, it makes it seem like he may not see his achievements as noteworthy, when he simply just.. does not brag. And this makes sense that he doesn’t when you remember that he’s already a revered shizun and sword cultivator. Why does he need to list off his skills and triumphs to anyone just to counter the jokes he makes in his mind?

Fanon:

Shen Qingqiu is not nearly as self-depreciating as fandom makes him out to be. A lot of it is just a direct misunderstanding of Shen Qingqiu’s character stemming from as early as his transmigration, where many readers assume that he is only motivated by “survival” despite Shen Qingqiu accepting the “inevitability” of his death before even laying eyes on Luo Binghe for the first time. This is just one of those situations where fandom has taken a relatively small and casual character trait and turned it into the character’s main personality.

Fandom-wise:

There’s a worrying amount of people in this fandom who seem to miss a lot of queues from story, which I feel like stems from two places that may intersect but aren’t mutually exclusive: 1) people are reading mxtx as their intro to cnovels when every mxtx novel is a critique and takedown of the genre it inhabits. If you don’t even know what’s typical of average Chinese webnovel writing, how are you able to pick up when an author is mocking something or playing around? Speaking on myself, svsss was my first cnovel, and there were a lot of things I either missed or misunderstood until my second reread after spending a year consuming any cnovel I could get my hands on. That added experience changed my understanding of svsss when I finally revisited it.

And 2) a lot of the English-speaking fanbase (which is mostly composed of white people from Western nations) have a worryingly hard time conceptualizing of Chinese people as people and not little robots or meme-machines, and that translates into the inability to see Chinese characters as anything but either illogically literal or callously glib and unfeeling, no nuance or in-between… unless it’s a character they personally vibe with, in which case only that character has nuance and complexity while the others are “boring” and “unnuanced.” I have no sympathy for or solution to these type of readers, but the fact that they tend to dominate book discourse is a massive problem.