#oop caught!

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton knows the FNAF Mimic’s secret..

[doing-something-unholy]

I was looking up what happens to laicized priests for potential ✨️character drama✨️ but i found this instead 😳

[artilite]

my vision for fishing one's design and STARFISH DOODLES 🗣🗣🗣🗣

[ambient-arena]

f1rst time i ever drew kiriona gaia, the saddest girl in the whole world and the specialest little prince in all of space

[shanastoryteller]

Happy Halloween 🎃, more First disciple WWX, please.

a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Wei Wuxian is being vexing.

"It's called flirting," Nie Huaisang says.

"Why is he here?" Lan Wangji asks. They're in his brother's rooms. It should be safe from irritating disciples.

He'd come here specifically to both avoid Wei Wuxian and to complain about him. He hadn't expected an audience of two.

Xichen innocently blinks at him in a way that Uncle still falls for, but Lan Wangji knew better to trust by the time he was six. "I would not want Mingjue to think I'd been discourteous to his brother."

"You are not taking this seriously," he says. "He is up to something!"

"Yeah," Nie Huaisang says. "He's interested in getting up in your - mmf!"

Nie Huaisang glares, crossing his arms and putting his nose in the air.

Lan Wangji would have considered that a blessing a minute ago, but now he looks at his serenely smiling brother and wishes he hadn't used the silencing spell on Nie Huaisang. He wants to know how that sentence was going to end.

[knightswaypoint]

Day 2: Royal Library

Court Sorcerer Merlin, post magic reveal, working to restore all the remaining magic knowledge and books to the royal library.

[cinamun]

Do I know you? | Next

[payasita]

and now a word from our sponsor!🌟

[mzminola]

#kinda critical I guess?#mostly because I'm not going to pretend that Steph isn't responsible for getting herself fired#or causing the gang war#it's not like bruce doesn't share in the blame#he loaded the gun sure but steph's the one who pulled the trigger#after she broke into the gun vault to steal it from him#and she's not some innocent widdle kid who couldn't know any better she's 17#18 if people kept better track of her age relative to tim [tags via soleminisanction]

From the Doylistic lens, I think Stephanie got screwed over because DC was always planning to bring Tim back to the Robin role ASAP, and wanted a plot device to kick off War Games. She was always going to be fired (or quit). That’s one of the downsides of being a supporting character.

~

I think how they did the Robin thing is in character for Steph.

Looking at this now, having read more comics than I did back when it happened and I only heard about it secondhand, I think the sexism is... present but not as directly affecting things as I assumed. The art is clearly focused on her boobs, which is often a comics problem. But I think she got the Robin role while Tim was out, with DC having no intention of letting her keep it, because she was the only other active teen vigilante in Gotham who didn’t have her own series.

(Cass was busy being Batgirl, and I’m pretty sure everyone else was adults.)

Like if Steph was a dude, this would have gone down similarly, just with less boob-focused art (and maybe without DC higher ups claiming she didn’t count as Robin, but who knows, maybe they still would have).

The interpersonal drama with Tim could’ve been done through some other contrived misunderstanding (or maybe a real conflict, please DC) if they were platonic friends at the time. The sexism came into play ages ago when a writer chose to shoehorn her into dating Tim rather than sticking with Vitriolic Buds, and then with that established the writers for this went with the sexist “how dare you cheat on me (oh wait you didn’t)” cliche.

~

War Games still feels less in character and more victim-of-being-a-plot-device, though. I think Stephanie stealing the plans is within her established character at the time, but it would make more sense for her to wave “ha ha I did something sneaky under Batman’s nose” in Tim or Cass’s face (or even Barbara’s, by this point) rather than “I have to prove myself so B will take me back / let me be a vigilante”.

Because previously, Bruce told Steph to stop being Spoiler, more than once if I recall correctly, and she just... ignored him! Kept going out as Spoiler! She didn’t bother with any kind of “oh I gotta prove I can do it” she just fucking did it.

Though since she did kick off War Games, whether it was in character before, now it’s something I keep in mind with her further actions. And oof does she go on to make some terrible choices that are in line with this one.

:[

How did Steph become Robin and how did she become fired? I know it was her starting a gang war but how exactly?

I had this whole thing typed up last night with citations and everything and then the post editor glitched and I lost the whole thing. :/ So, take 2:

Around Robin issues #124-125, Tim's father Jack discovered that he was Robin and went to Wayne Manor with a gun to threaten Bruce over the whole thing. To keep the peace, Tim volunteered to step down as Robin and promised his dad that he'd give that life up forever.

Shortly thereafter (Issue 126), Steph was stalking Tim at his school because if she doesn't see him every day she immediately assumes that he's cheating on her. She arrived at just the wrong moment to witness his classmate Darla plant a kiss on him, took that as proof that he was cheating, and ran away without bothering to wait the ten seconds it would've taken to see Tim push Darla away and tell her, again, that he has a girlfriend, sending her off in tears.

Steph went straight home, made herself a Robin costume, then went to the Bat-cave and told Bruce she would be the new Robin now. And Bruce agreed to let her try.

It's never actually defined what Stephanie's motivation for this is, BTW. We're left to pick it up from context clues -- like the fact that she was perfectly happy being Spoiler and had zero thoughts or plans in this direction until she saw Tim "cheating," and the fact that she then immediately ghosted Tim for what's implied to be weeks, potentially months, with no explanation.

It is, however, implied that Bruce might be going along with it all as a -- quoting Alfred -- "scheme to lure Tim back." Which, yeah, is not great.

So Bruce sets Steph up with a non-homemade Robin costume and a stupid new haircut (it only looks passable when Damion Scott draws it, everyone else needs to stop trying) and gives her this ultimatum.

Remember this for a later post, this one got too long. This arrangement of theirs lasts for a grand total of two full issues.

Seriously. Steph is hired as Robin at the end of issue #126, and she's fired at the end of #128. She appears in, I think, one or two issues of Cass's Batgirl, maybe the same months' corresponding Detective Comics and Batman issues (I don't really care to look them up to double-check), and a single B-plot appearance in an issue of the contemporary Teen Titans mostly dedicated to Superboy calling her a backstabbing wannabe poser and telling her she'll never be welcome at the Tower because she's not the real Robin.

That is the only time those two have ever spoken, BTW. Which is why a lot of people have been annoyed that they're suddenly being written as buddy-buds in the recent continuity for no reason.

Anyway, the point is, Steph's Robin career lasted a grand total of 3 months out-of-universe and forty-nine days in-universe, which we know because she started calling her diary-based narration her "War Journal" and counting the days there. This was recently re-confirmed in 2021's Robins miniseries.

Which brings us to how it ended, which is where I need to correct you slightly, anon. The gang war wasn't the cause of Steph's firing, it was the result.

The cause was an encounter with a powered-armor-wearing assassin called Scarab, who'd been hired by an old enemy of Tim's to kill black-haired, blue-eyed boys in Gotham in the hopes that she would eventually kill Robin. Encountering Steph with Bruce convinced Scarab that she must've killed her target ("resulting in the need for a replacement") and she was preparing to leave Gotham when Bruce & Steph tracked her down.

Bruce suited up in some power armor of his own and went down to fight Scarab, giving Steph strict orders to stay in the Bat-plane and not touch anything. Over the course of the resulting fight -- in which Bruce does seem to struggle a bit but never loses his cool and never seems to be in more danger than he would be in other fights -- he repeats these orders to Stephanie no less than five times.

Stephanie does not listen.

Stephanie rushes into the building, continues to disobey orders once she's there, and immediately gets herself taken hostage. Her life is threatened by the bad guy and Bruce lets Scarab go to save her.

That incident is what gets Stephanie fired.

Interestingly, despite what Bruce said about this being "the precise moment [Stephanie's] out," he actually waits until his injuries from the fight have recovered to drop the bomb, and it's implied that he stretches that out longer than he usually would -- out to a full three weeks -- to give her time to stew. Which I find very interesting, I'll talk about it more in the later post.

The gang war comes in because he gives her some privacy in the Batcave to collect her personal belongings before she goes, including her personal files off the Bat-computer. While doing this, she decides it's a great idea to steal one of Bruce's, quote, "contingency plans" to "wipe out all crime in Gotham... if worst came to worst." This particular plan involved bringing all of the Gotham crime families under Batman's control, and Steph figured that if she could "set that in motion, show she could help him" then he might "take her back."

Unfortunately, one of the "Big Secrets" that she wasn't privy to as a result of being on probation was the fact that Matches Malone, the guy on whom the entire plan hinged, was actually one of Batman's secret identities, so when he didn't show up to the meeting she arranged... boom. A bunch of mafia heads ended up dead, and that led to retaliation from their subordinates. Cue War Games.

[nat-20s]

Honestly I get why narratively speaking they had a Super Mega Tragic Separation for Donna and The Doctor because you KNOW that if they hadn't been every single Doctor would've dealt with trauma by disappearing on their current companions to go have a movie night with the bestie. They straight up would've:

[duskydrawings]

The Pale King and His Pure Vessel

[lavampira]

I'll admit that I'm in deep that I don't know how else to be and I don't want to slow down

[thebramblewood]

Gwen was having a great day off until she nearly had another tense run-in with Elvira and then arrived home to discover a burglar had stolen her stove. At least Spike is safe!

Lilly: THAT'S MY BEST FRIEND!!!

-

Bar Patron: What are you running from?

Gwen: My hot-headed vampire ex. How about you?

Bar Patron: My exorbitant bar tab. Good luck with your... situation.

Gwen: You too!

-

Gwen: Aw, buddy. You must have been so scared.

[facelessmime]

In the merder drones au (great pun btw) what would Uzi’s solver form be? (Or whatever the equivalent is)

I know the au just started but I wanna know UwU (great art btw)

Hmmm... She's fine... maybe...

(alsothankyousomuchiappreciateyousm)

Totally not excited to share all the things haha

(Edit: I cropped it for mystery purposes haha oops)

[artifeast]

HUGS!!!!!

[applestorms]

following the very funny take that L just speedran his feelings for light from denial to acceptance over the course of the tennis game alone, i do think that even if L was somehow aware of the fact that his feelings verged on less-platonic he wouldn't necessarily see them as being requited. or alternatively, that if they are, light is too much of a repressed freak to ever get over his own bullshit enough to make it actually happen.

like i said in my own tags, this perhaps is another anime/manga difference to me. to elaborate...

in both cases, i think it starts off mostly the same: L's interest is Piqued when he realizes KIRA might actually be a human person, with the high of that feeling hitting its peak during lind l tailor as his theories are confirmed -> L's feelings about KIRA develop/are further complicated as he starts investigating light specifically. personally, i think he starts getting Interested™ while stalking him through the cameras in their house & seeing how he acts under the mask, realizes his feelings are Developing in a way he didn't expect the more he watches, and is fully in the Annoyance/Denial stage when he's autism staring at him throughout the testing sequence (could still vary) -> he works through/accepts it by the end of the tennis game, like a kind of background process monologue, maybe capping off specifically when light beats him.

following this, it seems natural to me that there would be a period where L furthers his investigation on light as KIRA while simultaneously also kinda trying to figure out how DTF he is. he's already pretty certain about the former point so a lot of this is just checking his work, watching very carefully to see if he can push light into losing his cool again and giving himself away, which has the additional side effect of pushing his newly developed crush to the front of his brain on a regular basis through sheer necessity.

this all comes to a head w/ misa's arrest. again, at some point throughout this time frame i think L starts putting enough pieces of the Light Yagami puzzle together to start figuring out that he's either 1. not interested entirely, or 2. never gonna fucking admit anything truthful about who he actually is, ever, even to himself. perhaps the next planned step of L's approach would be to push light into telling the truth or revealing something genuine about himself period, even outside of the KIRA investigation itself, but this gets fucked up by light's little memory loss/alternation plan.

yotsuba is interesting because it obviously gets to L quite a bit, showing aspects of his character that we don't really see outright before that point. it is well known that L is a filthy little liar, and that he specifically uses his lies as a way of testing light, but i think yotsuba is when he kinda. gives up on that. in a way, light is being fully truthful during yotsuba, it's just that what he believes to be truth has been manipulated beyond what's usually humanly possible. so L gets what he wants but it's a twisted version of it, and still misses the key component that drew him towards light in the first place (KIRA).

he's grumpy, basically. his toys aren't working the way he wanted them to, so he's throwing them at the wall and demanding that they fix themselves again. as i said before, L is simultaneously incredibly alienated from (the rest of/his own) humanity and directs his entire focus on it- he's the world's greatest detective, not out of empathy or sympathy for human suffering, but because people are the most interesting/complex puzzle he's ever come across and the scale of mass murder makes his dick harder than anything else.

in a way, you could see him locking light away in this shitty little constantly watched cell/literally holding him on a handcuff leash at all times as L's attempt to recreate the feelings that started popping up while he was watching light in his house the first time, seeing the seeds of a serial murderer in his little perfect teenager pet. the most notable shift throughout all of this though is the fact that L starts telling the truth- to bring this classic panel back,

he's not bothering with the "ooo sounds like something KIRA would say," shtick now. honestly the only other time someone really gets this blunt about telling light he's KIRA to his face is near:

(think this might be my favorite near panel ever lmfao. finally found it in ch.80 =3=)

point is, L is both pissed and genuinely kind of depressed throughout most of yotsuba, or at the very least has been annoyed into spitefully shucking off all his duties cuz he doesn't wanna play the game anymore. childish, and a sore loser- just like he said.

ANYWAYS. the differences between the anime and the manga, right.

the main way this diverges is that i think L is definitely aware of his feelings in the anime. all of the evidence for this comes down to episode 25- the rain scene, the foot washing, "Have you ever told the truth once in your life?" and so on and so forth. part of this may actually follow the divergences of light's characterization between the anime and manga, but L is almost certainly talking about something that light isn't willing to admit during these scenes and it's motivating a lot of his hardest lines.

again, it's the two cases: either he's morose about the fact that his feelings are unrequited and kicking back as a final fuck you for getting pulled around for so long, or (and personally, i kinda think this is more likely) he is aware of the fact that light does like him back in that way and Supremely salty about the fact that he won't ever act on it. "It will be lonely, won't it," etc. etc. "You're gonna fucking miss me, bitch. You don't have to do this but you're going to tear us apart anyway, and I don't forgive you, never will." light is putting the game above them, and L is fucking mad about it lol.

sidenote: it's interesting that the tennis game itself kind of parallels/foreshadows L losing in this way. as i've said before, in the tags on some fucking post i don't even remember now, light knows throughout the tennis game that winning might add to his KIRA percentage (though it is admittedly still quite vague), but he chooses to go for it anyway. just can't stop himself from winning, even if it goes against him and everything he actually wants... some classic light yagami shit right there.

in the manga this is a lot less clear, specifically because we are lacking these scenes in particular. L's death just happens so goddamn quick in the manga, it rushes up and catches him by surprise basically the second he lets his guard down and stops watching light, so we don't get this same drawn out saltiness as he metaphorically bleeds out. this is not to say it isn't present entirely- much of the above analysis still applies to the manga just as much as the anime, but it is perhaps a lot more subtle to follow by the end.

honestly, that all being said, i think manga L is also a lot more likely to simply never figure his shit out when it comes to light. it's a particularly interesting part of canon to me that both of these interpretations actually seem to work equally well when it comes to L, that he is either fully aware for most of the series about his feelings or entirely unaware and never bothers to reflect or consider it. says something about his character i guess, that he still manages to hide or cloud so many of his internal thoughts that shit like this can be pretty ambiguous and still feel kind of core to his character.

anyways, thanks again to @ai-the-broccoli and that original post for kicking this particular essay off, as well as everyone else who responded for getting my brain rolling this time around :)