#real clown hours

[unicorndeathrace]

The official OFMD account is liking tweets again

[chocolate-cream-soldier]

!!!

[bixy]

when you go to a cybersecurity event to network, since you're in school for that and you're trying to get an IT job (entry level IT jobs are so hard to get into right now) and someone is talking about defcon, so you ask if they're fluent in sign language but it turns out thats a con specifically for cybersecurity and programming whoops

[rarelyseencephalopod]

Me screaming and crying about Kunikida being the Mafia switch like I don't already have an AU planned out where he IS in the Mafia from the start 😐

[pokemonxhyperfixation]

Real clown hours

So true clownpiece, YAGADUBI BEDEBADUBI BEBEBUBEBBEBCBCBBABBEYAHHBBRBFBEBFBEBF4BTBEBRERBBEBEBIBBEBEBA, WHUUUU BIbibibibibi to you too.

[heartorbit]

revstar emu save me

[h-doodles]

should i be finishing my spreadsheet? yah i should. but guess what im doing instead!!!

...exclusively pinoy songs btw. i'm screaming.

[poisonousquinzel]

"the only reason Harley's called Harley Quinn and not Harleen Quinzel or some other moniker is because the Joker manipulated her into thinking the similarity in her name and the name of a specific type of clown meant they were destined to be together and that means she's intrinsically tied to him forever and can't exist as a character on her own because her origin is tied to him" ass take has gotta be the worst one I've seen as of late,,, like really can't lie it's stuck in my head lol 😭

i wish i could go about life misunderstanding characters this much and thinking that one who's been a canonical domestic abuse victim since her og origin episode / comic, who is partly (story wise) inspired by a real life dv victim who survived

In the afterword, artist Bruce Timm shares that their Harley was based in part on a real-life friend who was stuck in an abusive relationship: “I’m happy to report that the ‘real-life Harley’ did finally break away from her ‘Joker’ and has been happily married to another man for several years now.”

[Source]

is a character who's "girlbossified" when she's allowed to grow past and outside of her abuser himself,, and that that means idk writing her without him dilutes her character and takes away everything interesting and flawed about her? that she should never be written without him / without her world revolving around him, due to him being the catalyst in her origin?

The Joker's part of her origin because he was the root cause of her fall, the villain, the bad guy, the abuser. that doesn't mean she's required to be forever tied to him?

This isn't even a problem in the actual comics or anything. It's just absolutely 100% not.

No one even pretends Joker isn't intrinsically tied to her story, or more specifically her trauma. No one in real life and no one in their universe.

Tim Drake literally mentioned The Joker in like the last chapter of her (2021 - ) comic ffs!!! 😭

"Did the Joker make you want to do that? Do you wanna unpack that, Harley? Do you wanna talk about The Joker?!"

Harley Quinn (2021-) #42

But it's almost like people grow and heal and evolve. Her codependency and shit are flaws that are not permanent and are things she (can) and is working on.

She's riddled with flaws and they've gone nowhere! she's just trying her best to stay afloat and better herself bit by bit because she isn't Dr. Harleen Quinzel anymore, she can never walk into a medical building and apply and expect them to not know who she is upon a singular search in the system.

She's just Harley Quinzel now, she still has the skills and experience and schooling, but she also has a long serious criminal record, severe mental health issues and is living in a city that rightfully does not trust her. She can't go back, she can't get her old life back, and she can't go back to being Her, The OG "New & Improved" Harley Quinn who's world revolved around 1 person and him alone, because she would die.

He'd kill her, maybe not immediately, but he would be the death of her.

And she knows that. It's a lose lose.

The only real option she has is to lay down and die or to survive. To float and swim bit by bit until she finds stable ground.

Until she finds a way to live with herself again.

Harley's "obliviousness" is a coping mechanism that we literally see her dealing with since BTAS.

A warped world view that does in fact make her actions more complex,, and makes the aftermath / come down all the harder for her as she has to grapple with the internal traumatic response to Everything with Joker while also dealing with the world she's waking up to and realizing the real reality of her actions and the actual pain it left behind. It's literally been in her character plain as day since her First Personal Comic from 2000!

It's something taken seriously and something she knows, regardless if she even remembers the crime, that she has a responsibility to take accountability for. She almost lets Clown Hunter execute her because she was involved in his parents death, even though she doesn't remember the night, she trusts Batman enough that if he says she was there, she was. And she's going to own up to being there. She starts a therapy group for ex clowns post Joker War, she's become a (court ordered) professor and during all of these arcs Joker and his influence on her and her life are mentioned and acknowledged and present.

He's not been removed as an intrinsic aspect of her story, but he is no longer the center of her world and that is a good thing.

It's almost like character growth after 30 goddamn years is something that happens.

And! you know who else is intrinsically tied to Harley Quinn's character just as much as The Joker?

Poison Ivy and Batman.

Her three primary connections since the Beginning, since the original series that everyone wants to pretend was so so different about her than it ever was, was Joker, Batman and Ivy.

And a primary goal (Harley wise) for 2/3 people she's been connected to since Batman The Animated Series has literally been to get her away from the 3rd. They've just successfully helped save her in most universes now, even when she's the one who pulls the trigger in the end.

It's been over 4 years since I made this blog and I still cannot wrap my head around this fandom's deep seeded hatred and disdain for actual character development.

"Sorry", but that's just such a disgusting take built on misinformed foundations and idk a personal rage for bad guy characters not being bland, predictable one note entertainment for the rest of their miserable existence in comics until they're shelved for being fucking boring one note d-list characters?

[hanjesungs]

totally helpful super informative s class choreo guide (real)

[nightsandreala]

A short (like 350ish words) jackle and balan fic under the cut for international clown week (late again) 🤭 very unserious it’s just jackle brushing balan’s hair. also balan rhymes all two of his lines 🎉

“Your hair’s getting too long in the front,” Jackle says, combing Balan’s bangs down so that they just barely impede his vision. “You want me to cut it?”

Like a giant orange cat, he’s perched up on the top of the chair Balan is sitting in, in front of the vanity, the comb now gripped between his teeth while he searches in the depths of his cape for what Balan already knows will either be an incredibly-sharp tarot card or something similarly inappropriate for cutting hair— knowing Jackle like he does, it would probably be something like a medieval sword (and, along with it, a completely true and non-embellished story about how he’d obtained it). Before he can find whatever it is he’s looking for, though, Balan reaches up and pulls his arm down, forcing his hand, empty, back into this plane of existence. 

“I’ve more than kept its length in check, and please, i’d like to keep my head attached to my neck.” He watches Jackle’s face in the mirror, grinning wide in mock annoyance above him, and when his eyes shift downwards again he finds that he’s smiling too— hat off and everything. It isn’t new for the two of them, but still surreal in Balan’s mind, but not uncomfortable.

Jackle, though, is so ready to argue back that he has to scramble to catch the comb that slips from his mouth. “What?! You’ve seen me dice vegetables with a playing card but I'm not good enough to cut your hair?” 

“Have you ever tried it? You don’t have any hair of your own.” He looks up again, shifting towards Jackle’s hand with the comb— he may have never cut anyone’s hair, but he was remarkably gentle while brushing (it had taken some practice, though, Balan remembered, feeling a phantom pain at the tips of his ears). “If you've never cut hair, I'd rather you just stick to the comb.”

“And I thought you were all in the know about style,” Jackle sighs, shakes his head, but pulls Balan by the shoulder towards him nonetheless, dividing up another section of hair for brushing. “…And anyways, if I really wanted to behead you, you know I’d use a guillotine.”

[foxedfriend]

9-1-1 || 7x04

here before buddie canon!! 😜😜

(🤡🤡🤡)

also currently listening to bad omens by 5sos and that exactly describes how i feel about this.

[luvbug724]

ITS KEVIN/JEREMY RENEE AND NEIL I AM PUTTING MY MONEY ON IT

[morethanwonderful]

One of the things I think of a lot with regards to John is—why didn't he have any friends in his real life?

None of the beta kids ever seem to mention having irl friends that they miss in the aftermath of the apocalypse. And yeah, they've got a lot of other stuff going on, and it's not really in the narrative's nature to bring up people not somehow involved with sburb, but on a watsonian level, if any of them had other friends that died in sburb's aftermath, you'd think they'd say something about that grief at some point.

It's relatively easy to explain away the other beta kids' friendlessness. Jade lives alone on an island, Dave is Dave (raised in an extremely weird way that does not make him well-suited for regular life), and Rose's mom is strange and rich enough that Rose probably goes to some shitty private school or has an online tutor or something.

But John is such a public school-type kid through and through. He's just some guy. But the more I think about him, the more I'm thinking about why he must not have any friends. He canonically spends most of his time online.

He's into (poorly) coding, shitty movies, online games, and magic tricks, none of which are a particular recipe for popularity—especially not as a twelve year old in 2009. He also has a peanut allergy.

Unfortunately, that's also probably a social strike against him. Schools are historically really bad at dealing with kids with severe allergies. There's decent odds John was eating alone and isolated at an "allergy table."

Overall, he's kind of made for being a run of the mill social outcast. He's not Dave levels of weird, and he might not be horribly bullied, but he absolutely strikes me as the few to no friends sort in a really painfully mundane way. He's just some dweeb. He's painfully sincere and enthusiastic most of the time, yet clearly has some self-hatred issues deep down that he doesn't like to think about.

He likes unpopular things and lives his life online. And pre sburb, at least his online life seems happy! He has good friends! But I can't help but wonder what his hours not at his computer screen were like. It's hard being twelve years old and goofy and awkward and friendless.

All those deeply repressed internalized thoughts about how lame he is have to come from somewhere, y'know?

[cantsayidont]

One day, someone might want to sit Microsoft developers down and teach them what a progress meter is actually for, since the behavior of their update systems still suggests considerable confusion in this area.

[scary-grace]

whoever requested Thranduil POV seeking a friend (if that in fact happened and I didn’t make shit up) you are a genius because I needed an anniversary fic idea and you gave me one

[pynkhues]

I wonder if they'll go with Marius being physically monstrous or go with him NOT looking that unusual and emphasizing his inner monstrousness -- I could see it working either way.

Yeah, me too! I actually re-read Lestat's turning just the other day in the context of writing this fic, and the way Anne describes Magnus is so viscerally monstrous that it made me wonder how the show's going to handle him. Given this show's exploration of memory, I could see them maybe playing with that in the sense of what he did to Lestat being twisted up in Lestat's memory of what he looked like, especially given Lestat's so out of it for most of the time he's with Magnus.

The show does seem to like to play around with the horror elements of the show too - like things that are so horrific in the books, like the trial, are still horrific, but carry a lot of other tones and genre elements too, whereas things that you maybe wouldn't expect to be so horrific, like the original interview, go full horror. I'm so curious as to how they play it!