#supervillains unlike real people need to be interesting lmao

[luthwhore]

i can understand people not being interested in seeing reformed lex and preferring stories of him being a villain (even if i don’t personally agree) but i saw someone leave a review on league of comic geeks insinuating that joshua williamson’s take on lex luthor was somehow indicative of his view on irl billionaires like musk and bezos and i really wanted to reply to the person and be like “hey serious question do you think ebeneezer scrooge reforming at the end of a christmas carol meant charles dickens was pro-billionaire”

[eggtrolls]

The Downton blogging (circa S3E5) will continue until morale improves

Ice in the veins, Kobe of the social scene — Mary Crawley would not, could physically not miss a chance to be ruthless to Edith. She sees Edith from 100 feet away and it’s On Sight. Edith standing in the churchyard about to be married and Mary is like listen we WILL NOT like each other a jot more in the future but good luck I guess. Sybil is lying DEAD on a bed in front of them and Edith is like 🥺 oh Mary 🥺 do you think we might get along a little better in the future? 🥺😭 and Mary just says “I doubt it”. She is a supervillain and I support women’s wrongs.

My favourite half-drowned bear cub of a man, Robert is like ‘no I can’t kick out my tenants who can’t farm and haven’t paid rent since the Norman invasion because they’re OLD wtf do you think I���m MEAN or something????’ and then he turns around and is like ‘but fuck Catholics for real tho lmao am I right or am I right, archbishop of banterbury’

The scene right after Edith gets left at the altar and Robert and Matthew go outside to talk about Reggie Swire’s fortune and the shot is them as tiny ants in the shadow of Downton’s walls…….that’s the shit I like

Cora saying goodbye to Sybil’s corpse with an insanely placid smile and her right (my left) eye twitching the entire time. Again the reminders of Iphigenia vis-a-vis a young woman dying in the house as a sacrifice, thus casting Cora being Clytemnestra which is just deeeeeeeelicious

The only part of Sybil’s death/mourning that actually made me feel some kind of way was Maggie Smith struggling alone with her cane in the hall……how many women has she seen die in childbirth over the last 70 years. Is it even surprising anymore? Does it hurt more or less?

Tom is still busy being fucking useless because he has no real purpose other than being a vague socialist life-size cardboard cut out to eventually be whittled down as a foil to Matthew who is himself being whittled down as a foil to Robert.

Also re: Tom and the Drumgoole house burning, WHY was he surprised by this being upsetting LET ALONE that it happened? He’s like omg I can’t believe I was upset by seeing rich people crying when their house burnt down, but the same fucking guy years ago canonically said nothing bad would happen to the Tsar and his family? Bro? Tf? Did you even do the readings of this shit you’re actively living through, while as a journalist to boot?????

Also also tremendously weak ass shit for him to answer Sybil’s “you didn’t tell me you’d gone to those meetings” with “I didn’t say I hadn’t”. “You didn’t tell me you were part of the Oklahoma City bombings”/“well I didn’t say I wasn’t” ass logic. unsurprising Tom L

Anna’s character is wearing so thin. She really has fuckall personality besides being pert, blonde, and vaguely saintlike while saying mihstehhhh Beyyyyyyyhtś every five minutes like a cuckoo clock

O’Brien playing the long game of slowly nudging Thomas and Jimmy towards each other, knowing it will get Thomas fired if not jailed, is a master class in scheming. Spy novels where the payoff is averting nuclear war are written with less attention to detail than this.

I need Thomas to get a mean lesbian best friend as a counterpoint to season 1 Miss O’Brien but since female sexuality wasn’t discovered in England until the 1970s it’s unlikely to happen :(

Mr Molesley as the permanent straight man of the show is maybe a little stale but it does crack me up every time. Sorry bro

The conversation around Downton as sentient being who kills those who don’t belong (Lavinia, and ultimately, Matthew) or who stray from the fold (Sybil) or those who endangered the Family (Kemal Pamuk) is still super interesting as the later seasons really let Edith hit her stride. It’s pretty clear that the flow of the Downton True Heir is set up as Violet to Robert to Mary but what if not. Mary is the bloodline (via Matthew) and has the money (also via Matthew) and the beauty* but Edith is the care and the maintenance that is completely ESSENTIAL to maintaining a house like Downton: in the little things of arranging seatings for dinners to keep the peace, to bigger things like helping with the Drake’s farm because the estate does boost the house, to her entire arc during S2 with the war. Mary as the roof and Edith as the walls…..let me cook

Lastly:

Okay hear me out but Vera Bates……..….would

*Edith isn’t even actually UNattactive, she just has the combo curse of Too Much Nose and Teeth. Mary’s features are roughly as pretty individually but much better proportioned for her face.

[ectonurites]

I know Jason "came back to life" in the eyes of the public etc but like legit interested in your opinion on this because I'm just confused and interested in how he went about that, y'know? Like wouldn't it take him years? And who does he get to confirm its him and not some rando? IIRC Bruce didn't know he did that until the iceberg lounge thing which is weird if his son came back to life you would think he would testify or something sooner? I just don't know how it would work lol 😳🤔

SO you sent me down a reading rabbit hole. 

The thing about Jason’s situation compared to most situations irl is the fact that since he genuinely did die, there was a body and everything. That definitely makes it tricky. However, even though in our minds he was dead a super long time since he was killed in the 80s, he was only really gone for what’s probably 5 or so years by the time in RHATO he’s trying to ‘come back’. It being not even a decade is in his favor (I haven’t found a ruling for New Jersey specifically yet but in Ohio for instance a death ruling can’t be overturned if it’s been more than 3 years, so less time dead is better. But Ohio’s the only state i’ve seen the 3 year thing for so working with 5 should be okay here) 

Most cases about people needing to re-declare themselves alive that have happened irl I’ve found are either missing persons who were presumed dead after many years being away (the base line is 7, some states have it as less though), OR the more common situation of literally just clerical error on this thing called the ‘Death Master File’ (apparently like, nearly 40 people get declared dead by accident every day in the US! which is WHACK!) 

The grounds Jason would likely try to use is that it was a mistaken body (so somebody else) and he had actually just been missing all this time, which would kinda be a mix between a ‘fraudulent death’ claim and then the missing person type thing. Fraudulent death seems to be one of the harder ones to prove (because most of the time this category is more for people who purposely faked their deaths). In general, the fact that this happened with him as a child rather than as an adult, means there’s less cases I’ve been able to find that are even remotely similar but it also might help him out since there’s less precedent and also it’s more clear it probably wasn’t a like ‘get insurance money/run away from money owed’ scam. 

However, identity theft with dead people is like, a pretty common thing, so yeah proving oneself alive is not the easiest process in the world.

But most of the like, ‘things that make being declared legally dead even if you aren’t a really really bad and a lengthy process to fix’ are like, money related (social security, life insurance, bank accounts, property stuff, etc) and for someone like Jason who was 15 at time of death (so not married or owning property) and money apparently does not seem to be a problem for due to his various criminal activities, these wouldn’t be anywhere near as big of a deal. Like, sure a little inconvenient perhaps but definitely not entirely devastating like it can be for the real normal people that this kind of thing happens to. Also, when he bought the Iceberg Lounge, he bought it out from under the fuckin’ Penguin, so like, there’s already some shady shit going on there, so even if he was still in the process of ‘coming back to life’ he’d probably have been able to get that all started.

Also the ‘confirming it’s him’ thing as far as I’ve gathered from what I’ve read doesn’t... anywhere say it actually requires he bring someone from his life (Bruce) to verify it’s him? It’s way more about the combination of your presence & the documentation. So as long as he has photo ID and like as many of his official documents as possible (which. sneaking into the manor to steal his real passport from childhood and other documents like that i think is absolutely something he could/would do especially since like, earlier in RHATO 2016 it’s shown Bizarro’s door thing can literally get into the Batcave. I think it’s not unlikely to assume at some point he thought it could all come in handy and swiped ‘em) he could get the process going. This might differ since he was a minor at time of death but again every real case I’ve found so far was dealing with adults so I’m not sure.

Getting the US government to declare you alive though, like, from what I read can honestly be done as quickly as within a few weeks OR it can take years (but usually the ‘years’ there is more figuring out all that money and insurance related stuff, which again, not as big a deal for Jason specifically)

Another consideration I’d like to bring up is the fact that being presumed/found dead and later turning back up definitely happens a lot more in the DC universe than real life. Like, there’s supervillain attacks and world disasters and shit all the time. I think that realistically in the DCU there is probably a better system set up than IRL for handling cases like this, which would work in his favor.

I also think that due to the fact he was a relatively known person in Gotham, and we know Gotham’s systems are NOT the most uhhhh ‘by the books’ especially if theres public pressure and money being thrown at them, I pretty firmly believe he could have gotten it settled relatively quickly.

In real life it would be a lot harder due to the factor of the body, since he’d have to try to prove that wasn’t him even though it literally was, but liiiike unless Bruce had cashed in big on life insurance and didn’t have the means to pay it back (which this happened years before he lost the fortune LMAO) he should probably be fine, this is a comics world where most problems can be solved if you throw money at them (real life’s kinda like that too of course but comics take it to an EXTREME).

I do agree that Bruce would probably need to have been at least a little aware this was all happening, but for dramatic effect since this is in fact a comic book I understand why they had it be a surprise to him. A panel of Bruce getting a phone call from his lawyer wouldn’t have been nearly as effective as Jason just suddenly being on TV. Also like, I don’t think it’s impossible to rule out Bruce could have known he was in the process of legally coming back to life but not have known he was doing so in Gotham, because Jason being back in in the city was Bruce’s actual problem there.

Also funnily enough one of the cases of a person I found who was declared dead but is still alive was someone with the last name ‘Todd’, weird coincidence world. 

Some further reading about real cases of people coming back / things I might have referenced but wasn’t sure exactly where to link along the way: (one) (two) (three) (four) 

[anzacanary]

human-shinigami-swap-Bleach-AU thoughts continued in discord, copy-pasted here with minimal efforts at formatting

Canary06/14/2020 thought: modern-AU-Byakuya commits violence the same way that Tachibana drives a car. Renji’s all impressed that the prep-school skinny-jeans guy very successfully punched a dude, and Byakuya’s all “yes, I too am honestly shocked that went so well” Rukia: I hit a guy in the throat with a wrench! Be impressed! Renji: yes but I EXPECT it from YOU Canary06/15/2020 Although in modern AU none of them are actually much good at fighting. Renji thinks he is, but it’s “teenager who keeps telling you how he’s totally been in a bunch of street fights you guys” good Rukia’s the best since, not being v physically intimidating, she already had a “run up while they’re not looking and stab real hard” approach to fighting, which is their best shot at success when up against actual trained shinigami sword-people BRG06/15/2020 Yes, incredibly good. What's Ichigo like? Canary06/15/2020 I picture this in the “Rukia is a regular teenager and Ichigo is the shinigami who crashes into her life” swap AU so he’s presumably yelling How To Use Your Magic Sword instructions from the sidelines Sleeping in the coat closet Wearing skinny jeans and a Karakura University sweatshirt which Byakuya does not want back, thanks Eventually his fellow shinigami show up to fetch him; Kurosaki-papa’s much less fatalistic and depressed than Byakuya was so I imagine his approach is more “come on, kid, you gotta come back so I can start talking everyone down over here”, genuinely thinking he has enough pull in Soul Society that he could put a stop to the whole ‘execution’ thing BRG06/15/2020 Aww. That's really cute and disastrous and I'm much happier for them as a family. Canary06/15/2020 ...ofc it’s gonna hit Kurosaki-papa pretty hard as he realizes that he badly overestimated his ability to put the brakes on this situation. and he’s the one who dragged Ichigo back, telling him everything would be fine! Fortunately the plot proceeds as before and Rukia will be along shortly Ichigo: aw, you guys came to rescue me? Rukia: Yes! Renji: For sure! Byakuya: I’m really more here to rescue the two of them. Also you owe me coat-closet rent and I want that sweatshirt back after all

Lol, possibly someday, but it doesn’t really have any story or plot or ending to it yet. it barely even has scenes, it’s more of an explanatory “here’s how characters so-and-so would work” post in nature [4:04 PM] For instance I have worked out the Kuchiki situation in some detail (they’re half-siblings about five years apart; Byakuya’s mom was grudgingly willing to look after her husband’s illegitimate daughter but was unenthusiastic enough about it that when Byakuya moved out at 18, everyone was happy for Rukia to slide on out the door with him) [4:05 PM] But I don’t have any actual, like, story to write about that, I just know how it happened [4:07 PM] (I figure they met when Rukia’s mom died - Rukia was 7-8 and Byakuya was 11-12 at the time, and he was instantly like “Family responsibility! That’s my favorite thing!” and latched on to the idea of being an older brother- dude was kind of a lonely kid- while Rukia instantly clocked him as her best potential ally in the scary new rich-people world, and also as a kid who clearly just needed someone to hang out with. And so it went)

BRG06/15/2020 (I haven't seen much JoJo. Isn't that exactly how it didn't begin?)

Canary06/15/2020 Lmao, it’s not unlike now you mention it! Although Dio Brando got adopted in as a result of a family debt, and was not actually an illegitimate connection [4:10 PM] Also Rukia’s less, you know, supervillain

BRG06/15/2020 As far as we know, yeah.

Canary06/15/2020 Also most of Ichigo’s friends from canon wind up being shinigami in the AU. Not everyone corresponds neatly to one other character, but for instance AU-Chad is basically a very chill Kenpachi. Staring down at teeny-tiny Rukia with her comically enormous sword like “......hm. ......so you wanna fight or what” Rukia absolutely wants to fight I’m turning most of Ichigo’s friends into captains but I’m pretty sure Ichigo himself was only like a lieutenant. Vice-captain. Whatever Renji is BRG06/15/2020 Excellent, goodgood What if What if Kenpachi isn't Chad What if Kenpachi is Orihime What if Kenpachi is Ichigo's sister Karin Canary06/15/2020 Orihime is already more or less Renji! But I guess she could also be Kenpachi Definitely one of the sisters is a captain - if they let Hitsugaya do it, why not, right Probably Karin is a captain and the other one, Yuzu? is her lieutenant I don’t think Ishida is anybody specific, but he’s also there, with some kind of bow-and-arrow-themed sword. Possibly he’s an undercover Quincy who hasn’t reported back to Quincy HQ in so long that he has actually just kind of defected? I’d work it out if I were more interested in the political drama side I say Orihime is Renji, but she’s def captain-rank herself, but she’s also the one who tags along with his dad to come pick him up, and is the first shinigami to join Team Let’s Not Get Anybody Executed

Canary06/21/2020 Also forgot to mention Renji’s background in the modern AU: I imagine he and Rukia were childhood buddies, who lost touch in elementary school when Rukia got scooped up by the Kuchikis, and when Byakuya and Rukia got out of their parents’ house and moved halfway across the city, she ran into Renji again. And now they are pals again! Also his home life is terrible in some unspecified way so he basically lives on their fold-out couch and nobody says anything about it. He probably has a crush on one of them, but I’m not sure which. Possibly Renji isn’t sure which