#that's some cool meta there!!!

[captain-krow-drozdov]

Danny Is An Alternate Version Of Ra's Al Ghul And Flash Already Called Dibs On Adopting Him

Danny In All His Sleep Deprived Slightly Scuffed Up From A Fight Glory Is On His Way To Clockworks Tower To Hopefully Get A Nap And Maybe Some Homework Done When A Natural Portal Opens Up In Front Of Him And Proceeds To Unceremoniously Drop Him In The DC Verse Just Outside Of Central City Before Promptly Closing Leaving A Tired Danny Behind In A Run Down Abandoned Parking Lot.

It's Times Like This When Danny Regrets Putting Off Learning How To Make His Own Portals, Cause Now He Is Very Much Stuck For The Foreseeable Future And He Has No Idea Where Or When He Is. Luckily For Him However Central City Isn't Too Far Away, Unlucky For Him However Is That Once In The City He Realizes This Isn't His Dimension. He's Pretty Sure He'd Remember Something Called The Justice League.

So What Do You Do When Supernatural Bullshit Fails You? You Fall Back On Your Mad Scientist Roots And You Make A Portal Gun. So That's Exactly What Danny Plans To Do.

Unfortunately Staying Alive And Building Questionably Safe Portal Technology Requires Money And Supplies, So He Ends Up Wandering From City To City Doing Odd Jobs/Fixing Up Busted Tech For Cash Or Unwanted Electronics For His "Operation: Get Home" Needs. This Obviously Ends In A Few Superhero Encounter Shenanigans.

Though He Always Ends Up Back Near Central City, Both On The Off Chance The Natural Portal Will Open Up Again And Because Out Of All The Superheroes That Apparently Exist In This Universe The Speedsters Are His Favorite (Red Robin Is Solidly His Second Favorite Ever Since The Gotham Vigilante Gave Him A Large Coffee Filled With Enough Caffeine To Kill A Man).

Unbeknownst To Danny However Is That Every Hero/Vigilante He Has Encountered Has Come To At Least One Of The Following Conclusions; 1. Run Away Meta Who Is In Desperate Need Of A Good Meal/Adoption Bait. 2. Possibly Red Robin/Tim Drake Clone 3. A Good Kid But Could Possibly Be A Future Rouge If Left Unsupervised. 4. Did Bats Get A New Kid And Why Is He Here?

All Flash Knows Is That He Saw The Kid First And Therefore Has Dibs. Suck It Bruce.

Fast-forward A Few Months And Danny Gets Hurt During A Rogue Attack While Trying To Help Some Civilians Get To Safety (Old Hero Habits Die Hard (Ha Die Hard) And All That Jazz) And He Nopes Out Once Everyone Is Safe And When The Paramedics Are Busy With Other People Unaware He Left A Blood Sample Behind.

One DNA Test Brought To You By Paranoid Bat Concerns Of A Possible Red Robin Clone Later And They Find Out That Dannys DNA Matches One Ra's Al Ghul.

They Now Think Danny Is An Escaped Ra's Al Ghul Clone.

Memes For The Vibes:

[vaguely-concerned]

I understand and agree with a lot of the frustrations about the shortcomings of Inquisition as a story. but sometimes when I hear people complain about the chosen one narrative in it I do want to just be like... you know it's a deconstruction of the concept more than anything, right. the inquisitor isn't actually chosen by anything except stumbling into the wrong (right?) room at the right (wrong?) time because they like, heard a noise or whatever. or if you think they are chosen, as many do in-universe, that's something you have to take on faith, the maker-or-whoever moves in mysterious ways indeed-style. the Inquisitor isn't actually a Destined Chosen One, they're a Just Some Guy in a fancy hat, self-delusions of grandeur to taste as you'd prefer.

a running thread that goes through all of the personal quests of the companions is the concept of a comforting lie vs. an uncomfortable truth, upholding old corrupt structures vs. disrupting them, and the role of faith in navigating that. (blackwall the warden vs. thom rainier the liar and murderer. hissrad vs. the iron bull, or is that the other way around? cassandra and the seekers -- do we tell the truth about what we find, even if it means dismantling the old order of the world? and so on.) and your inquisitor IS at the same time a comforting lie (a necessary one, in dark times? the game seems to ask) and an uncomfortable truth (we are the result of random fickle chance, no protective hand is held over the universe, it's on us to make a better world because the maker sure as hell won't lift a divine finger to help anyone, should he against all odds exist). faith wielded for political power... where's the point that it crosses the line into ugliness? is it before it even begins? what's the alternative? will anyone listen to the truth, if you tell it?

interesting how you also get a mix of companion agency in this -- you have characters like dorian who ALWAYS choose one side of the comforting lie vs. uncomfortable truth dichotomy. he will always make up his own mind to go back to tevinter and try to dismantle the corruption of the old system no matter what you say, or how you try to influence him. meanwhile iron bull is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum -- so psychologically trapped and mangled, caught in an impossible spiritual catch-22, that his sense of identity is left entirely to you and your mercy. you cannot change dorian in any way that matters; you can be his friend or not, support him or not, but he is whole no matter what. you are given incredible and potentially destructive-to-him power over bull's soul. it's really cool (and heartbreaking) to think about.

this is a game about how history will eat you even while you're still alive, and shape you into whatever image it pleases to serve it, and for all your incredible power right now you are powerless in the face of the gravitational force of time -- of more than time, of History. you won't recognize yourself in what History will make of you, because you belong to it now. you don't belong to yourself anymore and you never will again. the further you were from what it needs from you to begin with, the more you will find yourself distorted in its funhouse mirror. (why hello there inquisitor ameridan, same hat!)

and to me this is so much the core of what Dragon Age is about right from the Origins days -- how and by whom history gets written, the inherent unreliable narration of it all. I hope you like stories, Inquisitor. You are one now.

I do think it's probably still the weakest of the games narratively, and it's hampered by its structure and bloated systems. but I also find it disingenous to say that there's nothing deeper or actually interesting going on with it, thematically. if you're willing to engage with it there is Some Real Shit going on under the high fantasy-tinted surface.

[sforzesco]

AKHENATEN

uhhh let's see. I combined some sketches I did of Nefertiti and Akhenaten and ended up somewhere here for an Akhenaten design. in my heart, it's for a comic but there's so much visual research I'd have to do before I could even think about approaching a comic. oof.

anyway moving on: Akhenaten was a childhood obsession! and then I moved onto other things, as one does, but then a couple months ago I decided to check out some books and now I have a headache.

Akhenaten, Ronald T. Ridley

[sapphicfandompirate]

Did any of the Strawhat's even go to school?

Chapter 1134 has sparked discussions on the state of the Strawhat's education, so I figured I would do a little analysis on my thoughts on it based on canon.

Luffy- Feral jungle child. Makino probably taught him to read and write, and attempted to teach him manners. Jury is out on whether or not Garp actually taught him anything. Doesn't seem to know much history. Does know beetles, and probably a lot of survival skills, including hunting.

Zoro- Ok this is the real reason why I made this post.

A dōjō (道場, Japanese pronunciation: [doꜜː(d)ʑoː]) is a hall or place for immersive learning, experiential learning, or meditation. This is traditionally in the field of martial arts. The term literally means "place of the Way" in Japanese. -Wikipedia

Isshin Dojo (一心道場, Isshin Dōjō?) is a kenjutsu school, a school of Japanese swordsmanship. Its owner is Koushirou, who is a skilled swordsman and father of the deceased Kuina. It is the place where Zoro trained his Three Sword Style and in the anime is the only dojo Zoro did not take down the sign of. -One Piece Wiki, Emphasis added by me

As a member of the Isshin Dojo Zoro has attended school! Koshiro taught him primarily swordsmanship and meditation, but someone taught him reading, writing, and math and I'm just going to guess it's Koshiro as well. Seems to know a bit of sword-related history, but not much world or local history.

Nami-Stole education books. Not formally educated. Everything was probably taught by Bellemere and the rest was learned on the fly. Probably knows the basics of mainstream world history. Is capable of formulating advanced equations, and has vast sailing, navigation, cartography and weather knowledge. Studied at Weatheria during the timeskip, but it doesn't seem like a formal institution.

Usopp - Orphaned street rat. Unknown who taught him to read, write, and do math. Possibly Banchina before she passed away. Somehow he knows chemistry and engineering? Might have borrowed books from Kaya? Mostly self-taught it seems.

Sanji- Definitely has a formal education, up until he ran away. Noble child who had a variety of tutors. Learned whatever noble children learn plus a variety of fighting techniques and fields of science. Then was taught cooking by Zeff. Boy definitely knows how to do math. Anyone who cooks for a large group of people can at least multiply on the fly, or has a calculator taped to the wall. One Piece appears to use the metric system, so at least he doesn't have to figure out how to quadruple a recipe that originally called for 1 2/3 cups of flour.

Chopper - Professionally taught by Dr. Kureha (and Dr. Hililuk). They are both referred to as Doctors, but it is unknown what sort of medical knowledge is actually needed for that title, or if there is like a degree or anything. Assumably one of them taught him reading, writing, math, and chemistry in addition to medical stuff. Also read all of the books in the Torino Kingdom during the timeskip. According to the wiki, Kureha established an academy during the timeskip.

After establishing a medical academy, she taught and trained at least eighty students who became skilled enough to join the Isshi-20, expanding their members to a hundred under her leadership.

Robin- Got a degree in archaeology at the age of 8. Has all of the reading, writing, and history skills, including dead languages. While she taught herself how to read the poneglyphs, I think it's safe to say that Professor Clover taught her regular history, math, science, reading, and writing. Robin went to school!

Franky - Apprenticeship under the shipwright Tom. His state of education was unknown before meeting Tom at age 10. Should know all of the basic skills (reading, writing, math) in addition to carpentry, and shipbuilding. Tom's Workers is referred to as a shipbuilding company, so I don't think it counts as a school? Knows at least enough medical knowledge to turn himself into a cyborg with scraps from a ghost ship after being runover by a train. And Survive. Somehow.

Brook- APPARENTLY??? Stated that school makes him nostalgic, which implies he attended. Also knows a variety of things usually nobility would, namely various musical instruments and fencing. He also knows sailing, and various other things to be a battle convoy leader and pirate captain. I have questions for this man.

Jinbe - Dojo again, this time the Fish-Man Karate Dojo. Later joined the Neptune Army. So, since a dojo counts as a type of specialized school, he's attended a school as well as had military training! Knows basic historical stuff, especially that pertaining to fishmen and human-fishman relations. Seems to know other basic life skills (reading, writing, math, ect)

So, in conclusion:

Went to school: Zoro, Robin, Brook, Jinbe

Private Tutors: Sanji

Vocational Training under a Professional: Sanji, Chopper. Franky, Nami,

Self Taught with some instruction by a parent or other adult (non-professional): Luffy, Nami, Usopp

Out of the ten members, 4 of them attended a school of some sort and several others had some sort of professional training or supervision of study.

Feel free to add on if I missed anything!

[kalinara]

I always feel like this is an underrated moment between both of these characters.

Scott's awkward as fuck, and generally tends to avoid a lot of physical contact himself. He was isolated in the past, and now he's in a time period where everyone basically treats him like the baby version of a monster. "Don't touch me!" is a common refrain.

But he sees someone who seems to need physical comfort and impulsively, and awkwardly goes for it.

And I'm not a Laura Kinney expert, so please feel free to correct me, folks who know better. But the gist I've gotten of Laura's story at this time is that she's (also) relatively isolated from most of her age group. And aside from maybe the guy she was in a romantic relationship with for a while, I don't get the sense that she's been offered much by way of physical comfort from someone her own age before. And it probably helps that he immediately backs off when she says "No."

(The faces of the peanut gallery make me laugh so hard.)

And then, of course, there's that equally sweet moment later, when she ends up returning the favor:

I'm actually pretty glad these two never ended up dating during his time in the future. I think they're maybe a little too alike, with a bit too much by way of similar trauma and backstory to really make it work.

But they do make such wonderful friends, and I love how much they seem to understand each other.

They don't really have the same camaraderie that Scott and Kamala got once Scott aged back up again, which is a bit of a shame. But they did have a few good moments when they were both on the X-Men together in Krakoa.

It's just a lovely little friendship and I love it very much.

(Panels from All New X-Men #20 and Guardians of the Galaxy #12)

[necrotic-nephilim]

not enough TimJay content takes advantage of the fact that the Red Robin mantle and suit were Jason's first, and Tim effectively stole Jason's shit that Jason wanted to throw away. Tim took Jason's name, his suit, to go on a one-man crusade when he's at odds with the Batfamily. You're telling me Jason wouldn't be weirdly offended but also weirdly turned on by that?

robin (1993) #177

robin (1993) #178

And yes, Tim only knows about the Red Robin suit's existence because Ulysses Armstrong stole it for a hot second, but the fact he stole the suit from Ulysses and fucking kept it? Even before he had any reason to? Like before becoming Red Robin, Tim just kept a suit he knew belonged to Jason despite openly disliking Jason for. Reasons. And later on, it's explicitly confirmed Tim's wearing it because it's Jason's legacy? That's the most toxic gay shit I've ever seen.

adventure comics (2009) #3

Tim's punishing himself with Jason's image. Jason, who has been constantly trying to get Tim to see things his way and work with him would lose his mind over that. There's such a potential for a toxic possessiveness to it all, Tim branding himself with Jason's suit and name. The assumptions Jason would make about Tim because of it. The way Jason could hold that over Tim's head, that they really are one and the same, and deep down, Tim must know it to some degree, if he became Red Robin when he felt replaced as Robin. I truly do not think Jason would ever shut up about it. As a fan of 'possessive/weirdly obsessed with Tim' Jason, I think this would take Jason's weird feelings about Tim to the next level. And if Tim will punish himself just by wearing Jason's legacy, imagine how much more he'd punish himself for falling for Jason too. Weird freaky little masochist who tortures himself through Jason seems exactly Jason's type, tbh. I'm feral about it.

[fae-morrigan]

Superfam and Found Family: What it Means to Choose

I have seen a lot of my beloved mutuals talk about adoption as a theme in the superfam, and thats true, thats very much a thing, but thats more a subsection of the larger idea with the superfamily: You get to choose your family, and define your relationship to them.

Clark and Kon come to mind. They've been discussed a lot lately, huh? Namely people saying Clark does not treat Kon well. This is false, by the way, they get along great.

But let's sort of dig into the actual story told by their relationship here: Kon was created by Lex without Clark's consent. Clark had no say in how part of his DNA would be used to create a new life.

(This is coincidentally why it irks me that certain fans will act like Clark is a monster for even HYPOTHETICALLY not wanting a relationship with Kon. Guys, you sound like pro-lifers. Lets watch it!)

Despite this, Clark accepts Kon with open arms. Now, as myself and others have pointed out, Kon's technically... he's not a clone, he's a test tube baby. Technically, biologically, he's Clark & Lex's son. D.. diversity win...?

But thats not how Clark and Kon choose to define their relationship. They instead decide, hey, we were raised by the same people, we're brothers.

Kon is not an outsider to the Superfam, even as he is an outsider to this world- He is welcomed with open arms once it is clear he needs a home. And with Clark and Kon, they get to choose how they define their relationship, not Lex, not anyone else.

Then, John Henry and Nat. John Henry is not Natasha's father, but their relationship is very complex and often veers into that territory, for the simple reason that he shows up for her in that capacity when Natasha's own father fails her.

Even while their relationship has its ups and downs (read 52 guys for THEM), they manage to forge a relationship based on mutual respect, enough to the point where during Steelworks, she is not just his niece, but his partner in building a better tomorrow. It is a fatherly/daughterly relationship built on mutual respect largely independent of their blood relation, built on the security that Clay failed to provide Natasha with.

Of course, to talk about adoption, Clois adopting the twins. I think Phillip Kennedy Johnson handles the topic of adoption EXPERTLY with Otho-Ra and Osul-Ra, specifically as a metaphor for transracial/transethnic adoption.

Clark's relationship with the twins is built throughout the Warworld saga, and does not start... great (they discuss looting his corpse lol), and often they. But Clark understands that the kids are traumatized, and seeks to guide them to a better situation.

Now I would be irresponsible to not mention that, during this time, Clark is still struggling with Jon's age up. He mumbles, disoriented during their first meeting, that the kids are the same age as his son (no they are not). In a less tightly written book by a worse writer, it'd be a thing where Clark completely uncritically finds 'replacement kids' in the twins... Which is NOT what happens here, because PKJ is the GOAT.

In the end, his relationship with the twins is built not only independently of his struggles with Jon, but the way he connects with them helps Clark realize that whats done is done. They need him to be Clark, not a man hanging onto the past he will never get back. To move forward, they must do it together, it won't work if the twins remain on Warworld and he remains mentally in Hamilton. Its why it is SUPER important, also, that in the end, Clark doesn't ask them to come with him- rather, they ask to go with Clark.

(Sidenote: The twins lost not only their parents on warworld, but an older brother, too. Clark isn't the only one who finds a healing way forward via the Ra-El relationships, but that's gonna be another post!) And their hero names, Red Son and Starchild, are from their original culture (the Phaelosians), a culture that was systematically robbed from them when Warworld trafficked them into service. Rather than forcing them to conform to the house of El and their legacy, they help the kids reconnect.

These are his children. They found each other in the scariest place in the universe, and together, they find a way past the things they've both suffered through.

I'm afraid I don't know much about Kara (kara mutuals, reading recs appreciated! i've only ever read WOT and a few issues of the most recent Supergirl run) but I do know that her relationship to Clark is inherently different than it was supposed to be, and she has to roll with it and redefine it accordingly. She was supposed to be older than him, be able to take care of him, but by the time she actually finds him, he's the one doing that for her.

(I dont really have a panel here I fear, so look at the pretty art from Woman of Tomorrow. If someone wants to say more on Kara, you're welcome to hijack my post for a bit!)

Kenan is an example of this theme going kind of sideways and being examined from another angle- He's forced to choose between his two found families, and with either choice, he stands to lose something. Either his connection to Superman, or his connection to home:

Kenan already has a messy relationship with family, considering the soap opera level drama his parents inflict on him in his solo. Now, separated from his culture by circumstances he can't control, Kenan's relationship with the Superfam is forced by circumstance, even as it isn't unwanted. He's forced to make the most of what he has.

Then you have Clark and Jon, where the 'and define your relationship to them' part of my thematic statement REALLY becomes important.

I've seen it argued many times that giving Jon the Superman mantle weakens the theme of found family, but I'd argue it strengthens it, because Jon not having a choice in becoming Superman is EXPLICITLY framed as a bad thing.

Jon's not ready to be Superman. He doesn't even really WANT to be superman. But because of the circumstances of his birth, the world, and his father, push him into it. Clark never asked Jon to be Superman, during the Son-of-kal-el + Warworld era. He assumed he would be.

It tarnishes Clark & Jon's relationship, actively preventing Jon from connecting with his father and the WORLD fully in the way they both want. This is a key theme of Superman: Son of Kal El, from the very moment of Jon's actual birth:

All throughout post-age up Jon is the idea that Jon is just as burdened by the expectations placed upon him by his blood as he is comforted by what the mantle represents.

(I know I use this panel like every analysis but its a GOOD PANEL, SHUT UP) And there's of course the fact that... y'know. Well. Y'know.

Y'KNOW.

I think there's a potentially strong story in either Jon walking away from the mantle entirely, or redefining it to be his own. But first, he's going to have to suffer for the fact he wasn't ready for what many people call his DESTINY, including his abuser.

And where does this leave Jon and Clark?

Here.

The last note before Absolute Power of these two is this bittersweet moment where Jon still isn't fully heard. Where he still doesn't get a full say in what he and Clark's relationship will be. And judging by THIS interview from Mark Waid, this particular idea is about to finally come home to roost:

Lastly, there's of course the Most Found Family Thing Of All that i basically see NO one talk about: The fact that the Irons and the Kents just. Share all their big life events with each other. They're literally not related to each other by blood at all, but throughout PKJ's Action Comics, they ARE family!

Teamwork makes the dreamwork guys!

The superfamily is a wonderfully diverse cluster of relationships and examinations of the way family finds each other. Even moreso than the Batfam, which is often defined by their father-son relationship with Bruce in fanon, the Superfam displays a wide array of the various ways non-nuclear families can build each other.

This is all to say you guys should read PKJ's action comics run. It rules.

(This is also to say Superman 2016 sucks ass.)

[neversetyoufree]

I've remarked on this blog a few times before that I'm fond of the theory that The Shapeless One is Paracelsus, but I've always hesitated to elaborate, as I felt like there wasn't enough hard evidence that supported this theory being true. However, something recently clicked for me regarding one big parallel between them, and now I can't stop thinking about what that connection would mean for the story thematically.

In mémoire 61, after Machina pushes him to explain what his "plot" is, Teacher declares that he wants to achieve world peace. I've had no idea what to make of this line for a while now, just assuming that we'd need more context to understand what the actual hell he's talking about. But with the Paracelsus comparison, I feel like I'm starting to grasp what's going on there.

[This post needs a VnC-standard warning for mentions of suicide, sexual assault, and child abuse].

There are a few pieces of evidence that support the idea of Teacher being Paracelsus. VnC's Paracelsus is introduced as a great alchemist, just as he was in the real world, and the Count of Saint Germain was an alchemist as well. Nobody knows Teacher's origins, but he's one of the oldest vampires and close with the queen. There's also a little drawing of six-pointed stars that appears behind Paracelsus in the first storybook illustration of him, and those same stars are seen hanging from Teacher's walking stick in the scene where he first meets Noé.

That panel of Teacher and Noé appears at the very end of chapter 6, and the Paracelsus panel appears at the start of chapter 7, meaning these images are quite conspicuously close together.

So what does this mean for Teacher's idea of "world peace"?

In the storybook version of Paracelsus's life, he's described as wanting to alter the world formula not for scientific curiosity, but because he wants to save the world.

Paracelsus, per the childish version that Teacher presents to Noé, caused the Babel Incident because he was trying to "rid the world of its ills" and "guide people to happiness." The line about the human world's "rampant ills" is read over a drawing of dancing skeletons—a Danse Macabre. This is a Medieval way of drawing the personification of death, usually for the purpose of expressing the way that death comes comes for every person inevitably (the same theme later expressed by Vanitas art).

When Paracelsus speaks of the world's ills, this is the reality he seeks to cure. The world is afflicted with suffering and death, and he wants to rewrite the world's formula so that humanity can live happily without that pain.

A world rewritten to be without suffering—isn't that world peace? "World peace" is often used to evoke an end to armed conflict specifically, rather than suffering at large, but the concepts must overlap if they're pursued seriously. How can world peace last if there are people starving in famines or dying of disease? Suffering breeds violence. And how can someone seeking to alleviate "the world's ills" not want to achieve world peace?

If this is true, if Teacher's hope for "world peace" is him carrying on Paracelsus's legacy (or carrying on his own work, if they're the same man), then what does that mean for Paracelsus's supposed altruistic intentions?

We know little about Paracelsus now, only Teacher's recounting of the Babel Incident by way of a book he's reading to a child, but I think there are two ways to interpret what we do know.

Trying to rid the world of suffering is, on its face, the most noble possible intention. To lead the world to happiness is to attempt to help every other person in the world. And I can think of a lot of ways that Paracelsus's goals make absolute sense to me. If you discover that the fabric of reality can be rewritten, and you know that there are people in the world dying of famines, wouldn't you want to reshape the world so that they no longer have to go hungry?

It's possible, depending on what we find out about him in the future, that Paracelsus really will be a noble figure whose one great sin was hubris, and all he wanted from his research was to help the world in ways that make both moral and logical sense.

However, given some of VnC's other themes, I think there's another lens through which we should consider Paracelsus's actions. We don't know exactly what he was trying to rewrite with that disastrous experiment, but that Danse Macabre does give us one possible clue.

One of the themes that VnC has been slowly developing throughout its run is the idea that, though trying to save a person's life is noble, it is not noble to deny all death as a whole. This is a story about the concept of Vanitas, the idea that death is inevitable and that all else is rendered meaningless in its face. Noé feels like he failed Louis because he was unable to kill him when he asked, and it seems like the manga's being set up to end with Noé killing Vanitas to escape a fate Vanitas considers worse than death. One big part of what makes Mikhail so unsettling is his denial, his laughing about his mother's draining and the fact that he cannot accept the reality Luna has died, and Vanitas is horrified to hear that Misha is planning to resurrect their parent. That same issue goes on to be the one thing that finally drives a wedge between Noé and his teacher, as Noé can apparently forgive the man for purchasing him on the black market and killing Louis, but he's horrified to hear that Teacher told Mikhail that resurrecting Luna was possible.

All of these scenes have other elements to them, other things that drive the characters and inform why these specific ideas of undeath are so deeply horrifying to them, but the buildup of this running theme is an undercurrent through all of it. Vanitas means that someday all people must die, so what does it mean when somebody tries to deny that?

Even further, there's the broader horror of both Noé and Mikhail failing to process the bad things that happen to them. Misha commits blithe horrors in part because he does not understand that his sexual abuse was wrong, so he seems to see no problem with sexually assaulting others now in turn—as he does when he pressures Noé to drink his blood. Noé happily recounts being kidnapped and sold on the black market, remarks on Chloé and Jean-Jacques's goodness minutes after Chloé assaults him in his sleep, and brushes off the incident of Jean-Jacques drugging him to the extent that even Jean-Jacques himself is unnerved by it. All of that is deeply concerning behavior.

Misha is written to be obviously uncanny in his denial, and that uncanniness holds up a mirror to the subtler horror of Noé's own disconnects from reality. The more recent chapters have also begun drawing direct attention to the ways that Noé's denial of the bad in the world becomes problematic. The aforementioned scene of Vani, Dante, and JJ being disturbed by Noé's "it doesn't bother me" line does this, as does the long discussion Noé and Vanitas have about why Noé's ignorance of anti-Dham racism upsets Dante so much.

There is an ongoing tension in VnC between the inherent goodness of peace and life and the horror of what comes when those concepts are taken too far. Noé and Vanitas are this in a nutshell: an endlessly clashing duo made up of a too-extreme pessimist and a too-extreme optimist. The story arcs thus far have taken turns challenging each of their worldviews, slowly pushing Vanitas to open up and let himself hope for peaceful solutions, let himself accept love and emotional closeness, while also slowly pushing Noé to confront the fact that sometimes not everything has a happy-making peaceful solution after all. Sometimes "saving" a child means she has to die, and sometimes an enemy will have an entirely sympathetic reason to hate vampires, but Noé still has to fight them anyway to save the people he wants to save, regardless of whether that enemy is "right" or not.

Noé lives in denial of his own past traumas and his own present-day potential for harm. He denies the potential that "good" people he meets might harm him, and he struggles to accept instances where he has harmed others in turn. Dominique and Vanitas go on for pages after the amusement park about how reckless and overly trusting he can be, and he turns around, unable to cope, when confronted with the truth of what he did to Misha with his claws. However, Noé also has the benefit of his proximity to Vanitas knocking just a bit of sense into him, and it might not be a sure thing that he's going to stay in denial-land forever.

One of VnC's specific points of tension is the question of if/how Noé will grow to accept the hard things that currently bounce off his oblivious denial like water off of a raincoat. The end of mémoire 1, the statement that someday he's going to kill Vanitas, suggests that perhaps he might learn to understand how death, despite its pain, is important in its own right. It suggests that maybe he'll come around to no longer denying death and insisting that salvation is always its avoidance.

However, if he can't quite make that leap, the story provides us with dark mirrors to show us what a monster Noé could become by doubling down on his idealistic, optimistic denial. Misha's current state is Noé to an extreme, an innocent child committing horrors as he utterly fails to process the truth of his own horrific early childhood. Misha's driving motivation is a hatred of pain and suffering, and he's willing to do anything to resurrect the family that saved him from that pain in the past.

Then there's also Lord Ruthven, a man who was once an optimist in Noé's own mold, but has since broken bad in a spectacular way. Noé and Ruthven recite the exact same line about liking both humans and vampires, an obvious parallel, but now Ruthven is working with Naenia. Now he's living in the aftermath of his idealistic peace plan imploding and almost costing him his life. Ruthven despairs the last time he visits Gévaudan, lamenting the wrongness of his naive past hopes for understanding, and now he's working toward some unknown end involving Naenia, Charlatan, and the Queen. Now he's committing horrors of his own, biting at least three people by force, overriding their wills, and associating with the being that steals innocent people's true names.

There's also the question of what the hell Ruthven is doing with the queen. It seems he was somehow involved with Faustina devolving to her current state, and Loki references "smashing up her corpse," so it's possible Naenia's existence may be a sign that Ruthven wants or wanted her dead and/or cursed. However, the shots of him with the Faustina-like body in the tank at the end of mémoire 18 suggest there's a chance that he could instead be involved with some form of resurrection scheme (or a scheme to preserve/save her if she's not yet fully dead).

Ruthven exists in part to demonstrate the ways that an idealist like Noé can go bad, and it's possible that he, like Misha, is attempting some sort of awful resurrection, once again denying the reality of death.

Then, finally, there's one more character with whom Noé has these sorts of obvious parallels. The man who, perhaps, is also meant to represent what Noé could become if the dangerous sides of his optimism aren't reigned in: his teacher.

Noé is fascinated by Vanitas, drawn to him out of care and connection, but also because he wants to observe and understand him to sate his curiosity. In a darker mirror of the same trend, we see Noé's teacher allow Louis, Noé, Domi, and Misha to come to harm at least in part for the simple enjoyment of seeing how they react when placed in dark new situations. Noé and his teacher are also the only crimson vampires we know of who find the Blue Moon beautiful and alluring, rather than a source of fear (assuming that Teacher is a normal crimson vampire).

Noé was raised by this man; his worldview has been shaped by him in countless ways big and small. Noé was already living in cheerful rejection of trauma before The Shapeless One found him, but he could not have remained so radically detached from the painful parts of the world around him if his teacher had not wanted and allowed him to do so. He censored Lord Ruthven out of Noé's education, and he apparently did the same with anything that discussed (or expressed) severe bigotry toward Dhampirs. How else did Teacher shape him, and to what goal?

We know that the Shapeless One taught Noé how to fight. Given that "world peace" line, I wonder if perhaps he may also have taught him his morals on wanting to avoid conflict.

Teacher is a contradiction. He talks about "world peace," but he blithely leads Louis to his doom and supposedly doesn't hesitate to half-kill anyone who calls him by the wrong name. Marquis Machina calls him an incomprehensible natural disaster for this reason. Yet, despite all his rampant cruelty, I'm beginning to think that he might be just as much of a dangerous optimist as his student.

Teacher is defined by the fact that, in every scene, he always seems to look like he's having fun. There's hardly been a single panel where he's not drawn smiling. Sometimes that fun is vicious, a cruel smile made as a threat to Vanitas when he fails to address him by his name, but just as often, his aura seems horrifically innocent. He's just a man with a sweet smile and rather dull eyes having a very good time with life.

In the past I've largely looked at this smile as an extension of Teacher's sadism. He toys with Louis and Noé for the fun of it, and I took his smile as an expression of his cruel enjoyment of the pain he creates in his wake. However, now that we've seen him interact with Machina, now that we've observed him speaking casually with a peer for an extended period, there seems to be a disturbingly sincere quality to him as well.

Based on how he's portrayed in mémoire 61, when Teacher says he does everything he does for the sake of "world peace," I honestly think I believe him. I don't believe that he's not a villain—I can't guarantee that his vision of "world peace" would even align with a normal person's definition of "peace" or "happiness," but I believe that he's speaking some version of honestly here.

There's an honest to goodness optimism in that ever-present smile. There's a hope and a genuine quality to what he announces to Machina, in contrast to his smiles of sweetly cruel schadenfreude.

So perhaps, if all that is true, if Teacher is another dark mirror to Noé and he really does want to bring about world peace, then the point of him is that "world peace" has the potential to be a horror. What is the pursuit of world peace if not the ultimate pipe dream of every idealist in the mold of Noé and Ruthven? And what is VnC if not a long catalog of the horrors that idealists can bring about if they aren't careful?

And that, finally, brings me back to Paracelsus and the Danse Macabre.

Depending on what Paracelsus wanted to achieve through his experiments, it's possible he may have been yet another character trying to escape the harsh reality of death. The line about the world's "rampant ills" is placed over the Danse Macabre, after all—a symbol of death's universal inevitability. Is that the painful ill that Paracelsus wanted to address by rewriting the world formula? Inescapable death itself?

If so, Paracelsus becomes the ultimate embodiment of what happens when one denies death's certainty and the necessity of that certainty. He's the ultimate denial of "Vanitas" and what it represents on a scale far larger than Noé, Misha, or even Ruthven could grasp. And the manga casts his failed experiment as a Tower of Babel, throwing the world into chaos and causing countless deaths in his failure's wake.

Meanwhile, Teacher seems to have some ideas about how to cheat death in the present day, as he's promised Misha that there's a way to bring "The Vampire of the Blue Moon" back to life. This could be a lie, of course, or he could be planning to bring back "the vampire of the blue moon" in a way that does not actually bring back Luna as an individual. However, even trying to bring back the Blue Moon in some other way, perhaps through the human Vanitas, still represents him trying to restore something he found beautiful that was lost because of death. It still ties him thematically to the perversion of death as an ending, the same as Mikhail and Ruthven.

So far every character we've seen that wants to undo death is cast as an antagonist. Ruthven, Mikhail, and The Shapeless One are all united by a cruelty and a perverseness in various forms, and their goal is part of this. Death is a tragedy, but although trying to save the lives of people who want to live is noble, attempting to undo or eternally escape death is a far worse horror.

If Teacher is Paracelsus, or if they're closely connected in some other way, then that serves to further this point and show how the horror of escaping death extends to Paracelsus as it does the others. Teacher is strange and cruel. Paracelsus might be a nobly hubristic historical fool in a storybook, but if these two characters are connected, that instantly reveals the unsettling truth of how wrong Paracelsus's potential attempt to thwart death would have been. Nothing Teacher is working for can be wholly good.

And, just as Noé and Misha's denial is both present and harmful beyond the most severe subject of death, even if Paracelsus wasn't trying to craft a world without death by altering the world formula, we know he was trying to create a world without suffering. Again, this is a noble goal in theory, but so long as death remains, some suffering will remain as well. Crafting a world without pain and suffering can also go much too far, can slip into denial and cruelty. Mikhail's whole motivation as an antagonist is his search for a life without pain, and look where that's led him.

A rejection of all suffering can be an extremely dangerous thing, whether it's running from one's own mental pain or wanting to rewrite the world to negate all suffering as a whole. This dream will never not be a detachment from reality.

The Case Study of Vanitas is a series that seems to be searching for a balance of optimism and pessimism, a way to approach the harsh realities of life that lies between the toxic extremes embodied by Vanitas and Noé. To lapse too far into hopeless pessimism creates a Vanitas, a Chloé, an Astolfo. It creates people who are suicidal, genocidal, or both, and dangerous to themselves and others for it. However, to go through life in a state of eternal joy without processing one's pain, or to attempt to create a world wholly free of suffering—that is just as dangerous and foolish. What are Noé, Misha, and Ruthven if not dangers to themselves and others? What is Teacher if not the most dangerous man in this manga?

Noé and Misha are unsettling because they smile through the bad things that happen to them and act as though they aren't bad. They each have some exceptions to this rule—Louis's death for Noé and the pain suffered at the hands of Moreau for Misha—but they still come across as at times disconnected from the reality of pain.

Yet, neither of them is as disconnected from the reality of pain as a man that can behead the grandson he raised with a smile on his face. Noé as a child sees the fun in being kidnapped and put up for auction. Teacher, if his smile is to be believed, sees the fun in every single thing we've seen him do, and that's what's so unsettling about him. He genuinely seems to be having a good time, including and especially when he's blithely committing horrors for the fun of it.

Noé and Misha's strange behavior stems from trauma, and we don't know that's the case for Teacher. Perhaps not, as he seems much colder and crueler in his tendencies than either of them. But either way, the happy sincerity displayed by both of them is echoed in the face of the Count of Saint Germain as he tells Machina that he's searching for world peace. That is the face of someone idealistic, someone who believes he's working toward a real goal that both justifies and delights him.

Teacher wants world peace, and his warped nature means that we have no real idea what "world peace" means to him. Is a world at peace a world where he still gets to violently beat people who get his name wrong? A world where he still gets to have fun observing the free will and choices of the traumatized children he raises? Maybe he once believed in a world that was truly without suffering, and his overly-long life and mad optimism have eroded his tether to reality, turning him into the awful person we see now. Maybe the catastrophe of the Babel incident broke him and turned him from a hubristic idealist to warped echo of his former self. Maybe he somehow thinks all the suffering he causes is justified if it's in pursuit of his noble end goal. Maybe his version of "world peace" is a world where all people can live free from the fear of death, and the smaller pains caused along the way are irrelevant in the face of that impossible dream.

Or maybe he's just a cruel hypocrite.

In the end, we still know too little about both Paracelsus and Teacher to make any grand proclamations about the truth of their characters. However, I can't unsee this connection between them now that I've seen it. Teacher is one of Noé's dark mirrors, a character that represents the horrors possible when one goes too far down his current emotional path. Noé is optimistic to a fault, convincing himself to see only the best in many truly awful scenarios, and Teacher is the man with an eternal smile printed on his face. Noé loves and wants to save Vanitas, and Teacher speaks of the Blue Moon's ultimate beauty and says he has a way to bring them back to life now that they're dead. Noé is the eternal savior, always desperate to prevent people from dying, and Teacher claims that everything he does is done in the name of achieving world peace.

Similarly, Paracelsus is defined by throwing the world into chaos and horror due to his over-optimism. He tried to go too far, tried to rid humanity of its countless ills and create his own form of world peace, perhaps even tried to rewrite the reality of death. Did he hate pain and cold like Misha? Did he want to stop unjust wars like Ruthven? Did he want to become a savior in the image of Noah?

If Teacher's goal of "world peace" is to be believed, then whether or not Teacher and Paracelsus are actually the same person, they represent the same thematic extreme. Death is inevitable, says the concept of Vanitas. It's inevitable and Noé must learn to accept that fact before he does something awful in the name of pain and death's prevention. Teacher and Paracelsus have both done something(s) awful in the name of pain and death's prevention. Teacher and Paracelsus have followed Noé's path of optimism to such an extent that they, in one way or another, both claim(ed) to want to save the world, and this requires a mad extreme of Noé-like cognitive dissonance and hubris.

Paracelsus pursued some goal, some way of granting humanity happiness that was supposedly noble but still murky in its specifics, and he warped the fabric of reality and caused the countless disasters of the Babel Incident in the process. And that's assuming the storybook is true, and Babel really was accidental on his part. Meanwhile Teacher has warped the seemingly noble dream of world peace into something that he can claim is served by the way he's tormented Louis, Misha, and Noé. There's a chance that both men tried or are trying to undo the reality of death. They're bound by the same underlying current of scientific curiosity intermingled with their dreams of world peace.

Noé is not an alchemist, and he's not particularly skilled at rewriting the world formula. He's unlikely to have any chance to rewrite the fabric of reality itself for the better. He's unlikely to have any chance to achieve "world peace" by any definition.

Noé is, however, a dangerous optimist who has not yet learned that death is unavoidable. He hasn't yet learned that death can be preferred to its alternatives. And he was raised by a man who seems like he has not learned or does not care that disrupting Death in the grand sense will inevitably lead to horror. Or perhaps a man who enjoys horrors and wants to toy with absolute death as a part of that. And all this in a world warped and defined by the folly of a man who may also not have understood the horror of evading death.

So Teacher might be Paracelsus. I think this connection between them only strengthens the odds of that theory being true. But even if he isn't, they represent a similar thing for Noé and for the manga's themes at large. You cannot rid the world of the Danse Macabre, and attempting to end that dance will only bring greater ills and greater pain than death on its own could ever hope to bring.

A strange and dangerous man proclaiming with an honest smile that he wants to bring about world peace does not make him any less strange or dangerous. Depending on his definition of world peace and his idea of death's place in it, that idealistic goal may actually make him far more dangerous than if he were nothing more than a simple sadist.

[toomanyf4ndoms7]

Incredible moment, in my opinion.

[dandelionjack]

saw this on the forbidden app could not resist reposting because it’s true. “the one who waits is almost here” is lazy LAZY writing. stop dangling lore in front of our faces… make it SUBTLE. show not tell…

did russell go to the chibnall school of bad screenwriting before his return because these episodes do genuinely feel like they’ve been created by a different person entirely than the emotionally intelligent, thoughtful showrunner who gave us the first four series

[wandixx]

Halloween dress-up, let's go!!!

Assignment: "Dress up as ghosts".

Status: Yes. They're ghosts. Just really different types of ghosts

[mollysunder]

Has anyone else noticed that Mel's office resembles the Lamb's cave in the Blood Sweat and Tears mv?

The geometric design gives the illusion of Mel's space being cavernous. Mel also decorates her office with the same red rock the Lamb is surrounded in.

In the Lamb's domain she hand picks warriors to fight and decorate her space, meanwhile Mel's office is framed by a large mural of faceless warriors that surround her in defense.

On top of that the way the Lamb was introduced is nearly the same way Mel was. In both scenes, we have this mysterious but clearly clever individual offer a person with high esteem a gift (using the same hand btw).

Without any context the one to receive the gift assumes it's of high value and a reflection of their superiority, when in reality it was play on the receiver's ego by the clever gift giver.

And just like Mel with Hoskel, the Lamb had fooled Ambessa for the rest of her life by letting her believe a false interpretation of the vision she was given.

It was likely in Ambessa's final moments did she realize how wrong she was about everything from the vision, the throne, Mel, and how they were all meant to come together and how they all will come together without her.

[zprite-x]

A warrior’s toughest battle

[thanatika]

yeah i agree with your point about survival mechanics and i feel the same way about the lack of combat mechanics. "why would an educated city doctor need a weapon" because shit is hitting the fan in every way impossible and pretty much everyone is walking around armed... also why am i supposed to believe the the fact that he's a man of intellect will somehow provide him with food? i don't think anyone is going to be too eager to share food during an outbreak intellectual or not...

+ follow up for the previous ask but actually my favorite quest from the original pathologic is the day 11 bachelor quest that involves shooting down soldiers. i think it really drives the point home about how this random fuckass guy who is supposed to be battling a plague doesn't even have the time to do that anymore because the people in charge are asking completely irrelevant things of him now and he's at a position where he cannot refuse what is being asked of him. like i think it was good storytelling that even as the guy who lowkey wants to deal with the plague and solve its mystery you still have other, more pressing, less interesting and or pleasant tasks to complete

i agree! honestly, i feel this way about the combat mechanics even more than i do about the physical survival (food, health, illness, sleep) mechanics. because sure, i can see how it makes sense for daniil's position of authority to mean that his basic needs are somewhat provided for -- although i don't think it makes more sense than what we got in the original game. i've never seen anyone bring up "isn't it kind of unrealistic that the bachelor isn't given lots of food during a massive food shortage?" as a plothole that needed to be resolved. the townspeople generally don't like him much, and most of the people with power don't either, except for the kains. sure, maybe it's kind of weird that you can go see the kains while broke and on the verge of keeling over from hunger, and they won't do anything to help you, but... the kains are pretty self-centered, and they're so goddamn weird that maybe they forget that you need to eat food to live anyway. and it's half-implied that the powers that be are ultimately giving daniil this role as a convenient way to kill him, so it makes sense that they would put no pressure on the town authorities to keep him alive.

(and honestly, artemy is taken under the olgimsky's auspices as much as the kains take daniil's under theirs! which is to say, selfishly, with ulterior motives that are more important to them than the well-being of their healer, but... the olgimskys are set up as the wealthiest of the 3 families financially, as well as the ones with the most access to food, given their control over the meat industry. so if anything it's "weirder" that artemy isn't more materially provided for, though to be clear i don't think there's an actual plothole there either way.)

but anyway, you could handwave it and say that daniil's position of privilege and authority gives him more perks than he got in the original game, but the amount of fighting you have to do to get through town is... kind of an unavoidable physical reality? like you're given so many sidequests that you often wind up walking around town after dark, and that's when the bandits come out. is the idea that the bandits would be too scared to attack him because he's so important? because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and even pathologic 2 establishes that he's seen as a valuable target by the bandits:

and then there's the quests where combat plays a more direct role in the story itself, like getting involved in saving andrey from the firing squad, or killing guards to break artemy out of prison, or the quest where you have to kill var in attempt to stop the arsonists (which i include on the same tier as the other ones because i really like the quest journal entry he has if you complete it where he blames himself for willow's death. it's a good character moment.)

hell, even in pathologic 2 itself, one of the biggest Bachelor Moments is on day 11, when you have that big dramatic convo with him after he killed a soldier for the papers he was delivering. plus one of bad grief's idle dialogues in patho 2 is commentary on the bachelor being "quick on the draw" and that he "already shot someone". like he just straight up is not living a combat-free existence. and overall, combat isn't just a good tool from a mechanical perspective, heightening the stakes and placing pressure on the player (though it is), it's also pretty important for him on a thematic level imo, almost as important as artemy and his "rivers of blood". in patho classic, daniil has this early interaction with the inquisitor:

which, thinking about it from a doylist perspective, was probably the writers' attempt to make it sound more plausible that this random medical researcher from the big city was competent with multiple types of guns. and i appreciate them coming up with that hint of backstory to cover their bases a bit, but with those bases covered, i think the fact that daniil ultimately spends more time shooting people than he does prescribing medicines for them actually does a lot for him thematically? i mean, if his whole thing is that he's this "tempted destroyer", someone who frames his career as a combative battle with death rather than a quest to save people's lives, whose "default" solution is to raze the town with artillery because he's too limited by his rationalist worldview and military upbringing (and bitterness over being manipulated and sabotaged) to come up with a solution that saves the any remaining infected survivors on his own. plus the way that clara frames artemy and daniil as two sides of the same coin in being violent destroyers and killers, who without player intervention will immediately devolve to running around chasing each other down in what's either an insanely dedicated tom and jerry LARP or some really elaborate foreplay. imo, that whole dichotomy (which is pretty core to the game, as the idea of dichotomies are core to it in general) works so much better with the way they're both presented in classic, stalking around with gun/scalpel in hand. hell, not to mention the effect that spending 12 in-game days trying not to starve and getting killed by bandits or guards or worms or soldiers every day would have on the player, and the way it would make them feel about the town and their natural projection of those feelings onto dankovsky, who is a perfectly fitting vessel for them as the avatar actually undergoing those virtual experiences.

ultimately i think they are mainly going this direction out of a desire to do something more creative and original, which is fine... it just seems a bit silly to me that they keep saying "well obviously that doesn't really work for the bachelor's scenario", when, well... even as recently as patho 2 in 2019, they seemed to think it fit his narrative pretty well! i'm also guessing that a lack of combat won't be that bandits are just no longer roaming the streets at night. it sounds more like pathologic 3 is set to be more of a nonlinear experience, where you'll probably fast travel from place to place instead of having to walk across town so much? so you'll be avoiding bandits just in the sense that the gameplay will be avoiding them. i guess i'm hoping that at the very least, there's still the implication of the crunch of not getting enough sleep or food and the threat of being stabbed to death while trying to get through town occurring to dankovsky in the background, even if those mechanics are deemphasized in favor of more macro-level town resource management, time control, and sherlock holmes fruit ninja or whatever the hell they were on about back in 2022 lmao.

[radioactive-killjoy]

The Second Coming was always going to happen

The Metatron doesn't need Aziraphale specifically in order to make it happen, but he must know that Aziraphale is a significant threat to the plan.

"Keep your enemies closer."

Keep Aziraphale where he can see him and where he's away from temptations (especially since Crowley said no - did this surprise the Metatron? I don't think so) and maybe he can keep Aziraphale controlled.

This, of course, is incorrect because Aziraphale doesn't just love Crowley and coffee. He loves humanity. His moral compass is stronger than his desire to be seen as a good angel. Instead of neutralizing a threat, the Metatron invited the threat in.

[necrotic-nephilim]

@profandomhopper i was going to reblog the original post this comment was left on but i felt it divorced itself from the original topic so much, you get your own post for giving me delightful permission to ramble about this. buckle in people this is long.

so, DC is a big fandom that expanses a lot of different types of content, and like anything, is subject to crossovers. the obvious ones like Marvel are for the reason of being a similar and equally popular superhero world, so it's easy to transpose the worlds onto each other and overlap the characters. both of these worlds deal with multiverses and endless, endless heroes. it makes sense and there's no real stretch to think Batman and Spider-Man could co-exist. i mean, there have been canon crossover comics. and even some more random crossovers like White Collar have pretty easy to trace origins, being an actor in WC was a popular Dick fancast back in the day so there was some bleeding over that led to a well-loved niche crossover space.

but Danny Phantom and Miraculous Ladybug are where it gets interesting. because at a surface, MLB sort of makes sense. it's a superhero world, you're following a teen girl superhero and sure the mechanics are pretty contained, but the crossover should make sense. but when you compare it to the crossover numbers of other superhero media like say My Hero Academia, Ladybug takes the *crown* with such a bizarre popularity. and of course, DP feels like it makes even less sense. sure, you *could* lump it into at the very least, superhero-adjacent media, but it's not a true hero world like MLB or DC is.

but, the thing to always understand about DC, *especially* the Batfamily (which is where the crossover content propagates the most) is this: a *very* good chunk of fans don't interact with the comics. i would venture to say even most Batfamily fans don't read the comics and actively talk about it. we've all read a very fandom big Batfam fanfic where the author's note mentions the writer has never touched a comic in their life. typically, these fans are either cobbling together their understanding from fandom content, or by frankensteining unrelated DC adaptations to understand each character. you take Bruce from Batman: TAS, you take Dick from the animated Young Justice, you take Jason from Batman: Under The Red Hood animated movie, you take Damian from the DCAMU Batman vs Robin, and you read some fandom metas to fill in the rest and well, you've got some sort of an understanding of these characters. read enough incorrect quotes, some genfic, a couple of character metas, and boom, you understand the Batfamily fandom enough to start creating your own content. and of course now. now you have Wayne Family Adventures so it's even *easier*. a pretty easy to pick up webtoon that's filling in all the gaps for you. but i've been in this fandom long enough to remember before we had WFA and even then, this was still a common, if not the most popular way, to ween yourself into the DC fandom space. you cherry-picked the canon you liked and then plunged into the depths of fanon.

i'm not here to make in depth commentary on if i think this is a good or bad thing. trust me i have that commentary in my head, but that would need it's own post. i'm very split on it and my feelings are complicated. my feelings on WFA are even *more* complicated. because oftentimes, the attitude expressed by these fans who are frankensteining this version of the Batfamily/DC world they have in their head is they don't *want* to read the comics. the comics don't contain the content they're after. and to an extent, i understand that. if you're looking for light-hearted vibes of the Batfamily all getting along and having the occasional hurt/comfort moments but in the end, they hug and make up, you're right. largely, you won't find that in canon. of course there are so many comics to recommend for Batfamily interactions, but you have to get specific. you'll find them interacting in small groups, Tim and Dick bonding here, Duke and Cass bonding there, but largely, the comics don't care to balance the ridiculously large cast they've given themselves. but fandom does. it's easy to toss them all in a blender and ignore the parts you don't like. the default argument to ignoring the comics or writing something OOC is always "well the comics are OOC and inconsistent too" which, while a flawed argument that massively misunderstand how comics work as a medium, isn't an entirely incorrect one. you could serve on a silver platter to these fans, an easy and accessible way to get into comics and they wouldn't be interested. it's not what they're here for. fandom is always character-driven above all else. it's driven by character relationships and dynamics. if someone wants to consume content where Tim idolized and stalked Jason as 'his Robin' and now is trying to help him rehabilitate and they're super complicated but have this long epic forgiveness arc, why *would* they read the comics? because they're sure as shit not going to find that dynamic in the comics. it's laughably OOC and not canon at all, but that doesn't matter. what matters is the sandbox. most Batfamily fans care *far* more about the sandbox canon gives them than the actual canon itself. feel how you feel about that, this really isn't being negative toward that attitude, but it is a common attitude.

so, you have Batfamily fans playing in the sandbox and building their own narrative. common fandom headcanons are so common, you could practically write a guide on how the fanon Batfamily works with how consistent people are about it. or you could just read WFA, which is practically the new manifesto of it. even now, with this sudden spike in people talking about canon accuracy and "actually this happening in the comics", they don't actually care about the comics, just what they can cherry-pick for fodder. (even if they rob it of so much context they're just as OOC as they were before. see specifically: the recent phenomena with Tim Drake going from the woobified weakest member of the Batfam who everyone needs to save constantly and he's the smart boy but he's also the one with a sad tragic neglectful past who gets overlooked being the way Batfamily fandom played with Tim for years. but recently, people seem to be pushing this idea of a ridiculously badass Tim, Tim who *totally* has a kill count because of his actions in RR (2009) if you take them completely out of context, Tim who bested Ra's and is even more badass than Jason and he's the 17 yr old CEO of Wayne Industries being cool and flawless it becoming the new fandom zeitgeist. neither of these versions of Tim are canon, and the second fundamentally misunderstands his arc in RR (2009) but the shift has undeniably happened and it's been fascinating to watch. the same thing happened with people suddenly deciding Jason isn't the "angry violent Robin", he was a sunshine sweet boy who was perfect as Robin. neither of these are true, but the second feels more transgressive and new to fandom from cherry-picked panels.) the point is largely, Batfamily fans would rather build their own canon than play with the actual canon.

and then, you have Danny Phantom. i'm not into DP and have no interest to get into it, but what i know about it via fandom osmosis is this: DP fans sort of also don't give a fuck about canon. once again, the canon of DP is a sandbox, not a rulebook. the concepts and the characters are the draw, not the plot itself. i've seen DP posts explaining characters who are essentially OCs, but have become so dominant in the fandom via fandom osmosis. there are concepts and ideas about how Danny's powers work and potential concepts with his ghost nature that either aren't in canon or only happened once in canon and fans decided to expand on that and doesn't care about it's own in-universe logic. i've seen a lot of DP fans also express they haven't seen the show and they don't have plans to see the show. because the show is just some children's cartoon with some inconsistencies and a simple plot, as you'd expect from CN. the show isn't the point. no one cares about it's plot, they care about it's characters. they care about pushing the concept of half ghost boy to a logical extreme and seeing what you can get out of that. can you make it weird and fucked up. how much can you highlight on his trauma and body horror. what identity crisis can you give him and how can you build his interactions with other characters in his world around that and also make those characters fun and unique on their own. sure, the skeleton of canon is there, but the meat lies all in the fanon.

Miraculous Ladybug also exists in this similar vein. the characters, the concepts, those hold intrigue. and not even mentioning the fact the original concept for this show was supposed to be aimed to an older audience, so you can see the bones of something a bit more mature and nuanced under this typical, villain of the week magical girl transformation show. the show itself is a bit shallow and that's not a *bad* thing, it's just the medium it exists within being aimed towards children. but the concepts of a teen girl who's basically a sort of chosen one, a boy who doesn't know his father is the big bad of the show, and their weird identity porn love... square thing. those dynamics are *so* complicated and such a fun sandbox to play in with character-driven fandom.

so, at the core, you have three fandoms that care more about the culturally accepted fanon than the canon, with a good chunk of people often not even consuming the original canon content. and well, DC is an *easy* world to transpose just about anything onto. a boy who's half ghost and fighting supernatural threats? that makes sense, DC has ghost heroes like Deadman already. a girl who has this magical item that gives her animal themed superpowers? i mean that's practically the same thing as Vixen's Totem so that one makes sense too. they fit in pretty easy, no needing to change the world to accommodate them. and of course, if you're a fan of *one* fandom where you don't care for the canon content and only like the fandom sandbox, chances are, you'll get drawn in pretty easily to another fandom with similar mechanics. if you can teach yourself the DP fandom rules/concepts, you can teach yourself the Batfamily fandom rules/concepts. and well, since there's so much crossover in fandom members, why not write the fanfiction? crossover fics will always exist, but with such a shared member base, you have a really big boom.

it's why the characters you see DP interact with in DC are *always* characters who are far more driven by fanon than canon. Danny and John Constantine is a *massive* concept. for people who don't read Hellblazer comics. my poor partner, @divine-dominion has lamented to me pretty often about finding DP content in the Hellblazer tag that is essentially turning Constantine into an OC. because whatever version of Constantine is being written about isn't one bit comics accurate, and really, isn't trying to be. and the same thing happens with Shazam. you watch Young Justice and understand him well enough, you get drawn in by the character concept that you just run with it. people put their favorite blorbos in the same place because hey, wouldn't ghost boy be pretty cool in a city like *Gotham*. how would Batman even react to him. and then, the shipping. because ages for the Batfamily can be easily hand-waved and moved around based on where you plop Danny into the timeline, you have your pick of the litter with him, and same with Ladybug. of course there are the most popular ships but largely, the world is your oyster.

i don't think this is the worst thing in the world for either fandom. it's not hard to filter out the crossover tags and scroll past content i don't like. and sure, i see the appeal of making your blorbos from two different places meet. i've got my drafts *full* of DC/MHA crossover ideas because well, i like them both and think that would be cool. i think my only gripe with it is when DP or MLB crossover content seeps it's way into the wrong tags. using the above example, if you're writing about Danny and Constantine but there's zero content of the actual Hellblazer comics, i don't think you need the Hellblazer tag, just the Constantine character tag. tbh i wish this extended onto Ao3 and people utilized fandom tags better. if you're writing Batfamily fanfiction that is very clearly and obviously WFA driven in characterization and concepts, i would far prefer those fics be tagged with the WFA fandom tag rather than the Batman (comics) fandom tag. because well, you're not writing about the Batman comics. and there's nothing wrong with that, but it helps if you don't confuse yourself for content striving to interact with canon more. (this especially extends to Young Justice, by the way. if you're writing for the Young Justice tv show please, please stop using the Young Justice (comics) fandom tag. i'm at my wit's end- /lh)

the whole thing is fascinating. i've got zero interest in entering DP or MLB as fandoms because that's not my speed, but witnessing it as an outsider is my favorite pastime. i see a *lot* of posts going around the DC x DP space that are helping explain to people who's who, what's what, and understanding the canon/fanon of both of these properties so others can better enter the space. which is not something you'd need in a fandom driven only by it's canon content, but it is sweet watching others try to help newbies enter the space. it's a very inviting fandom space, i think, whether you lament it's existence or not. they're just sitting in their corner with their blorbos, and i gotta respect that. the posts explaining the Batfamily to DP fans are always fun for me to read, even if i disagree with some of the characterizations in them because it helps shine a light on what the fans of this crossover regard as "important" enough about each fandom to be worth including those sorts of primers. very fascinating stuff.