#the complexity of what should be simple

[inkoutsidethelines]

Nothing has convinced me I don't want to be a lawyer like reading a law textbook

[starry-bi-sky]

thinking about Dan in CFAU and just how different he needs to be (in my opinion) in order for Danny's whole thing to work. Canon Danny with Dan's influence, would never even consider thinking of killing anyone even after losing people close to him because he'd be scared of becoming like him. CFAU Danny however has been festering in this hurt and anger for years and wants the Joker dead and is plotting it. I don't think he'd do that with Dan's influence.

I explained how Rath came to be in this post here. Things happened in TUE as normal -- Danny's family dies, he lives with Vlad, Vlad rips out his ghost half. The difference here is that not only was Danny in a grieving state (something exclusive to banshees that the post goes into) but he also doesn't end up fusing with Vlad.

What happens instead is that Danny's ghost half, consumed already with grief and now enraged by being murdered and lied to by Vlad, destroys him completely and disappears into the ghost zone. He traps himself unintentionally in a negative feedback loop of grief, and as a human spirit banshee, cannot mentally handle the constant agony and sorrow he's experiencing. What happens is that he ends up driving himself insane with misery.

So the difference here, ultimately, between Dan and Rath, is that at the end of the day; Dan is fully aware of his actions. He knows what he's doing is wrong, and delights in it. He acknowledges his lack of humanity and feels no remorse in doing what he does.

Rath? He's... not. Not really. Dan is a hulking mass of muscle; tall, towering, terrifying. He loves what he does and does what he loves. Rath, however, appears as a scrawny young boy in raggedy clothes far too big for him, hunched in on himself while dirty, unkempt hair curtains his face and hides whatever he doesn't have ducked down in his curled-in form.

Rath is locked in a constant, unending state of sorrow and misery. He, for lack of better words, is unable to perceive the world around him properly and lashes out terribly and violently at anyone or anything that catches his attention. The only thing that he knows is that his family is gone, his other half is gone, that everyone he loves is gone, gone, gone.

He is a zombie apocalypse wrapped up in the form of a malnourished child, wandering the world in search of people who are not there, and becomes furious if you're not them. He is constantly crying, but he's been crying for so long that he's all but lost his voice. Meaning anyone trying to keep an ear out for him has to listen for soft, pained gasps and quiet whimpering, and wonder if the sound they're hearing are hurt survivors, or the very thing they're running from.

As a result, Rath's influence on Danny isn't that he's scared of doing something bad and becoming like him. He's scared of losing control of himself and dooming himself and others to eternal misery. As a result, he's adamant that things that he's done were not done out of pure emotion, but were active choices he made.

Up to and including killing the Joker. There's enough grief and rage behind his views on him that anyone could argue, especially knowing that Danny's a ghost, that he was not in the right mind when he did it. He was blinded by his emotions and was not in the right mental capacity, he had no control over himself. It'd work as a convincing argument.

If it weren't for Danny himself arguing against it. Killing the Joker was a choice he made, fully and willingly. It was autonomous, premeditated murder and he won't accept anything else -- it was not a fit of passion, it was not act of insanity, it was a decision. He won't accept it being anything else but revenge either, and if anyone tries to claim that it was a necessary evil he will yell at them. He didn't do this for the betterment of the public, that was just a fortunate side effect. He did it for himself and Jason. If you wanted it to be a necessary evil, then you should've killed him yourself. It was a selfish evil and he knows it.

In the end, Dan’s existence would prevent Joker’s death. Rath’s existence only solidifies it.

Rath's complete difference from Dan is one of my favorite parts about this au even if he never makes a direct appearance.

[pageofheartdj]

You know it's annoying how people accept gender being a complex thing. How the way you identify and the way you present are not the same. How complicated and fluid your gender can be.

And then turn around and deny ALL of it for sexuality. That sexuality is binary and strict.

[jokerfic]

@shepards-dead-fish DELIGHTED to talk about this, tyvm

first and foremost, the big dawg himself, Nolanverse Joker

His whole deal can honestly be summed up with:

effectively flipping a code of morality on its head necessitates an intimate understanding of that code of morality first. Ledger's Joker sure does spend an awful lot of his limited screentime preaching nihilism to people, that nothing matters, that saving a busload of puppies and pushing a granny into traffic are both completely morally neutral acts, as is everything else under the sun, because there's nobody up there keeping score.

to me it reads like a crusade. to me, it reads like a smokescreen for rage and disgust. either the Joker isn't human, is instead a figment, a personification of chaos, or he is human, and something happened, something shoved him over the edge, and his actions are a means of punishing a cruel world that he bitterly resents and hates in its totality. you have to understand the concept of cruelty to react to it and lash out like that, though. you have to understand that it's a bad thing-- that bad exists at all. a true nihilist, when confronted with the weight of the world, shrugs-- because what are you going to do? what's the point in trying to change anything when any change is equal to the status quo?-- and moves on with their day. The sheer amount of time and effort the Joker expends on terrorizing Gotham speaks to a belief that Gotham deserves punishment, and punishment as a concept doesn't exist if there's no right or wrong.

confronted with this idea, he would claim that it's just his favorite hobby, his favorite thing to do, and since there's no moral weight attached to the shit he pulls then why not indulge in it? it's important to understand that this is total horse shit. it may well be his favorite hobby, but I think it's his favorite hobby because doing this shit makes him feel superior to everyone, and again, if he was a true believer in what he's peddling, he'd know that there's no true superiority when everything is on totally equal, neutral footing. he's a liar. he's an excellent bad guy because he knows bad exists and is intimately familiar with it. he lives as an inversion of good, tacitly acknowledging that good exists and that he's painfully aware of it.

next up: Jerome Valeska!

Jerome is honestly kind of a doll compared to the others. He's on the simpler side of Jokers when it comes to his motivations and morality, because he sort of of wears his heart on his sleeve (and he never shuts up, so you don't really have to wonder what he's truly thinking). Jerome is doing what he does because he sees it as punishing a world that failed him, and he's open about it. He kicks off his criminal career by murdering his abusive mother, he's unrepentant about it, and from that point on, everything he does is with an attitude of "why should I care if anyone lives or dies if nobody ever did the same for me?"

There's no doubt that, like Ledger's Joker, Jerome really does get a kick out of violence (his family members who've known him since he was a kid repeatedly call him out for being a difficult, bad kid who frequently acted out and scared them-- and it's not as if regular abuse can have that effect on a child, right? he was definitely just "born bad," as his brother Jeremiah puts it. /s). I would argue that he gets a lot more actual joy and fulfillment out of murder and mayhem than any other Joker. He really just likes to kill, terrorize, and destroy! It makes him feel powerful and engaged with the world. It's his main social outlet (he's an extrovert).

He knows it's wrong-- he never tries to argue otherwise, or get out of it by acting like right and wrong don't even exist-- but in Jerome's morality, he's justified in doing it, because the way he was treated was wronger. All he's doing, in his mind, is seeking revenge, and revenge is one of Jerome's biggest motivators. I would argue that the pursuit of it is something he thinks is always morally correct in any case. There's a sense of fairness there, and by extension unfairness. He understands that it's an unfair world, and he thinks it's every person's right to fight for what they believe they're owed, even if that means stepping on other people to get it. "Every man for himself" is Jerome's morality, and given his background, how could it not be? If nobody ever reaches a hand out to you, you never learn to reach out a hand to others.

(By the time he meets people who do reach out their hands to him-- Lee Thompkins, Bruce Wayne-- his point of view is firmly cemented, and instead of opening up to the possibility that the pursuit of goodness might be worthwhile, he laughs at them for being freaks of nature, acting against their own self-interest.)

And finally, Arthur:

Arthur, who of the three is easily the most sympathetic and more of an anti-hero than an outright villain.

Arthur, like Jerome, is also lashing out against a world that has repeatedly hurt him, but in contrast to the other Jokers, whose destruction spreads out over the whole city, he's very deliberate about who he attacks. He goes after people he specifically feels mistreated by. He goes after bullies and thugs and the elites who he blames for the state of Gotham, as well as for his own low personal state. His victims are specifically targeted-- he's not out to just hurt anyone he can get his hands on. He doesn't seem to find any pleasure in the idea of hurting people just to hurt them. He wants to punish bad people (and, at worst, he's neutral about innocents, though I'd say he leans more towards sympathizing with them than not caring about them at all).

That's what I mean when I say his moral code is unusually explicit for a Joker-- it is! Far from being the city's personal tormentor, he's basically hailed as a vigilante and a sort of champion at the end! That's very odd for a Joker. Far from denying they even exist, he very clearly knows the difference between right and wrong, and moreover, he cares about trying to do the right thing (which is why he never even seemed to entertain the idea of killing Gary, even though Gary had just witnessed Arthur committing a serious crime-- Gary hadn't done anything wrong, Gary didn't deserve to be killed). Unlike TDK Joker and Jerome, he doesn't seem to have a natural inclination towards and sense of pleasure in violence-- it seems painful for him, like a last resort, something that takes him over and that he surrenders to rather than something that's always been a temptation in the back of his mind.

But I don't think he thinks of himself as a bad guy. I think he thinks of himself as desperate, maybe broken. I think he cares about being good, I think he's tried to be good-- I think he feels like he's tried everything. But in Arthur's mind, violence is now the only way, the only thing that will make the bad guys sit up and take note. I think that he thinks that the exercise of violence against bad guys is no longer an evil, and I think the distinction matters to him because, again-- he wants to be good. In his view, it's the world that's stopping him from being good, nothing inherent to his own nature.

so yeah. all three of them have a personal sense of morality that informs their lives and decisions, and that they use to justify the things they do. it's super interesting to see where they differ and where they overlap.

[normalestenstars]

a fraction of the reasons why tatsumi kazehaya should have won the least normal unit member poll

yeah. there is so much wrong with him. 💚

[mantisgodsdomain]

We ought to write more Pokemon fic some time. We want to recreate the Pokemon Manners/Human Manners cheat sheet that we made a few years ago we think that this site would like the Sliding Scale Of Politeness When Greeting A New Pokemon You've Never Met Before.

[holyshit]

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[girlhorse]

y'all this is ridiculously easy to look up on any search engine lmao

quit spreading the antisemitic line that jewish settlers should just "go back where they came from" or move "back" to their ~second home in NY~

Almost half are mizrahi, the group that were ethnically cleansed from their homes in North Africa/Asia in 1940s-80s. they once represented 60% of the population of Israel and currently there are roughly 3 million living in Israel.

And as it is with any long lasting settler colony, such as the fucking united states, a large majority of the people living in Israel were born in the colony. They don't have this imaginary second home in Europe or the states.

Not to mention how a vast majority of the Jewish people in Israel today were escaping existential threats to their life, whether from pre holocaust antisemism, extreme global antisemism & genocide during the holocaust, 100s of years of pogroms in Europe/Eurasia/etc, ethnic cleansing in North Africa, etc., and will not be greeted with much kindness if forced to return to "where they came from"

jumblr please feel free to correct anything. I am just a simple goy concerned with the ridiculous amount of antisemism coming from "leftists", particularly those with no ties to israel or palestine, that cannot seem to understand how to talk about anticolonialism and I/P without spitting in the face of millions of jewish people.

and before anyone decides to twist what i say into being an anti Palestinian argument, please go read this post 3 more times and consider shoving a cactus up your ass

[bonestrouslingbones]

now realizing that i haven't seen an edgepuff fic any longer than a oneshot since fucking. 2022. and not even a oneshot since 2023. god.

[spotforme]

here's a little sketch, i'm testing the waters because i have no idea how to get the to look like Winx girls?? testing testing prototype one:

had to give Rimmer the mean girl glasses (tm)

i do have a better idea for Lister because what is he even? a pirate? gonna maybe have to make him one of the sword/cape boys but they look so boring i'm not sure if i can

not satisfied with the colours but no idea as to what to change them to

[tautozhone]

idk how to start this so this post is ab individual action, trying to motivate positive change in the world, etc etc

a lot of growing up in the US for me makes things feel more scary than they are. like it’s actually not that difficult to go out of your way to get a bottle of water or iced cup of water from some random drive through if you think you should do it. either fast food conglomerate or local actually, it’ll usually be cheaper than 5 dollars to get drinkable water. i try to have 5-10 dollars i can justify spending on water, and asking for change, because sometimes when i’m out driving i need to go grab water.

i do not do this for me as much as i try to do it specifically when i see someone who’s most likely homeless on a street corner. i’m sure one day i might do this and they might not be there when i come back, but what have i lost really? a bit of time and a bit of money that would’ve meant more to them, that i can hold onto until i see them next.

the pressure that a lot of people feel when they think “what can i do” comes from this grand narrative that the average citizen can singlehandedly fix the housing crisis. rich people? maybe. nonprofits? not in a day, not all one person still. what can i do is a question i ask a lot. what can i do, not just because it feels bad to move along like nothings wrong with the world, but what can i do that will do anything. what can i do that makes even the smallest change.

i feel like it took me too long to figure out a personal method to what i consider individual action. it’s taking time to get to my own financial stability to be able to do more. but for now it’s as simple as water and cash. not water and food, but water and cash.

individual action means a lot in small steps, go get a bottle of water bare minimum and the price of a meal if you can and then just give it to them. if it wasn’t such a miserably hot place where i live i would keep a pack of water in my car, which i still want to do for the sake of having immediate access to water to give someone who might need it- hot or cold sometimes won’t matter. but when it’s hot out, get cold water, if it’s cold out, a warm tea will hydrate more than coffee will as long as it’s not super caffeinated.

[creaturefeaster]

Your animations are so awesome and smooth, what steps did you take to get to the skill level ur at now? If that makes sense ^^

Aw!! Well thank you. I wish I had more time & focus to... well, actually finish them! They'd look a lot better fully animated, lol.

As for steps... I guess I just immersed myself in a lot of animation from a very young age at first? I used to spend a lot of time on Newgrounds, I watched a lot of youtuber animations... Filmcow & Egoraptor were big inspos for me as a kid. Eddsworld and Happy Tree Friends too. I think digesting material that inspires you is essential.

Studying life and how things move, function, look, and work are also important. I really like to make emotions and actions feel as real as they can while still giving that extra flare that animation allows for. I've always been a listener more than a talker in real life, and as such I think it gives me more time to focus on how people look and act while they're busy communicating, or doing whatever else.

I also think letting yourself experiment with your own techniques is very important. Taking inspiration from favored animations is one thing, that is how you can learn, but also trying out & constructing your own methods is also important for workflow. Also, sometimes a chosen method you use just becomes uniquely yours, and becomes better with time the more you work at it. I feel like I have a pretty specific way of animating body language & movement. I'd call it theatrical to an extent. It's something I always wished I could see more of in animation so I've spent a lot of time trying to get it right.

I also started from a very young age, like 8 or 9? Maybe older or younger, I can't quite remember. But most importantly it just takes time to teach yourself. Research always, and know that time will pass no matter what, so you might as well start learning now if you want to make something great one day! I'm still working towards that myself.

[bookwyrminspiration]

i thought after finishing that kam fic that the next one would be easier. but I have once again managed to create and incredibly finicky and difficult situation that means I have to think very very intensely about. every single fucking thing in the entire universe

[igneouswyvern]

being the only fan of something is so great because i am the sole ruler of this kingdom. no one is around to tell me my headcanons suck or that all the characters are ooc

however it also sucks because i am the only fan. no one is around to support my headcanons or tell me they love my portrayal of the characters

[grotto-esque]

I think... people should cultivate a skeptical, questioning mentality towards news reporting, and perhaps especially if that reporting confirms your worldview.

[alohapromisesforever]

Thought For the Day: Make Everything As Simple As Possible, But Not Simpler. A Man Should Look For What Is, And Not For What He Thinks Should Be

“Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be. We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy? Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move…