#the main point is he’s always been mean and nobody cared and made his fanon nice anyway so that’s still not gonna change | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

balillee · 3 years ago

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my unpopular dsmp opinions, some of which genuinely should be popular

c!dream has crossed the moral event horizon and is irredeemable. once you cross that threshold, you're no longer a 'morally grey' character.

pre-recorded, heavily produced lore killed the lore. it was cool, sure, but you completely misunderstand the magic that the smp had when people watched it initially. the story is improv and that's how we like it. we can tell the cc's have lost interest in it, you can admit that to us, we'll understand, just stop lying to me.

c!dream's pov isn't necessary to understand his character or his motivations. if you've watched literally any c!primeboys stream he's basically spelled it out for you.

i don't understand how fans can dislike l'manberg or have claimed to be against it since the beginning. i honestly don't get it. what's so bad about wanting your own spot where you make your own rules and skirt accountability that has been used to technically oppress you before - and, before someone who never saw the earlier streams tries to disagree with this, the og l'manberg crew were imprisoned for shit that everyone else on the server was practically encouraged to do. also, what do you have against fun and happiness?

i think some of you forget that 'hybrids' aren't a thing, discounting c!ranboo. there's no piglin hybrids, c!techno is just a pig. there's no avian hybrids, c!phil is just a man with wings. there's no creeper hybrids, c!sam is just a creeper who's indecently exposed from the hips down. canonically there's no hybrids, and therefore no hybrid discrimination. people ran with that concept too much.

the loss and the fanon rewriting of the early lore up until pogtopia has ruined fandom perception of c!dream and the og l'manberg boys. c!tommy is more morally white than you think he is, and c!dream has always been a villain - he massacres and he kills and he destroys and he schemes and he always has broken his own rules. no wonder the boys wanted their own space after how they were treated.

i think ranboo oftentimes forgets his own lore. he brings stuff up that c!ranboo may have done, such as exploding the community house to frame c!tommy, holding onto Cat, and it goes absolutely nowhere. we've gotten all of these developments in his story but they have never been expanded on, and we're nowhere closer to figuring out his relationship to c!dream and what his other side is and honestly i see no hope that we'll be any closer to knowing even by the end of the year.

your characters don't all have to be morally grey for the story itself to be morally grey. this is fiction - some people can be nothing but evil and others can be nothing but good. being purely good or evil doesn't mean that you're one dimensional, either.

c!dream apologists have ruined c!dream for me. he's not a good person. how about you let me enjoy a villain for who he actually is, rather for than your percieved woobified ragdoll you pass off as c!dream.

the story was better when there was a central writer. it was brilliant back when wilbur wrote it to be that the environment drives the characters and the story, and it was really good in early s2 up until techno's execution day when it was more character driven. since then, the amount of autonomy people have over their characters without any central 'director', as it were, has been a detriment to the story overall. there needs to still be one overarching figure or director or writer.

not everyone is a main character. just because they have a pov, doesn't mean they're a main character. some characters have such little impact on the overall plot and describing everyone as a main character oversaturates the story and makes some characters seem more important than they are.

the egg lore had so much potential up until it didn't. all that built up threat that we were expecting and we still don't even know what the egg wants really other than just controlling people. does it hatch?

genuinely, if there's no major plot developments by the end of the year (and let's be honest, it's a very big possibility at this point), a few of the more prominent members of the server should do a podcast style stream talking about where the story would have gone, because at least then we would have gotten somewhat closer to a conclusion.

c!techno is a villain and an asshole and a bad person. he stops caring for people once their interests don't align with his or if they look at him funny. he makes meta-jokes about his own tyrannical and oppressive nature. stop taking that away from him. he's a bad person. cc!techno does a fabulous job portraying that in a comedic manner and the balancing of him being a deeply flawed person with deeply flawed morals and ideas with his comedically-portrayed stubbornness and lack of willingness to hear out opposing viewpoints is incredible. i want to like characters who are arseholes for the sake of being arseholes, and who refuse to take into account the hurt they've caused either out of self-righteousness or because they don't care, so let me. he's the anti-peacemaker, LET ME HIM ENJOY HIM FOR THAT!!!!

i think tommy and wilbur's way of doing lore is my favourite. relies heavily on improv, voice acting, sprite acting and facial expressions. really shows off the acting props and they pull off the emotional moments well for the insanity of the creative medium.

i'm not a fan of fan-music. i find songs about media i'm into difficult to listen to. coincidentally i'm also not a fan of shit like slam poetry or live music/musicals/pantomimes.

the death of l'manberg killed people's motivation to go on the server casually. i've talked about it more in depth before, but destroying what was a central, driving environment for the story killed momentum and motivation. imagine in an episode of she-ra, the princess alliance just nuke the freight zone and all of the members of the horde just have to deal with it. that would be shit.

until season 3 has some momentum, i'm counting the end of the smp as january 20th. that had a conclusion. season 3 has... whores, technoblade and tommyinnit. that's about it.

i wasn't a fan of the development of c!tubbo joining las nevadas. i preferred snowchester and the walled city conflict. give c!tubbo some backbone and some badassery. also tubbo where's the fucking nuke bro if you're shelving that plotline just tell us on like an alt stream what the plan was i beg

add like 2 or 3 new people to the server so that michael mcchill has someone to talk to and so that there's something always happening on the server. it gives the og's more motivation to return if things are happening in and out of canon and it'll help with momentum, and who knows? maybe they can write their own story/stories.

i really think that c!sam is an underrated character. he's multilayered, extremely interesting, and the dichotomy of his loyalty to his job and how far down the rabbithole that's taken him versus the genuine love he has for his friends that drives him to do what he does out of wanting to do right by them is brilliant. i don't talk about c!sam enough.

STOP HAVING FUCKING VILLAIN ARCS!!! I'M FUCKIN SICK OF IT!!!! i want to see more characters who see everyone else being absolute selfish, abhorrent cunts and go 'if nobody else is going to be a good person, i fucking will'. GIVE ME SOME MORAL WHITENESS!!! IT'S INTERESTING AND MORALLY GOOD CHARACTERS ARE FUN!!!

let tommyinnit build cobblestone towers. everyone bullied him too much for how ugly they were and the one he built outside of the prison looked genuinely really nice. it gives the boy something to do.

i'm a fan of the revive book and the canon lives system. don't ask me why, but i think it might just be the morbidity of it. it adds to c!dream's god complex persona, and i think the fragility of death itself is a really fun concept. not enough fan cc's have made connections with that and c!mumza, and it could make for cool fanfic.

ranboo your house is fucking ugly. it's an eyesore

c!niki, and to some extent now c!jack and c!fundy, are boring me and ruining my mood. i think c!jack is the closest to being an actually interesting sympathetic villain, mainly because nobody else seems to realise that c!niki is a villain. not a good one imo, but she's a villain. c!jack just has the problem of starting a new project over and over and over and over again and because of the slow in momentum for the primary cast, there hasn't been a lot of recent development for him.

not really a dream smp opinion, but if philza went full geordie accent, i would love it. i want him to, in canon, say shit like 'me n ye' instead of 'me and you' and use geordie dialect. i want him to be physically unintelligible because it's funny.

i don't really know what's up with c!foolish but i think he's a dumbass. he had a while to think about c!q's proposal and then changed his mind about joining the guy to admitted to letting him die just because. moron

i wish there was more c!eret lore. i wish he was an actual king with an actual kingdom and actual subjects and royal advisors. c!eret is far too fucking cool to be the king of nothing and nobody. fatten up the kingdom and the castle with people who work with c!eret, and don't just make it tyrannical and dictator-y to prove the point of the server's 'anarchists'. make it a healthy working environment, please - if you want moral greyness, have 'anarchists' who claim to care about the welfare of the server oppose a kingdom of happy people under a fair and just ruler because their ideologies clash.

the server needs more characters who oppose anarchy in more peaceful ways, or passively wish for systems to be a part of. i think a chaos vs order conflict ending only in mutual understanding where everyone understands that they should just leave each other alone would slot nicely into the story that's been created so far.

you need to have watched all of the previous arcs to understand the story. i've seen people argue that they don't need to know about earlier lore to understand the prison, but that's the equivalent of only watching the final season of pretty little liars and expecting to understand the context of what's going on.

some characters aren't that morally grey. some characters, take c!tommy for example, are definitely on the whiter side for the morality scale, he's just an asshole. he's abrasive and rude and a dickhead but he also doesn't agree with terrorism, he's patriotic, he strives for a better world, he's apologetic, but he's also a fucking BITCH.

you can add onto this if you want, but not if you're a c!dream apologist. nobody likes your opinions

#dream smp #dsmp #esclaposhitpost

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bigskydreaming · 4 years ago

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Couldn't the thing with Jason thinking Dick is infallible from Truth and Justice story come from how he is compared to his brother from Bruce. Even when he was Robin with Dick and Bruce fighting, he was told that Dick was better by Bruce. Then he comes back and is a cautionary tale of what not to and how not to be while Dick and Bruce are now getting along.

I mean yeah, you could go with that take, but I’m always gonna argue that even that is more fanon based than anything else, at least before this issue. We’ve seen a lot of that take in the past already, but truth is, there really isn’t that much basis in older stories for Bruce comparing Jason to Dick. And like I’ve expanded on in the past, younger Jason looked UP to Dick, he certainly didn’t resent him.

With this being true even when he first came back - Dick was the only one he didn’t target at ALL during Under the Red Hood, and when he did finally meet up with Dick a year later, during the Brothers in Blood arc, it was more to fuck with him than any attempt to take things out on him. Like, that arc gets a lot of shit and deservedly so, but I really do wish more people would at least takeaway from it the fact that in it, JASON referenced still thinking of Dick as family. Which just doesn’t mesh up with all the ‘they barely knew each other/they resented each other’ takes.

Pretty much all the times I can think of when Jason was compared to Dick pre ADITF, it was actually not at all what its usually represented as by most fandom takes, such as the time Jason teamed up with the Titans. For pretty much Jason’s entire tenure as Robin up until the Felipe Garzonas arc, Jason was actually portrayed as perfectly secure in his position of Robin and wasn’t threatened by anyone else’s perception of him at all. Even the arc where he loses it on Two-Face has been kinda amplified to make more of it than it was, like.....Bruce was worried about the anger he expressed there, but that was more out of concern FOR Jason and it wasn’t the “Jason was on the verge of getting fired as Robin all along” kinda narrative we tend to see referenced.

Jason was only made out to be the angry Robin or the less competent Robin or whatever AFTER his death, which is all kinds of shitty, but like......there’s no real basis for any kind of extended history where Jason resentfully suffered under his big brother’s shadow while Robin. The angry/less competent Robin stuff was all DC retroactively railroading him after the fact to justify their choice to kill him off (which was still their choice no matter the existence of a poll), and its the narrative most people have run with because it amplifies Jason’s existence as the misunderstood and unfairly judged underdog of the family.

Now to be 100% clear, as I’ve said in the past.....there is absolutely no reason you CAN’T go with this take if you don’t want to. Nobody has to abide by canon, or a particular canon and I’ll never argue otherwise. My main point has always just been that the thing about fanfic is that its a transformative process, it enables fans to take canon and transform it into something else.....but here’s the thing....those transformations ALWAYS happen with INTENT. People are deliberate in how and in what ways they transform canon, even if they’re not always CONSCIOUS of that deliberation.....it still exists. None of these transformations just happen, they happen for a reason. Because fans want an end result that’s different from what we saw in canon.

So my thing is always just.....yes, transform canon as you like, for whatever reason. But don’t pretend that those reasons don’t exist, and understand that when people look at a canon to fanon transformation that really only results in one major difference.......they’re gonna assume that this difference, achieving this difference, was for whatever reason, the POINT of the transformation.

And here’s where I also want to express something else: my take has never been that most of fandom just hates Dick Grayson. That they’re consciously, deliberately out to smear him or make him look bad. I think there’s a lot of elements in play with how I perceive fandom’s interactions with him compared to other characters, but more often than not, I think one of the bigger issues with how his character is TRANSFORMED from canon to fanon, is just.......he’s collateral damage. I don’t think in most cases the point is even to make actual transformations of his character or characterization......its to apply these things to people he’s in scene WITH......and he just ends up transformed as well, by proximity.

Take a look at some examples:

1) Dick firing Tim

Except as we’ve gone over multiple times, Dick didn’t actually FIRE Tim. He didn’t neglect him, he didn’t turn his back on him, he could have handled that situation differently, sure, but he had none of the ill intent people assign to him when they typically ramp up how bad this period was for Tim. Dick actually called him his equal, begged him to stay, said he was too GOOD to be Dick’s junior partner........but this is not at all how this moment in canon is generally viewed by a lot of fandom. He comes off looking a TON worse, like he just chose Damian over Tim and discarded Tim first chance he got, he didn’t care how Tim was affected, he kicked Tim out of the manor and out of Gotham.

But the thing is.....I’d argue that none of this TRANSFORMATION from canon really had anything to do with Dick. I don’t actually think that tons of fans were just waiting in the wings for the perfect opportunity to make a villain out of Dick and just seized upon this moment as the perfect opportunity. I think it was just all about Tim. It was about accentuating his misery, his aloneness, heightening the whump factor of his character and amplifying the feelings of insecurity, rejection and alienation he was feeling and that people related to.

What happened to Dick’s character in most peoples’ eyes as a result of this transformation, was the symptom, not the point. It was the collateral damage, not the aim.

2) Bruce firing Dick

In contrast, we have more than one canon interpretation of Bruce firing Dick as Robin, with this leading directly into Dick leaving the manor at a fairly young age, keeping his distance from Bruce until he finds out about Jason, Bruce giving Robin to Jason without acknowledging or apologizing for the fact that he was giving away the identity that someone else had crafted and poured their heart and soul into, not him.......but this isn’t how a lot of fandom outside of Dick stans and people who are specifically predisposed towards Bad Dad Bruce like to treat that part of canon.

Here, the transformation is the reverse from what happened with Tim and Dick. Here, the feelings of rejection and alienation and insecurity Dick realistically would have felt during that time are overlooked and even outright invalidated by TRANSFORMING the canon so that actually, this period of extended estrangement is completely disconnected from any version of events where Bruce fired Dick, which he did not do here. And in fact, Dick gave up Robin, he and Bruce had a falling out, and this was mutual and two-sided and thus Dick’s refusal to come home earlier and reconcile with Bruce was not actually him standing up for himself and refusing to settle for being taken for granted and dismissed when convenient but rather just Dick being immature, stubborn and a little spoiled.

But again.....I don’t think that’s the aim so much as a byproduct of the intended end result. Once more, I think that had very little to do with Dick himself, wasn’t about making him look bad specifically....but rather, it was about making Bruce look better. It was transforming the thing he had done in canon which was so hard to defend, ie ignore all of Dick’s feelings on the matter much in the way people accuse Dick of ignoring Tim’s later, and passively rejecting him and refusing to be the first to reach out unlike Dick who actively sought after Tim when he left. Those moments in canon definitively make Bruce look pretty bad, and are hard to reconcile with Good Parent Bruce Wayne, so that is what people are trying to transform. Once again, the way it makes Dick look in contrast is just a symptom.

The further examples are honestly pretty endless.

The aftermath of Forever Evil and Spyral is ignored, transforming Dick into the true villain of that period not because people just want an excuse to hate him, but because they don’t want to or can’t reconcile what Bruce actually did in order to get Dick to act so out of character, or they want to justify Jason and Tim and others’ anger at Dick later rather than have them appear to be inconsiderate assholes just piling on a guy who just had the worst year of his life to date.

The instances of Bruce outright abusing Dick after Jason’s death and at other times like Night of the Owls are ignored, transforming Dick into an impetuous, overly aggressive asshole who isn’t reacting to Bruce’s initial aggression, but rather just popping off the handle because he isn’t being received or treated just the way he likes.

Dick reaching out to Jason and making an offer to be there for him as Robin and later times they interact in Titans as well as any actual bond they build, even if mostly just hinted at off the page....all ignored in favor of transforming Dick into this bitter, jealous jerk who can’t see past his own feelings long enough to realize he’s taking things out on an innocent kid who doesn’t deserve this, even though that’s exactly what he realized and motivated his actual actions towards Jason in canon. And again, its not so much about making Dick worse, its about overlooking the WHYS of Dick’s hurt, turning the focus from what was done to him that justifies him being upset in the first place, to some greater mistreatment he enacts on Jason and thus drowns out any sympathy that people might otherwise have for Dick.

Dick’s periods of brainwashing like under the Church of Blood being overwritten or ignored in order to transform his deliberately out of character attitudes towards his friends and teammates there into just normal outbursts that were part of his characterization rather than signs that something was abnormally wrong with him. Thus turning everyone else’s treatment of him during that time period into again just their part of a two-way street and nothing they had to feel bad about rather than acknowledge that he’d literally not been in full control of himself while they had no such excuse for their behavior.

To be clear.....this kind of thing is NOT limited to just Dick. It tends to happen any time people want to transform a canon event into something more one-sided, to accentuate a particular character’s position as the victim or the misunderstood or neglected party.....or to turn a one-way street into a mutual antagonism, to lessen a particular character’s culpability in some argument or feud. You can absolutely find examples of this same effect applying to every other character in the Batfam as well.

But the reason it happens so often with Dick, and thus every instance of it happening tends to be amplified by the sheer volume of similar situations......is because of convenience. Because ironically, the reason Dick so often looks so bad in fanon’s eyes when it comes to his treatment of his family....is BECAUSE of how Dick is so much more integrated into every one of his family’s lives (and his friends’) than pretty much any other character. He’s the collateral damage to other characters being deliberately transformed in some way purely because he’s the one who almost always is THERE to some degree. Because there’s no one else in the scene that’s being transformed.

And so to bring it all back to your question......I think you absolutely can go with that take. There’s an argument to be made for it, especially now given that this canon issue has actually established a precedent for Jason feeling that way rather than fanon just running with the idea because it makes Jason more maligned. Its still not something that’s ever going to interest me though, even if I can see the reasoning for it, because its not just the fact that this particular dynamic between Dick and Jason has played out thousands of times before in fic, as I said yesterday. Its also because like I laid out here......my bigger issue is that take has absolutely NOTHING to do with Dick himself, says nothing about his character, but his character is inevitably the one who will suffer fallout from that particular take. That dynamic, as you described it, makes sense.....but its entirely, 100% on Bruce or others for raising those comparisons, not because of anything Dick did to Jason himself.....and thus it makes Jason’s dynamic towards Dick MORE a product of other peoples’ reactions and attitudes towards him and his brother respectively.

And that dynamic IS perfectly understandable and valid. But even if its slightly different this time because of more of a canon basis, it still for me falls into the same pattern of Dick being collateral damage to something that’s largely focused on another character entirely, with him and how he’s impacted by extension being kinda an afterthought.

*Shrugs* And that’s just......a story I’ve read so many many times before, I’m just never gonna be all that engaged by it.

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heloflor · 4 years ago

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About MML season 2

So after rambling about one season 2 episode, I now want to rant a bit. So here’s a list of reasons why I find season 2 weaker than season 1. Obviously, this post is mostly me complaining about some stuff so, if you don’t want to hear about it, don’t read.

Note that this is a personal opinion and you have every right to disagree with it. Also, the points given aren’t sorted in any particular order of importance.

For those who don’t want to read the post (because you don’t have time/aren’t really interested/ can’t stay focused for too long etc) or if you only want to see certain points, here’s a list of what I will discuss here :

- Murphy’s Law seems weakened

- Dakota and Cavendish are like looney toons characters and more time is spent on them getting hurt rather than on their interactions with each other, which makes their plot boring

- Compared to most Dwampyverse couples, Zack and Melissa have no development

- Doofenshmirtz is annoying but does have his few moments

- A few jokes take too much time; in particular, “Cavendish Unleashed” makes me straight-up angry because of that

- They wanted to make a plot for Zack but it goes nowhere

- other smaller things like the lack of time spent on the school characters

Now, onto the longer version (very long post ahead) :

1. Less Murphy’s law

So in season 1, Murphy’s law was a main focus for the story, in the sense that it was pretty strong. Most episodes had stuff blowing up or getting destroyed. And often, you end up thinking that people got hurt by such mess. Take episodes like “Worked Day”, “Family Vacation”, “Murphy’s Lard”, “The Little Engine that Couldn’t” or “Milo's Halloween Scream-a-Torium”, to cite some of the most extreme cases. And yes, not every episode is like that, and some are even pretty chill when it comes to Murphy’s law like “The Race” or “The Substitute”. Also, Murphy’s law was conveniently turned off except when convenient for the story in major episodes like “Missing Milo” and “Fungus Among Us”. But overall, you really had that impression that Milo’s life was chaotic and explosive and hard to live by.

In season 2, there definitely were episodes in which Murphy’s law was strong, like for example “Freefall”, the ending of “Teacher’s Feature” and any episode with the aliens, in particular the last three episodes of the season. But for the most part, Murphy’s law mostly felt like an inconvenience rather than an actual problem. For example, you have “Walker, Runner, Screamer” in which like one problem happens or “Disco Do-Over” in which Milo very easily solves his parents’ problem. It also doesn’t help that both episodes have at least one character make a big deal out of Murphy’s law.

But aside from that, there are also episodes in which Murphy’s law doesn’t even seem to really happen. Like in “Lady Krillers”, “Spy Little Sister” (I’d argue that the lightbulb accident would have happened regardless of Milo’s presence) or even “Cake ‘splosion” in which Murphy’s law is there but overall it feels more like Milo overcoming the show’s obstacles.

So yeah, Murphy’s law is still present but at the same time it doesn’t feel as strong as the first season. And while it does give more time for Milo and co to have some character development I guess, overall it just feels kind of off. And now that I think about it, this lack of a mess in the A plot in a show that’s meant to be chaotic might be the root for my next complain.

2. Dakota and Cavendish are too cartoony

So in season 1, the B plot was my absolute favorite thing in the show. I couldn’t and still can’t get enough of these two idiots and how they play off of each other. But in season 2…let’s just say that I barely watch their plot during the first half of the season, and the reason is simple : Cavendish and Dakota are a joke in this first half. Their plot is all about them trying to get something and stupidly get hurt by it, and it just feels boring.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against these two getting hurt. After all, they failed basically all their missions in season 1 and looked dumb while doing so. But the thing is : 1. In season 1, it was mostly because of Murphy’s law so it wasn’t always their fault and 2. The main thing about them in season 1 was their interactions. The most interesting thing about them has always been how they act with each other, at least in my opinion. Heck, my favorite B plot (not episode but B plot) is from “Abducting Murphy’s Law”, an episode in which all Dakota and Cavendish do is talk to each other in different places. It’s just two guys talking, and yet I absolutely love this plot.

So yeah, you don’t need to make Dakota and Cavendish be incompetent idiots for them to be great, you just need to make them interact with each other. That’s also why, out of all their “collecting trash” plots, my favorite is in “Lady Krillers”, because I love the first half with Cavendish complaining while Dakota is being baby while listening to music + their dumb argument over moving the bag and then Cavendish getting scared and Dakota immediately getting protective. This is fun ! This is cute ! This is very dumb and I like every second of it !

On the same note, I can’t stand the B plot of “Disco Do-Over”. The idea isn’t bad and the old lady is a great one-of character, but overall the plot is just urgh for me. The only thing I like is when Cavendish says that Drusselstein sounds made up (I guess Professor Time never wrote an autobiography) and Dakota starts listing made-up words, only to end up smiling at Cav while saying his name slowly in a borderline flirty way, as if he enjoyed every syllable of it. But thing is, I consider that, when shipping is the only thing I care about in an episode/plot, it means that it’s bad. And “Walker, Runner, Screamer” is in the same vein. I can’t stand the plot.

There are actually two things about these plots that I thing really pisses me off (the fact that these plots don’t have much of the duo playing off of each other doesn’t really pisses me of, it just makes the plot boring) :

First of, it makes Dakota seems completely incompetent. Yes I know he wasn’t a first-class agent and even in season 1 he wasn’t that athletic or anything but there was still the feeling that he knew what he was doing. He always managed to steal from Brick and Savannah or know where the duo was, he was able to save Cavendish hundreds of times and finally who knows what the Mississippi purchase was. So while he wasn’t the best, there was some competence. But in season 2, it’s more or less gone.

And for my second pet peeve : Cavendish’s mortality. In season 1, it was established that Cav had a hard time staying alive and could die from tons of different ways, including falling from great heights or getting sent through a wall by a horse. And while we do see him survive a giant rolling rock in “Murphy’s Lard”, Dakota still makes a comment asking if Cav is alive.

But is season 2, it seems like they completely forgot about this part of his character. The worse has to be in “Loot at This Ship” in which he somehow survives when messing with the ship. But earlier in the season, there’s also “Lady Krillers” in which he survives a bull attack three times ! Though, what really pisses me off with that isn’t just the fact that he survives for the sake of comedy; it’s Dakota. In this episode, Dakota has no problem just running away and letting Cavendish get attacked by the bull ! And it’s the same thing in “Disco Do-Over”. When Cav tries to sneak into the garden and gets attacked, Dakota just panics and runs away ! I swear the first time I saw this I was like “Excuse me ?!”. Because you’re telling me that Vinnie “sacrificing himself over and over again with no regrets for Cavendish” Dakota is now ditching Cav in situations he finds dangerous in order to save himself ???

I’m sorry but it pisses me off. It might just be me overreacting but seeing two characters whose main strength in the story was their banter now interacting less and getting hurt more, with one of them going against everything he did in the first season; this just angers me. And so when I watch season 2, I tend to skip most parts of the B plot (which makes me watch like 1 min of episode for “Lady Krillers” because the A plot is very meh. “Disco Do-Over” has an adorable A plot tho).

And last note about these plots, I didn’t mention “Field of Screams” and “Managing Murphy’s law” because I tend to forget about the first one that I find pretty meh (the entire episode, not just the B plot) and the second one has a B plot based on cringy humor and I’m not really into it, though I do really like hearing Jeremy getting more and more tired of Dakota and the hug at the end is such a cute and underrated Dakavendish moment. Also Dakota makes a dad joke near the beginning and I absolutely adore that.

I also didn’t mention “Freefall” because it’s fine. Dakota is being Dakota (and I adore this dork), we start to see Cav get genuinely angry about his job which sets the root for the second half of the season, there’s one scene in which the two are clearly very bored and for some reason it makes me laugh, and the action scene is fine (also damn Cavendish knows how to fly a plane !). But I find “Freefall” to be a good episode in general so yeah.

3. Zack and Melissa

First thing first : I have nothing against the ship itself. I’m not a big shipper when it comes to child/teens characters but I completely understand why people ship them, and I agree that they have personalities that mix well together. And honestly, this point is probably my most minor complain.

That being said, I do believe that their relationship has basically no development. Or at least, if you compare them to other couples in the Dwampyverse. Because thing is, Dwampy tend to have pretty high standards when it comes to couples. I mean, if we look at every canon couple + a few fanon (aka “here’s my need to infodump about random stuff nobody cares about”. This part will be in italics so, if you want to skip it, you can see where it ends) :

- Phineas and Isabella : since the first episode, we see that Isabella is attracted to Phineas. And throughout the entire show, these two are always willing to help the other, with Isabella always wishing to help in any way she can with the project of the day and Phineas always wanting to make the best projects when it comes to Isabella (just look at how he gets upset in her birthday episode when the finale doesn’t go according to plan). So yeah, they’re two kids in love with a very sweet friendship that you know will evolve into a relationship once they get older and understand relationships better.

- Ferb and Vanessa : Ignoring “Act your Age”, this is the usual trope of a young kid falling in love with an older person. And just like with Phina/bella, it’s made clear that Ferb likes Vanessa and is willing to do anything for her.

- Candace and Jeremy : Same kind of relationships. Candace is clearly head-over-heels for him, Jeremy often gives her presents since the beginning of the show and overall is always patient and understanding to her. It’s very sweet and it’s satisfying to see them get together and know that they will stay that way.

- Linda and Lawrence : While we don’t see much of them, it’s made clear when they’re together that they genuinely love each other. Same for their respective parents.

- Vanessa and Monty : A very organic relationship. It’s two teens who find each other attractive and, after randomly finding each other in the same place, decide to talk and learn more about each other, eventually deciding to start dating. It’s pretty sweet.

- Sara and Neal : These two are just fucking adorable ! They’re two awkward nerds in love and the episode when they get together really plays onto this and it’s the most adorable thing. And while we don’t see much of them, at the beginning of “Love Toboggan”, it’s made clear that the two have seen each other enough for their respective families to know that they like each other.

- Amanda and Milo : Another duo of cuties. The idea of a relationship between them is hinted very early, in “Smooth Opera-tor” in which we see that Milo likes her. And throughout the show, we see them getting closer as Amanda learns to accept Murphy’s law and becomes a genuine friend to Milo. We also see that Milo really likes her and is always willing to help her in any way he can.

- Brigette and Martin : Probably the most underrated characters of the show. I simply adore these two ! They’re just really wholesome people, especially Brigette. She knew full well what she was getting into when she decided to marry into the Murphy family and it’s clear that she doesn’t have a single regret. Like the Flynn-Fletcher parents, they aren’t around that much but when they do you can tell they love each other.

And for some fanon ships :

- Buford and Baljeet : Basically an enemy to friends to lover trope. They start off as bully and nerd but, the more time they spend with Phineas and co, the more Buford shows off his sensitive side and learns more to respect Baljeet’s boundaries while Baljeet learns to stand up for himself. And by the end of the show, the two are genuinely close. Heck, even in “Act Your Age”, despite the canon ships, there’s one scene in which the guys tell Phineas that “guys don’t talk about their feelings”. After they say that, there’s an awkward silence and at the end of it you can see Buford and Baljeet look at each other before looking away with a sad expression, as if they did have feelings for each other but never talked about it because of the “boys don’t talk feelings” thing (which, in real life, is complete bullshit. Let men be emotive, dammit !). But yeah, these two have a friendship that grows over the show and is sometimes teased as if something else was going on there.

- Heinz and Perry : Fun fact : when I became an adult and started getting back into the show, I couldn’t help but laugh as I started to ship it because this is such a crackship on paper ! Also, everything related to Peter the Panda, especially “Time Out” and “Lost in Danville” is fucking hilarious because of how ridiculous it is. I love the Dwampyverse ! (and I just realized that I didn’t talk about the humans/objects canon couples but given that only one person can evolve in these relationships…yeah)

But looking at the show and the books, yeah, these two are like two people thrown into an arranged marriage and having to figure everything out. Even if they start off as enemies, they eventually get accustomed to each other, to the point of being each other’s most important person. We really feel it in season 4. In a lot of ways, these two are a lot like Buford and Baljeet (which a lot of people had already pointed out).

- Candace and Vanessa : This one is mostly based on how much Candace admires Vanessa in “Night of the Living Pharmacist” and honestly, it’s pretty alright. I can definitely see why people ship it as there’s definitely some material there and there with Candace trying to impress Vanessa and look cool in front of her.

- Cavendish and Dakota : Act like an old married couple 24/7 ; often have physical contact and never react to it, showing that it’s normal to them and that they’re very comfortable with each other, almost to the point of having no notion of personal space when it comes to each other ; call each other “partners” most of the time ; have known each other for at least 10 years given Cavendish’s change in appearance from “First Impressions” to ‘now’ ; have to share a room most of the time due to their work ; are compared to Perry and Heinz, aka Dan’s favorite fan ship (or at least it seems to be) ; would die for each other and are willing to do anything to keep their relationship going, including stopping a “break up” (Dakota’s words). What else is there to say ?

So looking at all these relationships, including the fanon ones, it’s pretty clear that Dan and Swampy like to give out tons of shipping material. But Zack and Melissa ? They act like friends for most of the show. In season 1, the only episode that’s really shippy is “The Math Book” with how they play off of each other.

The saddest part with this relationship for the shippers is that in the PnF crossover, we start to get hints that they might be a couple, only for them to keep the exact same dynamic as season one up until the very last episode of season 2 in which suddenly they act like a couple most of the time. And before you point out “Escape”, it’s probably just me but the way Melissa tells Milo to hurry because “It starts to seem like a date”, followed by Zack saying “You wish” in such a neutral tone gives off the impression that they don’t want it to be a date. So yeah, by the end of the day, it feels like they only got together because 1. Disney likes straight people and 2. They’re the hero’s best friends.

Seriously, on youtube, there’s a video that’s a Zalis//sa compilation, and not only is the video only 6 minutes long, but most of these moments could come off as two friends acting like two friends. And for the video length : reminder that there’s a Milan//da video from the same person that’s 17 minutes long, Amanda being a character that appears like ten times less than Zack and Melissa; and there are also two Daka//vendish videos, both 10 minutes long each, and they barely cover like 1/3 of the episodes the duo show up in. Seriously, a fanon ship has a hundred more shipping material than a canon ship ! Honestly, Zalis//sa shippers were robbed.

I think the only other ship that has that little development (and by that I mean way less development) among major characters is the one between Baljeet and Ginger. Honestly for this ship : Ginger shows that she’s interested and it’s taken as a joke in season 1; in the bees episode, Ginger listens to Baljeet and, while Baljeet is happy that she’s listening, he’s mostly happy that someone is listening, regardless of who it is. Then we see them dance a few times in the background, including in a Halloween episode in which Buford and Baljeet were sharing a costume and, as Baljeet and Ginger start to dance, we have a shot of Buford not looking happy about this. And yet somehow they became a canon couple.

With this forced ship, I tend to accuse Disney being homophobic and refusing Buford and Baljeet to be both single at the end of the show (seriously Disney seems to be so homophobic that they allowed couples between humans and objects but refused any gay couple. At least they seem to have started to be more accepting with recent shows from what I’ve seen).

4. Heinz Doofenshmirtz

So I know it’s been talked about but it’s still a major point in this season so I have to talk about it. So : in Phineas and Ferb, Heinz is a motivated inventor who was able to make inators that worked, though his poor planning and some of his ideas often got the best of him. But overall, he was just a nice guy with a certain genius and who was trying to cope with his childhood trauma in the only ways he knew. He’s also one of the best fathers in all of animation, especially given how much baggage he has, but that’s not the topic here.

Then, when Dwampy made “The O.W.C.A. Files”, they decided to change Heinz’s personality. Suddenly, he was a complete klutz who’s can’t do anything right and just pisses people off. And when they made MML, they kept this personality trait. It also doesn’t help that quite a lot of focus is put on him, which renders him even more annoying. I won’t develop much on his flaws because, again, others already did before. Instead, since so many people already talked about what was wrong with Doof in this show, I actually want to talk about the good moments that Heinz has in MML.

So, to cite a few : First off, the PnF crossover. Yes he does mess up his time machine with orange juice but that’s like his only mistake. Overall, he’s seen to be a great inventor who quickly understands the Pistachions’ weakness after spilling juice on a plant and immediately creates a plan around it. And speaking of which, I also really like how, when he meets the group at the beginning and is told to be a hero, he asks “What do you base your assumption on ?” (not a direct quote), which really shows that yes, he’s a scientist who thinks like one.

The moments where he butts head with Cavendish are also pretty good, especially with how what he says is only the truth : he’s not Professor Time, he’s just some random inventor, and Cavendish feeling so much deception is his own fault for idolizing someone. Thinking about it, it might actually be the only moments in the show in which he’s seen as more mature than another major character.

And overall, he’s just his PnF self in this episode. Like, there’s also how he talks to Diogee and, later, when Milo puts some pressure on him by reminding him of the stakes, he goes “I’m going to go back to talk to the dog”.

As for some other good appearances : “Spy Little Sister” has Heinz show up for a very little and it really works with making him a lot like how he was in PnF (honestly the lightbulb accident seems like something he’ll do in PnF. Heck, in the first part of the episode, he reminds me of how he is in “Doof 101”, episode in which the problems are caused by the annoying bugs and not him).

“Disco Do-Over” does a clever use of the “I am a superstar” video, though Heinz is a bit obnoxious in this episode.

The season 2 finale has Heinz once again act like a scientist when he asks the Octalian about shape-shifting.

Finally, I really like the friendship between him and Dakota. The two are definitely bad for each other and that’s what makes their interactions interesting. Though, I would have loved to see some time spent on pointing out the fact that Dakota grew up seeing Heinz as a hero. And on that same note, I would have loved to see a bit more of Cavendish interacting with Heinz, especially after Heinz and Dakota became “friends” (the last episodes give off the feeling that now that they made up with their respective partner, they aren’t going to hang out with each other).

So yeah, Heinz does have his moments in which he works pretty well. But most of these moments are in episodes in which he’s a minor character. When the show starts to focus more on him, he’s just annoying and immature, which is really sad given how great he was in PnF.

5. The humor

Now it’s time to get the claws out. Seriously, this part was meant to be short but I can tell from what my brain has in mind that I’m going to give a long rant. To be honest this wasn’t even really supposed to be a big thing to point out, like I could’ve put this at the end with the other “minor complains”. But one thing pisses me off so it’s now its own part.

So to make things clear first : when I talk about the humor, I’m talking about one kind of joke that the show has done since season 1 but that feels off in season 2. I’m talking about the jokes that go on for a while, sometimes too long; especially too long in season 2.

I think a good example of a long joke made right is in “Party of Peril”, when we have to watch Elliot get attacked by a duck for like 50 seconds. It’s a joke that probably goes on for too long but let’s be honest it’s hilarious, along with creating the recurring joke of ducks hating Elliot.

In season 2, they kept trying to make these kinds of jokes there and there; but for some reason it doesn’t really work. I have two examples : the first one is in “Teacher’s Feature” in which we spend 20 seconds on Scott dancing in a cringy way while the kids comment on it. And I swear as I’m writing that I’m considering checking the length because it feels like 40 seconds, not 20, and that’s the problem. Watching the scene, they could have easily cut out 5 seconds of him dancing with music to go directly to the part where there’s no music but he keeps going. Seriously. They definitely could have made this joke shorter.

But the worst to me, the absolute worst, is in “Cavendish Unleashed”. OOOH BOY the fucking waste they did there.

So in this episode, there’s a joke that plays out 3 times, two times the same way and a third time with a slight difference. The joke is about people wanting to sign a paper to destroy then protect the forest, only to get crushed by the alien and being unable to use their hand. To put it simply, this joke is boring. It doesn’t even feel like a joke ! It’s just 15 then another 15 and then a whole 20 seconds (more or less) wasted on this shit. And I swear I also want to go check the length because I remember that when I first saw the episode, the third joke felt like it went on for two minutes. It’s not fun, it’s just boring.

But what’s the problem with that ? Simple : the ending of the episode. At the end of the episode, Cavendish talks with the main trio, learns that Milo was the abductee and then tells the teens to leave. And they just leave, asking no questions whatsoever. Like hello ???? Cavendish has been missing for days, maybe weeks ??? Dakota is desperate to find him ??? Haven’t Dakota told the kids that Cavendish was missing ??? Hadn’t they noticed during “Cast Party” and even before or after that Dakota wasn’t with Cavendish anymore ??? WHY IS NOBODY ASKING QUESTIONS ???? Why didn’t the kids go like “Oh yeah, we saw Cavendish today” to Dakota ??? Why waiting DAYS before telling him ??? Hell, in “Escape”, he talks about finding Cavendish like the kids knew ! So what the hell was that all about ?!

Seriously. Would it have been too hard to remove that dumb recurring joke and instead have an angsty scene in which Milo points out that Cavendish is considered missing, only for Cav to feel bad about it, making us feel for him, and then tell the kids that he’s doing what he believes is for the best and then ask them to keep it a secret from Dakota ? How come the only time we see Cav feel bad about leaving is in a fan animation ?

This seriously pisses me off. The whole arc about Cavendish going rogue could have been one of my favorites. We could’ve seen him struggle to live, think about what he’s doing and why, feel homesick or missing Dakota and the others. Hell, he’s been stuck alone and conscious in an ice cube for who knows how long, so why did he never take the time to reflect during that time ? And yes he was conscious. When he gets trapped, his eyes move and when he’s saved, he’s able to protect his face the very moment the ice break, showing that he was well-aware of Dakota breaking the cube.

But no. Instead, this arc spends like 30% of its screen time on Cavendish doing a Candace-like joke about trying to show the ship and 70% of the screen-time on Dakota sulking. And in the last episode, there’s a scene in which Cav complains about Octalia, only to be remembered that he can save the planet; and then he goes on a rant about how he’s going to be the hero of Octalia, showing that he didn’t learn a fucking thing from his arc.

This pisses me off. This really pisses me off. No wonder I wrote like 5 oneshots around that arc. I need to get that “Cavendish is struggling” angst juice one way or another.

And speaking of bad arcs…

6. Zack’s plot

So in the first episode of the season (not counting the crossover), the characters talk about how Zack is a coward who tries to get over his fears. Ok so first question : since when is Zack considered a coward ? I mean, he’s very cautious when it comes to Murphy’s law, yes, but being cautious is not the same as being a coward. Besides, Murphy’s law is dangerous. And for most of the episodes, his reactions are the same as Melissa and Milo, when Milo gets scared. As for his fear of fish, anyone can have these kinds of irrational fears. Also there’s the Halloween episode in which it’s made clear that he doesn’t have much fears aside from the fear of dying from the unpredictable, hence his usual resentment with Murphy’s law.

It’s also worth mentioning that MML follows the trope of having a group with two guys and one girl; with one guy being the main character, the girl being the smart one and the second guy being the coward or the forgettable one in certain shows. I think this might be one of the reasons why there’s this idea that Zack is a coward.

But aside from the fact that, in my personal opinion, this plot comes out of nowhere, there’s also the problem that we barely see it at all. I mean, in “Snow Way out”, it’s put into the story. Then they completely forget about it and Zack goes back to act chill and cautious until “Freefall” whose entire plot revolves around Zack being fearful (again, rightfully fearful given the situation). Then it’s dropped again until “The Mid-Afternoon Snack Club” with the idea that Zack feels overshadowed by Milo (which, honestly, sounds like a more interesting arc than the whole fear thing). And finally, it’s dropped yet again until the very last episode in which they keep insisting that he has no fear anymore.

Seriously, am I the only one seeing this ? Or am I just bad at noticing the character growth ?

7. Smaller pet peeves

So that last point is a list of small things that bother me in this season but that I don’t see myself write 10 paragraphs about :

- Most of the supporting cast needed more screentime. Seriously, characters like Neal and Veronica basically don’t exist this season, Sara also has a much more minor role, Bradley desperately needs some kind of character arc, most of the school characters and staff are also pretty absent (we miss you Drako !), Brick and Savannah only appear twice, once being a cameo in front of a pistachio cart, and I’m sure there’s more that I forgot.

- A very personal opinion so it’s not really a pet peeve but time travel was much more interesting than aliens, though the plots were pretty similar with the people involved trying to get to Milo, only for Murphy’s law to occur and ruin their plan. Also, while I really like the captain/leader, the two guys sent to capture Milo are your usual comedic duo, like the two small devils in Disney’s Hercules (I don’t know their name in English, I only know that they’re named “Peur” and “Panique” in French).

And fun fact, “Spy Little Sister” is probably my favorite episode of the season, and while watching it, I really had a feeling of “god I missed that” when time-travel occurred. Though, I’ll admit, the aliens plot does a much better job using Murphy’s law, not only with the aliens failing constantly because of it but also especially in the finale with each character having their own backpack to “fight against it”.

- Bob Block. There was some potential with that character (*cough* villain *cough*). Though, I won’t develop here because I already did at the beginning of another post.

- The episode “Game Night” is weird to me. Like, it’s not a bad episode, on the contrary it’s a great one, but at the same time I find myself not liking it. I think the main problem is that it should’ve been a season 1 episode due to the whole thing with the deadly vortex and how Cavendish and Dakota somehow knew what it was. Also I feel like there’s a waste of characters. I mean, we get the Murphy parents, Neal and Cav and Dakota and yet it feels like the episode is mostly focused on the main trio + Sara. Also Veronica was robbed. They could have easily removed the whole vortex thing, hence removing Cavendish and Dakota from the story, and have Veronica with the group instead. Look I love the two time-travelling idiots but other characters deserve some spotlight too.

Besides, thinking about it, it’s a bit sad that Cavendish and Dakota don’t really interact with the others when they’re on screen. There’s like 5 people in the room and yet we either see them talk to each other or to the group in general (though to be honest this disconnect between characters even when they’re in the same room is also in the crossover and the season 2 finale).

So yeah, this episode is weird. It has tons of elements that should make me love it (the Murphy parents; Neal; Melissa being Melissa; Dakota being Dakota; some Daka//vendish, including a 3 seconds argument that has some of the biggest “old married couple” energy we’ve seen in this show; Milo and Sara being overly dramatic babies; the Veronica cameo). And yet, I somehow can’t find myself really liking it. It’s weird.

So, overall, it was still a pretty good and solid season. Most episodes were pretty fun and enjoyable. But they were still a lot of small issues that, in my opinion, makes season 1 much better; and when I decide to watch random moments of the show or watch full episodes, I tend to mostly pick in that first season.

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welcome-to-the-gay-bar · 4 years ago

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So I we started to watch Attack on Titan again after many years and I’ve just finished season two and before starting season three I wanted to take a trip down memory lane and look at all my old favourite AOT fan fictions from 2014 (and see what’s popular nowadays that I may have missed, since wow, a lot has changed since I was last present in this fandom and compared to what’s happening in the current episodes season one was tame).

I’ve noticed a huge divide between fanon and canon and I kinda wanted to ruminate on this a bit.

Eren’s character in the show isn’t my favourite. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still fond of this brash idiot, but he’ll never be my favourite. He falls into this shonen protagonist trope of being hot headed and ill tempered. He doesn’t take advice, he’s not going to listen to plans or authority, he always thinks he’s right and only follows his moral compass, and to tie it all up he’s not even that strong. He can’t back up the threats that he’s laying down and yet he always rushes into situations with fists flying and never thanks or appreciates the characters (Mikasa) that get him out of those tricky situations. The only way to get through to him is to physically beat him down and even then it may not work if he hadn’t already somewhat respected you (Mikasa again). This character type is seen so often in shonen and I’m really not a fan, I like the cool and calculating protagonist better. Someone who has the power behind their threats and doesn’t rush into situations. Again, I like Eren, but I think it’s the other characters in the show that balance him out and the plot itself that makes me like Attack on Titan.

Compare this to fanon where his default character is happy ray of sunshine who’s a little bit naive. It’s a rather jarring comparison but I also don’t necessarily dislike it either. To me canon and fanon characteristics are almost completely seperate. If I had to always think a d compare fan fiction to canon I probably couldn’t read it. I read about happy fanon Eren and see canon angry Eren and to me they are two completely different characters - two completely different people even. If I had to read fan fiction about canon Eren I can 1000000% say that I just wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I’d be totally bored. As I said before, I like Eren but it’s the people around him and the plot itself that makes him bearable. I can watch a show about him because it takes less time and emotional energy, but I couldn’t invest in reading a book about him (which is why I haven’t read the manga either).

This isn’t even exclusively towards Attack on Titan. Back in my Teen Wolf phase I noticed how different canon and fanon characters were. Small secret - I was knee deep in the Teen Wolf fandom before I realised that I hadn’t actually watched an episode of Teen Wolf. One of my mutual’s reblogged TW artwork that was linked to a story and from that I never looked back. When I actually did get around to watching TW I can honestly say I was more than a wee bit disillusioned. Derek and Stiles are obviously not the main characters and I was prepared for that, but then they barely interacted, and when they did interact it was nothing like what I had read about - nothing like what their fanon characters or interactions were like. I can honestly say that I never made it past the first season - the show just wasn’t for me - but I was still thoroughly invested in the fandom for another year or two.

Something about fanon Sterek dynamics just did it for me, their characters and relationship was just so on point for what I wanted, and this is kind of when I came to accept that canon and fanon can be so different that it almost feels as if it’s two pieces of completely different media. I mean, fanon has its own set of rules, it’s own character tropes and story arcs that even completely different authors with completely different stories somewhat instinctively know to follow. I think that’s amazing, but it’s also a double edged sword. See these first two examples were of shows that I A) never watched/finished before reading fan fiction, B) don’t necessarily love love the characters in canon. That means that fanon is more appealing because it takes something I don’t care too strongly for and changes it to something more appealing. But what about when fanon takes something I love and cherish and remoulds it?

I want to briefly take this time to talk about something I’ve dubbed “the twink affect”. When you take a character that’s originally strong willed, self sufficient, and somewhat masculine and you pair the, up with someone EVEN MORE strong willed, self sufficient, and masculine - the “Alpha male” of characters if you will. I find that fanon is incapable of seeing two strong men together in a relationship and will eventually slowly twinkify one of them. Make them smaller, softer, lonelier, less self sufficient and more reliant on others, they need to be taken care of, they’re now a ball of sunshine that’s radiant and joyful, they’re cotton candy that melts on your tongue. You put them next to the pairing you ship them with and instead of seeing two strong men you see a bear and a twink. That’s definitely what’s happened to the two characters/pairings mentioned before and I honestly didn’t mind because I wasn’t protective of the source material, but when it does happen to a character I love it’s the most frustrating thing in the world, and I can’t even complain because I’ve already reaped the benefits from other fandoms. (I am going to complain though, this is my blog and I can do what I want mum.)

I’m going to talk about Mo Dao Zu Shi. Beautiful story that I love in (almost) all its various adaptations, but I’ve noticed the ever slow changing of fanon’s Wei Wuxian. For anyone reading this that hasn’t read MDZS (or if anyone’s reading this at all, I am expecting to just be shouting into the void at this point) Wei Wuxian dies - not a spoiler, it happens at the very beginning of the story - and comes back to life in the body of Mo Xuanyu. Mo Xuanyu is small malnourished and twinky - he even canonically wears makeup (or at least has it in his possession, I’m getting the various adaptations confused and I can’t remember if in canon Wei Wuxian woke up in Mo Xuanyu’s body already wearing the makeup or if he just finds the tin of makeup in Mo Xuanyu’s possessions). Wei Wuxian’s character is also a bit of a tease, and now he’s alive and unburdened by the past he’s much freer now than he was in the past, couple that with the fact that he’s pretending to be Mo Xuanyu (a character who is rumoured to be gay and also a bit insane) he goes all out in pretending to be a shameless flirt, and it’s honestly hilarious, I love his character. So in a sense he has all the makings of a canon twink and I’m really not here to shame on those who portray him that way while he’s in Mo Xuanyu’s body.

My personal issue is with the same extreme twink portrayal while he’s in his original body. In his original body Wei Wuxian is BUFF. He’s hunky, he’s in the top five most eligible bachelors, he’s *car honks* woof woof bark bark *whistles* puurrrr, he’s one of the most powerful cultivators of his generation, he’s a genius too. He’s hunky. He still has the cheeky shameless character, but when you compare him to the male lead Lan Wangji, they’re about the same size and strength. My favourite type of fan fiction in MDZS is fix it/everybody lives nobody dies/no war/etc etc. Basically stories where Wei Wuxian keeps his original body. The fanon twink portrayal of him being so small and soft and weak while in canon he’s one of the strongest and smartest urks me in ways I can’t explain. It’s not what I want, not what I’m looking for. I love him for who he is in canon and to see his character so distorted by fans of the original work is frustrating. I just want to read about Wei Wuxian as a jock with his equally buff and tall nerd boyfriend.

I want to pause here and say that I have nothing against authors that write him in a twinky way, I respect your work and your characters (and as I said before I’ve reaped the benefits of other fandoms twinky character portrayals numerous times), if I read a fic that I’m not happy with the characterisation I just close the tab and move on so absolutely no hate to anyone who enjoys this character type. I’m just ruminating on the fact that I’ve been seeing it happen more and more often lately to the point where I’ve kind of bounced the fandom and am sticking to other works like Scum Villain that haven’t yet twinkified too much (there will always be one or two stories in every fandom that twinkify and honestly? I respect that. Authors said twink rights ONLY, good for them).

Mo Dao Zu Shi isn’t the only fandom I’ve been in that I’ve negatively reacted to fanon. Another one would be Batman (I love Tim with all my heart and I love him getting treated nicely but damn I sometimes wish people would remember how freaking strong and amazing he is too), 2Ha is another I’ve started to see “twinkified” (although I don’t mind seeing Chu Wanning being soft and taken care of, he is canonically called handsome and masculine and he’s quite tall too), I’ve even seen the canonically “top” character (and that seems so weird to write oml) be twinkified by fandom because they want to see him get bottomed for ~equal rights~ because apparently bottoming is seen as a “woman’s position” to them and they’re trying to be woke by switching the sexual positions up but failing to see how misogynistic and homophobic that take is (imma stop myself here because that a WHOLE ‘nother can or worms to be opened right there).

What I’m trying to say is fanon is a double edged sword and I’ve definitely enjoyed some and hated some. I think it’s important to seperate the two. I do think it’s annoying for fandoms to be flooded with mischaracterisation when you actually do like the original characters and I wish there was some way to seperate fandom into “actual canon fans” and “fans of fanon”, but I don’t have a solution and I’ve definitely contributed to the problem in the past so for that I’m sorry.

I don’t know how to end this long ass rant, I don’t know what the goal was in writing this, but taadaa ~ here’s my exceptionally long take on fanon.

#rant #I don’t know if I should tag the fandoms mentioned in case I wake a sleeping bear #but I’m going to do it anyway in case someone has the tags muted #mdzs #aot fanfiction #AOT #mo dao zu shi #fanon #ao3 #attack on titan #ereri #wei wuxian

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sharada-n · 5 years ago

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Could you elabirate about why Papyrus reminds Flowey of Chara? I'm really curious.

Sure, but I want to preface this by saying its been ages since I’ve written Undertale Meta so excuse me for being a bit rusty. Also, there’s a lot of personal conjecture and interpretation here so feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt…

This is pretty much a counter argument to people claiming that Papyrus resembling Asriel is the reason why he’s Floweys favorite. I’ll get into why I think that isn’t true in a second (and why I think he actually is more like Chara) but first I’d like to point out that this theory doesn’t even make sense.

Flowey’s relationship with Asriel is complicated. On a technical level they’re the same person, yes, but in reality, they’re more like separate entities. While I do believe there is some Asriel left in Flowey, Asriel himself states at the end of the pacifist route that Flowey and he are not the same. More importantly though, Flowey talks about Asriel with clear resentment. He says Asriel was weak and blames the failure of the plan to free monsterkind on himself.

Keeping this in mind, it doesn’t make sense that Papyrus reminding Flowey of Asriel would be a positive thing to him. Especially considering the way Flowey speaks about his first encounters with Asgore and Toriel. Flowey doesn’t seem to want a constant reminder of his old life around, let alone a constant reminder of his old self. If Papyrus was like Asriel, I can only imagine Flowey would resent him too and not have him as a best friend.

“But Shara,” I hear you cry “Flowey is hardly a good friend. In fact, he's kind of a jerk and he manipulated Papyrus in the pacifist ending!”. Which, yes, that’s a fair point. I’m not saying he deserves a “friend of the year” award, but I’ve definitely been over why I feel their friendship is not just a charade on Flowey’s part. It might have started as such, but it's not anymore I think.

For example, the plan to use Papyrus to lure everybody into his trap at the end of the pacifist route wasn’t concocted until after Frisk fell, and they were friends long before that, so it can’t be the reason why Flowey befriended him in the first place.

Granted this is veering a little into headcanon territory, but there also is canon evidence to support this, such as the anniversary event where Flowey was the only one who knew what Papyrus’ favorite food was, and was seemingly annoyed at the fact that nobody else knew.

And also the dialogue you get if you keep doing neutral runs without ever attempting a genocide or pacifist run.

Here Flowey accuses the player of continually resetting and visiting him out of curiosity and boredom rather than a genuine desire to befriend him. This mirrors the part where he talks about his friendship with Papyrus being a result of his own curiosity and Papyrus (for some reason not actually properly explained in canon) being “fun to mess with” and a character that took a long time for Flowey to get bored off. Then we get this tidbit:

Not only is this line very interesting but the facial expression is important too. You can read it as discomfort, clearly, but it is also very much a guilty expression. This is the same expression Flowey has at the end of the pacifist route when addressing the player and compelling them not to reset anymore because it would take away everybody’s happy ending. It also happens to be the same expression he has when talking about the Flowey Fan Club as well as at the exact line I mentioned above, where he admits Papyrus was his “favorite”.

Seems to me like Flowey is expressing guilt or embarrassment about his original intentions behind befriending Papyrus…

Now to get into the main thing: Why do people think Papyrus and Asriel are similar? The hard part is that we don’t know that much about Asriel when you think about it. He’s been long dead before the events of the game. We get some bits and pieces here and there but most info comes from Flowey himself, who is hardly an unbiased source. However, it's fair to say Asriel was very kind, innocent even, and pretty naive. A crybaby, in his own words. And if you take the most shallow, basic interpretation of Papyrus (the kind of fanon that makes me want to pull my hair out) what do you get? That Papyrus is kind, innocent and naive.

The only word in that list I do not take offense to is kind. Papyrus is undeniably a very kind person. But he is not innocent or naive. I could go into why I say this but honestly, it has been argued to death not just by me but by the entire fandom at this point, you’ve all heard it before. Papyrus is an actor. He’s good at showing people the parts of himself he wants them to see. It's unlikely that he’s completely faking it, I do believe Papyrus is genuinely a positive and quirky person. But he’s also playing up those parts to the extreme. Which leaves us with a lot of subtle clues as to his real feelings. Meanwhile, Asriel wears his heart on his sleeve. Crybaby, remember? And what about Asriel being a coward? Papyrus is anything but a coward.

So let's talk about Chara then. Once again we face the same problem we did earlier. Chara is long gone and we don’t know a lot about them besides what Flowey tells us, unless you subscribe to the “Chara is the narrator” theory, which I personally do, but since I know some people are still on the fence regarding this I’ll keep to strictly canon dialogue first.

Asriel says Chara wasn’t the nicest person. True enough, their plan to destroy the barrier by means of killing themselves and then a bunch of humans wasn’t exactly a solid idea. However, it was made with good intentions. Chara was willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of freeing their newfound family. Chara wanted to help fix something they saw as undeniably wrong: the way humans treat others.

But this was also about revenge. Chara was bitter. They didn’t climb the mountain for a happy reason, according to Asriel. Asgore tells us something different too. He says he can see “the same hope in Frisk’s eyes that he saw in [Chara]”. So here we find what is both the big similarity and the big difference between Chara and Papyrus. Both of them are genuinely filled with hope, with belief, and with the motivation to make things better. They just manifested it differently.

Where Papyrus seems to maintain this disposition even in the face of adversary and unkindness, believing in you all the way until his death in the genocide route, Chara has already faced the kind of behavior that has made them resentful of things they consider unfair or unjust.

Both of them are willing to act upon these feelings of righteousness at least, however ill-advised, in contrast with Asriel (or ironically: Sans), who seems to be a more static, laid back person that didn’t like shaking up the status quo and just went along with what others did. Even Flowey himself only engages when he’s sure he has an ace up his sleeve and is unwilling to act thoughtlessly or impulsively.

As the tape in the True Lab betrays, Chara was also a hard person to read, and both an excellent liar as well as an actor. They were hard to figure out, at the very least, and Asriel expressed joy at seeing a glimpse of their unguarded emotions when they smiled genuinely. Once again though, Chara seems to do this because they want to come across as colder and more emotionless than they really are, giving the impression that they don’t care about anyone or anything. While Papyrus is always trying to come across more happy and untroubled than he really is, and rather keeps his more negative feelings to himself.

The result for both of them is the same though: they are distanced from their friends and family, I’d almost go as far as to say that even those closest to them barely know them, and they are misunderstood in the most fundamental way. Their motivations are harder to figure out than those of most other characters, for sure. It would definitely go some way into explaining why Flowey was so fascinated by Papyrus from the start…

If you do believe in the Narra!Chara theory, there are some small details that match too. Chara is a rather goofy person actually and often makes jokes, but expresses disgust at puns and Sans’ rather lazy sense of humor where he goes for the most obvious wordplays. Just like Papyrus, who the fandom often portrays as hating puns when in reality he loves them, just not the kind Sans makes because they’re easy. Chara is also implied to be quite fond of books/reading and cooking, as is Papyrus. They both come across as inquisitive to me. The narrator's retorts can be unexpectedly sarcastic, or even dark, not unlike some of Papyrus’ dialogue. There’s some other minor things but honestly this post is way too long as is so I’ll just leave it there

Conclusion: Flowey made the same mistake the fandom made in assuming Papyrus was a one-dimensional person who is easy to fool, only be confronted with his new best friend being strangely similar to his old one and now he has no soul and a weird attachment to this strange skeleton who everybody underestimates. He even admits that Chara is the only person he would still care about now. Kind of a weird statement, except if you consider he has found somebody like Chara that sparked some kind of actual emotion in him (whether that be friendship, compassion, guilt, or something else)

What do you guys think? I’d love to hear your thoughts, or if you want to tell me this post was a horrible read from start to finish you can do that too

#Undertale #Papyrus #Chara #Flowey #undertale meta #my writing #answer #an amazing anon #this became so long what the fuck #I tried bolding a bit so it'd be easier to read i'm so sorry #anyway excuse me while I write a fic based on this now

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marawrder · 5 years ago

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in this post i will be laying out all information regarding sirius’ romantic orientation, experience with and general stance towards romance. i will also take position in regards to popular ship dynamics and general pointers on shipping with this muse.

too long; don’t wanna read: sirius is aromantic, wolfstar ehhh perhaps BUT!, and i don’t really plan on romantically shipping him with anyone. sorry!

romantic orientation sirius is grey aromantic, but on the furthest side of the spectrum. in his canon time-line, he wouldn’t and doesn’t fall in love. for him to do so, it’d require an incredibly close bond, and if there’s ever a person who reaches that the level of closeness and trust it needs to be up there with the bond he has with james. it doesn’t have to be as soulmate-y, james and sirius really are on the exact same wavelength, but just as open and codependent, sort of. the problem is: in his main verse, sirius would never ever have let anyone as close to him as james, because of the circumstances and because he doesn’t want to. that’s why james would be the only person he could theoretically develop feelings for. which he doesn’t because that is his brother. experience the only experience sirius has with romance is therefore from seeing it between others. he didn’t exactly grow up in a loving household, but that is not to claim that orion and walburga didn’t love each other. sirius just didn’t see it, and especially when he got to an age where falling in love is something more people think about, he was already getting estranged from his parents and, partially out of spite, thought of them to be unable to feel love in the first place. but sirius doesn’t get it, at least not in the way his friends talk about it. this is not just because of his orientation, but sirius, in general, is oftentimes very oblivious to other people’s feelings. he’s not very empathic, and if he cannot relate other people’s feelings to his own… well… then he just doesn’t understand at all. and sometimes that also means that he doesn’t accept them. what really makes him understand is seeing james and lily fall in love, and even that, for him, is a process. of course there probably instances around him of people feeling romantic, but it either — given the age — wasn’t too serious or fully-fledged, or it wasn’t too close to him for him to actually witness it. because sirius didn’t really care for it, at all, and he made sure to proclaim so several times, even when he didn’t know what he was talking about.

watching the person he was closest to fall in love, though, changed that. at first, he was highly skeptical. well, at the very first, he thought it was a joke, that the way they acted was somehow planned because he didn’t get how that just happened to someone. but when it became clear that they weren’t just acting like that because, stereotypically, people “ in love ” acted a certain way, he realized, and he didn’t like it. when james and lily started a relationship, he wasn’t entirely on board, because while lily is cool in theory and he does wish his mate all the best, it feels like james is trying to replace him. for sirius, what he feels for james is really as far as it goes when it comes to caring for someone, and he thought that that’s mutual. he doesn’t get how there’s suddenly “ more ” for lily. it takes him a while to come to terms with the fact that this is something different entirely, that james is still his family and, by extension, so is lily. it also shows him what romantic love looks like, and that it’s nothing he’s felt before or can imagine himself feeling. stance towards romance depending on when you ask sirius, his answers will of course differ, but for the longest time, he thought it was a hoax. not as in — nobody ever felt romantic love, he certainly knew it existed and thought it would even befall him someday, but the way it was portrayed by books and songs and all that? it sounded like it was too exaggerated for actual, real-life people to behave like that. this certainly is not due to his own orientation, but because in his immediate environment, love between a husband and a wife was not put on display and certainly not treated as a prerequisite for marriage. the whole idea of romanticism was treated like a dime novel concept, nothing practical or applicable.

sirius believes in love. he has seen and felt it, familial love, platonic love, close kinship with people he hasn’t even known for that long. but he has no reference, no connection to romantic love. he’s never experienced it, he’s never really wanted to experience it. but above all, he is not very empathetic at all. if he has no reference, he doesn’t understand it in others, and therefore he doesn’t take it seriously. this can and has lead to him offending and hurting his friends when he invalidates their feelings, especially in his phase of antagonizing lily when she and james clearly expressed romantic interest in each other. it’s something he has learned from and afterward isn‘t proud of, and thanks to them he learns to understand about true romantic love, but it’s something takes most of his normal life to process. later, he has more time to reflect, but it’s not a good time.

on wolfstar i want to note that i do not ship wolfstar, at least not off the bat. this has to do with the interpretation of fanon, in which sirius and remus fall in love at 15 and are inseparable ever since, they share chocolate and fight about who’s the bottom. as you may know, i hate fanon with a burning passion, and above all, i hate how one of the central points of sirius’ characterization has become his being in love with remus. secondly, my personal interpretation and prioritization of canon information is rather different from wolfstar interpretations, even the non-fanon ones i have seen. in his canon timeline, sirius and remus begin harbouring deep distrust towards each other, causing them to suspect each other to be the traitor. i also do not believe that the “ prank ” sirius played on snape, in which he purposefully led snape to find remus on a full moon, who might’ve killed him if it wasn’t for james’ intervention, is something they could just move past so easily. even if remus does forgive sirius, for sirius it’s still something that’ll stand between them. i do not believe that this is an atmosphere in which romantic feelings could arise for anyone, let alone someone like sirius.

that being said, just because i don’t support widespread ideas regarding sirius x remus, or do not ship them in a canon timeline, this doesn’t mean that i am completely opposed to the idea! i just personally believe that the circumstances have to be very, very different for them to be able to trust each other, and deeply enough for it to end in something romantic. i do not have a specific idea of how that should go, but i am always willing to explore a plot!

on other dynamics there are a few other popular ship dynamics in fanon that i don’t quite understand, specifically when they involve characters such as marlene, dorcas, or mary, who have been mentioned within perhaps two lines. obviously, i do not believe in lumping together all these different interpretations of one character, and i will not assume chemistry off the bat. in fact, i usually actually assume the opposite, because most of these characters are self-respecting women and sirius behaves, most of the time, like a full-on asshole — but that’s besides the point. as stated before, i really do not see a way in his canon timeline for him to get close enough to someone other than the marauders. and sirius doesn’t do crushes. that is not just because it takes a lot for him to develop romantic attraction, he’s also just an all or nothing kinda guy. therefore, the only thing that really applies to this type of dynamics is chemistry and lots and lots of plotting and development.

on james/sirius in my previous analysis, i might’ve suggested that james would be the one person sirius would fall in love with, but that… really isn’t it, either. quite frankly, things would have to go horribly wrong for them to end up together, or it might even be impossible, because james' trust and friendship are what shape sirius as a person and them being family is essential to his development. and no, despite being purebloods, you just don’t date family.

#⌞ ⋆ rp. ⏤ headcanon ⌝#( personals: under no circumstances interact with this post in any way shape or form thank you )#( anyway this one's for u my darling followers xx pls be kind to me )

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mieczyhale · 6 years ago

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throwing together some of my recent/ish hc posts/tags for @hellomyguru bc its a thing, babey (i have no idea what you’ve seen and what you havent bc tumblr really just suck like that so lmao)

my tags on this post:: #HELL YEAH HELL YEAH #more pride hcs!!! noice!!#i love these sfm#like klaus always taking part no matter how bad shit is bc HIS PEOPLE!!! and ben trying to punch picketers and homophobes is fucking adorbs#and i would kill (whoop) for the day klaus makes ben corporeal during pride and ben can punch all the people and then disappear#vanya’s is cute. come to the light darling!!#and diego fksgjf okay listen whether one hcs him as bi or not this is 1000% something he’d do either way#he’s supportive!!! and he has lgbtqa+ family!!! and nobody gets to be mean to his family but him!!#see also:: the first year after the apocalypse is avoided five decides to tag along when klaus saying he’s taking dave to#his very first pride. he not only enjoys himself but he learns a lot and either then or over the course of the following weeks figures his#own labels out - bc i hc five as asexual and i just have a thing for klaus being the all knowledgeable one about something for once#and his siblings learning about gender and sexuality from him and maybe discovering something new about themselves along the way!#except luther. he’s a cis hetero and we all know it#but maybe he learns to be a good ally. maybe#i mean probably not but whatever#allison is the only other person in the family who i’d even consider calling straight#bc there’s nothing wrong with being straight and i just.. dont have another label that i think fits her really well#so yeah ive got gender and sexuality hcs for them all flgkscndn happy pride month bitches

my tags on this post:: #’you’re telling me this happens every year?? for a whole month??!’ #actually i need every possible concept of dave experiencing pride month and seeing how far things have come for gays#like rainbow shit everywhere#and of course the legalization of gay marriage#out and proud gay politicians and gay people in positions of power#the amount of support that comes when homophobic shit happens now#homophobia isnt the accepted norm anymore#another thing i like is the concept of - either during pride or just in general - dave being excited to learn about the community as a whole#his boyfriend is a nonbinary pansexual and klaus has explained before what those words mean but dave wants to really understand#we stan a supportive and loving couple#dave has a lot to learn in 2019 but i think this stuff would be the most important and have the most effect on him yknow??#shit isnt perfect but its better and now he can work on getting passed the environment he was raised in#so he can hold klaus’s hand in public and kiss him around other people without panicking and eventually he proposes because HE FUCKING CAN#HE CAN DO THAT. HE CAN JUST.. ASK HIS BOYFRIEND TO MARRY HIM. LEGALLY.#good fucking shit

my tags on this post:: #did you see the state of the sky in the apocalypse?? there’s a chance he really wouldnt have noticed#i mean like yeah it could be a funny plothole#but there could also be reasons for why thats not something he noticed#or idfk man timeline shit#maybe the moon didnt explode the first time around#maybe it did and there’s just another moon somehow some way#maybe he didnt notice bc he was first too scared and then too frenzied and angry probably and then he had shit to focus on and math to do#and then dolores wanted to go on dates to the local wine cellars and flat empty areas that used to be parks and then there was spending days#in the library together like having a girlfriend is a lot of work okay#maybe five just didnt have the time to slowdown and consider things like space#maybe his headspace was too fucked#sometimes you just forget about the moon - i know i do!#so sfgksncjf okay y e ah

my tags on this post:: #YES!!! #yes yes yes #okay #so#everytime someone mentions or even hints at dave having anger issues i wanna fucking cheer bc thats one of my biggest hcs for him#like yeah he’s sweet and gentle and respectful and all that - genuinely a good man - our lil jewish gay#BUT#he did grow up in the 50s and 60s which as op said would have surrounded him with a lot of toxic masculinity. now i dont think he would be#a toxic kind of masculine AT ALL but it definitely would have forced him to hide his emotions and feelings and idk hobbies and of course his#sexuality. and i say hobbies bc there isnt a canon answer for it i dont think but i personally hc dave as being someone who loves art#specifically: drawing. dave keeping a lil sketchbook and some pencils under the pillow on his cot in vietnam?? yes please#so anyway yeah - he wouldnt have really had any good examples of how to properly take care of your anger - although he has enough#heart and common sense to know its really fucking wrong to take it out on women and children and people one is dating WHICH - another hc i#have that ties into this is that somehow his dad found out that he’s gay and beat the crap out of him over it. because unfortunately thats a#thing that happens. so his main male example was an abusive pos. and then he goes to vietnam which is fine because its not like he has#anyone stateside that will miss him - that will talk to him anymore - and its a warzone so there are a lot of ways to work out your anger#and yeah that of course includes bar fights. and he does - usually - try and keep a hold on his anger until he’s away from anyone who might#feel threatened - and he doesnt wanna end up taking out an innocent on accident - but he’s not actually perfect and so sometimes he fails#and it happens around klaus one time and seeing his love’s reaction - the making himself smaller - trying to hide - going quiet and so#clearly afraid - and not just afraid but afraid OF HIM - freezes him to the core where he stands because nobody has ever reacted like that#before. or if they have he never noticed or cared because they didnt matter. but this is klaus. his klaus. who he loves and would never do#anything to hurt him. his klaus who he protects and defends and knows he wants to spend his life with - no matter how impossible it is#he wants to go to klaus and apologize - try to undo the damage done simply by him raising his voice and lashing out - but he doesnt know#what to say or how to say it - he doesnt know what to do with the situation honestly. so he leaves the tent and goes to take his renewed#anger and frustration out on whatever he can find so he can calm down and hopefully get into the right headspace to have whats#no doubt going to be a really hard conversation with his boyfriend. because where do you even start??#but of course they talk it out and dave promises to work on his anger and on how he lets it out and yknow.. its dave so klaus trusts him and#it takes some time - there are some incidents - but dave works hard and learns a lot from klaus - including how to unlearn a lot of shit he#grew up with - and its rough but having a partner from the future who breaks all kinds of barriers definitely helps#so y eah. those are my brief feelings on it and i wanna marry op

my tags on this post:: #!!!!!!!!!!!! #YES #i adore this post#i could never pinpoint why the introduction on the bus made me feel like That but this is it!!#its just so sweet and innocent - even surrounded by other soldiers in the middle of a warring country#the innocence and unbearable fucking adorableness of their first convo on that bus just… its so bright and lovely it makes everything else disappear#the only thing that matters is the two guys getting to experience that ‘o h’ moment for the first time in their lives bc their childhoods#never let them have that #i assume#bc like op said klaus didnt go to a regular school and he wasnt p much stuck in that house and then he was on the streets so#and for dave like.. i guess he could’ve had that moment in school? but it would’ve been one-sided and he never would have#told anyone. 1960s. gay jewish man. yeah.#they’re each others first (and only) loves and i just really fucking adore that and live off of posts about them

my tags on this post:: #what if he wasnt dead-dead though???#bc like… the day five found them all dead was apparently the day the apocalypse happened right? so its not like they’d been dead for days#weeks or w.e yknow??#and the time between klaus dying and coming back is varying and undetermined - there’s no canon timing for the length of his deaths#so what if he came back to life??#like okay i know its not really possible in canon bc five buried them i think?? or is that a fanon thing??#i cant remembering #anyway#but still - in general klaus not being permanently dead in the apocalypse is another possibility#and five didnt know about it bc after finding them all he began his 45 year journey#and klaus wakes up alone and essentially has to learn to survive and he doesnt know five was ever there bc..well.. yeah#five is long gone#maybe klaus lives out his days in that wasteland#and he doesnt remember it where five does bc five time traveled back and klaus didnt. the klaus that got stuck in the#apocalypse is a different klaus - like a different timeline. the klaus from ep1 never got stuck in the destroyed future so#he’d have no knowledge or memories of it or anything#or - second thought - he kills himself at some point after waking up and either begs god to let him stay dead or he strikes some kind of#deal with her so he doesnt have to return to whats left of earth#oooo or something happened that put a lock on his powers?? like yknow those cuffs and devices and stuff in stuff in fantasy that freeze the#users abilities?? that’d be an interesting plotpoint bc then like who did it and why and what was the last day really like? yknow#vanya’s meds but More is the idea #just a thought#but anyway idk im just a big fan of klaus with the inability to die and all the possibilities that brings

my tags on this post:: #i’ve actually never stopped to consider why he didnt notice them except for my v first tua watch-thru#which is odd bc like that seems like a thing one should notice after a few watches??#but w.e #anyway#my only other hc for that part of the episode isnt that klaus didnt notice them bc he’s used to guns#it’s that he didn’t hear them#or that they weren’t loud enough -to him- to register as gunfire initially#bc like one of my close hcs is that he has bad hearing. growing up with people screaming in your ears 24-7 365 can’t exactly be good for#his ears now can it? and with how loud some of them are and how close they can get to him - without touching him - that’s just.. a lot of#fucking volume okay#now add in the academy’s mission alert siren#how loud he listens to his music with headphones on when he’s trying to drown out some REALLY LOUD SCREAMING#and then being near gunfire growing up. those bank robbers had guns and weren’t exactly a big distance away#all the raves and clubs and parties he goes to?? places where music is played so loud the room shakes and you cant hear anything else and#the music itself can be heard from blocks away?? that’s an indeterminable amount of intense noise#and then of course the gunfire of vietnam#so like… boys ears have SUFFERED. whether they wanna acknowledge that in canon or not#so the shooting at the theater - the shooting thats IN the theater - which is large and meant to house sound#thats happening across a big city street from where they’re standing and they’re behind the food truck and if klaus was ordering when it all#started that was just another level of sound and he’s not exactly focused bc everything is awful yknow?? so either it takes him a second to#notice or register it on his own or maybe he doesnt and ben says something?? idk but that’s kinda the field i’ve landed on for that scene#not that im not here for op’s hc!!! bc it really is a good one and it makes sense. im just rambling my own theory here bc i like considering#the Ways for Things sometimes. esp with klaus involved. this does make me wonder tho… if his hearing somehow is -fine- in canon…. h o w?#bc like bitch who tf can take all that and have perfect hearing?? thats gotta be impossible. if they are fine is it related to his powers#somehow?? like.. does his casual passing between life and death all the time mean he doesnt have mortal ear weaknesses? its weird but im..#i’ve got theories.

my tags on this post:: #probably in the massive fucking pockets of his fluffy coat#see also:: a dealer’s place #a boyfriend’s place#an ex-boyfriend who is also a dealer’s place#a girlfriend’s place #a partner’s place#all ex’s of course bc dave is the only valid romantic relationship#he made friends with the person who owns a nearby thrift store and they help him out#he has a locker at a public place like the ymca#he only has one outfit before returning to the mansion so he has nothing to carry - ever on the move#he thiefs off of people in rehab and crackhouses he stayed in that are dumb enough to leave their shit unattended#when he sees something he likes or he feels its time for an outfit change#he mostly sticks with his lace up pants as far as bottom pieces go bc its much harder to sneak away with skirts#and the kind of crazy pants he likes. there’s only room for one pair of pants for this pan disaster#after returning to the mansion he has access to the funky gay clothes he had managed to aquire before leaving all those years ago#bc like… i kinda hc that he got out of there fast and probably higher than fuck and had nothing packed#have you ever tried to pack while high?? it’s harder than it has any right to be#crack theory:: he had a bag - we just never saw it bc in the beginning he wore it under his floofy coat bc safety and he didnt need it the#rest of the time.#i have a lot of thoughts and headcanony opinions about klaus’s time on the streets so thank u#for giving me a place to dump some of them

#a collection of my dumbass tag rambles about the umbrella academy #for the ever lovely #hellomyguru #im definitely gonna be thinking of more pride hcs tho bc... Gay.#oooo i should make a post about my gender/sexuality hcs for all the siblings maybe?? ive seen other people do that and like.. i wanna share #but i also dont want to be eaten by people who disagree so... mayhaps not.#idk.#anyway. i knew i typed a lot in tags but uh... i wasnt aware of how bad it was. whoops?#mytuaposts

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dent-de-leon · 7 years ago

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I see a lot of people still theorizing that Shiro and Keith are brothers or related - which is fine but, at this point, in season 4 don't you think it would've come up by now? I'm curious about your opinion because I'm like wow little late on that.

ahhh ok. Okay. Disclaimer that this is my own opinion and is nothing against the people who prefer this theory, but here are just some of my qualms with it:

Shiro and Keith’s dynamic has never been played as anything like Pidge and Matt’s, and it honestly boggles my mind that people are so insistent on fanon. And as I’ve talked about before, not only would it make no sense, it would incredibly detract from the story’s main theme of found family. The whole point of Shiro staying for Keith when his own family left him was that you don’t need blood relatives to make your own family and surround yourself with people who love you. The whole point of Shiro still caring for Keith all through his galra arc is because Keith’s blood doesn’t matter. Again, rendered pointless if you have the same blood.

I can’t tell you how much promoting the idea of found family instead of relying on blood means to me. Coming from a family that’s never accepted me, always feeling isolated and unloved, finding out there are people out there who would still care about me meant the world. I don’t want them to take that away from Keith.

The idea of them somehow being related–and with flimsy evidence like “they seem like they’re both Japanese and they’re very close”–strikes me as not only ludicrous, but also unsettling. In my opinion it seems racist to assume they have to be related if they’re both Japanese. I’m white though so I don’t want to speak over others about it, and I’ve heard some mixed opinions on it (with some people noting it reminded them of their own family, and others arguing that it did feel racist to them.) But I’ll leave that up to the discretion of actual Japanese fans and have no intention of speaking over them. It’s something that didn’t sit right with me though.

But yeah. Having Shiro and Keith somehow magically related would be as bizarre to me as making Lance and Allura siblings out of nowhere at this point honestly. And it’d cause the same pointless plot device of she doesn’t need her blood relatives, she has founD FAMILY–oh wait, still blood, only blood ties matter sorry guys. Also Keith was abandoned at a young age?? He had nobody? He literally said Shiro changed his life when he came into it, so before that, he clearly wasn’t a part of it? Never mind that Shiro didn’t even recognize Keith’s dad? Or hell, how Keith’s dad didn’t even ask about Keith having a brother or ever mention it?? Like, there are so many glaring plotholes in this fanon I don’t even know where to start with it. The very idea is just plan bad writing.

And while the crew made no definitive promises, they’ve dropped enough implications that they’ve had a gay relationship developing on screen since season 1 for me to believe we’ll see lgbt representation in some capacity. And at this point, sheith seems like the only likely contender to me. So I’d like to believe that’s where they’re going honestly.

I mean like, I’d also be concerned as to why the director was drawing sheith fanart and the showrunner liked sheith fanart of them making out if they were related somehow, but you know

#voltron spoilers #voltron #sheith #keith #shiro

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pixel-creates · 7 years ago

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About Me: Kingdom Hearts

Behold, my excuse to cry over KH with paragraphs for nearly each answer.

(shamelessly copied from @khfriendlyreminders)

Favorite Kh Game Overall: … I underestimated how hard this would be. I mean, I can't simply say I love all of them (even though I do), so... I guess it has to be

ALL OF THEM.

Least Favorite Kh Game Overall: Aside from nitpicks in story and gameplay, I don't have much to say against the KH games. ^^'

I understand perfectly well when people analyze the story and explain why certain parts just don't work, but unless it's something that just outright doesn't sit well with me, I find it hard to be critical of the games. Which is weird since I can be very critical of other media, but KH is kind of... hard to see or make criticism of. I'm not entirely sure how to explain it...

Kh Games I Should Replay: … ALL OF TH-

Okay but for real, I do have to repay them all for the sake of my fic since I'm basing the events off of my gameplay. Though, one I'd like to experience once again is 0.2. I only had the chance to play once at my older brother's before I moved and I feel like I need to experience it again to really understand where the story stands currently.

Most Played Kh Game: KH2 definitely.

Least Played Kh Game: Maybe Re:Coded, Days, and Re:COM. Re:Coded, while I do enjoy, is just not that fun to play on my dying 3DS. Also, I can't remember if it's just Re:Coded, but the camera was just really loose?? On my 3DS with broken left and right triggers, there was just no end to the frustration when those babies started going out. Days is a long game to play and my gameplay is either short and brief stints or finishing the entire game in a day. Right now, I'm in the short and brief stint gameplay mode since I need a new 3DS. On that part, Days and Re:Coded aren't at fault. Re:COM just scares me. Eveyone says that it's easy to get a handle on the card system, and it is but I don't do very well under the pressure of getting the cards together. It's gotten to the point where just looking at the menu screen makes me cringe. ^^' KHUX can count, as well. The game has a hella lot of filler quests, which are fine here and there, but wow those mission goals (“Defeat Every Enemy” has been seen in my nightmares). Not only that, but I'm not really that good at keeping up with games that often require constant/daily logging in for advancement.

Kh Games I Need to Play: I've technically played them all in one form or another, but I would very much like to try out the original GBA COM game at least once. GBA used to be my favorite system and finding out a KH game had been made for it is amazing!

Favorite Gameplay: This one is a tie between KH and KH0.2.

KH2 is just... fun. It's fun to play, it's fun to watch, and it just feels satisfactory to attack and explore the worlds. It might seem a little weird, but my favorite part was being able to 'Examine' everything with the triangle button. It was like Sora's (and Roxas' thoughts for a time) were given a place to exist outside cutscenes and gave insight into how Sora/Roxas were viewing the world. I dunno what anyone else thinks about it or if they even care, but I sincerely hope it makes a comeback in KH3.

KH0.2 is like KH2 in which we are given more of an opportunity to explore and interact with the world around us by actually creating change within the world through spells, hitting objects, or finding the lost memories. I absolutely love to freely roam in games, but it doesn't do much to bring me into the world itself if I can't interact with the world. That's why, as much as it creeped the frick out of me, the Dwarf Woodlands in the Dark World was my favorite world to explore even after the main story.

Least Favorite Gameplay: It's not my least favorite by far (in fact, it's really high up there), but I feel I do have to mention that in KH DDD, I felt really bad about using Flowmotion. It was like, I'd find my way up to several treasures, but then, it turns out, that you'd eventually make it up there by unlocking the way so that you could walk to the treasure. I feel like if there was a couple of puzzles that locked some treasures away and couldn't be accessed through mobile means, it'd balance out the gameplay a little more.

I also find the Dream Eater system to be... a little cool and also a little bad. A little cool because while I can adventure to who knows where and not get constantly freaked by Donald and Goofy teleporting right behind me. It felt like I was on a little solo adventure! Not only that, but the feature to import Dream Eaters from a previous save to a new/other save was a great feature. It was especially helpful when I replayed DDD went from Beginner Mode to Critical Mode. Did I mention it was y first time playing any KH game on a mode tougher than Normal?

A little bad because sometimes that solo adventure was just a bit too solo – and when just starting out (especially on Critical Mode), rather than being my allies, my Dream Eaters were more so the colorful Pokemon rejects I babysat so they didn't die after three hits. It became annoying pretty quickly to constantly keep them alive, only for them to wander away from where the enemies are or just simply not attack and once again die.

KH Re:Com as explained above, though I will admit that once I start to get into it, I feel a lot less pressured unless it's a boss fight. Other than that, the game just feels really repetitive and as someone who's gameplay style is 80% grinding until you simply can't die, it just really didn't feel that fun to play after an hour of just grinding for a boss fight that I felt really unsure about fighting because I'm sill having trouble with the card system.

Favorite Story: Yikes, another hard one. It's easy for me to talk about gameplay in the games because they're self-contained to a singular game within the series, but goodness the story.

I suppose out of all of them, I would replay KH2, DDD, Days, and Re:Coded for story reasons only. I find them to have the more interesting stories. Right now, I'm kind of side eying BBS for... reasons, and KH1 is kind of hard for me to say anything about. More on that in the next one.

Least Favorite Story: Out of the games, KH1 is probably the most consistent one... on its own. As the series progressed and the writers tried to fit more lore and story into an idea that... no one really expected would garner so much attention, it becomes more obvious how... out of place the first game seems in comparison. This took me years to realize and I only really understood why people made such a deal about it when Caddicarus talked about it in his review.

I can't bring myself to really blame the writers (or Nomura) too much for the inconsistencies between the first game and the latest one, but I will say there are some things I wish could've been kept consistent throughout the series, or just plain kept.

So, I don't think of it as my least favorite (since there are times I'll play it simply because I love the story a heck of a lot more than the gameplay), but it's question because of how out of place its story is in comparison to its children.

Favorite Character: Sora. I would fucking die for him – but he probably wouldn't let me. Why is he my favorite character? Probably for a similar reason why Naruto is – I am not a particularly outgoing or outspoken person. My voice is naturally soft and whenever I try to gear myself to ask people the simplest of questions or even to say hi, I chicken out at the last second. And then, we have this character who not only talks to people without an issue but easily has an active participation in not only social situations but in everyday life.

In a way, my younger self strived to be just a little but more like that, if only because I wanted to be surrounded by friends like Sora was. Not only that, but there's just the overall positivity vibe Sora gives off that I feel like I lack; I almost immediately assume the worst of situations, have trust issues, and stress horribly over situations that even I can admit are out of my control. And seeing this character go through what he did and still keep that positive outlook? How could I not want to be like that, if only just a little?

Least Favorite Character: I'll probably get shit on for saying it, but I really can't bring myself to like Kairi in any way shape or form. She's pretty much the only thing about KH that I can be really critical of and I'm not very proud of that. I can't get into her in canon and I can't get into her in fanon. I can detail point by point about why I just can't like her in any capacity and my own disappointment towards how she's written, and I really wish it was the opposite... but that's a whole other post.

For now, I'm more than content to ignore her.

Favorite Character from Main Cast: Aside from Sora? Roxas, Xion, Vanitas, Riku, Namine, and Ventus are in the ring competing for 11th favorite character since Sora has taken up the first ten spots. Aqua, Terra and Goofy are shoe ins for the next spots after them.

Least Favorite Character from Main Cast: Aside from that one chick? It's mostly as a joke, but Donald can rot.

#NeverThankDonaldDuck2018 Also, fuck Yen Sid.

Favorite Drive Form: Final. Fucking fite my vanilla ass.

Favorite Spell: While the Cure line is a staple, I'm going to have to go with the Reflect line. Late game KH2 often ends up with Heartless/Nobody encounters quickly ending as soon as it started with a single Reflectga. I really hope it makes some kind of comeback in KH3.

Favorite Keyblade: Kingdom Key. Call me vanilla, but I love it's simple design and the lore around it.

Favorite Summon: I've honestly only ever really used Tinkerbell and it's always for the Dragon!Maleficent fight in KH1. I always stress about using things with time limits, so I often just don't use them period. :,D

Favorite Limit: Okay, but if I rarely use Summons, then I really don't use Limits like ever. I hardly switch my party members out unless mandatory. Even then, I turn off the Auto Limit shit because I find it more important to make sure Sora has magic for Cure than pulling off an attack that will only hit like 3 times.

Aside from completion purposes (and Riku because how can I deny the beauty that is Sora and Riku's Limit), I don't use them in the main story.

Favorite Dream Eater: It's a toss up between Pega Slick and Me Me Bunny. While offering some pretty good abilities, I really like their aesthetic. Yoggy Ram and Aura Lion are pretty high up there, too.

Favorite World: Oooo~ How about we have fun with this answer?

KH1 – A toss up between Hollow Bastion and End of The World. The aesthetics for both just really agree with me and the map for Hollow Bation especially is really fun to explore. KH Re:COM – 100 Acre Wood for being the only world that isn't completely repetitive. Whenever I play Re:COM I use it as the 12th floor just so I can reward myself for sticking with the game. KH2 – Radiant Garden for being probably the biggest world in KH2, linking to worlds I really like (Space Paranoids/100 Acre Wood), and having an interesting story that was actually intertwined with the main plot. KHBBS – This one is a bit hard since I don't play any other story except Ventus' 90% of the time. It's a toss up between Land of Departure (aesthetic and story reasons), Disney Town (mini games are really great – except I Scream Beat), and Mirage Arena (Rumble Racing and Mono- Command Board ftw!!).

KH Re:Coded – Pretty much all of Hollow Bastion. While a re-hash of KH1, it still felt like its own thing, especially with the battle system since Data!Sora's Keyblade was destroyed. I also really liked Olympus Coliseum. It was my favorite place to grind. In fact... Re:Coded took a lot of risks in changing up how you could fight and/or navigate the world and, to me, they were all interesting takes and fun experiences. Except Agrabah. Fuck Agrabah.

KHDDD – I like La Cité des Cloches because of what it could have been... Actual worlds I like are The Country of Musketeers, The World That Never Was (Sora's story), and Symphony of Sorcery. KH0.2 – Dwarf Woodlands as explained above. KHUX – I honestly really like Daybreak Town. I wish we could freely explore it.

Least Favorite World: F U C K M O N S T R O

I have some bad memories with Monstro from KH1.

First off, there's a chance you will just plain miss the cutscene needed to get access to him. I once had to drive between Halloween Town and Atlantica six times to get him, and often require 2 or more trips around to get him to appear in general.

Second, in KH1, a game that actually would've benefited from the nowadays useless as shit map system, has a world where everything looks the damn same and has rooms literally titled 'Monstro: Chamber 1' and 'Monstro: Chamber 2'. Just watching Raisoren, someone who has played KH1 at least twice, try to find his way around Monstro was a headache in itself back when I first found out about KH. Actually playing it was a migraine.

Third, the aesthetic... just the aesthetic. I am very squicky about the 'insides' of things. I understand that the team went through lengths to make it not look realistic, but that ultimately failed since the main different between most of the rooms are ledges and the amount of barrels in a room.

With all that said, I bet many of you can guess my reaction to Monstro in KH:DDD... it honestly wasn't too bad. Unless I was grinding, I didn't have to spend as much time in Monstro as I did in KH1 and the layout was a lot more varied and easily distinguishable from each other.

And then I played it in Critical Mode. :)

Am I ready for Kingdom Hearts III: Very much so! I've been steadily getting more and more excited with each piece of news we get. I don't know what to expect, but as long as it feels like a KH game, I don't think there's a way to disappoint me.

#purikh #puri ponders kh

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su-angelvicioso · 4 years ago

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Right? and why is this so shady?

That whole “why are we justifying this??” like we all know who you’re coming for.. and people reblogging this and then going to reblog my post about the same topic with a weird comment in the tags seems shady to me too but okay..

To address this shady ass post made by Jasper Stan experiment #3468: Um, why are You justifying SMeyers racism? Why are You justifying her racist ass portrayal of a latina character??

Let’s get one thing straight here, Jasper wouldn’t be able to rip her head off. She’d fuck his ass up with no problem bye.

Also he doesn’t WANT to because he said so himself? He literally said that he was relieved to not have to harm her?? Like just because he had a rocky relationship with her doesn’t mean it was 100% horrible? That also doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her? Why would he want to hurt her?? Why is it such a PROBLEM that he actively doesn’t want to?? Because your racist ass wants him too??? Jasper wouldn’t actually want to harm people he actually loved. He literally has no need to want to rip her head off?

Why is that so confusing? Especially since y’all are the ones that are always acting like he’s so mature and calm and mild mannered?? People just gotta hate smh, and I'm sorry, but even going into Smyers canon and following her entire storylines, Jasper and Maria are still close. If they weren't why would Jasper reccomend they bring her up for help with the Eclipse battle? He’d have to be in some contact with her to do that, especially on such short notice. Why would he want to even attempt some form of contact through Peter & Charlotte and send a nice message to her in Midnight Sun?? Smh He obviously has no issue with her and probably never did have any issue with Just Her. He never speaks about Her as the main issue/terror in his past, just what he dealt with, which he’s a grown ass man and knew exactly what he was doing.

Point 2: You’re telling me the man who willingly joined The Confederate Army, in a bloody ass war, knowing EXACTLY what that would entail would be that fucked up over being “dragged” into another army?? Practically doing the same types of things but for a different, more noble, less racist reason?? Get outta my face with that.

And Nobody’s “justifying” it. We’re just saying we’re not gonna fucking baby him and pretend he’s some huge ass fucking victim, nor are we gonna act like his confederate ass didn’t deserve it.

Literally, So What if they're on good terms?! Jasper literally CHOSE to stay on good terms with her after leaving!?!

It was literally His Choice to remain on good terms with her. It was his choice to want to keep in contact and to want to contact her in general in MS and Eclipse soo??? Like... Maybe María just has good pussy or something lmfaoo. Not Her fault her obsessed ass ex can’t let her go.

I don’t get why are some of y’all are so pressed about that. Like.. people do that?? It’s a thing that happens? You’d think people would be hailing him for how ~Mature~ and ~Good~ he is for that alone but no, they are overlooking that because they actively WANT him to hate María because they hate María. They can’t stand the fact that he cared for her enough to not want to harm her or hate her vehemently after leaving, even if their relationship wasn’t the Bestest Magical-est Ever!! ✨ There was obviously their bond or Something else there that was between them to keep them from ripping heads off (as if Jasper would been try it) or even actively despising each other. Like? What’s wrong with that? The fact that it doesn’t go along with y’all’s dumb racist, “Jasper is Disgusted with any and everything María lol 🤪” fanon narrative??

Like,, y’all really expect us to feel bad for him?

Us... BIPOC??

Okay but can we talk about the fact that Jasper and Maria are in good terms??

What the actual fuck.

It makes no sense whatsoever! Jasper was dragged into the war, had to create newborns, KILL newborns, then he ESCAPES, and you’re telling me jasper DOESNT want to rip Maria to shreds?? Why are we justifying this??

#this is really giving me certain ~vibes~#this could have stayed in the drafts sis #also dont reblog anything from me if you reblog posts like this #if you have a problem/hate maria do not shade or reblog any post of mine after you just reblogged a post like this #if you have a problem/hate maria because you wanna coddle jasper please keep that to yourself #twilight

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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

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What are the best standalone dc comics you can recommend to someone who just knows the main few jla heroes, the existence of multiple robins, and only a few of their actual names? The less grimdark the better, I've already got Li'l Gotham, Kami Garcia's Raven, Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen in my list. Anything with Dick?

With the ironic exception of the 90′s Nightwing solo series, which I will never recommend as it contains all of my least favorite staples of his character lol, from cop Dick to ‘let’s systematically destroy his life because that builds character’ which uh, is NOT the point of angst or conflict IMO, lol.....

Ahem, anyway, except for the 90′s Nightwing solo series, I personally would recommend going back to the 90′s comics for fun stuff. First off, back then the titles were a lot less interconnected, it was a lot easier to read just one book and not inevitably need to rush over to another one to get any context for what was happening, and like....I think the 90′s (at least for DC) gets an undeserved rep. It was dark at times, definitely, but not the unending grimdark of some of the more recent years, and there was a definite focus on younger heroes - for instance, a lot of the names I bring up in my posts about the lineup I’d use for Jason’s Titans, those come straight out of the 90′s versions of those characters. Like The Ray, Damage, Anima, etc.

So the 90′s Young Justice book, Superboy, etc. The Flash, because Wally and Linda Park are a hugely underrated DC couple and were so great together, and the Rogues were at their best in the 90s, I think. The JSA title from back then was a TON of fun at times, with a lot of characters you’ll rarely see anywhere else, unfortunately, but definitely deserve all the love.

And the 90′s Robin book! Maybe unexpected given my posts about Tim and his fandom these days, but a huge part of my issue there is that fanon Tim and Red Robin Tim are just....the ANTITHESIS of everything Tim was originally, and why I loved him. In the beginning, 90′s Tim was the Robin Who Shouldn’t Have Been. What I mean by that is he wasn’t this exceptional prodigy whose rise to heroism was inevitable - his discovery of Batman and Robin’s identity was as much a matter of luck and fanboyism than anything, certainly not Tim being this child-sized Batman who was every bit as competent as his older counterparts with none of the training.

Tim was the Robin who made no sense, and that was the point - he didn’t have Dick’s lifetime of dedicated athletics or Jason’s street-smarts or self-preservation instincts (Jason died because he followed his understandable desire for family rather than his instincts, it was never because he was this reckless kid with no sense of danger, he KNEW how to protect himself and keep himself safe and alive...the tragedy of his death was it happened because he didn’t CARE in his desire to believe the best of Sheila and try and save her).

The point of Tim, originally, was he became the hero he was for one reason only - sheer stubborn determination to live up to the example of the Robins before him and be the partner he believed with all his heart that Batman needed. Tim, ironically given how he’s portrayed today and viewed by fans - was the everyman.

Yeah, he was wealthy, but that wealth wasn’t portrayed like he was Bruce Wayne Jr., but rather just that he was a well-off kid who skateboarded and played video games and had the luxury of going off and doing what he wanted. It wasn’t emphasized the way it is now. And yeah he was something of a loner, but that was by choice - because he was this kid who was obsessed with his hobbies that by their very nature required secrecy. But he had friends, he was just selective about them, and his only hurtle to making friends later with his teammates was the secrecy demanded by Batman. And he was never this socially awkward, maladjusted loner who was a lonely outsider constantly looking in - Tim has probably had more casual girlfriends than any of his brothers, he was awkward but never exceptionally so, and his social issues or problems fitting in at times at school were always portrayed as like....teenage growing pains, rather than any kind of true outsider status.

Tim Drake, originally, was just your average kid who became a hero because he loved heroes and believed in them, and he saw a void that nobody else was filling, and said well if nobody else is going to do it, might as well be me.

And he was the Robin who had everything set against him and no reason to expect he’d actually work out....because he wasn’t an innately exceptional athlete or genius, he HAD lived a relatively sheltered and privileged life (at that point, though they emphasized and upped the tragedy and neglect of his family circumstances more and more in later years)....but initially, the point was....he had no reason to have the skills or the drive of either of the two previous Robins....AND YET HE SUCCEEDED ANYWAY.

For one simple reason:

He was determined to. He refused to give up. He powered through despite all odds. THAT was the point of Tim Drake.

He was the underdog. That was why we rooted for him!

And that’s why the modern version and the fanon versions of him are so dissatisfying to me personally, because they’ve taken ALL of that away from him and made him into this entitled, inevitable HEIR to all the talents and instincts and toils of everyone who came before him. He doesn’t have to work for any of it, it all just comes naturally to him. From his first appearance in most stories, he’s already the equal of all of his predecessors, able to play cat and mouse with Bruce and Dick and Jason without any of them gleaning on to the fact that he knows more than them, and he’s like....the puppet master secretly helping them all from behind the scenes because they apparently need his help and were incompetent until he came along and that’s not Tim Drake to me and completely the opposite of why he was so great! Now in fanon he’s as wealthy as Bruce and as tragic as Jason and as athletic as Dick and as smart as Babs and I know I’m always saying the Batfamily is a family of Mary Sues and that’s their entire concept, but there’s this insistence on Tim being the MOST Mary Sue of them all and THAT’S his niche, like if he isn’t the most special or talented or smart then what’s even the point of him and its like......STUBBORN TEENAGE HERO IDEALIZATION! THAT’S THE POINT OF TIM!

Modern and fanon Tim Drake is this dark, brooding, cynical pragmatist, when 90′s Tim was the kid who was so hopeful and optimistic he brought a smile back to even Dick Grayson’s face when Dick Grayson had stopped smiling!

Ahem.

Anyway.

Yeah, 90s Robin is a good series. So is the original Batgirl series. I’m a sucker for Kyle Rayner of course, so I’d recommend his solo Green Lantern title, but even though his debut happened in Green Lantern vol 3 issue #50, I’d start around #60 to be honest, because the early issues are when women in refrigerators was coined with the utterly gratuitous murder of his girlfriend Alex deWitt, and its truly an albatross around that book’s neck that never needed to happen and IMO added absolutely NOTHING to his character or the title, so skip it and don’t do that mess the courtesy of even reading or acknowledging it.

Hmm, what else....the Captain Marvel/Shazam stuff from back then was excellent of course, as was Wonder Woman and her supporting cast. The Titans were honestly not at their best in the 90s though there were some good minis here and there.

After the 90s, my recs are sporadic - I’d read the Ryan Choi as Atom series, Jaime Reyes’ Blue Beetle books, the Jason Rusch Firestorm, etc. I really have very little modern or current DC recommendations as IMO the entire New 52 was an unnecessary miss and Rebirth has done very little to course correct, though I do think the early Rebirth Nightwing title was pretty good and had some fun stuff.

Anyone else got anymore/other recs for anon?

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