#they could have had a gap at the beginning of the season between Jason dying and bringing Red Hood into the story

[disniq]

Sure! I'm sorry for the delay, it took longer than I thought to make my thoughts into something vaguely coherent lol

Also, this got long, so it's going under a cut and, fair warning; there be spoilers ahead.

Titans has two big failings for me; one is pacing, and the second is, as you sort of mentioned in your ask, that the interpretations of these beloved characters are trying so hard to be dark and edgy that it mostly just makes them supremely unlikable hypocrites.

Both of these come to a head in season 3's Red Hood arc.

It makes sense that they can't do a faithful adaption of UTRH, because Titans is the Dick show, not the Bruce show, and they don't want to try to do the Joker. That's fine, it wouldn't really make sense for this version of Jason anyway - he's older; his childhood trauma is a different flavour; he hasn't been with Bruce for as long; and everyone in this show is more violent and reckless, so Bruce benching Jason for being "too violent and reckless" wouldn't really make sense.

So they kill Jason off in the opening episode, and then they have Bruce kill the Joker and peace out of Gotham because, again, this is the Dick show. We have episodes 2 and 3 of Red Hood causing problems for Dick and the Titans - up to and including killing Hank which apparently we're supposed to be sad about - and then ep 4 where Dick figures out that Red Hood is actually just a pawn working for Jonathan Crane to break him out of Arkham Asylum.

Then we get episode 5, the flashback which shows us that an already suicidally depressed Jason also developed PTSD from the incident with Deathstroke and it's aftermath. He's having nightmares, panic attacks, and is unable to fight anymore. Bruce suggests therapy, which Jason commits to, but then Bruce benches him anyway, which leads Jason to go to Crane because a guy who makes fear gas can probably make an *anti*-fear gas, right?

Well. Sort of.

Crane gives Jason the wrong formula on purpose, and the result is a gas that makes him feel nothing at all. While he's under the influence of this drug, Crane manipulates Jason into proving he's no longer scared by going after the Joker, and then revives him to make him even more indebted to him.

This is all pretty sympathetic, and the next few episodes make a point of confirming that most if not all of what Jason did in ep 2 and 3 was Crane's plan. There's a scene where Jason questions Crane, and is promptly shown that Crane has other underlings who would be happy to replace Red Hood as his second in command.

When Jason undermines Crane again, Crane drugs him (uhh...double drugs him?) and ties him up. The Titans figure out where Crane is hiding and show up to wreck shit, and Jason (now detoxing from the drugs) seems almost pleased about this. Crane escapes, dragging Jason with him, but Jason has had enough of being used, knocks the creep out and runs. He broods on his own for a bit, and then contacts Dick because he realises he maybe fucked up.

So far so good.

I'm not gonna say it's perfect, because there are some really strange choices being made just in general (*cough*confessing that you murdered your teammate to a pair of hookers*cough*), but I can see where they've drawn inspiration from Arkham Knight and tried to connect the dots between the way Jason was treated in season 2 and said well, hey! A kid with RSD up the wazoo is gonna look for approval wherever he can get it, even if that's from a known supervillain who likes fucking with people's heads.

Now, if I were writing the show, this is where I would have Jason's redemption arc start. He walked away from Crane of his own volition, he made the choice himself to reach out to Dick. Crane is desperate and erratic, so having Jason on the titans side isn't any kind of deux ex machina "I know his whole plan and how to stop him" situation.

But because this is Titans, and they so love a bizarre 2nd act team breakup for increasingly stupid reasons, they don't do that.

Instead they pull a fake out, where Crane is evesdropping on Jason and Dick's conversation, and uses that information to lead the Titans into a trap that puts him back in control of the situation. It's never 100% confirmed if Jason was in on this plan or not, but I tend to think he wasn't. Either way, the Titans think he was, so his hope of redemption is dashed and he's drawn back into Crane's circus for another 3 episodes of lacklustre rivalry with Dick that goes nowhere before finally helping the Titans in the final episode.

What's more annoying to me is the way the supposed heroes talk about Jason during this time. When other Titans had been brainwashed, magically controlled, or even just had a violently emotional outburst, they get the benefit of the doubt. Jason doesn't. Gar is the only person asking how this happened, asking how they can *help*. Everyone else is ready to straight up kill Jason for his crimes, even KORI, whose b-plot this season is LITERALLY ABOUT FORGIVING HER SISTER FOR MURDERING HER PARENTS!!

Ahem Anyway.

I'm definitely rambling now lol, but yeah, I think they wrote a decently solid Red Hood plot that fits the Titans-verse, they just tried to make it last a full season when it was a half-season type arc.

Hello yes hi which are these Jason-centric episodes of Titans please? Because I tried it previously and gave up after like 3 episodes because literally every character’s characterisation was annoying me. But I wish to enjoy the Jason hours if that is possible without having to speed run the rest of the 4 seasons. If you please 💙

Oh that is entirely valid, and I would be delighted to help!

So, even though it's not technically Jason-centric, I really do have to recommend season 1 episode 6 "Jason Todd" which, as the name suggests, is his intro episode. It really sets the tone for his and Dick's relationship, and I don't think either of them ever fully recover from this first interaction.

Season 2 is a little trickier, because Jason's story takes place in the background of a couple other episodes - ep 2, 3, and 5, if you did want to skip through them for his bits - but this culminates in season 2 episode 7 "Bruce Wayne", after which Jason leaves the Titans.

Next, you want season 3 episode 5 "Lazarus", which is the flashback episode that bridges how we get from disillusioned Jason to the Red Hood. This is the only fully Jason focused episode, and for unrelated reasons also happens to be my favourite.

The rest of season 3 is... Complicated. It could almost have been good if they'd cut it off halfway through, but they drag it out and flip-flop too many times on Jason's stance for me in the end. I'm happy to give a more detailed breakdown if you want, just let me know!

And last but not least: season 4 episode 11 "Project Starfire" has the Jason Tim interactions, and is well worth skipping through for that alone imo. Jason is so much more settled in himself here that it makes all the suffering almost worth it.

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

chin fucking up, amigo.

Titans 3.02

... eh?

SPOILERS ahead.

1. you know that music video for billie jean where michael jackson would dance along the pavement and the tiles would light up under his feet in different colours? yeah? me too.

titans hasn’t met a table top or a support arch that it doesn’t want to light up in a headache-inducing blue like the world’s most boring nightlight. i mean, i’m not an expert on lighting or cinematography or just... colour by any means, and the quality of the video i’m watching is poor given that i can’t access hbo max, but all the orange and teal and neon is making it very difficult to really differentiate between say, the batcave and the gotham police department and hell, the titans tower. i feel like there’s oftentimes a gap between idea and execution with titans, with gotham being this almost otherwordly hellscape with an aesthetic pulled from a gothic horror novel, but the colours and design just... leave it flat and dark and dull.

1.5. like what really frustrates me is that titans has a delightful mix of tones--the fights often remind me of schumacher-era batman camp, with the contrived quips and the start-stop rhythm and krypto just sallying in and ending the fight with a fucking SuperBark (tm) but in the same episode you have red hood just casually pulling out severed heads out of a duffle bag and desperate people blackmailed into killing themselves out of drug overdoses. I MEAN. it’s wonderful! but it looks all the same. it sounds Absolutely Bonkers on paper but on screen both Quip and Murder happen in the same washed-out blue and i wanted to be excited about the batcave, dammit!

2. things re: red hood have happened at such a breakneck speed that it feels like there’s so much that’s happened off-screen that we’re not privy to. a real proper mystery! 

things that are intriguing about the red hood arc so far:

a) what was that chemical he huffed just before going to fight the joker? is it a regular old performance/adrenaline booster or is it something more lazarus-juice adjacent? if it’s the latter, i can’t imagine he got that much information from a lone chemistry textbook. and where is he getting the resources to set up his little chemistry lab? is somebody else orchestrating things behind the scenes?

b) the red hood persona, costume and mask, plus the elaborate plan he’s putting in place to both string along gotham’s rogues and enact his revenge against the titans seems too... fully-formed and elaborate to have been concocted in just a few days. how long do you think jason’s been planning this? just... stewing in resentment and building rage, dismissed and passed around and underestimated and realising that the power he thought he would get by being robin is no power, no protection at all, but something that’s left him even more vulnerable than before? 

c) do we think that the scarecrow is at least partly behind this transformation? because yes, it was batman that set up this whole hannibal lecter-esque situation with him, and he would be irresponsible enough to have jason-as-robin go talk to him regularly regarding “~profiling~” criminals. it’s not too far of a leap to assume that scarecrow could’ve been manipulating jason at a very vulnerable time, and that he could’ve passed along some of his chemistry know-how, too.

d) ... or fuck, i wouldn’t put it past titans to introduce ra’s al ghul in a fucking ten second aside

e) anyway, the thing that won’t leave me alone is jason seeking out the joker not necessarily to fight him, but to orchestrate his own death. the whole thing has to have been part of a bigger plan. he broke batman with it, after all. and he’s starting to break the titans, too.

f) i love it! i mean, it does re-tread some of the storybeats we had with deathstroke last season (turning the titans against each other as revenge, etc) but it’s... tighter, this time, and at least for now seems better-executed. and as a red hood story it’s different enough to be really interesting, and i appreciate the ways in which its reframed the revenge story to focus on the titans rather than just the batman. like fuck everything up, i say! turn it on its head! slash the innards out of that sacred cow and strew it like garlands in the path of the Story You Want To Tell!

(and yes i am fully aware that by the time i post this review, there will be a whole lot more information out but if i come across like a fool then goddammit i will be a fool!)

2. i love how every season of titans starts off with, ‘oh dick, you thought you were settling into a role and a life and a pattern of relationships? well fuck you, here’s a terrible and traumatic thing, tons more responsibility, and circumstances that will lead you to uproot your entire life and move somewhere else.’ and dick’s just like, ‘well, ok. fuck you, but all right’.

can you imagine? the man was just settling into leading a team in sf and smiling for the first time in years, and now he has to deal with jason’s death, bruce experiencing a full fledged breakdown, coming back to a city that represents more bad memories than good, red hood, and a frightening new case that seems to be targeting him and his team. it’s a testament to dick’s growth that he’s not reacting to this stress like he did last year, shutting everybody out, making irrational decisions and experiencing sharp, short bursts of anger. (not to mention a full fledged psychotic episode.)

2.5. but i’ve also talked about dick performing a fair amount of unwarranted emotional labour for his team(s) in that he just lets them take out their frustrations on him and... does nothing. be it his team exploding at him for jericho (both in flashback and present-day) or donna and hank needling him for handling deathstroke poorly or barbara berating him for not handling the bank situation as well as she thought batman would though just the previous episode she had talked about how fucked up it was that bruce just expected dick to step up and replace him in gotham without any real notice. i mean it’s all perfectly understandable and sympathetic from their end--and i’m not trying to bash them here!--but hank, my man, the same chin you’re asking your amigo to keep up is the one that you punched last year and never apologised for. just sayin’.

2.75. @superohclair did a wonderful breakdown of what the ‘fear’ contract could imply here and there’s not too much i could add to that. it’s just really interesting that fear ended up being such a defining feature of their lives, albeit it’s the fear of seeming less than invincible in the face of bigger, more tangible fears. am i making sense?  dick feared loss, and abandonment, and the more existential concept of turning into something that he didn’t want to. bruce so feared being alone that he’s scouting kids to replace robin within days of jason dying. 

it also goes some way in explaining the tense sort of... restraint that bruce and dick show in the wake of loss and tragedy, like anything less than complete control of your emotions can lead to tragedy. it’s conditioning that dick couldn’t shake off when he was at his lowest in detroit, hating his legacy but unable to let it go either.

2.775. but i definitely appreciate the softness that dick displays with his team now, checking on them after a mission-gone-bad, welcoming back old members with no caveats or resentments (and kory’s delight in seeing hank back! hank and dick hanging out together and hank trying to prop dick up!), and appreciating their teamwork in solving cases. that’s always been the essence of dick as a person, and the beating heart of this show: flawed and traumatised people coming together to a place that will always be open to them, where they can be their worst and be supported still, allowed to make mistakes and grow from them. that’s family.

2.8. coming back to bruce for just a sec, it’s interesting how that gotham rogue was so certain when he said that ‘batman doesn’t kill’ but it’s not a rule that either jason or dick put much store by when they were robins. the ‘no-killing’ rule clearly didn’t mitigate dick’s fears about turning into batman and jason’s never been seeing giving two shits about it. it seems to me of a piece with bruce’s distant, second-hand sort of parenting that we see in dick’s flashbacks from s1 where the fear was never about personally disappointing batman, but taking lessons from him on finding a place in gotham’s hellish ecosystem and surviving.

3. kory having waking flashbacks! i don’t buy the bullshit parasomnia episode explanation from fake!HPG (because c’mon, justin has to be some sort of tamaranean ruse) because for one, you have to be actually asleep for that diagnosis. 

(and here i was, hoping against hope that HPG would actually end up as the team’s therapist)

curiouser and curiouser! i wonder if these flashbacks are from the time between kory landing on earth and the beginning of season 1, when she was completely amnesiac? it’d be cool if the show was considering repercussions from that time, and if kory hasn’t gained all her memories back. 

4. i just love the vibes between gar and conner and kory. gar Having Things To Do is only one part of my wishlist for him, however: other parts include having an actual story arc, and actually bonding with members who are not conner and kory. (dick! dick! hank! dick!)

anyway. time to move on to watching ep3 and seeing this family bond and nothing terrible and tragic happening at all, nope, nosiree. 

[hellyeahheroes]

Ghost Spider problems

Disclaimer: the comic is not bad. Take this as constructive criticism

1. Start from the beginning

This is all you get when it comes to Gwen’s origin.

And before you say that this is mirroring Peter, no. Amazing Fantasy #15 was a fully fleshed out origin story. Amazing Spider-man #1 takes place immediately after Uncle Ben’s murder. Gwen’s origin encompasses years of her being Spider-woman with actual events that go beyond just a sparse origin. When Spider-Gwen starts, we are like coming in at the equivalent of Amazing Spider-man #300.

So Jason Latour tries to use flashbacks and detailed full page word dump expositions at the end of each issue to further fill in the gap between the shit the audience doesn’t know. The latter is quite frankly the laziest thing I’ve ever seen in writing. Rather than creating stories to establish characters and create a catalogue to their history, lets fucking just explain everything that happened in essay form.

This, til this day, pisses me off.

Anyways, when Latour did introduce a characters like a Harry Osborn, he relied on flashbacks to detail what happened. The issue however that he was simultaneously advancing a story while retroactively setting foundation of a character. One example of a past event being constructed entirely out of flashbacks: the death of Peter Parker.

In these flashbacks that are construed across multiple issues and not in chronological order of either the issue nor the flashback, Latour basically shows the audience for the first time Peter’s personality, how Gwen was after her dad indirectly told her about his feeling about Spider-Woman, and a little about their high school life.

The problem with this is that Latour relied on the interpretation of 616 Spider-man characters when he didn’t elaborate on their character for characters like George Stacy, J. Jonah Jameson, and Aunt May while simultaneously hiding behind the excuse of it’s an alternate universe to explain why characters are different. This comes with accusations of character shilling since he portrayed Em Jay as a selfish self-centered person, Peter as an arrogant misanthrope, but Gwen completely escapes her negative 616 characterization and comes off looking better.

So Spider-Gwen really doesn’t have an origin story. And no one actually bothered to make one even 4 years later.

2. Alternate Dimensions convolutes stories

Traveling to another dimension to just fucking go to school is cop out. Granted, the explanation as to why it was done was simply because Gwen doesn’t have a secret identity anymore, but okay, far be it for me from wanting a good time. It would have been more interesting if she persisted in trying to go to school in her universe while being known as Spider-woman, anxiety attacks be damned. “Man fuck consequences of a plot point, let’s just create a specific scenario to avoid them” is what McGuire decided to do. Didn’t even bother to retcon. Just fucking noped it.

MJ says what I’m thinking.

Barring this, it is a stretches my suspension of disbelief that ESU would enroll a girl who not only is named after a deceased student who you named a library after in memoriam but also looks like the girl who died and is around the same age. Oh and also, you hired the guy who looks exactly like her mentor who went on to practice unethical experiments and tried to conquer the world with them at one point but he has a different name so...

Granted, Latour twice left Spider-Gwen in a hole. He wasted Gwen revealing her identity to her father for the introduction of the character and Gwen then revealing her identity to the world to defeat Matt Murderdock kind of screwed the pooch. First, there has to be a way for Gwen to defeat him without sacrificing her identity like exonerating herself from being blamed for Peter’s death because clearly she’s innocent(self-defense and saving kids from some incel white boy turned monster is not an jailable offense).

Regardless, McGuire was dealt a shitty hand that nuked any possibility of continuing any story developments in E-65 without Gwen being under constant danger. I, for one, would welcome it and had Gwen continue to try, it would have made shit interesting.

But this is also taking away Gwen from her own supporting cast that she has had since the beginning and also from her setting. The more she is in 616, the less I am going to see of the Mary Janes. The less I see of Harry although I don’t mind that. The less I see of any character that was established in her series. And honestly, those new characters could have been introduced in her own setting. Hell, E-65 Jackal could have been a college professor at E-65 ESU without Gwen knowing if she attended there.

Why are we choosing to avoid superhero drama in a superhero comic book?

3. Don’t rely on 616 Gwen Stacy while simultaneously declaring this Gwen as a different character

For all intents and purposes, the Death of Gwen Stacy has nothing to do with Spider-Gwen. This book and her fans will deflect any criticism about the lack of parallels between Gwen Stacy’s death and Peter’s death by saying Spider-Gwen is not the same as Gwen. You sit there and complain that all Gwen Stacy is known for is dying yet you commentate using a completely amended character while simultaneously avoiding the literal hundred of issues of character that 616 Gwen previously had before her death.

If you read the Night Gwen Stacy Died as a stand-alone, what you did was the equivalent of watching the Red Wedding without the three seasons leading to the event.

Spider-Gwen can’t go five issues without harping on about every miserable or unhappy or dead Gwen in some other universe. It comes to a culmination that writers want to tie Spider-Gwen to 616 Gwen Stacy so much that she is actively going to school in 616. The same school that Gwen attended and has a library named after her in memoriam, and apparently her creepy stalker teacher still teaches at albeit with a different identity because no one apparently recognizes faces anymore.

This doesn’t redeem Gwen. In fact, you proved Gerry Conway’s point. 616 Gwen is so unlikeable that you’d have to completely change her character to make her not worth throwing off the bridge.

Point is that Spider-Gwen treading the stories of Gwen Stacy defeats the purpose of separating the two in personality. What happens if Kindred is revealed to be the ressurrected Gwen Stacy while Gwen basically caught treading her stories instead of continuing her own?

4. The Jackal? Fucking really?

Personal, but point still stands. I fucking hate the Jackal. Jackal is like the catalyst of feeling like you need to take a shower afterwards. Along with the Inherentors, this is one of the villains that go to far in being made for a specific purpose in that they really don’t have a motivation as to just why do they do the things they do other than to be a bad guy.

Warren Miles is a creepy professor with an almost paedophillic obsession with his barely legal and also dead mentee, 616 Gwen Stacy. And it’s only almost because Gwen was 19 and almost certainly would have engaged in a sexual relationship with her. I don’t buy that he saw her as his child because it’s not like Gwen was just this remarkable science prodigy that would warrant any special attention from a professor. No, she was a remarkable and hot co-Ed scientist that was in her sophomore year. He was trying to fuck her and hated that she was dating guys her age. I wouldn’t put it past him to quid quo pro her into some sick shit for grades.

And the thing about it is that this story has been done before with Mary Jane and it was more appropriate to her occupation as she was a model at the time and married to Peter Parker. She is going to get the attention of richer and skeezy men that would have the power to force her into questionable shit. Hollywood is pretty much a glorified sex trafficking ring, don’t @ me. Far be it for me to say male professors don’t abuse their station on women and sure, I’d like a Spider-Man story to explore that, but Jackal takes it to a whole other that defiles the memory of a dead girl. It is basically a type of necrophilia and ew ew ew ew.

His obsession with Gwen and clones doesn’t foil Peter in anyway. It literally carries this creepy and unsettling implication that if Gwen lived, he would have raped her. There has never been a good Jackal storyline. It is literally the CJ meme every time he appears. He is not an engaging or fun.

Guess who is the first villain Gwen faces in 616.

Why people insist on putting him in anything over more thematically appropriate and fun characters is beyond me. I don’t even mind 65 Jackal. He doesn’t seem to interested in teenaged girls. He just wants to kill her like a proper super villain from what I gather. But of course, we had to not be spared from the comic equivalent of taint that is Miles Warren.

@ubernegro

[usatrendingsports]

2018 Farmers Insurance coverage Open: Jason Day will get first win since 2016 in prolonged playoff

Jason Day took house the 2018 Farmers Insurance coverage Open in a six-hole sudden dying playoff over Alex Noren with a birdie on the ultimate gap to Noren’s bogey. The birdie capped off a exceptional six holes of golf for the Aussie wherein he made 4 birdies and secured the 11th win of his profession.

The match was boring on Sunday in the course of the last spherical. Then it was enthralling as Day, Noren and Ryan Palmer went at it in a five-hole playoff that spilled into Monday (Palmer dropped out after the primary playoff gap). Then it was anticlimactic on Monday as Day ended it early with that simple birdie on the sixth playoff gap following the in a single day watch for the ending.

The trio of Day, Noren and Palmer mixed to shoot a really uninspiring mixed 1 underneath quantity within the last spherical. However Noren and Day mixed to make six (!) birdies and 4 pars within the 5 playoff holes on Sunday earlier than it bought too darkish to proceed.

A change was flipped between regulation and the playoff that turned the tip of this match into must-see theater. Day was hitting heaters out of the tough over water from monumental distances. Noren was stuffing the whole lot he checked out, like Joel Embiid on a 9.5-foot aim. It was compelling.

After which it wasn’t. On his second shot into the par-5 18th on Monday in the course of the sixth playoff gap, Noren dropped a Three-wood into the water, and it was all however over. Day wedged a lay as much as two ft and simply made the birdie and the win.

It was the fitting end result. In addition to Noren performed, Day did not miss a shot within the six-hole playoff. He made 4 birdies and missed ending the occasion by inches on three totally different holes. It is his first win since Could 2016 on the Gamers Championship and his second in 4 years at this course. He joins a bunch that features Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Arnold Palmer as multiple-time winners of the Farmers Insurance coverage Open.

“It has been a very long time coming,” Day instructed Peter Kostis of CBS Sports activities. “Final 12 months wasn’t the best season for me. I had some stuff astray that was just a little distracting with my mom clearly having most cancers. It is particular as a result of I labored very laborious within the offseason to get again to this place.”

Day really withdrew from the Wednesday pro-am due to a foul again that he stated he threw out the week earlier than. He performed his first 12 holes of the occasion in Three over earlier than taking part in the following 45 in 15 underneath to place himself in place to get into the playoff. That stretch included a round-of-the-tournament 64 on Friday, which bought him squarely into competition.

“I did not understand I had an opportunity this week,” Day added. “Going again to earlier this week, I by no means although was going to truly play due to my again. I am very grateful for my entire crew. We needed to keep affected person. The aim as all the time is to get again to No. 1. It is a step in the fitting path.”

Since rising to No. 1 on the planet in 2016, Day has fallen significantly. He got here into this occasion ranked No. 14, however this win will probably propel him again inside the highest 10. It is his 11th victory in 214 profession begins. That is a 5.1 % profitable proportion, which is fabulous on this period.

After being on the golf course for eight hours on Sunday, attempting to safe a dramatic victory, it took Day just a few minutes on Monday to take action. It wasn’t thrilling within the second, particularly with out followers in attendance on Monday, nevertheless it may portend an enormous 2018 for the Australian.

“I used to be up all evening final evening occupied with attempting to get that subsequent win, No. 11,” Day famous to Kostis. “I am actually pleased. I had my finest mate on the bag. It was a pleasant strategy to go.”

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