#they made it almost comical?? when he was such a tragic character it was very disturbing to watch

[doyouknowthis-grishaverse]

Nisho is a Squaller and part of The Darkling's army, he was tortured horrifically by the First Army resulting in him losing the ability to speak

[starlightseraph]

finished dead boy detectives!!! (spoilers ahead!)

quick disclaimer: i haven’t gotten around to the comics yet but i’ve been very interested since the sandman came out and i do plan on reading them eventually lol.

- edwin is my new blorbo cutie and i too would go to hell for him. also, his style is immaculate, exactly how i want to dress all the time.

- i am SO sad about niko. but i’m glad that it seems like she’s not totally gone? i hope she’s not an antagonist in the next series (the ending was a touch ominous), but i’ll honestly be happy either way. it’s so rare to find good western-japanese characters. it made me incredibly happy when she switched into a japanese accent when saying “osaka” because it’s something i recognise in my family and in me. i know people from lots of different backgrounds do that with words from their own languages, but i’d never seen a japanese character do it before so i was very tickled.

- charles. man. please fall in love with edwin. how tf are you quite literally dragging him out of hell and he confesses to you and you look him in the eyes and say that you love him but you’re not in love with him. i mean that’s the best possible way he could’ve gone about it, but if i were edwin i might just have gone back down to the doll face spider thing.

- i hope that crystal’s past doesn’t land her in jail or anything. i really like her dynamic with the others but i’m not sold on her and charles romantically, mostly because edwin is so fucking sweet and i don’t want his heart to be broken. he’ll be happy if charles is happy, but i cannot stand see him get hurt even the tiniest bit.

- jenny is amazing. she’s literally me fr. also i love how she just hands people cleavers.

- i found the night nurse’s breakdown when she was in angie’s stomach very relatable. i feel like that a lot lmao. and i love her accent. i will go to bat for my own weird ass culchie irish/valley girl hybrid, but if had to pick another accent…

- i need a wise and eternal south asian man to talk me down from the ledge. it’s almost finals week and a ring from kashina would be a big help.

- tragic mick (top tier wordplay name) is a sweetheart and i hope he gets to be a walrus again eventually. my first reaction when i saw the cat king was “oh my god, it’s the piss kink guy from You!” but that aside, he was ok in the end. so was monty. i hope the night nurse can help crystal drag david the demon back down to hell.

[fictional-orphan-smackdown]

Round 2, match 1!

All propaganda and what each competitor is from under the cut

Peter Parker/Spiderman (He's from a lot of things)

Orphaned twice over

Both of Peter's parents are dead so he's raised by his aunt and uncle, his uncle dies as part of his origin story. His aunt often dies eventually too, but she may come back depending on continuity (ex. Peter in the comics made a deal with the devil to sacrifice his marriage and child to bring Aunt May back)

It’s Spider-Man guys. Coolest guy ever.

The Baudelaire Orphans (A Series of Unfortunate Events)

The epitome of orphans, they’re the best

“I’m having a very terrible childhood right now”-Klaus

The story deadass begins with them being told that their parents died in a fire and that they're orphans now. They then bounce from guardian to guardian who tend to always meet a gruesome fate at the hands of Count Olaf. Not only have they been orphaned once, but have been orphaned multiple times and are called "The Baudelaire Orphans" by not only characters in the book but by the narrator himself. They're called "The Baudelaire Orphans" so many times that it might as well be a defining character trait of theirs, and honestly it sort've is. The series doesn't even end with them finding a home or guardians of any kind, it ends with the Baudelaires fate being completely ambiguous with them literally sailing away from the island they were stranded on in the final book (yeah this series is quite the journey, I highly suggest it). These poor three kids are probably the most orphaned kids of all time since their orphaned in a new way almost every book and they deserve at least one win in their unfortunate tale.

These guys are like the poster-child of orphaning, we open the series with them finding out that they're orphans and also have no access to their money so now they hop around from place to place from weirdo caretaker to another weird/crazy/murderous caretaker and it's all fun and games and murder and decieving and surviving and thriving and---my point is, these three are a wonderful trio of siblings who love and rely on one another through all their trials and tribulations.

Literally every single one of their problems come from being orphans. They’re continually referred to as orphans and the plot of the first half of the series is them being shuffled around to guardians.

These kids are so orphaned they never even get a found family outside themselves. At least most stories featuring orphaned kids see them fulfill some sorta epic destiny or have them find a new home or set of loved ones of sorts. The Baudelaires? They're thrown from one fucking failure of a home into the next, ignored, hunted, etc.. It's been years but like, even in the end, they still have to set sail alone. As individual characters, they aren't bad either. Violet's the dependable big sister who's knack for inventions comes in handy, Klaus is a well-read chap and Sunny is a lovely gremlin. They make a good trio.

Every single guardian they try to obtain throughout the series turns out to be someone who wants the large inheritance left for them and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it.

They basically fend for themselves the whole series when no adult will listern to them. The whole series is them being resourceful and clever the whole series despite the misfortune. Violet is a brilliant inventor, Klaus reads and collects knowledge, and Sunny learns to be a good cook over the series

their parents die tragically in a fire and then everything awful proceeds to happen to them

I haven't read these books in years but if any orphans deserve to win a smackdown it's these fools, they are constantly in the trenches in those books goddamn. Also that baby is like a shredder they have that on their side, I think that beast literally solo'd a snake?

(This one was specifically for Klaus, but I'll put it here still) He and his sisters being orphans is kinda the point. As in many books, it's the trigger for them to change lives and navigating hardships. The thing is, their hardships just grow worse and "unfortunate" (read "dreadful") events keep happening to them as they stick together instead of the story getting better. Klaus and Violet become Sunny's subtitute parents and get through their more and more miserable lives together keeping hope things would eventually get better

Arguably more famously orphaned than Bruce Wayne, if not for how their story happens while they’re orphaned children versus an orphaned adult. Definitely have the most famously tragic post-orphaning story. All three are incredibly brilliant in their own way, including the literal baby. Pursued relentlessly by the leader of a maniacal theater troupe and letdown by a slew of adults, so it’s all the more impressive how amazing they each turned out to be. Book series was so good it got turned into a pretty great movie and then a successful TV show years later. Also can’t forget how these three are orphaned repeatedly as the distant relatives who take them in get killed off in increasingly inventive manners. Let’s be honest, ain’t no characters out here orphaning like the Baudelaire orphans.

this series taught me so many cool words and phrases and I love each of the 3 main characters so much

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are peddled from caretaker to caretaker over the course of 13 books, always being chased by the evil Count Olaf who wants to steal the Baudelaire fortune that the children are meant to inherit once they reach a certain age.

Spoilers ahead, the Baudelaires siblings story starts with them going from being the Baudelaire kids to the Baudelaire orphans, after their parents pass away in a mysterious fire. But they arent the only paternal figures that they lost, they go from tutor to tutor, almost all the good ones dying in front of them, and even the ones that survive at first their future is uncertain since the last time the kids see them they are blindfolded in a burnind building, and we never found out who make it out alive and who didnt. Even the main villian, Count Olaf their first tutor, and the only constant adult in their life after their parents death ends up dying in front of them. These three are orphans ten times over.

They are THE orphans. They have lost not only their parents but multiple guardians that they went to live with as well.

They're THE Orphans. The childhood book orphans we all read, Orphans Prime if you will. They lose their parents, every caregiver who's ever kind to them, then say fuck it and live on a deserted island on their own to raise themselves abd fully embrace their orphan status. On the island, they learn their parents survived the shipwreck then died again - double orphaning even.

OH MY SWEET LITTLE CHILDREN THAT FUELED MY LOVE FOR READING AND THE MACABRE Violet- Won her first of many invention competitions when she was five with an automatic rolling pin (comprised of a window shade and six pairs of roller skates). Extremely innovative and genius, foiled by her kindness to others. And she knows how to make a Molotov cocktail. Klaus- Absolute monster of a bibliophile, conducts research for fun, and has a photographic memory. He is known to want nothing more than "a good book, a comfy chair, and the warm glow of a reading lamp". He also is a Herman Melville fan, which is points for him in my book. Sunny- Most people know her only for her penchant for biting, but Sunny is a distinctly distinguished character. She has sharp wit (as long as you can read it through her babbles), her poker skills are phenomenal for a baby, and she has quite the knack for cooking! Also yeah, the teeth. She climbed an elevator shaft with them once.

They are constantly going through it, give these kids a break for real

[xx-vergil-xx]

Can I ask what pushed you to end Hounds the way you did? It's a fantastic ending, but I'm curious. I expected the Fates to revive Dream, or allow him to inhabit a new form (such as one made by Daniel, so that Dream becomes a dreamthing), etc. But instead, his death is made to have never happened. Which makes it partly feels like Hob's whole road trip journey was for nothing since he lost all those memories and connections with Matthew, the Corinthian, Delirium, Despair, Desire, Death, etc. (thank god he kept the farmhouse). But it's almost like he traded all those memories and connections for Dream. Unless I missed something while reading (I was crying very hard).

Again, fantastic ending, and I'm also glad it's a happy ending. But I'm curious as to why you didn't go in the other direction

howdy! thanks very much for the ask — an excellent query, one which i’m happy to answer

(verg of the future: this answer ended up long! there’s a short form at the top here and at the end <3)

in brief: he did make that trade you described! but not strictly for dream — it was the price of swapping genres!

an explanation:

what i had in mind while planning and writing was less the idea of erasure of prior narrative action and more a subversion of the expected genre, in particular the genre tropes that follow dream in the original arc of the comics, where his story is very classically tragic (with the understood weaving of hob into that tragedy, this being a dream/hob telling and all)

for reference, i also drew a lot of inspiration for hob’s road trip odyssey from the aeneid, an epic that is, yes, about the founding of rome but also (at least to my reading) a fundamental tragedy — the cost of founding rome is aeneas’ home, many of his friends, much of his core family, and the very end of the story is not some victorious depiction of the glory of rome to be (which we do get earlier in the book, with the ekphrasis on his shield) but aeneas, overcome with fury and loss, killing a man who begs his mercy. i’ve always felt that the aeneid, while certainly stepped in the expected amount of roman nationalism, is centrally about a single man and his singular suffering as an instrument of higher destiny.

i wanted to model hob’s arc around the aeneid (minus, y’know, some of the chunks that are strictly battle sequences <3) both because intertextuality is a huge part of how i wanted to handle hounds (story about stories, made of other stories, etc), but also because hob and aeneas are fundamentally parallel characters — nomads with exceptional ordinances, permanently displaced by the passing whims of higher powers, men who are made to reckon with both extraordinary wonder and extraordinary tragedy regularly while still, at their core, just being human. that’s what makes aeneas so compelling — he’s just a man. and so is our beloved hob — that’s his whole thing, his whole narrative function and his whole central ideal, humanity

so then, approaching hounds with both the thought of the sandman’s original tragic contours (see: the whole lead-in to daniel. christ above is the way that goes devastating to read) and the man vs fate core of the aeneid, i was considering a lot of things about how to mess around with both notions without gutting them entirely. i tend to dislike tragedies that become un-tragic without some sort of Serious Payment For It (not to say i don’t like happy stories because i very much do! but i get ticked off when high stakes get deflated too quickly) and i didn’t want to undermine the very real fact that the Fates are typically not versed in notions of empathy and/or leniency, and that dream and hob and those around them did experience and endure devastation and loss, and that death is a fact typically immune to argument.

the world of sandman is not one with easy answers, and to my mind there’s no such thing as a bargain with the Fates where you break even. for hob to get what he wanted, something had to be given, something dear and vital and real. there’s more to what hob actually gives the Fates than he verbally stipulates, which i tried to address largely via the corinthian and his perception of the situation, especially those last conversations with dream in the “swamp”. i have a lot of options about the corinthian in his function as “dark mirror” having a blistering clarity of understanding much of the time, which is why i foisted the onus of those complexities onto his dialogue, rather than hob, who (and i say this with love) is a creature of bias and often blinded to greater repercussions of his actions insofar as they extend beyond his immediate objectives/enjoyments, or dream, who can see the bigger picture but i think often really keeps himself from doing so when it comes to anything at all that’s personal (king of stories has a blindspot for his own). what hob gives the Fates actually costs him almost nothing, in the long run, if we operate with the idea that he cannot remember, nor is there any lasting effect from, his 600-ish heavily-relived years. there’s narrative and symbolic weight, of course — he gives them love as an oath and as nostalgia (sidebar: his driving force is an almost pre-nostalgia, a continual love of the moment as the moment is passing, but anyway) (cuff links), he gives them in a captured moment the lovely discomfort and simultaneous brilliance of being alive (the hook, the finger prick the blood), and he gives them a rich and complicated experience of humanity (those 600 years). but practically, what is actually taken from him that he doesn’t just get back?

only those few months — and in them, a web of real and known connections, all of which matter, and all of which change his understanding of and relationship to things like grief, and loneliness, and fear, and forgiveness. those are important changes, real changes, that would affect how he operates in the world going forward. that development is gone. he returns instead to the (of course, fought-for and hard-won) stasis of what was, which becomes what will always be. in making the Fates and their judgement more complex, he has actually made his own life less complex. now, i’m not going to sit here and argue that “suffering has inherent value” or some shit like that because i think that’s bullshit! pain is just pain. but he does lose experiences which would have shaped him in new ways, and, i think, good ways. even important ways

and he may well be shaped towards similar courses with dream (especially re: learning that lesson about loneliness — i think hob suffers from the curse of always, ultimately, being alone (immortality etc there’s so much discourse about this), and the road trip was in part about him learning that though it is the simplest path it is neither the sole nor the best path), but he certainly doesn’t learn them the same way, with the same faces, with the same acuity and clarity and intensity.

the thing with the Fates (to me anyway) is that you don’t ever just win. maybe you can get what you want, but it’s not easy (it make take a thousand repetitions of your lifetime until friction and the touch of your hands wears the sisyphean boulder down to a pebble — like the parable of the bird scraping its beak on the mountain), and it’s sure not free.

so yes, those months are lost. that’s a big part of the price. and we don’t know, at the end, how much of that thing he really gave ultimately comes back — his new relationship depths with deanna or cori or the other endless, those things aren’t seen. the main arc is resolved — hob and dream — but there are still pieces missing. he loses a piece of his human experience, he gets tossed back around through the wringer of his life (which is often distinctly not pleasant), and he is, as he ever was, a character with a path whose impetus and dictation rest heavily on external forces. even in attempting to channel his life elsewhere, he still has to bargain, and is still subject to the choices of the fates, and in some ways the story remains irrevocably a tragedy, in that one way or another it has loss in a central place. in the latter half of hounds hob really became my attempted version of an aeneas type — a man with a quest and a fated directive, a deeply human and flawed individual, who can alter the path and even irrevocably change the genre of his own narrative, but only at cost.

of course let’s be clear! some of all the actual rendering of this ended up as it did partly because i am not always a clean writer, and for that i apologize! but i did genuinely want that sense of gaps — of faces and voices given over to the gravitational well of the principal narrative arc of hob/dream versus the Fates. i think those things are gone. the narrative is forcibly re-centered around hob and dream, and in doing this — in shifting the story genre — other ties and bonds are not just cut, but unwoven entirely. when you change the kind of story you’re telling, the change is done at the expense of something else. kind of like how there’s a fixed amount of matter in the universe? you can’t create or destroy matter — to make something new you have to take from another place. (sidebar: wow i’m realizing something about my fundamental storytelling beliefs right now! laws of physics! anon your ask has really got my cylinders firing, and most sincerely thank you <3)

still, they might come back. though i didn’t write it as fully as i could have (i will freely admit there was a great deal of burnout at play towards the end there), i had a lot of thoughts re: repetition and density, namely that if you stack a thousand repetitions of a lifetime against each other it’s the equivalent of writing a word over and over and over on a page. when you erase it, the channels remain. language flows most naturally in the direction once etched for it. maybe hob learns those same lessons and knows the same people in the same way — maybe he and the corinthian find that odd patch of common ground, maybe he takes a long drive with delirium through rural maryland. maybe there are echoes. maybe even if it is gone what was still shapes the topography. maybe a kindness or a word exchanged still ring out when you can’t see them or remember them. while the milestones of our lives rippled the most visibly, i think we’re shaped a thousandfold ways by accumulations of small things we can’t distinctly remember. only a feeling of a thing, or the negative space it leaves.

well. tl;dr — i didn’t want to let hob get away without actually giving anything up, nor without his choice to bargain affecting others besides himself in equally irrevocable ways (sidebar: at his core is a selfishness that is both charming and ignoble — he wants to do a good thing for dream but also he makes a call that changes a plenitude of lives other than his own, and i don’t think he really asks, he just does — grey areas are his whole gig to me), because nobody makes a deal with the Fates for free, and changing genre has a price tag. it was my effort to make the tone of the whole beast more authentically sandman-esque, since sandman does a lot of that sort of water-muddying, especially when using understood narrative models/archetypes/etc etc

i am. sorry this was as long as it is! jesus! but i’m sending it off all the same. anyways, anon, thanks very much not only for your lovely kind words and the high honor of your tears (no pulitzer could mean more to me than knowing a thing i wrote really moved someone, seriously thank you) but also for giving me a blank check to go buck wild and ramble about my own damn writing and Things I Just Think <3 i hope you have a lovely day/morning/noon/night, and thanks a bunch for dropping by <3 <3 <3

[positivelybeastly]

Does the x-office hate beast?

Cynically: yes.

Less cynically: it's complicated?

Like, here's the thing, right - Beast fans are . . . kinda rare. Sure, there's tons of people who saw the 90s cartoon and really liked him, there are tons of people who saw X-Men 3 and liked him there, there's a whole (almost separate) community of people who are still writing X-Men: First Class fanfic about that version of Hank.

But I'm talking about, will go out and write fanfiction about the character; will draw fanart of him; will actively go out of their way to talk about him on social media. I feel like that's been on the decline for the last . . . fuck, 30 years, probably? Ever since he went from this

to this.

Like, the difference is jarring and immediate, right?

And that lack of a dedicated fanbase made him an easy character to contort to fit stories that certain writers wanted to tell. The X-office doesn't have a ton of people gagging to write Beast, he doesn't headline his own series, he doesn't have a rabid Twitter populace who will fight and scream and shout like Emma Frost or Cyclops.

What do most people think when they see Beast? Like, normal people who don't read comics, who just consume maybe a Marvel movie twice a year, or saw a cartoon when they were a kid.

"Oh, he's cool. SO ANYWAY, MORE OF THAT WOLVERINE."

Beast is not a character with a strong base.

So he's just.

Disposable.

Who cares, throw Beast to Bendis or Ben Percy, I don't care, is what it feels like.

As for WHY he doesn't have that dedicated fanbase, well, I have theories.

A lot of Hank stories are just, sad. They're just so fucking sad and tragic and dark and about finding light where you can.

I often find them very cathartic, like, Hank leads such a troubled and harsh life, and he savours the pleasures where he can get them, and I really love that aspect of his character, that unyielding spirit, but that does not make for a popular character.

His feline era, from 2000 to 2012, is honestly my favourite for him because he is so nuanced and his themes of learning to love your body and control yourself, and his thoughtful, measured, deeply moralistic stories resonate with me and provide me with comfort, the idea that people can be tempted to do bad in the service of good but turn away is beautiful to me.

But that's not really an easily sell? People don't usually want to be sad when they read comic books. They want to be thrilled or horrified or made to laugh. Sad is . . . harder to sell.

Honestly, I also think there's a degree of assuming that he's a snobby asshole because he talks fancy. Like, I legit think that plays into it, and you sometimes see writers fall for the same preconception, they assume that Hank is a snob, and he really isn't, he's a lower-middle class kid from Illinois who grew up on a farm and whose dad was involved in a horrific radiation accident because of poor safety conditions, this is not a person who would be snobby.

It's so funny to me because the guy is from a fictional place in Illinois? It's never specified, which means, if anything, he probably sounds like he's from Chicago! Now, there's probably a degree to which he does speak more formally and has changed his voice, because Hank is extremely protective and conscious of the image he projects, always has been, but snobby? Pfft, nooooo. So yeah, absolutely, you see people assuming that he's a snob because he's smart. Snobby only plays well if you're Emma Frost.

I also have to say, I think there's a degree to which there's an anti-intellectual bias going on. If you look at pretty much all of the major genius characters, they are pretty much ALL unpopular because they are nerds and they are not usually portrayed as being great fighters or tacticians, which is an easy way for a character to become popular - that's why Cyclops is so popular, because he's right all the time and he's a badass, and that's an easy pop. Science solutions are inherently less visceral, harder to write and thus rarer, and do not stick in people's minds.

Moreover, what do you think of when you think of genius superhero? The reputation is of privilege and the image is of boring white guys, they assume it's just - boring. It's only interesting if it's cloaked in sarcastic wit, like House or Sherlock (during The Dark Times), or used in a martial sense, which is why Black Panther is the exception to the 'all the nerds are boring.' Bruce Banner also escapes this trap because he's had his own solo comics for 60 years and he's had a million people write absolutely amazing stories for him.

I also think that his almost complete absence from the Claremont era stories hurts his fandom reputation, because if you're an X-Men fan, you read Claremont, and Hank is not in those stories almost at all. He pops up during the Mesmero arc, during Dark Phoenix, here and there, but he spends 1974 to 1991 in the Avengers, the Defenders, X-Factor, he is so very rarely being written by who most people would consider the definitive X-Men scribe. There's also an element of the stupid X-Men vs. Avengers tribalism working against him thanks to that.

I think Claremont writes a pretty decent Hank when he does turn up, but there's a reason he picked Jean and Scott, and it's interesting that he chose to feature Hank more often than Warren and Bobby, and even then, Warren more than Bobby. I don't know if Hank was really heavily in demand so he just couldn't get him, or if he didn't know what stories to tell with him, but I actually kinda think it was the former, just because Hank always makes an appearance in his post-'91 work, especially his alternate timelines, and he was clearly interested in writing for him in X-Treme X-Men given he set up the Betsy romantic angle early, but then Morrison snatched him up.

Hank also got pushed into the role of the naysayer during the Fraction and Bendis era, which is an instant rock around the neck for your popularity. A lot of the arguments that Hank makes about why he doesn't like what Scott does and how he runs the X-Men and Utopia are not necessarily wrong?

Like, X-Force is just plain morally bad. It is.

You can make the argument that it's necessary, but these two things can exist at the exact same time, which appears to be a concept that people do not grasp! And especially, like . . . the X-Men are not an army. They are a voluntary paramilitary group that is, ostensibly, dedicated to mutant rescue, outreach, and general superheroics.

You are not obliged to stay.

Hank was suffering from legitimate PTSD flashbacks, he was wracked with guilt over the Skrull bioweapon (which, notably, sticks to Hank but does NOT stick to Scott), he was very obviously depressed, recovering from torture - and when he reached out to Bobby to try and explain how he was feeling, draw some comfort, Bobby basically just told him to deal with it!

But this made him SO FUCKING UNPOPULAR. You can go to comics sites that have comments under this issue, under the issue where Hank is having PTSD flashbacks, and they'll be like, THIS IS WHERE IT ALL BEGAN, and I'm like???????? The fuck are you saying to me?????? WHY ARE YOU BOOING HIM HE'S RIGHT.

There's also a degree to which I think that, whether the writers have realised it or not, they do not usually put in the work to establish that the X-Men are doing their due diligence to make sure that Hank is okay. They rely a LOT on off-screen things happening to fill in the blanks. A short list of things that we have never seen!

The reaction from the O5 when Hank first turned furry.

The reaction from the Mansion X-Men when Hank turned into a cat.

Anyone going to visit Hank in the infirmary when he was recovering from his fur and claws falling out due to torture.

Anyone expressing concern over the fact that during the whole time travel debacle, Hank was dying and did not tell anyone.

You don't see these moments, and these are fucking important! These make you sympathetic to the character! These are the moments where people look at Beast in pain, suffering because of what's happened to him, going through his emotional arcs, showing strength as he perseveres, THAT is what builds a fanbase and keeps a fanbase engaged with a character - but they just stop happening for Hank. You don't see them. He loses his characterisation moments, they just happen off-panel.

But what do you see? You see a lot of people walk into Hank's lab, they receive words of wisdom and comfort, or a scientific solution for their problems, and then they walk out.

Like, Hank from Avengers vs. X-Men onwards reads as just - psychologically unstable. He does things on impulse, he reacts without talking to people, he does not have strong relationships with anyone, he appears to have broken up with his long time girlfriend (for no specified reason, we still don't know why 9 YEARS LATER), he often appears adrift and lost and unhappy.

And we are TOLD during his intervention that people have talked to him about what's going on, and they were ignored, but, like, I'm sorry, FUCK OFF, SHOW YOUR GODDAMN WORK.

If you want your emotional moments to have any bite, then you need to ESTABLISH things!!! When Ororo says, oh, you're just ignoring everyone, I'm like, FUCKIN' SHOW ME WHEN YOU TALKED TO HIM. Because do you know what I DID see?

I saw Hank being the most comforting and lovely and soft individual in Storm's solo series, being there for her after Logan's death, BASICALLY BECOMING HER SECRETARY BECAUSE SHE WANTS TO FUCK OFF AND BE A THIEF, and then BOOM, suddenly, she's like, you're a fucking loose cannon.

This was, like, a few months apart. Editors? Hello? Does Ororo fucking hate Hank or not? Because Bendis seems to be of the opinion that she does, but Greg Pak does not appear to have gotten the memo! HELLO? EDITORS? There's a big fucking GAP here where a story arc is meant to go???

There's so much of Hank's 2012-onward story that we just AREN'T shown. Like, he and Scott just - patch up their differences over the revolutionary thing OFF-PANEL during Hickman's Avengers. You don't even see the conversation. He agrees to try and work on the M-Pox cure, MOVES TO ATTILAN TO HELP THEM, all because Storm (WHOM, LAST WE SAW, WAS THREATENING TO PUT HIM IN PRISON FOR CRIMES AGAINST NATURE) convinced him to . . . and WE DO NOT SEE THIS CONVERSATION.

Every time someone pulls out the 'oh, this has been an expertly played baton pass of writers depicting Hank's moral downfall,' I just want to fucking pick up shit and fling it in their face, because they could not be more wrong.

Do you know who's read more Beast comics than these fuckers?

Me. It's me.

Believe me, if there was an actual DEPICTION of ANY of these MASSIVE emotional moments in Hank's life, I would LOVE to talk about them and agree. But they do not exist. It's a character being used as a narrative prop to justify writing decisions that otherwise wouldn't make sense (Inhumans vs. X-Men, All-New X-Men), and no-one cares because he was never that popular to begin with.

And it just - frustrates me, because, like, did you know that Hank formed a political advocacy group for mutant rights?

Did you know he was present during sessions of Congress, giving his support to pro-mutant legislation and becoming long time friends with multiple politicians?

But because it's in New Defenders, because it's in Secret Avengers, and no-one READ those issues, they don't care! It doesn't matter to them! Hank has, by and large, within the narrative, done SO MUCH for mutant rights, he has ACTIVELY worked for them within the system SO HARD, but because it isn't done with an optic blast or a big punchy fist in an X-Men book, it doesn't count.

And like, I just . . . the last few appearances before he starts being focused on in X-Force, before the heel turn, he is NOT acting like an asshole!

Laura literally calls him the nerd she can trust and he takes pictures of her and Gabby being cute during a party!

He's helping Banshee recover from his Apocalypse corruption and teaching at Harvard, trying to actively retire from superhero work because he's exhausted!

He's telling Captain Marvel, hey, you're wrong about your precognition bullshit in Civil War II, and he's helping Spider-Man with science problems, and he SAVES THE INHUMAN CIVILISATION SINGLEHANDEDLY!

So many writers are trying to steer him back onto course. Not just Avengers books, either, X-Men books! There's, like, TWO, THREE writers who want to push evil, asshole Beast, and everyone else is just like, uhhh, nooo? But because the X-office do not care, they keep getting their chance. They don't care about protecting Beast's reputation, or his stories, or his legacy. He's just a character to be thrown wherever he'll fit.

So you get the narrative that he was always evil. He was decaying all along.

No, it's bullshit. It's literally the Scarlet Witch story again, where it just HAPPENS in fits and starts to kick off events and stories, regardless of whether or not it makes sense for past characterisation or continuity.

So, yeah. It's a combination of the X-office not really caring about protecting the image of the character, and certain writers just doing shoddy, shitty jobs of writing emotional checks that their asses weren't willing to cash.

[lara60]

Hi! I wanted to ask if you could share some things about Daareios (I love viltrumite ocs and your art is so pretty!!!!). Like what happens to him at the end of invincible? what's his reaction to Thraggs manipulation AND death (and maybe some hcs?)

HELLO ANON THANK YOUUU FOR THIS ASK!!! 💜 So the thing about Daareios is that I initially made him as a joke/meme OC, as he was only supposed to be a guy that annoys Thragg by merely existing. But I got attached and turned him into a very tragic character instead. His story is not a happy one.

MAJOR INVINCIBLE COMIC SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT

In the most canon compliant version of his story, his role would be that of Thragg’s loyal dog until the very end.

He’d side with Thragg after Nolan takes the throne, and he’d be exiled along with him. During the years in which Thragg builds his army on Thraxa, Daareios would do his best to fulfil his every whim, and he’d desperately wish that Thragg would eventually consider him someone important to him. He’d latch onto this foolish wish and wait patiently, looking for signs that the Grand Regent considers him something more than just a subordinate, deluding himself into thinking that he just needs to do a little more, be a little bit better, until Thragg finally gives him that honor.

But it never happens. Daareios would keep chasing that dream, and it would lead to his death.

During the big conflict between Thragg and Nolan’s Empire, Daareios would try his best to keep Mark busy, so Thragg can deal with the usurper. But he’d underestimate his foe and make a mistake, which would lead to Mark killing him.

Daareios wouldn’t die immediately – he’d still be conscious for a few moments, floating in space, trying his hardest to stay alive and help Thragg. In his last moments, he’d reach out to him .. and realize that Thragg doesn’t even spare him a glance.

And instead of finally realizing that his loyalty had been misplaced, he just thinks that he should have done better. That he wasn’t good enough for Thragg to care after all. He dies feeling like a disappointment. 💔💔💔

ITS SO CRUEL I KNOW … but fitting for his journey, he’s been doomed by the start … im sure that in some other timelines he had a happier ending 💜 Regarding some random lore bits that come to mind:

He’s kind of a clean freak, doesn’t like getting blood on his clothes and definitely not on his skin.

He’s secretly very intimidated by Thula and likes her and Conquest the least.

He’s usually very quiet unless a superior asks him to speak or he has to report something. He has a very strong case of ‘resting bitch face’, so nobody really approaches him otherwise.

His feelings towards Thragg are very complicated and can’t really be labeled. He sees him as a superior first of all, but there’s also an almost childish need to have his attention/praise/to make him proud, which is far from professional. Perhaps he also sees a pseudo-parental figure in him, but at the same time he’s also attracted to him. It’s a mess because Daareios (like any other Viltrumite) has no concept of love, but he also has trouble controlling his emotions, unlike most other Viltrumites who are so perfectly composed all the time. It makes it doubly difficult when his crippling self-doubt combines with his need for approval and attachment issues. He’s just … really not okay. 😢

ON A LIGHTER NOTE … in an AU where he makes better choices and ends up alive by the end of the story, AND joins the other Viltrumites on Earth, he’d be really into music. Specifically, he’d enjoy metal, and he’d wear appropriate fashion and grow out his hair. He’d also learn to play various instruments, guitar being the first. Maybe he’d even try to write songs of his own.

His favorite food on Earth would be anything sweet – not really chocolates, but fruits rather. Give him an apple pie or a peach cobbler and he’ll do anything for you.

He’d be fascinated by Earth nature/flora/fauna and travel a lot. He’d take hikes and spend a lot of time away from civilization. His favorite animals would be reptilians and snakes of any kind. I bet the first time he visited an animal sanctuary and had the opportunity to put a friendly python around his shoulders he had tears in his eye.

WOO CANT REALLY THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE RN .. thank you sm for asking about my little guy, he makes me very sad but I love him

[a-vicious-faithless-angel]

I want to preference this with at the end of the day, i am one random person and anyone can do whatever. Alright?

That being said. I wish people realized or at least understood that shipping something that isn't "healthy" means the person thinks this is good or okay. Its the same mentality people have with "if you shoot in game u must want to hurt people irl" and its like...no. When i talk of characters/ships like David x Simon, Clancy x Lucas, or Woods x Hackett/Dauda x Bishop, i think its interesting to dive into a relationship that isn't healthy or good for a character. In these characters the characters knows and understands that this love is unhealthy and hurts/destroys them but does it anyway out of this soft like devotion they have. They know what they have going on is wrong, i do not make this to be they're obvious and its just cutesy fun stuff!! They know and understand that it hurts them.

Simon is well aware that loving David breaks him but he's scared to lose someone that made him feel like maybe there could be a place made for him. That David wants to give something to Simon they know they can't? But does it regardless because it feels nice. Do you not think Clancy didn't think about the outcome of loving Lucas? That he was loving someone sick but did it anyway not to fix him but because he couldn't help but find the scenario almost comical. How someone who wanted him in pain would get distraught of the thought of losing his victim. He plays into it. Do you not think Woods not understand that he should not love Hackett because it feeds into a obsessive devotion? But Hackett wanted to feel like something he wasn't so he found himself entangled by the corrupt love handed to his scarred hands.

That is not to say these characters can never have a soft moment or love each other without pain. Their love is not complete misery. They have warm moments of laughing and cuddling closer to the other. They stand fingers intertwined as they watch the sun and the moon carefully walk around.

Love is complex, it can be very ugly but also tragically beautiful. Ig when i hear people say you cant ship xyz because "it makes you a bad person!!!" Mentality it pisses me off because relationships [of any kind] can be horrific and shitty, they can be twisted and messy, they're characters built to be human. They make mistakes they feed into their own greed they scrap for something they've been wanting for decades. They can be aware they scare the other but can't stop themselves. Ik in the act of shipping it comes across as tho i support their actions but...this is fictional. Its not real. I support their actions in a fictional view because if one really wanted to dissect their lover and keep everything from the inside irl that be a little scary, but in a fictional world fuckin go wild.

The same goes for relationships we already see in media. Looks kindly at Mia and Ethan. Eye twitches their love will never be perfect but they love each other regardless because who else is left to understand the scars they have without having to speak?

[bellatrixobsessed1]

The Tragedy of the Trix; Rehabilitation vs Punishment

Saw this post on reddit asking if the Trix are tragic characters and at first I almost said no. And then I thought about it a bit. On the outside they seem to handle things very well and they seem to be delighted and content with being evil for the lols but honestly, that happiness is probably super hollow and fake. And they might not even realize it. It has the same energy as someone super wealthy who has a lot of nice things but very little love. Anyways I decided to share my response on tumblr.

I've got several points here that I might elaborate on later if I get some time because I feel like there are a lot of topics here that the fandom doesn't talk about a lot; like Light Rock and the treatment of witches overall.

Honestly yeah I kind of do think that they are tragic characters. It is mostly self-inflicted and we don't really know what happened to them (unless we're counting Icy's last minute backstory) to make them the way that they are. So I can absolutely see them having grown up in rough environments.

The thing that I think makes it a real tragedy as that no one really ever tired to help them. Griffin actively encouraged their mischief and bad behavior until it became a little too evil. In the 4kids dub they didn't even get expelled for the deed itself but because they got caught. And Griffin took little to no responsibility for her hand in all of this; she's the adult, they were still probably teens when they started at Cloud Tower. So in some sense she did have a duty to guide them (and every other student). She praised them for the things that they would eventually be imprisoned for. Which is the next issue; they just kept getting imprisoned and punished with no real attempt at rehabilitation.

I would not call Light Rock rehabilitation. Based on the 4kids dub it had cult vibes more than anything else; not even the guards were allowed to leave and one of them said he felt like a prisoner rather than a guest. The whole scene opened with a debate over the morality of trying to force people to be happy. Light Rock was less about rehabilitation and more about brainwashing. So the Trix never really did get a shot at true rehabilitation and help. It was all punishment. I feel like Light Rock overall was a waste of potential; there were some implications there that really could have made for a cool plot point.

But yeah I feel like not only were the Trix neglected and heavily misguided but they were actively pushed in the wrong direction. The witches in general (not just the Trix) have such a stigma about them that even when they're doing good or minding their own business, they get accused of being evil. And so no one should be surprised when they just embrace the image.

I also feel as though some of the punishments were disproportionate to downright cruel. Like them getting sucked into a void in season 7. Heck, even Light Rock was cruel; it's brainwashing, an attempt at manipulation, and psychological abuse. It's usually passed as a joke but honestly, they have experienced the horrors. Of course they're going to come out more resentful. The comics are almost worse for this. Again it's usually the result of their own schemes but their suffering in the comics is literally played for laughs.

I think that that's why I liked season 8 upon rewatching it; more compassion was given to the Trix. Bloom told Icy that she saw good in her. And, what do you know, Icy was receptive to it. Instead of taking the power for herself, she helped the Winx save the magical dimension. I really would like a follow up on that story line. It was nice to see them humanized a bit more.

Tl;dr: Yeah the Trix brought a lot of their troubles onto themselves but they were actively being praised for doing evil until they did something too evil. And there was no genuine attempt to help them.

[forest-of-stories]

Throwback Thursday, Fandom Edition: Sidetrasked

This is a collection of Silver Age X-Men comics that I’ve now owned for over two decades, and brought to Fan Expo Boston (then Boston Comic Con) in August 2014, hoping that artist Neal Adams would sign it.  

And this is the reason why.

When I tell people about Larry Trask today, I sometimes refer to him as "Blorbo From My Comics."  He is one of my favorite villains in the X-Men universe, and, at least for a time, was one of my favorite characters overall.  He also, at least for a time, embodied the anti-mutant bigotry that has been part of that universe almost since its beginning.  I want to avoid going on a tangent about the morality of villain fandom, and I resent the social obligation to attach an "I Hereby Acknowledge That My Fave Is Problematic" disclaimer to an exploration of how and why I liked a fictional character, but I also want to give people who don’t want to engage with any kind of love for such characters a chance to stop reading.  If you’re not inclined toward sympathy for an antagonist who makes terrible, destructive choices based on a lack of information and for what he thinks are the right reasons, and later has a tragic and redemptive ending (which might not actually be an ending; more on that further on) once he realizes what is going on, then this is not the character or the post for you.  And that’s fine.

Otherwise, I hope you're interested in reading a pretty long post.

Bolivar Trask, who originally created the giant mutant-hunting Sentinel robots, appears in almost every media adaptation of the X-Men.  What none of those adaptations have shown thus far is that both of his children were mutants.  Tanya’s time-travel abilities eventually stranded her in the far future, where she became known as Madame Sanctity and entangled with the extremely convoluted Summers family tree.  Her brother Larry could see the future, but their father created a very ostentatious Silver Age medallion that suppressed Larry’s powers and scrambled his memories so that he didn’t even know he had them.  When Bolivar was killed in a battle between the X-Men and the Sentinels, Larry blamed mutants everywhere, not realizing that he was one at first, and made the extremely smart and good decision (she said sarcastically) to create a bunch of new giant robots.  

I first read those comics in the early 2000s, when I was already drawn to characters who couldn’t trust their own memories, and to stories in which parents or authority figures manipulated or outright mind-controlled the young people in their care.   So the Trask family backstory appealed to me immediately, especially when I read a flashback issue that explored it in more detail.  

I was fascinated by the dramatic irony of a villain who trusted, adored, and committed atrocities to avenge, a father who continuously deceived and gaslit him "for his own good" (and also for the good of their giant robot plans).  I knew that there was a lot of material for fanfic in there, one way or another.

At the time, a couple of other significant things were happening in my fannish life.  Firstly, I was working on the Wallglass series, aka the Writing Project That Ate My Adolescence, in which a lot of my creative choices amounted to "let’s throw in this ingredient and see what happens." My decision to include Larry, not as a villain but as an ordinary teenager and love interest for one of my original characters, was no exception.  Although I eventually incorporated his precognitive powers into the story, that wasn’t necessarily the plan at first.  (X-Men: Evolution, the canon in which my big project nominally took place, did introduce the Sentinels, albeit in a different context than the one I chose.  I was already writing an AU simply by virtue of my OCs’ presence, but past a certain point, I diverged from continuity completely. One of my biggest regrets, of the many regrets that I have about that project, was not making Larry an active antagonist in the final installment of my series.)

As in canon, Bolivar Trask plotted to block his son’s mutant powers and memories of same, but unlike in canon, he outsourced the actual mental meddling.

The second important thing that happened during this time was that I started communicating regularly with the author of one of my favorite XME fanfics, which featured our OTP of Lance and Kitty.  She was reading my fic as I was reading hers, and at some point, we moved on from leaving each other comments (or “reviews” as we called them on fanfiction.net) to exchanging emails about our writing projects, our feelings about the current season of XME, and other things that were close to our fannish hearts.  We subsequently friended each other on LiveJournal, and later Facebook, and have mailed each other gifts and attended a convention together and remained friends to this day.

Back then, as she got to know my version of Larry Trask, I encouraged her to seek out the comics in which he first appeared.  Although he wasn’t the catalyst for our friendship, he did become another one of our shared obsessions, fueled in part by my personal conviction that we were The Fans Who Understood And Cared About Him The Most.  We informed each other whenever we caught a glimpse of Larry in comics or in fic; we once stayed up past midnight, chatting online about the issues of Avengers in which he sacrificed his life to stop the Sentinels from destroying humanity; and we devoted many, many more email and IM exchanges to discussing his narrative potential (which we recognized even if the people writing and adapting the comics apparently didn’t) and how else we might explore it in our own writing. 

My attempts to do just that, post-Wallglass, mostly amounted to scribbled drafts or outlines in various notebooks.

Sometimes I tried to explore Larry’s upbringing or the period in his life after his Sentinel project fell apart and he was dealing with more amnesia and more lies from someone he trusted; sometimes I made overly ambitious plans to integrate him into the Ultimate universe or back into XME. 

Trying to write about Larry was often as frustrating as it was fun: as one of the Fans Who Understood Him The Most (which is how I wanted desperately to be known, even as I was thrilled every time another writer, including a BNF in the X-Men movie fandom, included him in their fic), I felt obligated to Do Him Justice somehow, and was unreasonably frustrated with myself when I didn't feel like I'd managed to do so.

The term “Blorbo” didn’t exist when I wrote those entries, and I kind of wish it had; the fact that I was throwing around phrases like “fictional preoccupations” shows how much we needed a word that meant, roughly, “character with whom I am obsessed even if I don't have a crush on them, or am not sure whether I do or not.” If nothing else, using a silly nonsense word might have helped me take my creative angst a little less seriously.

Although I haven’t followed the comic books in years, X-Men is one of my forever fandoms. And although my attachment to Larry Trask, Blorbo From My Comics, became less pronounced over time (which is probably a good thing), I don’t think I’ve ever detached from it completely.  I haven't wanted to write fic about him in a very long time, but when a podcast (like Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men or Graymalkin Lane) mentions him, or when blogs like @summerstrash post about him, I always sit up and take notice.  And when I met Neal Adams at that Fan Expo ten years ago, I made sure to tell him how much I loved the character he’d helped to create.  He signed my book, as well as one that I bought for my longtime fandom friend.  When I learned that Adams passed away in 2022, I was immeasurably grateful for that experience, and I still am.

And now, based upon recent comics news, it turns out that Larry’s story isn’t over after all.

[rosetheocto]

Rambling about how Eeveelution Squad stinks at writing women!

TW: mentions of abuse and A Certain Type Of Harassment (pls don’t kill me tumblr)

Hello gamers!! welcome to another one of Rose’s Yapping Sessions! Before we get into the Essay Thing, I’m gonna quickly mention I am not making this to harass EV-Zero, or anyone else who’s worked on the comic! (trust me. they’ve got more than enough of it, unfortunately) this is just me expressing my frustration, because this comic had a lot of potential and it seriously sucks that it’s gone to waste. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve really thought about this comic admittedly, so please bare with me if I say something wrong or inaccurate

SO! Eeveelution Squad has clearly gotten a lot of inspiration from a bunch of different anime and similar media. many of the anime that are referenced don’t have a good track record for writing women or romance, so that ain’t a good start. Out of the 10 main characters, there are only 4 that are male and 6 that are female. usually this would mean that there’s gotta be at least one girl that’s super well written and explored, but NOPE! The male characters of the Squad (excluding Axel, cuz he doesn’t have much screen time and Is Only Four Years Old) all have important fleshed out stories, along with major plot relevance in the comic.

More is under the cut cuz this is LONG

Coastal “Speed” Red is a traumatized war veteran/child soldier whose world almost literally revolves around him (and NOT in a good way)! Alan, a version of Speed from the Original Timeline made the wish that caused not only the creation of the Berserk Virus, but Memory Path and the Timeline Resets, along with other things that I’m forgetting (i wanna say that Deoxys Space Virus Thing was also caused by Alan?? but I’m not too sure on that one). Speed was forced to take care of his siblings, and eventually another lost egg, when he JUST BORN. Speed also has a BUNCH of overpowered abilities since He’s The Main Character. Most notably his Healing Factor and the Turbo Boost. Alongside that is the Classic Transformation since he’s half Coastal Eevee, but looking at how it turned out for Alan (not well) I’m glad Speed hasn’t gotten the criteria to access it. The Jolteon who was getting constantly beat up for the first Whatever Amount Of Chapters is apparently the most important guy in the multiverse. Bro is not having a good time

Coastal “Solarflare” Green, Speed’s youngest sibling, is also vital to the timeline resets (despite dying very early on in the first timeline but whatever lol). In 99% of the timelines, he’s the Ultimus (which admittedly I forgot the definition for, but I know it’s important!) due to getting the Berserk Virus. In fact, he’s a Category Three Berserker, which is something that happens to only 5% of those with the virus. Due to this, whenever he and Fluffy (the name of his virus) bond, he also gets a power boost. Not as broken as Speed since he had to learn to control it and stuff, but still. Like Speed with Alan, we also see a version of Flare from another timeline, with an even more tragic backstory. Both Solar and Flare are present during the final fight alongside Speed. Flare’s stuff is just a watered down Speed ig lmao

Black Silverbolt was a close friend of Speed when they were younger. His parents were killed by a Berserk Pokémon, leaving only him and his brother, Frost, to fend for themselves. After being challenged by a classmate to prove his strength, Black goes to a dungeon with extremely tough Pokémon. He’s able to get through a majority of it, but he gets knocked out and nearly dies. Frost sweeps in to save him, and carries him most of the way back to town, but he’s very badly injured. As soon as he starts to get over the death of his parents, Black has to grieve over his older brother’s death too. Unlike their parents, he was more than able to prevent it. He caused his brother to die. Black has also been shown to have PTSD flashbacks of both Frost and his parents. Later in the comic, Speed rekindling his friendship with Black is vital to his arc of opening up to others about his emotions. Black’s trauma and struggles, and getting over the hardships and guilt from his past, make him a good character to see grow as the story progresses. Unlike Lazuli, his story isn’t completely focused on shipping, and his changes seem natural

NOW FOR THE GIRLS!!

First of all, Coastal “Crystal” Blue! The middle child of the Coastal Triplets! For how vital this family to the multiverse itself, Kris doesn’t really have.. anything to her name. she shares a backstory with Speed and Flare, sure, but she doesn’t get the same new abilities or plot armor they do. All Crystal has really done is (accidentally) evolve Flare, break the fourth wall, and is purely comic relief. The fact that Black has more plot relevance than her is insane. The only strength she really has above the average Eeveelution is the Classic Transformation, and even then, Alan has shown that if you’re not a full blood Coastal, it’s not gonna go super well. In a brief panel, it’s confirmed there are universes where Crystal is the Ultimus/has the virus instead of Flare, but that is never explored upon at all. Even as Flare is collecting all the light orb things from previous timelines

Shining Pearl is the Espeon who founds the Squad, getting the funds to buy the Treehouse with the help of Speed. The first scene in the chapter with her backstory is when she first gets a crush on Black, a key part of her personality for the first few chapters of the comic. Her arc on this “romance” (she just harasses Black) was going in a good direction for a little bit, as she realized what she was doing was wrong and moving on from her attraction. But it was planned before the cancellation for this to be when Black catches feelings. When she isn’t being down bad over Black the only other part of her personality is that she’s sorta the ‘mom friend’ of the squad, which isn’t really the best personality for her to have imo. especially when she’s at the same age, or even younger, than some people in the squad. Someone had pointed out to me a while ago that all the interesting stuff is about the people that know her, and not Pearl herself (like knowing Stella and Mollie since childhood, for example). On her own Pearl seems very bland, and that’s a shame since she could’ve been one of the comic’s best written characters.

Next up! You know her, you either love her or hate her: It’s Lapis Alfred Lazuli!! So her and her sister got kicked out of their house by their father at the age of five, because if they stayed they would’ve been murdered on the spot by an outlaw. Neither of the girls knew that however and thought for over a decade that their dad just hated them. This caused Lazuli to get extremely protective of Leaf, along with completely closing herself off from any other person. For a majority of the first few chapters, she was a TEXTBOOK Tsundere. Beating up (or threatening) anyone and everyone, with it purely being treated as a gag. We eventually learn that the one person she’s been abusing the most, Speed, is actually someone she has a crush on!!! how cute!!!!! (kill me) so now it’s a coin toss on if she’ll be a flustered schoolgirl around him or if she’ll keep being a Nasty Girl. she eventually realizes that Hey Maybe I’m Not A Nice Person (obviously) and tries to improve herself and it kinda. doesn’t work for me. She does have a hobby, she likes to read, but it’s mostly there as a bit to point out her crush on Speed again since she’s reading romance novels. I wanna talk more about her character but I wanna save that for the Essay Thing about how the romance in this comic is portrayed, since a lot of her personality is tied to the ship she’s a part of

SPEAKING OF CHARACTERS WHOSE PERSONALITIES ARE TIED TO THE SHIP THEYRE A PART OF!! Next up is the midfest that is Lapis Alfred Leaf!! she shares almost the exact backstory as Lazuli but she’s more reclusive due to the events than Pissed 24/7. seriously though other than her love to garden and connections with Solarflare name ONE thing about her character. like I don’t even have much to say about her lol. She’s the nicest of the Squad so ofc that also makes her the most boring apparently

oh god now we gotta talk about Silvia Sunsinger… OKAY!! So she’s like. her fav hobby is Harassing the locals apparently. And yet it’s bad when her brother does it. gotta love double standards. One of her biggest targets of this is Speed, purely because Silvia knows he’s strong and popular. And that’s just sort of becomes her whole personality. Sure she does other stuff, like find Manaphy, but even then her biggest goal is trying to get in Speed’s metaphorical pants. The whole reason she even evolved is because of how much she’s in “love” with Speed. Most of the shenanigans she gets into is tied to that Jolteon, one of the first ones I can think of is the body swapping she and Pearl did to try and get him to kiss her or whatever. The only other bit of personality she has is being like a sibling/parental figure to Sunshine (which is something everyone else is to her already), planking people with Crystal of occasionally, along with Harassing people! Literally how is she likable? what makes her likable??

Some Bonus Mentions: I like what they did with Stella but at the same time the small bit we see of her doesn’t really tell us much. She’s an explorer, She’s Alan’s wife, the Original Sunshine (not Lily)’s mother, Pearl’s childhood friend, and she dies. The only reason they have her die is because they wanna fuel Alan’s already tragic backstory. can we have ONE person not die after talking to him for more than 10 minutes like. good lord. Other than a brief flashback, we don’t even see her in the Prime Timeline! I like her, but girl is underdeveloped as hell. Same with her sisters

I also really like the mothers for the Squad members, but they have the same problem: a lot of them die. Sylvia, Blaze, and Mollie are the only ones still around. I also wish to know more about Daisy and Nora, Silvia’s friends from her backstory chapter. Especially since they have ties to Solar. I just hate that there’s so many characters with so little development and relevance.

And that concludes the yapping session for now! Hope all of that was coherent enough for you to understand the point I was trying to make! I love the funny eevee comic I swear I just think it could’ve done better lmaoo

[alfredsolos]

It bothers me when Jason stans try to demonize everyone else and try to woobify him to make him a constant victim.Jason did awful and indefensible things that were 100% his decision. What he went through was tragic but it doesn’t excuse his actions or make him less responsible for them.

You are 100% right anon!

Before I give my input, I'd like to state that I love Jason Todd and enjoy reading his comics.

With that out of the way, I think the biggest and most toxic problem of the fandom is their love for woobifying characters.

And this happens mainly to Tim and Jason.

A lot of people blame his actions to the pit madness. But that's simply not true.

Jason was aware and sane when he did those bad things. And that's what makes him so interesting. Because a hero turning into a different path willingly is very exciting to read.

I know a lot of people believe that Jason was an anti-hero when he came back to life, but it's simply not true. Jason was a villain when he came back. He turned to being an anti-hero way after that.

And things he did isn't portrayed accurately in fanon or is simply lacking.

They give two examples of him being bad, and basically try to give him a redemption through that.

It's way more than that.

He came back and murdered mafia leaders, stuffed their heads into a bag and basically showed it off.

He beat up Tim Drake. (He did not mean to kill him or hurt him beyond that. He wanted to send Batman a message)

Through out Batman and Robin (2009) he was literally one of the main villains. He kidnapped Dick and Damian and almost revealed their identities.

In Battle For The Cowl, he almost (intentionally) killed Tim. In fact, he smiled at Tim's unconcious form when he thought that he was dead. The only reason Tim was saved is because he slowed down his heartbeat.

In the same comic, he also shot Damian and caused him to get over 70 stitches.

He went around as Nightwing and had a murder spree.

Literally made fun of Bruce, when a nuclear powered villain was thrown onto Bludhaven, and Dick was thought to be dead.

While he was in Jail, he poisoned and killed 83 inmates.

And so on.

Jason Todd is a character that is written pretty good, and as I've said I like reading about him. But let's not infantilaze him, and instead treat him as the mature person he is.

The same goes for Tim Drake.

[xxtha-blog]

I can't really understand Ace's psychology... In the comic he seems to me to be a funny dandy, a bit of a tease but not a bad guy, with a trauma that has led him to do stupid things for reasons who were moral. Given that the comic ended on a hopeful note thanks to Dream, we can only imagine that things will get better for him afterwards... Whereas in the Asks, the commentaries and all the information outside the comic, he comes across as much more cynical, tragic and negative... In fact, over and above what I'm sure is a lack of understanding of the comic, it's a difference in the aura of both that I feel that's confusing me... Perhaps you can enlighten me?

There's definitely a difference in how Ace acts outside of the comic vs how Ace acts inside the comics. A lot of it is the difference between Ace being essentially shackled by Joker vs afterwards.

He really doesn't break the fourth wall very much within the comic so you don't get much of his active disdain of us. It's a contained story-line, he can't interact with creators in real-time. Whereas, on a medium like tumblr or in an rp event, he's real-time talking with creators, and he loves to antagonize creators, hence, being pretty cynical.

His nature as a character is something that isn't resolved and 'things will get better' doesn't mean he's doesn't have like. Fifty different mental illnesses still. In fact, Ace in the comic recognizes this by not saying that things are better, but that they could be better, and in two parts of that, his goal is to 1. Enjoy himself. And 2. Get over what he lost, both of which he is doing in most of the post-AU stuff. When he references his tragedy he usually does so mockingly or ironically. When he talks to creators he's also doing the same. The ask blog isn't that great of an example for his post-Au character given it's intentionally a non-canon and actively antagonistic format, so he's just constantly not enjoying it. A better example would be RP events on discord, which most people never saw, or this really old one-shot I made when I was like 16, which you can read here (it's not the best written but still in character):

This is a pretty typical way he'd react. He's not really overly cynical or negative, mostly just chaotic and quick witted. If he thought you thought that about that, he would be offended, and then he'd act much more positive, just for you. He'd give people gifts and sing funny musical numbers, full orchestration. Do some dances, really bring the energy.

If people thought he was too upbeat and positive, he'd kill a rabbit with a playing card in front of them, electrocute someone, and threaten to burn their house down (whether serious or not is up to you).

His personality is always revolving around his weird way of speaking and general oddities, but he'll essentially do anything as long as an illusion is fuelling it because illusions allow him to do anything. Which includes acting in a very wide variety of ways.

The power of illusions just lets him make the world his playground.

He plays the hero, he plays the villain, he plays whatever role he thinks is something you haven't seen him play before, because he can do whatever he wants (except cliches, they'll kill him dead), and he's going to do whatever he wants, to keep you on your toes. If he's talking to creators he's almost always going to be sarcastic though, simply because he doesn't like them very much. He uses other characters as vectors for his silly hi-jinks, which he just fundamentally can't pull when talking to creators directly.

You can also find a more in depth overview of his personality here:

[raytorosaurus]

wait, did the umbrella academy have a step sibling romance subplot?

under a cut for discussions of the above content and also mild comics spoilers if you care about that lol

yep, the comics are very textually about reactions to extreme trauma (familial trauma but with the extra layer of being famous and under scrutiny from the public eye since childhood - its own kind of isolation) and the characters are intentionally flawed and do fucked up things. the whole point is that it's a dark subversion of the superhero team genre, which was a lot more original/groundbreaking in 2007 than it appears now (definitely not the first one ofc - gerard was inspired by watchmen and doom patrol, and the boys came out not long before etc, but it did win an eisner back then for a reason). in the comics, rumor goes through a divorce and loses custody of her child, then reacquaints with her step-siblings who she hasn't seen in years after hargreeves's death. because she feels incapable of giving or receiving real love or human connection, has been taught from infancy that her power and her physical beauty are the only worthwhile things about her, and has nobody else in the world, she uses her power to make spaceboy fall in love with her. it's textually a non-consensual relationship right from the start and is acknowledged as a fucked up & harmful trauma response and treated as such. these aren't comics for kids lol.

imo the fundamental issue with the show that makes it unpalatable to me is that it tries to water down the content for a netflix (and preteen) audience, but then they still left in parts of the allison/luther plot, only they took out the whole 'rumor' aspect and ended up portraying as. romantic. and not tragic and disturbing lol. so the show had to backpedal and didn't textually denounce it as anything more than harmlessly cringey until like season 3. a similar thing happens to the seance's addiction storyline, which is a big deal and has very real consequences in the comics but kinda got played for laughs in later episodes of the show, and with portrayals of genuine disability, almost all of which are erased in the netflix adaptation (spaceboy requires a full-body mechanised assistive device to move, rumor is missing an arm and the kraken an eye, and vanya acquires a traumatic brain injury which impairs her motor and cognitive functioning etc.)

i'm certainly not saying the comics are perfect - their biggest issue is how white they are (which gerard has acknowledged and said he regrets) and some (presumably) unintentional racist imagery/stereotypes (e.g. the bodyguard abhijat who feels tokenised, and most other characters of colour being background non-speaking roles etc). those are things the comics can, should, and have been criticised for, but i don't see the step-sibling incest as it's portrayed in the comics as ~problematic - it's definitely supposed to be uncomfortable, at least in my reading of it. much more than it is in the show, in any case.

so overall like. the comics are super not for everyone, even beyond gerard's unconventional pacing/writing style that i know some people don't vibe with. they weren't meant for a wide audience. they're very dark and are primarily about fucked up trauma responses more than anything else - luther and allison's relationship is just one of these. i personally love the comics but it's totally understandable if other people find them unpalatable - but yk, dark media isn't immoral when it knows what it's doing. imo if the show was going to leave some of those darker plot points in they should have made the entire tone of the show darker and raised the rating; otherwise, they should have left out aspects like the step-sibling incest.

but yeah, tl;dr yes there's step-sibling incest in both versions, but it's treated very differently in both and imo is so much grosser in the show becuase they tried to make it palatable at first for some fkn reason lmao.

and beyond your question and just in general, the tv show being attributed to gerard when it's not his artistic content bothers me so so so much skdkffk. even if i totally loved the show, i can't staaaand things being miscredited, especially creative things. gerard's given steve blackman his blessing to make the show his own vision, and says he considers the comics and the netflix version entirely separate entities and has made a conscious effort to distance himself from the latter.

[linkspooky]

YOU KNOW DC?! WOW, I'M A FAN WHAT FAVORITE HEROES AND VILLAINS DO YOU HAVE MINE IS HALEY QUINN.

So sorry, my main area of expertise is Teen Titans characters and Batman Villains.

#5 Roy Harper

Roy is just the most wholesome sunshine boy. He's positive addict representation. (It turns out anyone can become an addict even superheroes, it doesn't make you a bad or morally deficient person). He is a loving single father. He is a team leader and friend. He's got it going on.

Roy projects this bad boy image but don't believe it, he just has low self-esteem, if anything he is one of the more wholesome superheroes. Roy tends to be really caustic and likes to pick fights with people, but don't buy it he's literally the bad boy who feeds kittens when no one is looking. Ollie is like a more idealistic batman, and Roy Harper is like a more idealistic Dick Grayson.

Roy is confrontational. but he has the best of intentions he only picks fights with people if there's a problem that needs solving. Also, the person he fights the most is Dick Grayson, and he needs someone to give him a kick in the pants every once in awhile.

#4 Donna Troy

Donna is actually one of the most nuanced comic book characters of all time, and it has nothing to do with her backstory so don't even bring that up. "She's just kind of plain and boring..." that's it you've got it, you've nailed the essence of Donna.

Donna's the one sort of normal person around a bunch of extreme personalities, so all of her friends use her as a free friend therapist, while completely ignoring Donna's own issues. Donna is the single mom of several traumatized teenagers except she's the same age as them.

Donna has this image among her friends as the perfect overachiever, but she's actually just as much of a mess as everyone else. One time Dick leaves Donna in charge of the titans and the team totally falls apart because Donna CANNOT lead. She tries to make Jason the leader of the team and he was like twelve at the time. Her entire personal life is a wreck, look up what happens to Donna Troy it's one of the saddest things in comic books. She's actually one of the most tragic characters, which makes her enduring desire to help her friends and take care of people a really strong character trait because it's continually tested by the tragedy in her life.

#3 Eddie Bloomberg

Every Teen Titans run gives me a new favorite character and Eddie was that for the Geoff Johns run. Seeing as my favorite hero of all time is Spiderman, there is nothing better than a normal, powerless teenager, trying to become a superhero because they want to help others.

Eddie's life is just very melancholy and lonely, he becomes so desperate to be a teen titans he literally seels his soul for the chance of being a hero. He almost cut his life even shorter, because being a hero for a few years seemed better to him than living as a normal person for a much longer life. Eddie works as a character because despite his abysmally low self esteem he tries to help people, and what makes him a hero is not his powers but who he himself is. Even after losing his powers the Titans need him around because he is the heart of the team.

#2 Rose Wilson

Terra is my favorite DC character of all time, and Rose is basically Terra if Terra actually lived. Rose and Eddie made the Geoff Johns run enjoyable for me, there's something deeply compelling about Rose's search for a family and also her desire to define herself as her own person.

If you are connected to Slade Wilson in any way he will just destroy your own life, so it is powerful to watch Joey and Rose connect as siblings outside of Slade, and also Rose keep trying to be a hero on the Teen Titans when no one on the team trusts her. Even when she leaves it's not because she was a bad person, it's because the whole team rejected her and even on her own Rose was still trying to figure out what the right thing to do was and how to live her life.

#1 Harley Quinn

Harley's just one of the most characters ever. Characters are their flaws and Harley has a whole lot of them, she's hurt a lot of people, she enabled a man to hurt so many more, she crossed a line as a psychiatrist, she's selfish enough that she'll terrorize gotham in the pursuit of love.

YET! She remains such a sympathetic character at her core. Not only because of the way the joker treats her, but because no matter much Harley tries to change herself in pursuit of being loved by someone else, Harleen was a doctor. Hurting people is against her nature. THe more people she hurts, the more she is hurt. She's like a living example of the cycle of abuse, she is a victim and she victimizes others, and yet there's always still that chance of recovery for her.

Harley's also just so unique. Her world view is so distorted. Her priorities are all messed up. She doesn't really have a system of morality so much as "If I do this, I will be loved...." and because of that she ends up doing some really bad things. Yet, there's something deeply relatable and identifiable of a person who just wants to be love.

She's incredibly emotionally complex. One unique thing about Harley is she kind of changes her entire personality depending on who she's around, and yet she's still Harley. Harley's just kind of this attention hungry, love seeking person, desperate to stand out, easy to get along with, easy to make friends. She's like this really wholesome while at the same time being a really toxic person, and all of those qualities make a volatile mix that just explodes into the funnest person ever.

[distort-opia]

so i just enjoy the batfam totally from the outside, i've never read the comics, i've only seen the nolan movies, and i've seen maybe an episode or two of the animated series. i find the family dynamic interesting so i follow people who talk about it, and maybe i'll actually dive in someday haha but WOW!! your tags on that post about jason's death and bruce's reaction really just blew me away. it seems like cynically realistic view of what might really happen between family members with a strained relationship like theirs seems to be, and it's painful to read about! of course, it could all be done with the intention of the fans leaving with the thought that bruce is a Good Guy, but still. it feels real in a really sad way. is this story from the comics? if so, do you know which series?

Hey! Yeah... That's the thing I find fascinating too, regarding that whole conundrum I mention in my tags to this post. When it comes to Bruce and Jason and Joker, the Watsonian and Doylist perspectives are both needed to understand the dynamics. DC bringing Jason back from the dead to create conflict with Batman… and then deciding to keep the character, but not really knowing what to do with him. Jason could not be allowed to challenge Bruce too much, make Bruce look too much like he's in the wrong, because Batman is the hero. Batman is the main character. So what we ended up with was a narrative skewed hard in Bruce's favor, one that does things like putting the blame on Jason for his own death and writing Jason as forgiving things that are hard to imagine ever being forgiven. And this couldn't be done without making Bruce express this attitude as well, which is what I was referring to-- within-Universe, this reads as Bruce being unable to accept that he has wronged Jason, and resorting to defense mechanisms mired in denial and repression. To stave off his guilt.

I do agree it's compelling though, from a character point of view... it makes sense in a tragic kind of way. Bruce was crushed by grief and guilt after Jason's death, he entered a spiral that was only broken by Tim and Dick's intervention. And then Jason came back, and confronted Bruce with a very difficult choice, borne from his anger at seeing that Joker suffered no consequences after killing him. And thing is, I am of the opinion Bruce's choice not to commit murder, even Joker's, is valid. (And also, that Bruce did do something; he refused to save Joker's life after Jason was killed, but Joker survived anyway.) The problem is... you know, Bruce slitting Jason's throat to save Joker's life. An almost-murder of his adopted son to avoid the murder of the guy who killed him. And how do you live with that, I suppose? Other than scrambling for every justification under the sun and burying yourself under mountains of denial? If Bruce reacted so strongly to Jason's death, how would he be able to keep going if he accepted the fact he nearly killed Jason himself? It's an incredibly selfish choice to shift blame onto Jason instead, make everything about Jason's death and not at all about the events of UtRH... but it makes sense in the context of Bruce defending himself from a grief and guilt he cannot come back from. Jason having committed crimes and killing people made it easier for Bruce to do this, too. Hide behind Jason's "instability".

Oof, ended up rambling again, sorry for how long this gets! I gotta say though, I'm not primarily a Batfam fan; I've got a similar approach to you, Anon. Making the note because there's definitely some comic-knowledgeable Batfam experts out there who are better equipped to speak on the topic. Alas, when asking about the story itself, I assume you mean Jason's death and return? Because if you want to read about that, I'd recommend the following (in this order):

Batman: A Death in the Family (Jason's murder)

Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying (for Bruce's reaction to Jason's death)

Optional: The Batman Files (Bruce's journal entry regarding Jason's death, which is a contradictory combination of blaming himself and Jason for it)

Optional: Batman: Gotham Knights #43-44 (for Bruce's recall of the events and a story that suggests that, even if Jason had been an emotional and reckless teenager, Bruce as an adult should have made better choices regarding him-- shoutout to Barbara)

Optional: Batman (1940) Annual #25 (Jason coming back to life)

Optional: Red Hood: The Lost Days (Jason's time after being resurrected and prior to coming back to Gotham)

Batman: Under the Red Hood (Jason's return)

And I guess if you want a sampler of what Bruce sounds like at his shittiest when doing the stuff described, there's Batman: Battle for the Cowl #3, in which Bruce leaves Jason a message post-mortem. It's not a very nice message. And I wish I could say Bruce at least doesn't do more shitty things regarding Jason even after all of that, but I'd have to be lying.

[thelittlecoughsomewhere]

So I'm now gonna give you my thoughts. I will try my best to keep it chronologically but we'll see how that's gonna go

so first of all I have my blorbos back and that's FANTASTIC and nothing can take away from that. So even though I have criticisms I want you to know that I loved this episode and these specials will be very dear to me, no matter what happens

I'm not gonna lie, the fourth wall break did not work for me. was goofy

THE NEW INTRO OMG love love love love it

the tone of the episode was a little bit too comedic for me and not sincere enough. The acting of both Tennant and Tate was also a bit too overacted sometimes, almost as if the director had children in mind as target audience. The pacing was too fast, the episode didn't allow the emotional beats too linger.

I loved getting to know Shaun and Rose and hope we will see more of them in the next specials (But I think they won't be in the second special)

Love Shirley, hope we will see more of her. (maybe UNIT spin off) Ruth Madeley is a great actress. (I know her from RTD's Years and Years)

I loved seeing Sylvia again, I absolutely love the redeemed her. She was so fiercely protective of Donna. (good on her for punching the Doctor) And she is a great grandma to Rose, even though she is learning. I love that Rose has a supportive family.

The plot with the meep was fun (Unfortunately I got spoilered and knew that the Meep was a villain in the original comic). The practical and special effects were on FIRE.

The dramatic "Why does it have to be this scene?" + the return of the DoctorDonna + Donna seemingly dying in the Doctor's arms = Good stuff and obviously everything I waited for during this episode. But I am disappointed that Donna didn't confront him with the fact that he went aginst her expressed wishes when he wiped her memories in Journey's end. (maybe this topic will get discussed more seriously in Special 2 but I try to not get my hopes up). I get it, there was no time for a long conversation in the scene where literally all of London was at stake, yet Russel did take the time to let her be angry about the lottery ticket, but he portrays her anger in a comedic way

speaking of the lottery ticket: I think this is the only point of the special I am truly miffed at. I loved the fact that Donna gave the money away because of course she would. And when she said that she knew that people out there where in pain and need and would need it more than her and giving it away felt like the sort of thing "he" would do I took 2 things away from it :

2. I know I'm probably the only one but I thought she meant her dad when she said "him". The lottery ticket is symbolically a present from him and in my personal headcanon Sylvia and Wilf told her some kind of story that tied the lottery ticket to her dad to honour him.

1. the experiences with the Doctor did have a lasting impact and changed her. And this character development from season 4 was not totally eradicated. The Donna we know from season 4 would give away the money of course she would.

But no, DoctorDonna is mad at him because she gave away the money to be like "the Doctor", her subconscious memory loop made her do it. This takes away from Donna's character and from her autonomy. Also it makes the scene too comedic which gives me whiplash when the scene turns tragic

I don't like the fact that the timelord consciousness in Donna was activated by a sequence of words. (Can't explain why, I just didn't enjoy that)

The metacrisis is solved because the metacrisis energy is shared by both Donna and Rose. Neat, I like that. (The idea of solving the metacrisis by having the time lord consciousness be passed on to Donna's child is almost a staple in fix-it-fics, so I guess as a fanfiction reader and writer I feel vindicated). In an earlier post of mine I wrote about the fact that I hated the idea that Donna influenced Rose's name, but I'm fine with the name now because she chose it herself. Having Rose's trans identity be influenced by her time lord heritage surely is a bold choice by Russel. I think he will make a lot of bigots angry but I have also already read posts from some trans people who didn't like this story beat. I personally liked it when I watched it, it felt like everything was fitting into place. But I want to let the story linger for a few days maybe I will change my mind. I will say I like that Russel takes risks with his writing choices.

The scene that made me roll my eyes was when Rose and Donna said "There's a way to get rid of it. Something a male-presnting Timelord will never understand: Just let it go". Come on, this was cringe. This line actually sounded like something Moffat wrote for River Song. The reason this line annoys me isn't even because it presents female-presenting people superior/different to male-presenting people. It annoys me because it's lazy writing. Russel clearly didn't spend a lot of time thinking about the metacrisis problem and working out the mechanisms behind it. I have read dozens of fanfiction that solved the metacrisis in a much more complex and thus more satisfying way

The new Tardis interior is stunning. It's big and spacious with a lot of ramps. IT IS TOTALLY WHEELCHAIR-ACCESSIBLE. It's so clean and sterile and all-white, though which makes it feel less homely. Love the fact that the panels can change colour, hope they do that often.