#this like. Of comics where they're taking a lot of stories that were popular in the late '70s and '80s and into the '90s?

[chuplayswithfire]

This era of X-Men covered in X-Men '97 is genuinely one of my favorites and the fact that I'm already seeing signs that they're going to cover several arcs that are my favorites, is increasing the sensation that this show was made for, like me and a small handful of personal friends who are all losing our mind at the choices already made.

[mysterycitrus]

Hey!! Love your art and your meta posts. I was wondering about your thoughts on something because I don't think I've ever really read about much of it in canon (might be missing something though), but do the batkids have their own Brucie Wayne-esque personas? I figure they'd be expected to act a certain way, like they've been taking in by a party loving play boy, they're gonna be a at least somewhat spoilt social butterflies right? I just can't stop thinking about the kids hitting like teenhood and having to adopt and put on that kind of act because it would be a little suspicious if nothing about Brucie rubbed off on them. Maybe they steal Bruce's cars or crash a gala, something staged just for the tabloids like that. Idk, I just find the idea of (most of) the kids not being raised anything like that and having to act up in the name of keeping their identities safe really interesting because I don't think they'd find it fun, I think it would actually gross them out to throw around money and act like brats.

lovely anon this is SUCH a fun question and i shall answer it in parts. the first is this — what is the purpose of the bruce wayne persona?

bruce created a specific public image of himself for several reasons — to deflect any suspicion that he’s batman, to justify his frequent disappearances from the public eye, and to be consistently underestimated by people he was in opposition with (gothams corrupt elite, the gcpd, etc). the popular interpretation of this is that he’s like a kardashian, but to be honest id say he’s a lot more like a donatella versace— relatively reclusive but who occasionally pops up doing the weirdest shit ever. he posts on dick’s insta like bruce WAYNE ❤️

wrt his kids, no, i don’t think many of them have that sort of glamorised persona. part of it is that the “gala” trope in fandom just…… doesn’t really exist in the comics? like bruce will take vicki vale to an event, or go to a luthercorp thing to gather intel, but the idea of everyone hitting up an event at the gotham four seasons is not a common story beat. and even then, again, the performance has a purpose outside of just being a distraction.

in particular, u have to consider how his kids are different from bruce. jason and dick were both lower class, if not actively below the poverty line and acting spoiled won’t win them any favours. cass straight up isn’t interested in that kind of performance. damian is honest to a fault. duke has his own family that he’s proud of. when u consider that damian and cass and duke and dick also aren’t white, u have to think about how acting like a glitzy idiot would help them in the same way it would bruce. short answer — it very much wouldnt. many people will think less of them regardless. it would be dehumanising, and because none of them have that same degree of disconnection from the standard person that bruce has, how would them being seen as spoiled idiots help them?

dick has always lived with civilian neighbours, had civilian jobs, and fostered civilian relationships. him being a cop was bad, but he takes a lot of pride in being someone who’s like… dependable. a good neighbour. jason is legally dead, but he wouldn’t have wanted to be seen as the dumb poor kid either. cass would probably play with peoples expectations of her, but not like an established persona that she has to take on. duke is, again, very attached to his family and where he grew up, and is very aware of assumptions people might make about that. damian would rather kill himself than pretend to be an idiot. tim, again, is a strong maybe, but i also don’t think he’d give a shit. he really values keeping himself as tim drake intact, away from robin. he wants to keep being himself.

i just think most of them would stay out of the public eye. remember — bruce isn’t active online. there is still massive control over released information about him, especially with babs. i think they would purposely make themselves boring and unassuming.

the short answer is that none of them, truly, possess bruce’s raw commitment to the bit.

[being-of-rain]

My collection of Doctor Who Magazine comic reprints! (Or 'graphic novels' as they're officially called, which I feel is a bit misleading since they're almost all collections of many different stories, but I don't think 'graphic novel' has ever had a standardised definition so whatever.)

I'm pretty happy about having the complete set, which includes very almost every Doctor Who comic published by Panini and Marvel UK over the last 45 years. It's a series I love a lot, because it has some of my all-time favourite Doctor Who stories, and because (like the TV show itself) it's a fascinating look at how a series can change over decades of regular releases.

Feel free to ask me any questions about them! As you can probably tell, I think about the series a lot.

Image 1: The 36 books in order of when the original comics were published (more or less. A few of the books collect comics from several different times, meaning I have to take some creative liberties in where I place them). This is the order I keep them on my shelf. The books aren't all the same dimensions, because DWM changed to a different size from 2013 to 2019.

Image 2: The same order of books, turned around so you can see the back covers. For anyone who happened to be curious about that.

Image 3: The spines of the collection on my bookshelf. They started out all different colours, but eventually standardised a black design.

Image 4: (Click to see the full image.) The books in order of when the graphic novels were published, which was 2004-2024. Here you can see how they started out reprinting some of the most popular runs of classic Doctors, then changed to alternating between the most current comics and filling in old gaps in the collection. You can also see the evolution of the covers, from character to dramatic movie-poster-style illustrations, and going through every Doctor Who logo of the last 20 years.

[shinesurge]

I think it's a side effect of having a slightly bigger audience than before, but this year I've been getting a LOT of questions about offering digital editions of the KC books so I wanted to talk about it out loud for a bit.

There are a bunch of complicated reasons I've never offered the volumes as digital downloads, and I think they mostly boil down to concerns about the pretty embarrassing lack of significant internet presence Kidd Commander has accumulated over the 11 years it's been running. The audience I DO have is very enthusiastic, and let me be clear that I appreciate how unique and cool that is, especially in the era we're in where I really have no business running things the way I do lmao

The problem is, in refusing to do any of the predatory social media bullshit that tricks people into doing advertising for my comic while pretending it's a fandom, and by taking initiative to build fandom spaces for people to hang out in myself, I've created an extremely insular community where folks don't really feel any need to help it grow. "If you build it they'll come" is true, but the other half of that is people going "hey neat this thing builds itself!" and you end up with dozens of fandom posts, hours of discussion, and even fanwork locked away in inaccessible spaces while the pages on the site consistently get no comments or interaction and the public tags are empty.

WHAT does this have to do with digital editions lol

The idea was, a thing that helps set KC apart is the webcomic thing where you're not only checking a site regularly as a routine, but you're building some impression of the author as well. My little news posts are bundled with the pages, the site gives a sense of Environment in way static editions don't. In return for offering nearly a thousand pages of completely free content the reader has to Encounter Me at some point, and be made aware that this is an operation being run by a single person, and that its survival is entirely dependent on other people reading it and supporting it. Going to the site ALSO at least lets people know a comment section /exists/, and there COULD be a community to participate in. You don't get that with the books as much, but the books are almost exclusively going to folks who already read the comic, I don't think they're floating around out there to many people who didn't buy them directly from me after reading it online.

It is objectively easier for people to binge an archive they can carry around offline with them, I completely get it. But I've watched SO many new readers fall in love with this thing in real time as they leave comments behind them through the archive, and even just forming the habit of checking the site regularly really goes a long way towards forming enough of a connection with a reader for them to stick around for the long haul. If you just read it all isolated on your phone, it stops there; it's easy to forget it's an independent operation that desperately needs your support, /I/ have no idea whether you liked it or if people are even reading, and when you're finished you'll move on to something else because there's no visible fandom to engage with.

I don't WANT to think this is what will happen, but it's already been happening here for years even without proper channels. I sort of feel like this would just be facilitating my own demise lmao. All the comics who run the way I do were ALREADY popular back before the landscape shifted to fast-fashion sensibilities, so Girl Genius offering digital editions doesn't really harm them, you know? By the time forums died their community was already so stable and self-sufficient they could quit updating the main story for a whole year and not even feel it. Gunnerkrigg is signed on with fuckin Dark Horse now. People doing the things KC does got in early and stabilized before I even got started, fandom is a different world now and I'm already barely keeping this train running on my own as it is.

But on the other hand: accessibility!! HOW many times have I wanted to engage with something but they WONT LET ME PAY THEM FOR THE THING I WANT so I just leave!! The alternative here isn't "oh if i FORCE THEM to read it online they'll stick around" it's "if i can't read it how i want then i'm skipping it". That makes total sense, /I/ do that! What about people who want the extra content in the books but can't pay international fucking shipping!! It's also an Archival issue, which absolutely kills me, but that's a whole other post lmao. There are extremely good reasons to offer another option for reading my work, but I am so anxious this would just be putting a nail in this stupid coffin I've been building already.

I've been having this conversation a lot, mostly with Lee, but it came up again this morning in an email and regardless of my own feelings: this is a thing people want, a very reasonable thing, and if I fail to provide it that's just bad business. Do y'all here have any thoughts about all this? I would like to give the people what they want and y'all are The People.

Anyway buried way down here so far I'll make another post about it: I /am/ going to offer the specials as digital downloads, permanently in the shop. They're old books by now, I'm having issues keeping them in stock anyway, and they DON'T exist online anywhere, so this isn't technically any skin off my back outside of piracy issues, which. would be a stupid thing to fret about lmao

thanks for reading all this! I'm gonna go sort through pdfs for a while

[krispdreemurr]

oh oh i have an interesting discussion/query ! what do u think the meta purpose of making kris act like they do at the end of chapter 1 was? specifically like the imagery of a kid in a green/yellow shirt manipulating a red soul, pulling out a knife, having red eyes and grinning evilly cause like... i feel like deltarune definitely incorporates the memory of undertale throughout? like its advertised as a game for people who finished undertale and theres lots of references and things that are only as impactful if you had an emotional connection to the original game, like spamton neo and gaster saying "have you been looking for me?" and just.. so many things but most interestingly imo being that ralsei almost comes across like a fanonized "cinnamon roll" version of asriel that was so popular way back when? ofc he's more than that but thats like. a Part of him anyways what i mean is like, when chapter 1 released many people (myself included) saw that and instantly assumed that kris was being controlled by chara because of how strongly chara-esque (*especially* to the fandom, like ralsei) the imagery was, only for chapter 2 to come out and many people (myself included^2) completely disregarded chara as having any bearing on the story whatsoever and that kris is just themself trying *not* to be controlled by us. i think we can all agree that the latter is correct, and some people were clearly smarter than me in chapter 1 and deduced the truth even then (e.g. lynxgriffin in their comics), but i am left wondering what the point of that was almost? i thought you might have some interesting thoughts on that, cause like, if kris's frustration with the player is essentially the main plot of the game (give or take), the allusion to chara was a little bit 'distracting' for the fandom i feel like? some ppl are (somehow) still confused & blaming chara even! i guess im just wondering, what if kris had wore a different shirt and menaced the player in a different way at the end of chapter 1? do you think it would have improved the story to eliminate the possibility of confusion, or do u reckon toby fox want us confused? idk LMAO just thinking aloud atp. just been on my mind the past few days bc in retrospect, while the intro to deltarune is obviously trying to trick you into believing this is "undertale 2", post-dark-world the game is unambiguously super different, to the point where it feels a little bizarre that there'd be a red herring *after* deltarune already smashed the notion that it's a prequel or sequel into pieces doesnt it?

i think it's most legible to me as an attempt by Kris to psych us out that they sort of get lucky with thanks to toby helping them!

like, obviously they have no way to know you've been menaced by nonbinary children before - the specific parallels aren't a thing they're reaching for. but they're trying to get the player freaked out, and toby sort of lends them a helping hand by making them coincidentally charalike.

it's not the first time he's had a character freak us out with knowledge they don't have (thinking about sans and the talking flower in grillbys), and it's not the first time in Deltarune alone where a parallel is arguably sheer coincidence in world but happens to echo something to the player. i don't think it's like cheap or anything - toby fox does a really good job building up a language of associations and connections and motifs and then sometimes uses that to trick you just the tiniest bit lmao

but just like Chara, the ways to see thru the trick are there if you're looking. if you pay attention to Chara, you learn their oh so ominous faces and scares were originally just a thing they did to have fun with their brother, and maybe you get an appreciation that they were a child trying to scare you in childish ways. similarly, if you talk to everyone in town, you learn that Kris is a prankster by nature who delights in freaking everyone out (and also someone who would eat an entire midnight pie), and maybe you get the chance to go "oh, they're pranking me, huh?"

a little like Chara, Deltarune ch1 uses Kris to ask if you've been paying attention to the material. did you notice this really, really wasn't Undertale? and if you did, what conclusion do you reach about this new kid?

[nullen-void]

Lego Stories

There are times when I've considered the idea of a media of the sort that is so bad, we want to fix it.

You know the type. Miraculous Ladybug, Worm, Danny Phantom--these are works that are really cool in concept, and have really cool moments, and have the potential for truly great worldbuilding and stories... but the execution falls flat. Works that get you angry over what could have been. Works that drive people like me to rewrite them in our heads, where fanon becomes more popular, more accepted, and maybe even more well-known than the canon.

I would like to propose a name for this type of work.

I call them Lego Stories, because if you follow the instructions you make a fun enough little setpiece, but the real fun begins when you take it apart and put it back together your way.

Worm is probably the best example of this. There are so many pieces to it that would make a truly great story, if they were just rearranged a little. Or a lottle. And we, the fanfic authors, are the ones who see the shape we want it to be and work towards it.

Anyone in the Worm fandom can probably name three or more fics they've read that they'd call better than canon. Harry Potter and Miraculous too.

The first example that springs to mind at the moment is @zoe-oneesama's Scarlet Lady comic. It's a retelling of Miraculous that diverges from the moment Marinette recieves the Ladybug earrings, because Chloe steals them instead. Everything that happens in the comic is canon, but a little to the left; all the pieces are there, but put to a better use, in my opinion of course.

Any fanfic does this to an extent, of course. A Lego Story is one that leaves lots of room for fanfic authors to explore. Some works are too tight to squeeze anything new in, and writing fic for it is a constant struggle; instead of Lego, they're a stack of cards that could collapse if you move anything. But that's a conversation for another day.

[jesncin]

I know you said at some point that you had zero idea on how to put your own stamp on the Bat Rouges, and that does sound super difficult I feel like I have a few suggestions for the big 4 (Joker, Riddler, Selina, and Penguin) at least.

Joker - Follow B:TAS, bits of the 1989 film. In addition to actually being funny yet scary (especially B:TAS) those takes on the man were ex-mafiosi. Do what you will with the concept of Joker once being in the mob.

Riddler - He's an actual genius, but he's also an attention seeking narcissist, and the Arkham games the man has a case of megalomania, so maybe have him at some point move some operations to metropolis. Basically make the man an honorary Superman villain. He HAS worked alongside Lex in the silver age and in SOME comics, so like a Riddler-Lex team up could be in the air.

Catwoman/Selina - This is a free box so long as she remains a thief within the grey area of morality.

Penguin - Another free box honestly because Oswald has been redone a LOT, though I recommend going back to some earlier comics and some modern stuff to distill his essence.

While I appreciate the suggestions, I feel like I'm not clear enough with communicating why I struggle doing a reimagining of the bat rogues. So to put it plainly, when I do a re-mix: I need a thesis (a story to tell). I usually form a thesis if I find a narrative opportunity or I'm dissatisfied with how the character is handled in canon. That thesis will then fuel the story and design interpretation of that character.

Lately I've been reimagining Conner Kent/Superboy because I feel in canon after his initial debut in Reign of Supermen, Conner struggles being overshadowed by Jon Kent Superboy or Superman's legacy. DC doesn't know where to place him or what to do with him after his Lex Luthor-Superman-clone origin as a solo. Much of the later additions to Superfam don't feel as politically motivated as Clark would later be interpreted as (with the exception of Kong). So I wanted to create an origin that helps Conner stand on his own, be a uniquely different experience to Clark, and place him somewhere new after his origin is revealed- that adds longevity to his narrative. That's how my Paul Westfield/Conner Luthor version is created, from that thesis.

And that's my approach with all the characters I've done so far too. I wanted to tackle Martian Manhunter's ableist lore, or I wanted to reinforce the immigrant allegory in the Clois dynamic, or revitalize Superman rogues because they're underappreciated (Livewire), or I wanted the evil robot to be more gender (Brainiac). When I get suggestions to just follow what works, that's not creatively fulfilling for me.

Stuff that gets the gears in my brain turning are when I see fans passionately talking about but also being critical of characters they love. Like this Scarecrow video! It opened my eyes to how underutilized and undeveloped a character Scarecrow is (who I previously thought was popular). That's the kind of thing that gets me excited to pitch an interpretation on a character!

And lastly! I really don't want to crossover Batrogues into other hero's worlds where I can. I've done it sometimes sure, but only when there's a story to tell. Rogues are created to tackle a specific superhero's abilities and themes. A superhero crossing over rogues too often (especially with the Bat rogues, I get it they're the best rogues gallery in the business) feels like the creator lacks confidence in that hero's own rogues gallery. I'd rather revitalize a hero's rogues gallery than have My Adventures With Other People's Rogues Gallery. Amirite, MAWS.

[wellzofyouth]

Hot take

But I think comic stans would be a whole lot happier if they stopped judging works compared to the source material and judging works about how they best utilized the source material to tell an engaging and complex narrative. Does that makes sense? A lot of criticism since I got back in comics is relayed to the idea about how all works about xyz needed to be like this because xyz. But that mindset is quite frankly childish. And I'm surprised at how popular it is in these circles.

Comics will never directly translate to the big screen. Entirely different medium. This is obvious.

Due to the long running history of the comics , it is quite *literally* impossible to fit years of history into a 2 hour film or 1 season TV show. A lot of comics build on multiple past issues to build a narrative. Lets just say, a character is originally introduced in an event where years worth of storyline is needed, or referenced, for the story to make sense.

You can NOT put that context into a adaptation. In order to do so, you have to go along with the assumption that the audience understands these characters. This is bad storytelling. This is usually fine with characters like Batman or Spiderman as they're ubiquitous in pop culture, but not for lesser known heroes like Nightwing, or even Wonder Woman. Ask how many people know who Steve Trevor is or who Nightwing is compared to who uncle Ben or Peter Parker is.

The audience must be introduced to the character, grow to like the character, and watch the character grow all WHILE having an engaging plot, and, most importantly in relation to this, good pacing and themes. Including the entire origin of a superhero and how they're technically a God might be interesting to some comic fans, but the general audience will get bored.

So you have to gut, rearrange, and combine certain characters to make the story you want to tell and tell it well.

The first two characters that come to mind when comic fans criticize off source material alone and not engaging with the actual STORY, is YJ and how they handled Cass and how Joker 2 handled Harley. Now I never watched either of them--and it doesn't matter for the point im trying to make--but a lot of the criticism I've seen is just that those characters were different and had different backstories.

It's fine not to like a character because they've changed from the source material. Literally. It's fine not to like a character or story for any reason. But I DO think it's bad faith criticism to call a work of art bad because it changed the source material. News flash: all source material is changed in adoptions. Even the original source material is based off changed source material. Fans of old comics will know the pain of having a characters retcon backstory being the preferred one by Fandom. It sucks!!!! And I won't name names but you're thinking of one right now, aren't you?

I dislike the change YJ did to Cass if i solely compared it to the source material. BUT that doesn't mean the work or even the change itself was bad if the way it was handled fitted the themes, did something interesting with her character in THAT story, or improved the quality and pacing of the story. That's it. Nothing else matters I promise you. Young Justice is only bad because YJ itself is an overrated show.

[dairy-farmer]

Sorry if you've already touched on this, but what are your thoughts about the discourse/discussion about Tim in the comics and Tim from the lens of A03/fan fiction?

For example, I hear a lot from old comic fans about how the series with Tim dating Bernard was doomed to fail bc 'the writer wrote him like her fanfiction version of Tim and not the real character'. There was a lot of discourse with canonical announcing Tim as queer, and that's kinda all these older comic book fans seem to keep coming back to. Idk, there just kinda seems to be an underlying feeling of misogyny towards the female writers and anti lgtbq vibes that it's hard to hear like a real arguement against the series.

I guess as a long time a03/Fandom person, I'm so used to just creating another little reality for the things I disagree or want to explore with a character, that it's strange to see people so upset that Canon doesn't flow the way the want.

it's no problem!! and i haven't really touched on the newer comics all that much mostly because i also don't particularly like them, not for any specific reason-they're decent enough but i don't really think they're 'tim'-but i do know what you're talking about. on twitter and tumblr i see a lot of different takes regarding tim and how he's written in this newer robin series.

for starters: i get what you're talking about where criticism of the comics might partly because of anti-lgbt attitude. especially since tim getting confirmed to be bisexual made A LOT of people mad (including ppl who arent homophobic but are mad that it wasn't THEIR favorite robin who got confirmed queer like dick, jason, or damian etc). comic bros and even casual comic fans who had never even heard of tim or even gave a shit about him were now furious. and while there might be ppl with genuine critiques- some of hatred of the way tim is written in the newer comics you really have to take it with a grain of salt because it very well could be comic bros hating because "robin isn't gay".

same with the writer, meghan fitzmartin. in general, women DO have an uphill battle when it comes to working in comics because it is very male dominated. and it's no secret that a lot of comic fans are opposed to women writing in comics. so misogyny, and even jealousy also plays a role with how much criticism is ACTUALLY warranted. but that doesn't mean a woman in comics isn't allowed to be criticized if they do a bad job or do a botched execution when their job is supposed to be making good, enjoyable, stories that do justice to the characters. i do think meghan may have some decentish ideas but whether she genuinely has the writing chops to deliver on those big ideas is well...iffy. but then again i genuinely don't keep tabs on comic writers or they're projects so maybe that will change.

when it comes to the critique of tim being written like a "fanfiction" version and not a "real" version of him i do see what they mean.

when I think of fanon tim I think of all the mischaracterizations that have been popularized. a coffee obsessed gremlin that doesn't sleep who is deeply insecure and agonizes over his place in the family, thinking he doesn't belong. people LIKE that tim is portrayed like that (in fanfiction) otherwise that characterization wouldn't be so pervasive in fics (there's also the possibility that a lot of ff writers DON'T know any better because many don't read comics but they do read fics and so they base their portrayals solely off what they read in fics resulting in this racoon eyed, coffee loving character who they believe to be an actual portrayal when it's really just someone's idea/exaggerated interpretation of tim).

i really don't see a lot of that in meghan's writing, the issues with tim's writing with her are different. if anything WFA is the one that really have the 'written as a ff character' vibe. but that series is also SUPPOSED to be deeply unserious as a fun slice of life universe where nothing goes wrong for anyone ever as a soothing balm for the oftentimes depressing stories in batman comics.

but in meghan's writing I also don't see a lot of what i consider to be core tim values. is she the best writer for tim? no i don't really think so. but there is a certain degree of understanding for his character. I see the comics and I can recognize that it's tim. so it's not offensively OC.

a lot of complaints seem to stem from his relationship with bernard being too much of a focus. people say how tim does too much thinking about him when...he was a lot worse in the 90s with steph. I remember getting so irritated when entire comics of robin would be narrated by steph or about her, i'd be like 'I want to read about ROBIN and his adventures, not steph, why is she even relevant?'. but tim's relationships to other people are a core part about him so you just have to take it.

the part that i think is justified in critique is in talking about whether her writing of bernard dowd is good. that is a much easier thing to answer. and its that its not good writing. in fact it's a pretty bad, inaccurate portrayal of him given how he was written when we first knew him. he's sort of been...sanded down? kind of remade into some new, almost unrecognizable character that fits into what she believes would be a nice, wholesome, gay partner for tim. which is an issue for me because we have seen and know what tim is like in relationships. tim had tension with, disagreed with, got annoyed with, fought and argued with his other partners like stephanie and ariana. but he also enjoyed himself and was happy with them. there was a balance there of good and bad because tim's unique situation of being robin made it so there had to be good and bad. with bernard it's all very passive and easy. they don't argue, they don't really fight, or have any struggles in their relationship when trying determine compatibility. avoiding tension in the relationship when tim has a track record of it makes it almost seem like she's afraid of the risk of portraying a gay relationship in anything less than a golden light. which is not good writing. BUT it is also very NEW. so maybe that will change (but there's a similar problem with jon kent and his bf so idk)? i personally believe kon would've been a more ideal partner with their shared history, chemistry, tension, the fact that fans have wanted it for decades, and the fact that it would've been such a good addition to the arc of self acceptance for kon's character. and many of the issues that tim being with bernard wouldn't be a thing because tim and kon famously don't see eye to eye 100 percent of the time and so their relationship would struggle and grow as they go from friends to romantic partners.

ultimately in my opinion to write a truly good tim drake you need to be able to accurately portray the thing that made him such a great robin: his heart of gold. tim cares about doing the right thing SO much. he cares about helping people. he's not some cold, unfeeling calculated computer who uses people as pawns and abandons his morals at the slightest inconvenience or seduction to the 'dark side'. and he's not some coffee drinking hacker man that is 20 steps ahead and smug about it.

tim worries about people, he's upset at injustice, feels guilt at not being able to save people, is judgy, sometimes a brat, sarcastic, gets angry at people for throwing their lives away, gets very invested in things that catch his interest, is too curious for his own good, nosy. he lies through his teeth and then bats his eyes in sweet as pie innocence. will think VERY rude thoughts about people but will bite his tongue because he's a nice boy👼 but sometimes things slip out. he is somehow simultaneously able to be the 🥺 and 😈 emoji at the same time. his odds of making bad decisions increase by 100 fold if in the company of other stupid teenagers.

now i write tim as a very exaggerated version of that core self. that's what a lot of ff authors do. they choose a handful of traits they like best about him and spin entire fics about it. i don't think writing tim as a fanfiction version of himself is a bad thing because some fanfic is genuinely better than the source material and that comes from being very good at understanding the character. the tim of today can't be written the same way he was in his golden age, the 90s, because a lot of his struggles and hurdles that he dealt with in those comics are over. they're done. tim can't be 30 years old and still wondering if he's doing a shit job as robin. tim IS a good robin and he should be able to acknowledge that (funnily enough one of his clear acknowledgements of that is often wiped away by fics- that being the titans tower scene where jason asks if tim thinks he's the better robin and tim, without hesitation, says yes) a lot of older fans are clinging to problems that tim has already resolved. he's not thirteen and insecure about his abilities. he's not on his first relationship with someone (but he is in his first relationship with a boy). he's not still learning how to navigate his relationship with batman and the rest of the family or struggling to come to terms with his civilian and caped life. do some of those things still trouble him on occasion? yes but they're not the main focus anymore.

tim has to have new problems, new challenges, new growth.

i had some hope for new tim comics.

would i like to have seen more tim centric material or at least good stories. and often times in the new tim comics tim was exactly the same at the end of the issue as he was at the beginning. tim struggling with his identity is something that made an appearance in 90s comics a lot but I think for the newer ones that it would've been better received/more interesting if it were...written better?

idk. i don't know a single comic fan that loved every detail of their fav's comics. was it the best run? no. but it was okay enough i guess. it was lukewarm, not standing ovation worthy but also nobody should be throwing tomatoes at the performers either, it just earned a polite clap of acknowledgement which i don't think is a very bad thing but still i hope we get something better!

[rappaccini]

okay spidergwen 4d chess is evolving to spidergwen 8d chess for this one.

if synergy with the spiderverse movies got comics-gwen into this crisis of character consistency where gwen can't go home to earth 65, can't come out of the closet, and can't even refer to herself as an adult, the long game for neutralizing gwiles and restoring gwen's character is using synergy to pull her out of it.

but even then it's gonna be a fucking rollercoaster ride that could derail at any time and the realistic best-case scenario will still lead to gwiles happening again, just makorrafied.

here's the short version:

now walk with me:

first, gwen's always been and always will be subject to synergy. all comics characters are, but gwen is especially vulnerable to it.

her creation in 2014 right after the general audience learned gwen died barely a year ago in amazing spider-man 2, ship teasing her with peter immediately and and being kept on a pedestal away from all spider-men but him? absolutely meant to capture emma stone/andrew garfield nostalgia. to the point where the original voice in people's heads when they read gwen's comics was absolutely emma's.

ten years ago, petergwen was the original gwiles. it was a ship between gwen and a far more popular spider-man that reduced her to the role of supportive girlfriend, took her away from her world, her stories and the people who love her, prevented her from being her own person-- and wouldn't let her explore her sexuality. and it felt like a given that it would happen.

like i remember reading those original spiderverse comics in 2014, being afraid gwen was just going to be a plot device to make peter parker sad. that she'd get killed by morlun at the end of the arc, and he'd have even more gwen angst. and then, after she lived, that he'd throw away decades of development for a terrible fling with a barely-legal variant of his dead girlfriend.

instead, that didn't happen. because a lot of writers and editors worked like fuck for years to keep it from happening. they kept them apart, or kept their interactions on a tight leash. now, ten years later, peter and gwen's interactions have a big brother/little sister vibe. they're out of the danger zone. the consensus is "peter and gwen sometimes have tension early in their dynamic, but they get past it and stay friends" and that's rippled out into other media's spider-peter and spider-gwen dynamics (the marvel's spider-man cartoon? does exactly that. gwen and peter have a shiptease, but ultimately stay friends).

the arrival of the spiderverse movies did half the heavy lifting, because gwen's character started taking cues from those movies instead. the pressure to pair peter/gwen shifted to miles/gwen.

it went nowhere for a bit. they aren't friends. they just team up occasionally in group settings. miles is with tiana toomes and gwen's solo, while it lasted, gave her a few dates with harry and she's one conversation away from getting together with em jay. it felt like they were leaving the danger zone too.

but atsv pushed them back in the red. now years of the same anti-petergwen care must be applied to salvage that dynamic and protect gwen's character in the comics and any other media where she appears (movies? games? cartoons? same principle. keep them the fuck apart and give them other love interests to kill that vibe before it can poison anything else).

there's still a clear road out and a few different ways to get there. one of the simplest ones is the same way we got into this mess: use the synergy.

it takes time, careful writing, an alternate ship, and a new property for editorial to leech off of to change the flow of synergy and stop a bad plotline from taking root.

so... where do we seem to be going, and how can we escape?

the spiderverse era:

we know the drill: spiderverse synergy yields an ongoing where editorial wants gwen away from earth 65, in the multiverse, hanging around peter and miles, ambiguously a teenager, and the writer has no choice but to follow those edicts if they want the gig. we've done this already with the mcguire run. we're doing it again right now with the phillips run. we'll probably do it at least one more time when btsv hits.

itsv synergy led to gwen exploring the multiverse when not on 65 (and a character beat where miles crushes on her and she's totally indifferent), the book flopping and getting canned 10 issues in, a relaunch about commuting from 65 to 616 with her eventually moving to 616 for good, that one getting canned after 10 issues too, gwen hanging around 616 and helping out in a few events, and then several multiverse-themed miniseries that put gwen back in 65 without much explanation, eventually ending in her back home for the whole story... and getting extremely close to coming out of the closet and starting a romance with em jay.

atsv synergy is trying to plant gwen in 616 For Good this time, and putting her in a few movie-tie-in events to seal the deal... and nobody wants it. the announcement of gwen's new status quo was met with annoyance and indifference from non-gwen fans, and disappointment from gwen fans. nobody wants this thing except for a minority of hardcore gwiles shippers who don't even buy her comics.

we're probably looking at a similar pattern as last time's attempt: a flop that's canned after a few arcs (maybe even 10 issues), a possible stab at gwiles during the book, a possible relaunch and likely second flop if the 616 status quo is kept, then back to miniseries that gradually return her to her own world. (it would be great if gwen keeps her ongoing and is quietly sent back to 65, possibly even with the same writer, but we can't bet on that.)

btsv comes out in 3-5 years. whatever progress gwen does make towards making it home will likely be yanked back because we'll probably rinse and repeat the sv synergy shit again: another gwen-in-616/multiverse-themed ongoing relaunch that flops, followed by miniseries, probably with gwiles round 3 cranked up even harder somewhere along the way.

-> but maybe 🤞 with gwen confirmed as bisexual by that point. they might not let gwen get a girlfriend in under 5 years, but letting her say "i'm bi" feels possible. she's one conversation away from coming out, and her writers keep putting her in queercoded storylines with women she has chemistry with. at some point, all that momentum's going to break through.

for the immediate future, it's not looking good.

what's that? it's cindy moon with a steel chair!

by then the moonissance should be underway thanks to the insomniac spider-man 3 game dropping around btsv. cindy moon/silk is insomniac's spider-woman instead of ghost-spider.

yes, there was that scrapped multiplayer concept where spider-gwen's a prominent character. but it was scrapped.

if gwen's in the games, she'll have a supporting role, most likely as a civilian, hopefully not as peter or miles' love interest. maybe as cindy's.

-> if gwen is miles's interest, fuck. (unlikely: insomniac's pretty committed to hailey, and tiana toomes is semi-canon thanks to a tie-in novel. it's more likely for them to favor those love interests than cram gwen in out of nowhere.)

-> if she's peter's, it's annoying but salvageable. (also unlikely: it'd be pretty dumb to build up peter/mj as a committed relationship just to replace her with gwen right as they're about to settle down)

-> ... but if she's cindy's? this might be the ace in the hole.

if ism3 comes out before btsv, btsv instantly becomes outdated for putting gwen back in the closet for a straight ship. that poisons the gwiles synergy well ("are you really sure you want to get them together if it means turning miles into the kind of homophobic douchebag who'd shove gwen back in the closet so he can kiss her whenever he wants?").

if ism3 comes out after, then gwiles's chokehold on the post-btsv fandom gets an immediate rebuttal, and if comics-gwen was forced into a romance with miles during the btsv synergy era, cindy gives her a clear path out: coming out, possibly leaving miles for cindy (... and, since miles's reputation is the one they'll want to protect, giving him a way to step aside that makes him look good by framing him as an ally who graciously gives up his romance so gwen can be happy). no matter what, gwiles takes a serious hit and is forever associated with gwen being in the closet.

if gwen's not openly bi in the comics yet, they might go there to ride insomniac's coattails, and tease a gwen/cindy ship for synergy's sake. we keep insisting on em jay being gwen's first girlfriend, but cindy might be the dark horse who takes it.

(even if it's just queerbait, fine. it's another female love interest dangled in front of gwen, and it makes both characters' queerness harder to deny.)

then we have the spiderverse spin-off spider-women to contend with. first, it may not happen at all; all three female superhero team movies we've gotten so far haven't done well financially or been fondly received, and we've gotten basically no info about sw other than a vague suggestion that they still want to do it.

if it happens, it'll be 3-5 years after btsv.

and if spider-women releases... first of all, gwen might be single after the events of btsv, or she'll get a birds-of-prey-2020 plot about finding herself after breaking up with miles, which are the better scenarios but the most unlikely. in the event that sv gwen is still Miles's Girlfriend, the plot is supposedly intended to be a multiversal adventure centering gwen, jess drew and cindy moon so hopefully he won't be in it much or at all.

regardless, there's going to be a comic tie-in. synergy will send gwen on an interdimensional team-up event with whoever the cast are. and since cindy's going to be riding high off ism3... even if she isn't in sw, she'll still probably appear in some capacity, and this'll likely be the second round of synergy that pairs her and gwen.

no matter the context of the relationship or whether sw releases, gwen and cindy's bond is likely to get a big focus in a few years. it's just a question of what kind of relationship it'll be. are gwen and cindy going to be friends, harley-and-ivy-circa-2013-'friends' or a canon couple?

and even if gwen doesn't appear at all in the games or they're not shipped at all, cindy is on track to become the new Default Spider-Woman: she's a lead in one of the biggest games in the world, which will definitely be released, there's a slim chance the tv series might be revived, and cindy will almost certainly be in spider-women and is likely to be the breakout character of that lineup. even if only the game happens, cindy will still be the newest, hottest toy to play with.

which means in 5-10 years, we're either looking at a spider-quad, with peter, miles, gwen and cindy... or, since trios are easier to adapt and market, cindy could get the push from editorial to replace gwen as the One Girl in the trio and become the default female spider for a new generation of kids to relate to (... and more importantly, for their parents to buy merchandise of).

therefore, gwen could finally go home for good, assuming she hasn't already.

if gwen doesn't have an ongoing at the time spider-women happens, she'll probably get one again. or at the bare minimum, she'll get a mini.

possibly even as an openly bisexual character because even if gwen doesn't come out in the comics until then/isn't queer in the games, the resistance to her coming-out will be a lot smaller because:

-> a) the unspoken concern keeping gwen in the closet-- that making ghost-spider queer will lead homophobic parents to refuse to buy their kids her merch anymore-- will no longer be that big of a loss if it does happen, because if silk takes ghost-spider's place as the new Flagship Female Spider, it'll be expected that parents will be buying silk stuff for their kids instead. marvel's still getting their money, just from a different girl.

-> b) which means there's room to tap into a new market. and since the spider-gwen fandom that remain with her will be teens and young adults who would buy her shit even if she's queer (maybe even especially if she's queer)... well, there's your money.

-> c) the 'think of the children' excuse doesn't work if the children in question aren't kids anymore or aren't even into gwen in the first place because they're all about cindy, and if those kids' parents can't get mad at marvel for trying to market gwen to an audience of children when they aren't even doing that. remember, harley quinn didn't get to be canonically bi until she was repackaged as a more mature character for a primarily teen-to-adult audience.

-> d) just saying. the spiderverse is supposedly about showing how anyone can be a spider-hero... yet we still don't have a major canonically queer spider. that's the one part of the spiderverse that marvel's stayed quiet on. which means there's a gap to be filled in the story-- and (here's what marvel cares about:) an audience that has yet to be reached out to, who will give them money and good press when they do it.

gwen is the ideal character to be that first queer main spider-hero because it's a core part of her story, there's already a demand for it, and if the right choices are made about which characters and relationships to promote, the backlash to her coming out will fade away with time and become smaller than the potential gain.

we don't know what the climate for queer characters in kids' media will be in 6-10 years. maybe it'll be so good that gwen's queerness won't affect her presence in spider-man stories. maybe she'll be allowed to come out... and then quietly shuffled out of the main lineup. but even if marvel sidelines gwen away from the Straight Spiders, that benefits her character because it means there's a lot less pressure on her to be on earth-616. which means she can go home and stay there.

gwen's stories are already queer as hell, even with all the synergy and the pressure of being every little girl's spider-hero keeping her in the closet. when that weight is off her back, maybe that'll be all we need to go for it.

it took five years to get gwen away from amazing spider-man nostalgia and the threat of being Peter's Designated Girlfriend, and they did it with a combo of controlling their interactions to keep them from getting together and shifting to the spiderverse and making gwen Miles's Designated Girlfriend. it'll take ten more years to get her away from spiderverse synergy and the threat of gwiles. and the way to do that is to avoid miles wherever possible, keep building towards gwen's coming-out and shift to riding insomniac's coattails to get us there.

(hell, the five-year overlap opening will probably repeat too. in the five years between asm2 and itsv, peter/gwen started to fade away as she was pushed towards miles without being consistently shipped yet... which created an opportunity for gwen to develop romantic interests in harry, em jay and possibly hobie. there'll probably be one between btsv and spider-women, and insomniac spider-man 3 will be out by then. good time to get some distance from gwiles and give her a gf.)

the most efficient way to do this is by confirming gwen's bisexuality as fast as possible in the comics and games, but because of cindy taking gwen's place, the path's still there even if they don't move on it until after spider-women comes out.

... but then we'll have live-action miles probably in development for sony or the mcu, assuming it doesn't happen even sooner. there's no mention of a live-action spider-gwen solo movie or show in consideration (or even an animated show), so at this point, if gwen shows up in other media, it'll be as a supporting character in miles or peter's story.

and that could make or break things for good.

the live-action era:

we'll see how old she is compared to miles and peter, and who their love interests will be. that determines everything.

1) if it's a sony movie about miles, it's more likely than not that gwen's going to be his age/his love interest. sony made the spiderverse movies, lord and miller and pascal (who love the ship) would still probably have creative influence, everyone expects it, you know it's coming.

even if gwen isn't spider-gwen, editorial's gonna force another round of gwiles synergy all over again and the clock's reset to zero. insert another gwen-in-616 attempt, another forced gwiles attempt, another refusal to let her come out and another ten years of unraveling her from that mess.

-> and because it's live-action, everybody will have seen it. unlike video games and animated movies, which have broader appeal than comics, but are still somewhat limited.

-> but if it's a sony movie, it's probably gonna be a mess that'll leave a bad taste in people's mouths and not have much longevity. hopefully there'd be an opening to wiggle out of there.

-> if gwen isn't his love interest / isn't in the sony film at all, well there you go. whoever that girlfriend is will get a boost, and gwen will have that gwiles pressure off her back. it's possible. just don't be optimistic.

2) if it's a spiderverse teamup... pack it up. they'll shoehorn spider-gwen in since she's the most popular female spider-hero, she'll be a bland girlboss who'll probably be shipped with miles or peter. earth 65 takes another hit. the damage may be irreparable because spider-gwen will be seen by everyone as their love interest.

3) but in terms of the mcu, they'll definitely do miles someday, but they're gonna put peter first.

if i had to guess, peter's getting a college trilogy. maybe not after he has his 'neglect peter in favor of spider-man' arc, but he's gotta have his college movies at some point. when peter graduates at the end of sm6, and we no longer have a teen/young adult spider-man for kids to relate to, that's the ideal time to introduce miles. and THEN miles gets his high school trilogy with peter as a mentor figure.

and since gwen was peter's love interest before she was miles's, and peter's iconic college relationships haven't been adapted yet, there's a 50/50 chance that she'll be introduced there, along with harry and a more comics-accurate version of mj.

(if gwen's introduced as a member of miles's cast, we're fucked. plain and simple. the transfer from being a part of peter's cast to being part of miles's will be complete in the eyes of the audience. that shit's gonna follow her everywhere forever, especially since the mcu lasts for fucking ever.)

if gwen is peter's age, ESPECIALLY if peter and gwen are a couple in his college years, we might get out of the gwiles pit for good:

a) gwen might die before ever meeting miles. and even if she doesn't...

b) there's no bigger bro code violation than dating your friend's ex. let alone your mentor's ex

c) the ick of live action college-aged-or-older gwen and high-school aged miles is impossible to reconcile. sitting in a tree on steroids. everyone who sees them together in any other medium (comics, games, cartoons, you name it) is just going to picture those actors, and no one will be able to brush the age gap aside for as long as these movies and the versions of their characters last. and it's the mcu, so it'll last a damn while. even a possible reboot/sony version will have that baggage attached.

so if gwen dates peter first, she'll never date miles in live-action without it being hated by everyone. and the comics will never want to revisit a romantic connection between them as a result. even though spider-gwen =/= peter's-gf-gwen, nobody's gonna see it that way. we can work with that!

petergwen synergy might make its way back... but we all know there's zero chance he won't end up with mj, in the movies, in the comics, in anything, so there's less danger there. the most that'll happen is spider-gwen having to pat peter while he cries on his shoulder about his dead gwen. annoying, but not derailing.

if gwiles happens in live-action, it's game over for fully moving past gwiles and being queer for good. gwen might survive the animated movies on their own, but not the one-two punch of animated movies and live-action. that would guarantee that she'll always be seen as miles's love interest, that they can never be friends without that threat looming over them, and that any progress she makes away from miles will likely be temporary before she's inevitably dragged back to him by editorial. we'll have to rely on comics contrivances like one more daying it or dropping continuity to get her out of there, and those will never last for good.

but if petergwen happens in the mcu, that makes the likelihood of a comics gwiles revisit slim for a solid decade. which creates a decade's worth of opportunity for gwen to seek other love interests that'll make gwiles's status lessen in importance even more.

add the ten year window where gwiles can't stop gwen from being bi to whatever happens in the comics in between sv movies and after insomniac's spider-man series wraps up. the bi gwen momentum is already chugging away. that window could be filled with female love interests who actually get to stick around. (giving gwen male love interests will just signal to straight fans that she's available for a straight romance because straight people don't understand what bisexuality is. she has to date women for that label to stick and for people to get the message that she doesn't belong to miles or peter.)

i know i keep circling back to 'make gwen bi', but it's the truth. the way to escape spiderverse synergy, gwen being stuck as Miles's Girlfriend forever, and gwen getting away from being Spider-Man's Girlfriend for good has been the same since 2018.

make gwen bisexual.

(yes, bi. the spiderverse movies introducing spider-gwen to a generation of kids as a girl who's attracted to men guaranteed that she'll never be a lesbian or asexual in canon. have your headcanons, but it's too late for that to ever happen in reality. if you're gonna campaign for a canonically-queer spider-gwen, you have to ask for her to be bi because that's the only type of queer that stands a chance at being canon someday. get mad at lord and miller, not me.)

(it'd be awesome if spiderverse-gwen's trans coding catches on... but it's just not likely enough to realistically hope for. marvel's far more likely to standardize making gwen bi than trans, and it wouldn't occur to them that she could be both. which she'd have to be, because ignoring ten years of buildup to gwen coming out as sapphic and saying 'hey! she's this other kind of queer but is still only into men!' isn't satisfying. gwen can be trans, but must be bi.)

it's been built up so strongly in the comics that it's not really a question of if she's bi anymore. it's when will they say it out loud? and will it stick or be shoved under the rug so gwiles can happen?

that's the issue. gwen's never been closer to coming out. it could happen as early as the very next issue of her ongoing. it could be next month, next year, a few years, in a decade... or it could literally never happen at all, because she'll get crammed into a romance with miles and her queerness will be stifled to keep her with him. and we have no idea which it'll be. that's what's so frustrating: we have no idea if we're about to get everything we've been waiting an entire decade for, or if it's getting taken away forever and gwen'll end up being the girl chappell roan's singing about in good luck babe!.

(and that's the thing with gwiles. no matter how much chemistry they have, or how well-executed the romance is in the spiderverse movies or anywhere else, this ship can only happen if gwen stifles her queerness, her need to go home to the world full of people who love and need her and her story... and the longer it goes on, the more miles becomes responsible for doing that to her. it's a homophobic, misogynistic gut-punch to both characters disguised as a happy ending. the movies haven't fixed this. if anything, by introducing this romance to the general public, they've guaranteed it'll spread to other canon and delay or permanently cut off her coming-out arc.)

other media is the factor that can speed up gwen's coming-out and make it definitive, or slow it down and reduce gwen to momentary bursts of queerness in between nonstop gwiles slog.

but even if gwiles happens and sticks, it's not the end of the world.

the obvious narrative way out has already been stated earlier: gwen comes out of the closet and leaves miles to explore her sexuality, and miles supports her in doing it.

look, every time they've been shipped together so far, gwen has always rejected him and he just keeps pushing, but the writers and fandom keep ignoring gwen's feelings because this ship isn't about gwen, or miles-and-gwen. it's about miles getting what he wants, which is a pretty white girl with a famous name and superpowers who can't stand up to him. therefore, the only way out that'll stick is for miles to be the one to end things.

the best way to redeem him for the homophobic undertones of encouraging her to stay in a romance she isn't capable of wanting, is for him to voluntarily end the relationship, wish her well, and support her in exploring her queerness.

it's the best way to end the relationship with miles looking as good as possible. and since the fandom and marvel are very defensive about miles and his ego, they're gonna want it to end in a way that makes him the good guy.

and it's also how we make this ship too radioactive to return to. once you show miles realizing the girl he likes is queer, and putting his feelings aside to support her, he can never go on and try to date that queer girl again without it being a hideous character assassination.

that's the best way to do it. but there are others. comics are meant to last forever, so the story will never have an ending. even marriage and kids, the typical ending, can be retconned or walked back. like, peter and mj were married for years, and then they weren't and still haven't gotten back together even though literally everyone in the fandom keeps demanding it. if that can happen to one of the most famous couples in comics, gwen can sure as hell make a deal with mephisto to retcon her comphet brats out of existence, especially since gwen-8 already technically attempted it in the latour run. hopefully it doesn't get to that point though.

if it does, here are some comics-specific ways out that don't revolve around gwen coming out and leaving miles to be openly queer. i am very aware that they suck, so let's just not gwiles at all please.

it was all a mysterio-induced illusion.

gwilesified gwen was a clone the whole time, and real spider-gwen's trapped or hiding somewhere.

amnesia plot. they forget they were ever together.

pull a batcat or kitty/colossus wedding. huge event that aggressively advertises a wedding that ends in the bride getting cold feet, realizing how wrong the relationship is and leaving the groom at the altar. good for her. make the fandom so angry about being blueballed that they won't want to see her in close proximity with miles again.

have gwen cheat on miles with someone; even better if it's his friend. for maximum chaos make it his clone or his best friend's dad. (if miles cheats, he'll be forgiven. if gwen cheats, she'll be witchhunted for decades by his fans... which means they'll never get back together!🥳).

have gwen go out for cigarettes and a carton of milk one night and simply not come back. 1) she would. especially if earth-8 happens. 2) it would make the miles fans hate her.

... kill gwen off. (it'll never be miles.) have miles move on. and then when she's eventually resurrected she just never gets back together with him. if you're gonna force her to be Spider-Man's Girlfriend again, you may as well fridge her too. just go ahead and own that miles is just as bad for her as peter was. make the taste in our mouths about this ship so bad that we can never return to it.

drop the plot. just drop it. end one book and start another with them randomly not together and just never mention it again. you do a shit job with the rest of gwen's continuity. why not this?

one more day. nuclear option. the devil himself can break that marriage up and get rid of those kids.

wait a few decades for editorial to switch out and pray that the powers that be give a shit about gwen and will let this ship die. (they won't.)

speaking of.

.... post-first live action miles morales (so... twenty years from now):

alright i've come this far let me throw out a controversial expectation: they're gonna do gwiles again. they are. they just are.

much like the petergwen vibe, gwiles is going to be an unavoidable part of spider-gwen's character moving forward. sitting in a tree was rightly hated and aggressively ignored, but then the spiderverse movies dug up that storyline and pumped life back into it.

and now it's too late. the spiderverse movies are too beloved, popular and well-reviewed for gwiles not to happen again. marvel has hard proof that this couple will make them money, win them praise and avoid controversy. (... and they also know that making gwen miles's girlfriend is an effective way to stop her from being queer and cut off her coming-out arc from ever culminating into anything, while looking progressive). an entire generation of people-- especially children-- now expect gwiles whenever they see gwen or miles (even when they aren't even in the same place or are dating different people), perceive their romance as a good thing, and expect spider-gwen to be attracted to men.

when those kids grow up, some of them will become writers for marvel. and they'll do what the current writers do and resurrect the ghosts of their favorite childhood spider-man stories (which is why Gwen Stacy Death Nostalgia keeps happening even today; that's what the powers that be grew up with, and they're writing for the kids they used to be, not the kids that exist now). which means spiderverse nostalgia. which means gwiles. even if gwiles don't get together in the spiderverse movies, they'll still do it because they'll want to 'fix' that. and all it takes is one dumbass writer to make it happen. so it'll happen.

if the worst-case scenario of gwiles in btsv, gwiles in the games, gwiles in live-action, comic-gwen never goes home, marries miles and has the comphet spawn happens, well no shit the next generation of writers are gonna keep gwilesing. it's functionally over for her and she'll never meaningfully escape.

but even if the best-case scenario pipe dream of gwen never canonically dating him in any media post-btsv, going home to earth-65, coming out and only having romantic relationships with women happens (95% sure it won't)... gwiles is going to resurface in the comics in some capacity, and will probably reappear in other spider-gwen adaptations: games, movies, tv shows, you name it. the horse is out of the barn. it is too late to stop it. we will always have to deal with this ship.

what can be changed is the context in which the ship exists. the name of the game is now putting an end to the "endgame star-crossed soulmates destined to marry and start a nuclear family" dogshit sitting in a tree and spiderverse insist on by... doing what i keep repeating:

1) let gwen come out. either say "i'm bi / into women" or show her kissing a girl. 2) have miles acknowledge gwen's queerness and support it. 3) give gwen female love interests that last in multiple mediums and adaptations to solidify her sexuality so everyone knows (especially those kids who were introduced to her through the spiderverse movies and have no idea that she's a closeted queer girl or that their romance storyline's about gwen being pressured into pretending to be straight and miles letting it happen so he can have her to himself) and marvel can't pull a kitty pryde and pretend like it never happened. 4) build up both gwen and miles' romances with other characters, so people who want to ship them have better canon options. (for gwen, these can be female or male after she's had at least one major girlfriend)

and since a significant section of the trilogy's young fandom acknowledge spiderverse gwen's trans-coding-- or even want gwen to be bi or a lesbian, despite the heavy gwiles preference of the films and lack of any positive dynamic between gwen and any female characters-- there's a good chance that once the spiderverse kids see that gwen's canonically bi, they'll run with it. we just have to get them there.

the best case scenario that can be realistically hoped for is a petergwen scenario (or a peter-and-any-girl-who-isn't-mj scenario): accepting as a given that a staple of spider-gwen's character in any future adaptations will be a probable romance with miles morales, but instead of it being a given, it's merely an option that doesn't necessarily need to exist. and if it does exist, instead of it being an endgame romance, reframe it into a temporary flirtation before they move on to other people.

to make a comparison: we need the collective mindset about gwiles to shift from kataang to makorra-- from "childhood sweethearts who never break up" to "hormonal teens who have a rocky first romance that quickly implodes, but they come out of it as friends and he supports her when she goes on to date a girl". or from 1990s joker-and-harley to 2020s joker-and-harley-- from "the female character only appears in proximity to her boyfriend and is totally defined by her romance with him" to "everyone sees the female character as an individual, knows she's queer, and understands that if she and this guy have a romance, it'll only be temporary, and sometimes he doesn't factor into her story at all."

so, a compromise. give the gwileses what they want, and then give queer gwen what she needs. the makorrafication of gwiles means everyone wins.

we can work with that. gwen and miles's respective stories are at their best when they're about embracing their marginalized identities after rejecting assimilating into the dominant culture they're being marginalized from (straightness and whiteness respectively). they need to start the story by trying to do that so their arcs are more pronounced, and their romantic arcs should reflect their overall arcs. it does actually make the most sense if miles's first major love interest is a white girl he feels pressured to tone down his blackness for, and gwen's is a straight boy she's comphetting with, because the point is they have to grow out of that.

like, as a certified decade-long Gwiles Hater, there is actually a case for gwiles as a romantic plotline, and it's that. the issue with gwiles is the way the ship's been framed. once we change the framing, and that framing is widespread and accepted, we're good. and it is going to take a long time to do. (remember, it took twenty-five years to break up harley and the joker for good. optimistically, it's gonna take that long to get gwen out of gwiles.)

gwen and miles don't necessarily need to be each other's first relationship (that role can be filled by plenty of other white girls and straight boys, and they're best as friends in entirely separate worlds), but it can work as long as it's within that context: fine, they can get together. but they must break up.

that's the way out.

but again, we just don't know what we're dealing with yet. the rollercoaster car might have derailed already and it just hasn't flown away yet. or maybe we'll make it after a couple dicey turns and a fucking agonizing loop or two. man i hate not knowing.

[kysoncat]

Eeveelution Squad Journeys (My ES AU)

Hello everyone. If you saw on my introduction post I mentioned having an ES AU called Eeveelution Squad Journeys and I'd like to talk about it here. Hope you guys enjoy my first ever post about it here on Tumblr since I've talked about it before on other sites like reddit and Discord.

History I feel like before I explain what my AU is I need explain how it came to be so here's the backstory!

Way back in 2021, I was first introduced to the Eeveelution Squad comic from the dub and then found the actual comic and began reading it myself for the first time. While I was reading it a lot of stuff bothered me like Speed being stupidly overpowered, complex lore that I could not process, shipping moments being shoved down my throat every 3 pages, and more. I kept up with the comic till it ended and I was sad as I saw the comic could've had potential specifically with the characters but it didn't do anything with most of them.

After the comic ended I began thinking how I would write ES while fixing a lot of the problems I had with it. I dug through EV's account and found that ES was originally supposed to be about the cast as a Rescue team instead of living together. Around this time I was watching the Pokemon anime and while watching it I thought what if Eeveelution Squad was like the Pokemon anime. What if they were an actual squad, an actual team that would actually bond with each other by going on adventures like in the anime. It was at that moment that my AU was born. After developing it for a bit and sharing this AU idea with some people in the ES Discord Server (Now known as Astral Treehouse) with it receiving positive feedback, I would continue developing it for myself as it was fun developing and for what ES could've been with its missed potential. I decided to name the AU "Eeveelution Squad Journeys" after a friend suggested in the name in the Discord Server.

Premise So this AU is basically what if the Eeveelution Squad were a competitive battling team in a humanless mainline Pokemon world where they would take on the regional leagues and go on adventures as they bond and strive to become the greatest team ever.

The AU takes the series in a more action/Shounen approach rather than the Slice of Life or whatever the hell the Vacation Arc was trying to be. It takes inspiration from some animes I've watched like Pokemon and Fairy Tail.

While making the AU I have these goals in mind for it:

Have the characters be used to their fullest potential. A lot of ES' characters either had very little or nothing at all and after scrounging through the comic and certain journals I knew they had so much potential and I want to use them to their fullest.

Make the main cast actually bond. To me, the main cast in the comic had no real bond, they didn't feel like a squad, or family, or roommates. Also the title does not fit the comic with its story or genre. I want the main cast for my AU to actually feel like a team and make the "Eeveelution Squad" in the title actually make sense.

Don't make the AU stupidly edgy or confusing. Pretty simple with this goal.

Don't prioritize romance. Characters with their development and building bonds comes first.

Don't let anyone influence my AU. I'll listen to feedback and criticisms but I will not listen to someone who tries to change my AU into something that's unrecognizable. Toxic fans and shippers can go away if my AU isn't for them.

AU Changes

The World ES Journeys takes place in a humanless mainline Pokemon world where competitive battling is the most popular sport in it. The world has the Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola, and Galar regions only so no Paldea as well as some anime locations like the Orange islands. Rescuers are still a thing in this AU but they're part of the police. Because this AU has a more modern setting, there's no such thing as Wild Pokemon. Technology in this world is not as stupidly advanced as the comic so no Iron Man suits or other junk like that (I hated ES' technology), only modern technology like computers and stuff we have today.

The Lore ES Journeys does not focus on the Timeline Lore or Berserker Virus Lore because they do not exist. These two things should not have been in the comic but did because one comment said ES was boring which made EV add them. 90% of people either do not understand it or don't care about it. The only lore in this AU is backstory on characters.

The Cast While ES Journeys does have all 9 main characters (10 counting Axel) they're not going to be together right at the beginning. The reason I made this decision is because giving focus to that many characters right at the start of the story would be difficult to pull off. I want each character to get focused on without another one hogging it up like how Speed, Flare, Lazuli, and Silvia did in the comic. With the cast starting off small, focus can be put on them and when the characters join the main cast over time, focus moves on to them. The cast starts off with just Speed, Crystal, Flare, and Sunshine but when the group are in a region where the other main characters are they join them like how Ash gets new traveling companions when he arrives at a new region. So... yeah. That's Eeveelution Squad Journeys with what is had and how it came to be. Does this sound interesting or is this a stupid AU idea? I might make posts on my AU about the characters or story in the future. If y'all have any questions about the AU, feel free to send me an ask and I'd be happy to answer. Well until the next post that's all I have to say so bye everyone!

[demonsfate]

i've never seen a fandom hate and spite their own mc more than the tekken fandom. i was browsing r/Tekken one day for tips on how to beat lili and unsurprisingly i found a post where people kept disrespecting him on his OWN BIRTHDAY. seriously, as someone who is a diehard stan of kazuya mishima and sasuke uchiha (i loved both of them since i was a kid) even those two get more respect than jin - the naruto fandom on reddit never straight up disrespected sasuke on his birthday.

worst part of it all is that jin got basically the same treatment as luke from star wars and captain america in marvel comics - he was just ooc as fuck in tekken 6 and his characterization in that game completely contradicts tekken 3-5 jin. it can easily be fixed too by just saying he got brainwashed by azazel (like how nina got brainwashed by ogre). jin fans get called whiny for trying to retcon or fix their own favorite, but side character fans (ex. paul, law, etc) get a fix their own fav and be called "the best writers in all of fiction". i think i also remember seeing someone say they hope jin's va gets terminal c*ncer and dies so the writers could have miguel kill him off and then replace him with kazuya or lars as the new mc while xiaoyu fucks hwoarang or something (i checked to see if it was still there, but they probably deleted their twitter account).

why can't the tekken fandom just do what voltron stans do and ignore canon while making their own?...yes, everyone and their grandma knows tekken story has gone down the shitter since post tekken 5. so then instead of saying "Tekken story sucks and no one cares about lore in fighting games" for the 100th time how about fucking make your own au's and fanfic.

honestly it's hard to look thru any jin content without a joke about tk6, or straight up bitter haters. i'm not saying every jin post has a comment with that content, but there's a lot that does. reddit is probs the worst place for jin hate too as i see it there the most. heck, i get hate for being a jin main. usually when they don't agree with one of my takes, they point out me being a jin main and how we're all retarded or some shit. (alisa & jun are now more of my mains, but that was back then when i still listed jin as my main lmao) so whilst you're still gonna come across jin hate on places like twitter or even here, it's best to steer away from reddit 'cos it's most egregious there.

yeah. most normal fandoms do just ignore canon, or if they can't ignore canon 'cos it's canon, they acknowledge it's trash and purpose ways it could've been handled better. but the tekken fandom isn't like that. they're insistent on jin being a fucker head because it happened in one game. and yeah, i have seen ppl say jin fans are either whiny or losers for wanting to say he was brainwashed and not hold him responsible for his actions. and it's like, yeah, i approve of holding characters responsible for their actions. but the problem with jin is that his character should've never been written to commit those actions to begin with - i'm not gonna care to hold a character responsible when they were out of character. i'm just gonna criticize the writing.

also maybe you saw that on a message i already answered? there was another anon that also told me something similar that their sister or friend was praying for that in a church lol. i dunno if you're the same anon or not (as you both have similar takes regarding the treatment of jin's character)

i think the reason why tekken fans have a harder time ignoring the Bad Parts of canon compared to fandoms like marvel, star wars, or certain animation is because of the "stories in fighting games don't matter" saying that's popular. it gives people the mentality that they shouldn't care about the story as much... yet ironically caring about it as they're mad at jin for being the Hope of Mankind lmao.

[imperiuswrecked]

If you're in the mood to hate-watch-and-then-cathartically-destroy something, I'd recommend the YouTube video "Wakanda Forever: It's a Mess" by The Critical Drinker (🤢). Man really had the nerve to call Namor the worst MCU villain 💀 And it has 2.9 mil views and 128k likes! Wtf is wrong with people, smh

Lmao, The Critical Drinker's voice is extremely annoying and they are also very wrong. Like, the fact that both Black Panther and BP:WF are the only movies to get oscars/noms, and is very popular with fans and both movies are good superhero movies. Just because it's not some superhero movie curated to their tastes doesn't make it any less good. They just have bad taste, the opening line of "I thought the herb granted them permanent power" or whatever goes to show they didn't even bother to understand the rules and basics of the Herb and the Black Panther's world, and how that could be taken away from them. This is like if someone goes "omg I cant believe there is a man who can fly and shoot laser beams out of his eyes but a stupid green rock called kryptonite can hurt them and make them lose their powers". Like at some point you just have to understand that people do not want to suspend disbelief and actually engage with the characters and their world, they just want to criticize it because it's not something they liked.

And this is an issue when it comes to superhero stuff ALOT and to some extent fantasy works in general but not sci-fi, where people go "well why couldn't the hobbits fly to Mount Doom and destroy the ring" and they don't care to engage with the material/understand stuff or suspend their disbelief, and the reason I say it doesn't apply to sci-fi is bc sci-fi stories all have that pseudo science/answers that makes it less unbelievable than like giant eagles, or underwater people with feathers on their ankles. Superhero media really gets the worst of this "well why couldn't they---" because the superhero genre itself is usually rooted in lots of real world settings/comparisons. Them hating on Namor is ridicolus because I have lurked around and read comments from every type of fan and you know all those older Namor fans from like the early Marvel years who have been fans of his character for decades? I literally came across comments from them saying "even though they changed his backstory it's still the same character from the comics and it stayed true to his character" and this is what I have been saying since I saw the movie. lol. Some random youtuber farming for hate likes's opinion means nothing.

I'm not gonna watch this video again but I remember not being impressed with anything they said. They're takes are ice cold and stupid and ignorant of the movies/characters so why would I want to waste time again listening to them.

It was just really funny they were like trying to be "cool" and critique the plan: "their killer strategy to defeat namor was to lock him in a room with heaters and dry him out" and I was like LMAO. BUDDY. THAT IS EXACTLY THE MOST SUREFIRE WHY TO DEFEAT/WEAKEN NAMOR, it's LITERALLY in the comics, its been a thing for decades!!

Anyways I don't take any of those types of hate videos seriously. Namor was done really well in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever thanks to the actors, crew, and director.

[ilovescaredysquirrel2]

My thoughts on the new Chicken Run 2 + other upcoming animated movies

I saw the new trailer for Chicken Run 2 and I'm having a roller coaster of thoughts rn.... I don't know how to feel. I think Netflix is ruining Chicken Run! I won't come after Aardman on this, even though I think there's more they could have done, I don't really know how they could make this work since Chicken Run isn't really their thing. Like, Chicken Run is MORE DreamWorks than it is, Aardman. Aardman had a lot of work and effort put into the movie, but it still counts as being more of a DreamWorks film. I think Netflix is mostly to blame, I also wish that DreamWorks would have more say-so in this. Like, DreamWorks needs to step up and take back what's theirs! Like I said, not entirely blaming Aardman on this, they're neutral and have to be, it's Netflix I'm angry at.

Okay, so this new trailer didn't really feel like Chicken Run. My bestie Georgia and I are huge fans of it, so we felt a little hurt seeing this new trailer. Of course we're gonna watch it, obviously because it's Chicken Run, but we're still not excited for it and have a lot of mixed feelings. We both agree that this didn't have the same vibes as the first movie, where they mostly focused on telling a story of an American rooster with a broken wing who helps a hen and her flock escape from a chicken farm in the UK, because the owners plan on killing them off for food. The story has a lot of heavy topics and fits perfectly for a DreamWorks movie, relating to real life situations. Chicken Run is the best example but also Kung Fu Panda and Trolls were good examples too. I think Chicken Run is mostly known for the serious topics, and I relate to Rocky so much, that's why it's my favorite.

Everyone in the trailer seemed so out of character, especially Rocky and Ginger. Rocky was the main character in the first movie,m and it's okay if they wanted it to focus more on Ginger for the sequel, I totally get that! They barely showed him in this new trailer, however. I'm actually really mad. And when I saw how they changed Ginger's personality, I felt like crying! For so long, I saw her as one of my comfort characters, she seemed tough and strong but also very understanding and sweet in the first movie. It seems like they're just making her the just tough baddie in this and I'm really upset. Like, I didn't see her understanding and sweet side like in the movie. It's so hard to se my favorite characters like this. Plus, them firing almost all the voice actors. Like, Julia Sawalha stills sounds the same and this new lady who's voicing her sounds nothing like Ginger! I bet they only hired her because she's more popular than Julia. I also know there was some drama with Mel Gibson in the past, he might be a little bit of a jerk sometimes but he's still the OG voice of Rocky and there's no replacing him. Disney didn't replace Ellen in Finding Dory and Ellen's not a nice person either. Plus, what did Timothy Spall and Phil Daniels do to get replaced? NOTHING! I heard the voices and those are NOT Nick and Fetcher's voices... maybe favorite DreamWorks sidekick duo and I absolutely can't handle this. At least Jane Horrocks, Imelda Staunton, and Lynn Ferguson are in it still (I feel bad Imelda always gets stuck playing/voicing the worst characters, but she voiced an absolute icon in Big & Small).

To be 100% completely honest, I actually think Babs is the only good thing about this. Like I said, I'm also happy that Jane Horrocks is still voicing her, because I think she's perfect for this role. I love how Babs is the only one who's kind of in character, and also has more screen time. I don't want Babs to just be a comic relief, but I love that she has more funny lines. She's one of my favorites in the first movie, but I think it's safe to say that she'll be my favorite in the sequel. This still doesn't feel like Chicken Run to me, and it definitely doesn't feel like a DreamWorks movie. This feels like Netflix was trying to get ownership from DreamWorks and force Aardman to team up with them... however, I'm still going to watch this. Another good thing is Frizzle, she seems like a sweet character (I feel like they're going to make Babs and Frizzle be a couple, watch them be lesbian. Just watch, I can predict the future). If it were up to me, Babs is better on her own she don't need no love interest.

So after the long rant about Chicken Run 2 Dawn of the Nugget (ew I hate that "Dawn of the Nugget" title), I have other movies I'm way more excited to see. It used to be a Chicken Run sequel I was waiting for almost 3 years, but now there's other movies that look way better. It hurts, because I'm a huge fan of Chicken Run but at least Trolls 3 looks amazing! I don't know how I feel that they gave Queen Poppy a sister but she seems cool. I just hope we get that wholesome Broppy romance we're all hoping to see! I'm also really excited for Illumination's "Migration" which is about ducks, but what really won me over was this movie called "Butterfly Tale" which looks absolutely adorable. I love how it focuses on a boy butterfly and a boy caterpillar, because butterflies were always seen as a "girly" thing so HAH! Boys can like butterflies too! ^u^

Anyway, tell me your thoughts on this! Any other Chicken Run fans here? any DreamWorks or Aardman fans want to add to this too? What about Trolls 3? I'd love to read your comments!

[stargazer-sims]

You know how you have an idea and your brain just gets stuck on it until you share it or otherwise do something about it? Or are you normal?

Yes, this is about my OCs. In fact, it's probably everything you (n)ever wanted to know about Nikolai Pavlenko.

It's gonna be long. Apologies.

Seriously, you get all the 🍪 and ⭐️ if you make it through this Chaotic Info Post™

Anyway, I was just thinking about how some of my best and/or favourite OCs were only meant to be secondary characters, but somehow became so interesting to me (either on their own or in relation to other characters) that I absolutely had to develop them. Nikolai was one of those, and now, so are his potential love interests, Ginger and Mishka.

I already had skeletal backstories for both Ginger and Mishka (Ginger's was a bit more in-depth, to be fair, but still...) Now, suddenly they're both telling me all kinds of things about themselves to the point where I can't even decide which one of them Nikolai is meant to be with. I mean, let's face it; he's definitely not meant to be with Anya again, and he's too loving and sweet to be alone.

Nikolai can credit all his former coaches and his figure skating friends, and his students to some degree, for shaping who he is as a person. He loves his parents and has a good relationship with them, but his father in particular is not the sort of person to show much emotion or demonstrate affection and his mother is a bold, no-nonsense woman who can come off as brusque and rude to people who don't know her. Nikolai is not like that. He's gentle and patient and he likes to show others how he feels and loves to give and receive affection. It was his coaches, Stanislav and Beth-Anne, who brought out the best in him, and in reality they often parented him just as much or more than his parents did. As an adult, and since becoming a coach himself, he's also learned a lot about how to have good relationships with people and also a lot about himself.

As a teenager, Nikolai's closest friends were all figure skaters, like him. He started skating at the age of five, when his family lived in another town. At his old skating club, he didn't manage to make a lot of friends and would have been desperately lonely if it weren't for his sister Natascha.

He was sixteen when his family moved, and he flourished at his new rink with his new coach, Stan, who taught him just as much about life and love and the challenges of growing up as he did about figure skating. It was there that he met the people who would become his core group of friends; Anya, Ginger, Hunter, Juliet and Christian.

Vivienne "Ginger" Holmes moved to town during the same summer Nikolai did, so they already had that in common when they met. She was only 14 and had come all the way to Canada from the UK specifically to train with Stan. She was living with a host family, but was essentially on her own, according to her. She and Nikolai bonded instantly, not just over being the new kids at school and the rink, but also over their shared love of dance, bike racing, comic books and spicy food. Ginger never acted stereotypically "girly" and Nikolai appreciated that. It was easy to think of her as a buddy and a confidante, without the complication of adolescent infatuation.

Anya, on the other hand, was a totally different story. She was also 14 when Nikolai met her. Like him, she was the child of an immigrant family, but unlike him, she was well-integrated, attractive and popular. Nikolai tried to avoid her at first, thinking that she was probably mean and shallow like most of the other pretty, popular girls he'd met at his old school. It was actually Anya who approached him. She was learning photography from her grandfather, and wanted to take pictures of Nikolai on the ice. He refused at first, but after Anya kept pestering him, he finally agreed one day. After practice that day, he agreed to go with Anya to get food, and they naturally started talking. Slowly but surely, they got to know each other, and he learned to trust her. As they both approached adulthood, he realized that somewhere along the way, he'd fallen in love with her.

Nikolai and Anya married when he was 24 and she was 22.They were both actively competing and were at the peak of their skating careers. The year they got married, Nikolai won his first World Championship gold medal, and Anya came away with bronze, her second World Championship medal in three years.

Unfortunately, their marriage was not meant to last. Neither of them were ready for the responsibility of a marriage. They were juggling their training and competition schedules, their finances, managing their shared home, and dealing with growing pressure from both their families to start a family of their own. Even though they didn't realize it at the time, neither of them had been ready for a marriage. They hadn't been mature or stable enough, and Anya in particular hadn't been ready to settle down.

The final blow to their marriage that they hadn't been able to overcome was the injury that abruptly ended Nikolai's competitive skating career. He was 27, and competing in the Four Continents Cup, when he injured his knee in a spectacularly bad fall. Even before the doctors and physical therapists assessed his injury, he somehow knew that his career was over, and that he'd never be in another competition.

The eventual prognosis was that he would recover enough to be able to walk and run normally, and even to be able to skate again one day if he did everything the medical professionals told him to. But, they said, he would never be able to compete again. His damaged knee would not tolerate the amount and intensity of training required for it.

Nikolai wasn't ready to accept that reality. He couldn't decide if he was more angry or sad about it, and he became increasingly depressed. Anya couldn't handle the burden of taking care of him while he recovered, with his irritability and mood swings and seemingly random bouts of crying or angry outbursts making things even worse. She decided to leave, and packed her things to go move in with her grandfather.

As if Nikolai wasn't already broken enough, Anya's departure absolutely shattered him. He felt like he was losing everything. He actually contemplated taking his own life, and he might very well have done if not for his coach at the time, Beth-Anne.

Beth-Anne received a phone call in the middle of the night, and on the other end of the line was Nikolai, sobbing inconsolably and telling her that he was scared. Beth-Anne didn't ask questions. She told him to go and unlock the door and not to do anything else, and that she'd be there in ten minutes. She threw on some clothes, grabbed her car keys and sped all the way there. When she got there, she found Nikolai sitting on the floor in the entryway, still crying and looking absolutely exhausted. He hadn't even made it back to the sofa or his bed or wherever he'd been when he phoned her. He literally had unlocked the front door and done nothing else until she arrived.

Beth-Anne gathered him up and took him to the ER. She knew he needed help, at least to settle him down. Anything else he needed after that, she could handle herself. She lost patience with the doctors who were going on about anti-depressants and therapy, once they'd heard the full story, and she vetoed the idea of them admitting him for a psychological evaluation. She verbally exploded on the doctor with, "He doesn't need his head examined and he doesn't need fucking drugs! He needs a sense of purpose and someone who actually gives a shit!" That got the tiniest smile out of Nikolai, and Beth-Anne was silently and secretly pleased.

In the end, she and Nikolai did acquiesce to a painkiller for his leg and some medication to help him sleep, and agreed that he should stay in the hospital overnight for observation. Beth-Anne bullied the doctor into letting her stay with Nikolai all night, and she didn't leave his side for more than a few minutes. In the morning, she called Nikolai's parents and informed them that he'd be staying with her for a while, and then with the consent of the doctor, she took a still-drowsy Nikolai home to her place and tucked him into bed in the guest room.

For the first couple of days, Beth-Anne cancelled all her students' practices and stayed home with Nikolai. She made him stay in bed or on the sofa, and practically waited on him. On the third day, however, she bundled him up and took him to the rink with her, telling him that he needed to watch her and observe her students, because she'd be asking him for commentary and critique later. That was his first glimpse into the skating world from the other side of the gate.

As the weeks progressed, Nikolai began to feel better. Every day, he went to the rink with Beth-Anne to be a second set of eyes for her, spotting different things each of the skaters did exceptionally well and things they still needed work on. At home, Beth-Anne helped him work on his physical therapy exercises, taught him how to cook, introduced him to yoga, and happily expounded upon the joys and pains of being a figure skating coach. She answered all his questions about coaching, and encouraged him to join her as an assistant when he was ready.

Eventually he did join her as a coaching assistant. After a few months, he was able to skate again for short periods of time, and then it wasn't long before he'd taken over one of Beth-Anne's beginner groups, teaching his five little skaters mostly on his own, with minimal guidance from Beth-Anne. He was happy to realize she'd been right. The thing he'd needed most was someone who cared about him and something to bring a sense of purpose to his life.

Meanwhile, Anya was deeply regretting her decision to leave Nikolai. She still loved him and wanted to come back, but he wasn't ready for that. He was still hurt, and he didn't think he could put himself through another ride on the emotional roller coaster that had been life with Anya. He filed for divorce, and she didn't contest it.

They were able to repair their friendship, but Nikolai wasn't interested in renewing their romantic relationship at that point. Eventually, he would be, but he needed time. He had to admit that he still loved Anya too, but he realized things would never be good between them until they both changed.

At some point, they settled into a "friends with benefits" arrangement, where they agreed that they weren't going to commit to each other and that they'd be free to see other people.

During that period of time, Nikolai went out with his good friend Ginger several times, but they never once slept together and never liked to say their outings were dates. Nikolai dated other people as well, but nothing ever developed with anyone.

It was on the night that he, Beth-Anne, Ginger, Juliet and Hunter were out at a club, celebrating his thirtieth birthday that he met the person whom he'd have his next serious relationship with, Mikhail Vasiliev (a.k.a. Mishka). Nikolai and Hunter were up at the bar, getting drinks for themselves and the ladies when they noticed a man around their age apparently struggling to explain something to one fo the bartenders. The man was enormous, with bulging muscles clearly visible through his snug-fitting shirt, and Nikolai guessed that if they were standing side-by-side, the top of his head would only come up to the man's shoulder. Despite that, however, the man had an oddly childlike quality about him. His sweet face was crumpled with frustration and he looked like he might cry at any moment if he couldn't make himself understood.

Nikolai's second observation was that he recognized the language the man was speaking in between snatches of halting, broken English.

"He's speaking Russian," Nikolai told Hunter. "I'm going to help him."

As it turned out, Mishka was lost and had come into the club for directions. After not having succeeded in getting help at a convenience store down the street, he'd wandered into the only other establishment that was open at that hour. He explained to Nikolai that he was a professional hockey player, and that he'd been part of a mid-season trade from his old team to the one in Brindleton Bay. He'd only arrived a few days ago, and was staying at a hotel until he found a suitable place to live. This particular evening, he'd had dinner by himself at a restaurant, and then on a whim, decided to take a late evening stroll around town. But then, he'd gotten confused and couldn't find his way back to the hotel.

Nikolai and Hunter invited him to come and join Nikolai's little birthday party, and then Nikolai would take him back to the hotel afterwards. Mishka agreed, mostly because he was a little desperate, but he would later say it was the best choice he'd made in a while.

Nikolai and Mishka spent a lot of time just getting to know each other after that, and soon realized this was not going to be just a friendship. Everyone agreed that Mishka was good for Nikolai, and his family and most of his friends liked him. As for Mishka, he was very happy to find himself surrounded by so many people who cared about him, and to be falling in love with somebody who treated him gently and took care of him the way Nikolai did.

For all his strong, tough appearance, Mishka is a meek and quiet person. The thing he appreciated most about Nikolai is that he recognized Mishka's vulnerability and never judged him for it. He was always there to support him and look after him. For Nikolai, Mishka inspired the same kind of nurturing and protectiveness as his young protégé Eden Seong and all his other students, and the relationship offered him that all-important sense of purpose.

His relationship with Mishka was quiet and steady, with none of the chaos and emotional turbulence that his relationship with Anya had. There were fewer risky adventures, far less wild sex, very little personal drama, and no all-out screaming arguments. They often disagreed, but they rarely fought, and they would always try to make up before going to sleep if they did fight.

To Nikolai, their love was all the sweeter, knowing that they were able to successfully navigate through the aftermath of an argument and still want to curl up together in bed when all was said and done. That always made him feel safe, when they felt satisfied enough with the outcome to finally let themselves go to bed, and he was wrapped in Mishka’s huge, gentle arms. Sometimes Mishka would sing to him; the most unexpectedly angelic voice coming from this massive man who looked like he’d be more at home yelling commands to workers at the dockyard than chanting in a choir.

(Mishka had been in an all-boys choir as a child and young teen)

Mishka is cuddly and affectionate, just like Nikolai, and they both fulfilled each other’s need for physical touch. They also had no qualms about being affectionate in public, and it wasn’t at all a rare sight to see them holding hands while out for a walk or to catch Mishka hugging Nikolai from behind and shyly kissing his cheek while they waited in line for coffee.

Mishka shared Nikolai’s love of cycling, and the two of them liked to go on bike rides together. Their favourite thing to do together was to bike somewhere and go exploring. In the summertime, they’d take several small trips where they’d bike for a while, then hike into to the woods and find a nice spot to put up their tent, and camp in the forest for a night or two. Sometimes they’d find a place to fish, sometimes they’d sit in the sun and read, and sometimes they’d wander around and look at the flowers, mushrooms and trees and simply enjoy the quiet. Mishka often got stressed about getting lost, but Nikolai is good with a compass and so they never did.

Other things they enjoyed together were swimming, dancing, playing video games and of course skating. Sometimes the skating was more about Nikolai showing off while Mishka admired him, but mostly they’d skate laps together until Nikolai’s knee dictated a halt. Then, they’d go home, and Mishka would ice and massage his leg until he felt better.

One of the big challenges in their relationship was Mishka’s travelling. The team was constantly on the go throughout the regular season, and even longer if they made the playoffs. Nikolai didn’t like how often Mishka was away from him, and even though there was a set schedule for the team’s away games and home games, the whole thing still felt unstable and uncertain to him. Psychologically, it was difficult for him, and although he tried not to show how upset and stressed he was every time Mishka had to leave, Mishka always knew. He hated that Nikolai was upset, but there wasn’t much he could do in that situation, which naturally upset him too.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle for them was Anya. Nikolai and Anya’s on-again, off-again friends with benefits situation was in a definite “off again” phase when Nikolai and Mishka decided they were in an official relationship, but that didn’t stop Anya from coming around and trying to make herself at home. She’d show up ostensibly to cook for them, help them with their laundry or bring them something she’d knitted. The whole thing made Mishka feel extremely uncomfortable, and he said so on multiple occasions.

Regardless of the fact that Nikolai told Anya several times he wasn’t interested at all, Anya still tried to flirt with him (and with Mishka, much to Mishka’s distress). Mishka was never worried about Nikolai being unfaithful, but he neither liked nor trusted Anya.

One of the worst things for Nikolai during all this was that he didn’t even have his buddy Ginger around to talk to about it. Not long after Nikolai and Mishka had gotten together, Ginger had returned to the UK to begin her own journey as a figure skating coach and, as it happened, a wife. She and Nikolai did their best to keep in touch, but with their schedules, time zones, and Ginger’s new husband Liam not liking her to talk to other men, it was a challenge.

Inevitably, Nikolai and Mishka reached the conclusion that as much as they loved and cared for each other, this was not the right time or the right circumstances for them to stay together. They mutually decided to part ways and remain friends, and they promised that if their situations ever changed, they'd look each other up and hopefully try again. They did their best to keep in touch after that, but just like his contact with Ginger, Nikolai's contact with Mishka was semi-regular, but they still managed not to lose track of each other. He never forgot what they'd promised and neither did Mishka.

Fast-forward a few years, and Nikolai receives a message from Ginger, telling him that she and Liam are divorcing, and she's moving to Japan to continue to train her star student, Sebastian Fujikawa, a Japanese citizen who'd previously been training in the UK while he attended school there. The teenager was ready to go home to Japan, though, and he'd practically begged Ginger to come with him. She told Nikolai she was ready for a change, and that she'd gladly agreed.

Meanwhile, Nikolai was busy with Eden, his own young champion in the making, as well as his other students. Eden and Sebastian were the same age, Nikolai discovered, and soon they'd be competing in the senior division, where they — and their coaches — would undoubtedly meet at international competitions. It was easier for Nikolai and Ginger to keep in touch, now that she didn’t have Liam breathing down her neck, and their contact became less sporadic. Nikolai always looked forward to the chances when they'd encounter each other in person at a competition or training camp. Seeing Ginger again always made him happy.

Fast-forward another handful of years, and Nikolai finds himself in the unlikely scenario of being begged to come to Japan by his own student. Eden had decided to follow his brother Charlie to Japan, where Charlie was going to pursue his career as a professional aesthetitian, hoping to become the proverbial beautician of the stars in the J-pop music industry.

Initially, Eden asked Nikolai to come with him, and Nikolai said no. For one thing, he was terrified to uproot himself from his family, students and familiar surroundings. He was never good with instability, and he didn't think he could cope with that drastic a change in his life. His other reason was that he thought Eden might need to assert his own independence a bit. He didn't want Eden to leave, but knew that it'd be wrong to hold him back.

Eden found a new coach to train with, but the whole thing went terribly wrong after only a few months. Coincidentally, he was skating out of the same rink in a small town in Japan where Ginger was coaching her student, Sebastian. Nikolai heard more of the story from Ginger than he did from Eden at first, as Eden didn't want to upset him with all the horrible details, nor did he want Nikolai to think he was trying to guilt him into coming to Japan.

Finally, Eden did confess the whole truth, and Nikolai was heartbroken to realize that he'd made a huge mistake in not going to Japan with Eden in the first place. He'd all but made up his mind to go, and it really took very little extra persuasion on the part of Ginger and Charlie to fully convince him.

He was overjoyed to be reunited with Eden. Three months had felt like forever to him. He's struggling to adapt to life in Japan, and he'd be lying if he said he wasn't scared, but having Eden, Charlie and Ginger close by helps him. Anya, a professional sports and entertainment photographer, has been there to visit him, while she was travelling in Asia for work. As much as he wants to deny it, he was glad to see her too and try as he might, he can't deny that he's looking forward to her coming back again.

But, other than training with Eden again, the real highlight has been his reunion with Ginger. It's brought him much more joy than he'd expected, and he's really not certain how to explain his feelings about it. He and Ginger spend as much time together as they can, and it didn't take much for them to slip back into their old friendship. They still don't want to say they're dating, and neither one of them really sees their relationship as a romance, but they're nevertheless very happy together. Nikolai can honestly say he loves Ginger, and he sees nothing wrong with that.

It's all good until he receives a long email from Mishka. Now 35 years old, Mishka has decided that too many injuries and stamina that's fading with age have finally made him uncompetitive as a pro hockey player, and it's time to retire. Nikolai could read the excitement in Mishka's written message, and he easily could picture Mishka's sweet face glowing with a smile at the sentence, "I never forgot you. I'm coming to Japan to find you, my love."

Nikolai is excited too, until he thinks about Ginger. And Anya.

He's still figuring out his feelings for Ginger, who is already right there in town, and Anya will be back soon on another business trip. How's he supposed to handle Mishka too, in the midst of that?

He has a problem, and not the sort of problem most people have. Some people have trouble finding one love interest. Nikolai's problem is that he may have far too many...

[oliveroctavius]

ALSO on the topic of domestic abuse, canonicity, and popular male characters I was thinking recently about probably the most viscerally uncomfortable to me personally comics sequence ever, More Bad News from ASM 369

This is going under the cut because it's just kind of omnidirectional pondering of something that makes me upset and therefore not really Comics Criticism but my gut feeling on JMD is that while he cranks up everything very high he's ultimately very like. centrist.

The sequence rides on the tension of justifying psychiatric restraint (the razor blade of fear being is Harry about to hurt Liz the entire time) and you have characters express pretty blunt opinions on both sides of the issue. the guys in full body armor with huge future laser guns are on the side of "locking him up and throwing away the key" and Liz on the side of "this is a horrible way to treat a person, what the fuck" which is a position she holds pretty much through everything, repeating that Harry has never harmed her and isn't going to... and which seems to be intended to make her look more delusional than he is.

like the dialogue goes all in on "I am not going to hurt you"/"I am not afraid of being hurt"/"I am in a really uncomfortable situation"/"I want to get you out of this situation" while tone and staging signal the exact opposite. is this a veiled threat? Liz doesn't take it as one but the art signals it as one.

hang on in another panel they misspelled "Osborn" with an E on his jumpsuit. anyways.

after what Liz sees as a normal conversation (except for the audience-aimed cues that Harry is dangerous) he breaks out of the stupid metal straitjacket and starts going full alpha male rhetoric while like... grabbing Liz and it's unclear what's going on but it's definitely drawn in a way to evoke strangling. there are a lot of shirt collar and face grabs as a violation of boundaries in Sal Buscema's art for JMD around here and they kind of have this air of "you aren't listening to me, I am forcing you to face me so you listen" but the sheer aggression of the one here seems so intentionally evocative of harm that it makes me wonder what the script said in any of these.

like, when included between in this sequence the last panel becomes much more upsetting too. as much as an in-character reading supports taking the boundary violation as "look at me" it's equally easy to read as intending harm. Harry is after all in a situation where he feels powerless and there's only one person who he can exert power over (physically) and it's Liz. this characterization is uncomfortable but that doesn't make it noncanon; a lot of the story already hinges on the fact that Norman's motivations were "love" but the output was still abuse.

at the same time the thing that feels so Gross to me is the voyeurism of the danger Harry supposedly poses as a "crazy person"—literally, this interaction is being watched by people with the power and stated motivation to find an excuse to harm him. and they're getting fuckin horror movie closeups of this sensationalist comic book staging through their security cameras, somehow.

so Harry's only advocate is the person he's also a threat to, who is either too naiive or stubborn to understand the danger. I'm guessing the language here comes a lot from the idea that like, the abused stick with their abusers out of misguided obligation, but I feel like that applies a little differently in a situation where people are just waiting for him to so much as get his hands free so they can burst in and shoot him with stun guns. Which is what happens.

and they drag liz away too for how upset she is at witnessing this. "he loves me! he loves me!" "sure, whatever you say." I feel so bad for Liz on every level and especially when this comes up later when MJ and Peter are trying to get her to call the police on Harry and she refuses because like have you ever had a family member acting very scary and unpredictable but you just got them out of a really really bad situation and that's the option people are suggesting again. I suppose taking everything here as face value canon, yeah actually, you would have a feeling of obligation to someone who hurt you if you knew that bringing charges against them could for real get them killed and that absolutely also traps people in bad situations! though much less often.

anyways it ends with him bodily strapped down to a bed again with multiple security cameras pointing at him. fuckin insane intense sequence. I really hate how reading it makes me feel but it's pretty telling of like the entire JMD goblin II arc