#topic || titans

[thematingpress]

Chapters: 1 of 1 Fandom: DCU / Justice League / Teen Titans / Titans / Young Justice Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: None Characters: Garfield Logan

Summary:

One night Garfield Logan is hosting the new live camera show - Question Time with the Titans - as a means of improving relations between heroes and the public. All is going pretty smoothly until an anonymous viewer makes a request of him he cannot help but follow.

[mysticalchildkore]

[vro0m]

They're really sending several planes and boats to find a handful of rich assholes stupid enough to get themselves in a scam submarine meanwhile Europe pushes hundreds and thousands of displaced people into the Mediterranean Sea to make them disappear. Drives me crazy.

[taibhsearachd]

Me: Mags, what’s the biggest shipwreck you can think of?

Mags: Ummm… Destiel?

[ghost-bxrd]

Been mulling over Titans Tower and it's really interesting to me how it's treated in Fanon as compared to how the events transpired in canon. it's a really fun topic! Honestly, the original writing in canon is DOGSHITE but not for the usual reasons people cite.

Here's what does make sense in canon but is largely ignored (this is using canon characterisations at the time): First, it's all about the whole Titans team, not just Tim. They really downplay his death a lot, did not put up his statue or honour him whatsoever. Plus the hero community tends to victim-blame him a fuckton. Jason is showing that his death could've happened to anyone. Second, Tim and Jason are just two yearish apart—Jay died at 15, Tim becomes Robin at 13—so those Titans are more like his colleagues than anything else; he's not some older guy beating the shit outta them. Third, Tim’s indifference to Jason's comments and his cockiness about being a better Robin are pretty on-brand for his early portrayal as Robin. (I think fanon Tim derives a lot of his characteristics from his Red Robin run, which is valid as well! But here in particular we have Robin Tim... who... was... uh... a bit of an asshole when he was written back then and the HUBRIS on that man? Immaculate.)

What still makes this absolutely dog shit is the dialogue and how Jason is pouring his heart out to someone who he doesn't really care about. Jason... just doesn't operate this way... Why's he trauma dumping on... tim... ???? It makes no sense whatsoever because Jason really is someone who'd keep those vulnerabilities to himself. Why would he open up to... CANON TIM??? He makes scathing remarks when faced with Bruce and Dick because he knows the knife twists then and at he cares about their reaction. But not tim ????? Canon UTRH doesn't even mention Tim ????? ???? So in the end it's still shit imo.

I also find the use of Pit Madness in fanon super interesting, despite it not being canon. It's used to propel the Titan's Tower incident, which fascinates me because it shows how people are willing to work around its flaws to maintain consistent characterization in their works (which is !!! cool !!)

It's so interesting how many other incidents that do occur in canon aren't as well known as this one aren't given much thought. But this one is and it's interesting how people try to work with it regardless of it's flaws originally!

I'd really love to hear your opinions about it and how flexible you are with the Titans tower incident! :) How do you work with your Jason and your Tim? because it's cool to hear your analysis etc etc

Hooo boi okay i was planning on replying to this earlier but this deserves a proper, thought out response (which I’m shite at but I’m trying here. Words are hard.)

For one, I wholeheartedly agree with the whole trauma dumping thing.

Obviously we all have different tastes in media and I know there are quite a few people who enjoyed the confrontation with Tim, which is totally fine, but personally… yeah, not my thing.

I got into the Batman/batfam fandom via fanfic, so my first introduction was some version of Titans Tower I believe. I was super intrigued by the characters and the tidbits of lore sprinkled throughout that I immediately began reading up on them and digging through the internet for more info and background story on them. Which then quickly evolved into the part where my adoration for Jason’s character began and a short phase where I absolutely despised early canon Tim.

Like— all the victim blaming. He seriously couldn’t mention Jason without adding something derogatory about getting himself killed, which sat so, so wrong with me. Not to mention the Titans just accepting a new Robin right off the bat and joining in blaming Jason for his own death. I’m pretty sure that was the point where I swore off comics for a long while and decided to live off fanon 🤣

And then Jason’s part in the Titans Tower incident. I think part of how weird the canon event was is due in part to how the writers fumbled to depict trauma? Or maybe they just outright hated him because I know a lot of people back then despised Jason and his run as Robin.

Whatever the reason, I think I genuinely cringed when he revealed the Walmart Robin costume he was wearing. And then the trauma dumping.

Jason is smart enough to know Tim wouldn’t care about his grievances. I mean- dude just broke into his hideout to attack him, I think Tim’s about as done with Jason as with any other criminals, regardless of his past. And all that is proven by Tim fighting back tooth and nail without pause. He doesn’t even react to the accusation of the missing statue in Jason’s honor. Like, he genuinely doesn’t seem to care. And why would he? They don’t know each other.

And yeah maybe he was trying to beat some sense into Tim (which is still wrong but— vigilantes I guess? Idk) and make him quit Robin, but Jason’s also smart enough to know that Robins don’t quit easily. And then, as soon as Tim is down for the count and can’t keep fighting, Jason leaves. Just like that. No actual murder attempt, no kicking-while-he’s-down (at least as far as I remember).

It makes no sense. What would Jason be gaining from that encounter? Why would he blame the kid that replaced him and not the guy that did the replacing? Hell, it would make more sense for him to go after the Titans than Tim. Not the mention him casually doubting Tim’s talents when he must have done some background checks on him.

It’s why I like the idea of Pit Madness I guess, and that Jason actually went to the tower with the intent to kill. Because that way the entire thing wouldn’t seem so… pointless.

As for how flexible I am with the Titans Tower storyline, it really depends on the route people choose to explore. But I’m a huge sucker for the “Jason was Tim’s Robin” trope where there’s at least a mild amount of hero worship going on. 👁️ Oh, and happy endings. I can’t deal with tragedies.

But yeah these are my thoughts on it. Obviously no hate to whoever enjoyed the comic mentioned above 💚 we’ve all got different things we resonate with after all~

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Errors, “Errors,” and Sci Fi

@strawberry-crocodile

tvtropes calls stuff like the wolf example "science matches on" which I think is a pretty fair shake

This.  This is what’s got me thinking so much about errors.  There’s a certain danger, here.  A certain way that this particular effect — delicious dramatic irony — tempts the mind when reading old stories, even true ones.

What do you know about R.M.S. Titanic? I ask my class every year, and the first hand rises.  “It was unsinkable,” the student inevitably says, and everyone is nodding, “or so they thought.”  I write the word UNSINKABLE on the board, underneath my crude drawing of a ship with four smokestacks.  It will be crossed out before the end of the hour, but not for the reason they expect.

“I find no evidence,” Walter Lord, preeminent biographer of the ship’s survivors, wrote, “that Titanic was ever advertised as unsinkable. This detail seems to have entered the collective mind so as to create a more perfect irony.”  Indeed, historians’ examinations of White Star Line documents show the shipbuilders themselves worried it would be so large as to risk collision; they stocked several more lifeboats than 1910s regulations required.

The War to End All Wars (deep breath, satisfied exhale), also known as World War ONE. Chuckle.  Shake of the head.  What if I told you that this phrase, used primarily in American newspapers after the fact, wasn’t meant to be literal? Nowadays we’d say The Mother of All Wars, or One Hell of a Fucking War, but we wouldn’t mean literal motherhood, literal intercourse.  What if I said the armistice and the Lost Generation and the Roaring 20s were all braced for another outbreak of European conflict, and yet we still failed to prevent it?

Did you know they were so confident in the safety of the S.S. Challenger that they put a civilian schoolteacher onboard? I do, because I’ve heard that one repeated many times.  Only, see, it’s got the cause and effect reversed.  Challenger launched on a day the shuttle’s engineers knew to be dangerously cold, because the first civilian in space was on board. And NASA knew its shuttle project would be cancelled entirely, if they couldn’t get that civilian’s much-delayed entry into space in the next two weeks.  So they launched on a cold day, and killed her instead.

These are all what cognitive science calls Hindsight Bias on the personal level, what sociology calls Presentism on the cultural level.  Social psychology’s a little of both, is primarily interested in why you’re sitting on your couch in a Colonize Mars shirt watching PBS and chuckling at the fools who believed in El Dorado.  It wants to know why the mind flees straight from “marijuana will kill you” to “marijuana will cure cancer” without so much as a pause on the middle ground of its real benefits and drawbacks, its real (mild) risks and rewards.

And they can paralyze the sci-fi writer, if you think too much about them. Jetsons is futurist one decade, retro the next.  “There are no bathrooms on the Enterprise,” the creators of Serenity say smugly, as if Gene Roddenberry should’ve simply known that decades later it’d be acceptable to show a man peeing in full view of the camera, nothing but the curve of the actor’s hand to protect his modesty.  “No sound in space,” the Fandom Menace says, “No explosions in space,” and “A space station can’t collapse in zero-G.”  Only then NASA burns a paper napkin outside of atmosphere, transmits music using only the ghost of nearby planets’ gravities, and logs onto Reddit long enough to point out the Death Star would implode in its own gravity field.  And now we’re the ones pointing, the ones laughing, at those earlier point-and-laughers.  Self-satisfied, smug in superiority.  As if we did the work to find out ourselves, instead of just happening to be born a little later than George Lucas.

[conditionaljewel]

Tonight I'm not thinking about the Gods, or the Archmages, or the Weapon; I'm not even thinking about the bigger implications of it all...

No, tonight I'm sparing a thought for the Ars Elysia, and that couple who got engaged, who had just agreed to spent the rest of their lives together.

Did they know? Did they know it would only be an hour, two at the most? Did they get to share one last kiss before the city hit the ground? Did they die together, holding one another at least? How long did the Aeormaton last after the explosion, after the impact, after the destruction?

Of course not. You never know when it's going to end. You can never, ever know, even if you think you do. You can only hope, and wish that you do everything you hope to do in those moments before hand, but once it's done, it's done. So of course they didn't know. How could they know?

And how many other couples in Aeor met that same fate that night? How many were together in the end? How many were holding one another tight, wondering what had happened, what was going on? How many had a loved one by their side while the impossible became possible inside their fortress of a city? How could any of them know anything?

They all died that night, as did all of their stories. The nameless mages, the identities of the Divine mortals, all were seemingly lost to history, sure. But also, a great number also lost were people just looking for salvation and a new start on Exandria once the war was finally over.

Tonight though, I'm thinking about that couple in particular. I'm thinking about them, and I am hoping that when that fateful moment came that their last moments were spent together, and were full of love and peace, and they both had a chance to say goodbye. Gods, am I hoping.

I mean, that's all you can really hope for, right?

[kaiserouo]

fuck weekly meeting

[six-paths-of-jeanmarco]

New art just confirmed Marco would have been shorter than Jean and no one's talking about it??? Like?? How did we miss that?!

[marcobodtlives]

In 2014 there was an exclusive ‘interview’ with Jean’s character, released as a collab between a Japanese phone carrier and AoT. A lovely person translated it here.

It has some JeanMarco gold. I’ve summarised it all for reference.

——

Jean on why he chose the Scouts:

He didn’t initially want to be a Scout, but after Trost he was thinking about who would be next casualty.

He imagined how he could have saved Marco “if I was just there…”

Jean on Marco’s death:

Jean felt “indescribable regret and responsibility.” He knew him and Marco were in different squads, but he finds himself continually thinking that Marco would still be alive if he had just “been with me.”

Jean on his and Marco’s closeness:

Marco was someone who really knew him well, “we’ve really been through a lot together.”

Marco gave Jean encouragement “all the time” during their time in training. Jean admits he always felt upset and down after any kind of mistake. During those times, Marco was “the one who stood by me.”

When Jean rambled about things, Marco was there, quietly hanging around at his side. Marco would say affirming things like “is that so…” and listen to all of Jean’s problems without fail. Marco was always there for him.

Jean on Marco’s personality:

Any time anyone was hurt, Marco would be upset by it. That was just the kind of person he was. Caring.

Even when Jean would tease him about being a perfect student, “Marco would just smile and nod.” Jean admits he has no idea why Marco would ever be friends with someone like himself, “who’s selfish and self-centred.”

Marco never got mad at anyone. To Jean, Marco was good, “someone who’s too overly good, I might say. He had that ability to see through a lot, but still believed in the good bond and spirit between people; always looking after the interest of peers. That’s how he was.”

——

The interview was short, and only had time for some select topics that were obviously key to Jean’s character and personality.

The entire first half of the interview has to do with Marco:

His choice to join the Scouts (courtesy of Marco); his guilt over Marco’s death; how close he was to Marco during their training days; his take on Marco’s personality.

The second half is broader:

His thoughts on Mikasa and her beauty; if his family is alive (yes); his relationship with his mother; his love for omelettes; his impression of Armin and Erwin; and his ideal world without titans.

[thematingpress]

Chapters: 1 of 1 Fandom: DCU / Justice League / Teen Titans / Titans / Young Justice Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Clark Kent / Conner Kent (mentioned) Characters: Conner Kent, Clark Kent (mentioned), Garfield Logan

Summary:

After spending the night hanging out with Garfield Logan, Conner Kent finds himself under the effect of a magic marker - emphasis on the magic - capable of changing the mind and body of those marked with it. While invulnerable to a lot of things, Conner suffers from the same weakness to magic as Superman and discovers an appetite for something new.

[n0tamused]

Dad Reiner doodle anyone?

The feminine primal urge to give this man a happy family is stronger than I... One day I'll write a fanfiction about it...

Pspsp...ask box open for reiner brainrot/drabble requests<3

[halfghostwriter]

Y’know something weird I’ve noticed? I’m way more confident writing DP x DC stuff than I am writing just DC stuff. I think it’s because the DP x DC fandom doesn’t really expect writers to have as much knowledge of both, so I don’t feel the same “can’t make any mistakes” feeling I get when I try to write DC fics. There’s just so much complex lore in the DC universe, from the comics to the shows, and a lot of it is different depending on what time period the stuff you’re reading/watching is from. I’ve never finished or even posted any DC stuff I’ve done cause I’m always worried that the lore I’ve learned from the shows and the lore I’ve learned from the comics will contradict each other or something, and I’ll get called out on it. There isn’t that same pressure when I’m writing for a subsection of the fandom that’s totally fine with inconsistencies and character rewrites

It’s really nice that everyone here is so nice

[oifaaa]

if you want a romantic anime I can recommend "president of the student council is a maid?!". it's sort of a classic so you might have heard of it but it's cute. not without it's issues of the time and of the genre. but still it's very decent. funny and the main girl and the love interest boy are interesting

also something you might have seen: classmate. just a lil bit of school romance, it's a film. it is gay in a very like. sort of realistic but not for the sake of angst and suffering kind of way. very good animation

Yeah unfortunately I have already watched both of these its weird thinking about how Maid sama used to be one of those animes everyone would have watched not in like the way people watch anime or trending shows now a days more of the if your friend was trying to get you into anime and they gave you a list of recs maid Sama would be on it and yeah Doukyusei came out around the same time yuri on ice did which is weird to think about how long ago that was now

[donnatroyyyy]

If there’s ever actually a good Live Action Teen Titans show about the OG team, I NEED a New Girl-like scene where Garth finds out he’s colorblind. Like you know how there’s that whole scene of Winston thinking money is brown and stuff and Schmidt being like ‘if that’s brown what color do you think you are’? Yeah I need it in teen titans format.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

not really enjoying tumblrs trend of comparing Thomas Andrews to Stockton Rush 😒Could you share how the two differ despite the fact they died by their own creations?

ive been trying to figure out how to tackle this ask for a few days now because theres so much to disentangle, but disentangle i will.

see, this comparison relies on common misinformation and misconceptions about titanic. its a ship thats been romanticised and mythologised for decades, and every portrayal of it from william randolph hearts yellow newspaper coverage to robin gardiners conspiracy theory to jim camerons film.

what im gonna list to disentangle this whole thing is by no means an exhaustive list of titanic misconceptions, only those relevant to this topic

-titanic was a cruise ship - titanic was an ocean liner not a cruise ship (ive detailed the differences in a different ask here)

-titanic was a brand new unique ship never seen before - not true, ocean liners had existed for decades. theres debate about which was the first, but many agree that its the ss great western which launched in 1843. titanic wasnt even the first launched in her class; that honour goes to the rms olympic.

-it was built with substandard materials and cut corners - this is one of those where theres potentially some truth, but its been misrepresented. theres some evidence that the rivets werent the best made, but the board of trade cleared the ship and she was built with the same materials and basically the same design as her sister ship, rms olympic which sailed for 24 years under the nickname "old reliable" and literally rammed a u-boat during ww1 when she was requisitioned as a troop ship. ultimately, the builders were not blamed in the wreck inquiry and the materials used were not substandard.

-it was built as said above due to the choices of j bruce ismay - yeah so this one obviously ties into the above. theres a lot of unreliable sources who seem to believe ismay oversaw the entire design and every cut corner was due to money. this simply isnt true and isnt how this sort of thing worked. white star had a contract with harland and wolff wherein they would build the ship agreed upon and when it was finished, it would be presented to white star and undergo sea trials, and during that time, white star could reject the ship if they considered it substandard. this is what happened to the ss city of rome. unles. the design itself was to be changed a la britannic after titanic sank (improving safety measures), white star could not interfere. ismay could not force them to use different materials.

-it was all ismays fault - okay, i could go on about this for a long time, but this ask isnt about ismay. the gist of it is that history has blamed ismay due to the influence of william randolph hearst (yeah, the guy from newsies and supported hitler) who hated ismay and blamed him entirely. actual evidence shows ismay helped a lot of people during the sinking itself.

-titanic was badly designed - ive kinda gone over this a little already, but again, titanic was not badly built. she was practically identical to olympic which was a fantastic ship. in the design, no risks were taken. most of the designs were enlarged versions of parts of previous successful ships. she was considered the safest ship on the sea. four of her water-tight compartments could be breached without her sinking which was a big fucking deal.

-thomas andrews was the sole designer - there was actually a team of designers that included andrews. he didnt even draw up the original plans; that was alexander carlisle.

-titanic sinking was a unique situation - yeah nah, boats sank a lot around that time. literally two years after, there was a similar disaster with the rms empress of ireland which goes entirely forgotten nowadays. in the same decade, you also had the sinking of lusitania in 1915, principe de asturias in 1916, volturno in 1913 and even thrown in princess sophia in 1918.

-the sinking was actually caused by a coal bunker fire - this is simply horseshit and im sure im gonna end up having to explain and debunk that one too

-the crew were taking unnecessary risks to win the blue riband - this myth is widespread because of the movie, but titanic was not trying to beat the record of the fastest ship from southampton to new york (thats what the blue riband) is; she physically couldnt. it was held by mauretania at that point with a record of 26.06 knots/48.26 km/hr. titanics top speed was 23 knots. white star as a line never focussed on speed and ismay never told the captain to speed up.

-she was "unsinkable" - this is a little harder to disentangle. the claim itself was "practically unsinkable", but the context of that was to do with how safe titanic was as mentioned above. also, the idea of an unsinkable ship was not quite to white star or harland and wolff; most of the shipping industry believed it.

-almost everything youve heard about the life boats - okay so here you need to throw out your preconceptions of what a life boat is because our modern conception does not match that from the early 1900s. to not get into all the details of life boat philosophy at the time (if you do wanna know, just send me an ask lmao), the main purpose of life boats at this time was ferrying passengers to a rescue ship. that was it. this attitude was informed by both the wrecks of the ss valencia and ss clallam, as well as the miraculous rescue of the rms republic. titanic did not have enough life boats for everyone because it was never expected for the passengers to be alone in the life boats for hours; it was not a design flaw, it was a feature.

-that fucking stupid ship swap myth and the idea that the crew were trying to sink the ship - i dont even want to get into why this is bullshit, plus ive also debunked it in another ask

i highlight all of the above to emphasise the fact that titanic was not a badly built ship. she was designed well, built well and sailed well. many experts agree that the way that she hit the iceberg was the only way she could have sank.

this is not the case with titan and stockton rush. in a previous post, ive gone over the design of the titan, the flaws in it and what experts in the field believe, so im not gonna go over it again, but rest assured, the titan imploded because of rush's actions and decisions.

titanic did not sink because of thomas andrews. its due to his design that anyone survived the titanic because she stayed afloat for over two hours which allowed the crew to launch all the life boats. thomas andrews himself helped many survivors during the sinking and evacuation.

he also was not a rich man using a gravesite as tourism; nepotism was certainly involved in his career but he spent ten years working his way up in the company, helping with the design of countless ships. he was mostly regarded as a good man who worked hard and recognised the hard work of others.

its honestly ludicrous to compare them because the disasters themselves are simply not comparable. the titanic did not sink because of the folly of rich men cutting corners; titan did.

thomas andrews, for any faults he had, knew what he was doing and built a good ship that was unlucky. almost every other ship he helped design didnt sink or if they did, most of them were due to ww1.

its just such a ridiculous comparison, and thats all it is. without the misconceptions and misinformation about titanic, the comparison simply falls apart. its built on a foundation that fundamentally misunderstands the titanic disaster.

if you want to talk about shipwrecks caused by stupid decisions made by rich men, go look up the last incarnation of hms captain or the gunilda or the fucking vasa if you want, you can literally go see that one. but dont besmirch the memory of a guy who, by all acounts, died a hero helping other survive.