thefoxgardener

[thefoxgardener]

This healed me.

[thefoxgardener]

Damian Wayne comes across a classic christmas carol known well among the children of gotham… pt [1/?]

[thefoxgardener]

[thefoxgardener]

r you rlly a victor frankenstein apologist 😔

Ahaha I love the tone of disappointment in this ask.

I debated with myself over whether to get deep about this or not, but here we are I suppose.

The point is, I think Victor is a flawed character and while he’s one of my favourite characters in fiction I don’t think it’s useful or necessary to overlook his flaws. However, his flaws aren’t half as bad as people would have them seem. At the start of the book he’s a teenager with a hugely inflated ego who’s playing god in his uni room, a testament to the hubris of youth etc. When his experiments finally succeed he’s appalled that the creature isn’t perfect he runs away from him, but crucially the creature also runs away from Victor & they don’t have any further interaction until after the creature has killed Victor’s little brother.

The creature is obviously a sympathetic character, he acts and reacts in the way he does because of the cruelty he’s suffered. The thing is, neither Victor or the creature are ‘the monster’ just as neither of them are blameless.

The novel, to me, is about the very human, very flawed response to being hurt. That is, to lash out at the person who hurt you and by extension, the entire world. Both the creature and Victor do this, and it’s always struck me how they are the only two people in the novel who could possibly understand each other but Victor’s bad reaction when the creature first takes life and the creature’s (understable but not excusable) reaction to the way he’s been treated make any understanding between them impossible. The creature systematically kills everyone Victor has ever loved and in return Victor denies the creature a loved one. Victor and the creature are a snake with its tail in its mouth, pumping poison into itself. The creature makes Victor into the man he is at the end of the novel in as concrete a sense as Victor created the creature in the first place.

The cycle of revenge and hatred they enter into is only appeased when Victor dies. The creature, finding him in Walton’s cabin, cries over his body and asks (too late) to be forgiven - that, to me, has always been the great tragedy of the novel because they’ve been pitted against each other for so long, determined to the see the other dead, without realising that for one to die leaves the other entirely alone.

I have a lot of sympathy for Victor, he’s always been my favourite character in the novel, mostly because he’s the character I latched onto when I first read the book as a lonely, precocious 13 year old. Which isn’t to say I don’t also sympathise with the creature. I don’t think picking a side is necessary, I don’t think the complexity of the narrative needs to be thrown over in favour of assigning one or the other as the ‘monster’ of the story.

If you read all this, anon, please know I am not having a go at you. This question just brought up a lot of thoughts I wanted to put out there! If you don’t like Victor, that’s a perfectly reasonable opinion & the fact that multiple readings are possible is one of the reasons I love this book so much!

[thefoxgardener]

basicallyidk i love greg

[thefoxgardener]

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥🤪 this strain is called “into the unknown”💀 it’ll have you making a pilgrimage in a place between our world and the next 💯☝️

me: yeah, whatever. I don’t feel shit.

five minutes later: bro I swear I saw the beast following us through these mysterious woods that I don’t remember entering

the highwayman: I’m the highwayman

[thefoxgardener]

Happy to help!

I have procreate now and…idk. I expected so much more, it’s a little disappointing. The brushes are…meh, and I tried to replicate the one I use in ibis paint, but is not the same. If you use procreate, can you tell me what you like about it? Idk, I feel like it’s pretty much the same than ibis, maybe even worse, since it costs money.

Anyway, here’s Damian 😔✌️

[thefoxgardener]

[thefoxgardener]

I personally prefer procreate because because theres a really fantastic procreate brush community on Gumroad. If you’ve ever had trouble with background art textures like for clouds and grass procreate its fantastic and it has way more options for changing brushes. Procreate also has a really seamless perspective tool thats really helpful. Procreate for me is superior in how it can help draw backgrounds, but, its pretty similar drawing human for me as well. Are you using an apple stylus? The procreate app was specifically made with the apple stylus in mind and using that really elevates the feel/performance of procreate.

I have procreate now and…idk. I expected so much more, it’s a little disappointing. The brushes are…meh, and I tried to replicate the one I use in ibis paint, but is not the same. If you use procreate, can you tell me what you like about it? Idk, I feel like it’s pretty much the same than ibis, maybe even worse, since it costs money.

Anyway, here’s Damian 😔✌️

[thefoxgardener]

[thefoxgardener]

the bite is a gift 🐺💉

insta

[thefoxgardener]

they have a literal ancestral manor to hang out in but they choose to break into jason’s apartment while he’s out. they’re playing jackbox and accusing dick of being the faker. (it’s steph.)

[thefoxgardener]

can we go back to watching YouTube videos of some Slavic dude making homunculi with his sperm and a chicken egg and then smashing it to death with a Bible when it hatches I’m so tired

[thefoxgardener]

like look ive adored and immensely related to viktor since day 1 but ive also spent years extremely unsure of where they were going with him in terms of disabled representation and thinking they were just going to keep torturing and punishing him for the crime of not wanting to die before his time having lead an unfulfilling life. then season 2 started rolling out and they ramped it all up and he kept dying and being resurrected against his will and we couldnt tell if he was being mind controlled or if he was even In There Anymore or anything and i seriously lost hope for a satisfying ending for a while. my whole opinion of his arc was hinging on these last 3 episodes and

what the hell do you mean this actually Landed as the most profound and home hitting narrative about internalised ableism ive ever experienced. that he Hated Himself and didnt believe he deserved or would ever recieve love and his obsession with overcompensating and proving he was worth anything spiralled until he nearly destroyed the whole world but he was brought back down to earth and Saved by being told he was is and always will be loved unconditionally. that his flaws are beautiful. All of him was held and adored fiercely until the end. like are you fucking kidding me. they actually did make him For Us ♿

[thefoxgardener]

Juni Ba’s Damian is a true punk hero 💯

Juni Ba’s “Boy Wonder” study and also just fun design exploration

[thefoxgardener]

okay. let’s talk about jayce’s monologue, since people are calling him ableist.

for context, not that it matters: I have a significant mobility disability and a progressive chronic illness which, even when managed, can kill me. I’m not in exactly the same boat as viktor since my disease isn’t terminal, but I’ve had very similar experiences to him. this shapes my perception of him and of this storyline.

this is the monologue:

You’ve always wanted to cure what you thought were weaknesses. Your leg. Your disease. But you were never broken, Viktor. There’s beauty in imperfections. They made you what you are. An inseparable piece of everything I admired about you.

first, it should be noted that “what you thought were weaknesses” is not the same thing as “things that are good.” jayce is not saying that viktor’s disease is or was a good thing. what he is saying is that he admired (loved) everything that viktor was, which included the things viktor thought made him a burden or a problem. remember also that jayce almost doomed the world because he couldn’t let viktor die; he would never imply that viktor dying was a good thing.

the next question, then, is whether viktor sees himself as a burden or not. I think it’s implied that he does — it’s certainly not unrealistic to think that viktor might have come to view himself, or at least his disease, as a burden and a flaw. disabled people often view ourselves that way either because of internalized ableism or because society constantly tells us that we’re burdens and that our bodies are abnormal and wrong. viktor displays behaviors that indicate internalized ableism, including hiding the fact that he’s coughing up blood from jayce the first few times it happens and generally refusing to be in the public eye in a way that is self-effacing and not just him being private. yes, he says in act 1 of season 1 that he believes in himself, but he does also call himself a cripple in a dismissive way in that same scene; also, he doesn’t have the disease at that point. arguably the entire scene where he runs despite clearly being in pain is an example of his internalized ableism, but that’s another post.

more evidence for viktor’s perception of himself being negative is that he clearly has a sense that he doesn’t deserve to be loved (specifically by jayce, but maybe also in general). we see this when he asks jayce why he’s still persisting in saving him. we see this with his generally self-effacing behavior. we see this with the fact that in all of season 1, the only person he allows to touch him is jayce, and that the only person he actively touches in the entire show is jayce. viktor is reserved and not good with his emotions, which is a huge part of his arc this season. all of these behaviors point to him having a negative self-perception.

I think it’s important to really consider how jayce perceives viktor and how viktor perceives himself. I don’t think this season handled everything perfectly, but I think they handled this very well. viktor has been written with a fullness and complexity that most disabled characters don’t ever get. him being morally grey doesn’t mean he’s “problematic” or “bad representation.” obviously I’m only one disabled person, but I really love jayce and viktor and I think their story is beautifully written.

[thefoxgardener]

Defender of Blüdhaven

Ladies and gentleman, I present to you my version of the famous Dick Grayson. This time, I went all out with colors!