My little baby always on the verge of breaking down in any second and I don't want him to die from either a brain stroke due to uncountable amount of stress (from running the restaurant and dealing with Adam) ... or a broken heart once more because I know he'll always and I mean ALWAYS willing to sacrifice a part (if not all of) himself for Adam, which is UNHEALTHY for our Tony.
(and this is the 928576103438th reason why Tony Balerdi deserves a better guy than the-perfectionist-but-also-problematic-narcissist-chef-that-he-might-have-changed-but-I-don't-care Adam Jones.)
Vlad was injured by the GIW, and fled through a random experimental portal they had.
He landed outside a smoking warehouse in Ethiopia, next to a dying child.
The kid was beat to hell and back, and worse off than Vlad himself.
There was a clown, ducking into a car, covered in the kids blood.
Vlad, desperate for an outlet for his anger at being stupid enough to be caught by the GIW, immediately turns around and hunts the man down.
By the time he's done with the clown, he's even eaten the man's newly formed ghost, permanently ending the threat.
Which leads to his current predicament; the dying kid is still dying, and he's calmed down enough to know he would feel bad later about letting some random kid die like this.
Luckily, he saw some ninjas while he was killing the clown, and after a short conversation, they agree to take the boy.
Vlad feels accomplished.
After all, what child wouldn't want to be raised by ninjas?
Meanwhile, Jason, delirious from pain and smoke inhalation, thinks he saw Batman murder the Joker and then turn around and sell him to Ra's Al Ghul (Vlad in his ghost form has pointy things on his head, and Jason was so fucked up he thought it was the cowl).
Jason's still fucked up and pissed when he comes back, but for entirely different reasons.
Okay people, dream with me here: 2d animated Supersons in Patrick Gleason’s style from the comics
This is a small bit of a 1 minute animatic I’ve been working on in my spare time, that I’m slowly starting to get some finished animation on! Based on the Robin vs Superboy fight scene from Superman #10, by Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason, because I love it
“Wow, hey crown prince. Why is the human smiling like that?”
“…Yes, Raon-nim.”
The crown prince was shocked as well.
“T, the human is smiling like the sun during spring!”
“…Yes, Raon-nim.”
“The human looks quite wicked.”
“…Yes, Raon-nim.”
something that really stands out to me is that the two times utena brings up the concept of eternity is when she wants to die as a child and when she's being raped. literally only in the absolute worst fucking moments of her life, and it's so viscerally upsetting both times. the show really does not want you to have positive associations with the concept of eternity, which is of course the point. but at the same time, utena clearly does. when she's in the coffin, she laments that nothing eternal exists, implying that she wishes it does. and "something eternal" is what gets her out of there, she just also learns that eternity isn't a good thing. i've always been less sure about what it means that she asks akio what eternity is in episode 33. it tells us she's forgotten what she saw as a kid, that she still might be clinging to the idea that eternity is something that could save her, and like i said, it draws a parallel to when she was in the coffin. eternity is also something akio offers her during his proposal in episode 38. it's the illusion of a kind of happily ever after. i suppose that in that moment when she asks him, utena is trying to believe in that illusion, because facing the reality of the situation is too painful. it's like anthy looking at the projections rather than the real stars. maybe. i'm not sure.