#and if they ARE it's only after an arc of bruce being a fucking ass as an apology and it's. insufferable.

[mamawasatesttube]

ok i put a longer post abt tim's Emotional State in drafts for when my brain is less melted but re: tim and going to college im just gonna get a lil silly with it. hear me out.

i have this whole vague story in my mind for tim's college days moonlighting as red robin as he tries and figures out what he wants out of life. (it's a while after rr leaves off and all because he's like. Super Depressed for a hot minute and then has to drag himself through actually bothering to get his GED and applying to college, etc., but eventually lucius is like hey. you're great with gadgets, and you clearly love tinkering. i'd hire you for r&d in a heartbeat but you need at the least a bachelor's of engineering. i know you have a lot of the technical skills, but you need a degree. so tim goes ugh fine i'll get a goddamn engineering degree how hard can it possibly be.)

anyways. i think it's a universal experience that if you go to college and you hang with the STEM crowd, you will unfortunately get to know at least one Fucking Guy. it's like brentwood arc; tim does make friends, but there is just this One Fucking Guy he cannot stand and will never stand. this Fucking Guy is in the common room playing his guitar at midnight. he's drunk and yelling and laughing really loud when people have exams coming up. he's convinced everyone adores him. there's also a detective/supernatural plot going on. the subplot is just that tim hates This Fucking Guy.

at some point, there's a story beat where he as red robin has to rescue That Fucking Guy from a real dicey situation, and That Fucking Guy is really shaken and grateful to him, and he's like okay. maybe. maybe we are making progress. but then the next time he encounters This Fucking Guy as tim drake, the guy is just like. "ohhhh hey drake you missed it last night, it was AWESOME!!! i had to save red robin from a KILLER ROBOT. he's pretty cool though i guess. i bet you wish you could be more like him huh??" and tim is just. I Will Not Grind My Teeth About This. I Will Not. his life is a fucking joke. he dismantles the toaster oven in the common room kitchen to cope. it's definitely to cope and not just so that That Fucking Guy won't be able to heat up his pop tarts in the morning.

at another point, This Fucking Guy looks at street mode, lowkey, unremarkable Normal Car-looking redbird and goes, aw, dude, i thought your dad is loaded?? he only got you a generic-ass sedan?? that sucks lol, if you want we can take my car down to the game instead. and tim is just Say One More Fucking Word About My Baby I Dare You I Fucking Dare You One More Fucking Word.

(also i like to toy with the idea of this being a university in metropolis - he's out of gotham, but not too far. keeps him from getting antsy about what if he's needed because he can get right back over there. and in the meantime, he can hang out with kon and kara a lot, and occasionally enable and be enabled by lois lane and her snooping habits. there's another subplot in which tim and lois get up to shenanigans. at least once.)

it's sort of an introspective thing of him trying to come to terms with the way he no longer wants a fully normal life the way he always used to assume he would - he has the option to walk away from the cape now, like he always thought he would one day, but he just can't give it up anymore. he's fallen into the same black hole he watched dick and bruce dive headlong into. it's also about him finding joy in tinkering and working with his hands and getting to spend more time as tim drake first and foremost. and it's about him venting to kon about That Fucking Guy while they have a lil picnic on the green while kon loses his absolute shit laughing. all against the backdrop of a little mystery or something. <3

OH and also, most importantly. zoanne wilkins is there and laughing at him for assuming college would be easy. and kon gets her into wendy the werewolf stalker. My City Now.

#rimi talks #rambles #tim #like.... do u see the vision. there are emotions underneath here #but right now i have a migraine so its silly time first and foremost. Tim Hates That Fucking Guy #we've all known a Fucking Guy right? im pretty sure its a universal experience. #the stories i could tell about the Fucking Guy i knew. man.

[zeroducks-2]

I've just finished Gotham Knights and I get that people aren't happy with the fucked ass haircuts but like, I do believe this is the most progressive and well written Jason Todd we've ever gotten in recent times. Even in recent comics. Like damn, bro goes to therapy, picked up his interests and hobbies again (e.g. the cooking and the reading and the shit talking) from his "Robin makes me Magic" days. Like yeah, he's still edgy, but he was murdered by a fucking Clown, he's allowed to be edgy. We got a Jason Todd that isn't diluted to "the angry black sheep character" archetype. He's healing, working on himself, his relationship with his family, and he's fighting his way (brutal and all strength and tact) to do what he stands for and what he believes is right. And his heart is just so big and full of compassion, but it doesnt blind him and make him wishful or naive. He's so well balanced in Gotham Knights. I hope this version of his character is written in future comics. I'm sick of DC writers making him this angry anti-hero who's only reasoning and purpose in life is to get back at Batman for failing him and so many others. Jason is allowed to be more than his trauma. Thank you Gotham Knights for seeing that.

I'm glad you enjoyed the game anon. I personally am not a fan, not because of Jason but because of the game itself. The dialogues felt stale, more reminiscent of tumblr "incorrect Batfam quotes" than the source material, and the NPCs felt dull compared to how full of life they were in the Arkham series (so much so I would hide in random spots just to hear them talking about the current game events, especially in AK). The most unforgivable bit to me was Tim not having ever fought the rogues because he's "young" - I've never seen anything more insulting and infantilizing for a character which already heavily suffers for being treated as the useless one, never allowed to participate in the game changing dynamics or to have meaningful arcs, and is relegated to being the cute little bisexual twink.

That being said it's a matter of taste, and Gotham Knights is surely a good game for those who prefer a wholesome loving family approach to these characters. Jason working on himself and going to therapy and having a good relationship with his "family" is surely what lots of people (especially in here) want to see. Me, I don't think any amount of therapy would help since therapy is based on shared human experiences and repetition of patterns, and Jason died and dug himself out of his own grave. That's not a trauma any therapist would have the means to help with. They indeed "diluted" the event in the game, changed the fact that Jason dug himself out of his own grave and was functionally braindead and homeless for two years, and made it so UTRH never happened in order for therapy to make any sense, because there is no reconciliation possible with a parent that slit your neck to save the person who broke all your bones with a crowbar and then murdered you.

It's kinda like when Wally went to therapy (canonically) after Barry's death. The therapist was a good one and he tried! But ultimately he didn't manage to make a real difference because Wally is the Flash, a super-powered creature with time bending powers who does things on the scale of absurdity, and who also happens to have had an extremely traumatic childhood and to have just lost the only person who ever loved him unconditionally. His problems have roots in reality but are out of the scope of any therapy method currently known to man.

And Jason is more than his trauma, but pretending his trauma doesn't inform his actions and can be solved with him "working on himself" is not an approach I hope they take in comics. I'd rather they went back to Jason doing things his way and protecting the people of Gotham in the only manner he finds helpful, because he experienced on his own skin (twice!) that Batman's methods don't work. I'd rather they allowed him to stop clashing with Bruce as main theme of his stories, and have his own plotlines in which he's in between a vigilante and a mafia lord (which they were doing with Dick by the way, before chickening out and have Slade bomb Bludhaven) with Bruce only as a cameo sometimes.

We have a high number of morally irrepressible characters who always do the right thing more or less. I'd like Jason to be something different, something darker, because there is a dramatic lack of grey characters and anti-heroes which were sanded down to either 100% bad guys or 100% good guys. I hate that, why can't we have nuanced choices and people struggling with the darkness they carry, why does everyone need to be a perfect "unproblematic" paragon of goodness who would never do anything wrong. We have A LOT of characters like that and I love them, I really do! But if everyone and their families are like that then it's really frickin boring!

Plus, I'd like the characters to actually struggle with their past traumas in a meaningful way, otherwise why even giving them those traumas to begin with. Give me Tim still grappling with how he couldn't save his father, give me Dick haunted by all the times he slipped and let go of the no killing rule in a way or another, give me Jason haunted by the tragedy of being abandoned by every person who was supposed to protect him and working from there to being the protector of everyone else.

That's what I hope DC would pick up and write about. I was never much for fluff and wholesome things unless it's in small amounts, I always preferred strife and complexity. But hey, I'm glad you enjoyed the game, at least one of us did!

#that game seems to have been made by tumblr for tumblr lol #the characters don't jave jagged edges they're all smoothed down to the most palatable version of themselves #I really disliked that #and sure the Arkham games have been made by dudebros for dudebros #but it's a batjokes fest which I always enjoy #and the dynamic of how Bruce reacts to the AK being Jason is more fatherly and loving than anything else ive ever seen between them #Bruce doesn't even need to forgive him because the moment he finds out that's his boy there's nothing to forgive #and every asshole thing he did with Tim and Barbara comes crashing down the moment he realizes this #he's not a Wholesome Tired Dad UwU he's someone who brought these kids to the frontlines of his war #and finally starts to see how wrong he's always been and realizes that actually he wants to cherish them and protect them #but alas it's too late they're soldiers now there's nothin he can do #Welp that was long #don't be offended anon we just like different things #my asks #jason todd

[distort-opia]

What are your opinions on Tynion run? I noticed there’s some batjokes fans not being too much into it. I wonder if it’s because of the new LI for Joker or is there truly something off?

Mm. I can't say I'm opposed to it, to be honest. It has its good parts and bad parts. Tynion actually was a co-writer alongside Snyder for a good chunk of the New 52, and for stories I did like. And when it comes to his solo Batman run, I personally had fun with Joker War and Fear State. He introduced Ghostmaker too, a character I've come to like a lot. And even Punchline is quite interesting.

However, when it comes to most Batjokes fans disliking his stories, I get why that might be -- Punchline seems like a new love interest meant to "straighten" Joker out. And Ghostmaker has now become half of a popular Bruce ship (Ghostbat), which you might hate, if you're an exclusive shipper. But on closer inspection, to me at least, it looks like Punchline as a character is meant to be Harley Quinn's opposite. She hasn't joined Joker out of love, but rather ambition. She's a sidekick, not a love interest. She believes Joker has an anarchist agenda, and she wants to further that. She joined Joker because of her twisted belief system and ensuing obsession with "someone who understands", not quite realizing Joker is faking having any agenda. Both Joker and Punchline are using each other, with different degrees of awareness about it. This is pretty much spelled out in Joker War, in the fight between Alexis and Harley. And when it comes to Ghostbat, I personally think it's not detrimental to Batjokes in any way -- it's Bruce and a weakness a mile wide for a psychopathic character who he thinks understands him. I've got a whole-ass post of Batjokes/Ghostbat parallels in the works, which says plenty, I guess.

And well, I guess one could hate the ending of Joker War, from a Batjokes shipper POV. Bruce leaves Joker to fend for himself with a bomb strapped to him and it's 100% framed as him leaving a toxic partner behind. But I'm an angst fiend and I find this kind of conflict really interesting :)) From Endgame (which Tynion co-wrote for) to Joker War, you get Joker escalating in his quest to force Bruce be more... Batman. In Endgame, he didn't fully go after "Bruce Wayne", only after Gotham. But in Joker War, he goes after everything "Bruce Wayne" is. It's a huge escalation on Joker's part, who in the past would not have touched Batman's secret identity with a ten-foot pole. And so, of course Bruce needs to escalate as well. I'm not actually talking about Bruce leaving Joker to die, because the text makes it 100% clear Bruce knew Joker had the tools to survive. The point of that scene is that Joker went too far in trying to force Bruce play his part, save Joker at any cost the way he always did, with Bruce going "fuck you, do it yourself" and then leaving. Which is what Joker genuinely gets upset over -- Bruce's refusal to play the game. He doesn't get to hear Bruce admit he thinks Joker is right later to Selina, or see Bruce try to do exactly what Joker said he should do. It's a messy divorce arc, kind of! And I'm a sucker for this shit.

Anyway, I got a bit too long, but yeah -- I guess I can't say I've got terribly passionate takes on Tynion's writing (like with Morrison, Snyder or King) but I definitely can't say I hate it.

#sorry it took so long to answer Anon. this got buried in my inbox #asks #batman #batjokes #tynion's writing #my meta

[disniq]

Heya, I was wondering if I could get a quick comic book rec. I've read RHaTO Vol. 1 up to issue... 27 I think it was? (Basically the first 4 volumes) ans RHaTO Vol. 2 up to issue 18 (end of Vol. 3)

Are volumes 6 & 7 of RHaTO vol.1, Red Hood & Arsenal, volume 4 of RHaTO vol.2, and Red Hood: Outlaw, worth a read?

Hi Anon! I apologise in advance because I was very verbose in answering this yes or no question lmao.

Disclaimer first, because RHATOs is always gonna be written by Scott Lobdell, so it's always gonna be at least vaguely misogynistic and full of heavy handed abuse apologia because Lobdell is a misogynistic abuser. That said, if you can stomach that, there's usually *some* merit to most of them.

(and, just to be clear, I am certainly not recommending you *pay* for any of them 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️)

So, RHATO vol. 1.

Volume 5 is actually one of the better ones imo, it finishes up the story from volume 4, and then has a few self-contained stories focusing on Roy and Kori individually (so depending on your opinions of nu52 characterisation ymmv). Bonus points for this adorable panel;

Volume 6 and 7 are a really weird mishmash of main plot about Kori doing space-drugs (which is unsurprisingly lacking in any nuance, making it especially frustrating when the book also features a recovering addict and a guy who grew up surrounded by drug users), their nu52 origin stories (which are retconned again in Rebirth anyway), then there's the bizarre little Christmas issue (which I don't hate), and the weird flash forward issue (which I *do*) that is also retconned out with the Red Hood/Arsenal run so. These two are entirely skippable for me.

Red Hood/Arsenal

There are only two volumes of this, and if you managed rhato vol. 1 then this is fine. It's a lot lighter in tone, even if I'm not a big fan of the Joker's Daughter plot in volume 2. Personally, I think this run is worth it just for the jayroy dynamic - genuinely don't know what Lobdell was going for but he accidentally wrote a gay sitcom. I mean seriously, look at this break up scene;

RHATO Vol 2.

I canNOT believe I'm saying this, but you should probably read through this one. #25 (MY BELOATHED) is actually the conclusion to the Bruce and Jason trust arc of early rhato rebirth, and as much as I hate the direction they went with it, it does fit with the general state of Jason and Bruce's relationship in rebirth. It also seems to be the jumping off point they've used for more recent interactions (Cheer and TFZ).

Red Hood: Outlaw

Volume 1: Requiem for an Archer. So, this is the start of Lobdell's shameless projection onto Willis Todd, and naturally they skip right over any consequences of Bruce beating the shit out of his kid AGAIN, but I actually quite like this one. It's nice to see Jason work competently alone, and I think it does a good job of letting Jason's grief breathe, after the chaos of everything in the previous volume. Also, this is where he meets Dog and she's a good girl.

Volume 2: Prince of Gotham. I like this one too, actually. Jason gets to wear his fancy little suit and be clever and calculating, he gets to actually use his criminal links for once, and it's the biggest fuck you to Bruce since utrh imo. I hate the random ass non-plot point of Jason suddenly having a public civillian ID again, but that nonsense is worth it for this scene alone;

Volume 3: Generation Outlaw. This one... I like in theory lol. Jason gets to be a teacher, I think putting himself between Lex Luther and a bunch of impressionable young metas is something he would do, and one of the kids is a non-binary entity (it's a little ham-fisted, but I never say no to more enby characters!) HOWEVER. The writing takes a turn again here, and where Jason was clever in the last one he's now a bit of a bumbling idiot being outsmarted by a bunch of kids. The Artemis and Bizarro plotline is weird and a but pointless, but they are back by the end of this volume, and it contains the one jaytemis kiss that I like (because they both hate it lmao. wlw mlm solidarity).

Volume 4: Unspoken Truths. This is just out and out bad. The writing goes from bad to worse, Isabel is dragged back for absolutely no reason other than Lobdell wanting his blorbo JT to be surrounded by women he's slept with at all times, the art is terrible. There's a single Joker War crossover issue which is meaningless without context, and also drags Joker's Daughter back up AGAIN, and it ends with the Outlaws breaking up again because Jason isn't allowed to keep any friends ever.

ANYWAY. All of that was a complete non-answer because it really does depend on what you like and don't, but I hope my rambling at least helps a little!

#asked and answered #rhato #red hood and the outlaws #long post

[navree]

What about the Baratheons in the book?

Renly - Renly's fine, he's just not someone that compels me in any way and he does kinda tend to come off as more of a wannabe-Jaime to me than anyone who's interesting in his own right. Plus he's a dick and it takes a lot for me to get fond of characters who are deliberate assholes, and that generally involves them being self aware and having a purpose to it than Renly, who's just a bored pretty boy with too much time on his hands. Best way I can describe Renly is he's the Brucie Wayne personal of Bruce Wayne without any of the hidden depths or complexities, and also if he lived in medieval times. There's elements of Renly I can get behind, like Stannis says, the boy he once was seems to have been very sweet and bright and that does sometimes make me Sad, not to mention his relationship with his brothers holds a wealth of drama that makes him interesting enough.

Robert - I hate Robert. Like, I really, really hate Robert Baratheon, with the burning passion of the sun. I find him to be such an unimaginable asshole and I'm glad his death was slow and long suffering. I think it's entirely valid of Lyanna to not want to marry him for being a philanderer and an ass of a person (even though I don't approve of the 24 year old grown married man with two kids swooping in and taking advantage of that and starting a war in the process) and I think it's very very valid of Cersei to want him dead and to not miss him after he raped and abused her for years. Not to mention, perhaps it's just me, but if you keep sending assassins after innocent children (Viserys and Dany were innocent and clearly were in real danger) and condoning the absolute butchery of Elia and her children because they were "dragonspawn", then you deserve to get beaned in the head with a chair forever. Fuck him, he sucks.

Stannis - Stannis 👏 the 👏 mannis 👏👏👏 I love him. He's another top character in ASOIAF for me, I do adore him. For one, he's a character archetype that I love, I love the outwardly emotionless, cold characters with a good mind and a firm belief in themselves who have hidden depths that very few see (and there's not a lot I approve of what the show did with Stannis but the scenes with him and Shireen, minus the last one, were top tier), so I'm incredibly predisposed to liking him on that alone. For two, as a character he's so wonderful. I can't find the post but someone said that Stannis's arc is just "what if an account was mistake as a world saving fire sword wielding hero of ancient prophecy" which is what it is and that's very funny. But Stannis as someone who feels shoved into this role not because he wanted it, because Stannis has never wanted anything of what he's had to deal with, not the dead parents or the issues with his family or having to settle for Dragonstone and certainly not being Robert's legitimate heir, but because he has to, because he has an ironclad sense of justice and wants to do what's right even if it's against his own wishes? That fucks. That fucks really hard. Stannis has a very strong sense of right and wrong, it's why what happens to Renly tears him up so much, not just because of the love he had for his brother but because it goes directly against his moral code, and considering all the grey morality of ASOIAF, that's very fun to watch. There's also this great element of Stannis in that we are never in his head, we only ever see him through the eyes of others, primarily Davos. So we see and hear about his bad qualities, his intransigence and stunning lack of charisma, from peoople who don't care for him and are on opposite sides of him, but we also see him through the eyes of someone who really loves him. Someone who views Stannis as the best there is, in spite of those qualities, and through that we can see Stannis in that light too. We can see the boy who was tenderhearted enough to nurse Proudwing, who clung to his atheism not due to any beliefs but just because of how upset he was when his parents died, the seventeen year old who had to fight against his own morals ("my king or my brother, my blood or my liege" GOD) for the sake of family, who starved himself in the service of his brother's war and was probably giving as much of his food as he could to his little brother, who accepted Davos into his service with a minor punishment and who clearly relied on him and loved him in turn just as much as Davos did. The complexities and the layers to Stannis are amazing, I love him so much. And his claim is the most legitimate one besides, even if he's not gonna get the throne in the end. Also, Stannis and Davos. Just read any of the chapters where they share scenes, they're gay as Hell.

#personal #answered #anonymous #god stannis breaks my heart sometimes but in the best possible way #there's a certain kind of character where if i say 'they break my heart' you know that i love them dearly #it's not all of my favorite characters but it is a lot of them #and i adore stannis

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | The Last Boy Scout (Scott, 1991)

There's undeniably something ugly about the way this movie views women. You have one hero, Bruce Willis, who drops by his house, immediately suspects his wife of cheating on him, waves a gun around, is revealed to be right, shoots a family photo on the way out, and the movie basically supports his point of view. And you have the other hero, Damon Wayans, who arguably has the healthier relationship with women, introduced as having cheated on his girlfriend, who he also gets annoyed with when she gets chatty with the first hero at the bar. Neither the wife nor the girlfriend get to exercise much in the way of agency, the former being reduced to one dimensional shrillness only to embrace her husband at the end as he tenderly spouts vulgarities at her, the latter not making it past the first act and essentially being defined by a past relationship with a sleazy NFL bigwig. The only female character to have much in the way of agency is Willis' daughter, who gets characterized in vile, uncharitable terms and then has a joust of profanities with her father.

Because this is was written by Shane Black, who can't help but write colourful dialogue, some of these scenes manage to be entertaining, if only in a lizard brain way. ("Buy a dog.") Like Eddie Murphy's Raw, the brutal precision in the delivery of punchlines shakes a laugh out of you despite the pungency of the material. You might not like that you're laughing, but you're laughing. But at the same time, this is all plunged in a certain self-loathing, which might make some of this a bit easier to sit through. We meet Willis as he's sleeping in his car and some punk ass kids drop a dead squirrel on him, then watch him pathetically trying to compose himself as he prepares for the day, appraising himself as he looks in the mirror. "Nobody likes you. Everybody hates you. You're gonna lose. Smile, you fuck." And we meet Wayans as he broods over a sleeping woman who is definitely not his girlfriend, pops a bunch of pills so he can "get by", set straight a friend who is treating a woman abominably and look glum about his life situation. Of course these guys have issues with women. They have issues, period.

And over the course of the movie, they rediscover their self respect and regain the luster that had dimmed. Willis, the former secret service agent who saved the president's life (seen in flashback, resembling the Jimmy Carter mask in Point Break) but lost his job after confronting a sleazy, perverted senator, shedding his hungover aura of booze and stale cigarettes and slowly transforming from his zombified state to the hero he once was. Wayans, shedding his insecurity and proving to everyone that his reputation for the best arm in the league was well earned. The movie pushes the two against each other, having them bristle and eventually bond, each doing wonders with the dialogue even as they operate in different registers. Perhaps because the movie starts them off so low, and because of the dignity both actors bring to their roles, I found I was quite moved by their arcs.

And on top of all this, this is just an amazingly fun action movie directed by one of the kings of action movies, Tony Scott, who keeps the movie in hyperdrive. It's got that beautiful shimmering look that Scott's movies had during this period, but with intriguing variations. You get sparkling champagne magic hour look in the daytime scenes, but you also get intense moody blues at night, almost out of a dystopian science fiction movie. The screenplay by Shane Black, in addition to giving texture to the heroes, is great about keeping the convolutions of the plot easy to follow and finding ways to twist tense situations with juicy dialogue. (At one point, Willis avoids being killed by colourfully describing the girth of his assailant's wife. "Now I'm not saying she's fat, her high school picture was an aerial photograph.") And because of the pervasive misogyny and self-loathing, and because the movie opens with Billy Blanks gunning down opposing football players and blowing his own brains out during a game, there's a corrosive quality to the movie that gives the action an added kick. Every explosion goes extra loud. (The best one has a car crash into a pool, blow up, and then get blasted a few extra times by Willis for good measure.) Every gunshot sprays as much blood as a splatter movie. And if you get both explosions and gunshots in the same scene, like the poor bastard who's shotgunned repeatedly while on fire, that's just icing on the action movie cake.

#film #movie review #the last boy scout #tony scott

[arguablysomaya]

batfam fanfics that don't have enough fucking attention

alright i'm finally doing it gents listen up

1. Bang, bang by @Ididloveyou_once

Summary: ‘You shot me!’ Jason gasped, stunned, ‘Holy shit, you actually shot me.’

Tim’s eyes widened and he froze. They stared at each other for a second, dumbstruck and then-

‘Don’t tell Bruce.’

Or: The family enjoy a normal movie night. Except Jason has a gunshot wound and Tim’s the only one who knows and oh- that’s because Tim’s the one who shot him and they really, really need to find a way to leave before anyone finds out.

This fic is fucking hilarious and the characterization + banter is on point. i have a bit of a soft spot for schemes <3

2. four brothers, one crush, and absolutely zero braincells to be found by @Ms_Trickster

Summary: Tim: i need to know what’s the best way to a boy’s heart

Damian: Easy. The best way to someone’s heart is through their ribcage. Everyone knows that.

Damian: Come on Timothy, I expected better from you.

Dick: I-

Dick: Try again

Tim is having boy troubles.

Tim goes to his brothers for help.

Tim...did not think that plan of action through.

(In which the batbros give Tim advice on relationships, told entirely through texts.)

Again, fucking hilarious. the chat titles are SUCH a nice touch and it really feels like authentic sibling silliness

3. Night at the (National) Museum by @collectivefandomstuff

Summary: Tim finds himself having, once again, been dragged into the social event of the season. As he slowly dies of boredom and the physical exertion of not rolling his eyes, he bumps into his fellow prisoners brothers and they decide to do something about Bruce’s tendency to trick them into going to these things. More specifically, they decide to cause as much trouble as possible in the hopes that Bruce will just straight up stop inviting them. [cue mission impossible theme]

“We could call in a bomb threat?”

“That’s imaginative.”

“Ok, then we get paintball guns and go to town.”

“Also unhelpful.”

“No, wait! That’s actually a good idea!”

“Really Dick? You don’t think people are going to ask questions if the Waynes start literally hunting socialites for sport?”

I. Love. Schemes. also the writing style is so good omg if i could write like this i'd literally die happy lmao

4. Cingulomania (Sometimes, Dad Needs a Hug) by @charleswaterloo

Summary: ‘Right,’ Tim said, in the voice he used on missions, ‘we’re going to have to call in an expert.’

*

‘Hey guys!’ Dick said, voice slightly crackly over Tim’s phone speakers. ‘What’s up? I’m not supposed to visit until tomorrow - is something wrong?’

-

Something is seriously not right with Bruce. They’re a family of detectives and no one can figure it out. It’s kind of embarrassing.

They’re all starting to get worried.

-

(Sometimes, Bruce needs a hug.)

ok this fic is just really fucking sweet and sometimes a bitch is soft okay?

5. After the Fall of Olympus by @/killthespare

Summary: The League has fallen. The team is dead. All that’s left is for Dick Grayson to pick up the pieces and move forward.

Easier said than done.

this fic is literally a must-read in the dc fandom it's not done yet but holy shit. basically goes through young justice and other arcs if the league had died while dick was robin. perfect if you liked young justice and convoluted plotlines, and this fucking fic kicked my emotional ass SO hard

6. And The World Came Crashing Down by @One_annoying_bird

Summary: When Dick and three of his siblings find themselves within the wreckage of a collapsed building, Dick makes the executive decision for himself to be rescued last.

Even if his injuries really demand for him to be first.

Not that he'll let anyone know that last bit.

Fuck me dude. i'm always a sucker for whump

7. Asimov's Integral by @sElkieNight60

Summary: Tim is an unwanted android, a Robo-Child. After being sent back by his parents, his last and only hope rests in the hands of a man still grieving the loss of his own son.

“I didn’t ask for a replacement,” Bruce barked. “I don’t want a replacement! You can go back and tell the RCO I don’t need a replacement.”

Bruce Wayne didn’t want him. If Bruce Wayne didn’t want him, he’d be sent back and dismantled.

this one hurt me <3 android AU, tw for tim absolutely abysmal mental state and attempted suicide

8. Midnight Book Club by @badwolf36

Summary: “Dick is a lying liar who lies,” Jason declares, drawing his knees up to his chest. His ribs are screaming in that very special way that lets him know at least one or more is bruised (or, more likely, cracked).

“Dick wasn’t the only one who turned you in.” Cass says, now tracing ‘moron’ onto his forehead. “Also, Alfred.”

___________

Cass and Jason discuss books as they wait for Jason to be able to stand up after taking a brutal hit.

this one's a really sweet, quiet piece about jason and cass's relationship (which i absolutely love) and cass's characterization is spot on perfect

9. You fuck with them, you fuck with me by @oclark1226

Summary: When Batman's out of the country for Justice League business, it falls on Dick to find his missing brothers. Once he does, however, he nearly loses control fighting their kidnapper. He has to deal with both the mental and physical consequences of that fight while helping his brothers heal. Includes some soft Bruce tending to both of his eldest boys because they need some hugs and they support him in return.

now this one is simply criminally underrated. hella protective dick, which is my lifeblood, and some of the most well-written hurt/comfort i've read

10. Conflict Resolution by @anicomicqueen

Summary: It started off as a quiet Sunday morning, until Timothy and Damian decided to take their argument outside.

who would i be if i didn't end off with some fluff?? this fic is literally catharsis and i cherish it so much plus its hilarious

#batfam #fic rec #batfam fic rec #batfam fanfiction #dc comics #batman #batman fanfiction #batfamily #dc #dcu #bruce wayne #dick grayson #cassandra cain #jason todd #tim drake #damian wayne #Alfred Pennyworth #batkids

[uhthor]

I find the final funeral scene of endgame where everyone is honoring t*ny and crying at his death funny because like if were were being realistic only rhodey, pepper, and happy would have even showed up

PLSKSJDKSBS FRR!!!!!! WHY WERE THE PYMS AND VAN DYNES THERE!!!!!!

idk why we had to see all the sweaty barton kids like tony has ever done shit for them except make their life hell when their dad was pulled out of retirement for a stupid airport fight and then put in the raft...

and most of the other attendants couldn’t even stand him like u tryna tell me sam liked tony after civil war? u tryna tell me thor ever really gave a shit about someone who constantly made fun of him and gave him stupid nicknames? UR TELLING ME THEY GAVE THE LOCATION OF THE MOST PRIVATE AND HIGH PROFILE FUNERAL TO HARLEY FUCKING KEENER? he is never mentioned again after im3 like who other than tony knows of their experiences together? who knew to invite him? carol knew him for at least 4 seconds and aunt may should’ve taken peter to therapy after tony’s treatment of him not to his funeral

if i rewrote the funeral the only attendants would have been pepper, morgan, happy, rhodey, bruce and steve because they’re polite, nat if she was alive, clint out of respect, fury and maybe maria or coulson. because THAT would have been a true reflection of the way he treated his “friends” and “colleagues” and who he was as a person. having saved the universe and then barely anyone showing up to your funeral because you are a horrible person would have been the most poetic justice for the end of his character arc imo... would’ve been cruel at the time but it would have been realistic. it would have provided that little bit of sympathy for the people who don’t think the sun shines out of his ass

#liv answers #anonymous #this is so funny tbh like #why tf did hank pym go. he spent his whole mcu life saying never trust a stark #it’s just funny to me #anti tony stark

[justiceleaque]

Hey Leaque! I know you watched the new Justice League movie and I was around when you were doing the very first DC movie reviews back in the day. I would absolutely love a review of this one if you have the time :)

i've been a fan of Snyder's universe from day 1 so i understand this might be considered an off-balance review already, but i want to note that i didn't come in wanting the film to be good or willing to see it as good despite actual impressions. i wanted to watch it as the Justice League movie i was supposed to get back in 2017, the same one i was willing to not watch for years if it meant Zack Snyder got to finish his vision even later down the line

i was actually as neutral as i could possibly get because at this point i don't have any real emotional involvement in whether this version of the DCEU continues or not. WB execs have done some fucked up things with the treatment of the cast/ray fisher, so i take this as Snyder's DC trilogy and nothing more (which makes it bittersweet for me but that's a different topic)

heavy spoilers follow

it's incredibly comic book-like. i remember typing the exact same words back in the Dawn of Justice days: it doesn't read as a superhero film a la Marvel but as a comic book film. each frame could be a realistically painted comic book frame; the dialogues would fit freakishly well if they had to fit speech bubbles. the damn scene overlaps and changes are heavily reminiscent of a comic book. better yet: of a Justice League comic book. if you’re familiar with comic book events where big things happen and it affects everyone, this is how this reads

it’s a heavy film but it’s not hopeless. i’ve been seeing reviews pop-up already: “ZS’s Justice League film is twice as longe and twice as hopeless” is the maybe verbatim title of most articles. the one thing i kept thinking throughout these four hours is how much hope this is filled with. we’re dealing with a post-superman world that was shaken by the loss of a beloved superhero and you see batman, the #1 comic book superhero known for brooding and darkness and all things sad and bad, be the loudest, most hopeful person in the film, trying to get a team together to save the world, and later on being two steps from literally screaming that bringing back superman is what should happen no matter the cost because of his faith and hope in winning. did we watch the same film?

in the same vein, the 4 hours seem like a stretch until you realize each part has an actual purpose that introduces or ties in important aspects related to the film’s one purpose: take down Steppenwolf and Darkseid. i don’t believe any scene was wasted on useless information. it can get tiring in the way watching a shot tv series gets tiring: it does NOT get boring at any point

such wonderful character arcs. seeing each of the team’s personalities and quirks, the way they clash with each other, the way it makes it all work so goddamn beautifully. the way they click because they just keep interacting so much? Whedon’s cut didn’t give me a team, it gave me five different people in costume that were forced to sort of work in the same vicinity as each other. Snyder’s cut gave me a version of the Justice League that worked so flawlessly together by the end of the film it felt like a dance. felt like comic book page spreads

right before the epilogue they all pose together in the rising dawn, clark included, having won. super reminiscent of the JL cartoon intro. i cried a bit

J’ONN J’ONZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU KNOW THE AMOUNT OF SPECULATION ABOUT GENERAL SWANWICK BEING THE MARTIAN MANHUNTER BACK WHEN MAN OF STEEL WAS RELEASED???? VINDICATED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

listen to me. i need to make this clear. listen.  j’onn. j’onny boy. the way he’s designed and cgi’d..........the adorable frown............the kind smile......................his obvious need to make others feel better and to simply help......................i love him

his interaction with bruce only comes in the end and it’s super brief but seeing those two still not know how the hell each other works even in film format is hilarious. bruce having accepted aliens and magic and shit is the new norm after like 20 years of only having to deal with the joker attempting to rob neon green hair dyes or some shit is so much bigger of a character development than i ever expected, especially coming from BvS where he’s just a stupid fat-bat-carrying onion

i wasn’t a big fan of Suicide Squad’s joker portrayal but we get to see him at the end of the film while we’re seeing a possible future where lois lane has died and superman is best friends with darkseid playing tic-tac-antilife equation. Snyder somehow managed to turn jared leto into a disgustingly legit comic-faithful joker. dont’ ask me how

in the same scene they mention jason and his death

: - (

we see a few bits of some green lanterns in some scenes, one from the past and one from a possible ultra dark and edgy darkseid future. still convinced bruce simply willingly did not go looking for hal, which, fair

they cut out the fish joke bruce tells arthur when they first meet which immediately turns the whole film into a 1/10 for me

ben affleck’s bruce wayne and batman continue being my favorite on-screen batman iteration to date. we finally move from the usual dark lone soldier version Hollywood is relentlessly giving us into one that belongs with the Justice League. incredibly heartwarming to see

there’s a scene when the JL are first assaulting Steppenwolf’s base and they’re all fighting parademons and shit and there’s a moment where you see batman fighting the Space SWAT From Hell alone and the way he moves? the way he flows from one position to another and another like i’m watching a damn comic book animation????????? sir????????????????????

barry allen saved them

like, literally, barry allen saved them. superman was back and everyone was ready to dance one final time and they were all going ‘steppenwolf fucking SUCKS’ and steppenwolf was crying to darkseid and then the motherboxes did their thing and they all were obliterated into star dust and then barry allen was like ‘bitch i told you i need FRIENDS’ and turned back time and now they’re all okay again :o)

darkseid @ batman through his magic spacetime portal: i’m gonna get your ass one day soon and take you back in time and you’re gonna eventually bring about the end of the world by having every dark twisted batman invade your universe because you inspired them

batman:

batman:

batman: i haven’t read Rebirth bro

i know i’m forgetting stuff but that’s the gist. hands down one of the best comic book film experiences i’ve ever had. with an aside to barry allen being more of a mix of barry and wally, everyone feels incredibly faithful to the source material. also batman definitely killed like, at least 400 parademons in one night, but pest control doesn’t count

(like. he straight up obliterates them)

(pulls out a batbazuka on them)

(amazing)

#Anonymous #asks #zack snyder's justice league #zack snyder's justice league spoilers #JL spoilers #justice league spoilers #/ long post

[stxleslyds]

Red Hood and the lost art of telling Joker to shup up.  

Okay, I know that I talked about Jason and Joker in a recent post but this is something different, I promise.

I really want to talk about how different Jason has been written since UtRH when it comes to him confronting Joker. Jason hasn’t been put in that position a lot but the times that he has, he lets Joker talk for far too long and actually pays attention to whatever he has to say.

The Jason vs Joker thing is basic in on itself and letting Joker talk isn’t exactly the problem here, the real problem is Jason letting Joker’s thoughts shape his future thoughts and decisions, I do understand that that’s exactly what writers want though, they want to build the problematic of: “Jason is just like Joker and the fact that he uses the name Red Hood only proves that Joker made who Jason is now”.

But the thing is that THAT problem is overdone at this point and the only time it worked was the first time it was brought up and it worked because Jason shut the Joker down.

Let’s see all the times (that I remember) the Joker and Jason have had a little chat and/or the times Joker’s words actually influence Jason’s thinking and decision making.

 Under the Red Hood – Batman (1940) #649

This is the first real confrontation we get to see between Jason and Joker after Jason’s death and it is beautiful. It's absolutely amazingly written, Joker goes on and on forever about how he killed Jason about how Jason is just as bad as him but that he is also just like Batman because he hasn’t killed him yet.

“You let me live after everything I did, you couldn’t pop my balloon. You just couldn’t. The apple doesn’t tumble too far from the paterfamilias. You are just like daddy-kins”

Jason lets him talk, yes. But he absolutely destroys Joker with what he tells him next.

“You couldn’t be more wrong about me. If right were a country on earth you’d be circling on the edge of the milky way. Yeah, I let you live but like always, every damned minute of your addled, posturing, psychopathic life, you think this is about you. You’re a worm. I’ve pitched you on a hook and dropped you into the brine. And I will beat the hell out of you Pagliacci because it was too much fun not to.”

“Listen to me Joker, I’m not you. I´m nothing like you. I know what I do and I know why I do it. You, you are, clinically speaking, a whack-job. But I know a secret, a good one.”

“You are not nearly as crazy as you would like us all to believe or even as crazy as you would like to believe. It just makes it easier to justify every sick monstrous thing you’ve ever done when you play the part of the mad clown. You are crazy, bubba, but you ain’t that crazy. Look at that. I wiped a smile off of Joker’s face. I have been waiting a long time for that.”

Everything about this is perfect, Jason gives Joker no room to mess with him. Whatever the Joker had planned on saying he had to eat because Jason wasn’t playing games and he was ready for any kind of lie the Joker had ready to tell. This is Jason Todd. He won’t let the Joker get under his skin because he knows the Joker and he, also, knows better. 

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #15

Here Jason comes across Joker during the “Death of the Family” event. In this issue the Joker has information about all of the members of the “Batfamily” and he uses that to mess around with each one of them, in Jason’s case he insinuates that he was present in very specific moments of his life when Jason’s father got shot, when his mother overdosed and when he was on his own before joining Batman.

Jason doesn’t quite believe that Joker was there but as the reader, we can see this sort of sense of doubt in Jason. He hesitates a few times before resolving that the Joker is playing with him.

But as far as this issue goes let’s just say that what the Joker says doesn’t get to Jason, this changes though in the issue that follows up this story.

Teen Titans (2011) #16

This is where that story continues and where Jason starts to buy the story that Joker is selling.

Joker convinces Jason that he has his father and Tim’s father and that the only way for Jason (or Tim) to save their dads is by killing the other (Jason or Tim). Tim doesn’t believe it but Jason is ready to shoot Tim almost immediately.

However, Jason changes his mind about killing Tim just as Tim comes up with a plan for them to not actually have to kill each other. Here is where Lobdell’s writing shows all of its flaws, Lobdell is so desperate to show that Jason and Tim are besties that he forgets that Jason had no reason to stop trying to kill Tim to save his shit father because it is later revealed that Jason truly believed that Joker had found his father and had him captive. It wasn’t until Tim explained his thought process as to why those men weren’t their dads that Jason just goes “you realize, of course, the only reason I didn’t kill you right off is that I knew your big brain will figure out some way out of this” HA, nice save Lobdell but I see right through your bullshit.

Jason bought what the Joker was selling and that is the beginning of Jason’s downgrade when it comes to not playing Joker’s games.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #17

Well, in this issue Lobdell goes back to Jason kinda not believing what Joker told him, and Jason asks Bruce of all people if he thinks the Joker truly “made him or not”. Bruce says that he doesn’t believe that and that he didn’t have anything to do with the man that Jason has become either. For some reason, Jason is actually happy with what Bruce said and for a couple of moments, Jason goes back to being sure that the Joker knows nothing and that he is his own man.

It doesn’t last long though. At the very end of the issue, the trap that Joker had set up in Jason’s helmet triggers and Jason gets his face fucked up with acid or something.

But that’s not all because a hologram of Joker has something to say: “you were supposed to be my masterpiece from start to finish. But you were too stubborn to stay dead. So here is what we are going to do… You’re so determined to be your own man? Fine, let’s start with a clean slate”.

Basically, the Joker insinuates once more that he had something to do with who Jason was supposed to become and that Jason isn’t truly “his own man”, This is all a setup for a very dense storyline that will be continued in this run later.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #18

In this issue, Jason is in a coma after he is dosed with that gas in the previous issue. The Joker isn’t really present in this issue but he does make an appearance as part of Jason’s “nightmare” while he is unconscious.

That’s not all though, Jason has an illusion of Ducra (someone that he appreciates a lot), telling him that “after you left the All-Castle after you went back to the world you continued to let your life be defined by the actions of that man. You became a killer, lashing out at people who may or may not have deserved it. Eventually, you will hurt all those you have cared for. In that way, how are you any different from the Joker?”.

In this statement, there is a lot of wrongs that can come from two places, either bad writing on Lobdell’s part or just Ducra telling lies as a plot point.

“Let your life be defined by the actions of that man” is a sentence that horribly simplifies Jason’s thinking during the events of UtRH, because while he did resent the Joker, his real problem was with Bruce who had not avenged his death by killing the Joker himself. Also, Jason was doing other things back then, like being a pain in the ass for Black Mask and disrupting the drug trade in Gotham as well as trying to control the drug dealing to children. So that little sentence is just a gross misinterpretation of the true events which means that Ducra was wrong, and “she” continues to be wrong when she says that there might be no difference between Jason and Joker.

Luckily Jason thinks the same because he tells “Ducra”: “…don’t you dare compare me to that monster Ducra. I am nothing like the Joker! Nothing!”

Once again please don’t be fooled by Jason’s thinking because in the next issue it turns around really fast and really bad.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #19

Just a heads up this issue has a change of writer, Lobdell isn’t writing this arc, the writer that gives us this hellish story arc is James Tynion IV.

All that talk about Jason not being affected or not believing what the Joker told him is yeeted out of the window and it’s not a fun ride.

In this issue, Roy and Kory find a Jason that doesn’t know who they are or who he, himself, is. This is because S’aru that little floaty little shit took his memories away after Jason asked him to do so, well Jason asked S’aru to erase every memory that darkness has touched (Joker) and he does that. But him doing that is apparently erasing everything which, holy shit, how messed up is that?

But let’s take a look at what Jason says before he gets his memories taken away: “Not only did the Joker almost take my face, but he tells me he might have manipulated my entire life from the beginning! Even the good is tainted by him now. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t have that kind of doubt. If you take it away, I can go on living. I can keep fighting”. So, yeah that was a pretty emo speech. But the thing here is that if Jason is asking this dude to erase every memory that has been tainted by the Joker and he erases all of them then we might be facing one of two situations, either Joker has been messing up with Jason’s life from the beginning or S’aru is just a little bitch.

We will later find out in #20 that S’aru and Ducra planned the whole thing, meaning that they took all of his memories for ulterior motives not because the Joker had actually tainted all of them.

For many issues Jason has no memories and now that I am revisiting these issues, I now remember the twisted and completely insane plot they came up with for the “League of Assassins” and Jason being the “Chosen One”, everything was happening in this run, my god, it's like they wanted Jason to be the center of every single trope in writing history.

It’s in issue #26 that Jason asks for his memories back but the Joker having tainted his memories or not isn’t important anymore to anyone, including the writer (because he is too focused on telling this messy story), Jason (because he has enough problems at the moment) and the reader (because this book makes zero sense and it changes the story and motivations every single issue).

But there is another truth to be revealed in the next issue.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2011) #27

Jason has planned along Ducra and S’aru to give up all of his memories to be cleansed so he could defeat Ra’s Al Ghul. But (there is always a but) Ducra says this: “Your greatest enemy returned and nearly took your face away from you. And in the process, shook your sense of identity to the core” “The final battle here will take place in the Well of Sins, and with all the doubt and fear clouding your mind, it would eat you whole”.

So yeah, now we have confirmation from Ducra that Jason had indeed let what the Joker told him cloud his sense of self and made him doubt who he was and if he really was in control.

All that back and forth for these many issues just to say, yes, Jason let Joker’s words affect him.

So here it is, let Joker get in Jason’s head to build the plot of a story, fantastic, the story was a mess because it had so much information, the mischaracterizations of Roy and Kory were at their maximum potential, and in this particular story arc not only are the events of Red Hood: The Lost Days officially erased from Jason’s canon but something quite out there is added to Jason’s canon from before he was even Robin (that’s a whole different story that I won’t be talking about here).

What an insane ride this arc was. Definitely not the kind of story I enjoy in a Red Hood book but that’s just my preference.

*This whole arc was written by James Tynion IV.

Red Hood/Arsenal #11

Joker is dead during the events of this run but the person who has something to say to Jason about how the Joker made the person that he is now is Duela Dent (“Joker’s daughter”, she isn’t his daughter she just found Joker’s face somewhere and she puts it on and “becomes” crazy, she is an incredibly weird character).

She says this, “You’re a lot like dad in that way” to which Jason says “He is not my father. He’s not even your father” but Duela continues by saying. “You’re kidding yourself if you genuinely believe that. Yeah, he took your life but look what you got in its place, you ingrate. You got your freedom. You were reborn.” 

Jason doesn’t fall for it or anything of the sort but once again writers are bringing up the Joker as the maker of the Red Hood and “suggesting” that what Jason has been doing and who he has become is all thanks to Joker. The idea of Jason having no free will is still present in this narrative, even when Jason doesn’t believe it.

Red Hood/Arsenal #12

I talked too soon because in this issue Jason is having some weird thoughts.

“Funny, isn’t it, so easy to call Duela “crazy” because she wears a dead man’s face. Because isn’t that what I’m doing? Before he was the Joker, he was the Red Hood. So maybe the line between men and the Joker’s daughter is a lot thinner than I’d like to admit.”

Here he is comparing himself to Duela and to the Joker to an extent, writers often bring up the fact that Jason uses the code name that his killer once had and they have people or Jason himself questioning why he uses that name.

Personally, I don’t think there is much to build from it (at least not from the perspective of Lost Days and UtRH), it was just a joke, a morbid one if you will. He wears the mantle of the person that destroys Gotham and fills its people with fear while he is trying to control the city’s drug trade and trying to keep the people safe in his own way. And the way he wanted to do it is almost the complete opposite of the way that Batman does things.

I just think that he is being ironic and acidic about the whole thing. He has obviously moved on from the fact that Joker killed him but he has issues with the fact that Batman has yet another child working with him while the Joker is still alive. And Jason really wanted to make Bruce suffer, so him taking the name and a similar appearance to how the joker used to look is also done to get a reaction from Bruce.

I really don’t think there is any sort of connection to make between Jason and Joker beyond that, much like there is no connection between the name Nightwing and the Court of Owls. Even though Lincoln March tried to convince Dick Grayson that he chose the name Nightwing because Owls fly at night and that meant that he was supposed to become a Talon and all that Dick still didn’t believe it because he knew why he chose that name and no one can twist his reason.

Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #10

Finally, I can stop re-reading New 52 books, I don’t enjoy it but I have to do it if I want to talk/complain about stuff.

This one is a little different because while Jason does talk with the Joker, the Joker isn’t really there he is just part of Jason’s imagination just like the Robin Jason that he is also seeing.

In this story, Jason is helping Artemis discover who she is but he gets captured in Qurac, yup that place, and worst of all from where he is being held, he can see the place where he died. All of that is helping Jason have some very vivid memories/illusions. He does actively hold a conversation with the imaginary Joker and Robin Jason though, and he is also having a lot of thoughts that let us know how the Joker affects Jason.

“This is why it was stupid of me to come back to Qurac. Even to help Artemis, even if I thought I could handle it. Physically, I am alone, but in my head? I’m drowning in memories of the worst day of what was my very short life. The day I was murdered.”

That’s what Jason is thinking but what I write next is what Jason’s saying as he talks to the imaginary Joker.

“Not interested in replaying this over again, like I have every night of my life since it happened Joker”

So, we are told that Jason thinks about that day very often, the Joker might not be involved much in Jason’s books but he definitely has a bigger role inside of Jason’s head. They chat for a bit up until Jason decides to “kill” the Joker, he knows, of course, that it is not real but it does give him satisfaction. (If only they would have let Jason actually kill the clown for real, or at the very least chase him just to show the reader that Jason does actually want to finish the job since the Bat won’t do it himself).

Having said all that, Joker’s imaginary death doesn’t last long because Jason is trapped in his mind and the Joker is basically functioning on a loop inside of it.

That is where the problem lies in this issue because Jason is letting us know that he is still heavily influenced by what happened that day and that he hasn’t been able to walk away from it. But once more that’s not the worst thing, because all of these thoughts have led Jason to think that he (in the present and as a fifteen-year-old) is the one to blame for having ended up dead. Yeah, it is messed up.

This is what Jason says to imaginary Robin Jason, “He is never going to die, Jason. Not here. Not in my mind, not if at some point I don’t stand up and walk away from my memories. From you.”

This is a major downgrade, from the Jason that we had in UtRH because that Jason had moved on from the fact that he had been killed what he was looking for was for Batman to avenge his death. He had other things in mind as well, like I said before in this post Jason had a lot of things going on, killing Joker wasn’t his only plan.

And this situation (written by Lobdell) is also very different from what was going on in New 52 where Jason being influenced by the Joker was used to build a plot. This is just a writer letting us know that this “new version” of Jason hasn’t worked out his problems when it comes to his death and his killer. That means that we are going backward.

After he realizes that he was unconscious all that time and that he was being tortured he does get his shit together in order to get out of captivity and go help Artemis.

The Joker and that whole thing that happened in his mind aren’t mentioned again, it was just for the reader to know that Rebirth Jason has unsolved issues with his death.

Batman: Three Jokers #1

Oh yes, here we are, we have arrived to that dreaded book, awful writing gorgeous art. In this book, the “Joker made Jason as he is now” trope is at its full potential; Johns drives this hellish truck of a book at full speed into our homes and then ends it by giving us one of the worst takes on Jason Todd’s characterization ever.

But first, let’s talk about the Joker and Jason interaction in the first issue. As Jason and Barbara are left alone with the Joker that they came across moments ago the Joker begins talking because that’s what he does.

He says this, “I’m the loop-de-loop, the hamster-wheel-of-doom. The cycle of pain each one of you is trapped in. Take “Red Hood” here, for example. Have you ever wondered why he uses my former moniker? Who in their right mind would take on the identity of their killer? Am I right?”

He is obviously being a little shit on purpose and is waiting to see if somebody will take the bait. Jason is the first to talk and he says this: “I took it because I’m owning what you did to me. You made me into this. I will be your destruction”.

Congratulations Jason, you took the bait, and now Barbara will fight with you over it.

Jason raises his gun to “break the cycle” and Barbara is like “please don’t do it” and boy is Joker having the time of his life! Both of these idiots are playing his game, Johns really did both Jason and Barbara dirty with this.

Here is where THE problem with letting the Joker talk is. This Joker got under Jason’s skin in seconds and Barbara did nothing while it happened.

This is what the Joker had to say. “Let’s look at the facts here bat-people. I bashed this boy’s skull in. I killed this Robin” to which Jason says “You didn’t kill me, you only made me stronger” which is weird because the Joker did kill him so I don’t know what kinda comeback that was supposed to be but Joker wasn’t done because he continues by saying “Yes, you crawled from the shallow grave I left you in. You lived on to fight another day. Hurrah! You survived because of your tenacity! Or maybe… maybe I beat you to a bloody mess… I took you right to the edge… because I wanted to leave you alive.”

Great that’s where the clown is going, just fantastic, more of the “I made you” but that’s not all because the Joker tells Jason that him having hurt Jason wasn’t because he didn’t like Jason, it was all about Batman, Jason doesn’t matter.

But that’s not the worse thing that was written in this awful book, Geoff Johns seems to have felt that the trauma that Jason went through in the original “Death in the Family” story wasn’t enough because he decided to add something new.

That’s why the Joker says this next, “Do you recall what you said to me while I was breaking your head in with that crowbar? As your blood streamed into your eyes and your skull cracked? Because I cherish those words. I’ll always cherish them. ‘Please stop! Please! If you let me live, I’ll do anything you say. I’ll be your Robin’” “And look at you now my little “Red Hood” shooting up people and making Batman’s life miserable! You are my Robin!”

What a nightmare Johns decided to put Jason and Jason Nation through huh? I hate this, this is the worst thing that has ever been written in a Jason Todd story (although I can say that about many things that were written in this three-issue book).

Jason kills the Joker after he says all that, Barbara does (for some reason) try to stop him from doing it but luckily, she can’t stop Jason.

But here is the thing, Jason killing the Joker doesn’t make me feel as satisfied as I would have liked, and it doesn’t feel that way because Jason let Joker talk for far too long and what Joker said ended up getting in Jason’s head and messing with him.

Batman: Three Jokers #2

Yeah, there is no rest for us, Jason Nation, in this issue Jason goes looking for another Joker to kill and he finds one but he gets captured. Johns really had to get Jason naked for Joker to torture him mentally and physically? Johns is, himself, a major red flag but that’s not what I am here to talk about.

In this issue the Joker that captures Jason has the same things to say as the other one, DC writers really have no imagination when it comes to building conflict between Joker and Jason, huh?

Anyway, Joker says this, “tell me something. Why would you put on that helmet and call yourself Red Hood after what we did?” Jason of course replies “Come on, is every one of you copycats gonna ask me the same thing? It’s a joke” the answer isn’t enough for Joker (the two of them that are here with Jason) so he continues talking. “A joke? We left you with brain damage and permanent nerve pain. Physical and emotional trauma so severe that the only relief you ever find is when you inflict pain on others. You and me, boy, we’re more alike than you’d care to admit. But you know that already. You nearly died and you blame the Batman. You hate him for it. Me too. You hate him most of all don’t you?”

Now, here is the thing, that whole thing is bullshit, none of it makes sense. From Jason having permanent nerve pain to Jason hating Batman the most, everything is a lie. And my confusion here is that I don’t know if I have to feel like Joker is doing it on purpose to be a little bitch or if Geoff Johns was on crack when he wrote this and he had actually never heard of Jason Todd in his life before.

The whole thing is a mess, it feels like he is writing Jason from an origin and story that we never read. I don’t know how to explain it, but the whole thing feels cheap, it’s a cheap trope and it’s a cheap take on who Jason Todd is, was, and will be.

The nightmare doesn’t end Jason Nation because these two Jokers have something else in mind, you see, if they said that they made the Red Hood when they killed Jason the first time, maybe if they kill him this time then he could possibly come back as the Joker. Yeah, this book did nothing for Jason.

Let’s make something clear, Jason does NOT hate Batman/Bruce for not being able to save him, he hates the fact that Batman/Bruce didn’t kill the Joker to avenge him. That simple thing doesn’t exist in Three Jokers and that’s why things like the ones that happen next are allowed to happen in this story.

Bruce and Barbara find Jason and when Bruce asks if he is okay Jason just goes berserk, he says: “Am I all right? What do you think Bruce?! You did this to me. You put me on this path. And I do hate you for it. For leaving me in the dirt. Replacing me one Robin after another without a thought.”

This, everybody is what you get when you mix bad writing with Jason being mentally manipulated by the Joker.

It's a shame that Jason is being treated this way at this point in time, in a book that came out in 2020 when Jason was able to shut the clown up with a knife and a couple of words back in 2005. What a downgrade.

At the end of this issue, Jason is safe and recovering but he still is in the same mindset, he says, “What the Joker said about how I’ve been on the path to being like them for years… they are not wrong. I don’t want to be like them though. I really don’t.”

It’s like a never-ending wheel of pain with this book. Jason is talking to Barbara when he says that and he is trying to look for comfort in her. And here is where the Jason/Barbara subplot begins and I only bring this up because something that happens in the next issue is based on the kiss that Barbara gave Jason but then was like “that doesn’t mean anything, I was just trying to comfort you”. Johns shouldn’t be allowed to write Barbara and Jason ever again.

Batman: Three Jokers #3

It’s in this issue that we find out the big subplot that Johns has prepared for Jason, are you ready for it? Yup, Jason should stop being the Red Hood because if he keeps it up, he will eventually become the Joker.

I know, I know! Jason would never stop being Red Hood, he is not on a path to become the Joker, that’s crazy! Jason’s Red Hood is a character on its own and he is amazing and just because he has different morals from Batman doesn’t mean that he is a bad guy! Right?...

“I’ll give up being Red Hood for us. I can be something else. Or I can be just Jason.”

To this day I cannot believe that those words supposedly were written by Jason Todd to Barbara Gordon after Barbara rejected him three times. The level of “what the fuck is this” is incredibly high with this one…

This whole book was a mess and I am so glad that it didn’t last longer.

Anyway, that’s it. In conclusion, Jason didn’t let the Joker get under his skin the first time they interacted after he came back from the dead but later when DC decided that UtRH was just too good of a book they came up with stories where Joker does get under Jason’s skin and Jason becomes convinced that he has no free will (or at the very least he doubts his free will) when it comes to him becoming his own man.

As I have said before, that for Jason Todd is a major downgrade. And it's one of the many things that hurts Jason’s characterization in current comics.

#jason todd #Jason Todd #red hood #Red Hood #red hood and the outlaws #red hood outlaw #three jokers #batman under the red hood #dc comics

[medeafive]

no because your thing about nat having a side character death is so painfully true. so much so that everyone who isn’t a natasha stan, just forgets that she died to save the universe the same way tony did. and the fact that yelena was clearly the one to get her a gravestone (because it said sister, no one else knew about her family except them, and it’s under the trees like her mother’s was) meant that not a single avenger gave more than those few tears at the lake for her. at best(hopefully), we might get a little honouring for her at the barton household in the hawkeye series that’s it. steve shed two whole tears, bruce was solemn that he couldn’t bring her back, tony didn’t even fucking realise he was her family, and thor who didn’t have much of a relationship with her anyways, got a little angry. that’s it. and everyone that was currently snapped at the time gave us NOTHING. sam didn’t mention her once, which was honestly awful considering they were friends, and anthony loves natasha’s character. wanda, who nat genuinely cared for so much and worried about so much during their nomad days, had two words to say to clint about it. not to mention we even had t’challa acknowledge tony’s death despite barely knowing him/not liking him, even though he was actually friends with nat before and after she helped steve in CW, to the point where he let her stay in wakanda while she was a fugitive once they made up. and technically bucky doesn’t count because they barely touched on their shared history (but like also she still saved him multiple times, and would have interacted with him in wakanda after he came out of cyro), but we got nothing from him too.

natasha’s relationships with people (besides clint, and occasionally steve and bruce) often felt so one sided because she loved them all so much and they rarely batted an eye at her, and the way they treated her in endgame just solidified that. natasha worked her ass off to take care of each and every one of them, keep the team together, especially after civil war, and was honestly the glue of the mcu, and yet nothing.

anyways thanks to clint and yelena for being the only bitches to love her as much as she deserved.

All of that is true and you should say it!!!

I just think we shouldn't put it too much on the characters, if that makes sense. Like, Natasha's death in-universe wasn't Clint's fault (which is why we can't really get excited about Yelena going after him, he really really tried to save her) but narratively, it is - she had to die so he could live. I know it's hard to distinguish but for me, it's really the narrative and the structure of the movie that didn't give the characters more place to mourn. Like you said, casual viewers just forget Natasha died, probably already by the end of the movie, and that's because they didn't give her death the same impact as Tony's. Her death literally mattered less than his and that's just telling the audience that she mattered less than him. I think the characters come across as not caring enough to us but to the writers, it was the appropriate amount of mourning she deserved based on how important they thought she was, and that's not a lot.

This also shows in the movies and shows after Endgame. TFATWS didn't mention her even once even though she would have fit in at several points - neither her sacrifice nor the SHIELD data dump nor her role in Civil War, not any brainwashing parallels to Bucky, Sam literally says "Steve and I were on the run for years" without mentioning Nat was with them, Sharon didn't mention her once, she wasn't even in Bucky's victims book even though he tried to kill her three times. And the TFATWS story works totally fine without her because they didn't feel the need to address it any way. Meanwhile, Spiderman Homecoming is about Tony's death to an almost absurd amount, and that's because Tony's death is important(tm) and they expect it to matter to us and that's why they feel like they have to talk about the consequences even in future movies (see also that quote from the Eternals trailer about who leads the Avengers now that Tony and Steve are gone- they mattered. Nat didn't). Imagine if Tony or Steve or Thor would have died somewhere in the middle of Endgame - that wouldn't have worked, right? They wouldn't have dared get rid of them like that. But for Nat, it's okay because the implicit understanding is that she's just a side character and so she can die like a side character, too.

That's just my interpretation, of course- if your interpretation is that the other characters didn't care about her as much as she did about them, that's perfectly valid and angsty and good! I just feel like they're constantly telling us (through the narrative and the characters behaviour) that Natasha and her death shouldn't matter all that much.

I wasn't really upset that Nat died - characters die all the time, hell, Loki "died" in the first Thor movie and look where he is now - I'm mad because her death wasn't made to matter and they seem to think that's the appropriate weight the end of her arc should get. They could bring her back anytime if they wanted to. They just expect us to be okay with what she got and honestly, it seems like a lot of people are.

#more rambling #it makes me so mad when people throw Tony's and Nat's death together #you absolutely can't compare #natasha romanoff #black widow #anti endgame #this is not just anti endgame this is anti all the movies that solidified nat as a side hero #including everything that came after endgame #meta

[nethandrake]

Blood In The Water

stevethortony. mcu. rated t. 1.8k words.

based on this fanart i commissioned from​ @justlous-art

also on ao3.

*****

Press conferences, in Clint’s opinion, are one of the worst things he has to experience.

Every time the Avengers has to host one (which is usually almost every fucking week), it’s always the same old reporters throwing accusations, the same old debates being tosses around, the same old headaches and boredom creeping into his mind. They always end with everyone in a shitty mood.

The only upside Clint could see is that he only needs to speak up if a question’s directed his way. Otherwise, it’d be their co-leaders’ job to fend the wolves off.

Their co-leaders who are currently and unfortunately answering another stupid question from the press.

“Yes, Stark Industries will be footing the bill,” Steve says tiredly.

“We always do,” Tony chimes in. “Now, you with the green-striped tie. You’re up.”

The journalist in question straightens, fixing his tie. Clint doesn’t remember seeing him at any of the conferences but he looks awfully familiar.

“He’s from Fox News,” Natasha supplies next to Clint.

It takes everything in Clint to not bash his smash his face against the conference table. “Shit.”

“Shit indeed.”

“It is no secret that Mr Stark is, to put it lightly,” Fox Man begins, his reedy voice making Clint’s skin crawl, “promiscuous—”

“What does this have to do with the giant squid we took down?” Steve interrupts.

“—and have been known to get into relationships with men, women—”

“What is the point of this?” Thor cuts in, his cool demeanor now turned irritated. “We are deviating from the—”

“My question to you, Captain,” Fox Man continues, unperturbed, “is, what are your thoughts regarding Mr Stark and Mr Odinson’s…relationship?”

Tony stills as murmurs begin to fill the room. Pepper immediately whips her tablet out.

It’s not the first time Clint’s heard of rumors of the Avengers dating amongst themselves but it’s never been brought up during their press conferences.

First time for everything, he supposes.

Thor jumps to his feet, slamming his hands on the table. Outside, thunder crackles.

“You dare—”

Steve isn’t doing much better to rein his temper in, leaning forward with a dangerous glint behind his eyes. “I’d be careful with what you say next. Rumors of the Avengers fraternizing isn’t new so—”

“Oh, this isn’t just a rumor,” Fox Man says coolly. He jumps to his feet, holding out his phone. “I happen to have…proof.”

In a flash, Happy strides over, most likely to block the man’s path like the good Head of Security he is. Steve waves him off, beckoning for the device to be handed over to Clint.

On the phone is a picture of Thor and Tony kissing in a dimly lit alleyway. Or at least, men who are supposedly Thor and Tony. It’s hard to tell since the quality’s crap.

Then again, they’re both bathed in a soft blue glow. A soft blue glow that Clint’s come to associate with the arc reactor.

“That isn’t photoshopped,” Fox Man claims. “If you swipe left, you’ll find a video.”

True enough, there is one of Thor pushing Tony against the wall and god, that’s so gross. Who knows what’s on that wall—

Natasha snatches the phone out of Clint’s grasp, giving it a long once-over.

“Thoughts?” Clint murmurs.

“It looks authentic,” she admits.

Well, then. Fuck.

When the phone ends up in Steve’s grasp, Clint swears cracks form on the screen.

“I would like to know if there have been…issues between you and Mr Stark,” Fox Man continues like the oblivious idiot he is. Clint’s ready to reach pluck an arrow from his quiver and pin the asshole to a wall. “You come from a different time, a time where traditional and wholesome American values are valued. Mr Stark isn’t known for possessing such values. And it is widely known that you and Mr Stark did not get along. And with this…alien—”

“I get it,” Steve growls. It’s been a while since Clint’s seen in this furious. He looks ready to pounce, if Tony hasn’t stilled him in place.

Steve’s features meld into something soft, a look that Clint’s privately coined as the ‘Tony Look’. Oddly, it’s the same look he flashes Thor. The three of them trade glances, glances that only a super soldier, a god, and a genius would know. Tony’s lips curl into a reassured smirk. The other follow suit.

Clint wonders if that’s how Natasha and him are like. Because damn, he gets why people think it’s eerie.

“First of all, let me be clear about this,” Steve begins, “I will not let you or anyone disrespect my friends like that ever again. This is a warning to the rest of you all as well. You, however, I’ll make sure you’ll be banned from the next conference. And don’t think I won’t remember your face. Because I will. I have a good memory. As for your question, I don’t have anything to say about that. But I do have something to show you.”

Without hesitation, Steve leans over to capture Tony’s lips in his.

Clint would’ve toppled over if Natasha hadn’t steadied his chair.

“That’s…”

“Bold?”

“I was gonna say unexpected,” Clint says. “But yeah, sure. Let’s go with that.”

It’s an open secret among the Avengers that Steve and Thor have been hopelessly pining for Tony for months, even going so far as trying to outdo each other with their efforts of wooing Tony.

Judging by the way Tony’s cupping Steve’s face as they make out and the shit-eating grin Thor has plastered on as he saunters over to the two, it seems like they’ve come to a mutual agreement. A silent mutual agreement.

How the fuck did this escape the rest of their notice? Of Clint’s notice? Steve and Thor are two of the least subtle people around. The fact that they and Tony could keep their relationship on the downlow is blowing Clint’s mind.

Steve and Tony part with a quiet smack. Tony turns in his seat to fist Thor’s shirt to give his own kiss.

“I think my brain’s short-circuiting.”

Natasha scoffs. “You’re acting as if you’ve never seen two men kiss in your life.”

“Well, I’ve never seen my friends kiss each other,” Clint hisses. “You gotta cut me some slack here. I mean, look at Bruce.”

“Bruce looks fine.”

“His eyebrows look like they’re gonna climb off his forehead.”

Steve’s cheeks are flaming red when he shyly turns back to the stunned crowd in front of him. His expression quickly turns icy when he meets Fox Man’s eyes, who looks torn between hiding in a hole or lighting the rest of them on fire.

“Does that answer your question?” he challenges. “Or do you need me to give you another demonstration?”

Thor doesn’t let Fox Man reply, smirking as he inches over to Steve. “I dare say we have not finished his question, my love.”

And with that, he seals Steve’s lips with his.

Clint almost passes out.

“Okay,” Natasha says. “Now, that? That I didn’t see coming.”

Tony’s all smiles as he watches his boyfriends (boyfriends!!!!!) make out in front of everyone. It’s the smuggest and proudest he’s ever seen him.

“Suck it,” he says into the microphone, casually flipping off Fox Man, who looks like he’s ready to explode.

For some unexplainable reason, the rest of the journalists zero in on Clint after that.

“Don’t look at me,” he says, hands held high. “I ain’t kissing them.”

Natasha smirks. Bruce covers his grin behind his sleeve.

Out of the corner of Clint’s eyes, Pepper rubs her temples and pops a pill.

*****

The next day, Clint and the rest of the Avengers pile into one of the stuffy conference rooms on the helicarrier because according to Tony, ‘Eye Patch is in the mood to ream their asses’. Which is so, so unfair since Clint wasn’t the one who made out with his boyfriends in front of the press. Why the hell did he need to face Fury’s wrath when he wasn’t the one to out himself to the press?

Much to no one’s surprise, said boyfriends don’t show up.

Fury’s scowl is much more steely than usual when he storms in, slamming a newspaper onto the table.

Emblazoned on the front page is a picture of Tony flipping the camera as Steve and Thor make out in the background. Avengers: Gay Orgy?!, its heading screams.

“Is there something you people wanna tell me?” Fury begins icily.

“There is no orgy going on between the six of us,” Natasha immediately answers.

“Or five,” Bruce adds.

Clint nods his head, gesturing towards the newspaper. “Yup, yup. The only Avengers having an orgy are them.”

Fury raises an eyebrow. “And what the hell do you call this, then?”

“A threesome,” Natasha replies.

Clint frowns at her. “But that’s not even a threesome. They weren’t even having sex.”

“Threesome could mean three people as a group,” Bruce offers.

“Ah.”

“Speaking of threesomes, where the hell are Stark and—”

A resounding crash cuts Fury off, jolting everyone in their seats.

Everyone hustles out and makes a beeline for the conference room next door. Clint gets into position, readying himself to let his arrow fly.

He expects AIM beekeepers, HYDRA goons, or even Doombots. Instead, they’re greeted by the sight of the conference table cracked, the room in disarray, and the other half of the Avengers in a tangle of limbs.

Tony has sandwiched himself between his boyfriends as he sucks the soul out of Steve. Next to them, Thor glances up at Clint and the rest, beaming and flashing them a thumbs-up before Tony drags him into a kiss.

Clint’s going to need bleach for his eyes when he gets home.

“Are you sure the squid didn’t spray them with sex pollen or something?” he begins tentatively.

“Nope,” Bruce replies. “We got checked over, remember?”

“Twice,” Natasha adds.

Steve has the decency to look ashamed when he catches sight of them. He pries his boyfriends apart before jumping to his feet in haste. “Director! I– We were just—”

“Late,” Tony continues for him. “Sorry about that but—”

“We were distracted,” Thor declares.

“I’ll pay for everything,” Tony adds.

Fury looks absolutely murderous.

Clint clasps his hands. “Well! I think it’s safe to say that we all need a break. Or bleach. How about we adjourn this meeting for a while and—”

“Three of you are dismissed. But you three,” Fury jabs his fingers at Steve, Thor, and Tony in turn, “stay. We need to talk.”

Steve’s cheeks darken. Thor puffs his chest. Tony grins lazily. Their hair is disarray, their clothes wrinkled, their lips red and puffy and— Clint is not going to think about that. Nope. Not at all. Not if he wants to sleep at night.

Natasha immediately makes a beeline for the door. Bruce wipes his glasses with his shirt, following after her.

Out of the corner of Clint’s eyes, Fury rubs his temples and pops a pill.

*****

True to his word, Tony ends up paying for all the damages incurred on the helicarrier. All twenty thousand dollars’ worth of damages.

Clint couldn’t look at Conference Room Three the same way ever again.

*****

also on ao3.

#stevethortony #stevetonythor #stevetony #thortony #stevethor #tony stark #steve rogers #thor odinson #steve x tony #steve x tony x thor #steve x thor x tony #thor x tony #steve x thor #*fic

[theliterateape]

We Killed Jason Todd

By Matt Markman

In 1988 my friends and I killed a kid.

He was just a boy really. We had help it wasn’t just me and my pals. there were adults involved, lots of them. I mean we were young we were just thirteen and really couldn’t comprehend the ramification of our actions, the adults knew what they were doing. I’m painting it to sound way more sinister than it was, and in today’s society, wouldn’t trend on Twitter but maybe in the ’80s, it was probably considered quite ominous.

To set your mind at ease, it was Jason Todd. You know, Batman's sidekick, The Boy Wonder, Robin—well, the second Robin anyways. And I helped kill him.

I was big into comic books but my favorite was, The Dark Knight, The Caped Crusader, The Batman… He donned the best costume, he had all the money and was the most intelligent of all the superheroes. That last trait right there, the fact that he was considered a superhero and he had no actual super powers made him cooler than the other side of the pillow. You know how The Big Bang Theory has convinced the world it’s an Emmy-winning sitcom worth watching? I think it’s the fact that Batman was someone any one of us could actually be. Sure we needed to start with a base coat of genius followed by a splash of handsome billionaire playboy then train overseas in martial arts for several years, but if you had those things you, too, could be a vigilante. You ask me today and I'd stand by the fact that Batman would beat Superman in a fight, say ten out of ten times. This is not debatable because super beings from another planet are not real.

My favorite thing about Batman, though, is his ability to balance out good and evil. He spawned one of the greatest comic book villains and fictional characters ever created, The Joker. They have tried and tried again but in my opinion never got close to the Clown Prince of Crime—maybe Negan from The Walking Dead, he's pretty ruthless. The Joker is what would happen if a stand-up comedian became a criminal mastermind, so basically the plot of the 2019 film Joker.

My love for Joker made sense because growing up I was always more into the bad guys than the good guys. Watching and playing with G.I.Joe, I was always on the side of Cobra Commander, the twins Tomax and Xamot, and Zartan because they were always more glamorous and eye-catching than the boring ass Joes. Just once, I’d like that “knowing is half the battle” part at the end of the cartoon to have been Storm Shadow giving us kids a tip on how to fuck up Shipwreck and his stupid Parrot. Megatron, Skeletor, Shredder, Mumm-ra…

The list goes on, but the antagonists always resonated with me. they had a much better and more intriguing agenda than the good guys did. I know that wasn't the purpose, we were supposed to cheer on the good guys, like the idea of saving the world and all, but the mayhem… It’s like Alfred Pennyworth said, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” It’s odd because the bad guys in my life were real, the bullies and I didn't like them at all. They tormented me daily unprovoked because I was short and had big ears. Perhaps my love for the dark side stemmed for my desire to be on that side because in real life there was no Superman swooping in to rescue me from the clutches of Lex Luthor. 

There were two sides, and good had a lack of champions looking out for the weaker, smaller good guys. The bad guys in my neighborhood, well, they were real and never really foiled and more importantly, they always got the girl in the end. Fuck the good guys!

My admiration for evildoers achieving their agenda was tested in 1988, Batman was running a four-part series called A Death in the Family. It was your typical Batman arc. Somehow, The Joker was going to get the upper hand on The World’s Greatest Detective only to be bested in the end by Batman. But this time, the third comic decided to do something nobody had never seen in the industry. The writers were going to give the fans the opportunity to decide where they were going to go with the story, only it was an option between two different roads, one quite unconventional. Apparently a few years earlier, one of the writers, Dennis O'Neil, had seen a sketch they did on SNL where Eddie Murphy held up a Lobster—Larry the Lobster—and was asking viewers to decide whether Larry was boiled and eaten or was to be set free. The choices were offered in the form of two phone numbers both costing fifty cents a call. One number was a vote for him to be freed and the other number was a vote for Larry to be murdered, smothered in butter, and devoured by Axel Foley. Ultimately, after nearly 500,000 calls, the people voted for Larry the lovable lobster to be pardoned with a 12,000 call margin. The popularity of this bit intrigued O'Neil and A few years later he decided to implement it in his Death in The Family storyline.

In the third book, The Joker had taken Batman's sidekick, the Boy Wonder, hostage. He’d beaten him bloody with a crowbar leaving a cliffhanger to be wrapped up in the fourth book. The last page of the comic was full page and at the top read in true ’80s Do the Right Thing fashion: “Robin will die because The Joker wants revenge, but you can prevent it with a telephone call!” They even phrased it to steer you down the hero’s path, like you can literally be Batman with one phone call. Underneath the imploring verbiage were two numbers, dial one number; The Joker fails and Robin lives, Batman would once somehow saves the day. However, call this other number and The Joker succeeds and Robin dies. Gruesomely.

Wow! They were going to let the fans decide the fate of Robin, really this was one of my earliest introductions to a reality voting competition type show. In my opinion, it was a bad idea. Robin was always the worst. Go back and read through an adventure or two involving Jason Todd and tell me he wasn't always whiney and bellyaching. He was never going to be iconic or cool like Bruce Wayne or even his predecessor Dick Grayson—the first Robin. See, Dick got pissed off, decided he was tired of being in Batman's shadow, ditched the Robin costume, threw on a black blue and gold costume, moved to another city and became Nightwing. Dick was a go getter, ambitious. Grayson’s Robin was a winner, Todd's Robin was an irritating little bitch; he was not an innocent lobster.

I went to my mother and asked if I could make a call that was going to cost just fifty cents and I would pay her back or she could just take it out of my allowance. She wanted to know what it was for and mostly wanted to confirm it wasn't for an adult sex line, which costs more than fifty cents a minute, but that’s a different story. It was nothing as tawdry as phontercourse, I just wanted to help murder an annoying teenage sidekick. My mother response was “Oh, yeah, that’s fine.”

I think after it was exposed that it wasn't phone sex anything else I said went in one ear and out the other, surely she didn't think I was actually voting for a plucky comic book sidepiece to be murdered by The Joker. So that’s what I did. I cast my vote along with a majority of DC comic book fans that shared my detest for the boy wonder. Ten thousand votes were recorded with a narrow margin going to Robin dying. I think the writers never suspected that fans would go that route.

O’Neal himself voted for Robin’s stay of execution. A man of his word, Batman issue #429 was released and Robin was killed by The Joker in an explosion and we were to blame for it. Sad to say but you give a bunch of comic book nerds the power I think it would go bad every time. That day we were all proud to be The Joker's henchmen. I felt like a soldier at the end of Star Wars cheering madly while The Joker received his metal shouting, “I helped that happen!”

So many shows these days embrace our fascination with the anti-hero with the success of The Sopranos, The Shield, Breaking Bad, hell Narcos had me rooting for Pablo Escobar—Pablo fucking Escobar. I wouldn't say I was a bad person growing up. Quite the contrary, I was a shy nerd with no power to do anything but pick my books up after they were smacked to the ground. What I’m saying is don't give me the power to make important life or death decisions with your franchise because myself and the other dorks will have the bodies of Orko, Snarf, and Jimmy Olson lying in a shallow grave, just tell me what number to dial… or text.

Matt started performing standup comedy in 2004 in Las Vegas and is now a regular at every major comedy club on the Las Vegas strip. He released his first comedy album in 2016 titled Uncut available on iTunes. More about Matt and his upcoming appearances can be found on MattMarkman.com.

#Matt Markman #Matt Markman Comedian #Matt Markman Comedian Las Vegas #Las Vegas Comedians #G.I. Joe #Skeletor #Joker #Batman #Joker kills Robin #Jason Todd

[bigskydreaming]

Sorry to bother you, but RE: the Jason Todd in Arkham thing, like, what was Dick supposed to do? Take him home to the same house where two of the KIDS that Jason had threatened/attacked were supposed to be living in what one hoped would be relative safety?

Like, full offence, Jason had at that point proven himself a danger to all the people around him. If he wound up at Arkham, oh well, maybe don’t kill a whole bunch of ppl and harm numerous others. If Arkham doesn’t work as a hospital, maybe he should have been at another one, but at that point in his character arc, a secure mental health facility was probably the best he could expect.

It’s like ppl forget he’s a multiple murderer with a history of targeting the ppl Dick loves. I don’t even read the comics and I know this much.

Oh for sure, I mean, I've posted meta about this before because the fandom accepted narrative gets it sooooooo wrong. Like, I'll always be right at the front of the line yelling IT WAS JASON'S CHARACTERIZATION THAT WAS CRAP THROUGH ALL THAT, THAT'S NOT JASON, GIMME NUANCE OR GIMME DEATH. Y'know, something like that.

But like, given that Jason was written as repeatedly trying to kill Dick's other two brothers its like, yeah?! What was Dick supposed to do? He'd tried asking Jason nicely hey could you stop doing that and Jason was like LOL no.

And also....people are like - Dick callously threw Jason into Arkham right next to the Joker and then just left him there and forgot about him and....SOURCE?

1) Dick didn't DO this to Jason, JASON went after Dick and Damian and in the process of fighting him in a very public space, Dick beat Jason and police were already like....right there? Dick didn't actually have the option of being uh no, you can't take this known and notorious criminal into custody, I'll stop you on the basis of - well I can't tell you actually but plz just trust me okay, he totes didn't mean it! (except like also, at that point he totes did, so.....)

2) What pull Dick DID have as Batman with the GCPD, he used to get Jason put into Arkham INSTEAD of Blackgate for his SAFETY. We know this to be true. Jason himself confirmed that absolutely nothing bad happened to him in Arkham, he just didn't want to be there but WHO THE HELL EVER WANTS TO BE IN A PRISON OF ANY SORT? And the first thing Dick said when Bruce said Jason had demanded to be transferred to Blackgate is that Jason wouldn't be safe there with all the enemies he had gunning for him. It was abundantly clear that Jason's safety had been a primary concern for Dick the whole time (and Jason wasn't safe at Blackgate, its just fine, he only wanted to be transferred in order to enact an escape plan that got like 80 people indiscriminately killed but whatevs. Its Gotham, what's a few dozen more dead criminals am I right? *rolls eyes at how often that little detail gets left out of the narrative).

3) Dick consistently put time, focus and Wayne Enterprises money into Arkham Asylum while he was Batman, since Arkham was being rebuilt from the ground up after it was blown up in Battle for the Cowl. Also, Dick had been one of the last 'patients' in the old Arkham, given that he went undercover to infiltrate the Black Glove while they were in control of Arkham and spent a week in there drugged to the gills, locked up and in a straitjacket before being almost lobotomized. He has every grievance with Arkham that fan writers like to PRETEND Jason has from his stay there, but Jason's only complaint was that he again, was bored, and he had to take psych evals every other week because it was after all, still a mental health institution. Dick did everything in his power at the time to make sure that even if Jason did have to be locked up to keep him from going after more people, like, it was going to be as humane as possible and the stuff that Dick himself had JUST experienced in the old Arkham WOULDN'T happen to Jason.

4) The Joker was literally nowhere near Arkham THE ENTIRE TIME. This is not a small detail, given that 'the Joker was just five cells down' is the entire basis of most writers' Jason-in-Arkham angst and the anti-Dick sentiments they tend to create. All the major Rogues escaped from the old Arkham in Battle for the Cowl BEFORE it blew up. That's why they're not DEAD. Dick's run as Batman was primarily about fighting the escapees. And Joker, very significantly, was clearly among those Rogues not present in Arkham during Dick's Batman run, given he was literally toying with Dick and Damian through most of it. Seriously, how much do people have to hate Dick and think the worst of him to think that he - the dude who btw, BEAT THE JOKER TO DEATH WITH HIS BARE HANDS FOR MAKING JOKES ABOUT KILLING JASON - would just....obliviously lock Jason up right next to the Joker and throw away the key?

Like...and it goes on and on, lol. I remember the first time I brought all this up in an argument with some Jason stans, they literally started laughing back and forth to each other in the replies about how someone was a bit too carried away with their own fanon, and its like...LMAO! Yes! Someone is! Its YOU! You are the people you guys are talking about, looooool, I can literally back all this up with sourced panels.

Buuuuuuut, c'est la vie.

I mean, this is nothing new for us, its literally Teen Wolf fandom alllll over again. Probably why I just said nope, not doing this again awhile back and was like umm actually I will NOT just be ignoring the blatant false narratives thrown around here just so that people happy with the fanon narratives that prioritize the characters they like and sling shit at the characters they don't can have their fandom just the way they want it at the expense of everyone else in it. You wanna push bad faith interpretations of specific characters at every literal opportunity, its like, that's cool! I got the drive! I can push back with actual facts, its all good!

But the most hilarious thing to me will always be how fucking INDIGNANT people get about that, like "How dare you point out the precedent we established in not caring about any fandom experience other than our own and thus being loud and everpresent with our preferred interpretations in an attempt to drown out any other possible interpretation just so that the most people possible would be influenced by us instead of anything else, and we'd get more of the content we like at the expense of any possible nuance whatsoever."

Like, the most common complaint I get is people griping about how damn often I'm saying "mmmm, no, this isn't what happened actually" and "okay but have you considered flipping the script BACK from the way you flipped it initially in order to get this weird ass interpretation of a superhero noted for his emphasis on emotional caretaking of his loved ones actually being this callous oblivious selfish jerk who tramples all over the feelings of everyone around them and makes them just the woobiest woobies that ever did woobie all throughout Woobieland?"

And I'm just like, okay see, I hear you, its just the thing is, the THING IS......

If you didn't want that to be the topic of conversation so damn often, then hey, just a suggesh, but maybe you shouldn't have devoted literal years to coming up with the most bad faith interpretations of this character possible at literally every available opportunity. Maybe there'd be like.....less reason for the topic to come up so often, if like....you by your own actions hadn't made it a necessary topic to tackle so often?

I DON'T KNOW, I'M JUST SPIT-BALLING HERE, DON'T MIND ME AND MY CRAZY-ASS IDEAS OF FAIR PLAY.

[slashy-ashy]

I love dickkory, dickkory is my favorite ship because those two were literally my first ship. I grew up with watching the Teen Titans and I instantly fell in love with them. It sucks that comic writers did what they did too Dick and Kory, I mean it pisses me off so badly, I hate how they made Dick sleep with Bab’s right before getting married with Kory to perpetuate this idea of theirs that Dick is a ladies man that can’t be chained down to one woman even though he loves the idea of having a family and the fact that Dick loves Kory so unconditionally it isn’t even fucking funny, and Kory loves Dick so unconditionally back too and the fact that she was the one who helped Dick be more open about his feelings and to be more loving towards himself and she’s basically the reason on why the fandom writes him as this mother hen, happy go lucky guy. Kory was the one to bring him out of his shell, along with the Titans because they helped out A LOT with bringing Dick out of his shell because depending on which retcon you want to go with Bruce is definitely not an entirely open guy especially when dealing with his emotions, I hate that when Dick was raped by Mirage (because they did have dubious sex, one party of the duo didn’t know that the other was a shapeshifter who turned into the love of his life and slept with him then turned back into their original form and laughed in his face when she revealed her so called master plan) they had the team, the team of SUPERHEROES WHO DEAL WITH THIS SITUATION IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER POSSIBLY ON THE DAILY VICTIM AND SLUT SHAME DICK, and it says a lot when the fans actually agree with the teammates who slut shame and disrespect their leader and not bat an eye at the fact that the literal SHAPESHIFTER is practically jumping with joy after emotionally manipulating and raping their leader, and people are so quick to say that after seeing Kory yelling and blaming Dick say how in character that is but don’t talk about how in a different issue Kory fucking attacks (as 👏🏾she 👏🏾 should👏🏾) Mirage because “how dare you sleep with Dick” and they don’t site how truly THAT is in character because it is in the character of her. She loves that man so fucking much she really does, and Dick is so fucking gone on her too it isn’t even funny, and I have nothing against DickBabs I love their dynamic too but I didn’t grow up with them and I wasn’t as introduced with them as I am with Dickkory in a sense and I truly just enjoy Dickkory more than Dickbab in my opinion but it’s mostly due to the writers and how they just fucking wrote Barbra like I just feel like if they took the time to rebuild their friendship, and to stop and look at her characterization over the years and learn to write her properly then yeah I would love DickBab’s but as it stands I’m hesitant to follow canon DickBabs and I honestly will accept fanon DickBabs more than likely.

Dickkory is such a wonderful ship because they have so much history with each other and honestly at this point most of my ships for Dick are just him with the fab five, I love DickRoy, I love DickWally, I love DickGarth and I love them even if they’re romantic or platonic, outside of the fab five I will say that I like DickJoey but only for the reason that I don’t really know Joey.

One gripe I have will be the fact that due to how writers have written and mistreated canon, people believe all of what I said up above to be canon behavior for Dick, I hate how hyper sexualized he is and I hate how it comes to a point that it becomes this running gag of “I wonder what I can get away with” and by that I mean the in canon instances of people touching Dick without his consent but it ends up being laughed off because the predator is just so good looking that it makes it okay, or how people will just say how good his ass looks, or even wonder out loud how good in bed he probably is and some old flame will just come out of the wood works with a smirk on their face being all “well ladies I can say that he is fantastic in bed” while Dick just stands there while listening to this all go down and being so used to this but he still will get flack if he says anything to show how uncomfortable he is with the situation because he “asked for it” or something else as disgusting and ridiculous, and after a while it just gets so old like honestly just find a new gag okay, it’s not that hard.

And finally J**Kory , J**Roy and J**KoryRoy are not my favorite ships whatsoever ever. They’re not even my favorite friendships to be honest, because I legit cannot see a world where like my older sibs friends would ever just decide to hang out with me and spend so much time with me and I would just be okay with that. No, no, no,no,no,NO! It just boggles my mind on why DC decided that Jason can’t possibly make friends with people himself and it irks the hell out of me that they nerfed Kory and Roy that hard it isn’t even funny.

Like it kind of is funny when you think about it because if they weren’t then I doubt I really doubt that those two would have just been like “ yep, I’m just going to hang out with the love of my life’s little brother” like I can see, just them from time to time just going to check in sometimes with Dick and him just being like “hey you guys want to come with me while I check in with Jason” and they could be like “yeah sure, I haven’t heard from him in a while” but for the most part no I just don’t see them realistically just deciding to just hang out with Jason because Kory has a planet to run and Roy has a daughter that he needs to parent and Jason has a lot of trauma and anger to get through in a responsible and reasonable way that doesn’t include running a drug empire, killing people, trying to kill his family, and just constantly blaming his actions on his trauma because I don’t want to sound too critical of him but at the same time it’s like when are you going to let go of all of this anger and just try to start healing because you keep taking the easy route of things and you decide to walk away from the problems eating you up inside and you just default to distancing himself away from his problems and family but when are you going to do the most important and difficult step, of beginning the process of healing and coming to terms with your actions and on how they don’t just affect you but also the people around you? If I saw an issue like that than I would most definitely pick up an red hood book but as it stands no. It’s a no from me y’all.

And DickKoryRoy is honestly where it’s at. They have DECADES of content and storylines that you can just be like “hmm, I want to write/draw about the Brother blood arc or I want to write/draw about how Dick went to save Lian and how this affected Roy” the content is there it really is.

I love how this post just devolved into me talking about my love for Dickkory, my hesitance towards DickBabs, me talking about the ships I love and like, how I hate how they (the writers) mishandled Dick and how they mishandled real problems that people go through in real life, how Jason with Kory and/or Roy is my first and ultimate NOTP, and how Dickkory and/or Roy is elite in my opinion.

#dick grayson #nightwing #dc comics #teen titans #kory anders #Star fire #Jason Todd critical #Jayroy critical #jaykory critical #jayroykory critical #DickBabs #Dickkory #the first thing I post in a while on here and it’s this lol #DickWally #DickGarth #dickjoey #Jason Todd

[davidmann95]

How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

*  Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

#Justice League #Zack Snyder #Superman #Batman #DCEU #Opinion