#badass strawberry truffle

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

it wasn’t power i coveted; it was acceptance.

Titans 3.06

y’know, i was just thinking the other day that 1.06/1.07 and 2.06/2.07 were the best episodes of their respective seasons, so i have great hopes going in to this one. fingers crossed!

as always, typing this up as i see the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. oh! um... that was a Cold Open, all right. *nudges* get it? cold? because it’s snowing? and two people got murdered in cold blood? eh?

... oh, i’ve just started.

1.5. i wonder if “i want to be sipping pina coladas on a beach with you” is the new “i’m just one day away from retiring.” i was so on edge after that--i kept expecting that car to explode. even so, the way they died wasn’t an anticlimax: brutal, and quick. 

1.75. so i’m assuming that’s the titular lady vic! this show better bring up why this doll was important or why these two cops needed to be killed, and not leave it to the ether like jericho’s little mindscape jaunt in 2.08 (i’m still dying to know what that was about???)

2.

i love how deliberately unappealing wayne manor is. 

(sorry for the pic quality. i don’t have hbo max! ssshhh.)

2.3. i love the many references to “home” and “our house” when they’ve been here for less than a week and saw one of their friends get blown into pieces. i mean, i unironically love it: home is where family is, after all!

2.5. i’d like to say that kom is playing some sort of long game here, especially given the build-up we had last season and some of the more niggling details this season: why did kom choose now to use her bond to lure kory when she’s been on earth for months? why did justin call kory now, just around the time that she started getting kom’s visions? and what about kom’s ability to exactly imitate other people? hmmm.

2.75. the reason i wrote i’d like to say is that i’ve made the mistake of assuming plot complexity where there is none; i was so invested in the jason todd orchestrated his own death theory for instance, when it turns out that oops! ra’s al ghul just happened to leave a little lazarus puddle in gotham, and oh yeah! scarecrow just happens to have a network of henchmen working for him on the outside and a fully functional laboratory and a weapons cache fit for a new supervillain in the basement of the high security psychiatric unit/prison that he’s in! 

(no i’m not bitter, why do you ask)

2.8. iiiii don’t know what to say about the implications of sex slavery being a thing on tamaran, so i’m not going to say anything at all. for now.

3. gotham, six years ago... wasn’t it five years before s2 that jericho died and the titans disbanded? and when was the flashback from 1.06 where dick let zucco die? i think it was after the events of 2.08: jericho? i can’t seem to find any transcripts or reliable information online, so i’m going to have to rewatch 1.06 at some point. 

(i love the old-fashioned batman music in this heist scene)

3.5. “security is a joke... it’s my way of keeping my dad on his toes”. what you’re an ethical thief now, like an ethical hacker? i don’t think that excuse is going to sell, barbara, on the day you do encounter a decent security system and your father is forced to arrest you.

(then again, gotham’s security is piss-poor. did you know that you could just walk into arkham asylum without any official clearance, ply one of its most dangerous inhabitants with contraband, and said inmate could get away with having an entire laboratory and weapons cache--NO I’M NOT GOING TO LET THIS GO)

3.8 so that flashback between dick and barbara was really cute! and also illuminating:

a) dick sounds so light, so... um. look. i have some apologies to tender to mr thwaites, because while i’ve always thought he does a fine job as dick grayson, i’ve never been terribly fond of his cadence as he delivers dialogue. it’s often monotonous, i thought, but then again, he’s usually delivering exposition or dealing with one soul-crushing crisis or the other. so i was pleasantly surprised to hear dick sound so carefree and alive in his conversation with barbara, laughing frequently, his emotions so bare and bubbling to the surface. it’s really a fantastic contrast to the traumatised and world-weary dick grayson that we see now, even more so than the costume department just bunging a backwards-baseball cap on mr thwaites’ head and hoping that will convince us of his relative youth. 

b) and god, when he wakes up from that memory, all alone in his bed, bleeding from bullet holes in his shoulder (bullet holes that are--in a somewhat convoluted way--barbara’s fault)? yikes. it’s great. you have my apologies, mr thwaites!

c) can you imagine dick just... crawling back to wayne manor, trying not to be seen by anybody, shedding his suit and just... collapsing onto his bed without even tending to his wound? the sheer emotional and physical exhaustion of it? 

d) it’s so interesting to see how barbara and dick approach the idea of legacy--a big theme on the show!--in this flashback. barbara is the one bucking the idea that she should follow in her father’s footsteps, while dick seems pretty content with the batman-and-robin setup, and even tries to get barbara to join their team (robin-girl. pfffft). obviously after this several traumatic things happen wherein dick ends up questioning and then resenting his role as robin, his relationship with batman or even returning as a vigilante at all. and barbara... ends up replacing her father as commissioner. it’s tragic, really. 

e) the dynamic between dick and barbara in the flashback reminds me of how it was between dick and donna in 1.08 and even between kory and dick in early s1. it’s like having an older, strong-willed woman by his side means he gives over the steering wheel for a while and lets himself... unspool, a little bit. it’s kinda endearing.

also:

*pinches his cheeks*

3. you know, we talk about dick and Eldest Daughter Syndrome, and that’s definitely valid, but here gar seems to me the embodiment of it, with all the emotional gardening and firefighting that he’s expected to do. he’s kind of the guy expected to keep his shit together and take care of everyone else while they are falling completely to pieces, unable to carve out time to process his own trauma. he’s also picked up dick’s and kory’s tendencies to bottle up their struggles and shun appearing vulnerable, and he’s struggling in the shadow of both dick and kory undergoing acute crises, his best friend (and frequent confidante) on the other side of the world, and seeing hank die, utterly helpless to stop it. 

i’m glad that he got a chance to tell dick even a smidgeon of what he really feels, and i hope this is at least a semblance of a wake up call for dick to actually sit down and work with the people he repeatedly calls family.

3.5. it’s heartening to see that dick immediately makes it his priority to go talk to gar. but don’t blow off kory in the process, man!

4. i’m really loving this dynamic between kom and conner--i get the idea that both of them consider each other as Unknowns, alien two times over. but conner’s only ever known the titans, who embrace being different, and kom’s only ever known... well. 

anyway, kory is Really Stressed, and honestly? #relatable. 

when you’re forced to bring an estranged family member to hang out with your friends...

4.5. i love that the titans are spending so much time in the kitchen. a real family!

5. jonathan crane is a creep and i absolutely cannot stand him.

5.25. how did he get a whole lab setup (in the basement of a hospital...?) with a bunch of whitecoats to work for him? how did he just waltz into the viewing room of an operation theatre when he’s one of the most wanted men in gotham right now? why is jason wandering around maskless when--presumably--as the adopted son of the most famous person in gotham he’d be a tad more recognisable than your average joe?

why do i expect this show to answer anything anymore?

5.5. that’s not necessarily a criticism, mind; i’ve said since season 1 that titans is very comics-like in this aspect, all about the Aesthetic and the splash-page splendour rather than the niggling unimportant details of how or when the characters got to said location. like. the camera gliding over the operation being set-up, lady vic bursting in and doing her murder dance (imagine the luck of the poor intern who chose this day and this surgery to assist) and jason, shocked and slack-jawed, framed by blood.

5.75. it’s a sobering reminder for jason that, though he chose this path in order to gain control over a world that seemed like it was rapidly spinning out of his grip, he’s only succeeded in handing over even more control to a man with an agenda that is very clearly not aligned with his own. he’s in too far to stop now, though.

5.9. i have a lot more thoughts about jason! saving it up for the end of this recap, though.

6. more kitchen time! i better see dick do some cooking soon...

(”our kitchen”! it still delights me! kitchens are So Important)

6.25. so much of dick’s issues have revolved around his relationship with bruce, so it’s completely understandable that in the wake of a huge crisis where bruce literally asks dick to replace him and be a “better” him, dick would default to all the worst things he learned from the man. and i’m glad kory’s having none of it, but come on, guys. the woman’s literally fetched her fratricidal sister out of a hole in the ground with no idea what said sister is going to do next and experiencing a burgeoning sense of guilt far, far beyond her history with the titans, and dick’s too far into his autocolonoscopy that he can’t see that she needs help.

6.5. “he services your urges”--well, as far as we know, kory is the last person he had sex with...

7. “i hope [gar] isn’t angry with me...” SIR! i thought you’d already spoken to him! smh, as the kids say. kory wouldn’t be needing to reassure you if you just took the effort to build two way emotional relationships with the rest of the team. @superohclair​ was taking about dick’s relatively low emotional intelligence? i agree.

7.5. “i got my own problems [...] you and barbara? fix it.” YOU TELL HIM, KORY

8. man i really like this weird, sad tension between dick and barbara--this sense that both of them are approaching the other based on how they remember them and are ultimately disappointed by the truth. barbara thought she could trust dick to... well, be a better batman, but dick has not only failed at that in her eyes, but repeatedly undermined her while exploiting the authority that she gave him. in dick’s eyes, this is nothing like the barbara that he knew, rebellious and ready to do whatever it takes to find something. 

like. this show sometimes really hits me in the chest about the ways it shows kids grow into adults and into caretakers, and the way it’s stop-start, the ways nothing can happen at all for a long time and then it’s Crisis Central all at once and there’s no space to breathe. the weird sort of sadness that comes with nostalgia. 

8.5. oracle name drop! i agree with barbara, any system that can just randomly tap into gotham phonelines is a monster.

8.7. (i don’t know if it’s my imagination, but is dick holding himself... differently in this episode? like that wound is definitely bothering him, and he’s running on fumes)

9. man, that was a really sweet scene between kom and conner. “feeling alien in your own world”... “not quite here nor there”

honestly this team runs on conner and gar’s faith in their value as a family, and it’s a sign of conner’s generous heart that he extends that opportunity to blackfire. this arc of maturation for him, where he’s now able to consciously choose which parts of himself he can use to do the thing he wants to so--save people--has been so fulfilling to recognise. this baby’s grown with the titans! and what he’s learnt is that people can get fucked up, but the titans is a place where they can be fucked up, and grow.

MY MAN CONNER

10. oh man i’m drinking in the gar-dick interaction in this episode like i’m three days into the desert and it’s the only source of water for miles around!

a) gar is absolutely not dealing with dick’s bullshit this episode and I LOVE IT. it’s such a far cry from the man who was idolising dick/robin back in s1 and expecting him to solve all their problems. dick is fallible, dick is fucked up, but he Tries His Best and that’s ok.

b) dick, huffing and puffing through that vent, unable to put any pressure on his left shoulder, trying to have a heart to heart with gar... fuck i love this asshole. 

c) bruce took in a kid who was suffering... “and made him into a weapon”. well. i absolutely agree with dick that it was bruce who put these kids into these horrible situations with him and they came away with a bucketload of trauma to add to the one that they already had. but we know that bruce was really trying with jason, and at the end of s2, dick was coming to acknowledge that bruce had offered him something that wasn’t just darkness. jason’s death and bruce’s reaction to that shattered that fragile progress.

d) “gotham got to me too.” i feel more sympathetic towards dick running off on his own than most, and it’s not just because i’m an unapologetic stan.  we’ve seen before that dick... devolves when overwhelmed, and he lashes out and makes ill thought out decisions and just Does Not Deal. it happened after hearing the news that deathstroke had returned in s2, and it didn’t help that everyone around him was reeling at the news, either. this time, however, he has his salvation in his family, and despite some stupid decisions like running off and kidnapping supervillains without telling his team, he’s been really on the ball this season. thinking clearly and logically, holding it together and working on a plan, thinking two steps ahead of the villains... yes.

e) gar needing to believe that jason isn’t beyond redemption... there’s a lot of blood on his hands, too, from when he was manipulated by cadmus last season. it makes sense why he’d relate to jason’s predicament, and i hope dick picked up on that.

f) my head just added a plaintive ow after dick jumped feet first into the storage room

i need, crave gifs of this scene!

11. *sits on hands* i’m going to talk more about red hood, i promise!

12. more gar and dick! is it my birthday??!!

(actually, according to the tamil calendar, it is my birthday! my “star” birthday)

12.5. excellent. dick using some implausible training that bruce taught him to solve a mystery? passing some of that knowledge onto gar? that proud smile when he sees gar perfectly execute moves that he taught him? MY HEART IS EXPLODING

13. aw, i love flashback!dick and barbara, they’re so cute <3

13.25. why does it not surprise me that the way he proposes a relationship to barbara is by saying “we make sense”? this guy can deduce exactly who was present where and what weapon they were holding from a garbled audio recording but other times he’s utterly clueless, and that’s a consistent character beat right from s1

13.5. so.... that’s why lady vic has it out for... barbara....? i don’t get it. it’s flimsy. but hey! the fun thing about titans is that i don’t have to get it. the payoff has nothing to do with the plot.

14. i can’t believe that barbara fell for that, but at least that wheelchair fight looked awesome, so.

15. oh yeah, i forgot that red hood bullied the mob into helping him and scarecrow... at least that explains the whitecoats and the elaborate set-up.

15.5. honestly i love how this dynamic between kory and kom is developing, though i wish more of the team would pay attention to it. time to call justin, i think!

16. i wonder what happened after that second flashback where barbara got hurt during that heist. did she give up on doing any more (maybe jim caught her)? was it because dick was called away by bruce and then the titans and got caught up in his own issues? maybe barbara froze him out because she wasn’t looking for the relationship that he was looking for? maybe the idea of doing that with someone turning into batman-lite was just... unappealing? scary?

whatever it is, it doesn’t look like dick ever processed the end of that relationship. it’s very intriguing to see where their dynamic goes next.

17. so.... what, did vic deliver some fear toxin to barbara? i... what?

17.5. and i TOLD YOU that they would never explain that doll or why vic attacked those two cops at the beginning! oh, titans. never change. 

18. did jason just randomly have tim’s restaurant burgled? god, i’m feeling a bit nauseous... are they going to kill tim’s father?

18.25. i feel like the rest of the season is going to wrestle with jason’s culpability in the horrible stuff he’s doing and i’m already seeing that prospect divide fans. on one hand, his story is taking a lot of oxygen away from other equally interesting story arcs, and he’s done some truly awful things, like indiscriminate murder, threatening to kill children, blowing up hank, and potentially killing tim’s parents. 

there’s something to be said for the kind of hold that crane has over him, and the so-called ‘anti-fear’ drug that he keeps plying jason with--he’s alone, drugged almost constantly (to the level of dependence), fresh from the trauma of being bludgeoned to death. he hasn’t conquered fear; he’s ruled by it. on the other hand, given that he’s the one character on the show given an obvious and identifiable ‘mental illness’ arc (maaaaybe dick too), one can argue that it’s irresponsible to show this progress into such violence: jason was vulnerable because he was struggling, and that left him vulnerable, but it took only a push before he became a fucking serial killer.

but that could mean we underestimate the degree of that vulnerability, and the mechanics of this universe where he fell into the clutches of the one supervillain perfectly designed to exploit that vulnerability. that helpless spiral into further and further self-destruction is all too real. it’s valuable to know that someone who has sunk that low can still seek help--actual help--and get it. 

18.5. i don’t know. it’s not a question i’m going to resolve at the end of an overlong recap at 1 in the morning. i don’t believe it’s even a question that titans can resolve. but i am interested in where they’re going next with jason.

19. this episode was genuinely great! i’m pumped for the rest of the season!

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #dick grayson #koriand'r #barbara gordon #garfield logan #conner kent #komand'r #jason todd #jonathan crane #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle #manic pixie pop tart #a tragic jalebi #this is a 3k+ MONSTER yikes

[hello-wanderlust-my-old-friend]

Types of people: seasons

Summer: freshly-picked peaches, innocently naive, the adrenaline rush of the first jump into a slightly chilly lake, early morning walks, windswept hair, toasty perfectly golden brown s'mores, stepping on a plane and never looking back, deep stargazing talks, petrichor, a hopeless romantic, content silences, the magical exhilaration of a first kiss, wanderlust, fruity light perfume, light eyes that shimmer in the light of the setting sun, campfire sing-alongs, touch-scared yet craving physical contact, thunderstorms, messy buns with cut off jeans, favorite words, nostalgia, and melancholy.

Autumn: pumpkin spice lattes, flannel scarves, doodles on hands, perfectly organized bullet journals, freshly baked bread, dewdrops on spindly spiderweb threads, carrying beat-up copies of favorite books in leather purses, happy drunk, the crunch of colors upon colors of fallen leaves, satisfaction of winning a debate, sweet as pie yet badass, hesitant in love, steam rising off warm coffee mugs held with two hands, succulents, a little scared of what's to come, always behind the camera never in front, absolutely frickin beautiful yet never believes it, getting lost in corn mazes without a care, organized, always up for new beginnings, anticipation

Winter: spiked cinnamon apple cider, glittery highlighter, sleepy puppies, cold hands warm heart,  chunky sweaters, vanilla candles, a little lonely, listening to the Beatles through earbuds, cobblestone streets, snuggling on window seats, the sound of the wind in the trees, corkboards filled with ticket scraps, peppermint chocolate truffles, loyal AF, violin waltzes, powdery fresh fallen snow, well worn Birkenstocks and fuzzy socks, cupcake scented bathbombs, old architecture, headlights snaking through foggy trails, a little pessimistic, gives the best hugs, strawberry milk tea, tinkling infectious rose gold laughter, Doc Martens, gullible, warm apple crumble, catnaps.

Spring: wild strawberries, deep wise dark eyes, dimpled cheeks, impulsive confessions with sweeping deep passionate kisses, a perfect rose, restless pent up energy, flawless lipstick, Polaroid pictures, having a few close friends who are your life, slow dancing in the kitchen, well-loved slightly cropped jean jacket, falls in love as often as it changes from April showers to May flowers yet has that one special someone they always come back to, green tea lattes, a subtle leader, light flowy sense of humor, bittersweet smiles, messy cursive writing on post-it notes left every which way, warm ocean breezes, shining Christmas lights in the snow, golden heart and silver tongue.

#types of people #aesthetic posts #tag yourself #I'm summer #seasons

[toloveawarlord]

20 Questions Tag

Tagged by @meowsamune 

Thanks for tagging me and sorry it took so long for me to do!

Rules: Answer the 20 Qs and then tag 20 people.

Name: Bekah

Zodiac Sign: Libra

Height: 5ft 4in

Language spoken:English, Japanese (poorly)

Nationality: American

Favorite fruit: strawberries, kiwi, raspberries

Favorite scent: apple cinnamon, champagne toast (from bath and body works. It’s a divine smell.) Anything fall scented like pumpkin spice etc.

Favorite color: Mint Green, Maroon

Favorite animal: Hedgehog (his name is Sebastian) and dogs

Coffee, tea or hot chocolate: Tea and Hot Chocolate. My favorite tea is English Breakfast with a splash of sugar and milk.

Favorite fictional character: For the sake of this blog, I’d have to say Ieyasu from Ikesen and then Edgar from IkeRev. In general....Chuuya Nakahara from Bungou Stray Dogs

Dream trip: Japan! And maybe England because I love Shakespeare so much

When was your blog created? This blog is barely a month old, but my other tumblr account was made in like 2013 or 2014

Last movie you have seen? Jurassic World

Song you’ve had on repeat: Panic Room by Au/Ra

Favorite candy: Lindor’s Milk Chocolate Truffles

Favorite Holiday: Christmas because I get to decorate the tree and house with pretty lights. And I have no self control when it comes to buying presents for my family.

Last book you’ve read: Heart of Ash by Kim Ligget in like January, but the last Manga I read was Kiss Him Not Me Vol 14 (The final volume) and I cried.

Favorite TV Show: Code Black but it’s been canceled.

Who’d you most like to have lunch with? IkeRev’s Luka. We both like to cook and are badass at it. We could have a contest and then stuff ourselves full of delicious food.

#tagged #personal post

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

the wolf should’ve been afraid of me.

Titans 3.04

just under the wire! ... i hope.

like with the previous review, i’m typing this up as i see the episode. here we go!

spoilers ahead.

1. ... well. that was an interesting cold open.

1.25. i don’t know whether to admire this show’s restraint when it comes to gotham and its excesses, particularly arkham asylum. it’d be easy to go hammer and tongs, like suicide squad (2016) did, or any number of bat media did, at a tropey, colourful~~insanity~~ that can be quite damaging, casting mental illness in strangeness and criminality. it definitely shows gotham as... separate from the rest of the country, its own ecosystem of heroes and villains, a sort of rogue state. 

but that ecosystem is still human, with its heroes needing to clip parts of themselves away just to survive, growing old and needing to be recycled, its villains languishing in the same kinds of systems that fail everybody else who needs to be helped. it’s a quieter, tenser sort of wrongness: not strange enough that you can dissociate, but not close enough that you can completely empathise. gotham is its own creature.

1.5. i know that the reasoning behind this is more doylist than anything, but i’m so glad that joker was killed off with little fanfare right at the start of the season. he is the one man in the batverse that’s transcended its confines as this sort of ethereal boogeyman/eternal edgelord and to justify his presence in the series would mean giving him this tired, overblown importance and too much of a stab at colourful, tropey “madness” in this otherwise-subdued series. i wish all batmedia would follow suit and get rid of this fucker.

1.75. so jason is bucking scarecrow’s control! or reminding him of who exactly holds all the cards right now. circling back to what i talked about in the last review, it’s remarkable just how little time it’s been since jason’s “death” and he’s already got ‘minions’ and elaborately set up plans to track, break and kill the titans. just how long has he been planning this? when did he first look at WE weapons prototypes and think that’s something i can use to blow somebody up? and the most unsettling question: did he plan his own death at the hands of the joker just so that he could break batman?

at this point it’s obvious that the scarecrow at least started jason down this path, but it’s frightening just how far he’s travelled already.

1.8. aaagh, less than one minute in! i’ll shut up. 

2. conner washing his hands at the sink reminds me that he was directly in the line of explosion when hank got blown up and he’s probably got atomised hank-bits all over his skin that he’s desperately trying to wash off.

... you’re welcome.

2.25. conner, don’t you speak to gar fucking logan like that, sir, no!

2.3. if anything it’s the lex part of him that gave him the knowhow to recognise the weapon and build a de-activator for it. 

anyway, for that ‘half-breed’ and ‘talking tiger’ comment?

(i wish, tho, that we actually see conner more interested in the superman part of his legacy, like maybe listening to stories from gar, or even better, dick, so we get a better idea of the pressure he’s feeling to live up to that part of him and not the part that’s lex.)

((i talked about conner’s stages of moral development in his introductory episode last season, but i wonder if the next stage of his self-actualisation would be to further integrate the parts of himself and realise that they are only parts and he, conner, is an entirely different person unto himself that can make decisions on how to use what he has and what he knows. his superman abilities can be used to destroy. his lex knowledge can be used to save.))

3. oh dawn :((

3.25. is this the last we see of dawn and hank? i mean, we know donna is coming back; would it be a stretch to think they’ll try to have a go at resurrecting hank as well?

3.5. “deathstroke didn’t make us into killers.” good, because deathstroke didn’t make jason a killer either. there’s a missing step there you need to be looking for, dick. 

3.75. dick did try to break the cycle, step away from gotham, run from the possibility that he could turn into batman. it didn’t help; he couldn’t fully withdraw from his vigilante persona the same time he loathed it, and batman literally haunted him both asleep and awake. but maybe gotham doesn’t have to turn anybody into anything. maybe gotham has nothing to do with it at all. it’s about taking responsibility, realising some sacrifices are pure bullshit, and building an actual family instead of merely a team.

anyway: hugs!

(oh, also? mr “i hate flying”? i mean, there’s perfectly valid reasons to hate flying that’s not related to childhood trauma, but then again, this guy was literally a ‘flying grayson’ once. also also, remember that he also gets sea-sick. must’ve a lot of fun stories to tell.)

4. ooh that gar/kory confrontation was brief but cool!

listen, i have never seen a psychiatrist with that extravagant an office and SIR I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW HOW--

4.5. kory’s so unused to reaching out for help and it’s breaking my heart that HPG likely is some kind of impostor that’s maybe causing her symptoms in the first place. 

kory and dick have mostly been apart this season but it’s remarkable how their journeys have paralleled each other; kory processes her grief, isolation and existential dread into a determination to take care of this new family she has, no matter what it takes; dick does much the same, forging ahead with plans and solutions until he has no fuel left in him and spirals into a massive breakdown.

4.25. listen titans this really is a TERRIBLE continuity error. we aren’t goldfish; we can clearly remember that two minutes ago it was gar’s upper arm that was burned, not his forearm. COME ON.

“sensory deprivation tank” *SNORT*

anyway, gar is the BEST

4.5. i wonder where these visions of experimentation took place. was it on tamaran, or on earth, after she came to hunt down rachel/trigon and before she lost all her memories? is HPG a part of the scientist group that experimented on her? ... god, i hope not. i mean, i think he is, but it would be cool to have some positive therapist representation in media. 

5. you’d think the van transporting a dangerous supervillain that only batman could catch would be more secure but... i’m also not entirely surprised. 

5.15. i love dick gives ZERO shits about hiding himself or even ensuring scarecrow is adequately contained. just turns away after kidnapping him in BROAD DAYLIGHT and says ‘let’s go’. I LOVE THIS DUMBASS

6. lmao gar is having a really really shitty day SOMEONE GIVE THIS MAN A BREAK or just a goddamn story arc of his own

6.5. i’m really confused about the timeline here. so... sometime ago, kory came down to earth to hunt down trigon, yeah? at some further point down the line she and her sister were kidnapped and experimented on. THEN she somehow escapes but... loses her memory? a few months pass and then we see blackfire alive and well and free; she kills faddei, can impersonate other people, and is clearly seeking out kory. but now she’s still in the experiment facility...? what’s going on?

i’m not entirely surprised about the facility being mostly deserted. either the biggest investors in this project gave up on it and it was left to the most fanatic to carry on, or they were deliberately trying to lure kory and get her to free blackfire--expand the environs of the experiment, so to speak.

7. hopefully barbara is going to get something to do other than listen to various men give her Attitude

8. how do you terrorise a terrorist? well:

i love when dick is a scary-competent motherfucker.

8.25. ooooh, the attack on crane at arkham a ploy to get crane to blackgate? nice one dick, i didn’t even think of that. but why though? to protect crane from the titans? to intercept the van to blackgate and “rescue” him? seems likely--red hood was there, except dick got to crane quicker.

9. still reeeallly unclear about the komand’r situation. was komand’r captured after s2? is this all A TRAP?? if so, why are you stepping into the only thing that can contain you, kory????

9.25. so... definite parallels between dick/jason and kory/kom here. i’m just. i’m still. really confused. i’ll shut up now.

10. this may be my favourite dick look yet:

woodsman!dick in a beanie.

10.5. i unironically love how titans has made this bizarrely-devoted-to-his-moniker, toxin-spewing supervillain into a tamer version of hannibal, psychoanalysing his victims into submission. it’s of a piece with how inward looking titans is, the way all of its villains are obsessed with how our protagonists’ minds work, to the point where they would actually spend time inside of them. 

there are no big plots to end the world. no apocalypses or endgames here. these villains collect the titans’ insecurities like infinity stones. the way the titans defeat them is by achieving character growth--literally winning by the power of love. literally “the real superpower is the friends we made along the way”!

10.7. anyway, i’m betting dick is used to this bullshit from crane and is humouring him in the service of getting more information. the story about the wolf? an implicit threat, not to mention dick getting to control what crane knows about him and what methods he would use to manipulate him.

am i giving dick too much credit here? i don’t think so. he’s really impressed me so far this season.

10.75. like. there’s a real unreliable narrator vibe coming off with every person that talks about bruce (much like how the various members of the titans talked about jason’s motivations) and to buy into crane’s talk about bruce being a psychopath is to fall for the same manipulation that jason fell for. dick is the only person who hasn’t really psychoanalysed bruce this season, and i think some part of his detective brain is piecing things together into a bigger picture.

11. i’m glad kory rescued kom but did she have to kill the scientist?

(i mean, yeah, probably - the less people know that kom escaped the less likely they’re going to have the fucking govt on their doorstep, but still.)

11.5. dick’s gonna come back to wayne manor, stare straight at komand’r and go, well which room would you like? because the team might as well adopt ANOTHER person, yeah?

12. oh MAN that red hood/nightwing fight was AMAZING! and he did the thing! the boomerang escrima thing! i’m so delighted!

12.5. the anger and disbelief in dick’s voice when he says you told crane EVERYTHING?! tells me that he knew exactly what he was telling crane himself.

12.75. “everything you are is because of him” - oh that reminds me of halluci!bruce from last season. i hope we see halluci!bruce again--he is so vicious but so entertaining... so much more effective at tearing dick down than crane or jason combined. goes to show that dick’s biggest enemy is own fucking head.

12.8. oh no! dick’s shot! crane is in the wind with red hood! blackfire is now with the titans! i love it!

honestly this season’s pacing is such a big step up from the last couple. gold star, show.

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #dick grayson #koriand'r #garfield logan #komand'r #conner kent #dawn granger #jason todd #jonathan crane #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle #manic pixie pop tart #a tragic jalebi

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

gotham’s on its own, now.

Titans 3.10

moving onwards! we’re back to the core team (hopefully) in this episode, at a delicious cliffhanger at the end of 3.08, so i have High Hopes

as always, typing this up as i watch the episode.

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. this opening scene is so deliciously bizarre. is that dick in his old hospital room brooding at the snellen chart that he hallucinated about? is dick astral projecting? is that a future dick? a dead dick? 

i just know we’re not going to get answers and i love it and i hate it and i love it.

2. not sure why barbara’s being put on the spot over the situation since as a police commissioner she wouldn’t really have the power to fix the issues with the pipes and the toxin? maybe gotham is a city so overrun by police that they’re looked to for every issue that comes up. it’s bizarre though.

2.25. also not a fan of how barbara’s authority is repeatedly undercut--especially by other nameless men--and how she defers to dick when she was (rightfully) furious at him just a few episodes ago for making rash plans and, well, undermining her authority! 

what’s dick grayson to the gcpd anyway? he’s bruce wayne’s son and an ex-cop from detroit who hasn’t been in one in nearly a year. why in the world are they ok with him consulting in this case and dragging the commissioner’s attention away from a crucial matter? ronnie from schitt’s creek, why???

2.45. dick complains of “brain fog from the accident”. AHA! not to mention unspecified chest/back trauma from being slammed into a car at high speed, and a gunshot wound from before that. take a nap, grayson. i see shitty decision-making in your future.

3. oh gawd, it’s the scarecrow again. do we have to listen to him talk? i hate his character so much.

3.25. “you fucked it up--they were about to take me back!” at first blush this seems like jason genuinely regrets that he couldn’t reconcile with the titans, but his demeanour makes me think that he wanted to plant himself among them. i don’t know. i think he’s playing a balancing game with the options he does have: he’s not ready or secure enough to strike out on his own, and the door to the titans seems closed for now. all he’s got is scarecrow and he can’t risk completely alienating the guy.

3.5. all that big talk about Edward Bernays and the power of an Idea and he releases a... Boomer Facebook ad?

it seems utterly over-the-top and ridiculous, but i guess in a charged situation like now, and in a city like gotham... with the right suggestions wrapped in the right kind of context, well. 

3.75. maaaaan i have a feeling i’m going to be in the minority here, but i feel for dick and barbara so much here. especially when barbara says “even when things were at their worst, gotham trusted batman and my dad.” neither of them really wanted this legacy though on paper they’re the ones best suited for it. and now that they’ve taken charge, things have shattered so beyond their control that now the legacy is a source of guilt. you have to fix it--it’s hard to think of anything else, be it friends or family or yourself.

at the end there’s just... burnout. giving up.

3.8. (who’s projecting? shut up, you’re projecting.)

4. “one river, many wells”... oh i see what you’re doing, Show. :/ there just happened to be a lazarus well in gotham, sure. 

5. i have loved every single gotham taxi driver on this show and i demand a spinoff based on them.

6. i thought this anti-fear toxin was only supposed to remove your inhibitions, not turn you into a stereotypical zombie. it’s perfectly possible that some people are going to do terrible and reckless things that don’t involve fighting, like make ruinous financial decisions or bake bare-handed or try parkour on a multi-storey building. honestly, that would’ve made for a much more interesting aftermath.

6.5. “the worst of it is over”??? are we going to do something for the tens of thousands of people poisoned by this toxin, even the ones you brutally beat down? withdrawal facilities, medical support, anything?

7. i love how titans loves to give everybody mind-bending powers at a whim. so now lydia can just teleport whomever she wants to some ethereal “training ground”? what’s next?

the way this show’s building up the rules of its universe, time and space and the mind and soul are interlinked and constantly bleeding into each other; it’s providing a framework for every deus ex machina to come.

8. so they meet in a bar. while there’s a city wide zombie crisis going on and the literal water from their taps is poison. taking away police resources when they’re stretched thin. taking a shot of absinthe after admitting that you’re still experiencing post headinjury “brain fog”. i know, i know.

the bad decisions are just beginning.

8.5. hmmmm. you know, i can just about see where dick is coming from with the idea to have nightwing surrender to the gcpd--this is now a PR battle, after all, and making a big, public gesture is a good move. but dick, it’s not the police that gotham has lost trust in (any more than usual anyway) but in you and your team. you were in a precarious position anyway even before scarecrow’s video as a brand new team in a city that’s used to its larger-than-life heroes and villains; now is the time to go big, to show that you care for the city. maybe by working hard on an antidote to the toxin. maybe by using WE resources to medically treat the poisoned. maybe by providing clean drinking water from outside the city. honestly there are so many options.

but dick’s not thinking straight, is he? he’s thinking about saving barbara’s image. he wants her employees to trust her again because he just can’t let go of his guilt and his tendency to throw himself on the cross at the slightest shift of the wind. he’s still obsessed with the idea of penance, not realising how much it would affect the people around him. 

8.9 and honestly we complain about dick making dumbass decisions but that’s the point? the show is not justifying these decisions by making them work out; they keep backfiring on him until he learns the lesson he really needs to learn. victory is in self-actualisation; not strategy or training or fancy weapons or martial arts moves. 

9. fuck off, crane.

9.5. it’s obvious he doesn’t quite have jason in his thrall now, and it’s quite possible he’s begun to misread and underestimate him as well. jason wants purpose, true, but not for power or legacy; it’s for safety and guidance.

10. i’m disappointed, but not surprised, to see the rest of the team agree with dick to surrender themselves. nobody had other suggestions or even opposition--not even gar, who has so far been the most sensible of the bunch. 

i can believe kory’s own guilt over being the one manipulated into blowing up the pipes that led to this whole crisis pushing her to agree with dick’s decision, but we’ve spent zero time lingering over her feelings on the matter, so that’s a huge opportunity wasted isn’t it?

(oh, i just remembered! what happened to Hot Psychiatrist Guy? has she spoken to him again? Show, if you tell me you’re just going to drop that thread i swear--)

10.5. “as a team, as a family.” well, this is one dysfunctional fucking family. 

there’s still a weird level of deference to dick that i both understand and don’t understand at all. he’s the one with the most training, the most experience under his belt as a hero after all; he’s the one who stepped up to lead and so he’s the leader. but he’s also clearly unwell and has been for a while. his leadership last year was a fucking disaster and though he’s been much better this year, he’s still closeted and self-sacrificial and under stress, utterly reckless and self-absorbed. the team’s continued reliance on him as a leader despite all of this is bad not just for them, but for dick too.

11. “you were born not just to protect people, donna, but to lead them.” huh. just as i was talking about dick taking a break from being the leader...

12. wait, is that the police guy...?

“say it. say my name.”

“uh... red mask? scarface? motor voice? oh, oh, oh! toothless! because of the, uh, no, uh, mouth line on the mask? ... hey, hey, hey, now put the gun down--”

13. why do they keep repeating “this is just for show” and “optics” in front of all the police officers? remember, they’re trying not just to rehabilitate barbara’s image in the eyes of gotham, but also in the rest of her force, who think she’s been too chummy/lenient towards the titans.

13.5. *siiiigh* well. that went downhill fast. and predictably so. again, barbara has frustratingly little power... (though that could just mean she’s in the wrong profession). a stunningly bad decision all around. 

a bad decision going demonstrably sideways i think says more about where the characters are than the quality of the writing at that stage, imo. not to say that titans is well-written (even i can’t compel myself to say that).

13.8. wait whaaaaaat. kom has kory’s powers now????

13.9. oh, kory. she looks exhausted... defeated. the guilt around being a possible catalyst for this crisis, the shock of losing her powers, her growing horror that her sister might’ve deceived her in order to steal her powers, the utter despair that is their carefully crafted plan utterly falling apart...

i wish we had just as enough time in kory’s head as we do in dick’s to really explore these feelings and pick them apart.

14. sooooooooooo barbara’s in jail. holy fuck. 

15. i guess i was hoping for a more emotional reunion between rachel and the rest of the titans, but eh. there’s a crisis on. i guess i can excuse a bit of an anti-climax... for now. (though i’m sure they’d want me to call it understated.)

16. dick’s reached the burnout stage, i see.

and i’m sorry, the police know that the titans are based out of wayne manor? then from there it’s a very, very small leap--infinitesimal, really--to figuring out that dick grayson is nightwing and bruce wayne is batman. and speaking of batman, do we know what this guy is doing after a fucking suicide attempt????

and there are only three episodes left?????

good god.

17. also: fuck off, crane.

#titans #meta #dick grayson #koriand'r #garfield logan #donna troy #barbara gordon #jason todd #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle #manic pixie pop tart #a tragic jalebi

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

we are our family, even if we don’t want to be.

Titans 3.07

a bit over halfway through the season, and we still don’t have all of our main characters on the board! i love this show.

as always, typing this up as i watch. live reaction, baby! *shadowboxes*

SPOILERS AHEAD

1. i don’t think i’ve mentioned this before, but i kinda miss the old ‘dc universe’ intro. it was cool! the whole idea of it was wild and waaaaay over-ambitious, but also very very on-brand because of it.

2. this is... the third time we’ve seen dick sleeping this season? that’s a record! checking another thing off my s3 wishlist...

2.5. i guess i rag on titans all the time for its wafer-thin plotting and bad pacing, but i have to admit that this season has been a step-up from the last one in this regard. titans has very reactive rather than proactive protagonists, and a lot of the last season seemed to be: x happened, the team reacted badly, then y happened, they reacted badly, etc. this time around, it’s not a huge leap up by any means, but at least they’re doing something about it. 

i do appreciate the focus on character arcs over everything else. and when i say everything else, i mean it: arcs that started two seasons ago with no big cathartic moments, intermittent payoff and multiple relapses. big bads have ranged from interdimensional demons to superpowered assassins to whatever in the world scarecrow is, but trigon’s big weapon against the titans was to... use their worst fears against them. slade’s was to... use their fears to break them up. crane’s is to... use red hood to use their fears to break them up. even the threat of gotham’s citizens being in danger doesn’t feel real: gotham is mythologised into an entity of its own, infecting our heroes like a parasite. like. this is not to say that most other superhero media aren’t big character arcs intertwined with the main plot, but titans doesn’t even make pretend that it’s anything but.

anyway. that’s my entry #2345 to ‘give a grand unifying theory for titans’. thanks. i’ll be back with more.

3. “anger is just fear in a little black dress.” god I HATE HIM

(what’s he doing with barbara’s likeness? oh... oh god. a terrible thought just occurred to me. what if they introduce hush at the very last minute for plastic surgery shenanigans? would you put it past this show?)

3.5. jason, nooooooooo

3.75. i mean, they’re making it very clear here that scarecrow is the one in control--the one who’s always been in control--and is manipulating jason and literally poisoning him, but i hope it doesn’t end up erasing nuance or jason’s autonomy. if jason’s to reckon with the issues that brought him here, then the lines of responsibility will need to be set somewhere. 

(this applies to dick as well but more on that later, i guess.)

4. just--the phrase “40% loss of income” is so funny to me. like, gotham is full of these larger-than-life characters who are idiosyncratic beyond belief, colourful and dramatic and creating chaos just for the sake of chaos, and then there’s the regular criminals and their henchmen who just want to make a quick buck sitting down with pie charts and graphs, griping about the joker reducing their returns or debating high risk investments in, i don’t know, two-face’s next scheme.

“yyyyeeeeeaaah, my financial advisor is telling me that going all-in with a guy who literally makes decisions on the flip of a coin is probably not the greatest idea.”

4.5. god i hate smug!smarmy!scarecrow so much

4.85. as big plans to “control” gotham go, it’s pretty bog-standard. clearly scarecrow has some bigger plan in mind but it really feels like we’ve got no clear insight into him and he’s this generic creepy mystery-man who knows more than he lets on and springs a twist/cliffhanger every now and then. i liked the scenes with him and dick in 3.04 where it seemed like he was genuinely on the backfoot and things weren’t going as he predicted. for all of his faults, dick is at least familiar with scarecrow’s bullshit and knows not to give what he wants.

5. i mean... i see where dick is coming from with the “he’s not jason anymore; he’s red hood” because his immediate glaring concern is scarecrow’s drug and the damage it could potentially cause gotham? i do not doubt that it’s something batman drilled into him, too, but when you’re expected to take point on a situation where the lives of an entire city weigh down on your shoulders, it’s better to simplify things and prioritise. i’m not saying it’s great or healthy! gar is absolutely right to consider this facet of the situation. it’s just dick can’t.

6. hmmmmmmm. HMMMMMMMMMMM. 

i don’t know that i’m super fond of this iteration of oracle???? it looks like a cross between cerebro from x-men and jarvis from iron man. it’s giving me second-hand embarrassment. somebody help me.

(at least they remembered dick’s middle name is actually “john”. i like to think bruce printed D in that contract because for a while he genuinely thought richard “dick” grayson was his full name. duck duck goose, dick dick grayson, i don’t know alfred, the kid was in a circus, maybe they thought it was funny. or maybe it was a test in anger control, who knows.)

6.5 “maybe you two would like some time alone?” even AI can’t help hitting on dick grayson in this universe.

“oh mr grayson, if i only had another eye to see you better...”

6.8. on one hand, it’s a bit disconcerting that the title of ‘oracle’ has gone from barbara herself to this gigantic machine; from my impression of the comics-verse, barbara had an extensive computing and surveillance system, true, but she was very clearly the brains behind the operation. on the other hand, i’m kind of glad that the ethical boundaries that this kind of surveillance violates is a sticking point for barbara. (tho let’s be real, the nsa would kill to have this in their arsenal).

6.9. also it’s now obvious that scarecrow’s big plan is to take control of oracle itself. it’s why he had lady vic take that picture of her eyes, or why he’s meddling around with it on his computer.

6.95. if only i could ‘command sleep’ anybody overstepping their boundaries re: personal information...

7. “you can just sit back and watch as the titans destroy themselves.” i mean... he’s not wrong

8. “dick’s parents were killed by a criminal mob; he won’t work with them.” it’s wonderful that you have this insight into dick, kory, i just wish we could’ve watched some of these conversations actually happen on-screen.

8.5. i’m glad that kom’s being treated with such nuance and understanding, though it’s obvious that she definitely has a Plan of her own. (and did i entirely imagine her ability to mimic other people flawlessly at the end of s2? or is that going to come into play at some point?) i think her story has the potential to be genuinely poignant, and in a universe where being Different, either because of mental health or physical differences or whatever else, leads a straight line to Evil, it’s important to acknowledge and then emphasise that the mere fact of your existence as a Different Person doesn’t predispose you to evil. maybe your act of destroying a system that has destroyed you and not scrambling to “fit in” is only evil as defined by that system. 

8.8. “you’re trespassing, i should call the authorities, i feel unsafe.” now this is a villain lady who’s definitely aware of her privilege.

8.85. kom smirking knowingly at her sister is everything.

“oooh that’s the kory i remember”

9. conner and dick working together woo!

9.25. god i hate a villain who’s always just a step ahead, no matter what. so crane anticipated dick using oracle to track his personal communications and set him up? how did he know when exactly dick would get to do this? how long did he have that poor man tied up in that van?

(the “save me, grayson” is a nice touch, tho. send dick spiralling even further! because if there’s one thing dick will do, it’s take responsibility for every goddamn thing that goes wrong.)

9.5. ahem. i’m going to need a million gifs of conner yeeting dick across that yard, fandom, thankyouverymuch.

(i understand conner is invulnerable to explosions, but how do his clothes survive??)

9.8. oooh crane is already in oracle! i’m just sitting here laughing helplessly because they’re overpowering this goddamned guy so much. he can build a lab in arkham’s basement! he has access to lazarus puddles! he has minions working across gotham, including a fully functional chemical laboratory staffed by chemists who only answer to him! he has the crime families of gotham quailing in his very presence! he has assassins at his beck and call! he’s enough of a manipulative bastard to have red hood under his thumb! and now he has enough of a tech know-how to not only be aware of oracle, but know how to hack into it! i’m sick of exclamation marks! i’ll shut up now!

9.95. dick leaving behind that smouldering grave for a person he failed to save without taking a second to process how he feels about it and running towards his next plan to corner scarecrow: a microcosm of where his head’s at right now.

10. really hammering in the themes of this season, aren’t we. 

10.25. the interesting thing is the titans repeatedly call themselves a family this season (none more so than dick) and while that found family has helped encapsulate and put away their traumatic experiences with their ‘original’ families, it’s meant that they’ve not really dealt with those issues. and dick and gar and jason come from ‘found families’ of their own: they are twice removed, traumatised two times over. they still cling to this identity however, and because of it they’re losing each other. a family isn’t static. it’s an ever-evolving dynamic and you have to put in work constantly to keep it healthy.

10.5. anyway, that’s entry #2346. i’m here aaaalll night.

11. lookit gar the detective! half-transforming and using his powers to deduce things! what a hero! i’ve said this for a long time, but gar is the bedrock of this team, and an unsung one at that.

11.25. i’m confused about him calling this room jason’s though. it seems to me that this is dick’s room that jason later used, and one that dick’s using now. so the unmade bed isn’t really jason’s fault; dick was woken by barbara that morning, and in his hurry, he left without making his bed.

(it still confounds me that bruce didn’t find jason another bedroom in that gigantic mansion of his. you really didn’t give this kid a chance, did you?)

12. oh well. so much for the oracle.

13. ... sorry, wait. you didn’t think i wasn’t going to address the bit with dick right now, did you?

12.5. i honestly don’t think it’s very complicated: dick’s been reeling from one traumatic thing to the next, and just when it seemed like at the beginning of the season, he felt happy and secure with his team and his place in the world, bruce ups and leaves gotham to him, specifically naming him a successor and calling him a ‘better batman’. he’s lost garth and jericho and donna and jason and now hank and dawn. he’s not even sure where rachel is or what she’s doing. after being told that batman was a psychopath for moulding him into a weapon, he’s also been told that his failure to be a ‘better batman’ lead to further disaster. of course he’s going to get batman-goggles. of course he’s going to be a prick. 

12.8. i don’t know what to say. i feel his frustration acutely. i don’t think he should’ve said what he said to barbara (can people stop pushing her around this season????) but that pressure to step in where your parent fails? to clean up their messes and try to think like them? to fall into habits drilled into you when you developed them as coping mechanisms growing up? I FEEL THAT. 

every step he’s taking he’s putting 110% of himself in it and scarecrow’s still playing mindgames with all of them: i absolutely feel his desperation to take control of that game and turn it on scarecrow, no matter what it takes.

and he did apologise almost immediately, and finally--finally--actually works with barbara. 

12.9. again, not excusing him! but i get it. and i think that’s a sign of great character writing.

“did you know i just reminded emmram of all of her daddy issues? what the fuck????”

12.95. i love that dick&barbara, kory&kom, and gar are all approaching solving this mystery from different angles, each as valid as the other. also, conner is there as... emergency bomb defuser man?

13. it’s like all fancy rich people in fancy rich houses do is pour fancy rich alcohol into fancy rich glasses on pristine, untouched tabletops. i wonder what it’s like to live like that.

13.25. I KNEW IT! poor michael. it was nice knowing you.

13.5. man, kory is contending with a lot of issues that she’s successfully bottled up and compartmentalised until now. the cold reality that a child can seek out their parents as refuge and they can view the child as a piece to be moved in a greater game (never out of cruelty, though, never, and somehow that makes it worse), that truth of blackfire’s treatment on tamaran because she’s different, and her own culpability in what happened. she exchanged one family for another, after all, and left that family to die and her sister to suffer. like dick, like gar, kory’s being forced to reckon with what the titans are meant to be, the larger implications of creating their found family in their own space.

14. it’s probably because it’s one in the morning and i’ve had two glasses of wine but i did not follow that bit of exposition at all and victor freeze??? what? 

anyway. look at them solving things! together! go team!

“you made a deal with the mob?” oh the sense of betrayal on his face! fuck off, dick, your issues aren’t kory’s. 

15. conner is really sweet and a bit of an awestruck crush on kom is to be expected. especially after that power rangers-esque transformation (i say this as a former huge power rangers fangirl. i’ve seen every series until 2007 including the original japanese versions and written fanfic for all of them. so i love a cool costume transformation, is what i’m saying.)

also?

FUCK YEAH

16. i love the gotham crime families just chillin’ around eating ice cream. I LOVE THEM

16.5. that was a fun fight sequence, if marred slightly by that bit of awkward flirting between conner and kom. i wonder if she’s really planning to use him in a larger scheme to get kory back to tamaran, or maybe something else. 

16.75. so i’m assuming that scarecrow has jason either so paralysed by fear that he can barely move, or jason’s withdrawing from the drug that he’s been sucking in every few minutes. 

17. it’s nice to see them chill after a successful mission! and it can be awkward, but conner’s crush on kom and him striving to impress her is also, well, uh... cute.

17.5. i guess the dick/barbara scene was inevitable, especially given the... unresolved nature of their relationship in the flashbacks? and they’ve been through a rollercoaster together this episode, discovering and then destroying an incredible tool within a matter of hours, re-discovering just how well they work together as a team. dick’s swimming in the nostalgia. i don’t expect it to last as a long-term relationship, but i totally get why this is happening now. and hey, they’re cute!

i have a weeeirrrrd feeling that kory is going to leave to tamaran at the end of the season and that dick and kory will rekindle--or rather realise--their relationship just before that. it’s going to be devastating and beautiful and painful and i will be writing essays about it which would be me just wailing into the screen.

18. gar found molly!!!!!!! MOLLY’S BACK! \o/ gar is the BEST

19. that was a fun episode! i love this silly show, even if it does destroy me sometimes <3

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #dick grayson #barbara gordon #koriand'r #komand'r #garfield logan #jonathan crane #conner kent #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle #manic pixie pop tart

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

chin fucking up, amigo.

Titans 3.02

... eh?

SPOILERS ahead.

1. you know that music video for billie jean where michael jackson would dance along the pavement and the tiles would light up under his feet in different colours? yeah? me too.

titans hasn’t met a table top or a support arch that it doesn’t want to light up in a headache-inducing blue like the world’s most boring nightlight. i mean, i’m not an expert on lighting or cinematography or just... colour by any means, and the quality of the video i’m watching is poor given that i can’t access hbo max, but all the orange and teal and neon is making it very difficult to really differentiate between say, the batcave and the gotham police department and hell, the titans tower. i feel like there’s oftentimes a gap between idea and execution with titans, with gotham being this almost otherwordly hellscape with an aesthetic pulled from a gothic horror novel, but the colours and design just... leave it flat and dark and dull.

1.5. like what really frustrates me is that titans has a delightful mix of tones--the fights often remind me of schumacher-era batman camp, with the contrived quips and the start-stop rhythm and krypto just sallying in and ending the fight with a fucking SuperBark (tm) but in the same episode you have red hood just casually pulling out severed heads out of a duffle bag and desperate people blackmailed into killing themselves out of drug overdoses. I MEAN. it’s wonderful! but it looks all the same. it sounds Absolutely Bonkers on paper but on screen both Quip and Murder happen in the same washed-out blue and i wanted to be excited about the batcave, dammit!

2. things re: red hood have happened at such a breakneck speed that it feels like there’s so much that’s happened off-screen that we’re not privy to. a real proper mystery! 

things that are intriguing about the red hood arc so far:

a) what was that chemical he huffed just before going to fight the joker? is it a regular old performance/adrenaline booster or is it something more lazarus-juice adjacent? if it’s the latter, i can’t imagine he got that much information from a lone chemistry textbook. and where is he getting the resources to set up his little chemistry lab? is somebody else orchestrating things behind the scenes?

b) the red hood persona, costume and mask, plus the elaborate plan he’s putting in place to both string along gotham’s rogues and enact his revenge against the titans seems too... fully-formed and elaborate to have been concocted in just a few days. how long do you think jason’s been planning this? just... stewing in resentment and building rage, dismissed and passed around and underestimated and realising that the power he thought he would get by being robin is no power, no protection at all, but something that’s left him even more vulnerable than before? 

c) do we think that the scarecrow is at least partly behind this transformation? because yes, it was batman that set up this whole hannibal lecter-esque situation with him, and he would be irresponsible enough to have jason-as-robin go talk to him regularly regarding “~profiling~” criminals. it’s not too far of a leap to assume that scarecrow could’ve been manipulating jason at a very vulnerable time, and that he could’ve passed along some of his chemistry know-how, too.

d) ... or fuck, i wouldn’t put it past titans to introduce ra’s al ghul in a fucking ten second aside

e) anyway, the thing that won’t leave me alone is jason seeking out the joker not necessarily to fight him, but to orchestrate his own death. the whole thing has to have been part of a bigger plan. he broke batman with it, after all. and he’s starting to break the titans, too.

f) i love it! i mean, it does re-tread some of the storybeats we had with deathstroke last season (turning the titans against each other as revenge, etc) but it’s... tighter, this time, and at least for now seems better-executed. and as a red hood story it’s different enough to be really interesting, and i appreciate the ways in which its reframed the revenge story to focus on the titans rather than just the batman. like fuck everything up, i say! turn it on its head! slash the innards out of that sacred cow and strew it like garlands in the path of the Story You Want To Tell!

(and yes i am fully aware that by the time i post this review, there will be a whole lot more information out but if i come across like a fool then goddammit i will be a fool!)

2. i love how every season of titans starts off with, ‘oh dick, you thought you were settling into a role and a life and a pattern of relationships? well fuck you, here’s a terrible and traumatic thing, tons more responsibility, and circumstances that will lead you to uproot your entire life and move somewhere else.’ and dick’s just like, ‘well, ok. fuck you, but all right’.

can you imagine? the man was just settling into leading a team in sf and smiling for the first time in years, and now he has to deal with jason’s death, bruce experiencing a full fledged breakdown, coming back to a city that represents more bad memories than good, red hood, and a frightening new case that seems to be targeting him and his team. it’s a testament to dick’s growth that he’s not reacting to this stress like he did last year, shutting everybody out, making irrational decisions and experiencing sharp, short bursts of anger. (not to mention a full fledged psychotic episode.)

2.5. but i’ve also talked about dick performing a fair amount of unwarranted emotional labour for his team(s) in that he just lets them take out their frustrations on him and... does nothing. be it his team exploding at him for jericho (both in flashback and present-day) or donna and hank needling him for handling deathstroke poorly or barbara berating him for not handling the bank situation as well as she thought batman would though just the previous episode she had talked about how fucked up it was that bruce just expected dick to step up and replace him in gotham without any real notice. i mean it’s all perfectly understandable and sympathetic from their end--and i’m not trying to bash them here!--but hank, my man, the same chin you’re asking your amigo to keep up is the one that you punched last year and never apologised for. just sayin’.

2.75. @superohclair did a wonderful breakdown of what the ‘fear’ contract could imply here and there’s not too much i could add to that. it’s just really interesting that fear ended up being such a defining feature of their lives, albeit it’s the fear of seeming less than invincible in the face of bigger, more tangible fears. am i making sense?  dick feared loss, and abandonment, and the more existential concept of turning into something that he didn’t want to. bruce so feared being alone that he’s scouting kids to replace robin within days of jason dying. 

it also goes some way in explaining the tense sort of... restraint that bruce and dick show in the wake of loss and tragedy, like anything less than complete control of your emotions can lead to tragedy. it’s conditioning that dick couldn’t shake off when he was at his lowest in detroit, hating his legacy but unable to let it go either.

2.775. but i definitely appreciate the softness that dick displays with his team now, checking on them after a mission-gone-bad, welcoming back old members with no caveats or resentments (and kory’s delight in seeing hank back! hank and dick hanging out together and hank trying to prop dick up!), and appreciating their teamwork in solving cases. that’s always been the essence of dick as a person, and the beating heart of this show: flawed and traumatised people coming together to a place that will always be open to them, where they can be their worst and be supported still, allowed to make mistakes and grow from them. that’s family.

2.8. coming back to bruce for just a sec, it’s interesting how that gotham rogue was so certain when he said that ‘batman doesn’t kill’ but it’s not a rule that either jason or dick put much store by when they were robins. the ‘no-killing’ rule clearly didn’t mitigate dick’s fears about turning into batman and jason’s never been seeing giving two shits about it. it seems to me of a piece with bruce’s distant, second-hand sort of parenting that we see in dick’s flashbacks from s1 where the fear was never about personally disappointing batman, but taking lessons from him on finding a place in gotham’s hellish ecosystem and surviving.

3. kory having waking flashbacks! i don’t buy the bullshit parasomnia episode explanation from fake!HPG (because c’mon, justin has to be some sort of tamaranean ruse) because for one, you have to be actually asleep for that diagnosis. 

(and here i was, hoping against hope that HPG would actually end up as the team’s therapist)

curiouser and curiouser! i wonder if these flashbacks are from the time between kory landing on earth and the beginning of season 1, when she was completely amnesiac? it’d be cool if the show was considering repercussions from that time, and if kory hasn’t gained all her memories back. 

4. i just love the vibes between gar and conner and kory. gar Having Things To Do is only one part of my wishlist for him, however: other parts include having an actual story arc, and actually bonding with members who are not conner and kory. (dick! dick! hank! dick!)

anyway. time to move on to watching ep3 and seeing this family bond and nothing terrible and tragic happening at all, nope, nosiree. 

#titans #titans spoilers #meta #dick grayson #jason todd #red hood #koriand'r #garfield logan #bruce wayne #his name is justin. #a byronic cupcake #a tragic jalebi #badass strawberry truffle #manic pixie pop tart

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

whumptober day 5: rescue

Titans time! 

summary: kory rescues dick from captivity, but he has a final trick up his sleeve.

warnings: set vaguely at some point after s2 ends. some s2 spoilers. pretty harmless, really. 

rescue

Dick’s been missing for five days when Kory finds him slumped and bleeding in the basement of a derelict Gotham hotel. The place smells dank and mouldy, and it’s cold enough that Kory’s shivering, her powers mostly spent. She’s been on Earth for long enough now that she anticipates depravity instead of being startled by it, but Gotham is… special. Beyond. There’s a pall over it that stifles her powers before she’s even had a chance to use them, and it only gets worse the deeper she goes into the city, into all the places even Gotham thought was unsalvageable. It’s frightening to think that this is the city after it obtained an entire family of vigilantes dedicated to saving it.

(maybe their kind of saving isn’t what Gotham needs, after all--)

She glows faintly, illuminating just enough of the place to see Dick chained to a corner by his arms. He’s on his knees, slumped to one side, blood caking one side of his face, but his costume appears otherwise intact, and he is breathing steadily. Rats scurry into dark corners as she approaches him.

“Good timing,” Dick says, as she gets close. “I was just about ready to get out of here.”

He’s grinning, teeth startlingly white against the grime and blood on his face. He looks utterly relaxed in a way that Kory has never seen him in Titans Tower or, well, anywhere else; for all that Dick professes to despise Gotham, there’s no denying he’s in his element here. Even if that means being captured, beaten up and left for dead.

Kory makes a show of rolling her eyes as she swiftly snaps the chains with her bare hands. It worries her that he isn’t immediately leaping to his feet or even trying to move much at all; now that she’s close, she can hear a faint wheeze tailing every breath. “It doesn’t look like you are,” she mutters.

Dick’s grin fades. “Just a broken ankle,” he says with practiced nonchalance. “Kind of pedestrian when it comes to torture, really. Are Rach and the others okay?”

“Dealing with the rest of the cult outside so that I could get in here.” Kory slips a hand under his shoulder and slowly hefts him to his feet. Dick hisses, swaying, but swiftly transfers weight to his uninjured leg, leaning against Kory for support. 

“Gar’s still got a cold, you think he should be out there fighting?”

Kory begins to make her way to the door in small, slow steps, allowing Dick to figure out a gait that meant the least discomfort. “He recovered from it last week, Dick,” she says, when Dick has stopped gasping in pain. “You’ve… you’ve been gone a while.”

Dick falls silent for a long moment as they make their painstaking way to the door. Then: “I haven’t missed his birthday, have I?”

“No, but I think he’s already found out about the game console you’ve hidden in your room.”

“Ah,” Dick says, smiling, “I meant for him to find that. It’s cover for his real present.”

“If it’s the collection of autographed basketballs then he’s found that, too.”

Dick shoots her a sidelong glance. “That’s not… meant for him--”

“Whoops.” Kory laughs and kicks the door to the basement open. “Do you want to tell him or shall I?”

The lobby is already swarming with men by the time they get there. Kory fights off as many of them as she can and Dick tries his best to help, but with her own powers at a low ebb and Dick… incapacitated, they’re clearly not going to get out the front door.

“Roof,” Dick gasps.

Kory swiftly gathers him in her arms without another word--ignoring just how light he is and the heat radiating off exposed skin--and sprints up the stairs. The rotting staircase rumbles and creaks with the footfalls of the men chasing them, but Kory just pours on speed, acknowledging but putting aside the way Dick bounces in her arms, his laboured breathing, his bitten-off screams when his ankle is inadvertently jostled. When she finally bursts onto the roof, panting, he looks ready to pass out.

He’s still grinning.

“Okay, Grayson,” Kory pants. “What’s your big plan?”

One of the ugly stone gargoyles on either side of the roof shifts, tilting its neck and spreading its enormous wings against the murky night sky. It crouches, as if waiting to be mounted.

“Rachel,” Kory whispers. She looks sharply at Dick. “Was this your idea?”

Dick shrugs. “Been a dream ever since I became Robin.”

Behind them, the roof access bursts open again, their enemies pouring in. “When I get my flight back,” Kory says, placing Dick in front of her on the gargoyle’s back and climbing on after him, “you’re going to regret that you ever made me do this.”

Dick pulls her arms around his waist. “Hold on tight!”

His laughter echoes in her ears as the gargoyle lurches off the roof and towards safety.

#i....... dk #i just really wanted to write that last bit #titans #dick grayson #koriand'r #my fic #whumptober2020 #no.5 #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

For the dysfunctional pairing prompt: Dick/Kory?

s2!AU - SPOILERS until 2.11

1.

“You’re good with the kids,” Kory tells Dick. It’s an absurd thing to say when one of those kids is beaten half to death, another is strutting around in a spandex costume like it’s his second skin and yet another… vanquished an interdimensional demon like it was nothing, but they’re all laughing, and Dick looks lighter than Kory has ever seen him.

Dick looks about as bemused as she feels. “You think?”

She smiles. “I do.”

“You’re pretty good with them, too.” He hesitates, then tilts his head at the car. “You know, this model seats five…”

Oh. Oh, no. She has only just come back to herself; there are so many decisions she has to make and so much to think about. Still, she’s curious about the light that’s animating Dick, about what it would feel like to cruise down stark and beautiful landscapes while knowing exactly who she is and where she is coming from and nothing about where she’s going. Only for a little while.

Just for–

“I’m in,” Kory says, and relishes the huge, delighted grin that breaks over Dick’s face.

6.

When Jason falls from the balcony, Kory’s first instinct is to dive right after him. She hasn’t tried flying in so long–not since leaving Tamaran–but the way her power coils around her, lifting her, is so familiar that she lets conscious thought go and let it take her where–

“KORY, NO!”

A desperate grip on her hand jerks her out of the moment. She hangs, swaying, from Dick’s hands even as Jason plummets to his death.

“What have you done?!” she screams at Dick. He has nothing to say, but she sees the answer in his eyes: he has made his choice, and it is going to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

10.

After the whole truth has been told, punches thrown, and the dust settled, Dick and Kory are the only ones left in the room. The silence is absolute, like a crypt–and Dick looks like he might belong in one, pale, stooped, blood pouring down his face. Kory, for her part, sits curled on a couch, her phone in one white-knuckled hand, staring past Dick. He grabs a towel and presses it to his gushing nose.

A few moments pass before Dick ventures, “Kory, what’s wrong?”

There’s a picture of Faddei’s corpse on her phone, the name Blackfire burned into his skin in Tamaranean. Kory feels… brittle, anxiety and regret buzzing under skin that feels like paper. “There’s nothing you can do,” Kory tells Dick, and the words unstick themselves from her throat with visible effort. “You need to be here.”

“Please.” Dick’s face crumples with the kind of emotion he’d dared not show the others. “Please, let me help you.”

“Dick, I–”

“We’re in this together, right?” He takes her hands in his. “Whatever this is, you don’t have to deal with it alone.”

His touch is so very cold, but Kory doesn’t let go.

2.

The first few months at the tower are wonderful.

Kory goes out as frequently as she can, soaking in the sights and sounds of a bustling city. She drags the others out with her often–riding roughshod over Dick’s protests. Rachel and Gar seem delighted that they are together, in peace, and with purpose; and although Jason is wary at first, he warms up to her soon enough.

At night, after the others have gone to sleep, Kory joins Dick in bed. There is a reverence to the way he touches her that turns boisterous without warning, which she finds delightful. Honestly, all of this is more than Kory could ask for.

(and if she finds Dick lying awake in bed well into early morning, or hears Rachel scream into her pillow, or sees Gar unable to look either of them in the eyes for more than a few minutes at a time, or runs into Jason nursing bruised knuckles in the training room in the dead of the night… well. They’re here to work through all of their problems together, and that’s exactly what they’re going to do.)

8. 

The devastation and betrayal in Jason’s voice is palpable when they confront him. Kory knows she should intervene, that without Dick there she needs to take control before things spiral further, but she stares at the pieces of her sawar bracelet in her hand and thinks for a single, vicious, shameful moment: Good.

5.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble with your powers before?” 

Rachel’s huddled under a table in the control room, and flinches at the sound of Kory’s voice. “What’s the point,” she says. “I just killed Rose. Maybe I’m just born bad, Kory, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it now.”

Kory crouches in front of her and tentatively reaches out to touch her thigh. “You know that’s not true,” she says. “Me and Dick, we believe–”

“Please don’t tell Dick!” Rachel says suddenly, eyes wide, clutching Kory’s hand with both of hers. “Please, Kory–it’s why I didn’t say anything earlier. He can’t know.”

“He can help you, Rachel. All of us can.”

“He’ll only think he’s failed me, somehow. And then–” Rachel’s voice drops to a whisper, “he’ll leave. Again.”

Kory thinks of how wound up Dick has been since Deathstroke returned; how he flinches and mutters at thin air and refuses to tell her why. She thinks of his haphazard battle plans, and the reckless glint in his eye as he discussed how to rescue Jason from Deathstroke. 

“Okay,” she sighs. “I won’t tell him.”

12.

“And worst of all, the idiot goes and gets himself arrested so he can feel better about his guilt.” She takes a healthy swig of her wine. “And I’m stuck. Lost–literally!–in space and time. We were supposed to help each other find ourselves, yet all we’ve managed to do is get lost even further.”

Her one night stand removes his briefs from around his neck and slips into them with no small measure of disappointment. “Seems to me,” he says, “that neither of you were particularly ready to enter into a relationship.”

She considers him critically over the rim of her glass. “Why, are you some kind of expert?”

“I am a psychiatrist,” he says mildly, brushing glitter off his pecs.

“Of course you are,” Kory mutters, rolling her eyes, and finishes the rest of her wine in one final swig.

4.

Faddei keeps calling.

It’s not that Kory isn’t aware that she has responsibilities on Tamaran, or what would happen to Faddei if she didn’t return to him. It’s just–she has an obligation to the people here, and with Rose’s arrival, Deathstroke’s return, the older Titans coming back, she’s been putting out fires left and right. Dick stops sleeping altogether, pacing the hall in the middle of the night, muttering to himself. Kory can’t possibly leave things the way they are.

Tamaran can wait.

9.

Dick stays long enough on the roof after a red-eyed Jason returns to the tower for Kory to get worried. He doesn’t react when she moves to sit beside him; only continues to stare out into the city, a kind of invisible weight stooping his shoulders. His arms are shaking, and Kory tenses, ready.

“I’m sorry,” Dick says at last. “None of this is fair to you.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“All of this.” He gestures at the tower below him vaguely. “Kinda dragged you into the middle of a giant clusterfuck that was my fault. Figured the least I could do is apologise.”

“I’m here by choice,” Kory says. “And we’re going to get through this together.”

“Yeah,” Dick says, faintly.

3.

“It’s wonderful that you two are together,” Dawn says. “Dick can be a difficult person to get close to, though.”

Kory frowns puzzled. “Sexually he’s both quite active and enthusiastic–”

Hank chokes on his lunch while Dawn smacks his back. “No I meant he’s a closed book emotionally. It’s just the way he was raised, I guess.”

Kory thinks of the warmth in his eyes and his smile when he thinks nobody is looking. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess.”

11.

Dick drives them to Nevada after they discover that every means of transportation that Kory had to her home planet has been destroyed for good, then disappears.

Kory leaves him a voice message and doesn’t bother to look.

7.

Saving Conner with her powers is the most Kory has felt like herself since Trigon was defeated.

It’s a startling thought, and she doesn’t know what to make of it.

13.

“I see Dick dying,” Rachel says, her eyes wide and very white. “Please, Kory, he needs us.”

Kory breathes in the dust kicked up by Dawn’s car. “I know,” she says. “Let’s go get him together.”

-

(  Give me a pairing and I’ll write you a way it could be spectacularly dysfunctional! )

#thank you anon!! #titans #my fic #dick grayson #koriand'r #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle #anon ask #dickkory #ugh this really spun out of control and took me aeons to finish

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

dick x kory prompts? please i need some prompts after 2x09

(do you mean you want dickkory prompts or are you giving me a dickkory prompt for the dysfunctional pairing meme? you know what, never mind, i’ll just try and combine the two.)

-

(set just before 2.11. also a very happy birthday in advance to @superohclair!

-

It’s freezing cold, rank, and he’s shivering so hard his aching joints rattle with the force of it. His mouth is somehow both dry and slimy at once and he can’t remember the last time he ate or drank, but he hasn’t reached the stage where he wants to try flambeed rat or water that he’s pretty sure one of the guards has pissed in. Yet.

It’s not as though he hasn’t been trained to endure conditions worse than this without complaint--it’s just that complaining would piss off Bruce-in-his-head, and he wants that ornery bastard off his game even before he shows up. Which he will, Dick is sure.

Fuck, it’s cold--

He leans against his bed, pulling his knees into his chest. A deep, lung-rattling cough burns its way through his throat. Dick presses his fingers against his eyes, willing his headache to go away, and when he opens them again, Kory’s kneeling in front of him. The room around her wavers as if caught in a mid-summer haze, but Kory herself is crystal clear, and she’s smiling.

“Did you think I’d actually leave you to go self-destruct on your own, Grayson?” she says. “If we’re going down this rabbit hole, we’re going down together.”

She takes his hand, and the world tips sideways.

He’s in the destroyed Batcave from Trigon’s vision. Bruce is dead at his feet, neck at an awkward angle, but Kory’s there, alive and well, and Dick is so torn between devastation and relief that he thinks he’s going to die. “We need to go very, very far away from this,” she tells him, and Dick’s pretty sure that what he needs is to face the consequences for murdering his father, but the idea of leaving everything behind and running away with Kory sings to him--softly, at first, then louder and louder--

He blinks. Trigon is defeated, and Dick stands at the cusp of a new life. “This model seats five,” he tells Kory, and he hopes the offer is flippant enough to hide the way his heart thunders against his ribs as he watches Kory make a decision. “I’m in, Grayson,” she says, smiling brilliantly, and Dick is sure in that moment that he would never need anything more than that ever again--

Blink. Kory fighting by his side against Deathstroke--

--talking to him, her hands flying through the air, about Tamaran culture, her people, her history, as he thinks he can listen to her voice forever--

--standing in between him and all his failures, just long enough for him to pull himself together--

--cuddled next to him on the couch, laughing raucously at Donna’s stories of their childhood--

--kissing him as they soar through the night sky--

--a resounding crash from somewhere outside his door brings him back to the present. He’s lying face down on his bed, and his pillow his suspiciously wet. With a shuddering sigh, he pulls the blanket over his head and shivers.

He hopes Bruce shows up the next time he opens his eyes. It’d be less painful.

#titans #dick grayson #koriand'r #my fic #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle #dickkory #anon ask #um it's kind of sad so sorry??

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

like when halluci!bruce tells dick in 2.07 that he’s afraid that “the others” will leave him once they know his secret, he can only be referring to kory, gar, rachel and jason because we know from 2.08 that donna, hank and dawn pretty much know what dick does - that’s why they left him (unless there’s something else to that flashback that we didn’t see--god i hope not, because this drip-feeding of info has gotten tiresome)

so what dick is really worried about is kory and the younger titans leaving him just as his older friends did--and he’d think it was a personal failure all over again, just like he did the last time. it’s a testament to how hurt he was by the first time that he goes to such lengths--lengths that are frankly harmful not just to himself but damaging to his charges--to hide what happened from them. he’s sort of made his peace with hank and dawn and donna--he went to hank and dawn for help with rachel last season (so deathly afraid of taking in another kid with powers that he’d rather drop her off with them instead of risking her possible death by his association) and he gladly went to donna to crash and get his head on straight later on but it’s clear the damage from what happened never really went away

and the thing is: kory and gar and rachel (and maybe jason?) would understand. they’re already incredibly perceptive regarding his emotional state: rachel looks up to him and doesn’t want to come to him with her problems so that he wouldn’t think of himself as a “failure”; gar respects dick’s authority and more than that he’s respectful of dick’s decision to keep things to himself; and kory’s... well, she’s kory. right from last season, she’s allowed dick to express himself freely purely by dint of her personality; she’s curious about the things he’s hiding but always, always respectful of his boundaries and knows when and where to push. at the beginning of 1.08, when dick splits from kory and the others, there’s no anger or resentment or sadness; just the understanding that he needed some time to himself to Figure Things Out, and the trust that he would not only be okay but that he would eventually return

which is a long-winded way to say: trust the family you built last season, dick. because the only way they can be completely honest with you and not tip-toe around emotional land-mines is if you tell them where they are

#titans #meta #dick grayson #koriand'r #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

d'artagnan, treville, and koriand'r from titans? (which i've never seen but her hair is beautiful and also i appreciate the name)

d’Artagnan

How I feel about this character: i love that d’artagnan wholly, and without any evidence of an uneasy split between the two selves, occupies the role of ‘archetypal hero’ and ‘incorrigible little shit’. he is brave, and romantic, and loyal to a fault, but he also has a casual, often flexible relationship with his principles when he really, really wants something. he can be conniving, deceptive, and entirely too comfortable with scaring the living shit out of anybody enemy-adjacent as long as it gets him closer to his goal. the source material leaned into this irony more, but it’s not difficult to see that edge to him on the show. it’s not even something he’s even conscious of, which makes him very entertaining to watch, and honestly makes me long to see more of his story.i was going through some of my old meta posts about d’artagnan and here’s one from 2015 that kinda sums up all this waffle:he’s such a little shit. and he’s perfect for the inseparables because i don’t think there’s any other way to get their attention and their friendship than to stomp into their midst, threaten to kill one of them, roll your eyes at their plans, act entitled to their histories within months of knowing them, signing up for missions without a thought about what they would actually entail,  and just being stupidly brave enough through the whole thing that the resulting smugness is more endearing than irritating.this guy kills without compunction yet has legions of people calling him ‘puppy’. how is he not a little shit.I LOVE HIM.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: EVERYBODY. essentially my musketeers manifesto.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: porthos + d’artagnan makes me swoon in any iteration.

My unpopular opinion about this character: i know he got a lot of shit for some of his actions in s2 and while he deserved some of it, he did not deserve the kind of unchecked vitriol that fandom spewed about him then. the facts speak for themselves.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: there were at least a couple of interesting inflection points in his character arc that sadly went unexplored: when bonacieux died in 2.07 and ‘cursed’ him and constance with his dying breath; and when he had to kill the mentally ill veteran he’d been trying to save all episode in s3. he ends both episodes in genuine pathos, seemingly at a crossroads, but by the next he seems to have forgotten all about it. it could also explain why it felt like d’artagnan grew so little in s3.

Treville

How I feel about this character: i tend to have a vague, low-simmering affection for treville most of the time, but the times that he’s most interesting is when he’s more... well, morally suspect. like the time he essentially used his regiment as a pawn in his protracted war with the cardinal, or the whole savoy fiasco, or even his efforts to keep porthos’ past a secret. also i just like to refer back to this post i made a long time ago whenever i’m asked to articulate my thoughts on treville.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: i see the potential in richelieu/treville, but i haven’t really given a lot of thought to shipping treville

My non-romantic OTP for this character: i really like the dynamics between athos and treville. i don’t think treville was entirely accurate with his judgment of athos’ temperament as a leader, but i think he was willing to take the chance anyway because he saw, perhaps clearer than most, athos’ compassionate heart. 

My unpopular opinion about this character: i don’t honestly find him as interesting as the rest of fandom??? *shrugs*

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: it’s a great pity that richelieu had to leave at the end of the first season. i do think his dynamic with treville made treville a lot more interesting and it would’ve been cool to see that evolve.

Koriand’r

How I feel about this character: what i really love about what titans has done with kory is subvert the ‘born sexy yesterday’ trope. they could’ve so easily had her perform this naive, what-are-these-human-customs role, but kory is different. she’s alien, sure, and curious about this world that she’s landed on, but she’s also smart and adaptable, and oftentimes far more well-adjusted than the earthlings around her. and i love how the show lets her be alien twice over--in the first season she has amnesia and is alien to herself, and that’s just a really interesting layer to her characterisation.besides, she is badass, and compassionate, and funny, and all-around beautiful, inside and out. and yes, her hair is great.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: DICK GRAYSON. despite the sorry lack of together-time in s2 they still have crackling chemistry. i also like kory/donna and kory/faddei.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: kory really connected with rachel and conner wrt their feelings of ‘otherness’ and i hope both of those relationships are explored further from hereon.

My unpopular opinion about this character: i mostly agree with the show’s decision to have her separate from the rest of the titans in s2. i know it was frustrating, but oftentimes her relationships with the others devolve into her providing succour and doing most of the emotional labour, and that’s not fair on her or the others.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: that said, i wish there’d been more focus on her, or just more screen time in general. still all the signs are pointing to exactly that in s3, so i’m optimistic. :)

( give me a character to break down! )

#the musketeers #d'artagnan #captain treville #titans #koriand'r #badass strawberry truffle #meta #going through some of my old musketeers meta posts from 2015 and 2016 has been a TRIP #i wrote some really cool and interesting things #thanks past self

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

some people are just born bad.

look who’s finally gotten her shit together and watched the new episode! honestly, i was busy, but also maybe putting off watching this episode because i felt the pressure to Write Something about it when a lot of the times i don’t have insights so much as i point and go, “ooh shiny!”? so. i don’t know. anyway, i got over myself, i watched titans 2.05, it was excellent, and i would like to tell you why.

SPOILERS ahead.

1. titans is taking a HUGE gamble by keeping the titans’ history with deathstroke under wraps five episodes into the season, and having the old team constantly refer to it in increasingly melodramatic terms. i mean, this episode is called deathstroke but we never actually see his face--just his admittedly creepy mask--and we still have no idea what dick did to jericho that was so horrible that they’re carrying this much guilt with them all these years later. i mean, if the reveal doesn’t live up to all of this sinister build-up *cough*trigon*cough* it would be a great pity.

1.5. i do think this episode hung together better than the previous four in almost every aspect--the themes were clearer, plot points were clarified, arcs advanced, and we got some genuinely good, if short, action sequences. and even though we don’t really learn anything new about slade wilson’s backstory or the origins of his feud with the titans, i do have a theory about why it is absolutely appropriate to call it deathstroke, and that theory, predictably, is mostly about dick grayson. um. so. stick around?

2. kory coming in and just... putting out fires left and right? talking sense to these melodramatic fuckers? actually inquiring after their emotional well-being, and giving them space to express themselves? FUCK YEAH. awesomeness aside, it just makes sense that she would be the one to bring some much needed perspective to the table--the og team is too caught up in the past to look at the present with any degree of emotional distance (tho dick, bless him, does try), and rachel and gar dare not question dick’s authority. 

2.5. the conversation she has with rachel is easily one of the smoothest and most heartfelt parts of an episode that otherwise often appeared fraught and brittle with heightened, soap-y drama. the two of them bonding over being outcasts even among outcasts, and rachel, desperately seeking not normalcy but an anchor, and kory being that for her... just perfect. i wish we’d gotten more of this right from the beginning. i wish this theme had been developed this explicitly and this empathetically right from season 1. i wish there was more kory, period--i really do think everybody’s forgotten that her original mission on earth was to find rachel and stop trigon from destroying the planet, and i don’t think it would take much time to make her s1 and s2 plot-arcs connect, if they would just give it to her--

2.8. also, while kory bringing support and sanity to the tower is wonderful, that’s not her role, nor should it be. it would be great if she could express her own conflict with her past and her supposed destiny without having to use that to prop up somebody else when they’re in crisis. 

3. dick grayson. oh boy. oooohhhh boy.

3.35. i described dick as a Mature Mentor in an earlier review and i mostly stand by that. i do think that he took in rachel and gar--and yes, jason--with an intent to not just protect them but to give them the tools and training to protect themselves. i think he committed to that as best as he could, or as best as he thought he could--a comfortable and fortified place to live, healthy food, training both their bodies and minds to defend themselves. more than anything, after the trigon fiasco, he gave these kids a place to belong. when slade and donna and dawn go off on him for putting these kids in harms way by restarting the titans, they’re being a tad unfair in ignoring this--and the fact that he didn’t know deathstroke was alive when he re-opened the tower--and the reasons they banded together to form the titans in the first place all those years ago.

3.38. it isn’t so much that he wants to keep them at a distance, or wants them to be soldiers on a mission--he frequently and freely uses the word ‘family’ when referring to them, tries to find ways to connect to them (at least until deathstroke came back and petrified his plans), and is just about always there asking what’s wrong at disturbances in the night (does this man ever sleep???). his refusal to admit vulnerability and insistence on silently taking on all responsibility and compressing it into a jagged diamond core right at his centre means that, while they clearly admire him and look up to him, rachel and gar can’t be vulnerable or honest with him. and they both need that so, so badly.

3.45. the shock of deathstroke’s return, the lingering trauma from garth’s death and whatever the fuck happened with jericho, and the old team coming back together with exactly none of their issues resolved means that a lot of bad habits are rearing their head as dick decompensates silently under intense and relentless stress. he shuts the kids out. he weathers everyone else’s admonition without protest, only occasionally cracking. he jumps into confrontations without any plan aside from ‘show up and hope things work out for the best’. the og team is too accustomed to ceding the planning and leadership to dick and funelling their feelings about the consequences of their actions through him. the kids don’t feel secure enough to question his authority. in that sense, kory is the only one in any position to really confront him, and when she does, he unravels in an instant.

so it isn’t entirely unsurprising that he goes to face deathstroke and give himself up to save both rose and jason. i can only hope that this comes as a wake-up call to the rest of the team that dick grayson is really Not Okay, and that they can’t carry on like he is.

3.6. dr. light was disposed of without much fanfare. jason’s capture was incidental. it’s ostensibly deathstroke v the titans, but deathstroke’s beef is very personal, and it’s with dick grayson. in that sense, an episode of dick grayson making very bad decisions under the stress of having to choose between two impossible choices (and failing all the same) is also the story of deathstroke playing out what he (probably) went through with ruthless, clinical precision.

3.8. as much as that final shot of jason falling to his death while dick reaches helplessly, screaming, hurts, it’s fucking agonising thinking how just five episodes ago, rachel had used that traumatic memory to save him instead. 

4. hank empathising so strongly with jason, kory using her own experiences to connect with and reassure rachel... this is the content i’m craving, you guys.

4.5. now if we could just get more gar (please!) it would be perfect!

5. even if your destiny seems inevitable, even if what you are and what you are meant to be seems set in stone, there’s always another way. kory just arrived with the big over-arching theme of the season, people. god i love her.

#titans #titans spoilers #koriand'r #dick grayson #rachel roth #slade wilson #deathstroke #meta #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

So I was rewatching the Doom Patrol episode and Kory said to Dick about him having problems and not being able to manage alone. I think in a way that’s what’s happening to Dickkory in season 2. They both have problems and they can’t manage it alone and after this last episode they are not handling it at all and the fact that they only had 1 solo scene/conversation is a crime within itself but also can be a careful laid plan for Dickkory’s future as a couple. Thoughts? I like your analysis.

sorry i’m a bit late in responding to this, anon - i wanted to go back and rewatch 1.04 myself before answering

it’s interesting to note that most, if not all, of dick and kory’s interactions in s1 came before kory even knew who she was, and before dick was ready to reveal to anybody who he really was (the other three didn’t know he was robin until the end of episode 5). at the time their priority was also taking care of rachel--and that, more than anything, was the primary source of any conflict that they might’ve had in s1. clearly the two of them felt some kind of Connection to each other from the beginning--but given kory’s amnesia, the urgency of their situation (what with the nuclear family and weird cults breathing down their necks), dick’s general reticence and kory’s innate curiosity about the world and the people around her and uninhibited physicality, the Moment they shared in 1.05 seemed less the beginning of a romance and more a tentative hello, i would like to know you better. it was just the perfect moment in space and time for both of them to start that conversation without either of them feeling uncomfortable or feeling like they had to upset or reset their boundaries. they already trusted each other with their lives at this moment--but that’s not quite the same as trusting each other with themselves, you know? (am i making sense?) this is what i think kory was going for when she told dick that it doesn’t help to keep shit buried for so long, and that things can’t be managed alone.

but this conversation gets interrupted in a big way by the events of 1.07. dick is faced with what he’s let robin become, and it’s a disquieting spectacle not just for him, but for kory and the others as well. and kory goes through a horrible, traumatic violation in that episode--she is faced with both how vulnerable she is without an identity and how alien she is to these people, and she can’t quite put off worries and doubts about who she is and what she’s meant to do any longer. dick and kory try to connect on that personal, intimate level after 1.07, but they both realise that it’s not quite working: there’s just too much they both now know and don’t know. it’s time to find themselves before they can resume this conversation. there is no resentment or anger or sadness on either of their parts about this (whether at the beginning of 1.08 or in 2.01)--just the understanding that this is what they both need and trust that they’ll return to each other eventually.

so here we are now, with two individuals so focussed on finding themselves that they are lost, eventually working their way to the realisation that what kory said in 1.04 is true in more ways than one. 

i think it’s great they went through all this shit apart from each other--while still subtly and unsubtly hinting that they respected each other and had each other’s backs--only to come back together when at least one of them is in a position to actually help the other. given how much we’ve been in dick’s head and how much oxygen his perspective has sucked from the other titans’ stories this season, i shudder to think what could’ve happened to kory’s story arc had she and dick actually been in a relationship this season.

clearly the groundwork is being set for a grand dickkory romance, but i’m glad the show had them do the legwork of growing as people themselves first instead of leaning on a relationship to do it for them.

#titans #dick grayson #koriand'r #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle #meta #anon ask

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

What Kory was doing those 3 months away from the tower

No one ever really said what she did with Donna those 3 months away from the tower, so I thought I try it out. It’s pretty late though, sorry:

• She would always go around talking to whoever she could, oddly enough, she brighten that person’s day

• She saw a cat once and took care of it before realizing it belonged to someone and returned it to the owner

• A little girl saw her using her powers once and ran over to ask if she could get an autograph(to which Kory happily said yes)

• Donna showed her pictures of Themiscrya and offered Kory to take her there. While Kory told her all she knew about Tamarean and said how she would like to take Donna there

• Stopped a robbery at a donut shop

• In return she got free donuts

• Went to a music store and bought every piece of music made in the 80s

• Sang to said songs in the 80s

• Didn’t notice until Donna pointed out that she had a butterfly on her shoulder

• Went to Donna to help her change her hair(they went to a salon actually)

• Donna and her took a day off to go clothes shopping on earth.

• Kory and Donna went to a place private to go test out more of Kory’s powers. You know like what can she do as of right now

• Donna introduced Kory to Diana and Diana was impressed by Kory and her strength and compassion

• Helped a child find his mother when he was lost

• Asked a cop once where their uniforms come from

(That’s all I have, if you like it you can add more if you want)

-

these are all great! her and donna’s looser approach to superheroing generally gives kory more time to re-integrate her past memories with her earth-experiences

i can imagine kory dragging donna–or maybe just exploring on her own–to natural history museums, aquariums and big and beautiful markers of centuries of human history

makes best friends absolutely Everywhere

enjoys roadtripping in the countryside but thrives in the big cities that are so full of different kinds of people and colour and stories and food and music

loves trying new things but almost always it’s one at a time–if she’s hyperfixated on say, doughnuts, or disco, or purple, she won’t move on to the next until she’s experienced the shit out of that trend (it drives donna up the wall sometimes but she can never really say no to kory)

she regularly talks to rachel and gar over the phone. a part of her waits for dick to call her to the tower–she misses them all!–but another part is glad that he’s holding off

donna’s passion to do good for the sake of doing good–regardless of costume/superhero name–inspires kory

#titans #koriand'r #donna troy #badass strawberry truffle #submission #thank you for such a great submission! <3

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

Fic: here and now

titans fic! ... hey. stop looking at me like that.

Summary: Dick Grayson is jaded and doubting and frequently oblivious, but he is Trying His Best.

aka: the team that cuddles together, stays together.

Warnings: SPOILERS till 1.06: Jason Todd. Set some indefinite time after that ep. Some swearing. My first attempt at these character voices, so let me know if they’re off.

here and now

By the time Dick Grayson’s (finally, finally) alone in his room, all he can think of is stripping off his costume, sinking into a hot bath, and sleeping for two weeks straight. It’s been a rough couple of days and he’s exhausted as all hell, so the world will have to make do without him swinging in in skin-tight spandex for a bit. Maybe a whole day will go by without something going FUBAR. It’s a nice thought.

(the world doesn’t owe you anything, dick, a voice whispers in the back of his mind, sounding suspiciously like Bruce. shut up, he tells the voice.)

He peels off his Kevlar and bodysuit in stiff increments, debates the merits of hobbling towards the bathroom and getting this motel’s shitty hot water to work versus flopping onto the bed that’s… right there, then nixes both ideas in favour of grabbing an old sweatshirt and pants while checking his phone.

Five voice messages, all from Jason. Well, now.

He starts playing them on speaker while he changes. Hey, Dick, Jason says, voice all belligerence and bravado, and Dick is almost too tired to deal with this now. Almost. I can’t believe you make people leave you voicemails instead of reading texts like a normal person. Like, dude. I can even picture you brooding at the window, listening to voicemails on speaker in an empty room like you’re a maudlin heroine from a movie that came out in, like, 1980 or something.

Dick scowls at the phone and steps away from the window.

Actually, you know what? This is ridiculous. Read my texts, weirdo.

Beep. And maybe reply to them once in a while? I know you’re busy with your team, but it would be cool if we could meet up soon. I mean, I guess. Um.

Beep. Or not. Fuck you.

Beep. Sorry about that. It’s just—Big B’s acting weird again, and the only way he’s spoken to me in the last couple of days is through post-it notes. God, it’s like I’m the only one living in the twenty-first century among the three of us.

Beep. I just… Dick. How did you even—with all the things I can do, the things you could do, how did you walk away, man? I just—I can’t wrap my head around it. But I’m going to make this count, Dick, I really am, and if you’re interested in joining me, let me know. And not through like fucking voicemail.

Dick sighs. Part of him is tempted to just leave Bruce to take care of this—after all, it was Bruce that saw some potential in this kid, and stubborn, opaque fucking Bruce who couldn’t take five minutes to talk to him before outfitting him with a bodysuit and a god complex and unleashing him onto the world. Then again, if Jason does go out and do something monumentally stupid and Dick doesn’t stop him even though he could… he’s never going to forgive himself.

He stares at the phone. Robin must be on patrol with Batman right now, so… he’ll call Jason first thing in the morning. That seems like a reasonable compromise.

(you can’t switch off or postpone being responsible, dick, says the voice, and Dick really, really wants it to shut the fuck up.)

He flops back onto bed, wriggles into blessedly warm covers, and is just about to nod off when there’s a knock at his door. He bolts upright, does a quick visual sweep for where he’s stashed all of his weapons, then ventures a look through the peephole.

“Sorry if I woke you up,” Kory says, sounding totally insincere.

Dick’s running out of ways to sigh without actually turning into the maudlin heroine that Jason insists he is. He opens the door, and Kory strides in with a toss of her curls and a wide smile.

“Is everything okay?” he asks.

Kory toes off her shoes and settles back on his bed. “Of course not,” she says. “The air conditioning in my room is terrible, and I figured from the way the receptionist was making eyes at you that you’d have the best one out of the four of us, so.”

“So?”

“I’m not going to drive you out of here, Dick! Come on,” she pats the bed next to her, “It’ll be like I’m not even here.”

Dick’s not sure that would ever be possible with Kory, but he complies.

Two minutes of silence pass and Dick’s almost asleep again when Kory says, “It’d be nice if we could score one of those safehouses again. We’ve been motel-hopping for a while. Rachel’s lived off nothing but pizza and chocolate milkshakes and Gar’s figured out pay-per-view.”

Dick mutters indistinctly into his pillow.

“Excuse me?”

Dick lifts his head. “We’ve still got a satanic cult on our tail. ‘Sides, Batman’s pretty much locked me out of his network. I can’t get into one even if I wanted.”

“You… could always call Jason.”

Dick tosses her a baleful glare before dropping his head back onto his pillow. Kory rolls her eyes. “It’s not like we aren’t still fighting some enemy or the other almost every other day, so I can only imagine that you continue to do this because you actually like cockroaches in the bathtub.” She shudders. “Disgusting little—”

“Careful, one of ‘em’s green and you might hurt his feelings.”

Dick almost leaps out of his skin. He jumps to his feet, wild-eyed, only to discover Gar near his door, a towel hastily wrapped around his waist. “Whoa!” he says, stepping back with one palm up. “Sorry! I came in with Kory and I promise I was going to leave without a word if things were going to… you know, get weird.”

Dick stares at him.

“You know, like.” Gar waggles his eyebrows, “If you two started to, like, have s—”

“Don’t tell me you actually came in here as a cockroach,” Kory says loudly.

“He was a frog,” Rachel says, from where she’s materialised behind Gar. “And it was my idea, so don’t blame him.”

Dick runs a hand through his hair. This is getting ridiculous. “Is nobody planning on sleeping tonight?”

“I was,” Rachel says, her voice small. “But I couldn’t. And I, um. I didn’t want to come here alone.”

Dick pauses, takes a long, deep breath. It’s been a long, hard few weeks for all of them, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that, sure, Rachel can harness demonic power strong enough to kill the planet, but she’s also thirteen, and she’s tired and scared almost every moment of every day. In another lifetime, Dick can imagine telling her to tough it out because there’s so much out there that’s worse and he can’t protect her from all of them. He keeps thinking he’s left that life behind, but it isn’t as easy as making a single choice, is it? He needs to keep making that choice every day.

He needs to make that choice now.

“Fine,” he says, hands on his hips. “Fine. We’ll… review our situation, tomorrow. Until then, for heaven’s sake, let’s all get some rest.”

Rachel beams.

Ten minutes later, Dick is back in bed and everybody else is asleep. Kory’s curled up next to him, hair tickling his nose. Rachel’s on his other side, head on his chest, bracketed by his arm. Gar, dressed in one of Dick’s sweatpants, is further down the bed, sprawled over his legs, head resting on one thigh.

Dick smiles. “Look at us,” he says, a little fondly.

“Titans,” Gar says sleepily. “We’re… we’re badass.”

#titans #my fic #spoilers #dick grayson #koriand'r #rachel roth #gar logan #a byronic cupcake #badass strawberry truffle