Another thing that fascinates me about Jason and Bruce is the way Jay can't get over having learned that there is a line Bruce wouldn't cross for him. How he can't get over the fact that love isn't childishly perfect and pure. Jason's way of understanding and demanding love is so painfully, desperately naive, that it will always tug at my heartstrings, because don't we all just want to be loved completely?
Learning your parents, your mother or father or both, will not actually love you to the point of self-sacrifice is painful. It's not like you have the right to demand it from anyone else. And most people will take this lesson and learn that love is not what they thought it was. Will learn that love is imperfect. That love can sometimes hurt more. That love is in the end just a feeling. And no guarantee of safety or care or anything.
But Jason refuses to think that Bruce can love him at all if he isn't willing to commit the act of avenging him by killing his murderer too. Isn't that question desperately familiar? How can you love me, if you won't even do this for me? How can you still say you love me?
It's about having gone through the pain of that question yourself, before you realized that you can be loved and hurt every single second of it.
And then there's hope. The hope that yields to placing the gun in your fathers hand. And bearing yourself. And what could it have been other than a futile hope to be wrong, that led to the confrontation between the Joker, Jason and Bruce? I think somewhere there was a last effort internally in Jason to provide an excuse to himself. Trying to convince himself that it will still count if Bruce lets Jason be the one to pull the trigger. Like this can still count. This will still be love.
But then he's laying on the floor, bleeding out, and I think what died there was the last spark of hope that love is magical. After that you know, love can mean something to you, but it carries no meaning in itself. And the world becomes a little bit more gray.
It's a childish way to love, in that we all wish, somewhere deep down, that we could return to loving and being loved in this way.
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Every fall out boy song is like *nonsense lyric* *nonsense lyric* *the most profound cunt serving couplet in the English language since Shakespeare that sends you straight back to middle school* *nonsense*
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something happening on a mission, something personal that has soap spiralling; panic and rage making him reckless, thoughtless, and ghost has to draw the line
“you’re compromised johnny; you know what that means?”
“you’re not pulling me out,” soap immediately snarls. he turns on him and ghost barely recognises him; venomous fear turning his eyes to unyielding ice. "you're not sidelining me; i need to be in this-!"
but ghost has never been afraid of venom; spat or dripped straight from bared fangs.
he snakes out a hand grip the back of his neck, jerking him in a rough shake. "if you can't think, you can't be a soldier," he growls and he flinches like he's been struck.
his lips quiver as they twist in a sneer and he wrenches, trying to free himself of his hold.
ghost doesn't let him.
"it means you give your body to me because your head ain't fucking attached to it anymore."
soap stills, body trembling beneath his hand as he sucks in shaking breaths.
he tightens his grip, pulling him closer and digs his forehead hard into his. “it means you give yourself to me so i can have the weapon that you are and use you the way you're meant to be used."
the ice in soap's eyes fractures.
ghost’s voice drops to a whisper, spoken only to johnny, not this facade of vengeance and pain, and wills it to reach him through the glaciers.
“so i can keep you safe ‘til it’s done and i can bring you back.”
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So I noticed something in Harrow the Ninth. In chapter two, when John is trying to console Harrow over having lost Gideon, he puts his hands on her shoulders, and he says "Gideon Nav did not die for nothing."
Harrow feels "a hot whistle of pain run down
[her] temporal bone," which is, we know now, Harrow having a stroke as her skull alters her brain so that she hears him say 'Ortus Nigenad' instead. And she replies to him in kind, using Ortus' name. So the interesting bit is John's reaction, look:
He had his hands on her shoulders the whole time. Physical touch negates lyctoral blindness, and she had a stroke while he was touching her. That look on his face. Is he working out an emotionally taxing anagram, or is he taking a good look at her and working out what the hell just happened? Then he says Gideon's name again, like he's running a test, and Harrow has another stroke. That's exactly the same test Mercy performed to figure out what Harrow did to her brain in chapter twenty-nine.
He knows. He's known about the lobotomy since chapter two. He thinks she did it to forget her grief and guilt, and he thinks he understands.
Which means when he 'notices' the lobotomy in this scene:
He's not really noticing it for the first time at all. He's calling attention to it. He's just told Harrow that she didn't open the Tomb, that she's wrong about the events of her own life, and then he deliberately 'discovers' and points out her brain damage to seal the deal.
John Gaius uses: Gaslight! It's super effective.
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Maybe I'll make a post on this at some point but like, something deeply fucked up about TNP and Po3 that people have totally forgotten about is how badly they try to whine that "Tigerstar Had Good Traits :("
Firestar does it, Brambleclaw does it, and they keep doing this after it becomes this GRAND irony that Firestar almost gets Tiger'd to death in a fox trap because he was too trusting. Bramble gets his pity award of keeping deputyship and then cries to his son about how No One Saw The Good In Tigerstar :(
And it's wiiiiild that no one else in this fandom has done anything with the fact that Leopardstar broke the Warrior Code to appoint Hawkfrost, who had no apprentice, an extremely aggressive and warmongering Tigerclone who says things like "Tigerstar wasn't the worst cat to look up to." ONLY qualifying trait was being kinda like Tigerstar.
And she practically did that the SECOND Mistyfoot went missing. And then Leopardstar continued to be one of the most violent and xenophobic leaders through Po3, joining with WindClan to attack ThunderClan.
What I'm getting at is that like, a few years ago, with books like "Blackfoot's Reckoning" and "Shadow in RiverClan" it's like they suddenly decided to retcon in a bunch of "redemption arcs" in hindsight. They just pretended like there was this grand high reckoning with TigerClan, when there literally wasn't, and if anything that caused SERIOUS problems for the cast that the authors didn't fully acknowledge as such.
And now ppl haven't actually read the main series and are just working with their recent memory of all these retcon books.
But TNP and PO3 are still there, and you can go and see the ACTUAL timeline where Leopardstar is really not apologetic at all, and Blackstar is a useful stooge for the very next wannabe dictator that strolls in, in spite of the new side content that COMPLETELY mischaracterized them for their plots to work.
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HI I LOVE LOVE LOVE THE WAY YOU DRAW SHANE (AND THE OTHERS BUT ESPECIALLY SHANE FOR I TOO AM WHIPPED) have you ever thought of making a portrait mod at all? Sorry if that's a dumb question but I'd be all over your portraits if you ever did OK LOVE U BYE
im sorry.....................im really not strong enough to make it
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buggy, dreamily sighing: did you see marco today?
shanks, warily: yeah? why? we see him like every other month?
buggy, immediately gushing: wasn't he soo cool? like the way he transforms and those muscles! didja see his muscles, shanks? he could probably pick me up with one hand....
shanks who has just realized that he never wants buggy looking at another man who isn't him: .....yes... cool
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