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justminawrites · 17 days

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None of you understand Amber Bennett: She's just a girl, your honour. A review of the show writers' least favourite love story from Invincible season 1.

Now let me just preface this by saying I have 2 points to make. Just two, very long, super rambly points that does have mild spoilers for Invincible season 2. Read at your own risk.

Point 1: Amber isn't "understanding" enough is utter bullshit.

There’s no indication that civilians outside of the ones associated with the GDA have any idea how brutal fights are for superheroes. Amber quite literally has no idea what the hell Mark is going through, even after the superhero reveal. The only thing she has a smidgeon of understanding of is his dad beating his ass on live TV. And even that is a heavy maybe because we don’t know how much of the fight the cameras could cover and how much was broadcast to the general public.

Point 2: Amber’s dated Losers before.

This is stated explicitly in canon, she's “been down that road." Furthermore, she’s also the daughter of a single-parent household. She used to hang out a community centre as a kid because her mom did late hours. Daddy Issues anyone? She’s got a lot of her own problems that we never get to unpack or linger on because the writing decided she wasn’t going to end up with Mark.

What if she’d already dated an absolute bastard before Mark? Someone who seemed sweet and genuine at first, but then he started slacking. He’d be late to dates, stop taking an interest in anything she did, and just never show up for her in any way that mattered. Amber would make up excuses with her friends and family, oh he’s busy, he’s studying; he cares, I swear, he just has a strange way of showing it.

Her friends and family don’t believe her completely but they humor her because she really seems to like him. And the ex-boyfriend isn’t a douchebag the whole time.. he brings gifts to make up for being late, he plies and pacifies her with honeyed words and promises to be better.

But each time the lies get more and more difficult to believe. Traffic and science projects, traffic and science projects, even when he shows up smelling like weed and alcohol. Her friends and family give her tight-lipped smiles when her ex-boyfriend gives her sloppy kisses and proclaims over and over “She’s too good for me, this one.”

She tries to be empathetic, she tries to be understanding when they’re alone, he can tell her what it is that’s wrong. But every-time she brings up giving them some space, he takes it as an indication of her not believing him and he guilts her with one sob story or another— she knows him, he was so gentle and respectful before they started dating, does she really think he’d do this to her if he didn’t have a good reason? Just a masterclass in gaslighting. So she gives him a second chance, third chance, fourth even.

But then he begins cheating on her. Whenever she confronts him about it, he plays victim and accuses her of being “crazy” even though the entire school knows otherwise. She catches him one fine day, and dumps him on the spot. For a short while, Amber’s very proud of this but as time passes she starts to feel extremely embarrassed that it took that long for her to catch on.

No one blames her, of course, but they all say something along the lines of “We never liked him anyway” which makes Amber doubt the perception of him she had. She internalises their support as a failing on her part to be vigilant, she didn’t want to end up making the same mistakes as her mom, after all.

Amber becomes guarded. She doesn’t entertain male attention (from Todd, for example) but then she finds out resident wimp Mark Grayson takes a beating for her and she feels bad.

So she gives him a chance. Mark was a nonissue, a nobody with no track record of being amazing or awful, just an in-between, normal guy who was maybe a little soft spoken and needed to stand up for himself more.

But every time they try to hang out, something comes in between them. The excuses are laughably obvious this time and Amber is caught between trying to understand if Mark Grayson is trying to let her down easy because he’s not interested or if he’s just another douchebag taking her for a ride.

He leaves her alone during their study date for an hour to do something shady and/or potentially related to Eve (I know she overheard him yelling at Cecil in his bedroom); Mark tells her he’s been to Mount Everest, but can’t tell her How he got there, and leaves on a non-specific trip for two weeks, right after their first date, and can’t even tell her Where he’s going or what he did when he was there?

So she does what she’d wished she’d done in her first relationship, she sets her boundaries. Firmly. She gives Mark multiple chances to come clean when she tells him she’s not riding that wave again. It’s been brought up a few times that Amber has lingering relationship-trauma.

During their study date Amber tells him she’s been in relationships with violent potentially abusive guys (“Met plenty of guys who were willing to throw a punch for me.”); or when he stands her up for the Dinner with her mom she tells him that he needs to make a choice because she’s “Been down this road before, and once was enough.”

But he still keeps at it and she starts getting tired of defending him to her friends and her mom. He’s just busy, he’s just studying; he cares, I swear, he just has a strange way of showing it. And this time they shake their heads and lightly imply that she’s stuck in a pattern. Amber can feel them comparing Mark to her old boyfriend and it all becomes a bit too much.

Either he’s a no good drug dealing prick or he’s just wasting her time, whatever it is, Amber’s had enough of being left in the dark.

The soup kitchen is the final straw, but then she finds out that he gets run over by a bus. He actually gets hurt, this is the first time Amber’s seen him hurt, and she feels awful because if she hadn’t pushed him to show up for her again and again maybe he would’ve been more careful.

He doesn’t let her visit him in the hospital. A hit and run on the wrong side of town was the story this time— he can’t even tell her this, the specifics of his accident! Eve was his first point of contact after his parents?! At this point Amber is convinced that he’s involved in something violent or something to do with Eve, or both and she’s not sure she wants to keep going with this.

Amber is confused and hurt but she also feels responsible for Mark’s injuries. Maybe she Was too paranoid, maybe she Was projecting all her relationship-trauma on him and he would tell her what happened at his own pace. So she backtracks, gives him another chance.

College is really the best of all worlds, Mark makes her promises that this time will be different, and Amber tentatively agrees to college together. (She’s still stressed out about his injuries and on edge the whole time though and asks if he has a concussion).

This is really important because Amber ends up at Upstate U later. She decided to go to college with him, basically because of Him. This wasn’t any specific plan she had before, this was her making room in her life for this boy and potentially everything their lives could be together.

Then the Reanimen Incident happens. And she loses her shit. Mark Grayson is not the flakey but well-intentioned boyfriend she thought he was.. Mark Grayson is not even a good person! He LEFT her and William at the drop of a hat to save his own slimy skin, that bastard! Her intuition was right, she never should’ve given him a chance.

Amber was no longer going to give Mark Grayson the time of day, much less share a bed with the self-serving jerk; she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of spinning another tall tale. Or seeing her cry. She closes the door to the shower rooms behind her, and overhears Rick leaving to get them all some beer. Dorm room walls are thin, after all.

Then she hears something else.

“You’re Invincible!” William’s voice carries over excitedly, “And you never told me?”

Here goes the "problematic" bit.

I think Amber was lying when she told Mark she knew he was Invincible weeks ago. Amber didn’t even know who Invincible was until a few minutes after the Reanimen attack. She isn’t acting for anyone around her, she’s genuinely confused when the superhero jets off because she’s never seen him in her life.

I think she overheard William freaking out about it in the dorm room and she pieced together Mark’s absences with his vague excuses and why couldn’t visit him at the hospital. She takes a shower to cool off but sitting and stewing on all of it just makes her angrier and she decides to go to the frat party just to get away from Mark for a while.

Now why wouldn’t she just tell him she overheard them talking?

Amber is an assertive independent character with a lot of pride. And that’s not a bad thing. Amber has a lot to be proud of. She has a strong sense of justice, she doesn’t take crap from anyone and she has too much self-worth to put up with liars.

You can clearly see this in the way she approaches Mark in the beginning. She asks William if he’s dating Eve, and then instead of calling him herself, she gets Todd to give Mark her number so he can call her if he’s interested, despite the fact that she already is. She has too much pride to chase him. It’s one of her fixed flaws, and it’s consistent to her character.

So finding out that Mark is actually Invincible almost by accident, is kind of embarrassing for Amber. Not only because she yelled at him for disappearing but for all the times he misled her and lied to her only to actually have a good reason for doing it. There’s a lot of mixed emotions there, shame, guilt, concern. Guilt.

Admitting that she overheard he was Invincible would be like admitting she was a stupid, nagging girlfriend who had no right to be a part of his life (the way the fandom perceives her) so she doesn’t. She tries to distract herself with the party, flirts with someone she just met not ten minutes ago, and feels awful because he immediately drops the girlfriend bomb.

Now she’s forced to confront the fact that she has a boyfriend, and her flakey, well-intentioned superhero boyfriend is sitting and moping in the dorm room because she doesn’t have the guts to tell him she knows. Because telling him she knows would remove the choice he’d need to make when deciding whether or not he was serious about their relationship.

Amber was serious, Amber was going to change her life and potentially open her future to college with him, but was Mark really sure about Them if he couldn’t even tell her of his own accord?

Telling him would be like giving him another out. And Amber was done giving him an out.

When he finally confesses he doesn’t see why she’s mad at him, because he doesn’t see her at all. He can’t even begin to imagine what this roller coaster of a weekend has been for her because she’s been serious about him all this time and it took them breaking up completely for Mark to choose her back in the first place and go all in.

Now it’s true that Mark is entitled to his secrets but Amber is also entitled to being upset that he can’t tell her 1 solid thing about his life. Not one thing does he trust her enough to explain, and at that point why should they even be dating each other? Why should she change the course of her future for a guy who can’t tell her where he was last weekend?

Then Omni-man beats him up on live TV, and now that she knows that he’s Invincible, she finally gets a glimpse into the bloody, gruesome world that is Mark’s. His Dad isn’t a superhero, his Dad is a Monster, and Mark is discovering this the same time as the rest of the world.

So she freaks out because she cares, and she’s so relieved to see him not beat to a bloody pulp like on TV that she kisses him. She likely had no intention of getting back together with him before that, but world-ending fiascos often come with heightened emotions, and they’re just kids at the end of the day.

She’s not a manipulative, narcissistic villain, she’s just a proud girl, in love with a boy who can’t decided whether or not he loves her back.

Now do I think Mark is a terrible jerk who doesn’t deserve Amber? No. I watched Invincible the same way it was intended, almost entirely through Mark’s eyes, and it’s hard to assign blame in this case because we see how horrifying and traumatic being a superhero actually is. But that’s the point, we only see one half of the story.

We see Amber through Mark’s eyes and in his opinion she could afford to be more compassionate to his excuses the moment she finds out he’s a hero, the way Eve can, but that’s not true at all because Amber has no idea what being a hero is like. Eve does, and that’s the difference that Mark is wilfully blind to.

But Mark also has no idea what Amber’s life is like and it’s easy to get lost in the sea of all the lives lost and villains fought, that he genuinely hasn’t spent any time with his girlfriend as a person beyond his Girlfriend. Amber isn’t a person to him, like William stopped being eventually; they became sort of tethers to Mark’s humanity, a way to distinguish himself from his Dad. A way to ground him.

Seriously? When was the last time Mark even talked to William, his once Best Friend? They’re not his Mom, they’re concepts to him. They’re civilians, potential victims he could end up losing if he doesn’t police himself and his powers. Mark slowly becomes disillusioned to his own life as a human, the more the leans into the Viltrumite half of his parentage.

It’s a little tragic but it’s the story we’re seeing. In season 2, when Mark and Amber break up and he gives up his dream for college, these two things are almost explicitly correlated. Mark is coming to terms with the fact that he’s going to outlive everyone he knows, even his new baby brother and that is just the most chaotic example of a slow-burn trauma if I’ve ever seen one. He’s giving up being human, but maybe not giving up his humanity.

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TLDR: None of you understand Amber Bennett because the writers decided that Mark would outlive her before he ever had the chance to see things from her perspective and I am SALTY about it

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taldigi · 11 months

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is there a difference between alina and alya???? in terms of personality?

Since Alina is supposed to represent precanon Alya: yes.

From the 9/7/2012 bible: As eccentric as Marinette is classic, Alya wears extravagant outfits, swinging from gothic to geeky. She takes pride in being nothing like the others. It's her way of distinguishing herself. Alya is perfectly at ease with all things technology and telecommunications. Moreover, she's a budding reporter for the college newspaper!... Alya shares her bedroom with her younger sister. The room is divided in two. Alya's half is lined with posters of comic book superheroes, the floor is strewn with cables connected to an imposing DIY computer station.... Besides, she has theories on everything, admittedly- they are often very absurd. She dreams of gaining powers and becoming a heroine like Ladybug... Alya doesn't understand how Marinette can fall for Adrien, On the other hand, Alya finds Cat Noir super classy, molded into his somewhat gothic leather uniform. Oh! If only Alya was Ladybug...

She is bright, smart, geeky- but fashionable! She's an individualist- loving to define and express herself. She's whipping up wacky theories that stem from her hobby of being a reporter for the school newspaper and her love of superheros- something she wishes desperately to be. She's a tech wiz- having built her own computer.

She also has a crush on Chat Noir, which i think is great in contrast to the love diamond and her relationship with Marinette. Later art of her does show that she even put red streaks in her hair, wore goggles, and held a helmet, which I think is super neat and expresses her more... creative or even techy side?

Canon Alya, on the other hand, dosen't seem to be too entrenched in tech, past a passing comment that a "good reporter backs up her files" or smth. But that's like.. something built into most phones these days, so it's not really a.. tech.. geek thing. Alya also never expresses much desire to be a hero, it more falls into her lap due to circumstance and nepotism. and her antics devolved into "stupid reporter" and zero self-preservation instinct- as well as pushing Marinette around for self-confidence reasons. (there is a discussion to be had there around black and asian stereotypes but thats a discussion for another day.)

Anyway, while it's true that none of the characters change outfits much due to cheaping out on 3D, Alya expresses no interest in fashion whatsover. In fact, she seems to carry a hipster vibe (she's rather unfashionable- I mean, most the cast are, actually.) and her outfit sort of expresses a carelessness to her fashion choices- as it's boring and plain, rather than "eccentric" She also actively seems to balk at the idea of Chat, and ignored him for the most part in favor of Ladybug. Her relationship with Nino is actively detrimental to her character and I think was her shark jump- as it suddenly started being the justification for a LOT OF BAD BEHAVIOR.

Hope this helps!

#688199 #Alina LeRoux #ladybug classic lore studies #ladybug classic #alya cesaire #Alya Salt #to be safe it's less salt and more an active criticism but people aren't great about defining the two lately

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look-how-they-massacred-them · 9 months

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Preliminary Poll

Scott Summers/Cyclops

Preliminary Poll:

OK SO. Cyclops is one of my favorite characters. He's just so complicated and messy. In the original 60s comics, he's not the most developed, because, well, none of them are, it's the 60s, but he's got the start of the threads that define him: he's an orphan fully dependent on the X-Men now thrust into being the leader, and while he's nervous about that, he refuses to let it show. He's in love with his best friend, but is unwilling to push it. He's resolute to Charles Xavier's dream. Once Claremont comes in and the comic reboots, that's when X-Men gets good. And Cyclops is one of the characters he really likes playing with (which is rare for a male character tbh, he really likes highlighting his women). And he takes all those threads and really starts running. He's an actual good leader, for one. He's not just tactically smart, he's good at managing the team. Others are perhaps better with emotions, but he knows how to encourage them to work together. We also start to see the way he develops outside of being the perfect follower, to question his teacher and what's right, which is I think the largest theme of him over time. What does it mean to be groomed into this position, to be set up as in charge and define yourself around it. Can you ever leave it behind? He hands over his leadership of the X-Men to go live a civilian life with his wife and newborn, and then fails at it so badly because he can't handle, like, not being an X-man and saving the world. He goes a little more back to form / boyscout in the 90s, but he's fairly consistent at being this really good leader. He's not free of drama, but it's clear that through everything he's genuinely respected - especially by Wolverine. And then, we get to his 2000s arc, which is the reason I'm obsessed with him as a character. You see, at the core of the X-Men is this philisophical debate about how you deal with people who hate you. Charles Xavier represents the non-violent on a surface level (well, non-violent for superheroes), but more than that he represents Assimilation and working Within the System, whereas Magneto represents violent revolution and seperatism.

And while it's pretty clear cut in the original that Xavier is right (although, like, Claremont makes it fairly clear Magneto is not wrong), in the 2000s you get this more deeper thought, especially as more marginalized creators come into the books, and you start to see the shift. And Cyclops, who is The Leader, who is the Poster Boy for Charles Xavier's Dream, who has literally been raised for this, starts to falter. He becomes head of the school. He founds a seperatist nation off the coast of California. He starts turning to more violent preemptive actions. And then he gets possessed by a god and kills Charles Xavier and becomes a violent revolutionary in the aftermath. I think he really represents this in between point, especially in his revolutionary era. That the Dream is nice, but it's a long term goal, and in the here and now, we need to keep people safe, and then we can worry about the high and mighty. Because he's a practical person. He's the field leader, not the guy in the chair. And, above all else, he just really wants to help people. Because, even at his most ""editorial is trying to say he's a supervillain"" he's just a really good guy. ... Now, I could tell you about the weird editorial mandate that had him leave his wife and newborn, or the fact that they've just completely ignored the revolutionary phase for the past few years, or any number of things that the comics have done to massacre him. But I don't have to, because every other adaptation does it worse. The 90s cartoon really cements him as Boring Boy Scout. Like, he's pretty universally hated among people who got in through it, because they're like, what, that guy? I know why, it's a kid's cartoon, he's there to be the One Who Follows Rules so the other characters can go have fun. It's not really that deep, it's a cartoon. But it's only from there... In the original X-Men movies, Scott is sidelined for more Wolverine all the time. This is the thing that really popularized Jean/Logan (I mean, I think Morrison at the same time also helped) which had existed before but mostly as a Logan's being a creep kind of energy.

Because look at this annoying whiny loser, he's not as cool or masculine as Wolverine! Watch as he fucks your wife! [they're canon poly rn but ignore that, that is not the vibe these movies want]. He has a good actor but like. He's there to be functionally the same as the 90s cartoon, although he's pulled off with a bit more nuance mostly due to the actor. And then. In Last Stand. They just. kill him off screen. Because he's not like important or anything. OHO. But we have the reboot movies, which:

- The character who's literal most defining characteristic is being the First X-Man and the fact that it left him like seriously fucked up because he never learned who he was

- Who was a literal orphan who lost everything and was being like. Consistently abused and gaslit by authority figures, including making them doubt his younger brother was real

- and, like, who is in fact one of the more recognizable of the X-Men, like, he's an actually pretty important character... Is now like a rich suburban kid angry that his [older!!] brother, the actual OG X-Men, is gone and is here to be like. Boring wallpaper? I have refused to remember what happens in the later but I don't think they even let him play leader for the kids team he's on. And worst of all, like, all of the fics you find are from the movies! And on tumblr it's nothing but the reboot movies! And at least in the OG he wasn't fleshed out very much and so you'd get people drawing from the comics, but like, my boy! Look how they massacred my boy! It's even worse than some other characters, where there just won't be content, he's genuinely a popular and well known character and it's just all bad Like, the movies also sucked for a lot of characters. Storm's never been her full glory in adaptation. But at least she's still generally likable. Hating Cyclops is genuinely so common, and I get it, but it's because he's not well written / intended to be hated in these adaptions, and that's not (usually) how the comics are writing him! If you're going to hate him at least do it for who he really is!!!

Propaganda:

he's so autistic and i love that for him. like i talk about people hating him for being the rules follower but to be clear it's because he's just *so* autistic coded, and every good Cyclops is written by someone who recognizes that at least subconsciously.

#look how they massacred them poll #look how they massacred my boy #xmen #x men #scott summers #x men cyclops #xmen cyclops #x men comics #xmen comics

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uwubeggar · 7 months

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Why Omega Matters in TBB

I've seen many instances of people exclaiming that Omega is a useless part of the show. I initially agreed. Its hard not to start the show after TCW and think who tf is this random girl clone. Blonde hair, a girl, the secret clone experiment who is the head scientist's assistant that no one knew about?? Sounds like a self insert fanfiction. However, as the show progresses you can't help but like Omega (at least I couldn't). She's funny, cute, always trying to prove herself, and just trying to find a place in the world that is just as confused about her existence as the viewers. No matter what, however, you have to ask yourself, what's the point of having her in the show?

My first line of reasoning I want to point out is pretty surface level; from the standpoint of developing a children's show, it makes sense to make the show center (or at least include) a child or teen that the viewers can relate to. While it isn't necessary persay, (many kids shows don't have a child lead (think superhero shows and such)), with a show that has a pretty dark atmosphere/tone as TBB or TCW, it makes sense to include a child for balance and relatability. This is probably a pretty similar reason as to why Ahsoka was put in TCW. There really is no point in giving Anakin an apprentice except for a younger character the viewers can latch onto and learn things along the way with. And as we all know, after years Ahsoka has become a fan favorite. A mid character can be made great with good writing.

Jumping off my last few points, a new member of the batch allows the viewer to learn new things/context without a weird info dump. The batch literally has to explain what is happening to a kid: Omega and the viewers.

I also want to point out benefits to the plot that come with having Omega around, which I think is pretty important to the themes of the show. While TBB is about this squad fending for itself in a galaxy ruled by the empire, it is also about the relationship dynamic between members. I think the fandom has picked up the "found family" aspect, but it is also about family in general, loyalty, friendship, and what being a team means. Before O66 the squad was so efficient and trusting to each other, that they had a 100% success rate on missions. With the introduction of Omega, their priorities no longer align. Hunter wants to go into hiding with Omega, Echo wants to help Rex, Tech just wants to keep them alive, etc. As well as this, their team doesn't function as well. Omega throws them for a loop and leads them, mostly Hunter, to take paths they wouldn't normally take. This makes for an interesting show.

You're probably wondering why I haven't talked about Crosshair. Especially since his splitting from the group would definitely throw their dynamic into turmoil without needing Omega there. And, you're right. The Crosshair plot probably could have sustained the conflict throughout the season as they try to get him back while also fending for themselves. That is what leads me into my final point.

Omega fulfills the role of "the heart" that none of the other members really fit into. While all the members have morals, obviously, they have been shown to be picky with the missions they take. They avoid missions that are too risky, keep to themselves, and try not to make trouble where it isn't immediately needed. Omega is always the one who pipes up first when someone is in crisis. She was the most visibly concerned about "Muchi", she made them hear Hera out on Ryloth, she heard Gungi and refused to leave without rescuing him, and she was always the most vocal about trying to get Crosshair back. While the batchers may share some sentiments with her, obviously they don't want children to die or be ripped from their family, we can't say for sure that they wouldn't have abandoned these people unknowingly without her to be so unendingly caring about everyone she meets.

And also Omega is just adorable and we all like them being forced into the role of father and uncle and killing it.

Sorry for the long post....This is also my first post so forgive me if I don't know what I'm doing hehe

#tbb #the bad batch #tbb omega #tbb hunter #tbb crosshair #bad batch #clone force 99 #sw tbb

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idontbeatgames · 11 months

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It's Time To Talk About The Missed Potential of DC's Titans

Five years and four seasons later, DC’s Titans has officially come to an end and admittedly, saying that kind of leaves me with a bittersweet feeling. I think a lot of people will agree with me when I say that Titans is the superhero genre’s Riverdale. Everybody knows that Titans has hit or miss writing, everybody knows that the showrunners had almost no idea as to what they were doing with a majority of their characters and everybody knows that the show refused to learn from its mistakes. However, that never changed the fact that whenever a new season of Titans was announced or a new season of Titans concluded, people consistently found themselves binging Titans despite its flaws. I’d like to think that it’s because unlike some of the late Arrowverse shows, Titans always had a ridiculous amount of potential. Since Season 1 of Titans, Titans fans have always found themselves asking the same exact questions every single time a new season was about to come out. Is this the season that the Titans finally turn things around? Is this going to be the season that’s finally consistent from start to finish? Is this the season where Titans finally dedicate time to growing its core cast rather than introducing a ridiculous amount of characters?

As frustrating as it is to say this, the answer to those questions was a resounding no, and yes, that even applies to the last season as well. The core reason this is frustrating is that Titans got everything else right. For instance – the superhero suits made for every single season of Titans were legitimately incredible, the cinematography has always been great, the action scenes were more than good enough despite some dodgy CGI and even the casting was pretty much as good as it can be for a superhero show. Since the first season of this show, fans such as myself have had the same complaints or criticisms, and I truly mean this. You can rewatch every single one of my videos about DC Titans and you’ll notice a trend when it comes to this show. This show has consistently suffered from poor writing, inconsistent storytelling, an unequal amount of screen time for every single character, and finally, constantly adding way too many characters every single season – which to me hurt the show way more than the showrunners probably thought it would. There is a thing as too many characters in a show, movie, or cinematic universe and Titans is a prime example of this. To give an example that showcases what balancing too many characters should look like, let's look at the Arrowverse. The Arrowverse has always had a massive roster of characters from its very inception starting with the cast of Arrow. Unlike Titans, the Arrowverse fleshed itself out enough to allow the user to slowly become accustomed to understanding and remembering its massive cast of characters along with their core traits or storylines associated with those characters across its multitude of shows. Outside of the Titans Core Four — Nightwing, Starfire, Beast Boy, and Raven — you never really got to actually be acquainted with any of the side characters introduced in the Titans Universe. Those side characters always felt more like they were taking away time from the characters we actually want to see and spend time with. The writers behind this show also had an annoying tendency to write these side characters as solutions to avoidable conflicts.

For a show that focuses on the key premise of an ensemble cast growing into their own across multiple seasons, you’d think that the Titans would eventually be able to get things done without needing outside help from other side characters for a single scene in an episode. That never happened. None of the Titans ever grew into the mantle of a superhero nor did they ever shine satisfyingly, outside of Beast Boy. And I say that despite Beast Boy spending three full seasons being nothing more than Raven’s boyfriend and barely transforming at all despite that being his superpower. As for the other Titans, let's do a quick rundown to see just how good they ended up being by the finale of Titans. Dick Grayson spent four seasons knowing a guy who had the answer to every minor inconvenience that came across the Titans' way because that was the only answer the writers ever had when it came to progressing a season’s storyline. Raven spent the majority of this show being a damsel in distress with inconsistent power scaling because the strengths of her powers depended on what the writers wanted for any given particular scenario. There are so many scenes with Raven in them that could have easily been solved if someone said “Hey Raven, help us out here”. However, since that was too easy for this show apparently, Raven would just sit back and do literally nothing when she wasn’t forced into being a damsel in distress for the sake of a plot line. Starfire is the only character that actually got to find herself and got to find her purpose by the end of the show. I can’t believe I get to say that since the showrunners shelved an entire Starfire-centric plot that was planned for season three for unknown reasons after spending two full seasons setting that massive storyline up. Superboy was introduced as the lighthearted character who was the unintentional but much-needed comedic effect. And then, in typical Titans fashion, the show pivoted from that direction. Superboy pivoted towards embracing his inner Lex Luthor for the entire final season, only for him to realize he no longer wants to be that anymore and he reverts back to his regular self.

That then leaves us with a multitude of characters who were previously important that eventually got shelved due to unknown reasons. Jason Todd, for example, was such a vital part of Titans but he eventually just faded into obscurity after his Red Hood story arc only for him to suddenly pop up for a single episode in the final season. Why? To train Tim Drake for Dick which was obvious fan service just like Beast Boy’s episode in the final season. Donna Troy, just like Jason, was also vital to the Titans at one point. She got killed off for dramatic effect and came back for one single episode in season three as a response to the massive but deserved backlash the show got for such a stupid decision. Finally, does anybody remember Jericho and Rose? You know, the two characters who played a massive role in Jason’s character development in Season 2? If you said no, I don’t blame you. Those characters got shelved for unknown reasons and never had their storylines addressed after Season 2, which is incredibly weird when you think about it. Those characters never got mentioned ever again after that point in time just like Hawk, who died, and Dove who retired as a Titan after simply not wanting to be a Titan anymore. The same even applies to Barbara, who I nearly forgot about as well. It’s like this show was so focused on trying to be this mini-Batman Cinematic Universe that it forgot to make almost anything meaningful. The constant habit of trying to name-drop characters as Easter Eggs and introducing characters who only end up being relevant for a total of like twenty minutes in a single episode actually ruined the show in the long run. And although it’s fairly easy to overlook how these characters were treated, I never found myself able to overlook how the Titans themselves were written. The Titans, as a whole, were terrible people. They weren’t heroes. They never had the moral compass of good heroes. They weren’t positive role models to any of the citizens they tried to protect in their universe and they weren’t good friends to each other, let alone a good team, either.

There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that rather than this show using its dark and gritty but semi-realistic theme in a meaningful way that allows this show to tell a compelling story that pushes its main characters through highs and lows that ultimately flesh out their characters for the better, it doesn’t do that. Titans use its dark and gritty but semi-realistic theme as a justification to consistently put its main characters through meaningless traumatic events without any intentions of meaningful character growth. The thought process behind this train of thought ended up always being “We can, so we should” instead of “We can, but how does this traumatic event affect the long-term trajectory of this character?” It’s almost like this show’s goal was to intentionally make the viewers feel bad for the Titans without ever offering any sort of logical long-term resolutions for these characters. A prime example of this is how Jason Todd was handled. Jason started off as a loudmouth member of the Titans that most Titans didn’t like nor tried to get along with because he was too immature and energetic, which was totally understandable due to him being one of the youngest members of the Titans. The Titans hated him so much that they treated him terribly and only felt bad for him after he went through a bunch of traumatic events with Deathstroke. And even then, the Titans were still confused as to why he started to act differently and as to why Jason would have even more arguments with the Titans. This naturally caused a massive rift amongst the Titans because only one person was willing to try and understand Jason and what he had been through – Dove. Jason being the immature kid he was, didn’t listen to anybody and gets killed by the Joker only for him to come back to life with one goal: becoming “the Red Hood” so he could get revenge on the Titans. The Titans were massively confused as to why this was his intention and how he came back to life, understandably so. The end result of this storyline? Jason and Dick Grayson talking outside in the middle of a street after Jason puts every Titan through traumatic events due to him also being manipulated by Scarecrow, who was an awful villain by the way. After this conversation, they come to the miraculous conclusion that they need each other for the greater good and decide that they should work together to take down Scarecrow. Are you going to tell me that this end conclusion couldn’t have been resolved much earlier on or in a much better way?

It’s like those who were behind this show were so preoccupied with the thought of doing a Red Hood storyline for Titans, that no one asked the question: How do we naturally progress towards this Red Hood storyline? After watching the final season of Titans, I began to have the realization that you can also say the exact same thing about every other season of this show and their respective storylines, which brings me to the second reason why the team never ended up being a good team. Thanks to the way this show was written and thanks to this show’s structure, I’ve never seen a group of superheroes get together, split up to go on side adventures, get back together, realize that they should’ve never split up to begin with, and then split up again, like the Titans did. It’s always felt like the show was afraid to give the Titans any sense of downtime. Every episode happens to contain one of the following events — a random flashback that was never shown to us that explains something that’s going on in the present, the world is ending, the villain is planning the next step of their massive plan, a character goes off on a side quest to get some character only for them to not explain that to anybody or a couple of characters go off together to get a vital piece of information to progress the season’s overarching story. There’s never a point where the Titans are just being regular people together. Yeah, they’re supposed to be superheroes, but they’re people too and I truly do think this show would have benefited by having an episode per season dedicated to the Titans just hanging out and building their chemistry. Why do you think so many people happen to like Beast Boy? He’s one of the only kind-hearted characters in this show that actually tries to be a good person. He actually tries to put his best foot forward to be there for any Titan, especially Raven, and that would sometimes lead to some of the best scenes in this show – the scenes of people just talking things out. With a set of characters that are so young, this show had so much potential to make the smaller moments matter more. They had the opportunity to bring characters together and form unexpected friendships. They had the opportunity to create a team with inside jokes or callbacks that could’ve been unexpected payoff moments. And more importantly, they had the opportunity to humanize these characters if they were willing to give them the downtime to breathe and build their chemistry with one another.

No, this creative decision or idea wouldn’t have taken away from the intentionally dark, gritty, and semi-realistic themes this show was going for. What it would’ve done is actually boost those same exact themes considering the fun, enjoyable, or humanizing moments in Titans were always so far and few in between. It would’ve made us care far more for the characters and find some level of appreciation for the plethora of dynamics across the show’s four seasons. And you sort of feel that in the final season of the show because the finale leaves a bit of a bittersweet taste in your mouth. The finale of Titans doesn’t feel like an ending. The finale doesn’t feel like we’re closing the chapter on a bunch of characters that have been through it all and finally got the happy ending they all deserved. The finale, in my opinion, felt like the showrunners had just opened the door and gave us a glimpse as to what Titans could’ve been. Seeing every character sitting with each other, laughing, talking about life, and simply appreciating each other’s presence was such a bittersweet moment. That heart-to-heart scene was exactly what this show was missing from start to finish – the Titans actually bonding over something that doesn’t relate to trauma. With the show being over, I still can’t help but question what Titans should’ve been instead. Should Titans have been a show set up by a single-season Nightwing show? Should Titans have been a single-season experience that sets up multiple spin-off shows for characters like Red Hood, or Beast Boy? Should Titans have been a show that primarily focused on one character per season so it could ultimately build up to a finale team-up season where the characters come together to take down a common foe? Should Titans have been a Bat Family show instead? I don’t know if any of us will ever know the exact answer as to what the actual right direction for Titans was, but what I do know is that what we got clearly wasn’t the best choice (outside of the casting, of course).

There’s a quote from one of my favorite movies ever made and I truly think that this quote entirely encapsulates the experience of DC’s Titans.

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Yes, I’m seriously quoting Jurassic Park right now, get over it. DC’s Titans was a mixed bag. Watching this show more often than not left me with the same thought as we reached the end of every season –“But why? Why would you do that to these characters? Why would you use this as the solution to that plotline? Why didn’t you just do this or do that instead?” While that was a frustrating experience, considering I was constantly waiting for the show to finally learn from its mistakes, I’m still going to admittedly miss it. As I said earlier, this show was basically the superhero fandom’s Riverdale. It was a constant trainwreck but it was our trainwreck, you know? I’ve watched this show since the very first episode and I was even there for the World Premiere Titans Event during New York Comic Con in 2018 where DC even previewed the first episode of Doom Patrol along with the original DC Universe Streaming App show lineup as well. Watching this show has been one hell of a journey and while I’ve never agreed with a lot of the creative decisions in this show, I’m always going to have a soft spot for Titans no matter what. It’s a shame that the cast of Titans isn’t going to likely ever reprise their roles because there were some amazing choices with the casting. Like a lot of people, I would’ve easily been down with nearly any Titans-related spinoff TV show even if I fully knew that those shows wouldn’t have lived up to their potential deep down inside. I’ll always remember DC’s Titans. I’ll remember the massive cast this show had. I’ll remember the amazing cinematography and pretty good action in this show. I’ll remember the poorly done storylines and I’ll even remember the infamous Batman line that nearly caused everybody to immediately write the show off from its first trailer, too. However, what I’ll always remember the most from this show is the simple fact that Titans never lived up to its massive amount of potential.

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hannahhook7744 · 7 months

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Adrien Byers-Wheeler, Son of Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers;

Trigger warnings; Mental health issues, childhood trauma, Implied PTSD, etc.

His full name is Adrien Barnaby Byers-Wheeler.

His middle name is a tribute to Barb.

He is sixteen years old.

He is dating Ophelia Hagan—not that his parents or hers are aware of this fact.

He is into rock, metal, and just loud music in general but will listen to other genres if he likes the lyrics (and if it’s not classical music).

Adrien is very fascinated by ghosts, aliens, cryptids, urban legends, mythology, urban exploring, and just monsters in general as well as true crime.

He also loves a good mystery and often lands himself into trouble because of this.

He also has his own youtube channel called “PhantomPursuits” that he runs with Nova Bingham, Ophelia Hagan, and Stefan Harrington.

His best friend is Nova.

He is also a fan of history and conspiracies that he often rambles about Stefan.

Also he and Nova are high a good 55% of the time.

He wants to be a famous film editor and director when he grows up.

Adrien also has a pet hamster that he named ‘Question’ after a dc superhero.

The curse word he uses the most is ‘damn.’

He has good grades despite his dyslexia, dyscalculia, and ADHD.

He once got detention for calling his teacher an old sot. His mom wasn’t amused and he got grounded but on the brightside, his dad and uncles all thought it was funny.

His favorite colors are gray, red, and black.

His favorite band is ‘Panic! At the Disco.’

He’s a total mama’s boy but gets along better with his dad because he is very aware of the fact that his mom isn’t the biggest fan of him due to the circumstances leading up to his birth.

Said circumstances being that the doctor told them he was a girl—causing his mom to become hellbent on naming him Barb and excitedly planning what kind of life she and Jonothan could give ‘her’. Only for her to go into labor earlier than expected and for the baby to turn out to be him—a boy. Which added to the PTSD from the upside down and the postpartum she had made it very hard for her to bond with him.

He doesn’t hold this against her but he found out about this when he overheard her talking with her government appointed therapist about all of this and how she felt so guilty for how she just couldn’t seem to love him enough just because he wasn’t what she had expected (she was on the phone)... needless to say it fucked him up a great deal and made him very eager to do better.

To make matters worse, Adrien never told anyone about this because he didn’t want to upset anyone so he has just internalized all of this.

Also he, the Hagan kids, Nova, and Harrington quads were not allowed to swim unsupervised due to the circumstances of Barb’s death (none of them knew this until their teens). Which annoyed them to no end since they didn’t know the reason.

Adrien also remembers an incident from when he was very little when he got a bloody nose in the pool and his mom flipped her shit, and took him and the other kids all home with no explanation—which made him very wary of water afterwards.

He is still wary of big bodies of water to this day because of all of this.

Also he is very handy with a gun. A skill he picked up from his mother.

Also Adrien is very snarky like his uncle Mike and sweet like his aunt Holly.

He met his dad’s bio dad exactly once but didn’t realize it because he only remembered how his dad lost his shit when he found the man near him. He was in kindergarten at the time and didn’t realize that he was about to get kidnapped.

Also he loves his aunt El and Uncle Will very much, and also loves his grandparents very much even though they aren’t always perfect.

He has a coffin keychain.

He has tried to talk to his ‘aunt’ Barb, Fred Benson, Grandpa Bob, and Steve Harrington before on the Ouija board and spirit box before and swore all his friends to secrecy because he knows his mom and dad wouldn’t have reacted well to it.

Also he is very shy and likely would have gotten bullied more as he grew up if it wasn’t for Zane and their other friends being scary when angry.

His favorite video game is ‘What Remains of Edith Finch’.

His favorite movie is ‘The cabin in the woods’.

Oh and Adrien is very into witchcraft and is attempting to learn it with Nova.

He practices Paganism like Nova.

He is quite the runner when in danger.

Oh and he loves Scooby doo and pizza. Many people have compared him to Shaggy Rogers because of how similar they are.

Oh and he's good at sneaking out and around and at not being noticed, which leads to him overhearing a lot of shit. So he has a lot of blackmail he exchanges with Zane because they're both huge gossips.

Argyle is his godfather.

Note:

These headcanons take place in my Stranger Things au 'Cats in the Cradle'. In that au, Tommy and Carol are left to raise Steve's four infant children with the help of the Upside Down Crew, Steve's half brother, Steve's younger cousin, and their collective families.

In that au, Jason and Eddie live.

Max is less seriously injured.

Phil Callahan is Steve's older half brother.

And Chrissy, her brother, and Fred Benson were Steve's cousins.

Oh and Steve hooked up with one of his pre-nancy girlfriends and after his death she found herself pregnant with quads that Steve never got to meet.

Hope that clears up any confusion regarding these ocs and headcanons.

Also no hate to Jonathan or Nancy in this. They aren’t bad parents, they’re just struggling and trying their best.

#st #stranger things #jancy #stranger things next gen #nancy wheeler #jonathan byers #next generation #st au #stranger things au #stranger things alternate universe #etc

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variablejabberwocky · 6 months

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so i've seen a lot of "bruce is a good dad", "no bruce is a bad dad!", "no THIS version is good for THESE reasons", "but THIS version is BAD for these other reasons" kind of stuff and ,honestly, what im getting from all this is that we've all collectively identified A Problem but haven't quite figured out the root cause yet.

well, i think i've gotten a little closer. to be fair tho i wouldn't have if there weren't so many amazing people spouting excellent meta theories and writing advice and whatnot here on the tumbles.

so here is my opinion on this that literally no one asked for but you're gonna get anyway:

the root problem is a narrative perspective incongruence

let me explain: so superheros are, at their core, a power fantasy (at least the dudes are, anyway) and what fantasy they are about differs between characters. in batman's case the fantasy is...complex, but basically boils down to staring at the uncaring void of the universe and making it blink first. its a fantasy of getting to grow up to become the thing that would have saved you. of being such a badass that you can drag the world even that tiny bit closer to being fair, even if you have to use force to get it there. its about making it so no one else has to go through what you had to. its about being someone who CARES in a way it felt like not enough people did when you needed it most.

and thats a powerful fantasy. very appealing to a LOT of people for a LOT of reasons. but its ultimately a fantasy told from an adult perspective. we don't see little 8-12 year old bruce dress up and go out fucking shit up in the night. we see, at the youngest, 19-20 year old bruce dressing up as a bat and starting his whole thing. and usually its more like 22-24 when he gets started. and that means he has an adult's idea of what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, what is fair an what is not baked into it. which is absolutely fine, its just also deeply incompatible with a child's perspective of the same things. because to an adult, a good adult, children are a thing to be protected, not endangered. and to a child an adult is a threat at worst and an obstacle at best.

which means the problem... is ROBIN

because robin is ALSO a power fantasy, but one for children. robin is about a little 8-12 year old kid dressing up to menace the kind of people who hurt them or those they care about. its a fantasy about getting justice NOW, of getting an adult that treats you like an equal ["partner, not sidekick" anyone?], an adult that understands and validates your feelings and wants and trauma and HELPS you in the exact ways you want them to help you at the time, even if its something other adults would be mad about.

which is also a powerful fantasy, but because its being told from the perspective of a child it has a VERY different set of requirements for the setting than something told from an adult perspective.

see, for a child (or children, or teens, or any other not-adult) to be able to be the hero or protagonist of a story it NECESSITATES that the adults in that setting are all some form of terrible. usually in one of the three following ways: dangerous, absent, or useless.

dangerous adults are ones who want to kill, maim, or otherwise assault the kid protags. they're usually the more dangerous bad guys of a story or even the 'final boss'

absent adults are usually the mechanism that allows for all this adventure and why a kid is the one all this responsibility falls on. this can mean anything from "all the adults magically disappeared one day and now its just us kids in the world", to "all the adults are off at war", to "none of the adults care to check in on us so we're left on our own to do what we want", to "all the (relevant) adults are dead" [insert "you're not my real dad" jokes here]

useless adults are, i think, what trips so many people up. because these are the adults that try to help, that try to take responsibility, that try to do the right thing. but because this is a story about kids they can't actually SUCCEED without making it all about the adults instead. and this is, unfortunately, where the vast majority of "good" adults in a child-perspective story have to be. and that't not even getting into how a 'good' adult from a kid's perspective is a very different thing from a 'good' adult from an adult's perspective.

because, no, a kid is not 'an equal' to an adult in all things. an equal person? yes. an equal in basic human rights? yeah they should be. an equal in power? in responsibility? no, by the very nature of kids being kids they are NOT ready for that. an infant is literally unable to care for themselves and will die without that care, a toddler is not ready to work or pay taxes, an older child/younger teen is not ready to be wholly responsible for themselves much less parent someone else. and that means there is gonna be a power imbalance. a 'good' adult is one who is capable of balancing the independence of a whole-ass separate person with the power-over and responsibility-for someone who isn't able to be as independent as they want yet.

a 'bad' adult is one who doesn't do that. either because they can't or because they intentionally won't. a 'bad' adult puts a kid in danger, is sexually inappropriate with them, or slacks off on their responsibility towards a child under their power. a 'bad' adult will give a child what they want even if it is dangerous or otherwise a bad idea in a way that child isn't prepared to understand yet. either because of negligence or manipulation.

so if we bring all this back to batman what we get is a story that is trying to be told from an adult's perspective AND a child's perspective at the same time. one where batman HAS to be good to be batman but he can't actually be good the way an adult would view it.

which is how you get robins having to be the co-dependant emotional support for a grown-ass adult. of having to parent the parent. of having to parent the other kids while they still are one. of being 'allowed' to fight murderers and rapists and pedophiles and traffickers while being a prime target for ALL of that because even the 'good' adults don't seem to know what appropriate boundaries and limits for kids are. and all that is in the "better" versions of batman. don't even get me started on the horrors lurking in the bad ones.

so as long as robin is under 16-18, batman is REQUIRED by the narrative perspective to be some kind of terrible adult, because an actual good one WOULDN'T LET SOMEONE YOUNGER THAN THAT DO SO MUCH DANGEROUS SHIT. hell even that age range is pushing it a bit.

and before someone jumps in with the inevitable "lol, what makes you think bruce could stop [insert robin here]": alfred somehow kept tiny bruce from running off to fuck shit up. you think he can't still do that with the younger kids? that him AND bruce at the height of his power couldn't do that combined? that a bruce who has made friends with fucking SUPERMAN and WONDER WOMAN couldn't get a literal demigoddess and overpowered godlike alien to help him wrangle his kids? that a good-parent bruce wouldn't sacrifice his pride/territoriality over gotham if it meant saving/protecting his kids? that the most paranoid man in the world with terrifying stalker/invasion of privacy tendencies wouldn't be capable of having multiple trackers on each of his kids (including ones they don't know about) that set off a bazillion alarms and failsafe protocols the MOMENT they went off schedule or pattern?

i will absolutely grant you that the grown-up versions of the robins are all terrifyingly hyper-competent even in comparison to bruce (or at least they SHOULD be) but thats their GROWN UP versions. while they're still kids, still ROBIN, they are VULNERABLE and, like any other kid, deserve to be protected and as safe as reasonably possible.

going out at night to kick people in the head in spandex and booty shorts ain't it

so your options are:

bruce is a good dad and all robins are at least 16 before they start actually going out to fuck shit up. and aren't running off on their own to 'fight crime' until at least 18. they might or might not be involved in the background stuff like research or 'guy in the chair' duties but they ain't physically in danger until around mid-late teens. OR,

bruce is a typical useless adult of child-narrative stories that has no idea how to care for a child and lets them do shit that is inappropriate as hell but the kids think that makes him a 'cool' adult at the time so the narrative labels him a 'good' dad and not the textbook definition of 'reckless endangerment of a minor'. [and leads to the grown up kids having Complaints about their upbringing that never get addressed]

and i think it's pretty obvious which one the multiple iterations of canon consistently go for

so yeah: doylist take is batman is a bad dad (who is usually at least trying) but he's literally written that way by poorly thought out narrative choices trying to have it both ways that have been going on so long its beyond baked into the narrative and has progressed to burnt-in.

and that sucks because by all rights he SHOULD be a good dad if you keep to his "platonic ideal of batman" characterization. like this man should have spent like a year doing almost nothing but teaching himself how to parent when he got the first one. this is the dude that goes out and finds experts until he himself is an expert. why on earth would he do that for his 'mission' and not his kids when the WHOLE POINT OF BATMAN IS TO HELP TRAUMATIZED KIDS LIKE THEM.

#batman #flying furry brigade #the essay that no one asked for but everyone is gonna get regardless #longpost

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moonlayl · 2 years

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Just watched the first episode of She-Hulk and I’m wondering what exactly about it is making people angry? (Aside from the obvious of course)

We’re back to (actually, I think we never left) audiences absolutely being incapable of putting themselves into a female character’s shoes.

Jen, at this point, literally suddenly had a spaceship spring out of nowhere, got into a terrifying car accident, and became a HULK.

She then wakes up in an unfamiliar place, and has Bruce repeatedly be kind of horrible at breaking everything down for her (understandable from his perspective, this isn’t a criticism of him). She’s told that she might have to be isolated from everything, her job, her friends, her family, her LIFE, for YEARS.

Bruce repeatedly makes the assumption that her becoming a superhero is inevitable, to her face, something she’s not at all okay with, something she doesn’t want, something she never asked for, all in the manner of DAYS.

He expects her to go through the same exact journey as him, and when clearly, she’s actually handling it differently because a) they’re not the same people b) they’ve had different experiences and c) the world (in universe) itself has changed, and after several different scenes of that, after several days of her suddenly being expected to drop everything and change her entire life (something none of us would be okay with. Something none of us would handle well) she snaps at him.

A lot of the things she said were mean, yes, that’s true. But for the most part she wasn’t wrong.

I think they were both a little wrong in that scene and both need to understand/respect each other better. But no, her saying she’s had to control her anger all her life, be it when she’s catcalled, or when so obviously her male coworker doesn’t respect her or see her as an equal/capable, isn’t her “rubbing Bruce’s trauma in his face”

She wasn’t wrong about Bruce’s life being terrible and him living in isolation. He kept trying to defend it, saying “that’s the life of a superhero” or something along those lines, but it IS true that him being the hulk and even later a superhero ruined his life in certain ways, and it makes a lot of sense for her to not only NOT want that, but to also stop him from trying to convince her to go through that.

Bruce is at a point where he needs to understand that the world changed, that things aren’t like before, and that he can’t expect Jen to just be okay with all those changes immediately, even if he’s there to help her.

But Jen needs to understand that denying the Hulk (like Bruce said) isn’t going to work and it’s not a permanent solution. And she does need to understand that he DOES have experience with this.

They both made brilliant points but both sort of missed what the other was saying. Honestly, their argument and fight was very believable.

Bruce also did a bad job at breaking it down for her. “15 years” would make anyone freak out. He repeatedly tried to get her angry, which yeah, he did it for a reason, but that still contributed to her eventually snapping.

This is new territory for her and she’s clearly desperate to get back to her life and is terrified (though she does a good job of trying not to show it and pretending it’s okay; basically living in denial) Actually, this is new territory for both of them. I thought both their actions, words, and reactions were very realistic given the sudden, unexpected situation they found themselves in.

And no doubt, this will be addressed later in the show, and we’ll get scenes where she understands what he’s been through better.

It’s not surprising though, why many dislike this show. Is it flawed? Yes. But I’m guessing the scenes that include her being catcalled, other women immediately willing to help her in the bathroom and saying “whoever did this to you does not care about you”, her facing disrespect in a male dominated workplace, and her pointing out that she always needed to control her emotions otherwise she’d be seen as emotional or her life could actually be threatened, pissed off a lot of people, and those are the scenes people had issues with. Even though not a SINGLE one of them wasn’t realistic or accurate.

It’s not surprising, why many review bombed this show.

#she hulk #mcu #marvel #marvel meta #mcu meta #jennifer walters #bruce banner #she hulk spoilers #she hulk show #tatiana maslany

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argentnoelle · 4 months

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so yesterday I was bored and wanted to read something that I wouldn't get too emotionally invested in. so I decided to go find platinum end and see how bad it is. and wow, it... really is that boring. 3 chapters in & i was skimming over most of it & I'm not sure I can make it to the end. there's literally not a single compelling aspect about this entire piece, except maybe the question of why it exists. it's like Ohba went. "hmm. I have one really popular manga, but I'm honestly not sure why it got popular, so if I just do all the same things in *this* story maybe I'll replicate my success" which. I do have *some* sympathy with. having something you make get that popular, everything else is going to reflect on it whether you want it to or not, and I understand how that could cause some writer's block. especially when it seems he doesn't? actually know what his strengths as a writer are?

because here's the thing Ohba *does* have strengths as a writer. he can write incredibly convoluted plots with ramifications, and that can be a fun thing to watch play out (he's got "convoluted" down here, but instead of being connected by cause and effect, stuff seems to just "happen" and there's no ramifications yet, which makes the plot super boring). The other thing Ohba is good at is writing smart characters doing clever things. And it's not like he lost all of his capacity as a writer, he was still good at it when he wrote Minoru. so it's not like he can "only write one kind of smart character" either. If he wanted to avoid writing Light 2.0 he could've done that and still made it compelling, I think. but... so far, the most interesting character here is... the guy who was dying of cancer and wants to design superhero suits. But upon further reflection, most of what makes him interesting is because of Obata. because Obata at least put some *effort* into the art, while I feel like Ohba put 0 effort into the writing. I don't feel the story plays to Obata's strengths as an artist, but he's managed to create some nice panels that are somewhat memorable. and again, the only reason any character or scene becomes interesting is because of the artwork. Like the main character: he's got no personality beyond being depressed and missing his family and an obsession with finding happiness. but Obata draws him with pathos in some certain scenes, and it could almost make you feel something except that it doesn't.

The main duo, that is the main character and his angel, don't play off each other well. she's also a bit morally iffy, which I feel was purposeful: the only remotely memorable line so far is when she's talking to the other angel about the main character and says "I don't think he's the kind of person who can be happy after committing murder yet." like. what kind of a line is that. what kind of a contest is this.

yeah, none of the god contestants except for knight dude want the job, since they're all depressed. conceptually that comes the closest to being interesting this story gets, except it's the least fun thing in the world to watch. and knight dude is just. you can't even root for him, he's that dull. others have mentioned the super weird conversation between knight dude and his friend(?) when they're at the archery place, where the friend is like yeah if I had a wish I'd wish for all ugly girls in the world to disappear. which yeah. sexist. and knight dude is like cool wish! (???) but then the friend goes on and is like 'and all guys more handsome than me, too' and then knight dude is like 'can't do that one, I'd have to die' and friend laughs and agrees. what I want to know is, who talks like this?? was knight dude "joking"? he has no sense of humor though; it's not played that way. and the friend just. Idk that whole scene is baffling.

there are gore and fanservice scenes like "look! shock value! surely this counts for something???" which are also honestly incredibly dull. Obata draws that stuff like he's drawing the Yotsuba building. actually the Yotsuba building was more interesting. because yes, Yotsuba makes a cameo so knight dude can blow up its doors with his arrow weapon. Sakura TV makes a cameo too.

anyway I can see where Light gets his belief that humanity is boring from. it's from the author because the author seems to think that too. Ohba probably should've stuck to writing genius characters and villains, all his "good guys" have no personality whatsoever. they're like little paper dolls. unfortunately, the villain in the piece (so far) also feels like a little paper doll.

there's one moment or aspect that could've been interesting, but again, wasn't. which is the fact that the main character is in love with Saki, this girl at his school. But she's also a god candidate and ended up shooting him with cupid's arrow to make him on her side (it doesn't last, he's still on her side though). That plus main character's tragic Cinderella backstory including dead parents makes him a bit of a Misa parallel, and I don't think I'm reaching with that because there's an actual line where he (who has wings, Saki doesn't) offers to Saki "I can be your wings!" so. Misa who won't kill people though, and has no sense of volition, which makes him significantly less interesting.

The thing is, if Ohba had taken the flip and played it through all the way, he could've done something kind of halfway-clever, and had Saki be a Light parallel. Like, if main character thinks this girl's so sweet and nice but you the reader meet her and go "wow, she's cold and calculating and totally just using him to gain her foothold as god" that could've added something to the character dynamics. but instead she, also, has no personality and does nothing. and so far main character hasn't even wondered once why the girl he likes apparently lost the will to live so much that she got entered into this contest.

#my meta #death note

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denimbex1986 · 9 months

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'In anticipation of the movie event of summer 2023 known as Barbenheimer, the best and wittiest unpaid advertising Universal and Warner Bros. Pictures could have hoped for wasn’t an Instagram post of a grinning Tom Cruise, along with Mission: Impossible 7 director Christopher McQuarrie, brandishing tickets for Oppenheimer and Barbie. It was a recent tweet from television writer Noah Garfinkel, built around a still from Oppenheimer featuring Tom Conti’s Albert Einstein and Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer, ostensibly involved in a serious conversation about atom splitting and stuff. The caption read “‘We’re gathering a group of top scientists to go see Barbie.’”

That tweet is great because it’s a life raft of spontaneity in a sea of hype that has come to feel desperate. In the week leading up to the dual releases of Oppenheimer and Barbie, on July 21, the fever has gone off the thermometer. Christopher Nolan, with his fixation on craft (and his status as the guy who made those Batman movies), tackling the story of one of history’s most famous theoretical physicists? The idea is so antithetical to the I.P.-fixated pack-em-in mentality of the past few years that it’s no wonder anticipation among actual grownups, whether they’re Nolan fans or not, is high. The juggernaut around Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is even more formidable: Barbie pink, a hothouse hue verging on fuchsia, is everywhere. And at the film’s Los Angeles premiere, on June 9, Margot Robbie appeared in a life-size version of one of early Barbie’s most famous ensembles, a strapless sparkle evening gown accessorized with a chiffon hankie and the famous Barbie mules, known as “Solo in the Spotlight.” She looked glamorous, sexy and adorable. You’d have to be a certified funkiller not to love it.

The Barbenheimer phenomenon is fun, and essentially harmless. But while it’s wonderful that adult people have not one but two reasonably grownup movies to look forward to in the same summer week, there’s also something depressing about Barbenheimer. It has less to do with the projects themselves and more to do with what we’ve come to settle for in the world of movies. It will be a great day in Hollywood, and pretty good for anyone who cares about film, if both Barbie and Oppenheimer do well at the box office. But as film scholar, industry observer, and all-around smart film person Mark Harris noted in a series of tweets, the success of Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Mission Impossible—Dead Reckoning, won’t be enough to solve Hollywood’s myriad problems. “I am rooting for all three of these movies to succeed, because we are definitely in the ‘A rising tide lifts all boats’ phase of the crisis, and it is a crisis,” Harris writes. “But the thing is, none of these three movies are going to fix the cracks in the hull.”

Those cracks are too numerous to contemplate without falling into despair, but Barbenheimer at least flicks at one of them. The idea of a do-it-yourself double feature, or even of seeing two big movies in one weekend, used to be a staple of frequent moviegoers’ lives; it has now become a novelty. There just aren’t enough big-screen movies for adults being released at any one time. The Barbenheimer model at least presumes people are excited about going out to a movie theater sometime around July 21.

But the reality is that prying former moviegoers—especially those over 40—off their couches, away from their big-screen TVs and sophisticated sound systems, isn’t going to be easy in the long haul. On the one hand, you can’t blame the stay-at-homes, given how few movies are geared to their demographic. Superhero films and CGI-heavy action movies with indecipherable plots have taken the place of things people used to hire babysitters to go out to see: romantic comedies, erotic thrillers, courtroom dramas, even just dumb comedies about teenagers doing dumb stuff. The even harsher reality is that in many cities, cinemas specializing in smaller movies have closed. Depending on where you live, you can love movies desperately and simply be out of luck.

But talk to people who have given up on the movies by choice and the sad truth is that they don’t seem to miss them: “There’s so much good TV these days, why leave the house?” “I hate seeing movies with smelly, noisy people, the at-home experience is so much better” and so forth. Admittedly, many of the people who think and talk that way probably never really loved movies in the first place. But there are still too many who have outed themselves as consumers of content, happy as long as there’s enough on streaming to fill their entertainment hours. Moviegoers has a romantic ring to it; content consumers is the role more and more people are settling for, unquestioningly, often without seeing how distasteful the concept of content is. There’s great stuff to stream, series that have been made with thought and care and create space for wonderful actors to do good work. But viewers who happily position themselves as consumers of content are playing into the mindset of the big streamers, who have a great deal invested in getting that stuff squeezed through the tube as cheaply as possible—hence the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying TV—but right now may be the time to think about whose side you’re really on, especially if you’re of the generation that used to take great pride in sticking it to the man.

Let’s assume, though, that the Barbenheimer effect is enough to get at least some of the couch people back into the theater, which could help both movies become hits. What could box office success for either Barbie or Oppenheimer—or, with luck, both—mean for the future of movies? We used to get so many historical epics about Important Men—A Beautiful Mind, The Social Network, The Imitation Game—that we’d almost groan whenever we saw another one slouching down the pipeline. But in 2023, the promise of Oppenheimer—a story about a controversial historical figure, played an actor who has always been terrific in his movie roles but who ultimately found acclaim working in TV—is like a lake in the middle of the desert. If Oppenheimer is a hit, could it mean more movies drawn from history—that other kind of pre-awareness that has nothing to do with I.P.? Maybe. But even if not, it could open a door for filmmakers to explore bigger subjects.

Barbie, on the other hand, is a movie based on a toy—which is not an inherently bad thing when you’re talking about this particular toy. There are 70-year-old women who have played with Barbie in their lifetime, and harbor some sort of feelings about her, whether fond or complex. I have not yet seen Barbie; I’m excited about it, because I love Barbie, and I generally love Gerwig’s work. But what bothers me about the pre-movie hype is its overinsistence that Gerwig has made a “smart” movie about Barbie. Which suggests that Barbie by herself—or, more specifically, love for Barbie—is somehow dumb. The storied history of Barbie has its share of inherent subversiveness: if, in the 1960s and 1970s and beyond, feminists objected to her because of her highly unrealistic bodily proportions and empty smile, they weren’t exactly taking the long view. In the household I grew up in, one with much older sisters, we had in our attic two pre-Barbie adult dolls: one was a bride and the other was a nun. A doll you could dress in exciting clothes—one who eventually had her own house and her own car, let alone any job she could dream up—was a huge step away from that. The marketing for Barbie, rather than capitalizing on the sophistication of the finished product, feels desperate to cover every base. Love pink? Barbie is for you! You’re smart? Barbie is for you, too! That line of thinking is reductive, not revolutionary. But then, the proof will be in the movie, not the marketing.

That said, by now we’ve all heard that Mattel is planning a slew of movies based on its toys, from Hot Wheels to Rock Em Sock Em Robots, and we’ve been assured—by Mattel—that all of these movies will be “smart,” not dumb. Again, the proof will be in the movies. But none of those toys, no matter how loved, have the cultural resonance of Barbie. And in the end, what we’re being promised is really just more movies about childhood effects, things we already have some emotional attachment to. Does anyone else feel not just depressed and embarrassed by this, but also excessively exploited? As if the movies’ only hope is to latch onto old playthings and their attendant comfy feelings? What about seeing and experiencing something brand-new, that draws out feelings we didn’t know we could have?

No matter how well Barbie and Oppenheimer do, that dream feels elusive. Which is why I love the idea of a group of top scientists convening to see Barbie, presumably stepping out of their comfort zone because they’re curious to see what all the fuss is about, even making mental notes for the discussion they’ll have later. That’s what going to the movies used to be. For scientists, and for everyone.'

#Barbenheimer #Oppenheimer #Barbie #Christopher Nolan #Tom Cruise #Mission Impossible #Christopher McQuarrie #Tom Conti #Albert Einstein #Cillian Murphy #Greta Gerwig #Margot Robbie

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ninjastormhawkkat · 2 years

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Villain Steven Au Idea

This is just a twist on the villain Steven concepts. After Steven became Dr. Two Brains, Becky's friends felt really bad for her. They did not bring up the incident much because they thought that Becky still had issues with her dad becoming a villain. So they did not talk about how her dad was in front of her. One day, one of the friends slips up and comments that it must be really weird for her being a superhero while her dad is a villain. Becky just replies, oh not really, he's always been like this. Becky's friends have a hold up, what you talking about moment. From what Scoops and Violet remember, Becky's dad has always been the kind, good-natured, and law abiding citizen Steven Boxleitner. Becky laughs a little and corrects their thinking. Steven is a kind, person, he is good dad to Becky, and he did have friendly chats with his neighbors and colleagues, but he was not a law abiding citizen. He was actually a villain scientist. He was doing independent work for villains from the other cities and private investor villains. After he became Dr. Two Brains and developed a focus on cheese, he switched to working in a group villain organization with Fair City villains. That's why Granny May and a few other Fair City villains on the committee were so welcoming of her dad. They began to ask her a plethora of questions to try and clear things up. That is why Dr. Two Brains is a pro at his villain antics.

Didn't he write a book on superheroes? Yeah so he could expose other hero's secrets and strategies sneakily through legal means. That book is not exactly private material.

How come none of the other scientist he worked with noticed anything. Dad always kept his work matters to himself, feeding others false or only half the information to hide his true evil intentions. His clumsy and oblivious nature made people think he was an innocent worker. Dad put in fake surveillance cameras in his lab so no one would have a reason to spy on him.

So why did your dad help train you to become a superhero. I wanted to become a hero to use my powers to help others. Dad was understanding albeit a bit disappointed that I wouldn't join him in his villainy. We tease each other about me becoming a villain and him being a good guy all the time for fun. Still, Dad wanted to make sure I was well prepared on how to be a proper hero and not end up corrupt or being a plain jerk to others. He was also helping me to control my powers long before I chose to became a hero.

Why were you upset when your dad became Dr. Two Brains? I was upset because my dad really messed up his body system and his head in the accident. I was horrified at the beginning at his transformation and the way he acted made me afraid he had really become insane. Dad assured me later that while he did have a bout of insanity because of the sudden fusion between him and Squeaky, he was still okay later after resting it off, and was fine now, more or less.

Why did you refer to Squeaky as an ultimate evil? Because the mouse is really vicious and mean and has a strong food urge that makes him very dangerous when left unchecked like when my dad got the stupid idea of letting him take control for once. Earth animals don't have a moral compass unlike people and alien animals.

Why didn't you tell us this before? You guys made your own assumptions and never asked me before whether my dad was always a villain or not.

Point taken.

So this is basically an au where Steven has always been a villain but Becky already knew this and was just normal with it because he was her dad.

#wordgirl #wordgirl au #steven boxleitner #dr two brains #becky boxleitner au #villain steven au #but becky knows and doesn't see the point in hiding it #everyone else in this au is oblivious #except the villains

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jules-ln · 1 year

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Honestly I just saw the new movie of the guardians of the galaxy. And I have a lot of thoughts about it.

Like, I've seen a lot of people being like "I'm done with Marvel" and I just can't. I still remember when I was 8 and my dad took me to see the first Iron Man movie.

Marvel; both the characters and the stories, have always been important to me, and I don't mean just the movies, but also the cartoons, the comics (I know most people in this site don't read, but I swear, there are some comics that are soooo good, but sooooo good you can't even imagine). So not going to lie, when most people got angry at the quality of the recent Marvel movies and shows (with good reason) I just got sad. I don't like seeing characters I love being transformed into heartless, mindless, full of cheap jokes, zombies who only reason to exist is for giving the rich more money.

And with the guardians of the galaxy, they might not be my favorite characters of Marvel. But the movies have always been dear and close to my heart like no other in Marvel. There was always this feeling of "Yeah, They are a bunch of losers, but so I am." That wasn't there in the other movies.

So seeing this movie right now, especially for me; that I'm in a difficult time emotionally speaking where the future appears bleak, means a lot. To see these characters that I grew up with, maturing and becoming better persons; because they're still losers full of trauma, and they might not be perfect, but they're better than yesterday.

And with the risk of being emotionally sincere and vulnerable on the internet, that gives me hope that I too; a loser full of trauma, can be better; and that might not be much, and you might say that I should go watch a better movie, but I don't care. I've watched a lot of better movies and almost none gives me hope like this one has done (the better movies actually make me more depressed most of the time lmao).

I'm not done with Marvel, I'll probably never be done with Marvel even if I wanted. I just hope that the mouse has mercy and lets the people who do love and care about this characters tell the good stories that I know they can tell. Is that likely? Nope. Am I still going to give my money to the mouse? Heck no, this is the first Marvel movie that I've watched through legal means since endgame (piracy is good). But I do hope that I can get to see more stories like this one in the future, because that's what superheroes stories are for. Not to sell things, but to give hope that the future can be better.

Also, I hope the companies give the writers everything they want because they deserve it.

#guardians of the galaxy #gotg #guardians of the galaxy vol. 3 #marvel #mcu #ramblings #I'm literally crying right now #screaming my feelings into the void (tumblr) because I can

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raspberrydaisieschlb · 1 year

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HOO BOY FINALLY WATCHED IT

I have a lot of thoughts but I’m going to focus on our protag right now, because god was she good. (Semi-rant)

(spoilers. Read at own risk)

Like, there are a lot of things that have yet to be answered, about Sora ALONE, but it’s the first episode so of course we’ll have to wait. But so far, Sora is pretty solidly written, and already distinguishing herself from other leaders, minus the color.

Because let’s be honest: What she did was stupid. Her first idea when seeing an explosion at a castle was TO GO TOWARDS IT, she chased after a superpowered terrorist pig unarmed, went into the villain dark matter portal, and tried to fight the motw with no powers whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool to see but it was FUCKING DUMB. But they didn’t change the gravity of the situation and girl is bruised and struggling to get up before she becomes Cure Sky. And it’s clear some part of her knows what she’s doing is stupid because it was emphasized more than once that she was scared. I believe at the beginning of the episode she said something along the lines of “What kind of hero would I be if I was scared?” and yet, at least twice, she showed fear. But girl kept fighting for Ellee (how do you spell her name?) despite everything that happened. That amount of strength and determination is not something I’ve seen in a Cure before (not this early in the season at least)

But again, it’s only the first episode, and all seasons have their flaws, so considering what has happened in past seasons, I just have a few concerns:

They won’t acknowledge failure. Like, I get it. It’s a kids show. And failure sucks. But since this show has a bit of a superhero theme this time around, there should be a moment in time where they acknowledge that even heroes aren’t perfect and can be prone to failure as much as the next person.

2. They won’t acknowledge the potential stress and overwork that is going to be Sora’s life. I’m not as worried with this one, but I’m still worried. Sora has a personal code of conduct and still wanted to fight despite the fact she was struggling to stand, so this might not happen, but it’s 40 episodes, things get forgotten, and they can (and sometimes do) pretend that any unresolved stress the character has just doesn’t exist anymore! Or at all! I don’t need her life to be struggle city, but at least recognize this ain’t easy.

3. They’ll overplay this. Again, seeing Sora do stuff no one has ever done before was pretty cool! But they could keep pointing that out. A lot. Act like she is the best thing since Black and then say the same thing the next season. I (personally) like the powerhouses, but there is a reason why people have issues with things like Parthenon Mode and Forever Lovely. And this also mixes in with Sora getting too much focus. We’re supposed to have 5 leads by the end of this season, and from what I’ve heard, Prism isn’t showing up until the fourth episode. Balance is important.

4. They’ll forget her flaws. Currently the only one I can note is that she’s an idiot (not an obvious one, but still an idiot), she just makes up for that with her determination. But, similar to point 3, I have seen characters either become that of a Mary Sue, or an oversimplified version of their character. We don’t need that.

But I’m just going to silently pray none of this happens and hold on to the Sora Harewataru that was shown to me.

#precure #pretty cure #precure spoilers #hirogaru sky precure #hirogaru sky pretty cure #hirogaru sky spoilers #sora harewataru #cure sky

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thatsastepladder · 2 years

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Daily Planet: The Workplace Comedy

This is such a good idea I'm surprised DC hasn't done anything like it before. (Or maybe I'm just biased about wanting more media set in superhero universes that focus on the normal person perspective.)

The setting would be Metropolis at the very beginning of Superman's career. Young, up-and-coming reporter Clark Kent is in his mid-late 20s, has stopped travelling the globe and settled down - only to find himself in competition with star reporter Lois Lane, which eventually develops into a Jim/Pam style slow-burn romance.

The cast:

Clark Kent is our main protagonist. He's bafflingly sincere, straight-laced, and all around a Good Guy... albeit a bit of a coward who runs away at the slightest sign of trouble, even if it would get him killed. He knows his stuff, though, and his human interest stories are second to none.

Lois Lane is a rising star. She's only been in the professional world for a few years, and already there's talk of Pulitzer nominations. She's nice, but very much the City Mouse to Clark's Country Mouse. She's also become enamored with this new Superman who's taken Metropolis by storm, and is more than willing to throw herself into danger just to get the scoop on him.

Perry White is the editor-in-chief at the Planet. He's been around the block more than a few times, and still isn't happy that the building has a no-smoking policy. He's a bit of a grouch, but he's fair and honest, and has taken on somewhat of a fatherly role to Lois.

Jimmy Olsen is the youngest of the main cast, barely out of college. Perry doesn't particularly like him, but he's the only photographer who's been able to get a clear shot of Superman, so he stays around. He's eager to please and takes a shine to Lois and later Clark, and also has a tendency to tell the strangest stories of what happened on his days off. The audience never really knows if Jimmy actually married a gorilla over the weekend, or turned into a fifty-foot-tall turtle man, but there's always the chance...

Cat Grant is the Planet's gossip columnist. She's catty, flirty, and leaves too many buttons open on her blouse for a professional work environment. In short, she's an insufferable bitch, the mean girl from high school who never quite grew up. Sort of a combination of Kelly and Meredith from The Office (US).

Steve Lombard is Cat's male equivalent. The Planet's resident sports columnist, he's essentially that jerk jock from high school who never grew out of it. A boorish, mischievous flirt who largely targets Clark with his bullying, Steve's ego is about as big as his muscles.

Ron Troupe is the voice of reason if there ever was one. As the Planet's opinion writer, his personality is the complete opposite of Steve's - he's down to earth, calm and collected and serves as the straight man for whatever antics are going on.

Superman is never seen, just spoken of. Everyone knows about him - how could they not? - but he rarely ever appears on screen, and if he does, the audience doesn't see his face. He seems like a nice guy, though - Lois certainly thinks so - and he gave Jimmy this nifty watch!

#dc #superman #clark kent #lois lane #jimmy olsen #daily planet sitcom #daily planet

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ufonaut · 2 years

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you mentioned it a few days ago but i'm still very curious about ur thoughts on alan's class traitor dynamics within the gay community in the 40s-60s era, the progression of it, and how that might compare to his current stance in the 21st century.

i don't think alan is a class traitor to the gay community per-se as much as he's a class traitor in general, and one of the most fascinating things about him (at least to me, personally) is the fact that nearly every part of him is a facade in some capacity -- from the big obvious things like his secret identity as a superhero to his eighty-something years in the closet to the fact that he's spent his whole life trying to distance himself from his social class.

(the green lantern 60th anniversary panel at the all-time classic new york comic book convention 2000, from alter ego 1999 #148)

like mart nodell himself said, alan was a working man. the few mentions of his childhood that exist (in the sleepers book two and jsa: ragnarok novels) have him growing up as an orphan in abject poverty; his work on the railroad -- which originally had him employed as an apprentice to a mr john hall in all-american comics 1939 #17, rather than any later stories claiming he'd ever owned or started a company -- paints him in the clear contours of the working class, as does his time on the radio where he works his way up from a jack-of-all-trades handyman position to radio announcer and beyond. to drive the point home, it's also important to note that alan spent most of his youth living in a rented one-bedroom flat with a taxi driver (and we know there's no question whatsoever about doiby dickles' working class background):

(examples from all-american comics 1939 #60, green lantern 1941 #26, the big-all american comic book 1944 #1 respectively)

there's also rare moments when alan's accent slips into a phonetically spelled new york accent like doiby's, or what we might call gotham in this particular case. this is one of the reasons i was so overjoyed by the whole "pal, start yakkin'" and the rest of his dialogue in jl vs losh 2022 #4.

this is all to build up to the fact that the few ways alan has expressed his sexuality are also steeped in working class dynamics:

(dc pride 2021 #1)

gay bar culture as we know it, particularly that of the 40s and 50s like alan would've experienced and as is pictured here, is a staple of the working class -- these are fellow working men we see milling around in a shuttered basement, people who might've already been made to feel like criminals and who had none of the comforts afforded by upper class social capital, this is a place for cruising as much as it is for solidarity.

that being said, alan has worked long and hard to rise above his station, so to speak.

(green lantern 80th anniversary special 2020)

he's visibly out of place among people like jimmy henton's mother because he's made himself out of place. over the course of his run in all-american comics 1939 and green lantern 1941, alan wears a grand total of two suits (and we even see him mending one at one point) but he still never dares for anything more casual. on one memorable occasion, he lies to irene miller about his education. whenever the radio gives him the opportunity to go to something relatively prestigious like the theatre or opera, both he & doiby are consistently surprised by it.

throughout his entire career, he's shown a good ol' 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' mentality as he's relentlessly worked his way up to the point that his work -- once the radio, later gbc -- would become the single most important thing in his life (the amazing world of dc comics #16 has a wonderful little analysis of this regarding his many mental breakdowns related to gbc's bankruptcy but even books like the golden age 1993 and starman 1994 #11 show a threat to the company as alan's sole fear). it's also often implied that jennie's gotten no help in her failing career as an actress, despite her dad running a broadcasting company & presumably having any number of industry contacts, for this exact reason. that is all to say that, by the 60s and up to the present day, alan has categorically made himself a rich ceo and acts like it too.

(all-star comics 1976 #64)

but in the process of distancing himself from his social class, he's also lost any hint of solidarity with young men he'd been exactly alike once upon a time. this is obvious enough in his treatment of jared stevens in both fate 1994 and the book of fate 1997

(fate 1994 #11 -- cultured people? style and taste? could alan be parroting what he'd been told was the measure of a hero back in the day?)

and following that same line of thinking, another layer is gained with the canon confirmation of his sexuality and the fact that he's evidently kept silent throughout every single movement of gay liberation in the 20th century. it's not that alan should've come out earlier but rather little things like him having led jay to believe he's a republican (aquaman 1994 #44) point pretty clearly to what opinions and stances he has expressed, if that makes sense.

even so, with all of alan's attempts to make himself virtually indistinguishable from the upper class crowd, the fact of the matter remains that he'll never be accepted as one of their own

('scenes from the class struggle at jsa mansion', from golden age secret files 2001 #1)

and that stays, i believe, the clearest indictment of alan as a class traitor (and how utterly fascinating that makes him!).

thank you for giving me the chance to get into it!!!

#alan scott #green lantern #jsa #justice society of america #asks #anon #god i missed this kinda ask sooooooo much thank youuuuu sincerely #ONCE AGAIN. ALAN SCOTT IS THE SINGLE MOST INTERESTING CHARACTER IN COMIC BOOK HISTORY #alan being told to lower his voice during the class discussion always gets me literallllllllly insane

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