the reason why nu52 Dick is so simultaneously messy and yet boring is because they don't let him be bitchy enough whilst simultaneously making him a little bitch
sdfsdfdsfs I don't totally understand what this means and yet I feel like I agree with the spirit, anon <3
Outsiders 21 - preboot Dick yelling at Bruce my beloved
Yeah, caveat that there's plenty of nu52 Dick stuff that I haven't read and I don't think it's all bad, but also... man, he is not for me. As far I'm concerned, the main good thing that came out of n52/Rebirth is some setups for sad!Dick fanfic. And yeah, "Dick is not bitchy enough" is actually a pretty good summary of my complaints sdfdsfs
The thing is, nu52 Dick has some similarities to preboot Tim, in that he'll sometimes be insincerely fake-cheerful even when actually upset, plus he periodically seems uncomfortable with direct confrontation so instead he lies to avoid confrontation. And mmm I mean, I like these qualities in preboot Tim, so it's not like I think these are terrible traits to have!!
BUT :
1) Preboot Tim has no authority. But preboot Dick does, and it's frustrating to take it away from him in nu52.
There's some post-2011 panel where Dick lies to Batman and is cheery about it, a la Tim bragging to his friends about lying to Batman in Teen Titans, and I had to stare at it for ages trying to figure out why it felt like such a record scratch moment to me.
But it's because there is a huge difference between a presumably independent superhero lying to another superhero vs. a sidekick and his sidekick friends secretly joyriding in Batman's car.
Like, Tim lies to authority figures more-or-less constantly, because he doesn't want to be told what to do, but also because - importantly!! - those authority figures reasonably assume they have authority over him that he has to evade. Of course he tries to avoid direct confrontation with the JLA / Batman / Red Tornado / Starfire - they're not his equals and a direct confrontation would end badly!
Whereas Nightwing lying to Batman feels like putting him in a subordinate position in a way that preboot Dick never is. Preboot Dick always tells Batman off to his face, because preboot Dick cares about being equals and refuses to accept being subordinate. He doesn't sneak around behind Bruce's back - he fights back! If he doesn't agree with Bruce's position, he tries to argue Bruce into his own. He'll do stuff without asking Bruce's permission, but he won't conceal it; he'll make a point of making sure Bruce knows what he did and also that he isn't sorry.
2) Preboot Tim's lying / tendency to be fake with people is a consistent personality trait that's also consistently problematized. nu52 Dick's characterization is wildly all over the map.
In preboot, Tim is a liar and obsessive compartmentalizer, which is both a strength (disguises, sneaking around authority) and a problem (loved ones who are hurt by it). He's self-aware about his lies, periodically resolves to lie less, and generally fails at it.
Tim's consistent enough that you can track this character trait in all his relationships: he lies to his dad. He lies to Batman. He lies to his girlfriends. He refuses to tell Babs his real name for ages for basically no reason. He stalks Dick and then tries to run away from him in his origin story and then tries to avoid telling Dick his name. And this evasiveness consistently causes him problems!! Dick's suspicious of him. Ariana's suspicious of him. His dad is suspicious of him. Young Justice and Steph get annoyed with his secret-keeping. Young Justice want him to take off the mask. Steph wants to know his real name. When she finds out and calls him by his real name, he has a panic attack and literally runs away. When upset, he insists he's fine and fake-smiles at people. In Teen Titans, when Tim's busy being fake-cheerful and Conner is startled to see him there right after his dad died, Tim gets upset and angry at Conner and demands that he not tell anyone about Jack. Fine, Conner says, I guess it's another secret. In AC 3, he's lying to Conner again and Conner accuses him of having an insincere "Starfire voice," which is a hilarious callback to Tim being fake-agreeable-yet-secretly-bitchy at Kory when he first meets her. I feel like I get that the lying is a Tim Character Trait which is sometimes endearing and sometimes less so and which all the people who love him are gonna have different feelings about.
By contrast, nu52 Dick spends a ton of time lying but it's hard for me to model his characterization in the same way? He's sometimes fake and ... sometimes that's totally cool and sometimes people punch him! also, does it say something about him? ehhhhh maybe? no? who can say!! At the end of nu52 Nightwing, he doesn't want to go undercover and Bruce beats him up, but then in Grayson he seems totally on board with his mission and willing to actively lie to everyone, and then in Batman and Robin Eternal he carries out a whole secret mission behind nuTim's back because he thinks nuTim is maybe a spy and is scared (?) of confronting him directly, but also he's so sloppy about it that he gets followed and the bad guys find nuTim's parents. Oopsie! He represents The Heart and is super-caring but also somewhat ditzy with a tendency to leap before he looks, and also he's very very very goodlooking and Grayson would really like you to know that.
You can try to make sense of this character's internal motivations and I have read various enjoyable fanfics that do, but in the comics I don't feel like he's clearly characterized.
3) Dick should be a convincing team leader
I know I kind of talked about this earlier but it bothers me SO MUCH that I have to talk about it again dsfdsfds
Preboot Dick is a natural leader: he seizes control of the feuding personalities in the Fab Five; he does the same thing in the NTT; he stands up to Bruce. He can overrule strong personalities like Pantha and Roy; he can hold his ground against the Outsiders. He doesn't back down and he doesn't quit. He's got instinctive authority, and he's a forceful and aggressive enough leader that he can lead teams even when his teammates are feuding or difficult or arguing with each other. Sometimes he's a little too forceful and it backfires on him, but for the most part, it works!
By contrast, nu52 Dick often comes off as kinda... hapless? He's definitely not a force to be reckoned with.
Like, just to take one small example, in post-Crisis's Red Robin 14, Tim and Damian are fighting and Dick wants them to cut it out, so he throws a batarang at Tim's staff and snaps at him, and the fight stops immediately. By contrast, in nu52's Batman and Robin 10, Tim and Damian are arguing and Dick wants them to cut it out, but nuDick is incapable of confronting anyone over anything so he just sighs about it, passive-aggressive and ineffectual.
And "ineffectual" is too often the vibe I get from n52 Dick in general. You put that man with Pantha, and he'll probably be bemused, but he won't be able to make Pantha do anything, and he wouldn't be able to make Danny Chase do anything, and he can't or won't stand up to Bruce so he has to lie the way Tim does, and he would never have a fistfight with Roy over the proper way to lead a team.
And in a lot of ways this makes sense, because n52 Dick isn't a team leader, because they've deleted the Titans. He's just a guy. He's nice, I guess.
But even though he gets all kinds of excellent woobie plotlines that I'd normally enjoy (an evil organization is stalking him personally! his dad is beating him up and forcing him into becoming a spy! he's losing his memory!) his personality is usually so far off from the character I like that I struggle to get invested.
Because the thing is, Dick's leadership instincts aren't incidental to what I like about him. They're all wrapped up in his outsized sense of personal responsibility and instinctive belief that if anything is going wrong anywhere near him then it is his obligation to handle it and if anything goes wrong then it's his fault if he was involved and also his fault if he wasn't involved and actually if you have ever gotten within five feet of him and unrelatedly something bad happened to you then it's probably his fault and he FAILED. This belief gives Dick a lot of control issues and makes him bitchy sometimes and is not great for his mental health, but it's also very endearing and an outgrowth of how much Dick cares!
Anyway, re:bitchiness, I have similar feelings about various choices in Batgirls and in Tim Drake: Robin and in current Nightwing; like, I don't think any of these stories are bad ipso facto, I don't begrudge anyone who likes them, and I certainly enjoy fluffy fanfic sometimes - I don't always want the same things in transformative fandom that I want in canon.
But in comics, I often want the characters to have a bit of edge, to be cranky and difficult and just... y'know, clearly the kind of people who would choose to be vigilantes. I want them to care enough to be bitchy about it. And I often feel like I'm missing that, post-2011.
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I like the idea of Martlet staying with Toriel and help her protect Frisk, Not gonna lie, it would be really funny if Ceroba, Starlo and his gang also stay in the ruins to help Toriel watch out for humans, while Dalv is just living in Snowdin :3
the rest of the gang have their own place in this au :))) we'll see them wayyyy later, but it wont hurt to show yall what theyve been up to since uty!
dalv's still chilling in snowdin, though he visits starlo and the gang every once in a while for bar night and performs there! his new children books have been getting popular at snowdin's librarby :))
starlo and the feisty five are still up to their shenanigans in the wild east, putting up shows and bringing in plenty of tourists. they help out the farm when they have the time. ceroba's also working at the farm nowadays. the mansion feels way too big for just one monster so she moved into the farmhouse
they have a mail system to keep in touch ever since martlet ended up in the ruins :D usually dalv and sans meet once a week and they exchange letters. martlet likes hearing about whatever's going on outside the ruins and the others are just glad to know she's doing alright ever since uhhh....... the incident
also shitty bonus pic lol
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Trigun Thoughts Vol. 1 Pt. 2
So now that I've finished with volume 1, I just wanted to write down a couple thoughts I've had and neat things to point out so far
When I was watching Stampede, I took note of a few kind of textbook avoidant behaviours Vash engages in, and lo and behold, here he is in the manga displaying even more of them. I'll list out a few here.
In order, we have:
Casually asking for a time limit on the interaction (ie. "How long do I have to keep this up before I can leave?")
Attempting to lose people in a crowd
Leaving without saying anything (and as a bonus, dreading being recognized in public)
Over-indulging or over-involving oneself in social events to create a viable excuse to leave suddenly (in this case, he uses alcohol as a reason to "pass out")
Sleeping to avoid unwanted conversation
Escaping to the bathroom to get away for a bit (and also to grumble about it haha)
Playing off sincere reactions by deliberately allowing them to be misinterpreted to avoid personal questions
It's really obvious, even this early in the manga, that Vash is intentionally avoiding prolonged interaction with people, and only involving himself in situations by necessity. He doesn't like attention on himself - the only reason he intentionally draws it is to divert it away from others.
The reason for this is a bit muddy though. It does seem that Vash doesn't particularly enjoy being caught up in drama, and it is also very likely he wishes to get in and out of places as quickly as possible to avoid them getting caught up in his drama too. It may even be that he finds prolonged socializing kind of tiring; that he needs a certain amount of time to himself.
But then there's also this bit, shortly after the celebration, where he pretends to pass out.
This brings in a bit of a guilt aspect to it. It likely has to do with July, or maybe it's due to something else (at this point, we can't say), but I think it's notable that Vash cuts things off shortly before they become intimate. He can play along to make others happy and to share in their joy for a bit, but the second things get too personal or focused on him, he will quietly slip away. Now this is specifically an instance of physical intimacy, but I think it'd probably hold for emotional intimacy as well, given the continuous avoidance and misdirection he does to prevent too many questions.
I made some commentary on Stampede Vash's self-punishing behaviours - specifically, the way he denies himself food. I don't want to get too into it because I don't know if everyone reading this has seen Stampede, but food is framed as something to be shared in the show - so, denying himself food is denying himself the right to share with others, which is denying himself belonging, which is denying himself any semblance of intimacy. (It means other things too, as food-sharing is associated with Rem, but I don't want to get too into it here.)
Vash in the manga doesn't seem to have the same issues with eating, but this is a similar premise - he's denying himself intimacy out of a sense of not being deserving of it.
So, then, there are probably many interwoven reasons for Vash's avoidance - he's sick of the chaos that follows him around, he doesn't want others getting hurt, he gets tired from having to "play it up" all the time, and he seems to also feel that he doesn't deserve that closeness. I'm intrigued to see how Vash's avoidance will be tackled going forward (I'm assuming it will?), and I suspect, more than there being one right reason for it, that all these reasons are actually true to an extent.
On a completely different note, this panel here is the biggest mood. I feel it in my bones.
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