#what a payoff!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

#in our enclosures!! #video linked as source; which i'm glad to see already has a million views and is trending. That's Right #lackadaisy #WHICH i have been reading since at least '07 when i was thirteen my god b/c this animation is based on the ongoing webcomic #like does its influence show up Directly in some Discrete way i can point to in my art? not very easily probably. And Yet. #the inspiration....i wasn't able to be Regularly Only for at least another year / art done Nonprofessionally Online was novel to me #like wow ppl can make & post fanart of w/e they love huh....didn't know webcomics were a thing & i never really read that many since but. #good god the quality of Lackadaisy at its onset is like this is superb?? this person putting in all their talent and effort??? #and Then you get years & years more art and i don't even know what superlatives to throw out abt its quality as it evolves. obsessed w/it.. #if i see a new lackadaisy comic page i Will be acting out. obviously this animation is a delight & also stunning. and fascinating to also #juxtapose as a Translation / Interpretation of the comic in a different medium & standalone snippet of Story #and that we're not even quite there in the comic timeline; Taking Notes abt character info we get distilledly here....genuinely love like #take it back to '07 i'm like oh boy can't wait for the dream team to assemble. then a decade later when it did? Oh Boy. that is payoff lol #namely hooray for stitches and mudbug at the field office for every passing gangster. killing one marigold associate but not the other #which seems like a promising start to shootouts w/the other dream team triumvirate. i adore that in canon so far mordecai freckle & rocky #have met but only over a nice brunch. re: all intentions anyways. anyways i'm like Gifs Must Be Made while i'm also so riled afresh abt the #comic that i've been sooo hype for for over fifteen yrs now babeyyy Deservedly. i've done a couple of rereads & ought to do another.... #For Interest it'd probably take a few sittings to catch up from the start but there is much to be engaged over....this ongoing story that's #historical fiction prohibition bootlegging cats with plenty of focus on characters & several Mysteries. which i'm better at parsing now lol #like one of the more recent rereads like Oh Of Course x (probably) accidentally killed his y & z took the fall & that's a binding secret... #Not [oh of course] abt the circumstances surrounding a's death & how b & c were involved. nor the ''what's marigold's damage'' mystery #which is great. love to not know things. love that we can readily follow all the emergent drama everyone's wading in nowadays. hell yeah #anyways admire my organized approach to gifs here. four shots each Expressions Atmosphere Action Groupshots #sure might've muddled through gifmaking for this anyways but fr being a huge lackadaisy comic enjoyer for now most of my life helps #and its very Overall Inspiration like. just really getting the [you can really just draw stuff out here] going. fr the art's detail & skill #and that enrichment like i'm gonna have a great time following this. And I Have #you don't expect a crowdfunded indie animation in the mix back then but hell yeah fellas #SIGH ok removing a 4th gif that's broken / not displayed despite reuploading then entirely remaking it. if it's a bug i'll try again later

[ashinaisshin]

Arriving at Anor Londo

#dark souls #dark souls remastered #gamingedit #dailygaming #dsedit #ds1edit #edit:all #edit:gif #damn what a glorious payoff after curse sewers and poison swamps #tho i still think its a bad idea to put the extremely cursed status effect areas in early(ish) game and i’ll die on that hill #imagine having to go through subterranean shunning grounds and lake of rot in order to access leyndell in er #it works well with ds' narrative but oh god 💀💀

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

*shaking fist at sky* CLOOOOOOOWWWWWWNNNNNNNN

#edit: look at this post's reblog #WYM WE CANT CLICK THE TREE #cmonnnn CMONNNNNNN #im Laughing but im also violently biting my computer #shaking the tree let me in LET ME INNNNNNNN #you know i checked the site earlier and i looked at everything BUT the exhibition #homebogging #if anyone is wondering what the Hell im on about this time #go to the site and go to the playfellow exhibition #theres a christmas tree drawn on the page #and the words 'playfellow exhibition' are Indeed upside down! #the instructions. the payoff has begun! #BUT YOU CANT CLICK THE TREE #i clicked all over it. i tabbed through the page #IT HAUNTS ME LIKE THE FRONT PAGE BEETLE #that damn Beetle...

[echo-and-dust]

young royals has to be the most ‘angst with a happy ending’ i’ve ever seen a tv show get

#what a sweet sweet payoff #wilmon #yr spoilers #young royals #yr season 3 #yr s3 spoilers

[laquilasse]

johan is so great because he can be the princess trapped in a crystal or the poofy sleeved swedish prince

#johan andersen #jun manjoume #jesse anderson #chazz princeton #yugioh gx #ygo gx #yugioh #5 minutes later manjome is punching a wall like WHY DIDN'T I SAY SOMETHING COOL!!!!!! FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #my art #we're on s4 of gx right now and im like. so where was the hug after you saved your prince from the crystal. what happened to the payoff. #it's evil it's not right

[centaurianthropology]

Why C3E51 worked so well (a DM’s perspective)

I have seen a lot of absolutely bananas critiques of C3E51 (thankfully not nearly as many around here, far more on Reddit, which I should not have visited).   And the ongoing theme of those critiques is that Matt should not have imperiled former PCs, and if he brought them in should have either done lengthy side-bars with those characters or let them win the fight against Ludinis and have a chance to take him out themselves, since they’re ‘god tier’ or ‘high level’ and that makes ‘logical sense’.  What these critiques really boil down to, IMO, are people who were really invested in the former campaigns upset that their faves didn’t get to do cool things, treating it more like a TV show than a game.  But even as a TV show, that would have been disappointing from a narrative perspective.  Because even in a TV show, this is a sequel spin-off show, starring new characters.  The story is about THEM.  And more importantly, the game is about the players and about telling their story.

So let’s break this down from a DM perspective.  How do you build a Kobiashi Maru situation for your characters?  For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Kobiashi Maru is a Star Trek term for a scenario designed from the jump to be unwinnable (Kirk beat it by creativity, but later admitted that he missed the point of it).  In Star Trek this was done to test what a future officer would do if faced with certain failure.  In a D&D game it’s a little more complicated.  Part of it is to set up the BBEG, put their plan in motion, and set the stage for the next leg of the game.  But it’s also to give your players, who are clearly into it, a darkest-hour scenario.  Not every player group is going to be into facing down the Kobiashi Maru, and it’s clear from the aforementioned critiques that a lot of them are on Reddit.  Power-gamers who always want to win are not going to enjoy this sort of storytelling, but players who are really into RP and working through difficult times and failures will eat this stuff up.  And this is absolutely the sort of table playing on Critical Role.  There is a level of trust there that can only be built after years of working together, and this was finally the moment when Matt could pay off years of planning and campaign-spanning set-up.

Matt carefully plotted the structure of this episode out to give maximum agency and impact to a party of dramatically under-leveled characters.  And they knew going in they were under-leveled.  This wasn’t a surprise, but a potential suicide run by people who knew they weren’t the heroes they needed to be, but were the only heroes in the right place at the right time to try anything.  So they came up with as good a plan as they could, and executed it fairly well, all things considered.  

They knew they couldn’t take on Ludinus directly (and this was a great way to demonstrate exactly how much he had planned and how long, to bring in elements from C2, hints we’ve had for years about Ludinis, only to reveal it went deeper than any of the characters could have imagined), so Matt gave them some winnable objectives.  This is a great way to keep the characters invested in an unwinnable scenario: the ultimate outcome may be beyond the characters, barring some insane genius or incredible rolls, but they can still help.  They can do something that will have a tangible impact on events and hinder the baddies enough to give them another chance at a rematch and a way to stop the apocalypse when they’re higher level.  So Matt gave them the batteries: take out as many as you can.  While this would not stop the ritual, I suspect that the more they took out the more Ludinis would have to drain his own power to make the key work, and the longer the process would take.  Knocking out the feywild key, as well as multiple power sources turned what would have been an instantaneous event if they had done nothing into a more drawn-out affair which, I suspect, could be stopped or even reversed.  It gave them a window to come back and demand a rematch.

Then we have the high-level PC allies, and how to play with those sorts of characters without pulling focus from the PCs.  Matt handled this very well, by having the players roll for their former PCs, taking the specifics of their actions out of his hands and letting the dice of the former players decide.  He also revealed that Keyleth’s involvement, and baiting Vax with Otohan’s permadeath poison, was key to Ludinis’ ritual, which was why she couldn’t just dive in and clean everything up.  But again, because of this story, it ties less back to Keyleth and more back to Orym.  That was the point of the attack on Zephrah, to get her attention by getting her to look into who did it and then coming to get some payback, but the little guy on the ground has always been caught in the middle.  Orym has been Ludinis’ unwitting pawn from the off, his family’s deaths merely a means to an end, and that is vicious and amazing set-up for character growth for him.  

Beau and Caleb had to be there by the logic of the story.  It didn’t make sense that Caleb would sit out a world-ending event orchestrated by a Cerberus Assembly member after spending years trying to take them down.  Beau would obviously go with him.  It also made sense that they would be the only two there, because they were scouting when Ryn got taken down, and after that were trying to keep a low profile.  Shit accelerated too fast for them to call in reinforcements.

Which is the in-story reason for them to be there, but isolated and vulnerable, making them useful allies and wildcards (who likely could have been more useful if ultimately failing as well, but failed early thanks to Liam and Marisha’s rolls).  But they were still outmatched.  I have no idea what the challenge rating of Otohan, Leliana, and Ludinis are, but we know Otohan was considered ‘beatable’ back in Bassuras.  That indicates she’s the lowest CR, particularly with the glowing weak-spot on her back.  But she can still wreck a level-20 PC if she gets the jump on her, which she did.  And that meant that she remained a massive threat.  Caleb and Beau were playing it smart, keeping to the shadows, but still got caught by Leliana.  Between dice rolls, careful planning, and some great enemy design, Matt really set up a team that could take on high-level players and win.  And he made it clear that Ludinis did not leave this to chance.  He has the best people he could muster after 1000 years of planning.  Nothing short of a miracle could have truly stopped them.

Which is why we cut back to Bells Hells.  Because ultimately this particular story isn’t about Keyleth or Vax or Caleb or Beau or any other former PCs.  This is about the current party being caught up in events much larger than them and having to rise to the occasion.  This is the story of the schmucks sent in to take out the batteries, but who have personal beef with the big bads.  Ludinis orchestrated the plan to attack Zephrah to bait Keyleth and draw out Vax, and Otohan carried it out.  And he used Orym as a pawn throughout all of it.  This makes taking them down, but especially taking Otohan down, the cornerstone of Orym’s personal quest.  Letting an NPC take her down would be taking away a critical part of his motivation and goals, which is an absolute no-no for a DM.  NEVER bring in a god-tier NPC and take away player agency or story beats.  Especially never have them resolve important player goals and backstory events!  Every NPC, even the powerful ones, are there to support the story the players are telling.  So of course Keyleth wasn’t going to take out Otohan.  Of course she wasn’t going to stop the ritual.  Beau and Caleb might have been able to do something more if Liam and Marisha hadn’t rolled so badly for them, but ultimately, they had to get caught or fail in another way.  

For the sake of gameplay, Bell’s Hells had to be the only functional team.  They had to be the ants that were beneath Ludinis’ notice long enough to really accomplish something.  And as much as it feels like they failed, they had minor victories: Laudna and Ashton took out more batteries, making Ludinis drain his own power to kick off the apocalypse.  They only failed to take out Otohan’s backpack by 2 HP, which showed them that she was an achievable goal in the future.  If they had rolled a little better, they probably could have taken her out entirely, which would have felt like a big accomplishment for them.  Imogen made her mother pause in her assault before doubling down.  This leaves open very interesting future beats for their interactions.  Can she ultimately redeem her mother or would she have to take her out?  Every step that Matt set up in this episode, from the reveals about Ludinis’ plans and Orym’s past, to Imogen’s interactions with her mother, to Chetney and likely Ashton finding themselves staring down their own backstories after the party split, was focused on this party, on getting them ready to step out of low-level play and advance.

And that’s the point of E51.  It’s not a climax of the story, but the ultimate set-up.  It’s putting all the pieces onto the board in a way that all the characters can now recognize.  Yes, unless the players came up with something genius, the apocalypse was going to kick off, but their actions slowed everything down to a place where it could be combatted.  Yes, the god-tier former PCs were always going to get neutered, because this is Bells Hells’ story, and you cannot have NPCs fix PC problems.  They might have been able to do a little more before this happened, but the dice rolled.

And it’s honestly good for the PCs how things turned out.  They have a clear objective, but are split up.  This gives them great incentive to level up, explore character backstory, deal with their personal shit, get stronger, and then come back to kick the asses of all three of these villains (or possibly redeem one, we’ll see).  Their powerful allies are now temporarily side-lined.  Keyleth is badly hurt and will need time to recover.  Caleb is collared and will need time to get that removed.  Beau is likely up and moving now, but will need to safeguard Caleb for a while.

The Bells Hells are on their own.  The Darkest Hour has come, and it’s time for them to rise up and go from nobodies to heroes.  This is their true call to adventure.  And as a DM, it was so cool seeing how Matt set up all the pieces over the campaign, only to pay them out in such a satisfying and motivating way in this episode.

#Critical Role #Critical Role spoilers #I really liked this episode #both as storytelling #and in terms of structure #this is how you do long-term setup #and payoff for a villain #he had planned for everything #but this annoying party of gnats muching up his works #and the gnats are going to be what takes him down #that is such a good way to let a low-level party get set up to take on a high-level villain!! #anyway #this is to combat some of the negativity I've seen toward this episode

[ofthebrownajah]

Something that sticks out to me from rereading TFOH is that it deals A LOT with Nynaeve's fear of failure and not being enough to help her friends and people and I think people forget that she's deeply afraid cause she presents this facade that she's confident in herself when deep down she's not

#wheel of time #wot book spoilers #i think this is what the show is emphasizing #cause it's a huge deal in tfoh #her fear of moggy and how beating her once was maybe only luck #and the payoff when she fights that fear and gets the upperhand on moggy again #nynaeve al'meara

[turtletoria]

my favorite wordgirl character, jerma

#turtlearts #wordgirl #wg #jerma #dr two brains #steven boxleitner #ok funny story. my lockscreen is fanart of jerma right #and my mama saw it and said is this the guy you like? and i was like :D YAS ITS JERMA 985 MY FAVORITE GUY #and my mama was like oh is that the guy you draw all the time? and i was like draw all the time?? i havent really drawn jerma all that much- #WAIT. OH. OHHHH..... #my mama confused steven with jerma. i exploded #but also yeah i see the similarity so much #ive come to the conclusion that i like 1 (one) kind of white guy and theyre weird and funny guys that have a rodent motif #jerma and steven and will wood are all the same to me. sorry #jerma is the rats rats we are the rats guy. 2 brains is self explanatory. will wood has lovely pet rats. #and he sings about them. his new album even has the rat motif and i love love tomcat disposables argggghhh #oogh. i want a pet rat. lovely creatures #also why do i keep putting so much effort into what should otherwise be low effort memes???????? its driving me insane #it makes the joke unfunny and the payoff doesnt equal the amt of work that went into it!!!!!!!!! arrrrgggghhh #i literally spent so many hours on the burger one and i hate it so much. cries

[joyflameball]

What yougotta understand is that when you're interacting with blogs from a fictional universe, such as the English Willy saga, ya DON'T GIVE THE GAME AWAY. Don't just TELL THEM all the plot. Don't tell them exactly what's happening!! Don't tell them the important names!! Send asks and such but actually think through, how would a normal person respond to all this? How would a normal Tumblrina respond? The answer is YOU PROBABLY WOULD NOT FIND FUCKING EVERYTHING OUT IMMEDIATELY. The answer would probably be memes and clowning on things! If you wanna allude to things that will happen in the plot, ALLUDE to them. If you know that someone's gonna burn to death, say you hope the stress doesn't cause them to burn out. Please, my Tumblrinas, learn the art of subtlety in writing. You are not the main character in fictional universe blogs. It's okay.

#cassie rambles #english willy #this post was prompted by me getting annoyed ppl in the comments of the english willy posts were just straight-up giving everything away #PEOPLE. LEARN THE ART OF ''WAITING'' AND ''SUBTLETY'' AND ''YOU'RE NOT THE MAIN CHARACTER HERE'' #like just straight up saying ''yeah that probably means elizabeth! that's probably a murderer's corpse in there!'' #girl these reveals take TIME #the reason the "lisbef'' thing and the ice cream thing work is because we know the plot to fnaf! we know what he's talking about! #we don't need it to be said explicitly! that's what show dont tell is! #and it sucks the wind out of the sails if you just say ''oh yeah that's a reference to elizabeth afton'' #it's like if the op brought up fires and someone immediately said ''oh fazbear frights is gonna burn down btw'' #like NO. THAT'S NOT WHAT GOOD WRITING IS. THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DO REFERENCES TO THE SOURCE MATERIAL. #the reason saying like ''aw i hope mike doesnt get cold in there i hope he brought smth to stay warm :('' works is because it isn't blatant #i mean if you know hte plot to fnaf 3 it is but if you don't it doesn't break immersion by just telling us the plot #all of this is said lightheartedly #anyway. #LIKE NO YOU IDIOTS!!!! DON'T JUST BRING OUT CIRCUS BABY BLATANTLY!!!!!!!!!!!! #YOU'RE TRYING TO RUSH THE STORY!!!!!!!!!!!!! LET IT BUILD UP AND THE PAYOFF WILL BE BETTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! #STOP TRYING TO BE THE MAIN CHARACTER!!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE A SIDE HARACTER HERE ADN THAT IS OKAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[danwhobrowses]

I still can't believe Critical Role in the span of 2 weeks went 'hey remember that ship you like? Well we have this whole episode endorsing it which is awesome' just to suck me in and then this week go 'now that we got the table invested, Taliesin will now whiplash everyone like Imodna did with the sisterzoning but also maybe denial or gauging reactions' and then leave us on that FOR THREE WEEKS

#yes I like critical role I have other hobbies than pokemon wrestling and one piece #though it is fairly new I was like toe dipping with TLOVM then just kinda got swallowed into the void and now hey look they're LOTR chars! #callowmoore #fearne calloway #ashton greymoore #rockwild #fearne x ashton #ashton x fearne #taliesin jaffe #ashley johnson #critical role #bells hells #Taliesin you know what you're doing but that is just mean #I get too invested in ships I like so I crave romantic payoff with the pickpocket love language emperor/empress duo #'let's just get the fans to stew on that while we do Mighty Nein reunion and Candela Obscura and then MAYBE we'll track back to it' like fr #in front of my salad? in front of an invested and encouraging Laura Bailey? the nerve the gumption the audacity!

[eddiezpaghetti]

This line is begging to be paralleled in a Byler way in Season 5. Not just "crazy together", but I mean stupid-on-the-nose paralleled. We're talking quoted exactly.

#Not saying it necessarily WILL. #I'm not psychic. #But holy SHIT does this line have vibes of a setup for a later payoff. #byler #I could totally see Will doing something dangerous for Mike and like...Nancy seeing it. #Not knowing what to say because she and Mike don't really talk. #Especially not about stuff like this. #So if she did want to say something...it'd be with someone else's words.

[mumblesplash]

main thing i want from beyond the spiderverse is mayday parker literally and figuratively walking all over every character tasked with babysitting her for any amount of time except hobie, who continues to have no problems whatsoever

#ideally this would all go down in the background of other more important scenes and have no real payoff #with the possible exception of an epilogue where a slightly-older mayday speaks with a trace of a cockney accent #spiderverse team can do what they want with the rest of the movie i trust them i just really like team anarchy (hobie and mayday) #mumbling #across the spiderverse #atsv

[lgbtlunaverse]

My baby sister has heard of bnha and apparently watched some clips but only some tidbits from the 6th season (mainly the fight with Nagant, who is her favorite) And she very confidently told me that she knows all about keigo, who is hawks. I asked if he knew who dabi has, and she rolled her eyes and told me that yes, she knows he's touya, and that he used to be friends with keigo as kids!

She was very confused when I told her that... no, they weren't. They didn't know each other until adulthood. She insisted that she'd seen a video of them as kids together. I told her it was probably a fan animation, because a lot of people thought Dabi and Hawks knew each other as kids, since Dabi was the only one who knew hawks' real name. But it turned out he just tracked his mom down in secret. She insists that this is stupid, once again confirming that the "dabihawks secret childhood friends/rivals" theory is the only time fanon has ever been better than canon.

#sorry but objectively the 'touya was secretly in the HPSC at one point' theory was SO much better than what we got #not even from a shipper standpoint but a story one #all that buildup with the name and the black fucking speech bubble and NO PAYOFF. BOO! #they didn't even need to like each other! if it turned out they fucking hated each other as kids I would've laughed my ass off #give keigo a complex about how he would have TOALLY done a better job at being endeavor's kid than this nutjob. how dare he #bnha #dabihawks #not necesarily shippy but i think it warrants the tag #dabi #todoroki touya #hawks #takami keigo #also i had some theoretical idea that bnha was popuar with like. children. #but was completely unperpared for the revelation that it's like. a mainstay in 12 year olds' classroom discussions #absolutely terrifying no thank you! #Nagant being her favorite tho TASTE!! I CAN ALWAYS TRUST MY FAMILY

[booasaur]

P-Valley - 2x03 - The Mercedes Experience

#pvalleyedit #p valley #pvalley #mercedes woodbine #farrah haynes #brandee evans #shamika cotton #p valley 2x03 #flashing images tw #farrah x mercedes #femslash related stuff #I wanted to see what exactly the payoff was for this from last week #suffice to say...a good payoff >_> #in this week's ep #this was shot so beautifully #both the routine and the focus on farrah watching it #and the music

[viric-dreams]

The Clandestine Confessor

Robert Jones

Born: Cardiff, 1862

Occupation: Midnighter

Closest to: The Great Game

Qualities: Watchful, Persuasive, Mithridacy

Quirks: Subtle, Steadfast

Jones grew up in the aftershocks of London's Fall. For a brief period, it seemed like anything was possible, the powers turning the wheels were not as inevitable as they seemed. He turned to politics at an early age, notably agitating for a Celtic Union in London's absence from the Isles.

His political ambitions came to a sudden and violent end in the late 80s, when he was arrested at a rally. He'd been a thorn in their side for years. This time, he would be made an example of--to serve his extended sentence in New Newgate.

Those first several years in the Neath were not pleasant. The conditions at New Newgate had nearly worn Jones down, when one day a letter appeared in his cell. An interested party knew of his political background and was willing to make a deal: He could either continue to rot in his cell, or take the offer and step onto the chessboard.

The Great Game gave him a new lease on life, but he refuses to let it consume him. Jones believes in a strong wall between profession and personal life, and has no interest in speaking about what it is that he does to either friend or stranger. He does enjoy the work (what he remembers of it) and the sense of absolving agents of their burdens. Outside of work, however, he works to maintain an active social life. His time in Newgate took a toll on him and he's no longer the young firebrand he once was, but he still holds a certain degree of magnetism, when he wants to turn it on. He enjoys social gatherings, content to stake out a corner and observe the guests around him. On occasion, he'll step into the centre of the group and entertain them with a tale in which he somehow manages to express so much, yet nothing at all.

(the scar near his temple came from a constable's baton during a protest turned ugly in the early 80s)

#jones #my art #the guys keep multiplying #astra i'm blaming you #which is a fairly common occurrence at this point #as usual #so much work for what started out as a bit #but is now a thing with incredibly delayed payoff #now i need to go draw the homieship

[ragnarokhound]

puts this on your list of things to do

Skcnwksks *adds another stone atop the mountain, and the world sinks another inch closer to hell

But okay fr. I actually read Knight Terrors: Robin today, and with the enormous grain of salt that I am working mostly with fandom osmosis, esp re: their established relationship, I think they alllllmost wrote something that worked. Almost. Long rambling nitpicks under the cut:

I think if they had about three more pages they could have established Tim and Jason's relationship and their problems with working together a little better; and either cut Babs out as the middle man who introduced their individual issues to the audience, or used her more effectively as a mediator.

They very clearly wanted to showcase two problems: Tim is working himself to death trying to save everyone, and Jason is suffering by insisting on working alone. Good! I like this concept. It's annoying to me that Babs is the one who tries to reach out to both of them about these issues, gets rebuffed, and then is never heard from again. I'd much prefer it if they tried to talk to each other on their own and it went poorly at first, only to be forced to open up in the nightmare realm. It would tighten up their combined arc if they'd had one single conversation before the Inciting Incident occurs.

Like, don't get me wrong. I am waffling about this because Babs is a good entry voice to help introduce our primary actors. She is the person they have in common, and by having her be the voice in their ear, we see that other people in their support networks are worried about them.

But man, why not just have Tim monologue to himself about being ready to wrap up his third bust of the night and consider hitting up Jason to see if he needs help on the intergang drug bust he's in the middle of. It could be on Tim's way to the next place he's going, demonstrating that he's stretching himself thin and looking for even more to do; even with people like Jason who he isn't all that close with. And then Tim and Jason have their own snarky conversation (with some veiled flirting) about not needing each other's help or each other's nagging, and that's when the nightmare mist hits.

Because the story is only tangentially about people other than Jason and Tim. They're both too wrapped up in their own problems to notice other people reaching out to them about their fucked behavior. So Babs could have been used as a yardstick for each of them - Tim dismissed her fears at first, Jason hung up on her outright - but only if she comes back.

If Babs had also been there at the end to check in with them, yeah, it might have lessened the impact of Jason's plea for help and getting only Tim in response, but it would have been the indicator that they were now ready to hear the worries expressed by their loved ones. A very *clear* indicator of what has changed in the narrative that justifies Babs' involvement in the first place. You could have her come in right as Tim and Jason are catching up after the initial plea, having just escaped her own nightmare (*editors note: see Babs' knight terrors issue, lmao). She could groggily direct them to someone who needs help. All three of them are working together now, Tim and Jason are on their way to opening up to more people; huzzah

And hell. If you want to justify why Tim knows stuff about Jason he shouldn't - or why Jason might know something about Tim that he shouldn't for that matter - a little extra time spent together in the nightmare zone is great for that. Make them see each other's worst memories. Make them see each other's defining moments. Make it the twisted, terrible, self-directed-blame version of events that exists in their heads, and then they can separately call bullshit.

You literally put them into a shared mind palace!! Why did Tim know that about Sheila? Because he just saw it in Jason's head. How does Jason know Tim has a savior complex too big to shoulder? Same deal. IMO, this would have made their insistence that the other person is better than they think much more natural. It's not an empty sentiment because 'I've literally seen what you think of yourself and I am telling you that it isn't true'. (They're in a shared mindscape. Why not imply that they are seeing what the other is seeing too. That they're having a shared experience and are privy to each other's thoughts, emotions, and memories? Easy to do. "I feel like I'm walking to class in the 10th grade...but when I was that age, I was 6 feet under." "And I'm positive I'm picking up ammo for a gun I don't own. I think it's safe to say we're sharing a dream.")

I'm also ??? about why the nightmare zone let them talk at all?? Maybe that's something that we don't have time to explain/ it doesn't need explaining, but if I were a terrible nightmare creature and I was menacing two people at once, I simply wouldn't let them exist in the same space. Isolation is key to breaking someone's will. If you let them talk to each other they could help each other. Fool. Buffoon. Literally the only reason to let them talk to each other is if you think they'll make each other worse lmao.

There was a clever visual trick in which Jason hits the void barrier and Tim sees the ripples he makes - but iirc that is the closest we get to an explanation of how they might be breaking through to each other. And it happened after they were almost done with their second conversation. Too little, too late, IMO.

Arguments could be made that they were able to break through because they were approaching a hard limit. Jason hears Tim again when he yells at his double to shut up, when Jason himself is just about ready to throw in the towel. The moment of deepest despair, the realization for both of them that they're not cut out to solve the problem with their current method. Something something, breaking the pattern - but why let them, unless the nightmare can't do anything about it? I do like a monster with a secret weakness, so I'm willing to let it slide now that I've talked it out lol but still. It feels like an unearned conversation when the only convo they had before was mostly exposition.

Anyway. Tldr; if the writers had a few more pages and shown us Tim and Jason's conflict with each other rather than water it down via Babs (OR BROUGHT HER BACK TO TIE IT ALL UP WITH A BOW) it would have been a tighter & more interesting story.

#wow that rant got a little long skxndbdjsj #anyway i think i want to own a copy of knight terrors robin now #i want it on my shelf so i can shake it around every now and then and remind myself of what we could have had #cause its honestly not the worst #it just suffers from being a spin off storyline without enough time to sufficiently set up its payoff #jaytim #also im still enamored by how that convo would go #jason: drake? is that you? #tim: jason? where are you? are you okay? #jason: not remotely. but first things first *coughs blood* what are you wearing