I Still Hate Writing Fighting Sequences But I Think I'm Getting Better At Them

THANK YOU FOR NOT MAKING JASON SLYTHERIN LIKE ALMOST EVERYONE DOES.

I KNOW ITS SO STUPID JUST BECAUSE HE'S THE "BAD" ONE LIKE NO STOP MY BOY LOVES TO LEARN OKAY

but i never imagined a dot quite as pale or as blue

[ comms open ]

At what point do the viewers start thinking Jess' videos are staged and what do the lanterns do about it

hello! excellent question

it's pretty early on, actually, as the audience becomes increasingly confused and suspicious of the fact that hal never knows what's going on.

this man is so horribly out of date with current affairs that he's genuinely shocked when jess tells him obama is no longer president and hasn't been in years. the theories come in from the viewers: confusion, brain damage, early onset dementia.

or maybe, just maybe, he's faking it.

part of the draw around hal is that he's very out of touch on internet things. this is thought to be because he's older but that's not quite it. hal just doesn't spend enough time on earth to ever bother to know what's going on and even though he's staying on earth a lot more these days, he's not the type to actively research the president.

there's other stuff too. it's entirely unbelievable that jess casually knows two green lanterns and everyone else there is a complete enigma and also really fucking weird. hal also seems a little too clueless at times while doing certain things and trends that are particularly connected to pop culture (he barely knows who taylor swift is, someone help him)

it gets to a point where jess is facing outright accusations of faking everything and things kinda do spiral. she doesn't tell hal (lord knows the pta meets do enough damage to this man's blood pressure already) but she does tell the others.

kyle suggests some kind of qna. jess vetoes that because hal probably wouldn't want to. jo says to maybe do some kind of challenge to distract? jess considers that but it's a fat maybe. simon kinda just grumbles that there's really nothing they can do because anything could be edited on the internet and they'd never have the trust of the masses. no one could ever get how weird hal is in person. jess's eyes light up.

the next dozen videos are all just to showcase how fucking odd this man is. he eats a spoonful of cinnamon with a straight face. hal even turns to jess and asks if she's got more (she doesn't give him any). he does the ice bucket challenge. hal barely flinches. the internet learns that hal jordan cannot do the worm but can toss jess and kyle into the air like a cheerleader effortlessly. his favourite movie is top gun and he doesn't know there's a sequel until jess tells him on camera (he then spends two minutes frantically googling before bolting out of the room to ask john if they have it on streaming). he can fly jets. he watched his dad burn to death (this garners a lot of alarm over the internet and gets zero follow up from jess). he dated a ceo. he has no clue what queer labels are but is 'auntie hal' just as much as he's 'uncle hal'. he's (allegedly) married to a man (no one knows to who and it's driving them nuts).

the point is, hal jordan is a wholeass enigma so who cares if he doesn't know who the damn president is?

the internet drop the entire thing pretty quickly. the lanterns become uber famous shortly afterwards and no one ever gets any answers ever. jess comes out on top as she always will.

tim drake's rules brain

I did promise I'd use this account for long form analysis of Batman characters' psychological problems. Something I was talking about on twitter the other day was that to me, one of Tim's primary drivers is his sense of duty -- his need to figure out the correct action and take it. This comes out either in family/social obligations ("I have to quit Robin because my dad said so and he's my dad") or in broader obligations he takes on ("I have to become Robin because Batman needs someone, and nobody else is doing it").

This trait of his is super compelling to me because it's both a strength and something that backfires on Tim constantly -- it's a big source of crunch. On twitter I called him the world's worst utilitarian: he will identify a need and then do pretty much anything short of murder to fill it, even if it tramples over things like his happiness or other people's boundaries.

It's pretty popular in fandom right now to frame his origins like: Tim figures out Batman's identity young, then spends years running around Gotham at night taking photos of Batman and Robin. This is fine!! This is a fine story! Have fun!!

But to me the compelling thing about his intro in A Lonely Place of Dying is that it goes more like: Tim figures out Batman's identity young, and doesn't do anything with this other than keep up with Batman news. While at boarding school he see Batman go apeshit when Jason dies, decides he has to fix this, and during his next week off from school he goes to Gotham and stalks Batman, Nightwing, and Starfire to figure out what's up, makes a plea to Nightwing to come home (without ever telling Nightwing his name because that's not relevant to the task!), and then finally takes on Robin because someone has to do it and he's the closest candidate (while firmly believing he's just a temp substitute!).

The compelling thing is how fast he goes from nondescript eighth-grader to stalker to Robin as soon as he convinces himself he has to do it.

And he does this constantly. My boy sees the world through the lens of rules/obligations/correct actions.

Like I said above, he quits Robin when his dad tells him to, because he needs to respect his dad.

He learns to skateboard (and builds a rocket-powered skateboard) because his dad sells his car and he needs to find a way to get around. Is he a 1990s teenager who just wants to skateboard? Yes. But he has to find a way to make it an obligation.

His conflict in Young Justice 98 is a conflict of obligations! Batman told him he isn't allowed to tell anyone his identity, while his YJ teammates can't trust him because he won't share his identity. Tim repeatedly asks Batman for permission and is bitter about getting a negative response, but won't go behind his back: he needs to respect his duty. (He's super relieved and gleeful when a villain reveals his identity to the team -- it's out of his hands! oh no! what a pity!!)

When Bruce tells Stephanie his identity he's furious at Bruce for the breach of trust and giving Steph more info than he wants her to have, but also specifically for breaking their contract -- they have an agreement and they need to follow it. Tim follows it! Why isn't Bruce??

Throughout the 90s, Bruce's failures to Tim are framed by Tim basically as breaches of contract. It isn't "this isn't a just or kind way to behave to someone in your life," it's "we had a deal and you need to follow it." Batman's 16th birthday present to Tim is two weeks of psychological torture in the form of a fake time-travel mystery; when Tim figures out it was a test, he's furious Bruce for the breach of trust and quits, but he returns within a week because 1) all his friends are capes and he'll never see them again as a civilian and 2) someone needs to protect Gotham. (His loneliness/desire for companionship is another Big Tim Trait imo. but that's another over-long tumblr post.)

Battle for the Cowl is not a good arc but I do think it's significant that in it Tim is the one who lets Jason out of prison, because in a way they're family, and you need to give family a second chance. That's the deal with families.

There's a point in 90s Robin where Tim builds himself a mobile computer system and teaches himself to type on a one-handed keyboard because he needs to find a way to look stuff up in the field without Oracle. Like the skateboard thing... he doesn't actually talk about just wanting to be a keyboard guy. Lots of people have fun building keyboards as a hobby, Tim. No. He has to invent an obligation about it.

[Tim Drake Fake Uncle Scam Arc Goes Here]

Red Robin is entirely about Tim deciding he needs to achieve a series of increasingly ridiculous goals. He needs to prove Bruce is alive. He needs to keep Wayne Enterprises solvent. He needs to take out the League of Assassins. If this ends with him as 1) the boy-king CEO of Wayne Enterprises 2) missing a spleen 3) obliged to pretend to have two broken legs for a year 4) the target of multiple real and fake assassination attempts 5) out of contact and on the outs with his family for months he'll do it. because he needs to.

As a counterpoint to the above, if he doesn't feel an obligation he'll do absolutely whatever. He lies to Batman constantly if it isn't something he feels Batman needs to know.

I could keep going. I'm forcing myself to stop here. This is too long.

Tim isn't "the smart Robin." Tim is the Robin who has weaponized the feeling of I Just Gotta so hard that he can use it to take down Ra's al Ghul. And watching himself either get trapped in an obligation or make one up so he can do what he wanted in the first place is part of what makes him so interesting to me!! ok thanks.

Hey OP? Meet me at the ball pit, I just wanna talk I promise,,,,

SHARE YOUR HEADCANON! BURN US TO ASHES!!

I want you to remember that you asked for this.

I was thinking about Jason’s resurrection and how it was never really explained. I still don’t have an explanation, but I started wondering if he was the only one this had happened to. So the symptoms that I know are that he was like a zombie—confused, disoriented, easily frightened, pale, disheveled. Right? And supposedly the Lazarus Pit is what brought out his unhinged rage.

I don’t think that’s the case because Damian didn’t have those symptoms, at least not that I’ve seen. (And apparently Cass used the Pit as well? And I’ve never seen her shown as displaying a Jason-level rage.) You have to remember that my comics background is very light, but also the comics are a mess, I stick to the narrow band of consistent characteristics, fight me.

So, returning to Jason’s so-called Pit madness, what if the Pit wasn’t the cause of the rage? 

What if the ABSOLUTELY UNMANAGEABLE LEVELS OF STRESS caused by being violently murdered, stitched back together, and then having to DIG YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR OWN COFFIN ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT YOUR FAMILY REPLACED YOU were the true origin of his issues? 

And all the Pit was responsible for was making him lucid enough to express that fairly quickly and also erasing his physical injuries?

If you accept this premise, then you get something very interesting. What if ~someone~ died in a similarly awful fashion and was raised by this unknown power, but did NOT have the baptism by Pit? What would you have then?

You would have a confused, disoriented person still bearing the scars of their death and whatever psychological trauma that was a part of them when they died compounded by likely also digging themselves out of their own grave. Their trauma would likely be amplified by the time it would take to piece back together what little was left of their mind after being resurrected. 

Now assume this person had no Talia to direct their rage. Oh and the pale-as-death skin. Don’t forget that. You could even, feasibly, add in a small backstory about this person being taught as a child to laugh at their fears. 

So you have a psychologically unhinged, physically damaged person with death-madness, no fixed point for their rage, unerased scars from whatever killed them, unnaturally pale skin, and terror out the wazoo because haiiiii murdered and resurrected six feet underground, and then they remember to laugh at their fears. 

What do you get?

Clark: and then Krypton exploded killing everyone on it

Bruce: That's so sad batcomputer play despacito

The book this is from is justice league: 5 minute stories.

The reason Clark is chasing Hal on a motorbike is because he's been whammied by Poison Ivy and whammied Clark isn't that smart (Hal just likes motorbikes I guess)

The book includes other highlights such as:

Lex's cheesy lines

Aquaman with a shark plushie

Clark and Bruce undercover

And a smiling, waving Hal

I was at the bookstore the other day and I found a book featuring Hal being chased by Clark on a motorcycle

Emerald storm

What is a mother?

Batgirl (2000) #25 // Batman (1940) #567 // Batgirl (2000) #54 // Batgirl (2000) #49 // DC First: Batgirl/Joker // Batgirl (2000) #52 + Batgirl (2024) #6