Batfamily Powerpoint Night!

good news i finished Tim Drake : Robin, bad news i need More i want More i crave More i should've had a DC interest back when this was on going because i would've been the biggest hypeman ever.

Tim Drake unaware king, he doesn't know he lives in a place that would be the Top One Spot for hiding twenty bodies stitched together like the second coming of human centepede.

this also shows timbern loserboyxloserboy they are both losers about each other. they are so whipped with each other. i bet they sleep with the other in their mind and they twirl their hair while thinking of the other. Losers.

it also showed the 'vigilante is accused that they are dating their Own Vigilante Self' and its Funny

in conclussion, read Tim Drake : Robin so you can see him as a badass vigilante and the most loserboy boyfriend ever. he Cannot lie to bernard, he is Whipped.

cross guild plays uno

I need you to know that I did say that word for word and @emiko-fan-2podcasterin can thank me for this

Watching psych for the first time with my bestie @m-le , we’re on ep 3 and…she really doesn’t like Henry Spencer…like she absolutely hates him for the way he treated Shawn as a child…and yeah like…it’s valid but I’m just so torn bc I know how he’s gonna be later on 😅

Bernard Dowd and the Art of Recontextualization

I'm what you might call a "fake Batman fan" - that is, I've only watched most of the Batman animated series', all of the live action movies, most of the animated ones, played some of the video games... so, you know, probably thousands of hours of my life in Batman related media. But not the comics! Fake fan!

Frankly, I find the comics medium the way DC and Marvel do it to be really hard to follow. There's the fact that you can't really follow an individual solo character without them getting caught up in massive crossover events that ruin their arc and pacing, there's the soap-opera-iness that encourages cheap and revolving conflicts inherent to the longform monthly release schedule, the writer roulette, and there's also just that going back to try and thread a particular continuity or character is an exercise in frustration. Oh and the retcons. Everyone hates those. They've (basically) never been good. Don't remember this part it will never come up aga

But, you know, despite this - or maybe because of this - comics is a breeding ground for ideas. Because of the quick turnaround and the demand for novel conflicts, comics just churn out idea after idea. Good ideas, bad ideas, doesn't matter. Get it to print. Retcon it later if we write ourselves into a corner. Comics are often soooooo first draft coded. This is why I personally prefer adaptations - they often reimagine ideas and retcon them into new narratives where they can serve a more coherent plot. But what happens when a character is picked up for a second draft ... without actually contradicting the earlier material? While enriching the earlier material, even?

(SPOILERS for Tim Drake: Robin and uh... 20 year old comics under the cut!)

So, uh, quick disclaimer - because I have very little overall knowledge of DC's Comics continuity, there may be more interesting examples of times that what I'm going to point out was done. But I love Bernard and from a writer's POV I'm impressed with the way they did it so we're talking about Bernard lmao

The Beginning (Robin 1993) - Reading comics from the 2000s hurts in a way I can't describe

Okay so I heard Tim Drake is dating a guy now? (Penny Sonic voice) Whoa he's bisexual I didn't know that! I'm sure people on the internet are being very normal about this. Cool let's find out more about his new bf. I like starting from the beginning... so like yeah hold on while I crack open the Robin comic and take down what this guy's deal is.

😬

So basically the TL;DR of Bernard in his original appearances is that he seems to be an attempt to introduce some normal stakes teen drama into Tim's life. He has all the Funny Guy Friend Classics - he's got an inflated sense of his proficiency at pulling girls, he's inexplicably drawn towards the protagonist (who is cooler than him), he wants to date the most popular girl in school, and he wants to get down with older women!

This might just be me but while I was going through this I thought like, he almost reads a little uncanny, like he's been filtered through a Disney Teen Special. In practice he mostly serves to introduce Tim to the Real Plot, Darla Aquista, and be one of his ties to civilian life, which is, like, fine. He's ultimately just a background character and he's so unimportant that he only has one appearance after their school gets shot up(!!!), which is, again, to be more of an accessory to the Darla plot.

After this display of "wow this guy's kind of lowkey insane for offering to his resurrected bestie supervillainess to be her manager actually", he's dropped forever. Comics! We're not gonna unpack that.

The Sequel (Batman: Urban Legends) - We're Gonna Unpack That

Until almost two decades later when he calls Tim up for a date. And while I'm trying to skim over a lot to get to the point here and I don't really know the FULL context, it is notable that Tim is in the middle of an identity crisis / the cusp of adulthood when this happens (I think he just lost a spleen or something. That sucks dude). It's pretty implicit that part of the reason he's going to see Bernard is because he's someone familiar in a time when he's facing a lot of new and scary stuff.

And at first blush, he really does seem like the same dude. The familiar arm over the shoulder, the banter, it's all very casual and similar to the ribbing from high school -

- and I guess nothing has happened to Bernard in the interim haha he's just the funny friend guy right?

I really like the way they did this. I'm just unambiguously going to praise how good this is if you just came off the 2000s stuff. Comics have kind of breakneck pacing by nature but they really manage to condense down and then pull off a neat sleight of hand over the course of like four pages here. They re-establish Bernard as a silly guy and then wham you with the fact that yeah actually we ARE gonna unpack that. Fuck you Tim Drake life is ever changing and nothing stays the same

So the TL;DR on the rest of the Urban Legends storyline is that stuff like, HAPPENED to this guy while our focus was elsewhere. He learned martial arts, presumably so that he wouldn't be so helpless in the next school shooting level event, he got into a pain cult, he's just Not Doing Well. We find out, reading between the lines, that calling Tim on a date was probably one of his last attempts to reach out to someone when the cult stuff was getting really bad.

I've heard people complain that Bernard is uninteresting or not a character or entirely focused on his relationship with Tim, and I think that criticism is really weird considering that his entire re-debut focuses on the point that he's been having his own life and making his own (often wild) decisions - ones that really changed the course of his life - while Tim was gone. And it's also notable that this story is about how the fact that he's his own person and has changed and has made the nerve-wracking decision to take action and call Tim inspires Tim himself to take a leap and fling himself into the uncertain waters of young adulthood.

Me when I have my bi awakening and call to get out of a rut simultaneously because Cute Insane Guy Inspired Me. iconic

So that's how Bernard has changed. But that's not recontextualization, that's just the writers taking a guy and making him do another, cooler thing. Well hold the fuck on because we're not goddamn done.

What did he mean by th-

The Recontextualizerrrrr (Tim Drake: Robin) - Bernard is the funniest person in Gotham City. I'll not be taking constructive criticism on this

Tim Drake: Robin is the followup to the Urban Legends story and Tim is the main character fr. Obviously. but Bernard is also a major character. Later, he even gets to be a POV character. But they don't do that for several issues, instead treating us to his shenanigans from Tim's point of view as he solves a bizarre serial murder case and like, they're cute! And neither of them are normal in the slightest. I love that for them.

Again, TL;DR, there are a lot of interactions where Bernard talks to Tim both in and out of costume, but we don't get to see his POV until they go out to a restaurant and meet Bernard's parents there by accident and Tim has to run off to do Robin stuff. And like... a lot of stuff happens in this one bois. Whammy after whammy

We're suddenly introduced explicitly to a lot that was only implied or just completely unavailable before. Bernard's parents are ragingly homophobic. Probably were never great even before that. He suffers from depression. All that is a lot to. wait. hold on a second

he knows?????

HE KNOWS????

Okay so if you stop at this point and reread the entire run so far you find out that Bernard is in fact the biggest troll in the entire universe. This is the moment that cemented him as my favourite, by the way. Like I had a feeling that he knew and I was just laughing my ass off when my suspicions were confirmed.

But this is really interesting on top of that because Bernard has been revealed to be, at this point, a guy who you should look deeper than the surface to understand. Someone who masks his true self and whose true motivations you can only uncover if you're really looking past the facade. Even with Tim, he sort of offers Tim and Robin half the story each, taking advantage of Robin's "distance" to give out information he wants Tim to think about but that he's reluctant to talk about frankly while at the same time almost daring Tim to open up about his identity.

Absolutely most normal way to tell your bf about your cult trauma. You'll always be famous to me Bernard Dowd

This is a really neat trick by the writers. It makes Bernard a multifaceted character who got to quietly develop while we were mostly focused on Tim, and there's some clever clever foreshadowing they set up in this run to achieve this. If it were just this, I would call it good writing.

But it actually goes one level deeper than that and becomes something really really special. because as we all know, Bernard was not conceived to be this way, he was a one-off guy who was kind of annoying and he was essentially retconned to be, like. Gay? Have depth? Be funny? All of those things?

The Seamless Retcon (Robin 1993 Again) - We took your guy and we gave him gay subtext and it worked astoundingly well

This is not a new observation btw, I've seen a ton of posts to this effect. But oh my god. Some of these panels really hit different with the new Bernard lore. Like holy fuck just read this back to back

There are tons of moments like this. There's SO MUCH that the revelation that Bernard is queer adds to his initially extremely underwhelming tenure in the Robin comics. A reread almost begs the question of what Bernard must have been thinking at any given moment! BRO YOU SAID YOU WANTED TO FUCK HIS STEPMOM. That's completely believable as a next-level closeting move and goes from kind of annoying to turbofunny.

Like yeah of course he's acting like a douche. His father is a status-chasing asshole and he's five racks deep in the closet. Of course he gravitates towards Tim - his gaydar is pinging and he thinks Tim is cute. And it's also pinging that Tim is like. You know

None of this would hit as hard if the writers had not set up Bernard as someone who masks so much. They worked it in that character trait to mean that you could always glean information deeper than the surface from his top level interactions.

Because of this, Bernard is really fucking interesting and he's a good character and he's one that gets better on reread. Like I said, that's a set of observations that are not new to me. But something that really gets to me is how seamless and intentional it is. It really feels like the writer sat down and took their time devising a guy that is believable as that other guy, but only if you read back with certain context.

The conclusion - Comics. Man.

So is this just about how Bernard is really fucking interesting and he's a good character and he's one that gets better on reread and that he can exist independent of Tim and all the haters are wrong. Yeah of course. 💖

But also like, I have thoroughly proven to myself that I was kinda wrong to just reject the published comics medium out of hand. I see now that there's room for the writer's roulette to hit the jackpot and that something I mistook as an outright flaw, the winding and unfocused and often improvised nature of it, can be ridden like a wave if you're skilled enough to do it. Meghan Fitzmarten is a goddamned genius.

I guess I have to read comics now. Fuck

hey after kristoph gavin planted atroquinine in a kid's favorite nailpolish, while he was spending seven long agonizing years waiting for the kid to actually poison herself, how badly do you think he pissed his dumb little blue pants when 6 years in his brother presumably out of nowhere published a song titled "atroquinine my love" and made the whole world sing it for a little while

a very self-indulgent idea i got after watching the last ep of fmab anime or “and there were two beds but they ignored it”

Gedanken meinerseits zu die drei ???

Falls die drei sich je fürs College oder so trennen müssten, gibt es zwei Optionen:

1. sehr dramatische Situation, viele Tränen, viel Depression, viel alles, sie gehen zu dritt zur Therapie für mehrere Termine, löst sich freundlich und einigermaßen gut

2. auch Drama, Streit, Schuldgefühle, schlechte Kommunikation und die ganzen schlechten Seiten von deren basically co-dependency, reden vllt für eine längere Zeit nicht

In beiden fällen gibt es deren weirde co-dependence aber in einem Fall klären sie dies bevor es zum brechpunkt wird (weil co-dependency nicht healthy ist auf langzeit)

Am realistischsten ist es aber sowieso dass die ne WG machen und zumindest in der gleichen Stadt College/Arbeit haben (finde ich zumindest). Aber auch da müssen sie natürlich irgendwann ihre Probleme ansprechen 🤷🏻

Noch ein Gedanke

Habe die Rewe Edition Die drei ??? Bücher gelesen, welche jetzt nicht super charakterisieren aber

Man hätte zum Treffen zwischen Peter und Jeffrey auch Verabredung oder halt Treffen sagen können aber es wurde explizit das Wort Date genutzt

Ich spreche nur das aus was auf den Seiten steht (don’t boo me, im right)

Weiß aber auch nicht wie Canon diese Bücher sind . But still they exist with very queer undertones✋🏻

Und auch zu den Editionen: ich liebe Ellen, sie taucht zwar nur kurz auf aber sie ist so relatable . Sehr viel Liebe an Ellen und an Mandy die drei Sätze hatte und im Customer Service arbeitet, es ist nicht einfach🫶

Das war’s für heute

Disclaimer: Ich weiß nicht doll viel und bin müde also falls was nicht stimmt… der Mülleimer steht neben der Tür (/j)

It’s also basically all @emiko-fan-2podcasterin fault so… :)

I’m a big fan of all of these having main colors to work with and making them more stand out against eachother but also leaning more into the design of teh celestial spirits themselves <3

redesigning star dresses part 2!

part 1

notes and individuals are below!

virgo ~

- really wanted to step away from that sexy maid aesthetic. my goal was to mix maid with a princess silhouette to reference virgo’s nickname for lucy.

- so i added elements of cinderella’s look like the side fabrics, choker and longer dress.

- using just black is so boring so i brought in some pink and chose to instead use greys

- so many lucy dresses have pigtails so changing the hair also has a more practical element because it’s pulled away.

~ scorpio

- I actually love the og scorpio dress. It’s so different to all the other looks and so easy to distinguish that it’s scorpio.

- i wanted to play into a trackstar / athlete look just so it has an aesthetic that stands out. i also used shapes found in scorpios tail and neck frill in her armour and top.

- i absolutely love the new hair, i wanted it to resemble a scorpion tails! Also just was bored by the normal head band and u know what why not do a cutest bow.

~ sagittarius

- my least fav og dress is is sag. the colour, the lack of shade range and the outfit is just…. yer not cute.

- so i was inspired by more fantasy archers and sag’s colours are screaming cool earthy ranger.

- i think the final result much better resembles sag in the colours and aesthetic.

~ capricorn

- this luxus bad girl moment and i love it. The og one is pretty good but i wanted to fully push it more.

- there’s strands of hair coming out of her bun to resemble horns and belt to resemble a tail.

- the og design is too black so i went with a darker purple to stand out. I didn’t want virgo and capricorns to look like a matching set.

~ aquarius

- there was a lot of pressure to do aquarius well because it’s significant star dress, a fan favourite and my own star sign!

- i leaned more in the mermaid aesthetic by using more fin silhouettes and pearl detailing

- i wanted to make it more practical so a more supported bikini and mini skirt under the fin like fabric.

~ full set

i’m so super proud of these designs and i’ve actually seen an improvement in my art. Maybe in the future i’ll do a piece with all of them or do yukinos dresses so lmk if ur into that.

if ur looked this far ty so much for reading all my notes xxx

Me and my friend talking about Charles and Erik be like:

Friend: They ruin me every time I think about them too much

Me: They could’ve had it all with a compromise but NOOOOO CHARLES, YOU HAD TO GET SHOT AND LET ERIK CRIPPLE YOU

Friend: But also : communication??? They don’t know her !!! Like literally??!!! Talk with a couples therapist between you and her having a spray bottle for cats in her hands

Heavily encouraged by @emiko-fan-2podcasterin

Hatte einen Post über die TKKG Episode „Hinterhalt am schwarzen Fels“ gesehen und der Part mit dem Wolf heulen von Tim hat eine wilde Idee bei mir gefestigt:

Tim als Prinzessin Mononoke und dann Gabi als Ashitaka (der Typ von Prinzessin mononoke halt) und dann halt der Plot des Filmes aber halt mit dieser Änderung…

War einfach dieser Sprung von Wolf zu Prinzessin mononoke der extremst Sinn für mich gemacht hat lol

Enjoy this peace of wild thought of mine