Lin

I just- where’s the line drawn, is my question? Like when does something (like a ship) step into the territory of genuinely not being okay. is there a line.

and maybe this is a sign that I shouldn’t ever publish my work but as an aroace person my characters are all deep extensions of myself and I’d be WILDLY uncomfortable if people shipped them. to the point that I probably shouldn’t put my work out there if this is the majority sentiment.

like I’m in fandoms where the creators have said “hey don’t ship these characters” “don’t do this please” and people have been okay with it so I’m confused to where this is coming from.

anyways sorry im just trying not to walk out into the world with a wildly incorrect stance.

im incredibly surprised and honestly disappointed that Tumblr of all places is where a majority of people are saying that they just don't respect creators asking for their boundaries to be met.

also i wanna just remind you that conforming to large groups doesn't always mean that they're correct! if you know of somethings accuracy and majority of people are wrong, you don't change your stance just to fit in even tho it's wrong and you know it's wrong. (I feel like this can relate to a SHIT TON of things in the world but I feel like it's a good thing to mention here)

Literally anything beyond that is attempting to control the thoughts and actions of people who are not yourself, which is both futile and immoral. Which is why so many people are having strong ‘no’ reactions to the poll question.

Fandom isn't for creators. IP holders aren't the Supreme Authority for fandom.

Fandom wouldn't be fandom if fans stuck only to what creators dictated. Non-canon ships wouldn't be a thing if we all restricted ourselves to that.

And I can remember a time when canon queer characters were an extreme rarity.

But if you mean will I obey it, then no, not necessarily. I will listen to their reasoning and go along with it if I find it compelling, but being the author of the book/director of the show/actor of the character/whoever does not confer automatic veto power over fandom.

So I voted no, because I'm pretty sure "respect" in this poll means "obey" but I made this post because this is a rhetorical trick to watch out for. The immediate slide from respect to obedience allows the general concept of respect to be weaponized.

Some people don't want X and Y characters shipped because it's an interracial relationship and they're a racist fuck.

Some people just don't want X and Y characters shipped because they think they have an innate right to control how other people (including people who literally paid to engage with the media they intentionally made public in order to make money) get to interact with the media they indulge in, and the fandom around said media. Which, frankly, no, no one has that right. As people expressed eloquently upthread, you do not get to dictate other people's completely harmless actions.

All of these reasons are complete bullshit. Hell, the idea that what not-for-profit fiction you can write in your spare time should EVER be subject to the explicit or tacit permission of someone else is bullshit. It's fiction. It literally does not and should not matter to anyone what you're writing, certainly not to the point where anyone should be trying to control it!

Wild to me that we live in a world where there are people who will genuinely defend the right of AI programs to steal people's work in order to generate profit for the companies that make them, while they will SIMULTANEOUSLY argue that a random person doesn't have the right to draw casual fanart of two characters together because it makes the creator uncomfy. When did we develop this idea that it is the responsibility of random strangers who have never spoken to you or formed any kind of agreement with you that they need to maintain your mental health by only engaging in activities you approve of in their free time? When did we as a society become so utterly incapable of managing our OWN mental health by taking the steps we need to protect ourselves from things that might harm or upset us, and instead decided to foist that emotional labor onto the shoulders of everyone around us instead?

And honestly, trusting your mental and emotional well-being to the charity and consideration of others is just...a terrible idea. You can make all the impassioned pleas and impotent demands you want, but you cannot force people to cater to what's best for you if they don't want to. (And, let's be real, a lot of the pleas and demands y'all make are really unreasonable anyway, and do not deserve to be honored because they are in and of themselves denying OTHER PEOPLE agency or the right to have their own personal boundaries. Just because some requests for consideration can be valid does not mean all requests are.)

You need to be able to protect your own well-being regardless of whether or not people are willing to work with you to protect your peace because, yeah, sometimes you will be in situations where no one else can and/or WILL work with you, and if you can't look out for yourself in those situations then you're going to end up in an awful place. Relying on others completely to manage your emotional and mental health via THEIR actions - which you cannot fully control - makes you way too easy to hurt or take advantage of. And frankly, it's a level of responsibility over you that very few people in your life (and certainly zero people who should be trusted with it) will ever ask for, or want.

If you create a piece of media and you don't ever want people to misinterpret it, to re-imagine it, to go outside the boundaries of what you personally envisioned for that piece of media and the characters within...then that piece of media needs to stay within your head. When you invite people to engage with a piece of media you made, you cannot control what they get out of it or what they do with it, and frankly, most creators have no desire to try. How people engage with your work can be (and often is) one of the most fascinating things for a creator to witness, and I genuinely pity the creators too fragile to cope with people going outside the narrowly defined limits they try to set on their works.

Real talk: if you can't handle your work or your characters being subjected to any treatment outside of the range of what you personally consider acceptable...then frankly, I'm sorry, but that is genuinely a personal problem you have with an excessive need for control that makes you incompatible with the whole concept of sharing your creations with others. (It's probably also unhealthy in general for the relationships in your life; trying to exert excessive control on other people is not a good or pleasant personality trait. Not trying to armchair diagnose anyone here, but if you're trying to control fandom over fiction, it's not hard to imagine you might be a control freak in other things too.) Sharing anything means you forfeit a level of control over it to those you're sharing with. And if you can't handle sharing your things, okay, that's fine - you don't have to. No one is making you share your creations with the world. But if you want to share your things with the world, for profit or any other reason, and then share them, then you have chosen to make a trade-off. You have CHOSEN to relinquish absolute control in favor of having an audience. Again, you still retain the basic rights to your work, but you don't have - and NEVER had - the ability to dictate to people what they do for casual fun in their own time just because they now have a Barbie that looks exactly like yours. You put the Barbie on the shelf for them to buy. You don't get to tell them how to play with it.

Being the creator of a piece of media, no matter how popular it might be, does not mean you are infallible or incapable of being unreasonable, and these kinds of demands ARE completely unreasonable and deserve to be ignored. You are the one who needs to manage your expectations of other people, your emotional responses to fandom, and your controlling tendencies/lack of understanding of boundaries.

If you as a person in fandom think these kinds of demands, this kind of control, is normal, then you have been submerged in some very controlling, fucked-up mindsets for a very long time, to the point where you perceive some person you have no obligations to demanding the right to exert control over your harmless recreational activities as healthy and normal. (Likewise if you see YOURSELF as wanting/deserving to exert that level of control as a creator.) It's really not healthy or normal. Creativity is self-expression, and people trying to stifle that in ANY case except where real live people are being actively and inescapably harmed in the process (see: CSEM, revenge porn, adults exposing minors to sexual content, etc - aka, very very specific things that are usually already illegal) do not have your best interests at heart.

tradition pt. 3

And now I’m here to call bullshit on some things I couldn’t before.

First though, I wanted to note that I thought this book may make me more sympathetic to Bruce then I was before, but that is so far from the case it’s insane.

Anyway. Point of this post is something I’ve seen brought a few times as an argument defending Bruce when confronted with the fact he didn’t do anything permanent to stop the Joker after Jason died. It’s an argument I’ve really debated with anyone one way or the other before, because I hadn’t read DITF so I didn’t feel like I had enough context to make a judgement, basically.

Now, I’ve just finished reading and my god do I have some things to say.

The argument, is that Superman, Clark Kent, stopped Bruce from killing the Joker and that Jason should blame Clark from stopping Bruce from getting revenge.

Now that I’ve just read the pages in which this occurs, I call bullshit.

(All the Bruce glazers can never make me hate you Clark)

Ok, so to go into a bit more deeply:

Bruce is essentially planning a final showdown with the Joker, aware it will end in someone dead, most likely the Joker. He discusses the back and forth of how it’s a long overdue course of action and something he should’ve done a long time ago with himself. But he also argues with himself that the Joker is certifiably insane and cannot actually be held responsible for his actions in killing Jason Todd, which, the fact that Bruce can even debate that in the first place raises some flags.

Actually, overall something that really stopped me from sympathising with Bruce is that he never once exhibited any lost of control or hysteria in losing Jason. Bruce is able to be reasoned with, for the most. Even though he continues to state about killing the Joker, he never actually takes any action to kill him. The helicopter crashes, but Bruce is not the one to cause the crash. He ask Superman to check for the Joker’s body, but in the next panel accepts it and leaves.

But my thing is, I don’t understand how any of this can be construed as Clark stopping Bruce from getting revenge.

I suppose it could go back to when Clark first appears in the issue, but to me that still doesn’t make sense. Because Clark empathises with Bruce while explaining the Joker’s diplomatic immunity and how essentially, the Joker can’t be touched. Bruce’s refusal to let the world know of the second Robin’s death also contributes to this, because as far as everyone else is concerned, there’s not enough to prove he even killed Jason. Even if it could be proven, the Joker still has immunity as the Iranian Ambassador at this stage.

Bruce punches Clark once, during this interaction when Clark tells him he’ll be forced to stop him. Clark then asks if he feels better and Bruce shakes it off. The rest of the interaction is a conversation. Bruce isn’t arguing heatedly with Clark, and Clark is not advocating for the Joker. All Clark is doing is warning him that his actions, if he does attack the Joker could have lasting impact on international relations for the US. But Clark never physically restricts Bruce or restrains him, they have a conversation which ends with Clark essentially stating that he hopes Bruce makes the right choice. No where in there does Clark actually stop Bruce from taking revenge. If you expect me to believe that Bruce keeps Kryptonite on him as a back up and that he can beat Superman, than an amicable discussion with someone who is his best friend certainly isn’t stopping him.

Then, we get to the Joker attacking the UN with his laughing gas. Clark arrives and stops the gas from getting to anyone by breathing it in. He then proceeds to tell Bruce, and I quote-

“The Joker is all yours”

Clark didn’t stop shit.

If Bruce had genuinely and truly wanted the Joker dead he would be dead. He has several opportunities throughout the comic after Jason dies, that he does not take. He literally confronts the Joker in his hotel room, Clark nowhere to be seen, and just taunts him for a bit before leaving. He could’ve killed Joker before the UN meeting that morning. He could’ve insisted that Joker be found in the wreckage of the helicopter crash instead of putting up a token argument at Clark then just going home.

Nothing about Bruce’s actions in this comic show a hysterical parent seeking justice. Nothing about Clark’s actions in this comic actually do anything to inhibit Bruce from killing the Joker.

Bruce is who inhibits Bruce from killing the Joker. That’s how it’s always been and the fact that Bruce even recognises in this comic that the Joker does not deserve to live after all the people he’s killed, he still does nothing to actually, permanently stop him in any sort of capacity.

So stop smearing my man Clark’s name! He is not the bad guy here, he literally just had a single conversation with Bruce. He never even touched him. Lies and slander.

Anyway I have many more thoughts than just this about a death in the family and I will certainly be most more of these thoughts here, but I think I’m going to leave this one here for now. I had just assumed from the arguments I’d seen that Clark had put up some big physical fight against Bruce and physically restrained him from killing the Joker when in reality it really amounted to-

“Hey, no, don’t do that. Please?”

Free my man Clark from these lies and slander, I am sorry I fell for the propaganda my good man.

It is canon that Jason was essentially erased. For identity reasons Bruce changed him out of his Robin uniformed and cleared up the crime scene. The Joker can never be prosecuted through the courts for the death of Jason Todd because as far as the world knows, he had nothing to do with it.

The other big thing is that his tenure as Robin is essentially erased as well. As far as the world is concerned, Robin went from Dick to Tim, there was no one in the middle. There was no second Robin. Everything good Jason did in the suit is attributed to Tim or Dick. The Teen Titan’s he was meant to join at 16 went to Tim, the recognition went to Tim.

Jason Todd becomes a foot note. A cautionary tale to the few that remember he existed. He is their doomed from the beginning story. That’s all he is. He isn’t remembered. Not as Jason Todd anyway, and in the few ways his tenure as Robin is remembered, they aren’t about him.

Nothing about Jason’s memory is about him.

Jason is angry at inaction. He is angry not that the world didn’t stop because he died, but because everyone acts as though he was never there before. He was buried in a public cemetery next to the woman that got him killed, while Bruce had his stuff packed away and photos hidden. The only thing in the manor that memorialises him is that stupid case, and that’s not even for him. It’s a manifestation of Bruce and Alfred’s guilt.

Jason didn’t expect them to fall apart because of his death, he never wanted that. He wanted to be remembered. He wanted to matter and everything that Bruce and Alfred did after Jason died was the opposite.

There was four people at his funeral. Bruce, Alfred, the funeral director and commissioner Gordon. Four people.

What about Eddie Bloomberg? What about Rena? What about Dick Grayson, his brother, who Bruce never called and never tried to even contact? What about Danny Chase, who he was friends with during his brief run on the titans? What about Jericho, who he was also shown as friendly with? What about any of the adult heroes who had known Jason?

Jason’s anger has never been solely because the Joker is alive. It’s because he died, knowing he was going to die and with the belief that it might serve in causing things to change for the better. But it hasn’t. It didn’t change anything. His death became a footnote in the story of Batman, a little line here and there and nothing more.

When Jason comes back to life the Joker is walking in and out of Arkham like it’s his holiday home. He quite literally still mostly has free run and the cycle of bullshit from before just keeps continuing. People keep dying. He wanted change, and that isn’t wrong.

I’m not endorsing the way he went about everything, but I think it’s pretty fucking understandable why he did. Bruce never offered another solution beyond letting the Joker walk in and out of Arkham’s revolving door as he pleases. Bruce didn’t upgrade Arkham’s security, he didn’t get him into a higher level prison, he didn’t use the phantom zone which he could’ve just asked Clark about. There is no reason that Bruce couldn’t have come up with another way to have Joker secured that wouldn’t have ended with Joker dead.

But he doesn’t give Jason any other viable option. Going back to Arkham doesn’t solve anything and Jason knows that. Jason sees Joker dying as the only viable solution to keeping victims safe. To keeping himself safe.

He wanted Bruce to allow him to kill the Joker. Bruce didn’t have to be the one to pull the trigger, Jason would’ve. What he wanted was for Bruce to prove what he’d said all that time ago, to prove that for once Jason could matter more than the mission.

(He never had. Not when he was Robin. Not when it was Gloria Stanson. Not when Bruce thought he was suicidal and he’d run away and Alfred’s freaking out Bruce still went after the Joker. He still chose the mission. He did it with Dick, he did it with Jason, he did it with Tim and he’s even now doing it with Damian. It’s a cycle, one not specific to Jason at all)

(I know Joker had a nuclear weapon, but Nruce was already talking to the Justice League about the Joker. The JL were helping and there is no reason he couldn’t have asked one of them to locate Jason, or asked that they takeover and handle Joker while he tracks down Jason. Because he never went to Lebanon to find Jason, he went to find Joker and happened to run into Jason while there. He even tells Jason this to his face)

Bruce had, not long before Jason died, talked to him about Felipe and Jose Garzonas. I’m pretty sure anyone who’s looked into Jason as a character knows about The Diplomat’s Son. It’s extremely relevant to DITF and what leads to Jason leaving the manor. In it, after Felipe falls to his death (it’s left ambiguous but I subscribe most to the idea that while Jason didn’t push him, he didn’t try to save him either, but that’s a matter of personal opinion) Jose goes mad with grief. He is hysterical (not whatever Bruce was in DITF) and goes after Batman and Robin to avenge his son’s death.

Jose Garzonas proceeds to die because Bruce knocks a stack of cars onto him, that Bruce then proceeds to turn around and blame entirely on Jason. But I think what matters most here for Jason’s future actions, is what Bruce proceeds to say before the comic ends.

Bruce says that Jose Garzonas actions in trying to kill them to avenge his son are only what could be expected of a father losing his son. That any parent who lost a kid would want revenge on the reason that child was gone. I don’t have the direct quote but that’s essentially the gist of it. Bruce set the expectation for a parent avenging their child, he tells Jason that’s what he should expect.

Except, Bruce didn’t do that.

(Yes I hear your arguments about Clark stopping him and I raise you my recent post about Clark’s involvement in DITF)

[Image description:

Image 1. A post from attentiondeficitstarscream. “Being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re twenty-five.” Reblog, from the same person. “Someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm-ups! it’ll help. me: my what” Reblog, from suave-eddboy. a meme of a baffled teenager, captioned “wait, you guys do warm up drawings?” Reblog, from thepioden. “What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and i was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.”

Image 2. Reblog from sparksel, which continues into images 3 and 4. “when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and (sic) offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much. Being older now and having an art job it’s...kind of essential. So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and proaby be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys: a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers-some people prefer the finger tips, but i tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support.

Image 3. I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface. d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out) e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders, These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

Image 4. f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 10 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing (sic). Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. so, yeah! That’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings!”

Image 5. A reblog from concerningwolves. Another baffled looking meme, captioned “Okay, was anybody going to tell me that You’re meant to draw from the shoulder, or was I just supposed to Read about it in this excellent thread myself?”