the show must jo on

my "How 2 Start Reading Batman Comics" zine I debuted at MICE this year! it was soooo much fun to put together, especially for baby's first mini-zine. Printed, it's only 6 interior pages and about medium hand size.

Nightwing (2016) #130

This! Exactly!! This is exactly why I always hold that if you want to tell the story of Bruce-as-Batman as something that is sustainable, that is ultimately healing, it NEEDS to be accompanied by his kids.

I mean, putting him in a parental role also just really rounds out his arc and the complexity of his response to the ultimate catalyst to his vigilantism in the first place. It’s one thing to say he fights crime because crime killed his parents, and that’s great on a certain level, but as a whole person with multiple emotional needs, it addresses an entirely different and far more personal facet of that traumatic experience for him to turn around and say “no one else should face that, and I mean that in a general, citywide sense, and also in the case of these specific children”. Making Bruce see that journey in others, from the outside, now as the person with the reigns on the situation?? Whole other ballpark.

I love seeing characters really needing to figure out now to *be* or *give* what they didn’t *get*. It speaks to me of actual healing on an emotional level that achieving concrete progress against an antagonistic problem doesn’t.

Especially because, with Dick, this was the first time he saw the chance to personally step in and say “not again” in a manner that’s less about prevention and more about recovery, which is the thing that Bruce, personally, needs too. And as hard as the disagreements are for them both, they’re also so vital. Because Bruce’s goal raising his kid was to give Dick a chance to not be like him. And he succeeded.

So every time Dick turns that relatively high emotional awareness right around and inflicts it on the parent who he refuses to not let love him? He’s using the fruits of both their hard work to continue insisting on the dynamic that saved them both.

space as a concept was always seen as something far away from home, in which we call earth. just like travelling to a foreign country for a holiday, space was always seen as foreign territory to visit before coming back home.

but it represents loss, confusion, just an array of stars with planets at every axis. as beautiful as it seems it is just a wide expanse of ‘space’ filled with planets housing species after species, and one of those species are us humans on earth.

project hail mary illustrated that so clearly. that image of confusion being away from home, while still being sent to a foreign territory that is yet so beautiful, housing planets and stars.

ryland grace had no immediate family, no wife, and no pet even. he only had himself, but that in itself was love. to take care of himself, being comfortable in his own skin, and choosing to stay alone? that is love in itself.

but i feel like society as a whole always had the narrative that there will always be a one way solution to everyone’s lives. every country might be different, but almost all of humankind believe that success is achieved when you earn a stable salary while working an honourable job, having a house, having a life partner, and then, having kids.

but ryland grace never had that.

always seen as a hero for the people but never a diplomat, always seen as genius but never honoured, always seen as sheep while amongst a bunch of greedy wolves.

but when you are sent to a foreign territory like space. the juxtaposition between the beauty of where you are at and the dire situation you are in, it sets the narrative that you are done for, and your life never mattered so now you die in a location you always researched and loved.

now being so far away from home, despite all that need to come home, you never felt loved on earth anyway so what was the point?

the point was that love was always there, everyone will receive love in their own ways and for grace? he received it from another species, an eridian alien.

but he received it in dire need of help, stranded in space with limited resources, together with an eridian who lost all of his friends to radiation and was alone for years and years. two species meeting for the first time, all out of the dire need to find love and company as they face one problem; losing something that was once cherished by them.

for grace, it was his home. as much as earth treated him unfairly, it was still the planet he goes back to, the planet that houses his students, his school and place to be an educator.

for rocky, it was adrian, his partner, his friends and family, all lost or dead to a disease he did not know existed because of a lack of scientific education he never received, all while stranded alone for years, wondering why all of his loved ones never woke up.

united in loss, that itself represented strength and love, and when you have two species unified in strength and love of saving each other’s planets, that itself shows that love prevails all even when all of earth turns their back on you, or when all of your loved ones are gone.

and suddenly the foreign territory known as space is not so foreign anymore. its not so foreign when you are travelling through planets with someone you finally felt a connection with, its not so foreign now when you are on a mission to save you and your new friend’s planet from dying to a beautiful species known as astrophage.

its is not so foreign now that you see the beauty in space, how loss brought you and your new friend together connected by the red string also known as the petrova line.

even as you save you and your best friend’s world. the moral of the story wasn’t the one-way ticket to your death that proved humanity was cruel, it wasn’t the fact that you had to save earth as a mission.

it was the fact that loss brings people together. as different as we all are, when we face loss, it is only love that brings us together and motivates us to keep on living, it is only love that makes you see the good in people and everything around you, and it is only love that makes you want to save the world.

not because it was a mission you had to take, but rather because you see the good in saving humanity and all of erid. that’s the most human thing to do, to have love and give it.

space as a concept was always seen as something far away from home, but home is where the heart is, and sometimes, the heart is in something you have researched on for years; in space.

out of love you live in erid, in a dome built by eridians as their warm hospitality to house you. out of love, humanity is saved but you didn’t need a thank you or a standing ovation, you just needed to be with the only person you have ever felt a connection with, and that turnt out to be an eridian.

out of love, you learnt the eridian language just to understand another species. out of love you dedicated your heart to educating children, even when those children aren’t human.

love is always hard to find yet we find it anyway, we find love everywhere as we yearn connection. we find love in our chosen families, our identities, our friends, or maybe, we just find love in a place far, far away from earth, a dome built for us to pass down knowledge to an alien species and live a quiet life by the shore, illuminated by sparkling televisions.

Like Ezra was 19 at MOST, he had just lost his father figure and all of a sudden he was in a completely new galaxy extremely isolated and injured. It’s implied in the show that at no point were Ezra and Thrawn working together (which is a shame because that could have been a really interesting dynamic) so odds are Ezra had to go off on his own to survive away from the remaining imperials, while still injured from that gun shot btw.

It’s crazy to imagine how hard the first while was for him after they all got stranded. Like, this kid was probably still actively grieving the fact that Kanan died as well as literally everything that happened between that point and the finale- and all of a sudden he’s launched into a new galaxy left to go through that process alone. Also slight side tangent, but I wonder if he ever got to see Kanan as a force ghost, or if he was just alone for the entire ordeal (apart from the turtle guys he befriended at some point)

There has never been a good nightwing fancast because nobody ever considers this. They all just go with the darkhaired pretty boy of the month.