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personal tags:
#sashene creates -> my art (fanfiction, fanart, memes, edits)
#sashene's drawer of wips -> my fic ideas
#sashene commentates -> my meta
#sashene reads [...] / #sashene watches [...] / #sashene plays [...] -> liveblogging my thoughts and reactions to books/comics/movies/tv shows/anime/manga/video games that i'm reading/watching/playing
#sashene answers -> my answers to asks that i've received
#sashene rambles -> personal posts
#sasheneβs diary -> other people's posts that describe me well
(i don't tag nsfw posts and rarely use trigger warnings. consider this blog "not rated" and "creator chose not to use archive warnings")
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a pic from yuujiβs camera roll <3 little harder to look back on after shibuya but he canβt bring himself to delete it (itβd be like losing them all over again)
dykeparasite (2023) Barbie (2023) is to she/theys what The Lego Movie (2014) is to he/theys. I canβt explain it but itβs TRUE., Tumblr. Available at: https://dykeparasite.tumblr.com/post/714005432703877120 (Accessed: April 14, 2023).
finalgrrrl (2022) don't ask me why but mlm belong in dark academia and wlw belong in cottagecore, Tumblr. Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/finalgrrrl/681884740465360896/this-post-is-killing-me-what-in-the-patriarchy?source=share (Accessed: April 14, 2023).
Joke (2023) Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke (Accessed: April 14, 2023).
Lavigne, A. (2010) Avril Lavigne - SK8ER BOI (official video), YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIy3n2b7V9k (Accessed: April 14, 2023).
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okay, so let's break down whatever this monstrosity is.
"I was only ever a tourist in her world" could not be a more inaccurate statement. if you've read any comic involving talia and bruce's relationship from the 70s-90s, you'd know they were obsessed with each other. while they had their flaws, it was a genuine, mutual relationship
"...and an unwilling one at that." aaand this is the magnum opus of this panel. we all know the retcon and how the fandom (and apparently authors) treats it. putting that phrase in any context with talia & bruce is like asking for people to take it and run with the "oh, it's canon again, let's all hate her now" or something along those lines. now, having that on its own just brought up would've been bad enough, but putting it directly above an illustration of the two of them clearly being intimate is like pulling the pin to a hand grenade.
"all steeped in her unorthodox cultural traditions" holy anti/arabphobia. the concept of this line even being thought of, let alone being written, making it past editorial, and being published. but then again, it's DC, so i'm not surprised.
"convinced his presence in my life would destroy me, she threw him [damian] in my lap." honestly, this may be one of the worst things ever written. the entire reason she sent him was to keep him safe and so damian could meet his father. could she have had other motives? yeah, maybe, but it wasn't to destroy bruce's life, nowhere near that extreme.
"... and ran away laughing." while i'm sure this is hyperbole, and she didn't literally walk away laughing, by saying that, implies she took pleasure in just dropping damian off with bruce and found it amusing. which, again, could not be any further away from the truth as this was one of the most difficult decsions she ever made + one of her biggest regrets. and due to the wording it implies she could basically care less about damian and just dropped him off without a second look, again could not be an even falser statement
"it became my job to both dismantle that time bomb, and to make it stronger." ah yes because the feral child will learn how to control himself, all thanks to his white father, after living with his arab maternal side for the first ten years of his life, yes, yes, exactly. and the whole "make it stronger" bit is so odd because you want to dismantle, which the definition of dismantling is: "to take apart a machine or structure so that it is in separate pieces." OR "to end an organization or system by gradually in an organized way." (oxford dictionary)
so you want to take what he learned from the league apart and just essentially reteach him? pick and choose what "pieces" from his time in the league he gets to keep and use while being robin? you do you ii guess.
now the big thing is, well, he would not fucking say that. bruce genuinely loved talia to the point he had her scent memorized. he respected her AND ra's. no way would he be caught dead talking about her or damian for that matter like this.
moral of the story, this whole thing is orientalist, and rascist. also i take back what i said about how talia fans have been eating lately. we are in fact on the edge of being sent back to purgatory & it was fun while it lasted.
In twenty years we will look back on the post-Epsteingate era of comics the way readers today look at the post-9/11 era.
When talking about Epsteingate, a few facts are always on my mind.
One in five girls and one in six boys are victims of sexual abuse before the age of eighteen.
Across all ages, almost half of all women are victims of sexual assault.
For both of the above, the majority of perpetrators were people that the victims knew and trusted.
As for trafficking, Epstein trafficked some 1200 girls. The national human trafficking hotline claims to have identified 21,865 victims in 2024 alone, while their all-time statistic is in the hundreds of thousands. (Frustratingly, they separate the number of cases of sex trafficking from cases of labor trafficking, but list the victims only in aggregate. I thus cannot be sure how many of these victims were trafficked for sex, at least not by HTHL statistics alone).
From these facts, I think I can make the case that Epsteingate was not exceptional in its character. Sexual abuse and exploitation is not the sole purview of a select few. It is endemic to our culture, an inevitable fixture of an economy wherein the body is a commodity and there are classes of people who are culturally and socially denied the power to defend themselves.
But that's not the cultural reckoning we're seeing right now, is it?
This media spotlight could have been a launchpad to critique this element of our political economy. Instead, the new generation of opportunists, in accidental collaboration with their bourgeoisie, have rallied around the phrase "the Epstein class". Peddlers of the phrase will tell miracle stories of how this scandal is finally opening their rightist friends and family's eyes to the class the left rails against. But the phrase is only so readily accepted because it is bereft of meaning. The "Epstein class" is not united by its relationship to production. It is a category of person who commits a crime, namely child sexual exploitation. And everyone who hears the phrase maps onto it the sort of person they associate with that crime. Thus, the leftist opportunist says "the Epstein class" and means "the bourgeoisie," while the reactionary says "the Epstein class" and means "the fifth column of Jews and degenerates." (As always, the right's enemy is also not defined by its relationship to production). Which meaning will win out? Well, with every powerful person in the country scrambling to find a scapegoat for the scandal, I'm sure you can guess.
Thus, unto the fandom side of things. Following the cultural trend, DC's reaction to the Epstein shock repeatedly portrays the problem as exceptional and as arising from outside the culture. The other day, Supergirl premiered, and showed the titular superheroine defending Earth from sadistic aliens called the Brigands, who sustain themselves solely by defiling the women and girls of other cultures. Meanwhile, the ongoing Absolute line of comics depict a setting ruled by a shadowy cabal of wealthy elites. Joker in this setting tortures and mutilates babies to maintain his appearance in a beat-for-beat retelling of the adrenochrome harvesting conspiracy. That conspiracy itself is a modern repackaging of blood libel. Liberal cape fans are singing the praises of both of these works, calling them a shot across the bow from pop culture against the Epstein class. Which Epstein class? No doubt capital will make it out of this one unscathed.
I would love to see DC grapple with the sort of cultural reckoning I touched on earlier. I wish I could see stories really dig into how the commodification of women and children's bodies permeates the entire culture. Not because of evil foreigners or hidden elites, but because of the culture itself, because of the pressure toward dehumanization in everyone who desires a commodity. I wish I could see comics get into just how damn prevalent and unexceptional it all is β more people are sexually abused as kids than have blonde hair, for crying out loud. But it'll never happen. Would Eddie Berganza write that comic? What about Scott Lobdell? Geoff Johns? Warren Ellis, Jason Latour, Scott Allie? Would Charles Brownstein fight for the right to write it? Would the corporation that defended and promoted these men knowing damn well what they did, even having it on camera, publish it without watering it down until there was no message left? Would the millions of readers who are themselves guilty of this exact behavior look in the damned mirror and see themselves for what they are without pitching a fit and threatening the author?
No. Easier to make it a big spectacle and blame it on someone else.
The emotional whiplash I got when Metamorpho basically goes, "hey supes you can save my baby, right," mere seconds after sobbing over Lex murdering Malik could snap my fucking neck.
This is the way the film treats their most prominent immigrant human character. As a mere afterthought. A prop to verbally hype up what a swell guy Supes is.
I get so mad about how the character of Malik is treated within the narrative. Like there was a brief scene where him and his community are shaking their heads in disbelief after the reveal of Kryptons being colonisers who wanted Supes to have harems with humans.
And there's so much drama and social commentary that could be mined from this. What does Supes represent to immigrants like Malik and his community? What does this revelation mean to them personally? Does Clark empathise with them, sees himself in them and their experiences? There could have been a scene of the daily planet or other in-universe news outlets interviewing Malik and his community. But nope!
Malik's death is not even given any narrative weight. There's no funeral scene with Superman in attendance or collective mourning from his community. It's acknowledged with a brief shot of a newspaper headline.
Ultimately, Superman 2025 is a movie where the filmmakers want to claim has a pro-immigrant message, but they still seem afraid to draw any parallels to real-world immigrants/refugees and the problems they face onscreen.
Also I can't help but notice how meanspirited this movie is about its female characters. It's not a James Gunn movie without his casual misogyny.
Gunn only knows how to write three types of women. You are either: a) snarky badass loner types (Lois, Hawkgirl, Engineer) or b) dumb/airheaded (Ma Kent, Eve, female robot)
Lois doesn't get to display much of her journalism skills, and her research skills as a journalist occurs off-screen. She hardly gets to interact with other women on-screen, and her one scene with Cat Grant revolves around Cat asking Lois about her romantic life, so it failed the Bechdel test.
Martha (Ma) Kent doesn't get to dispel folksy small-town wisdom like her husband does. Her most prominent scene involves her not knowing how to talk on a smartphone with Clark in very "haha, boomer doesn't know how to use modern tech" fashion.
Eve doesn't even get to whistle-blow against Lex Luthor becos she's got her own moral backbone, but becos Lex treated her badly. And her love interest Jimmy Olsen is constantly demeaning her intelligence and her looks even tho he looks like the human equivalent of a number 2 pencil. It's gave me gotg 2 war flashbacks over how Mantis is mocked for how "ugly" she supposedly is.
Even the female robot is introduced as becoming very giggly and shy over Clark looking at her while her male counterpart is cool, logical and snarky. Even the robots have gender roles.
Also, this version of Clark and his motivations? So criminally boring.
Why does he want to do good? Why does he want to become a superhero? And it basically boils down to, oh becos his biological parents apparently told him in a recording that they sent him to earth to serve humanity and help the world be a better place. Like, hang on, Clark, are you helping people becos mummy and daddy told you to π₯Ί?
Again, it all comes back to the filmmakers being fucking afraid to draw parallels between Clark and real-world marginalised communities like immigrants. It's interesting to note that you don't see this version of the character interacting with regular humans who aren't Daily Planet co-workers as Clark Kent, the civilian. Much in the same vein as MCU Peter Parker, this Clark Kent is not a man of the people. You can't hardly blame the citizens of Metropolis for turning on Superman becos there's little connection between this Supes and the people.
Is no one going to talk about how people gave Supes so much shit in the beginning about the legality of him physically threatening the Boravia president and for not considering potential geo-political repercussions, only for Hawkgirl, a metahuman from a superhero team funded by an American businessman to murder him at the end?? Becos seriously? Where the fuck was internal consistency?
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So, I have a question. Yellow Peril villains are part of comic book history since their earliest days, no bones about it. But I've seen various attempts over the years to try to "update" said Yellow Peril villains for use in modern stories. I have mixed feelings on this. Do you think it's possible to update these characters so they can fit into modern stories without exploiting xenophobia or should writers let these characters have a long retirement?
Yeah I'm of mixed minds about this too. Most attempts to update the Yellow Peril trope either remove their signifiers for Eastern cultures so it's purely yellow aliens but still retain the racist message without explicit signifiers, or they have straight forward Yellow Peril characters without the yellow color (Al Ghuls in Abso Supes and Jor + Lara El in Supes2025). Neither of these are really tackling the problem itself.
I think the only true rebuttal is revising Yellow Peril characters to the point of near unrecognizability from their current versions. I can see the perspective of readers thinking characters like the Al Ghuls are too far gone in the mainline comics, which is why when the Abso line just repeated the Yellow Peril tropes in their brand new universe it was all the more disappointing that DC couldn't innovate.
I'm often asked "well what would you do with the Al Ghuls in the Abso universe" and I generally answer "make the Al Ghul's redeemable. Make them the misunderstood good guys with a radical but good cause. Have a conversation about their orientalism so we are engaging with their comic meta. Challenge the inherit Arab and Islamophobia that exists in American cape comics. If you're brave enough, make Superman ally with them as immigrants."
In the hands of current DC creatives, they probably need to retire a lot of their Yellow Peril villains. In the hands of more radical, diverse, fresh talent? They're capable of coming up with creative remixes.
A lot Superboy fans are so confused with my version of Tana Moon and are mad that I'm tackling this character at all. Because to them, this exotic predatory character of color should either be vilified or discarded. Cape fans pigeon hole characters of color like this, to the point "giving humanity" to these characters isn't an option. But I think these readers need to read outside of Discrimination comics to see the potential of Native Hawaiian representation beyond racist writers. And that's the case for Yellow Peril characters too.
John Constantine prompt for DC Gotcha for Gaza! I was given free reign to do anything Johnstantine, so I figured it would be a fun opportunity to draw blue suit and tan coat combo :y
Peep at the DC4Gaza carrd if you'd like to request some DC art/fic too! You've got until the 18th!
It's so funny how the kon el fandom harassed me and called the racebending I did in my kon el origin fan comic "arbitrary" despite me both showing and explaining how I changed multiple characters from their source material with the intention to deconstruct the colonial and misogynistic aspects of SB94. To politically reimagine what it would look like to have a Superman legacy character grapple with how his power is racialized in America. But it didn't matter how many times I explained myself.
This same fandom then turned around and put all their faith into MAWS. MAWS released promo art depicting a brown leather jacket-wearing Superboy that will show up in the upcoming season of their show. There was so much hype for this, to the point the kon el fandom pretended it was basically the only real adaptation of Kon there is (ignoring YJ and Reign of Supermen as animated takes because it didn't meet their standard). And Kon was going to be brown too! Wow, surely the show that treats racebending as an aesthetic apolitical change to the characters could do justice to Kon, who gentrified Hawai'i in his original comic. Surely the show that's squeamish about politics could handle that.
So then MAWS did what it always does. Its interpretation on the character barely resembles their source material. Basically all they share in common is a name or title. It's as though the show didn't engage, challenge, transform or adapt anything from the source material the character came from at all. Apparently y'all just got Trunks from Dragon Ball named Jonathan Kent. He's voiced by Darren Criss, a wasian Chinese Filipino actor- continuing MAWS' tradition of monolith casting its Asian characters (considering he's likely a clois baby and Lois is Korean in this series).
Basically it looks like all this Superboy has in common with Kon is that he styles his hair in a fade, wears a leather jacket and sunglasses sometimes. Anyone who sees this character design would assume it's Kon and that's the point. MAWS is a show that wants to hit as many comic references as possible for no other reason than to jingle keys at you. Now that's an arbitrary artistic decision driven by nothing.
I think it's funny because that's how racism in fandom works isn't it? You harass individual POC artists on here who make passion projects for free and then put your faith into a company that never cared about what you saw in the character. So you get nothing.
ive got a bad case of the khoas right now... its terminal....
babs' text on one of the screens did in fact say something before i fucked around w colours and noise to the point and flipped to so u cant even see it. so here.
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To celebrate Duke's birthday yesterday, here are some of my Duke reading recs grouped together by arbitrary categories!! Take these with a huge grain of salt I'm completely working off memory
Powers
The Cursed Wheel finale, found in All-Star Batman #9 (Duke's light powers awaken)
Dark Days: The Forge / Dark Days: The Casting (explanation of Elaine's meta gene and also Nth metal... idk I don't understand it)
Batman & The Signal (introduction of Gnomon)
Batman & The Outsiders (2019) (Duke's shadow powers awaken, which dampen his light powers)
Dark Nights: Death Metal Robin King (Duke unlocks his light powers again)
Batman Secret Files: The Signal (Duke unlocks more powers)
Thomas Family
Batman: Zero Year / Batman: Endgame
We Are Robin (you already know this is essential reading)
Batman (2011) #48 and #50
All-Star Batman #1-9 including Cursed Wheel back-ups (PEAK Doug & Elaine reading. read main stories alongside back-ups for the best experience)
Batman & The Signal
Batman: Secret Files: The Signal (Duke's mom disappears)
Batman: Urban Legends #8-9 and #18-19 (aftermath of Duke's mom's disappearance + rescuing her)
Romance
We Are Robin (Dizzy + polyWAR for your reading pleasure)
Batman (2016) #1-6 (in which Tom King replaces Duke's girlfriend of colour with a White love interest)
Batman & The Signal (Duke is back to dating Izzy! so. literally what was the point)
Batman Secret Files: The Signal
One-Shots Where Duke Barely or Doesn't Appear But Is Really Important To My Conception of Him
Batman (2011) #44 (a lovely issue about Bruce and Gotham. REALLY important imo to understanding Snyder's Duke-Bruce-Gotham triangle, even though he isn't even mentioned here)
Detective Comics #982 (only a Duke cameo but again SO important to that Duke-Bruce-Gotham triad)
Batman (2016) Annual #1 (the tiny Bruce-Duke moment is worth the entire thing)
The Robin-to-Signal Transition
Batman (2011) #50 (Bruce extends an offer)
Batman: Rebirth (Duke takes up the offer)
All-Star Batman #1-9 (Duke and Bruce get acclimated to each other)
Batman (2016) #1-6 (Duke and Bruce get acclimated to each other but it's written worse)
Batman & The Signal (Duke officially becomes the Signal)
Batman & The Outsiders (not actually related but you can - and I do - read Cass' Batgirl vs. Orphan struggles as analogous to Duke)
DC Rise of the Power Company (the only time Duke actually on page explores why he left Robin)
The Jason-Duke Supercut Or: The Indeterminability of Whether Duke Likes Jason
The Cursed Wheel Part 1 (Bruce says 'villain' and Duke asks 'Jason'?)
New Talent Showcase (2017) (Duke and Jason train together)
Batman (2016) #33 (Duke teases Jason, calls him "Jay")
Detective Comics #1000 (Duke teases Jason again)
Batman Secret Files: The Signal (Bruce tells Duke he failed Jason; presumably Duke has heard lots of negative things about Jason from Bruce)
DC Rise of the Power Company (Duke insults Jason while talking to Jace)
Duke One-Shots That Deserve More Love
Gotham Nights #8
Dark Nights Death Metal: Robin King
The Unexpected #4 (purely for the Duke-Helena interaction)
Batman: The Brave and the Bold #10
Duke One-Shots That Deserve More Hate
Batman (2016) #16
Detective Comics #1000
Batman Secret Files: The Signal
The Snyder Cut
Batman: Zero Year / Batman: Endgame
Batman & Robin Eternal
Batman: Superheavy
Batman: Rebirth
All-Star Batman
SCOTT SNYDER PLEASE WRITE DUKE AGAIN PLEAAAAASEEEE
My Personal Defining Issues and Runs For Duke's Batfam Relationships (For Jason See Above)
Bruce: Batman: Zero Year / Endgame / Superheavy, Batman: Rebirth, All-Star Batman, Batman & The Signal, Batman & The Outsiders, Batman Secret Files: The Signal (also see one-shots that influence my Duke conception above because they're all Bruce-Duke too)
Cass: Detective Comics #983-987, Batman & The Outsiders
Dick: Batman & Robin Eternal #4, Robin War, Night of the Monster Men
Damian: Robin War (I WISH THERE WAS MORE)
Jace: DC Rise of the Power Company, DC Power Company Recharged
Stephanie: Dark Nights Death Metal: Robin King, DC Power 2024, Batman: Urban Legends #3
Tim: Robin War, Dark Nights Death Metal: Robin King, Batman: Urban Legends #8-9
Kate: Detective Comics #952
(Any Batfam members not mentioned here don't have significant interactions with him; however, for Helena check out The Unexpected #4 and for Harper check out DC Power 2024)
OKAY that's about it!! Obviously these are my opinions, for a more extensive reading list check out @duketectivecomics list here. HAPPY DUKE READING!!! LET'S MAKE THIS YEAR DUKE THOMAS' YEAR!!!!
