Spes

“So, even with everybody thinking you’re a bad ghost, you’re still gonna try to be the hero?”

“Well, somebody’s gotta. If not me, who’s gonna protect this town? Besides, it’s not like I can ignore a scream for help.”

I am so gonna talk about this boy I’ve been waiting for a good chance to talk about what a good, pure child he is and I am taking it now. Bless his heart I love him so much.

Let’s talk about Daniel James Fenton and why he deserves love and protection forever and always.

Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. Pamela especially seems controlling of her daughter. She even put a restraining order on one of her best friends because he “seemed troubled.”

We don’t really see enough of their relationship to really be certain, though. For the most part, they seem content to let her do her own thing. The only time they’re ever shown getting really involved is Control Freaks, and even the Fentons are actively pushing against Circus Gothica.

Emotional abuse is hard to spot from the outside, because so much of it relies on manipulation. Simple differences in wording, tone, and even the perception of the victim can change a situation from safe to unsafe very quickly. I’m inclined to lean towards Sam’s parents being overprotective and very conservative, but not outright abusive. Sam doesn’t fear them in any way, for one thing. In fact, she has no problem standing up to them and even cutting up the dress her mother hands to her while it’s still in her hands.

It would be so easy for a family as wealthy as them to ship Sam off to some boarding school or something to whip her into shape, or they could even not care what she does at all and go on vacations at all. They’re involved in her life, and while they push things that they think are right, they don’t try to force it.

Compare Pamela and Jeremy to, as an example, the Northwests from Gravity Falls. Pacifica is stubborn and shows a rebellious side, too, but her parents have her trained to submit to them with a simple ring of a bell. Sam still has access to the family’s money to buy her clothes and goth books and such. They let her build and care for her own greenhouse. She was even allowed to invite Tucker over for a movie night.

Sam’s parents seem very accommodating to me. They also:

- Buy her a gothic purple dress for the dance in season 1 - Hire an entire medical team to look after Sam in What You Want, when all she had was a cold - Let Sam stay out overnight at the zoo for a project that wasn’t even hers - Let Sam stay out ghost hunting all the time? (Danny’s the only one who ever complains about curfew) - Allow her to presumably use family funds to replace the amphibian dissection program of the school with mechanical frogs - Volunteer to drive the (Deadly) Ectoskeleton in Reign Storm - Immediately and Vehemently defend their daughter from accusations when it’s revealed she’s associated with Danny Phantom in Reality Trip

as well as all the other points listed above. Even in Control Freaks, they only go crazy overbearing on Danny when outside news convinces them he’s a threat (TV: ”Learn to recognize a bad influence when it walks in your door!” *Danny immediately walks in raving about a CD of questionable content*) and even then only go into overdrive when Sam is caught cutting class with said “bad influence” at Circus Gothica, that very day.

The main hangup I see most people have with Sam’s parents is Pamela’s persistence in trying to get Sam to wear girly, frilly things. And while there is something to be said about parents who use their kids as barbie dolls, or parents who have strict rules on public appearances, Pamela comes off more as the “Oh my little girl wouldn’t she look adorable in this dress that I personally like?” which is played up for laughs. She never has consequences for NOT dressing up that way, and never impedes Sam from wearing her gothic garb. The behavior is annoying, at best, like a sibling who gets you a gift they would like and use, and doesn’t understand why you don’t like it too.

Bruce: That's why you're his favorite.

Clark, wide-eyed: When he was ten!

Clark: so Superman’s still your favorite?

Dick, who told Bruce last week he’d die for him and then crashed out and cried so hard when Bruce hugged him he had to lie down: yeah, what makes you say that?

I've been seeing a lot of posts and comments recently concerning Duke Thomas in WFA. I know WFA discourse has been done to death, but these comments were about how they'd only read WFA, felt Duke lacked a personality, his powers weren't distinctive, etc. Out of the main WFA characters, I think Duke has the least-read comics and the least understood canon history. This post is going to dissect WFA!Duke, compare it with canon!Duke, and address whether WFA is a fair representation of Duke or not.

This is not a WFA hate post. A lot of comics readers love WFA and vice versa, and I'm not going to dictate what people should like or dislike. Check out this post I made yesterday about the origins of WFA, which really aren't ill-intentioned. However, judging by the comments/posts I've seen, a lot of people don't know the difference between WFA!Duke and canon!Duke. This post exists to clarify those discrepancies and hopefully encourage more people to read Duke's comics.

[Image ID: A very confused, and slightly horrified looking Danny Phantom holds the Little Baby Man version of himself that is hugging his hand and purring. /. End ID]

So here's a fun thought: Consider a situation in which LBM is NOT, in fact, a tiny Danny, but a mimic blob ghost that has adopted his image as a form of Batesian self defense. Then imagine Danny's reaction to seeing some fucked up little uncanny valley cat version of himself with zero warning or context.

Legionnaires #23 Swears curtesy of the Legionnaire's resident potty mouth Querl Dox aka Brainiac 5.

Being that DC spans many different periods in time there are many different curses and swears that have been used with varying degrees of frequency among multiple characters.

Bart Allen and other time displaced characters are some of those in the modern timestream that use some of the following in place of English swears. Otherwise the bulk of these words are used in comics such Legion of Super-Heroes and sometimes in comics that take place off-world.

To note, most of these swear words are supposed to be taken directly from Interlac, the universal language spoken by everyone in the 31st century as a unifying interstellar language.

Interlac is a language that is many thousands of years old by the 31st century, and the same Interlac language exists in the 21st century as well. There are some references that the language does shift over the thousand years of time passage, but it is still recognizable between speakers.

Without further elaboration here is a non-exhaustive list of the most common swears, their approximate meaning, and general time/place/characters they are used in/by.

Grife

Meaning: Fuck/Shit.

An intense swear used as an expletive for surprise or frustration. Sometimes used as "fucking" where -ing is attached to the end.

Used commonly in the 31st century and by Bart Allen in the 21st century.

Sprock

Meaning: Also Fuck/Shit.

An intense swear used as an expletive for surprise or frustration. Sometimes used as "fucking" where -ing is attached to the end. Is generally interchangeable with grife. Sometimes, both grife and sprock are combined to create compound swears such as "gee-sprocking-rife" courtesy of Brainiac 5.

Used commonly in the 31st century by all Legionnaires. Has made its way into other media such as the CW's Supergirl.

Nass/Nass-Head

Meaning: Shit/Ass

An expletive used often as an insult or as as a common crass intensifier. Most commonly used as "nass-head" in place of "shit-head" or "We're going to kick nass!" or "We're stepping in nass."

Used in the 31st century.

Scroach

Meaning: Bastard/Fucker

A derogatory uncommon/rare insult directed at someone. "That person is such a sprocking scroach I want to beat the nass out of them."

Used by a future version of Bart Allen in the Impulse comics during the Dark Tomorrow story arc. As far as I know, it is exclusive to the Impulse comics.

Grokk/Grok

Meaning: Shit/Fuck/Damn

An expletive used in surprise or frustration, much like sprock or grife.

Bart Allen is a character that is so often badly characterized that most people out there have no idea what he’s like. He’s constantly characterized as essentially a 7-year-old, and was even believed by some fans to be only 10-years-old to 12-years-old when his solo started. This is not the case, as while he arrived as a 12-year-old at the very beginning of his first appearance, his struggle was that he aged rapidly, meaning that by the end of that fiasco, his age settled at the age of 15-years-old.

This isn’t even close to the only misconception about Mister Bartholomew Henry Allen the second. As due to later writers consistently infantilizing this once magnificent representation of a teenager with ADHD, that had fun dynamics as a fish out of water, his original personality is something that many Bart Allen fans wish would come back from the war once again. It was what allowed Bart to be an initially popular character, that had a decently lasting solo series, that was eventually slowly killed by bad characterization and infantilization.

Heck, it’s hard to begin to know where to start since there’s so many misconceptions about what was intended by his creator. I’m going to do my best, though, as I am one of those many that wish for Bart’s original characterization to come back. He’s not a hyper little boy as people think (Again, he was never 10-years-old. They just didn’t care to draw him properly when he returned. And his return panel is so widely shared these days). He’s actually the most teenagery teenager that’s ever existed.

So I’m going to start with the first issue of his solo series and go from there. I’m using the first ten issues of his solo as my line of research, since by then his characterization is readily fleshed out, and you can understand a lot of his true depth.

Also, this is going to be super long, but if you want to know Bart’s character like a pro-Bart-Allen-Er (?) this is the post for you.

What makes Bart unique, and what’s Bart like at school?

Okay so this is partly answering a longer ask I'm currently working on about each character's religion in canon, but let me just say this: DC Comics pretending like any hero is actually atheist cracks me up because it's an unbearably stupid concept in a world where mulitple pantheons of gods literally exist, the Spectre is God's Chosen, and Heaven and Hell are both tangible places multiple heroes have been. They might not believe in YOUR* god, but I find it extremely difficult to believe they don't believe in A god (or gods).

*generic you, encompassing any given religion and/or interpretation of the divine

I specifically want to inspect Fabian Nicieza's brain while he was writing Tim's Judgement on Gotham tie-in issue, because one of his best friends is Zeus's daughter, he semi-regularly works with Azrael, and he's good friends with Helena Bertinelli...but he doesn't believe in a god or understand the concept of Catholic Suffering?

My mom was a little religious, my dad not at all. So when she was killed--and my dad was left in a coma--I didn't have a strong foundation of faith to turn to. By the time my father was killed--then so many of my friends--all I had left to turn to was anger. It was easier than believing in a God who had let that happen. But anger sovled little and when the world was in crisis...I prayed. I heard only silence. So I confessed my sins...and realized I had none. How could someone who tried so hard to be good--did so much for so many people--be asked to endure so much? -Red Robin (2009) #22

Nicieza had not read the Book of Job in several years (if he ever had) when he wrote that issue, I'll tell you that much. If he had, we might be having a very different conversation about Tim Drake's religious belief system right now.

My larger beef with DC is that their writers continually impose their own incredibly limited, biased, and Western Christian-centric religious views onto characters in a universe where those views make no sense, and there's fewer characters that issue is more prominent with than Bruce Wayne and Tim Drake; while there's nuance to be found in the difference between belief and worship, writers often throw around atheism whenever they want to prove how "logical and intelligent" their character is. Except within the canonical constraints of the DCU...claiming to be atheist just makes them look dumb, because they're denying an objective fact of their universe.

Basically: you can be generally non-religious (or non-practicing) without being a non-believer, which is what most of the "atheists" in the DCU probably should be. Realistically, any hero a writer wants to make "atheist" should be saying something like "all these gods and divine forces in the universe and not one of them chose to help me when I was suffering? They don't deserve to be worshipped" instead of "I don't believe in god."