"Optimist? Never been one of those before."

El | 24 | Catholic | National Guard | die hard Deathstroke fan for over a decade and counting!

[ram1dus]

sins of the father etc

[dogmeatthedead]

Opens Tumblr.. What's the old crew up to? What new nice artwork is being made about my favorite characters? What takes can I weigh in on and enjoy reading? Oh what's that? There's a new Deathstroke book out?

I'll have to drive into town and grab it, don't have high hopes.

Oh it has Wintergreen in it? That's nice, more books need Wintergreen tbf. OH

oh

oh okay

that's enough tumblr for today

Thanks for spoiling the book in all the ways I needed @ohlookitsthearkhamknight @ravagersruin

Still going to buy it tho

[messi-mooni]

A father and his lil nuggets

[messi-mooni]

Baby-ified

[messi-mooni]

Nightmare

[dogmeatthedead]

NOOOOOO my heart!

[ravagersruin]

All of my Deathstroke related custom funkos!

[praleczka]

As you wish @terradni

[disco-troy]

Can we all move away from talking about how cool Deathstroke is and move back to the natural state of the Titans making fun of him every time he opens his mouth?

Slade: Four months ago I took on a job. I was to deliver certain goods into this country. Not drugs. Not weapons. Medical supplies, or so I thought Vic: Yeah, right – they paid a merc big bucks to take legal supplies past the border. Sure. You gonna sell us swamp land in Jersey next?

Slade: You know I get paid by taking on… Special jobs. Roy: Translation: I’m a scuzzy mercenary. Hey, let’s all play “What he says, and what he means”

[dogmeatthedead]

I love! this take. I’ve been trying to find a way to talk about this so here is something I’ve been thinking about forever.

The original Deathstroke run is framed mostly as the retellings of Wintergreen in his journal right? These quotes are from that era and Slade in both books acts the same. In the Deathstroke book Wintergreen will often say that “Slade later told me what he did,” or “This is how Slade told me it happened.” That way the story can continue without having Wintergreen always around. So it’s clearly stated that Slade tells Will about his adventures.

What if, like he is to the Titans up above, he filters the reality for Wintergreen? To the Titans Slade wants to appear as more of a hero than he is because he knows that’s what will either get him ahead or get them to work better with them. So would Slade change things in order to sound more cool?

Like would he change how he broke into a building? Or, as another example,  how he finished a hit in order to make the story that he is telling Wintergreen more interesting since Will mentions that he is writing a book about Slades adventure. Not everything he does is super cool so in order to help the story be better he might embellish things.

Or, on a darker note, would he make things sound better? Like how he tells Roy that he gets paid to do special jobs. He isn’t technically wrong since it’s a special job, but he’s leaving out the part where that job involves murder. So could he just not tell Will about the horrid things that he does during missions, or the jobs that he takes and doesn’t tell Will about. 

This idea could explain why Slade is framed as more of a hero during his original run. Wintergreen (and Marv Wolfman’s) bias explains this portrayal, but narratively, how it tells the story to Will could also play a part. 

I think that using this as a lens to reread the original run is a cool idea since, if true, would redefine what the run is about.

[disco-troy]

You are so right!!!! - the perception of Slade as this righteous antihero mercenary with a moral code in the grey is very much what Slade wants us to think, and something he constantly spins in his favor. That lens to look at that original run makes so much sense, and really puts in a lot of the holes and changes from when you get to the Deathstroke series vs what you see in early titans.

This is the core of the characters motivations and origin. Grant was told stories about Deathstroke by Slade portraying him as a cool action hero. Grant, based on the aggrandizing stories becomes a mercenary himself and dies. Grant’s death is due to Slades lies and ego but since he can do wrong, Slade spins the narrative so he is the hero and the Titans are responsible.

Slade is a bad guy that wants to thing he’s a good guy while he does bad things. He deludes himself into thinking his actions were for a noble purpose or for the greater good, even when it doesn’t make any sense to do so.

and he says it so often other characters begin to believe it too! Gar makes peace with what Slade did to Terra after a diner conversation where he frames himself this way. Dick tells Bruce he has a “strong moral code” that he can’t actually define. Do you know why? IT DOESN’T EXIST. Slade’s just claimed it has one so much he’s tricked characters and writers alike.

Slade constantly claims he doesn’t steal or kill for personal gain when. He’s a mercenary.

When Joey died he exuded such a sadness that even Terra’s brother (who to be fair doesn’t know the whole story bc Donna and Dick are #liars) has so much sympathy for him.

Slade filters reality again and again, and most of the time the writers let him, because they don’t realize it. He’s such a powerful narcissist he warps reality past the fourth wall. And that’s why its so disappointing that’s is so rare for him to be called out anymore. Because to me that’s the point of the character. Nothing bad is his fault. He’s always a good person he’s always right. and that’s what makes him such an accurate depiction of an abuser.

[dogmeatthedead]

I can see where you're coming from, and it lends itself to an interesting read of the character, though not one that I have myself. Slade is, undeniably, a bad person. He is a murderer, and there is no two ways around that. However, I think that he does have a strong set of ethics, just one that allows for murder. Strong being that he adheres to them strongly, not that they are strong in the sense of them being correct as we often associate them the term "strong ethics." This is likely due to my background of being in the military myself, but I have met plenty of people like Slade in that they have killed people when they deeply believe that they shouldn't have. I think Slade was exposed to so much death and war so young that he became desensitized to it as a way to cope with what he'd done.

Across multiple cannons, Slade was there, or forced or tricked into killing people he knew were innocent or noncombatants. That's one of the hardest things to face as a solider and I think that it was easier for someone as mentally unwell as Slade to just disassociate humanity from people. I wish I had my single issues handy but it was during the arch where Wade was hunting down Slade from the OG run and Slade is on a train and he mentions that so many times he looks at people and he just forgets that they are human in case they end of dying. I find that to be so interesting because I've served with people who say the same thing.

So in his mind, murder is okay, but say for example human trafficking, something that he survived, isn't. He also isn't okay with petty robbery, or drug dealing. Now I do think that he turns a blind eye to others doing it in most cases, or that he takes people at their word on what jobs are about to ignore that he is also doing it. So I think that he deals strongly in cognitive dissonance (more so than ethics) to some crimes but when he finds out flatly that he was tricked into smuggling drugs, he isn't okay with it. A distinction without a huge difference for most people, but enough of a difference to him.

I think that Slade tells his side of things which naturally is shaded to fit his own view of himself, just like how Wintergreen describes himself different to how he seems in reality. Will says he's a romantic, Slade says he's lecherous but we don't go around saying that Will is a s*x addict. When given the chance to tell a story about ourselves, we tell it from our POV which often goes hand and hand with how we view the world. So Slade tells stories that help reinforce the cognitive dissonance, and his weird sense of what's right, and Will tells does the same.

I have family who check just about every box for being a narc and I don't get narc character vibes from Slade. He can and will admit that he's wrong. He openly hates himself and what he's done to himself and everyone around him, and you wouldn't catch a narc thinking, or ever admitting that. (at least in the OG run, Johns and others ruined that depiction of him right into being pretty much a narc tbh)

I also think that Slade should be called out more, but not for being a narc, though like I said, some writers versions of him absolutely should be lol. I think he should be called out for his lack of humanity, his warped view of the world, and the mental gymnastics that he needs to jump though to maintain these thoughts. And I think that it's this that makes for a more interesting character. One that is mentally unwell enough that to be wrong but not so unwell that they could never change. Not that changing would atone for his actions.

So yeah, I think Slade changes stories in order to help his distance himself from the things he views as being unforgivable, and he a bad person, but I don't think that it's because he's a narc. That was a really long was of me saying I don't think Slade is a narc. Apparently I felt like yapping this morning.

[hmmbarkbark]

needed to make a slade collage today

[dogmeatthedead]

ok, hi again! slade age anon. just want to clarify that i was talking about the ages of the characters, not the military part. you're probably more knowledgeable about that than i am. also, disclaimer: i am mostly using the post-crisis ages as that the wilson fam i have the most knowledge about, and the fact that i wasn't all too fond of priest's rebirth run. the dates themselves don't really matter, just the numbers we get from them. it requires a bit more math, but that's okay for me. :) so the first date range we have is for slade himself. slade is said to be 16 when he (illegally) enlists in the military, but he's also said to be a korean war vet. the korean war was from 1950-53, so slade was born somewhere between 1934-37. that would make him between 47 and 50, but because we know slade was created to be in his early 50s during his first appearance i'll just say 1934.

we also know that slade fought in the vietnam war (1955-75), and that he was part of the first american soldiers that set foot on vietnam soil (1965). as stated in tales of the teen titans #44, the same day america touched down on south vietnam is the same day grant wilson was born. which would make slade 31 when grant was born. in deathstroke (1991) #1, wintergreen says that grant ran away at 17 to join the local gangs of new york. in the new teen titans (1980) #2, it's said that grant was 19 when he died, and if you look at his headstone at the end of the issue it says 1961-1980.

joey is where we run into a problem. joey is said to be roughly the same age as dick, but that just doesn't work knowing grant's age. grant died at 19, and one year later (judas contract arc), dick is ~18 and nightwing [debuts same issue as jericho, Tales #44]. in ntt (1984) #11, joey is reminiscing and he explicitly remembers himself as 3 when grant was 7, which is a 4 year age gap. the closest i could get to closing that is under a hypothetical where either grant just turned 7 or joey has not yet turned 4. that would make joey roughly ~16 when grant dies at 19, and one year later would make him 17 when he joined the titans during judas contract. joey stays with the titans for about 2 year [during the beginning of the titans hunt/jericho's gambit arc, the titans are celebrating their 3 year anniversary. if grant died literally right as they formed (NTT 1980 #1) and then a year later joey joins (Tales #44), he would've spent about 2 years with them], and dies in New Titans (1988) #84; coincidentally at 19 as well.

within the same year, slade meets rose when she's 13 [after deathstroke the hunted arc, in #48]. by this point, slade would also be around 53 as well. that means rose would've been conceived when slade was 40. joey's age when his throat was slit was never given, but i thought i remembered him being somwhere around 5-6. which kinda implies that joey was assaulted, slade and adeline divorced (after she tried shooting him), and slade met lillian and conceived rose within the same year. that's all i got. i know it's different in rebirth (rose was younger when found, grant younger when he ran away, slade was 17 when he illegally enlisted and he cheated on adeline), but this is mostly it for post-crisis canon! :D

Always good to meet someone who enjoys the classic run more. I tried to avoid tying Slade to real world years since that gets harder and harder to maintain cannon as each year passes. Plus there is some stuff that I genuinely enjoy of Slade in the Middle East as a character moment. I think these years could work too, as much as I love MarvStroke even his years were inconsistant. ie: when Rose is first introduced, Will wasn't there then later in the run he was there. Things like that. No matter how you slice it though, I do agree that Slade and Lillian would have had to get together super close to the divorce. I just like the idea of it being further out. I think I probz got to tied up in making it work with the Army timeline haha. I think the closest age that we get for Slade in MarvStroke was in some editors notes that mention that during that run Slade was in his mid-fifties with Will in his late sixties with there being a 12 year age gap between them. Of course I won't even get into how that makes no sense because they say over and over again that they've been friends for 20 years when the actual number is closer to 40 years but that's a differnt can of worms. I love reading otherpeoples timelines! Thanks for taking the time to write this out!!

[dogmeatthedead]

Don't be happy about that Frannie drawing. The OP is a crazy sicko who believes that Frannie canonically molested Slade and that's why Slade became a pedophile.

Oh dang! Suddenly I remember why I stopped adding comments on tumblr posts. You never know the kind of crazy you might be given attention to. Thanks for the heads up.

[birdw4tching]

Do you guys ever think about how extremely normal slade and frannie are about each other

[terradni]

UAGHHHHHHHHH UR CRAZZYYYYY /pos

[dogmeatthedead]

People make fanart of Frannie?! My heart...is it healing?

[ravagersruin]

My Deathstroke Collection (that I've lovingly built over the past 4 years)

Miscellaneous | stickers, pins, keychains, shirts (yes, even the cape from Six Flags too) & other things I don't really keep on display

Trading Cards/Other Random Cards | most of these came from ebay (I didn't know the Ravager card was an NFT when I bought it 😭), yes I even have his tarot card, I didn't even know Slade was on the packaging for the Cosmic Cards but I got a free pack of them after buying a card from someone on Mercari!

My Main 3 Slade Shelves

Starting with the top shelf! This is my Classic Slade shelf that houses all my various figures of that particular suit, my framed reprint of New Teen Titans #2, most of my custom DSTT funkos, most of my comic volumes (the 90s ones are hidden behind the Omnibus, I have all of them + Full Cycle), my handmade copy of the Wintergreen journal, and a photocard of Wintergreen that my friend made for me <3

The middle shelf! Home to most of my official funkos of him, some Slade related DVDs, some small plushies, an adorable Bombshell Ravager figure, my legos of him, some other stuff, and a photo of Knights and Dragons Slade with my custom of that version of Addie bc why not!

And the bottom shelf! Home to all my Rebirth merchandise of him (ignore the christmas sweater), some miscellaneous things, a Wintergreen Altoids tin that holds all my Slade pins, BOTH versions of the Icon Heroes Rebirth Slade statue (the unmasked one I waited 3 years to buy from my local comic book shop and I got it for my birthday), and a 3D printed design of his logo because what collection is complete without one?

My Slade Art Prints/Other Displays

Just a side note most of these art prints came from a convention or were bought online

Firstly, all my signed art prints. The first is from Steve Erwin, middle is from Tony Daniel, and the last is from Jeff Brennan. Everytime I meet someone that's worked on Slade stuff at a convention I always ask them to put a line related to him that they like if they have one!

My Main Slade Walls | they're the left and right sides of my dresser respectively, so happy to have the only official merchandise of Pat Trayce (brother got it for me for Christmas)

Other prints around my room (& a framed copy of my favorite issue, #26, signed by Steve Erwin, which I got on ebay after his passing)

And finally, the other little displays I keep on the left and right sides of my headboard! Truly my favorite things to look at. Home to my paired WinterStroke customs (the right is my FAVORITE) and Rose, a knockoff of the Arkham games Slade Hot Toys (which was a gift and I love it), some issues I like to keep out to look at, a framed photo of my favorite panel from DSTT, and a framed copy of the first annual which is special to me not only because it's the first issue I ever owned of that comic, but also because I picked it up the one time I've been able to meet my partner in person.

There's a story behind so much stuff here and a lot of it has been graciously gifted to me over the years (it's very easy to shop for someone when they mainly like something incredibly specific). This is pretty much everything I have except for the single issues but if I did those we'd be here all day and I only get 10 photos so 😂🖤🧡

[ravagersruin]

I couldn't add anymore photos to the main post but I just wanted y'all to know that I also keep my brother's life size Deadpool cardboard cutout next to my main Slade shelves :)

[ravagersruin]

There isn't, I made her

I made 3 of her 😌

[dogmeatthedead]

I want to rob you so bad, #26 is also one of my favorites! I unironicly wrote college essays about it. RIP Steve

[custer-mars]

I will never shut up about this :

Our boy was tortured during the war and it was not explored more than that?!

Like it left no trace or trauma?

Something I've always found appreciable about the various writers' exploration of Slade's character is that the pain he felt from the experience is often at least mentioned or shown

Here, in Inc #10 , an exploration generally appreciated by fans of Slade's feelings after the experience that left him half-dead for a time

I think Wintergreen's traumatic experiences should also be discussed and explored again. It's a pity that his own painful past is forgotten, because it contributes to his overall complexity.

[dogmeatthedead]

Wintergreen in general needs more exploration tbh. Like writers get so scared to talk about him when you can explore the title character and Will because of the parallels that they share.

[ravagersruin]

My Slade Related Custom Funkos and their inspirations!

The Slades + Waller: Hunting Outfit Slade (DSTT #1 & #26), the official Classic Slade funko with Cobb Vanth's head, and red coat Waller

Miscellaneous (Joey, Rose, Pat): the main Jericho costume, DSTT 4th Annual Rose, and Vigilante Pat (I know I need to make her a better one, I know, Peacemaker season 2 please gimme something to work with)

The Addies: Knights and Dragons, New Teen Titans #39, and DSTT #31

The Wintergreens: Basic, DSTT #10/#11/#31, and DSTT #36

If anyone's curious, the order in which I made them is Pat, blue sweater Wintergreen, unmasked Slade, Steve Trevor Wintergreen, NTT Addie, yellow shirt Wintergreen, Kitale Slade, World Tour Addie, Waller, K&D Addie, Rose, and Jericho

My current plans for new ones are: K&D WinterStroke, Judas Contract Wintergreen & Adeline, DSTT #37 WinterStroke, and DSTT #39 Pat Trayce, and maybe Lilian if I ever find good ones to use for her

[dogmeatthedead]

STOP I LOVE THESE! I've never repainted a pop before but now I have plans for when I'm near my paints again!!

[ravagersruin]

Wintergreen and Ravager by Steve Erwin

[ravagersruin]

Everytime I look at that art I get emotional so if you need me I'll just be over here looking at them

[custer-mars]

I need more scenes with them

[deathstrokeapologist]

wait, he doesn't wear socks...? ok i might have to become a slade hater for real. i mean i could excuse everything else but that's just unforgivable

So here we have the less damning piece of evidence: Several times in this issue of Deathstroke ‘91 we see his ankles, but they do change colour and it’s possible that he’s wearing socks here and it’s just not clear, or that he’s not wearing them because of this disguise over the top of his suit necessitating different shoes.

But! I have proof of his freak.

Page 12 of Deathstroke the Terminator, issue 10, we see him getting dressed right there on screen. And idk about you, but I’m pretty sure he goes straight from bare feet to boots there.

A couple issues after this, he goes wandering through some sewers and ends up becoming king of a buncha lizard people. The 90s Deathstroke run was a TRIP.

I’ve read every Slade run since this was released and I don’t think it’s ever specifically retconned that he’s a sockless freak, but I was in some kind of haze when I read most of these comics, so possibly I missed something, and modern Slade has socks under the boots. I hope so.

[custer-mars]

My theory is that he can walk around in shoes without socks on all he wants given he can't get blisters anyways