note

I don’t know how use tumblr

[note-450]

intro post

I’m Note. They/them smile

My ao3 is MagicAsh85. My twitter is @/Note_450. If we’re moots you can ask for my discord

I am currently most interested in:

Superboy Prime

Current fandoms:

DC, Honkai: Star Rail, Jujutsu Kaisen, Linked Universe

I only got into DC relatively recently so i don’t know anything about anything!!!

#note does a posting is my tag for posts that i made

[duahhail]

most sane group of dc siblings

(alt. version below)

[duahhail]

Had this headcanon that it's a rite of passage for Billy, Mary, and Kit's friends to all have a small crush on or admiration for Freddy because he's the cool older brother type and it basically goes like this:

Freddy, coming back from work: Hey, I’m going to take a nap real quick

Billy: Okay! We’ll keep it down for you :D

Jon, Damian, Scott:

Jon: So is your brother single or

Billy: Be careful with what you say next

or

Freddy: Sorry, I have to go, it was nice seeing you, Mary—and Mary’s friends

Mary’s friends, after Freddy leaves: Mary, your brother's kind of

Mary: Don’t finish that sentence

or

Kon: Hey, what's up so quick question

Kit, who's already been asked too many times: If you ask me if Junior's single I'll blow this space station up with everyone inside ^▽^

[duahhail]

This is the most normal and friendliest encounter they had all week

[binary-bird]

pose studies/doodles feat. jason and his unusually strong gym partner

[hannrum]

Superman variant

[four-pebbles]

can we talk about the genuine meta horror of prime's whole, "they made me evil / they made me do this / they made me a villain" sentiment? as much as it's thrown around casually as proof of his immaturity and childish refusal to take the blame for his actions, he’s.. kind of right?

(very long analysis under the cut ! you’ve been warned)

even in the most recent superman issues, post-redemption, he's still insisting that all his evil actions were "an accident" or "not [his] fault." while ive seen a lot of ppl understandably critique this (because if we’re meant to believe he’s a good guy now, he needs to own up to this mistakes and stop being so dismissive of the atrocities he's committed), i think there's a lack of people talking about the fact that, in a sickeningly existential way, it’s true.

he’s a character. he knows he’s a character. everything he does—it’s not actually him, right? it’s a writer behind the scenes deciding how he needs to act to best serve the plot. obviously you can say that about every character, but the difference between every character and prime is that prime is aware of it.

i’ll admit the first few times he does the whole, “they made me do it!” thing in infinite crisis, he's clearly just talking about conner and the heroes around him for trying to stop him and therefore 'making' him hurt them. this is naive, yes. this is a misguided 15 year old freaking out over the destructive potential of his powers and out of either shock or puerility (or both) refusing to take accountability. but by the time we see him in adventure comics, after he's become aware of the fourth wall at the end of countdown, the "they" he keeps blaming for his violence shifts explicitly from characters to the dc writers themselves.

his whole vibe at this point still reads as petulant and bratty, as a purposefully easy-to-hate loser. him crashing through the dc headquarters and threatening the dc staff is supposed to be a funny fourth wall-breaking sequence, a tongue-in-cheek critique of obsessive fanboys who take comics too seriously and can't separate reality from fiction. all we're supposed to get out of it is that he’s an annoying child still blaming everyone but himself for the ways his life has gone to hell.

it works until it doesn't. because if we're looking at this solely from the level of a fictional story, sure, yeah, this is a character and his words and actions show us the kind of character he is supposed to be. but when prime is constantly acknowledging that he knows it's fictional too, the “wall” that keeps us at the story level starts to crack. prime isn't “just” a character. his whole conceit is that he is real, he is someone from the real world, who has somehow ended up in the world of a comic book. of course prime can’t tell fiction from reality; it’s not that he’s an overly invested fanboy, it’s that his whole existence blurs that line on principle. so when he cries that he's been "forced to hurt people," and that the writers have "made [him] into a villain," we end up looking at it from the level of our world. and they did make him into a villain in our world. someone from dc sat in a meeting and pitched, “hey, what if we brought those guys who sacrificed themselves to save the dc universe in the 80s back, but made them into antagonists?”

prime’s whole framing as a character that knows this turns his whiny "i wasn't supposed to be like this" lines from immature to heartbreaking. prime didn't want to be a villain. he tells us this explicitly, whispers it into an empty room in the wake of his fight with the black lanterns. but what can he do about it? characters don't choose for themselves how they’ll be written. he can slam through a comic's depiction of the dc headquarters all he wants; it's still just a depiction. the real world is untouchable. his entire existence has become an outlet for annoyed writers to point and laugh at, to make a fool out of as reparations for the hate they deal with from fans online. he's a convenient plot device. he's a lampshade personified.

it might seem kind of obvious, but i really get the sense that it’s not fully intentional by the writers? like, they showed us more and more of his backstory over time, gave us examples of him being bullied and emotional and prone to outbursts as a child, because we’re supposed to see prime as a boy who turned evil because he already had a predisposition for erraticism and then lost control of his life, not a boy who turned evil because a writer decided they wanted him to be evil. but the reality is, his agency has been stripped from him. as long as that fourth wall is being broken by prime’s awareness of his existence as a character, it feels like we can never properly blame him for the things he's being written to do. and isn’t that terrifying? that we’re watching someone the writers want us to believe was once a real boy get yanked around, forced to commit atrocities with unwilling hands?

so. do i have a point im trying to reach here? sorry, not really. i just love meta characters and wish i saw more people playing into the horror that can come from realizing the lack of control someone has in their own narrative, kris deltarune style.

also, i think it's worth mentioning i don’t think anything i’ve said here is going to end up a canon explanation for why prime is still acting so callous about his villainous past in the current superman run. stuff like this gets too close to the root of why fourth wall-breaking characters are so hard to develop. if you make them too aware of their existence, what's left? it's just depressing. it's a motivation killer. like, literally kills all possible character motivations, because they'll know those motivations were just shoved into them like doll stuffing. and how do you write a fun superhero story with a character like that?

if we were to apply this to our current prime anyway, just for the angst fun of it, i think it can still work. he’s no longer screaming, "this isn't right! ... i was supposed to be the real superboy!" instead, he's casually explaining, "[it was] not my fault. at least, that's what i'm trying to retcon." it's like he's given up on fighting it directly, recognizing he'll have to work outside the context of the story. he'll "retcon" it, rather than prove with actions within the story that he isn’t to blame, because he doesn’t really have control of those actions. he’s come to a begrudging acceptance of his own lacking autonomy.

but hey! he's finally being written as a good guy, just like he’s always wanted. maybe if he keeps reminding the writers that it's his redemption arc, that he's finally been changed, they won’t forget to write him a happy ending.

even if there’s nothing he could do to stop them, if they choose not to.

[roguewanda]

I will forever maintain that Steph didn't fail at being Robin because she was bad at her job. She failed at being Robin because Batman didn't want her to be Robin.

Steph was a great vigilante as Spoiler, but a Robin's role isn't just to be a vigilante. A Robin's role, first and foremost, is to be Batman's sidekick. And if Batman doesn't really want you for the job, it doesn't matter how good you are at it, you will never be good enough for him.

It was pretty explicitly clear that Batman took her on in part because he was hoping to tempt Tim out of retirement. Batman wanted to work with Tim still, and no matter what Steph did, she wasn't Tim, she was her own person.

Yes, Steph made mistakes, because she was a teenager, but no mistake she made was worse than anything Dick, Tim or Jason had done (it's worth noting that Batman had previously wanted Steph to stop being a vigilante because he saw too many similarities to Jason and was worried that she would get hurt or killed, so it does make sense that he'd have less leniency for Steph than he'd had for Jason). Disobeying Batman's orders in order to save him, the thing she got fired for, is something they must all have done at least once.

Honestly, I'd argue that Steph didn't fail at being Robin at all. She was a great Robin, but she was fired before she really got a chance to prove herself.

[mauditeaffaire]

im scared they look so cool how do i turn this into a productive social interaction

[candy8448]

Which of the four houses are you is OUT, tell me which of the four humors you are

[pineappical]

ACTUALLY heres another one i quickly animated of rocky beating the shit out of grace

[big-kipper]

dude FUCK time travellers they genuinely piss me off i actually cant rven dothis rught now im so fucking mad they keep coming to my house they jeep showing up at my door trying to stop me theyre all like Dude in 5 years youre going to have a baby and you CANNOY keep it. Genuinely leave me alone. ztheyre telling me my spawn is going to destroy words i DONT fucking care genuinely ohmygod bro Leave me a postcard FUCK OFF . GET OFF MY DOORSTEP I DONT GUVE A SHIT. THATS LIKE THE FIFTH ONE THIS WEEK AND THEYRE ALL IN THE WORST FUCKING FITS ANYONES EVER SEEN TOO THEY HA OH MY GOD NO CAUSE IM ACTUALLY GETTING ANGRY THEY ALL HAVE THESE STUPID FUCKING HATS LIKE THEYRE TRYING TO MAKE LEGIONNAIRES HATS A THING THEYRE KOT A THINGIM DONT CARE I DONT CARE I DIDNT EVEN WANT CHILDREN BUT NOW IM PROBABLY FOING TO HAVE THEM ANYWYA BECAUSE I CANT STANF B DUDE NO SOLICITING IK SO DEADASS GET OFF MY DOOOROHHHHROORORRRRRRR IDODNBDTTTRCACCACREEEE

[lampssshade]

Me when the love of my life turns into a bird

[halondrus]

[its-arson-time]

type prevs url with your eyes closed in the tags

[binturong-of-the-day]

The binturong of waking up from a nap but feeling more tired than before

[indigosfindings]

people online: hi hows it going

people irl: hi hows it going

marina diamandis if she wrote an extended version of how to be a heartbreaker where it's revealed tbat electra heart is a bee: rule number five/is you protect the hive/so that the queen can survive/and all your larvae can thrive