I read the comic in one sitting less than an hour after finishing the movie, and wow I have many Thoughts™.

- It's very obvious the two versions were meant to cater to different audiences AND tell different messages. I don't get why people are going "But the comic was better! It had more nuance!" just because Nimona was easier to root for in the movie.

- The comic was written back when ND Stevenson was still trying to process a lot of stuff, so all the characters are morally grey/straight up evil and the climactic battle is between a Ballister who regrets turning against Nimona, even if it was to save others vs. a Nimona who's too hurt to care if her lashing out was going to hurt innocent people.

- By the time Nimona got a movie adaptation, ND was a lot more secure in his sexuality, so the climactic battle was Nimona vs. the Director, the symbol of religious oppression and bigotry. It's not just about your friends turning on you because you're "too much" for them anymore, it's also about a society that would rather bring itself to the brink of ruin than coexist with you.

- (I totally get why people were upset about Ballister's surname change, though. Like come on, the media dubbing him Blackheart just to be mean was RIGHT THERE).

- Nimona's metaphor for not shifting is such a neurodivergent thing. Even in the comic, Nimona's parents insisting she's a monster who replaced their daughter is reminiscent of the changeling myth, which is what many parents thought their neurodivergent kids were—changelings who replaced their "real" children.

- Ambrosius being trained to cut off HIS BOYFRIEND'S WHOLE FUCKING ARM instead of merely disarming him is a very cop thing to do. As much as cops claim they're trained to de-escalate situations, their training still teaches them to treat everyone as a potential threat, and that level of constant vigilance can turn anyone into a trigger-happy/arm-choppy bastard. Even the Director, who can use a sword but probably hasn't actually fought someone in ages, STILL can't see Ballister reaching for the squire's phone without assuming he has a weapon.

- And on that note, the Queen getting killed simply because she was trying to reform the Institution and allow commoners to become knights? That's the best "no such thing as a good cop" metaphor I've seen. Because even if there ARE good cops and they ARE in leadership positions, the system will crush them before they make any meaningful change. It's not a good institution that turned rotten, it's an institution that only exists to spread its rot and refuses to be good.

- That's why Ballister's characterisation is so different in the movie vs. the comic. Comic Ballister had 15 years to come to terms with his trauma and the Institution's evildoing, while Movie Ballister is still freshly traumatised and hasn't found a way to define himself beyond the role he was assigned by the Institution.

- Not to mention Comic Ambrosius was not very noble to begin with and genuinely believed Ballister was better suited to villainy than heroism, while Movie Ambrosius never wanted the glory that came with his lineage in the first place and only antagonised Ballister because of indoctrination he needed to unlearn (which he did, all by himself, after witnessing the lengths the Director will go to just to kill Nimona).

- It really shows how important it is to surround yourself with loved ones who are open to change. Comic Ambrosius can love Ballister all he wants, but he'll still blast his arm off because he thinks Ballister deserved it anyway. Movie Ambrosius will stop to question what "the right thing" even means, even if he didn't love Ballister enough to defend him unconditionally.

I have so many more thoughts bubbling beneath the surface, but I'll probably address them some other day. In conclusion:

Watch Nimona. This is not a request.

Back with more Nimona thoughts, y'all.

- It's definitely possible that the Director wasn't reacting on instinct when Ballister reached for the "weapon", and she was lying off her ass to escalate the situation until someone killed Ballister and/or Nimona. Something something instinctive prejudice, something something deliberate evil, something something police brutality is both.

- So much of the Director's "Boohoo, that wasn't me it was the shapeshifting monster" charade could have been debunked if Ballister planned ahead and recorded Nimona shifting back BEFORE he revealed himself. Classic "underestimating the enemy" move.

- Ambrosius going from "He killed the Queen" to "He's being manipulated, I can still save him from the monster's evil clutches" is a nice parallel to Ballister going from "He didn't mean to chop off my arm, it's what he was trained to do" to "If I can show this video to Ambrosius, he'll believe me". Both of them are still clinging onto old beliefs because that's all they've ever known, but the one constant is their desire to be together again. Just. ARGH. THESE TWO GAYS I CANNOT.

- Movie Ballister unlearning his prejudices over the course of the movie is a very important thing to portray, because no one is immune to propaganda and dismissing bigots as individuals who chose to be evil instead of addressing the system that produces them is the political equivalent of bailing water out of a sinking boat while going, "Dang, why won't these water droplets magically gain sentience and stop flooding my boat—or better yet, help stop the leak?"

- (Because let's be real, a society that values conformity and authoritarian control isn't going to install a Free Will Ex Machina switch in bigots that will automatically turn them good if X condition is met. Creating mindless robots who will persecute any minority without stopping to question things IS the point.)

- (Case in point: Gloreth, who could have been Nimona's best friend forever until she fell victim to her community's prejudices and didn't even stop to question them. She wasn't secretly evil the whole time, she was just a kid surrounded by people who actively prevented her from knowing better.)

- That being said, I LOVE that Movie Nimona never gave a single fuck about Ballister's discomfort and continued to be herself until he came around. The point isn't to dismiss the impact of conservative indoctrination or make endless excuses for people who reject every opportunity to reform themselves, it's to make some room for empathy without debasing yourself for people who won't even meet you a quarter of the way.

- It's a nice contrast to Comic Ballister the Morally Grey but Still Reasonable Anti-Hero and Comic Nimona the Cool Punk Gremlin Who Kinda Needs To Keep Her Destructive Tendencies In Check.

- The comic was radical because it validated people who were tired of being nice and just wanted to go apeshit, because fuck everyone who believes you're something to be saved or fixed.

- The movie was radical because it acknowledged that destroying your enemies sometimes just destroys you even more instead of bringing catharsis, and that's okay because fuck everyone who demands you choose between burning the world or being burned when all you wanted was a life of peace.

- I can kind of see why people thought Nimona's ending was anticlimactic but honestly, I think we've had enough buried gays. We deserve a little magic resurrection.

- (Besides, there's this cool theory that Nimona deliberately took the form of a phoenix before killing the Director so that she could be reborn, and I can't remember who OP was but damn if that isn't a great in-universe explanation.)

Again, in conclusion:

[ID: A pink-haired Nimona doing the sign of the horns with a maniacal grin while Ballister, a black-armoured brown knight, looks confused and dazed in the background.]

Go watch Nimona right fucking now. Rewatch it, if you've already done so. Hell, get the comic and reread it too. Join me in my Nimona obsession.

The whole plot past Megamind defeating Metro Man only happened because Megamind didn't want Roxanne to see him in his pyjamas

Reading Dracula Daily was like reading the Webcomic Check Please.

Obviously not content wise, but the whole, big parts of tumblr read something together and than you dive into the tag for commentary, meta, fanart and fan theory, plus with time between updates you really get the chance to focus on small details.

Honestly I hope we, as in all of tumblr, can agree on a new reading material next year that gets released in short-ish more or less regular updates so we have time to write meta, theories and focus on the small details as much as the big things.

also when i’m feeling less emotionally raw about it i am So writing a meta abt their symbolic marriage that culminates in Yaz carrying 13 bridal style over the threshold of their home. But I am too raw right now. 

Yazmin Khan has spent 3 seasons watching and learning from 13. In this episode, 13 seemingly dies and Yaz is left to pick up the pieces. She does. She flies the tardis, gathers the troops, formulates a plan and sees it through and saves the doctor’s life. Temporarily (it’s always temporary). Saves the world. Saves the creature. Saves so many others who would have been effected by this. 

Meanwhile, the master, having a total breakdown and Still trying to bring the doctor down to his level so they are the same again, attempts to Be the doctor to do it. But. He has no idea who the doctor is and never has. He’s doing a grotesque echo of what was done to Missy, he shapes the doctor into him as the doctor attempted to shape Missy into him.  But How the doctor views the master and how the master views the doctor in these instances are not the same. 

He’s parading around in her outfit and with her genetics and putting on a show while yaz watches in disgust and knows deep in her bones that she is better at being the doctor than he is because she actually knows what it means. 

The juxtaposition of a woman who has spent 3 seasons looking and learning and managing to become the doctor by learning who she is even while 13 wasn’t entirely sure to the master, who is desperately clutching at gaining that level playing field with 13 at the top of the pile  he sees her on, even if it kills her. The master chose to degrade 13 to nothing but her genetics and therefore when trying to Be the doctor all he does is kill her and steal said genetics. But those genetics have Nothing to do with the person the Doctor is. 

Yaz, however, knows the doctor is not their genetics and she is, in this episode, 13′s true successor. 

She Is The Doctor because she knows the Doctor is the sum of their actions, not her parts.

He is a mess of genetic code because he reduces her to her genetic abilities, just as Tecteun did originally. 

Yasmin Khan is The Doctor. 

what they say: I'm fine

what they mean: the master said he doesn't want to be himself anymore cause he knows he'll always be the 'worst one', the outcast, the doctor's friend who was supposed to be his equal, but it turned out the doctor is, and always will be, much better than him. No matter what he does, what kind of plans he will make, he'll never be enough powerful to be considered equal in the eyes of the doctor, his best friend and mortal enemy. He experienced so much suffering from the academic pressure on gallifrey, to the drums, to the cyberium, to the endless rage he always feels and it only caused him pain that nobody will truly know about. He'll always be hated in the eyes of everyone that knows him, especially in the eyes of the person's opinions he cares about most

only thing i want from the centenary is for the doctor to Get Mad. out of her mind. off her last hinge. i want 10 in end of time 2 levels of meltdown and self-pity. 12 in face the raven levels of irrational and desperate.

i want her to become so unrepentantly and shortsightedly selfish shes not even trying to hide that her first priority isnt saving the world anymore. i want the rest of the team to be working around her bc shes not a player anymore. i want them to need all these highly experienced Savers Of The World bc theyre trying to do the work of The Doctor while the doctor clocked out and has no duty of anything anymore. complete loose canon. completely true neutral. only guiding principle left is YAZ. cant be counted on to help save the world and cant be expected not to get in the way.

i want her to Not be able to snap out of it herself (like 10) or herself-via-companion (like 12). i want them to need both the master And yaz in tandem to get her anywhere near able to listen to anyone again. and it will only be them. it will only be yaz and the master she will listen to. because he knows her past and she knows her present.

i want all the humans who learnt from the doctor to save the world and i want the doctor to snap in half like a glowstick and fucking explode. The Doctor to Unbecome.

and then i want to see 14 try to put themselves back together again after they tore themselves apart. 12 reached Peak Doctor. 13 must reach the bottom. how deep can we dig until it’s not the doctor anymore. what is the ground the well springs from.

give her a flamethrower

thinking about that ocean vuong interview where he talks about the aftermath of anger being care; and writing being an act of care, or the answer to the question “now what” in the exhaustion after anger. how each word is “a collective citizen towards hope; towards clarity and expansion”. every word counts; all writing is aspirational. every attempt expands one’s capacity for care.

thinking about how dw is about stories; the doctor herself at once narrator and protagonist and story itself, such that there are no paths beyond the expected arc. “options blocked off”.

thinking about what care might look like, when you *are* the story. when you thought you were writing it, and instead it’s gone and happened to you, and anger is the only response left. and after you’ve razed everything and are digging through the ash: what now?

#look okay i have a lot of feelings about how #yaz’s doctorification #doesn’t erase the differences between how she and thirteen approach problems #and i maintain that while the doctor tries to operate from kindness #yaz is a better listener #and that in the same way the doctor frequently fails to consider or understand the perspectives of others (structure’s flat until it isn’t) #(the doctor answers their own questions out loud constantly) #yaz *lets people answer* #in other words #every word counts #or #care as an exploration #rather than a duty #which matters quite a bit i think #when you’re deciding how to rebuild after a fire

Somehow I'm in the minority on this one but. I still genuinely consider Black Parade to be one of the greatest rock songs of our generation

Genuinely if it hadn't been beaten to death by every single radio station in the universe within a month of its release it would probably be one of my favourite songs of all time. The only issue it has is that it's overplayed and misinterpreted. They started working on it while they were writing bullets. It uses 159 tracks. At least 26 of those were just for the snares. They used a full orchestra. It was originally inspired by My Way. It uses Pachabels Canon as a chord progression. It was their Bohemian Rhapsody and years later they got to play it with Brain May himself. Even goddamn Andrew Lloyd Webber has referenced it. They're absolutely fucking insane for even having the balls to release something so out there and it absolutely paid off.

Bruce never grieved his parents fully and this dictates every aspect of his adult life.

He can never escape the ghosts of his parents and it hinders him so badly. He’s obsessive and overprepared and angry because Batman is reactionary. His driving force is reactionary.

He’s always planning for the worst case scenario because the worst case scenario happened to him and he was unprepared and it fucked him up. His parents’ loss slammed into him and he didn’t have any defenses against it. So he builds walls to protect himself against that sort of loss in the future.

Bruce Wayne is driven by grief; defined by grief. He does everything in his power to not relive his trauma. And when he does? When he loses someone? He goes off the rails because he can’t deal with it. He doesn’t have the tools to cope. His control has been stripped away. He’s helpless again.

Anyway this is an incomplete meta post so feel free to add on lol I’m just rambling

Yes!!! And that also gets into the core issue of his character- Bruce is so convinced that everyone he loves will either die or leave that he pushes them away before it can happen, but all that does is create a self fulfilling prophecy where in a way he forces them to leave. Because nobody’s patience is so impeccable they’re going to stand around for decades on end while Bruce does his level best to force them out. And this creates a self perpetuating cycle where he just gets increasingly more miserable and increasingly more proven right when in reality the only way to finally break it is to let himself be venerable again and he can’t because he never properly grieved the first time he got burned. And like, on top of that- you can blame the OCD or you can blame the autism, but the fact of the matter is he’s never even really been able to figure out why his parents died. The concept of “bad luck” or “bad things just happening sometimes” is incomprehensible to him. There needs to be a root source or concrete reason or he just can’t grasp it. So he lashes out at the nebulous concepts of “crime” and “corruption” in hopes that it’ll somehow help stop the same thing from ever happening again. Symbolically, in a way, he’s trying to sort of bring his parents back by stopping the thing that killed them, but he can’t because it’s an impossible task!! Death is not an undoable action!! And like,,, maybe I’m reading into things too much, but I’ve always seen that as a large cause of his no-kill rule. Or at least his overly strict adherence to it in any and all circumstances. Because, at his heart, he’s still that little boy who can’t accept death. Not as an occurrence nor as an unstoppable force. It’s a defeatable monster to him, and until he realizes that it’s not, and truly accepts on a fundamental level that it is an inevitability, he will never really be able to heal.

BRUCE WAYNE IS A PTA PARENT

You know that recent interview or whatever where Sacha said he didn’t see his Master as a man, or seeing gender in that way or whatever it was? Don’t get me wrong, I was like ‘cool fits fandom and headcanons i guess’ but now we’ve got this image like…yeah, now I get it, that is quite a lot of gender actually.

This is information I never knew I needed and now have no idea what to do with, so thanks for that Chibnall

#i love the implication here that nine just assumed jack slept in the hallways??#dw spoilers (x)

Me during any vampire movie: blood is approximately 90% water and has very little nutritional value. An actual vampire requiring an average human's caloric intake would have to piss constantly to avoid dying of renal failure

Oh no

Oh no

A Thought

Any analysis of Superman and Captain America should involve two main points. 1) They are every bit the caricature of honest goodness that they are said to be. And  2) BEING a a caricature of honest goodness means not just fighting obvious villainy, but raging against institutional injustice, even when it comes from “Legitimate” sources.  There is a difference, however. The Kent’s raised Clark with a strong moral compass, but also good sense. He’s very aware that, as Superman, anything he does comes with a tinge of Threat. He’s keenly aware that with the power he wields, the only way he can continue to operate is by appearing completely nonthreatening to the status quo. Unless he is preventing immediate, obvious harm, he has to be very careful with his intervention. He’ll see a city councilman skimming funds from schools, a factory illegally disposing of waste, or Cops inflating their quotas with bogus charges, and he’ll be outraged. But, Superman can’t do anything about those things. If he intervenes, people won’t see Superman protecting civilians from police abuse, they’ll see Superman Threatening A Cop. If Superman expresses any opinions besides the most milquetoast “Be Kind To One Another” stuff, it gets spun into “Scary Indestructible Alien Man Wants To Take Over The World”. So, Superman takes all that rage, every injustice and abuse he sees, and those that he cannot solve as Superman, he gives to Clark Kent.  And behind the “Aw Shucks’ Kansas Farmboy affect, Clark Kent is RUTHLESS. He will pick apart your life and nail you sins the sky for all to see.  Like, everybody knows about Lois Lane, and she’s objectively the better journalist, but people always underestimate Clark. Those that remember anything about him usually think of him as harmless, the guy who comes to collect the statements your media people prepared, so you’re caught off-guard when the fangs come out. A Clark Kent interview goes like this: First Question: Hello Police Chief Smith. So, how did you get involved in law enforcement? Second Question:  What are the key values that drive your police department?  Third Question: On September 14th, you called your officers together and told them to, and I quote “ Pull over every [racial slur] you can find out there. If they let you search, say you smell weed and bring them in. If they don’t, bring ‘em in for refusing to cooperate. Just get those [expletive deleted] in cuffs and paying fines, or else start looking for a new job”. Would you say this policy of deliberately targeting racial minorities is in line with the values you described earlier?”  And Clark Kent doesn’t stop after he gets his headline. It might end up on Page 3, but he’ll keep the story going until your career is torn to shreds and staked outside as a warning to others.  And then it’s back to human-interest stories and the feel-good beat until he selects his next target.  Superman is forced to overlook things, but he IS looking, and he won’t forget, and just because he’s not throwing you into the sun, doesn’t mean he intends to spare you.  Steve Rogers on the other hand will interrupt an interview to kick the shit out of a crooked real estate developer for driving people out of their homes. When arrested he’ll say “I’m sorry, how about we just chalk up the next time I save the world as community service”. 

I don’t think we talk enough about how, despite the presence of multiple globes, PotC takes place on a flat earth, ice wall included.

I'm gonna need some elaboration here

They literally sail over the edge of it after passing through a hole in a wall of ice. They fall off. They get back to the other side by passing through the whole ocean.

But also there’s a globe on, like, everyone’s desk.

#it's like lord of the rings#it's only flat for pirates

You get it.

No, but this is actually (sort of) canon.

See, part of the conceit of the PotC trilogy is that all myths are true. Nearly every supernatural element in the franchise has a root in some real world mythology or pirate lore, although some of them are mashed together.

Another thing is that they take place at the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, and the more the map gets filled in, and the more the Royal Navy takes power, there less room there is for the mystical and supernatural in the world. This is explicitly called out in At World's End with the death of the kraken:

The only way to access the world of the supernatural is through the supernatural itself. You can only get to the Isla de Muerta with Jack's compass that points to whatever you desire, or if you already know where its is. You need Tia Dalma's map to find the edge of the world. To access the supernatural, you need to already be immersed in it.

The pirates world isn't flat, it's round - but because the edge of the world exists in myth, it therefore exists in reality. The pirates are able to find it through supernatural means, but if, say, someone like Norrington just sailed in the same general direction, he wouldn't end up in the same place.

“Pirate” is a mage subclass fueled by word of mouth, rule of cool, The Power of Belief/Love/Friendship, and rum.

Mostly rum.

I think one of the best things about the new batman movie is that rather than go the route of past adaptations where bruce is just this lone savior figure who stands apart in this sea of terrible heartless criminals, it makes it a point to show him as someone with deep roots within gotham and for whom the city’s degradation and the acts of cruelty that go on within it are deeply felt. it shows him as someone who has been the victim of incredible violence, as someone who is still carrying and processing that trauma (while also taking the time to explore his positions of privilege and how that privilege comes into play here) as someone who is able to empathize with other victims of similar trauma and who ultimately comes to understand that perpetuating a continuing cycle of violence is getting all of them nowhere. it takes a look at both the characters of bruce wayne and batman and gives us a hero who is able to look at a devastated city filled with devastated people and decide they’re all worth trying to save. this is a movie that says, “hurt people hurt people, but sometimes, hurt people can help each other too” and I think that’s brilliant.   

we can argue all day about whether or not Bruce has the obligation to kill certain villains, but idk I just think that it's so wonderful that there's this character, this hardened and traumatized character, that works actively, everyday, to not let the violence that was done to him be done to anyone else. I desperately want a piece of media to explore this in an open and honest way. I want to see Bruce struggle with this, to see him grapple with the real consequences of this, but ultimately never take a life. I feel like so many movies and tv shows and whatever have fallen so short of this. it would be so much more interesting and relevant to see him stay true to the core values of Batman.