PSA

What are your favourite dickkory moments?

These!

Generations Shattered

Bamf malewife and bamf girlboss

Convergence New Teen Titans Issue #2

Just the utter love

The New Teen Titans (1984) Issue #1

It's all about the domesticity for me. The 'we're already parents' lifestyle

The New Teen Titans (1984) Issue #39

The deep emotional understanding.

The New Teen Titans (1984) Issue #10

What will it takes for moments like these again? Why is DC pushing so hard against this? I mean, I know why but seriously?

The New Teen Titans (1984) Issue #31

The New Teen Titans (1984) Issue #34

The New Teen Titans (1984) Issue #35

The New Teen Titans (1980) Issue #1

It's always been love at first sight for Kori.

The New Teen Titans (1980) Issue #2

JLA/Titans Issue #2

The utter love and joy that's radiating from her face at seeing Dick- you can just feel it through the screen.

Justice League (2018) Issue #54

Kori will always kill anyone who hurts Dick and Dick will always love Kori.

My favorite moments are always how endearingly she carries him and how softly he touches her.

The Flash (1987) Issue #81

Pre-crisis I actually think they married officially even though the wedding got interrupted because originally Wally refers to Dick as Kori's husband and I remember a scene where people were protesting Dick getting married to an alien. I believe DC rewrote their stories to never having been married later on.

The Flash (1987) Issue #81

"Koriand'r--Starfire--is a solarpowered alien princess who can blow a hole in the side of a battleship."

Dick: "I love that in a woman."

After Dick and Wally rescue Kori:

The Flash (1987) Issue #82

Flash: "uh huh. Hey, not to be crass, but can we postpone this little hallmark moment--at least until things quiet down a bit?"

The New Teen Titans: Judas Contract

Dick literally fights off possesion due to the amount of love he has for Kori and his friends

The New Teen Titans: Judas Contract

Dick keeps pictures of Kori framed

Tales of the Teen Titans Issue #44

And my favorite Dick and Kori moment of all time-

Teen Titans Spotlight (1988) Issue #19

A grand, sweeping romance, the two of them.

Obi-wan left Luke and Leia with a musical locket each. A left over from a more civilized time, a small reminder of their heritage. Maybe he leaves someone from Naboo with them idk 🤷‍♀️ I just have this imagine in my mind that Luke is curled up on himself beside his fighter with his locket playing. The force theme ofc. Leia marches over “wtf you stole my locket?!”

“No?! You have a locket too?”

Both take their lockets out to show the other. The song played and something new happened, showing a projection. “Made from love, a gift of the force.” Pictures of people long gone, Stormtroopers big smiles. Jedi Masters? A group of women in red and loving eyes. A couple in a wedding scene a Jedi? A women in lace and flowers, then finally one of Old man Ben? But he was younger holding two small babies with a sad smile. “My twin stars, know I will always be with you in the force. Do not hate you’re father, the dark side…had taken him. But know deep inside…he can be redeemed.” Ben looked up to the camera at them now. “If you are seeing this, you have found eachother again. My Luke and Leia. I may not be you’re father…but you are my beloved children.”

————

Idk it’s a small idea

pre-order here now

Maids, cleaners, janitors, and sanitation workers are all the most important people of civilization by far. Even 12 hours without them is VERY noticable and they simply need to be highly compensated for it

One of the running themes in "humans are space orcs" circles is the idea that humans will bond with anything. I can think of plenty of stories of humans making friends with wild animals, alligators, predators, creatures that aliens would immediately recognize as too dangerous for contact. But I was reading a story about two orangutans released back into the wild today and there's a certain element to that story I haven't seen so often: humans will bond with animals regardless of whether the bond is reciprocal.

For every story of a human making friends with some unlikely creature, there are dozens of stories of conservation specialists tranquilizing animals, tending to their wounds or illness, and releasing them because they're too dangerous to handle consciously. Stories of tagging birds of prey and timber wolves and Siberian tigers. Fat Bear Week? Any of those bears would rip your face off without hesitation. But they're round and fluffy and intimidating and beautiful and we love them even though they hate us. We make an effort to protect our monsters, because we love our monsters.

Imagine an alien planet that's experiencing ecological degradation. Their flora is dying, and they can't figure out why. And, offhandedly, in a diplomatic mission, an allied planet mentions that humans have successfully reversed similar devastation on Earth. So they reach out and Earth sends some experts to check it out. And what do they suggest? Reintroducing an apex predator that used to be a scourge against alien settlements. The species still exists in other regions of the planet, but it is slowly disappearing outside of its native habitat.

The aliens are askance. They've told bedtime stories to their young of these creatures: how they tear apart their prey, how they've eaten their organs and rip apart their homes. Some suggest that it's a trick—that the humans are trying to prompt them into destroying themselves.

But there are many alien cultures on this planet, with many different stories and some of them agree. The world watches in anticipation as the humans help their predators. They seek them out, these fearless otherworlders, putting them to sleep and tending their wounds. They keep track of the beasts, not to harm them, but to protect them.

At first the doomsayers' prophecy seems to come true. The predators devour prey animals like a feast, like a slaughter to people who have never been so close to the circle of life. But then, slowly, not over months but over years, comes change. The prey no longer eat the leaves and buds of every tree; some are left to bloom and fall. The refuse rots in the dirt, and the floods cease as the soil grows thick with compost and rotted bone, thick enough to hold water. The shapes of rivers change to protect their surroundings from the rain. The pollinators rebound.

Decades later, other cities and nations begin to accept this human myth of "conservation." Champions arise, alien champions, now, who go into the depths of the wilderness and the seas to protect those predators from the apathy of time.

Not all of them make it. This is something else the humans teach. Sometimes the tranquilizers are not enough. Sometimes the timing is wrong. Sometimes accidents happen. And when they do, the aliens look to humans for an answer for why they should protect these creatures who have killed those they love?

"Because they knew the risks," the humans say. "Because they would be the first to speak to save them. Because they taught you to see the beauty in the wild and you must not close your eyes."

So, despite themselves, they don't.

Does anyone know of that one obikin fanfic where obi-wan wakes up and he realizes hes in star wars as anakin's cold master? You know that premise wherein hes like that reincarnated or isekai'd shizun????

So. Hear 5. Nika. Loony Tunes Luffy, if you will. Tell us your thoughts on him and any potential meta? 👀 I’ve been aching to hear it from you since we first saw him go Full Silly Boy.

it's hard to answer this, because i have so many thoughts. i'm just going to try and start from the biggest points and move down.

i like gear five a lot, and i think this development feels very appropriate as a culmination of both luffy's character and the themes of one piece as a whole because of how it interacts with three extremely dominant motifs that have reoccurred throughout the story: freedom, laughter, and the sun.

from the very beginning of the story, luffy has acted, in small ways and big, as an agent of complete freedom. from his first meeting with coby to his breakout at impel down to the liberation of wano, what luffy does is destroy systems that control and oppress, if only because they are in his way. every strawhat is somehow trapped and held back from pursuing their own dreams when they meet luffy, and he frees them all, along with hundreds of others along the way, whether he's inspiring shirahoshi to venture outside or crushing yamato's manacles. his talent for this has always seemed almost preternatural.

luffy is not necessarily a benevolent person; he doesn't care much about helping people in the abstract. he's selfish. he values freedom for freedom's own sake, not because of any greater moral convictions. he doesn't think much about the negative knock-on effects of things like causing a mass breakout at impel down, and he doesn't really go around seeking out downtrodden and oppressed people to free out of a charitable or selfless instinct, nor does he really do anything because it's the right thing to do. he's dismissive of the idea that he might be a hero.

but because he is a completely uncontrollable free agent, and he doesn't really want anything but for himself and everyone he cares about to be completely free, he constantly collides with the systems of oppression that control his world, and when those collisions happen, it is the systems that fail, time and time again, because oppressive systems always do eventually. they can't withstand the light of day. and because he lives completely confidently and unapologetically, he is constantly inspiring others to do the same.

so by the time we are told about nika for the first time, we already know that what nika is said to do is what we've seen luffy doing for more than a thousand chapters: he frees people, and inspires them, and makes them laugh.

i also find luffy-as-nika to be very interesting and thematically appropriate when positioned in opposition to the various antagonists in one piece who have declared themselves to be gods, frequently some of its most tyrannical and oppressive villains- enel, the celestial dragons, doflamingo. all enslave and imprison people, robbing them of their freedom.

nika is a god of slaves, and a creature of liberation. the natural enemy, as rosinante might say, of that sort of megalomaniacal 'god.'

one piece has also consistently connected the theme of freedom, as embodied through luffy, with the sun since very early on. the sun pirates, former slaves, used the symbol of the sun to wipe away the brand of the celestial dragons. (and aren't i curious to know what jinbei might know about nika- he never did answer who's who's question about it.) the fishmen more broadly view the sun as something to be reached when they are truly free. on wano, the coming dawn is understood as the coming liberation. impel down and the florian triangle, places of indefinite imprisonment, are lightless dungeons where the sun doesn't reach. the sun is freedom.

and luffy has always been thoroughly sun associated, from the visual of his hat to his origin on dawn island in the east blue, to his ship, the thousand sunny.

finally, one piece has always placed a great deal of emphasis on smiles and laughter (laugh tale, joy boy, roger laughed, etc)- but that joy must be real. it can't be forced. we're told again and again, through koala, dressrosa's toys, and most obviously the victims of the failed SMILE fruits, that to force someone to smile, denying them the right to cry, is nothing less than an atrocity. people can't be forced to be happy- they should be happy because they're free.

luffy in gear five is laughing nigh-constantly, but it's just because he's having so much fun. unlike the victims of the SMILE fruits, his endless joy is genuine, because in this form, he is completely free- nobody can stop him, and nobody can control him. as he says himself, he can do whatever he wants.

i know that some people felt this moment was in some way a deus ex machina, but it just didn't feel that way to me, because of how well it plays on the story's established themes and trajectory, as well as concepts like devil fruit awakening having been established hundreds of chapters back.

luffy is the sun, the sun is freedom, freedom is joy. i think it makes total sense.

Fansplaining

The Endless Appetite for Fanfiction — Fansplaining

In 2024, everyone wanted a piece of fic, from AI grifters to traditional publishers to ravenous audiences. Where did that leave the people w

In a normal year, @flourish & I would have made a list of five big fandom trends for our annual "Year in Fandom" round-up. But the podcast is on hiatus, and I was left with MANY THOUGHTS about fanfiction seeming to break containment this year and nowhere to put them. So this is a "Year in Fandom" segment of sorts, about a set of related fanfiction trends that I'm pretty unhappy about!

I get that sense that a lot of fandom folks are, like me, worried about the way the ground seems to be shifting beneath us: in meta after meta, I’ve seen frustration over a larger but increasingly passive fic readership; dismay that traditional publishing has a growing influence over a practice that partly exists in opposition to it; and anger that some guy can just copy-paste your work and charge money for it, and no one outside of fandom seems to care.

What happens when fanfiction scales—but participatory fan communities do not? Read or listen to an audio version via the link above!

one piece saved my life man