#I was OBSESSED with their books as a child

[maxwell-grant]

Didn't realize you've read Riddler: Year One, any thoughts on it ? Also, in a more general way, what are your thoughts on the Riddler ?

Someone sent me an ask the past week or so saying that The Penguin is everything that the Joker movies should have been, and I don't think I agree on that in regards to The Penguin specifically. But if we're talking about a "Batman-less Batman villain origin story about a lonely suicidal man struggling with poverty and mental illness exacerbated by child abuse, who is pushed down through the cracks of society deep into the pits of his own mind until he can only save himself by becoming a horrible force of social upheaval and political terrorism, finally discovering joy and a reason to live at the expense of everyone around him, and now he will be Batman's problem someday", well this just completely embarasses Joker (2019) on every level. Impressively drawn, impressively written, impressive on it's own and as a prequel to the movie, WAY better than a movie actor's comic book tie-in has any right to be, and one of the greatest Batman comics ever made. Issue #5 in particular is one of the best and most harrowing comic issues and format breaks I've ever seen in the medium, and even if it's entirely self-contained, it very much belongs in the exact same conversation and should be considered inseparable from The Batman and The Penguin.

We spens 4 issues boiling the frog over every painful corner of Edward's childhood and humanity and misery, taking us through painfully intimate views and perspectives inside his headspace, seeing how and why he justifies his worldview and how easy it even is to do so, feeling truly sorry for this hopeless wretch even though we know he's losing it bad bad baddy bad bad and is going to step off the deep end forever. And then Issue 5 happens and suddenly you are one of the people in Gotham City tasked with sifting through this serial killer's personal diary and you can hear that creep shouting with that distorted voice, you can feel the final death rattle of Edward Nashton's soul ending where The Riddler begins to scream in your head 'I NEVER KNEW I HAD A REASON TO BREATHE", and by Issue 6 you fully understand why and how nobody was prepared for him, and why what he is and does and embodies is going to drag the city into an abyss it may never recover from, and why this was never going to stop even after his arrest, even after his defeat and humiliation in the movie. Everything here adds layers of sympathy and tragedy and heartbreak to the character, while simultaneously making everything he is and does in the movie so much more harrowing and disturbing, holy shit he really staked EVERYTHING, everyone's lives included, on being noticed by his savior.

I was already very much on board with Dano Riddler in the movie, whose execution absolutely sold what should have been, on paper, a storm of unadvisable fandom pitches and uninspired trends and straight-up bad ideas ("What if The Ridder was the Zodiac Killer", "What if The Riddler was a 4chan mass-shooter type", "What if The Riddler was a political terrorist with legitimate grievances but whose final goal was to kill off scores of people for little reason", "What if The Riddler was a creepy fascist responsible for a QAnon cult that ends the movie by metaphorically storming the capitol", "What if The Riddler was really, really, really obsessed with Batman", "What if The Riddler was another Dark Opposite Batman", fucking "What if The Riddler was Hush" even) worked into just this miracle magic bullet of a new take on the guy, fully capturing a lot of the essential bullet points of what makes The Riddler tick as a character while spinning them into new and significant ways befitting this increased role he has in the movie. Rereading the story now, so much of the movie even feels like it's specifically referencing the first Riddler story - The Mayor of Gotham City as a target, Riddler misdirecting Batman with a big target while his real plan involved a flood, Edward putting on a costume and naming himself The Riddler specifically because he wants to get Batman's attention, the glass maze, the written letters to police headquarters, The Eagle's Nest that is a nightclub and also the home of a millionaire with a bird last name (Falcone), a driverless vehicle careening wildly into a public place, even how the very first thing we learn about this fucker is that he cheats to win.

The guy in the movie is a version that fully works on it's own, but it clicks SO much more strongly and cohesively when you read this comic and what it establishes for him. It's the scene in the movie where the section of his diary reads "I must become something more" while Bruce finds the panicked desperate bat rattling against a cage, the thematic parallel between them that is the scariest thing he finds in the entire movie, but developed across six issues. This even begins with Eddie living through his version of the Wayne murders, with the first time he's felt anything other than crushing despair and misery, in part because he's seen the first hint of the puzzle he needs to solve, and where he needs to go. The moment the world stopped making sense for Bruce is the moment that the world started to make sense for Edward.

We understand, around the same time he understands, the childish nightmare that must become the pattern of his entire life from that moment onwards, how Edward Nashton would have killed himself, and no one would have cared, had he not become The Riddler, and how the only alternative to "Hey Edward why don't you crawl into the black hole inside yourself" is to, in fact, find this black hole inside of you and shaped like you and push other people into it instead. Become the creature of the night who can punch crime forever, become the avenging force too great for the Falcones to handle, become the kingpin whose name alone will live forever, become someone that the entire city will never again ignore or forget.

We see how it's less that he's been planning for this for so long, and more that his entire life has been broken and hammered into a Riddler shaped hole, and then when Batman dropped into it, he could start to understand what it is and put a name in it, in the fact that he's been training his entire life for this without knowing. Getting comfortable with flushing rats and making bombs at the orphanage, getting intimately and painfully familiar with self-loathing and alienation and misanthropic contempt for this city and it's people who sit by and allow all of this to happen, surviving his suicide attempts without being able to explain why, searching for answers as to why it hurts so much to live broken and unfulfilled and miserable and why he even bothers to keep on doing so, having nothing to love in his life but numbers and puzzles, spending his entire life invisible while trying to get Thomas Wayne and then his boss to notice and praise him, and then being the wrong man at the right place to begin his campaign, a little nobody accountant who noticed an inconsistency in the numbers, put the pieces together, and then decided he was gonna do something about it because he knew it could be done, because there was someone out there who showed it could be done, and if Eddie joined in, maybe this someone would notice him, let him be his friend.

Batman and R, forever.

(People don't talk nearly enough about how this Riddler's entire life ambition was to recreate Tim Drake's origin story, and they should, it's pretty funny)

And to be honest, I think this is the first Riddler origin story I've ever really liked. Some of the others, particularly the first, have their charms, and this one certainly wouldn't fit most takes on the character, even most of the ones I like, but I've never really been fully sold on the idea of a Riddler origin story until this one, he's always been a very backstory-proof guy to me. This doesn't have any particularly obvious shorthand moment as to why Edward became The Riddler, so much as an entire life twisted and torn and abandoned and rotten in ways big and small until this is what came out of him. No immediately abusive fathers or test cheating scandals or major company backstabbings as defining tragedies, just life for a poor orphan in Gotham City who can't figure out the answer to what's missing from his life until he does.

Still a horrible nerd hopelessly trapped in a life of trying to intellectually one-up everyone as the only thing he lives for and, like every horrible nerd, knowing that one day he will be recognized for what he is and then they'll all see how wrong and stupid and savage these stupid savage idiots all were to look down on him. Still a man driven to impose order on the world the way he believes it has to be. Still a cheater who loves puzzles and answers and the thrill of intellectual stimulation and victory more than anything else (and in this case, having had absolutely nothing else to even love about his life), and still very much this guy at the end:

I do have a lot of thoughts on The Riddler, and I think part of why I might not talk about him as much is because he's not a character I tend to have really exclusive or particular preferences for. There are a LOT of Riddlers out there, maybe more so than there are Jokers out there, and there's not really with him the definitive must-be-like-this that the other Batman rogues have. Everybody approaches the puzzle differently if they do so at all, and I like a lot of these Riddlers! They connect with each other surprisingly well even, in spite of being incompatible as the same person.

He's gone through some real ups and downs over the decades: given stardom in the Adam West show that made him a definitive Batman villain and spread his modus operandi across all the others, sacrificed in the altar of camp insecurity along with fellow snooty oddball Penguin, defanged and turned into a parody of himself, refitted for joke status, re-refitted for surprise baddie status, given a whole new lease on life and his own gimmicks with the arrival of computer puzzles and the internet and given his fangs back and then amplified, pushed back to the big leagues more horrible and topical than ever before and exponentially increasing as such until his next big movie showing, torn in multitudes across multiverses of takes and ideas, almost too many to even consolidate them all.

I like the first Riddler of Bill Finger's original story in Tec #140, this curious satisfaction-seeking master cheater growing exponentially more dangerous and more varied and more assured the more he fades into his endless barrage of traps and toys and puzzles,. I love Frank Gorshin's Riddler, and everybody loves Frank Gorshin's Riddler, he is the reason The Riddler became an iconic Batman villain overnight. I like John Glover in TAS, and I like Robert Englund's cold ghostly showman in The Batman (2002) much more. I love the Arkham games version of Riddler, probably because I never actually played the games and had to collect his dumb trophies. I love Paul Dini's Detective Riddler, and I especially love Brent Spiner's take on the guy for Justice League Action. I LOVE the more classic take on Riddler as played by John Leguizamo in The Batman Audio Adventures, and I LOVE Paul Dano's Riddler in The Batman, and they couldn't be more incompatible with each other.

I love the Riddlers who continuously undermine themselves in the name of criminal artistry and who look down on the profit-seeking rubes who think any of this is about money, and I love the Riddlers who are ultimately con-men doing money heists because they want to be the only crooks in town smart enough to have something to show for all their work at the end of the day. I like Riddlers who are widely despised and regarded with annoyance and disdain by the city and their fellow rogues, and I like the Riddlers who have good professional relationships with the other rogues, and the Riddlers who managed to become darkly inspiring figures in their own right. I love the Riddlers who've subsumed themselves into the mysteries and horror they embody, and I love the pathological pattern-finders trying to find a way out of this weird pathetic life, even if their efforts will be doomed to failure - The Riddler couldn't out-think his way out of Batman's toybox no matter how much he tried, and he has no desire to - where would it leave him? Down there with all the troglodytes? Please.

I can get on board with very human, conversational Eddies, the Eddies that did stints as sideshow carnies, that can tell on some level that they should be doing better things than this, who'll do bored stick-em-ups to fund the attention-seeking tantrums they're actually passionate about, and I can get on board with Eddies who are truly uniquely vile and scary even compared to the other Rogues in the room, who uphold this terrifyingly cold perversion of fairness, imposing a stark and utilitarian worldview on the city by which the penalty for falling short of his games is murder, that sheer calculated murderous menace that Frank Gorshin brought when he ended his first episode leering on a helpless Robin strapped to an operating table. And if I ever thought I couldn't get on board with the Riddler as a major serious scary existential threat to life on Gotham, well, The Batman sure proved me wrong. I may not love him as passionately as I do The Penguin or Hugo Strange, but I love too many versions of this guy to ever be able to narrow them all down, and there are even more still to be discovered.

Endlessly adaptable, able to change and mutate with the times on the same kinds of grand orchestral shifts and minute beats that Batman does, a greater variety of personalities than the Joker if not quite the same versatility (and where would we be without these two always pissing each other off or making out or both, living in each other's respective negative spaces), always an enduring and entertaining opponent regardless of whether he's the most pathetic man alive or a malevolent genius beyond understanding who routinely puppeteers an entire city and it's greatest hero into putting on their greatest performances for him. Always an adapting puzzle box, always leading into the next version of himself, always beguiling, and always becoming the most frustrating thing that Batman has to deal with, whether he's systematically destroying Batman's rationale and will and ability to be Batman or just being naturally the worst guy to deal with at the most unfortunate possible moment, in itself another key to his endurance. The Joker can murder sidekicks and torch the city and routinely try and drive Batman to breaking points of rage and indignity and despair - but sometimes The Riddler can get Batman there just by being himself, as anyone who's had to deal with this asshole in the Arkham games can attest.

It is imperative to believe in and understand Batman's worldview that his villains can be saved because everyone can and must be saved, just as it is to understand that, out of everyone in his Rogues Gallery, if The Riddler was drowning, Bruce would be inclined to throw him a cinderblock, and The Riddler would be glad to receive it, so long as his last gasps of breath could be spent laughing at Batman's inability to match wits with him.

For a villain who is meant to be fixated on knowing the one correct answer to every riddle, he’s uniquely able to be reinterpreted in endless new ways. He’s gone from being a camp and colorful performance artist to one of the most sadistic and sinister villains Batman can ever go up against. There is no one way to write a Riddler. There’s no single solution! And writers will always like the challenge that presents.

Just when readers think they’ve seen everything the Riddler has left to offer us, and the character is finally exhausted… a new lime-green envelope pops through the door of Wayne Manor to challenge us all once again. It seems we’ll never get tired of trying to unravel the Riddler, and writers will never give up on unraveling the character’s fullest potential. It unites readers, writers, and caped crusaders alike: this time, surely, we’ll crack him. - Batman's Greatest Enemy is...The Riddler, by Steve Morris

[the-promise-has-been-made]

EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUCK AMAZON IS BRINGING OUT A SHOW BASED ON MY FAVOURITE BOOK WHEN I WAS A KID AND IT'S COMING OUT IN MAY AND THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I HEARD ABOUT IT?????

[squash1]

my new brain worm is thinking about how the irish meaning of ronan is “little seal” which at first glance is unimportant, until you learn that the name comes from the irish mythology about selkies.

in the specific legend that the name “ronan” comes from, a seal is warned not to get too close to land. when the seal is washed ashore by a wave she becomes trapped in human form after a fisherman, and soon to be her husband, hides her seal-skin. she builds a life with the fisherman — having children, known as “ronans”/“little seals” — but longs to return to the sea, longs to be able to freely transform between seal and human. she eventually finds her seal-skin and returns to the sea but keeps a watchful eye on her beloved children and husband.

this name is undeniably perfect for ronan. the selkie myth is his dreaming, his otherworldliness, in another universe. the selkie people are not just seals or just humans, they are both — just like ronan. the journey of the selkie — being trapped, not entirely unhappily on land but longing for something different, something more true to her, and ultimately finding a way back to the sea — is so perfectly ronan. ronan doesn’t return to his sea — or, he does, but only temporarily, only to see what his sweetmetal sea could feel like, what going back to greywaren’s world would be like — but he finds new power, new control and ends his own entrapment in the waking world not by leaving completely but through gained knowledge, vulnerability, and honesty.

“he belonged in both those worlds.

he belonged in neither.”

[wigglebox]

Comfy & cozy are we ✨🎄

[thestuffedalligator]

The sacred texts

[antigonenikk]

modern day liebgott is an uber driver who exclusively plays chief keef on his busted out speakers. his car is a 2004 toyota corrolla that smells like cigarette smoke and axe body spray. the rubber is peeling off of two of the doors. the left blinker does not work. a door handle has been mysteriously ripped off and the windows wont roll down. he has ten parking tickets he refuses to pay off and does not care about right of way. if hes delivering your food for uber eats you can count on the fact that he has eaten some of your fries. in spite of all of this he pulls more bitches than all of his friends combined.

[thefloatingstone]

Not to be like "haha I'm better than you guys!!!" or elitist or anything because that very sincerely is NOT the point of this post.... but I never really understood people extremely love for Harry Potter.

I read them as they were coming out. Most of the time they came out soon enough that I was the same age as Harry. I liked them. They were cool. Goblet of Fire was my favourite and I was always happy to see what story the next book would bring but that's all it was. Interest to see the next story whenever it came out. Like a sitcom you enjoy but you didn't set your tv to record for you in case you missed it.

And then the word "Chosen one" was uttered and, just like that, I fucking lost all interest. Honestly there was "Chosen one" talk in the 4th book and already I was like

Honestly I think I liked Goblet of Fire the most because there was no friggen Quidditch. And there was less focus on the SCHOOL part of Harry Potter and more this weird Video game Quest setup which just appealed to me more.

In retrospect, I think that might be a big part of why I enjoyed it but never LOVED it like other people.

Like

"Oh boy my absolute biggest most favourite fantasy! THE BRITISH EDUCATION SYSTEM!!!!"

The fact that the books take place in a school seemed like a default to me because, well, most teenage focused cartoons and shows I watched had the main characters at school. Because they're teenagers. But the school wasn't why I enjoyed the books. The school was just a location. No I didn't want to go to Hogwarts. No I didn't want to get attached to a specific school house (although I feel it worth mentioning that when I was 13 I did the online house quiz thing on the official site and it said I was Hufflepuff so make of that what you will).

I really disliked whatever the one was that came after Goblet of Fire. So much so that it completely killed any and all enjoyment I had in the series. Which, considering I was only mildly entertained by them wasn't a massive loss or anything.

I know I read whichever book it was where Dumbledore died but I very genuinely cannot remember one single thing that happens in that book whatsoever. I read half of the Deathly Hallows after coming back from College and gave up because I wasn't enjoying any of it and I never picked the book up again.

I saw the first movie in theaters when I was 13 and I did not like it. It was visually very very dark and gloomy and just... extremely uninteresting to me. Idk how to explain it. The first book just felt so much more vibrant than what I was watching on screen.

I know I saw the 2nd movie although I have no memory of where or why. And I... THINK I saw the third one??? I think??? I'm actually not sure. But that's about where I just stopped and completely lost interest.

Because it wasn't very good.

They just weren't very good books.

They weren't TERRIBLE or anything like that but they were just so.... blah. The earlier ones 13 year old me enjoyed the one time I read each of them but I don't think 13 year old me had the best taste considering I also disliked the Princess Bride at this age.

But I was reading other books because I was a kid with ADHD in high school who desperately needed something stimulating to stop myself from going insane. And frankly, there were just far better books out there. Books I actually re-read. Books I borrowed from friends which ere just... so much better and more interesting.

So I just don't understand this insane appeal so many people have for it, even if they have severed that connection due to Jowling Kowling Rowling's bufoonery and showing herself to be a withered old crone with a shrivled heart and mind every time she opens her mouth.

I grew up with these books the same way as a lot of people. I was the exact age to go through the series' highest popularity and I just did not click with them despite reading them.

So seeing so many people my age or a little younger try and do their best to re-analyse and de-tangle what the books actually are and that... maybe.... just maybe.... they might not have been very good?? Maybe?? is very weird to me because I'm just like.

"Yeah they're overrated as hell and not that interesting."

It's a very weird thing to live through because it's like looking into a bizarro version of the world you remember living through... but not like THAT. I remember the Pokemon craze and yes, it was like that. I remember when anime started to become big and yes, it was like that. I remember DBZ airing and yes, it was like that.

But this insanity around Harry Potter while it was releasing?

Yeah I don't remember it being like that at all.

They were just mediocre books I read because I needed something to occupy my attention and eventually they got worse and worse and I just stopped reading them. That's all.

[missconchshell]

Alone, and it's all your fault.

Designs inspired by Asthmatic8ot's awesome animation: here

[thespianwordnerd]

Brb persuading Tumblr to go and watch the new Matilda movie musical by telling everyone how baby queer and neurodivergent coded she is

[hylianengineer]

I saw another post debating whether kids should have access to the adult secrion of the library (the answer is yes), and in response I present this list of 'adult' books I took a random interest in at the age of twelve or thirteen

Physics for dummies

String theory for dummies

Quantum physics for dummies

Calculus for dummies (because there was calc in the quantum physics book)

Trigonometry for dummies (because I needed it as background info for the calculus)

Parents beware: given unrestricted library access, your child may attempt to learn calculus as a result of a special interest in theoretical physics - or chase some other special interest into the depths of the grown-up nonfiction section. I did not actually understand the calculus, or the trig either, and eventually got bored and gave up, but I did have fun with it for a while. And when I got to the point of being able to take classes in physics, trig, and calc, I wasn't scared of them.

[winepresswrath]

i am going to wind up on team #justiceforarmand but it's going to be so situational. justice for armand specifically during the period of time louis is all "oooh who needs labels." a very different kind of justice for armand on matters pertaining to claudia.

[ladywaterfall]

I’m reading the Percy Jackson series for the first time and so many of the little jokes are so funny. Just casually drop that only three people have ever escaped the Greek underworld: Orpheus, Heracles and Houdini of course. Sure, why not.

[ouremperorssmugsmile]

晚夜玉衡, 北斗仙尊。

[lucalicatteart]

A few little sketches of some possible school uniforms for mage schools/learning centers for magic/etc. :0c Though because Nanyevimi is so scattered and disconnected, it'd actually vary much more by region (like not everywhere would have a cultural concept of what a suit jacket or neck tie looks like lol), so it's probably unrealistic for so many of them to follow too many traditional Uniform Conventions from cultures in our world, etc. But, still, fun to mess around with designs, and think about which would be most fun to wear/what school you'd go to just based off the clothing lol~

[rewritingcanon]

have you ever met any of the hpcc cast members?

no, but i don’t think i want to meet them haha.