#JUST ONE WEEK. ONE WEEK OF NO FUCKING MISERY

[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

[rakkuntoast]

wishing that things will get better for qforever and that after all of this he realizes that there are people sticking out for him and people fucking CARE AND LOVE HIM isnt enough, i need to fight ccforever for making his cubito miserable

[seven-stars-in-his-palm]

the thing i love about bill cipher is that even after i've learned all of this stuff about him, seen him at the most vulnerable he'll ever get, seen him at his most innocent, i still can't give a flying fuck about trying to justify his actions. yes he's traumatized, yes he was twisted into what we know today, and while it gives a semblance of context to why he did what he did, it doesn't matter. he still ruined ford's life. he still drove and baited multiple humans to suicide. he still tormented every human he saw as his ticket out of the consequences of his own actions. he still took delight in his actions. he was willing to commit genocide for fuck's sake!!! (freezing all of the humans into statues). trying to explain away what he did does not get rid of what he did, but it certainly puts it in perspective. you won't be catching me being a bill apologist any time soon <3

[hawkstincan]

my rewatch got to season 8

[etrevil]

Manga readers don't know what's gonna happen. Anime watchers dont know, I don't know. Fuck, does the studio even know at this point?? Does Asagirir know??? For sure what they're gonna do with our hearts???? How can this manga that started as one author wanting to make dead literary masters into hot guys become such a sense of dread and conflict and excitement all at the same time for me 😭

It's the bungou experience guys. Also preview coming out this evening, prepare the tissues and funeral music✌️

[seilon]

I wish I could tell every young person with a uterus (especially with bad cramps and/or dysphoria and/or depression, etc) that there is a decent chance they just straight up don’t need to live with that. don’t let the stigma surrounding contraceptives and the expectation that you should just ride it out and suffer win. for the love of god if there’s a chance you can lighten or even stop your period and it’s symptoms all-together, unless there’s a legit health concern, your doctor should at least make you aware of that option. I want every young person to know that “birth control” is not just for birth control and it has the potential to make your life infinitely easier to live. do not give in to anti-pill propaganda im serious

[dragonji]

have to be honest guys its actually going Really Badly again.

[bluesey-182]

me, every time i get sick: please please please let this be the one time i just have a cold for a few days

the infection moving into my lungs after two days, every single time: did someone call for bronchitis? I'm gonna be here for at least a month. maybe two :)

[tardis--dreams]

Should i finish my degree or just drop out?

Will it benefit me to do it? Probably a little bit.

Will it affect me negatively if i don't? Probably not much.

Will i feel better after doing it? Probably a little bit.

So this should mean the answer is a clear 'yes i should absolutely finish my degree even if i hate every second of it' right? But. I really hate just even thinking about it. But i should. Do it. It would be bad not to. I think-

[micamone]

hey guys

[rocknrollinbitchforu]

yet another social event i ruined for myself by being a pushover and a wallflower! my favorite!

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[jvzebel-x]

🦋

x. polite because no one deserves to be purposefully treated rudely. kind because kindness keeps a person gentle. sweet because making people smile is uplifting. helpful for the same reason. supportive because if you dont have anything nice to say, it's extremely easy not to say anything at all. above all, do unto others what you would have them do unto you.

o. polite because it's the best way to fade all the way into the background. kind because i'm too afraid to let myself be cruel. sweet because of overwhelming&pathetic desperation to make people happy. helpful because it's too exhausting to cause waves. supportive because other's goals are a great distraction from my own. above all, a smile makes the best camouflage as long as no one can ever see you sweat.

x. lonely+isolated because of mental+physical health restrictions. i miss people-- i miss being surprised, i miss relating to people on any level that isn't abject pain. i miss connection, communion, community.

o. alone+introspective because it pays off to be so. i don't miss people at all-- in fact it is a true sign of growth that it is not my knee-jerk reaction to say that i hate them for everything that (an admittedly small sampling of) people have done to me.

x. i am so terrified of communication at this point, &traumatized by Other People just in general, that i regularly shut my notifications off on everything because the sound of any form of notification ring that i recognize can literally kick off vicious panic attacks and send me running for dark corners, lmao. i am pathetic-- but i am a survivor.

o: i am charming, fun, &social to varying degrees dependent on the work. i am adaptable, everything from the center of attention to support staff with ease. smiling through blood in my mouth&talking to basically anyone for minutes to hours is child's play-- literally, since that is when i learned it.

x. pride over the skills i've developed over a lifetime of nonsense. made possible by mania, perhaps.

o. shame over the skills i've developed over a lifetime of nonsense. put off by disassociation, definitely.

x. i am kind and small and smiling and invisible. please just leave me alone. please don't even look at me, i literally cannot bear it, i just want to be alone again, please do not hurt me, i will do anything to make you happy if you just promise not to hurt me.

o. i am vicious and bloody and loud, and i will make you look at me, i will make you see me. i will give you a reason for that sneer, &i have no problem giving and taking blood in the process. my blood is worth so much less that i will win this no matter what-- i am braver than you could ever be because i have nothing that i'm afraid i'll lose.

x: i just want to make people smile.

o: i just want to never see another living person ever again.

x: like me, like me, like me. please just like me. i just want to be safe from abject hatred. i just want to be likeable. i can be anything, anyone-- it isn't like i want to keep all my parts, anyway, just tell me what i need to toss to be normal. just tell me what to chop off to be loveable.

o: i will give you every reason to fucking hate me if that is what's going to happen, anyway. i have spent a lifetime becoming who i am, usually against my will-- i can finally look in the mirror without flinching, &i won't let anyone take that away from me. you'll pry my forced self-acceptance out of my cold, dead hands.

x: i have been so lucky. i have been so fucking lucky. every single day i am reminded of all the many ways it could have been worse, things could have been worse, life could have been worse. i am so lucky. i owe the red string everything for letting me finally be someone i like sometimes.

o: i might have been lucky, but somehow i doubt anyone treating my gratitude or happiness like a red flag would be capable of living a day in my life-- or any singular one of the days i've lived thus far. but i can definitely give them a taste if that's what they need to wipe the snide looks off their faces. i'll hate myself after for giving in to the temptation, though. i always do.

x: there's good in everything. if you look for it, there will always be good somewhere. you just need to look. happiness is a conscious decision. kindness is a conscious decision. being a decent person is a perpetual and conscious decision.

o: there's bad in everything, too, and the second i see it, i cannot unsee it. or forgive it, usually. why is it so much easier to see how much people fucking suck?

x: i want perfection. practice, constant effort, dedication-- i need perfection, i'll get perfection. if i can't, what's the point? if there's not even the possibility, what is the fucking point? how am i supposed to live if i know my lifelong goal is&always has been unattainable?

o. perfection isn't an objective possibility. how many times&different ways do i need to fail at the impossible reality before it actually settles in. it isn't possible. i'm dedicating my life to an impossible pursuit. more specifically, i'm committing myself to eternal&constant punishment for failure. why, though. why am i like this.

x. i hate myself so much sometimes i feel like i might actually lose my mind.

o. i am so full of pride sometimes i feel like i might burst at the fucking seams with it all.

x. i am terrified that i'm not capable of living unless it's fighting uphill. who am i without the struggle? who am i past the trauma?

o. if fighting uphill is what made me what i am, what does it matter if i never lose the edge? why should it matter if i need the extra motivation? if i can handle it, why should the struggle be a bad thing?

[barefootbaltimore]

I just watched Bisans video about why anyone celebrating Christmas should be ashamed of themselves.

And she has every right to say that and she's right. We should be.

I think of how happy I was to put up my tree this year, I got a real tree for the first time and it brings me so much joy to see it. I wonder of I have the right to that small joy each day. How dare I?

But then I think to myself that this time of year, these stupid decorations and traditions exist for so many reasons not the least of which is a reminder that the long nights will end. Almost every holiday celebrated around this time is about the same thing when you strip away the fluff. It's about light in the darkness. The candles will burn, the sun will rise, the star will lead us to the savior. Its all people being in the cold and the dark and reminding themselves that it will end.

And I wonder if maybe some of us do need that this year more than others. There are people for whom this winter is going to be worse than I can even fathom and my dumb issues pale in comparison but is wallowing in my own misery helping them? I don't think so. Maybe it's stupid for a dying Douglas fir draped in lights to bring me joy but fuck something has to? Right?

How do you find joy in a world like this? How do you justify happiness when a genocide is happening? When multiple genocides are happening?

I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out. Because me collapsing under the weight of the world certainly doesn't help anyone.

I know I've done things in the past few months that I will have to answer for one day, even if it's just to myself. I know I haven't given as much as I could or gone to as many protests as I could. I know that when my grandchildren ask me about this time I will have to look them in their eyes and say "I had to go to work." and they will be right to judge me.

This post has lost the plot. It's starting to sound like I'm asking for absolution for buying a fucking Christmas tree during a genocide but I'm not. I can reckon with my own conscious. I'm the one who saw all of those dead children and then went to sing Jingle Bells with the perfectly safe and privileged children of the families I work for. Maybe I'll forgive myself one day.

Merry fucking Christmas I guess

[macchiatogf]

my first draft of my capstone is a week overdue so i’m trying the ole sleep deprivation method (i.e. no sleep til it’s done) but now it’s 3am i’ve faffed my way into getting one more page done and the harsh reality that this paper is truly not going to write itself is setting in. what the fuck gives

[poughkeepsies]

911twt is so funny I just saw someone post "kristen not writing a single ep of s6 but still being my worst nightmare" babe you're admitting to having beef with her when she hasn't done anything what do you think that SAYS