#i've got a new one about elliot ward. that's just..

[reluctantjoe]

how it feels to create the most gut-wrenching headcanons

[soleminisanction]

What did you think of the new Batman movie?

I frigging loved it. It's my favorite live-action take on the franchise by wide, wide margin.

Quick personal survey to establish my baseline tastes: I unironically love the original 1966 series starring Adam West because it's campy and happy and never fails to put a smile on my face and also Burt Ward was a babe and both he and West were much better actors than they've ever gotten credit for. (Did you know they almost gave Ward the lead role in The Graduate? Did you know they offered West James Bond? That is so wild to me.)

My opinion on the Burton/Shumacher movies from the 90s is meh, leaning positive overall. I dig the design sensibilities but most of the acting and storytelling didn't stick with me. I've never felt the urge to rewatch them but I also wouldn't say I dislike them. I mostly appreciate them as the starting point for the original animated series.

I wanna say that my opinion on the Dark Knight trilogy started positive and then turned sour as time went on but in retrospect I never actually bothered to watch the last one, and when I saw The Dark Knight for the first time it was in a double-feature showing with Hellboy II and I came away from that knowing without a doubt that Hellboy was the better movie so yeah. I will say that, while I think that they ultimately just slapped a Bat-branding on a completely unrelated story and characters, I respect that they gave the version of Batman they wrote the only ending that actually made sense for him.

And the less I say about anything that Zack Snyder has ever touched, the better -- that is a man who wouldn't know a good superhero story if it shoved itself down his throat.

But The Batman, oh man. I loved The Batman. I felt so seen by The Batman. I came away from that movie practically skipping with joy, I couldn't stop thinking, "Yes, finally! Somebody who gets it!" There was so much to love about that movie, I don't even know where to start.

I guess, since I was already thinking about it, one thing that I really like is how Riddler's games all feel almost like something from the Adam West show? But dark, and twisted. Like that "flying rat" pun in Spanish, and the other pun-based puzzles he left around, those were all very much like how they'd be done in the Adam West show, only these had the bloody plot twists attached to them. The "thumb drive" gag had me cackling.

But like, I also really loved how well thought out the themes were. Like, if you're paying attention, the movie explains without ever really spelling it out how the broken, corrupted system of Gotham City created both Batman and the Riddler. It's not "hrr durr the masked hero invites masked super-freaks to come along too," that's been done, it's "this system, this city, is corrupt and broken, and that broken system led two broken men to take extreme measures, one as a hero ultimately driven by the desire to make things better and one as a villain consumed only by hatred and revenge."

Heck, it even explains why Bruce couldn't just throw money at the problem, like all the disingenuous people on Twitter always try to argue -- his father tried that. And the broken system not only corrupted his well-meaning efforts, it killed him to protect its ill-gotten gains. That is such good writing.

Speaking of the Waynes, I also loved the deep lore cuts and, more specifically, how deliberately they were used to establish the differences in this world to the people who were paying attention. Making Martha an Arkham instead of a Kane? Tommy Elliot's father being the reporter who was going to ruin her, a reporter that Thomas Wayne inadvertently got killed? That's good stuff. I can't wait to see where they take it in the sequels.

But the best part of all, for me, was Bruce's character arc and the fact that finally, somebody understood the assignment and showed the arc that, I believe in my heart, every Batman needs: the moment, or arc, or story, or whatever it takes, that moves Bruce away from being motivated entirely by his love for his parents and into to being motivate by his love for Gotham City, his chosen family, and his comrades-in-arms.

So yeah. Suffice it to say, I loved it, I bought the bluray, and I hope very much that they actually talk Warner Brothers into letting them give Battinson a Robin in the next one because his interactions with the mayor's son throughout the movie were adorable and they didn't even talk. I need to see this man taking care of a child. I need it.

[angstyaches]

I've wondered about vampires in your stories and with the recent one about Elliot, how do they work? Are they turned vampires by other vampires via bite or are they needing to be born via two vampire parents or another way? I'm just interested since it's always neat to learn how people treat their own vampires in their stories! (I have some vamps and the way they turn is from ingesting blood from a vampire and depending on the amount of blood ingested determines their strength and power and so on)

ANYWAY I love Elliot and Felix so much -Lee

Aagghh I've always wanted to try to organise my thoughts on this so here we go I guess!

Every vampire clan has an Elder, and every other member has the same strain of vampirism as their Elder. Ryan is the Elder of the Aldridge clan, which consists of Elliott and Felix and two others. Madelyn Devine is also an Elder, but her only blooded ward is her husband, Watson.

Becoming a vampire is not something to be taken lightly, so it is up to the Elders to decide who and when someone is blooded. Elliott defied this when he half-blooded Felix.

Regular vampires, such as Elliott, can blood new half-vampires, but they cannot start a new strain. The new vampire is still the kin of the Elder. Basically, even though Elliott blooded him, Felix's veins contain the strain that Ryan passed on to Elliott; Felix belongs to Ryan's bloodline the same as though Ryan herself had directly blooded him.

As for blooding itself, new vampires come from humans that have been blooded. It's unknown if all creatures can successfully be blooded into hybrids (Ryan and Nancy have tested this, with partial success. Madelyn had plans to experiment too, but those plans got fucked over).

And as opposed to vampires being turned with a bite, I too prefer the idea of new vampires having to drink vampire blood in order to (partially) turn. I think something similar is used in D/arren S/han's vampire saga, but it's been years since I read it and I may be misremembering. It would have to be a decent amount of blood, and they'd have to keep it down despite the agony of their body trying to reject it, but finally, the transition to half-vampire would begin.

To become fully-fledged vampires, half-vamps can be re-blooded by an Elder, or they can trigger the transformation the way Elliott did (by being a bloodthirsty bastard with no self-discipline).

I think that's everything I wanted to ramble about.

I'd love to hear more about your vampires, if you want to share!!