#in my framework of thinking
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ngl cannot really understand why people would want to get pregnant. i mean like it destroys your body for what? so you can have a child to take care of that is genetically related to you?
#iso.txt#cannot really understand having children tbh like why would you torture them by giving them life#but esp if you are the partner who would have to endure the actual pregnancy … it seems not in ur self interest#i saw some posts talking about what it’s like to be pregnant and i don’t understand why anyone would endure that for ANYTHING#and why would you want more responsibility for yourself anyway#tbc im not judging anyone it just makes no sense logically#in my framework of thinking
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calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.
#nonbinary love#nblnb yearning#nb4nb#nblnb#wholesomeposting#yearning hours#ive been thinking about how some languages dont have a possessive tense#so you dont say “i have a thing” but rather “a thing is by me”#and like im not usually one for psycho linguistics and like critical thoughts etc etc etc#but i really like the framework of responsibility/commitment rather than ownership#i think about this mostly in terms of ecology#and relation to land#but i also love it as it applies to language shared between lovers#like i LOVE calling them mine or for them to call me theirs#but i'm also nonmonog and that was kinda weird to square for a while#and it clicked one time when i was talking about my neighborhood and i was like well#when i say my neighborhood or my city it's understood i'm not taking it away from anybody else#its understood i just mean the city where i live#so why cant we apply the same to lovers?#mine in the way i want to show up for you again and again#ok#done now
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Reaper Man / The Shepherd’s Crown / Going Postal by Terry Pratchett
#inspired by that post about terry giving us so many frameworks to think about death#discworld#reaper man#the shepherd's crown#going postal#*#feel free to add on other instances of this theme this was just off the top of my head
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what they don't tell you about unlearning the harmful, discriminatory, hierarchical systems of our society is that the hard thing is deconstructing all that shit, but the harder thing is dealing with the fact that most people around you still believe and act within these frameworks
#what i mean is i am deconstructing this stuff to a level that is completely useless#and sometimes makes me almost unable to participate in society because in my head i don't use the same frameworks and terms but in real lif#i have to because otherwise no one understands me#and also finding out when to intervene and be the killjoy and be annoying and go hi I think this action or phrase or whatever might be#harmful and when to just leave it tf alone#politics#:I
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i will never understand when people act like zutara shippers are reaching when we say the crystal catacombs scene is intensely romantically coded because like... ignoring literally all other context (which does have other hallmarks of romantic coding, but literally pretend you don't know anything about the show or scene for a second)... what would you think happened in this picture?
would it .... would it maybe be an interrupted almost-kiss
#zutara#even ignoring all other context (such as katara gently touching his scar with her THUMB on his LIPS?? the soft glowy lighting and the music#look at that moment outside of the context and tell me that's not what you would think#i think part of the sentiment comes from people thinking romance coding inherently means the two characters are written as canonically#having feelings for each other#and that's not necessarily true.#it's about the narrative framework the dynamic is presented in consistently using tropes and imagery that are commonly used in romance#stories#atla#zuko#katara#anyway. i am so normal about this#the crossroads of destiny#i was gonna wait to post until i got here in my rewatch but. i changed my mind
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Cdream be like: You can't put yourself in the Prison anymore bc of the woke >:(/lh
That man is a mess like it's facinating how messy his vision of reality is for others and himself
it is fascinating fr, and does remind me of how we'd talk a little bit about how his perspective may betray what kind of environment this guy might've been in pre-dsmp. the stick-up-his-ass about rules and rule-following, the neuroticism about conflict, and the ease with which he jumps to punishment as being the appropriate response to people who cause problems (a perspective that, quite evidently, to a certain extent, does apply to himself, doesn't it?) all seems quite indicative of someone who lived in an environment where punishment being the natural consequence of stepping outside the lines was generally something that went unquestioned. of course, this is speculative, and it's not that a #tragicbackstory is necessary to explain what the fuck is up with c!Dream, and it's hardly about justifying the choice to abuse a teenager into behaving, lmao. but while exile served his goals and exile was a lot of petty, spiteful cruelty for petty, spiteful reasons, i do think there's something to be said about how clearly c!Dream hadn't expected c!Tommy to respond quite so severely to exile and how he thought he would be "fine" with potatoes in the prison and the language he used both about exile and his own early prison stay about shit like "getting better" through punishment. of course, punitive justice as a norm is kind of ingrained in our own society (just look at the rhetoric around deserving in this fandom, lmao, which speaks more than well enough for itself) and of course that reflects onto the dream smp as well, considering how many of the characters talk quite freely about the idea of punishment/deserving/what have you, but few characters are quite as obviously a stickler for rule-following as c!dream and exile and then prison are uhhh definitely on the more extreme end of things. anyway. just some food for thought
#my asks !!#tw abuse#it's part of why i get a little uncomfortable with the rhetoric about abuser/victim that is so common on the internet these days#bc there's often this notion of these two categories as being mutually exclusive completely distinct groups of people#and well honestly being abused normalizes abuse to a person? many people who think beating a child is fine actually were beat themselves#if you live in a world where the framework exists that punishment is the natural consequence for breaking the rules#then you will believe and often later on enforce the idea of punishment as the natural consequence for breaking the rules#there's stuff with c!dream re: this topic that's more speculative and there's stuff that's less so#(especially if you look at the weird ways he seems to be about his own redemption to c!wilbur during pogtopia)#(and that in relation to the consequences of the revolution)#but anyway. just a little ramble
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It is kinda crazy to me that EXU Calamity’s clear inspiration from disaster movies isn’t immediately recognized, but I do think that’s due to disaster movies not being the spectacle that they used to be, like when I was a kid the big budget summer blockbusters weren’t superhero movies, they were movies like Armageddon, Volcano, Dante’s Peak, etc., and like no these weren’t critically acclaimed and most of them didn’t leave an obvious footprint in culture, but the tropes and character archetypes and relationships were constantly recycled over and over because there was a formula to them that isn’t common anymore.
A strained relationship that comes together by the ending? I think the SECOND the reveal that one of the other PCs was Quay’s ex I was like oh okay we’re doing this.
The devoted Everyman father? Yeah, Cerrit has a lot of influence from old school detectives but he reminds me a lot of Harry from Armageddon.
The reporter? Not every disaster film has one, but it isn’t unusual for one viewpoint character to be someone determined to bring the truth to light when everyone else is shutting their eyes.
Laerryn even reminds me of a MUCH more sympathetically played (and less frustratingly stupid) version of the doctor in Deep Blue Sea- convinced that it has to be worth it, making mistakes based entirely on her emotions, but ultimately sacrificing herself to put an end to the damage done.
Obviously not everything is a 1:1, but I think if you go and watch a marathon of 90’s big budget disaster flicks, you’ll find similar beats and inspiration scattered throughout.
And disaster movies ARE horror. Most of them end happily and I think that’s what keeps them from being classified that way, but there’s always tragedy and the potential that it won’t end well. Armageddon ends happily but I can’t help but think of Harry’s last message when I hear Quay’s. The day WAS saved but a lot of people did die to achieve that victory.
#never stop blowing up has really got me thinking#that most of these people are my age and absorbed a lot of these tropes#that are often not thought about because that kind of formula doesn’t sell anymore#but holy shit the framework is there#exu calamity#critical role
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#Its been a min since I shared stuff about my divers#It doesn't have a tag :(#I'll come up with a name I swear#Changes from the 1st post:#V and her partner are stationed on this small island as opposed to being from there#I also think the new sea level is different but I'm not sure by how much yet#The general premise is the same though#If this were a show it would probably be a semi anthology about the lives of the people the objects she finds belong to#With her and her partners' work serving as a framework (if thats the correct term)#solarpunk#post apocalyptic#soft apocalypse#original story concept#marine archeology#art#artists on tumblr#my art#digital art#concept art
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Thinking about River affectionately calling the Doctor her “madman in a box” only after he's called her his “bespoke psychopath,” and vice versa. They each were called these words by the other before ever using them to describe the other.
Thinking about the way they defy reality for each other. How modern psychiatry elevates objective reality to gatekeep full participation in society, yet they shatter objective reality with love — “I can’t let you die without knowing that you are loved.” and “You are always here to me and I always listen and I can always see you.”
Thinking about “What's the mad fool talking about now?” and how Gallifrey ostracizes those labelled mad, going so far as to see it as failure in children. Thinking about “A child is not a weapon!” “Give us time.” and how Kovarian equates psychopath with weapon as a tool of dehumanization and control.
Thinking about the way the psychiatric-industrial complex inflicts violence upon those who deviate from psychosocial norms. How their relationship was born in violence, but of madness — not madness in a post-Enlightenment framework of opposition to Reason, but madness as radical compassion that doesn’t demand so-called rationality — “Every time you've asked, I have been there.”
Thinking about how neither of them chose “psychopath” or “madman,” but they both own those words as instruments in their own agency.
#words by seaweed#(eleventh) doctor is neurodivergent tag#river song#eleventh doctor#twelfth doctor#antipsychiatry#mad liberation#madpunk#yowzah#doctor who#bc I've seen the discourse on whether river is ‘actually’ a psychopath heres your regular reminder that psychopath is NOT a medical term#it's madman but with a lack-of-empathy slant.#saneism#ableism#reclaimed language#actually psychotic#mental health#neuropunk#disclaimer: not a philsopher. can u tell I was a graphic design major w an incidental personal investment in psychotic ppl rights#anyway when I say ‘madness as radical compassion’ I don’t mean that madness creates compassion; but that this position#where participation in modern personhood is violently denied+ autonomy stripped due to weaponizing mental health interests#elicits a different framework of compassion— one doesn't have to make sense or ‘fit’ into a convenient Narrative for compassion#the fact that they passing laws to make conservatorships easier to acquire in several states makes me shriek when I think sometimes#so uh tune in next time for me drowning my sorrows in my canon psychotic eleventh doctor evidence posts
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i was prepared to re-evaluate my love for dean and my confidence in understanding his character and his actions but the closer i get to the end the more i believe in him.
#i was bracing myself to integrate bad shit into my mental dean framework but every time i run into a purported dean crime#i'm like well i see why he did that and i think it makes sense even if i don't like it and wish he wasn't doing it#it doesn't shake his foundations for me though#it just indicates how bad things are for him and how hard it is for him to stay true to those foundations#if that makes sense#spn#spn rewatch
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Also on the subject of Mochijun and master/servant relationships, I remember seeing MDZS takes a few times that draw on the idea that Jiang Cheng wanting Wei Wuxian to be his right hand man (and therefore arguably subservient) their whole lives means he looked down on him, and I just. I read Pandora Hearts at a formative age and fictional master/servant relationships have been irreparably romanticized in my brain forever now. Sorry if the same thing didn't happen to you.
Even if Wei Wuxian did end up as Jiang Cheng's right hand man and/or servant, I know it would've turned into a "you work for me, so that means it's my job to protect and be devoted to you" type deal. A mutual obsessive devotion in which the power dynamics have become a bizarre web. Or at least that's what JC dreamt of. You read enough Mochijun manga at age 14/15 and those dynamics just come naturally to you.
#it's okay JC I see you I understand you#I think Jiang Cheng should read pandora hearts. I think that would do something to him#wwx too for that matter#and yeah OBVIOUSLY I know this same framework doesn't apply to every fictional servant situation. but when it does. man#VERY similar vibes too from zy and bl from ts#I think my guy bl would be right at home among the likes of gil wil and jj#invasion of the frogs
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not to foxpost on the foxblog but I think we should all talk more about the cognitive dissonance that the GAR, and the Guard specifically, would have to deal with on an ongoing basis. they're brought up and had it drilled into them for a decade straight that the Republic is worth fighting and dying for, that it stands for justice and freedom and [insert patriotic buzzwords here]. they get deployed directly into a slaughter on Geonosis. they get assigned to Jedi who intentionally get them killed. they get assigned to the Guard and listen to Senators treat the war like an abstract, distant concept and the clones like equipment to be manufactured/replaced/disposed of. they're treated as subhuman by civilians. they're slaves in this system that was built up to be a shining star, a perfect example of democracy, the thing they're born to die for.
so what do you get. indoctrinated beliefs versus lived experience. sure, some of them turn (Slick) or desert (Cut), but most of them have to reconcile that conflict without walking away from the army altogether. Dogma is one end of the spectrum, going the route of "my indoctrinated beliefs must be true, so I'll selectively validate parts of my lived experience to align with them and seek out proof of them". Fives is, on Umbara at least, the opposite end, going the route of "my lived experience must be true, so I'll recontextualize my indoctrinated beliefs to match it". the Republic is still worth everything, but maybe we can't trust the Jedi, or the Kaminoans, or the Chancellor.
but the majority of them are going to fall closer to Dogma, otherwise the GAR would stop functioning or try to collectively rebel, right? it's easy to skirt around how deep brainwashing runs and how far people will go to resolve dissonance, but fmngmfng
so you take Fox in the context of Commander of the Guard, and you get "the Republic must still be worth it, so these rules and regs are in place for a reason, and even if they're not then they do work to protect us, and the Senate is doing its best with a bad situation, and the Chancellor wouldn't commit xyz atrocity because he is the Republic" and on and on and on to try to reconcile it all in his poor fucked up brain. how would he carry on with the slog of his job? how could he possibly have the space to wrestle with the contradiction? then the longer you lean into one justification, the deeper it sinks in and reinforces itself
anyway this has been needless over-analysis hour
#commander fox#YES i do think fox gets increasingly suspicious of palpatine. especially at the end#but i also think that goes hand in hand with fox starting to fray#he never fully falls apart but surely he would start to buckle under the strain of Everything plus losing faith#that does fucked up shit to the brain#hfdgfb#and it's not like he can't fit Overprotective Of The Guard into this mental framework#fox is going through it in my head can you tell. what is his story if not a cycle of tragedy and being forced to carry on#how do you cope#you convince yourself that there's a purpose#he's so complicated. the guard is such a complicated post. no one look at me#foxposting#i saw a harebrained fox take so i had to speak my truth (<- through gritted teeth)#aheem#leo.txt#apparently i also hit 400 followers so here's what you get kasnkdbdjd
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at first glance i thought the fixation on till’s neck was a sly joke about a/b/o, a genre heavily based in bl works, in the same cheeky way ivan’s name is a play on korean lgbt slang.
but the recurring motif of strangulation, how till's relationships (excluding his infatuation with mizi) are largely characterized with him being the object while the other is the subject; how him being on a leash, not just a collar, is quite literally one of his defining visual traits...
it reminds me of shakespeare's othello, where the titular character strangles his wife to death in a fit of jealousy over her alleged infidelity... the results of round 6 almost feel like a subversion of that play, where the leading artwork, esp the red one, seemed to suggest that ivan would strangle till in an act of possession, but it ended up as just the opposite.
but i wonder if there's more symbolism we can extrapolate if we hypothesize that some of the imagery are allegories to othello...
#ofc there's the till and luka drawing but im going to feel embarassed if i post it again for the third time#btw i dislike othello for orientalist reasons but anyway#ivantill#alien stage#beans of consciousness#SORRY FOR SPAMMING THE FUCKING TAG#OTHELLO IS A REALLY MEMORABLE PLAY FOR ME UGH BC I HAD TO ANALYZE IT ON THE FRAMEWORK OF DOMESTIC ABUSE YEARS AGO#SO WHENEVER I SEE ANYTHING THAT REMINDS ME OF OTHELLO I GO KIND OF CRAZY#it wouldn't be so crazy to assume that qmeng and vivinos ref shakespeare. they did it w the whole star crossed lovers.#frankly all of alien stage could be a ref to that phrase. mfs are literally with the stars and theyre all doomed.#or just western stories in general. the whole speculation that hyuna is zeus would make luka being hera fit quite well lmfao#or maybe its mizi who is zeus?!?!?!?!?!?! then would sua be hera....#sua as a character in general feels omnipresent despite being the first to go#both because shes literally the foundational concept of alien stage but bc mizi's arc is literally kickstarted by sua#and honestly mizi is the mainest main character of alien stage#eyes of hera yeh?!?!?!?!#all of my thoughts about media stem from jokes that i start to think about seriously.
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imo if you're trying to discuss the concept of Sexual Orientations and you kind of need to come at it from the understanding that, at least in the Western World there isn't really a concept of sexual orientation or sexual deviance that isn't categorically reliant upon gender expectations to make sense of. concepts like sodomy, like homosexuality and bisexuality, are constructed entirely by the gender-based ways that people are expected to perform their sexuality. see: the way inversion theory was the prelude for a lot of academic understanding of sexual identity and how echoes of that continue into the modern day. this isn't really a hot take or anything i just feel like its a nuance a lot of discussions are missing.
#which is part of why terfs are so fucking stupid. although this post isnt about terfs#and part of what i feel like is missing from some of the framework around asexuality. although this post is not about asexuality either.#and part of why i think bi lesbian discourse is kind of stupid on both sides. even though this post is not about bi lesbians#although i might make a post about that. because i have some thoughts in my head Cooking that i want to try to sort out at some point
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I’m overanalyzing something that’s canonically not meant to be thought about, for fun, so here’s a speculative Saiyan biology question: how often do they actually need to eat? I’ve sort of joked about the possibility that it’s like large predators irl where they gorge themselves occasionally and then wait until the next big kill. This would balance out the amount they’re eating to closer to a normal human, just a surprising amount in one sitting, and dodge the thing I’m about to go off the deep end about. But I think they’re probably supposed to need that amount frequently? Which is like, rodent levels of frequency and portions, but unlike a small mammal, a huge amount of actual food consumed. It’s fine if there’s only a handful of Saiyans on a whole planet but how did that work when there was a lot of them? That’s a massive amount of food, where is it coming from? Are they mostly feeding their army by taking food from conquered planets? They’d still need to be producing enough for their homeworld. Is it being farmed automatically and that’s how they can have the majority of their whole species be soldiers? But like, Gine has a job processing meat, so it’s clearly not entirely automated. Stuck thinking about Saiyan agricultural production and supply logistics help.
Unfortunately, I can also say that almost immediately after finding out the amount that Saiyans eat, the back of my mind did jump to “how fast do they starve?” Like, is that a much bigger threat for them than a human or do they have about the same amount of reserves, even if they’re eating more? If it is way faster, how does that affect how they view food/hunger? As a fun irl example, hummingbirds have such an insane metabolism that they would potentially starve to death if they slept at night. So they don’t sleep like normal, they enter a state that’s more like hibernation to slow their metabolism down enough to survive. Many hummingbird species are fiercely territorial because they need access to their food source or they starve. I imagine a theoretical hummingbird society would be thinking about food differently. And because this is my indulgent post where I get to talk about animals, I’m also going to bring up vampire bats, which could also potentially starve if they can’t feed within two days or so (I did not go deep into scientific literature to find original numbers and sources for this estimate I’m sorry true bat fans. Actually same goes for the hummingbird estimate but I know more about birds.). Unlike the more territorial hummingbirds though, vampire bats roost together during the day in colonies, with the same other bats repeatedly. And their food source can’t be guarded like a flower patch can, so there’s less purpose to territoriality. So they can form long term friendships with each other by interacting in ways like grooming each other. Within these friendships, when one bat gets a meal during their few-hour-a-night feeding window, but the other one doesn’t, the one who got enough food will often share with their friend to keep them from going hungry. Then their friend returns the favor when their roles are reversed, keeping them both alive, along with the rest of their friend network.
So those are some very different responses to needing food nearly constantly. If I were deeper in ecology mode I could probably try and come up with explanations based on the types of food source and territory and other factors for why, but I’m here to apply this to Saiyans lol. Honestly, a cooperative strategy would make more sense given that they’re pretty human-like, but that’s certainly not the sense we get given of their society. Were they always super individualistic or is that a recent development? Are they even actually individualistic or is that fully a societal role thing (elites are different from lower class warriors)? Or is the idea that they don’t cooperate partly a lie made up after their deaths anyway? Speculative biology for intelligent species get the extra layer of culture just to make things more messy and fun. We also know pretty much nothing about their original home planet and the actual context that shaped them, so I don’t get to apply other factors, like how easy it is to defend food sources or how important it is to stick together. We probably won’t ever get to know anything more about their original homeworld/Sadala, which is disappointing given that we got hints about it, but it does leave more room for speculation.
#I don’t feel like putting this in anyone’s main tags I think it will find its audience#And if not I got to talk about birds and bats to myself#Also this is not the post I meant to make today but I’ll see about it tomorrow instead#At this point that other post would involve making a graphic and my skills are not amazing#I’ll give it a shot though#I did go into the deep end on this post#Some day I should start answering my own questions and come up with a saiyan society framework#Fun worldbuilding project#I’d probably get sucked into coming up with critters for them to share their world with though ngl
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"#Batman resists his own insanity so it spreads to e v e r y t h i n g around him"
You can't just say this and not elaborate in great detail. PLEASE elaborate oh my God. I do agree but I want to hear every single thought you have about this topic.
Btw, I'm the same Anon who asked -- or not really asked but more so talked -- about Batman and Joker's soulmate sort of bond.
AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN WITH "COMBINING JOKER'S HEAD WITH BATMAN'S BODY"???????
I was thinking along the lines of the concept version and how they could never be satisfied like this, united in one body. What is the result of mixing chaos and order? What is the result of mixing the act of forgetting the past and fixating on it? What do you get through combining the ideology of making everything matter and taking all meaning away?
The result is that the pure concepts become stained and dull, pushed away from their original function, losing their purpose to oppose each other.
Becoming one entity is the act of becoming complete (concepts being stained) and losing the thing that made them them. Batman and Joker were never meant to unite in this way with overlapping voices, finishing each others thoughts and sentences and it SHOWS. I'm in love with their grotesque obsession with each other that borders on love and punishment. Their desire to win and conquer the other for good but never being able to because losing one side takes away the purpose of the other.
That's why I'm so, so, SO disappointed with how the Batman Who Laughs turned out. Where are my identity crises? Plural, because this could never be an one-and-done kind of deal. They became OneTM, inentionally or not, but BeforeTM, they were always wondering what it would be like. Batman could try to get closer to Joker's mental state but never fully experience it, same with Joker. But now they are OneTM and then what? Batman is just the Joker with Bruce's memories and face. I can't begin to describe how boring that is. That's like if DC made a "Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe" story only they used Joker instead of Deadpool.
Do you see my vision? Can you feel my pain? I wanted to psychoanalyse that asshole with my amateurish psychology knowledge but they only gave us a watered down Joker who makes other Batmen less interesting upon contact. WHERE ARE THE IDENTITY CRISES?? WHERE IS THE DIFFICULTY IN MAKING A DECISION?? WHERE ARE THE LENGTHY MONOLOGUES ARGUING BACK AND FORTH OR CONTRADICTING EACH OTHER ALL THE TIME??? The Batman Who Laughs is basically Two Face but without the wall seperating Harvey and Two Face. Joker!Batman should be unable to do anything or constantly switch between Bruce and Joker or save one life and then turn around and kill it. Like, where is the complexity? Why the hell is that guy only a murder machine?? That was neither Joker nor Batman's whole purpose??
Tell me all your thoughts, my friend, while I'm here spinning in circles and going insane. I'll never get out of this alive, you'll still find me ruminating on this on my deathbed.
I swear, if you give an absolute banger of an answer again, I'll come and start living in your walls.
Have a nice day!! :)
ANON LOVE OF MY LIFE, i'm shoveling all the insides of my walls out as we speak, you can move in by Wednesday morning—
Like, the way i felt every single word you said in my bones. You are so right, and there are a couple different points here and it's gonna get longer than usual so i'll separate each thought thread to avoid drowning in lé brain soup.
• Re: batman resisting his own insanity, i feel like i have simultaneously talked about this in 7986 different ways and haven't said anything about it at all 😂 possibly most of it has been discord ramblings. Long story short, the spine of his narrative to me is that he actively resists his own humanity and in extension of it, his evil. He wants to be good. But there's also immense psychological/emotional/physical price we pay whenever we make these kind of choices; whatever we disown and banish to our subconscious, we project out into the world and unto the people around us. The load you refuse to carry will be carried by the people around you, because at the end of the day /someone/ has to carry it, it doesn't just disappear into ether. So, in a way, for Batman to remain good, to remain a hero, someone else has to be bad. The extent in which Batman keeps his goodness "pure and untainted" dictates the horrors created around him— and particularly the creation of Joker. I say creation because the existence of Batman as a concept absolutely necessitates the existence of Joker. In a way Batman does create him, and it's true that with Batman gone Joker and half the evil in Gotham would be gone too, not because Batman is an evil presence— but precisely because he disowns his own evil.
And the thing is, in the specific context of Joker, it has become this almost loving, adoring symbiotic relationship; Joker has willingly shaped himself to fit the outline of an evil that Batman needs to defeat, he has become the sin that Batman can overcome so he can stay a saint. I actually have a draft on this that i never finished, a meta about how all the coloring choices in Joker's design eerily resemble the different color stages of a wound and the bruising after, how Batman almost feels like Jesus with Joker as his side wound, Joker being the price he pays and the pain he goes through for his martyrdom in order to stay pure, for his idealogy to have any form of meaning and significance, Joker being his very own holy suffering.
We fundamentally understand reality in form of contrasts, internal ones, external ones. As you very well pointed out, without an innate sense of contrast, we cease to have any form of coherent grasp on different concepts, and they start to sort of become noise, they become nothing. Would you truly understand what a day was and grasp it as a concept if it wasn't followed by a night? So like, what i'm saying is, people around Bruce/Batman become what he needs because they love him and they want to help him keep his narrative, the structure of his psyche intact. They help him stay 'him' by taking on the burden of what he doesn't want to be, he subconsciously shapes them in the image of what he needs to uphold his identity as a good person. This is why Alfred becomes Joker to save him, this is why Selina is the more socially acceptable pretty Joker that Bruce can actually marry and bring to his family, this is why Joker and Batman feel like they can never escape their narrative, their roles and their performance. It's the reason the moment Batman lurches to kill The Riddler in "the war of jokes and riddles", Joker stops his knife with his hand. It's their defined roles, and the greatest act of love that noone except Joker would show him. Joker says "I'm the sacrifice. I'm the evil, i'm the one who kills, i have made this choice so you can make yours. You're the good one. If you become evil, it renders both your efforts and my sacrifice meaningless, and i can not allow that to happen." And it's a truly fascinating dynamic really, for all that Joker has and hasn't done throughout the Batmanverse history, when it comes to Batman he's irredeemably selfless. Everything he does regarding Batman is to keep Batman's sense of goodness and heroism intact, and in this context he's more pure than him. Everyone around Batman wants him to kill, perhaps rightfully so, they mean well. But Joker says "i'll bear all the unbearable evil so you dont have to, and we both acutely understand that without my existence you mean nothing. I will be the monster so you dont have to." And honest to god there's a heartbreaking affection to this, something noone else will ever be willing or want to offer to Bruce, not to this extent.
in 'the war of jokes and riddles' Bruce tells Selina that "what separates him from utter evil is a hand on his knife. Joker's hand." like bro, he knows. In a deeply twisted and gutwrenching way Bruce knows that noone loves him the way Joker does.
• Re: combining Joker and Batman's heads and bodies, i was thinking.... two concepts maybe?? 👀 one is more like the Dullahan myth, in which Batman loses his head but he isn't carrying it, Joker steals it. And then Joker loses his head and Batman has to keep it and he's forced to use it. It'd be an insanely fun concept; the Dullahan myth can be interpreted as the idea of death of self by supposedly losing all that would make you human; your thoughts and memories and logic, etc. Except that you still have a heart, and a body, and they're not exactly cooperative. It'd be fun to have Joker's mind trying to tame Batman's heart and body, each fighting and singing their own song, same for Batman. A version of the myth has Dullahan carrying a human spine in one hand, and i mean, the possibilities are endless!
But also another concept would be: two frankenstein monsters lmaooo, same sense of discordent internal landscape, same sense of ideological tension and conflict, but also someone's gotta [tw mentions of gore] chop chop them and sew their body parts together, and that can be another interesting element added to their fucked up dynamic ✨️ it can also be Joker as Dr Frankensten and he sews parts of himself to Batman in order to save him!
• Re: Batman Who Laughs, oh girl (gn), i have nothing to add that you haven't already said more beautifully than me. There's so much emotional nuance and complex philosophy that could've gone into that concept, it's certainly one of the hardest Batman story variations to pull off, and weirdly enough, the people who dont directly aim for "Batman becomes Joker/Joker becomes Batman" stories often tell a better more intricate tale about that transformation than the people who straight up shoot for the concept. One of the things that always sends a chill down my spine is the ending of Batman: Europa, in which Joker is terrified and screaming as Batman laughs and lurches for him; that's the dynamic, that's the Batman who laughs, and the most unsettling part of it is that, Batman doesn't change. He doesn't have to. On a core level he is quite frankly a bit fucked up, it's not a stretch for Batman to be evil, and that's why his goodness is meaningful. Cue Nietsche's quote, "Of all evil I deem you capable: Therefore I want good from you. Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws." Batman is not a good guy entirely, and that makes his goodness a conscious choice with so much weight and worth and significance. I dont think a lot of DC people understand this.
With Batman Who Laughs, the name kinda sums up the take unfortunately; it's a superficial interpretation that falls flat on its own face because the writers couldn't be assed to explore how a chemical combination of Batman and Joker's narrative would unfold. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as with any potent chemical reaction, the mixture is highly unstable and unpredictable, and that's the fucking fun of it. There's gotta be tension. I do think Batman and Joker can very well mix, i do think they can make a seamless fusion, but i dont trust any canon DC writers to handle the characterization well in a way that doesn't bore you out of your fucking mind. You gotta make a new person and you gotta capitalise on the core components both Batman and Joker share; their incessant sense of idealism, their need for purity, their volatile emotions and their aggression, their need to individuate from their context and deviate from the norm, take the third way out narrative wise, their philosophical and intellectual bend, their immense grief, their need to be oh so special and different 😂 they actually have a whole lot in common, this is why they're perfect enemies!
But yeah, writing that personality fusion is very hard because it's such an emotionally complex context and most DC writers have not felt a single emotion in the past 35 years aflhdtdhlf
Anyway yep i love your brain so SO much Anon, hope you have a wonderful day ❤️💕 and dont forget to tell me what ya think!!
#the way this ask had me scrambling through my desktop blog to find posts and then i realised that i dont like my desktop theme#so i overhauled the whole theme while i was writing this lmaooo#anyway yeah. goddd i need to finish that jesus/side wound meta one day.#it's a bit above my paygrade because i thought i'm pulling one single thread but turns out it was a whole 9 yard yarn pile#with three cats entangled in it#but the gist is more or less the same#but also ''what do you get through combining two idealogies of making everything matter and taking meaning from everything''#i need to gay lay down a bit. maybe die a little#i think they're not a single identity in this framework; they're cycles. you understand them as they continue each other#the way spring sprouts from the belly of winter; winter spreads from the spring's belly; they be like dat#anyway Anon you're out here working all my 2.5 braincells overtime godbless ❤️💕#Batman#Batman meta#Batjokes#Batjokes meta
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