#the art and making of the dark knight trilogy

[fortunaegloria]

[jaymir]

aaa scarecrow sketch

Nolanverse! I guess

[runefaustblack]

HOLY SHIT this has gotta be a record

Nolan's Batman trilogy

The Dark Knight Trilogy (Batman Begins/The Dark Knight/The Dark Knight Rises) (Film Series, 2005)

Explain your reasoning in the reblogs!

[queeraang]

sometimes, you dislike a piece of media that is very popular and objectively well made. the popularity of it will only make it more annoying to you. now, the solution is not to then comb through a thing you don’t like to see if you can find something problematic to harp on to prove it's actually bad (you will find it, no human being has ever created perfectly inclusive perfectly inoffensive art) that just tanks the vibe and discourages new art because what's the point if it can never be perfect, also sometimes you spin out of control and start accusing people of real life crimes over like... a niche webseries

as someone with over three decades of 'bad taste' under their belt, allow me to guide you on best responses using a real life example of a popular film series, i couldn't give less of a fuck about. the nolan batman trilogy

block, mute, blacklist, whatever you have to do to avoid seeing this thing on your preferred webbed sites

allow yourself a quiet “ugh this shit” when things slip through the cracks

pick a neutral element of the thing to dislike when people ask “i’m not really a batman fan" "i like more lighthearted superhero movies"

when inevitably someone can't BELIEVE you don't LOVE the best thing EVER MADE, you make it boring to talk about "yeah couldn't get into it" "it's just not my thing"

it also helps if you admit that it is good (i'm so sorry) just not good to you. the metaphor i use is gordon ramsey could make the most immaculate mushroom risotto ever made, but it's still not going to taste good if you don't like mushrooms

change the subject/leave the convo. i don't sit around listening to ppl talk about the dark knight, i ignore the gc for a few minutes, i go get a drink irl, if it's one on one i go "no, but you know i did like birds of prey, have you seen that?"

if someone really won't let up, stop talking to them! a guy who always wants to talk about how i should watch batman is a fucking weird guy to know

vent about this with like minded people SPARINGLY, too much and you'll fall down the "and everyone who does like it is morally bankrupt" hole

crucially, don't do this to other people for stuff you like. you're not the arbiter of taste, your "best movie ever" could be someone else's "if i have to hear about that shit again i'll scream"

like i'm sure i could figure out ways the dark knight trilogy is racist/ableist/etc if i really examined it, but like... i would so much rather just NOT WATCH THREE MOVIES I DON'T FUCKING LIKE

[graysoncritic]

The Literalization of Superhero Identities

The academia-lover in me prefers for my posts to be more formal, well-structured, and more researched than this. But, to be honest, this is not really a proper essay – it’s more of an observation, really, that I first made in a private discussion and decided to share here. I should note that, despite the title, this is more of an observation about Batman and Robin. Or, given my personal bias, Batman and Dickbin. 

It’s impossible not to notice that a lot of Batman stories position Bruce Wayne and Batman as adversarial forces. For example, in Ram V’s Nocturne, an otherwise perfect story in my opinion, Selina is shown to have broken up with Bruce because Gotham needs Batman and Bruce needs his darkness – or, as it is implied, needs to be unhappy – in order to be Batman. 

(V, Ram writer. Raffaelem, Stefano, art. Lucas, Adriano, colorist. Gotham Nocturne Act I: Grand Design: Part II. Detective Comics. 1070 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2023.)

In Nolan’s famous The Dark Knight trilogy, Bruce only achieves happiness once he gives up Batman and runs away from Gotham with Selina.

And when Dick was considering a future with Bea, Bruce says that people like them, i.e. superheroes, cannot have a happily ever after. Despite Dick typically being portrayed as the proof that darkness does not need to follow a hero’s life, the story seems to side with Bruce in order to force Dick to break up with Bea. 

(Jurgens, Dan writer. Cliquet, Ronan, art. Filardi, Nick, colorist. The Problem with Napkin Man. Nightwing. 76 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2020.)

It’s not that Batman and Bruce can never be antagonists. Batman: Ego, for example, shows how this can be done very well. In this story, Bruce struggles against a manifestation of his inner darkness that demands Bruce kill the Joker in order to protect Gotham. Bruce refuses, asserting his humanity while also accepting that the responsibility of Batman means he will never truly be “happy.”

(Cooke, Darwyn  writer. Cooke, Darwyn, Art. Ego. Batman: Ego and Other Tails  e-book ed. DC Comics, 2007. pp. 66 - 67)

But I also think that in making the Batman identity Bruce’s antagonist, writers (both in canon and in fandom) lose sight of the good that Batman has brought to Bruce. 

When Steve Braxi states in his essay On Superman, Shootings, and the Reality of Superheroes that he “read[s] Batman to transform trauma into will power,” he perfectly summarized what these canon stories, and what fanfics that claim Bruce never became Batman because he went to therapy, miss about Bruce’s secret identity. 

Batman is therapy. Or, at least, a metaphor for it. Batman is both a manifestation of trauma and a manifestation of healing. It is through Batman that Bruce Wayne is able to process his trauma and transform it into not just power for himself, but power to help others.

This is beautifully captured in DeMatteis’ Grimm. In Grimm, Batman and Robin’s early partnership is put to the test when they face the titular villain Mother Grimm, a seemingly caring old lady who has been taking in runaway children and keeping them safe in an underground amusement park. She reprimands Batman for putting Robin’s life in danger, echoing a line we often see uttered by Robin-skeptics by saying children should not fight crimes. Batman and Robin are temporarily separated, but of course, Mother Grimm is not as kind as she first appears.

In the beginning of Part Three of this story, Bruce hallucinates his younger self falling from the sky as a hallucination of Dick hurls ugly accusations about Bruce endangering Dick by allowing him to become Robin. But as Bruce falls, he sprouts bat wings and is able to save himself, flying joyfully into the sky. “And he was about to hit the bottom,” Dick narrates “when Batman saved him.”

(DeMatteis, J.M. writer. Von Eeden,Trevor, pencils. García López, José Luis, inks. Grimm: Part Three: A Terrible Tragedy. Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. 151 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2002. pp. 01 - 02)

The metaphor is obvious: Batman saved Bruce. When Bruce thought he was going to lose it all, Batman came in and gave him the power to save himself – to fly free and happily through the skies. Bruce can never fully escape his trauma or erase it – it is part of his identity, of who he is – but what he can do is transform said trauma into something that saves himself and others. And through that he can find purpose, freedom from the burden of the trauma, and, as a result, he can even find happiness. 

This, I think, is what stories that only see Batman as an obstacle to Bruce’s happiness miss. Batman is not just a cowl Bruce puts on at night and the battles he faces against Gotham’s evil and corrupt – Batman is a metaphor for trauma and, just as important, a metaphor for healing. 

While Grimm is the example that first comes to my mind when discussing the metaphorical narrative function of alternative identities (not just of Batman and Robin), it is not the only one to demonstrate how Batman has been good to Bruce. 

The Murder Club is a four issue story featured in the anthology series Batman: Urban Legends. In it, Thomas and Martha Wayne are brought into the present. When they find out about Batman, they immediately express their anger and disappointment at Bruce’s actions. But Dick comforts Bruce by pointing out all that Batman brought to him, and how Batman brought them together. 

(Esposito, Joey writer. Georgiev, Vasco, art. Guimaraes, Alex, colorist. The Murder Club: Part Three of Four. Batman: Urban Legends. 22 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2022.)

There are those who would prefer for Batman to be a lone wolf. But, as I will one day argue in a future proper essay, a story in which Batman is a lone wolf is an incomplete story. There’s a reason why Dick was created not even a year into Batman’s debut. There’s a reason why Dick is so crucial to the Batman Mythos. That is because it is through his relationship with Dick that Bruce learns to open his heart to the world again, after so many years of being isolated from it. Dick teaches Bruce how to connect to people, and thanks to this relationship, Bruce is able to gain what he had once lost – he is able to have a family again. And what connected Bruce and Dick – what allowed for this healing – is Batman and Robin. Until Dick’s arrival, the Batman myth is, then, incomplete.

(Side note: There’s a lot that could be said about the traps movie adaptations fall into by refusing to adapt Dick, how they replace him with Selina, and how that is steeped into homophobia… But that is an argument I’ll save for a proper essay).  

Similarly, I worry about stories that are so quick to criticize the existence of Robin. I said in my essay about Grayson #05 that I quite dislike when people accuse Robin of being a child soldier. Such criticisms, I stated, overlook the metaphor that Robin. I stand by that statement, and I wish to elaborate on it a little more.

When Dick became Robin, he had lost his entire family. He was taken from his home. He had witnessed the gruesome murder of his parents. He was left helpless. But Bruce gave Dick a tool to bring justice to his parents. Note that, in most versions of Dick’s story, it is not just Batman who brings Zucco to justice – Dick (be it as himself or as Robin) plays a crucial role in the solving of the case as well. That is because Bruce understands that this is not just about justice – it is also about Dick regaining the agency that was taken from him by Zucco. Dick’s origin story, then, shows that Robin is not child endangerment, but rather child empowerment. 

(Dixon, Chuck, writer. Armstrong, Jason, pencils. Campanella, Robert, inks. Allen, Phil, colorist. Robin: Annual. Robin. 04. e-book ed. DC Comics, 1995. pp. 44 - 47)

Grimm also notes this in its story when Dick comes to realize his full potential as Robin. 

(DeMatteis, J.M. writer. Von Eeden,Trevor, pencils. García López, José Luis, inks. Grimm: Part Five: I Prove My Worth. Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. 153 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2002. pp. 07 - 08)

By being Robin, Dick, too, is transforming his own trauma into power. He is gaining agency and the ability to save himself and others. Robin is a power fantasy for children – it is a power fantasy for those who have felt helpless when faced with forces that were so much bigger than themselves. Robin is about children who are facing terrifying situations being able to save themselves from the horrors of this world. Again, Robin is a story about empowerment. 

This is what stories like Batman: City of Madness seem to miss. In it, young Jevoney is kidnapped by a monstrous alternative version of Batman who seeks a Robin of his own. When our Batman does save him, the story notes that rather than being trained, the kid went to therapy instead, as if the former was the wrong ending and the latter the correct one.

(Ward, Christian writer. Ward, Christian, Art. Batman: City of Madness: Book Three. Batman: City of Madness  e-book ed. DC Comics, 2024)

Similarly, while I hesitate to bring up this example as it is still ongoing, Philip Kennedy Johnson’s (as of writing) current run in Batman and Robin (2023) also seem to only focus on the negatives of Robin rather than its positives (As a side note, it hurts me to say this because, this big problem aside, I otherwise am really enjoying this run).

(Johnson, Philip Kennedy, writer. Fernández, Javier, art. Di Giandomenico, Carmine, art. The Gotham Cycle: Part Two. Batman and Robin. e-book. DC Comics. 2025)

But again, just like Batman, Robin is therapy. Robin is the healing. Robin is empowerment. Batman and Robin are metaphors. They are extensions of Bruce and Dick’s identity, yes, but they are also metaphors for trauma and healing. Yet stories like City of Madness, the current Batman and Robin run (assuming that this matter doesn’t get addressed as the story progresses) and like countless fanfics and online criticism literalize the superhero identity by seeing only how it would operate in the real world rather than the heightened reality of the superhero genre.

When I brought up this subject in a private discussion, it was pointed out that one of the reasons for this overlooking of the metaphor – this literalization of the superhero identities – is due to a preference towards the grimdark, towards realism, and towards whump. We want Bruce to be the lonesome dark hero, we want the guilt and whump of Two Face almost killing a young Dick, we want to talk about what it would actually be like to come face-to-face with such horrific crimes. And while I concede that that is the excuse many would use for justifying these storytelling decisions (Bruce only becoming happy after he gives up Batman, Robin never becoming a thing because child soldiers are bad), I do not believe they are the true root behind it.

Understanding Batman and Robin as metaphors does not mean we cannot explore the trauma that comes with being a vigilante. We can have grimdark realism and whump without condemning heroism and the superhero genre as a whole. We can have grimdark, we can have whump, and we can have it all while also understanding that Batman and Robin are sources of healing that should not, under any circumstances, be abandoned in order for our protagonist to live better personal lives. Yet, why is that so many stories (again, both in canon and in fandom), are so eager to do just that? 

I believe anti-intellectualism is the reason behind why there’s such a refusal to engage with the metaphor Batman and Robin. As Dan Olson from Folding Ideas said in his video Annihilation and Decoding Metaphors, the phenomena of anti-intellectualism promotes “an understanding of culture that rejects metaphor, that rejects the symbolic and clings to the literal, is more true” (emphasizes mine). This, Olson explains, “It is part of the process of denying art the capacity for meaning.”

In the superhero genre, we can see this with how some stories will claim “realism” when they portray Batman as an obstacle to Bruce’s happiness, or erase Robin’s existence because Robin is in fact a child soldier who should not exist. Yet, the superhero genre is, by its very nature, a heightened reality that operates in metaphors and symbolism. These stories are not, then, creating more “realistic” takes on Batman and Robin (when Robin is allowed to exist), but rather they are using “realism” as a poorly constructed excuse to engage with the text only on a surface level.

By not writing Batman and Robin as metaphors, these stories deny them their capacity to carry empowering messages of how to overcome trauma or conquer evils that appear greater than one’s self. And, as a result of engaging solely with the surface of the text, these stories not only become shallow, but they also rob Bruce and Dick of the richness and complexity that resulted in their near century long longevity. We can see a prime example of that in Tom Taylor’s Nightwing run. 

I’m not entirely sure how to conclude this… Post? Observation? Rant? I guess I just wish that Batman and Robin were given more credit than I think a lot of creators, both of canon and of fandom, do. It seems to me like this desire for “realism” – or a desire for grimdark or whump – is stripping away the magic of the superhero genre by literalizing its strongest and most powerful metaphor. And by refusing to engage with said metaphor (or, perhaps more accurately, by not even bothering to learn that there’s a metaphor to engage with in the first place), we are taking away Bruce and Dick’s individual and collective richness. And as someone who loves both of these characters so much, I hate to see that happen.

So I’m not here to preach that we should abandon grimdark or whump. I’m not here to say that we should never explore the horrors that come with being a hero (especially because I do love those types of stories). I’m just here to caution against throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Just because there is darkness in heroism, it does not mean that it is inherently a bad thing that will only bring forth misery and self-destruction. Batman has brought Bruce much joy – it gave him a tool to process his trauma, it allowed him to heal, it gave him a new family. Robin is not a child soldier – it is a fantasy through which children can feel empowered to overcome evils that seem greater than they are. These metaphors are powerful, and by understanding them as such, we can also better understand two of the greatest characters ever created. 

Bibliography

Braxi, Steve, “On Superman, Shootings, and the Reality of Superheroes” Comics Bookcase, September 2021

Cooke, Darwyn  writer. Cooke, Darwyn, Art. Ego. Batman: Ego and Other Tails  e-book ed. DC Comics, 2007.

DeMatteis, J.M. writer. Von Eeden,Trevor, pencils. García López, José Luis, inks. Grimm: Part Three: A Terrible Tragedy. Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. 151 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2002

DeMatteis, J.M. writer. Von Eeden,Trevor, pencils. García López, José Luis, inks. Grimm: Part Five: I Prove My Worth. Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. 153 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2002.

Dixon, Chuck, writer. Armstrong, Jason, pencils. Campanella, Robert, inks. Allen, Phil, colorist. Robin: Annual. Robin. 04. e-book ed. DC Comics, 1995

Esposito, Joey writer. Georgiev, Vasco, art. Guimaraes, Alex, colorist. The Murder Club: Part Three of Four. Batman: Urban Legends. 22 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2022

Johnson, Philip Kennedy, writer. Fernández, Javier, art. Di Giandomenico, Carmine, art. The Gotham Cycle: Part Two. Batman and Robin. e-book. DC Comics. 2025

Jurgens, Dan writer. Cliquet, Ronan, art. Filardi, Nick, colorist. The Problem with Napkin Man. Nightwing. 76 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2020

Olson, Dan, “Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor” Youtube, uploaded by Folding Ideas, 31 October 2018

V, Ram writer. Raffaelem, Stefano, art. Lucas, Adriano, colorist. Gotham Nocturne Act I: Grand Design: Part II. Detective Comics. 1070 e-book ed. DC Comics, 2023.

Ward, Christian writer. Ward, Christian, Art. Batman: City of Madness: Book Three. Batman: City of Madness  e-book ed. DC Comics, 2024

[pinguwrites]

Cillian Murphy & Characters

--- --- ---

𝐜𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐦𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐡𝐲 (𝐫𝐩𝐟)

This is not a reflection of Cillian Murphy's actual life. This is completely separate and is not intended to harm him or his family in any way. DNI if you're a Yvonne hater. This is only fanfiction and this is just for fun.

⸻ oneshots

Sweet, Little Girl | 1k, dark!reader You're Cillian Murphy's next door neighbor. You're young and innocent, and he's an attractive older man—surely he must be the one taking advantage of you . . . right?

A Daughter's Duty | 1.4k, dark!cillian x stepdaughter!reader You’re stepfather has made a habit of sneaking into your room at night to use you, even when you don’t want it.

A Father and a Lover | 1.1k, dark!stepdaughter!reader Cillian Murphy is trying to be a good dad for you. It proves more difficult than he expected.

⸻ drabbles

You milk Cillian of his babies

Your favorite actor flirts with you

𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐛𝐲 (𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐲 𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬)

Peaky Blinders characters, plots, quotes, etc. do not belong to me and belong to the rightful owner(s). This is only fanfiction and this is just for fun.

⸻ oneshots

In The Light of the Moon | 5k, dark!tommy x innocent!reader Having enough of being mistreated by your family, you decide to runaway to the small town of Birmingham. There, you meet the feared gangster, Thomas Shelby, whose intentions with you are less than pure.

To Lend a Hand | 3.2k, sister!reader After catching your brother masturbating, you decide to go to him for help in a matter you've been struggling with — the art of pleasure, and specifically, how to do it for yourself.

⸻ drabbles

Drabble: Tommy takes you from behind

Drabble: Tommy wishes you were his

⸻ series

Black Heart | poc!american!reader, age-gap, slow burn

𝐣𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐞 (𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐤𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲)

The Dark Knight Trilogy characters, plots, quotes, etc. do not belong to me and belong to the rightful owner(s). This is only fanfiction and this is just for fun.

⸻ oneshots

You Set My Soul Alight | 5k, enemies to lovers You and Jonathan Crane have always been at odds. One day, Crane comes to you with a plea to enticing to resist, and you find this the perfect opportunity to put him in his place.

The Doll’s Burial | 9k, kidnapper!reader

⸻ drabbles

Drabble: yandere!jonathan kidnaps you

𝐧𝐞𝐢𝐥 𝐥𝐞𝐰𝐢𝐬 (𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐬)

Watching The Detectives characters, plots, quotes, etc. do not belong to me and belong to the rightful owner(s). This is only fanfiction and this is just for fun.

⸻ drabbles

Drabble: you catch your boyfriend Neil eating out his fleshlight

Drabble: dark!neil refuses to pull out

𝐭𝐨𝐦 𝐛𝐮𝐜𝐤𝐥𝐞𝐲 (𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬)

Red Lights characters, plots, quotes, etc. do not belong to me and belong to the rightful owner(s). This is only fanfiction and this is just for fun.

⸻ oneshots

Our True Nature | 4.4k, psychic!reader Despite your great abilities you've pursued a humble life, looking for others like you. Your search comes to an end when you realize that your professor's assistant, Tom Buckley — the one you've been harboring a secret crush on — is a psychic, just like you.

⸻ drabbles

Drabble: Tom can’t help but breed you

𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐦 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐤 (𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞)

PHOTO COMING SOON

The Edge of Love characters, plots, quotes, etc. do not belong to me and belong to the rightful owner(s). This is only fanfiction and this is just for fun.

⸻ oneshots

Home Is Where the Heart Is | 9k, future!reader You don't think much of the box when it arrives at your front door. That is, until you open it and are transported decades into the past. There, you fall into the arms of a handsome soldier, who is intent on making you stay.

⸻ drabbles

Drabble: William gets needy when he's jealous

Drabble: William fakes a PTSD nightmare

Drabble: dark!william teases and degrades whore!reader in semi-public

𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫 (𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧)

Inception characters, plots, quotes, etc. do not belong to me and belong to the rightful owner(s). This is only fanfiction and this is just for fun.

⸻ drabbles

Drabble: you degrade and overstimulate Rob

Death Junior (only one fic for now)

Robert Oppenheimer (only one fic for now)

[slavicdollie]

Lin kuei movie headcanons 🎬🗡

As a film girlie I saw another user talking about how the Lin kuei brothers wouldn't really be into the mean girls so it made me think what kind of movies would they be into

Bi-han

I cannot picture this man being into comedies or romance, so if you're down for some 10 ways to lose a guy or the notebook enjoy watching that by yourself.

Comedies,no the only time we see this man crack a smile is when he's saying something snarky to his opponents in the intros.

Likes Quentin Tarantino movies like kill bill and inglorious bastards,not a big fan of pulp fiction because he thinks the characters and plot are silly but he enjoys the martial arts and revenge plots in other Quentin movies.

He will like movies where the main character is problematic but he doesn't understand that the audience isn't supposed to be rooting for them eg,scarface,taxi driver and joker(2019)

I also see him fucking with kung fu panda💀

Kuai liang

Similar to bi-han,can appreciate a good action movie but leans more towards movie's that make you think, such as interstellar, inception,shutter Island and the Truman show.

Definitely a Christopher nolan fan,I can see him liking the dark knight trilogy.

Unlike bi-han he would not put down watching a romance movie.

I see him enjoying 10 things I hate about you.

Unlike bi han he would watch films like scarface and taxi driver but criticize the main characters

Tomas

Opposite of bi han loves romcoms and classics.

I assume Johnny would def give tomas movie recommendations which consist of classics and action.

Doesn't like action as much as the others,I feel like Tomas's views are different from the other two men even though all of them basically grew up around violence Tomas uses films to escape from his real-life experiences.

Enjoys light hearted stuff with drama like Wes Anderson,he enjoys the cinematography of his films.

Not really a movie but he would watch sitcoms.

Enjoys movies like The royale Tenenbaums, the mask,Shrek 2

[abalidoth]

what is cosmere? (is that what its called?)

The Cosmere is a big, interconnected fantasy universe that is the setting of most of the works by the author Brandon Sanderson. The cool thing about his books is that each series is contained to its own world, and you can read any of them in isolation without realizing you're missing anything, but if you read them all you get a sense of the larger plot happening behind the scenes as those worlds start to collide and things cross over.

Brandon's magic systems tend to be very rule-based and well-defined, with a lot of twists being characters finding interesting ways to use those rules of magic. This lends itself well to the crossovers, because all the magic systems (as different as they are) share the same underpinning principles.

Here's some quick rundowns of different series and standalones in the Cosmere:

The Stormlight Archive

Planned ten-book series, currently four books are out.

A massive sprawling epic about the world Roshar, that's hit by a hurricane about every four days, and all the life has adapted to survive that environment. Knights Radiant -- superpowered individuals with a close bond to a spirit -- are starting to re-emerge in the world after being absent for centuries.

Because there are so many characters, this is where a lot of the character fandom tends to focus their efforts. I wouldn't recommend starting with it, though -- the first book alone is a thousand pages. I'd wait until you have a sense of Brandon's writing. But it's very good.

Mistborn

One trilogy (completed), one tetralogy set a couple hundred years later (completed), two trilogies some time in the future.

One cool thing about this series is that it follows one world (Scadrial) from a vaguely Renaissance tech level in the first trilogy, to 1920s in the second series, and eventually 1980s in the third and space-age magic in the fourth.

The magic itself is very intricate and all woven around metals -- there are people called Metalborn who can ingest metals and burn them in their stomachs to get different effects, including super-senses, strength, and Magneto-ish metallokinesis. That last bit makes the gunfights in the second series particularly fun.

The first book is a heist novel about robbing a thousand-year-old God-Emperor blind. It's a pretty good place to start, although it's a pretty hefty novel to start with.

The Emperor's Soul

I'm putting this one in a different category from the rest of the one-offs for a very good reason -- it's, in my opinion, the single best place to start reading the Cosmere.

It's a novella (just over a hundred pages) about a forger named Shai who uses magic to rewrite the histories of objects. She is captured by the government of an empire to reforge the soul of their Emperor, who has been left braindead after an assassination attempt, in the 100 days before the mourning period is over.

It's a fantastic meditation on art, a cool introduction to the way Brandon writes both characters and magic systems, and Shai herself is one of my favorite Cosmere characters. If any of this sounds at all interesting to you, I recommend you check it out.

One-offs

Brandon has also written a bunch of one-off novels in the Cosmere.

Elantris: His first book, and the one that my tattoo is from. About a prince who is affected by a dark transformation and thrown into a city of fellow undead, and the princess betrothed to him who arrives just in time to be told he died. Good, but suffers from some first book issues, pacing problems, and weird plot cul-de-sacs. Set in the same world as The Emperor's Soul, although there's basically no crossover.

Warbreaker: About a world where souls (Breaths) are bought and sold, and used to animate objects to do work, ruled by The Returned, living gods who require a steady dose of Breaths to live. One of my favorites, and an essential if you'd like to get into the crossover-y parts of the cosmere, as it introduces a bunch of elements that show up later (Especially in Stormlight)

Tress of the Emerald Sea: The first of his wildly successful Kickstarter project books, it's a fairy tale style story about a girl who braves a sea of bubbling, deadly spores to rescue the man she loves. It's lovely, especially if you're into a more Diana Wynne Jones kind of vibe to your fantasy. Probably a pretty good place to start!

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter: The third Kickstarter book. About a shrine priestess who stacks rocks to draw spirits, and a man who paints the nightmares that roam the streets of his city to banish them -- they become trapped in each other's places and must learn about each other's worlds to survive. This is currently my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE cosmere novel, oh my GOD it's so good. I'm not sure it's a great place to start, as a lot of the conclusion might feel a bit rushed if you don't have a good feel for the vibe of how Brandon writes magic, but honestly it might stand alone just fine even then.

The Sunlit Man: Fourth Kickstarter book. I haven't read this one yet.

Novellas: There are a bunch of novellas and short stories, some set on worlds we haven't otherwise seen, some set on Roshar or Scadrial.

If any of this sounds good to you, I recommend you give his writing a shot. He's one of my all time favorite writers (the tattoo should prove that, lol) and the Cosmere fandom is by and large wonderful and welcoming. I've made many lifelong friendships there.

[haleyslibrary]

Hi there! I've had a lot of new followers recently so I figured I should do a formal introduction!

My name is Haley, I'm on the cusp of 27 years old, and I love to read! I used to read a lot when I was younger but lost interest/capacity for it after high school. In 2023, I read 4 books. Then at the start of 2024, I re-discovered my passion for it in full force and read 45 books last year! :)

My favorite genres are fantasy, sci-fi, or dystopian. I've also made it a goal this year to read more classics. Some of my favorite series are Throne of Glass, ACOTAR, The Folk of the Air, and The Hunger Games. My reading goal for 2025 is 50 books.

I also love music, and my favorite artist is Taylor Swift (I'm a big swiftie). Some of my other favorite artists are Noah Kahan, Sabrina Carpenter, Lorde, Hozier, Renee Rapp, Gracie Abrams, Halsey, 5sos, The Lumineers, Mt. Joy, & Wilderado.

I also like to play video games, mostly RDO and SSO , and my brother bought me Witcher 3 for Christmas, so I plan on starting that once I have more free time.

I love cats, and I have 3 of my own: Ivy, Beans, and Daisy May. I also love horses, and I volunteer at a Veteran Equine Therapy barn on Saturday mornings doing animal care!

I love art and recently I've been getting back into creating it for fun. I started a junk journal that I use occasionally. I got an iPad for Christmas, so I bought Procreate and have been playing around with that when I feel inspired. I used to draw/paint a lot when I was in school, but I wouldn't say I'm very good. Too much of a perfectionist, I think, which makes it hard to do it for fun. It's been a welcome challenge to overcome that and make it fun again.

I currently work as a content creator for a car dealership, but I don't really love it. It pays the bills. I'm in a period of my life where I'd love a new job, but I don't know what I'd want to do. Nothing has really piqued my interest that also pays enough. :(

I'm also a sports photographer on the side. I was pursuing it as a full-time career up until a few years ago, but I've lost the passion for it, unfortunately. This is a big reason for my uncertainty in the job market. Outside of that I love taking photos for fun, whether it's with my phone, my point-and-shoot, or my DSLR.

That said, a lot of my blog is photos I've taken of my books! It also will consist of things related to the interests I've said here in this post, but mostly book things. Sometimes I'll post reviews or book-related thoughts. Mostly I'm just running on vibes though, and it's subject to change as I see fit lol

If we share interests or book favorites, feel free to interact or dm me! I'd love to meet more bookish friends!

Edit: I can't believe I forgot to add TV shows and movies!

Favorite movies (top 5, not in any particular order): Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Dune: Part Two, The Dark Knight, The Hunger Games Trilogy, and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy!

I can't pick a favorite show, but here's some of the ones that I enjoy: New Girl, Schitt's Creek, Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, Rings of Power, One Tree Hill, Bridgerton, Yellowjackets, Sex Lives of College Girls, Peaky Blinders, Stranger Things, Outerbanks, Normal People, One Day, The Bear, The Good Place, The Vampire Diaries, Teen Wolf, Ted Lasso, Gossip Girl, Heartland, The Boys, Daisy Jones and the Six, Criminal Minds, Spinning Out (rip), The 100, and more probably lol

[whatjoup4]

Júlia's Top 10 Videogames

10. Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap

I swear no game ever gave as much of a sense of adventure like Minish Cap. I feel like part of it was the main gimmick of the game, how becoming smaller revealed a lively hidden world full of magic, and how that implied depth and complexity was there even if you couldn't see it. No other world has ever felt quite as magical, not even other Zelda games.

9. Firewatch

I've played Firewatch about 3 or 4 times, and it's one of those games that the more I play it the better it gets. Like many people I found the ending confusing at first, maybe even a bit frustrating. The older I get the more I play it, the more I understand it. I think that is its beauty. Part of the point is that childish escapism isn't a solution, it's a break, and the problems you're escaping from are still there when you come back, but at the same time, time for escapism is important.

8. Dragon Age: Origins

DAO is the first game on this list that belongs to my favorite game genre, the CRPG. It's a singular game in that, starting from Dragon Age 2 the series would become a more "modern" Action RPG, and would also drop the Dark Fantasy vibes in favor of something more cheeky and adventurous. While I remain a fan of the Dragon Age series (you'll even find in me a Veilguard enjoyer), very few games can match DAO in writing and ambience. It's major flaw in my eyes is the gameplay. Realtime CRPG combat is definitely not my style.

7. Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader

As any transwoman worth her salt, I've gotten into Warhammer as of late. And Rogue Trader is right at the intersection of that interest and CRPGs. Much like DAO, it takes place in a grim world. Unlike DAO it finds comedy in it's over the top grimness. It's the best way to engage with any Warhammer world, playing it's over the top darkness and leaving the humor to be found in it to be found by the player. And unlike DAO, combat is extremely fun, and the ways to build your character and their entourage are just varied enough to give you a sense of identity, but not overwhelming to the point of paralysis (unlike other Owlcat games *cough cough*)

6. Chrono Trigger

For a lot of my life, if you asked me what my favorite game was I'd have said Chrono Trigger. I've played through it so many times, and it's a near perfect game in almost all senses. Art, music, story, gameplay. It legit makes me angry that it didn't become the template for jRPGs going forward, and that Final Fantasy did. Just looking at it being #6 on this list feels wrong, but the top 6 games of this list all mean so much to me that depending on my mood I could say any of them are my favorite on any given day. This game is a true masterpiece, even all this time later, being the inspiration for so much of the gaming landscape, no true successor has ever been made.

5. Hollow Knight

Hollow Knight is a beautiful game. That it plays and feels as good as it looks is another wonder. It's a story felt instead of told. Both literally and figuratively, you are a bug crawling on a dying world. There are thousands of words written on what that story is but when you play it, you don't know almost anything for certain, but you do feel it. Maybe all I needed to get Soulslikes was beautiful 2d animation and backgrounds.

4. Mass Effect Trilogy

A little bit of cheating I know but it's my list. I put the whole trilogy in here because to me they're inseparable as games. They have their own differences but each of them benefits for being part of the whole. My favorite is 2, like most folks, but part of it's greatness is because of what inherits from 1 and what it foreshadows about 3. I'm not big into shooters, so that it made it's way this high into the list is proof of just how good a story it is. I miss Bioware, shame it died.

3. Control

I really like SCP. More than the lore, I love the vibes of SCP. Control might be the best way to express those vibes in a game. It's technically not set in the world of SCP but I think that works to it's benefit. So many of the vibes of the SCP project is about accidentally stumbling into a weird world of supernatural things, from the small and safe to the world ending, and the nutjobs that dedicate their lives to it's study. If it was set in the SCP world I would recognize things, maybe even understand them. It is not, and I don't. And that's its greatness.

2. Subnautica

There are games on this list that are objectively better games. Games that have objectively better written stories, objectively better art direction, objectively better gameplay. But none of these games seem to have been drawn from 4 year old me's dreams. I have always been obsessed with the Ocean. From little I used to dream about hopping on a submarine and seeing all the fantastical things that lie at the bottom of our oceans. Subnautica does not take place on our oceans, yet it is infinitely more faithful to the image of the ocean that filled me with wonder ever since I can remember. I love this game to bits.

1. Divinity 2

At the top it only felt fair to put my favorite game from my favorite genre (yes I think it's better than Bauldur's Gate 3). Divinity 2 is amazingly written, the world feels lively and full of wonder, combat is full of creative decisions. The game systems both disappear and get amplified, as the effects of one spell affect the next, affect the next. The characters are all interesting, your party members are likeable and full of personality. And Sing With Me will never leave my head.

[zahri-melitor]

I think this is pretty decisive that I should do several of these, however I’m going to start with the 8 November 1989 stories.

These are the 11 stories I had to read.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #2: this is the second issue of five of the story Shaman, by Denny O’Neil. LotDK, for people who are unfamiliar, was premised on being a book that largely told early-career Batman stories, generally in disconnected arcs by a wide range of writers.

The title opens with ritual human sacrifice, involving people’s hearts being cut out and a cult run by people from Santa Prisca. The plot is about a particular mask from an indigenous community in Alaska that was ‘collected’/bought by a professor of anthropology. This particular mask is of a bat, and traditionally used in healing rituals. Also during this story, Bruce and Alfred decide to move Bruce’s crime fighting HQ into the Cave (as I said, this is a VERY early career story).

I have read this story previously (because it’s interrelated to and occasionally referenced in various Barbatos and Zur-En-Arrh storylines), so I know where it’s going, but as a single issue this has a lot of moving various story lines along but not a lot of context on what’s happening or how they’re related.

Action Comics #648: and another second issue in a storyline! This is part two of the Brainiac Trilogy. A good chunk of this issue is just Metallo recounting his backstory to Brainiac. Outside of that, a swarm of Metallo robots are attacking Lexcorp Tower, and Clark beats them up. This infuriates Lex, of course. Brainiac gets cryogenically frozen and this allows him to project his mind at people he’s implanted control chips in, because comics, and at Cadmus Dubbilex senses Brainiac’s men and Metallo trying to steal shit and sends both Guardian and Superman to prevent it.

Clark also makes “I’m disarming you” and “I’m not leaving you with a leg to stand on” jokes while lasering off Metallo’s limbs with his heat vision. Oh, Clark. You think you’re so funny.

Justice League Europe #9: this I had so little context on. The main things that happen are Power Girl needs surgery (performed by Clark via heat vision assisting the doctors) because of injuries from the previous issue (Clark's doing a lot with heat vision this week, it seems). Also Wally and Ralph Dibney come to a level of reconciliation over how much they both miss Barry by telling each other stories of fights Barry had.

The Question #33: oh, hilariously this is actually a good stand alone issue of The Question (and also an important one) given it’s the first appearance of Harold Allnut. I will note that the art for this certainly prematurely ages Harold, making him look older than his mother. But essentially what is happening is a criminal is released from prison and sent by a corrupt judge to attack/kill Myra, who is Mayor at this point.  Harold helps Myra start her car when it’s broken down and then stays with her, helping her protect Jackie from the attack.

I will note this particular exchange occurs (because it’s very 1980s and also still topical today):-

Vic: He said Judge Whelperson released Cathy Fregosi on his own recognizance today. Tot: You said “Cathy” and then said “his”. Pronoun trouble? Vic: No, Cathy is a he.

(Context: Cathy is being used as a nickname for Carlton, the guy who comes after Myra)

Green Arrow #27: I'm going to open by pointing out this wasn't deliberate, this was a completely randomly generated number.

GUESS WHICH ISSUE THIS IS? IT'S THE ONE WHERE TRAVIS MORGAN SHOWS UP, GETS MISTAKEN FOR OLLIE, AND PUNCHES OLLIE!

God this was glorious. Now of course nothing happening in this was a mystery to me, given Travis' helmet outline is visible on the cover and they literally use The Warlord's fonts in the cover and splash.

But Mike Grell and Dan Jurgens have a whale of a time slowly making hints of who this green coated man actually is, revealing more and more details. Truly, they had fun with it and so did I reading along and spotting everything.

Doctor Fate #12: in part 3 of The Death of Innocence, Doctor Fate (Eric Strauss) and Doctor Fate (Linda Strauss) are fighting Darkseid in Apokolips. They join their power together to become stronger by combining via what they describe as their 'sacred union' and their love. They end up so attuned they are talking to each other psychically. Unfortunately, during this battle Darkseid kills Eric.

I had to do a wiki dive to work out what on earth was going on with these two characters, and I couldn't do those summaries justice if I tried. Both DC Database and LOCG have corkers of write ups. We'll START with the fact that these two are step mother and step son, and YES they're in love and mystically fated to be together, also Eric was artificially aged up from age 10 to adulthood when he became Doctor Fate (but apparently is still mentally 10 years old). And that's just the start of it.

I am not sure I need or indeed want to read any more of this run, but it's the most concentrated comics nonsense I've seen in quite a while.

I will also note that this comic does not have Comics Code Approval on the cover. Which, I am not shocked over, but what IS interesting to me is that some of other comics in this set that also don't have approval (The Question, Green Arrow) are listed as for Mature Readers, and this is not. Which. Hmmm.

Mister Miracle #10: Barda's hair is this incredible intricate braided updo in this (yes of course my priorities are in order). The general plot of this is that Scott and Barda are living in a small town hiding their identities and trying to fit in with the humans, only it's just come out that "Mister Miraculous" (what the news is calling Scott, to his disgust) is fighting crime around the town, and a newbie hero who wants to be the super of this tiny community decides to fight Scott.

Suicide Squad #36: this is a very complicated issue to drop into, because it's at the climax of a story about the Squad attacking Apokolips. Despite coming out at the same time as the Doctor Fate story, fighting Darkseid, and having Barda with the team facing Granny Goodness, this story is completely unrelated to the two stories listed above it.

What's continuity and coordination, folks?

There's a lot going on here, but I think the most important aspect if you've never read it is that Doctor Light (the villain, the one whose mindwipe comes up in Identity Crisis) dies in this issue. And explicitly goes to hell.

Captain Atom #36: this issue is called "The Secret Origin of Everyone!" This is a corner of DC I know very little about, and the explanations of this character called the Silver Shield and how it's related to Captain Atom lore are not particularly easy to follow.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure #1: this is a 32 page comics adaption of the movie screenplay. And it's exactly that. I'm not sure there's much else to say about it. I have to say, it’s not very funny to read as as lot of the jokes clearly depend on mispronunciations, accents and comedic timing, and so look dull and stale written down.

Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children #6: this is some experimental storytelling. Happy Birthday to Hell is the Devil explaining his version of events about why he was kicked out of Heaven, and why it wasn't an interesting place to be in the first place, in the tone of a contemporary human with mundane problems. There's a whole rant, for instance, about trying to buy shoes at the shops when you have cloven hooves.

The whole comic is sketched double spreads, with a handwritten monologue from the Devil in cursive all the way through, making it difficult at times to follow.

[syzygyzip]

The Soul Still Burns: Analysis of the Lords of Cinder (DS3)

What follows is a short essay on the Lords of Cinder from Dark Souls 3, exploring their symbolism on spiritual and metatextual levels. After that is a related reading of Slave Knight Gael, the final adversary of the Dark Souls trilogy.

The Lords of Cinder are in many ways the primary adversaries of Dark Souls 3. This title they share, “Lord of Cinder,” refers to a personage who has rekindled the first flame, keeping the cycle of light and dark going.

Cinder is a substance which continues to burn without the presence of fire but does not reduce to ash. So euphemistically, it seems that the Lords are somehow stuck in their process of purification, and the game suggests that the world is stuck along with them; this is why it is the Ashen One’s task to “set them upon their thrones”—to hurry them along and thus allow the world to follow its natural decline. As individual characters, each of these Lords represents a different attitude that complicates and prolongs the cycle.

Through these stubborn Lords the game is commenting on at least two things. On the metaphysical level, it reflects the Buddhist idea that certain attitudes keep people reincarnating over and over again, unable to extricate themselves from the material world of suffering (samsara). While on the metatextual level, the game is suggesting that certain attitudes keep players coming back to Dark Souls again and again, starting new games, making new builds and revisiting old files.

The idea there on the metaphysical side finds an easy analogy in Buddhist doctrine: the “three poisons,” the three root causes of suffering. These are hatred, greed, and delusion. What’s interesting is that these essential vices also fit pretty easily onto the different types of players that are being caricatured by the Lords. We’ll break these correspondences down in a second.

But First: Why Do They Correspond? So we have these sets of three. Three lords, three poisons in Buddhism, three types of Souls players. How convenient. When we analyze art, we sometimes ask, “Huh, is this structure really there, or am I projecting it into the material?” And if the structure is really there, baked into the work, that doesn’t mean that it’s due to developer intention. Archetypal forms sometimes show up in work via an unconscious influence, be it due to the cultural milieu, personal psychology, or some a priori biological disposition of the human being.

And the thing about Dark Souls is that it’s an unusually honest piece of art, in that its creative team allows their own free associations and intuitions to show up in the work without too much self-censorship or questioning. They make space for a mystery to show up on its own terms, and in leaving its riddles unanswered, there is more space for discovery by the people who play it.

It should also be said that cultural ideas persist for a reason. Beneath the ethics and ideology of the people who originally named the Buddhist “three poisons,” there may be something timeless, something perennially descriptive of human nature. If that is the case, then it would make sense for this same triplicity to unfurl itself in other cultural products. So for one reason or another, these three poisons, these addictions, show up diegetically in the characters and are also expressed in player psychology.

I say all this just because sometimes I feel very aware of the disconnect between much of Souls lore discourse and the broader field of mythological study. Since we are gamers first, there may be this tendency to want to “solve” the lore, but that’s not what we’re doing here. Myth functions because it elaborates our experience of the world through affective resonance; it attaches images and characters and stories which help us anchor our own prelinguistic impressions of the world, cultivating our sensitivity there.

Anyway, let’s look at these Lords.

Abyss Watchers Poison: Hatred The lore of the Abyss Watchers is pretty clear: they have an obsessive fixation on the abyss, and are ready to raze an entire town if they suspect abyssal encroachment. This obsession has literally possessed them, as they are now “abyss touched.” Gaze too much into the abyss, etc. They carry such strong contempt for the disavowed object that they don’t care what comes between it and their sword. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that they are a brotherhood yet are unhesitatingly slaughtering themselves again and again. Hatred has made them blind, and has also caused them to resign their individuality (they are identical, mere instruments of a transpersonal grudge). They cannot die, their hatred keeps them locked in combat.

Type of Player: competitive | Interest: combat The Abyss Watchers are a representation of PvP addicts. They have no powers other than tenacity; they perform the same combos repeatedly. When you are really gripped by a PvP binge in Souls, you often end up doing the same thing again and again. The fight takes place in a mausoleum, on top of many chambers filled with human remains. The fact that this boss fight is instructional about combat, specifically about looking for tells (a cloud of dust always signifies the end of their combos) might be another clue. There is no limit to how good you get at Souls PvP; every foe is an opportunity to improve timing and strategy. You can just keep stacking anonymous bodies under yourself.

Aldrich Poison: Greed Aldrich invokes the concept of supremacy many times: he is in the supreme area from Dark Souls 1; in the supreme boss room of that area; he wears as a crown the former supreme lord of that area. This is because he devours lords; he tries to take prestige upon himself through acquisition and incorporation—greed.

Type of Player: completionist | Interest: content Aldrich is a commentary on completionist players. He is someone who “plays the game to death”, acquiring every object, reaching every achievement, devouring the soul of the game through taking everything into himself. He becomes bloated by consuming as much of the game’s content as possible. The old God whose likeness he has adopted is Gwyndolin, who was, in narrative terms, the one pulling the strings in the land of the Gods. And in gameplay terms, he is a secret boss. So on both counts we have someone who is elusive, and exists more or less at the boundary of the gameworld. When a player tries to see every last little morsel of a game, they become somewhat like Gwyndolin, a manipulator of a virtual world. If you know too much about a game, you have the risk of being less immmersed.

Yhorm Posion: Delusion In Buddhism, the poison of delusion secretly underlies the other two poisons, as the impulse toward hatred and greed are ultimately born of some false view about reality. This is akin to how the profaned capital sits below the rest of the kingdoms. To beat Yhorm you essentially have to “play pretend” with him, picking up a fake super-weapon, or fighting alongside Siegward, a knight who appears to be somewhat deluded about the state of the world, enthralled in the same fantasy as Yhorm himself.

Type of Player: lore researcher | Interest: meaning The profaned capital is full of statues—fixed images of myth; and empty goblets—treasures with no utility. Not to mention the area with the swamp which is full of symbolic imagery, but serves no narrative or mechanical purpose. The entire profaned capital challenges us to make sense of it; it is the ultimate temptation of lorekeepers in DS3. It throws at us a disproportionate amount of reference to DS2, which is famous among Souls players as the least thematically sensible Souls game. The Greatshield of Glory is found right outside Yhorm’s room, in a conspicuous room full of treasure, and yet it is a very impractical shield and offers very little lore value. If a lore-minded player picks it up, it directs them to a legendary personage from the War of Giants, which raises far more questions than it answers. The same is true of much of this area—the Eleanora, the Monstrosities, the Profaned Flame itself—they are all there to get you to speculate. These are the players who come to Souls games again and again, trying to find the “ultimate meaning.” They seek the grail, claim to find it, and then chuck in a pile with the others.

Yhorm's story also imitates the primordial Artorias myth: forsaking his shield in preservation of something more valuable. Other than that Yhorm is largely a cipher when it comes to biography, with a void for a face, which itself epitomizes what must remain at the center of mythology and storytelling: mystery.

Sit Down and Seek Guidance So we have the three reasons that people become fixated on Souls: the combat, the achievements, and the mystery. But there is a fourth lord of cinder boss, who is conceptually apart from these three: the Lothric Twins. They represent yet another kind of person who must keep playing Dark Souls: the developers. Lothric is striving to produce “a worthy heir,” a proper sequel to Dark Souls 1. The Princes are bound to their chamber as the developers are bound to their project, as that is their curse—“but you may rest here too, if you like.” In this context we can see their duality as the dual nature of having to work on the game and also play it to death. The privilege and the loftiness of the promise of a great piece of art (Lothric), and also having to go back "into the trenches" of the work itself (Lorian). Notably, neither of them can walk, they just teleport around. They are stuck at work, trying to bring the new world into being. Also I can’t go this whole essay without mentioning the obvious: that the Ashen One is bringing Lords to their thrones, and we players and developers have to assume our little chairs and couches when we access this world.

Playing Beyond the Point of Pleasure Of course the most extreme example of someone stubbornly remaining in the world no matter what is Slave Knight Gael. He is looking for pigment, which seems to be a euphemism for the substance of humanity (the Dark Soul). He wants to give it to the painter, the world-creator, so that a new world can be made. He is willing to indulge in a wasteland of abject violence for as long as it takes in order to renew something. Ironic that he is probably only prolonging the current world in his obsessive drive to recycle it faster.

Let’s examine the relationship between the figure of the painter and her relationship to Gael. That she is a spiritual entity is obvious: we never see her touch the ground, she is always in an upper room and lifted on a piece of furniture. Among other things, she is a clear metaphor for life springing eternally. A creative child who continues to paint despite kidnapping and imprisonment. She is the heart of the painted world, itself a place that symbolizes the idea of the representation of reality.

I want to make sure this is clear, because it is a bit of a kaleidoscope to consider. Any subject in Dark Souls stands for many things, but something that the painted world specifically represents is the very concept of representation. So of course the places in our imaginations are painted worlds, but so is this physical world of appearance, the maya of mundane reality. Not to mention that a work of art is a painted world, and the game we’re discussing is a painted world. When a work of art is able to recreate itself in itself, we can see this funny effect of mirrors reflecting mirrors infinitely. This results in seemingly inexhaustible symbolic content—there is so much potential to find meaning and create connections. Because Moby Dick represents a work of literature; the Tempest represents a play; Twin Peaks represents a TV show, these works can offer extensive insights not only into their medium but into the nature of reality. In these and other examples, the representation of the medium within the work may or may not be a single subject, but since Dark Souls is formally a game about levels and level design, the painted world is the heart of its self-reflexivity. The painted world can be pointed to as the summary of this fractal device. And the personification of that device, its ambassador to the player, is the painter.

The miracle or divine child is also an archetype familiar to us from Lothric, in their struggle to produce the “worthy heir.” Reality seeks salvation through the appearance of grace. They want it in a clear, incontestable form—to be able to point at it and say, "thank goodness we went through all that, because look, now here is the meaning, here is that which validates all that came before." In the world of Dark Souls 3 the religion of the masses is the Lothric stuff; meanwhile knowledge of the painted world is much more obscure. Lothric’s religion is obviously regulated and hierarchical, while Gael’s devotion to the painter is highly personal and private: he carries around a scrap of painting; he prostrates to a hidden idol in a small chapel; he considers the painter his family. He is emotionally close to the object of his worship.

But whether it’s Lothric or Ariandel, they are anticipating the divine child to redeem the world. As an archetype, the child ultimately represents surprise. The possibility of being delighted by life in its creative novelty. The child as an archetype appears in our own behavior when we do something without any sort of contrivance or mental interference, doing something in the world which doesn’t seem to have come from who we conceive ourselves to be. This is miraculous. Such an action enchants the world, and there is no explaining it, even if it may weave all kinds of stories around itself, retroactively framing things that have led up to it as portents or promises. (Though not exclusive to him, this trait is well-known in characterizations of Christ, and DS3 is clearly indebted to Christian iconography, so do with that what you will). Regardless of the specific cultural invocation, the divine child is a personification of something that happens within the human spirit. TFW you are renewed by a fresh and spontaneous engagement with life.

The grace of the miraculous often comes to us through play. Play is more of an attitude than an activity; the feeling of play may come to us through making a painting, or chatting with a friend, or moving around in a video game. We can play video games idly, competitively, experimentally, creatively, studiously, whatever, the feeling of “play” can show up regardless. We can sit there playing a certain game from a certain motivation, and feel totally rote and joyless, and question, “Why am I doing this?” Or we might sit there and play the same game with the same motivation, feeling totally lit up by it, its purpose to us obvious and self-validating. We are not even questioning why we are doing it, we are enjoying life.

This is really the ground that the miraculous tends to land on. Grace, meaning, and an immanent love of life are more likely to show up when we are in flow and not exercising our capacity for self-assessment. But like everything in life, we mistake the images and objects around us for the feeling of grace. Any given object might only be the catalyst once; it’s not about the object. This is extremely easy to see in cases of acute nostalgia; adults chase enchantment through collecting Zelda memorabilia or going to Disneyland, in pursuit of what kindled their spirit as a child. It was never really the game or the character that was doing it, it was what they were able to access within themselves.

So anyway Gael has yet to realize this. He thinks the Dark Soul is out there in something else. That it will be yielded as a drop if he just kills the right enemy, or 10,000 enemies, or goes to the right place at the right time. You can see that this is something of a synthesis of all the other Buddhist defilements: there are elements of completionism/greed, violence/hatred, mysticism/delusion. There is even the suggestion of the developer of these games again, in that Gael is a “slave,” forced into participation in the world to assist some creative apotheosis. (Isn’t it funny that his weapon is a worn-down executioner’s sword?—whether the person coding or the person playing, we are all “executing” command after command). The thing that really keeps him on the wheel is something beyond any of the player types and their vices; it is almost some sort of pure, amoral automatism, a churning drive that on one side resembles wanton nihilism, and on another side single-minded piousness. Is one disguised as the other, or has Gael somehow stepped beyond this binary? Yet another dichotomy in Dark Souls that begs to be reconciled, but whose tension creates the opportunity to participate creatively in its expansive mythology. When things are held apart we can move between them.

To really understand Gael, we have to contend with the question of a person’s relationship to their own soul, since that relationship is so plainly suggested by Gael and the painter. (This question, by the way, is much elaborated in Elden Ring, with its repeated foregrounding of the image of the maiden or “consort”). If we were to see Gael and the painter as partitions within one person--whether she is his soul, or his inner life, or his better nature, whatever—then in any case Gael is the side which goes out into the world and experiences it. He is the creative extension into the world as its active participant and realizer. Yet he is clothed as the warrior, the executioner. While the one who is dressed as the artist, the painter, just stays in her room and imagines the world—but this is where the magic of creation is really felt. We involve ourselves in life, or in a game, but we are only really changed and renewed when that exterior experience is “brought home” into the inner life. We do something “in the game,” but the act of “painting,” in renewing the world through our creative interpretation, is a decidedly interior experience.

[glaseadomtn]

im so obsessed with your art all your drawings are beautiful... do you have a pinterest or sum where you have inspo i can follow??

Thank you, I'm touched! I don't think "beautiful" is a word that has ever been used when describing my art, so I am very honored, thank you!

I don't use pinterest or anything like that, so I apologise if this isn't what you're asking of me, but under the cut I've listed some things I enjoy currently and attempt to incorporate into my own stuff, as well as my process of going about it all, if that interests anyone. It's a bit of an infodump, but I feel its the best I can do since I don't have a physical collection of things to share.

The things I post are my outlet of "I love this, have a lot of things to say about this, I'm thinking about it a lot" etc, but with nobody irl to talk to about it, it comes out on drawings (and meme edits) instead lol.

I am first and foremost a furry/creature artist, have been for like forever. I've never drawn people this much in my entire life! Batman stuff has been especially fun since it has decades of extreme popularity there is nearly infinite things discover and get excited about.  likeso, this scarecrow design is from a monopoly board game, found on instagram just from falling down a rabbithole of looking at lame batman merch:

I've always gotten insp from Pokemon cards, When I see art I like on one I sometimes like to try my hand to mimic it. My favorite manga ever is Golden Kamuy, the visual humor and the way movement and expressions are drawn is next level. I'm a big fan of Lego media, especially the games that are made of an existing franchise, The way they retell a story except everything is made silly and not serious at all is definitely is a foundational part of the way I view Batman and other media. More recently, I've discovered and love literally everything about the style of Sam Kieth's comics:

In a similar vein, this one is from a quick color study of paintings by Simon Stålenhag. I adore the way he paints realistic atmosphere and lighting, especially the dark and snowy scenes:

a handful of things I've posted have come from a study-type of pic of a painting or photo I like, that I just threw a character on top of lol. I often use my own photos as well:

my batman "worldbuilding" and characterizations is how I would go about making my own Batman series, which falls more in line with the old comics when everything was tacky and campy and whimsical. I'll always prefer the 60's Batman show or Batman Returns/Batman Forever over the Dark Knight trilogy or Arkham games, and it's impossible for me to even take those dark & gritty versions seriously.

I doodle in my downtime, and when I have a good chunk of art done I post them, which is why y'all keep getting posts of like 20 random pics every week from me lol. I draw fast, and I don't care enough for clean & polished looks as long as the concept gets across. If I spend a lot of time on a pic, its moreso for the fun of using the brush settings and colors than it is my goal of finishing the art. I'll paste in refs and insp to help show what I'm trying to draw, it helps with the overall vibe, so I just search them up as I need them. My favorite thing to do is to paste in a stock image of an item or place instead of trying to draw it, especially if it has a watermark makes it way funnier to me. 

here's something I'm working on at the moment, redesigning Duela Dent:

For the type of character I imagine her being, I find a tv show or movie character that is similar, and see what they wear as a base reference. (A more popular character with many appearances is much easier to work with, since you can pick and choose which bits you like of different versions and mash them together, with not a lot you have to make up yourself.) I also throw in similar characters from other media to help be "like this character!" about it, be it visually or in writing or both. when im messing with character designs, especially their fashion, I'm not too good with colors and patterns and details, so it's more about the shapes or vibe I want to get across. I see what I want in my head but I try to find an actual photo ref to help, like her hair style & color, and the half-skirt-half-shorts she's wearing to emphasize the "2" theme. I imagine her with a rockstar personality to contrast with Harvey being a classy lawyer/mob-boss; giving her rebellious teen attitude is how I'm reimagining her origin of being "the Daughter of [insert villain here]" that she constantly changes, turning it into more of a "fuck you dad! I'll run away get a new dad!" type of thing lol. I still feel really rough at drawing humans, so leaving in my refs and insp on the character pages feels necessary to me.

and I guess that's all I have to say for now! tldr: I don't keep a track of my art insp, because I get inspired by too much of anything and everything! i just draw to entertain myself and express my happiness! and thank you again!

[dimalink]

Mystical Star I -  tent in a snow

Pixel art for today based on videogame Ultima 4 Quest of Avatar for computer system MSX. Unbelievable and advanced role-playing game. As good as Might and Magic, Wizardry. And one more title – Ultima. Huge world, train a character. Mystery, which is covered in the world. Story with fantasy.

But, as things goes, it is, also, a place for a science fiction. And, game for imagination. In such games, imagination of the player, has a good role, it plays a big role, it takes a big place. Sea of adventures. And territory for travel. Dungeons. Castles. Sorcery. Magic. All of these, of course, will be there! Something unbelievable all the time happens in a world, when you run such kind of game! Just like you fall into another world. And it is starting point for explore and character training!

And, this is my drawing based on. Everything starts in a cold winter day. When searcher for adventures walks the forest. It was cold. And, it was a magic and such beautiful snow. Everything was in white. And trees were black.

You walk for a long time, until snow start to close your eyes. And, it appears a tent before the eyes. It was here and not here. Just like when you enter it. You find yourself in space. Amongst the stars. And space lost its coordinates. There was a sorcerer with a ball, and sorcerer points you a way. He said, that your time has come! And mystical star will show you a road.

When you wake up. You start to think, that it was dream. Beautiful and interesting, but only a dream. But, with you – it was a sword with a name Mystical Star. In the sky, it was a shining, something bright and white explodes. And you decide to go there. You knew, that you need to go there! Snow ends. And, even, it is getting warmer.

Your mystical sword makes a shine, when you go in the night. And, mystical star, every, night makes a light in the sky. She is now like a lighthouse for you. Maybe, you are cursed. And, you cannot to go some other way. So, you go through snow plain for several days. To see a place, where shining light was fallen, which you see several days ago.

You have, already, seen, several times, a creatures of the night, which with no fear can to walk during the day. It was wolf mans, werewolf, and taken by force controlled creatures. And, if not your new sword – you will never win the fight with them. But, even this way, every battle goes hard. And, every enemy is unique. Enemy have intelligence. But, from other hand, he is in blood addiction. It makes him to do mistakes. And every mistake you catch.  Sword is like sings in your hands.

Fantasy role playing game picture. As a trilogy of Krynn. Krynn. Death Knights of Krynn. Dark Queen of Krynn. For example. Retro. 80s. There is a game on the map there. And part of the game with pictures and text. Of course, there are labyrinths. And discovery of territory. You need to explore everything. To search items. Upgrade your characters heroes. Read text with the story.

Dima Link is making retro videogames, apps, a little of music, write stories, and some retro more.

WEBSITE: http://www.dimalink.tv-games.ru/home_eng.html ITCHIO: https://dimalink.itch.io/

TUMBLR: https://dimalink.tumblr.com/ BLOGGER: https://dimalinkeng.blogspot.com/ MASTODON: https://mastodon.social/@DimaLink

[unfortunately-obsessed]

Saying that I hate Nolan's Batman in a room full of man just to feel something

But here's a random list of my rating of different Batman that nobody asked because I love giving my opinion

The Dark Knight Trilogy: Solid Batman, hate the Bruce Wayne. Brucie, the public persona, is supposed to be a bimbo that cares for the city, not a rude arrogant prick that sinks the Wayne name. It completely butchered his relationship with Harvey too for... *checks notes* Rachel? Nahhh 2/10, a male fantasy movie but it gets one point for showing his training years and another for some cool one-liners

The Batman (2022) – I love the movie and that's top Batman to me, especially the last scene. Batman is a symbol of hope, compassion. I had the same problem as the Nolan's one for the larger portion of the movie: instead of using the Wayne Inc. to do good, he doesn't care about his parent's heirloom and drowns into being Batman. HOWEVER, it's pretty clear how raw and wounded he still is, and after the whole Riddler deal, I can see him turning this around and doing good as Bruce Wayne too. My fav live action movie but it gets a 8.5/10 on characterization

The Long Halloween, Comic – classic Batman, I like his personality and how he lets Batman and Bruce work together to do better to the city. A inspiration for the 2022 movie too. 9/10

The Long Halloween, Tomorrowverse – butchered the storyline and I shit you not Bruce says "I never thought I would need to do detective work to be Batman". Made him all muscle and no brain. Cool art but it doesn't even get a point for it, couldn't bring myself to watch more than 20 minutes of the part two. I kinda liked how he acts with Selina though. Yet, keeps it at -10/0

The Arkham Games – I watched the Arkham Knight gameplay like it was a movie and then watched scenes from other games on yt. That's the ideal way Batman operates to me. Thing dreams are made of. Also balanced on his public facade. 9/10

Batman The Animated Series, Timmverse – can't ask for better. Always offering rehabilitation to villains? Showing empathy for freeze and ivy and Harley!? and his friendship with Harvey? 10/10

Justice League: Unlimited – The timmverse gets him right and I love to notice how he progressed as a character. Love how they write Bruce's friendship with Clark and true partnership with other Leaguers. Also love his relationship with Diana, wonderbat forever. 10/10

Batman, Tv animation (2004) – The story is tailored to be palatable to kids so they changed some elements. It's fun to watch tho, 7/10

Batman Vs. Superman – guilt-ridden, PTSD older Batman? Pretty solid on the premise and I could see any Batman acting that way with enough groundwork. I just don't like the whole marking criminal and sending them to prison to die. Bruce wouldn't, doesn't matter how grief stricken he is. 8.8/10

Gotham (Tv Series) – Eh. Young chaotic Bruce. The focus of the series is on the villains and I didn't even pay too much attention to him tbh. I love a disaster teenager Bruce tho, 7.6/10

Young Justice – Gets points for bonding with Dick earlier in the series and for later showing him operating with a larger Batfam. Also accurate on the way Batman operates. He would leave the League because he's not about being part of a society or the status that come with it. The League had a purpose, which was facilitating saving people. Than he couldn't save people with it? He left. 9/10

Superhero Girls – exploring him being Kardashian-level celebrity?? Hilarious. But I don't like the other implications the show makes about him as Batman. 3/10

The Killing Joke, animated movie – something about how he acts throws me off. Older Batman but done badly. I think they don't work enough to drive him to murder. Should have left him kill Joker when Jason died. 2/10

Ninja Batman – The writers had LSD to write it. Insane. Hilarious. Didn't like that he was "oooh I don't have tech what will I do? :(" Batman is a survivalist so be for real. 4/10

Year Zero (comic) – hate that buzz cut. He wouldn't. Otherwise solid. Also another inspo to 2022 movie. 6/10

Year One (comic) – classic backstory, can't ask for anything else on personality matter. The fact he hallucinated a bat while he was concussed and thus made himself Batman because he thought it was rad? Peak characterization. 10/10

Harleen (comic) – He's not the focus of the story but I do love when they show how much sheer power the Wayne name carries. He has a steady hand over Gotham, a background influence constant and unwavering. Also that dialogue on the end where he's blaming himself for everything that happened even though it's not his fault? Yeah, it tracks. 9/10

Turning Points (comic) – the way he acts... He's such a theater kid. Also accurate on how Robin happened and I love he doesn't try to fight Gordon but humbly accepts Jim is going to hunt him if something happens to Robin. 9/10

There's a black and white one shot comic that Dan Mora made that I can't rember the name but?? Bruce adopting Jason, Dick and Tim in one go?? Can't go wrong for me. I am also not immune to how Mr. Mora draws Bruce. 100/10

The goal of this year is to watch more timmverse and read more comics with the batkids

[petersqloints]

hello chat welcome to my blog. my name is zero(he/him) and i am a seasoned fandom hopper who has returned to tumblr after 20 years of trials (chronic twitter usage for three years and then like a year and a half of online inactivity). im crazy abt a lot of things and i realized I couldn’t keep relying on instagram reels to fuel it. i had to dig deeper. i had to return to my deep dark roots of tumblr usage during the early quarantine.

ive created a lot of things including but not limited to:

several long deleted sanders sides as vines videos

a part in that one curses hollow knight map

several orphaned dsmp fanfictions

many, many drawings of smallishbeans that i regret deleting

one of the most popular sonadow fics on ao3

about three gillion unfinished google docs ranging from incorrect quotes to decade old warrior cats self insert fics where i made myself a girl to try and convince myself i was cisgender to unfinished/discontinued dnd campaigns to half-baked fics for half a dozen different fandoms.

the reason i am exposing myself as a huge loser is because i need to get out of a year and a half long creative block. i want to create fandom stuff again because it makes me happy but to do that i think i have to pull a persona four and accept the darkest cringiest parts of myself. i would love to meet some new people so that we can freak out together abt various things and create more.

i am crazy big into many, many things. if it wasn’t obvious. but the biggest ones, in no particular order, are:

sonic the hedgehog(actually, mostly shadow the hedgehog. this is my biggest greatest most long lasting interest, it changed my life. i am so insane about all forms of shadow the hedgehog and infinite the jackal from the hit game sonic forces 2017, trust me guys, he has so much potential and so much complexity if you just build it all up yourself, holy shit, my god.)

ace attorney(specifically aa4. i love the original phoenix wright trilogy obviously, and im also a nrmt enjoyer, but there is just something about apollo justice and klavier gavin that itches my brain in the best way.)

just roll with it(apotheosis changed my life. im also obviously crazy insane about riptide, and i love wonderlust + the suckening. ive currently just begun pd s2. queerplatonic fish and chips dont even joke lad)

project sekai(esp n25, vbs, and l/n. they are all polyamorous on some level. my favs are mafuyu, mizuki, honami, ichika, toya, akito, an, kohane, yes i just listed all of vbs, i would die for them, and n25 kaito)

persona 5 (and 4 and 3, but im not done with 4 yet and although i love 3 i think p5 will always be my first love. pegoryu and shuake are canon—and not mutually exclusive!! heh.)

sanders sides(for nostalgia reasons, mostly—but that could change if the season finale ever comes out and it’s actually done well lol. janus and roman should kiss.)

zelda botw(and yes, i think link and revali should kiss, and yes, i am based and correct. i also fuck heavy with hw aoc, link and revali should kiss in that timeline as well. ignore the fact that he has a beak)

but yeah! that’s me. sorry for the yapfest but not really, just wanted to peep through the blinds. maybe i’ll repost some art from twt bc fuck that website!