#just kind of compile and simplify some of the most confusing characters because honestly

[gothamdetected-a]

an idiot’s guide to ra’s al ghul. 

ok so at this point im really gna say fuck dc canon, and go completely off piste and write my own.

dc really don't know how to write this man a backstory and he literally has one of the least developed and simultaneously confusing origins of any batman rogue. so here, lemme fix that.

ra's al ghul is a moniker, a title that is passed down. anyone who leads the league of assassins/shadows, becomes ra's al ghul (roughly translated to the demon's head). this explains how a White Man, henri ducard was able to become ra's al ghul in batman begins. at the passing of the head of the league, the next in line, by order of physical and mental prowess, becomes the next ra's. bruce himself is, at one point, supposed to pick up the mantle - the current ra's considers him his only worthy successor (a la arkham city & some of the comics from the 80s/90s), the man who will replace him and exceed him. however bruce, due to his unwavering morals and refusal to kill in order to bring "justice" ends up spurning the league, and is disowned by ra's in a very effective way - he tries to kill bruce. ra's still holds some sort of belief that bruce will return to him, despite all of this. he uses talia and then damian as a pawn in this game, to draw bruce back to the league and have him become the next demon's head.

so who is "ra's", or at least the goateed, green pant suited, scimitar wielding ninja who is most commonly seen as THE "ra's"? well, dc couldn't really make up their minds, so i'll do my best to patch it together from the 8 different versions, and compile something that agrees with most of it.

ra's was born approximately 600 years ago, to a man known as the Sensei (an asian martial artist) and an unknown mother of arabic descent, somewhere in the middle east. little is known about his early years, other than he was obsessed with the sciences, and became a physician with a wife named Sora. he made many discoveries ahead of time - understanding microscopic pathogens, how to cure diseases such as cholera and typhoid, although his greatest discovery was the Lazarus Pits - a natural phenomenon containing a mysterious green liquid with immense restorative properties. ( this is not to be confused with the fountain of youth at shangri-la, which his father, the Sensei, used). ra's uses the pit on the son of a local sultan who is dying, but when the boy returns, he is not all there. the empathy is gone, and he gets pretty funky about killing people, including ra's wife, sora. it is important to note, at this point, ra's is not called ra's, but dc have never given him a name so idek what to call him. so we don't know his real name, age, or what his chilhood was like. lets keep it that way, we stan an air of mystery.

the death of his wife and the overpowering grief leads to a fixation with revenge - ra's trains furiously to master martial arts and eventually kills the sultan, his son and razes their city to the ground. at this point he becomes "the demon's head" and founds the league, with the aim of eradicating evil from the world, mostly through assassination and genocide. which, you know. isn't great. this is also the period in which ra's begins to use the lazarus pit on himself, in order to prolong his life. he seeks more pits throughout the world, travelling extensively, and finds three more: one in switzerland, one in what will later become gotham, and one on infinity island, making a grand total of four. dc can go fuck themselves there is literally only four, you can't just keep making more when it's convenient. ra's intends to only use the pits until a worthy successor can be found for the league, but two problems occur; one) he starts going a bit nuts from over using the pits, and it does become like an addiction and two) he never finds someone he considers worthy.

so, skip through a bunch of wars he fought in, the league becoming globally established, and the industrial revolution. ra's doesn't like that. bad machines, destroying the earth, coating the skies with pollution and leading to greater inequality. so ra's decides it's time to purge humanity, and leave only the people he deems worthy behind, in a fresh clean world (in a real james bond villain move.). he builds wonder city, beneath gotham and around the gotham lazarus pit, but the city is never used because ra's does something mad stupid and falls in love. so much for eco terrorism, he's now off having babies with a woman named melisande. or one particular baby - talia. due to ra's having been using the pits for centuries before boning this poor woman, talia comes out with slowed aging abilities. ra's eventually murders melisande when she gets antsy about him training their kid to be a master assassin. he does a very similar thing with a russian lady to produce talia's half sister, nyssa. so by now the 20th century is in full swing, ra's has a cute lil murder family and the league has become a smaller part of a huge underground organisation called The Demon, at which ra's sits at the head. he still hasn't found a successor though, and he's getting Old. the lazarus pits are no longer bringing him back 100% - he loses more and more of his sanity with each ressurection. and then. wow. bruce wayne appears. and ra's sees a huge amount of himself in this kid, the loss, the anger. boom, we got ourself a successor.

we all know how that wound up.

so ra's is now Personally Mad at batman, and we get the Contagion storyline. back to his old, eco-terrorism ways, ra's unleashes the clench, a really nasty virus that's definitely worse than your average cold. batman eventually finds and disperses a cure, but gotham is Mad Fucked. damian wayne is born, trained by his mama and gramps, and then abandoned at 10 on bruce's doorstep. there's a brief interlude where bane also goes to train under ra's in the hopes of being the worthy successor and marrying talia instead, but then everyone realises he's one sandwich short of a picnic and ra's kicks him out in his ass once batman beats him in another fight. there's also some funky moments where ra's

• tries to resurrect thomas and martha wayne. it goes about as well as you'd expect.

• pisses off both of his daughters who start to work against him. talia half teams up with supes. wild.

• lets his guard down and most of the lazarus pits are destroyed, leaving only the one beneath gotham.

• tries to body swap with his grandson (i literally hate dc)

• watches batman accidentally kill his old dad the Sensei, by dragging him into a lazarus pit which destroys the nasty man's corrupted soul and heals bruce tf up which is how dc get away with him looking permenantly 30

• has another, estranged child, who becomes the White Ghost

• helps tim find bruce after he "died" but then becomes a lil bitch over it and tries to do a ninja take over of gotham and destroy anything about wayne. he fist fights tim, and dick, and then lo and behold it was all a test or some shit, which is the dc version of "he woke up and it was all a dream".

• makes superhumans in whale wombs which honestly, when i read the issues, i wanted to Die. literally straight up end me.

there's a bunch more stuff but im not a masochist enough to keep going. the point is, he's an old naughty man, kind of bruce's father in law, definitely insane, and dc will probably drag this mans back at some point. but i like to go with the arkham knight ending, where bruce chooses to cut a half-resurrected ra's off from the last of the lazarus pit, and drops his dying body off at the gcpd to an indeterminate fate, while nyssa becomes the new demon's head. its a good ending. makes sense. works well with everything. gives him a solid out. but honestly they won't leave him alone and he'll be back soon i'm sure, being pesky and owning really freaking cool swords.

so yeah, that's a rough and ready guide to ra's al ghul, because dc really can't manage this themselves and i'm made to pick up the slack.

[velvetrouge]

I have recently started learning mandarin by myself since my school doesn’t offer any classes, I was wondering if you have any tips for studying or websites that I could use?

Hi there, sorry I took so long to answer this because this answer took me a really long time to compile 😂 First of all, great to know you are learning Chinese! Actually Mandarin is just a spoken form of Chinese, but I assume you are planning to learn how to read and write Chinese as well :D I’ve received quite a few questions about learning Chinese ever since I started this blog, so I thought I should write a detailed answer about this. 

LONG ANSWER AHEAD

Before you start, do note there are actually two sets of (overlapping) Chinese characters out there, 

1. Traditional Chinese characters (used in Taiwan and Hong Kong)  

2. Simplified Chinese characters (used in Mainland China, Singapore and Malaysia). 

I’m from Singapore so I learned simplified Chinese, I can generally read traditional Chinese as well though I have great difficulty writing them because I’m too used to simplified characters 😂😂 You don’t have to learn both, but it’s good to know the difference since you will probably encounter both types of characters at some point when you are studying Chinese/ consuming Chinese entertainment.

I definitely recommend learning Hanyu pinyin to help with the pronunciation of the words, but do note that pinyin is neither the Chinese alphabet nor meant to be a substitute for Chinese characters. There is no alphabet for Chinese… we do have Chinese radicals (further explained here) which is not really an alphabet but more like components of a character 🤔 For the most part, to learn Chinese characters you have to memorise them. Maybe you can set yourself a goal of memorising a few characters a day to kickstart the process, actually if possible I would recommend getting a Chinese copy book/app like this one: 

Writing the characters over and over is the best way to remember the words imo, also this will help you practise your handwriting! 

A good dictionary is a must, for Chinese-English dictionaries the best one I have tried so far is the app Pleco. I used to have this book of 成语 (Chinese idioms) and 俗语 (Chinese sayings) as well that I had to memorise for school, but I think you can just learn them online (found some here) if you want :D You should probably wait till your Chinese reaches intermediate~advanced level before starting on those though, if not the whole thing might be kind of confusing. 

For websites, I have never tried learning Chinese online before so I don’t have first-hand experience of any of the online Chinese learning sites, but I did find this list of online resources for learning Chinese which is really comprehensive. it covers sites and apps for everything from reading and writing Chinese characters to all types of podcasts. Actually you know what, there are more resources available online than I thought, there are even apps for you to connect to native Chinese speakers (I didn’t even know those existed until I wrote this answer) 👀 That list of sites and apps pretty much covers every aspect of learning Chinese so I don’t have much else to add tbh 😂😂 Just gonna recommend some entertainment options that will hopefully make your learning process more enjoyable! 

(Below are mostly my personal song/ show/ manhua recommendations)

For songs there are really way too many so it’s kind of hard to draw up a list, maybe you can start with the songs of some of the more famous artistes like Jay Chou, A-mei, Eason Chan, Faye Wong, Mayday, Stefani Sun, Jam Hsiao… You can search for Mandopop playlists on Spotify for a start! I’m personally quite fond of 逃跑计划, Lala Hsu and 陈粒’s songs.

Also randomly recommending 夜空中最亮的星 and 平凡之路 because they are my favourite songs (夜空中最亮的星 almost made me cry the first time I heard it, even now after listening to it for so many times it still gives me the same feeling 👵🏻).

For dramas my favourite drama by far is Nirvana in Fire (琅琊榜), which imo is the best drama I’ve ever watched. My sister and I were obsessed with this show and recommended it to all our friends, it was so good!!

(side note I think Hu Ge’s face is especially suited for historical dramas)

Some other dramas I liked were Ode to Joy, The Fierce wife (Taiwanese) and The Legend of Zhen Huan, Nirvana in Fire Season 2 was also just released this year! My friend recommends Tens Miles of Peach Blossoms which she said made her cry a lot, and I think Yang Mi’s latest drama The Negotiator is quite popular too though I haven’t watched it yet. I actually don’t have a lot of dramas to recommend because I don’t really watch them 😂😂 But coming from someone who don’t particularly like watching dramas, Nirvana in Fire is really so freaking good…

Anyway besides songs and dramas, my other recommendations are 1) Web novels and 2) Manhua.

I highly recommend reading web novels (I mostly read on them on qidian), the Chinese web novel community is seriously gigantic and I’ve honestly only explored a very very very tiny fraction of their offerings because there are so many popular web novels out there. Btw even if you can’t read Chinese there are English sites (webnovel l wuxiaworld) where you can read the Chinese web novels translated into English for free, so you can enjoy them regardless of your Chinese abilities :D One well-known novel on both the English and Chinese site is The King’s Avatar (全职高手), which was made into a gorgeous Chinese anime last year

First episode here!

Btw if you download the qidian app they have this audio book function that I thought was pretty handy, you can listen to your favourite novels being read to you ->

(Click 听书 and it will lead to the audio)

(One of my favourite novels 惊悚乐园／Thriller Paradise!)

For manhua I mostly read my manhua on kuaikanmanhua, 腾讯动漫 and occasionally dongmanmanhua. I made a short list of BL recommendations previously here, some other non-BL manhua I’m currently following are:

DOLO命运胶囊 (the art for this series is really beautiful) 

女王的手术刀

哥哥是大笨蛋

看脸时代 (This one is Korean and really popular, it’s translated into English as well under the title Lookism but personally I prefer the Chinese translation) 

A friend of mine recommended Duoluo Dalu (novel here) and Battle Through The Heavens (novel here) which I haven’t read yet, but if I’m not wrong both series are popular 👀   

That’s all I can think of for now! Kind of off topic but from the perspective of an overseas Chinese I think Mainland Chinese entertainment have improved a lot in recent years. When I was young I could only remember a few shows from China like 还珠格格, Journey to the West, and Return of the Condor Heroes, and my own childhood was dominated by Japanese manga and Taiwanese Mandopop/ idol dramas (that’s how I learned to read traditional Chinese lol). But now there is an increasing number of quality productions from China, which is great for someone like me who is fond of Chinese entertainment (sadly Singapore’s Chinese entertainment scene is pretty lacking and Hong Kong and Taiwan’s entertainment industry have been declining, Singapore is currently pretty much dominated by Kpop and K-dramas). Hopefully Chinese entertainment will continue to get better and better in the near future ^^

In any case this list is non-exhaustive, but my answer is getting way too long so I’ll just stop here. I’ll add any future recommendations under the recs tag, hope this helps!