#there's no context for this i just thought of it while playing Gotham Knights

[sourmilkinthefridge]

What Could've Been...

I just love the concept of Dick as a talon so much and this was a great way to try out Clip Studio Paint while I still have the free trial for it

[electromignion]

Young Jeremy Bradshaw fanart! (Bridgewater my beloved)

“Dad? Can you hear me? Are you out there?”

Here’s my latest Bridgewater fanart! I wanted to explore more young!Jeremy Bradshaw; especially as in S2 he mentioned having been tried Wicca when he was younger; so it struck me directly — what if he tried witchcraft overall? And my mind unraveled to that point to now 👌

If you want more explanation about the fanart and my headcanons about Jeremy you can click on read more (because again details are detailing way too much)✌️

So let’s first start with young Jeremy, as he admitted to believe, I wanted to show how he tried to explore all the possibilities and I totally see him as a little bit of a rebellious teen as he is still in denial and as he is aching for the come back of Thomas. That’s why he tries to contact him with the pendulum, he wants to believe.

And I thought how Jeremy would express himself in this situation? That’s why I gave him black nail polish, an earring, and you can’t see it much but he has some black eyeshadow, to me it was his way to express himself.

As a way to express himself too, on the picture framed on the left in the red frame, it’s him as a teen with his mother and his step-dad, as I heard in S1 EP01 that Jeremy’s mother said dad to talk about the guy and Jeremy corrected her, I thought about that grudge must have been lasting for a huge while, so that’s why he put a post it and crossed it as well, because he has always refused to replace Thomas in a way, and he looks quite uncomfy on the picture too.

However, another picture is framed: baby Jeremy with Thomas Bradshaw and this one is fully visible. It’s probably one of his only picture with his dad so he cherished it a lot. (My headcanon is that Jeremy had the film camera and took a picture by accident as he was excited to see the camera, and when they developed it they kept the picture as it was too adorable, and I love Jeremy with his one little tooth 🥺🥹)

He also cherishes the letter his dad has written to him for his fifth birthday, so just before his disappearance. As I don’t know if you will be able to read my handwriting here is my transcript:

“Dear Jeremy, Son, l know I promised to be here today, but *scribbled words which are “you know”* work is work sometimes. I’m sorry. You will probably understand later. You have plenty of birthdays to come, so I promise I’ll make it up to you. Take care of your mom ok? Happy 5th birthday, proud of you, x Dad”

Which makes it even more hurtful because he never got to celebrate another birthday with his son. (Yes I suffer, you suffer with me /lh)

For the context of this fanart, I thought it would be in the year 1995, so Jeremy would be 20 years old and it would match. So I then looked for Gameboy games which were out in North America before 1995 because I really like to be accurate, and I put Batman first because it’s a nod to Misha Collins’ role in Gotham Knights as he plays Harvey Dent! (Btw as an other Misha nod, I did the bed blanket pink for the famous pic of Misha with his pink blankie but that’s really anecdotal but that’s what I enjoy). I really wanted Jeremy to have Pokemon Red/Blue but unfortunately, it was out in Japan in 96’ and then 98’ in NA/EUR and import at the time was so-so, but as he likes myths and folklore he would love to catch pocket monsters for sure. (Maybe a next time??)

I put another paper taped to the wall which is just the Bridgewater triangle with the locations of each angles of it, I like to think that Jeremy was trying to find more information on it, that was his way to have a visual reminder of it all.

When it comes to the X-Files… because his t-shirt is some accurate 90s vintage t-shirt X-Files merch with “the truth is out there” written on it (I like details way too much), I think it is time to explain why TXF is so present in my full Bridgewater fanarts (the Big Blue mug reference to Quagmire 3x22 of txf, or even the I Want To Believe poster which is present usually in Mulder’s office ) not only the show is really important to me, but I really found the vibes of it in Bridgewater, and then it struck me, Jeremy had been Scully coded in the beginning of the S1 to then go to a sort of epiphany realising that things might end up real. But I truly don’t think that it stops here, because to me — we come to the headcanons — Jeremy has watched the X-Files as it aired. It started in 1993, he had 17 years old, he was not feeling good, he wanted to believe, who wanted to believe as well? Fox Mulder.

And it’s easy to draw the parallels: Jeremy has lost his father nobody cares anymore and he is only aching as he had been hoping for him to come back, his father disappeared in strange circonstances in the Bridgewater Triangle. Mulder has lost his little sister, Samantha, whom he was persuaded as a kid to have seen getting abducted by aliens, and everybody has lost hope on finding her, it’s easy to assume that Jeremy saw himself in a way in Mulder. Their seek for the truth is important but even when his belief starts to crumble I think he is still attached to the show and starts to find himself in the character of Scully, scientific and down to earth before anything else because it hurts less, and it’s his trauma response. But I think he ends up with the IWTB poster in his house as an adult as no matter what, he still wants to believe into the hope of finding Thomas again although he doesn’t believe it anymore.

For the witchcraft part he also has a tigers eye stone bracelet because it’s supposed to have strong properties of protection, and the pendulum is in amethyst as it’s supposed to bring soothing energy and good vibes — which might be useful to get contact with Thomas.

Then we come to my favourite fanart “plotwist” which I’m super proud of: the incense behind him as it’s burning is spelling “Jeremy?” which is a supposition that his contact with Thomas was indeed working — the veil hum hum cough cough — however he could not see it so not believe it, whereas ironically, the cone incense in front of him was burning normally, so this “séance” not working might have crumbled his beliefs into the supernatural too which put them into more into the rank of myths instead of real tangible possible things (and we can see his interests into myths and folklore already as the three books he has on his shelves are about it!)

As a ref of young!Jeremy Bradshaw I took refs on pics of Misha in his twenties 😭✌️

I hope you enjoyed my fanart (it took me roughly 13 hours this time) and my little explanation and thank you for reading it all! Lots of love 🫶

[dotthings]

I'M SCREAMING.

I TOLD YOU SO!!!

Context. At a certain point some of us were clowning for Jensen to play Bruce in flashbacks on GK. And then Jensen himself on a cockles panel (NJCon 2022 I believe?) talked about how much he wanted to play Batman on GK, it was just talk haha so adorable Jensen loves Batman, but he was dropping hints like "maybe a friend with an in there could help." And Jensen was already the voice of Batman for animated films, he's also been making himself more and more loud about wanting to play live action Batman.

A bunch of stans (because unfortunately, as you know, spn stans) from the Jensen lane got extremely virtue signaling and high and mighty about shaming anyone who thought it and how this wasn't GOOD ENOUGH for Jensen and we have to get Jensen away from Misha because oh noes the hellers etc etc and honestly people were such a pain about this. And they completely ignored how Jensen talked about it so eagerly on the cockles panel.

Because I guess, ignoring your own fave and what he wants while gatekeeping against THE PEOPLE WHO WERE RIGHT AND WERE ACTUALLY PAYING ATTENTION because you don't like destiel, or you think CW Batman isn't good enough even thought Jensen wants to, is a really great idea.

Anyway, the awesome JenMish bamfery of Jensen (voice for animated Batman) and Misha (cast as Harvey Dent live action) getting to play Bruce!!! and Harvey!!!! was really tantalizing

And it turns out...it was actually something that got discussed!!

"Yes, there was. I don’t know if I’m supposed to reveal this, but we tried to work it out to have Jensen play Batman on the show. It was all kind of teed up, but unfortunately, Jensen was on another show at the time [laughs], and coordinating between two series is challenging. So it didn’t ultimately end up working out, but we tried. Jensen was pretty psyched about the prospect at one point because he does the voice of Batman for the animated movies. It would have been a great tie-in, and I thought it would be super fun too. But unfortunately, that didn’t work out, and I thought it would be super fun too. But unfortunately, that didn’t work out."

[scorpionyx9621]

So I'm not the one who wants to police whether you should like or hate something, but I'm seeing more than a few posts complaining about Jason Todd in the Arkham Knights game. How I don't have a problem with people who don't like Jason's design. It isn't for everyone. However I am seeing more than a few people bashing his voice for being too gravely and not sounding like Jason and I can't stand by and let people do this without knowing the context.

Jason is voiced by Stephen Oyung. Pictured below, he's a very well versed Asian-American actor and voice actor. If you played the Spider-Man PS4 game you might recognize his voice in that Oyung also voiced Mr. Negative.

I'm completely fine if you don't like the character designs. That's fine, but Gotham Knights is so important especially because of the voice actors we have listed thus far. Every single member of the Bat Family with the exception of Bruce is being played by a POC or a mixed-race individual.

Dick is being voiced by Christopher Sean, a mixed Asian American voice actor.

Barbara is being voiced by America Young, a mixed-race Latinx voice actress.

And Tim is being voiced by Sloane Segal. A mixed-Asian actor/voice actor.

For a video game holding as much weight as Gotham Knights, to see the voice cast of the four playable characters all be mixed race or POC is fucking huge. As far as I know this has not happened for a major triple-A video game title. This is monumental and I just can't stand by and let people bash Jason's voice without this context. I know voice actors can change their pitch and their inflections to match a character. I personally thought Oyung was going to go for a much more gravely and deeper take for Jason. Yet I was surprised by how close Oyung was to his actual speaking voice for Jason. Under that context it really upsets me that people are bashing Jason's voice in Gotham Knights.

What I'm trying to get at here is that we shouldn't be attacking these artists or voice actors for their takes on characters. Yes, we have taken outrage at a design and made it loud enough that a studio can hear it and make changes. Look at the Sonic movie for example. Yes we have changed the design for the better but what about the artists and designers who out of the blue have to painstakingly redesign a character and re-animate said character in a tight timeframe. This game has already been pushed back because of the pandemic. With a release date in late October I'm guessing Warner Brother's Montreal is completely finished with the majority of the game's programming and is going through and debugging/testing at this point. I'm sure all the voice lines have been recorded and while it may be easier to do vocal retakes than say change the graphic design of a character, these VA's have already put a tremendous amount of effort into this game.

Let's try to steer away from the hatred of the Voices and the VA's because we truly do have a powerful cast full of POC and mixed-race artists. These people deserve praise for their work and the representation they are bringing to the Voice Acting world and they absolutely should be celebrated as such.

[hood-ex]

Hi! Love your blog and your fic! You seem like a really nice person who's also pretty knowledgeable about dc so I thought maybe you could give me some advice? I've recently gotten into Batman comics and have some ideas for fics I want to try, but I've never been so scared to write for a fandom before. There's just so much canon I haven't gotten into and I really want to get characters right. Its also kind of an intimidating fandom to get into. Do you have any tips that might help me out?

Sure, yeah! I totally understand how you feel btw. I was so nervous to start writing fics in this fandom for the same exact reason. 

One important thing to keep in mind is that your fic doesn’t have to encapsulate every single trait that a character has across all comics. You can pick and choose a few to focus on. 

For example, if I want to write about Damian then I can choose to focus on his brash attitude and his hesitance to partake in something considered fun or childish. I don’t have to include his love of animals, his insane intellect, his tendency to insult/belittle people, his moments of compassion, his desire to be accepted, his insecurity of being rejected/replaced, etc. 

Another way to make Damian sound more like Damian is to reference little things about him from the comics. For example, Damian likes to play a video game called Cheese Viking. Throwing that into a conversation will make the readers feel like you know this character on a deeper level (even if you don’t). 

What you get is something like this:

“Get out of my way, Todd! The time I’ve wasted on talking to you could have been spent doing far more productive things like getting to the next level on Cheese Viking!” 

Also, try and find moments in comics (or individual panels you find) that will give you an example of what a character acts like when they’re happy, sad, mad, stressed, etc. Base your own reactions off of those moments. 

For example, if I want to write a scene of Dick comforting someone, I’ll try and find a scene in a comic where he’s doing that. I can then analyze whether Dick uses touch to comfort someone, if he throws a few encouraging words at them, or if he stops and listens to their troubles. Comics are good for using as a base or outline on how you can make a character react to a situation. 

Now if you don’t have time to read a bunch of comics to look for that kind of info then I’ll share a little trick with you. There are blogs on Tumblr who post the most important, relevant, and impactful scenes from comics. 

My advice to you would be to find one of these blogs that posts a lot of comic panels, type in a character’s name into the search bar of their blog (or look at their archive), and if the blog has a good enough tagging system, tons and tons of panels that have the character you typed in will pop up. 

Browse through them. Pay attention to how the character speaks, how they react to certain situations, and how they interact with other characters. Take little notes on their behavior if you want. 

Another way to go about this is simply by typing random shit into the Tumblr search bar like “Dick Grayson sad” or “Bruce Wayne fight.” Sometimes you’ll get tons of results to browse through. A lot of it will be art or text posts, but there will also be comic panels included in the search. You can also do random comic issue searches to pull up comic panels for you to analyze. I used to just type stuff like “Nightwing 145″ or “Gotham Knights 37.” 

You can also do this with Google images as well as Pinterest. Pinterest has a shit ton of comic panels too. I see them all the time in the Google search results when I’m hunting for a specific comic. Seriously, just pick a comic and start searching for random issue numbers or keywords. Stuff will pop up. Read what comes up, takes notes if you want, and absorb that info into your character building arsenal. That way you don’t have to waste time reading the entire comic, you can just look at the most important bits from the comics and base your characters off of that to get you started. 

You’ll start to notice patterns of the character’s behavior and you may even be able to spot whether something sounds OOC or not. The only bad thing about that method is you may not be able to tell if a character is acting OOC based on a panel that is out of context. In time, the more comics you read, the more you’ll be able to deduce whether something is IC or OOC. 

Now, obviously, if you’re wanting to write about a specific comic event then you should definitely read the comic to get all the details and to understand what the characters are saying to each other in context. 

Anyways, just remember that most people are pretty lenient when it comes to batfam characterization in fics (hence why there are so many fanon takes). Even in canon, the characters aren’t always consistent because they’re written by so many different people who don’t all write them the same way. So you definitely have wiggle room for trial and error when it comes to characterization while you’re still in the process of learning about the characters. Just have fun and experiment! Trust me, it doesn’t have to be perfect at first. And if you’re still hesitant, try and emulate the vibe you get from one of your favorite batfam fics. That will at least give you a place to start. 

I hope that helps you out a little! Let me know if you need any more advice!

[typinggently]

I feel like feral!bruce would like to wear body glitter. Just a slutty outfit that reveals as much of his body as he can without showing off his scars and absolutely covered in body glitter that reflects the lights of the chandelier at a fancy gala (he's not following the dress code, but who cares when hes hot and rich?) OR the neon lights at a shady club in the dangerous part of Gotham. Thoughts.

Anon…your mind… y.y I love this so much…the concept of Feral Bruce in a glittery outfit is truly incredible and I love it so much

I also spent a hoot minute sorting through my thoughts and I found something that’s similar to glitter, but gives more protection for his scars (while still showing skin and being sexy AND being glitter)? And it’s those glittery diamond chain shirts?

You know, like this piece by Ludovic de Saint Sernin (you KNOW I love that specific collection, I used it before for Feral Bruce Fashion simply because I adore the combination of glitter, black and revealing outfits…unparalleled)  -

Put him in proper black suit and voilà!!! Maybe velvet? To really give it that overkill feeling? Or keep it classy with a matte, nicely cut suit to balance out that top? Also by suit I mean trousers and the jacket. Leave the jacket open and you have that gorgeous piece just glittering underneath, showing plenty of skin while not showing too much, you know? He doesn’t have to worry about the scars because they’re sufficiently hidden underneath the glitter AND the pink of his nipples still shines through. That’s fashion. That’s a Gala Outfit right there.

And actually???? Maybe? He goes the extra mile and wears this dress version??? Now of course he still wears trousers, he wouldn’t want to cause a scene. Never. Not him. But it’s more glitter and shows more skin so…

Also I refuse to believe that he wouldn’t be wearing diamond clip earrings. Maybe he wouldn’t pierce his ears because, like tattoos, they could somehow give him away, but clips are a-ok.

And see – he’s wearing a suit. It’s a suit event. He’s following the dress code. And as you said – he’s hot and rich, who’s going to stop him?

But now – he’s at the Gala, dressed to the nines, what does he do? I say he goes to the DJ who’s playing tasteful 60s cocktail music to appeal to the crowd and goes “Hello can you play something a little more fun, s’il vous plait?” – and what’s the DJ going to do? “No, Brucie Wayne, I can’t do that”??? As IF

The point is that Bruce dances. Possibly on the tables. And since he’s the Prince of Gotham, the sugar babies join in at some point and that’s the headline right there – Brucie surrounded by a group of scantily clad women and men who all came on the arm of some rich, corrupt, married raisin

I honestly can’t decide what kind of songs Bruce would chose for Brucie? I feel like he, as himself, would probably rock that exact outfit in that exact context – the stiff-formal crowd, the marble floors, the glittering chandeliers, the champagne – and go absolutely HAM to Prrokofiev’s Dance of the Knights (or maybe Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King). And I don’t mean in a classic Ballet way. Just – absolute feral energy. I feel like watching Bruce - the real Bruce - dancing is like watching a thunderstorm. There’s so much energy there, so much passion, he’s absolutely lost to the world, his body a livewire. A sense of elegance, mixed with a wild strength, flexibility and a foaming, wild mind.

But yes. This isn’t real Bruce, this is Brucie. So I say – honestly, he probably goes up there and goes “Anything from Blackout, oui?” (Brucie sometimes puts on a REALLY fake and bad French accent)

Next thing you know, the marble halls and floor-to-ceiling windows are vibrating with Piece of Me.

(Bruce with his hair falling into his eyes, chest covered in strings of diamonds and sticky with champagne he used to cool off between songs, flushed cheeks, dancing with a selection of three sugar babies at a time on a buffet table that’s creaking dangerously)

-

Dangerous parts of Gotham? We know Bruce has the Matches Alias when he wants to snoop around the seedy parts but like – Wouldn’t it be fun if he just waltzed in as Brucie now and then? It’s not unbelievable, Brucie is the Hot Airhead type, he could decide to go off the beaten tracks for some “real fun”.

And Alright. Alright I have to say it. Colin Farrell as Penguin right. What’s up with that. I know I established the Penguin as some sort of uh? Fastfood fiend? But honestly, he did that drug and chain restaurant spiel in ’03 or so. He can move on and have some Ice Cold Nightclubs. And maybe Bruce wants to investigate but Matches is too sleazy, so Bruce is all “The only possible solution is to dress up in glittery outfits and go check the scene myself”

Since the Club Penguin (I’m? Come on, that’s gotta be the name) it Ice-themed, glitter is the PERFECT outfit. He arrives with glitter in his hair, glitter on his chest, maybe wearing some leather trousers this time, acting high as a kite and carrying one (1) credit card as well as one (1) bottle of Perfume. Upon arriving at the door, he sprays it liberally on his chest, throat, the general area around himself and drops it right on the floor before waltzing in, not even pausing for the bouncer. Hot and Rich. Who’s going to stop him?!

Once inside the club – icy blue walls, neon lights, fog, glittering floors – Bruce obviously has to dance and pretend to get real fucked up on whatever people are giving him. Sea of writhing, glittering bodies.

And see – Brucie could be in real danger here. This is not a friendly-fancy club, this is the Penguin’s lair. I think he escapes the attacks people make on him in hilarious slapstick ways. Someone fixes his drink and Brucie just pours out his 30$ g&t to marvel at how the neon lights glitter in the glass. Someone tries to steal his credit card but ends up with a glittery black card that says “Brucie XO” on it and nothing else. Bruce uses it like a regular card, as in he hands it over and people give him shit because he’s Brucie Wayne.

The Gotham Underground hates Brucie so fucking much. But in like, the “angrily jumping on your hat and then eating it” way. That’s how he’s still alive. (Bruce perfected the game)

(I would like to let you know that I’ve been listening to Slayyter’s Gimme More remix basically nonstop so I guess that’s what the club is playing. You cannot afford to ignore when I walk out of the store / Freaky little whore from the 314 always wanting more – no one said Penguin had proper taste in music. On second thought they probably play it just for Brucie. And I want to know who he’s dancing with in this cool-glittery club with the nice lighting while he’s wearing his cute little fit. >:( )

-

Honestly, I hope you enjoyed this at least a little. I feel like this was very stream of consciousness but it was so much fun to think about. Little episodes of Feral Bruce living his best life. I love him so much.

[davidmann95]

How did you end up feeling about Batman: Last Knight on Earth when all was said and done? What does it imply as the culmination of Snyder and Capullo's solo Batman megastory?

Batman: Last Knight on Earth is weird as hell, and not just in the way a lot of Snyder/Capullo gigs are weird as hell. It’s out of left field on several different levels, and crucial aspects feel frustratingly undercooked, yet on a pure conceptual level it’s hard not to argue it isn’t a perfect conclusion to their vision of Batman and his world. Complaints upfront:

* The cover for #1 is so atmospheric and perfect, and #2 and #3 don’t even try to live up to it.

* Joker’s face turn is absurd even in this heightened context.

* Scarecrow and Bane are a fascinating pair - the ultimate counterparts to Batman in terms of the image he seeks to evoke and him as a man, respectively, and Snyder did no work with either of them in his main run - and this story uses them purely as muscle, when Bane was just the co-lead villain of the entire Tom King Batman epic, and he just made clear on Twitter he’s got a perfect angle on Scarecrow. What a waste.

* Half the finale and its buildup with the Batfamily, Wonder Woman, and a final obstacle of Martian Manhunter of all people feels entirely perfunctory. And then Batman kills the villain without comment? I guess a unique circumstance of sorts with said villain, but still.

* I cannot figure out for the life of me how to read the last few pages as not being about Snyder moving on from Batman to Superman as his new principal character, when he’s made very clear Wonder Woman/JSA are his next big project.

* I suspect part of the reason Morrison and Burnham’s Arkham Asylum 2 didn’t happen was because Snyder and Morrison apparently frequently chat (note: this returns to Snyder/Capullo joints being Morrison covers, as this mixes Final Crisis and a sort of inversion of Return of Bruce Wayne with a couple R.I.P. touches, and as an aside the Speed Force Storm is basically the Chronovore), and maybe Morrison didn’t want to crowd the market on dystopian future Batman stories. Which would be a real friendly move on his part, but also the hell with that, I’d trade this for a years-after-the-fact true ultimate finale to the best longform superhero run of all time in a hummingbird’s heartbeat.

...okay, so how wild is it that Scott Snyder’s take on the final adventure of Batman is as a fanfic alternate take on his own Justice League run? And that his conclusion is that if it were to play out as a Batman story instead, Batman would fail? It exists at such an odd place relative to his other work too, since while it’s the ‘end’ to his take on Batman on the opposite pole from Zero Year that he came up with at the same time, he told an entire other ‘final’ Batman tale in Endgame that’s much closer to how you’d traditionally expect that sort of story to go,* leading to another resurrection in Superheavy. Then Metal with how it clashes his Batman mythology against the DCU in a far different manner than here, and The Batman Who Laughs presenting another take on an evil Dark Knight contemporaneously with this.

The most crucial comparison though is actually I think the first arc of All-Star Batman. I will never, ever forget the experience of reading issue four the literal day after the 2016 election, which ends with Batman expressing faith in the inherent decency of his fellow man, only to gaze at the horizon towards an armed band of frothing maniacs made up of ordinary people driven to murder by simple greed and fear and hate. It’s the same energy that goes into the pivotal scenes here explaining what became of this world, and it’s with this comic that I finally understood Scott Snyder, the friendliest bro in comics, constantly writing horror and tales of heroes truly afraid that they could give into their worst impulses: there is an anger in that guy at what human beings are capable of, and it’s what lends his work a conviction as expressed through his 80s action movie superhero punch-opera sensibilities that marks him as apart and above so many others in his field with similarly populist inclinations.** Matched, of course, by the vibe of Capullo and Glapion and Plascencia’s craggly, rock stadium, neon-splattered hellscapes for their already long-since classic Batman to wander, the Zero Year sensibility as applied to an entire biosphere and giving us an entire world as vicious and out of control as its populace.

Which is why Last Knight turning out to be a tale of the fall of the original Batman makes sense. Throughout Snyder’s work with the character the ultimate threat is always him being forced to admit that he’s wrong, that he’s always been wrong - that he can’t understand Gotham, that he can’t care for anything other than the mission, that he can’t live up to or survive his legend, that he isn’t strong enough to fight the part of himself that would rather give in - and it is always a legitimate one that he struggles with on a personal level. And so it makes sense Snyder finally theorizes a Batman that can give in is one that one day will in the face of the world as it is, just as it makes sense that even in the face of humanity utterly succumbing morally and the greatest of them going down with the ship, Snyder’s Batman persists past the person himself and his failings in the most literal possible sense. Mortality was the other big arc of the teams’ solo Batman work - Court of Owls his realization of his limits in the face of a greater power and history, Death of the Family questioning if he wishes he could turn back the clock, Zero Year showing him when he was young and thought he was invincible, Endgame and Superheavy giving him a mere brush with death and thereby having him reckon with the notions of immortality and a chance at a new life altogether - so of course the end is age and death and what endures beyond. In one final twist on a Morrison notion, Snyder and Capullo’s Batman will never die, and as with Morrison that’s both a tragedy and a triumph; no matter how twisted the world becomes, no matter that a given take on Bruce Wayne can be savaged beyond recognition and finally break, there will always be a new Batman for each new age, adapting as needed but still born of the same pain and carrying the same ideals anew, in his world as in ours, in the hopes that someday, finally, he and his friends might get through to us.

* Plus they open the book with a THIRD ending where Bruce has to live through the dumb meme ‘uuhhhh duhhhh but what if he’s CRAZY and he’s really a patient in ARKHAM, and all the villains are orderlies and Penguins’ just a guy he sees out the window with an umbrella WOAH’ idea of the end of Batman we’ve all seen, and then he DEFEATS it, which rules.

** Not to downplay the role of his abilities as a pure nuts-and-bolts enjoyable storyteller. I listed my complaints above but for as wild as its goes Last Knight feels like Snyder’s most disciplined, controlled work on a panel-by-panel basis in years, and there are moments of poetic narration in issue two especially that I would go so far as to call Moore-esque in the casual, haunting beauty at a shattered world of miracles it evokes.

[gothamloveforever]

May 3, 2019 Great article about how the Gotham cast wants to reprise their roles!

In closing out its final season, Gotham launched viewers to the point in Gotham City's future when Bruce Wayne finally returned to his crime-ridden home turf in full Dark Knight glory. Of course, the episode held its focus on all the other colorful and iconic characters that have populated Gotham throughout its five seasons, granting Jim Gordon, Barbara Kean, Oswald Cobblepot, Ed Nygma and others a fond comic-book-infused farewell. But could these characters return in our future one day?

The #1 hope, of course, is for another network or studio to hurry up and pick up where Gotham left off, but even if it takes time, there are feasible ways to jump back into Gotham's story. It's not likely that every single cast member would be able to pick back up where their characters left off, but CinemaBlend asked a handful of stars, including Cameron Monaghan, if they would be down to return. Let's run through their answers.

Cameron Monaghan - Jeremiah / J / The Joker

Of all the elements that made Gotham such a blazing romp, its greatest weapon was the sporadically utilized Cameron Monaghan, who inspired increasingly Joker-esque pandemonium as both Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska, as well as the finale's Mr. J. Oker. (Not the actual character name, but wouldn't that be a hoot.) Thinking about Gotham returning in the future without Monaghan's sadistic villain – or even just his laugh – is a bummer, so it's a good thing we don't need to do that.

CinemaBlend spoke with Cameron Monaghan for this year's Television Critics Association winter press tour, which took place ahead of the finale's airing, but after the principal photography was shot. The actor was very pumped for fans to get a load of Jeremiah's final turn, and I had to ask if he would be interested in reprising Gotham's version of The Joker in the future. His response:

“Yeah, maybe. I think that it just depends on the context that it's within. I think that this specific version probably wouldn't be used if I was to return to it. It would be in a different capacity. It's like one of those things, because The Joker, to me, is like the most distilled version of an antagonist ever, and he is the counterpoint to whatever he's in a scene against. And he needs to shift depending on the context around him. So if I was to return back with these characters, he would probably be different, and reinvented again, you know? It's one of those things where he has to be completely tailor-made to the tone and the story of whatever it is he's a part of. So I would be willing to go back if the story was good and it made sense, but it would probably be different.”

 The last time we got to see Cameron Monaghan's Joker was in his first face-off against Bruce Wayne's Batman, although it was a severely short-lived one. The scarred-up J took a Batarang through the hand, and then one to the top of the dome, which knocked him clean out, though it definitely didn't kill him.

Considering the finale was viewers's big introduction to the post-Arkham Jeremiah, it would make total sense for his next appearance to head down a different creative route. Assuming the next Gotham project would get to feature more of Batman, that would automatically change the writers' approach to weaving a Joker storyline into it. And I'd love to see it, if someone can just make it happen. Someone?

Ben McKenzie - Commissioner Jim Gordon

If there was a load-bearing character on Gotham, it would definitely be Ben McKenzie's Jim Gordon, as close to a working-class superhero as there is. The fact that the finale even hinted at him trying to quit the GCPD was surprising, given the character's legacy, but the story obviously worked itself out in Gotham City's favor. Even if he had to shave to make it happen.

I also got to talk to Ben McKenzie during TCA, where we talked about him facing fellow former teen hunk Shane West as Bane. McKenzie is a pragmatic actor who loved his time on Gotham, even if he didn't flip out with excitement over Batman's arrival. But would he return to play Jim Gordon again someday? His answer:

 Sure. Possibly. I mean I think that, in the right context, sure. I think this, for what we were doing here, we really bookended it in a way that feels true and honest to the characters that have been fleshed out here. So this feels like a real ending. But if in the future, it were to come back around again in some way, yeah of course, I'd always be open to thinking about and talking about that, and doing it possibly. I mean, I've mainly played three characters in 15 years, you know? Three different shows, and each of them kind of stick with you a little bit, and it's fun to re-explore and think about again, if you haven't thought about them a lot.

 Three different shows that might seemingly have three very different fan demographics, too. Ben McKenzie starred in both the teen drama The O.C. and the non-comic cop drama Southland before hanging his hat in Gotham City, and I've no doubt that fans of both of those shows would love to see them get revived in some form or fashion.

 Regardless of any of that, though, Ben McKenzie sounds like he'd be willing to slick his hair back anew to lead the GCPD against whatever dangerous threats lie over the horizon. Just imagine if the newest recruit on the squad was his Southland character Ben Sherman, and if Joker's newest henchman was The O.C.'s Ryan Atwell.

 Robin Lord Taylor - Oswald Cobblepot / The Penguin

After five seasons of watching Robin Lord Taylor committing some Penguin-lite acts as Oswald Cobblepot, Gotham fans were introduced to the most genuine iteration of The Penguin that TV has seen since Burgess Meredith waddled around for the 60's Batman series. The penultimate episode injured his eye to set up the monocle, and a rough decade in Arkham Asylum led to his weight gain and heightened levels of frustrated anger.

I got to talk to Robin Lord Taylor on the phone just ahead of the finale's airing, and he seemed to still be riding that one-of-a-kind Gotham high, championing the work he got to do alongside Cory Michael Smith as Ed Nygma. When I asked Taylor if he would ever want to get uncomfortable in The Penguin's signature garb again in the future, he was down, but only if his co-stars were making the return with him.

“Absolutely. I totally would. It would have to be the right circumstances. I don't think I could do it...in fact, I know I couldn't do it unless the actors I worked with on Gotham came back as well. It's like, there's no way I could be in a scene with a different Riddler. I couldn't do it. It wouldn't be justice. It would be blasphemous to what we had done before. So again, if the circumstances were right, in a heartbeat I would be there.”

 As great as Oswald and Ed were in Gotham's first 99 episodes, seeing them in pure Penguin 'n' Riddler glory was a gloriously batty punctuation mark on the series' run. (A question mark, of course.) Any follow-up version of Gotham would be severely lacking if Taylor's Oswald and Smith's Ed were absent. However, Robin Lord Taylor wouldn't begrudge another team picking up where the Fox drama left off. In his words:

 “You never know. All I put out there is that whoever takes up the mantle of the Dark Knight or any of the amazing characters that we got to put in Gotham, that they have as beautiful a crew and cast as we have. Because that's really the success of the show. It was built on the backs of many. No one takes full credit for being successful in this show. We all came together in this spectacular moment, and I feel like we just made something really amazing, and I'm just so proud of it.”

 Again, it should be stated that any future Gotham-y project that doesn't have Robin Lord Taylor's Penguin and Cory Michael Smith's Riddler is not the ideal iteration of that project. So other decisions should probably be made. Soon.

 David Mazouz - Bruce Wayne / The Dark Knight

David Mazouz's potential to return to Gotham's universe would a little trickier than what would happen for the others. As viewers witnessed – or didn't witness, as it were – Mazouz's Bruce Wayne was completely absent from the series finale, which wasn't announced ahead of time like Camren Bicondova's absence was. (She was replaced as Selina by Lily Simmons.) That was, of course, due to the actor's young age not exactly matching up with Bruce's for the finale's flash-forward.

As such, I didn't directly ask him about reprising Bruce Wayne for a future Gotham project, I did ask if he'd be down to play Batman on the big screen. His answer did not take long to formulate.

“Oh, absolutely. I think I would need to be a little bit older, a little bit taller.”

"I know there's a new Bruce that's going to be cast soon. I'm sure whoever they cast is going to do an incredible job. All I can say is that it's my philosophy that if you're going to do something, do it well. There's no point in doing something a half-assed. That's kind of always how I've functioned. So I feel because of what I've taken on, I sometimes decline challenges because I say to myself, 'I know I'm not going to be able to do my best on that.' And that's not acceptable to me. If I do something, I'm going to do my best. And I think this job was no exception, and it's pushed me to some limits and it's challenged me in ways that I'm forever grateful for. I feel like this role has changed me in so many ways, and this experience has changed me in so many ways, and all for the better. And I know it sounds so cliche and like, you've heard it a million times, but I'm just so grateful. It really comes down to that.”

 All that said, David Mazouz spoke so highly of his experience on Gotham, especially in the final season, that he would very likely return for more small screen vigilantism should anyone come calling. Now, someone, start calling!

Gotham is over on Fox now, but there's always the hope for more in the future. While waiting for Season 5 to hit streaming, you can watch the first four seasons on Netflix, while Hulu is still hosting the final five episodes of the series.

[ravensroundofrobins]

Since most of y'all Don't seem to Know her.... Let’s DO THIS BRIEF HISTORY OF ROBIN!STEPH BUCKLE TF UP BITCHES

(Note: For the most part, Steph’s time as Robin is included in the War Games TPB, especially because it serves as a catalyst for said event. Highly recommended the read, but mind, like, everything about it) ((also also tumblr only allows 10 pics, so I'm cherry picking my fav panels/most important ones. + offering a bit of meta. take this with a grain of salt and Please read War Games and draw your own conclusions blah blah))

So to start with, a little Context to Steph’s Start as Robin:

Tim’s dad found out about his Robining & made him hang up the cape+mask. As any Concerned and Reasonable parent would. Steph is still operating as Spoiler at the time, despite many attempts by many members of the batfam (but especially Batman) to dissuade her from crime-fighting.

Due to a gross misunderstanding (as these things tend go in comics *sigh*) Steph, who is dating Tim at the time, sees a girl who was interested in him make a move & thinks that Tim is cheating on her. She channels this grief/mourning/anger into making her own homemade Robin costume and convinces Batman to take her under his wing (he sets the conditions that she must follow every order, with a ‘one strike, you’re out’ kind of policy). She undergoes an unspecified training period to get in Proper Shape For Crime Fighting and Batman starts taking her on various patrols and investigations.

During this time, she also teams up with Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) on more than one occasion (one of my fav panels below, just bc its so stylized lmao. its Cute)

During this time, in true Robin Tradition, Steph builds up quite the rapport with Batman, providing a lighter/comedic side and being a general breath of fresh air and foil to the Dark Knight. (just LOOK at this banter & Bargaining for the batmobile!!! a TRUE ROBIN)

There’s a couple cases that I won't get too far into (but one i want to briefly mention involves Zsasz and Steph going almost a bit too far when trying to subdue him. its a very clear parallel to Jason & serves as foreshadowing for how War Games will play out i.e., Steph’s fate) 

Now during this time, there’s an assassin/merc who is killing off teens who were suspected to be Robin (Tim Drake), which Batman catches wind of and the Dynamic Duo moves in to put an End to. (look at this smug lil robin, catching the Bad Guy™ off guard. ADORABLE)

Another thing to note now, is how Eager Robin is to jump onto the case and into the fray. and how carefully she toes the line when following/questioning batman’s orders. this is touched on many times often either with her able to juuuuust reason with the caped crusader enough to Bend his own orders or even to change his mind on occasion.

(a thing i want to note here with this panel and with this particular time in Steph’s career as Robin is that the writer had her referring to Batman as ‘Boss’. whether this was intentional or not, it most closely resembles, to me, Carrie Kelley’s mannerisms as Robin. i.e. another Robin that the writers may have been using as inspo/to parallel. Carrie’s time as Robin is also defined by Batman’s grief from losing Jason, and is given a very similar probationary status that Steph is given during her time as Robin. coincidence? maybe. but i think not.)

While they lose track of the villain initially, Steph’s quick thinking to place trackers on her is what saves the mission. at the Moment at least. Batman makes a decision to bring Robin along when tracking their prey, but orders her to stay behind in the batplane & ‘not touch anything’ unless ordered to do so. which is where we get the Defining Moment:

When Steph, against orders, jumps into the fray. its something to be admired, and very Typical Robin Behavior (bc where would they be if they weren't impulsive and, well, KIDS, amirite?) but unfortunately, her decision costs them the chance of apprehending the villain, and Batman stays true to his word...

and she's Fired (g o d I'm not the biggest fan of damion scott’s art but this look BROKE MY HEART. i can practically HEAR those choked back tears and see that quivering lip like... G O D BRUCE NO. GIVE HER ANOTHER CHANCE. ANYTHING ELSE THAN WHATS GONNA HAPPEN)

here’s where I'm gonna TL;DR War Games for y’all bc.... holy shit its a LOT. and Steph’s involvement really only begins it, and essentially ends it. (literally lmao. she's featured a little throughout but like. its a Crossover Event™ for a reason. everyone gets a little bit of the spotlight, which means a bit of shuffling around ofc) but Anyways

tl;dr - steph takes one of Batman’s contingency plans on her way out of the cave & implements it w/out being aware of a few Key Details. all out War breaks amongst the different gangs of gotham, with Batman & company trying to regain control of the city & maintain order. Black Mask resurfaces, catches and tortures Steph to learn details about the plan and makes his own grab for power (fun fact, for those of you paying attention to the Big Picture: this essentially sets up for his position later on in Under The (Red) Hood when Jason starts wrestling that control away from him) Steph manages to escape, Batman takes her to Dr. Thompkins clinic, and Leslie reveals that her condition is critical. bruce makes it back in time to be by steph’s side for this:

and then she dies ;-;

BUT THIS IS COMICS- so its revealed initially that Leslie withheld treatment to save Steph’s life to Make A Point and try to dissuade Gotham Youth from following Steph’s path. BUT-BUT WAIT THERES MORE BC THIS IS ~*C O M I C S*~ so its ALSO revealed later on that steph DIDNT die. Leslie helped fake her death and blah blah blah, Steph comes back, gets to be spoiler again, then batgirl and the rest as they say is history

anyways. STRAIGHT FROM THE BAT’S MOUTH THANKS. Steph WAS really™ a Robin™ and as much as DC wants to pry that from my gay goblin hands they WONT be able to. and anyways... She Earned It. okay. give this girl the Respect she deserves. 

(now since I'm a Shipping Blog™, ima add some thoughts regarding her parallel to other robins and how Theoretically a relationship with raven might work out)

Again, the biggest parallel that DEFINES War Games and Steph’s time as Robin, is that to Jason Todd. (fun fact/sidenote: they’re both Leos, so like. Another Connection btwn the two lmao) They’re both impulsive and eager to prove themselves, and follow Batman with unwavering faith and loyalty (up to a Certain Breaking Point that is). They’ve got especially cheeky attitude and flair for drama, and hey. Narratively speaking, writers seem to have a penchant for drawing a few connecting lines between them (again, by starting the WG TPB off with Bruce mourning on Jason’s bday & setting a Tone for the overall event. and then again, by having a major character for UtRH be the very same villain that killed our former girl wonder) 

Now with those lines drawn, and with an understanding of how Jason has interacted with Raven in-canon (with mostly cordial interactions and for the most part respectful analysis of each other’s abilities & strengths), & no known connection between Steph & Rae as of yet, we can really only assume a few things:

-like most of the batboys, Raven is very likely to get along with Steph and to respect her abilities given that Steph respects her in turn.

-Steph’s bright, extroverted personality could again work as a good foil/compliment to Raven’s more introverted/muted one.

-theyve got what i like to call the Bad Dad™ connection (with Steph’s being a former Gotham Rogue™, and Raven’s... well.. y'all Know) Steph’s already shown great Morbid Humor regarding this part of her life (shown in her interactions with Cass) and is very willing to bond with others over Sucky Parents

-while stephanie has a canonical Love™ of Waffles, and raven (at least in regards to her Most Popular fanon from the 03 cartoon) has a fanonical love of them as well. Hence, they ARE the Waffle Queens (embrace the ridiculousness, guys. DO IT)

-Since steph is not an Adopted member of Bruce’s family (& again, more often than not they have attempted to dissuade her from vigilantism) and similarly, due to Batmans Dislike of meta-humans/outsiders messing with Affairs in His City, as well as some of his canonical Distrust™ for Raven due to her mysterious background/nature. this could be another minor/potential bonding point between the two

-likely more??? its getting late, and not much else I can think of off the top of my head, but i might add more to this later. 

as a ship StephRae has as much potential as any other, and since there’s not a lot of canon to really go off, fans can really take it.... wherever and i think thats beautiful

[inappropriatefangirlneeds]

Gotham s4ep11 “Queen Takes Knight” Personal Review

“Killing you would have been a kindness” Warning spoilers below

* Okay this episode was so good, it had me running a couple full circles especially on the matter of the FALCONE FAMILY FEUD. I lowkey spoilered myself about who it will / might be that dies and I was getting nostalgic, I did not want Carmine to die, he´s after all a good character. As soon as Carmine had summoned SOFIA FALCONE I went from naaah don´t kill off Carmine (don´t make this another he´s dying anyway thing) to Fucking Hell Sofia Fucking end this Asshole. * Carmine scolding Sofia for sleeping with Jim because of Mario was so insufferable to watch. Can we just retire that trope of fathers having any say in their daughter’s romances?! Also if the fandom can come up with the thought of her just and merely using Jim Mr. former mob boss should be able to construct that theory as well which would have saved us from an insufferable judgmental moment. * Sofia´s line nailed what crap appeared to be happening: “Another day, another man sending me out of Gotham.” “We're both just trying to keep you alive. Tell yourselves that. But what I know is that neither of you believed in me. It could've been so different.” Then she even kissed Jim Gordon before leaving which on the one hand was a very satisfying “FuckYouYouFuckingFuck” to her father but also felt so wrong and awful because it appeared that was the only thing left to do for her to show some agency both against her father controlling her and against Jim getting the upper hand. Ugly moment. But then, I don´t know how they did it, I did not straight up believe it was Sofia responsible for the shooting but I was suspicious. Could it have been her? It´s possible, just alone the way how she delayed the departure .. on the other hand the blooddrop from the rose thorn was not necessary maybe that was just a scene for dramatics not plot relevant .. but then again if she indeed is responsible for Pyg this would make a wonderful parallel: Her getting shot there and her hand getting stabbed at the table..  Great scene. Also now that we know: Take this old man! You raised someone as ruthless and nasty as yourself! Maybe even a tad bit more. 

* SOFIA & OSWALD I feel a bit confirmed about this: The moment when Oswald was talking about their parents and taunting her seemed to be pretty important to me. I really had a feeling of uhoh you fucked up when she reacted to it, I don´t know if I´m interpreting too much into this but I could imagine that Oswald wasn´t so much boasting as gauging her, and he learned something about her from her reaction, something that bothers her, something that might be used against her .. The way SOFIA FALCONE reacted that night told OSWALD COBBLEPOT that she wanted and was struggling for Carmine´s approval, the way she reacted told him that she did not have his approval, which made it a quite good call to contact Carmine behind her back. What a shame that it did not work out.  Also what an irony that Oswald “people that underestimate me die” Cobblepot is right here underestimating the ferocity and resolve of Sofia.   *“And if he would have shown one iota of appreciation for everything I have done for this family, for him, he would be alive.” APPRECIATION: Sofia Falcone never got it from her family while half the city bows before her just because of her name. Oswald Cobblepot got it from his parents while half the city laughs at him and calls him names. * SOFIA FALCONE & JIM GORDON “My father had his moment of truth. This is yours. How many cops died under the Pax Penguina? Not one. It was you who couldn't stomach it. It was you who came to the Falcones for help. There is a direct line from your decision to a dozen police officers who have been brutally murdered.” “You're insane. Why not just kill me?” “Because, Jim, I need you at the head of the GCPD. I need Someone you can control.” “You've been planning this since the day we first met. This isn't about Gotham. This is revenge for me killing Mario.” ”You want to arrest me, arrest me. But I will talk.  And the cops that died, the friend that you betrayed, will all have been for nothing. The GCPD will crumble. Penguin, or someone worse, will take over, and you will lose Gotham forever. Or take on the sin as your own. Keep the GCPD, let them think you're a hero, but live knowing who you are, what you've done. That is my revenge.” Oh *sigh that crap logic again. I´m all for calling Jim out on his issues but this would have so much more impact if that blame did not come from someone actually being at fault. It´s not like Jim forced Sofia to do any of this. I mean if I buy a kitchen knife and someone takes it and murders someone then that’s as much a direct line but I really would not take the blame for that murder. Sofia makes her own decisions.   * HARVEY BULLOCK & JIM GORDON   Harvey would be much more suited than Sofia to call out Jim, although he´s again stepped into shady territory with suggesting Jim to utilize a war.    He is still enabling Jim´s recklessness. Despite having lost faith in their personal connection he is still there to back up Jim thinking he´s on top of things and can just do what he deems best. “Get him to do something you can really bust him for. And then yank his ass off the street once and for all.” “You're saying start a war.” “I'm saying get him to start one. You know he's gonna come for her. I don't give a tinker's damn about Sofia. The way I see it, everything that's happened, down to Don Falcone lying in that box, comes from you deciding months ago to go after Penguin. This is all on you. So finish what you started.” Both Jim and Sofia are saying the same thing in some way. Jim should face what he did and draw the consequences, just not exactly the responsible ones. Harvey says he already got his hands dirty now he should put them to good use to and get rid of everything. Sofia illustrates how Jim´s shortcomings have led to more blood on his hands then he bargained for and threatens that this can become even more, it´s there but he better not let it become more. The last scene with Harvey hurts even more in the context of the Pyg case:  “So everything turned out well. You didn't even need me.. They, uh they believe in you. Don't let 'em down.” HARVEY BULLOCK hands in badge and weapon thinking he is not needed anymore, probably still being eaten up by guilt that Pyg got him tricked to shoot at another officer. That´s a stark contrast to the episode trying to tell us that Jim Gordon is the one to blame for all the deaths cause by the Pyg. * JIM GORDON or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the LAW It´s a comedy, a travesty , it´s glorious. Harvey Bullock is the person to enable Jim to go on with some questionable things. Risk a war. Play gangster against gangster. Actively pit them against each other.  Jim verbally rejects being “used” by the mob  first “I can't allow her to turn the GCPD into her own private army. We've come too far.  This has to be by the book.”  but then goes on to act against the book again. Him preaching “The law is the law” at the GCDP is quite the moment. On a side note: Sofia Falcone seemingly coming up with a more lawful solution to Jim´s issue  (“So you're baiting him into committing a public atrocity.”) while actively withholding information of her own criminal involvement in the situation .. is this even irony anymore?  Despite the rousing speeches in the precinct, in the Jim Gordon department crime and crime fighting are more entangled than ever. * “Nobody has to die. We only want Cobblepot.” Jim Gordon coming for Oswald like Zsasz was coming for Jim Gordon that long ago day was beautiful though * Also on the risk of sounding like a broken record, what about that wealthy Gothamite that Oswald killed in front of witnesses. * “I like to call it Operation Save Bruce Wayne.” Everything is pain and all hurts. BRUCE WAYNE is running away from everything. Parties help him to not think about things. When running is not enough because ALFRED PENNYWORTH comes after him to dump those issues on him (again) he pushes him away, instead of going travelling into misery land with him. Alfred is fired. And while Alfred is absolutely right with this not being a solution at all Bruce has a few points when he states that he is not what Alfred thought he was, what his parents wanted him to be. This was a really whole lot that was expected from him and I can´t really blame Bruce that he wants to cast away that weight. “All you're offering me is pain.” “Well, there is no life without pain. There's no love, there's no joy.” “I don't know about that. I'm having a fair amount of joy.”  “You're bloody miserable is what you are, mate. I can see it.” “Alfred, I know you care about me. But I'm asking you to stop what you're doing. I'm not who you thought I was. I'm not who my parents might've wanted me to be, and I'm okay with that! But I'm not okay with it.” Oh shut up Alfred, I don´t wanna hear that either. Bruce.. pass the booze, will ya. * Edward is not in control. His mirror is talking back again.  * The Grundy moment was awesome:  “Ed angry at Ed?” “That is surprisingly perceptive.” * Are they going to mirror TABITHA GALAVAN and LESLIE THOMPKINS. Leslie told EDWARD NYGMA she is not  looking for a remedy because he is actually fine but she did not tell him so because she is afraid he will change back and she likes the current Edward. Edward regaining memory / mental capacity is nothing she wants and she is treating him with kindness. While Tabitha wants Butch Gilzean to get his memory back, she believes violence is the answer for this. This is remarkably uncreative but well. It seems it worked. (Ugh, I don´t even want Butch back) 

>>> So everything is about Parents, control, trust and identity?   Bruce Wayne breaks loose from Alfred Pennyworth. Sofia Falcone kills her father Carmine. While Sofia knows her identity, which is tied to her family name and embraces it Bruce Wayne rejects the identity that he inherited from his family.  Edward voices the theme of loss of control. Penguin as well as Carmine get taken away all their influence. Jim as well. Jim moreover gets a few moments to decide who he wants to be.  The Sirens bargain has paid off for now, Sofia kept her word..... >>> This episode is a medieval nightmare!  EDIT: Omg it even is in the title .. that´s not just about chess .. The church scene has everything the church scene with Kriemhild wearing Brunhilds belt has. Noble peoples interaction was so much about gazes and gestures and there is so much of this wordless communication in that scene.  They could have even toned the dialogue down and it would have had the same effect. Victor getting up once he is in the line of sight of Sofia Falcone tells everything everyone needs to know. We don´t need Oswald screaming after him when he walks past him instead of returning back to his side. This is a slap in his face in public. This is as a severe gesture as one can make. * Moreover medieval is how Victor kneeled for royalty. “End of the day, he's a Cobblepot. You're a Falcone.”  * Then all those highly symbolic details. Victor putting a bullet to rest with Carmine is such a strong visual and so was the rose scene. While Percival gets an epiphany from the blooddrop in the snow Sofia seems to be mystified. Her delaying the departure was her sticking to her plan the blood on her finger seems to be a diversion from this,  maybe it should have illustrated how she´s hurting herself with hurting her family. Could it say anything that it is her mothers roses that drew the blood?  * Some things felt a bit dream like as well, not as much as Jim´s first visit in the south or Leslie first leaving town but Zsasz turning on Oswald “What's to tell? You blew that kid sky high.” Was an almost nightmareish turn of events * Also just all this grave dialog: “Blood will run, Jim. Mark my words! Blood will run!”  “Killing you would have been a kindness. You've no idea what you've brought to your city. I imagine when you find out the truth, it will destroy you. That's a comfort”  ”The sun never shines here” * Jim take that trench coat and put it back to where you found it and keep it there. Or better burn it. Burn that thing. * Alfred .. that blue vest & those golden sleeve garters .. never take them off again honey. * Harper is awesome! * ”Yay Teamwork” Okay that was good. If only that weren´t just a gimmick slogan and they would have built a good story around the Sirens working together. * Yay for having Barbara at least somehow acknowledging that Carmine hasn’t been nice to her.  * “He will with me” Carmine telling Jim that Oswald loves respects him more was such a burn. I guess Penguin´s daddy kink is a tad bit more severe than his uniform kink ..    * “Well, every cop in Gotham is behind him. I'm guessing he has great leadership skills.” Zsasz showing his soft spot for Gordon again. Also his damn face while doing so!  * I liked VICTOR ZSASZ  better when he just mostly did what he has been told. So when´s he and Sofia gonna break up? The way he kneeled for her I can´t imagine him snatching food from a plate in front of her, but I want him to do stuff like that again.  Also I´m just gonna lean out of the window super far. I know it´s quite impossible the way they shot it but can Zsasz just be still with Oswald & Martin. That would be sweet. * Is Mr. Penn okay ? What did Tabitha do? “Jim, not now”   uh why does it work for him I keep saying that but issues don’t just walk away like that, Victor teach me how to do that!

[gothaming-with-andy-blog]

A King’s Knight [Oswald Cobblepot x Reader] (p. 1)

Request by Anonymus: Hello, there! Are requests open? If so, Could you please write something about the reader being one of Don Falcone’s former henchmen, and Oswald sends her to a mission that is all to test their loyalty and the reader comes out clean? (NSFW or not, as you prefer) Thank you!

I have to say, dear Anon, that this request sparked my imagination. I was thinking on how to write it while re-watching Gotham season 2, and by the time I realized I’d written over 2000 words and wasn’t even near finished. I did wanted to write some smut, to be honest. However, I find it difficult when I don’t have enough context to justify the sex, for me some kind of emotional connection is always necessary. (I’m weird, I know. Sorry abour that). That’s why I divided this into two parts for now (might do some more later, who knows).

I hope you enjoy it, despite the lack of smut.

Title: The King’s knight, p. 1

Warnings: blood and murder (your usual Gotham stuff). Spoilers: takes place between the events of S2 E1. 

Oswald poured another glass of red wine for himself and walked over the chimney. His free hand rested on the marble edge as he stared into the flames. He hadn’t been in control for long but he had a good feeling about the future. Everything seemed to be playing out in his favor, yet there were some rebel underbosses that still refused to acknowledge as what he was: Gotham’s new King, and that was unacceptable. Ogden Barker for instance, he thought he could ignore 250 grand in debt because Falcone was gone.

He was going to realize his mistake soon enough, one way or the other. Oswald had been rather disappointed when Jim refused to take care of Barker for him in exchange for the favor he wanted. For Loeb to be gone so he could have his old job back at the Police Station. He still hoped for Jim Gordon to change his mind, but if not, he was getting ready a plan B: you.

‘I head you wanted to see me, Mr. Penguin’, a woman’s voice dragged him out of his thoughts.

He stepped away from the fire and turned around to face you. He didn’t remember your name. All he knew was that you had came with his new position as head of the mafia in Gotham. You had worked for Don Falcone before him, and the old man had given you to him as a token of peace after what happened.

'I think you are desperate enough to put some order back in this mess, Oswald’, Carmine had said to him before he left Gotham for good. 'But let me give you one last word of advice: You’ll need loyal men if you plan on staying the boss.’

He’d arranged a small meeting at Maroni’s old restaurant, as if to mock the dead bastard. Oswald had been rather confused that he wanted to see him. And suspicious too. He even took Butch and Gabe with him just in case Don Falcone wanted retaliation for what happened at Gotham’s Hospital a few days ago. But to his surprise, Carmine genuinly just wanted to have food and a chat with him.

'I take it that you forgive me for trying to take you down?’, Oswald dared to ask.

Carmine chuckled at his boldness.

'I don’t blame you for being ambitious’, he’d said to him. An amused smile on his wrinkled face. 'We are what we are’

'Indeed’

’[Name] will serve you well. Keep her close’

Of course he didn’t know who Don Falcone was talking of at the moment. It had been Victor the one who introduced him to you. Since you didn’t dress up as one of Zsasz’s companions he’d guessed you weren’t one of them. Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that you was dressed up like a man, you wouldn’t really stand out at all, he thought. Not with you clean-washed face and plain hair. He might as well have taken you for a boy since you were wearing a black suit and tie that didn’t show any curves at all.

'Yes.’, he rested one hands on the back of his chair. 'What was your name again?’.

’[Name], sir’, you replied. Your voice was soft but deep, and Oswald thought it matched you serious face.

’[Name]…’, he let his tongue get used to the sound. It was an good name. It fitted you, he thought. 'So, [Name]… This is something I would rather ask Victor but since he’s taking care of… something else for me, I figured you would do’.

'What do you need, sir?’

'There’s a friend of mine I need you to follow from a distance and report back to me’, he pushed the chair back and sat down. 'The one who came by earlier today’.

He watched carefully as you cocked an eyebrow.

'You want me to follow James Gordon?’, you asked. He chuckled at the your reaction, and laced his fingers together over the table.

'Have you two met?’

'Not really, sir’, you replied. 'I know him only by reputation’.

'I see.’ Oswald raised his palms as to end the explanation there. 'The thing is, I asked dear old Jim to collect a debt from Ogden Barker in exchange for a little favor. I want you to make sure he does the bidding… And if he doesn’t, I trust you to take care of Ogden for me yourself.’

You narrowed your eyes at him. What was he asking you exactly? You need to be sure. You liked Jim, it would be a shame having to kill him as well.

'Should I kill Gordon too?’, you asked in the same tone one would use to ask about the weather. Fortunately, Oswald jumped from his seat immediately at those words.

'What? God no!’, Oswald shook his head. 'I only want you to collect the money from that traitorous punk of Ogden Barker. Leave Jim be. No harm is to be done to Jim Gordon, he and I are friends, is that clear?’

'Yes, sir’.

'Good. You can leave now’

You bowed her head sightly before exiting the room. What was Penguin’s real deal with Gordon?, that was some information you could use. You wondered as you ready for work. You hand gun, and your pocket knife skillfully concealed inside your jacket, and a pair of red leather gloves to finish up with the attire. Being an assasin didn’t mean you couldn’t kill off people with style.

That thought sent you back about a month ago, when you were still working for Don Falcone. He’d asked you to meet him at the docks, something about taking care of some chickens you thought it meant finishing off someone. Turns out he was literally speaking about chickens.

'Hello, young lady’, he greeted you with a chicken on his hands. 'I like your style’

You huffed.

'Me or the chicken?’

He chuckled, and pet the white hen in his hands.

'You know what I’m talking about’.

'What’s with the chicken, sir?’

'It’s an old habit’, he said. 'I like to know what I’m eating’

That’s when the bike appeared. Two men with helmets stopped a few meters away from Carmine and the car. One of them stepped down and pulled out a bazooka.

You acted as quickly as you could, pushing your boss out of the way. The proyectile flew past you and hit the car. The explosion send you back against a wall. You hit your head hard, and the last thing you remembered was the cackle of half a dozen chickens.

When you woke up, it was dark already. Carmine was gone and you were tied up in some warehouse along with the men that survived the blast. After you managed to free yourself, you rushed to find Don Falcone only to heard about what happened. Maroni was dead, Fish was dead, and Carmine had been taken into custody by the GCPD. Panic took over. Don Falcone was like a father to you, and you’d failed to protect him.

The first thing that came to your mind was calling Victor. You were getting ready to break Don Falcone out of wherever they had him, and help him take back Gotham. That’s what you told your friend Zsasz the second he picked up the phone. But to your surprise, he had another story for you.

'Haven’t you heard, [Name]? The boss is retiring’

You frowned.

'What the hell are you talking about?’

'He’s coming to the mansion as we speak. He and Jim Gordon came to some sort of arrangement. I don’t know’, he explained. 'You should be here when the Don arrives. Don’t be late’.

'Fine. I’m on my way’

It was just as Victor had said. Don Falcone was back at his state, and had gathered all his people at the dinning room. After he gave his final instructions, he called you appart to his office. He had another set of instructions for you: to work for the Penguin.

It seemed like a reasonable thing to consider. So naturally, you refused.

'This city needs you, sir. Not him’

'The truth is, [Name], I think it’s time that I retire. I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately, and after today…’, he sighed. 'I don’t want to be part of it any longer’

You were at loss with his words.

'Sir… What about everything you’ve buildt?’

'And what is that, my dear girl? An empire of suffering, death and betrayal? I don’t want that to be my legacy’

'So you’re just going to let this… Penguin take over?’

'Maroni is gone, Fish is gone…’, he shrugged. 'Who else is desperate enough to squabble through ash and debris to pick up the pieces of this empire but him?’

At first, the though sickened you. No one could replace Don Carmine Falcone, no one could ever stand up to his name. Specially not that kingpin wannabe. It left you wondering if there was a secret motive for him to ask such a thing of you: to worl for a man who’d tried to kill the only father figure you ever had.

However, and as usual…, Don Falcone was right all along. Penguin had put order to the anarchy among underbosses in less than a week, and now he sat in his throne as the King of Gotham. A well deserved trone. You hadn’t shared this with anyone out loud, but Oswald Cobblepot had earned your respect and admiration in the course of these past weeks.

You’d made the right call by choosing his side. This man would do Gotham good. You would gladly take care of those who wanted to undermine him as boss. Starting with Ogden Barker.

To your surprise, you didn’t have to. Jim Gordon did almost all the work. He’d shoot Barker twice without hesitation. You where hidden behind a black van when Gordon stormed into the parking lot at Ogden’s property. Four men where comming after him, and Barker himself was one of them. There was no way Gordon could make it out of there alive unless you intervene. You waited for the men to ran past you, and jumped out of your hideout to throw your knife at the slowest of them. The other two stopped to confront you, but Barker kept chasing Gordon.

You took them out easily. They could be big and tough were no match to your fighting skills. Only then, you went after the disgraced detective. That’s when he you saw him shoot the bastard. Once. Twice. In the stomach.

So far he hadn’t seen you behind the pilar and you made sure it stayed like that. When Gordon left, you approached Barker’s body. He was still breathing, but had lost too much blood to even hope for survival. He must have sensed you close because his eyes shot open, and his hand flew to grab your ankle. You reflexes got the best of you. Without thinking it twice you dug your knife into his neck and his hand dropped.

Dead at last.

Gordon had fled while still carrying the gun that shot Ogden. You glanced at the bullet wounds on the body, then at your knife and back the the corpse. Your gloves where already stained with blood you might as well make yourself usefull. As quickly as possible, you removed the bullets from Barker’s body, hid them away in your pocket and left before anyone else could see you.

'Odgen Barker is dead’, you anounced as soon as you stepped into the dinning room. Oswald was finishing up with his dinned when you arrived, Butch sat beside him.

He arched an eyebrow at your words.

'And where’s my money?’

'Gordon retrieved it’, Oswald’s severe mask dropped and his lips curved in pleased smile. This was just what he needed to hear, and he thanked you for this news. Jim had proven to be a true friend after all.

'And did he kill Barker too?’

You winced at the question.

'Well, sort… of’

Penguin frowned.

'What?’

'I finished him off’

He pressed his lips together and let our a small hum before addressing you again. 'Care to elaborate?’

You tried really hard not to roll your eyes. Penguin was your boss now after all.

'He and his men were on the run for Gordon. He was out-numbered. I figured you wouldn’t want a friend of yours to be shot to dead, sir’

'Did he see you?’

'He thinks he was the one who killed Barker. He did shoot him fatally, twice in the stomach. Barker would’ve died anyway’, you explained as your hand went inside your jacket to fish the bullets outs only to present them to the raven-haired man.

You earned suspicious glances from both men.

'The GCPD will not find any bullet’s on Ogden Barker’s body, and those who saw Jim Gordon at the club were also taken care of’.

Oswald blinked several times, trying to process all the information. This just relieved him from the pain of having to bride the police commissioner to protect Jim’s reputatiom and then take care of the mess at Ogden’s. It was perfect. Too perfect.

’I didn’t ask you to do this’, he eyed you wary.

'Shouldn’t have I?’

'I don’t know’, he crossed his arms over his chest. 'Why didn’t you reveal yourself to him?’

Oswald noticed you glanced at Butch through the corner of your eye and then back at him.

'May I speak freely, sir?’

'Yes, you may’

You were a little hesitant to talk with Butch still in the room. But you continued as it was your boss’ command.

'Detective Gordon is not your friend.’, You said, and indignation quickly washed over Oswald’s face. He glared.

'And who are you to make such an statement?’

'I’m merely observant, sir. On the friends matter, you and Jim are not. At least he doesn’t regard you as such, that’s why I didn’t reveal myself when I had the chance.’

He raised ln hand and you took it as a command to stop. So you did.

'Butch. Leave us’, Oswald said. The big man reluctantly stood up and gave you the side eye before leaving the room. When you were alone, Oswald gestured you to occupy Butch’s now empty chair. 'Go on, continue’.

You sat down with your arms over the table. You could feel Penguin’s analitic eyes over your every move. You gathered your courage to look him in the eye as you started speaking.

'You see, sir… Jim Gordon , he is an honest man. He tries too hard to be honest, and unlike the men you’ve dealt with before…’, Oswald’s gaze hardened as he listened to you. 'Don Falcone, Maroni, even Miss Mooney, men like Jim Gordon are the kind of men you need to watch out for because the can’t be bought, you can never predict when they’re going to do something reckless that will tear everything you’ve built apart, dragging you alongside’.

'That’s a fair assesment.’, he brought a hand to his chin, and looked slightly up. 'But I still don’t understand why you had him believe he killed Ogden’.

'Honor.’

Oswald narrowed his eyes at you.

'Honor?’

'You can manipulate and control an honest man easily’, you replied. Those words learned by hard from Don Falcone himself. 'But only if you have something that will threaten his reputation. His honor’.

Oswald studied your face for any sign of deception. He was so used to be lied to that he’d become quite skilled at reading people’s true intentions behind their elaborated masks. Yet, he saw nothing that indicated you were trying to fool him.

His expression softened. Now he was intrigued.

'Why are you doing this? No half truths this time. I really want to know. What is it that you want?’

You leaned back on your chair and a annoyed frown crept to your face. This conversation had went long enough for your own taste.

'Have you always been this suspicious of your men?’

Penguin shrugged with a cynic half smile.

'Old habits die hard’

'Fine’, You raised your palms and took a deep breath. He was your boss after all, he was entitled to a better explanation. 'I want… what’s best for the bussiness’, you replied, looking into his big eyes. 'And right now, you are. This city needs a leader, sir.  Everyone who underestimated you, who took you for a fool, you’ve proven them wrong and rose like a true Don’.

Oswald’s lips parted but no words came out of his mouth. He chocked down a nervous laugh as he looked at your face. You were truly being honest, and he wasn’t expecting that. He cleared his throat and tried to remain formal.

'A Don you say?’

'Yes, sir.’, you placed a hand on top of his, as to support your words and give him a small gesture of your appreciation. 'In all but name…’

'However, Don Cobblepot doesn’t sound right, does it?’

You smiled.

'No. I suppose it doesn’t.’

'I’ll just stick to Penguin for now’, he commented, 'It grew on me.’

He chuckled and brought the back of his hand to his face. His cheeks where burning hot. You had done this to him, and he had let you. It was unnaceptable. Oswald was relieved you were the only ones in the room. Oswald took back his hand the moment he noticed he’d been staring at you for too long. 

You on the other hand, couldn’t advert your eyes from this man. Who would have though that the cruel Penguin, this cold-blooded murderer could in fact make such an adorable face when embarrassed.

'If that is all, sir…’, you said. 'I would like to retire before Gordon arrives’

'Of course, of course.’, he waved his hand to indicate you could. 'You are free to go, [Name]’.

You stood up and gave him a short bow before exiting the room. Oswald never once took his eyes from you as you left. Butch returned soon after and said something Oswald didn’t pay attention to. His mind was elsewhere, with you. Don Falcone was right about him needed loyal men. Every king needed knights, and he bet you would look good on a shinning armor.

.

.

.

{Part 2} {Part 1}

[mandibierly]

31 Genre Show Producers on the Heart of Their Series

Over the last month, executive producers of more than 30 current genre shows have taken part in Yahoo TV’s “Why Genre Shows Matter” survey, either via email or by phone. We’ve learned which genre show was the first to resonate with them, which genre show they believe deserved more Emmy love, which current genre show they think is tackling an issue well, and, if they were a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, what moment, episode, or arc best explains why in honor of the show’s 20th anniversary.

Our final question to them: What is the issue you’re proudest of tackling, or most invested in, on your own show? Read on for their answers.

Related: Yahoo TV’s Complete “Why Genre Shows Matter” Coverage

Brian Minchin (BBC America’s ‘Doctor Who’)

The Doctor sees horrors in the universe and faces them with kindness and understanding. (While reserving the right to blow things up if required). That standpoint goes into everything, and is hugely valuable. I love that children watch a hero do that. (Credit: BBC America)

Source: Yahoo TV

J. Michael Straczynski (Netflix’s ‘Sense 8’)

We designed Sense8 to say that regardless of where we are born, what our ethnic background, gender or sexuality might be, we are more alike than we are different, that what unites us is stronger than what divides us, and that the common coin of our shared humanity trumps the forces that would set us at each others’ throats. At a time when we are being tribalized and factionalized and marginalized as never before, we felt that was an important message to convey, and it’s only become more relevant and vital in the last year or so. (Credit: Netflix)

Source: Yahoo TV

Eric Kripke (NBC’s ‘Timeless’)

I’m really proud of how Timeless shines a light on some of the lesser known stories in history, often involving the heroic contributions of women and minorities. I’m proud of how we’ve established ourselves as a warm, multi-ethnic, inclusive view of history. Because one, it’s the truth, and two, America’s history should be for everyone. (Credit: Sergei Bachlakov/NBC)

Source: Yahoo TV

Albert Kim (Fox’s ‘Sleepy Hollow’)

This season on Sleepy Hollow, Ichabod Crane has gone head-to-head with a villain who believes that America has failed as a social and political experiment and that tyranny is how the country needs to move into the future. Which means Crane has been forced to defend the ideals of the country he helped establish over two centuries ago. It’s a situation that’;s allowed us to explore the question: What makes America America? Through that lens, we’ve looked at the stories of real historical figures like Benjamin Banneker, a Revolutionary War-era African American surveyor and engineer who knew that when Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase, “All men are created equal,” it sadly didn’t apply to everyone. Now, more than ever, seems to be a good time to be bringing up issues like this, even in a fictional context. (Credit: Tina Rowden/Fox)

Source: Yahoo TV

Robert Singer (The CW’s ‘Supernatural’)

I think as the show has matured, we’ve become very conscious of the idea that world is not black and white, and that the shades of gray in this life are not easy to deal with, but it is important to try. Sam and Dean have certainly, over time, found their moral center, and because of this they try very hard not to see the world in just black or white. This season, with The British Men of Letters, who do view the world in black and white, has given our leads moral challenges which for the most part they have been up to handling. When they haven’t been up to the task, the lessons learned from these episodes have been profound. I think the best genre shows try to do this, and while good lessons learned are very valuable, it also makes for better storytelling. (Credit: Dean Buscher/The CW)

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Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis (ABC’s ‘Once Upon a Time’)

There’s a saying on our show that we keep coming back to: “Evil isn’t born, it’s made.” Once Upon a Time is at its core a show about hope and optimism. We like to believe that the world is filled with good and when evil does rear its head it’s because circumstance conspired to create it. And if circumstance can create evil, then those same circumstances can be defeated, and the best of humanity can win out in the end. (Credit: Jack Rowand/ABC)

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Cheo Hodari Coker (Netflix’s ‘Luke Cage’)

I love the fact that we have two black male characters that you’ve never seen before. You’ve never seen a burly 240-lb. black man that can throw stuff that’s also a bookworm, and you’ve never seen a musician that’s a gangster. And the fact that you have a gangster that is really just a frustrated musician is interesting. And what Simone Missick did with Misty Knight or what Alfre [Woodard] did incredibly with Black Mariah, I mean, it’s just next level… All Blaxploitation is, is the opportunity for an African-American cast or lead actor or actress to do the same things that a white action hero gets to do… The reason that Shaft has a dominant theme song is because James Bond has a dominant theme song… I wanted the show to not be embarrassed by the Blaxploitation roots, but embrace it. Then at the same time, open up the camera, so to speak — widen the aperture — to include other genres. I mean, honestly, what Luke Cage; it’s a hip-hop Western. And you have Luke Cage as the sheriff of Harlem. He’s basically Shane. He’s Shane or he’s any number of reluctant heroes as played by Clint Eastwood. (Credit: Netflix) Read our full conversation with Coker.

Source: Yahoo TV

Joe Henderson (Fox’s ‘Lucifer’)

In the second episode of the show, we established that our lead male character is bisexual, which I think is pretty rare on network TV. We worried the studio and network might push against it, but instead, they championed it. And when I mentioned it to Tom (Ellis, Lucifer himself) he just shrugged. “Well of course he is.” When it aired, the only reaction was positive. I’m proud that what we thought might be pushing boundaries/creating controversy was instead welcomed as normal. Because of course it is. (Credit: Jack Rowand/FOX)

Source: Yahoo TV

Jeff Davis (MTV’s ‘Teen Wolf’)

The idea of inclusion on Teen Wolf has always been something for which we strive. We’ve heard from fans that how being gay is treated so nonchalantly in the world of Teen Wolf has been something they’ve loved most about the show. (Credit: MTV)

Source: Yahoo TV

Ken Woodruff (Fox’s ‘Gotham’)

The story I’m proudest of is from this season (Season 3). We were able to take a popular character from the canon of DC Comics, Penguin, and tell a personal, real, heartbreaking love story between him and another male character, Edward Nygma. (Credit: Jeff Neumann/FOX)

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Melissa Rosenberg (Netflix’s ‘Jessica Jones’)

In the comic books, Jessica wasn’t actually raped — she was an imprisoned voyeur to it, and we just wanted to make it a more personal experience and more realistic. We really were just telling the story of this character and never said, “Okay, we’re going to tackle the issue of rape or domestic violence or any issue like that.” We’re just going to tell her story and be responsible about it and be honest with the character. And so when it aired, there were initially all these think pieces on how it addressed rape and domestic violence. And then we were like, “Yes, that’s exactly what we intended to do!” Obviously we were dealing with an issue, but we never approached it that way. The minute you step on a soapbox is the minute people stop listening to you. (Credit: Netflix) Read our full conversation with Rosenberg and The Magicians showrunner Sera Gamble.

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Sera Gamble (Syfy’s ‘The Magicians’)

We felt that sexual assault was really the core of the Magicians story. The reveal that the Big Bad [The Beast] evolved into a monster as a defense mechanism to protect himself because he was being sexually abused as a young boy struck my partner, John McNamara, and me as a really amazing use of fantasy, and it felt psychologically real. It was non-negotiable for us. We really wanted to tell that story. It kind of became the guiding mechanism for the whole show; just the idea that fantasy is used to explore darkness and the human psyche and the various evils that we do to one another and to human beings. When we got to [where] Julia is assaulted by a trickster god, it’s a very graphic rape scene. What was important to us was to be honest and unflinching about it. We didn’t want to find any trapdoors that we could go through that made it less personal for the audience. So for example, we could have made the creature that assaulted her look less human and we chose not to. We wanted him to feel as human and present in the room as possible. Most important for us, when we filmed that scene, was to stay in Julia’s point of view, to make sure we were telling her story, and that she never became the object of the story. She was always the subject of the story. (Photo by: Carole Segal/Syfy) Read our full conversation with Gamble and Jessica Jones showrunner Melisssa Rosenberg.

Source: Yahoo TV

Bruce Miller (Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’)

I’m proudest of the way the show deals with institutionalized sexism and misogyny. The show takes place in an alternative present where women are commodified and strictly oppressed under threat of violence. In a world like this it’s easy to get lost in categories, i.e. victims, collaborators, oppressors, but I’m proud of how our show tries to humanize everyone in Atwood’s Gilead. (Credit: Take Five/Hulu)

Source: Yahoo TV

Michelle Lovretta (Syfy’s ‘Killjoys’)

Consent and agency are important themes in most of my work, and are also just a natural fit when dealing with science fiction, especially as a woman. In Killjoys, a lot of our long arcs are about systems trampling on the rights of individuals… and then we sit back, crack a beer, and have fun watching how our smartass underdogs win out. (Credit: Ian Watson/Syfy/Killjoys II Productions Limited)

Source: Yahoo TV

Ronald D. Moore (Starz’s ‘Outlander’)

I’m proud of the way we depict our heroine as a smart, strong woman who is able to adapt to living in the past without losing her sense of self. She’s not a damsel in distress and she’s often the one to come to the rescue of the man she loves. (Credit: Starz)

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Emily Andras (Syfy’s ‘Wynonna Earp’)

I’m very proud of the female representation on Wynonna Earp — has there ever been a western with more women running around firing guns and kicking ass? — and I like to think we handled the LGBT storyline delicately with grace and good spirit. (Credit: Michelle Faye/Syfy/Wynonna Earp Productions)

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Marco Ramirez (Netflix’s ‘Daredevil’)

From the beginning, Daredevil has been concerned with characters who uncover truth, whether through vigilante activity or journalistic integrity. The Ben Urich story, which then became Karen Page’s story, is something that seems to take on a new and different meaning every year. Season 1, it was about taking down Wilson Fisk. Season 2, it became about uncovering the truth behind the murder of Frank Castle’s family. Maybe it’s The X-Files still in my DNA, but “the truth is out there” is a hell of a dramatic motor in TV. (Credit: Barry Wetcher)

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Terry Matalas (’12 Monkeys’)

12 Monkeys is pretty morally gray, through and through — which gives us great latitude to explore things like blind faith in any kind of doctrine.  We delve into how one can be driven to do terrible things: Fear. Love. Faith. (Credit: Ben Mark Holzberg/Syfy)

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Mark Fergus (Syfy’s ‘The Expanse’)

You’ve got these middle-aged guys who have lived badly, or if they had convictions they lost them, they tripped and fell in life and they’re trying to find a way back to the light… That’s the story we gravitate to because I feel like we have something to say about that. It’s Children of Men, it’s Tony Stark, it’s Rick from Casablanca, it’s The Verdict. [In Season 2’s “Home”] Miller felt like his whole life had been the fabric leading him up to this moment, so the fact that he was a f–kup his whole life actually helped him in the moment where he needed to redeem himself. That final scene with Julie, that was the reason we wanted to make this show. That was the whole heart of it. It’s not only the heart of the book, I think it’s the heart of the whole show. (Credit: Syfy) Read our full conversation with Fergus.

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Bryan Fuller and Michael Green (Starz’s ‘American Gods’)

Fuller: We’re very proud of the coming-to-America stories. We told them because we were very moved by them as reminders of how we all got here. And when we made them, we thought everyone would be moved by them too and were very surprised to find out by the time it airs — especially after November — those immigration stories have become far more political than we would have ever expected. If people are moved by them, so much the better. If people are challenged by them, that’s there too, and not a bad thing at all. (Credit: Starz) Read our full conversation with Fuller and Green.

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Ryan Condal and Carlton Cuse (USA’s ‘Colony’)

Condal: We’re proudest of the human drama in Colony. The genre, the science-fiction, is just a backdrop that applies the correct pressures (i.e., an alien occupation of Los Angeles) to explore the themes in which we are most interested. This season, there are two particular issues that are addressed that really interested us. In episode 2.04 (“Panopticon”), we dramatize the very real and growing technological surveillance state as it applies to the world of Colony and, in particular, the Bowman family. What happens to a society when it lives in constant fear of being watched? Can anyone trust anyone? The answers are dark and approaching the nihilistic, which is why we were so drawn to it. The other issue is the true nature of resistance. When we think of the word “resistance,” in a science-fiction context, it tends to conjure images of the Rebel Alliance in Star Wars and Sarah Connor in The Terminator. But real resistance is ugly. It’s politically motivated, it’s brutally violent, it is uncompromising, and it is often utterly futile. This is a big theme this season, particularly in the second half, and I think the audience will be surprised about what Colony has to say about the issue. (Credit: Isabella Vosmikova/USA Network)

Source: Yahoo TV

David Greenwalt and Jim Kouf (NBC’s ‘Grimm’)

Greenwalt: Grimm attempts to offer an explanation for monstrous behavior and the inexplicable nature of evil. Kouf: The environmental issue in episode 9 of this season, as the environment is an issue that’s important to me, and the senility issue in episode 10 of this season, as it is an issue we all have to deal with. (Credit: Allyson Riggs/NBC)

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David Eick (Freeform’s ‘Beyond’)

Beyond is interested in how a nuclear family holds together despite extraordinary events, and how growing up and becoming an adult is sort of like learning to be a superhero. (Credit: Katie Yu/Freeform)

Source: Yahoo TV

Julie Plec (The CW’s ‘The Originals’)

It’s all about family, for better or for worse, through the good and the bad. It’s about the bonds of blood. And as children of dysfunction and abuse and tyranny, it’s about how these kids grew up to be both the worst parts of that and the best parts of themselves in spite of it all. (Credit: Annette Brown/The CW)

Source: Yahoo TV

Damon Lindelof (HBO’s ‘The Leftovers’)

I feel most proud of the way our show addresses grief… how surprising and upsetting and nonsensical coping mechanisms can be, whether that mechanism is joining a cult or hiring prostitutes to shoot you in the chest. There is no more profoundly complex human emotion than the one associated with losing someone you love and The Leftovers is a constant examination of that idea. (Credit: HBO)

Source: Yahoo TV

Julie Plec (The CW’s ‘The Vampire Diaries’)

I think that we said a lot that this is a show about love and loss. And those are two extremely universal things that everybody on this planet goes through at one point in their lives. They, with luck, fall deeply in love at least once. Unfortunately, over the course of a lifetime, they experience loss more times than anyone could hope. It’s very difficult for people to express themselves emotionally to deal with those emotions. In the phases of managing and moving on from grief, it’s a very complicated journey. A show that tackles issues of loss and grief, like what we do, is just another tool out there in the universe to let you sit and have a good cry, or to see something about your own experience in this fiction. (Photo: Bob Mahoney/The CW) Read our full conversation with Plec.

Source: Yahoo TV

Nick Antosca (Syfy’s ‘Channel Zero’)

Loss and the experience of coping with it, in Channel Zero: Candle Cove. We’re a horror show, and loss is the most universal real world horror. (Credit: Allen Fraser/Syfy)

Source: Yahoo TV

Dana Gould (IFC’s ‘Stan Against Evil’)

Stan Against Evil is largely about moving on after loss. We start Season 1 at the funeral of our lead character’s wife, and by the end of the season, he has only started to come to terms with it. I went through a divorce a couple years ago, and didn’t realize until midway through filming that I had been writing about myself. (Credit: Kim Simms/IFC)

Source: Yahoo TV

Dan Harmon (Adult Swim’s ‘Rick and Morty’)

I am proud that our show addresses what I consider the root of all our issues: it’s better to have felt an unfeeling universe than never to have felt at all. (Credit: Cartoon Network)

Source: Yahoo TV

Drew Goddard (NBC’s ‘The Good Place’)

I believe The Good Place is the first show to explore sexual relations between an anthropomorphized afterlife information delivery system and a gentleman from Jacksonville, but it’s possible St. Elsewhere got there first. (Credit: Vivian Zink/NBC)

Source: Yahoo TV

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’)

We spend a lot of time pondering the complexities of incestuous relations. Talk about a sticky situation! (Credit: HBO)

Source: Yahoo TV

[dougcook]

I wrote words and created sentences to review a game that came out months ago!

               “He will remember that.”

               Well, I goddamn hope so.

               I’ve never played a Telltale game before. I’ve heard they’re great. A lot of people talk about THE WALKING DEAD (Seasons 1 and 2), but I passed because I don’t much care for THE WALKING DEAD. It took me too long to realize GAME OF THRONES was a Telltale game and not a cheap tie-in, and by the time I did I learned the big ending and wasn’t particularly interested anymore. I’ve never played BORDERLANDS so TALES FROM THE BORDERLANDS was never really considered. I’m always intrigued by games that have a shifting plot based off of your choices – HEAVY RAIN got a shot years ago because of this, I fell in love with MASS EFFECT partially due to how skillfully it builds on your choices over three games [1], and I randomly took up LIFE IS STRANGE to see how they did it, even though it was an unknown to me.

               But I know Batman. And in the wake of an uncertain future for Batman video games following Rocksteady bowing out after ARKHAM KNIGHT, I was eager to try BATMAN: THE TELLTALE SERIES.

               Alright, so I’m not such a big gamer that I can talk about gameplay for long, and it’s not a huge factor for me. I mean, I need the gameplay to work and be fun, but beyond that there’s not a huge difference. And while I think there’s a lot BATMAN: THE TELLTALE SERIES has going for it that the Rocksteady games don’t, the gameplay is nowhere near as fun or engaging. The QuickTime event nature of its action makes them tedious to me, and anytime I had to move Bruce or Batman around is was mostly frustrating. And I despise the game forcing me to highlight circles when investigating things with the right joystick, it feels so damn awkward, like being asked to write with my non-dominant hand.

               Thankfully, the game’s real interest to me was its story, and how it developed behind my choices. And this is clearly Telltale’s bread and butter. There’s a lot of spoilery stuff to unpack here, so probably stop reading if you haven’t played and want to remain spoiler free. Or don’t. I don’t care, do what you want.

               So the game’s real strength is its use of Batman lore against the player. And it’s undoing as well. It starts off well enough, by introducing Oswald Cobblepot as a handsome, thin young man around Bruce’s age, and an international criminal. It takes a canon idea (the Cobblepots and Wayne’s as rival families, until the Cobblepots crumbled, leaving Oswald bitter), and takes it in a fresh direction of establishing Wayne’s equal and inversion in all ways. It’s fun!

               This even applies to the big thing I presume people being pissed about: Bruce learns that Thomas and Martha Wayne were in league with Carmine Falcone and corrupt Mayor Hill, and that specifically Thomas is the brutal evil mastermind, committing enemies to Arkham Asylum for petty reasons, such as Esther Cobblepot simply to gain her land for the construction of Wayne Tower. Guys what a great idea! By casting the shadow on the memory of Bruce’s parents, it forces the idea of Batman to be analyzed: why does Bruce do this then, if his memory of his parent’s morality was a lie? (This gets compounded when it comes out that Thomas and Martha’s deaths were a hit ordered by Hill, and not a random mugging). Where does Bruce’s moral code come from, and does it remain afterwards? This is, of course, not really a chance for Bruce Wayne to grapple with these thoughts, but a chance for us, the player, as we dictate what kind of a man Bruce/Batman is.

               This takes me back to a memory of a coworker and I discussing THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. I really love the book, I do, but I’m not blind to the unfortunate fascistic implications of the book’s portrayal of Batman. He has power and takes more because only he can be trusted with, etc etc. My coworker didn’t see this as troubling – he’s Batman, he is the only person that can be trusted with power. He couldn’t see that, while the fictional character as written by a person is pure and always makes the right choice, that’s not a lesson we as people can take and use in our lives. Superheroes work best as Aesops, and too much Batman fiction gives into the power trip of the character. It comes from the base root of everything, this intrinsic idea: the trauma instilled Bruce with a hardline moral code that makes him incorruptible. BATMAN: THE TELLTALE SERIES forces us to reconcile how that moral code can remain intact when the cause is shown to be even more impure. I find it interesting so many players make choices as Batman that are more merciful when faced with this.

               It’s a shame the things we don’t control are borderline too much. Like the Rocksteady games, it’s a pretty tough sell that Batman doesn’t accidentally kill anyone with his roughness. Batarangs enter eyes; heads slam against walls. I want to applaud the game’s desire to show violence as brutal, I just don’t know if I have it in me to go through anymore crime scenes where people’s eyes are gouged out.

               Oh yeah, and the game seems to have an obsession with eyes. Batman gives Catwoman a black left eye after punching her; the lens on the goggle on that same eye is broken in the next episode, along with Batman’s left eye. Alfred’s glasses are found with the left lens broken, and he can possibly lose that eye by the end of the game [2]. Penguin at one point dons a…um, thingy that looks like a monocle, leaving his left eye open. Falcone is shot (oh yeah, he gets offed so much earlier than one would expect) with a shot to the left eye. So does Thomas Wayne when we finally get the required Wayne’s death scene. And of course, there’s the Harvey Dent scarring, a major part leaving his left eye uncovered, ala THE DARK KNIGHT [3]. The game’s central focus seems to be on secrets; everyone’s got ‘em, and nobody’s what they appear. Except Gordon. Fucker’s a rock in Batman fiction.

               The first three episodes of the game move at a breakneck pace, with things getting wilder until the third episode’s climax, which reveals you were being played the whole time by…Vikki Vale? Um, cool? It’s not that it breaks canon (I’ve shown a fondness for that so far), it’s not that it’s left field (it’s foreshadowed very well in retrospect), but…like, how the fuck does somebody become Gotham’s Lois Lane while secretly planning…huh, not super sure what her end goal was besides screwing with Bruce Wayne. The fourth and fifth episodes continue to fly by, with fun cameos [4], explosive moments, and some heartfelt scenes. But ultimately, the climax falls short due to Lady Arkham/Vikki Vale just…not being interesting. It works, story and theme wise, to fight her as Bruce Wayne, but it’s so muddled what motivates her and what she really wants. It’ so unclear she comes across more like throwing a tantrum. And to have an interesting version of the Penguin as her number two, and even a Two-Face who’s betrayal stings so much due to a strongly developed friendship with Bruce both playing second fiddle to Lady Arkham, well, it’s disappointing.

               The game starts strong, and ends with a bit of a dud. But its highs, man they’re really high. A quick-hit of amazing stuff in this games: Bruce throwing down the Batman cowl and yelling at Alfred, accusing him of lying about his parents; Bruce and Selina Kyle fight off Penguin’s goons in a bar to, well, jaunty bar music; Bruce pulling off the “I’m about to be caught as the other man in a love triangle so I’ll tip-toe away carrying my clothes to hide” move while carrying the friggin’ batsuit; Batman and Two-Face have a showdown in Wayne Manor; Bruce reassuring a despondent Alfred he’s not to blame for the game’s events.

               BATMAN: THE TELLTALE SERIES can delight and make you weep, but only when the villains aren’t around. Rating: 14 out of 17 Stolen Waynetech Grapplers

[1] – There’s a handful of series in fiction that are so tightly wound together that I never engage with a single installment out of context – I begin the series at its start and I go until it ends. HARRY POTTER, THE LORD OF THE RINGS films, and MASS EFFECT are the three examples I can name without hesitation. I’ve played through the three MASS EFFECT games straight three times. [2] – I confess, this didn’t happen in my play through, I simply read about it after. [3] – I consider it a true delight that I could’ve avoided Harvey getting scarred, but that’s another “armed with canon” moment for you. I assumed it was gonna happen, thus I was complicit. [4] – Let’s talk Joker down here briefly. I liked him, mostly, interpreted as like, that awkward, nerdy guy you knew in college with the weird sense of humor. His knowledge of everything Lady Arkham comes across as 80% “get out of jail free” card, but it does kinda fit. He’s…aight.

[aion-rsa]

Batman #21 Proudly (and Effectively) Displays its Watchmen Influences

SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for “Batman” #21, on sale now.

Tom King and Jason Fabok’s “Batman” #21 marks the beginning of the Dark Knight’s anticipated crossover with the Flash, first teased in “DC Universe: Rebirth,” that will unveil many of the mysteries of the current DCU — including (possibly) the mastermind behind the New 52 universe, which excised five years from our heroes’ lives. “The Button, Part One” leans hard into the “Watchmen” themes that have permeated multiple titles since Rebirth, drawing heavy inspiration from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic story.

RELATED: Watchmen’s Comedian Button Is Crucial for [SPOILER]’s Return In Batman

Last year’s “DC Universe: Rebirth” one-shot by Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Sciver, Ivan Reis and Gary Frank, which re-introduced former Flash Wally West into the current continuity, immediately began the unraveling of some elements of the New 52 reality. The story strongly implied that Dr. Manhattan, the clockwork demigod of “Watchmen,” had altered the bonds of the DCU’s reality for some unknown purpose, while another character called Mr. Oz, whom some have speculated is Moore and Gibbons’ antagonist Ozymandias, has since been seen operating behind the scenes, working toward some obscure stratagem, faking the death of Tim Drake (aka Red Robin) to take him off the board.

“The Button” represents the overdue team-up between the two heroes most invested in this universal struggle, and those most likely to unearth its mysteries. In the “Rebirth” special, Batman discovered, embedded in the walls of the Batcave, the iconic, blood-stained smiley button Rorschach recovered after the Comedian’s murder. Wally West’s return showed current Flash Barry Allen that core pieces of his life had been ripped away, and illustrated how Wally’s role in changing reality in “Flashpoint” weighs heavily on his shoulders.

Now, Batman is finally getting around to investigating that smiley button. And King and Fabok are showing off their “Watchmen” chops, enhancing their story in a way that holds all manner of Easter eggs for fans immersed in Moore and Gibbons’ book, but is simultaneously entirely accessible for those who haven’t read it.

On the Grid

“Watchmen” was noted, among other things, for its strict employment of the nine-panel grid, a device artist Dave Gibbons used masterfully for the story’s rhythmic pacing. Tom King previously wrote for the grid in “Omega Men,” illustrated to perfection by Barnaby Bagenda. He does so once again in “Batman” #21, which adheres almost entirely to the grid, though it does break for a single page as Batman’s time runs out in his fight against the Reverse Flash (more on this in a bit).

The device isn’t necessarily apparent in the first few pages — pages 1 and 2 are each three panels, three rows with a single panel each, while page 3 is a splash. Further, the first two don’t immediately call “Watchmen” to mind, focusing as they do on a scene at Arkham Asylum, where the semi-amnesiac Saturn Girl watches a hockey game she knows will end in tragedy. (There is a quick nod to Moore and Gibbons’ work in the background, though, in the form of a smiley face-emblazoned poster declaring “Arkhman is for Healing.”)

But from page 4 on, which divides into a full nine panels, it’s clear that what’s preceded has also adhered to the grid, combining the left, center and right panels on each tier for pages 1-2, and all of the panels for the page 3 splash, much as Gibbons modified the grid in “Watchmen” to create specific pacing effects. Fabok and King use less variety here than did Gibbons and Moore — “Watchmen” layouts would switch up the selection of combined panels, whereas this issue trades primarily in full-nines, horizontal threes, and splashes. Whether this is by design and will play into the story’s upcoming chapters remains to be seen.

Iconography

The bloodied smiley button, perhaps the most recognized emblem of “Watchmen,” hardly needs its significance explained. But King and Fabok make many subtle nods to the imagery of Moore and Gibbons’ dystopia, beginning right on page one.

Varying perspective, such as an extreme close-up of an object followed by a view of the same object from further back, was a recurring feature of “Watchmen” from its opening pages, where the view pulled directly up from a smiley button in a puddle of blood all the way up to the to the top floors of a high-rise. In “Batman” #21, we begin on a close up of center ice at a hockey game, viewed through a TV screen. In panel 2, when we pull back, a player’s stick has landed, evoking another bit of “Watchmen” iconography — the clock face. If that’s the minute hand, it’s pointed to around ten minutes to the hour. Not a lot of time, and deliberately similar as well, in fact, to the orientation of the blood spatter on the button.

Shortly after, in a scene Bat-fans have seen any number of times before, the Dark Knight stands before a massive wall of monitors in the Batcave. But in the context of such a “Watchmen”-heavy issue, the image evokes Ozymandias observing the world from his own headquarters. In this case, however, every screen is filled with the smiley face, save for four central monitors, one of which is tuned the hockey game.

The smileys overwhelm the image, giving an immediate impression that Batman is simply obsessed with this mystery, but with a moment’s thought this becomes a very strange scene. One of the smiley monitors displays a double helix overlay, suggesting Bruce is running tests on the button’s blood splatter, perhaps conveying that each monitor is devoted to a different experiment or set of data. But with only four remaining screens to keep an eye on Gotham — one shows firefighters at work, another appears to be a news program, a third looks like a bird’s-eye view of the city — why is one devoted to the hockey game? Is this what the Batman’s tests on the button are telling him is important, was he aware of Saturn Girl’s breakdown at Arkham, or is the Dark Knight simply a fan of the sport?

After rotating the button several times over his hand, all while he takes in the game, Batman tosses the button aside, causing it to come into contact with the Psycho Pirate’s mask. The Pirate, of course, was a major figure from “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” DC’s first major universe-altering event; so important that when the dust settled and a new universe was born, Psycho Pirate was the only person to remember the original continuity. Here, a spark passes between the mask and the button, and Batman sees a brief vision of the “Flashpoint” Batman, his father Thomas Wayne.

Batman phones up the Flash to help with this new mystery, and Barry Allen promises to be at the cave… in one minute.

“I saw God”

In that minute, though, the revitalized Reverse Flash attacks, taking revenge for his own death in “Flashpoint” at the hands of Thomas Wayne upon his son, this reality’s Batman. Bats actually holds his own pretty well against against a villain who can move at the speed of thought, taking each punch and even landing a solid hit by momentarily pinning Thawne’s foot to the floor with a Batarang. As the seconds tick down — another motif seen throughout “Watchmen” — Batman knows all he has to do is run out the clock until help arrives.

But the Flash is late.

This is the scene that breaks the grid; the clock runs out and the anticipated event fails to materialize. On the three-panel page, two tall panels split what would be the grid’s center panel, and Reverse Flash lands his knock-out punch in a full-width panel that is slightly taller than the grid’s third tier.

Thawne picks up the badge, which instantly transports him… somewhere; a moment later, he’s back, much as Dr. Manhattan would disappear and immediately reappear throughout Moore and Gibbons’ epic. But when the Reverse Flash returns — in a burst of blue light — his body is burnt and ruined, similar to how Barry’s was when he ran to save the universe in “Crisis.” Thawne’s final words before his seeming death are, “I saw God.”

The World’s Greatest Detective, The Fastest Man Alive

DC has made no secret of the fact that the “Watchmen” characters are central to the “Rebirth” mystery. Now that Batman and the Flash are attacking the problem head on, it shouldn’t be surprising, then, that that the influence of “Watchmen” grows ever stronger. But what’s also notable is how King and Fabok aren’t just using “Watchmen’s” characters and objects like the button, but also studying the storytelling elements that landed Moore and Gibbons’ book not only in the pantheon of comics but also earned it a spot on many literary “best of” lists. The result is not at all academic; they’ve enhanced their own story by using effective techniques, devices with a particular pedigree that enrich the sense of weight and import that the “Watchmen” characters’ arrival portends.

Most importantly, if you don’t know any of this, if you couldn’t care less about the science of comics storytelling. Even if you’ve never read “Watchmen,” you’ve still got a rock-solid story about the Flash and Batman teaming up to solve a mystery and stop a powerful villain. It’s a damn fine superhero action adventure, and really, isn’t that what matters most?

The post Batman #21 Proudly (and Effectively) Displays its Watchmen Influences appeared first on CBR.

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[davidmann95]

I’ve talked about the Superman of the DCEU plenty in terms both positive and (largely) negative over the last...year? Holy god, I started this Tumblr just over a year ago. Anyway, there’s one element of Man of Steel I’ve never seen touched on in quite the way I thought of it, and for a pretty obvious reason: the filmmakers went a different way with it than I thought they would, one that took it off the table. And to be honest, I totally get it. What was done made sense within the context of the story they were telling, and whether I liked it or not, that’s fair play in and of itself.

But I really thought as I was watching the movie opening night that the Genesis Chamber was going to become something much more significant in the long term.

Now, I’m not a fan of the whole idea of Clark being genetically unusual even before leaving Krypton that this hinged on, in either this movie or the Post-Crisis stories that originated the idea - even the master Elliot S! Maggin’s occasional mention of him as being genetically near-perfect as a result of his parentage doesn’t suit me quite right. While he’d likely if by no means certainly be a pretty bright kid given his heritage, he’s going to be physically magnificent anyway once he arrives on Earth; what makes him different are the specifics of his upbringing. Adding additional qualifiers on top of the powers, whether to reinforce his status as a champion with Maggin, provide a continuity-wank justification as to why he alone escaped Krypton in the 80s and 90s, or simultaneously position him as a relative underdog and a virtual messiah (luckily, not being bred for perfection didn’t stop him from turning out to be Henry Cavill after working out for months on end) as in the movie feels to me like it misses part of the point. But the way this seemed to be setting things up implied a much more promising tweaking of the concept.

It’s an idea that in hindsight was clearly never going to happen; it would deform the shape of his story and the universe around it in a way that wouldn’t have fit in the scope of a DC movie universe surely intended to run on for decades. But as of 2013 - as I recall it and was certainly the case for me - the general consensus on the atmosphere surrounding Man of Steel just prior to its release was less “this is the movie that’s going to set up the potential next MCU” nearly so much as “this is the Dark Knight Trilogy headmen and Zack Snyder trying to do an equivalent of that for Superman”. And given that those movies shockingly ended up so self-contained that they had less than a year before actually given a definitive end to their version of Batman, the discussion of Superman’s intended purpose on Earth seemed the laying of long-term seeds.

And because of that, my immediate thought in the theater when Jor-El explained this chamber was the last chance of Krypton’s survival was “Oh, okay, I get it.

“This is Kandor.”

That wasn’t an unreasonable thought on my part, right? The scout ship was by all appearances the movie version of the Fortress until that ended up wrecked too, so that there’s a whole chunk of it sealed off in glass - a bottle, if you will - containing the de facto last survivors of Krypton in it that Superman hoped to one day regrow/revive seemed to be pointing in a pretty familiar direction. It was exactly the kind of ‘realistic modern update’ of the concept I’d have expected to see in a movie like this, and a nice little background element to have around. The reason it leapt out at me, however, was that it seemed an obvious way to provide this version of Superman with a logical endpoint.

Superman and Batman go on forever; that’s their deal. Batman’s not going to stop until ALL OF CRIME is wiped out forever, and Superman’s not going to stop until EVERYONE is fine forever. That’s a model that fits the comics, and thus far these larger cinematic universes. But Nolan’s Batman trilogy wasn’t intended to last forever, and neither was its Batman, so its version of Batman was tweaked in certain ways I’ve mentioned before to give him a closed narrative arc: he seeks specifically to break the back of organized crime in Gotham rather than destroy it all everywhere, succeeds through underhanded tactics but finds no satisfaction, returns to save the city one more time, and ensures a truly lasting peace for both his community and himself. And with the idea of this spinning off into Aquaman and Gotham City Sirens movies not at the forefront, it didn’t seem implausible that the same people handed the other biggest superhero would take a similar approach to him. And Kandor looked for an hour or thereabouts to be the key to that.

It gives Superman, after all, a very specifically defined purpose capable of being completed rather than a Never-Ending Battle: bring humanity to a point where he can safely revive and shepherd a new generation of Kryptonians as citizens of Earth, making it in the long term a world of Supermen and Superwomen. It distills his mission (”Do good to others, and every man can be a Superman”) down to something simple and literal, something that could be tracked and played with over the course of multiple movies, informing his interactions with the world at large until he presumably succeeds in the end. It’s not something I think would work in the comics, too much of a ticking clock that could never go off, but for a set of movies that would theoretically not last more than 3-4 entries? It provides him a sense of progression and ultimately closure. What’s more, it would frame his genetic status in a more fruitful light, at least for me: rather than positioning him as the chosen one destined to defeat Zod and company, it marks him as different from the upcoming generation of Kryptonians unless he can successfully provide them with free will, even as he’s far from an earthman either, isolating him from both even as it positions him as a bridge between them. His unique status and bearing of the codex becomes not a theoretical hindrance, or a privilege marking him as a step beyond his peers, but a grave and magnificent responsibility to discharge, a birthright to be handed down.

None of this played out. The storytellers decided to show the possibility of Krypton being revived in any way as a poisoned chalice, the necessary components for playing this out were removed even if later creators wanted to do something different, and the whole affair’s since blossomed into a full-fledged cinematic universe that wouldn’t permit that kind of closure and upheaval. Regardless of my feelings on how they handled it, it was internally thematically consistent and led to a more traditional setup for the character and the world at large. But in another life and a different surrounding context, I still think it could’ve been interesting.

[davidmann95]

What is the 'Two-Face problem' regarding his stories? What can be done about it?

That he’s locked into a setup that forces him to tell one of, appropriately, two stories. This has been covered in better detail before by others, but in short: the only stories to really tell about him are his origin, because it’s so full of dramatic potential, or an attempt to cure him, because he’s Batman’s noble former ally in the war on crime laid low by a demon within, so any story of those two clashing that isn’t about Batman trying to save him is going to seem trivial. Even the recent My Own Worst Enemy, which went as far afield of traditional stories for either of them as having him on shotgun to Batman wrecking his way across the American South with a chainsaw while being pursued by KGBeast - and I definitely liked the idea it introduced of Two-Face intentionally bringing out the worst in others, something I’d like to see be a sticking element for his character - it’s still ultimately a story about whether he can be cured, and whether one side of him can overpower the other. And the answer to both is of course “no”, because then you can’t use Two-Face anymore.

Here’s a dirty little secret about Batman’s villains, at least from my perspective. Yes, he unquestionably has the best rogues gallery in comics, but they’re not THAT much better than most other major characters’ rank-and-file. Not that they’re bad by any means, but they’re absolutely artificially inflated by circumstane. By Batman’s nature as a weird solver of elaborate puzzles who’s easily put in physical danger, it’s easier for them to provide a serious and distinctive threat to him even in a ‘serious’ context than it is for a guy with a flamethrower or boomerangs to reasonably challenge a nerdy cop who can outpace light. And since Batman’s more concretely and popularly defined psychologically and symbolically than probably any other superhero, it’s tremendously easier for creators to at least nominally parallel him in some meaningful fashion than it is for Superman’s guys - if most writers can’t think of anything to show Kal-El as other than Nice and Good, they’ll have a hard time coming up with a contrast for him other than Mean and Bad. It’s a triumph largely by contrast that lets even simple Bad Guy V Good Guy stories by average talent coast by on atmosphere and basic observations. Hence why the likes of Penguin struggle after all these years, since his ability to parallel Batman isn’t nearly so immediately obvious and simple (it’s absolutely possible, but it’d require more thought and effort than most are willing to put in), while even the usually pretty flat Scarecrow can easily carry a comic because hey, he relies on fear too, there’s probably something in that.

Harvey has been able to coast in largely the same way most of the time. Harvey’s good, Two-Face is bad, and he reflects the most obvious, banal aspect of Batman possible, that he has a dark side represented visually. And truth be told, I think that vein has well and truly been bled dry. Even aside from whether or not it’s a good idea for a villain in the first place - sensitivity towards mentally ill people has never been Batman stories’ strongest suit, and the modern Harvey Dent is the most stereotypical example possible in that regard, an abused child who grows up to be a gruesome freak with a dangerous, violent alternate personality that emerged or even developed in a single moment of highest drama - there’s not that much to it. You get Harvey and Two-Face arguing and never winning, he feels bad but sometimes doesn’t, Batman feels bad, everyone feels bad, we get to ponder about the darkness hidden inside the human heart and that, sit down for this one, Batman kind of has two faces too, you guys. Like I said, it’s banal, the most facile of observations on Batman as a character that ultimately tracks back to the idea of him as ultimately mad himself and driven above all by vengeance and violence, an interpretation pretty much every Batman story worth its salt moved on from over a decade ago.

It is absolutely fixable though, largely because there is of course a second Two-Face out there, the original, and he’s always worked better. People just tend to forget about him because the aesthetic leans more easily towards the guy I talked about above. And it’s a GREAT aesthetic, from the face to the suits to any bisected hideouts or getaway cars he might bring into play. But that’s all that stuff is, same as Riddler’s question marks or Joker’s playing cards; all that, even his face, is an expression of his pathology, not the core of it.

That’s the coin.

The coin’s turned into a pretty insignificant part of his character over the years, a simple compromise between the two identities over who gets to drive that’s often forgotten, but really think about that thing if you take away the identity divide. Harvey Dent is a man so at odds with the world around him and alienated from any recognizable principles, so unable to make decisions or make a distinction between the value of good or evil under his own power, that he’s surrendered his very decision-making capabilities to this thing. The coin decides his soul, the coin decides who lives or dies, the coin is horrifying on a level the split-personality take can’t even begin to compete with. A million arguments between the DA and the Mob Boss could never so brutally and simply capture the sheer brokenness of Harvey Dent’s soul as him showing the part of him that can understand or care about consequence is just gone, and that he’s replaced it in the most chaotic, meaningless way possible.

I tend to think Batman’s villains work better when they oppose his philosophy or aspects of his overall narrative rather than his psychology, especially since the bedrock observations about his psychology in play there are like I said generally pretty simple. Riddler’s not interesting because He’s Obsessed Too!, but because he threatens to tear down the idea of Batman as unstoppable and always one step ahead of crime. Maybe Joker also Had A Bad Day, but he’s endured because at his best he threatens the basic logistical and moral assumptions Batman’s world is built on. My terrible (but surprisingly popular, thanks guys!) take on Mr. Freeze is rooted in the idea that he’d be more workable long-term as someone who finds security and power in becoming something bigger than an ordinary man after a tremendous loss, rather than him ‘just’ also being sad about losing his family. And while I don’t really care that much about Which Face Is The Real One, the idea of Two-Face as a man who in spite of devoting his life to fighting chaos and forcing the world to make sense just like our hero ultimately completely succumbs to that chaos on the most fundamental philosophical level imaginable, whether in defiance of the justice he once served or as a theoretically purer version of it (which the coin can stand for either way), really does it for me. 

He can still have the face and accompanying visuals and gimmicks as Gotham-level realizations of said philosophy and representations of the defilement of the good man he once was. Rather than locking him into a rigidly defined paradigm of which side is stronger (though you can still do that too, directly over good and evil!), he becomes inherently unpredictable and therefore infinitely more dangerous and dynamic. He becomes a threat to Batman’s entire approach to life rather than a walking problem to be fixed, putting them on a much more even footing for a back-and-forth rivalry and letting more standard confrontations between them be as charged with drama as whether or not Harvey can overcome the worst in himself, opening up far more possibilities for him as a supervillain. The alternative may have gotten more play as of late, but exhibit A for my preference: it’s the take The Dark Knight went with, the objectively most critically acclaimed story that guy has ever been in. I Believe Harvey Dent and Two Face Hate Each Other has had its day and run its course. Harvey Dent Believes In Chaos.