Elevator - Blog Posts
it frustrates me how some of the most iconic versions of batman are still by people who dont really care about the character and just like his aesthetic. snyder and nolan wanna empathize how cool and badass he is and thats fine but they try to make their movies way deeper than such surface level portrayals of batman should be. they like that hes dark and brooding but they dont go in depth on why hes like that. or they try to and fail. its not just about his parents dying its that he never healed from it. he didnt have the support system he needed to process his grief in a healthy way and was raised by an emotionally repressed ex military man who wouldnt let himself cross the line of employee and family. he learned not to show emotion outside anger. batmans stoicism isnt because hes badass, its a trauma response. the nolan movies treat batman not killing like its a moral superiority thing when thats not it at all. its what batman might occasionally tell himself it is but in reality its because if he starts he knows he wont be able to stop. he also has flaw of believing its like that for everyone but thats a whole other discussion. anyways not killing is in fact a mental block and its emotional because hes mentally ill. oh but we couldnt explore that because that would imply the guy were using for our toxic masculinity power fantasy is weak because he cant mentally handle something. its like.we want to hurt batman but we dont want him to feel anything about it other than maybe anger to show how tough and hypermasculine he is. this also correlates in why the live action batman movies dont want robin. they dont want batman to be a dad because thats not cool i guess. if you cant think of your batman comforting a crying child you didnt write batman though. i swear this obsession with not acknowledging that just because batman is bad at showing his emotions besides anger doesnt mean he doesnt have them has bled into the comics to. batman was literally a good dad to jason pre crisis but can you imagine nolans batman being a good dad? i cant personally. hes a man child. so now comics batman was shitty to jason when he was robin in order for batman to feel despair he needs to first feel love. his parents werent the only thing he loved. he loves his city, his friends, justice and doing whats right, his 2 major love interest and he absolutely loves his family im not saying all batman media needs to be a deep deconstruction of his psyche but if youre gonna focus on batman being 2 kool for emotions being badass rather than a result of his trauma dont pretend your movie is deeper than it actaually is
on the note of batfam siblings being more sibling like in fics, i also need tim drake (only child but he has researched sibling relationships) to be almost murdered by jason and instead of being displeased he is just 'ah. excellent. i am being accepted into the family. i should blow up jason's car'
Say what you will about the rise and fall of Young Justice but they really did pop off with their iteration of Batman.
They did right by my man Bruce Wayne—he was seriously not to be fucked with.
Like, the third season really did me in. This bitch had plans with plans, was willing to absolutely verbally annihilate the League at the drop of a hat, and pretty much told everyone to kiss his ass while he fucked off to save the world with nothing but his team of former protégés and his own goddamn brain power.
And you know what? It. Fucking. Worked. (Basically.)
Because he’s Batman.
He was brilliant to watch in the first season—he was an excellent mentor, a total badass in the field, and he was a good father figure to Robin. (He was actually surprisingly gentle with him, like he wanted to guide Robin instead of boss him around, which I really appreciated).
Such a king. Rest in peace Young Justice Batman.
Honestly I think the main thing I can’t look past in s2 is how it offers super simple solutions to incredibly complex and nuanced questions that s1 set up so intricately.
How can someone like Jinx ever become stable or well adjusted? Oh her hallucinations basically cease cuz she just becomes depressed and then before she can get over that brief period of apathy and go back to her psychotic self, she adopts a kid that basically brings Powder back. So the super crazy Jinx we expected to see after the cliffhanger of s1 never gets the chance to form! Isha serves as a plot device to avoid a complicated answer to Jinx’s mental issues and question of identity.
How can Vi and Jinx ever become sisters again after they’ve changed to much, is it even possible for them to reconcile? OH their dead dad comes back and reminds them of the good old days so we can ignore all the present and much more recent shit that has happened! And we’ll just really reaffirm that Jinx is Vander’s kid and not Silco’s after ep 4! This is the easy way out to the sister conflict, literally just reminding them that “oh yeah! We did used to be sisters!” And then Jinx can just die so we don’t need explore a complicated road to recovery that Jinx would have needed to embark on! Wow. What a cop out.
Will Zaun and Piltover ever be able to escape the cycle of violence that plagues them that is rooted in complex systemic oppression and inequality? Is violence the answers? Or will it only perpetuate more conflict? How can compromise come about with the rising extremism on both sides? How can Zaun and Piltover ever progress while acknowledging the horrors of the past, but still retaining optimism for the future? OH! Let’s actually just not even BOTHER exploring Piltover/Zaun at all!! They’ll team up to fight foreign 3rd enemy (literally foreign cuz Noxus is literally another nation interfering) and an incredibly simple exploration of forgiveness is the answer! Definitely not cliché as crap.
Complex questions, basic, uncomplicated answers. I simply wish the writers had chosen to prioritize themes and exploring interesting nuances more than big plot climatic style battle in the end. I see visions of nuance there, but they fall flat cuz of the fast pacing and what plots the story chose to prioritize, which don’t organically continue the setup from s1
And the season doesn’t do enough to properly explore these answer to justify them answering those questions. They use plot point through plot point to force the characters to where they need them to be without doing anything interesting with them to explore these complex themes from s1. and after speeding through all these arcs and themes they turn around and pretend like they perfectly answered these questions without putting in any of the work to bother exploring them
Having never considered the concept of a highschool retelling of the Odyssey until that one post mentioned them in passing, I'd like to give my own pitch: the Odyssey meets Back to the Future meets whodunnit.
Odysseus is the central figure of the story, of course. He is also one of those high school protagonists who is inexplicably surrounded by half a dozen girls, because emphasizing that aspect of the Odyssey is funny to me. There's Penelope, his actual girlfriend; popular girl Circe; poor little rich girl Calypso; freshman Nausicaa; and Athena, who is older and solidly in bro territory with Odysseus, but still adds to the overall effect of him being surrounded by girls. (Is she a goddess? Idk. Probably she has some other kind of power, like riches or genius or both.)
The cast is rounded out by some of his Odyssey crewmen, maybe a few Iliad Greeks, and Telemachus, a new kid at their school who quickly becomes friends with Odysseus. For about half the story, things focus on slice of life, Odysseus's schemes, and the students' various personal problems. Incidents from the Odyssey are nodded toward, but not directly retold.
Then you get the Back to the Future part with the reveal that Telemachus has traveled back in time twenty years, with the help of future Athena, to solve the extremely cold case of his dad's disappearance by investigating his high school life.
Future Athena was only able to discover that someone from his high school circle was involved; in their time, there were just too many roadblocks set up between her and the truth. And she can't get inside access to those events as her adult self. So it's up to Telemachus to get to know his past parents, investigate their friends, and chase down the clues to discovering where his father's been all his life.
...While hopefully not raising the suspicions of his teenaged, but still infamously clever, parents in the process of this totally straightforward and not at all emotionally taxing mission.
i dont think enough otgw fans talk about the exploration of complex family dynamics that the show manages to weave through pretty much every episode. like the relationship between wirt and greg seems so innocuous in the beginning, just normal aloofness due to the age gap, but as the episodes go on it becomes clear that wirt full on resents greg and actively dismisses him as “his stepdad’s kid,” while greg openly admires/loves wirt and doesnt understand why he wont spend time with him. theres so many little moments that make the lack of reciprocity in their relationship obvious, and it literally takes almost DYING for wirt to understand that he needs to treat his brother better. like holy fuck man ill be shocked if the person who wrote their backstory doesnt have a step/half-sibling cause WOW they got it right
DC Metro Enclosed Family Room
You know that John Mulaney quote, “the things crazy people say mean nothing to them, but everything to me”?
Now, every time I get on the school elevator, I think of that. So for backstory, I sprained my ankle when I fell down the stairs about a month ago, this granted me access to the elevator in my school. A couple of days ago I was waiting to get on the elevator to my fourth block class when a girl wearing sweatpants, a sweatshirt, a messy bun, and socks and sandals approaches me. In one hand, she held a McDonald's milkshake or frappe of some sort, and in the other, a paper plate with some folded over paper towels stacked on it. “Hey, can I ride with you? I’m lazy.” I smile and say “yeah, of course!” because we’ve all been there (and I don’t like confrontation.)
While we are waiting for the elevator she asks me, “Hey, do you like bacon?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want some? I made it in foods.” She said, unfolding the paper towel.
Now, I have been told many times by my parents not to take candy from creepy old men in sketchy vans, but I have never been warned about not taking bacon from a teenage girl. That thought and the fact that she was offering me free food made me say “yeah” and take the bacon.
The elevator door opens up and we get in. The door closes and after a brief conversation about what floor we’re going to she says, “Hey, can I tell you something gross, but kind of cool?”
“Sure,” I said, now questioning my judgment and critical thinking skills.
The elevator had a little gap between the sidewall and the wall with the door and buttons, in this gap, is a bunch of nasty splatters of god knows what. She points to one of the splatters and asks,” You know what that is?”
I shook my head.
“That's a loogie. Do you know who made that? I made that. Freshmen year. I’m a senior now. Just shows you how much they clean this place.”
The elevator door opens. “See ya.” She gets out of the elevator, and I’m still standing there, frozen in shock and in utter disbelief at what had just happened, half a piece of bacon in my hand, which I was now hesitant to eat. When she was bacon girl it was fine, but now shes loogie girl. Anyway, I walk to my class, bacon in hand, as like, I dunno, proof that it happened, that I wasn’t dreaming.