favorite thing about tolkien fans is how y’all are like “now this idea would’ve had the old professor tolkien absolutely foaming at the mouth in rage ….. which is exactly why i have written 200k words of it and made art for it and firmly hold it as canon”
y’alls tags only further convince me of this
a few more honorable mentions for your viewing pleasure
This is almost fifty years ago: I added psych as a major so I could access the books on homosexuality in our university library. They were locked in the back and you had to go through the librarian to get them. If you were not a psych major the Dean of Students would interrogate you as to why you wanted to read such deleterious material.
Seeing the newspaper that one of my professors and his friends had been arrested at his own house, having a barbecue in the backyard, for “associating with a known homosexual”. Believe me, these things twist you, and make you think twice when invited to a party at someone’s house.
Having a handsome young stranger make eyes at you at the all night diner as you study for finals, and wondering if he is one of the detectives assigned to entrapping gays. Going through the teeter totter emotions of wondering if he might be the love you are looking for, or is he the trap that will flush your whole life down the toilet.
Coming to barracks at the end of the day in the Air Force, and watching the swarm of OSI and Security Police escorting a friend out under arrest for having gone to a gay bar. Wondering if he would name you, because that was the only way you could stay out of jail – by naming at least five other gays.
All of the above were common experiences for many gays in America, not that long ago. Those of us who went through this are still among you. Don’t take for granted the new freedoms you have. Get out and vote this election no matter what. The Republicans mean to send us back to all this.]
I see the human legs, but where’s the rest of the human in that costume? It doesn’t seem like there’s quite enough room for a human to be standing up inside that thing.
The Riddler hijacks the local TV airwaves and appears onscreen holding a comically long roll of paper. After dramatically clearing his throat, he proceeds to read from it.
“The following is a list of people who can suck it. Number One: The Joker. I don’t think I need to explain that one. Number Two: Cluemaster. Fuck you, you stole my bit, and I will be like a plague unto your house. Number Three: King Tut. You also stole my bit, but did it while killing people and got me arrested for murder. Also, I’m, like, 93% sure you’re a white guy and your costume is racist.
“Number Four: The Scarecrow. I know you ate my leftover Chinese, Jon, even though I wrote my name on it. I was saving that for lunch. I had to eat a goddamn peanut butter and jelly sandwich like a five-year-old. It was all you had in the hideout. For fuck’s sake, go shopping, not all of us can live like a bridge troll.
“Number Five: The Penguin. You- No, no, wait, wait… That one should be crossed out. He replaced that and apologized. Never mind, Oswald, you’re fine. Drinks at 7:00 tomorrow, right?
“Anyway, where was…? Ah, yes. Number Six: The Mad Hatter. You carded me and left me like that for six hours because I, and I quote, ‘would not stop talking about Mythbusters.’ Well, excuse me for trying to make intellectually stimulating conversation on a level you could understand. I suppose every time you prattle on about mome raths and borogoves it’s goddamn Shakespeare? Well… Well, it’s Carroll, but… Oh, you know what I mean!
“Number Seven: Catwoman. You left me hanging by one hand from a ledge five stories up and holding a twenty-pound bag of jewels and very pointy
objets d’art while you ‘distracted’ the Dark Knight. I know you were making out with him, Selina. You were gone for fifteen minutes. My shoulder almost dislocated. Very unprofessional.
“Number Eight: Kite Man.”
Here the Riddler pauses, lifting his narrowed gaze to glare at the camera, voice dropping to an ominous tone.
“You know what you did…”
His demeanor shifts quickly, and he’s back to reading from his list almost cheerfully.
“Number Nine! Th-”
He’s interrupted by a crashing noise in the background and looks over his shoulder just an instant before a deep voice angrily growls, “Riddler!”
“Oh, for the love of-” He turns to glare at the camera, speaking quickly. “Number Nine: Batman! Interrupting me while I’m on television making very important- Hm-mmph!”
He’s reduced to muffled curses as a black gloved hand covers his mouth and pulls him out of frame. The camera tilts, a cracking noise is heard, and the broadcast turns to static.
KITE MAN’S CRIMES WERE NUMEROUS AND TERRIBLE
If I were batman I’d give him like a five minute warning, because this actually sounds theraputic.
Batman: Riddler, you’ve hijacked the TV airwaves and you know that’s wrong but I think this is actually theraputic. So I’m giving you five minutes, and then I’m taking you to Arkham
Robin: Geez get a facebook account for this crap, hell if you wanna vent to millions of strangers just get youtube.
“RIDDLER YOU CAN’T JUST GO ON TV AND SCREAM AT PEOPLE
THAT’S WHAT YOUTUBE IS FOR”
Riddler takes this advice. He gets his own youtube channel called RiddleMe_Th15. It starts out as being purely therapeutic, a platform for publically calling out those who have annoyed him. Then someone leaves him a pathetically easy riddle to solve in the comments, and he spends his next segment ranting about it, and then posing a better one.
This starts a dialogue with a number of other youtube users who both attempt to answer his riddles and pose their own riddles in return.
Riddler has found his people, and his hit count is climbing.
Seriously, Riddler would KILL IT (metaphorically speaking) on YouTube. He just does those weird animated puzzle videos where he poses lengthy, overly complicated puzzles, game theories, and riddles, then gives away…fuck I don’t know…Amazon or iTunes cards to whoever gets them right.
“Riddle me this: How can I ensure there are more videos like this one? The answer, my little quest solvers, is simple: Like and subscribe, and consider donating to my Patreon! Which isn’t much of a Riddle, but seriously I’m down to eating crackers and ramen right now and YouTube keeps demonetizing my videos because I used to be a supervillain.”
Bringing this back because “YouTube keeps demonetizing my videos because I used to be a supervillain” has to be shared and because I have some followers who have not experienced The Riddler Post.
Seriously, if you ever need a good time, just read all the responses in the notes. This post still ranks as one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Batman sees all of this and donates a substantial amount. He still can’t believe YouTube was the answer all along.
This is especially true with BTAS Riddler.
“Riddle me this… who’s the biggest asshole in games development this side of Ubisoft? It’s Daniel Mockridge who screwed the dev team, myself included, out of our royalties for Riddle of the Minotaur-”
Two days later Jim Sterling is calling Mockridge out, there’s a gofundme for the other people on the dev team, and Nigma’s halfway to funding the spiritual sequel on Kickstarter.
“Okay, more backer questions… Puzzlemaster323 sent says “Riddle Me This, will there be VR support.”, and I say of course there is! Ten years ago I trapped Batman and Robin a VR version of the first game and I threw that rig together in two months. We’ve worked out the motion sickness problems for 90% of users and the game will not kill you for real if you die in the game, but hardcore players can set it to give them a harmless jolt if they’re into that kind of thing.”
The Scarecrow: “I *did* eat his leftover Chinese. It’s messed up that he knows.”
Blogging this tweet because this explains SO MUCH about the mindset of pretty much all the folks I’ve known who’re against single-payer, it’s not even funny…
This….
This never occurred to me. Not once. That Americans are against Health Care because they think it actually costs tens of thousands of dollars for a broken arm, hundreds of thousands for a complicated birth, millions for cancer treatment.
Because they’ve never known anything different. The idea that a broken arm is only a couple hundred bucks; a complicated birth a couple thousand; cancer treatment only tens of thousands; all easily covered by existing tax structures.
This explains a lot. And it’s a good example of what I was talking about in my post on scarcity being used to prop up ableism – always question the idea that a resource is genuinely scarce. Even if it seems obvious that it is, quite often that’s the result of careful manipulation and misconceptions that you’re not even aware of.
And never think you’re too smart to be fooled by that kind of thing, it doesn’t work like that. Similarly, don’t think people who are fooled by something are stupid. Nobody can have all the information about everything, and nobody has the time and energy to investigate and put together conscious conclusions about every piece of information they’re given. It doesn’t take being stupid, or even just gullible, to believe something like this.
I currently live in a country without free medical care and still, it’s enormously cheap compared to the USA. An American expat wrote a piece for our English language paper about how she paid more for parking at the hospital than giving birth to her baby that’s pretty interesting:
Yesterday I had to go to the hospital cause I injured my eye, I’m frankly dreading what the bill is going to be, but what made me balk was being told in the pharmacy that my insurance was denied for the antibiotic eye drops and it’d be over $100 out of pocket. So I didn’t get my eyedrops.
I’ve had these same drops before living in the UK. They cost me seven GBP.
It’s the exact same drug, same steroid, same strain of antibiotic. But somehow the US gets away with charging $100 for a generic non brand version of a drug which is easy to create and widely used. It’s downright robbery, but also a form of eugenics through poverty and class warfare. You keep the poor poor by making sure basic necessities remain unattainable and then you make it seem like the norm so no one fights it.
[Give me… Give me the bread! Give me the bread, stupid! Give it back! Give me the bread! The bread! Give it to me! Borya, what are you doing? Give me the bread! Borya, give me the bread! For fuck’s sake, Borya! Give me the bread, please! Give me the bread! Just take a bite if you want to! Borya! Calm down and give me the bread… Borya!.. Borya! Borya, give me the bread! Give! Me! The bread! Borya, what are you doing, Borya, give me the bread! Borya, for fuck’s sake! Give it back! How long are you going to hang like this? This is just ridiculous! Give it back… You asshole! Bastard…]
I try and bring up how he ruined free in state tuition in the name of hippie bashing when he was California’s governor often, but don’t exactly have the biggest platform.
“Worst of all, these students’ sense of the future is constrained by planning for and then paying down their student loans, often for decades. Economists are waking up to the fact that when young Americans enter the workforce burdened with over a trillion dollars in cumulative debt, they become risk averse, unwilling to move, less able to make major purchases, and slower to become homeowners. Not coincidentally, they don’t feel safe enough to register any major protests against the society that’s done this to them.”
Damn.
i am reblogging again because….. fuck ronald reagan forever and ever and ever and ever.
Economists should be adept in their fields, how are they only now realizing that paying off our student debt is a fucking priority over anything else other than food?
Weird, it’s almost like there’s something missing from the study of economics.
Who would have possibly thought that a young generation owing trillions of dollars could have a negative effect on the economy?
wupacing 