SERIOUSLY THOUGH SHE WAS MY FAVORITE BATMAN VILLAIN
Her physical condition didn’t allow her to age
No one took her seriously as an actress
And even when she was trying to get into a happy romantic relationship (albeit with another villain) he still couldn’t take her seriously as a consenting, sexually active and romantically interested adult
That’s a lot of blows to someone’s psyche
and Babydoll is both a sympathetic villain and a formidable one
I remember this episode fucked me up a a kid.
And man, do I wish we could see this Batman again: the Batman that consoles his villains, because the majority (if not all) of them are mentally ill people. And Batman knows this and wants them healthy again, not punished and GOD definitely not dead.
Baby Doll is so underrated as a Batman villain
but her episode was perfect
Batman: The Animated Series
The story of one fucked up, traumatized little boy, doing his best to help other fucked up traumatized people.
The Batman that cares about the inmates is my favorite. He doesn’t put up with their shit, but he does try to reach out here and there and he’s as human as he can be to them.
When Harley was re-institutionalized, he got her that dress she wanted.
In the comics based on B:tAS, there was a time during Christmas that there was snow and it was Mr. Freeze’s fault, and he was making it snow because Christmas was his anniversary with Nora and she LOVED it when it snowed on Christmas, so Batman let him finish mourning before calmly taking him back to Arkham.
He never, ever gives up on Harvey possibly recovering.
Sure, Batman is going to throw punches and do what it takes to take these guys down when they’re hurting or threatening people. And he’s not going be a complete bleeding heart; he has to protect the innocent. He’s going to take them down and take them back to Arkham, but it doesn’t mean he’s incapable of being a bit human to the ones who deserve it.
Batman needs become human again
Because it needs to be here:
Remember that time a young girl with near god-like psychic powers threatened to destroy reality and the only one that could stop her was Batman because he had a previous encounter with her and was tasked with killing her to restore reality.
But instead, Batman sat with her on a swing and kept her company as the girl’s psychic powers slowly killed her.
No?
Fuck you people making me emotional
The. Batman.
This is MY Batman, not the murderous fascist they’ve made him into.
There’s another story that I like about a Chinese general who had to defend a city with only a handful of soldiers from a huge enemy horde that was in all likelihood going to steamroll the place flat within hours of showing up.
So when said horde did arrive, they saw the general sitting outside the city’s open gates, drinking tea. The horde sent a couple of emissaries over to see what was what, and the general greeted them cheerfully and invited them all to come and take tea with him.
The horde decided that this was a scenario that had “MASSIVE FUCKING TRAP” written all over it in beautiful calligraphy and promptly fucked off.
Whoever that general was, he was clearly the Ancient Chinese equivalent of Sam Vimes.
did he just invite us over for tea nah man i’m out
This just keeps getting better
I fucking love history.
ok but tbh that story misses a lot of the subtlety of the situation like ok
so this story is the Romance of Three Kingdoms, and essentially takes place between Zhuge Liang, resident tactician extraordinaire, and Sima Yi… OTHER resident tactician extraordinaire.
The two were both regarded as tactical geniuses and recognized the other as their rival. Zhuge Liang had a reputation for ambushing the SHIT out of his opponents and using the environment to his advantage, thus destroying large armies with a small number of men. Sima Yi (who kind of entered the picture later) was a cautious person whose speciality was unravelling his opponent’s plans before they began. So it was natural that the two would butt heads; however, since Sima Yi tended to have more men and resources, he started winning battles against the former. Which, y’know, kinda sucked.
On to the actual story: Zhuge Liang is all like “shit i gotta defend this city with like 10 men.” Literally if he fights ANY kind of battle here, he WILL lose; his only option for survival is not to fight. And that’s looking more and more impossible until he hears that his rival is leading the opposing army. And then he gets this brilliant idea. He basically opens all the gates, sends his men out in civilian clothes to sweep the streets, and sits on top of the gate drinking tea and chilling out and basically makes the whole thing out to be a trap
When Sima Yi comes he’s all like “yo come on in bro”
and Sima Yi is like “yeah he’s never been that obvious about his traps before. this is definitely a bluff” and he’s about to head in when he realizes
wait. he knows that i think he’s bluffing.
and so he gets it in his head that maybe, just MAYBE, Zhuge Liang has this cunning plan that will wipe out his army - recall that he has a pretty good handle on what his rival is capable of. And after a long period of deliberation (which is just like “he know that I know that he knows that etc.”), being the cautious man he is, SIma Yi eventually decides to turn his entire army around and leave.
Zhuge Liang later points out that the plan was based specifically on the fact that he was facing his rival; if it had been anyone else, there’s no way it would have worked. A dumber or less cautious person would have simply charged in and won without breaking a sweat.
and that’s the real genius here: it was a plan formed entirely just to deceive one man, and it worked.
Zhuge Liang is the most brilliant, sneaky-ass bastard in history. One time his side’s army was out of arrows, which pretty much meant they were screwed. So Zhuge Liang goes and does the logical thing, which is build a fuck ton of scarecrows and put them all on boats. Then he makes the men hide in the boats and sail them out on the river.
Well, that day was super foggy (which Zhuge Liang had predicted. Did I mention he was also a freakishly accurate meteorologist?). So the enemy across the river sees a fleet of boats armed to the teeth with what appears to be half an army of men. They panic! and start firing arrows like crazy.
Zhuge Liang lets this play out for a while, then he’s like, ”Ok guys that’s enough.” They calmly turn the boats around and go back to base, where they dismantle the scarecrows and pull out all the enemy’s arrows.
Zhuge Liang is legend.
I love this post. It just keeps getting better. Like seriously, I would have adored learning about this in World History.
If you want to see this in cinematic glory, watch Red Cliff.
Especially since it makes Zhuge Liang look like this:
Red Cliff is 50% bloody battles and 50% eye candy and about half of that eye-candy is due to Zhuge Liang
March 28 2017 - People in Paris, France, take to the streets and clash with police after the police murdered
56 year-old Shaoyo Liu in his home in front of his family. He was shot to death because he opened the door carrying a pair of scissors he was using to cut fish for dinner. [video]/[video]/[video]/[video]
