I was so excited when I heard they were bringing back Animaniacs, but I have been a bit disappointed with it so far. It is pretty good, but it is not as good as the original.
Well you know, “the DAO than can be told is not the true DAO.”
therefore “Batman” is not the true Batman.
Also,
“mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.”
Darkness within darkness?
That’s right, you guessed it.
It’s Batmans all the way down.
I occasionally watch speedrunners, whenever there’s some big breakthrough in a game that catches some headlines.
Those people are…is there such a thing as aspirational insanity? I work in software, and if I could put the sort of focus into understanding the minutiae how a piece of software functions that they do I’d probably be a millionaire. And they mostly do it for fun.
That being said, yikes, I also suffer from insomnia thanks to working nights throughout college, and I can say from experience that Amber needs to get some rest. Don’t let all-nighters become a habit at this age, because you get to my age, pull the occasional unintentional one, don’t bounce back like you used to, and spend the next day as the living dead.
Speedruns that focus on the route, optimizations, discovery, and exploiting mechanics are super interesting for me. It’s so cool to see a game I’m familiar with get broken down and rebuilt to achieve a goal.
Obsession over performing frame-perfect maneuvers in round after round of repetitive gameplay is where I lose interest immediately. Different strokes, I guess.
I have little interest in watching the speedrunners perform that kind of thing itself, but the documentary style video essays detailing the journey is often very interesting and sometimes inspiring.
Not to speedrun, but just to accomplish things in general.
Well, there’s an interesting difference between what is theoretically possible and what has been provably performed. Like, for a lot of games, you’ve got people who use tools to achieve impossible levels of perfection, and everyone nods wisely and agrees that asking a human to do this is ridiculous… and then a few short years later, humans are doing it somehow.
It’s kinda neat as a matter of defiance in the face of inevitable obsolesence. Like, an athlete will never outrun an F1 car, given a reasonably fair playing field (e.g. don’t run the poor guy over), right? Except an F1 car has to go in for multiple pit stops over 200ish miles, whereas Dean Karnazes went 800 without sleeping.
It’s not interesting to watch, but it’s cool to hear about.
Reminds me of when I watched Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, and a clips of a few others have a multi part rage meltdown trying to reach the end of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy and then watched a speed runner get through it using some absolute brain defying fuckary faster than I could fully process what was going on. Was a HELL of a thing to watch. Sometimes I still watch someone like markiplier, jacksepticeye, or gtlive do a let’s play of a game and then look up a speedrun with that in mind. It kinda makes me appreciate the speed runners more ya know?
Unfortunately, the quality of mental healthcare available in the DC universe appears…spotty.
Hugo Strange, Jeremiah Arkham, Harleen Quinzel…I guess Jonathan Crane was a professor instead of a practicing doctor but he was still a psychologist.
I think first day at Arkham you get given a mug that says “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!” and eventually start taking it literally.
You know what I suddenly want? An Elseworlds story where she’s Bruce Wayne’s therapist instead of Joker’s, deduces from his psych profile that he’s Batman…but falls for him just like she did for Joker and decides to declare herself Batgirl and won’t leave him alone.
…Huh, both Batgirl and Harley have been played by Tara Strong, so there’s our casting choice for the animated adaptation.
I would definitely read a series where Harley Quinn is Batman’s therapist. I don’t even care about all that other stuff you just said, Batman therapy sessions with Harley Quinn sounds amazing.
If she was going for a Robin vibe, there’s a real bird called the Harlequin Quail, but that would take the silliness to 11. I think Harleen as Batgirl with a skirt, bare midriff, and little bat wings attached to the back of her costume would keep the silliness at a solid 9.
Batgirl: You can count on me, Mistah B! I’ll detect that mean ol’ clown and tie him up in front of the police station before you can say “Chiroptera”!
So here’s what I’ve come up with based on this prompt.
Alfred hires Harleen Quinzel as Bruce’s therapist to help him with the loss of his parents (it’s basically his ultimatum for allowing Bruce to be batman is he has to actually work through his issues.) Harley talks to Bruce about the incident and how it affected him and he goes on about how for years he always wondered what he could have done to stop it from happening. But after a while he stopped blaming himself and realized there’s nothing he could’ve done and stopped blaming himself. He also mentions wishing there was someone there to stop it. Someone to help the terrified citizens out in their hour of need. Harley points out that that concept is an idea of comfort for Bruce, in the same way a lot of people in crisis wish for assistance from police or a hero or anything. She also offhandedly remarks that it’s kinda funny how now that he’s grown up there’s a cape wearing superhero out there doing just that. Bruce and Harley laugh about it, him remarking “I guess I was born a bit too early”
Harley continues to make house calls to the Wayne Manner and while Bruce seems like a well adjusted guy she can’t shake the feeling that she’s not making any progress with him. Like he’s got his walls put up. She begins exploring Wayne manner to see if there’s anything about it she can use to understand him better. When she begins coming down a hallway that leads to one of the entrances to the batcave, Alfred sees it on the batcomputer. Bruce tells him to keep her from going down there with a laser grid that will keep her from going any further. At first Harleen is deterred and starts to walk away. Then she takes off her shoes, gets a running start and acrobatically jumps between each of the lasers down the hallway. Bruce and Alfred watch her go through them, commenting on which spots are harder to get through than others and being impressed when she narrowly squeezes past them. She barely makes it to the other side and Both Bruce and Alrfred are understandably impressed. Before Bruce can dismiss it however Alfred opens up the entrance to the batcave. When Bruce tries to reject the idea Alfred tells him that this therapy will never be complete unless Ms. Quinzel is allowed to speak to the man and the bat. Bruce relents.
Harley is obviously amazed to see everything and even more shocked to find out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. Bruce tries to play off how uncomfortable he is with it but it’s pretty obvious Alfred put him up to it. He repeats with what Alfred said about her needing to know both sides of the story for this to work out. Bruce begins to talk to harley about what he’s been doing, the training he’s undergone, the places he’s been, improving his detective skills and using the money to try to make Gotham a better place. Unlike before where Harleen had the reigns, she is completely ENTHRALLED by Bruce’s tales. Sessions from here on become less about Therapy and more about Harley really falling in love with not Bruce, but Batman. Bruce begins to sense this and decides to start trying to resume their former professional relationship. Harley realizes this as well and dials it back a bit.
Batman is stopping a crime and is being overwhelemed by swarms of criminals. That’s when a woman in a costume (Either a batgirl faccimile or robin faccimele) and uses her acrobatic skills to help him out. She narrowly avoids being fatally injured but manages to help him out. Batman being “THE WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE” he instantly finds out it’s Harley and tells her to stop doing what she’s doing. She argues that he’s doing the exact same thing and she’s just here to help out. He warns her that if she continues doing this he’ll be forced to turn her into Gordon or take her to Arkham, but she counters with the fact that if he does, she can blow the whistle on Batmans identity. Batman’s kinda stuck and so he has no choice but to accept her. But he figures if she’s gonna do this, he should at least keep her safe. So he trains her, gives her gadgets, helps teach her detective work and his methods. He’s harsh and unforgiving and partly wants her to give up but he’s also a bit amused by how well she’s doing. Eventually she becomes a full fledged side-kick and works with Batman much the same way that Dick Grayson does.
I’m imagining a storyline where they have to fight the Joker and the Joker and Harley are separated from each other and he starts needling her.
“Y’know I’ve seen a lot of crazies in my day. I own a mirror after all, HAHA. So trust me when I say I know one of my kind when I see one. I’ve seen many such cases before. A person trying so desperately to cling to the rules of society. Such a fragile tight rope they walk. You might think you’ve got it all together up there but you’re just holding back your true potential. I can help pull that out of you if you’ll just let yourself go”
Batman comes in and takes him down. He asks harley if she’s alright and she’s a bit shaken.
Harley: “It’s like he was seeing right through me, every thought I’ve ever had, everything I’ve ever done. Like he truly knew me. Am I really destined to turn out like that?”
Batman: “I can’t pretend there isn’t any truth to his words. I’ve found myself coming to that crossroads many times. But I always choose this path, because I can’t allow myself to lose sight of what’s important. That’s the citizens of Gotham, That’s the kid who lost everything in that alley all those years ago. And it’s you too, Harley. If you can promise me that you won’t lose sight of that, I promise I’ll do everything to keep you on that path.
Harley does a big goofy grin and says and continues following batman.
Haha I’m super cheesy. I dunno it’s a fun dynamic to imagine.
See the best part about coming up with ideas for characters that are inherently interpretative is that you get to swap the names and call it your own.
Batman exists because a talented artist (and some asshole parasite) cribbed super hard off of pulp character The Shadow. It’s all yours, Yoto, go for it.
@Yotomoe: I like it! It’s a fun storyline and an interesting dynamic.
@Spencer: Very true. While certain less-than-great current franchises have made it publicly official and obvious, the idea of fanfiction ascending into its own new IP is a tale as old as fiction itself. Just ask Dante.
Batman trained hard to be the best at everything. Including being the best at needing therapy.
I wouldn’t bet on that extending to also being the best at speedrunning Mario. There’s only so many hours in a day after all, so I’m happy to assume he limited his video game mastery to Dance Dance Revolution.
I mean I love Mario as much as the next nerd but that really sounds like a huge waste of time. Go back to therapy Amber. If you’ve even been to therapy at all that is.
There is research that playing games like Tetris immediately after a traumatic event can help prevent PTSD. I’m have no idea how well the study or two I read about has held up, but given how something as silly looking as EDMR has a decent amount of evidence that it works for some diagnoses I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s held up well.
I once witnessed a guy blowing his fingers off in a chemistry lab accident. Had heard of that study before, proceeded to play Tetris all night, and ended up with way fewer nightmares than expected. So for me it seems to work!
For me, Minecraft is the therapy game of choice. I almost never play Minecraft just for fun – I only pull it out when I’m upset about something because it calms me down. There is something wonderfully soothing about that game.
I don’t doubt the therapeutic qualities of gaming. I’m all for it actually but this one situation specifically seems like an unhealthy use of Amber’s time. Not even the fact that she’s overly obsessing over a feat that is supposedly humanly impossible. Human’s break those preconceptions all the time. It’s the fact that she’s sacrificing sleep for it. I’m really surprised people quickly jumped to Amber’s side on this one.
Oh it’s unhealthy as hell but given the standards of both Amber as we’ve seen her through this comic and speedrunners, which Doctor Who NAILED the description of with ‘aspirational insanity’? Yeah this isn’t actually THAT worrisome. Still worrisome! But uh. There are certainly worse.
I have seen in the last year a speedrunning strategy that requires overheating your console, a classic Famicom specifically of which there are a very finite number left in the world to shave off a few precious frames. Don’t remember what game it was, the fact that this was a viable strategy at all tells you something. A Super Mario 64 runner once managed to get a record run because of a stray neutrino hitting the RAM at just the right time to trigger an otherwise-impossible glitch. Wind Waker speedrunners spent a decade looking for a way through an impregnable barrier, despite being unable to come up with one even with computer assistance. There are now two different methods for performing a barrier skip, one in the original release and the other in the Wii U remake. One sleepless night is actually not that out there by these standards.
She should still sleep of course, because she’s not getting those two frames with dulled reaction times, but this doesn’t even rate in the realm of Questionable Choices or Bizarre Tactics Committed in the Name of Speedrunning.
I’ve heard of a fighting game super-combo that required a DEFECTIVE CONTROLLER to work, and all the pissbabies threw a fit when the tournament scene banned the defective controllers.
Was it Melee? I feel like this was Melee. (Though Melee’s wasn’t necessarily defective, just some potentiometers on the Gamecube controllers were more sensitive than others.)
That might have been it? I don’t really care for competitive gaming so I didn’t really commit any details to memory, it’s just something I remember reading.
One of the craziest speedrun “tricks” I’ve ever heard of was a glitch in Super Mario 64 caused by cosmic radiation from space. Allowed a speedrunner to clip through ceilings or something like that.
Yep! That was the stray neutrino I brought up. They tried REALLY HARD to replicate it before managing to reproduce it by modding the game to flip a certain bit there and concluding it must have been space radiation in the right place at the right time.
“overheating your console, a classic Famicom specifically of which there are a very finite number left in the world ”
Reminds me of something, google up “gamer gunk speedrunning” sometime, both the first video and the part 2 follow up are very interesting watches. Of which has the literal quote “okay we can already see this is fucking stupid right? Just making sure cause if you’re new around here you probably can’t tell what’s satire anymore” in the videos about the time saves discovered by licking your game disc.
(The licking your game disc part isn’t the satire.)
“She should still sleep of course, because she’s not getting those two frames with dulled reaction times”
Well, I know I don’t play in her league, but the only time I was able to beat the last level of Aquanoid (or the last free level ? It’s a long time ago) was in a sleep-deprivation-induced craze…
Video games did not exist when I got PTSD as a child, but I played the crap out of my GameBoy when I was hit with the truck in 2001. I was still in the hospital when I started playing.
Being a world record holder, especially in something as competitive as SMB, is absolutely a goal worth shooting for. And the record she’s talking about is tantalizingly close, so there’s definitely reason to think it’s possible.
Also, yes, Amber needs therapy. In fact, can we just get a therapist or two to move into this hall? It’d save everyone some travel time.
There was that episode of Justice League where the heroes got turned into kids and Wonder Woman got on Batman’s case about why he is such a downer and did he never have fun as a kid? Batman’s response was basically that he stopped being a child when his parents died.
In the pilot episode of Deep Space Nine, when Sisko is talking to the Prophets (who don’t really get this “linear time” thing), they keep bringing him back to his wife’s death at Wolf 359. The only explanation they give is that “you exist here”, which he eventually realizes is because that’s where he is most “solid” or “present” along his personal timeline.
In a very real sense, Bruce Wayne is still – and perhaps always will be – in that alley watching his parents die.
Now that Star Wars and Marvel are owned by the same company, it’s time for Star Trek and DC to merge, so Batman (played by Avery Brooks, of course) can become the emissary of the Prophets and save the Alpha Quadrant from an invasion by Planet Clayface. In other news, Mxyzptlk is a Q and the Borg all wear hats.
On one hand, I really do know how pushing your limits and becoming better at any pursuit can be really fulfilling and essential in gaining and maintaining a healthy sense of self and self-worth.
However, as fulfilling as it may be, it’s always a good idea to take care of yourself when you’re doing so.
One sleepless night once in a while is a nice experience, and I mean a REALLY nice one, but the brain really can’t function all that well without at least SOME sleep.
They WERE. There’s a glitch now that can get around that to some degree. It’s stupidly hard to pull off, and is only faster on certain levels, but it’s a thing*.
*I think. I’m not 100% on the details, SMB is not a game I follow.
That’s true for the first seven levels of the run (1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, 8-1, 8-2 and 8-3), because every time you finish a level, it waits until the next multiple of 21 frames to start the next one.
But in the last level (8-4), you don’t have to wait for the next level to load. So timing ends the exact frame you end the level — no waiting for the next “frame rule” to move you to another level, because there are no more levels left.
They are, except for 8-4 in which every frame counts. The game will only allow Mario to exit the level and load a new one every 21 frames, but the game ends on 8-4 immediately after hitting the axe and walking right to the princess without needing to load a new map. So that’s the only map where you don’t need to be faster by an increment of at least 21 frames to get a lower total time.
That is correct. In all other levels, the frame rule prevents improvements in increments of less than 21 frames. But, on 8-4, there is no frame rule, so single-frame improvements are possible.
In Batman’s case, probably, but as a general rule in his reality? No. Plenty of costumed heroes, even non-powered ones, in the DC universe who don’t have any more need for therapy than anybody else.
Which was why I hated that they changed, e.g., Barry Allen’s origin to give him a dead parent. As if personal tragedy like Bruce’s is necessary for a hero (or makes them “better”); you can’t just do it because it’s the right thing to do.
(In-universe, this is the argument of the long-time antagonist who’s responsible for making it happen, changing the timeline … which suggests that Editorial actually agrees with the bad guy.)
The funny thing about Barry Allen to me is that he has been cool exactly one time in history, and that was in animated film adaptation of the New 52 Justice League.
Everyone else was some manner of horrible smug asshole (Hal Jordan is the least annoying of them, wrap your head around that) and Barry’s just kind of this endearing everyman who everyone likes, except it’s easy to draw the conclusion that it’s because he’s not an outrageous douchebag like the others.
I don’t know why they never rolled with that take on Barry, this goofy dorkface who seriously is just here to help.
I would guess at least some of it’s because that is historically Wally West’s niche as Flash, isn’t it? But it’s not like Flash conflation’s stopped DC so far.
Wally in the comics was never really the super comedic goofball from Justice League, he started off as a brash hothead (and also teen republican who complained that his commie teammates weren’t kind to him) and then mellowed out into this sort of Spider-Man~esque “gotta be at my best at all times” character in the Waid run, someone who was getting carrying a really heavy burden of legacy.
Barry in the movie I mentioned is just kinda, like, aggressively normal, like if Danny had superpowers. He’s nice, he’s seriously just here to help, Batman likes him but it’s because he’s actually pretty good at being a superhero and they don’t really gussy it up.
If Barry ever had to be alive again (and he did not), it kind of struck me as the best possible use for the character. There’s nothing complex about him, he’s just chilled out and wants to do nice things with his cool superpowers.
Instead we landed on a guy who had to have an entire separate continuity reboot to explain why the last one that happened wasn’t his fault.
To all the commenters above and below me that keep saying Amber needs therapy, for all we know it may not even be an option for her right now for various reasons (financial, lack of qualified professionals in her area, etc.).
Playing games is a great way to relax, and setting records like that provides a great sense of accomplishment that can build her sense of self-worth. It might not seem like much on the surface, but at least at the moment, she may not have any viable alternative.
A sleepless night once in a while is OK, and as long as Amber’s not getting to the point to which she hallucinates Mario spanking his own ass, she should be fine.
Are we sure that was a hallucination? Maybe there’s some kind of game in Mario Kart where that’s a taunt animation. Admittedly might be more a Wario style taunt, but still.
Yeah but not sleeping for 24 hours is detrimental to one’s health not just mental but physical as well she can’t achieve perfection if she is sleep deprived.
And you’ve also people like me, who just get brain-fogged all day and have a 50% chance of randomly falling asleep if we so much as sit down, let alone lie down “just because [we’re] tired, not actually going to sleep”
best case scenario i get very slightly elated post-sleepless nights and sleep 12 hours like a baby the next night.
most likely though i’m just pissy and drowsy all day and still manage to go to bed way too late when i finally do. i may be doing sleep deprivation wrong idk
We literally already know why Amber isn’t in therapy. Walky said they weren’t very good ‘here’ and she wasn’t officially diagnosed as a result of that.
Being able to help some people doesn’t make a therapist inherently good over all or good for you in particular. Regardless of whether they were good for Dorothy or Ruth to some degree, they weren’t good for Amber. Walky said that was what Amber herself said about it (with a kind of implication that he may have also gone and also not found them helpful after Mike’s death).
The vast majority of therapists have little to no training in treating DID. Some will refuse to treat it entirely or cause harm by treating it incorrectly. We have DID and we were on a waiting list for a specialist for EIGHT MONTHS before there was an opening.
Also, Amber very well could have been going to therapy this whole time and still act like this. Therapy is not instantaneous and especially disorders like DID take many years to get under control. If she’s been going for a few months, there may not be much progress yet.
Yeah, I can see the therapists here being really experienced with depression and anxiety (on a college campus, they damn well better be,) but a lot of therapists don’t believe DID exists, even. Which will not help. But even if she had gotten one narratively tailor-made to help her, we’re only three months out from the complete traumafest that was Book Ten. Breaking thought patterns that are seriously entrenched like that self-destructive self-loathing takes time to do consistently. Hell, even if she hit the antidepressant jackpot I could see them still finetuning dosage at the moment.
(Also, specialists for diagnosing rare/underdiagnosed and -studied conditions. My sympathies and empathy. Almost through waitlist purgatory for assessing my hypermobile joints for Ehlers-Danlos, but we had to schedule an appointment a year out and hope for a cancellation – which did, fortunately, show up. And they don’t take insurance. And the cost for an initial consult is seriously hefty. This is standard.)
Oh, absolutely. The issue with getting treatment or even diagnosis for these ‘rare’ conditions is that the people who specialize in them are rare enough that I’ve heard even in the UK with its nationalized healthcare, they tend to be in specialized, private practices. They’re rare conditions, after all! If this only appears in 1 in 10,000 people, how many people could possibly be looking for treatment or assessment in any given area? (Hint: divide your population by 10,000 and you’ll probably get a ballpark estimate.)
And a good chunk of the therapists who ARE trained have decided the whole thing must be made up because big-words-to-the-effect-of it’s just so goshdarn weird, and will spend the whole time telling you to stop playing dumb and pretending you’re not (body legal name) or at least trying with some actual subtlety to convince you you’re faking.
A good friend of mine is a therapist and has clients with DID, and it’s hard to find resources for training. They did find one this year that they’re going to, but it’s an out-of-state conference that’s only available in-person. Beyond that, there was like a five-hour video they could buy access to.
It’s kind of ridiculous how little many therapists are trained in dissociative disorders in general. And then they’ll turn people away because they’re not trained in that, but not make moves to address that gap in their knowledge.
There is an ocean of difference between the treatments Ruth and Dorothy need and the treatment Amber needs. The on campus therapists likely specialize in/are trained to deal with more common place issues for students like depression, anxiety, stress, maybe Identity issues and grief. Amber needs a psychologist who’s been trained to treat DID. A therapist trying to treat something they know little about will just end up making it worse
I don’t have DID but I have experience being a broke college student and the only therapy options being not a good fit. People love to say “get therapy” as a cure-all but it’s not that simple and it can be very condescending.
Yeah, when I was in college, the counseling center did more to refer out than actually help me. And then I didn’t go to a referral because of the cost, or because I couldn’t get the schedule to work with my classes and trying to catch the bus to get there, or because it was a service meant for women. And then I’d wind up back at the counseling center after a while and they’d be like, “I see you didn’t take our suggestions last time.”
That’s the Watsonian (in-universe) reason. The Doylist (“meta”) reason is because Amber, as a character, is defined by her mental problems, and so they cannot ever be fully resolved – she’d either cease to exist or become someone entirely different.
It’s pretty in-character too. Amber’s struggles with her mental health have been defined by her inability to accept she deserves help or even that help is something that’s possible.
There is a way to skip Mario sliding down the flag pole back glitching to the other side, but that doesn’t have to do with it. The 21 frame rule deal with how the game checks if you’ve completed the level, essentially the game refreshed every 21 frames (or .35 seconds) and check if the level complete flag has been raised. This is probably because the NES was incapable of checking every frame so they settled on ever 21. Though I suppose Willis might be referencing humans being able to match the TAS run, but I think they’ve already done that.
People are allowed to want to do utterly pointless things. But also they should still sleep. Trying to do something over and over without a break can make you find it even harder to do it because it can create a baseline level of anxiety that causes you to jump at incorrect moments like when I spent 4 hours in the Final Fantasy Remake trying to make Tifa do 40 pull ups on the highest difficulty of that minigame and hoping the AI didn’t get 46 this time.
There are literally two kinds of people for that minigame: people that can do it in 5 tries max and people that spent at least 3 hours on it.
It’s a funny coincidence that I only recently watched this genuinely interesting video on the Super Mario Brothers speedrun record (regardless of your interest in speedruns) that just shows how much research went into this comic that it is accurate: https://youtu.be/U7RzoIEoSMY
Every game I’ve played of Arkham Horror has indicated that the blasted thing is a sentient, cruel abomination from beyond Time and Space who reorders the cards in the decks at will. Guess the grav roulette is moving in the same direction.
To expand on that. I guess I disagree with how the goal of speedrunning is presented here. The computers are never optimized. Neither are humans! It’s a symbiotic relationship where the Tool-Assisted Speedruns human design and the human speedrunners themselves help each other optimize the un-optimizable. Without speedrunning, we wouldn’t know all of the cool quirks below the surface of our favorite games! Like half-A-presses and whatnot.
Just my onion! I do agree with Dina here. Every speedrunner on earth needs more rest, and Amber does sounds worrisome.
As I understand it, Super Mario Bros. is. a pretty unique case where the run really is as optimized as it will probably ever be. It’s always possible that some new discovery will allow for even faster times, but such a discovery would be a Big Deal.
I’ve gotten the vague sense that most of the speedrun community has become much better about promoting healthy behavior over the last year or two, but my main visibility is via GDQ, so that might just be following the pack or it might be normalizing being good. Dunno.
I don’t know if speedrunning community has changed re: health norms, it isn’t like esports where money’s involved. Not that I do much running, mostly just watch, so I’m still an outsider in many ways. That and the point of going faster, I guess, makes people want to play shorter, and people aren’t really attracted to the 12+ hour runs unless they just enjoy the game or want to prove something only once. The biggest issue is button mashing. You can absolutely get injured, yet using tools to do it usually makes it a TAS, so there’s reason for people to brute force it. That drive is kind of like what Amber’s doing here, although it’s hard to say for sure, since I’m not familiar with this mario run in particular.
I forgot to remember but really if anything else threatens the safety of speedrunners, it’s when it becomes an obssesion. That’s not glorified, but it’s not exactly discouraged? Other runners tend to be “well, that’s not my business” about it.
I believe Alan Moore had a relevant point when he said Rorschach is what we’d get from trying to be Batman in real life…..I doubt Amber has read Watchmen, though…
First of all, why would you assume she hasn’t read Watchmen? She’s into comic books, Watchmen is a very well-known and influential comic, she’s probably read Watchmen.
Second, I was going to contest the implied comparison between Amber/Amazi-Girl and Rorschach, because, you know, I like Amazi-Girl, while Rorschach is an irredeemable asshole, but as I think about it, I realize it is actually kinda apt. They’re both characters who read Batman comics as a kid and took away from them that it’s okay to beat people up as long as they’re “bad guys”. They’re different in a lot of other respects, but that core motivation is the same.
“I like the cut of this guy’s jib” – Amber, seeing the angry vigilante with rigid and uncompromising view on morality convinced you can solve anything with sufficient pinching.
I get what you’re saying, but seriously I’d believe she not only read ‘Watchmen’, she also read the issue of “The Question” where Question reads Watchmen, thinks Rorschach is cool, tries emulating him and regrets it.
I miss when Batman was written in a way where he was brooding and gothic, like he sacrifices his own personal happiness and saves the world every day forever, and not as an ineffectual manchild who will never accomplish the slightly lasting goo, and his time would be better spent on literally anything else.
Nowadays I just have Wayne Family Adventures to get my fix for a Batman who isn’t a huge tool who sucks at everything. 1988 really did just ruin cape comics for everybody.
Wayne Family Adventures is the only Batman media I’ve ever consumed in years and it’s amazing. Just… really likeable characters and fun dynamics all around.
Like how is “Batman as an out of depth goofy sitcom dad” not a textual element to his character all the time?
(the answer is that Batman having feelings and being a parent cuts into the power fantasy of grown ass adults. Anyone who has ever said “Batman is realistic and dark” is talking out of the biggest ass that has ever existed)
I think it’s a case of writers being ashamed of or insecure about telling the simple pulpy stories that made the character iconic in the first place. Batman is no longer allowed to just be a broody detective who fights criminals with gimmicks while dressed like a bat, his stories have to be big and important and edgy and assauge the insecurities of the writers and fans about liking the character in the first place.
Frankly it’s not a Batman exclusive problem, the entire superhero genre has it, but Batman might have it the worst.
Exactly. Keep his rogues low level damn. Why does Poison Ivy have to be an omega level city destroying threat? Why is the Joker setting of citywide bombs and causing more mass murder than Gotham’s city limits should even allow. There’s an old comic with the riddler lamenting the fact that now all the villains are these crazed mass murderers instead of just campy serial villains where he’s like “did I miss when they changed the rules?” https://i.imgur.com/YKwhgX5.png
Batman is far and beyond at his best when it’s just…a detective story with fantastical elements included. Which is why the adaptation of “The Long Halloween” might be my favorite DC Batman thing they’ve done in years.
It’s the kind of thing that happens with characters who exist in perpetuity telling stories defined by serial escalation.
Batman cannot stop the Joker from performing a dastardly crime, he’s already done that. For a Batman story to matter, to count, to be important, it has to be Batman at his smartest, strongest, most inspirational, defeating Joker at his worst and most loathsome with the highest pile of bodies yet.
All the biggest superhero characters go through this. They’ve just been around too long to exist as actual characters anymore. Superman got away with this better than anyone, really, since he’s been Boring and Overpowered for so long that he stopped being a character. Now he’s an archetype to draw wildly different and at times contradictory takes on him like “Superman struggles with his identity as an immigrant while fighting Klansmen” and “Superman as Gohan’s dad”, “Superman performing his last and greatest deeds before his death”, and “Superman in love.”
Basically what I’m saying is that maybe it wasn’t for the best that American comics were run by a monopoly of two whole companies that boxed out and marginalized entire genres of stories because a dude in the 50s told America that Batman was making your son gay.
It’s why I prefer manga honestly. You wanna read dragonball? Or One Piece? Or Naruto. You start at volume 1 chapter 1 and read until it ends. Or in One Piece’s case, forever because it never ends. A self contained story with a narrative. And y’know…one dedicated writer who has a plan for what to do with the characters.
I used to be the kind of person like “nah just start where you want”, the problem there is that most people want to start at the beginning. It’s weird that I caped (fnar fnar) for one kind of story told in one kind of manner that no other media engages in and then acted like everyone else was the problem.
Like, Transformers or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been in constant circulation since the 80s and never really went away for any meaningful amount of time. Crucially, however, they exist in distinct phases that use the same iconography to approach new ideas and stories, you don’t have to watch Beast Wars or TMNT’s 4kids cartoon to start reading the IDW comics, they start, do everything they want to do with characters you already like, and stop, and then the cycle repeats.
Even DC itself got into this with their younger reader imprint that told self-contained stories that weren’t in-continuity with each other like Green Lantern: Legacy, Shadow of the Batgirl and Superman Smashes the Klan, and if you want any cleaner symbolism for how utterly borked cape comics are, the idea of releasing stories about Superman aimed at children that didn’t require knowing anything else about him needed its own imprint.
There have been some positive effects to the big ol’ shared superhero universe, we wouldn’t have everyone and their mom trying to make one of their own if continuity was actually for dorks like we’ve been saying for decades, but I don’t think it’s about continuity, I think the main issue is and always has been dragging the exact same characters through the decades where every new story has to square with every other one made not only about that character, but with everyone else in their universe too, and you’re not the only person writing it. At some point in time (and if you ask me that point in time was 2004), Marvel and DC just got too big for their own weight; the best series from these companies like Ms. Marvel, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and Super Sons, those are ones that capture the best of all worlds in writing this kind of comic; you got cool characters in a universe of endless adventure, write till you drop.
Frederic Wertham should probably have cashed cheques from DC the rest of his life even as he insisted they were turning America’s Youth into hoodlums and miscreants, to be honest. He did more good for their place in the comics industry than anyone actually involved in selling the damn things.
You didn’t specify any genre preferences so I’m just gonna gush about my favourites.
– Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (the movie’s just the abridged version of what would later become a full-scope sci-fi epic)
– 20th Century Boys (apocalyptic sci-fi about rock n’ roll and runaway nostalgia. Anything by Naoki Urasawa is good)
– Pluto (Also Urasawa. A reimagining of Astro Boy’s most beloved storyline as a murder mystery)
– Planetes (Garbage men in space fall in love)
– Vinland Saga (by the same author as Planetes, bloody tale of vengeance in 11th century Denmark)
– Devilman (horror comic by way of getting superpowers, one of the most iconic works of manga of all time)
Buuuut if you just wanna dip your toes into your Shonens with your Dragon Ball and your One Piece, you can sign up for the Viz reader for $2 a month. I’m signed up pretty much exclusively for Spy x Family, but even if I’m not crazy about the entire catalogue it’s hard to beat the value.
Haha it’s so hard for me to recommend good beginner manga because I’ve been reading so long. Most of what Spencer said is good.
If you’re interested in Anime I’ve got a few Recommends
1. FLCL a coming of age story about a boy who hates adults. Who gets hit by a bass guitar wielding manic pixie dream girl on a Vespa. And then it gets weirder.
2. Michiko and Hatchin. A woman escapes prison and takes her late boyfriend’s daughter on a cross country roadtrip to find track him down.
3.Cowboy Bebop is an awesome sci-fi serial featuring a ragtag group of space bounty hunters with a bunch of different backstories.
4. Space Dandy. It’s about a Dandy guy. In space. Imagine if Johnny Bravo was a space epic. Probably one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen.
Manga I like
I really love both the anime and manga for Soul Eater. It’s got a cool punkish art style and a cool story. And you can really see Ohkubo improve as he makes the manga.
If you don’t mind going to fan translated stuff, please Check out Shiori Experience. It’s my favorite manga of all time. It’s about a plain teacher who ends up posessed by the ghost…of JIMMY HENDRIX and has to form a band with the students of her class before her next birthday or else she’ll die.
Yu Yu Hakusho is a classic and is done by the guy who did Hunter x Hunter. Solid shounen manga. It deals with a dude who gets hit by a car and dies, and when he’s reincarnated he becomes a spirit detective and fights a lot of demons. It’s got great characters and the manga is hilarious because there is a character who is so short that sometimes he’ll be out of frame except for his hair. It’s completely finished and has been adapted into anime. The manga author is also married to the author of Sailor Moon.
Sailor Moon is another classic, and is a magical girl, shoujo manga.
Full Metal Alchemist is a solid shounen that goes into morality of using alchemy & the after-effects of war and has been adapted into anime repeatedly. The author has also written Silver Spoon, which is a slice of life manga about a dude going to farming school. It’s heartwarming af.
Tomie, or anything by Junji Ito really, is a great way to get into horror manga. It’s so creepy and I really love it.
Other misc series: The Ancient Magius’ Bride, Angelic Layer, Undead Unluck, Tokyo Mew Mew
You should probably narrow things down a bit, Manga covers a pretty diverse subject field. Just asking for Manga recommendations is like asking for a book, with no description of subject matter. I would suggest you Google manga english and find a few english translation fan sites, like Manga Fox, they are generally pretty good and are faster than the official translations. Other options would be Viz as mentioned above, or a subscription to Crunchyroll or other paid manga/anime site.
Not just superheroes, but also nuWho and Sherlock, for example. I don’t know why, but franchises that get taken over by ascended fans have a sad tendency to shift from fun procedural stories about the iconic character doing their thing (fight crime, have adventures in time and space) to grandiose drama about everyone else doing things to the iconic character. Batman, Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes etc. change from agent to objective, from hunter to quarry. Stories about being obsessed with Batman replace stories about solving mysteries.
No, is not a fanart. It was made for fun and for fan, but it’s not a draw or fanfic.
I’ve tried contact him by Patreon and Twitter, but I got no answer.
I’ll wait until tomorrow, so I’ll post anyway.
I think…therapy would help batman come to terms with his parent’s death a bit better, but he’d probably still choose to be batman. His drive to do good is fueled by the trauma of his parents death but he’s still driven to do good. He’s a good guy and I wish more writers treated him like that.
Not all problems can be solved by therapy because therapy does not and cannot alter the material circumstances of one’s life, just give one tools to cope with the material circumstances of one’s life. That’s unfortunately not solving
“All that is holy is deconsecrated, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.“ a real banger of a passage from Ole Charlie and Freddy
FYI, if you’re interested in what Amber’s talking about with this, this long YouTube video on the speedrunning challenges involved goes over it all in great detail (the 8-4 bit is covered at the end): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rIJNT7dCmE
Amber. Honey. It’s… literally impossible for you to do this move. The NES controller you have in your hand literally will not allow you to push both left and right on the d-pad on the same frame, meaning no fast acceleration.
Yeah, speedrunners have a TON of categories for what can and cannot be used in a given run, and being found to modify a controller and then submit your run in a non-modded category would go over poorly. If you want to mod the controller you can run in one of the modded categories.
Whoa, now THIS is weird: if you let your eyes slip out of convergence and re-focus so that frames 3 and 4 merge, you get an ersatz stereo-optic 3D image of the girls talking in their dorm room. It takes a moment of effort to see it, but when you do, it’s kinda cool.
I saw it accidentally at 3:30AM while I was on the throne and haven’t been back to sleep since because now I’ve got one grand headache behind my eyes.
The awkward part of talking about mental health for me is that I only started to get better when I took myself of my antidepressants without telling anybody and then almost died.
That sounds like a dunk, but it’s true. I only reevaluated who I was when I started feeling horrible enough to force myself to change, because all I could do beforehand is talk about feelings I was too dulled to feel. I’ve been a lot more constructive since, my stupid bullshit brain is a puzzle to be solved one piece at a time now. It’s interesting, in a “shit bro you live like this” kinda way.
Yeah but then his clone son that Amanda Waller cooked up by hijacking some guy’s spooge and then hiring Bruce’s ex to murder his parents picked up the slack, so all’s well that ends well.
“Surprised to see me?”
“A little. Frankly, I didn’t expect to live so long.”
“Batman, Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne, Batman. Or have you met?”
“NOT NOW!”
“Great. What did they used to call it, ‘stereo’?”
Do you know how much better Bruce Wayne’s life would be, if he had therapy, and possibly took medication? Yes, the world would be missing out on Batman, and he would most likely not be getting super hero/villain booty, but he would be emotionally and psychologically healthy. There is always a trade off.
Naw. It may have started out as performance art, but pretty sure the whole reason Joker continues to do it is because it lets him spend time with his little potentially-half-brother which is the closest thing to family he has left.
I was going to say that in real life if Bruce Wayne dressed up like a bat and beat up criminals people would say it was a sign of mental insanity, then I remembered Amber is sharing her wakings hours with a superheroic personality of hers. WELL PLAYED, Willis.
I’m expecting huge drama bombs related to Dana, Sara’s inability to step up for Joyce, and now some more Liz shenanigans (’cause you can’t send her off after that, there’s gotta be some resolution!) and it’s probably just gonna be about pointing out all the legal inaccuracies in Ace Attorney.
IIRC, aren’t the Ace Attorney games largely based off of the Japanese legal system, which I’m told can be a bit of a nightmare (the conviction rate being 99.7% for cases that get to trial)?
Amber, I’m only going to say this once, so please, listen through the fourth wall: Batman needs therapy. SO MUCH THERAPY. He also probably needs more sleep. But also, therapy.
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Batman is also FICTIONAL, Amber
…
wait
Skippy Squirrel: But Aunt Slappy, those were cartoons and this is real life!
Slappy Squirrel (to audience): Don’t tell him, he might crack.
Classic!
Now THAT’S comedy! 🙂
I miss an evening and there’s a classic Animaniacs reference.
It’s cute that kids today think of Animaniacs as ‘classic’.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s good stuff, but I was in my 20’s when it came out. Looney Tunes, THAT’s classic.
I will take that compliment.
That said, I actually meant ‘classic’ as opposed to the Hulu reboot (which tragically lacks Slappy).
I was so excited when I heard they were bringing back Animaniacs, but I have been a bit disappointed with it so far. It is pretty good, but it is not as good as the original.
Same.
Heck, a lot of LT is actually older than television (as a medium, not an experiment).
How do we help fictional characters get over their belief in another fictional character?
Science is baffled.
He’s also a giant dick-bag.
Yeah, right?
Get a sense of humor, ya fruit-sucking, bourgeois, underwear-obsessed excuse for a hero!
Well, we don’t actually know that Batman is completely fictional in the DAO universe.
Unless we do and I wasn’t paying attention.
Well you know, “the DAO than can be told is not the true DAO.”
therefore “Batman” is not the true Batman.
Also,
“mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.”
Darkness within darkness?
That’s right, you guessed it.
It’s Batmans all the way down.
this answers your question i think.
When you write it in all caps like this, I read it as talking about digital access objects, and it’s still true.
The characters reference specific real-world Batman media, sometimes by name.
Also if Batman was real in this world people would have treated Amazi-girl very differently
“I don’t want anyone thinking you’re like that nut in Gotham City.”
to be fait lots of fans say “batman go to theraphy”
I occasionally watch speedrunners, whenever there’s some big breakthrough in a game that catches some headlines.
Those people are…is there such a thing as aspirational insanity? I work in software, and if I could put the sort of focus into understanding the minutiae how a piece of software functions that they do I’d probably be a millionaire. And they mostly do it for fun.
That being said, yikes, I also suffer from insomnia thanks to working nights throughout college, and I can say from experience that Amber needs to get some rest. Don’t let all-nighters become a habit at this age, because you get to my age, pull the occasional unintentional one, don’t bounce back like you used to, and spend the next day as the living dead.
Speedruns that focus on the route, optimizations, discovery, and exploiting mechanics are super interesting for me. It’s so cool to see a game I’m familiar with get broken down and rebuilt to achieve a goal.
Obsession over performing frame-perfect maneuvers in round after round of repetitive gameplay is where I lose interest immediately. Different strokes, I guess.
I have little interest in watching the speedrunners perform that kind of thing itself, but the documentary style video essays detailing the journey is often very interesting and sometimes inspiring.
Not to speedrun, but just to accomplish things in general.
Well, there’s an interesting difference between what is theoretically possible and what has been provably performed. Like, for a lot of games, you’ve got people who use tools to achieve impossible levels of perfection, and everyone nods wisely and agrees that asking a human to do this is ridiculous… and then a few short years later, humans are doing it somehow.
It’s kinda neat as a matter of defiance in the face of inevitable obsolesence. Like, an athlete will never outrun an F1 car, given a reasonably fair playing field (e.g. don’t run the poor guy over), right? Except an F1 car has to go in for multiple pit stops over 200ish miles, whereas Dean Karnazes went 800 without sleeping.
It’s not interesting to watch, but it’s cool to hear about.
Yeah, I went bonkers just trying to get the Braid Speedrun achievement
World 6 just… ARGH
Reminds me of when I watched Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, and a clips of a few others have a multi part rage meltdown trying to reach the end of Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy and then watched a speed runner get through it using some absolute brain defying fuckary faster than I could fully process what was going on. Was a HELL of a thing to watch. Sometimes I still watch someone like markiplier, jacksepticeye, or gtlive do a let’s play of a game and then look up a speedrun with that in mind. It kinda makes me appreciate the speed runners more ya know?
Hovertext: YEAH Amber, you clearly belong at an Arby’s instead
I beg to differ.
Captain Jack’s Chicken.
Staying up all night, haunted by strange obsessions, trancelike state?
If she didn’t visit a Denny’s at some point in the night, it’s only because one likely materialized around her.
Or there just aren’t any Denny’s around.
Considering the existential dread Arby is known for, I second that.
And who said Batman doesn’t need therapy? Everyone does, even Batman
Batman is basically defined as a character by his intense need for therapy.
Unfortunately, the quality of mental healthcare available in the DC universe appears…spotty.
Hugo Strange, Jeremiah Arkham, Harleen Quinzel…I guess Jonathan Crane was a professor instead of a practicing doctor but he was still a psychologist.
I think first day at Arkham you get given a mug that says “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!” and eventually start taking it literally.
Hey now! Dr Harleen Quinzel is a perfectly capable therapist! Just deeply susceptible to maniacal clowns
You know what I suddenly want? An Elseworlds story where she’s Bruce Wayne’s therapist instead of Joker’s, deduces from his psych profile that he’s Batman…but falls for him just like she did for Joker and decides to declare herself Batgirl and won’t leave him alone.
…Huh, both Batgirl and Harley have been played by Tara Strong, so there’s our casting choice for the animated adaptation.
I’m genuinely shocked to discover this isn’t already a thing.
Damnit, now I have to get hired at DC so I can make this story. I hope you’re happy.
I would definitely read a series where Harley Quinn is Batman’s therapist. I don’t even care about all that other stuff you just said, Batman therapy sessions with Harley Quinn sounds amazing.
Words cannot describe how much I want this story to happen now. Thanks a lot…
The story I didn’t know ghat I wanted, and certainly the one I need
If she was going for a Robin vibe, there’s a real bird called the Harlequin Quail, but that would take the silliness to 11. I think Harleen as Batgirl with a skirt, bare midriff, and little bat wings attached to the back of her costume would keep the silliness at a solid 9.
Batgirl: You can count on me, Mistah B! I’ll detect that mean ol’ clown and tie him up in front of the police station before you can say “Chiroptera”!
So here’s what I’ve come up with based on this prompt.
Alfred hires Harleen Quinzel as Bruce’s therapist to help him with the loss of his parents (it’s basically his ultimatum for allowing Bruce to be batman is he has to actually work through his issues.) Harley talks to Bruce about the incident and how it affected him and he goes on about how for years he always wondered what he could have done to stop it from happening. But after a while he stopped blaming himself and realized there’s nothing he could’ve done and stopped blaming himself. He also mentions wishing there was someone there to stop it. Someone to help the terrified citizens out in their hour of need. Harley points out that that concept is an idea of comfort for Bruce, in the same way a lot of people in crisis wish for assistance from police or a hero or anything. She also offhandedly remarks that it’s kinda funny how now that he’s grown up there’s a cape wearing superhero out there doing just that. Bruce and Harley laugh about it, him remarking “I guess I was born a bit too early”
Harley continues to make house calls to the Wayne Manner and while Bruce seems like a well adjusted guy she can’t shake the feeling that she’s not making any progress with him. Like he’s got his walls put up. She begins exploring Wayne manner to see if there’s anything about it she can use to understand him better. When she begins coming down a hallway that leads to one of the entrances to the batcave, Alfred sees it on the batcomputer. Bruce tells him to keep her from going down there with a laser grid that will keep her from going any further. At first Harleen is deterred and starts to walk away. Then she takes off her shoes, gets a running start and acrobatically jumps between each of the lasers down the hallway. Bruce and Alfred watch her go through them, commenting on which spots are harder to get through than others and being impressed when she narrowly squeezes past them. She barely makes it to the other side and Both Bruce and Alrfred are understandably impressed. Before Bruce can dismiss it however Alfred opens up the entrance to the batcave. When Bruce tries to reject the idea Alfred tells him that this therapy will never be complete unless Ms. Quinzel is allowed to speak to the man and the bat. Bruce relents.
I’d buy/read it.
Good stuff!
Harley is obviously amazed to see everything and even more shocked to find out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. Bruce tries to play off how uncomfortable he is with it but it’s pretty obvious Alfred put him up to it. He repeats with what Alfred said about her needing to know both sides of the story for this to work out. Bruce begins to talk to harley about what he’s been doing, the training he’s undergone, the places he’s been, improving his detective skills and using the money to try to make Gotham a better place. Unlike before where Harleen had the reigns, she is completely ENTHRALLED by Bruce’s tales. Sessions from here on become less about Therapy and more about Harley really falling in love with not Bruce, but Batman. Bruce begins to sense this and decides to start trying to resume their former professional relationship. Harley realizes this as well and dials it back a bit.
Batman is stopping a crime and is being overwhelemed by swarms of criminals. That’s when a woman in a costume (Either a batgirl faccimile or robin faccimele) and uses her acrobatic skills to help him out. She narrowly avoids being fatally injured but manages to help him out. Batman being “THE WORLD’S GREATEST DETECTIVE” he instantly finds out it’s Harley and tells her to stop doing what she’s doing. She argues that he’s doing the exact same thing and she’s just here to help out. He warns her that if she continues doing this he’ll be forced to turn her into Gordon or take her to Arkham, but she counters with the fact that if he does, she can blow the whistle on Batmans identity. Batman’s kinda stuck and so he has no choice but to accept her. But he figures if she’s gonna do this, he should at least keep her safe. So he trains her, gives her gadgets, helps teach her detective work and his methods. He’s harsh and unforgiving and partly wants her to give up but he’s also a bit amused by how well she’s doing. Eventually she becomes a full fledged side-kick and works with Batman much the same way that Dick Grayson does.
yes
YES
(the Harley is out)
I’m imagining a storyline where they have to fight the Joker and the Joker and Harley are separated from each other and he starts needling her.
“Y’know I’ve seen a lot of crazies in my day. I own a mirror after all, HAHA. So trust me when I say I know one of my kind when I see one. I’ve seen many such cases before. A person trying so desperately to cling to the rules of society. Such a fragile tight rope they walk. You might think you’ve got it all together up there but you’re just holding back your true potential. I can help pull that out of you if you’ll just let yourself go”
Batman comes in and takes him down. He asks harley if she’s alright and she’s a bit shaken.
Harley: “It’s like he was seeing right through me, every thought I’ve ever had, everything I’ve ever done. Like he truly knew me. Am I really destined to turn out like that?”
Batman: “I can’t pretend there isn’t any truth to his words. I’ve found myself coming to that crossroads many times. But I always choose this path, because I can’t allow myself to lose sight of what’s important. That’s the citizens of Gotham, That’s the kid who lost everything in that alley all those years ago. And it’s you too, Harley. If you can promise me that you won’t lose sight of that, I promise I’ll do everything to keep you on that path.
Harley does a big goofy grin and says and continues following batman.
Haha I’m super cheesy. I dunno it’s a fun dynamic to imagine.
See the best part about coming up with ideas for characters that are inherently interpretative is that you get to swap the names and call it your own.
Batman exists because a talented artist (and some asshole parasite) cribbed super hard off of pulp character The Shadow. It’s all yours, Yoto, go for it.
There’s even an episode of TAS that pays homage to that, the one with the model cars blowing things up.
@Yotomoe: I like it! It’s a fun storyline and an interesting dynamic.
@Spencer: Very true. While certain less-than-great current franchises have made it publicly official and obvious, the idea of fanfiction ascending into its own new IP is a tale as old as fiction itself. Just ask Dante.
Or my favorite fanfiction, Lupiin the 3rd.
I would absolutely watch/read the *hell* out of this.
Batman trained hard to be the best at everything. Including being the best at needing therapy.
I wouldn’t bet on that extending to also being the best at speedrunning Mario. There’s only so many hours in a day after all, so I’m happy to assume he limited his video game mastery to Dance Dance Revolution.
I search this comment. Most comic i read pointed out that Batman is insane or that he should stop. Not a idol to copy
I mean I love Mario as much as the next nerd but that really sounds like a huge waste of time. Go back to therapy Amber. If you’ve even been to therapy at all that is.
I did a college term paper on video games as a therapeutic activity. So there.
I don’t know the content of your paper, but I’m here to confirm that games are DEFINITELY therapeutic. At least, they do so for me.
Any specific kinds of games you highlighted?
There is research that playing games like Tetris immediately after a traumatic event can help prevent PTSD. I’m have no idea how well the study or two I read about has held up, but given how something as silly looking as EDMR has a decent amount of evidence that it works for some diagnoses I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s held up well.
I once witnessed a guy blowing his fingers off in a chemistry lab accident. Had heard of that study before, proceeded to play Tetris all night, and ended up with way fewer nightmares than expected. So for me it seems to work!
… I have a morbid and probably ableist question to ask.
If he lost his fingers, or if they were freshly reattached and thus immobilized… how did he play Tetris?
I think Masumi was the one playing Tetris, because they watched someone else blow their fingers off.
OH.
That… that makes more sense, yeah.
I’ve successfully used Tetris to stop flashbacks early in the process as well as the occasional obsessive daymare so I co-sign.
I did no college term papers on the subject but Animal Crossing got most of my friend group through the early pandemic
For me, Minecraft is the therapy game of choice. I almost never play Minecraft just for fun – I only pull it out when I’m upset about something because it calms me down. There is something wonderfully soothing about that game.
I think it’s the calm music and lack of mandatory objectives that do it. It’s just you and a wide open world to explore. Or not, no pressure.
I don’t doubt the therapeutic qualities of gaming. I’m all for it actually but this one situation specifically seems like an unhealthy use of Amber’s time. Not even the fact that she’s overly obsessing over a feat that is supposedly humanly impossible. Human’s break those preconceptions all the time. It’s the fact that she’s sacrificing sleep for it. I’m really surprised people quickly jumped to Amber’s side on this one.
Oh it’s unhealthy as hell but given the standards of both Amber as we’ve seen her through this comic and speedrunners, which Doctor Who NAILED the description of with ‘aspirational insanity’? Yeah this isn’t actually THAT worrisome. Still worrisome! But uh. There are certainly worse.
I have seen in the last year a speedrunning strategy that requires overheating your console, a classic Famicom specifically of which there are a very finite number left in the world to shave off a few precious frames. Don’t remember what game it was, the fact that this was a viable strategy at all tells you something. A Super Mario 64 runner once managed to get a record run because of a stray neutrino hitting the RAM at just the right time to trigger an otherwise-impossible glitch. Wind Waker speedrunners spent a decade looking for a way through an impregnable barrier, despite being unable to come up with one even with computer assistance. There are now two different methods for performing a barrier skip, one in the original release and the other in the Wii U remake. One sleepless night is actually not that out there by these standards.
She should still sleep of course, because she’s not getting those two frames with dulled reaction times, but this doesn’t even rate in the realm of Questionable Choices or Bizarre Tactics Committed in the Name of Speedrunning.
It’s only worrisome because we know Amber, frankly.
I’ve heard of a fighting game super-combo that required a DEFECTIVE CONTROLLER to work, and all the pissbabies threw a fit when the tournament scene banned the defective controllers.
okay all of this speedrunning stuff is news to me and it is fascinating
off to youtube
I find it fascinating too!
And by the way milu, if you check your email, I do believe you’ll find something you’ll like that’s also game-related 😉
Was it Melee? I feel like this was Melee. (Though Melee’s wasn’t necessarily defective, just some potentiometers on the Gamecube controllers were more sensitive than others.)
That might have been it? I don’t really care for competitive gaming so I didn’t really commit any details to memory, it’s just something I remember reading.
I’m pretty sure you’re talking about Melee, yeah. The Gamecube controller thing sounds familiar.
Uh, worse shows up tomorrow (already today if you have Patreon).
Please don’t post Patreon spoilers. That’s not something Willis has looked upon kindly.
One of the craziest speedrun “tricks” I’ve ever heard of was a glitch in Super Mario 64 caused by cosmic radiation from space. Allowed a speedrunner to clip through ceilings or something like that.
Yep! That was the stray neutrino I brought up. They tried REALLY HARD to replicate it before managing to reproduce it by modding the game to flip a certain bit there and concluding it must have been space radiation in the right place at the right time.
“overheating your console, a classic Famicom specifically of which there are a very finite number left in the world ”
Reminds me of something, google up “gamer gunk speedrunning” sometime, both the first video and the part 2 follow up are very interesting watches. Of which has the literal quote “okay we can already see this is fucking stupid right? Just making sure cause if you’re new around here you probably can’t tell what’s satire anymore” in the videos about the time saves discovered by licking your game disc.
(The licking your game disc part isn’t the satire.)
“She should still sleep of course, because she’s not getting those two frames with dulled reaction times”
Well, I know I don’t play in her league, but the only time I was able to beat the last level of Aquanoid (or the last free level ? It’s a long time ago) was in a sleep-deprivation-induced craze…
Video games did not exist when I got PTSD as a child, but I played the crap out of my GameBoy when I was hit with the truck in 2001. I was still in the hospital when I started playing.
Being a world record holder, especially in something as competitive as SMB, is absolutely a goal worth shooting for. And the record she’s talking about is tantalizingly close, so there’s definitely reason to think it’s possible.
Also, yes, Amber needs therapy. In fact, can we just get a therapist or two to move into this hall? It’d save everyone some travel time.
…. but then who would be therapists to the therapists, and would the therapists shave the barber?
A good game developer could in theory break the cycle…
Wait, don’t you have a record to break? Or an essay to write?
i mean… therapists are therapists to therapists all the time? i think this works out?
It’s just an ouroboros of therapists.
no joke, real therapists do need (and, if they’re smart, actually go to) therapy themselves.
I think Boomer fits that niche, or whatever Walky’s roomie’s name is.
“Batman needs therapy” is an extremely common batman hot take.
Hot take, or a simple application of common sense?
Common sense.
Batman is very much defined by the incredibly traumatic experience of watching his parents being murdered in front of him as a child.
There was that episode of Justice League where the heroes got turned into kids and Wonder Woman got on Batman’s case about why he is such a downer and did he never have fun as a kid? Batman’s response was basically that he stopped being a child when his parents died.
In the pilot episode of Deep Space Nine, when Sisko is talking to the Prophets (who don’t really get this “linear time” thing), they keep bringing him back to his wife’s death at Wolf 359. The only explanation they give is that “you exist here”, which he eventually realizes is because that’s where he is most “solid” or “present” along his personal timeline.
In a very real sense, Bruce Wayne is still – and perhaps always will be – in that alley watching his parents die.
Now that Star Wars and Marvel are owned by the same company, it’s time for Star Trek and DC to merge, so Batman (played by Avery Brooks, of course) can become the emissary of the Prophets and save the Alpha Quadrant from an invasion by Planet Clayface. In other news, Mxyzptlk is a Q and the Borg all wear hats.
Life is not a video game, you know.
Nick Bostrom thinks otherwise.
On one hand, I really do know how pushing your limits and becoming better at any pursuit can be really fulfilling and essential in gaining and maintaining a healthy sense of self and self-worth.
However, as fulfilling as it may be, it’s always a good idea to take care of yourself when you’re doing so.
One sleepless night once in a while is a nice experience, and I mean a REALLY nice one, but the brain really can’t function all that well without at least SOME sleep.
Also, according to DC, Batman doesn’t give mustache rides and where’s the fun in that?
Somewhat appropriate Gravitar, FTW.
Well yeah, Batman only has a mustache in DKR, and he wound up shaving it.
I mean, it’s just a euphemism… 🥸 supertroopersmotherofgod.gif 😉
#HeroesDODoThat
I thought SMB speedruns were measured in increments of 21 frames because of the way the victory animations work?
They WERE. There’s a glitch now that can get around that to some degree. It’s stupidly hard to pull off, and is only faster on certain levels, but it’s a thing*.
*I think. I’m not 100% on the details, SMB is not a game I follow.
That’s mostly true, but not for 8-4 – the Speedrun ends the moment you touch the final axe.
That’s true for the first seven levels of the run (1-1, 1-2, 2-1, 2-2, 8-1, 8-2 and 8-3), because every time you finish a level, it waits until the next multiple of 21 frames to start the next one.
But in the last level (8-4), you don’t have to wait for the next level to load. So timing ends the exact frame you end the level — no waiting for the next “frame rule” to move you to another level, because there are no more levels left.
They are, except for 8-4 in which every frame counts. The game will only allow Mario to exit the level and load a new one every 21 frames, but the game ends on 8-4 immediately after hitting the axe and walking right to the princess without needing to load a new map. So that’s the only map where you don’t need to be faster by an increment of at least 21 frames to get a lower total time.
That’s why it’s only on the last level. Time is called the frame you hit the axe, which can be any frame
IIRC 8-4 is the exception. There’s no next level, so there’s no frame rule, so absolutely every frame counts.
That is correct. In all other levels, the frame rule prevents improvements in increments of less than 21 frames. But, on 8-4, there is no frame rule, so single-frame improvements are possible.
Speedrunning is very serious business. It is stressful, can take months or years to beat a record, and randomization in games always makes it harder.
For these reasons, I don’t speed run. I don’t even like games that expect you to beat a time to win.
Batman only achieves peak human perfection after performing cunilingus.
*taps side of head* “Can’t go back to therapy if you never went to therapy in the first place.”
But for real Ambs, go to therapy, please.
Not a great Batman argument seeing as he definitely needs therapy. You can tell the sleep deprivation is kicking in.
Dressing up in a bat-styled costume and beating up criminals at night is clearly something a normal person who doesn’t need therapy does.
In Batman’s case, probably, but as a general rule in his reality? No. Plenty of costumed heroes, even non-powered ones, in the DC universe who don’t have any more need for therapy than anybody else.
Which was why I hated that they changed, e.g., Barry Allen’s origin to give him a dead parent. As if personal tragedy like Bruce’s is necessary for a hero (or makes them “better”); you can’t just do it because it’s the right thing to do.
(In-universe, this is the argument of the long-time antagonist who’s responsible for making it happen, changing the timeline … which suggests that Editorial actually agrees with the bad guy.)
The funny thing about Barry Allen to me is that he has been cool exactly one time in history, and that was in animated film adaptation of the New 52 Justice League.
Everyone else was some manner of horrible smug asshole (Hal Jordan is the least annoying of them, wrap your head around that) and Barry’s just kind of this endearing everyman who everyone likes, except it’s easy to draw the conclusion that it’s because he’s not an outrageous douchebag like the others.
I don’t know why they never rolled with that take on Barry, this goofy dorkface who seriously is just here to help.
I would guess at least some of it’s because that is historically Wally West’s niche as Flash, isn’t it? But it’s not like Flash conflation’s stopped DC so far.
Kindaaaa
Wally in the comics was never really the super comedic goofball from Justice League, he started off as a brash hothead (and also teen republican who complained that his commie teammates weren’t kind to him) and then mellowed out into this sort of Spider-Man~esque “gotta be at my best at all times” character in the Waid run, someone who was getting carrying a really heavy burden of legacy.
Barry in the movie I mentioned is just kinda, like, aggressively normal, like if Danny had superpowers. He’s nice, he’s seriously just here to help, Batman likes him but it’s because he’s actually pretty good at being a superhero and they don’t really gussy it up.
If Barry ever had to be alive again (and he did not), it kind of struck me as the best possible use for the character. There’s nothing complex about him, he’s just chilled out and wants to do nice things with his cool superpowers.
Instead we landed on a guy who had to have an entire separate continuity reboot to explain why the last one that happened wasn’t his fault.
probably that he’s too wholesome and thus either hiding something or just not interesting. :p
To all the commenters above and below me that keep saying Amber needs therapy, for all we know it may not even be an option for her right now for various reasons (financial, lack of qualified professionals in her area, etc.).
Playing games is a great way to relax, and setting records like that provides a great sense of accomplishment that can build her sense of self-worth. It might not seem like much on the surface, but at least at the moment, she may not have any viable alternative.
A sleepless night once in a while is OK, and as long as Amber’s not getting to the point to which she hallucinates Mario spanking his own ass, she should be fine.
Are we sure that was a hallucination? Maybe there’s some kind of game in Mario Kart where that’s a taunt animation. Admittedly might be more a Wario style taunt, but still.
It may not be a Mario game, but I could have SWORN I was seeing things when I first saw THIS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQF6l_NBBV0
Did… did he just … wipe with his cape? and put it right back on?
Come on man …. there’s a big ol’ roll of paper right there!
Super Mario Strikers had some buck wild taunts, what with Waluigi crotch-chopping and Daisy doing the thumb to butt “ooh I’m too hot” thing.
I don’t think Mario spanked his own ass though.
Yeah but not sleeping for 24 hours is detrimental to one’s health not just mental but physical as well she can’t achieve perfection if she is sleep deprived.
Going sleepless once in a while can actually be a good thing if you go about the following day CORRECTLY.
Like, you don’t PERFORM then. You just use the day to RELAX and stuff, and kind of meditate in that brain-state, you know?
Not everybody gets that brain-state. There are people who just get a headache.
And you’ve also people like me, who just get brain-fogged all day and have a 50% chance of randomly falling asleep if we so much as sit down, let alone lie down “just because [we’re] tired, not actually going to sleep”
best case scenario i get very slightly elated post-sleepless nights and sleep 12 hours like a baby the next night.
most likely though i’m just pissy and drowsy all day and still manage to go to bed way too late when i finally do. i may be doing sleep deprivation wrong idk
This os amber we’re talking about. When has she ever gone about something potentially dangerous and self destructive in a healthy or safe way
Just because it might not be an actual option for her, doesn’t mean it’s not something that–ideally–she’d need.
Sometimes ideal isn’t real. Especially during locally and, as of recently, globally tumultuous times.
And hopefully if you’re not unlucky, or at least if you’re not ME, you won’t have to learn that the hard way.
We literally already know why Amber isn’t in therapy. Walky said they weren’t very good ‘here’ and she wasn’t officially diagnosed as a result of that.
Well,
1. That’s Walky saying it, and
2. Ruth and Dorothy both seemed to get something out of it.
In fairness, the number of therapists anywhere who are good at dealing with DID is – I gather – scarce at best.
Being able to help some people doesn’t make a therapist inherently good over all or good for you in particular. Regardless of whether they were good for Dorothy or Ruth to some degree, they weren’t good for Amber. Walky said that was what Amber herself said about it (with a kind of implication that he may have also gone and also not found them helpful after Mike’s death).
The vast majority of therapists have little to no training in treating DID. Some will refuse to treat it entirely or cause harm by treating it incorrectly. We have DID and we were on a waiting list for a specialist for EIGHT MONTHS before there was an opening.
Also, Amber very well could have been going to therapy this whole time and still act like this. Therapy is not instantaneous and especially disorders like DID take many years to get under control. If she’s been going for a few months, there may not be much progress yet.
Yeah, I can see the therapists here being really experienced with depression and anxiety (on a college campus, they damn well better be,) but a lot of therapists don’t believe DID exists, even. Which will not help. But even if she had gotten one narratively tailor-made to help her, we’re only three months out from the complete traumafest that was Book Ten. Breaking thought patterns that are seriously entrenched like that self-destructive self-loathing takes time to do consistently. Hell, even if she hit the antidepressant jackpot I could see them still finetuning dosage at the moment.
(Also, specialists for diagnosing rare/underdiagnosed and -studied conditions. My sympathies and empathy. Almost through waitlist purgatory for assessing my hypermobile joints for Ehlers-Danlos, but we had to schedule an appointment a year out and hope for a cancellation – which did, fortunately, show up. And they don’t take insurance. And the cost for an initial consult is seriously hefty. This is standard.)
And they don’t take insurance. And the cost for an initial consult is seriously hefty. This is standard.
[Heavily amplified and clipped rendition of the American Dad! theme song plays]
AMERICA!
Oh, absolutely. The issue with getting treatment or even diagnosis for these ‘rare’ conditions is that the people who specialize in them are rare enough that I’ve heard even in the UK with its nationalized healthcare, they tend to be in specialized, private practices. They’re rare conditions, after all! If this only appears in 1 in 10,000 people, how many people could possibly be looking for treatment or assessment in any given area? (Hint: divide your population by 10,000 and you’ll probably get a ballpark estimate.)
And a good chunk of the therapists who ARE trained have decided the whole thing must be made up because big-words-to-the-effect-of it’s just so goshdarn weird, and will spend the whole time telling you to stop playing dumb and pretending you’re not (body legal name) or at least trying with some actual subtlety to convince you you’re faking.
A good friend of mine is a therapist and has clients with DID, and it’s hard to find resources for training. They did find one this year that they’re going to, but it’s an out-of-state conference that’s only available in-person. Beyond that, there was like a five-hour video they could buy access to.
It’s kind of ridiculous how little many therapists are trained in dissociative disorders in general. And then they’ll turn people away because they’re not trained in that, but not make moves to address that gap in their knowledge.
There is an ocean of difference between the treatments Ruth and Dorothy need and the treatment Amber needs. The on campus therapists likely specialize in/are trained to deal with more common place issues for students like depression, anxiety, stress, maybe Identity issues and grief. Amber needs a psychologist who’s been trained to treat DID. A therapist trying to treat something they know little about will just end up making it worse
I don’t have DID but I have experience being a broke college student and the only therapy options being not a good fit. People love to say “get therapy” as a cure-all but it’s not that simple and it can be very condescending.
Yeah, when I was in college, the counseling center did more to refer out than actually help me. And then I didn’t go to a referral because of the cost, or because I couldn’t get the schedule to work with my classes and trying to catch the bus to get there, or because it was a service meant for women. And then I’d wind up back at the counseling center after a while and they’d be like, “I see you didn’t take our suggestions last time.”
That’s the Watsonian (in-universe) reason. The Doylist (“meta”) reason is because Amber, as a character, is defined by her mental problems, and so they cannot ever be fully resolved – she’d either cease to exist or become someone entirely different.
It’s pretty in-character too. Amber’s struggles with her mental health have been defined by her inability to accept she deserves help or even that help is something that’s possible.
There is a way to skip Mario sliding down the flag pole back glitching to the other side, but that doesn’t have to do with it. The 21 frame rule deal with how the game checks if you’ve completed the level, essentially the game refreshed every 21 frames (or .35 seconds) and check if the level complete flag has been raised. This is probably because the NES was incapable of checking every frame so they settled on ever 21. Though I suppose Willis might be referencing humans being able to match the TAS run, but I think they’ve already done that.
Sorry, Amber, but if someone does that it will likely be a tabla player. Some of them have insanely fast fingers.
I see the boss has been playing with the avatars again.
Emo Ethan was added.
Liz, too.
People are allowed to want to do utterly pointless things. But also they should still sleep. Trying to do something over and over without a break can make you find it even harder to do it because it can create a baseline level of anxiety that causes you to jump at incorrect moments like when I spent 4 hours in the Final Fantasy Remake trying to make Tifa do 40 pull ups on the highest difficulty of that minigame and hoping the AI didn’t get 46 this time.
There are literally two kinds of people for that minigame: people that can do it in 5 tries max and people that spent at least 3 hours on it.
Sheesh, Amber’s summoning some serious salt.
It’s a funny coincidence that I only recently watched this genuinely interesting video on the Super Mario Brothers speedrun record (regardless of your interest in speedruns) that just shows how much research went into this comic that it is accurate: https://youtu.be/U7RzoIEoSMY
I like Dina’s hoodie
FUNNY THAT, AMBER.
Huh. Well then. Irony it is, gravitar roulette.
That’s actually really incharacter for Amber.
Every game I’ve played of Arkham Horror has indicated that the blasted thing is a sentient, cruel abomination from beyond Time and Space who reorders the cards in the decks at will. Guess the grav roulette is moving in the same direction.
Too relatable. “I’m doing important work” is how I justify all of my bullshit.
This is how every conversation I have with non-speedrunners goes. It *is* peak human perfection! Fight me!
… /j but only halfway
To expand on that. I guess I disagree with how the goal of speedrunning is presented here. The computers are never optimized. Neither are humans! It’s a symbiotic relationship where the Tool-Assisted Speedruns human design and the human speedrunners themselves help each other optimize the un-optimizable. Without speedrunning, we wouldn’t know all of the cool quirks below the surface of our favorite games! Like half-A-presses and whatnot.
Just my onion! I do agree with Dina here. Every speedrunner on earth needs more rest, and Amber does sounds worrisome.
Last thing, Walky already said that Amber’s therapists have been no good. When Booster was introduced.
As I understand it, Super Mario Bros. is. a pretty unique case where the run really is as optimized as it will probably ever be. It’s always possible that some new discovery will allow for even faster times, but such a discovery would be a Big Deal.
I’ve gotten the vague sense that most of the speedrun community has become much better about promoting healthy behavior over the last year or two, but my main visibility is via GDQ, so that might just be following the pack or it might be normalizing being good. Dunno.
I don’t know if speedrunning community has changed re: health norms, it isn’t like esports where money’s involved. Not that I do much running, mostly just watch, so I’m still an outsider in many ways. That and the point of going faster, I guess, makes people want to play shorter, and people aren’t really attracted to the 12+ hour runs unless they just enjoy the game or want to prove something only once. The biggest issue is button mashing. You can absolutely get injured, yet using tools to do it usually makes it a TAS, so there’s reason for people to brute force it. That drive is kind of like what Amber’s doing here, although it’s hard to say for sure, since I’m not familiar with this mario run in particular.
I forgot to remember but really if anything else threatens the safety of speedrunners, it’s when it becomes an obssesion. That’s not glorified, but it’s not exactly discouraged? Other runners tend to be “well, that’s not my business” about it.
To be fair, speedrunning is healthier than like half of the things she has engaged with in this comic, so I say go
is it healthier to speedrun in mario bros than to speedrun in actual moving traffic? probably
I believe Alan Moore had a relevant point when he said Rorschach is what we’d get from trying to be Batman in real life…..I doubt Amber has read Watchmen, though…
Amber’s a huge comics nerd who was a masked vigilante for a while. She’s definitely familiar with Watchmen.
First of all, why would you assume she hasn’t read Watchmen? She’s into comic books, Watchmen is a very well-known and influential comic, she’s probably read Watchmen.
Second, I was going to contest the implied comparison between Amber/Amazi-Girl and Rorschach, because, you know, I like Amazi-Girl, while Rorschach is an irredeemable asshole, but as I think about it, I realize it is actually kinda apt. They’re both characters who read Batman comics as a kid and took away from them that it’s okay to beat people up as long as they’re “bad guys”. They’re different in a lot of other respects, but that core motivation is the same.
You… think Amber hasn’t read what is possibly the most famous comic series ever? AMBER?
“I like the cut of this guy’s jib” – Amber, seeing the angry vigilante with rigid and uncompromising view on morality convinced you can solve anything with sufficient pinching.
Pretty sure they’re being sarcastic.
Heh.
I get what you’re saying, but seriously I’d believe she not only read ‘Watchmen’, she also read the issue of “The Question” where Question reads Watchmen, thinks Rorschach is cool, tries emulating him and regrets it.
To be fair, I feel like a lot of people actually tell Batman to chill out and/or go to therapy.
While this is indeed a noble goal, I guarantee you Amber, you will speedrun better with adequate sleep.
Because sleep deprivation dulls your reaction times. You’re not gonna shave off those frames with dulled senses, come on.
Batman should also go back to therapy.
Hey Yoto!
Will you also be watching Toonami tonight, like I am?
In his timezone it was midnight when this strip was posted who said he wasn’t already?
I miss when Batman was written in a way where he was brooding and gothic, like he sacrifices his own personal happiness and saves the world every day forever, and not as an ineffectual manchild who will never accomplish the slightly lasting goo, and his time would be better spent on literally anything else.
Nowadays I just have Wayne Family Adventures to get my fix for a Batman who isn’t a huge tool who sucks at everything. 1988 really did just ruin cape comics for everybody.
Wayne Family Adventures is the only Batman media I’ve ever consumed in years and it’s amazing. Just… really likeable characters and fun dynamics all around.
Like how is “Batman as an out of depth goofy sitcom dad” not a textual element to his character all the time?
(the answer is that Batman having feelings and being a parent cuts into the power fantasy of grown ass adults. Anyone who has ever said “Batman is realistic and dark” is talking out of the biggest ass that has ever existed)
I think it’s a case of writers being ashamed of or insecure about telling the simple pulpy stories that made the character iconic in the first place. Batman is no longer allowed to just be a broody detective who fights criminals with gimmicks while dressed like a bat, his stories have to be big and important and edgy and assauge the insecurities of the writers and fans about liking the character in the first place.
Frankly it’s not a Batman exclusive problem, the entire superhero genre has it, but Batman might have it the worst.
Exactly. Keep his rogues low level damn. Why does Poison Ivy have to be an omega level city destroying threat? Why is the Joker setting of citywide bombs and causing more mass murder than Gotham’s city limits should even allow. There’s an old comic with the riddler lamenting the fact that now all the villains are these crazed mass murderers instead of just campy serial villains where he’s like “did I miss when they changed the rules?”
https://i.imgur.com/YKwhgX5.png
Batman is far and beyond at his best when it’s just…a detective story with fantastical elements included. Which is why the adaptation of “The Long Halloween” might be my favorite DC Batman thing they’ve done in years.
It’s the kind of thing that happens with characters who exist in perpetuity telling stories defined by serial escalation.
Batman cannot stop the Joker from performing a dastardly crime, he’s already done that. For a Batman story to matter, to count, to be important, it has to be Batman at his smartest, strongest, most inspirational, defeating Joker at his worst and most loathsome with the highest pile of bodies yet.
All the biggest superhero characters go through this. They’ve just been around too long to exist as actual characters anymore. Superman got away with this better than anyone, really, since he’s been Boring and Overpowered for so long that he stopped being a character. Now he’s an archetype to draw wildly different and at times contradictory takes on him like “Superman struggles with his identity as an immigrant while fighting Klansmen” and “Superman as Gohan’s dad”, “Superman performing his last and greatest deeds before his death”, and “Superman in love.”
Basically what I’m saying is that maybe it wasn’t for the best that American comics were run by a monopoly of two whole companies that boxed out and marginalized entire genres of stories because a dude in the 50s told America that Batman was making your son gay.
It’s why I prefer manga honestly. You wanna read dragonball? Or One Piece? Or Naruto. You start at volume 1 chapter 1 and read until it ends. Or in One Piece’s case, forever because it never ends. A self contained story with a narrative. And y’know…one dedicated writer who has a plan for what to do with the characters.
I used to be the kind of person like “nah just start where you want”, the problem there is that most people want to start at the beginning. It’s weird that I caped (fnar fnar) for one kind of story told in one kind of manner that no other media engages in and then acted like everyone else was the problem.
Like, Transformers or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been in constant circulation since the 80s and never really went away for any meaningful amount of time. Crucially, however, they exist in distinct phases that use the same iconography to approach new ideas and stories, you don’t have to watch Beast Wars or TMNT’s 4kids cartoon to start reading the IDW comics, they start, do everything they want to do with characters you already like, and stop, and then the cycle repeats.
Even DC itself got into this with their younger reader imprint that told self-contained stories that weren’t in-continuity with each other like Green Lantern: Legacy, Shadow of the Batgirl and Superman Smashes the Klan, and if you want any cleaner symbolism for how utterly borked cape comics are, the idea of releasing stories about Superman aimed at children that didn’t require knowing anything else about him needed its own imprint.
There have been some positive effects to the big ol’ shared superhero universe, we wouldn’t have everyone and their mom trying to make one of their own if continuity was actually for dorks like we’ve been saying for decades, but I don’t think it’s about continuity, I think the main issue is and always has been dragging the exact same characters through the decades where every new story has to square with every other one made not only about that character, but with everyone else in their universe too, and you’re not the only person writing it. At some point in time (and if you ask me that point in time was 2004), Marvel and DC just got too big for their own weight; the best series from these companies like Ms. Marvel, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, and Super Sons, those are ones that capture the best of all worlds in writing this kind of comic; you got cool characters in a universe of endless adventure, write till you drop.
Frederic Wertham should probably have cashed cheques from DC the rest of his life even as he insisted they were turning America’s Youth into hoodlums and miscreants, to be honest. He did more good for their place in the comics industry than anyone actually involved in selling the damn things.
I am just getting into manga. Do you have any recommendations?
If you’re into superheroes, might I recommend My Hero Academia?
Or, if you want something more adventure-oriented, try Hunter x Hunter.
You didn’t specify any genre preferences so I’m just gonna gush about my favourites.
– Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (the movie’s just the abridged version of what would later become a full-scope sci-fi epic)
– 20th Century Boys (apocalyptic sci-fi about rock n’ roll and runaway nostalgia. Anything by Naoki Urasawa is good)
– Pluto (Also Urasawa. A reimagining of Astro Boy’s most beloved storyline as a murder mystery)
– Planetes (Garbage men in space fall in love)
– Vinland Saga (by the same author as Planetes, bloody tale of vengeance in 11th century Denmark)
– Devilman (horror comic by way of getting superpowers, one of the most iconic works of manga of all time)
Buuuut if you just wanna dip your toes into your Shonens with your Dragon Ball and your One Piece, you can sign up for the Viz reader for $2 a month. I’m signed up pretty much exclusively for Spy x Family, but even if I’m not crazy about the entire catalogue it’s hard to beat the value.
Haha it’s so hard for me to recommend good beginner manga because I’ve been reading so long. Most of what Spencer said is good.
If you’re interested in Anime I’ve got a few Recommends
1. FLCL a coming of age story about a boy who hates adults. Who gets hit by a bass guitar wielding manic pixie dream girl on a Vespa. And then it gets weirder.
2. Michiko and Hatchin. A woman escapes prison and takes her late boyfriend’s daughter on a cross country roadtrip to find track him down.
3.Cowboy Bebop is an awesome sci-fi serial featuring a ragtag group of space bounty hunters with a bunch of different backstories.
4. Space Dandy. It’s about a Dandy guy. In space. Imagine if Johnny Bravo was a space epic. Probably one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen.
Manga I like
I really love both the anime and manga for Soul Eater. It’s got a cool punkish art style and a cool story. And you can really see Ohkubo improve as he makes the manga.
If you don’t mind going to fan translated stuff, please Check out Shiori Experience. It’s my favorite manga of all time. It’s about a plain teacher who ends up posessed by the ghost…of JIMMY HENDRIX and has to form a band with the students of her class before her next birthday or else she’ll die.
Oh yeah and Jojo. I’ll recommend Jojo til the cows come home.
Manga recommendations my time has COME…
Yu Yu Hakusho is a classic and is done by the guy who did Hunter x Hunter. Solid shounen manga. It deals with a dude who gets hit by a car and dies, and when he’s reincarnated he becomes a spirit detective and fights a lot of demons. It’s got great characters and the manga is hilarious because there is a character who is so short that sometimes he’ll be out of frame except for his hair. It’s completely finished and has been adapted into anime. The manga author is also married to the author of Sailor Moon.
Sailor Moon is another classic, and is a magical girl, shoujo manga.
Full Metal Alchemist is a solid shounen that goes into morality of using alchemy & the after-effects of war and has been adapted into anime repeatedly. The author has also written Silver Spoon, which is a slice of life manga about a dude going to farming school. It’s heartwarming af.
Tomie, or anything by Junji Ito really, is a great way to get into horror manga. It’s so creepy and I really love it.
Other misc series: The Ancient Magius’ Bride, Angelic Layer, Undead Unluck, Tokyo Mew Mew
You should probably narrow things down a bit, Manga covers a pretty diverse subject field. Just asking for Manga recommendations is like asking for a book, with no description of subject matter. I would suggest you Google manga english and find a few english translation fan sites, like Manga Fox, they are generally pretty good and are faster than the official translations. Other options would be Viz as mentioned above, or a subscription to Crunchyroll or other paid manga/anime site.
Not just superheroes, but also nuWho and Sherlock, for example. I don’t know why, but franchises that get taken over by ascended fans have a sad tendency to shift from fun procedural stories about the iconic character doing their thing (fight crime, have adventures in time and space) to grandiose drama about everyone else doing things to the iconic character. Batman, Doctor Who, Sherlock Holmes etc. change from agent to objective, from hunter to quarry. Stories about being obsessed with Batman replace stories about solving mysteries.
Hey, people. I’ve made something. But I want to ask Willis first if he is cool in allow me to share it or not.
I trying to tell him, to show him this thing. The problem is, as you all know, it’s very hard to contact him.
I really don’t know what to do, ahahahahah.
I’m sure if its fan art or anything cool, I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to see if here.
In fact, I think we’d ALL be happy to see it! Post away!
No, is not a fanart. It was made for fun and for fan, but it’s not a draw or fanfic.
I’ve tried contact him by Patreon and Twitter, but I got no answer.
I’ll wait until tomorrow, so I’ll post anyway.
Oooo! Is it an animation? Does it involve animation?
No, no no no no, is not like that.
Then something with food? Or music?
’cause otherwise I’m all outta guesses! 😜
Regardless, I can’t wait to see it! Post away!
They engineered an alternate universe where Dumbing of Age is real obviously
Try his Twitter, if it’s more complicated than fan art?
He is not that hard to get hold of, best bet is his twitter, or he might spot your post here and respond.
This spech about Batman is very real and I’m think about it: could his problems be solved by therapy? Could all problems be solved?
“As the size of the therapist grows, the number of problems they are incapable of solving approaches zero”?
No, because for most Batmen if they were happy they wouldn’t be Batman anymore so the writer can’t allow therapy to fix their problems
And then some villain he could have stopped would poison half of Gotham.
I think…therapy would help batman come to terms with his parent’s death a bit better, but he’d probably still choose to be batman. His drive to do good is fueled by the trauma of his parents death but he’s still driven to do good. He’s a good guy and I wish more writers treated him like that.
Not all problems can be solved by therapy because therapy does not and cannot alter the material circumstances of one’s life, just give one tools to cope with the material circumstances of one’s life. That’s unfortunately not solving
“All that is solid melts into air…”
“All that is holy is deconsecrated, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.“ a real banger of a passage from Ole Charlie and Freddy
Amber, you might just be faster if you get some rest.
Oh so it’s not depression it’s just your average video game marathon fix, that’s more understandable. OK carry on.
Amber… a lot of people think Batman is crazy and desperately needs therapy. Dina is 110% right.
FYI, if you’re interested in what Amber’s talking about with this, this long YouTube video on the speedrunning challenges involved goes over it all in great detail (the 8-4 bit is covered at the end): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rIJNT7dCmE
wow thanks! i am curious, but my scattershot searches have yielded nothing but baffling videos and obscure lingo.
Nice find.
Amber, we need to talk about parallel universes.
Also, maybe you and Batman should go to therapy together.
any superhero group therapy in the Bloomington area?
Amber wants more than anything to backwards long jump away from all her problems.
Okay, but speed runners do operate on another level…
Amber. Honey. It’s… literally impossible for you to do this move. The NES controller you have in your hand literally will not allow you to push both left and right on the d-pad on the same frame, meaning no fast acceleration.
It’s TAS only for a reason.
Watch her do it anyway, and that’s the last straw that breaks the audience’s suspension of disbelief about her abilities.
What I’m hearing is that we need to do some potentially illegal controller modifications
I don’t think there’s any legislation dictating acceptable controller mods.
There’s probably a couple, but I was more thinking about breaking the internal rules of the speedrunning community
Yeah, speedrunners have a TON of categories for what can and cannot be used in a given run, and being found to modify a controller and then submit your run in a non-modded category would go over poorly. If you want to mod the controller you can run in one of the modded categories.
I think it’s a different kind of fast acceleration (my knowledge is based on the summoning salt video).
Whoa, now THIS is weird: if you let your eyes slip out of convergence and re-focus so that frames 3 and 4 merge, you get an ersatz stereo-optic 3D image of the girls talking in their dorm room. It takes a moment of effort to see it, but when you do, it’s kinda cool.
I saw it accidentally at 3:30AM while I was on the throne and haven’t been back to sleep since because now I’ve got one grand headache behind my eyes.
Haha yeah! Nice!
I don’t know as much about in Mario, but the AI in several video games can absolutely do things a human player cannot normally do.
The awkward part of talking about mental health for me is that I only started to get better when I took myself of my antidepressants without telling anybody and then almost died.
That sounds like a dunk, but it’s true. I only reevaluated who I was when I started feeling horrible enough to force myself to change, because all I could do beforehand is talk about feelings I was too dulled to feel. I’ve been a lot more constructive since, my stupid bullshit brain is a puzzle to be solved one piece at a time now. It’s interesting, in a “shit bro you live like this” kinda way.
Batman got heart problems and ended up a bitter reclusive old man Amber, chill and go to therapy
Yeah but then his clone son that Amanda Waller cooked up by hijacking some guy’s spooge and then hiring Bruce’s ex to murder his parents picked up the slack, so all’s well that ends well.
Terry – The one good thing Amanda Waller did in her life.
Hey, she melted down the android body “Baldy” was going to put his brain in. And got the President to call of the airstrike.
And, uh… um… hm.
I’ll get back to you, okay?
Amazing that any Batmen live long enough to retire
“Surprised to see me?”
“A little. Frankly, I didn’t expect to live so long.”
“Batman, Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne, Batman. Or have you met?”
“NOT NOW!”
“Great. What did they used to call it, ‘stereo’?”
Batman is what now
Literally everyone says that about Batman, in universe and out
More grav roulette
Seriously why’s it so hard to get a girl again
Oops accidentally started a new thread. Feel free to delete all this willis
Yeah this works for now
Again…
i mean, batman should definitely chill out and go to therapy
WWBD, What Would Batman Do? He’d continue to grind it out until he made a perfect run.
Do you know how much better Bruce Wayne’s life would be, if he had therapy, and possibly took medication? Yes, the world would be missing out on Batman, and he would most likely not be getting super hero/villain booty, but he would be emotionally and psychologically healthy. There is always a trade off.
Until he realized that he couldn’t read a newspaper, or any of the books in his house…
Well it would be fine until the Joker killed everyone in Gotham.
Naw. It may have started out as performance art, but pretty sure the whole reason Joker continues to do it is because it lets him spend time with his little potentially-half-brother which is the closest thing to family he has left.
Joker in fact would not be the Joker if he had not met Batman.
Oh hey I’m Amber now.
Neat.
Oh my god, Amber, go to freaking therapy!!
Turns out she did, it just didn’t take.
Only if you pay for her 😛
Speedrunning is not for me.
I was going to say that in real life if Bruce Wayne dressed up like a bat and beat up criminals people would say it was a sign of mental insanity, then I remembered Amber is sharing her wakings hours with a superheroic personality of hers. WELL PLAYED, Willis.
Oh wait a sec, today’s Saturday.
That means Liz gets the whole weekend to stick around!
And the next chapter is called Trial and Sarah!
Assuming the chapter title doesn’t change between then and now. But yes! More Sarah!
I’m expecting huge drama bombs related to Dana, Sara’s inability to step up for Joyce, and now some more Liz shenanigans (’cause you can’t send her off after that, there’s gotta be some resolution!) and it’s probably just gonna be about pointing out all the legal inaccuracies in Ace Attorney.
Inaccuracies in Ace Attorney? Gasp!
IIRC, aren’t the Ace Attorney games largely based off of the Japanese legal system, which I’m told can be a bit of a nightmare (the conviction rate being 99.7% for cases that get to trial)?
Amber, I’m only going to say this once, so please, listen through the fourth wall: Batman needs therapy. SO MUCH THERAPY. He also probably needs more sleep. But also, therapy.
DON’T BE LIKE BATMAN.
if shes doing what i think shes attempting to do then GOD SPEED