Vicki Vale: And What Do You Have To Say About The Rumors That Bruce Wayne And Batman Are The Same Person?

vicki vale: and what do you have to say about the rumors that Bruce Wayne and Batman are the same person?

12 year old, newly appointed robin, jason todd: ??? that would be really weird cause i’ve literally seen them kiss before??

bruce: *in the Wayne tower, popping up from his paperwork* …something just happened…

How Would I Write A Batman TV Series

Hello! So I'm a huge fan of Batman. He's been my favorite superhero since I was five and one of my favorite movies of all time is The Batman (2022). So as a writer of course I've had ideas about a Batman TV series (animated or live action). It would be werid if I haven't thought about it. Now I doubt I'll ever actually get to make that idea a reality but it's the thought that counts!

Back when I first came up with the idea for this hypothetical series I actually wrote part of a script for it. It's just first and last scene of the episode but it counts for something. It was the first time I had written in screenplay format and I haven't done it since so It's most likely a little rough but my thought process behind all of it was simple.

Here is the last scene of the hypothetical first episode. The Wayne Murders.

Why is this the last scene?

I wanted to be different. In a lot of Batman stories the story kicks off with the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne. So having the first episode end with their deaths seemed fun. I wanted the viewer to spend time with the Wayne's before tragedy struck.

Why is Selina Kyle there?

I was inspired by the show Gotham's take on the Wayne Murders, where Selina Kyle was actually present for them. I thought it would be cool to have Selina and Bruce be duo protagonist of the series. Throughout this first episode we are not only following Bruce but we are also following Selina. I wanted to parallel them in cool intresting ways.

We see the difference between them and how they live. Bruce is a sheltered and carefree while Selina has seen far to much for some one her age. Bruce is the son of a wealthy family while Selina is the daugther of a family living in poverty who has to steal to survive. Bruce has a happy loving family and Selina doesn't.

Bruce wears pristine fashionable clothes his parents bought for him while Selina's clothes are more run down and worn. Bruce goes to a private school and Selina goes to a public one. Bruce has a circle of close friends while Selina has her little sister and stray cats she feeds

Even the lightning of their scenes would be different. Selina's would be cold and dark while Bruce's would be warm and bright. Selina is in closed spaces while Bruce is in open ones.

They have nothing in common until one day Bruce and his parents step foot in a dark, cold alley way. Then suddenly they have a lot in common while still being different in so many other ways.

Now on to the first scene which I never finished writing.

Now I don't have much for this scene. I wanted it to be clear throughout the episode that Thomas is worried about something or is working on something beacuse I thought it would be a cool set up for the Court of Owls. And that's it. That's why this season exists. Told you I didn't have much.

That's all for now. We'll talk about this again whenever I decide to work on character arcs and villians.

is titling your metas too tacky? I don’t know but here’s some ramblings on

reading anakin’s arc in ROTS as a journey of mental illness:

I wanna preface this by saying I’m not a mental health professional so this information and analysis is not expertly informed. This is based off of very mild research that I’ve done as well as just my lived experience with how I’ve witnessed mental illness in the people I know and love. If I say anything that is ignorant, please do not hesitate to respectfully let me know.

••••••••

First off, it’s well worth establishing that Anakin’s main grappling moments before his true turn to evil in episode 3 were caused by the fear of losing Padme. And when you see the way the news of her pregnancy affects him, it’s really easy to see that news/piece of information as Anakin’s central stressor or trigger. So it’s very important to note that whatever mental illnesses I talk about here would also have been exacerbated by both that fact and by Palpatine’s influence and manipulation.

Anakin’s big outburst with order 66 and his fight with Padme and Obi Wan could all speak to it being an episode of psychosis. Psychosis can be triggered by something as mundane as an extreme disruption in sleep— which was true for Anakin from the minute Padme tells Anakin she’s pregnant. Interestingly, he’s had a history of sleep loss since AOTC too, briefly mentioning to Obi Wan that he doesn’t sleep well anymore.

Further, psychotic episodes or disorders will contain one or more of five categories: delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thought, disorganized behavior, and negative symptoms. We know already that both in AOTC and ROTS, he’s plagued with visions. (This one’s just obvious. Visions… dreams… hallucinations… Just because they actually come true doesn’t mean it isn’t a form of hallucination!! He’s seeing things that aren’t yet real!!!) But the twisted logic Anakin develops leading him to equate the mass murder of younglings with doing the right thing is akin to disorganized thought and delusion. His main delusion, obviously, is that he has to do unspeakable things and be a sith or else Padme will die in childbirth and this is the only way he can save her. This is close to what’s called a nihilistic delusion: when someone believes major catastrophes will occur if not for performing a certain action.

Now, sleep loss obviously doesn’t cause psychosis on its own but moreso is what pulls the trigger on psychosis in someone who’s been exposed to trauma or is already very mentally ill. That then begs the question: what are the broader underlying conditions to Anakin’s psychosis?

The most obvious answer is the trauma he suffered at such a young age. Anakin was the oldest youngling to have ever been recruited by the jedi. He had already grown to know the love of his mother, especially since it was the only true love he really had in his life up until that point, and then was forced to walk away from it. He also knew powerlessness, and knew the degrading nature of being someone’s property. Like even as a kid, you understand the lack of autonomy that comes with slavery. Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, his mother had to be brutally tortured and killed! And as reckless as Anakin was at the beginning of AOTC, he wasn’t outright violent until then. Losing the first thing he ever knew to love and protect is a deeply scarring trauma, especially when it happens before you reach the age of twenty.

So trauma does play a significant part in triggering the psychosis in the 3rd quarter of ROTS, especially because having visions of losing Padme that were so similar to the visions he had of his mother dying, re-opened his trauma, sort of akin to retraumatization as often seen in people with PTSD.

However, many signifcant aspects of his character point not to PTSD, but to a type of dissociative disorder. We see so many small signs of complete dissociation in Anakin in ROTS, and hints of it in AOTC as well when he says he’s not supposed to be feeling angry, that there’s a war inside him, that he isn’t the jedi he was meant to be, etc. Already, he has a lot of identity confusion, a key component to dissociative disorders. To some extent, how could he not? He’s been pried from his mother’s hands and has been told by dozens of jedi and other people who he is and isn’t supposed to be since the age of 9. It’s not exactly giving him healthy and reasonable standards to live up to, nor is it giving him any room to embrace an identity of his own creation in any way. Before then it was Tatooine, and it’s not exactly like being a slave held space for him to really form and express an identity then either, apart from the identity of loving son. (The dramatic reaction to her death is starting to make more sense now, yeah?)

The depersonalization and derealization are very present in him, especially when he starts to confuse his dreams for reality/being set in stone and grapples with wondering who he even is anymore. Again, those two things are staples of dissociative disorders, which were likely set off and exacerbated by his trauma from childhood and youth.

Such a major component to the argument that Anakin has some dissociative disorder is the paranoia we see practically oozing out of Anakin’s pores by the end of ROTS. (Oozing like lava- I SAID NOTHING CARRY ON.) A huge part of the paranoia is Palpatine’s creation, because he wanted Anakin trusting no one so that it’d be easier to have him eating out of the palm of his hand. But extreme paranoia is indicative of mental illness, and you know it’s not a healthy and stable Anakin who’s shouting “LIAR!” at the love of his life and mother of his children, who’s lying to her hours before that, who’s distrusting of the man who, as he says in AOTC, is the closest thing he has to a father. Padme and Obi Wan were the people he loved most in the world, and so seeing the paranoia turn him against them is so heartbreaking, because it’s the true indicator that this is not the true Anakin we’re dealing with. We are not our worst moments. We are our happiest ones. And Anakin on Mustafar was not a mentally stable Anakin. Hell, with the dissociative disorder’s symptoms at play too, it was hardly even Anakin at all.

We also see partial hints of amnesia in Vader/Anakin, most notably when Palpatine has to tell him/remind him that he choked out his own wife. There’s such a devastating tragedy to Anakin asking “Where’s Padme?” like a dog who doesn’t realize he killed the crow he held in his teeth minutes before, and wants it for a companion to play with once more. But it also shows memory loss, a key component of dissociative disorders, further supporting the idea that Vader is of Palpatine’s creation, whom he metaphorically implanted into Anakin during his phases of dissociation to control Anakin and snuff him out, but Anakin’s love for Padme still seeps through in Vader for a moment and he doesn’t remember what he did. To this extent, I think Vader loves Padme as well. Vader/Anakin deep into a psychosis and paranoid rage, however, did not.

A clear pattern begins to form: the childhood trauma of slavery and of losing a parent led to the development of a dissociative disorders (which are often caused, studies show, by unstable and frightening environments in youth or just as a way to cope with trauma). Then, his dissociation sets off an psychosis episode, agitated by Palpatine’s influence and manipulation during Anakin’s most vulnerable moments. Thus, the fall of Anakin Skywalker through the lens of someone with mental illness.

I do want to recognize that people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) are often poorly stereotyped as these very“Dr. Jekyl vs. Mr. Hyde” evil alter ego archetypes that are very harmful and not accurate. I do not intend to perpetuate these stereotypes any further. Identity alteration is a symptom of various dissociative disorders, not just DID, and so there can exist within Anakin that alteration of his identity to something so far removed from his original self during a dissociative episode or during psychosis without it necessarily being DID. To me, that’s what happened. Vader and Anakin, though treated like two distinct people by more than one character, are too enmeshed to be separate personalities. They aren’t the same, but it’s also worth noting that Anakin was able to do the right thing when it came to saving Luke. He never truly left. It was a matter of giving him a purpose, after having lost so many, to break free from the dissociative episode and the identity alteration and to return back to who he truly was, even at the risk of re-opening those old and painful wounds that time could never heal.

Finally, and most importantly, Anakin’s displayed symptoms of mental illness, his rage and trauma, and his grapplings with identity are not inherently evil things. Vader would not have even been so dark and so cruel a person if Palpatine hadn’t seen/felt/identified that space in Anakin for something wicked to grow and taken advantage of that, as people with mental illness often are. Palpatine planted the seed where something good or healthy could have grown, an identity that could have protected Anakin from his past trauma, from his visions, from himself, and instead Palpatine made it the thing that destroyed Anakin and everything he held dear.

And that’s a wrap!

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I love you from the bottom of my heart and I mean that. You have thoughts? Share them! Comment or reblog or don’t be afraid to dm me!

TL;DR Anakin is mentally ill as fuck and somebody had to figured out what was going on in pookie bear’s twisted little neuron nugget

Solidarity

listen ok so i made some good jokes yesterday about Lestat having an onlyfans but i am back today with a new essay and this one is entitled

Why The Invention Of Social Media Is Going to Permanently Save Loustat's Fucking Marriage

come on this journey with me.

ok so on one hand we have Louis, who does not like to leave the house except when he absolutely fucking has to and even then he resents it. my man wants to be at home with a book 100% of the time and he's so fucking valid for that. When he leaves the house, bad things happen to him. He has learned this and honestly i can't fault his evidence. it sucks out there. it truly incredibly sucks out there.

the problem is that sometimes he is married to lestat, who starts clawing at the walls if people aren't paying attention to him for 12 consecutive seconds, and being Out Of The House is the best place for him to go foraging for People To Pay Attention To Him. my man once had a rock star career the way that some people get addicted to meth brewed in a trashcan in someone's garage. Louis, through no fault of his own, is simply not capable of filling this psychological need no matter how hard he tries, except he should not even HAVE to try like that, because no one can do it, because Lestat is fucked up and like wasn't hugged enough as a child or something

this imbalance in their relationship is the core source of all their marital problems since day 1: THIS man's idea of a good time is chilling on the sofa in silence and maybe staring contemplatively at the wall for a while, and THIS man starts self-destructing at a truly astonishing rate if no one is making eye contact with him. If you make Louis go outside and socialize with people, he's miserable and sulking and whining about "are we done can we go home". If you make Lestat sit in silence in a chair for five minutes he starts crying and claiming that No One Has Ever Loved Him, Ever, Ever, And No One Understands Him, And He Hates Everyone In This House and He Is Being Actively Neglected And Cruelly Mistreated Right Now And No One Even Bothers To Feel Sorry For Him, This Is BASICALLY Domestic Violence Against Him Personally, If Only Anyone Knew About The Quiet Hidden Tragedies Of An Unhappy Marriage, and then he breaks some furniture and a window and isn't seen again for six weeks and comes back like "you will not believe what just happened, i [checks notes] met Merlin and also a dragon who gave me three wishes, brb i'm going to write another book about it :))))"

all you fucking have to do to fix their problems is to hand Lestat a cellphone and say the words "do you know about social media? you can say whatever shit you want and there's always someone awake in some time zone to talk to you." Suddenly Lestat is now very interested in sitting quietly on the couch, Lounging Alluringly and posting thirst traps on instagram and finally getting emotional fulfillment from all the likes and comments of "omg???? omg this is the hottest man alive". he does not have to leave the house anymore to get his attention meth. His yawning abyss of neediness is being fulfilled by having parasocial relationships with millions of strangers online who all think he's sexy and don't have to experience how fucking awful he is up close. he can flirt pointlessly with 200 people at once which is FINALLY ENOUGH FLIRTATIONS FOR HIM TO SATISFACTORILY JUGGLE

Meanwhile Louis is 3 feet away, vaguely reflecting to himself that HE is feeling all emotionally fulfilled because they're spending this great Quality Time together in perfect silence while he reads his book and Lestat plays on his cellular telephone and only OCCASIONALLY giggles to himself or says "louis which of these photos do you think is sexier, the one with four buttons undone or the one with five buttons undone" Louis is feeling like his Opinion is being Valued, Louis feels like he is being Consulted on Matters that are Important To Lestat. He has opinions about the photographs. It is not that much trouble to be interrupted from staring philosophically at the wall to spend five seconds looking at a photograph and then saying "that one". Finally he is experiencing Cozy Domesticity. he is so horny about it. lestat is surprised and bewildered about the sudden sharp increase in the amount of sex he is now getting but before he can make any vaguely mean comments about it (bc he's confused and vaguely defensive and worried that it's going to stop out of nowhere and he doesn't know any other interpersonal skills for expressing a thought) his phone pings about how he's just broken 5 million followers on instagram and he totally forgets to even mention the sex thing, which means that he continues getting the sex instead of inciting an argument about the sex and going through his 800th divorce from Louis

all their friends are extremely confused when a whole month, and then six months, and then a year goes by without another Loud Divorce happening and no one crashing through their front door like "I HAVE TO SLEEP IN YOUR GUEST COFFIN FOR THE NEXT MONTH, HE IS INTOLERABLE". They are worried. they are concerned. what is going on over there. are they both dead. no, they can't both be dead, Lestat just posted another tiktok of him sucking on his own fingers, which he would not be doing if Louis were dead. there is an ecosystem collapse happening in the groupchat and it's because the main Drama Vectors have been neutralized