Just an autistic dude in a neurotypical world

everyone is late teens-early thirties. these are worlds flattened in their demographics to the coveting of sexually available youth. there are no mothers with young children, no sons caring for older mothers, no elderly people who aren't evil and no children that aren't cardboard cutouts instead of developing people.

i knowww this is a symptom of me not being the target audience for this, and i understand that people don't come to these books for complex worlds but for erotica and romance, i know! so this is my caveat before i rant more that i'm not being super serious i'm just discussing something i've noticed i appreciate in more complex worlds

it especially stings in medieval fantasy (and by that i mean largely Western medieval fantasy) settings. it reeks of an inability or refusal to conceptualize a society and communities (or lack thereof) isolated from modern capitalist ideals, particularly the nuclear family. you don't know the kind of labor elderly women did to keep the world running in the premodern era.

who taught your nondescript background serfs to embroider the belts they're wearing? who made their 'roughspun tunics?' who weaved their blankets? who cares for the children while the parents are working in the fields? who brews their ale? who passes on their stories, medical knowledge, songs? why aren't there any older women in your clergy, helping manage your estates, present in your royal court? who are your midwives? who does your teenaged protagonist learn from and look up to?

beyond that, how do you treat your old women? are they all evil witches, all tradition-obsessed backward fossils, all smothering female relatives, all background extras? are they and their bodies cheap punchlines and jumpscares? where do your women go when they're too old for you to imagine them with sexual appetites and complex personalities beyond grandmothers and jealous evil hags?

children exist as infants or late teens only, ironing out the uncomfortable ugly years of a person becoming a person, teens without acne and without social awkwardness and fully developed in their competencies and personalities without the difficult part of growing up and learning included. babies are allowed because they're cute, they're basically props, a goalpost for the main romance of the book to satisfy heteropatriarchal expectations of couples instead of the main characters subverting any expectations. not to mention that most of these protagonists i can't imagine being 12, 13 years old. they sprung up fully formed at 19 before being whisked away by a love interest so overtly sexual he circles around to being sexless and utterly unappealing.

don't get me STARTED on how i hate seeing characters propping up relationships of main characters instead of being complex on their own.

slut

good boy

sweetheart

baby

And he HATES it.

It's not that he hates being smart, he just hates how he can never quite predict how dumb everyone else is.

Just when he thinks he knows how low Guy's IQ is: "we are both of the cloth"

No, Lois, we can't repel down there, WHERE WOULD WE GET THE EQUIPMENT?

DO YOU REALLY NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CIRCLES AND SPHERES?!??!?

WHY WOULD YOU BRING YOUR DOG TO THIS TEAR IN THE FABRIC OF REALITY?

And then, when there's someone who actually is intelligent, it's like the intelligence only increases their capacity for dumbassery

🦇 THAT TIME BATMAN CALLED THE JOKER A MOTHERF*CKER

---

Let me take you back.

It’s 1989. You’ve just popped that Blockbuster rental copy of Batman into the VCR. Tim Burton. Michael Keaton. Jack F*cking Nicholson. You’re 7 years old, wide-eyed, unsupervised, and this isn’t just a movie — it’s a holy document. A rite of passage. A VHS scroll of Gotham scripture.

You’re deep into it. The museum scene just passed — Joker’s dancing to Prince, defacing priceless art, and trying to woo Vicki Vale with homicidal paint fumes.

Batman busts through the skylight, grabs the girl, batarangs a couple of goons into trauma therapy, and disappears into the night like a cryptid with a grappling hook addiction.

You’re hooked.

But nothing — nothing — prepares you for what happens next.

Bruce is in the Batcave.

He’s running files. Pulling receipts. Zoom-enhancing like a 1989 hacker-savant on high-octane vengeance. And then — he remembers it.

Remembers something Joker said as a homicidal bar off the dome.

> “You ever dance with the devil in the pale moonlight?”

That line. That cursed little nursery rhyme Joker drops before he shoots people in the face with Looney Tunes handguns.

And Bruce pauses.

The air gets thick. He flashes back to that alley. The pearls. The scream. The muzzle flash that turned him from boy to bat.

That line — it’s not just villain shtick. It’s the password to his origin trauma.

Fast forward.

Final act. Cathedral. Joker’s dragging Vicki Vale up what feels like 7,000 haunted stairs. Batman’s in pursuit, pissed, bleeding, emotionally cooked.

The belfry showdown begins.

And here it is.

The moment.

You swear it happened.

Batman grabs Joker by the collar, throws him into a pile of gothic architecture, and rasps out in his Michael Keaton bat-growl:

> “I’m gonna kill you, motherfucker.”

Not “scum.” Not “joker.” Not “you killed my parents.”

Motherfucker.

You paused the tape.

You rewound it.

You called your cousin in from the hallway.

> “Did you hear that? He said motherfucker.”

Your cousin shrugs. Your mom yells at you for rewinding too much. Your sibling’s trying to fix the tracking on the VCR.

But deep in your soul?

You know what you heard.

Except…

That line?

Doesn’t exist.

Nowhere in the actual script. Not in deleted scenes. Not in director’s commentary. Not even in the weird foreign dub where Joker laughs in French.

But you remember it.

You remember it.

Clear as day.

That’s how powerful Batman (1989) was.

It didn’t just tell you a story. It installed a glitch in your cortex. A false memory so emotionally potent that it warped VHS playback and left you with cinematic PTSD.

And don’t even get me started on the Joker’s line about rhubarb.

> “Never rub another man’s rhubarb.”

What?

Why?

What does that mean?

We don’t know. We didn’t know then. We still don’t.

But it was iconic. It felt important. It felt like… prophecy.

Let’s be real.

Michael Keaton was unhinged Batman before Bale made it method. Before Pattinson made it depressive. Before Clooney added nipples.

This Batman said “You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts,” like a man who eats drywall and challenges demons to bare-knuckle therapy.

So yes.

You remember him saying “motherfucker.” Because it felt earned.

Batman had been holding it in for 90 minutes. For 30 years. For his entire goddamn inner child.

And when he said it? You felt seen.

Mandela Effect?

Maybe.

Or maybe you just had the unrated cut that played only in your head.

And maybe that’s the only cut that matters.

Sleep well.

And if you ever catch a rerun of Batman (1989), turn the volume up. Right at the belfry fight.

And listen closely.

> If you hear it… > If you hear that raspy growl say > “I’m gonna kill you, motherfucker…”

You’re not crazy.

You’re just remembering the Bat-F-bomb Timeline that VHS tried to erase.

🦇 Reblog if you swear you heard Batman say “motherf*cker.” 🕰️ Reblog if your childhood memories came with static lines and tracking issues. 🃏 Reblog if Joker’s rhubarb line lives rent-free in your frontal lobe.

💥 Reblog if you’re 91% sure this happened… and 9% willing to fistfight over it.

1. "Five second rule!" while scrubbed, after dropping a sterile scalpel on the floor (no they did NOT pick it up again but I swear everyone's buttholes puckered)

2. (spoken during the closing of a particularly long and difficult case) "Nurse - my tunes." :heavy metal starts blasting:

3. Gently to a fretful patient, pre-anaesthesia: "It's going to be okay. I promise, I've dealt with worse." As soon as the patient is unconscious: "This is literally the worst thing I've ever seen."

4. [okay this one was a med student] "Wowwww, that's so gross!!" Reg: "Please remember that [patient] is awake for this procedure." Student to patient: "Oh my god. I am so sorry, that was really unprofessional - " Patient, cheerfully, also engrossed with what's happening inside them on the screen: "Nah - it's, like, super gross, right?"