riddler-coded (autistic) 💚🩷

current anons (for tagging, use emoji then anon with no spaces like for example 💚anon):

🫖teapot anon

👾space invader anon

🐓rooster anon

🎶music anon

🧚‍♀️fairy anon

🪽wing anon

🐦‍⬛crow anon

🌙crescent moon anon

🌧️rain anon

🧩jigsaw anon

🎀💜🎀bows anon

❓question mark anon

🪲 beetle anon

🦢 swan anon

🦆 duck anon

this is maybe an observation that's been made, but i still mostly see people insisting that eddie is the smartest man in the world, a genius, unapproachable in his intelligence. i fell into that trap too because it's his language, and as a diehard loser groupie of his i would absolutely be hanging on his every word, knelt at his feet telling him of course he's the smartest person to ever exist. but he's... not? and outside of adoring fans i think everyone realises it. including himself. or he did at one point and is now past the point of being able to recognise it or admit for fear of the self-combustion that would happen

now you'll have to bear with me, because i'm not saying he's unintelligent. i'm saying though that where he is clever is not the way he thinks he is, and it's different for every iteration, really, or most of them. my own edward for example is an adept mathematician and engineer, he has dyscalculia and suspected dyslexia, he can't tell his right from his left, but none of that affects the areas where he is skilled and informed. despite what any given riddler insists, he has strengths and weaknesses

that's where eddie in the arkhamverse (specifically to me) comes into things. because he refuses to acknowledge that he has any weaknesses.at least not out loud. and maybe not even to himself if he wants to have a good day. obviously he's clever. obviously he has skills. he's a mechanical engineer. he reminds me of a close family member who once tried to explain quantum physics to me on a napkin in four minutes before i had to go to choir. BUT that's where the difference is!! eddie can do things, he can know things, but i don't think he could explain that knowledge. he couldn't pass it on to someone else. it almost just feels inherent to him. not earned, just there. which i think is where his imposter syndrome and need to prove himself and the resulting overcompensation comes from

much like in his youth where he cheated instead of actually bothering to learn, eddie either absorbs the information or doesn't, and when he doesn't it embarrasses him to a point where he can't admit it and has to lie. there are considerable gaps in his knowledge and his skillset and rather than fill them, he pretends they don't exist because to admit it would be to admit his falliable nature, his humanity (gross)

that sort of fits in with my idea that he's sort of fallen victim to the sunk cost fallacy of it all. i mean, in the arkham games he's a purveyor of puzzles more than riddles. admitting, however, that maybe he should have called himself something else or chosen a different shtick would be like admitting he was wrong. that does make me wonder why he chose to change from e.nigma as in arkham origins. perhaps it shows the change in his personality and intentions, maybe it felt to him like a progression, an evolution, rather than a discarding of a planned career that failed

another thing that points to this would be the fact that he doesn't have a doctorate, no mentioned degree either, but specifically amongst his peers a lack of a doctorate (for him) speaks volumes to me. and while obviously intelligence is not measured in what certifications you have (sorry doctors), it does offer up an interesting thing to consider with eddie who does value proof to his claims. he thinks he's better than batman and seeks to prove that. he claims he's intelligent but... doesn't need to prove that to people? i like to imagine him playing it off with a sort of "i don't have peers and therefore cannot be judged or reviewed by them in order to gain an accreditation of any sort" when asked or teased. and that could be true, but only in that it suggests he's scared of being proved wrong

i make a lot of comparisons in my head between eddie and derren brown who describes himself as a 'psychological illusionist' (and also hilariously as a mind bender, because he reads minds and is gay) because he performs feats of magic and mind control using perception tricks, memory skills, and subliminal suggestion. one of his sort of more famous 'tricks' is that he can say what word is on line 5, paragraph 4, page 127 in a book he has read, for example. it's something that wows people who don't possess those kinds of memory skills and i can't find a source but i am certain i have read him talk about how it's misinterpreted as him being very clever, as opposed to him just being really good at memorising things. he pretends he can read minds, but he can read facial cues. he can manipulate a pattern, rather than just predict one. i think this is the kind of skills eddie possesses

he can predict people's behaviours, which makes it easy to outsmart them. he confesses openly to having an eidetic memory. yeah, maybe you can recite pi to a thousand places, but that doesn't make you a genius

and he obviously has an above average intelligence, but he bases a lot of that on his own assumptions and on outdated methods of measuring intelligence like iq levels. there are plenty of areas he is lacking in, and he'll never be able to become smarter or more learned because it's almost like he refuses to see where his flaws are

he's so deeply flawed, in fact, that he either doesn't realise it or he's aware and hiding it down so deep that he can't even trust or recognise his own intuitions anymore. only what he knows from experience and can therefore attempt to predict. that's why it bothers him so much when things don't go to plan, and why, for a genius, about 99% of the time things do. not. go. to. plan

people aren't all that predictable, and being able to recalculate on the fly and be flexible with your learning is what makes other incredibly smart characters (lex luthor, michael holt, bruce wayne) so different to eddie