#monrambles

One day I was at my high school, and decided to look for beauty in everyone, and I found beauty in everyone. And I don't mean I forced myself to find a positive in a sea of negatives- I mean that before long, I was walking the hallway at recess taken aback at how beautiful every single person was. I stopped actively doing that because I kept staring because I was fascinated with everyone.

Once I painted a portrait of somebody considered to be quite ugly by my family, and when I had finished the painting they kept remarking that this person suddenly, inexplicably, looked beautiful on canvas while being the same person- and I didn't know how to explain that I couldn't have painted this person while thinking they were ugly- that in the study of their feaures I found beauty, and so the painting was not done until it reflected what I saw.

So when I am watching a movie, or a show, or anything, and I see a beautiful person, and someone besides me says something like "They are not pretty enough" or "but that person is so ugly," and I analyze the image before me and I can't even figure out what beauty standard, exactly, they offended by existing as they were, I realize that I am simply not approaching beauty like there is a specific thing that must be acomplished, like I'm in jury duty and the person is on trial- I just appreciate what I see. And the person beside me is not doing that. They are doing something completely different.

All the struggles that each of the girls go through during the story are made easier, are made more manageable, are faced more decisively, and sometimes even resolved, due to the support that the friend group has afforded them. Yuzuki literally only wants to create real human connections, and gets them through friendship. Mari learns to proactively work for the adventure she wants, to take the risk of disappointment after making an effort, to step out of her comfort zone, in the drive to help and accompany Shirase. Hinata learns how to be vulnerable, how to be helped, and where she has the right to take distance due to Shirase's support. Shirase is helped in very practical and direct ways, wherein she would never have reached Antarctica without her friends' help, but additionally, she is emotionally supported as she finally reaches the point where she can process her grief and mourn. Friendship is the common thread in the story.

What I truly find fascinating is what this series says about friendship beside it being an incredibly helpful, motivating, and healing force in one's life, because a lot of the choices made in the story are quite interesting and unusual.

The character with whom we are introduced to the story, Mari, has a best friend at the beginning, Megumi. As Mari begins her character arc, Megumi falls into a spiral of jealousy that makes her harm Mari in subtle ways, until she confesses her actions in regret. Another story would have set up this plot-line for a redemption arc, but in this one, Megumi recognizes that it would not be healthy for Mari to keep interacting with someone who has been harming her behind her back, and that she herself needs to take distance from the relationship. She "breaks-up" their friendship. (There is an implication later on that Mari and her keep texting, but its also clear that something has indeed been disconnected.)

The story makes a very strong emphasis that the girls, the main 4 of the cast, have known each other for a very short period of time, but they very quickly get along, sometimes without any sort of transition period of them being at odds. In other stories, the strong friendship would have been given the force of time behind it, or otherwise, more emphasis would have been given to a transition where the characters would have learnt to respect and hold affection for each other. Instead, they are friends the moment they chose to help each other, and the disagreements they have from then on never feel like a threat to that.

One of them, Yukuzi, barely understands the concept of friendship, and in an effort to not lose her current friendships, she wants the other girls to sign a contract. Rather than promise to be best friends forever (though they do tell her that they are best friends), they tell her that the contract would not mean anything. That sometimes people drift apart, and that it is nobody's fault. The friendship happens naturally and that one just knows, without having to sign anything or commit in perpetuity. (Though the girls do make clear to each other the intention to keep seeking each other out.)

In this way, this story presents an interesting and invaluable set of messages. That friendship is not supposed to deliberately hurt you. That friendship can simply be something you choose to do, to help a person, to prioritize their needs, and to be there. That you do not need the weight of time or expectation to make friendship happen. That you do not need someone to profess their friendship to you in order to acknowledge it internally. That you are not beholden to friendship beyond the point where you're willing to participate in it.

For over a decade now, it has been theorized we've been in a Loneliness Epidemic, globally. A lot of outlets have described it being especially intense in Japan and the United States. Some describe it as beginning in the 2000s, others in the 2010s, but whichever the variables are, people are having a harder time connecting with each other, with visualizing the possibility of building connections that are not neatly fixed within the romantic, familial, or even the professional. This series presents us with an imaginative framework that we could use to help us visualize possibilities in our own lives, to feel the joys of friendship with none of the usual apprehensions. Everyone needs to know that if you seek it, you can find people whom you can understand, and who can understand you.

I really like the concept that the younger you go, the more that it is a fundamental truth of Batman that he's mad. Bruce Wayne has been indescribably angry since he was 8 years old, but he's also smart, and anger is one of those emotions that seldom really goes anywhere useful and he knows that. It's why he isolates, its why he leaves Gotham, and Batman is as productive of an expression as he can produce out of that anger. Which is why he doesn't think himself a good person, deep down.

This man could not be a green lantern, he would not be able to be a Jedi, because there's a part of him that is gripping that pain with both hands and he will never want to move on. There's a part of him that does not want to heal.

In my head, Bruce cannot give himself positive credit for being Batman. Despite all the sacrifice he puts into being Batman, he knows he couldn't be doing anything else except something much much worse (what happens when you take the kill rule out of Batman), or move on.

You take that out of him, and you take the wrinkles out of his character. Smooth him out too far. There's a bunch of somethings in several versions of Batman that I think can be taken away comfortably. His relationship with Barbara, that should never have been a thing. Lack of empathy for victims and children or genuine useless cruelty, swipe that away. But his anger? That's so very baked into his characterization.

That anger as both the tool that pushes him out there and also keeps him restrained. Because murder angers him, so he won't do it. Because senseless cruelty angers him, so he will not commit it, he will be stubbornly empathetic regardless of whether the person deserves it- he will not become what he hates, but he's tempted, all the time.

"If I allow myself to go down into that place, I'll never come back."

I like to think that building meaning, that recognizing the connection he has with Alfred, with his children, with the league, these people he shows the truth of himself to- allows him to calm down. He will never not be angry, but he can be a little better at being happy.

Dick Grayson is an acrobat and a performer and a cheerful person, which all fits with Nightwing. But Dick Grayson is no corporate man or socialite. The public appearances he does as Dick Grayson are ones where he's polite, but he's not overly enthused by the environment and he's very much out of his comfort zone. A charity gala just won't make him display his extrovert-ness and that's enough contrast.

Jason literally dies. Like, he has the easiest cover ever because who he is supposed to be is dead and he grows up significantly between his death and re-emergence. If he does publicly rejoin the Batfam and Wayne Fam, there's still the matter that Red Hood and Robin are not necessarily connected in the public eye, and for all that he is a serious grumpy young man, one doesn't quite imagine he could be an ex-crime-lord turned vigilante. He also isn't one to be making many public appearances.

Tim becomes CEO of Wayne Enterprises, in a way where he actually appears to be putting in the work, unlike Bruce, who very much worked to not appear to be putting in the work... who the fuck thinks this guy has time to be Red Robin?

Steph and Barbara aren't even directly publicly tied to Bruce Wayne.

Damian is a more peculiar case, I am unsure this child can act, but also I don't think he would exactly interact much with the socialites at all. Or the press.

Hi! You're getting me!!! [Context 1 - 2]

Sadly I don't have more writing on this, but the essense of it is twofold:

1.- Getting more Bartosch, who I feel is actually a well developed character for the screentime we get of him. (Managing the interaction for the one night stand is quite delicate!) Especially with how chill but firm his reaction is if Henry is open about how they're on opposite sides.

2.- This squeezing a great amount of despair from Hans, crucially with Henry alive and well and largely unaware of this havoc.

Which almost happens naturally, due to the aforementioned similarities + a bonus, that you mentioned as those expectations that seem exceeded.

I also think the timing of it is horrible for Hans, because when does Henry meet Bartosch? Right during their reconciliation after their "divorse era" which happens because Hans lashes out at Henry. After which he is sour at the party, and then at Nebakov preoccupied with how meeting Hanush will go when they return to Rattay. His moods are understandable, but when Hans connects the dots about Bartosch/Henry and when it happened? He is gonna be inmensely frustrated at himself, wondering why he is so difficult (especially if Bartosch is consistent with what seems a determinedly easy-going personality). That period of time representing less a bump on the road that was smoothed over with an apology, strengthening the Hansry friendship, but instead and crucially a time whe something slipped from his fingers without him even noticing.

The truth of the matter would be more nuanced than that, and Hans would be unfair on himself thinking like that, but that's the sauce of it! It's excellent material for Hans to catastrophize.

I would love to hear any thoughts you or anyone else might have in how an actual romance with Bartosch would affect Hans.

If I make it and I feel bad, then the other one is the one I truly want! If I make it and I feel good, then I know I took the choice I wanted! Success! Foolproof technique!

Then there's Ben Affleck's Batman who like, seriously speaking, has everything going for it. Ben Affleck has the face structure of any animated Batman. They made him ridiculously buff but fast and efficient. They gave him all the cool tech without bothering to explain it. It had so many things squared in its favor... except for immidiately twisting the core concept on introduction with making him a seeker of death.

There's a special place in my heart for the Christian Bale Batman. It goes hard into Batman's threaticality being intentional along with with Brucie persona. I adore that. I have two issues with it, though. One is nitpicky: Christian Bale is not the face I feel fits Batman, despite him being a great actor. My other greater issue is how little it allows Batman to be in a sort of golden age of batmaning. Batman Begins? 100% on board. By the second movie, it's already all "Oh, Gotham is going through social reform, the Batman is of the past" and then Batman corrupting his own image, which. Dude, the SYMBOL THE SYMBOL. The Joker there is top tier though. And of course there's the third movie, and I get what it was going for, I enjoyed it, I enjoyed all of them! But well.

The animated batmen tend to be so much better at scratching that itch in my brain. For one, they tend to feel more timeless. For two, they don't need to explain as much, and that sort of helps the sense of hypercompetence that the concept of Batman I like exhudes. For three, its so much easier for them to be presented as almost... forces of nature.