#riddlee

A playlist for the Unhinged Nerds of Gotham City! 💖

you mentioned the disconnect between the past and present scenes, so maybe making them stronger parallels instead could have helped? i have an idea for that but i'd rather hear your thoughts

I do. I'm not very confident on my ideas but I have some anyway:

Firstly I would change Edward's relationship with riddles. They should be his weapon part of his identity. A Riddler that hates and is afraid of riddles is just the stupidiest concept someone could come with and while my ideas might not be that much better I'm not a professional writer and they are still better than Riddler would be a better characther with we made him generic.

▫️That enters on hiw would I do the past:

So instead we keep that Edward is an absurd level genius (I will even keep the honestly over the top things like him learning multiple languages to a middle school level at the age normal kids are learning to speak) and his dad is a man who always apreciated intelect. He is a conservative elitist in all ways and he wants his offspring to be perfect as a boost to his own ego. Edward is raised to be perfect. To excel.

Problem is we got this teacher who likes games and riddles and he starts to present them in class. Now instead of hating them. That's the first time Edward gets to play a game. He was raised by his dad and likeminded elitists, he never got to be a kid or to play. And he loves it. Instead of for grades this time the teacher presents puzzles as ways to win extra credit and Edward always gets them right. He starts to present riddles back, to read all books on it. Baby got an hyperfixation and he is just soo happy. His dad hates it. He wants his son to be the perfect little intelectual robbot and not the weird nerd who plays D&D and randomicaly chalenges other kids to "a battle of wits". And so he starts punishing Edward for the riddles. Blaming him for the games. For just wanting to be a kid. So he keeps being punished for it untill he stops. It's not that he doesn't like riddles anymore is that he knows that if he keeps with them he will be punished. He stops playing games and just goes back to being a robot. Until his teacher presents a rubik cube. Edward wants it soo badly. It isn't because it's hard for him but because is colorfull and fun and he just wants some form of stim iten godammit. But his teacher just wants to use it to decorate the office. And Edward knows his father won't let he have one. So he starts invading the office in the dark to play with it.

Second problem: the teacher decides to present the cube as a competiton the student that solves it quicker wins extra credit or something. So after announcing it on class he locks the cube on his office. Edward doesn't care for the challenge he just wants to play with "his" cube again. So he invades the office, lock picks the desk and keeps playing during the night. But he never lock picked things before and he just forgets to lock it back or to throw away the evidence.

When the competition happens he wins. But instead of simply congratulating him the teacher says they need to talk after class. There he says he knows Eddie cheated. That the desk was open in the morning and he saw the pins on Edward's pockets. He castizes him saying that he didn't even needed the extra credit. That if he wants to be the best student so much be it but other kids just want to have fun and he should stop being a problem for them and he keeps not listening to Eddies explanations and than he threatens to tell the principal (Eddies dad) and Edward knows that if he does the punishment will be even worse and he panics and hits the guy with some tabble decoration. Later his dad just finds them there. The dead body and Eddie almost catathonic repeting he just wanted to play a game. And his dad reprimends him as if he had recieved a bad grade and not killed a guy and it's talking about how after they clean this mess he is better prepare for another punishment and in blurred colors we see this as the moment something breaks in his psyque as he mutters "no" and steals the rubik cube.

Now is that how I would write a Riddler origin story? Hell no. But I tried to keep the vibes, key aspects and edgyness of the original but with an Edward who loves riddles from the start and is viciously showing them on everyone's face because he never got the change to be himself instead of the "i hate riddles blablabla" and of course also with he clearly having a psychotic break because of the abuse he suffered instead of being evil from birth.

▫️Now let's go to the future:

The future gave me a conundrum: for one side my original idea of Riddlers newest ploy being related to his backstory - possibly a move against the school his dad was the principal off - and therefor he leaves riddles for Bruce to uncover his past or with Riddler himself reminicing it since it's suppose to be inspirated on The Killer Joke.

I decided to have a bit of both. As during a bank kidnnaping at Gotham Acadamy Edward notices a young student that reminds him to much of himself he starts becoming obcessed with changing things by uncovering the corruption behind the institucion and more importantly destroying it. As his motivations are more missplaced revenge than the curiosity he convinces himself it is his clues for Batman start to show it making so the flasbacks are a mix of Edward being forced to remember the past as he plants his clues and Bruce uncovering them (with greener tones when it's Edward and darker when Bruce - maybe with Riddler remembering in sepia but with green and purple highlights while Bruce discovers the past with black and white - and the present having the same constant vibrant collors as if even with the darkness of everything Gotham shinnes uncaring and wow that's edgy) none of the memories are completly true and even contradict a bit (on the sense of Bruce's part differing for Edward as Bruce wasn't truly there and Edward remembers it by his own miopics). We still have Bruce talking with Edward's father but this time he calls the old man out and Edward never met nor killed his mother. It's a thriller and no one dies in the end.

▫️Is it good?

I have no clue. But I think it's better and it keeps with the edginess (I feel like any rewrite of a One Bad Day story HAS to be edgy even if I really wanted to do a more classic riddler story that still has the angst and tragedy but it isn't full of super duper impossibly smart people and everything sucks and murder and violence yay). I don't know if I would care for this characthers still or not. But I think it's a least less against everyrhing that came before.

What do you think?

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