Winter Chimes

YOU'RE THE ONE IN LOVE WITH HIM. // OF COURSE. ISN'T THAT OBVIOUS?

WE ALL LOVED HIM. WE WANTED HIM TO LOVE US. THAT'S... EVERYTHING. BUT HE NEVER LOVED US. HE ALWAYS LOVED YOU... WHY?

I was your masterpiece

Anyways I like to think about Bruce´s laugh because its his reaction to the inherent absurdity of reality. Which is where usually batman and joker differ: Batman tries to be prepared, to control every variable to his favor, to hang on to hope even when everything around you is burning. whereas joker is a wild card, never consistent and ever changing, becoming one with the chaos and absurdity around him- becoming the fire itself in order to avoid getting burned, laughting logic and worry away. However as I said its this difference between how they confronted their respective trauma, how they overcame it that defines them.

Which is why I like those panels of both of them laughting so much. Bruce lets go. For a moment he lets go and laugh alongside the man who left paralized Batgirl, who tortured Comissioner Gordon, who has killed hundreds of thousands and will continue to do so. In the end, when Bruce lets go, he has a similar reaction to that of the Jokers. In the end, when having to face their reality both have the impulse to laugh, only that while Bruce resists it, Joker lets it define him. And neither understand why would the other do the opposite.

Makes me wonder of if both men in one of those thousand nights running around gotham, have shared another moment like this. Have shared another moment of comfort in each other in an alleyway or a rooftop. If criminals and civilians alike have witnessed this moments, either freezing or fleeing at the sound of those laughs interwined.

Whenever I see Heath joker I feel so crushed... 😂😂😂😂

He's the first character whom I fell in love. 🥰🥰

Bless this comic

you don't understand, i'm obsessed with these covers.

Their tutor Aristotle described friendship as “one soul abiding in two bodies”. That they themselves considered their friendship to be of such a kind is shown by the stories of the morning after the battle of Issus. Diodorus, Arrian and Curtius all describe the scene when Alexander and Hephaestion went together to visit the captured Persian royal family. Its senior member, the queen Sisygambis, knelt to Hephaestion to plead for their lives, having mistaken him for Alexander because he was taller, and both young men were wearing similar clothes. When she realized her mistake she was acutely embarrassed, but Alexander pardoned her, saying “You were not mistaken, Mother; this man too is Alexander.”

Their love for each other was no secret, as is borne out by their own words. Hephaestion, when replying to a letter to Alexander’s mother, Olympias, said “you know that Alexander means more to us than anything”.

Arrian says that Alexander, after Hephaestion’s death, described him as “the friend I valued as my own life”.Paul Cartledge describes their closeness when he says: “Alexander seems actually to have referred to Hephaestion as his alter ego.”

For Alexander to marry a daughter of Darius made good political sense, allying himself firmly with the Persian ruling class, but for Hephaestion to marry her sister shows the high esteem in which Alexander held him, bringing him into the royal family itself. They became brothers-in-law, and yet there was more to it than that. Alexander, says Arrian “wanted to be uncle to Hephaestion’s children”. Thus it is possible to imagine Alexander and Hephaestion hoping that their respective offspring might unite their lines.

Hephaestion’s death is dealt with at greater length by the ancient sources than any of the events of his life, because of its profound effect upon Alexander. As Andrew Chugg says, “it is surely incredible that Alexander’s reaction to Hephaestion’s death could indicate anything other than the closest relationship imaginable”. In the context of the nature of their relationship however, one stands out as remarkable. Arrian says that Alexander “flung himself on the body of his friend and lay there nearly all day long in tears, and refused to be parted from him until he was dragged away by force by his Companions”. Plutarch says that “Alexander’s grief was uncontrollable” and adds that he ordered many signs of mourning, notably that the manes and tails of all horses should be shorn, the demolition of the battlements of the neighbouring cities and the banning of flutes and every other kind of music; another that said “he lay stretched upon the corpse all day and the whole night too”, and another which told how he had the doctor, Glaucias, executed for his lack of care. Arrian also mentions Alexander ordering the shrine of Asclepios in Ecbatana to be razed to the ground,and that he cut his hair short in mourning, this last a poignant reminder of Achilles’ last gift to Patroclus on his funeral pyre: “he laid the lock of hair in the hands of his beloved companion, and the whole company was moved to tears”.

Another hint that Alexander looked to Achilles to help him to express his grief may be found in the campaign, shortly following these events, against a tribe called the Cossaeans. Plutarch says they were massacred as an offering to the spirit of Hephaestion and it is quite possible to imagine that to Alexander this might have followed in spirit Achilles’ killing of “twelve high-born youths” beside Patroclus’ funeral pyre.

Arrian states that all his sources agree that “for two whole days after Hephaestion’s death Alexander tasted no food and paid no attention in any way to his bodily needs but lay on his bed now crying lamentably, now in the silence of grief”. Alexander ordered a period of mourning throughout the empire. Arrian tells us that “Many of the Companions, out of respect for Alexander, dedicated themselves and their arms to the dead man”. The army, too, remembered him; Alexander did not appoint anyone to take Hephaestion’s place as commander of the Companion cavalry; he “wished Hephaestion’s name to be preserved always in connection with it, so Hephaestion’s Regiment it continued to be called, and Hephaestion’s image continued to be carried before it”.

Alexander sent messengers to the oracle at Siwa to ask if Amon would permit Hephaestion to be worshipped as a god. When the reply came saying he might be worshipped not as a god, but as a divine hero, Alexander was pleased and “from that day forward saw that his friend was honoured with a hero’s rites”. He saw to it that shrines were erected to Hephaestion’s memory, and evidence that the cult took hold can be found in a simple votary plaque now in Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, inscribed, “To the Hero Hephaestion”.

One final tribute remained, and it is compelling in its simplicity and in what it reveals about the high esteem in which Hephaestion was held by Alexander. On the day of the funeral, he gave orders that the sacred flame in the temple should be extinguished. Normally, this was only done on the death of the Great King himself.