#yeah tho
wonder if adrien would still be saying that they should let lila just keep lying if he knew that lila had legitimately threatened marinette in the bathroom earlier and made her cry
today’s date is the 3rd? what’s next, the 4th? the 5th? the minor fall, the major lift?
I’m really annoyed with the internet woobification of batman 2022’s riddler because it fully misses the point of the entire movie to almost concerning degree
Ok. So. Basically what it comes down to is that The Batman (2022)’s Riddler is a fairly obvious (at least to me) stand-in for the very real-world phenomena of young white men who feel isolated and personally victimized by society, who turn to the internet to feel less alone, and who are preyed upon by domestic hate groups who validate and weaponize their feelings and turn them into genuine white supremacists and neo-nazis and armed insurgents who march on Washington DC to violently protest democracy. Initially, the Riddler targets the corrupt, using the internet as a means to further spread his rhetoric to disconnected white men like him, but by the end of the movie he’s bombing flood walls and sending militarized followers to assassinate Bella Réal, a young black mayoral candidate who wishes to bring real systemic change to Gotham. This reveals the truth and the hypocrisy of his mission, which is that he’s not really trying to effect change—he’s lashing out and tearing down a world that he feels has victimized him, personally, and he’s doing this while trying to pull others into his violence. He’s a normal looking guy, with a normal job. A nobody. Someone who could be anyone, who could be someone you know, and meanwhile he’s online encouraging paramilitary violence and committing acts of domestic terrorism. This is how hate groups function in real life. It’s not a subtle allegory. The fact that a truly alarming proportion of internet fandom has, after seeing this movie, managed to miss the very obvious messaging and choose to reduce him to just a funny little guy who has a crush on Batman and just wants a little attention is, frankly, concerning to me because of what it means for peoples’ ability recognize hate group recruitment in real life.
