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kazunoko_kazunoco on Instagram

The batman is such a nice movie to look at. Like i never had the need to strain my eyes to see what was happening in the dark, all the contrasts were good and it all felt done purposefully. The colour shemes all felt in line with each other in mood and colour sense and the lighting was absolutely fantastic. That all mixed with the fantastic set made the city really feel like Gotham. The scene were B lit the red light? FUCKING DELICIOUS. The mcu and the majority of superhero cinematic media really fucking starved us from good looking superhero movies. Like literally why do they look like that. This movie makes every scene in mcu look bland and unseasoned. I mean just the colour alone is so much better. The suits too, like they feel like actual suits that do shit. The batfleck suit just looked restricting and useless, chistian bale's just looked fake, not used and dont get me started on Catwoman's suits. Anyway i would watch this movie for the cinematography alone, even if the writings is bad (which it isnt btw, its fucking amazing holy shit)

🦇 🦇 🦇 Batman 2022 Spoilers! 🦇 🦇 🦇

I would like to talk about the sequence in which Bruce watches Riddler’s video about the Wayne family history.

Bruce is someone who has a rose-colored view of his parents. It’s easy to romanticize a dead loved one, especially if they passed before you could grow to be critical of them.

Not only is he hearing awful things about mom and dad, he’s hearing things that completely shatter his reason for living. He’s hearing that his father, a man who prioritized human life above all else, had someone killed. (We find out later that this isn’t 100% the case but for Bruce in this moment it’s true.)

There’s a really brilliant edit after the Riddler exposes that Martha was in and out of mental hospitals: It cuts to Bruce, wide-eyed, shaking, devastated. This man who is clearly struggling with mental illness himself just saw that his family has a serious history of it. He is horrified.

Right after this scene he goes to talk to Falcone. He looks like shit. He is incredibly vulnerable. Falcone treats him like a 10 year old and Bruce just takes it.

I’ve said this before but we have NEVER had an on-screen Batman who was so vulnerable, so raw. He might have his defenses up at Batman but as Bruce Wayne? He is flayed open.

What If Martha was the one who survived crime alley instead of bruce. And what if the shooting only happened because Thomas was involved with some organised crime people, either working with them or hunting them and Martha discovers his version of a batcave and starts working to finish the job.

And what if she was a hollywood starlet and incredible stunt woman who gave up her work to be a mother. And also grew up as a ballerina and was on an olympian track, but never really pursued those dreams. But now on her path of revenge she can use those skills as the Bat.

And what if also she walked around in lingerie all the time and was super angry and strong, another important and central headcanon.

dare i say. 2022 bruce felt the most genuinely Bruce Wayne out of all of them, to me, because it felt like they understood that the core of batman’s character is love.

that whole final act of the movie where he starts accepting his own fear, and understanding the negative effect his vengeance has had on gotham city, and seeing the importance in love. that whole montage of him lifting children out of rubble and holding the hands of scared, injured civilians and smiling comfortingly at them even though he’s covered in dirt and has a whole city full of people left to save after them. that individual kindness he gives them all. the way he doesn’t so much as hesitate to throw himself into the flood to save them. 

that’s batman. that’s who batman has always been, at least from my perspective, and i’m so glad they’re finally putting it on the screen properly. i got so sick and tired of seeing comics and movies and games etc where bruce is portrayed as this cold, brutal, downright villainous character - he should be scary, and strong, and sometimes a little violent, but overall he should be caring. batman is terrifying to the people who deserve to be scared, and comforting to those he saves. batman was the hero i looked out of my bedroom window and daydreamed about coming to save me from all my problems when i was little, because i knew i’d be safe with him.

and sure, you could argue that i’m wrong - he’s DC’s character, i have no say in how they characterise him, if they want to make him brutal and cruel they can go ahead - but if you’re asking me? this movie was the first time i’ve seen my bruce wayne on screen in a long time. it felt like they finally remembered that under all that kevlar, he’s a human being.

Unironically the best part of The Batman was seeing him helping search and rescue at the end. So many Batman stories end with Bruce still as an outcast, perched on top of a gargoyle staring down at the destroyed city below him. That final detail of having him staying behind to help even after all the villains were taken care of was more of a contribution to the superhero film genre than anything else to come out of the past ten years.

i loved robert pattinson’s batman because THATS what bruce wayne in his earliest years as batman should be — a young, awkward socially anxious shut in who looks like he doesn’t shower and would be completely helpless without alfred’s care. young batman is a hot mess who wipes the fuck out sometimes because HE IS STILL LEARNING !!!!! 10/10 bruce wayne characterization please give him a hug and a hot bath

Vengeance won’t change the past, mine or anyone else’s. I have to become more. People need hope. To know someone is out there for them. The Batman (2022) dir. Matt Reeves

THE BATMAN

2022, dir. Matt Reeves

i’m so done with the way girls in twenties are treated. i’m so done with people who literally create timetable for us. 20- 24  find a guy, 24-26 make him propose to you, 27-29 get married. i’m so done. i’m do not want to get 2 a.m texts from my best friend who is freaking out that she is gonna die alone. i do not want see my 20 years old friend wasting her time on some guys who are not even interested in her. i do not want see us falling for every nice guy who does not look creepy. i do not want to see girls get sad or paranoid just bcos they do not fill in the schedule. you are ok. you should enjoy your life at its fullest and one day you will find 10/10 so do not pursue 6 just because you do not want to be single. it is ok and one day you will find someone. do not split your love with people who does not deserve it. keep it for yourself and when time will come you will know. i know it hurts. i know you wish u could just open part of yourself and release the buzzing love. but not every kind of love is romantic. show it to your family, friends, plants, yourself.

Not a real criticism, just an expansion really, but …  it’s not just the timetables we need to get away from, but the goal itself, I think.  “One day you will find someone,” sounds comforting, but the reason it doesn’t lay fears to rest is because we are all smart enough to know it’s not necessarily true.

My aunt is over sixty, never married, and never, so far as I am aware, ever even had a great romance.  She dated a lot, but never clicked and now seems to have given up.  My mentor is over seventy, divorced her asshole husband more than half her life ago and has never found anyone since.

We all know women (and men) like these.  And because we know them, we know that “one day you will find someone,” is just … hogwash.  Because sometimes you just … don’t.  Or sometimes you do, but he turns out to be a cad.  Or you do and the universe rips you apart in the most unfair way possible.  And because society has us so fixated on finding “our other half” or whatever, we view these women as cautionary tales.

But … 

My aunt trains dogs.  Her schipperke is the national champion for his breed.  She spent so much of her life as a librarian, nurturing the love of books in kids, myself among them.  I ride horses because of her, and it’s one of the very few things I do that makes my soul feel at peace.

My mentor is one of the best criminal defense attorneys in her state.  She has devoted her life to fighting to ensure that everyone gets a vigorous defense.  Because of her countless people have had the opportunity to turn their lives around.  Because of her, they’ve had a life to turn around.  Because of her, the prosecution and the police in her jurisdiction are forced to behave ethically and adhere to the rule of law.  She’s still, even now fighting to abolish the death penalty.  It’s because of her that I am pursuing the life I am.

These women’s lives are not nothing.  In fact they are a whole lot of something, and it makes my heart hurt that I ever, in my dark 3 am’s, thought of their lives as something to be avoided at all costs.

So love your family, your friends, your pets, your gardens.  Love your job or your hobby or your raison d’ etre, whatever it is.  Love sunsets and the smell of rain and yourself, and don’t love these as something to do as a placeholder until the buzzing, romantic love comes, but love these as things worth loving all in themselves.

It’s fucking hard some days.  The dark 3 am’s still come sometimes.  But most days, I am so much more at peace knowing that I am not incomplete or waiting, but that my life, if it ended today, is worth it because of the platonic, familial, friendship love I have shared.  And if the other kind does come someday, that’ll be nice, but it won’t make any of the others less.  It’ll just be caramel sauce on a sundae–tasty and wonderful, but the sundae was perfect without it too.

It’s also worth remembering that for the longest time people *had* to get married to survive. It was an economic arrangement, and women (in particular) had few other choices when it came to supporting themselves. (This is even true, at least in the U.S., for women who loved people who weren’t men until the early twentieth century.) I think of this often. I’m a single woman with a good education in a job that brings me a lot of satisfaction. Can you imagine how many women dreamed of that kind of freedom over the centuries? For whom being single was never an option? I think of those people often.

chel_faust on Instagram

The artist gives light and paints the art so that we understand another hidden reality. Artist Nikita Busyak.

my hot take is that you don’t have to love being single or love being alone. if you can’t spend a second in your own company there’s a problem, but wanting love and companionship is completely normal and natural. you’re not weak or mentally unstable for feeling lonely or yearning for partnership and friendship. we do need each other, we need community, we need love, it’s part of our dna to be social creatures.

— Ocean Vuong, from an interview with Zoë Hitzig in Prac Crit

When Oscar Wilde said, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” and, “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all,” and, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”