Batman n Stuff

[haii2u]

So, I'll be honest - I've been feeling very isolated and lonely lately. It's the kind of loneliness that's entirely self-inflicted, but what's frustrating about that is that I don't know how to change it. The problem is that I don't feel like I can be vulnerable with my friends. I can joke with them, share emotional moments with them (like crying with a friend after we watched Logan), but I can't let them know too much about anything that I like (unless I know it's a shared interest) without feeling horribly embarrassed afterwards.

If you have ADHD or autism, you might understand what I mean. Maybe as a kid you talked WAY too much about your special interest to the other kids and got lectured about it. That on its own isn't a bad thing, it's important to learn social skills and be able to have two-way conversations, but I feel like for me that lecture planted this deep guilt in me that never went away. That's why I prefer blogging about these things, because whoever reads it does so of their own volition - and the people who DO read it are likely total strangers! Their opinion of me doesn't matter so I can be as crazy and overbearing as I want.

Anyway... with all that said... to remedy my bad feelings I've been revisiting Arkham City, the first ever piece of Batman media that I really engaged with (The Dark Knight Rises doesn't count, damn it!!! I was 12 when I watched it I didn't know wtf was going on!!). I played it on a whim one night last year since it was in my friend's shared Steam library and I was bored. Initially I couldn't get the hang of it since I'd never played a game like that before, and settled on just watching a playthrough. While I watched it though I just couldn't shake off this feeling of "I NEED to experience this myself" so I forced myself to pick it back up, and I'm really glad I did.

Imagine going into this game nearly blind, with only a vague idea of what Batman was really about and not knowing about the majority of his rogue gallery beyond like, Harley and the Joker. I was so totally enthralled by all the characters!! I mean, what a great introduction to some of his most interesting villains. Like, not only is Mr. Freeze there, but SOLOMON GRUNDY?!! (I thought he was Frankenstein when I first fought him...) Victor Zsasz, Two-Face, CALENDAR MAN... I had no idea at the time that what I was playing would become such a shining light in my life.

Unfortunately I couldn't beat the game, because, well, I'll be honest. I suck at video games, and that final Joker fight with Mr. Hammer was NOT kind to me. But it's okay because a friend of mine finished it up and played Arkham Asylum on stream which was a lot of fun to watch.

After that, I was hooked. I read... SO MANY comics. Pretty much all the iconic ones, and there are still more I want to check out. My brother, who also really likes comics, bought me Batman: Year One during a trip we took to SF earlier this year. That book in particular had a huge influence on my art, inspiring me to work on composition and perspective more as well as creating comics of my own (albeit very short ones).

Obviously I do have some qualms with some ... decisions, I guess, when it comes to various pieces of Batman media (like the constant focus solely on the Joker and also how the Penguin looked in the first Batman Telltale game - ugh!) but I can save that for another time maybe. I just wanted to talk about what this series means to me, and really, how lucky I was that Arkham City of all games was my introduction.

^ me btw if you care