Imagine if the GIW started gunning for Jason without the Batfam ever meeting Phantom. Like, Bruce has to figure out on his own that the guys in white suits with Lazarus guns are 1. a legitimate government agency, and 2. are perfectly within their rights to hunt Jason like an animal, because 3. there's secret government legislation that says that since Jason's body processes ectaplasm, he's classified as non-sapient and has no legal protections.
Bruce calling up Clark like
Bruce: I am currently in the process of breaking into a government facility in order to dismantle their operations.
Clark: Okay? Do you need... help?
Bruce: Yes.
Clark: Sure, I'll be right there.
Bruce: Not that kind of help. Oracle is sending you the files now. I'd like you and Ms. Lane to make these people wish they were never born.
Clark: [speed-reading the documents] Oh yeah, can do. This is truly disgusting. If the public is half as outraged as I am, we'll get this sorted as fast as the courts can manage.
So Clark Kent acts as a whistle-blower, the Justice League publicly condems the Anti-Ecto Acts as inhumane, the GIW is disbanded, and Batman gets pardoned for all of those crimes that he technically did by assaulting federal agents. And after all that gets sorted, some white haired kid pops up in the Watchtower like "haha thanks for that I really didn't want a war between Earth and the Infinite Realms" and the League are like "wait what"
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Hamlet’s Age
Not to bring up an age-old debate that doesn’t even matter, but I have been thinking recently how interesting Hamlet’s age is both in-text and as meta-text.
To summarize a whole lot of discussion, we basically only have the following clues as to Hamlet’s age:
Hamlet and Horatio are both college students at Wittenberg. In Early Modern/Late Renaissance Europe, noble boys typically began their university education at 14 and usually completed at their Bachelor’s degree by 18 or 19. However, they may have been studying for their Master’s degrees, which was typically awarded by age 25 at the latest. For reference, contemporary Kit Marlowe was a pretty late bloomer who received a bachelor’s degree at 20 and a master’s degree at 23.
Hamlet is AGGRESSIVELY described as a “youth” by many different characters - I believe more than any other male shakespeare character (other than 16yo Romeo). While usage could vary, Shakespeare tended to use “youth” to mean a man in his late teens/very early 20s (actually, he mostly uses it to describe beardless ‘men’ who are actually crossdressing women - likely literally played by young men in their late teens)
King Hamlet is old enough to be grey-haired, but Queen Gertrude is young enough to have additional children (or so Hamlet strongly implies)
Hamlet talks about plucking out the hairs of his beard, so he is old enough to at least theoretically have a beard
In the folio version, the gravedigger says he became a gravedigger the day of Hamlet’s birth, and that he’s be “sixteene here, man and boy, thirty years.” However, it’s unclear if “sixteene” means “sixteen” or “sexton” (ie has he worked here for 16 years but is 30 years old, or has he been sexton there for thirty years?)
Hamlet knew Yorick as a young child, and the gravedigger says Yorick was buried 23 years ago. However, the first quarto version version of Hamlet says “dozen years” instead of “three and twenty.” This suggests the line changed over time. (Or that the bad quarto sucks - I really need to make that post about it, huh…)
Yorick is a skull, and according to the gravedigger’s expertise, he has thus been dead for at least 7-8 years - implying Hamlet is at least ~15yo if he remembers Yorick from his childhood
One important thing sometimes overlooked - Claudius takes the throne at King Hamlet’s death, not Prince Hamlet. That is mostly a commentary on English and French monarchist politics at the time, but it is strange within the internal text. A thirty year old Hamlet presumably would have become the new monarch, not the married-in uncle (unless Gertrude is the vehicle through which the crown passes a la Mary I/Phillip II - certainly food for thought)
Honestly, Hamlet is SO aggressively described as being very young that I’m fairly confident the in-text intention is to have him be around 18-23yo. Placing his age at 30yo simply does not make much sense in the context of his descriptors, his narrative role, and his status as a university student.
However, it doesn’t really matter what the “right” answer is, because the confusion itself is what makes the gravedigger scene so interesting and metatextual. We can basically assume one of the following, given the folio text:
Hamlet really is meant to be 30yo, and that was supposed to surprise or imply something to the contemporary audience that is now lost to us
Older actors were playing Hamlet by the time the folio was written down, and the gravedigger’s description was an in-text justification of the seeming disconnect between age of actor and description of “youth”
Older actors were playing Hamlet by the time the folio was set down, and the gravedigger’s description was an in-text JOKE making fun of the fact that a 30-something year old is playing a high-school aged boy. This makes sense, as the gravedigger is a clown and Hamlet is a play that constantly pokes fun at its own tropes and breaks the fourth wall for its audience
The gravedigger cannot count or remember how old he is, and that’s the joke (this is the most common modern interpretation whenever the line isn’t otherwise played straight). If the clown was, for example, particularly old, those lines would be very funny
Any way you look at it, I believe something is echoing there. It seems like this is one of the many moments in Hamlet where you catch a glimpse of some contemporary in-joke about theater and theater culture* that we can only try to parse out from limited context 430 years later. And honestly, that’s so interesting and cool.
*(My other favorite example of this is when Hamlet asks Polonius about what it was like to play Julius Caesar in an exchange that pokes fun of Polonius’ actor a little. This is clearly an inside-joke directed at Globe regulars - the actor who played Polonius must have also played Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play, and been very well reviewed. Hamlet’s joke about Brutus also implies the actor who played Brutus is one of the main cast in Hamlet - possibly even the prince himself, depending on how the line is read).
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Goose and Carole were both Catholics - Goose, a good church boy from a small town in Tennessee, and Carole, a foster kid who spent half her foster years in nun-run group homes.
After Goose dies, Carole loses most of her faith. She no longer attends church every Sunday, no longer spends her Saturdays in the church committee with all the other ladies, no longer lets Bradley roam the church with all the other kids as said ladies attend rosary devotions in October, no longer prays to St. Joseph of Cupertino.
Goose's funeral ceremony is the last time she steps inside the church for years.
And then Mav starts dating Ice - or starts something with Ice, they never call it dating or being together or put a label on it, but Carole knows. Ice becomes a part of their life, too, going from absolutely shy around Bradley to bumping up to Bradley's favorite uncle (which Mav resents) and she can see Mav is happy, is trying to be happy again, and Ice is helping.
So, when one day she asks them to dinner on Sunday, and Mav arrives alone, she asks, "Where is your better half?"
Mav doesn't even deny the wording and just says, "In church, I think. He goes from time to time, he should be here before dinner."
When Ice does show up, she asks him about it when Mav is busy playing hide-and-seek with Bradley, and he tells her - he goes to a small Polish Catholic church from time to time, mostly because the mass there reminds him of the church his mama used to take him to and he can be anonymous enough there that he doesn't feel guilty for not being as religious as his childhood had been.
Carole asks him if she can go with him sometime.
So they start going together - the service is mostly in Polish and most of the people there talk in Polish so she's a bit clueless at the beginning but that makes it easier, makes the bitterness she feels about God easier, makes the anger simmer down. The people are friendly even though a lot of them can't speak English very well and Ice has to translate here or there.
The first time they take Bradley there, for rosary devotions for kids, he keeps on asking a million questions, mostly to Ice because he doesn't understand. In the end, Ice takes him on his lap and whispers explanations in his ears the whole time. The ladies that are sitting in the paw next to them keep smiling at them, not even minding the disturbance.
They stay behind after, mingling with everyone, and Bradley starts talking to a few kids despite the mix of Polish and English floating around - kids are like that, she supposes.
Ice talks to the priest, in Polish, and the priest calls him Tomek, as usual, but this time whatever they're talking about makes Ice's face bright red.
He comes back to her side and she grabs him by the elbow, holding his arm as they wait for Bradley to be finished coloring this week's rosary scene, and asks, "What was that about?"
Ice is avoiding meeting her eyes, focused on Bradley instead. "Everyone thinks you're my wife. Priest Rafal thinks it's admirable that my wife and--and son attend church with me despite the language barrier."
Carole blinks, taking in Ice's embarrassed face, and bumps her forehead on his shoulder, snorting into his arm. "Your wife is making us lemon chicken piccata as we speak."
Because every time Ice and Carole went to church, Mav would stay with Bradley and cook some absolutely delicious dinner for them to come back to. Today, it was Ice's favorite type of chicken piccata.
She feels Ice's arm shake under her hands as he chuckles. "True."
"I don't mind being your church wife, though," she tells him, pressing closer into his side, smiling.
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