What is your ideal ghostbat dynamic?

Oh it's definitely the thrice-divorced snarky middle-aged men performing intricate rituals thing they currently got going on.

Batman 2022 Annual

Bruce Wayne, being a character with almost a century of history, has beein paired with so many individuals. There's a lot of relationships he's formed over time, but a particularly interesting type is the people-who-knew-him-before-Batman category. Harvey Dent, Thomas Eliot, Zatanna Zatara, Talia al Ghul... and now Minhkhoa Khan. Obviously, quite a lot of these characters ended up as unequivocal villains Batman has had to fight (Two-Face, Hush) while Zatanna remained a childhood-friend-and-almost-lover. Talia and Khoa are more complicated; they're definitely not heroes, not exactly on the same side as Bruce. But they aren't downright villains either. The waters are more muddled. In Talia's case there's the conflict between her loyalty and love for her father, duty and legacy; this opposition to Bruce's own goals was there from the start. But (to finally get to my point with this tangent) there was no such thing with Khoa, and that's basically my main draw to the ship. Bruce has other people that know him as just Bruce and not Batman, or as the in-between (all unique and complex relationships in their own right), but I can only think of Khoa as someone who was present for Batman being forged. While Talia was there when Bruce was training, she didn't share the same goal of combating crime, but Khoa did. For someone so desperately lonely as Bruce is, having someone to share that road with meant so much. Not only that, Khoa contributed to the formation of Batman by engaging him in the wild competitive streak they share, by pushing Bruce to rise to his level.

Hence... the unique kind of familiarity they have even decades later, despite the numerous betrayals along the way. That's an ideal component to me-- Bruce feeling like he can easily be himself. It's a rarity to him, since he plays so many different roles to many different people. And after Alfred's death, someone so important who knew him utterly and supported him from the start, he clearly missed it. It didn't really matter that Khoa killed dozens of people when he showed up in Gotham and literally declared he'll traumatize Bruce by killing a kid in front of him (which he probably would have done, if Harley hadn't managed to be as persuasive as she was). After Selina leaving him, Dick getting shot, his own father and Bane taking his city away, Alfred dying, losing his fortune and Joker War happening... myeah, I really feel like Khoa showed up at the perfect moment.

Which leads me to another component of their dynamic that I favor, and that's both of them being manipulative assholes and equals capable of kicking each other's asses. Why did Khoa show up with all of his resources after Joker War specifically? Why did Bruce ask him to stay so readily, forgoing the things Khoa had done? Hah. Khoa's undoubtedly been obsessed with Bruce, if keeping tabs on him and seeking out Jonathan Crane to learn fear and hell, even getting a sidekick to mirror Batman having a Robin is any indication. He gets to be close to Bruce and potentially ingratiate himself to him while fully knowing Bruce is using him, and Bruce knows it too-- but he's still allowing himself to depend on Khoa's resources and on him becoming part of Batman Incorporated and the more extended Bat-team. Khoa's always been manipulative; wonder if Bruce ever found out that in The Knight #4, Khoa was the one to tell those assassins Bruce's location, thus orchestrating a situation in which Bruce would finally accept to take him with him. But then, while they were training with Avery, Bruce was manipulative back, and you can literally see Khoa falling in love over it in The Knight #5, after Bruce distracts him with flirting and then steals the book.

At the end of the day, Khoa is a psychopath; perhaps not the sadistic kind, but he still operates as one, and Bruce can not only handle it, but he can handle it well. He's proven himself to be an equal, someone who challenges Khoa to improve and become better. Thing is, psychopaths overlap with narcissists a lot due to a basic reason. For neurotypical individuals, empathy acts as a way to see conspecifics as others, but like-minded others. You see other people think and emote like you, and you register them as human beings just like you. 'I feel what you feel, therefore we are the same.' But psychopaths work differently, in the sense that they often have excellent cognitive empathy, but a dulled affective one. They can tell how people think, but emotionally these things don't resonate with them-- the consequence being that they don't easily register others as equals, like-minded others. It's easy to then see yourself as the most valuable individual ever, as the center of the world, because you haven't truly ever shared that world. Which is why, when a psychopath meets someone they can relate to... they don't just relate, they become obsessed. Much like Khoa has. If all your life you felt you're separate from everyone else, having this kind of connection is life-changing, and you'll do whatever you need to preserve it. Including manipulative and murderous acts. But that's fine, because Bruce is attracted to this kind of thing. He himself has thought at some point about a woman (Jezebel Jet) that he should've known she was villainous and would betray him, because he had been attracted to her. I could get into Bruce's dating history and what it says about his preferences, but 'nuff said.

...Anyway, this got away from me, Anon :)) You probably didn't expect a whole-ass essay, but I hope you enjoyed reading through my personal take on them. I really like Khoa's character, since it's not often you get a morally-grey and complex psychopath like him, in comics. But to summarize my answer, my ideal Ghostbat dynamic is definitely one based on them being equals who know each other on a fundamental level, capable of handling both the good parts and the bad parts of the other; the one that solidified after decades of a push-and-pull between their core principles and ideals.

The Phantom of the Opera: Sorting Hat Chats System

I have returned! This time, I'm talking about one of my longest running obsessions: The Phantom of the Opera musical. Keep in mind, this will only be in reference to the way the characters are presented in the musical, so the housing may be different in different media.

Also, if you have any questions about the system, I'd direct you to my last post about Scooby-Doo, or to @sortinghatchats (the originators of the system) and @wisteria-lodge (my personal favorite fan sorter.)

First off, as discussed elsewhere, stories themselves can have houses as well! Since this musical is my absolute favorite and I have dissected it on more than one occasion, I feel I can speak on the houses this story comments on. At it's core, Phantom is a story that sets the Gryffindor Primary way of life against the Slytherin way, and forces the heroine to acknowledge what kind of person she is. Is she a fighter or a lover?

In this story, Gryffindor Primary says that your ideals are most important. What is right and what is good should win out in the end. Those who are wrong should be punished and evil and good truly exist in this world. There are angels and there are demons, and only the angels have earned their right to love.

Meanwhile, the Slytherin Primary says love is the final word. It argues that you love who you love, and all is fair in love and war. And that doesn't just mean romantic love. Creative love, familial love, friendly love, love of one's career.... all of these are beyond "good" and "evil," "right" and "wrong." Love is not created by seeing the goodness of a person, and can exist despite the existence of evil there, and that is okay.

The moral of this story, in my opinion, falls in the Slytherin camp. And that is because two of three main characters are Slytherin Primaries, and it is through their love, of art, of creation, and of each other (romantically or not) that the main conflict is resolved.

I'll only be sorting the three main characters, as they're really all I need to illustrate this point. Here we go!

The Phantom: Slytherclaw (Exploded Slytherin Primary, Ravenclaw Secondary)

The Phantom is an ultimate example of the "Jack of All Trades" Ravenclaw Secondary. He is a scholar, musician, composer, singer, architect, inventor... the list goes on. He is a collector of tools, and these tools he uses to compensate for his deformity. He has made himself overly competent to feel better and as though he might deserve a place at humanity's table. He uses careful planning and control over an environment he claims is his to give the impression of being a ghost. That brings us to his Exploded Slytherin Primary, or rather, his initially Petrified Slytherin Primary. Being a ghost is the dream of any Petrified Slytherin. To become a literal non-entity, unable to be hurt, unable to love, unable to care for anyone other than themselves. He was very unfortunate to be born with a Slytherin Primary housing, as the rejection of those he loved lead him to his petrifying. He wanted no one in his circle but himself and sought to other himself purposefully, removing himself from society. Until, he met Christine. Her love of music and creation, a love he had used to replace his need for chosen people, helped him to connect, and he slowly began to un-petrify. This could have been a healthy thing for him, a way for him to return to life, but no. He was so certain he'd never need anyone else, never want anyone else, never find anyone else that he clung desperately to her, became obsessed, and we watch his explosion throughout the musical. In one fell swoop, he went from entirely petrified to an explosion of pent-up love and devotion aimed only at her, all his love for the chosen people before him aimed only at her. And, with his newly ignited love, he tries to convince Christine to be only with him, care only for him, which as an Exploded Slytherin Primary, feels like the only way to properly love someone, the only right way to live, and murder and extortion are perfectly respectable ways to attempt to hang onto that love. So, he asks her to give in to the "music of the night." Her love of music, creation, and her devotion to him as her Angel of Music. But, there is another man in her life, telling her there's a higher calling, a higher judge of character than love.

Raoul de Chagny: True Gryffindor (Gryffindor Primary, Gryffindor Secondary)

I know Raoul has a reputation of being a soft-hearted guy, but this guy is most definitely a Gryffindor Secondary. After not seeing Christine for years, he has no problem coming into her dressing room uninvited and inviting her to dinner, and expects no pushback from her. He is quick to judgement, confronting the managers about sending him a note that he has little proof they sent. He makes himself as a barrier against evil, as he swears with confidence that he will protect Christine from a man who has already killed once. He is filled with fiery passion for doing what is right above all else and will barrel over any evil-doer who stands in his way, an old school Knight in Shining Armor. But, his Gryffindor Primary ultimately leads him into conflict with the woman he loves. After having seen this monster attack innocent people, he is sure that Christine would want to run away with him and condemn the Phantom for all time, but he is utterly confused by her reaction. Not only is she not running away, she's actively refusing to help capture him and pushing against him! Why?? Raoul's extreme Gryffindor-ness leads him down into the lair to save her when she is taken, to be immediately rendered useless by both the punjab lasso and the plot. His righteous nature is not wrong, and in many other stories, he would be the hero of the day. But, this is a Slytherin story, and so love is the only solution.

Christine Daaé: Slytherpuff (Slytherin Primary, Hufflepuff Secondary)

We spend a lot of the musical inside Christine's head, more than we spend watching her physically act in reality, but we can still figure out her secondary. Her Hufflepuff Secondary comes out in her devotion to her craft. She is a hard worker and takes her art very seriously. But, Christine can also be a doormat, allowing people like Carlotta to walk all over her for far too long out of fear of rocking the boat. She is regarded as a quiet and kind woman who works diligently at her craft, so Puff Secondary felt right. Now, for her most defining trait in the musical, her (almost unhealthy) Slytherin Primary. Christine has never quite petrified, but she has come very close. Her father was, and, for a while into the musical, still is, her entire world. He was her only companion in life for a very long time, and all of her creative energy came from her love for him. Then, she met Raoul as a child. The young and charming True Gryffindor was easily able to slip past her shyness with his Gryff Secondary panache, and she had found another chosen person to bring into her life. Even after they were separated, she never forgot him and continued to love and appreciate him. Then, her father died. She nearly petrified, wanted to push most people away, especially with Raoul nowhere to be found, but the Angel of Music her father promised her came to her. The Angel replaced her father in her circle of chosen people and became the most important person in her life. She would sing for him out of devotion and love, just like her father was a muse to her. But, Raoul's sudden return into her life creates the conflict. Things have changed, Raoul. She has someone she feels a loyalty to that she cannot break. Even as her Angel is proven to be a deformed man, even after he has murdered, even then, she cannot bring herself to despise him and shun him. When you're in with a Slytherin, you're in hard. It is only when the Phantom tries to take advantage of her grief at her father's grave, only after she fully confronts that her father is never coming back, that she can bring herself to fully side against him with Raoul. The Phantom should know how much her father means to her. He should understand. A Slytherin using another Slytherin's person against them is the ultimate betrayal. The next betrayal came when he threatened to take away Raoul, her last chosen person beyond the Phatom himself, trying to force her to become like him and live in the darkness alone. Instead, it is through Christine's Slytherin-like act of love towards Phantom, even beyond his horrible acts, that ends his tirade.

Let me know what you think of my analysis! [And, if anyone in the Phandom sees this: yes, I love Raoul. No, I don't like LND. I'm technically a fan of both E/C and R/C, but I believe R/C is ultimately canon and better aligns with the moral of the original story. Meghan Picerno is my current favorite Christine (love me an operatice Christine,) Jordan Donica is the best Raoul to ever grace the stage and deserves a spin at the Phantom, and Earl Carpenter has my favorite acting interpretation of the Phantom even if his singing was only okay.]

Some thoughts about one of the most important and complex pieces of Cinema created by one of its most brilliant minds, Charlie Kaufman. This piece is called “Synecdoche, New York”, made it to screens in 2008, and it has not been the most famous amongst his other works (eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, Anomalisa, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), perhaps because it stood on the edge of the forgivable of the provocative. Yet it’s level of courage in the cinematic depiction of humanity’s eternal struggle for depth and meaning is an undoubtedly a rare gem.

This picture follows the life of a theater director (Caden Cotard) and its slow disintegration out from and into itself while going through an endless quest to regain control, in a world that viciously continues to strip the sense from his mind, soul, and body. It quickly starts with a brief introduction into an insane world, one full of disasters, affecting many layers, the outside world, his small family, and his own body. Calamities are everywhere, artists dying before their time, earthquakes killing tens of thousands, political destruction of a fragile society while being eaten by the unmerciful capitalism of America. This is the outside, the surrounding, the baseline of life. This eternal unfair chaos projects itself into his smaller world, his family’s. His wife is slipping away in a self-struggle to maintain the façade of love that she had for him, feeling the shattering disappointment that she describes as an inevitability after “you get to know someone really well”. She is an aspiring artist that longs for freedom from the attachments of her world, the boundaries of modern America, the walls of her house, and the ever-known human “family” structure. They have a daughter; she is erratic and spontaneous. She also has the same bug of deconstruction of the self, as her parent’s, portrayed from the very first scenes when she got obsessively worried of having a “green Poo” which was unusual and unnatural and served as a starting point of constant doubt of her own body and how it functions, thoughts that her parent’s quickly dismissed and ignored. The last layer of this mania is Cotard’s body; it starts showing several symptoms of an unknown undiagnosed illness that seems to be deadly; its symptoms are physical and apparent on his skin and in his joints and in his nerves and his blood in a medically random and incomprehensible fashion. This chaotic manifestation of these lives is aided by fast and unusual style of editing that denies the viewer the chance to breath, constantly challenging any efforts to grasp the story and its characters. This style introduces the surreal and forces you to succumb to its sheer force of the non-logical and the insane; it’s simply saying “I won’t let you understand, as these characters are lost, as these lives are denied of meaning, you will be too”.

The family is destroyed, the mother and the daughter leave, and our poor Cotard is left alone. His body continues to fail in a very gruesome manner. Then we get deeper into a dissection of society; now the medicine trying to understand this disintegration of his body but fails miserably, both because of the dysfunctional medical system (one of apathetic approach that makes an endless loop of referrals that robes time and efforts mercilessly and towards nothing!, in a surreal criticism of modern America’s healthcare system) and the enigma of his body being a projection of the enigma of his soul.

Throughout Cotard’s moral and physical battles, he fails to seize many opportunities of true passion and love. There is a secretary that finds him physically appealing; She admires his talent in theater and finds his tormented soul soothing to hers. She is wild and alive, frequently flirting with him, seducing him into surrendering his meaningless devotion to his miserably failing marriage. He is lonely, she knows that, she understands that, and she also suffers from that and wants to save herself and him, but the idiot is weak, lacks the power for adventure, and powerless to break free from his loneliness. The years pass by in a weird chronology that shines more light on the psychotic state that drowned him, and he continues to have a passive-aggressive vain dance with his admirer around their lust for passion and true happiness, but not actually reaching any. He continuously tries to connect with his abandoning family, failing every time, and each time he would lose more of himself by their constant ignorance and rejection, which later throughout the movie appeared to have changed him into a masochistic pathologic small man, one who got addicted to the worthless and the contemptible.

Despite all his defeats, he is truly a brilliant artist, and a play of his achieves major success quickly to be rewarded with the highest grant that can be given to a theater director. He now has a tool to construct something meaningful and true in his life; he has a mean to maybe gain back some control of his life. He starts building this vague play; he keeps repeating that he wants to portray something real, defining this “real” mainly by the idea of death, his firm belief of its inevitability, but at the same time, his refusal to concede to it as he wants to live and explore the spectrum of his moral paradoxes. This play doesn’t have a plot nor any well-defined characters, no unified structure, no script, and no clear dramatic objectives. He instructs his actors (or rather preaches them) about its intended qualities, but in reality -as had he intimately shared with another admiring actress- he doesn’t really know what he is doing. He starts the project in a spontaneous fashion, instructing actors to build the real, and with the lack of context, he unknowingly starts to shed parts of himself into the play. Step by step, throughout a bizarre and terrifyingly brutal and swift passage of time, he builds his own life in a colossal warehouse that replicates the same chaotic outside world (New York is used as an example, which is a perfect smaller scale of the American society in particular and the whole world in general) and the one of his own life. He chooses actors to play his friends, his co-workers, his lover, his estranged wife (the character being a piece of paper constantly instructing him to clean her house, with random phrases of “congratulations” and empty longings, that served as bread crumbs luring him into an addiction to masochism), and finally, an actor to play his own self.

These versions of the people and the environment of his life keep emerging, getting larger and larger with increasing complexity with more actors, more construction in the set, and more stories. He failed to control his own life, so he went into a quest of replicating his own world but now from the seat of the director in an attempt to assume the “god” of his life, he is searching for control, for meaning, for the lost opportunities of his youth, and the missed love from his existence. He wants to right his mistakes and re-live the failed opportunities. His theater piece -as his own devastation- became endless. He created one duplicated layer that quickly was duplicated again and again and again into further warehouses inside warehouses; actors instructing actors; himself instructing himself to choose another self, and such insanity. But now something fascinating started to appear before his own eyes, his subjects started to break free from the sorrowful storylines of his life. The opportunities of love that he had lost in his past started to be seized by the actors playing them, the stability of his replicated families had stronger chances, even an old failed suicide attempt was successful in a dramatic and hauntingly beautiful fashion (as how one's death is always wished to be). Not only that, but the actors assuming the roles of his old lost loved ones started to have real interactions with the real people of his real life; substituting him; bypassing him, they were not only defying his orders but also furthering his moral decline. The manifesto of god was being undermined, again and again, striking him many times back again to the loss of control and to the void that he so desperately was trying to escape.

This play takes decades in the making, clearly without any comprehensible finishing end in sight. Our director kept making different titles for it as he gets older -and perhaps wiser-. As these smaller versions of life continued to evolve, they started to disintegrate by falling into war and destruction, something that can be described as an embedded doom in the humanity’s genome, their tormented souls everlastingly jumping between the need for control and the need to destroy it. Kaufman is saying that after all, these enchanting dynamics are what keeps us alive, they might be lures of desire, qualities that are old and beasty, but they are the flams of our souls; ones of which are both created and destroyed by fire. This war continues to annihilate everyone and everything, leaving the director utterly alone. His last surrender was to a voice -a manifestation of his superego- explaining to him the deeper meanings of his life, informing him that all humans are alone, he is all the characters of his life, all the characters of his plays, “everyone is everyone, everything is everything”. He continues to wander in the apocalypse until he sits with one survivor actress, one whom played the mother of a dream of his, apologizing to her for the lost opportunity of an old promised picnic with her and her grandchildren he made in an old childhood dream, admitting love for her, which serves as an epiphany for what he believed to be the most complete and the purest of titles for his play, but as he started to name it, he was quickly abducted by death.

Synecdoche New York is a very complex and enchanting piece of art, one that is very hard to dissect. It must be viewed from two distinct perspectives. One that might try to look closely to understand the story, but not to be taken too seriously because it's incomprehensible and surreal, but rather to feel (and maybe understand) how the movie deals with identity, sexuality, and desires; the story of the origin of god and the instincts behind that; the glimpse at American capitalism and its resulting destruction of the passionate and the genuine. Also, the dissection of fatherhood, motherhood, and family; the criticism of toxic masculinity that Kaufman so very much adores dealing with in all his pictures. The other perspective, and the most approachable and important, is to see the bigger picture that integrates all these small aspects and its dazzling complexities; To see the laughable mockery of our grasp on life, our infinite quests for meaning in the wrong paths that imprison us into sorrow and loneliness that furthers and furthers, while we miss the most beautiful and what is truly worthy of life; sex, passion, courage, art, love, and the intimate human touch.

Kaufman’s Synecdoche New York is an unforgettable experience that almost redefines everything, one that is very personal to me, and will forever stay in my memory as well as my heart.