Fanfiction Fridays: Human Decency by crowsnest

Recently, for whatever reason, I decided to go ahead and give Gotham Season 2 a watch. Regardless of my feelings on the show as a whole, the experience nevertheless left me in yet another mood to seek out more Riddler. As such, I set out to revisit some of my favorite fanfics, and so I bring to you Human Decency by crowsnest.

In Brightest Day: Batman, Winnie the Pooh, OCD, and a Lack of Representation

I’ve wanted to write a post about how OCD is portrayed in pop culture for quite some time now—but to be honest, there really aren’t that many obsessive-compulsive characters out there. Off the top of my head, I can name the Riddler from DC Comic’s Batman and Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh. Rin tells me that Pearl from Steven Universe also suffers from OCD, but I don’t watch that show and therefore cannot comment on it. So that leaves me with the Riddler and Rabbit, which are not that many characters at all.

Unfortunately, despite being one of the more well-known mental disorders out there, OCD is sadly not that well understood by people at large. I think this helps contribute to the lack of representation—and what representation us OCD sufferers do get is normally not that great either.

Fanfiction Fridays: The Cat Problem by raven_jem

via imgarchade

Batman is one of those stories I’m constantly conflicted about. I will always hate Batman because of its horrible ableist take on mental disorders and people who have them, but I will always love Batman because it has awesome characters who override my hatred. And at any given moment, I don’t know who my favorite character is. Is it Harley Quinn for her fun-loving personality and romantic and sexual interest in Ivy, or is it Jonathan Crane who I can easily headcanon as asexual? Other times, I relate more to Edward Nygma because of his obsessive-compulsive behavior. And then of course there’s Selina Kyle, who’s a sassy badass cat lady. And who doesn’t love a sassy badass cat lady?

Fanfiction Fridays: Enough

Probably the only upside to cancelled shows is that fanfiction attempts to fill in the holes they leave behind, and Young Justice had a lot of holes in it. Very obviously the show was designed to run for a least a few more seasons to explain everything and justify the numerous characters it introduced.

Also, his sideburns bother me.

One such character was the Riddler; I was never sure how I felt about his introduction into the series. We first meet him while as an inmate at Belle Reeve, not Arkham, and instead of working on his own personal goals—like proving himself smarter than Batman—he’s an agent for the Light. I was a little underwhelmed by his character, and I felt as if the show should have done more with him, instead of having him be a random adversary for our heroes, especially since working with the Light never seemed to line up with his original goals in the comics. I just wanted something to justify his alliance with them.

Enough by FelineOverlord doesn’t set out to do that specifically, but it does give me some closure with his character, though admittedly not as much as I’d like.

The Riddler has enough, but breaking ties with the Light is nothing he can do on his own. YJ verse, based on a prompt fill by Higgystar on tumblr.