Jason: What are you making?
Dick: Haute cocoa.
Jason: Hot cocoa?
Dick: No. Haute cocoa. I am making the best, and fanciest cup of hot chocolate in gotham.
Jason: Is that a cup of corn starch? How much milk are you using?
Dick: Equal parts!
Jason:...Equal parts?
Dick: I gotta make it thick somehow! All fancy hot cocoas are thick. Now where is Alfred's homemade vanilla...
Jason: mmkay. ALFRED! DICK IS MAKING NON-NEWTONIAN HOT CHOCOLATE WITH YOUR GOOD VANILLA!
Dick: Shh Shh Shh! No nonono please! Why would you tell him that!
Alfred: Master Dick...
Dick: -hOW DID YOU GET HERE SO FAST!
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ok im waffling on about fallout instead of having breakfast but i saw a criticism of how the prisoners were treated that's stuck with me.
spoilers!
so i think the criticism wasn't incorrect, per se: it condemned the way the show portrayed the vault dweller's naive intention to rehabilitate their murderous captives. it found fault with a common, and horrible, message that tv shows like to say, which is that carcerial violence and even the death penalty is the only effective way to deal with criminals, who are a fundamentally Bad category of human. im sick of that message too! but i think that wasn't what was going on here, actually.
so like, the vault dwellers had only ever experienced violent loss the once, and didn't really know how to cope other than denial and repression of the ordeal. but they were all hopeful and enthusiastic that their prisoners, the invaders that came to kill them all and take their stuff, could be eventually welcomed into the community as their comrades. the champions of this cause were nebbishy dorks and painfully out of touch academics. this is pretty normal for how prison reformers are portrayed, if extremely fucking annoying for those of us who ARE in favor of prison reform.
but so of course when the son of the former overseer, Norm, speaks up and suggests killing the prisoners, because why should they share resources with invaders who explicitly wanted to keep hurting them? why should they show mercy to their attackers? everyone is appalled by this suggestion. because they had to reinvent the whole concept of vengeance right then and there, because grudges and cycles of violence are anathema to a bottle society like theirs. they have been raised all their lives to forgive and forget and now, put to the test, they're recommitting to this ethos: get along, let the past go, look towards the future, believe the best of everyone.
but the prisoners die, anyway. the prisoners are killed with rat poison. and the thing is that Norm who suggested it didn't do it himself. and the prison guard who's blamed for it, even though she privately agreed with Norm that the prisoners are dangerous and unforgiveable, she didn't do it either. it's not a moment of triumphant, cathartic vengeance and it doesn't prove that there's no way to negotiate with terrorists and invaders but kill them like vermin because that's not what the message is meant to be.
the message is that norm stands there in the middle of these inconvenient prisoners, these corpses dressed in his own people's uniforms, and he looks at the new overseer. and he knows that she killed them, and she knows that he knows. she wanted him to know. this is her message and he's reading her loud and clear. and he doesn't look like a guy who's just been backed up by authority, who's just been validated in his desire for the ultimate control over those who have wronged him.
he's scared and pale and the music is ominous as fuck. and he's inside the cell, he's directly in the middle of it.
because what just happened is that he realized his entire society is being held prisoner, and the overseer is the one with the rat poison. and that he doesn't know, anymore, what freedom and safety and justice actually mean, just that he doesn't have them and he doesn't know where to find them.
that's what that scene meant. not that rehabilitative justice is a pathetic delusion of people who have no idea how to make hard choices.
but that before you advocate for killing prisoners, you might want to see how big that prison is, first.
and which side of the bars you're standing on.
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Broke: Catherine Todd died of a heroin overdose and Willis Todd was an angry deadbeat alcoholic goon
Woke: Catherine Todd died of Cancer and Willis Todd worked for Two-Face to make ends meet
Bespoke: Catherine Todd died because she had Cancer, but could no longer afford Chemo, so Willis Todd took the job with Two-Face to help Catherine. Except he got arrested leaving Catherine with a low source of income so she had to rely on other sources for pain relief. And it’s Gotham so whatever meds she got weren’t safe.
Stop villainizing Willis. Stop simplifying Catherine’s situation. Sheila and Bruce are fair game, but Willis and Catherine were good people in a bad situation.
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