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cantsayidont · 5 months

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Spring 1941. For sheer noirish atmosphere, no era of Batman stories has yet topped the period of roughly a year and a half between the introduction of Robin in DETECTIVE COMICS #38 and the late 1941 story in which Commissioner Gordon officially deputizes Batman. By this time, the strip was beginning to find its own voice and aesthetic, but it had not yet abandoned the intensity of the character's pulp roots. The material is not always particularly grim or dark, but there's a real sense of madness in some of these stories: Batman and Robin are still outlaws, moving through a macabre underworld of irrational violence and implacable fate, where any real rules are mostly arbitrary. There's also a degree of romance, something that the strip would later abandon for many years. This was the period in which Batman regularly let Catwoman escape him with a kiss and shove, and in which he could still be moved by a pretty girl like Queenie (above), the ill-fated heroine of "The Riddle of the Missing Card!"

This story from BATMAN #5 begins with an explanation of how the Joker survived his apparent demise in his most recent appearance (in the previous issue of BATMAN). Three crooks in a boat find the villain in the harbor and decide to rescue him for their own reasons:

At this point in the series, the Joker was not yet a prankster pulling themed novelty crimes; he was a greedy, homicidal schemer with a gruesome sense of humor. He proposes that they operate a gambling ship just beyond the three-mile limit, where it will be out of the jurisdiction of the police, and suggests that rather than simply fleecing customers at the gaming tables, they also gather information about their guests to identify targets they can rob later.

Reading about the controversial gambling ship, Bruce Wayne decides to pay it a visit in mufti, although while getting ready, he accidentally cuts himself shaving. On the ship, he soon meets Queenie, who's acting as hostess:

Writer Bill Finger often borrowed from the movies for these stories, and the conversation between Bruce and Queenie plays on a popular convention of talkies made in 1930–1934, before the strict enforcement of the Production Code: characters surrounded by libertines who make a romantic connection based on their shared weariness with debauchery and fast living. This particular trope played out many times in pre-Code films, one well-known example being the 1934 crime drama MANHATTAN MELODRAMA, in which former good-time girl Myrna Loy leaves gambler boyfriend Clark Gable for his straight-laced friend William Powell, and adds context to Queenie's reaction to Bruce beyond what's actually on the page.

Bruce then overhears Queenie talking with her confederates and realizes that one of them is the Joker in disguise, which so startles him that gives himself away. To Queenie's dismay, her partners' response is to immediately attempt to murder Bruce:

(Bruce does occasionally smoke in these early stories, although more frequently a pipe than cigarettes.)

Bruce of course survives and later returns in costume with Robin, leading to a fight and a car chase that ends with the Batmobile sailing off a cliff. Robin is captured, and Batman surrenders himself in hopes of freeing his ward, even if it means gambling for Robin's life. However, this gives Queenie a close look at Batman, and the familiar shaving cut on his chin:

As Batman fights the Joker's cohorts Clubsy and Diamond Jack, the Joker decides it's time to cut his losses by sealing the hatches and setting the gambling ship ablaze, intending to kill everyone aboard. Meanwhile, Queenie chooses Batman over her own accomplices:

It's not entirely clear here if Queenie has dropped the gun and Jack has picked it up, or if Jack has a second gun. In any case, Queenie collapses in Batman's arms and dies of her wounds after a final kiss, as seen above. Her statement that she was in love with Bruce is a bit much in context — they really interacted only briefly — but her fate makes an impression, not least because this story is framed as much from her point of view as from Batman's.

Batman and Robin then pursue the Joker by boat through a rainstorm, leading to a final confrontation in a nearby lighthouse that culminates in Robin throwing the Joker to his latest apparent demise:

Note that there's no pretense here of turning the Joker over to the police, and as with some of the men Robin apparently killed in his first appearance, calling this self-defense might be a stretch.

Afterward, Bruce has a reflective moment about Queenie:

While there's no mention of Catwoman in this story, the parallels between Catwoman and Queenie are notable, aside from their physical resemblance. Like Queenie, Catwoman is a criminal, but she still has a conscience, a dangerous commodity in these stories, and one that leaves her vulnerable to more ruthless villains like the Joker. Indeed, in one of her previous appearances (in BATMAN #2), Catwoman had attempted to bargain with the Joker to stop him from killing Robin and was nearly burned alive for her trouble, after which she plunged into the river to an uncertain fate, much as the Joker does here.

In this period, few of the characters had been around long enough to be assured of any script immunity (even the Joker had very nearly been killed off at the end of his second appearance), and it's easy to see this underlying the early flirtation between Batman and Catwoman: Their world is a lawless one of frequent, serious jeopardy, beyond just the whimsy of a dedicated crimefighter being attracted to a pretty thief, and it's probably not coincidental that the frisson of their interactions steadily diminished as Batman and his mise-en-scène became less perilous and more respectable throughout the '40s. By the end of the decade, the Batman series rarely had any meaningful romantic subplots, and it would be years before there was another with any real spark; Batman had grown too staid and his world simply too safe for it to carry the same charge.

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ehlnofay · 11 months

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19 for the worldbuilding prompts + Torr?

the profound quiet of a small settlement at night

North Eastmarch is freezing cold all over, but it wears different outside the city than within.

Torr would never call Windhelm warm – not even in summer months, no matter how used to it they are – but what little heat it has it clings to with great determination. The walls huddle together, trapping the air so that it’s either still and muggy or a howling wind, like each close-knit house is breathing in tandem. The heat of the people run up and down its streets, blood through its knotted stone veins. The city is alive, an ecosystem unto itself; its snow, dark with footprints, runs sludgy down the roads; a fireplace is always burning somewhere.

Outside of the walls, surrounded by nothing but empty air and snow-laden trees, a slow-moving stream running with barely a burble – it feels dead, in contrast. Silent. Branches reach needle-sharp across the blue-black sky, the ground is gleaming white and undisturbed by anyone else’s footprints, and the nearest fire is the barely visible gleam of the Kynesgrove mining camp, up the hill and through the sporadic spindles of the trees. The breeze ghosts past Torr’s neck and whips the mud-stained snow into a flurry.

In the city, Torr’s comfortable sleeping almost anywhere – as comfortable as they ever get, anyway. Some of the buildings have great gaps under the porch where the snow can’t reach and no-one ever finds them; there’s places in the nooks of the walls, and sheds built into the side of the house that people don’t lock, and Torr knows a few people besides who don’t mind him kipping on their floor every now and again, as long as he doesn’t ask too often. The outside isn’t like that. There’s not many places to go. He’s lurking around Kynesgrove tonight – on his way back from a quick venture out to get some things done that pay better than running errands around the markets – and there aren’t many options. The inn, which he can’t afford – the mine, which would be warm but is very guarded – the miner’s encampment or someone’s house, both of which would most likely result in being chased off. Besides, there’s a performative element to meeting people, especially adults, in strange places, and Torr’s not in the mood to play to strangers. So much of his being is caught up in Windhelm’s grimy alleys, tangled in the hair and fingers of its discarded children; he doesn’t know how to be himself away from it all.

But they don’t have to, seeing as there’s the rickety old sawmill on the edge of a stream feeding into the harbour. It’s not bad, as shelter goes; no walls, so the wind rubs its fingers wraithlike down Torr’s cheeks and tangles them in his hair, but at least there’s a roof. It looks newly thatched, too, the floorboards free of rot, the water-wheel still chugging creakily along. There’s no wood to cut here, all the nearby surrounding trees too scraggy to be worth the bother. The only big ones are part of the grove up on the hill. There’s no point in keeping the mill running, but Torr is glad it is; he watches the distant firelight flickering through the scrub, and listens to the splashing of the wheel. It’s proof that people and the things they make do still exist – if not necessarily here.

It really feels dead, out in the cold, with the leafless trees and the wind that doesn’t even whisper. It always does. It’s a bit discomfiting, which is maybe why Torr doesn’t go on out-of-city endeavours as often as perhaps he could; but really, there’s not work out here enough to make it worth it. There’s always problems with bandits on the road, but Torr’s not a good enough fighter for bounty work; there’s collecting plants and things to sell Nurelion, but that’s easy enough to do on a day trip. (And, really, it’s more for Torr’s own enjoyment, besides. They never even venture far south enough to get to the sulphur pools, which is where the more interesting things grow.)

This trip, though, is an outlier. Unusually efficient. Just a quick job for Niranye, scouting a merchant’s cart on the road – almost definitely for something shady, but that’s not Torr’s business, and it was too much money too easy to turn down. And then – just earlier today, foraging out in the wilderness as best as Torr (a distinctly urban animal) knows how – they’d come across a giant’s corpse, stiff and white as the snow it lay in. Torr’s no master alchemist but they know the value of a cadaver when it comes to brewing alloys and admixtures, so they set to with their blunt-edged dagger and now they’ve got a sack full of what may as well be gold. (Long as it doesn’t start to rot before they can get Nurelion to preserve it, anyway.)

Torr’s going to be rolling in it when they get back to Windhelm. They could use that money for nearly anything – pay off a few things they borrowed, new warm things now that winter’s coming back strong, bedrolls, waterskins. Endless options – which, strangely, is more exciting than it is burdensome.

It’s all the sort of decision that would ordinarily feel life-or-death urgent but right now feels – not small. Not insignificant, not at all, but distant. A choice to be made at another time, by another person.

(Torr’s whole being belongs to Windhelm’s back streets. They’re someone else, away from it all.)

That’s the other thing about leaving the city, spending time in the discomfiting slow-paced ghost-world outside. It’s quiet. Torr sits surrounded by the wind in the trees, the lazy murmur of the stream, the creak of the water-wheel, and nothing else.

He’s been called a worrywart (mostly by Griss in a strop) but to tell the truth he doesn’t think that’s true. Torr doesn’t fuss for the sake of fussing, he just doesn’t like to leave things undone; can’t stop until he finds a solution. Out here, alone, in the empty cold, there are no solutions to find – same old problems back home, he knows, but no steps he can take at this time to right them. That’s never true while he’s in the city, so he can never stop thinking about it, every choice and action accompanied by a buzzing background chorus of everything else he really should be doing – that really should have been done by now – that should never have been left undone this long, what was he thinking? Everything is urgent when it’s doable. But here and now, there’s nothing to do.

So Torr sits hunched on the board floor of the ramshackle watermill, huddled among their heaps of bags and blankets, and thinks of nothing at all.

Not strictly true. They think of supper – haven’t eaten since an apple this morning, except for some snowberries they found around noon, and it’s been a long day. They nabbed some turnips from the garden of the Kynesgrove inn on their way to the mill. They’re fresh, if nothing else – also covered in dirt, so Torr rises reluctantly from their pile of stuff to crouch on the banks of the stream and dip the vegetables in to clean them off. It aches like hell, the frozen water turning their joints to ice – they almost drop the turnip they’re washing, so they scrub it as best they can with the frigid pad of their thumb and whip their hands out of the water soon as they’re able. They stick their fingers in their mouth to warm them back up.

Even after all that time spent warming up their hands, arraying all their belongings back around themself to conserve body heat, the turnips are still cold enough to hurt Torr’s teeth when he bites in. He eats them anyway, relishing a little in the unearthly silence and the aching of his lips and palms. They taste delicious.

With nothing else to do after, the gnawing of his stomach sated, he wraps himself in his shawl and stares up the hill at the camp’s fire until it goes out. The stars wink into brighter being. The wind whistles through the whip-thin branches of the trees. The water-wheel creaks.

Torr sleeps, but he feels like he hears it all – a silent observer, an echo, a beginning – until morning.

#I considered doing something with post-questline torr for this #but it would have been so fucking sad #and I didn't want to write something that was so fucking sad!#I'll post about torr after the horrors eventually but Not Today.#this was also initially supposed to be an exercise in writing something short that focused more on a distinctive atmosphere #than a scene or character study as most of my pieces are.#oops.#snowballed into an absolute monster of a ramble.#maybe sometime I'll use these prompts to write Actually Short pieces with more of a focus on the worldbuilding aspect...#would be good practice. everything I've written lately has been a thousand words minimum.#I could write about my minor characters or npcs with it too... yeah I think I'll do that at some stage #but. anyway. I quite like this piece as a sort of study #I fucking love writing characters who are having a nice time. with just a hint. just a whisper. of the problems #I enjoyed putting in the reference to the alchemical giant's toes especially because that is an allusion no-one but me understands #to a line in one of my very bad very early pieces on torr #it's not well written but I loved that bit because it's such a wonderful microcosm of the way torr is even before the murder cult thing #Yes he's the busiest most hardworking caretaking boy in the world taking trips into the wilderness (comparatively) to feed his family #and Yes his first instinct on seeing a corpse is to cut it up and sell it for parts #(he's done this to human bodies too but only in extremely specific circumstances. the risk of legal repercussions is too great otherwise)#I'll make a post rambling sometime about torr's ethical system because I'm so obsessed with them and their unhinged point of view #Anyway #done rambling #my writing #fay writes #oc tag #torr #the elder srolls #tes #skyrim #tesblr

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