It's a Deal.
So! Steph is in a bit of a Bind. Literally.
Her Father had just discovered that she was the Vigilante who kept ruining his Plans, and decided to Deal with her. So he tied her up at a Bomb Site for one of his Plans and left her to die there.
No matter how much she struggled, she couldn't escape the Ropes, and time was running out. If only she had managed to get that last message out to Batman in time, maybe he would have come to rescue her.
The Timer had nearly reached Zero, when all of a sudden Time Stopped. The Ropes around her fell away, and a guy walked up to her as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
"Hey, you seem to be in a bit of a bind."
"Not so much anymore, was that you?"
"Yeah, bit of a Free Sample. See, I'm in a bit of a bind as well. I made a Deal with these floating Eyeballs, and long story short in order to keep my town safe I need to take the Soul of an Innocent person."
"And is that where I come in?"
"Yup, Basically I save your life, help you out with whatever you want, and you give me the rights to your Soul."
"What if I just walk away while time is stopped?"
"The building is Locked down tight, and I can't actually hold Time stopped for too long either way, it's sort of a new power to me. Without my help you wouldn't get out in time."
"So it's sell my soul or die?"
"Trust me,I don't like it either, but it's what I have to do."
"You know what, sure. You help me escape, help me take down The Cluemaster, and I'll give you my Soul."
"Then it's a Deal."
"I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship."
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since there's an impressionist royal portrait in the zeitgeist right now, do you wanna hear about one of my fav norwegian oil painters........ his name is håkon gullvåg and he's painted portraits of the norwegian king and queen and they look like this
which were pretty controversial at the time (the year 2000), but i was too baby to know anything about it!
(the headline says "UNDIGNIFIED!")
i first heard of him when he was on the news for a completely different controversy around the years 2008/2009 - his exhibition titled 'the holy land'/'terra sancta' which was a series of paintings he had painted in a wild unstoppable rage over the injustices he had seen palestinians suffer. at one of the exhibitions in syra, two of the paintings got removed by the french embassy, and i think never returned to him? i'm finding it surprisingly difficult to hunt down the story without knowing exactly what to look for, but i did dig up this article. i was still a young teen at the time so i didn't know much about the context, but in recent times i've been thinking about these paintings a lot. i'll add the Controversial Paintings under the cut:
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So I noticed something in Harrow the Ninth. In chapter two, when John is trying to console Harrow over having lost Gideon, he puts his hands on her shoulders, and he says "Gideon Nav did not die for nothing."
Harrow feels "a hot whistle of pain run down
[her] temporal bone," which is, we know now, Harrow having a stroke as her skull alters her brain so that she hears him say 'Ortus Nigenad' instead. And she replies to him in kind, using Ortus' name. So the interesting bit is John's reaction, look:
He had his hands on her shoulders the whole time. Physical touch negates lyctoral blindness, and she had a stroke while he was touching her. That look on his face. Is he working out an emotionally taxing anagram, or is he taking a good look at her and working out what the hell just happened? Then he says Gideon's name again, like he's running a test, and Harrow has another stroke. That's exactly the same test Mercy performed to figure out what Harrow did to her brain in chapter twenty-nine.
He knows. He's known about the lobotomy since chapter two. He thinks she did it to forget her grief and guilt, and he thinks he understands.
Which means when he 'notices' the lobotomy in this scene:
He's not really noticing it for the first time at all. He's calling attention to it. He's just told Harrow that she didn't open the Tomb, that she's wrong about the events of her own life, and then he deliberately 'discovers' and points out her brain damage to seal the deal.
John Gaius uses: Gaslight! It's super effective.
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underrated relationship dynamic is “i would do terrible things for you because I know you would never want me to” i would toss aside my entire moral code if you asked because i know you never will. i would choose you over everything because you would never make me choose. i give you this power because i know you would never abuse it
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