#penguin replies

[universitypenguin]

Hello, Alice! I’ve been recently reading But I Do… Love you and it’s amazing 😍

It’s apparent that Steve’s a bit of a soft!dom in this lovely story and that got me thinking…

How would he react if reader took on a little more dominance in the bedroom? 😏😮‍💨

I think if the tables were turned, Steve would love having the reader dominate him.

This would come as a surprise to him, because I doubt many of Steve’s fantasies include submission. However, when the roles shift and she takes control, he’d find himself enjoying the break from decision making. Being the one who relinquishes control wouldn’t come naturally to Steve, but if it was what the reader wanted, he’d be on board. Then, when he was finally in that position - being the one stripped of control - he’d be shocked to realize how much he needed that release of responsibility and tension. Submitting is a wonderful thing when you trust your partner. He’s definitely comfortable enough to give her power over him and wouldn’t hesitate to let her restrain him if she asked to.

He’d enjoy being the object of her desires, the center of attention, and relish the chance to anticipate what comes next because he doesn’t know what she has planned for him. Also, the fact that she’s gone to the trouble of planning a night for him would be a huge turn on for Steve. The fact that she wanted him and went to all the trouble of figuring out a way to restrain him (because she definitely sourced some vibranium handcuffs for their night) is oddly touching and kind of exciting.

And since he’s Steve Rogers, he’d be taking mental notes the entire time, thrilled by the chance to learn what your true desires and preferences are in this new context. Because he’s already planning on doing it again next weekend.

#penguin replies #steve rogers x y/n #steve rogers fic #steve rogers x you #steve rodgers x reader #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers headcanon #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers smut #but i do love you

[maxwell-grant]

So... Thoughts on The Penguin trailer?

I'm trying to reign in my optimism a bit and be a little more cautious, but so far: ahahahah oh man, oh man oh man, I'm really excited for this.

God I gotta get back on my Sopranos watch, I gotta start making time for it again. I mean, it's been a terrific show so far, I'm not just watching it because of this, but out of everything we've seen so far this trailer is the biggest "we're doing The Sopranos" thing I've seen from them yet.

I love the mention of Rex Calabrese here and the recontextualization of his character, and how Oswald views him. For comparison's sake: In Batman Eternal, Rex Calabrese was brought up as a brutal ruler who ripped throats out with his teeth and terrified all the other cops and crime families into obeying him and who understood the natural order through which he was supplanted by Falcone, who was then supplanted by Penguin. But here, he talks about Rex Calabrese as a childhood hero who helped people, who was given a funeral parade as a show of love from the people. That's the kind of person Oz idolizes, the kind of life he wants and is starting to think he will never get to have.

Here's one of the big reasons why this is already the best take on Gangster Penguin there's ever been, and the thing I love the most about this trailer, and something that absolutely defined him in the movie as well: Oswald is completely delusional about what being a gangster actually means.

Oswald here is a guy who had his heart broken in the movie because Falcone, the guy he followed and obeyed and looked up to with every breath, turned out to be a backstabbing piece of shit, with Oswald clearly kept in the dark about the nastier things Falcone got up to. He gets very offended at the suggestion he murdered Annika or that he did the Riddler's serial killer rat maze trap, and in that deleted scene where he tries to pay Selina and keep her from going underground, he clearly wants to be the guy who treats his staff allright and pays them what they need and tries to shield her from the grubby animals downstairs that he on some level finds disgusting (even though they're on his club, and he's providing them with what they want, and he's shielding the worst one of all).

And now he's sitting here talking about his old hero, a gangster from his neighborhood who reached out to people in the street and helped them, who died with his pride in hand and was beloved by his community for it. The kind of guy that Oswald emotionally talks about as someone he wants to be like, as he's getting ready to go to war and shoot and stab and blow up people in a crumbling nightmare city.

This is, in spite of everything, a guy who is very, very preoccupied with being some kind of gentleman, or at least more of a gentleman than the criminals he cavorts with, and a guy whose vision of himself doesn't match the reality of what he does, and a guy who has made a ridiculous cartoon of himself in order to try and forcing that childish idea into reality. This is a Penguin who lives and dresses and acts as an absurd child's idea of a rich and powerful man, except what that entails has changed.

Instead of wanting to be the romantic aristocrat, instead of playing the cultured gentleman thief, this Oswald wants to be the friendly gangster. He wants to be the neighborhood king who runs soup kitchens and helps old ladies cross the street and inspires beaten-down insecure loser kids like him to strive for more, the mafioso who looks out for women and kids and isn't scared of the cops and gets funeral parades for being such a swell guy who just does a little crime ova here every now and then, eeyy, c'maan.

Oswald here has the same dream as Giorno Giovanna, from JoJo Part 5, and he saw Rex Calabrese as the distant mysterious gangster who looked out for Giorno and invisibly kept bullies from picking on him and made the neighborhood treat him decently, who showed him what real power, power to protect himself and others, looks like, and he very clearly wanted to project that kind of fantasy onto Falcone, who is an actual gangster, and thus doesn't act remotely the way Oswald thinks they ought to act.

Oswald here wants to be the Depression-era honorable mafioso, just as outdated and fictional and mismatched a character in our time as the gentleman thief aristocrat was to the 1940s, and to me that feels like the first time anyone's really made Penguin-as-Gangster be a concept worth it's weight and play into makes him so engaging a character. It's just instead of being a burglar and crimelord who reads Raffles and quotes Shakespeare, this Oswald is a Tony Soprano who prays every night to be Don Corleone once he grows up.

And he might even get his chance! Because the way things are going in Gotham, with the city destroyed and in need of rebuilding, with the entire infrastructure crumbled and the mob having lost their figureheads and supply, and Oswald holding one of the few structures not completely totaled, he has the opportunity of a lifetime here to swoop in and play the Capone/Dillinger to this Depression-flavored Gotham.

And I'm really curious as to where he's heading within the show: whether he's going to make this fantasy of his work and be the reasonable flexible-but-unbeatable crimelord and the sole player remaining in town, or whether the downfall of organized crime in Gotham and the rise of the weirdos means that our beloved waddling freak is going to have to come to terms with what he actually is, and grab his colorful suits and his new name and make some umbrella guns to embrace and ride his bizarre awfulness into the sunset.

#replies tag #superheroes #dc comics #batman #penguin #the penguin #oswald cobblepot #colin farrell #matt reeves #hbo max #the batman

[maniacwatchestheworld]

Right now I feel like... If you gave me a Batman rogue and a conflict, I could give you a DPxDC prompt for that. :p

I don't know if anyone would want to take me up on that offer, but I can certainly try! >.<

#dp x dc prompt #dpxdc prompts #dpxdc #dp x dc crossover #dc x dp #dp x dc #As an example you could send me an ask or reply to this like... Rogue: The Penguin. Conflict: Someone insulted him and now he wants to stab. #like that's not a lot but I could make a prompt out of it! :p

[goosterbold]

misc. the corazon figure i've been hunting for a hot min finally came in the mail

#one piece #corazon #sabo #hearts pirates #that's me in corazon's hand. #and the pic of penguin is replying to a tweet about law's boobs.

[chaifootsteps]

It happier news, Jakeneurtron just released a Jax song, with Michael singing! Needless to say I've been listening to it on repeat since I found it yesterday and hope we get an music video to go with it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm-V5CGxtuU&ab_channel=Jakeneutron-Topic

Penguin Anon

Every time Michael sings in something, I want it to play loudly in the house of anyone who says he can't sing.

#Anonymous #video reply #penguin anon #actual blog post

[mydarlingstarling]

#green man has also been living rent free inside my head so i made this #oblivious ed strikes again #the 4 other replies are ivy/jim/selina/butch insulting him for being a fucking moron #ed still does not get it although he /is/ offended #zasz saw his stupid ass reply and just rolled his eyes while sipping on an ice cold shake #harvey literally saw it over jim’s shoulder and died laughing #ed mentions it to lucius lamenting abt everybody calling him dumb when no one else can give the proper answer either #lucius is like :| ohhh ed #gotham posting #shitpost #op #nygmobblepot #riddlebird #gotham riddler #gotham penguin

[sidsthekid]

hello please hear my midnight thoughts. if the pens core (+1) were elements:

Geno - Fire. guy’s passionate, has bursts of energy

Sid - Water. something something determination, repetition, enough to wear away even solid stone

Tanger - Earth. he’s a steady presence, dependable, calm

Flower - Air. nickname nonwithstanding. he’s light and playful and quick

oh!! i like this, and i feel like your observations are spot-on for the core (flower is 100% part of the core in my mind no matter where he goes!!)

especially for geno... i'm just sitting here thinking about all the times he's burnt unsuspecting teams to ash when the pens have seemingly been down during games.

i mean...when is that man not bringing the fire!! the fiery!! the lava!! the drama!!

exhibit a:

to that end...thanks for sharing, anon! :):)

#thoughts immediately went to that caps game from last season when he tore manthas pocket open #and scored #and subsequently sent me and the pens fandom into a stone cold coma #cw flashing #just in case cause for some reason the footage has this blippy thing going on #evgeni malkin #pittsburgh penguins #sorry for the late reply!! its been a nutty week for me

[crossbackpoke-check]

Here is cult leader Geno!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31151726

thank you SO MUCH!!!! 😭🥰 this ask took so long to answer because i decided to find the other fics i had mentioned too and create a mini rec list (under the cut)

Blessed are the chosen by beggingwolf

cult leader geno fic. so good enough said i don’t want to spoil anything EXCEPT there is also a director’s cut which i personally am obsessed with because i love to know everything, ever

wine, flowers, & blood by malk1ns

the geno comes to take pittsburgh but doesn’t realize there’s already been a claim fic. oh my GOD i love this fic and the world building and there are so many small details that i want to chew on for hours

The Hockey Gods (Must Be Crazy) by Solarcat

ok this is the real reason this took so long. i was like SOMEWHERE there is a fic about how in a back alley wall in edmonton? winnipeg?? alberta??? there’s a shrine to wayne gretzky because he once took a piss there and if you’re having a shitty season you can leave an offering there to fix it but i COULD NOT find it and i tried every variation of looking for the longest time like. inputting random words into my bookmarks and then into the whole of the HRPF tag but WE FOUND IT

bonus (unmentioned in the original post but found while perusing my bookmarks):

omni devotione by CloudCover

They’d told him, at the beginning, that Sid was devout, an obedient follower of the old gods.

Still a child, Zhenya had laughed, careless and free of concern. “I’m Russian,” he’d said with a shrug. “We killed our gods.”

He knows better than to laugh now.

limned in gold by sebfish

It was tradition that anyone who made the team got called to meet the gods, and everyone knew what that meant.

#thank you for sending the link 🥰😭🥹 i appreciate you so much 💕💕💕 #hckyrcl #liv in the replies #these are all sidgeno because that was the thesis of the original post but if you can’t tell. i LOVE a good magical realism/hockey gods fic #SCREAMING LAUGHING THROWING UP WHEEZING MYSELF TO DEATH I AM LOSING IT Y’ALL THE FIC I TRIED TO FIND FOR SO LONG I CAN FINALLY POST THIS #also guess how i finally found it. guess #page two of the results of the ENTIRE hrpf tag with the ‘search within results’ of ‘brick’ #W H E E Z I N G #fic recs! #pittsburgh penguins

[neoruby-loves-ut-aus]

Ello! You're a really great and interesting person here in Tumblr! As a result, this special gift is for you! Inside of it can be anything from your imagination! Enjoy! <3

Aww thanks Yash!!! *Imagines a cute fluffy female emperor penguin as a pet and friend and hundreds of free Nutella and Oreos* *opens and sees everything imagined*

Awww I'm gonna name my penguin as Snowie and I can finally share my Nutella and Oreos!!! *Gives you a Nutella and a lot of Oreos* Thank you for the beautiful gifts!! 😊😊❤️❤️❤️

#gacha club #gachaclub #gacha character #ask response #ask #answered #ask me anything #ask reply #asks #lovely person #a gift for me?! #Penguin #emperor penguin #nutella #oreos

[sumikatt]

Remember when ppl were replying “submissive and breedable” to celebs/athletes/misc personalities as if that wasnt literal sexual harassment……..

#.s #i know im like 5 years late to this but like. people really were saying this in like the pittsburgh penguins replies like. #what was the plan there 😭

[universitypenguin]

Smut, the way you write it 🤌🤌🤌 as someone who hasn't dipped their toes into smut yet. Spill your secret, Alice.

How do I write smut like you?

Write, then let it rest and revise. Let that rest and revise again. Revise as many times as necessary - sometimes it takes longer, sometimes you’re just in the zone and the words are flowing.

Nobody writes a good first draft - it’s literally never been done. Make sure to give enough detail to get your point across, but remember- your reader’s imagination is capable of doing most of the work.

When you describe something be precise about physical locations. For example, “he touched her hip” is very different than “he touched her waist.” Remember which character’s hand went where! This is an important second draft check and it always saves me. You can’t give your character three hands when he’s only supposed to have two. Writing smut this is a very common problem, which I’ve heard described as “phantom limb syndrome.”

Focus on your character’s reactions. Smut isn’t good because it’s hot, it’s good when it makes the reader feel something emotional. You’re doing two things at once in a smut scene - first, showing erotic moments as they can only be conveyed by the written word, and second, you’re revealing internal thoughts and feeling of your character that would only occur in this context. For example, Lloyd and Princess. The smut chapter was frequently in his perspective due to the fact that I wanted to establish his emotions. The only reason he’d admit to those specific feelings so honestly was because they were being enhanced by passion.

Pace yourself in the build up to the main event - readers need foreplay. I always make people wait. Making the right promise to your audience is very important. Then, you have to lure them along with breadcrumbs in the form of interesting little twists and turns. Your reader has already set their expectations based on the feel of your writing and the things you’re focusing their attention on. They know they’re heading towards a gingerbread house. If you lay a trail of breadcrumbs and fail to deliver the expected “gingerbread house” at the end, they will not be pleased. Make your promise to the reader, and pay it off with the right currency. For example - don’t set up a hot, explicit erotic smut scene and then cut away before things get good. Technically, this might work if you’re writing a “closed door romance” but that’s usually not the style on Tumblr.

I’ve found the chapter warnings we put in the headers tend to set reader’s expectations. Those absolutely help not only for safety, but to direct you towards what stories you’d want to read.

Also, don’t be afraid to keep a file of all the good smut scenes you read. Go through it and make notes over what they did well and why it worked for you. Think about how you could use the same type of device in your work and try it out. I’m not saying to copy their work! But in the same way a chef can make an omelette in thirty different styles, you’ll start to see patterns in good writing that you can follow to improve your own technique.

Beta reader feedback is another important aspect of good writing. You can get lost and not see the forest for the trees, you know? Don’t ruin a piece that’s improving because you’re frustrated. Take your time as you write and the remember: breaks are an important part of the process!

Hopefully this helps! Also, I’m just one writer with a personal opinion and my own experiences. There are many different approaches to creative writing and they’re all valid.

💕

#penguin replies #writing advice #penguin comments #writing stuff #creative writing #how to write #smut #writing smut #smut writing

[maxwell-grant]

This feels like the kind of ask someone should've gotten around to a million years ago, but it seems it falls to me: The Shadow vs. The Penguin. Is there anything there?

Anonymous asked: How would pulp heroes like the Shadow or Green Hornet respond to The Penguin. Characters like Joker or Ra’s I can see them gunning down but that feels weird to do with Oswald “Pengy For President” Cobblepot

(Penguin by Mike Mignola. The Shadow by Lela Dowling)

It's amazing, really, what you've built here. You had a vision and made it real. Every Batman in existence respects you for it, Oswald. In fact, I'll tell you a secret…people assume that Batman's last enemy on most worlds out there is Joker. Maybe Riddler, or Ra's…but it's you.

See, you grow this crime empire until he has to deal with you. - The Batman Who Laughs #3

What there is here is a bit of an impasse, because yes obviously this is brutally, comically one-sided against The Penguin. Pitting most if not all Batman villains against The Shadow is going to be already one-sided in The Shadow's favor. Pick a Batman villain, even the big ones that make Batman the underdog like Ra's and Bane, and you can name a similar threat that The Shadow already defeated. Even if you don't count superpowered cheating with whatever abilities The Shadow has this moment, he's already dealt with most of everything they can do, he's beaten these strategies and puzzles and countless death traps at their own game, and yeah there's the fact that he's known for the fact his villains don't tend to come back for round two even when they don't die facing him. Villains that he faces tend to die specifically because they try to kill him and he returns their fire (it's important to establish here that, unless his enemies have guns drawn on innocent people, The Shadow rarely shoots first - they always have a chance to lay down their arms and walk away, a chance that most obviously never take), and Penguin's known for his unwillingness to go down without a fight and for his signature move being a concealed sneak attack, which means his odds of dying are near dead certain.

In fact, The Shadow already fought a Penguin-esque guy as one of his few reocurring villains, via The Wasp, Gibson's latter day attempt to make another Voodoo Master/Shiwan Khan. The Wasp is a "Napoleon of crime" whose body and strange buzz voice and antics and operations are themed after his namesake animal/insects, who uses a concealed weapon part of said theme (an electric "sting" on his hand powered by batteries on his belt), who connects Cranston to The Shadow and was also the only villain to figure out that Kent Allard is The Shadow. He was cleverer and more resourceful and harder to defeat than most of the typical Shadow villains, and to his credit he did achieve a thing nobody else really achieved in the run, and it didn't really do him that much (learning the secret identity tends to be a death sentence for vigilantes, but for The Shadow it's really not that big a deal, given how easily he can make new ones) and he still went out like a chump, and he's only really remembered as the less impressive of the reocurring supervillains, lacking the outright superpowers of the others. It seems like a fairly closed case.

Problem is, the more comically one-sided the odds are against Oswald, the more likely he is to actually win or at least survive because of that. Going up against people who should have his goose cooked, getting away with things he absolutely shouldn't, slipping away to survive and put one over Johnny Law, that's his thing, it's been his thing from day one. He is no stranger to dealing with vigilantes or people much bigger and stronger and scarier than him, it wasn't that long ago he was walking off getting shot at point blank and later faking his death. Penguin is no common criminal, and he isn't just a guy who's unusually smart and competent at it enough to waddle among supervillains either. In his narrative domain, The Shadow is unbeatable, but in his narrative home, The Penguin is unkillable, and not just because he's a comic book villain who survives by editorial demand. He has protagonist survival clause now.

In his ups and downs over the years, he survived in large part by becoming a fixture of Gotham, someone impossible to uproot from the setting, with his ignanimous transformation into stool-pigeon and banal crimelord in part a consequence of said survival. After more or less retiring from villainy, the next step was to very gradually join the likes of Catwoman, Azrael, Harley Quinn and Renee Montoya in their careers as independent Gotham-adjacent protagonists, which is why he now gets to have his own tv series (the second one at that, because Gotham exists and if it achieved anything, it was proving that there's an audience for The Penguin Show - and yes it still is very much shitty, but also not remotely surprising, that the instant they made a version of Oswald thin, that guy became a critical and fandom darling overnight). The Penguin wormed his way into becoming irreplaceable and they tried, they tried very hard over the years to replace this guy, and he's taken some brutal lumps and fell off very hard from the Bat-villain totem pole, but even that just enabled him to ascend to a different pole and one that makes it he can't really be just another gangster or supervillain to be knocked around, and one that's almost specifically built to ensure his narrative survival. Someone who serves the story better by being alive.

Has The Shadow ever dealt with a guy like this? Yes, yes he has. The Shadow is no stranger to criminal protagonists, or the concept of nuance, or redemption. He is certainly no stranger to the gentleman of crime who is more than what he seems.

The man who entered was tall and well built. He had the manner of a gentleman. He was attired in a perfectly fitting dress suit, which he wore with the easy air of a man of the world - Kings of Crime

The gentleman of crime arose, picked up his hat and coat and reached for his cane. There, his form obscured, The Shadow stood close enough to overhear what Graham Wellerton was saying. The gentleman of crime was talking to members of his mob.

What was Graham Wellerton's purpose? How and why had the gentleman of crime parted from his men? Why was he no longer engaged in robbery? - Road of Crime

To all appearance, George Ellerby was a gentleman; and he was actually qualified to prove such a claim. But tonight, he was to be a gentleman of crime - Battle of Greed

"I wonder," said Sandersham, slowly, "just how much The Shadow can do, or intends to do. Who is he, Krengle? How powerful is he?"

"No one knows who The Shadow is," replied the lawyer. "But he is death on crooks, they say, and he considers crime to be much broader than its legal implications." - Battle of Greed

There's about 5 Shadow novels that specifically touch on the topic of redemption. There are others where it comes up, plenty of others where The Shadow goes the extra mile in giving criminals a chance, and stories that highlight the lines that The Shadow draws in deciding how to deal with criminals (“To murderers, The Shadow dealt death: to such schemes (robbery, fraud, etc), he dealt ridicule.” - The Third Shadow), but those 5 make a focus of it. In all of those 5, we meet characters that can be called a "gentleman of crime". They are cunning, respectable-looking young men who use their smarts for crime, largely because of social circumstances that force them into using criminal tactics for dealing with life-consuming problems that the law has failed them in, and The Shadow assists them in addressing and rectifying said problems and turning their lives around.

In Kings of Crime, blackmailer and swindler Hubert Carpenter. In Road of Crime, the protagonist Graham Wellerton, "bank robber deluxe". In The Broken Napoleons, engineer Curt Sturley. Battle of Greed opens with George Ellerby, although he's not really the protagonist and is stopped before he commits his first robbery, and that story has two other redemptions that pull more focus. And in House of Shadows, Kid Pell, whose tragic demise opens the story. With the exception of Carpenter, all of these young men are given understandable and even sympathetic reasons for having become criminals, as all of them became criminals specifically because the law failed them profoundly and allowed them to suffer horrible injustice and ruin upon their lives and families, while shielding those that inflicted it upon them and provided no other recourse for them, and The Shadow goes out of his way to directly or indirectly steer them away from the paths they're walking.

Out of these, only Hubert Carpenter had a body count: he is not a murderer outright, but his past deeds had pushed victims to suicide, and The Shadow fully intended to let him serve his sentence in full. It is through the involvement of innocent parties (he took a dive to get the money to his family, he was betrayed, and his wife fell ill, making him break out of jail and desperately try to get the money for her treatment by robbing an old man who turned out to be The Shadow in disguise) and Carpenter’s own serious efforts to reform himself and assist in the downfall of his far crueler former partners that he’s able to redeem himself and face a new life (The Shadow delivers a government pardon so that he serves a month instead of 10 years).

“Somehow, he knew that The Shadow would not see the innocent suffer for the guilty.” - Kings of Crime

Kid Pell, who had already shot at least 6 people and killed 2 before the story began, wasn't quite so lucky. Dying of blood loss after trying to shoot The Shadow, his last words are a plead for him to get the guy who pushed him into this path, and keep an eye on his brother Denry to stop him from going down his path (which ends up happening, but The Shadow is able to save Denry in time).

"They called me a public enemy," declared Pell. "What else could I be, after my first kill? You know what it is to be quick on the trigger. That's the way I am" - he hesitated, his smile dwindling - "or was."

"I tried crime," said the Kid. "It didn't pay. But I was in it - deep. So I stayed. I've got no excuses. I'm not even blaming the fellow that started me in it. What I did was on my own. Understand?"

"Do me a favor," muttered the dying man. "Let me be forgotten - as Kid Pell. I rigged this hideout, so I could close accounts. Let me go through with it the way I want."

The Shadow's whispered tone gave agreement. Pell's face relaxed. In the glow of the lantern, his features lost their forced hardness. It was easy to see why he had been nicknamed the Kid. His age couldn't have been more than twenty-two.

Even his surroundings spoke a pathetic story. The shelves of the trailer were provisioned for a long stay; and among the canned goods were a few jars of homemade jam; probably the very sort that he had swiped from his mother's pantry only a few years ago.

There were books, too, that dated back to boyhood. Even when he had embarked on his career as a public enemy, Kid Pell had taken these along. He was looking at them, eyes open, the jam jars and the books, and he was smiling again, Kid Pell was. But the dampness from his dying eyes was forming into little beads, like raindrops. Suddenly, the Kid's lips stiffened.

A hand was resting on the Kid's shoulder. He could feel the power of its grip: the hand of The Shadow, merciless to men of crime. To this dying youth, murderer though he was, the pressure of that hand had the warmth of friendship.

"Maybe, Shadow" - The Kid was choking the words - "I ought to have met you before. Maybe… if I had-"

The grip tightened. It brought an end to regrets that could not be remedied. It steeled the Kid for what lay ahead - House of Shadows

-the words that The Shadow delivered held Sandersham rigid. Never in his life had the millionaire listened to such pointed accusations; such words that jogged his memory, nor such tokens of prophecy. "Rupert Sandersham," came the voice, "you are a man condemned by your own avarice! You are a master, not of finance, but of greed!"

"While your wealth grows greater," resumed The Shadow's voice, "your life grows shorter. As your schemes expand, your soul shrivels. You have physical comforts, yes"—the tone was mocking—"but who knows how long you shall retain them?"

"Your power, Sandersham, is not equal to the strength of the law. There have been loopholes in your schemes, that certain eyes may discover before your attorneys plug them". - Battle of Greed

Is The Penguin sympathetic? In some ways, yes. Is The Penguin redeemable? Not a question I'm remotely interested in handing a firm "Yes/No" to, because it's kinda both and neither, redemption tends to be conditional and fickle like that, and also irrelevant to the matter here: We've established that The Shadow (again, speaking for the pulp version here, it's what I tend to do) does not go out of his way to execute criminals, but doesn't hesitate to kill them when they try to gun him or others down. Would The Shadow extend The Penguin an olive branch and spare his life in the hopes that he'd come around and use his impressive intellect and resources and drive for the better? No. It would be useless. The Shadow doesn't deal with that kind of "hope", and The Penguin would not be interested in doing so either.

There have been occasions where The Shadow was caught in a bad enough situation that he had to momentarily pause the pursuit of a criminal, but The Shadow does not compromise, nor does he ever really need to, and he knows a true villain when he sees it. He is not keeping Oswald around as a informant, because he doesn't play by Gotham City rules where that seems like a reasonable thing to do. The true villain of most Shadow stories is always the person who stands to profit the most from said calamity, and most of the time they operate beneath suspicion. There is 0% chance of him underestimating Oswald the way Oswald prefers to be underestimated.

There are two ways Oswald Cobblepot would walk away from meeting a quick death at the hands of The Shadow. The first would be if he never killed anyone, or did anything that led to anyone's death ever again. He'd have to commit to undoing the ruin he brought onto people's lives and give back as much to the city and his victims as he possibly could. Such was what The Shadow did in Battle of Greed to Rupert Sandersham, a millionaire who got a kick out of ruining others financially. He is not the villain, nor is he a murderer, but The Shadow manipulated and terrorized him into making amends and repaying all the people he destroyed. These would be the best, most impossibly nice terms The Shadow could offer Oswald, along with him serving time and spend his whole life looking over his shoulder when, and if, he gets out.

"Look at yourself, Sandersham! You are wearing stripes! In front of you are bars! Beyond you, the outside world. Regard it as an omen, and make your choice. Amend the past; rectify the wrongs that you have done—or face the future consequences that your present methods will bring you!"

Rupert Sandersham was staring downward. His startled eyes saw the stripes that The Shadow had mentioned: those alternate ribbons of dark and light, that came from the setting sun. They had turned his gray suit into a convict's garb! Could it be that he, Rupert Sandersham, might find himself within a prison cell?- Battle of Greed

And that is not happening. There is not a single version of The Penguin who would accept these terms or accept this as a thing he's going to do. Short of the most kid-friendly media and even then, much as I argue that he should have rules of conduct, I don't think there is a single version of the Penguin who'd balk at murder or who hasn't committed it with little to no remorse. Oswald Cobblepot may carry much bitterness and heartbreak, but The Penguin loves what he is too much to accept being anything else. He isn't scared of any of these terms and would find them deeply absurd, because who is this, trying to tell The Penguin he isn't allowed to rob this thing, or kill that guy getting on his nerves, or ruin that rich asshole over there. The audacity of this laughing clown! As if he didn't have one too many to deal with!

The other way he lives, at least for a while, is if he turns out to be right about the way Gotham City works, and it turns out that he really cannot be removed from his position without far worse things growing as a result. I don't think The Shadow would have issues with the Batman villains individually, but neither do Batman or most superheroes. It's Gotham City that's the real problem here, and it's a problem that Batman hasn't solved in nearly a hundred years, and neither has Superman or any of the billion superheroes in that universe, a problem that will never be solved so long as there's a profit to be made on Batman. The Shadow can and has cleaned cities of organized crime before, usually by manipulating it's players into destroying each other, but even he has limits and Gotham City is no mere gangster-ridden town, much like how the man who claimed it is no mere crimelord either.

So the final matter at play here is whether The Penguin is right, and if so, whether The Shadow can afford to kill The Penguin, when there are other more pressing matters. Because the biggest reason Penguin's able to position himself where he is, as a necessary evil in-universe and a reocurring side character/even protagonist out of it, is by never being the nastiest or most urgently threatening villain in the room, and therefore always being the one that the heroes have to compromise with or have to defeat quickly to get moving. He has weaponized a Kingpin-esque idea that he is a necessary deterrent, because Gotham can always get worse, and everyone else who can take power in Gotham from him is much worse than him, and therefore you save the most innocent lives by allowing him to do his thing under a leash. Refer that line above, about how The Shadow will not suffer the innocent for the guilty.

There has been at least one Shadow story where he's dealt with this dillemma, in Face of Doom, as I elaborate here. The Shadow defeated the Face through taking the long way around, disarming his individual lieutenants, luring them into traps and disguising himself as The Face and all kinds of strategies necessary to checkmate the guy, but in the process also giving The Face enough time to regroup and strategize and target his agent(s). A similar thing happened when he had to take down Benedict Stark, and had to considerably slow down the operations to rescue Rutledge Mann from kidnapping. Issuing any kind of harm or death to The Shadow's agents guarantees him unleashing carnage on you personally, refer to Gangdom's Doom where he obliterates organized crime in Chicago in response to the death of Claude Fellows, but The Penguin can play smart. He can refrain from doing that, and buy himself more time, as The Shadow goes after those that think they have what it takes.

I think The Shadow vs The Penguin would probably pull elements from all of these stories I'd mentioned. If The Penguin is right, The Shadow would have to defeat, or at minimum stall, crime in Gotham City in a way that could then remove The Penguin from the picture, which means The Shadow would have to go through the rest of Batman's Rogues Gallery. Difference being, he's not going to fight those guys forever, he might not even fight them at all.

For The Shadow, he's up against a particularly smart, resourceful and powerful "gentleman of crime". One with personal tragedies and codes of conduct, one who might have even been like the ones he'd been able to reform if life hadn't twisted him, but who at present poses an active danger to the lives of people of the city, and stopping that is the bigger concern. He's taking down not just one crime king, but an empire that the crime king holds at bay, and god knows how many crime kings in the way, and possibly others who would see the innocent suffer for the guilty and keep this stalemate forever. The Shadow doesn't do stalemates, and Oswald Cobblepot is going to repent for all he's done or die, and nothing in between.

For The Penguin? He might very well be in heaven. He's dealing with death itself arriving from nowhere to give him the greatest challenge of all: surviving. Which just so happens to be the thing he does best and takes the most pride in doing. It might even be the kind of thing that makes him feel alive again. Facing down someone every bit the implacable wall of terror the Bat is, but who is less about the martial arts brute showdowns and more about god knows how many other subtler espionage chessplay and psychological mind tricks, and zero hesitation in putting a bullet in his head.

And possibly taking it's sweet time wiping out all of the competition, going through the long list of wiping out all of Oswald's hated rivals and competitors for him, and possibly a few unfortunate friends. Years, decades of playing the long game, gathering his assets, putting pieces in place, keeping his head low, letting the Bats and the others walk over him and forget he's there, and he's rewarded with the game of a lifetime! To be the arch-criminal who took on The Shadow and won! You'd almost think he'd have planned for The Shadow to come after him, and getting very angry if Batman shows up to get on the case to stop this because huur I'm a big selfish brute who wants to hog all the fun, duuuh Oswald you can do better, we don't kill around these parts Shadow huurgh, god, Batman, *waugh* can you BE any more of a self-important killjoy?

Sure, if no divine intervention comes, he's absolutely going to die, he is not walking out of this confrontation alive even if The Shadow has to go through Gotham ten times to get to him. But, you know, the real problem with Icarus was that idiot drowned when he fell, because he forgot to pack a bathing suit.

And you know what penguins do best, right?

*WAUGH WAUGH WAUGH*

#replies tag #the shadow #superheroes #dc comics #batman #the penguin #oswald cobblepot #shadow magazine #pulp heroes

[secondbeatsongs]

Catching up on my dash after work and seeing in your tags that YOU ALSO REPEATEDLY WATCHED SCAMPER THE PENGUIN AS A CHILD. AAAAH. I've never met anyone else who's ever even HEARD of it, but I can still visualize the entire thing in my brain. I love it. It was terrifying. Knowing that it was heavily edited to be suitable for children makes me morbidly curious about the original but I don't know if I want to ruin the nostalgia.

yup.

seems like the original was pretty hardcore

I love that we're all able to have this moment together, bonding over this forgotten piece of terrible children's media! :D it warms my soul to know that others were also obsessed with this film the way I was

but honestly, I don't really remember much about Scamper the Penguin, except that my parents hated it, and that I loved it to pieces. maybe I should poke around and see if we still have the VHS anywhere...

#asks #kinthulou #existential-dad #that-fruitsbasketcase #astarlingdiscovery #replies #not requests #id in alt text #scamper the penguin #xD

[antiqueanimals]

could you do penguins? any species is ok

Penguins. Written by Bernard Stonehouse. Illustrated by Trevor Boyer. 1979.

#birds #penguins #emperor penguins #snares island penguins #adelie penguins #gentoo penguins #fairy penguins #chinstrap penguins #yellow-eyed penguins #erect-crested penguins #peruvian penguins #Trevor Boyer #replies #requests #anonymous

[chaifootsteps]

Another thing about Michael singing is, he sings in the Paranoid DJ "Liquid Gold" song for Lackadaisy, so I have no idea how people say he can't sing. And honestly I hope in Lackdaisy we get more of his singing, as well as well the other cast

Penguin Anon

Very much agreed.

#Anonymous #penguin anon #lackadaisy #video reply #actual blog post

[icestarphoenix]

You look like a mii

#replies! #penguin posting #my art