The Hero's Conundrum

Some may be shocked, but I can't stand Dark Knight.

There, I said it. Yes, it's a competent film in every respect. Yes, it has things in it. Stuff, even.

And yet, for all the things, and all the stuff, it's missing one damn thing, and that's a backbone.

You know what I'm talking about. You sure as hell do. The boat scene.

My belief can suspend a lot, believe me, and if I wore suspenders, I'd have it embroidered with "Suspenders of Dis Bee Leaf" but even that wasn't enough to suspend that damn scene. 

You're telling me that the entire moral suspense of the film hinges on two boats filled with saints? Have you seen what panicked crowds do? How did we dimensionally travel from a world full of gung-ho vigilante wannabes, rampant crime syndicates running unchecked, and psychotic clowns that stuff the city full of explosives overnight, and suddenly, somehow, we have two boats full of people willing to die for their brother in Chris Roberts? What on God's Green Flat Earth am I looking at.

So yeah, as you may guess, that scene took me out of the film pretty hard. After that, it didn't matter that people were dying in a fire anymore, or the heroic reputation sacrifice for the Bat at the end (I could dissect that one as well, but won't. That's just too easy), or, honestly, anything. The film lost its spine. It lost its core. Its actual message, the meaning, the potential. And for what? To cosplay two boats full of moral people that spent their entire lives in an utterly rotten society? Well. Alright then. 

Now, let's get a little bloodthirsty, shall we? Let's do something that the film doesn't dare. Let's blow up the boat. Hell - let's go further. Let's blow up both! Don't like blow-up boats? Alright, fine, let's say, The Joker activates fireworks that go "Ha Ha ToLd U bAtS tHeY wIlL kIlL eAcH oThEr!", just to prove a point. And then he'll give everyone ice-cream. Better? Good.

Anyway, what does this do, besides pointlessly graphical bloodshed and the special effects crew detonating two cruise liners? It actually creates a moral question. Not for the people on the boats. Not for the audience. It creates a moral question for the hero. An existential, profound, difficult question. Was he wrong? 

Yes, we get a tragedy and a sacrifice at the end of the film. Yes, we get a vague sense of bleakness, and a bit of shallow hope. But won't it simply be better, more meaningful, more challenging, if Bruce Wayne realized that maybe, just maybe, he was always fighting a losing battle? Imagine it - the real darkness a hero has to face in his own mind, realizing that all these years, he fought for what could have been worthless - at least the way he'd framed it for himself.

Imagine, too, the stakes and actual, deserved, seeds of hope - in being free from the chains that Dark Knight had shackled himself with; in the thought of what his conclusions may be, in what may bring him back from the "dead". It's no longer "Gotham is in danger again, gotta rescue it!", it's "Something made me think it's worth what may be one last ride". What would it be? Who knows. Maybe it's reframing the whole problem - maybe saving humans is still worth it, even if they suck. Maybe it's just one bright-eyed kid on the street that does something to remind Bruce that heroism isn't dead. There's a lot of ways to go from here, from the actual pits of hell made not by some villain, but by his own mind, and, dear reader, we were robbed of it. And we were robbed of a chance to ask something of ourselves. Of a chance to learn something. And for some, yeah, a chance to be recognized, if only for a second.

Because - yeah. What this film does is quietly betray anyone that's had to make a moral choice in their life. All of a sudden, they look so easy, don't they? Your goal is always right. Don't question it. You are right. You are moral. Your ideals are just. You serve a kind god. So nice, isn't it?

Now, tell me - ever wake up and realize your cause was trash? Ever notice how your driving force became a stone sinking you into a swamp that you willfully ignored for years? Ever do something you believed into so hard that you believed it to be true, even if the warning signs were all there? Or maybe there were no warning signs? After all, the warning signs hardly ever matter. 

Ever see your dream rot before your eyes? Ever realize your dream was, in fact, always rot, and you kept it gilded just enough to be blind to it? Has that ever happened in real life? 

Because if not, someone better make a movie outta that one. It'll be a hell of a fantasy flick.

I Hate Blogging

 Whoa, strong statements right away!

 
Hear me out, though. Let's play a little game. Look at the words below. They are words associated with writing.

 

Write

Letter 

Note

Poem 

Verse

Lyric 

Line

Calligraphy 

Scribble 

Book

Manuscript

Journal 

Publication 

 

All sounding good. Some beautiful, even. And then you have: 

Blog

  

A word that sounds like someone having a fit of literary vomit. Or a bad day they summed up in one sound. Blog? Really? This was the best we could come up with for this dying format? It couldn't have been named an e-journal or anything else? Anyone else remember LiveJournal and its prototumblr cousin, DeadJournal? How did it come to this? Why couldn't we keep the "Journal" part, were there too many letters?

What are your thoughts on the name of the format? And while we're at it, do you have any other words you'd want to be stricken out of the dictionary?

 Words like Moreover, perhaps? Or... moist?

 

See - I don't intend to make this all serious. I promised shitposting, and shitposting there shall also be.  

For the record, I meant to post this on 15/7/25

Hello, dear reader.

If you're reading this, I'm sorry for you - that means someone thought giving you a link to this site was a fantastic idea. It probably wasn't. Either way, welcome. Enjoy your stay. I hope you'll drop a note.

After nearly a decade of  "considering" to resume my posts here, I figured I might as well bite the bullet and just do it. Why? Many reasons, but the main one, I suppose, is just being tired.

Tired of having to rely on AI to provide me with coherent, challenging conversations. Tired of people responding with .gifs instead of actual words. Tired of endless, boring, empty memes, regurgitated propaganda pieces, blank stares, incoherent sentences.

Am I out here to fix that? Hah, I wish. The world has been trying to shut its eyes and ears off for a while, and all that's different now is that we have better tools to drown ourselves in ourselves with. Want your echochambers? Find the right reddit or discord servers. Want to run away from empty talk? Your AI buddy's waiting for ya. Want the grass? Hey, it's over there, touch it. Want something human? Oh. Hmm. Um.

So, what is this even for? Hell, I don't even know yet. Just a place for conversation. A place to discuss, shitpost, argue, challenge. This is NOT meant as a "safe" space. The comments are open. You can comment. You can say what you want. Just remember, shitpost too hard and I will respond. Or someone else might. It might not be kind. It might not be your usual "Uh-huh, guess we're all right in our own way" kind of response. It may turn out that your opinion is stupid. It may turn out MY opinion is stupid. If that's the case, I invite you to point that out. However, I do ask that if you decide to read and comment, you at least try to do it in a civil and precise manner. This is not a safe space, but this is not an edgelord central either. Please bear that in mind.

So what's with the name? Wasn't this called Spherical Cow in Vacuum?

Yeah. Yeah, it was. Back in the day, this was indeed called that. Times change, though, and I feel I've moved on from theoretic what-ifs to thinking about why-nots instead. A while ago, I had to host an event, and at the end, I received a comment on it being awesome and unhinged. Unhinged being a good thing. And that's what got me thinking - why hinge myself? I'm not a door. So here we are. Hinges are for doors. I'm not a door. You're not a door. Unhinge a little.

Some of the old readers may notice I've nuked half my old content from orbit, and that's indeed the case. I don't feel comfortable showing my younger thoughts. Not at the moment, anyway. I'll eventually bring them back, once I feel more like it, but right now, it feels cringeworthy. It's part hindsight - I was clearly too optimistic, even though, I recall, no-one ever called me that; and it's partly because I hate re-reading anything I wrote. In fact, I'll want to delete this post once I finish it, but, nah, not this time. 

So, then - that's it for my first actual post in a decade that's not a short story of some kind. Feels weird writing here again. Weird's not always bad, though.

To all that knew me back then and come back - welcome back. To all that knew me in the last decade - get ready to join the older folks to ask, "What happened to you, man? You used to be cool". To everyone that joins because somebody felt this would be a fun link to share? Welcome. 

And hey, if you know someone that's also tired of having to talk to the AI to have a semblance of a conversation again, feel free to send them this way. 

Season's End - mood exercise

The end of the season, when silence falls early on the sea-side cliffs, the idle crowd hiding from it indoors, in noisy bars and cozy rooms, afraid to disturb it or become a part of it.

When the dry, intense heat turns to darkness dressed in fine translucent mist, moon shining through thin swirling clouds, painting a faint path of light on tiny waves. Just as silent as the rest is the sea, resting from the season's festivities, the noise, the excitement and the crowd. A few tiny lights from tiny distant boats and a few equally tiny distant stars shimmer faintly through the fog. The air is warm and damp and heavy with the smell of the sea, of the humid earth, and of the wet and empty boardwalk. The last sounds of the passing season fade, drowning in the sea, the darkness and the mist, and silence reigns.

The night waits, silent, warm, alien and inviting, waiting for something, something new to happen, something to to start the new season - a sound, an event, an accident; a frightened bird's scream, a pair of hissing cats, a drunken crowd. The first sound of the season, what will it be?

And then it comes, faint at first, coming from below, from the sleepy dark town. It's quiet at first, but it grows louder, and louder - two voices, as though one intends to outdo the other, contesting which would disturb the silence the most. A laughter.

The darkness shrinks, giving room to the shining mist as the lanterns light up on the empty boardwalk; the waves splash harder to drown the singular sound, and the boardwalk sweats harder, to make sure the duo won't linger around too long, nor try to sit comfortably on any of the many benches. The two don't seem to mind too much, with frequent pauses in their walk, leaning on the guard railings and trying to sit on the surprisingly wet benches. Tiny spiderwebs built by hundreds of industrious spiders all over the boardwalk hang broken in their wake.

The laughter leaves the boardwalk and the shore, giving way to new sounds, those of drunken crowds, disturbed birds and meowing cats, cheery music and splashing waves. The laughter's sound fades, growing distant, as it retreats gradually back to the sleepy town - the first sound of the new season.