mtl008 Chapter 2511: Battle for the Cloak (67)
Chapter 2511: Battle for the Cloak (67)
Chapter 2511: Battle for the Cloak (Sixty-Seven)
Talking about his experience in this play, the Riddler also had to shed tears of bitterness. Bruce brought Superman in and left him there, expecting him to disappear during such a long time when the main storyline was going on. It can only be said that the Joker virus really burned Batman's brain.
Superman lost his superpowers, not his memories. His personality did not change. He is still Clark Kent. How could he do nothing?
In order to prevent Superman from interfering with the main storyline, the Riddler's mission is to hold him back. Theoretically, it should not be a problem for the Riddler to deal with a Superman who has been weakened to the extreme. The fact is that the Riddler did hold Superman back.
But this process is so torturous.
Although Batman and Superman have similarities, it is their differences in personality and philosophy that cause them to frequently conflict and always produce confrontation and clashes.
As a human being, Batman considers himself a supplement to the legal system of human society, and his targets are criminals who cannot be punished or cannot be fully punished by the law.
As a non-human, Superman considers himself to be another system of human society. This system is called Superman's justice. He uses his own three views to judge whether this matter needs to be corrected. If so, he will do it.
It is somewhat counterintuitive that Batman presupposes that the world is orderly and he is just a supplement to the order, while Superman presupposes that the world is chaotic and he is the savior.
Therefore, the two of them can never reach a complete consensus, and conflicts are bound to arise as long as such ideas conflict.
In terms of action, Batman focuses on establishing a supplementary order, which is the so-called deterrent power of the Dark Knight, to deter and punish super criminals who want to be outside the normal order. Superman takes himself as the order. He praises everything he thinks is right and punishes everything he thinks is wrong.
Therefore, Batman's psychological activity in fighting crime is "you are a criminal", while Superman's psychological activity in fighting crime is "you did it wrong". One is materialism based on social standards, and the other is idealism based on his own moral conscience.
Therefore, the two people's approaches to the crimes against the Riddler are completely different.
Most of the Riddler's crimes proceed as follows: he first creates a continuing crime, such as kidnapping someone, planting an explosive, or threatening to commit a crime.
Then he will leave a riddle, the answer to which is the key to his crime, such as where the hostages and explosives are placed, what are the important steps in the crime, where he is hiding, and how Batman is going to catch him.
The Riddler will definitely let Batman see the riddle, and when Batman sees the riddle, he will know that the Riddler is committing a crime, so he will solve the riddle and catch the Riddler.
Because Batman will regard the Riddler's riddle-making behavior as part of the crime and a clue in the early stages of the investigation, so he will solve the riddle to stop the crime.
But Superman is not like that, he sees these two things separately.
When you kidnap or plant explosives you are hurting others, so you are wrong. But when you make riddles you don't hurt anyone, so you can make them if you want. You haven't done anything wrong in this matter. Why should I hold you responsible for it?
If your riddle affects the appearance of the city or brings trouble to others, then you should simply pay the price for this mistake. It has nothing to do with whether you are secretly working on a bigger case.
If I catch you scribbling, I will give you verbal education, labor reform, or at most send you to the police station. When I catch you kidnapping or bombing, I will punish you with justice.
If it were in the normal world, the Riddler would at most think that the game was unplayable and boring, but in the dream world, he had a mission, and he had to hold back Superman.
He had to let Superman follow the clues of the case according to his riddles, just like Batman did. Otherwise, how could he stop Superman if he just gave him a warning when he saw the graffiti?
If you ask the Riddler what good ideas he has, he actually doesn't have any. Unlike the Penguin and Two-Face, the Riddler does not have sufficient real-life experience and is an unemployed vagrant most of the time. He also does not have professional skills in practical subjects such as chemistry like the Scarecrow, and can engage in scientific research and academic work when necessary.
He is probably the only one among all the Arkham criminals who was a pure liberal arts student who fast-forwarded to study journalism.
This caused him to be very passive in the face of this situation. He did not have enough social experience to take advantage of social rules, nor did he have enough professional skills to do something behind the scenes.
What's even more tragic is that the Riddler is a real mental patient. His behavior of outlining riddles is completely a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Severe obsessive-compulsive disorder makes it impossible for him to change his behavior patterns, leaving him with no room for flexibility.
So the thing becomes that the Riddler draws a riddle on the road that Superman must take, and if this road is not a very important main road, or if someone specifically complains to Superman, then Superman will pretend not to see it.
Assuming that the riddle is indeed too abrupt and affects the cleanliness of the wall, Superman will choose to find a way to erase it or cover it up, doing the work of a city cleaning volunteer.
But this obviously couldn't delay him for long, so the Riddler had to show up himself to explain the rules of the game to Superman, saying that the answer to the riddle could affect a major case. Superman asked him to fetch a bucket of water and clean the paint off the ground when he had nothing to do.
The Riddler had no choice but to stage a kidnapping, leave a riddle, put the hostage behind the riddle, and then explain to Superman that as long as he could solve the riddle, he could open the lock on the hostage's hand and rescue the hostage. This is how the game is supposed to be played.
Superman said, "Do you think I'm stupid? You are the one who kidnapped the hostages. You are right in front of me now. What riddle do I need to solve?"
The Riddler got beaten up.
That's right, even though Superman has been weakened to this extent, his body is still considered strong among ordinary people. After all, the size of his skeleton is there. How could the Riddler, who is considered skinny among ordinary people, be a match for such a strong man? Even at the end, when Superman was as thin as a bamboo pole, he was still a circle bigger than him, and the Riddler could not beat him at all.
Finding that this didn't work, the Riddler finally decided to separate the crime scene from the riddle, and then leave a large speaker, so that he could guide Superman to track him down. After all, it's impossible for Superman to hear someone committing a crime and then do nothing, right?
Superman does intend to take care of it, but before he does, he still has to erase the riddle first.
After all, I have said that these are two mistakes. No matter how serious the crime you committed is, it is not the reason why you affect the city appearance. It is impossible for me to see that you affect the city appearance and not do anything, right?
If the person who committed the crime is a normal person, then just wipe it off. In the end you still have to come to me based on the clues of the riddle you remembered, right?
But the Riddler is not a normal person, he is a mental patient. He has extremely severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. The process of this whole thing does not involve you holding a mop and wiping the riddle, so you can't wipe it, and then the Riddler appears again, and then he gets beaten again.
As mentioned before, Superman, who can become close friends with Batman, is not a normal person. A stubborn person will only be surrounded by stubborn people, so this matter becomes a confrontation between two stubborn people.
After the Riddler drew Superman's picture, he tried to wipe it off. During the process, the Riddler didn't let Superman do it. Superman insisted on doing it, and the Riddler wouldn't let him.
In the end, the Riddler was beaten up, and couldn't commit the next crime. He could only redesign the crime process and redraw the riddle. After the Riddler finished drawing, Superman wiped it, but Superman didn't let him wipe it during the process...
So the question is, is it more tiring to draw riddles or to guess riddles?
Judging from the behavior of the street graffiti boy, it should be more tiring to erase the riddles, because drawing graffiti is a hobby, but erasing graffiti is a job. Although it is not easy to draw so many patterns, it is also difficult to erase or cover them up.
But this is not the case with the Riddler and Superman. In the real world, the Riddler makes riddles as a hobby, but in the dream world, he comes with a mission, and he is forced to draw riddles repeatedly because Superman is not smart enough. For him, this is a job.
After Superman lost all his powers, he really had no more effective means to fight crime, but the sense of justice in his heart was not erased. Now there happened to be a crime that he had a way to stop, which allowed him to express his sense of justice and relieve the pressure in his heart. This was a hobby for him.
Moreover, the patterns designed by the graffiti boys have some visual aesthetic value at most, without any deep connotation. But the riddle man is different. Each of his riddles is carefully created and designed, and it requires thinking.
When he used to play games with Batman, he could spend two months designing a brilliant riddle to match a mystery case, and he enjoyed watching Batman solve the mystery and investigate.
When it comes to Superman, after getting beaten up, he can only spend two hours at most to think of a new riddle, otherwise Superman will have to move towards the main line. He can't be too slow when drawing, otherwise Superman will come over and he will get beaten up again in a short period of time, so he won't be able to draw the next riddle, and he will be completely unstoppable.
It is easy to imagine the difference in quality between the output of two months and two hours. The Riddler is not a pig in the production team. You asked him to create an original riddle, think about the case and draw it on the wall within two hours. Even the students in the Academy of Fine Arts don't do this. The Riddler was almost exhausted to death.
And this is not the most terrifying thing. The most terrifying thing is that the Riddler's personality is more like an artist than a writer. He is abstract, neurotic, and makes a living from aesthetics.
However, due to the tight deadline, the Riddler is more like mass-producing shit than creating works of art.
He knew how bad the riddles he created in such a short time were, and he also knew that the patterns he drew were full of flaws and shoddy.
Artists can gain happiness from the creative process. Feeling their works being completed and perfected day by day can generate a strong driving force and even allow them to reach a state of mind where they are not concerned with external things and are content with themselves. This is why outsiders think many artists are crazy.
The most devastating blow to this type of personality is to make them mass-produce low-quality, flawed, ugly and useless assembly line products. The inability to satisfy their own aesthetic and aesthetic creation needs will cause them to suffer a blow and become depressed.
The Riddler is really getting depressed.
(End of this chapter)