personally, when I see someone press a heart-shaped button to denote that They Like My Work, the conclusion I draw is that They Like My Work. but perhaps I'm the crazy one, and I should instead be taking it as one step above "shooting me three times in the head."
#liking it is a bookmark for them. no one else sees it. it's a nod and acknowledgement my work was seen. clearly not good enough for#them to share. not good enough to bring me more business more clients more customers. how does that like button help the artist#or help the writer? it doesn't. call me cynical if you want but i've been here long enough to know the like button is only a bookmark.
listen. I get it. I am also Out Here, chronically unemployed and trying to make ends meet by monetizing my music. I also get frustrated and demoralized when something I worked hard on fails to gain traction.
that being said:
this attitude can only ever corrode your connection to your own work. "not good enough to bring me more business" - I'm sorry, but strangers on social media do not owe you free marketing. meanwhile, what you call "only a bookmark" signifies that your work appealed to them, even if they didn't reblog it. isn't that the fucking point of doing any of this? to make someone else's day a little richer, or to make them feel seen?
to put it in simpler terms:
if you consider someone liking your work "meaningless," why are you making art in the first place?
really baffling phenomenon on this post: a significant number of people are reblogging it, and then disagreeing with me in the tags without actually adding any of that to the post itself
I feel like it undermines your argument a little when you don't even seem to understand the Basic Functionality of a reblog. just my 2 cents
No one is morally obliged to give you free dopamine or exposure. It’s okay to prefer reblogs to like—I know I do! But it’s absurd to throw a fit about it.
#as an artist & writer i get it! i love reblogs!#but i actively DO NOT reblog posts that include guilt trippy little segments about likes being worthless#its social media not a morally charged email spam chain for gods sake
I'm excited to finally be able to talk about them. Venture down there if you beware
These guys are pretty entwined, so just like in the Twobat backstory, It'll just be one big thing. BIIIIIGGG thing, sorry
Viktor Fries was born in Denmark, an only child to two very loving parents. He'd always had a love for the cold, which grew into a love for winter, which grew into a love for cryogenics. His parents couldn't get him enough books or research papers written about the subject, so his eventual decision to pursue it in higher education came as no surprise. At the time, Gotham University and WayneTech were the leading institutions in cryogenic research, so Viktor packed his bags and ventured off to America.
Kirk Langstrom was born a sickly little baby at Gotham General. He was born with Chediak-Higashi syndrome, which not only caused his albinism, but made Kirk very prone to bacterial infections, especially when he was younger. It would also cause motor issues as Kirk aged, resulting in the need of mobility aids like canes or a wheelchair. As a child, Kirk was teased for his appearance, likened to a vampire - or, on one occasion, an albino bat another kid had found and presented to him. Instead of being offended, this moment was what kickstarted Kirk's love for bats, and eventual pursual of chiropterology.
And for Hugo Strange....well, no one really knows where he came from.
The three met when they were all in college, and they became friends almost instantly. They were three smart outcasts who had little to no real friends before this, so naturally they latched onto one another. Hugo a little more than the other two, but I'll get into that.
For the time they were in college, they were good for each other! But as most things go, they drifted a bit after college ended. Viktor by now had fallen in love with Nora and gotten his job at WayneTech, and Kirk had gotten the opportunity to take a research trip to study Bracken Cave (which is where he'd meet his eventual wife, Francine). This left Hugo mostly to his own devices, which he put towards his career at Arkham Asylum and eventually becoming the head of it.
When Kirk eventually returned from his trip, they reconnected with one another. Now here's where I'm gonna talk individually about what happened to Fuck These Guys Up.
Chronologically, Nora getting sick and Fries' accident is what happens first. When Nora started getting really sick, Viktor and her had no idea what it really was, only that it had the potential to kill her if they didn't find a treatment. Viktor's desperation to find it would eventually lead him to Hugo, who agreed to assist Viktor in his research. When Viktor and Nora mutually decided to freeze her to give Viktor more time, Hugo allowed them to build the machine that would freeze her in an abandoned room in the basement of Arkham (which Hugo was using for his own experiments).
Viktor panicked during the process of Nora freezing, and went to turn the machine off in the middle of it, not fully thinking through what he was doing. It caused the machine to malfunction and the chamber (with Nora in it) to explode outward, releasing everything that had been meant to cryogenically preserve Nora out into the room. The injuries and exposure to chemicals should have killed them both, but the temperatures (and medical assistance) managed to preserve the both of them, though it left Viktor as a living but slowly rotting corpse, who is both being killed by the cold and needs it to keep living in whatever state he's in now.
Hugo was actually the one to find the both of them. Though he had personally never cared for Nora, he followed the plan she and Viktor had laid out, making a new chamber to preserve her while he had a suit specially made for Viktor in order to keep him alive. With a tracker installed inside of it so Hugo could know where he was at any time.
This is probably a good time to cut and explain what's wrong with Hugo. He is...insanely devoted to both Kirk and Viktor. They were both his first friends and he loves them very much and he will Keep Them at Any Cost.
So after Viktor awoke, and realized that Nora had been preserved (even though part of him didn't want that anymore), Hugo instructed him to begin working on a cure for her. Hugo couldn't care less if she died he'd get Viktor to himself then, but Viktor had grown dangerously depressed after the accident and the thought of one day being reunited with a cured Nora was the only thing motivating him to stay alive.
Because Nora's chamber is in the basement of Arkham Asylum, Hugo has control of when and for how long Viktor can visit her. If he doesn't make sufficient progress on her cure, he isn't allowed in.
Now, onto Kirk. He had no idea that was all happening, as their contact with one another had been limited, even after reconnecting. One day, though, Kirk had mentioned his interest in changing his current study to focus on his condition, CHS, instead of his bats. Mostly because he was worried about progressing into the accelerated phase, as most people with CHS do. But Hugo suggested instead that he could figure out some sort of treatment for Kirk - and don't worry, you can just go back to your bats! I promise it'll work; in fact, it'll have you feeling like Batman!
So Kirk, suffering from chronic pain and various disabling motor issues, agreed happily. He visited Hugo's lab when the "treatment" was finished and received two injections in the neck, which turned into those two scars. When it didn't work after a couple of days, Kirk was disappointed, and was ready to tell Hugo that he needed to try something else when something...happened.
Kirk blacked out for a couple of hours and woke up shirtless, covered in blood in an empty alleyway. And, strangest of all, he wasn't in pain.
And this kept happening. Every couple of nights he would black out and return home bloody. He attempted to hide this from his wife, but something like that can't stay under wraps forever, so when she found out she urged him to talk to Hugo and figure out what the hell that "treatment" did.
So he did (rather angrily, of course). Hugo would explain that the treatment was actually an experimental chemical he'd developed to be able to turn humans into animals, specially developed for Kirk to turn "at will" instead of being stuck like that permanently. Because of Hugo choosing a vampire bat as the animal for the specific "treatment" developed for Kirk, he would need to feed on blood while in bat-form, thus the reason he was bloody every time he awoke from his blackouts.
There was only one bonus to the transformation. The concoction was, actually, a sort of cure. The bat form didn't have the same chronic pain or issues that Kirk's normal body did. But it came at the cost of being a mindless, bloodthirsty monster.
All he needed to do, Hugo said, was figure out how to become the bat instead of letting it take over, and then he'd practically be the perfect creature!
He would have to keep coming to Hugo for regular injections, though.
Kirk initially, obviously, refused - he wasn't a monster, and he didn't want to hurt anyone or anything just to help himself. But he kept thinking about it. And thinking about it. Could he really tame the bat, and live as something powerful and strong? Something he'd never been?
It weighed on his mind so much that he inevitably returned to Hugo, just to try it. What he didn't know at the time was that the injections were purposefully addictive, growing worse and worse the more he returns to take them.
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
areudirty
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
stormborns
