#a cas post

[cassiesanalien]

I think that it's quite funny that every single batman rogue has a different gimmick. you can compare and contrast every villain and they'll all still be different from each other. costumes, gadgets, and flashyness all depend on how similar or different the rouges can be from each other.

you can't have scarecrow robbing the bank by cutting a hole in the window because that's catwoman's thing.

you can't have two-face setting the fire department on fire because that's firefly's thing.

you can't have harley quinn use polar bears to distract batman because that's mr freeze's thing.

you can't have poison ivy make a riddle about plants for batman because that's riddler's thing.

you can't have music meister sing a song about plants because plants are poison ivy's thing.

even without how they conduct their robberies and shenanigans, they all have different interests. this makes them different from each other because of their backstories and motivations. a lot of the gotham rogues have similar experiences with being in lab incidents or being disfigured or experimented on in the past which caused them to become a villain.

mr freeze became a villain because he's trying to save nora.

harley quinn became a villain because she fell in love with the joker.

mad hatter became a villain because he fell in love with someone that didn't love him back.

riddler became a villain because his boss didn't fw him.

all of the rogues are different but if you back up and squint it's all a blur.

[cassiesanalien]

[cassiesanalien]

i think that a lot of neurodivergent and queer people are really drawn to Batman rogues because they're so similar to us. they’re re outcasts and never really fit in. we can see ourselves in them. we can relate to their experiences when they were children. they represent the effects of oppression and child neglect.

a lot of the rogues are now canonically queer in some way. poison ivy, harley quinn, and clayface are the first rogues that I can think of off of the top of my head. not even including fan ships like riddlebird/nygmobblepot, hattercrow, bruharvey/twobats, firebug/firemoth, firefreeze, and scriddler. and those are just the tip of the iceberg.

the rogues represent neurodiversity and mental illness in some way. some overlap with each other. a lot of people express their own headcanons and show the implications of the certain disorders or mental illness that the character may have.

[cassiesanalien]

a lot of batman fans don't realize that mr freeze has an insane amount of PTSD and trauma. this causes him to be the way he is, monotone and emotionless. his childhood, his time at the boarding school, nora being sick, nora being in the hospital, and the incident. all of these events in his life piled up without any therapy or help. he also doesn't have healthy coping skills. the only good one was having nora around to console him and calm him down.

he is constantly under pressure from himself for prioritizing saving nora before anything else. he is extremely obsessive over curing her. victor believes that if he doesn't cure her as soon as possible then she'll die and if she dies he'll be alone forever and he doesn't want to be alone again. this causes him to work a lot and not put consideration into his feelings or his health. he puts nora first, not himself.

[cassiesanalien]

i was rereading some mr freeze comics yesterday and i was comparing the height difference between victor(he was a head on a robot body by this issue but why would he make himself taller, thats not very common for his character) and nora(which was clayface, but clayface was accurate with nora’s height and victor would’ve known the difference he knows everything abt nora) and victor TOWERED OVER CLAYFACE(who was pretending to be nora) OH MY GOD

victor fries has got to be one of the tallest batman villains. nora is canonically 5’2(confirmed in batman and mr freeze:subzero 1997) but victor is typically 6’1-6’4, but i headcanon him to be 6’5. especially with the last photo with batman. batman himself is usually 6’1-6’2(from my memory check me if i’m wrong). victor is TOWERING over batman and is at least a full head taller than him in his cryosuit.

again, he is significantly taller than nora AND talia al ghul. from the information that i could find, talia is 5’7-5’8. victor is so much taller than everyone else that he has to look down to talk them. i know he’s got CRAZY neck pain bc of this.

i just think that it’s crazy that one time there was man who had a phd in cryonics that was walking around gotham with a last name that was pronounced “freeze” and was like 6’5 and no one thought that he would someday turn out to be a villain.

[cassiesanalien]

one of my favorite comic book facts is that the name for Arkham Asylum from Batman is based on H.P Lovecraft's fictional town, Arkham, that he made for his stories. the town is set in Massachusetts and Gotham City is usually set in New Jersey(which makes sense). both states are in eastern America and known for having strong accents.

there's a lot of connections between Re-Animator, a movie based on one of H.P Lovecraft's novels, and Batman as well. one is that Herbert West's actor, Jeffery Combs, played Scarecrow/Jonathan Crane in one of the seasons of Batman: The Animated Series. he's also had appearances in other DC and Batman related media.

[cassiesanalien]

mr freeze is a batman rogue that many people actually refer to as "dr. freeze" as most of the time, but why is this such a popular misconception about the character? I wanted to make a clarification on why victor may not have chosen his PhD credentials in his villian name!!

victor fries is known for his loving attachment to his wife, nora. everything that he does is for her. but why if he has a PhD, or maybe even multiple, and went by dr. fries before his incident, why isn't his villian name also dr. freeze? well, there may be many reasons for this. I have culminated a few reasons on why this chilly rogue may prefer being a "mister" over a "doctor"

the first reason being his connection to his wife. when referring to heterosexual couples, society usually will refer to them by "mr. and mrs." followed by their shared last name, typically the husband's, like the frieses. this is prominent for freeze's character and can be seen in, an unfortunate comic run, detective comics #1011-#1016. in which by awakening nora with a special substance created by lex luthor and sent specifically to victor, she wakes to become "mrs. freeze". they become a villian duo but that doesn't last very long. definitely a comic arc that is low on my mr freeze tier list.

the second reason having something to do with his morality. victor fries was the man who earned the "doctor status" but since freeze believes the man he used to be before the incident is dead, he may not see himself as a scientist anymore. his morality may be a reason why he prefers being called "mister". I think that if he was annoyed with the public calling him "mr freeze", he would've just asked to be called something else, he used to be called "mr zero".

or a secret third option being maybe he just got his license revoked after he murdered a bunch a people and was pronounced dead for more than a year. I can't help but think of medic tf2.

with my (extensive) mr freeze knowledge, I don't recall any DC writers addressing this. so, I wanted to make a possible explanation as to why the name may have stuck around for so long. thanks for reading!

[cassiesanalien]

the holy trinity: victor frankenstein, victor fuentes, victor fries