“When you do not know what I am, I am something, but when you know what I am, I am nothing. What am I?”
You’ve found me. Congratulations. Most people spend their entire lives looking directly at answers and never realizing there was a question in the first place.
My name is Edward Nygma. You may know me by another name. The Riddler. Criminal mastermind, intellectual superior, and occasional consultant- depending entirely upon who is asking and how desperate they happen to be.
This blog is, for lack of a term simple enough for the general public, an open epistemological exercise. Questions. Observations. Problems requiring solutions. Riddles, naturally. You may inquire whatever happens to be rattling around inside that tragically underutilized organ behind your eyes, and I may elect to answer it. I strongly recommend making it interesting. There are very few things in this world more offensive than a boring question.
Well… Perhaps a wrong answer. So-
What has no lock, no key, and yet requires permission to enter?
Go on. The Aporetic Interrogatorium is open.
"What is it? Unsure what to do next? May I suggest lying down on the floor and allowing the roller to do its thing?"
//ooc
Mun | Work hours | MST
Age rating 16+ for muns only.
Hey, y’all! I’m Emily (Em), I’m 23, and the Superbat chokehold I had on me brought me to the world of DC roleplay ahaha! I have a background in history, education, and a huge Batman obsession as a kid.
Mainly, I made this blog for fun, but I’m open to exploring serious topics and using proper trigger warnings for them. That said, folks under 16 are not permitted to roleplay here.
Feel free to spam my inbox whenever!
Character Info
This section will be filled in as I read more comics. Also its 4am omg-
Tag Nav
General
❔ Indeterminate correspondents - anon asks
❔Correspondents - asks
❔Ratiocination - Ic posting
Character Specific
❔Heads Tails and Habeas Corpus - Two-Face / Harvey Dent
❔ persistent irritant - Miss Tuesday
❔Ballistics Over Brains - Deathstroke / Slade Wilson
Rules
Keep in mind that the mun of this blog is 23 and works in childcare/education. I will not be interacting with muns who are under the age of 16, as explained in the linked post above.
You are welcome to discuss dark themes here. I only ask that you communicate with me in dms before roleplaying it. You'll find that I tend to overcheck what is okay with you. I like having that documentation and consistent communication.
Triggers will be tagged "tw: *insert trigger*"
ABSOLUTELY NO pedos, incest, MAGA, I.C.E, homophobes, terfs, actual nazis, etc. Mun is the kind of person who wanted Bernie Sanders as president, ya feel me?
A brief clarification for those who continue confusing verbosity with pretension:
Using precise language is not an affectation merely because you personally require a running start to clear three syllables.
Words possess specific meanings. Those meanings allow us to communicate complex ideas without reducing every conversation to grunts, threats, and vague hand gestures. Humanity developed an entire lexicon, and I see no compelling reason to abandon it simply because some of you regard opening a dictionary as an act of intellectual surrender.
“You only use big words to sound smart.” No. I use the correct words because I am smart. You interpret that as performance because your own intelligence apparently requires one.
Furthermore, brevity is not inherently indicative of depth. Sometimes a concise statement is elegant. Sometimes it is merely the complete extent of what its speaker was capable of producing. Silence may be mysterious. It may also be empty. The distinction becomes obvious the moment the person begins talking.
So, please: continue insisting that your inability to follow a sentence is actually evidence of my poor communication. It is an extraordinarily efficient method of identifying the weakest participant in any conversation. And should six syllables constitute a personal attack, the dictionary is not your enemy. It is an intervention.
Wonderful, I was beginning to worry the sustained cognitive exertion had killed you.
“Fuck you too, Nygma.” Four whole words. A subject, a verb, an object, and even the correct application of a comma by implication. Slade, this is extraordinary. We should commemorate the occasion. I’ll have a plaque made.
Do you know what I admire most? The progression. First, you dismissed my speech as “babbling.” Then, when confronted with an argument, you reduced your response to “blah blah blah.” Now you’ve abandoned pretense entirely and arrived at profanity.
It’s practically evolutionary. In reverse.
Keep going. I’m fascinated to discover what lies beneath language. Perhaps your next response will be an open-mouthed snarl. After that, you can throw a rock at me. Eventually, we’ll strip away enough higher brain function to observe you communicating exclusively through territorial urination.
A brief clarification for those who continue confusing verbosity with pretension:
Using precise language is not an affectation merely because you personally require a running start to clear three syllables.
Words possess specific meanings. Those meanings allow us to communicate complex ideas without reducing every conversation to grunts, threats, and vague hand gestures. Humanity developed an entire lexicon, and I see no compelling reason to abandon it simply because some of you regard opening a dictionary as an act of intellectual surrender.
“You only use big words to sound smart.” No. I use the correct words because I am smart. You interpret that as performance because your own intelligence apparently requires one.
Furthermore, brevity is not inherently indicative of depth. Sometimes a concise statement is elegant. Sometimes it is merely the complete extent of what its speaker was capable of producing. Silence may be mysterious. It may also be empty. The distinction becomes obvious the moment the person begins talking.
So, please: continue insisting that your inability to follow a sentence is actually evidence of my poor communication. It is an extraordinarily efficient method of identifying the weakest participant in any conversation. And should six syllables constitute a personal attack, the dictionary is not your enemy. It is an intervention.
A brief clarification for those who continue confusing verbosity with pretension:
Using precise language is not an affectation merely because you personally require a running start to clear three syllables.
Words possess specific meanings. Those meanings allow us to communicate complex ideas without reducing every conversation to grunts, threats, and vague hand gestures. Humanity developed an entire lexicon, and I see no compelling reason to abandon it simply because some of you regard opening a dictionary as an act of intellectual surrender.
“You only use big words to sound smart.” No. I use the correct words because I am smart. You interpret that as performance because your own intelligence apparently requires one.
Furthermore, brevity is not inherently indicative of depth. Sometimes a concise statement is elegant. Sometimes it is merely the complete extent of what its speaker was capable of producing. Silence may be mysterious. It may also be empty. The distinction becomes obvious the moment the person begins talking.
So, please: continue insisting that your inability to follow a sentence is actually evidence of my poor communication. It is an extraordinarily efficient method of identifying the weakest participant in any conversation. And should six syllables constitute a personal attack, the dictionary is not your enemy. It is an intervention.
By the almighty, Nygma, will you quit your incessant jabberin’? I swear you never stop talkin’
@sword-for-hire
Slade, the fact that you experience coherent speech as “incessant jabbering” says considerably more about the intellectual conditions inside that helmet than it does about me.
Some of us communicate through complete sentences rather than tactical grunting, gunfire, and prolonged displays of masculine disapproval.
Maybe some of us don’t need to babble like an overeager thesaurus t’seem smart. We show it. Or did you forget that Batman’s solved every riddle your “genius” mind has ever come up with?
The inevitable invocation of Batman, because apparently even Deathstroke requires another man’s accomplishments to make his arguments for him.
Yes, Slade, he solves them. Eventually. After hours of investigation, several incorrect assumptions, extensive property damage, and the devoted assistance of an entire network of masked adolescents. That is not evidence that my riddles lack sophistication. It is evidence that they require Gotham’s most obsessive detective, unlimited resources, and the combined labor of a small vigilante municipality to unravel.
Besides, the objective of a riddle is to be solved. An unsolvable puzzle is not genius; it is defective construction. The achievement lies in making the answer attainable while ensuring the journey toward it is sufficiently difficult, elegant, and humiliating.
You might understand the distinction if your own problem-solving methodology extended beyond identifying a target and inserting ammunition into it.
But by all means, continue “showing” your intelligence.
Thus far, you’ve demonstrated an ability to repeat Batman’s résumé and mistake terseness for depth.
I don’t know what possesses you to talk like you’re givin’ a speech at the White House all the time, but I do know you’re a goddamn pain in my ass, Nygma.
The only reason I don’t got any triumphs over you t’list is ‘cause I don’t find merit in braggin’ about beatin’ a defenseless twig. It’d be dishonorable.
Oh, Slade, how touching. You’ve mistaken my preference for intellectual confrontation over blunt-force trauma for an inability to defend myself. I assure you, the distinction becomes considerably clearer once the floor beneath you begins asking riddles.
And let us not pretend your sudden concern for “honor” is anything more than a convenient alibi for an empty résumé. You have no triumphs over me because we have never competed- not because some dormant chivalric instinct prevented you from brutalizing the poor, fragile intellectual.
Men like you invoke honor whenever winning would be unimpressive and losing would be humiliating.
As for my manner of speaking, I apologize. I understand sustained thought can sound like a formal address when your usual conversations consist of coordinates, ammunition counts, and monosyllabic threats.
Still, you’ve finally said something interesting.
You believe I’m harmless. Hold on to that belief, Slade. It may be the only advantage I ever give you.
By the almighty, Nygma, will you quit your incessant jabberin’? I swear you never stop talkin’
@sword-for-hire
Slade, the fact that you experience coherent speech as “incessant jabbering” says considerably more about the intellectual conditions inside that helmet than it does about me.
Some of us communicate through complete sentences rather than tactical grunting, gunfire, and prolonged displays of masculine disapproval.
Maybe some of us don’t need to babble like an overeager thesaurus t’seem smart. We show it. Or did you forget that Batman’s solved every riddle your “genius” mind has ever come up with?
The inevitable invocation of Batman, because apparently even Deathstroke requires another man’s accomplishments to make his arguments for him.
Yes, Slade, he solves them. Eventually. After hours of investigation, several incorrect assumptions, extensive property damage, and the devoted assistance of an entire network of masked adolescents. That is not evidence that my riddles lack sophistication. It is evidence that they require Gotham’s most obsessive detective, unlimited resources, and the combined labor of a small vigilante municipality to unravel.
Besides, the objective of a riddle is to be solved. An unsolvable puzzle is not genius; it is defective construction. The achievement lies in making the answer attainable while ensuring the journey toward it is sufficiently difficult, elegant, and humiliating.
You might understand the distinction if your own problem-solving methodology extended beyond identifying a target and inserting ammunition into it.
But by all means, continue “showing” your intelligence.
Thus far, you’ve demonstrated an ability to repeat Batman’s résumé and mistake terseness for depth.
By the almighty, Nygma, will you quit your incessant jabberin’? I swear you never stop talkin’
@sword-for-hire
Slade, the fact that you experience coherent speech as “incessant jabbering” says considerably more about the intellectual conditions inside that helmet than it does about me.
Some of us communicate through complete sentences rather than tactical grunting, gunfire, and prolonged displays of masculine disapproval.
I would be forever grateful because my girlfriend doesn’t believe that you’ll do it and I (for once) need to win an argument.
@thezesti-hummingbird
…
Fine.
But let us establish something immediately: I will not be “setting up an escape room.” Escape rooms are commercially sanitized approximations of intellectual adversity, designed so that suburban couples can fumble with combination locks for forty-five minutes before an underpaid employee offers them a hint over an intercom.
What I will construct is an immersive, sequential test of deductive reasoning, lateral cognition, pattern recognition, cryptanalysis, and psychological resilience.
Should you complete every stage, you will receive incontrovertible proof that you were correct and she was wrong- professionally typeset, embossed, and signed by Gotham’s foremost authority on being correct.
Should you fail, however, I will provide her with an equally formal certificate confirming that you invoked Edward Nygma’s name during a domestic disagreement and still managed to lose.
I must admit that your politics amuse me, Mr. Nygma.
It is not every day you come across a madman advocating for a lack of corruption in a system that rewards their negative behavior.
Should I be so bold as to wonder if therapy has been a monumental success? Or are you merely so bored that you would rather challenge an operating government than be handed your right to villainy on a whim?
— Doctor Arkham.
Doctor, you appear to have confused an objection to corruption with an objection to criminality. They are not synonymous.
Corruption is intellectually graceless. It is not rebellion, innovation, or even particularly impressive villainy. It is cheating performed by unimaginative people who have inherited enough institutional protection to mistake their own impunity for competence. A bribe passed beneath a table is not a masterstroke. Nepotism is not strategy. Redirecting public funds into one’s own pocket does not make a person a criminal genius; it makes them an accountant with poor impulse control.
I do not require Gotham’s government to be virtuous. I would settle for it being interesting.
A functional administration might recognize a pattern before the body count reaches double digits. It might employ investigators capable of distinguishing a cipher from decorative typography. It might even force someone such as myself to devise a plan more sophisticated than allowing the city’s own structural incompetence to complete half the work for me.
But Gotham does not reward excellence, Doctor. It rewards familiarity, obedience, and the ability to commit one’s improprieties quietly enough that the electorate can pretend to be shocked when they are eventually discovered.
That is not a functioning system granting me my “right to villainy.” It is a malfunctioning system continually lowering the entrance requirements. And yes, that is boring.
As for therapy, I would hesitate to call it a monumental success. It has, however, furnished me with an expanded vocabulary for identifying precisely which logical fallacy is being used whenever a psychiatrist attempts to classify an inconvenient observation as a symptom.
Speaking of which: “Madman,” Doctor? From a medical professional? How diagnostically imprecise of you.
Hey Riddler, why does Gotham continue electing officials who possess roughly the same collective problem-solving capacity as a concussed pigeon trapped inside a vending machine?
Oh. You were listening.. Excellent!
The answer, unfortunately, is considerably less entertaining than the pigeon.
Gotham has spent decades perfecting a political ecosystem in which competence is not necessarily advantageous to survival. Competence disrupts arrangements. Competence asks inconvenient questions. Competence notices where the money went, why the same contracts keep finding their way into the same hands, and how an individual with seventeen documented conflicts of interest somehow continues being described as an “experienced public servant.”
So what does the system select for instead?
Familiarity, money, connections, fear, name recognition. The reassuring ability to stand behind a podium and confidently repeat six sentences written by somebody significantly smarter.
And Gothamites- having been conditioned by generations of corruption, scandal, institutional collapse, organized crime, super-crime, occasional chemical terrorism, and whatever catastrophic civic embarrassment occurred this week- develop extraordinarily low expectations.
Eventually, “probably not actively working for the mob” begins to resemble a qualification.
Then election season arrives, everyone solemnly promises to clean up Gotham, approximately twelve people believe them, the rest vote for whichever candidate appears least likely to be indicted before inauguration, and six months later somebody discovers that the deputy mayor has been laundering money through a charity for orphaned puppies.
Again. It is not, strictly speaking, that Gotham continually elects stupid people. That would actually be easier to solve.
It continually produces systems in which intelligent people are incentivized to become corrupt, honest people are incentivized to leave, and mediocre people with excellent networking skills float effortlessly to the surface like particularly persistent sewage.
The pigeon, meanwhile, remains trapped inside the vending machine.
But in its defense, at least the pigeon is attempting to escape.
What happened to my monster? It was literally in the fridge
@miss-tuesday
Your Monster?
You’ll have to be more specific, Tuesday. Gotham contains an unreasonable number of things that could be accurately described that way, and at least three of them have attempted to live in my refrigerator.
If you mean the beverage, I moved it.
It was occupying valuable shelf space beside an experiment requiring stable refrigeration, and unlike your aggressively carbonated battery acid, mine actually possessed scientific merit.
It’s on the second shelf behind the pickles. You’re welcome.
“Fuel” implies improved performance. What you’re drinking appears to produce vibration, poor judgment, and the mistaken belief that refrigerator shelves constitute sovereign territory.
And pickle fumes do not “contaminate” sealed aluminum cans. That is not how airtight containers work. Although “Monster Pickle LaCroix” is such a profoundly revolting phrase that I now regret moving it on principle.
What happened to my monster? It was literally in the fridge
@miss-tuesday
Your Monster?
You’ll have to be more specific, Tuesday. Gotham contains an unreasonable number of things that could be accurately described that way, and at least three of them have attempted to live in my refrigerator.
If you mean the beverage, I moved it.
It was occupying valuable shelf space beside an experiment requiring stable refrigeration, and unlike your aggressively carbonated battery acid, mine actually possessed scientific merit.
It’s on the second shelf behind the pickles. You’re welcome.
