seiberwing

Title: The Phoenix in Green
Author: Seiberwing
Fandom: Batman (1960s TV Show)
Characters: Riddler, Bookworm, Louis the Lilac, assorted Special Guest Villains
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Any fandom, being queer and having a mental illness. It's not cause and effect, it's effect and effect.
Warnings: References to mental illness.
Summary: A new villain in the Gotham archcriminal scene attempts to unpuzzle the Prince of Puzzlers. Good luck with that, old chum.
Author's Note: All the gratitude in the world to mithen for her dazzling review/betaing of this monstrosity. It could not have been done without you. To new readers coming in from queer_fest, I'd like to reemphasize that this is for the 1960s TV show, not the 1990s animated TV show, and thus anything that seems ridiculous is probably plucked straight from canon.

( Bookworm had always loved books because books never lied. They sat there and told you what you needed to know, and if they didn’t you analyzed them until they gave you what you wanted. )

I continue to be amused at what happens when I explain to British people that my end of American culture has no conception of the 'electric kettle', and that when exposed to one in England it took me a month to figure out what it was.

They always act like I've just casually stated that we have no cultural taboo against eating our own young.

Things that make me irrationally proud of myself:

Figuring out how to resize all the photos in the Riddler/Scarecrow photoshoot without having to go bug someone else for tech support. Google does not count as someone else, btw.

Look, it's Saturday, what do you want from me.

The food pantry got some hate mail today. They let me take home a copy after we passed it around the office doing dramatic readings.

For context, this was is a homebound lady who wanted us to bring her groceries. When the (male) delivery volunteer showed up at her house he asked if her husband was home, so he could have him listed as residing there. She accused him of wanting to do all sorts of horrible things to her and threw him out.

We sent a woman around to pacify her but she kept ranting about how bad we were. Objects may have been thrown. Our head of stuff was forced to send her a letter saying we would have to stop delivering food to her, as we do have our limits. Today this letter arrived on two neat sheets of notebook paper, and it was greeted with much fanfare and morbid curiosity. I have reproduced the original spelling, capitalization, and underlining as much as possible.

Dear [our head of stuff],
There’s a name for ”EVIL” people like you. And it is a FUNKING BITCH [Every letter in this phrase being individually underlined].
How dare you switch it around and make it like I was in the wrong. Do you even know who I am. I was in several Hollywood movies in AND around 1985 & in 1978. I was signed up.
Also, the BIBLE states which I’m sure you’ve never read. Be careful how you entertain strangers because they may be angels. Well, I’ve always been known as an angel by my husband and my relatives & others.
I’ll have my husband deal with you and it’ll be a doozy.
[her name]

P.S. – And just remember all you young people have evil minds. And are utterly EVIL. But, you’ll pay in the end if God decides to send you to HELL eternally and I am a born-again Christian & proud of it. I trust God I’m going to HEAVEN. I don’t go around lieing like you & all liars have their part in the LAKE OF FIRE OR HELL when they die. The BIBLE states. You’ve got a lot of evil nerve & unmitigated gull & audacity, unwarranted. I have nothing further to say to the likes of you.
[her name]

It had to technically be filed to the Big Boss of Pantries since it's got a threat in it, but since we can't even confirm the husband exists we spent most of the day laughing about it.

Today the house of Riddler recieved a visitor!

( Cut for Scarecrows )

As I put together the post for the Scarecrow/Riddler photoshoot I am reminded of a bit of shared headcanon. Most of the fanon I see of Scarecrow seems to have him as either asexual, sex averse, or very private about his sexual preferences. However, I'm fairly certain the Arkham Asylum version is running around in his own personalized version of a fetish outfit because that is the ONLY reason I can think of for someone to wear that many leather straps and yet use a piece of rope to keep his pants up. And he is possibly going commando under that loincloth. There is nothing practical about this outfit, he wears a gas mask when he's supposedly immune to his own stuff, he has a choking hazard around his neck and has time for 26 carefully placed belts but can't put on a goddamn pair of shoes.

Took Lauren a full hour to get dressed. Me, the dapper Riddler, it took five minutes but she had a full hour AND a grievous injury just getting the costume on. The only logic path leading to this outfit is that he's getting off on it and we're all just victims of his inability to find appropriately twisted fetish clubs to indulge himself at.

Staldog 13 has started to live up to its name recently. In addition to boarders and day care we seem to be hiding the stray and lost in our basement in preparation for transfer to better facilities. Last week Dogboss found a small mop of black curls when he was out walking one of our dogs, and since the dog had a collar but no tags Dogboss brought him back to Staldog 13. We've put up flyers in that neighborhood but no takers yet. The mop, code name Dude, seems to be in good health and high spirits but he hasn't been neutered or chipped. Or given a haircut in far too long. Dogboss' long-term ambition is to get him adopted to someone in the area and if we didn't already have the Squiddler I'd be giving it a mite of thought.

That was last week. This week, someone threw a dog over our back fence.

The back of Staldog 13 is constructed so that there's a fence about five feet high around the dog pen in the backyard and the pathway beside it, but the border between our property and the back alleyway is blocked by either the garage or a seven foot tall fence with a thick door in it and iron spikes along the top of the frame. Yesterday afternoon my coworkers found a gorgeous year-old Shepard wandering the area between the back door and the back gate. The only possible way this could have occurred is for someone to have stood on a car with the dog and then dropped her over the other side. I have no idea why anyone would go to all this trouble rather than just driving her around to an actual shelter. One coworker named her Beauty, and another took her to get registered with German Shepard Rescue so they could get her chipping and vaccination costs paid for. A third's contemplating fostering her. To be honest I think this is a net win for Beauty; anyone who was dickish enough to keep her for a year and then throw her over a fence to avoid dealing with her probably has no right keeping a dog in the first place.

Interesting times.

Visiting my grandmother's stressful enough. The last thing I needed was a woman on the flight home having a seizure. She was okay and we didn't get rerouted to another airport, though, so I suppose I should count my blessings.

Dad says this is gonna be the last time. They're going to bring her down to K-town in the summer and where she likes it or not she's staying there. She's in no condition to be living on her own and going up to visit her's more of a clusterfuck than it usually is.

And visiting my grandmother has always been a clusterfuck.

Holy heck, you guys.

"You know what we need for the season finale of our adorable magical pony show for little girls?"

( Cut for massive spoilers )

I am reeling from the awesome.

There's a nearly-empty sweet-smelling bottle of expensive-looking cognac and a flask of scotch that's got to be at least two decades old in here.

Oh, Seiber is going to have a fine time in New York tonight.