I was thinking about the Riddler
tonight, how he's so damn smart, but permanently smalltime. He'll
never be a Ra's al Ghul, even if he is as smart as Ra's, because he's
in it for the art. He has the stuff to be bigger time. He can plan a
heist, he can manage a small organization of henchmen---building
blocks of mastery there. It's not like he's Solomon Grundy, incapable
of putting it together. He could do it. But most of all, he wants to
make clever riddles. So he'll never be big time. What's important to
him is not big time stuff.
Reminds me of Picard in Next
Generation, that one episode where he traveled in time or whatever
and was just a dude in a science officer uniform, all because he
never punched a dude when he was younger. Backed down from a fight,
missed his “destiny” as Mister Enterprise.
I've backed down from a lot of fights.
I've spent a lot of time poring over riddles. I wonder if there's
still time and chance to be a major villain, a starship captain. Or
am I just a dude in a blue shirt now?
Seems like there's a chink in the thinking here, the assumption that being captain is preferable to being a science officer. But I haven't finished the thought.
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