It’s funny the things you remember. Cue chat excerpt:
Infinite Alis: i used to watch [Batman: The Animated Series] religiously
Infinite Alis: it was the thing that taught me you can’t read in dreams
Infinite Alis: which IS TRUE!
Infinite Alis: EDUMACATIONAL!
Xxxxx Xxxxx: YES I REMEMBER THAT FUCKING EPISODE.
Xxxxx Xxxxx: WITH THE WORDS THAT RAN OFF THE BOOK AND SHIT.
Infinite Alis: hahah! yes!
Xxxxx Xxxxx: I LOVED THAT EPISODE.
Infinite Alis: XD
Infinite Alis: it’s, like, the ONLY episode i actually remember
Xxxxx Xxxxx: AND THERE WAS ALL THIS DRAMATIC MUSIC AS HE REALIZED IT WAS A DREAM BUT WE DIDN’T BECAUSE WE WERE DUMB KIDS AND IT WAS TOO EARLY IN THE EPISODE.
Infinite Alis: because i remember trying to read in a dream (i lucid dream) SPECIFICALLY trying to see if batman was right
Xxxxx Xxxxx: *so excited*
Infinite Alis: he was!
Infinite Alis: I NEVER DOUBTED BATMAN AGAIN!
Xxxxx Xxxxx: ROFL JESUS I WONDERED WHEN I FOUND SOMEONE WHO FELT THE SAME WAY ABOUT THAT EPISODE.
Xxxxx Xxxxx: and yes, if i ever experienced a lucid dream after that i’d try to find something to “read” just to prove it. have you ever been able to read in a dream after that? because in dreams i have severe add and that just sucks.
Infinite Alis: sometimes if i expect what is coming, then i can ‘read’ but the words are gibberish
Infinite Alis: i’m just pretending to read
Xxxxx Xxxxx: yeah, like if the dream intends you to know what it says you already inherently know the meaning, but you can’t actually “read” it.
Infinite Alis: yup
Xxxxx Xxxxx: i’m so stupidly giddy about the can’t read in a dream episode because all of my friends all throughout grade school were obsessed with things like popularity and didn’t care when i was like GUYS GUESS WHAT I REALIZED. xD
Xxxxx Xxxxx: WITH THE HELP OF BATMAN.
Infinite Alis: lol
Infinite Alis: ppft, anyone who didn’t realise the awesome power of BATMAN was obviously not cool
(Incidentally: Why yes! I do talk like a fucktard in chat. Whaddrya gonna do about it?)
The episode in question is, I believe, called “Perchance to Dream” (1×30). I read somewhere on TEH INTERWEBS (which, of course, means it must be true), that it was one of Conroy‘s favourites to voice, and it’s generally one of the most acclaimed episodes from the first series. Apparently with good reason. It actually occurred to me many hours later that, wow, it really did leave a substantial impression, because I was going to use it as a plot element in the ‘original’ ending to the DCUNU story (yes, there was a plot!).
The tale was going to go a little something like this: Loki and Miriah turn out to be the only characters ‘crossed over’ in the universe, and in the way of these things they get down to trying to figure out what’s going on. Things start to deteriorate fairly quickly as Loki’s behaviour becomes more and more erratic; though of course because we’re still in his narration he doesn’t think he’s acting odd, and instead becomes increasingly paranoid about Miriah. The narration abruptly cuts off with Loki getting “a bad feeling” about something, and running off. The story drops his perspective entirely, and instead picks up with Harley coming home to the apartment she uses when she’s not incarcerated and when her boss doesn’t need her, only to find the place a complete wreck. Loki — whom Harley, of course, thinks of as the Joker — has pulled the place apart looking for Doctor Quinzel’s notes on himself. He is alternately hysterical and morose, to the point that even Harley is worried, and after lots of manic reading throws a bunch of notes into a folder and tells Harley to give them to Miriah when she inevitably comes looking for him. He also gives her a message to pass on, before apologising for no apparent reason and jumping out the window.
Anyway, as predicted, Miriah shows up a day or so later and a dispirited Harley passes on the folder and the message, which turns out to have been, “Look with your geek, kid, not with the Bat.” Miriah scowls and stalks off dramatically to study the notes. Several hours later, she’s still doing just that; the notes are a seemingly random collection of things Quinzel has written about the Joker, and it occurs to Miriah that there’s nothing there she hasn’t read before. It also occurs to her that the vast majority of what she’s reading is familiar since it’s taken from the narration in Mad Love; she realises that this is what Loki meant by looking with her ‘geek’, and as soon as she’s realised that it leads to the realisation that there is nothing in any of the notes Loki left her that she doesn’t already know. Shocked, she drops the folder and turns to the computer…
Sometime later, Alfred finds her in the manor library, a copy of Alice in Wonderland open in her lap and most of the rest of the books scattered across the floor. Miriah laughs, saying this is all very familiar, and asks Alfred to read out a passage from the book; he does so (he mis-quotes it), and Miriah tells him she knew he would read that passage, because it’s the only one she remembers from the whole book. She admits she can’t read it at all; every time she looks at the book, all she can remember is that passage. She’s says that’s what clued her in, when she knew what she was looking for; she couldn’t read anything at all. And there’s only one place Miriah knows of where she can’t read; a dream. And she knows this information, of course, because she saw it in an episode of Batman as a kid.
She wakes up.
Anyway, that was the original. In the end it got ditched for being way too serious and instead got replaced by something 68.49% more cracktastic, with more cast and less plot. But the pull of the It Was All a Dream? Pretty strong.
) I didn’t think he was a hero before. 
1088 days ago
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