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wesavegotham · 1 year

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I could make an even longer post including panels to explain all the reasons why I don't agree with the people I've seen online who act like the recent stories of Tim saving Bruce at the end of Batman #135 and Damian saving Bruce at the end of Batman vs Robin are very similar and treating Tim and Damian equally good, but that would probably end up being too long. So here is the slightly less long version to explain what fundamentally sets them apart:

Tim is simply allowed to be good and heroic with no drawbacks. And Damian is not.

There was no argument before Bruce vanished that Tim saving him is an apology for. Bruce didn't get lost because of a mistake Tim made. Tim's way of travelling through the multiverse didn't require him to do anything bad to get it and his travels don't have any negative consequences for him or the places he goes to. Tim didn't only manage to save Bruce after asking for help from a bunch of other characters he met during his journey through the multiverse.

He is simply allowed to be Batman's shining saviour.

Now that alone isn't a problem. The problem is that the other character currently wearing the Robin mantle gets treated very differently.

If Damian was the one trying to save Bruce in the same arc I'm pretty sure some of the things I've listed above, if not all of them, would have been done. Because making Damian at fault for the problem he is trying to solve, punishing him repeatedly for messing up and not letting him solve the problem simply through the power of his own abilities is a pretty persistent pattern in Damian's stories.

Like in Batman vs Robin, a recent story some people try to argue gave Damian a "Robin saves Batman" story equally as nice as the one Tim just got.

Let me break down what Damian's role in that story actually is:

He opens the tomb of Nezha because of his recklessness, Mother Soul only had to arrange for the key to fall into his hands (thus causing all the following terrible events)

He gets possessed by Nezha

He tries and fails to kill his father multiple times, not because Damian is successful in fighting back against Nezha's possession, but because Bruce is simply shown to be superior to him in every way

Bruce dons the helmet of fate and frees everyone possessed by Nezha from his influence, including Damian

Damian begs Bruce for forgiveness

Damian and Talia try to defeat Mother Soul but she simply jumps into an abyss

Damian tries to stop Nezha from killing Bruce, but Nezha then just tries to shoot Damian instead and Bruce jumps in front of the blast, causing him to die

Black Alice and Pigsy manage to revive Bruce, but he's still in a very bad condition

Damian flies them all out of there and crashlands the plane into the Hall of Justice

Damian tries to explain to the heroes what is going on, but everyone turns to (a barely conscious) Batman and they only start listening to Damian once Bruce tells them to do so

Damian comes up with a very vague plan that...I guess one of the two teams had success? The other part of the plan failed and had some unintended consequences though, like Nezha taking full control of Bruce's body, which turned Bruce into nothing more than a husk for Nezha.

Damian remains at the Hall of Justice while the other heroes leave to execute his plan

He gets attacked by King Fire Bull and is completely useless the entire fight even after gaining temporary powers (seriously, it's stated in the book that his heat vision does nothing against a magic being like King Fire Bull)

He yells at King Fire Bull that if he learned anything these past few days it's that you will never be better than your father

The freed magic users defeat King Fire Bull

Nezha in Batman's body returns to the Hall of Justice without the rest of Batman's team, but Damian doesn't become suspicious of him

Damian wakes up captured by Nezha

He manages to escape but Nezha chases him

Monkey Prince explains to Damian the longer Nezha stays in Batman's body the stronger he will get, so they have to get him out of Batman and into his old body fast to banish him, but Nezha is the only thing keeping Bruce's body from dying. If they want to save the world Damian has to kill his father

Damian calls the rest of the batfamily for help to capture Nezha/Batman

After the batfamily wears him down first Monkey Prince uses his cloning ability on Damian to make 20+ (?) clones of Damian that wear Nezha down even further

Zatanna, Enchantress and Pigsy arrive to shackle Nezha and transfer his soul back into his original body on Damian's orders, leaving Bruce dead

Damian then asks Enchantress to transfer his life to Bruce to revive him, arguing that the world needs Batman far more than it needs him. She replies that his sacrifice wouldn't be enough to bring Bruce back, shocking Damian. Zatanna says countless people would need to give parts of themselves to revive Bruce.

Damian asks the entirety of Gotham to give a part of themselves to revive Batman, reminding them of all the times Batman has saved them and to shout "we are Batman" to transfer a part of their lifeforce into Bruce

Bruce comes back to life and they hug

The concluding sentence tells us that this story serves as a lesson to the world that there is no more formidable team than Batman and Robin

Even though we never saw them truly working together as Batman and Robin at any point of the story and the only lesson I took from this is that Mark Waid really wants you to know that Bruce is the greatest and that Damian will never be as good as his dad. How uplifting.

But hey, they hugged in the end, surely that makes up for all of it, right?😑

Who needs Damian to not be at fault for yet another disaster? For Bruce to say something nice about him that goes beyond "well, he's my son, so I guess I have some love for him even though I can only describe him with bad attributes"? To simply see Damian filling the role Robin is supposed to serve in a story?

Or why let Damian enjoy the privilege that all other male Robins enjoyed? Which was to be Robin without sharing the mantle and getting to be Batman's main crime fighting partner?

Why do that when you can just use Tim for these things instead, right?🙂

And I want to make it clear that it's not just because "the characters are just like that". The characters are fictional, they have no free will.

A writer could simply let Damian have a story where he's not at fault for the problems he faces, where his own abilities allow him to solve the problem and he doesn't have to make shitty decisions because he's been forced into dilemmas other character simply don't get subjected to.

They just constantly choose not to.

#damian wayne #bruce wayne #Tim Drake

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laufire · 11 days

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I don’t know if you’re still doing the AU ask game but what are your thoughts on the “Jason and Damian meet each other via LOA” au? I know you’re writing a young justice au and that’s basically canon in that universe right? I don’t headcanon them knowing each other early in mainline canon but as a separate au/elseworld sort of thing it does intrigue me

if my inbox is open, consider it fair game for any asks (from a game or otherwise) you might send :P

when it comes to mainline canon, no, I don't headcanon them knowing each other during the lost days era, and that goes into my own headcanons on the al ghuls and damian's upbringing.

my view in that respect takes some things from what morrison built with damian into account, but ignores anything that's in contradiction with batman: son of the demon. the result is, among other things, that I 100% believe talia tried to put damian up for adoption, but ra's caught up to it. the years later, in part as a punishment, in part because of his need to be the most (maybe the only) important person in talia's life, as well as a desire to control, and to mold damian specifically, ra's limited how much damian and talia were in each other's lives. am I the only one who sees some parallels with bruce's parenting here btw.

in my head this means that, at most (and this is something I do use in some WIPs), damian got to see jason from afar when he was catatonic, maybe a few times. later... well, after jason almost kills bruce before stopping himself, talia definitely doesn't want them to meet. if she ever contemplated the option of introducing them (probably never that seriously, just as a distant possibility if at all) after jason started to kill on behalf of victims, particularly children, she weighted the options (jason's protectiveness over children vs. his bruce issues) and decided not to.

now, for the young justice cartoon fic! it is true that jason and damian know each other day, since damian was born specifically. but this doesn't happen in the league of assassins (league of shadows in the show) because by the time damian is born, the al ghuls have left the league LOL.

I actually headcanon that the al ghul's left the league BECAUSE damian was going to be born. I think talia put her foot down and ra's actually listened, and decided he'd accomplish his goals in a way that would compromise for his daughter's desires (young justice makes room for both bruce AND ra's to be better parents. ain't that something lol).

as for some headcanons about jason and damian in this 'verse! (which will be canon. in my fic. xDD)

the (canon) birthdates for them are 1999 for jason, and 2018 for damian. that's an almost 20 years gap and imo it significally affects how they relate to one another. in many ways, jason is a quasi-parental figure more than a brotherly one (he wouldn't call damian his son, but he's... his brother, his kid... his, you know?). at the beginning of the fic, when they're hiding from the new league of shadows, their cover is actually father and son lol.

related to the above: I headcanon that yes, this one time jason and talia do have a biiiiiiiit of a surrogate mother-son relationship (talia was born in 1984 btw). BUT. only because it comes with heavy doses of spousification/parentification lol. this contributed to that kind of dynamic with damian, because in this world talia's pregnancy was complicated, damian's health was at risk when he was born, talia had one hell of a post-partum depression... basically, despite the fact that jason himself wasn't at his peak then (canonically he just started regaining some memories after this), talia relied a lot on him at this time. if bruce can do it with HIS robins... xD

re: jason's health. he dies in 2013, and yet in 2018, when he has his first appearance on the show, he's not recovered (he doesn't say much, he struggles when he does, and we're told he has memory issues). my personal headcanon is that this jason doesn't go into the pit and recovers the long, hard way. I love giving characters chronic issues so I've decided he has aphasia. mostly expressed with difficulties talking, but sometimes reading as well. this was all to say that by the time my fic starts damian is six and he's gotten in the habit of reading to jason (has been learning to read by doing this, actually lol). this includes political/philosophical books that are definitely not aimed at kids his age (but damian's upbringing, albeit not as terrible as in the mainline, has been sui generis), but also "the demon headmaster", because jason think he's really funny.

I've decided to take one of the few things I liked about how they wrote dcau!jason (but with my own spin) and given him an older bio sister. the age different wasn't AS big as with him and damian, but circumstances conspired so that dani had to take care of jason on the streets (in this canon, I have her as barely 17 when she died, with jason as 10 when he meets bruce). jason picked up on quite a few things from her.

due to several reasons (including the fact that the joker's been dead for a while, at harley's hands), jason is less interested in a utrh-type crusade here. he's instead put it all on damian. he's who he'd die for and kill for and fight the entire world for.

#replies #kittycatninja321 #ty! i had a lot of fun answering this one :D #talking to he void #my thoughts #dc #dc comics #young justice #young justice wip #dc thoughts #dcau #jason todd #damian al ghul #damian wayne #talia al ghul #bat clan

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preyofolympus · 1 year

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People who say Tim annoyed/ bullied/ tricked his way into being Robin, especially when bitching about comics canon vs fanon, genuinely make me lose my mind.

Like.

How thick can you be?

Tim didn’t even want to be Robin (I heard New 52 was a bit wacky but I’m not looking up his history in that continuity for a quick Tumblr rant). Like, he straight up asked Dick to be Robin, tracked his apartment down and tried to argue his case that Batman needed a Robin, and Gotham needed Batman.

He became Robin because he saw no one else was going to step up to the role, and Batman was spiralling after Jason’s death. Gotham gained a sense of hope with the Batman, and he was a symbol to them of something at least close to good in their messy city. Tim saw that the light Robin brought to the duo helped keep Batman in check to a degree, when his self-restraint wasn’t enough, and with this being so abruptly taken away with Jason death, Batman stopped pulling punches, began to lose sight of being that symbol of hope/ good Gotham needed. He was becoming a force of fear, like there wasn’t already enough fear in Gotham.

So Tim stepped in. He wasn’t instantly Robin after wrestling his way in. He earnt the Robin mantle, and worked bloody hard before Batman finally let him take it on.

I love Tim as a Robin, because he came from a privileged background, had his whole life basically set for him, and he could have easily sat back in Drake Manor, becoming nothing and having everything. But he saw that good needed to be done. He saw no one else was stepping up to do it. And he stepped up to the task.

He is selfless, embodies that optimism/ hope that the Batman symbol is meant to represent (at least at the start, before he loses the mantle). Tim’s Robin is the symbol of doing what is right, even when you don’t have to. Simply because it’s the right thing to do.

It’s two am, and I’m pretty much definitely not saying all my thoughts, and I’m sure I’ll notice a hundred typos when I wake up tomorrow, but goddamn Tim haters irritate me when they act like he is just some rich kid that wanted to be Robin. Like I hate being in drama/ discourse so usually I just shut up, but this recent canon be fanon shit has had me so riled on so many fronts (tbh I think this rant is just blowing off steam at a smaller issue, because I’m sick of seeing idiots on Twitter rag on my friend).

I haven’t fully read Tim’s Robin comics run, as I’m saving that for next Summer, but I’ve still read enough extracts to know this line of argument is just plain stupid, no other word for it.

Also, give up on the fanon vs canon shit. Seriously. It’s embarrassing.

Tldr; Tim didn’t want to be Robin. He stepped up because he saw no one else was doing the right thing. He worked hard before officially taking on the mantle. He saved Batman and Nightwing from the scarecrow, earning their trust to train him. Tim Drake is a hero because he could have easily lived life on the backs of his rich parents and kept his nose out of it, but he didn’t because he cared about Gotham and it’s people. There is no best or worst Robin, and Tim certainly doesn’t deserved to be considered the latter by some idiots who dumb down his journey to becoming Robin to “rich kid who wanted to play hero.”

#batfam #batfamily #red robin #tim drake #dc robin #tim drake wayne #batman #batman urban legends #batkids #timothy drake #batbros #dc comics #jason todd #red hood #dick grayson #nightwing #robin iii

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gautierprotectionsquad · 1 year

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All of my Favorite fanfics

Fandoms: DCU, Ace Attorney, ORV, AFTG, FE3H, TMA, Junoverse, SOC

Ace Attorney

A Boy at the Airport : AU where Phoenix runs into a tiny Apollo Justice who just immigrated from Khura'in and takes him in.

The Phoenix, and Other Early Birds: AU where Apollo watches the Enigmar v state trial and insists on helping Phoenix get his badge back

A Crack in the Marble : AU where Miles Edgeworth is the prosecutor for State v Wright (with Dahlia)

And If My Wishes All Come True : Apollo adopts a cat, Klavier pines, and they make a lot of divorce jokes

The Complete Turnabout: Phoenix sent to an AU where he's a prosecutor

Burning on in my heart: Klapollo sickfic that explores their insecurities and internal struggles.

Exorcism: AA4 rewrite. Serial Killer known as the Devil has killed every innocent defendant from Klavier’s cases.

Dirty Paws: Crack taken seriously: Larry Butz writes Warrior Cats fanfiction to cope.

Sharing A Dream: Klapollo bodyswap highschool au

Gonna Make this Place Your home: Klapollo fic. Apollo and friends and love and home

His Highness the Second: AU where the Revolution happens early and Apollo gets to grow up in Khura’in. Apollo has a loving family.

In lipstick on the mirror are the lyrics to my obituary: Klapollo bodyguard AU.

Man of Mist: AU where Kristoph adopts Apollo. A dark story about a toxic familial relationship between a serial killer and the boy he loves.

Miles von Karma: Gregory Edgeworth Lives AU and Gregory Edgeworth POV where Miles is sent back in time and to an alternate universe. Miles has lost his memories and works as a detective.

The Legacy of Gregory Edgeworth: AU where Raymond Shields adopts Miles

The Infernal Prosecutor vs The Defense Heir: Narumitsu Role swap AU

Revival: Dual Destinies rewrite

Alt (better) ending for AA5

Soleil and the Demons: Apollo finds his bio family but when the family falls apart after his step father's disappearance, Apollo embraces his performer side and joins a band

It Never Rains but it pours: Apollo joins Wright and Co early

DCU

Gotham by Messier_47: Superbat Identity porn. Clark hates Gotham but meets a man who IS Gotham and learns to see the city in a new light

Jason Todd's terrible, horrible, no-good very bad Week: Jason gets captured by the Justice League and his brothers sneak into the Watchtower to save him

Loading and Aspect Ratio: Batfam wings au (kinda) with Superbat

Plagiarism is Not a Joke, Batman: Batman reveals his identity to the Justice League. He is far younger than they thought.

Smoking in the Boys Room: Superbat identity porn. Clark finds Bruce injured in a bathroom stall

Space Cellmates: Identity porn Superman and Bruce Wayne are kidnapped by aliens

The Man Behind the Curtain: Superbat identity reveal. Superman slowly learns more about batman.

The Mask Behind the Mask: Justice League learns about Brucie's reputation

The Waynes, Damsels in Distress: Batfam lets themselves get kidnapped bc they think it's funny (it is)

thirteen: Clark/Bruce. Clark Kent is hired as Bruce Wayne's nanny. All the batkids are close in age and Clark is not Superman.

The Longer You Stay: Domestic Selina/Bruce. Selina pov. A retired vigilante and retired thief live a quiet life and adopt three children.

Trust through the ages: De-aged Bruce Wayne. The Bats and the Flashes are close friends.

In Love with Justice: The Justice League think Batman and Nightwing are dating. they are hilariously wrong.

a heart just can't contain all of this empty space: Young Justice Team are tired of Bat secrets

Sneaking out for superhero teenagers: Tim needs to go to Central City without the rest of the family knowing so he comes up with a plan to sneak out. He runs into some superheroes on the way

through different colored glasses: It all started when Jason was trying to rescue his rocket launcher. (this fic is for me specifically bc of my experience with broken door handles.)

Two Sides: Jason meets Damian in the League of Assassins.

Equal Magnitude: The Robins' favorite superhero.

Batman, go grab your Robin... Wait, wrong Robin!: Tim goes trick or treating only to get kidnapped!!...By Batman?

In this Town We Call Home: The Drakes use Batman as a boogeyman to make their son behave...it didn't work out how they expect.

I wish I was: JayRoy no vigilantes au/romcom au. Jason and Roy have a meet-cute at a bookstore and then keep running into each other. 5 times Jason accidentally turns Roy down and 1 time he says yes.

In Your Pocket: JayRoy no vigilantes romcom au. For the dramatic irony enjoyers. Wrong numbers.

Familiar: JayRoy. Romcom with a vigilante twist. Contains fun banter, fluffy fluff, Austen levels of slowburn, Roy and Jason being dads, and heartbreak.

Cause You Mean More than Anything: Series of fics about the justice league's dramatic theories about batman's love life.

Life After Life: Thomas and Martha Wayne Beetlejuice AU

Lighting Bolts and Breaking Clouds: Jason and Roy adopt Billy Batson

tribute: Billy Batson dresses up as his favorite hero for Halloween

Dangerous and Noble: The Bats investigate their missing neighbor. Tim and Cass meet in the LOA au.

Things My Heart Used to Know: Jayroy. Jason Todd has been missing for 6 years and there's a 5 million dollar reward for anyone that can bring him home. Roy finds someone who happens to look a lot like Jason and they're both desperate for money. Inspired by Anastasia.

farthest you've ever flown: Robin!Tim gets kicked out of Drake manor. Red Hood finds him. Alternate first meeting.

No Strings Attached: Boostle no capes/powers au. Friends with Benefits to Lovers. Superhero groups are bands in this universe

In This or any Other Universe: Nightwing ends up in Battinson universe.

The Bachelor: Robin Edition: Batman needs a Robin. Tim knows just the plan. Kidnap several black haired blue eyed children to train and test them to become the perfect Robin until only 1 remains. He doesn't know how to test for "lovable" but he'll figure it out.

Come Alive: Dick went to Infinity Island on a mission to rescue three and ends up with Jason and Damian, too. 3x06 of Young Justice AU.

Now you will not swell the rout: Tim wants to be Robin but Batman is too overprotective and won't let him out into the field. So he tries street fighting to prove to Bruce he can take a hit and train himself. He meets a vigilante in a red helmet, too.

Little Bird's Wings: Jason comes back to Gotham only to find Batman and the Joker missing. He wants answers and instead he finds a few teen vigilantes running around.

break: Tim retires from vigilantism. If only Gotham would let him stay retired.

Working With Professionals Once: Red Hood has a plan. That plan backfires when his goons kidnap Bruce Wayne

Forecast: Red Hood pulls Dick's body out of the water. ANGST hurt/comfort. Jason coming home/identity reveal

False Words: One of the best handlings of Dick during RR/Dick and Tim's reconciliation after RR. (specifically chapters 3, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16)

reset: Circe puts a spell on Red Hood that gives him temporary amnesia. Jason wakes up confused why his family is so distant

The Nuclear Option: Tim blackmails Alfred into going to Comic Con with him. SUPER CUTE

(Honorable mention to Either Side of the Median by CaffienatedCopyeditor which is no longer on AO3.)

FE3H

Keep Him Safe: Sylvix adopts a son

the courage to love, a guide to fatherhood by felix fraldarius: Felix adopts a daughter

TMA

(i don't read tma fic much)

Rather Interesting: Crack treated seriously. jonah magnus/elias bouchard. canon compliant somehow. Elias is able to regain consciousness whenever Jonah smokes weed.

AFTG

(there's not that many here bc i didn't start keeping track till later)

Love Hurts: Aaron/Katelyn before the start of TFC

Red Right Hand: Au where Nathaniel Wesninski works for the Moriyamas and has been assigned to collect Kevin Day.

This was Home: Someone's OC joins the foxes

Pie Another Day: Pushing Up Daises AU

TPP

(there's not that many here bc i didn't start keeping track till later)

up the wolves: A nine-year-old juno stumbles into one of jet's post-heist hiding places

Six of Crows

(i don't read soc fic much)

The Meadow: Kaz dreams of his brother while finding himself past the age he thought he'd die at, and feeling stuck while all his friends have changed.

ORV

A Circle to Your Square: ORV rewrite where Yoo Joonghyuk and Kim Dokja were dating before the scenarios started

Ascension, Love, and the Ever Present Push and Pull: De-aged Dokja

Rendezvous: ORV in Yoo Joonghyuk's POV

and at the very least, the wall will change: No Scenarios Soulmate AU

World's End Rhapsody: After the epilogue, there is love.

how the mighty fall (in love): Yoo Joonghyuk can't stop thinking about Dokja. Eventually decides to settle the matter. (it's horny with no sex)

Knight in shining (plot) armor: Kim Dokja gets isekaid into Ways of Seduction, a smutty stallion novel. (spoilers for tls123's identity)

All the things we didn't say: ORV rewrite where Kim Dokja writes letters to Yoo Jonghyuk

Down: 1863 Yoo Jonghyuk meets a stranger. A thief. An uncanny man with all-knowing eyes and a too-clever tongue. A man of harsh words. A man of soft touches. The Wall tells him a story about this man and another version of himself and he listens.

Grim Reaper's guide to keeping a human alive: grim reaper yjh interferes with a human's life to get them to stop annoying him during work

A Star Without Light: A fairy tale au

#fanfiction #fanfic #ace attorney #batman #orv #penumbra podcast #aftg #soc #FE3H #TMA #romanticsap #long post #rom's fanfiction collection

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northoftheroad · 1 year

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I really like your blog and read a lot of things you had to say about Wolfman, so can I pick your brain about Devin Grayson?

A lot of people seem to say she wasn't good for the Nightwing run. Just wanna know your opinions about it

I'm gonna read her run anyways. It's just that I like your takes on things. Especially since you make connections with older comics.

Honestly, I think there is a lot to enjoy in Devin Grayson's stories. In Titans, she wrote Dick as a competent workaholic and the Titans as a group of very close friends. JLA vs Titans has a worried bat-dad, which is always adorable. Dick and Tim have fun together, and Bruce is emotionally complicated in Batman: Gotham Knights. Batman plus Arsenal is great (Roy chews out Batman!). Her story in the Robin 80th anniversary comic has a fun twist. Etc.

Batman: Gotham Knights # 8 & 9

Then there's things I don't like.

The rape. IMO, you shouldn't write rape in comics unless you're prepared to deal thoroughly with the consequences in the story. Admittedly, the sexual assault in Nightwing vol 2 # 93 is probably dealt with more seriously than the Mirage situation by Marv Wolfman, but I still wanted something more. Blockbuster's murder and the rape had an enormous impact on Dick's mental health; we should have got a resolution where Dick could admit out loud (if even only to himself) what happened, where he could get what help he needed and decide to move on. (Preferably, I would also have liked other characters to realise what had happened and not only be assholes…) (That Devin Grayson, in some interview, wanted to call it not consensual instead of rape doesn't help (full disclosure: I don't know if she's backed down on that).)

The retconning of Dick as part Roma. Now, it's for people who are Roma to have opinions about representation; I've seen (allegedly, because who knows what is correct on social media) both Roma people who like it and those who don't. From where I'm standing, it wasn't well done. The only comic arc where a Roma parent is essential to the story is quite problematic; you get the impression that the writer did it… to exoticise Dick and have Bruce talk like a racist…?

Gotham Knights # 20.

Some later stories have acknowledged this retcon, but only a handful of issues from decades worth of comics. Most writers ignore it, and Dick has never been portrayed as being fluent in a Romani dialect or adhering to any customs (other than looking for Romani food and talking about some legend.) He didn't even speak Romani when Devin Grayson wrote him.

How she wrote the relationship between Dick and Barbara. They were supposed to be old and dear friends, apart from a couple. Barbara blamed Dick for being sexually harassed (kissed), and when he came to her for comfort, reeling from Haly's circus being burned down, she asked him to leave after few hours night. That's not a relationship I, as a reader, would root for.

To be fair, she intended to write a story about how Dick went from being happy, to making his life living hell, and presumably end in a new happy place for him. Dick and Barbara are written in a way that would end in their splitting up. (Writers will create conflict because the storytelling needs it, and sometimes we as readers can think it was out of character, or unnecessary.)

I expect I would like her writing better if she could have finished her story. Maybe she would have got together the Dick/Barbara relationship and delivered a satisfactory resolution to the rape. But DC editorial interrupted her plans with Infinite Crisis, where they almost decided to kill Nightwing, and she had to make a rushed conclusion that never went anywhere. And when the Nightwing comic continued, it was in another town and one of the worst Nightwing stories ever.

As I said, I like part of her characterisation of Dick – how he can be ultra serious just as well as joking around, has a tendency to overwork himself, blame himself, he wants to give everyone a chance. But… I know she's said in an interview that she thinks of Dick as a contact junkie* who processes with his body before his head. I'm not down with that. Ok, as an acrobat, you could argue that body memory and responding to the touch of his fellow performers is essential for survival. And Dick might be freer with hugs than Bruce Wayne and Alfred, but that's a very low bar to set. Marv Wolfman wrote a Dick Grayson who was very private and could hardly show his love for Kory physically in public. (To be fair, when Dick dated a few girls in college in the comics from the 70s, he didn't mind holding hands and kissing in public. But, as much as I enjoy citing examples from older comics, the 80s is the start of a deeper characterisation for Dick Grayson.) I read Dick as a guy who's very much in his head – if not for any other reason, Batman must have drilled into him to think and question everything. There are panels where he seeks out solitude or watches nature programmes without talk to relax. And I also read him as uncomfortable with strangers touching or ogling him.

Anyway, happy reading. Of course you should read and form your own opinions. I guess you'll find things to love and things to loathe - I find that's true about most comic book writers and runs, myself 😎

*The way I think about him, he likes everyone, he's sort of a contact junkie — just this incredibly physical (and attractive) person who lives wholly in the corporeal plane and responds with — processes things in — his body before his head or heart. I imagine that he can be hypnotised by a touch the way other people can be stopped dead in their tracks by the sight of money or the promise of true love.

#Dick Grayson #Nightwing #Robin #Batman #Devin Grayson

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roobylavender · 3 months

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i love how you hold in-depth and insightful discussions with your anons even if they might disagree with you, i feel like you're such an easy person to talk to 🥹 which is to say i wanted to ask you about something - if you don't mind - i'm always really surprised when you discuss bruce vs. ollie's parenting styles because i feel like the differences you mention weren't necessarily so clear-cut?

for instance i think the 70s were really when the "oh no how can we send our own kids out there to fight criminals and die" conundrum was first raised in superhero comics because of dennis o'neil, stan lee, etc starting to equate the concept of child sidekicks to child soldiers & abusive parenting (hence bucky's ~death~ around this time too), and as a result of that + o'neil wanting to take batman back to its darker solo-ish roots, bruce was written to carry even more immense guilt over sending dick out as robin. and certainly he's had moments like this before, where he worried that he had done dick more harm than good (and for ex., subsequently erasing his memories as robin and sending him back to an orphanage like in world finest's #153..) but for the most part he's very insistent on dick being robin and he understands and encourages the fact that dick wants to balance his civilian life with being robin very much (reason #489893 why i think marv wolfman having dick drop out of college was OOC but that's another subject). tbh that's why i'm so defensive of the original context of batman comics, the fact that children were working in sweatshops or factories or as garment workers etc back then definitely allowed people accept the idea of bruce gifting a bat-copter to dick for his birthday in batman #10 (which is implied to be his 8th birthday 😭) or dick performing shoulder surgery on bruce at age 7-8 or whatever in batman #2 - so in the same vein, i don't think the thought of "oh no dick's life is in real danger as robin" should ever seriously enter his mind (as opposed to in-the-moment anxiety, which i'm sure happens a gazillion times a week) until dick's college years imo?

and i know you've mentioned before that you don't take the golden age personalities/morals ascribed to bruce & dick too seriously because they vary greatly depending on whether the tone is comedic vs. serious - but i actually think they're pretty consistent! for instance for the first ~30 issues of detective comics, bruce is a lot more OK with the idea of killing criminals, but it's clear that after a child, dick grayson, comes into the picture he takes a much harder stance against killing (hence why his original vow with robin by candlelight says "WE two will…never swerve from the path of righteousness" - implying batman will now hold himself to a new high standard that he's also setting for robin). as you said, when batman and robin do mention just "finishing off" a guy or whatever it's definitely played off for comedy and i think the audience is meant to recognize that :]

and re: ollie, the 00s series has him grappling with the "child soldier" worry a hundred times for mia, connor, and roy, so i think this sort of realization should happen slowly and organically for him too (and not just bruce) and it kinda already started back in the 70s anyway with roy's drug overdose... idk i like to imagine that bruce and ollie are a lot more alike despite the surface-level differences in temperament or personality and that's really what causes the (one-sided, from ollie LOL) tension!!

anyway i'm so sorry for dumping this entire novel in your inbox, it comes across like i'm just trying to lecture you but i promise i'm very interested in what you think 😭 and thank you for reading and always providing such interesting replies/commentary in general! have a lovely day ♡

please never apologize for this omg i am always elated to talk about the vast expanse of canon and hear other perspectives on it! and i wholeheartedly agree with you actually, the impact of the 60s really cannot be understated in how it altered dc’s approach to certain topics going forward (and i would love to find scholarly articles about this if there are any). like it’s really interesting how cape comics reacted to wwii and the social welfare era in very distinct ways, because on one hand as you said it originally wasn’t too hard for a reader to wrap their head around the idea of kid sidekicks because there probably were a lot of kids at the time who were also working due to the wartime labor shortage. but the 60s was a huge moment for civil rights and social welfare of all kinds and this was particularly with respect to children. i’m actually in a class right now called children’s rights so we discussed some of that history and the shift at the time that caused legislators to begin to take abuse as a concept seriously. i guess the tricky part about comics and our engagement with these characters is trying to balance the evolving world against what we would like to be a consistent depiction of the characters even though that isn’t necessarily possible, because the politics and concerns of various writers obv filter through (like wolfman and his reagan era propaganda lol). i def want to get further in my ollie reading someday because i’ve heard so many good things about the sort of gravitas of his role as a parent increasing as time goes on. and it would be interesting if more than one character ever converged on that concept of sidekick-ery as child abuse. i think the problem really is that some writers adapted that mindset while others didn’t so you ended up with a lot of tonally dissonant books and characters even though addressing this issue collectively across the expanse of the canon could have been very interesting

#outbox #tangentially i think that’s why i like bruce’s despair being a gradual development #like i think it can totally make sense for him to feel confident about robin’s existence and it’s coexistence with civilian life #but that faltering over time and like you said esp as dick gets older and the weaponry grows more complex and the villains get weirder #i can see bruce doomscaping easily by that point

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dick-nightwing-grayson · 2 years

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okay so question

what is happening in comics right now

bc according to dark crisis batman is dead

but also we have batman vs robin??? among other things…

Okay, so this is a complex question and sorry it took me a minute. I want to answer this seriously, so much so, I busted out my actual laptop (it has dust from over a month of no use [I solely use my phone and tablet]) This may seem like a half hearted answer, but know that it is 100% serious because DC is just an absolute clusterfuck.🙃

My understanding is that since Death Metal, everything both is and isn't current continuity. If this somehow makes no sense, you are welcome! You now understand perfectly and have the same basic understanding of what is happening as I do (which for context, I read roughly 30 active DC runs a month, I am putting in the work 😭)

The best and only way I know how to explain it is to go over what is occurring in each active run/series that features batman. It doesn't really clear anything up, but I feel it is the only way to address this. I am also probably wrong on some of this. Please comment any corrections, I am trying… (unless otherwise noted, I am reading all titles listed and am current on all issues)

*Lastly, I am trying to make these as educational as possible while also giving away as few spoilers as possible. There may be some if you are not caught up or have not begun a series.

Current continuity- Main Timeline

Batman #125- This is a start of a new storyline and puts the previous storylines at an end (can we put Gotham Girl to rest) Batman begins the investigation of the killing of Billionaire's in Gotham featuring the Penguin as his main villain (from what I know from solicits. It comes out in full tomorrow July 5th) Status- Alive

Detective Comics 1062- This is a start of a new storyline and puts the previous storylines at an end. It releases July 26th. RamV begins a run where Bruce begins questioning demons and if one is inside him, idk man, the solicit was odd. Ram V is generally a big horror/suspense writer so this part 1/4 of his Gotham Nocturne series is along those lines (I assume) and I have very high hopes. Status- Alive

Dark Crisis: Has some cross over with the Flash, but seems mostly an entirely contained storyline that is not affecting other continuity. Bruce Wayne is dead. Stems from events that occurred in the current timeline of Justice League. Status: Dead

Batman Vs Robin- This title will be released in September, so we only know what has been released in the solicits. The crossover event of Shadow War just ended as well as will be Robin. This is the fallout of both of those regarding Damian. Not much is known yet as it has yet to be released or even solicited much, but we do know Bruce Wayne's status at the beginning of the story: Status- Alive

Batman: One Dark Knight- Batman is assisting an escort of prisoners. Status- Alive

Task Force Z: Harassing Jason Todd after putting him undercover on a mission. Status- Alive

Nightwing: Bruce is in like one issue. He is proud of Dick. He is pretty much the only batfam to not feature prominently in this which is surprising as Tom Taylor (derogatory) loves to write anyone except for Dick in his Nightwing run. Status- Alive

Superman Son of Kal El- Bruce is "looking out for" Jon as Superman is off planet. Tom Taylor (derogatory) writes Bruce as incredibly incompetent… color me surprised. Status- Alive

Timeline Jumps/Elseworlds:

Batman: Urban Legends- This is a collection of short stories that are all current continuity, elseworlds, and timeline jumps regarding the batfam and Gotham, and sometimes neither of those things. Status- Alive, but could change depending on individual storylines

Batman/Superman World's Finest- Fighting Crime with Superman, Supergirl, and Dick as Robin. Status- Alive

Jurassic League- The justice League as dinosaurs. It is awesome. 10/10 would recommend. Status- Alive- but as a dinosaur 😲🦕🦖

Batman: The Knight- Bruce Training to become batman, but he is not yet batman. This is my favorite Bruce-centric series at the moment. Status- Alive

Future State Gotham- *I am a bit behind as went through and read each Future State series before allowing myself to go deeper in this, I am only like 6/14 issues in. Bruce has stepped down as Batman. Jace Fox is currently Batman. Nightwing wants to be Batman. Status- Alive, I think, but not as Batman

Batman: Killing Time: When Bruce was in his early days as Batman. Currently tracking The Riddler and Catwoman after a crime. I have really enjoyed this despite it being a Tom King run.... Status- Alive

Batman Beyond Neo Year: Bruce has been murdered by Gotham (yes the city as an entity) Terry McGinnis tries to put the pieces together. Status- Dead

I am Batman: *I haven't read this as I am still behind Future State Gotham. Jace Fox is batman as a companion storyline to Future State Gotham. Status- Alive, I think, but not as Batman

Flashpoint Beyond: Thomas Wayne is Batman. Status- Batman is alive, because Thomas is Batman, but that is because Bruce is dead

DC vs Vampires (and related spin off series): Vampire King Dick Grayson has taken over earth. Status- Dead

Dark Knights of Steel: More trash from Tom Taylor (derogatory). The art is pretty though and Tim gets wrecked once again. Status- Alive

Batman Beyond: The White Knight- Bruce is old and no longer Batman. He has escaped from prison with the assistance of Jason Todd. Status- Alive

Monkey Prince- Batman is tracking down Monkey Prince's parents and Monkey Prince, but it is mostly Damian as Robin. I am unsure if this should go here or under current timeline, but seeing as it has Damian in Gotham and as Robin, I assume it is slightly prior to Damian's own series. Status- Alive

Unsure because I have not read these:

Batman: Fortress- I haven't had time to get into this yet. I think batman is trying to stop an alien invasion. Idk if it is main or elseworld or time jump. Status- Alive

Batman/Catwoman- This just ended.I am uninterested. I have zero idea honestly. I assume he is alive otherwise what is the point? Status- Alive

Edit- I have been informed Bruce is dead in this, but as it takes place over multiple timelines he is both alive and dead

Justice League vs The Legion of Super Heroes- Batman is fighting the LOSH with the JL. Status- No idea, but pretty sure it is Alive

I hope this makes some sense and helps a little. I know it does neither.

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yvtro · 1 year

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A while ago you said that Jason should've been Batman after Bruce die and i don't remember if you mention about Robin in it. Let's say dc do it, should they make him a new character to be his robin or do you have anyone in mind?

i briefly mentioned it in a post yesterday, but originally when talking about jason becoming batman, my thought process involved bruce either retiring or getting seriously injured (in the latter case jason would take the mantle only temporarily), but now that i think about it the concept of bruce getting fridged for the sake of jason's character development is not only ironic and tragic, but also very funny. uno reverse. especially if they don't get to reconcile before; the angst of it all. the wretched parallel (bruce distorting jay's imagine in grief vs jason aiming to see the best in bruce in mourning; bruce getting considerably more violent at being batman after jay's death vs jay seeking to adjust his ways to understand bruce's ethos better; the tone of the batman comics becoming darker following jason's death vs it becoming what i would call 'aggressively hopeful' when jason takes over the mantle and tries to truly connect with the legacy). and none of it would be easy, the opposite really, a long, painful process. (also in my mind it follows from a secret disastrous storyline in which jason already loses hope in the concept of red hood as well; so his whole sand castle collapses, then bruce dies, and he's left to pick up the pieces).

all of this is different from another secret au in which bruce dies before jason even makes it as red hood and jason gets even more murderous while maybe taking the batman mantle too; identity theft seems to be his go-to coping mechanism.

sorry for such a long tangent... to your question about robin: to be fair, i have not thought about it, as i imagine jason would be rather uncomfortable with having a sidekick. some things to think about:

the *traditional* concept or batman & robin is a bit anachronistic atp. tim, for example, is still robin, but he also made robin uniquely *his* rather than adjacent to batman and bruce (this is of course not the first time this progression happened in the history of comics). damian (and that is not damian slander) doesn't really stand for what the original concept of robin was neither.

i'm not really diminishing the idea "batman needs a robin" though, but i feel like it's taken a bit too much at face value and doesn't take into account the story progression? the important part of this sentiment is that batman should not work alone, since the strict division of what batman means for the people vs what robin means for the people doesn't really apply anymore.

going back to existing robins, i believe jason would continue to work with them, but on their own terms, rather than trying to bring back the "dynamic duo" act. he would be protective, of course, but not more than he is normally; he definitely sees them more as equals, given that he used to hold the title too, and i doubt tim and damian would consider him "their" batman too.

(this is a vastly different situation than it is be with dick btw, who is the oldest and who created the robin mantle and also has more right to see it as his legacy. the subtle difference of "i shared a role and a title with these people" vs "i invented this role and title") tldr i don't think jason feels like he has a right to "have" a robin and for this to be his call.

also, as i already said, i think he would be (at least at first, and i believe for a long time) rather uncomfortable with the idea of having a sidekick. there's definitely a part of him who still appreciates and believes in what robin is a symbol of, but he has a complicated relationship with it, and probably with very idea of kids being in the field in general.

also, jason is young. i know dc keeps de-aging bruce, making him to be younger when he took in dick, but still, rn jason is supposed to be 23 at most (btw personally i don't accept like 90% of bullshit that was supposed to happen in this time, and since tim can be stuck at 17 for no good reason, why can't we also have jay to be younger so that the progession actually makes sense?? probably because it doesn't match the power fantasy middle aged men insert rh persona). i don't reckon he would be enthusiastic about being responsible for a whole child/teenager for a long time.

so i guess my answer is: no robin for jason, no sidekick even, for a long time. unless you give him some eldritch horror of a kid, maybe? that could be fun. but if you have any thoughts of why it should be different, please do share, i'm not ever deadset on my ideas.

#sorry for such a long answer!#batman jason agenda #<- settling for this name for the tag for now. i will come up with something better though #jason todd #jay meta #dc comics #answered

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frasier-crane-style · 1 year

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DC Slate

Really wish The Authority were an Elseworlds. We had that entire Superman Vs. The Elite movie about how ‘the Authority’ and the traditional (good) DC universe don’t and can’t mesh, so either the Authority gets watered down into a generic (but edgy) superhero team or all the Justice League has no convictions and is okay with a bunch of superpowered psychos flying around doing whatever.

(Also, didn’t we just get Black Adam about this exact theme? That was literally the movie that killed the old DCEU!)

-High monkey’s paw potential: Gunn is an actual superhero comic fan and is citing specific runs he’s going to adapt instead of basing movies on Wikipedia pages like the MCU. Bad news: they’re Tom King runs.

-Speaking of Gunn, he’s on the record as having something of that Tobey Wainscott attitude about superheroes being silly--which they are--but I’m a guy who feels they work best when you commit to the bit and kinda delight in the silliness, not doing the MCU elbow in the ribs to get that you’re actually above all this goofy bullshit? So I feel like we’ll probably end up with the opposite problem as Snyder. He thought superheroes were goofy bullshit, so he focused on making them as over the top serious and brooding and violent and butch as possible (Wonder Woman carrying a bunch of severed heads around, et al). So I worry Gunn’s going to go “this is all goofy bullshit, SO LET’S LEAN INTO IT! SILLY SILLY SILLY!” Which people will probably love, because we as a society can’t take anything seriously unless it’s ‘representation’ like Black Panther or Captain Marvel, so I don’t know, I guess maybe after the Western world falls and we rebuild from the rubble, then I can get a decent Mister Miracle solo film.

-Two Batman movies and no Wonder Woman movies? Sounds about right...

-Oh, I forgot, there’s going to be a prequel TV show about Wonder Woman’s... setting before she’s born/as a young child. I guess Smallville, Krypton, Gotham, and Pennyworth weren’t enough bites at that apple. Then again, a peaceful utopia with no conflict full of lesbians sounds like Tumblr’s ideal show, so maybe they can stop trying to turn other media like Thundercats and Ghostbusters into that and just enjoy drag king story hour or whatever Amazons do all day when there isn’t a Crisis and DC doesn’t have to kill five thousand of them to show how high the stakes are.

-Gonna be weird to have Superman as a young bachelor while Batman has a full Batfamily and Damian is his Robin. I suppose that’s Superman & Lois’s fault for... sort of... getting to Jon Kent first. But still, it’s weird that Damian is Robin while Lois Lane hasn’t even been inseminated yet.

-I will forgive a lot if we get a Jon Hamm Batman though.

-I guess we’re just never going to do a live-birth DCU where we see the Big Seven’s origin stories, get to see them form the Justice League, maybe a few second-stringers like Atom, Green Arrow, and the Justice Society for flavor?

-I’ll largely reserve judgment until we get some casting. It seems like five-to-ten years ago was the big “Okay, we’re making this ONE character black, but that’s all!” push (Hermione, Perry White) and now it’s “Okay, we’re making the entire supporting cast black, but the main character’s still white!” (Percy Jackson, Wheel of Time, Spider-Man) so I worry by the time the Gunnverse gets going, we’ll be firmly in the era of “white men can only be clowns, villains, or mentors who are about to die” (Black Adam). And anyone with taste will just have to count on Tom Cruise to make at least one movie a year worth watching.

#dc comics

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thevindicativevordan · 1 year

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Comics this week?

Superman #4 - How? How is this so good? How did Williamson go straight from Dark Crisis into writing this? Is it just because he and Waid are talking regularly per separate interviews with the two of them, because the rise in quality here is enough to give me whiplash. It's like Williamson has read my blog because he's making moves I've been begging to see get made. Tying Silver Banshee with the Phantom Zone! Giving Metropolis a personality of it's own by making it obsessed with the future and contemptuous of it's past, to the point there are ruins of old "Cities of Yesterday" underneath the current city, which perfectly connects with the Moonlight plot thread of her being the ghost that haunts it! Jimmy Olsen being relevant and useful because he's a native Metropolitan unlike Lois and Clark, so he knows the history of the city in a way they don't! Plus he's dating Banshee who isn't even in the top 5 weirdest dates he's had, but might be one of the hottest. Wasn't sure if the first arc was simply beginner's luck, but now that the quality hasn't dipped in the second arc I rate Williamson's run higher even than PKJ Action. And I still greatly enjoy Action! What a nice experience to have where both of the mainline Superman books are worth reading.

World's Finest #15 - Coming down off my high from Williamson, this remains fine. Feels like Waid is on autopilot with this arc, "Newmazo" is a terrible name. At least next issue promises more Supergirl/Robin interactions which will hopefully liven the story up.

The Brave & The Bold #1 - Got this mainly for the Superman story but the other three weren't bad. King described this Batman story as "burgers and fries", what you see is what you get. If you want a dark, gritty Batman vs. Joker story, that's what this offers. Stormwatch has great art, Jeff Spokes reminds me of Ryan Sook, but I don't love the team. Needs more proper Wildstorm characters, and seriously who the fuck cares about Peacekeeper anymore? Kill him off ASAP. Mora's story had great art of course but the plot was just an excuse for him to do cyberpunk Batman art. Finally the story I actually bought the book for was the strongest of the four which was nice. Cantwell has a good handle on Superman's voice, I was surprised to see this takes place in mainline continuity, but the real draw for me was always seeing Javier Rodriguez draw Superman. Glad to share he does not disappoint, loved the page where Clark and Lois are examining the decoder ring.

Vigil #1 - Less of a superhero book and more of a spy one, but no less enjoyable for that. Ram V said he was drawing on Wildstorm and Planetary for this book and that is seen in spades. Morally ambiguous anti-heroes whose goals aren't mainly concerned with saving people, and who don't shrink at lethal force are exactly the kind of protagonists you'd expect to see in a Wildstorm book. I like this team, they feel like a group that could be different enough from the Justice League to justify their existence, unlike quite a few other teams.

Cyborg #1 - Ok first issue. Hampton is a relative newcomer to comics and that shows in some places like the clunky dialogue from the kids. Raney's art isn't a favorite of mine, and the cover being so different from the interiors is going to turn some folks away.

Superboy #2 - Cosmoteers are assholes, not sure if Porter will be able to win me over into liking them, but it makes for funny interactions at least. Superboy resolving to TTK punch his way through an enemy fleet is the most like his 90s self he's been since he came back wearing that look.

X-Men #22 - Was on the fence about dropping this too, but Duggan bought himself a stay of execution by finally moving the ORCHIS plot forward. Makes sense that ORCHIS would move on the wider superhuman community after the mutants when you remember that ORCHIS is just a front for the machines to take over. Speaking of which, Omega Sentinel returns! Are they finally going to address that turning Moira into a villain means we now have two characters who are functionally the exact same on ORCHIS? OS and Moira are both former X-Men allies turned enemies, both have transitioned from organic to robotic bodies, both founded organizations to prevent the futures they lived through from coming to pass, etc. Hickman worked hard to make OS into Moira's opposite for the machines, yet now that the two are on the same side we've never even seen them interact! Fall of X needs to change that.

Hulk Annual - Meh main story, but the epilogue pages got me pumped to finally get my hands on PKJ Hulk in a month.

Avengers #1 - For all Aaron's efforts, this feels more like Morrison JLA than anything he came up with. Everyone is competent and contributes to the fight, the art is great, and the tease at a larger plot with Kang sounds fun. First time since Hickman that I'm planning on reading the Avengers regularly again.

Fantastic Four #7 - Another fantastic issue, this time finally featuring Doom. Hickman was my entry run into F4 and made me a sucker for "Doom's ego is so great he would rather destroy reality than lose face" stories.

#weekly reviews

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wesavegotham · 1 year

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Batman vs Robin #4...spoilers and a long rant under the cut.

Waid continues what he started doing in the preview and wastes Bruce's inner monologue on listing the martial arts moves they are doing. What is he trying to tell us with this? They know a lot of fighting techniques, what a revelation. The parts not about martial arts aren't that interesting either.

When I got to this page I thought for a split second that Bruce was finally going to reflect on his relationship with Damian a bit, but it's the most basic, surface level deep stuff you could possibly write. And instead of picking something meaningful from their history (Bruce gifting Damian Titus, Damian giving Bruce one of Martha's pearls he searched for in the sewers, the scavanger hunt, their trip to the moon, Bruce reviving Damian...) the artist gave us...this. Heartwarming. You can really feel how much writer and artist care for the relationship this book is supposedly about according to the title.

Also apparently obligatory Talia bashing.

I believe Bruce saying "he's my son" here was supposed to make me feel something, but it's all just so damn basic. He's Bruce's son, and? He doesn't seem to like him as a person and Damian being Bruce's son has never stopped Bruce from letting Damian down. Badly. If Damian being his son truly meant anything their relationship wouldn't have gotten this bad.

If anyone feels happy that Bruce's injuries from the last issue didn't get ignored here, let me assure you, despite it looking like it for a few pages none of this is going to matter later.

(I'm going to skip a page here, it's just more martial arts move and Bruce thinking that Damian can counter all of his moves. I'm really not sure what Waid wants to tell me with this. Am I supposed to think that Damian is a real threat? But Bruce already said that he could easily beat him under normal circumstances. Pride? But again, he's doesn't seem that impressed? Idk. I don't get Waid's Bruce.)

It's not compelling.

Also, as if anyone would even think for one second DC would let Bruce seriously be beaten by Damian. DC makes Damian lose against characters that picked up martial arts like two weeks ago to hype them up or to "teach Damian a lesson"

(Another uninteresting page of Damian punching Bruce and talking about killing him I'm going go skip here.)

Because why should Damian ever be allowed to have a win?

Also, we could have gotten a cool scene of Bruce rescuing Talia and talking about saving their son together, but instead Waid chose to go for the boring "gotcha, Bruce always pulls something out of his ass" route. I swear to god, DC writers are so afraid of letting Bruce make mistakes or be in real danger that it's infuriating. It's so boring to read Bruce. I know this twist is coming, I'm just always hoping they don't do it because it's such a predictable twist at this point.

Yay. Batgod😒

With the power of the helmet Bruce simply breaks Nezha's control over the possessed characters and teleports most of them home.

Damian immediately begging for forgiveness from Bruce kinda irks me. Especially when I consider how Bruce talked to Damian in the first issue and how he thinks about him...it just all gives me the vibe that this book is trying to "put Damian in his place". It's all so...patriachal? In a really bad way.

Bruce starts fighting Nezha. Bruce is batgod and Nezha is boring.

Talia and Damian go after Mother Soul, but Mother Soul can't really do anything on her own, so they beat her easily. She's also boring.

Nezha continues to be generic.

Bruce's line could have been really cool and touching. If Waid had built up to it. But at no point did Bruce reflect on anything Damian said to him during this book or think about how his mistakes as a father landed them in this situation, so when and how did Bruce reach the conclusion that this was actually about being the father Damian needs?

Because to me it feels like Damian was only in this as an excuse to draw Batman going up against demons.

*sigh* I feel like I read this dialogue 100 times already.

Bruce is still fighting Nezha, but is too cool to use magic correctly, so Nezha is able to pull the helmet off his head and the helmet breaks and lands in the lazarus pit, releasing all the magic it accumulated into it. If Damian had pulled something like this he would be laughed at for his arrogance, but this is Bruce so instead Nezha just rants about how great Bruce is:

You know, for one second I thought Damian was actually allowed to something useful for once in this story and save Bruce, but of course it doesn't go that way.

Instead Bruce ends up saving Damian. Why actually talk about their relationship issues if you can just throw in a heroic sacrifice to resolve it all?

Do you know how many times DC has "killed" Bruce this year? He'll be fine.

Also, Bruce had basically nothing nice to say about Damian or Talia this entire book so seeing them care so much about his death is just...guys, he's not worth it.

King Fire Bull arrives and starts fighting Nezha because he apparently killed his real parents. I don't care, they are both generic.

Black Alice revives Bruce with the lazarus magic running through Nezha's veins. I guess that is why Bruce turns into a demon in Lazarus Planet.

Nezha flees, the humans run to the plane Bruce arrived with and King Fire Bull blows up the volcano that spews the contaminated lazarus pit water all over the world.

Uff. I just feel like Waid has absolutely nothing interesting to say about Bruce and Damian's relationship. There is zero reflection going on. This book only exists to make Bruce look cool and everyone else is only there to give him opportunities to do so.

#bruce wayne #damian wayne #batman vs robin

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thealtoduck · 3 years

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Being Giganta’s son and falling in love with Tim Drake…

Tim Drake x Male Reader

Warnings: None

Summary: Your mom gets arrested and you get an offer you can’t refuse.

(A/N: To celebrate Tim being LGBTQ+)

——

It started after your mother was arrested and your home was raided by the Justice League.

So when they broke down your door you did what most superpowered people do when someone breaks in to their house… fight.

Off all the things Batman and Wonder Woman would expect to find inside the room while breaking down the door a teenager was not one of them.

A superpowered teenager at that.

When they had walked inside the room you used your powers that you had inherited from your mother to grow in to a 50 feet giant.

From growing this tall you smashed through the ceiling. You then looked down on the now tiny super heroes and said in a hostile tone ”Get away”.

Wonder Woman tried to fly up to you but you reacted by swatting her away as if she was an insect causing her to smash in to the ground.

Superman the tried to make his way to you but you grabbed him by the cape and threw him at Hawkgirl who was flying towards you. But soon enough you were overwhelmed by the amount of superheroes attacking you and they managed to take you in to custody.

Though they didn’t put you in jail because to be fair they broke in to your house and smashed in your door… but they did try to get information out of you.

So there you were sitting in a chair while the Justice League asked you questions you refused to answer. The only thing you told them was ”First you break in to MY house, then you take ME in to custody for self defence and then you question ME for info”

”Can you see why i don’t feel like talking?” You then asked them ironically. They then saw that it was a losing effort talking to you and left the room.

When Tim saw Batman exiting the room he went up to him and asked how it went but was told you were difficult to work with.

But Tim got an idea, ”What if someone who didn’t arrest him talks to him, he might be more willing to cooperate then?” he suggested to his mentor. Which Batman accepted and let him in to the room where you were being kept.

”Hey” he said to you as you only stared towards him but before Tim had said anything else you said ”Look i’m not telling you shit so just leave” but instead of leaving he grabbed a chair and sat down opposite you.

”I’m sorry they broke in to your house and took you here, but there is a lot going on some of which involves your mom and also involves innocent people getting hurt and if you have any possible information we would be very grateful” he said kindly yet seriously and he added a quick ”Please”.

Well he did ask nicely and plus you hate innocent people being hurt as the result of good guys vs bad guys so you said ”I have somewhat of a location, not an exact adress but i know they are gonna be in Gateway city and close to the harbour. I think Cheetah and Doctor Psycho will be there, i think it’s a ”I hate Wonder Woman” kind off thing”.

”Thank you very much, you have given us more than enough information, i will make sure you let out of here” Robin said giving you a small smile.

With the information you gave them the league managed to take down the baddies and Robin kept his promise which meant you were released.

You were moved in to your old house which the league had fixed. Then everything mostly went back to normal except from the occasional visit from Wonder Woman just to check that you were doing fine living alone or to make sure you didn’t do anything illegal.

But that lasted for only a few weeks.

There was a knock on the door and it was Wonder Woman as usual but this time she had brought Wonder Girl, Batman and Robin. She then told you they were going on a mission and she thought that your skillset would be useful to them.

So now there you were… wearing spandex right next to your mother’s worst enemy.

After the mission you kinda became Wonder Woman’s occasional 2nd sidekick.

You also got to know Robin better, which Batman probably didn’t approve because your related to a super villain. But you’ve heard about him and Catwoman so he wasn’t really one to talk.

Soon enough you had fallen for the Boy wonder and the two of you became practically inseperable in costume.

But nothing really romantic happened between you until one day when the earth was attacked by aliens and you and him were defending Gotham while the Justice League dealed with the leader of the aliens.

You stood on a rooftop as you saw aliens spaceships flying towards the city so you looked at Robin and said ”Incase we die, i love you”. You then jumped off the rooftop before he could answer and altered your size to be ready to smash some aliens.

After the league had managed to defeat the big bad and all the smaller alien invaders were gone you met up with Robin.

You were about to say something but was cut off by him pulling you towards him and your lips meeting.

After the kiss he took of his mask and said ”I’m Tim, Tim Drake”.

When Batman found out it was hard to tell if he was happy or not but you think you caught a glimpse of him smiling slightly.

#tim drake x male reader #tim drake x male!reader #tim drake #tim is bi #tim is queer #if you don’t like it die mad #batfam x male reader #dc x male reader #dc comics x male reader #x male reader #male reader #x male reader fluff #x male reader headcanons #male reader fluff #male reader headcanons #male reader insert

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batarangsoundsdumb · 3 years

Text

guess fucking what? my inbox is so fucking full right now i'm unloading all of this shit in one post.

For the 11th gotham memes: gothamites react to bruce being jacked in a tiktok he made with kids, like super yoked, ripped as hell

fucking hilarious thanks. i think i did it in one meme post, but i genuinely don't remember which one

i dunno which of the batfam would do this but one time i was sleeping over at a friends house and ended up on the floor bc the bed was so very small and i just stayed there because the rug was soft

that's a drunk jason move i don't know what to tell you

tim and jason are "i listen to pop punk" solidarity. whenever jason highjacks the batmobile theyll go on long ass car rides blaring mcr and paramore and then never talk about it again

as they should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! tim: no jason it's my turn using the aux cord i gotta put on my jams jason: don't you dare put on weird shit tim: don't worry, you're gonna love this *plays fearless (taylor's version)

hear me out hear me out, red hood stans 🤝 nightwing stans t h i g h s

holy shit yes.

SNL au: Bruce breaks character when pretending to superman and says something like "I'm not superman! You've seen his gps!! It's from 2001!!!" @sabeanybabe

superman flies past the snl building the next day just to say 'actually it's from 2005, i'm not a heathen'

does your back hurt from carrying the batfam fandom

it hurts more from the exotic rock collection i keep in my backpack, but thanks for the concern.

I love your posts by why would you always leave the best parts in the tags?

as a treat for the people that check the tags ;) (and also because i'm committed to the short post aesthetic)

somehow your playlist was everything i never knew i needed. i mean it. this is my new favorite playlist.

and don't you dare get a new favourite playlist!

babe ur stoner tim playlist is exactly too perfect, earth is literally blessed by ur existence

babe thanks so much! i love my stoner tim playlist because it's just my usual playlist but people think it's an artistic choice that i put taylor swift and britney spears in there, when it's just what i unironically like listening to

JANDKSKDK BILLY RAY CYRUS ON THE STONER TIM PLAYLIST I LOVE IT IT

again it's not even an ironic choice, i know every single word and i genuinely like the song

The last chapter of Fundamentals of Casework has me crying at work. Thanks I love it @dudelookitsalesbian

oh babe, i'm sorry, but also, not sorry i love chapter 4 so much it's my lovechild with the 'mental illness' tag

soooo....stumbled on your tumblr by some stroke of fate??? read your DC fanfic first. which is PHENOMENAL btw. then found all the batmemes; the funniest thing EVER bc everyone forgets about regular old gothamites. kept scrolling and your blog pops up as recommended. clicked on the ao3 for shits and giggles and waddaya know?!?!? it's YOU!!! you're LEGEND!!!! ever seen that meme? it's a video of a cat that got into a baseball field and the two announcers get really invested in his escape attempt and start giving a play by play of the cat instead of the game. memeable moment: "GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!"

i seriously think about this ask every single day and it's so fucking funny to me that i've never seen the meme you're referencing, but i still find myself going 'GREAT stuff from the Cat!!!' whenever i see something funny. but wow i'm glad you liked this steaming pile of garbage

Fav dc character overall? And fav batfamily character?

don't ask me to pick between the loves of my life, but i can tell you i've cried about every single batfamily member and also wally west (my beloved)

What's your opinion on fans having a problem with batfam being "too big"? And some even claim that batfam is just "Bruce Alfred Dick Damian" and the rest of them are just "friends and allies" (source: reddit) Personally, I like batfam because of this reason but idk

stupid. a family can never be too big. i'm not that big a fan of like huge batfam stuff with everybody from every single universe, because as much as it's funny for bruce to have like 30 kids, it just feels a little too OOC for me.

This is the best tag I've seen involving the batfam, thanks for thinking of it

This is canon now @nctxrejects

lmao yeah i think at that point alfred has had to sit through like at least a dozen coming out talks and just has a pride flag collection in the attic that he pulls out whenever a kid comes out

idk why batfam hits different as compared to any other superhero family

bc it's found family and usually the other superhero families are almost all genetically related in one way or another

I don't know if you watch the umbrella academy but I saw your last post about batcest and saw the similarities. But the thing is (although I think it's weird) in TUA, they addressed it by saying "they were raised as weapons, not siblings" or something along those lines, which is simply not the case with batfam.

yeah i watched tua but i also thought it was ridiculous and they still treated each other as siblings so i didn't like the luthor/allison thing, and am glad they stopped doing that shit bc it fucking sucked.

Hot take: Batcest shippers are the same people who believe adopted siblings are not actual siblings

smoking hot take: batcest shippers are the people who watch 'my sister got stuck in the washing machine' porn

Duke was adopted by Bruce?

not technically no, but do i, tumblr user batarangsoundsdumb, look like i care?

True story but I had to change my freaking name because it used to be "Damien" and most people would go "OH LIKE DAMIAN WAYNE" like please I'm just tryna live

true story, but i don't actually think of damian when i hear the name damian, literally the first thing that pops up is damian darkh like bruh what?

apparently dc comics company supported comic stores by giving out new titles and stuff during the beginning of the pandemic to help them run and I just think that's wholesome

ah yeah that's so fucking cool, still don't like dc, the company, because this world is a capitalist hellhole and we're all owned by warner brothers or disney with no in between.

ayo looking at tumblr head canons and finding out bruce is actually a terrible father is a punch in the gut

lmao yes, in like 50% of comics bruce is a terrible father and it gives me whiplash

oooh I just saw the jason todd vs winter soldier post and the real question is: batman vs iron man

while iron man has like hundreds of cases of armor, batman could throw out an emp and have the guy dropping out of the sky in 2 seconds.

dickfast = fastdick = quickdick = quickie

magnum hot take

hey bata(?) just thought I'd let you know I have copied the obnoxious emoji and Billy Ray post for use on simping men going forth

thank you 😘🌷 (@spacebarsidecar)

why would you do that to your followers???? i get why i did it, but why would you???

what is scarecrow made the nightwing funko pop himself, like those diy-ers that paint over other ones

oh god no, horrible take, horrible take, that's a disgusting thought oh no

I see your HC that Bruce and Oliver fucked and raise you this: Dick and Roy ALSO fucked

yes they did and it was a horrible moment for jason to find out dick has fucked both of his best friends

"at this rate bruce adds like 1 child to his family every decade or so" Duke is introduced in 2013, Damian as Damian, not as an unnamed child, in 2006. And he is already 14 years old, Robins rarely remain Robins after 16 😬 It looks like a new Robin and Batkid will appear in a couple of years

i mean i can't wait? but somebody will probably die first tho, we're due for another major character death. my money's on either cass or duke this time.

BRO you're so right all of your Bruce's ex headcanons are amazing but they aren't ships, that's kinda wild. Like I don't want any peeks into how their relationship was I just want to see everyone make fun of them

lmao YES it's just i love bruce being a slut, like good for him.

I am in love with your posts your honour thank you

omg thanks are we like,, gonna kiss now?

The justice league needs to have a meeting to discuss how many of their members/partners have slept with bruce. Because through a combination of cannon & fannon (if DC wasn’t homophobic) we have AT LEAST: 1) clark 2) lois 3) oliver 4) dinah 5) john

Thats not counting villains or random civilians @dudelookitsalesbian

yes yes yes, they'll have a yearly meeting about how many of their collective exes could be out for revenge and batman's list just keeps getting longer.

tim was like "i'm drake now" and everyone was like ahh so your fursona is a dragon and tim was like pffffft no. ducks.

and what about it?

when steph's fighting livewire and she zaps her with lighting and nothing happens and then they both just. stand there awkwardly for a second and talk. yeah i couldn't stop laughing at that batgirl steph is the BEST

oh yeah that was fucking hilarious and i think it would be so cool and sexy of dc to give steph a little comic series,,, as a treat

Hi I absolutely adore all of yours "Bruce and Oliver very badly pretending they didn't fuck each other" memes

lmao i do too

I need you to know that “Bruce Wayne had frosted tips” is one of my favorite Bruce takes of all time it’s so galaxy brained. you’re right and you should say it

he also painted his hair blonde once when he was travelling and in conclusion, this is why he's being blackmailed by the gotham gazette.

you know my thing about gordon being branded as the only good cop in gotham is its a load of shit like arguably he's a good person and not working to screw people over or anything but the fact that he also works w. batman makes him a shit cop. like yea batman is better than the mob but its still illegal its still an abuse of power he just not making bank

babe, all cops are bad cops. (but yeah youre absolutely right, working with vigilantes makes you a shit cop, but also working against vigilantes just makes you an asshole cop yanno?)

ruh roh i think i’m about to add “so not yeehaw” every time i don’t like something

that's a very good vocabulary upgrade

somehow i feel like steph already knew. like babs obviously knew but i feel like bruce got high/drunk in front of steph and started telling his boarding school stories and steph was just like “oh you fucked up i’m never gonna forget this”

steph and bruce have weird uncle/rebellious niece dynamic and they just hang out sometimes and bruce will be like 'i once broke my arm when i tripped over a hedge when i was drunk so oliver drove me to the hospital on an electric scooter' and steph will just have to sit there with that knowledge in her head.

Hello I just wanted to tell you you are So right in all your steph opinions bc she is, in fact amazing and I think that's very sexy of you. Ps. Your Bruce/Oliver fic is hilarious

babe, thank you so much and yes steph is amazing and i love her and she deserves the world and she's the best member of the batfam hands down. also thanks

In Supersons we see a couple of kids that are implied to be Damian and Jon's children and the boy has laser eyes and can fly, so I asume he's not adopted. The girl, who calls Bruce grandpa, can also fly, btw. So it's canon (probably by accident) that Jon can have kids and he must have married one of Bruce's kids. (I'm hoping for Damian, mostly because any other of his children would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay too old.) @artemisa97

lmao that was probably an accident seeing as jon is a 17 year old superhero in the year 3000 (by the jonas brothers)

You know, I'm a die hard fan of your memes, but I gotta say one thing: if Gothamites actually took gas mask everywhere with them, then the Scarecrow would just be a weird dude in a weird costume, and not a villain oh so scary. DC really should just takes notes from you.

bold of you to assume there's no gothamite anti-maskers

How does it feel being the funniest person on this app?

horrible, next question.

I can't listen to Green Day or Billy Joel without thinking of your post about how Bruce got arrested at a Billy Joel concert @nightwings-kid

yeah that's your mistake, i on the other hand can't enjoy billy joel without thinking about the glee rendition of 'uptown girl'

I've FINALLY been watching the Batman animated series and I gotta say, after watching "the gray ghost" I am CONVINCED that Batman is a closeted super hero geek who was 100% freaking out the first time he met Superman and is just REALLY good at hiding it.

superman: so what do you do in your free time? batman, thinking about the superman fanfiction he's writing on the batcomputer: i have no free time

bruce and oliver be like boyfriends to co-workers 401k (do the justice leagues get 401ks??? not that bruce and ollie would need them, but-)

lmao yes just 400 thousand words of bruce realising 'oh dip oliver is such a fucking dumbass' (also i don't know what a 401 k is but i assume they don't?)

Gothamites would totally boo superman as he saves Gotham while batman is out. @meenje

he's like 'okay think about that next time you want to be saved from an alien octopus'

I just took long break from dc comics and I come back to see ric grayson ??

i think it's very cool and sexy of dc to see dick and just think 'you know what? let's just give him a traumatic brain injury' and then didn't develop his character in any real way

SPEAKING OF RIC GRAYSON, gothamites making confused memes out of ric grayson is much needed

'dick grayson is my taxi driver? can anyone explain what the fuck happened he looks like an italian plumber?'

i hate to say it but batfam are def "marvel characters" in that sense they are characters who are human but become superheroes unlike most dc characters who are gods trying to be human maybe this is why I like batfam

fair enough

#this is only like half of it #but at least you can get like a few answers #yanno fuck it #bataranswers #ask #asks #anon

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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I'm so used to Dick getting hit because his family or friend was annoyed and decided he was the closest wall to punch that I never expect anything different anywhere, and then Young Justice s3 and Titans s2 caught me by the neck and threw me into a pool of unexpected catharsis. I never expected Dick to defend himself, I never expected the catharsis, I never expected how much it'd affect me. Although now that Titans s3 is upon us with a Dick vs Jason fight I'm back to the default.

I really, really, REALLY wish more people had even the slightest idea of the catharsis that can come from one character just fucking INTERVENING in a situation like we see happen so often in fics and the comics and just be like....no. That is not fucking okay. And like, without that, it literally is just...permissive? Like when Jason punches Dick in Grayson #12 after the Spyral thing, and Tim just stands there.....Tim's essentially saying its okay, he sees nothing wrong with what just happened. Which....dun dun dun....not all that surprisingly then turned into Tim punching Dick in Batman and Robin Eternal.....again with nobody upset.

Its why I've never even been able to like, go with the idea that Alfred or any of the Titans knew about what happened between Bruce and Dick in NTT #55, specifically, because like....I can't make peace with nobody saying anything about that ever. Bruce is a Big Time Superhero. Who frequently rubs people the wrong way. I don't buy that nobody's ever gonna throw that back in his face to make a point about how he's got no business being holier than thou about various topics. *Shrugs*

But yeah, unfortunately its not just canon. Like, I've read a fic where the prompt was literally like....people being glad to see Dick back from Spyral and getting actual catharsis for everything he went through instead of what we got in canon....so I went into the fic like okay, cool, this is exactly what I'm looking for. LOL nah, we got Jason STILL punching Dick anyway, even AFTER finding out about the events of NW #30 and Dick actually having died, and like, Jason was still so pissed at Dick for not TELLING them this that NOW, THAT'S why he just has to punch Dick before THEN hugging him and saying okay I just had to get that out, but now I'm over it and glad you're back.

And I was just like.....ummm. The author and people in the comments are treating this like an lol moment where all's well that end's well, and I'm like ARE YOU KIDDING ME, THAT'S THE EXACT SAME ISSUE CANON PRESENTED. Only now its WORSE, because people act like that addressed and resolved it, but with it STILL including Jason punching Dick cuz he was mad, and now with this even MORE formally being treated as like....something fine and necessary to repair their relationship. And all of this is packaged as like...the specific catharsis that people who were UPSET with how that all played out in canon like, came into this specific fic looking for....and this is what we got instead, with zero warning.

That's not even getting started on like, the super long super serious fic set during the Ric Grayson era that was supposedly about addressing Bruce's abusive actions towards ALL his kids, which FEATURED Ric as a regular character, but only ever actually DELVED into the times he'd hit Jason and then Tim. With Tim as an unreliable narrator making some reference to Bruce having hit Dick a couple times but that was different because Dick was an adult....and the author and narration at NO POINT pushing back against this to be like well actually Timmy, that's not fucking different at all, Dick is still his kid, Bruce was still taking out his anger on him, that was still abuse, and saying or even just implicitly framing it as NOT abuse the way it played out in Tim's head, when you're presenting this entire fic as a whole as like, an ode to actually acknowledging the abusive aspects of how Bruce has been written with his kids....

Again, SUPER upsetting to read and witness, because people are absolutely going to read that and internalize that as reinforcing their belief that the situations with Bruce and Dick WERE substantially different and thus not qualifying as abuse and belonging in a separate category the way Tim slotted it in his brain.....because why wouldn't they?

The author only wrote it that way because they perceived it that way, clearly, otherwise by their own stated admission of trying to tackle this subject honestly and completely, like....they would have actually made some kind of point or acknowledgment of it not being different at all and still very much abuse....and the fact that they didn't suggests they very much did see it as somehow different.....so why would readers perceive it any differently and why wouldn't its inclusion in a fic that delved into abuse so extensively NOT at least on SOME level potentially reinforce whatever leanings or perceptions they had in the same direction already? And meanwhile, this story like sooooo many others that wants to talk about abuse SERIOUSLY, all the while calls this their hobby that they do for enjoyment, so please don't criticize anything because that would ruin the HOBBY of it all for them, and its like....

And then there's the fic where its Dick hitting Jason while in the midst of a narrative that's bringing all of Jason's abuse issues and related triggers front and center, and this one is highly recommended as like, a great Dick Grayson characterization by an author who hates any and all canon renditions of Bruce being abusive and so doesn't include anything like that, and so you're going into it like okay, I'm not expecting any catharsis or anything along the lines of acknowledging Bruce's worse moments with Dick or Jason because clearly that's not what this fic is about and that's fine...but by the exact same token, I ALSO was not expecting that an author who is so vehement about how abusive Bruce is wildly OOC writing because the real Bruce would never do that and that's not how they perceive the characters, like....what I'm NOT expecting is for Dick, in a fic PRAISED for a good and complex depiction of him, to like....just fucking pop Jason one in the face and bring to mind how this makes him no different from Jason's abuser and then he runs and seeks comfort in Bruce who whether people like it or not, is canonically someone who has made Dick an abuse survivor himself....

And I'm just sitting there fucking BLIND-SIDED thinking wow, not only did I NOT want this recommended to me by the whole freaking fandom as a wonderfully nuanced portrayal of Dick Grayson, I would have kept a ten mile radius from it if it had say, a tag warning of sibling abuse, which is what they wrote between Dick and Jason, just the other way around. And its like.....I completely understand the author's dislike of abusive Bruce in canon and their desire not to engage with that content on any level, and would have been totally fine with that.....except, I naively figured there was no reason that same logic wouldn't extend to Dick, especially in so lauded a fic, because like, what? Bruce would never ever hit his family and its wildly OOC and simply not believable, even though its happened like five different times with Dick alone, but Dick hitting HIS family is a wonderfully nuanced and complicated portrayal of him? In what universe is that not gonna be a problem for some people??

But because we live in a fandom that's like, umm, this is just peoples' HOBBY, they're doing it for FUN, we're expected to be silent about stuff like this which are very real fucking problems to watch go unacknowledged in fics that claim to be TRYING to treat these topics seriously, but in reality only want to be entertainment just deep enough to move people but NOT deep enough to warrant criticism for having an undue influence on peoples' emotions or perceptions of various dynamics.....and we're supposed to be polite and just smile and say this isn't for us and let it all go, even though like, we would have KNOWN it wasn't for us and not gone anywhere near it in the first place if like, it had been tagged as sibling abuse or something like that. That would have been a clear advertisement to me that like, this is not something you want any part of.

Like, I go to fics that do acknowledge or reference Bruce's abuse to his kids because I'm LOOKING for the catharsis of having abuse actually called out as abuse....and what about that makes anyone think I or someone like me is in doing so LOOKING for characters who AREN'T already abusive to each other in canon NOW being abusive in ways that only the individual fic writer chose to depict them as? And by the same token, its not like I want to go into any fic and see more of the same thing as we get in canon, which is.....more instances of actual abuse being framed and treated as something that's just fine, actually, and nothing to worry about or take too seriously....

But meanwhile, back at the fandom farm, everyone's still totally convinced that they're so superior to canon and doing things so much better than them and fixing all their mistakes....and its like....well then why are you MAKING the EXACT same mistakes, and what the hell are we supposed to do about it with YOU guys if unlike with canon (where we can criticize but it doesn't do much good because there's no guarantee of the people who need to see it actually seeing it), we're not supposed to bring it to your attention as 'criticism-worthy' (thus making the opposite problem of where we CAN bring it to the attention of people who can see it, but we're not 'supposed to' because fandom etiquette)?

And back to the whole thing about using a sibling abuse tag as a warning for people to steer clear if this isn't something they want in their dynamics between the Batbrothers, not just Bruce and his kids....

The thing that fucking gets me every time here, is like......THIS WOULD BE SUCH AN EASY PROBLEM TO FIX, IF PEOPLE WEREN'T JUST SO FREAKING EMBARRASSED TO ADMIT THEY ACCIDENTALLY WROTE IT WITHOUT NOTICING WHAT IT WAS IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Like that first example I used....I very naively DID try to bring it to the author's attention when I was new to dipping my toes back into this fandom, and boy oh boy did that just exemplify how counter-productive that is as long as people can hide behind the DONT CRITICIZE MY WORK shield. I sent a private message on Ao3 so it wouldn't even show up in their comments, and just said very simply:

"hey, I really enjoy your stuff but I was wondering if you would mind putting a warning tag of 'sibling abuse' on your latest fic? I'm not trying to tell you how to write the characters and I figure you probably didn't intend it to come across that way anyway, but as an abuse survivor, I can't help but see that dynamic pop out as such for me in a way that I would at least have liked a heads up about, if that makes sense? Its just I do see how you paralleled how the canon presented this scenario and thus get what you were trying to do there I think, but I kinda only came into this fic for the specific lure of the catharsis we DIDN'T get when things played out somewhat similar in canon, with a lot of it having to do with that dynamic between Dick and Jason, and so...yeah. This part of the comics is obviously emotionally charged for a lot of us and I just know personally, this wasn't quite the catharsis I was after for that scenario and just a quick tag like that would have helped warn me of that. Anyway, sorry for this and hope you can understand my position, I'm not trying to be heavy-handed here or anything, but this was a problem for me and just in case it might be a problem for anyone else in the future, I thought I'd try and send a quick message about that for you to do whatever you want with."

I mean, I thought I was pretty reasonable there, personally?

Yeah.

The author did not.

She went off on me for constructive criticism which she did not ask for, and did not appreciate my insinuations into her character about her being an abuse apologist, because that's clearly what I was saying there. But I mean, that's what happens here. I'd bet anything that she was just embarrassed to have written the dynamic in such a way and then been called out about something she was previously oblivious to and then felt self-conscious about having overlooked or perpetrated herself.

But like....as understandable as that is, like....that's not my problem? And that's not a reason to shut down ANY avenue for people to raise the issue when writers unknowingly perpetrate stuff like this, in ANY way, no matter HOW delicately.

I get being defensive about someone thinking you INTENDED to write a pair of brothers as abusive and saying that was fine, and I even get how, being in a defensive mindset, she could have jumped to that interpretation of what I was saying rather than what I was ACTUALLY saying which was just....look, I don't know you, I don't know your own story, but for whatever reason you didn't pick up on this potentially troubling element of what you wrote in ways that I did because of my own experiences, and I'm just trying to point the issue out as delicately as possible because I KNOW that chances are, you WOULDN'T have written things that way if you had at all perceived the dynamic as I did. And I also KNOW that for people who don't have necessarily the same experiences or perspective I do, that they're not going to be as naturally inclined to perceive trouble spots the way I'm kinda....primed to notice them, and its NATURAL for some of this to pass by peoples' notice for a variety of reasons and like....I'm not freaking mad about that?? That's FINE. That's NORMAL. You're not a bad person for writing something a 'problematic' way purely because you LITERALLY DIDN'T SEE THE PROBLEM WHEN YOU WROTE IT.

Nobody has universal experiences. Nobody has all experiences. The problem is almost NEVER somebody just WRITING something in a way that they 'should have' known better than to, especially when it comes to topics like abuse or whatever.

No, the problem is ONLY when they get all up in their butthurt feelings about being embarrassed that they DIDN'T omnisciently know that and they feel self conscious now about how they think it makes them look now that the issue HAS been raised in a way they can recognize, and so they just fucking double down on pretending there's no issue whatsoever and whomever brings it to their attention is just overstepping and who even asked, anyway.

And thus a problem that can easily be solved in TWO ways....1) by adding a simple tag acknowledging the problem area for what it is, or 2) by editing the problem area to erase or write around the issue it raises that the author didn't perceive initially and likely would have avoided from the start if they HAD, because they AREN'T someone who wants to stand KNOWINGLY by that implication and what it says or suggests.....

Instead, this problem just gets turned into a generic fandom discourse issue about critique etiquette that addresses absolutely nothing, changes nothing, makes nothing about any of this better for ANYONE, just extends the problem to one likely to be repeated over and over again because it WILL never change so long as it remains something that isn't SUPPOSED to have attention brought to it, and all of this.

All of this.

Is just self-conscious defensiveness because people didn't want to be perceived as someone who either actually thought the things they'd unknowingly implied for WHATEVER reason, or didn't care/pay enough attention to notice as a problem in the first place....

Or else they just literally DON'T care enough about the content of what they're writing enough that they actually GIVE a shit about becoming better informed on it and thus better able to steer away from troubling implications or points of view in the future. Even if pointed out by survivors or people with personal experience as such that they recognize a problem even where the author didn't themselvse, no matter WHAT their own personal relationship with the subject matter is -

(because yeah, survivors of rape and abuse can absolutely perpetuate harmful viewpoints ourselves as well, because experiencing these things doesn't take away from our being exposed to just as much of the abuse/rape culture and apologia society and media churns out regularly enough that it can cloud ANYONE'S mind on this subject, without the addition or input of other points of view).

And either way, no matter what the reason is, when people aren't willing to even ENTERTAIN input, feedback, or potentially negative or even just AWARENESS-RAISING viewpoints in response to culturally influencing fictional content they put out via a variety of fairly wide-reaching platforms that can thus reach and influence any number of mindsets, from those of survivors to potential survivors to friends or families of survivors to people with no connection to abuse or rape whatsoever currently but for whom that could change at any time because we all meet new people every day and survivors could come into your life and be affected by your views and knowledge of abuse and rape culture and apologism at any point, even if you never become a survivor yourself -

(as is my ardent wish for anyone no matter HOW much I dislike or disagree with them personally. I don't expect or WANT people to be as fully informed on a lot of this stuff as I am personally, just like I'm not like, sad about not being MORE informed on the aspects or experiences stemming from it all that aren't personally relevant to my own life, because I'm additionally very aware that my own viewpoint is not definitive and not the monolithic voice for all survivors everywhere, I've literally only ever advocated for my own perspective on these matters and anyone of a like-mind which is an entirely opt-in POV that people have to decide for THEMSELVES if they feel that applies to them versus something that I'm CLAIMING on behalf of anyone but myself) -

Anyway. Bottom line is whatever the reason for WHY people are so avoidant on this topic, the end result is we've created a culture that says people are allowed to craft fictional viewpoints on any topic in any way to any degree...but the only impact that can ever be acknowledged is positive. Nobody can point out where things can be better. Nobody can point out where things are just fucking WRONG. The entertainment of whomever wrote the thing and whomever reads it and ISN'T bothered by it in any way, is eminently more important and worth protecting than the comfort of anyone who reads the thing and is not only troubled by the viewpoint made or claims presented on a matter they're intimately acquainted with in some form or to some degree themselves.....but then merely wants their viewpoint and concerns acknowledged and made part of the conversation so that both writer and readers can potentially apply that viewpoint and ANY additional perspective or information it contains to future works.

In essence, for all the free speech and censorship talk that gets thrown around fandom spaces....THIS kinda thing RIGHT HERE?

Is the most self-evident example I can come up with of ACTUALLY shutting down conversation and the spread and dissemination of information relevant to the topics being raised as points of interest every. single. day. in this fandom and most every other one I can think of.

So if peoples' ACTUAL goal was creating spaces where the people for whom fictional content is actually MOST relevant to are encouraged and outright TOLD to try and separate their feelings from that relevancy and treat it all as an abstract.....

Just so that people for whom this content already IS an abstract and nothing more, can refrain from having it made real and thus reality-impacting, and in doing so take away some of the escapism and FUN of it all, and make it a little more 'heavy' than they wanted when they turned to it for a bit of self-indulgent angst they never intended or expected to treat (or see treated) as anything more than that?

Then its like, congrats. You did it guys. That's what you've got here. That's what you've made.

Yay.

Go team.

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