#'what if thomas and martha took bruce to see a movie because thomas slapped him earlier that day'

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

gonna sob @ this from Batman #430, published immediately after Jason's murder 😭

[rachel-wayne]

I got this question on A03, answered it there and decided to post it here as well. Answer is beneath the cut because holy hell it’s long.

Let me start off with Rachel Dawes and how she... like leaves this bad taste in my mouth? I'll start off with events/implications/whatever coming from Batman Begins.

I'll start off with Bruce and Rachel being childhood friends but their interactions always seeming... like super cold? I think this is due to my own experience with my mother "encouraging" me to be friends with a co-worker's kid. So I'm kinda inclined to read that as Rachel's mom encouraging her to be friends with Bruce and thus not see the friendship as "real".

Moving on to Joe Chill's trial times and starting with a note that I think the acting in that bit is like... the worst in the movie, which probably helps a lot with my perceptions of motivations/etc. Like Rachel and Bruce's talk in the manor just is so... awkward. I don't know if they're trying for a "calming / placating" tone but it comes off more like disinterested and insincere to me. Specifically Rachel's "We all loved your parents Bruce" line is just... man that needed another take.

A bunch of the last paragraph is probably just be due to most of that scene being not very well done info-dump on "why the hell is Gotham letting the Wayne killer out?"

It seems super odd to me that Alfred isn't going to Joe Chill's hearing, either on his own (given his clear close relationship with Thomas and Martha) or as support for Bruce.  Yeah Alfred and Bruce argue at the start of this segement, but I see that more as "two people figuring out how to interact as adults instead as a kid and an adult" then "real" arguing.

Also it seems clear that Alfred and Rachel know Bruce is not gonna take the hearing well... so why is he going with a person who can't be by his side during said hearing or, perhaps more importantly, when Chill walks out as a free man? (He could have said ANYTHING to those reporters!)

Moving ahead... I kinda like the whole "dude look beyond yourself" bit of Rachel cutting across traffic to drive Bruce down to see how Gotham is rotting and to try to get him to man up. But... well I'm not sure what the "right" response is to a friend saying he's not a good person, that he's wanted to kill someone for years and was going to follow through on that... but it's DEFINITELY NOT slapping him and then LETTING HIM WALK AWAY WHILE HE's STILL ARMED AND YOU JUST ALL BUT POINTED TO A DUDE AS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS PARENTS' DEATH.

(Also weird side note - I was looking up Batman Begins clips to refresh my memory and realized my mental timeline was messed up. I could have sworn Rachel saw the gun BEFORE she took Bruce to Falcone's bar? What the hell brain.)

So that scene especially makes me think VERY badly of Rachel. Like... honestly what did she think would happen? Like the best case scenario is she thought Bruce would wander around and somehow not get mugged and return to the manor all fired up for social reform... but I'm the kind of person who goes more towards the worst cases scenario. So again, that makes me think badly of her.

That also leads into the fact that Rachel was pretty much the last person seen with Bruce before he vanished off the face of the earth. Yeah Falcone and all those people at the bar saw him, but you think they're gonna come forward? Rachel's the last "decent" person to have seen Bruce... and somehow I don't think Alfred would maintain a cordial relationship with her if she'd admitted to dropping Bruce off in the worst part of Gotham. So again due to towards thinking the worst, I'm inclinded to believe that Rachel either claimed not to have seen Bruce after Chill's death or to have left him somewhere other then right outside Falcone's.

Moving forward to Bruce's return to Gotham... he doesn't interact with Rachel until running into her at the restaurant and she doesn't seek him out despite "hearing" he was back. It seems odd that she'd just accept that "oh he's back and a rich fool" given knowing him as a kid and an angry young adult.

Next time I rewatch Batman Begins I'll have to remember to keep an eye out for more, because I know there's more, but I'll end my look at that movie with Rachel kissing Bruce at the end. That whole scene just seems so fricking manipulative to me? Also the whole "man I loved" just makes me question when the hell she actually knew Bruce as an adult.

Moving on to the Dark Knight, most of the issues I have with Rachel in this movie boil down to the fact that it seems to me she's giving everyone mixed messages? Again I need to rewatch the movie, but my memory is that it seemed Rachel didn't make up her mind till like right before her death and she kept giving off mixed-messages to Bruce and (to a lesser extent, or at least a lesser extent that we see) to Harvey.

I can't point to why right now, but the Bruce/Rachel/Harvey love triangle mess just... felt like Rachel was stringing the two along? I mean it's probably supposed to be her conflicted and changing her mind as time goes on an events happen, but that's how it came off to me.

With regards to Rachel & Harvey's kidnapping - given the fact that Batman and Gordon arrive within a very short time of each other, despite Gordon being in a police car and Batman in the Batpod, I always assumed there was a somewhat substantial difference in how far it was from GCPD to Rachel and GCPD to Harvey. So I interpreted Batman going after Rachel as him going after the one who was further away / harder to get to in time.

Also with regards to Dark Knight, I feel that knocks down the "not wanting to be second in Bruce's list" thing you mentioned. Like yeah, Harvey doesn't go out beating up criminals, but he's protreyed as a man who puts the city first. This didn't factor into my decision to do what I did with Bruce Dawes, but I thought I should mention it.

Oh, last but not least -- I don't like the whole "Rachel was going to wait for me" bit of Dark Knight. I think it makes Batman a weaker character. (I think the Mask of the Phantasm did a better job of doing the "Batman can't love" thing.) Also I feel like I read a few fics which just went to gag levels with that idea.

I'm not going into as much detail or refreshing my memory via YouTube as much since Dark Knight went down pretty differently in Scilicet...

So you start off with a canon that makes me not the biggest fan of Rachel Dawes. Next you take the step of going "okay I want to semi-gender bend this canon and smush it together with other canons"

Before you start changing events around you get canon moments which... seem to change a lot when you do nothing but swap around genders. For example some of Rachel Dawes' lines/actions come off much darker when it's a guy saying/doing them. Specifically everything in the car after Joe Chill's trial, ESPECIALLY the slaping. I'm sure part of this is just due to society being more easily able to go "oh that's not right" when it comes to m -> f attacks/abuse/etc then f -> m stuff.

Then... I just kinda let my evil side take over when I started writing. As previously mentioned I like to think about the darker implications / side of things / etc. Bruce Dawes actual got worse and worse as the series went on, some of it due to that dislike of canon-Rachel Dawes and some of it due to hitting Rachel with the angst bat and slapping big "THIS PERSON IS NOT MENTALLY HEALTHY" labels on her, as I see a big part of Scilicet as Rachel actually healing instead of just ignoring her injuries and pretending she's fine.

So to try and sum things up. It's partially due to having issue with Rachel Dawes and partially due to it being some extra trauma for Rachel. Okay that's a lot of text and I have many other things I should be doing today, so I'll end by saying thanks for the comment/question!