#Old man yells at cloud I'm sorry I'm sorry ill stop killing the mood some day

[aingeal98]

Thinking about Bruce and his flaws again and the thing is while I can ignore most of the things he does in other comics because they're clearly using him to dramatically advance the stories of his kids (firing Dick in ntt, beating Jason in rhato, Tim's 16th birthday in Robin, his treatment of Cass during her Batgirl run etc.) it's his treatment of others in his own run especially women like Helena and Steph that kills me. Because several of the writers are clearly fully aware that they're writing him as a misogynist but instead of overcoming that character flaw the narrative ends up making the women atone and prove themselves to his unfair double standard (Helena in NML Steph in Robin) or suffer and die because the misogyny is as strong in the creative team as it was in Bruce (Steph during war games)

There's never any real reckoning with the flaws and attitudes they give him, likely because the writers see it as a character quirk instead of something that should negatively impact him and that he should overcome. Bruce Wayne murder fugitive has him hit Dick and later apologise. NML and War Games never have him take responsibility the same way. He's misogynistic, the women pay the price, he learns nothing because the message gets twisted to avoid the writer's own misogyny.

If you're a fan of Bruce you probably want to just pretend it never happened which is what a lot of writers choose to do. If you're a fan of the female characters affected you have to acknowledge it because it was a major story point for their character. And it wasn't even for them. They were were used and spat out to try and fail to make Bruce seem more complex.

And I say fail because it doesn't make Bruce more complex. The writers make him a bad person and then call it a day. No one around him actually holds him accountable. Everything goes back to the status quo. A new writer comes along and Batman is a straightforward hero again.

The only lasting impact is on the characters torn down to give him poorly written drama. All this to say if Babs Helena and Steph teamed up to murder Batman completely unprompted I would be their number one defender.