#all in all obd cw was not the worst thing that could be published. far from it actually

[roobylavender]

on one hand i think g willow wilson's introspection about selina is on the nose for the most part (with some caveats) and certainly an improvement from what most interpretations have made of her in the last few years. but where i think she and ram v (someone else who came close to returning to that post-crisis core for selina) tend to falter is in how they position selina with respect to bruce. modern iterations of the bc relationship generally tend to make the longing and yearning between these two pretty even handed but i think what writers like mindy newell or even bob kane and bill finger understood about bruce and selina is that it was a one-way chase on bruce's part. in the golden age selina was wrapped up in her own world and only ever on the verge of probing that she might feel something for the batman. in pre-00s post-crisis selina was either bent on survival or pulling off grand set pieces so she could make a mark on gotham and the world. sometimes it was both. there was a power play there between her and bruce on occasion where he would intrude into her space and she'd have him on a leash for a quick moment before she suddenly bound away. but whether we're talking about the golden age or post crisis the fact stands that it was bruce who sported the secret bewilderment, the subdued awe, the latent yearning. selina was unabashed and rough-edged and hot-headed and rarely had the time let alone energy to even dwell seriously on something like romance. and newell's selina specifically was never falling head over heels for bruce or setting aside her anger and confusion at his belief in a system that threw away people like her regularly. he intrigued her, but he didn't manage to charm her. he was still an obstacle and a challenge, and she had the control

i definitely understand where the sentiment of wanting to see a softer and lighter selina depicted regularly comes from, bc it's hard to read about a character who struggles and is angry at the world all of the time. but i also think this sentiment obscures that there were plenty of moments pre-00s selina displayed a softness and compassion for the people she was in community with, and it creates this on-page contradiction where she's angry at a system in one breath and all too ready to let it slide in the next when it comes walking to her in the form of bruce. the novelty of selina as she was established by newell in the post-crisis era is that her unapologetic rejection of the system was wholesale. it didn't falter simply bc bruce came parading into her life and dared to challenge her. and selina didn't simply walk away with a quirky word or two. she clawed her nails through his chest, bc even if he was charming, she understood ultimately what bruce was: an arm of the system, even when he didn't want to be. i think that is something that absolutely has to be understood by writers to bring the most compelling version of this relationship onto the page and screen, bc there's no tension there if all it takes for selina's stance and ideology to crumble or momentarily disappear is the fact that bruce likes her and could care about her. it has to take more than that. bruce has to fight to prove to her that he's different. and it has to be him that relents to her world view rather than the other way around