#also i don't think stories where ivy exhibiting a moral compass is a symptom of her crush on batman should count anyway

[forevercloudnine]

Hello! You mentioned in a tag that you think Pamela is Bruce's favorite, and it made me wonder. I'd definitely be interested to hear more on that, if you feel like talking about it! Love hearing your thoughts.

💗💗 So a few years ago I was reading the "Gothtopia" arc and was incredibly amused by Bruce casually letting Ivy escape from Arkham to return a favor she'd done him.

Notably, Ivy was the only inmate imprisoned in Arkham at the time, because Scarecrow locked her up for interfering. So Bruce literally helped her escape and then lied to Jim's face about it. I know you recently read Run, Riddler, Run, so here's an amusing comparison: in this story, Ivy is pointedly not reformed, she punches Bruce in the face before helping him, and Bruce still sets her free. Meanwhile, Bruce rewards the assistance of a reformed Edward by punching him in the face and making sure Edward is re-imprisoned.

And then ever since reading Gothtopia, I’ve just been noting how much more tolerant Bruce seems of Ivy than his other villains. Obviously a large element of that is the metatextual factor of Ivy being a female character-- it would clearly Look Really Bad for artists to depict Batman brutalizing a woman with the same sadistic detail with which they depict him assaulting his male villains. (Though ironically the metahuman plant goddess could probably brush off a punch much easier than his variety of entirely human gimmick villains).

There’s also the factor of writers continuously flip-flopping back and forth on whether or not they’re attracted to each other. I kind of thought Pamela’s current commitment to Harley meant this was over, but then Tynion’s run depicted Ivy as holding the same spot in Bruce’s subconscious as Selina and Talia, so I guess it isn’t (though maybe that just means the attraction is one-sided on Bruce’s part now, which would be an amusing twist on Ivy having an unreciprocated crush on him in the 90′s).

But over time I think Bruce’s faith in Ivy has become less about her being a woman (who he may or may not be attracted to), and more sympathy for her motivations. Especially now that she’s transformed from a femme fatale who wants to be the queen of crime to a zealous ecoterrorist who wants to save the planet.

For as much as their interests are entirely alien to each other (Ivy wants to protect nature, often at the cost of human life; Bruce wants to protect human life, often at the cost of... well, human life, actually), their obsessive dedication to doing what they think of as “good” is very similar. Which means Ivy is easier to negotiate with than other villains, since she has goals beyond greed or sadism that Bruce is able to compromise on. Which means it’s easier for Bruce to believe in her capacity for good, in a way that he normally doesn’t bother to believe in his villains, because it’s inevitable that they’ll disappoint him. Which also means that he GIVES Ivy opportunities to disappoint him...

Detective Comics #823 is a huge point of frustration to me because the concept is so fascinating and the execution is just ENDLESS objectification to the point that it almost erases the plot (story of my life trying to read Paul Dini’s writing). But I love the bones of it as a comic where Bruce sympathizes with Pamela, to the point of letting her stay in the Batcave to protect her from an attacker (I can’t even think of another example of Bruce doing this for a villain, outside of Joker in the BTAS comics, and doesn’t that say a lot on its own). But then he discovers evidence of Ivy having recently gruesomely murdered several people, and he is so illogically hurt and betrayed by this-- a woman he knows is a murderer having murdered people-- that he threatens to kill her.

It’s not uncommon for Bruce to threaten his villains with death (I have a whole subfolder on my computer dedicated just to times where he does so with Mr. Freeze), but it’s fascinating to me that Bruce frames the threat here as a question. He wants her to give him a reason to believe in her, even though he has just been faced with undeniable evidence that her view of human life is fundamentally incompatible with his. But Ivy doesn’t give him a reason-- she just calls him on his bluff, which I love.

In the current continuity, Ivy is honestly less Bruce’s supporting character so much as she is Harley’s, but Bruce IS still the main character of DC Detective Comics, so they still interact on occasion. Although ironically, I think the most recent example of my point is actually Ivy’s ex-girlfriend Bella comparing the two of them in Batman Secret Files: The Gardener.

Bella believes that Bruce will ignore her and simply try to imprison Ivy more effectively, which is probably what he would have done normally: Bruce is extremely set in his ways, and his way is to drag any villains he defeats back to Arkham even though he knows Arkham helps no one. The 2021 Detective Comics Annual was all about how Bruce still has to be dragged kicking and screaming into investing in the idea of any criminal being reformed, and resolutely does not consider it his responsibility to help them do so.

Ironically, however, we know that Bruce DID listen to Bella. The issue with their conversation is set in the timeline right before Everybody Loves Ivy, which ends with Bruce deciding to bring Pamela to “Sanctuary,” the therapy center he helped build for superheroes, rather than bringing her back to Arkham. His dialogue with Ivy even uses a lot of Bella’s points here, which is very fun retrospective writing from Tynion. But then Heroes in Crisis happened and... well, Bruce’s attempt to help her instead of hurt her ultimately made everything worse, and has now domino effect led to her current solo series where she is trying to kill off a significant portion of the planet’s human population. (In his defense, Bella’s attempts to fix Ivy also failed and backfired just as spectacularly.) But the fact that Bruce was willing to try is notable and so fascinating to me, since as a character he’s so resistant to setting himself up for disappointment.