#and i do stand by making bruce an outright bad or abusive parent shows a critical lack of understanding his character

[trekkele]

ilike your posts but why do you defend Bruce for things you condemn other characters for like with Alfred and shitty parenting? I know that fanon is different but do you even like a character if they're completely different from canon?

Lmao why are you here. i am a bruce fan first everyone else is incidental because they are involved with him. Was that not clear?

Also what canon? Silver age? Gold? Modern? Elseworlds? B:TAS? Live Action? Live Action But Camp? Live Action But C.Bale? Justice League? Batman 2004? Pick one. Pick them all. Let me enjoy myself this isnt rocket science.

[rezonan]

Why do people use OOC/Irrelevant stories to justify their hatred for characters?

I'll admit I got this question from reddit but seeing as you are a big fan of Iron Man and certain characters afflicted by this issue I thought I would ask

Comic book characters and the consistency of favored portrayals

Why do people do the exact opposite to justify how cool they think a character is?

Look this is probably the worst kind of question to ask me, back when I was in high school my classmates hated me cause when it came to arguments I would always 'Stand on the fence' or 'Never pick a side' and I agree, even when I disagree or agree I can't help but see the other side of things with some questions.

I think one of the biggest things comic fans need to accept with our medium is that, the only real continuity that exists is the one we try and brute force and make in our heads, some writers themselves don't really care, Geoff Jones ignored Batman previously basically begging for Hal Jordan to come back to life when he was The Spectre to writing Batman basically complaining that Hal was back because to him that is what he thinks Batman should act like with Hal, and considering he probably grew up with a comic like Dark Knight Returns the asshole authoritarian was probably was he knew of the character, who knows I don't know his personal life.

I think we can all say that you have fallen in love with a character based of Non Canon stories, Hell my favorite comic for Superman and the one that got me into liking the character was All-Star Superman. The exact opposite of that like what you asked tho, Hating a character because a story depicted them poorly whether it's canon or not is valid as well, I mean it's pretty damn short-sighted if they have been exposed to better represented sides of those characters, but it doesn’t change the impact they initially felt, wether they can get past that is on the person. Like for example, I fucking hated Superman growing up cause the first movies I remember seeing him in was the freaking Dark Knight Returns duology and certain parts of Young Justice Season 1 but overtime seeing better versions and representations of the characters and also hearing put fans on what he represents has pushed him up to my 5th favorite hero, I do understand not everyone can do this. People just want to support their view of the character.

I also do think people who hate certain characters do reach a lot of the time, sharing panels of stories older than their parents sometimes probably not even knowing what comic it even came from, just happy they have this image of the character they don't like being abusive or something. It's even worse then the he outright go out of their way to find these panels or stories to use for hate on purpose even after knowing it's generally agreed upon it's a shitty representation of the character. Seriously nobody should bring up All Star Batman and Robin as some 'Got Ya!' moment in an argument, just no. Sometimes some people have just predetermined in their mind they want to hate a character and will go out of their way to farm for anything that can paint them in the worst light possible.

With Iron Man it's people bringing up Civil War again and again and again continuously like the 40 years of stories before that don't show why Tony would never do any of that in his right mind. With Superman it's people bringing up injustice in literally any relation to him or people bringing up a scene of Jason Todd blaming Bruce for his death as evidence of how whiny he is even when one of the highlight lines of his first appearance as Red Hood is 'Bruce I forgive you for not saving me but-'

With characters like say, Hal Jordan, Magneto or Venom and meny more, it gets more interesting here. Here what the characters did that was bad IS/WAS(considering reboots in Hal's case) in continuity but a version of the characters that were received much more popularly then makes fans disregard these past appearances as wrong, say they have had this entirely new portrayal longer than they had that one or writers themselves will retcon them away by making them, in the case of former villians now refromed, seem less evil than they were. No no those people Magneto killed weren't innocent humans in the silver age, they were actually anti-mutant bigots that killed a little girl for being a mutant. One of my favorite examples of this is Hulk. Yes Hulk the rampaging monster from movies to series to comics, in comics in I think 2008 was retconned to have never and I mean never killed a single person in all his rampages In the in-universe 12 years at that point, not even indirectly because Bruce Banner was subconsciously calculating all the angles of where he would throw or smash stuff apprently. All those crumbled buildings, nope, nothing.

And you know what? I can agree with some of that (that Hulk retcon is still dumb) because let me tell you the real truth to all this.

Consistency

People love consistency, They don't care about Magneto killing innocents in the 60s or Venom eating people in the 90s, they care about the take that has been supported consistently in their view for longer or just showed more consistently in what they have seen. Even for the haters it's the same, if for example my only experience with Batman was All Star and Certain Post New 52 issues, I would be happy knowing I hate this borderline sociopathic dude that's what I know Batman as.

You see it even with the movies, When The Amazing Spider-Man came out you had people saying it was an inaccurate take or not liking the changes even though it was actually more comic accurate that what came before but fans of the Raimi movies have consistently seen Peter as a meek and nice kid before being Spider-Man not an asshole, they have consistently seen him with organic webbing not with web shooters. Anything that breaks the portrayal they have known the most if gonna make them react either well or badly. People who only knew Tony Stark from Civil War probably reacted well to his MCU version seeing as he broke the consistent borderline villian they knew him from the comics.

So the big issue is people trying to force their own consistent idea of a character on others when comics just aren't consistent, everyone like I said at the start has their own makeshift continuity in their head they made up with books they liked or think fit, the consistent portrayal they know about, so this is why you get people arguing about if Batman is the real identity or Bruce Wayne or if Clark Kent should wear trunks or not I could go on and on like if Wonder Woman should use a sword? Someone who is used to the New 52 version would say yes and someone used to the Post Crisis version would say no. Or maybe it's what love interest Spidey should end up with, people who say Gwen probably grew up with TASM and Spectacular Spider-Man. Better for people to just respectly discuss the takes of characters different people have instead of childishly pushing the version they have in their head as the correct version and putting down everyone else's pretty damn subjective takes. That's with superhero comics of course, the nature of what is canon and isn't and how fans of this stuff talk about it with different 'takes' is way more unique than talking about disliking MCU Spider-Man or talking about why you hate Sasuke or something.

I don't really have a good way to end all this cause that's just it, all about consistency if I didn't get that across the 10 times I used that word. As usual feel free to disagree with me and if possible tell me how and why.

[anendtopursuit]

Tell me about how telltale batman has the most in character bruce despite being divergent to a lot of established lore - more so than a lot of the comics themselves imo

YES YES EXACTLY YOU GET IT

quick disclaimer that my comic knowledge will obviously be limited to the comics i've personally read. comic writers love to take characters and do their own thing with them, so i know for a fact there are probably a million comics that contradict this post, but that's not the point.

even the telltale side of things in this are gonna be a little biased and full of personal interpretation, because telltale's game format means that everybody's bruce wayne is gonna look a little different. but, i mean, i guess the way i play bruce is the way i see him anyway, so whatever.

ANYWAY! i hope you wanted an essay because oh boy did i get carried away:

one aspect of bruce's character i think is important is his motivations. he didn't just wake up one day and decide to be batman - he made that decision for a reason, and i think that reason is inherently important to his character, because having a different idea on his origins can give you a completely different idea of how his character should act, if that makes sense?

in my personal opinion, bruce wayne should always be motivated by love. he's motivated to fight crime by his love for his parents, and his love for gotham city, and his love for innocent people who don't deserve his parents' fate. my favourite comic panels are always the ones where bruce lets his scary persona slip a little, where he cradles a child against his chest to comfort them; batman was created to be scary, yes, but he's intended to scare criminals, not innocents. whilst bruce's parents' deaths definitely jumpstart his vigilantism, they are not the centrepiece of his entire morality - he doesn't care about gotham's citizens because he's imagining his parents in their place, he cares about them because he genuinely loves his city.

i think a lot of comics i've read have sorta forgotten that aspect of his character. white knight's entire plot revolves around the idea that bruce, blinded by his own anger, has become just as brutal and careless as the criminals he fights, and has ended up causing harm to innocent civilians because of it - whilst i think that's certainly interesting, and i am a sucker for a good "heroes aren't always good people" storyline... it feels icky. i struggle to reconnect that bruce, snarling and chained and unable to sympathise with the innocent people he's hurting, with the bruce who held children to his chest and promised they'd be okay. a lot of comics don't consider bruce's motivation to be his love, they consider his motivation to be his hatred, which leads to characterisations of bruce that are cruel and uncaring and, in some instances, outright abusive. it's like they frame his entire morality as "getting revenge for his parents' deaths" - which is funny, because i think it's pretty commonly agreed upon that bruce wayne shows his parents' murderer mercy. i think a lot of the issue is that people dehumanise batman, and bruce in turn; he's not a man, he's a monster.

which brings me to telltale bruce!

i think what makes telltale bruce work so well is the way they instantly humanise him. the opening scene of season 1 flickers between batman's fearless crime-fighting and bruce wayne gritting his teeth through an injury and getting ready for a gala. his relationships with the other characters - harvey, selina, john, tiffany, everybody - are shown in halves; you see just as much of bruce as you do batman. you'll see batman shielding harvey from attacks followed by bruce sitting by his side in his hospital room; batman repressing fond smiles behind his cowl as he talks with john; bruce at lucius' funeral, filled with despair, knowing that batman is to blame. it is incredibly, painfully clear that batman is not a myth or a monster - he's bruce wayne, the same bruce wayne who flirts with reporters and makes bad puns and goes on fake-dates with his friends to help them learn how to talk to girls. he's human, in a way that comics often seem to forget he's meant to be.

(part of the draw of batman, to me, is that he's human. he's got fancy gadgets and a cool suit but underneath it all he's just a man, just a human being driven by emotion like the rest of us. he feels real, in a way. i used to look out of my bedroom window and imagine batman coming to save me from my problems; i could never quite do that with superman, or wonder-woman, or any of the others.)

not only that, but thomas and martha wayne are removed from bruce's motivations pretty effectively - they're outed as awful people, the kind of people bruce fights against. they did to oswald what joe chill did to him. so rather than falling into blind rage, rather than the unfortunate "batman fights for revenge", you get a bit of nuance - bruce has to come to terms with being wrong, and learn where he stands, torn between awful people who he loves and good people who hate him. he's fighting not to avenge his or oz's parents, but to prevent any innocents from meeting the same unfortunate fate, and to redeem himself.

they let him be wrong without totally becoming a villain: they let him punch out oswald cobblepot on live TV and deal with the consequences; they let him instigate riots for his own benefit; they show him crouching in the back of a truck, surrounded by criminals he's been willingly helping, staring guiltily at a bat-signal he's ignoring; they let him feel guilt for all the friends he couldn't save.

he doesn't beat his friends-turned-enemies with glee. he doesn't take joy in putting them away. he doesn't use them as punching bags for his own anger and trauma.

he keeps harvey from committing suicide and tells him, earnestly, that there's still hope for him. he sits across from john and admits, hoarse and teary-eyed, that he truly did consider them friends. he gives up being batman for alfred's sake. he visits john in arkham, with an honest smile, despite all they went through. these choices may be optional, yes, but with the way telltale writes their characters, every one of these options is perfectly in-character for their bruce. you may play him a little angrier, a little more vengeful, a little less sympathetic - but at his core, he's the same. at his core, he still looks at gotham city, and the villains he goes up against, and says "i'm sorry this happened to you, i wish i knew how to make it better". he cradles them against his chest.

i don't know if any of this made sense, but tl;dr: telltale writes bruce as a flawed person, yes, but at his core he is loving and charismatic and bittersweet, and that's who i've always thought he should be.

(this kinda turned into bruce loveposting halfway through, but hopefully i still got the point across.)

[thattimdrakeguy]

I say I’m gonna make a post about a lot of things.

But I’m contemplating talking about flanderization in comics as it causes a lot of problems, and the comparisons between some of the fandom flanderizations and the comics.

Like a lot of the fandom take Tim not doing homework and dropping out of school, as was a byproduct of him being too busy and then traumatized by the death of his father. A few lines in presumably Teen Titans. And having learned to skateboard in an arc of Robin to defeat a skateboard gang. To turn him into a rebellious “Screw you, old man”, stoner kid, that wears primarily ripped jeans.

Or another more common take, him taking a lot of naps at inconvenient times because of his bad sleep schedule also do to Robin, to him being an extreme coffee addict that might need a rehab.

Where as the comics took a clever kid, who’s boy scout tendencies and circumstantial social unawareness led him to be condescending from time to time, when not often cause of the pressure he was under. Into a supergenius jerk, who judges everyone and thinks he’s better than them, with a vast amount of confidence.

As well as Bart being a teenager with no life experience (for obvious reasons), leaving him to be dangerously naïve, and reckless, into basically a six year old with no sign of hanging out with people his own age and older.

Maybe even Dick’s mature and heartfelt compassion, and comparative lightheartedness, into him being everyone’s morale compass, to the point they forgot he had a temper problem and grown past a lot of his childhood tendencies..

Damian a kid raised in a cult who just wanted the acceptance of both of his parents that struggled to grow out of the way he was raised that led him to be a stand-offish, rude, angry, arrogant, young adult at the age of 10. Into being portrayed as just a troubled kid who should know better (even when it’s still bad cult behavior it’s how they write it often), that has some anger issues, even in flashbacks where we know he was way different than that with not even an attempt at an excuse avaliable. Or back into a violent nightmare, but I think that counts more of just regressive writing.

Or Jason who’s comics went two different ways with him being an outright villain with serial killer tendencies and frightening small children, to him being portrayed as if everything's just an act--when that’s been obviously not the case. Who’s also a bit of an idiot--despite the fact that he led Batman around the block, tricking him as well as some of the cities biggest mafia leaders, and showed a natural ability at school work, and enjoying learning in-general.

Like not just “Oh this writer focused on this” sort of stuff. Like actual, flat-out, took a few minor traits and exaggerated them into parody levels of flanderization, while adding tropes that don’t work, that comics keep doing.

The kind that leaves Tim to be a fascist in the making, Bruce a child abuser, occasionally Dick as a dope, and Jason viciously murdering people as children watch him,.

Cause I was reading New 52 Justice League, where Batman was just a total jerk, and it made me think about all these other times characters that have been flanderized. Like look at freaking Tim. Read anything from the New 52 and forward era and even try to connect it to the 90s without really stretching some stuff with your imagination. You just can’t do it.

[bigskydreaming]

And another thing!

Can we like, just collectively fuck offffffff with this whole ‘the natural opposite to Bruce’s abusive relationship with Jason is Jason having a warm, nurturing relationship with Talia after she adopts a pseudo maternal role with him when she dumps him in the Lazarus Pit’?

This trend has kinda been around forever, but I feel like its been popping up in like, every Jason-centric fic I read lately, and uggggh, dislike. Look, I actually feel no desire to defend Bruce and his parenting, ever. I try and go with AUs and canons like Young Justice where he’s like, Bad At It, but not to the point of the absolutely toxic abusive shit he’s guilty of in various writers’ runs in the comics, but that’s just because I want his kids to have nice things and his kids all at least WANTED Bruce to be a good father at one point. But if your take on Bruce is that he’s abusive despite his best intentions and the best thing for any one of his kids is to move on and get the hell away from him, I’m not gonna argue with you, or try and defend him in the slightest. I will read the fuck out of that, happily.

Until you try and pretend Talia’s not...just as bad?

Like, okay, I have complicated feelings on Talia, mostly because the shared universe nature of comics makes it impossible not to. She’s an extremely nuanced and complex character and has been for decades, which means I really enjoyed her and found her every bit as compelling as Bruce, until....Morrison happened. And I loathe Morrison’s dumbass writing and try and pay it as little heed as possible, so wherever possible, I go with one of the takes or canons or AUs where Bruce and Talia had fully consensual sex and she just never told him about Damian til later, because I will never ever ever excuse the date rape interpretation of Damian’s conception. And I’m fully aware that it was written that way largely BECAUSE Morrison’s a dumbass and most likely didn’t think through the full implications of what he probably just saw as an expedient way to give Bruce a longlost kid he knew nothing about, or how it would throw Talia’s character under the bus. It’s different with Dick and Tarantula, because Catalina didn’t have those decades of prior characterization and attachment, her agenda was pretty clear from not long after she debuted. (Although, we gotta talk about how just like with the aggressive man of color stereotype, the only times comics show a man being raped by a woman, its a woman of color. Pin in that for now).

So I mean, I don’t automatically write off Talia unless we’re dealing with a fic, AU or run in canon that clearly expresses its going with the version of events where she date raped Bruce. I vastly prefer being able to still enjoy her as the compelling equal and foil to Bruce that she was for a long fucking time before that. 

But even with that, the idea that she’s a superior parent to Bruce and a convenient candidate to step into the void he leaves in any of his sons’ lives, let alone Jason, and just...Do Better....umm...how about could we not?

Like, YMMV obviously, but to me the entire point of Talia in the context of her relationship with Bruce has always been she and Bruce are as alike as they are at odds. Selina and Bruce, the appeal of their romantic dynamic is they’re opposites. Talia and Bruce....they have far more in common than they don’t. They have different goals, different lengths they’re willing to go to, they’re not the SAME by any means, but they understand each other in a way few other characters do, because deep down, they always GET why the other one does what they do.

So I mean, I’m not saying Talia is inherently WORSE than Bruce, I’m just arguing that even with all of Bruce’s flaws, she’s usually not any BETTER. Like...its pretty much a lateral move.

Sure, you could easily WRITE Talia as being a loving maternal figure to Jason or Damian or anyone....but just the same as you could write Bruce being a healthy paternal figure to them. The potential is there in either character, depending on what takes in canon you choose to focus on and you clarify where and in what ways you’re diverging from any takes where they both devolve into outright abuse of their kids. Because both definitely have, and thus, you don’t get to just....handwave away any problems with Talia’s character (and parenting) and default to her as this superior parental figure on the basis that hey, she’s not Bruce. 

Like, okay....you want to write Jason moving on from Bruce and rejecting his attempts to reconcile because he’s come to view Bruce as having essentially raised them all to be child soldiers? I WILL TOTALLY BACK YOU ON THAT. I mean, the dude’s memorial to his SON, was a case containing his uniform and a plaque that said A GOOD SOLDIER. Case made, you know? Not one fucking argument from me. Your take is valid, and Jason’s complaint has my full backing.

But here’s the thing....if your fic does NOT significantly diverge from canon prior to Damian’s joining the rest of the Batfam, if it does NOT show Damian having a WILDLY different upbringing than he did in all versions of canon, and by extension, resulting in Damian having at least a somewhat different approach to interactions, worldview, mannerisms and ideology.....

Then no matter what relationship you craft between Jason and Talia, you are STILL swapping out his parental figure - who he resents for raising him as a child soldier - for another parental figure, who LITERALLY RAISED HER KID AS A CHILD SOLDIER.

Like, hellooooooo? Any take where Damian grew up in the League of Assassins without Talia objecting to him being trained with them or getting him the hell out of there, is a take where Talia literally does the exact same thing you’re holding against Bruce on Jason’s behalf. (While, I might add, ignoring that while Tim at least was well into  his teenage years by the time Bruce became his mentor, Dick, Cass and Damian ALL have this child soldier upbringing in common with Jason. It really doesn’t work to single Jason out as the only one who was victimized by their parent in this way).

But okay. Let’s say you’ve got an explanation for Damian’s upbringing or have written that differently. If you’re going with the take that Jason has a connection with Talia now because Talia’s the one who put him in the Pit and either brought him back to life or restored him to full coherency, then almost inevitably (because you COULD do this differently, but I’ve yet to see a take where a writer DOES)....you’re also going with the take that before coming back to Gotham, Jason trained with the League of Assassins, and this is how he was so competent by the time he went up against Bruce and the others, given that he wasn’t nearly as skilled back when he died at age fifteen.

And it really, really, REALLY bugs the fuck out of me that people so rarely spend much time or focus looking critically at Jason’s time with the League of Assassins, and how that contributed to his ideology and methodology as the Red Hood.

And this is a complaint I have both with fics/writers/headcanons that are pro-Jason and anti-Jason. 

Again, don’t get me wrong. I honestly don’t have a problem with Jason’s initial return to Gotham. Like, he can murder the fuck out of every rapist and crime boss he wants, I’ll be in the stands holding the OMG LOOK AT MY BABY, LOOK HOW GOOD AT MURDERING ASSHOLES HE IS sign and doing high kicks up and down the bleachers. 

But ESPECIALLY if your take on Bruce and his raising of Jason is that he was abusive and trained him as a child soldier.....it absolutely IMO does not work to overlook the role the League of Assassins...and by extension Talia....played in shaping the man he was when he first returned to Gotham. 

And they abso-fucking-lutely played a role.

Because Jason is not Bruce, was never going to be Bruce, was always going to clash with Bruce’s ideology in ways even Dick never did, especially when it came to killing. Even before Jason died, it was very well established that they did not see eye to eye there and likely never were going to. It IS part of Jason’s core characterization that he fundamentally disagrees on the subject of killing criminals, the worst of the worst. Whether you think he actually killed Felipe Garzonas before Bruce benched him, or whether you think he didn’t, or that it was an honest accident...this was a hard line they were always going to end up on opposite sides of, and that inevitably was destined to create at least SOME kind of divide in the family.

But thing is, arguing that its okay to kill a serial rapist they have evidence that should convict him, but who keeps getting away with it because of diplomatic immunity and legal loopholes that show how ineffective a corrupt justice system is.....is NOT the same thing as arguing even to kill a murderer in the name of avenging your son that he murdered.....and even THAT is still along way away from.....

tossing eight heads in a duffel bag down onto a table in the middle of a meeting of local crime bosses as an intimidation tactic.

Felipe? That was Jason’s own personal thoughts and morality, his own perspective on right and wrong at work there, 100% him. The Joker? That was a natural, easy to follow extrapolation of those same thoughts and perspective and how they might change and grow as a result of the trauma of what the Joker did to him and how it affected him.

But Jason’s tactics when he first came back to Gotham weren’t either of those things. They were textbook League of Assassins methodology and justification.

And its just fucking WEIRD to discount that when examining his character and how he changed from the Robin he was to the Red Hood he became.

Like, even with varying canon takes, the youngest Bruce took Jason in at has him at about twelve. He wasn’t a trained acrobat like Dick, he was a malnourished street kid with none of the head start on his training that Dick came to Bruce with, already having it under his belt. Everything Jason knew how to do as Robin, the detective work, swinging around Gotham on grappling hooks, various martial arts forms and mastery of weapons....Bruce had to train him in all that from scratch, and that took time. Jason was at the earliest still only like 13 or so when he became Robin. And pretty much every take I’ve ever seen on his death has him at around fifteen when the Joker killed him. That’s two, at most three years of time spent training and being Robin, under Bruce’s tutelage.

Then things split into two takes....some go with the sequence of events where Ra’s or Talia take Jason’s body right after his funeral and put him in the Lazarus Pit, others go with the sequence where he was resurrected on his own, and was found by Ra’s or Talia a year or two later, still largely catatonic, with them putting him in the Pit to heal his mind the rest of the way.

But either way, by the time Jason comes back to Gotham he’s put at around nineteen or twenty, with it usually said that it was five years after his death, and AT LEAST two or three of those years were spent training with the League of Assassins, or with other teachers thanks to Ra’s or Talia’s patronage.

So.....any way you cut it, if you’re going with a take where Jason’s skills post-Robin come from training with the League....he spent at LEAST as much time being trained by them, with their perspective, in their methods, according to their philosophies....as he spent being trained in all that by Bruce.

There is no angle here in which they didn’t play EVERY BIT as much of a role in shaping him as the man he resents for raising him as a child soldier! With it also largely unacknowledged that even WITHOUT the effects of Pit Madness from the Lazarus Pit, you’re talking about a KID, someone who was either fifteen or at most seventeen by the time the League started training him....who is recovering from a trauma the likes of which pretty much nobody can even comprehend. While nursing a massive grudge and resentments born of insecurities and issues that carried over from his fucked up childhood from even BEFORE he met Bruce, and that Bruce absolutely failed in addressing. 

Again, no matter how you look at it, we’re talking about an extremely traumatized and impressionable and suggestible minor, desperate for anything to hold onto, any ideology to grasp hold of, any justification to make sense of all the shit that’s happened to him and where he goes from here, a purpose, a way to move FORWARD.

Like.....I’m all for Jason resenting Bruce raising him as a child soldier. What I DON’T get, is neither him nor anyone writing him in this way displaying the same awareness of the fact that....the League literally raised him to be a child soldier after he was brought back.

Same shit, different generals. That’s it. But again, that’s not an upgrade! That’s not better for Jason! That’s not an improvement over Bruce! It’s literally a lateral move!

And if your take includes ANY aspect of Talia training or overseeing Jason’s training to help him get back at her ex, someone she definitely has issues with at the time, no matter what canon or existing adaptation you’re going with.....you’re talking about someone literally weaponizing a traumatized teenager against her ex.

Ummm. Yeah. We’re just....not gonna call that better for Jason, or healthier for Jason, or in any way, shape or form to JASON’S benefit, okay? Cuz its not. No matter what his issues with Bruce, no matter what your issues with Bruce as a reader or writer, no matter where you fall on the ‘is killing bad people bad, y/n’ spectrum.....it is just deeply WRONG to just generically write Talia as forming a maternal bond with Jason WHILE he’s being trained by the League she holds enormous influence over, even if not as much as her father.....and act like this is the opposite of Bruce and how he failed Jason. Instead of just more of the same.

Like sorry not sorry Talia, but if you actually give a shit about Jason when he comes out of the Pit all traumatized and chock full of issues....you put him in fucking THERAPY, not How To Be An Assassin and REALLY Get Back At Your Dad 101.

And it doesn’t have to be that way, to be clear. You can write Talia taking off with Jason and toddler Damian in the middle of the night, abandoning the League of Assassins to take both of them far away and hide them so Jason can heal and cope and find himself and Damian can grow up not learning how to poison people by age five. You do that, all my objections vanish, THAT is infinitely superior to Bruce’s parenting, and that’s a parental bond with Jason I can happily stan as being for his benefit and to his betterment.

But no fic where he debuts as the Red Hood with years of League training under his belt has that. And this oversight is realllllly starting to get on  my nerves, lol.

Again, from both sides of the Jason camp, pro and anti alike.

Cuz if you’re a Jason fan for any reason, no matter whether you’re in favor of him reconciling or bonding with any or all of the Batfamily or not, why WOULDN’T you want them acknowledging that who he is now and what he’s done as the Red Hood has every bit as much to do with the skills the League gave him and the philosophies the League taught him as it does with what he learned from Bruce? That he was conditioned in these things while in a highly vulnerable point in his life?

And if you’re not a Jason fan, no matter the reason, it is again, STILL a massive oversight not to acknowledge that his actions and agendas as the Red Hood stem from years of being trained as a teenage assassin while in a highly vulnerable and thus suggestible state and with a clear lack of other options or support systems to counter anything they taught him.

Like I said, I’m pro Red Hood, I love Jason, I agreed with him back when he was arguing with Bruce about Felipe Garzonas. Jason’s never targeted anyone but the worst of the worst and he’s always displayed an ability to see reason and back down, he’s not some mindless killing machine. I lean way more towards his philosophies than I do Bruce’s, even if I don’t always agree entirely, and part of my point here is like...this isn’t about judging Jason for his actions or like, ugh, I really like Jason but I think he’d be even better if he was less murder-y, you know, more like Dick.

But like...the rest of my point is that I just honestly don’t see Jason’s actions and professed ideologies as one hundred percent HIS natural perspective, not influenced to an unhealthy degree by others in a position to take advantage of him at more vulnerable times in his life and sway him more to their positions. And THAT’S my problem with how little people reflect on the role the League played in who he became, AND with the insertion of a maternal and nominally supportive bond with Talia that’s written as being superior and more to Jason’s benefit than anything he shared with Bruce.

LOL even when I don’t mean to, like I definitely didn’t when I started this post, I always seem to keep coming back to how alike Dick and Jason and their stories are and how well and how often they parallel each other, because its the exact same issue I have with Dick. They’re just a very easy way to point out certain things about the other.

Like, I’ve talked before about how I think Dick’s aversion to killing, not when others kill but when HE himself is presented with killing as an option - its really just him being terrified of disappointing Bruce and being abandoned by him if he does so, no matter that he’s an adult now. Because I DO agree and always have, that at the very least, Bruce was at times emotionally abusive with Dick and Jason at least, with a strong case to be made for Damian as well. (Tim’s harder to gauge given that most of his time under Bruce’s direct care was at a time when Bruce was overcompensating for all the things he missed with Jason and blamed himself for, and ever since Jason’s return, Tim’s written as being so independent and removed from Bruce’s influence that its more like Bruce rarely has the OPPORTUNITY to fuck things up with Tim to the degree he has with his other sons.)

Sorry. Digression. Point being, like, I do fully agree with the interpretation that Bruce’s rigid moral code and how forceful and insistent he was on imprinting it on Dick, Jason and Damian has at times been emotionally abusive, and I think the effect of that is most clearly demonstrated with Dick, due to the simple fact that Dick has spent more time under Bruce’s care and tutelage than all the others combined. 

So my problem with Dick’s aversion to killing and how its so often hyped up in canon and in fanfics as him being so like Bruce in this regard, or just a Boy Scout, or ‘too good’ or ‘too pure’ to ever kill, at least not without it ‘breaking him’....that’s got nothing to do with me wanting Dick to suddenly go all trigger happy and kill his enemies with no problem. It’s just because.....I don’t think its Dick’s moral code at work there. I think its Bruce’s, and the way Dick’s written sticking to it without any self-analysis of where it came from and WHY he clings to it so rigidly, I view as evidence of conditioning due to how he was raised. With Dick so focused on other areas where he pushed back against Bruce he’s never really realized that how thoroughly Bruce influenced him in this regard flew completely under his radar.

It’s not that I want Dick to kill more, its that I want his choice to kill or not to be based on HIS choices, HIS morality, and not just a kneejerk response to conditioning he’s never recognized as such because who doesn’t have blinders on in regards to parts of our childhoods, you know?

And then circling back to Jason, I went on that tangent to emphasize its the exact same thing there, just in reverse. It’s not even that I DON’T want Jason to kill his enemies, to have the same philosophy or ideology or methods as Bruce or Dick or Tim. It’s that I want his choice to kill or not to be based on HIS morality, as the result of conclusions he came to after having the time and space and distance to separate himself from his various teachers and surroundings and decide for himself just what it is he believes, what choices and instincts are his naturally, organically, and which ones are leftover from his training by the League, drilled in by his instructors - just as he’s taught himself to recognize when his old training and lessons from Bruce are kicking in.

Anyway.

tl;dr - Bruce sucks and is a terrible parent but lolololol unless you’re going well off the beaten path from canon and faaaaaar away from where the League of Assassins can get their hooks in Jason to any degree, like...Talia is not better. Let Jason be Jason, not just a child soldier raised by your general of choice and aimed in the general direction of philosophies you agree with more than their opposite.

[shieldmaiden19]

The Mis-Sorting of Tim Drake

Let's start from the beginning. 

At the tender age of nine, Timothy Drake was outside, trailing after Batman and Robin (who knows how long he'd been doing it before then?) and observed Robin do a move he'd observed only Dick Grayson do. The nine-year-old quickly put the pieces together, succeeding where decades of hardened criminals and trained detectives had failed. He continued to watch and wait for the next five years, with neither Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, nor Jason Todd catching on.

What can we extrapolate from this?

-- Tim Drake was more logical at the age of nine than all the adults in Gotham put together.

-- He was patient, and he was sneaky. I don't know about you, but if Batman doesn't notice a nine-year-old with no assassin/spy/physical training to speak of stalking him on a nightly basis, he doesn't deserve the title of World's Greatest Detective. That title belonged to this scrappy little kid after his first night of sleuthing.

-- He knew what he wanted, and he was willing to work until he got it. The work of the Batman and Robin was the work he wanted to do (heck, he was doing it then, otherwise how did he arrive at the conclusions he did?), and he began training himself in it and then doing it all on his own.

Which leads me to another point:

-- Even though he wanted to do this work, he didn't necessarily want to be Robin. Jason Todd was Robin to him. Doing everything in his power to become Robin was not a battle worth fighting for Tim. 

This is a little more of an educated guess, but I don't think Tim admitted to himself how badly he wanted to be Robin. He constantly let bad things be done to him and never breathed against it; if he had, he would have faced down his parents when he was little and demanded that they stop emotionally neglecting him. If he was smart enough at the age of nine to trail Batman through the night and then deduce his identity, he was capable of researching and arguing neglect and emotional abuse to a court. But he didn't. It wasn't a battle worth fighting. He knew it was highly unlikely that anything he said would make his parents change, so he saved his strength and pursued detective work on his own.

Segue: This is a pattern of behavior that continues in the comics, in fan stories, in any animated show or movie, in anything in which Tim makes a regular appearance. That being said, I am still looking for examples of when this brilliant boy does stand up for himself. If you know of one, I would love to see it. End Segue.

After the death of Jason Todd, Tim observed Batman going down a spiral of pain, violence, and self-destructive (and destructive!) tendencies. He calculated possible outcomes and came to the conclusion that probably saved Bruce Wayne's life - that Batman needed a Robin.

Finally, here was a battle worth fighting. 

Tim set out his qualifications and argued down Batman to let him take up the Robin mantle. Nothing was going to deter him from doing what was best for Bruce, for Batman, and for Gotham (and maybe a little for himself). 

Huh. Sounds like......ambition?

I understand why Tim is most often sorted into Ravenclaw. This is the mind so complex and so powerful that, had it not been for Batman existing as a beacon of hope in his life, would have turned to insanity and become the Joker. He is frightfully intelligent, extremely calculating, and considered by Ra's al Ghul to be more dangerous than Batman. 

Sorting Tim Drake as Ravenclaw is taking him at the surface level, engaging only with the facade he presents even to those he loves. His family glosses over Tim or takes him for granted, and it’s only enemies that see Tim as he truly is. 

Ravenclaws are driven by discovery and a primal need to understand. They form their sense of self around what they know and what is still to be learned; and most importantly, they don't play by the rules. Rules are for the sheep who aren’t intelligent enough to find a way around them. 

And Tim follows the rules. Any Leaguer, Titan, or Batfamily member asked would describe him as ‘by-the-book,’ ‘measured,’ or ‘a rule follower.’ But that’s one of the reasons he’s so dangerous: he colors within the lines and still outmaneuvers some of the most dangerous people in the world.

So Tim Drake has a penchant for playing by the rules but also an intellect with the potential to tear the world down. He is extremely loyal to the Batfamily, even after years of them underestimating him, looking down on him, outright attacking him, and taking him for granted. He is the epitome of Slytherin house’s three most defining traits - ambition, cunning, and a selective but fierce, fierce loyalty. He hides it behind a mask of blandness and agreeableness, but it is there.

For Slytherins, intelligence is a tool to be used in service of their goals. As @obaewonkenope wrote in an excellent essay on Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Slytherin is a house that uses their abilities and talents to benefit themselves and those they choose to be loyal to." 

Tim continues being a Gotham vigilante primarily because he wants it - not to save people (Hufflepuff), not to stay at the forefront of technology (Ravenclaw), not even to see justice done (Gryffindor), but because this is his work, his city, and damn anyone who tries to take it from him. He is consistently underestimated, constantly undermined, and still he comes out ahead.

Tim Drake is a Slytherin. Pass it on.