#bc i would love for it to occur at a point where bruce is content in his life and has resolution and closure with his children

[roobylavender]

i read your post about a potential harvey murdersueicide and while that is a fantastically tragic idea i cant help but notice you always believe bruce should meet his demise early😭 as in, he doesnt get to experience true old age.

its not actually that i disagree or even not understand where youre coming from. i feel like, since dc insists batman has to exist and has to be a big player, the main character, gotham can never truly improve. because stories need to be told with him. theyre stuck, the city is stuck, and thus bruce is stuck, he only continues because he feels he is needed. in order for him to retire i think hed have to look at the progress hed made and go, yes ive done enough, but that will never happen because books need to be sold.

i think there could be potential for him to reach this conclusion and retire in a more limited series like a show or movie series, but do you think hell ever get to a point where he feels comfortable naturally retiring, and if so what would you think needs to happen?

i should probably clarify the reason i'm so invested in the idea of bruce dying early is bc denny o'neil said that by his early 40s bruce would either be married to talia or be dead and since he vehemently opposed the former i imagine had his editorial stint continued that he would have led us to a conclusion of the latter. so in my case it's less about a supposed impossibility for him to ever escape the life he leads as batman and more me being morbidly intrigued by this ultimatum denny set for the character. i'm not sure what his intended end for bruce might have looked like but ig in my imagination i either love the potential drama of the bruharvey murder sewercide or the sheer inconsequential nature of bruce dying while saving a life. not anything too grand or complex but simply being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and dying as anyone would, while doing something he wholeheartedly believed in. like a car crash. the dark knight rises for all of its faults has a few plot decisions i dearly love, bruce's retirement and passing on of the mantle being one of them, but i think that's a development that, complementary to what you said, works more in a medium where things have to end. the trilogy was finite so it made sense for bruce to move on. comics however are never-ending. and even beyond that ig i don't think bruce would be the type to retire even if he did sort out a lot of his emotional issues or feel like the city was on the right path. he's a very stubbornly selfless person and so long as he has a working body he'll be putting it to use. in that sense batman beyond definitely took a logical path in that bruce only gave up the mantle when he could no longer physically maintain it. the only problem there was that the timmverse's bruce is progressively depicted as an isolated loner so his retirement feels almost like a defeat that is subsequently revived once terry enters his life. and maybe there is a world where bruce could sort out his issues and retire of his own volition instead but for some reason i find there to be more meaning in bruce dying doing what he believes in. and maybe he's happy and gotham is on a path to being better bc he's reconciled with his children and maybe he's slowly trying to dedicate more of his time towards abolitionist work on the ground rather than encompassing all of his spare time in vigilante work. but i would like to think if he died in the mask at a point where his life is like that that it would still be meaningful. bc the mask would no longer be a prison. it would be what it was always intended to be: the truest representation of himself and his desire to help others

[op-sys-chaos]

As someone who loves the idea of “sassy badass grandpa butler Alfred Pennyworth” but who also knows he’s a problematic enabler, let me add my two cents.

Some of my first exposure to Alfred was comics like Red Robin 2009. Where you can see Alfred praise Tim for throwing hands with Damian (mostly because Damian was being an asshole and kinda deserved it iirc). What you don’t see in that comic is that the source of that argument, which was Damian getting Robin, came from Alfred. This thread is in fact the first time I learned that Alfred was behind that. (I haven’t read the Dick!Batman Damian!Robin run outside of maybe a single comic or two.)

But what’s interesting is even then, even when Alfred’s being sassy and all “good for you for sticking up for yourself, master Tim,” he’s still encouraging the siblings to fight. He’s enabling Tim and Damian’s whole fucked up dynamic instead of saying “hey, you two should sit down and talk it out and get your shit together.” Damian constantly tries to kill Tim and all Alfred says is “well done, you stood up for yourself and fought the child who keeps trying to kill you.”

Alfred is a massive enabler. He stands aside and lets shit happen.

Alfred wasn’t happy about participating in the 16th birthday thing iirc. But he did it anyway. Because he doesn’t say no to Bruce, no matter how wrong he is.

He did at one point quit during Tim’s 90s Robin run because he was mad at Bruce, and he went to go support Tim instead. Idk exactly what Bruce did bc it didn’t occur in the comics I was reading, it likely happened in a Batman comic and I was reading the Robin run. But Alfred does have a limit to what he’ll support. And I think him leaving and supporting Tim (who was also kinda pissed at Bruce for being an asshole) helped solidify the “Alfred loves his grandkids and supports them” stance for those who read it. It certainly helped me form my opinion of “sassy badass grandfather butler” because that was what he did in that run.

Basically, I’m conflicted. I love fics where Alfred is awesome. I love awesome Alfred. But also, I can definitely admit that he’s problematic. I already knew he was a massive enabler of Bruce’s bullshit. But I don’t think he’s so problematic that you can’t see him in a good light. And I don’t see the harm in painting him as a good grandparent in fics, because it’s fanfiction. Just like how Pit Madness is the only reason Jason was ever mad in the first place in some fics, if people want Good Alfred they can have him. Both make reconciliation fics easier, and we in the DC fandom do love our found families.

Side note, I don’t think the whole “allowed the negative narrative about Jason to spread post-death” argument is particularly relevant. Yeah, you’re not wrong, but literally everyone was saying it. Tim was saying it and the other Titans, Jason’s friends iirc, were saying it too. And it’s not the kind of thing Tim would ever say if that comic was written today! It was a product of the time. Readers hated Jason Todd so the writers talked shit about him and made him look bad. And so, the characters did too. That’s less “Alfred allowing a shitty thing to happen” and more “the writers had EVERYONE doing a shitty thing.” The whole hero community was pulling that crap iirc. So I don’t think that’s a point against Alfred since the whole hero community was pulling that.

Another side note, canon is very subjective when it comes to DC. There’s so much content that you’ll never be able to read it all. I’d never even so much as heard of Julia, because I hadn’t read comics that mention her.

So if you’ve only read Good Alfred comics you’ll assume he’s a great guy. And if you’re like me and you’ve read some of each, with Good Alfred first, then you’ll have the image of “generally good guy who can be a problematic enabler.” But if you’ve only seen Enabler/Asshole Alfred, or that’s what you saw first, that’ll be your image of him. Whatever your interpretation is, that’s the correct one. There is no “right” way to see canon. Even two people who’ve read the exact same comics in the exact same order will come to different conclusions. So read and write what you want. :)

One trope that i find weird is that during batfam reconciliation fics, the batfam members use alfred as like the big red button to bring jason back, but i feel like that wouldn't actually work. at all.

Jason would HATE alfred after everything he did after he died. Canonically, it was alfred that made the "a good soldier" memorial case, bruce wanted it down but alfred insisted he keep it up, he was the one that gave tim the Robin suit THAT JASON DIED IN, and drove him to save batman and nightwing with NO training at all. He also helped keep up all the "jason was always doomed for a life of crime, and he was an angry child that got himself killed" narrative that was spun after DitF. Alfred pennyworth is batman's biggest enabler, and has stood by while bruce did all his bullshit, such as the whole UtRH arc, and RHatO #25, where he said that it was inevitable that jason would go back on the whole no killing agreement.

Alfred may care for all of Bruce's children, but his only grandchild is damian, as shown when he made him robin behind tim's back( the whole "dick made damian robin" thing is just to add to tim angst. Dick was infact against that whole shitshow). If it doesn't benefit bruce, his pseudo son/employer and landlord, he wouldn't give a fuck.

It's basically impossible to write a reconciliation fic at all without completely rewriting characters, especially jason and alfred. Jason believes that batman's mission is flawed and useless since he doesn't permanently stop crime, so he'd never fully give up killing, the whole reason there's a rift between him and bruce, and alfred isn't this doting grandfather that always sides with his grandchildren and bakes cookies and makes tea.

Also, one major thing the fandom forgets is that alfred is canonically a shitty father to julia, his bio daughter. He abandoned his own daughter for the waynes, he'd never prioritise bruce's children over him.