#but i have hcs and opinions on owen and his connection to his family and bart

[radioactive-earthshine]

AU where instead of Jay and Joan taking Bart in after Max is pulled into the Speed Force Owen takes him in.

[kidflashimpulse]

Hi! So, question about Bart.( This will kind of disregard canon since I haven’t watched the show in forever, sorry in advance). What do you think about Bart’s opinion on death and killing? Like, do you think he might have killed reach soldiers before? Or, like, could have helped someone, but didn’t because of his own need to survive? I belief he would always help as much as possible but...

what about criminals?? What if, say, they are dealing with a bunch of human traffickers, and they say stuff that reminds him so much about his childhood! Like, he doesn’t get pleasure out of killing. But maybe he sees it in a strategic light? “ if I end this now, they won’t ever hurt anyone the way I was hurt. They would just pay their way out of prison..”

I just want to see a moment where his good heart + morals (taught by his family and other heroes) clash with his apathetic mindset from living in an apocalyptic world were humans are at their lowest. Plus, he’s smart enough (and fast enough) to make it look like an accident....

u’ve always got the most amazing questions which i’m so grateful for omg <333 thank you for the ask 🙏❤️

so first on bart’s opinion on death and killing /killed reach soldiers / or whether to help ppl at risk of his own survival :

very interesting scenarios that u’ve outlined !!! especially since yes i have SO MANY HCs about this 😭 some of which I plan to refer to in a Owen + Bart centric fic connecting to allusions of Barts past that i’ve hinted at in AAIT, so i won’t go into detail about those. But i’ll give an overall answer of the HCs that i have ! I do think he’s killed people like reach soldiers and that he hasn’t thought twice about it because it’s a natural kill or be killed scenario for him and the ppl of his time. I think he would be significantly more impacted by not being able to help ppl that he could’ve “possibly” helped but couldn’t/didn’t. I agree that he’s got that somewhat natural heroic tendency to him of wanting to help where he can so if he’s prevented from doing that, he would feel responsible and devastated by it. I think death and killing is such a prominent occurrence in his time that as typically establishes by most he’s been pretty desensitised to it, so even if he would feel sad or bad about something, i think he’s capable of moving on from it fairly easily that it doesn’t affect him to the point of say how the deaths have affected Gar in the show. As a very vague spoiler to my HCs that i plan to write about, everyone he’s killed isnt solely restricted to reach soldiers. Regardless of different HCs of anyone, i think it’s unavoidable to consider that bart has had at least a very strong exposure to death and killing, resulting in his desensitisation, which i would say is what we can assume from canon.

in terms of how his morality plays in and how this relates to things like criminals or ppl that remind him of his past like human traffickers: i think the biggest indicator of his character to answer ur question is that he befriended Jaime of all things, rather than just straight up try to kill him 😂 Like u said, it would be incredibly easy for him to just do it, so if he didn’t kill the guy who practically brought on the Reach apocalypse, the literal main reason why he’s in the present in the first place, then I really don’t see him being “triggered” in any sense to kill any criminal that they might encounter just for the sake of stopping criminality. Now i’m terms of in the moment survival where there’s quite literally no other choice, i don’t think it would be much of a dilemma for him at all in comparison to other heroes. But for the sake of “vigilantism” where it’s to get rid of crime, i don’t really see him being motivated to kill people. He seems to have a heroic morality to him where it’s more about helping people as much as possible rather than just stopping crime, which is why in the previous example of not being able to help someone i think he would be much more devastated than i’d he just killed someone for say in the moment self defence for either him or others.

good heart + morals + clashing with his post apocalyptic apathy: i understand i would LOVE to see that !! it can lead to incredibly interesting situations. i do think though that this can come around in other ways that we might not traditionally think of/expect. like i mentioned, i do see him as someone with an inherent heroic morality of helping people to him, and i don’t think that’s something that would ever come into any significant question for him (because of the blue beetle example). But that doesn’t mean i don’t think of him as without moral ambiguity/greyness, which i think he has plenty of in terms of his worldview and how he is as a person. I think a decent example is the fact that he literally hung out with his grandfathers murderer who helped him with his biggest and arguably most important mission ever. Whether bart agreed to his company out of it just happening or no other choice is something else, but he clearly had no problem being with the guy and even making snide remarks calling him “neutron” which nathaniel is probably traumatised by 😂 Growing up in his post apocalyptic world bart clearly has no qualms about stealing things, like at all. I think moral ambiguity would manifest in just how he is as a person, which can be (mis)interpreted as someone just being from a different time rather than having different moral principles. I think the fact that he’s seemingly addicted (this is more of a HC ig but based on my interpretation of him from the show 😭) to just always being there to help people out, he had no problem literally just abandoning everyone he knows to join the Legion with their mission (which is insane to me lmfao) and maybe, he can be a bit cold like that. In that one scene where the Outsiders lose track of where Vic went, and Jaime was almost killed by the X-pit and as bart said “Gar got his butt kicked” he seemed pretty upset at the notion of “losing” on a mission, like it’s something he doesn’t even want to consider. I think he takes personal failures quite seriously (Mt Justice, Wally), not to the extent that it’s debilitating, but it definitely plays on his mind to a point that I can see him get pissed at himself if anything.

Basically, i see his moral greyness and apathy manifesting in a type of aloof coldness of things socially, where he can seem maybe a bit inconvenienced by morals that are standard of the people around him, and in terms of a very drastic desensitisation of things like death and killing, and in terms of overall morality like theft/doing things for the sake of survival/the mission, but not without having to abandon his core moral of just helping people out. I HC that maybe he might struggle a little with some notions of empathy that he probably had to work towards by just being in the present, and that his sense of morality is maybe almost always mission based where he just wants to get things done, rather than out of a more humanitarian POV.

hope my essay can get some of my points across to answer ur ask 😅 and thank u again for such an incredibly interesting question !!