#i also don't support the idea of banning his books and comics

[afusionoffandoms]

I'm already seeing a lot of people doing the same as they've done with JKR going "I ALWAYS knew he was shitty, his stories have ALWAYS been bad," etc etc, mostly to make themselves feel better about having liked or maybe even still liking what he wrote.

Not only is this an unhealthy way to process your grief, but it also perpetuates the idea that bad art can only be made by bad people - and even worse: that good art can only be made by good people, and that idea is exactly why people are still in denial about JKR and why it took this long for the Gaiman pustule to burst.

It doesn't mean that we are immoral for having liked it when we didn't know any better, or still having fond memories, for having created fan art or gotten tattoos or whatever else.

But keep in mind that we need to be careful about perpetuating that idea as well, because that mindset has consequences.

Edit: And also, obviously, boycott the shit out of that fucker.

[thequiver]

I've never read batman but bc it's. Batman it's so unavoidable that inevitably I get some info and context from everyone else being a fan. So there's some things I know and meta I've read bc bman fans create it, but Bruce being abusive is not something I've seen discussed whatsoever. Like I'd love YOU to discuss it more bc I had no idea abt it but it's weird how despite the piles of meta I've read it rarely if ever comes up. Not even to bitch about it

Okay so a few things to preface this. 1. The comics never write the narrative in a way that shows that Bruce's actions are wrong or bad. 2. I am saying this as someone who has received 3 years of training in identifying abuse in adult interpersonal relationships, and as an educator who has received training in the identification of child abuse. I am also an abuse survivor myself but when analyzing Bruce I work very hard to focus only on the characteristics of abuse that I've been trained to identify. Again these are things that I use for my actual real life job, I do know what I'm talking about.

3. The writers who write Bruce as being abusive almost certainly are not thinking "ah yes this abuse"- that does NOT mean that the story and the interpersonal relationships they write aren't rife with it anyway.

4. This is about the COMICS, idgaf about Batman: the Animated Series, if anyone tries to use it to refute what I'm saying, I am going to laugh at you and I will not be sorry.

Okay, so, all that being said here we go.

I'm going to start with the way he treats his children as this is what most people who reference Bruce being abusive will be talking about. And the simple truth of the matter, is that he is. I'm not even going to touch on the fact that he recruits questionably young sidekicks, like having child sidekicks is really bad and is child endangerment but this is comic books so I'm ignoring that. Some examples of this behavior just off the top of my head include: physically assaulting Dick and banning him from the manor because he tried to offer emotional support after Jason's death, he consistently argues that Cass doesn't need a normal life because she's a soldier, FORCING DICK TO FAKE HIS DEATH AND JOIN SPYRAL BY BEATING HIM TO A PULP UNTIL HE AGREES, telling Robin!Jason that he's "invested a lot of time into [him]" instead of actually acknowledging the parent-child relationship, insulted Stephanie and kicked her out of the "family", told Damian that it was Damian's fault that Alfred died, insulting all of his children to their faces, he physically assaults all of them, he's willing to forgo everything to benefit the mission at the expense of his family, he took Jason back to where he died just to use him. And there's so much more, again that was just off the top of my head, that's just a handful of instances from 80 years of canon. For at least the past 20 years or so you've had characters actively criticizing Bruce's actions in regards to his children, and nothing ever comes of it because the narrative DC pushes just supports Bruce's authoritarian rule of fear over Gotham- that's literally his whole thing, fear and ruling with an iron fist. Furthermore, there are several Bruce stans on this webbed site that will say "Bruce is only abusive if you look at it from the kids' perspective and not his" and frankly that says a LOT. I'm not saying that Bruce doesn't love his kids- but loving your kids don't exclude you from the possibility of being abusive to them. It also doesn't mean that there aren't good moments too, but abuse is a pattern of behavior, it isn't isolated instances of controlling, manipulative, physically violent behavior, it's a pattern of those behaviors, and it can't be argued that in canon Bruce doesn't exhibit a pattern.

But something that isn't as talked about in regard to Bruce's abusive personality is his treatment of other adults, and especially those that he'd consider friends. Like make as many jokes about it as you want, but making contingency plans to kill your friends/coworkers by obsessively studying their weaknesses? Is a bad thing. When Dinah is in charge of the league he's incredibly dismissive of her and her leadership. He considers the others beneath him. I've mentioned this before, but he knocked out someone he considered a friend and would have cut them open if he knew he wouldn't kill them in the process and then forced that person to watch a video of him killing his best friend is not the kind of behavior one partakes in when they believe that others have a right to bodily autonomy (especially when at this point in the narrative there was absolutely nothing to suggest that Ollie was being followed by demons). He constantly belittles the others, and he feels threatened by the fact that Hal is "the man without fear" and that threatens him because as has been said in the comics, "What is Batman to a man without fear? Just a man." Bruce relies on fear, he wants the league to be afraid of him because people who are afraid are easier to control. Going back to how he prioritizes the mission over his own family, he expects other League Members to do the same.

There's so many examples of this that frankly it would take me WEEKS to list them all. But yeah, he's a piece of shit. I can pull some panels for this later, I'm currently on my planning period at work and that's about to end, so I have to go collect my class, but I hope this helps!

[aikainkauna]

#it's biphobia #it's that the writer can't wrap their head around the concept that yes you can love and desire more than one gender genuinely #this mindset is where the idea that bi folks vacillate between gay and straight comes from #it's also a serial monogamy thing i think #to appease your current partner and shield yourself from their potential jealous violence you have to profess open loathing of your ex #or anyone else who could threaten their exclusive right to you

I've been thinking of this recently--that whole cult of exclusivity as a sign of your love being pure and true. Fandom's internalised misogyny aside, it's depressingly common IRL as well. That somehow you aren't fully committed to your sexual identity unless it's exclusive, unipolar--only towards the one sex/gender. I was horrified when all of Tumblr was oohing and aahing over that (German?) comic book-type booklet supposed to explain homosexuality to the masses and it was about a guy who just abandoned his wife and children, saying in very cold and brutal terms that "nope, this is not what I am" and this was seen as *heroic.* Because hey, fuck any feelings and arousal you may have had for women when you were younger, fuck the fact that human sexuality changes over one's lifetime, fuck these human beings whose life you were a support pillar of and who supported you in turn. The guy was a proud individualist being ~true~ to his real nature, and his idea of self was more valuable than anything else (like, say, the negotiations every decent person *has* to make to coexist with others). And none of that would have any links with the toxic ideas of women and families just being satellites of that kind of guy's existence, where he's the only real star, the only real person (as if the women and kids weren't individuals on their own but just extras--compare the guys who kill their wives and kids when committing suicide), or batshit jealousy, or straight-up misogyny (including a hatred of families because those are women's things and a Real Man is wild and free)? As for women, the patriarchy's so fucked us over that it's far easier to give up on men as a species and declare oneself as lesbian or asexual or a different gender to the point where it starts looking more than a *bit* suspect.

Basically, humans are trapped in dualistic, black and white ideas of sexuality and orientation and relationships and gender, ideas of "either/or" because it's just *so* much easier to do that than to face the inherent, bewildering, personal responsibility-demanding and therefore terrifying fact that we are *way* more complicated than that. Love, sexuality, orientation, gender, family are *way* overwhelming in their variety and complexity and people are shit-scared of that. Dualisms of all kinds developed from personal, intense pain and fear and a sense of something being Just Plain Wrong about something (to that person), just generalised and applied to everyone/everything else as fact and law and violence. It's far easier to ban something than to deal with its complexity--if there's a difficulty, let's bury it and be blind to it!

Tangent, but it's intimately connected. The fanficcer/mad shipper politicising a personally favoured ship in terms of gay rights and representation or whatever just wants to shove aside things that are too complicated and painful to handle. Whereas it's the people who legitimately write/look at things bisexually/pansexually/genderfluidly/in a polyamorous way, as a part of genuine striving towards recognising the world's complexity, who are truly brave. I could fill out as many cutesy gay prompts as I liked, go on about how slash is great because female bodies are victimised and we're beaten out of them, yeah, and call that developing as a writer, but I've still developed more as a writer through writing bi/pansexually and polyamorously. I don't want to remain a victim just because I'm a woman or to give in to jealousy-writing (or any other dualistic crap) because I don't like how popular misogyny and jealousy and dualisms are in our world. I generally don't want to read or write character-bashing because I want to focus on what/whom I love, and the poisonous snake of exclusivity and jealousy does *not* have to sink its venomous fangs into that. He can fuck off.

Fanfic is, so often, all about *improving* on what we see in our beloved media, so why should I not improve on the way we write women, the way they're seen, and improve heterosexual sex and relationships in general? Because who the fuck is going to change this shit if I'm just sitting here on my happy little gay m/m cloud, having locked myself out of my icky booby body? Nobody.

I absolutely hate it when slash fics feel like they gotta tear down the character’s previous relationship with a girl in some way. Like it doesn’t matter if they were canonically having some truly fantastic sex just a few episodes ago, dude’s gonna hook up in the fic with another dude and it’ll be all “it was never this good with HER” or some shit about how it feels more ~right~ somehow.

It’s vaguely biphobic, misogynistic, and invalidates what were often perfectly healthy relationships with women while subconsciously perpetuating the idea that you can’t love more than one person in your lifetime. That girl you were absolutely in love with a few months ago? Yeah that was nice but THIS love with your new boyfriend is obviously SO MUCH MORE REAL.

Why is this necessary? Why can’t you just respect these relationships and the female characters who were an important part of this male character’s life? As a writer, you’re in control of the world you’re building, so they literally pose no threat to you. Grow up.