#i don’t know that i like this characterization of talia but she would do anything for her son even if that’s using another son

[superbat-lmao]

Much as a man of the sea knows before he can feel a shift in the wind, Talia knows there will be a change in the world. She knew when she first laid eyes on him. A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

His movements were sure, even as his eyes held no consciousness. Her Father had seen him once and gave his ultimatum. His assessment that the boy was a waste of resources. Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert

If anything, the waste would be squandering the boy. After all, the best arsenals were made of different weapons, not the same blades. If she was ever to have her boy accepted, she would need to alter his Father. Alter his strays. Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

And truly, what better tool is there than rage? For men, it is the most productive. Better to be above ground and angry than below it and dead. It was an investment, on her part. That twenty centuries of stony sleep

She would watch him train. Occasionally. Now that the worst of the pit had left him. That blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

She could still see the moves of his Father, but the league training was becoming more familiar, more natural. Turning and turning in the widening gyre

His thoughts held no target, it was still too early for him to see sense. Rage was easy, control was futile. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Two teachers dead in as many hours. He would need to be sent elsewhere or it would be too great a drain of resources at this particular compound. A bit early for real missions, but not for remote instruction. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

She can see it in his eyes when he looks at her. The pain, the fear, the anger. He looks at her in challenge, in provocation. Whatever philosophy the little bird had held is gone. There is now only blood. The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

But his Father, the man of myth and shadow, is just a man. And he is not here. The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

And oh what a surprise he’s in for. She had seen few images of the boy, now man, before his submersion. What had been small in youth was made large in maturity. A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

To crack that ideology she would need a blasting charge. And from the fractures she would cement Damian’s place. The battering ram of a man would face the brunt of their Father’s ire for her son. As payment for his mind. The best lack all conviction, while the worst

And he must change. Because her Father is not a man. She cannot give Damian to him. He is immutable. Are full of passionate intensity.

Gotham will be ripped apart by Father and son. Their language is violence, even if now they will be a dialect apart. Bruce will realize all the wrong things. Surely some revelation is at hand;

Jason must be kept in motion. Always forward and everywhere. He has his targets now, his sights are not aimless. He was still for too long below the Earth and now must tilt and pitch in the direction of his every whim. Control sounds too much like inaction. Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

She places him on a plane. Few possessions, many plans. He is anger and betrayal and righteousness. He will subdue what his Father tries to tame.

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[vee-crytraps]

Hi, Vee! Will Talia make an appearance at all? I’m really curious to hear your opinion and characterization of her. I really like her and think she’s an interesting character even though I know a lot of people don’t like/kinda hate her, which I blame on early 2000’s retcons of her. Originally, she was just a villain’s daughter, not out right evil but could still through down if need be, and she was torn between devotion to her father and love for Bruce. I really hate how writers have turned her into an outright villain and even a callous mother to Damien. To me, Talia is a tough- not abusive- but loving mother who only wants the best for her son (even if “best” might seem strange to outsiders). She‘s definitely not perfect, but she is undeniably loyal and will defend her loved ones to her hilt. Which brings me to my next question: what is Talia’s opinion of Bat!Sis ? I can’t imagine she’s very impressed with her lol. (Then again, as an Arab/Chinese boy mom of one child, I can’t imagine she’d be impressed with any daughter-in-law.) Does she even know that Damien has basically chosen her as his Beloved™️ He definitely gets his fierce devotion from his mother, so her opinion of Bat!Sis is ultimately irrelevant to him but I still think he would want her approval. He just wants the two most important women in his life to get along 😭

Hi there!

Unfortunately I don’t think I will be including Talia in this fic, it might even be one of the universes where she’s dead?

I totally love her as a character when she’s done right. You and I are totally aligned when it comes to her being written as this callous pure evil bitch is a complete waste of a really complex character. She, like Damian, is a victim of her father’s whole mindset yk? I think of her as very determined, someone who knows what she wants and doesn’t always agree with her dad and his plans.

That being said- you hit the nail right on the head of her being fiercely disapproving of Batsis as Damian’s endgame. She is a very traditional woman and Damian is her one and only son. If anything I imagine she already has a handful of acceptable matches for Damian. Even if Batsis didn’t wash out of being Robin, her family history of mental illness through Harvey alone would make her “ineligible”. Damian deserves the best after alllll

I don’t think she would do anything extreme about it, especially knowing how important Batsis is to Bruce- but if she were around she would definitely use her influence over Damian to get him to change his mind.

She loves him so much, but a lot of that love takes the shape of reminding him how he is destined for greatness. And Damian respects his mother fiercely but after living as a Wayne for 10 years he understands her flaws. At this point in time he would recognize his mother’s shortcomings and wouldn’t give up batsis.

ultimately when it comes to this universe, her being around would add a whooooole other layer of conflict because she would DEFINITELY have something to say and my laziness has won out haha

[ursie]

dont take anything that person who's on your ass about mirage is saying personally 😩 theyve been adding antagonistic, asshole, classist, irrelevant opinions about stuff that has nothing to do with what the original post was about for a while. its their whole thing. it reeks of desperation for something to be a champion of and i maaaybe would feel bad for them if they werent such a douche about everything. totally worth blocking and moving on because they will just double down and make worse opinions on your posts (and then send anons after you block about why you arent responding, which you can then block after. speaking from experience)

No I know my friend sent me this and it’s like 😭

literally no one said that no one said she should be killed in fact I have multiple posts talking about how bad it is to use Miriam’s (also I used Mirage because most people do not know or remember her name like) history as a rapist (same w Catalina) to justify violent misogyny 😭 that just wasn’t the post you chose to respond to. Also like I’m sorry but a character can in fact be written badly and also written to be a rapist and also be a person of color. And whether the writer’s biases informed the decision to make them be a rapist or not does not make the rape not happen 😭 especially when it is quite literally what the character is most well known for like. Next you’re gonna argue Catalina being a rapist is ooc actually when that was quite literally what the character was invented for

Also conflating Talia and Miriam is wild Miriam is a minor character who’s most well known for being a rapist (that she was unapologetic about and made Dick uncomfortable before said fact) whereas Talia was nothing like how Morrison characterized her and her character was changed radically post 9/11 when she’s an Arab woman like. These are very different contexts 😭 I don’t like the fics where the writers injure or punish them I don’t like the torture porn I’ve said that before but that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with the character like.. survivors are allowed to be uncomfortable with rapists it’s genuinely not complicated and multiple things can be true at the same time hope that helps!! Like 😭

[stxleslyds]

Also, the writers' failure to understand, every crime Jason committed had a motive. Attack other criminals? Holy warrior destined to purify the world of evil. Attack Bruce? Joker's still alive. (Oh, Jason, it's much worse than that.) Attack Tim? A parody of what he once was. He wasn't just a "bad boy". He was dangerously insane.

Hi, Anon! Yup, there seems to be a lot of things that writers have gotten confused about Jason Todd/Red Hood and the biggest one is his motivations to kill certain criminals.

Let’s be honest, Judd Winick set a golden path for the upcoming Red Hood writers. But each and every writer that used Red Hood in their stories completely missed the point of Jason’s character. All of them. It’s so incredibly wild to me that every other writer read UtRH and came up with whichever version of Jason they came up with.

Let’s list the writers that completely missed the point.

Geoff Johns in Teen Titans vol.3 #29.

Geoff Johns was one of the first to completely mischaracterize Jason, why on earth would Jason go to the Titans Tower to beat up Tim? This is not me saying that Jason would never do that because Jason thinks of Tim as his brother or a friend or the person that he can trust the most from the Bat-Clan (can you believe Lobdell tried to sell us that one?), this is me saying that Jason wouldn’t have done that because he couldn’t have given less of a fuck about Tim’s existence.

When Jason found out that Bruce had another Robin he wasn’t bothered by his “replacement” he was mad at Bruce for having another child playing hero after he lost his life as a fifteen-year-old. Jason didn’t even think of Tim as his replacement as fandom likes to make us believe, Jason called Tim “pretender”. And that was that, but to go from minimal recognition to go out of his way to beat him up at Titans Tower is a massive mischaracterization.

Paul Dini in Countdown (to Final Crisis).

Paul Dini in Countdown did absolutely nothing with Jason, I am sorry but that’s all he did. Him writing Jason was like watching a dog trying to catch their own tail. He started with a pretty basic take on UtRH Jason, then he added a bit of Jason being an annoying man with Donna, then we had the jealousy arc because apparently, Jason had the hots for Donna but she didn’t want anything to do with him and he was all angsty when she paid attention to Kyle instead of him, and then, later on, he had that whole Red Robin bullshit (I am sorry about this, but I absolutely hated that, it was so dumb, I am so glad it didn’t last long because it was just too bad), and after all that mix of just not interesting stuff he went right back to the Jason that he had at the very start. It was a waste of time, but I guess that he had to be there because he was an anomaly and all that. I just think that was DC’s first try at making Jason Todd/Red Hood something more than just a street-level vigilante and they failed miserably.

Tony S. Daniel in Batman: Battle for the Cowl.

Even though the first two did make mistakes with Jason’s characterizations, this man was the first to just throw UtRH out of the window and make up his very own version of Jason Todd. And his version was horrendous, that Jason had no problem with attempting to kill children and innocent people, he also really wanted to be Batman because Gotham needed a Batman and he wanted to be the person to wear the Cowl and he was looking for a Robin for himself.

I know, the whole concept is the perfect opposite of what Jason Todd and Red Hood were in UtRH. Every aspect of BftC Jason is based on nothing.

Jason wanting to be Batman because Gotham needed Batman is just the beginning of what’s wrong in this book. Jason became the Red Hood (in part) because he believed that Batman and his ways weren’t what Gotham needed so he made a better version of Batman with Red Hood (according to him) because Red Hood did what Batman refused to do. Another thing that is just wrong is Jason wanting, Damian, Tim or Dick to be his Robin, there is just so much wrong with this, first of all, Jason wanted Batman to stop having Robin because child soldiers ran the risk of dying at a very young age and that’s exactly how he saw the whole thing because that was what had happened to him. Second, if Jason was mad at Bruce for getting another Robin why would he now want one of his own to team up with his Batman? Damian was a child, Tim was someone that apparently Jason hated (because Jason beating Tim was mentioned in this event), and then Jason actually asked Dick Grayson, Nightwing, to be his Robin? Listen, there is no way that was Jason, nothing about him makes sense, even taking into account that Jason had beaten Tim already in this event Jason actually tried to kill both Tim and Damian (it might have been just one of them but yeah, it still doesn’t make sense).

I just don’t think that Tony S. Daniel knew who Jason Todd was, maybe he got confused but the thing is, his “villainous” and deranged version of Jason Todd allowed a villainous and deranged version of Red Hood to happen with the next writer that I will be talking about.

Grant Morrison in Batman and Robin vol.1 #3-6.

This was the birth of the villainous, deranged and bloodthirsty Red Hood. There is absolutely no trace of UtRH Jason here, not even if we are looking at the opposite of things like we could do with Daniel’s Jason. Grant Morrison wanted Dick and Damian to have a villain to match their Batman and Robin and they decided to give us a red-haired-pill-headed-red hood. Everything from Morrison’s characterization of Jason is crazy, from the red hair (hello pre-crisis) to the awful Joker’s Red Hood looking suit, everything was just weird.

I still don’t believe that was Jason, to be honest, I would rather think that version of Jason was actually a rouge Skrull that came all the way from the Marvel Universe and lost his way in Gotham City. Maybe when he made the jump between universes, he got too much information and got confused and took the form of the wonkiest Jason Todd he could come up with.

This Jason was absolutely deranged, he knew exactly what he was doing and he didn’t care if innocents died. This Jason was the one that got locked up in Arkham. This is the Jason that Dick put in Arkham for Jason and everybody else’s safety.

Dick putting that Jason in Arkham wasn’t a bad thing or something that anyone can use to shit on Dick Grayson (not on this house). This Arkham was reformed and that Jason knew that if he stayed in that new Arkham he would stay away from trouble, but here is the thing, that Jason loved trouble, so he took all the tests to prove he wasn’t insane and asked to be transferred to Blackgate (where all the Red Hood’s enemies were). That Jason didn’t ask to be sent to Blackgate because the Joker was a cell away from his in Arkham, he did it so he could go on a killing spree in Blackgate (which he did when he got there).

Skrull Jason was just bloodthirsty and nothing like UtRH Jason, he had no motive other than just killing for fun or whatever. He didn’t want to protect Gotham and he couldn’t have cared less about the drug trade in Gotham. In Batman and Robin vol.1. Jason Todd was unrecognizable. And luckily, we never saw him again.

Scott Lobdell in Everything that he ever wrote about Red Hood.

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Lobdell was the king of overpowering Jason, he was the one that drove Red Hood farther and farther away from his street-level vigilante status. He continuously added more to him, he was a big deal because he was meant to take down Ra’s al Ghul, he was a big deal because he was the only human to train in the All-Castle and learned to summon the All-Blades.

This Red Hood’s morals and ideals were kind of gone, there just wasn’t any kind of interest in Jason to get rid of drugs or try to control its trade in Gotham, he just had no interest in street-level threats, everything was extraordinary in both New 52 and Rebirth. If he wasn’t in space he was in some mystical land. His friends and allies became even more and more powerful, his level of power was completely off compared to the others. His personality was ever-changing and quite honestly you could barely see the Jason that he once was.

This Jason also was very inconsistent in the way that he felt towards people (obviously because Lobdell is a shitty writer), he wanted to follow Batman’s rules and was shown as someone that still had fond memories of his life with Bruce before he died but was also willing to let those memories go, to move on? Maybe? I don’t know. But he changed his mind about Bruce and following his rules or not for a very long time. Jason was also a little bitch about Dick, and he was a little bitch because he (Lobdell) never gave the reader or anyone a concrete reason as to why he hated him so much and then in Rebirth he decided that Dick wasn’t that bad. Also, Jason went from “Willis Todd, abusive husband and father that deserved to die” to “Willis Todd abusive husband and father but he sent me letters when he was in prison and Penguin had him killed so now, I really want to avenge him”. Yeah, I don’t really know why that happened and like most of Lobdell’s arcs and stuff it was never really completed or well thought out.

Lobdell’s Jason characterization was a mess for ten years and that’s the prime reason why Jason is a character with no solid background, story or future.

James Tynion IV in Red Hood and the Outlaws.

Tynion’s Jason Todd was a hero, he was like a mini Tom King Batman. Everything he did was right and there was just no way that you could bamboozle him. This Jason was able to hold to Blades that drained his soul as well as hosting the Untitled in his body (that were able to drain his soul too) and on top of all that he completed his journey of the Chosen One by making those ancient martial arts moves that he learned before he was Robin even though Talia hadn’t been able to master it yet.

Scott Snyder, Tim Seeley in Batman Eternal and Batman and Robin Eternal.

A mess, this was pure New 52 levels of bullshit and they all just wanted to push the “Batfamily” and while Dick was gone, they were trying to make Jason fill the void that Dick left in Batman events. It didn’t work at all and all they did was mess around with Jason’s characterization more.

Geoff Johns in Three Jokers.

I have talked enough about Johns’ takes on Jason Todd and Red Hood, but let me tell you something real quick, if a writer thinks that the best they can do with a character is make them give up their morals/ideals for an unrequited love interest, then they can keep that idea for themselves. Geoff Johns wrote a book that was absolutely not needed and then proceeded to butcher every characterization that he could, Three Jokers was three issues long and he managed to add more trauma to Jason’s torture, push the narrative of Jason being at fault for his own murder and make Jason’s motivations to be the Red Hood weak enough to make him want to give up his work for a woman that he barely knows (and doesn’t like him at all).

Joshua Williamson in Future State: Red Hood and Robin #5.

Now, with Williamson I have issues only when he writes Jason, not because his stories are bad, don’t get me wrong, I would have completely enjoyed FS: Red Hood if it weren’t for the completely unnecessary Rose/Jason side plot he had going on. Jason was clearly working undercover for some people that he hated working with. He had to arrest or kill “masks” (vigilantes, just like he “used” to be) for the Magistrate.

His ideas were pretty solid, Jason did the job but he never killed the masks and actively didn’t trust the Magistrate but he was working there to tear them apart from within, and that’s amazing if Williamson had given us Jason Todd/Red Hood working undercover to dismantle an organization I would have been really happy.

But that’s not all he gave us, even if I just forget about his failed attempt at giving Jason a relationship, I can still see that Williamson is the kind of writer that wants (or is just following DC) to make the “Batfamily” happen no matter how dumb and out of place it looks in comics’ canon. So, I am a little bit weary, any writer that leans too much towards making Jason and Bruce work together and become a family makes me want to scream, but I do understand that is just me, many people want those two to be buddy-buddy, I, personally, would love to see Jason kick Bruce in the balls and tell him to lose his number.

Chip Zdarsky in Urban Legends: Cheer.

Ah, yes, I remember the days in which I thought that this could have been something good. Well, I was utterly wrong and I suffered all the way through this mini. I feel like now I can safely say that Zdarsky only wanted to write a Batman book but DC told him, “Hey you can write Batman but it has to be within a Red Hood story, but don’t worry, you don’t have to know much about the Hood guy, just come up with something and write Batman around that”.

I know that’s what happened because I read that story and all we got from it was horrible characterizations for pre-Robin Jason, Robin Jason, Jason Todd and Red Hood. I don’t know how he did it but yes, he managed to mess it all up.

From Jason not really wanting to be Robin and acting recklessly every step of the way, to secret desires of a perfect family with Bruce and so many other people that he couldn’t care about, Urban Legends: Cheer is the perfect book to avoid at all costs if you believe that the concept of “Batfamily” is the biggest lie, DC is trying to profit off this time around.

Zdarsky also nerfed Jason in ways that I thought DC only wanted to nerf Dick Grayson. But I was able to see that I was wrong. Zdarsky’s run also pushed some of the most disastrous narratives that DC really wants readers to believe like: Robin Jason wasn’t good at his job, he was too reckless and ultimately his death was his own fault. Yay! I want to cry!

I will give Zdarsky two points for at the very least showing that Red Hood wants to protect children and that he has a huge issue with how the drug trade is controlled and abused in Gotham City, it had been a while since we had seen that aspect of Jason’s Red Hood make an appearance.

-

It’s just too many writers completely missing the point of Red Hood’s character or simply writers agreeing to destroy Jason’s uniqueness in the DC Universe so DC (as the publisher) can further push the abomination that is the “Batfamily” in comics’ canon.

I do agree with you Anon when you say that Jason isn’t just a “bad boy” but I also don’t think that we can call UtRH Jason “dangerously insane”. Personally, I will only use that last description for BftC and Batman and Robin Jason, those two were dangerously insane indeed.

UtRH Jason was very meticulous in who he wanted dead and who got to live. He entered Gotham’s most dangerous world and he had to make a big entrance, he invited the eight most prosperous street dealers to a meeting, showed up with the decapitated heads of each of their right-hand men and an AK-47 and said:

“I am offering you a deal. I will be running the drug trade from now on. You will go about your business as usual. You will kick up forty percent to me. That is a much better deal than the Black Mask will give you. In return, you will have total protection from both the Black Mask and Batman. The catch? You stay away from kids and schoolyards. No dealing to children, got it? If you do, you’re dead.”

This was Red Hood! Red Hood wanted to control the drug trade in Gotham because he knew that Gotham is far too corrupt and filled with drug lords for him to just want to eradicate drugs from Gotham. If he had tried that he would have been a dumbass, but he wasn’t. He didn’t want to start a gang war and get innocent people killed because of it, he wanted to set the rules of his new Empire and he had to start with the street-level drug dealers, from there he grew until he became a major pain in Black Mask’s ass.

We went from Jason wanting to control the drug trade and take over Gotham’s underworld so people like Black mask couldn’t have people work for him (or being dependent on him) when they were still in high school or were in a vulnerable position, to Jason fighting a war for a mystic land because he was their “Chosen One”. DC really wanted to do something grand (yet boring) with Jason instead of sticking to a street-level vigilante that could have become a Drug Lord to control the drug trade of a city that is so filled with crime and corruption that it can’t be saved by anyone.

Batman doesn’t eradicate crime, he “controls” it, puts a blank it over it, lets it nap up until it wakes up once more to make more mess.

Red Hood had other plans, certain criminals didn’t get to nap, or, better said, they would get to nap forever.

So, no. I wouldn’t call that “dangerously insane”, I will call that “vigilante that believes himself judge, jury and executioner” of a city that is drowning in crime and corruption.

Anyway, I hope you have a really nice week Anon and thank you so much for sending me this ask!

[jostenneil]

talia

from this ask meme

she’s driven by love! lol. this is the most obv thing but i think people often restrict themselves to just viewing it through the lens of her family—whether that be her father, bruce, jason, or damian—but i also think it extends to her love for people. her love is hope is compassion, etc etc. it’s the root of her philosophy on justice

she’s unconcerned with power. if talia is ever interested in power it would only be as a means to an end (like how she used her ceo position at lex corp), never something she would actively pursue for herself. rather than power, she desires peace both for herself and for others

talia is like her father in the sense that she’s a phenomenal strategist and she houses the same concerns about the world and how humans have polluted it through various evils. where she differs from him is in her methodology. ra’s is a nihilist and talia is an idealist. she doesn’t believe the world needs to be destroyed in order for it to be better. she believes in people, and that’s a strength as much as it is a weakness

talia is more than capable of putting the greater good above bruce. her love for him is important to her obv but she doesn’t let it blindly rule all of her decisions. if she puts bruce first it’s usually not just bc she loves him but bc he’s standing for the right thing. after all, that’s why she loves him to begin with. characterizations of talia that have her disregarding all good and common sense for the sake of “winning” bruce’s love thereby don’t really make sense, esp since she already knows bruce loves her. she doesn’t need to do or give up anything to prove that, and doing good is ultimately the more impt thing to her if she has to weigh those choices

talia is self-sacrificial in the sense that she’d give up her own happiness for the greater good. that’s why she breaks off her relationship with bruce during son of the demon, or why she stays as lex corp ceo for so long, despite both experiences clearly taking a toll on her. she believes that if she has the resources and capability that she needs to do the right thing, and she’ll do that no matter at what cost to herself. the important thing is that it’s on her own terms. what drove her away from ra’s and bruce is how their decisions forced her to sacrifice her own happiness time and time over without giving her a choice

[fancyfade]

ok so misc damian characterization thoughts

it actually is related to 2 things, mostly characterizing new earth damian with the later stuff added in batman and robin 2011 and robin: son of batman... this means i KNOW that it does not match authorial intent i’m not trying to say “this is what the authors intended” it’s just working with the version of the character that i like best (the one written by gleason) and other instances of the character

first, I feel like Damian’s a kid right? He’s all srs now, presumably had to GET more serious on the year of blood where he was obviously super worn down and doing it mostly out of obligation...

but when he was younger, he presumably would have tried to have fun. yeah i know stephanie is like “he doesn’t know how to have fun 😭” in her batgirl solo but a) I already said yes he’s super srs business NOW when he’s like 9 years old but being told “your final training is complete you’re ready for anything” b) in an undercover situation, with backup he doesn’t trust yet, there’s no way he’s going to be relaxed enough to try actually playing and also he doesn’t know these kids.

anyway so even tho i imagine he probably didn’t get bought a ton of toys (and if talia did buy him toys, he probably would be too embarrassed to play with them once he becomes more conscious of the expectations he has) but like.... kids can have fun with anything. it doesn’t have to be a toy or a video game. so wondering how damian might have had fun in the league. I think it mostly would have been with Talia (he doesn’t know how to play with kids his age but he presumably knows how to play with his mom :P). i also headcanon his voice mimickry talent as something that he started just genuinely for fun (perhaps to annoy someone he doesn’t like 😂)

similar train of thought wrt characterization taht I know was not intended by the author but i feel like *I* like better:

in B&R 2009 there’s a moment where Damian seems genuinely surprised dick saved him. i know this was probably intended as morrison being like “damian isn’t used to anyone caring about him because talia is evil” but even EXCLUDING later stuff, we don’t really need damian’s surprise to be because no one’s ever cared about him before or whatever.

I guess cuz it was a weird crossover plotline, Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul isn’t normally taken into consideration in B&R (even tho i’m pretty sure morrison also wrote on it?) but it makes perfect sense for Damian to not expect Dick to care about him if you remember he just got betrayed by his grandfather he was working for his whole life and hunted down by the organization he was raised in! That would shatter anyone’s trust let alone a 10 year old kid’s. Yes, Talia was in his corner* but that doesn’t mean that being betrayed by his grandfather and the rest of what represented his childhood isn’t going to hurt. of course he’s not going to expect dick, some guy he just met who doesn’t even seem to like him, to care about him a ton

anyway so i know none of this is probably what the authors intended while they were writing, since the batgirl thing was informed more by what happened after it was actually written, it’s just more of how i characterize him and mesh some of the early stuff with the later stuff

*actually :P okay this is again nothing that was intended by the authors, just me trying to attribute meaning to 300 different writers and a bunch of different canons, but I feel like Damian being kind of bratty to Talia almost makes sense with this in mind like he doesn’t have to always 100 percent regulate his emotions or put on perfect behavior because she’s actually consistent and there for him so he’s not at risk of losing her love... OR could even be like (unconsciously, i don’t think it’d be something he knows he’s doing) “better make sure my mom actually loves me and not just the idea of me/obedient me... time to act like a brat”

[autisticcassandracain]

I have many thoughts on the weird phenomena in the DC fandom and the Batfam fandom specifically where probably the majority of people just straight up. haven’t interacted with the source material. and almost all of those thoughts can be summarized as ‘lmao that’s weird and mildly concerning’.

and because I’m annoying I will list them all here right now <3

1. To preface this post, I mean, obviously, comics are inaccessible as all hell, both in the disability kind of way and the ‘you need to understand the concept of hypertime to fully comprehend the DC timeline’ kind of way. Because of this, even if you don’t have a disability that prevents you from reading comics, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at the amount of comics you need to read to have even a base understanding of a character and go ‘no thanks <3′ and just enjoy fanart and fanfic in a vacuum. Ultimately, this is fandom, this is supposed to be fun, it doesn’t really matter.

2. That said, it’s VERY weird to me that the majority of this fandom just straight up hasn’t interacted with the source material, and moreover, that it’s considered rude to tell people that they should do so. It’s especially weird considering the amount of fanon-only fans I’ve seen who straight up have a superiority complex over canon. The idea that it’s gatekeeping to tell fans of something to actually interact with canon is just. so weird, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what ‘gatekeeping’ actually entails. 

3. But honestly I’m less interested in discussing the ways in which canon and fanon fans should interact with each other (personally, I think it would be helpful to create separate tags of some kind, but that’d require quite a big overhaul of the current fandom state) than in figuring out how this actually happened in the first place. On the one hand, it’s obvious; long-running superhero comics the way DC writes them have made themselves so thoroughly inaccessible that most people are simply too daunted to even try. Most media has a cohesive beginning and end (or at least, a planned end somewhere). Comics just... don’t.

But I do think it says something that, even among people who are clearly interested in the characters (since they have, you know, entire blogs about them), the effort to get into comics just seems to be too much to even bother. This really doesn’t bode well for the future of DC Comics. Obviously, I am no expert on anything at all ever, but I’d personally be surprised if DC survives beyond the few decades, at least in its current form/without a big overhaul.

4. But on the other hand, I don’t think the confusing state of DC Comics is the only thing to blame here. Fandom has a well-known problem with reducing any character down to archetypes to more easily ship and write fic/make content with. This problem is particularly prominent in fanfic, which, if you read enough of it, you’ll eventually start seeing not just the same tropes and trends, but essentially the same fics over and over again. And not just within the same fandom; everywhere, or every large fandom, at least. 

Fanon Batfam is entirely built on a bunch of those tropes; insecure/depressed sadboy Tim, team mom with optional hidden trauma/emotional problems Dick, bad boy with a heart of gold + sadboy combo Jason, abused sadboy Damian/angry easily-villified-for-fic-reasons monster Damian, good dad Bruce for found family fic and bad dad Bruce for angst fic, etc. This all culminates in a found family dynamic that’s generic and malleable to whatever fic the writer wants to write.

(This isn’t getting into the ship fic, which I avoid like the plague because the vast majority of it is incest, but I’d bet real actual money that the tropes in those fics fall under what is often preferred by the Migratory Slash Fandom.)

By having a decent excuse not to get into canon (the inaccessibility of comics) and a, by now, well-established fanon fandom, many fans feel free to use the batfam fandom as essentially an excuse to write whatever fic with reduced archetypes and tropes they personally feel the itch to write, without having to bother with even consuming a canon. This is compounded by the fact that canon itself is often contradictory and frankly bad, meaning that whatever interpretation of a character you want/need to go for your fic is at least theoretically backed up by canon (for example, you can just as easily cast Bruce as an abusive shithole dad who his kids need to get away from as a loving father figure who cares deeply for his children), which you can always use as a defense if people question your characterization.

5. This focus on fandom trends and tropes over actual creativity or care for the characters is also visible in the way bigotry manifests in this fandom; namely, in literally the exact way you’d expect. The female characters and characters of colour are shuffled to the side, non-existent, vilified, and/or reduced to harmful stereotypes. 

Barbara is probably the one I saw the most often in fanfic, but usually just as ‘Dick’s girlfriend’, and even then, she was often vilified for Dick angst (especially in fics about examining Dick’s trauma from his canon sexual assault; Kori also often gets the short end of the stick in those). After that, probably Stephanie, who fanon fans don’t really seem to know what to do with, so she’s basically just there as comic relief waffle girl, most of the time, though sometimes she can be used to either further Tim angst or further vilify Tim, whatever the fic calls for. Cass has gotten included more in batfam fics as of late, likely in response to critiques of fandom racism for leaving her out, but again, it’s clear people don’t actually know what to do with her. She’s often reduced to a racist stereotype of a quite, stoic therapist for whatever guy du jour needs it. That, or she’s in Hong Kong and just not there. Duke especially gets left in the dust in fandom, usually just being non-existent, but when he’s there, he’s almost always nothing more than the straight man for the actual fun characters to play off of. Talia probably has it the worst, though, and almost universally gets vilified by fanon stans in order to write sadboy Damian.

All of this is extremely predictable behaviour and falls entirely in line with general fandom misogyny and racism; ignoring or vilifying women and characters of colour, or using them as very minor characters at best. The only two characters of colour who aren’t regularly left out of fic are Dick and Damian, who are both also conveniently the two characters most often drawn and written in a whitewashed manner. In addition, there’s a real trend of demonizing Damian in fanon fics where he isn’t written as an abused sadboy, which I’d argue is in no small part due to fandom racism, considering Damian’s behaviour is in no way as bad as Jason’s, who doesn’t get anywhere close to the same demonization and gets woobiefied instead. I also find it convenient that Damian is probably the batboy who receives the most vilification in fic, when he’s the most obviously non-white of the batboys they’re willing to acknowledge.

Fandom often cries for more diversity in canon, only to ignore the diversity already there and focus on the same generic white guys. The batfam fandom is a brilliant example of this.

Which is not to say that fandom racism and misogyny isn’t present in the canon parts of the fandom (and canon itself); it absolutely 100% is. But I’ve found that canon fans are also more likely to like and care about at least one of the characters I’ve listed as ignored/vilified, and are willing to create and consume content for them, whereas fanon fans... aren’t, really. I’ve never seen a fan of fanon Cass the way I’ve seen fans of fanon Dick, for example. Obviously, this could just be by coincidence, or I’ve just surrounded myself with people like that, but it’s been a trend I noticed. Racism and misogyny is present in every part of this fandom and should be addressed as such, but I feel like it manifests the most blatantly in the fanon parts of this fandom. 

(I’d also recommend the articles Migratory Slash Fandom’s Focus and Beige Blank Slates, which expand more on the type of fandom racism I think is especially prominent in the batfam fandom, as well as literally every article in the What Fandom Racism Looks Like series.)

6. All this leads me to conclude that the majority of fanon fans don’t actually like the characters all that much; they’re convenient excuses for them to participate in fandom. Which I also think is, in no small part, a reason why so many of them react so negatively to being told to pick up a comic; they came to this fandom specifically to consume it as a fandom, because they wanted the fandom experience without having to consume a canon. 

This is not a phenomena unique to the batfam fandom (again, see the Migratory Slash Fandom), but it does fascinate me. While fandom is often said to be an experience focusing on transformative art, I think it’s also safe to say that, especially as fandom has become more mainstream, an increasing amount of people are looking to it less as a way to engage with their favourite pieces of media, and more as a type of media in and of itself. I think the reasons for this are similar to the reasons mass media entertainment like the MCU are so popular; you gain a lot of enjoyment out of it with very little risk involved. 

By consuming the same fics of the same characters (or the same archetypes) over and over again, you are rarely at risk of being challenged or even disappointed. It’s often very clear right from the start whether or not a fic will appeal to you, and if it isn’t, it’s easy to just look for another one. It requires less emotional investment than most other types of media, even ‘popcorn media’ like the MCU - or, yes, DC Comics. It’s safe, it’s enjoyable, it’s comforting, like McDonalds, but just like McDonalds, it’s ultimately bland and unsubstantial. 

7, TL;DR. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s like, wrong to enjoy the fanon version of the batfam without wanting to engage with canon, and I certainly don’t think it’s okay to harrass people over it. But I do think it’s in large part based on a desire to interact with fandom rather than other pieces of media because people are scared of being let down by those pieces of media (or worse, just uninterested in actually thinking), which is mildly concerning. 

[bigfan-fanfic]

I prefer to look at Talia as a character pre- Grant Morrison’s mommy issues being inserted into her characterization. It makes Damians conception a whole lot more complicated for BatDad. He had suspicions of Bruce cheating within those 5-6 years he was missing but it never really registered that it could’ve really happened. It wasn’t a thought he could deal with and be mentally competent enough to deal with school and Wayne enterprises. But after he meets Damian and sees his face, his eyes... he sees Talia and it takes everything in him not to completely lose it. Selena was bad enough but this... is something else. He spent years with Talia and his insecurities about that were only confirmed. Of course he grew to love Damian and such but I imagine it hurt alot more putting his hatred for Bruce in that moment aside for this kid, who was actively trying to kill him. A kid who doesn’t know just how much his existence speaks to the level of disrespect Bruce had for him. But alas he didn’t choose to be born. So he ultimately channels all of this rage and sadness at his work and doesn’t even speak to Bruce. He is entirely cold except to Alfred and the children. what do you think will be the resolve to make him forgive. If anything will. I think this might be the straw that broke the camels back which would then lead to him stepping down as CEO and moving to Metropolis, eventually.

Still, even without the whole issue of Talia and Damian created during the Morrison run, which has been retconned back and forth since then, Talia's still kind of a terrible person. She's still an assassin and part of Ra's al Ghul's eugenics/bioterrorism organization. She still does horrible things out of loyalty to her dad. And basically the one cool thing she did was run LexCorp while Lex Luthor was President (long story) and leak info to Superman.

Like Bruce does have a history of liking crappy people, like Selina, so Talia doesn't break the mold in that way. But yeah, I hate to say it, but at least with the Talia in Batdad's universe being more like the post Grant Morrison Talia, it makes it a little easier for Batdad to come to terms with Damian's existence, because it wasn't like Bruce had a say in it. But with Bruce yet again actively cheating on him... it'd be really bad. I don't even think he should forgive Bruce if that were the case.

But also do you really think that Bruce could've kept that a secret once he gets back from training, if he fell for Talia and had sex with her? From the person besides Alfred who knows him best in the world? Probably better for him to know then and get away.

[thetinysmallbird]

for the character ask game: Bruce Wayne, Talia al Gul and Jason Todd?

Jason Todd

How I feel about this character

Well this is going to be biased since Jason is my favorite character in DC. I just love everything about him! His complex characterization, personality, backstory, and morals are all just very interesting. Honestly I feel like he’s one of DC’s most fascinating characters.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Romance has never been big with me when it comes to Jason. But I do think JayRoy is neat since they have a nice dynamic in the comics. I’ve always headcanoned Jason as bisexual.

My non romantic OTP for this character

Artemis. I never really shipped them and I’ve just seen them as good friends.

My unpopular opinion with this character

Jason growing a close bond with the batfamily may not be realistic for his character. But honestly it depends on the writer and how they manage that. I’m not against it, I just don’t want it to be forced or rushed. I want him to be in character without him losing anything that makes him who he is.

One thing I wish would happen in canon

So many things. But the one thing that I can think about right now is Jason owning a dog. It seems really random, but I feel like Jason getting a German Shepherd fits him. In the New 52 he had a dog as a kid and I just liked that little bit.

Bruce Wayne

How I feel about this character

I liked him in the older comics. Like during Jason’s time as Robin. I liked his relationship with Jason then. He just seemed really different from how modern comics portray him. I mean if I had to list every problem I had with Bruce in the more modern comics, this post would be super long.

All the people I ship with this character romantically

Selina Kyle mainly because I like their relationship in the comics.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Wonder Woman. They’re js good friends what can I say.

My unpopular opinion on this character

Not really an opinion, but I just have mixed feelings about his “no kill” rule. Again, another post for later.

One thing I wish would happen in canon

Remember when when Batman chucked a batarang at Jason’s neck when he had a gun to the Joker’s head? Yea I wished he didn’t do that. Imagine how Jason felt. Your dad decides to harm you to protect the man who murdered you.

Talia Al Ghul

I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t know much about her. I just know she’s Damian’s mom. I also know she worked with Jason after he was resurrected. (And they had a thing which I don’t really like)

I don’t wanna say anything that’s false or untrue about her with my limited knowledge about her. Although she is one of the characters I want to know more about.

[bigskydreaming]

Its just never not gonna be a huge pet peeve for me when people make a thing about Robin as Mary’s name for Dick being a retcon. I’m just like, yes, and? What does that actually CHANGE, and also its a thirty-year old retcon. Like, its just...that’s a really long time, you guys, lol, just like the ‘Dick was fired’ retcon is even older, and like......I just don’t see anywhere where “well it wasn’t like this decades ago” is used as an actual invalidating argument for major things pertaining to other characters. *Shrugs* You can find retcons in EVERY character’s stories, but these are the sticking points, apparently.

Thing is.....do people actually adhere to this as a reason not to like the Robin-as-Mary’s-name-for-Dick thing because the fact that it was a retcon actually bothers them? Because if so, that logic would seem to invalidate a TON about the Batfam that people DON’T seem to have a problem with. So rather, it just always comes across as attempting to use the fact that this particular take from canon wasn’t the FIRST take on the subject, as like, an attempt to just invalidate something people don’t like for other reasons.....and the only other reason I’ve ever been able to come up with for why people have such a problem with that origin for Robin, is because it grants Dick a close personal connection with the name that can’t be dismissed as irrelevant or not emotionally significant, and one that other Robins can’t really ‘compete with.’

Except problem there is....none of the other Robins could compete with Dick here anyway, if it WERE a competition, which its not....but like, the part fans of other Robins who don’t like Dick for whatever reason tend to overlook so often is that Jason and Tim are legacy characters....and DICK’S legacy characters in particular. 

I focus on Jason and Tim here because Stephanie wasn’t created to be a legacy character - she became Robin later on after her creation, but she wasn’t created to BE Robin. I’d argue the same is true of Damian, because I think the catalyzing impulse behind creating Damian was to have a biological son for Bruce, or specifically a son of Bruce and Talia’s, and as much as I think Damian being Robin was always an inevitable part of his character trajectory after that point because of the importance of the Robin mantle in the DC mythos and the Batfamily in particular....again, I don’t think he was created to BE Robin, specifically.

But Jason and Tim WERE. They just were. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. They’ve grown beyond that - or at least they had until DC decided the best way forward for Tim was backwards - but no matter what they became, the catalyzing impulse for creating Jason and Tim was to make a new Robin.

They were created as Dick’s legacy characters. Not just to be partners for Batman, but to be inheritors of the legacy Robin mantle. To step into a role that was made relevant and made popular by Dick’s character.

And I think some fans are bothered by that, but its like....that doesn’t make it less true? Unless you can come up with a compelling argument for how you can look at Jason or Tim’s debut or early character concepts and not see it as ‘they were created to be a Robin’.....they’re Dick’s legacy characters. And I don’t think there’s any reason that has to be limiting, or makes them less than any other character....the vast majority of DC’s character staples ARE legacy characters. They’re still full-fledged characters in their own right, its simply relevant to the how and why of their creation. Like I’m not a Hal Jordan fan at all really, and I’m a huge Kyle Rayner fan. Doesn’t mean I’m not very aware of the fact that Kyle is a legacy character of Hal’s. Kyle does not exist, if Hal didn’t exist. You can’t remove Hal from the equation and be left with much if any substance for Kyle to begin from....no matter what Kyle later became, under his own narrative power, due to his own stories and characterization.

(And yes, I know Hal’s not even the first Green Lantern or the origin of the Green Lantern as a legacy in universe or out of it, but Kyle’s origin and story is directly connected to and stemming from Hal and his story in a way that’s simply not true of Kyle and Alan Scott or John Stewart or Guy Gardner...even while Kyle still has strong ties with each of them. Kyle’s story began out of Emerald Twilight, Hal was the catalyst for his creation, they’re tied in a way Kyle isn’t to various other GLs. Hal may not be the initial GL and Kyle may be a legacy character for MORE than just Hal, but he’s very much Hal’s legacy character at the same time).

So the thing about trying to move away from or steer around the idea that Robin was Mary’s name for Dick.....I don’t see what that accomplishes, even if you do dismiss it as ‘invalid’ whatever that means, because its a retcon? And I see a lot of posts and fics that ACT like it changes something, but....does it? Does it change the fact that Tim and Jason are still Dick’s legacy characters? Does it change the fact that in-universe, Dick’s still the one who made Robin notable enough to warrant having a legacy at all? Does it change the fact that out of universe, Dick’s character is still the reason that Robin was popular enough to warrant having a legacy character made in the first place? Does it change the fact that the Robin mantle in the existing DC universe and our outside perception of it, in all practical senses, would not exist if not for Dick’s character, and Jason and Tim at least and in particular, would not exist either? At least, not in the way that they do now?

It seems to me to just attempt to make an illusion of stripping away a layer of emotional significance between Dick and the mantle that the other boys don’t have.....but even WITHOUT that, Dick and the mantle still have the layer of significance that is - he literally created it and its initial popularity - that no legacy character can ever share with the originator of the legacy they embody. With this being true of all legacy characters and legacy originators, across the board.

But lessening the emotional attachment Dick has to the mantle HE created - for WHATEVER reason - doesn’t actually accomplish anything for the other characters, it doesn’t add anything they didn’t already have.

But flip it the other way around....lean INTO the emotional significance of Robin as Mary’s name for Dick.....I’d argue this is as much to the later Robins’ benefit as it is to Dick’s. Because the more emotional weight you give the mantle for Dick, the more emotional weight you give to Dick’s blessing with regards to the other Robins bearing it later on. And even though Dick didn’t choose to make Jason Robin post-Crisis (but that’s a retcon! He made Jason Robin himself pre-Crisis! Where’s the shouting about that? Where’s the constant pushback against people saying Dick resented Jason for being Robin with “oh that’s just a retcon though, originally, pre-Crisis, Dick gave Robin to Jason himself and they were really tight?” See what I’m getting at?), and even though Dick was initially opposed to there being another Robin at all after Jason.....Dick still did ultimately give both of them his blessing, not just Damian...and when you lean INTO the weight that Robin as his mother’s name for her son gives the mantle for Dick.....you simultaneously boost the impact and weight it has for his brothers, as that then extends to becoming Robin as Dick’s name for his brothers.

And thus rather than it just being a name they all bear at one time or another and have in common....it becomes, and REMAINS....a family name, tying both Dick’s first and second families together, with him and his interpretation of Robin not being more IMPORTANT to just him more than the others, but more RELEVANT to how he acts as the bridge, the connective tissue not just between his first family and his second, but also the bridge and connection to the source of Robin, the inspiration, the reason this name they ALL bear exists....as well as then to the later Robins themselves.

And personally, I think that makes for a stronger emotional connection between Robin and Batkid in regards to ALL of them, not just Dick.

But also, back to the pet peeve note....the Venn diagram that is people shouting “Robin as Mary’s name for Dick is a retcon” and people shouting “lol canon what canon, fuck canon, I don’t know canon” is waaaaaay too often a single circle, and that gets filed under things that make me go hmmm. Cuz isn’t that interesting. 

About as interesting, like I said, just once more with feeling....as the people yelling but retcon though about how Robin isn’t that significant a name for Dick - beyond y’know, him just coining it as his own unique persona why should that matter lolol i digress - while at the same time yelling - i have no objections here, you’re doing great sweetie, more of this, more more more about how Dick definitely resented and hated Jason for being Robin, as he did not make Jason Robin himself, see, that was retconned, that means it no longer counts and only the retcon matters now.

Anywho......

[ash-mcj]

Hello hello! For the character ask, can I ask for Erica or Boyd? Happy for your own insight since we don't get a lot to work with from canon. ❤ Thank you!

Hi!! Thank you for asking ♥ I'll take this as Erica 'and' Boyd, instead of 'or' ;) If anyone has any other characters they wanna know my thoughts on, please feel free to send me an ask!!

I've done these characters already: Stiles, Chris and Talia, Peter

Since it's two characters, I put it under the cut

ERICA REYES

1 - How I feel about this character

I love her!! Definitely my favorite female in Teen Wolf by far.

2 - All the people I ship romantically with this character

Vernon Boyd (Berica), Stiles Stilinski (Sterica), Allison Argent (Allerica), Cora Hale (Corica?), Malia Tate (Malerica)

3 - My non-romantic OTP for this character

I love her being best friends with Isaac. I think that duo is amazing!! But also, she and Lydia would rule the world together.

4 - My unpopular opinion about this character

She's soft. That badass, asshole chick she played through season 2 was the result of a sudden power trip. She went from nobody to a freakin werewolf overnight and then felt very important - or rather, felt like she was able to convincingly make others think she was. But I think she's soft. I think she cares a lot about people's validation of her, which is why she was dressing in more revealing clothing and acting a bit more provocative once Derek 'made her hot'. (For the record, I am not shaming her - I did the exact same thing in high school and there's nothing wrong with feeling hot and showing it). I genuinely believe that if she ended up in a healthy, loving pack, that she would soften a ton and be much more gentle and affectionate once she realized that she wasn't in danger of becoming a nobody again. I love her badass act, but I really do think it was just an act to intimidate people away from bullying her anymore. She wanted to finally be seen as something powerful.

5 - One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character

I wanted her to get her driver's license and have the chance to drive her pack around :(

♥

VERNON BOYD

1 - How I feel about this character

Honestly, I'm indifferent. I don't feel like I know him at all. I've watched his scenes so many times, trying to get a feel for him, but I just... can't? The show did him so dirty by not giving him more layers and more of a storyline. He was ultimately just used as a part of Derek's plot, instead of having his own subplot, which is annoying. I like who he is in fanfic, because people have headcanoned a lot of great things with him, but if I'm strictly looking at canon stuff, I'm not the biggest fan. His character falls flat and it made me feel weird during that scene that Scott was trying to talk to Derek about not killing Lydia (the potential kanima), and Boyd was trying to intimidate Scott because he was bigger than him. Like... Scott wasn't there to fight him - why was Boyd jumping to intimidate? Then again, he was likely also on a similar power trip as Erica. I think he was just feeling powerful and wanting to back up the dude that made him feel that way (Derek). I like to imagine that he was a calm voice of reason with a soft heart, and that we would've gotten to see more of that had he been in the pack for a long time. I like fanfic version of him, but I'm not crazy about canon version that we were shown. I did think his building friendship with Derek and Erica was cute, though.

2 - All the people I ship romantically with this character

Erica (Berica) and Cora (Bora)... honestly, I'd ship them in a throuple (would that be bericora?)

3 - My non-romantic OTP for this character

Derek. I love the idea of them being friends and I think Boyd's calmness and respect for boundaries would make Derek more willing to open up to him and want him around.

4 - My unpopular opinion about this character

Literally my entire outlook that I talked about in the first question. I'm not the biggest fan, because of how he acted in the show. Just seemed very serious with a focus on his strength. The show did him dirty and made that his entire personality. Thank god for fic writers giving him more characterization.

5 - One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character

I wish I got to see more of him doing pretty much anything. I just want to get to know this guy!! I wish the show gave him his own storyline. Maybe dating Erica or Cora... maybe just seeing what makes him tick?? Give him some hobbies, favorite color, favorite food. Something. Anything. I wish they let me get to know him apart from being a lonely, big dude. But really, I wish they gave him a pack that was healthier and more put together than the one he had (for like 2 seconds), because he really just wanted friends/family. I'm upset he didn't get more of that. Thank goodness fanfic exists.

[thattimdrakeguy]

How would you characterize Damian by himself? Also have you read Robin: Son of Batman? If so, what did you think of it? Sorry for all these questions, by the way.

Lets just say Gleason is a way better artist than he is a writer.

Robin: Son of Batman is a series with a good idea at it’s heart for it’s first arc, but overall just wasn’t the greatest written thing ever, and botched almost everything it needed to do to make it work.

It’s pacing is manic at times, and incoherent to follow. Things just sort of happen without any proper set ups.

Damian himself is written with a veil of depth via the flashbacks but overall is very two dimensional. He’s mean, and he had a dark past. For a lot of it that is all to him. At most he has random moments of caring and that’s about it.

There’s a part in issue 3 were he fights Maya and without much pacing they just sit down and chat just because of a sudden moment. The pacing ruins any sense of emotion were they try to develop him, but it’s so rushed it just doesn’t feel right.

It wants to hit a beat and it rushes to it. Making it just feel unworthy of the moment it tried to create.

Then he goes back to being a jerk anyway so the moment doesn’t mean anything hardly. 

When there seems to be a moment of development, quite often it feels pointless. 

They could cut out these moments and the characters would mostly remain the same. At the beginning of the first arc to the end, Damian is still the same character besides pandering moments, he just asks for forgiveness once. It’s character development is showing how much worse he used to be, but they botched even that cuz of flashbacks that show he wasn’t that bad.

So they never really want you to think Damian is too bad, but they never fully have others react right around him, creating a superficial tone.

Him and Maya just sort of work together, while Damian is just a jerk. She reacts appropriately sometimes, but other times she barely reacts at all. Sometimes she treats him in such a way it’s like the audience is supposed to read Damian as silly when a moment prior treats him as a serious possibly crazed person.

There’s moment were Damian still apparently has his baby teeth still, I’m not sure how seeing how many fights he’s in, but it’s right after his fight with Maya were he looks crazed. So that’s a good example of it. They use these randomly moments that treat Damian as if he’s just a normal kid like they want you to forget his general personality. As a form of woobification.

So the tone is often very inconsistent.

Damian’s sort of just a Gary Stu that way. He’s talented at everything, and even when he’s a jerk he just gets away with it mainly besides maybe 2 or 3 moments.

He takes on Deathstroke by himself and is barely even hurt.

I’m pretty sure he tries to kill Talia. So what happened to not killing? But he could’ve just had a sword against her throat to make her not move.

But like– listen to him. He acts like he’s gonna kill her.

One of the most famous parts of the series is the flashback where Damian spares Goliath and cries

But I think that scene is ridiculous, –

–because Damian in his origin story cut heads off of humans and was numb to it. If Damian knew that killing all this time, doesn’t that ruin his character development? And make how nuts he was in his first appearance not make any sense given how obviously numb he was, and how he clearly had no idea it was wrong?

It’s very much a series that wants you to ignore all character logic for practically every emotional scene there is.

When Maya forgives Damian it’s mostly just over the course of a page, it’s mostly rushed. It feels about “oh look how great he is deep down”, but he’s not developed hardly, within the next issues he’s the same as always.

It wants the reward without the effort. It’s an imaginative series with it’s visuals, but lazy with it’s characters.

Suddenly Maya says she’s Damian’s sister now, but why? He was mean to her the whole time besides one or two moments. It’s desperately trying to achieve these emotional fan pleasing moments, but hardly does a thing to earn it.

Something else the series does is just treat Damian like he’s so great. He’s so talented, he has such a big heart, look at all this bad stuff in his past, forgive him, and it wants you to ignore how he’s an egotistical, mean, jerk the whole time, because he has a few moments of having a heart.

So in that aspect it’s like Detective Comics Rebirth with Tim, except replace bad past with evil future, and mean jerk, with blooming fascist. Although thankfully it doesn’t hit you over the head with the “oh he’s so great” moments like Tec Rebirth. They still let you know he’s mean at least some of the time even if people don’t react right enough a lot of the time.

Like overall it’s a series that would rather you just feel bad for Damian over developing him. If he seems to get better it’s so you feel bad or wants to pander, and then he goes back to normal. 

It’s cheap chump writing.

Even art wise Gleason got a lot worse at drawing Damian.

This is what Damian is supposed to look like. Ignoring the bat, because I’m not saying he should abuse animals, he’s past that, but just how he’s drawn.

In this he’s drawn like this:

Only thing that got better is a more racially accurate skin tone, and that’s not even consistent all the time..

Otherwise it doesn’t even look like him.

Ray Fawke’s writing and Ramon Bach’s art is even worse on their run. Ramon clearly doesn’t know what Damian looks like that much cuz he seems to think he’s five and Ray’s writing is rushed, lazy, and pandering.

There’s a moment in one of the last issues were there’s a hug and they’re like “family”, but it’s so rushed and pandering. It’s not earned given the time the characters have actually spent together and how Damian is. It’s just a random sudden thing to suck up to people.

To me, Robin: Son of Batman, is a really bad series that was trying desperately hard to be good, with the Gleason part of it. You can certainly tell he’s trying his best, but the end product just wasn’t very good. The Ray Fawkes part was lazy garbage that relied almost solely on pandering to make anyone care.

It’s created moments people share cuz they seem good or pandering, but when you actually read and think, you just begin to question things.

If it didn’t pander to people so much or tried to woobify Damian as much as it did. I genuinely think no one would care about it that much, because it’s not well written.

[stxleslyds]

EVENT LEVIATHAN issues 2 and 3

EVENT LEVIATHAN BUT IT’S ONLY JASON TODD.

Oh, Anon, I am sorry it took me so long to answer your ask, to be honest with you, I had completely forgotten this book ever happened and when I went looking for it, I saw who was the writer for it and my brain disconnected completely.

Michael Brian Bendis, what a polarizing writer. I had forgotten why I didn’t like his work much but this book made me remember that his writing gives me headaches. I swear, every time I read his work I am left wondering if I missed an issue or a page, it’s like I always lack information even though he makes sure to write a lot in those “monologue boxes”.

But I am not here to complain about Bendis, let’s talk about why Jason appears in this book and how is he characterized in it.

If you don’t know what Event Leviathan was about, in the first issue we are told that a terrorist has been attacking places simultaneously. This person, known as Leviathan collected some of the people that survived the attacks (like Batgirl), and others he let escape (like Green Arrow). All of the attacks were on organizations (A.R.G.U.S, Spyral, D.O) that were the pillars of the world intelligence community.

Because the case is big and operating on a big scale, several detectives and heroes (Batman, Robin, The Question, Lois Lane, Plastic Man, and Manhunter) have come together to figure out who is behind Leviathan’s mask.

In the second issue, their main suspect is Jason Todd after Damian suggests that Jason’s “special war on crime” can be related to this worldwide level of terrorist activity.

Well, If you couldn’t tell by the way that I phrased that, I really believe that DC and Bendis had to do some weird changes to the narratives because Jason hadn’t been really at “war with crime” for a very long time, or at the very least, not on that level (against organizations selling/controlling intelligence). So, right of the bat, I am confused as all hell.

Jason at this point in time was working as the Ice Lunge’s owner, so this was after the events of RHatO (2016) #25 and after Roy Harper’s death. But before I get to explaining why Damian and the others thought that Jason was behind Leviathan’s terrorist attacks, let's talk about Jason’s characterization.

How to write about a character based only on “tropes” that the publisher of the book told you. A Guide by Michael Brian Bendis.

We find Red Hood in Seattle, already investigating Leviathan. So, yeah, to me it was kind of obvious that Bendis put Jason there to build up the reason as to why Jason was the main suspect of being Leviathan or working with them.

We are offered some very casual banter with Batman as well as the ever-present subplot of Jason caring for Barbara Gordon. I am not a fan of whatever DC was and is trying to do when it comes to Jason and his crush on a person that he barely knew and has rejected him before. Bendis was probably told to put that there, I really don’t see Jason going out of his way to ask if Barbara is final but oh well.

In that panel we also see Jason say this to Batman, “can we put away the stuff between us so we can work on the case?” to which Batman answers, “of course”.

What the hell was that? First Batman beats the living shit out of Jason (Jason even says that he never saw Bruce hit the Joker as hard as he was hitting him) and rips the bat-symbol of his suit saying that they no longer work together or whatever, then we have Bruce going to Jason to tell him that Roy is dead, he gives him a hug but then proceeds to tell Jason that he is still banned from Gotham.

DC really reduced all that to “stuff between us”, alright, all I am getting from that is that I was right when I said that DC lets Batman get away with his horrible treatment of his kids as if it just were a subplot. Lovely, I hate being right.

But that’s not really what I want to discuss, I want to discuss the level of detective/investigation skills that Jason has got going on for him in this issue. Suddenly Jason has information about what happens with organizations like Spyral, ARGUS, and DEO? And then Bruce asks Jason if he has been in contact with Talia recently?

I am not mad about those last things, don’t get me wrong, Jason being good at investigating and him being (possibly) in contact with Talia are great things BUT they don’t fit in his story anymore.

Where is this Jason coming from, it must not be from the narrative that Lobdell had going on, Jason never showed much interest in keeping up with that side of the world or in doing detective work. And his relationship with Talia was downgraded a lot, basically, all Talia had done was keep an eye on Jason since she first met him before he was robin (yeah, that was a thing that happened as told in RHatO (2011) #25) and that how she found out that he died, after he came back from the dead, she put him in a Lazarus Pit and then sent him to the All-Castle so he could become Ducra’s apprentice. That’s literally it.

Or are we working with a Jason that maintains his Lost Days origins? There isn’t time on the timeline for that to have happened so his involvement in this book and the way that they are writing him is very confusing to me.

Jason doesn’t say anything about Talia except that he pulls an Uno reverse card on Bruce and asks him if he has been in contact with Talia. But just like many things with Bendis as a writer we never really hear any of them say anything about Talia and they continue talking about something else.

Alright, back to sharing what they found it is! Jason has apparently investigated this very closely because he cannot stop bringing up the fact that the attacks leave no bodies behind. Either people escape or vanish from the attack site.

But here is where the so-awaited “Batfamily” mention comes in. After Bruce tells Jason that he is putting a team of Detectives together Jason asks this, “we can’t keep this in the Batfamily?” Gods, was DC on crack when they wrote this? The Batfamily? Honestly? Two of your best detectives are not around to help you and your so-called family left Dick Grayson all alone in Bludhaven!

What Batfamily are you talking about Jason? You, Bruce, and Damian? I can’t with DC pushing and pushing the wildest concept in their universe.

After all that Batman spends a lot of time explaining what has happened or what was supposed to happen, he talks to Jason about how the other detectives were getting closer to retrieve a body that they needed to study. In between what Batman is explaining the scene of Plastic Man talking with Leviathan happens and there Leviathan says that they know each other. So, that’s a clue, whoever is behind the mask is someone that Plastic Man has met before.

We find out that Batman was retelling that story to Jason, so Jason starts putting the pieces together. Batman already has a team, they know that Leviathan has been spearing some heroes’ lives, there is a cause for all the attacks (“a new world order”), and that the attacks leave no bodies. Jason even begins to put together the list of suspects but then Jason asks Batman if they have their number one suspect and Batman says, “Yes”, and it’s Jason!

This is so funny to me, like what? How did they come to that conclusion? Luckily Bendis “explains” the Detectives’ team’s reasoning, I guess? They take turns to ask Jason basic questions that Jason deflects from some reason? It is so dumb.

From this page the most important thing that I gathered is that Damian (the one who initially accused Jason of being Leviathan) says that he doesn’t “think that you (Jason) know you are doing any of this. I think it manifested itself out of grief”.

What? A terrorist that has some sort of technology that makes explosions that leaves no bodies and spares some people’s lives, is being manifested by Jason because Roy Harper died. Did I understand that correctly? That’s their big idea as to why Jason is their number one suspect?

Team of detectives, yeah, I don’t see it.

It makes zero sense! First of all, what “war with crime” was Jason having at the time, and they also say that that war was “a point of controversy for years”. Excuse me? Are they really calling Jason using guns (with rubber bullets) a SPECIAL war with crime? What are they referring to? Are they talking about the events of Under the Red Hood? Because Jason hasn’t been that version of himself in years! We don’t even know if those exact events happened in this continuity!

I am so lost; I actually don’t know why they are relating a terrorist attack to Jason. I don’t know, to me, Jason’s appearance here is unjustified and lacks logic.

Now, we find ourselves in the third issue, where an unnecessary amount of time jumping is done. First, we are in the present after both Batman and Robin let Jason run away. Listen, I know that they tried to paint it as Jason kicking both their asses but I saw those pages, they threw three punches and one of them connect with Jason’s jaw. Batman and Robin just stopped fighting Jason.

I don’t know, why they had to make Damian say that Batman let Jason get away when he was there too and did nothing.

And then they had Damian say this about Jason, “I have never been a member of his fan club but Jason Todd is one of the great master fighters of all time”. Okay, sure, Jason has had a lot of training and he has been immeasurably overpowered over the years but I still find Damian saying this a bit weird, like why would he say that? The fight that is shown after this look into the present is just like any other fight that any Bat-related hero has had. Dick has had more impressive fights than that one after the New 52 and he was immeasurably nerfed.

I love Jason getting recognition for the things that he does right and that he is good at but I need you to represent those moments better. The fight isn’t that grand and they clearly let him run away!

In the fight there all jumped off of a building, (Jason, Batman, Robin, Manhunter, Arrow, and Plastic Man) Jason shoots at everyone and they have a “fight” midair. Then Batman, Robin, and Jason fall through a glass roof and they continue fighting in a pool, this is where I say that they let Jason ran away, they showed us Damian kicking Jason in the face and Bruce punching Jason in the face. But then Jason electrifies both of them while they are in the pool? Listen, this is very nitpicky but Batman and Robin are wearing proper suits for vigilantism, if their suits aren’t prepared to receive some electric shots then wow, but also, the electricity does nothing to Jason even though he is also in the water? Jason’s Red Hood suit at the time was a pair of pants, a shirt, a vest with a hood, and some bandages on his arms… You are telling me that Jason was wearing a suit that protected him from that? Alright, I will believe it, after all, I am very dumb.

Then Jason fights Manhunter, a simple fight apparently, he doesn’t show much fighting skill because she looked like an easy target and then Jason stops fighting and decides to have a nice chat with Lois Lane.

“Why did you run?” I think he ran because a bunch of people accused him of being a terrorist and threw themselves at him at the edge of a building, what kind of question is that?

This page is just, I cannot describe how confusing it is. Lois finally asks that if it isn’t the Red Hood, then why would Leviathan try to set him up? To that Jason answers this, “I was thinking about that on the way down here. Because I am perfect. All this should be me” then he explains “I lose sleep running the numbers in my head, on how measured response to the criminals of the world brings nothing but more chaos. Batman knows this. If this Leviathan is making a big play to change the world, maybe it is the move the “crime-fighters” just don’t, will never have the guts to take. Maybe.”

What. Is. Going. On? Where did this version of Jason come from, this isn’t really in tune with UtRH Jason, RHatO Jason, or RHO Jason. This take on Jason is completely different, Jason doesn’t involve himself with threats on a worldwide scale, he doesn’t care how all heroes around the world operate, and he is not the only one that does things differently from Batman and other heroes that have similar morals.

What is this Jason saying really, is he suggesting that a global terrorist attack can lead to the reconstruction of how heroes work?

Why does Jason think that what Leviathan has going on is similar to things that Jason has done? What did Bendis read that I didn’t? How did Bendis come up with this characterization of Jason?

Because even though RHatO and RHO Jason went beyond Gotham he still fought for things that were directly aligned with his story, Ra’s al Ghul, the Untitled, Essence, all of that wasn’t on a global scale, why is he so suddenly aware of more than that, I just don’t think that his participation in this book is justified.

In these other panels he also comes off as way too aware of what is going on, and I understand that to a certain level all heroes might keep up with what going on a global scale but it seems like Jason knows way too much for someone that hasn’t been connected to those organizations and or people before.

Jason appears a little more after that but nothing of true importance is said anymore in this issue. After, Lois finishes her talk with Jason she reunites with the rest of the team and is like “It wasn’t Red Hood, let’s move on” and that’s that.

That was all Jason did in those two issues. A mix between nothing, knowing too much and him speculating about what a terrorist would want to do next.

Before I give my last thoughts about Jason and these issues, I want to share with you these panels from issue 5 of Event Leviathan.

There, Zatanna and the others confirmed it. Even though Lois listed the Red Hood as a suspect the other detectives told her that not only none of their suspects were Leviathan but that none of them were Leviathan adjacent.

OF COURSE, JASON HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH LEVIATHAN!

Here is what I think, Jason shouldn’t have been in this book, it makes less than zero sense for him to be there. Jason being set up by Leviathan had no logic whatsoever. Jason and Leviathan’s levels of “disruption” are on completely different levels.

I just don’t know why he was there.

Anon, once again I am sorry for taking so long to do this review, I hope you had fun reading this, and I hope that you have an awesome day!

[jostenneil]

same question about friendship that anon asked earlier for jason or maybe jade?

i need to read more stuff for jade to generate more ideas but as for jason in what i imagine is a very unpopular opinion i legitimately think he wouldn’t be friends with supers bc he’s like, so disillusioned with the profession. and i get that that was kinda the point of rhato yknow that he was befriending these “outlaws” who didn’t fit in either but idk first they tried to give him dick’s besties due to flashpoint or whatever and then i am not as familiar with artemis and bizarro but idk i just don’t think it’s as interesting as allowing him to return to his roots after resurrection and identifying with normies bc i MEAN. his entire thing is about how disadvantaged people in society aren’t afforded justice the way privileged people are and would it not make sense for him to form his community around the everyday folk of his old neighborhood? i loved the last two issues of rhato that martinbrough did last year for that reason like the potential was so good and i love the idea of him potentially being this neighborhood protector who shows up for the little guys preyed upon by drug lords and rapists and the like that batman doesn’t have the time for anymore bc he’s dealing with gotham’s more extravagant big bads. but that aside obv i do think there would be a few exceptions to this non-supers interpretation, namely: 

dick - BEFORE you drag me to filth i want to clarify i am not like those jason stans who want dick to be like uwu jason i love you you have never done anything wrong in your life ever. that’s boring. what i DO want to see is dick pushing back against bruce’s interpretation of the events of ditf and needing to see jason get better once he’s back bc he feels bad for not having been there much when jason was alive, bc he knows jason is better than the hysteria he’s trying to drive himself into, and bc he figures out a lot of jason’s baggage centers itself around people not having faith in him to be better. more about that here, here (the joker’s last laugh doesn’t exist to me sawry it makes things too easy imo), and here

 talia - self-explanatory given i’m writing an entire rewrite fic of lost days / under the red hood to give talia better characterization than winick ever bothered to afford her despite my loving the initial premise he set up with her and jason, but to expand: i like that talia is a clean slate for jason. she’s never met him before, she doesn’t know about his childhood or about what tension existed between him and bruce. he’s a stranger to her and it puts her in this place to listen to and empathize with him rather than judge him, not to mention it’s interesting to explore the void he could fill for her while she's still mourning the loss of bruce and damian from son of the demon. also obv given jason’s mommy issues i think it would be nice to see him meet and develop a bond with someone like her bc she’s not going to die, she’s not going to use him, she genuinely cares about his well being (in the world where she wasn’t written by racist white men obv), etc. he’s traumatized in ways very different from her but in ways i think she’d still intimately understand bc she feels as alone and isolated as he is. i have too many posts about them tbh but here are some of my favorites 

and then i don’t know that i would see him having deep, faithful friendships with selina or helena but i could see him working with them in the field bc i think some of their moral leanings and motivations align on occasion also like. the shared experience of being from a darker side of gotham yfeel 

[cooltrainererika]

Hetalia Emblem: Once Upon A Hallowed Night (pt. 1)

(Note: This was originally posted yesterday, October 20th, but due to typos, I have reposted it. It is still probably a bit rough, but hopefully there’s less glaring errors. I was also intending to release fic 2 yesterday, though it will be released later today, the third one probably won’t see the light of day for a while)

Hello! This is my entry for this year’s #hetaween #hetaween19/20! The prompt is 10/20; “Crossover”. And I have delivered! At least part of it!

However, this requires some explanation; this takes place in my Samuraiverse/Flagverse AU, or “Hetalia Emblem”, a theoretical Hetalia x World Flags (if you don’t know, it’s this: world-flags.org) x Fire Emblem crossover game. Basically, it’s Hetalia characters, World Flags outfits and weapons (as well as certain character elements; they will become apparent as you read along), and Fire Emblem gameplay, story elements, and lore elements. Unlike “Alt-talia”, the AU I usually write in, I’m thinking I might use characterizations closer to canon instead. Though they still may be slightly different.

So I saw the prompt, and thought this was a perfect place to spread my AU more. Basically, this is a human AU taking place in a Japanese medieval setting with international elements. A summary can be found here: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DarthWiki/HetaliaEmblem (Or in my post on the subject)

Now, this requires minimal knowledge of Fire Emblem, though some spell names and skills (basically things that can enhance a unit on the battlefield) and such might be referenced. (Also, if anyone wants to use this AU, go ahead! Please!)

And tonight, I have for you not one fic, but a batch of three! First, a spiritual tale. Second, a fun trick-or-treat story with a twist. And third, an action story (hopefully)!

Also these are being released separately so I can hope to get one out the door by the end of today. Though oh well, it’s the 20th in most of the rest of the world.

Also, this is an idea for a support conversation somewhat modified to fit the holiday. If you don’t know what a support conversation is, they’re conversations that you can unlock between two characters to make them bond more, making them perform better around each other in battle. As such, it was the one I was most sure about. This is based on their C to B conversations, I think (since D conversations are a thing in this game).

I also haven’t decided fully on some names, or whether to use different names than Alt-talia, for those who were never given names or have inaccurate ones. However, I have decided to use the ones here for the time being. And Matthew keeps getting called by his full name because everyone’s name is spelled out in kanji in-universe, and in Japanese “Matt” doesn’t make much sense as a nickname for “Matthew”. Also, while a character mentioned in this fic has a name in Alt-talia, here I decided to keep him unnamed. It is kind of debatable if they’re the same character after all…

I’ll also say that many of the characters here, especially the focus characters, don’t have a set costume design or weapons, but will be assumed to be sword users for the time being until further notice, since it’s most likely they are.

And since these were kind of rushed, they may not be best written. So yeah… sorry about that. The second one in particular may kind of meander a bit.

A final note: this IS NOT shipping! Almost no shipping happens in Hetalia Emblem (so no S conversations in this game), as such pretty much all interactions are platonic by default.

Without further ado… Trick-or-Treat!

……….

On the night of the last day of the tenth lunar cycle, when the harvest is ripe and the harsh winter is nearing, the realms of the mystical and spiritual and this realm are at their nearest point, so close the barrier between them almost nonexistent; it is this one night of the year which is prime time for the departed to see those they had left behind, and for the mystical to give us a visit…

Closure

He had found her some ways away from the camp, bathed in the smoky aroma of incense, her pale hair seemingly glowing in the moonlight.

“Ms. Natallia?”

She turned, the ghouls departing.

“What do you want?”

The boy flinched a bit, but then continued to move towards her, revealing his face. Not that it mattered; his white kimono had made that quite obvious.

Yong-Soo hesitated, his face flushed a shade of pink, sputtering.

“H-hey, Ms. Natallia! Erm… it’s me again.”

“What do you want? Don’t waste my time again.”

Her voice was curt, cold.

The boy straightened himself out, shook his head, and cleared his throat.

“I won’t. You can talk to dead people, right? I mean, I heard that you have powers like that, despite not being a mage or anything, and…”

She could see exactly when his face turned uncharacteristically serious, she observed. Somewhat perplexing.

“Yes? And?”

“…I need your help.”

Natallia simply blinked.

Yong-Soo took a deep breath and continued.

“I need to tell you something.”

“…”

“…Hyung Yao isn’t my real brother. I used to have a biological brother. A twin brother, actually…”

A brother?

His normally cheerful, jolly voice had a tinge of pain behind it that was small, but as apparent as the luminous moon above. For whatever reason - though she knew why deep down - she felt her heart being tugged at.

“…But one day, he just disappeared. He was gone. I don’t know what happened to him. …I spent a year looking for him, but… I never found him.”

“…”

“I want closure. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. But, if he is dead… I want to at least say goodbye to him.”

No response.

She turned.

“Please… please…”

The teenager’s voice was starting to break, but he didn’t care. He briskly bowed, his head down low.

“Please… Please, I only-“

“Come with me.”

The dancer lifted his head immediately, just as the woman was starting to walk away.

His face lit up, his eyes becoming misty from the shock and joy at her words.

“Thank you! Thank you!”

———

The air inside her tent was heavy with incense, the ominous glow emitted from the small fire in front of Yong-Soo and the sticks of incense giving the dim tent a warm glow.

“What is his name?”

“It is-“

Once she had heard it, she simply nodded, calling upon it thrice in a hushed whisper.

Nothing.

“…He isn’t here.”

“What does that mean?”

“Even if he is dead, he hasn’t visited you. Yet. Now, quiet.”

The boy immediately straightened himself again, nodding

“Yes ma’am.”

————

Natallia had been silent, deathly silent. Even he wouldn’t dare raise a sound. It had felt like time had stopped. Despite the warm glow of the flames and incense, he felt chills; not just any, but a strange chill from within and without. He could have even sworn he saw glowing, fire-like orbs flicker around her.

————

Ion felt the spiritual energy; what kind of dark mage would be if he weren’t. It drifted ambiently in the air, but radiated from a certain, definite place.

It seemed Huong Lien felt it as well, the mage having poked her head out of her tent, her two familiars floating around her frantically, apparently either in distress or hyper-energized by the high concentration of mystical energy.

Somewhere on the other side of camp, Arthur could be heard loudly complaining about a headache.

Ion felt he now had a good idea as to why Yong-Soo seemed so excited when he had heard from him she could see ghosts…

————-

Connecting with the spiritual realm was a strange experience that was unlike any other. It was like being in one place but everyone, trancelike but alert.

On this day, when the other realm was the closest, however, the process was made easier; relatively, at least.

Neither she nor Yong knew how long she had been there, but in time, she found herself fully back in their realm.

Yong’s anticipation reached a boiling point. He couldn’t take it anymore. He had to know.

“…So? Did you find him? Was he-“

“He wasn’t.”

His face started to light up, but with a hint of hesitation, as if barely holding himself back from hoping just yet.

“So… so he’s so alive? He’s still out there somewhere?”

“Yes.”

Tears pricked the dancer’s eyes, as the information fully soaked into the teen’s brain.

Natallia hadn’t noticed herself make a rare, small smile at the sight, though not that he noticed - he finally broke down into tears of joy, repeating “He’s alive! Gods, he’s alive!” to himself.

“Congratulations.��

“Damn it, why did he leave me for so long?! That dastard!”

———-

By the time Yong had left, thanking her profusely of course, she had finally realized she had been smiling.

Natallia couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this… happy for someone outside her family.

But it was as if she saw some of herself in this annoying dancer boy.

Some of that scared, lonely girl and her sister as they called out into the cruel, unforgiving howls of a certain snowstorm.

[bat-lings]

Is Bruce a good father to Damian, specifically? I mean, he seems to have learnt from past mistakes... but in preboot, does he even care about Damian at all? Didn't seem like it most of the time (especially in Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, where he didn't even seem to care that Damian's life is in danger). Do you think he cared about Damian preboot?

Well, you are both right in that reboot!Bruce puts his preboot counterpart to shame where Damian’s concerned. The thing is, the reboot gave a much bigger place to Bruce and Damian’s dynamic than preboot ever did. Those two actually don’t have that many scenes together in preboot, and said scenes were usually part of a bigger plot/narrative that left little room to focus on their relationship.

I’ll answer this in three stages in order to address everything our Anons mentioned:

Bruce & Damian’s dynamic as portrayed by Morrison

The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul

Conclusion: does preboot!Bruce care about Damian? And was he a good father to him? (spoilers: yes and no, respectively.)

The conclusion summarizes everything so jump there if the argumentation part is too long.

A) Morrison’s Damian & Bruce

Disclaimer: I really, really hate Morrison’s writing. I’ll try to be reasonable when criticizing it but be extra aware of that bias. It makes me put most of Bruce’s action on the writer rather than the character and while I have my reasons & probably won’t change my opinion, it’s still a pretty categorical take.

Honestly I think Morrison’s Bruce does feel responsible for Damian. I’m even sure he cares about him too:

[Batman (1940) #657]

Actually, the whole issue is pretty good where Bruce & Damian are concerned. Must be my favorite thing Morrison has ever written. He installs interesting things character-wise, like Bruce making an extra effort to make Damian comfortable in the Manor & be patient with him, or Damian being an insufferable brat up until Bruce snaps at him, at which point he immediately switches off to “yes sir” in front of that new figure of authority.

Those are interesting bases to construct a dynamic upon. Problem is, they’re not gonna be exploited.

Here Bruce shows clear intent to provide guidance to Damian. But rather than give Bruce the occasion to follow up on that intent, and to develop a real relationship with Damian, Morrison gives us the incident Anon mentioned in the next frickin’ issue : an explosion set by Morrison’s godawful “““Talia””” that should’ve killed both her and Damian, and Bruce staring dramatically into the distance.

Does Bruce investigate their disappearance while Damian is being hardcore abused by his mother? Nah, he’s too busy skiing with one Jezebel Jet– a relationship Morrison needs to install since Jezebel has a notable role in Batman RIP.

My point is: as of #658 Morrison considers this arc finished & that there’s nothing to add. By that logic it’s valid to forget Damian until he’s relevant again plot-wise. It’s not (i think?) a way to tell us Bruce doesn’t care about Damian.

Let’s fast-forward to the disputable editorial & writer choice to launch Batman Inc/Leviathan  just after Bruce’s return from the “dead” without A) leaving room for a  confrontation/closure scene between him and Damian beforehand; or B) letting them actually interact more than the strictest minimum in said arc. From a strictly in-universe POV though, it’s not ooc for Bruce to decide unilaterally that Damian doesn’t need him or to focus on the crisis to come without talking to his son first.

I guess I should be talking about Batman Incorporated Vol. 2 too, ‘cause while it’s technically N52 it’s very much in the continuity of the storyline Morrison started in preboot. It also has a few Bruce & Damian moments where despite terrible miscommunication Bruce seems to worry for Damian… But then the plot requires Bruce sending Damian back to the mother who, in this dumbass version, abused him all his life.

[Batman Incorporated (2012) #4]

If I got that right this is a “Hero must make Big Sacrifice for the Greater Good” moment. The fact that Bruce loves Damian isn’t put into question: it makes the sacrifice more significant.

And that’s kinda my problem. First we’re told that Bruce wants to provide for Damian, but then whatever affection he feels for the boy is sidelined or even sacrificed to other narrative considerations.

So basically Bruce’s love for Damian has no significance in itself. It’s a given that doesn’t particularly need to be illustrated or expanded on; it’s stocked until we need it to breed impact in some scenes. Like the one above or, you’ve guessed it, Damian’s death. So yeah Bruce loves Damian. He loves him so much he’s sad when he dies. Ahem.

All in all it’s not a father-son story: else there would be more banter, slice of life sequences, time for the dynamic to develop, etc. It’s a hero-who-loses-stuff-in-war story. One story isn’t better than the other, they just appeal to different types of audiences.

“Does my father love me” is a personal thus small stake. Batman Inc/Leviathan or “Can I keep this future from happening” are world-wide to city-wide thus big stakes. I think a marked interest in the Big Ideas is what characterizes Morrison’s writing. Thus the portrayal of character relationships has a very specific place in his stories.

Anyway: I don’t think Morrison ever wanted to imply Bruce doesn’t care about Damian. It’s just that he’s a plot-driven writer and that both characters’ interactions & smaller stakes, although somewhat present in his narratives, will always come second in the big schemes of things.

If you consider that Bruce behaving like he does under Morrison’s pen proves he doesn’t give a damn about Damian though, I sure as hell won’t fault you for it.

B) Bruce & Damian in The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul

(God re-reading an in-character Talia these days is an oasis in the desert. Gotta love that arc all the more for that.)  

Not gonna lie fam. Our two Anons are right when they say Bruce is pretty cold in that one.

But A) Bruce is also dealing with a crisis, which means he’s emotionally removing himself from the situation; B) he’s not treating Damian differently than he is Dick or Tim… which we’ll see is the problem tho.

It doesn’t excuse Bruce’s behavior (I think he’s out of line myself), but I just don’t think it implies he doesn’t care about Damian.

You’ll notice that his apparent aloofness applies to Tim too (and Dick although he’s not mentioned), and that it equally unsettles Talia.

[Nightwing (1996) #138]

I want to stress the apparent in aloofness. On several occasions during RoRAG Talia reproaches Bruce that he’s not confronting his feelings what else is new. I believe he’s worried about the boys, all of them, but he also trusts them to handle themselves. He also thinks that if he so much as voices his worry, he won’t be able to focus and do what he has to. So he represses them and goes fully in Batman-mode.

Fast-forward. When Bruce is barking at Damian to pick up a sword and fight, it’s his way of protecting him– he needs Damian to defend himself.

[Detective Comics (1937) #839]

Because it’s not fair to show this without context: 5 seconds before Bruce legit bites Damian’s head off, chill out dude, he goes all protective batdad upon seeing Ra’s trying to steal Damian’s body.

So yeah. I have reasons to believe Bruce is scared out of his mind here. Hence the very aggressive way he tries to shake Damian into action.

So far Bruce gets a pass. It’s afterwards that he deserved to be punched in the face imo, and that’s probably the scene our Anons had in mind:

In fact, Bruce is expecting the same from Damian than he’s expecting from his two other sons. To be precise, he’s not treating either of them as sons— they’re on the field, they’re Robin & Nightwing right now. Aka soldiers/partners/teammates rather than family. And Bruce is putting Damian on that exact level when he shouldn’t be.

It’s harsh, and that’s emphasized next to Talia (who is actually written like a Talia). She’s all aggressively worried mother and Bruce’s all cold commander, the contrast is off-putting.

Talia reacts like a mother first by fleeing to save herself and her son. But Bruce can’t let Ra’s to his own devices, and he expect his sons to fight beside him.

It’s unfair to Damian ‘cause he’s not Robin yet, he’s not part of Bruce’s war the way Dick and Tim chose to be, he didn’t choose to be dragged into Ra’s schemes: he’s snapping to attention at Bruce’s order out of a childish need for validation, not out of a conscious & thought-out choice to make this his life. Also he’s ten. Yet those considerations fly over Bruce’s head: right now and unlike Talia, he’s not thinking like a father.

Do I think Dini balances the Greater Good vs Familial Attachment dilemma better than Morrison does? Hell yeah. He took the time to show Bruce ripping Ra’s apart at the beginning of the issue to prove us Bruce cares. And for all that Bruce’s wrong here, Dini has him fighting beside Damian, not sending him off on his own. Talia’s fleeing with her son gives the reader a reality check & puts the validity of Bruce’s choice into question as it should be. The stakes are also so much more concrete that “distant dark future to avoid”.

Next is probably my fave line ever written about Bruce & Damian ‘cause it gives so much sense (or depth) to Bruce’s hands-off approach.

And like. Everything that Bruce says here is true. That’s exactly what Damian’s character arc should be about. But dude maybe try to have a relationship with your son outside of the Batman legacy? The thing is Bruce built his relationships with all his kids through vigilantism and I think he just. Doesn’t know how to do it differently. The idea doesn’t even cross his mind for god’s sake.

By my understanding it’s not that Bruce doesn’t love Damian. It’s that he genuinely believes Damian’s better off without him.

It’s low key confirmed in Bruce Wayne: The Road Home.

[The Road Home: Batman & Robin]

((Don’t trust anything Bruce says about Dick’s “casualness” or whatever in this issue tho. Nicieza just… doesn’t know Dick��s character all that much.))

So Bruce is basically taking the easy way out, yeah. Both in ‘Tec and in choosing it’s not worth trying to work with Damian as his partner. He decides Talia is a better parent & Dick is a better mentor than he could be, and he’s off fighting the good fight against Leviathan.

We can stretch it and say Bruce probs decided he’ll take care of his relationship with Damian after the Leviathan thing is dealt with but tbh I don’t know if DC or Morrison thought that far ahead.

Conclusion

Morrison’s narrative installs that Bruce does feel morally obligated to care for Damian. And although I get why it can feel uncertain, I’m not sure we’re supposed to doubt Bruce loves Damian.

Bruce not looking for Damian after the explosion is is more due to the writer’s choice to consider the “Damian issue” closed for now so that he can focus on his next plot/installment. I guess.

When Bruce has the idea to send Damian back to fake-Talia, I guess his love for his son is a tool used to show how much Bruce is a selfless hero*. and a terrible dad but he’s a Hero™ so it’s okay.

Bruce in RoRAG doesn’t come as indifferent to Damian’s safety to me, he’s being his dumbass self in a crisis situation. He’s got no excuse for sending Damian alongside Dick & Tim when he did though.

On two occasions Bruce unilaterally elects that Damian is better-off without him. First with the in-character Talia who actually loves her son, second as Dick’s partner.

* Actually it’d be very interesting if someone who liked that comic-book could explain me wtf I didn’t get about its narrative significance. Sometimes our personal tastes just render us blind to some things guys.

TL;DR: Does preboot!Bruce love Damian? Yes. Was he a good father to him? No.

And I’m feeling way more comfortable giving a categorical answer here than when I was asked if Bruce is, in general, a good father.

To be fair Bruce does try to step into a fatherly role in Morrison’s Batman #657, aka just after he meets Damian. Afterwards we get sidetracked; and later storylines just. Don’t really give Bruce & Damian the opportunity so share father-son moments.

His behavior in RoRAG is just plain bad. The fact that it’s not due to indifference doesn’t change that. The ten-year-old who didn’t ask for shit should be treated differently that the seasoned vigilantes Dick and Tim are, period.

Obviously leaving Damian in fake-Talia’s clutches or wanting to send him back to his abuser goes under “bad father points” too. If you consider the whole of Morrison’s run should be integrated into your personal understanding of the character, that is. woops look at that terrible bias showing its ugly face again

In later episodes, it’s tempting to give Bruce a pass by saying that he just didn’t get the chance/time to be a good father to Damian, and part of it is true. But again, failing to invest in that relationship is completely in-character, and tbh it’s the part I find the most interesting character- and narrative-wise:

It’s A) self-depreciating (”Talia or Dick can provide my son what I can’t”); B) self-centered, in that Bruce doesn’t stop to consider what Damian thinks or wants; and C) cowardly, in that the second there’s someone else available to take care of Damian, Bruce stops trying to be a father and to invest himself emotionally because gasp, feelings!

As a comparison, think of how long it took for Bruce to go from mentor-protégé-e to father-child in his relationship with Tim and Cassandra; and to admit that’s how he felt about those kids. He didn’t adopt Dick until he was an adult either. Batdad needs time to un-constipate. It’s a Bruce thing, not a Bruce & Damian one.

(Jason is the only kid with whom Bruce immediately builds a wholesome relationship and that’s where you cry because if Jason didn’t die Bruce wouldn’t have half as much trouble getting close to his kids.)

Hope this word-vomit answers that. Thanks for the asks!