#in another medium or entirely different story where these circumstances were isolated maybe it’d make sense to explore

[roobylavender]

i mean most abusers do love the people they abuse. abuse isn’t something done with intention or malice half the time, it’s done by people thinking they’re doing the right thing. bruce’s love and need for control are constantly in conflict with each other and that’s why the robins are stuck waging a war against him. i feel like a big part of a dysfunctional parent-child dynamic is feeling trapped by your parent’s love. Even if you hate it, it’s still canon that Bruce has been historically bad with dealing with his kids. Half of them don’t even feel comfortable calling him dad cuz the relationship seems so undefined or shaky. In Dick’s case i feel like he has no grounds to oppose robin and his vigilantism because Bruce (deep down) loved having someone like dick around to fight crime with. They both refer that time as “the good old days” so it’s not like Bruce was truly opposed. It’s only when the actual reality of that negligent and naive behaviour materialises that he realises he fucked up (robin year one eg). Then he treats Dick in such a cold manner that Dick believes if he’s not robin, he’s not wanted. This has been a pattern since the golden days so no it’s not ooc for Bruce. Yes the natural conclusion to all the modern day tension should be for both parties to meet and resolve their issues but Bruce is still the abuser at the end of the day, and even though Dick’s self sacrificing nature might easily forgive him, on a textual level it should be clear that a true resolution between the two would need Dick to dig deeper, and for Bruce to be ready for rejection from his son.

i don’t disagree with that assessment of abuse like it’s absolutely true, but my problem is i don’t think the cold or controlling behavior is really a consistent enough pattern until we move into post-crisis canon. for several decades dick and bruce have a great rapport with each other bc that’s what everyone knows they’re supposed to have. like i don’t think most writers from the golden or silver age if asked that they intended to write bruce as an abuser would agree and say yes, and that distinction to me is impt, bc sure, we can take what we’re reading on a surface level and project our own experience or modern understanding of relationships onto it, but i don’t think that should happen to the extent authorial intent is superseded bc then you start to enter territory where you’re divorcing narrative from genre conventions. if we go by the assumption that bruce is an enabler and abuser for allowing dick to be a hero for so long without purported attention paid to his safety then that establishes practically every hero within the universe possessive of a sidekick as an abuser. and i do get that some people are interested in following that thread like esp in post-crisis we see that exploration a lot but ig for me personally it’s kinda like the thing that breaks the camel’s back and withholds the entire genre from actually allowing itself to explore more pertinent issues. not to say abuse isn’t a pertinent issue, it absolutely is and i do think there’s ways it can still be explored, but the primary reason the genre was established in the first place was in response to fascism. obv the engagement with that wasn’t necessarily complex early on but it’s incredibly impt to the development of the genre and as we can see in a modern context how that response to fascism or lack thereof is conveyed can be incredibly influential in terms of facilitating support or not for fascist government. so my issue is like, yes, it’s impt for bruce’s faults in these relationships to be addressed to a constructive and worthwhile extent, but i also think writers have gone so drastically far in curating those faults in the post crisis era that it’s effectively restricted the scope of the stories they’re allowed to tell, bc they’re more focused on individual instances and relationships within this world than they are on any form of commentary that reflects the operations of the world at large in relation to regulation of crime