#not denying that bruce can be abusive in canon but

[robinverse]

The chad “I don’t see myself as a father figure but I think i can make a difference in his life” Bruce Wayne vs the virgin “I didn’t have a good childhood so why should he?” Bruce Wayne

First Panel - Batman: Dark Victory #9

Second Panel - Robin & Batman #2

[brucewaynehater101]

The number of times I've seen people argue that Bruce is a decent father and that he is not abusive absolutely blows my absolute mind.

Yes, you can hc whatever version of Bruce you want. You can even blame it all on bad writers or reject canon. You can claim comic!Bruce isn't your Bruce and main a different version of him. Those are all valid.

However, you can NOT say that he has ever been justified for hitting his kids. There is no excuse for him willingly laying his hands on his kids. It doesn't matter if the person is drunk, drowning in grief, lost in emotions, whatever. Hitting kids is not okay.

Continually, the physical abuse is a very obvious sign of Bruce being a shit dad in the comics. On top of that, there is so much emotional abuse and manipulation as well. He's shitty as fuck to his kids and there's no reason this is okay. He may love those kids, but that doesn't excuse his behaviors.

Anyways, reject canon Bruce all you want. There's certain aspects of other characters I reject, and DC stands for Disregard Canon. Feel free to have whatever version of Bruce you desire.

What is NOT okay is excusing or accepting canon Bruce's actions/behaviors as acceptable.

[bitterrobin]

you, batman/batfamily fan, can you be normal about parents and their flaws without making them exaggerated abusers?

can you absorb the fact that Jack and Janet Drake were not perfect parents, but they still loved Tim? and that Tim loved them enough that he tried to tear a razor sharp boomerang out of his father's corpse with his bare hands? that the Drakes were not millionaires who forced high society values onto their son for the sake of a public image? (that they weren't even rich for that long of a time?)

can you be normal about how the deep recesses of poverty affect a family unit while allowing a parent nuance? can you write Willis Todd without making him a classist caricature of an abuser? can you write Catherine Todd and Crystal Brown without portraying their drug addictions as fodder for their children's whump? (I added in Crystal bc she canonically suffered from drug addiction, but I haven't seen much of her in fics tbh)

can you accept that as much an abuser David Cain was, he still loved Cassandra enough that he utterly fell apart when she left him? That he was genuinely astonished/proud of her when she spoke to him for the first time even as she threatened him? he still sucks majorly, but you can't deny that he loved her. that's what makes their relationship so painful.

can you be normal about Talia al Ghul? can you write her without making her an ooc rapist or child abuser or cold dragon lady? can you acknowledge that every ounce of her characterization surrounding Damian is vastly different from her original pre-Morrison personality to the extent that og Talia would never even have a child in the League?

can you pick apart when a parents portrayal is out of character, that a writer made them hit or neglect their child because above all else they exist for drama and action? that you can find DC characters who actually had traumatic childhoods instead of grafting them onto a Bat-character? (> this last sentence is mostly about Tim btw)

Exploring a character's parents and how they affected them is always interesting, but I've seen fics that genuinely steer towards character assassination rather than an exploration of events written in the comics. They exaggerate a parent's portrayal not to write about a complicated parent-child dynamic but so they can have Bruce or Jason rushing in to comfort them (yes, this is about the Tim Drake shrimp fic). Idk, I think most of my ire just stems from the fact that content about Mia Dearden or Todd Rice or Grant Emerson aren't widespread, Mia specifically always gets explored in Bat-circles as someone that just adds to Jason's character rather than analyzing her on her own, in addition to the constant hell that Talia goes through in both canon and fanon.

[farshootergotme]

When people deny that Bruce is abusive or has abused his kids in canon, what do they define as abuse? Because I comprehend that abuse is the harm of one person to another that can be physical, mental or emotional. Usually it's done out of malice, but you can still intend harm while not being an evil person.

I consider Bruce a very complex and extremely complicated person. He does a lot of good in his city, but he also does bad when it comes to his personal relationships because of his inability to deal with emotions in a healthy or proper manner.

When I think of him as an abusive parent, I'm not thinking of him as a father who doesn't love or care for his children nor am I suggesting he's a horrible and irredeemable person.

I think he's abusive in the sense that he's violent towards his kids when he feels cornered or thinks if they get an opening to fight back it will be a fair fight and his actions will be justified when he doesn't know how to deal with a situation otherwise.

I think he's abusive when he neglects to provide a secure emotional support for his children and pushes them away instead, even when they're trying to reach out to him.

I think his abuse comes in many forms and not always intentionally, but it exists and it will keep happening because he doesn't have healthy coping mechanisms. He doesn't have a normal life, he doesn't have healthy emotional responses and he has too many issues to even start to unpack any of that.

He's far from the perfect parent we all wish he was and he keeps messing up no matter how overwhelming his love for his kids is because he only deals with the problems the city has, never his own.

When you focus too much on something big, you'll end up neglecting other aspects of your life, and in this case for Bruce it means neglecting his family for the sake of a city. And he's a hero, he saves people, he comforts the victims and brings protection to the children of Gotham. Sometimes he will even be a shoulder to cry for the criminals that deserve it. And all of that is too much for just one man, and Batman is no exception.

[aingeal98]

Bruce and Cass are so interesting to me because their canon dynamic in batgirl 2000 shows aspects of both a loving, caring father and a toxic one. And for me they hit that balance perfectly in a way that rings true to Bruce's characterisation of that era while also being more engaging than his usual macho patriarch nonsense. And then in fanon you can play around with that balance. Many people twist it all the way to loving WFA girldad which I understand. But it's also interesting to think about a Bruce and Cass dynamic that twists the dial the other way. Take Bruce's canon projection onto Cass and how he isolates her because it's what he/she needs to be the best Bat, and make it even more messed up.

A Bruce that projects so hard onto Cass but won't listen to Barbara at all and isolates Cass from her too. Cassandra understands him, Cassandra IS the Bat. Anything else is only tying her down. She doesn't need friends, she doesn't need Barbara. She is the Bat, she is him. And all she needs is him. Everyone else around them growing more and more uncomfortable with how Bruce denies Cass any sort of social life but he ignores them because they don't understand. No one does expect the two of them, isn't that right Cassie?

The au potential is fascinating to me because unlike say, Dick or Tim, Cass doesn't have a reference for a good parent. She's never known parental love that WASN'T dehumanising and toxic. Bruce is literally the upgrade from Cain no matter what he does and how he treats her because he understands her conviction against killing. When you think about just how fucked up and abusive Bruce could get without Cass realising he's Wrong and breaking free it's both horrifying and heartbreaking

... Good thing this is him in canon!

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

KATHERINA MINOLA (THE TAMING OF THE SHREW) (CW: Domestic Abuse)

1.) We had to read this for English my senior year. I got so mad at the way she's treated. She's the titular "shrew" of the play. She has to be married off before her younger sister can get married, because that makes sense.

Then the most dogshit man imaginable comes along, and everybody thinks they're perfect. He literally gaslights her and denies her food and water.

Fuck Petruchio and Katherine Minola deserved better!

2.) Literally the whole play is about how she is so awful that the main guy needs to change her entire personality, which he does as a challenge not because he likes her, and then proceeds to her abuse her for the rest of the play. Yet, he is portrayed as the hero, not a villain and she is shown to have "improved" at the end. People will say, oh it's open to interpretation, it can be played different ways, it's satire, but i don't find abuse funny and there is a distinct lack of commentary in the play to count as satire imo. Taming of the Shrew is a tragedy not a comedy, I will die on this hill. Kate deserves better!

3.) The title isn’t joking, ya’ll. She literally gets broken like a rebellious feral animal and it’s treated as a happy ending.

BARBARARA GORDON (DC COMICS) (CW: Ableism)

1.) Famously fridged in 1988, which was so popular with misogynists it became canon. After almost 2 decades of being one of the only disabled characters, was rebooted to a younger, more fun version of herself whose only history is that she was fridged but not disabled by it.

2.) The Killing Joke is one of the biggest comic examples of a female character getting hurt to motivate male characters. Also tbe way different cannons will trade off who her romantic intrest is out of Batfamily is pretty disturbing ranging from Bruce Wayne in Batman the Animated series universe (ew) to Tim Drake in the Arkham games (ew). Not to mention DC now is not letting her grow out of being Batgirl taking away her legacy of other young female heroes taking up her mantle and her getting to mentor them instead forcing her into a Batgirl cycle of purgatory when she was always better as Oracle (Its a little more complicated in the new Batgirl book but its still not solving the issues in a way that feels meaningful enough to make up the damage).

3.) Was shot as angst value for Bruce and her dad, implied to be sexually assaulted in The Killing Joke with absolutely no respect for her long career as Batgirl. When Alan Moore asked if he could, the editor said "cripple the bitch." She became paralyzed from the waist down. THankfully, an actually good writer picked her up from there and then wrote one of the best stories ever written (Oracle Year One: Born from Hope). Was one of the most iconic disabled characters in comic book history, hell, as Oracle, she was definitely up there as one of the most iconic disabled characters ever as well as a fantastic character, period. There were a few moments where people kept trying to make things out of her disability and had her be shitty to other women for no reason but for the most part, she was awesome. During her time In 2011, Dan Didio and some other misogynistic/ableist comic book writers were responsible for "curing" her disability and forcing her back into Batgirl, despite her having shown absolutely no desire to do so, as part of the New 52. They also made it an editorial mandate that she couldn't have glasses, a cool secret base, and her time as Oracle couldn't be referenced. This was because those writers were nostalgic for the 60s Batman show where Babs was played by an actress they all had the hots for and couldn't accept she'd grown up and moved on. That was bad enough, but over time, she's been increasingly deaged and reduced even further to just Dick Grayson's on and off again girlfriend and a generic girlboss. Batgirl of Burnsides burn in hell.

[twistpixel]

I’ve never seen a Jason liker say “he didn’t really kill all those people or hurt anyone”*** And yet other parts of the fandom are constantly putting out shit like “Jason stans are abuse apologists” *****But the part that is making me actually sick about it is the way Bruce fans, saying this kind of thing about Jason, and in those very posts say “Bruce isn’t perfect.” Like I’m going to actually be sick. Vomitrocious.

When the situation is literally abusive, as in “a person with a longstanding relationship with a pattern of using violence to control the other” suddenly you can’t say it? Grow up please. Like just be honest. You won’t go to hell if you say “canon Bruce abuses his kids I just like to think about him he’s my favorite character.” But I promise you will actually go to hell if you re-enact the end scene of Some Like it Hot but with times Bruce decked his kids. “Nobody’s perfect” “he’s made mistakes” Go straight to hell hitting your kid isn’t just a “mistake” and this admitting Bruce “isn’t perfect” is not the same as saying “Bruce has a persistent habit of being physically violent with his kids when he’s feeling angry.” THAT is the actual abuse apology.

*** Jason being under some kind of influence is popularized and maybe invented by fanon Tim likers who want to read 284950 fics of Jason beating Tim up and stabbing him and then swaddling him in a baby blanket so Tim can beatifically forgive him. Jason being mentally unstable =/= Jason being mind controlled. 98% of Jason fanblogs reblog every “your honor he did do those things” type post they can find. Where is the idea that Jason fans deny his actions coming from?

*****setting aside that these people don’t differentiate between assault and abuse when it props up their condemnation for them to use the word that sounds worse

[littledead-ridinghood]

Ollie Queen and Jefferson Pierce are in fact what batfans pretend Bruce is and both of them should be much more popular than they are now

They should be more popular! I haven’t read Jefferson Pierce yet but he (and tatsu) is on my really long reading list of character to get to, so I won’t speak on him yet but he seems really cool

Anyway: I just…I keep seeing “Ollie is so mean and hates his kids thank god Batman is here to save them and also yelling and berate Ollie for being such a horrible dad” content. And man…thank god I’m so good at keeping to my “just keep scrolling” philosophy

Like Bruce????

The man that continuously hits his kids with no repercussions, manipulates them, calls them “his soldiers in his war on crime”, never lets his kids think they’re doing good enough, projects all his insecurities, traumas, & prejudices on to them—

Without ever a “sorry” or working to be better? Like people love to flaunt Snowbirds but do you know how many years of effort Ollie put into his relationship with Roy to make it better again? So many. And he let Roy make the decision rather than forcing him back into the folds.

Furthermore. ollie is usually the one that tells Bruce to shape up (in politics and as a family man):

Infamously about Dick:

(Which Bruce follows up with “he’s more than that. He fights by my side…” but like it really just reads as bruce parentifing the hell outta him [Dick] and, by extension, the rest of the children he’s brought into his home)

And also infamously Jason:

(I’ll do an analysis on this story one day…one day)

Here you can see their differences as people and how they view theirs and the other’s family by how they differentiate between Jason and Mia. Where Ollie considers Bruce Jason’s father because Ollie sees himself a father as he took these kids under his responsibility, Bruce denies Ollie’s role of being a father because he doesn’t take responsibility for the role of bringing children into this life (especially because he very often does not see his children as children).

If you want a super politically outspoken man, someone who continuously gives back to his community, someone who actually hates cops…guys! Ollie’s right there!

Frankly, I don’t like playing into the “this is the character people should be liking rather than who they think they like” because it’s been done to me so many times and I Hate It. But when the character who is actually like this (Ollie) is given the role Bruce canonically fulfills (usually specifically to be used as a prop to uplift “good dad Bruce”) I lose it. I think I lose it specifically because in other aspect it’s about more so trivial things, differences on how the media was consumed and interpreted, or just haven’t read as much as the character as the fan has, but I’m Bruce’s case, so few people want to acknowledge the abuse he enacts on his kids (and co-workers) in lieu of playing happy family at the expense of the children’s characters

[floof-writes]

Officially Declaring War On The Canon V Fanon Debate in DC (it's fundamentally flawed, they are interdependent)

"Actually in canon" "fanon always gets this wrong" "Dick's the golden child" "Jason's the golden child" "In canon Alfred's an enabler" "Actually Bruce is abusive" "Hate when people pretend Tim cared about Jason as a kid"

Look, if being in the DC fandom has taught me anything, it's that canon has so many retcons and reboots that they made up an in-universe mechanic for when the world resets. Why are we pretending that Fanon is anything less than another branch of this world? Golden Age, Silver Age, Pre-New 52, Fanon. Who are we to say that if Superboy Prime punched reality hard enough or Flash fucked up enough, we wouldn't end up here anyway? Comics as a medium are messy and worked on by hundreds of people across the decades.

DC comics is almost a century old. The Justice League wasn't always called that and Batman wasn't always part of it, there's a Batman rogue named 'Condiment King' and one of his most recent appearances was in a fucking LEGO movie, Dick is named Dick. These characters and their stories are living artifacts- time capsules of decades long gone, but also undergoing constant and soul-deep change.

Moral of the story: If DC canon is your golden standard then you're measuring against a piece of cooked spaghetti.

And we expect canon to evolve, to be inconsistent. When they made Dick they didn't know about Jason, when they made Jason they didn't know there would be a Tim, and when they made Tim they didn't know Jason would come back. These characters are inherently fluid because they weren't created with each other in mind, so when the Batfam is all together today, their characterizations are adjusted to make them a more interesting group for the given storyline and genre. Canon has always just been an attempt at expanding on and experimenting with what has already been built, and it has always been influenced by the fans of the time. The most famous example being the phone in vote on Jason Todd's death that literally defines canon today. Characters are killed and resurrected and given comic runs based entirely on popular demand. Fans and fanon have power- and rightly so.

DC canon is simply the constant interpretation and reinvention of the work of hundreds of artists and writers over the years, all compiled into this conglomeration of Stuff- and guess what? That's exactly what fanon is.

"Fanon loses their mind when they see actual complexity" Guess what? Storytelling is based on archetypes. Fanon isn't a 'dumb it down' machine- it's a purifier. It boils things down to their essence. It takes the contradictory, awful, beautiful mess that is canon and turns it into something usable. Fanon characters tend to be an approximate average of all the different interpretations, and they separate the characters into the parts that people find the most compelling. It identifies the pieces of a character that define it to the audience and gives canon something reliable to work off of the next time they decide to rewrite the universe.

And yes, often times Fanon doesn't make it out without a heavy dose of optimism. The erasure of certain abuses, the resolution of certain arguments. Because let's face it: moral grayness is Uncomfy. And people engage in fandom largely for comfort- that is one of the main functions of all entertainment. In other forms of media, problems are given finality. Complexity is given a rest with an ending, happy or not- but comic books don't do that, and in the next run with the next writer they may just ignore it happened at all. Fanon's rose tinted glasses aren't always rose, sometimes they're a sickly green- it's just that to write the next story with nuance you have to have a solid starting point.

I'm not denying the power of working within the restraints of a predefined timeline, nor the power of something being officially canon. Returning to the source material can inspire new nuance, new details, new opportunities- but using the source material to disqualify nuance made by fanon is counterproductive and frankly dumb. We're all building off of eachother- why are you retconning something that existed only as an experiment? It's important to acknowledge that an audience is half the art, and once something is published, there's no way to take it back and make it definitionally pure again. It is the property of all those who consume it.

TL;DR- 1. Canon is absolutely fucked anyway. 2. Fanon and canon have always been and will always be intertwined and interdependent.

[fatexflipped]

"you should know better by now. fate has chosen... and cannot be denied."

idris elba  +  cis man  +  he/him  ✧  welcome to new york,  harvey dent  (two-face)  !  as a  fifty year old  villain  you’re no doubt itching to get back to  meeting with your lackeys  —  but first, if you could repeat your story for the record. you woke up on new year’s day with  a double-headed coin  beside you, right  ?  and you were dreaming about  cross-examining himself for the acquittal of james gordon  ?  thank you for your answers, and we’ll be in touch soon.

canon: new earth with some batman: the animated series thrown in!

AT A GLANCE:

full name: harvey dent alias: two-face age: 50 birthday: assigned may 30th by me ( dc says it's either january 1st or march 30th but. calendar man in the long halloween arc keeps saying harvey dent is a gemini so <3 he has a third birthday now <3 ) gender: cis man pronouns: he/him sexual orientation: bisexual romantic orientation: biromantic career: lawyer... and also gang leader? notable traits: i mean... half of his face fell victim to an acid burn, so... that's pretty notable. threat level: medium

SCRATCH IT:

affiliations: my manz is barely even affiliated with himself !, injustice league unlimited (past) abilities: toxic immunity weapons: handguns, double-headed coin strengths: genius level intellect, law, hand-to-hand combat, kung fu weaknesses: biiiiiiiiig instability

DIG DEEPER:

*all following connections are liable to change depending on muns ! positive personal connections: ... complicated personal connections: bruce wayne/batman (i just... really love them...), gilda dent, duke thomas/the signal (albeit, that's prime earth, but jic he's brought in!), pretty much all of the major rogues negative personal connections: himself, sal maroni, thomas elliot/hush, renee montoya/the question, most of the robins...

DIG REAL DEEP:

* expansion will be offered through task ! ( the double-headed coin is very important, mhm. ) mother: deceased (suicide) father: christopher dent, professional poor excuse for a human being brother: murray dent, deceased (burned alive ; inadvertently killed by a very young harvey (on accident!)) cause of 'ability' manifestation: sal maroni splashing him with acid during a questioning ( although it had been building up through a slew of ignored mental disturbances and the ignored trauma of his father's abuse - that was just the straw that broke the camel's back )

ABILITY & WEAKNESS EXPANSION

toxic immunity: it's never explained how (not to my recollection, at least), but harvey is unfazed by ivy's kiss, thus implying he's immune to toxins.

handguns: harvey is proficient in... a bunch of weapons, but his weapon of choice is the handgun. more specifically, he's known for his double-barreled gun -- big surprise there !

double-headed coin: not a conventional weapon, but he literally uses the coin to make, like... 85% of the choices in his life. it's always had a dark past, having been a coin his father would use to trick him into thinking there was a chance he wouldn't be beaten (see: he'd say if it landed on tails, harvey would be fine... but it's double-headed, so...), but the darkness amplified when half of it got scarred by the acid attack. shiny side, you get harvey. scarred side, you get two-face.

genius level intellect: my manz is brilliant, idk!

law: due to his career as a lawyer, harvey has an in-depth knowledge of the law... and the loopholes.

hand-to-hand combat: he can hold his own in a fight.

kung fu: ...

-

'biiiiiiiiig' instability: sure, all rogues are unstable, but very few are quite as unstable as ol' harvey! i'd argue that even the joker is more predictable since he doesn't rely on the flip of a coin.

[dyslexicandakeyboard]

Made this post before but child superhero does NOT equal child abuse.

Why?

It ignores real actual cases in the DC universe of children being forced (important key word) into the masked world and focuses on situations that would not qualify. Think Cass or (in some retrospects, he wasn't a child I think) Steel. There is a big difference between Tim forcefully asking Bruce to train him and make him Robin and what Cass went through which was abuse.

It is a fricking convention (convention just means something that is usually done which can include writing style or topics used in a piece of writing, it's kinda like a trope) of the genre. It's even in the Incredibles and no ones arguing that that's abusive. It's ingrained into superhero comics, especially Batman related properties, as writers wanted to attract younger readers. (Dick's first appearance reads like those wattpad stories ngl).

It devalues the agency of the characters. Basically, if you read most accepted or highly liked origins of the Robins/child partners, most of the origins give the children a lot of choice in the matter. It was their choice. I'm not arguing that it's a smart choice or a healthy choice. Nor am I denying that it allowed for them to have a well-adjusted adult life.

Forgets that the comics went through massive tonal, social and even genre shifts. Early comics were not meant to be serious and they have all the acceptable social attitudes of the day such as sexism. Early comics were not looking to write a study on the effects of a child being put into highly violent, high-pressure situations. They were looking to entertain children, where was their target audience. I think that modern comics are more critical of child heros, but it's kinda like saying that parents that put their children into ballet are inherently abusive/looking to give their children body issues. It's not that simple.

Weirdly enough, devalues other batfam characters that are not the Robins and the very independent natures of their origins to say that they were abused and forced into the role of a superhero.

I think it's good that there are fanworks that look critically at their childhoods and the effects of crimefighting. I love reading works that actually write Bruce as how he is shown to canonically parent/mentor (Not a physical/emotional Abuser nor that overly doting kissy-kissy-huggy unrealistic parent) and shows his mistakes. It's great that people are giving tropes and concepts a critical eye. However that would mean Clark's an abuser and Lois is an enabler which, obviously, is not right.

DC is set up in a particular way where one can train a child if they treat the child acceptably (ie not abusively). It's wrong to look into this setting and say that it's inherently child abuse.

Also, lots of tension between Bruce and the Robins due to Bruce barring them from patrol or taking away their mantles if they got hurt. It was a common trope in loads of fanfiction on ffnet to ground a Robin from patrol when they were hurt or the villain was very danguous, especially in the Young Justice (The TV show) fandom. It happened to Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian. Bruce has set limits on Cass, such as her not fighting metas, for her safety. If Bruce was actually written to be abusive and to not care for the safety of his partners (I understand that there are times in which Bruce has been abusive. I'm talking generally) this wouldn't be such a common occurrence.

So, in my opinion, child superhero ≠ child abuse

[throwntothevoid]

Writing for the Al Ghul Family is so difficult. For Example I want to write Damian as a character who struggles with right and wrong. Like he does frequently in canon. Then I also want to write Talia as someone who is morally grey and compassionate. But it's difficult to write a kid who is so angry and entitled but then deny how a large part of that is because of how the Al Ghul's raised him. How can I write a caring, compassionate mother Talia al Ghul when her kid is struggling with so much, let's be honest, abuse.

But then I fall into the trap of making it sound like Batdad is a great parent when in a lot of cases he isn't. Like I'm making Talia Al Ghul to be an evil parent just to make Bruce sound like a good parent. I despise the whole Batfamily is good and the Al Ghul Family is evil, black and white nonsense. Especially when the Batfamily has also fucked up with their own quite frequently.

Not to mention if you make the argument that raising your kids as assassins is bad then how can someone make the argument that Bruce training kids to fight crime around the ages of 10-12 years old as any better?

I just want to write morally grey Al Ghul family but I keep on falling into the trap that is called canon and it is really hard to get out of it. At this point it's difficult to write the Al Ghul's as anything but evil.

Anyways thank you for listening to me vent my internal struggles.

My condolences to any other writers out there who are suffering the same fate.

[incoherentbabblings]

What do you think of Bruce as a father? I understand that he’s not perfect, but I’m incredibly uncomfortable with the way he’s written as a parent. A lot of reproachful, unkind behavior gets brushed aside as “that’s just the way he is” or “he was under a lot of stress”. I don’t know, I wish the writers would take a lot more care in writing this part of him because it honestly makes me somewhat dislike his character as a whole 😔

Abuse discussion content warning below.

I have a lot of contradictory feelings towards Bruce. I think he loves his kids more than anything. I think he loves Dick more than anything. I think he has moments where he goes above and beyond the duty of any parent for their child. I think his reasoning for helping his kids is genuinely alturistic.

I also think Bruce is abusive, and I don't think it's one off tone deaf writers 'getting it wrong'. It's a consistent part of his character and goes back decades. And just as in real life, it's hard to reconcile the idea of a parent loving their child whilst also being abusive. It's not an easy thing to write about, so if I'm crass here, or get things wrong, I am sorry.

But I think the best example I can give is that Lemire's Robin and Batman is my favourite depiction of Bruce and Dick's relationship in years. It unequivocally writes that Bruce: A) Loves Dick very much. B) Is abusive. I'm very grateful for the fact that the book never side steps this fact.

I don't know. There's a lot of uncomfortable and difficult to explain things regarding Bruce's behaviour. It's all well and good to say the abuse stems from ptsd and trauma but then, is that just stigmatising mental illness, which is something that Bat comics (or superhero comics in general) do all the time? Do we really want to perpetuate that? And I'm not sure about the answers to any of that! I think the writers intent matters in these cases, and the thing that kills me is that there is no intent. Most of his writers genuinely have no clue what they've done, creating such a realistic cyclical depiction of an abusive parent. And a lot of the time, I really don't know how to feel about it all.

And yeah sure there's a lot of contradictions in his approach to his kids, but things that crop up again and again is denying them agency, unrealistic expecations, and a resulting coldness for when they fail to match them. I have seen, and I agree I think, that the very concept of Robin is abuse, and no not in the vigilante dodging bullets way, but in the Fear needs Hope Batman needs a Robin way. Placing the emotional stability of an adult as a responsibility of a child.

It's not just the hitting - of which there is plenty over the last fifty years to see - its the lack of communication, the financial control he exerts, the rejection and withdrawl of affection based on the kids having to hit impossible targets, the lying and manipulation... it goes on and on. Bruce ticks every box when it comes to parenting his kids. I don't blame people for wanting to scrub it, and they will have very sympathetic reasons for doing so. I get a little antsy however as that doesn't mean the actions and words are actually gone. Bruce smacking Tim was awful. I've seen arguments about its ooc nature and how it should be ignored and forgotten etc... but Bruce still hit Tim. I can open a book and look at it right now. Ignoring it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I don't mind reading or writing fics where Bruce is decidedly not abusive, I do it all the time certainly, but in canon, I think the whole #NotMyBruce is well intentioned but also a bit dangerous. People seeing their own abuse reflected back at them, and how in many ways that can actually be quite affirming, only to have someone come along and be like 'that's not the real him' or whatever long essays they write about BtAS (which... he's still abusive in that I'm sorry but he is) being the 'their' Batman doesn't really help.

Abuse survivors don't want to read an iteration of such things versus those who in one way or another take comfort from it. The needs of one don't cancel out the needs of the other? I hope that makes sense. It's a very complicated thing to try and put into words. Many blogs have written about it much better than I.

I just think, the abuse is still there on the page, saying it 'doesn't count' because it was ooc (it's not) doesn't make it go away, and I think its dangerous to ignore it. I think it's important to draw a distinction between looking at what is shown on the page, and how that fits into a pattern of other instances, versus what you want Bruce to be, and how there may be contradictions about the abuse portrayed in other pages.

[apopcornkernel]

i dont mean that bruce is a perfect parent nor do i mean that they (or you) should just ignore the shitty things he's done. it's always very hard to talk about bruce characterization esp wrt parenting because a lot of things he's done are very shitty and sometimes ooc and ALL of them are irreversibly canon

but the fact remains that these people love him. you may hate him for things he's done, but these people love him. you may not be able to forgive but these people have—or even if they haven't, well, they still love him. love doesn't mean they're always happy, or that they're soft and warm and cute found family. love is chains too. love is knowing the best and the worst, and choosing to love the best and the worst

idk. i just find it really sad when i stumble upon people who love a batcharacter, who also completely hates bruce, like absolute hatred and thinks he's an irredeemable abuser. first off, dc comics will forever burn for how frequently they assassinate his character to the point that he hits his kids.

second off, and again what i said earlier—you are missing out on SO MUCH without that love between the batcharacter and bruce. you have to accept that im afraid. as a jason stan (he was my gateway into comics <3) what makes him and uth so tragic is how much he loves bruce. there's anger, and there's hurt, and all that only exists because he still loves him. it makes me feel so extremely unwell. and imo you can't understand jason as a character without understanding why and how he still loves bruce, which means you need to understand bruce

it's the same with dick especially—he's quite literally the blueprint. him and bruce have got the longest relationship of all the bats and to deny that devotion takes away a HUGE part of his character. that man raised him for a good portion of his life, mentored him, was his partner for years on the field. of course bruce has done shitty things and like i said we can argue all day about whether it's ooc or not. but the fact is that IN CANON dick still loves him, dick has always loved bruce and it's reductive to erase that

the third example i put in my post up there was cass. i notice a lot of people like to put cass as the voice of reason. (if she's not just. token silent asian that is.) it's very strange to me. i do think cass can recognize bruce's flaws but at the same time she is quite literally the most loyal person to him i feel like. especially to the concept of batman, she is loyal to that before bruce. her and bruce are so alike that it hurts my heart; they're like a cycle of inherited violence and the yearning and hope for justice despite despite despite. they would give everythinf for the mission. cass of all people would be the most understanding when bruce acts like bruce about vigilante things

i just—i cant fathom ppl ignoring all of this and just reducing batcharacters' relationship with bruce to the typical abusive parent thing. like not only is it grossly ooc for bruce to do those things in canon, it just removes all the beautiful complexity in their relationships. idk. its 3am and i just drank coffee even tho im sensitive to caffeine. its whatever

ngl idk how u can stan dick or jason or cass—or, just anyone in that family who loves bruce—without u urself loving bruce

[autisticcassandracain]

I've seen multiple people say now that writers, rather than ignoring the writing in which Bruce is written as abusive, should confront and work through it. And I get why; not acknowledging the abusive actions and simply writing sweet scenes while those actions are still canon re-frames those scenes as an abuser having good moments with their victims, rather than genuine good parenting. Not acknowledging those scenes as abusive also makes it easier for people to deny those scenes were examples of abusive parenting at all, which is potentially dangerous. And in general, when writing abuse, you should be acknowledging it as such, rather than pretending abusive actions aren't abusive actually. So I get it. But I disagree.

First of all, it is important to acknowledge that the writers of abusive!Bruce do not recognize they are writing him as abusive. I think there are very little writers who would write cornerstone superhero Batman as abusive, and DC editorial would not allow it if they realized that's what they were doing. This means that, barring a change in editorial to staff that knows how to recognize abuse in writing, there is absolutely no reason to believe that a) a writer would be allowed to re-frame Bruce as abusive, or b) that any redeption arc for Bruce would actually stick. There is a very high chance that, even if a writer acknowledges Bruce's behaviour as abusive and has an arc working through it, the next writer will simply ignore it and revert Bruce's behaviour. This is something we've already seen in writers attempting to address Bruce's manipulative, emotionally closed-off nature, only for him to continously revert back to it when written by other writers. I would even argue that this is part of what can make him read as abusive in canon; none of his apologies or promises to do better ever stick. Why would an arc addressing his behaviour as abusive be different? In fact, if they have that arc, and later he ends up acting abusive again anyway, it'll look like that arc was nothing more but another entry in a series of false abuser apologies.

Second, there really wouldn't be a satisfactory way to write that arc to begin with. Any kind of redemption arc would, by nature of this being Batman comics and this being too important of an arc to contain to only one comic run/series, frame Bruce, the abuser, as the main character over his children, the victims. Prioritization of the abuser's feelings over that of the victims is a real epidemic in media (and real life), and this arc, no matter how well-intentioned, will play into that trend.

Secondly, in my opinion, the only proper way for abuser redemption arcs to end is for the abuser to go straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect 100$. Anything less than that shows, to me, that the abuser is unwilling to face the consequences for their actions. And Batman's not going to jail for child abuse and serve out his sentence, it just isn't going to happen, so.

But even if you disagree and believe there are satisfactory ways to end an abuser redemption arc in a way that does not end with the abuser in jail (or like, dead I guess), I think it's very reasonable to say that abusers should not be superheroes, even if they are reformed. If nothing else, an abuser redemption arc for Bruce should end with him realizing he isn't fit to be Batman if he can't even keep his children safe from himself. This means that this arc would have to end with a permanent change in status quo, either ending Batman as a character or having someone else (likely one of Bruce's children) pick up the mantle of an abuser. That second one would have to be done exceedingly delicately. But either way, this change in status quo is simply not something that's ever going to happen, not permanently. This leaves us with an arc where the absolute best case scenario ending is 'Bruce apologizes to his children and goes to therapy, but ultimately doesn't stop being a superhero or face up to any real consequences even though he is a self-admitted child abuser'. Is that really a satisfactory end for anyone? It isn't for me.

All this is without even bringing other people into it. If we were to do a proper arc addressing Bruce's abuse, we'd have to address the presence of other adults in Bruce's life who should've stopped the abuse as well. Alfred, while often disapproving of Bruce's actions, has never attempted to stop the abuse long term, making him an enabler. Once she hit adulthood Barbara carried a responsibility to stop the abuse as well. As someone who has never been a victim of Bruce's abuse, and someone who was in a pretty safe position from him and, as a superhero, should know how to recognize abuse, her non-involvement is hard to justify. Especially since, as Oracle (while diminished in the new continuity) she would be in a near-perfect position to gather evidence or, if all else fails, blackmail, to stop Bruce. That is, unless she didn't know the abuse was happening, which, considering how often Bruce has hit his children while in capacity as Batman, is extremely unlikely.

And that's not getting in to the superhero community as a whole. Did none of them notice? Not even Clark, with his superhuman hearing? Did none of the teams of the various Robins notice? If so, okay, people often overlook and don't notice abuse committed by their friends and colleagues, and this doesn't make it their fault. But it certainly stretches my suspension of disbelief if nobody noticed, since, again, Bruce often hit his kids in capacity as Batman, and it's literally these people's job to notice these things. But ignoring that, it would shake the foundations of superhero society to find that one of their cornerstone members is an abuser, and none of them noticed. This would affect pretty much all other superhero books running at the same time as Bruce's arc. This isn't to say that would be bad or impossible to handle (though involving so many writers would definitely make the chance of one of them fucking up higher), but I included this to illustrate how big of a deal this arc would actually be. It could not stay contained to just Batman books. And afterwards? Would the Justice League still be willing to work with Batman? If they are, that's a really, really bad look. If they aren't, they should stop Bruce from being Batman, which, as we've established, wouldn't stick.

Like, this arc would be extremely complicated, and there's basically no way it's going to be done well. There are too many complications, too many pitfalls, too many comic book-isms getting in the way. It's just not going to work.

[zeroducks-2]

There is a brake in people's heads that stops them from recognizing/admitting that the protag of a story, the one hailed as a hero by the narrative, is a toxic person and/or did despicable things.

This happens because of moral panic, because if Character does something bad means they're a bad person, which also means that "I cannot like them because they're a bad person, I can only like good and morally upstanding characters". And it also happens because it's easier to "go with the flow" of a narrative that gives you the instruction manual on how to feel about this or that character. They say you should hail Batman as a hero always and every time and that he's always justified for his actions, and so they do exactly this without questioning it.

Then you present them with a number of evidence for the fact that no, Bruce isn't always justified for his actions, that he's a deeply flawed human being who's entirely capable of abuse (and that it essentially depends on who's writing him). And so they have to defend their post and make him look good by comparison, like what happens with Tim's parents (that from neglectful in canon material turn into violent monsters so that Bruce can swoop in and save poor little abused Timmy). Or they just flat out deny it, and say that the comics where Bruce abuses the fuck out of the kids do not count because "X reasons".

It doesn't help that in order to have their Wholesome™ slice of pie, people will go to ridiculous lengths. I had literal "I don't like the comics where Bruce hits Dick so I pretend they don't exist", and "Bruce is a good dad in my head so for me the only canon comics are those in which he's a good dad". Like, fuck. Why don't you fucking go read another story, one in which the patriarch is actually a benign gentle giant, and stop shoving Wholesome Tired Sitcom Dad Bruce down my throat.

(I feel like it's important to say this every time I talk about this topic and I have no qualms repeating it: I have ZERO issues with people who write their wholesome Batfam fanfiction, or draw their Sleep-deprived Dad Bruce fanarts, and what have you. I'm strictly talking about the BRUCE IS CANONICALLY A GOOD DAD AND I WON'T ACCEPT ANYTHING ELSE!1!! crowd of folks. Which, coincidentally, very often tend to be antis and will get nasty once they find out what you ship, at least that's how it tends to go down in my personal experience)

Thinking about Batman fans and the tendency to ignore or excuse Bruce's abuse of his kids while painting every other non perfect parent character as one-note child abusers. Almost seems like. Projection, mayhaps? "No, my fav dilf isn't abusive, YOURS is." "He didn't abuse [Jason, Tim, Damian, etc] because their old parents were totally way worse." And the fics that write other parents as being so cartoonishly evil so they can have Bruce swoop in and be absolutely perfect in comparison. I'm not even mad/upset about it anymore. I'm just kind of rolling my eyes at the immaturity of it.