#or like that time in batgirl i forget the issue number where babs is like

[mamawasatesttube]

you know how bruce is often doing shit like bringing up his dead parents all the time apropros of nothing? like

(action comics #784)

well i think it would be REALLY funny if he pulled that one at kon sometime, because:

(supergirl (1996) #76)

i need this actually. like i NEED this. can you imagine??

bruce: you don't know pain like i do. i watched my parents die-- kon: well hey, at least you HAD parents! bruce: ...hn.

like what would his dramatic brooding ass even say to that. lmaooo

[gnawingonwood]

I don’t know how you got so close to realizing it’s no characters’ fault for the shafting of another character, just to heel turn and blame it all on Damian.

And the function of that is that when Bruce dies - Dick feels he HAS to take care of this shitty kid along with Bruce’s legacy which means he is completely isolated from the entire rest of the Bat Family. Tim has been fully driven out at this point and is spiralling, Steph has just walked in on a total fucking trashfire, ERROR 404 Cass not Found and Babs is just sort of in the background sometimes. The Bat Family becomes “Dick and Damian”, and then when Bruce comes back they don’t fix it. Because they can’t fix it. Because the ethos now is “Bruce’s biological son is the only true member of his family.”

This is just not how Batman Reborn worked, like, at all. Dick wasn’t isolated from the Batfam, he talked to Babs, and teamed up with Tim (Blackest Night), Steph (Batgirl), and Kate (Batman and Robin) while Bruce was ‘dead’, and then later on with Tim (Black Mirror) and Cass (Gates of Gotham). Tim was not driven out of the Batfamily, he left to find Bruce and Dick refused to drop everything and follow him.

You actually describe the state of each character during the Batman Reborn arc very vaguely, trying to leave just enough room for imagination to leave people thinking that everything sucked and it was all Damian’s fault, but it didn’t actually go like that. Steph was not ‘walking in on a trashfire’ she had her own solo where she was Batgirl and proving herself as a Bat. Babs was not just ‘sort of in the background’ she was co-starring in the Batgirl comic and mentoring Steph as Batgirl and Wendy as Proxy. Cass was still the victim of erasure by DC editorial because of the aforementioned racism and ableism, and doesn’t get her own book, but she does appear as a supporting character in the Red Robin, Gates of Gotham, and Convergence stories. It’s not nearly as much as she deserved, but she wasn’t gone.

And I think it’s absolutely wild that you think it’s some horrible thing that Dick and Damian are the only ones together most of the time because they’re Batman and Robin, it’s the dynamic duo for a reason, it wasn’t crazy when it was Tim and Bruce doing the same thing, only just now that Damian is by Batman’s side instead, the dynamic duo might as well have never been a thing. And if you looked at the number of stories in which it was more than Dick and Damian together, it wouldn’t look as much like the Batfam was dead and buried once Damian took up the R. And Bruce and Damian weren’t even a duo until after the reboot, so I guess we should look at the N52 next.

I’m not going to lie and say the New52 was actually great for all these characters, because it wasn’t. In fact, for basically everyone but Damian and Duke, it sucked. But you are entirely wrong in thinking it was because of Damian. Steph and Cass were erased from existence because DC editorial didn’t want any acknowledgment of Batgirls besides Babs, and definitely were the worst off due to the outright hostility towards them from inside the company. I don’t think any of the others were intentionally screwed over, just mismanaged. Babs had all of her character development erased in favor of an ‘ideal’ Batgirl pushed by editorial. Tim and Jason were both at crossroads with regards to their characters, Tim being in the middle of setting up a new normal for his character in the middle of the reboot, and Jason being entirely retooled as an antihero instead of a villain. They both got team books that they were the leads of, which could have been good (a la Dick with the New Teen Titans series), but unfortunately they were both saddled with a garbage writer, and the fandom would rather forget their stories from that time. I’ve read a grand total of one Grayson comic issue, so I’ll leave him off for now.

Damian, in comparison, is living it up. He’s got the Batman and Robin joint comic, then the Robin Son of Batman series and the Super Sons series. But he wasn’t given all this out of preferential treatment to the bio son, but rather because the writer for his first series, Batman and Robin, was actually good, and thus, was able to get support behind creating more Damian-centric series once Batman and Robin ended. But you’re still wrong in the idea that “Damian is now the single most important/only member of the Bat Family.” Because that person is actually Bruce. Post Batman and Robin, Damian was basically treated equally to the rest of the Batfam in terms of importance in the Batfam. He, just like the rest of them, got a solo/focus in a team book without much attention to his role in Gotham outside of when they all came together for Robin War. I counted up his appearances in the N52 Batman and Detective Comics series, since that’s where the big Gotham stuff happened and compared it to the others. Damian was in 14 Batman/Detec issues, Tim was in 11, and Dick was in 24, so Damian isn’t exactly the core of the Batfam now. Unless the metric for most important member is measured by how much time they spend hanging out with Bruce, since as a ten-year-old living with his dad, Damian obviously wins that by a mile.

And while I don’t exactly know what you mean by the writers stealing Cass’s backstory for Damian, I’ll try to address what I think you mean. They did have a similar backstory in terms of both being raised by assassins and suffering abuse at the hands of their caretakers. And after leaving that environment, they both made the choice to atone for their past behavior as superheroes under the Bat (or I guess Robin) moniker. The writers in charge of their stories both went about their backstories and atonements in very different ways. Damian was simultaneously spoiled and abused in his childhood, making it hard for him to realize how screwed up it actually was. He was sent on various missions by his grandfather to commit horrible acts against innocent people. It took him much longer to realize that his treatment by the LoA and the values they instilled in him were wrong, and didn’t feel he needed to atone until he’d undergone character growth as Robin. His atonement comes in the form of restoring stolen artifacts to where they belong, and protecting or allying himself with the people he once wronged. Cass went through brutal training and stuck with her dad due to hero worship, but only up until she killed someone for him and realized the gravity of that action. Her atonement comes in the form of saving everyone she can, because she can never fix what she broke. The story of ‘abused child is made to do bad things, grows as a person, and tries to atone’ is not a particularly specific one and can be retold many different ways to resonate with different people. And I don’t know how Cass getting nerfed even remotely relates to Damian, seeing as she was still able to (rightfully) kick his ass in Detec #975.

Your opinion on Damian as a character is entirely subjective and up to you, but it’s an objective truth that he isn’t at fault for the other Batfam characters’ mistreatment by editorial over the years. However, I would recommend that you read Batman and Robin (2011) and Robin: Son of Batman so that your dislike of the character comes from a place of actually knowing what he’s like when being written by someone who doesn’t hate him.

I honestly never understood how Damian ended up being the most (arguably) hated Batkid in the fandom when his existence never directly effected any other Batkid in a negative way.

Like Barbara was the reason why Cass & Steph got erased from existence, Dick became dumb/a himbo because they want Tim to appear smart, Robin Jason became a problem child in order to portray Dick as the “Golden Child” and literally not one of them is allowed to out-shine Batman because he’s Batman.

Yet I don’t see stans of these character putting half the energy into hating these other characters (which would be dumb, don’t get me wrong, but at least it will make sense) for what their existence has done to their favorite character compared to the amount of hate they have for Damian, who really has nothing to do with anything bad that happened to any Batkids nor does he get any privilege/good treatment at their expense, aside from like one or two superficial comments about him Bruce’s “real” child even though he canonly has the worst/2nd worst relationship with Bruce after maybe Jason.