#or they add extra context they didn't feel fit into the actual post for fear of textwalling or cluttering??

[hellogoodbyeitsme]

When I see a post I really like reblogged by someone I follow, I will usually go and check the original post to see if there are bonus features there (aka tags that are basically "and another thing!") lol

[bat-lings]

I love everyone in the batfam no matter how problematic, but the Rhato 25 discourse bothered me. As a Bruce fan I didn't like the complete crucifixion of his character by the Jason diehards. Personally I feel Bruce was justified (the brutality felt like a publicity stunt for shock value, which I didn't like), but seeing these same fans (that hate Bruce for daring to hurt their fav) then celebrate when Jason did the exact same thing to Damian in the teen titans annual. It's so hypocritical.

Oh, Anon, I fear you inadvertently put the finger on the exact thing I despise about current storylines. I agree in that they’re taking the shock value too far and that every character suffers for it.

Frankly, I have more of a problem with what the fans are served than with how they reacted to it.

Fair warning, I’m gonna get very critical with the writing of the two events Anon mentioned. I’d be extra interested to hear about those events from the perspective of someone who actually enjoyed them, but it’s not worth your good mood if reading a post basically trashing said storylines upsets you.

I’ll respectfully disagree about Bruce’s behavior towards Jason. It was excessively brutal and nothing justified it. The scene can be summed up to shock value, to the point it would need to be entirely rewritten to exonerate Bruce. Jason relapsed into lethal force for understandable reasons. Even if we consider nothing excuses Jason; even in an alternative scenario where he’d have shot the Penguin out of the blue, Bruce’s behavior would be plain wrong.

Bruce went after him, assaulted him, and kept on beating him while Jason wasn’t defending himself.

Let’s forget this was Jason for a second. This is not the kind of violence Bruce should resort to against any criminal. I don’t just mean that hey, this isn’t ideal morally speaking, I mean that Bruce Wayne, as a character, as the man who was always written to believe in redemption/rehabilitation, as the man who willed never to use lethal or even unnecessary force, can’t do this and pretend to be remotely what Bruce’s character is supposed to represent. I hate it every time Bruce is written to use that kind of empty violence, preboot or reboot. Miller went down that road too and it never fulfilled my idea of entertainment.

Then you add on the fact that Jason’s his son, and it makes it all so much worse. Bruce legit puts the blame on Jason, not only during the confrontation (“I told you if you left me it’d be your choice”), but also in a later issue when Lobdell serves us a disastrous attempt at a reconciliation scene. “I love you but you deserved a kick in the ass.” Like, I don’t think Lobdell could’ve portrayed a more abusive father-figure if he wanted to.

As a comparison, have similar confrontations between Bruce and Dick in preboot.

[Batman (1940) #600]

So here there’s an actual fight. Dick is actively participating rather than being used as Bruce’s punching-ball. Power-wise, they’re equals.

You want a true equivalent to the scene between Jason and Bruce, where Dick suffers from a power-imbalance + Bruce being toxic?

[New Titans (1988) #55]

Note how it doesn’t go further than a punch because it’s bad enough that way and doesn’t need to escalate further to drive the narrative home. There’s no “I love you but you deserved a punch” bullshit later on either.

Even in Teen Titans: Year One where Bruce was particularly terrible (too much imo), he’s brainwashed when he hits Dick and nothing in the story/framing exonerates Bruce for his global behavior.

Those confrontations had a place in their narratives other than shock value. Bruce’s descent after Jason’s death, his mental state in Murderer/Fugitive. They illustrate how fucked up Bruce is at a specific moment due to specific events and context. They’re not casually dismissed afterwards by a hug and a dubious line. And again, they don’t require Bruce to beat Dick half to death to drive their point home.

By the way, this is reconciliation.

[Batman (1940) #605]

This is a component of the circle of abuse.

[Red Hood and the Outlaws (2016) #27]

“I love you. If only you weren’t so stubborn, you wouldn’t deserve an occasional kick in the ass. Like when I inflicted you severe physical trauma. But I love you anyway. Aaah, the woes of father-son relationships!”

There was no narrative reason for Bruce to take it that far with Jason in rhato. It’s just physically more violent and emotionally less impactful, because it’s so damn cheap and because it tries to pass abuse for a normal familial dissension that can be cured with a hug. I can’t get emotionally engaged with that kind of writing.

It’s a reboot, it’s entitled to change characters, but it’s simply not a Bruce I recognize nor one whose existence I’m particularly eager to acknowledge.

As for the Jason-Damian confrontation…

I don’t care that Jason didn’t want to fight and tried so hard to de-escalate the situation until Damian pulled out that mystery drama-box. I don’t care that Damian’s a trained fighter. Frankly, I don’t care about the specifics. At the end of the day, an adult beat the shit out of a child. A child who was framed in earlier appearances to be his little brother. A writer/editorial team/whoever the hell made the conscious choice to put those characters in the specific situation where an adult would beat the shit of a child family member.

You know, for all that I hate TT#29 for its cheap violence (and Jason’s less than ideal portrayal), it at least had the decency to oppose two characters of roughly the same age. And in this continuity, Jason was revived to be a villain. I may not like it but it’s expected that he acts villainous towards the fam, or Tim here. Plus Tim and Jason were never ever portrayed as brothers in post-crisis. They’re strangers. Them beating each other simply doesn’t have the same significance.

Have another preboot parallel where neither perpetrators are villains.

[Red Robin #14]

Here the writer puts Tim in a situation where he has to defend himself against a ten-year-old. There’s a punch, and then the violence stops. That’s it. Much like the preboot Dick-Bruce confrontations, it doesn’t need to be taken further. The story delivers its point without any ten-year-old getting beaten senseless by an older ally.

Seriously, how does this…

[Batman (2016) #16]

…exist in the same continuity as this?

[Teen Titans Annual 1 (2019)]

How is this a good way to portray familial dissensions/confrontations of any kind?

You’re the writer. You decide if the 20 something is gonna throw hands with the 13 year old. You decide how the father figure reacts to the son’s actions. You decide how far each confrontation goes. You decide whether two characters that were explicitly portrayed as brothers are gonna bleed each other out. You decide whether the father figure is abusive. You decide what happens, how it happens, how it’s resolved, and how every element is framed.

Physical violence is just another narrative tool that should be used to construct a story. You can’t just throw it in, dial it up to 11, and hope it’ll make your scene impactful. It just proves you don’t know how to write a vivid scene without relying on cheap tricks.

Anon, I get your frustration, I don’t like what’s done of Bruce either. I made a post about his parental failures in preboot ( bat-lings.tumblr .com/post/180901354160/do-you-think-bruce-was-a-bad-father-im-starting); none of them ever reached rhato’s caricatural empty brutality. Bruce is less and less well received by fans as he’s sometimes instrumentalized in sequences that don’t fit his character. It’s not fair on him.

But I can’t seem to disconnect with what we are given long enough to worry about how we react to it. And to be fair I’ve seen as many posts hating on Jason’s recent actions than hating on Bruce’s.

Tbh bad writing/ooc-ness aside there’s little anyone can say to exonerate either character here. The fans are reacting vividly because they’re faced with a story that has little else to sell other than vivid brutality. We all go “gasp!”, pick sides, and that’s it. It’s hard to breed interesting discussion among fans with that configuration.

The good news is, each of those characters have seen better days, and not everything in reboot is as bad as the above sequences. Also we have fanfictions :D