#this is all a mess anddoesnt make sense but yea i have a love/hate relationship with him

[bluegarners]

sometimes i have a hard time wrapping my head around the complexity of bruce's love versus his devotion versus his guilt/ego. now that all may sound entirely separate, but it works like this in my head...

see, because im always thinking about dick's observation that bruce would probably trade everything to get his parents back/prevent their deaths. granted, dick might have been uncharitable in that lens, but he is also one of the few people who reads bruce accurately and clearly. to that point, i would argue that, subconsciously at least, dick also recognizes that a part of bruce will always believe that he is at the center of everything- that bad things happen because of him. connecting all of that to every death bruce has witnessed to/been the indirect cause of/believes himself to have been able to stop some tragedy but wasn't able to/etc., i think within that seemingly not nice interpretation of bruce, we get the idea that bruce believes that had his parents survived that night, the world likely would have been a better place. batman would have never existed/there would have never been a need for batman to exist. in bruce's mind, i imagine that he can't picture a world where he is not batman, fighting the good fight, and therefore any world where there is no batman is a world that is a) much better off, and b) not fraught with death and tragedy caused by his hand

now, granted, this is an interpretation of my own viewing on how dick's observation and bruce's character throughout the years has evolved. i think bruce is an egotistical person, not in the sense that he thinks he is superior to everyone in the world, but that he believes that so much around him is a result of him. i believe bruce has a hard time separating himself from the lives of those around him, a kind of "everything i touch goes to ruin" idea that constantly floats around him- an idea that, more than once and rather frequently, does get proven to him, and, to an extent, people tell him. obviously, jason's narrative is brought to the forefront. anyone who has ever been connected to bruce wayne or batman has been connected to him via some kind of tragedy. a "what's the common denominator?" situation that can be hard to overlook and is definitely not one bruce overlooks

and going back to the love versus devotion versus guilt thing, bruce loves his people and his city so much. he loves the world and protects it because despite every bad thing in it, there is clear and abundant evidence of good. just as well, bruce is devoted to loving and protecting- it is what he believes he's best at, and without it, he would be little else. there was a time where bruce was more obvious with his love, in both physical and verbal confirmation, but i believe at this point it's generally agreed that bruce shows his love in an unconventional way- despite that, he still loves and loves greatly. however, that is where the guilt comes in. his midas touch for tragedy gets in the way of his love and devotion entirely

bruce feels guilty for loving, guilty for bringing people into his circle, guilty for being batman- a force that does as much good as it does reinforce the narrative that it's all cyclical. his inability to let go of his guilty conscious prevents him from 1) showing his love, 2) letting others love him, and 3) getting better. to me, bruce is always in this insistent circle of helping, loving, realizing, shunning, and disappearing that his devotion just goes to waste and is hardly recognizable outside of his bat insignia. what bruce is devoted to is people but it gets pushed aside in favor of batman so often because of his iron grip on the past, his guilt, and his constant fear of what's going to happen to the people around him because of him

which really discredits those people who choose to stick around and stay by his side. bruce loves so much and yet is so constantly blind to how people love him, and the result is this mess of a character that see-saws between this intense display of hard sacrifice and moral ground, and a simple man who's defining trait is the family he somehow built around himself

idk where i was going with this, but my summary is essentially he is sooooooooo annoying to write for and think about because a lot of what he does doesn't make sense or apply to his character, but at the same time it does which makes it harder to recognize when he is being genuine and when he is using something as a shield or weapon against another

[angstandhappiness]

Fascinating

sometimes i have a hard time wrapping my head around the complexity of bruce's love versus his devotion versus his guilt/ego. now that all may sound entirely separate, but it works like this in my head...

see, because im always thinking about dick's observation that bruce would probably trade everything to get his parents back/prevent their deaths. granted, dick might have been uncharitable in that lens, but he is also one of the few people who reads bruce accurately and clearly. to that point, i would argue that, subconsciously at least, dick also recognizes that a part of bruce will always believe that he is at the center of everything- that bad things happen because of him. connecting all of that to every death bruce has witnessed to/been the indirect cause of/believes himself to have been able to stop some tragedy but wasn't able to/etc., i think within that seemingly not nice interpretation of bruce, we get the idea that bruce believes that had his parents survived that night, the world likely would have been a better place. batman would have never existed/there would have never been a need for batman to exist. in bruce's mind, i imagine that he can't picture a world where he is not batman, fighting the good fight, and therefore any world where there is no batman is a world that is a) much better off, and b) not fraught with death and tragedy caused by his hand

now, granted, this is an interpretation of my own viewing on how dick's observation and bruce's character throughout the years has evolved. i think bruce is an egotistical person, not in the sense that he thinks he is superior to everyone in the world, but that he believes that so much around him is a result of him. i believe bruce has a hard time separating himself from the lives of those around him, a kind of "everything i touch goes to ruin" idea that constantly floats around him- an idea that, more than once and rather frequently, does get proven to him, and, to an extent, people tell him. obviously, jason's narrative is brought to the forefront. anyone who has ever been connected to bruce wayne or batman has been connected to him via some kind of tragedy. a "what's the common denominator?" situation that can be hard to overlook and is definitely not one bruce overlooks

and going back to the love versus devotion versus guilt thing, bruce loves his people and his city so much. he loves the world and protects it because despite every bad thing in it, there is clear and abundant evidence of good. just as well, bruce is devoted to loving and protecting- it is what he believes he's best at, and without it, he would be little else. there was a time where bruce was more obvious with his love, in both physical and verbal confirmation, but i believe at this point it's generally agreed that bruce shows his love in an unconventional way- despite that, he still loves and loves greatly. however, that is where the guilt comes in. his midas touch for tragedy gets in the way of his love and devotion entirely

bruce feels guilty for loving, guilty for bringing people into his circle, guilty for being batman- a force that does as much good as it does reinforce the narrative that it's all cyclical. his inability to let go of his guilty conscious prevents him from 1) showing his love, 2) letting others love him, and 3) getting better. to me, bruce is always in this insistent circle of helping, loving, realizing, shunning, and disappearing that his devotion just goes to waste and is hardly recognizable outside of his bat insignia. what bruce is devoted to is people but it gets pushed aside in favor of batman so often because of his iron grip on the past, his guilt, and his constant fear of what's going to happen to the people around him because of him

which really discredits those people who choose to stick around and stay by his side. bruce loves so much and yet is so constantly blind to how people love him, and the result is this mess of a character that see-saws between this intense display of hard sacrifice and moral ground, and a simple man who's defining trait is the family he somehow built around himself

idk where i was going with this, but my summary is essentially he is sooooooooo annoying to write for and think about because a lot of what he does doesn't make sense or apply to his character, but at the same time it does which makes it harder to recognize when he is being genuine and when he is using something as a shield or weapon against another