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Do you think that Batman could empathize with Tomura and successfully reach out? They are both orphans with a dark side. The difference being is that Bruce was able to work through his darkness to be healthy(er) while Tomura had all his pain cultivated for 15-16 years.
Yes. 100% yes. That’s not even a question for me. I’ve been dying for someone to send me a question like this, because it’s something I’ve noticed in the general fandom response to the pro-heroes and the hero kids. The thing is, the heroes in My Hero Academia don’t really act like good wholesome heroes. They certainly act like marvel movie heroes... in the fact that they have strong superheroes and fight a bad guy and have such a clear delineation between good and evil that many viewers take them to have propagandistic qualities. Like, there’s a reason that marvel movies have degraded to what they are today currently, and besides all the other factors it’s because these comic book heroes are really getting sanded down into a set of superpowers, a costume and a bad guy to beat with no ideals or themes behind their characters. My Hero Academia heroes aren’t really that heroic, they don’t really have any ideals they stand for except the extremely vague notion of defeat the bad guy. Yeah, Deku has “Save people” but Deku is noted several times to be an oddity among heroes.
The Pro-Heroes and the Hero Kids in My Hero Academia have this weird paradox to them where the story itself, and also in world hero propaganda sells the idea that heroes are incredibly wholesome, always selfless, people who go above and beyond to save and protect. Yet, the heroes in MHA are actually extremely cynical, and pragmatic, and they also really have no guiding principals beyond “Might makes Right.”
You can put all heroes on the scale of Spiderman <---------> Punisher.
To define them by whether they are a superhero focused on saving innocents, or a violent vigilante who is focused on punishing the guilty, the heroes in MHA are far more on the punisher scale of things than anyone either in setting or the fandom would like to admit. This is a universe where heroes like Hawks and Lady Nagant regularly commit state sponsored executions. This is a setting where Enji Todoroki is revealed to be a heinous abuser of his family and everyone in the superhero community is like... fine with it for the most part. They either don’t bring it up, or they think Enji does such a good job it justifies his position.
I mean, here to justify my accusation that heroes in MHA are far more on the punisher side of the scale. To compare to another manga, Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia have a similiar circumstance where a villain, Mahito and Dr. Garaki respectively are able to transform unwilling victims into mindless attack dogs by twisting their bodies into unseemly and horrifying shapes. Mahito’s altered humans, and Dr. Garaki’s nomus respectively seem to retain some sense of humanity and are in a state of pain. Nanami Kento, Shoko and Yuji all come to the harsh reality that there is nothing they can really do for the humans that Mahito has twisted, except for a swift mercy killing, and yet a lot of time is still given to the fact that killing something that is a human being is wrong and a heavy task even though it’s their only option, and two that the decision to kill someone is an extremely heavy burden to bear not made lightly. Nanami straight up loses all focus in a fight, and stops to wipe the tear of a former human when he realizes what they are fighting against.
Compare this to the way every hero responds to the Nomus in My Hero Academia. Enji without knowing whether or not they are truly sentient or even capable of being turned back into what they were, roasts one alive right away it’s his first action with them. Enji then later on meets a Nomu who is capable of intelligence and communication, and roasts it alive even harder specifically because the way the Nomu Acts, reminds Enji of a darker part of himself, and killing that enemy is perfectly satisfying to Enji because it allowed him to take out those personal frustrations. When Mirko learns that the Nomu are former human bsings she has no hesitation at all at bashing their brains in, in fact she’s almost delighted because she doesn’t have to hold back and that makes it easier than fighting regular villains. If the enemy is sufficiently dehumanized than heroes in my Hero Academia very easily resort to murderous methods, and it’s not just heroes like Enji, Mirko does it, heck Present Mic expresses the sentiment that Oboro would be better off dead then continuing his existence as Kurogiri.
The heroes in My Hero Academia are dark, almost myopic. I’m not saying you can’t enjoy them, but they are very different from the way heroes act in western comic books and I think a lot of people don’t know this because a lot of manga fans don’t really pick up comic books, and their biggest experience with western heroes therefore comes from movies.
So when I say BATMAN WOULD NEVER dehumanize a villain to the extent the My Hero Academia heroes do on a regular basis, I’m not saying that as a batman fan, I am saying that because Batman is probably THE MOST IDEALISTIC DC HERO. Yes, even moreso than superman. Batman is Clark’s hero. His inspiration. His good time boy.
Bruce would have noticed there was something off about Tomura right away in the early stages, if not the very first attack he waged on UA. I’m going to use two examples to prove my argument, one the fact that heroes also noticed that Shigaraki was extremely mentally unwell and just decided not to really care about it, and two Batman was actually faced with an extremely similiar situation in BTAS and his reaction is pretty much the opposite of All Might’s.
1. There’s Something Wrong with That Kid
To those who were paying attention to Shigaraki’s character from the beginning, even before we got to dig further into his backstory in My Villain Academia arc, or even be shown a more sympathetic and human side to his personality in the Overhaul arc, from his introduction Shigaraki shows signs of extreme mental distress. He is constantly exocriating himself, which is a form of self-harm that manifests under circustmances of extreme psychological stress. Shigaraki has a full on skin disorder that many people have because he is so poor at managing his stress he relentlessly picks and scratches at himself.
When he starts to lose in the middle of the fight, he essentially throws a tantrum, and not only does he immediately want to give up and go home, but he also lashes out at his own ally to try to vent that anger.
When All Might removes the hand from his face he has a momentary break from reality, and talks to the hand a physical object like it’s a person calling it “father” and apologizing to it.
Shigaraki also shows a clear grudge against both heroes, the failure of heroes, and the violence that heroes show (no kidding he’s a victim of violent abuse and the cycle of abuse in his family has an origin in his grandmother’s complete and total failure as a mother) that he clearly states in front of All Might once, and then Deku later the idea that heroes do not save people with their violence, and the implication that there are people that All Might have not saved and both times he is essentially brushed off by both of them.
Shigaraki’s mental distress is so obvious that even the heroes of My Hero Academia, who’s general response to villains is lock them up and throw away the key, noticed it. The heroes notice several of the symptoms I listed above about Shigaraki, but then decide to dismiss him as a man-child and then go on to say that he represents a kind of “pure evil” that villains may find attractive. The enertain the idea for like half a second that there might be more to Shigaraki that makes him different from the regular street villains heroes usually fight, and then they just dismiss the thought. Once again a common theme, the second All Might realizes he is Nana’s grandson he wants to go after Shigaraki to attempt to find him and reason with him only for once again Gran Torino to dismiss him as the kind of villain who’s beyond redemption and All Might to immediately give up on trying any other tactic than beating him down.
Now why do I say Batman would have immediately gone after Shigaraki and tried to reason with him and get him the help he needs? Do I have proof of him acting similarly? Batman in fact, comes across a similiar enough situation in one of the most famous episodes of Batman the Animated Series.
2. Man-Child meet Woman Child
Baby-Doll Batman the Animated Series season 3, episode 4 is one of the most popular episodes, and it shows most clearly the way Bruce’s brand of heroics is ultimately based on saving and empathy for his villains rather than just putting them down for the greater good. I could have gone with a lot of batman villains with much more clear and tragic origins, Mr. Freeze isn’t even trying to achieve anything villainous he wants to save his wife. Two-Face started out as not only Batman’s best friend, but a good guy and an ally of justice who was driven to insanity by a horrifying and sudden tragedy. Harley Quinn is a victim of grooming and abuse similiar to Shigaraki who has her entire sense of self warped and controlled by an abusive narcissist who quite literally turns her into a crude relfection of himself, to act as a pawn in his own evil schemes. I could use a lot of batman villains, but no Baby Doll, we’re going with Baby-Doll.
Mary Dahl is a washed up child actress with a physical condition that prevents her from growing up past a child, she’s sort of like Claudia from Interview with a Vampire, an adult mind inside a child’s body. Not only will she always be treated and regarded as a child for her physical appearance, due to her child as a former child star who’s show was cancelled and had no success in acting when she tried to do anything outside of playing the cutsey and innocent “baby-doll” on the sitcom “Love that Baby” she has ended up emotionally stunted and stuck in the past.
Mary Dahl’s fall to villainry is a bit less tragic than Shigaraki’s, she wasn’t like kidnapped and groomed since childhood by a villainous mastermind and turned into his own pet “make your own supervillain” project. She’s not getting work, but she’s not poor or destitute, there are former child stars who lose out on their childhoods and have no money to show for it, but she seems to have enough money to at least have an extremely competent agent and money to blow on her elaborate schemes. Her backstory is not nearly as tragic as Shigaraki’s, yet she shows several symptoms in common with Shigaraki, being a former child star like many child stars she shows severe dysfunction as an adult because it ate up her entire childhood. Child labor is bad people. Children who are not given room to grow up and develop as kids, have problems late into their adulthood.
She is also someone who feels rejected and left behind by society as a whole, it’s clear her only way of connecting to other people was the attention she received as a child star and the connections she had with cast members. She also experiences severe body dysmorphia I would say on level with Shigaraki’s, Shigaraki’s body dysmporphia is so bad he constantly picks at his own skin, his quirk soemtimes even causes physical damage to him and he feels extreme nausea at a near constant basis b/c of his emotional unrest. Baby-Doll literally experiences a same incompatability with her body, she has an adult mind, she craves to be a fully grown normal body, and a lot of her mental breaks from reality seem to come from how easily people mistake her for and treat her like a child.
Mary Dahl also shows severe dysfunction when it comes to regulating her own emotions. As tragic as Mary Dahl’s fall from fame is, and as much as it mirrors what happens to a lot of child stars in reality, Mary Dahl kind of also dug her own grave by her actions. Everyone on the cast thought she was notoriously difficult to work with, her show wasn’t cancelled on her, she left because the directors added in a new character she didn’t like and took attention away from her because of plummeting ratings. She left the show to try to take a more serious turn as an actor, once again to get attention and because she was on an ego-trip, then tried to get the show running again when it didn’t work for her but by that point it was too late. She’s also someone who just does not treat people well, she’s manipulative, she never engages people as her true self Baby-Doll is a role she is essentially playing, to both allow herself to violently lash out, but also to evade any responsibility for her own actions. It’s also ambiguous how much of the Baby-Doll persona is a genuine psychotic break (I don’t use the word psychotic lightly, I’m also not saying LOL look at her she’s so crazy, but there are genuine moments where Mary seems to mistake what happened on her TV show for reality which indicates that she’s not just trying to reclaim her former glory, that she is full on having delusions) there are also moments where “Baby-Doll” is a deliberate act she’s putting on, and Mary seems aware of what she is doing.
Mary Dahl is at the same time, delusional enough to believe she can kidnap everyone on her former show, and force them to just pretend to be the characters they were on her show, and playing dollhouse with this pretend family will somehow fix her problems. She is also, lucid enough to carefully plot and execute the kidnapping of several people, control a minion in her agent, and then evade capture from Batman several times. She is both a victim (she’s genuinely mentally unwell) and a villain (but not unwell enough she’s not aware her actions are wrong, she’s deliberately hurting people she just thinks her tragedy makes her entitled to that revenge). Mary Dahl thinks the world has wronged her and left her behind, that her show being cancelled was some great injustice done to her, and something she deserves the chance to rectify, even though as I just explained in detail that Mary was equally as responsible for the cancellation of her show. She is a person not willing to take any responsibility for her actions or see fault in herself.
You could even argue because of these quality Mary is way less sympathetic than Shigaraki, Shigaraki at least seems to have genuine critques about his society, and feels that he and the people around him have been rejected in an unjust fashion. Mary Dahl is upset her TV Show got cancelled and decided to make it everyone else’s problem. Mary Dahl’s problems are a lot more selfish, and smaller in comparison to Shigaraki’s, and yet the story itself does not downplay Mary’s distress because it is genuine to her.
In one extent, Mary is a danger to others, but she’s also a danger to heserlf. Like I said, it’s ambiguous how much but she’s clearly a mentally unwell woman. When someone is experiencing delusions on that level it’s a brain chemistry problem, and it’s also not something where it’s fair to go “Well, she has no reason to be mentally ill, it’s not like she was beaten, she’s just having an emotional breakdown because she’s not famous anymore.” I mean, what does it matter the reason whether she’s having a breakdown is a good enough reason or not, she’s clearly in extreme distress.
Number two, I think society as a whole tends to downplay the suffering of celebrities or child stars and make them seem like they are just entitled or spoiled for acting out, because they’re rich and famous and living a life most people would die for so who cares. But, HollyWood, the spotlight, and public scrutiny has a really bad psychological effect on people. Most people would not do well under such harsh public scrutiny all the time, and also when you make your entire personality around being a star and having the spotlight, also because in Baby Doll’s case there’s really no other career avaiable for her because of her condition then losing that is a pretty huge loss. Like, child stars who cannot either adapt to adulthood, cannot get work as adult actors, or just cannot even function as adults is a pretty common societal problem.
On top of kidnapping people, holding them hostage, she’s also someone who clearly needs help, like Baby-Doll is not just doing these things because she’s a selfish, entitled brat throwing a tantrum because she’s not famous anymore, she’s experiencing clear mental breaks from reality where she confuses her tv show for reality, she’s mentally sick and in need of treatment.
Baby-Doll is presented to us as a manipulative child star desperate for the spot light, endangering her cast because she herself cannot let go of the past for most of the episode, people around Bruce are pretty unsymapthetic to her, her attempts to get a more serious career is played off as a joke, the cast members do not like Baby-Doll and found her to be extremely high maintennance and difficult to work with even when she was on the show, Baby-Doll’s clearly not after the cast because of nostlagia, friendship or happy memories she has with her former cast members, but rather because she wants to pretend to be the the sitcom character who was surrounded by family who loved her. People constantly remark how crazy she is for thinking a tv show is reality. Even Robin says that he absolutely despised the “Baby-Doll” show, and it’s dismissed as kind of a cheesy sitcom with no real merit.
However, the last five minutes turn all of that on its head. Bruce Wayne, my darling, is presented to us as a man of few words. We don’t actually see Bruce’s reaction to what Baby-Doll is doing for most of the episode, we see Dick’s who clearly thinks she’s just crazy, Bruce the whole time is focused on just resolving the incident first, finding the kidnapped people, rescuing them from Baby-Doll’s grip. So Bruce’s absolute first priority is just to stop the villain from doing the bad thing, he stops the bad behavior and makes Baby-Doll unable to hurt others.
Bruce, the living embodiment of the term “Gap Moe”, because he is so closed off and not reacting to Baby Doll in any way, does not seem to be going out of his way to sympathize with her. That however, changes once the the threat Baby-Doll represents to others is neutralized. Baby-Doll then flees from Bruce with a Tommy Gun out into the middle of the night. The tables have turned and Baby-Doll has gone from a cackling villain, pretending often to be a scared little girl in order to manipulate people, to a genuinely scared and desperate person. Even the image Baby-Doll evokes fleeing from Bruce, is a sympathetic one, Baby-Doll despite being an adult woman still looks like a child, and acts several times like a woman-Child and she is fleeing from an adult man who picked his costume to terrify crimminals into submission.
Baby-Doll flees into a carnival ground filled with children, she has a Tommy-Gun on her, she’s still pretty much a direct threat to others, but the way Bruce approaches her does a complete 180. Bruce is calling out after her to stop fleeing, when she disappears into a tunnel, he’s telling her to stop not because he wants to arrest her, but because she’s going to hurt herself at this point. Baby-Doll is no longer a danger to others, she’s a danger to herself because she’s scared desperate, and fleeing, and instead of pursuing her to put her down Bruce is trying to stop her from getting hurt as she flees. This is also behavior he has shown to repeat, in Harley’s Holiday he pursues Harley the whole episode not to stop her because she’s on a crime spree, but because she’s freaking out and he doesn’t want her to be sent to Arkham and lose all the progress she made in her recovery.
Bruce pursues her into a mirror maze and this is where we get the most famous scene in the episode, Baby-Doll is still dead set on killing Bruce (this is also where Bruce shines, Baby-Doll is actively firing a gun at him and he is still calling out at her to stop because she might get hurt).
Baby Doll fires at the mirrors over and over again, until one of the funhouse mirrors shows her what she might look like as an adult, at which point not only does Baby-Doll come to a complete stop, but she talks not in her Baby Doll voice, but as Mary-Dahl.
Mary Dahl: Look. That’s me in there. The real me.
Mary Dahl: There I am... BUt it’s not really real, is it?
Mary Dahl: Just made up and pretend like my family, and my life and everything else.
Mary Dahl: Why couldn’t you just let me Make believe?
She then grows angry at realizing that she is trapped on the other side of the mirror and will never exist in that adult body, she starts firing at every mirror around her trying to get batman who stalks her once again as an unspeaking shadow, until she gets impatient enough to destroy even the idealized image of herself represented in the funhouse mirror. At which point the gun itself runs out of ammo, and Mary breaks downc rying. At that point Batman could say that Mary is just throwing a tantrum, that being a washed up child star doesn’t entitle her to hurt others, he could say that her tears aren’t even real because Mary Dahl has pretended to be a child in order to manipulate other people and merit sympathy literally this whole episode. Bruce does not do any of that. Bruce’s only action after following her this whole time, is to remove the gun from her hands so she’s no longer capable of hurting someone, and then when she hugs him, to return her hug and comfort her.
Mary Dahl: I didn’t mean to...
Because, utlimately she’s a human being who needs help. It’s not Bruce’s job to pick and choose who deserves that help, it’s his job to help people who need it.
So yes, Bruce would have noticed right away that Shigarki wasn’t just a violent child, but a child who is clearly suffering from distress and lashing out. He wouldn’t just dismiss Shigaraki as an entitled man-child because as I’ve just demosntrated, Bruce had a situation where he frankly could have just dismissed Baby-Doll as a selfish an entitled vain womanchild and yet he didn’t do that. He saw a crying person in front of him, and he helped them, and he was even trying to help her before she started crying and asking for comfort like a more standard victim TM. Letting a child who shows clear signs of abuse like Shigaraki has go unhelped is not only out of character for Bruce, it basically is against everything he stands for as a hero.
And if you still don’t believe me on that, here’s a quote from the director of the final installment of the popular Arkham Series, “Arkham Knight”, a game that features a character Jason Todd who was similiarly groomed over a long period of time by batman’s arch enemy into an enemy for batman to fight.
#askspookies#batman#dc meta#dc comics#dc comics meta#batman meta#bruce wayne#btas#batman the animated series#shigaraki tomura#mha meta#metasks#ironically this long post is not bashing MHA for having dark heroes#as much as i love idealistic heroes my second favorite marvel hero after spiderman is daredevil#my third favorite is the punisher#though versions of the punisher that are aware#that he's not doing the right thing#the line between heroics as essentially volunteer work#and heroics as vigilanteism#is a fascinating concept to explore#jason todd is much more interesting as a violent drug lord who is still soft on victims#then he is as a much more sympathetic and palatable edgy anti hero with daddy issues#its just the extreme dissonance in mha in how the heroes are written#and how they are framed#my biggest example is hawks of course#hawks goes to extremely dark territory that makes for a fascinating character#only for hori to completely back off on that plot#and go back to framing hawks as an idealistic hero obsessed with saving people#that's just a clear example of having your cake and eating it too
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Like I mentioned on my previous post, there’s a particular aspect of how Steph got fired from being Robin that I find particularly interesting. (And based on your tags, @alvindraperzzz, you're going to enjoy this as well ;) )
So, just as a reminder, this is the deal that Stephanie and Bruce make when he agrees to let her be Robin:
"You're on probation. You don't learn any of the big secrets. And the first time you disobey my orders, is the precise moment you're out. No second chances."
Here's what makes this interesting: Tim also had a probationary period. It took place between 1989's "A Lonely Place of Dying" storyline and 1991's Robin miniseries, happening in scattered pieces across bits of Batman, Detective Comics, and other associated books.
Aside from changes in comm-tech between 1989 and 2003, there's only two major differences between Steph's probationary period and Tim's. First, Tim already knew the biggest of the Big Secrets, so he gets moments of interacting with Bruce and Alfred in civilian mode and even stays with them during school holidays. And second, Tim was not allowed his own costume and was forbidden from going out on patrol. Presumably, this second difference comes from a mix of Bruce's implied scheme to lure Tim back, Steph already having copious experience on the streets as Spoiler, and just general management of their differing personalities.
The important thing is, during this time, Tim was under the same restrictions as Steph: stay out of this fight, and if you disobey me you're gone. And there came a time, right at the end, where Batman wound up in a dangerous situation versus a supervillain (in this case, Scarecrow) and the would-be Robin chose to break the rules. What's interesting is the parallels and differences between the two scenes, and how, if you're paying attention, they're pretty consistent, despite their very different endings.
For one, in Tim's case, he's not initially on the scene, and he doesn't have contact with Bruce (like I said, 1980's comm-tech -- Oracle wasn't even a thing yet). This means that he isn't defying direct orders when he chooses to act. And he doesn't rush in himself right off the bat -- his first choice is actually to dial up Commissioner Gordon on the landline.
It's only after he runs out of ways to get a hold of Batman and warn him of the danger that he makes the decision to go out. And he does so very conscious of the fact that this is going to cost him Robin, in spite of the months of work he's put in.
Stephanie, on the other hand, is on the scene and has a direct line to Batman. She's chattering in his ear the whole time, to the point that he has to tell her to be quiet because she's distracting him. And when the fight gets going, he tells her repeatedly that he's doing fine, don't come in here, stay in the plane.
She lasts maybe fifteen seconds before abandoning her comms and diving in.
She doesn't wait or consider her options. She doesn't even give their deal so much as a passing thought. She simply assumes that she knows better than him and leaps in without thinking. Which mostly just demonstrates that a) she doesn't trust him which is bad when you're trying to form a partnership, and b) she can't be trusted to follow orders.
Also, frankly, she demonstrates poor judgement by completely misjudging the situation. Bruce does not need her help. Even injured, he's doing just fine. Stephanie rushing in is nothing but a distraction and, ultimately, what loses the fight.
Tim, on the other hand, judged the situation correctly. When he arrives on the scene, Batman (and innocent civilian Vicki Vale, not shown for space) is in trouble. He's been caught by Scarecrow and genuinely needs the back-up because he's being psychologically tortured.
Another parallel is that both Robins wind up in trouble as a result of coming to Batman's rescue. Which makes sense, they're teenagers versus adults with super-tech, training and horrible fear chemicals.
In Tim's case, he gets doused with fear gas (specifically "essence de trauma" because this was back when Scarecrow had specific strains of his stuff) which trapped Tim in an illusion of the very recent attack on his parents. Seriously, this is happening like, the day after they buried his mother.
But! He pulls himself out of it with the help of what might be hallucinations or might be the ghosts of Jason Todd and the Earth-1 Dick Grayson (it's never explained because this was the late 80s and nobody questions this stuff when half the creative staff is running on cocaine.) He then manages to turn the tables on Scarecrow and actually save the day.
Stephanie, on the other hand, gets herself caught.
Which, like I said, loses Batman the fight. And more importantly, it puts Steph's life in danger and she's not able to get herself free.
And it isn't like she doesn't have the opportunity, in-universe. This is where the scene ends, but Bruce recaps on the next page how Scarab, quote, "Left Robin tied up, but alive and uninjured" when she stole the Bat-plane to make her escape.
So, if you're a reasonable person, I hope you can see how there's already multiple strikes against Steph that don't really apply to Tim: she broke the rules thoughtlessly instead of with consideration, she defied direct orders instead of taking initiative on her own, and she completely misjudged the situation, putting herself in danger for no real reason and costing Batman the fight.
But now, we come to the difference that almost everyone overlooks, but I think is the real key to the whole thing: how each Robin behaves in the aftermath.
Because, see, Tim comes to Bruce immediately afterwards and owns up to everything.
I really like this scene because what Tim says here is very deliberate. He doesn't make excuses or try to deny anything. He simply explains himself and then apologizes, fully willing to accept the consequences of his actions.
It's a very mature thing to do. I couldn't have done it at 13. I'm not fully confident I could do it now, at 33. And in return, Bruce says this:
This is the story where Tim earns his wings. In the next two pages, he's given his costume and is officially made the new Robin. And it's because he demonstrates, through his actions in this story, that he understands both the weight of the legacy and the very real responsibility he's about to leap into.
Compare that to how it goes down with Steph.
Like I said in my previous post, despite Bruce saying she'd be out "the precise moment" she disobeyed him, Bruce doesn't fire her immediately after the Scarab incident. Instead, the story skips ahead by three weeks, until after Bruce has recovered from his injuries.
This is something he's shown consciously choosing to do, though he doesn't explain why. I like to think it's to give her time to consider her actions.
Note the difference in the way that Steph behaves: she shows up in her costume, with the standing assumption that they're going to go after Scarab. The only thing that she thinks would've prevented them from doing so is Batman's vision not healing.
She feels "guilty" about him being blinded, but that just demonstrates that she doesn't really understand the situation -- Batman was blinded while she was in the plane. Which implies that what she feels "guilty" about is not disobeying him sooner. The fact that she put herself in danger, the fact that she broke the rules, these things never cross her mind.
You'll note that she doesn't apologize either. Again, it's probably not deliberate, but "I feel so guilty, it was all my fault!" is not the same thing as "I'm sorry." The former is what you say when you're trying (consciously or not) to get the person you've wronged to comfort you. To tell you that it's okay, you didn't mean to do it, everybody messes up so don't feel bad. Which you'll note that Bruce does.
It's only after Steph does this, comes to him acting like nothing's wrong and they just had a little oopsie-daysie on the way to their next rip-roaring adventure, that Bruce finally drops the bomb.
Note the "direct order in the field" specification.
Stephanie only starts to admit that she did something wrong after she realizes she's going to be punished, and even then, she's not apologizing, and she's not owning up to her actions. She's making excuses, trying to wheedle out of the consequences of her own actions. And not once does she ever seem to internalize that she could have died.
And all of this is very in-keeping with her personality as established up to his point.
In short, while the two situations are very similar, Stephanie's actually demonstrates the exact opposite of Tim's: even after years of being Spoiler and multiple occasions where her own life, civilian lives, and the lives of people she supposedly cares for have been on the line, she's still treating this all as a game where the most important aspect of the outcome is how she feels about it. It's not just that she made "one mistake," this is part of a pattern for her, one that demonstrates very aptly that she does not understand the danger she's putting herself in, doesn't respect the guidance of the people who are trying to teach her, and frankly, has no interest in ever getting better, because she doesn't think she has a problem.
It can't be her fault, after all. She just made a little mistake! It's everyone else who're being unfair to her, holding her to rules and agreements she never meant to honor, and they'll all see as soon as she can prove them wrong...
And we all know where that leads.
Now, there are people who believe that this entire issue is simply unfair to Stephanie. And yeah, there's an entirely different discussion to be had about the out-of-universe decisions surrounding this story, the intention of the creators, etc. But I think everything that happens here in Robin #126 is as in-keeping for Steph's personality as the events of Batman #457 are for Tim. And I believe that, in both, Bruce's reasoning is fair and based on sound judgement, not sexism.
Still, they're very fun to compare. The nuances between the different relationships is very interesting.
#stephanie brown#tim drake#robin#batman#dc comics#meta#dc comics meta#robins#bat family#long post#my meta#man it was hard to end this one for some reason#I wish so hard I could see the world where Steph didn't die at the end of War Games#and the writers actually had to think about how she'd deal with the weight of what she did to people#it'd be even better if she didn't get hurt but Tim or Cass did#I should probably stop before I start writing fanfiction in the tags#still she could've been so interesting!! and instead they went with boring and 'I'm not like other girls! I'm QUIRKY!'#we could've had it aaaaaaaaaaaaall
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What is the Brown family pre-Flashpoint characterization vs post-?
hoo boy. So, disclaimers, while I've read a LOT of comics, I have not in fact read all of the ones where a member of the Brown Family appears (mostly because I just don't have the heart to put myself through Batman and Robin Eternal, along with some of Dixon's notoriously sexist writing in his Robin run), but I think I've read enough to make a decently informative post on this.
Let's go by characters.
Stephanie Brown.
Probably the one that most people noticed, Stephanie Brown in her pre-Flashpoint characterization is one that has (right up until a certain...event...) a lot of grit to her. While she's still the victim of Dixon's notorious attitudes towards women, she's still allowed to be competent, holding her own in a fight quite handily, especially in her own Batgirl run, where she's able to take on League of Assassin members without too much trouble at all.
Her major, I would argue defining characteristic, is that she does not give up. Ever. Her dad tells her to quit. Tim Drake tells her to quit. Fucking Batman tells her to quit. Multiple times!
Stephanie Brown does not give up. Ever. When the going gets tough, she shrugs, puts on her eggplant outfit, and kicks ass.
Post-Flashpoint?
Stephanie is constantly made out to be unreliable, unable to handle herself, constantly needing other people to pull her out of trouble. She loses fights she simply wouldn't have before (although to be entirely fair, this is a problem literally every batfam member has from N52 onward but that's another post)
But worse than that, post-Flashpoint Stephanie gives up.
This scene is genuinely insulting- it's definitive proof that DC's writers from N52 onwards have never understood Stephanie Brown, and never plan to (yes, I know she does come back later, but the fact this happened at all is the point.) This is utterly antithetical to Stephanie Brown as a character, and spits in the face of everything she stands for.
Crystal Brown
This is actually the main reason I decided to start writing sins of the father (working on chapter two in conjunction with this), because the treatment of Crystal Brown in Post-Flashpoint DC comics is just insulting- and a major disservice to Steph! Her relationship with her mom is essential to her arc.
Crystal Brown starts out as a woman who's got a supervillain as a husband. She's struggling with him, with near-poverty, and with a drug addiction that seriously impedes her ability to be a good mom.
But like daughter, she doesn't give up. In fact, Crystal Brown kicks Arthur Brown out of her life and picks herself up, manages to quit her habits, and becomes a well-respected nurse at Gotham City West Mercy Hospital. Her defining characteristic is that she loves her daughter, even if it took some time for her to get her act together.
Post-Flashpoint Crystal Brown is not that. Hell, she's barely a character. When Steph calls her, desperate, afraid of her newly-learned-of criminal father, Crystal’s response is to lie to her daughter, and then call her husband and tell him Stephanie knows about his plan.
Sure, she doesn't want him to kill her, but this is so wildly out of character for Crystal that this is basically an entirely different person. And it leaves Stephanie without a single parent who cares about her, since Bruce sure has hell hasn't stepped up in Rebirth. Steph doesn't have any positive role models in her life in Rebirth, leaving her bereft of really any consistent form of love and encouragement outside of maybe Cass, but even that relationship is a hollow shell of what it was previously.
Arthur Brown.
So Arthur’s the one who’s arguably changed the least, because abusive asshole is hard to get wrong, but he does feel like he’s lost all consistency in Rebirth. Before, he's a smug, arrogant asshole who doesn't give a damn about his family beyond how he can use them.
In Batman Eternal he’s…well, fine, but in Batgirls he’s…nearly unrecognizable, even from his characterization in the previous issues.
Like seriously, what was going on here? Arthur's never given a single damn about Steph aside from literally using her as part of a plan to get rich.
But anyway. TLDR; All three lost nuance, Steph used to be more competent and had an actual character arc, Crystal used to have an actual character and was an inspiring story of overcoming addiction, and Arthur used to feel like a consistent villain instead of a one-off whack job.
#DC#DC Comics#Stephanie Brown#Crystal Brown#Arthur Brown#ask submission#DC Meta#DC Comics Meta#Stephanie Brown Meta#as you might tell#i really don't like most of dc comic's decisions post flashpoint
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Dan Mora’s Knight Terrors designs for batman, superman, and wonder woman came out and I have Thoughts as to what that might tell us for their individual stories !!!!!!!! if I’m right I am owed one billion dollar and to be president of dc thanks
wonder woman: okay admittedly this one is easiest. judging by the several Greek mythological aspects of her design (medusa hair, ares/battle helmet, harpy or other bird of prey appendages, etc.) and excessive weaponry, I’d combine those two to expect her fear will be becoming a machination of war and a tool manipulated to fulfill the myth that is her life and themyscira’s existence. her extensive training as a warrior could easily be used to slot her into the place of the next great hero of myth, slaughtering the gods’ enemies until she herself completes her purpose and dies a warrior’s death. the fear stems from the fact that despite that, she is an individual. her choices to mingle with man’s world and extend her horizon beyond the world of the gods, along with the conscious decision to become the humans’ champion rather than just the gods’, is proof of this. To lose this and be used by the powers that granted her incredible talents against the new life she’s fought to protect could likely be her greatest fear.
superman: death. the grim reaper aspects of the design (skull face, hooded cloak, withered and near skeletal limbs, halo-like spikes) scream that to me (see also: angel of death). specifically, the fact that he can so easily escape death while nearly everyone around him can’t. it could also potentially be the fear of what dying would even look like for clark—alone, in a world unrecognizable from the one he landed in, etc. as a rebuttal for his seeming lack of fear regarding it—but this is less likely to me. the fact that humans are so fragile, so short-lived, and yet so wildly and passionately important to him is an easy target for clark, hence why this character is giving “ghosts of christmas future” vibes that will force him to confront a world without those he loves. (think, mark!!! what will you have in 500 years????)
batman: this was harder than I thought, in part due to my bias against doing his parents’ deaths for the millionth time. though, the detail of the bat crawling out of bruce’s mouth gives me hope for something a little different, as weird as that sounds: I think a distinct fear of bruce’s is letting the identity of the bat consume him. the fact that the amorphous bat-monster-thing crawling out of him alludes to the alternate identity that’s been dormant inside of him finally emerging, leaving bruce behind as a hollow skin along with his humanity and ties to the dredges of his former life. he has fully become the bat—there’s no longer any room for bruce wayne within him anymore. It might as well be the incarnation of his fear and anger leaving the rest of him behind to gain a life of its own.
so yeah!! I’d absolutely love to hear some other takes, I may very well be wrong but I had so much fun trying to decode these designs and I’m super excited for knight terrors regardless!
#knight terrors#dc meta#superman#batman#wonder woman#bruce wayne#clark kent#diana prince#meta analysis#dc comics meta#cricket reads comics
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I have been reading DC comics fic again for the first time in like . . . a decade-ish? because I'm a masochist, apparently. Finding new stuff and reading old favorites and being reminded of canon and all my thinky thoughts about superheroes and specifically Tim Drake, because he's my Robin and I imprinted (much like he did).
canon has put that boy through the wringer in the last decade, including smushing like, all his tragedies from 15 years of comics into like, ten seconds of comics time. I was reminded of the storyline where his dad found out he was robin and threatened batman into making him give it up, which at the time pissed me off because it was both a clear illustration of what a terrible parent jack drake was (in a way the narrative itself didn't seem to get??), and also because everything about it was so obviously For The Plot.
There was like, nothing in that storyline that I remember that actually came from the characters. It read like the writer or editors or whatever TPTB* decided they wanted to write a story about robin's dad finding out about robin and making him stop**. it's an obvious story for the only robin at the time who wasn't an orphan, and one of few kid heroes whose parents didn't know about them, and also it was Batman and Robin! The Drama! it so clearly had nothing to do with TIM when he should've been the main character, and it made me so angry, and then that anger was compounded because TPTB used it as an excuse to screw over Steph and then make the only non-orphan robin into an orphan, i guess just because. I hated it then, I hate it now.
BUT
I have a lot more perspective now, and have read a lot more (both published work and fanfic), and I have had a thought that I cannot believe I didn't have back then and that I've never heard before anywhere. (which doesn't mean somebody else hasn't had it, i just haven't found it)
One of my core objections about the storyline is that Tim's dad didn't figure out his ID, he just found the Robin uniform in Tim's room. Which is so out of character that it should invalidate the entire storyline.
This is the kid who wore another mask under his mask to prevent his other superhero friends from SEEING HIS FACE--not knowing his ID, just seeing his face. The kid who kept his identity from goddamn ORACLE for a while there. The kid who was able to sneak out and photo-stalk BATMAN AND ROBIN for literal years as a preteen and never get caught. Nobody ever knew anything about Robin III unless Tim made a deliberate decision to reveal the information. This had been a cornerstone of his character for 20+ years. Robin III's secret identity was arguably second only to Oracle's in-universe.
Yet that entire story rested on the idea that Jack Drake, inattentive parent maybe-kinda-misguidedly-authoritarianly trying to connect with his son for the first time ever, snoops in Tim's room and finds proof that Tim is Robin?? AND that Bruce Wayne is Batman?!?? Tim, whose best friends still call him "Rob," left proof of his identity and Batman's somewhere his civilian father could find it??!??!
There is NO WAY THAT MAKES SENSE. There is no version of canon in which that makes sense.
Things that would make sense: Is that old poster of the Flying Graysons how you met the Waynes? or Hey So I Noticed You Have Three Half-Empty First Aid Kits, Talk To Me? or Dad! Did you read my freaking diary and find whatever normal-teenager angst I wrote as a cover and possibly also some real civvie-ID angst mixed in?! Not cool!
OR
Somebody set that up.
That was a freaking supervillain plot.
There's like. No other explanation for what Tim's dad found. Either a supervillain figured out Tim's ID and took him off the playing board in the way most likely to disrupt as many other superheroes as possible, or a supervillain who didn't know Robin's ID mind-controlled him into revealing it for nefarious reasons.
So uh. I really don't want to get into writing DC fic, because I have shit to do that is not that, but SOMEBODY NEEDS TO TELL THAT STORY. Like, either all the characters involved don't contract plot stupidity and thus realize there's something hinky going on, or at some point after that in canon new evidence comes to light or an existing rogue says something suspicious or . . . there's just so many possibilities.
AND THEY'RE ALL MORE INTERESTING AND MORE IN-CHARACTER THAN CANON, DC!!!
(the creators involved in that storyline should feel very very lucky i don't remember who they are and am too lazy to look them up. because i would bring up how bad they are at storytelling every chance i got, forever)
--translations for fandom young'uns and some snark:
*TPTB: the powers that be, shorthand for the vast array of people in charge of multi-creator stories run by companies, such as tv shows, movies, and comics
**Buffy did it better
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So there’s this Superman comic I really like called Superman: Earth One, written by J. Michael Straczynski, and I enjoy it because it portrays a version of Superman who’s believably angry about the state of the world and often has to work around that in his decision making. And as a follow-up to that, I also really, really like the comic because it directly addresses the elephant in the room about why Superman doesn’t get involved in politics.
There’s a sequence in the second volume where Superman is providing disaster relief to a minority-dominated area of a country, which the local dictator has been passively trying to genocide by denying conventional relief. Said dictator shows up and starts executing and mutilating the local populace until Superman leaves; this causes Superman to throw in with the local revolutionaries, and he subsequently storms the dictator's palace, disarms everyone present without actually hurting anyone, and then leaves the dictator open for the revolutionaries to do with as they please. Very messy things subsequently happen to the dictator.
And this is the point at which the United States Government drops everything to begin working out a way to kill Superman, because they surmise that it’s only a matter of time before Superman does the same thing at the White House.
And then, after Superman barely scrapes out a win against the CIA’s half-baked predictably-nearly-apocalyptic plan to kill him by cutting a deal with General Zod, he goes to the United Nations and says, “Look, I can’t survive you assholes pulling out all the stops to get rid of me, but you can’t survive the fallout of a successful plan to get rid of me because anything the CIA makes or recruits that’s capable of killing me, is almost certainly going to immediately turn around and kill all of you. As this whole mess demonstrated! So how about I pledge to stop couping dictators, you stop growing evil Superman Clones, we all go home really unhappy and do our best to get on with it?”
And, you know, ask any Superman fan who hasn’t read this comic why he doesn’t fight the government and you’d get an answer along these lines! It’s not hard to intuit the realpolitik of Superman’s position on the world stage, he can’t help people if he’s constantly fighting every government at once. But most Superman comics that get political in this way either have him stay out of it entirely due to personal ethics, or have him become a crusading tyrant to demonstrate why it’s a bad idea. So even if it required a generally angrier and grittier Clark than you usually see, it was really refreshing to see a version of Superman that dipped into this kind of thing just enough to canonize the obvious answer as to why he usually steers clear of outright political violence.
#superman#superman earth one#general zod#thoughts#dc comics#dc comics meta#superman meta#j michael straczynski#dc earth one#earth one#dc#dc meta
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After reading the second issue of Wonder Woman by Tom King... The story feels like it was written for the express purpose of setting up a backstory for Lizzie, King's OC daughter of Diana. Both issues are fully narratated by the villain who is clearly speaking to Lizzie. This implies to me that this villain is really meant as Lizzie's villain, not Diana's. Oh yes, we know he fought Diana in some capacity, though it is very possible not directly, but he's giving a lengthy villain monologue to Lizzie. And, to be frank, what we know of the Sovereign is not all that compelling for a Diana "archenemy" as King billed him. But you know who he would make a compelling enemy for? The daughter of Wonder Woman. I can't say I know this for sure but I have a feeling he created this villain to be his oc's archenemy and then went backwards to make this Wonder Woman arc. The book just really reads like something that should be a flashback.
#idk if that make sense but#those are my thoughts as of now#dc comics meta#wonder woman#tuesday spoilers
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so I was listening to one of my Jason playlists and there's a song I put on there that I always have to listen to several times cause I get SO many feelings about it. I wish I could draw so I could do a cool animatic for it but cause I can't do that I'll just WRITE META ABOUT IT I GUESS
Here's the song. Sorry for the external link tumblr won't let me actually upload the song for some reason.
Breakdown of the song with my thoughts under the cut. (this is very long)
Starting with the chorus
Come paint my face
Come take my hand
I do not wish you to understand
Someday you too
Will go to war
And by that time may you not fear death any more
Ok so I always listen to this song as if Red Hood Jason is looking at and talking to pre-Robin Jason or like has just been taken in by Bruce Jason. I can only imagine the emotions Jason has thinking about how happy and naive he was pre-Robin. Like yeah he went through a lot of shit with his parents and then living on the street but his stint as Robin and then getting killed by the Joker is just... something else. And "will go to war, and by that time may you not fear death any more." just kinda hits me so hard cause as soon as he put the Robin suit on he was pulled into Batman's war and not long after that death became a very large part of his life very quickly till it culminated with his own.
Fortune may hold you
She's not your friend
Kind words spoken
Bows deepened
Foulest creature may wear the sweetest smile
Oh do not fear for I will see you in a while
This is obviously about Bruce taking him in and making him Robin. "Being Robin gives me magic!" He was so fortunate that Bruce found him and took him in. But I have to wonder if he regrets it at this point. Like he's died, been resurrected, tried to kill most of his family, gotten better but like is still not Okay(tm). And the fact that it starts off by talking about how good luck can turn and then ends with what is the best descriptor for the Joker that I have ever heard is just Jason poetry honestly.
Eyes upon you
Through the years
All of your troubles
All of your fear
Always watching
Always see
I am you now and you are me
This is just... man if you go back through his Robin run Bruce, Dick (and by extension the Titans) and even Babs were always kinda telling him he wasn't good enough. Bruce by pushing him to be more like Dick and Dick and Babs literally telling him he wasn't good enough to pick up the mantle from Dick. Not to mention all of rich Gotham society judging him for being from the poor side of town. And then later when he gets older and has more of his own opinions and gets more and more violent as Robin because he cares so much about the injustices he sees. Which only leads to Bruce and Dick saying he's too violent and one day he'll end up killing someone. ONLY for that to be followed by the Garzona thing. THIS SONG WAS MADE FOR JASON ISTG
If I should fall
You take my sword
All that is mine
Will be yours
Do not fear for those we leave behind
The blood that runs in your veins it is mine
And it's like despite everything Robin Jason has been through he knows that what has happened to him to bring him to where he is now is inevitable and it's a cycle he can't change. And maybe sometimes he's not sure he even would given the chance. I'm sure there are moments where he looks at who is right now and how many people he has helped with the way he handles things and knows that Bruce's way doesn't always work and maybe it's good he ended up like this so he can make the hard choices Bruce can't. But he still wishes the young boy he was didn't have to suffer as he did.
I am a stone falling through black water
On the bottom I start again
I am a stone falling through black water
My fall it never ends
My fall it never ends
This part man... it feels like he's talking about his relationship with "justice" and how it influences his relationship with his family. Cause he very obviously still considers them all his family but he's stuck in a continuous cycle of wanting to be part of it but also knowing that his way of justice works. Because he knows what life on the poor side of Gotham is like and he KNOWS Batman's way of fighting the injustice that happens down there doesn't work long term. But he also struggles with the fact that sometimes killing someone can start a vicious cycle that leaves kids orphaned, just like him. And so his feelings on the subject are ever fluctuating and he can't help himself falling over and over into cycle of violence no matter how much he wants to get out of it.
SO YEAH I JUST HAVE A LOT OF JASON TODD FEELINGS RIGHT NOW. Sorry that was so long. hopefully it was coherent and made any form of sense. but also omg why did you read this whole thing.
also if anyone wants me to post my Jason playlists (i have 3) lmk and i will
#jason todd#red hood#batfamily#jaybird#dc comics meta#i got really carried away and blacked out halfway through writing this#so i have no idea if there's a cohesive thought in any of these paragraphs#that's my secret cap I'm always thinking about Jason Todd#Spotify
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“Bruce is emotionally incompetent and can’t step outside his own morality” yeah it’s a character flaw.
“Dick is extremely stubborn and thinks he’s right all the time” yeah it’s a character flaw.
“Jason has hypocritical tendencies” yeah it’s a character flaw.
“ Tim is entitled and doesn’t think about people when seeking results, and often acts uncaring” yeah it’s a character flaw.
“Damian is rude and bratty” yeah, it’s a character flaw.
Also, some people may not even regard everything listed above as flaws.
Having negative traits allows incredible flexibility within your characters, what makes them intriguing, what makes them easy to relate to. If you want to write people, then write people. But they can’t be good and clean all the time.
#bruce wayne#dc comics#dc#batman#jason todd#dick grayson#tim drake#I’m really glad we’re growing out of the ‘my favorite is flawless because they’re a good person who has done both wrong ever’ phase#you can absolutely enjoy media that has imperfections and blemishes. these characters should be flawed. they should get to be shitty people#sometimes. they should get a chance to grow and extend and evolve as individuals. because I think that’s what we need to see more#it’s not about being a shitty person. it’s about STAYING a shitty person#text#meta#batfamily
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listen, i have no idea what’s currently canon in dc comics and i really don’t care to BUT regardless of what continuity we’re in, i think jason todd might be the funniest character of all time. just the biggest hypocrite ever and i’m obsessed. like, so many people have pointed out how crazy it is to be pissed off at tim for replacing him as robin when he literally replaced dick while dick was still alive, but then to go and parade around bludhaven as a murderous nightwing while dick is (again) very much still alive and THEN form a team with dick’s ex girlfriend and best friend??? jason todd is THE definition of “replacement” or what the fuck ever he calls tim and i actually find it so funny. stay crazy girl <3
#not to mention the meta of it all#Jason’s original backstory being identical to dick’s because dc literally just NEEDED another robin#like my guy was intended to replace dick#that was his original narrative function#he’s unintentionally the funniest character ever#jason todd#red hood#robin#dc robin#robin and batman#dick grayson#nightwing#red hood and the outlaws#more like red hood and the in-laws#yes i know everyone’s made that joke before#tim drake#Red Robin#batman#dc comics#gotham#bludhaven#batfamily#batfam#dick and jason
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Everyone’s like, “Dick’s traumatized from his heart stopping in Forever Evil, he deserves to have his family validate that and say it still counts as dying!”
But…I feel like Dick wouldn’t want to hear it, wouldn’t want to believe it counts. Not just because he’s insistent that he’s fine, but…
Years ago, he beat the Joker until his heart stopped, but Bruce revived the Joker so it “didn’t count.” Dick has been clinging to that “didn’t count.” He needs to have not broken the no-kill rule.
So if his family tells him that his own heart stopping counts as dying, what he’s going to hear is that he killed the Joker all those years ago. And I mean, that’s really difficult for him to accept.
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Do you think Batman could empathize with Terra?
Short answer: Yes.
Long Answer: Oh, here we go again.
So, Terra is my favorite character of all time. I want her to live, recover from her trauma, and then become some anti-villain mercenary that just shows up to annoy the titans.
However, I will forever defend the decision to kill Terra at the end of Judas Contract. Her complexity as a bad victim and the tragedy that Terra was just too complicated a victim for anyone in her life to notice or save is what makes her character good. The whole point of the story is Terra should have been saved, but she wasn't. That gives the story it's punch. Terra is a teenage girl who joined the Teen Titans, put on a costume, and died. Her creators sort of half-realized this and half didn't when they made the decision to kill Terra.
"Hers was the power over the earth itself. She could have brought life to deserts, heat to the frozen tundra, food to starving millions, she could have damned raging rivers and funneled water to lands parched dry, and dead. Her powers were limited only by the mind that controlled them. A mind which sought not hope, not love, not life, but death."
Even the panels that narrate her death that call her a psychopath and victim blame her, also speculate on how much potential good for the world is lost by snuffing out life as young as Terra's. Hers is the story of a young girl who by the narrative is doomed to die hence why there is nothing, no hope, no love, no life just death in her mind.
That's what makes the question of "Could Batman have empathized with her" so compelling, because it makes you think and realize there was a chance for Terra, miss "Dead at the beginning of the story" to be saved. So, why wasn't she? Why couldn't anyone involved in her situation empathize with this troubled teenage girl?
Out of context of her creators intending her to be an irredeemable monster, don't these lines, the last one especially sound horribly tragic?
"A mind which sought not hope... not love... not life... but death."
Terra's life is so nihilistic and miserable. What exactly was she alive for? She was a sixteen-year-old mercenary who was cut off from her family due to being the bastard child. She thinks she's manipulating death stroke who she thinks is her equal when she's actually just getting manipulated by him. I mean the fact that Terra views relationships as transactions. That she views sex with Slade as using her body as a bargaining chip to gain leverage over them. The fact that she hates the titans, primarily because she doesn't understand them. She thinks all their goodwill for each other is fake, and that they can't possibly be as good as they pretend to be because, in Terra's mind, good people don't exist.
The best interpretation of Terra is to not make light of her crimes at all, she did not grow close to the titans, she was planning on betraying them and never wavered, she felt next to nothing about killing... but even if all that's true isn't she sympathetic regardless because her life's just miserable?
All of Terra's actions don't change the fact that a 50+ year old is not only raping her, and using her as a child soldier, but is good enough at manipulating that she thinks the relationship is consensual and she's somehow in on the partnership. These two things do not cancel out one another.
The reason I hammered this nail in so hard, is because this is what makes up the tragedy of Terra's character. Terra is a fifteen year old girl in a horrible situation and therefore deserves to be saved. Terra does not get saved. Why is that? That's the essential question of the tragedy.
Now to return to your question, would batman empathize with Terra?
Yes.
I would argue the Titans empathized with Terra too. However, empathizing with someone is different from having the emotional maturity to communicate with them. Which is the difference between Batman and the Teen Titans, he is an adult and they are children.
When I think about the Teen Titans who are unable to save a girl they've lived with for months from an adult man who's their mortal enemy and clearly exploiting her, I get frustrated until I realize the Teen Titans are just barely older than Terra. Terra's case so clearly needs adult intervention, and she doesn't have that she has a group of teenagers who all have the RESPONSIBILITIES of an adult, but don't have the requisite maturity to be able to handle those responsibilities.
There's a lot of reasons that Terra does not get saved, number one being that not a single Titan seemed to see through her act despite them all having suspicions. I know this wasn't the intent, but Terra's written as a pretty textbook CSA victim. She's aggressive, hypersexual, tries to pose as an adult, associates sexuality with violence (heck Beast Boy flirting with her during a training session makes her violently lash out, you could easy interpret that as her experiencing some kind of flashback). There was clearly something going on with Terra, everyone had an inkling, no one noticed.
It's because everyone around her just saw what they wanted to see of Terra.
Beast Boy only saw his own romantic feelings for her. He made up his own idealized version of Terra and pursued her. And let's be honest considering Beast Boy's weird relationship with women in early NTT he was probably just seeking a girlfriend to validate his low self esteem.Raven sensed something off with Terra, but projected her own situation onto her as well. Raven convinced herself that there was some kind of evil buried deep within Terra but was afraid to confront her because number one, Raven is convinced she is evil deep down inside, and number two Raven understands so little about humans she feels like she cannot judge them. Robin is frankly, too busy with the rest of the team to notice.
Terra is practically the Laura Palmer of the Teen Titans. For those who have never watched Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer is a young woman in the town of Twin Peaks who lives a double lie. By day she is a prom queen dating a kid on the football team and running a meals on wheels program. By night she is tricking her boyfriend into buying cocaine for her regularly, working at a whorehouse across the border, regularly sleeping with men twice her age. Laura has an ugly dark side that's hard to look at, but what's uglier is the source of all of this behavior. Laura's coping with being raped by her father on a semi-regular basis and keeping that secret, when every single person in town only sees what they want to see of her, they see a prom queen, or a girlfriend, or whatever.
Bobby Briggs: “You damn hypocrites. You make me sick! Everybody knew she was in trouble but we didn’t do anything. All you good people… You wanna know who killed Laura Palmer? You did! We all did.”
No one noticed because they all saw their own version of Terra. Terra herself played into that, because she was lying to everyone.
At the same time there's a difference between a child who is not fully emotionally developed or aware of their surroundings and an adult who should know better. An adult should be aware enough to pick up signs of abuse or even notice a child's distress, and if they ignore it that's a problem.
The question is should a kid reasonably be expected to do the same thing? I would say that's expecting too much emotional maturity out of a kid because that's asking them to do what should be an adult's job. At the same time, the Teen Titans are kids who put on masks and decided to make it their job to save heroes. This is what makes the Judas Contract such an effective tragedy, because it makes you ask these questions. If none of them were able to notice or save Terra, then will they be able to notice the next time someone like Terra is in danger but they're not a straightforward or easy-to-spot victim?
The complexity of Terra's victimhood is another reason why the titans failed to save her. There's a panel where Terra is telling Kory and Donna a fake version of her backstory to get sympathy and they deny it by going "Well, we all have dead parents." And Kory goes "I was a slave for five years."
Of course, Terra's lying about her backstory here but regardless it's dismissive to play tragedy olympics here. The fact Kory was a slave for five years doesn't really matter because we're talking about Terra's experiences here, and only Terra knows about her feelings.
Terra is a complicated victim, her trauma doesn't make her a hero, in fact she despises the idea she should have to use her powers to help others. Yet, she deserves saving because she's a fifteen year old girl getting raped. In fact you would think Kory if she learned that fact or even got an inkling of it would be the first to sympathize having gone through something herself. And hey, she might. I just want to point out, Starfire tends to suffer from black and white, them vs. us thinking. Especially NTT Starfire who's much more emotional and warlike. She also didn't even notice her own sister blackfire was being abused in the same household.
So why do usually extremely empathic heroes draw a line like that with more complicated victims like Terra? Why even bother to play Trauma Olympics in the first place?'
It's because once again they're teenagers. Teenagers have black and white thinking. Who would have thought? Teenagers don't realy have the emotional maturity to see outside of themselves and their own situation. Which is why we get one of two responses. The first being "Well, I went through this and I'm fine...." (Arguably, none of the Teen Titans are fine they're all drama queens). The second being "Well, just because that happened to her that doesn't justify her behavior."
Returning to the example of Laura Palmer, once again does Laura Palmer's dark side even matter? Does it matter she illegally buys cocaine, or helped kill a man? An Adult (Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks) would be able to see that literally none of that matters because Laura needs someone to notice what her father is doing to her and save her from it.
This is mostly a post about comic books Terra, because she's my baby darling but to bring one moment from the cartoon in. When faced with the weight of her guilt in the episode "Betrayal" Terra breaks down sobbing and starts apologizing to Beast Boy.
Terra: (from o.c.) Beast Boy...it's the truth.
Beast Boy: Terra...why?
Slade: Because you could never give her what she needs.
Terra: No! I won't let you hurt my friend! (Close-up of Slade.)
Slade: Dear child, you don't have any friends.
Terra: (sobbing) Beast Boy, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. (He moves partially into view near the camera.)
Beast Boy: (from o.c.) Then why did you let it? (She stands up.)
Terra: I don't know, okay? I don't know.
Terra: Slade...he helped me, saved me from myself. (Pan to frame an upset Beast Boy in the other spot; she continues o.c.) He said I owed him, but--
Beast Boy: So it was all a game? You were just pretending? (Cut to frame both.)
Terra: (steps to him) No. You said you'd be my friend no matter what, remember?
(She reaches out to touch his shoulder, but he gives her the hardest glare he can and turns away.)
Beast Boy: Slade was right. You don't have any friends.
Terra confesses everything, shows obvious signs of guilt, and basically begs and Beast Boy turns his back on her. There's no more obvious opportunity to save her or change her heart, and Beast Boy just doesn't. He jumps straight to the victim blaming, "Why did you let it happen?" Again and again, they empasize Terra's choices and of course those are important but it doesn't change the fact she's being abused. "Why did you let it happen?" I don't know why did she let an adult man groom her. Why do children get groomed? Shouldn't they know better?
However, in doing that Beast Boy basically repeats the same words as her abuser "You don't have any friends" and drives her right back to Slade.
Now, Beast Boy was hurt because he thought his friends were possibly dead or injured somewhere else and Terra lied to him the whole night about it. Beast Boy's also a teenager so it's ahrd for him to see past his own hurt feelings and show empathy for the person who hurt him no matter what her reasons would be.
At the same time Beast Boy decided to put on a mask and call himself a hero. Heroes save people. This begs the question, if he's too immature to handle a victim as complicated as Terra which he will come across in the job because the abuse that happens to Terra is more common than you think then is he really mature enough to be a hero?
Now, having gone through all of that Batman would be able to empathize with Terra, for the simple reason that he's an adult so he should be able to step out of the situation and realize this a child who desperately need adult help that he's dealing with.
One important detail is that Terra's death, and Jason's death happened pretty closely to one another in comic book time. Dick Grayson in fact had a pretty bad reaction to both of those where he felt responsible because he was the one who gave Jason his Robin costume and allowed Terra on his team, therefore in both cases it was like he was approving of them being superheroes when they were too young for it... the very thing that got them killed.
Batman regularly refers to Jason's death as his greatest failure, because Jason was just a child and Bruce wasn't the caretaker that Jason needed him to be. Jason Todd is also a character that once reviving from the dead becomes a morally grey victim, with behavior that's comparable to Terra. Some people believe that Talia dipping him in the Lazarus pit like a crouton in soup has rendered him insane, or incapable of feeling remorse.
He is a vigilante killer. Tutored by several years by a woman from the League of Assassins and taught several forms of murder. He's involved in the drug trade and selling his services out for protection money. He is more or less a teenage mercenary like Terra, just with a slight vigilante bent to his actions.
Heck, his trauma is similiar to Terra's, they were both basically separated from their families at a young age, lived apart from them for years, and then became mercenaries and used their powers / vigilante training for both survival and profit. However, Bruce unconditionally views what happened to Jason as a failure because he let it happen. As an adult it was his job to be there for Jason and he wasn't.
Bruce's dying will and testament in Battle for the Cowl is an admission for this, and an offer to help him get the treatment he needs. Of course, it's Bruce so he still says it in a victim blamey way. He probably should have said "I failed you" rather than "You have been my biggest failure" but he still took responsibility.
Which is the underyling point and also something Batman as an adult can realize, that Jason was a child dealing with all of that pain alone and he couldn't possibly have coped with it the way an adult would because he's not one. He needs adult and outside intervention to show him the proper way.
Batman has taken in former murderers as sidekicks before (though arguably Terra needs to learn how to just be herself, making her be a hero was part of the problem in the first place). There's Cassandra Cain who was trained from birth to kill, his own son was also raised by the League of Assassins. In the new 52 Batman and Robin Damian and Bruce have a complicated relationship, but there is one scene I think demonstrates how Bruce has great potential to be empathic and communicate with Damian. Damian murders a man in front of Bruce, and breaks the bat family rule of no killing. He murders Henri Ducard's son, because the man was threatening to come back and kill Bruce at a later date.
Bruce does not throw him out or fire him for being Robin. THis time, Batman takes a long time to explain the truth to Damian about what his relationship with Henri Ducard and his son was. How in the past he also felt a desire to kill both of them for what they did and what the danger represented.
Bruce doesn't hit Damian over the head with "murder is bad" or "cool motive still murder" he doesn't see the crimes first he sees the victim.
He takes the time to let Damian understand him better as a person so they can have a connection there, and then he explains to Damian why he does not kill, and that he also doesn't want Damian to kill so he won't have to bear the guilt of it. He does that for Damian's sake, because he's a child and won't understand these things unless told.
Bruce needs to communicate this with Damian because they won't magically understand and empathize with each other, which is why I'm emphasizing over and over again the necessity of adult
intervention in Terra's case. An older and more mature Dick Grayson in Batman and Robin 2009 also emphasizes that Dick is the grown up in the relationship and Damian is the child.
And as the adult it is his responsibility to take care of Damian, hence the "Who's gonna save him if we don't?"
Batman has encountered children turned murders in one way or another and he always emphasizes the fact that they are children. If you want a more recent example, in the James Tynion Iv run for Batman, issue #105 where Bruce is facing off with Ghostmaker / Minhkhoa. Ghostmaker sets up a situation where Clown Hunter a murderous vigilante who started killing crimminals after his parents were murdered by the joker at twelve has a chance to kill Harley Quinn in revenge while Bruce watches. Bruce intervenes for two reasons, which he tells Minhkhoa.
Which features one of my favorite Bruce lines "caring about people hasn't killed me yet..."
Which really demonstrates Batman's empathy for others. His goal is to not put villains away, but stop the cycle of violence in the streets of gotham.
"How easy it would have been to just eliminate the joker's closest associates? But then nobody learns, nobody changes, nothing is better in the end."
It's easy to dismiss Terra for her crimes and let her face the consequences alone. But then, nobody learns, nobody changes, and nothing is better in the end. Batman doesn't judge who deserves to be saved and who does not. He doesn't let "not everyone can be saved" work as an excuse to not try to save someone.
Hell, Minhkhoa himself is diagnosed as a psychopath in universe with extremely low or nonexistent empathy, which is what Wolfram and Perez's original vision for Terra was. A person who did not feel empathy, remorse, or love for others. Yet, Bruce still gives someone like Minhkhoa a chance to do good, and still tries to communicate with him and get him to understand why Bruce does things the way he does even if Minhkhoa can't empathize with him.
To tie this all up. The tragedy of the Judas Contract arc is Terra was a child who did not get saved. There are reasons for this. She was surrounded by other children who didn't have the maturity to save her. She was being taken advantage of by an adult man who has been manipulating people for years. She was a liar and manipulator herself.
If Batman, an adult, had been there to help the Titans would he have been able to reach out to her and save her? We don't know, but I can say this he definitely would have tried.
#tara markov#terra teen titans#terra#batman#bruce wayne#dick grayson#teen titans#tt meta#teen titans meta#dc comics#dc comics meta#jason todd#damian wayne#beast boy#ghostmaker#dc#rape tw#csa tw
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Do you think Tim redefined Robin as Batman’s partner instead of his sidekick like Dick? I mean Tim’s run as Robin was that he was more independent and set upon a boundary. For Dick, Batman was the hero and he needed to set out and become his own hero. Comics are always in flux but I think it’s kind of why I like Tim as Robin.
No, I don't. I adore Tim and I think his perspective on Robin as Batman's partner is the best one, but it's not at all something that started with him. The relationship between Dick and Bruce in the gold and silver age was very much a partnership, much more so than a lot of the kid sidekick copycats that came after. And that got even more true after the Adam West series, when they aged Dick up to match Burt Ward's portrayal. It wasn't until the 80s when they decided they wanted more drama and an excuse to spin Dick off into the New Teen Titans that they introduced the idea that being Robin somehow made him lesser, like it was anything other than the name Dick Grayson chose to use as a hero. Heck, go back and read some of the Elseworlds from the 90s -- Dick is far more often portrayed as Bruce's BROTHER than as his chiId.
The idea of Batman as parental figure got introduced a little with Jason's tenure, but not nearly as much as fandom would have you believe -- which is why anyone who gets mad about the "Good Soldier" epitaph frankly just doesn't know what they're talking about. That was a sign of respect for a fallen partner. The idea that Robin is a child's role, and specifically that Batman is supposed to be his father figure, is EXTREMELY recent, and trying to read a lot of the old stuff through that lens is, honestly, kind of disingenuous.
People might not believe me when I blame Damian for skewing this perspective, but I swear to you, the fixation on the Bat-family as a semi-traditional nuclear family unit didn't really exist my first time through the fandom, before he was introduced. They were a found family, for sure, but the idea of it being specifically structured as a patriarch and his kids? That came with Damian more than anyone else.
And that's why I get super frustrated by anyone who tries to argue that Robin is a kid's role to be grown out of. It's not. That's all just an excuse to justify promoting Damian, an inherently immature and childish character entirely defined by being Batman's Son.
#Robin#batman#dc comics#Batfamily#DC comics meta#dc comics asks#tim drake#dick grayson#jason todd#damian wayne
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I really don't like the narrative of "Bruce thinks if he hadn't made Jason Robin, Jason would have ended up as a criminal."
I much, much prefer the narrative Robins (2021-) gave us. Jason knows he did illegal stuff to survive. He did what he had to do. But has been called a crook, a criminal, a kingpin and similar stuff so many times and yeah, he is one, that he believes this narrative of "oh, I so would have ended up as a criminal." Jason does not have a high opinion of himself. He knows his skills, he knows what he is, but his self worth isn't big.
And then you have Bruce. Who doesn't think that at all. He expects Dick and Stephanie to still be heroes if they hadn't been Robin. But Jason? No. Jason would be successful. He would use his skills, combine it with a passion and help others that way. In #5, they were all in a simulation based on Bruce's idea of what their lives would've been if they hadn't been Robins. And Jason? Jason is a famous race car driver. So good that he wins and wins and wins. He has his own charity dedicated to his mother. Every single penny he wins goes to that charity.
#jason todd#red hood#robin#robins#robins 2021#batman#batman comics#bruce wayne#comics#dc#dc comics#comic panel#comic panels#jason todd meta#robin ii
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Two bros, chillin in the batcave, 0 feat apart cuz they’re best friends
Also because Danny weighs like a wet baby crow in ghost form and he likes to have his Perch.
Duke would sooner take up Condiment King duties than turn him down
edit: there’s a comic now :)
and a story from @zeestarfishalien
#dpxdc#art#illustration#dp × dc#danny and duke#hazmat au#bunfish can art#comic#comics#day shift#day shift duo#meta alliance
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DPxDC and OOC
I've had a couple of posts cross my dash recently where people lament that a lot of the dpxdc fandom writes characters very OOC and how we're proliferating these characterizations among each other. I figured I'd add my own two cents.
I think the fundamental discrepancy comes from trying to reconcile two canons with vastly different tones.
Danny Phantom is a comedy superhero show operating on cartoon logic. Why do ghost experts Jack and Maddie never realize their own kid is a ghost? Why is the status quo restored at the end of every episode? Why does Danny shoot an ectoblast out of his butt that one time? Because it's funny. It's cartoony action fun where the plot is resolved in 22 minutes, there's never any lasting consequences and it's aimed at kids.
DC meanwhile wants to be taken Seriously. Heroes get beaten within an inch of their life, traumatized, killed and even the good guys do messed up things (often to each other). Yes there's action and puns, but also horrific violence, actions have consequences and it's (mostly) aimed at adults. When a main character dies the comics show their family and friends mourning and things are very dramatic. Even though at this point we, the audience can pretty much expect every death to be undone within 2-5 years of publishing, but I digress.
So how do we, the fanfic/fanart creators reconcile these differences when we make our crossovers? We either make DP more serious and somber, or we make DC more comedic.
Suddenly we have a DP verse where the Fentons' bumbling obliviousness is elevated to serious neglect or outright abuse. The GiW are no longer a minor annoyance, they are a serious threat with genocidal plans and a desire to vivisect the protagonist. When actions have consequences, we imagine Danny as dealing with serious PTSD from having to be a solo superhero and witnessing his family's death that one time (and maybe also getting vivisected). Danny is not just a teen superhero, he's now the Ghost King with serious responsibility on his shoulders.
On the flipside, if we make DC more comedic we tend to exaggerate character traits for comedic effect, focus more on the interpersonal dynamics (especially the Batfam) and have the characters act more casual and silly. Suddenly the Batfam goes from a group of seriously messed up individuals who have trouble communicating with each other and fight all the time to Batdad "Kids if you don't stop killing criminals you won't get dessert ffs" Bruce. Violence is played for laughs instead of taken seriously. Yeah they fight, but they still Love Each Other.
And THIS IS PERFECTLY FINE. It's transformative work! And trying to reconcile these disparate fandoms is hard! Fandom is a labor of love. We do it for free. We do it for our own entertainment. And no one is forcing you to read fics you don't like. DLDR and all that.
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