Tumgik
#im not sure if i actually answerd ur quesiton sorry
fancyfade · 5 months
Note
I saw the post saying Batman fans think dc intentionally make Bruce a terrible parent to give Damian angst…just…have these people seen what dc writers and editors in interviews?
A lot of writers and editors revealed they see Damian not more than an arrogant and entitled brat that needs to learn his place and follow the status quo…which is hilarious as a lot of modern writing heroes make fucking frustrated with their holler than thou personalities.
Heck I remember the writer got Tim Drake last recent book said she liked Damian but he can be difficult at times
Oh like Ra’s and Bruce? Almost like he related to the some of the most complex mainstream comic book characters.
And from my experience, a lot of writers want to write the idolized version of Batman that made up as a kid. Which unfortunately makes Bruce treat Damian as afterthought unintentionally.
Now I don’t expect Bruce to be the perfect dad, but as you stated months ago. A lot of modern Batman writers have a fundamentally lack of desire to have Bruce act like a parent/figure. In fancy I notice this with the other batkids where their bonds with Bruce have been extremely watered down. Can you confirm that as you read more older comics than me.
Sorry for a long anon, I don’t think Bruce is meant to be a terrible father. Just a lot of writers project their personal bias against Damian into other characters…which in turn make a lot of them worse as writer forgot Damian is a child…not to mention Bruce bio son. Not saying parents and kids have 1:1 of personalities. But do writers remember Bruce can be an asshole too?
yeah a lot of the writers do project their personal biases - as well as they personally don't view Bruce's adopted kids as his actual kids* and it's more comfortable for writers to just have them do different things when batman doesn't "have" to be a parent. like dick and bruce have pretty good rapport in silver and bronze age.
for older comics its strange. like I'd say even tho golden/silver age bruce didn't refer to dick as his son, he still definitely had "dad like" qualities. like we see a golden age bruce knock dick out to stop him from following him to his presumed death**, and silver age Bruce encourages dick to spend time being a kid and enjoying basketball and for example 1 comic dick goes to his school's spirit night instead of on patrol.
bronze age dick is college age, so their dynamic is different. dick's out of the house in college, and honestly I wish writers would do this more if they just didn't want to write Bruce being a dad. Like for Damian's situation instead of Bruce being criminally negligent/stupid why can't we just see Damian living with Talia he literally has a mom. you don't want to write bruce being a dad there are options.
jason we see him being a good dad but also his tenure as robin is pretty short, and then for a while the robin of the time (tim) is important in that he is not bruce's son. he's a trainee. Bruce doesn't have any minor children for a while, and only after OYL (occurs 2006 in our world) do we see him adopt a nearly adult tim.
For which Batkids have had their bonds with Bruce watered down, I'd have to read more current batcomics. The old comics I'd say we do have phases where Dick and Bruce don't talk much, mostly due to the annoying post COIE retcons of how Dick becomes nightwing (Bruce initially tells him he can't be Robin after he gets shot, then immediately adopts Jason to make him Robin, and then later that is retconned for Bruce to kick him out). I've spoken multiple times about preferring pre COIE retcons where Dick had more agency.
Cass I am not sure if we've seen her interacting a lot with Bruce lately, due to the aforementioned not keeping up with current batcomics that don't have Damian. She does show up in spirit world but :P that's about Xanthe.
From what I hear from people who read current Tim comics, Tim's bond with Bruce is very strongly emphasized, tho I haven't read those comics myself so I can't comment firsthand.
Overall I think a lot of portrayal of Bruce as straight up negligent or abusive*** is due to writers just not caring about portraying him as a dad, they care about loner batman which maybe is the version from their head as kids? or could just be because that's a lot of what DC likes to emphasize. also the general "men express emotions by being angry and violent" thing many writers like. and DC was going to set up Damian as the villain for 5G, so they had to put him in a place where Bruce couldn't have seen this and stopped it, so they decided that he was going to claim any level of ignorance in order to not look bad (because I guess just not knowing what's going on with your child is fine)
*for a similar thing not in batman comics: i think that if Death of a Prince writers viewed Garth as Aquaman's ""actual"" kid, even though Garth was adopted by him and raised by him for a large portion of his childhood, they wouldn't have had aquaman being willing to fight aqualad to the death to save his biological child, arthur jr, at black manta's threats.
**which is also what Talia does for Damian in Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul - she knocks him out to take him away from battle and protect him
*** as opposed to realistically emotionally unavailable for his character, which I think works especially post Jason's death. but also WRT for why I think the negligent stuff is OOC (here - post)
18 notes · View notes