One last rambling rant just cause I can
I think it’s so fucking weird that when people make fanfiction, specifically Jason Todd-centric fanfiction, people of Crime Alley hate all vigilantes except for Red Hood.
That’s the biggest bullshit I’ve ever heard.
Batman, the creature that has been patrolling and helping all of Gotham's citizens, no matter what part of Gotham, suddenly isn’t allowed in Crime Alley because of this new vigilante??
I understand if the people there get used to Red Hood because he is only for Crime Alley, unlike Batman, who is for all of Gotham, but cmon.
Mr. Head's in a body bag or The Dark Knight, who I’ve seen bleed to keep a child safe and then comfort that same child successfully?
Mr. Crimelord of The Caped Crusader, who helped my Grandma and bought groceries for our entire family before referring us to the Wayne directive and securing us stable jobs, so we wouldn’t have to fall back on a life of crime?
Let’s weigh the options here.
And even if you don’t add the whole Jason murdering people thing, why would they turn on Batman when all he’s ever done is try to help the city?
I hate when people try to make an argument that regular people are scared of Batman because he just ‘beats up mentally ill people’.
Bruce’s entire shtick is helping people who are struggling physically, mentally, or even financially because he believes in second chances to a fault.
He doesn’t go after civilians. Bruce would destroy himself if he accidentally went after an innocent person. Then he would probably make it up to them.
And he doesn’t! Because he’s Batman, and he’s very meticulous in what he does, and he waits until he’s absolutely sure.
99.8% of the time, he’s right. Cause he’s the World’s Greatest Detective.
Bruce went to the bedside of his parents’ killer and held his hand while he passed away, ultimately making a huge personal sacrifice and forgiving him. You’re telling me that his kindness and compassion aren’t felt by the citizens that he’s been protecting for years?
I think it would be fine if people instead portrayed this arrangement as Batman giving Red Hood a place to protect that is entirely his own and more manageable than all of Gotham.
But having the people of Crime Alley refuse to be helped by Batman or insult him and actively drive him away is so strange to me. There's no logical reason why they would ever do something like that.
Anyways! Even if we don’t address all of that and we love Jason Todd (because we do love Jason Todd / all the batkids in this household), why would Crime Alley only accept Red Hood?
I think this trope also plays into how DC writers and fanfic writers refuse to allow Jason to grow and change from the grief that has shrouded his character ever since he came back from the dead.
In the end, no matter how they individually get there, all of the vigilantes in Gotham (plus Blud) want the same thing. They want to help their city.
Yes, there is a large difference in how Jason and Bruce feel about how they could best help the city, but they can come to a compromise on a lot of different matters.
And some people try to write it as if Gotham citizens see Red Hood as more ‘down to earth’ and more like them.
Which I think is stupid because they don't know a single thing about Batman, so why would they view him as being above them?
If you say, "Well, maybe it's the gadgets?" Red Hood uses a bunch of gadgets and expensive stuff as well. It's a total cop out. Bruce had been Batman for years and years before Red Hood came along.
If anything, Crime Alley would be more receptive and comfortable around Batman and Robin being there to help them. I'm sure they were scared of the Bat, but then he showed he just wanted to keep the streets safe and got Robin, which made him even easier to approach.
There’s this one little thing that most of the fandom agrees with that I sort of have a problem with. Not talking about the comics, only the fandom.
A lot of people rag on Bruce for not being more sympathetic to Jason after coming back from the dead. Specifically talking about how different Jason is personality-wise.
They say they feel bad for Bruce, but it’s worse for Jason because he lost himself while Bruce lost him, but ultimately got him back.
But with the way people write, Jason never being able to grow or move on from dying, Bruce didn’t get Jason back at all. Not his personality, not his being, not his love.
He lost Jason completely and yet still sees him from time to time, with their relationship being mostly antagonistic.
Bruce acknowledges that Jason is now a completely different person from the little boy that he was before. That much is painfully obvious. But that also seems to be a problem because people who write Jason being angry at Bruce treat him a lot differently, and do not know how to interact with him.
Either Jason is angry at Bruce for trying to go back to how their relationship was before they died, or he gets mad at Bruce for having a strained relationship with him.
It’s more of a fault of comic writers, show writers, and fanfic writers.
Most of the time, as people have pointed out, Jason doesn’t have much going on that doesn’t somehow tie back to the Batfamily.
He doesn’t have his own friends, his own villains, his own love life. Everything about him ties back to his family, which is how people equate Bruce not seeing him as his own person when, really, it’s the entire narrative built around him that makes it seem as though he is nothing outside of them.
I personally won’t be writing any Jason-centric stuff cause this is a Bruce-centric page only, but I have noticed it.
In the same vein, when fanfic writers make the people of Crime Alley also hate Bruce Wayne??? Not Batman, but Bruce Wayne.
Like, the man who goes out of his way to donate to charities, orphanages, and other sources that will help all people of Gotham?
The man who experienced the tragedy that Crime Alley holds firsthand while still a young child?
The man who happily hires goons, thugs, and anyone down on their luck at his company because he needs to help those around him?
He's a bright light in Gotham's gloom, the way he pretends to be a ditz and is mostly unproblematic in his scandals. He's all about doing good, and the public knows that. The entire Wayne legacy is full of people who have only done good for Gotham, and the public knows that Bruce Wayne, no matter how stupid he presents himself, plans on continuing that legacy.
And don’t say it’s because he’s a billionaire, because I think that's another cop out. This specifically only happens in Jason Todd-centric fanfiction, where they hate Bruce.
I don’t like any fanfic where they decide that the general public hates Bruce Wayne or views him in some evil light. That's stupid and goes against what most comics present, since some of y'all are obsessed with things being comic-accurate.
There was also this fanfic where Oliver ruins Bruce’s reputation after they switch bodies or something because Bruce is horribly abusive to his entire family, and I couldn’t even bother clicking on it. I was so tempted to block the person who wrote it, but I just scrolled on by.
Both Oliver and Bruce have their faults, especially with their children, but their both good people who deserve to be recognized for the good that they’ve done for their city while they’re rich.
I just think it’s ironic how Jason Todd fanfic writers constantly write about his desire to move past his death when they’re never letting him move past it.
There’s also the huge, annoying problem with the constant parentifying in the fandom. Tim isn’t that much younger than Jason, and yet everyone wants Jason to adopt him?
Jason can never be his own person.
He’s entire childhood was stolen away from him, and yet they want him to take care of another person who is, again, not that much younger than him.
Tim is constantly and consistently infantilized by the fandom. They make sure every bad thing in the world will happen to him, and either he can’t defend himself at all, or he is the all-powerful all all-knowing guy who doesn’t need the Batfam and is only staying around because he knows they need him as an emotional crutch.
In most fanfics like this, they make Bruce absolutely useless. Tim knows all of his secrets, and Batman knows nothing because Tim is oh so mysterious and the world's greatest detective and completely unbeatable in every single way.
Like, yeah, because of how Bruce trained his kids, they will eventually surpass him, but the way people write the Batkids, it's like Bruce is completely useless. He can't order them around, he can't order the Justice Leauge because they don't respect him, Gotham doesn't respect him, he can't figure out electronics, all of his kids keep secrets and he can't figure them out cause he's too stupid and they're so much smarter than him, he's always left in the dark, they make jokes at his expense.
Because Dick is constantly seen as being close to Damian, people make Jason close to Tim to balance it out. Or, if someone portrays the relation between Tim and Dick as being close, then Jason is super close with Tim and is basically his second father, and is the only one who truly knows Damian while effectively icing out the rest of the family, specifically Bruce, and taking that father figure role as well. Because once again, if Jason isn't potentially parentified for Tim, he's gotta be parentified for Damian instead.
Both Jason and Dick never get a break. They can never just be older siblings that occasionally have to take care of their younger siblings, like in the real world. No, the moment they show any care, they are automatically designated as the parent, even though Bruce is right there.
They'll disguise it as jokes, but use their jokes as a means to bash Bruce and make Damian or Tim rely on any adult that isn't him for some reason. Or they'll hold their love and affection for him as a means to control him. Now if Bruce did that, we'd be having a whole different conversation cause ya'll would downplay it.
Anyways, this started off as a small rant about how some Jason fans treat Bruce and the rest of the family like trash while glorifying everything that he’s done.
If you wanna write it, whatever. I go by the philosophy of don’t like, don’t read. But stop pretending that’s how everyone should write their relationship and start tagging your fics correctly so I can avoid that shit
