Violent Impulses

Sethan. He/him. 20. DC blog curated for Two-face / Harvey Dent. Main blog is sethansewellart.

[harveydentfanpage]

discord server for fellow harvey dent fans! daily discussions, sharing fanart, brainstorming headcanons, etc will be common activities.

Join the Harvey Dent’s Courthouse Discord Server!

Check out the Harvey Dent’s Courthouse community on Discord - hang out with 38 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

[peztacular-deactivated20240803]

lonnie doodls from a magma today with friends heheeh

[harveydentfanpage]

would any comic anarky fans be interested in an anarky discord server? feel free to let me know.

[peztacular-deactivated20240803]

my hatred for DC tv shows should not come as a surprise to anyone but seriously:

its so painful knowing how some dc characters will be instantly associated with their live action/movie version of them because i want you all to know that arrowverse lonnie machin is nothing like his better (comic) counterpart. they are nothing alike. the only thing they share is a name, and that surprisingly applies to a lot of movie/series versions of dc characters. i hate how they fuck them up and then like "Oh yea its [x] by the way, because they have the same name, nothing else is the same jsyk." like here let me just take this one underrated character you love and fuck him up by making him a p.o.s in the live action version and everyone will associate him with that version now and no one will fucking notice because they cant be bothered to read his comics

anyways Arrow & Flash suck ass and most characters they use are not accurate depictions and do not fit their comic counterparts at all

i dont care if theres a reason for them changing everything or whatever. It Just fucking sucks and i hate it

this is all just my opinion so dont get pissed. even though im incredibly right

[kalelraejepsen-deactivated20231]

i just finished reading scott snyder's court of owls saga ‘cause the owls have been coming up what with that gotham knights game coming out, and i want to talk about it because, as a jewish person living in the year 2021, i found the entire thing really disturbing

i will get into what was antisemitic about it, but i want to talk first about why it's a problem. first of all, batman in particular has a nasty history of getting co-opted by fascists. there’s frank miller’s the dark knight returns, which advocates pretty blatantly for fascism and hides it under a layer of irony. i’d argue that the popularity of comics like tdkr has contributed significantly to the radicalization of fandom spaces, particularly online ones, leading to movements like gamergate or the incel movement, which then fed into the rise of the “alt right” and hastened the global rise of fascism we’re dealing with today. innuendo studios has a great video on this phenomenon, by the way

the other reason i think the court of owls existing in the dcu is harmful is it directly parallels actual conspiracy theories that, if you dig deep enough into them, usually center around the idea that a ~secret cabal of international jewry~ controls the world. considering qanon believers invaded the us capitol on january 6th and all the conspiracy theories around COVID, masking, and the vaccine, i hope i don’t have to explain why depicting a similar conspiracy theory turning out to be true in the narrative of the most popular superhero franchise in the world presents a tangible threat to actual human lives even beyond the hate crimes it could inspire against jewish people

i’m going to back up my claims below, but i just wanted to get the reasons for my concern out of the way upfront because it's not just that i'm uncomfortable (though boy howdy am i ever.) this is harmful, scary shit, and i worry what retelling this story in a new medium is going to encourage

so the court of owls is a secret society of powerful elites who have been controlling the fate of gotham since its founding. bruce wayne gets on the court’s bad side when he starts a project to invest in and massively improve gotham city, a thing the court doesn’t want to happen for… reasons? as the story goes on, we find out that many attempts at fixing gotham have been stopped by the court of owls. for example, martha wayne once tried to open a school for underprivileged youths and wound up losing her unborn child in a car crash. (put a pin in that!)

this gets at the central problem of conspiracy theories, which is that they provide easy explanations for problems that are actually caused by the many complex systems that make up our society. instead of blaming, say, capitalism (which would be very difficult and messy and inconvenient to overthrow), conspiracy theorists can point to one particular group of people and claim that if they could just get rid of this one group, everything in the world would be fixed! and, uh, because, you know, the entire history of europe, that scapegoat tends to be jewish people

it is often said that antisemitism is the socialism of fools, and this comic is honestly a great example of why. gotham doesn’t suck because its poverty is profitable for the people who shape the way gotham functions and the city has been systematically drained of resources in pursuit of that profit; it sucks because the court of owls keeps doing spooky shit to stop the GOOD, HELPFUL rich people the city SHOULD belong to

now, it’s strongly suggested by canon that martha wayne was jewish, making bruce jewish as well, and you might think that cancels out some of the antisemitism. however, i should note that a lot of antisemites will draw distinctions between “individual jews” who they like and "international jewry," who are the real problem, so it still fits quite neatly into most conspiracy theories. also, i could point out the fact that dc has literally never acknowledged that bruce and martha are jewish. they didn't even make them jewish on purpose

the court of owls also has a lot of ~spooky trappings~ that fall into antisemitic tropes, intentionally or not. the biggest one is the way it parallels the blood libel. for those who don’t know, the blood libel is a belief that developed among christians in medieval europe that for the passover seder, jews will kidnap and ritually sacrifice christian children and drink their blood. this belief has echoed through conspiracy theories not just in famous modern antisemitic documents like the protocols of the elders of zion, but in other, broader evolutions of the blood libel such as the witch trials (the malleus maleficarum described the ritualistic sacrifice of children to the devil), the satanic panic of the 70’s and 80’s (satanic child sacrifice and the corruption of children), and of course qanon in the modern day (more child sacrifice and corruption!) while none of those are explicitly about jews, if you dig deep enough into them you’re going to find accusations that jews are in league with the devil

the court of owls have these spooky servants called talons, who are children the court of owls kidnaps and molds into superhuman assassins totally loyal to them. talons are apparently selected from among children raised in haly’s circus, and dick grayson was originally supposed to be come a talon before bruce took him in. i think it would be remiss not to point out that dick is romani, and as with jewish people, the persecution of romani people has often historically been justified by accusations of kidnapping good christian children. dick’s romani family isn’t directly implicated in this instance, but considering we’re already in blood libel territory the association between the talons and haly’s shows a lack of thought on the part of scott snyder at the very least

another example of the blood libel being paralleled in the court of owls is. siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. bruce’s secret evil brother he forgot about (just like sherlock!) who was spirited away by the court of owls and raised to hate bruce so the court could use the brother against him. again, this ties back to the ways the ~secret cabals~ of conspiracy theories halt meaningful progress. it’s ambiguous whether this dude is really thomas wayne jr. or whether someone's lying, but it’s at least strongly implied that he was taken from the waynes as punishment for martha trying to open that school against the wishes of the court. it’s also unclear whether or not the court of owls killed the waynes. bruce looked into it when he was younger and concluded the court didn’t exist, but it’s at least lightly suggested that they were responsible

there’s also just some little stuff peppered throughout the story that makes me really uncomfortable as a jewish person. at one point one of the owls threatens to “eat [batman’s] bones,” which throws back to blood libel in the cannibalism sense. there’s also this scene where the talon asks the court how he should execute batman:

it gives me bad vibes because it echoes the part of the new testament where jesus is condemned to death by a crowd of jewish people chanting “crucify him!” i don’t know if this was on purpose, and i doubt it was, but this is a part of the new testament that’s been used to justify the persecution of jewish people over and over again over the last two thousand years, and even if it wasn’t on purpose there’s at least some unconscious association going on here. like at the very least it’s not a good look

it’s just really irresponsible storytelling, and in an era when conspiracy theorists are more emboldened than ever i think using this story in new batman media is throwing fuel on a fire that’s already out of control. let’s just not. thank you for listening

[peztacular-deactivated20240803]

this was made in two minutes because i had. an idea and an available art program

ive been getting into a lot of arrowfam n green arrow reading recently... havent had much time for lonnie- i have 3 other characters who serve 2 brief appearances and then promptly die or disappear forever to fanboy over.

[sonofapunk]

*taps mic* zoanne, tam, callie, hudman, darla, bernard, tim, lonnie friend group

[rejincy]

he said yes

[harveydentfanpage]

i think that--as an adult and some years have past since they woke up from their coma--lonnie would join activist groups in gotham and join local communities, to *actually* work with people they claim to be protecting on their behalf. even establish clubs (non-profit ones of course) for children, like damian wayne, or something. tim could help along too, perhaps.

[harveydentfanpage]

hey guys. apologies for the severe lack of content on this blog. this year has been such a rollercoaster ride and i've just been so so damn busy in general, but i am happy to announce that i'm in a better position to post content on here again!

[harveydentfanpage]

discord server for fellow harvey dent fans! daily discussions, sharing fanart, brainstorming headcanons, etc will be common activities.

Join the Harvey Dent’s Courthouse Discord Server!

Check out the Harvey Dent’s Courthouse community on Discord - hang out with 38 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

[somebody-stop-me]

I'm sorry but this is now my new favourite photo of Jim Carrey.

[badwaves]

[harveydentfanpage]

i’m two (HAH) days late, but… HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! and it is harvey’s year, thus i shall participate in celebrating every tuesday.

[systematic-advice]

The Scarecrow and Twoface are also heavily implied to have DID as well, so much that it may as well be canon in some versions

Harvey isn't implied at all! He HAS DID. It's stated many times in Canon that he struggles with it. You even see him split a second Alter outside of Two-Face in the Animated Series where he gains an Alter called The Judge!

I didn't actually know about Scarecrow though!! Now I need to do more research!!

[trustymikh]

Judge sketch that went out of hand

[poppy-sliaccio]

Toss the coin.