Why can't she just write smut about damian? We literally have alternative timelines where he's in his mid twenties.
I find it genuinely strange how people keep asking this question as if the answer isn’t already obvious: “Why can’t she just write smut about Damian? We literally have alternative timelines where he’s in his mid twenties.” As if the existence of an alternate timeline magically erases everything the character fundamentally is, represents, and was created to be.
Let’s start with the most basic point. Damian Wayne is, at his core, a child. That is how he was introduced. That is how he is known. That is how he exists in the cultural consciousness. You don’t get to just selectively ignore that because there happens to be one alternate version somewhere where he’s older. Alternate timelines exist for storytelling flexibility, not as a moral loophole for people who want to sexualize characters whose entire identity is rooted in being minors.
Saying “but he’s aged up” does not change the origin, the intention, or the context of the character. It doesn’t erase the fact that the emotional attachment people have to him was built on his portrayal as a child. It doesn’t suddenly make it neutral or detached. The character people recognize, the character people grew attached to, the character people are thinking of when they say his name — is a minor. Pretending otherwise is not intellectual honesty. It’s rationalization.
And more importantly, the real question is not “why can’t she write it?” The real question is: why does she need to? Why is there such an insistence that she should? There are countless adult characters. Infinite possibilities. Entire worlds full of grown, fully adult fictional people. Yet somehow, the focus keeps coming back to characters whose identities are rooted in childhood. And when someone says, “I’m uncomfortable with that,” suddenly they’re treated like they’re the irrational one. It’s backwards.
Her refusal isn’t hypocrisy. It’s consistency. It’s recognizing that just because something is fictional doesn’t mean it exists in a vacuum. Fiction is created by real people, consumed by real people, and shaped by real cultural norms. And those norms do not exist in isolation from power, race, or history.
Because here’s the part people really don’t want to talk about: characters like Damian do not exist outside of Western frameworks that have historically exoticized, fetishized, and “othered” non-Western identities. Damian is the son of Batman and Talia al Ghul, created and published by DC Comics, a Western company operating within Western cultural narratives.
And Damian’s identity is not neutral. He is written as racially ambiguous, often coded as Arab, Asian, or generally “exotic,” and raised in an environment portrayed as violent, cold, and hyper-disciplined. He is literally introduced as a child assassin. A child raised outside “civilized Western society,” who must be brought into the moral framework of his white, Western father.
This is not accidental. This is a trope. A very old trope.
Western media has a long, deeply documented history of portraying non-Western cultures — especially brown, Arab, Asian, and Black cultures — as savage, dangerous, hyper-sexual, or morally deviant, while positioning Western culture as the civilizing force. The message is subtle, but persistent: the non-Western child is dangerous, broken, and in need of correction. The Western parent is rational, moral, and redemptive.
Damian’s entire narrative is built on this foundation. He is the “violent foreign child” who must be taught humanity by his Western father. He is the product of a mother whose culture is portrayed as cruel and extreme. He is literally framed as something that must be softened, corrected, and integrated into Western morality.
And this matters. Because when you take characters who are already racialized, already exoticized, already positioned as “other,” and then sexualize them — especially when their identity is rooted in childhood — you are not operating in a neutral space. You are participating in a long history of fictionalizing, consuming, and controlling racialized bodies for entertainment.
The context does not disappear just because it makes people uncomfortable to acknowledge it.
So when she chooses not to write smut about Damian, it is not because she “can’t separate fiction from reality.” It is because she can. She understands that fiction reflects values. That fiction carries implications. That fiction exists within systems of representation that are not random or meaningless.
She is choosing not to contribute to something that makes her uncomfortable. She is choosing not to engage in the sexualization of a character whose identity is fundamentally rooted in being a racialized child created within a Western narrative that already exoticizes and objectifies him.
That is not weakness. That is awareness.
And honestly, the fact that people react with confusion or frustration toward that boundary says more than they probably realize. Because nobody is losing anything by her not writing smut. Nothing is being taken away. No one’s freedom is being restricted. The only thing that’s happening is that one person has decided, based on her own ethics and comfort, not to engage in something.
And somehow, that alone is enough to bother people.
Which raises a very simple question: if it’s “just fiction,” if it’s “not a big deal,” if it’s “completely harmless,” then why is her refusal such a problem?
Why is her boundary so threatening?
The answer is simple. Because boundaries force people to confront things they would rather not examine. They interrupt normalization. They remind people that just because something is common doesn’t mean it’s neutral, and just because something is fictional doesn’t mean it exists without meaning.
She doesn’t owe anyone that content. She doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. And she certainly doesn’t owe anyone the abandonment of her own ethics just to make others more comfortable.
Choosing not to sexualize a character whose identity is rooted in being a racialized minor is not hypocrisy.
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