something small that irks me a little about the batfam fandom when regarding Stephanie is their insistence about Bruce not being her father, and that effectively absolving him of any guilt?
People are SO eager to display their ‘ball’ knowledge of Stephanie by constantly making the exclamation that ‘Bruce isn’t Stephanie’s dad!’. Like we know, it’s a commonly known fact, it also doesn’t stop him from being an adult figure in her life who failed her. Much like you can have shitty teachers and tutors and bosses and therapists, they may not be your parent but they have a responsibility to treat kids in a certain way, which some abuse.
Like, yes, Bruce isn’t her father, and she has a mom who she loves and a shitty dad who deserves a special place in hell. But just because Bruce isn’t her dad doesn’t mean he has no place in her life? Batman disapproved of Spoiler from the start, neglected her as a young, teen vigilante with a dangerous father. She had no other guardians or older heroes to guide her path in the early days, so she ended up taking many crap paths and was put through a lot of shit that could’ve been avoided if Bruce had trained her from the start.
I’m not saying Bruce was all terrible, if anything, I agree with him on many parts, like yeah I would also tell the fifteen year old, untrained girl to get off the streets and go home, and get pretty annoyed when she didn’t. However, even when he let her into the Batcave, he kicked her out almost immediately, even as Robin she was picked apart about every tiny thing and was essentially only used to get Tim back (Bruce was such a piece of work here, definitely partially due to writing issues but there’s also merit in the fact that he was struggling in the loss of Tim who was out of the scene at this point). I think that Bruce did try his best with Steph, I think he also made a lot of mistakes and abused the position he had in her life. And while we’re on the subject, I also think her death should not be pinned wholly on either party.
I think that this complex relationship shouldn’t be disregarded just because he’s not her father.
It’s suchhh a flag to me when someone makes this claim, e.g. in the comments of a video discussing this topic, that they A. haven’t read any of her comics(or at least, any of her significant ones from the 90s/early00s), and/or B. don’t really care about her character and only use this as a ‘gotcha’ on people who refer to their relationship (perhaps by mistake or just misunderstanding, or as their own interpretation of the relationship) as parental.
But don’t take this too serious, it’s just a little grating to see people firing shots at others about simple mistakes and canonVsfanon arguments when they don’t seem to have any knowledge on the character themselves. Like what you wanna like, read what you wanna read, js be kind about it.
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