Apparently that is a hot take because I saw someone on tiktok (or somewhere) say that it’s objectively true because Bruce gives Dick the most responsibility and the most trust and it’s like…
Yeah, Because he’s the oldest??
Personally, I do think that Bruce doesn’t have a favourite, because he loves all of his kids so much.
He say he does and that it’s Jarro to piss off the rest of them tho
this is my truth too and some of it is is based on the one time i asked my own mom if she had a favorite and she looked at me like that was an insane question.
I just think Bruce 'way too much love in his heart' Wayne doesn't do favorites in this way not even subconsciously. But i also dont think its ridiculous to say nothing will ever compare to the times where dick and bruce were just batman and robin. Like i think that period of time is something special to him in a way no other robin would be able to match up to ...
okay this may be cruel of me but i think there does exist a reality where Alfred treats dick coldly and quite distantly and possibly even with a little disdain in a universe where bruce’s want of dick is not nearly as evident to alfred
Why are people scared of defining Superman's ideals/ why he's boring sometimes
I've said before that post-Snyderverse, there's this contrarian tendency people have where they distill Superman down into a list of aesthetic traits (bright colors, smile, save cats from trees, fix property that he damages in action sequences, be nice for free) with no real substance behind them.
And it's led to this new era of "Superman is a nice guy! Is it that hard to believe people can want to do good things?". Shows like MAWS perpetuate this rhetoric and it's so intellectually dishonest. It's a way of getting around basic character motivation. Because that tells me nothing about Clark's character. Batman, Lex Luthor, Harvey Dent, etc are all characters who believe they're good people doing good things.
If I asked you "why does Harvey Dent believe what he does is morally correct? Why does he act based on the whims of a coin flip?" I'd get a thorough response back. Life experience (abusive dad, time as a lawyer, acid face incident, crumbling mental health from pressures of a mayoral campaign and undiagnosed DID) led to Harvey believing in chance as the great equalizer. I'd probably get a similarly detailed response if I asked about Batman's motivations. My writing prof once said "a hero is a character who strongly believes in an ideal and will sacrifice anything, including themselves, for that goal. A villain is the same thing. The protagonist is who the story is about. And that can be a hero or a villain."
But if I ask you "why does Superman do good things?" or "what informs Clark's ideals?", I get a weirdly vicious response back. "It's sociopathic to ask why people are nice without benefit!" "Lex Luthor mindset" "why are you acting like being nice is a plot hole" "being good for the sake of human empathy and decency? Why does that need to be justified?" "Why can't you fathom someone being kind for the sake of it?" "Because it's the right thing to do??" Or I'm told I'm smug for asking.
We're so used to seeing Superman as a popular media icon that saying "Superman is a good man who upholds American values because he was raised by good Kansas parents" is considered a sufficient enough answer for most people despite that being a nothing burger statement. Writers who stick to this mindset struggle to get compelling characterization out of Clark that isn't "Force of Good Who Fixes Things". What does being "good" even mean? That's so broad. A conservative and progressive person's idea of "good" are radically different. Clark got his ideals from his Kansas parents? Okay, what are the Kents' ideals then? "They're a classic American family" that hid an undocumented alien immigrant? And adopted him as their own? Surely that's considered pretty unamerican to conservative people. So no, that's not a sufficient answer.
I want to interrogate why people are so averse to answering this basic question. What are Superman's ideals?
The question of Superman's motives are explored many times in the comics. Better Superman writers take advantage of Clark's lived experience as a means of informing his heroism and ideals. For example, Grant Morrison's All Star Superman went for "A Superman who is tuned in to humanity's vulnerabilities based on his heightened Kryptonian senses- he understands how fragile the world is."
It's a pretty neat answer and certainly goes deeper than most Superman motivations. This is subjective on my part (and a hot take- I'm allowed to have different opinions), but I kinda find this dorky, haha. I get it, but personally I prefer it if Clark's ideals weren't so tied to his Kryptonian + Sun abilities or this implication that if you have "heightened abilities you have more empathy for life". Again, I get what it's going for but it's not my cup of tea!
What interests me is how Superman's lived experience as an immigrant inform his heroism- not so much his super powers. Yeah it would be useful if Clark used his heightened abilities to help people, but it comes with outing himself as an alien and being othered for it. So why does he take that risk? These were all questions I had Lois ask Superman in Private Interview- that's how compelling I think Clark can be as a character. If Clark had an initially flawed reason to go into heroism (to prove himself as the respectable, assimilated immigrant), even better! That's room for character growth. This is why I love Gene Yang's version of Clark. We get to see that growth.
When writers don't dig past "well he's just a nice guy" that's when we get boring Supermen. That's why I don't think it's baseless to say he's boring. I wouldn't blame you if you read one of the many times writers were satisfied with "Superman's just nice I guess." Heck, we've got a whole animated show about that. It's not the full picture, but there's many takes like this.
I believe there's something inherently insidious and conservative behind the push to just make Superman nice with no ideals. This side of the discourse will often argue that "good" is something that's magically inherit and natural in us, it's something we'll just know how to do thanks to the help of Kansas Parents(tm). When you ask these people to elaborate on this, the mask comes off and you get "Clark was raised in a good Christian family with Proper American Values" and that's the root of all this.
It's conservative to believe that Liberal Christian American values are universal and inherit to human nature. That it's something unquestioned and unchallenged. That it's not deeper than just being nice. Gone are any of Superman's political beliefs and personal experiences that inform his character- because if you look at Superman this way, you can project whatever you want on that mascot for vague goodness.
What these people don't want to hear is that empathy and altruism is something you have to work for. We live in a world where our government, education system and media landscape constantly tell us who is worthy of integrity and personhood. It takes work to care about marginalized people. It entails challenging what you're constantly told is unquestioned good. Maybe that means questioning what you're taught in history classes, or recognizing the history of racism and ableism that informs fields like that of science. Maybe it means moving past 5th grade understanding of biology as justification to oppress trans people.
Ages ago, I wrote a critique about the shallow inclusion of Thanksgiving in MAWS. In it, I try to engage with Thanksgiving as a political topic in the context of the show. In the show, it's just a reason for Clark to get together with his friends and family. In reality, it's a holiday that erases the genocide of Native Americans, re-appropriated to be a day of protest and mourning by indigenous communities. Surely the fictional undocumented immigrant survivor of planet-wide extinction, Superman, would have more to say about Thanksgiving than just sitting around and eating a Turkey.
The response I got for that critique was "you're reading too much into it. He's celebrating Thanksgiving because he's a good American Citizen". When your hero's classic motto is "Truth, Justice and the American Way" and you refuse to have a critical interrogation of what it means to be an undocumented immigrant in America, you open the doors for bigoted fans like this to identify with Superman. You left it vague, so there's room for them now. Superman's good, but not good enough to care about indigenous people, because that's Unamerican. That's why so many Superman fans are the most bigoted people I've met in fandom.
All this to say, it's important to be aware of instances when Superman becomes a corporation's vague mascot symbol of Unquestioned Good, without ever saying, doing, or elaborating on what being "good" would entail.
hiii valiants! first of all thank you for all the cod treats you share with us! genuinely love your perception and takes on the characters. i know you mainly focus on soapghost but i also realllllyyyy love your priceghost. i spend a Normal, Reasonable, and Healthy amount of time thinking about priceghost in that post-roba/pre-141 time period and the recent price scars posts and your handler(tm) priceghost post got me thinking of the different ways—small or big—that price built up trust with ghost.
how big of a role do you think price's scars/history at the gulag played in the foundation of their relationship? do you think there's a privately shared intimate (perhaps even spicy) memory between the two of ghost finding out about price's scars? whether price's time at the gulag happened pre-roba or if there was some overlap and shared commiseration? i always go back and forth with myself on whether ghost was assigned to price or hand selected by him. whether brass paired them based on history or if price's M.O. has always been hand picking the ripest fruit... (re:soap)
sorry lots of thoughts but i just find their mentor/mentee; handler/attack dog; Dom/dom; old married couple schtick so fun
-love eviltreat
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 eviltreat, thank YOU and never apologize for such a LUSCIOUS message filled with such DELISH thoughts, and for your generous tip - you are too kind to a mere priceghost pervert... in return I shall try to answer as best I can.
I think you're so right, the scars had to have helped build trust between them, especially since neither are the trusting type. I remember learning in a psych class in school that when people go through torture most of them lose their distinct personalities and they all become "the same", behaviorally. So Ghost and Price, having gone through this experience, were also kind of the same for a time... I imagine it would be hard NOT to establish lifelong kinship and camaraderie with that similarity alone.
That plus my headcanon of Price growing up rough, around other roughened people (and traumatized fighting dogs), he would DEF know how to handle Ghost's more uneven moments - and maybe sometimes even be a good sport about Ghost's tangled intimacy wires and get him off, albeit very clinically and as his direct superior (hot):
And A THOUSAND TIMES YES on Price hand-picking the most rottingly ripe fruit... I think no one above Price can truly tell him what to do about his own team - certainly not about its make-up - and I've imagined over the years how it might've gone down with Ghost and Soap, since we've seen it firsthand with Gaz.
In my head Price went through what he did, THEN learned about Ghost due to his notoriety, both pre-Roba and after. He probably had always kept an eye on Ghost for his potential (very high) and later his exploitability (easy with a rough hand) but only really picked him up when he started to go bad enough to save. They're brothers now, but I do think Price has always just been after good dogs and good weapons, for a just-as-good cause... (another fly for the flypaper)
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