Warning: my opinion, you don’t have to agree with me, you only need to be mature about it
Okay, my take on the Batman is that he is brooding and he is dark.
But he’s brooding and dark in the way autistic teenage girls are. Just a bit off putting and depressed in a way that often gets misunderstood and twisted fit other people’s perceptions. (Ex: he thinks he’s better, he’s a creep, he’s stuck up, etc.)
And he is emotionally distant but only because he feels so much. His parents got shot in front of him when he was a kid, you don’t think that would make for a closed off, sensitive teenager then a super guarded but at heart super mushy adult??
I’m not saying he would be a ‘crybaby’. I am saying he would be tortured by empathy. That’s why he’s so brooding, dark, and depressed because he knows the moment he lets someone in he’s going to end up understanding them too well and it makes their inevitable betrayal or Bruce’s inevitable mess up to hurt even worse.
And Batman is Bruce Wayne. Batman is also that small child in the alley with blood on his knees staring and staring and staring at all the red staining his shorts and wondering if any of it really happened. Hoping it wasn’t real.
Bruce is kind. Bruce is loving. Bruce is empathetic.
But Bruce is also closed off and guarded and so paranoid that it hurts him and others.
A lot of things can be true at the same time. You don’t have to take away one character trait to add another. They can coexist.
It’s why I can’t take grim versions of the Batman too seriously and why I can’t take soft versions of Bruce very seriously either.
He fucks up his relationships all the damn time. Sometimes, it’s not even his own fault. Sometimes, it’s just moral he’s not willing to bend on.
(Ehem, *insert ‘no killing rule’ here*.
Because that is a moral. A principle. Him not willing to bend on them isn’t a bad thing even though it does end up hurting people. It just means that there are exceptions to rules.
Still, I don’t think Bruce should ever kill or actively condone killing. At most, I think he should look the other way, but not pat anyone on the back for it.)
