all i am is a story

kid... comics will break your heart.

[sasswonfp]

world war 3 was on the line, jason

[letmedominate]

[sun-moon-talia]

it really gets to me when ppl say “talia only loves batman not bruce” because unlike most other characters talia didn’t meet one before the other. the first time she met him he was unconscious and by the time he woke up she had already taken off his cowl. there was never “only batman” or “only bruce” to her. just one man, her beloved.

[sun-moon-talia]

thinking about it again and it seems like ppl are under the mistaken belief that in order to love bruce properly his partners must only love the “bruce” side of him and treat the “batman” side of him as just a mask he puts on. that’s a very inaccurate view of who he is. both parts of him are equally important and equally part of his identity. that is something talia understands. she respects the responsibilities and burdens he has as batman because she has her own as the daughter of the demon. she encourages him to embrace his feelings and passions as bruce wayne and not to shirk his duties as batman. like the time she visited bruce in no man’s land #0 after he abandoned gotham to mope. she told him to get shit shit together and start acting like batman, because she knew that was who he needed to be right now. she convinced him to go back to gotham even if it meant he couldn’t be with her, because he has a duty to himself and the people he protects. talia understands bruce and batman in a way few others do.

[disappointment-comics]

canonical weeb damian wayne is so true bc a) its nice for him to have normal hobbies, b) he is a 2010s robin in the way that tim is a chronically 1990s robin and they should lean into that. and c) he is so fucking chuuni. that boy is chuunibyo. he is a teen with a katanna who says "heh" under his breath when he smirks. he is hunched over a notebook at school thinking "i'm not like the other kids... my destiny calls me..." while drawing little sparkly shoujo eyes

[smallvillecentral]

CLARK KENT AND LOIS LANE SMALLVILLE | 8.07 “Identity”

[fredricwertham]

Besides being kind of beige and decidedly un-dynamic to me as a reader, the issue with having Bruce and Dick openly define their relationship as father and son, and especially with trying to position that as a cathartic emotional breakthrough for the characters, is that it's coming off of decades worth of comics that made it clear that Bruce and Dick were uncomfortable fully embracing those roles because they saw each other as more important than that, not less. Writers and readers both do this to piggyback whatever snugly feelings they have toward their own parents or children, whom I'm sure they love very much, but in continuity it's necessarily a demotion. Boiling their relationship down to father and son implies that they've come to mean less to each other.

[batmancurated]

cassandra cain by bill sienkiewicz

[vintagerobin]

The folks who come up to you out of the blue and act like you kicked their dog because you said Bruce and Dick's relationship is historically more complex than straightforward father-and-son, that they've denied being father and son in some comics, and that other relationship descriptors are much more important to them need to be studied. Why do these two fictional men not fitting neatly into a little nuclear family box upset you so viscerally.

[tawked]

Honestly the overall nuclear family-fication of the Batman Family is just kinda off to me. It feels somehow more cisheternormative than introducing Kathy and Bette and forcing the Batman Family to conform to a literal nuclear dynamic did.

And I don't mean in a weird shipping they should be a polycule way or whatever, I mean that cisheternormative culture sets very strict, defined roles for people in family structures. Previously, no one in the Batman Family fit said roles at all, and there wasn't much of a desire on the part of writers or fans to force them to fit. There is now imo a very obvious vibe at DC where writers wanna square peg round hole them into said father-child roles in a way that, idk, it doesn't work.

It is massively to the detriment of potential storytelling.

Not to overshare but I have a similar age difference with my dad that Bruce and Dick do, that is under fifteen years, and uh, he does not fulfil role. He kinda couldn't. We're too close in shared generational experiences and he's not able to fulfil certain role expectations that cisheteronormative culture constructs surrounding "the dad." So our dynamic is probably most approximate to older/younger brother. Even that feels incorrect because it's not that, it has a character that is simply not found in any familiar cisheternormative visible-on-sitcoms role. Family is more fluid than that.

And it's not like an older man in the family became "the dad," right. That's not really something that happens in the way I think people want it to, when they discuss Batman as a father. Instead I've had a small collective of men, uncles and so on who by vibe feel more like older brothers or whatever, rotating in and out to fill various roles and needs, while all maintaining a certain emotional distance due to this strange reverence for "the father role."

It's just more complex than that. I think we're culturally primed to see an adult man in proximity to and with responsibility for a bunch of kids and assign fatherhood to him, but fatherhood is a construct man, it's as performatively constructed as gender or whatever other bullshit. Batman isn't "failing to be a father" when he and the relevant kid work out a different dynamic, he's being something else that we, due to our nightmare society, don't necessarily have a name for, but which imo definitely exists as a distinct role.

[vintagerobin]

No I absolutely feel you on this. One of the biggest reasons Batman initially appealed to me so much as a kid was because the lack of that rigid structure was more familiar. There are a lot of people out there to whom having that assortment of people who are mostly family by chance or choice rather than blood who fulfill a variety of different roles at different times is the norm, and because we don't see that very often in fiction it rubs me completely the wrong way when people try to force one of the few examples of it into the strictly defined roles of the nuclear mold.

[nxblinee]

more talia art cause she’s a cutie and i wanted to experiment on a lighting thing

[deadchannelradio]

if they ever get to a point where they all “talk” “normally” to each other jason will always know bruce is in big boy trouble with dick when dick calls jason and refers to bruce as “YOUR father” and not “bruce” or “our dad”

[deadchannelradio]

Jason feels like a child of divorce between his dad and his brother

[deadchannelradio]

okay sorry dc but jayrose should never have a baby that is both of their nightmares jason has had tubes tied you didnt even know could be tied just to prevent this exact scenario from occurring. Jtodd is getting an orchi just to prevent rose from getting pregnant and only after than realizing that she’s transgender. Get it together . Jason lays awake at night in a cold sweat imagining rose as a mother and rose lays awake at night in a cold sweat imagining herself pregnant

[deadchannelradio]

bruce discovered through nefarious means that dg and roy have gotten back together and that dg is pregnant and instead of either taking that knowledge to his grave and waiting for dick to tell him and pretending like he never knew (door no 1) or sending a condoluations card (door no

2) bruce decided to order him prenatal vitamins and send them to his doorstep anonymously (ripping through the wall with a chainsaw and leaping out of the hole 10 stories onto the pavement). dick calls jason about this all hi jason im pregnant and YOUR STUPID FATHER-

jason: what.

dick: is a WRETCHED and DESPICABLE bastard who-

jason: go back. No i need you to go back. Roy is neutered right

dick: okay first of all thats gross dont call it that second of all thats not the POINT the POINT is that

jason: my participation in this conversation is entirely dependent on your confirmation on if roy shoots blanks or not

dick: well it turns out getting kicked in the NUTS every night for ten years can REVERSE IT if your stupid DOCTOR didnt tie them off or burn them or whatever the fuck but ANYWAYS THE POINT BEING YOUR FATHER IS A DUMB SON OF A

at this point jason is hanging up. Throwing up. Googling HOW TO ACCESS SPERM COUNT NO JACKING OFF because he is in a crisis and cannot be doing all that right now also like he’s letting anyone else handle his sperm he barely even lets rose even see his whole situation even though she would like nothing more than use it like a stress ball or hold it while he pees. Rose cant get her tubes tied it’ll just grow back. Possibly with more of them like a fucking hydra. oh my god. hes googling to see if pam is in arkham or not and then going out to find her like Doctor Isley. I Need you to whammy me. “What.” Whammy me. Please. It’s for science i need to know my sperm count and am incapable of finding out without outside influence. The Worst Thing In The World Has Happened To Me. “It’s not a- Dont call it a whammy that makes it sound-“ I will Literally call it your flarpy bloogle if it gets you to do it to me. I will do anything. this is nightmare world for jason. I need us to get serious.

[trekkele]

Jason: "If Bruce really loved me he would have killed the Joker"

Dick: "If you really loved Bruce you wouldn't ask him too"

[vintagerobin]

(tags via @umbrellajam )

[noodles-and-tea]

Since Wonder Woman can canonically speak to animals, do you think Damian has ever used JL official channels to reach her and asked her to see if she can speak to his pet to ask whats wrong when they're feeling sick or not acting themselves?

He would want to fix it.

He's not above using classified channels to make sure his pets are comfortable, I'd think.

I LOVE THIS!!

[sun-moon-talia]

[sun-moon-talia]

i saw a tiktok comment that said “bruce is like steph’s evil sports coach” and i’ve never head a more accurate description of their dynamic

[donnatroia]

Cass & Babs

The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood / Les Misérables, Victor Hugo / You've Always Been More of a Dog Person, Trina Das / When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, Chen Chen / Tell the Wolves I'm Home, Carol Rifka Brunt / Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami / Letters to Milena, Franz Kafka / Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys / Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, Jeanette Winterson / In the name of Love, Katie Maria

[gothamcitycentral]

Cousins!