@cap-ironman rec week day 1: matrimonial monday š
weddingsšāāļø proposalsšāāļø arranged marriages, fake marriages, marriages of conveniencešāāļø no divorces this time šāāļø
you'll wait a long timeĀ by @elcorhamletlive
Steve and Tony share a moment during a wedding. Things escalate from there.
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Alternatively: Four weddings, a funeral, and one very emotionally stunted idiot.
Playing the part (remix)Ā by @elcorhamletlive
āWe have five days of this ahead of us, Cap. Call me crazy, but I think if we donāt spend the entire time fighting over every little thing, we might have a chance of actually pulling this off.ā
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Tony tells a joke, that turns into a lie, that turns into him having to pretend to Steve Rogers' husband for five days. Just his luck.
the best laid plansĀ by @cinderellasfella
In the post-battle lull, Tony catches both Steve and himself off guard with a very important question.
10th Time's the CharmĀ by @zappedbysnow
When you've been trying to propose for months and villains keep ruining your moment, you just gotta take the chance at any opportune moment.
To be Held by Something Reluctant to Let GoĀ by @thahiree
Tonight, at the banquet, he saw his worst fears come true: Tony courting the Princess, warm affection plain on his face. It was hardly the first time heād seen Tony entertain a guest, but it was the first time he had looked truly content in someone elseās arms. The first time he hadnāt searched out Steveās gaze across the room, a shared moment of stillness in their otherwise so busy world.
In the wake of Tonyās looming betrothal and an attempt on his life, Knight Steve and King Tony must finally confront their feelings for each other before itās too late.
Chapel of LoveĀ byĀ Last_Chance_Anna
After some tense moments, Steve and Tony make dinner, make up, then make a decision.
Iron, Rot and Bloom.Ā byĀ @moorfantasy @wingheadloveshellhead
Prince Steve arrives in the Ironlands with gifts he made himself to bond with King Anthony and cement an alliance between their people, but the Iron King is not what he what he had hoped for. He had hoped for love, but instead, he finds only a man who's been shaped by anger and violence.
Will their relationship flourish against all odds? Will Steve endure long enough to earn the love he wants so much? When a plague comes, it changes everything. Including the King made of scars and fear.
Two-Point PerspectiveĀ by @festiveferret
Dear omega,
Congratulations! You've been selected. Alpha #95847872 has been assigned as your pre-bondee. A group bonding ceremony will take place on the 14th, unless other arrangements have been made by your alpha or their family. A valid bonding license must be submitted to Omega Services within 45 days of this letter or all services will be cancelled and any transferable benefits will not be applied to your alpha's package.
If there is some reason why you cannot be bonded on this date, please apply for an extension by calling 1-800-555-6827 within 7 days of receiving this letter.
Sincerely,
National Omega Services
In RecoveryĀ by @festiveferret
"Excuse me?" Tony mock-cleaned his ear. "IĀ what?"
Fury sighed, like this was the last conversation he was hoping to have that morning. "We found him in the ice. And you, technically, have ownership rights to Captain Rogers' body."
if i get married (i want to be very married)Ā by @hollyandvice
Tony intends the marriage to be a way to get omega Captain America out from the clutches of SHIELD's old-fashioned ways. He doesn't expect it to turn into something more.
To Liars and Saving the WorldĀ by @magicasen
When Tony's life is in danger, Steve does the only thing he can do to save his teammate: he makes an honest man out of him. Steve and Tony's sham marriage is only supposed to be a blip in their history that no one has to know about. But when they're outed to the press, and with ghosts from his past coming to haunt him, Steve must come to terms with the idea that his own feelings for Tony might not be a lie.
finders keepersĀ by meidui
Tony would put the severity of the situation somewhere above Steve losing his wallet and somewhere below Steve losing his shield. No need for him to step in yet.Ā
āIt's not anywhere,ā Steve says miserably. āGod, what was I thinking, shoving something like that inside my uniform?ā
Dick and Donna talking on the phone all the time actually just makes Donna's death 10x sadder. Dick has the impulse to call her like he normally would, but then he remembers that she's gone, and he shoves his feelings just like he shoves his phone in his pocket: down, down, down. Then Roy keeps calling Dick over and over, and Dick hates it because he wishes that just once it would be Donna leaving him a message on his answering machine instead.
Roy wants to talk about it. Roy wants to deal with it together. Dick wants to cry because he wants to tell Donna that Roy keeps blowing up his phone, and he wants to hear her tell him, "Then talk to him, dummy, and he'll stop calling you!" But he'll never get to hear her say that, so he lets his phone ring and ring until it doesn't ring anymore. And Dick might hate the silence even more than he hates the ringing, because with the ringing, he could at least pretend that Donna might be behind one of the calls.
Actually bouncing off that last reblog, I think it is absolutely important to understand not only that Jack Drake is new money, but that he is a very specific type of new money parent, (which I happen to think is one that is declining in general existence at least in part to the declining affordability of a lot of these things, although these mentalities are still present, just to a somewhat lesser degree).
Which is parents that are very wealthy but very anti- old money scion behavior of just getting whatever you want. (The beef between old and new money being something that can be absolutely enormous and informs Jack's hatred of Bruce.)
These type of parents would have enough money to get their kids basically anything, but would go "no, I'm not getting you a car, you have to work and earn money and pay for it yourself". With the idea being to teach the kids that they actually need to work for everything they receive, and to be fiscally responsible. Nothing is handed to you on a silver platter.
And then, for instance, Bruce gets Tim a car.
Which not only gives the impression of kind of "buying" his son, but also explicitly undermines his parenting style.
Like, you really really cannot fully understand the absolute massive beef Jack has with Bruce without the knowledge that it involves fear that Tim will learn to start acting like an old money scion.
What makes it kind of extra delicious is that Tim actually does work his ass off. Bruce gives him a car, yes, but that's after all of Tim's hard work and training, after relying on Bruce and Alfred for rides as Robin, after working his ass off as Robin. Tim didn't work to earn the money to buy a car, but he absolutely put in the work to earn it - Jack just didn't see any of it.
It's even better then when Jack sells Tim's car to pay off his debt, because he took something someone else had worked for to fix his mistakes. In his head, he was paying off his debt AND getting rid of something Bruce had "just" bought for Tim on a whim, but from Tim's perspective Jack took something Tim earned and cared about to cover his own ass (that Bruce had to then fix by buying the Redbird and holding it for Tim).
And I get that this isn't technically Jack's fault because he didn't know about Tim being Robin (at the time), but a good chunk of Jack and Tim's problems could have been solved by sitting down and having a conversation about it, or Jack having a conversation with Bruce or with Bruce and Tim, but I genuinely think Jack would rather eat glass than do any of those.
100% the thing about this whole gripe is that what Jack sees isn't even true - Tim worked his ass off in regard to everything to do with Bruce, but it's all tied up with Robin stuff, so he doesn't know.
And then when he does find out, he forces him to quit, which yes, is an additional irony even if it sounds reasonable to a lot of people on the face of it, because he's been glorifying the story of a literal child soldier in their family Tim's entire life. (Not to mention that his finding out is tied up in a gross invasion of privacy and his reaction involving threatening Bruce with a gun are both unreasonable stances, I have a full breakdown of Robin: Unmasked as a Jack hate post on my blog. This post isn't about that.)
Which is why the closest he comes to forming an actual, genuine relationship with Tim is in the short time period he has between Tim going back to Robin / him accepting that and his death. Which is where the argument about whether he could have been decent from that point forward comes into play. Because he died, so we don't know.
Basically I think from the perspective of a reader in regard to canon Jack, having a positive or negative opinion of him at the end of the day is very tied up in if you think, had he lived, if he'd have been able to maintain his acceptance long-term now that he knew Tim was fully being raised with this kind of work ethic from both ends, or if he could just not have helped himself but fall back to being bitchy about Tim's relationship with Bruce to the point of his own relationship degrading once again. (Well besides people that might have a positive opinion of him because they agree with a parent being able to treat their child like property, which is a stance I'm fully not going to engage in.)
I have a hard time really believing that Jack would have improved all that much if he had lived, tbh. A lot of what we see from Jack Drake is that he prioritizes himself and what he wants first, and he sees Tim as his property and an extension of himself before he sees Tim as an independent human being - even while loving Tim. Jack waffles a lot and sometimes does a complete about-face in his opinions/behaviors as different writers try to figure out what to do with him, but at his core, he is (or at least very much wants to be) the traditional conservative 'head of the household' patriarch: he wants a nice house in a nice neighborhood, he wants an attractive and doting wife, an obedient son who respects and looks up to him, and he wants to be respected by his peers and seen as a 'real man'.
And from what we see, he has those things for the most part, but there are a few glaring asterisks: his debt problems, the mishandling and loss of Drake Industries, the way Dana challenges him on some things, the way he's older and not in his prime, but all of that can be smoothed over.
Except then there's Tim.
While Tim loves Jack and respects him to an extent, he's never going to be the obedient respectful son Jack wants, and I also don't think he really respects Jack as a parent. Jack's still his dad and he respects him as a person, but as a parent? Everytime Jack tries to tell Tim what to do or order him around, it's pretty transparent that Tim only does it if he wants to. If he thinks it's stupid or there's something more important to be doing, he is halfway out the window before Jack is even finished turning around. Tim does what Jack tells him to because he's trying to placate him or it serves his own purposes, he never really thinks Jack is right or really respects his decision.
And I think Jack knows that on some level, and he hates it, especially because in his eyes, the moment Bruce tells Tim to do something, Tim can't do it fast enough. Bruce lives rent-free in Jack Drake's head as the personification of his own emasculation: rich, good looking, always has beautiful women throwing themselves at him, fighting fit and in shape, everyone talking about him all the time, and all Tim's obedience/respect/adoration that is, in Jack's mind, his by right.
On top of all that, Tim and Jack are just very different people. They have different interests, they interact with people differently, value different things. Tim tries to placate Jack and meet him halfway on things, but it's pretty clear he and his dad just don't have a lot in common, and that's another blow to Jack's ego: his son loves him but doesn't respect him as a parent, and there's very little Jack has to share with Tim that Tim is even interested in. And again, there's Bruce looming in the horizon with shared interests with Tim.
Interacting with Tim is death by a thousand instances of minor ego death, a bright glaring reminder that Jack just wasn't a good dad, that he fucked up too much and tried way too hard way too late, with the added background radiation of Bruce the Batman Wayne being his competition. Repairing his relationship with Tim would take a lot of work, a lot of introspection, and letting go of his problems with Bruce. It would take literal years, and frankly with all the times Jack just threatens to send Tim to boarding or military school when Tim isn't doing what he wants? I don't think he'd be willing to put in the work, not without kicking and screaming and digging his heels in the whole time.
#jack out here having the messiest nastiest divorce slash custody battle with Bruce#a man he has never been married to#nor been in the same room with for a consecutive hour#meanwhile the one he should really be worroed about is Dick#Jack and Bruce arguing about who Tim loves and respects more#meanwhile Tim is staring at Dick with stars in his eyes kicking his heels
Partly just bringing this out of the tags. Although also important to note that said argument about who Tim loves in respects more isn't either of them thinking it's themselves, but thinking it is the guy they are arguing with, while thinking that said guy doesn't deserve it. Bruce looses some rank in the Bruce Wayne Haters Club (of which he's normally high-level) purely from Jack annoying him too much. Meanwhile, Dick is absolutely 100% the person Tim loves and respects the most.
#Tim being the President and Founding Member of the Gotham Dick Grayson Fanclub #Bruce thought it could be him for a while but Tim beat him by several minutes and graciously allows Bruce to be Vice-President
#I think an important thing to note about Jack from a meta perspective #is that he was originally intended to be killed not long after Janet #but was kept around because it would be āmore interestingā #so he 100% only ever lived for the Drama#and in the end he died as he lived in that way #just wanted to add that I found the actual reblog and the tags and it's 100% valid to love that whole situation BECAUSE it's messy #it's basically another post I reblogged where it's like āthat character is problematicā āyeah they're SUPPOSED to beā that's Jack (via @katanahime)
#DC killed Janet before she could divorce Jack so Bruce gets the post divorce child custody battle mess instead #Jack does not know how to parent as a verb #he never needed to when Janet was alive and after her death he does not learn (via @mizminola)
and also some tags on the original post bc they made me lol:
#One of my fav Jack drake moments (I think this in batgirl?) #Tim says they should get a dishwasher #Jack says that they have a dishwasher and his name is Tim (via @aliteralchicken)
Jack's biggest issue when Janet died was that he suddenly became a single parent, and he didn't realise the difference between being the 'fun' parent who was the one who primarily brought home income and spent 3 hours with his kid on a Saturday afternoon, with being the hands on parent responsible for actively caring for the kid. Because up until that moment Janet had handled the active parenting as had Tim's boarding school.
Which is why Jack was always bringing up the topic of boarding school: from his perspective he'd had a good, obedient, easy to manage kid when Tim was at boarding school, and he now had a kid who seemed to constantly be getting into fights, was disrespectful and acting out. To Jack, the difference in the equation was the school, so he wanted to send Tim off so it was easy like before. Whereas an awful lot of it was that Jack had never actually had to actively parent his kid up until this point, and the fact that he now had a 14 year old who didn't have any experience respecting him as an authority figure over bedtimes and homework and other boundaries and so just...mostly didn't listen? Jack was massively struggling with that.
Plus, Tim did have boundaries in his life - he had Bruce and Alfred providing them, both of whom had a lot more experience in terms of mentoring and parenting, and whose authority Tim respected. And because he respected them more than Jack, and was actively concealing a massive secret from Jack, Tim looked far more disrespectful and like he was picking and choosing when to behave for his father, rather than being respectful and obedient.'
Also, this change also lines up with going from two to one parents at the same time as the transition from pre-teen to teen, meaning Tim was due to become more difficult and independent anyway.
Bruce: You still donāt get it, you still donāt understand! Donāt understand reason, orĀ logic or sanity! Well, toĀ blazesĀ with you! Iāll make you understand! Iāll speak your language! This insane murder/suicide stops now! Iāll stop you! Ā Me! Because itās time you muscle-boundĀ morons realizedā
When my friend M was kind enough to give me the password to her Digital Marvel subscription, I knew exactly what it was I wanted to find. I wanted to read Hulk comics where Bruce Banner was just as important as the Hulk, where people didnāt see just a big green (or sometimes grey) monster who occasionally wore the skin of a scientist.Ā
Mostly, I wanted to see moments exactly like this.Ā
At this point, Bruce is dealing with not one, but two different Hulks, fighting for control of his shared body: Grey Hulk, who is marginally intelligent, but still prefers to solve problems with his fists, and Green Hulk, who is all id, and nothing but a rage-filled monster. The struggle has gotten so bad that Bruce and the two Hulks are locked within their body, unable to escape or control their transformation as the Hulks fight to determine who is the strongest.Ā
As Bruce shows, theyāre both wrong. Thereās a lot of speculation as to whether or not the Hulk has always been lurking around in Bruceās mind, but one thing is for certain: the person who has to deal with the guilt, with the damage caused by the Hulk(s), with the prospect of transforming from stress or anger or the rise and fall of the sun, thatās Bruce. Heās the one who has to wake up after every transformation. And, at least for a short period of time (because nothing in comics is ever permanent), heās the one who wins control of their body.Ā
hot take: if you want a darker batman movie, skip over bruce and go straight to dick's run as batman. i haven't even read the run much, but here's some fun reasons why this would be terribly angsty in the best way possible:
dick's goal is to be nightwing, not batman
dick has the trauma of losing his birth parents *and* bruce
dick has to figure out how to raise a kid
depending on how you approach it, dick has to keep the role switch in who batman is a secret because that's what bruce would have wanted.
dick is dealing with all of this while still grieving bruce and handling his legacy.
he probably also feels responsible for becoming a father figure to the rest of the batfam, even though that absolutely should not be his role.
if this ever *was* a movie, i'd 100% want it to end w/ dick learning that 1) gotham needs people protecting it, but not batman specifically; he was just the first and 2) if he stays as batman, he doesn't have to be bruce.
i'd like at least 1 set of the scenes w/ the justice and commissioner gordon where they just know that it's nightwing/the first robin instead of the OG batman, and another set where the batfam grieve together as a family.
I would like to keep talking and note that some of the "darkest," angstiest, and weirdest Batman stories take place during Dick's tenure too. For consideration:
Gordon's psychopathic serial killer son comes back to town and starts killing people. This storyline includes several murders, a mirror-filled fun house, hallucinagenic nerve gas that conjures violent illusions, and a murdered woman left inside a dead killer whale, and culminates with James Jr. kidnapping Babs to kill her, with a secondary mission of "mentally destroying" Dick and Gordon...and also the Joker is running around causing chaos and leaving Gordon's ex-wife in critical condition on top of all of this
Dick and Damian take down a mad scientist named "Professor Pyg" (he wears a pig mask; it's a whole thing) who leads the "Circus of Strange" and tries to introduce an addictive mind-altering drug into Gotham's population. His mutilated, brainwashed minions are called 'Dollotrons', and they're just as creepy-looking as they sound
Victor Zsasz runs a gladiator ring with children; Damian and his friend Colin Wilkes have to take it down from the inside. Yes, Dick worries the whole time
a history-laden all-Batfam story about the Five Founding Families of Gotham featuring a serial bomber targeting famous Gotham landmarks (most prominently the bridges leading into the city)
Also:
the inherent angst of having to fight your family members over a mantle you don't want and your dad specifically told you to let die in his last note to you
I would also like to point out that Dick has to fight against not only one but TWO zombie versions of his parents during this time period: Blackest Night happens during Dick's run and he's forced to fight his reanimated parents, and he also dumps Bruce's (apparent) body in a Lazarus Pit under Gotham City to try and revive him (it doesn't work, mostly because it was a clone and not actually Bruce's body). If there's an opportunity for depressing angst, it's Dick having fighting his dead birth parents or a fake version of his dead adopted dad that he tried to revive
ON THAT NOTE, the Batfam had Thomas Elliot/Hush (who had surgically altered himself to look like Bruce) basically pretending to be Bruce for the entire time they thought he was dead. "Having to grieve for your dad when literally no one outside the family knows he's dead and there's a lookalike running around" is some prime angst opportunity, right there
Also the "angsty in the best way possible" story about a family fracturing during a time of unbelievable grief, even as Dick tries his best to hold them all together, and slowly but surely healing and coming back together in the aftermath
Like...there is so much potential sitting there waiting to be mined, but DC and WB are all cowards who want to keep milking Martha Wayne's broken pearls, apparently
People who say "Batman is the real man and Bruce is the mask" or act like they're distinct and separate personalities that can be separated from each other fundamentally just don't get it. Bruce and Batman are BOTH the 'real man' because the 'real man' cannot be separated either from the foundations of who he is as a person or the way in which he lives out his beliefs.
Batman does not exist without Bruce's tragedy and trauma and motivations and morals...and likewise Bruce likely can't function without engaging in direct action to prevent his own tragedy from happening to others. It really is that simple:
"Our own personal losses drove us to become what we are. We do what we can to save others from what we experienced. That includes everyone in Gotham."
Anyway.......Murderer?/Fugitive already definitively answered this question:
"I thought that in many ways Bruce Wayne died along with his parents...and the mask I've shown the world all these years is the remnant of what that child was before that night. But it's not true. My codes, the rules I live by--these ideals came from my father...from Thomas Wayne...that's why I couldn't let even a killer like Tony Rulyanchik get shot. Because he wouldn't have either. He believed in the sanctity of all life. I've been so blind...all this time. I thought the real Bruce Wayne was that happy child of memory...but now that everything has been stripped away from him, I realize that mask is not Bruce...not at all. I am Bruce Wayne. I always have been."
"Batman" doesn't exist without Bruce to drive it. You can't divorce Bruce from Batman or define one as the "true" self. Batman is what Bruce does but it's driven and informed by Bruce's past, trauma, and mindset. Case closed. No more debates. Everyone go home.
clark kent ticking the organ donor box on his drivers license automatically out of the goodness of his heart and then panicking because what if he actually dies somehow and some human gets a super heart what would even HAPPEN like he can't have his kryptonian retinas with laser vision donated to a random eight year old and so he has to awkwardly go back to the DMV to get it changed to not an organ donor but he's so embarrassed the whole time because the DMV employees will think he's a bad person that by the time he's done he has to go cry in the car
plot twist he's so clearly distressed and sad about doing this that the dmv folks just quietly assume he must have received some kind of awful medical diagnosis that makes him ineligible to donate and the first clerk that helped him immediately takes a smoke break and sees him crying in the car and that's how Clark gets at least 3 rock solid anonymous sources at the dmv and a free off-brand coke from the break room fridge.
Hi! You're very insightful about comics and your fics are really good, so I wanted to ask what you would recommend when writing a canon-accurate Tim Drake? Like, what main aspects about Tim are to be most considered?
I think vital aspects of Tim include the following:-
Heās a Good Kid (TM). Tim generally wants to live up to expectations and do the right thing and look out for others. Heās polite and sends thank you notes and feels guilty when he has to lie to people. He expects and accepts dealing with the consequences of his choices and actions. Thatās not to say he doesnāt act out on occasion or think about doing the wrong thing, but heās the sort of person that gets held up as a good role model for others.
Heās earnest and works incredibly hard. Tim is the 99% perspiration of achievement. Heās certainly brilliant in some areas but what he is more than anything else is incredibly hard working, and somewhat cautious over his skills until he knows he has them down. Heās one of the best bo fighters in the world not from natural talent but from so much practice and training with the best.
āSomeone should do it. Iām someone, so I guess I will do it.ā This is rhetorical nuance from ALPOD some people overlook. Timās involvement with the Mission has a core of āsomeone needs to step up and do this. And nobody else is volunteering. And I tried to find an alternative, but thereās just me.ā Itās not that he puts himself forward; itās that heās willing to volunteer for what he sees as a duty and responsibility that everyone else is trying to sidestep. Itās why he flirts with the idea of no longer being needed, and why every time he does end up in that situation where he has to choose whether to be a civilian or step back up because he can help, he is pulling the costume back on and returning.
Heās extremely socially adept and a compulsive networker. Tim is a gregarious social person. He makes friends easily, he can work with people even when he doesnāt like them, and most importantly he can hold a group together even when there are otherwise tensions in it. Two characters might not want to work with each other, but theyāre both willing to work with Tim, and thatās what makes the team or teamup function. Tim isnāt necessarily the team leader, but heās the reason the team functions together.
He is an annoying know-it-all and forgets to think before he speaks. King of sticking his foot in his mouth because he didnāt think through exactly what he said and missed an unfortunate implication. Heās got compulsive pester power in terms of being the exact line of annoying but charming and loveable that meant most older characters wanted to take him under their wing as a little brother immediately after meeting him. He also gets caught up in his own cleverness on occasion and feels the need to announce it to others or overcomplicate a situation. Hubris is usually pretty immediate in how it arrives when this happens, but itās small scale (see the foot in mouth problem).
I agreed with some points but the op lost me when saying that Bruce wasnāt a victim.
Anyway, have a great day/night! <3 (love your posts)
Hi, anon! The post seems to lament that people focus on Bruce's pain whenever they refer to Jason's death at the Joker's hands. It also mentions Barbara's trauma, and the trauma of Duke regarding his parents being jokerized. At the end, the implication seems to be that Batman/Bruce cannot be considered a victim of the Joker based on the fact that it was Jason who died, not Bruce, and because Bruce has apparently never gone through that same trauma.
Now, I am not one to tell people how to feel, nor which perspective they should focus on when interpreting/dissecting/analyzing a conflict point in a story. I'm also not really looking forward to picking a fight, but I will attempt to answer as neutrally as I can, because I believe saying that Bruce was not a victim is a bit reductive and, frankly, very mean-spirited. The aforementioned post also seems to ignore the fact that Bruce has died multiple times at the hands of the Joker himself, thus making him a victim.
Let's start with the topic regarding Jason's death. It is very true that, at the end of the day, it is Jason who died in that warehouse, and he is the most direct victim of this tragedy. It is also true that in an attempt to soften the blow of killing a teenage character in such a brutal way, the writers and editors began to imply narratively that Jason's death was his fault: a result of his rebellious and 'psychopathic' ways. More importantly, though, it was implied he was destined to get himself killed due to his upbringing coming from poverty and being surrounded by crime, because the implication here is that growing up like so means the person is ontologically evil, or will grow up to be (which you don't need me to tell you is classist).
To further that point, the writers would make Bruce, Alfred, and Dick repeat those points to a young Tim as a reminder to behave and 'not end up like Jason' (or to Bruce, as a way to soothe his grief). Obviously, this is very frustrating writing and diminishes the tragedy of Jason's death, because it wasn't carelessness that got him killed, but a choice to heroically try to save his biological mother. If you want a more in-depth exploration of the narrative and in-universe victim-blaming Jason Todd goes through, this essay will be your best friend.
Now, I would also like to mention that outside of these attempts to save face, there are also a lot of times you will see Bruce blame himself rather than Jason, or describe Jason's death as a tragedy without blaming his child.
Obviously, there are a lot more of these instances, but I'm trying to keep this as short as I can. My point is, Bruce Wayne, as a father and someone who loved Jason dearly, is, whether you like it or not, still considered a victim of this tragedy. He, specifically, falls under the category of a bereaved parent.
Losing a child is widely considered one of the most psychologically devastating experiences a person can go through. It often disrupts a personās sense of identity, you lose sight of future expectations (āthe life Jason should have hadā), experience persistent grief that doesnāt fully resolve and it damages one's identity psychologically (āI was supposed to protect himā). While Bruce is not the direct victim of the Joker, and while I do understand the frustration that revolves around the way comics discuss Jason's death, it's important to make the distinction that Bruce is still a parent who lost a child, and it is a pain that shouldn't be dismissed.
It goes without saying that I find it irritating to compare both of their trauma and rank it, because both deserve a space to grieve. Comparing trauma is not only insanely disrespectful, but also does a disservice to the way something as traumatic as Jason's death impacts both parties. It also goes without saying that Bruce's trauma shouldn't invalidate Jason's feelings, nor make his trauma seem like 'lesser', because he is the direct victim of this situation. Simply, this situation is too nuanced to be dictating who is a victim and who isn't, because it is supposed to be a tragedy.
Moving on to Barbara's trauma, I can understand the frustration with how The Killing Joke handles her trauma. The comic, infamously used as an example of the Women in Refrigerators trope, does not explore Barbara's trauma, and instead chooses to focus on the psychological damage it inflicts upon the men in her life, aka Bruce and Jim Gordon. This, thankfully, has been addressed in comics featuring Barbara.
Oracle: Year One
Obviously, Bruce's feelings do not matter over Barbara's feelings in this instance. He is upset, yes, but he is neither a direct nor in-direct victim, at least not in the way he is with Jason's death.
I also do not understand the comparison to Duke's trauma. Duke, as someone who frantically searched for his parents only to find them to be permanently disfigured and jokerized -- Thankfully, his mother does recover! -- lives out this trauma under wildly different circumstances and thus, because he isn't any of the characters listed above, experiences different responses and exhibits different behaviors to cope with this trauma.
As i've already stated, I find it problematic to compare the trauma of different characters with different circumstances and then dictate whether the psychological damage inflicted upon them matters, or if it doesn't. It's just, frankly, very insensitive and comes off as sanist. And yes, this goes for the writers and editors that do this narratively as well (trust me, I call out a lot of writing like this!).
But most importantly, moving away from all of these instances, Bruce is a victim of the Joker. He has died many times at the hands of the Joker, with the recent one being in DC: KO. Emperor Joker sees Bruce die repeatedly and cruelly at the hands of the Joker, Batman: Going Sane has the Joker kill him with a bomb, Endgame sees the Joker set off a final trap that lends to both Batman and the Joker being buried under debris, and many more instances. Bruce has also been subjected to countless moments of torture, pain and psychologically engineered traps to traumatize him.
Implying that he is not a victim of the Joker and therefore his opinion of the clown doesn't matter is, honestly, misinformed. Multiple things can be true at once and I implore people to watch how they talk about characters with trauma, because language does matter and I promise you, another character having trauma at the hands of the same person does not invalidate your favorite character's trauma, even if the writers try to convince you of that !
Very simply put, Batman comics will focus on Batman first. Whether or not you like that or agree with how it is done (trust me, i don't either a lot of the times), it doesn't change the fact that when it comes to the Joker, Bruce does have a seat at the table of lives impacted by him.
EDIT: I also want to add that pretending these characters are real and dictating who is allowed to grieve, or what the correct way to grieve is, is just... Not Great. The language you use will impact real people reading these posts who may have gone through what that fictional character has gone through, and it is insanely dehumanizing to have your trauma dissected and treated as a narrative nuisance for a character, and not a reflection of things that actually do happen in real life!
Hi have you ever done a post where you talk about reed being autistic coded i've seen that mentioned and i would be really interested in learning about him :)
Yes, I have! You can find it here. Thereās an alternate universe version of Reed who is canonically autistic, and also let me just add that Tom Brevoort has said on his tumblr that itās possible that 616 Reed is on the spectrum, even if it hasnāt been confirmed on-panel:
I also, in the post I linked you to, touch on the fact that probably about 99% of the hate Reed gets in fandom is transparently about his autism. Fandom makes one hell of a lot of terrible and unsubstantiated assumptions about Reed just because he doesnāt always process or express emotions the way allistic people do. I donāt know how else to explain the fact that the warm, caring, compassionate, highly moralĀ family man that I see when I read FF comics somehow got translated in fandom into a cold, emotionless, condescending, inhuman robot who cares about himself and science and nothing else, sees people as objects, never feels guilt or remorse, and doesnāt love his family at all, which overlaps pretty neatly with negative, anti-autistic stereotypes but isnāt Reed at all and never has been. I mean, my god, canon explicitly contradicts that take pretty damn often (likeā¦.every time Reed opens his mouth?). For instance, in Fantastic Four vs the X-Men #3, when Sue discovers a diary Reed supposedly wrote prior to the spaceflight crash that makes it seem like he deliberately exposed his family to cosmic rays, Sue realizes very belatedly, after watching Reed comfort his son (whoād just had a nightmare), that Reed couldnāt possibly have written the journal because he doesnāt see people as things:
No fucking shit, Sue. You should have known that already. Sue figures out eventually that Doom ā who DOES see people that way ā wrote the diary in an attempt to break up the FF by making them doubt Reed, his goodness, and his heroism. Essentially, Doom was taking advantage of Ben, Johnny, and Sueās ableist assumptions about Reed in an attempt to tear them apart as a team and a family ā and it very nearly worked, too.Ā
Iāve been thinking of doing a longer post talking about how Reedās been coded as autistic since Lee/Kirbyās run (because he has been, for the record) and also about ableist treatment heās been subjected to both by writers and his family, but Iām still going through and collecting panels (if anyone spots any useful ones, please let me know!). The realization that Reedās coded as autistic made me see a lot of Reedās interactions with his familyĀ in a brand-new lightā¦letās just say that they donāt always handle his autism very well (āHe does have feelings after all!ā ā really, Ben?). Thatās part of why I think making his autism canonical is so important ā I want writers, fans, and Reedās family to be called out on their ableism, which is something that is more difficult as long as Reedās autism remains implicit rather than explicit.Ā
The way things are now, writers ā and fans ā get away with bashing Reed for exhibiting autistic traits and no one ever calls them on it, and I, for one, am goddamn furious about it. People should not be getting away with being ableist jerks without facing any consequences, but so many are. Shit like this
is not fucking okay, and all of these people should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for saying that a fascist dictator who is a mass murderer, has abused, tortured, and murdered children, nonconsensually experimented on his own people with his pet Nazi scientists, and repeatedly assaulted women is a better person and more likable than Reed, who is and has done none of those things. Those people donāt fool me. I know exactly why they think that, and also fuck them.
Reed Richards is autistic, and he is also a good man who always tries his damnedest to do whatās right no matter what it costs him, heās an excellent husband and father, and heās a hero through and through. Anyone who implies differently can go straight to hell.
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