To Be Fair, It's Clearly Been A Team Effort From Red Hood, Nightwing, Batman Writers (and I'm Probably

To be fair, it's clearly been a team effort from Red Hood, Nightwing, Batman writers (and I'm probably missing some) to rewrite Bruce as a worse and worse parent. The issue imo is the retroaction. It pisses me off because it's one thing to be like "yeah he's abusive so now we're gonna roll with it and develop from that pov instead of pretending like it never happened", I could get behind that sentiment, but the retroactive retelling kinda feels like saying "well Bruce is acting violent so clearly he's always been this exact kind of violent to his kids". Which is not how abusive relationships work!!!!

I'm so pissed I desperately need dc to understand how abusive and just complex family relationships work because goddammit. Okay.

1) You don't magically become immune to the power imbalance with your parents the day you turn 18. Parents are not supposed to hit their kids. Ergo, Bruce doesn't need to be physically violent to Damian or the kid version of the batkids to be physically abusive.

2) Emotional child abuse is an actual thing, please treat it seriously.The shitfest at Tim's 16th birthday, for example, is a clear example of terrorising your child, and that's abuse.

3) You can be abusive to your kids without wanting to, out of love, out of a want to protect them, out of fear that they'll grow up a bad person if you're too permissive. People love to pretend like abusers are a monstrous, wildly different breed because it's reassuring. The idea is that abuse is not love, and thus we normal people are safe because we love our family and therefore we could never be like that, and thus we don't have to worry about being a bad person and a bad parent like those monsters out there who are clearly different (and less human) from us. That's a terribly harmful rethoric on two points:

-it stops people from introspection, questioning their methods and trying to do better. You think you could never be an abuser because you love your kid, so you'll excuse anything you do that is abuse as "education", "not the same", "a lapse in judgement" or simply won't examine it.

-it harms victims. By telling victims "if that person who you love and rely on abuses you they don't love you" you're making them choose between two options: 1. That person who you love, and who you need to love you, doesn't or 2. What happened wasn't that bad/wasn't abuse/was somehow an exception or you're remembering wrong or it was an accident, etc., etc. What would you choose? Would an 8 years old rather believe they're remembering it wrong, or that their parent doesn't love them?

To put it simply, it's a punitive rethoric rather than a harm-reduction oriented one, it puts victims and vulnerable kids in danger and encourages victim-blaming. Sorry, but "someone who loves you wouldn't do this", yes they would. Sometimes, people love you, and they love you "wrong", in a way that hurts you, and sometimes parents abuse their kids on accident. Whether someone is a hero or a villain matters way less than whether people are getting hurt and what we can do to stop it. Right now, our options with batman are batman being the cliche abusive villain of his children's story or ignoring every bad thing he did with a good dose of victim-blaming and flimsy excuses. What I would give for one (1) batman story arc about him realising all the times he tried to do what he thought was right for the children hurt them or simply didn't realise the way their relationship worked was harming them, and doesn't skirt about the term abuse, and he tries to do better, and we have hopeful perspective for the future as he decides on concrete ways to work on their dynamics. I think showing that perspective, which is closer to what a lot of abused kids experience than the cartoonish villanization we often get as representation, would help a lot more kids than a generic *insert superhero* beats up an abusive parent, hugs their kids and there's a helpline number at the end of the issue. (Note: not to say all abusers love their victims, parents who don't love their kids are an unfortunate reality and these people's experiences are valid too, I'm just saying there's nothing intrinsequely contradictory about love and abuse).

4. Different children get different parents. You grow, learn (sometimes for the better and sometimes from the worse) from your experience with your first children, learn from your mistakes to do better, apply inappropriate patterns that would have worked for one kid on a kid with different problems and do worse. And then of course there are the roles people tend to assign themselves amidst a system, so for example someone designated as a scapegoat is gonna have a different experience of the family than someone who isn't, or someone who was parentified with their siblings, and someone parentified with their parent, etc. By which I mean, in regards to dc, retconning Dick's and Bruce's early relationship or Jason's and Bruce's early relationship to make it less healthy because of your correct analysis that Tim and Bruce's early relationship is unhealthy is an overcorrection. Of all the instances of OOC behaviour to fix, that's not necessarily what you should have been focusing on.

"but Glitter, why can't we just show the batkids going no-contact and healing?" I mean, you could. Not saying it wouldn't be good. But would dc ever go for that, when so many dc fans are specifically batfam fans? Sometimes, for many reasons, going no contact is not an option. Irl, that can be because of cultural factors (for example can't go no contact with someone without losing the entire family that's like 8/10th of your support system which isn't affordable for your mental health, or you could be a disabled person reliant on the abuser and help is not accessible or it takes years to access, etc.) For characters in comics, one of these contraints in the narrative. (Also, in the example of Jason, his attachment to Gotham/crime alley can be an obstacle for example, because realistically fully going no contact with Batman as Red Hood means leaving Gotham.) But whatever the reason, I think when going no contact is not an option, that's when you take the opportunity to showcase other ways to heal/distance yourself from the toxicity/keep yourself safe as best you can.

Honestly when it comes to characters I'm less concerned with whether or not they are good as to whether or not they are a good, or at least unharmful, representation of the things they've come to stand for and the themes they gravitate about. The reason why I hate Battle for the Cowl and Heroes in Crisis have less to do with "oh no Jason/Wally are so evil in here" and more to do with the representation and messages they send on mental illness. DC has been writing Bruce on a spectrum from "accidentally abusive at times" to "extremely fucking abusive" for a very, very long time now, to the point that several beloved characters have become entangled in terms of functioning, development etc. with those events and dynamics, the least they could right now is give us stories about this that are helpful instead of doubling down on ill-timed retcons that make it worse, victim-blaming like it's an olympic sport or just plain ignoring it like it'll go away if we don't look at it.

So yeah, those are the main gripes I have with the way dc handles abusive!batman right now, feel free to add more or bring up some nuance I've missed!

It's kind of annoying (and weird) how DC keeps trying to rewrite how Jason and Bruce met to paint Bruce in a worst light.

Originally, Batman finds Jason stealing the Batmobile's tires, the kid runs away, and Batman finds him. Discovering the kid is homeless, he gives him to the authority and Jason finishes at Ma Gunn's school. Ma Gunn is actually teaching the kids to be gang members, so Jason tells Batman. Together, they win again Ma Gunn, and Bruce takes Jason in because he sees himself in him.

Well, in Nightwing: Year One, they change it for "Batman kidnapped Jason when he found him stealing his tires and forces him to become Robin", with Jason ATTACHED AND GAGGED in the batcave. (I like this comic except for that because wtf)

In Red Hood and The Outlaws (2011), they changed it for "Jason stole drugs from Leslie and Batman was ready to beat and throw a young teen in jail, but Leslie begged him to give him a chance", which again, wtf. Batman beating up a child. Okay.

In Red Hood and The Outlaws (2016), they changed it for "Bruce put Jason in Ma Gunn's school because he couldn't handle him after taking him in". The only good addition they made is "when Batman caught Jason stealing his tires, he bought him food".

I do not understand why they need to make him awful to this 12 years old so bad. What do they want to make it as if Bruce forced that life on Jason but also didn't want to deal with him. Why they cannot let it as it is, with Bruce having fun dealing with this lil shit that stole his tires and being there for him when he needs him later on, until he finally craves and takes Jason home.

And that's why I am so critical on how Batman and Bruce is written in Nightwing and Red Hood stories, because the writers are incapable to make their main character have conflict with Bruce, without changing his character and their story to make him abusive. They need him to be the bad guy of Jason's, and sometimes Dick's, story because they don't know how to make you side and care for their character without making the other side a monster.

@timstolejasonscorpseagain *deep sigh*

I have a lot of thoughts about Jason, philosophy and his development, unfortunately those thoughts are very convoluted and I have yet to reach a conclusion, mostly because I'm not that cultured and have yet to find the time to do all the philosophy reading to solidify my positions or question my doubts, which I why I tend to avoid talking about it until I'm confident I won't say something so baffling in its stupidity it will change someone's stance on a completely unrelated subject of out sheer disdain. With that being said, and thanks to the lovely vulgarisation function of our friend wikipedia, I am now fascinated with the idea of Jason reading Kierkegaard and his stance on the "leap of faith".

Now my starting point position on Jason's character in relation to love and as christic symbolism is detailed in this post down there, but the gist of it is that heroes/antiheroes don't have to be motivated by a moral code but can be motivated by love, and that's what makes Jason my favourite comics character, that his development and motivation are based on love, and that we have a nice parallel between Bruce as The Father, the Law, the Lord with a moral code that cannot yield, VS Jason as The Son, Jesus, an approach to christianity based on love (though of course Jason's lost days/utrh arc is a dark retelling, a "dark jesus" if you will).

Note that the interesting thing about philosophy is that not everybody agrees you should base your behaviour on an unyielding code of conduct, things you mustn't do because they are inherently bad: we have deontology, virtue ethics, utilitarism and other types of consequentialism, but also ethics (as understood by Levinas), agape (as per Amélie Nothomb), a lot of shit I'm not smart enough to understand and probably a lot of other stuff I've never heard about because, again, I haven't done my reading. And I wanna see more superheroes living through these stances, and not just deontology or utilitarianism, and I think Jason's stance on love could lead to a fascinating development in that direction.

Now, taking a deep breath,a chill pill and thinking about Jason as a he is right now, as a character, and whether he would have this or that book on his bookshelf. About Kierkegaard's "leap of faith*, Wikipedia tells us:

People who have actually opened a book written by Kierkegaard know more than on the matter so feel free to correct me on the matter but I would say yes, @timstolejasonscorpseagain , to answer your question I think he would love reading Kierkegaard. I'll also highlight that no, despite the theology and judeo-christian culture in which those theories are soaked, I don't hc Jason as christian, and I think the most important part of the leap of faith in regards to Jason is how it relates to love rather than God. However, we can't ignore that context, and that's one of the biggest limits of my analysis of Jason's philosophy, the fact that I was so deeply soaked in it myself growing up that I'm still widely ignorant of the other options and outlooks. One day I'll make a better, more developed post about the potential of Jason's ethics switching from utilitarism to platonic love aka agape (from Compte-Sponsville but mostly Amélie Nothomb), how fascinating it is that one of Kierkegaard's biggest critic is Levinas because of Levinas' ethics vs "christian love" in relation to Cass vs Jason and the potential of reconciliation between the two that Amelie Nothomb suggests, but for now all you get is this very narrow outline. Hope that at least answers the question, and if anyone has suggestions of authors I can read and look up to narrow that view, feel free to share them if you want!

Literature nerd Jason this and that, but no one says that he would become obsessed with the book where the narrator is dead and is reminiscing about his life and whose epigraph is a dedication (of the book) to the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of his corpse 💀

You can't ask me to pick just one Hozier song do you want me to combust

Innocence died screaming honey ask me I should know (From Eden)

your tear caught the light, the earth from a distance (Abstract)

" Would never belong to angels/had never belonged to man [...]a swan upon leda/occupier upon ancient land" (Swan upon Leda)

Nothing in the room but an empty crib (Work Song)

It's bloody and raw but I swear it is sweet (Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene)

Through all things birthed in her silence/nature offers a violence (Blood Upon the snow- as well as the entire bridge of that song it's so damn good)

And that's just the bare minimum, my absolute favourite hozier lines. Definitely my favourite lyricist!!

I’m a simple bitch. I hear Hozier go ‘I slithered here From Eden just to sit outside your door’ and go absolutely buckwild

UTRH AU where Jason pretends he's not aware he died and walks around dealing extreme psychic damage to anyone he has a conversation with

“Oh my god! It’s been a while since I saw you. How are you?” “… How are you here?” “What do you mean?” “You're… Dead.” “What?” “YOU’RE DEAD! FOR YEARS!”

Oops forgot to link the fic! It's definitely on ao3, here you go:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/57542074/chapters/146407723

"Welcome back to the land of the living, B."

It's a blessing. It's a deep breath for the first time, after so long in the water, half-drowned and landing on the shore. But-

But...

"Where's Stephanie?"

Tim smiles, softness in his dark-rimmed eyes.

"She's right there. Dinah's talking with her right now, but I’m sure you’ll see her soon.” He hasn’t. “She’s alive, Bruce. It wasn’t a dream.”

Alive. A sterile, windowless room in the Watchtower. The emptiness of space- sitting in the kitchen in that patch where the afternoon sun bathes the air in molten gold.

“Where’s Jason?”

-The Protector chapter 10: "The Hero"

You say "Jason's main writer was Sterlin who hated him" and like that's obvious, but were there others? Because I can't find the writers but I remember stories about Robin! Jason being really heroic (Jason offering himself as a hostage for Two-Face and Jason going out to protect the heroes after being almost killed by a mob with a broken arm and leg come to mind, he was so cute standing protectively in front of Wonder Woman- these are the main that spring to mind but there were others). So like, is the point that he was apparently an asshole about it (because my outlook on stuff makes it hard to grasp sometimes when the story goes "oh yeah you're not supposed to empathise or agree that character is being rude and I don't like him"), or is that cause these stories were written by other writers?

wheelies away

man, jason todd.

writers can't seem to work out who jason todd was and what they want him to be to bruce this far out from "A Death in the Family."

jason's principal writer during his tenure as robin was jim starlin, who notably did not like robin and wanted batman to primarily be a solo hero. starlin was mostly empowered by editor julius schwartz, who didn't fuck with robin much either. they tried to "fix" robin during this dark, edgy comics era by making him a violent little freak who'd do shit like beat pimps within an inch of their lives or, at one point, implicitly kill a dude after diplomatic immunity kept him from facing legal consequences for sexually assaulting and murdering a woman.

many of the bat-stories of the era, but most notably "the cult," sought to define jason as distinct from dick grayson as a vulgar, violent, paul veerhoven style character.

beyond that, he didn't really have a character, not in the same way tim drake did during his time as robin, with solo stories and all that bullshit. this is not due to jason being a weak character, but because of different priorities in the writer's room. jason existed at the peak "robin is lame, batman should shoot dudes" era (there are like 3 different stories where batman shoots a lot of people in the bat-tank around this time), before bruce timm and paul dini's animated series really redefined bruce wayne as a tragic, shakespearean character who isn't all violence all the time in the public mind. to the audience and in the minds of starlin and schwartz, he was an uninteresting relic of goofy golden age comics, and when their attempt to edge him up didn't work for them, well 🤷

imo, you can see the absolute height of their disinterest in jason in how horribly shit "A Death in the Family" actually is as a story. we remember joker, crowbar, "i'll save you, mom," bomb, batman lifts his fucking somehow intact body from the rubble.

the rest of it has a lot of... i mean, a lot of it is sincerely,

and let's be honest, when you're using a superhero story to show lebanese people are inherently evil and israel is some kind of bastion of modern civilisation in a barbaric east, well, it's clear your priority isn't telling a real story about the characters involved. you're lost in the sauce, just like the famous bigby "i'm going to mansplain israel to the season one archvillain instead of mentioning anything remotely relevant from the preceding arc" scene. sidenote, if you're ever wondering why dc uses euphemistic fictional countriesl like "qurac" to showcase racist america first bullshit, haha, look no further than how they used to behave when using real countries. holy fuck.

in a better world, jason todd was a voice of empathy and compassion for the downtrodden on bruce wayne's shoulder, the billionaire hero's lifeline connection to the impoverished that he spends his time policing. instead of vulgarity, violence, spitefulness and - at times - what seemed to be suicidal depression (just look at the stories leading up to "A Death in the Family;" jason is NOT doing well), jason could've been the one who teaches bruce why people become addicts, what the desperation and hopelessness of poverty does to people, and what things people actually need - not a positive attitude, but simple material security - to prevent crime.

there has never been a character in comics done dirtier than jason bartholomew todd, and the dim "the gist is" revisionist attitude we see when veteran writers like loeb invoke him is a product of that dirtydoing. what else can they say about jason without invoking the extremely weak writing around his death?

additional reading important to understanding "A Death in the Family" and why cool writers with hot dicks who fuck amazing struggle to engage with it:

1: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42980513 - Holy Islamophobia, Batman! Demonization of Muslims and Arabs in Mainstream American Comic Books

2: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1994.2801_123.x - Arab Images in American Comic Books