This: Is A Work Of Art

this: is a work of art

(original post)

TOA AU where…

When the Trollhunter receives their amulet, they hear the name of the next Trollhunter. It's to ensure they're properly trained before receiving the mantle.

And so when Kanjigar receives the amulet and activates its power for the first time, he hears “Jim Lake Junior”.

That… doesn't sound like a trollish name. That doesn't sound like a trollish name at all!

He consults Vendel and Blinkous and they come to a conclusion that it's a human name. Oh woe.

After days spent on trying to rip their horns off from stress because what if they're gonna be a changeling?? Huh?? Vendel whacks him on the head and tells him to stop worrying. Whatever comes, comes.

It's not until nearly four centuries later when he hears the name again. He was hiding from sunlight in a mini-forest near human dwellings when he heard a woman screaming “James Lake, you are not going to leave me here with our son alone!”

He watches, with batted breath as the male human does indeed leave. Feeling a pull of fate he sneaks into the house during night fall, and hears the woman talking to a sleeping child. “Oh Jim… how are we going to get through this…?”

He found him. He found Jim Lake Jr, the future Trollhunter.

He sneaks out, the same way he sneaked in, and goes to consult Vendel.

“He is but a whelp! A human whelp at that!”

“Well, we're gonna have to work with that. Somehow.”

They decide to wait a few more years until the kid looks like he could pick up a training sword and not fall over, and then they reveal themselves to his mother and him.

Barbara Lake is a demon in human skin, Kanjigar swears. The woman is protective as all hell towards her son, and she proved that by breaking a broom over his head. Kanjigar briefly entertains a thought of her being a Trollhunter but drops it quickly. Amulet chose Jim.

And oh Great Gronka Morka is Jim different. He's a soft, empathetic boy who doesn't shy away from them. Sure, he was scared at first, but curiosity and wonder won. And when he learnt about being tasked with protecting a race he hadn't known existed a few hours earlier? He took it in stride, saying he'll do this.

———

Essentially Jim gets three troll dads (one dies, sorry) and learns how to be Trollhunter much earlier on.

show, don't tell:

anticipation - bouncing legs - darting eyes - breathing deeply - useless / mindless tasks - eyes on the clock - checking and re-checking

frustration - grumbling - heavy footsteps - hot flush - narrowed eyes - pointing fingers - pacing / stomping

sadness - eyes filling up with tears - blinking quickly - hiccuped breaths - face turned away - red / burning cheeks - short sentences with gulps

happiness - smiling / cheeks hurting - animated - chest hurts from laughing - rapid movements - eye contact - quick speaking

boredom - complaining - sighing - grumbling - pacing - leg bouncing - picking at nails

fear - quick heartbeat - shaking / clammy hands - pinching self - tuck away - closing eyes - clenched hands

disappointment - no eye contact - hard swallow - clenched hands - tears, occasionally - mhm-hmm

tiredness - spacing out - eyes closing - nodding head absently - long sighs - no eye contact - grim smile

confidence - prolonged eye contact - appreciates instead of apologizing - active listening - shoulders back - micro reactions

they are friends they are friends they are friends

I am. So fucking tired of Batman being portrayed as a bad parent and a toxic person. And it’s so goddamn widespread. Fuck, it might be as bad as the whole “Superman being a kindhearted Boy Scout is boring” take.

I get it, the man’s not exactly stable, he watched his parents get murdered in front of him and spent years of his life training to fight crime dressed like a giant scary bat, of course he’s not perfect.

But to say that Bruce Wayne isn’t caring, isn’t empathetic, to call him abusive…it just misses the point of who the character is to me.

Why do you think he fights crime? Yes, part of it is because he’s bitter and sad because his parents were cruelly ripped from him as a child, and he’s lashing out against the corruption of his city. It’s arguably the focus of his earlier years. But he learns to become more than that. He learns to bring hope, a chance to be better.

Harleen Quinzel is the Joker’s right hand lady, but she’s also a victim of an abusive relationship and a woman with a surprisingly strong moral compass and a love for animals, and wants to get better.

Harvey Dent is a man who will decide someone’s fate on a coin toss(and a pretty inaccurate depiction of DID), but he’s also Bruce’s close friend who clearly needs help learning to live with his condition, rather than try to get rid of it, and someone who he still goes out of his way to visit, even after everything.

Victor Fries is a cold, emotionless man who will callously discard allies and blame them for being careless, but he’s also a man who’s either lashing out because he had the love of his life taken from him, or just desperate to make sure she isn’t taken from him, and is willing to do anything just to guarantee her survival.

Even the Joker, arguably one of the most morally bankrupt characters in all of fiction, is someone that Batman has offered a chance to. After the guy shoots the daughter of his friend, a girl he cared for like she was his own kid, and paralyzes her from the waist down, he tells the Joker that he doesn’t want to hurt him. He wants to get him help. He looks at this monster who has taken countless lives and says “You don’t have to be alone.”

For fuck’s sake, he sat with Joe Chill in his last moments so that he wouldn’t be alone. Joe Chill, the man who murdered his parents, who took so much from him, the person responsible for all of the misery and suffering he’s gone through. And he sits with the man to comfort him while dies.

And you’re gonna tell me the man who did that would abuse his kids?

That he’d hold up the young man whose death was his greatest failure, the boy he grieved, and say this?

That he’d look his goddamn son in the eyes and say this to him?

Why the FUCK do you think he took in Dick Grayson in the first place? It wasn’t because he saw the kid and thought “Ah. A potential soldier.”, it was because he saw a boy experiencing the same heartbreaking loss he had so many years ago, and wanted to make sure he didn’t end up as bitter and miserable as he was.

Why do you think he smiled when Tim Drake presented him a broken watch for Father’s Day? Because he was just happy to see the boy alive and safe.

DAMIAN LITERALLY POINTED AT A COW AND SAID “I’m keeping her. She’s Bat-Cow.” AND BRUCE JUST WENT WITH IT. DIDN’T EVEN NEED TO ARGUE WHY BRUCE SHOULD LET HIM KEEP HER. HE SAID “this cow is my pet now” AND BRUCE SAID “alright, bet”.

The thing about Batman is that he wants to make sure nobody else ends up feeling the way he does. That’s not just about stopping a mugger so a boy’s parents aren’t gunned down. It’s about giving his loved ones the support and care that he couldn’t have, because it was taken from him. It’s about comforting someone who just went through a traumatic experience and letting them know that they’re going to be okay. It’s about going to someone locked away in a cell who thinks that they’re a lost cause and a burden to society and telling them that he wants to help them get better. It’s about EMPATHY.

That’s what makes him a HERO. He’s meant to inspire us, to show us that we can have that same empathy for others around us, that we can turn our suffering into hope for a better future.

I just wish more people at DC would start recognizing that. But I might as well follow that example myself. Maybe through this struggle of having to see this hero mistreat the people around him and act like a grade-A jackass, people will start to recognize that missing empathy, and slowly but surely, it might come back. After all, what is this post, if not trying to bring attention to the matter in the hopes of fixing it?