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I need someone that believes in magic to get ahold of Batman again. He is an overly serious man that runs around in an admitted bat suit fighting a gimmick rouge gallery. And he is doing it because he sincerely believes in a better tomorrow and somewhere along the way we have lost the plot. Batman wasn’t created to punish the guilty that is actually completely antithetical to his beliefs he is not the fucking punisher.

Batman just like wonder woman and Superman primarily wants to save people! sure he doesn’t do it in a sunny way but that is still what drives him. Hell he even goes a step further and actually builds a case he’s not just waiting for criminals to commit the crime he is shutting down smuggling and trafficking rings foiling plots he is a detective! For Christs sake it’s what made him so unique and fun as a superhero.

Also His desire to save people is literally what compels him to adopt Dick, Jason, Stephanie. Cass because he wanted to give these kids a chance, to save them in ways 8year old him wasn’t. Someone who just wants to punish the guilty wouldn’t do that, And now they have turned him into a borderline physically and emotionally abusive absentee parent all in the name of making him an edge lord. Where is the heart! Where is the fucking heart in it all! Where are the kids and the bright colors and the zaniness. Let Batman and Gotham be FANTASTICAL! I’m tired of the greys and the browns.

I’m tired of “grounding a story” meaning sucking all the joy and color out if it. Also superhero stories don’t need to be grounded in your fucking abysmal reality they are literally superheroes they exist outside of reality, let them!

A story does not have to be joyless to have depth and it does not have to be nihilist to be compelling.

I am sick and I am tired of it. 😔

You know what this makes me think about? A guy as paranoid and highly trained as Batman would absolutely flip out if someone he didn’t know tried to touch him. He’s probably on alert at virtually all times for possible hits or hands reaching toward him.

But here? He’s on his comm and he doesn’t even blink when Dick reaches into his belt pockets. His belt pockets with explosives and highly dangerous materials that shouldn’t be accessible to anyone who doesn’t know how to disarm them.

Dick reaches into his belt for a sucker and Bruce just lets him. It’s such a casual display of touch that I overlooked the first time I came across this panel.

How many small touches and invasions of his space does Bruce allow from family? How big of a gift is it for him to allow those? What other ways does the Batfamily climb all over him with casual touch and affection? Did he have to learn to accept it after being relatively devoid of it for so long?

Just some morning thoughts as I wake up on cold medicine.

can we talk about how Damian’s culture shock had not been addressed in any significant way ever in canon or fanon?

imagine you are 10 years old, your mother loves you dearly, you are told all your life stories of how important and legendary your father The Batman is, you are to be a strong warrior-assassin-son and you excel in your training, your mother and grandfather are proud of you until they say you have to leave.

you lose everything. your home country, language, religion, relationships. your comfort foods, smells, clothes. everything.

you're given to your father who you have been told you need to prove yourself to, you are being treated as an enemy, you have no allies, no one will explain the unwritten unspoken rules especially not your father who has decided you are a nuisance.

they tell you your past and everyone in it is evil, your home is evil, your mother and grandfather are evil. you cannot have any connection to anything or anyone familiar.

your father dies. they all still hate you. they will not let you go home.

comics are in and of itself, an unreliable narrator.

i say this because i started my comic journey with jason todd. i read all his robin appearances, pre and post crisis, then read hush and under the red hood, and all i could think about was what the fuck. what the fuck batman. how did you become this. what happened between 1988 and 2006. how did the the man who's life revolved around caring for this child, teaching this child, learning from this child, protecting this child, losing this child — become hurting him.

it was so baffling to me i found myself slipping into the batman shaped void that many never return from (lol). and so now, i have read over 1500 batman comics, over 300 different writers, spanning over 80 years of publication. i finally get to what happened between 1988 and 2006, and how batman as a character has become as unrecognisable as he has remained familiar. i see the events of alpod, knightfall, cataclysm, no man's land, the 200 individual batman issues and 200 individual detective comics issues alone that had passed, not taking into account the the other long runs, mini runs, short stories or collaborative comics that were released in those 18 years. the people he had met, lost, been betrayed by, abandoned in those stories.

it has only been about 5 years since jason todd died for bruce wayne. 5 years that have felt like two decades.

it has only been around 4 years for jason since he climbed his way out of his grave. 4 years that felt like less than three.

so when reading as jason, i felt betrayed. how could batman do this? how can't he see? he knows how i would have mourned him, he knows how fiercely i love him, how all i want is for him to prove he ever loved me the same way. how can he not change after all these years? how is he not aware that he is not the change gotham needs? (how does he not see that he is what i need — needed.) how will he save gotham? he can't. he can't save gotham. he can't save me. but i can. i can fix it.

then i read as bruce and i am betrayed. who is this? why does he doubt how much i loved him? what changed? why did he change? (am i the one who changed? no, surely not.) after everything, the people i have hurt, the people i have lost, the people i have sacrificed for gotham, how can he doubt? he would have never asked me to do this before, he understood, i'm sure he did, before. i won't choose. i can't choose. where is my son. where am i. i can't save gotham. i can't save you. but i can fix it. i can fix you.

they're both wrong.

Going insane thinking about some kind of warped trinity re Batman Bruce and robin. You just keep churning out more messiahs help meeeee

If DC didn't want my catholic education to analyse it through that lense it shouldn't have made a big deal about trinities or invented "The Lazarus Pits". One thing I find interesting about Batman/Batfam is when you look at symbolism in the batfam to analyse through that lense so far I've thought of (clearly this is my lense and you're not obligated to adhere to that vision):

-Jason as Jesus, Talia as Mary, Batman as God, Joker as Lucifer

-Robin as the Son, Batman as God (the Father), the Mission as the Holy Spirit

-Batman as God, Jason as Adam (Paradise Lost)

-Batman as God, Batkids as christians (Quo Vadis)

-Batman as Jesus, Two-Face as Judas

So I think it's very interesting that considering his place in the Batfam, Batman always has easy parallels with God The Father, but with Two Face he's a friend before he's a father so he's Jesus to his Judas -which makes me very curious if there was an intended parallel with Superman and Wonderwoman, since I don't really see it but they called them The Trinity, so maybe I am missing something?

When it comes to the batfam on the other hand, it's no surprise to see how fucked up their relationships are if Bruce is hailed as the metaphorical God Father. Maybe I'm missing some batfam interactions with the batkids in which he's compared to another figure in which case that interpretation is wrong, but so far I think these parallels combined with the themes of emancipation tying with identity loss, hero worship, and the general power dynamics of the batfam make a lot of sense.