Can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?

Dick Grayson:

Jason Todd:

Tim Drake:

Damian Wayne:

Duke Thomas:

Bruce Wayne:

Alfred Pennyworth:

Stephanie Brown:

Cassandra Cain:

Barbara Gordon:

We are One? a fucking jam

think before you speak/type or the chokehold fairy will get you   

Literally every version of his origin story I can remember involves him realizing that he can’t just treat the symptoms as Batman, he has to treat the root cause as Bruce Wayne. A huge part of the plot of “The Dark Knight Rises” is that his company is on the verge of bankruptcy because Bruce keeps spending all their profits on things like “clean energy” and “food and shelter for orphans.”

The opening of “Arkham City” shows him campaigning against mass incarceration because the majority of the inmates in Arkham City are not public menaces like the Joker, they’re desperate people with no other options, and Gotham should be providing them with legitimate means of stability rather than punishing them for having none.

Especially since the majority of his villains are independently wealthy people (doctors, lawyers, business executives) who are exploiting people’s desperation in order to get themselves henchmen, and the henchmen almost always have jobs with a living wage waiting for them on the other side of their sentence, and Bruce has a standing offer to pay out-of-pocket for the therapy of any of his villains whose crimes are the result of a mental illness (which Bruce is sympathetic to since he is mentally ill himself)

But what’s really damning about these posts is that a lot of them suggest Bruce should use his money to give the police the resources they need to deal with crime on their own, which makes it clear they’ve never actually consumed a piece of Batman media, since the issue with the Gotham Police is not that they’re underfunded. They have a bloated budget, they’re almost militant, and they’re so corrupt that they actually encourage crime, both violent and economic, because they’re on the payroll of the richest criminals. 

Only here’s the thing.

The kid?

He runs away.

And this isn’t just a “Oh, I need some time to think but I’ll come around in a day or two and fulfill my destiny.”

No this kid is gone. For the first time in his life, this kind and generous kid makes a selfish decision. He knows what the consequences are. He knows what’s at stake. He knows that lives are going to be in danger. And he still chooses to run away.

Things take an abrupt turn when he gets into an accident and he ends up in a coma. He wakes up years later and guess what? Him running away from his duties that day? Yeah it kind of caused the entire world to be plunged into chaos. This kid, this kid, is now responsible for thousands upon thousands of deaths.

At the age of twelve, this kind pacifist single-handedly becomes a mass-murderer by association. All because he ran away.

A few older teenagers find him and immediately help him. They don’t think much of it. They’re used to helping out anyone they can. After all, the war has killed people they love, family, friends. So they help this kid before they even realize that he’s destined. And this kid, this kid isn’t even fully aware of just how many people he inadvertently killed.

Until they go to the ‘city’ where he was from. He doesn’t understand why they’re so worried but when he gets there…he gets it. There is no ‘city’. Not anymore. It’s abandoned ruins lined with skeletons—his friends, his family. He finds his father’s corpse. He finds signs of a struggle. Everyone he knew is dead. And there are so many more. Hundreds. Thousands. All dead. All because of him.

He’s a good kid, a great kid. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.

And he led to thousands of deaths.

All because he ran away.

And this entire story is just the first three episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. (Four if you count borrowing some information from The Storm.)

Avatar showed all of this in just three episodes. Actually it showed this and more. Because this is just one character’s story and they introduced us to half a dozen major characters, each with stories just as, if not even more, tragic than this one.

Long story short, we always talk about how amazing Avatar is for the representation and art and animation and music and morals but we rarely ever talk about how amazing the story is. The horrible irony that Aang, a pacifistic monk who was kind and generous to everyone he met, inadvertently led to thousands of people dying in a century-long war—it’s one of the greatest stories that I’ve ever heard of. This doesn’t even include all of the other consequences we see throughout the series—villages being destroyed, families living in fear, people being dragged off to concentration camps in the middle of the night, kids turning into terrorists, refugees being forced to walk thousands of miles to get to a safe haven, the injuries, the fear, the trauma. (And this is all just in Book One. Don’t even get me started on the other two.) It’s hard to say that it’s all Aang’s fault but his disappearance certainly had a huge impact on the horrible things that occurred.

And the worst part is?

Black Lion doesn’t want him? We’ve got a bigger robot who does.

Team Voltron had no room for him? We’ve got a bigger team that does.

A-plot doesn’t want him? Well this season’s B-plot called him “Sir” all the time and was all about Earth coming together and pooling our alien and homegrown resources, our global talent, and our will in a massive cooperative effort showing hey universe, humans are space-orks, and hey universe, we held out by the skin of our teeth without Voltron and we went from nobody to winning in 4 measly years and we defend our OWN home

The universe doesn’t want him defending it? EARTH WANTS HIM DEFENDING IT

Stanning this character was constantly hearing how eeeeeverything would be better in a universe where he wasn’t black paladin and wasn’t on the team and YOU KNOW WHAT?  YOU KNOW WHAT MAYBE HE’S BETTER OFF AWAY FROM YOU TOO

Look. You’re Team Voltron and we love you. We love you very much. You’re our heroes. You’re our heroes. And even if you weren’t, Shiro loves you so what else would we do?

But in addition to that

THIS IS OUR GIANT UGLYASS GORGEOUS THICK-THIGHED, TINY-WAISTED LADY DANGER-ESQUE MECHA WHO KICKS ASS IN HEELS AND WE FUCKING LOVE HER

THIS IS OUR LARGELY MIDDLE-AGED CREW OF BADASSES THAT SAVED VOLTRON’S BUTT AT A CRITICAL JUNCTURE AND YEAH WE LOVE THEM!!  THE RHEUMY EYES OF TIME ARE COMING FOR ALL OF YOU YOU ONLY WISH YOU’LL LOOK THIS GOOD

AND 

THIS