#fandom talk

Contrary to popular beliefs, Damian knows that killing is wrong. Not taking lives lightly is literally one of the core beliefs in the League, practiced almost religiously by the people he looks up to. For starters, his grandfather Ra's genuinely treasures and wanted to preserve all lives living on Earth, often targeting only leaders of major organisations that benefitted from the misery of others, while his mother was studying medicine and hated it when she had to take a life (and even then, she mostly used anaesthetic)— Damian, young and sweet and so full of love and emotional Damian, who bleeds the needs to be accepted, of course knew that killing is wrong, but he does it anyway because it's the last thing left. The only thing that he can do.

The premise opens a chance to explore interesting concepts like rehabilitation (something that Bruce believes in) and how no humans deserve to play God by determining who gets to live and who gets to die, and no one should hold the axe of the executioner. It’d certainly be more interesting than the usual "Because we're good and your old family is bad so we do good stuff and they do bad stuff,” trope people throw around, one that often perpetuates undertones of a white saviour.

It also opens a discussion of how flawed even Bruce’s methodology really is, because by not killing a criminal it might lead to potential future harm; however killing them wouldn’t resolve the patriarchal system that caused the crime to happen in the first place, with Jason being the prime example of this glaring issue.

The reason why I decided to finally finish this post (this has been marinated in my draft for weeks now, I believe) is because I'm getting exhausted with the rhetoric that the al-Ghuls represent all the bad things in Damian's life while the Wayne's are the best thing that has ever happened to him, a popular concept often used when a POC characters joins a predominantly white household/establishment, thus perpetuating white savior trope.

It brings a distasteful narrative that white people are always morally superior, that the only chance of a POC character being civilized is by having all cultural identities stripped from them and for the white people to give them structure in accordance to their standards.

It's especially troubling when people would pull the "It's okay to hate everything from your previous life," fast card, thus neglecting on giving an equal chance to the characters from the aforementioned POC character to be anything other than abusers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all about cutting ties with your abusers and setting boundaries, especially when it comes to your own growth and development, however simply claiming that this is the case with Damian would be a narrow-minded way of seeing the broader issue.

A lot of the abuses done by either Talia or Ra's were writings stemmed from political beliefs or the writers' own weird decisions rooted from certain ideas. You would see an astronomical change in their character from their appearance in the 1970's to the early 2000's, a change that is particular set in motion post 2001 (if you know what I mean).

I'm not saying that all writings where the al-Ghuls committing crimes are automatically assumed to be written in bad faith, but I'm saying that they (the writers) have a certain goal in mind when writing them particularly OOC; Ra's, who devoted his life to preserve the nature, who aimed to save the environment from further destruction suddenly condones killing animals and participates in wars, or Talia, who was abused her whole life, who specifically seeks to liberate herself from violence and murder and her father's teachings, who loved Bruce and Batman but is aware how being together would destroy him, suddenly becomes an evil mother and an assaulter.

It's clear that today's writers just wanted us to hate the al-Ghuls through Damian's narrative. Setting the BatFam as the 'good end' of the spectrum and sending the al-Ghuls way on the opposing side.

Sometimes, it's a genuine abuse perpetuated under the pretense of discipline. Sometimes, it's little tidbits that insinuate control, perhaps, "My mother never allowed me to form an emotional connection," or maybe, "My grandfather killed all my pets."

It's the same trend I observed, one that extended to even Cassandra and Duke. Lady Shiva's own trauma was often discredited in favour of making her an abuser through and through while simultaneously ignoring the existence of David, while Duke's parents are almost never in the picture. It's a see-saw kind of logic where a character either exists as the trauma or doesn't exist at all, with the latter often portrayed as a momentary caregiver before the white rich guy eventually gets to them.

It's stupid to even ask if the end goal of these portrayals meant to make these three 'grateful' for their place in the BatFamily, thus cementing the 'White Martyrdom' mentality the majority of the fandom tend to possess; that all their life's problems suddenly go away because Bruce is in the picture, and therefore providing little to no agency of their own.

It's peculiarly harrowing when people depict them accepting or even tolerating abuse or humiliation, things that might be detrimental to their growth done by the BatFam because, in the end, Bruce is supposed to be the better end of the deal.

it went from being tied or nearly-tied post-S2 to jackieshauna being 1,236 fics ahead post-S3. that is a HUGE jump, especially considering Jackie has been dead since the end of S1.

also consider the numbers from this jackieshauna fanart (which I LOVE, btw):

this was only posted yesterday (April 30, 2026), and it already has 67k views, 7.9k likes, and 1.4k retweets. there is no way a lottienat fanart would see numbers like that today.

we've also lost one of the most active lottienat accounts on twitter (@lottienathive). they haven't posted anything since August, 2025. many of the top lottienat fic writers have also stopped posting lottienat content on ao3, including subsolare (of Dial Drunk fame), who hasn't posted anything since May, 2025.

I'm not bitter, by the way (that wasn't sarcasm, I'm being genuine here). personally, I have no problem continuing to post content for a ship that's popularity has fallen.

I'm only trying to emphasize this point because I'm tired of seeing posts claiming that lottienat is still one of the most popular ships when that simply isn't true anymore. such a claim is usually made in a non-malicious and harmless way, but I've also seen it used in bad faith.

as for why this dip in popularity happened, I think the most obvious reason is that S3 gave us very little canon lottienat to use for inspiration. but I also do blame (this is just my personal opinion) a surge in Lottie haterism on twitter. there seems to be a feeling amongst a certain crowd that Lottie isn't good enough for Natalie Scatorccio.