Dark night flyer lift me higher

Okay, so DC kind of has a long and problematic history with queerness and batman that it’s only just started straightening (heh) out in the past couple of years with the emergence of characters like Kate Kane, Maggie Sawyer and Renee Montoya as well as allowing Selina Kyle to be bi and Harley and Ivy to be in an open relationship. This is all fine and dandy and I love it but it doesn’t erase the fact that for years - YEARS - it was ALWAYS the villains that were coded with gay stereotypes. 

This is problematic not only because of it’s association of gay/queerness with evil and wrong but also because if you were to headcanon a villain as queer, especially a male one, you run the risk of reinforcing that stereotype (mostly because there are so few LGBT+ HEROES in Batman, especially male ones, but that’s a post for another day.) 

I mean, at the end of the day I’m pretty close to canon, that’s just the nature at which I operate, but like… I am developing a sense of… not really caring about disputing canon.

My view has always been that I love comics and it’s my favorite media because you have such an independent and personal relationship with your reading of the comics. There’s definitive fact that everyone can agree on, sure, like actual events and actions, but how you read between the panels – the inflections you give characters, the movements between panels that you imagine because they carry between, so on and so forth – that’s a unique relationship you’re bringing with the media. And what events and characterizations and ideas you latch on are a combination of what your personal opinions and tastes and values are, and what order you read things.

If you’re introduced to ideas you have a lot of affection for with certain characters and properties, even it it’s multimedia – like how my Catwoman will always be Black thanks to the ‘66 Batman TV show, or my Flash will always be Wally because of Justice League Unlimited – and you hold that because that’s your relationship with the property, that’s totally awesome.

But it’s not any better or worse than someone else’s relationship.

I may disagree with someone who thinks that the Joker is he end-all-be-all villain because they started getting into Batman after watching The Dark Knight and can carry a discussion about why I do or don’t agree with that view, but just because I’ve read x more comics doesn’t make them wrong necessarily. It just means my opinion’s different.

Now, there’s right and wrong worth discussing about why certain changes were made and why certain opinions and interests are more gravitated toward than others, and there’s things like people holding ideas because of spite or ignorant say-so  like “Lois Lane’s a dumbass lol should be removed from continuity” or “No one likes Cass because she’s unrelatable Mary Sue everyone complains about her too much” that I think are very different and don’t really respect though? And like… I don’t know. Stuff like – I guess it’s when opinions are baseless but people say them with a sense of authority and newer people go with them because who knows better really get to me.

And of course there’s elements of everything that are like the social reasons these things are changed or being said, and he intentions behind certain blanketed statements that are going to change my opinion.

But I guess what I’m struggling with it I’ve always thought I’ve tried to be respectful of the fact that canon is so huge and the entire appeal of comics is that we cherrypick our personal continuities for whatever reason, and while I try to present a base for my own opinions and also post from actual comics on my various blogs to give people a point of reading and accepting or dismissing for themselves, I don’t know if I’ve done my absolute best to make it clear.

So here I go:

It’s whatever. And I’m going to try to be more clear that it’s whatever in the future.

If you ask me for my opinions and my personal canon and headcanon, just be aware that all of this is through my lens, all of this is how I’ve constructed these worlds for myself, and there’s most likely a reason for every choice – some simple, some not – but to utterly deny everyone who disagrees with me because they’re coming at this with a different viewpoint is a tired and rather useless gatekeeping practice at this point.

Be cool and respectful. But like. Also have fun? Good gawd we take this stuff too seriously. Life’s too short for the anxiety we give ourselves over which comic or version of an anime or multimedia we watched as five year olds should we prefer over another. 

tommy drunk-dialing bruce fics (canon)

tommy spending christmas eve with bruce fics (semi-canon)

I’m fairly certain it’s illegal to write fics this cute????

and i just realized. twins. TWINS. T W I N S. 

HE AND BRUCE WERE GOING TO FUCK TWINS.TOGETHER. oh my god i

that was so cute though i’m goin gto CRY. they had a TRADITION. oh god. and tommy wanting to do the thing. omg. ;A; go for it bby DO IT ;3;

Tommy “Hush” Elliot is also set to appear on the series, though only as an “Easter egg,” according to Alfred Pennyworth’s Sean Pertwee. A childhood friend of Bruce Wayne, Tommy Elliot would grow to hate the Waynes, and targeted the Dark Knight as “Hush” after deducing Bruce’s secret identity. Hush was introduced into the DC Universe in the wildly popular “Hush” storyline by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, and is the primary villain in the weekly “Batman Eternal” series. 

#spoilers for Batman Eternal 26, warnings for #child abuse, #abuse

I’m kind of in shock. Sat there with my hand over my mouth for a good couple of minutes as I read the rest of the issue.

New backstory: Tommy = Bruce’s best friend and was obsessed with him. He murdered his parents to be like Bruce, copied how he dressed, flirted with the same girls, even sometimes introduced himself to them as Bruce Wayne (lmao what the fuck Tommy).

Bruce gets mad, the truth comes out: Tommy thinks Bruce can have anything in the world he wants, yet Bruce doesn’t take advantage of that the way Tommy would if he were in his position, and it’s sooOOooOo unfair. Bruce (correctly) realizes that Tommy fuckin sucks and that obviously he doesn’t understand Bruce at all (because Bruce actually CAN’T have the one thing he wants - his parents to be alive again). Now Tommy wants to fuck up all of Bruce’s shit by taking every single thing away from him.

MY REACTION:

On the one hand, I think it’s a good creative choice, in the sense that they’ve made Tommy’s motivations to be Hush and do what he does much more streamlined, which was, in my opinion, the biggest problem with Hush in the preboot. And I don’t hate the above motivation, it’s actually a pretty interesting/creepy origin.

But on the other hand, they’ve erased almost all of the complexity that was there before:

isn’t a survivor of physical and emotional abuse anymore;

didn’t kill his parents as a means to escape those situations;

didn’t have the experience of his mother enabling his father’s abuse and not protecting him for selfish reasons;

didn’t come to envy Bruce for having freedom (in contrast to Tommy’s life with his controlling, manipulative, and mentally ill mother);

didn’t come to hate Bruce because of his mother constantly comparing Tommy to him;

didn’t come to hate Bruce through paranoid delusion that Bruce collaborated with his mother to ruin his life at age 10;

doesn’t have the same mental illnesses as before (paranoia and anger issues);

his friendship with Bruce isn’t genuine anymore: preboot Tommy viewed himself and Bruce as “a single soul dwelling in two bodies” and that doesn’t seem to be true at all anymore;

Tommy’s anger at Bruce no longer has the component of feeling betrayed by his best friend after making himself vulnerable and (platonically) loving him, only to have Bruce (in his mind) ruin his life.

I am REALLY mourning the last two points — this new Tommy never actually cared for Bruce in a genuine way. Like, new Tommy was obsessed with him and had positive (almost worshipful) feelings toward Bruce, sure — but it was only due to Tommy’s underlying envy of Bruce’s money/status and anger about not having it himself, NOT out of genuine love and affection for Bruce himself.

I guess I just don’t like that pretty much all the things that made Tommy interesting and at least slightly sympathetic — i.e. not just a white boy who feels entitled to being rich/powerful — have been erased.

Giant cats at Landmarks and Monuments: United States Edition.