What do you think of the changes to Tommy's backstory in BE#26?
#spoilers for Batman Eternal 26, warnings for #child abuse, #abuse
Iâm 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:Â Tommy = Bruceâs 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 doesnât take advantage of that the way Tommy would if he were in his position, and itâs sooOOooOo unfair. Bruce (correctly) realizes that Tommy fuckin sucks and that obviously he doesnât understand Bruce at all (because Bruce actually CANâT have the one thing he wants - his parents to be alive again). Now Tommy wants to fuck up all of Bruceâs shit by taking every single thing away from him.
On the one hand, I think itâs a good creative choice, in the sense that theyâve made Tommyâs 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 donât hate the above motivation, itâs actually a pretty interesting/creepy origin.
But on the other hand, theyâve erased almost all of the complexity that was there before:
isnât a survivor of physical and emotional abuse anymore;
didnât kill his parents as a means to escape those situations;
didnât have the experience of his mother enabling his fatherâs abuse and not protecting him for selfish reasons;
didnât come to envy Bruce for having freedom (in contrast to Tommyâs life with his controlling, manipulative, and mentally ill mother);
didnât come to hate Bruce because of his mother constantly comparing Tommy to him;
didnât come to hate Bruce through paranoid delusion that Bruce collaborated with his mother to ruin his life at age 10;
doesnât have the same mental illnesses as before (paranoia and anger issues);
his friendship with Bruce isnât genuine anymore: preboot Tommy viewed himself and Bruce as âa single soul dwelling in two bodiesâ and that doesnât seem to be true at all anymore;
Tommyâs 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 â 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 â but it was only due to Tommyâs underlying envy of Bruceâs money/status and anger about not having it himself, NOT out of genuine love and affection for Bruce himself.
I guess I just donât like that pretty much all the things that made Tommy interesting and at least slightly sympathetic â i.e. not just a white boy who feels entitled to being rich/powerful â have been erased.
So in summary, I not angry at DC about the changes, but I feel literally zero affection for this version of Tommy. :/