tiny cheese acolyte

Nightwings: Hold on, there's a civilian running around. Early twenties, black hair, super pale and kind of sickly lookin. He looks panicked, like hes looking for something or someone, I'm going to check in, in case its a child.

Nightwing: Excuse me sir, are you alright?

Danny, pressing a hand to his chest in pain: So-Someone broke into my-my appartment when I was at work and-and they left the door open, and now I can't find Mittens!

Red Robin, over comms: Seriously? All this drama over a cat?

Red Hood, over comms: Who actually names their cat "Mittens"?

Oracle, over comms: You two are so stupid.

Robin, over comms: I agree, shut up. This is serious, that poor animal could be injured.

Nightwing, helps Danny sit on a nearby bench: Hey its alright man. I'll have the others keep an eye out for her okay? What does your kitten look like.

Danny, releived: Mittens isn't a kitten, shes a puppy, really tiny girl. She's a Bully Kutta, and she's mostly white but has black unclipped ears and some black splotches- here I have a-a picture. *pulls out his phone with shakey hands and shows Nightwing a picture of Danny and Mittens in their new appartment, Mittens goes up past his hips*

Nightwing, stunned into silence: . . .

Red Robin, over comms: That is "tiny" to him?!

Robin, over comms: Stunning.

Oracle: Found him. Daniel Fenton moved to Gotham with his Service Dog in Training, Mittens, two months ago. He works at Gotham's Space Museum, and writes Parnormal Fiction stories on the side, and he apprentantly visits Middle schools to do presentations. Mittens is 15months old and is set to graduate very soon. She has high praise from all her trainers, but it seems Danny's employers at the Museum are pushing against him bringing her to work once she graduates, Danny seems to be fighting with them about it a lot. Jerks.

Batman, over comms: What does he need her for?

Oracle, over comms: Heart problems, and mobility issues caused by an accident when he was a teenager, as well as Anxiety, and PTSD. A lot of his file is sealed because he was a minor when it happened, I can snoop more?

Batman, over comms: No, that amount is fine.

Nightwing: Well, the others know, and will keep an eye out for her. You're still shaking pretty bad, how about I see you home.

Danny: I appreciate it. I'm sorry for keeping you back, being a hero is- seems like an exhausting job.

Nightwing, joking: You speak from experience?

Danny, eyes distant: No, I was never a hero.

Robin, over comms: Mittens spotted near the Museum!

Nightwing: Hey, Robin said he spotted Mittens near the Museum.

Danny: She went looking for me, of course she did. If she won't go to Robin by name, have him call her "Vöttr", I'm the only one that ever calls her that, so it will catch her attention.

Nightwing, nodding: Robin call her Votter.

Red Robin, over comms: Old Norse?

Nightwing, eyebrow raised: Old Norse?

Danny, shrugging: Its a hobby.

Robin, over comms and sounding very excited: Target secure. . . . May I pet her?

Nightwing, snorts: Robin wants to know if he can pet her.

Danny, amused: As much as they want, as long as I get her back.

Robin, over comms: Understood, we will reconvene at Fenton's appartment.

Nightwing: Hah that kid. He said he'll meet us at your place if thats okay.

Danny: Sounds good, I'm just happy that I didn't loose her.

Blackbat, over comms: Sad, remorse, upset.

Red Robin, over comms: He does seem interesting.

Batman, over comms: Hmm.

But I think what disappoints me most about it is people not getting why that’s not it

There’s a difference between killing in self-defence and making an active choice to kill. Proportionate force (using only the amount of force necessary to protect yourself or others from danger) can include taking a life if the risk is high enough. Killing someone who is actively trying to kill you absolutely counts as self-defence, and thus is morally neutral — it doesn’t make you as bad as someone who goes out of their way to try and kill someone who isn’t presently a threat

So killing henchmen, who are all ganging up on you and trying to kill you first, is morally neutral. If you do not have the opportunity to make an active choice about whether or not to kill or just incapacitate them, you can’t possibly be held morally responsible for their deaths. But once heroes reach the villain, there’s typically a point where the villain is downed with the hero’s weapon pointed over them, and the hero has to choose between killing an already defeated opponent or ‘not being as bad as them’ by letting them live. THAT is an active choice; they’re no longer in active combat, the villain is now defenceless and already defeated, killing them will serve no defensive purpose. So killing the villain will be a moral choice, but killing the henchmen isn’t

But say that the villain has been granted mercy many times, and has repeatedly shown that they can break out of whatever prison they’re thrown in, and will go on to be even more dangerous every time they’re free again. Take the Joker, for example; every time Batman defeats him and locks him away in Arkham, he comes back to commit even worse atrocities. And now most people, both in and out of the story, are at the point of saying that Batman might as well just kill him, because leaving him alive is clearly not going to stop him and is only allowing him to come back and cause more harm

When it gets to a point where the options are ‘kill them’ or ‘lock them up briefly before they inevitably break out and cause more harm’, I can’t see killing them as being just as morally reprehensible as frequently causing significant harm and casualties through senseless violence. At that point, you might as well just go it, because clearly the ethical approach is only enabling them to continue committing much more significant atrocities than killing someone

Although I will say that there are versions of Batman’s no-kill rule that I can respect; he avoids the pitfall of saying “If I kill Joker, I’m just as bad as him” by saying “If I kill Joker, I’m just as bad as corrupt cops”. He believes that if he kills once, even when nobody would hold it against him, then he would be more open to killing again, and if he starts to be the one who single-handedly decides who lives and who dies, all in the name of justice? What makes him any different from the bad apples in law enforcement, whom he is also trying to stop?

By comparing himself to a lesser evil, the comparison is a lot stronger; killing one guy doesn’t make you as bad as the shits-and-gigs serial killer with a three-figure minimum body count, and nobody should be unironically arguing that. But abusing your power because you believe that your interpretation of morality is correct does indeed put you around the level of those abusing their power because they believe that their interpretation of morality is correct

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

Today we have some bio-dad!Bruce Wayne vibes!!!! The intro scene to Teleporting Into Your Life by Izanae on AO3 :D