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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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what are your favorite and least favorite tropes in fanfiction regarding dick grayson?

Most of these I feel are probably a given with me given that I am apparently physically incapable of being subtle and am donating my body to science upon my demise so that this phenomenon may be studied. For Science.

(But also like, the funny thing about me is as much as I rant about a few specific topics its only so frequent because there’s actually only a few specific things I gripe about its just that they’re eeeeeeeeeeverywhere.)

Thus, in no particular order, my least favorite Dick Grayson tropes in fanon and in canon because I can’t read apparently OR AT LEAST I CHOOSE NOT TO FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS EXERCISE, JEEZ, LEAVE ME ALONE....

1) Police officer Dick Grayson

2) Dick hated Jason pre-death and/or judges and is incapable of understanding or empathizing with Jason post-his return

3) Police officer Dick Grayson

4) Dick’s loved ones and friends all making jokes and insults out of the nickname he keeps in memory of his parents and Dick being all like lol this is fine, this isn’t debilitating to my self-esteem at all hahaha oh man that was a good one, I AM a Dickface, you nailed it!

5) Police officer Dick Grayson

6) Dick’s loved ones and friends all punching Dick every time he puts a foot out of place and then everyone both in-universe and in-comments being like NO PROBLEMS DETECTED, and also WOW, CHILL OUT DG, TEMPER MUCH?

7) Police officer Dick Grayson

8) Dick fired Tim and callously kicked him out of his home and the city UMM METHINKS THE FUCK NOT

9) Police officer Dick Grayson

10) Only addressing conflicts between Bruce and Dick when using the framing device “when you think about it though isn’t it still like at least half Dick’s fault that Bruce fired him and kicked him out of his home and hit him and guilt-tripped him into doing what he wanted.”

11) Bonus round - sub Dick Grayson. Like, I barely ever read smut in this fandom because I’m like ‘mmm, no thx and also hard pass’ to rape and incest as fetish or porn, and its like....hard enough to find any mature content with Dick that doesn’t overlap with at least one of those so I just kinda stopped looking ages ago, but even just when glancing my eyes past tags while browsing, I just DON’T GET THIS. I tend to be a variety is the spice of life kinda guy and thus usually can make a case for any character going any which way in any number of things, but this is the one character where I’m like, I do not see any angle in which he has a submissive bone in his body. Yeah he has control freak tendencies and there’s that trope about people who spend most of their time in charge wanting to give up control and let go at times, buuuuuut that only actually works with people who don’t fully WANT to be in charge or control to begin with, not people like Dick whose control freak tendencies IMO are directly born of how rarely he gets to be in control of even his own personal life in the first place. Just doesn’t compute for me.

And in no particular order, top ten most favorite Dick Grayson takes in canon and fanon, with these weirdly just being the direct inverse of things I hate because I mentioned the Not Subtle thing and also the Not Actually As Picky As I Often Come Across As, right?

1) Anything other than police officer Dick Grayson

2) Dick and Jason being bros who get along and confide in each other about the stuff they can’t/won’t share with anyone else because they understand each other in ways most others never will, and also also them having Secret History as Brothers BECAUSE THEY ARE BROTHERS WITH HISTORY BUT I FUCKIN’ DIGRESS

3) A Tim who respects and appreciates Dick’s contributions to his life and happiness and the amount of time and effort Dick has put into being there for him often at his own personal expense, even if there have been like one or two times in the grand scheme of thirty years of comic book content when Dick wasn’t able to put Tim first because he felt he had to put someone with directly competing needs to Tim’s first in this particular time and place instead, just like he had so often before put Tim’s needs ahead of others who had competing needs at the time

4) A Bruce who acknowledges his fuck-ups with Dick and actually apologizes instead of just being like “I am going to look at you solemnly with my Apologetic Eyes but its on you to read the Apology clearly present in my Apologetic Eyes cuz that’s the only one you’ll ever get as I am a genius and a renowned playboy but I do not do the words good except for when I am being genius-y and renowedly playboy-y and not Apologetic.” And who also puts in actual work to actually fix things with Dick when he fucks up in that over-the-top-I GOTTA BE THE BEST THERE EVER WAS, POK-E-MON!! kinda over-achieving way in which he does everything in life.

5) An extended Batfamily and hero community who actually ACT like Dick is someone they respect and appreciate and are in awe of for his position and accomplishments in the hero community and the fact that he’s been out there risking his life day in and day out for people almost as long as any other hero out there, and who has in fact been doing this for a FAR greater percentage of his lifetime than any other hero, period. Rather than an extended Batfamily and hero community who just SAY that Dick is respected and appreciated by everyone and this is why actually they resent him and think he’s over-rated, with no actual sign or evidence of Respect, Appreciation and/or Awe on display anywhere at any time ever.

6) A Dick Grayson who is allowed by the narrative to be as hyper-competent and intelligent and multi-skilled as any member of the Batfamily, without feeling a need for qualifiers about him being second best or a good acrobat but not as good at the detective stuff as the others, etc, etc. Noooooope. Nerp. Nuh-uh. Someday I will rise from my death-bed amid my death-throes one last time just long enough to gasp out “The Batfamily’s entire high concept is that they are a family of literal Mary Sues and thus all of them are every bit as intelligent and hyper-competent as the plot demands and its stupid to try and rank them and telling when Dick somehow always ends up ranked bottom last despite being the kid whose very existence as a hyper-competent little genius troll boy is what jumpstarted the kid hero trend in universe in the first place, which is the kind of thing that could ONLY happen if he was impressing and making second-guessers of nay-sayers left and right BUT I FUCKING DIGRESS, GOOD NIGHT NEW YORK, AND SCENE!” At which point I will expire, my work here done.

7) A Dick Grayson who is allowed to get mad and yell when people DO FUCKED UP THINGS LIKE HIT HIM AND BLAME HIM FOR SHIT THAT ISN’T HIS FAULT without this being viewed as a “flaw” and him Being Dick Grayson Badly. Extra points for a Dick Grayson who is allowed to stay centered in his own traumas and tragedies without everyone else around him somehow making it out to be that they’re MORE victimized by the things he is most directly the victim of.

8) A Dick Grayson who eats more than just sugary cereal because he was literally raised from birth even pre-Bruce as a world class athlete and show me one single person that description matches who doesn’t know how to actually keep to a nutritious diet. Yes, by all means have him eat the occasional sugary snack as a treat, that’s fine, but when the take is that this is all he exists on or would be the only thing he exists on if not for the intercession of Actual Adults being like eat your veggies, Dickie, like.....mmmm, but whatcha doin’, fic?

9) A Dick Grayson who doesn’t actually even HAVE to get mad and lose his temper when people do fucked up things like hit him and blame him for shit that isn’t his fault or do nothing but mock and insult him and make him feel bad, because there’s actually other friends and family present who make a point to be like WHOA, HOW ABOUT I SHUT THIS SHIT DOWN LIKE AN INTELLECTUAL, BECAUSE THIS SHIT IS NOT OKAY? I’m just saying, how is it that every single fic and their grandma posits the existence of a swear jar because Alfred will not tolerate uncouth language in his domain, but it coooooooompletely flies over everyone’s head that Alfred of all people would be okay with people casually disrespecting his eldest grandson for the sake of a yawn-worthy punchline every single time someone opens their mouth to say “Dickhead” without even any kind of “Swear jar!” follow-up, let alone a “I don’t know who gave you the idea it was alright to disrespect Master Dick’s memories of his parents, young sirs, but I assure you most assuredly...‘TWAS NOT I.”

10) The existence of literally any other plot for Dick Grayson than one involving or relying on brainwashing. Like, just spitballing here but maybe people would have less trouble acknowledging and remembering the hyper-competence and skilled and genius qualities of the first Batkid if he was able to more often put those things on display instead of just running around 24/7 either brainwashed or brandishing pom-poms in enthusiastic commemoration of the hyper-competence and genius of everyone BUT him.

11) Bonus round - literally any other career choice besides being a cop.

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helloitsthecynincalaesthete-blog · 5 years

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The Handmaid’s Tale: Prophecy or Inevitably?

Lydia Cole-November 2018

“Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.” It’s amazing how much the world has changed within the past decade, and even within the last few years. Eleven years ago, the first iPhone was released. Ten years ago, Obama was sworn in as the first African American President of the United States. Scientists are close to figuring out how to edit human DNA. Twenty-seven countries have legalized same sex marriage. This is truly the era of change. Sometimes, change happens so quickly that we don’t even really realize that life is different from what it was before.

The Handmaid’s Tale, a thrilling show set in a near future dystopia is all about change, big or small. The story itself isn’t new: it’s been around for over 30 years, since Margaret Atwood’s novel (by the same name) was published in 1985. Bruce Miller has done a better justice to the harrowing themes in Atwood’s novel than any other adaptation has; Atwood herself even stated that the realness of Miller’s story was too horrific to watch at times. It draws inspiration from different historical avenues: Lebensborn (a Nazi program that encouraged higher birth rates), America’s Puritan roots, and East Germany/The Iron Curtain, to name a few. The greatest accomplishment of Miller’s show is that it’s a feminist driven shock value, meant to prevent us from making the increasing anguish throughout the world our new normal. The Handmaid’s Tale is set in the Republic of Gilead, which was formerly the United States. The world is plagued with environmental disasters, as well as low fertility and birth rates. A religious extremist group took it upon themselves to make America great again; They made it look like their actions to abolish the government were the acts of Islamic terrorist groups. Once the religious extremists gained power, they forcibly separated fertile women from their families to create reproductive slaves or forced surrogates or ‘handmaids’. These handmaids are captives in the houses of a specific commander and his wife, who cannot bear children. Once a month, these women are held down and raped during ‘The Ceremony’. It was either this or exile to the Colonies, where these women would spend the rest of their lives cleaning up nuclear waste from the waging war.

Moss leads the cast as the protagonist, Offred, a feisty feminist trapped as a handmaid in a society where a single toe out of line could end her life. She can’t let that happen though. She has to stay alive so that she can find her daughter, Hannah, who was taken from her. Moss’s narration gives us an insight to all Offred’s snarky thoughts. Many people tend to find voice-over narration an example of lazy writing, or unnecessary exposition. But for a character who is allowed to speak very little (mostly in repeated phrases) the voice-over is a welcomed device.

We get to know Offred quite well throughout the show: not just through the narration of her thoughts, but also through flashbacks to her life before, with her family. These flashbacks allow the audience to piece together how not just Offred ended up in Gilead but also how little changes led to America becoming Gilead. . We see her and her colleagues being escorted out of the office because women can’t earn an income anymore. She can’t withdraw from an ATM or even use her debit card to pay for coffee. Flashbacks also tend to be an annoying narrative. But in this case, they work in favor of the story rather than against it.

It is not the flashbacks, narration, or dialogue, that shows off Moss’s spectacular acting. Rather, it’s the silence in between, the expressions on her face, the defiance that shows in Offred’s eyes as she is being slapped or tazed or whipped. Moss does have some of her work cut out for her because Offred is a brilliantly written character. I mean, what kind of person cracks jokes while looking at the dead bodies hanging above her? But Moss’s choice to play the character with astonishing nonchalance is audacious and sensational; her performance carries the show. You can’t have a well written protagonist without an equally enthralling villain. Or in this case, villains. We can say that the obvious villain is the patriarchy, or the system that designed the role of handmaids in the first place. But these are just ideas, mentalities. The Handmaid’s Tale is less about the patriarchy itself and more about the women who uphold it.

Acting alongside Moss is Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck) as Mrs. Waterford and Ann Dowd (Compliance) as Aunt Lydia, the tormenting handmaid handler. Neither of them are inherently evil. They believe that what they are doing is for the greater good of Gilead. What makes them great villains is the fact that they aren’t far off figures, like ‘Big Brother’, or whimsical in their villainy like Captain Hook. They’re written well because they’re so real, so raw. Mrs. Waterford helped create Gilead because she believes in love and in family. All she wants more than anything is a child. Aunt Lydia, though harsh and unwavering in her punishments, truly cares for the handmaids, ‘her girls’. She is a twisted motherlike figure; she punishes but only to ready the handmaids for their divine purpose. Miller has effectively created villains that you will love to hate.

Although the show has many strong points, there are many people that argue that it’s distastefully explicit. Even if you know it’s coming, there’s something new and unnerving about watching Offred lay on the lap of Mrs. Waterford while she is being raped by the Commander. We see the handmaids casually observe the bodies of hanging men, marked by their crimes: Catholic, gay, abortion clinic worker. There is a woman who is repeatedly shamed until she believes that it was her fault that she was gang-raped. These scenes don’t show everything, but they show enough. Margaret Atwood herself said that there were a few times where she had to avert her eyes because it was a scene was so horrific. The show tells a fantastic story but the violence show on screen is what’s preventing a wider audience from tuning in. it’s not a show for the faint of heart.

The show would be unwatchable if it was all doom and gloom; American Horror Story being the example that springs to mind. But, it isn’t. Just like in every story of oppression, there is resistance. There is a spark, hope, that crackles in the darkness. Many of the handmaids come together in resistance, the taste of freedom on the tip of their tongues. In our society, women resist by speaking up: they post on social media, they petition, they protest, and they march. They make themselves known, because how else will they make change happen?. But in Gilead, resistance is a quiet whisper that is carried on the wind: Mayday. Hope. Freedom. Reunion. It is human nature to resist oppression, and the Handmaid’s Tale provides a splendid exhibition of that fact.

The most horrific part of this show does not lie in its explicit nature.. It’s the extreme similarities to the reality that we live in, even though the story is based off of events that happened 30+ years ago. Moss herself thinks that using the violent nature of the show as a reason not to watch it is a weak excuse. She said, “I hate hearing that someone couldn’t watch it because it was too scary[…] I’m like, ‘Really? You don’t have the balls to watch a TV show? This is happening in your real life. Wake up, people. Wake up.’” The show’s timely premiere, close in hand with Trump’s inauguration seems coincidental. Was it? Either way, women have started dressing up in the iconic red robes and white bonnets worn by the handmaids when attending various women’s rights marches. Trump’s new policies, especially those in favor of anti-abortion, are being perceived as threatening to women. Discrimination against working mothers and women who choose not to be mothers are still battles that women continue to fight.

This ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ wasn’t written to be some urgent prophecy, but still as a potential warning of what might come to past. Aunt Lydia, a strong believer in the ‘greater good’ said it best: “Things may not seem ordinary to you right now. But they will.” It’s a dictation of the process that humans go through when they start to numb themselves towards the harrowing atrocities happening around the world, to the point where it’s becoming normal. It’s only when we look back on ‘the good ole days’ will we realize that it’s too late.

#the handmaid's tale #prophecy #abortion #trump #elizabeth moss #review #tv show #margaret atwood #book

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susandsnell · 6 years

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it's been bugging me for a while now, but five worst parts of the dark Knight and one good part. bc I know you hate the movie 😂😂

boh. oh my gosh. b please don’t hate me. 😂😂

Five worst parts of the Dark Knight:

5. The Filmmaking. More specfically: LONG AND WASHED OUT PALETTE. IT’S SO FUCKING LONG. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE OVER TWO AND A HALF HOURS WITH TEN PLOTS TO WRAP UP AND HAVE NO FUCKING COLOURS IN IT. WE GET IT, NOLAN, A MAN DRESSED UP AS A BAT BRINGS YOU NO JOY AND SO NOW WE HAVE TO NOT HAVE ANY JOY IN OUR HEARTS EITHER, THANKS A LOT. HERE I THOUGHT I WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE FUN AT A MOVIE ABOUT BATMAN, BUT YOU SURE PROVED ME WRONG.

4. The Writing. Holy pretentious dialogue Batman! Where do I begin?Harvey Dent’s “I will state the theme of my arc in the most lazy and blatant foreshadowing speech until Emma Stone literally says she’s gonna die in the opening of The Amazing Spiderman 2″ gets quoted all the time and yes, superhero movies aren’t known for their subtlety, and not all great movies need to be subtle, but the “die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain” is egregious not only for the reasons I stated, but is a nauseating indicator of the film’s cynicism (despite what the boat climax purports to be proving!). Alfred’s “some men just want to watch the world burn” speech is similar albeit less facepalmy and Theme Stating. It’s blunt and heavy-handed, overly expositional, and very hit-you-over-the-head with regard to commentary.

And here’s the thing! It could work in the context of the type of movie it is - The Shape of Water pretty much opens with a statement of the “who the real monster is” idea, but it works because the film is a fairy tale and presents itself as such, whereas this movie wants to have its cake and eat it too as a “super adult DEEP subtle COMPLEX movie” with incredibly clear and simple shit like this. Beyond that, Nolan really has a dialogue issue in a lot of his works where nobody just has a fucking conversation. Everything has to be the most serious issue in the world or a ten thousand word treatise on the fundamental dichotomies of human nature or some shit you’d hear in a freshman philosophy 101 course from that guy nobody can tolerate who thinks he’s G-d’s gift because he wears glasses or some shit, I don’t know. Even the Joker, an agent of chaos, gets wrapped up into it! Like he is a showman, but the yammering and rambles of shit that isn’t even that deep but pretends to be gets on my damn nerves. And the worst part is that it comes at the expense of the characters.

They don’t really…develop emotional bonds (even with Rachel, the token woman And Therefore the Object At Which Emotions are Thrown). I’m not invested because none of these characters are real or relatable or have human interactions. The script shouldn’t be an anchor that drowns the actors and suffocates the characters to the point that there’s no chemistry, no connection, no believable core. Alfred is practically Bruce’s father and I get no love out of them! Harvey and Bruce don’t connect at all! Lucius Fox, the only POC in the entire movie, is literally reduced to a plot device despite having moral concerns!

3. That damn third act. This one takes special mention because it just pisses me off. It’s just too much! The chase with the Joker would be fine, but that’s not the end. His plot already extends way beyond where it would logically end (hence the bullshit runtime), but on top of that, on top of the drama with the escape ferries hammering you over the head with the point they’re trying to make about humanity and the obnoxious moralizing, and then you have Harvey’s fall to the dark side which I’m sorry, needed a lot more time than just getting crammed in to the back end of the movie. His descent into evil happened way too quickly. Two-Face is a great villain! But take Batman the Animated series (to me, the best adaptation of Batman there is, while not perfect) as an example: he’s established as a character and his descent into Two-Face receives the full focus of entire episodes and impacts the characters later on! Having him play sideshow to the Joker is a huge mistake, especially with something as huge at play as threatening Gordon’s family; it completely disrupts the focus of the plot and unnecessarily prolongs the film as a whole, but he goes down pretty easily in one of the movie’s shitty-ass fight sequences that I’d make their own point if there weren’t worse things because I can’t tell who’s punching who. And if you’re gonna rush Dent into villainy only to kill him, that makes his whole plot kinda a waste.

And The Dark Knight Rises was a lot more criticized than the Dark Knight, so how’s this for a fix for the entire trilogy? Don’t kill Two-Face. Keep Joker getting carted away gloating about having corrupted him, but then have Two-Face get away too. Don’t make whitewashed lamely written Bane the villain of the next movie - instead, let the tail end of this movie build Two-Face up as the main villain for the final part! That way, you have more time for development, cohesiveness, consequences, exploration of themes, and you don’t waste characters.

2. Batman / Bruce Wayne’s entire character. Okay, so whenever I fawn over the Lego Batman movie and how it confronts the issue with modern portrayals of Bats and rightfully points out it’s not deep, he’s just a humongous dick, this feels like the source material of that popular portrayal. Of course, it pre-dates it in the comics - Miller and company are to blame for Grimdark Asshat who Batmansplains, but I feel like Dark Knight especially, for its success and greater accessibility as a film, is what widely propagated this portrayal.

Secret identity or cape and cowl, there is a serious issue in your Batman movie if your Batman is terrible. He’s the protagonist, the titular character, and he’s fucking terrible! At best, Bruce Wayne is like…completely deadpan and not even there (I don’t give Bale shit because I think a lot of the fault lies with the writing/direction, Ledger was pretty much the only lively performance in the movie), placeholder of a protagonist. At worst, he comes off as deeply self-centered, self-aggrandizing, entitled, and violently unstable. I don’t care how bad the Joker is, when in custody, he still had legal rights, and Batman fucking tortured him. Even brutal criminals should not ever be tortured for information! And the film never engages with Bats reaching the point of beating people to a pulp as means of interrogation; he just feels conflicted about who’s worse and broods over it after the fact instead of, I don’t know, maybe thinking twice about torturing someone. The darker Marvel Netflix shows have their characters doing a lot of grim things, but the narrative or other characters almost always holds them accountable for it in ways beyond “aww, I feel kinda sad that I beat mentally ill people to a bloody pulp” – it challenges them often, or has other characters call them out. Batman just does this shit and people are like “oh you shouldn’t do that” and he’s like “AHHH I’M A MONSTER” and it borders into uncomfortable real-life implications with regard to authority and violence. There’s something to be said for introducing grey morality into superhero media, and I get the anti-hero thing, but Dark Knight codified the “white guy grimdark antihero being actually just a terrible fucking person who is the good guy in name only” deal we see in a lot of our media today.

It’s one thing to have a complex and flawed protagonist, but you have to balance that out with redeeming qualities, otherwise, he’s not even a fucking superhero! Again, I refer back to the 90s animated series: Batman has his moments of ruthlessness, but it’s balanced out with the philanthropy work we see in Bruce Wayne, and moments of genuine compassion that he shows many of his enemies – he apologizes genuinely to Two-Face, often tries to give them an out, and is frequently super kind to Harley Quinn, bringing her the dress she was accused of stealing when she was sent back to Arkham in the episode where she tried to redeem herself, and frequently trying to get her to acknowledge that the Joker is abusive towards her, as well as convince her she can still start over and be a good person. On top of which, Batdad is super popular in both the show and the comics. He’s frequently shown as having an especial soft spot for children; addition to all his adopted kids, you also have a lot of his interactions with children, whether as Bruce or as Batman, marked by gentleness, care, and compassion, largely based on what he went through as a child.

You get no such moment in the Dark Knight. I cannot for the life of me think of kids who would go to see this as a Batman movie and leave looking up to Batman and wanting to be like him except on the surface level of wearing a cool costume and punching bad guys. There is nothing heroic or admirable about this Bruce. He fights crime as a vigilante - brutally, I might add -and this time, it comes off more as a desire for vengeance than a desire for justice, a point which the film raises, but ultimately doesn’t resolve or engage with in a satisfying character arc.

The closest thing we get to humanizing this character is his relationship with Rachel, and even then, his interactions with her have heavy shades of Friendzoned Nice Guy which is especially bullshit because he won’t pursue a relationship with her yet is bitter about any decisions she might make about her own love life. He doesn’t even care about her that much as anything more than a conquest! He really doesn’t, and Alfred tearing up the letter proves that – with regards to how he behaves towards her, it really feels like it’s not so much that the letter would break his heart as it is that he’d resent her beyond the grave!

Worse yet, he gives no shits about anyone else. This has a lot to do with Nolan’s scripts having a toxic masculinity problem where it’s not cool for guys to sympathize with or have emotional bonds amongst themselves, but like… he’s allies in a shared venture with the other characters, and nothing more. Alfred is practically his dad but you wouldn’t know that. Gordon, as revealed in TDKR, was kind to him after his parents’ deaths, but they’re just partners. Harvey is a rival for claiming a woman! In other adaptations, Bruce and Harvey’s friendship is fleshed out a lot so the guilt and shock of his transformation into Two-Face is really impactful! Here, Bruce doesn’t really give a shit beyond it just being another thing to do.

And that’s what heroism and motivations are to Batman in this - just a thing to do. I don’t want to watch a hero who’d rather bitch about doing good than actually just fucking do good, this is the safety of your city, not a school essay! He doesn’t really seem to want to help people, he wants to complain about people, but then thinks he’s so fucking special and such a snowflake martyr for still helping them regardless! It’s such a deeply childish and yes, toxically male mentality. I know it’s become a meme, but the ”I’m not the hero Gotham needs, but the hero that it deserves” line pisses me off so much for this reason, as well as the fact that he thinks that Gotham’s flaws justify the fact that he beats the fuck out of people and roars in their face to get answers; I think the perfect refutation to both that line and how a superhero protagonist that explores what heroism means can actually be found in Wonder Woman – “It’s not about deserve, it’s about what you believe.” In fact, that’s what made Wonder Woman so good (and feminist!) – it’s rejection of toxic masculine ideals and emphasis on love, compassion and vulnerability being one’s strength, and that people are inherently deserving of being saved if you believe in the good of the world - a much better treatise on good and evil than “see, people sometimes don’t explode boats but they still suck so it’s okay for a billionaire in furry cosplay to beat the shit out of mentally ill people because that’s what this city deserves, a guy who’s more into violence than saving people.” He just doesn’t care, so why the hell should we?

And there’s just no arc. He just reacts to shit and that’s it, which makes him boring when he’s not being a fucking maniac. Despite the script not allowing him to have feelings for other human beings, having him break his no-kill rule with Harvey at the end would have been impactful….had he not already broken it in Batman Begins by leaving White Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson I love you but there is no reason to have whitewashed him or Talia the way Nolan did in the series - same as he did with Bane and arguably Catwoman since she’s been portrayed as a WOC many times before, actually come to think of it, there is a LOT of whitewashing in this trilogy) to his death.

The film comes up with no real way to challenge it’s hero, have him grow, or change, or even show consequences for his failure to change, making him come off as stunted, unlikeable, and yeah, not much of a hero.

1. The sexism. (You knew this was coming, and yes, it is the worst part). I already mentioned how the men in this movie all fall prey to toxic masculinity as is common with Nolan characters, then even more characteristic of a Nolan movie is The Dead Girlfriend, Wife, or Daughter (you know, the only three things women could ever be!) of Sad White Guy(s). Rachel is the only female character (strike one) and she is handled nothing short of atrociously. Her entire job as a lawyer, intelligence, and hard work established in Batman Begins (which is also too grimdark but actually doesn’t piss me off half as much!) is hardly even mentioned and takes a backseat to her being a prize for the men (including her boss!) to throw feelings at and squabble over. While the male characters have no personality except for one characteristic and a goal because this script was written by an edgy thirteen year old boy, Rachel has no personality except to be a living emotional crutch/plot device. She does not exist as an autonomous individual outside her relationships to the men in the movie. Shit, she’s barely autonomous within these relationships! Bruce is a bitter little shit about her not wanting him back and we’re supposed to feel for him despite him literally offering her nothing relationship-wise for two movies and actively pushing her away at times! He feels he can’t be with her, but the framing is such that she shouldn’t have the right to be with anyone else, either! What the hell? I would even go so far as to say that her choosing Harvey just as she gets blown up, as well as how both of them got to that point, almost feel like the narrative punishing her for not wanting Bruce. More male entitlement bullshit.

And her fate…well, I mean. There’s a damn reason The Dark Knight is my go-to example when I want to explain what Fridging/Stuffed in the Fridge means. After having every possible stereotypical pigeonholed white girl trope tossed at her, Rachel is killed off callously for the character development and man angst of not one, but two self-obsessed stubbled white guys who make it about themselves and their right to act like phenomenal turds. She’s Helen of Troy – a woman blamed for people’s reactions to her (Harvey becoming Two-Face, Batsy or Bruce being saaaaaad, etc). She’s the Lost Lenore; a person reduced to how their death impacts their romantic interests. We have reached peak Nolan here, and frankly, peak Batman too, because the franchise (comics, movies, etc) has always had this same problem with its treatment of women. Her fucking death isn’t even about her! It’s Harvey’s fucking villain origin and Bruce’s sad ending and Alfred’s resentment and note-burning and would she have waited, oh boo hoo, how about, did she have a fucking family, what would have happened if she hadn’t been murdered young, et fucking cetera.

The thing that really gets me is that Rachel is by no means the worst treated woman in speculative fiction (especially not those that make a claim to some degree of intellectualism); she’s white, so her death is beautifully tragic and she’s put on a pedestal rather than being subjected to racialized misogynistic tropes (being treated more roughly by the narrative, having her suffering ignored or erased altogether, her death being callously ignored except for a throwaway line of dialogue, etc), she’s not unnecessarily and gratuitously sexually brutalized for shock value (that looks uncomfortably like fetishism at times) like the women on Game of Thrones or in nu!Bond movies, or, if we’re still in the Batman universe, Barbara Gordon in any iteration of the Killing Joke (which is another tentpole of misogyny in the Batman universe and I fucking hate it and it clearly influenced the Dark Knight, so, chicken, egg). She isn’t forcibly sterilized and her inability to get pregnant treated as making her a freak like AOU Black Widow. She has no pointless and insulting fanservice scenes like Carol Marcus in her underwear in Star Trek: Into Darkness. Her suffering is not treated as empowerment like any number of women written by Joss Whedon, she isn’t used to be chewed up and spat out and destroyed in a romance with either a guy who terrifies her and in whom she’s shown no prior romantic interest or an outright villain who has caused her nothing but pain in some stupid half-assed not-redemption arc where she has to sublimate herself and be stupidly forgiving beyond the willing suspension of disbelief so some horrible man can evolve.

But why this sexism sticks out to me is that it’s so insidious; if it were more on the nose like the examples I listed above, it’d almost be less jarringly offensive, but it masquerades as her being an empowered yet tragic character and weaves into an overall narrative that validates all the tropes I mentioned, and legitimizes itself in a way that feels fundamentally dishonest about how sexist it’s being. Worse yet, there’s the fact that The Dark Knight is more than just self-contained; its influence on not just comic book movies, but all kinds of media as we know it, is undeniable. And as far as setting the example goes? This hugely well-regarded, influential film is almost entirely white, and tells us that women exist as distractions, tragedies, and extensions of men’s storylines, and this bullshit has been echoing in similar media works since.

AND NOW, THE ONE (or multiple!) NICE THING(S):

All this being said, I admit there actually are a lot of things I like about this movie if I can separate them enough from the main issues! 😂For one thing, Hans Zimmer’s work on the score is top-notch; I listen to Like a Dog Chasing Cars and Harvey Two-Face all the time and the music alone provokes stronger emotions for the characters than anything in the movie actually did. The opening heist is just fantastically entertaining, and up until the messy third act, the pacing and plot is pretty tight and engaging! Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is of course fantastic; although he’s not my favourite Joker, he really gave it his all, and is by and large the highlight of the film. Nolan is really good with visual appeal (with the exception of that damn colour palette) and the shots are fantastic. I really love the chase scene with the Joker and wish the rest of the movie held my excitement like that.

Finally, it’s odd to say this, but I really like the world of the movie once I ignore the characters and plot. The Gotham that was built in Nolan’s trilogy, the contrast between the classes with the lavish receptions and dinners versus the underbelly, the corruption versus the goodness, how these disparate elements work in a terrible symbiosis, the architecture and technology reflecting this character – it’s incredibly vivid, both grounded in reality and yet sufficiently speculative fiction-y enough to be intriguing. I just wish that the people in it matched the quality of the setting. 😂😂😂

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shepgeek · 5 years

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Deus Ex Machina in Films

Spoilers for Slumdog Millionaire, Jaws, Angels & Demons, Contact and Signs.

If a tale is worth the telling, then should it not be extraordinary?

From our very origins, where stories of gods and monsters were told around a flickering campfire to our modern multiplexes, it has been the stories of the most dramatic shifts in people’s lives that we long to hear. These tales bring with them an inherent problem: should the piece prove to be too fantastic, too far removed from what we can connect with, then the spell is broken. Suspension of our disbelief is only a part of this, and often a film may cause a snort if it takes a dramatic step too far, or when the mechanics of an author making a story fit can be readily sniffed out. This magical balance, of spinning a yarn but never yielding the sense that the tale itself has a fundamental ring of truth to it, has plagued storytellers for centuries and the term “Deus Ex Machina”, dating from Aeschylus, has come to be associated with this issue in the modern cinematic age.

Meaning “God from the Machine”, it refers to when a story takes a contrived turn. In Ancient Greece, there would be a literal contraption that would lower actors playing the Gods into the theatre and such divine interventions would often allow direct solutions to whatever dramatic tangle the characters found themselves in. The fine line between this dramatic “Get out of Jail Free” card and writing resolutions that thrill and inspire audiences has ensnared storytellers for millennia. Modern audiences will complain when a film hits moments of what feel like implausibility, despite the entire picture up to that point involving a man who can talk to fish or a Prime Minister courting a tea lady. The moments that shunt audiences out of the experience of watching a film are both fickle and, of course subjective and, since no storyteller sets out to leave themselves open to this vulnerability, there is seemingly no way to protect your film from it, hoping instead that a crumbling of verisimilitude never manifests.

This is different from implausibility or fantasy. Films go to huge lengths to make the audience invest in a story: the reason Jaws is held up as one of the finest the medium has to offer is not due to the convincingness of the shark but how much we have invested in the three lead characters, and the shading to make them and their worlds real to us over the first hour of the film demands our investment such that, when a 25 foot plastic shark finally leaps from the water, our terror is welded to theirs. Our human biology is a problem here, since the idea of the extraordinary is what inspires the very best stories but is undermined by our animalistic understanding of coincidence. In evolving our way to the top of the food chain, we have learned to spot patterns and are built to learn from mistakes in order to thrive, so that if an extreme event happens it is programmed into us to be intrinsically suspicious. Phrases such as “truth is stranger than fiction” are accepted truisms, and yet some films are criticised if they rely too much on remarkable events, despite this often making them the stories worth telling. The logical response would be that nobody would want to see a film in which one of the other double-O agents dies in the attempt at saving the world: show us instead the spy that survives ludicrously improbable traps to win the day.

Slumdog Millionaire is a fascinating example of this contradiction and is based around the concept of a penniless boy appearing on the world’s most famous TV quiz show. What happens, however, is far from a typical appearance and the boy, who has no schooling, is in fact using the show to search for his lost love. Along the way he is asked questions that he happens to know the answers to, with the film flashing back to explain how he would know each of these facts. Statistically this is an interesting approach: given that there are hundreds of thousands of people who must have appeared on a version of this quiz over decades, one of them would have to be ranked as the luckiest in terms of the questions they happen to have been asked and, therefore, would not their story not be the most compelling? There is an intriguing idea within the film of defining intelligence as being asked the questions that we happen to know the answers to, but the role of chance in shaping a person’s destiny can prove divisive in audiences and it is this friction that blurs the line upon which audiences’ readiness to accept the story we are spun is founded. Slumdog Millionaire is ultimately not that interested in the mechanics of this since the boy himself is not motivated by the money, using the show playfully to up the dramatic stakes and revealing more about the characters involved, but the boldness in using such a unusual framing device is relatively rare.

We can take a certain amount of improbability in our stories but the dangers of invoking anything beyond chance are arguably greater, and whilst there are many examples of outrageousness in the plotting of modern films there are few, if any, whose audacity in terms of confronting these shades of grey are as remarkable as 2009’s Angels & Demons. Having made a career from inferring conspiracies around artistic and historical fact, Dan Brown’s book is adapted by Ron Howard and builds to an unforgettable climax. A series of grisly murders are investigated by symbologist Robert Langdon and escalate to a finale in which a priest detonates an antimatter bomb in the skies above Vatican City, bailing out of his helicopter with a parachute at the last minute. We soon learn that said priest had, in fact, planned both the murders and the bomb (stolen from CERN) in order to get himself elected as Pope. As preposterous plotting goes, this is pretty much as far on a limb as even the most ridiculous of Hollywood thrillers has gone but there is something to be said for the gusto and straight face that the film commits to in bringing it to a screen. What makes it completely outrageous, however, is the concluding scene, where a kindly cardinal thanks both Langdon and God. As an atheist, Langdon demurs, but the cardinal replies that, given the remarkable nature of what has happened, how could this be anything other than God’s plan: a literal use of Deus Ex Machina in the modern cinematic age!

Angels & Demons’ approach is far from unique, although perhaps not in terms of sheer nerve. Raiders of the Lost Ark’s denouement also sees the God of the Old Testament wipe out the villains (The Big Bang Theory delighted in pointing out that, for all of Indy’s heroics, he plays no role in actually saving the world) whilst the Eagles in the Middle Earth films have a strong whiff of godliness to them. The moments when a storyteller is clearly fumbling for a way to get themselves out of a sticky corner will now be increasingly exposed online, whilst even knowing moments that try to poke fun at the fourth wall have a tendency to get lynched, such as Ocean’s 12’s set piece where Tess Ocean (played by Julia Roberts) bumps into actor Bruce Willis (played by Bruce Willis) and is then coerced into saving the day by pretending to be actress Julia Roberts, whom Tess apparently resembles. The only moments when such brazenness can be allowed are when a film dives wholeheartedly into the silliness, such as the moment in Life of Brian where our hero is saved from falling to his death by some convenient passing aliens.

Many films dance around this fault line in fiction but M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs chooses to confront it by forcing each viewer to reflect on their own choices in terms of how they each decide to see the world. Following The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, narrative twists had become the director’s trademark so the marketing of the film was stealthy, with the only knowledge circulated that the film was centred on the frivolous phenomenon of crop circles. Audiences who had been thrilled by Shyamalan’s first two films came expecting to find another sting in the tale and, whilst they would have that expectation met, for many it was not in the manner in which they were expecting.

From its propulsive opening credits, which musically and visually invoke Saul Bass and Bernard Herrman’s work for Hitchcock, the film casts a macabre spell, introducing us to a close family broken by bereavement. As enigmatic shadows, ominous animal behaviour and melodramatic news reports seem to imply that the world may be on the verge of disaster, the film spends our time focused on this household who is living as if Armageddon has already happened. Far from casting a morose tone, however, the focus is very much on their love and support for each other and the film is surprisingly funny, with a dryness and drollness that invites you to emotionally invest in them and their world to a huge degree, with various idiosyncrasies cleverly painted in to seemingly deepen their credibility, as is the norm for this genre. Charisma was always Mel Gibson’s strongest suit but, in this film, he uses it sparingly behind an expression of a man whom life has utterly defeated; a minister who has abandoned his faith after the cruel and arbitrary loss of his wife. His performance as Graham Hess is incredible and, in one scene, he processes rage, humanity, forgiveness and sorrow within the space of a few seconds. Joaquin Phoenix plays Graham’s brother Merrill, an honest and simple man whose awkwardness belies a gently painted integrity, whilst Cherry Jones also adds considerable emotional heft as the kind and empathetic local Sheriff: the world these characters inhabit, whist harsh and simple, makes it clear that these people are good-hearted and worthy of our empathy.

Shyamalan takes what would be the hugest event in human history and focuses upon the least significant of locales. He called Signs his “most popcorn” movie and takes many cues from Spielberg, with the juxtaposition of ordinary with extraordinary, a cast of children and a troubled, failing father (literally and professionally) all Amblin tropes, and the film is notably produced by Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall. As the eeriness builds with the aid of an impeccable score from James Newton Howard, the crop circles increasingly seem to be the work of alien visitors. Throughout the film however, there is a mischievous sense of ambiguity and the film continuously undermines this fantastic possibility: Shyamalan plays on the audiences’ expectations with masterful sleight of hand, continuously teasing us with the prospect of a narrative twist that we are all trying to spot ahead of time, knowing all the while that, whilst we focus on this, our attention remains away from the ace he has hidden up his other sleeve. Everything we see seems to be developing this potential alien threat, but the film is subtly sowing very different seeds and Shyamalan uses a full array of tricks to keep our attention away from his final intentions. The most memorable of these is where Merrill watches a blurry Brazilian news report whilst hiding inside the cupboard under his stairs. This simple scene is edited to creepy perfection and, as the announcer intones “what you’re about to see may disturb you”, we share Merrill’s ghoulish excitement at finally discovering the truth behind the mystery. The reveal of a creature looming for a split second, out of focus but stalking us with predatory malevolence is one of cinemas great shocks: simple, matter of fact but unexpectedly stark. As Shyamalan tears away the ambiguity, this extraordinary image pays off the patient teasing shown by the film up to this point and, crucially, keeps us frightened for this family and what this all might mean for them.

Set almost entirely set around the family’s farmhouse, the key moment of the film comes as Graham attempts to comfort an alarmed Merrill. Gibson is shot in shadow throughout the film but with a light from behind the camera reflecting in his pupils, keeping the whites of his eyes prominent and obscuring our view of his lost soul. Graham’s speech about two truths and the choice we have in how we interpret the world appears, on first viewing, to be a charismatically sad mission statement of how Graham’s faith has been lost although, as we soon discover, he has not stopped believing but has moved away from his God in rage at the loss of his wife. Graham tells Merrill that we always have a choice to either interpret the world as a confluence of happenstance or as the plan of a deeper, bigger force. Shyamalan brilliantly undercuts this hugely significant moment with an immediate distraction, as Merrill recounts his experience of once narrowly avoiding getting vomited on by a pretty girl, but the scene is of fundamental importance to the whole purpose of the film. There is a way to read Signs as Shyamalan viewing himself as the god of his own worlds, with the characters he writes bending to his will (and his subsequent film, The Lady in the Water would see him develop this idea to memorably baffling effect) but the message of this film is centred on choice. When Graham is at his lowest ebb in the final reel, he does not appeal to God but simply repeats “not again” and, eventually, “I hate you”: he has failed to disavow himself of his faith, despite trying walk away from it. Graham spends the film in a purgatory of his own making and one reading of the piece is that of a man beset by demons on his way back to the path, which is finally triggered in the film by an emotive Last Supper. Shyamalan himself comes from a Hindu background but attended a Catholic school and the film wisely stays far from any one dogma, always ultimately returning to the choice of the individual to read the world as they see it and Shyamalan invites us to do the same with his film.

In the final act, Graham has an epiphany that all the events of his life are coalescing in this single moment: his brother’s failed baseball career, his wife’s death, his son’s asthma, his daughter’s habit of leaving glasses of water everywhere: all of these factors converge simultaneously and with specific purpose. This extrapolation, whilst fantastical, only involves the joining of a handful of dots and the film never demands that the audience agrees with Graham: we have the choice ourselves to view this confluence as coincidence or as part of a wider plan. This is the genius of Shyamalan’s film, to make a film about faith, call the film “Signs” and then conceal the entire purpose of the film within an alien invasion. Another outstanding film about faith, Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, has a similar denouement, where the lead character is forced to make a choice about whether they can believe what has happened to them but Signs does not repeat the only error of that film, where the audience is privately told what really happened.

As Signs concludes, we are left alone with our own choice to make and this is what many viewers objected to, feeling that the contrivances were too silly, or maybe that water would be an unlikely vulnerability for invading aliens (despite the definitive text on this, War of the Worlds, invoking a common cold for the same dramatic purpose). I can sympathise if a viewer felt they were promised plotting to resolve the tale and it must be conceded that ambiguity from a story is dangerous if it comes as a surprise, but the conceit, showmanship and storytelling guile in making this twist thematic instead of narrative makes it, for me, Shyamalan’s masterpiece. He plays it with astonishing skill and total assurance.

We all always have a choice of how to accept what the world presents us with, and the gift of a great storyteller is to blend the meeting of the extraordinary with characters to ground our interest and our emotional investment, whilst simultaneously building a world which audiences can recognise as real. Such alchemy is so delicate, so complex that this makes a potent reminder of why so many films miss that mark, but the reality that so many storytellers have it in them to keep reaching for this delicate balance is the reason why we will always keep coming back to that campfire, waiting to be enveloped in a new, fantastic tale.

#signs slumdogmillionaire jaws contact

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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To me the most strange thing about the Dick is a manchild take is that often the same people that say this are the same people that say that Dick's primary characterization should always be as a pillar of support for Bruce and the others. So, basically that Bruce and the others are so helpless that they should be mothered by a manchild. As a preference, I find it it kinda ???

Exactly! There’s no consistency to it, and the thing is, I feel like a lot of people tend to treat Dick as a plot device rather than an actual character in his own right. What I mean is, even in big ensemble fics that feature almost the entire family, when most everyone has their own little storylines, Dick’s sole storyline is acting as a supporting character in everyone else’s storyline. Essentially, its like rather than people going into writing a fic with a specific characterization of Dick in mind already, like they do for most characters, I feel like a lot of the stories out there start with the author figuring out what their plot is, what their preferred characters are doing….and then Dick’s characterization within their fic tends to end up being almost completely determined by what role they want him to play.

Like……as you said, a huge facet of his core characterization is that he almost always prioritizes being a pillar of support for Bruce and the others….but in fanfics, he’s just as likely to be the antagonistic foil that’s causing drama within the family by not understanding Jason or favoring Damian over Tim or whatever…..and its like he ends up that way purely because writers want some internal strife within the Batfam, but they want Tim and Jason to get along, and they want Bruce to interact with Jason as a son and Damian’s too young to cause the kinds of disruptions within the family from internal/ideological disagreements that authors are usually after….so Dick ends up shoehorned into the role of obstinate last holdout getting in the way of the whole family getting along because he just can’t get over himself or whatever.

But then go two fics down from that one and its a whole other ballgame, because in this fic now, Dick gets along with everyone, everyone loves him, but ultimately in the end his lack of contributing to family drama comes from the fact that as far as that fic is concerned, he’s too ineffectual to ever actually be a problem for the family. He’s just kinda there, solely because he was the first kid Bruce took in, but no attention is paid to the fact that he created Robin, DEFINED Robin. And instead the fact that he’s still alive at all is basically implied to be a fluke because he’s not really that bright compared to the others, not really exceptionally talented compared to the others, the only thing he has going for him is he has seniority, and he’s just too gosh-darned happy and perky and nice for anyone to stay mad at for long……so Dick ends up shoehorned here into the role of comic relief, either by cracking jokes constantly and never taking anything seriously for the sake of ‘family morale,’ or just by being the butt of the rest of the family’s constant jokes. With these fics, you get 50/50 odds of it going either way.

And then on the very next page of fics you’re likely to run into one where he’s supportive of all the others rather than antagonistic, yes, and he’s considered competent and effective at what he does, sure, but now with these fics, he’s basically relegated to the role of wallpaper, because the story’s not supposed to be about HIM and the authors don’t want him drawing focus away from their preferred characters. He’s not the character people should be hoping or expecting to see in a starring or even a major role, when reading their fics, is basically what the sentiment feels like there.

Like, he’s there, he’s present, he’s competent and helpful, but it largely ends up feeling like all of that is because ironically, having him NOT be there and coming up with reasons and justifications for that….would draw or require more focus on him than they want to spend. So instead he’s present in the story, but that’s about it.

He largely just….exists, within these types of stories. At best he’s there to be a glorified bodyguard to his various siblings, and be hanging around so that he can swoop in and save them from any major danger that isn’t the direct focus of the plot…..but he has little to no scenes other than ones where he’s directly acting to save, rescue, emotionally support or offer sage wisdom or a shoulder to lean on, for any of his siblings or Bruce himself.

He has no problems of his own, as far as the fic ever mentions, no priorities or personal ambitions beyond ‘always be available for whatever his family needs, whenever his family needs it’ and everything you learn about him in the first couple chapters of that story, when establishing his place/status quo within that particular fic….like, who and what he is and cares about and prioritizes and even just talks about in the first couple chapters will basically still be the exact same things in the final chapters of the fic….because absolutely nothing throughout the fic has actually affected HIM, changed HIM, impacted HIM in any kind of meaningful way that would lead to actual character development or even just….change.

…wait, hang on, I take that back. There is one sizable exception in these types of fics, where there is focus on Dick’s POV and him being impacted by the plot and ‘changing’…..but that exception comes in one form, and one form only: Scenes Where Dick Self-Flagellates and Regrets Being the Worst Brother/Son Ever to Jason, Tim, Bruce, etc. And reflects on how massively he’s failed or let those members of his family down at one point or another in the past, when they have only ever been there for him, consistently, without fail, and thus they deserve better than his previous fuck-ups with them and he staunchly vows to Make It Right and from this day forward, Do Better and dedicate himself to being the best brother, son, blah blah blah that ever lived.

(With the problem being - or well, my problem at least, lol - like…..rarely if ever are these things Dick is beating himself up over, like…actually his fault or things he should feel like a terrible human being for. And granted, Dick has a definite canon tendency towards self-blame and assuming the worst of his own actions and the fallout from his actions, so its not like its out of character for him to be an unreliable narrator in this regard…..BUT like….when you’re using an unreliable narrator to like, beat himself up for being just the worst ever, you kiiiiiiinda need to balance that out with the narrative or someone else in the narrative at some point contesting that unreliable narration…..and being like….what? No??? Omg enough with the Catholic guilt Dick, you’re not even Catholic, and you definitely aren’t responsible for me dying in Ethiopia at the exact same time you were light years away on an entirely different planet, dumbass.” ANYWAY).

So I mean….there are all these various roles Dick plays in different kinds of almost….I wanna say like ‘genres of Batfam fanfiction’……and IMO that’s how large parts of fandom manage to juggle all these completely contradictory views of Dick without ever finding it odd or illogical that he can be considered to be both the Batfamily’s primary source of emotional support one second, and the thorn in everyone’s side the next. Because many people, I feel, just aren’t approaching his character in terms of how his characterization, and thus his presence, would affect their plot, result in specific kinds of dynamics, interactions etc…..rather, they’re looking at it from the complete opposite direction. They do all that with the characters they’re more interested in writing, and then when they have most of it figured out, they basically just pigeon hole him into whatever gaps in the plot need filling, and go with whatever popular take on him is most convenient for what their story still needs or is lacking.

And it all kinda loops back around, I think, to make it this sort of self-perpetuating cycle…..writers aren’t as interested in writing Dick as they are the other siblings because they don’t find him all that compelling, except what they actually don’t find all that compelling is probably more accurately labeled various fanon views of him that have at most just a superficial relationship with his more developed canon characterizations.

But regardless, they’re not that interested in him as a character, due to mostly equating him with fanon takes that prioritize his usefulness as a plot device with ready made connections to most anyone else a fic needs to bring in, rather than trying to view him, understand him and relate to him as an actual character in his own right…..so they too end up also just using him as a plot device rather than try and even just give him some more development themselves.

And it all feeds back into itself, forming this constant feedback loop that’s ironically mostly just fueled by itself, rather than anything outside that loop of perception and perpetuation….like, y’know, his actual stories and his actual well-established dynamics with various other characters.

Its like….you know how sometimes people are like “how would you describe yourself/this person/this character in just three words, like what are the three words that best encompass them in your mind?” Like…..that’s not SUPPOSED to be an easy thing to do. That’s SUPPOSED to be a hard - and revealing - question, because three words is a very very limited frame to try and condense entire personalities into in a way that’s in any way actually specific to them as an individual rather than just a list of generic traits that could equally apply to any number of people.

And yet….I do not think a lot of Batfam fans would consider that a hard question to answer about Dick Grayson, and therein lies my eternal frustration. Like I’m pretty sure we can all predict what a lot of those answers would be: “funny,” “angry,” “cheerful,” “supportive,” “moody,” “hopeful” and various other things related to either 1) Dick the Emotional Support Non-Entity, 2) Dick the Unattainable and Impossible to Match or Even Relate to Standard or 3) Dick the Antagonistic Foil, etc.

But my point is……I do not think a lot of fans would find it difficult to reduce Dick down to just a short list of generic character traits….because that’s the pattern I’m talking about in fics. A huge amount of his depictions in fic could be summed up with just two or three adjectives….because whatever role he’s been designated in a particular fic……that’s it for him, most of the time. As in…..he doesn’t at any point break out of that very specific and definitive box the fic puts him in because its been slated as the role/place/designation he’s most ‘useful’ to the plot and the other characters and the story over all. So whatever he is in that fic….he’s usually JUST that one thing. His actions are usually perfectly in sync with whatever the other characters expect those actions to be, his mood is fairly consistent throughout with very little variation, and his motivations are usually fairly superficial and don’t require a lot of digging under the hood to see what’s really going on deep down beneath his surface level.

*Shrugs* Anyway, that’s my take on all that, and the various contradictions that all conversations about him are practically immersed in, all at the same time. Granted, I’m biased as hell and who can say if I’m actually on to anything there or not, but for me the most telling and pertinent question about fandom’s perception of Dick Grayson is:

When one of the few things everyone can agree on about him is that he’s a natural performer and the face he presents to people around him is often just a mask hiding his true thoughts and feelings….

Why on earth aren’t more writers interested in pulling back the mask and seeing, writing, revealing or expanding upon whatever might be underneath?

Cuz the way Dick’s primarily used in fics literally only makes sense to me if you’re prioritizing his role in fics based on what the plot or other characters require.

Looking at him purely on a character level, in terms of archetypes? “Eternal secret keeper who even (successfully) keeps secrets from the rest of a family made up entirely of people who are both adept secret keepers themselves and adept detectives”…..

Like how the hell do you tell me that archetype’s only narrative appeal lies in advancing everyone else’s plots? For all intents and purposes, Dick is essentially the trickster archetype within the Batfam, innately predisposed to constantly come into conflict with his chosen father figure, given that Bruce in contrast embodies a stern lawful judge type archetype. Thus with the two of them operating off of entirely different world views that nevertheless can overlap just often enough to make that not quite a given….given that trickster archetypes, by their very nature, have flexible alignments and can go in entirely different directions from one story to the next, all while still being true to themselves and their core archetype.

Then you have Jason, with it being hilarious to me that people so often write Jason as being convinced Bruce will never understand him the way he does Dick, that they could never have the kind of bond Bruce and Dick had in his eyes…..with the funny part about this IMO being that Jason is one of the Batfam MOST similar to Bruce, archetype wise. Because Jason also operates almost entirely off of his own convictions, based entirely off his own moral code….WHICH IS THE EXACT SAME THING BRUCE DOES….the only part they actually disagree on is the precise specifics of their two differing moral codes.

Jason has always had FAR more in common with Bruce than he realizes or cares to admit to, and if you look at Dick as a trickster archetype forced reluctantly into the role of arbitrator or peace-keeper purely because there’s no one else stepping up to do the job, even though its not a role he’s ideally suited for because of how it constantly forces him into shapes and actions that are contrary to his own nature and thus result in so much of Dick’s personal conflicts ultimately being with HIMSELF….

….eternally torn between trying to be true to himself and who he wants to be, while at the same time trying to be what his family needs him to be because he’s the only one of them with a track record showing he at least is willing to bend to try and accommodate all their conflicting viewpoints, whereas they all tend to try and just bulldoze each other into submission instead….which never works because they’re all equal parts Immovable Objects AND Unstoppable Forces at the same time…and each too stubborn to admit that their siblings/father/children are just as stubborn and willful as them so they could easily stalemate each other indefinitely, if they didn’t have a mediator present, who has enough flexibility to contort himself into whatever configuration is needed to find some kind of bridge or common ground between two conflicting family members who each refuse to budge even an inch….

Well anyway, my point with that little random offshoot was just that personally, I think Dick gets fed the fuck up with both Bruce and Jason at times and just wants to knock their heads together because its so frustrating to him that neither of them can see how alike they are and thus how they’re always THIS CLOSE to finding common ground, they literally just need to like….each move an inch to the right and maybe pivot like five degrees or less…..lolol.

Anyway. I kinda got carried away there with unnecessary narrative analysis and archetypes and whatnot that literally nobody asked, but umm, in response to your actual message itself….err…yes. Agreed. As a preference, I too find bwuh????? to be the most accurate response to the frigidly cold take that ‘Dick is the emotional support pillar for the Batfam but also Dick is massively dysfunctional and a disaster baby who is literally the worst of the Batfam at taking care of himself and not just dying because his favorite pizza place doesn’t deliver on a Tuesday and he doesn’t know how to get food another way so he’ll probably just starve I guess.’

Oh well.

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Is Bruce a good father to Damian, specifically? I mean, he seems to have learnt from past mistakes... but in preboot, does he even care about Damian at all? Didn't seem like it most of the time (especially in Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, where he didn't even seem to care that Damian's life is in danger). Do you think he cared about Damian preboot?

Well, you are both right in that reboot!Bruce puts his preboot counterpart to shame where Damian’s concerned. The thing is, the reboot gave a much bigger place to Bruce and Damian’s dynamic than preboot ever did. Those two actually don’t have that many scenes together in preboot, and said scenes were usually part of a bigger plot/narrative that left little room to focus on their relationship.

I’ll answer this in three stages in order to address everything our Anons mentioned:

Bruce & Damian’s dynamic as portrayed by Morrison

The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul

Conclusion: does preboot!Bruce care about Damian? And was he a good father to him? (spoilers: yes and no, respectively.)

The conclusion summarizes everything so jump there if the argumentation part is too long.

A) Morrison’s Damian & Bruce

Disclaimer: I really, really hate Morrison’s writing. I’ll try to be reasonable when criticizing it but be extra aware of that bias. It makes me put most of Bruce’s action on the writer rather than the character and while I have my reasons & probably won’t change my opinion, it’s still a pretty categorical take.

Honestly I think Morrison’s Bruce does feel responsible for Damian. I’m even sure he cares about him too:

[Batman (1940) #657]

Actually, the whole issue is pretty good where Bruce & Damian are concerned. Must be my favorite thing Morrison has ever written. He installs interesting things character-wise, like Bruce making an extra effort to make Damian comfortable in the Manor & be patient with him, or Damian being an insufferable brat up until Bruce snaps at him, at which point he immediately switches off to “yes sir” in front of that new figure of authority.

Those are interesting bases to construct a dynamic upon. Problem is, they’re not gonna be exploited.

Here Bruce shows clear intent to provide guidance to Damian. But rather than give Bruce the occasion to follow up on that intent, and to develop a real relationship with Damian, Morrison gives us the incident Anon mentioned in the next frickin’ issue : an explosion set by Morrison’s godawful “““Talia””” that should’ve killed both her and Damian, and Bruce staring dramatically into the distance.

Does Bruce investigate their disappearance while Damian is being hardcore abused by his mother? Nah, he’s too busy skiing with one Jezebel Jet– a relationship Morrison needs to install since Jezebel has a notable role in Batman RIP.

My point is: as of #658 Morrison considers this arc finished & that there’s nothing to add. By that logic it’s valid to forget Damian until he’s relevant again plot-wise. It’s not (i think?) a way to tell us Bruce doesn’t care about Damian.

Let’s fast-forward to the disputable editorial & writer choice to launch Batman Inc/Leviathan just after Bruce’s return from the “dead” without A) leaving room for a confrontation/closure scene between him and Damian beforehand; or B) letting them actually interact more than the strictest minimum in said arc. From a strictly in-universe POV though, it’s not ooc for Bruce to decide unilaterally that Damian doesn’t need him or to focus on the crisis to come without talking to his son first.

I guess I should be talking about Batman Incorporated Vol. 2 too, ‘cause while it’s technically N52 it’s very much in the continuity of the storyline Morrison started in preboot. It also has a few Bruce & Damian moments where despite terrible miscommunication Bruce seems to worry for Damian… But then the plot requires Bruce sending Damian back to the mother who, in this dumbass version, abused him all his life.

[Batman Incorporated (2012) #4]

If I got that right this is a “Hero must make Big Sacrifice for the Greater Good” moment. The fact that Bruce loves Damian isn’t put into question: it makes the sacrifice more significant.

And that’s kinda my problem. First we’re told that Bruce wants to provide for Damian, but then whatever affection he feels for the boy is sidelined or even sacrificed to other narrative considerations.

So basically Bruce’s love for Damian has no significance in itself. It’s a given that doesn’t particularly need to be illustrated or expanded on; it’s stocked until we need it to breed impact in some scenes. Like the one above or, you’ve guessed it, Damian’s death. So yeah Bruce loves Damian. He loves him so much he’s sad when he dies. Ahem.

All in all it’s not a father-son story: else there would be more banter, slice of life sequences, time for the dynamic to develop, etc. It’s a hero-who-loses-stuff-in-war story. One story isn’t better than the other, they just appeal to different types of audiences.

“Does my father love me” is a personal thus small stake. Batman Inc/Leviathan or “Can I keep this future from happening” are world-wide to city-wide thus big stakes. I think a marked interest in the Big Ideas is what characterizes Morrison’s writing. Thus the portrayal of character relationships has a very specific place in his stories.

Anyway: I don’t think Morrison ever wanted to imply Bruce doesn’t care about Damian. It’s just that he’s a plot-driven writer and that both characters’ interactions & smaller stakes, although somewhat present in his narratives, will always come second in the big schemes of things.

If you consider that Bruce behaving like he does under Morrison’s pen proves he doesn’t give a damn about Damian though, I sure as hell won’t fault you for it.

B) Bruce & Damian in The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul

(God re-reading an in-character Talia these days is an oasis in the desert. Gotta love that arc all the more for that.)

Not gonna lie fam. Our two Anons are right when they say Bruce is pretty cold in that one.

But A) Bruce is also dealing with a crisis, which means he’s emotionally removing himself from the situation; B) he’s not treating Damian differently than he is Dick or Tim… which we’ll see is the problem tho.

It doesn’t excuse Bruce’s behavior (I think he’s out of line myself), but I just don’t think it implies he doesn’t care about Damian.

You’ll notice that his apparent aloofness applies to Tim too (and Dick although he’s not mentioned), and that it equally unsettles Talia.

[Nightwing (1996) #138]

I want to stress the apparent in aloofness. On several occasions during RoRAG Talia reproaches Bruce that he’s not confronting his feelings what else is new. I believe he’s worried about the boys, all of them, but he also trusts them to handle themselves. He also thinks that if he so much as voices his worry, he won’t be able to focus and do what he has to. So he represses them and goes fully in Batman-mode.

Fast-forward. When Bruce is barking at Damian to pick up a sword and fight, it’s his way of protecting him– he needs Damian to defend himself.

[Detective Comics (1937) #839]

Because it’s not fair to show this without context: 5 seconds before Bruce legit bites Damian’s head off, chill out dude, he goes all protective batdad upon seeing Ra’s trying to steal Damian’s body.

So yeah. I have reasons to believe Bruce is scared out of his mind here. Hence the very aggressive way he tries to shake Damian into action.

So far Bruce gets a pass. It’s afterwards that he deserved to be punched in the face imo, and that’s probably the scene our Anons had in mind:

In fact, Bruce is expecting the same from Damian than he’s expecting from his two other sons. To be precise, he’s not treating either of them as sons— they’re on the field, they’re Robin & Nightwing right now. Aka soldiers/partners/teammates rather than family. And Bruce is putting Damian on that exact level when he shouldn’t be.

It’s harsh, and that’s emphasized next to Talia (who is actually written like a Talia). She’s all aggressively worried mother and Bruce’s all cold commander, the contrast is off-putting.

Talia reacts like a mother first by fleeing to save herself and her son. But Bruce can’t let Ra’s to his own devices, and he expect his sons to fight beside him.

It’s unfair to Damian ‘cause he’s not Robin yet, he’s not part of Bruce’s war the way Dick and Tim chose to be, he didn’t choose to be dragged into Ra’s schemes: he’s snapping to attention at Bruce’s order out of a childish need for validation, not out of a conscious & thought-out choice to make this his life. Also he’s ten. Yet those considerations fly over Bruce’s head: right now and unlike Talia, he’s not thinking like a father.

Do I think Dini balances the Greater Good vs Familial Attachment dilemma better than Morrison does? Hell yeah. He took the time to show Bruce ripping Ra’s apart at the beginning of the issue to prove us Bruce cares. And for all that Bruce’s wrong here, Dini has him fighting beside Damian, not sending him off on his own. Talia’s fleeing with her son gives the reader a reality check & puts the validity of Bruce’s choice into question as it should be. The stakes are also so much more concrete that “distant dark future to avoid”.

Next is probably my fave line ever written about Bruce & Damian ‘cause it gives so much sense (or depth) to Bruce’s hands-off approach.

And like. Everything that Bruce says here is true. That’s exactly what Damian’s character arc should be about. But dude maybe try to have a relationship with your son outside of the Batman legacy? The thing is Bruce built his relationships with all his kids through vigilantism and I think he just. Doesn’t know how to do it differently. The idea doesn’t even cross his mind for god’s sake.

By my understanding it’s not that Bruce doesn’t love Damian. It’s that he genuinely believes Damian’s better off without him.

It’s low key confirmed in Bruce Wayne: The Road Home.

[The Road Home: Batman & Robin]

((Don’t trust anything Bruce says about Dick’s “casualness” or whatever in this issue tho. Nicieza just… doesn’t know Dick’s character all that much.))

So Bruce is basically taking the easy way out, yeah. Both in ‘Tec and in choosing it’s not worth trying to work with Damian as his partner. He decides Talia is a better parent & Dick is a better mentor than he could be, and he’s off fighting the good fight against Leviathan.

We can stretch it and say Bruce probs decided he’ll take care of his relationship with Damian after the Leviathan thing is dealt with but tbh I don’t know if DC or Morrison thought that far ahead.

Conclusion

Morrison’s narrative installs that Bruce does feel morally obligated to care for Damian. And although I get why it can feel uncertain, I’m not sure we’re supposed to doubt Bruce loves Damian.

Bruce not looking for Damian after the explosion is is more due to the writer’s choice to consider the “Damian issue” closed for now so that he can focus on his next plot/installment. I guess.

When Bruce has the idea to send Damian back to fake-Talia, I guess his love for his son is a tool used to show how much Bruce is a selfless hero*. and a terrible dad but he’s a Hero™ so it’s okay.

Bruce in RoRAG doesn’t come as indifferent to Damian’s safety to me, he’s being his dumbass self in a crisis situation. He’s got no excuse for sending Damian alongside Dick & Tim when he did though.

On two occasions Bruce unilaterally elects that Damian is better-off without him. First with the in-character Talia who actually loves her son, second as Dick’s partner.

* Actually it’d be very interesting if someone who liked that comic-book could explain me wtf I didn’t get about its narrative significance. Sometimes our personal tastes just render us blind to some things guys.

TL;DR: Does preboot!Bruce love Damian? Yes. Was he a good father to him? No.

And I’m feeling way more comfortable giving a categorical answer here than when I was asked if Bruce is, in general, a good father.

To be fair Bruce does try to step into a fatherly role in Morrison’s Batman #657, aka just after he meets Damian. Afterwards we get sidetracked; and later storylines just. Don’t really give Bruce & Damian the opportunity so share father-son moments.

His behavior in RoRAG is just plain bad. The fact that it’s not due to indifference doesn’t change that. The ten-year-old who didn’t ask for shit should be treated differently that the seasoned vigilantes Dick and Tim are, period.

Obviously leaving Damian in fake-Talia’s clutches or wanting to send him back to his abuser goes under “bad father points” too. If you consider the whole of Morrison’s run should be integrated into your personal understanding of the character, that is. woops look at that terrible bias showing its ugly face again

In later episodes, it’s tempting to give Bruce a pass by saying that he just didn’t get the chance/time to be a good father to Damian, and part of it is true. But again, failing to invest in that relationship is completely in-character, and tbh it’s the part I find the most interesting character- and narrative-wise:

It’s A) self-depreciating (”Talia or Dick can provide my son what I can’t”); B) self-centered, in that Bruce doesn’t stop to consider what Damian thinks or wants; and C) cowardly, in that the second there’s someone else available to take care of Damian, Bruce stops trying to be a father and to invest himself emotionally because gasp, feelings!

As a comparison, think of how long it took for Bruce to go from mentor-protégé-e to father-child in his relationship with Tim and Cassandra; and to admit that’s how he felt about those kids. He didn’t adopt Dick until he was an adult either. Batdad needs time to un-constipate. It’s a Bruce thing, not a Bruce & Damian one.

(Jason is the only kid with whom Bruce immediately builds a wholesome relationship and that’s where you cry because if Jason didn’t die Bruce wouldn’t have half as much trouble getting close to his kids.)

Hope this word-vomit answers that. Thanks for the asks!

#bruce wayne #damian wayne #batman #dc comics #batfam #batfamily #meta #batdad #dick grayson #tim drake #talia al ghul #ra's al ghul #jason todd #robin #nightwing #red robin #zae chatters #asks #my stuff

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