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person in fandom: eeeyikes!!! i hope im writing this character in this short little fanfic right >_< eeekkk what if my takes on my meta are all wrong and everyone will Kill me!!

guy in professional comic industry: okay lets mischaracterize every single character that appears in this comic for 50 or so issues

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Hetbait kind of goes harder than queerbait sometimes. Queerbait you understand that the creators very rarely could do it even if they wanted to so implication and suggestion was better and safer than being explicit. Hetbait though there's no such justifiable reason they just want to fuck with you.

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poll request: if one of them HAS to be cisgender, which one do you think it would be?

dick grayson

jason todd

tim drake

damian wayne

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Hi, Warrior's reading Jaybin comics again. Specifically Detective Comics #572-573

He's adorable 💜

Aw, Bruce, he was just trying to help :( why are you making him sad, he's doing his best :(

Okay but the Brucie moments were so silly, and Jason was having fun playing along (or possibly just laughing at Bruce - both are valid options). I do love Gordon having absolutely none of it though lol

just look at him!! he's just a little guy! specifically the rain one, look at him shielding himself from the rain with his cape. ahdjsafdklaj I love him so much

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batman at his core should represent love but i think some of u guys arent ready for that

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little gay ppl in my phone you’re in my pocket rn next to my boner

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When I (M29) was a young boy (M7) my father (M35) took me into the city (X167) to see a marching band (M23, M21, M22, F22, M24, M25, F21, M

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I hate when a tiny stupid thing pushes you over the edge and makes you freak the fuck out because it makes you look like a completely irrational tar pit of a human being. Like no I promise this is warranted just maybe not about that specifically I swear I'm well adjusted. Come closer stick your fingers in my cage

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Firmly believe that Bruce bought one of those puberty/sex ed books and just left it on dicks bed instead of talking to him about it

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Oh big large Bruce how I love you

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Lets go All Over The Fucking Place with mama

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This idea just popped in my head so not super elaborate. But let’s have the Batfam out apprehending a rogue magic user when Nightwing gets de-aged to when he was in his first few months as Robin. And they’re all expecting a sweet little sunshine kid, a smaller version of how their brother currently acts.

Instead, they see the itsy bitsiest little kid imaginable in the original Robin uniform, and they’re all instantly so mad at Bruce for ever letting Dick go out and fight when he was literally a tiny little child. He looks like a strong wind will blow him over.

But then they see him in action and they realize oh no, their brother was actually a little monster. He actually growls at them at one point. They get back to the batcave and they see him just become an animal. He bites Damian’s arm so hard when he hears someone call Damian Robin, then screams and yells about how he’s the only Robin.

Then he tells off Bruce with the intensity of a pissed off teenager, except he’s not even four feet tall and he’s standing on a table so he can shout in Batman’s face. And Bruce just looks so exhausted.

“I’m in charge here,” Bruce starts to tell him, but Dick just puts his hands on his hips and huffs.

“It’s cute you think so,” he says in a snotty voice.

“Alright, time for bed,” Bruce says quickly, because he remembers very well how things worked back when Dick really was eight and a snot nosed little menace. And he knows all of Dick’s tells, and he can see that he’s getting overwhelmed and upset and it’s going to soon turn into a total meltdown.

“No!” Dick argues, but Bruce has already picked him up, and he’s flailing and biting Bruce’s arm. “Pumme down! You’re not my dad, put me down, you’re not my daddy!”

He’s screaming and sobbing before they’re even halfway up the stairs. It’s the tantrum of the century, and it’s making Jason’s ears ring.

“What the fuck,” Jason gasps once the door leading upstairs closes, “was that?”

“Was Dick possessed or something?” Stephanie asks, rubbing at her ears.

“I can’t believe he bit me,” Damian mumbles, watching as Alfred cleans the very detailed bite mark on his arm. Tim snorts from where he’s watching.

“I think you’re all forgetting a very crucial detail,” Alfred tells them all, his voice very patient but strained, “that Master Richard came into Master Bruce’s care during a very traumatic period in his life. While his behavior might shock you, I assure you this was all quite normal compared to when he was actually eight years old.”

And it’s true. Because they do all often forget that the only reason Dick came to live with Bruce was because he’d just watched his parents get murdered and fall to their deaths in front of him. Most of them don’t even know about the couple months he spent in juvie while Bruce fought to get custody of him.

So when they go upstairs and hear Dick still screaming at Bruce, they try to have a little more empathy. Especially when they hear him start sobbing I want my mommy over and over again, and they have to listen as Bruce whispers I know, I’m sorry, I’m here to try and soothe him.

They try to be patient when he gets so angry the next day that he screams and flings Zitka across the room to hit one of them in the head, only to start sobbing when he realizes a couple stitches popped on the leg he held to throw her and now the stuffing is coming out, and they try to calm him down while looking for Alfred to help stitch her back together.

They try not to get frustrated when he’s yelling at them, only to fumble over his words in the middle of his tirade because he can’t remember the words in English, and now he’s upset and tugging at his hair and hitting his head while they try desperately to hold his wrists and make him stop, to help him find the words he was looking for, but he’s speaking like three different languages at once and no one can follow and it just makes Dick so much more frustrated until he runs away to hide in his room.

They try not to get annoyed when he’s in the batcave and actually beating them when they spar (because he’s fighting way dirtier than he ever would if he was his normal age), only to have him taunt them and stick his tongue out at them.

They try to understand how the little brat that was just screaming in Bruce’s face is now clinging to his leg, sitting on his foot, and begging Bruce to let him sleep in his bed tonight. You have to keep the monsters out, he tells Bruce, and they all see the way that makes Bruce melt, makes him do anything Dick asks because somehow this menace has Bruce wrapped around his little finger.

They watch Dick swing from a chandelier one day, looking down and calling everyone some very colorful names in all sorts of languages, but especially Bruce. Then he’ll hop down and pretend like nothing happened, instead clinging to Bruce and making him carry him around all day long, acting as if he’ll be burned if his feet to touch the floor.

He goes from wild to sweet in the blink of an eye, and it’s a total mind fuck.

Then he turns back to normal and acts as if none of that was even out of the ordinary.

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There's a dark irony to Joker being such a hated character in fandom, with people constantly going "DC should just kill him off", because Joker's being depicted as increasingly self-destructive and suicidal. (This will be the topic of this little rant, so if reading about depression and the depiction of potentially suicidal behavior triggers you, take care.)

It's not even "doomed by the narrative", even though that's the case too, it's "trapped in the narrative". It's "doomed to the narrative", and it's something I feel can only manifest within the comics medium-- or rather, within franchises and stories that have been going for decades (Dr. Who is another example). As long as Joker makes money DC comics won't kill him off, and even if they do, they'll inevitably bring him back when sales are down for shock value. And it creates this fascinating thing where good writers handling Joker, by dealing with the suicidal tendencies inherent to his character (Red Hood jumping/letting himself fall into the acid vat & wanting Batman to kill him), now paint this overall picture of Joker wanting out. Being tired and embittered with Batman, but also sick with the cycle he's trapped in.

Legends of the Dark Knight (2021) #3

Detective Comics (2016) #1058

The Joker (2021) #15

And, well. Just going through Joker's recent major appearances is an interesting indicator. Batman (2016) #49 has him wreck the Batcat wedding and almost dying in the process. The Batman Who Laughs (2018) has him shoot himself in the chest. Joker War (2020) nearly has him choose to die strapped to a bomb that's about to explode. Hell, we had a whole comic called Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing (2022-2024) that ends with a fight to the death between two versions of him. And it only goes downhill from there-- in the Zur-en-Arrh arc, Joker literally brings Zur out to get him to kill him. And even in Hush 2, Joker's contribution is basically "You don't even have to kill me, you just have to do nothing and let me die!"

But Batman can't let Joker die. Batman can't kill Joker, for Watsonian and Doylist reasons; he's just as trapped within the narrative as Joker is. But there's a stark difference to their perception of this, due to how they're constructed. Batman is all about forcing the world to make sense, so no matter how cyclical his life has become, he finds a way to live it. But Joker's all about a lack of meaning. His very point is that the world is absurd, so... trapping a character like that in a neverending loop is almost cruel. He's got no other way to make meaning and live on but Batman, except Batman has become a carrot dangled in front of his nose that he can't ever reach. No matter what he does, Batman will never change, so inevitably he'll ask himself: what's the point?

To quote a little story by Azzarello that basically spells all of this out in bright shiny letters:

The Joker 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular -- Two Fell Into The Hornets' Nest

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How beautiful is butch identity that it includes cis women, trans men, trans women, nonbinary people, and bruce springsteen.

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dick getting his hair braided for @/arcaneprism via dcforgaza! ty for donatinggg