#batman thinks he is in line

[undertheredhood]

random civillain who just moved to gotham: *having a mental breakdown after they accidentally kill a clown with a bad dye-job*

the red hood (notorious crime lord and vigilante): "are you from tennessee? 'cause you're the only ten i see."

[brucewaynehater101]

I'm bad at math, but is Bruce theoretically 38 years old when he goes into the time stream?

Hear me out (and canon likes to fluncate their ages, so this is my best guess without trying to account for birthdays):

Bruce becomes the legal guardian of 9 year old Dick when he's 23. That's a 14 year difference.

Jason becomes Robin when Dick leaves at 18. Jason is 13. That's a five year difference.

Jason dies at 15, and Tim becomes Robin at 13. That's a two year difference.

The age difference between Tim and Bruce would thus be 21 years.

Tim becomes Red Robin to find Bruce at 17.

That means that Bruce had to be 38, right? Why was I imagining him closer to 50?

Adopting so many kids must have aged him

[river-bottom-nightmare]

bruce “piles my entire moral framework onto dick’s shoulders and blames him when either one of us buckles under it bc i know deep down he’s the only one that’ll forgive me for it” wayne

[bamboozled-distress]

obsessed with the tomorrowverse superbat because we’re seeing them in the eyes of the rest of the JL because why is the one person Superman thinks about when hes about to die that creepy looking cryptic, batman??? how and why do they know each others identity???? HOW are they this close??? why do they listen to each other so easily??? why is bruce getting princess treatment in warworld???

[redkelpfish]

I know we all clown on Tim Drake for having a moral code that’s just “whatever the opposite of what I think will make me evil gun batman” but have you considered Tim Drake is absolutely the kind of feral bastard to carefully design and create an entire illusion of inevitability just to manipulate his younger self into not becoming a supervillain.

Like do you think Future Tim just set aside some really crazy weekends. Do you think he was the worst drill sergeant ever when making his friends practice their lines and backstories over and over until they locked him in a closet with no electronics

[lilacsandlillies]

I think the main reason there’s such a big discrepancy between Jason fans on what his relationship with Bruce should be is the fact that neither option is completely narratively satisfying.

Option one is that Jason and Bruce never get along or reach a compromise, which makes sense given both their morals but would eventually become quite boring narratively and comes with the risk of making Jason into a boring one dimensional villain that’s always in the wrong.

Option two is letting Jason compromise his own morals to become a bat again, which would allow for a few cool stories and some progression past Jason’s death, but would majorly compromise Jason’s moral compass and ideals to do so.

Now logically there is a third option, where Bruce lets Jason (or literally anyone else) kill the joker and he does the same thing Bruce does with people like Selina and Harley and just ignore the killing, but he won’t because DC hates me personally so for some reason Bruce doesn’t care when other people kill except when it’s Jason (or Helena)

[sleepire]

Y'all ever think that maybe Tim, in his stalker era shit, has photos of. Every. Single. Bat.

Like, he continued the hobby in some way? Still snaps little memories when he can of his siblings?

And he just has a collection of a photo with evey one of his siblings, of the other bats, and then none of himself?

Just a thought. Maybe.

[apopcornkernel]

and did bruce not, in the end, have a hand in jack drake's death as well? did tim becoming robin not seal his father's fate? we can talk in circles about the delegation of guilt but batman's quest to make no more orphans has, undeniably, made an orphan of robin

[boyfridged]

i’ve been thinking a lot about what is so unique and appealing about 80s robin jay’s moral standing that got completely lost in plot later on. and i think a huge part of it is that in a genre so focused on crime-fighting, his motivations and approach don’t focus on the category of crime at all. in fact, he doesn’t seem to believe in any moral dogma; and it’s not motivated by nihilism, but rather his open-heartedness and relational ethical outlook.

we first meet (post-crisis) jay when he is stealing. when confronted about his actions by bruce he’s confident that he didn’t do anything wrong – he’s not apologetic, he doesn’t seem to think that he has morally failed on any account. later on, when confronted by batman again, jay says that he’s no “crook.” at this point, the reader might assume that jay has no concept of wrong-doing, or that stealing is just not one of the deeds that he considers wrong-doing. yet, later on we see jay so intent on stopping ma gunn and her students, refusing to be implicit in their actions. there are, of course, lots of reasons for which we can assume he was against stealing in this specific instance (an authority figure being involved, the target, the motivations, the school itself being an abusive environment etc.), but what we gather is that jay has an extremely strong sense of justice and is committed to moral duty. that's all typical for characters in superhero comics, isn't it? however, what remains distinctive is that this moral duty is not dictated by any dogma – he trusts his moral instincts. this attitude – his distrust toward power structures, confidence in his moral compass, and situational approach, is something that is maintained throughout his robin run. it is also evident in how he evaluates other people – we never see him condemning his parents, for example, and that includes willis, who was a petty criminal. i think from there arises the potential for a rift between bruce and jay that could be, have jay lived, far more utilised in batman comics than it was within his short robin run.

after all, while bruce’s approach is often called a ‘philosophy of love and care,’ he doesn’t ascribe to the ethics of care [eoc] (as defined in modern scholarship btw) in the same way that jay does. ethics of care ‘deny that morality consists in obedience to a universal law’ and focus on the ideals of caring for other people and non-institutionalized justice. bruce, while obviously caring, is still bound by his belief in the legal system and deontological norms. he is benevolent, but he is also ultimately morally committed to the idea of a legal system and thus frames criminals as failing to meet these moral (legal-adjacent) standards (even when he recognizes it is a result of their circumstances). in other words, he might think that a criminal is a good person despite leading a life of crime. meanwhile, for jay there is no despite; jay doesn't think that engaging in crime says anything about a person's moral personality at all. morality, for him, is more of an emotional practice, grounded in empathy and the question of what he can do for people ‘here and now.’ he doesn’t ascribe to maxims nor utilitarian calculations. for jay, in morality, there’s no place for impartiality that bruce believes in; moral decisions are embedded within a net of interpersonal relationships and social structures that cannot be generalised like the law or even a “moral code” does it. it’s all about responsiveness. 

to sum up, jay's moral compass is relative and passionate in a way that doesn't fit batman's philosophy. this is mostly because bruce wants to avoid the sort of arbitrariness that seems to guide eoc. also, both for vigilantism, and jay, eoc poses a challenge in the sense that it doesn't create a certain 'intellectualised' distance from both the victims and the perpetrators; there's no proximity in the judgment; it's emotional.

all of this is of course hardly relevant post-2004. there might be minimal space for accommodating some of it within the canon progression (for example, the fact that eoc typically emphasises the responsibility that comes with pre-existing familial relationships and allows for prioritizing them, as well as the flexibility regarding moral deliberations), but the utilitarian framework and the question of stopping the crime vs controlling the underworld is not something that can be easily reconciled with jay’s previous lack of interest in labeling crime. 

[goozeghost]

MORE TimKon doodles (+surprise Clark) because I am gay.

(singles under cut :) )

[rillette]

Pretty boy! Everyone you draw is so pretty lmao

TYSM!!! That's very sweet of you to say! T^T <3 <3 <3

[hijinxinprogress]

I like the Tim drake loves coffee thing but you’re telling me this unhinged maniac is drinking the same amount of caffeine as regular civilian college students?? I’ve made some weird shit with an espresso machine but Tim??? I don’t know what’s in that man’s cup but it’s not coffee are you seriously gonna tell me this kid was chasing after Batman at 3am when he was in elementary school after a couple cups of coffee?? I mean I’d believe you if you told me he was hopping rooftops after mixing energy drinks (my guy got sad, made an underground mad scientist lab, and then tried to recreate his dead friends a couple hundred times with a homemade cloning machine) and an entire coffee pot is too tame of a choice for the maniac who’s favorite pizza toppings include artichoke hearts so I promise you if that mf has a cup it’s not coffee, it’s a zesti and at least six different energy drinks because he’s a fucking weirdo like he probably carries a 76 oz travel mug full of that shit and one time Bart drank out of it and everyone else on young justice refuses to let Tim hand Bart any sort of beverage and he claims he doesn’t have a problem bc he drinks tea and it’s herbal tea that’s surprisingly not overly sweet bc he and Alfred are both tea snobs so there’s no tea that costs less than $3000 in either of their cabinets

[martyrbat]

detective comics #509

[ID: Bruce Wayne sleeping in his penthouse, his eyes squeezed shut as the narration reads, ‘Gordon's strained laugh sounds hollow, but it echos in the Batman's mind... and haunts his dreams...” Bruce awakens to a hand on his shoulder and before he can think, he's twisting it and holding it down. The panel expands, revealing the hand belongs to Alfred as he's almost toppling over! He cries out, “M-master Bruce—my arm!” as Bruce groggily realizes who it is. He lets go at once as Alfred moves to the end of the bed and holds his arm while stammering an apology, “S-sorry, s-sir... Sorry if I startled you.” Bruce looks at him with aghast as he cries out, “My god, Alfred—I almost broke your arm!” Alfred reasons, “You must have been having a nightmare, sir.” as Bruce sits up and puts his face in his hands. He weepily dismisses, “A nightmare—what kind of an excuse is that? Old friend... forgive me...” Alfred reassures, “Nothing to forgive, sir. Just bad nerves, sir.” END ID]

[undertheredhood]

from the tiny snippets i've been seeing of gotham war on tumblr, i don't think there's a way for jason and bruce's relationship to ever be okay again, especially not after what bruce did to jason

[renecdote]

Jim Gordan could have found out Batman's identity a hundred different ways, from a hundred unintentionally or intentionally dropped clues, but I like to think that sometime in Batman's early years, a drug dealer or bank robber or unspecialised goon got a lucky shot in and Gordan swabbed the blood at the crime scene, quietly had it tested, then just as quietly erased the results and sat on the knowledge that Bruce Wayne was running around the city in a giant bat suit fighting crime

[welcometogrouchland]

I support the "Batman was unfairly biased to Stephanie for XYZ reasons" crowd so strongly bc DC claims that Bruce is a master planner who is able to understand anyone's psychology but he didn't realize that literally every single one of Steph's problems as a teenager would've been solved by her joining a shitty punk band. If he couldn't figure that much out then he didn't understand her for a minute