#robin was so right about them both being morally grey fr fr

[enbysiriusblack]

"I hate you."

Sirius folded their arms with a smirk, "You're obsessed with me, Reggie. I mean you dragged me away from class just to talk to me. You clearly miss me."

"I do not. And don't call me that!"

"You miss me", Sirius teased.

"What would I even miss? Getting into trouble for your antics? Only getting to eat half of meals because you can't keep your mouth shut for one family dinner? Having to cover for you so you could sneak out and mingle with strangers? I don't miss you, Sirius. I don't miss you, because you were never there for me to miss."

Sirius frowned, tilting their head slightly, "We were all each other had as kids. We slept in each others beds at night, helped each other study, and played every game with each other."

Regulus shrugged, "Yeah... I was your only option. And then you got older and discovered the bigger world and couldn't care less about me. We haven't been proper brothers for years now. I can't miss someone who's become a stranger, Sirius."

"But I miss you."

"Well", Regulus huffed, "You always were too sappy."

He walked closer to Sirius, and folded his arms.

"You've grown up."

Regulus rolled his eyes at Sirius' comment, "What, did you not notice? See, it's something that people do as time goes on."

"I mean, you've grown up to be just like Father."

Regulus sneered, "Look at yourself in a mirror, Sirius. No matter how much you rebel, you'll never escape this family. You're dear old mother, Sirius. Just like her."

Sirius punched him, Regulus falling to the ground. The boy lifted a hand to his nose, and as he looked to the blood, his eyes drifted up to their's.

Regulus smirked, "You hit just like her too."

[mysterycitrus]

I know a lot of ppl ask u abt jason or dick but im wondering now, what do u think about bruce? I find him a very interesting character whose characterization is incredibly feeble, both bc of his 80 years of history and the tendency writers have to project their own male fantasies on him. So i'd definitely love to hear ur own thoughts about him. I personally enjoy depicting him as someone morally grey, although my sympatization for him changes day to day. Wether you think he is a good or a bad person, i believe u need to make him dedicated to gotham and the bat as a symbol, and that comes with all its advantages and drawbacks

bruce wayne is sooooo interesting (derogatory) because like u said, he carries the baggage of every masochismo author that decided batman was too woke and should hurt his kids and that supporting gotham’s infrastructure is for pussies. there’s also the flipside of that, where he’s the perfect father who’s waaaay too emotionally regulated for my taste. both of these interpretations are bad imo, and both functionally miss the point.

i think part of this (in fandom) is an obsession with moral angst — u can either be a good person doing good things, or a bad person doing bad things. think about how some characters are crucified while others are babied. someone always has to be absolutely right, and the other has to be absolutely wrong.

in reality, there are a lot of people who are fundamentally kind and fundamentally want to do good that are really terrible to the people in their lives. bruce wayne being someone who relies on having so much control that it implodes his connections to the people around him is an important part of his character. his profound love for his children, for gotham and her people, for humanity in general and his belief in peoples ability to change, doesn’t circumvent the fact that he’s often an emotionally abusive man who hurts others to achieve his own ends. he contains multitudes.

writing him as a functionally irredeemable, violently abusive person is the anti-thesis to the symbol that he himself created. no, i personally don’t believe he actively beats his kids (even though it’s supported in the text). no, i don’t think he’s an irredeemable sadist (as much as frank miller wants u to believe otherwise). to have people like dick grayson and diana and clark and dinah love and believe in u means that there has to be something there worth caring about, otherwise the whole universe is gonna fall apart.

that’s what makes his relationship to cass so interesting — he sees his neuroticism, his dedication to the cause above all else, and does not find it admirable. he finds it confronting and upsetting. and to be clear, cass (like dick) is very much the moral ideal of what batman should be, but still bruce finds it hard to deal with!!

his abject failures — his treatment of the robins, his crippling guilt about jason, his fears of becoming a killer, the impossible load he gives himself to carry — means that when he’s shown as someone who genuinely cares, it makes him more complex. like yeah, bruce isn’t actually a cold hearted person. he really really gives a shit. too many shits, to be totally honest. he’s a morally grey person that wants to do good, but is so terrified of losing control that he keeps others away and hurts them in the process. there’s a reason why his emotional crutch was a traumatised eight year old fr. nothing is more important than the mission, including bruce wayne himself