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zenosanalytic · 5 months

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So I was reading Karen from HR(go read it!) by Unpretty(go follow her!!) last night and I think it crystalized for me part of why I LOVE her characterization of Bruce Wayne so much(I mean: just basically that she treats ALL the characters as WHOLE PEOPLE rather than split-personalities ala the wornout Kill Bill analysis of Superman[which you weren't SUPPOSED to agree with! Bill's the VILLAIN GUYS!! But that's a different essay u_u] is Enough but she does so much more...), namely:

"Batman" isn't a way Bruce deals with his trauma, it's a way he AVOIDS dealing with his trauma.

Yes this is an analysis post about a fanfic |:| Obvsl, ***Spoilers*** |:| |:|

Ok so here we go: This is Bruce reacting to the grief of Corinne's co-workers at her death

He wanted to put distance between them. It wasn't fair to any of them to be irritated. It wasn't their fault. Nails on a chalkboard, their noisy grief repulsive. The self-centered way the living mourned their memory of the dead. Accepted death as a force of nature, an act of god. No fury in them, no action. No problems to be fixed. A hole in their lives to fill with tears until they couldn't feel the emptiness anymore.

Don't worry, he knows how fucked up it is to think this way and there are lines immediately following which show that(he is so well characterized in this and all related works PLEASE Trust me, Dear Readers) but I want to focus on THIS and what it says about how BRUCE relates to grief and mourning.

He thinks mourning is a way to put death behind you; a way to center your OWN feelings of grief and loss in the midst of something terrible which has happened to SOMEONE ELSE. Right off the bat(heh) this is telling us he has NEVER let himself mourn for his parents because he's talking about it in 3rd Person; as something separate from himself(and please don't sleep on how he also talks about The Living in the same way, implicitly classifying himself outside that category as well) Bruce is a Raw-Fucking-Nerve 24/7, and has been since his parents' were killed right in front of him, and refuses to heal or even face his emotions about that event because doing either might mean moving on and he thinks that would be selfish.

Actually, let's look at another line from before this which I think clarifies his emotional reality wonderfully:

He looked out at all the employees, all huddled together in different groups, whispering and checking their phones and waiting for the police to tell them they could leave. Some of them crying. Everyone giving him a wide berth. There was blood on his shirt. Bruce Wayne didn't have any reason to be handling this well. Shouldn't have been handling this well. Safer for the sake of secrets not to handle it well. With that decided, he found the nearest trash can and started heaving into it. Better. He hadn't done that in years. He grabbed a flute of champagne from the abandoned buffet table and downed it like a shot, then another. It helped get the taste of acid off his tongue. He let his hands shake. It felt like a normal thing to happen, his hands shaking.

Allowing himself the physical expressions of grief and trauma soothes him; feels normal. Because it's not something he's let himself do in years(probably lying to himself here; probably since the murders). He can only psychologically allow himself to physically grieve as an act to keep up appearances; he can only grieve by disassociating. Which of course also means he's never PRIVATELY allowed himself this grief. Jesus-Fuck

Let's jump forward, to an exchange with Dick Grayson(first robin/nightwing), to drive this point home. It's a longer dialogue I don't want to include all of so the context: Corinne died before earlier in the week and Nightwing found her, but she revived and left the scene before he returned from catching the culprit, and Dick just told this to Bruce:

"You could have talked to me about it," Bruce added, looking at the ballroom and not at him. "When that happened. How you were. Feeling." Nightwing huffed a sound that wasn't a laugh. "Right," he said. "Sure." Bruce grit his teeth. Nightwing clapped him on the shoulder. "Let's do that," he said. "You can come over later, tell me how you're feeling about all this." Bruce said nothing. "Yeah," Nightwing said, patting his shoulder as he disengaged and stepped away. "That's what I figured."

There is so much here, and it all hurts so good. 1)Bruce is thinking of himself as Bruce; again Unpretty treats the "secret-identity" superheroes as what they are, facades; Bruce does not think of himself as Batman, Batman is a persona-tool(one might say a worksona :3) Bruce uses 2) but Dick isn't Dick even when he's in his civvies he's Nightwing, because Bruce needs to distance and disassociate himself from the emotions he won't let himself process and that's what he uses the personas to do 3)this is made explicit by both his passive refusal of Dick's sympathy and offer of comfort, and the bitter sarcasm of Dick's offer of it, which communicates this is an offer that has always been there, and always been denied. Dick cares for Bruce and wants to help him heal but knows Bruce won't let him care for him and won't heal, and this refusal has visibly damaged their relationship.

Oh and 4) "You could have talked to me about it": Bruce's desire to help others is tied directly to his refusal to let others help him, and his refusal to mourn his parents/let himself grieve/heal. Because his desire to help IS a trauma-response, because you Can't Actually Just Suppress This Shit Away. This situation is So Fucked Up for Dick: Dick wants to be comforted by Bruce as much as he wants to comfort him, but he knows letting Bruce comfort him would Only Reinforce His Pain; Would Only PUSH HIM FURTHER AWAY. Again I say to you: Jesus-Fuck.

Ok so: this next bit isn't directly related to this, it's more of like a second-order thing, but a few chapters later Bruce is helping Corinne make empanadas and he talks about his dad and I think this is also Quite Revealing:

..."My father liked to cook," Bruce said eventually as he peeled paper away from garlic to pull away cloves. "He was very passionate about food. About joy."...

I'm going to skip around a bit here cuz it's in the context of a much longer/larger scene

..."We had a chef, but he liked to make meals himself when he could. Food as a symbol, food as a way to love himself, to love life. Finding joy in the work it takes for even a fleeting moment of happiness, gone in the time it takes to clear a plate."... .... "I don't have that," Bruce said. "His sense of taste. I don't think I've ever enjoyed anything as much as he enjoyed good soup."

BRUUUUUUUUCE!!!! No wonder everyone wants to fuck this man. We can fix him, guys; WE CAN FIX HIM NO SHUTUP EVERYBODY BEFORE WERE ALL DOING IT WRONG BUT WE GET IT WE CA- ok I'll stop now.

First I want to be mean for a little bit and call bullshit here cuz unpretty's Bruce is One of the most Eloquent Motherfuckers Around. Fuck You You don't enjoy things "Food as a symbol, food as a way to love himself, to love life" Goddaminit just admit you love your dad you son of a bitch!!! And while you're at it, admit you like to talk so that words sound good leaving noisehole!!! Admit that you love Competence; Admit it!! ADMIT IT!!!(*entirely metaphorically shaking this take of Bruce Wayne by his lapels tho not really cuz he's conservatively the size of a hardwood armoire*)

But seriously: I again point you at disassociation. Batman seems like a really active response to grief, and the way unpretty writes it it physically IS... in the same way that a person who responds to grief by turning to alcohol or sex or thrill-seeking instead of going to the funeral is very actively partaking in those activities. Psychologically though it's actually a passive, avoidant response; a refusal to feel, to face, to deal with that pain. It's not Bruce's fault that he doesn't realize that he enjoys being poetic and eloquent or that he enjoys being GOOD at things(or that he enjoys LOOKING good and FEELING LIKE HE LOOKS GOOD and BEING ADMIRED FOR HIS BEAUTY, for that matter, or that helping someone cook connects him with his Dad) because BRUCE DOES NOT LET HIMSELF EXPERIENCE HIS EMOTIONS DIRECTLY. All of his emotions are exactly like that Horror and Trauma and Grief at the top right after Corinne had been shot: Moderated through performance as a 3rd Person experience of himself. He has no idea what he's feeling, and he hasn't had any idea what he's feeling since the night his parents were killed and he won't LET himself have any idea what he's feeling because to do so would be to MOVE ON and (he thinks)FORGET and ACCEPT THAT THEY REALLY ARE DEAD and he thinks that would be SELFISH!! BRUUUCE! BRUUUUUUCE!!!

UUUGH! Ok, that was actually a tangent and not what I ACTUALLY wanted to talk about here(tho also: EXACTLY what I wanted to talk about here):

"I don't have that," Bruce said. "His sense of taste. I don't think I've ever enjoyed anything as much as he enjoyed good soup."

This sentence is so huge, but you really need a bit more context to understand why. One: even aside from his trauma Bruce has a very detached and clinical way of thinking

The knife moved quickly and looked much fancier than when she did it. "You're really good at that," she said. "You should get your knives sharpened," he said. "Yeah," she agreed, pouring eggy water into her bowl to mix with a spoon. "Do you cook a lot?" "No." There was silence before he clarified. "I dislike the inefficiency." "Oh." "It's necessary to function," he said. "I prefer to spend my time on other things." ... "It isn't a matter of health or moral fortitude," he said carefully. "No more than you not drinking coffee. It isn't particularly admirable to not do things you don't enjoy. I don't enjoy food as much as other people do. That's all."

Two: Karen from HR is part of a wider body of work called Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts(Read It!!!), and in it there is a fic about Bruce's parents, set when Bruce is a child, called Wayne Manor(You know the drill u_u), and in Wayne Manor it's very clear that Bruce is autistic, which the above way of thinking about things is an expression of. His parents are wonderful about this, and there's allot of evidence that Bruce's mother is also autistic and makes such a point about being wonderful about it due to her own abuse for being autistic as a child, and as a child Bruce seems to feel nothing but confidence and happiness in his autistic qualities. But the trauma of the death of his parents has somehow changed that.

I would argue that Bruce ties these autistic qualities, which he associates with his parents because they affirmed and celebrated and shared them, with the way he has responded to their murders, with Batman, which he is deeply conflicted about; something he consciously deems a MORE ethical, active, and "problem-solving" approach to death than mourning, while subconsciously recognizing is deeply fucked up and unhealthy for him and everyone in his life. He's come to attach his clinicality, his "dislike [for] inefficiency", to Batman, and thus as something which sets apart and isolates him; something "lacking" in himself which denies him the joy his father was able to feel. Again: obvsl that's bullshit for the reasons I listed above --his interest in doing things well is THE SAME THING his father felt, is something which his own decision to bring up his father shows connects him to his father IN THAT VERY SCENE and it is his disassociation from his trauma which prevents him from acknowledging and experiencing the joy he finds in doing things well-- but thoughts don't have to be rational for us to believe and hurt ourselves with them. Humans are irrational; human psychology is irrational.

Unpretty understands this so fucking well. She writes Bruce Wayne(and all these characters really) so fucking well. Unpretty's Bruce Wayne is a Deeply Irrational, Hyperrational, Hypercompetent Man. She has turned the power-fantasy of multiple generations of USian men into the Saddest and Wettest of Meow-Meows. This stuff is So Tasty numnumnum I eats it up I EATS IT!! Bruce is such a fucked up dude; his loves and self hatred all wound up and tied together and hiding themselves from him within a trauma Too Huge for him to ever face; "making himself useful" and "solving problems" to everyone and everywhere as an act of ultimate self-annihilation; Heroism as Self Healing as Self Destruction; The Noblest and most Beautiful of Lies; Delicious this Gourmet Fucking Meal she is serving us.

I don't read the comics and I can't call myself a huge fan of the movies, but I SO wish I could see a theatrical take on this character that understood as well as Unpretty does that Batman is a story Bruce Wayne tells himself and that it Isn't Fucking Helping.

#unpretty #Karen from HR #Fanfic #Long Posts #Bruce Wayne #Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts #Wayne Manor #Batman Fanfic #DC #Batman #Writing #Characterization #Character Studies #zA Analysis #The Critical Stance #Gr8 Art #appreciative reblogs

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