reblog to bonk the person you reblogged it from with a hollow cardboard tube

dick grayson

Bruce, finding a girl who's just like him but even more intense about it: Hahaha yesss this is perfect!

Bruce when that girl demonstrates his own unhealthy mentalities and flaws, taken to their most extreme: Wtf. What the actual fuck. Why would you do that.

idk how i feel about “not every superman is good” because yes, obviously, there are evil supermen, but that’s such a TINY minority because being evil is against the entire concept of superman, like the versions of clark that are evil aren’t really superman

and i feel like this is gonna push lois into a downward spiral because we already know she has trust issues. and yeah also this was probably mr. mxyzptlk’s plan (get lois to stop trusting clark, clark is hurt and confused and easier to take down) but i just don’t know how i feel about the wording

Personally I think this is intended as meta commentary because the "evil Superman" trope has gotten SO popular in the last ≈decade that it's overshadowed the true version of the character.

I saw someone's post the other day about how so many people now only really know Superman from Injustice, and how even if they vaguely know Superman is normally good, they still get misconceptions about who Superman is at his core (like, thinking every version of Supes isn't strong enough to maintain his moral center if Lois dies). Add in the popularity of The Boys & Invincible, then factor in that the only movie version of Supes in the last 10 years was the Snyder version (who apparently was also supposed to turn evil after his Lois dies in subsequent Snyderverse movies that never got made). Absent the CW's Superman & Lois, you've essentially got a generation of non-comics media that has warped and distorted Superman beyond recognition.

So I'm expecting the next episode(s) will make it a point to show that the universes where Clark turns bad are the few exceptions to the rule, and maybe give us a glimpse of the many many realities where Superman is who he's supposed to be (and possibly more of the one in which he's a crab lololol).

Mxy is here to sow chaos, manipulate, & mislead. So of course he's going to selectively show Lois the awful 1% of Evil Clarks and not the 99% of Clarks that are not, then rub his grubby little hands together like a raccoon to see what mischief comes from his stirring the pot. Other than that, idk what Mxy's plan is, but I think the show's creators are gearing up to make a statement about the true nature of Superman.

oh totally, but what i meant is kinda that i don’t really think there are any clark kents that are evil by nature, like obviously there are evil supermen (injustice etc) but i feel like it’s always a superman that turned evil (which i also don’t like but yeah that’s the point), none of them just exist that way by default

there’s so much here right because it does show that babs and bruce have completely different philosophies when it comes to their moral code (tm), and—especially in this part of her life—cass was so heavily influenced by both of them i can’t imagine what it did to her when she was still trying to figure out who she was

Honestly, this feels less like "conflicting philosophies" and more "Batman is being written as an utterly obnoxious, judgemental asshole solely for plot reasons"

I mean, yes, he can BE an obnoxious asshole, but over something like this, it feels incredibly contrived.

IIRC, the core of this disagreement is that Bruce's actual position is a) he knows that Cass feels this way, already, because b) he would feel the same way, and thus c) his understanding of the problem is better than Babs' because he knows that d) like him, Cass isn't interested in hearing "it's not your fault," that won't make her feel better, she just wants to know how to not do it again, so he e) believes he will help her more than Babs ever could by being like "yeah you fucked up, let's train some more so that doesn't happen anymore" and validating her feelings and coping strategies. Which he then goes and does, despite Barbara's vague and empty-by-fiat threat here.

The trouble with this of course being that 1) Babs also understands feeling like it's your fault when it isn't perfectly well, so it's pretty stupid to act like he has some great insight on this that she can't possibly comprehend, and therefore 2) there is still zero non-asshole reason for Bruce not to use his big boy words here and just straight up say "I know where her head is at and she won't want comfort any more than I would" instead of vaguing everything in the most combative and douchey way possible, and, most importantly, 3) validating Cass' absolutely toxic self-image and godawful coping strategies is not an acceptable parenting choice, regardless of what Cass wants to hear or what makes her feel slightly better in the moment.

Which is, unfortunately, all pretty much entirely in-character for the Batman of that era. Even when he's not being an asshole about what he's actually saying, he's being an asshole about refusing to communicate properly, and being a generally toxic parent even when he's trying his best.* The fundamental conflict of Bruce and Babs raising Cass together is that Bruce gets her trauma response, because he shares it, in a way that Babs doesn't, so he knows why she's doing the things she does, and what feeling is behind it, even when Babs is still confused and not sure how to help. But he also never actually developed past that response. He's been holding on his whole life to the maladaptive, erroneous beliefs and short-term, unproductive coping strategies that that trauma instilled in him. So when Cass does the same terrible maladaptive stuff that he would, his reaction is always "yes, perfect, I know from experience that that definitely helps and is completely appropriate, keep doing exactly that." (And even under normal circumstances, to undermine any push Babs makes to socialize the poor kid even slightly.) And, naturally, Cass would much rather listen to someone who's telling her that she's correct and should do what she wants than someone who's asking her to do new, difficult, painful things like grow and heal, so she's always picking Bruce's dumb nonsense over Babs' much healthier advice. And this reinforces Bruce's belief† that he's helping her and doing the right thing and understands what Cass needs better than Babs does.

It would be interesting to see the universe where for that whole Miller-poisoned three-decade stretch, Batman was still traumatized and broken, but just slightly less of an arrogant asshole, and this dynamic was, instead, him identifying what was in Cass's head, telling Babs what he could see happening in clear and straightforward language, and then trusting her better mental health and coping strategies to find a more positive solution than whatever one was his (and Cass's) default response. Them working together for her as a team, instead of directly in opposition at all times. I guess probably you'd get basically the Cass we have now, or maybe Bludhaven-era Cass, but it would actually make sense how she got there? Either way, a better world than this one, for sure.

*how 90s Dick was supposed to have grown up to be the man he became with 90s Batman as a father will never stop confusing and amusing me.

†and the fandom's, depressingly.

@the-fallen-blue i totally agree with you, also i did fully write the original post at like 4am so not all my thoughts really got across all the way

also yeah i do think that even though obviously babs is far from perfect, she will usually try to do everything in her power to protect cass because she just cares so much (even though babs doesn’t really understand cass and has also very much expressed that she doesn’t understand)