Hello world. This is the tumblr account attached to Violet138 (on AO3). This blog is mostly Batman stuff, and kind of a mess that will occasionally clog your dash. Thanks :)
Asks, messages, replies, reblogs (whatever) are always open, Mondays through Fridays around the clock, so just go for it.
Also! Just because this has come up enough, I am atrocious with tone and cannot always identify sarcasm, so if I give you a bizarre response to something I apologize in advance.
shit I haven’t Tim Drake posted in ages. uhhhhhhhh. I think he has an insane amount of connections on his LinkedIn profile but no education details
I've kind of given up trying to make any kind of sense of the timeline in Jean Paul's life because Dennis O'Neil himself doesn't seem to have had a really solid grasp on any kind of coherent continuity but god this. this is really taking me out.
twenty two??? TWENTY TWO??? you're telling me that Jean Paul had time to get into grad school, have his disaster stint as Batman, dismantle the Order of St. Dumas, and survive a year of No Man's Land all before he was twenty two??? DENNIS PLEASE BE SERIOUS.
and he starts out this issue celebrating his birthday! he's a FRESH twenty two! ALLEGEDLY.
from Azrael: Angel of the Bat #66 (2000)
I'm going to IMPLODE in the VERY NEXT ISSUE they've upped him to 23 years 😭
HELLO WE'RE BACK ON OUR BULLSHIT IN AZRAEL #73
DENNIS WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE'S NEVER READ FICTION. DENNIS.
Dennis!!! in Azrael Annual #3, which you wrote, JP goes on such an intense kick reading old school detective stories that he starts talking like a hard boiled private eye. hello. hello!!! you wrote that, Dennis!!!
also, and I really hate to harp on this, but Dennis. he went to high school, Dennis.
(from Azrael #25)
Dennis you wrote that too!!! he went to high school!!! he was in GRAD SCHOOL when he became Azrael! how has he never read any fiction Dennis!!!! I'm in hell!!!
back to JP's age real quick. less 15 issues after celebrating either his 22nd or 23rd birthday, JP is back to being in his "mid to late twenties." don't ask about the crocodile.
from Azrael: Angel of the Bat #81
The thing you need to remember about comics ages and timelines is that yeah it's messy there are retcons at stuff and it will never be clear and perfect. But also, DC has an interest portraying age the way they do. They have an interest in aging Barbara down so she can be Dick's pretty girlfriend with whom he raises a cute dog (and maybe a cute little family next perhaps?). They have an interest in trying to keep Tim young and draw him younger than he looks so they can milk his Robin's popularity for as long as possible. They have an interest in drawing Jason to make him look 40 when Bruce slits his throat, to make him look like a grown man fighting a teenager when fighting Mia even though they're the same age (though i mantain that mia is a little bit older), in having him call Tim kid even though they're the same age, in having him offer Tim a drink and Tim pointing out he's not legal when Jason isn't either. They have an interest in Jason looking older in Jim Aparo's art style in ADITF than he looked in precrisis or in 308. They have an interest in Steph magically looking older in War Games, where she gets tortured and brutally murdered, than the fun colourful round and much more youthful art from her Robin run. There are probably many more examples but bottom line it's not fucking innocent. DC knows how to hire artists that know how to draw children it's really not that hard. Characters who look young, characters who remind you that they are young, create more empathy; which is good when you want the public to continue to root for them, and bad when those characters challenge the status quo or that excess of empathy might create pushback after you decide to have them brutally murdered. DC can't have Batman grievously wounding and causing the death of his underage son, but if he looks as old as Batman? DC can't have Jason making a valid point about vigilantism being unsafe for Mia and relating with her with childhood sexual abuse subtext because it makes the heroes (and especially Batman) look bad, but if it looks like this is a grown ass man harassing a teenage girl, then it's clear who is the villain, it's okay, no problem. DC needs Barbara to be younger so the power dynamic between her and Dick fits their idea of a perfect little nuclear family much better and they can shove Barbara back into the role of Batgirl even though she is very much a girl rather than a woman. DC needs Steph to look older when she's tortured so they can be edgy without people being too horrified at them doing something horrifying, DC needs Jason and Steph to look older on the day they die because young looking= innocent which makes it so much harder to victim-blame. DC needs Mia to look younger than Jason so they can make it look like the good old "good victim/bad victim" dichotomy and even though that's not what the story is actually about, regardless of how much it disrespects Mia's character to do so. DC needs Jason to look ugly because it's harder to empathize with ugly people and it makes it so much clearer who is the bad guy and who is the good one, and it's a much easier dichotomy, so much more comfortable than challenging the whole mythos around which Batman is built. DC needs Barbara to be sexy in their traditional male-gaze way, because this is the audience they're trying to appeal to.
So like, I know that I'm nit-picking when I say "actually according to any and all logic Jason is younger than Tim by a couple of months and than Mia by around three years". Or when I say "they should bring back Dickbabs' old age difference" or even interact with Dickbabs as if they still have that difference and refuse to interact with Tom Taylor's version of the ship. I know comics are incoherent and the timeline is messy; but just because it's messy, just because it's always been, doesn't mean it's innocent. So I'm gonna keep nitpicking, and I'm gonna stay an annoying bitch, because I refuse to allow comics to manipulate me out of my empathy. And because I don't see everything and am very aware of how easy it is to be manipulated even when you're careful, I encourage you to add to this with things you've noticed whether it's in portrayal or in art about character age, appearance, or any other device they might use to manipulate our perception of the characters -and what narrative these resorts serve.
This man's ability to think on his feet is excellent.
~ A Lonely Place of Dying
I'm screaming again. He keeps going to call Dick "Robin" before switching to "Nightwing". You could interpret that as "he is used to work with Robin not Nightwing", but for me, it's "Dick may be all grown-up, but he will forever be his baby, his Robin. And rn, Bruce misses his babies, he misses his Robins, with Jason's death and Dick too far away".
Do you think when duke cracks his back his spine lights up like a glowstick or like nah
it has always been charming to me how these two work together for familial objectives when it comes to Bruce and Dami.
I procrastinated a whole lot but I finished mostly
As always thank God all the Gotham villains are deep down, attention seeking whores.
Bruce, lying in bed night after night, terrified of taking his brand new kid on patrol because the kid is a daredevil that puts all of Bruce's previous antics to shame.
Bruce: *silently fuming in anxiety and worry like he's never felt since he decided to write off his life at the ripe age of 10*
Bruce: *sneaks out of room, quietly, so as to avoid waking up the eight year old with superhearing who might think it's patrol time*
Bruce: "Alfred. Alfred! What do I do?"
Alfred, groggy: "Master Wayne? Is something rotten in the state of Denmark?"
Bruce: "No it's me, wake up already, I need advice."
Alfred: "Sleep is essential sir. I'm sure whatever you're looking for will come to you overnight. If we're both very lucky sleep will return soon."
Bruce: "You're useless Alfred. You're fired."
Alfred: "Very food Master Bruce. Breakfast at eight?"
Bruce, aglow in epiphany: "I could fire him."
dick grayson's personal enemies list pre-chemo
dick grayson's personal enemies list post-chemo
Bruce: oh my god, I'm so worried, Dick has been kidnapped, what if something happens to him.
Dick:
Literally
Dick: what do you mean "scared"? Bitch I'm busy
Because I find stupid things funny, I like imagining that the Batkids need to tail someone, but obviously they can't be using the Batmobile or one of the stupidly flashy cars owned by Bruce Wayne, so they steal one. This plan works brilliantly, they maintain a phenomenal distance from the target, and then, because Gotham is Murphy's law citified, there's a police checkpoint for some other criminal and now them and their nervous criminal are trapped in a horrible, inescapable queue of cars.
To make matters worse they need to decide if they're gonna try and hide their costumes-- which only leaves them dealing with the lovely matter of the stolen car they have no papers for-- or stay in the suits and try talking, punching, escaping out of this, while alerting the criminal they were tailing.
While bored on cases the Batkids treat each other like WebMD and ask if their symptoms are normal, and since no sibling wants to take any chances or miss something underdiagnosed, they always return home with two types of cancer, an autoimmune disease and a rare genetic disorder.
