This is badass: Medieval Nubian Fashion Brought to Life. Click through to the link because there’s more replica clothing and it is all stunning!
This is AMAZING.
A young girl walks past a blue door in Assomada. Santiago Island, Cape Verde. ©Kuchnia nad Atlantykiem
I find batcat vs brutalia so funny because that man should die. Straight up be put down like a rabid dog. These ladies should be in the club together. I’m not saying this lightly they should korrasami him
Hello to the one blog I've been loving to read for the past few days :) <3
Just wanted to add a little something that I started thinking abt after reading a few of your really cool posts, I think we should also discuss abt how Bruce's argument abt killing (with Jay) are often framed with "you're not the judge, jury & the executioner" which is really telling of who he thinks can exersise this legitimately? ? ?
I think it'd be constructive to actually properly discuss this aspect of Bruce's philosophy too. Plus, we get more nuanced Bruce characterisation. (Also keeping in mind uh... comic book propaganda of the writers and DC themselves)
YES ABSOLUTELY! Like what if someone is given a death sentence by a court of law? Does Bruce still care? I'm sure most writers would tell you no because Bruce has become a cop allegory. He's a violent enforcer of the law, and he seeks to uphold the law. Which is a recent switch! Batman comics used to be more radical, but now they're being written by old white men. So it's another one of those things where you can ignore it for your PERSONAL INTERPRETATION but you can't say that it's not A Thing because it's been like this for at least a decade.
His argument would likely be that everyone deserves a fair trial, that everyone has the right to be seen in court. Something which I do think Jason would agree with because when he's being written well he's not just shooting petty criminals! Jason's stance comes in with the big players, the disgustingly rich or well connected upper class who get away with murder. This has been true since the Garzonas case, the whole point was that Felipe was virtually immune to the law, and Jason couldn't allow that.
I think what it comes down to is whether they believe in reformative justice or punitive Justice, and I can most assuredly say that Batman believes in the latter. You can argue that Bruce is an advocate of prison reform but we don't really have evidence of that. He considers himself a punishment for criminals, he considers himself an equalizer but that's not true because he just delivers criminals into a system that is fundamentally corrupt and unfair. Do you actually think a trial in GOTHAM of all places is going to look at a rich man vs a petty crook the same way? That rarely happens even in real life.
And I don't think that Bruce does what he does out of inherent malice. Bruce is a deeply empathetic person, the core of Bruce Wayne is that he cares. But that's not enough, Bruce was allowed to grow up sheltered and it gave him an intrinsic idealism. He only has a Birdseye view of what the common people go through, that is not enough to stand there and say that he understands . Because he doesn't. He literally can't. And I think this bias, certainly one projected by the writers but that's another issue, comes through the most with Jason and Steph.
As far back as Jason's Robin era - widely regarded as Bruce's peak of being a good dad - he still makes some pretty big mistakes. Because he finds this homeless kid whose family has been ripped apart by the corrupted systems, who has actively experienced the worst Gotham has to offer, and he comes to the conclusion that if he doesn't take Jason home Jason will inevitably become a criminal even after Jason explicitly says he doesn't like stealing. So he takes Jason in but he makes that position as his son synonymous with Robin. And this is where we have to talk about meta because Jason is intrinsically tied to meta narratives. I'm not sure if you saw my other posts about Robin, as a concept, but I'll summarize here.
Child sidekicks are fine, in early comics. When things were campy light hearted whodunnit mysteries with a few action sequences, when you always knew that the child hero would come out unscathed, would always live till the next issue. And so when Bruce makes Jason Robin you have this veil of suspension of disbelief. But Jason's era is where you start seeing these kids' storylines get worse. More gruesome, more violent, more cruel. They start really testing the limit of Bruce's morality.
Batman: The Cult - Robin Jason has to crawl through a pile of dead bodies and while Bruce is having a mental break this MAYBE 14 year old is trying to get them out. The Diplomats Son - Jason watches a rapist be let go, because he's powerful and his dad has money. He sees exactly the kind of damage it does to the victims, he's the one who finds Gloria Stanson. A Death in the Family - Jason is murdered. Tortured and murdered and betrayed. He's dead and he was always intended to STAY dead. And all throughout Tim's run and then into Steph's the writers retroactively change everything about who Jason was because it has to be HIS fault, because if it's not Jason's fault then it might be Bruce's. Because how can audiences see Bruce as just and good for taking in new kids after what happened to the last one?
The suspension of disbelief shatters. Because now Jason is back and he's angry. Because maybe we as readers know that Tim, and Steph, and Damian need to be Robin because Robin makes money with young readers. But you know who doesn't know that? Jason, who no doubt assumed that his survival depended on being Robin. Who was sold out because he was Robin. Who was badmouthed and disgraced the entire time he was gone by people he loved and trusted. Jason doesn't know that he's in a comic book, but I argue he knows he's in a Batman story.
If not from his first appearance then definitely in recent ones. What can you do besides lay down and forgive and keep coming back when you know that the universe revolves around one man? How do you get rid of the terror and anger at realizing that you can never leave, that no matter how much he hurts you the universe will bend itself in half so that he is still just and right? When you realize that the love that has defined you is a disease rooted so deeply that to rip it out would be to kill yourself, that you can't even stay dead because Bruce does not want you to be.
And they couldn't even stick to Jason being the problem! Because then Steph dies. And all I could think was "Of course she did. She's an East End girl whose been compared to Jason constantly. Or a version of him. Of course she would be tortured to death trying to get Bruce's approval." Here we are, history has literally repeated itself, and...Tim is Robin again. Why? Because this is a comic book, and Batman needs Robin.
But what do you think everyone in-universe thinks? What do you think that looks like? How can you possibly still call Bruce a good parent under these circumstances? Bruce calls Robin a blessing, a gift, a necessity. He relies on Robin, physically to watch his back and emotionally to keep him in line. He trains them, he molds them, he loves them.
But sometimes love just isn't enough and the good Robin does shouldn't negate the harm they get in the process. Robin then becomes this horrible force of change, you get it and you know that this has doomed you, one way or another. Because Bruce believes that suffering is noble, that pain can reform people. It's baked into his character. Even if he doesn't intend to hurt his kids, it's not like we haven't seen him justify it to himself and others. "I love you, I did this for your own good, I thought I could help you, it was your fault I did that, it won't happen again, I lost control of myself but only this once, we can be a family again if you just come home." It reads an awful lot like an abuser trying to convince you or himself that he's not in the wrong.
This was longer than I intended it to be, but I guess my main point is that Bruce and Batman can't ever be fully separated. Something that I think his relationship with Cass shows us he's aware of but chooses to ignore. We know that Batman is dangerous, that he wouldn't hesitate to hurt his kids, we saw that with Zurr-Batman (WHO BRUCE ADMITTED WAS A FACET OF HIMSELF YOU CAN'T SAY IT WASN'T HIM BECAUSE HE HIMSELF SAID THAT IT WAS). So why try and act like it's this impossible out of character thing for Bruce to be harmful? For his kids to feel angry and hurt about his actions or for their feelings to be as or more valid than Bruce's. Batman has and will hurt his kids and Bruce will try to rationalize it all away because he loves them, he would never want to hurt them. And the narrative will tell us that Bruce is right, that this is good and fair and just, that Bruce's perspective is the correct one, that his kids deserve this, because this is a comic book and outrage sells. Or they'll retcon it and pretend it never happened. Or they'll just never bring it up again. Or Bruce will be forgiven regardless just to hammer home how good and right he is.
Because this is a comic book about Batman, and Batman is a hero, he is our protagonist, and so he is reliable and we should never doubt him, or call him out, or be mad at him. Naturally.
never been about me
Why are writers suddenly so bad at writing stories about racism? They didn't use to be
Static Shock and Teen Titans did good, but a lot of recent shows just missed the mark completely
The Star vs. the Forces of Evil monster arc is too heavy-handed, and Star's own savior complex really brings the plot down
The White Fang plotline in RWBY is somehow both too nihilistic and optimistic in its approach
Miraculous Ladybug had one episode that attempted to show racial profiling, but let the racists go away scot-free for their actions
And I'm fully aware this last one will be a massive hot take. The Young Justice Martian plot line just wasn't good. It made no sense why it even exists. They discriminate based on skin color, but they can change appearance whenever they want, and there's an entire ceremony where they turn yellow to devote themselves to a new lifestyle
Edit: Forgot to add. The discrimination in Atlantis makes more sense conceptually, but that's not the prejudice they focus on. The more inhuman atlantean were outrighted hunted by purists for looking different. It's easier to pinpoint where the idea comes from, so it's also easier to systematically tackle every excuse used by racists to justify their own prejudice
The Owl House is the only recent show I can think of that did a decent job of writing racism. And all they did was have the main villain be an unrepentive racist out to destroy people he hates. He's from a time period when all witchcraft is evil, so when he finds a world of them, he wants them gone by any means necessary
Is it so much to ask that writers actually put some more thought into writing stories about discrimination?
How did we go backward for this specific type of story?
The added context of Young Justices focus in the Martian racial storyline as opposed to Atlantis is that then the story gets to focus on M’gann, a white coded character as opposed to Kaldur, an actual POC person, creating a racism storyline where the viewer is never asked to empathise with a POC person.
Instead all of M’gann admittedly very shady behavior is excused because she just *had* to escape Mars. She is posed as deserving of empathy and forgiveness despite the many people she hurt because of her own personal trauma. Meanwhile Kaldur, a black queer man with aquatic mutations never gets to escape. On land and in sea it is narratively impossible like idk most people living in an oppressive society. But still all the harm M’gann has caused on her ascendency to privilege is swept under the rug by the narrative, the only person who doesn’t forgive her being her too ‘into racial equality brother’, but he’s evil so don’t worry about him.
All of this is just an extension of the way the show handled her brain blasting of Kaldur, where her guilt and emotional turmoil over hurting Kaldur is given center stage over Kaldurs own feelings of being hurt. We never even get to find out how Kaldur feels about what M’gann did to him!
Armand frustrates me in my bones because it’s like, you’re not that scared child anymore! I know it’s hard and I know the familiarity of submission is comforting, and I know it’s overwhelming and I know it feels like it’s out of your control, and I know it’s near impossible to believe that you have agency, and that agency can alter things for your benefit, but like, you’re 500 years old. You’re literally 500 years old. You might as well be a god. And the best thing you can think to do with all that power is lock yourself in a cage of your own making. Armand isn’t a mastermind, he’s not even a particularly skilled manipulator, he’s more like a child that got lost in a mall and instead of calling for help or looking for an adult, has stayed in the exact same place for 500 years, and then the mall collapsed and forest took over and then someone built a new mall in its place, and he’s still standing there. And it’s so frustrating to watch because it’s not that he’s incompetent or powerless, it’s that he thinks himself incompetent and powerless, and so refuses to move. And if he ever moves it’s because he’s convinced himself that it’s inevitable. Someone is making him do it, this is an impossible situation, he must bend before he breaks (note: no one is making him do anything, there is no one left in this world that has the power to do so). It’s why his passivity and hurt comes off so duplicitous. It’s not that he’s not hurt, it’s not that he wanted this to happen, it’s that he could’ve prevented all of it but he refuses to because he refuses to see it’s possible. And I love him, and he moves me, but even if someone set up a perfect path to happiness for him, and all he had to do was take that one final step, by himself, no pushing, no cajoling, nothing but free will, nothing but him, he couldn’t take it! He wouldn’t know how!
