Say It With Me Now Comic Bruce Sucks - Blog Posts

That moment when you realize Bruce Wayne’s canon “favorites” aren’t his favorites… their his ideal selfs.

Bruce isn’t a ‘girl dad’ or ‘loves Dick because he’s his eldest’ no. That’s not it. He likes Cassandra because she’s has his exact moral code with little to no differences, she follows it to a tee. He likes Dick because Dick is his perfect version, his ‘success’ the best version of his exact situation. He loves them sure, but he doesn’t favor them because of love. It’s to further his own ego.

This is proved with Jay, to take care of Jay he had to push his own feelings onto Jay. To ‘fix’ him. Jay didn’t need ‘fixing’ or an outlet, he needed compassion, GENUINE compassion. Not self imposed compassion or understanding by grafting his experiences over Jason’s and making it more about himself then Jay.

He needs to keep making others ‘better’, that’s why he keeps Jay around. But shuns him too. Bruce needs to fix Jay, but Jay is imperfect, a stain on his legacy. So he can’t.

If you think about it from this perspective, Gotham War starts to actually sound completely in character. He succeeded, he ‘fixed’ Jay in his mind.

Same with Damian, not exactly, but close. He just couldn’t be the one to ‘fix’ him. Yeah he values Damian because he’s his son, but paying attention to him regularly? Nope. Damian’s been ‘fixed’.

Tim doesn’t need to be fixed, he fixed Bruce so Bruce ignores him. Any attempt at fixing would be met with a wall.

As for Stephanie he couldn’t twist her story to fit his narrative, so he just completely rejects her. 

Cass and Dick are his legacy. They were ‘fixed’. That’s why he values them.

Some food for thought, I personally don’t like this, I like good dad Bruce Wayne that values all his kids equally and tries to reach out to Jay because he genuinely wants to help his son but won’t put Gotham in danger because of himself. He pays attention to Damian, praises Tim, wants the best for Steph even if she isn’t his daughter.

But, when you think of the wider scale of Bruce’s actions in the comics (without thinking of the hand of the author) this pattern is a thing. I REALLY want to be wrong.

PLEASE COMICS LET BRUCE BE A OKAY DAD! NOT EVEN GOOD JUST OKAY IS FINE! JUST LET HIM LOVE HIS KIDS EQUALLY AND WITHOUT ANY STRINGS ATTACHED!