frankenbaby:

joons:

it’s just bizarre to me that what draws me to bruce wayne as a character is how broken he is psychologically, how easy it is for him to want to ignore his own code, how much time he spends in ISSUE after ISSUE dreaming of killing criminals, of killing himself, of the deaths he has caused by accident and trying to bury them so far back he never has to deal with them.

and then we got that version of bruce wayne on screen, and people said it wasn’t really batman, batman would never act like that. it’s all i’ve EVER read batman as, and people who have never picked up a comic want to take away what makes him intensely precious to me? they don’t want to see him struggle with weighty moral problems and his own mental labyrinth? they don’t want that?

that’s why bvs criticism really, really bugs me, like on a deep level. it’s really crazy that people didn’t want to see ONE version of batman that’s as broken on the outside as how he always feels, when there are a million other versions of batman that are calmer, saner, more confident. like why are you so afraid of letting bruce wayne be afraid?

It’s the same reason they can’t stand a Superman that has doubts and existential dilemmas. They can’t stand the idea that these characters, who are ideals to them of what we can be, the perfect, strong, powerful hero, they can’t stand that they are still human, with human struggles and slave to their emotions.

You can’t have a power fantasy with emotional weaknesses, because we’re trained to think that the perfect person is a flawless person. But that’s not true. To be a perfect human is to be flawed. If you’re not flawed you’re essentially a god, and that separates you from humanity.

Arguably what makes Superman perfect is that he has all of the emotional strain that we do and still manages to save the world. He has godlike powers, but he isn’t a god, he doesn’t want to be a god either, he just wants to help people.

And what makes Batman such a compelling character is that he is so broken, and could be the most powerful villain ever, but he is still compelled to do good. Even when he loses his way, it’s still for the greater good, in his mind. And of course, that’s why he really was the main villain of BvS. Because villains always think what they’re doing is right, and can always justify their wrongs. What the audience struggled with is reconciling the ideas that a hero can be wrong. And he was wrong. People complaining that his actions aren’t true to the character are missing what his character is. Because this was Batman finally going off the edge that he’s balanced so precariously on. The edge that he looks down from and knows how easy and comforting the fall could be. But when he hits the ground, he realises that it’s ugly, painful and messy down there. So he has a choice, stay down there, a broken, ugly creature, or climb back up and get a clear perspective again.

Being shown this in a superhero movie is unprecedented. And to be shown it with arguably the most well known and well loved characters in superhero history is unfathomably brave and bold.

And people struggled to understand that if they had a problem with the way the character was behaving, it’s because they were supposed to.

But it damaged their perfect ideal, it punctured the puffed out chest of their power fantasy. There was no understanding that in saying that these characters could fail and still overcome, that they were even more powerful than ever shown. And to be shown them overcoming such obstacles is in fact an inspiration to people with personal struggles. They don’t want to accept that, because to put an element of effort into the power fantasy takes away their “fun”, but it adds so much more meaning. They want perfection and they want zero effort to achieve it. They don’t want human personalities and enotions, because those are seen as weak and distracting. They want cheat codes and convenience, and watching Batman struggle with the very mental illness that makes him the hero he is wasn’t convenient for them. It was difficult, it was real, it was human… it was perfect.