this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Instead of being trained by Ras Al gul, he’d have been trained under both 4chan and qanon. Instead of working out his emotional demons by maiming henchmen, he’d be an incel shitposting. Instead of Alfred admonishing him to be careful, he admonish Bruce to go outside and socialize once in a while

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Batman could have done more good as Bruce Wayne and instead dressed up like a bat to beat up street level thugs. If he was real, I don't think it would make a difference what time period he was in, he'd still be traumatized by his parents death and decide to dress up like a bat to beat up street level thugs.

[–] [email protected] 121 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Batman was a CEO of a company.

[–] [email protected] 70 points 4 months ago (8 children)

not to mention he's a psycho himself. instead of using his seemingly infinite wealth to engage in any real systemic change, he puts on a fucking bat costume and prances at night to beat the shit out of low level goons while letting the biggest maniacs and the ones leading these gangs run away every time.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 4 months ago (1 children)

instead of using his seemingly infinite wealth to engage in any real systemic change, he puts on a fucking bat costume and prances at night to beat the shit out of low level goons

Some of the better Batman comics introduce him as skilled detective, rather than a superhero whose power is infinite money.

Like any good crime thriller, his work starts with some innocuous crime or tragedy that gets swiftly covered up by corrupt police. Batman steps in as a noir vigilante, listening to the witnesses everyone else ignored and tracing the crime back to the low-level thugs who serve as pawns in a much bigger game. He extorts them for information in order to move on to bigger fish - the crime boss who runs the docks or the sleazy businessman who thought he could pay to make a problem go away - and uncovers a deeper systematic corruption. He runs into various freaks and geeks - your two-faced DA or your web-fingered club owner - who facilitate the city-spanning crime. And, in the climax, he discovers the whole system is rotten, even to the point where his own Wayne Enterprises is complicit in these cruelties.

He discovers the limits of vigilantism, its not just a question of biting into a few bad apples, but tearing the rotten tree out of the earth root-and-branch. And he realizes its too much for one man to change. So he goes back to that first original witness/victim, and he brings him back to his cave. And he sets himself to training this survivor of a broken system how to fight crime like he does.

The best Batman stories aren't the ones where he punches a Clown Prince out of a factory window. Its ones in which he pulls another scared child out of the wreckage of his parents' home and gives him a second chance at life.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

instead of using his seemingly infinite wealth to engage in any real systemic change

Do we know this? I don't follow the comics at all but do they ever go into the things Bruce Wayne does as CEO of Wayne Enterprises? I can't fathom we have gone decades without someone touching on this.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (6 children)

i don't follow the comics but things that are established that i know of are:

  • Bruce Wayne is insanely wealthy
  • Uses his wealth for his bat-themed middle age crisis (bat sports car, bat private jet, bat motorcycle, bat gondola probably)
  • Other than that the best thing he does for other people is "philanthropy" (in the real world this is a scam by the wealthy) unless you count taking in his ~~young lover~~ sidekick
  • The police and the politicians are extremely corrupt and are for sale.

Now from all this i gather it would be very easy for Bruce to get actual political power in Gotham to make real change but he doesn't do it because running around in a furry costume is more fun.

Even apart from that, sneaking around in a costume talking about how you're the night or the knight or whatever is on its own very cringe and psychotic.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Well he did have his parents murdered in front of him as a child.

That shit twists people.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

i mean yeah, I'd totally support this angle but DC usually uses him as the moral compass of the entire universe while making Superman go nuts instead.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

They don't fight their own kind.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

Yeah I was thinking about this in regards to superhero relevance.

A relevant Spider-Man story today would be one in which Spider-Man is saving people from the NYPD. Webbing up cops doing stop and frisk, terrorizing a racist cop, fucking with the mayor who shut down libraries on Sundays.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago (2 children)

You've got Batman mixed up with the Punisher, OP.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Isn't Queen also a billionaire CEO..?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Trust fund baby, but part of his story is that he straight up murders rich and powerful people who aren’t using it to benefit society.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

That would work too.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

This reads like he was real at some point in the past.

[–] [email protected] 130 points 4 months ago (1 children)

My brother in Christ, Batman is a billionaire CEO.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Yeah but he is on "our team" though!

People can't spot corpo propaganda, a lot of educating to be done.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

You’re thinking of the punisher

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The joker isn't the disease in Gotham, he's the symptom. In a world where the effort of an individual results in proportional gains, where people have a home, family, and attachments to their community, there is no joker. The populace is innoculated against his desire to tear it all down, because they have a stake in "it all". The few that are vulnerable to his views, are getting the support and care they need from trained staff, and the people around them are keeping the joker away. Batman isn't in Gotham because of the Joker; the Joker can exist in Gotham because of Batman, a billionaire who spent his efforts and resource on violence, instead of outreach.

Plus, giving OSHA some teeth, and forcing corporations to compensate fairly for workplace accidents, and regulations requiring the inspection and certification of toxic chemical plants would have stopped the joker, and countless other tragedies, at a fraction of the cost.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Treating people with dignity and respect creates a functional society...

Doing the opposite ...

Until we start naming people who are doing this nothing will change but NPC normies worship their dear daddies

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think more Superman.

He is just a working class guy, both his wife and his own job are probably getting replaced by AI, his mother pension keeps getting lower and his dad died because he couldn't afford proper healthcare.

Also his arch nemesis is already a Billionaire.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Martha and Pa both got hooked on Oxy in the 00s, nothing Superman can do about it. He tries writing a big expose as Clark Kent but the Planet kills the story because Perdue buys a lot of ad space with them.

Public got too weird about Supergirl, forcing her to retire as incels kept jumping off of buildings so they could grope her when she saved them.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 4 months ago (3 children)

No he won't, batman fulfills every billionaires fantasy of dressing up in a costume and beating up poor people.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 4 months ago

The former richest man in the world gave away much of his fortune and continues to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett#Wealth_and_philanthropy

Bruce Wayne is not like that at all though. He's in a position where he could actually do something about the problems of Gotham City and decides to go LARPing instead.

To be fair, he beats up a bunch of rich criminals too but he whole thing is really more about his ego than about doing good.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Yes. Not one really questions why Gotham has such a high crime rate, but where there's poverty there's crime. I think we need a working man's batman.

Someone whose super power isn't having infinite resources.

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