Batman X Batgirl: The Problematic Ship NO ONE WANTED

i think we've got a problem no shit yeah being an 80 year old pop culture icon there's not really a single character that hasn't been shipped with the batman yet despite being attracted to crazy somehow the most controversial relationship isn't his thieving ex or rapist baby mama but the redhead in the back seat it's a thing and just like covet it won't fucking go away and for the uncultured people in the back who don't know who batman is or any of his other cast members who look at this at face value and just see two attractive people banging and wonder what's the problem here's the context batman got his best friend's daughter pregnant who is also his adopted son's ex and that doesn't sound bad enough by all estimates the big b is close to being twice her age this ship is a dumpster fire in a straw house and every time someone brings it up it burns that shit down and while i won't police what y'all ship not my thing and it'd be pointless for me to even try this is a pairing that should have stayed on what pad instead though the networks made the mistake of hiring its biggest supporter who made it canon so now we all have to deal with it i'm sarcastic chorus and today we'll be talking about the cradle robbing adventures of batman and how we got to this point why does everyone hate this why i hate this and looking at two of the worst moments in batman history buckle up grab some popcorn because i'm not being gentle with this one now these characters should need no introduction but we're here so i might as well make fun of them i'm batman batman is every guy's wish fulfillment character people give isekai a lot of crap and deservedly so batman though is almost just as bad as he's rich with no parents a father figure that he can fire has all the coolest toys and just hangs out in his man cave all day the fact that he's constantly miserable only adds the appeal because being so dedicated to a job that treats you like shit is relatable also being surrounded by women he only has time to hit and quit is another fantasy men have not gonna lie though i do love batman he's got the best rogues gallery and the dark superhero vive will never not be cool until it gets too edgy in which case please just stop but what i can't stand is just how he's gotten to this point where he is so jerked off as this master planner who can defeat anyone if he has prep time he's not a man or a bat at this point he is just a god honestly for me he is at his best when he is on the ropes which is why stories where he is getting his ass kicked like the court of owls hit so much better at the end of the day batman aka bruce wayne is just a guy in a costume trying to make the world a better place with his only real superpower being his bank account and lying to the irs now usually i would go in to talk about his personality but that kind of gets tricky from here on out as he can swing from maladjusted man-child to a fascist psychopath more obsessed with killing superman than fighting crime or just being the bat dad the character has a lot of range and a lot of different interpretations and no one take is actually better than the other except batgod that is the worst basically you just have to make sure he doesn't kill people and pretty much everyone will come away happy minus the punisher batman fans no one cares about them though by far the most iconic batman in existence is the one from the animated series it's the one i grew up on and just struck a balance between him being a badass detective and just being a guy trying to do the right thing well he would slowly start to veer just a bit too hard into the i know better than everyone else batman we would see in the justice league show overall he was the bat with the most man in him who tried to help the traumatized people he was fighting the show is amazing and i highly recommend everyone give it a watch if you have an hbo account but where there's light there's shadow so it's saying that the best version of batman also has his dirtiest moments it was fantastic like fireworks let's talk batgirl batgirl aka barbara gordon aka bavs i will jump around between all them depending on how i feel is the daughter of police commissioner gordon aka the guy who turns on the nightlight telling batman to do his job eventually barbara herself would don the tights and fight crime alongside the big b and whatever extra body he's dragging along at the time mackerel pretty popular character that goes without saying while tragedy in movies has created a pretty rough outline of what people can expect from a batman batgirl is pretty much a free-for-all bounce between a young adult who don't even think about it and for the record when she was first created she was depicted as an adult she was closer in age to batman than she was to robin then the animated series came out was great that wreck contoured to be closer to robin's age than batman and from then on everyone just treat this as the default with a few key exceptions that girl personality wise bounces around from a wisecracking fan girl who's just happy to be here to the more technical and serious grown-up in the room it really just depends on what the rest of her cast is like and what the vibe of the show is going for batgirl kind of just has these cycles where she goes from that spunky and relatable hero to dark and bitter with one vibe replacing the other whenever people just get sick of the first one with the edgy trauma porn expiring faster than warm milk is you can't really talk about batgirl without mentioning the killing joke which is somehow the only thing some people want to talk about see the killing joke is pretty much the seminal batman joker fanfic with it diving into joker's possible origin while he tries to prove that one bad day can drive anyone to become insane just like him so to prove it he picks jimmy fuck my life gordon to be his test subject kidnapping and torturing the man for days but in the process of kidnapping him the joker in a hawaiian shirt gut shots barbara at home to take naked pictures of her body to help gordon get to crazy town now personally i like the killing joke when it's good it's great when it's not it's still pretty okay except when it comes to batgirl who was done so unbelievably dirty not only did she get shot like she hadn't been a superhero for years everything that happens to her is just an excuse to make her dad and batman feel bad it's woman in a closet to a tee which is bad and what makes this worse though is what happens afterwards because this story was considered so great so groundbreaking put on such a high pedestal that every comic book writer considered it canon this story was going to be in every batman story that followed by the comic book writers meaning barbara getting shot was going to be canon in all of them so batgirl got paralyzed and she was gonna stay like that for years like just take a step back imagine this from her fans perspective you spend years loving batgirl you love seeing her fight crime punch bad guys being on the ground with the bat family only for her to get paralyzed in a story that wasn't even about her so yeah people were pissed about this she did continue to be hero as the oracle where she was pretty much kind of tech support she just became like the super smart hacker really started rocking the glasses look and becoming one of if not the biggest disabled superheroes at dc so naturally because of comics they retcon the whole thing making that she's only temporarily paralyzed she got better over a course of some like two years or something like that which pissed off all the fans who'd come to like her as oracle was approved by some fans who felt like this was just restoring her to her true form but also pissed off all the other bad girls the killing joke honestly had a bigger effect on batgirl than joker or batman in the long run which is insane because she's barely in the book so naturally when they adapt it they want to correct this mistake by fleshing out her character but before she gets capped and they dropped the magic 8 ball so hard we still haven't found it what the hell have you done overall i think batgirl is fine there's a lot of different versions of her i like some of them but i don't hate any of them i have a soft spot for the teen sidekick version in the batman and the new harley quinn show made her a blast but everyone's fun in that show but these variations make talking about these two together an absolute pain so we're just gonna narrow this down to the relevant stories the batman animate series batman beyond the killing joke movie and the worst comic book tie-in of all time and let's talk about that variation brahm because to me it makes this so much worse because batgirl and batman are different things to different people they are different characters they have different personalities they have different ages it all gets tweaked based on the story and whatever depraved soul is writing it some things stay the same like the ears and the dead parents but everything else you never know and while this might seem like a get out of jail free card letting different writers tell completely different stories with basically the same characters this actually is one of those things that make this ship a non-starter for many people his age is one of those things that just doesn't matter in comics batman has raised six plus kids yet they still want to pretend he's barely 30. despite his long history of helping orphan children find cooler ways to die he's turned child sidekicks into young adults yet batman's age will always be ambiguous adult with the comics even going so far as a claim he's like 28 with a 12 year old son while batman is always the adult the robins and batgirls get used in their teen and adult selves so when people hear that batman banged batgirl on a rooftop people conjure up vastly different images and none of them are okay like this is depressing but like best case scenario she's 18 and he's a 35 year old sugar daddy which isn't batman behavior but it's apparently superman's adding to the yuck factor is that even in this best worst case scenario is that batman always works alongside police commissioner gordon and you have to imagine that he is at least aware of her existence and hopefully not waiting at the starting line piece grooming is a thing it's not something canonical to any of their relationships officially but batman knowing background when she's younger then hard cut to this yeah you can see why a lot of people hate this just flat out throw in the power imbalance of having your mentor deciding he wants to sleep with you and that is every kind of creepy making it so that she came onto him doesn't help as he should know better as a man with personal experience with stiff parents unless it's something in a vacuum like the lego movie the specifics of how old each party is when did they meet and what the fuck happened to dick is suddenly a very important question everyone is asking unless all of them are addressed you're gonna have pissed off fans speaking of dick let's bring up the former boy wonder dick grayson is the first robin he later got sick of batman's shit and decided to become nightwing originally a circus reformer before his parents got gunned down by the mob batman decided to adopt him to prevent him from turning into an angry less rich version of himself a batman does adopt him he does treat him like a son batman hopes that dick doesn't turn out to be the brooding angry asshole that he is he wants dick to have a life of his own which he pretty much does he turns out to be the fun robin the guy who is the most relaxed the man-ho the guy who's just here to have a good time while wearing the tightest pants possible but what makes dick really relevant to this is that on top of being a bit of a man hoe he's also the most popular pairing with batgirl when he's not banging the alien barbara and dick have a long history in the comics so that relationship naturally gets transferred over to most of the animated series that they both appear in even if you don't ship them this pairing is ingrained in the characters but them having data being considered the default even when dick doesn't make an appearance and this opens a nasty ass can of worms on batman and batgirl getting together as not only do they have a power imbalance not only are the age gaps worrying it's the fact that he's banging his son's girlfriend also again his best friend's daughter would you give me a second look i know the bro code doesn't really exist but this still somehow found a way to violate it because it would be weird if your best friend started sleeping with your ex gonna happen it would be weird if your boss slept with your ex but if your dad did that to you though no amount of family therapy is ever gonna fix that mess especially when it's the bat family making it basically incest all this wraps up into a clusterfuck of reasons why people would shoot this pairing on site even if they get written to have chemistry the effect it has on the larger cast of characters and the judgment it would bring down from dick gordon and everyone else oh dear makes this a taboo subject that no one would touch because it's simply not worth it it's right up there with gwen stacy having sex with the green goblin and having his twins it's something that sounds terrible on paper yet they still did it anyway and with all that other ways all the many many reasons why people don't really put this in canonical works again fan fiction it's whatever you can do whatever the fuck you want but for the canonical material that general audiences will watch and enjoy why did this become a thing why did this happen why did it happen here why did she have a crush on him in the animated series why was she pregnant with his baby the answer is bruce tim now bruce tim is one of the guys who developed and produced the original batman anime series tim helped come up with the design and art for the show along with erica radamosky probably butchered that this show wouldn't exist without him and i gotta respect him for that but sadly the man is the reason i'm making this video because bruce loves this ship and we are all suffering for it now this wasn't something that started all at once the animated series at least pretended batman liked women his own age in fact in the first run of the series it's not even present which should be great on paper but this is all one continuity making some of their earlier interactions come off as not great barbara come in you've grown it's been what four years home from college for a visit see that as an introduction is totally fine for a family friend bruce's age range is most likely early 30s to like around 35. barbara and this just started college putting her at around like 17 to 19 which makes the idea of them being together pretty sketchy but it's happened beyonce and jay-z if you want an example but then it just gets worse though it's been what four years all right i've heard enough lock his ass up forever this is what i mean by the shipping vibes being non-existent at first making this ship look worse bruce is written to be a family friend or an acquaintance of her dad meaning these little paternal moments are in your mind when we smash cut to them flirting over the phone years later if batgirl is 19 to 17 in this version that means he's known her since she was either 13 or 15 and the fact that they end up hooking up makes it look like in retrospect that he is just waiting till she's legal and it's just not a good look this makes these scenes feel predatory in hindsight but the fact that she is introduced like this that she has a teddy bear with her and everything it's a joke for gordon but you can feel what they're aiming for in this scene and from there barbara would pop up here and there usually when we need someone to cry about her dad there are continuing to be no romantic vibes between them as bruce or as batman this just wasn't an option he pretty much just tells her to stay safe reinforcing that do as i say because i know better part of their relationship when barbara does become batgirl though it's almost entirely by accident when her dad gets arrested and a series of misunderstandings makes her decide to become a hero part-time and when the new adventures come out she gets upgraded to the main cast replacing robin but throughout both series we see both her and dick have a thing and start dating this is also when they start throwing emotes between her and bat daddy barbara hey fabs you know what i'm fine with this no really no joke i think it's fine that she's crushing on batman honestly who wouldn't look at that jawline her being into him is not the problematic part i've been crushing on angelina jolie since i was 12. we all have that older crush that's not the problem the problem is batman later reciprocating those feelings deciding that the woman he's known since she was 13 who he has mentored worked with is the person he's going to jump in bed with there's so many reasons why this is a big no for me and i know people are gonna say in the comments that they have happily married parents with larger age gaps than 20 years the problem here though is that batman knew her when she was a teenager which adds to the creepy undertones that just don't need to be there throw in the fact that she is his adopted son's ex then you have a ship that i am praying hits an iceberg this all just builds up to what is probably the worst attempt to pair these two up together and add drama no one was asking for which brings us to the comic batman beyond 2.0 it is thankfully a non-canon comic book it's just a spin-off following the batman beyond cast which was a tv show where bruce has reached his final form of being a bitter angry old man his secret son is in the suit barbara is the police commissioner but because we can't have nice things this is the series where they confirm that batman and batgirl dated kill me one of the weirdest sticking points though of batman beyond was that we never found out what happened to dick he's just barely mentioned never appears so this comic boy decides that we need to reveal why dick and batman don't talk anymore and it is some soap opery ass bullshit the comic takes place after the revenge of return of the joker specifically it takes place a week after batman and girl rescued the second robin tim drake who was tortured and transformed into the joker's mini-me the joker died tim was recovered and dick came back into town after the fact because despite months of searching they never decided to call him over from his home city of bloodhaven but he's back so barbara and tim decide they're gonna get back together because the emotional whiplash of their little brother getting mutilated just really sets the moon things are great though for those first couple weeks only shocker abs is pregnant but rather than jumping for joy or suing bat condoms she goes to batman and tells him the news she's seven weeks pregnant and dick has only been around for three of them that's right batman is the baby daddy and because this is emotionless batman he just asks if this changes anything and lies saying that he'll stay out of this waiting for babs to tell dick everything but as soon as she's out of sight he swoops in and lets his adopted son know that he cucked him now finding out that your adopted dad knocked up your girlfriend isn't going to go down well in any situation but to dick's credit he does focus on the important things here asking when when did this happen is batman's known how dicks felt about her for years he knew that they dated there's no way out of this fight dick just wants to know how angry and betrayed he should feel right now the answer is after he moved away probably immediately while batgirl was still in college with them having hooked up again while robin 2 was getting tortured but spring break will be coming up soon and i'll be back in gotham for two whole weeks won't that be nice yes i hope you guys are having fun with this story because i'm not the pregnancy is the last straw and tim just starts beating the shit out of his old man who's just taking it which is the only chivalrous thing the dark knight has done all video also abs has a miscarriage because fighting crime i hate it this story is honestly terrible it has no reason to exist and the fact that it's supposed to be in the batman anime universe is just so wrong on so many levels the hints of bara having a thing for batman are there only and beyond though was it confirmed to be a thing with all other instances of it appearing being retconned in by later media despite no one wanting this to be there as not only is it creepy from the get-go but their initial dynamic her relationship with dick all of it just creates a situation where no one is really down for this pairing as just screws over what people really care about the bat family the dynamic him having this relationship mean that if something happens everything just implodes it ruins his relationship with her with dick with her father it is a time bomb that fucks with so many different things in the story that you basically have to have tunnel vision for these two getting together to ignore something like the lego batman gets a pass only on the technicality that they're both around the same age robin is a teenager and that they don't even get together everything else though carries over that dick and barbara relationship it carries over that age difference it all just builds up this creep factor that just isn't worth ever exploring batman x batgirl doesn't add anything to either of these characters it makes batman look like a predator well batgirl having a crush could be fine more often than not though it only hurts her character reducing her to just being the love interest which is exactly what happened with the killing joke movie people are already sick of this pairing they don't like it being mentioned the killing joke was the story that changed the entire trajectory of her life but she was only a footnote in it so the idea of doing an adaptation that gives more time to her it would have been a great opportunity to let her shine to give her that relevancy so it doesn't feel like she's just there to get hurt it wasn't going to undo what happened it could have really made us feel for this tragedy rather than just being an accessory to hurt someone else to make her more than just the woman who gets hurt to affect the main men instead though they double the fuck down look you don't need to know the context of how we got here the scene speaks for itself instead of exploring her character before she got paralyzed they give her and batman sexual tension with her frustration of not getting the d being the main undercurrent for their entire relationship it adds nothing weakens the story and makes one of the coolest women in comics just the love interest for batman no one want this no one needed this and bruce tim comparing their relationship to a parent and child is the death nail to me forever looking at this thing again batman has plenty of non-creepy love interest to be shipped with batgirl can date basically anyone she wants and i for one love problematic couples they're usually super fun this one though makes me want to go straight to the cops shit like this happens in real life and this is some representation i can't get behind i hate this with every fiber of my being i'm sure someone's gonna argue in the comments but i just don't care this ship is dead to me thank you all for watching have a good one i think we've got a problem no shit

Channel: Sarcastic Chorus

Views: 1,611,265

Keywords: batman, batgirl, thebatman

Id: PrAaPv1vfYY

Length: 24min 48sec (1488 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022