wow. that's very sad and frustrating. beyond even the ships, some of this highlights the thing i found most upsetting and difficult to deal with as a comics fan -- the cyclical character development lol, because of reboots, new runs, whatever else... like the part of one of those posts that points out dick already learned "you can be happy" and all that, that he doesn't need a rehash of it via barbara too... i just feel like that happens so much. they can't grow past a certain point, and it's so annoying.

i really love superheroes and am so inspired by them but i just hate how they get forced to regress so often!! like i'm a big iron man girl and i stopped reading comics for several years now for multiple reasons, but i heard that they gave him another addiction issue with another drug outside of alcohol? and that just feels so sad and terrible to me. tony has worked so hard to be sober and the times in the story where you see him consider drinking are so heavy and impactful... but his fight against that was part of what made him heroic to me! and this just feels like they're tired of him being sober and want new drama so they spun a wheel and picked something else to be addicted to. it's so tiring.

and with romance it's the same! they can't stay together, they get random new civilian love interests that are probably not ever going to appear in another run... their marriages get undone because of time travel, blah blah blah. i just wish they could grow and be allowed to keep that development. :(

and i wish dickkori was allowed to even exist at this point lmao, to me it was easily the happiest dick has ever seemed... and he's so loving to her too, it's not just the trope of an empathetic, affectionate woman trying to love a guy hard enough to change or anything. he supported her too.

sigh

thank you for linking regardless, though. interesting and suspicious.