SERIOUSLY THOUGH SHE WAS MY FAVORITE BATMAN VILLAIN
Her physical condition didn’t allow her to age
No one took her seriously as an actress
And even when she was trying to get into a happy romantic relationship (albeit with another villain) he still couldn’t take her seriously as a consenting, sexually active and romantically interested adult
That’s a lot of blows to someone’s psyche
and Babydoll is both a sympathetic villain and a formidable one
I remember this episode fucked me up a a kid.
And man, do I wish we could see this Batman again: the Batman that consoles his villains, because the majority (if not all) of them are mentally ill people. And Batman knows this and wants them healthy again, not punished and GOD definitely not dead.
Baby Doll is so underrated as a Batman villain
but her episode was perfect
Batman: The Animated Series
The story of one fucked up, traumatized little boy, doing his best to help other fucked up traumatized people.
The Batman that cares about the inmates is my favorite. He doesn’t put up with their shit, but he does try to reach out here and there and he’s as human as he can be to them.
When Harley was re-institutionalized, he got her that dress she wanted.
In the comics based on B:tAS, there was a time during Christmas that there was snow and it was Mr. Freeze’s fault, and he was making it snow because Christmas was his anniversary with Nora and she LOVED it when it snowed on Christmas, so Batman let him finish mourning before calmly taking him back to Arkham.
He never, ever gives up on Harvey possibly recovering.
Sure, Batman is going to throw punches and do what it takes to take these guys down when they’re hurting or threatening people. And he’s not going be a complete bleeding heart; he has to protect the innocent. He’s going to take them down and take them back to Arkham, but it doesn’t mean he’s incapable of being a bit human to the ones who deserve it.
Batman needs become human again
Because it needs to be here:
Remember that time a young girl with near god-like psychic powers threatened to destroy reality and the only one that could stop her was Batman because he had a previous encounter with her and was tasked with killing her to restore reality.
But instead, Batman sat with her on a swing and kept her company as the girl’s psychic powers slowly killed her.
No?
Fuck you people making me emotional
The. Batman.
This is MY Batman, not the murderous fascist they’ve made him into.
This is what I mean when I say I love Batman
broke: batman doesn’t have any powers
woke: he does have a power and it’s empathy
So there was a time when I thought that superheroes must be shallow machismo pieces about people punching each other. And I thought cartoons were for kids. I decided, on a whim and a bit bored, to watch an episode of Batman: The Animated Series, and, knowing nothing about it, I expected complete junk.
This was back in the stone age, before Netflix, when you pretty much watched what the TV was showing that day, so it was pretty much down to luck what you got. And what I got, that day, was the Baby Doll episode of B:TAS.
I mean,
mind. Blown. Right? I didn’t know you could do stuff like that. Not only did it get me into superheroes, and into animation of all sorts, but it became a gold standard for superhero storytelling. If you want me to believe in a superhero, show me someone who would comfort Baby Doll.
the best trick blizzard ever pulled was tricking a bunch of homophobic gamer dudes into shelling out hundreds of dollars for the collectors’ edition of a game with a lesbian on the box because it came with a statue of a gay man
