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Description
In an imaginary world not too different from others instantly recognizable to millions of you. in a Gotham City where its greatest hero reigned even into his fifties. He married the former thief turned hero in her own right. And they both became parents to Carrie Kelly, who was so inspired by the Batman, she became his Robin. Then, not so successfully, a second Catwoman. Now well into her early twenties, Carrie had long ago adopted the crime-fighting persona of Harley...mainly because of a unique dream she had of another world that held quite a few differences from her own.

There were times that the Batman and his family, both real and extended, could see into other worlds.

A few nights ago, Carrie and her parents saw into our world. It was a glimpse, but it was enough. It was also too damned much.

From one of Gotham's great towers, the Batman and his mate both considered the city...but it couldn't ease their troubled hearts.

The Catwoman purred to her husband: "Bruce...maybe you should talk to her? It's been almost two days."

The Batman knew exactly who his wife meant. His aging voice was still strong as he simply responded, "Carrie's a strong young woman, Selina. If our daughter needed help, she would have asked."

The wife gently drew closer to her beloved. "It wouldn't hurt to reach out to Carrie. It can be hard to ask others for help, you know."

The Batman sighed. "I never had to ask for help after..." He bowed his cowled head a little. "After I lost my parents. I had to rely on my own will and strength to become the man I am today."

"And you are an incredible man. You are my man, and I'll be your woman forever. But..." Selina hesitated. "Remembner you were alone then, just like I once was. Carrie isn't." She laid a sweet gloved hand on his shoulder. "What we saw might have affected her even worse than...it's affected us."

The Batman gazed at his gorgeous wife. "It's another world, Selina. In the end, it has no affect on us or our world."

The Catwoman's loving green eyes looked into his...she offered quietly, "It might be a world where we're just imaginary characters, but...it's affected me." Her voice thickened with quiet anger and revulsion as she spoke. "To know that even an imaginary version of you could be shown so much disrespect. Be called 'fascist'. And then...!" She shook her head slowly. "And then that version of you was killed by the villains, and the storytellers told the world to call them heroes for that."

Resistant, trying to hold to his legendary inner strength, the Caped Crusader reminded, "That was an imaginary version of me. Well, one of many from what I understand."

"He was still a Batman so many loved. That means so much to me, so please don't say that this isn't affecting you. You don't have to be strong as a bulwark, darling. Not with me."

"I..." In a rare moment in his guise as the dark night avenger, the Batman...wavered. "How could a world exist where anyone would find...entertainment in killing their heroes? No. This is 'entertainment' created by those who disdain heroes. Those who are offended by every damned thing."

Selina nodded and offered with love, "I hate that a world like that could even exist. And how must that be making our daughter feel?"

One parent looked at the other on this bleak night, but before either could say anything else...

...a new voice spoke: "It makes me feel like crap, mom."

Both looked to the source...to their amazing daughter Carrie, who had grown so fast ever since Bruce and Selina got married. Dressed as a harlequin, the beautiful hero's fanciful makeup and domino mask did nothing to conceal the pure despair in her expression. Both Bruce and Selina's hearts broke at the sight. Carrie, also known to this world simply as Harley, mustered all of her strength to speak. "I-I know I can't blame everybody in that world for how it is. It's just a few deranged and super-weird people who are in charge and wanna reset everything. Even their imaginary heroes."

Carrie looked down as her strength slowly, steadily faltered as her inner agony really expressed itself: "These weirdos hate heroes and would rather tell everybody to root for the bad guys and all the horrible things they do just...just because the heroes are way too traditional and not the right freaking color or something! D-dad, there they call every version of you the worst kind of person. It...snff!...i-it's bad enough they had to kill a version of you voiced by Kevin, who was just as awesome!

"They..." Harley could hardly contain herself, and finally couldn't as she moaned, "They made that crazy bitch who has a name like mine not try to do anything to save him, they had that Harley kill him. But oh no, she couldn't just do that! They made it so she had to humiliate him and talk down to him like he was the one who always did the wrong thing! Oh..." She burst into tears and exclaimed, "I was inspired by someone so much like that Harley Quinn, and to know that she'd kill a Batman, ANY Batman -- !"

Before the tortured hero knew it, her father was THERE...so was her mother as the Batman took firm yet loving hold of Harley in his strong arms. He soothed in his deep voice, "Easy, girl. Easy!" But Carrie couldn't stop crying, even as she felt the Catwoman's loving hold behind her, as well. They both needed desperately to give her the warmth of their love on this cold night.

The Batman then gently counseled his adopted girl and crime fighting partner. "That Batman wasn't me. That Harley definitely wasn't you. We both figured out a while ago that you were inspired by a very different Harley...the one Arleen gave her voice to.

"Listen to me, dear girl. Listen. That world is nothing like ours. Their ugly imaginations can try to bring down and even destroy that world's heroes...but they won't." Shakily, the daughter looked up at him. "Just as long as there are those who believe in their heroes, as long as they cherish those like Kevin who brought those heroes to life, then they will resist those who want to reset everything. They will stay strong exactly because their heroes will never stop inspiring them.

"Besides...I suspect certain joyless people want to outrage those who believe in the heroes they despise. What they did to that Batman is horrible...and I'm sure as hell taking it personally too, dear girl." The daughter looked up at her father with wide, wet eyes. He said much more tenderly, "But I refuse to let them get to me. They want to bring those who believe down...please. Don't let them, Carrie."

Still so full of sorrow, Carrie's voice had shifted to become a little stronger...she managed, "I...snff! I won't let 'em bring me down, dad. Mom, I swear to everything I won't!" Harley's breaths deepened...she really reached into herself as the love and support of her parents meant EVERYTHING. "I just hope some real heroes among those who believe will really rise up one day...then they'll kick the reset people out on their asses once and for all!" Harley hoped that...even though it was the 'real' world that would never affect her own, she began to pray for that.

Carrie began to calm, but her father the Batman and her mother the Catwoman didn't stop holding her with all of their love.

Not for a long time.
---
My The Dark Knight (Reloaded!) headcanon might be as imaginary as anything official, but I felt the need to break a certain Fourth Wall in this instance.

I'm sure a lot of you who know and love "Batman: The Animated Series" and especially grew up watching the series hold its noble heroes and hissable villains and everyone in between sacred. Many Bat-fans regard it as the definitive version of Batman, and the importance of Kevin Conroy giving the hero his voice is beyond any and all dispute whatsoever. And it's held in such high regard, perhaps even higher by some than the official canon Batman comics, even though it's a bit different. Now, it may surprise you that the idea of different versions of the same nearly mythical hero and his stories weren't nothing new even in the 20th Century. Just look back to the Greek and Roman versions of the same son of gods being named Heracles on one hand or Hercules on the other!

Different versions of heroes in our American culture, especially when it comes to superheroes, are honestly WAY too many and varied; it would be as hard for a newbie to keep track of them all as it would to be to keep up with the entire anime history of Pokemon! But fans like me have at least had the benefit of growing up with these heroes, which means we have the luxury(?) to gravitate to the version of a given superhero that appeals to us the most. Take Batman all by himself. There was the original Golden Age version who had no trouble terminating bad guys on occasion (and really, out of necessity)...in the Silver Age, it was recounted how he married the Golden Age Catwoman and they had a daughter, the Huntress. Then there was the tongue-in-cheek 1960's Batman where Adam West played Bruce SO straight, that in itself was a source of the show's comedy! Much of the Silver Age of DC Comics was defined by the Earth One Batman best remembered for a blue cowl and gray tights. Hell, like many superheroes, one version or another all depended on who was writing the hero from one decade to the next. Frank Miller brought his imagining of a much darker Batman to TDKR and Year One...but then he lost his damn mind (mainly from, one can suspect, controlled sustances of one kind or another!), because how else does a fan explain the increasingly inferior and nihilistic TDKR sequels or the 'All-Star Batman and Robin' many may never forgive him for? Never mind more Current Year assholes like Tom King who seem dead-set on deconstructing him, changing his character -- this one fool writer decided to have his frigging version of Batman let criminals rob high income victims, AND I WISH I WAS KIDDING! -- and even his sexuality, and yet another idiot writer and DC's editors decided that the hero had to be just as crazy as the Joker. Which is so incredibly stupid. And I haven't even gone into the Batman movies, which are a whole other thing and separate from what's 'official', too! Fans are still arguing whether Tim Burton's Batman or Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight is the bestest version, and may likely always will.

To really emphasize, yes, I absolutely see one comic writer's depiction of a superhero or team of superheroes in their own book as often whole different version of what previous (and often better) writers did before. Another prime example to back my argument is the X-Men of Marvel Comics, and I mean purely the comics, not even counting mediums from animated series to films. Other writers helmed the X-Men up to the 1970s books, with kind of lackluster success; the book was surviving on reprints of previous issues and maybe on the verge of cancellation. Then a certain giant-sized book happened. But to keep the appeal and momentum going, Chris Claremont was brought aboard and his Alpha class writing gave us the fan favorite, seminal incarnation of that most uncanny team that changed in roster more than slightly over the years, and cemented everyone's favorites like Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Storm and way too many more all the way into the early 1990's!

But you veteran X-fans remember what happened after Chris was shown the door by Lee and Harras, right? Things started to change, and I don't just mean in terms of storytelling quality from writers like Scott Lobdell who just weren't equal to the task. The themes that always drove and defined the X-Men and their adventures shifted, and so did the heroes in ways big and small. Each new writer from Whedon to Morrison to Austen gave us THEIR versions (or at least versions mandated by the arbitrary and increasingly political editors) of the X-Men, New Mutants, X-Force and more. Even when Chris came back for the second and final time, I'm sure it was mainly the editors who made him go in directions that just weren't true to the heroes he firmly established before, and you longtime fans know what I mean by that. Then, most recently, Jonathan Hickman up and retconned the X-Men completely into plant people with Cylon 'resurrection protocols', Moira McTaggert was back to life and a mutant just 'cause AND to justify every damned thing, and the X-Men who once strove for peace between the ordinary and the mutated segregated themselves and other mutants to Krakoa -- you know, that evil alien island that wanted to feed off of human mutants back in that certain giant-sized classic, but that's okay since it's a mutant, too! Holy damn...

Long story short, Hickman's version of bigoted and ironically elitist X-Men were completely night-and-day different from Claremont's X-Men or the 1990's X-Men animated series that has many, MANY fans of its own...but it's not the only extreme case. The entire comic book universe of Marvel Comics got rebooted (also by Hickman and the arbitrary editors) in 2015's "Secret Wars". And that was all to basically set up the Current Year no talent 'diverse and inclusive' Marvel NOW! way of things and rewrote heroes into versions who barely even look like the heroes we knew up to '15. Again, all of that only emphasizes that one writer's version of a superhero can be different and even totally untrue to what was most beloved by fans before, or even different from the intent of the creators of those heroes...I will talk more about this some other time, but Batman's also clearly fallen victim to that thanks to total hacks like I just described a few paragraphs ago!

And yeah, in Current Year, you'll see even moar 'reimagined'-slash-totally-different versions of legendary characters and even stories than you can shake a stick at. Just look at DC Comics rewriting its very universe for what seems to be every damn generation of readers. Lately I've gone into how the *original* heroes and villains of Mortal Kombat were switched out and written over arbitrarily by the NRS New Timeline, but then they said 'Wait, let's have a New Era we MIGHT stick with!' Look at the massive difference between the Doctor Who fans knew and loved for decades no matter who he regenerated into...and the version who 'needed' to have a chick put in his shoes and made ULTRA-MEGA lame by the BBC and Superhack Chibnall. How about the difference between the Star Wars and Luke Skywalker everyone knew since the '70s, and Disney and Kathleen Kennedy's Force is Female version that's dropped hard in quality because those morons only care about owning it and beating us repeatedly with The Message? How many of those 'new and improved' versions of fan favorites and even more have been negatively received?

Way. Too. Damn. Many. And the one thing all of those reimaginings and rewritings have in common is that these stories written for 'modern audiences' often objectively and thoroughly SUCK! -___-

One recent version of Batman who was truly positively received and became very nearly just as loved as the "TAS" hero, in part because Kevin Conroy again provided his voice to the Dark Knight, were the Arkham series of video games brought to us by Warner Bros. and Rocksteady. It was a trilogy of games that started with "Batman: Arkham Asylum", continued into the much bigger and darker "Arkham City", and concluded with 2015's "Arkham Knight". Each game took place on a single night(!) where the Batman had to face a huge part of his Rogue's Gallery until he fought the final villain at the end. I played both "Arkham Asylum" and "Arkham City", but was never able to get ahold of "Arkham Knight". For very clear and present reasons which I won't spoil here, the trilogy was mostly true to the canon of the comics, but also deviated in really important ways. This Batman and his Gotham City and his universe were as distinct from DC's book 'canon' as my TDK(R) imaginings, yet due to the thrilling missions and lots and LOTS of sidequests, spectacular game worlds, excellent gameplay, well-written stories, and again Kevin Conroy's pitch perfect performance of a slightly different Caped Crusader made the games favorites to many Bat-fans!

"Arkham Origins", though? That's the redheaded stepchild spinoff of the trilogy that's kind of accepted by fans! That great trilogy was completed right before Current Year and all of its purely political, patronizing-for-its-own-sake, DEI/ESG bullshit took hold and stretched out its tentacles to spear into anything and everything in our culture in the name of elites like the Schwabs and Rothschilds and Bidens and the highest of our world's political-industrial-media complex. C'mon. Don't even TRY to deny it when you look at how things have been going in the past 14 years and has never been more obvious right at this moment. We've been told again and again to throw away the Four Olds and embrace a reset that will involve owning nothing and being happy (Klaus Schwab himself SAID SO!), everyone needs to think the same way or be on the receiving end of cancel -- wait, they prefer to call it consequence culture, we need to shift from eating meat from cows that fart too damn much to bugs, we shouldn't even grow our own gardens because that's SOMEHOW bad for Planet Earth, and on and on and on and on!

Sigh. I've said before I'm as apoliticial as you can get, and I only bring such things up to shine a glaring light upon how negative politically motivated shit can be. Worst of all, they tell us again and again it's all the sake of 'progressive' ideals of 'diversity and inclusivity', but their need to humiliate and even destroy anyone who disagree shows their tyrannical Marxist Puritan hypocrisy. And I said all of that to really set up what I've got to say next, and what I conveyed in a different way thanks to the Batman, Catwoman and their dear girl Carrie in my story and art above. Again, one big thing about Current Year entertainment is that they put The Message before everything else...can you also deny that the quality of our entertainment from comics to films and TV to video games has dipped hard? The basic message we've been getting has been, 'This is awesome just because of everything we have to preach to you, so you'd BETTER buy things like the Saint's Row reboot! We know we're trying to cater to 'modern audiences', which means it's not made for YOU, but buy it anyway! Wait, you don't like that!? HOW DARE YOU! YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE A TERRORIST!' I know you've seen that kind of shit again and again just like I have. It's that kind of unmitigated arrogance and total hubris that makes certain Karens think they can frigging rewrite Japanese anime when they're just supposed to translate it as closely as possible for American audiences.

Warner Bros. fumbled the ball in its video game sector not long ago with "Gotham Knights". It's not to be confused with that dud of a TV show that barely lasted a season, but the quality had clearly dropped from the high point of the Arkham games. The story and gameplay were trying to be like the Arkham trilogy but couldn't stick the landing, and most importantly like that stupid-ass TV show, it was a story set in Batman's world...and Batman wasn't in it! How little Bat-fans knew that game did the Batman and his supporting cast more justice than what we're being inflicted with RIGHT NOW.

Years ago, WB and Rocksteady announced they were coming out with a new game set in the Arkham verse...and Kevin Conroy would be reprising his role as the Batman; he recorded this last performance before he passed away from cancer. If you're a normie, you wouldn't be able to appreciate the excitement this generated. However, time passed. And then MORE time passed as development was delayed on "Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League". Rumors began to swell. More delays kept pushing the game back. And the more news that came, the more ominous things got. Sure, the Suicide Squad has fans of their own being kind-of former villains turned into antiheroes under the yoke of government assholes. Their first movie incarnation was for the most part okay, the sequel/kinda reboot by James Gunn was quite a bit better. The idea of this band of ne'er do wells taking on the frickin' Justice League was hilarious when you thought about it.

The game's subtitle had to be a satirical and even funny joke itself. Kill the Justice League...of America, by the way! The JLA's fans are far more massive in number across the world and go back generations. There's no way that subtitle could be serious, even if this was in the Arkham Universe, where deaths happened before. (Again, I'm not spoiling anything!) A bunch of criminal and in some cases psychotic misfits killing DC's most legendary heroes. There has to be more to it than that, right?

Right???

One thing that Bat-fans weren't immediately aware of was that ever since 2015, those in charge of Rocksteady and most all of their key staff who worked on the Arkham games had left, and more than a regime change happened. Like way too many game developers, ESG and DEI and their hardline rules took hold. Worse, a company with the truly ironic name Sweet Baby Inc. began ah, consulting them. What the hell is Sweet Baby and what makes them ironic, you ask? Well, they basically look over the shoulders of developers, artists, and ESPECIALLY the script writers of an increasing number of game makers to MAKE SURE what they're doing has all the right Messaging and is appropriately 'diverse and inclusive' for Current Year. No, again I'm not kidding. An outside entity is enforcing political will and putting a leash on the creativity of game makers. I've never heard of such a thing when it comes to movies, comics and TV shows, but I'd imagine there's many forces similar to Sweet Baby making sure other forms of entertainment increasingly tow the 'progressive' line of the elite Marxist Puritans.

Want another example of Sweet Baby's influence? Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 video game. Yep, the same game that diminished Mary Jane's traditional beauty, gave Miles Morales the most 'correct' softball missions you could imagine since the dude is a 'POC' (I'm using a term championed by the patronizingly 'diverse and inclusive' there), and the story mostly sucked big ones since so little effort was put into the sequel compared to the first game. Sound familiar? This one asshole at Insomniac outright admitted that okay, they'll give fans what we want, but they'll ALSO not so subtly force feed us 'progressive' things they think we need...basically saying we're too ignorant to realize that until we 'know better' and 'do better'.

That's the kind of arrogance we're talking about. See, there were already plenty of reasons to rethink the decision to get "Suicide Squad: KTJL". The more gameplay of it we saw, it was so painfully obvious the graphic quality didn't even match "Arkham Knight", a game made NINE YEARS AGO! Reports from Beta testers were that the gameplay was mostly bland as hell, your run of the mill shooter. Never mind that up to its release, the game an awesome guy on YouTube named Cyael calls "Sushi Squad" was and STILL is buggy and glitchy AF, and that is not in any way a good thing for a game where you need to be online to play it, even if you're just on single player. And then for the sake of fixing ANOTHER bug or just to 'perform maintenance' for some damn reason, a gamer is shit out of luck wanting to play it at all! Other so-called 'AAA' games have had worse starts, but for a game that was this long in the making? This is beyond stupid.

But let's get back to the 'diverse and inclusive and all around tolerant' story of "Sushi Squad". Yeah, it's only about as frigging 'progressive' as The Last of Us games, where lead girl Ellie was denied a lesbian romance not once, but twice! It's also worse. Far, far worse. If you've seen the clips of the story scenes, you know what I mean, ESPECIALLY if you saw that moment with Not Arkham Harley and Not Arkham Poison Ivy. See, Joker was still Harley's 'Puddin' in the trilogy, but they retroactively changed that for "Sushi Squad" so that Not Harley and Not Ivy were a couple like the comics. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for Not Harley having the hots for Not Ivy, who's been resurrected into a young teenager. Yes, Not Harley was coming on to a pre-adult. I hate to say that the social(ist!) justice warriors writing this with the 'support' of Sweet Baby seem to want to cater to, shall we say, pdf-philes...but it's kind of hard NOT to say so with the damn evidence staring us in the face! :/ :/ :/

In spite of even that, the darkest thing of all is the premise behind the subtitle of "Sushi Squad". "Kill the Justice League", it turns out, was never meant for laughs and open to a 'wait, just kidding!' twist, or simply be an alt timeline thing like the Injustice games; it was as bald-faced serious as a 'mostly peaceful' protester. You do have to legitimately kill the JLA. Think about that. You play certified bad guys to kill some of the most legendary heroes in American geek culture, including a Batman voiced by the late Kevin Conroy, which I spoke of enough in my TDK(R!) story. I've been hearing that Arkham Wonder Woman was the only hero given any respect, but she's still being disrespected by being killed for no good reason!

Yes, I *can* say no good reason. In the story, the JLA are being mind controlled by the evil Brainiac, and that's why the Sushi Squad has to terminate them all. Really?!? I've seen mind control stories done a thousand times better in the comics, where the heroes have to break that control or need help to do it so they can be their true selves again and kick the bad guys' asses! But the ESG/DEI controlled leaders and the token low-to-zero-talent 'creatives' steering the Current Year Rocksteady ship presently can't be bothered to be creative. In the name of The Message and an Agenda enforced by entities like Sweet Baby, this was the best possible way to look 'progressive'...this is an extreme version of narrative 'equity', where the villainous underdogs must be raised up by knocking down and terminating the old guard of heroes, including Superman, BECAUSE they represent 'unconsciously biased' ideals like truth, justice and The American Way. And yes, because the Batman is a rich white male, he has to be called fascist (again) and he has to be yelled at by Not Harley Quinn because he tried to save innocent people from criminals -- who by the way included HER! -- and he was so 'pressive and maybe was the root problem all along. And then she executed him like a crippled dog in the street.

No, Current Year Rocksteady. NO, Sweet Baby. I may have to acknowledge your mean-spirited and ugly bullshit, but that doesn't mean I'll accept it. Most every Bat-fan out there, especially those who cherish their memories of Kevin Conroy as the Dark Knight, never EVER will. This is bad fanfiction. That's all it is. You thought it would be a great idea to kill some of our greatest heroes...suh-prise, suh-prise, that's already making you look like the villains, so it's no shock that you're going to piss people off.

But I have one appeal to make to my fellow fans.

The backlash Current Year Rocksteady and Sweet Baby have rightfully begun to earn doesn't have to be loud. It doesn't even have to be angry, because it's been part of the overall strategy of the social(ist!) justice elites and the fools who endlessly shill for them that *they often count on backlash.* That way when we don't like things from Jake Skywalker being deconstructed and killed to lift up Rey, when one of the real Doctors was resurrected just to be berated so smugly by a Karen and her trans kid because the guy is simply 'male presenting', every time that kind of shit happens and we make our feelings clear, they think they have the built-in defense of saying, "If you don't like it, then you hate women! You hate trans folks and gays and all the 'victim groups' we endlessly turn into purse puppies for our own benefit! You must be a toxic fan!"

The thing is, that kind of defense hasn't been working so well lately. It's the same as the Marxist Puritans saying anybody who'd dare to disagree with them must be 'cis Yahtzees from the other side of Hell' for YEARS...but given enough time, that comeback has become less and less of a defense and holds less and less power because even normies with no stake in our geek culture have come to understand how hollow and self-serving such a defense is. For that and other reasons, the 'virtuous' masks of the SJWs have been slipping more and more, too. Just ask the person working for Volition how well things worked when she called those who didn't like the Saint's Row reboot 'terrorists' -- oh, wait! They're out of business!

If Current Year Rocksteady is so DEI/ESG/Marxist Puritan to dare to do the same to lifelong fans of the JLA and especially Kevin Conroy's Batman and call US toxic, they'll VERY likely suffer the same fate because of their arrogance and politics. They made this game for THEIR OWN sakes, not for the fans. It's the same as when Kathleen Kennedy made the Force female, it was just for her own elevation and meant ONLY to satisfy her and the DEI/ESG gods.

That being said, we don't have to express our outrage loudly, even though we have every justifiable reason as fans. We don't have to feed the dog, and I'm not gonna apologize for using that figure of speech. Ours is still a country and culture based on quality being rewarded and earning things by actually achieving something. "Sushi Squad" is clearly a product of low quality worsened by the fact that all the weirdos and beta cucks and narcissists at Current Year Rocksteady care about achieving is resetting our entertainment into their selfish image.

Therefore, because they put so little effort overall into the game and the fact they're looking for a reaction so they can put themselves on a pedestal, the best solution is not to give them our anger but our total apathy. Don't give them ANYTHING. Quietly BOYCOTT Current Year Rocksteady and even Warner Bros. Get your refunds now if you haven't already. For those of you who haven't bought "Sushi Squad", simply don't. Make your feelings clear with your wallets more than your voices because no matter how much some of our elites might secretly hate capitalism, that's still the language of our land. Refuse to give them even one thin dime and instead find a collection of the Arkham trilogy, because they're still out there...well, I'm not sure how long that will last since the powers that be don't want us to own PHYSICAL copies of video games and other media anymore, so get 'em while you can!

Let Current Year Rocksteady, Sweet Baby and all of the likes of them slide by themselves into the trash fire of ruin they built...because that's what they earned from us.

I make that humble appeal with total love and respect to Kevin Conroy, the beloved voice of the Batman, and to the late great actress who gave us the original and eternal voice of Harley Quinn in "TAS", Arleen Sorkin.

Giving credit where it's due!
XNALara created by Dusan Pavlicek; XPS created by Dusan and XNAaraL

Models:
Above are my TDK(R) versions of three characters you know and love, but they're still distinct in their own way from the comics, "TAS", and so on!
The Batman by !
The Catwoman by ! (That Deviant no longer has an account here, but you can find this same gorgeous model from ! )
The Harley you see between them is simply called Harley, aka Carrie Kelly in my unique imagining. It's been a few years story-time since I last did a story (and brief comic!) with her, so she's fully an adult...that means I've shifted to a new model -- ironically enough, looking a lot like Arkham Knights Harley Quinn -- thanks to ! x 100! (Again, he also isn't here anymore, but you can still find him on Patreon where he does have links to this true beauty among MANY other models! )

And for those of you coming into my The Dark Knight (Reloaded) stuff late, just search my gallery for Batman or Catwoman or naturally Carrie in works like "The Bat and the Cat" and "The Hero and His Ward" so you'll get fully caught up. And yep, I've also done Superman and Lois Lane in this unique headcanon, and I'm hoping to expand things even further...sigh, when I have the time to. That's all, folks!

Description
In an imaginary world not too different from others instantly recognizable to millions of you. in a Gotham City where its greatest hero reigned even into his fifties. He married the former thief turned hero in her own right. And they both became parents to Carrie Kelly, who was so inspired by the Batman, she became his Robin. Then, not so successfully, a second Catwoman. Now well into her early twenties, Carrie had long ago adopted the crime-fighting persona of Harley...mainly because of a unique dream she had of another world that held quite a few differences from her own.

There were times that the Batman and his family, both real and extended, could see into other worlds.

A few nights ago, Carrie and her parents saw into our world. It was a glimpse, but it was enough. It was also too damned much.

From one of Gotham's great towers, the Batman and his mate both considered the city...but it couldn't ease their troubled hearts.

The Catwoman purred to her husband: "Bruce...maybe you should talk to her? It's been almost two days."

The Batman knew exactly who his wife meant. His aging voice was still strong as he simply responded, "Carrie's a strong young woman, Selina. If our daughter needed help, she would have asked."

The wife gently drew closer to her beloved. "It wouldn't hurt to reach out to Carrie. It can be hard to ask others for help, you know."

The Batman sighed. "I never had to ask for help after..." He bowed his cowled head a little. "After I lost my parents. I had to rely on my own will and strength to become the man I am today."

"And you are an incredible man. You are my man, and I'll be your woman forever. But..." Selina hesitated. "Remembner you were alone then, just like I once was. Carrie isn't." She laid a sweet gloved hand on his shoulder. "What we saw might have affected her even worse than...it's affected us."

The Batman gazed at his gorgeous wife. "It's another world, Selina. In the end, it has no affect on us or our world."

The Catwoman's loving green eyes looked into his...she offered quietly, "It might be a world where we're just imaginary characters, but...it's affected me." Her voice thickened with quiet anger and revulsion as she spoke. "To know that even an imaginary version of you could be shown so much disrespect. Be called 'fascist'. And then...!" She shook her head slowly. "And then that version of you was killed by the villains, and the storytellers told the world to call them heroes for that."

Resistant, trying to hold to his legendary inner strength, the Caped Crusader reminded, "That was an imaginary version of me. Well, one of many from what I understand."

"He was still a Batman so many loved. That means so much to me, so please don't say that this isn't affecting you. You don't have to be strong as a bulwark, darling. Not with me."

"I..." In a rare moment in his guise as the dark night avenger, the Batman...wavered. "How could a world exist where anyone would find...entertainment in killing their heroes? No. This is 'entertainment' created by those who disdain heroes. Those who are offended by every damned thing."

Selina nodded and offered with love, "I hate that a world like that could even exist. And how must that be making our daughter feel?"

One parent looked at the other on this bleak night, but before either could say anything else...

...a new voice spoke: "It makes me feel like crap, mom."

Both looked to the source...to their amazing daughter Carrie, who had grown so fast ever since Bruce and Selina got married. Dressed as a harlequin, the beautiful hero's fanciful makeup and domino mask did nothing to conceal the pure despair in her expression. Both Bruce and Selina's hearts broke at the sight. Carrie, also known to this world simply as Harley, mustered all of her strength to speak. "I-I know I can't blame everybody in that world for how it is. It's just a few deranged and super-weird people who are in charge and wanna reset everything. Even their imaginary heroes."

Carrie looked down as her strength slowly, steadily faltered as her inner agony really expressed itself: "These weirdos hate heroes and would rather tell everybody to root for the bad guys and all the horrible things they do just...just because the heroes are way too traditional and not the right freaking color or something! D-dad, there they call every version of you the worst kind of person. It...snff!...i-it's bad enough they had to kill a version of you voiced by Kevin, who was just as awesome!

"They..." Harley could hardly contain herself, and finally couldn't as she moaned, "They made that crazy bitch who has a name like mine not try to do anything to save him, they had that Harley kill him. But oh no, she couldn't just do that! They made it so she had to humiliate him and talk down to him like he was the one who always did the wrong thing! Oh..." She burst into tears and exclaimed, "I was inspired by someone so much like that Harley Quinn, and to know that she'd kill a Batman, ANY Batman -- !"

Before the tortured hero knew it, her father was THERE...so was her mother as the Batman took firm yet loving hold of Harley in his strong arms. He soothed in his deep voice, "Easy, girl. Easy!" But Carrie couldn't stop crying, even as she felt the Catwoman's loving hold behind her, as well. They both needed desperately to give her the warmth of their love on this cold night.

The Batman then gently counseled his adopted girl and crime fighting partner. "That Batman wasn't me. That Harley definitely wasn't you. We both figured out a while ago that you were inspired by a very different Harley...the one Arleen gave her voice to.

"Listen to me, dear girl. Listen. That world is nothing like ours. Their ugly imaginations can try to bring down and even destroy that world's heroes...but they won't." Shakily, the daughter looked up at him. "Just as long as there are those who believe in their heroes, as long as they cherish those like Kevin who brought those heroes to life, then they will resist those who want to reset everything. They will stay strong exactly because their heroes will never stop inspiring them.

"Besides...I suspect certain joyless people want to outrage those who believe in the heroes they despise. What they did to that Batman is horrible...and I'm sure as hell taking it personally too, dear girl." The daughter looked up at her father with wide, wet eyes. He said much more tenderly, "But I refuse to let them get to me. They want to bring those who believe down...please. Don't let them, Carrie."

Still so full of sorrow, Carrie's voice had shifted to become a little stronger...she managed, "I...snff! I won't let 'em bring me down, dad. Mom, I swear to everything I won't!" Harley's breaths deepened...she really reached into herself as the love and support of her parents meant EVERYTHING. "I just hope some real heroes among those who believe will really rise up one day...then they'll kick the reset people out on their asses once and for all!" Harley hoped that...even though it was the 'real' world that would never affect her own, she began to pray for that.

Carrie began to calm, but her father the Batman and her mother the Catwoman didn't stop holding her with all of their love.

Not for a long time.
---
My The Dark Knight (Reloaded!) headcanon might be as imaginary as anything official, but I felt the need to break a certain Fourth Wall in this instance.

I'm sure a lot of you who know and love "Batman: The Animated Series" and especially grew up watching the series hold its noble heroes and hissable villains and everyone in between sacred. Many Bat-fans regard it as the definitive version of Batman, and the importance of Kevin Conroy giving the hero his voice is beyond any and all dispute whatsoever. And it's held in such high regard, perhaps even higher by some than the official canon Batman comics, even though it's a bit different. Now, it may surprise you that the idea of different versions of the same nearly mythical hero and his stories weren't nothing new even in the 20th Century. Just look back to the Greek and Roman versions of the same son of gods being named Heracles on one hand or Hercules on the other!

Different versions of heroes in our American culture, especially when it comes to superheroes, are honestly WAY too many and varied; it would be as hard for a newbie to keep track of them all as it would to be to keep up with the entire anime history of Pokemon! But fans like me have at least had the benefit of growing up with these heroes, which means we have the luxury(?) to gravitate to the version of a given superhero that appeals to us the most. Take Batman all by himself. There was the original Golden Age version who had no trouble terminating bad guys on occasion (and really, out of necessity)...in the Silver Age, it was recounted how he married the Golden Age Catwoman and they had a daughter, the Huntress. Then there was the tongue-in-cheek 1960's Batman where Adam West played Bruce SO straight, that in itself was a source of the show's comedy! Much of the Silver Age of DC Comics was defined by the Earth One Batman best remembered for a blue cowl and gray tights. Hell, like many superheroes, one version or another all depended on who was writing the hero from one decade to the next. Frank Miller brought his imagining of a much darker Batman to TDKR and Year One...but then he lost his damn mind (mainly from, one can suspect, controlled sustances of one kind or another!), because how else does a fan explain the increasingly inferior and nihilistic TDKR sequels or the 'All-Star Batman and Robin' many may never forgive him for? Never mind more Current Year assholes like Tom King who seem dead-set on deconstructing him, changing his character -- this one fool writer decided to have his frigging version of Batman let criminals rob high income victims, AND I WISH I WAS KIDDING! -- and even his sexuality, and yet another idiot writer and DC's editors decided that the hero had to be just as crazy as the Joker. Which is so incredibly stupid. And I haven't even gone into the Batman movies, which are a whole other thing and separate from what's 'official', too! Fans are still arguing whether Tim Burton's Batman or Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight is the bestest version, and may likely always will.

To really emphasize, yes, I absolutely see one comic writer's depiction of a superhero or team of superheroes in their own book as often whole different version of what previous (and often better) writers did before. Another prime example to back my argument is the X-Men of Marvel Comics, and I mean purely the comics, not even counting mediums from animated series to films. Other writers helmed the X-Men up to the 1970s books, with kind of lackluster success; the book was surviving on reprints of previous issues and maybe on the verge of cancellation. Then a certain giant-sized book happened. But to keep the appeal and momentum going, Chris Claremont was brought aboard and his Alpha class writing gave us the fan favorite, seminal incarnation of that most uncanny team that changed in roster more than slightly over the years, and cemented everyone's favorites like Cyclops, Jean Grey, Wolverine, Storm and way too many more all the way into the early 1990's!

But you veteran X-fans remember what happened after Chris was shown the door by Lee and Harras, right? Things started to change, and I don't just mean in terms of storytelling quality from writers like Scott Lobdell who just weren't equal to the task. The themes that always drove and defined the X-Men and their adventures shifted, and so did the heroes in ways big and small. Each new writer from Whedon to Morrison to Austen gave us THEIR versions (or at least versions mandated by the arbitrary and increasingly political editors) of the X-Men, New Mutants, X-Force and more. Even when Chris came back for the second and final time, I'm sure it was mainly the editors who made him go in directions that just weren't true to the heroes he firmly established before, and you longtime fans know what I mean by that. Then, most recently, Jonathan Hickman up and retconned the X-Men completely into plant people with Cylon 'resurrection protocols', Moira McTaggert was back to life and a mutant just 'cause AND to justify every damned thing, and the X-Men who once strove for peace between the ordinary and the mutated segregated themselves and other mutants to Krakoa -- you know, that evil alien island that wanted to feed off of human mutants back in that certain giant-sized classic, but that's okay since it's a mutant, too! Holy damn...

Long story short, Hickman's version of bigoted and ironically elitist X-Men were completely night-and-day different from Claremont's X-Men or the 1990's X-Men animated series that has many, MANY fans of its own...but it's not the only extreme case. The entire comic book universe of Marvel Comics got rebooted (also by Hickman and the arbitrary editors) in 2015's "Secret Wars". And that was all to basically set up the Current Year no talent 'diverse and inclusive' Marvel NOW! way of things and rewrote heroes into versions who barely even look like the heroes we knew up to '15. Again, all of that only emphasizes that one writer's version of a superhero can be different and even totally untrue to what was most beloved by fans before, or even different from the intent of the creators of those heroes...I will talk more about this some other time, but Batman's also clearly fallen victim to that thanks to total hacks like I just described a few paragraphs ago!

And yeah, in Current Year, you'll see even moar 'reimagined'-slash-totally-different versions of legendary characters and even stories than you can shake a stick at. Just look at DC Comics rewriting its very universe for what seems to be every damn generation of readers. Lately I've gone into how the *original* heroes and villains of Mortal Kombat were switched out and written over arbitrarily by the NRS New Timeline, but then they said 'Wait, let's have a New Era we MIGHT stick with!' Look at the massive difference between the Doctor Who fans knew and loved for decades no matter who he regenerated into...and the version who 'needed' to have a chick put in his shoes and made ULTRA-MEGA lame by the BBC and Superhack Chibnall. How about the difference between the Star Wars and Luke Skywalker everyone knew since the '70s, and Disney and Kathleen Kennedy's Force is Female version that's dropped hard in quality because those morons only care about owning it and beating us repeatedly with The Message? How many of those 'new and improved' versions of fan favorites and even more have been negatively received?

Way. Too. Damn. Many. And the one thing all of those reimaginings and rewritings have in common is that these stories written for 'modern audiences' often objectively and thoroughly SUCK! -___-

One recent version of Batman who was truly positively received and became very nearly just as loved as the "TAS" hero, in part because Kevin Conroy again provided his voice to the Dark Knight, were the Arkham series of video games brought to us by Warner Bros. and Rocksteady. It was a trilogy of games that started with "Batman: Arkham Asylum", continued into the much bigger and darker "Arkham City", and concluded with 2015's "Arkham Knight". Each game took place on a single night(!) where the Batman had to face a huge part of his Rogue's Gallery until he fought the final villain at the end. I played both "Arkham Asylum" and "Arkham City", but was never able to get ahold of "Arkham Knight". For very clear and present reasons which I won't spoil here, the trilogy was mostly true to the canon of the comics, but also deviated in really important ways. This Batman and his Gotham City and his universe were as distinct from DC's book 'canon' as my TDK(R) imaginings, yet due to the thrilling missions and lots and LOTS of sidequests, spectacular game worlds, excellent gameplay, well-written stories, and again Kevin Conroy's pitch perfect performance of a slightly different Caped Crusader made the games favorites to many Bat-fans!

"Arkham Origins", though? That's the redheaded stepchild spinoff of the trilogy that's kind of accepted by fans! That great trilogy was completed right before Current Year and all of its purely political, patronizing-for-its-own-sake, DEI/ESG bullshit took hold and stretched out its tentacles to spear into anything and everything in our culture in the name of elites like the Schwabs and Rothschilds and Bidens and the highest of our world's political-industrial-media complex. C'mon. Don't even TRY to deny it when you look at how things have been going in the past 14 years and has never been more obvious right at this moment. We've been told again and again to throw away the Four Olds and embrace a reset that will involve owning nothing and being happy (Klaus Schwab himself SAID SO!), everyone needs to think the same way or be on the receiving end of cancel -- wait, they prefer to call it consequence culture, we need to shift from eating meat from cows that fart too damn much to bugs, we shouldn't even grow our own gardens because that's SOMEHOW bad for Planet Earth, and on and on and on and on!

Sigh. I've said before I'm as apoliticial as you can get, and I only bring such things up to shine a glaring light upon how negative politically motivated shit can be. Worst of all, they tell us again and again it's all the sake of 'progressive' ideals of 'diversity and inclusivity', but their need to humiliate and even destroy anyone who disagree shows their tyrannical Marxist Puritan hypocrisy. And I said all of that to really set up what I've got to say next, and what I conveyed in a different way thanks to the Batman, Catwoman and their dear girl Carrie in my story and art above. Again, one big thing about Current Year entertainment is that they put The Message before everything else...can you also deny that the quality of our entertainment from comics to films and TV to video games has dipped hard? The basic message we've been getting has been, 'This is awesome just because of everything we have to preach to you, so you'd BETTER buy things like the Saint's Row reboot! We know we're trying to cater to 'modern audiences', which means it's not made for YOU, but buy it anyway! Wait, you don't like that!? HOW DARE YOU! YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE A TERRORIST!' I know you've seen that kind of shit again and again just like I have. It's that kind of unmitigated arrogance and total hubris that makes certain Karens think they can frigging rewrite Japanese anime when they're just supposed to translate it as closely as possible for American audiences.

Warner Bros. fumbled the ball in its video game sector not long ago with "Gotham Knights". It's not to be confused with that dud of a TV show that barely lasted a season, but the quality had clearly dropped from the high point of the Arkham games. The story and gameplay were trying to be like the Arkham trilogy but couldn't stick the landing, and most importantly like that stupid-ass TV show, it was a story set in Batman's world...and Batman wasn't in it! How little Bat-fans knew that game did the Batman and his supporting cast more justice than what we're being inflicted with RIGHT NOW.

Years ago, WB and Rocksteady announced they were coming out with a new game set in the Arkham verse...and Kevin Conroy would be reprising his role as the Batman; he recorded this last performance before he passed away from cancer. If you're a normie, you wouldn't be able to appreciate the excitement this generated. However, time passed. And then MORE time passed as development was delayed on "Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League". Rumors began to swell. More delays kept pushing the game back. And the more news that came, the more ominous things got. Sure, the Suicide Squad has fans of their own being kind-of former villains turned into antiheroes under the yoke of government assholes. Their first movie incarnation was for the most part okay, the sequel/kinda reboot by James Gunn was quite a bit better. The idea of this band of ne'er do wells taking on the frickin' Justice League was hilarious when you thought about it.

The game's subtitle had to be a satirical and even funny joke itself. Kill the Justice League...of America, by the way! The JLA's fans are far more massive in number across the world and go back generations. There's no way that subtitle could be serious, even if this was in the Arkham Universe, where deaths happened before. (Again, I'm not spoiling anything!) A bunch of criminal and in some cases psychotic misfits killing DC's most legendary heroes. There has to be more to it than that, right?

Right???

One thing that Bat-fans weren't immediately aware of was that ever since 2015, those in charge of Rocksteady and most all of their key staff who worked on the Arkham games had left, and more than a regime change happened. Like way too many game developers, ESG and DEI and their hardline rules took hold. Worse, a company with the truly ironic name Sweet Baby Inc. began ah, consulting them. What the hell is Sweet Baby and what makes them ironic, you ask? Well, they basically look over the shoulders of developers, artists, and ESPECIALLY the script writers of an increasing number of game makers to MAKE SURE what they're doing has all the right Messaging and is appropriately 'diverse and inclusive' for Current Year. No, again I'm not kidding. An outside entity is enforcing political will and putting a leash on the creativity of game makers. I've never heard of such a thing when it comes to movies, comics and TV shows, but I'd imagine there's many forces similar to Sweet Baby making sure other forms of entertainment increasingly tow the 'progressive' line of the elite Marxist Puritans.

Want another example of Sweet Baby's influence? Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 video game. Yep, the same game that diminished Mary Jane's traditional beauty, gave Miles Morales the most 'correct' softball missions you could imagine since the dude is a 'POC' (I'm using a term championed by the patronizingly 'diverse and inclusive' there), and the story mostly sucked big ones since so little effort was put into the sequel compared to the first game. Sound familiar? This one asshole at Insomniac outright admitted that okay, they'll give fans what we want, but they'll ALSO not so subtly force feed us 'progressive' things they think we need...basically saying we're too ignorant to realize that until we 'know better' and 'do better'.

That's the kind of arrogance we're talking about. See, there were already plenty of reasons to rethink the decision to get "Suicide Squad: KTJL". The more gameplay of it we saw, it was so painfully obvious the graphic quality didn't even match "Arkham Knight", a game made NINE YEARS AGO! Reports from Beta testers were that the gameplay was mostly bland as hell, your run of the mill shooter. Never mind that up to its release, the game an awesome guy on YouTube named Cyael calls "Sushi Squad" was and STILL is buggy and glitchy AF, and that is not in any way a good thing for a game where you need to be online to play it, even if you're just on single player. And then for the sake of fixing ANOTHER bug or just to 'perform maintenance' for some damn reason, a gamer is shit out of luck wanting to play it at all! Other so-called 'AAA' games have had worse starts, but for a game that was this long in the making? This is beyond stupid.

But let's get back to the 'diverse and inclusive and all around tolerant' story of "Sushi Squad". Yeah, it's only about as frigging 'progressive' as The Last of Us games, where lead girl Ellie was denied a lesbian romance not once, but twice! It's also worse. Far, far worse. If you've seen the clips of the story scenes, you know what I mean, ESPECIALLY if you saw that moment with Not Arkham Harley and Not Arkham Poison Ivy. See, Joker was still Harley's 'Puddin' in the trilogy, but they retroactively changed that for "Sushi Squad" so that Not Harley and Not Ivy were a couple like the comics. That wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for Not Harley having the hots for Not Ivy, who's been resurrected into a young teenager. Yes, Not Harley was coming on to a pre-adult. I hate to say that the social(ist!) justice warriors writing this with the 'support' of Sweet Baby seem to want to cater to, shall we say, pdf-philes...but it's kind of hard NOT to say so with the damn evidence staring us in the face! :/ :/ :/

In spite of even that, the darkest thing of all is the premise behind the subtitle of "Sushi Squad". "Kill the Justice League", it turns out, was never meant for laughs and open to a 'wait, just kidding!' twist, or simply be an alt timeline thing like the Injustice games; it was as bald-faced serious as a 'mostly peaceful' protester. You do have to legitimately kill the JLA. Think about that. You play certified bad guys to kill some of the most legendary heroes in American geek culture, including a Batman voiced by the late Kevin Conroy, which I spoke of enough in my TDK(R!) story. I've been hearing that Arkham Wonder Woman was the only hero given any respect, but she's still being disrespected by being killed for no good reason!

Yes, I *can* say no good reason. In the story, the JLA are being mind controlled by the evil Brainiac, and that's why the Sushi Squad has to terminate them all. Really?!? I've seen mind control stories done a thousand times better in the comics, where the heroes have to break that control or need help to do it so they can be their true selves again and kick the bad guys' asses! But the ESG/DEI controlled leaders and the token low-to-zero-talent 'creatives' steering the Current Year Rocksteady ship presently can't be bothered to be creative. In the name of The Message and an Agenda enforced by entities like Sweet Baby, this was the best possible way to look 'progressive'...this is an extreme version of narrative 'equity', where the villainous underdogs must be raised up by knocking down and terminating the old guard of heroes, including Superman, BECAUSE they represent 'unconsciously biased' ideals like truth, justice and The American Way. And yes, because the Batman is a rich white male, he has to be called fascist (again) and he has to be yelled at by Not Harley Quinn because he tried to save innocent people from criminals -- who by the way included HER! -- and he was so 'pressive and maybe was the root problem all along. And then she executed him like a crippled dog in the street.

No, Current Year Rocksteady. NO, Sweet Baby. I may have to acknowledge your mean-spirited and ugly bullshit, but that doesn't mean I'll accept it. Most every Bat-fan out there, especially those who cherish their memories of Kevin Conroy as the Dark Knight, never EVER will. This is bad fanfiction. That's all it is. You thought it would be a great idea to kill some of our greatest heroes...suh-prise, suh-prise, that's already making you look like the villains, so it's no shock that you're going to piss people off.

But I have one appeal to make to my fellow fans.

The backlash Current Year Rocksteady and Sweet Baby have rightfully begun to earn doesn't have to be loud. It doesn't even have to be angry, because it's been part of the overall strategy of the social(ist!) justice elites and the fools who endlessly shill for them that *they often count on backlash.* That way when we don't like things from Jake Skywalker being deconstructed and killed to lift up Rey, when one of the real Doctors was resurrected just to be berated so smugly by a Karen and her trans kid because the guy is simply 'male presenting', every time that kind of shit happens and we make our feelings clear, they think they have the built-in defense of saying, "If you don't like it, then you hate women! You hate trans folks and gays and all the 'victim groups' we endlessly turn into purse puppies for our own benefit! You must be a toxic fan!"

The thing is, that kind of defense hasn't been working so well lately. It's the same as the Marxist Puritans saying anybody who'd dare to disagree with them must be 'cis Yahtzees from the other side of Hell' for YEARS...but given enough time, that comeback has become less and less of a defense and holds less and less power because even normies with no stake in our geek culture have come to understand how hollow and self-serving such a defense is. For that and other reasons, the 'virtuous' masks of the SJWs have been slipping more and more, too. Just ask the person working for Volition how well things worked when she called those who didn't like the Saint's Row reboot 'terrorists' -- oh, wait! They're out of business!

If Current Year Rocksteady is so DEI/ESG/Marxist Puritan to dare to do the same to lifelong fans of the JLA and especially Kevin Conroy's Batman and call US toxic, they'll VERY likely suffer the same fate because of their arrogance and politics. They made this game for THEIR OWN sakes, not for the fans. It's the same as when Kathleen Kennedy made the Force female, it was just for her own elevation and meant ONLY to satisfy her and the DEI/ESG gods.

That being said, we don't have to express our outrage loudly, even though we have every justifiable reason as fans. We don't have to feed the dog, and I'm not gonna apologize for using that figure of speech. Ours is still a country and culture based on quality being rewarded and earning things by actually achieving something. "Sushi Squad" is clearly a product of low quality worsened by the fact that all the weirdos and beta cucks and narcissists at Current Year Rocksteady care about achieving is resetting our entertainment into their selfish image.

Therefore, because they put so little effort overall into the game and the fact they're looking for a reaction so they can put themselves on a pedestal, the best solution is not to give them our anger but our total apathy. Don't give them ANYTHING. Quietly BOYCOTT Current Year Rocksteady and even Warner Bros. Get your refunds now if you haven't already. For those of you who haven't bought "Sushi Squad", simply don't. Make your feelings clear with your wallets more than your voices because no matter how much some of our elites might secretly hate capitalism, that's still the language of our land. Refuse to give them even one thin dime and instead find a collection of the Arkham trilogy, because they're still out there...well, I'm not sure how long that will last since the powers that be don't want us to own PHYSICAL copies of video games and other media anymore, so get 'em while you can!

Let Current Year Rocksteady, Sweet Baby and all of the likes of them slide by themselves into the trash fire of ruin they built...because that's what they earned from us.

I make that humble appeal with total love and respect to Kevin Conroy, the beloved voice of the Batman, and to the late great actress who gave us the original and eternal voice of Harley Quinn in "TAS", Arleen Sorkin.

Giving credit where it's due!
XNALara created by Dusan Pavlicek; XPS created by Dusan and XNAaraL

Models:
Above are my TDK(R) versions of three characters you know and love, but they're still distinct in their own way from the comics, "TAS", and so on!
The Batman by !
The Catwoman by ! (That Deviant no longer has an account here, but you can find this same gorgeous model from ! )
The Harley you see between them is simply called Harley, aka Carrie Kelly in my unique imagining. It's been a few years story-time since I last did a story (and brief comic!) with her, so she's fully an adult...that means I've shifted to a new model -- ironically enough, looking a lot like Arkham Knights Harley Quinn -- thanks to ! x 100! (Again, he also isn't here anymore, but you can still find him on Patreon where he does have links to this true beauty among MANY other models! )

And for those of you coming into my The Dark Knight (Reloaded) stuff late, just search my gallery for Batman or Catwoman or naturally Carrie in works like "The Bat and the Cat" and "The Hero and His Ward" so you'll get fully caught up. And yep, I've also done Superman and Lois Lane in this unique headcanon, and I'm hoping to expand things even further...sigh, when I have the time to. That's all, folks!