How to rekindle love for Batcat? (I lost my love for their relationship)
I used to be very passionate about Batcat for 20 years up until a couple of years ago, so I shall use this subreddit as my therapist because my therapist does not know anything about Batman.
This is purely a me-problem and I would like to know if there's anything insightful to think over that could potentially make me reconsider my thoughts on them.
Their relationship made me read (what I believe to be) every comic involving Catwoman that was available on a definitely-legal comic site. I still adore both characters, but I fell out of love for the pairing.
I can't pinpoint the exact reason why I stopped loving them. It's simply become stale to me. I don't think making them get married in the main universe would solve this issue for me.
A lot of people rave about Absolute Batman's Batcat and I see lots and lots of fanart of them from The Batman (2022) and official art of them posted all over the place (especially from that new Sirens: Love Hurts comic), so that's how I know it's a me-problem, and that maybe the pair is evolving into something that's not for me anymore.
I read Absolute Batman and I don't recognize Batcat in it. It lacks almost everything of what I enjoy in Batcat. It's an entirely different relationship and Selina is an entirely different character. Maybe I feel this way because we didn't see their evolution in full.
Their relationship is built entirely on "oh that's Batman and Catwoman, of course they have sex immediately" and "they grew up together" and less on any build up or a proper romance. I appreciate that it's trying new, but that's about all I appreciate from it. It runs entirely on their pop culture status as a couple and less on what they actually have in the book itself.
I could go on, but this sub (and readers in general) clearly love Absolute Batcat so I don't want to try to tell people they're wrong about their opinions because it's the opposite of my goal.
Don't have lots to say about The Batman's depiction of them. It's stuff most of us have already seen from Batcat. Maybe it helped bring in new fans, but I guess I just felt nothing because I've seen and read a billion different "Batman meets Catwoman" stories before.
I read Sirens: Love Hurts, and it encapsulates a lot of what I now hate about their relationship in the main universe, despite that specific comic being an elseworld.
Maybe it's because of Tini Howard writing Catwoman for as long as she did, but it's not exclusive to her because Zdarsky, Loeb and Tom King are guilty of this.
There's something incredibly juvenile and Tumbr-ish about their interactions (I don't like using Tumblr as a derogatory term because I use Tumblr myself, but it seemed appropriate given the type of fanfics you'll come across there).
Their dialogue with each other comes off as incredibly unnatural. I cannot buy them having actual normal conversations with each other in the main universe. It's hard to put into words, but it's like all they do is say "Bat" and "Cat" to each other and then be overly angsty with each other (I'm a sucker for angst, I love that shit but it's done in a way that does not work at all because these are people who've canonically known each other for decades).
In the the main universe, they don't interact anymore. When they do interact, it's more often than not written in a way that makes me roll my eyes. From Tom King's run + his elseworld Batman/Catwoman comic, to Zdarsky/Howard's Gotham War event, and to whatever Loeb is attempting with Hush 2, it's either handled incredibly bad or not handled at all.
There are moments from the pre-52 era when Bruce and Selina would simply... talk. I think Paul Dini wrote them the best. They felt like two humans who had problems but were in love to each other. I don't remember it feeling childish. It felt like something that started as a forbidden love that evolved into something mature. It never became anything too serious, obviously, but it was always tons of fun to see them interact.
TDLR: I either feel nothing from the new Batcat stuff coming out, or I dislike the new Batcat stuff.
Starting to pivot away to different Bat-related ships and I'm at a point where I think Catwoman works best when she's single and does things unrelated to Batman.
Has anybody here lost their love for Batcat and then rekindled it? If so, what made you fall back in love?
And to everybody else: how do you keep loving them as a couple? What do you like so much about them that your appreciation for them is unshakable?