In Brightest Day: Batman, Winnie the Pooh, OCD, and a Lack of Representation

I’ve wanted to write a post about how OCD is portrayed in pop culture for quite some time now—but to be honest, there really aren’t that many obsessive-compulsive characters out there. Off the top of my head, I can name the Riddler from DC Comic’s Batman and Rabbit from Winnie the Pooh. Rin tells me that Pearl from Steven Universe also suffers from OCD, but I don’t watch that show and therefore cannot comment on it. So that leaves me with the Riddler and Rabbit, which are not that many characters at all.

Unfortunately, despite being one of the more well-known mental disorders out there, OCD is sadly not that well understood by people at large. I think this helps contribute to the lack of representation—and what representation us OCD sufferers do get is normally not that great either.

In Brightest Day: Batman and the Problem with Mental Illnesses in Comics

Comics have an issue with portraying many of their villains as mentally disabled. This is especially true in DC Comics, where many of the villains have mental illnesses, but almost none of the heroes are portrayed as also having mental illnesses. Furthermore, the heroes punish the villains for their illness and in no way attempt to help them with the treatment they need. The statement this ends up making is that people who suffer from mental illnesses are evil and deserve to be hurt and locked up. This obviously creates a lot of problems with how people are then taught to view mental illness in real life—especially when our heroes respond to mental illness with violence and a lack of care and concern.

Fanfiction Fridays: Enough

Probably the only upside to cancelled shows is that fanfiction attempts to fill in the holes they leave behind, and Young Justice had a lot of holes in it. Very obviously the show was designed to run for a least a few more seasons to explain everything and justify the numerous characters it introduced.

Also, his sideburns bother me.

One such character was the Riddler; I was never sure how I felt about his introduction into the series. We first meet him while as an inmate at Belle Reeve, not Arkham, and instead of working on his own personal goals—like proving himself smarter than Batman—he’s an agent for the Light. I was a little underwhelmed by his character, and I felt as if the show should have done more with him, instead of having him be a random adversary for our heroes, especially since working with the Light never seemed to line up with his original goals in the comics. I just wanted something to justify his alliance with them.

Enough by FelineOverlord doesn’t set out to do that specifically, but it does give me some closure with his character, though admittedly not as much as I’d like.

The Riddler has enough, but breaking ties with the Light is nothing he can do on his own. YJ verse, based on a prompt fill by Higgystar on tumblr.