>>111425423You don't fix that by doubling down on the torture and inflicting so much worse pain he becomes completely broken. That's not safety OR happiness. That's literally killing him, and more importantly Thomas was cooperating with people who WERE trying to kill Bruce, and it was sheer luck that didn't happen.
You want to make Thomas deadset on killing Batman and taking over for him? Replace him by being BETTER. Make Thomas go for the jugular on crime and use the Psycho Pirate to "reform" criminals making it look like Thomas's methods are better. Fix Gotham and make it look like under Thomas things are just becoming better, giving Bruce a REASON to settle down and be happy, knowing that his burden has been truly lifted.
And THEN introduce the conflict that what Thomas is doing isn't actually true reform of criminals, and after many months their minds begin to fracture under PP's brainwashing, so they begin to violently lash out and become even more dangerous than before. So then Thomas starts killing the criminals instead, once they're pacified. And THERE'S your goddamn conflict where Bruce has to step back up after getting rusty in times of peace, and stop Thomas.
For fuck's sake.
