kirbydots

[kirbydots]

A phenomenon I’ve seen in fandom with a large central ship is that people will have their shipping goggles activated at such an intensity, they doggedly erase character traits that don’t contribute to pushing forward romance. The two individuals in the relationship are rendered utterly one-dimensional through the loss of any individual aspects of their story or personality that could be interpreted as an obstacle to shipping.

This makes fanon interpretations of the characters boring and uninteresting to read about because they have no character traits other than being in love with their romantic interest. I like shipping as much as the next guy, but I hate fandom-at-large’s tendency to only engage with a story through shipping, and especially to the extent that the characters are barely individuals, and do not exist outside of the central romantic relationship

[kirbydots]

a big point of contention for steph and cass in Batgirl 2000 is that steph wants to fight and has the potential to be a really good vigilante, but cass feels a need to protect her when theyre on the field together because she knows steph "isn't good enough yet" and she doesn't want to see her get hurt.

and then steph dies. and cass couldn't save her.

post steph's death, we see a shift in cass's behavior. she was always reckless and blindly trusts her ability to punch her way out of things, but i would argue that she becomes more passively suicidal post war games/war crimes.

then, the two times cass almost dies steph is the one who saves her...steph became cass's white knight...like aughhhhhh

#dc #bats #cassandra cain #stephanie brown

[kirbydots]

talking to people offline about comics is always so weird and scary like you can run into people that are still mad that iceman is gay

#sometimes people I meet go on rants about ‘comics these days’ in a very clearly coded way #and I want to pry open their jaws and rip them in half lengthwise

[kirbydots]

the whole “ppl don’t care about female characters bc writers don’t make them as complex” argument holds no weight. boba fett was a hugely popular star wars character for decades when all he did in the original trilogy was say 4 lines then die.

[kirbydots]

The more I read canon Cass the more fanon Cass becomes unreadable to me, especially her fanon interactions with Bruce

So many fanfics have him coddling her and treating her as his ‘precious baby’, someone who has gone through unspeakable trauma and that he wants to protect as a result

That is the exact opposite of canon - Bruce sees so much of himself in her that he replicates his own toxic coping mechanisms through her. And it works! She responds to his relentless training exercises, his black-and-white morality, the prioritisation of The Mission above all else. He understands she needs to focus herself towards a higher purpose or else she’ll drown in her own guilt, because he is exactly the same

Bruce doesn’t treat Cass gently because he wouldn’t want to be treated gently, and his own personal brand of toxic training is his idea of care

#dc #cassandra cain #bruce wayne #bats

[kirbydots]

I'm so firmly team Cass is Bruce's favourite but also equally as firmly on team This Is Not Exactly A Good Thing. He loves going on missions with her. His standards for her are insanely high. He'll buy her whatever she asks for. He enables all her worst impulses. He's protective. He's smothering. Cass asks him for a plane because she wants to fight a shadowy government on the other side of the world, he'll give it to her. If she doesn't check in for six months he'll just assume everything is fine. He cares so much. He needs so much therapy. He sees himself in her. He struggles to let her be herself outside the Bat.

You ask a regular batfam member and they'll tell you how they move in perfect sync, how he smiles proudly at her whenever she takes bad guys down, how he trusts her judgement and skills. It's enough to make anyone a little bit jealous, how easily she seems to gain his approval.

You ask Barbara Gordon and she puts her head in her hands and let's out a deep, long sigh.

#dc #cassandra cain #bruce wayne #bats

[kirbydots]

Can I say something. I kinda love when batman fans talk about it like there's one definitive canon universe and we're all always talking about the same version of batman. Like no we're not but I'm obsessed with the implications

#it gets even better when you’re talking about one specific version of batman #and someone tries to refute your point with the actions of a completely different version of the character #it’s hilarious #dc #bats

[kirbydots]

character idea: guy who’s bisexual about death. as in they answer the question “are you dead or alive” with “um well… to me death is more of a spectrum”

#prev #marc spector #marvel

[kirbydots]

okay, but everyone in the Dusk Court like “why doesn’t the Old God eat the fox child…. why does it have conversations with her…. that’s insane, what is going on” and spinning all these theories about it, and the answer is that she’s nice to him and he loves her

#monstress #zinn #kippa

[kirbydots]

Maika’s psyche splitting under the horror of what she’s learned as she starts symbolically destroying herself but there’s a piece of her that still! that still resists and fights the urge to lay down and die! and her weird little family is there surrounding and protecting that piece of her, and picking up the parts that she tried to destroy, and wanting to put her back together. like ok, Miss Liu, I’m finding the nearest space shuttle and launching myself into the void

#monstress #maika halfwolf

[kirbydots]

No one really talks about this comic but I’ve been reading Monstress (2015) lately and I can’t stop thinking about Tuya and Maika. I’ve only read up to Issue 35 at this point so my preceptions could change as I catch up but it’s fascinating how despite being the person who arguably knows Maika the best, the one Maika outright admits knows all her secrets, Tuya is the one most unhesistant to betray her.

Granted, it took Tuya years to actually do the betraying necessary, but when she was once again given the opportunity she takes the shot and gives her the poison Corvin refused to do. I can’t help but think of the rationale in that in being the person who knows Maika (at least, an earlier version of Maika) the best, Tuya has grounds to fear her the most.

Tuya was there in Constantine. She saw the damage Maika and Zinn wrought the first time, the explosion that either directly or indirectly leveled a city and killed 100,000. She saw the lengths a teenage Maika was willing to take to get answers about her past (a past Tuya intentionally hid, I might add. In some way). The blackouts, and the violence. She knew (at least, prior to current events) that Maika would go out of control and people will be dead. That, to a very young girl as she was in Constantine, is traumatizing. It’s horrifying. It will happen again if the prophecies are to be believed.

It is also no secret that people want to weaponize that. One could count in one (1) hand the amount of people trustworthy enough in the comic that wouldn’t want to weaponize Maika and Zinn in some manner or form. All others want her destroyed. Maika is a target, either way she’s becoming someone’s puppet or is going down. Tuya, the Baroness of Last Dusk, knows this well. And Tuya, in her need for control, believes herself to be the best person involved to make that decision - she after all, would be in direct control of the body, Maika is after all “asleep.” It is a better choice than the alternative. She is, the best alternative. 

It is such an interesting thread. This theme of control, and autonomy. Who has control, who has power. Maika has all this physical power, but is she really in control? 

#monstress #tuya #maika halfwolf #zinn

[kirbydots]

Girl You're Pining For Without Knowing She Betrayed You Enters Marriage of Convenience with Your Aunt (Who's Hunting You Down) And Also Pictures It Was You During The Wedding Night.

hyper-specific lesbian drama I didn't know I needed, and that Monstress generously saw fit to give me.

#monstress #maika halfwolf #tuya #sword of the east

[kirbydots]

Always make sure to check in on the eldritch horror that lives in your flesh. They're going through a hard time too! Just because they're revered and feared under names like the Destroyer of Spheres or the Terror of Shadows does not mean they don't still feel awful and/or amnesic over their break-up from centuries ago!

#monstress #zinn

[kirbydots]

Starting my Monstress reread and y'know I really do appreciate how Maika is just, such an utterly dogshit caretake for Kippa. Like does take care of her but it's like five volumes before there's even a trace of real interpersonal warmth or affection.

Minimum effort required to keep a female character from being fandomized into 'oh she's such a good/natural mom!' I guess.

#monstress #maika halfwolf #kippa

[kirbydots]

I think fandom doesn't realize that even when male characters get "the female character treatment" (meaning victimized) they often are afforded much more narrative agency than actual female characters.

You see people love to say dick is female coded bc he was raped (which is stupid in and of itself bc men can experience sexual assault too), but as the writers treat it, it's not done to make another character sad. We often see his reaction prioritized in the text, even if it's handled in an unsatisfying manner. Compare that to sue dibney and how the text is entirely focused on how mad/sad it made her husband and the justice league. If we expand this to "female character is assaulted in general for man's pain" you have the text of longbow hunters and follow up hunters moon way more interested in Ollie's reaction to Dinah being tortured than it is interested in her reaction. He gets more agency in processing her trauma than she does.

Then there's the whole "jason was fridged for Bruce's pain" thing which like. Yes, I'm sure the writers were thinking somewhat about angstifying Bruce (but also don't forget that they just didn't like robin). But compare that to babs in tkj or Dinah in longbow hunters. Death in the family spends 2 40 page comics about jasons journey, about how he feels with Bruce benching him and his discovery of his bio mom. He is allowed to make choices that affect the story and makes a heroic sacrifice to try to save his mom despite her betraying him - like you can't compare the amount of panel time and choices he was allowed to make to the lack of panel time and choices babs and Dinah got in their events where they were hurt for man pain.

I guess I'm just saying fandom analyze the narrative around events rather than the fact that they happened. B/c the complaint about fridging shouldn't be "bad things aren't allowed to happen to characters" (tho I am aware it is used that way sometimes) but "stop making bad things happen to female characters while making their pain or death not about them and giving them no agency in their recovery and doing this all to make a man sad"

#dc

[kirbydots]

They should take Kon into the Fourth World to develop him. He bounces between the Forever People and Super Town and spends his free time getting combat lessons from Orion. If a writer insists he still has identity issues around being 'half Lex Luthor' (he shouldn't but you know how people are) Orion can fix that damn quick.

#dc #fourth world

[kirbydots]

It truly fascinates me how fandom can take concepts made to discuss misogyny and make them all about men.

#krackle.txt #even discussions about misogyny have to be about canonically cis men.