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watching titans and they introduced kory’s sister and why was i lowkey expecting someone called silant’ro to walk out

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Don't you ever just

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Said this elsewhere as a comment, but expanding it in a reblog as well, because I love the both/and-ness and ambiguity you highlighted here. The events of CFB both perpetuate the cycles that formed Helena and release her from them. A huge shift has happened here, but it's not a total divesting of either her faith or Huntress, and we don't see where she lands until much, much later. The darkness in which CFB ends is indeed reflective of tragedy, but it's also, to pull from the mini's butterfly imagery, a chrysalis. Helena continues to be the Huntress, continues to do good, and in a way no longer driven or burdened by personal vengeance--important to note, that's never been the entirety of her motivation, it's just that now that part has been settled for her. At the same time, she’s lost a lot of the other pillars that gave her purpose, such as teaching, and we don’t know (she never shares, and may not know herself) what she might imagine or want for her life in the aftermath. Likewise, Helena doesn't stop believing in God, and we how her beliefs about herself have been deeply informed by that belief. Several issues in Gail Simone’s BoP run touch on the state of Helena’s faith (in the #70s/80s in Vol. 1, and in #6 in Vol. 2) since CFB: we don’t get a clear timeline on the shift, but it’s suggested that Helena stopped going to church because she believed she was inescapably damned for the things she’d done. She hasn’t stopped believing, it’s BECAUSE she still believes in God that she expects a lonely existence. We see over the course of being with the Birds Helena returning to a much more hope-filled faith, and a much more grounded life both in teaching and as a vigilante/mission field leader, and personally I think the needle moves for her because she experiences friendship—a gift she hasn’t sought or believed she deserved, especially since CFB. Even after she's solidly been embraced in various friendships, Helena struggles to believe she deserves good things, or is worthy of receiving the love she feels for others. (Dinah gets really upset with her when she volunteers to fight Shiva. Helena is even sneakier about sacrificing herself for Renee in the Question: Pipeline arc). But a key difference is she has so much more to fight FOR now, not just against. And I think that galvanizes her faith and her work. CFB's ending emphasizing that this arc is about Helena, not the Huntress, is I think why we end on the image of the cross sinking into the river. Faith is really complicated, and it informs identity. It’s not just abstract beliefs about God, it’s beliefs about ourselves—our natures, our purpose, our value, our ability to change—and I’ve appreciated that Helena’s faith shows up in a range of (often contradictory, very human) ways: conviction of purpose and personal damnation, comfort and guilt, despair and hope. CFB sits us right at the edge of all those things.

Thank you, @armed-with-a-waffle-iron, for reminding me once again why I adore this comic!

what do you think about the ending of cry for blood?

i don't think that's helena saying she doesn't believe in god anymore, she also throws her huntress gear in the water and that doesn't mean she quits

other things i found interesting

"this was never about huntress"

after the rooftop confrontation with nightwing and batman, helena fell into the water and vic rescued her. in the ending, she throws her things into the water and doesn't rescue it. the beginning of the comic is straight up a panel of her cousin's dead body. what do you think about the motif of water here? almost symbolising... reincarnation or new chapters of lives, almost. not to mention, her burning the house in the purple flashback scene

"Never about the Huntress"

"Men make their own history, ... but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

I think the reason Helena throws her costume is not to renounce being the Huntress but instead to emphasise that this is all about Helena. The whole story, its characters have been preoccupied with the Huntress' willingness to kill, while Helena narrates a story about her, which "started in Sicily", before the Huntress and even before her birth. The other vigilantes think "killing" is this moral dilemma and question of methods, but Helena gradually tells us why and how "blood cries for blood"; why Helena kills. Put simply, the answer is so she can survive, when backed up against the wall. She chooses not to hide behind a mask when she faces that truth, and she accepts that it damns her in a religious sense.

Sleeping with the Fishes

"The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

The significance of drowning in the harbour is that it plays on an old "Sicilian message" popularised by The Godfather. Mobsters were said to disposed of their victims' corpses in the harbour and "sleeping with the fishes" became a euphemism for being murdered by the mafia.

The book opens with Claudio Panessa's corpse in the harbour, foreshadowing that it was not Huntress but instead a mobster who murdered him. This is emphasised by Helena's narration; "They all think they know me. None of them knows a damn thing."

The book also ends with Helena's discarded cross sinking into the harbour, with bubbles rising from the cross as if it's actually drowning. I don't think the cross represents Helena's faith in God but instead her virtue or sanctity, from a religious point of view. The Huntress has killed before, but this is the first time Helena has, although indirectly. It could also represent religious virtue generally. The page tells us that it is this virtue and sanctity which the mafia has defiled. "Damn you," Vic tells Helena and she answers, "Happened long ago, Vic." The mafia had put her on a path of damnation a long time ago. This is her accepting that these are cards that she's been dealt and she's doing what she can to survive and do good.

"Now it's enough."

"It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past... must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content."

Cry for Blood is not a story about a killer who learns that killing is bad, although Question, Batman and Nightwing are adamant on treating Helena that way. It's a story of who Helena Bertinelli is, and her arc involves her reckoning with the history that made her in order to turn the page.

Essentially, history will repeat itself over and over unless we learn from and reckon with it. And that's what Helena does. She realises that she can't go on as she did if she wants to survive so she reflects critically about her story and those which came before it to find a way out. She uses the mafia's avarice, superstition and preoccupation with tradition against them. She lets Cassamento drop his guard by feeding his power trip, she uses Huntress' reputation to intimidate Mario into fleeing Gotham and she plays on an old Sicilian tradition to get Tomasso arrested and Cassamento killed. And NOW it's enough. She's no longer in survival mode; it would take a lot for her to kill again. She can now start anew.

It's a bittersweet and very lonely ending, but Helena won and her prize is a new beginning. How she chooses to live it is left beautifully ambiguous.

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…Did Stephanie have a connection with waffles before BG 2009? Curious.

Stephanie's comfort food is actually mashed potatoes.

Robin #111

Waffles began as Crystal's way of bonding with Stephanie after she returned from war returned from her year away. However, Stephanie created a lot of space between her and her mother, which to me speaks to her previously having to be ultra independent and at times even a carer for her mother, who was struggling with addiction. She's unimpressed by her mother's waffle gambit initially but slowly warms up to it, after having a realisation about "second chances", and starts making waffles for her mother too.

Batgirl (2009) #1 & #3

Also Babs doesn't hit Stephanie with the waffle iron.

Batgirl (2009) #2

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Fuck it *washes your robins

Hanging them out to dry…

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There are a couple of things about current shipping culture that confuse me.  

1. The focus on whether or not a pairing will become canon as a reason people should ship something or not.  Do you not understand what the “transformative” part of “transformative works” means?”

2. This idea that saying “I ship that” means “I think that, as presented in canon,this is a perfect, healthy relationship that everyone should model their relationship after.” 

Sometimes shipping something does mean that.  Sometimes shipping something means “Person A is a trash bag who doesn’t deserve person B but I would love to explore how Person A might grow to deserve Person B.” Sometimes it means “I want these characters to live together forever in a conflict free domestic AU.”  Sometimes it means “I want Person A to forever pine after Person B.  Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.”  And sometimes it just means you like their faces and want to see Person A and Person B bone in various configurations and universes. 

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a post for helena bertinelli and her mama's wip too :)

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“villain attempts to go back in time to kill superman as a small child, gets shot in the face by ma kent, who buries him behind the barn with the others” would probably have niche appeal as a comic but i don’t care, i want it

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ily stephanie brown

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Cass learning slang from TV is an underutilized character trait

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Ok one more steph birthday thing: this collage I made in high school

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Feeling hubris overtaking me… might start an over-ambitious writing project no one but me would care about

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When you daydream about your story and it doesn’t magically write itself onto the page:

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I love that while most of the bat vigilantes have very STEM-oriented expertise, Helena Bertinelli is unequivocally a Social Studies girl. Criminology, Literature, History, Religion, Politics, Pedagogy, … the lot.

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fanon depiction of dick and tim’s relationship being either pure fluff or pure melodramatic angst is so funny when their canon relationship is 30% emotional support, 10% gossip, 10% bickering over things that don’t matter and 50% beating each other up in a denny’s parking lot for shits and giggles

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I wonder what archaeologists in 1,000 years will think when they dig up the Batcave