duskdog

[duskdog]

Ohhh @a-bad-case-of-the-stephs -- DC was dumb about this and I've got receipts for you that justify why you probably thought she was 17! In short, 16 doesn't make any sense with the timeline. Let's analyze!

When Steph tells Tim that she's pregnant, she estimates that she's about two months along. It's implied that a couple of days pass, at least (as she and Crystal visit with a counselor and adoption agency while exploring options, and Steph meets with Tim again on the roof on a different night), but not long -- because the very next issue, Steph talks with Crystal, and Crystal mentions that Steph is 15 years old.

So we know for a fact that Steph is 15, when she's roughly 2 months into her pregnancy. We don't know if she's newly-15, or has been 15 for a while, though.

Steph gives birth in Robin (1993) #65, with a publication date of April 28th, 1999 (remember this date, it'll be important later). We aren't given any indication that this is anything other than a full-term or close-to-full-term pregnancy. The baby's vitals are strong. Steph does, however, have some serious complications during the birth of her child, and had a C-section, which is typically about 6 weeks to fully recover from. (Maybe longer, depending on the nature of her complications other than just the baby's positioning.)

Remember, Steph spends a lot of time running around on rooftops and getting into fights later, which shouldn't have happened until after this recovery period. Steph is definitely back in costume again by Robin #74, with a publication date of January 19th, 2000. So at least 6 weeks have passed between Robin #65 and Robin #74.

So that's roughly 7 months since we learned that Steph was 15, and then another month and a half-ish before she can go running around punching people again. By the time she's in action again, she had to have been at least 15 years and 8.5 months -- but likely older, because her mom doesn't mention it being her birthday (or anywhere close to it) when she says she's 15. Even with the most conservative reading possible, she has to be getting quite close to her 16th birthday.

But here's some interesting stuff that doesn't seem immediately Steph-related, but which I think is relevant, given Steph's later presence in the Batgirl (2000) book.

Cass makes her deal with Lady Shiva in Batgirl (2000) #9, with a publication date of October 2000. That an entire year and a half of real time after Robin #65 -- though of course real time doesn't even remotely equal comic book time. The important take-away is that a year and a half of real time is plenty of time for us to deduce that Batgirl #9 wasn't occurring concurrently with Robin #65, and has to happen at some indeterminate amount of time after Steph gives birth.

Cass's deal with Shiva is that, in one year's time, they'll meet back up and fight to the death. That death-match happens in Batgirl (2000) #25 (publication date February 2002). And this happens directly after Joker's Last Laugh and directly before Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive -- which places it definitively before War Games even if we ignore everything else (which we can't).

So we know, canonically, that an entire year has passed, at the very least between the time Steph gives birth and recovers, and the other events we're about to discuss.

Batgirl #38 takes place before Steph becomes Robin (specifically, right after Batman unceremoniously dumps her as Spoiler). It also contains the infamous "never been kissed" conversation, during which Steph says she gave up her baby "last year". Now, "last year" probably means "last calendar year", but it also implies that this was a fair amount of time ago... otherwise, wouldn't she say something like "a couple of months ago" instead of "last year"? I know that when it's February and I'm telling someone about something I did in December, I don't describe it as "last year".

Steph breaks her leg in Robin #123 when she and Tim fight Johnny Warlock. The very next issue, #124, Bruce states that it's been 3 months since Tim "killed" Johnny and has been acting depressed about it. Tim goes to visit Steph, who is still in her cast, and she says she has 3 more weeks before she can get it off. (Nasty broken femur.) This is part of the storyline that leads to Tim being unmasked as Robin, and Steph debuts as Robin two issues later, in #126.

And then Steph is Robin for a total of 71 days (as stated in several places, most recently in Robins: Being Robin #1), including the time she was suspended, which still counts for our purposes because it's part of the time that passes before she's fired, and before War Games and her subsequent death.

So what do we have here?

Steph is 15 at an (estimated) 2 months into her pregnancy.

7 more months until she gives birth.

One and a half months before she's back in action, which

Takes place before Cass makes her deal with Shiva. 12 months passes.

After this, the baby's birth is referred to as being "last year".

Steph breaks her leg. 3 months+ 3 weeks and some days (we'll estimate 4 months).

Steph becomes Robin. Is Robin for 71 days (we'll round that down to 2 months just to be very conservative) 7 months + 1.5 months + 12 months + 4 months + 2 months = 26.5 months, y'all, at bare minimum.

Meaning that, even giving the most possible leeway and declaring that Crystal Brown said that Steph was fifteen literally on her fifteenth birthday, and making the near-impossible allowance that absolutely zero other time passed in between any of these stated events, and going exclusively by canonical sources where actual time/dates are stated, there is no possible way that Stephanie could have died at age 16.

It's canon, though, so to make it work we'd have to accept some compromises. Maybe if she really had only just turned 15 when she and her mom talked, and she was actually farther along in her pregnancy than she thought, and her C-section recovery was shorter, and she got pregnant when she was just 14. (Edited from the original version because my math was off and I went off on a tangent about her actually being 18, which wasn't correct if we read as conservatively as possible, but could have been correct if Steph had been upper-15 when she got pregnant.)

I sorta assumed Steph was 17 during Robin —> War Games, given she’s normally a year older than Tim and we see him turn 16. However I just reread the 2005 Secret Files and Origins and she was 16. Reread war crimes and yeah… I don’t know how I missed that in my other readings. Steph was absolutely 16.. I feel like a fake Steph fan.

Secret Files and Origins (2005) & Detective #810

Posting this despite my immense shame on the off chance anyone else was too delirious with sadness and rage while reading War Games/Crimes to read clearly and also missed this info somehow.

(Also unrelated but I know we’re meant to disagree w Arturo but fuck that noise he’s right for the wrong reasons, yes Steph was lowkey manipulated and lied to by Batman into becoming Robin and also yes we should absolutely blame Batman for her death.)

[duskdog]

[duskdog]

So do they just, like, never address Stephanie's Black Mask trauma? She doesn't get any kind of rematch/climactic showdown with him or...? Doesn't even talk about it with anyone?

[duskdog]

Post-Patrol Selfie by Judy La

For Misfit Day!

[duskdog]

i love you mia dearden

[duskdog]

Do you think Steph and Cass get tired? You know, from running through each other's minds all day?

finally. stephcass hallucination 4

[duskdog]

I feel like Mia has more of a right to make this joke than anyone else, as she, too, has a surprisingly impressive history of getting blown up. Except unlike Jason, she always survives. Skill issue, tbh.

Why would she say that😭

[duskdog]

obsessed with their dynamic

[duskdog]

I will never like JayMia as a romantic pairing, but an AU of their original interaction like this? Or some other interesting interaction between them that could result in an actual worthwhile conversation between them that does something positive for them both? I'm absolutely down for that. Jason: "My mentor and yours are exactly alike -- they're rich bitches who will never understand us." Mia: "False, our mentors are totally different. For instance, mine got me into therapy, and yours obviously didn't, like goddamn"

Idk I was thinking about Jason and Mia and once again writing a Seeing Red AU and I was mulling over it and just decided to say fuck it, let's do aliens or something. Just because it would be incredibly funny to have the whole set-up and them going at each other and then just aliens. And now it's them having to go at the aliens together instead, all the while Jason is keeping his lecture monologue going and Mia is yelling at him to shut the fuck up already. They end up being frighteningly effective teamed up and figuring out how to stab or shoot at something even better.

Anyway every time Jason says something during his monologue that exposes something about himself Mia (while shooting at aliens) is just like

[duskdog]

trying to use this site again. hello!

i got back into superheroes recently and steph and cass remain my favourites. on twitter @kmayarang

[duskdog]

Yeah, Tim was dating Ari when he first kissed Steph, and continued to date Ari the whole time he was doing this weird tap-dance with Steph pre-relationship. I actually think Steph thought she and Tim had a relationship -- or were at least heavily moving towards one -- long before Tim was sure that he was interested in one. She seemed to think of their vigilante outings as dates, in a way, while Tim was still trying to resist the fact that he was developing feelings for her. Tim was leading her on, though I think it's obvious that it was unintentional and mostly due to his own confusion about his feelings for both of them. He did eventually tell Steph about his relationship with Ari, and she expressed that she was okay with it -- she only had him as Robin, after all, and this other girl had him as whatever his secret identity was. Tim was absolutely ecstatic that he could potentially have them both, but IIRC ultimately decided that he needed to choose, and was going to break it off with Ari. Conveniently, she broke up with him first. (I think it's worth mentioning that, had Tim decided to keep dating them both, it was always going to be unfair to Ariana because the fact that she couldn't know about Robin meant that she also probably couldn't ever know about Steph. Even if Steph really was okay with sharing him, Ari would never get the chance to make that decision for herself.) So if Steph was really chill about Ari at first (to be fair, she didn't actually know the other girl's identity, she just knew there was another girl), what changed? Firstly, I don't think she actually was chill about Ari. I think it was more a case of convincing herself that she was okay with it, because she probably thought that was the best she would get. Up until this point, she'd been getting really mixed signals from Tim -- he kissed her, after all, not the other way around, and he kept spending time with her when she had made it abundantly clear that she was interested in him. On the other hand, he often outright rebuffed her when she flirted with him openly, he wouldn't share any personal details with her, and he occasionally still told her to go home (despite fighting alongside her five minutes prior). When Tim told her about Ari, he was also affirming how much he wanted to be with Steph herself. She was probably feeling such a high that she would have agreed to almost anything... or, more sadly, she probably thought that if she pushed back, she wouldn't get any of him at all. It's also possible that she genuinely thought she was okay with it... but grossly underestimated her own jealousy and insecurity until actually confronted with it. Or, maybe, she really was okay with it, but became much less okay with it as her feelings for him grew, particularly after her pregnancy (a very emotional situation for her, worsened by the fact that she likely became isolated from all her other friends during this time). Regardless, I think thebluemoo is absolutely correct -- Steph would have known very early on that Tim was at least open to cheating, because he very much was two-timing her and Ari. Regardless of whether he and Steph were "official" or not, Tim definitely had feelings for her, and was definitely spending a lot of time with her, and kept spending time with her despite knowing that he was dating someone else, and that his feelings were getting stronger. I think most people would consider that an emotional affair at the very least. If he was willing to juggle two women once, why wouldn't she believe he might try it again? And Steph, who has taken a few extra blows to her self-esteem by the time Star and especially Darla come along, is probably very aware that this time, she might lose.

Weird question for you guys. We never see Stephs misunderstanding about Tim cheating on her with Star get resolved. It gets totally dropped from like Robin 87 onwards and never mentioned again. Same thing happens when Steph assumes Tim is cheating on her with Darla, we never see it cleared up. Do you assume these misunderstandings got cleared up off camera?

On one hand, the fact that neither Tim nor Steph mention the cheating misunderstandings ever again might imply that they cleared the air and everything was explained.

On the other hand, Stephs repeated suspicions that Tim is cheating on her make a lot more sense if they never actually cleared the air, and she was under the impression he did cheat on her with Star.

Additionally, for Darla, Steph wouldn’t really have had time to find out, she sees them kiss and then she’s not talking to Tim, she becomes Robin, then after that instantly War Games, and then she’s dead for a year and in Africa.

It super does not matter for the record, I don’t put a lot of stock into the idea that Steph does a lot of her actions because she thinks Tim cheated on her** but I’m just generally curious if people have thoughts on this.

** I sincerely attribute her becoming Robin for instance to her need for approval from the man who has been building up and callously and randomly tearing her down, rather than some spite over Tim. And I think her repeated belief she’s being cheated on has much more to do with her own self esteem issues and inability to believe she is ‘good enough’ for someone like Tim Drake as well as her history of horrible men in her life than it has to do with like… reality.

[duskdog]

The "Our dads are assholes club" founded by Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown current membership now includes Damain Wayne and Jason Todd, both there due to Bruce although they constantly argue that the other is a fake dad hater and their claim is more legitimate, and also Duke Thomas, who always starts the meeting by saying that he loves his parents. His biological father is the asshole NOT his actual dad. Everyone knows this by now but they hold space for his introduction speech before going into their biweekly Bruce bitching session and finishing up with depressing anecdotes about Cluemaster and David Cain that only Steph and Cass laugh about.

[duskdog]

I started out posting some thoughts about how being surrounded almost exclusively by men for her entire life might affect Mia (particularly a lesbian Mia), but then I ended up just getting caught up thinking about her relationship with Roy. We don't actually get to see them on panel together very often, but we get a lot of off-panel and subtext. In fact, their very first conversation happens off-panel! We don't get to see any of it -- but we do get to see Mia being so pumped afterwards that she backflips over a stair railing. Much later, there's a point where she's hurt, and when Roy tells Ollie that she seems to be in good spirits, Ollie says it's only because Roy is visiting. The idea of Mia getting excited whenever Roy visits, and trying to be low-key about it and failing, is insanely cute. We know that she has her own reasons for wanting to be a vigilante, but she chose the Speedy identity in particular not because of Ollie, but because she admires Roy. She's inspired by him not despite his struggles, but because of them -- which is so important, because I think Roy still has a lot of trouble giving himself credit for overcoming his addiction, and still feels a lot of shame about it. It's not all one-sided affection, though. Roy is protective enough of her that he, like Ollie, doesn't want her to become a vigilante and is willing to fight with Ollie over it -- until her diagnosis changes his perspective. And when he misses her seventeenth birthday, he leaves his old quiver of arrows as a belated birthday gift -- including the Phantom Zone arrow, which shows a lot of trust in her. More importantly, though, I think we overlook the fact that he left this gift for her at Titans Tower, when even Mia herself didn't know she was becoming a Titan ahead of time. Ollie basically hooked her up with the Teen Titans without telling her because he thought she lacked friends and knew the Titans had been the origin of Roy's deepest friendships. The fact that Roy knew, ahead of time, to have Cyborg pass those arrows on to her means that Roy also knew that Ollie was going to make Mia join the Titans. I like to think that he was part of that decision -- that he either agreed with Ollie or even suggested it initially, because he wanted his little sister to have the same support that he had when he needed it most. Just... Roy and Mia, y'all.

[duskdog]

So unfortunate to me that almost Steph is regularly called “Stephie” almost exclusively by the creepy/absuive men in her family because it’s such a cute nickname. Stephie. Stephie B. Theres so much potential!

[duskdog]

I am unable to separate them

[duskdog]

Consider: Cass as a colicky baby, screaming out into the silence that surrounds her

[duskdog]

I love writing about female characters I love making them silly and flawed and hypercompetent and moral at the same time and watching fandom's brains explode because they're not one dimensionally chill and supportive or mustache twirling evil and are allowed be jerks and overreact and make mistakes and still be good people worth rooting for or not even good just Interesting. This is very fun to do in male centered fandoms because sometimes they get so confused and scared like no she's supposed to be Nice to my fave guys why isn't she validating them and being supportive? Why are you letting her exist like that? She's being mean to my blorbo she needs to either be written as evil or erased from the narrative.

And every time I see that I get more determined to either make her meaner and have everyone support her or erase your blorbo from the narrative. She doesn't think about him at all actually he's irrelevant to the story now. Yeah sorry to break it to you she made him cry and everyone told her good job so he left the country. Also she's got a girlfriend and they're going to fuck in his house which is theirs now that he no longer exists.