duskdog

[duskdog]

@casscainweek Day 2: Together + Alone

Them ✨

[duskdog]

cass cain week - day 2 - together

[duskdog]

[duskdog]

cass cain week day 2: Together

this was actually originally a sketch for a pjo stephcass idea i had that I repurposed for cass cain week purposes lol

if you know what cass’s shirt is referencing you get bragging points and a kiss on the cheek

[duskdog]

You tell 'em Cass

[duskdog]

Mia shooting arrows upside down🏹

[duskdog]

If you have Spotify reblog this and tag what your number one song on your “on repeat” playlist is.

[duskdog]

They're making Mia read Madame Bovary for school? Hasn't she been through enough?!!!

Free my girl

[duskdog]

my bff4ever

[duskdog]

Tim Drake as the fanons resident sad boi is … whatever I guess but you know who the fandom should be all over and isn’t?? Stephanie Brown. Girl is so so close to being part of the crowd but she’s actually not family, she’s actually not that accepted, there’s the whole events of her as Robin where she’s actually compared to other robins and told to her face she’s not good enough (extreme paraphrasing), she DIED (retconned away but it’s still bad), didn’t even get a memorial or grieved except by Cass and Tim, she’s been told for decades in the comics she’s not good enough, and yes she’s Batgirl now (or a Batgirl I think everyone’s batgirl now.. I did love her batgirl solo from 2009) even that wasn’t smooth sailing for her. And yet and yet and yet we all know why y’all are sleeping on her when she’s got a rough background, villain dad, started out as a solo vigilante (listen of the main ‘batfam’ only Babs and Bruce did that), and actually is an extremely fun character who’s been around for decades. She’s got some good fics out there but damn does she deserve more

[duskdog]

I made myself laugh

[duskdog]

her personal audiobook <3

[duskdog]

Cassandra Cain...in plush form!

For Cassandra Cain Week 2025, I decided to make a plush of Cass in her Black Bat costume! Here, you can see she’s posed amongst rosemary flowers. Rosemary is a symbol of remembrance, and because it can grow even under harsh conditions, it also stands for strength in adversity. Both meanings are perfect for Cassie!*

I really like how her expression turned out. I think she looks very cute and tough!

If I’m being honest, Cassandra’s Black Bat costume isn’t my favorite (though I do love how she’s usually drawn with her cape as this rippling, writhing, alive thing swirling all around her)—I think her OG Batgirl costume is top-notch character design! But without the mask, it’s also a pretty plain costume, and I thought the Black Bat outfit was more visually striking for a simplified doll. (This is also why I made the inside of her cape yellow—canon!Cassie would definitely favor an all-black cape for stealth, but I think she’d agree that for a cuddly doll, a pop of color is acceptable.)

I’ll post some work-in-progress pictures of her later this week, but for now, I’m just delighted that she’s done! I used to be super into knitting character dolls (like, it was my main hobby besides writing—I was very cool in high school), but it’s been a while since I made one, and it was really fun to do something similar again. I think my favorite detail is the little bandages/wraps on her forearms. She wears them as Black Bat, but she also wears them in the YA novel Shadow of the Batgirl as part of a costume she cobbles together herself, and for that reason, I’m especially fond of them as part of her design. With them on, she's ready to take on whatever Gotham can dish up!

*Alright, full disclosure: I actually didn’t intend to comply with the prompts at all. I was taking pictures of Cass outside, noticed that the only flowering plant in my yard was rosemary, and had a violent flashback to playing Laertes in my 11th-grade production of Hamlet, in which we had our Ophelia run out into the audience and start distributing flowers to random people whilst explaining their meaning (one of which was “rosemary—that’s for remembrance”). So then I spent several minutes trying to figure out how to most effectively stuff my precious, handmade doll into a bush. On the plus side, the pictures are pretty, they fit the prompt, and now Cass smells like rosemary, so…win/win?

[duskdog]

cass cain week || day 1: scars/flowers

sunflowers: loyalty, devotion white daisy: forgiveness, hope black rose: regret, death white tulip: sorrow

[duskdog]

Stephanie Brown Rambling Incoming

Stephanie’s relationship with Gotham and the rest of the bats, especially Jason and Dick, is such an overlooked thing because.

Stephanie, Jason, and Dick are all more or less the same character in three different fonts. All three have very similar character arcs, more similar than the other robins, and similar personalities with the main differences coming from either metatextual reasons like the time their being written and specific writers preferences for them, and the situation that their in.

People talk about Jason and Stephanie’s similarities all the time but it goes a lot deeper than just the surface level of them both having died and the similar stories of their parents. Stephanie is one of the only Bats that are relatively cool with murder. She’s attempted it before. And unlike other characters who have internalized the whole “we don’t kill thing” Steph seems to only follow that rule in order to make Cass, Bruce, and Tim happy.

Stephanie, much like Jason, understands the position of the victim in a way that many of the other Bats seem unable to. In fact, some of them, like Bruce and Cass, are much more likely to identify with the Criminal than the victim.

This gives Steph a unique perspective on crime and Gotham that she only really shares with Jason.

On the other hand, Steph goes through a pretty similar character arc as Dick, starting off as a relatively cynical and angry child and growing into a more optimistic person through vigilantism. It’s important to note that Steph and Dick, more than any of the other robins or even bats as a whole, were destined to be vigilantes. They chose to be vigilantes without outside encouragement from Batman or prior training. I hate to reference the Robins comic but in that comic when their put into the “idealistic” lives that Bruce thinks they would’ve had without him, steph and Dick are the only ones still in “the life.” Damian, Tim, and Jason have nothing to do with vigilantism in Bruce’s ideal reality, but even here Bruce can’t even delude himself into thinking there’s any world where Steph and Dick atenta fighting for justice.

The main difference between Dick and Steph has less to do with them as people and more to do with where they are as characters, with Stephanie being much younger with much less history, and the other characters reactions to them. A big reason Dick is where he is as a person is because of Bruce and the Titans belief and trust in him. That’s not something Steph has ever had. Bruce barley tolerates her presence during her Robin run, and the Titans actively reject her while she’s Robin.

This leads to a bigger trend with Steph that shows a major difference in the way the Steph is treated out of universe in comparison to the other robins and batgirls.

In DC comics, characters can usually be sorted into two types of characters. There are the more active characters that exist in both their own mythos, and in larger comic crossover teams and events. Nightwing is allowed to exist in both the Batman mythos and in Titans comics. Black Canary is allowed to exist in Green arrow comics, birds of prey comics, and Justice league comics. These characters are also allowed regular cameos in comics that have nothing to do with them.

On the other hand, more self contained characters like Leslie Tompkins or Jimmy Olsen are only allowed to exist within the context of the mythos they where created for. You’d be hard pressed to find Dr. Tompkins in something unrelated to Batman. These characters are allowed to be characters, but only in the context of the environment.

Most of the Robins are allowed and expected to be one of the active characters. Their leaders and basically and extension of Batman. DC loves Batman, so they wants characters that are basically extensions of him anywhere they can.

That’s why it’s so strange that Stephanie is treated more like a self contained characters only allowed to exist in Batman and related comics than most other Batman characters.

She’s never led a team, unlike the other Robins. She’s never had a consistent non-bat non-gothamite friend. She’s barley even allowed cameos.

Even Duke, who’s a much newer character, has already been allowed to exist on a team and interact with non-bat characters like Black Lightning and Katana.

Every single one of Stephanie’s important relationships, except her relationship with her mother, is with a bat. What makes this extra sad is that with the exception of Cass, Tim, and Damian, she’s not very important to them.

Dick and Steph should theoretically have much more relationship than they do. Dick and Damian are very important people to each other because of their time together as Batman and Robin. Yet Stephanie isn’t awarded the same type of relationship with Dick despite the fact that she was batgirl while he was Batman.

They’ve worked together before, and the two of them are both very important in Damian’s development. But these things are not reflected in their relationship with each other.

Stephanie tends to be discarded and forgotten both as a batgirl and as a Robin, which is tragic considering what a compelling and unique character she is.

Robins have been defined by their relationship with Batman and how he perceives them for a long time.

Dick is famously the perfect version of Bruce, the man Bruce wishes he could be. He’s hope and light and good. Jason is the exact opposite, the worst possible outcome in Bruce’s eyes. He’s the antithesis of Bruce’s ideals and he’s good at it. Tim is Bruce cynicism and practically. Damian is still growing, but in my mind he’s Bruce’s skill and empathy. Duke is an embodiment of the people, of Gotham itself.

I think that Stephanie is a kind of mix between Duke and Jason. She’s an embodiment of the people, yes, but more specifically the people Batman has failed. The kids of criminals, the people who were forced into a life of crime.

She’s a revelation of Batman’s hypocrisy and failures. Had Batman caught her dad earlier, had the justice system not failed her, her life would’ve been much better. She wouldn’t have been a vigilante.

She’s an embodiment of vigilante justice in a way that none of the other Bats really are. She didn’t come into this trained by the best and with super advanced tech. She didn’t have Batman to save her from every mistake. Stephanie is what happens when the average citizen gets a little fed up and decides to take matters into their own hands.

That’s part of why Bruce resents her so much. Bruce inherently comes from a privileged place that makes him unable to understand Stephanie and the people she represents. He doesn’t understand how a parent could be such a danger to their kid that the kid would rather the parent dead. He doesn’t understand why a girl with living parents and a house could want to become a vigilante. He has a fundamental disconnect from Steph and her world.

And just to preface this, I’m talking specifically about modern Batman and how Batman is portrayed during Stephanie’s Robin run. There are many versions of Batman whom most of this doesn’t apply to.

I really don’t know where this was going, I just had a lot of thoughts.

[duskdog]

Something about steph and self-image? Very vague I know but you always have good insights to how characters view themselves and I think Steph is fascinating ! 💜💜

ooo, good one! i actually have an additional fic for you aside from the one i'm writing now! i'm currently more interested in her view of herself as a person and hero -- but on my old account, i wrote a fic about body image. it's a little dated but i think you might like it as well! https://archiveofourown.org/works/17849309

but here's the fic prompt answer:

/////

It’s a while before Stephanie goes back to the cave after… everything.

After she died. After she “died.” 

After the gang war, and Leslie sort-of kidnapping her so she could heal far, far away from Gotham. After being away from the sickness its heart, getting to decide whether she wanted to go back after she was clean. 

Stephanie had. 

And now she was back. And the cave was exactly the way it’d looked when she was Robin. 

Exactly. 

As in – Jason Todd’s Robin suit was still hung up as a memorial. And Stephanie’s is just back in storage somewhere. 

The way she sees it, it’s all the more proof she’s the biggest fuck-up the cave has ever seen. Maybe even a bigger fuck-up than that weirdo who took over as Batman a few years ago and turned Batman bloodthirsty. 

But unlike him, Batman knew Stephanie sucked from the get-go. 

Which is like, the problem. She was the ultimate fuck-up Robin, and she doesn’t even get credit for it. She’s just swept under the rug, and there’s no part about Stephanie that was supposed to go down easy. 

Stephanie stands there, in her shiny new Batgirl costume, and can’t help but stare at Jason’s trophy case. At the plaque. Guess the non-fuck-ups get trophy cases. Or maybe they're just reserved for the real Robins.

Everyone acts like they’re supposed to learn from Jason’s mistakes, because he died in costume and it’d be such a tragedy for Batman to lose another soldier. Which is kind of fucked up, in Stephanie’s unprofessional opinion. But from what little Stephanie has gleaned from Tim and Batman, Jason Todd wasn’t even that much of a fuck-up! He didn’t get in over his head intentionally. He just wanted to know the truth about his mom, and got stuck in a shitty situation. How was he supposed to know the Joker would be in Ethiopia? That was a crazy one-in-a-million chance! 

Stephanie’s the real fuck-up Robin and she should be remembered as such! She innovated in ways that proved there was truly no limit to how bad a person could mess up. Except, everything she did as Robin, right up to the end, was entirely by the book. She followed orders, she did everything she was supposed to do. She stepped exactly half a toe out of line, something that she knew for a fact the other Robins did all the time. Especially Tim. She used her judgment, used her brain – and everything had gone fine. 

And then she’d been fired. Just like that. 

It’s infuriating. She’s heard about all the ways Tim and the first two Robins deliberately disobeyed. Tim got the gig specifically by ignoring Batman’s instructions! It wasn’t fair that the one time she improvised – which still led to a decent outcome! – she got sacked for it. Tim would’ve gotten benched, maybe. But because B already knew Stephanie was the fuck-up of all fuck-ups, everything she ever did wrong needed a triple dose punishment. 

It wasn’t fair. 

She wasn’t supposed to just be forgotten. She’d died, too, hadn’t she? However briefly? 

But then, even if it was brief, they thought it’d been for good. And he still…

There wasn't even a trace of her here.

Whatever. It was short. Like what, two, three months? Jason had been Robin for almost three years. So he got the trophy case. And she got the storage room. 

Because she’s a fuck-up. And fuck-ups don’t deserve memorials. They’re not even worth the cautionary tale. They’re only worth a tired, hand-sliding-down-the-face, ‘What did you do this time, Stephanie?’ 

So no memorial case for her. Whatever. it’s not like any of the others could even learn from her mistakes anyway. Not like Batman was just itching to hire more girl Robins, so why did it matter that she was Ms. Teen Pregnancy PSA? They couldn’t learn from it. Maybe they’d use a condom or something, but if Dick or Tim got someone pregnant, Batman would probably have just congratulated them. Yes, you’ve done your duty, you’ve put more batlings into the world. I’m so proud of you boys. 

And the other Robins didn’t have evil dads, she was pretty sure, so why would they need to learn how hard it was to let your dad get arrested instead of killing him in cold blood? They wouldn’t need any kind of Attempted Fratricide Redemption course. 

It’s just-

Every bad choice she’d made, she learned from, and she’d made the right choice in the end.

Well. Right up until the biggest fuck-up of them all. 

A lot of people had died. All because she’d tried to prove herself. That she was good enough. That she was still worth something after she’d been fired. She'd been wrong and so many people were in graves because of her hubris. And now she was alive and they weren't.

Stephanie closed her eyes a moment.

Maybe she'd been fired for a reason. Maybe he'd got a premonition that she'd be capable of cataclysmic fuck-ups, so B had just chosen to fire her early.

Because it was different, for her. The others had been benched before, and sure, Dick had been fired pretty unceremoniously too, but he’d had the Titans, and another name, and gear, and…

No one had ever been just one-and-done fired like that. Not in such a short turnaround. 

In hindsight, it was so obvious that she’d been nothing more than a placeholder for Tim at best, and a ‘look what you made me do’ at worst. Because Tim had been right there with Batman telling Stephanie to quit back when she started. She’d hoped that Tim had genuinely changed his  mind, but… She was just there to lure him back out. She’d just been there to keep the mantle warm.

And when she got fired, to Batman, that was it. He didn’t care about her, which meant no second chances. Not like the other Robins got. Because again, she was the fuck-up, and she didn’t deserve second or third or fifteenth chances like all the rest seemed to get. She didn’t get to use her own judgment in the field because no one trusted her.

They don’t support her because she’s a huge fuck-up. One big walking hazard sign. 

No one should’ve been surprised when she managed to start a gang war, and got captured and tortured, and died from her injuries.

But unlike Jason, who gets a whole trophy case, Stephanie didn’t even die in the Robin colors. 

She died as Spoiler. No relation to Batman. 

She wasn’t missed, she wasn’t remembered. She’s not even a goddamn lesson, because what is there to tell? “Don’t hire fuck-ups?” That doesn’t need a fucking plaque. 

Or-

Or maybe it does. Fuck it.

Stephanie finally takes a step back from Robin II’s memorial case, and gives it a two-fingered salute. “I know you weren’t a fuck-up,” she tells him. “And believe me, I’d know. Don’t worry, kid. I’ll make sure you’re not totally alone here.” 

And with that, she’s got a mission. She’s supposed to be in the cave for a supply run for Babs. Because apparently Babs is in the business of working miracles, and… After Cass gave Stephanie the suit, Babs…

Well. Stephanie isn’t entirely sure why Babs hasn’t tried to chase her off yet. Stephanie also isn’t entirely sure why Cass let her be Batgirl. But the point is, Babs hasn’t successfully discouraged Stephanie yet. She’s even been willing to work with her, give her supplies. Give her access to the Batcave again. Stephanie won’t abuse that trust, she'll finish the task Babs gave her, but she’s never been very good at following the rules to a T. And even when she did as Robin, it still wasn’t enough, so maybe it’s just a cosmic fuck-up thing. 

Stephanie finds the old costumes, stowed away, clean and neatly pressed.

Hers is among them. She’s only a little surprised – she’d half wondered if B would’ve burned it in a new no-girls-allowed campaign. (Stephanie tries not to think too hard about how and why Cass is the exception.)

She unfolds it, looks at it properly for the first time since wearing it. The red and green and yellow of it all. The skirt. The headband.

She has half a mind to take it with her. 

Instead, she sighs through her nose, and pulls out a sticky note. It’s no memorial plaque, but it’ll do. 

A good fuck-up, she thinks morbidly, and almost writes it when the sharpie hits the post-it note. It lingers for long enough that it forms a dark, swelling dot. But the others would probably kill her if they ever found it. Disrespecting the properly-dead, and all. 

Stephanie closes her eyes, and thinks about what the version of her who died on the operating table, however briefly, would have wanted to read.

…Fuck Black Mask, I hope he dies. Take care of my mom. Was I ever good enough? 

Not quite punchy enough. 

Spoiler Alert! She finally writes. She dies at the end. :) 

She re-folds the uniform, then sets it back in its place, note tucked slightly under the fold of the collar. 

There. Not much of a good soldier. But for now, it’ll do. 

[duskdog]

Bruce: You need to learn to steel yourself against the Fear Toxin. Go to your happy place and focus on it. Everyone's is different. Do you know what your happy place is? Cassandra: ...

Cassandra: ...Pass.