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[frogsonandholmes]

Cass to me is wasian in the sense that Lady Shiva's genes pulled a Shiva and won so hard against Cain's genes that most people don't actually guess Cass is mixed just by looking at her. They have to wait until she's on the phone yelling with Shiva and starts calling her mom a fucking bitch and THEN they realise she's half white.

[frogsonandholmes]

Dick gave up his childhood to be a vigilante. Jason gave his life for Robin and his innocence for Red Hood. Tim lost his father due to being Robin. Damian gave up a life of wealth and royalty, along with his grandfather's approval, to be Robin. Duke gave up We are Robin in order to be the Signal.

Cass had nothing to give and so had nothing she could accept in return. She has always been the way she is, since the day she was born. In the end she traded her life for acceptance, her own acceptance of the love around her. But in terms of vigilante mantles, there was nothing she could sacrifice or change in order to become Batgirl. She was Batgirl before she was Cassandra, before she had words to describe the burning need in her veins to save every life she could.

And before that, back when she was just a little child with an innocence she will always long for... Well back then she wasn't given any choices. She was simply molded into the weapon her father wanted, and the choice she made to reject that was not for any mantle or approval of a fellow bat. Her first ever choice, her first step towards building her own moral framework, was driven solely by her own soul. Zero external influences, just the blood on her hand, the body in front of her and the sick certainty in her stomach that this was Wrong.

[frogsonandholmes]

I like hypothetical Cass and Jason because it’s like exposure therapy except it doesn’t work and the exposure fills you with violent rage

No exactly the rest of the family is like "They just need some time to get used to each other and they they'll calm down." but they're forgetting that Cass has never calmed down even once in her life and Jason thrives on spite. Maybe if Cass was 10% less obnoxious they could find a balance but no she has to grab his gun when he was going for the kneecaps anyways, dismantle it, and poke him in the forehead saying "Skill issue." when he complains that she's being unreasonable. So now he's simply not going to end this mission without electrocuting her at least once. It'll cost him some goodwill with the other bats but 100% worth it.

(He does manage to electrocute her once they finish rescuing the trafficked kids, even if it's more of a zap than a full blown knockout. She responds by breaking into all his safe houses and making Zombie by the Cranberries play on a nonstop loop. He knows she had Babs to help her because there's no way his old Gotham 2005 oven should have fucking Bluetooth and speakers he can't locate.)

Bruce teams them up again next month convinced that things are improving. They finish the mission with Cass crying and Jason holding a cracked helmet, a broken arm, and a sprained foot, none of which he got from their actual enemies.

[frogsonandholmes]

Batfam as The Crane Wives Songs:

(this is a formal request for everyone to listen to the crane wives)

Bruce: Not the Ghost

Dick: Red Clay

Babs: Time Will Change You

Jason: Hollow Moon

Tim: The Well

Steph: Once and For All

Cass: Drown You Out

Damian: The Wolf

Duke: Sowing Seeds

[frogsonandholmes]

Jason gets like a week into his red hood plan and then finds out batman is his sister instead of his dad and has to backtrack hard and come up with a whole new plan and he’s super mad about it.

Jason when he first realizes that it's actually Cass and not Bruce he's been antagonizing for 5 working days

[frogsonandholmes]

i had this idea earlier it was funnier in my head

[frogsonandholmes]

if I could draw anything in the world, I'd draw Cass trying to knock out Steph for [insert plot relevant reason] and Steph jumping behind various Batfam members who get sucker punched instead until Cass has taken everyone out.

[frogsonandholmes]

This is not meant to be a dig more just an observation at why opinions differ, but I feel like the people who view Dick as being a fatherly figure to Damian/them having a Parent-Child dynamic vs a Older Sibling-Little Sibling dynamic don’t know what it’s like to have siblings that are waaaaaaaay older than you in a big family! They may take on a more guardian role but it’s still a different dynamic idk

[frogsonandholmes]

I completely agree! The biggest issue with Babs going back to Batgirl is that it is a regression of her character and arc. In the N52 comics I've read with her as Batgirl she feels immature and out of her depth, even though she's been Batgirl for years by the time these stories are taking place.

This is fully contrasted by her personality during Cataclysm, where she is taking control of the situation, and rallying the troops to recover Gotham after the earthquake. I cannot imagine N52 Babs having the ability to do that.

It is so incredibly frustrating watching her characterisation go down the drain for the sake of putting her in a recognisable costume.

I feel like it's always in bad faith when people try to act like others just don't understand how Barbara Gordon can be Oracle and Batgirl and she doesn't need to separate those identities cause they are all part of herself.

Like this page on saw on reddit

And only speaking for myself here, I get what DC constantly wants us to think. However for me, in the simplest way for me to say it, Batgirl is her past and Oracle is her present. And the refusal to allow Babs to grow up beyond Batgirl for so long to fully be Oracle only made Oracle feel like less than. Cause they were trying to raise her Batgirl status up, but instead they lessen what Oracle was supposed to mean to Babs journey as a character/hero. It was just weird, and while not completely fixed in present comics (cause they still refuse to have a visibly physically disabled wheelchair using Barbara Gordon at all times) writers do seem to more often write her more towards older Oracle era Babs than Babsgirl era these days.

And this is important cause if Babs doesn't mature then you can't in good faith write the type of material she deserves which then also hurts characters around her (like the Birds of Prey and Cass/Steph) almost as much as it hurts her.

[frogsonandholmes]

i love you female characters who make selfish choices they know will be bad for everyone. i love you female characters who think they're making the right choice but make things worse. i love you female characters who are making the right choice but noone else understands it.

[frogsonandholmes]

I love this post so much! I think a lot of people emphasise Cass' role in the relationship between them because fanon!Cass is such an uwu cinnamon roll, and so people who haven't spent much time with her character dont understand how stubborn she is.

The 'would Cass and Jason get along' conversation is interesting because it often hinges on whether Cass would forgive/accept/look past Jason's actions. A lot of people debate whether Cass' compassion outweighs her stance against killing, etc. I think this is the wrong way to go about it because the Cass + Jason dynamic depends on the person's interpretation of Jason, not Cass. If Jason is repentant/swore off killing a la Wayne Family Adventures or something, then yeah sure Cass would be fine with him (see the way she approaches past murderers like Alpha or Damian). But if your version of Jason is pro-killing (even the slightest bit, even the Joker), then no, she would not get along with him. And that's fine.

It's fine for Cass not to get along with every single member of the Batfamily. It's fine for her to have such a hard stance on morality it blinds her to grey areas (which is a canonical issue for her). It's fine for Jason to forsake relationships he may or may not care about in favour of his own morality, too. I think it makes sense to believe Jason and Cass get along, especially with where canon!Jason is now, but it should hinge on Jason changing, not on whether Cass learns to understand him.

[frogsonandholmes]

Please reblog if you have strong emotions about Cassandra Cain and/or Jason Todd, and have things of value to say about comics

[frogsonandholmes]

Helena “my peace has always depended on all the ashes in my wake” Bertenelli

jason “idealism sits in prison” todd

dick “chivalry fell on his sword” grayson

tim “innocence died screaming” drake

damian “i slithered here from eden just to hide outside your door” wayne

do you see the vision

[frogsonandholmes]

It's sorta fucked up to me that people in the Bat fandom who don't know any better just attribute Cass' childhood abuse to Shiva, presumably either because they got all their knowledge from Young Justice or they have no clue who David Cain is and jumped to conclusions based on stereotype. Shiva's not exactly mom of the century, in fact she is a very not good person altogether. She abandoned Cass at birth and clearly does not view her as a daughter in the slightest. Whatever else you can say about her though, she is nothing like David Cain. He is a different brand of monster to her altogether and it's actually a pretty gross disservice to her character to treat her as such. I guess it took comics fans a long concerted effort to push back against writing Talia as an evil one dimensional bad mom/dragon lady and Shiva just doesn't have anywhere near that kind of pull.

[frogsonandholmes]

I always have incredibly mixed feelings when it comes to people depicting Cass as a dancer. On one hand, I think that its a really cool way for her to express herself through movement in a way that is not born of violence.

BUT the idea that The Cassandra Cain would take a lesson or join a class is crazy. If girlie is dancing there is no way she's being told how to do it by someone else, or learning choreography.

I think that we as a society need to remember that Cass thinks she can do anything, with no training or preparation, and 99% of the time she can.

[frogsonandholmes]

cassandra cain

drawing content that specifically caters to me again yay

Close Ups

[frogsonandholmes]