littlemissonewhoisall

[littlemissonewhoisall]

There's a hot dog vendor in Cass' neighborhood in Gotham who makes a jumbo supreme dog with everything on it every night at around the same time and leaves it on the counter behind him. The next time he turns around it's gone and in it's place there's a fistful of tens. He's got no idea when it started or who he's even making them for. He's got no idea he is the single most protected person in Gotham City.

[littlemissonewhoisall]

Ngl, while I love the core four, I also feel the grouping of Kon, Tim, Bart ("the boys") and Cassie ("token girl") often leads to the erasure of the other members, especially the girls. Never forget that for most of it's run Young Justice had an equal amount of male and female team members and that Cassie was introduced to the team pretty much simultaneously with Cissie and Greta.

[littlemissonewhoisall]

Finally got my hands on Batgirl #3 and gosh. Gosh! this arc, at the very least, is going to be right next to BG 2000 on any future recs, if not Tate's whole run. It is everything I could've ever wanted in a Cass solo.

Like there's a lot of other thoughts I have, but seeing bits of that page float around for the last few days (Barbara's will, Stephanie's heart, Bruce's pride) put against a page where she is being demonstrably... narrow minded? Insular? About her mother - and is manifesting that in what is pointless violence against people who certainly aren't good but who's hurt doesn't benefit anyone in anyway is genuinely fascinating. Like there was a genuine feeling of something like dread in me when we see that juxtaposition - of her belief in her family with moral inflexibility. It's absolutly fascinating.

[littlemissonewhoisall]

i’m so excited for cass to do the wrong things and make mistakes

[littlemissonewhoisall]

Every day k think about the person that told me Cassandra Cain can't be Asian because she's disabled. I really am almost jealous of that level of stupidity.

[littlemissonewhoisall]

Shiva would do it for the bit.

I think Shiva and Barbara should get married so they can divorce and let Barbara officially get custody on Cass. Shiva is perfectly okay with this, so long as she can fight someone at the wedding after the vows.

[littlemissonewhoisall]

batgirl (2024) #3

this interaction 😆😆😆😆😆😆

[littlemissonewhoisall]

Wait is that true

I'm just saying, technically Barda's like the size of a planet sans boom tube so they're all microscopic to her relatively speaking and it's a little uncalled for of her to keep singling Cass out as the small one.

[littlemissonewhoisall]

So How About That Batgirl #3

I didn't transplant my review of #2 here because there wasn't that much more to say, especially in regards to Lady Shiva (which is always the most important part of any comic with her in it for me) but #3, hooo boy, there's a lot to talk about for this one.

It introduces, or maybe just expands, a concept that kinda had me feeling a bit nervous but eventually won me over, and still has room for some fun narrative trickery. So I'm gonna go ahead and post my full review of the issue down here:

Picking off where #2 left off, #3 starts with Shiva and Cass on a train heading out of Gotham to meet some allies in their fight against the unburied. And Cass is noooot happy about it.

These opening pages follow the same character dynamic we've seen so far, with Cass openly rejecting her mother's remarks while inwardly rejecting her mother in general -- her inner monologue constantly reassuring herself that Shiva is a lonely manipulative monster while Cass is a good person, clearly to try to chase away the guilt of leaving everyone behind. The desperation in Cass' inner voice to paint Shiva as an unredeemable monster is very palpable and very good in the face of everything that's happened so far.

But the next pages made me a little concerned, with Shiva berating Cass while goading her about her relation with the batfamily. And while we've seen Shiva take jabs at that before, notably in Hill's Outsiders, back then it felt more pointed (and a little meta, what with the whole "He won't even let you be Batgirl" thing), while here Shiva's comments on languages, while true in a way, felt more openly cruel. Bordering on villainous.

Had the issue stayed this way, I would've been very worried about this whole arc turning into yet another milquetoast "Evil bio mom, good found family" yarn. But then the track switches.

The lion's share of the issue is dedicated to introducing the survivors of the Order of Shiva, who have dedicated thier lives not to just worship the deadliest hands on Earth, but to study, learn & better themselves through her example. Which is an idea that could've gone very wrong. Personally? I think this is kinnnnnda neat. Mostly.

The thing is, I've never been a fan of Shiva having any kind of cult or organization built around her. I think it's the kind of stuff that can weigh her down and, at worst, just be used to make her more of a pure villain, like in Dixon's RICHAR DRAGON run. But in this issue, the idea slowly won me over with how Brombal uses it to explore two overlooked aspects of Shiva:

The first is that Shiva, at her best, tends to inspire others. Just by entering a person's life, Shiva, tends to change their perceptions of reality, of what's possible. When Shiva entered Vic's life, she indirectly got him to question a lot of things about how he viewed reality. Same with Dinah and, yes, Cass herself. And this order seems to be entirely built on that idea of Shiva as someone who makes people rethink everything (albeit with way more altruism than Shiva herself).

The other thing this whole scene explores is Shiva's dualities and seeming contradictions, her nature as both destroyer and restorer. Which is something I'm always happy to see, especially nowadays. But this is also where my one big problem with this issue lies: it pays a lot of lip service to Shiva as a healer without actually showing it.

A mention is made of Cass rejecting Shiva's help, but an actual moment of Shiva using her healing skills, to me, would've really helped support High Priest's Jayesh gushing praise of that dual nature.

Just a couple of panels of her doing some funky pressure point head massage, it's all I'm asking.

Beyond that, I do have one nitpick that's just about the one thing that keeps me from fully embracing this idea, and that's Shiva's level of involvement with the order. Jayesh drops a hint of how he met Shiva, and she seems to care at least a little for him and for the Order, but there's not a lot said about how much she helped them build and maintain it.

If they're all people who ran into her, had their minds opened and built an order around their idea of her, that's one thing. If she helped them build it then that's another. Her small moments of caring do seem to indicate she's also warmed up to them, which would suggest some relatively high involvement, which I don't really like. I'd much prefer the order being something that Shiva is aware of but keeps at arm's length, a bunch of well-intentioned groupies that, like the issue says, follow her example rather than her orders. The bottom line is that I don't like anything that Shiva seems to be too attached to, but even if she was, I'm still mostly OK with this idea.

Anyway, the final leg of the issue is dedicated to a very entertaining chase and fight across the rest of the train that's a delight to see. And while my copy's all digital, I imagine it's way better in paper. Miyazawa and Spicer clearly have a lot of fun with these pages and it continues the run's interesting dynamic of Cass and Shiva never being fully in sync during a fight, always fighting each other as much as whoever's all around them.

But apart from the action, the thing that rang a lot of bells for me was Cass' narration as it insists again that Shiva is nothing but a monster and that Cass is nothing like her, eventually flowing towards a very heroic list of all her family members and their core traits that's very nice and heartwarming... and desperate.

Because the narration in this scene all reads to me like Cass arguing with herself. It reads desperately like her trying to chase away the dual thoughts that her mother may not be a complete monster AND that she herself, Cass, really is a lot like her mother.

Hell, the scene is literally Cass running away from Shiva, punching through what she sees as undisputable proof of her mother's lies while checklisting the family she does want and love, physically and mentally fighting against even the possibility of Shiva being worthy of more than her disgust. It's not Cass rejecting Shiva for being evil, it's her trying to reject the evidence that she may have something resembling good in her.

So the whole thing takes a very heroic cliche, Cass naming all these loved one to give her strength, and turns into a flailing flurry of mental gymnastics from Cass to allow herself to keep rejecting Shiva, to maintain this inner image of her as a monster while refusing any connection with her. And it's all pretty compelling stuff.

The issue then ends with one final surprise as Cass runs into the rest of Shiva's allies: a resurrected Nyssa Al-Ghul, Angel Breaker and a brand new character we'll apparently learn more about next month. So yeah, this was an interesting issue. The pacing of the arc is still a bit slow, but with all the players (hopefully) at the table and three issues to go, I hope the rest of the arc will pick up steam and keep chugging along smoothly.

I wasn't expecting the Order of Shiva to get much more play after #1. I certainly wasn't expecting them to get expanded like this. And I definitely didn't expect it to win me over this much. Minor quibbles aside, I gotta give props to Brombal for the obvious thought he's put when laying down these tracks for Shiva, and I'm definitely in for the rest of the ride.

(then again, maybe I'm just being blinded by the intense relatability of my man Jayesh over here. I feel you, brother. Hope you survive this arc)

[littlemissonewhoisall]

Oh boy, the age old question. I can provide some more info from their comic counterparts if it might be of use, though there is really no great answer to be had:

The comics have recently stated that they're Chinese after a LONG history of not providing answers, but Shiva has a Japanese godfather and an uncle with a Japanese name. Shiva's place of birth is either somewhere in rural China or in Detroit, depending on the writer, with the former being more common. Her godfather and mentor was a defector from the Japanese army during WWII, placing her age at less than a century.

The family name was originally anglicized as Woosan, more recently Wu-San, and is applied for both Sandra and her late sister Carolyn, so I think it's supposed to be a family surname. This was back in the 70s and I doubt Dennis O'Neil was being very rigorous, though I have heard he did a lot of research when naming Ra's al Ghul around the same time so maybe there's more to it than what anyone has figured out? Her alliance with the League is a later thing in her life, as she was originally (and currently, now) their enemy. She's long since abandoned the name Sandra, though sometimes is still called Shiva Wu-San.

The name Lady Shiva is of course borrowed from Hinduism as she herself states in her first appearance, but she's consistently depicted as East Asian and one of her fellow disciples is explicitly Taoist, so I think she chose that for the symbolism around destruction as a means of renewal rather than any cultural ties. She's also been given symbolic ties to Shinto and Greek mythological characters.

Cassandra has been more recently been depicted using Cantonese terminology, but this is more likely due to her father David being from Hong Kong in the recent comics or due to her having operated in Hong Kong for a bit during the late 00s. Before the reboot, her father was shown to be white, and as he still uses a very white name I suspect he's mixed race in the post reboot years.

I was watching the new YJ series and now my brain can't stop thinking of what kind of Asian was Shiva and Cass??

("Cassandra WOO-SAN!")

What freaking surname is Woo-San???

I thought Woo-San was literally (五三）53, like maybe she was the 53rd ninja for the League of Assassins.

Or

Her surname was（吴）Wu and her name is （珊） San. It would make sense why her English name is Sandra. This one makes the most sense.

With two letters, even with a Chinese surname it's almost always ShangGuan, Ouyang, Sima, Situ.

Or

With two letters, it's... Japanese? After fiddling around Jisho.org I got nothing. Maybe someone else who is nihongo jozu can figure it out.

Or

Shiva is actually way older than she looks and her name reflected a low status from a bygone era.

I find it fascinating if it turns out that Shiva is actually from the Qing Dynasty and she was such a menace who battled everyone in pursuit of perfecting her style of martial arts that she gets noticed by Ra's who was at the imperial court at the time.

Then her name Woo-San is literally a number. Because people who were sold to slavery didn't have names beyond numbers. The numbers didn't reflect seniority. They usually get renamed after they're sold.

(Can you imagine them having a found family trope that gets corroded by the passage of time?)

[littlemissonewhoisall]

Idk about you, but it’s very important to me that Cassandra Cain has a scratchy and sore sounding voice paired with an accent that is completely unique.

Like, that girl was homeless and wandering the US for around 9 years! Pairing that with the fact she didn’t use her voice often/at all for the first 17 years of her life then of course her voice will sound weird from the disuse!

[littlemissonewhoisall]

The Flash plan is honestly so brain dead to me. It requires Wally to choose to phase through a bullet rather than dodge it, despite phasing being the technique Wally notably struggles with. What makes it even more absurd is that this is Mark Waid who wrote this! The guy who wrote Wally for an entire decade!

what's your favorite jl arc

Tower of Babel, obviously. It does such an awesome job balancing Batman’s skills (and morals) with the other Leaguers’, neatly explains why he has so much trouble with his local villains, and left behind such a wonderful legacy of Internet nerds properly respecting each and every superhero DC publishes!

[littlemissonewhoisall]

A Deep Dive Into Why Cass Threw Dick Out A Window

If you've been here long enough you've probably seen or heard of this moment, which is super hilarious and iconic. It's mostly discussed in reference to Dick and Cass' relationship. However, in my opinion Cass throwing Dick out a window had very little to do with her opinion of him, or even of Barbara; it has more to do with her understanding of romance and love. I briefly touched on this in my gender/sexuality post, but I'm going to explain more in depth my interpretation of how Dick functions in Batgirl (2000) as a whole. (This moment is very open to interpretation though, this is just my opinion!). So let's try to answer Dick's question: what was that all about?

Love, Language, and DickBabs

While Puckett's run is notable for not having Cass date anyone, romantic love does play a role in Cass' early understanding of the world. It's the impetus that spurs her to write: in issue 2, she sees a wife read a letter from her deceased husband, and her reaction affects Cass so strongly she immediately starts trying to write. (She also kisses the husband on the cheek earlier, which may or may not be a crush). Romance, and the ability to communicate your love, is a fundamental part of Cass' desire to learn language.

So we have Cass, who has experienced neither love nor language, living with Babs, who's in a relationship with Dick. This telephone conversation in #4 (the issue where a metahuman changes Cass' brain into understanding language) again links romance to communication. Dick and Babs are talking on the phone, unable to see each other but understanding each other perfectly; Cass and Babs, on the other hand, live together and can't understand each other at all.

"She can't talk, so it's not all that different [to living alone]." Babs is telling an eavesdropping Cass that her inability to speak prevents her from love and connection - a love and connection symbolised by one of the first romantic relationships Cass is consistently around, Dick and Barbara.

Dick as an Ideal

There's a debate whether Cass likes Dick or not because half the time they're friendly, and half the time she's punching him or throwing him out windows. This disparity makes sense if you consider that Cass strongly associates DickBabs with communication, understanding, love - very idealised notions - but she does not associate Dick as a person with them. Her interactions with Dick (sans Babs) are cute and normal - Batgirl #29 and Nightwing #81 feature some very adorable Dick-Cass moments, with no real tension whatsoever.

It's only when Cass sees Dick in a romantic light (as in associated with Babs) that she makes him into a symbol.

Cass often tries to copy Babs, thinking it's the 'correct' thing to do - in DC First: Batgirl/Joker, she goes after Joker because that's what Barbara did; later in Horrocks' run she'll wear Barbara's outfit. In a way, Cass' affairs with Tai'Darshan and Kon - as much as I do think Tai'Darshan was genuine attraction - is another way to 'copy' Barbara. In #42, Cass stares at a picture of Dick and Babs while asking if Babs likes boys. Obviously Cass knows the answer is yes, but see what she asks next, and how Barbara responds:

She shifts from 'like' to 'love', and Babs responds that she 'care[s]' about him. For Cass, whose arc in Horrocks' run is about parsing out the nuances of attraction, understanding the difference between like, love, and care is incredibly difficult. She struggles to separate familial from romantic (Bruce in #50) or romantic from platonic (Kon, and in somewhat the reverse way Steph). In this conversation, Cass comes to associate Dick with like, love, and care - DickBabs becomes not just a symbol of romantic love, but of any connection whatsoever.

The Old Costume

I've discussed elsewhere that Cass wearing Babs' old costume in #45 is a representation of her desire to be 'girly', and how she associates girlhood with someone other than herself, discarding her own costume for Babs'. But putting on a costume is not the only prerequisite for being a 'girl'. In Babs' speech to Cass, she emphasises being sexually attractive to men, with her final comment being about this "particular look Dick used to give [her]". For Cass, visual language is incredibly important; putting on Babs' costume is not about being or feeling like a girl, but about being perceived as one. Dick is symbolic of the perceiver: the one who can essentially 'grant' women their femininity.

But Cass is disgusted when Tim calls her hot, which adds to her confusion - why should Dick being attracted to Babs make Babs happy, but Tim (who's not a sibling at this time) perceiving her like that grosses her out? Cass' inability to feel good - to feel 'feminine' - through the male gaze is another sign, to her, of her failure to be a woman.

Which finally brings us to issue 46...

That Ableist Kon Comment

Cass finds out Dick breaks Babs' heart and then starts hallucinating on a drug. One of the things she hallucinates is Kon saying "who wants to date a cripple? Ain't that right, Nightwing?" and Nightwing responding "not me--at least, not anymore."

For the first time, we get to the heart of why DickBabs mattered to Cass: it was an example of a disabled person in a loving, romantic relationship. It goes back to that phone call in #4, where Babs implies that Cass is hard to care about because she can't speak. The Kon comment suggests Cass has carried that with her all this time, trying to find proof that she can be loved, no matter her disability. DickBabs showed her it could be done - the break-up shows her now that it can't be done.

Dick's hallucination mocks her disability: "look at her--she can't even read!" Attributing this mockery to Dick (whose real-life counterpart, unlike the other hallucinations, has never said anything remotely like this) shows that this 'Dick-as-ideal' is intrinsically tied to Cass' self-worth.

Honestly this whole post stemmed from me thinking about this one panel. There is no real reason, from Cass' view of Dick as a person, for her to think he's brave and noble and kind (more so than anyone else). But it's in the DickBabs context - that Dick seemed to love, wholeheartedly, a disabled woman - that makes Cass think this way. And now that DickBabs is broken up, it shows that she, too, is rotten to the core; that someone like her cannot be loved.

And so when Dick shows up, she throws him out the window.

Conclusion

In this moment, Cass isn't just reacting to Dick breaking up with Barbara, she's reacting to what it means to her. If Dick can't stay with Barbara, then that means Cass, as another disabled woman, is also unable to be loved. This all leads up to #50, which features another Cass punch to Dick's face, but more importantly is when Bruce and Cass reconcile through Cass' first language. It's a confirmation that though her verbal skills may not be fully developed, she still can communicate, and she can love and be loved.

I don't think a lot of the ideas I touched on here are fully developed, or conclude cleanly. For example, how does Cass' 'failure' to be a woman relate to her inability to be loved? Is she able to have a stable romantic relationship? There are lots more questions, but the role Dick specifically plays in Cass' understanding of romance is probably not going to develop further. I just think it's interesting how Horrocks uses the Dick-Babs relationship to explore Cass' identity.

[littlemissonewhoisall]

vanity

[littlemissonewhoisall]

It's less "he would not fucking say that" and more "he should not fucking say that"

“He would not fucking say that” is a Schrodinger’s phrase when it comes to Batman. There is probably Batman run where he would say that. There is also probably a run where Batman would kill the other Batman for saying that.

[littlemissonewhoisall]

I'd love to look at him but the Devil is taunting me from behind him.

BEGONE FOUL BEAST

It's like Batfandom has this compulsion to designate a character as The Normal One and it baffles me so much because isn't the point of the Bats that none of them are normal?

[littlemissonewhoisall]

mark of cain did a really good job showing us she tore out a man's windpipe without actually *showing* us her tearing out the windpipe but also... there'd be more than just blood on her hand from that, y'know?