#//so here is a little mini plot thing for Dinah that I've been working on!

[judgeanon]

It Sure Has Been a Wild Couple of Days to be a Lady Shiva Fan

(Art by Skylar Partridge)

So after only showing up for a backup story in DETECTIVE COMICS a few months ago and for a few pages in the last issues of BATGIRLS back in January, turns out that Lady Shiva is gonna be a major part of not one, but two different series come November. Putting my thoughts under the jump 'cause they might be long:

First, there's an all-new BATGIRL ongoing written by Tate Brombal and drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa. I'm not really familiar with either of them, but I'm gonna try to check some of their work in the weekend. As for the plot:

When a deadly group of assassins shows up to kill Cassandra Cain, Lady Shiva must come to the rescue, and they’re forced to put their complicated past aside and work together as mother and daughter to ensure they make it out alive. Unfortunately, things are never as easy as they seem, and Batgirl must embark on a jaw-dropping, martial-arts filled adventure in her quest for truth and justice…and revenge?! This is a Batgirl unlike any other so don’t miss the opportunity to dive into the psyche of one of Gotham City’s deadliest fighters, while exploring her deep and complex relationship with her mother.

Here's the thing: while I am overjoyed that after Bryan Hill's OUTSIDERS we've pretty much exorcised the idea of Shiva as a zealous, card-carrying member of the League of Assassins, I've been a little bothered by how literally every single big Shiva appearance afterwards has revolved around Cass. Even in that weird short stint leading a new Birds of Prey team, her motivation was somehow gaining Cass' trust for... reasons. So I'm glad Shiva's no longer an LoA flunky, but I'm concerned with how she seems so tied at the hip with Cass -- especially since Cass does get to have stories that don't involve Shiva at all.

But at the same time, I do think there's a lot of meat on that bone, meat that, in my eye, nobody has really sank their teeth in yet. Hill tried but he was working within a team book, and Cloonan and Conrad just sorta teased it. This one, however, feels like a story about Shiva and Cass built from the ground up, with all the room necessary for some actual development from the two. This is them not as a subplot or as a tease for future stories, but as The Story. And while that may go in a bunch of different ways, I'm definitely interested to see what way this will go.

Annnd then there's Tom King and Ryan Sook's BLACK CANARY: BEST OF THE BEST, which I'm... a little less interested in.

Black Canary faces her toughest opponent yet, Lady Shiva, in a battle to determine who is the single greatest hand-to-hand fighter in the DC Universe. To make it to the final round, Black Canary will need all her fighting skill and ability, plus additional training from some of DC’s most accomplished fighters, including Batman, Wildcat, and even her mother, the original Black Canary!

Yeaaaaah, I just... I'm not feeling this one. There's not any real mention of a plot here, not a lot to really grab on to other than vibes, and the vibes are just weird. It's weird how Dinah is fighting to determine who's the best fighter, something that to me isn't really a huge part of her character. It's weird that, from the preview pages, they're fighting in like a Vegas casino, in a ring, with an audience. It's weird that there's three trainers mentioned and none of them are Cass, who not only has beaten Shiva before but has trained with Dinah at least twice in canon. And this being tumblr, let me say it's also weird that this is a story about a white woman training with three white people to beat up an Asian woman in martial arts.

It's a six issue mini and the short solicit and weirdness is clearly meant to pique curiosity. But I'm dreading how much this all sounds like it's using Shiva to put Dinah in a pedestal, to show how strong and resilient and stubborn she can be. Even if it goes for a ROCKY ending of "Lost the fight but won at life", unless Shiva is written very thoughtfully, it feels like she's just gonna be there for the sake of Dinah's character. And I dunno if I trust King to write Shiva with any real thought.

So that's kinda where I'm at. Neither of these are a full Shiva solo, and one of them fills me with dread, but it's been a real rush to have two major Shiva-related projects like these be revealed one after the other. And with 2025 being the 50th anniversary of her debut, hey, who knows? Maybe this is just paving the road for something special. Hope springs eternal, no?

[dinah-davenport]

In the Dark of the Night || Self Para

TW: Blood, Violence, Gore

It was well after midnight when Dinah exited The Sanctuary. Usually she could be there much later but it had been a quiet night and one of the other medics was also on duty, so she decided to call it a night. It was just as well that the Alpha didn’t need a whole lot of sleep since she had a 6am rise that morning; the hospital called and asked if it was possible for her to come in for a few hours in the morning. So, being her typical caring self, hoisted herself down the hospital until around 11am when she headed to her family’s building. It was also the afternoon when she visited the Armory; luckily Gale took care of a lot of that so she could focus on other areas. This was why she was glad to be leaving The Sanctuary; it had been far too long a day.

Instead of getting her driver to pick her up, she opted to walk; something that she liked to do from time to time. Her almost floating amble meant that it could take her well over an hour, but Dinah liked the fresh air, she liked the fact that she didn’t have to speak to anyone and she could be alone with her thoughts. It was one of the rare times that she had that. Silence. Even her home was usually filled with some sort of noise: Olga in the kitchen or the the rest of the staff cleaning the house and sometimes Wyatt pacing along the hall. She always had something to do or someone to meet, so she felt these strolls were vital to her mental health in a way.

Dinah came to a halt in front of one of the entrances to Central Park, debating whether or not she was going to walk around and stop in at a 24 hour store, or walk by The Lake and delay her journey home just a little bit longer. After a moment of quiet contemplation she turned her sneaker clad feet in the direction of the entrance, trotting over the road to avoid some late-night traffic.

As soon as stepped under the canopy of trees, she felt as though she was entering another world; a feeling she loved when she walked in Central Park. She felt the park almost could seem out of place to some, a luscious, well-kept, vast area of green that stood out in a concrete jungle. It reminded her of home, the home she had nearly a thousand years ago. That was why she loved being in nature… because it made her feel closer to the life that she once had. It would be wrong to assume that Dinah spent every day pining for lost times that would never return, because she didn’t. But there were some passing days when the past seemed so much closer to her, like she could reach out and touch it and she’d be back with her husband and children, sitting in one of their fields, a light breeze catching at her hair. She wasn’t a naive woman in the slightest; she’d probably considered more of a realist than a dreamer. But it was interesting what a thousand years of living while people around you died and lay decaying in the dirt, could do. She grew wise to the dreams because in reality all they would do was cause pain… better to stay in the real world.

The werewolf’s eyes came back from the far off thoughts in her head, and back to the walkway in front of her. It was lit by Victorian style gas lights, an homage to a time when horse drawn carriages and corsets were the norm. Dinah liked walking down when there was no one around, it meant that, despite the darkness, she could really take the time to enjoy her surroundings. There was no one knocking into her or joggers snapping at her to get out of the way, it was totally relaxed. She raised her hand and tucked a strand of hair away that had came loose, securing it behind her ear before turning more in the direction of 5th Avenue.

It was as she began to walk off the main walkway that she realised that she wasn’t alone. Her eyes glanced around the area but she found no one, deciding to simply carry on her way than really stop to investigate. She was about to put the feeling to the back of her mind when a figure staggered out from the trees, turning towards her.

��Lady… lady please help… I’m hurt”

Even from the distance that Dinah was standing at, she could sense that they were a vampire. But as the figure crumbled to the ground, it didn’t stop her from jogging over to them, feeling the need to help. Perhaps they had been bitten by a werewolf or suffering from the effects of vervain. Both of which the Original had dealt with before.

“Where are you hurt?” she asked, coming to kneel beside the figure, a frown moving over her face from concern.

That was when it happened. At first Dinah thought she had been punched but as soon as she felt the burning sensation and twisting that she knew what it was. A blade. She let out noise that was almost like she had been winded and was trying to suck in breath, her hands moving to where the pain was. Her eyes darted to her fingers that were now covered in a crimson liquid… covered in blood. Despite still trying work out what had happened, she knew that the knife had most likely ruptured her liver and would be bitch to heal. This whole process in her mind must have only took a split second, but that was all that needed for a repeat attack, this one landing only a few inches from the first.

That was all that was needed for her to completely come to terms with this was; an ambush. Just as she began to move, she was dragged backwards from the decoy vampire. Luckily Dinah was much more prepared, her hand shooting back to the assailant’s wrist, twisting it hard enough to hear a resounding snap. With the vampire, who stank of the kind of magical alcohol that you could buy at The Frey, letting out a yowl, she took her cue and scrambled to her feet. As she whirled around, her hand over one of the wounds while the other was clenched at her side, stained red, she saw half a dozen vampires come out of the woodwork, stalking towards her.

Looking back, it was clear to her that this was the moment that something inside her that had lay dormant for well over a century, snapped. It wasn’t the short of snap like a twig under pressure, it was a snap like a bone breaking in two. And they were at the receiving end.

“You…” Dinah began, her voice low and resoundingly deadly, “Picked the wrong person to attack tonight”. Those were the only words she muttered until much later.

If there was one word to describe the events of that night, it would be ‘bloodbath’. It was evident that the Alpha wasn’t going to kill cleanly when the first head rolled across the walkway, leaving its lifeless body behind. The red mist had clouded Dinah’s judgement, leaving her with one desire: to send two messages. You don’t fuck with the Davenports. And perhaps more importantly; you don’t underestimate Dinah Davenport. And that was a lesson these drunk, rogue vampires found out the hard way, the violent way.

In the grand scheme of things the fighting didn’t last that long as the vampires soon began to drop like flies; one with their heart torn from their chest, one losing their head after she broke several bones in their now lifeless body and others going out in similar ways. She was about to finish off one of the final ones when she felt a sharp burning stab in the middle of her back, making Dinah cry out from the pain. The fact that it remained, as well as the object made her denote that it was a silver arrowhead-like weapon, a weapon now embedded in her back with no real way to get out by herself.

It wasn’t even a millisecond before she whipped around, her foot swinging around with her, colliding with the vampire (the one who lured her into the trap in the first place) and broke his leg. He went down like a ton of bricks, hitting the ground with a resounding smack. Dinah watched for a few moments as he did his best to drag himself along the ground, away from her as his leg wasn’t healing fast enough to make escaping easy.

“What? Leaving already?” she sneered, walking towards him at a pace akin to a wolf stalking prey. Though, her pace was laboured slightly from the injuries that would take some hours to heal fully. Her foot landed on his back, stopping the now terrified vampire. “But we were just getting started… it would be rude to leave a party you invited me to”. With a swift movement, she kicked him so that he rolled over, looking up at her with wide eyes.

“P-p-please don’t kill me,” the pleading began, making Dinah smile bitterly at him.

“Would you have spared me if the roles were reversed? I don’t think so somehow”. There was no real consideration in her voice, they probably knew she couldn’t be killed but that didn’t mean she was immune to torture… and they had almost succeeded in that tonight.

“You reap what you sow,” the words that left her mouth were cold, dark and almost unrecognisable in the usually calm and gentle Davenport. That Davenport was replaced by something far more deadly, a brutal reminder of why she was Alpha… and why she had survived this long.

“If you let me go, I can send a message…” the vampire was clearly grasping at anything that would spare his life, probably knowing that Dinah was renowned for her her compassion. But that side her of her wouldn’t be remembered tonight. No. The most hidden side would be. She reached down, grabbing him by the shirt, ignoring the agony her back was in, and hoisted him up.

“That’s the thing; killing you is exactly the kind of message I want to send. Your reap what you sow”

The vampire didn’t even have a chance to speak as she tore his head from his shoulders, blood splattering across her face, sending it thudding against a tree, killing the final attacker in the process.

There was a moment when time seemed to completely still for Dinah as she stood there, still holding the now headless body in one hand while the other contained the remnants of a scalp. It had been a long time since she had broke like she had tonight… and even longer since she had sent heads flying from bodies. But, the thing that was most curious was that she didn’t feel empty… this slaughter had been necessary to remind people with power complexes why they didn’t stand where Dinah did… why she was the one who stood at the head of one of New York’s most powerful families. She was not to be underestimated, she had the ability to be just as deadly as one of her less poised siblings… deadlier even.

Her fists eventually released the things they were holding, letting them drop to the ground. The pain returned as she stood there in blood soaked clothes and splatters all over her face. Dinah could feel her knees shaking slightly as she put her hand out to steady herself on the nearby lamppost. Her free hand once again returned to one of her wounds in her abdomen, her fingers receiving a fresh coating of the crimson red substance that had been so prominent that night. She knew she had to leave soon, not only to avoid getting spotted but to make sure that none of the wounds healed with anything still inside- especially that one on her back. Having to cut out a silver blade was not her idea of fun evening.

She needed to rest, she needed help. But for the next few minutes all she could do was rest her forehead against the lamppost and try to let the red mist lift once more and to return to the woman that everyone knew. Perhaps all that was now was a mask… a mask that had cracked in battle and all the things she was capable of would shine through, revealing a far darker person underneath.