#I do like stories that let Poison Ivy be heroic

[delicatefury]

They’ve done Poison Ivy so dirty by reducing her to Harley’s love interest.

She was so much more interesting as a misanthrope who was easily irritated by anything not plant related and who used and discarded powerful men as easily as those same men did women. Not because she felt any compassion for the women, but because she could and she liked being powerful.

there’s a difference between character development and completely changing your character’s personalities with no explanation

[paragonrobits]

i also have to admit i REALLY don't like the way a lot of online writing and creative thought has come to assume that 'villain = revolutionary' to such an extreme that a lot of corners assume that by DEFAULT a villain wants to change society or accomplish something good, to the point that if there is a story idea for a hero radicalizing or doing something to change society, its assumed that its the hero joining the villain side, and not just... the hero just doing those things to begin with, and the villain opposes it

i think its the idea of villain as more heroic by default that annoys me. This isn't an MCU inspired, as much as people want to act like the MCU set this off. It's been a trend for a while, and frankly you get a LOT of people suggesting that villains as fundamentally heroic but not bound by societal limits is the DEFAULT, and to arrive at that conclusion you kind of have to spend a LOT of time in the kind of echo chambers that conclude that Poison Ivy is an actual hero saving the world from corporate pollutants like a new captain planet character and not, you know. an eco fascist who regularly takes people's minds and bodily autonomy from them without consent. it's her iconic gimmick. Arguably given how much of her gimmick is also 'seduce people and brainwash them with a kiss and pheromones', sexual assault is her actual gimmick

but anyway the point of it is that that the idea of villain as inherently noble or motivated by moral causes and the hero as a bullying spoilsport is so ingrained, and I notice it also tends to be common among the moral puritans you're likely to see in fandom; the sort of people who generally tend to apply a morality that, again, assumes that a hero joining a villain team and killing lots of people for a moral cause is purely heroic

and not, you know. committing mass murder is generally not considered a moral thing to do. (And this is ironic because the vast majority of criticisms leveled at me by the past, by friends, is that I lean VERY hard into what is known as the Knight Templar archetype, or the principles zealot; the kind of characters who basically would rather let the world burn than compromise their morals, or consider their personal code/ethics more important than consequences on a grand scale. Suffice to say, a dark interpretation of my characters COULD have them actually becoming apocalypses destroying the world on purpose because, i dunno, they decided that humanity's capacity for evil is the same as the INEVITABILITY of evil, so they're going to murder the world and if anyone complains or cries, they will be surprised that they aren't automatically agreeing with them because it seems obvious.

i should stress this isn't canon but that's the point i'm trying to make: basically i'm saying that I'm criticizing the kind of people who honestly thought the villains in BNHA/MHA were supposed to be right or that they, for the most part, had any real basis, spinner being the only real exception as far as i can tell

its just a very, VERY weird trend in the creative writing/fandom side of things to automatically assume the villain is secretly the True Hero, or even treat their willingness to do horrific things as a sign of purer morality, or even regard shows of mercy or a reluctant to commit mass murder as a sign of moral weakness. i've seen those sort of people say things like "yeah, so what? if you're in a revolution, murder all the children of the people you're rising up against so they won't feel revenge towards you, problem solved, its not like its a big deal" and this kind of mentality lends itself towards a very amoral goal-focused outlook that regards human life as meaningless in the service of a goal which is a really weird thing to see from people that claim to want to change the world for the better

[docgold13]

365 DC Comics Paper Cut-Out SuperHeroes - One Hero, Every Day, All Year…

Suplemental - Villains Who Are Sometimes Heroes  

Often times, the best villains are those who do not necessarily seem themselves as such.  They are the heroes of their own stories and believe their villainous actions are in the service of some form of a greater good.  As such, there are numerous instances in which a villain will come to act in the role of hero or antihero, where the bad guy is actually the good guy, or a former nemesis becomes a sudden ally.  Following the jump are some of my favorite villains who frequently end up playing a heroic role…

There can be no doubt that both Deathstroke and Bane are bad to the bone. Yet each have acting in the role of antihero more times than can easily counted. 

Poison Ivy is less villainess than ecological warrior.  Her actions may be evil in the minds of many, but for her she is merely defending the wellbeing of plant life and attempting to stave off mankind’s thoughtless efforts to make the planet inhospitable to both flora and fauna alike.

The Flash’s Rogues, especially Captain Cold, HeatWave, The Pied Piper and The Trickster are most certainly cads… yet they all abide by their own particular code of honor and conduct.  As such, they have been many a time where these rogues have fought along side heroes as opposed to against them.

The Shade has been one of the Justice Society’s most formidable of adversaries.  And yet it was later revealed that he isn’t that bad a guy and it was the malignant possession of the devious Culp who was responsible for most of his villainous deeds.  

Both The Star Sapphire and Goldface each began as villains but ended up heroes.  

Knockout and Scandal are wonderful and I’ll hear no bad words about them.  

Brainwave Junior‘s turn as a villain was initially attributed to his difficulties with mental illness, but it was later revealed to be the machinations of the evil Mr. Mind.  Once the little creep was expelled, Brainwave Jr. became good again. whew!

The second Tattooed Man started off a villain but later became a hero, only to be killed in Heroes in Crisis (hopefully he’ll get better like most of the victims of Sanctuary).  As for Harlequin, she only acted as a villain to get the attention of her crush, Green Lantern (Alan Scott)… boy was she barking up the wrong tree.

Bizarro is not necessarily bad, rather he’s naive and easily manipulated and the majority of his evil acts have been the result of coercion by way of more purely evil villains.  And under the right direction, Bizarro can very much be a force for good, such as the time he served as a hero among The Red Hood’s band of Outlaws.  

Anarky is a political extremist and Thorne suffers from some sort of psychological malady.  Sometimes their on the right side of a conflict, sometimes on the wrong.  Are they bad guys… whose to say?

This guy… where do I even start?  Lex Luther certainly does not see himself as a villain; he’s out to save the world.  And there have been many a time where he has achieved exactly that.  He could have been hero on par with the greatest in the DC Universe… if only he hadn’t stolen all of those pies!

Plastique began as a terrorist and villain yet spent a brief time as a hero, a result of her romance with Captain Atom.  Alas the affair between the two proved to be short live, and so time did Plastique’s time as a hero.  As he Deadshot, he’s a stone-cold killer, yet his time with The Suicide Squad and Secret Six has hoisted him into the role of antihero… a role that proved a surprisingly good fit for the deadly marksman.

Cheshire is a deadly assassin who has proven formidable nemesis of The Teen Titans.  When he daughter’s wellbeing is on the line, however, the killer is quick to aide her one time rivals.  

Painkiller started off as a villain yet has recently turned to the role of antihero; mostly a result of the character’s involvement in the Black Lightning television series.  As for Manchester Black, I’m never going to be convince to trust this creepy peet… yet Superman has decided to do just that, recruiting the cad into his new team The Elite.

Both Fataly and Bleez have very good reasons to be as angry and vengeful as they are.  And though both have battled the Green Lanterns on multiple occasions, they have also assisted the corps in joining forces against common enemies.  

Thomas Blake made for a rather lousy super villain during his early years as Catman.  After a much-needed Gail Simone make-over, however, he became a truly terrific antihero.  Plus, anyone who likes cats as much as he does can’t be all that bad, right?

Although technically villains, I wouldn’t classify Jenette nor Black Alice as necessarily bad…  They both just have a different way of looking at the matter of morality.

Don’t mess with Lady Shiva… let’s just leave it at that.

Polymath’s tenure as a villain was merely a result of her desperation to save her father.  Once the Wonder Twins helped her do just that, she resigned from her villainous ways.  Shado‘s deal is a bit more complicated.  The devious archer has proven a formidable adversary to Green Arrow, but there has also been many a time where the two have fought side by side.  

So Dex-Starr is a rage-filled murder machine possessing awesome power.  Yet that is pretty much the case for all house cats, so I don’t see what the big deal is…

Both Killer Frost and Magenta fell into the antiquated trope of powerful women becoming evil due to some sort of hysteria.  Sure they’ve been bad guys plenty of times, but they have each also acted as heroes as well.  

Just like his father, Icicle Junior has taken the road of villainy, becoming a member of The injustice Society of America.  When The ultra Humanite took over the world, however, Icicle joined forces with The Justice Society and played a pivotal role in saving the day.  As for Junior’s baby-mama, Tigress, she remains a villainess… in the DC Animated Universe of Young Justice, however, Artemis is very much a hero.  Feels like only a matter of time before the comic book universe follows suit, turing The tigress from villain to hero.  

Both Clayface and Man-Bat are less villains than they are victims of circumstance.  And while each have battled Batman more times than can be counted, there has also been times where the pair have aided The Dark Knight. 

Once heralded as the greatest of The Green Lanterns, Sinestro’s path to villainy came as a facet of his quest to bring order to the galaxy.  His tyrannical notions aside, there has still been plenty a time where he has once more joined forces with his former allies among the corps.  

Both The Rubber Band Man and Major Disaster began as villains, but switched over to being heroes.  Major Disaster even served for a brief while as a member of The Justice League International.  

Lobo is a genocidal trashbox who has most likely had inappropriate relations with space dolphins.  Yet people seem to like reading about this jerk which has foisted him into the role of antihero.  I still think he’s garbage, but will admit that his daughter is super cool.  

These three don’t even require particular mention.  Catwoman, Black Adam and Harley Quinn’s roles as hero/antihero have been enough that they receive placement on both the 365 Villains list as well a the 365 Heroes list.  Quite the accomplishment! 

A rarity on this list… Terra started out a hero but it was later revealed that she was a double agent, a villain sent by Deathstroke to infiltrate and betray the Teen Titans.  She perished but later returned again, either cloned or resurrected or something like that.  In any case, she’s a hero again so yay…

So there you have it, a collection of scum and villainy who have, on occasion, acted in the role of hero.  Have I missed anyone important?  Let me know.    

[abigailnussbaum]

Harley Quinn, She-Ra, and the redemptive power of friendship

I watched the first episode of DC Universe’s Harley Quinn cartoon last year, and concluded that it was well done but not for me. The show seemed a little too in love with in-your-face violence, a little too deliberately outrageous. The positive reactions convinced me to give it a second look, and as it turns out Harley Quinn really is as good as everyone has been saying. You do need to accept a cheerfully cavalier attitude towards a lot of gruesome violence as the show’s buy-in, but I was actually impressed by how deftly Harley Quinn walks the line between humor and violence, while still stressing that some things are out of bounds for (some of) its characters. Add to that a well-crafted portrait of Gotham complete with a lot of familiar faces, some great storytelling and character work, and impressively gonzo set-pieces, and it’s easily one of my favorite superhero stories ever, not just in animation.

I was struck, while watching the first season, by the similarities between Harley Quinn and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Obviously, the two shows are very distinct despite both being female-led animated shows. She-Ra is an all-audiences series with an earnest tone and a strong emphasis on heroism. Harley Quinn is entirely unsuitable for children, and nearly all of its characters are villains. But both are also series about the redemptive power of friendship, and female friendship in particular (also, from what I’ve heard about Harley Quinn’s second season, a friendship that eventually turns romantic). In Harley Quinn’s opening episode, she escapes Arkham Asylum with the help of Poison Ivy, after waiting a year for the Joker to rescue her. Ivy helps Harley realize that the Joker never really cared about her, and that she can be a better and more successful supervillain without him. The rest of the season concerns Harley’s attempts to prove just that.

I found myself thinking that Harley Quinn addressed a lot of the problems I had with how She-Ra depicted this theme, while at the same benefiting from its distinct tone and subject matter. I’d like to talk about some of the things it does better.

For starters, Harley Quinn treats friendhip as an ongoing process. Harley and Ivy are already friends at the beginning of the series, and it’s their friendship that gives Harley the strength to break with Joker, and to believe in her own ability to become an independent supervillain. But Harley also backslides over the course of the first season. She takes the Joker back and regrets it. She ignores Ivy’s advice, especially about the types of people she should be associating with and the organizations she strives to join. And when she achieves professional success, she ignores the needs of not just Ivy, but of the crew she’s recruited over the course of the season. Harley’s journey throughout the season is one of realizing that she’s been a bad friend to the very people who have helped her to grow beyond the Joker, and of figuring out how to be better to them - in other words, the very things that She-Ra lets characters like Catra or Entrapta off the hook for.

At the same time, Harley Quinn also condemns toxic relationships and argues for their dissolution. This is most obvious in the case of the Joker, who repeatedly makes overtures towards Harley only to betray her. But if the Joker is too obviously untrustworthy, engaging in classic abusive behavior such as gaslighting Harley, belittling her abilities, and working to isolate her from her friends, there are also other characters throughout the season whose relationships with Harley initially seem more nurturing, only to reveal themselves as predatory. Harley bonds with the supervillain Queen of Fables over the difficulties of being a female supervillain, but eventually realizes that the other woman will happily stomp over her to achieve her own goals. And she tries to reconnect with her family, forgiving her gambling-addict father’s past exploitation of her, only for him to turn around and try to make money off of her again. Again and again, the show concludes that there are some people whom it is right and proper to shut out of your life - even to extent of acknowledging that when Harley apologizes to Ivy for letting her down, it is entirely possible that Ivy might still decide to end their relationship. To me that’s an essential corollary to She-Ra’s emphasis on friendship and second chances, the recognition that some people aren’t worth the effort.

Harley Quinn doesn’t pretend that becoming a better friend makes you a good person. This is, of course, my core problem with She-Ra, the way that it conflates personal friendship with a more global morality, and allows characters who have done a great deal of evil on the latter front to skate off with hardly any condemnation or consequences, because they’ve become someone’s friend. Harley Quinn is better at realizing that the two don’t really have that much to do with one another. To be clear, this is much easier to do when you’re telling a comedic story about unrepentant supervillains, than in a straight-faced story about heroes saving the world. But another way of putting that is that She-Ra fatally splits its focus whereas Harley Quinn wisely narrows it in a way that more successfully brings its message across. All of the show’s supervillain characters are capable of emotional growth and of choosing to be there for the people they care about (though a lot of them, like the Joker, choose not to do that). But this has nothing to do with their willingness to kill, maim, and cause general mayhem, because how you treat the people closest to you often doesn’t say much about how you view humanity as a whole.

Finally, and despite the above, Harley Quinn doesn’t ignore the difference between good and evil. One very easy approach to take in a story that prioritizes personal relationships above all else and sets itself among villains is to make the “good guys” look just as bad - corrupt, or inept, or priggish. That’s the approach She-Ra creator Novelle Stevenson took in her graphic novel Nimona, in which the league of superheroes are basically keeping themselves in a steady supply of villains by engaging in autocratic, abusive behavior. Harley Quinn could have easily taken this path, but it doesn’t. Though superheroes appear only rarely in the show, they are uniformly depicted as positive characters, good at their job and usually on the right side of things. When they say that Harley and her crew should be sent back to Arkham, you can’t help but conclude that they’re right, and the only reason we don’t want that to happen is that we like Harley. More than that, we like watching her relationships with Ivy and the rest of her crew develop and deepen. Again, this is the show walking an incredibly narrow line, getting us to root for a villain on emotional grounds, without ignoring the actual evil they’re doing. Harley Quinn is almost certainly never going to pivot its title character to full-on good guy status (even when Harley does heroic things, she usually only saves her friends, not the rest of Gotham), and that’s fine. We can enjoy the show as a story about one woman’s growth towards better emotional health (not to mention, a funny and violent cartoon) without pretending that she’s something she isn’t.

[stereogeekspodcast]

[Transcript] Season 1, Episode 1. Detective Mode – Batman’s Worst Enemy is Himself

In our first Detective Mode episode, we discuss why Batman is his own worst enemy, and consequently, bad for Gotham City, and the Bat-Family.

Listen to the Episode on Anchor.

[Continuum by Audionautix plays]

Ron: Today we're talking about Batman.

Mon: Yes, welcome to our first episode of Detective Mode.

Ron: Batman is a starting point for all superhero fans and he was for us. Mon: Yeah, we started off by watching the 1960s show with Adam West, and that really shaped our love for superheroes. It was camp but it was fun.

Ron: Yes, we struggled with the other versions of Batman because we loved the Adam West show so much. But once we started reading the comics, we definitely changed our minds about how we felt about Batman yeah exactly because Mon: Bruce himself is a complicated character but also a very inflexible person.

Ron: Yeah, that's a good point. Well, Shelfdust has this whole series about Batman's worst enemies, and he has a huge rogues gallery. But finally, we decided that Batman's greatest enemy is himself.

Mon: Yeah, and in this episode, we’re really going to be discussing why we think that.

Ron: Because, as much as everybody loves Batman, and we do love Batman, there are a lot of flaws with this character. In many ways he's making his own life, and the life of the citizens of Gotham, nd the people of the Bat-Family, very difficult.

Mon: Exactly. I mean, when we talk about Batman's enemies, we have Riddler, Joker, Penguin, Poison Ivy, Bane. these are just the compelling ones. There are so many more. But they are his own enemies, his personal enemies, and yes, they wreak havoc on Gotham. But why do they keep coming back?

Ron: And that's actually the only way to look at Gotham City. It's a place where crime happens but justice is never really served. And that's the whole point of Batman to actually bring justice to his city, and looking back at his past, Batman lost his parents. They were killed right in front of his eyes when he was a small boy, and that shaped his future. That shaped the person that he was going to grow up to be, and that shaped Batman. But the set of rules that he set for himself when he was a child… He was a traumatized child, and that completely colored the way he looked at justice, and that's shaped the way he's tackling the villains that attack him, and the city.

Mon: Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's a child's point of view. It's good. I mean, he's innately a good person. He has a code of honour which he usually doesn't break. There's always going to be a chance here and there, where it's going to change.

But while I like that code of honor, I feel like Bruce is working on crime in Gotham from the top down. It's easier for him to be Batman, to use his face to beat up these bad guys and throw them in Arkham. But what is he doing to make the city better?

Bruce is the wealthiest guy in the whole of Gotham. I mean, he comes from the wealthiest family, who have a history of wealth and a history of power and influence over people. So why isn't he using that? Instead he's just, you know, putting these bad guys away in Arkham, and they're breaking out of there, like every three weeks or so.

Ron: Yes. Nobody really stays in Arkham for very long. It's really a revolving door.

Mon: Yeah, and let's talk about Arkham for a minute. Like every iteration of Arkham, be it in the comics, in the games, in the TV shows and films. It's this horrible, wretched place. All it does is re-traumatizes anybody who goes in there. And it makes them worse.

Ron: So, where does the rehabilitation happen? Can you get justice in a city like Gotham without actually rehabilitating these people? All these criminals, you know, Poison Ivy, Joker, Bane, they come from great poverty, great deprivation, and they're trying to make sure that not only they can have some kind of luxury, but they can give it to their cohorts that they work with. So, where is Bruce Wayne? And where is Batman? When those people need help, before they become Joker and Poison Ivy. Mon: Yeah. And another way that I feel that Batman is not only his own worst enemy, he's also Gotham’s worst enemy is that he's fighting bad guys, he's putting them away, they come back out way stronger. But all he is doing all the time, is using his power and wealth to give himself and the Bat-Family better tech, better weapons. And that's something that's alluded to in the Christopher Nolan films. In Batman Begins where detective James Gordon says that if you're more invincible, they're going to start bringing out more powerful weapons.

Ron: Exactly. And that's actually a concerning issue, especially as we look at the world in 2020. There's so much money being spent on the police force, they have tanks, they have Kevlar, and the kind of weapons that they have access to, they could do real harm. And that's just to protect the city. I mean, that's exactly what we've been seeing in Batman. He has a suit that protects him. He has a utility belt that has all sorts of gadgets. But these are not just for him, he's making the same things for the GCPD. So, what we've seen in real life has actually been reflected in the Batman books for a very, very long time. He's actually making a world around him that allows for, even gives permission to, people to create super weapons, and that becomes dangerous for the common man.

Mon: Absolutely. The most recent arc in the Batman comic series deals with a new character called Clown Hunter, who has been killing Joker's henchmen. And Batman is dead set against it. When the Clown Hunter is introduced, Batman speaks to him about his murderous ways and Clown Hunter tries to explain to him that he lost his parents and he was orphaned. He's homeless, he's squatting in this place because of a fight between Batman and Joker. So, this young boy is collateral damage. And these are the characters that we don't often see, or we don't often see Batman engage with. But this clown hunter character, he's presented as a villain, or a villain-to-be. But he's just collateral damage in a fight that really shouldn't have happened.

Ron: We see that quite often. Even Kite-Man, he’s probably one of my least favorite characters in the DC Universe, he's extremely irritating.

Mon: I can’t believe he's such a huge part of the Harley Quinn TV show!

Ron: It actually did a really good job with him in that show. I was quite impressed. But otherwise, he's not a very good character; he's not very interesting. But his villain origin story comes from Batman. He lost somebody in his life because of Batman. It comes back to the same thing. Is Batman really helping the people of his city? What is he doing for people like Clown Hunter, for Kite-Man so that they don't end up on a path to villainy? How many heroes are in Gotham City, that will actually bring about something good? Apart from the Bat-Family. Even Nightwing, he's left, he's gone to Bludhaven. There's Red Robin. He's usually with his group of superheroes. There's Robin, who well, he doesn't really have a choice. He's Batman’s son. There’s Batgirl. At least, she is trying to do something. But she has a connection to the GCPD, because Gordon is her father. So, in a way, she has a very blinkered view of crime fighting, as well. Again, it comes back to the same thing. What are they doing to actually rehabilitate these people? What are they doing to mitigate the kind of collateral damage that they're causing?

Mon: Yeah, I mean at the end of the day, Batman is working on a surface level. He's not trying to structurally make a change to Gotham itself, and he's one of the rare people who has the power to do that.

Ron: Exactly. I mean he does have limited unlimited resources. So, what is he doing with that money?

Mon: Exactly. And we're always hearing about the corrupt cops in the GCPD and the mayor, who's usually being bribed by the Penguin or whoever. I mean, Penguin becomes mayor in several iterations of Batman series. So, we have to ask ourselves: why is Bruce just standing by and letting all this happen? And, of course, we're talking about a comic book character here, and he is just a reflection of the people who create him or writing. So, is it that much harder to think of a good character, a heroic character, who does the dirty work, but doesn't necessarily do it with his fists? Ron: Yeah. Gail Simone had an interesting Twitter chat with a few people some time ago about Batman. Quite a few people were asking, why does Bruce Wayne not do something with his money to save the city of Gotham and actually put an end to crime? And she was saying, it doesn't really make for great comic book writing, because the visceral action of somebody hitting somebody's face, or punching them in the solar plexus, that makes for great art, that makes for great reading. Somebody sitting behind a desk crunching numbers, trying to run an orphanage, or pay off some bills, that's not very exciting.

Mon: And also, I know that the diktat from up above in DC is that every comic book needs to have an action scene. It’s something Tom King alluded to a couple of years ago about his series, which is a little bit more cerebral from time to time. But yeah, he said basically every issue must have some action in it.

Ron: I think you can still have some kind of action. While also acknowledging the fact that Bruce Wayne has to do something with the money he has.

Mon: Something more. Because at the moment, what he's doing is, it looks like he's hoarding it.

Ron: It's actually quite interesting because the current Rebirth run has Bruce pretty much losing all his money. All of its been transferred to Lucius Fox. So, what is he going to do now? And another thing that we're seeing is Bruce is actually being questioned about what he's done for the city. He's actually having to rethink his war on crime, and whether it's actually brought anything to the plate.

Mon: Exactly. How effective is Batman?

Ron: We haven't seen him be very effective at all. Somebody like Joker; he's been around for quite a while. There used to be kind of comedic elements to him and the Adam West shows and. And we've seen that character become darker and darker. We've seen The Killing Joke, where he maimed Barbara. He was one of the more terrifying villains that we saw, when he was portrayed by Jack Nicholson, and he was portrayed by Heath Ledger. Let's not go into the Joaquin Phoenix Joker movie, which was not good.

But this is a person who is still a mystery in many ways, but he keeps harming the city, he keeps coming back. He harms people he causes damage, and he ends people's lives. And he causes a lot of pain in the process.

Mon: Exactly. And the worst thing is, at the end of it all, because the DC executives are so keen on keeping the Joker alive in some form or the other, it almost seems like Batman forgives the Joker. Yeah, that's why he always lets him live or sends him to Arkham, but it's not enough. Something more needs to be done about somebody who constantly returns and destroys the city.

Ron: Yes, I mean, he's a dangerous, dangerous man, and he has shown time and time again that he does not care about getting better.

Mon: So, something needs to be done. Maybe Arkham needs to be redone or restructured completely. Bruce has the power to do that. And unfortunately, he really just hasn't. So, in a way, you have to ask, is Bruce enjoying this? Maybe Bruce just keeps these people around so that he remains relevant.

Ron: Yes, it does. But in a way it makes sense because if there are no criminals, what's Batman going to do? There is no need for Batman. The whole point of Bruce becoming Batman was that he would make a city that would one day not need him. But it's been, what, eighty years of Batman and he’s still needed. Mon: Exactly. In fact, more so, because every time there's a colossal fight or battle, it seems like the city is completely at its end and there are even more new villains coming up. Just now, we've got two new different iterations of villains who are out to take on Batman and able to fight him toe to toe.

Ron: And the other thing is that, the newest villain that's been introduced, we don't really know very much about him, but it seems that he has history with Bruce. So, this is a personal battle that is being fought, and the victim is once again Gotham City.

Mon: There's so much collateral damage in the city, but even if we don't care about the poor faceless Gotham-ites, Batman's own family have been affected by his incompetence.

Ron: How can we forget Jason Todd, his second Robin, a feisty character, in many ways, but he ended up being murdered by the Joker. And because comics, he came back to life; he was resurrected. And he is still, after very many issues, very angry with Batman, who basically is a father figure to him. Because Batman never did anything to the Joker despite Jason dying. And that ended up leading to Jason becoming Red Hood, and he was a villain for quite a while.

Mon: Yeah, and it's funny because Batman basically saved Jason from being a villain. When he was young, his greatest concern was, if he left Jason out on the streets, then Jason would just become a bad guy. He would just be another one of Batman's rogues’ gallery. So, he invited him to the mansion, taught him to become the Robin. And that was great. And then, because of Batman's forgiveness of the Joker, when Jason does come back, he comes back angry, because it's constantly fueled by the fact that Batman refuses to act on what happened to him. Ron: That's how he keeps going. It's this vengeance that has shaped his relationships with almost everybody around him. And it's made him a very, very despondent, angry young man. We've had an issue with writing for Jason. It's not been good for a long time, but he can't grieve properly, he can't be a relatable person.

It seems like, because Batman is basically the flagship of DC, to make him as interesting as possible, everybody else around him is suffering.

Mon: Yeah. And let’s take Barbara Gordon, for example. We, especially nowadays, everybody talks about Jason's pain and Jason's anguish about what happened with the Joker. But people tend to forget what happened to Barbara Gordon. In The Killing Joke, which is a huge favorite among a lot of people.

Ron: It's not a very good book, actually.

Mon: It's quite problematic by today's standards, anyway. But for Barbara, she was left in a wheelchair after being shot by the Joker. And she took that opportunity. She saw it as an opportunity and became Oracle, still a very, very helpful superhero to the Bat-Family. And in the Rebirth comics, she was able to get some surgery, and she's back to being Batgirl.

But the writers, in general, tend to forget that the Joker had a lasting impact on her, as well. And while with Jason, it’s very much about his anger, with Barbara, she has to deal with it. And I don't think she's allowed to be angry at Batman. Even though she should be.

Ron: Yes, exactly! She's always been by Batman’s side, but has he earned that? Has Joker earned her forgiveness? Of course, it comes back to writing, and how female characters are never… It's a huge problem with the big two, that female characters have had certain personality traits that are not very realistic, at all.

Mon: So, it's hard to see them as rounded, fleshed out characters because that's not how the people see them.

Ron: And they have largely been written by men who seem to have very strange views on women. So that's also quite unhelpful. But again, it comes back to the same thing. What is Batman doing for his city, for his people, for himself? Because people are getting hurt. And nothing's being done about it.

Mon: There's the old adage that goes: violence begets violence. And, in essence, that's exactly what Batman is doing. Because every time he brings out his Kevlar and his armor and his fancy batmobiles, somebody is trying to figure out a new way to get through all that.

Ron: You don't want to say that it is an invitation, but because nothing is being done to keep these people behind bars or to find a way to make them better, then, it does become an invitation. Because they know that they're not going to be in Arkham for very long. Somebody is going to break them out or they're going to find a way to break themselves out. And they're going to have an upper hand because they've already fought Batman and now, they've actually learned the things that Batman seems to be working on

The principle that all the henchmen, they're desperate people so they're aligning themselves with the Riddler or Joker or whoever is the villain of the week. But those people, they're easy to grab. They're easy to punch, they're easy to put behind bars. What happens to the bosses?

Mon: Also, we have to ask ourselves: why are there so many henchmen lining up for these jobs with the Penguin and whoever? Where are the other jobs?

Ron: Exactly! That means there’s a high rate of unemployment in Gotham.

Mon: And again, that comes down to structural, systemic issues. Even if the bosses, none of them really do any work, all the henchmen have to do all the hard work and dirty work. So, if they didn't have a huge rotating door of henchmen coming in and out, they wouldn't be too effective.

Ron: We know that Bruce Wayne has a very large corporation, and obviously people are working there. Maybe there are opportunities to make new jobs. Why isn't he taking that up?

Mon: Exactly, exactly. It seems wrong to lambaste Bruce Wayne and Batman so thoroughly, since he is definitely one of our favorite superheroes. But at the same time, I feel like after 80 years of reading pretty much the same thing over and over, I think that, especially the most recent disappointment would have to be when The Joker War was happening in the Batman: Rebirth series. And by the end of it, he’s still a threat, an insidious threat, but he's still a threat.

And it just makes us wonder why DC is so against letting go of this character. Its comics. If a character dies, they'll be back in a year. It's fine. But give us a year where we do something different with Bruce Wayne.

Ron: Yes. And you know what, I would say, make a huge change. You know what this is making me think about? There's been a lot of discussion about colorblind casting in films. And we have seen different versions of certain characters. We've seen Thor, the mantle was taken up by Jane Foster. We've seen Miles Morales’ Spider-Man. Maybe we need a Bruce Wayne who is not so white.

Mon: In fact, we are going to get a few. I don't think they’re canon versions, but we do have a few things coming up in the DC future slate. The publications which will try and expand the variety and diversity of characters, even characters that we are familiar with. I hear that there's going to be a Batman who isn't exactly all white. Ron: Okay, but again, that's not the main title. That's always going to be a problem because I think, up until this year, we felt like whatever Batman was doing, it was fine. We were okay with it.

Mon: Yeah, as long as the stories are entertaining, we will keep coming back.

Ron: The stories have not been entertaining, that's a different matter altogether.

Mon: Yeah, that's it.

Ron: But since 2020 has happened. Since we’ve seen what an extremely rich, white man can do when he is in a position of power, right now, Bruce Wayne's entire arc really needs to be rethought. Because it is very difficult. The two of us are women of color. We're immigrants. Reading Batman do what he does, it's not relevant anymore. It's actually a slog for me to read Bruce Wayne’s stories. I feel really bad saying that because Batman has been in our lives forever.

Mon: Yeah. Can't remember a memory without Batman in the background

Ron: I have to really prepare myself to be like, okay a new issue of Batman has come out, let me read it. It is really difficult, because there is nothing about this man that I'm interested in or that I care about.

Mon: Yeah, I mean, he's gruff, he's rugged, he's always talking about how he works solo, and he must work alone. He has a gigantic Bat-Family. He would be so much more effective if he actually invited them to help him, instead of fighting on his own. I can't say I look forward to reading the Batman title, either. Which, again I feel really bad. But I think it's because there's a predictability that has crept into his comics. And it's because it's the safety net.

Ron: And it's the same kind of people writing the same kind of stories over and over again. I think, now is the time to really make a change.

Mon: Yeah, behind the scenes. And on the page. To really shake things up and make Bruce a compelling character again and even if it means a romantic getaway with Catwoman for seven-eight issues, we’re fine with it. It's okay! It's still different. If that makes him change his mind about how he does this war on crime.

Ron: Because Catwoman comes from nothing. Maybe that's what he needs. I do like BatCat, and I did like those issues in the Rebirth comics, but we haven't gone anywhere with it. That is the problem. There is so much that can be done with it.

Mon: Catwoman is far too restrained in her relationship with Batman. I think it again comes back to the safety of not pushing the boundaries of what Catwoman can do or can say to Batman. Because half the time I'm like, really? Why is she with this guy? He's Batman but, she deserves better.

Ron: Yeah, she's smart. She's seen a lot of the really bad parts of the city. She knows what can be done to make things better, because she's been on both sides. She's fought by Batman’s side. She's fought to save Gotham City. But she's also fought to steal stuff.

Mon: So that she can survive!

Ron: Exactly. She changes the perspective. Batman has not really had to do that. In a way, I kind of like the Christopher Nolan movies because we saw him leave Gotham City behind, leave his life behind, and actually have to be out on the streets. We see him trying to steal an apple. sharing it with another fellow thief, because he had nothing.

Mon: But in the comics, it feels like he hasn't learned from any of those kinds of experiences, or at least he's so far removed from those experiences now that he can’t really put himself in the shoes of anybody who is in that state. Ron: Yes, that's true. You were mentioning how we're going to have a future DC book where we're going to see a different version of Bruce Wayne, but I'm not sure what that's going to give us. Because I just read Batman: Overdrive which was quite enjoyable. And it wasn't written by a white man, but the ethos of Batman is somebody who has money, who has privilege. And it doesn't seem like he is able to see beyond that. And that is the problem that we have in 2020.

Mon: Interesting. So even in this Batman? I haven't read it yet.

Ron: Yes, it's a YA book, it's quite enjoyable. He's a young man. This is teenage Bruce Wayne, but he just doesn't see the privilege that he has. And it's a bit jarring when you're reading it, because… Yes he has friends who come from the wrong side of the tracks, who don't have as much money as he does, but he is just so self-absorbed. I think that's what's the problem with Bruce Wayne's money and privilege. He can't see beyond himself, even in his crime fighting. It's not how much of it is for Gotham City, and how much of it is for revenge for what happened to his parents. Mon: Wow. Yeah, that's it. I'm a little disappointed to hear that, because I was quite excited to read it. I kind of agree with you because , the problem with a character who is self absorbed or the issue with such characters, it's about them being—not being apathetic towards other people's pain and suffering, and their situation.

I think therein lies the problem with Batman. He is so absorbed with him being the sole protector of Gotham when he has so many people he can rely on. He's got Lucius Fox backing him up right now. He has Barbara who is back in the Oracle chair when she really should be fighting as Batgirl. He has all these safety nets. And he's not really doing anything with these partners that he has. And it really just comes back to the same thing that he doesn't see beyond himself. And that has repercussions on the people around him, on his city, and on the villains that he's been fighting all these years.

Ron: Exactly.

Mon: They're always saying, yeah, Batman he has his rules which is why he can't step over the boundaries. But that's not the point. Batman doesn't have to go around killing people to make a point. He needs to just make sure that Gotham isn't a breeding ground for these people.

Ron: Make structural changes when you have the ability to make those structural changes. And we're not really seeing that. I'm not saying that we need entire issues dedicated to Batman trying to build the halfway houses or something. but at least give us an inkling that he is doing something like that. And when they are introducing new villains like Clown Hunter, this is a boy who is murdering people, because of the deaths that have been caused by Batman.

Mon: And he's not just murdering common people. He's murdering people who worked with the Joker.

Ron: And who are also in some way, just regular people in difficult circumstances. So, it's such a vicious cycle.

Mon: Well, it actually reminds me off the first season of Batwoman on The CW. In Batwoman, where Ruby Rose’s Kate Kane, she's Bruce’s cousin, so she's also a person of wealth. She returns to the city and while at first, she really does want to fight as Batman, and then as Batwoman, she also starts making little changes. She buys those halfway houses, she's making a little club, which is friendly towards queer people. So, she makes her own little changes. Unfortunately, we won't be able to see more of that.

But we have a new hero in Javicia Leslie’s Ryan Wilder who is going to be debuting next year. 2021. And she is also affected by the structural issues, the systemic problems of Gotham. And she will be fighting for those people.

Ron: Javicia Leslie is a Black woman. She's playing the first Black Batwoman. And this is the kind of change that we need to see.

Mon: Exactly. Who knows, if Rose had remained as Batwoman into the second season, we probably wouldn't have seen this. But she stepped back and they saw what was happening around the world, and they made a positive change by bringing in a Black woman who can give us a completely different idea of what it is like to fight crime in Gotham. Ron: And is this something similar with Sophie Moore. They didn't have to have a Black woman in that role, but they did, and we get a completely different perspective because she's a Black, queer woman. We don't get to see characters like that. So for me, the Batman comics, if they really want to make Batman more relevant, maybe, to make sure that Batman doesn't seem like an enemy to his own people, maybe start making a big change like that.

Mon: Yeah, I, for a very long time, I've always wanted to make a sort of Elseworlds story where Batman is like sort of, half-Asian or full Asian, who knows. And the problem is that they will be rich, but because of the systemic racism and societal racism, he's not quite accepted by everybody else which is why he works alone so often. You need to sort of mold it, so it makes a little bit more sense.

Ron: But I would take that even further. What if Batman, an Asian Batman, whose parents built Gotham City, ended up seeing his parents being killed in front of him, because they were immigrants, because they were doing something for the city. We've managed to get a completely new perspective. I'm looking at it this way: we were in Dubai for so long, and there were so many South Asians who stayed there and built the city from the ground up. And it makes a difference to what the outcome of the city is. So, maybe that's what Gotham needs. Maybe that's what Batman needs. His titles need a refreshing change in point of view. Mon: Exactly.

Ron: Unfortunately for us, though we really do love Batman, we do have to admit that he has not been good for his city, for his close friends and relatives. Or for himself. He's not healing, he's not getting better. He's doing the same thing over and over again, which is quite literally the definition of madness. So, we need to see something new in Batman. We need to see him change. We need to see him held accountable for what he's been doing wrong. And maybe we just need a new Batman.

Ron: You can find us on Twitter @Stereo_Geeks. Or send us an email stereogeekspodcast@gmail.com. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And see you next week!

Mon: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. The music for our podcast comes courtesy Audionautix.

[Continuum by Audionautix plays]

Transcription by Otter.ai and Ron.

[phantomchick]

Can I ask what are your fav ships pretty, pretty please?

!!! Okay sure. 

I’m uh a multi shipper so I’m gonna put a read more after the first 3 if that’s okay?-

Wonderbat - Diana and Bruce are the one’s in control of the justice league’s shared braincells and I love their harmony and their commitment to helping people as much as they can whenever they can. I watched the Justice League Animated series as a child and I’ve never stopped loving their dynamic since. That show is the lens through which I look at this ship. It’s the Yearning. It’s the attraction. It’s the wonder. It’s the way they smirk at each other. It’s everything.-

Superbat - It’s the trust. Clark gave Bruce kryptonite because he was the only one he could trust to be Superman’s watchman. He gave him the ultimate power to destroy him and trusted that he wouldn’t unless it was necessary, he trusted him to be selfless and think of everyone even if it meant hurting a friend, and he trusted him to be the one to end him if he ever went bad because he didn’t want to die to someone who didn’t love him. On the other hand, Bruce trusts Clark with his secrets and also is the one he turns to for advice as an equal. He trusts Clark to be a good person and to remind him that he’s one too when he doesn’t feel like one at all. Also the way they troll each other is fantastic.

-

SuperHood - Because Kara and Jason both have anger issues and daddy issues and abandonment issues and trust issues and ptsd and yet they’re both fundamentally good people. Also the fic writers and fan artists really brought their A game even if canon didn’t so now I’m infected, it’s too late for me, I will go down with this ship. 

RedRed - Red Devil x Red Hood - Eddie was Jason’s penpal as robin and they’ve had zero interaction since Jason came back from the dead. But seeing as Eddie remains the only canon character who actually maintains that Jason was a good robin I am fucking sold on the potential of this dynamic. Also they can be old movie nerds together.

BruTalia - Because Talia isn’t what morrison and recent canon made her. She’s the morally complex daughter of an assassin overlord and Bruce is her father’s most dangerous enemy and her greatest love. In a black and white world full of Villains and Heroes, Talia and Bruce connect in the grey. Talia believes in The Batman and the good he’s capable of more than almost anyone on Earth and I will die on that hill. Bruce believes that Talia’s more than where she comes from and how she was raised, and also has a soft spot for intelligent/beautiful women who can handle his world both as a Wayne and as a Bat. She makes Bruce remember what’s most heroic and noble about himself when he’s at his lowest most self loathing points, and he makes her remember that there’s always a choice. I love this ship because it’s Romantic, in the relationship sense of the word and in the ‘stories of romance and daring do’ sense.

Ren/Kyoko - diving out of the dc fandom here, Tsuruga Ren and Mogami Kyoko’s love story has been making me swoon since I was in secondary/high school. It’s the good stuff.

Merthur - Merlin/Arthur - because it’s hilarious and dramatically romantic all at once. And the fic writers reeeeally bring their game.

Spirk - Kirk/Spock - It’s the premise and we approve. *Salutes the fandom elders who grew this ship from the seeds* Let’s boldly go motherfuckers!

Spike/Buffy - because angel’s condescending and can’t match the sheer witty banter of this dynamic even on his best day. Also Spike is hot.

Germany/Italy - hetalia was an adorable junk food for the brain kind of show that should really have been more blatantly anti nazi even still. But… the fandom as a whole really brought their passion for this ship? Like the pure Creativity and taking silver and turning it into gold with nothing but personal investment in the characters’ dynamic to do it with, kind of passion. There are a lot of fancomics set in the modern era where these anthropomorphic personifications of countries are not currently under the sway fascist governments … and it’s adorable. A guilty pleasure kind of ship.

Joker/Harley - I’m gonna get a lot of flack for this one, but as a dc fan I just find comics with them together more entertaining. Also batman: the animated series made it impossible for me not to love seeing this twisted mess of a ship!Yes it’s an unhealthy relationship, do I still find them fun and enjoy seeing and exploring said fucked up relationship? Uh Yeah! This ship makes me remember the good old days when Harley’s character wasn’t all over the place depending on whether the writer woke up feeling like she’s a hero, an anti hero, a villain or something inbetween - with no discernible transition or actual redemption arc to justify any of it. Also back when The Joker wasn’t the most annoying character alive but actually a highlight in Batman’s arsenal of rogues and a fun antagonist to read about. This ship is mostly sunk by canon and also poison ivy, but I still have fun when I see the fan art.

Kataang - because Aang is always there for Katara and is the first person to believe in her and really listen to her about her dreams and desires for the future. And because Katara grounds Aang and actually cares about his wellbeing more than his abilities as an avatar. Also they’re just cute.

Toph/Zuko - because I like it and for no deeper reason than that.

Clark/Lex - because the identity porn of Lex loving Clark but hating Superman is fantastic and also canon.

Bruce x good writing - the ultimate rarepair when will canon let them be together? WHEN. 

[twitchesandstitches]

alignment effects on powers

in my post about potter-style spells suited to this blog’s content, i made reference to Good-aligned spells and powers and let me tell you, alignment-centered abilities are absolutely a thing here.

now, to clarify, this isn’t a case where certain powers are inherently good or evil (or neutral); its all down to how you use them, not inherent qualities OF those abilities. i mean, if i went that route, it’d be hard to justify devouring powers as not being some various of malicious in nature.

rather, this is an outgrowth of the basic idea that self-actualization = magic = powers. Some aspect of who you are and how you think or do things affects your powers, and thus flavors some of your instinctive abilities and the basic nature of how they work.

Thus. someone who is Good-aligned, or actively trying to be a decent person, their powers will behave more morally; they will be more likely to be non-fatal even if its counter intuitive, do a minimum of colateral damage, and have side effects that make people happier or healthier. Their power make things better and help each other. generally speaking, powers that tend towards the superhero tradition or work with common ways of minimizing horrific side effects to innocent people would apply here. Most powers like this often involve rendering the worst effects temporary; for example, absorbing an enemy’s powers by eating them only to reform them after it is expended (or, ‘kirby-ing’)

this isn’t to say that Good powers CAN’T cause terrible harm; a heroic hand can, and sometimes must, kill. Smite Evil is a classic power for a reason, and of course, plenty of predators here are Good. (It just so happens that non-fatal or temporary digestion is super common for Good people for a reason.) Good powers simply make it easier for them to stay true to that aspect of themselves, and informs the evolution of their abilities.

Neutral alignment likely lends itself most to the ethos of ‘me and mine first, and only’, and probaly operate on the principle of avoiding harm only if they’re aware of any recipients. Your classic ‘indifferent predator’ would qualify here. They’re not so much malicious as indifferent to those outside their community, and that extends to their powers.

Evil powers are those focusing on being as big a cruel, hateful and vicious bastard as possible; these powers do as much damage as possible, as cruelly as possible, and more to the point, actively minimize restraint or common sense application; for example, evil predators generally cannot shield prey from digestion, even if they really don’t want to, or if they swallowed a treasure; their appetites overwhelm their restraint, or it is not in their nature to allow prey to live, no matter how much they care for the food. Most antagonistic warlords fall into this boundary, and is a reason most wind up death; their powers preclude them from thinking properly, and eventually overwhelm them.

Bear in mind that all powers are, in-story, unique and particular to their user, and this is largely flavor. They should always be characterized as a function of the character first, and not something outside them; if someone cannot digest anyone permanently without extremely good cause, that’s not their power or stomach rebelling, its because they themselves refuse to harm someone in that manner, and their powers have changed accordingly.

Powers exist as a function of the user, though. Someone whose alignment changes will find their powers evolving; Poison IVy, for example, as a former villain, probably has a lot of powers geared around consuming her foes but are slowly shifting towards healing and Kirby-ing her foes temporarily.

[thesilverheroineproject]

How to Write A Strong Heroine

Writing Advice by Mette Ivie Harrison

Writing a strong heroine can be a tricky thing, and not just for male writers. The problem is that if you write a heroine exactly like a hero, then it may seem unrealistic or "unfeminine." But you don't want to use stereotypes, either, because those are a cheap shortcut and don't make for a genuine character. I will admit that I tend to prefer the heroines that are written by women, but there are plenty of counter examples. Jim Butcher does a great job with strong heroines, even though Harry is the protagonist of his books. Guy Gavriel Kay. George R.R. Martin. John Scalzi. Orson Scott Card. Joss Whedon. I don't feel like I have a preconceived notion of how a heroine must be strong. It doesn't have to be physically, though it can be if it is explained well enough. I think the problem is more often that there aren't any heroines at all. Now there are books that are going to be about a man's world, but you know what? I'm not going to like it as much as one where there are hints of the women surrounding that man's world.

Mistakes that I see writers make too often:

The heroine's part in the plot is not an important one. Perhaps you will say that it is impossible to make more than one character absolutely essential to the plot, but I think this is untrue. If you are writing a story and you want the hero to be the most important character in the plot, you have every right to do that. But I will like your book more if the heroine also has a big role to play. She might not have to do it in the climax of the book, although she could. But please don't pander to female readers by pretending that she does something important (by having the hero tell her how important she was to his mental well-being or some such crap) when she doesn't.

The heroine's part in the plot is to give up herself. I know that this is a common device in Western Literature. I studied it plenty in grad school. "Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan" was a quote I learned early on, from Goethe. It's from his play Faust, and is about the eternal feminine that leads men to a higher plane. Yeah, only in Faust, Gretchen is abused by Faust and commits suicide. She comes back in spiritual form to help him. Um, this isn't what I would call a strong female character. A woman who throws herself into the well of evil to save all mankind is dramatic, but is there some other way she can destroy the evil? If not, I don't know what to say. I may just not like your story that much, or your world view. There is something noble about giving up one's life for another, but it seems like women do it a lot more than men in novels. Men tend to figure out some other way, or they just are not put in the same position. Women also give up their lives to save their children. Again, I would do this as a mother if I had to. But I would try not to be put in this situation. My children need more than just my giving them birth. They need me to remain alive in order for them to grow up well balanced. And a mother's job is not to be swallowed up completely in her children's lives. At least, that's my belief. Again, your view of the world is going to change what you choose to write in your books.

The heroine is recovering from abuse. I've used this myself. It works on occasion. Unfortunately, the world is full of women who are recovering from abuse as children. But not every heroine needs to have this as her background story. Some women are loved and treated as queens. Some are neglected in other ways, just as terrible.

The heroine sits around a lot, moaning about her fate, waiting for the hero to rescue her. Sure, women are physically weaker than men, and in a realistic novel, there are going to be some realistic limitations for women. But just be careful of this as a device for heroic action. Maybe your heroine can get herself out of that tower and go help the hero fight the evil hordes. Or maybe she isn't going to sit in that room spinning gold just because some king told her to do it and she'll get married.

Which leads me to -- the heroine's reward at the end of the book is marriage. Romances end this way traditionally, and I have no problem with a happily-ever-after ending. But be careful that the marriage is a reward for both the hero and the heroine, and that there are other rewards, as well. One of them being self-esteem, or perhaps some other tangible reward like a sword or a crown or even a big drink of water after a terrible battle with very dry evil.

You may be surprised by this, but I wish there were fewer heroines who disdain all things male. I get tired of this, really. I consider myself a feminist of sorts, but when the heroine has to go out of her way to say that everything she does that is traditionally male is stupid, that is offensive. Let her think some things are stupid, yes. But give some balance.

Heroines who fall in bed with the hero as soon as it is convenient for him. Come on, this is just school boy fantasy, isn't it? It's not the way real life is, and I think it makes for bad plotting, along with the other problems I have with it. It's as if the hero has problems in every other part of his life, and so he deserves (?) to have a little sex thrown his way to give him some relaxation. Need I say how much it offends me when female characters are used merely to be toys for the heroes? They have lives of their own and motivations of their own. I love how in Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, the hero is always trying to find the heroine and he can't. She is mysterious and has her own motivations, which he can only guess at, and he tends to guess very wrong.

OK, now some of the things I think I would like to see more of in heroines:

Heroines who have unusual skills. Your heroine doesn't have to disguise herself as a boy and learn how to fence in order to be interesting. But think about the stereotypes you are perpetuating when you choose your heroine's area of expertise. Is she a good seamstress? Does her magic come from tears? Or from dancing? Or from beauty? You might want to choose beekeeping (like in Robin McKinley's Chalice) or reading or filing papers or using a hammer in interesting ways. On the other hand, it is fun to twist around expectations, so that if a villain expects the heroine to make him dinner, she can poison it because she is really good at gardening and recognizes that those mushrooms growing outside his window are not what he thinks they are.

A heroine who refuses marriage. I liked it in the new book Gradelingwhen the heroine decides it isn't for her. I am a married woman with children and have a traditional life, but I like to see other choices offered to young girls, and marriage isn't the only way to happiness.

Heroines who are mothers and go on to become great political powers. I love Bujold's Barrayar because it is about a woman who deals with all the difficult realities of being a mother and giving birth, but still stops a civil war on her planet all by herself. Well, with help. But she is the force behind everything, and she takes her own risks. I love Bujold's women, by the way. Even more than Miles Vorkosigan, who some say is a woman in disguise.

Heroines who think for themselves. Just because someone tells a heroine something doesn't mean she should believe it. Heroes are always bucking authority and get rewarded for it by the plot, but for heroines, it often seems the reverse. They have to be good little girls, obedient, staying in their place, and they can work from there. Yes, that can be done and done well. But it isn't very often.

Heroines who beat the heroes in some area of life. I've read plenty of novels where I see female characters do things that are just unbelievable. That annoys me, too. But I wish there were more of them who out-thought the men, or at least teased them and brought them down to size. I think one of the problems with the Vorkosigan books was when Miles found his beloved Ekaterina, how could Bujold write a romance with anyone equal to Miles? She certainly tried, but I'm not sure it turned out well. Miles runs roughshod over her life and the thing she does best he uses to entrap her. I don't know if that is ever fully forgiven in the books. Miles is Miles, and well, he gets what he wants in the end.

Well, that's a start. There is a difference between good writing, which is clear communication of what you want to say and writing that has something to say that I like. I'm not saying you have to have strong heroines to have a successful book. Clearly, you do not. There are men who won't notice and even some women. But there's no reason you can't do everything, is there?

X

[stainyourhands]

I love them all so I tried to narrow it down to top 5: Jonjon #10 oh... Or #36 Vietreau #14 (cause that's them in a sentence) or #25 Danlo #40 Ot4 #41 I failed :( Have fun?! And, hope the writers block breaks soon!

Ahhhhh I had such a hard time choosing, anon, but I went with Vietreau #14. I hope you like it :D

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Jon sighs, his hands on his hips as he stares up at the fence towering over them. It’s bent in places, rust peeking out of twisted ends and spiraled knots. “It’s, like, three stories.”

Tommy snorts, “it’s maybe ten feet,” and continues to walk along the edge of the fence, pressing against the fence every few feet. His brow is furrowed in concentration, his forehead wrinkling like he’s deep into a briefing memo or two minutes from the perfect press rejoinder, not like he’s stalking a damn fence to uncover its lost treasures or whatever the fuck he thinks they’re going to find at the other end of the rusted rainbow.

“Fuck,” Jon swears, looking down. His foot - his best oxford, the ones his mom bought last time she was in town and clucked at the sorry state of his footwear - is sunk into a spot of mud. Jon sighs, pulling it out and taking a more careful step into a patch of ivy. At least, he thinks it’s ivy. “How many leaves does poison ivy have?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Tommy asks, his voice drifting back to Jon from a good distance.

Jon sighs, picking up his pace. The fence is overgrown with vines and brush and god only knows what else sinks into the parts of DC’s underbelly that Jon has made it a principle not to visit. “Tommy?”

“Polo,” Tommy calls, unhelpfully. “Get over here, I think I found it.”

Jon sighs, stumbling across the distance between them. Tommy’s bent over, his jeans - unlike Jon, Tommy had run home to change before this crazy adventure. Jon’s sending him his dry cleaning bill - pulling tight over his ass. Jon can almost forget the terrifying piece of wire fence Tommy’s holding back like it’s the door to fucking Oz in the face of that image.

Jon adjusts himself in his suit pants and steps up next to him. “You want me to go through that?”

Tommy nods, pulling it back a little more. The metal creaks and groans. “It’s a door.”

“Not all doors are meant to be walked through.”

Tommy snorts and squats down so he can get through the low hijacked door. “This one is.”

Jon sighs, “you’re lucky I’d follow you to the ends of the fucking Earth,” as he squats and follows Tommy through the brush, turning his shoulders so he doesn’t snag on one of the many, many spikes of metal. Sometimes, Jon wonders what his life would be like if he didn’t ask ‘how high’ every time Tommy asked him to jump. Safe and predictable and boring. Sometimes, Jon wouldn’t mind boring.

Tommy laughs, letting the hole in the fence clank shut behind them. “You’re lucky I add some excitement to your life. What were you going to do on a Friday night, anyway?”

“Draft POTUS’ remarks for the commodities exchange next week,” Jon says, easily. “Maybe play a little one on one beer pong with myself and I if I finished early enough. Maybe start that show Alyssa’s always going on about? The one about the hospital?”

“I can’t keep track,” Tommy admits, pulling his Blackberry out of his pocket and turning on the flashlight. “I didn’t expect it to be this dark back here.”

Jon rolls his eyes. “It’s a deserted warehouse. Did you expect it to be lit by spotlights?”

“It’s a deserted warehouse housing the most exclusive speakeasy in the city,” Tommy corrects. “So, spotlights, no, a couple strings of Christmas lights or a lamppost or two, yes.”

Jon sighs, looking around. “Are you sure Mary from Treasury wasn’t pulling your leg?”

“Yes,” Tommy glares at him, then flashes his light onto the path leading to the very dark building. “No? Come on, we’ve already gone this far, might as well see it through.”

Jon sighs, falling into step behind him. “Sometimes, cutting your losses and running is the heroic option.”

“At a casino, maybe,” Tommy laughs, stepping over a large, prickly bush and keeping the flashlight on it so Jon can get around it, too. “But I don’t know who the hero is in a story that ends with some slightly better IPAs than we normally drink.”

Jon frowns at his back as he mutters, “‘where’s your sense of adventure, Jon?’ ‘It’s the journey not the destination, Jon.’”

“Oh, that’s right.” Tommy grins. “I’m the hero of this story.”

Jon rolls his eyes.

Tommy stops as he reaches the wall of the building, flashing his light over the very large and very rusty grey metal door. “This matches Mary’s description.” Tommy tries the doorknob and frowns.

“What?”

“It’s locked.” Tommy tries the knob again. The door shakes on its hinges that doesn’t budge.

“Hey.” A flashlight - an actual, handheld light that illuminates everything in its cone - flashes next to them. “You’re trespassing on private property.”

“Shit.” Tommy reaches for Jon’s hand, shoving his blackberry into his pocket as he starts to run. The ground is soft under their feet and Jon can feel the mud squish and the bushes crackle and break as they barrel through.  Forget his dry-cleaning bill, Jon thinks bitterly, he’s sending Tommy the bill for a new pair of shoes and a whole damn suit.

Tommy keeps running until they hit the fence, then swears as he feels along it for the broken part. It takes two seconds or two hours, Jon really doesn’t know, but it takes at least two weeks off his life. Jon wonders if he can find a way to bill that to Tommy, too, as he ducks forward, feeling the fence snag on his belt loop.

“Come on,” Tommy hisses, looking both ways as he holds the fence up.

Jon sighs as he pushes, hearing the fabric tug and rip through the loop.

“Stop dallying,” Tommy hisses, again, reaching out to take Jon’s hand the moment he straightens. “I know someplace-”

Jon jogs next to him, down the block and around the next one, before Tommy pulls him into a well-lit alley, stopping next to a rusting blue dumpster. Tommy falls to Jon’s side, their shoulders pressing together as they catch their breath.

Jon looks around him, at the dumpster and the flickering streetlight and the leaves and plastic bags littering the ground. Laughter bubbles up in his chest. “You know a place?”

Tommy shrugs, pushing away from the wall to step between Jon’s legs. “Last time I was running through the streets to escape the cops.”

“Oh yeah?” Jon rests his hand on Tommy’s side, pulling him closer. Laughter’s still rumbling through his chest, desperation and nerves and adrenaline sliding together and coalescing in the flush of Tommy’s cheeks and the thickness of his erection pressing against Jon’s upper thigh. “Who were you with?”

“Does it matter?” Tommy asks, his breath catching warm and rhythmic against Jon’s neck.

Jon shakes his head. “No,” he whispers, dropping his mouth to meet Tommy’s, “not at all.”

Tommy presses forward, boxing Jon in. Jon’s heart pounds up his arms and tingling through his fingers and lodging in his throat as he opens his mouth for Tommy’s. Tommy tastes sour, like adrenaline and saliva and the french fries he’d eaten for lunch almost twelve hours ago, but Jon presses forward, sliding his tongue in, taking everything he can get.

Tommy groans, his knee pressing against Jon’s and his hips thrusting up and forward. A noise rumbles through his chest, ringing through Jon’s ears, and Jon wants to hear it again and again and again-

Except footsteps are running across the gape of the alleyway. Jon pulls away, resting his cheek against Tommy’s as he tries to catch his breath. The officer’s shoes are caked in mud, the bottoms of his pants scratched and tangled. He’s still holding the flashlight in his hand, the light useless on the busy DC streets.

Tommy snorts, turning back to kiss Jon again. “That was fucking close.”

“Way too close.” Jon reaches down to take Tommy’s hand. “How’s a night in with beer pong and that stupid TV show sound now?”

Tommy laughs, squeezing Jon’s hand and pulling him off the wall, around the dumpster, and back the way the officer had come. “Like the best offer I’ve had all night.”

[darkwingsnark]

KAL-EL CLARK KENT SUPERMAN SAVED ALL HUMANITY protects millions of people innocents CHAMPION HERO KRYPTONIAN savior truth and kindness and tell me stupid that she poison ivy pamela isley eco-terrorist obessive by plants misandrist killing men is not heroic and Yes, it's villainous. thieves. Rapists. Murderers. how many blood did she spill kill men and destroy justice league?

Not to be that guy, anon who might actually be a bot, but I think you might need to step away from fiction for a while if it’s making you this upset. Angry that a villain is doing... villainy? See how nonsensical that is? 

Story-wise, that’s like being upset that a cat brought you a mouse as a present. In a superhero story you need villains to thrive-- to give the heroes something to work through/against, if you don’t go with something like a natural disaster. Sure, you can still choose to dislike the character-- there are versions of these guys in the comics I can’t stand because their actions go too far, or their personality or design irks me too much-- but getting upset to the point you spam fans who don’t have the power to make the changes you want(?) seems like a stretch. 

Surely this is getting you nothing, in the end? Wouldn’t you be happier trying to put your focus on the things you do love? I worry about you, anon who might actually be a bot. I worry that you are letting your obsessive need to be angry make it so you can’t find the time to bring in positive energy. I wish you all the best.

[justgotham]

In my experience, Gotham is a polarizing TV series. Any superhero-themed program is sure to bring its critics, but Batman is a character near and dear to the American heart—as he is the last universally beloved billionaire—and it was certainly a risk going with a prepubescent Bruce Wayne. I’m a big fan of Gotham, and even I’ll admit that I’m not completely sold on its interpretation of the franchise’s main character. But that’s OK, because Gotham isn’t about Batman. It’s about the villains. And they’re almost all great. This was not an easy list to compile.

Gotham just feels like Batman, and it’s in large part thanks to the carefully crafted, over-the-top performances in some marquee roles, so without further ado, let’s get to the best Gotham villains.

I should also note that it would be impossible to do this properly without some spoilers. I’ll avoid any spoilers from the last few episodes of this season, but if you’re not caught up on this season of the show, some of this will definitely get you up to speed on where everything stands as of the Season Four finale.

15. Captain Nathaniel Barnes Played by: Michael Chiklis Michael Chiklis just looks like a cop, and that alone qualified him for the role of Jim Gordon’s boss. And his evolution from hardened lawman to judge, jury and executioner in the face of the future Commissioner Gordon’s heroics provided this political science major with a stark analogy for the tradeoff between idealism and pragmatism out in the real world. Every conflict of Barnes vs. Gordon centered around the way things should be versus the way things are, and the finale of Chiklis’ arc (for now, no one in this show is ever truly gone) raised good questions about where the line between the vigilante justice of Batman and The Executioner really stands.

14. Ra’s al Ghul Played by: Alexander Siddig The spiritual father of the proceedings carries a heavy burden. Not only must he justify the spiritual aspect of the rise of Batman (and the Joker), but Siddig also has to pull off whatever a 2,000+ year old man looks like. It’s a difficult ask, and he’s not had enough screen time for Ra’s al Ghul to seem like anything more than a narrator guide from a video game, but he’s given plenty of major moments, and he hasn’t come up short yet.

13. Butch Gilzean Played by: Drew Powell What Powell does with a character limited to being the main muscle on the show is the embodiment of the saying “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” He is one of the chief figures of strength on Gotham (and that was before he fell in a swamp filled with goop from Indian Hill), but his moments of vulnerability are what bring life to the character. His romance with a woman farther up on this list than he is reflects Butch’s limits, but perhaps new frontiers will be unlocked with his evolution into the famed Solomon Grundy from the comics.

12. Commissioner Gillian Loeb Played by: Peter Scolari Scolari brought a new face to this eternal foil of Batman and Jim Gordon, as the comics’ brusque blackmailer in the pocket of Carmine Falcone has been replaced with a shadowy figure in the pocket of Carmine Falcone. Scolari’s semi-detached performance is a fitting reflection of where our political reality currently resides, and he is very much a figure emblematic of the times.

11. Ivy Pepper Played by: Clare Foley, Maggie Geha and Peyton List Poison Ivy is still in development on the show—as evidenced by the three actors who’ve played her—but all three did well building a foundation for what should be a future supervillain the likes of which Gotham has never seen before. Both adult actors have provided the sex appeal intrinsic to the character’s strategy to exploit the stupid part of straight men’s brains, but it’s the child-in-an-adult’s-body aspect that makes this version of a hall-of-fame Batman character so compelling. After falling in dirty water (superhero origin stories would lead you to believe that the healthiest thing you can do is shower in uranium), Ivy Pepper’s accelerated womanhood might’ve been a missed opportunity for more comic relief, but her relationship with Selena is always engaging. Without it, neither of these characters would have the humanizing characteristics necessary to make their time on Gotham worthwhile.

10. Theo Galavan Played by: James Frain James Frain’s arc on the show was an original storyline, one that began with a plot to kill Bruce Wayne, then elevated him to Mayor, and culminated with him assuming the character Azrael from the comics. Frain’s smooth performance is underlined by an intense focus on a mission that all just feels Batman-y, even though this arc is not found in the comics.

9. Tabitha Galavan Played by: Jessica Lucas Theo was powerful, but his sister got the larger share of the badass genes in the family. Like her brother, Tabitha is an original creation of the show, and even though we’ve since lost Theo (granted, death is far from final in this universe), it’s difficult to envision Gotham without Tabitha at this point. Her romance with Butch is the only one on the show that’s convincing at all (a major new one is still TBD), and she was clearly placed in this universe to provide a positive role model for Catwoman—who did not make this list because she’s still stuck at the kids table with Bruce Wayne. Of all the major muscle on this show, Tabitha is the muscle-iest.

8. Hugo Strange Played by: BD Wong BD Wong has played so many doctors by now that part of me actually believes he is a doctor. Of all the doctors he’s played, my favorite by far is Strange. The main reason why no one on this show will ever die, Wong does a wonderful job of straddling the line between madman and genius—nailing the image of what Gotham’s mad scientist should look like.

7. Barbara Kean Played by: Erin Richards The NBA has a most-improved player of the year award, and Barbara Kean would have won Gotham’s MIP award the last two years. Initially, I lamented Richards’ on-screen demise as she was cast as the generic wet blanket to Jim Gordon’s hero (Kean was Gordon’s wife in the comics). Gotham almost lost me early on with their romance—as I just cannot take network TV’s portrayal of relationships seriously—but this new “take whatever she wants with a freaking glowing hand” version of Kean has unchained Richards, and her talents shine through in every scene. Gothamis right to structure a central narrative around her.

6. Mayor Aubrey James Played by: Richard Kind I’ll admit I’m biased on this one. I’m a politics writer here at Paste, and Kind’s performance as America’s bumbling mayor is a little too real to consider given the madness that America’s former mayor, Rudy Guiliani, is displaying every day on cable news. His portrayal of the character is the perfect summation of every empty-suit politician who ever lived, and it really resonates in a country overflowing with these vessels for the superrich. The mayor’s cowardice behind the scenes when contrasted to his stern public statements is just…*kisses fingers*

5. Victor Zsasz Played by: Anthony Carrigan The infamous hitman is a perfectly sardonic bit of comic relief, as Carrigan always finds the right kind of oomph behind his “Hey, boss, so when should I kill these guys?” salvos. A hyper-competent, semi-powerful character is a difficult needle to thread, as there must be a reason why Zsasz has yet to rise to the level of other A-list Batman villains, and it’s simply because Zsasz loves his job as an assassin-for-hire. It’s not about the power he could gain through his proclivity for mass murder, but the pure, utter nirvana that he derives from of every shootout.

4. The Penguin Played by: Robin Lord Taylor Oswald Cobblepot is not just an awesome name, but a fitting vessel for a character whose only real lasting public face is Danny de Vito’s snarling performance in Batman Returns. Robin Lord Taylor has brought a more refined air to the ringleader of Gotham’s underworld, and The Penguin serves as the yin to Jim Gordon’s yang. The universe of Batman is based on the premise that crime is a major industry in America—oftentimes involving our political leaders, as Mayor James demonstrates. Cobblepot likes to present himself a pragmatic choice in a chaotic world, and when the Gotham City Police Department finds itself with its back against the wall, some of the moral choices he presents are inescapably compelling. If crime is going to exist, why not try to bring some order to it? The GCPD can’t do that, but The Penguin can.

3. The Riddler Played by: Cory Michael Smith When arguing sports, I typically argue that numerical rankings should be eschewed for tiers. It’s difficult to compare a lot of similar folks, and drawing lines in between good, very good, and great is a far simpler task. I bring this up because this is where the top tier begins. Cory Michael Smith’s depiction of what I have always believed to be an underrated villain belongs in the Batman hall-of-fame—and frankly, it’s better than Jim Carrey’s semi-unhinged version (which I also enjoyed). It’s clear whether Smith is playing Edward Nygma or The Riddler simply from his posture and facial expression, which makes the Jekyll and Hyde-ian battle raging inside of him all the more engrossing. (Photo: Michael Lavine/FOX)

2. The Joker Played by: Cameron Monaghan Technically, we’re not allowed to call this character with a high-pitched laugh, a thirst for chaos and a bizarre love of Bruce Wayne (and now a purple jacket!) “The Joker,” as Monaghan revealed on Twitter. You know, copyrights, branding and all. TV stuff. Monaghan’s portrayal of The Joker would make fans of The Dark Knight proud. The choice to literally sew a new face on to Jerome evokes the same uncomfortable madness as Heath Ledger’s scars, and the amount of emotion that Monaghan is able to communicate through that mess with simply his face deserves some kind of award. “Jerome” is a delightful madman who brings an unbridled sense of joy to his criminality. I’m excited to watch this new, more serious iteration of this classic character, but I will desperately miss his home run performance as Gotham’s signature weirdo.

1. Fish Mooney Played by: Jada Pinkett Smith Stick this character in any gangster TV show or movie, and tweak the surrealism depending on context, and she’ll fit—that’s just how good Jada Pinkett Smith is. Fish Mooney did not originate in the comics, and the creators of Gotham should be universally commended for springing such a Gotham-y character to life out of the ether. Granted, Mooney likely wouldn’t be as engrossing if not for Smith’s electric performance. The woman completely owns every single scene she inhabits. Fish Mooney gives this show a good excuse to ignore the rules of death, because why would anyone want to take that out? Screw death and copyright law. Fish Mooney deserves to live on for eternity.

[aion-rsa]

Batwoman Season 3: Batwing, New Gotham Villains, Promise Wild Year

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Batwoman‘s second season had a lot of ground to cover following the departure of Ruby Rose as Kate Kane post-Season 1. Let’s recap! Season 2 introduced Ryan Wilder (Javicia Leslie) as the new titular hero with Ryan finding the Batsuit among the wreckage of  Kate Kane’s crashed plane. From there, she decides to use the suit to get justice for her adoptive mother’s death. Mary and Luke let Ryan keep the suit warm and keep the city safe while they wait for Kate to return, eventually growing into a tight team of their own.

Season 2 had to ask the question: what happened to Kate Kane? And devoted much of its top half exploring the answer. Kate was presumed dead after the plane crash, then thought to be Safiyah’s captive, then presumed dead again, until it was ultimately revealed that she was brainwashed by Roman Sionis to believe she was his late daughter, Circe.

Ryan and Alice confronted Circe and were able to dose her with aerosolized Snakebite, which finally brought Kate back. Mary, Luke, Sophie—and the audience—were all able to get closure with Kate, and Kate gave Ryan her blessing, officially passing the torch. Season 2 was one of reinvention, and it solidified Ryan Wilder as Batwoman. The finale also left us with some major clues as to what to expect in the forthcoming third season, which is set to premiere in October. Let’s discuss all of the major happenings set to occur in Batwoman Season 3, from new villains and heroes, to which mysteries could be solved…

Luke Becomes Batwing

One of the biggest moments in the Batwoman season 3 finale came when Luke finds a Batsuit created for him by his late father. He suits up for the first time and saves Mary from a Bane-ified Tavaroff, signaling his introduction as a new hero, Batwing.

Luke comes out of the season with a new suit and a new outlook on life, but it wasn’t without some major derails. After surviving near-fatal gunshot wounds, Luke went a little dark side until a run-in with John Diggle (David Ramsey) reminded him of who he was. 

“I think that scene between them was one of the best parts of the episode,” Ramsey told us when we spoke to him about a potential relationship between Diggle and Luke. 

“Both of them are still on a journey,” Ramsey says. “Part of Luke’s journey, part of that transition, John Diggle’s already made.” 

Diggle started out as Oliver Queen’s bodyguard and evolved into the hero fans know and love. Luke Fox was Batwoman’s “Man in the Chair,” and helped both Batwomen make the suit their own before stepping into a suit himself. 

“For Fox to begin to walk those same steps and to have a man that looks like him, that sounds like him, that lost his father like him, to have those similarities… I think it’s good writing for Fox, specifically, because he doesn’t know John Diggle,” Ramsey says. “So this will be a totally new relationship.”

Luke is a Black man in a notoriously corrupt city who will be taking up the mantle of Batwing. Without the direct guidance of his late father Lucious Fox, or the original Batman, Bruce Wayne, Diggle could serve as a mentor, a role we’re not used to seeing that character in. 

“I think in terms of our universe we haven’t really seen that. Just having this character begin to grow into a Batman, and to have someone who’s already done it, that has been through the same thing he’s been through, looks like him, can talk to him, I think that kind of mentorship on television, I think, is just rich.”

Ultimately, the people behind the mask are who we root for and who we tune in to see week after week. Batwoman has given us characters and relationships that are compelling and resonant. Luke has always been integral to the team, and his experience in becoming Batwing will be important to explore.

“To come back [from what Luke experienced] and then find another Black man who took interest in him, who sees the similarities, and can speak to that, can speak to fatherhood, can to speak to mentorship, can speak to losing his own father, can speak to coming into his own heroship, if you will… it’s great because ultimately you can see them fight together,” Ramsey says. “All the superhero stuff is there, but I just think about it on the other side of it, in terms of storytelling between these two Black men, one younger, one older, I just think it’s great for TV.”

There’s a lot of potential for Diggle to mentor Luke, especially as Diggle makes his own heroic transformation. 

“Obviously, John Diggle has his own destiny that he’s going into,” Ramsey says, hinting at the Green Lantern journey Diggle is on. “But how he fits, going into the mythos of other shows, I think that’s one of the things I would love to recreate, just that relationship between Diggle and Fox.”

The Truth About Ryan’s Mom

After Ryan and Alice temporarily team up to rescue Kate and recover her memories, Alice is arrested by GCPD, and Kate leaves Gotham to find Bruce, officially passing on the Batwoman mantle to Ryan. When Ryan visits Alice at Arkham Asylum, Alice reveals that Ryan’s birth mother, presumed to have died in childbirth, is alive and well. That’s a major revelation for Ryan and it’s going to be a major part of her story going forward.

Robin Givens was recently announced as a series regular, Jada Jet who is described as “passionate and hard working, a woman who has worked her way through life’s ups and downs to climb her way to the top — all while being extremely protective over her impetuous son. A woman with a deep past that forced her to give up her first-born child, Jada is a woman with a good heart, but will do whatever it takes to protect her family.” 

Ryan has survived a lot of trauma, and overcome a lot of personal obstacles. The discovery that her biological mother is not just alive, but thriving, could completely upend her reality.

Batwoman Season 3 Villains

Batwing will feature prominently in Batwoman season 3 and he’ll be likely recovering the villain trophies Circe stole from the Batcave. If the items that washed up on a Gotham river are anything to go by, the Bat Team may be facing off against iterations of Penguin, Mad Hatter, and Poison Ivy. The latter seems especially likely, given that Poison Ivy was name-dropped in an earlier episode, and may have existing ties with the current crop of Bat heroes.

Poison Ivy and Penguin are both iconic Batman villains, and bringing them to Batwoman is a strong declaration of faith in Ryan Wilder⁠. 

Poison Ivy is a meta who can manipulate greenery, and control people using pheromones. Penguin is a physically-deformed criminal mastermind.  

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Both characters have been mentioned in the Arrowverse before⁠⁠—Lex Luthor wrote about Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy in his journal, pre-Crisis, and Penguin was name-dropped by Cluemaster. There is also an inmate in Arkham Asylum named O. Cobblepot⁠—but they haven’t yet appeared on-screen. Allowing Ryan and Luke to face-off against A-list villains shows confidence in the show and in the characters.

Batwoman Season 3 New Characters

Dougray Scott (Jacob Kane) exited as a series regular post-Season 2, but Batwoman is shoring up the ranks with a new series regular: Victoria Cartagena will be joining the cast as Renee Montoya for the third season. Montoya has seen several on-screen incarnations in recent years, including in Birds of Prey and Gotham, where she was—pause for dramatic impact—also played by Cartagena.

I guess #Reneemontoya and I have some unfinished business❤️ So very excited to join this new group of talented artists, writers & crew who are doing their thing over here! They have welcomed me wholeheartedly! Grateful, humbled, hype AF… #batwoman #fullcircle https://t.co/eeNCmptT7v

— Victoria Cartagena (@VickiCartagena) July 20, 2021

This version of the character is not intended to be related to the Gotham version. She is (via Deadline) a “former GCPD officer who left the force when she could no longer stomach the corruption inside the department. She now runs the ‘freaks division,’ which hasn’t seen a lot of action… until now. Righteous and pragmatic, and LGBTQ+, she’s a woman with a very personal (and mysterious) mission to help clean the streets of Gotham in the right way, by whatever means necessary.”

We’ll also get Nick Creegan as Marquis Jet, who, according to Deadline: “A sexy playboy who grew up in a lavish lifestyle, Marquis is too charming for his own good and wields his power with a ne’er do well attitude. He views life as one big joke and that sense of recklessness has a tendency to clash horribly with his no-nonsense mother Jada Jet. When he meets Ryan (Leslie), he sees in her a like-minded young go-getter who like him is just waiting for the right opportunity to make his mark on Gotham.”

What are you excited for in Batwoman Season 3? Let us know in the comments below.

The post Batwoman Season 3: Batwing, New Gotham Villains, Promise Wild Year appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2V2jB9z

[wearepoisonivyleague]

The importance of Poison Ivy in Birds of Prey.

“To discuss Poison Ivy is to discuss environmentalism. To discuss patriarchy. To discuss collective archetypes, and evolving narratives. To discuss Golden Age femmes fatale and black widows. To discuss thrill killers and team ups. To discuss redemption, and defiance, and friendship. To discuss narrative polemics, women in the sciences, the rush of urbanisation, and the male gaze. In short to discuss Ivy is to discuss multitudes.” (1)

Since August it appears that poison Ivy will be a member (official or unofficial) of “Batgirl and the Birds of Prey”. This is a huge step forward for the character. The reason? For the first time in her 50+ year history as a comic book character, she appears to have an actual, coherent timeline and character progression tied to DC’s canon continuity. It has been attempted before with Greg Rucka during and after No Mans Land in which she gets trapped by Clayface (2), Batman comes to rescue her (3) and she fights with Clayface, beating him and promising to not only keep Gotham’s orphans safe but also feed the starving city (4). The story continues with Poison ivy avenging the brutal murder of one of her children by corrupt cops (5), her and her children violent eviction from Robinson Park (6)(7), as well as a story in “Gotham Knights” where we learn the future of the children which took under her protection. Greg Rucka portrayed her as a symbol of ecofeminism, pushing her as a heroic, activist character. Some writers drew inspiration from this mini arc but DC pushed Ivy back as a stereotypical villain. The problem with her post Rucka appearances was that she appeared to not have a coherent timeline, depiction or character progression. She was literally thrown into books as villain that existed outside of continuity. But with New 52 Things started to change. She was introduced by Duane Swierczynski as a member of Birds of Prey (8). This version of Poison Ivy appears to be reformed and heroic. Unfortunately she appears to betray the team and gets kicked out. Unfortunately mr Swierczynski planned to explain her actions and show her real motive behind this but he was replaced in the book. But this is the point where things get interesting. John Layman uses her as a hero in his run of Detective Comics, especially in Gothtopia (9) continuing the theme of a modern Activist. This is another huge step in Poison Ivy’s evolution. John Layman makes it cannon that Poison Ivy is not a threat to Gotham and its citizens and that she doesn’t belong in Arkham. The romantic tension between Ivy and Batman is strong. He respects her. Batman finally understands that instead of constantly beating her up, having her as an ally is a better choice. Perhaps she is “misguided” (10) but she wants to save the city and cares for the citizens. But the important part here is that Poison Ivy is not considered a threat by Batman and he lets her go after helping him save the city. A timeline begins to develop. Her time in Birds of prey is often mentioned and Poison Ivy evolves further from an antihero, to a hero. During New52 two also important things happen. During Scott Snyders Swamp Thing run, her connection with the Green is established, hinting that she is destined to become the next Champion of the Green after Alec (11) and Gail Simone writes what is probably the most important moment in New52 Poison Ivy with Batgirl Annual 2. Gail Simone’s Batgirl Annual 2 tries to explain the reasons behind the betrayal of the Birds of Prey. She was blackmailed by the owner of an evil corporation in an emotionally stressful period of her life. Simone not only gives huge depth into her character but also named her mental disorder for the first time in 50 years. Until now she was simply “crazy”. Simone explains that her violent outbursts are a result of “seasonal affective disorder” which in combination of her deep connection to the Green can trigger her depression. This book is important to me on a personal level for another reason. Not only Batgirl agrees that Poison Ivy could be the one that saves the world but Ivy also confessed her love for Batgirl in an very emotional moment. Poison Ivy says that she needs more friends and not just Harley Quinn but also that “perhaps in another world” she and Batgirl could be together again (12). She is sent in Arkham

And then Rebirth happens. Another world. Before that she made an appearance in JLU and a few other books but we will look at these in detail in another article. I consider Amy Chu’s Poison Ivy, Cycle of Life and Death 6 issue mini to be the bridge between New52 and Rebirth. Ivy has a job as a scientist (it is implied that the Bat family had something to do with cleaning up her records). She is cleaning up Gotham, and working on important scientific research. Ivy finally has her own cast of characters, has three daughters and her connection to the Green’s mythology is once more established and strengthened. Amy Chu in six issues reminds us Poison Ivy’s rich backstory and reintroduces her to new audiences (13). This Poison Ivy appears to be reformed and she mentions that this is going to be a new start for her. Francis Manapuls Trinity (14) expands elements introduced in Amy Chu’s mini and further establishes the fact that the trinity doesn’t see her as an enemy or a villain, letting her free after the arc ends. Her motives are human and has some deeply emotional moments. Manapul had planned to evolve Ivy by making her know the identities of the Trinity and deciding to keep them secret to protect the heroes but editorial opposed to this idea (15).

But, Poison Ivy does learn the identity of Batgirl in Hope Larson’s Batgirl run where she teams up with Barbara to save an airplane and it's passengers from a plant that's growing uncontrollably in the cargo bay. Here it is revealed that she knows Batgirl's true identiy and decides to keep it a secret (16). In Scott Snyders All Star Batman, Batman is asking for Poison Ivy's help as a scientist so he can stop a deadly virus that's threatening to destroy the planet. After helping him and manufacturing a cure, Batman makes a promise to clear her name saying that he was wrong on many things about her and that he has misjudged her, her motives and actions in the past. Once more she saves the planet and humanity. Not because she’s forced to, not because she is threatened but because she wants to (17). Which leads to Batgirl and the Birds of Prey. Here Julie and Shawna Benson present a heroic Poison Ivy who not only knows the identities of the Birds of Prey but Barbara Gordon trusts her so much that buys a whole company for her and puts Pamela in charge (18). And according to future solicits it appears that Poison Ivy will stick with the team. Before I make a recap I’d like to point that it appears that Batgirl is the driving force behind Poison Ivy turning a new leaf. And it makes sense. Since New52 Poison Ivy is described as a misguided person. Gail Simone believes that "Poison Ivy is the ultimate in rebellion, the last honest person in some ways". Batgirl believes in her. And if rebirth is about hope, then the perfect way to prove this is to give her a chance.

What we have here is a slow but steady character progression. Poison ivy tries to be a hero in BoP but things turn bad, she tries again and again, she helps batman, saves people, saves Gotham, saves the Planet. She asks Batgirls help. She asks her to trust her, to believe in her. She makes a genuine, heartfelt effort to become a better person. Batman trusts her, even makes a fund for young scientists to honor her. She tries to clean Gotham from pollution, creates patents, technology. Batgirl trusts her, Dinah trusts her, Helena trusts her. Not just as an ally but as a friend. She knows their identities. She spends her free time with them. So far she has saved both Gotham and the planet more times than a lot of other heroes. She is trying to become a better person. This is a huge chance for the Birds of Prey team to write history. This is a chance for the DC writers to prove that Rebirth is about hope. I think, I hope that Shawna and Julie Benson will keep Poison Ivy in the team. The problem with Poison Ivy is that a lot of writers force her to be a sidekick/friend/girlfriend to Harley Quinn. She’s not allowed to grow independently or interact with other characters. I understand that DC is putting a huge effort to push Harley but Ivy deserves some time on her own, meeting and interacting with other people, having her own stories. Selina is currently appearing in almost every issue of Batman as well as in other books, Harley has 6-10 books every month. Ivy… Well unless she’s with Harley, she rarely appears on her own or with other characters. I contacted mr DiDio through his facebook profile and told me that there are no present or future plans for Ivy and that fans should look at Harley for more appearances or the Batman family.

For the first time in her history she has a canon story that makes sense. Her journey towards heroism makes sense and is more deeply rooted (pun intended) than ie. Clayface or Killer Frost, Lobo or Lex Luthor who are currently being pushed as heroes. Unfortunately some editors and writers are negative towards Poison Ivy’s evolution and force “gatekeeping stories” that try to force her to go back into a villain. Stories that make little to no sense in the timeline I presented. 

So, in conclusion, dear Benson sisters we love you, we trust you. Please keep Ivy in Birds of Prey. Dear DC writers please respect the work of your colleagues and don’t try to forcibly distort the positive work they are doing with Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy is a woman in STEM, an activist, a feminist, an environmentalist. She is everything you say you want to see in comics. This is your chance to prove that these are not just words, tweets, posts. She is a character that represents the ideas that we need to see grow in these dark times. In Cast Shadows, Ann Nocenti writes Poison Ivy as a woman of science, a person determined to abolish hunger and poverty, stop wars, and bring world peace. To bring light and hope. Let her shine.

Sources: 1. POISON IVY – A CYCLE OF LIFE AND DEATH, Mackenzie and Walter www.nerdspan.com/poison-ivy-a-cycle-of-life-and-death/ 2. Batman: Shadow of the Bat Vol 1 88 3. Batman Vol 1 568 4. Detective Comics Vol 1 735 5. Gotham Central #32 6. Detective Comics Vol 1 751 7. Detective Comics Vol 1 752 8. Birds of Prey Vol. 1: Trouble in Mind 9. Batman: Detective Comics, Volume 5: Gothtopia 10. Detective Comics Vol 2 14 11. Swamp Thing Vol. 3: Rotworld: The Green Kingdom 12. Batgirl Annual Vol 4 2 "When Pamela Gets Blue" 13. Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life and Death Vol 1 14. Trinity, Volume 1: Better Together 15. https://twitter.com/FrancisManapul/status/836676127611568128 16. Batgirl, Volume 1: Beyond Burnside 17. All Star Batman #7 18. Batgirl and the Birds of Prey #13

[idle-flower]

Dear Yuletide Author - 2019

Thank you for your time and attention, and I hope your wishes are granted this holiday!

Likes:

I prefer plot and angst and adventure to fluff, though a nice warm fluffy scene can make a good dessert at the end of the pain and suffering. I lean more to f/f and m/f than m/m. I enjoy forbidden relationships. I love exploring the 'what if' spinoffs of a small change in a canon. I swoon for lovers who take dramatic risks to protect their loved ones.

I also enjoy detailed description of clothing/furniture/jewelry/pretty things in general. Not just heaping up brand names, but sensory detail.

Dislikes:

Please avoid sweeping tropey AUs like 'what if noir' or 'what if everyone was in high school'. I'm REALLY picky about comedy so it's probably not a good idea to go for wacky funny stuff. No excited rambling about pregnancy or babies. (Older kids are okay.) While I am okay with pretty dark stuff, please don't gorily torture characters to death on screen. If people gotta die, limit the details! I am generally not keen on crossovers. I dislike PWP unless it is exceedingly hot smut (see below).

Smut:

I don't require it, but I do read a good bit of filthy porn.

Kinks I find interesting: mild bdsm, pain mixed with pleasure, dubcon, sibling or cousin incest, strap-ons, futanari and other magical appendages, teasing, teenagers, drugs/magic with interesting effects, people making terrible decisions due to being emotionally overwrought or really really horny

DO NOT WANT: 

rape or painful sex that one party is not enjoying at all, inserting anything edible (licking off boobs is okay), aggressive face-fucking, choking, degradation, scat/watersports, bukkake, parental incest, anyone younger than teen, emphasis on 'virgin blood' (some writers make it a huge deal with tearing pain and fountains of blood, please don't).

---

Poison Ivy (1992 film)

Sylvie Cooper, Ivy

I was struggling through the confusions of puberty, Ivy was hot, this film left an impression on me. In a way it's perfect as it is, and trying to build any sort of happy ending for Ivy feels out of place, but on the other hand there's a lot of loose ends left after the story.

Throughout the film, there's a lot the audience never knows about Ivy, including her legal name. Did Coop know it? (Maybe, probably.) Did her father? (Quite possibly not). How do they handle all the legal responsibilities of her death? Were Ivy's stories about the aunt she was staying with true? How do they break the news?  How does her funeral go?  

What do Sylvie and her father have to say to each other about Ivy after the truth comes out? Does he admit everything that he did? How does he handle the guilt? How do they rebuild their relationship?

What is school like, afterwards? What rumors escape? How does Coop handle them?

Or - what if Ivy survives the fall? Seriously injured, possibly paralysed, but alive? How do they deal with her, once the truth comes out? Do they cover up her crimes? Do they keep her in their home? What happens to their relationships?

For AUs, what would have happened if Ivy had met Coop when they were several years younger, so she couldn't get her hooks into Darryl as easily? What if they met at summer camp and Ivy was just as messed-up and needy but the situations were different? What if the movie plot is actually a fantasy younger-Ivy spins about her future to her fascinated-and-appalled friend, who then has a chance to react to it?

Bittersweet endings are good here but I don’t mind it going all dark if you feel like it. Too happy would just feel wrong.

Smutwise, I'm fine with Sylvie/Ivy, I'm okay with Darryl/Ivy but I would rather he not be the focus of the story (Sylvie catching them having sex has possibilities, or Ivy thinking about Sylvie while seducing Darryl)

---

Xanth - Piers Anthony

Jenny Elf, Gwendolyn Goblin

I have an ulterior motive, I badly want to insert some gayness into Xanth after the author has tried so hard to make it impossible, even allegedly threatening magical straightjackets to cure homosexuality. And it is difficult to think of a good f/f pairing because female characters in Xanth are almost completely obsessed with flashing their panties and attracting men. Almost the only good female friendship actually on-page (as opposed to a vague comment that Ivy and Nada used to hang out) is Jenny/Gwenny, who are best friends.

The events of The Color Of Her Panties even provide some possible groundwork to build on. They've been raised together in the care of centaurs who have different views on morality/sexuality than humans do. They're forced to think about sex and be inducted into the Adult Conspiracy together. Gwenny's new contacts mean that she starts seeing other people's sexual fantasies (and Jenny does too, for a while). They're bound to have some good girly gossip on the subject at some point, talking about what all these weirdoes are into and trying to figure out what the appeal is! Or some simple "ugh boys are gross, especially goblin boys" that leads to pushing them closer together. (Well, Che is quite different from the goblin boys, and I'm not totally opposed to including him, but my ulterior motive makes me more interested in Jenny/Gwenny as a couple than all of them as an OT3.)

I basically stopped reading the series at that point so please don't refer to plot developments and characters that came later in the series. I know that both girls are married off to men eventually in canon. Don't care.

Straightforward romance: Gwenny relies on Jenny to cheer her up and help her relax from her duties. Romance blossoms! Simple.

Silly fluff: Gwenny and Jenny visit the Pantry, try on tons of lingerie together, have a ridiculous slumber party and pillow fight, end up snogging... maybe they even accidentally found Dolph and Electra's honeymoon chamber.

For a slightly more dramatic plot, Gwenny's bound to feel like she has to marry and have a child because goblins have hereditary rulership. She also knows all the good and bad sides of that - she would never have come to power without those rules, but those rules also made her bastard half-brother a threat when he would have been a terrible leader. And she knows that true family is what you choose, not just an accident of birth. Will she decide that she has to have a husband? Will she decide that she cannot have a husband, who might threaten her power, but must give birth to a child for the succession? (And hey, magic can be involved, this is Xanth, she can TOTALLY have Jenny's baby somehow) Or what about adoption?

If you smut it, I don't care if they're still as young as they were in TCOHP (but no younger). I'm also fine with them being older. I would rather not do any temporary sex-change because that defeats my ulterior motive, but weird uses for Xanth-style magic stuff could be entertaining.

If the real-world implications of Jenny Elf bother you, I'll settle for Ivy/Nada, but that's going to need a lot more imagination to get a satisfying story out of it. How does their friendship develop between Isle of View and Man from Mundania, other than gossipping about their respective brothers? Do they have any adventures? How does Ivy cope with Nada's occasional self-destructive tendencies? How does Electra fit into their group?

---

Fern Capel - Jan Siegel

Any

This is a tall ask, since this book series doesn't seem very well known here, and the writing style is hard to match. On top of that, I've got a love/hate relationship with the series.

I adored the first book. I liked the rest of the trilogy... up to the ending WHICH I HATED. I detest reset-button plots, and I find "just let me forget everything" resolutions to be unpleasantly reminscent of suicidal inclination. Life is making choices and carrying on and learning how to deal with the consequences. We don't get to wipe out our histories. They're part of us. Also, choosing to stop fighting evil as long as you and your friend can be safe is... I don't want to say cowardly, because it's human, but it's very unsatisfying as the end of a heroic story.

I want a fix-it. Somehow. Anyhow. Rewrite the universe, change the events of the third book. Give me an ending with hope. Doesn't have to be super-happy, can acknowledge that the fight against darkness can never be 'won' and we'll all die in the end, but we carry on regardless and we find some joy in the world we live in on the way.

Find Fern another way out of her dilemma - or rewrite enough of the plot that she doesn't feel so hopeless to begin with. Let Fern love again! Let her _really_ love, let her experience different kinds of love and find them all valuable rather than holding on forever to what she's lost.

Any sort of story taking place within this world could be nice to read.

Other things that might be entertaining - reincarnate Morgun? Trap Morgus in a harmless, powerless body and force her to interact with the world until she learns to be less evil (which will take centuries)? I tend to enjoy ancient evils forced to be helpful and friendly (while being very bitter about it). Get Will and Gaynor together? Get Will, Gaynor, and Fern all together (sharing non-incestuously)? Let Fern find an older magical woman, a mother-witch type, who is kind and understanding and supportive, so she no longer has to feel like she's the one bearing all the knowledge and responsibility alone? Fern never really relaxes. What would it take for her to be safe and happy and still herself, rather than giving it all up?

DNW: Will/Fern.

---

Anyplace Anywhere Anytime - Nena ft. Kim Wilde (Music Video)

Any

So when I first saw this video, I thought, "OMG that is absolutely 90s White Wolf / Vampire the Masquerade. And kind of gay!" And that's basically what I'm requesting. Dark urban fantasy romance in the streets of London (or some other European city with gothic churches around). A story that has the feel of this video, whether or not it's a direct connection. Bring all your darkest teen vampire angst fantasies, let them run wild, and give them a happy ending (because this isn't a sad song!)

Desirable elements: lesbians (please!) vampires (please!) people wearing sunglasses (including at night, to hide their inhuman eyes) people wearing black leather, with extra straps and buckles and spikes trenchcoats fishnets - possibly even full-body stiletto boots dancing/nightclubs staff fighting, maybe some sort of ritual challenge for position forbidden romance, which somehow works out

Could be cool: time travel (but not a full Dark crossover please) reincarnation a lyric drop - either "anyplace, anywhere, anytime" or "I'll build you a castle of sand" (yes, I know that's a little awkward in English but if they're vampires maybe someone's first language isn't English, and it needs 'castle of sand' rather than 'sandcastle' to be a proper lyric drop IMO... Or you could just say it in German to begin with.)

DNW:

tragic dead lesbians at the end of it. NO BAD ENDING FOR THIS PLEASE.

[phantomchick]

I’ve spent months ignoring the existence of batman: white knight for my own sanity and for that of my followers and yet the universe has conspired against me.

And so, I’ve been forced to acknowledge that it does in fact exist and sold relatively well and now I keep remembering even MORE details about it that made it a bad bad bad comic in spite of its decent aesthetic. 

So this is me working out some personal frustration.  

Through an analysis that involves very little actual plot arc by plot arc or panel by panel analysis because by Hera who, WHO? Has the energy or the emotional wherewithal to put that much effort into a post about this comic. I mean maybe if it was the only way to fully exorcise the bad content but I’ve managed to not let it hook too deeply to my poor soul yet so just this should be fine. Right? right.

So because of that this is mostly just some of my personal feelings on it. 

It is a rant that no one should read and was made with the only purpose being personal catharsis of negative emotions.

I send this forth, into the abyss. 

In the hopes that I won’t have to think about this comic ever again once it is done.

It’s like a never ending onion, the more I think about it the more LAYERS of mistakes and horrible characterisation are revealed. Layers and layers of just slightly off and annoying things that really feed into deeper misconceptions about what the heroes and villains in Gotham really stand for and how they interact with each other so it turns out that actually even the little annoying things are just contributing to the BIG narrative problems that this comic has. I LITERALLY KEEP COMING UP WITH REASONS WHY IT’S THE WORST. I CAN’T STOP. HELP ME. 

What’s worse is I can tell that the writer was definitely trying to do something cool and psuedo deep and say something (no clue what it was) about heroes and villains and the joker as a character, like really explore it, he just did in the worst possible way. Holding up a mirror to Gotham and reversing things so that the Joker’s Heroic and Batman’s Criminal in their approaches isn’t a particularly new or original idea but the writer really went for it or seemed to be trying to which is why I tried it in the first place. BUT NO. It’s bad, it’s full of bad takes. This writer has bad Batman opinions and it shows. 

IT’S A MULTI-FACETED MONSTER, THERE ARE MULTIPLE FACETS TO THE BAD WRITING. 

I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty but symbolically and spiritually it’s the anti-thesis of a good batman comic, it tries to be hard boiled and shocking but mostly it just heaps on bad things, it tries to do dark knight level cynicism but just misses the point entirely even as it assures you that people just aren’t ready to face the truth about how things are and it’s never clear on what that truth is. 

The cynicism is kind of like the injustice comic but it’s not balanced out by the fact that at least some of the characters are genuinely good people and will continue to be no matter how bad things get. It’s not balanced at all. 

It’s like how with the Suicide Squad movie the trailers promised supervillain breakfast club but then in the movie didn’t really provide a strong emotionally resonant reason for the characters to band together, besides ‘just coz’. It sold itself as misfits finally finding a place to belong when it was just: cool looking lady tries to control a pack of supervillains while swindling the money for tax money and everything that can go wrong does go wrong. But at least suicide squad had aspects that WERE entertaining, like the character designs and the comedy and the hints of deeper character motivations that were never really followed up on. 

Batman: White Knight on the other hand is just a slog of a batman comic that thinks it’s good when it isn’t. The only good point is the aesthetic and that gets old fast when combined with THESE characters. 

Where Suicide Squad promised quirky well written found family dynamics. Batman: WK promises game changing character exploration and imbalances of power between the GCPD and The Batman when really? It’s just a re-hash of the worst of the pessimism DC’s more odious writers have worked into the Batman mythos over the years. 

“Vigilantes being genuinely good people and not getting too big for their britches? That’s just not realistic.” I can hear the writer say. “We’ll do police brutality. But with Vigilantes!” I can hear him thinking, believing mistakenly that he has hit on a not boring idea. 

WELL NEWS FLASH JERKFACE! BATMAN AND THE ENTIRE GENRE OF SUPERHERO COMICS ARE WISH FULFILMENT POWER FANTASIES YOU ABSOLUTE CRETIN. 

The idea that batman can only make a difference because he’s a bad person who doesn’t hold himself accountable is so tired.  The idea that regular good cops like Jim Gordon would have conflicting feelings about relying on Batman isn’t a bad topic to explore but the guy presents it way too one-sidedly, like is a regular police department supposed to be able to deal with Poison Ivy or Mr. Freeze level meta humans just on their regular budget? No. So it makes sense for other supers to step in to fill that gap. (See: post singularity superhero stories like the BNHA manga) Which is why we have regulation debate style stories like marvel’s Civil War but the REASON dc doesn’t do that is that they made the very much conscious choice to keep one foot of their fictional world firmly in the fantastical whereas marvel has more of a real world slant. This writer missed that memo and what he came up with for his real world-ish batman critique was not good.

It’s like those people who don’t think Robin is a realistic character and so go too far down the child soldier route, which of course automatically makes Batman read worse as a person and I’m like it’s a wish fulfillment fantasy because kids want to have agency and help people. How do you not get this comic writer man? I just... if you don’t get Robin then why are you writing Batman and Robin at all. Seriously this story is just....

IT’S LIKE A STINK BOMB MADE ALL THE STINKIER BY THE UNIQUE COMBINATIONS OF THE TERRIBLE SCENTS AS WELL AS THE INDIVIDUAL BAD THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN PUT IN.

And look none of this is me saying that hero deconstruction stories can’t be good and interesting or that DC can’t do them but this is not a good deconstruction story, it is not well made nor is it well executed. It is a steaming mess. But fucking hell is it groundlessly confident in itself despite this basic fact.

[aion-rsa]

INTERVIEW: Snyder On All Star Batman, Collaborators & Future Mysteries

The penultimate issue of “All Star Batman’s” explosive second arc, “Ends Of The Earth,” (that would be issue #8, for those of you playing along at home) goes on sale on Wednesday, March 15, so CBR sat down with writer and Batman guru Scott Snyder for some perspective on the apocalyptic epic.  

Unlike the first “All Star” arc, which featured artist John Romita Jr. on each of the five issues and focused predominantly Two-Face, “Ends of the Earth” has been crafted by a revolving cast of superstar talent and villains, with Jock breaking the ice in issue #6 with Mr. Freeze, Tula Lotay coming in on #7 to work with Poison Ivy, and now Giussepe Camuncoli stepping up to the plate with a Mad Hatter-focused story for #8.

RELATED: Bane May Now Be Batman’s Ultimate Arch-Foe

Snyder took the time to share some insights on his process with his collaborators, interests in Bruce Wayne’s psychology, and deeply personal influences on the story, as well as tease some plans for former “Batman” and “We Are Robin” mainstay, Duke Thomas; and the mysterious summer event he’s working on with artist Greg Capullo.

CBR: “Ends of the Earth” has a pretty drastically different tone and cadence than “My Own Worst Enemy”  — it feels a bit like going from a Tarantino movie to something a little more David Lynch flavored, especially in this issue. What motivated you to shift gears like this?

Scott Snyder: For me, it’s the point of the series. I think people are starting to see what I was going for with “All Star.” I had such a great time with Greg [Capullo] on “Batman”-proper, and we’re gearing up to do more stuff together and there’s just a sort of bombast to his work — a kind of singular style. He’s so elastic that it allows me to experiment with story, but with “All Star,” I really wanted it to be something that I’d get to look at both the mythos and the villains from completely different angles, and also to be able to use it as a showcase for different artists. So, to challenge myself as a writer to write Batman from all different kinds of prismatic viewpoints, and to make it personal, to do stories that are about now and that matter to me — that was kind of the goal from the beginning.

The arc that’s coming up after this with Rafael [Albuquerque] is going to be kind of singular for those four to five issues, one style, but very different than these four. I want to keep surprising with each one. “Ends of The Earth” has a mode that works with very different artists, it’s about different ways that the world could end, and somebody making an argument to Bruce, saying, “look at the fragility of things right now, you’re just a bedtime story that we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better, but ultimately everything is tenuous.” [The world] could end in biological warfare like in the Ivy story, natural cataclysm with the Freeze story, and now with Hatter it’s about this descent into subjective madness. It’s the desire I think all of us have to shy away from some of these huge problems because they seem so insurmountable. It’s easier to see the world the way you want, to take information the way you want, to create your own perception.

That’s what the Hatter story is going for. It’s almost as though each villain is presenting a different vision of the fragility of things, and then it all culminates with issue #9.

It seems like you’re going for a record for most villain cameos-per-issue across all of “All Star.” Can you talk about your process working with artists like Giussepe Camuncoli to pick out and design some of these cameos?

Well, part of is just the way “All Star” has been working. I’ll go to an artist in advance and ask them, “Who’s the villain you’ve always wanted to draw?” Most artists say “all of them.” Everyone wants to draw the mainstays and the cave and the Batmobile.

Part of it is making sure that when I talk to them that, when they do pick a villain, that I have a really good story in my head for that villain. Then what I try and do is speak to the strengths — so, for example, if Jock weren’t the one doing Mr. Freeze, I would have set it somewhere else. But since I know what he likes to draw, I know the feel he creates, it allows me to be flexible as a writer.

Here, I knew Giuseppe really wanted to make things feel like a very conventional action comic at the beginning and then have it spiral out of control. He was very clear about picking Dean [White] for colors and Mark [Morales] for inks because he felt they would create this really distorted, painterly feel as things got more and more psychedelic. He wanted to start with it looking very “house” style since he recognizes his own style as sort of conventional-with-flair. He draws Spider-Man, so you know he has that really cool, modern, “Big Two” style — but he can push himself beyond that like you see in some of his indie work.

So, it’s that! It’s talking to each person and figuring out what they want to draw, picking a villain, making sure we have a really good story, and then asking if there are any peripheral things we can fit in organically. If I get a chance to put in the tangential villains and they work with the story I’ll always throw them in.

Issue #8 really zoomed in on Bruce’s issues with identity, which is something you’ve played with recently, before at the end of your run with Greg Capullo. Is there something you’re specifically interested in conveying about Bruce’s layers as a character across these stories?

Oh, totally. It’s something I return to a lot. [His identity] and his mortality, I think, are the twin pillars of the Batman material I like to dig into.

I think the thing that’s fascinating in terms of his identity, when you peel it back, is that it’s insane. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s the mission of someone who is completely out of their head — and yet it’s heroic and inspiring to us as a folktale. There’s really a very rich vein to mine there where you start to poke [that part] of him.

In this story in particular, what Hatter is trying to say is that everyone in the world right now wants to live in their own head. Everyone wants to put on a hat and skin the world the way they want — see their car differently, their house differently, the spouse differently, whatever it is they want. Everyone wants to lean into that. Batman sees that argument and thinks it’s a terrible thing, we have to see the world the way it is. He’s a detective, he works on empirical evidence, he talks [directly] about the need for transparency.

So Hatter flips that idea on him, asking [Bruce] “You understand that you’re the biggest culprit of this [delusional world view], right?”

The way Hatter actually proposes this to him — that he’s living in an actual, literal fantasy — is likely untrue. But if you step back from it a little, Batman really is living in a sort of fantasy all the time. He’s skinning the world the way he wants to see it; as a place where a vigilante can work and is a hero instead of a villain.

I love that aspect of him, that he exists at this intersection of heroism and pathology. It makes him human.

Let’s talk a little about Duke Thomas, who’s been the focus of the “Cursed Wheel” back up stories for the duration of “All Star.” This issue left him in a bit of a tenuous spot — can you tease what readers should expect to see from Duke and his role in the Bat Family in the future?

Definitely. Duke’s played a big role for us in terms of supporting cast for a while and we want people to get used to seeing him with the Bat Family. I get worried sometimes that throwing somebody into the mix in Gotham without a “home” — no matter how cool the character may be — they can kind of wind up vanishing.

With Duke, it’s about long discussions with Geoff Johns and DC about finding the most viable place to land him. Is putting him in the mantle of a known character of somebody else that exists like a Robin or a Nightwing? Or is it trying something original?

We veered towards the latter, so with the next issue, you’ll see a big change in terms of his status and his mission. It’s going to lead into the story I’m doing with Greg Capullo. [Duke] evolves within that story, and you’ll see his role within the Family really crystallize at the beginning of the event [this summer].

So [the “Cursed Wheel”] is going to end with a bit of a cliffhanger. You’ll see the transformation of him into a character will have a very distinct role in Gotham, and with the rest of the Family; and also reveal things about some mysteries going on around the DC Universe as well.

Any hints as to what his codename might be?

Yeah! Well, it’s all been decided. It’s actually been one of the biggest debates. Everybody has a name they want for him, and they’ve changed as his role has changed.

Here’s what I love about Duke as a character: He’s always believed, as a kind of outsider from the Family, that heroes are independent of their their inspiration. [He believes that] Robin was independent of Batman, and doesn’t “need” him in that way. Similarly, all the other [Gotham] heroes go out at night, Duke is starting to go out by day. The city is very different then. He’s following in the footsteps of his parents that way. So all this starts to crystalize around who he’s going to be.

There have been different names. As he’s evolved, people wanted to call him all kinds of bat terms, but I think we’ve settled on something that works.

I’ve always really liked “Lark” for him, and that name got a little shout-out in this issue.

Yeah, I do too! Not to talk too “inside baseball” here, but the fact is that I’m really interested in giving a new writer [from my class] a chance with him, and an artist. So the concern I had with [the name Lark] was pointed out by DC, which I think is logical. It’s that that name doesn’t have quite the “teeth” for a series. It doesn’t sound…y’know, [Laughs] “Let’s go get ‘em!”

For as much as I like [the name], it needs a little more “muscle,” according to [editorial], and I would agree with that. So, we’ll see! These are the discussions we have long, long talks and lots of things on the board over.

The takeaway from it is this: At this point in my career, it means a lot more to me to try and create new characters and land them in ways that open up avenues for other writers and artists to drive in. I think [Duke] will get new kinds of stories. If he works [solo], nothing would make me happier. If he doesn’t, he’ll always have a home with the Bat Family.

Speaking of side-characters, this issue also included the Blackhawk Squadron, which hasn’t been around for quite some time. They’re a group that carry a lot of history with them. What inspired you to dust them off?

They’re part of a bigger mystery I’m excited to explore. That’s all I can say for them right now.

As a big fan of the more “cerebral” Batman stories, this issue reminded me a lot of Neil Gaiman’s “Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader” in the ways it called into question the nature of Bruce’s reality. Was that something you had in mind as you wrote this story, or were there any other influences you were calling upon?

Oh, I love that [story], yeah. The stories that I love are always baked into the DNA [of Batman]. For example, “Perchance to Dream” is one of my favorite “Batman: The Animated Series” episodes, so there’s echos of that, there’s echos of “Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader,” there’s echos of “Arkham Asylum.”

There are a lot of those things in there.

One thing I haven’t really spoken a lot about is that the goal is to make every one of these stories contemporary. So the Two Face arc is very much about the moment when the discourse between all of us has gotten so ugly that, regardless of what side you’re on, you start to question the nature of people; whether people are “darker” than they are “good.” [This moment] influences the way people think of each other, regardless of who you vote for or what side you’re on. “My Own Worst Enemy” is largely about the scariness of that feeling.

What each of the villains [in “Ends of the Earth”] are trying to lead up to is the kind of finale where the [next] villain in issue #9 is like, “Look, this is a time when everything is about to fall apart, and here’s all the ways it can happen.” They’re meant to [represent] those anxieties that are in the air.

But the second thing I’d say to your question is that [these stories] are meant to be personal. One of the things that this story is about is the way it feels when you are not feeling well. For me, having had boughts with depression and anxiety, panic attacks, all those kinds of things, since I’ve been a teenager. In one form or another,  [those things have] been a part of my life.

This issue, and the reason I did it all in first person narration, is that I wanted to create the feeling that you are most used to, [the feeling of] being in Batman’s head when it’s clear — a clear window — which is how it feels when you feel well. But when it starts to get panicked, and you start to feel depressed or anxious, that window darkens and pretty soon all you can see is an ugly reflection of yourself. That voice in your head that seemed friendly gets very ugly and you can’t stop it.

That’s the reason this one was in first person narration, when the Ivy issue had no narration, and the Freeze issue had third person storybook narration. It’s part of trying to make them intensely personal on top of being contemporary. That’s one of the real joys of the series, that I can go intimate in terms of my own fears and also speak to some of the things that Batman makes me brave about in terms of the sort of zeitgeist concerns of today.

“All Star Batman” #8 arrives in stores March 15.

The post INTERVIEW: Snyder On All Star Batman, Collaborators & Future Mysteries appeared first on CBR.

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