#although now I'm also remember icons and really what limitation wasn't made up for by icons

[bitimdrake]

I don't know if you've already been asked this, but I was wondering if you could rank the Gotham vigilantes by combat level? Like, I've heard Black Canary is actually a really skilled martial artist, and was wondering how they compare to each other.

This question first puts forth how we classify Gotham vigilantes. Black Canary is indeed a vigilante who has often been in Gotham, but can we truly call her first and foremost a Gotham vigilante? What about the other Birds of Prey? The Outsiders? Alan Scott? Catwoman I think is safe to count by now, but Harley and Ivy have had more recent rehabilitations so?? For sanity, I'm going to keep this fairly limited.

Second it illuminates for me personally the gaps in my knowledge. I have barely read about Kate Spencer/Manhunter and skipped a lot of Kate Kane/Batwoman. I haven't read much after Flashpoint. And hey, what is even going on with Bette Kane these days?

Anyway my primary answers to what you've sent here are:

You have heard correct; Dinah is indeed known as a very skilled martial artist.

Trying to rank vigilantes one-by-one is a fool's errand and will only lead to petty infighting about "no my fave should be better" and "this comic where X won a fight against Y is clear proof, and that other comic where they lost against Y is clearly OOC"/"no, it's the other way around!!!" arguments. There is no clear order, no matter what anyone might try to convince you of, and characters will almost always be portrayed stronger and cooler in their own books, and weaker and not as good as supporting characters in someone else's book.

I think at most we should do rankings in groups:

She Gets Her Own Category

It is simply narratively important to Cassandra Cain's story for her to be the best in the world, in a way that it is not and never has been important to any of the others' narratives. Based on the metric of who's won what fight, you could maybe argue this, but based on narrative weight, no way. And I put story first, so. Perfect for a year, etc etc.

Top Tier Adult Vigilantes

Dinah, Bruce, Dick, Jean-Paul Valley, Jason, etc. Helena probably goes here, although I remember less focus on her hand-to-hand since the crossbow is so iconic.

Put two from this group in a fight, and it's not a terrible stretch for the writer to pick either as the victor.

You Go, Kid

Tim, Stephanie in and after her Batgirl era, and I think current Damian although my knowledge after the reboot tapers off.

Gonna be a struggle for them to beat one of the adults above, but they are still incredibly good fighters.

Trying Their Best

Pre-Batgirl Stephanie, early Damian. Both have grown out of it since, but in Steph's early years we were regularly being told or shown that she just didn't have the training to hold up to other Gotham vigilantes. And though Damian was surely a fantastic martial artist for a ten-year-old, it was also made regularly clear in his early preboot appearances that he wasn't half as good as he thought he was, and the older vigilantes could kick his ass if they wanted to.

[canariesrise]

Man I miss LJ like whoa. 

I’ve been on Tumblr a lot more in the last few months than I have been in at least year, really since my Enterprise days. And I want to be here because I want to consume a lot of the content here and there are some people here who I also very much want to be following. 

But the last few month’s combination of spending a lot more time on here and also doing a lot of thinking about what I want to be getting out of my leisure time is making it crystal clear to me that Tumblr is really not giving that to me. 

I know LJ is very much a emblem, if not a punchline, of 2000s internet culture and that this probably seems like nostalgia. And it’s me -- a part of it is *always* nostalgia. But again, all the thinking I’ve been doing lately has made it crystal clear why I miss it and feel kind of adrift in Tumblr even when I’m here all the time. 

I know that for some people LJ was a place populated by people they knew IRL (and the ensuing complications) or a place where toxic fandom happened or whatever. I don’t claim to speak for everyone. But my experience of LJ was always predominantly one of really supportive and interesting interactions with people that took place within this “friending” culture which was not inherently oriented around fandom. Looking back on it as an adult, friending memes and the sort of norms surrounding friending were centered impressively positive but candid communication. Like you write “Here’s what a write about, here’s how often I write, here’s what I’m looking for in a friend.” 

I was a pretty consistent journaler from the time I was about 10 until I got onto LJ when I was 16 or 17 and then my journaling habit went there. My fandom stuff was always mostly tangential to my LJ presence -- I would say I more lurked in places and happened to make friends who shared fandoms than made friends through fandom. My journal was almost entirely about my own life and I was able to follow other people whose journals were the same. And such folks were really easy to identify because you would post in the friending meme “I post about my life, not my fandoms” [in, you know, not those exact words]. 

So it was pretty easy to find people who shared your same general reasons for wanting to be on the platform and the whole friending structure had an implied reciprocity but also an implied “it’s fine if it doesn’t work out” thing where people would clear out their flists (there was a very standard style post to announce you were doing this) and it was just an accepted thing that sometimes it doesn’t work out. (I swear I cringe almost every time someone talks about “unfollowing” on Tumblr like it’s some kind of heinous insult, but the “Follow” button is much easier than mutually friending someone’s private journal and yet people used to unfriend people as a matter of course.) 

So there were these years of my life where I engaged in regular, kind of long-form (by Tumblr standards) journaling. (When I was in high school I wrote my posts every Friday, and I kept up with it in college albeit not as regularly.) And I had people who read what I wrote and commented which was validating, yes (and that in and of itself is also not a bad thing), but I would also say it was actual friendship. At any given time I had maybe 3-4 people on LJ who I was talking to on most/all of our posts and talking about real stuff. And I *loved* getting to hear about the lives of people who lived all over and did totally different things from me, etc. 

And now I have like no idea where to find something like that. I would go back to LJ if there was any critical mass of people there (although there’s a lot I like about Tumblr and two platforms doesn’t feel sustainable for me). And on Tumblr, sure lots of people talk but I don’t know how to find people who *want* to follow each other’s lives. That’s the kind of thing I desperately miss and the only way to find it is sort of organically which is the kind of process that I don’t have the spoons for (and maybe will never totally have the patience for either). There’s no friending meme equivalent of “raise your hand if you want to build new friendships” and the platform is just not set up in the same way -- not to be melodramatic or whatever but life without comments and an flist just isn’t the same. 

So now I’m left:

-Without a regular journaling habit. I could journal on here but the totally private or totally public situation with blog privacy doesn’t appeal really work for what I want. And I miss it -- I think it would be a good habit to redevelop in my current state of ~struggles~ and I am also genuinely super happy to have such a detailed record of my life from 10 years ago including how I felt about things, which is sometimes really surprising to me when I reread it. 

-Without more than a few online friends and certainly without any who I talk to that often and that in depth. And without a structure and culture that makes it easy to make the kinds of friends I want. Like I know I *could* theoretically develop these friendships if I tried, but seriously I cannot keep up with anything right now and so the last thing I need is a ~fun challenge~. And I’m at a place where I could fucking use some online friends because my life is a mess and I’m struggling a ton to keep up with the IRL friends I do have, so having some more supportive humans in the computer would be great. 

-And I’m on this platform which has lot of great content but, by the nature of reblogging and the sheer quantity of content, also has a ton of stuff I don’t want to see that feels pretty unavoidable. Like Tumblr Savior is great but you can’t blacklist, among other things, “Tumblr’s weird cultural norms that everyone’s blog must be a pinnacle of organization and righteousness for public consumption” which stresses me out just to witness from the sidelines. Tumblr and Facebook stress me out so much because I absolutely want to consume certain content on there but it feels impossible to any way plan my experience so that when I want leisure content, I only get leisure content or whatever. 

So that’s where I am. No real intention of leaving Tumblr but man, LJ still in my mind feels like this *place* where I went to build my own space and Tumblr more often feels like something that’s happening to me.