#and I love her relationship with Bruce

[haveihitanerve]

Her name is Stephanie Brown and she has been Robin since Tim Drake retired the name, choosing Red Robin instead as he fled the nest, the bat cave, and Batman. Stephanie Brown is Robin, Batman’s loyal sidekick, and the one who reminds him that they are better, that good people should not fear them, and that there is room, in their line of work, for hope. Stephanie Brown is seventeen and she is Robin when Batman is called to arms against Darksied, and she refuses to be left behind, just like Damian, and the two of them band together, both wearing the red and green and yellow, and he relents.

Stephanie Brown is Robin and she is watching him, as always, following his lead, his guide, so she sees it all happen. Sees as he gets hit, and sees as he collapses. The fall is not controlled, or cushioned, or careful, Bruce does not move his hands, does not lift his arms, or flex his legs. He does not do any of the things he has taught Steph to do when she falls, to save herself, to make the fall hurt less. No, he crumples, hard and heavy and final. “BATMAN!” The scream is torn from her throat and then Stephanie is running, dodging heroes and enemies alike, hurtling for the fallen body, her legs burning, lungs screaming. She sees, out of the corner of her eye, Dick crumple, sees Tim get knocked from the sky as his attention diverts, sees Jason roar as he starts firing anewed, rage in every fiber of his being. “BATMAN!” Damian gets there first, tugging at his fathers hand, pushing against his chest, but he’s too heavy, and Damian is too small, too young to see his father die, to be charged with the duty of trying to revive him. So Steph pushes him away, screams for Supergirl to get him out out out. And she beats at his chest instead, screaming for him to get up and fight dammit. Steph crouches over the body of her mentor, of her father, pounding on his chest with everything she has, forcing her own heartbeat into his body, pressing her lips against his over and over, 30, two breaths, 30, again and again and again. It isn’t until hands grab her, pull her back, kicking and screaming, that she realizes the battle is over, is won. But how can it be won, how can any of them say they’ve won when Bruce is dead? Bruce Bruce Bruce. Bruce is dead. The hands holding her relax as Stephanie collapses, sobbing, crawling to his side to hold him, to cry into his chest, begging, pleading for him to stand. To say something. To reprimand her, anything.

She is Stephanie Brown and she is Robin and the battlefield is quiet as they watch this girl, this child, Robin, beg Batman to yell at her, watch as she cries over the body of her fallen mentor. She pulls away, finally, and falls instead into the arms of Nightwing, who is crying too, tears streaking out from behind his mask, lips trembling. Red Robin joins them, his face an ugly red mess of tears, and Red Hood is quick to follow, wrapping his arms around them all. The four of them cling to each other, sobbing in their shared grief. Supergirl returns, holding a small Damian in her arms, the new robin, the one who had refused to stay home. He stares at them, and at the body of his father. Steph detaches from the group, slowly, approaching the boy with careful steps. He looks up at her, Lower lip trembling, head shaking quickly, repeatedly. “No.” He says, voice hollow. “No.” He repeats, louder, as though she hasn’t heard him. Steph crouches, brushing a lock of brown hair behind his ear. “Yes.” She whispers. The word breaks her, and him, because he falls, Steph catching him just in time, and he clings to her, sobbing, renewed screams of “no!!!” Leaving his mouth until his voice is hoarse with it and he can only sob dry tears. The Justice league watches the two robins hold each other and mourn, and they ask, vaguely, in the back of their minds, if they will ever see something more bone chilling ever again. The answer is no, no they will not.

She is Stephanie Brown and she does not have a mentor anymore, and she, they, bury him in an unmarked grave, a grave they tell no one but themselves about, and make a new, public grave for the others. They never go there. She visits him, almost every day, and Alfred hands her his videos, his last words, his contingencies he had crafted for them all. She hands them out dutifully, staying only long enough to see the tears form in their eyes as they hear their fathers voice for the first time again, then slips away, out, to patrol her city. The cowl is heavy on her, the cape too long, but she fits it, she thinks, and he would say so too, she thinks. She listens to her own video, alone, on their roof. “I am proud of you Robin. Give ‘em hell.” Steph wipes the tears away, smiling at his face, that face, pressing her fingers against the screen. “I always do Bats. I always do.” There’s a rustling and Steph shoves the screen away, stows it in one of the insanely deep utility belt, turning to the ruffle of red and green. “Hey Robin.” She smiles. Damian smiles back, happier than she’s seen him in a while. “Hey Bats.” He greets, moving so he can lean against her side. Steph likes the nickname, treasures it, even. The first time someone had called her Batman she had, come to their aid of course, but then she had gone home and thrown up, crying herself to sleep. Damian had appeared a few hours later, and she had snuggled him until dawn, telling him all her memories of Bruce, good and bad, telling him of his father.

She is Stephanie Brown, The Batman and she breathes deeply, hiking the familiar path to the unmarked grave. It has been a while since she’s been here, since she’s visited him, and she doesn’t regret it, not as she brushes away the old petals and places the new flowers in the hole. “I love you.” She whispers, fingers brushing the only word Dick had carved into the pure white stone. Dad. It means more to them then anyone would ever know. Her own father, biological, is buried somewhere across town, in a marked grave, a grave that is bare of flowers. She never visits him. “You were more a father than he ever was.” She whispers to the gravestone, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, wishing desperately that she had actually told him that. When he was alive. Steph stands, pressing a kiss to the stone as she always does, and turns, leaving him, as she always does. Robin moves on. He had whispered to her once. She knew it was true, had been true for all three before her, but she wasn’t quite ready to. Not yet.

She is Stephanie Brown and he is back. Stephanie doesn’t know how, and she doesn’t much care. He appears on the doorstep, looking a little confused and a lot guilty but they can deal with that later as Steph throws herself at him, burying her face in the familiar smell of his neck, soaking him in, treasuring the strong, steady arms that wrap around her, protective. “Hey Robin.” He whispers, gently wiping a tear from her eyes. “Hey Batman.” She returns, a smile threatening to split her face in two. Damian comes at the sounds of commotion and freezes, on the stairs, eyes blown wide. Steph takes a step to the side, but she keeps her hand on his arm, just because she can just because he’s there, just in case he disappears. Bruce takes a step forward, careful of her hand, and opens his arms to his son. “Hey Princeling.” He whispers and Damian hurtles for him, clutching his father like a lifeline, tiny body fitting perfectly against Bruce’s chest and Bruce cradles him gently, so gently, as he strokes a hand up and down his back and murmurs words of comfort. He looks at Steph over his son's head and she smiles, light and free and happy in a way she hasn’t the last few months and she pulls out her phone, pinging a quick message in the group chat and it isnt long before everyone has arrived, screaming and crying and yelling and Bruce takes it all in stride, hugging and apologizing and squeezing and kissing, and Steph watches from her spot against the wall, smiling so wide and for so long that she’s sure her face muscles will be sore tomorrow but for the first time in a while she just doesn’t care because he’s here he’s alive and she has her Batman back.

She is Stephanie Brown and she hands the mantle off to Damian, declining his offer to be two Robins at the same time like they’d been before, choosing her own purple cape again instead, still running at Batman’s side but a step further away now, running with Black Bat and Red Hood and Red Robin, still under Batman’s cape but no longer his shadow. No, now she is his claws, his teeth, his messenger, spreading across Gotham like mist, branching away and furthering the myth, becoming one of the birds in her own right. She adopts the name later, Sparrow, the one who was not broken, still with the purple colors but with flashes of red and green, highlighted with gold and blue, and a bright, proud, black bat on her chest, emblazoning her as his. She is not Robin anymore, she has moved on, but Robin helped her to grow her feathers and now she flies, flies free and happy and safe, but not alone, never alone, returning each night to her nest, her cave, her home. “Birds of a feather, bats of a cave.” Jason whispers to her once, on one of their missions together, and Stephanie takes the words to heart, repeating them to herself as she flies across rooftops, dancing with the stars and shadows of Gotham, happy and free and safe.

She is Stephanie Brown, the fourth Robin, Spoiler, and the Sparrow, she was the Batman when no one else was able to be, and she is Batman’s plague, his greatest weapon and his biggest curse, because she is his. Stephanie Brown never belonged in the sunlight, she did not belong cowering behind her mother, locked in the closet by her father. She belongs to the darkness, belongs to the creatures of the night because she is one, a phantom, a myth, and she showed them all, and she showed the Bat that there is room for hope in their line of work.

[bluerosefox]

Dinner?

Feeling a bit Spirit Halloweenish.

Danny blinked, stared blankly, blinked again before slowly very slowly closed his front door.

A few seconds later Danny opened the door again and once again meet a certain tallish young man, around his age if maybe a few years older, in front of him...

Who was it?

Bruce Wayne....

Bruce freaking Wayne, someone according to what he heard from Sam telling him from what she heard from her parents had apparently just dropped out of med school and was 'in the wind' according to rich elite gossip talks, was at his front door.

........

Why?

Wait... Did he just ask Danny out on a date?

-x-x-

Bruce Wayne has just dropped out of med school and is beginning his training into becoming the person his city needs him to become. While looking into where he can he remembers how in his teen years the planet was almost destroyed but was saved by a ghost teen hero and looks into it. He digs deep to uncover what happened, uncovering impressive firewalls Amity Park has, etc and finds out about Danny Fenton/Phantom.

He decides to go visit the younger man, who is just about to start college himself, and ask a few questions.

He uhhh... Bruce just wasn't expecting to find Danny very cute (even though he was pretty certain Phantom had been his first male crush when he saw a photo of the teen years ago), and adorable with his owlish stare, and well the first words out of his mouth was

"Would you mind joining me for dinner?"

-x-x-

[introspectivememories]

goddd i just know that tim never takes off that fucking necklace. and you know bear doesn't have that much money so tge necklace was kinda cheap and it wasn't anything the bear meant for tim to wear regularly it was just like a keepsake y'know? wear it on a date or a nice outing. maybe when they're both home together. but tim is practically feral over it. like straight up refuses to take it off. it's turning his neck green at this point and everybody is soo done.

[casscainmainly]

The Feelings About Cassandra Cain Alignment Chart

Like the Dick Grayson chart, open to change. Not moving anyone down though Cass is just this loved <3.

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I think more media should work with the concept that you can still love someone you never forgave. You can still rebuild and create a new relationship with someone but also be "what you did to me was wrong and I trust you to not be like that again and want you in my life but I can't won't forgive that, won't forget the hurt you caused. I love you but there will be days I won't be able to see you because the trauma you gave me is back and I'm just so angry and sad and at least you never asked for forgiviness just to be here, just for friendship, because you know that this are things I can give you."

[lilaclilyroses]

This could be a reverse Robin au but that’s not my intention. I want Steph to be angry and powerful!!! Im thinking that after Black Mask kills Stephanie Brown she is resurrected by her father who stole a vial of liquid from the Lazarus Pit. Instead of this being an act of love, Author Brown uses this to get her to work with him. He says he forgives her for working with Batman, that it’s even a blessing in disguise because she knows inside information. Stephanie pretends to work with her father for a while while she gets stronger and gains allies. She eventually kills Roman Sionis for revenge and takes his place as the Black Mask. She throws her father back in jail with her new found power and names herself as one of the top crime lords in Gotham city. Stephanie is sick of Batman and his rules, and Tim Drake who originally pushed his superior morals on her. The Batfamily for never really believing in her, who never gave her the tools to succeed. Her father who took advantage of her at every turn and made her life a living hell. Her mom who never thought she was worth getting sober for. This whole damn city for never accepting help. Well Stephanie will never let herself be hurt by anyone again, this time she’s made sure of it.

[foultreenightmare]

Okay, but imagine Damian was like just raised in the league of assassins. Like Talia was a good mother, and Ra's was a good grandfather, but damian is still trained and still is amazing at almost basically everything, but he had a really loving family before he came with his father. So imagine how confused damian was when he found out that his new family wasn't as loving. But we also have to consider his personality and how it would have changed. Damian is very cold and mean because he isn't very loved in the league, and he has a lot of trauma. I think he would have been kinda the same, but just because he doesn't know these people and he wouldn't be very mean mean and he would act like a kid sometimes. I just think, what if Ra's wasn't all that mean and Talia showed more love to damian probably would have changed him.

[yuripira4e]

I love the trope of “kid without a mother/father figure discovers magical world and gains 4 of them”

[ronniesart]

being a cass fan is 100% believing that the cass story in Detective Comics #1084 is setting up for a cass solo (please DC)

[hood-ex]

Donna Troy added Dick Grayson Mia no fucking way

SCREEEAM @boiwcndr scream scream scream. I'm screaming into the void.

[haveihitanerve]

Steph and Bruce things-

Bruce once said- “when I die I want you to be the one who lowers me into the grave so you can let me down one last time” and dick gaped at him in horror, jason exploded into laughter, and steph glared at him before giving him a high five

Steph ends every argument with him with “i won this argument” even if she- especially if she very clearly did not

When she gets injured Bruce forces her to stay at the manor. Its the only time he is permitted to actually parent her because she is injured and needs to recover, but thats not to say she doesn't break into the cave and annoy him during work and force him to take her with him everywhere

Steph has all the codes and keys for everything in Wayne Manor/Batcave, but still breaks in everytime she comes over. It drives Bruce insane

When bruce gets injured shes one of the kids who sits at his side the whole time, especially if its because of her or its a big injury(dick is usually the other one)

When he gets sick she forces him to sit on the couch with her all day and folds him into a burrito blanket and eat junk food and slightly burnt soup with bread and watch trashy tv

When she gets sick bruce wraps her in a blanket burrito that she actually cannot escape from and takes her everywhere with him, just carting around his technically not daughter who is forced to be there and take the medicine he gives her and food and everything because shes wrapped in a straight jacket blanket

He picks her up from school and will have the most embarrassing songs ever playing, or will call out something awful like “is that the boy you have a shrine of in your room?”

Will lecture her in front of her friends

Steph changes all his contacts frequently so he always has to spend some time deciphering who it is based on what she called them, or he just starts every conversation with “who is this?”

She once forced him to come to a concert with her and buy matching t-shirts and merch and whenever shes feeling down he wears the shirt as like.. Solidarity and it makes her feel better

Every year for her birthday or christmas or something he sends her a bat symbol, either in purple or black or some other color and every year on his birthday she actually wears it for one day and lets him “claim” her as a bat

She was the first one to visit the League and gave everyone whiplash and made Batman actually break composure

Bruce will actively go on the patrol route she goes on and throw water or like snacks at her while screaming “Hydrate or diedrate!!!” and it is common to see a screaming Spoiler sprint away from Batman across rooftops

They have a snowball fight every year and she recruits every batkid to help

When shes on her period bruce “grounds her” from patrol and forces her to accept his mother henning just once a month. Steph doesn't actually mind. 

Steph gives him actually useful dating advice

Since shes not actually his daughter she lacks the baggage of being his child and tells him when hes messed up and he and Babs have like meetings with him to explain what hes done wrong with his kids and how to fix it/be better. Dick is also sometimes involved in these meetings when he is not the offended party

thats all i could think of rn but please feel free to add more 💗

[farshootergotme]

Dick, Bruce and Cass for the Ask game

Please and Thank You 😊

Dick

Bruce

Cass

[aalghul]

it's so sad that talia still doesn't have good friends when her loneliness is what allowed nyssa to get talia to lower her guard

[casscainmainly]

Race and Perception in Batgirl (2000)

This is a companion piece to my two gender posts on Batgirl (2000). There are many interesting takes on race and Cassandra Cain, but most focus on whether she is a 'racist' character or not. This post is not about that, though I think my stance is fairly clear given what my blog is about. Rather than retreading the same ground of whether the conception of Cass is racist (something I might tackle later, because some arguments are flat-out wrong), I want to look at how race actually plays out in Batgirl (2000).

This post focuses on how Cass' Asian identity influences her views on perception, beauty, and agency. As usual, feel free to disagree as I'm not an ethnic or Asian studies expert.

Mask of the Batgirl

We all know and love Cass' iconic Batgirl costume. Besides its distinctive total-blackness, the most interesting aspect is the full-face mask. She is the only Batgirl to cover her face completely - when Stephanie takes over, one of the first things she does is rip the bottom half off.

Skin and external perceptions don't mean the same things to Barbara and Steph as they do to Cass. Cass' entire life is fraught with not just the male gaze, but the White male gaze - her father, David Cain, films her on video tapes, and Bruce later views these tapes (importantly, Cass herself does not get to). These tapes symbolise how her appearance does not belong to herself, but to external White perceptions.

In issue #1, Batman says the following:

"You... are me." Here, Bruce posits that the full-face mask makes Cass more like Bruce. It functions to hide their racial and gendered differences. By covering her face completely, Bruce (and Cass) tacitly suppress her race. Once again, White men are controlling the way she is perceived, something that began with David Cain and continues with Bruce.

Interiority and Exteriority

A common Asian stereotype is that Asians are mechanical - they have no interiority. The common conceptions of Asians as STEM majors and being emotion-deficient all come from this core belief, that Asians are utilities for White people. For Cass, this belief manifests from Babs, Bruce, and David Cain:

Babs says it's hard to care without knowing what's "going on in her head." She cannot connect with Cass' exterior, and finds it hard to imagine what her interior is like. Even worse, Bruce and Cain both argue that Cass belongs to/is like them, almost treating her as property- they reject Cass' own interiority and project theirs onto her, using her as a tool to extend their own identities.

In the early issues, Cass doesn't have an internal monologue. This somewhat reinforces what Babs, Bruce, and Cain all believe about her interiority. However, in issue #5 a White man gifts her the ability to think in language:

This plot point serves to demonstrate Cass' interiority to the reader, but it is another example of a White person choosing for Cass. She didn't get a choice to be raised without language, and she doesn't make the decision to receive it. Both externally and internally, White people control her narrative.

The Shiva Solution

After her newfound language skills impact her ability to fight, Cass encounters Lady Shiva, her future surprise mother. Shiva is the first one to ever acknowledge Cass' race.

Unlike Cain or Bruce, Shiva doesn't say 'you're like me'; she says, "we're a lot alike." She doesn't map herself onto Cass, but finds something they both have in common. By naming Cass' race ("in terms of our coloring") and framing their similarities in this way, Shiva affirms Cass' difference from White people, while providing an alternative solace: Asian solidarity.

Shiva gives Cass her first real choice. It's not exactly a good choice, and it's somewhat coloured by White perceptions (the idea of 'perfection'), but it's still the first major thing Cass gets to decide for herself. She even frames Shiva's path as opposing "Batman's method;" it's the beginning of her path away from White control, towards racialised agency.

It's no surprise, then, that Shiva is the one that helps Cass over her death wish. Not Bruce, not Babs, but Shiva - a literal and metaphorical link to her heritage.

Another Stephanie Brown Segment

As an integral part of Cass' sexual and gendered awakening, Stephanie of course plays a role in Cass' understanding of race. Moving from Puckett's run into issue #38, Stephanie and Cass have this iconic conversation on the rooftop:

I've written before about how this marks the beginning of Cass' foray into gender and sexuality, but this scene has a different meaning when viewed from a race angle. Stephanie is the quintessential American girl, with blonde hair and blue eyes; additionally, she's sexually and romantically experienced. Cass' own Asian appearance, then, may be causally linked to her lack of experience.

When Stephanie comes back as Robin, we have this moment:

Cass is unable to be perceived as non-threatening, helpful, or friendly, while Steph achieves all this with ease. Beyond the differences in temperament (Cass is definitely the spooky scary type), it's also the difference in costuming - Robin's bright colours and majority-unmasked face make for a friendlier appearance than Batgirl. Once again, Cass is unable to control other people's perceptions of her.

It's notable that the majority of Steph's appearances throughout Batgirl end with her leaving Cass on a rooftop. This happens in issues #38, #53, #54, and of course War Games. Their relationship is consistently tenuous, and I think this contributes to Cass feeling like she'll never belong in Steph's world.

Tai'Darshan Turns the Tide

At this point Cass is in pretty bad straits: no one has ever shown romantic attraction to her, Steph is mad at her, and she still doesn't have a full understanding of her race (bar Shiva, she's encountered no other Asians). This feeling of disenfranchisement from both the White and Asian worlds is a very common experience among third culture Asian kids, particularly mixed-race Asians.

Then comes Tai'Darshan, the second major Asian person Cass interacts with.

He is the first person to show romantic interest in her, and asks to "see [her] face." He wants to see her interiority and her skin - Cass' Asian features are now described as something attractive, something worth seeing.

Where Cass is creeped out by Conner's gaze on the boat, she's not similarly affected by Tai'Darshan. She's beginning to understand racialised dynamics, and finding comfort within other Asians rather than her majority-White friends and family.

Both during the fight with Tai'Darshan and the later fight with Bruce, Cass wears these eye-cut-out masks. The eyes are both the site of perception and the site of Asian racialisation, as the most identifiably 'Asian' part of people's faces. By wearing these kind of masks, she's allowing others to perceive her race, reclaiming racialised perception as an act of choice rather than something imposed onto her.

Choosing

In the final arc of Batgirl (2000), Cass sets out to find Shiva. The decision is spurred by this conversation, where Brenda explicitly asks about Cass' race. Everything has been building up to this acknowledgment of Cass' fuzzy origins, a recognition that the uncertainty around her race impacts her ability to achieve full self-actualisation.

Cass rejects Batman's help on the matter, instead going to Onyx:

By going with Onyx, a Black woman, instead of Bruce, Cass is starting on her journey towards racial solidarity beyond Asian communities.

The abrupt ending to Batgirl (2000) kinda cuts off any definitive arc, but I actually think what we have already paints a solid picture. There definitely is a lot more room for explorations into Chinese culture (Spirit World kinda covers this), Cass' relationship to White proximity, interactions with other Asian characters and more. I think her Asian identity deserves more of a spotlight, and I'm hoping more comics in the future delve into it.

[arabian-batboy]

I have seen some disclosures in the past about how fandoms force a non-existence "found family" dynamic between the characters then forcibly turn that found family into a "nuclear family" where they will make one character be the "dad" while one character is the "mom" and everyone else are siblings when that's not the case and while I definitely know what people mean by that and have seen it happen before, I feel like in the context of the "Batfamily," some people are taking it too far into the opposite direction.

Like first of all, depending on how you divide them, the "Batfamily" is made up by characters who are either literal family or just close friends/lovers, so I can understand why grouping all of them together and labeling them as one big family may sound confusing (but always remember, Wayne family =/= Batfamily)

Characters like Barbara, Stephanie and Duke (I might even throw in Tim & Cassandra, since they both were only adopted at 17) absolutely have an "unconventional" familial ties to each other and to Bruce, so I personally don't think you should be so eager to fit them all into a stereotypical nuclear familial roles, especially since all the characters I mentioned above (except for Cass) have one or two loving parents who have raised them all on their own without the help of Bruce and are still alive and present in their child's life (except Tim, whose parents canonly died a couple of years ago in-universe).

With that being said, sometimes characters just so happen to fit the bill of a stereotypical "nuclear family" in canon and not wanting to accept that because the children are adopted/not related by blood to their parents is fucked up.

And I say that mostly about Dick and Jason, who for for all intent and purposes were both fully adopted at 9 and 11 respectively (ignoring rectons that aged them up or the fact that Dick was a ward at first only because single men couldn't legally adopt in the 40's), so it doesn't matter how you go about it, Bruce is 100% their father and they are 100% his sons, no ifs or buts.

For me, I have seen too many people trying to down-play the fact that Batman is canonly a dad (maybe because they don't think its cool? Idk) by pretending that him and his literal children are just a found family or just partners and accusing anyone who refer to them as parent-and-child of diminishing this found family and forcing them into a "nuclear" family when that's not case with them.

Referring to an adult man who fully adopted a young child to raise them as his own as that child's dad isn't forcing them into a nuclear family, because he's LITERALLY their dad? That's just common sense.

[vicontheinternet]

It will never sit right with me the way some of yall treat Talia vs Selena and Barbra vs Kory with Bruce and Dick respectfully in y’all’s fanfic it’s turned me off from those two ships almost completely