#bab meta

[tarragonthedragon]

i actually think that after she's had time to catch up on some social development Cass is probably one of the better bats at passing for normal. she and Dick and maybe Steph have the best sense of performing "just some guy". Bruce, Babs, and Duke all overstep the mark and successfully pass as "not normal but not in a batman way more a this dude weird as fuck way" whereas Tim, Damian, and Jason are all under the mistaken impression that they can just be a version of themselves that is not a vigilante and come off as genuinely unhinged

[spite-and-waffles]

Bruce, picking up a stray: "He reminds me of me!" :333

Bruce, a couple of years later: "Why is he such a stubborn, self-destructive drama queen??" >((

[umbrellacam]

Saw a post where someone wasn't sure if Tim being good at computers was a fanon thing or not and friend I am happy to inform you that he's been a computer/tech guy from some of his earliest appearances in the comics.

Detective Comics (Vol. 1) #620 (Rite of Passage part 4) - immersed in the ~web~

Robin II: The Joker's Wild #3 - tabletop roleplaying games and spending hours in the basement on the computer - not beating the geek allegations on these fronts, Timmy

Detective Comics (Vol. 1) #676 - Dick was more into traditional detective work and tended to outsource the computer stuff in these days

Batman (Vol. 1) #514 (Prodigal part 10) - hackin' through all the garbage and garble

Robin (1993) #33 - Robin sneaking in and connecting Oracle with the baddies' mainframe so she can do her thing and steal all their data >:)

Nightwing (1996) #6 - "no you're really talented and well suited to be Robin." "no, you." "no, YOU!"

Tim is definitely not as good as Babs/Oracle, but he's certainly her back-up for computer work in the 90's batfam. They're tech buddies and Robin!Tim is her little assistant sometimes, it's super cute:

Birds of Prey (1999) #19 - happy to play with big sister's fancy high-powered toys

Legends of the Dark Knight (1989) #125 - real cute kid

And Dick will hand off computer jobs to his little brother when he doesn't want to bother Babs 😂 (that outsourcing I mentioned):

Nightwing (1996) #68 - examine them pixel by pixel, eh? welp, sounds like a job only you can do, Timbo, you got this buddy, byyyyeeeee

And then when he'd grown up and been doing this for years, he leveled up accordingly, and did stuff like use his access to the League of Assassins computers to overload the generators in every base he could find, etc. etc.

Red Robin (2009) #8 - yeah that was pretty dumb of you Ra's :)

So yeah, it was a bit of a specialty of Tim's, in large part because he was introduced just at the turn into the 90's, when personal computers were really starting to take off and become widespread. (Robins gotta be cutting edge and all)

Of course, by no means does it follow that the other Bats suck at computers (there is no 'smart one' they are all incredibly smart and capable). This is especially true as reboots and the sliding timescale of comics have moved the DC characters into modern times, where computers run the world and everyone grows up with one in their pocket. The baseline familiarity and expertise that everyone can be expected to have is just much, much higher these days.

It gets exaggerated in fanon as all character traits do, but computer guy Tim is definitely not something just made up out of whole cloth :)b

[franollie]

if every DC writer could read DC first: batgirl/joker that’d be great

even in just the last few pages it really nails their dynamic and the meaning of the batgirl mantle. Cass more than anything has a deep seated need to prove herself. shes competitive and babs knows this

THESE PANELS RIGHT HERE!! THIS WAS THE WHOLE POINT!!

“you’re going to make people forget me and thats okay” GOD I WISH

more than anything the batgirl mantle is about needing to prove yourself be it to the men in your life (babs), to the readers (cass), or to the writers (steph)

this is why babsgirl doesn’t really work anymore. babs has proved she’s capable as oracle she doesn’t need the batgirl mantle anymore. batgirl was the first name cass was given and it was someone else’s—thats not inherently a bad thing. it gives her a reason to keep fighting and it suits her natural need of competition.

anyways if you aren’t gonna read Batgirl 2000 at the very least read DC first: batgirl/joker

[cassandracain52]

A canon compliant guide of Bruce Wayne’s officially adopted children

I noticed there has been some confusion about who all in the BatFam is actually legally adopted by Bruce Wayne so I thought I’d try and help clear some things up.

(Full disclosure you can of course headcanon whatever you like, I made this is strictly to help newer fans know what is actually canon💕)

Dick Grayson: Adopted

(Batman: Gotham Knights #17 and Batman #600)

Many fans argue over whether or not Dick is officially adopted, many saying it was never official and he is still just his ward.

Though he does admittedly usually spend the majority of his actual childhood as a ward, Bruce ends up officially adopting Dick as his son(as I have explained before here)in multiple timelines

Barbara Gordon: Not Adopted

(Batgirl and the Birds Of Prey Rebirth)

There was never a need for Barbara to be adopted because she still has a Dad. She is however still very much in the BatFamily and has trained under and with Bruce

Jason Todd: Adopted

(The New Titans (1988) #55 and Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying)

Now I couldn’t track down a comic where we actually get to see Bruce adopt Jason, but there are plenty of instances in which his adoption is referenced -including but not limited to these two- throughout several timelines and reboots

Cassandra Cain: Adopted

(Batgirl 2008 #6)

Now this one is a bit more debatable as aside from this one instance, Cass’ adoption is never really mentioned again even after the timeline gets rebooted. Still the general consensus is that Cassandra’s adoption is considered canon.

Tim Drake: Adopted

(Batman #654 and Red Robin #4)

Though Tim declines Bruce’s offer of being adopted at first, we get to see Bruce adopt Tim as his son about a year or so later. His adoption is also referenced across multiple reboots

Stephanie Brown: Not Adopted

(Batgirls #13, Robin (1993) #174, and Robin (1993) #126)

Now the main reason Stephanie is not and probably will not be adopted is because both her parents are alive. While her Dad is a villain and out of the picture, her mother is a nurse and fully capable of taking care of her.

Bruce does however train her during her brief stint as Robin and much like Barbara she is no less apart of the BatFamily, she’s just not in the Wayne Family

Duke Thomas: Not Adopted (technically)

(All Star Batman #1 and Batman & the Signal #3)

Now Duke is never officially adopted because technically his parents are alive just insane due to Joker’s toxin of which there is no cure. However Bruce does take him in and let him stay at the manor and it is heavily implied he becomes Duke’s foster parent so do with that what you will

Damian Wayne: Not Adopted/Biological child

(Batman and Robin (2011) #0)

Damian is Bruce’s one and only biological child -of the main canon- and therefore does not need to be adopted because you don’t need to adopt your own child

And that’s all of Bruce’s official and unofficial children in the main canon!💕🖤

[theriverbeyond]

we have all spent a lot of time discussing the griddlehark get along shirt but have we spent enough time discussing the ianthenaberius get along saw trap. when you hate a dude but you are dependent on his image and his success and his skill, when you use him up and eat him up and think that means it is done and you won, because you never cared about him anyway. but it isn't done, because in killing him you have done the exact opposite of ridding yourself of him and now he is bound to you forever. he is changing you he has changed you he will continue to forever change you and you cannot escape that, ever, because you choose to eat him and that cannot be undone. when you hate a bitch but she owns you, and as much as you hate her you love to excel at the things she needs you for. you practice and you practice and you practice, and you are perfect, and then as your reward for a lifetime of labor she eats you and you can do nothing but be subsumed into her soul forever because you were never a real, whole, individual person anyway -- you were always an extension and a tool and a sword. maybe being stuck in her teeth is the best revenge you could hope for

[mzminola]

Bruce sets up an elaborate mindfuck for Tim's birthday in an attempt to make Tim less trusting of even allies, giving him a mental breakdown. Bruce claims this will make Tim a better vigilante.

Tim, upon figuring it out, throws his Robin uniform literally in Bruce's face, cussing him out (like, actually censored swears, which Tim usually doesn't use), and quits. He talks with Steph about how messed up it was, and she empathizes out of her own messed up experiences with Bruce.

An unclear but short time later, probably a few days, Tim un-quits and states to Bruce that he doesn't expect an apology (not because it's unnecessary, but because he knows Bruce).

~

Stephanie returns from presumed death, finds Bruce, and accepts his orders to not reveal herself to everyone else & to take extreme actions to, once again in Bruce's estimate, make Tim a better vigilante.

This includes running around town in her original costume so Tim thinks his dead friend has a copycat, hiring people to attack him, working with a bomber, and even after knocking all that off, not sharing pertinent information about it with Tim, resulting in Tim being caught in an explosion.

Tim yells at Stephanie and says "Don't let me catch you wearing [the Spoiler] costume ever again." When she tracks him down a little later, he refuses to speak with her.

An unclear amount of time later, probably a few months, Tim is willing to work with Stephanie to stop a supervillain plot.

~

Some fans treat Tim's word-choice in the confrontation with Steph as him trying to control her. As him thinking he's got the authority to decide who can and cannot operate as a vigilante, at least in Gotham.

But. Like. One, aside from this one conversation, he takes no actions to stop her. He doesn't steal her gear (like Bruce sometimes steals people's uniform), he doesn't go and tell other people to stop working with her, he doesn't even go snitch to her mom.

Tim just. Tells the friend who got him very badly hurt while mindfucking him that he doesn't want to see her in the field again.

Two, it's a pretty dang similar response to when Bruce mindfucked him in the first example. Tim is the one who insists Batman needs a Robin. And here he is depriving Batman of Robin.

Yet if I tried to claim "Tim quitting Robin is his attempt to control Batman, is Tim acting like he has authority to stop Bruce from being a vigilante" you'd laugh in my face. Because that is a huge leap to make, with convoluted logic, and isn't supported by the rest of the text.

Bruce & Stephanie both screw Tim up really badly.

He confronts them and says he's breaking ties.

Then after a little distance, he goes right back to working with them.

And some people think this is...controlling? Don't get me wrong, Tim has some controlling tendencies, they all do, but it's usually teaming up with Alfred to stop Bruce patrolling while injured, and lying his ass off to everyone so he can do what he wants.

This? Is not that.

[call-me-oracle]

barbara gordon in nightwing #85 pt. 1

bonus:

[gretahayes]

Barbara 🤝 Max

Parent figures to neurodivergent teenagers who they love and try to do their best by but don't understand, so they hurt. Often getting frustrated and lashing out due to their fundamental differences. Trying and messing up and trying and messing up and trying again. Didn't sign up to be parents but midway realizing they are and floundering because this is a responsibility they didn’t anticipate and what if they mess up? The mortifying ideal of loving a child that's so different from you that you clash in every way possible, but you keep trying because you love them.

Cass 🤝 Bart

Neurodivergent teenagers to parent-figures that don't understand them and they know don't understand them. Constantly trying and trying but knowing their best efforts aren't enough for their parent figures because it'll always seem like they aren't trying hard enough. Not always understanding why Max/Babs are upset with them, but knowing they are, and knowing they're meant to know why, and trying to fix it despite not knowing what they did wrong. Despite it all, wanting to make them proud and knowing they love you and you both will keep trying, for better or worse.

[spoiledqueenie]

The conclusions Babs and Bruce somehow learned from Stephanie’s death:

“We have to stop letting these untrained kids go out and fight by discouraging them and belittling them.”

The conclusion they were supposed to have gotten:

“These kids are going to do this anyways, so we have to train/prepare them and give them a safe place to advance their skills.”

[mattiebluebird]

Case fic AU of Duke's training year centered around his identity as Signal (big hero, works for/with Batman, above everyone else) vs. Lark (friendly neighborhood hero, fights for the little guy, does things his own way) told as he & the WAR crew investigate a strange new drug that gives people meta abilities, with several B-plots of the other Robins becoming heroes in their own right. Is that anything.

[mercyisms]

bringing some of this out of previous tags, but something incoherent about the escalation of ‘dolls’ throughout the series, and the (obviously gendered) difference between ‘dolls’ and ‘puppets.’ including but not limited to:

john’s first forays into necromancy as puppeteering ‘Titania’ and ‘Ulysses,’ who are explicitly named as ‘extensions’ of john, which progress to the puppeteering of the world leader, which progresses to the apocalypse and john fashioning the parts of earth he doesn’t consume (alecto) a barbie-shaped vessel.  back in gideon the ninth, cytherea’s puppeting (explicitly called this, i believe) of protesilaus, to be contrasted with cytherea’s own doll-like position. both in her posturing as someone who needed to be carried, adjusted, coddled and in the broader uncanniness of pretending to be dulcinea septimus, of being a passable but undead ‘fake’ substitution of the living ‘real’ dulcinea.* all of the victorian energy also undeniably relevant. all of this progressing to cytherea’s body being a doll? a puppet? a weapon? for commander wake in harrow. the role she forced upon others and enacted being enacted on her own body in death.  rocking back up to nona, where images of dolls and puppets abound. though ianthe describes it as puppeting, naberius body is described, by others, in a way that’s much more suggestive of a barbie doll (“fashion hair” echoes the “hollywood hair barbie”). and naberius, furthermore, stands apart from the multitude of soldiers ianthe is also controlling from a distance. mixed with corona getting quite literally dolled up (hair refashioned, and ianthe’s fixation on the poor condition of corona’s hair, and put into a dress) once pulled back under ianthe’s control (to whatever degree we believe her to be). the doll as a particular extension of oneself, perhaps laced with intimacy? naberius as the conduit through which ianthe can (insufficiently) touch coronabeth; john’s romantic desire for annabel (and his occasional inability to sleep without her comforting him); even the fact that naberius becomes the vessel for palamedes and conduit through which he and camilla can become paul. (noting that camilla and palamedes sharing a body is framed outside of this language, possibly because camilla actively consents, for good or ill, to the process?)  (in dialogue with all of this, the way BOE encodes the lyctors as ancient weapons, and kiriona’s assertion that she is fulfilment of the nine house’s arts, stronger than titanium, faster than a speeding bullet: a weapon in the shape of a corpse, a prince, a girl. [to be a very dead weapon-body rather than a tragically alive one.] [also, as an aside, how her mother conceived of her: a bomb in the shape of a baby.] [also obviously related is that the out-of-house derogatory term for necromancers and cavaliers being, respectively, zombies and minions.])  i do not have a thesis statement, of course, but i think there is a clear development of a theme and some symbols and language that may be helpful to return to later or to unpick some of the various (and very gendered) ways agency is or is not present in necromancy.  * very known, but i think the fact that cytherea and dulcinea are both subjected to the same cancer-eugenics and arrive at a near indistinguishable state, that they are in some ways duplicates of each other, takes on a really compelling sheen in the wake of her comment that john, explicitly, is building a static society.  

[trackingthehuntress]

I don’t think I could ever really pick a favorite thing about Helena, but something I think I’ve loved since the beginning of my love for her, - starting with cry for blood and going on to reading her other stuff - something I love is that she’s not really ever a character who gets fixed. Basically all of her connections in the heroism community (except for like. Dinah and Renee) have at one point or another viewed her as a problem, as someone who needs their solution, as someone who needs to be managed or manipulated. So many other characters look at her and see something that needs to be controlled, and at times the individual comics’ narratives agree with this and uphold it. But when you look at the whole of her character history, you see someone who never has the exact answer, who is never sure if she is actually a hero or still that scared little girl whose family was murdered. She’s always throwing away her costume only to pick it up again a few days later. She isn’t static, but her problems run deeper than ones that can be given a simple fix.

where was I? Oh right - she’s not a character who gets fixed. Because every person who thinks they can fix her, or control her, or agrees with people who try, or anything like that? It fails, in any way that matters. Think about max lord, think about batman, think about nightwing, think about oracle. Even if their plans succeeded in the short term, did they have any lasting effect on her or who she is? No - they all ended badly for someone, and only someone who recognized the harm of treating someone like this and apologized was able to get anywhere close to a healthy, meaningful relationship with Helena (that would be Barbara, by the way). So the thing that i love is that even when the people around her are all trying to shove her into a box and then fix the person they’ve imagined her to be, she is allowed to exist as this multifaceted person who has failures and flaws and struggles yes, but ones outside of the two dimensional person the people around her see her as.

[fantastic-nonsense]

Okay so....there was a post about Barbara Gordon and visible vs. invisible disability floating around on here awhile back. And someone wrote an excellent response already (thanks so much to @dilfdoctordoom for pointing everything out that they did), but I wanted to add my own two cents onto it because I felt there were some unaddressed issues...only when I finally got around to actually responding to it, I found out I was blocked by the OP (because tumblr is a hellsite that doesn't actively tell you you're blocked until you try to hit "post"). That's all a preface to say: this is a response to that post, and it's largely responding to the OP's comments about how the current depiction of Babs' disability is "great, actually!" because it provides representation to people with invisible disabilities.

Which...first it needs to be said that the OP is using "invisible disabilities need rep!" to excuse visible disabilities being erased and minimized. Because this isn't a situation where people are looking at a character who's always had invisible disabilities and going "they don't count." This is a character who for thirty years was disabled in a highly visible way and promoted as DC's most prominent physically disabled character...and a character whose existing physical disability (complete spinal cord injury leading to paralysis) was then erased, changed, and continuously minimized to justify making her a walking Batgirl again. DC also did this while erasing two other female characters (one of whom, Cassandra Cain, was disabled herself and actually is an example of someone with an invisible disability).

Barbara's disability, by its nature, is not one that should be portrayed as invisible. She was shot in a way that completely severed her spinal cord and shattered the surrounding bone structure. That was always her disability and despite the spinal chip magi-cure it technically remains her disability. Even if she can walk, she should still either be an ambulatory wheelchair user or using a cane/forearm braces, on the page, consistently. Her disability should be visible; that was the intention of her creators (one of whom was a disabled woman) and that was the representation she provides. She's also worn glasses since her introduction as a character, a disability that was also erased in the New 52/Burnside era via editorial mandate (and one that we have only recently won back post-Infinite Frontier). I find it interesting that OP chose not to comment on that.

Cassandra's disability, however, is invisible and always has been. Her struggles with speech and language are not ones that can be seen just by looking at her. She's been an incredible avenue of representation for people with learning, speech, and language processing issues for 22 years. And yet she got first character assassinated, then pushed to the sidelines, and then erased from the universe entirely because DC couldn't bear to have a disabled Asian woman wearing the Batgirl mantle instead of Barbara Gordon.

And while Stephanie isn't relevant in a conversation surrounding disability, I would like to point out that she became Batgirl largely by accident due to being resurrected at a time when 'who should be the new Batgirl?' was a topic being hotly debated. Babs was as close to being magi-cured and Batgirl again in 2009 as Dick was to being killed in Infinite Crisis (which is to say, pretty damn close). Steph becoming Batgirl only delayed the inevitable, which was a coordinated multi-year editorial effort to push Cass out of the cowl and Babs back into it.

So if people like OP want to talk about the representation of visible vs. invisible disability, I think we should talk about how making Babs a walking Batgirl again erased representation of both types of disability in the process. Because it was not a decision made to give representation to people with invisible disabilities. It was a decision made because Dan Didio and a small group of similarly powerful old, white, male, able-bodied managers wanted the Batgirl from their childhoods to be on the pages again, and if they had to erase two disabled characters and multiple female characters entirely to make it work, they were willing to do so.

Nearly all subsequent writers have effectively erased her disability by omission via giving occasional lip service to it-occasional comments about the chip, the back brace, the cane-and then disregarding it entirely whenever it suits them to do so (repeatedly showing Babs in inaccessible living and working environments, having her continually suit up as Batgirl despite saying it should be an "emergency only" thing, constantly showing her standing/with her legs crossed/in weird positions when she is sitting like there's an editorial mandate on artists to remind people 'she's not paralyzed! she can walk now!', etc).

And those creative and editorial decisions need to be talked about when discussing the treatment of Babs and frankly all of the Batgirls since 2011, because it's objectively ableist writing and it's frankly incredibly tiring to have to continually point this out despite the well-sourced and thorough discussions Babs fans (both abled and disabled) have written on the subject over the past 11 years.

[spite-and-waffles]

I'm going to start taking it personally when people say the girls are less of a disasterfire than the boys. No the fuck they aren't. They're completely dysfunctional, self-destructive, arrogant little goblins who've never met (1)healthy coping mechanism. They're Bats for Christ's sake. What comics have you even been reading.

[theriverbeyond]

so i was thinking about this post, specifically the comparison between Ianthe/Babs and Silas/Colum. because on the surface, they're both necromancers whose relationship to their cavalier seems wholly consumptive. but: Silas differs from Ianthe on one big, key point -- he refuses to ascend to lyctorhood. he has been indoctrinated since birth to view his cavalier as only a tool for him; Colum was quite literally made for him, the 8th house breeds batteries, but when the chips are down silas refuses. he tried to kill Ianthe for it!! like, he was the only one in the room who thought what Ianthe did was so fucked up that she should die for it.

and this is so fascinating!! because one could potentially interpret the 8th house's treatment of their cavaliers like Mercymorn trying to innoculate her house against the grief that destroyed her for 10,000 years. she loved Cristabel too much, and she never wanted that to happen to anyone else. but the thing is, I don't think it worked. at best, I can see Silas becoming like Augustine "human plex" the First. you are not immune to grief etc.

and i think this is going to be important like, idk. the 8th house is the only dead Canaan House pair that hasn't yet had their arc concluded. and IMO, i think the 9th house wasnt the only house to have their dynamic be challenged by and radically shift due to the events of GtN!! that scene where Silas invites Gideon to "take tea" and then tells Colum to kill her -- Colum refuses, Silas lets Gideon go, and we never see the conclusion of that fight. and of course, despite refusing to wholly consume his soul, when fighting Ianthe Silas falls back on old habits to steamroll Colum's agency, and ends up opening the path for the River Devil that comes and kills them both. I think it is very intentional that this is framed as a consequence of Silas overriding Colum's agency and treating Colum like a tool and not a person, and I think the rest of their arc is going to address this. in HtN, when Silas fled Harrow's bubble, I am convinced that he went to go find Colum's soul.

im very interested to see where their arc leads re: forgiveness, atonement, etc, especially in the context of Gideon's forgiveness of Harrow in the pool scene, Hot Sauce's forgiveness of Nona, and Ortus & Harrow's mutual forgiveness of each other. how do we make it right when it can never be made right, how can we move forward without ever being able to erase what we have done to each other?