#batwoman analysis

[shyjusticewarrior]

[professoruber]

Flamebird Analysis: The odd treatment of Bette Kane and her history/experience

Batwoman (2011-2016) #1

Okay so first of all, Kate; rude much?

Second of all... was Flamebird's costume really that impractical? Especaially when compared to Kate's costume.

While admittedly Flamebird's original costume was not exactly the height of practicality...

(Although she still seemed quite capable of holding her own in it)

Beast Boy (2000) #2

However she later does in fact get a more practical outfit which she also kickass ass in.

Beast Boy (2000) #4

And we do know that its Flamebird's second (more practical-looking costume) which Kate burns, as Bette ends up suiting up in her aforementioned spare after Kate fires her...

Batwoman (2011-2016) #3

While I am admittedly not an expert on combat outfits; Flamebird's second costume to me seems like it walks a good line between aesthetic and practicality. It has plenty of flair and style to it, but also appears quite flexible and overall not really too drastically different from Kate's Batwoman costume in this regard (rather hypocritical of Kate to say "you need a uniform" while she wears a long wig for no apparent reason apart from style).

If anything...

The "uniform" which Kate gives Bette kinda strikes me as being less practical for the situation compared to the Flamebird costume which she burned. Like Bette's mask seems to be just a piece of fabric tied around her face, which certainly feels like it should be looser and not be as sleek and flexible as the Flamebird costume.

Building off this, from what I've seen and looked over so far, the treatment of Bette kinda feels like it has a weird... juxtaposition at times between what's getting told and what's being shown, I guess.

Like on one hand...

It's shown by both Bette's comments here and the existence of her old Flamebird costumes that she has been experience vigilante for sometime. Longer than Kate I think, if I'm understanding the timeline all correctly.

There seems to be this odd case of both having Kate and the narrative treat Bette as an inexperienced rookie... while also having Bette and the narrative establish Bette as having been a Teen Titan, who has fought Deathstroke and presumably has years of experience.

Even Kate's codename for Bette indicates a rookie status...

However despite the references to Bette's past career and capabilities, and Bette's protests of being more capable than Kate gives her credit for, and Kate also immediately feeling quite shitty at how harsh she was when firing Bette...

The narrative still, from what I understand, kinda vindicates Kate entirely by having Bette get brutalised to the point of falling into a coma immediately after she defies Kate by heading out as Flamebird after getting fired... so I guess Kate was right? I don't know.

Like I said, I just find all of this quite of a weird portrayal. I've been curious about Bette lately on account of her being the original Batgirl (or rather, Bat-Girl), which is a very iconic mantle to the general "Bat-Mythos" even if Bette herself is far less remembered.

I guess one thing I find especially strange is how this is from the first issues of Batwoman 2011... meaning that this was right at the start of the whole New 52 Reboot stuff and so they could've presumably just retconned Bette's experience to make her an actual rookie sidekick instead of this weird half-measure where they both establish her past experience as canon while also otherwise ignoring it.

There's other stuff which I could go over; such as Bette's coma, her stint as Hawkfire, her enrolling in West Point... all of which probably has room for more detailed specific analysis by someone more familiar with both Bette and also the Batwoman comics (I've only fairly recently started looking into this stuff out of curiosity as I work my way through learning more comic history).

So I'll skip to a more recent appearance by Bette in 2017...

Detective Comics (1937—Present) #967

This whole exchange feels once again like Kate ignoring Bette's history, experience and capabilities. Especially the whole "pass second year in the top 99th percentile of your class and maybe I'll put in a good word with you to Batman" thing. No one else needed be top of their class at West Point, or attend West Point at all, to be a superhero. And it just seems strange to have Bette getting forced down that specific road.

Like; going by publication history, Bette was considered part of the original Teen Titans team due to debuting in the 1960s-1970s period. In fact she joined the team before the likes of Beast Boy, Raven, Starfire and Cyborg (at least in terms of publication anyway).

While I'm not entirely certain how her current age placement in the roster, they did still at least establish her as being a Teen Titan who fought Deathstroke and so presumably in the same generation as Nightwing (even if possibly a bit younger) and other core members. The from what I understand the Titans are currently considered senior and experienced enough to be the current "top team" of the hero scene in canon.

So all together this adds up to, as I keep saying, a strange contrast between Bette's stated/implied history and how she gets treated by the narrative.

DC's Legion of Bloom (2023) #1

Last year Bette did make a return as Flamebird (not Hawkfire). Which could mean one of two things...

Kate finally acknowledged Bette as ready/worthy/experienced enough to go out on her own

Bette went screw it and decided she didn't need Bette's permission

Honestly kinda hopping the later cause it brings to mind a bit of the Beast Boy comic which I quite liked...

Beast Boy (2000) #3

Better gets a very stern reprimand from Nightwing (some she admires), and is told she's not cut out for this world and quits. This comes after she's spent most of her appearance in this run being kinda a comedic relief in the form of her repeated failures to bail Beast Boy outta jail (since she's never posted bail before and didn't know how)

But after this..?

Beast Boy (2000) #4

She comes back, with a new (more practical-looking, as I discussed before) costume and beats up several bad guys to help out Gar (who in turn really appreciates her arrival and assistance).

Batwoman (2011) #3

Making this post I've noticed an interesting similarity and contrast between Beast Boy and Batwoman comics in regards to Bette. Both times, Bette gets very sternly reprimanded and told she's not cut out to be a hero and ordered not to be one by someone she admires/values the opinion of.

Both times she defies them and goes out anyway, putting on the same costume both times in fact.

But while the Beast Boy comic portrays her as competent and capable, even having her involvement appreciated by Gar...

Meanwhile in Batwoman?

Batwoman (2011-2016) #4

Bette's defiance almost immediately ends with her horribly injured, and in turn accidentally helps the DEO work out Batwoman's identity.

Two events regarding the same character which that character reacts to in a similar manner but one ends with her vindicated and the other... very much not.

DC's Legion of Bloom (2023) #1

Moving back to Bette's recent appearance in DC's Legion of Bloom. West Point is 4-years in total, and when we last saw Bette she was on her second year at the latest. So with the nature of comic book time, I find it unlikely she'd already graduated.

Her return to Flamebird could also have something to do with Infinite Frontier (I don't fully understand how it works, but apparently everything's canon now again sort of?) re-canonising Bette's competence? That sounds like kinda an amusing thought tbh; multiverse shenanigans happen and Bette wakes up one morning feeling suddenly competent again. Good for her.

Anyway I hope this is a good sign for Bette's character. Even if she's unlikely to be a major player, would still be nice for her appearance to at least depict her as capable. Plus as I said, comic book time means if she does actually stick to West Point, then she'd unlikely to be graduating (and get allowed to be a vigilante) anytime soon. So at that point you might as well just let her go be rich and play tennis since its not like that's a route to her actually doing anything.

Bette seems pretty neat from what I've seen of her, so I wish her the best. Even if Legion of Bloom continues the running joke of her trying and failing to recreate Titans West.

[soleminisanction]

I’d pay real money to see your analysis on steph and cass’s relationship 😭 you’re the only mfker on this site doing Stephanie’s character any justice w your amazing character analysis despite being the resident Stephanie Hater TM I owe you my life

Ha, thank you. It is very confusing that my feelings about Steph so often seem to boil down to, "I hate you because you deserve to be written better, goddammit!"

That said, I'm not totally sure I'm qualified to talk about Steph and Cass's relationship in its full extent because I haven't read their "foundational text" -- which is to say, Cass's Batgirl run. I've read pieces of it, but never the storylines where they hang out, and I can't deny that the knowledge of Steph's presence is a big part of what's made me avoid what I know, objectively, to be a fantastic series.

From what I have seen of their relationship, in family crossovers and Steph's Batgirl and their modern appearances (everything Cass has been in except for Batgirls, and about half of that series, but not a consecutive run of issues) plus general fandom osmosis... my personal feeling is that I'm not a fan.

For one, I can never see their modern cutesiness as anything less than full-on queerbaiting. Steph reads as fully straight to me, and when I say that, I don't mean, "hrr drr she's never shown romantic interest in girls before" because that's bullshit. What I mean is that, of all the femme-aligned Bat-people in the franchise, Steph is both by far the most gender conforming and the most male-oriented (of the modern age; obviously Betty and Kathy Kane are a different story). When they shave her head for Future State or the Earth-3 Mary Sue Batwoman, it doesn't look like her, it looks like she's trying to be Cassie Sandsmark. And her motivations are very often tied up in men, whether that man is her father, her boyfriend, or Batman. Since she came back from the dead and they threw out all the complicated character nuance that led to War Games, they really haven't given her much more than that to work with, and it's not like those motivations were ever fully separate from men either.

So to me, the more their modern comic appearances try to push this idea that Stephanie is the most importantest person in Cass's life, the more it feels like they're writing poor Cass to be in love with her straight friend, who in turn is either (generous interpretation) clueless to her affections or (ungenerous interpretation) stringing her along because the attention feeds Steph's ego.

And that perception isn't helped by the fact that I feel like their relationship, as it's written in canon, is extremely one-sided. Like, Steph dies, and Cass spirals, mourning her and hallucinating her presence. Cass gets written into books like Spirit World all by herself and Steph still gets mentions and shout-outs as an important person in her life. People draw art with Cass owning Steph's merch, and she spent so much time in Batgirls talking about how strong and special and important Stephanie is.

Meanwhile, Stephanie spent her time in Batgirls talking about how being a Batgirl made her feel special and awesome. Cass gives her the Batgirl costume at the start of her run of the same name and then disappears and is never seen or mentioned again. She doesn't show up nearly as much on her own, but the last time she did (in Robins) I'm pretty sure Cass wasn't mentioned once, not even as like a flash-in-the-pan cameo during her "Spoiler, leader of the Teen Titans" fantasy sequence.

Pair all that up with the fact that Steph really doesn't get stories of her own and instead turns up in other people's adventures at random, often with Cass at her side as a glorified cameo and... yeah, it all just feels very one-sided to me, like the relationship exists for the same reason the writers forced Tim and Steph back together in 2016. They don't know what to do with Steph if she's not somebody's Designated Love Interest, and since she can't be that to Tim anymore they've shifted to baiting a relationship they'll never actually pull the trigger on with Cass.

It just kinda sucks. Steph should get her own stories. And Cass shouldn't be reduced to her fucking Kato.

[bitterrobin]

i just read your bette in beast boy mini analysis and you mentioned that you don't think bette & bruce have interacted since the 60s. that's not exactly true. there's two appearances i wanna mention, one is from New 52 Batwoman I think, I can't remember the exact issue but it's during the Bette as Kate supporting cast era and Bruce is spying on them (they aren't related in continuity yet) and he observes her in a very detached way. The other time is in some Batman comic flashback circa 2015 where we see Bette call him "Cousin Bruce" as he lets her in. Edit - I did some digging and I'm pretty sure the "Cousin Bruce" panel is from Batwoman #25 so Rebirth era. The other thing I mentioned might be an issue zero. Lastly, Neil Gaiman's Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader has Bette give a little speech at Bruce's funeral and it's so good. Look it up.

Thanks for the added context! Yeah, turns out I actually have read all of those comics, they just totally slipped my mind when I made that post. Oops.

Either way, the point still stands that Bette and Bruce have a distant relationship as of New 52~

I definitely need to re-read What Happened to the Caped Crusader though, it’s been a while since I first read it and a good portion flew over my head haha

[noybusiness]

This is a great analysis, thank you for posting!

Some Gotham Knights-related thoughts I've had since the end of the series:

I do wonder if Turner might have changed his name to Turner Wayne eventually, since he now knows his biological parents were bad guys (whom he described as "monsters") and reaffirmed his commitment to Bruce's legacy in the finale, and with all those fake IDs, Hayes may not have been their real name, anyway.

Also, as they were prolific international assassins, I would expect that they had a bit more money than they seemed to, stashed away in a nest egg somewhere.

Being thought dead while being trained by the League of Assassins increases his parallels with Jason Todd, at least in the later adaptations where Jason was resurrected by the Lazarus Pits while Bruce thought he was dead. And of course, Damian Wayne was raised by the League. Doubtless a dramatic reveal/unmasking would have been coming in the future when the other Knights finally both saw him again and learned the person before them was Turner.

I actually would have liked to see him embrace the bad boy thing Duela pointed out he was flirting with in the episode "Daddy Issues" and run away with her in that episode (with or without Jane Doe) instead of how things turned out. Also, have you noticed that Oscar/Turner has blue-brown heterochromatic eyes? It's striking, but I rarely see people comment on it.

Rebecca March said that she started over with "a new name and a new family" several times, so Brody may not be the only child she's had over the past century+. He could learned about or even met them. And what would the long-term effects of the Electrum in his system have been? Would it have run out after he took enough injuries?

It wasn't totally clear to me if Cullen's confession to Turner about how much he matters to him was platonic/fraternal or not.

The show made sly references to Stephanie and Harper's comic book codenames Spoiler and Bluebird a couple of times, so I wonder if they would ever have actually used them, as Carrie goes by Robin already. Of course, Cullen doesn't have a codename in the comics :( :( :( , Duela's is primarily "the Joker's Daughter", which she now knows she's not, and Turner and Brody are original characters. I suppose Turner *could* resurface as Red Hood. At more of a stretch, Turner and Brody could be Batman and Owlman, but I have a harder time seeing that; slightly easier if it's years in the future when they're older. Carrie could also become Batwoman when she's older.

I hope we would have seen more of Carrie's mother Doctor Lisa Kelley, since she's the only living parent the Gotham Knights have access to who doesn't suck (something the others can all be envious of), apart from arguably Harvey/Two-Face (and what kind of frenemy/evil mentor/anti-mentor dynamic might he have developed with the kids? We were robbed!). Would Brody have wanted to work at the hospital more, and would he and Carrie have gotten closer? They seemed to have chemistry.

For that matter, I assume he and Stephanie have had all the necessary conversations offscreen before the last scene of the finale about her not really being into him and dating Harper now and that he's more-or-less cool with it, though I suppose there could have been a bit of awkwardness for an episode or two at least, I don't know.

CW’s Gotham Knights sorting 

Attention: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Turner Hayes

The first thing that hit me about Turner before he was framed for Bruce’s murder is that he was genuinely happy with his life. I expected a lot of Main Character AngstTM from him, the way most protagonists are written especially on the CW, but there was none (or very little) of it. And it’s not like Turner doesn’t have sources of angst: his parents are dead and he went overnight from the son of cleaners to the adopted son of a billionaire -and all that implies- without any explanation. You can see it clearly in Gotham Academy (and in the city at large) that he isn’t very liked. Actually it looks like most people resent him for ‘getting uppity’ and rising above his station. Just look at how Brody treats him in the beginning or how the people of Gotham are ready to believe the worst of him overnight. But Turner doesn’t care. He has his best friend, Stephanie, he has Cressida and he has Bruce. He loves them and they love him; more than enough for a Snake primary. Sure, Bruce may be a bit too busy and it’s annoying, but Turner can always distract himself with a party. Classic hedonistic young Snake.

Turner’s arc is all about betrayal and how one deals with it. Turner is slowly, over the course of the series, betrayed by almost his entire inner circle: Bruce, Cressida and even his dead parents. Interestingly enough he is the person who doesn’t betray anyone even when they turned their back to him. At the end of episode two, Turner is the one who went to save Duela from the Talon despite the fact that she abandoned him to certain death. I don’t think Duela was entirely in his inner circle at this point (although I think she, Cullen and Harper were slowly getting there from the very first pilot when they handed him the lockpicking tool for his handcuffs, thus including him in their escape), but I think it was important to Turner that he will not be the kind of person to leave behind someone who might rely on his loyalty. Another moment that comes to mind is finding out that everyone at the Gotham Gala is gonna be gassed to death. His first reaction? “Stephanie is there!“

Like all healthy Snakes, Turner adopts Bruce’s morality as his own. And he’s so successful that I almost wondered if he was an Idealist for a while. But what sold him as a Snake for me was him saving Cressida versus not saving Joe Chill. Cressida had helped the Court to kill his father and frame Turner for the murder but Turner saves her because ‘this is what my dad would do’. So he blows up his cover to save the woman who helped raise him and betrayed him in the worst way possible, despite the odds being overwhelmingly against them. But when he finds out Joe Chill had been framed by Thomas and Martha Wayne’s murders and will face the death penalty….he does nothing. Despite the fact that Joe was arguably more of an innocent than Cressida, Turner doesn’t even have a throwaway line later on about wishing he could have helped him. (This plus the way he has zero remorse over killing the Talon also made me rule out Badger as a primary.) That’s because Turner is Bruce’s son in all the ways that matter, but he is not his heir in this show. He’s too much of a Snake to ever be. 

His secondary is somehow even more obvious than his primary: this is the guy who had argued that they need to stick together from day one, who said that what makes them different from Joe Chill is the fact that they have each other, who was literally introduced to us extending a hand towards Brody when the latter lost the sword fight. He is such a Courtier Badger that for the first half of the show it almost overshadowed his primary. Not to mention, he is an amazing manipulator. Look at the beginning of episode two; after failing to convince Duela to trust Stephanie by vouching for her, he pivots: “[Put the knife down] or you might kill the one person who could prove we were set up.” He realizes Duela needs a self-serving reason to stop threatening Stephanie and he gives it to her. The same hyper awareness of emotional situations shows up again in episode thirteen when he wants to convince the group to have faith in Duela. The rest of the Knights are somewhat derisive that someone with Duela’s past and parentage could ever become a self-sacrificing hero…at which point Turner reveals his own parents’ secret: they were assassins sent to kill the Batman, and if they don’t trust Duela because of who raised her, they shouldn’t trust him either. And it works like a charm as the group gives into Turner’s wishes. 

Duela Doe Dent

Duela is such a complex character, I wasn’t sure of her sorting till the very last minute. I think what’s important to look at in order to figure her out is her mom. Duela idolizes Jane Doe and wants nothing more than to be like her. And Jane is the ultimate hedonistic Double Snake. So of course Duela has a Snake secondary that is always ready for a con. But at the end of the day this is just the model she wears because of her mother. One of the themes of the show is trying to live up to your parents’ expectations and what that does to you. And modeling Jane’s Snake sec I think made Duela to feel a bit invisible. In episode eight when she talks about how her mom had so many identities even she herself forgot who she really was, it’s the first time when she doesn’t talk about her with admiration, but with fear. Duela is similarly terrified of losing herself while trying to live up to the legacy of being the Joker’s daughter. Deep down under that playful Snake, there is a Lion Secondary that is as blunt as they come. Her plan B when rescuing Turner in episode nine? A bomber vest to kill everyone if needed. Her reaction to evil!Harvey? To taunt him by throwing the truth in his face. Turner is dying from radiation? Duela tells him as soon as she finds out, against everyone else’s wishes. As Turner says she ‘has no grasp on social clues’, ‘she always tells the hard truths’ and ‘she’s always…Duela’. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence it’s this last line that makes her kiss him. This is the Lion secondary being overjoyed at someone liking Duela for who she is, not who she tries to be. Her fighting style (punches and knives to throats), her way of gathering information being kidnapping and torture and her tendency of giving Turner a reality check whenever he needs it are also evidence that support a Lion secondary. Her idea of a distraction is also hilariously straight-forward: she escapes from the police by pointing out how she’s trying to pick her handcuffs. (Sidenote: Turner and Duela’s ‘not offended’ game, aside from giving us THE most romantic line in the show, it’s also very Lion-coded IMO. There is very little you can say to a Lion secondary that will offend them as long as you are honest and it’s clear your intentions aren’t malicious.)

When trying to figure out Duela’s secondary I realized that she is incredibly healthy for a girl raised in Arkham by a conwoman. Sure, she’s extremely self-serving and would climb over anyone to get what she wants, but she has no regrets about it. It’s a tough world and everyone is in it for themselves. Except Duela is in it for her and her mom. (And she thinks the same must be true for her mom.) She’s a Snake primary who can’t be with Her Person. So she’s a little burnt. She doesn’t let herself get too close to anyone because what’s the point? Everyone leaves you eventually. Jane is the only person that had been there for Duela so she is the only one allowed to be in her inner circle. But than episode two happens and Duela abandons Harper, Cullen, Carrie and Turner to save her own skin. So when the invincible assassin comes after her, Duela is all alone. Except no, because suddenly the others are there and they are saving her life. She tries to clumsily thank Cullen for it, but he points out that if it wasn’t for Turner, they would have left her for dead. This is the switch that puts him on her map and slowly but surely, her Snake latches onto him. “I don’t care about Gotham, I care about Turner.” Duela and Turner’s first conflict in episode 11 is a deeply Loyalist one: she wants him to run away with her and her mom because she only cares about these two people, but Turner’s inner circle has expanded to include the others, so he can’t just leave. And the girl who’s already kinda burnt takes it as a betrayal and leaves without him. But she does come back when she realizes her mom is safe, but Turner is in mortal peril; or tries to. I find it interesting that her reaction to seeing the others imprisoned is to say ‘Even little bird’. And that’s because Carrie is the other person she bonded with. 

Duela heals completely in the last episode when two things happen: Harvey promises to be her dad and commits a great sacrifice for her…and Turner comes to save her despite still being under the impression that she was never gonna come back. Her delighted expression when seeing him says it all. I always thought the Twelfth Doctor’s speech ‘Do You Think I Care for You So Little that Betraying Me Would Make a Difference?’ is every Snake’s dream, especially a burnt Snake’s, and Turner gave her this exact speech with his actions. Duela’s last scene mirrors Turner’s attitude during the whole show.

Harper: Duela, do you even care about the people?

Duela: No. But Turner did. And I cared about him.

She has adopted her loved ones’ morality and is willing to act on it. She’s a healthy Snake now despite all the tragedies that have happened to her.

(I am unsure about this, but I do wonder if Duela might have had a Bird primary model filled with nihilistic beliefs that she gets rid off by the end of the series. It would explain some of her more Idealist-like scenes, like when she is upset Joe Chill -the patron saint of small thieves- was actually set up. Or when she has to be comforted by Turner after saving the lives of kidnapping victims: “Just because you did a good thing doesn’t make you a good person.” The fact that this phrase makes her smile happily was hilarious.)

Harper Row

Harper is another Lion secondary that can’t be anything else but what she is. She’s blunt and forceful and makes her opinion known. She may be a genius but she is no Bird as she has none of the Bird sec traits. Sure she does research when needed, but she doesn’t show any particular inclination towards it outside life and death situations. As proven in the last episode, when she’s in a fight she goes for the biggest weapon. The way she stands up to Stephanie’s mom by throwing the truth in her face is also a very Lion move.

Harper is another Loyalist and for a while I believed she was a Snake with only Cullen as her person. After all, everything she does was and is for him. But she’s actually pretty miserable. Which is why I think she’s actually a Burnt Badger. @wisteria-lodge has this to say about Burnt Badgers: “[the Burnt Badger ]has decided that communities are unsafe, unpractical, and the only way to be safe is to be alone - or to try and be content with a much smaller community than the one they want. For this reason, Burnt badgers tend to look like miserable Snakes.” We sadly don’t get a lot of interiority for Harper (another reason to hate the cancellation), but I think her behavior towards Stephanie and especially Stephanie-Turner when contrasted to Duela’s is telling. Harper and Duela both have a crush on a person that has a very deep relationship with someone else, to the point that one can mistake the relationship as romantic. Which Harper does and starts resenting Stephanie and pushing her away in order to protect herself. She’s too scared to let herself get attached, typical Burnt Badger behavior. Meanwhile Snake Duela is just happy there is someone else prioritizing Turner like she does.

After their names are cleared, Harper says she might enroll in Gotham Academy with Stephanie, which to me shows that she’s looking to build a community.

Cullen Row

Cullen is the only one, alongside Stephanie, that is willing to deviate from their quest of proving their innocence in order to catch an art thief. While Harper refuses to risk her life in order to ‘recover trinkets for the rich’ and Turner says it’s not a priority, Lion primary Cullen has embraced his role as a hero of the city and thinks it would be unethical to not try and catch the thief and recover the stolen art. He’s also the one that wants to clear his name in the pilot because ‘I am the one who chose the damned thing’. If Turner wants to prove his innocence because he doesn’t want to be remembered as his own father’s killer and Duela and Harper don’t want to risk their lives in order to clear their names, Idealist Cullen is the only one who wants to do it because it’s the Right Thing to do. 

I oscillated between Snake and Bird for his secondary, but I went with the former because deception is his go-to method. Need to trade the electrum for Turner but don’t want to give it to the Court? Just create a fake one. (And that scene is such a contrast with Lion sec Duela whose solution is to try and cut the powerful space rock with a run-of-the-mill knife LOL) Need evidence from the police station? Pretend to be a cop. In the pilot, when they knock out the cops chasing them, Cullen is the one that uses their station to keep the other cops from finding them.

Stephanie Brown

Stephanie is a Lion primary who is pretty much being gaslighted by her parents. She knows your mom being so drunk and drugged she can’t even stand at your school function is wrong, just as wrong as your dad using his money and status to supply her addiction just to keep up the picture of the perfect family. Stephanie does everything her parents tell her to, including ‘dating a guy with the right last name’. Except that’s not entirely true. Stephanie rebels in her own quiet way from the pilot when she helps Turner and keeps helping him and his friends after they become fugitives. You can see her Lion primary both loves the rebellion and the fact that she gets to be a hero, to truly do something good. As I pointed out before, aside from Cullen, Stephanie is the only one who believes it’s their duty as heroes to recover stolen art. 

When she lets her father go to prison instead of giving Lincoln her friends’ location, Arthur Brown frames it as a Loyalist conflict: me versus them. But Idealist Stephanie doesn’t see it that way. What she sees is that her father is going to pay for his crimes, while her friends are innocent.

Her secondary was a bit harder, because I think it had been a bit burned by playing the perfect daughter, but I settled on Lion secondary. She and Harper communicate with each other in an easy and blunt way, like Lions do. She also has the Lion tendency of picking a strategy and just sticking with it, no matter how ill advised it might be. In her case it is using her hacker skills despite almost being arrested in the second episode. She’s also incredibly honest (when Brody asks about what she thinks about his dad, Stephanie just repeats that she thinks his mom is nice), uncomfortable with deception and goes after what she wants once her Lion primary has picked a path (see how she kissed Harper both in episode 11 and 13).

Carrie Kelly

Carrie is Bruce Wayne’s student when it comes to vigilantism and his true heir in the show. She is another Lion primary, and a Paragon one at that, just like her mom and her mentor. Like Turner’s and Duela’s, her story is about rising to your parents’ expectations, but in Carrie’s case, she surpasses them! Dr. Kelly is Gotham’s best surgeon who has double shifts at the hospital because this is the right thing to do and her drive has rubbed onto her daughter. So of course Carrie picks up on her mom’s, and later, Bruce’s, desire to save people and protect the city. As such when the opportunity arises she becomes Robin, Batman’s partner. Dr. Kelly is shocked her daughter would become a vigilante, but as Carrie points out she had been raised to do the right thing. This is also why she saves Turner and co in the pilot: she knows they are innocent and as such needs to rescue them. She’s still a young Lion who has quite the idealistic view and we see in the episode ‘More money, more problem’ -where she manages to put a mob boss behind bars only for him to be released by corrupt officials- that Gotham’s harsh reality could easily burn her. Thankfully I think the creation of the Gotham Knights would help prevent this.

As for her secondary, first things first: this girl is not a Lion. She steals the journal pages in episode two and keeps the secret about Batman killing Turner’s parents for the next eight episodes without much effort. She doesn’t have any Bird or Snake traits, which leaves Badger secondary, something that fits her quite well. I would say she is a Bookkeeper Badger, the other side of the coin to Turner’s Courtier Badger. Wisteria says about them: “A Bookkeeper Badger shows up and does the work. They are dependable, they are thorough, they don’t like cutting corners (Badgers consider cutting corners on something that they actually care about immoral.)” This perfectly describes Carrie.

Brody March

Brody doesn’t get that much interiority, so it’s hard to settle on a primary to him. I am oscillating between a heroic Badger or Lion as he turns on his parents when he realizes they are doing terrible things. I am gonna go with Badger primary, mostly for how much it seems like a community is important to him. When he joins the Knights in episode 12 he immediately considers himself one of them: “We would be fine.” There is also the way he seems to have quite the social life at Gotham Academy. This is mostly implied, but from the very first episode, while Turner is positioned as the outsider who will never get over the stigma of being ‘from the slums of Gotham’ and as such never truly belong in the upper class, Brody is the ‘guy with the perfect family name’ as Stephanie puts it. Everything he does is to live up to this family name, but unlike Stephanie, he genuinely wants to do so, it isn’t just pressure from his parents. You can see the first peak of the more heroic Badger when he does volunteer work at the hospital with Carrie and is bothered by the people left to suffer and wants to help them.

Brody and Turner’s pre-show relationship is fascinating and I’m sad it never gets fully explored. It’s clear they were somewhat close to each other, probably mostly because of Stephanie, but they are also clearly rivals in a lot of aspects: when it comes to swordfighting, to Stephanie’s affection and just to social status in general. Being the Bruce Wayne’s son, Turner is somewhat socially above Brody and pretty much all of the other students and you can see it irks them as they certainly feel he doesn’t deserve it. Brody believes Turner is capable of murdering his own father for money for…nine episodes, I think! And unlike most of Gotham, Brody clearly had enough of a rapport with him to have some doubts, but he doesn’t. I think these are the dark tendencies of a Badger to give into prejudice.

As Turner’s foil, Brody is another Badger secondary, but like Carrie -with whom he forms an organic friendship- I think he’s more of a Bookkeeper. While Turner may have been introduced to us in the pilot offering his hand to Brody, Brody is introduced when he accepts said hand, showing his fair play. His reaction when he is in uncomfortable situations (the gala, when he discovers the hidden camera with the recorded evidence) is to ask a friend (aka Stephanie) for help.

TL;DR

Turner Hayes - Snake who picked up Bruce’s morality/Courtier Badger

Duela Doe Dent - somewhat burnt Snake (with maybe a nihilistic Bird model)/Lion with a healthy Snake model

Harper Row - burned Badger/Lion

Cullen - Lion/Snake

Stephanie Brown - Lion/burned Lion

Carrie Kelly - Paragon Lion/Bookkeeper Badger

Brody March - Badger/Bookkeeper Badger

[tht-lesbian-fangirl]

It sucks that Kate Kane is going to be erased from cw. I feel like if they really had to revamps then is there a way to make it make sense for Sophie to be the new batwoman?

If that rumor and leaked audition script is real, then yeah it sucks and I'm kinda pissed. Batwoman is iconic in comics form because of how Kate is a Jewish lesbian. When DC rebooted her as this character, it was huge. The show needs to just recast and keep Kate Kane, anything else is kind of insulting to me-- like any gay character is interchangeable and who needs Jewish heroes anyway? That’s some pretty bad messaging and I expected better from this show, specifically. At this point I don’t care who they’d recast, I just want the character to stay the same. If they’re a WOC, great cause that’d give representation to non-white Jews, a huge population that is often dismissed and rarely represented! There’s no need to write a new character with a drug running background if they want a WOC Batwoman (and I think most people would argue that it’s a pretty shitty background to write for yet another POC character on the CW). Only 20 episodes have aired and the audience was just starting to build in numbers and passion, so it’s not like Flash or Supergirl where a recast would severely damage the audience’s connection to the character. And changing Batwoman altogether doesn’t even make sense story wise:

Alice’s motivation by the end of the season was revenge on Kate, so what would it be now? 

Mary’s connection to the Bat Team and show itself relies on her sister being Batwoman. 

Luke obviously has more of a connection to the Bat Team because of his father, but wow is the show really going to throw away the friendships he built with Kate and, in conjunction, Mary?

A new character would throw away any opportunity for that amazingly angsty arc for Sophie to find out that Kate is Batwoman, and obviously erase what seemed to be leading to a Batmoore endgame.

Julia only became a double agent to protect Kate from Safiyah, who is supposed to be season 2′s big bad. There’s literally no motivation for her to risk her life and career to help Batwoman if she’s not Kate.

The only thing that made Jacob interesting was the fact that he was at war with Batwoman, not knowing it was his daughter. Without that fatherly connection to sorta humanize him, he’s just the asshole leading a corrupt police force, hunting the woman who’s actually protecting Gotham, and leaving his other abused and traumatized daughter to rot in Arkham.

Tommy/Hush now wears Bruce’s face. Why does that matter if Batwoman is no longer Batman’s cousin and has no connection to him?

Oh and how about the Arrowverse as a whole. Kate Kane is the Paragon of Courage. She built a friendship with Supergirl and worked with the rest of the heroes during two Crises. She has a chair at the Justice League table. Doesn’t that matter??

And regarding Sophie, at this point in the game it would be a disservice to her character to have her take up the mantle. She’s currently going through two well crafted arcs: 1. her coming out story and accepting herself and 2. the way she stands between the Crows and Batwoman. What’s nice about Sophie is that she’s her own developed character and randomly putting her in the suit now wouldn’t work, especially since she never even figured out that Kate was under the mask. Only recently did she take the brave leap to live her life authentically and date women. Another massive life change so soon would be unreasonable and rushed for any character. Currently, I don’t think Sophie has enough motivation to fully betray the Crows/Jacob and it would also take away the show’s necessary element of her being the good agent who actually stands up for Gotham/Batwoman.

This show only works because Kate Kane is Batwoman. She’s the center of all these connections. While I admit she wasn’t my favorite character, the show and all these other excellent characters can’t really exist without her. A recast is their best option, not an insulting rewrite.

[acidglue234]

Show Don’t Tell me how you feel: A Wildmoore Analysis

so there’s something i’ve been thinking about in terms of the portrayal of Ryan and Sophie’s relationship and how balanced/complete the development of their dynamic feels. in no way did it feel rushed or like it came out of nowhere, nor did it feel like it was shoved in our faces or stuffed down our throats. with some genius writing and savvy character arcs, Batwoman managed to find the perfect sweet spot in including Wildmoore into the show, and not just as an extra piece they tagged on to give Ryan a love interest (because in no way at all is Sophie Moore just a love interest), but their dynamic is literally EMBEDDED into the fabric of the story.

their whole relationship and its evolution is the driving force for the majority of the decisions they make, it’s the underlying conflict behind the visual action on screen, and most genius of all, while it’s shown from Ryan’s perspective, it’s mainly told from Sophie’s perspective.

Ryan’s the main character yet she’s almost a passive participant in her own romance. multiple times throughout this season i found myself thinking, what’s going on in Ryan’s head? but not Sophie. it was Sophie’s POV where we got the “I have feelings” conversation with her sister while she gazed lovingly at Ryan. it was Sophie who insisted on posing as Ryan’s girlfriend when meeting her mother. it was Sophie who said “great first date, huh?” at the end of said first date. practically every move to advance their relationship into romantic territory came from Sophie, and that’s because the Wildmoore plot line didn’t belong to Ryan—this plot line was mainly Sophie’s.

Sophie’s entire season 3 arc is the evolution of her relationship with Ryan/her struggle to gain Ryan’s trust and to be let in. despite this, Wildmoore never once felt one-sided and that’s thanks to Show Don’t Tell, a writing technique that the Batwoman writers used fabulously. let’s be real, Ryan has had a shit ton of conflicts to deal with this season. her story is already jam packed with CEO stuff, best friend issues, mama drama, a Joker brother, and psycho villains running rampant all over Gotham.

the last thing the writers needed was to try and squeeze in a conversation between Ryan and Luke about her feelings for Sophie, so instead of telling us, the writers used visual storytelling to show us the development of Ryan’s feelings; from inviting Sophie as her plus one to meet her mother, to openly flirting with Sophie, to being petty after Sophie slept with someone that wasn’t her, we got to subtly see the progression of Ryan’s interest in Sophie, while simultaneously hearing about Sophie’s frustration regarding it all.

the visual storytelling on Ryan’s side mixed with the verbal storytelling on Sophie’s side made for the perfect recipe in navigating and delivering a well-balanced romantic arc.

and to tie it all together, their character arcs finally meet!

Ryan’s resolution with her mother turns out to be the actual catalyst in resolving Sophie’s character arc.

they were connected all along, and let me tell you, the storytelling nerd in me is just gushing at this development. the resolution to a story should be unpredictable yet inevitable, and that’s exactly what happens here.

we always knew, to some extent, that Ryan and Sophie would be together, and we always knew that Ryan would find peace in her relationship with her mother, but in no way did i expect for those two storylines to connect, and to connect so brilliantly at that.

in her pursuit to gain Ryan’s trust, Sophie was front and center in supporting Ryan through meeting her mother and all the emotional turmoil that came with it, and as a result, Ryan got to learn about a (literal) missing part of herself which was just what she needed to let Sophie in.

man.

i sure love when things come full circle.

[forkaround]

Asian media is about people. Western media is about ideas.

[prol-x]

Pam & Renee‘s Toxic Relationship

Renee was absolutely right when she said that they have a toxic relationship.

First of all, I don’t even understand Renee’s intentions. Like she wanted the old Pam back (okay fair enough) but when she saw that Ivy wouldn't change back into someone who couldn’t stand up for herself she betrayed her in the most horrible way. Both sides have their rights and wrongs of course but that’s not a healthy relationship.

I have so many questions because 10 years have passed and now Renee wants Pam back? Why now? What changed? Renee said she always regretted what she did and feels terrible. Okay yes, but you could have done something earlier or maybe not done that all? I get that she is conflicted about her feelings and doing what’s “right” but the timing feels weird.

Anyways, Pam is back now but without her full strength. That’s the next point I don’t quite understand. Renee helps her get Mary into the woods and then shoots Mary so they can’t meet? But in the end, steps aside? Talk about not knowing what you want. Plus, in the next episode, she’ll be on Batwoman’s side again and against Ivy.. again. Renee knew that Ivy would get her full strength back when she let Ivy get to Mary. What game are you playing Renee?

The most crucial point why I think their relationship is toxic is when Pam uses her pheromones on Renee.

I understand why Ivy did that and I’m kind of on her side. However, Renee reveals that she created her own toxin so she can’t get manipulated by Pam and that is it. Renee doesn’t trust Pam that she won’t manipulate her and created the toxin that Ivy didn’t create because she doesn’t trust Renee (Ivy gave Harley immunity, just saying). That means that the fundamental of their relationship isn’t trust it is fear. Maybe they do love each other but they are more afraid of how this relationship affects themselves and their goals than anything else.

This leads me to my next point. Every intimate moment they shared ended with one of them betraying the other. One is even worse than the other because.. listen, I get where Renee was coming from but that was the only solution? She tried everything else before she let Ivy rot in the ground? It‘s possible because we don’t know that much of their backstory but still.

After all of this, what’s the endgame going to be? Well, either Ivy gives up her crimes or Renee her oath to uphold the law and I don’t think nor do I want any of that. I love Ivy and her being a villain goes far deeper than I’d like to go into right now because her origin story is far more complex than what we got here. I don’t think giving up everything for a partner is the solution. Ivy outgrew herself and her weaknesses to the point where she doesn’t want to go back to this part of her life. Acceptance is the keyword in all this. Pam accepted what she is now and that she can’t change it but Renee didn’t or did she? When she talked to everyone else (Alice, Ryan, Sophie) about Ivy she said that Pam was a lost cause that Renee couldn’t save her but now she assumes that since Pam is back Renee can change her? Either Renee just wants to give the cool detective around everyone else but is just heartbroken deep inside and doesn’t know how to handle all of this or she is just a manipulative backstabber. However, the question remains: Why now?

All in all, I don’t think they’ll ever see eye to eye in this because one of them wants to go back and the other wants to move forward.

This is just my analysis of their relationship on what we know right now and maybe they can work it out in the end. Let me know what you think though!

[shyjusticewarrior]

Jason when Tim & Kate are in conflict w/ the batfam

Jason when Bruce is in conflict w/ the batfam

[murderbirds]

Character analysis based on song: Edward Nygma/ Riddler- Just a gigolo

You know what? I haven't done a character analysis in a while. I think it's time I fix that.

I would like to talk about Gotham's Riddler, more specifically the songs that were linked to him, starting with:

Just a gigolo/ I ain't got nobody

By David Lee Roth

I'm just a gigolo and everywhere I go

People know the part I'm playing

Paid for every dance, selling each romance

Ooh, what they're sayin'

There will come a day when youth will pass away

What will they say about me?

When the end comes, I know

They were just the gigolos

Life goes on without me

I'm just a gigolo and everywhere I go

People know the part Dave's playing

Paid for every dance, selling each romance

Ooh, what they're sayin'

But there will come a day when youth will pass away

What will they say about me?

When the end comes, I know

It was just a gigolo

Life goes on without me, 'cause

I ain't got nobody

Nobody cares for me, nobody

Nobody cares for me

I'm so sad and lonely

Sad and lonely, sad and lonely

Won't some sweet mama come and take a chance with me?

'Cause I ain't so bad

Better love me, babe

Sad and lonesome, all of the time

Even on the beat, on the, on the, on the beat

Bop, boze-de-boze-de-bop, se-de-bop

I ain't got nobody

Nobody cares for me, nobody

Nobody, hey, say

Singin' bout that soul

Singin' bout you Lord

Baby

You heard it

Feeling kind of good, babe

Little soul

Little love song

Ow, singin' 'bout

Feeling I ain't got nobody

Woohoo, sad and lonesome baby

Need love

Humala bebuhla zeebuhla boobuhla

Humala bebuhla zeebuhla bop

I ain't got nobody

Nobody, nobody cares for me, nobody, nobody

I'm so sad and lonely

Sad and lonely, sad and lonely

Won't some sweet mama come and take a chance with me?

'Cause I ain't so bad

Been a lonely soul

Been lonesome all of the time

Even on the beat

Johnny, Johnny on the beat

Need a long tall darling, mama

David said he got nobody I loves

Ain't got nobody (nobody), nobody (nobody)

Nobody (nobody), nobody (nobody)

No one (no one), no one (no one)

Loop-de-loop (loop-de-loop)

Darling, darling (darling, darling)

Getting serious (getting serious)

Got to see the walls (got to see the walls)

---

This song is played during season 2 in the double date between Edward and Kristen as well as Lee and Jim. Now, this is a really interesting song because the singer is known for having no romance or love and resenting how others view him as well as the loneliness that comes with it.

What is imteresting here is that this is supposed to be a happy or at least romantic scene, and yet, the song here isn't about how Edward loves his girlfriend or how he is happy with his friends. It's a song about how he is scared of how society views him and his lack of love/romance and how lonely he feels. It leads me to believe his entire relationship was less about how he truly loved Kristen and more about how he didn't want to be alone, he didn't want to be a failure. Kristen was his ticket to being 'normal', she was the only woman who treated him half decent and he killed her, he destroyed his chance of being normal.

This is something we see all throughout Edward's arc, this need to be normal vs his knowledge that deep down he is not. This is why Edward fell for Isabella so fast so easy, he wasn't in love with her, he was in love with what she represented. She was his second chance at being normal, his "second Kristen" if you will and Oswald destroyed that. He killed his second chance at being normal.

I have written another analysis on this so I won't dwell on it for long, but if Kristen and Isabella are his desire to be normal, Oswald is his acceptance that he is not. Oswald, much like Ed, is considered a freak, "a gigolo", but unlike Ed, Oswald is proud of who he is. He doesn't try to be normal, he shows his abnormalities for everyone to see, even if that hurts him. This not normal is what makes him king of Gotham. This is what Edward also finds himself wanting.

The dichotomy of Edward always trying to be normal and Riddler accepting that he is not

Edward shot Oswald, not to avenge his girlfriend, he shot Oswald to try and kill the part of himself that would never be normal, the part of him he thought could never love nor be loved.

But Oswald defeated him in his own game, he played by his rules, fell into his every trap and, by the end, he still loved Edward. This was the first time Ed experienced true love in the show, but what he wanted wasn't love. It was normalcy and that was something Oswald could never give him.

Then we get to the much more famous Riddler song in this show, Wake up Alone by Amy Winehouse

So he shot him, dumped him in the river and then felt a new type of emptiness and loneliness, the type where you crave someone you can never have again. This new loneliness nearly drives Edward insane and, by the end, the only way he finds to be close to Oswald is by becoming the thing he tried to kill by shooting Penguin.

And then Oswald comes back and Edward doesn't know how to feel. He still wants his love, but Oswald is also still the one to kill his normalcy, so he becomes his biggest enemy. He becomes obsessed with Oswald in a way he never became with anyone before or since.

Season 4 is... strange for Edward's character. The whole dumb Ed thing is a choice for sure. Edward starts off wanting what made him non normal in a very... interesting change of turns. On his look for what made him special, he meets Lee who doesn't just represent a chance of normalcy, but of what having what Jim had. Ed was always jealous of Jim and how he had and was everything he wasn't, but I do think that, in all fairness, Edward did love Lee. To him, love was only shown through sacrifice and Lee was the only woman Edward was willing to die for.

Then Riddler took over once again and Edward became a mess once more, since he was once more torn between normalcy and being special. Lee could give him the normalcy like with Jim that Ed wanted, but not the being special Oswald offered. I think Riddler somehow wanted both. He wanted to change Lee to make her more like Oswald, and in the end, that back fired tremendously, because Lee never loved Edward. She found the Riddler rather useful.

Season 5, we have the worst plot with Ed yet with the whole mind control BS which makes literally no sense for his character, luckily that doesn't last long and Ed and Oswald are back together.

We get Edward or Riddler finally accepting his abnormality and Oswald in a really nice scene and then we have Edward actually giving up on normalcy for Oswald. He could have taken that submarine, he could have started a new life and tried to find someone new, but he didn't. He abandoned what was his last chance of normalcy all for Oswald

[thefandomentals]

DC Pride returns this year with a bunch of new stories from queer creators and artists, including an introduction by Supergirl's Nicole Maines and a story by famed Batman VA Kevin Conroy. @askmeaboutmyoctopustheory breaks down each one and gives her thoughts in our latest comic review.

[isagrimorie]

Mouse and Ocean telling Alice to let go of Kate.

#there might be well-meaning intentions behind ocean's words#but also self-serving#because the last time alice had to choose between kate and ocean#alice killed ocean#and the last time mouse said this again; for her own good#alice killed mouse.

historically, trying to keep alice from kate ends in death. the death of people trying to keep them apart anyway.

[batwomanandmotherpanic]

I've glommed onto Vi pretty recently partly because she shares a quite a number of traits with Kate. Not too surprising, right? If I like one character, I'll probably like one who has a similar personality, skills, story role, and even color scheme. I'd guess the same goes for most people.

Anyway, though both have notable similarities, a major difference between them in terms of character is Vi being far more impulsive. To oversimplify, she seems like what Kate could've been had she not emulated her father Jacob.

I find this difference interesting because of some other similarities they share: parental death and a father figure who is genuinely loving yet capable of great violence when necessary. An emphasis on personal responsibility, too.

But where Kate follows Jacob's example of levelheadedness, thus mellowing out her natural temper, Vi doesn't do the same with Vander's warnings of how violence can consume.

And yet the directions both characters take from there work. Kate gets a tight rein on her anger, allowing her to become a highly competent and motivated individual, and Vi isn't consumed by violence to the point that it's ultimately self-destructive (despite some difficulties her hotheadedness still brings her).

This is all rather broad and certainly not limited to these cases, but it still struck me as neat, how these are just two examples of how similar characters can go on completely different trajectories and still both be believable.

[sapphic-luthor]

Wait wait wait wait wait

Did original Lillian die? The one that Lena used a truthseeker on? The one that tried to poison Lex in the White House?

I'm just so confused with everything all of the sudden.

And do we have the same Lex, or is this one different?

ok i’m about to get way deeper into this than you asked, my bad lmao

first, it’s definitely the same lex! he was a big part of crisis the same way kara and j’onn were, so he survived from earth 38, throughout the whole process, and made it out to the other side as himself.

as far as lillian, this is where you have to try not to think too hard or crisis will rot your brain out. technically yeah, the lillian that we saw in s2-5a died when all of the worlds got destroyed. our current lillian, however, has been brought up to speed about the past world by lex, so as far as we can tell, we’re operating under the conditions that she’s the “same” lillian as before. (but who knows how much lex has told her? and is she acting strangely because she’s different post-crisis or because there’s no continuity in the writing? nobody knows!)

but by that same logic, technically everybody except the paragons (kara and j’onn, for sg purposes) died*. when we came out of the other side of crisis, oliver had created a new world that looked and felt similar to (our) old world-- so many of the same people existed in it, but presumably with whole different histories (for example, lex was a good guy in this world, and has no outward history of villainy.) BUT, j’onn then gave all the important players their pre-crisis memories back (brainy, alex, and so on) so that they can be narratively the same as the pre-crisis characters we know and love. this does mean, however, that their individual histories might be totally different.

like, did kara’s high school crush ever get killed in this world? did jack? did alex ever meet maggie, or did she have a whole different coming out arc? and the one that i find the most fascinating: do the people who had their memories restored now have two totally different lifetimes of memories in their heads?

if you get too far into this, you start veering toward philosophy and thought experiments like the teletransportation paradox, or (sort of) the ship of theseus. so is a person a person because of something inherent to them-- their body, a soul (if a soul is physical), etc? or could you feasibly extract all of somebody’s thoughts, memories, feelings, experiences, etc., stick them in a “new” body, and is that now the same person as before?

it’s a mess, dude, and it would actually be rather compelling to watch any other network besides the cw tackle the complexities of it.

* lena may not have died, technically. lex made a deal with the monitor to save her, but we don’t know how that was managed. did he actually physically save her from the destruction of all the worlds (which i don’t think would’ve been possible)? or did he just save her memories for her? again, who fucking knows. the writers sure don’t

[tht-lesbian-fangirl]

you know how on batwoman mary knows kate’s secret and is trusting kate to let her in when she’s ready? that’s what I always wanted for lena and kara’s relationship and loved thinking about how lena knew kara was sg all along but the was going to wait for kara to bring it up bc it was HERS. this isn’t to drag sg show in any way it’s just bw counters things I wish sg missed out on.

Anon, I completely agree with you. It’s one of the things that annoys me to no extent. Things on Supergirl are mishandled so often, especially in regards to Lena, and when I look at how all the other Arrowverse shows (not only Batwoman) handle similar character situations, it drives me crazy.

On Batwoman: Mary discovers Kate’s Batwoman secret and is incredibly hurt. It builds into Mary’s idea that she’ll always be second to Alice– the person who murdered her mother– and adds to her idea that Kate doesn’t care about their relationship. She may be making passive aggressive and sassy remarks around Kate and Luke, but she still supports Kate and is willing to wait. Mary, who couldn’t feel more alone now, is able to process and love despite the pain, yet Lena has a mental lapse, ignores how Kara is trying to make it up to her, and has become a shell of herself.

On Legends: Exactly how many characters has this show redeemed without further dispute?? Too many to count, but let’s look at Mick and Nora. Mick was a legitimate villain thrown into the waverider crew. His past is brought up sometimes and his character was even tested when he briefly joined the Legion of Doom. He had an abusive father and an affinity for fire, but in the end, he’s a good person and a loved member of the team who spends his free time writing feminist romance novels. Nora (probably the character most similar to Lena) was brought up in a cult led by her father Damien Darhk and groomed to become the host of a demon. Yet, after spending time with Ray and the Legends, she realizes that she doesn’t want to be evil; she wants love and her own life. Some of the Legends slightly questioned her redemption in the beginning, but they all ended up believing in her. So Nora ended up as fairy godmother to unhappy children and married to boy scout Ray. Their redemptions were nuanced, earned, and never questioned. And both have done way worse than anything Lena even thought of doing.

On Arrow: Oliver Queen spent seasons wrestling with the fact that he’s killed so many people and the idea that his parents weren’t good people. He’s had full arcs (I’m thinking specifically in season 5) where he wrestles with the idea that maybe he liked killing. It was something he had to work through, and he was allowed to do so because he was a man and the hero of the show. [I would also get into Deathstroke and E-2 Laurel Lance, but I’ve already discussed those kind of redemption arcs in other shows.] Meanwhile, we have Lena similarly trying to clear her family’s name, but has always been strictly against killing. Yet, Oliver is a tormented hero and Lena is automatically written off as another Luthor the second her pinky toe steps out of line.

On Flash: Caitlin’s alter ego Killer Frost was LITERALLY a supervillain. Albeit a conflicted villain at certain points, but she did some pretty bad things and enjoyed it. But she’s been easily redeemed so much that her character often serves as comic relief on the show now. And no one has brought up her misdeeds in at least one or two seasons. Killer Frost was welcomed with pretty open arms onto Team Flash, whereas Alex is ready to use Kara as a trojan horse and literally blow up her “friend” Lena without even giving her a few hours to calm down and sort her shit out.

So yeah, the way Supergirl and certain parts of the fandom mishandle and misrepresent Lena (someone who grew up in an abusive household and has lived through an unknown amount of trauma, but still has always tried to be good) drives me up the wall.