#cain preferences

[fckbatmanhiskidsareminenow]

batfam meets the JL but it’s just the bat kids breaking into the watch tower during a debriefing or meeting to ask bruce the most mundane questions. they go about it like they’re interns that need to speak to the CEO during a board meeting. they walk over waving their hands and mouthing “i’m so sorry just need to ask batman something 😬” and then they lean over to bruce and ask something like “alfred wants to know if you’re gonna be home for dinner” and then they dip.

one of them started this when bruce didn’t answer their texts (it was probably tim or something) and now everyone does it.

[flonflonflon]

Siblings!!!!

(semi cleaned up some sketches I had lying around)

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in alt text, transcripts for comics also found there!]

🎉🎇HAPPY NEW YEAR!🎇🎉

Sure was a year...This is just me taking the end of year opportunity to post the various DC comics doodles that have been gathering dust in my files! Disclaimer that I'm a heathen who mostly reads batfam comics (and also a lot of. Sidekick-y stuff? Like YJ98) and these are all for fun! (Image #3 is a direct adaptation of this text post I made)

[franollie]

“you say i killed you— haunt me then”

[casscainmainly]

Looking at the notes of that Cass name poll and I don't mind people preferring Black Bat for certain reasons, but saying 'Batgirl is not unique/her own name' is not a good argument to me. Yes, it's not unique; that's the whole point. It's a legacy mantle. The power comes from the fact that Cass is linked, through Batgirl, to the people she cares about most. For a girl who was forcefully isolated, who was denied a name (and therefore denied a legacy), Batgirl is the first thing that was ever hers. And Batgirl is not, and has never been, tied to Bruce; the point of the mantle is women carving out their own spaces, forging their own identities regardless of what others have tried to make them. Saying Batgirl is not a good mantle for Cass is also denying what she brought to the name - under Cass, Batgirl became a legacy mantle. Batgirl irrevocably changed her, and she irrevocably changed Batgirl. Preferring other names is completely fine, but it's important not to undermine what Batgirl meant, and continues to mean, to Cass.

[encorific]

WAHHHH i finished my digital circus oc design yesterday i hate him i hope he abstracts

[bunnithechubs]

just a typical pair of newly weds doing newly wed things

[heyyallitssatan]

Bruce and all of his kids, are full of scar tissue and mended bones

Every single one of them can count on two hands or less how many bones they haven’t broken, and they can count on even less how many joints they have dislocated, and don’t even get me started on sprains

Point is, the Batfam haven’t exactly taken a lot of care with their very fragile human bodies over the years of vigilantism

You know what makes old scars burn and old breaks ache, and what makes every sprained stretched muscle tight

The cold

So Bruce, and all of his kids legal and not, fucking hate winter, they hate the cold, because it makes everything tighter, every warm up take a little longer, everything hurt just a little more

Of course you wouldn’t know it, with Dick striking poses that would make professional contortionists cry, or Cass landing perfect flip kicks, or Steph and duke giving each other massages, or Damian doing yoga, or Jason hitting pads with Bruce, or even Tim running through a cardio workout that puts the JL to shame

They would never show that pain, that weakness, to anyone else, because some villains would target those potential pain points if they ever saw even a hint of them, but more than that, because they have to be strong, for their teams, for each other, for the entire world

So you may never know that Dick spent an hour stretching out his left shoulder this morning, the first dislocation he ever go on patrol

Or that Cass is practicing flip kicks because he knees are killing her but she needs to know that they won’t be a hindrance

Or that Steph and Duke are giving each other pre workout massages because they’re covered in knots that make moving hard

Or that Damian is doing yoga because it helps with the imagined cold and real pain from having metal in your spine

Or that Jason’s broken fists sting with each hit

Or that Bruce is wearing a back brace today because his broken spine was killing him this morning

Or that Tim is doing cardio because the cold makes breathing a little harder so he has to be prepared

You’ll never know how much pain they’re in, not in the field when they broke their ribs and are coughing up blood, certainly not when they’re training the pain of the cold away

Because that’s what they do, they keep training, until it doesn’t hurt, or until they know for a fact that it doesn’t matter if it does

The Bats hate the cold, but they’ll be damned if they ever let it stop them

[ayilings]

strangers

[favourtonon]

I have just realised that i haven't said this which is stupid of me but I hate batcest that's it ew they are siblings

[necrotic-nephilim]

there is not enough femslash in batcest circles. the girls deserve to be just as weird about each other as the boys are. if BruDick gets to be weird father/son/brothers/lovers/friends/rivals/soulmates then it is only fair that Babs/Cass get to be mother/daughter/sisters/lovers too. Something about that deep intrinsic but undefinable love that is born out of trauma, especially if you consider Cass not knowing what healthy love looks like in the first place. i think it's fun and deserves just as much fandom content.

besides that, you can get even more niche with rarepairs like Helena/Steph. Huntress/Spoiler: Blunt Trauma is already a fantastic comic and even though it's their only real canon interaction it has so much potential. very comparable to TimJay in how Helena tries to get Steph to understand her morals and the corruption you could play with it.

batman: huntress/spoiler: blunt trauma (1998)

that comic also highlights on how both Steph and Helena are outcasts of the Batfamily and don't have the approval of Bruce to be doing what they do in "his city". I think there's so much Potential in Helena taking Steph under her wing because Bruce won't let her in and it becomes a weird codependent toxic sapphic mess. I think the protectiveness Helena feels over Steph from the get-go is so clear and the way she wants to look out for Steph, wants to make sure Steph understands the real world? I love them. Helena should be allowed to steal Steph, actually. I think it'd be fun.

there are a lot of other possibilities too like Babs/Steph or even getting weird with Helena Bertinelli/Helena Wayne and the existential question of "is it selfcest or not." But these two specifically live in my head rent-free, especially Helena/Steph and one day I'll convince everyone else to ship it too.

[inamindfarfaraway]

Steph: It’s pride month! You know what that means.

Cass: What? You want to fight… gay crime?

Steph, walking away: :)

Cass: What?

[were-wolverine]

the batkids & stardew valley

dick: tries to befriend everyone and finds out everyone’s favorite things to receive. has dated every available character at least once. cares more about the lore and character relationships than farming/mining/etc.

cass: has a few favorite characters that she always befriends. good work/life balance. grows a lot of crops and has a few chickens & cows. thinks the junimos are cute but doesn’t really care about the lore. relates to sebastian

jason: ignores every character except for linus. focuses on mining and slaying monsters. doesn’t care about the character lore, but is really invested in the worldbuilding. loves the junimos

tim: accepts every quest and gets it done no matter what. takes everything way too seriously. loves giving artifacts and minerals to the library. tries to talk to every character at least once a day (he needs them to like him)

damian: gets as many animals as possible and prioritizes them over anything else. best friends with marnie. desperately wants to steal alex’s dog for himself. hates lewis and thinks marnie deserves better. doesn’t care about most characters or lore- just likes taking care of his cows, chickens, goats, rabbits and horse

[akathesignal]

batfamily's favourite siblings:

dick: donna

jason: barbara

cass: duke

tim: dick

duke: cass

damian: dick

[casscainmainly]

This is a copy/paste of a reply I did to this post. I'm putting it in its own post because I genuinely need people to understand that saying Duke is unpopular because he's 'new' or unknown only furthers the racism Black characters face in fandom. This extends to the sexism Babs and Steph face, and the double racism/sexism that Cass faces.

For everyone in [this post's] notes saying [Duke's unpopularity in fanfiction] is because Duke is new, that's part of it, but absolving fandom of responsibility is misguided and sweeping both racism and sexism under the rug. The newness argument doesn't explain why Damian has more fics than Cass, Stephanie, and Babs, who all predate him.

More importantly: Jon Kent, who was introduced one year after Duke in 2015, has a total of 3,144 works under 'Jonathan Samuel Kent' and 9,280 works under 'Jon Kent'. That is 12,424 fics - around 5,000 more than Duke, despite debuting at roughly the same time.

The adaptation argument (that the ones who are more adapted are more likely to be written about) is also flawed - Tim has 3 major TV show appearances (The New Batman Adventures, Young Justice, and Titans). He cameos in Superman: The Animated Series, Static Shock, and an episode of Justice League. For films, he appears in two DCAU movies, Batman Unlimited, Gotham by Gaslight, Batman Ninja, and Death in the Family. That's 12 total appearances in film and TV.

By comparison, Barbara has an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to adaptations of her. She appears in 8 animated films, 6 animated Lego films, and has 5 animated film cameos. This is already more adaptations than Tim. Add to that 60s Batman, the Birds of Prey show, Titans, Gotham, DC Super Hero Girls, BTAS, Batman Beyond, Gotham Girls, The Batman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Young Justice, Beware the Batman, Teen Titans Go!, Harley Quinn, Batman: Caped Crusader, and the live action Batman & Robin, that's 35 total appearances across film and TV.

Barbara Gordon as Batgirl is undeniably more popular to the general public than Tim Drake as Robin, and her film and TV adaptations also outnumber Jason's (13, with 90% of those being pictures of him because he's dead) and Damian's (15). So if she should be more popular than Tim in every supposed metric (longevity, adaptations, even name recognition), you have to ask yourself: why is she less popular in fandom?

To return to Duke Thomas, if you're even a casual Batman fanfic reader you would know that most of his tagged fics are not about him. Duke has 7,042 tagged fics, and of those, 242 works are tagged as Duke Thomas-centric. By contrast, Tim Drake has 62,704 total works, with 3,809 tagged Tim Drake-centric. That means 3.4% of Duke fics are tagged as Duke-centric, whereas 6% of Tim fics - almost twice as much - are Tim-centric. This is not a perfect metric by any means (for example, Dick actually has less than Duke with 2%, though this is due to him having a bonkers amount of fics), but it is illustrative of the trend that literally anyone who's skimmed AO3 could tell you.

More comparisons: Jason Todd (2,990/76,427 = 3.9%), Damian Wayne (1,870/45,635 = 4%), Cassandra Cain (200/17,060 = 1.1%), Barbara Gordon (54/16,729 = 0.3%). Keep in mind not everyone uses the -centric tag, but this is generally useful to see broad trends.

If debut date, adaptations, popularity among the public, amount of canon content, or presence in major Batman events were truly the deciding factor, Barbara would be the second most popular character in fandom (behind Dick). However, she isn't. Even Dick isn't the most popular - Tim, despite his lack of adaptations, is clearly the Batboy centred most in fanfiction and fandom. Therefore, the treatment of Babs, Steph, Cass, and Duke in fandom cannot be attributed purely to lack of knowledge.

Blaming fandom's focus on the White- or White-passing boys on canon is ignoring the signs of racial and gendered biases in the way we latch onto characters. Fandom barely cares about canon - most Titans Tower AUs or family fluff blatantly ignore huge chunks of comics. If we can ignore Gotham War, make up lies about Red Robin (2009), and pretend Tim's allergic to shrimp, why can't we extend that imagination to the POC and female characters? Why are they less worthy of our efforts to make stories about them, whether they have canon/adaptational histories or not?

All this to say, trying to explain away the lack of works for Duke and the girls will not solve anything. Making excuses for the fandom is only perpetuating the racist and sexist erasure of these characters. Instead, read their comics! Here is a list of reading guides for POC characters.

Not interested in comics? Read these Duke fics (compiled by @himejoshiangels)! Also take the time to go through the Barbara Gordon-centric tag and support those creators. Feel free to post any recs of your own as well :).

[spooky-something]

Woke up from a comma with the dream induced mess that was Monster High but instead of being like all the characters based of the movie adaptations, it's just the monsters from the books

So, the Creature is crying the entire time because no one wants to be his friend

There's like way too many vampires, and Dracula is definitely a fuck boy; and somehow gets away with that because he's popular

Jekyll is at the school counselor because dude keeps having intrusive thoughts and is constantly on the verge of a breakdown (aka accidentally trampling people just because)

Hyde are said intrusive thoughts, and he's seen as

A. A weird Kid

And

B. The oddly quiet kid SOMETIMES, before shifting and not shutting the fuck up

Victor and West are all also there, they just applied via scholarships; Henry and Cain got there too, thanks to the other two getting a 'human' plus one, because the school wants some more "diversity" and thinks accepting a few more humans could do that

Might draw this, idk, sleep comma has ideas sometimes