#cass does not go off to say she has no batdad like dick did

[hollowwhisperings]

I FOUND THE THING!!! CASS IS BACK IN THE FAMILY I AM SCREECHING.

Batman: Wayne Family Adventures, Episode 1.

[squiddybeifong]

Meeting Batdad

@ravensflockofrobins 

Summer of Bats is here!!!

--

Dressed more for casual than business, Raven fought the urge to rock on her heels as she stood outside of Bruce’s office. She fidgeted with the buttons on her sundress’ pockets and took in another deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. 

Beyond that pristine wall there was a growing sense of relief from the two administrators at the meeting coming to a close and Raven reached out to fiddle with the office plant, her breath catching in her throat as the door opened. The shine of the ‘Bruce Wayne’ placard gleamed in her eyes as the two men strode out, a full folder in each of their arms. 

Letting the air out of her lungs, Raven murmured a quick, calming “Azarath, mentrion, zinthos” under her breath and settled herself in the center of the doorway. She bit back a groan at the fact that Bruce could somehow look just as intimidating without the fursuit and didn’t even try forcing a casual grin. She knew he’d see through it anyway. 

Bruce raised a brow at her, sitting up straighter in his chair. His hands folded atop his paperwork and the empath ran a tongue over her teeth, “We should talk.”

Sapphire eyes were all-knowing and unsurprised at the day’s turn of events, “About you dating one of my children?”

Her brows jumped and a teasing curl lifted her lips, “I know you didn’t adopt her, but are you making it official?”

The billionaire tensed a bit at his wrong guess, letting out a snort a second later to cover his mistake, “It’s Steph?”

Raven closed the door behind her as she glided over to his desk, sitting in one of the leather seats across from him. The ex-Titan felt the hint of a genuine smile come over her face and teased, “Someone give you the wrong intel, Mr. Wayne?”

They’d never had a chance to talk as casually as this before (because whoo boy, Dick did not like any extended interaction with the man when he was still Robin and medical school meant it was hard enough meeting the other batkids), but Raven knew that they wouldn’t have too much time for sizing each other up before the surprise came in. Still, she could see that his mistaken information was going to weigh on him, so the empath lounged a bit in her seat, “You can ask.”

He raised a brow, “Does Cass know?”

Raven let out a little chuckle and ran a hand through her hair, “It’s a pity that you didn’t even assume she’s dating both of us.”

Bruce stared at her for a long minute. Used to silence and glad for a tiny reprieve to think over her approach, Raven let him be. After another few seconds an exasperated sound rushed out of him at the most glaring flaw in their plan, “Did they honestly think you were the best choice to break the news to me? This is the first time we’ve really met.”

A pale hand waved in the air, “Cass is your favorite, we know. But we figured what with the whole element of surprise and all that…” Her eyes flicked to the window just behind him and another sigh slipped out of the businessman, “Don’t tell me they’re outside.”

Raven shrugged a shoulder and blew a kiss to her girlfriends, showcasing her magic-encased hand, “There’s a strong possibility.”

“We’re on the seventeenth floor.”

The mystic raised her palm another inch and Bruce looked at his silver thermos, watching the reflection of his daughter and mentee wave at him through the window. However he refused to turn around and take his sights off the superpowered woman, as ridiculous of an introduction as this was. 

Raven smiled at him and stretched to mimic his pose, her elbows on the edge of the desk and her fingers lacing. “I don’t know how much Dick has told you about my time on the Titans,” She started. Her indigo eyes seemed to darken to nearly a violet as she glanced out the bay windows again. Bruce noted the way she seemed to perk up at whatever encouragement the two Bats must have been giving her and Raven gave him a half-smile, “But my cooking’s been getting better!” 

“So,” The demoness aimed a small grin his way, “I’d like to invite you and my loves to dinner at my apartment. For a more formal introduction.”

“To you dating my daughter.”

“Dare I say… daughters?” Bruce simply blinked at her (is it possible to make a blink look so deadpan?) and she immediately amended, “Yes.”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, the billionaire glanced over his shoulder at the two hanging from the window washer, knowing that Raven’s magic was preventing any mishaps from taking place. Steph gave him two thumbs up and Cass hit him with dreaded puppy-dog routine and the batfather let out a sigh at their urging. He turned back to Raven and extended the olive branch even further, knowing exactly what Cass would have told her to make for dinner. 

His lips split into the closest thing to a grin, “Don’t tell a soul I said this, but Alfred can never get pan-fried salmon just right.”

Just as he thought, Raven perked up even more. Her smile didn’t widen --he couldn’t help but wonder if her empathy picked up on how much he knew-- but the mystic pushed her glasses up her nose and grinned back, “Then you’re in luck.”

Bruce nodded at her, his attention briefly flicking to his phone as the alert for his next meeting rang out, “I’ll see you three at eight?”

Through the windows he heard the two whooping at the relief on the empath’s face and Raven tittered with them, “We’ll be ready.”

[whothefuckiscassandracain]

Batgirl Vol 2 1: Redemption Road (Part I) - Square One

Woohoo! Here we go! Cass gets her own series again! Yeah! Six delicious issues of comic goodness written by A—

…

… … …

Written by Adam Beechen. Oh Lord, help us all…

Whatever excitement I may have had for this goes out the window on the very first page, where we are re-introduced to Beechen’s best friends: character assassination (Cass wanting to kill, this time even despite not being brainwashed and despite having sworn never to kill again) and retcons (apparently Cain was responsible for her brainwashing too, now). We are not even five panels into this and I am already face-palming. The next few pages aren’t any better, because Cass comes across as positively brutal and blood-thirsty here. Also, we welcome back Strangely Literate Cass! Dubious Characterization: 37 Retchcon: 5

The one good thing I can say about this comment, is god bless Alfred, because this man is a treasure and he can tell straight off the bat (pun intended) that something is wrong with her. It is here that we learn that Cass has apparently moved back into the manor and been accepted back into the family just like that. And as much as I love a happy ending, I do have a question: What?! Like, what the actual fuck? Bruce “We do not kill, period, point, blank” Wayne, Bruce “She Is Disturbed” Wayne just lets her move into the manor, which she didn’t even live in before? What?? When? How? Why? There is a story there, Beechen, and it should not be glossed over. Fail.

Cass sneaks back into the Batcave to use Bruce’s supercomputer for research. The plan is to sneak in, get the info, and sneak back out, since she is still feeling extremely guilty over everything she did while under Deathstroke’s control, but Dick finds her and he is very much not pleased that she is here, or that she took over his old team, or that she was out on patrol alone, or… let’s just say he’s not pleased and neither is Cass. On the artistic side, I congratulate the colorist on making Cass complete the set of naturally occurring eye colors by drawing her with grey eyes. She’s now had every color at least once.

The two of them chase-fight each other through the case with Dick giving us the obligatory bullshit backstory about how Cass seemed to be cured of Deathstroke’s influence before, but continued killing (in Titans East and the last few Robin issues). Batman interrupts the fight, telling Dick that she’s part of the family and they should not fight. Dick relents, but not before telling Bruce that she was out alone on patrol and in the Batcave by herself. Cass argues that she cannot just stay cooped in all day and Bruce agrees. Batdad: 51

We now get a two-page of exposition dump from Beechen and, good Lord, it is so much bullshit, I’m actually gonna have to use bullet points here. Let’s go down the list, shall we?

Supposedly, the reason Cass can speak and read now, is because she took speech and ESL courses + tutoring from Alfred during the day. That’s all it took. You know. For the girl whose brain chemistry was confirmed to be working completely differently by Barbara not too long before Beechen took over. Fail. Dubious Characterization 38, Retchcon 6.

Deathstroke drugged her with a rifle dart from a distance and then convinced her to break Cain out of prison, so she could murder him.

Cassandra won leadership of the League of Assassins through trial by combat and killed Nyssa to make sure she remained the undisputed leader. Dubious Characterization: 39

She had the League restore Lynx, who died during War Games, back to life, only so that she could kill her again. Dubious Characterization: 40

She killed Annalea. Dubious Characterization: 41

The pistol Slade had given her to kill Cain with was rigged, because the whole masterplan had been to, and I quote, “open up an assassin shop, with Cassandra as second, and Slade as silent partner”. Retchcon: 7

Cain had trained a bunch of other girls like Cass, but assured her that she was his favorite, and apparently that, plus a bit of residual drug from Slade, was enough to make her work with him in distributing Pheno on the streets of Blüdhaven. Retchcon: 8

Cass killing the pharma company boss in Robin’s series is painted as a good thing here, because it proved that she had escaped from Cain’s control. What. Dubious Characterization: 42 (technically for everyone involved in this, from Batman & Robin to Cass & Cain)

Words fail me in describing how utterly moronic and contrived and just baaaaad all of this writing is. Even worse, in trying – and failing! – to fix Cassandra’s character, Beechen is destroying another one: David Cain. God, I already hate this piece of shit mini-series so much.

As much as it pains me to say it, jerk!Dick might actually have a point here. He is not convinced by any of this bullshit and neither am I, so he heads out to find Cain and his assassin girls before Cass can. Bruce warns Cassandra not to make him regret his trust in her. She takes the notes she took from her investigation and leaves.

The next night, Cass is out on patrol by herself again, pondering her guilt over the murders she committed and how she is unconvinced she’ll ever have a place in the batfam. The second part of this adds another point to the dubious characterization counter, because Cass canonically does not care all that much about her civilian life. She cares about her life as Batgirl. At least she used to and I have seen nothing in the way of convincing character development that would justify this sudden shift. Ghost Of Failures Past: 22 Dubious Characterization: 43

She finds a bunch of dead girls in the basement of the place she is investigating and encounters their killer – a woman in black and red (so obviously evil), whom Cass calls a familiar face. I have a horrible retchcon feeling about this...

[whothefuckiscassandracain]

Batgirl Vol 1 50

We start with a flashback to Cass’s days with Cain. She tries to give him a hug and gets smacked instead and the closest she comes to giving him a kiss on the cheek is landing on him during the fight.

Back in the present, Bruce is telling Cass to stand down, saying he doesn’t want to fight her, but Cass refuses and tells him that she knows he’s lying. The two of them start fighting and Doctor Death uses the opportunity to throw a flask of his latest formula at them. They both get hit with the stuff and Bruce asks her one more time to stand down for her own good, but Cass just eggs him on. Batdad: 38

What follows is a long, drawn out fight that stretches over many panels and locations, in which Bruce and Cass are pretty evenly matched. Robin and Oracle try to follow their movements, but they move pretty fast. Meanwhile, Nightwing is trying to handle about a hundred Soul-crazed junkies, when Cass and Bruce crash the fight. Dick’s joy at having back-up quickly turns into shock when he realizes that Cass and Bruce are both on Soul. Dick tries to snap Bruce out of it, only to get clocked in the face by Cass, while Barb sends Robin back to collect a sample of what Doctor Death threw at the two of them and find the Doctor to get an antidote.

Robin manages to trick the Doctor into giving him the antidote, while the fight between Cass and Bruce leads to an oil spill on Sprang Bridge. Bruce lights it on fire and Cass tackles him off the bridge, sending both of them into the water. It’s at this point that the two of them finally reconcile. Bruce let’s Cass hug him and she explains to him that he hurt her just as much as Cain did when Bruce sent her away. He wants to know where her loyalties lie: with Cain (Bruce what are you smoking?), with Barbara (who’s got good points), or with him? Cass gives him a fourth option: her loyalty is to the mission, to what the bat symbol represents, not to any single person. Batdad: 39 Symbolism!: 18

Nightwing and Robin arrive with the antidote, but Bruce refuses to take any and instead asks them to take it to the Batcave so they can let the authorities know how to produce more. Later, Barb calls Bruce out on getting gassed on purpose, despite having masks in his utility belt, and realizes that he considered all of this a kind of screwed up therapy session. He claims that this was the only kind of therapy Cass would understand and Barbara calls him out on just how crazy that opinion is. Batdad: 40 Batmom: 43

To be perfectly honest, there are several things about this that rubbed me the wrong way.

1) Bruce is projecting just as much as Barbara, yet somehow when he does it, we’re supposed to consider it ok, as this is clearly supposed to be our glorious “happy” ending? What the fuck? Nothing really got resolved here.

2) Okay, maybe Bruce has enough experience with getting doused in crazy stuff to shrug off the effects of the drug just like that, even though it is supposed to be several times more potent than the normal stuff, but what about Cass? We saw her reaction to the normal Soul? How did she shrug it off so quickly? Is anyone going to call him out on subjecting her to that again when he blamed her for taking drugs last time something like that happened? What the fuck?

3) Just like the storyline in which Cass got her brain rewired by a telepath to understand spoken language at the cost of her intuitive understanding of body language, this feels like a giant, wasted opportunity. There was so much potential here for seeing how Cass would cope with having a normal life! She could have started trying to have a life outside of vigilantism, with Alfred and Barb in particular helping her through it. She could have used this opportunity to step up her detective game and come back knocking a case out of the park, much to Bruce’s surprise. And that’s just for Cass. Don’t even get me started on how many great storylines could have come from this for the rest of the fam. It was just one big wasted opportunity and I’m honestly kind of disappointed now.

[whothefuckiscassandracain]

Batgirl Vol 1 46

Happy 2018, my dear readers!

We continue where we left off, with the drug-using girl from the last issue trying to buy more „Soul“. Turns out supply is currently going through a shortage. Cass arrives, snatching a pill right from the dealer’s hands and tries to interrogate him, but she doesn’t much info other than a graffiti on a nearby wall, but since Cass can’t read, she replicates it on paper and takes it to Oracle, who is uncharacteristically depressed and upset. Turns out the graffiti refers to a new all-girls gang on the street and the reason Oracle is upset, is because she and Nightwing broke up. Cass wants to help, but has next to zero romantic experience and so all she can do is leave Barb alone. Fast As Lightning: 41 Aphasia: 65

Cass instead goes to find out where “Sunny”, the leader of the all-girls gang “The Lost Girls”, might be. She interrogates Sunny’s ex-boyfriend, who cries her a river about how more and more girls are leaving their gangster boyfriends to join Sunny. He points her to where Sunny is hiding and Cass finds them easily enough, but it turns out the girls have metahuman powers, including telekinesis, which they use to unmask her, and super-stealth, which they use to ambush her and push her into the last barrel of Soul the girls have left to sell. Cass accidentally swallows a pill and so the girl gang waits to see what will happen: if she is a good person, it will be heaven, if she’s a bad person, it will be hell.

At this point, Cass starts hallucinating all kinds of crap. First up is Bruce and Cain, telling her how disappointed they are in her, and Barb, providing the “heaven” counterpart by once more emphasizing that she needs more love and affection. Next up are Tim, Nightwing and Superboy, taunting her about how she looks hot, but can’t even read, to which Bruce once again jumps in as over-protective Batdad. Barbara notices that Cass is not answering her comms. She tries contacting Bruce, Tim and Dinah, but they are all occupied. And so Barb swallows her resentment of Nightwing to save Cass and sends him to Cass, whose hallucinations continue to trash talk both her and Babs. Plight Of Permanent Perfectionism: 13 Batmom: 41 Batdad: 36 Aphasia: 66

At this point, Cass actually starts hallucinating a devil Batgirl and an angel Batgirl whispering in her ear. The saddest part about this is that the devil Batgirl is not entirely wrong about some of the things she’s saying: Bruce does treat her more like a weapon than a person and Barb is projecting a lot of her own issues and dreams onto Cass. It is also true that Cass did kill and that every strike she makes is perfectly calculated to not be lethal. And yes, the break-up with Dick has broken Babs’ heart. Eventually, Cass gives in and starts beating the daylights out of The Lost Girls.

By the time Dick arrives, everyone including Cass is down for the count. He is very clearly worried about Cass when he picks her up and tries to shake her awake. Too bad Cass is still pissed off with him for breaking up with Barbara and kicks him straight out the window.

[whothefuckiscassandracain]

Counter Summary 1: Cass Appearances 1-100!

Welcome to my first counter summary! We have now examined exactly 100 issues of Cass Cain material, so let’s see what we have learned about her so far and what that will mean for her Arkhamverse introduction, shall we?

For starters, here are the counters sorted from highest to lowest:

Living Emoji: 59

Aphasia: 58

Fast As Lightning: 37

Little Lady Of War: 29

Batmom: 25

Batdad: 21

Fiercely Assertive Protector: 17

Creepy Bat: 16

Better Off Dead: 13

Symbolism!: 10

Ghost Of Failures Past: 10

Plight Of Permanent Perfectionism: 10

Unusual mannerisms: 9

Made Of Steel: 7

Dubious Characterization: 6

Cass Sass: 6

Ballet Battler: 1

Spells ‘Team’ With An ‘I’: 1

I have to say, I am really glad that Cass was the winner of the “next Batkid” vote, because not only is she an interesting character, but also she is mostly consistent in her characterization. Six cases of dubious characterization in 100 issues is really not so bad (especially considering that two of those issues were written by Devin Grayson). Kudos to Cass’ writers for being mostly consistent.

Unsurprisingly, the most common and consistent thing about Cassandra is her aphasia and her tendency to overcompensate for that by using her entire body language to “vocalize” her thoughts and feelings. It makes sense, since she was raised without vocal language, and even though she had her brain re-wired early on to actually understand words, I am grateful that it was not treated as a magical instant fix. It certainly made for an interesting character to read in comic form and it will make for one hell of a challenge trying to write her in prose! The No Man’s Land novel took the easy way out in that regard, but it will be a fun challenge to write someone who has no idea what any words anybody says mean. What is surprising is that her tendency to use unusual gestures to express herself pretty much dropped off after No Man’s Land, so perhaps that was just early writing weirdness.

Secondly, Cassandra has been consistently characterized as extremely fast (she can dodge bullets) and a master of combat. I do feel sorry that her “depowering” arc didn’t last longer, but at least they were smart about demonstrating that the ability to read body language mostly affects her defensive maneuvers. She does not need to read someone in order to be perfect in every martial arts form on the planet. Likewise, I loved that Cass was shown as having trouble against robotic or metahuman opponents, even though she has also managed to take hits that should really have killed her, or at the very least incapacitate her for weeks. Mostly, though, I will enjoy writing her kicking the butts of everyone in the batfam at some point, even if only in training.

Among some other character traits that have been consistent throughout her appearances so far, if less frequent than the big four, we can count Cass’ tendency to prioritize offense over defense, especially when protecting someone, coupled with an insane drive to be absolutely perfect. Both make sense, given that she was trained to be a master assassin, and means she’ll fit right in with all the hotheaded batboys of the Arkhamverse. Also, her tendency to snark at her opponents, once she has actually developed the verbal skills to do so. Definitely going to fit in well with the rest of the Arkham Batfam. :)

As for things that have changed in her characterization over time, it is great to see that Cass eventually lost her death wish, even though she still has a tendency to blame herself a lot for every single failure to save someone. I’m looking forward to seeing if this tendency will eventually wither away. Likewise, we’ll see if there’ll be more instances of her insistence to do the job herself causing trouble, or the undoubtedly cute, but so far singular, occurrence of Cass expressing herself in dance.

That leaves us with Cass’ relationships inside and outside of the Batfam, as demonstrated so far.

Throughout her appearances up until this point, there has been an interesting comparison mechanic between Cass’ real parents (spoilers about the identity of her mother ahead, if you don’t know Cass’ later storylines) and her new, “adopted” parents.

On one hand, we have Cass’ fathers: David Cain and Batman. Both have a tendency of looking at her more as a living weapon than a human being, at times. Cain raised her to be an assassin and has not seemed to realize how much he actually cared about her until he “lost” her. His response to those newly found feelings has been consistently self-destructive and it is clear in his interactions with Cassandra that she still loves him, but is unable to actually be close to him due to their irreconcilable ideological differences. Whoever had the idea of using a single crimson rose to underscore that visually was a genius, because a single crimson rose stands both for deep, unconditional love, and deep sorrow and grief. Bruce is surprisingly similar to Cain in so far as he too has trouble actually showing Cass how much he cares about her, but is fiercely protective of her. Cass, for her part, admires Batman and is grateful to him, but does not seem to look at him as new father figure yet. That’s what you get for taking on a kid who’s not an orphan yet, Bruce. This time you gotta earn your parenting cred.

On the other hand, we have Cass’ mothers: Lady Shiva and Barbara, and whereas Cass’ fathers are quite similar in how they treat her, her mothers could not be more different. Cass does not know that Shiva is her mom, and I’m not even sure if Shiva knows that Cass is her daughter. I believe she suspects it, given her dialogue during their first encounter, but I’m not sure. Either way, Shiva has not been a part of Cass’ life for seventeen years and while she has been courteous and even helpful towards Cass, she has not demonstrated any interest in getting to know “Cass the girl”, only “Cass the martial artist”. I do hope the pearls symbolism is going to come up later, because it does fit their dynamic rather well. Meanwhile, Barbara has no such troubles. She knew Cass before she became Batgirl and learned to care about the girl, not the fighter, and Cass appreciates it, even going so far as to almost tell Barb that she was like a mother to her. That is not to say that Barbara is perfect. She projects A LOT, constantly assuming that her motivations for and attitudes towards the Batgirl title are Cass’ as well and that she knows what’s best for Cass. She makes some good points, but it is a good thing that Bruce is there as a counterpart, because otherwise I’m afraid she might just smother Cass.

Last but not least, we have Cass’ relationships outside her parental figures and it is here where things get really interesting. A common theme in Cass’ interactions is that people are thoroughly creeped out by her, but eventually come to appreciate her for the kind, loyal, and fiercely protective person she really is. Tim takes the direct route and flat-out apologizes to her for his initial attitude, then offers her to be friends. Steph... never really gets over Cass’ creepiness, but is smart enough to connect with her in ways that are mutually beneficial for both of them (Steph gets some training, Cass gets some fun and socialization). And Nightwing... well, Dick broke my heart with just how quickly he accepted her and genuinely cared for Cass, despite having all of maybe two or three interactions with her. It seems like a repeating pattern for his comics character (caring deeply about his family, but not really having that much time to spend with them) and I look forward to writing a more involved version of him in Cass’ Arkhamverse stories.

Outside of the batfam, we have seen three notable interactions so far: Azrael, who had a crush on Cass that did not end happily, Superboy, who also seemed to have had a crush on Cass that was sort of left unresolved, and Leslie Thompkins, whom Cass greatly admired for her inner strength and her unbelievable compassion. I have to admit I won’t be sad if I never see Superboy or Azrael interact with her again, since I couldn’t bring myself to care about either of those two, but I do hope we get to see Leslie and Cass interact again in the future. If there is any way I can include her in Cass’ introduction into Arkhamverse (I don’t want it to be a mere re-hash of No Man’s Land), I will do so.

Last but not least, I’m kind of sad that we haven’t really seen her interact with Alfred all that much yet. I’m gonna have to fix that.