#steph erasure

[sjbattleangel]

I see tons of BatFamily fanworks (fanfiction, fanart, ect) featuring the four robins-Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian-and (sometimes) with Babs as Batgirl. For the record, I think these characters and the fanworks are brilliant. Yet, deep down, I always keep asking "Where is Cass, Steph and Duke?" Especially considering: .Cass, as Batgirl, had one of the best-selling, long-running comic series to star a disabled woman of colour superhero. .Cass predated Damian and the resurracted Jason Todd, appearing in 1999, Jason was resurrected as Red Hood in 2005 and Damian first appearing in 2006. .Steph, as Spoiler, appeared in 1992 as an ally of Batman and Robin (Tim Drake) and a love interest of Tim but would develop as a hero in her own right. .Steph had a very short but unforgettable stint as Robin. .While not as long or commercially successful as Cass's Batgirl run, Steph's turn as Batgirl was still widely acclaimed. .As a young kid, Duke's intelligence and puzzle-solving inspired Batman to defeat the Riddler during Year One, .Duke would join the antifascist vigilante youth known as "The Robins", helping strike a blow against criminal gangs and play apart in taking down the Court Of Owls. .Duke eventually became the Signal, staring alongside Batman in several acclaimed storylines from All-Star Batman, Detective Comics and Batman And The Outsiders.

I still don't understand. Why does the BatFam fandom know very little about Cass, Steph and Duke?

[casscainmainly]

Robins.

Robin (1993) #126 // Robin War // Robin (1993) #26 // Batman (2011) #45 // Robin (1993) #40 // We Are Robin #1 // Robin (1993) #126 // Batman & The Signal #1 // Robin (1993) #128 // Batman (2011) #47 // Robin (1993) #128 // Robin War // Batgirl (2009) #3 // Robin War

[sky-has-moved]

very frustrating interaction from yesterday that I thought I should share:

friend 1: this is the stuffed yak I got from build-a-bear. I'm naming her Robin because she makes batman noises when you press her paw.

friend 2: but the yak is a girl and robin is a boy

me: starts vibrating with rage

[covertblizzard]

Leslie’s blatant disapproval of some of Bruce’s actions

I just think if fandom wants or needs someone to find out something and do a Bruce call out and stuff, Leslie should be used more often. Because (as a few people have pointed out) Alfred is much more lenient with Bruce and is quite the Bruce-enabler, whereas Leslie is much more openly disapproving with him and tries to convince him to change his methods actively (and in this one, she’s supposedly his mother figure too, so it works quite well). She seems far more likely to yell at him over him crossing the line and trying to pull him in the right direction again.

ANYWAY why isn’t there more Leslie as the Batfam’s grandma because I want that. Please and thank you. Like I’m not even making it up the implications are thereeee...

(Also another scene would be the one with Robin Jason nearly dying)

[notrobinsomethingworse]

Damian: As the fourth robin-

Stephanie: Fifth.

Damian: You were a Robin for a week before Father fired you. You are not truely a Robin but a stain upon this earth-

Stephanie, getting up: I may have been fired. I may have only been Robin for a week but I still was a goddamn Robin. Richard Nixon is still called our goddamn 37th President even if he was shit-

Tim: You’re comparing yourself to NIXON???

Stephanie: -so I will not stand for this erasure. I have a sad goddamn backstory. I died-

Tim: That was fake.

Stephanie: Shut the fuck up. I died, not as Robin. But still it was for the greater good. I deserve to be remembered as the fourth Robin.

Jason, slow clapping.

Dick: You know Alfred said all of us can have his cookies right? Not just the robins?

Steph: …

Steph: Bye nerds! Your boys club is as lame as y’all are.

[justherebecause15]

Hey kiddo we're gonna just train ya to murder at the ripe old age of 2 then we're gonna rip ya spine out without any atheistic and replace it with metal. Have fun with your zero trauma

How was the training Damian was put through not traumatizing? O_o

[mae-kent]

let me know if i forgot anyone!

[brucewaynehater101]

I've seen this au before, but pretty rarely. Tim actually dies/harmed enough not to make it/Ra's just puts him in Lazarus Pit for shit and giggles.

(after Brucequest)

Tim snaps. Bruce or Damian or Jason or Dick or even Steph, anyone who tried to kill him/he had an emotional bond with says something. like,

Bruce, ignorant: *being himself*

Damian, after some goon got lucky: as expected from not bloody son

Jason whenever: hey, Replacement-

Dick, not seeing full picture of the case: Tim, I think you're wrong-

Steph: *basically any joke about her death*

and Tim just stands there heartbroken and empty. he stops whatever he was doing, even blinking, staring into their souls with the neon eyes they all seen. it takes time to notice that he never responded.

(not exact the expression I was going for but kinda)

FANART!!!! That looks fucking fantastic!!!! Heck yeah to the glowing green eyes, the long hair, piercing, and the way his eyes seems to convey how done he is. His expression, to me, appears to be reluctantly resigned and guarded.

Anyways! Fics or fanwork that show Tim being fed up and done (less of a blow up and more of him just giving up on the Bats) are near and dear to me. For the Bats not being great to Tim, I love seeing him just giving up. He loves them, but he can't care about them or their opinions anymore.

I've also seen some cool AUs regarding Lazarus Pit effects:

The typical anger

Tim completely losing his ability to access his emotions. Since he usually compartmentalized anyways, being revived made him 90% logical.

Pit possessiveness (though seen with Jason)

Venom-like pit consciousness (with Jason)

Accelerated healing

Increased durability

Overall heightened emotions

Memory erasure (specifically ones with positive emotions towards people)

For an L.P. AU with Tim realizing his family doesn't care about him in the way that he needs them to, there's a few cool ways to go about it.

You can have the L.P. trying to keep him with the family despite how much it hurts.

The L.P. can try to protect him by shielding certain memories, whispering to him, or shielding certain feelings.

Tim can rapidly lose feelings for his family members and turn to apathy due to the Pit heightening this quality.

Lots of fun!!!!

Again, really really cool artwork!!!! I've been so excited to answer this one ^^

[its-your-mind]

so there’s this series of YA graphic novels about the Teen Titans.

I have not read them, this isn’t about that.

What it IS about is THIS:

oh look! a book about damian coming to be the robin who’s on the teen titans and how that causes some tension between him and the previous Robin! I actually might pick that one up, I love me some extended Damian–Tim drama.

hmm wonder what it’s… about…

huh? why is dick here?

damian… feels replaced… has a rocky relationship… with Dick?!? Dick is still Robin?!? Why… why did they… there is a perfectly good tim right there! you could write basically the same story without fucking with dick and damian’s canon brothers-but-also-parent/child relationship! what is this tim-and-jason-and-steph erasure bullshit!!

[knight-in-baggy-sweatpants]

finished Batman: Zero Year yesterday and am honestly considering becoming a Duke Thomas fan account. i think he's only around ten or so and obviously nowhere close to becoming Signal in the comic, but he's just too precious and too brilliant for me to care. Every time I saw the word "signal" I automatically thought of him. When Gordon created the Batsignal(an absolutely amazing moment I have to say) my brain lit up with possibilities about Duke seeing it happen(i will say that i don't know the absolute reason he chose the name Signal, but i hope that's it). if i don't get my hands on the We Are Robin arc soon i'm going to go insane thinking about him.

also i think it's even further evidence of both Duke and Steph erasure that i see absolutely no one making them friends(Steph first trained to fight Cluemaster, and Duke began training himself to create a riddle to beat the Riddler! DC give me a Spoiler/Signal comic, and my LIFE, is YOURS). two of my favorite cutie patooties and i never even realized this connection between them. you can absolutely trust that they will be buddies in the batfam x renegades fic i'm writing.

[strawberrytalia]

the batfandom has a really weird way of viewing poverty and wealth.

like between the way they depict jason, the treatment towards willis, how they write steph, a LOT of microaggressions towards cass and duke (also racism), an erasure of dick’s background in favor of calling him ‘spoiled’ (very untrue btw), the pedestal they place tim on, the obsession with galas and fame tied to wealth, and this tendency to gloss over damian’s trauma and abuse just because he was “raised to be an heir” it’s uh…interesting

[casscainmainly]

Small question, does it have to be Gotham for Cass? There's charas like Dick that can go establish their identity in a different city. Then there's Bruce, Steph, Jason and Duke who are so intrinsically tied to Gotham that this has to be the city for them. Where does Cass lie on this spectrum? Tq!

EXCELLENT question. I think Cass' situation is somewhat unique because of the way her character was handled post-Batgirl (2000).

In favour of Cass not staying in Gotham, she doesn't have the same emotional connection to Gotham as the four people you listed. She wasn't raised there, and in Batgirl (2000), she has next to no ties to Gotham civilians. In fact, it's when she moves to Bludhaven in Gabrych's run that she gains her first civilian friend and civilian love interest. The iconic volving panel is from Bludhaven, too. It's undeniable that the distance from Gotham, from Bruce (and arguably Babs), helps her grow:

Batgirl (2000) #71

It can't be overstated how important ownership is to Cass. To own something means, necessarily, that you not an object. You are a person who something belongs to, and who belongs to something. By calling Bludhaven the "first place that's ever been... mine," she's explicitly saying that Gotham was not hers. Bludhaven was the first place that made her feel fully human.

But there are caveats to this. Cass goes to Bludhaven in the wake of Stephanie's death, a Gothamite through and through. It's probable that Steph's death colours her view of Gotham here, and her willingness to embrace Bludhaven is in response to the pain that Gotham now brings her. (This is also after Babs calls Cass stupid). Feeling like Gotham doesn't belong to her might stem from these specific circumstances, and not be applicable in current canon.

Still, if the story had ended there, I'd say Cass doesn't need to stay in Gotham. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

Red Robin (2009) #17

After Bruce's death, Cass goes to Hong Kong. Well, 'goes' is putting it nicely. She was written off to make Steph Batgirl, which resulted in Cass a) not appearing in most comics, b) being stripped of the bat symbol, and c) being isolated from everyone she cares about, besides Tim. It's a horrific and undeserved fate, reversing everything Cass' story once stood for (narrative agency; becoming a hero; finding a family).

Though Cass regains the symbol and becomes the Bat of Hong Kong, she is no longer part of the narrative; her distance from Gotham became a representation of her distance from narrative importance. That's the real danger of Cass leaving Gotham - unlike Dick, who is a big enough character to be guaranteed solos in Blud, Cass leaving Gotham will forever hold the threat of erasure.

I'm discussing this in a meta-textual sense, but textually Cass knows the danger too.

Gates of Gotham #5

Here, Cass rebuffs Dick's assertion that Gotham will never keep either of them because they don't belong. She says, "It's about how you choose to see the world. Everything else is just an excuse." She's repudiating multiple things: editorial's decision to boot her from Gotham; Bruce's decision to take Batgirl away; even, somewhat, Dick's ascension to the Bat mantle when she wasn't given a chance.

This is ultimately why, though Cass could work elsewhere, I think she should work in Gotham. It's the place she ran to after David Cain, the place she chose to stay in, and the place that gave her Batgirl. Most importantly, it's the place that rejected her. It's not about Gotham itself - It's about how she was ejected from it, and how she fought her way back, over and over again. Cass staying in Gotham ensures history doesn't repeat itself. It rewards Cass fans who survived OYL, Batman Inc, and New 52 with the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is just my opinion! I do love her stint in Bludhaven, so I understand other people preferring her elsewhere. Just for me, she may not belong to Gotham in the way Bruce, Steph, Duke, Jay, or Babs does, but she deserves to be there.

[umbrellajam]

2, 3, 4 for cass!

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

her first word, screaming defiance at the father who did everything in his power to steal words from her entirely. blood on her fist again, tears on her face again, but she's not a scared, confused little girl anymore (she is, she is, but this time--) this time, she takes everything he did to forge her into a perfect killer and throws it in his face.

"STOP!"

wrecked me when I first heard it in the audio drama, I was crying in my car and everything

also her Total Audacity toward enemies and allies alike. and that big gorgeous smile she gets while doing absurd shit like taking on a whole room of FBI agents or putting her face up to the barrel of Shiva's gun and challenging her to single combat

3. Least favorite canon thing about this character?

ahaha, probably also her audacity and ego 🙃 specifically when condescending toward allies. it cuts both ways as a feature/flaw that's entertaining/fascinating to read about in a comic book character but that I would not vibe with at all irl, Steph put up with some shit in there lol

also the editorial character assassination, sidelining from Batgirl, and complete erasure of her character, of course, but I figure that goes without saying

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

how about Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, because Cass Cain was absolutely definitely nowhere in that movie?? :)))

okay but actually, maybe it's Spirit World or Damion Scott's art style but I'm thinking a Ghibli movie. put that girl in fantastical situations. Cass as San in Princess Mononoke. Cass as Ponyo, guest-starring Steph as Sosuke.

10-year-old Cass tripping her way into the spirit realm during her wandering years after running away from Cain, rampaging her way through Yubaba's bathhouse on pure fist-first fighty adrenaline and then having to stay to work off her debt. Yubaba struggling with the contract for a bit because Cass can't write and in fact has no name to sign away. probably ends up tricking her into giving her thumbprint in blood or something. Cass making friends, sympathizing with No-Face as No-One herself, trying to beat him up when he starts to go gold-crazy and going a bit O_o when her fists sink into his gloop and do nothing. who even is Haku in this AU, idk and I'm not sure I care, I just want 10-year old Cass running around with spirits

ask game

[angelshipper]

Purely cuz that other weirdo essentially derailed the entire conversation (cuz. Their blog is honestly pretty yikes) the point I wanna make about Steph/Tim connects to other shit you yourself have posted about. Namely - it's very hard to divorce that relationship from what a massive piece of shit Chuck Dixon is. There are things to like for sure? But because a LOT of Tim and Steph's relationship was written by a Conservative assclown who kinda used Steph as a punching bag for a LOT of Tim's run as Robin, a lotta fans (myself included) have disliked them as a ship because other writers in other books didn't treat Steph so shittily. It comes across in Dixon's writing as Comphet because almost everything Dixon could think to do with her was really sexist and her relevance in the comics was almost always tied directly to Tim - and that rubs a lot of people the wrong way, even if it's not the case in EVERY book that has Tim and Steph be a couple. Saying dismissing their relationship is Bi Erasure is in and of itself Biphobic, because it creates the implication that Tim needs to have equal significance placed on ALL his relationships to JUSTIFY his Bisexuality to the audience. And that's kinda fucked. The fact that most of the current stuff is heavily emphasising and focusing on the relationship he's currently in isn't Bi-Erasure, but demanding everyone shut up about his literal actual current boyfriend and talk about his ex-girlfriend kinda is. Is it Biphobia that basically no one talks about his relationship with Tam Fox from Red Robin (2009), or any of the many one-off or short term romances he had with girls that happened during his solo run as Robin or the Batman/Detective Comics ongoings while he was the main/only Robin? If not, then how is it SPECIFICALLY Bi Erasure to dislike the Romance between Steph and Tim for reasons that are actually way more about how poorly STEPH was treated while she was dating him? If you like the Tim/Steph ship more than any other option for either character, good for you, but please don't invoke serious actual bigotry to justify why your ship is actually the morally correct one.

I DONT LIKE TIM/STEPH. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I SAID THAT????? Listen. My very first DC ship was Tim/Kon. I personally always liked Steph with Cassie in the fics I've seen of them. I don't even LIKE Tim as a character 😭 but you keep acting like I do? And this is not me "defending" my ship. It's not. I like their friendship fine.

I see now how my original post could come across like that and I do want to say that I very much did not explain myself well. My point was very specifically in cases where people bring up his past relationships and say shit like it wasn't real to Tim or when people make jokes saying they act like "siblings" (which is just....gross to me? In like an opposite way that Jaytim is also gross to me. Like they made out with eachother in comics and that just feels very weird but idk).

Regardless of that, my point was that people tend to dismiss their relationship as a whole one the BASIS that it was with a woman. Not because it was with Steph specifically. This isn't me making stuff up, this was stuff that was EXPLICITLY stated to me in all kinds of content I consumed. That because Steph (and others) weren't guys, Tim didn't "actually" have an attraction to them- THAT is what I thought came across as biphobia.

Like I'll be reading a fic or watching a skit and there will be a point where someone makes some kind of joke about women being hot or whatever and Tim will ACTIVELY dismiss them as part of the joke on the basis "but men tho" or will be "grossed" out when someone even MENTIONS him dating a girl (even if he isn't even dating Bernard in the context of the skit or fic or whatever) Like that doesn't come across as biphobic?

I don't care if you don't ship T/S. I DON'T EITHER AND I FEEL LIKE IVE SAID THAT SEVERAL TIMES?? But saying that their relationship WASN'T important to Tim or even less important just because it was with a girl and not a boy, and ignoring the fact he can even be attracted to girls, is that not biphobic? Like actually. If you think he'd solely gay and that all his relationships with women were comphet, fine. But in the actual text of the comics, that isn't the case. If DC comes out and says yeah, Tim is actually gay he just thought he had to be attracted to women, then I'd concede and say you were right.

Also SEVERAL writers have written about their relationship, not just Dixon? The first title I was even introduced to them as a relationship it wasn't through Dixon (because i honestly wasn't reading in any particularly order). And even though all your points about him were correct, it doesn't change the fact that SEVERAL writers have chosen to depict T/S's relationship as being meaningful to both of them, because it was??

Also like I said before, I made the exact same point you brought up about talking about his last relationships. OBVIOUSLY they're going to focus on his current one, even in fanworks they focus on the relationship and tend to ignore the rest. But WHEN those past relationships come up, THAT is when I see people acting like their relationship wasn't meaningful or didn't hold love between them.

Listen, if someone chooses to make Tim gay in their fanworks or whatever, and makes the exact same joke I brought up before, I don't care. I can just ignore it, block them, whatever but they are choosing to erase his attraction to women in their work, they're not saying he was never attracted to them. If someone goes out of their way to say how Tim is bi and then makes it a point to say how he isn't attracted to girls or claims their skit/fanfiction/art/whatever is meant to be based in canon and then does the same thing, then yeah it comes across as biphobic.

Like my issue isn't the fact people are focusing on his relationship with Bernard, my issue is that if Stephanie is brought up she's dismissed as not being in a "real" relationship with Tim.

I'm not saying Tim HAS to hold every relationship in equal importance. If he finds he has a stronger attraction to men than women? All the power to him. I'm not even saying that Tim had to have loved Stephanie more than he currently loves Bernard, maybe Bernard is more important to him that Stephanie ever was. But saying he was never attracted to women? That's what seems iffy to me.

[infinity-or-oblivion]

so my loa batkids au has gained a little traction and i’ve hit a bit of a wall when it comes to writing new stuff so here’s an infodump to hopefully kill my writers block xoxoxo

first of all, jason. my forever number one blorbo. there’s a bit of a role reversal here because compared to all the rest of them, jason arguably had it the easiest. like we’re not going to compare traumas but an argument could be made. i honestly don’t remember if i mentioned it at all in the actual series yet, but the story i have for jason is that his childhood with willis and catherine was about the same as canon/commonly accepted fanon, meaning he was homeless around nine years old. however, instead of living on the streets for years, it was only a few months tops before meeting bruce.

and bruce! this is very fun to me, but basically i was thinking that if he didn’t raise dick, then why couldn’t this version of bruce be younger? so bruce becomes batman in his early twenties, which is also around the time that he visits the league of assassins for training and damian is conceived. (for a little more about that, here) and bruce is roughly 25 when he finds a tiny 9-10 year old jason trying to steal his tires. just imagine that it’s so fucking adorable and heartbreaking ANYWAYS bruce, despite being overall a disaster, doesn’t let a malnourished 10 year old out to fight crime right away, so there’s a couple years between when jason first meets bruce and when he becomes a child soldier yayyyy!!!! but legit, it makes a lot of difference to jason, because you know how canon!jason has some self-esteem issues (for lack of a better term) around bruce not really loving him/seeing him as a son because bruce started training him as robin (and as dick’s replacement) immediately after adopting him- you know that whole thing? yeah well here, despite jason actually offering to help bruce as a vigilante, this bruce is like hell nah you’re literally ten years old and the size of a six year old no way, and those few years in between really stick in jason’s mind as solid proof that bruce really does love him, not for what use he can provide, but simply as a son. also being the only child definitely helps with that

(that little detail of jason and bruce’s relationship is slightly inspired by minimum height requirement, which is absolute batfam gold btw)

okay so. slight pet peeve of mine is in aus where dick isn’t the first robin, the legacy is still called robin for whatever reason (lookin at you reverse robins aus) because!!!!! how dare you erase mary and john grayson’s importance!!!!! (look there’s more nuance to it than that i know but. to put it simply it feels like flying graysons erasure to me) so in this au, jason can’t possibly be called robin. the real robin has been missing for roughly seven years at this point

and listen. i tried to be creative and come up with something cool and original for jason’s vigilante name i really did, but apparently i used all of my naming talent on nighthawk (fucking love that name for dick it’s so fantastic) so we just have bluejay. womp womp

also! on my list of things to expand on: main timeline stephanie!!! i’ve had an absolute blast making myself cry while writing every heart sings a song, incomplete and those who wish to sing always find a song, but spoiler steph will always be my babygirl. and duke!!!! i have not written barely anything for duke in this universe but believe me i have some Thoughts. perhaps even Ideas. basically a lot of steph&duke and steph&babs and steph&duke&babs because i love my little underrated trio

also just more babs in general, because like. i’ve had so many tiny little snippets of cass and babs and their sweet little relationship just sitting in my notes for literal years now that i really just need to organize and expand into their own fic. and yet. i have not done that. but rest assured cass&babs are very very important to me

such is the curse of female fanfic writers: always destined to fixate more on the male poor little meow meows than the female bad bitches. seriously what the fuck is up with that guys i don’t get it why does this happen

[gaytoadman]

sometimes I lay awake at night trying to decide my favorite Robin. Dick Grayson? The original? He did like so much. He's an icon.

Jason Todd? Didn't do much for the mantle but like... Red Hood, y'know. Also the good Robin and shtuff, an utter icon.

Tim Drake? Where do I start? Iconic.

Stephanie Brown? Just look at her. Live, Laugh, Love, Stephanie Brown.

Damian Wayne? Just... character. He's so fun. I love him.

Duke Thomas? A chaotic leader and people don't even consider him a real Robin. Seriously? Love him.

Carrie Kelley? Is she canonically Robin in the comic right now? No. But I love her. And they say the same for Steph. Not the woman erasure.

And then like everyone from We Are Robin. But the fact that I didn't name them probably definetely means they're not my favorite.