#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?

[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)

[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

[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 ^^

[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.

[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.

[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

[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

[whalehouse1]

The sad thing about the flaws in the writing of Batman characters by character:

Batman: Bruce Wayne erasure, edge lord writers who like toxic masculinity and no concept of Bruce’s money as plot.

Dick: His sexualization being used as a joke and nowadays making him a dumb blond stereotype.

Jason: Edgelord writing.

Barbara: Keeping her young and a deeply unsettling thought process of feminism where she is actively being toxic to Dick and just is nasty to Cass and Steph (pre-Batgirls I hope she is better to them in that).

Tim: His writers keep trying to make him relatable by making him chauvinistic, misogynistic, and when they do something interesting it’s either hollow (Sum of Our Parts) or seems like it belongs in an Else World (Red Robin and Gun Batman).

Stephanie: Gets treated like she’s useless.

Cass: Took an extremely nuanced character and reduced her to the pretty Chinese girl who doesn’t speak stereotype which is horrific.

Damian: Trying to mass market him with manga and romance, magic is here for some reason and with the looming potential of his origin being part of the upcoming movie, potentially the destruction of Talia’s reputation again. Have fun with that one Talia fans…

Duke: He doesn’t get written about.

Joker: DC puts him in more stuff than necessary and it dilutes him.

Harley Quinn: Fundamental misunderstanding of her character and the same stupid blondification they give to Dick.

Poison Ivy: The most misanthropic villain is an anti-hero and like Tim is only defined by her relationship (I hope the new Ivy series focuses on her but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet).

Riddler: Lazy in the thought process which you cannot be with him.

Scarecrow/Mad Hatter: Always a lackey, never the rogue.

Killer Croc/Bane: You know they do have brains right? Sure Croc is dumber, but Hannibal Lectoring him to make him scarier doesn’t work when everything is cannibalism and doesn’t fit his history or personality at all.

Two-Face/Catwoman/Penguin: No notes you’re not going too bad with them imo atm.

[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.

[ella-ashmore]

2 7 19 for salty asks!!

2. Are there any popular fandom OTPs you only BroTP?

the only ones i can think of right now are grace with max or steph maybe ?? i just personally dont enjoy them romantically but they have such fun dynamics to mess around with outside of that

7. Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?

fearing for my life as i say this but. nischa. i wouldnt exactly say i cant stand it but the way hardcore shippers shoved talia to the side entirely to the point she was hardly ever mentioned really rubbed me the wrong way and put a sour taste on the ship for me :(

19. What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

smthn smthn mspec avoidance and erasure smthn smthn i mean Whattt who said that.....

[inevitably-ineffable-husbands]

Hi Steph, lots of love from Germany! 🩵💙🧡 In your reply to the switch theory you wrote that you think switching will come up later in s3 (instead of having happened at the end of s2. and I totally agree with that, the seasons theme was love, pining and miscommunication, that had to culminate in something 😂)

But yeah, my theory is that Aziraphale and Crowley will join/celestial-marry/ "merge/fuse"(??) in some way and become very powerful that way. (Although if they fuse probably not permanently) Because

a) they're crazy strong together

b)when discorporated in s1e5 Aziraphale says sth like "I wish I could inhabit your body, but we'd probably burst into flames" and I don't think that was a set-up for the switch in s1e6, because I think they didnt actually swap bodies just made theyre own body look like the other (I think?) Azzi's physical body couldn't withstand hellfire, right? So that's not happened yet.

c) didn't you write they started out as one character in the book writing process? And in an interview for s2 David Tennant said that usually Michael Sheen and him would compete for the same part and now they're playing the same character split into two.

...Thanks for coming to my ted talk. 😂 What do you think? Wishing you a very lovely evening! I really love reading your blog! It's so... cosy on here. AZ Fell's Bookshop vibes 💛🩵💙🧡

(Referencing this post)

Hey Lovely!

Firstly I'm SO happy you enjoy my blog! :) That's high praise to be compared to Azzie's Bookshop, oh GOSHLES!! Thank you so much!! I'm having a blast being in this fandom, feels like the heyday of BBC Sherlock, hahahh. I'm hoping this blog turns into another "light" success and people just come here to feel "at home" you know? LOL.

Secondly, yeah, having another think on the Switch Theory, now that it's been a couple months and more of my own theories have formed about S2, I lean more on the "not a fan" side of it. For me it's the erasure of the emotional impact and the IMPORTANCE of their miscommunication that The Final Fifteen gave us, and honestly, there's too many loose threads that just... can't work with that theory. After sitting on it for some time, the big one for me is that Crowley-in-the-car-getting-upset-at-the-music at the end makes NO SENSE if it was A-As-C; No one would be watching him, why continue the act? And Aziraphale's gentle touch-and-cry reaction to the kiss makes NO SENSE if it was C-As-A. I dunno. I can totally see why people support the Theory, but it's not for me. I'm a creature of "I need things to make sense" and too much DOESN'T make sense with it, is all.

And you're right, S2's theme WAS about showing us the development of their relationship, how important they are together, so that the end of E6 would DEVASTATE US, having us wanting more than ever for them to get back together. It was meant to show how truly made for each other they are, just they're two idiots sharing a single braincell and that braincell is emotionally dumb lol.

That all said, I have a similar thought as yours that I've been hemming-and-hawing about for a couple weeks after rereading my own theories to possibly clean them up a bit. While I DON'T think they will "merge" into one being, I DO think that they will combine their powers together in the penultimate episode to "win" (I say penultimate because I have hopes that the final ep will be them moving in together, but I know realistically, a climax can't happen an hour before the end in a story LOL).

BUT I also like your theory as well, because story-wise, the hints have ALREADY been dropped for it since S1, as you mentioned in your points A and B. There was no need for a switch, and I DON'T think it will happen again. BUT the purpose of the switch was to show that Crowley and Azzie's powers are COMPATIBLE. THAT is what's important here, and it sets up their Together Miracle in S2. And if we're going on the idea that in S3 they'll finally be in-sync and that they only get MORE powerful the more comfortable and "on-the-same-page" they get, well, yeah, I think Heaven and Hell will be wise to leave them be.

As for your point C, yes I did mention that, I BELIEVE in my BIG roundup meta for S4, but it might also be in my 'Crowley’s Past: Was Crowley Archangel Camael?' meta, since I recall doing a LOT of research for that, including trawling through Neil's blog for quotes. But yes, I actually recently saw the gifset with that interview, I think it's in my queue LOL. Neil did confirm ages ago, way back in S1 that early drafts of the book did have them as one character, which is why I think it's MORE likely that their powers are going to be combined instead.

Either way, I think the ONLY theory I absolutely am 100% against is the "they're going to become human" one, because I hate that the condition to their love must be "to love like a human they must be human" and that's just... UGH not on for me. I remain hopeful that that's not the route that their gonna go, since Gabe and Beez didn't become human, and it was a CLEAR mirror for the AziraCrow relationship (a foreshadowing of sorts).

And because I'm thinking of it right now and don't want to forget to write it somewhere, another thing that CONSTANTLY brought up is Alpha Centauri; I hope that they honeymoon there at the end of S3, it'll be a nice payoff for its constant referencing, LOL. And they can't do that if they're human LOL. I want them to spend the next 6000 years and beyond together <3

Thank you again so much for your ask!! Sorry I took a bit to reply, just got home from a road trip and I finally had a bit of free time to reply <3

[lesbianclaryfray]

it’s 2024 and we’re still dealing with steph/cass/duke erasure in “batfam” content…

[wqintraining]

The way Shiva and Steph have both been so heavily attached to Cass these past few years is actually pretty weird when you think about it in the larger context.

Yes, Steph is Cass' best friend historically, and Shiva is Cass' mom. But between 1999 (Cass' debut year) and 2019 (the last year before DiDio's firing and the begining of the modern versions of these characters), they really didn't interact much. Yes, erasures, reboots, and deaths played a role in this, but even so, Cass and Steph had maybe a dozen team-ups total prior to the latter's death, with the two never getting a proper reunion once she was back, and the story where Cass and the readers discovered Shiva was her mom was the last time those two would interact for over a decade.

And like...this is the power of fandom at play, right? Prior to 2006 (the begining of Cass' erasure), Steph and Shiva would appear with Cass and play important roles in her life, but they also had conpletely seperate lives and relationships; they are both older characters than Cass after all. This continued in the back half of the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s. Whatever you think of the quality of stories being told, Shiva and Steph's lives were distinctly seperate from Cass'.

Then you get to Rebirth, and this is where this discussion ends for Shiva, because ever since Cass was brought back into canon, she hasn't had a single story that wasnt about her.

Steph's a different story though. From 2015-2019, the joke in fandom was that Cass kept ditching her best friend for a new one (Harper, Clayface, Duke, and, Hell, count Tim if you want see he was her best friend by the end of Pre-FP) and that her and Steph barely seemed like close friends at all. They barely spoke to each other in Tec, and didnt speak at all in between Tec and Joker War.

And yet now, short of a Robins team-up, you'll be hard pressed to find Steph showing up without Cass (much more likely it'll be the other way around).

The fact is that Cass is by far the most popular of these characters, and DC has finally started realizing Cass is one of their biggest female and minority heroes. Naturally, that's gonna pull Steph and Shiva closer into her orbit. But I think the fandom aspect is the more interesting part here.

Fans love Cass. For over 20 years, fans have created lots of content for Cass. And for as little as Cass actually actually interacted woth Steph and Shiva back in the day, they were still the characters she interacted with the most (alongside Bruce and Babs). Not only that, but most of their appearences together are utterly beloved and considered foundational to the characters. And so with no competition, clear slots they fit into in Cass' life, popularity among fans, and fanfic writers and fanartists generally preferring to explore/focus on relationships and interactions over the types of things Cass' book mostly dealt with, Steph and Shiva became integral to her world. And more than anything, I think that's why we find ourselves in the situation we do today.

Edit: Shit, I forgot to talk about Futures End, Convergence, and how the meta corcumstances of being lumped together as the "other" Batgirls caused them to become even closer.

[the-overanalyzer]

Eternally Yours - Batman Eternal #3

Everything Old Is New Again

And oh yeah, at long last, issue #3 features the return from limbo of one Miss Stephanie Gertrude Brown!

To be completely honest, I hadn't been following Batman books issue-to-issue for quite a while before this series was announced, largely because of how Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain both got massively screwed over by editorial when the new status quo was established after Flashpoint. I am a bitter, grudge-holding man by nature, and Batgirl v3 was my favorite book starring my favorite character, and seeing all that get dumped in the trash for the sake of the same masturbatory Silver Age revanchism that had been gaining more and more ground at DC ever since they dragged Hal Jordan back from the grave was enough to strain my affection for the franchise to its absolute limit.

It wasn't even only the mainline books that this erasure happened in, either. Steph was originally supposed to appear in the Smallville continuation comic as that universe's Nightwing, but come publication, she'd been replaced with Barbara in that, too, on the grounds that Babs was "more iconic". Y'know, the iconic Nightwing, Barbara Gordon.

But! That was 2011, it is now 2014. The New 52 has at this point used up its momentum, and as many of those new readers the reboot was meant to capture that were ever going to stick around are settled in, which means there's money to be made in trying to win back some of the audience that was driven off. And so, Steph, with Cass about a year away. Her origin is a bit different from Post-Crisis, in that she starts the story not knowing about Arthur's criminal life until she walks in on a supervillain meeting in his kitchen.

Oh, also, not-Flass up there is now the Commissioner, and he's crooked as hell and working for the Roman. That old chestnut.