I help run a poll blog @batman-polls as well as @jason-todd-week, @tim-drake-week, and @dc-challenge-fandom! For Doctor Who, I run @doctor-who-polls.
I’m doing a read through of Jason’s pre-Death appearances! I’m tagging all posts related to that #guide to jaybin.
I mostly post fanfic, fanart, random analysis, and incorrect quotes for Batman and Doctor Who. I’m studying computer science and neuroscience, so there are sometimes posts about that too.
I also write fanfiction as GalaxyOwl13 on AO3 for Batman, Doctor Who, Gravity Falls, and the MCU.
My asks are open! Feel free to send me any (SFW) ideas you want to see written, questions, or just bizarre thoughts you had at 3 am and want to share.
Note: Any requests for money will be deleted, and you may be blocked. I understand that you need help, but messaging me on Tumblr is not the way to get it due to the difficulty of verification. I assume most of these asks are bots, but on the off-chance that you are not a bot and are reading this, do not send requests for donation.
The projects I’m currently working on are:
Through the Twisted Mirror — The Robins are trained by an evil Batman and have to take him down. Chapter 16/30.
Telling Tales (series) — Jason has a Lazarus Pit episode and can’t determine what memories real or fake. He calls Dick for help, and Dick ends up learning some disturbing things about his father. Things sort of spiral from there.
Ok wait. Show off your favorite moments or what you have on Dick and Jason being canonically* similar. I'm focusing on apperance but I'll take anything. I'll absolutely count accidental times like writers forgetting who was where as long as it's noted as so
*As in within offical DC media, not just what's current universe mainline canon
Dazed while trying to piece together the series of bizarre yet deeply vivid images, the entire nation reportedly awoke Monday from a strange dream in which it had been watching soccer. “I wasn’t just willingly viewing it, I actually cared who won, and I was tuning in right here in the United States instead of watching it in Europe or someplace like that,” said 27-year-old Philadelphia resident Erika Sloan, one of the 340 million bewildered Americans who were kneading their foreheads in an attempt to recall the almost lifelike scenes in which they knew when Cape Verde was playing and had an opinion on whether a player was offside.
This interview with Ncuti Gatwa crossed my dash again, and I was reminded of how much I like it. Because it makes the rare Third Argument for representation in fiction, the argument I think is the best, and I'm always happy to see it. I quote:
At times, Gatwa’s casting in those projects has been dismissed as an exercise in ‘box-ticking’. Gatwa scoffs. ‘First of all, you don’t know anything about me. Secondly, tick fcking boxes! People need to be fcking seen. What are you going to do, tell the same stories? Have the same people fronting things for all of eternity? Representation and inclusivity and branching out… it enriches us all. How embarrassing. You people with your tiny mindsets – open a book, look out the window and then f*ck off.’ (source)
What do I mean by the Third Argument? Well, I'm not sure I've ever made a post about this directly, but as far as I can see it, there are three main arguments for greater diversity in popular media. The first two are the most common, and they go like this:
It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see people like them on screen. That is, the beneficiaries are marginalized people.
It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see and learn about people who are not like them through art. That is, the beneficiaries are non-marginalized people, who then (hopefully) pass on the benefit by treating marginalized people better.
These two arguments are the source of a lot of debate here on ye olde tumblr. Despite both being arguments for representation, they pull in different directions. What counts as 'good' representation for the purposes of Argument 1 often would not be good for the purposes of Argument 2, and vice versa. Authentic versus sympathetic. Ugly or over-sanitized. You see this debate play out constantly. It's really hard for a piece of - say - queer media to do both at once.
But these debates tend to leave out Argument 3, the one that Gatwa is making above. And that argument cuts through a lot of this debate.
3. It is good for media to be diverse because art needs variety. The beneficiary of representation is art itself, absent any social effects that may or may not be present.
For this argument, diverse stories are intrinsically good. It is good to make art that's not just the same thing you've seen a hundred times before. Putting the kinds of people who don't often make it into mainstream media into your art is an extremely efficient way to make that happen. It's not the only method, but it's a really good method.
For representation to be 'good representation' according to Argument 3, all it needs to be is interesting. A story you haven't heard before, at least not in that medium. That which counts as 'bad representation' by the lights of this argument are stock characters, like the Eternally Patient Mother, the Gay Best Friend, the Wise Black Advisor. Perhaps there was a time in which these characters were new, but that time has long passed. There's no art in pulling a bog-standard character trope off the shelf. Show us a new kind of guy. The world is infinitely diverse. You're not going to run out. Telling the same stories with the same voices for all eternity, as Gatwa says, is boring. Even if there was nothing else wrong with it, this would be. Art isn't supposed to be boring.
And that's why Argument 3 is my favourite. I do want the world to be a better place, of course, and I think art is a part of that. But the main job of art is to be good as art. And diversity in all aspects of the production of art makes art better.
If you’ve ever had a menstrual period, did you get your first one at age 11 or younger?
(Apparently the average age of one’s first period is around 12, but I’m curious to see where the demographics are here, and if it’s been trending younger in younger generations! I had my first period just shy of my 10th birthday 😭)
If you’ve ever had a menstrual period, did you get your first one at age 11 or younger?
To myself, raised in an environment that glorified and romanticized restriction and suffering:
There is no victory in skipping dinner, or lunch, or breakfast, or morning coffee, or dessert.
There is no victory in refusing heaters and air conditioners and fans and heated blankets.
There is no victory in denying yourself sleep, or showers, or movement, or water, or a comfortable bed, or taking the elevator vs. the stairs.
There is no victory in refusing pain meds and heating pads and ice packs and medical help.
There is no victory in punishing yourself needlessly, in telling yourself that this pain you feel is because you are bad to the core and deserve it.
There is no victory in choking back your laughter and your tears, to keep an imagined equilibrium of safety that is really just a dry, cracked, empty, endless emotional desert.
You are here. You are in this body, and this body is yours. You deserve good things. You are alive, and that is messy and loud, and messy and loud are okay.
It’s okay to live abundantly. It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to indulge. This paralysis of self-punishment, self-restriction, self-loathing is not healthy or good for you.
Another public service announcement. This time it’s air quality. Some of you are probably in it already if you’re in eastern Canada, New England or New York, but it’s sliding south, a huge mass of wildfire smoke. Please be careful. When it starts getting bad, especially, like when the sky gets orange or brownish, it’s best to run air purifiers in the house and wear N95 or KN95 masks when you have to go outside.
It harms your lungs and it’s especially bad for children (and pets!) or anyone with health problems. There are all kinds of chemicals in that smoke. It’s not only trees that are burning. The heat already makes it harder to breath. This makes it worse.
If any of you are experiencing it, feel free to tell about it in the comments. 💚
Also, throw out the mask every day and shower before you get in bed if you’ve been out or you’ll be breathing the particles all night. Stuff like that. It gets all over you, your skin, your hair, your clothes.
"How do you write such realistic dialogue-" I TALK TO MYSELF. I TALK TO MYSELF AND I PRETEND I AM THE ONE SAYING THE LINE. LIKE SANITY IS SLOWLY SLIPPING FROM BETWEEN MY FINGERS WITH EVERY MEASLY WORD THEY TYPE OUT. THAT IS HOW.
“When we were kids, the Phonics Wizard came to our town to show off how the letter E can change the sounds of vowels. He turned a can into a cane, a pin into a pine. This one kid had a cap and he changed it into a cape, that kind of thing.
“And we loved it, we were all having a great time, but then he saw my sister and I, and he just got this - this look in his eyes, and then-”
She hesitated, worrying the coarse material between her fingers. “Things got pretty bad after that,” she muttered. “I know it’s silly, but I try to keep - her - comfortable. We don’t know if she can still hear us, or see us, or if she’s even still in here, but I like to think she is. I talk to her when I can, I leave music on when I’m out of the house. I tried to convince my parents to bring her with us when we went to Disneyland, but they didn’t - didn’t really take that well.”
After a moment, she put the ball of twine back onto its pillow. “Anyways. They tried to arrest the Phonics Wizard, but he had a plan in case something went wrong and he turned it into a plane and flew away.”
Honestly, at this point, if you're still bitching about AI but not moving to open-source and nonprofit software/tech/services, you deserve it. Shut up or stop using it. Those of us who've put in the effort to switch to non-evil tech are sick of the purposeless whining.
I've been nicely letting everyone suggest open source on this post because it might genuinely be useful to someone but because you've decided to be a condescending little bastard- this might be a hard concept to grasp, but some of us actually have jobs. Some of those jobs also provide us with computers equipped with an OS we have zero say over, to use software we also have zero say over. Kindly get off your high horse and suck my dick.
As someone who has worked in IT for the past 17 years, I'd also like to say that there is often a higher barrier of entry for open-source software / operating systems when it comes to technical knowledge and ability, and those who can't jump that barrier still deserve to not have AI programs installed on their devices without their knowledge or consent. Someone who struggles with Windows is not going to be able to just hop into Linux, especially when they probably have other things going on in their lives and don't have the time to sit down and learn a brand new operating system. Someone who doesn't even recognize that there are different browsers, much less open-source ones that aren't Chromium forks, isn't going to be able to seek out one they can both a.) safely download, b.) install, and c.) use instead of the shortcut they know as The Internet.
And sure, you can dismiss these people as lazy, as stupid, as being elderly and so who cares. But from my 17 years of experience, I can tell you that technical instinct and ability varies widely across the entire adult spectrum. And I can also tell you that people have different strengths, and that just because someone isn't good with computers doesn't mean they aren't smart as hell.
And I can also say, again, that it really doesn't matter.
Companies like Microsoft and Google sneaking AI software into devices and software without the consent of those using the software or devices is wrong. It's invasive and raises major security concerns. People should not have to learn entirely new operating systems to escape this nonsense. It's an unreasonable expectation, and it fails to hold companies like Microsoft and Google accountable for their malicious behavior.
Batgirl (2000) #1 opens with the above panels - a rose puzzle being assembled, David saying "You can take off the blindfolds now," a shot of a young Cass, and then someone else saying "What's with the camera?" Immediately there is a focus on visuality - the blindness of the "blindfolds" and the eye of the "camera" - and a link between Cass and objects. The rose puzzle precedes child Cass' appearance, connecting the object Cass is handling with Cass herself.
Personhood, objecthood, and visuality are themes that underlie Cass' relationship with her father David. They are also themes that pop up in Anne Anlin Cheng's ornamentalism, a theory of Asiatic femininity. Ornamentalism describes how Asian women are commonly depicted as aesthetic, decorative objects. (The theory has way more to it but for this post that's what I'll focus on! Highly recommend reading the whole thing!)
I'll be looking at ornamentalism within Cass' narrative, mostly through David but also other White people in Cass' life. This is mostly an in-universe reading, although an examination of how writers use Cass as an ornament would certainly be interesting as well! As always this is just my own interpretation!!!
An Upbringing of Objects
David brought Cass up in relative isolation - the only person she had a real relationship with was him, which means that for the majority of her childhood, she was surrounded by more objects than people. Returning to the opening scene again, the men discuss the objects in the room more than Cass herself:
Batgirl (2000) #1
The plastic, the camera, and the knife all form part of how the men (and David) perceive Cass. From the beginning of Batgirl (2000), objects are intrinsically tied to Cass' identity. It's not only that objects surround her, but that she's perceived as an extension of the objects herself.
Batgirl (2000) #11
This is particularly pivotal when considering David's desire for tapes of Cass. In this panel, Damion Scott draws a picture of Cass imprinted onto the surface of the film. Her literally flattened image is a metaphor for David's 'flat' conception of Cass - his love for her is, to an extent, equivalent to his love for this roll of tape. In many ways he has always loved her as a two-dimensional object. And not just any object but an explicitly visual one like video tapes. In other words, his love for Cass has always been tied up in his perception of her Asian femininity as an aesthetic ornament.
Surfaces
This 'flattened' image of Cass is a recurring motif in David and Cass' relationship. Throughout their time together, they are commonly separated by glass or screens, like in Batgirl #1 when the end of the issue reveals that the flashbacks have been David watching Cass' tapes all along. Another example is their first meeting after Cass runs away:
Batman (1940) #567
Cass spots David in real life, but David sees Cass through the scope of a gun (which the art emphasises by putting us in David's perspective). While Cass can see David as a three-dimensional person, David's viewpoint flattens Cass into a surface. Cheng writes that ornamentalism reduces Asian women into surfaces, "impermeable and insensate". Although David doesn't shoot Cass because he doesn't want to hurt her, it's also interesting to consider that shooting her would shatter his illusion of Cass as an 'impermeable' surface.
In fact, every time the 'surface' between them is shattered, it's Cass doing the shattering. She learns to see herself as more than a surface, but he never quite gets there.
Batman (1940) #567 // Batgirl (2000) #33
David's flattening view of Cass relates to how some people say David sees Cass as a weapon, which I won't dive into here (I kind of agree but don't? but that would be its own post). The important part for this post is what weapon he sees Cass as. Because while David himself is most associated with guns, the weapon associated with Cass is...
The Knife
If "Asiatic femininity is ornamental/surface/portable," then the knife is the perfect weapon for her - small, sleek, and often highly decorative. David connects Cass with a knife, from the opening scene where he encourages the men to try to cut her with one, to his birthday present in Batgirl (2000) #37.
Bruce highlights that the gifted knife, while useful, has not been used "for years". This parallels Cass, who hasn't been 'used' by David in the decade since she left. Neither the knife nor Cass are loved by David purely for utility - there is an extra element that cannot be accounted for by just usefulness. This 'extra element' is the aesthetic consideration, the enjoyment David gets by looking at the knife/Cass. Rewatching the tapes, gazing at Cass through glass, affords pleasure to David through the visual medium.
Batgirl (2024) #20
In Batgirl (2024), there's a direct parallel between Bruce handing Cass a letter with the name 'Batgirl' (how Bruce sees her) with David handing her a knife (how David sees her). The fact that the knife is a reflective surface is essential, because if that's how David sees her then he's never really seeing her. Cass is a two-dimensional reflection of him, his "heir" (as said in Batgirl Secret Files and Origins). Which is why David never truly understands that Cass ran away of her own accord; he calls it "his fault," because he is still viewing her as an extension of himself.
Bruce Wayne: Fugitive
When Bruce asks David why he's throwing his life away, David says "it simply left without consulting me." Another obvious allusion to Cass, and note that David uses the pronoun "it". Here, David conflates Cass with his own life, a nod to how much she means to him but also how unable he is to view her as her own person.
Projection
David is not the only one with this problem, of course. No. 1 projector onto Cass is Bruce, someone with numerous parallels to David and who is also a White man. Bruce's projection onto Cass is also a result of his ornamentalism of her Asian femininity - she is a surface for his own desires. This is captured well in Batgirl (2000) #1:
Notice how Bruce's projection onto Cass ("you... are me") is interrupted when Cass makes contact with him ("uh...). Bruce's projection is dependent on perceiving Cass as that insensate surface, but Cass' act of touching him destroys that illusion. Bruce's actions in early BG 2000 have a lot to do with trying to maintain the lilusion - from rejecting the evidence of the tapes to isolating her in the cave, Bruce tries to mould her into the perfect, interiorless surface he wants her to be.
This is particularly important in the Tai'Darshan/romance arc. Cheng writes that "the yellow woman is persistently sexualized yet barred from sexuality, simultaneously made and unmade by the aesthetic project". Bruce's perception of Cass as an aesthetic (i.e, as a surface to look at and project onto) clashes with her desire to explore her own sexuality. But it's not just Bruce - Babs, Tim, and Kon all contribute to Cass being sexualised while being barred from sexuality. The one person she desires (Tai'Darshan, an Asian man) is kept from her, while she is sexualised by the White people around her.
Batgirl (2000) #45 // #39
But Cass, who has spent most of her life as this kind of decorative ornament (as explored above), learns to refute this behaviour. She expresses discontent to Babs about Kon's comment, punches Tim in the face, and eventually directly confronts Bruce about his behaviour. She gains awareness of how other people look at her, and exerts more agency over her perception.
Breaking Free
DC Festival of Heroes: The Asian Celebration
Cass' story constructs a duality between seeing and speaking. While seeing is a large part of Cass' abilities, it is also the medium through which she is ornamentalised - it is the gaze that often causes Cass the most discomfort, from Kon on the boat to David's tapes. On the opposite side of seeing is speaking, something David deprived her of and something she struggles with, but something that Cass comes to understand as freeing her from the White male gaze.
Cass speaking refutes the idea that she has no interiority - it dispels the illusion that she is a surface, a decoration. In DC Festival of Heroes (one of the few Cass stories written by an Asian woman), Mariko Tamaki demonstrates the power of speech.
In this panel, Cass thinks of words as "a thing other people do," while she herself is visually trapped in a double reflection. The reflections symbolise how her silent body is used as a mirror for White projections -her existence is limited to the visual medium, and she is barred from speaking. But then she meets and has a crush on Dr. Chin, which prompts her to think "Words. You will be mine."
As mentioned above, Cass' experiences with romance have been heavily restricted by the expectations and gazes of the White people around her. With Dr. Chin, though, it's her gaze that is being centered, leading to her reclaiming 'words' for herself. Instead of being an object owned by someone else, she has become the owner.
Final Thoughts
This post isn't meant to say David 'only' loved Cass as an object rather than a person. It's more about how the White gaze construes Asian women's personhood as inextricable from objecthood - that is, that David absolutely loved Cass as a daughter, which does not negate that he simultaneously (and interconnectedly) loved her as an object. Cass' visibility as an Asian woman coloured the way basically all the White people in her life dismissed her thoughts and desires, the way it was so easy for David and Bruce to project onto her.
Anyway this is a petition for more Asian women to write Cass!!!!! Although these themes are very much present in the White male-written Cass stories, I believe an Asian woman would be better able to draw these themes to the forefront and explore them in more nuanced ways!
