at some point we gotta acknowledge that getting the majority of your news and takes and general opinions from tumblr is not meaningfully different than getting it from tiktok even though on here it's in textual form. understanding the world through the lens of viral videos vs understanding it through breathless unsourced text posts written by dykeastarion69
#this is what made me switch to actually reading news sites regularly some years ago#(and when something's controversial or doesn't seem quite right I look up multiple news sources to try to get a fuller picture) (@thirddoctor)
A quick reminder that the Associated Press is totally free, and also often covers the news stories that Tumblr users say no one is covering. NPR is also free. So is ProPublica.
Also, here's a chart that might be helpful, in terms of determining bias and reliability: Interactive Media Bias Chart
sorry gotta get my ‘friend that’s too woke’ on but I don’t think the solution to misogyny is more misogyny. like by all means rip into republican/right wing women but your critiques should be about how they’re evil soulless people not ‘haha they’re ugly/visibly aged. they don’t know how to put on make up!’ like i don’t fucking know man I don’t think any woman at all should be required to wear makeup or be made fun of for not wearing it ‘properly’ also let’s stop doing the ‘not conventionally attractive = morally bad’ thing. that last part especially be kicking y’all asses.
Clearing up misinformation about Stephanie Brown and her family's financial status
So, there's a lot of misinformation about Steph's financial status (preboot specifically) on both ends, I wanted to make a specific post to try to clear it up, based on my way too specific knowledge.
No, Steph never lived in Crime Alley. No, she was nowhere near as poor as Jason Todd, boy who was literally homeless. Yes, she did live in the suburbs. No, it wasn't an area that was any more affluent that the working class parts of the city. Dixon describes her neighborhood as "working class" and "blue-collar" in the Titans companion #2. That means the people there do not generally have office jobs, but will work jobs that involve manual labor or skilled trades-- a mechanic, a custodian, a construction worker, stuff that pays hourly.
Yes, the Browns were shown to be financially struggling. Yes, the comics indicated why. Yes, her house was repeatedly depicted as being in disrepair across multiple comics, long before and after the earthquake storyline. Yes, she does mention not being able to afford things.
Steph pretty much states that her neighborhood is lower income and she could be considered "poor" in Robin #35:
"I was poor" "My Daddy didn't love me"...I probably came from his same neighborhood or one just like it! You don't see me busting into appliance stores and my dad's the Cluemaster!"
To break it down, in this rant clearly fueled by her anger at her father/own childhood issues, Steph basically says excuses like "I'm poor" and "Dad didn't love me" could apply to her too, and indicates her neighborhood is a lower-income neighborhood, but she would never use that as an than an excuse to commit crimes.
Steph is likely lower middle class, "poor" in a similar way, say, the Simpsons are poor (and her being a 90s kid, the comparison is apt). Poor in the sense that in the average public school in a middle class neighborhood she might be accused of being a "poor kid." She's not living hand to mouth, but she's not in great shape either. She and her mom have a tight budget and she can't afford certain things a regular middle class person could.
Let's go into why this is:
There are two reasons the Browns could be financially struggling. But the most important one, and the one we know is definitely true, is that Arthur has poor finances and blows their money.
I could have sworn Steph said directly at one point that Arthur would blow a bunch of her mom's 'money whenever he came home, but I must have imagined it because I can't find it anywhere. But we are SHOWN that he will take Crystal's money to fund his schemes, even when Steph was very young (cw domestic abuse):
(Secret Origin 80 page Giant)
So, if Crystal has a steady job as a nurse, why are in the bad shape? Because someone using up all your money isn't a thing you can magically bounce back from, especially as a single mother who needs to pay a mortgage and bills. This likely left Crystal in a huge financial hole it's going to take years for her to dig herself out of.
Also, please note some environmental storytelling above in the last couple panels --the walls of Steph's house are shown to be cracked, and a huge chunk of plaster is even missing and exposing the wall behind Arthur. This house is not in good shape, indicating once again that the Browns aren't doing well. This will be shown repeatedly in future comics too, and I'll be giving a range of examples when we get there.
Arthur's shitty finances are further hinted at when Steph talks about a period where Arthur went legit and made more money than he'd ever had-- in a manufacturing job.
#Robin 111
The other possible explanation for strained finances is that Crystal's former addictions cost money. I've seen a claim that they don't, because Crystal stole the pills from her job as a nurse. This is not true and I have no idea where this person got it from, unless they just assumed an addict must also be a thief. We are shown, on panel, in some of the first comics that Steph's in, that Crystal gets the pills from the pharmacy, by seeing doctors who are willing to recklessly give her prescriptions.
Robin #3
Finally, it gets overlooked, but Crystal was an alcoholic as well as a drug addict. Alcohol costs money. I doubt this was as big a factor as Arthur’s stuff, but it likely didn’t help things.
Now let's get to Steph's house.
There's been a claim circulating that Steph's house was only shown in disrepair in a certain issue thanks to the earthquake storyline that had just happened, Cataclysm. This is once again, not true, as you can see the same cracks from the 80 page giant panels I posted above, from when Steph was three years old. And when Steph is a teenager, It was shown looking rough way before the Catacalysm storyline, in Robin 41:
And two years after the storyline, in Batman Chronicles #22:
And even more years after:
Robin #109
The state of the house is a (kind of on-the-nose) way to communicate the Browns are struggling. How do the Browns afford a house in. the first place if their finances are so tight? Because affording a house wasn't as big a deal in the 90s as it was today.
A fun fact is that the house is in Arthur's name too. Black Canary notes that the house being under Arthur's name shouldn't be legal, which is a strange statement since felons can own property, but might indicate his finances are so shit he shouldn't be able to own a house, or something to do with Crystal being the one who pays the mortgage. Steph says it doesn't matter, because her and her Mom could never afford a lawyer even for a slam dunk case:
Birds of Prey #40
Now, let's move on to Steph's Batgirl series, which I recently reread. BQM pretty much confirms Steph having a lower financial status than her peers in college several times.
Steph is able to go to college, and we don't know whether she's getting financial aid, we do know she has to get a part time job at the school to keep it up, which isn't a specifically lower middle class thing, but does confirm she needs help to get by. It's notable that from a logical standpoint, the Browns are probably in the best financial shape they've ever been when Steph goes to college, Crystal hasn't lived with Arthur for a long time, and she hasn't had to support Stephanie in the past year (ouch) so she might have some savings by now. They also move to an apartment in the city in this series, so Crystal might have actually sold the house to help fund all this.
BUT Stephanie is still alluded to being less well off than every other person in her class:
Batgirl #1
She's the only one who doesn't have a laptop, implying she can't afford one while every other student in her class can
It was unusual not to have a laptop in college when this was being published (I was in college when this was being published, so I know. Close to Steph's age). Teachers generally assumed you had one, at least at mine.
Steph also makes some comments that (unclear exactly why, this part is very confusingly written) indicate to Jordanna she's poor, which Jordanna then confronts her about while high on Scarecrow's latest thing:
Batgirl #2
I've seen "Steph doesn't answer this so it's not confirmation" but uh. From a writing standpoint, absolutely no reason to have Jordanna bring it up if it wasn't supposed to be true. And like, what WOULD you want Steph to say in response to confirm it? "Yes Jordanna I'm super broke please mock me more, also I'm going to ignore the supervillain plot happening" If you want to bend over backwards to avoid what the text is clearly trying to get across, feel free, but I'm engaging with the text at face value.
So yeah, I think both things are put here to indicate Steph is, in fact, poor by her college classmate's standards.
It comes up a few other times, Steph mentions she can't afford anything like a DVR, Damian makes a remark "not that you'd know anything about being wealthy" (granted Damian standards for 'poor' is probably 'not a millionaire' but again, given the pattern here, I think we're supposed to take it at face value):
Batgirl #6
My hopes are that this post can clear up misinfo of both extremes, so please share it if you're interested in that too! I had some other tangents, like one about Steph's bike, but we'll leave them out for now!
#I never saw any of the original discourse#But the idea that somebody was coming down on A Batfranchise character for being too rich#and they narrowed in on Stephanie Brown as opposed to say Bruce Wayne and any of his progeny#Is already pretty comical
This person was a huge Tim Drake fan and I recall them saying Steph was "a middle class white girl coming down to the inner city to beat people up for kicks" and it's like...so uh. As opposed to Tim, an upper class white boy coming from an incredibly rich neighborhood (Bristol) coming down to beat people up in the city? Like if you have a problem with someone who doesn't currently live in the city doing this and think it makes a character I have bad news for you about Bruce Wayne and all of his kids (while they are living with him specifically, Jason obviously started out poor and usually lives in the poorer parts of the city outside of that time period, Dick lived in a modest apartment in the city in Bludhaven, etc) .
(The "for kicks" thing is probably because Steph described being Spoiler as kind of a thrill in early comics, but it was always clear she was naturally altruistic, and she became Spoiler in the first place to protect her Mom and stop her Dad. Sure, she was a teenager who found being a vigilante exciting, but she went on to develop more complex motives. You don't stay behind after a earthquake to help people after your date abandons you because it's a thrill. You don't deal with Batman constantly tearing down your self-esteem because being a hero is just a fun thing to you. She also expressed early on that she wanted to protect her neighborhood as well as the city, since bad stuff did happen there too ("the city had Batman, but the burbs don't have anyone") with a pastor she was friends with as Spoiler even noting he was truly grateful there was a hero looking after this area. She also stated as Robin that she wanted criminals who would exploit children out of children's lives, and I think wanting to protect people from what she went through was always a factor, even if she didn't realize it at first.
Anyway, God forbid a fifteen year old girl think being a superhero is thrilling, a crime, apparently.)
I feel like there's a certain kind of batfan that gets so caught up in Brucey's emotional turmoil that they forget that being a superhero is cool!
That power fantasy is literally the entire reason Batman has a kid sidekick in the first place. Adults like to get caught up in their feelings about how any child that fights is a "child soldier" being victimized by the adult heroes or something, but kids just see somebody with power and agency who gets to do stuff that matters instead of being chauffeured between playdates all day long.
Yeah, it's always so sad to me how the joy of being Robin has largely been lost since Jason's death, of which the people responsible for it have reported made a lot of little kids who loved Robin cry and had mothers writing in "I don't know what to tell my kid who loves Robin". Like how fucked up is that, to use what was supposed to be a fun thing for kids and have it hurt them instead.
Part of what would have made Steph such a good Robin if they'd given her a shot is she DID take such joy in being Robin in a way Tim often didn't get to. But of course she only got to do that so DC could kill her. Taking joy in being Robin is punished now.
And yeah, the child soldier discourse definitely wasn't helped by the "good soldier" memorial and Bruce repeatedly calling them soldiers after Jason died lmao. (Though since it was a DKR thing, everyone was going to follow suit and start militarizing Batman whether Jason died or not I guess) If there's one thing that's good about current comics, it's that we've had comics where Bruce rejects that rhetoric (There was this whole dramatic thing where he was like "Tim's not my soldier, he's my son") and we've largely moved away from it, as far as I can tell. Yet the discourse rages on.
Genuinely saw someone be like "I can't like any comic that has kid heroes because adults are exploiting children!!!!" and I'm like. I think you should probably not read comics then. Because child heroes, the child power fantasy aspect, it's been baked into comics since 1941. It's not going to go away, not matter how much DC fucks it up or Marvel is skittish about it. It is not that serious, suspend your disbelief.
I really think it's a complete inability to see a child's perspective.
Because otherwise, what exactly is the line of thinking? "Oh yeah, what kids want more than anything in media is to watch the kid stay home safe while the adults do all the cool stuff."
I view that in the same vein as trying to treat pokemon battles as animal cruelty. Like, you're not clever for pointing out it would be fucked up to do with your real life dog. That's not the kind of story this is.
Bruce of course is all deep in angst and sadness about everything on any given day. He tends to have a pretty bleak view on his own work, so of course he has a bleak view on the kids' work. He's always internally monologuing about how he's a grim soldier in a never-ending crusade or whatever, but somehow the conversation never comes around to how adults shouldn't be allowed to be superheroes because of that. Occasionally a villain will try to get Bruce personally to stop crime, thinking it will make him happy, but then it'll turn out he's too important to ever sit out the fight.
Treating Jason's death as some big condemnation of the sidekick situation also probably made more sense in the eighties when Jason first died, but at this point death is such a frequent and reversible thing in comics it's not really worth worrying about imo. Jason's literally fine. He's menacing villains as we speak. Nobody's forcing his hand either. Sometimes Batman tries to stop him and he just keeps doing his thing.
When Damian died Bruce literally brought him back from the dead on purpose. He went on a big quest to steal some crystals from Darkseid and just revived his son, as opposed to the previous occasions when the dead were brought back through uncontrollable happenstance. Like once you get to the point where you're just reviving people like it's a dungeons and dragons campaign you can probably stop stressing about it so much.
I definitely don't think Jason's "fine", per se, he's alive, but like of all the characters who've been bought back from the dead, he's probably the one who was most visibly damaged and traumatized by it. The severe difference is somewhat unintentional bc DC makes it out like Jason was always this morally bankrupt angry kid but if you go be the actual comics he's a sweet kid, (and the people he loses it on-- like I won't say death is the answer for any criminal-- but I also can't say I wouldn't really want that rapist to die too, and Bruce was going to do fuck-all about it and let him go on his merry way too, so even if Jason pushed him (and he probably didn't, he just didn't save him when he fell) it's valid of him)....so the only way to reconcile the way he is now at all is that what happened to him deeply changed him.
(Not to mention they made his ressurrection story as angsty as they could. Having to dig yourself out of your grave! Having all the injuries you died with! Being brain damaged and wandering the streets homeless for a year! Getting picked up by the league of Assassins, and clearly not having a good time when you were dunked in the pit, even if it did fix the brain damage...)
And I think maybe treating dying and coming back to life as a fairly traumatic thing for comics characters once in a while could help it seem less meaningless, it shouldn't have no impact on them at all.
But I think you're correct that more than the dying thing, DC's taste for violence and the ressurrection revolving door means the more relevant thing to be concerned about is the kids getting tortured and going through super ultraviolent things that really ruins the power fantasy-- Jason getting beaten to near-death and blown up, Steph being tortured with a power drill for hours and then shot-- and I think that is more of a discussion with how gratuitously violent comics have gotten over all, more than of if kid sidekicks are exploitative. Reveling in the torture of children is what the biggest problem is imo.
I honestly believe stuff like that is part of the power fantasy.
It's not like we want to get the shit kicked out of us, but we immensely admire a hero who gets the shit kicked out of him, then gets right back up and keeps on fighting.
A hero being put through the wringer is part of how we venerate them as a true hero.
It's similar to how Wonder Woman's situation with chains back in the day saw some feminist critique, but part of the reason she's put in chains is so that she can break them. Momentary debasement only serves to further build her up in the end.
Yeah but Jason and Steph and even Damian for a Very short period weren’t supposed to get back up and keep going. Steph was supposed to die for real and she was sexualized while she was tortured. In Robin, a comic that had clearly been aimed at teens before that. She was not the power fantasy. She was the sexual object to be beaten and punished and told she had her death coming, then forgotten. They assumed the audience was men, and assumed they saw her as an object. It was only because her female fans and some male allies made a huge fuss and fought for her that DC bought her back. They didn’t expect us to care that much. They were ANGRY we did. They made her Robin intending to kill her from the beginning.
Jason’s death wasn’t meant to be a power fantasy either. It was a punishment because the writers didn’t like him (or the concept of Robin) and intentionally encouraged fans to hate him. There was definitely not any intention of bringing him back. He was dead for one of the longest times of any comics character— fifteen years.
Damian’s death wasn’t for the kids either, though it was a bit less graphic and mean spirited than the others. Supposedly Morrison intended for him to stay dead, but the writers liked him too much, so he comes back super quickly. He’s the only one I think wasn’t meant to be punished. That him coming back with cool superpowers might have always been on the table.
Remember when Jodie Whitaker regenerated into David Tenant and rather than wearing the previous doctors clothes like every single new who doctor before him he magically regenerated with his own fuckass suit because rtd said her outfit which was specifically designed to be androgynous was too feminine for David Tenant to wear and it would look silly. It was all over from that moment. Like it was over. The fact that she even regenerated into David Tenant in the first place was bad enough. Anyway.
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