#*character thesis

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oh, how much i love her :')

[helraising-archived]

rereading comics of both helena bertinelli and helena wayne, it does become apparent that it is difficult to write a huntress without dissecting and reflecting on darker yet everyday themes like the normalisation of violence even at homes and in safe spaces, domestic violence, and specifically, the treatment of women and other marginalised populations most vulnerably affected by patriarchy, implicitly. why crime occurs at all, when children truly learn to get scared, how the asymmetry occurs in various, often times intersecting yet distinct hegemonic systems, and how it leads to hypervigilance even when the everyday life looks normal for people, to the point that even safety measures like holding your keys tight is seen as irrational, unnecessary, a personal affront. why imperfect victims still matter. how prey and predator often mirror each other in the desire-fear for survival, the world is more than a narratively linear war of two sides; it is an ecosystem. that's why the huntress is needed to be morally grey and yet, empathetic and understanding, both towards the people they hunt and the people they protect, because the huntress is just as capable of carrying on the cycle of violence she emerged from. history must, thus, be embodied - as a lifelong lesson, in everyday life. not a shallow legacy.

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lore drop for my helena (cw: csa, incestuous abuse)

okay so, if you're familiar with huntress (1989) and huntress: cry for blood as well the movie old boy, then you'll likely understand what i'm trying to go for here better, this is something i've been working over quietly for months, since the beginning of when i first started to write helena, and i have been trying to consider the implications of it in the grand scheme of things of who she is.

because the main point is that the massacre of the bertinelli is the breaking point, not the first blow.

"did they look like daddy, honey?" that line was seriously disturbing to me considering they were just asking if some "big bad men" "hurt" helena. i am sure there's a different way to interpret that question, but then i read cry for blood and:

so in my portrayal, i essentially combined these two major plots into one even more damning thing, and the way i imagine things went down is:

helena was victimised by a rival don at age six; being used as a pawn to teach her father a lesson;

her family is killed off when she's eight;

she comes back to gotham at nineteen years to begin her revenge arc;

two years later, she's near the end of her revenge arc; at twenty one, her entire world turns upside down. her horrible, selfish, conservative father chose to unconditionally love and raise helena as his own daughter even though he knew she wasn't his, biologically? her mother wasn't a good person or a victim, she was a cheater and a liar. and the very predator who haunted her was someone who was supposed to be her goddamn dad, who should've been her protector, not the reason she needs protecting.

her existence is a mistake. and he's not just projecting his sins on her. he makes it real by desecrating her and stealing her girlhood from her, making sure she'll never feel like a person, that she'll always pay the price for taking his real love - her mom, maria - away from him.

when helena says she's given up delusions of sainthood a long time ago, a part of what that means is how i imagine this:

“I’m sorry, child. Our order can only accept those who enter intact in body and spirit.”

helena being denied entry into nunhood in her personal circumstances, because of her not being a virgin due to having been raped. maybe they would've been more understanding if she went into the gritty details, but at that point, fuck it, what is the goddamn point if she has to fight for acceptance? if she has to bare her soul again and again just to be believed? she does not want people's sympathy, fuck them. you hate her, you hate her, and you stick to it. don't sympathise with her only after learning the scary crossbow lady has a sad past!

helena's memory of this incident is warped; even to revisit it feels like she's commiting violation, because she views her child self as a different person.

but there is freedom, however, through all of this; she's free from feeling indebted and loyal to her family. she does love them and miss them, they were her people, but she's free from their ideology, from "blood is thicker than water", from "blood cries for more blood".

because being related by blood means SHIT.

she overcomes her need for avenging her family through bloodshed, and instead, weaponises her lethality and training to devote herself to another causes, something that required no priestly approval or debt to the mafia, just her own choice: vigilantism and teaching.

she can't save herself, she's ruined, she can't undo the blood she spilled, she can't ever truly be unbroken or redeemed; she will do the ugly, dirty work if it means that other souls, much more deserving of redemption than her, can be saved.

[helraising-archived]

helena is not socially inept. far from it. she's had the fanciest upbringing with etiquette classes. she knows and has been taught how to kiss up or punch down across the hierarchy and what's expected or not. from my perspective, she's largely very neurotypical and understands nuance, social linguistics, the dumb rules, the doublespeak, the implications, etc. she understands reality. she just won't dress her opinion down. she just won't play the fool. she'll be kicked out of the kingdom happily instead. hel is hyper honest to a flaw. she will either stay silent or go 100. she can't beat around the bush. she cannot Not do intense. she's not crass, she's not angry for the sake of being angry, she's not cruel. she just has to be direct and say it as it is. she's straightforward. she has clarity. she has the willingness to take responsibility for her actions, words, thoughts, and beliefs. she is not fragile. she will own up and recorrect her beliefs and hear you out. she doesn't think she's right always; she can understand where you're coming from, she just also opines you're an idiot from coming from there. helena has to act swift. always has to make every shot she shoots count and hit the target. she cannot afford to waste precious time, delay what's right, or miss her mark. every. thing. has. to. count. she doesn't care if she's called a bitch. she'd rather be a lonely unlikeable isolated unvited-from-everything endless negative karma having bitch with her opinions pointing out the flaws than a nice likeable friendly person who bites her tongue and suffocates on the blood from how hard and how long she bites it down for. she will not be a dead woman today. or tonight. or tomorrow. or for as long as she can help it.

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i love you helena :(

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SAY IT MY QUEEN

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Teeth. What lasting mark do they leave on ?

bare bones!

hiii friend, so good to see you again!! thank you for sending this ask <3

my answer for this is that i think the point is that helena does NOT want to leave a mark on other people; that is, i believe, is the point of everything she does, as huntress and as a teacher.

she won't say this out loud, but helena does want to live in a world where vigilantes and superheroes become obsolete -- in the sense that every person, every civilian has the resources, the empowerment to fight for themselves and their people in the face of all adversaries; where the justice system, legal enforcement, and other supportive groups are able to be competent, well-funded, accountable, and stay on track all with the ultimate goal to helping people; not funds, not namesake, but helping the common people these services and systems were created in the first place to help out. helena understands that vigilantism is a response to the insufficiency of the current legal system we do have, among other things; vigilantism is not a solution, it is a workaround, a band-aid -- but the wound itself must heal, civilians shouldn't routinely have to feel they have to take the law in their own hand. not because helena cares about caring about the law, but because the law as it is now is not sufficient at all and requires longterm reform in a lot of ways until every level of population is helped out and accounted for. vigilantism is a symptom of a broken system in her eyes, and that's one of the reasons why she also volunteers, participates in her neighbourhood, and teaches.

as a teacher, helena wants all of her students to leave the sort of skills or lessons or memories or anything that helps them to spread out their wings. she will always be there for her kids, but she doesn't want them to be indebted to her or be reliant on her forever; she wants them to internalise the life lessons and skills she teaches them during their time in highschool, so that they can then learn to navigate adulthood with a stabler sense of self, some form of critical thinking and the ability to research find information, and of course, the emotional strength of knowing when to ask for help -- so her students then, in turn, can learn to help other people and pass on the similar strengths and compassion.

she doesn't mind if people forget her, so long she can do her work 100% with the faith that the next generation, the next people, that the people in this world who are not broken like helena can avoid the pitfalls of life and be a little stronger, self-reliant, and kinder in contributing to the everchanging world, and hopefully, the society itself. <3

[helraising-archived]

spine. when do they lose their backbone, what scares them ?

bare bones!

A VERY GOOD AND THEMATICALLY STRONG QUESTION FOR MISS HUNTRESS THANK YOU LAUREL <3

agency is a core part of helena's story and characterisation overall; she essentially was born without a spine when she was born into one of the most powerful mafia families in gotham, because she fundamentally was put into the difficult spots of:

reconciling with having family members who hurt people on purpose;

the incomprehensible greed and privilege all around that would make anybody inside this ecosystem not have a sense of normalcy, because they are so out of touch and distant from the average life, the average values, the average hardships, and so on;

being both the victim and the oppressor herself, carrying on the same generational footprints as her mother, her foremothers, and so on; being the good wife, so to speak, because the women wouldn't be considered to be the next don, for worse and for better;

that's just the foundation set up by the circumstances of her birth and her last name, even before we get into her actual backstory, her traumas (cyclically occurring from her childhood to now, always reaffirming the same fears, the same wounds, the same beliefs no matter the circumstance, no matter how older, stronger, faster she is), her religion, and all that factor...

having a backbone is what saves her, it is what helped her escape the harrowing, prevalent darkness of the underground. because before you become their soldier or their beneficiary or their victim, you first have to let them tell you what to think.

and that absolutely is why helena refuses to never not think for herself, never not question authority and everything that is said to her, never not critically think of information and mediums and people, never not investigate, educate, read, reflect, dig for 'primary sources' in every part of her life. the moment she doesn't have a backbone, her survival pact ceases right away.

and she is a woman who'd rather die on her feet than live on her knees, metaphorically speaking. <3