The thing that pisses me off the most about Bruce blaming Jason for his own murder-by-serial-killer-slash-international-terrorist (the reason why it’s one of the only things I will deem OOC) is that it was in NO WAY a character-focused decision.
Like, you can enjoy it as a characterization element, but it came about entirely due to Doylist circumstances—that is, the fact that Jim Starlin HATED Jason, and then later Marv Wolfman doubling down on the Jason-blaming because OTHERWISE there would be a lot of tough questions to answer about WHY BRUCE WOULD BE ALLOWED TO HAVE ANOTHER CHILD SOLDIER.
Gonna answer these for Dogma and Tup. Also in case this wasn't abundantly clear, no I am not shipping them. No clonecest. They can still have a deep platonic love for each other.
The quiet moments in a relationship are sometimes just as important are the verbal ones; describe an important moment where the characters in your story shared a quiet moment (like sitting together while reading, watching tv with one another, bumping elbows in the kitchen in the morning as they make coffee, etc), and tell us why you consider it so important.
For Dogma, the quiet moments he treasures is braiding Tup's hair. He can just be silent and focus on the repetitive motions. He thinks he's benefitting just as much as Tup is, which would make it even better because it's purely motivated by love and care, not anxiety and the feeling he has to repay Tup for something. And the knowledge that Tup trusts him to do this makes him feel all warm inside.
For Tup it's a little more simple and straightforward. He just likes hugging and cuddling Dogma to shower him in affection as much as he can. Dogma doesn't trust many people to touch him. In the middle of the night when either of them have woken from a nightmare, this means even more to Tup because Dogma trusts him even when he's on edge.
adkhakfdkj filled with soft feelings right now halp.
How does your main character feel about being affectionate? How easily and readily can they say “I love you” when they’re ready?
For Tup, affection is easy as breathing. He likes to be open and obvious about it. Whether this is verbal, or in the form of a hug, he's ready to give it. This is especially helpful for Dogma who likes when things are open and obvious, so he doesn't have to worry about missing some hidden cue. When Tup says "I love you" he really means this, and Dogma knows and trusts this despite all his anxiety and post-umbra guilt trip spirals.
Dogma does not say "I love you" verbally. He "says" it in all the little things. He says it in the way he braids Tup's hair, he says it in the way he trusts Tup (and Echo) to love him and care for him, he says it in a. thousand thoughtful things he does. And for Dogma trust is the key foundation for his love. It doesn't come easily but it's so firmly rooted that it would tear him apart if that trust was betrayed. Like dirt crumbled and torn apart when a plant is removed.
So anything that Dogma does that means he trusts, shows he loves.
gfdlkahfkjl more softness. Someone come here I need to hug you.
A low-key brilliant writing thing that I don’t think was intentional is the deeper logistics of Michael’s scheme.
Like, Michael’s scheme is partly written as it is so the audience isn’t starting from zero at the start of season 2. But its so funny that Michael, Shawn, and all the demons never tried lying about the afterlife. Yes, they said “oh we’re the Good Place and you’re good people” but they’re so creatively bankrupt they never think about lying about that afterlife system. They pretend to be on a different side of the afterlife rules instead of making up new afterlife rules entirely. Michael could have pretended any religion was real or claim they were created by a giant duck god and make them go every week to a duck god celebration. Or claim that all people who belong in the good place have to jump through a fire every week or stab each other a little to give the afterlife some good afterlife juice and that’s just the rules don’t worry about it. They didn’t even actually need Good Janet, they could just claim all Janets are like that and they’re doing their best to cater for human needs in spite of that.
But no, the afterlife is so obsessed with the rules and structures of how things are that it never occurs to them to try something different. And that fits so well with everything we’ve seen of them.
I still hate how in Endgame, out of the blue, every one of our fave did the complete opposite than of their past arc as their reaction to the trauma of the snap.
Tony Stark, inventor, billionaire, genius, mechanic? Someone who wanted to fix the whole world? He sits back and barely even tinkers during that 5 years. Being a family man is nice and all, but as it was pointed out even in the movie he's unable to not try to fix things when he has the tools. And he still has the tools.
Steve Rogers, whose defining characteristic is that he can't sit still even when he is literally physically unable to do much else, and who had been fighting for Bucky for 3 movies? He sits down and doesn't fight shit. The character who was always ready to worm his way through rules and commit anything for his goal to save the world also sits back, also preaches about moving on and fitting into the situation instead of changing it... You know, like his famous speech put into Peggy's/Sharon's mouth in his movie urges to not compromise on the important things.
Natasha Romanoff, who has been the practical, can-do type and definitely a field agent in every fiber of her being, also retires from the field. Also she who always tried to hide put herself in the spotlight. Though I admit her characterozation suffered so much under the different directors who couldn't handle her that it's hard to even think of a consistent character arc for her in the mcu.
Thor Odinson, don't even get me started, his arc is about nobility in fight, and growing up to be the right and just king of Asgard after learning about past mistakes... And yet he doesn't fight and doesn't rule, like he was supposed to be.
Bruce Banner became chill, no explanation whatsoever except SCIENCE (which is actually not science), and the character who appeared to be the less social among the gang becomes instagram celebrity who enjoys attention and lives for it.
And Clint Barton, the man who had been sent to kill Natasha, took one look at her and decided to spare and save her instead, the man who welcomed the Maximoffs into the Avengers team, forgiving their past if they were willing to do better in the future, the man who felt so guilty over his killings in Avengers - that man went on a murder spree for funsies.
And some people call it character development??? Listen, we know how these people had reacted to trauma before and you literally try to tell me that all 6 of them, without an exception, suddenly do the complete opposite of those coping mechanisms?
@ratnananda wanted Nidhana-verse Mahendra, Mama Baahu, Sumitra, and Jayasena!
Mahendra
1. Honestly, Mahendra--like Shivu--is a bit of a brat. We’re in close third perspective, so his rationalizations make him far more sympathetic, but without those, this kid is just as prone to defying his parents to run off and do as he pleases as his canon self.
2. Also, even Mahendra admits he’s not always the greatest friend to Gopu. (Can I detour and talk about Gopu for a second? I have an inordinate love of this kid, considering he’s never appeared on-page; but he’s this roly-poly little boy who is just constantly 100% Done with Mahendra’s stupidity.)
3. Part of the reason Mahendra has such a hard time putting together the clues about his parents is because, like any other kid, his worldview is so self-centered. As far as he’s concerned, Father is only important because he’s Mahendra’s father; who cares that people are making cryptic statements? (And, as in Chapter 12, his reaction to finding about about the saving-Kuntala thing is not to be impressed, but rather to be pissed off that he never got to hear this vastly superior version of how his parents met.) This also plays a role in his reactions towards Sivagami; as heartwarming as it is that he instantly accepts her as his grandmother, it’s also indicative of how he’s only really able to process people in their relations to him.
4. All of that said, this Mahendra (and yes, I admit, I have multiple versions of Mahendra that I’ve imagined for fic purposes, including many that are raised by his parents) is my favorite and definitely the most mature. He also benefits from having been raised not only by parents who love him, but a community that’s supportive and nurturing; that village was an amazing place for a little boy to grow up, and in my head, everyone who lives there deserves credit.
5. When in doubt, elephants.
Mama Baahu
(OK, admittedly this is easy because we canonically know nothing about her and I can make up whatever I want.)
1. I think she had a very emotionally lonely childhood, despite being surrounded by multiple stepmothers and with like, twenty-plus half-siblings. This unfortunately is probably what keeps her from really befriending anyone in Mahishmati, and I never see her and Sivagami as having anything more than a strictly cordial relationship (on the surface) at best.
2. She is silent by long habit, speaking only rarely. That’s something people who knew her and Baahu suspect she passed on to her son.
3. Her overall tendency is to think of things in terms of how she can most efficiently use them in her plans -- this manifests itself as inventiveness in her son.
4. She’s honestly far more selfish than Sivagami--she’s never been taught to think of anything more than her husband and her children, and certainly never to consider the country when there are more important things at stake. In that sense, she’s grateful Sivagami had the raising of Baahu; she shudders to think what she might have done to him.
5. She was a much better person than she thought she was.
Sumitra
1. She’s a pacifist, or at least someone who takes “first do no harm” to heart. This by no means suggests she is not brave.
2. She’s pretty much the only person in the Kuntalan royal family with some sense of propriety, and it weighs on her.
3. Despite that, she’s as down-to-earth and unpretentious as the rest of the Royal Family. She, just like everyone else, knows the servants by name; even “Shivu,” and she’s amused and delighted that Devasena falls for him rather than encouraging her to marry someone richer.
4. Her personal power in Kuntala is considerable. Not only does Jayasena not interfere in “women’s matters” (which has a remarkably flexible definition, including religious functions, marriages, women’s health, and anything Jayasena doesn’t feel like dealing with at the moment), but she sits atop the throne with her husband, which even Amarendra doesn’t do.
5. She is barren, explaining why there are no children in the Kuntalan royal family and also why she and Jayasena are so protective of Kumar Varma and Devasena.
Jayasena
1. His most important priority is his sister’s happiness and well-being. Even Kuntala comes second to that, which is...not the greatest trait for a ruler, but makes for an amazing brother.
2. That said, he wholeheartedly believes his sister can do no wrong. This is a man who, in his introduction in BB1 rants about the injustice done to her and how she is the rightful queen; in BB2, his defining dialogue is “Nothing is impossible for my sister! Try again, sweetie :D :D :D”
3. He and Devasena were orphaned young. I mean, from the movie canon alone, for all we know the parents ‘Sena died only like, six months ago; but given Devasena and Jayasena’s tendency to rely on each other and support each other in that way siblings all alone in the world do, I go with that head canon.
4. His rebel chief self is literally a tragedy: created of a man who has lost everything he ever loved and valued, with the lingering suspicion that if he had only been more careful, he could have protected it. (I can’t imagine how awful the sucker punch of “your sister’s widowed, bereaved of her son, and captured by her evil brother-in-law” combined with “oh yeah, the kingdom’s also under attack and going to be destroyed” was for him. He must have felt that he’d let down his parents and been unable to preserve any of their legacy.)
5. His death is actually a kindness; twenty-five years of anger and misery have made it so that he’d never be able to recover, and Kuntala will do much better with a younger, more hopeful generation to bring it back to life.
Obviously, the entire arc of Tom King’s Vision rests on the Vision’s desperate need for normality. But that idea of normal is so wrapped up in what he’s experienced, in that time of the life he was truly happy. He’s trying to escape the mess of him family by building a new one. But he doesn’t understand how he’s just repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
And so Virginia is plopped into this dream world Vision is trying to build. Its the opposite problem Vision and Wanda had. Vision wanted normal, Wanda wanted different. On the surface, Virginia and Vision both want the same thing. But the way they go about it is different. Virginia knows that Vision’s living the past and knows that living among the humans like this is doomed to failure. She isn’t even sure if he loves her for her or because she’s Wanda’s replacement. But she carries on because she can’t decide what else she could be good for. So she focuses on protecting the family, trying to keep things normal, trying to keep things under wraps. She does everything to support Vision’s dream of normality despite knowing its all going to fall apart. And its not just about blind support, its to protect Viv and Vin from the consequences his dream is going to create. She made the sacrifices necessary to raise a family.
And it destroys her. Trying to protect the dream and protect the children and maintain the facade eats at her until it finally does shatter with Vin’s death. And it destroys her because she tied her identity to Vision’s dream and then there was nothing left for her. The final sacrifice was herself. Her identity, her reputation, her life. All to make sure Viv didn’t have to suffer from Vision’s dream. She never had to chance to discover who she is outside of that identity.
But Viv gets the chance to learn from Vision’s mistakes. That its okay not to be normal. Even if she cuts herself off of her emotions in Champions, she gets the chance to have the identity Virginia never got to own. She gets to explore her interest in humanity, in sexuality, in friendship, in Riri. Virginia has already lost her chance to find herself. So she gives up the things she has left so Viv can have that chance.
andersen gabrych's batgirl: And Then It Got Worse [10 Hour Loop]
this whole post started because this post about cass's recklessness and passive suicidality after war games brought the thought back up in my head. going hand in hand with that behavior, cassandra starts behaving much more brutally at points post-war games. really this is just going to be a long rambling thing about cass's mental state in the gabrych run. my daughter who has every disease. my credentials are that ive been obsessed with cassandra cain for almost a decade.
anyway, despite the whole "wow she's being so brutal and reckless" thing it isn't as if her morals have meaningfully shifted, but it's just so clear cass is barely holding the broken pieces of herself together at that point, even as she starts making friends and finding a community. cass's time in bludhaven usually gets brought up mainly for those moments of recovery and growth, and how that was then taken from her too soon (thanks, infinite crisis, and i'll come back to how that plays into this at the end. also about how batgirl 2000's ending is Good, Actually), but it's made clear again and again that she hasn't even begun to really face any of the underlying grief and guilt she feels over steph. her growth in bludhaven is built on sand. and when it collapses, it collapses without warning.
andersen gabrych wrote batgirl (2000) for its final 16 issues, following war games--#58-73. his run has some dumb shit mixed in here and there, but it's so thematically packed i keep coming back to these issues more than probably the rest of the series put together.
this is going to be a really long one. lots of panels. walk with me for a bit.
there are points in the gabrych run from early on where the violence goes well past anything we'd seen from her before as batgirl. sure, she had her "stop someone's heart, terrify them for a few seconds, restart it" trick she pulled once earlier in the series, but—here, let's set a little bit of a baseline and go back to the puckett/scott run for a second. take how bruce describes cass's approach early on in the series here in #4.
that was usually fairly consistent as a key aspect of how cass fights. and then stephanie brown died. let's dip into that part for a second.
so we flash-forward to gabrych and bludhaven. issue #58, gabrych's first issue, establishes that cass can't bear to talk about steph.
issue #59, cass catches herself mentioning steph and immediately drops the subject. some of that's for tim's sake, but it clearly pains her, too.
issue #61 has cass's first fight with the brotherhood of evil, ending with her first near-death vision of steph. gemini has her wrapped up for about a page, and what does cass do to get out of the hold?
she sets her on fire. cass doesn't even know who gemini is at this point, much less whether she can take it. sure, she uses the extinguisher, but gemini's still on fire afterwards. ultimately, gemini's fine, she walks it off and she's back in the fight before the end of the issue, but cass seems genuinely surprised when gemini attacks her again.
issue #62. cass's drowning hallucination of steph in the aftermath. cass's guilt and her unsteady footing with bludhaven practically come up in the same breath.
issue #64! cass fights deathstroke and ravager. in that issue she's reflecting on her history, seeing herself in rose, seeing both of her fathers in slade and thinking about how she's trying to be better, to be something bigger than herself. it seems like it's building to some moment of empathy, but then she pulls this shit.
she stabs rose in the throat to force slade to take her and retreat. she's certain rose won't die, but that's only because slade is there to stop it. not exactly typical cass behavior, and the way it mixes with very typically cass introspection in the issue makes it stand out even more.
next issue, #65! the shiva search starts, and cass gives david cain probably the ugliest beating she's given anyone up to that point in the series. (he absolutely deserved all of it and more, but that's not the point.)
issue #67, after cass leaves bludhaven in #66. she's reluctant to call on barbara for help after their falling out way back in the horrocks run, and makes what's probably her last healthy decision of the series only because she knows steph would encourage it.
later in that issue, we get this moment. it's clear just how dark of a place cass is in, and we get her most vehement refusal of the steph topic. hell, she can't even bear to hear barbara talk about her.
issue #68. cass briefly seems aware of at least some of the issues with her latest behavior, even if she still has tunnel vision about finding shiva. the recklessness, the downward spiral.
a throughline in this issue and the next two is both shiva and nyssa playing to cassandra's doubts from different angles.
normally, villains monologuing at cass is the kind of thing she'd just shrug off, but under the circumstances, it's easy to see it getting under her skin. especially with where this is going. more for issue #69.
i want to mention the use of mr. freeze here just because the way cass empathizes with his grief and guilt feels like a pretty key part of the throughline i'm focusing on here. i could start bullshitting about steph and nora parallels, but i won't. use your imagination. victor's line in that last panel especially feels like a reflection of cass's time in bludhaven, and just like with cass, victor's world is about to come crashing down.
doubt's seeped in. sure, she reasserts her belief against killing, but right now, it's shaken. she sees one too many failures on her part, one too many tragedies she feels responsible for.
anyway i hit the image limit while filling in this part so i'm just gonna skip to the payoff now. rip mad dog this aint about you.
all of this brings us to #73, the final issue. like i said up top, i'm outing myself here as actually being a really big fan of the ending, even if gabrych was stuck with so much editorial bullshit. just hear me out. anyway, there's that scene while cass is in the lazarus pit and having her second "hallucination" of steph. (i maintain this one was meant to be real at the time and got retconned along with steph's death because it makes no sense otherwise, but i already did that post years ago so let's just keep rolling...)
she pleads with steph that she needs to go back, that she has friends, a city, she has things and people she has to live for. and then-
she sees the destruction of bludhaven, sees brenda's body, and that's enough to shatter whatever pieces of herself she'd managed to put back together since War Games all over again. not just that, but her doubts about the no-kill rule have become agonizing—and reflecting on something so central to who she is as a person is one thing, but this is something else altogether.
it hits her that she had countless opportunities to prevent this by killing the villains behind it, and that's one thing for bruce to grapple with, but for cass, whose convictions about it run even deeper, it has to feel like she's tearing herself apart inside. in this moment, on one of the worst days of her life—reopening the wounds of two of her other worst days—and with every bit of poison nyssa and shiva have whispered in her ear in this arc, she feels like her efforts to be better have ultimately made her a failure as a hero. she's finally facing every bit of guilt and grief she's buried in her time in bludhaven, and it's been amplified exponentially. this still isn't enough to truly break cass's morals... but it bends them to a point she just isn't equipped to bounce back from right away.
of course, cass emerges from the pit, she rushes shiva before her head clears, and they have the whole conversation about cass's birth and what happened to carolyn. cass, still with those same doubts screaming in her head, just has two questions.
she blames herself for those 48 people. just like she blames herself for bludhaven. just like she blames herself for lazara. just like she blames herself for stephanie. and for a moment, when shiva tells her "it's why I had you," she lets her doubts that she can or even should be more than she was born to be win out. under impossible and prolonged strain, her rules bend. just far enough, just long enough.
so they fight to the death one last time. this time, cass wins. she snaps shiva's neck.
shiva's still alive, barely still talking, but immobile. she begs cass to finish it, and when she thinks cass is going to throw her in the pit, pleads with her not to.
cass finds a middle ground. she throws her onto a hook hanging above the pit. she's killed shiva. even if she's going to fall into the pit and revive sooner than later, it's hard to imagine cass feels any better about doing it just because she left herself an out. she bounces between remorse and triumph in the space of a page. and that takes us to the final page of the series, where, at least for now, it seems like cass has given up the bat. she's calling herself the same runaway girl who fled cain and macau all those years ago.
even if cass has been outwardly calm in the face of a lot of what happened in this issue? it reads like the problems she's been struggling with since steph's death aren't just relapsing, they've exploded.
so, where does that leave her in the aftermath?
i'm starting to get into headcanon territory and trying to wrangle didio's infinite bullshit, but after thinking about this ending long enough i absolutely see why bruce didn't involve her in any of the mid-One Year Later shit with gotham or his trip with the boys? i honestly don't think she was there or even reachable when those decisions were made. there's no sign of her in the 52 maxiseries until week 8, two months into the timeskip. i tend to think she spent at least a month away from gotham just running from the situation and having one hell of a mental health episode. if only she knew how badly things were gonna go once she went home and put the suit back on.
here we go. the last arcs of cass's batgirl series spend a lot of time on setting up something like what happened in one year later, and if
a.) it had been a story about cass, told from her perspective, and not a vehicle for tim and bruce angst
b.) gabrych had written it
c.) the slade thing was always the plan
it'd probably mostly work. it might even be good. like, seeing how it shook out in the end, there's a solid version of the story buried in there that beechen just... didn't care about telling.
cass was in full moral and emotional crisis at the end of her book and at her lowest point in years. the stupid evil cass shit is fundamentally a story about a traumatized and disillusioned young woman being manipulated and controlled by someone wanting to use her as a weapon--and her eventually breaking free of that. but everything about how it was presented is just the fucking worst
