Bruce, you’re kind of a douche. Don’t worry, folks. Helena fucking showed him.

theanneh:

sweaterkittensahoy:

discodick:

thegoddamnemily:

Shhhhhh… No one tell DC the evidence still exists!

Fixed.

Is it bad my first thought was, “Oh my god, they gave her a realistic weight!”

And then my second was, “Fuck you, DC.”

Did I miss something

please

somebody tell me what I missed.

I don’t get it

Stephanie has been completely absent from the new DC line-up since the relaunch, and the one time she was supposed to show up (there were press releases sent out about it), they went in at the last minute and very sloppily recolored the issue (some issue of the Smallville digital first comic) so that the character who was SUPPOSED to be the Steph of that universe was, instead, Barbara Gordon.

Basically, DC hates Steph for some reason that no one understands, and their current policy is to pretend she’s never existed.

discodick:

thegoddamnemily:

Shhhhhh… No one tell DC the evidence still exists!

Fixed.

Is it bad my first thought was, “Oh my god, they gave her a realistic weight!”

And then my second was, “Fuck you, DC.”

(FYI, this is in response to my reading the synopsis for Death of the Family when I couldn’t sleep the other night.)

Barbara as the only female bat sort of sets things to be harder for her.

There’s a big old pile of nope I want to put on top of this statement so bear with me.

The idea that Babs should have a harder time doing something because she is the only female in a room, and that thing is not some sort of strength exercise, is what’s deeply problematic in how women have been treated in comics (and general media) for decades. There’s this never-ending expectation that women must somehow be “weaker” than their male counterparts in order to show exactly how strong they are, and while women are generally weaker than men when it comes to straight-up muscle strength, there is nothing else about men and women that is so drastically different on any other level that necessitates a woman being weaker than a man except for literally hundreds of years of societal bullshit that insists the only way a woman can be a woman is to be lesser than a man in some way shape or form.

Barbara (according to the synopsis I read) manages to fight off the first set of baddies and has since spent the rest of the arc somehow incapable of finding a way to get around Joker’s tricks. Where the male bats have been caught in some traps, they keep getting out of them. Why? It’s not because they’re smarter than Babs or think faster than Babs. Babs has always been shown to be highly intelligent, deeply analytical  and able to improvise, same as all the other Bats, so how is it possible that while the men are falling into traps but finding ways out, she can’t find a way out of her own situation? Oh, because she gets knocked unconscious  Of course. And before she can come to, her psycho brother passes her to Joker like she’s currency so that Joker can marry her and James can save his mother. And why wasn’t Babs awake for this? Why wasn’t she allowed to be shown using their negotiation as a way to get free and save her mother herself while they were distracted?

Because it would require effort on the part of whoever pitched this storyline to consider Babs not as a woman in comic book situations but as a character, as a Bat, in these same situations. She could easily go through the exact same whumping the rest of the characters are taking and come out in the same physical and psychological pain they’re in, but because she’s a female being written by people who have stopped giving a good goddamn about their individual female characters, she’s being used as a prop between two male characters to drive up tension.

And there’s the fact that there’s a flashback where Joker flat out stated that after the marriage (he demands Barbara marry him as part of this plot), he will (and I quote from Wiki):

cut off his bride’s legs and arms and keep her alive in the basement to prevent her cheating on him

God, why does that sound so familiar?

jason and nightwing got tied in using a girl as bait though…

See above.

And let’s not forget the last time we had a Batgirl in the middle of a major event.  

Hey, thanks for taking the time to consider it!

If you’re a completist (as I am), her first appearance was in Detective Comics #647-649. From there, she becomes a supporting character in Tim Drake’s Robin run, a few issues of which are available digitally at Comixology. Not sure how much of it is available in trade.

If you’re not a completist, just jump straight on Bryan Q. Miller’s Batgirl, which is all available from Comixology, and it’s also available in trade paperbacks, depending on how you like to read. It’s a lot of fun, and Steph is great in it, and you get what background you need to understand her place in the Bat Family.

Hope that helps!

I feel important to note that saying “Steph would’ve never been raped” because she’s “saving herself” puts out the idea that if you’re “saving yourself” it will somehow keep you rape-free, and that’s just not the case. Rape happens because violent rapists are rapists.

My issue with the near-rape in the Batgirl: Spoiled pilot is that it’s not only lazy writing (because damn near every comic writer has gone to the rape well to make a character more “interesting” or shown to be extra-defeated), it’s done on a character who has been canonically tortured in pretty gruesome detail for a big two comic book (as I outlined in the post that I figure got you to send this ask [warning for comic book torture images and discussions of rape in the text]). Nevermind having a superhero lose in their own pilot is just bad writing. The superhero should ALWAYS win in the pilot. They always have before. I’m not saying Steph couldn’t be bruised and sore; I’m saying that to go from a big fight to an attempted gang-rape is bad form.

I’m sure you meant it as snark to go along with this fan fic idea I hope you enjoy writing, but given that I’ve gotten a few anons about Batgirl: Spoiled tonight, I want to make sure that these points gets made.

And still pissed off. (Discussion of rape and pictures of comic book torture. I’ve tagged, but just in case you don’t have those exact tags saved.)

It’s not JUST the rape narrative, okay? It’s not JUST that it’s made clear Steph is about to be gang-raped, and it’s not JUST the rather disturbing POV shot of Steph getting kicked around by a group of thugs. And it’s not JUST that Steph had to get saved at the end of it.

It’s that when that POV shot was happening, when I saw Steph curling in on herself as she was hit, and then the POV changed to this towering group of goons standing above her as they continued to beat her, all I could see was how Steph died in the comics.

Not the hospital scene, the scenes before. Where we see Steph get stabbed in the shoulder with a shard of glass (Robin #130, page 6):

Hit in the face with a table leg (Robin #130, Page 7):

Choked by the Mask’s bare hands (Robin #130, Page 9):

Choked AGAIN after she breaks his first hold (Robin #130, Page 10):

Tortured (Robin #130, Page 14):

Tortured some more (Robin #130, Page 18):

Tortured to the point of begging for Mask to stop (Robin #130, Page 22):

After she manages to break out of the Mask’s chains, they fight, and she get shot in the shoulder (Robin #131, Page 19):

And kicked down a flight of stairs (Robin #131, Page 20):

So, when you show me a POV of Steph getting her ribs kicked in by a bunch of thugs, all I see are the many, many panels and pages of Steph’s slow, torturous death.

But, I thought to myself as it was happening, surely they’re doing this to put a spin on it. Get Steph to a point where it seems like there’s no hope she’s gonna make it back under her own power, make it seem like she has no tricks left, and then, BAM, she finds her last reserve and gets herself out of the jam. You know, like what happened in the comics after all of THIS happened to her (Gotham Knights #58, Page 19):

(Please note, by the time Bats finds where she’s been, she’s already on the move. She’s contacted NO ONE. This is PURE Steph.) Hell, they could have even recreated her walking along the rooftop like that and really stuck it to this entire fucking arc and how much it sucked and how badly Steph was used as a pawn.

But they didn’t. They nearly raped her and then had someone else swoop in to save her.

Steph.

Steph who got stabbed in the shoulder, hit in the face with a table leg, choked out twice, tortured for MULTIPLE pages, SHOT, and KICKED DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS. (And those are just the panels I decided to SHARE.)

AND GOT. THE FUCK. BACK UP.

So, no, I don’t think I’ll be watching any more of Batgirl: Spoiled. Not just because of the rape narrative. Not just because she had to be rescued but because these are people who are claiming to be fans of Steph and how awesome she is, and they’re so off the goddamn mark I just can’t.

So, I just watched it because it’s all over my dash, and while there’s a lot of good stuff in it, I’m really surprised no one I’ve seen reblogging seems to have issue with the fact that Steph was about to be gang-raped before getting saved by Harley.

Let me be clear: I don’t mind that Steph was saved by Harley. She had a good fight sequence that shows she can take care of herself, and it was some douchebag’s lucky shot that eventually took her down, but she very much went down fighting, but she is literally seconds away from getting gang-raped when she’s rescued.

I’m not okay with that narrative in the comics, and I feel like maybe the only reason people aren’t saying a lot about it is because the creators of the series are female and fans of Steph, and you know what? I don’t care if they are fans. There is no reason to have the rape narrative in that story. They could have ransomed her out as a hostage. They could have threatened to kill her over a period of days. They could have simply taken her around to the low-life hangouts in Gotham and shown off that they had her bloody and unconscious.

And you know, now that I’m typing it out, I sort of have issue with Steph getting her ass kicked so thoroughly in the very first episode. She’s obviously well-trained and good at being Batgirl at the point the story opens, so why does she have to end up bleeding terribly, nearly raped, and saved by someone else? Why couldn’t she have a victorious open and then have the rescue happen at the end of the second episode? Why couldn’t she get some solid fight injuries to show how hard she worked to win and walked out of that fight just fine?

Thank you for being Stephanie Brown fans. Watching all the reblogs happen from my 3-day post binge was really fantastic and helped make a week with a lot of stress be a lot more bearable.

Now, to convince you that Nick Gage and Jim Gordon are totally in a romantic relationship. Because they are. Totally.

If you’re new here: I have an age kink. And Nick and Jim hit it dead on.

Loved this team-up. Two hilarious, ass-kicking ladies on an international adventure. Fabulous.