an-android-child

[an-android-child]

"you can never leave!!!" "you can never go back!!!" are literary devices & a commentary on the unavoidable & irreversible march of time. it's not abt the ao3 website back button jsyk. use it when you don't like something abt the fic. it's that simple.

[an-android-child]

every time someone says dick grayson has eldest daughter syndrome/is “female coded” i’m requiring them to read 5 comics with a female main character.

[an-android-child]

every time someone says dick grayson has eldest daughter syndrome/is “female coded” i’m requiring them to read 5 comics with a female main character.

[an-android-child]

i'm sorry.

[an-android-child]

THANK YOU SO SO MUCH I'LL GIVE YOU MY FIRSTBORN

@an-android-child saw you in my notes recently. drew a baby bruce for you

[an-android-child]

@an-android-child saw you in my notes recently. drew a baby bruce for you

[an-android-child]

@an-android-child saw you in my notes recently. drew a baby bruce for you

[an-android-child]

@an-android-child saw you in my notes recently. drew a baby bruce for you

[an-android-child]

@an-android-child saw you in my notes recently. drew a baby bruce for you

[an-android-child]

@an-android-child saw you in my notes recently. drew a baby bruce for you

[an-android-child]

@an-android-child saw you in my notes recently. drew a baby bruce for you

[an-android-child]

IM CRYING I'M SCREAMING THIS IS PERFECTION!!!!!!

@an-android-child saw you in my notes recently. drew a baby bruce for you

[an-android-child]

How id judge you based on your favourite FANON version of the batfamily characters

Bruce Wayne: as a self proclaimed Bruce Wayne connoisseur and lover of him in all his forms… this is the fairest one to like out of all of them. My guilty pleasure is treating myself to happy fanon fics after seeing him tortured murdered and revived again strapped to an explosive device attacked by banana man, tied up, roundhouse trip to hell, broken up with his 50th situationship that just tried to k him and lastly like a cherry on top of this shit sundae, made to give his kids a knuckle sandwich for dinner for. Whatever godforsaken reason. so yeah. I get this one. Although this good dad characterisation of him is found especially abundantly in pre crisis comics…just saying…

Dick Grayson: oh brother don’t get me started. DONT GET ME STARTED. Easily top 3 worst fanon characterisations for me. If I have to read “dick is so eldest daughter coded” I might just take my toaster out for a walk to the nearest bridge. Another case of an upbeat and quippy character being reduced to a drooling happy little sunshine baby with no thoughts behind his eyes. Either that or he’s Satan personified who threw poor little timmy in Arkham and only visits him occasionally to spit on him and then leave with his evil precious little baby Damian. (Do you see the common denominator in these yet) And the worst part is? The worst part is? The happy airhead characterisation has been made. CANON. Thank god it’s over but AT WHAT COST??? AT WHAT COST??? IM BLAMING EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU FOR NOTHING BUTT NIGHTWING I HOPE YOURE HAPPY WITH YOURSELVES.

Jason Todd: both spectrums of how he’s portrayed are equally as horrible. Why must we have either the brutish headless chicken needlessly violent (cough. Arguably classist) portrayal or the uwu🥺🥺 everyone hates me🥺🥺 for absolutely NO reason at all🥺🥺 I need to adopt baby Timmy🥺🥺 to make up for my crimes🥺🥺 portrayal. May I introduce something called the middle ground. You don’t need to operate in extremes pookie, people usually have more than one character trait it’s alright🩷. i need fanon Jason to be banned from titans tower. And the colour green. As a whole. No green for him. And also from the “enemy to caretaker” tag. Free him. Although with this one his canon portrayal is sometimes (a lot of times) on par with the fanon in terms of horrible characterisation… so if his fanon characterisation is your fav… well its not like canon gets a gold star from me either so. Go ahead. I guess. Just stop with the classism and we don’t have an issue🩷

Barbara Gordon: worst offence I’ve seen is making her Bruce’s daughter as is often done with Steph. First of all she has a father. An alive father. Who loves her and started a whole war for her. Second of all. If you told her she’s Batmans daughter she’s throwing herself into the Gotham harbour. Please stop. And the usual making her an accessory to a Batboy and stripping her of everything interesting just to make her Nightwings airheaded girlfriend. Then again. That’s also been canonised thanks to my FAVOURITE author (sarcasm) T*m T*ylor so. As you can see we are not doing well and haven’t been since they made her batgirl again. Burn the burnside suit. Ironically the women have mostly been able to avoid especially egregious mischaracterisations (apart from making them two dimensional flavourless paper cutouts) through the fandoms misogyny um I mean DISINTEREST in them, considering that Cass, Steph and Barbara COMBINED have less than 1/5 fics under their character centric tags than Tim Drake so. Ironically by being forgotten they could escape the fate of being so grossly mischaracterised they are virtually unrecognisable. With the price of being mentioned once and tossed aside in favour of centring The Batboys. Go figure

Cassandra Cain: …really? You actually LIKE what they’ve done to her in fanon? My beautiful ruthlessly honest hilarious without even trying babygirl princess… she’s been ending people verbally and physically the moment she could speak and they made her the quiet Asian girl stereotype… They took her wings… If you honestly like the version of Cass that’s a cardboard cutout bland boiled chicken version of herself and a lot of the time just lazily included for the sake of avoiding being labelled a misogynist… alright…😟 just know you’re missing out on peak that is canon Cass. Read batgirl 2000. Goody two shoes rule following Cass isn’t real she won’t hurt me

Tim Drake: this is undeniably the worst and most infamous one. Because his mischaracterisation in fanon doesn’t only affect him but. Every. Single. Person. Around him. If you genuinely like the way he’s characterised to make him the helpless noodle armed noodle legged victim of all the evil demons that surround him then… idk what to say other than please start reading comics. Please. One correctly selected storyline per character is enough. PLEASE. The way literally everyone I know hates his mischaracterisation in fanon, fans and haters alike. I could write entire essays on the damage that portrayal has done to the entire batfamily not just him. Idk how people managed to do it, it’s honestly an award worthy feat. Yeah if you like this one I can with full confidence say you do not like a single batfamily character but rather the caricature versions of them that evolved from satans asshole.

Damian Wayne: easily one of worst cases cause this one is sometimes so racist I feel like I’m looking at straight anti Arab propaganda post 9/11. What are we doing. I’ve seen people draw him in CAGES, say that “Jon tamed him” like he’s some kind of animal instead of a human being and the way #some of you villainised him when he whole ass traumatised 10 year old child is just. Wow. Comes on par with the previous persons characterisation because FOR SOME REASON… the worst portrayals of Damian are always paired with #him. Don’t even get me started on the portrayal of the other Al-ghuls. I think I might kill myself before we even finish

Stephanie brown: another case of mostly forgotten or just included for the sake of not being labelled a misogynist. I feel like out of everyone she’s lowkey has it the… I wouldn’t say best… but okayest in fanon. Apart from the usual making her A Batkids Keychain, two dimensionally stupid (as is the norm with any upbeat character😐 especially women😐) or… shudders in horror... Bruce’s daughter… I haven’t seen portrayals that are as blatantly offensive as some of the others on the list, though it could be that I was just spared those horrors by being lucky enough to not have encountered those dark corners of the fandom. Overall very tame though you’re very welcome to share your horror stories with her fanon portrayal because I am sure there are a lot. Her canon portrayal now is. Bad enough. Don’t even remind me of how they made her be towards Bernard and Tim cause I fear I will throw up. She should be allowed to throw stones at all of their heads as enrichment

Duke Thomas: same problem as Cass’. Being toned down to a two dimensional goody-two-shoes who follows all the rules like the innocent angel he is!! Totally not because people only include him to avoid being called racist and not make an effort to learn what he’s actually like so they default to the safest characterisation: nothing!!!! Man I love the way any character that’s not a white man is portrayed in fandoms!!! If you like this version of duke im confused on what you like exactly cause it’s so far removed from his canon characterisation it’s insane. Like the sheer bigotry in picking the most complex characters and making them two dimensional rule following goody two shoes to avoid GOD FORBID having to actually put them in your plots and portray them correctly just because they’re not white men is. Yeah. I’m tired of this. Then again the white men aren’t even portrayed correctly so nobody is having fun but AT LEAST THEYRE THERE!!!!

Alfred Pennyworth: listen. I’m not saying he doesn’t have his good moments where he’s a decent father/grandfather figure. but let’s not act like he’s this innocent faultless angel frail old man who’s never done anything wrong in his entire life and has been the best father figure in existence. He is NOT. I’m tired of all of you acting scandalised when someone dares to not like him for VERY good reasons. But I guess liking his fanon characterisation is comparatively not as bad as some of the others so. You get a pass

Kate Kane: I don’t think fanon even knows she exists so there isn’t much of a “fanon version” to like. Although Im sure she’s probably mischaracterised whenever someone shoehorns her cardboard cutout into their fics to fill their 25% women quota but it’s not as wide spread as say Cass or Steph’s mischaracterisations.

At least from what I’ve personally seen as this is a subjective opinion about the way Batman characters are often portrayed in fandom.

[an-android-child]

Hi guys, this is going to be brief, but lets talk about Lady Shiva and motherhood: 

I'm fairly certain that most comic book fans, if they are aware of Shiva, know her from the Batgirl (2000) comics and her appearances in other works in subsequent years (which is fine!! Batgirl 2000 is great and Pucketts run contains some of my favorite Lady Shiva moments ever). Most have not read her earlier appearances, with the possible exceptions of "A Death in The Family," in which she cameos, and her prominent role in Robin vol 1 (1991) where her character is grossly distorted to bolster the virtue of the new titular Robin. It may come as a surprise to some, that Lady Shiva was originally a character who represented transience, freedom, duality, passion, grit, and skill, rather than just death, violence, and (still) incredible skill. I don't mean to sound too extreme, this may be a dumbing-down of her more contemporary comic book appearances, and it is a given for long-running comic book characters that their personalities and defining traits will shift, but it is truly so frustrating to lose a character you love to a version of them who wears their skin and only sometimes speaks in words that belong. While Dixon's writing choices can be blamed for her turn to villainy, he cannot be blamed for the thing that most frustrates me about modern Shiva portrayals: her commitment to motherhood.

Shiva became a mother during her Batgirl (2000) origin story, which absolutely gutted and threw out her original motivations. In this origin story David Cain selects Lady Shiva for her desirable traits, like an animal, kills Shiva’s sister Carolyn, and then beats her in a fight. Shiva is threatened with death and is essentially used by Cain as breeding stock. She is literally trapped by motherhood. This is a painful and stark contrast to the absolute freedom that the character previously embodied.

More than once in this issue Shiva says that Cain freed her or gave her life purpose. It is unclear why she attributes this to him because her most liberating moment appears to be when she chooses to leave him and abandon her daughter–the daughter she never wanted, the daughter she was forced to carry.

So much is unclear and confusing about this story beat. If she was capable of freeing herself, why did she wait long enough to carry Cain’s child to term? What changed within that time frame? How much was Cain coercing her? Why does she renounce the part Carolyn's death played in her life and instead emphasize Cain’s role?

The original version of her origin (Richard Dragon 1977) has her become Lady Shiva to take revenge on her sister's killer. For Sandra, Lady Shiva's dangerous life offers a thrill, a sense of freedom, and an outlet for grief.

The Batgirl (2000) version of Shiva’s origin appears to present Lady Shiva's becoming as an evil act. She frees herself, yes, but she is a broken woman, she is fueled by hate and the desire to cause destruction. Instead of from grief, she frees herself from her rapist, and importantly, from motherhood. This action almost slots her into an evil queen archetype. Warped by archetypical motherhood, she is immediately less defined as her own character and more associated with the act of abandoning a child. 

Of course, in Pucketts run, Shiva does become an important figure in her daughter’s life, though less as a mother and more as a catalyst. It is other writers who drag Shiva back into the role of mother bit by bit.  

Though Batgirl comics often handle Shiva’s character with the most love and nuance, they are also the comics in which her role as a mother is most emphasized. One of the most recent Batgirl releases, (SPOILERS FOR BATGIRL [2024] ISSUE 6) has Lady Shiva complete her lukewarm redemption arc by doing the most motherly thing a woman can do–sacrificing herself for her child (this arc is even called the Mother arc). Cass's inner narration reads: "A mother always sacrifices in the name of her child. So her child may live--even as she dies." To me, this is a hollow and unworthy death for Lady Shiva, because I would prefer for her to be known as something other than a mother. By placing the label of mother onto Shiva her most interesting traits are reduced or villainized. Motherhood is not freedom, for this character. Motherhood was not the plan for this character. And now it is the thing she is most known for. Now, she has even died for it. (Supposedly! This is comic books, she’ll probably be back in a few months so whatever idk.)  

Okay bye ily

[an-android-child]

fuck reading lists and recs just grab any comic and get started

[an-android-child]

rule #1 of writing Jason Todd is that he needs to think he understands everybody who's ever existed intimately because of severe projection. rule #2 of writing Jason Todd is that he kisses boys