I just think it's really neat how much fans have latched onto the fact that Stephanie Brown was Robin.
Like, both in and out of universe Stephanie was never meant to be taken seriously as Robin. The writers only made her Robin so that her death in War Games would be shocking and Bruce only made her Robin because he thought it would make Tim jealous enough to come back. She only had the mantle for 71 days before being fired (for doing something that literally every other Robin has also done and not been fired over), and she was only active during 50 of them. There are only six issues where Steph is Robin in the canon timeline.
Her final words before her death are asking Batman (Batman, because even on her death bed he doesn't trust her enough to take off his mask) if any of it was real. Was she really Robin? And Batman assures her that of course she was, that she was part of the legend and no one can take it away from her. Except it's a lie, because despite his reassurances, Batman never puts up a memorial or does anything to preserve her memory. He never really thinks of her as Robin, and even her friends will always think of her as Spoiler before ever remembering Robin.
Meanwhile DC spent years ignoring her time as Robin, to the point where it was completely erased from existence for awhile. It's technically back now, because timelines are weird, but unlike the others it's never been altered. She's never been given a second chance at it, no one's ever gone back and added more issues or details about those 71 days, or even seems to want to acknowledge them most of the time.
But fans have clung on to it anyway. Sure, there are lots of people who make Robin posts that are just about the boys, but there are just as many people who are ready to fight anyone who doesn't include her. Maybe it was only for a little while, but she was Robin, and we're sure as hell not going to forget it. If DC isn't going to bother to remember, than we will.
Stephanie Brown was Robin. She was part of the legend. It was real. No matter what, no one can take that away from her.
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Clone^2 Damian
If you really think about, Damian's situation in the clone^2 au is... kinda tragic? Especially in the early months of his arrival. Like,,, think about it. Damian has always known he was a clone of Damian Wayne, that he was a copy of the blood son. There was nothing 'original' about him, not even his name (of which at least Danny has that). He was just... a replacement. A disposable one, to boot.
And he knew that, to an extent, by the time he was six years old. he might not have been actively acknowledging it -- he's six years old -- but deep down he knew. And like, he's six years old. Every small child craves the love and affection of an adult, especially their parents, and even though he knew he was clone, I imagine he still considered - and still does consider, somewhat - Talia and Bruce as his mother and father. And I really doubt he was... getting it?
Now, I know Talia loves Damian, her son. At least in some interpretations she does, and in this au she does. But... a clone of her son? I'm not so certain if she would have the same affection for baby Dames as she would for Damian. I don't think she would treat him badly, but I don't think Talia would treat him warmly either. Kinda just, distant. Colder than she would have been with OG Damian.
And, I know I've mentioned Damian's arrival from Danny's point of view, and its kind of comical kind of insane from his perspective -- a little boy clone of Damian Wayne falls through a portal and immediately attacks him. That sounds like a bad joke.
But, if you think of this from Damian's point of view? It's like he just got dropped into a scary movie. Like, think about it. You're six years old, and suddenly a portal, as green and as swirling as your grandfather's pools, opens up beneath your feet and sucks you through.
After an intense bout of vertigo, you end up in a massive, urban city -- completely different from the rural mountain palace that you lived in for the last six years of your life, and in this city, you don't know any of the language. You don't know what anyone is saying, you can't read any of the signs - you are completely stranded, away from home.
And then, to make things worse, you're facing a figure with a terrifying mask and eyes as burning green as the portal you fell through. Of course Damian's first instinct, six years old, is to attack. He's terrified.
And this figure, he's not a good fighter, but he's fast, and he dodges you quickly. He grabs your sword with his hands, and tries to restrain you, saying something in a language you don't know. Naturally, Damian is just scared. He's six! He'd just be learning how to read if he was normal child going to school.
This figure halfway through the fight yanks off his mask -- he realizes you're scared -- and looking at you now, is a youthful version of your father. This is a clone of your dad, someone you have never met but, six years old, still wants to. Damian gets defensive. This is an imposter.
But this imposter eventually gets you home with him - and he's using his little box, his phone, to communicate with you through a mechanical voice speaking in arabic. and it's frustrating. The boy, the imposter, can say whatever to you just fine, but trying to talk back is a hassle and a half. He's six, he doesn't have that much patience.
He wants to go home.
And so he keeps trying to run away. He keeps trying to find out of this hellish concrete jungle, and he keeps getting lost. It's loud, and busy, and there are people talking to you and you don't understand them, and there are rules and signs you don't understand - Damian tries to cross the street and nearly gets hit by a car. He doesn't know how the road signs work, he was never taught. They didn't get to that.
And he gets lost. And it gets dark, and Damian is brave, but he is six, and this is the worst stress he's been under in all his six years of life. He wants, desperately more than anything, to go home. Why wouldn't he? The only stable... semi-stable environment he was in just got ripped out from under his feet, literally! He wants his mother.
And it's not happening.
But there's something good to be said, at least. The imposter that looks like his father always comes and finds him, no matter what. He could have left that morning, and he will find Damian at midnight, frazzled and worried, and carrying an extra jacket with him because it is cold in Amity Park and Damian is six years old.
And sometimes Damian attacks him - he's scared and stressed and he doesn't want to be here. And every time he catches the sword. Even though Damian can see it cut into his hand and pearls of blood well up and stains his fingers. Even though Damian can see him wince in pain and bite his lip, he still catches it.
But with that little box, he coaxes Damian to come back with him. It's cold, it's dark, Amity Park is unsafe at night. They can figure something out tomorrow, please. And every time, he agrees, reluctantly. And the imposter takes the extra jacket he brought with -- a flannel, a hoodie, a jacket -- and he wraps it around him. It's warm, Damian's clothes are not that thick, and even though he thinks he might hate this imposter, he still sticks close to his legs as he leads him down the street.
And sometimes the imposter carries him, because Damian's shoes are not that thick, and he cuts his foot on broken glass while they're walking home. The imposter sits in the bathroom with him and carefully cleans the cut out, and makes sure it doesn't get infected.
There's hope you know, he still has it. His mother will be looking for him. She'll be worried. He's important to them. Damian may not be the original, but he is still a blood son. He is still her son. She will come find him. This nightmare will end soon. He can go home.
And then weeks pass, and nothing. Then months, and nothing. His family is not coming for him, and it hurts. Hurts more than anything. And yet while that happens, the boy he's attacked, and hurt, teaches himself arabic in order to speak to him. He takes Damian out of the house one afternoon and buys him new clothes, or tries to. And then he keeps buying him new clothes. He gives him blankets and gives up his bed to him until they can get him one himself, and steadily he teaches Damian english.
This boy is kind. Kinder than Damian's ever experienced, and he doesn't know what to do with it. He's devastated by the fact that he is not as important to his family as his family is to him. What do you do when you're six years old and you learn something like that? When a random stranger who looks like your father is kinder to you, and cares more about you than your family did?
And then Damian tells him he's a clone. He's Damian Wayne's clone, and he tells him his purpose - that their grandfather made him to kill him. And the boy, the imposter, Damian thinks he probably already knows that he's a clone. But he doesn't say that. He just nods, and asks him if he wants to tell his original about him.
Damian says no. He doesn't want to. He's tired of living in the shadow of his original. He wants to keep this to himself. This is his. For once, all of this is his.
And to his surprise, the imposter doesn't try and convince him otherwise. He just nods, and says okay. And when Damian asks why, the imposter - his brother - looks at him and says.
"I don't care about Damian Wayne. I care about you." And in Damian's gobsmacked silence, his brother continues. He tells him that if Damian doesn't want to tell his original that he exists, then they don't need to. They don't need to worry about the LoA going after him, because clearly if his 'grandfather' needs to make a clone of Damian in order to take him out, then whatever it was that Damian Wayne was doing to keep himself safe, was working.
"Wayne already has people in his corner, he's got Gotham's army of vigilantes to keep himself safe." his brother says with his eyes as blue as moonlight. "You, however. Do not." And he continues, and says that if Damian Wayne has the same training as Damian does, then he will be fine. He doesn't need to be aware of his clone. Because if DW doesn't know about Damian, then the LoA doesn't either.
And here's the thing. Damian would not have survived in the LoA for long. Not as a clone. No matter what, he was going to die no matter what he did, and sooner rather than later. The sword of Damocles was always hanging above his head in the League of Assassins.
That portal, and meeting Danny, saved his life. There's no way around it. And to an extent Damian knows this even at six years old. He may not be aware that he would've died, but he knows that meeting Danny was the best thing to happen to him.
It's no wonder after that, that Damian is as clingy to Danny as he is. Danny is the first person he's met to offer him unconditional love, with no strings attached, only pure affection.
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Three young Black girls were strangled and left in a pond last summer in east Texas, and no arrests have been made in a case that advocates and experts believe has been severely mishandled by local authorities.
Nine-year old Zi’Ariel Robinson-Oliver, 8-year-old A’Miyah Hughes, and 5-year-old Te’Mari Robinson-Oliver, known as the Oliver 3, were reported missing on July 28, 2022, in Atlanta, Texas. The girls’ cousin, Paris Propps, who was watching the three sisters and their siblings while their mother was at work, reported the girls missing around 9 p.m. Hours later, on July 29, all three bodies were found in a nearby pond.
Initially, authorities said it was a drowning. But in March, nearly eight months after the girls were last seen alive, the Cass County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that a homicide investigation is underway.
“Autopsy reports concluded the manner of death for all three girls was homicide, indicating evidence of strangulation. The girls also suffered lacerations to their faces,” the press release obtained by Yahoo News from the Cass County District Attorney’s Office said.
Now advocates are stepping in to demand answers. On April 3, Minister Quanell X, the leader of the New Black Panther Nation, traveled four hours from Houston to hold a press conference in Cass County and demanded that the FBI and Department of Justice step in to investigate. The FBI has not responded to a request for comment from Yahoo News.
Quanell X stood beside the mother of the Oliver sisters during the press conference. “She was told that they drowned, but she always had a suspicious feeling that the girls did not drown. Well, her suspicions were confirmed by the autopsies,” Quanell told Yahoo News.
The Cass County District Attorney’s Office is currently working with the Texas Rangers and the sheriff’s office to investigate the murders. “Multiple witness statements have been obtained, DNA testing is ongoing, and the investigation will continue,” according to a statement obtained by Yahoo News from the district attorney’s office. Yahoo News contacted the office for additional information but a spokesperson declined to provide more details.
According to U.S. Census data from 2022, Cass County has a population of 28,539 people, and advocates say the town does not have enough resources to investigate three homicides.
“They were presumed drowned because of a sham investigation, a lazy investigation by investigators who obviously didn't have the resources, the training that was necessary to properly address an investigative crime scene,” Quanell said.
Investigators are still searching for suspects, but experts say the months-long time lapse could have been avoided.
“The usual time frame [for autopsies] depends, I would say within two weeks,” David Thomas, professor of forensic studies at Florida Gulf Coast University, told Yahoo News.
But for small towns, “they send those autopsies off to a whole different county, hours away from that county to do the autopsy,” Quanell said.
However, the autopsy reports are just one piece of the puzzle. Thomas says more could have been done at the time investigators found the girls in the pond.
“They sat and they made an assumption that they had drowned, which would be unusual for three people to drown at the same place, at roughly the same time — [it] doesn’t make any sense,” Thomas told Yahoo News. “If it was Gabby Petito, the world would have come to a stop.”
Revolt Black News weekly recently reported that authorities were aware that a crime had occurred soon after the incident, but just recently released the information to the public last month. “However, they didn’t say why they delayed sharing the info,” the article stated.
“At the end of the day, any seasoned investigators when they retrieved the bodies from the [pond] would have been able to see that this was more than some accidental drowning by the bruising on the faces and the necks of the girls,” Quanell said.
Quanell believes the investigation is not a priority because the young girls are all Black. “I think Cass County is doing what Cass County historically does when it comes to investigating injustice and murder involving Black people as victims. They’re not taking this case seriously in my eyes, because it’s not three young white children,” he said.
“National statistics tell us that over 60,000 Black women are missing, and Black women are twice as likely than they appear to be victims of homicide,” Brittany Lewis, co-founder of Research in Action, told Yahoo News in March.
Now experts say the investigation will be much harder because of the lengthy time lapse. “That eight month time gap is devastating,” David Carter, professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University and a former Kansas City, Mo., police officer, told Yahoo News.
“The longer time between when the bodies are found and the investigation begins, the harder it is. It’s harder to find suspects, certainly harder to find witnesses, and harder to find evidence,” Carter said.
Carter says that as a former member of the law enforcement, there’s no excuse for the delay in the investigation. “I’m really at a loss of why a criminal investigation wasn’t started immediately,” Carter said.
As authorities continue to investigate, advocates emphasize that whoever committed these crimes is still at large.
“They could be anywhere,” Thomas said. “But I would say the likelihood that they knew that pond was there would probably give you an indication that it might be somebody local or somebody that's very familiar with the area.”
“This sounds like a very, very targeted personal crime,” Carter added.
There have been no arrests in the nearly year-old case, but more people are pushing for justice. Recently, civil rights attorney Ben Crump and celebrities like Viola Davis and Niecy Nash shared a montage video on social media of the Oliver 3. The video was created by Black Girl Gone, a true crime podcast that sheds light on Black girls and women who are missing.
“A child killer. A serial killer is on the loose. One who was not afraid to murder three children. And if you kill three you will kill more. Especially when you believe you will get away with it like this perpetrator has,” Quanell said.
On April 26, Quanell and the New Black Panther Nation plan to host a town hall in Cass County, as they continue to seek justice for the Oliver sisters.
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