#Cass and Lady Shiva

[atlantic-riona]

Batgirl #9 (2000) // the Iliad trans. Caroline Alexander // Táin Bó Cuailnge trans. Thomas Kinsella

[evasive-anon]

I am consumed by how well Cass and Shiva understand each other. The way they speak purely through body language in combat, the shared grief and guilt leading to suicidal ideation, and the catharsis of redemption only through sacrifice.

[ghostbsuter]

"Hello there, little comet."

Robin wirled around with his sword pointed, standing still just before the skin of the others throat.

"Always so tense." The person teases and Robin tuts, pulling his sword back.

"Still obnoxious as always, Wraith."

The man chuckles lightly, stepping out of the shadows with a wave. "Have you learned any slang now that you live with your father? Fitting in is one of the most important skills for an assassin."

Robin scowls. "I'm not an assassin anymore."

The man is undeniable smiling beneath the mask, green eyes crinkling. It has Damian feeling all soft and squishy, he turns around with a huff, kicking the ridiculousness of those feelings away.

"You have grown."

"I have."

"I'm glad."

Robin averts his eyes as his comm comes to life, crackling in his ear. "Robin, mugging happening around the corner from your position."

He gives his acknowledgement, turning back to the man—

Only for him to be gone.

Damian sighs. "Until then, brother."

He leaps across the buildings, stepping in as the mugging happens.

—

(Usually, I would put this in the tags, but I'll put it here now for some background!)

Wraith, also formally known as Danyal al Ghul, son of Talia al Ghul and Lady Shiva.

He is younger than his sister, Cass, but older than Damian. During his league days, his loyalty stayed towards Talia, always has until he met Damian as a baby.

He became his guard, much like Cass was supposed for the Demon Head, one of the few teachers Jason had after and went on missions with.

Does he reappear later again? Who knows! He is still with the League, under Talia's command while sticking close to Ra's. A spy if you will.

[madcapmento]

You guys ever think about Cass making a goodbye message for Barbara before leaving for a death match she’s prepared to lose on principle if all else fails? You ever think about how those two love one another so much but can’t understand each other the way they wish they could? You ever think about Babs trying to raise a teenage girl who was brought up by an assassin, qualifies as one of the most dangerous fighters on the planet, and throws herself in harms way like she doesn’t care if she lives or dies?? You ever think about Babs trying to give her a life beyond just crime fighting?? You ever think about how Cass didn’t want that for the longest time?? You ever think about Batgirl as a mantle and all the weight it carries?? YOU EVER THINK ABOUT CASS SAYING THANK YOU AND THAT ORACLE WAS LIKE A MOTHER, BEFORE LEAVING TO DIE AT THE HANDS OF SHIVA??? Me neither me neither me neither.

[leoleolovesdc]

Your local daily reminder that Cassandra Cain had to choose over re learning her abilities from Shiva and having to battle her to death a year later or training like a normal person and taking time to get as good as she used to be. And of course she fucking choose to get killed by Shiva

Srsly no one talks abt this girl's suicidal idealization, she was literally trying to get herself killed out of guilt for killing a man ten years ago when she was a fucking child who didn't know what she was doing

[kermit-coded]

O Mother Where Art Thou?

batgirl (2000) // bethany webster, from mother wound healing: why it’s crucial for women // batgirl (2000) // enough, suzanne buffam // batgirl (2000) // h.d., from “envy” // fariha róisín, how to cure a ghost // batgirl (2000) // batgirl (2000) // james baldwin, from jimmy’s blues and other poems // janet fitch, from white oleander // batgirl (2000) // batgirl (2000) // clarice lispector, “excerpt”, collected stories (trans. katrina dodson) // batgirl (2000) // jack gilbert, “the abandoned valley” // batgirl (2000) // tomas tranströmer, tr. by robert bly, from a poem titled “track” // batgirl (2000) // batgirl (2000) // may sarton, journal of a solitude // batgirl (2000) // adonis, from selected poems; “a piece of bahlul’s sun” (tr. khaled mattawa) // batgirl (2000) // batgirl (2000) // neil hilborn, “a place where someone loves you” // batgirl (2000) // laura gibson, from “empire builder” // batgirl (2000) // anne carson, grief lessons

[kara-zor-els]

Sin @ Cass: So... I think my mom-mentor is fucking your mom-mentor..

Cass: your mom-mentor has been fucking my mom-mentor since the 90s. And my actual mother too.

[trust-and-jump]

Cassandra Cain and Jason Todd parallels - "I'm ready"

I tried not to compare Jason and Cassandra paths, I really did. But they are my favourites out of all Bat-related characters and Batman talks to her about Jason, a little, and

and she goes to find her mother, to ask if she's her mother, to know, to see for herself, she needs it,

and ends up. dying. I. I can't.

He gets..

She gets...

He's forced to remember

She won't do anything but remember

(which is... not a good example, but can you blame me? Her whole Batgirl run is full of memories she keeps bringing up. She's consumed by her past, but.. she's, at the same time, so much more than this past.)

There is no end, there is no beginning. What do they see, looking in the mirror?

They die as heroes.

(she won)

(he lost)

...and it's their mothers who set deadly traps for them. Their mothers are the reason they die.

then..

Someone tells them they are alive, somehow, again.

And it's a mistake - to let them live.

Their mothers are dead.

Everything has changed.

Something in their very souls twists.

They are different, now, too.

Batgirl (2000) #65-73, Batman (1940) #427-428, Batman (1940) Annual #25, Red Hood: Lost Days #1-6.

[oifaaa]

Tim is not force sentitive. He just pretends and writes fanfictions about the jedi order

Jason would 100% steal a villain red saber, takes it as his own.

Tim is the son of a senator and has been kicked out of the jedi temple on several different occasions and Jason wouldn't have to steal a red lightsaber not when he can just fall face first into the dark side of the force

[the-batgirl]

Birds of Prey (1999) #93 / #94 - Birds of Prey (2023) #7

[noblessyousforgiacomo]

Sometimes I feel frustrated seeing fans boil down Cassandra to JUST her "no one dies" mentality. Yes, Cass embodies it in a way that's even more obsessive than Bruce, but I feel like what most people leave out of posts (especially ones where they talk about how much she would hate Jason) is her compassion. Cass sees herself as every murderer she comes across. Almost her entire life, she spends trying to atone for one murder she committed as an 8 year old and to do that she stops murders from happening, but she also has a deep rooted belief that the people who commit these crimes are capable of changing who they are. Or, in the very least, understand why what they do/done is 'wrong'.

I read posts about how she would hate Jason and while I agree in some ways, I feel like there's something missing. What's missing is that why wouldn't Cass understand how Jason came to be the way he is? Someone who felt abandoned by their father's choice in allowing a murderer to run free—one who certainly isn't changing anytime soon. What's stopping Cass from knowing Jason's feelings in a way most other characters can't see because they haven't experienced it in a way that both Cass and Jason have?

Obviously this doesn't mean she is giving up on her moral code, I don't get why fandom thinks character foils can't interact together without losing some integral part of themself—the beauty of fiction is being able to create scenarios where that is possible. If you truly believe its impossible, I honestly think you might just have a really closed mindset or negate character growth as bad characterization.

Maybe its because no depiction of Cass is beaten by Batgirl 2000 and maybe because Jason's characterization is a spinning pendulum of nonsense half the time, but reducing either character to just their morality on killing alone is tasteless. People (and fictional characters by extension) are so much more complex than that.

[evasive-anon]

Cass died and was glad about it and she's so real for that.

[aingeal98]

Shiva really is just the DC version of Chuck Norris but better. Shiva can get a black belt in Tang Soo Do, Brazilian jiu jitsu and judo while asleep but Chuck Norris could never reach the level of badass required for his child to come out of the womb with their first language being Fighting. Shiva herself wasn't even born that way it was just the lifetime of accumulated badassery that transferred into her placenta, gave Cass nutrients and made her capable of throwing shuriken at a target before she could even walk.

[madcapmento]

One sec I need to talk about Shiva.

Lady Shiva was introduced in Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter in the 70s. She was a traveling martial artist hellbent on getting revenge for her sister, who she believed had been killed by Richard Dragon. She lured Dragon into a trap, revealed herself as Carolyn's sister, and tried to fight him to the death. Once she realized that Dragon had nothing to do with it, that Cravat and The Swiss (unimportant villain characters, they killed Carolyn) had been the ones to kill her sister, she helped Dragon defeat the villain (by giving him her shiny belt so he could redirect the beam of a deadly laser that was being pointed at them while they were fighting, don’t even ask) and Richard Dragon and Lady Shiva became allies, friends even. Dragon convinced her it would be a waste to kill Cravat and told her that he had killed the Swiss himself. She accepted this. They shook hands. This all took place over the course of one issue of Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter. It took ONE issue for Shiva to go from antagonist to ally. She then tagged along with Richard because she liked the adventures he got up to, the danger, the challenge, and the thrill of it. Richard even called her later on when he needed help on a different adventure. What I’m saying is she didn’t start out as evil.

Okay, so what do we know about Shiva so far? She’s a thrill-seeking peripatetic martial artist of great capacity and skill. She cared about her sister. She’s willing to kill. She’s an adventurer and a valuable ally. Great. Moving on.

The Question 1987 features THE Lady Shiva. A character capable of both ruthlessness and mercy, cruelty and tenderness. A curious, thrill-seeking, teasing character. She was vicious and nonpartisan and she was working as a mercenary for hire. But she was an ally, even when she was beating the shit out of Vic. She loved the O Sensei. You can tell she even cared about Vic in her way. I’m not saying she had a heart of gold, or that there weren’t tropes she fell into. She wasn’t and there were. But she was a fairly well-rounded, morally gray character that played a key role wherever she showed up. She was closer to a non-traditional anti-hero than anything else. Idfk, just go read The Question.

I read a tvtropes article describing Lady Shiva as “an archetypical Dragon Lady, complete with sinister motivations and exotic sex appeal,” which… she isn’t. She subverted this trope in several ways actually. She never had “sinister motivations” until Chuck Dixon got his grubby little hands on her. Her motivations were pretty neutral. She had her own set of principles, she was very morally gray. She wanted to travel and fight worthy opponents on her adventures for the thrill of it. She seemed to operate mostly on personal whims, and on the basis of building worthy rivals, out of love for the art of combat. And she didn’t use her sex appeal for shit (until the Richard Dragon reboot comic kms), she didn’t tolerate sexual advances or objectification. She just WAS NOT a conniving temptress, I don't understand where this misperception came from (but I do blame Dixon, I’ll get to that in a sec).

This same article states that she began as the arch-nemesis of Richard Dragon? Unless you’re accepting the version of the two of them from the very short lived Richard Dragon 2004 series as their canonical relationship then NO she didn’t. But I digress.

There was a marked change in the way Lady Shiva was written by the time Robin (1991) came out, this is where her character starts to lean towards the Dragon Lady trope imo. She also weirdly, and maybe arguably, leans more into traditional femininity while at the same time being written as more wild and uncontrollable. Chuck Dixon seemed to fundamentally misunderstand Lady Shiva as a character. He turned her (sometimes ironic) disdain for brutes who wouldn’t last a second in a fight with her into stereotypical womanly haughtiness. He turned her capacity for ruthlessness into bloodlust. And he made her into a conniving, somewhat deranged, villainous woman, tempting our young hero towards evil (oh my!). Again, I’m not saying she ever had a heart of gold, but Dixon changed core character traits (namely her respect for other people's personal code) to turn her into a villain.

“Kill him, little bird. Kill him and become a predator…Aren’t you my weapon? My instrument of death? Say you are mine.” Like?? She would not fucking say that, respectfully.

That isn’t even to mention Richard Dragon (2004) where Dixon turned Shiva’s relationship with Dragon into a resentful, sexually charged dick-measuring contest.

Even so, I don’t entirely hate Shiva as a villain, especially in Batgirl (2000). Pucketts Shiva is a bit less egregious imo. So she’s a passively suicidal evil mentor-figure who wants Cass to be a killer like her. Whatever, I can get on board with that I guess. I can enjoy it because I love Cass and this is a great comic run. But the retcon that–Listen, THE RETCON THAT IS SHIVA’S SISTER BEING KILLED BY DAVID CAIN, SHIVA DESCRIBING THIS AS FREEING, SAYING SHE’S GRATEFUL, THEN AGREEING TO GET PREGNANT WITH HIS CHILD IN RETURN?? This boils my blood. Shiva, who was introduced as somebody who cared about getting revenge for her dead sister. Shiva, for whom freedom and autonomy were core character traits. That Shiva?? That Shiva is relieved her sister is dead and is willing to carry her sister's killer's child to term?? What the fuck?

I hate it. I don’t understand it. Why would you take a complex character who makes it difficult to tell who she really cares about, and flatten them into somebody incapable of love?

Okay I’m done, this is getting too long and I don’t even want to get started on New 52 era Shiva. I don’t have a conclusion, I’m just annoyed. Thanks for reading. The Question (1987) is NOT a perfect comic but if you’re interested in Shiva please please please check it out, it’s very moody and philosophical, noir-esque. Also Chuck Dixon suck my dick.

[itsmebeff]

cassandra cain doodle 🙏🙏

based off of these hairstyles 🫶🫶

[sporkberries]

You look so much like your mother, you know that?