#He is a very wet kitten kind of blorbo

[autisticcassandracain]

Damian Wayne for the character bingo

ok yeah that's fair I did just make three posts about him

[Image: a character bingo sheet with the following squares circled: "I'm the only one that knows anything about them, actually. everyone else is wrong sorry", "they could've been such a great character if they were handled differently", "*gently holds*", "they have done nothing wrong, ever, in their life," "Autism™", and "free space". Full description under the cut.]

Listen. I am SUCH a sucker for characters who get out of a situation where they have little to no agency and then having those characters reclaim it. The idea of a kind of 'reverse' Batman and Robin dynamic where Robin is the one whose darkness needs to be kept in check while Batman lights stuff up is really fun and Dick and Damian's dynamic is the only good thing about Morrison's Batman and Robin run. I love the repurposing of the Robin mantle as a symbol for redemption; I really adore superhero mantles taking on a symbolic heroic meaning, and this is a great way to play with the Robin mantle, just like Cass taking on Batgirl as a symbol for redemption was a great way to play with the Batgirl mantle.

Damian's character himself is a fascinating take on the child assassin archetype, in that, since he was raised to be a leader, he acts very different to most other characters in the archetype, and it's easy to read him as entitled and arrogant, and to an extent, he is, but it's got layers. He's always gotten every material thing he wanted. Everything he's ever had has been conditional on his performance. He is comfortable with violence and will resort to it as a first response to problems. He's a ten year old kid who does not quite grasp the consequences of his actions further than the immediate removal of danger or the reception/removal of approval from a parental figure. He's a little fucking shit with an attitude problem. He tries so so hard to be kind. He's arrogant and cocky and believes himself to be a fundamentally bad person, with sins he can never redeem himself from. He's a complex, layered character.

It's a goddamn shame that he's so intrinsically intertwined with Talia's character massacre, that no-one has written him well since Patrick Gleason's Robin: Son of Batman, that DC doesn't know what to fucking do with him, and that Morrison is a bad writer and that makes Damian's original Batman and Robin run a goddamn nightmare to suffer through.

Anyway I think he's got big autism, I wanna hold him like a spitting kitten, he's never done anything wrong in his entire life the murders are okay because I like him, and most of his fans are almost as insufferable as his haters. I trust like maybe ten Damian fans on this website and if you like Supersons you're not one of them.

Image description: a bingo titled 'character bingo' with the following squares: "my special little meow meow. my every waking thought. my dearest blorbo", "i don't have anything against them personally but they failed the vibe check", "I'm the only one that knows anything about them, actually. everyone else is wrong sorry", "if I met them irl i would beat them up (affectionate)", "I would unplug their life support to charge my phone", "I like the fanon better for this one", "a pathetic wet cat of a man", "my anti blorbo. I am constantly thinking of them and I hate it", "knowing of their existence fills me with incredible violent urges", "they could've been such a great character if they were handled differently", "*gently holds*", "I don't care about them tbh", "free space", "[long keysmash]", "i sincerely do not understand the hype", "they have done nothing wrong, ever, in their life", "I don't even go here but I'd die for them", "not to be a homosexual but Jesus fucking Christ. oh my god. holy shit ['god' and 'shit' are misspelled]", "Autism™", "genuinely. what the fuck", "will someone give them a fucking hug jesus christ", "they could pour soup in my lap and I'd apologize to them", "they are literally so based", "there's nothing going on behind those eyes <3", "i want to kiss their poor little head". End description.

[kakusu-shipping]

having Korosensei as an f/o is such mind-candy sometimes. just imagine how soft and squishy and warm and snuggly and cuddle-able he is. and just imagine falling asleep with himmm <3

You are so correct Anon he gives the best hugs and snuggles he's so warm and squishy and hugs so tight in coils and multiple arms

Also while sleeping his holds his partners like a teddy bear I have never actually slept directly on the mattress

[mj-is-writing]

hi, happy blorbo blursday! how about a ramble about Cassian? any info you care to share, and I'm also curious about what Cassian thinks of your other characters :D

Cassian is so many things and about half of them are just “pathetic little man.”

I originally created him to be this cool, suave, Kick Ass and Take Names kind of character. He was dark and edgy and a typical rogue. That immediately fell apart as soon as I started writing and realized that he’s actually the saddest wet kitten of a person to ever exist.

So for the majority of the time that I’ve been writing him, he has been an emotionally repressed young man who grew up too quickly and blames himself for it. He ignores his feelings as much as possible because if he doesn’t, he’s going to shatter. And, throughout the book, he gets put in situations that make it increasingly harder to ignore his emotions. He has to recognize how scared Adelaine actually is and that she’s hiding just like him, he has to realize that even these strangers can care about him, and he has to see first hand just how similar he and Minnie are.

Cassian cries a lot in my current draft because I’m incapable of letting him be happy.

I also… uhh… kinda gave him my anxiety and depression and who knows what else. Like every paragraph is just him having Symptoms™️ and they very much are the same Symptoms™️ that I have. And I kinda can’t fix it because he’s my character that I project on constantly. If I stopped doing that he would be a fundamentally different character. Heck, I even made him the shortest because I’m the shortest in my friend group. (He’s still taller than me though and that makes me ANGRY. I could shrink him but I won’t.)

As for what he thinks about the others… well, his relationship with all of them is rocky.

Adelaine is someone he never even meant to interact with and now he’s stuck with her, and she is also way overconfident at times. Very competent as a leader, but also inexperience. And Cassian doesn’t handle that well. He likes her, he really does, but he doesn’t take her shit, either, and she doesn’t take his. They could probably duel to the death over a slice of ham and then have a shared gravestone that says “Besties ❤️”

Keeva is the emotional anchor of the group and, because Cassian is allergic to feelings, someone that he can’t have a normal conversation with for a long time. But they’re also always there for him. He hasn’t known them long but he also knows that they’re the one he needs to go to when he needs a shoulder to cry on.

Aoife and Cass don’t interact that much and it’s kind of one of the major problems in my current draft. She just… doesn’t have a lot in common with him. I think he wants to make an effort since she’s clearly so important to the others, but he’s also really bad at socializing and doesn’t know how to start a conversation. And she probably thinks that he just doesn’t want to talk? If he did come up to her she’d be totally chill with it, but she genuinely just thinks he’s keeping his distance and that’s also fine.

Minnie is… a lot of things. She’s his enemy and his best friend and his hope and his greatest fear and his therapist and his Reason For Needing Therapy. She and him have a really bad start, but they just have to get over it, yknow? And once they do, it’s fine. Nothing special. But Cassian has a lot of things from his past that haunt him, and Minnie embodies a lot of them. Just being around her means he has to confront a lot of things he’s been repressing, and that’s hard. It’s painful. But it’s necessary, too. I think he knows that. I think he knows that he wouldn’t have grown at all if he had never known her. She is the antiseptic sting on all of his emotional wounds at once and he hates her but he also knows that he needs her more than he’ll ever understand.

I really love these characters, I’ve been writing about them for almost four years now (!!!!) and Cassian was the first one I created. I love that people seem to like him.