#quick PSA more like long diatribe

[bitterrobin]

a quick PSA on pre-Robin Damian (again):

He has never called himself the "Blood Son". Those specific words have never come out of his mouth in a comic. In fact, Damian has only had dialogue regarding his bio status or another character's adoptive status like... three or four times.

Yes, pretty much all of those times have something to do with Tim in one way another. That's because Damian was less of a character, and more of a sword-carrying plot device when he was first introduced.

Damian's early writing lines up more with that of a minor villain than any supporting character. He existed at first only to rile up chaos in the Batcave for like, two issues, before his death in the fourth issue he appeared. He was introduced in issue 655 and killed by torpedo-submarine explosion in 658. Damian as a character was effectively "punished" for his earlier actions through a violent death.

You need to understand that early Damian (2009 mostly) didn't have a cemented personality or much characterization other than the basics that Morrison imbued into him i.e he was 10, an assassin, lax about death, very sarcastic/rude in tone, and weirdly spoiled despite his upbringing implying the opposite. Grant Morrison tends to write the large story concepts they like and they don't often adhere to any consistent/previous characterization (as seen with Talia) if it doesn't line up with the vision they want. Not even Damian's existence was kept consistent, as it's very hard to believe that Batman #656 Damian has the same backstory as Son of the Demon Damian or the Ibn al Xuffasch of Kingdom Come.

They didn't flesh out Damian a whole lot when he was first introduced, making him more of a spoiled rich kid who just happened to know how to kill people than the Damian that you probably think of. It took later comic appearances and other writers to add onto Damian's sporadic characterization - because he didn't have much major development after being created until becoming Robin and working alongside Dick.

To further characterize Damian as Robin, now that he needed to play against a larger cast and more established figures, writers needed to come up with ideas fast. So some writers played up his League backstory and wrote him colder, more logical and vaguely terrifying. They made Talia and Ras more and more ooc and abusive. They wrote dialogue for Damian that made him more of an annoying little brother figure, impulsiveness and all. Sometimes his dialogue with female characters drifted towards sexism, as clearly some writers can't write young boy characters without relying on shitty sitcom-style misogynist tropes. He got different moments, some skewing towards insanely violent or towards a normal child reeling from issues. This long trek of his writing was always changing in little ways until the reboot in 2011 and his first real death in Batman Incorporated, and then just continued on afterwards to this day.

In short, early pre-Robin Damian was a mess, and it took a long time for DC to develop him as a full character. (Even now, writers are still "figuring him out" and pulling ooc takes out of their asses). We have fun here.

[aelaer]

A (relatively) quick PSA

Hi all. I hope you all had a pleasant weekend; I know I did. Other than private discourse with a few of you (thanks for reaching out, btw!) I just shut down my tumblr for the weekend. This post addresses what happened on my blog Thursday evening and I guess it’s my “public response” to the nonsense. It'll be under a cut so those who aren't interested can skip right past it. Snip snip.

I'm gonna make the recap brief: for those who missed the drama llama train, I replied to an ask asking for my recommendations on stories with Peter, Tony, and Stephen. In my answer I noted that I don't have a lot of stories with this combo of chars in my faves and the reasons why. I also noted that I don't think Stephen's written well and often OOC in the majority of them. I figured that, since the ask was asking for my opinion, on my blog, that "these are my opinions" would be fairly evident. And that my opinion really doesn't matter in the long run, and certainly shouldn't to authors who have these fantastic followings with people who love their work.

Apparently not. I haven't deleted the insane diatribe I got in return split through a few replies from the individual that replied to the thread, so you can read them any time if you’re dying of curiosity. I'm more interested in summing up the after.

The individual who instigated the conversation was using what I would call a sockpuppet account instead of her main account to keep herself hidden from any sort of consequences, I suppose. I don't know; I've never been shy to hide my opinions under my own fandom name. Anyway, I figured out who she was pretty quickly. The person behind all that activity is an Ironstrange writer with a good collection of stories under her name, and is fairly prolific in the community. We've had one public interaction and she's not interacted with anything I can remember that's mine, other than a follow at one point in time. I won't be identifying her publicly on the blog and only privately to those I know who won't make further drama of it and just want to prevent themselves from engaging with someone like that for their own sanity and peace of mind. For anyone who does know who she is already, I ask that you take the high ground and leave her alone. But I have blocked her and her sockpuppet account, as well as her good friend's two accounts that shared her opinion about me.

This individual had information I had written in reviews from May, July, and September - and had *only written* in these reviews. These were not reviews on any of her stories and in these stories she was not always leaving reviews, herself. She also remembered a ranty post I made in a bad mood in the summer and then deleted half an hour later because- this might come off as a surprise- but I'm actually human X) More than once I've typed something and gone "Shit, Laer! That was a dumb thing to say! Why'd you do that?" I can delete sometimes and apologize to the individuals involved, which I do when I am aware I said something that was taken poorly or I just did something dumb. Humans are prone to error, eh?

But truly, I'm astounded that someone wasted so much time and energy in stalking my activity to compose such a lengthy rant to tell me just how wrong I am with 8 months worth of fandom activity. It's incredibly concerning, definitely weirdly obsessive, and I've lived through way too many things in life to tolerate the abuse and accusations thrown at me with no interest in polite discourse like reasonable adults would do. That whole conversation was incredibly unreasonable.

On the very slight chance that any comment of mine in the past has discouraged someone from writing that is now reading this, I do sincerely apologize. It's never my intention, though goodness knows my tone can come off as very stern if you read it a certain way. At the moment, however, feedback from writers has been far more on the positive end rather than the negative end - so I'm really not inclined to believe she was telling the truth and was rather self-projecting. If on the slim chance that she was truthful and there are people on the negative end, I can only talk with you privately if you desire it. If not, it's more than fine for us to go our separate ways - you might just have to tell me to leave you be, because I *can* be very clueless, especially without any facial or auditory feedback for the words we type. And that's why open communication is so important! The idea that it's somehow a lesser action to let someone know that something they said hurt their feelings and that it's "groveling" is one of the worst pieces of advice I've seen in a very long time, and certainly isn't emotionally healthy.

In the end, discourse always has to be respectful. I have zero tolerance for those who fall to name calling and negative tolerance for stalking, because that's just creepy and really unhealthy behavior. Words can be misconstrued - it happens all the time - but solutions can be found in misunderstandings, if desired, or we can go our separate ways. That's what reasonable people do.

Note that for, well, however long I decide it needs to stand, that any anon comments that come in that do declare I've hurt them will simply be deleted because there's already proof of sockpuppet use and I can't verify that it's a truthful message. Anything abusive will just be deleted because I'm not gonna fuel the negative folk that need to work on their mental health issues in the real world. I'm hoping this whole paragraph turns out to be completely unnecessary, but best to just get it out there!

With luck, this will be the last time something like this happens in this niche we're all in. Feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Now to go back to our regularly-scheduled programming.

Have a great day.