noted anti-hero stephanie brown

lmao right

IT'S SUCH A WEIRD TAKE

...what now?

the hell did I just read

what is happening

I feel like this person "loves" Cass but mostly as a way to insult Steph

lmao @ this take on tim but also, I DON'T REMEMBER STEPH DOING THAT..............

spacewitchery this person wrote a serious issuefic where the YJ intervene to stop Stephanie's abuse of Tim

...her what now

tbh I think steph and tim were both like, excessively beaten on by grumpy writers who did not like their ascended fankid energy

I. What.

sometimes comic book characters are written poorly by chuck dixon

guys let's all talk about virtuous tim drake who graciously agreed to be robin for selfless reasons only

absolute non-stalker tim drake whom was generously given an opportunity to help others by bruce wayne

anyway this plurk brought to you by tumblrs related post feature

just an endless scroll of really strongly held tim drake / steph brown opinions

a bat?? breaking into someone else's lair???????????????? unbelievable. unacceptable

but anyway reading this batgirl run I don't know how you can say Steph is depicted as flawless? she's still obviously reckless & undertrained but she's… getting better, with support?? a terrible theme for a series.

also lmao idek the context of that panel but I still know she's right. tim was a self-isolating self-destructive mess

touching one's shoulder without their permission... this is the worst thing that a comics character has done, ever

it's time to stage an intervention

he literally kicked her

you know who never did anything without someone's permission?

tim drake

tim drake, boundary respecter

that's why bruce let him volunteer to be robin

anyway a major criticism of that batgirl run I could see is that it needed more cass

oh i have a LOT of critiques of bqm's batgirl series but

this persons just so wrong

also lmao 'get back at her dad' YOU MEAN STOP HIS CRIMES??? FROM OCCURRING???

that's literally

she 'spoils' his plans

that's where spoiler comes from

she's not the revenger

she's not even an avenger

I think I ship tim/steph out of spite for this one person, now

i just blinked so many times

I don’t always like Stephanie but what the entire fuck is this terrible take

Also like imagine two traumatised teenagers don’t always treat each other well. IMAGINE

But “abuse”???? W h a t

that, like so many other important words, has lost all meaning thanks to fandom culture

id even argue like, the vast majority of their relationship's problems were bc of tim's behavior

its not on steph

this fic also has steph (unknowingly?) rape tim, probably because "making fun of tim's outfit" is like… actually not a very good reason to kick someone out of gotham

steps. back

..!

...what in the hell

yep

they all stage an intervention which is really just… tim dumping steph but everyone watching and laughing at her for his protection

thanks, I hate it

the image preview is horrifying enough without having to click

but then steph brags about sleeping with tim and surprise, he forgot, because he was roofied, but steph didn't realize because she's too self involved

why did I click

ROOFIED?? ACCIDENTALLY????

what in the ever-loving

anyway then there's like a 'PSA: consent is important and this is a serious fanfic' end note

and then in the epilogue steph quits being a vigilante and moves away from gotham and goes to therapy because the fic is not just a thinly veiled steph-bashing vehicle, really

I like how in fandom critical means has a spiteful vendetta against

bonus it's tagged "canon compliant"

god it's not like 'steph moves away from gotham and goes to therapy' is a major pot point.................before she becomes batgirl

plot point, whatever

anyway it's nice because if you're actually looking for tim/steph fic you know not to click on that one

obviously, they all need therapy

maybe someone should send tim to therapy??? at some point???

steph fans just need to accept that she's mean

characters can have flaws and you can still like them and steph's flaws are that she's a selfish terrible person

which her fans need to acknowledge before they can be proper fans of her

idk why that's so hard for them to admit??

squints

that "you're not my batgirl" seems very much like author bleedthrough

it's tru cass not being batgirl was handled poorly but.................so was tim not being robin

yeah they've decided steph is obsessed with being the batgirl to tim's robin, probably because they think her primary motivation is wanting to fuck tim

which might also be author bleedthrough

all li know about steph brown is what i heard from someone i used to be friends with and even i can tell this is... an incredibly awful take

the thing about comics is that characterization in comics is a nebulous, unstable thing, but it is also a business model that relies on people being super invested in favorite characters

I mean personally I feel like the original impetus for steph to become a vigilante aside from just stopping her father's crimes was to be better than him, and he was abusive, so like

where.....did this.....come from

well, you see, she's been tim's girlfriend

and some people think tim has been mean to her but they're wrong, tim is the only purely altruistic being in the dc universe

so genuine question, does op ship tim/stephanie or

also like....being reckless and rushing into situations they can't handle is like, most of young justice

oh no………… i'm not sure anyone involved in this conversation actually ships tim/stephanie

I certainly do not and they clearly hate it with the fire of a thousand suns

I'm p neutral on it

okay, i honestly couldn't tell

i wasn't sure if like the "(critical)" tag was supposed to be like

the author clearly used it as a vehicle to punish the character for anyone not only admiring steph but also shipping her with tim, their fave

'i like this but i have some criticism'

no it's clearly "this ship is bad and if you like it you probably condone abuse"

and then that criticism was just

really bad

which... i've never understood this practice in ficdom

okay, gotcha! ty

mostly I ship tim getting a soft reboot like steph batgirl bc his character has gotten lost in..........gestures

IT'S A BAD PRACTICE IMO

is it therapeutic for the author somehow??? idgi at all

it's extremely bad practice

it just seems Extremely Gross

i've seen it a lot over the years..... stares off into the 1000 yard distance

nobody ever seems to use 'critical' to mean 'I like this but I have some criticism'

from a full 360 degree perspective

which is what it should mean, imo

it's funny that it's usually aimed toward female characters too

^^^^^

or female creator's work

i remember the ff8 fandom back in the day did this A Lot with Rinoa

but yeah and I guess like… there's a thing in comic fandom whereby some fans, especially fans of older material, get weirdly insistent that other fans, especially fans of newer material, do not really "know" the character

but they were usually quistis/squall shippers, now that i think about it so idk if it's the same

I haven't noticed this as a big trend in dc but tbh I have not been in dc fandom for ten years or so

(especially when the character is a female character and especially when they won't admit she's a bitch, but I digress)

oh yeah know the dc purists....

*yeah, no

i have seen that kind of gatekeeping

there was a p big split between the gross old comics men and like

when I was on tumblr a lot more I ran into it with black widow a lot, which is funny because there's no one who likes silver/bronze age black widow more than I do

the more fandom fandom, which tended to be protective of female characters

bc of the gross old men,

lmao i remember seeing people trying to school you on natasha

like up until now I was under the impression all the yj fans were just yearning for steph and or cass to be batgirls again lmao

but it happens with like…

hmmm, you know, it's easy to read x-23 comics and get this idea that steve rogers is a huge jerk

GUILTY

hated 616 Steve for the longest time because of that

or hell— steve rogers being a huge jerk to young heroes is an established trope in a lot of things, because Bucky Died and he's still angsty about it

yes, he tries very hard to stop them being teen heroes

it's a thing

this is generally the intention but it is not always written very well, and in these stories steve is almost always a prop for the young heroes vs

well he was a dick to laura at first because she was an assassin, he ended up letting her go because it wasn't her fault

but i get your meaning

I know people who still hate tony stark for civil war

which is like, at a certain point it's not the character's fault

anyway, the point is, if you are mostly just interested laura kinney or the young avengers or whatever you have a totally canon view of steve rogers but it's a completely different view than like

someone who only reads captain america comics

yeah, i can attest to that, i didn't get a different view of steve until i started reading up on natasha

and those people are probably going to read those same scenes of steve being a jerk and 1) have a broader context to it and 2) reject them as bad ooc writing

I don't see how you can be a tim fan and not think steph is well-meaning tho

i understand what you're saying, but what i'm not understanding is the need to go on social media and post like you're a fan of the character but backhandedly shitting all over them and their fans

even if you don't ship it???

oh see

that's what happens when you don't understand this principle of people having different entrypoints and interests

ohhhh okay

so it's like

if someone was coming at me for liking laura

but using only the claremont run

or the bendis run

and also you really overinvest in one specific reading of a character based on like five comics and become convinced that everyone who doesn't read the character the same way just doesn't understand the canon the way you do

this is very egregious tho

idk why that makes you write a 10,000 word fanfic insulting the idea of stephanie brown but I'm convinced that's the general principle

it's like saying laura was abusive to julian

i have seen that take!

ah

fandom,

I mean it's mostly a huge amount of tim drake overinvestment but the "steph fans won't acknowledge her flaws!! i know this character better than them" thing is

i thnk that's why i was confused because the initial post is vaguely worded like this is someone who is a fan of steph's

it's very odd to pick steph and not like harley quinn

and does want to acknowledge her flaws

has harley/tim ever been a thing

I have not seen it but I would not be surprised

tim/kon is huge tho and you could probably more easily project this onto kon

I am not sure who she actually ships with tim tho

i believe that would be cass, into whom she self-inserts

it seems like it WOULD be cass but she doesn't say?? I think she wants it to seem like this isn't about a ship

lol i mean

i'm just picking up what she's throwing down on that throwaway line where cass has always been tim's real batgirl

i think it's like… tim/yj peeps honestly

tim/cassie, tim/bart, tim/kon in whatever combinations

wow ok so people who are a bit reckless and have a tendency to take on more than they can handle

there's a post where they say they enjoy tim + reckless person

EXCEPT when it's Steph

man now i wanna spite read the steph brown stuff

yeah I've been meaning to do a full read thru, where did you find the whole run?

the easy way

thank,

thank you!

i applaud you so hard for trudging through all of This

and i would apologise but now i get to read this plurk so i kind of win

what really gets UNDER MY SKIN with this is - okay the lesser thing is the disingenuous bullshit

and concern trolling

but the bigger thing is that they're talking down to people about canon and abuse and all this without mentioning the fact that stephanie has dealt with attempted rape

and GEE, I WONDER WHY THIS FACTOID HAS NOT COME UP

dude maybe you can just dislike a character and a ship and not make it about how superior and enlightened you are and you could avoid being, in fact, gross as fuck

CONCERN TROLLING that's the phrase I was trying to think of last night

it really bothered me bc steph has lived with abuse while tim has not UNLESS YOU COUNT THE WRITERS..........................

and to explicitly take her from batgirl when she has recovered from, fucking torture, is particularly gruesome

well there's also the added "......." of the fact that there is in fact attempted rape on tim by someone else one could delve into

if that was actually, like, the point

we know it wasn't the point though

we certainly do

i????? don't even go here and all i see is someone grossly concern trolling

OH ALSO if people are curious about pre-batgirl steph appearances there is a wiki with a nicely organised chronology

i thiiiink all of those should be on readcomicsonline too

not always in stellar quality, granted, the dcuniverse app is good for that one

i'm just reading dickbats now… that's the current hole

insert lewd puns here