I LOVE Imagining Mary In Different Styles Of Clothing!

TIL The Double Empathy Problem theory suggests social difficulties experienced by autistic people when interacting with non-autistic people are due to reciprocal differences, not an inherent deficiency, most autistic people are able to display good social reciprocity with most other autistic people

via reddit.com

Do you think that, if asked, Captain Marvel would tell the JL that “all the gods in my head are either screaming at each other about me or screaming at me to murder somebody to set an example” or do you think he just wouldn’t tell the truth?

"get a load of this guy"

cain and bruce and cass are sooo interesting to me... long rambles (with comic panel receipts!) under the cut (also batgirl 2000 spoilers)

Cain had tried many times before to make The One Who Is All, but Cassandra is special in a way the others weren't because she worked. She didn't defy instructions, she was amazing at combat, she didn't go insane, she was perfect. And David grew to love her in a way he hadn't loved the others, even though he hurt her, because it was the price he had to pay to get his little girl perfect. Yes he shot her, but it was to keep her on her toes, and she had to be that to be perfect - it’s the price he has to pay. He rarely touched her, because it was a price he had to pay, but in the times that he did, he cuddled with her on the rooftop and pointed to the stars. He couldn't talk to her, because it was a price he had to pay, but he could make their own little language and keep her progress on tapes.

And when the time came for her first real foray into being The One Who is All, he dresses her up in a frilly pink dress and pigtails.

And she runs away and David doesn't know what to do. The first kill is always hard, he made her do it too soon, too young, she wasn’t ready, he knows it’s his fault.

And then, years later, when his baby girl is almost an adult (but really he'll always see her as that little girl with pigtails and a bloody pink dress on), he meets her again and she yells at him to stop.

And he cries, because it was the price he had to pay, but his daughter can understand him now, fully, and she's using it to ask him to stop, so how can he say no to that? Now they're dangling over an edge and he's pleading for her to hold on but she can't, she won't, and she survives anyway like she always will but she survives in a cape and ears and a bat across her chest.

David thought that Bruce was perfect when they were training, but he wasn't. He wouldn't kill. But maybe he can be good enough for David's perfect little girl anyway because she won’t either, and god knows David isn't perfect. So he concocts a test, and tries his damndest to keep those tapes of his daughter because that's all he has left of her.

David loves Cass with all of his heart, but his heart isn't big enough to fit things like hugs and speaking and care. The biggest problem is that he sees her as a weapon first, no matter what.

Bruce isn't like that. Cassandra isn't a weapon— she's a bat, of course, she’s perfect for it! And to be the bat, yeah, you have to make sacrifices sometimes. Keeping your identity a secret is much easier when you have no (legal, public) identity to speak of, and he doesn’t understand when Barbara insists on frivolous things like vacations, identities, names, and peace. Why call the girl Cass when she can simply be Batgirl?

If Bruce had a choice, he would just be the bat. And so this girl who is just like him— better, even! Well, of course she’d agree. Yes, she’s young, she’s just seventeen, but… come on. You can barely say a perfect soldier like her is a kid, still. And it’s tragic that Cain made her like this, made her like them, but… it happened. She is like this. So why wouldn’t he help her use it for good? 

He never had to teach Batgirl, this girl who is just like him, about the value of life. Her hits are perfect and measured, to knock them out and nothing more. The first thing he noticed about her was her willingness to die and insistence that no one else does, and he encourages these things. 

And her death wish is ineffective and annoying and dangerous, but it’s inescapable and she doesn’t let it affect her missions anymore.

Batman asks Batgirl if the dozens of lives saved because of what she did is enough. She says no, and he says good. 

When Batgirl loses some of her skills, she runs at an armed man and gets shot 4 times (one in each thigh, one through her shoulder, one in her stomach). But she survives anyway, like she always will, and when she wakes up Batman asked why she did it. She responds instinct. He says, “Good.”

Then he finds out about her upcoming fight with Shiva. Batgirl knows that she will lose. This is not a competition or arrogance for her— this is suicide. She needs to move past this death wish and… well. She might not move… past it, per se, but she will be rid of it, and perhaps the world will become of rid of her. But it’s necessary. So he lets her leave, because he knows she needs to do this. At least she will die with honor.

Later, when she survives even after dying, because she always survives, Batman needs to do something. Something dangerous and reckless and, maybe, a bit suicidal. Batgirl wants to help but he just says “I let you fight Shiva because it was something you had to do for yourself. Don’t say thank you. Return the favor.” 

The tragedy of Batman and Batgirl is unlike the tragedy of David Cain and The One Who Is All, where she is only an assassin to her father— not even that, just a killing weapon. It’s unlike the tragedy of Cassandra and Sandra, where she is just a pawn for her mother’s suicide. And it is especially unlike the tragedy of Babs and Cassie, where she is seen by her mom as so much less than she is, as something that she can never be— regular. Normal. Innocent.

No, the tragedy of Batman and Batgirl is that her dad sees Cassandra as, yes, eventually a daughter, certainly a soldier, but most of all, an extension of himself. And he does not treat himself very well, or with much caution, or with any gentleness.

So mad right now because all the shows I want to watch are either not on any of the stupid streaming services I have, not available in my country, or nothing has it!

And I’m too tired to pirate it!!!!!

No but I seriously can't even fathom how painful Cassandra's existence has to be.

Like, we explore exactly how horrible witnessing death is for Cassandra, she reads the pain and the understanding and the regret on a dying body, she experiences death along with its victim on real time, she is the one human being who will never get desensitized to seeing a person dying, it is even worse for her than for anyone else, and she is surrounded by death

Her entire dedicated rogue's gallery (David Cain, Shiva, the Mad Dog, the Unburied, etc) makes a point of killing any and all by-standers and she always has to see it

Imagine the most traumatic death you have ever seen or heard about, imagine the grief or the disgust you felt when you first came across it, imagine experiencing that at the same time you experience the pain of the dying person and then imagine reliving that memory two, three, ten, twenty times every night and it's always like the first time and you never get used to it, and you'd be imagining a normal Tuesday for Cassandra as Batgirl

It's agonizing, my legs shake just thinking about it, I can't even picture getting up from my bed every morning with that curse over my head. And you're telling me Cassandra, this normal human without powers and with a support network that is lackluster on a good day, not only gets up every morning but lives with it? That she can manage a semblance of normality? How much willpower does it take? I am truly floored by how amazing Cassandra is.

Ouch :(

Ow :(

Because we’re talking about war games I just have to mention how fucking insane it is that after running herself ragged trying to get help, after hours being demeaned and cut into, after hours of brutal torture at the hands of a terrifying sadist, after breaking free and fighting back only to get shot, after bleeding out on the floor at the bottom of the staircase her limp body was kicked down, after all that Steph got up and she dragged herself away and she got onto a rooftop.

How unimaginably strong she was. How insane that she should have bled out there, that she should have collapsed and not gotten back up. How strong Steph was, that after all that, she had enough willpower to do anything at all. She had enough strength to drag herself forward.

Because that’s what Steph does. She gets up. Despite every indication she shouldn’t be able to, she got up. And then after all that she somehow still forced herself to have enough strength to try to explain herself, to try to explain that she just wanted to help.

Thinking about Mary Marvel picking up Captain Marvel (Billy Batson) from Justice League missions/meetings like she’s picking him up from school. And I’m not talking the N52 Mary where’s she’s much older than Billy, I’m talking TWIN Mary!

Mary Marvel: “sooo, how was it? Make any new friends?”

Captain Marvel: “yeah! And I met superman!!!”

Mary Marvel: “that’s nice Billy”