getting sunburned through my own window what's new

Jason Todd (Robin): 164/244 (pause)

Cassandra Cain (all): 22/239

Stephanie Brown (all): technically half done but i didnt note-take so ill be restarting at some point

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NOTE: Please don't comment anything along the lines of "actually your interpretation is wrong bc if you view this from Tim's pov then--" under my Steph posts. I was sick of it back then and I'm sick of it now. I will block you.

This poor girl holds so much guilt and self-loathing it's honestly heartbreaking. In so many of her stories so far she simply cannot view herself beyond her capacity for violence. All she's ever been is someone else's weapon and, even now that she's escaped, she'll never even get the luxury of being a dulled blade. She will always always always remember how to kill someone, or hurt them irreparably, and so on.

In that last panel, Cass just saved Jim Gordon's life. She is very explicitly shown to be understanding and compassionate of who Gordon is to Barbara and how much he matters to her, and now Cass has managed to stop her own father from assassinating him. She convinced him to put down his guns even, to give up and look at her and smile at her.

It's a very objectively good thing that she's done, and yet her perspective is still framed as blood being on her hands while her father smiles down at her. Not a hero, not a moment of redemption, but still exactly what she's always been.

Aside from her first attempt to fall to her death in that panel, she repeatedly throws herself into martyrdom, laying down her life in order to save someone else. It's especially addressed in Gotham Knights #2 when she sacrifices herself to save Batman. He recognizes the action, and ends up leaving her behind in order to make her own decision. Swim back out or drown with the ship.

Now would be a really great time for tumblr's image limit to increase so I could show the panel, but she reaches out as he goes. Cass wants to be saved, she wants to be good, but she's forced to face her thoughts as the water flows in about whether someone like her deserves to be saved and can be good. If what she's done and is capable of is all she is, or if it's just... something she knows.

Cass communicating through body language is always so interesting to read. Like in those three panels, she's doing the obvious in order to explain that David is her dad and, in the next two panels, that she speaks through fighting.

She goes on to explain the same two concepts by copying her father's movesets, trying to show that him and her are one and the same.

This conversation with Azrael too where she's fighting the air to get her point across lol

Cass' dad actually caring about her