sashene

Valerie D'Orazio, a comic writer and editor, posted on twitter in 2023 about how she was sexually harassed/assaulted by Stephen Wacker, Marvel's newly chosen Editor in Chief. More detail under the cut.

One direct confirmation of this is he would lock Stephanie in the closet when he was mad at her.

That's physical abuse. Whether Stephanie fought back at a young age or not, it would require shoving her in there while she was surely protesting, and tbh,there's a high likelihood Stephanie did fight back at some point, she developed an instinctive desire to do that at a young age. But more importantly, it goes without saying that whether you hit her or not, locking your kid in a closet is extremely fucked up.

But hey, do you know what's also physical abuse? Putting your daughter in a headlock and shoving her off a high building. And threatening to kill her and her mom/your ex-wife

He doesn't actually intend to kill her and catches her before she can fall (and I think the threat at her Mom was empty too, he does very much consider Stephanie "his" and probably feels the same way about her Mom, as shown by the possibility he killed his friend who attempted to rape her.) But dangling your kid off a roof and threatening her with death is actually worse than a punch to the face imo. He's extremely comfortable being rough with her.

He was even comfortable being physically rough with her and scaring the shit out of her with a toddler:

I feel I shouldn't need to explain this, but yanking a kids cape when they're running around will choke them, however briefly. And he also hit her Mom in front of her. She's like three here.

He's also comfortable having Stephanie kidnapped, threatened with a gun, and handcuffed to a bed.

Chuck Dixon didn't seem to want to cross the line of showing Steph's dad punch her in the face, he was likely uncomfortable with it, but he sure didn't mind portraying him as physically abusive, and it would be kind of interesting if that was a line Arthur decided he couldn't cross, but it would also be more 'weird" than complex because like. it makes far more sense for him to have hit her considering all this.

So yeah, it honestly doesn't make much difference if fanfic say he hit her when she was younger. It’s pretty plausible. He's comfortable with being physically violent with her and threatening to murder her so whether he did or not doesn't make a difference to their dynamic.

This isn't the only time they've done so too! Though I'll be charitable and say it was lack of research rather than lying. They claimed that Stephanie's family was not struggling financially because those panels where her house looked rough were because of the earthquake and her house wasn't shown like that in other appearances, and that's patently untrue. So this person is very much not a reliable source of information about Steph.

The claim she had a pattern of being physically abusive because she kicked her ex-boyfriend who got her pregnant in the balls one time was wild, I didn't want to touch that, but you know what, why not.

I'll just make it simple: Chuck Dixon thought that was an epic girl power moment in his crusty white guy brain. It wasn't supposed to be an insight into Steph's character. Steph's mom, a victim of spousal abuse, approved of it.

Steph did not consider Dean her partner, and in fact was making it clear he should never come see her again. We also have very few details about her relationship with Dean and how he treated her (beyond him abandoning her when she wanted to stay and help with the earthquake). It's okay if you don't think it's a good thing to do, but it's thirty year old comic at this point, I think we can stop mourning for Dean's balls and consider things that actually are reoccurring character traits Steph has.

It's not ever shown as a reoccurring pattern with her to be physically abusive to any of her partners, she never did that with Tim, and she's never shown any sign of being violent to any of her loved ones ever. Some of her loved ones are kind of violent with her, like Cass and the nerve strikes, but I would find you extremely tedious and uninteresting if you tried to argue Cass was abusive based off that. It's a superhero comic that was doing a running gag. Violence in certain contexts is presented less seriously. It's part of the genre. Let a girl live.

It would be like me claiming Tim is abusive because of that one time he kicked her in the stomach (accidentally, which Steph has done when they were dating/exes too, the difference being that she was always immediately worried and apologetic) and didn't apologize or even try to help her up afterwards, while they had the status of exes. That would be stupid though, right, because he was in the middle of a massive mental breakdown over Bruce's death, he never shows any pattern of abusing exes or partners other than this one incident.

or hey Tim dangled Steph off a building for fun once while they were dating is he an abusive monster

It's not more interesting, it's just (and I didn't realize this while initially posting or I might have pointed that out) this person doesn't want to acknowledge that Steph faced physical abuse because they know it's a bad look to claim an abuse victim is abusive on flimsy grounds so they want to streeeeeetch things as much as possible to make the justification Steph was not abused.

Sure. Thanks for asking, it’s honestly a fun topic.

Y’know it’s funny—I actually happen to own something that I think most people, even most Steph fans, haven’t seen: Steph’s first appearance. Not her Robin first appearance, her Detective Comics first appearance, her actual introduction. I happened to pick them up by accident at a con a few years ago because they’re also some of Tim’s first cover appearances. 

Other people might disagree with me on this, but I like to go back to the characters’ origins whenever I can to find the baseline of what they were originally intended to be and try to bring later interpretations in line with that. I like to think of retcons as new revelations, new plot twists in an ongoing story, and not a way to reset aspects of the past just to fit your story. It works especially well for this because Steph’s socio-economic status doesn’t actually change, there’s just kind of a game of telephone that happens across the decades that leads people to misunderstand. 

One thing worth noting in these early issues is just how much Steph, a 16-year-old girl, has at her disposal before she ever even glimpses Batman and Robin. Literally the first shot we ever see of the Spoiler is this: 

And because I am, in fact, that kind of nerd, I have gone in a couple of times and dug out old era-appropriate electronics magazines to figure out what that piece of equipment would cost you in 1992. Baseline for a parabolic microphone is $600, and that price is for much larger, more delicate pieces of equipment meant to be used for like, outdoor nature shoots, which wouldn’t be able to hear through glass. Steph probably dropped $1,000 on that microphone alone. 

Remember also that her costume is homemade—she doesn’t have any other way of getting it. She’s also shown using some pretty elaborate climbing and painting gear, with no indication that they were stolen or borrowed or anything, and you can see that she’s got a pretty well-stocked utility belt there.

Again, for some reason people tend to forget or overlook this but, right up until she demanded Bruce make her Robin, Steph operated as Spoiler with zero Bat support. She got some hand-to-hand training from Cass late in the game and tagged along on some of Tim’s assignments, but was otherwise being actively discouraged from vigilantism for most of her career. She made her own costume, bought her own equipment, and maintained her own motorcycle, all without the financial support of either Batman or her parents. 

So right off the bat we know she’s a teenage girl with a not-insignificant amount of personal disposable income, the only hinted source of which is the implication she works a part-time job somewhere—which I don’t think is ever brought up again when she reappears in Robin. 

We all know minimum wage went further in 1992 than it does now, but it didn’t go that much further. So it’s reasonable to assume that Steph has access to at least some money from her parents to support her vigilante habit, whether that’s in the form of an allowance, gifts that she carefully manages between Christmas and birthdays, or money that she’s able to just, take from Crystal without her noticing. 

But this page is more important to our current interests because it’s also when we see Steph’s neighborhood for the first time. We’re told here that Steph and her mother (who is called Mrs. Agnes Bellinger in this comic, although it’s possible she was using a fake name to visit her ex in prison) live in what is described as “115 South Holden Street, in Manchester.” 

Now keep in mind, the Gotham City map can be extremely fluid and tends to change depending on the needs of the story. But there have been attempts to map it, and “Manchester” has never been on any of those maps, so we have to do some extrapolation. At the very least, we can tell the neighborhood is clearly not in the city, given the very deliberate angle there in the first panel to show that they’re well away from the crowded downtown Gotham skyline.

This implies that Manchester is intended to be one of the mainland suburbs that feeds the island city of Gotham, similar to Bristol Township where the Wayne and Drake Manors are located. It’s not nearly as nice a neighborhood as Bristol—note the fenced-in front lawns, the broken shutters on the neighboring houses, and the vaguely racist lawn ornament on the Brown’s property—but it’s also not some rundown slum. People aren’t afraid to let kids play in their front yards or leave their garage doors standing open. And you’ll note those aren’t trailers, either, they’re decently-sized suburban homes.

Also worth noting: Crystal seems to keep this house perfectly fine on her own as a single mother. Arthur doesn’t live with them; when he’s shown having residences it tends to be apartments in the city by himself, and it’s not like he could support them from prison or with his ill-gotten criminal gains. And yet, we don’t see Steph or Crystal worrying at all about bills or mortgages or anything like that throughout any of their appearances. We see the interior of their house on several occasions and, while it’s often messy, it’s not in disrepair or neglect.

This is a constant portrayal throughout all of Steph’s appearances, from Robin through even her run as Batgirl. So, with that in mind, where does the idea that Steph is poor come from? Well, I’ve got a couple of theories.

One is the usual comics fandom problem: canon is huge, nobody can keep up with all of it, and some people go out of their way to be assholes about it, so misinformation gets spread like wildfire, in no small part because Steph is a character that a lot of people use as a self-insert and therefore she must be the misunderstood underdog in all things.

But on the more-interesting-to-talk-about front… I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Steph’s first big storyline was her pregnancy. Yeah? Like, it’s the first story involving her that really started getting critical attention. Whether it deserves that attention is more open to debate—personally, since reading Icon & Rocket for the first time, I’ve come to view it as Dixon pulling the comic book equivalent of white guys repackaging black music and watering it down—but the important thing right now is that it’s the first time people would’ve been specifically reading the Robin comics for Stephanie Brown. And in those comics, Steph’s house is shown as visibly run-down, covered in cracks and disrepair.

Thing is, there’s a context that people miss if you’re reading for the baby storyline and nothing else: this storyline plays out over the last days of “Aftershock” and early months of “No Man’s Land,” the storyline where Gotham is racked by a destructive earthquake that nearly levels the city and is abandoned by the federal government.

Again, we get the reinforced confirmation that Steph’s house isn’t actually in Gotham because it’s not destroyed in the quake—the neighborhood is damaged and briefly evacuated due to a gas line rupture in the immediate aftermath, but once that’s cleared up they’re free to return home, and their suburb is not part of the federal government’s evacuation. Nearly every building in Gotham is shown with similar damage during this time, including Drake Manor. 

This storyline also plays into, I think, the stereotypes that people jump on when it comes to Steph’s socioeconomic status. Like I’ve mentioned before: Arthur is a criminal, Crystal is a drug addict, and Steph is a teen mom. Therefore, they must be poor, right? Because good middle class families supposedly don’t have those kinds of problems.

But, as I’ve mentioned before, that’s an inaccurate stereotype that ignores reality: plenty of drug addicts, criminals and teen moms live in the suburbs. And the Browns’ specific circumstances are distinctly atypical of the stereotype—Arthur’s not some down-on-his-luck thief pushed to crime by economic hardship, he’s an arrogant former gameshow host who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and resents the world for not handing him the success he feels entitled to. Crystal’s not some crack addict, she’s a working nurse who used to get her doctor friends to write her scripts for prescription painkillers. And Steph is just a teenage girl who slept with a boy and got pregnant, with the costs of prenatal care and/or childrearing never seeming to be a factor in her decision to bring the child to term and give it up for adoption. 

I could go on but that’s pretty much the long and short of it: Steph is simply not shown as being poor in the comics. Ever. She’s not rich, she does clearly rely on her fists much more than any gadgets or fancy gear and lives with her mother rather than moving out on her own for college, but she’s also never shown worrying about student loans and can apparently pay for all her classes with some government assistance and a part-time job alone.

People just assume that she’s poor because they’re misinformed, or they’re projecting, or they’ve got biases they haven’t examined, or they need her to be an underdog to justify their argument against one of the other characters, or they really want her to be buddy-buds with Jason for some reason. 

I craft, so I keep my eye on the price of yarn, fabric, and such. also tools, those can get expensive fast. 

given that she not only MADE, but RE-makes and maintains/reinforces her costume on a regular basis, she’s runs through a LOT of fabric. she’s buying thread, specialty needles to punch through her reinforced fabric without shattering, pins (can never have enough pins) fabric scissors (yes, that’s a thing) she’s buying most of this on a regular, consistent basis. which adds up. one spool of purple thread isn’t going to cost all that much. but that spool is only going to last her a month, max, with how much she’s got to be constantly sewing to keep Spoiler in pristine condition.  if it lasts that long. one iteration of her costume, top, pants, hood, cape, likely takes two to three spools of purple thread to make, start to finish. add in some black thread to make the mask and the cape lining, that’s four different spools of thread just for one iteration of the costume. 

As someone who did own that comic, and in fact did own nearly every single appearance of Stephanie pre-reboot because I created a wiki logging those appearances: Stephanie was depicted as coming from a family who struggled financially. It was explicitly stated in a comic Amanda Connor illustrated that when Arthur comes back home, he uses up all her Mom’s money, which is probably the source of the hardship.

And the reason most people think she’s financially stuggling is probably because it was confirmed in BQM’s Batgirl run. There’s a segment where a member of Stephanie’s class talks shit about poor people, Steph gets upset (and scolds herself that she’s ‘getting lost in her own issues’), the girl later confronts her about it and asks if she’s poor. The implication is that she is. Like that run or not, it’s in the text, it’s a close to ‘canon’ as anything in comics.

Someone can live in the suburbs and still be struggling financially. You can struggle anywhere. What’s more, I don’t think Chuck Dixon really cared about thinking of the limitations someone who’s lower middle class or struggling would have to face, so all the thought put into how she’d afford x is probably…just something he didn’t care about. There are some other appearances depicted her house looking rough, and she was repeatedly contrasted with Tim’s wealth. When Tim’s dad lost money and they had to live a middle class life or whatever, she was notably disgusted by the drama over it (moreso in the Jon Lewis run, because she wasn’t being written by a conservative prolly) and even points out to Tim that she fights crime on a budget.

Let’s take a look at that scene, shall we?

As I’ve pointed out before, the question being asked here is not “why don’t the poor people just move out of Flint, Michigan” it’s “Why do criminals stay in the ‘Devil’s Squere,’ [sic], an area of the city that is literally being called a demilitarized zone?”

Jordanna is not “shitting on poor people” here. She’s stating a fact. A fact which Steph then steals directly out of her mouth and repeats verbatim: the criminals go back there because they don’t have any other choice. Like Jordanna said, they can either keep running or go back to jail.

They are literally saying the same thing. Which makes Steph’s internal monologue – “Gee golly whizz, I can’t believe I’m wearing my heart on my sleeve,” utterly nonsensical.

The one and only mention of poverty in this entire series comes a few pages later, when Jordanna is heavily drugged and asks Steph if she’s “poor.”

Which Steph does not react to or comment on at all, confirming absolutely nothing. She is then shown living a perfectly normal middle-class lifestyle with zero financial strain for the rest of the book.

The only other time Steph’s socio-ecconomic status is even implied comes when she’s shown (once) having a part-time library job to pay for her classes and only for her classes. In 2009, that puts her firmly in the middle class; that was, in fact, my status in college in 2009 and my family, while not rich, is very well-off.

#‘she has to fight crime on a budget’ yeah so does Spider-man and he’s actually shown STRUGGLING with it#Steph never struggles once and only brings it up as a gotcha on the rich boy

To further elaborate:

The difference between Stephanie Brown and Peter Parker is that for Peter, struggling with money is actually plot point. You ever read one of the reprints of Amazing Fantasy #15? Peter’s original costume looks like this:

He only upgrades to the fancy spider suit after he earns the money in that match. They recreate this in pretty much every redo of his origin story. He’s then regularly shown struggling with money, having difficulty keeping up with the rent, needing to keep his job at the Bugle despite it being degrading, even sometimes (like in the Insomniac games) prioritizing his super-gear over things like rent and food, to his own detriment.

Stephanie never has storylines like this. Spoiler shows up fully-formed, no lead-up time, no question of where she got the cash to pull that costume together. She’s never shown struggling with money, her parents are never shown struggling with money, there’s never a question of where she’s going to get the cash to maintain her bike or her costume or her prenatal expenses or even pay for college. Heck, it’s never even a passing joke – “Oh no, my suit! I just fixed that!”

It is, quite simply, not a factor in her stories. It’s only ever brought up by Brian Miller, above, to justify why it’s okay for Stephanie and the reader to dismiss Jordanna as a vapid bitch who deserves no sympathy.

And to be clear: that’s fine. (Well, the last bit isn’t, that’s sexist as fuck, but in general it’s fin.) Stephanie doesn’t need those things, she doesn’t need to be poor, and – and this important now – canon doesn’t claim otherwise. The argument here is not, “They say that she’s poor but look at all the nice things she has that doesn’t add up.”

No no, the argument here is: FANON claims that Stephanie Brown is poor and struggling and that’s just plain made up. Moreover, when you point out that it’s made up, some people (ahem) get really defensive – possibly because they’ve projected onto her; possibly because they don’t want to examine their own biases re: abusers, crooks, addicts, and teen moms; and possibly because they’ve been doing what Miller did and uncritically use Steph’s “underprivileged” status to justify her actions.

It very consistently looks like this. Please see this post for more.

If there’s not on-panel evidence provided for a claim, you should always check your sources in comics fandom.

Also, a look at the Jordanna thing from a non bad faith reading perspective is anyone’s interested. I do agree BQM was sexist in how he portrayed Jordanna though, she was often a shallow mean girl caricature. But I can simultaneously admit that while not having the most nonsensical bad faith interpretation of anything Steph says or does.

also the fanon thing: I had never read a batfanfic beyond my lj friends in my life when I initially responded to that post. I was a fan of comics in the 2007-2010 era , then dipped when the new 52 erased Cass and Steph and erased Babs disability and general misogyny and racism and ableism. I was not familiar with “fanon”, just what stuff we talked about as people who actually read comics on scans_daily. Nobody among people who actually read DC comics questioned that Steph was financially struggling back then. Instead of fanon, the class parallels between Steph and Jason were bought up in the site Even Robins, which looked at how class and misogyny interacted with the Robin legacy, and further parallels were bought up essay “a lot like Robin if you close your eyes” which again, discussed how these interact with Robin (and actually mentions Icon and Rocket as part of its examinations of girls who took one what Robin was not allowed to be in the Timbin era which is cool). Neither source ever claimed she was in the same financial position as Jason, just noted how they both contrasted with Tim’s wealth.

The connection was not an invention of fanon (solely). It was studied in a literal thesis paper.

I was not even aware of the “Steph lives in crime alley” thing back when I responded, because fanon had yet to become what it was (afaik) when I was active and I had not engaged in fandom in years. Jason had only come back recently when I was in fandom.

I was, simply, a former Stephanie Brown expert who was rusty after having been out of the game for a while, so my critique was not as effective as it should have been. And btw I don’t think BQM had some evil agenda to “justify Steph’s actions” with her underpriveliged status (odd you’d say that while denying Steph is meant to be underpriveliged. Is she only poor when you can make it a bad thing? Also, you admit Bryan Q. Miller brings it up, then say it’s fanon. If Miller brings it up, it’s canon, even if it’s canon you don’t like or want to believe has some kind of agenda. If you believe it’s poorly executed, fine, whatever, but you are trying to claim Steph isn’t poor and it’s not canon, and that fans like me are prejudiced and are projecting and it’s not based on evidence in the text. Then acknowledge the evidence in the text. Then say we made it up. Which is it?), he told me in a letter he used sources like my Steph wiki, which had collected the evidence from interviews and canon inferences that Steph’s family was financially struggling and lower middle class for all to see. So he acknowledged it.

The fact is: hardcore Steph fans know her family is meant to be financially struggling. Fanon exaggerated it, as it does. There are parallels between Jason and Steph as Robins (intentional on DC’s part, as shown in that issue of ‘tec with Cass and Bruce at Jason’s grave), which include how they contrast Tim, and fanon took that to mean she’s from the exact same background and is the exact same person idk. They value Jason over Steph so they know less details about her comics. JASON is the popular character in fic, not Steph way way down at the bottom of the barrel with the other women.

Absolutely incredible

Saying teenager who was murdered "got himself killed" because he made a decision to approach his mother and was tricked "isn't victim blaming". Okay. Sure.

Even if Jason hadn't been tricked, he didn't "get himself killed". A man killed him.

(This is from the same person who hates Steph, and I happened to see it when checking if someone else had blocked me out of curiosity)

This entire ask answer is in order to exonerate Tim from victim blaming, of course. Because Tim is not allowed to have flaws.

For the record, I do think a lot of Jason fans can put way too much emphasis Tim's victim blaming in particular out of their beef with him-- I've seen a claim Tim "does it to Jason the most" which is not true. as someone who went through all the comics that mentioned Jason post death on that doc, no, that's Bruce, followed by Dick.

And I do honestly give Tim the most grace for it too, because 1. He was a kid, while Dick and Bruce were grown men and 2. He didn't know Jason, and only has Bruce and Dick's take on him to go off of. He absorbed what they told him, and took it to heart. That's what kids do. Meanwhile, Bruce and Dick did know Jason and what he was actually like (especially Bruce), which makes their active rewriting of him feel grosser.

But his version of Jason saying "I killed myself, I thought I was [tons of wild inferences] is yeah, victim blaming. It doesn't make Tim a horrific irredeemable person. He's a kid with flaws who's mirroring rhetoric from adults about a kid he didn't know, definitely out of fear he'll meet the same fate as Jason.

(And then he goes and defies orders immediately but it's okay when he does it because DC said so)

It's just a shame DC thinks he's right, so those flaws can't be seriously reckoned with or explored in an interesting way. Tim learning that his impression of Jason has been warped could have been interesting. Dick and Bruce having to face the fact they said awful things about Jason in order to give themselves semblance of control-- that something was wrong with Jason and as long as Tim's a good boy the same won't happen to him-- would be interesting.

And since of course we bought Steph into it- it's not about making Jason or Steph perfect victims. It's about how apparently they need to be perfect victims in order to be children who aren't routinely blamed for their own murders. They aren't allowed to make any choices without having those choices used against them in an argument they were the ones to blame for their deaths.

Shifting any responsibility off the adults in their lives and their actual murderers in order to make it about their choices is wrong.

It's not that Steph and Jason don't have agency. Both of them do. Both of them made choices within the narrative. It's just that their choices aren't given any grace by the narrative, or treated in a normal way.

Jason was doing what pretty much any hero who wanted to save a loved one would do in his situation. Tim and Dick disobeyed similar orders and it turns out okay and is treated as heroic and because the narrative says so. I do not believe either of them would have waited around for their Mom to be in danger from a killer either. I believe they too would try to convince her to come with them.

(And as if to further prove my point some person tried to 'gotcha' Jason with 'why didn't he question why his Mom was allowed to take a smoke break'....why would he? She wasn't being tied up, she was being blackmailed, but she was with one of the most volatile killers on the planet and that could easily change if she stayed, Jason was pretty clearly trying to tell her he could help (as Robin) and they could leave together with him protecting her, And even if it was that Jason didn't put two and two together...how the fuck would that make him any more responsible for his own death. Are you trying to say he deserved to die for not noticing something???)

Stephanie made a reckless choice, and I would never deny that. It was something she should have put more thought into. It's something she regrets in the narrative itself.

(I hate to bring up my stupid fanfic, but that's why I have Steph hate when people to act like she didn't make her own choices in my own work. It's hard to balance acknowledging outside forces and manipulation vs knowing she was not completely helpless against the circumstances.)

But not ignoring how she was failed and mistreated by the adults around her and driven to desperation isn't removing her agency, it's holding a grown-ass man accountable, and questioning the framing of the story and how it treats women.

Because it ISN'T just Stephanie the narrative shifts the blame onto to absolve Batman. It's Leslie too. The narrative throws an important figure in Bruce's life under the bus, going against all previous characterization, to make it so Bruce faces less guilt. We have to make sure only women are responsible for Stephanie's death, and only women face consequences. If that didn't make it clear that the story has a misogynist agenda, that the character's actions are not about telling a good story, nothing will.

And, like with Jason, when similar choices are made by another character- the many times Bruce has accidentally gotten people killed with his plans ACTUALLY going out of control (Failsafe OMAC etc etc infinity)- he's not punished with death, there's no implication he is an irredeemable screwup destined to die for this.

DC doesn't tell these stories with no agenda. DC has reasons to frame these deaths that way, reasons they wrote it that way. They admit to hating Jason and trying to "make Jason unlikable", they now have a need to explain how Tim is better and different.

Steph was going to die no matter what at their hands. They faced pushback like Devin Grayson questioning them why they always kill off female characters and characters of color in meetings they ignore or laugh off. They have Dylan Horrocks report that the meetings were gross and seeing them plan Stephanie Brown's torture and death made him feel sick and he felt vindicated when Girl-Wonder called it out. They made Steph and Gavin the sacrifices for very specific reasons, their choices were motivated by racism and misogyny.

So they need their own characters to justify their hatred. They have them victim blame and the audience is supposed to agree. Analyzing that, saying "what this character says is fucked up but the narrative supports it, let's talk about why that is" it's part of engaging with media. Even when your fav is one of the characters.

Also from a different poster:

Insane thing to say. People victim blame without actively making the culprit less culpable all the time. They can still say the serial killer is culpable while saying 'that kid got himself killed by getting in the car with that killer'. It's a horrible thing to say irl, it is victim blaming. It happens with rape all the time too 'hate that guy but you did this to yourself by taking a drink from him" that sort of thing.

Often the culprit is treated like a force of nature, something horrible that can't be helped and could easily be avoided, like the victim intentionally walked into a hurricane or something, and clearly wanted to die, and that's pretty much like how the Joker is treated. He killed Jason, and we hate him, but he's just what he is, so let's blame Jason for being near him instead.

Gobsmacked by this. Really shows how real life beliefs play into how we talk about these characters.

rest of the ask under the cut so if this gets back to someone nobody can claim its out of context.

I have this idea for a modern era Silm longfic that but I'm kind of intimidated to actually write it because and I know it’s stupid but I’m afraid nobody will engage with it. Tolk canon is so vast and detailed and I keep second-guessing myself about whether the characters would feel OOC in a contemporary setting or if the whole thing would come off as AU for AU's sake. Prayers feels both fresh and true to the source and has so much engagement, so I'd love any insight or tips you have on good ways to write an AU? Thanks and hope this isn’t a weird question.

What an interesting question, sorry for my perpetual tardiness and thank you for your very kind words, although I will say at least some of the popularity of/engagement with Prayers is less the fic itself and more that I never shut the fuck up about it on here LMFAO… anyway, I genuinely don’t think there’s any prescriptive formula for a ‘correct’ way to write a ‘mundane’ AU, and I think that lack of formula is in fact the very thing that makes the AU fanfiction form such a fun sandbox. Also, there definitely are people who don’t gel with the characters as I present them in Prayers or see them as OOC, as it differs drastically from their own interpretation, which is totally fine, because again, everyone has preferences as do I: your target audience cannot and should not be ‘everyone ever’. 

So because of that, and also because I don’t think I’m good enough to give actual advice on this front hahaha, my answer is going to be less what TO do and what I personally find most compelling when reading AUs/writing my own. 

Imo AU fanfiction is at its best when it understands that "in character" doesn't mean a static adherence to canon behaviours and positionings, and that it just implies consistency with the source character’s core motivations & psychological patterns and potentially, depending on scale, their narrative trajectory. Hence, I've found that instead of asking “would this be ooc in a canonverse setting” it’s better to ask "what would that character do in this circumstance/environment/narrative", because characters aren't just collections of personality traits, but are fully rounded people shaped by their contexts. 

Thank you very much! I was honestly rather worried I was veering towards the polemical (primarily because I did it at a friend's place I was stopping over at and they'd been listening in and was like 'how do you make a presentation about elves sound like you're speechifying from the soapbox' though that's probably just because of my delivery style RIP...) so it's very nice to hear this!

So with theory, I'd say the best thing would be to avoid theorists labelled as 'postcolonial' unless you're keen to do a critical reading, because postcolonial studies in itself is a dated and single-minded field. I mostly use it for its datedness and prescriptiveness, Nehru and literary representations-of-Nehru being a comparison to Elven historians for that very reason, plus Prayers' engagement with how the dominant 'postcolonial canon', particularly in Anglophone academia, remains overly invested in rigid modes of literary 'representation', and over-prioritises social realism and binary models of coloniser/colonised, resistance/collaboration, centre/periphery.

Imo the best way to start tackling it would actually be to approach via those very gaps in and criticisms of postcolonial studies: how its aesthetic commitments lean toward either the grotesque or the respectable, its preoccupation with being seen+heard and understood, the way it does little to dismantle the colonial modernities that sustain the hierarchies established by Empire and prioritises symbolic redress over structural transformation, in part because a lot of these postcolonial scholars themselves benefit greatly from said hierarchies (see: Bhaba and Spivak for the most egregious examples...).

Also, there's a lot of value in reading about how the field’s lingering focus on culture over structure means it often stalls at critique rather than moving toward transformation. And approaching via scholars who critique the term itself, ie “the state does not disappear when it is called post-" (Ruth Wilson Gilmore) and those who write not just about the aftermath of the colonial encounter but go on to address how many postcolonial nation-states have become agents of their own dispossession.

Some general recommendations from me under the cut... much of my reading focus is on South and Southeast Asia though so if anyone else has recs beyond this, feel free to jump in!

For starters the blogger can just delete and ignore it. And given tumblr’s penchant for eating asks I think it would drive some hate senders a little insane if they keep checking back in wondering if their ask got eaten.

For second the anon ask format guarantees the blogger gets the last word in every time. Even if anon sends a follow up message they will never get the last word. And tumblr for better or for worse seems to run on this currency of “whoever expressed the last opinion in a post is the one we’re supporting”

My mom managed to dig up some old teen titans comics from when she was a kid. They were printed in black and white (I'm assuming to save money) but she had coloured in the characters herself in a couple of places which is really cute 😭❤️