Helena Bertinelli? (For the random character hc thingie)
YAYYY okay some hc/opinions
HEADCANONS:
now i haven;t read every helena appearance so idk if any of these are actually canon, but here we go:
as a pianist, one of the highest honors i can bestow onto any character is the ability to play piano. she learned because idk rich mafia family made their daughter learn, so at first playing is something that brings back traumatic memories. eventually, the birds of prey learn that she can play and they (especially dinah) encourage her to play for them! dinah duets <3
also based on that epic scene in batman: brave and the bold i HC that she’s a pretty good singer. obv dinah is the Singer singer of the group, but like when she’s singing while helena’s playing, helena will also sing with her <3
she has a cat in rebirth. this i acknowledge as canon. i headcanon she adopts even MORE.
one of my ideal team ups is between helena, kate kane (apparently they did in the modern comics that i’m not reading), and renee montoya, and at some point in this team up they kind of become a polyamorous trio, though they don’t really label or acknowledge it ?? kate and renee are together and helena just joins in idk
going off that, i headcanon helena as bisexual, but due to how she grew up she never really had the chance to date women or really acknowledge it. iF ONLY because of this one scene where she like. flirts? with talia al ghul during the legacy arc. it was hot. before that obv i had to imagine helena’s sapphic because projection beacon but that moment solidified it. also dinahelena <3 and helenazinda though i don’t see as many ppl talk abt helenazinda (or zinda at all)
i’m a traditional archer, i don’t know anything about crossbows. archers don’t really consider crossbows to be real archery (it’s more like a gun), but i have no idea whether most crossbow users think they’re archers or better than archers or what. due to her friendship with dinah, and remember when helena slept with roy i remember lol, i like to imagine she occasionally will shoot with members of the arrowfam (though neither helena nor any of queen’s brood consider the other like, a True Archer. they don’t hold any animosity or jealousy or think they’re superior, they’re all deadly in their own way.) (traditional archers can feel the same about compound bows too, i’ve never seen any of the arrowfam use a compound bow though so maybe they’re all just purists lol)
i feel like every comic makes her teach a different subject, so i like to imagine she’s a middle school english teacher. it fits with how fast she and 13yo tim bonded. the outsiders, of mice and men, a midsummer night’s dream, and a raisin in the sun are her favorite books on the curriculum; outside of school, she reads mystery series to take her mind off everything.
OPINIONS:
i..... ship postcrisis dick/helena DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT but like they're so much fun, they're literally the epitome of belligerent sexual tension and i just think it's funny. i hate nightwing/huntress (the comic) though bc i felt it reduced helena to being much more brutal and much less intelligent than she actually is (and dick was like weirdly naive about things? guess no one was safe) and all the weird subsequent slutshamingish vibes between helena & babs afterwards. do i think they’d be in a long term relationship? no. do i think they could’ve been a lot of fun for both dick and helena’s character development if they were handled by a ....better writer....? absolutely.
grrr i haven't read her stuff post rebirth, all i know is that NML is now canon (somehow? where did cass come from now idk?), and that helena has powers?? she can see from other people's eyes now. personally if i were to give her a power, it would be something like clear sight, the ability to not be deterred or affected by magical illusions
speaking of NML. while i personally don’t like the idea of the Bat being a legacy mantle to pass down (don’t get me wrong one of my fav eras is dick!batman) i do think that helena should be in the running to be in control of gotham, just as much as, say, dick and cass. must she don the Bat mantle to do so? no that’s one of my least favorite things abt batman comics and why i think knightfall fucking suckedddd how but whatever this isn’t the place
i don’t think she should pass on the huntress mantle or take on a sidekick. i think she loves kids too much and part of her becoming both the huntress and the teacher ms bertinelli is to ensure kids are protected; even her interactions with tim are like her being a big sister and not like a guardian
i absolutely love how she compartmentalizes “helena” and “huntress” as two different people in her mind, with each side of her existing to do what the other side can’t
i love that she’s a teacher. like normally idgaf about what a hero’s day job is, but teaching gives her this whole extra layer of caring for children. like the part in contagion when she, as huntress, goes out to save one of her students? amazing
i have no idea why DC hasn't capitalized on her more. like. daughter of a mafia don makes it her mission to destroy the mafia. people love mafia movies. tarantino. a huntress movie could easily be a blockbuster, but after seeing that birds of prey "crossbow killer" i want nothing. the best huntress movie lives in my head and it will stay there i hate the DCEU so much how do you fuck up all these characters and storylines so badly
i want that witch lady? fortune teller? i forgot her name, the one from huntress 1989. yeah i want her and helena to be friends. usually i don't really like gotham-based vigilantes (especially if they have any connection to The Batman) to interact with magical stuff, but i think that lady served a really interesting purpose in the 1989 comic especially since so much of the focus was unfortunately on violence against women. LA BRUJA that's her name yeah
okay somewhat connected to ^^ i found huntress: year one to be really... weirdly preachy and sexist???? i read it all in one go and immediately had to go clear my head, but IIRC there were all these allusions to the fact that helena is a huntRESS because she's a WOMAN and she's BETTER THAN EVERYONE. a lot of the sexism seemed forced, like something you’d see in a kids’ program about sexism. and then helena like monologuing about how much she hates wearing dresses... it was all very surface level. like i remember thinking it was so interesting that a comic from 1989 dealt with sexism much more sensitively than something from the 21st century, but i've noticed a lot of older DC comics are somehow more progressive than everything afterwards (c.f. the character assassinations to roy, talia, koriand'r, any other woman connected to The Bat, ....) shame bc i love the art style in this comic so much. ah well.
yeah!!! ty so much for asking i’m constantly rotating helena in my mind <3
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