#ook meta

Like, when I've seen ppl have them interact it's always w Cass bringing her standards and philosophy about Batman to Terry via training or preaching or whatever (not that I'm arguing against that tbc. She would, and should, do exactly that). The symbol means so much to her and she holds others to that just as much as she holds herself to it. But as interesting as that is, I've never seen ppl acknowledge the inverse and I think that means you're missing out on another layer of interest.

The problem as I see it is thus: the symbol of the bat does not mean the same thing to both characters. And both of them being famously stubborn, I don't think they'll suddenly budge on their ideas just bc a stranger tells them to.

What do I mean by this? Well, for Cass the bat, even removed from Bruce, is redemption. It's forgiveness. It's salvation. It's the power to be good enough to save everyone, do anything, fix everything. She holds herself to an impossible standard and refuses grace. No one else dies. Not on her watch. No criminal is irredeemable bc that would mean she is irredeemable. She always sees herself as just as bad, in a way, as the villains she is willing to die to stop every night.

For Terry the bat also means redemption, but not in such a manic way. For him it's a chance to right his wrongs, make a difference and be a force for good in his community. He's not so worried about external validation. He doesn't psychologically need every killer to be redeemed. As the late great Dwayne McDuffy said, "Bruce's goal is to stop crime. Terry's goal is to help people." He and Cass have radically different approaches to the same mantle that aren't going to mesh 1-1 and I think it's unfair to both to hold them to the other's standard. Apples and oranges, yk?

And another major factor is that they come from radically different worlds as well. Cassandra comes from a setting already full of heroes, where there's a hope and lightness to the air. She sees Batman for the first time and feels hope. When they meet in no man's land he's entrenched in his mission and she's excited to join it. She sees him as someone who will never back down from the cause, never waver on his morals, holds himself to the standards she wants and will hold her to it as well. Terry's first experience with Batman is disappointment. He's born after the man already retired. The age of heroes is long over. Bruce is alone. He meets a man who's abandoned his mission and refuses to do anything about the murder of Terry's father. Terry is not saved by the bat, he's saved by a cynical old man who has to be convinced to hope again. They don't know the same Bruce Wayne. They don't know the same Batman. Cassandra's bat would never in a million years ask her to kill one man if it meant saving the world. Terry's bat already pressed a chunk of kryptonite into his hand and did

Going off of the social model of disability, she wasn't disabled as a child. Her environment had no speech and she was able to communicate and be communicated with entirely through body language, so there was nothing disabling there. Once she entered into the wider world and found a new communication barrier, her entire way of living was disabling. It's what her brain and thinking and decision making is based off of, so it should therefore inform absolutely everything that she does. But most ppl when writing her barley even consider this even when they do so like. I don't even want to bother reading

And it's not even that I think this is a deliberate erasure of disabled identities and stories, I think it has to do with most folks not comprehending disability so thoroughly that it doesn't even occur to them to like. Try. It reminds me of sobbing on a bench after a class at college bc we'd spent the whole two hours going over Frida Khalo and yet barely any of it was spent discussing her disability. The very thing that informed a large chunk of her work, that dictated her entire process, that shaped her life. So so many of her pieces are about her disability. They exist to process her feelings about her disability, her thoughts on her disability, and to convey her existence as a disabled woman to others through art. But despite direct glaring references to it on every page, to the teacher it seemed invisible. Oh sure we were given the bare facts about how she became disabled due to a bus accident, how she wore braces to help her bones, how she held live exhibitions from bed when she couldn't get up, but her art was just "gorgeous" and "inspiring". So after class I found a secluded bench, transferred into it, hid behind my wheelchair and cried. Cried because I realized disabled people can shout their truth to other's faces and still won't be heard. Cried because the most famous pieces of Khalo's are ones where she isn't visibly disabled. Cried because people don't care that your disability is your whole life. They don't want to see it so they'll erase your life

Why ofc dear anon! (And also I got your "*for me" correction dw) It's always a good day to preach the word of transgenderism

So, purely going off the events of her origin comic Batman: Sword of Azrael #1-4 (1992) by Denny O'Neil and Joe Quesada, our dear Jean Paul Valley Jr reads as so insanely transfem I simply cannot deny the call. To summarize we have:

An extremely controlling family structure that absolutely requires she be a man

Her father, who has been subliminally programming her since infancy, dies in her room and leaves her with a set of final instructions to further control her identity

She follows these instructions hoping to find answers and is led to an isolated cabin where for months on end two men physically and mentally beat a new identity into her in what, considering the circumstances, reads as a type of gendered violence to me ("you will be a man. You will be this man. And whenever you fail or deviate from that idea we will harm you")

While there she works out to the point of "peak physical fitness" but expresses disconnection and mild disgust with her body now

By this point the psychological abuse has caused her to forget her name and not recognize the life she had before this

She is given her father's old suit to wear and made to go fight. Putting on the mask is a trigger for the new hyper violent and hyper masculine identity of Azrael to take over

She feels completely unable to control her body when Azrael is present and expresses distress at this, as well as his presence in general

The first act of agency she displays in the entire mini is when Azrael is moving to make a critical blow against Batman, she retakes enough control of her body to shout "No!" And redirect the hit

It's her choice to defy her handlers and help Batman, trying not to solely prioritize vengeance--the thing she was created for--as they track down and fight this servant of the demon biis dude, a barrel chested weapons dealer who runs around killing ppl in the nude

Only in the final panel of the mini does she regain herself enough to remember her name

Also she gravitates almost exclusively towards baggy clothes and dresses like this before the start of everything while she was slogging through her masters program. I rest my case

The closest thing he achieved to personhood was a handful of people who love him. He's doomed to haunt them in the very specific way of knowing they're the only ones to care about him

Receiving consolations after his death but they're all about the things he was and not the person. If this was a Pinocchio story then at least he could've gotten the narrative about learning to be a real boy, but he doesn't

bc the thing too is that jason is vitally important but not on the human level. he's functioning on the level of myth and that does demand sacrifice. mythological heroes don't have deep inner lives or many people who know the "real" them. they don't have room in their stories for awkward romances or shitty school photos or make believe games. there are multiple levels of existence in the world and by his nature he is inhabiting one higher than the people around him

Of all the legendary heroes around him he's the only one confined to myth

He's more like the first Jason then like himself

truly the only way jason could change is if his environment changed so dramatically that it wasn't even the world he knew anymore. you'd have to completely transplant that man to free him. guards. au that guy

He could be anyone is the thing. His life is a mask that could've been worn by anyone, his own touch leaving no mark on it. bc the function of the mythical hero isnt to.....have a personality. their function is to embody ideals. theyre not real people (similarly to how the historic perception of the gods wouldnt have been as characters, theyre embodiments of ideas and nature and metaphors to explain the universe), theyre an ideal for a specific type of person and as such all fo their actions can be understood not through the lens of characters but rather as paragons. so one thing to examine could be how much will jason actually possesses. how much is his fate tied to being the Most Perfect Hero and how much can he actually control

Literature has changed, and our ideas about characters their roles in stories with them. Jason's the only one who didn't get the update. In a world full of modern heroes and modern characters, Jason is a relic of an older time

He seems the most aware of it too. And if he was he'd never bring it up to his friends, knowing they'd be the only ones who deny it. his life was never going to end well. it rarely does, but his life especially never could have ended well, or remarkably, or in any way that overshadowed his legacy. nothing could make his life matter beyond the small handful of people who loved him and what about what theyre dead and gone?

How much would it hurt them, too, to know that they could move mountains and oceans but couldn't make their friend's life matter

I think that's what always called to me about his tepid fandom reception. Percy, Annabeth, Nico, Reyna, Hazel, Frank, Leo, Piper, all these people who the audience loves--them loving Jason was never enough to make the readers love Jason. Not in the way they should. Even without being able to articulate it, the accidental gods of the story have decided his fate. Of course Piper as a person would've sacrificed herself for Jason given the chance, but Piper as a character? I can't think of any reason she should've died instead of him

even by the narrative. jason the person is disposable. hes the distillation of killing a character because their death lets you tell more stories than you could with them alive

He was the son of Jupiter! A child of the big three! We're told the whole series about how this is one of the biggest things one can be but when Jason inhabits it he's still.. Small. We have every reason to believe he'll be more but he isn't. Usually when you're this level of disposable you're a side character, not a main. He never got to be the main character of his own life. and the universe knows it too. it knows hes the son of jupiter, it knows he will do great things because thats what children of the big three do. so why does he needs a family, or friends, or him memories? jason is a weapon used and refined until he inevitably broke

and then irl. who they hell likes jason grace best. lots of people like him, but hes not a favorite. hes a means to an end in the storyEven in the fandom hate he gets it's more about who he's not than who he is. He might not be the bottom of everyone's list but you'd be met with surprise if he's the top

In a term, he's the dead wife of the pjo universe