#steph meta

She'll hallucinate/imagine Cass putting her arm around her! This is her ideal supportive Cass, and it implies she'd like Cass to be more physically affectionate.

Batgirl (2000) #26

And later puts her arm around her very casually. Notable she's actually cheek to cheek with her too. (lmao God this panel is so suggestive every time I reference it I'm like wow)

Batgirl #38

You see a lot of how physically affectionate she is with Tim in particular. She'll throw herself at Tim the moment she sees him sometines.

Robin 80 page Giant

Tim is usually contrasted as more reserved in that area and sometimes oblivious when she's asking him to make out or whatever.

Robin #100

Though there are times he'll approach her, she's usually the one who requests hugs and things like that.

Robin #56

The Brave and Bold time traveling Robin story got this exactly right, with Steph being the one who hugged Bruce out of all the Robins (though I think with Bruce specifically, if you were raised by him and know how distant he can be about that stuff that might affect not wanting to give physical affection that will likely be rejected or made awkward.)

The All New Batman: The Brave and the Bold #13

And though she's not super physically affectionate with her Mom in the early days, showing how strained their relationship was, once it improves she's very affectionate.

Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead #1

Batgirl (2009) #15

Batgirl (2009) #24

So yeah, I get that the exaggeration of Dick's touchy feeliness is because men aren't often show to be super physically affectionate in media, but it would be nice to talk about/depict this aspect of Steph more too. I can see her struggling surrounded by people who are more awkward about physical affection, and we can see a number of times when she reaches out and doesn't get a hug back.

Looking through green arrow #5 for the wiki, and I know this comment is here because Kevin Smith either forgot or didn't know of the absurd state of things of Bruce not telling Steph who he really was despite her being one of the gang and knowing Tim's real name etc....

And lmaooo point by point

Ah yes because Dick Grayson and Jason Todd have never, ever been badly written. Ever.

All of these women are great characters who have been in some very well written comics and are just as rich and interesting as these men

please don't pretend you've ever tried to read about any of them, you clearly haven't

As for representing the female experience, Stephanie Brown is condescended to and discouraged and sometimes abused by every man in her life (and occasionally a woman joins in), but finds the inner strength to still pursue her goals and be defiant. She goes through a teen pregnancy. She's treated extremely differently from the male Robins and fired unfairly. She goes through sexual violence.She starts believing that she is lesser, and blames herself for being manipulated. She dies and is victim blamed to hell and back. She is not given a memorial like Jason gets nor is her death treated as important/haunting to Bruce. But then she comes back, and she eventually realizes she doesn't have to be dependent on the approval of men in her life and carves out a place for herself and receives support from other women. This doesn't solve the sexism she faces or her self esteem issues, but she's more confident and happier now.

How the hell is that not a representation of a female experience. Often completely unintentionally on the writers part, they agreed with her treatment in parts of this, but she's still so resonant because of that (and the fact that the demands of her largely female fans bought her back is another layer to things, as well as the fact that a DC writer said to my face that the women who fought for her to be recognized the same as Jason were annoying and he wishes he could shoot them. That became part of my female experience for sure.)

As I said, Jason and Dick have been through things women can relate to and that's fine, it's fine to discuss that-- but saying they're female coded or a reflection of the female experience and then ignoring actual female characters and their resonance with women's experiences--that's wrong.

I wanted to talk about Steph's relationship with school a bit. There was a poll a while back I saw that had Steph winning as likely to be the worst student of the Bats, and it's pretty much pure misogyny that's not supported by canon at all. Signs point to Steph being a good student if you pay attention.

In Steph's years primarily written by Chuck Dixon, what kind of student Steph was or what kind of grades she got was never directly said, but the mentions Steph does make of school imply/show that she's dilligent and dedicated as a student: She's often remembering she needs to do her homework (contrasting Tim who basically never thinks about it)

Robin #94

This implies she's taken something she learned in history class and applying it to her life, also.

She also does this with science:

Batgirl (2000) #20

It implies school is on her mind a lot (again, contrasting Tim)

The closest we ever see her get to complaining about school is not looking forward to doing math homework while nauseous from her pregnancy.

Robin #59

But it's when she goes to college we get a better look at what kind of student she is, and she's clearly a good and dedicated one despite having a busy life.

It should be noted that she was able to go straight to college despite missing a year in high school when she was "dead" and only having a month of additional high school. It could be Leslie set up a tutor or homeschool while she was with her (seems unlikely it would be consistent given they were going from village to village) but either way, it's pretty impressive she was able to essentially skip a grade and (most likely) get her GED.

Batgirl (2009) #15

The fact that Steph thinks getting all B's in college is like, bad, implies she's used to getting better grades. And the fact she gets B's while being a superhero AND having a part time job is pretty impressive.

She also joins a study group:

(also) Batgirl #15

She also calls the Great Gatsby "awesome" when describing what she's learned in college, showing a passion for her literature studies (though she does not like the Reconstruction era in history class) and that school is on her mind a lot.

(Some issue of Batgirl (2009) actually not sure, I remember it but not the issue #, I got this from another post)

And finally, she described herself as a dutiful college student.

Batgirl (2009) #4

So yeah, I'm not saying she's the BEST student of the Bats, or gets the best grades, but all signs point to her being a good and dedicated student, moreso than Dick and Tim at certain points in their lives where they saw school as a lower priority.

Was going through getting better quality (and better sized) images for the costume history page of the Steph wiki since it still gets a relatively decent amount of traffic, and I always found it interesting Tim stopped saying Steph's real name in front of criminals around the time they started dating.

The most generous interpretation is that after the Baffler captured her due to knowing her real name a few issues earlier (not because of Tim but because he knew her dad ig) he finally realized how dangerous what he'd been doing was...but it's also possible that dating her means he had to accept her as a hero and show her some basic respect, which is reinforced by the fact he basically thinks to himself "I know I shouldn't encourage Spoiler but I enjoy being with her" right before they start dating.

Which yeah, implies that using her real name was a "I don't think you should be a hero so I don't have to respect you by using your hero name", which is wild since it was so dangerous to do, very counterproductive to the idea he was concerned for her safety. Though I am not saying this was his active thought process, I'm sure it was subconcious.

But here's an interesting thing- in Robin #74 he slips up and calls her Steph (not in front of anyone this time, thankfully), she reminds him to call her Spoiler, and while he doesn't apologize, he says "right" in response, as in "yeah, you're right". It's a small thing, but in previous times this happened, he either didn't respond...

or, the worst example. literally told her to shut up and used her name again (he was stressed out because they were being shot at, but still).

So yeah, Interesting to notice that as a change, coinciding with no longer discouraging her.

And hey, he does remember to say Spoiler instead next time he runs into her.

It's interesting because it also implied Dixon might have reminded reader of that conflict specifically to build up to this scene, where Steph finally breaks down over Tim keeping who he really was from her, and then makes it very clear that when he calls her by her real name in costume, it's also a painful reminder of how unequal their relationship is.

Which I think he never fully got before.

The foreshadowing here is so incredibly subtle so you might not be able to tell, but Detective Comics #790 is trying to delicately hint that Stephanie Brown will become Robin and die and also her death will definitely be her fault just like Jason Todd whose death was also totally his fault. You really have to hunt for these little clues they're seeding in there.

ok so jokes aside, there's something I noticed about this little sequence that fascinates me-- you'd expect in the comparison between Jason and Steph that the comic would twist Steph's narrative to mimic Jason's more closely-- he came first and all--but it actually does the opposite and twists Jason's to fit Steph's. You listen to Bruce talk about Jason here, and how he "wanted it"--being Robin presumably-- "so badly" and Bruce didn't stop him, and if you didn't know anything, you'd think Jason was like Stephanie, he made himself a hero of his own volition, that he volunteered to be Robin (like Steph will) and so on.

But he didn't. It was Bruce's idea, and Bruce was the one who offered him Robin. Jason never had any aspirations of being a superhero before that offer, and yeah, once he became Robin he was dedicated and wanted to do a good job, please Bruce, etc--but no more so than Tim or Dick.

Stephanie's the one who wants it "too much" in Bruce's opinion. Who became a hero without anyone's approval and never gave up when people belittled her.

Bruce claims Jason had something to prove. He didn't though, really. Again, being Robin was important to him, he wanted to be good at it, but not in a way that was tremendously unique.

Steph, however, does have something to prove-- she's stated she wants to prove she's not like her dad, and while she wasn't overly interested in Batman's acceptance when she first became a hero, Bruce giving her acceptance and then taking it back so cruelly and nonsensically made her want to show him she was good.

Of course, there's an easy reason why he does this (probably not consciously), his audience is Cass, who knows Steph but doesn't know Jason-- he takes the tack of talking about Steph's qualities and tries to make them fit Jason, to convince Cass that firing her is the best thing.

But the thing is, Steph and Jason are alike in one sense-- firing them is going to hurt them and make them more desperate and lead them into danger. It's not a good move. This is the one thing Bruce SHOULD have learned from Jason's death and applied to Stephanie, yet the one thing he refuses to learn.

anyway this is all on accident, Anderson Gabrych just never misses an opportunity to victim blame Steph, I think only Willingham as a writer matched him in that (not surprising they teamed up for War Crimes), like I like his work on Batgirl, I liked the StephRobin Tec comic he did, and appreciate Ghost Steph but god reading his War Games aftermath stuff it is RELENTLESS. It's not surprising he'd feel the same way about Jason.

Though I will give the issue credit for this: