I Hate David Cain For Doing Cassandras Hair Before He Sent Her Into That Room. There Are Already So Few

He looks like he’s about to breathe all the oxygen and leave none for us 😭😭

What is this frame?😭 why’d they do ma boi Billy like this?

I understand the appeal of wanting every adult hero to instinctively adopt teenage Peter Parker, but can it really beat the hilarity of acknowledging that at 15 Peter was 5'10", unusually buff, went by a moniker with Man in it, wore a creepy full face mask, and had a tightly guarded secret identity and probably a Queens accent thick enough to have come out of a jello mold, and adult heroes reasonably responded to him by going, “Wow, this grown man is an immature asshole for no reason.”

For @casscainweek Day 3 (Jan. 22): Silence | Music

What’s it like to listen?

Cassandra did not live in a silent world when David was training. There were many sounds, fists against flesh, gunshots and blades being drawn and wielded.

It was a world she was used to. David never said he was proud, but Cassandra knew he was.

Now, she chooses not to think much about him. He had granted her these skills, but that was all he had given her beyond pain.

The world was louder now, she had to learn what voices were, what type of sound the voices were and what that meant. It was hard. Very hard. And it infuriated her. She wasn’t trained for this.

But, there was one sound she liked. Something that Barbara had given. She named them headphones. They faíce fed her ears and played a soothing tune of gentle… piano, yes.

It was easy to understand. The music was simple, she could close her eyes and focus on it. Barbara wasn’t always understanding, not knowing Cass was trying, and she wasn’t like her.

But this music was nice.

It was nice to have sounds she understood.

————

I hope this is good. I love Cass so much.

having depression makes your friends seem like the coolest most put together people on earth like wow... you got out of bed, had breakfast, went to work, AND spent some time on a hobby when you got home....? that's so impressive you're like superman or something. can i borrow your power.

cain and bruce and cass are sooo interesting to me... long rambles (with comic panel receipts!) under the cut (also batgirl 2000 spoilers)

Cain had tried many times before to make The One Who Is All, but Cassandra is special in a way the others weren't because she worked. She didn't defy instructions, she was amazing at combat, she didn't go insane, she was perfect. And David grew to love her in a way he hadn't loved the others, even though he hurt her, because it was the price he had to pay to get his little girl perfect. Yes he shot her, but it was to keep her on her toes, and she had to be that to be perfect - it’s the price he has to pay. He rarely touched her, because it was a price he had to pay, but in the times that he did, he cuddled with her on the rooftop and pointed to the stars. He couldn't talk to her, because it was a price he had to pay, but he could make their own little language and keep her progress on tapes.

And when the time came for her first real foray into being The One Who is All, he dresses her up in a frilly pink dress and pigtails.

And she runs away and David doesn't know what to do. The first kill is always hard, he made her do it too soon, too young, she wasn’t ready, he knows it’s his fault.

And then, years later, when his baby girl is almost an adult (but really he'll always see her as that little girl with pigtails and a bloody pink dress on), he meets her again and she yells at him to stop.

And he cries, because it was the price he had to pay, but his daughter can understand him now, fully, and she's using it to ask him to stop, so how can he say no to that? Now they're dangling over an edge and he's pleading for her to hold on but she can't, she won't, and she survives anyway like she always will but she survives in a cape and ears and a bat across her chest.

David thought that Bruce was perfect when they were training, but he wasn't. He wouldn't kill. But maybe he can be good enough for David's perfect little girl anyway because she won’t either, and god knows David isn't perfect. So he concocts a test, and tries his damndest to keep those tapes of his daughter because that's all he has left of her.

David loves Cass with all of his heart, but his heart isn't big enough to fit things like hugs and speaking and care. The biggest problem is that he sees her as a weapon first, no matter what.

Bruce isn't like that. Cassandra isn't a weapon— she's a bat, of course, she’s perfect for it! And to be the bat, yeah, you have to make sacrifices sometimes. Keeping your identity a secret is much easier when you have no (legal, public) identity to speak of, and he doesn’t understand when Barbara insists on frivolous things like vacations, identities, names, and peace. Why call the girl Cass when she can simply be Batgirl?

If Bruce had a choice, he would just be the bat. And so this girl who is just like him— better, even! Well, of course she’d agree. Yes, she’s young, she’s just seventeen, but… come on. You can barely say a perfect soldier like her is a kid, still. And it’s tragic that Cain made her like this, made her like them, but… it happened. She is like this. So why wouldn’t he help her use it for good? 

He never had to teach Batgirl, this girl who is just like him, about the value of life. Her hits are perfect and measured, to knock them out and nothing more. The first thing he noticed about her was her willingness to die and insistence that no one else does, and he encourages these things. 

And her death wish is ineffective and annoying and dangerous, but it’s inescapable and she doesn’t let it affect her missions anymore.

Batman asks Batgirl if the dozens of lives saved because of what she did is enough. She says no, and he says good. 

When Batgirl loses some of her skills, she runs at an armed man and gets shot 4 times (one in each thigh, one through her shoulder, one in her stomach). But she survives anyway, like she always will, and when she wakes up Batman asked why she did it. She responds instinct. He says, “Good.”

Then he finds out about her upcoming fight with Shiva. Batgirl knows that she will lose. This is not a competition or arrogance for her— this is suicide. She needs to move past this death wish and… well. She might not move… past it, per se, but she will be rid of it, and perhaps the world will become of rid of her. But it’s necessary. So he lets her leave, because he knows she needs to do this. At least she will die with honor.

Later, when she survives even after dying, because she always survives, Batman needs to do something. Something dangerous and reckless and, maybe, a bit suicidal. Batgirl wants to help but he just says “I let you fight Shiva because it was something you had to do for yourself. Don’t say thank you. Return the favor.” 

The tragedy of Batman and Batgirl is unlike the tragedy of David Cain and The One Who Is All, where she is only an assassin to her father— not even that, just a killing weapon. It’s unlike the tragedy of Cassandra and Sandra, where she is just a pawn for her mother’s suicide. And it is especially unlike the tragedy of Babs and Cassie, where she is seen by her mom as so much less than she is, as something that she can never be— regular. Normal. Innocent.

No, the tragedy of Batman and Batgirl is that her dad sees Cassandra as, yes, eventually a daughter, certainly a soldier, but most of all, an extension of himself. And he does not treat himself very well, or with much caution, or with any gentleness.

my phone isn’t charging even though i plugged her innnnn dramatic ass bitch. YOUR PUSSY IS FILLED! WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT

Despite my blog being named minibatson, I've always been a Freddy Freeman girl at heart.

Part of it is probably because I, too, am disabled. Not in the same way, but still. Disabled.

Part of it is probably because I, too, love my best friends dearly and would do anything for them. Just like he does consistently.

And I think part of it is because he feels so real? He feels so genuine in everything that he does. He goes through horrible tragedy, losing his parents, and then his grand parents and brother, being permanently disabled after an attack, and yet remains hopeful and fun. He maintains an air of jokes and comedy despite all the pain.

We talk a lot about how Billy is hopeful through tragedy, and he is. Being orphaned and homeless is horrible.

But we never talk about Freddy's strength. The amount of power – and compartmentalizing – it must take for a child to cope as well as he does.

To laugh in the face of such horror and pain is a strength we could all do with, given current events.

what if instead of cassandra cain she was cassandra wayne and they actually acknowledged she's bruce's kid