scans_daily: DC Women Kicking Ass - Most Kickass DC Female 2011 Is...

espanolbot (

espanolbot) wrote in

scans_daily,
@ 2011-11-23 12:13 am UTC

Entry tags:

char: black bat/batgirl/cassandra cain, title: batgirl

DC Women Kicking Ass - Most Kickass DC Female 2011 Is...

Behind the cut!

Well, the final Versus came down to Wonder Woman and Cassandra Cain, and the winner by 1192 votes to 1167 is...

...

CASS! HA!

In celebration, some bits from the story No One Dies Tonight, in which Cass carries out her memorial rite on the anniversary of the time she killed someone, by making sure no one dies violently in Gotham. At all.

This includes breaking into a gas chamber to keep a murderer from being executed.

The convict is bewildered by a mysterious ninja breaking him out of his execution, which considering he was ready to die starts to get him worried as to what's going to happen next. The pair then bump into the mother of the woman that the convict murdered, which knocks the wind out of Cass' sails,

Reluctantly, Cass returns him back to the guards (whose ammunition she stole on the way into the prison), and breaks out of the prison again, devastated that she wasn't able to keep the titular promise that she made to herself at the beginning of the issue.

This is from issue 19 of Cass' series.

http://dcwomenkickingass.tumblr.com/post/13154974640/winner

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	no subject nezchan 2011-11-23 12:48 am UTC (link)
	Well yes, I think she was right in stopping such barbarism. It's a pity she was pressured to let it happen anyway. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 10 comments) (Show 10 comments)

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espanolbot
2011-11-23 12:56 am UTC (link)

Her having to give him back wasn't shown in a positive way for multiple reasons, for example, the brief reprieve that Cass had given him had given the convict from time to stop being at peace with what was happening to him, so when the execution finally happened (rushed because of Cass messing with the schedule) he's now panicking and terrified of what was happening to him.

I think that the idea was that despite her good intentions, her ideology doesn't work in Gotham, because of the laws that she's trying to help enforce.

Don't forget, the figure that she's idolising at this point is someone who is so rigid in his belief in no killing that he'd save unrepentant mass murderers from certain death even though they'd maimed and killed his friends and family.

It could be interpreted that this was the beginning of the slide of Cass becoming more of her own person, as opposed to being the tool of Bruce's Will she initially was. After this, she began to become more of her own person as her personality grew and developed.

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icon_uk
2011-11-23 01:06 am UTC (link)

Her motivations don't work at all IMHO.

It was a legally sanctioned execution, the end result of the justice system she ultimately serves (and which Batman supports by his actions, including the death penalty. HE believes in no killing, he doesn't interfere with the due process of the law).

She had no business whatsoever to interfere with it. How is this different from organising a jailbreak because you happen to think locking people up is cruel?

And it's at least heading towards the hypocritical, in that she disrupts a legal execution on THIS night, but presumably is happy to let people be executed the other 364 days of the year? Either it's important enough to stop it all the time, or it's not.

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theredhood
2011-11-23 01:35 am UTC (link)

Which was ultimately the message of the story; "Sweet kid but honey, you have NO idea how this world really turns sometimes." As a reader, I don't think we were meant to empathize with her, just feel sorry for her inability to comprehend what you pointed out. As others have said, it was intentionally formative for the character.

In a broader sense, the semantics we've opened up here could be applied to Batman himself; How many stories do we have where he's busted up mob meetings and put 8 - 10 dudes in full body casts just to, I dunno, find out where the Penguin sequestered a stolen diamond? Quite a few. How many stories do we have where Batman uses his world's greatest detecting to track down a murderous internet pedophile? Comparatively not so many.

Does that mean that Batman really hates guidos but is happy to let kids be diddled? You can't really leap to that assumption. Dude's Batman. He has a lot of stuff going on, and he can't always fight every bit of corruption.

Though he tries, and that's why we love him.

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	no subject nezchan 2011-11-23 01:49 am UTC (link)
	That, and we can assume that he does routine crimefighting offscreen, as the "camera" doesn't follow him 24/7. So maybe he takes care of the pedos between Joker breakouts. Gotta pass the time somehow. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

	no subject korilian 2011-11-23 11:31 am UTC (link)
	Some types of crime fighting are just more respectable than others :). "It's okay to build me an armor tank car, but ooh tapping phones, that's going to far!" (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

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kagome654
2011-11-23 10:43 am UTC (link)

Technically she has no business interfering in the majority of what she does.

And I don't think something necessarily becomes acceptable just because it is legal. If you think taking a life against the owner's will is morally wrong I see no reason to make an exception just because the state is doing the killing. I think that's pretty darn consistent.

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icon_uk
2011-11-23 10:58 am UTC (link)

But that's my point; if she has a problem with State executions (and coming from a country which has no death penalty (even for treason) I share that POV), why isn't she interfering with them every day?

Plus, every murderer she catches and leaves to the law may well have the death penalty applied to them (Unless, y'know, they're a recurring franchise villain in which case, not a hope, but that's another discussion), so by her actions she's handing them over to possible execution, how does she reconcile with that?

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	no subject kagome654 2011-11-23 03:02 pm UTC (link)
	I assumed her motivation was probably explained in the story itself. I agree that if she feels strongly enough to interfere she should do so all the time, so I gathered there was a reason this individual or case struck a chord. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent) (Thread) (Hide 2 comments) (Show 2 comments)

	no subject kagome654 2011-11-23 03:06 pm UTC (link)
	Okay, the anniversary thing was mentioned, though that seems a little odd to me because I thought she tried her best to keep people from dying every night, but I guess I'll roll with it... I hate not being able to edit my posts (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

	no subject icon_uk 2011-11-23 04:38 pm UTC (link)
	Based on comments elsewhere in the thread it appears to be a self-imposed anniversary/memorial of her first "kill" for Cain, and her determination that no one should die on that day stems from that, so it's not so much ideological as chronological, and the actual person involved is irrelevant. (Reply to this) (Thread from start) (Parent)

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