Cringeworthy Cass Moments!

[espanolbot]

Contains violence against small pre-superheroines and animals.
Barbara reacting badly to Cass' illiteracy!
Context: A robot has been roaming Gotham destroying all copies of a certain book which contains the code that will destroy it. Unfortunately the librarian who was trying to help Cass was only able to find the word before getting unconcious.


After Cass defeats the robot, but jumping in front of it and shoving the book in its face, making it read its own selfdestruct code, it's revealed that although Cass may shrug off bullet wounds, Barbara has discovered there is still something of Cass' that she can hurt: her feelings!


Selfsurgery, with Cass! Also, Tim is totally trying to look at her with her shirt of there.

Seriously though, considering the amount of nerve and muscle damage that Cain would have inflicted upon Cass a child, she must have some kind of mild healing factor in order for her to function as a martial artist, surely?

Food, with MiniCass!



Parental Affection: Cain-style!




And from the only miniseries prior to the recent Gates of Gotham to star Cass, here are some of the covers from City of Light! Mwhahaha.








Yeaaaaah, as soon as I was done reading it I immediately mailed it to Linkara. He said he's planning to review it at some point, which is something to look forward to. :)

If only because if Batman, the worm-eating troll and a villain who is made of glowing, white stickiness (which he attempts to drown Renee Montoya and Crispis Allen in, if I remember correctly).

Comments

[aeka]

Wow. I knew Babs could be a bitch, but berating Cass for not knowing her alphabet despite knowing what her upbringing consisted of was just downright cruel, even if it was 'heat of the moment.' Poor Cass. :(

[espanolbot]

I think that the idea was meant to be that Barbara, as a former librarian and all round very well read person, felt it was really frustrating to have an apprentice who not only couldn't read, but found it so difficult that most of the time Cass just worked around it by getting someone else to do the reading for her.

It wasn't until Babs and Cass' last meeting prior to Infinite Crisis/the OYL Debacle, that Barbara found that there were actual physical reasons for Cass' inability to read (language centres of her brain are scattered about, effectively giving her dyslexia as opposed to just not knowing how to read or write) as opposed to Babs' previous idea, that Cass wasn't succeeding at learning to read because she was LAZY.

So, Barbara began working on a new way of trying to teach Cass that worked around how her brain worked, only that didn't actually get carried through, due to the whole Beechen thing.

[shadowpsykie]

she apologized though. we all say things in the heat of the moment that we end up regretting. it was a bad situation. but good people can do bad things....

Heat of the Moment

[blue_bolt]

Rule: Shit gets said in combat (whether you're in the field or not) that you regret.

The most important part is that she owned up to what she said and apologized for it.

[darkknightjrk]

Yeah, this is one of those moments that almost epitomizes my thinking that making her Oracle massively derailed the character of Barbara Gordon.

Mod Note

[salinea]

Do not use sexist language like "bitch" to criticise characters, please.

[jaybee3]

City of Light was truly horrible. The fact that Cass is basically the co-star with Bruce in it (and not the Robins) is the main reason to read it.

The whole plot with Cass' difficulty reading was something Kelley Puckett developed very subtly until it broke out with her learning how to read her first word (I believe it was "Why?" no?) in English - the fact that Beechan had her become fluent in Navajo (one of the hardest languages in the world to learn) off-screen (and it wasn't due to Deathstroke's magic evil juice but Alfred teaching it to her off-screen apparently) was so incredibly ridiculous - and it proved that not only Beechan but his Editors (Berganza, Tomasi) didn't even know much about Cass when the decided to go and make her evil.

I think if a writer cares about a character it really does influence how they write that character and how they come off. I think it was clear that Kelley Puckett, Dylan Horrocks (even if his run was uneven) and Anderson Gabrych all had a great deal of affection and understanding of Cass which Beechan who remarked that "IF he was a Cassandra Cain he would be upset at what done to her (by him!) too" at the same time he was given a min-series about her lacked. To him she was just a job, make her evil, retcon his own story, make her good, etc. there was no feeling in any of it.

[jlbarnett]

no, she learned English off screen with Alfred. I believe she learned Navajo offscreen with Bruce and Tim and it was supposedly meant as some sort of, well if we can't teach you English maybe you can learn a different language.

I like to think that she was just present when Tim learned it and the evil juice gave her like total recall.

[lieut_kettch]

That was incredibly lazy writing by Beechen. Especially since there were two perfectly plausible (well, comic book plausible) explanations for Cass' sudden leap in language skills-- the Slade Juice and her dip in the Lazarus Pit. Or a combination of the two.

[jlbarnett]

why would Cain teach her about cows and how some people view them when he wouldn't even teach her how to communicate with people. And teaching her body language doesn't count, because no one else would be able to communicate with her.

[mister_cairo]

He wouldn't have to teach her; merely taking her some place* where they are considered sacred would be sufficient as she would 'read' the respect off the handlers.

Everyone can communicate with Cass - to her, body language is a complete and universal language (it's how she was able to follow commands/function pre-telepathic rewire), but it only works the one way; everyone else's comprehension is severely limited in comparison.

* or she might have wandered through after she left him.

[kagome654]

Well, how far along in Cass' career was the library thing? Is there any reason she (and her friends and mentors) didn't make learning her alphabet a priority? Had Babs been working with her at all? Seems kind of important

[espanolbot]

It was fairly far into her career, just prior to her move to Bludhaven but before Steph's death. The idea was that Barbara had been trying to teach Cass to read and write even before Cass became Batgirl (see her introduction in No Man's Land), but it just wasn't sticking.

Steph was also meant to be helping her out as well, now that I think about it, though that kept getting derailled as Bruce kept on banning Cass from seeing her, as he thought that she was a bad influence and might distract Cass (this was in Bruce's accidental douchebag years, where his idea of keeping her safe and on the mission was to try and remove any attempts Cass made to try and have friends or relationships outside of the Bat Family).

[icon_uk]

IIRC she couldn't learn the alphabet because her brain wasn't wired to do so. Cain's training had over-ridden the normal language processing part of her brain in order to develop her people-reading skills.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Speaking as someone with a learning disability, yeah people really don't 'get' that we don't pick up information like everyone else. If I had a God damn nickle for everytime I got lectured for not knowing something by my parents or teachers, instead of them explaining it to me, I'd be a God damn millionaire.

Eventually, you learn to fake it to hold onto any self respect.

[blunderbuss]

Y'know, it occured to me after reading the discussion above about Cass's language problems - did the Bat Team ever try teaching her sign language? You'd think it'd would be perfect for Cass since she understands body movement so well.

Sure, she still needs to learn how to speak/read, but you'd think first teaching her a language she could understand would help.

[espanolbot]

In the mini series that Adam Beechen wrote to "fix" the issues he made with the original storyline where he made Cass evil, he basically said that during 52 Alfred (effectively Cass' adopted grandfather within the Batbooks) signed her up for ASL and speech therapy lessons to help her out.

Which, on the one hand, continues the thread from her own series of how Cass was genuinely treating Cass like Bruce's daughter even before he adopted her, but on the other brings up the fact it kind of makes Barbara look like she's got a really short attention span.

The whole "Now we know you actually have a learning disablity, I'll set my mighty brain into finding ways to teach you! At least, until I get bored and find other things to fill my time" thing.

[icon_uk]

IIRC As it stood, that wouldn't have worked, since it was the communication centre of her brain which had been affected by Cain's methods. Her brain was essentially hardwired so that the ONLY form of interpersonal communication she could truly read was body language, any form of spoken or written language was almost impossible for her. Body language is usually autonomic (If I remember the word right), but anything which amounted to conscious communication (attaching symbols to meanings or objects) was outside her range. She eventually learned to speak a few words like "Yes" and "No", but it was not "natural" for her to do so, so she rarely did.

[lieut_kettch]

Selfsurgery, with Cass! Also, Tim is totally trying to look at her with her shirt off there.

Ah, Tim and Cass. I totally believe they made sweet, sweet Batcest at the end of Gates of Gotham.

[espanolbot]

Yeah, I kind of got that impression too, not just in GoG but through their interactions in Red Robin as well.

Which, on the one hand, is kind of weird considering how Cass attempted to molest Tim (twice) whilst high off her ass on Slade's serum, but considering their relationship all the way through her own series and Tim's, I'd concede that there might actually have been some kind of mutual attraction going on in the background there.

Awkward as it might have been, considering Tim had dated Cass' best friend, and Cass had a brief thing with one of Tim's, and how for a large part of their early relationship Tim was terrified of her.

[q99]

What issue is the last Cain fight there from?

-
Seriously though, considering the amount of nerve and muscle damage that Cain would have inflicted upon Cass a child, she must have some kind of mild healing factor in order for her to function as a martial artist, surely?-

Ah, injuries in comics do not work like in RL ^^ Except for a few extremely serious injuries, most heal completely aside from minor visible scaring.

[espanolbot]

Batgirl 50, I think. It was a flashback prior to Cass and Bruce getting high on rage drugs and fighting each other across Gotham to help Cass get over her teenage rebellious phase that had been building for the past 40ish issues.

[stolisomancer]

Cain was shown later on to be the kind of ridiculously precise master assassin that only gets to exist in pop-culture, such as with how he killed Vesper Fairchild, so it's probably not beyond the bounds of reason that he was able to be that precise when, um, "disciplining" Cass. I remember one of the scenes we were shown where he shot her, and he was inflicting what would've been a flesh wound even on an adult.

[icon_uk]

In at least one of the cases where he shot her, he did so to teach her not to flinch in any way, so she could convincingly play dead.

[newnumber6]

I hated the killer-robot-that-can-only-be-destroyed-by-the-word-peace issue. Not the character issue or Barbara's reaction which were actually fairly well done, but the plot itself. The idea was mildly sound, a situation where Cass' inability to read makes for a life and death situation, but it was just written so... clumsily... first, a published book that contains the word and all sorts of information on who created the robot but yet nobody surviving has read it and the writer (who knew very well they might try anything to suppress the information) didn't spread the word and other information far and wide in all sorts of hidden ways just in case somebody tried to kill the whistle blower, second that the librarian finds the word, rushes out and says "I've got it! I've found the word that disables the killer robot you're fighting! I have it right here in this book and I circled it conveniently for you! The word in question, which will disable that robot that is an imminent threat to both of us, is..." instead of running out and shouting "peace! peace! peace! peace! peace! peace!"

Seriously, I was really getting into Batgirl and _almost_ dropped it thanks to that issue. Luckily I didn't because it started to get really good shortly after.

[newnumber6]

Woops, teach me for using angle brackets. There was supposed to be a (zapped unconscious) after the "imminent threat to both of us, is..."

[bluestar86]

Cass' life is pain. I don't say this lightly. I suspect that Cass being young is what allowed her nerves to heal, normally it doesn't work like that, but this is comics! Where nerve damage can be fixed by MIRACLES (and red hair)! Much less youthful vigor and recovery ability.

This doesn't make Barbara any less of a horrible person for not being able to hold her tongue.

Cass was the only good part of City of Lights. That and the opportunity to show that Batman kills kids and is barely affected by it after a month or two. The rest of it was tripe from top to bottom.

One of the big problems with having massive ongoing series, often switching writers every 25-50 books, is that characters inevitably become hypocrites especially with comics, because it isn't governed as well as it could/should be. For cryin' out loud, in the April '08 issue of Batman and the Outsiders, Green Arrow calls Cass a murderer(!), a year and a month later Green Arrow kills Prometheus, and I'm pretty sure he's been hunted ever since. Way to police your comics guys! I look forward to more screwing up in the future!

[fifthie]

I kind of enjoy the portrayal of Babs being as totally shitty to Cass in this comic as basically everybody everywhere* is to everybody else who has a difficulty they can't help in real life.

*no not actually everybody, no not actually everywhere