Mistress' Venting - Tumblr Posts

They're fictional characters on a fictional world where the whole plot is that a middle aged man couldn't go to therapy and has been raising children to dress in leather and go out at night to beat criminals.

And you are "concerned" about batcest.

How, out of everything DC as a franchise and fandom has, is Jason and Tim (for example) kissing the point where people draw the line? Why is TimSteph an exception but DickBabs isn't? Don't they both have families and have made clear they don't see Bruce as a father? Why is CassSteph fine but JayTim isn't? How come these moral clutchings of pearls are always focused on the same "bat kids" and never include Duke, Luke, Harper, Jean-Paul, Helena (both Wayne and Bertinelli)? What about Kate? What about Selina?

Then again, this fandom from OP here is the same one that has tried to burn Ra'sTim dow by calling it incest (as if Ra's al Ghul, a man whose family ties are as complex as his motivations, would consider the protégée of the man that dated his daughter, related to him at all).

Truth is: Almost no bat ship is going to contain any theme of incest. Most of them aren't related by blood nor were they raised together nor have they showed traditional familiar dynamics. Jean-Paul on the late 90s was actually wonderfully written on that topic, as we see him considering Babs an older sister figure yet being attracted to her (a feeling that was mutual, but not at the same time). Found family isn't about traditional and conservative family roles, it's about a group of people that find comfort of some sort together, and the nature of their relationships can be complex, dark, awkward and even painful.

Sure, as a writer, I do use the term batcest and find it funny to play with silly ideas about their messy group of people in latex that uses violence to cope. Rationally, however, we are talking about drawings on paper that have been played with by multiple people for years. Wonder Woman was born from the kinky sex life of some man and people eat it up but God forbid someone on the internet writes BruDick (which was a huge icon of the queer and homosexual community for decades!).

I'm way too tired to keep going, but honestly? One could make an essay on the awfully conservative tendency of new people in fandom for sanitizing content and labeling all media and putting characters in tiny boxes. You CAN'T come to a fandom that has been around for years (and made up mostly by queer people and women, btw!) and decide that YOUR subjective and biased interpretation is the only correct interpretation. This is not how fandom works and even less how media comprehension works.

Jesncin, your reply is so educated and polite (which I love!!! And huge agree btw), yet I am SCREAMING at once again seeing someone (this anon) misunderstanding Lex Luthor's character and clearly having no knowledge whatsoever of him in actual DC media.

This constant ignorance about Lex's motivations and reasons behind his evilness make my head hurt. It's almost as ridiculous as people who think Joker would be homophobic.

And yes! Lex has been coded as a person of color for years. From being written as the child/grandchild of migrants to have explicit non white features.

And I think there's something to be said about how fandom has this weird tendency of ignoring coding when it comes to characters that don't satisfy stereotypes while also encouraging headcanons based on hurtful stereotypes (coff coff thinking that making characters who are killers Mexican is cool for some reason).

People get SO uncomfortable when forced to acknowledge Lex's coding as a person of color and queer man, as well as a past victim of abuse. He is not a perfect victim, he does wrong, he shows evilness, he has power, he is arrogant. He doesn't feed people's fantasy about what people of color should be, and it makes them angry.

(P.S. Sorry for the spam, Jesncin! Your post is 1000/10 and I loved it. Extra kudos to you!)

I really hope this doesn’t come across as rude, but why did you decide to make Lex Luthor, whose motivation is basically racism and xenophobia from my understanding, a person of color? This isn’t like, a criticism, more just, I really like your JL remix stuff and you usually have cool reasons for the stuff you change, so I was surprised by this one

I understand the curiosity! But I have to point out that "you usually have cool reasons for the stuff you change, so I was surprised by this one" made me laugh, haha. Long answer coming because I have a lot of feelings- but the point in the very end is worth it, trust me.

So for one, Lex is Afro-Greek in my version. This comes from the popular headcanon that STAS/DCAU Lex is Black (and his design is based on a Greek man). His character design, skin tone, and Clancy Brown's enigmatic performance became unintentional perceived representation for Black fans (and even DC writers). And now in the Harley Quinn show, that's become canonized! For why they like it, that's not my place to say as a non-Black person- so I listen!

I don't agree that Lex's motivation is "basically racism and xenophobia"- his themes are much broader than that. It's the desire to be the Man of Tomorrow, his jealousy of Superman, the way his intellect alone is a match against Superman's strength. Sometimes that jealousy is expressed through bigotry, but it's all a means to an end for Lex. My approach is: if Lex being Black is something we want to integrate more into his character, what opportunities does that open up narratively? Because there's rich potential for him and the characters connected to him.

When discussing MAWS I talk a lot about how when you're writing a bigoted marginalized character, there needs to be specifity with where that internalized bigotry is coming from. So a change like that for Lex Luthor could, for example; discuss how privileges like wealth can assimilate otherwise marginalized people into the kind of power that harms others in their community.

The ripple affect this has on a character like Superboy/Conner is that we get to see how -even though they're both Luthors- Conner is profiled, othered and further marginalized as a Kryptonian and a Black homeless teen because he doesn't get to benefit from any of Lex's privileges. This is just part of the many reasons why I think Conner would be infinitely more interesting if he didn't look like Kal El despite being a clone. You get to see a new intersection of how the Kryptonian identity intersects with Blackness on Earth. The potential ripple effect for a character like Lena is also really fun! What if she's struggling with her own model minority pressure when she's making up for her brother's crimes? It's all very compelling!

And MOST importantly, in a 3 trillion IQ Lex Luthor-style move-making Lex Luthor Black means that some version of Matt Fraction & Steve Lieber's Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen arc exists in my au. Which famously hinges on the twist that LEX LUTHOR AND JIMMY OLSEN ARE DISTANTLY RELATED. THEREFORE!!! We have now found a convoluted way to have Wacky Renaissance Artist Jimmy Olsen connected to The Manifestation Of Black Excellence Evil Edition Lex Luthor in this au.

I keep seeing very weird takes about Jean-Paul and J*son T*dd being "Tim Drake haters" and I am thinking about doing that analysis I have always wanted to do about how despite Azrael taking over his mind during his era as Batman, Jean-Paul was showing (messily) that he believed Tim was a kid who should not be out there as Robin as Gotham was a cruel city that would *kill him*.

But in summary, I think it says a lot that even at his worst moment and being fully taken over by his brainwashing, Jean-Paul still managed to wake up from it before hurting Tim irreversibly (the infamous choking scene). JP not only stops himself, stopping Azrael from hurting Tim, but he even apologizes and tries to speak about what's happening to him. And one can argue how the distance he puts between himself and Tim later in Knightfall is, in JP's subconscious, a way of making sure AzBats won't hurt the kid.

Hell, there IS a panel of JP saying to Catwoman how he doesn't want to hurt Tim, and implying that him (JP) is scared of endangering Tim again. Jean-Paul explicitly tells Dick that he likes Robin, and shows certain jealousy to the bond Tim and Dick have.

And this is only New Earth, in n52 Jean-Paul liked all the bats (except Dick, supposedly). Although perhaps this is taking it too far, as n52 J*son also seemed to liked all the bats. INCLUDING TIM.

So, to summarize: Jean-Paul has never hated Tim, in fact, he seemed to be the only character written as recognizing Tim was a kid who should not be doing vigilante work. And this is CONSCIOUS Jean-Paul saying these things, vs a very conscious J*son being the one deciding to take out his anger on Tim as if Tim were to blame for the whole Joker thing.

Comparing JP to J*son in any way has no objective, as their circumstances are very different and they took very different paths regarding their anger. But implying that JP is a Tim hater because people want J*son to have someone who's also taking their anger out on Tim for no reason? I'd say Damian is right there but tbh I don't want my baby bat being labeled like that either.

(Huge disclaimer: This isn't meant as J*son bashing. His character is canonically the way he is and that's fine. My issue is people wanting to turn Jean-Paul into something he ISN'T to fit another's character's narrative. In fanfic is okay but please stop pretending those ideas are objective)

I'd make a longer post (and maybe one day I will) but since Lore Olympus, the story that introduced me to webtoons is coming to an end I'd like to say something:

I can't believe it is considered problematic. It has to be one of the sweetest, fluffiest, simplest stories I have read (hence why I still like it, it's a relaxing read before bed) and somehow it got too "kinky" for mainstream. It's laughable.

Everytime I dare to click on their tag or look for the # on Twitter or FB I see people clutching their pearls as if Lore Olympus were brainwashing teenagers into marrying a non existent God of the dead and have babies with him. What the hell?

The fact that people think LO is too dark makes me laugh. A single episode of Rick&Morty, BoJack Horseman or HQS has way more explicit content and dialogue. In fact!!! If it were up to me LO would have gotten genuinely kinky!!! All it does is have some surface spicy tropes that get sugar coated to not make puritans awkward and tbh that's sad. LO and the author get terribly hated anyway for daring to portray the most common female fantasy.

And this all makes me laugh but also mad because you'd think LO at least has some genuine dark themes but no? At most we have Persephone's trauma due to Apollo's abuse and yet that topic is treated as a therapy pamphlet because people couldn't handle an imperfect victim. Hades is a wife guy who shows little to no anger. Hera was re written to be sort of a feminist so that people stopped being annoying about women having emotions.

LO is a sweet, simple story with tiny spicy things here and there that were eventually pushed aside because people couldn't handle it. I wonder how Rachel feels about this, because at the beginning the story was extremely spicy and the only crime was being published in a platform as webtoon, full of people who can't differentiate reality from fiction.

Is LO a masterpiece? Idk! I enjoy the story, it's very self indulgent for me, but I won't go and analyze every detail to see how it should be labeled as it's not meant to be a perfect media. It's meant to be an entertaining, nice story of romance and it does that job very well. This need to demand perfect writing while also crucifying authors over "dark" themes is ridiculous and contradictory.

And I keep wondering, if these people loathe LO so much, why dedicate all that time to the infinte posts they make about how they would have told the story? And all those re tellings are boring! It's always "So Persephone and Hades won't ever kiss here because she's a lesbian. Also he doesn't appear at all. And Demeter isn't an abusive mom! Oh and everyone is ugly because gods shouldn't be beautiful! And Apollo isn't evil he's uwu baby. And no toxic relationships here, Zeus is a good husband!"

Sweet Gaia, you guys wouldn't handle Saint Seiya having Athena in the body of a teenage girl with big tits and who's constantly in the edge of breaking her virginity vows. This attitude screams of jealousy and puritanism and both are disgusting.

TLDR: LO being too problematic for people is both funny and annoying. I wished it actually were as kinky and dark as people insist it is. I'd pay for a toxic romance, but that being said, I LOVE it very much as it is and it's nice to have a re telling that, while not pretending to be loyal to mythology, didn't go for a route of sanitizing all the myths. I hope that once it ends haters will move on and let real fans and the author alone. 🙏

I'm probably making up things but I have been thinking about how Tim's relationship to the Batman and Robin mantles resemble the one of a noble lady to her title back in the golden era of monarchies.

Like a lady, Tim can only be Robin as long as a Batman allows it.

His title taken from him by whoever man takes the Batman cape, as Tim has no right to it due to his status. Tim can only have what the Batman will allow, whether it's little (Jean-Paul) or simply nothing (Dick).

Something something Tim loses his status when Bruce dies and the only way he can do anything it's with the support of a marriage (the deal with Ra's) and yet Tim's crucified over it.

... Ra'sTim in Red Robin being basically a convenience marriage. Tim who can never inherit the Batman title, condemned to have Robin only as long as the Batman allows it. Yes, he's a child of the bat but that means nothing when it comes to inheritance. So he must get his power by marriage, and who better to give him that than the most powerful and dangerous king to ever exist?

(Taken from a rambling at discord.)

I find it laughable that people eat up the FANON thing of Ra's being a sexist jerk (put it next to conservative Lex Luthor please) and the few terrible NEW retcons done to his character. People not only eat it, but preach it, yet if you dare to pull this same "canon" card with his daughter you will get crucified.

If the poc female character has nasty retcons then that's not canon! How convenient.

But if the poc male character has nasty retcons then it's canon? Huh, definitely has nothing to do with the constant need of society to label poc men as dangerous and abusers ☠️

Anyway! Never forget that the original story of Ra's (that people who swear to love his daughter should read again, apparently) has him mourning his wife to the point he can't endure the idea of loving someone else, the only reason he approached Bruce was because his daughter loved him and he never dated to underestimate women in the field ✨

(yes I love my fic Ra's a bit evil but GOD these takes...)

you'd think Ra's and Poison Ivy would hang out more given their broadly similar interest in killing tons and tons of people to "let the planet heal" or whatever. obviously there are editorial reasons for not constantly throwing two big-name villains together but from an in-universe perspective I'd like to imagine they tried to chill exactly one time and discovered they cannot fucking stand each other for reasons completely unrelated to the eco terrorism. they had like the platonic version of a one night stand and now the vibes are so rancid they can't make eye contact.

Batman #138

"I can smell it on you" why are these two like this? 😭 I swear people purposely ignore Ra's' queer coding atp because this arc was a barely decent story with Bat/Cat drama and siblings fighting and yet it decided to tie Vandal Savage and Ra's intimately just for the sake of it. We get no more memories or dedications, only this, a pain they somehow share. And I don't think it's necessarily shipping, but I do think this comic at least got right that these two terrible, ambitious men relate to each other painfully. "All good things fade."

People freaking out in the notes of this 😭 ??? Tumblr makes it so easy to mute stuff, why do people follow content they want to attack? Antis have such wild behavior.

ANYWAY!!! This was a hard decision, anyone who knows me knows I love both ships, but as for DamiTim, it changes from writer to writer, which sometimes makes it not my cup of tea at all (very normal for fandom ships I believe). It's kinda like BatCat and BruDick, I love them both, but the second one is read different by everyone, and sometimes won't manage to be what I want. That being said, I love all my bat ships a lot and they all get some attention from me 💚

(Ra'sTim is my OTP, yes, but do they count as a bat ship? They are more of a winner ship 🤭)

Top AO3 Batfamily Ships Bracket: Round 2

I know we all have complex feelings about ROS but this whole sequence is so funny to me.

Lex: "I want an abortion!"

Donovan: "Sir, you can't do that!"

Lex: "Why not!? It's my body, my choice!"

Donovan: "... Sir, your child is 15yo and sitting right here drinking a smoothie"

Kon: "It's fine, doc. He does this every week"

I find it hilarious how someone can come to this platform, point out that it's definitely weird and sad to dedicate one's whole account to "redo" an indie comic and exactly that kind of people will find your post and be offended.

Idc how much the age gap between two fictional characters, aka pixels and ink on paper, bothers you. Dedicating your whole internet presence to redo an indie comic and get some sort of profit from it it's weird and it does the opposite from helping artists. If you guys really hate LO so much then stop building yourselves after the work of Rachel! Go and make a fanfic of Percy Jackson. I hate that you guys make get so loud with your "positive retellings" that are nothing but sanitized versions of the story because you get the icks at a fictional age gap. You know what that is? Pathetic.

I already made my points before, and you are only proving how annoying your group of people is. You can't demand the story to be what Rachel didn't want, because the story is HERS no matter how many redesigns you post or how many edits you make. The story will always be hers, and you guys can keep screaming and hissing for eternity.

I shall proceed to block you. I wish no more contact with accounts that profit on indie media. I will not waste more words on you antis.

I'd make a longer post (and maybe one day I will) but since Lore Olympus, the story that introduced me to webtoons is coming to an end I'd like to say something:

I can't believe it is considered problematic. It has to be one of the sweetest, fluffiest, simplest stories I have read (hence why I still like it, it's a relaxing read before bed) and somehow it got too "kinky" for mainstream. It's laughable.

Everytime I dare to click on their tag or look for the # on Twitter or FB I see people clutching their pearls as if Lore Olympus were brainwashing teenagers into marrying a non existent God of the dead and have babies with him. What the hell?

The fact that people think LO is too dark makes me laugh. A single episode of Rick&Morty, BoJack Horseman or HQS has way more explicit content and dialogue. In fact!!! If it were up to me LO would have gotten genuinely kinky!!! All it does is have some surface spicy tropes that get sugar coated to not make puritans awkward and tbh that's sad. LO and the author get terribly hated anyway for daring to portray the most common female fantasy.

And this all makes me laugh but also mad because you'd think LO at least has some genuine dark themes but no? At most we have Persephone's trauma due to Apollo's abuse and yet that topic is treated as a therapy pamphlet because people couldn't handle an imperfect victim. Hades is a wife guy who shows little to no anger. Hera was re written to be sort of a feminist so that people stopped being annoying about women having emotions.

LO is a sweet, simple story with tiny spicy things here and there that were eventually pushed aside because people couldn't handle it. I wonder how Rachel feels about this, because at the beginning the story was extremely spicy and the only crime was being published in a platform as webtoon, full of people who can't differentiate reality from fiction.

Is LO a masterpiece? Idk! I enjoy the story, it's very self indulgent for me, but I won't go and analyze every detail to see how it should be labeled as it's not meant to be a perfect media. It's meant to be an entertaining, nice story of romance and it does that job very well. This need to demand perfect writing while also crucifying authors over "dark" themes is ridiculous and contradictory.

And I keep wondering, if these people loathe LO so much, why dedicate all that time to the infinte posts they make about how they would have told the story? And all those re tellings are boring! It's always "So Persephone and Hades won't ever kiss here because she's a lesbian. Also he doesn't appear at all. And Demeter isn't an abusive mom! Oh and everyone is ugly because gods shouldn't be beautiful! And Apollo isn't evil he's uwu baby. And no toxic relationships here, Zeus is a good husband!"

Sweet Gaia, you guys wouldn't handle Saint Seiya having Athena in the body of a teenage girl with big tits and who's constantly in the edge of breaking her virginity vows. This attitude screams of jealousy and puritanism and both are disgusting.

TLDR: LO being too problematic for people is both funny and annoying. I wished it actually were as kinky and dark as people insist it is. I'd pay for a toxic romance, but that being said, I LOVE it very much as it is and it's nice to have a re telling that, while not pretending to be loyal to mythology, didn't go for a route of sanitizing all the myths. I hope that once it ends haters will move on and let real fans and the author alone. 🙏

// Vent:

There's something so peculiar in this phenomenon where the people writing Ra's al Ghul's children decide to justify their characters by ruining Ra's' character and everything he meant. He has gone from a man trying to save mother nature to a pure, awful abuser. From a man who loved his wife so much he can't even think of remarrying to a man who killed his wife. He has been made a mockery of what he was, a racist caricature.

And no one cares, of course. They want their favs justified, so go ahead! Destroy Ra's! Who cares about the old man? Let him rot.

This is so... Hilarious. It's depressingly ironic. The fandom who adores Ra's' children and the lore that was his and his alone will celebrate the ruin of his character. And then there's this small, almost tiny fandom: Ra'sTim fandom.

And only in Ra'sTim fandom will you find Ra's being treated as an individual. Only there people care enough about Ra's as to acknowledge his forgotten stories. Only with Tim, Ra's gets an spotlight for him. A man who loves. A man who cares. A man who is trying to save the world.

You won't find "gen" fics where Ra's has some depth to his character. He is nothing but a piece to prop up others and ships, humiliated and turned into something he isn't. But with Tim? The most exquisite parts of Ra's blossom: Once again a man with freedom, with choices, who has his own emotions and ideas.

It's quite poetic, perhaps. In a way Tim truly manages to save Ra's, even if it's only here, in a tiny side of the internet's words, where few people remember who Ra's used to be, and love him for that, and dedicate their love with stories where he gets to be himself.

DC might never show respect for Ra's again, and yet, in this corner of the vast web, there's people who remember. People who give life to the old, lovely Ra's that used to fight for mother nature and who loved so strong it ruined him.

What a strange yet wonderful event.

SCREAM IT!!!

Like, okay, everyone can like their own ships, that's kinda my whole thing here. But this tendency of bashing Clex in order to prop up ANOTHER non canon ship is insane. Specially because as you all pointed out to OP, Lex and Clark have a long, painful and complex history together.

Again and again, we see each other being incapable of staying away. They have been tied for so long that they might not know what to do without the other.

If people don't like Clex then fine (I literally don't care), but they need to stop pretending it doesn't have the content it has in DC media. Denying all the comics and others showing Clex being almost intimately close to each other is almost as delusional as denying Clois media. Because it's there, whether you like it or not.

And, lastly, putting ship bashing on a ship tag is extremely rude. Which I'm used to, as a fan of certain ships who also have to deal with haters like this one above. Still, rude! Don't do that, people.

say what you will about superbat vs clex, but at least Bruce wants to fuck Superman AND Clark Kent. Lex really can’t say the same, huh?