I originally wrote this in 2006. I'm reposting it in Election Day because I still think it's true... and I think that it'll be true no matter who wins.

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Fuck you, DC. Cass was Batgirl, too. I don't know or care *who* is the new person in the Batgirl suit. Maybe she's Babs. Maybe she's somebody else. Maybe she's somebody else I'll come to like like whoa. That's not the point.

The point, DC, is this: You drove Cass OOC. Then you made her kill. Then you made her bugfuck-insane-crazy OOC. And then you made a character say, with all the metatextual trappings of a "Look, in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane!," that he didn't see the "quiet, mopey one," that "the real Batgirl was back."

That's not how it works, DC. You don't get to *erase* somebody like that and then tell us that you are about *icons* and *legends*. Outside the trinity, you couldn't recognize iconic if it bit you in the ass.

I swear, there are months when fanfic is the only reason why I care about what DC is doing.

Taken (and edited a bit) from a comment I made somewhere else, mostly so I could file this under "rants".

( Unnecessarily shitty, horrific events.Collapse )

On one hand, I was thinking -prompted by the recent discussions about Babs' disability- it might be cool to have a community or at least a series of posts devoted to the technological, scientific, economic and political aspects of the DCU (and perhaps other universes in comics). Issues of technological diffusion, international relationships, political structure, law, finances... all of those topics fascinate me in the real world, and no doubt would be extremely interesting to consider in the context of comics.

On the other hand, the DCU just doesn't make any *sense*, technologically or economically. At all. The inconsistencies between what they are capable of, technologically, and what they do, are so staggering that the community would soon devolve into long, increasingly rambling posts of incoherent geeky rage. If you aren't ready to deal with the implications of advanced technology, don't write it into your fictional world. Sheesh. It's like establishing emotional and professional ties between a character and other characters, then killing her gruesomely and have most everybody else never mention her again.

Oh, wait. Right.

So I won't touch the issue anymore. Much. At least in public.

See? Proactive stress avoidance: demonstrated!

It'd be petty of me to link to this, right? And completely besides the point, too. So I won't.

It'd be more realistic to consider all the ways in which the saying "cripple the bitch" would make Nightwing do things that he might or might not prettily angst about after all the violence is done. Still, not quite the point.

Overall, I think I'm not that bothered by the anti Dick/Babs thing (I mean, I think the rants show a questionable understanding of their characters and relationships, and hate comms are a waste of bits, but whatever people do in the privacy of their comms...). "I think she mistreats him, and he deserves something better" (had it been politely worded) would have been, I guess, ok (even if I'd be rather vocal arguing against that *g*).

No, what makes me think the whole thing is too ugly to be spontaneous (so I'm more icked than angry) is the "cripplethebitch" thing and the related stuff. There's character dislike, and there is sociopathic ranting. The mysoginistic violence in that -and I'm saying this as somebody who thinks comic books violence can be pretty sexy (cf Cass, Shiva, et al)- is utterly appalling. Babs was *crippled*, and, at least in the narrative framing, *raped*. You can (theoretically) not like her, but to gleefully say something like that... That goes beyond well mannered energetic fannish dissent, much in the same way in which a thing goes way, way, *way* beyond another thing.

I'd be glad if we never cross paths with that one again.

Riffing on jarodrussell's comics as software platform concept, I end up ranting on comics and technology.

ETA: In fact, I rant rather more than I had expected beforehand...

( Customer support sucks JUST AS MUCHCollapse )

( LJ == A better comp.os.linuxCollapse )

( DC and Marvel == Red Hat, but they think they are MSCollapse )

( Aside: IP laws don't match technology, economics or mores any more. I don't expect you to deal, Mr. Media Companies. I expect you to DIE!Collapse )

( comics fanfic == writing system freeware for WindowsCollapse )

( I want in my Fandom OS: a more modular systemCollapse )

( I want in my Fandom OS: Portability and flexibilityCollapse )

( I want in my Fandom OS: a DC Kernel Mailing ListCollapse )