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Hi, I'm Angela. I'm a white, cis woman who would enjoy long walks on the beach but that means I'd have to leave my apartment. In my spare time I enjoy crying about tv shows, procrastinating on assignments even after they're due, and pretending my alcohol tolerance is higher than what it actually is. Things you'll find on this blog are Homestuck, comics, Teen Wolf, Doctor Who, and a variety of other fandoms and pictures of kittens and puppies. |
i’ve been seeing posts like “either you’re on team batgirl, or you’re not,” in response to people who are fed up with barbara gordon because of the new 52 and dc’s/gail simone’s fuckery.
(funnily enough, that post used panels from steph’s batgirl, which used the term “team batgirl,” despite actively erasing cass’s tenure AS batgirl, and her relationships with steph and barbara. but whatever.)
and i’ve been seeing posts saying “don’t blame the character for the fuckery of the writers,” as well.
i’ve just gotta say, that kind of post seriously misses the point.
people don’t blame barbara for what the DC did to steph and cass. we don’t. when we say “anyone but barbara 2012,” all we mean is that we are tired of DC shoving a watered-down, declawed version of barbara gordon in our faces, and using her to erase steph and cass.
we don’t blame her; instead, we have grown to resent her. barbara gordon as batgirl, especially in the new 52, is symbolic of cass and steph’s erasure at this point. that’s what we associate with her. how on earth can you blame us for that?
many people felt the same way about steph when DC gave her the mantle of batgirl and erased cass in the process; cass’s decision wasn’t explored or explained, and she vanished completely from comics for like two years. so people got resentful of steph, who wasn’t allowed to remember her former best friend, wasn’t allowed to say her name, was written to replace her like she was never there. and you know what? it was completely fucking fair for people to resent steph’s series then, just like it’s fair for ppl to resent barbara now.
i understand that the new 52 screwed barbara over. i do. i am a massive oracle fan, of course i understand, and it hurts me too. but that doesn’t stop me from resenting barbara-as-batgirl, because the new 52 version of barbara gordon is NOT the barbara gordon i know and love; and, more than that, she’s a symbol for everything that pisses me off about DC these days.
*that* is why we resent her. not because we blame her, as a character, but because her appearances nowadays are bludgeon-esque reminders of DC misogyny/ableism/erasure/general fuckery.
that’s why fans won’t rally around ~*team batgirl*~. our hurt and frustration and resentment of babsgirl is rational and valid. you don’t have to feel the same way, but you should at least be able acknowledge to that.
(via shobogan)
