InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Do you have any Grey Poupon?"

kingrockwell (kingrockwell) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-11-01 22:03:00

Entry tags:

char: azrael/jean paul valley, char: batgirl/cassandra cain, char: batgirl/oracle/barbara gordon, in-joke: context is for the weak

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	manofbats 2009-11-02 03:09 am UTC (link)
	I am really glad that guy is dead. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	perletwo 2009-11-02 03:20 am UTC (link)
	Dude. So sorry. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	manofbats 2009-11-02 03:21 am UTC (link)
	Black Lantern = Still Dead (Reply to this) (Parent)

	kingrockwell 2009-11-02 03:22 am UTC (link)
	And now we'll never get hilariously awkward beats like this ever again. :( (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-11-02 03:34 am UTC (link)
	Oh, sure we will. There's nothing in JP's character, or... actually, in this dialog, to demand his awesome raged-out reaction face there. I think it's just a huge moment of artist!fail, and those can happen to anyone. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	kingrockwell 2009-11-02 03:38 am UTC (link)
	Except, well, his implied crush on Cass. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	bluefall 2009-11-02 03:45 am UTC (link)
	Given she's developmentally fourteen and he's just shy of graduating college when we meet him (which is some time before this, even with compression), I find any such implication both intensely squicky and frankly, pretty hard to even credit. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	akodo_rokku 2009-11-02 04:35 am UTC (link)
	To be fair, he was almost as fucked in the head as she is. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-11-02 04:53 am UTC (link)

Eh, that was the weird thing about JP, his personality varied wildly. When we first meet him he's a completely normal college student, and throughout his time as AzBats, he's steadily more and more homicidal and cult-y, but it's a completely adult psychosis - a totally competent, informed, deliberate rejection of society and its rules. He was fucked in the head, yes, but in the same way that, say, Scarecrow is. A normal man with abnormal values.

Then once he spun off as Azrael again and started getting costume changes and his own series, suddenly he was naive childlike raised-by-wolves boy who had a twelve-year-old's understanding of the opposite sex and no comprehension of the existence or purpose of perfume. Out of nowhere, he's a completely abnormal man with normal values... a male Cass, as it were.

But only half the time. The other half the time, he acted like a perfectly average American college student who'd suddenly gotten sucked into a bizarre world of superheroes and prophecy.

I mean, admittedly he did, explicitly, have a split personality, but that wasn't the split. The Jean-Paul half was supposed to behave consistently; the conflict was supposed to be between "normal good-natured guy" and "divine assassin," there really wasn't supposed to be anything fucked-up about "normal good-natured guy" beyond "periodically turns into divine assassin." Which is not a good match with Cass' fuckedupedness, which just makes her emotionally ten years younger than she physically is, all the time.

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	akodo_rokku 2009-11-02 05:28 am UTC (link)
	I agree on all points. But from a relatively shallow view (and lets be honest most readers -- hell most WRITERS don't put half as much thought into these things as SDers do) it seems like something they would grow together and bond over. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	pyrotwilight 2009-11-02 05:34 am UTC (link)
	Pretty much why I would've liked to see them together. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

pepperspray101
2009-11-02 12:01 pm UTC (link)

Same here. Though, I would love it if Cass found him alive NOW as she is (an older more mature adult) and they'd start up their friendship again and get close later on. Ya know, like finding an old friend you never would've thought to date, but suddenly seeing them in a new light or realizing you two are different people now after so many years and things actually work out well for you. The fact that they've been apart for so long helps here.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	kingrockwell 2009-11-02 04:47 am UTC (link)
	And that just makes it all the more awkward! (to clarify, i'm not endorsing a JPV/Cass ship, but that issue really read that way to me. it was weird) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	pepperspray101 2009-11-02 12:03 pm UTC (link)
	He's the only one who's never had awkward moments with her (probably cuz he's just as much of a freak as she is...compared to the other batclan members). He seems to take all her quirks in stride since he first met her. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	kingrockwell 2009-11-02 01:15 pm UTC (link)
	Maybe it not for them, but for anyone watching, like the reader, yeah it was hella awkward. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	pepperspray101 2009-11-02 01:42 pm UTC (link)
	lol. well yeah, that's part of their charm. XD They were clueless about eachother's weirdness. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	icon_uk 2009-11-02 07:13 pm UTC (link)
	I agree it would be weird, but developmentally in some area's he's not much better than she is (thanks to the training messing with his head). He mentions (in a Devin Grayson Gotham Knights IIRC) that he has absolutely no idea how to deal with women in a romantic way, and seems genuinely confused by the whole process. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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