InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Bad as new."

runespoor7 (runespoor7) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-05-21 15:29:00

Entry tags:

char: blockbuster/roland desmond, char: robin/nightwing/dick grayson, char: tarantula/catalina flores, creator: devin grayson, creator: mike lilly, publisher: dc comics, title: nightwing

Request: Nightwing #93-#94
By request, scans of Nightwing's rape by Tarantula and the fall-out.

As a reminder, Blockbuster has been screwing Dick's life. He's had Dick's apartment building blown up with all the tenants inside, he's had a fire devastate Haly's circus during a show (which resulted with more than 30 people dead, despite Dick being there to help), and he wanted Tarantula – vigilante of the “I'll just kill him!” variety and all-around Little Miss Happy-Go-Lucky Sociopath – to kill Barbara, as Dick's girlfriend, but Tarantula was genre-savvy enough to get that it would just make Babs a saint in Dick's eyes, so she manipulated the situation and Barbara broke up with Dick. Dick has also had to resign from the force since his captain ex-partner figured out his identity and couldn't condone a vigilante on the force.

Then Dick convinced Tarantula to help him take Blockbuster down the legal way; she agreed, and everything looked like it was going to work and if you've seen even one Joss Whedon show you know that means everything blew up in their faces pretty bad.

Nightwing #93:

So now Dick has been confronting Blockbuster, and Blockbuster is taunting him that he's going to keep on screwing Dick's life for as long as there's a breath left in him, and Nightwing doesn't kill, so there's no way out. And Tarantula shows up with a gun and tells Dick to get out of the way.

She shoots.

Nightwing 94:

The next two issues are titled Road to nowhere, which I'm sure must've made people snicker as much as I did when the last words of Nightwing: OYL were something like “please tell me it's over stop.”

Black and white = flashback.

She makes him break into a bed and breakfast.

[In the present, they find themselves fighting Copperhead, Tarantula gets poisoned, Dick (of course) has the cure, and Tarantula follows Copperhead. Dick accuses her of wanting to solve the problem by murdering Copperhead, Tarantula replies that he has issues, and leaves.]

[in the present he puts on his costume and the issue ends with him not taking Babs' call; she tells him that Blockbuster has been found dead in Blüdhaven, and clues point to Tarantula being involved.]

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box_in_the_box
2009-05-21 12:22 pm UTC (link)

I'll thank you not to twist my words and to stop interpreting my intentions.

You ignored the other sentence in my original post, which quite clearly addressed your point about victim-blaming. I honestly couldn't imagine any other explanation for you omitting that sentence, other than knowing intent.

But those circumstances exist within the story.

Those circumstances were a series of fanfic-level lamely improbable contrivances that read like a dumb teenager ripping off Frank Miller's "Born Again" arc in Daredevil, which is why I reject them, because they were so obviously intended to drive the character to the point of OH NOES I AM SO BROKEN WOE that the writer clearly didn't consider the logical consequences of her own plot developments, in terms of how the characters SHOULD have behaved. It's the kind of shameless emo for its own sake that makes Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who and the "Brand New Day" era of Spider-Man look like Shakespeare by comparison, so yes, I REJECT those circumstances. I actually used to LIKE Devin Grayson, but once she started tearing down Dick's life so pointlessly and nonsensically, even before the rape, I seriously started wondering if CHUCK AUSTEN was ghost-writing her stuff, because it's EXACTLY THE SAME.

Black Canary and Nightwing are two different characters and they wouldn't react or fail to react the same way.

Let me revise that, then; if any female costumed crimefighter, who had Dick Grayson's experiences and skills and will, had reacted in the same way, it would have been branded misogyny, and rightly so.

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runespoor7
2009-05-21 12:39 pm UTC (link)

I actually didn't see the logical link between one and the other. Your sentence, to me, sounded like "if one bad thing happens to someone, it makes them weak". I'm still not sure I see the link with the circumstances, but I get that you didn't mean it that way.

Psychologically speaking, given how I imagine/what I'd got from the previous characterisations of the characters, Dick's reactions seemed in character to me, and I'll admit that it's the most important to me.

If Dick was a girl and she'd reacted that way, I wouldn't have called it misogyny. I would've called it "Oh, god, Dixie, no," exactly the way I reacted when I read this chapter.

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	angelophile 2009-05-21 03:40 pm UTC (link)
	There's an underlying tone to this conversation that's verging on aggressive, so I'd suggest you both take a step back from the conversation for now or try and converse without either side sounding accusatory. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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