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Tweak says, "JUSTIN IS MOONLIGHT LOVE."

zechs27 (zechs27) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-08-19 19:06:00

Entry tags:

char: alfred pennyworth, char: batgirl/cassandra cain, char: batgirl/oracle/barbara gordon, char: batman/bruce wayne, char: robin/red robin/tim drake, creator: dylan horrocks, creator: rick leonardi, in-joke: herodickery, publisher: dc comics, title: batgirl

Batgirl vs Batman
Batgirl #49-50 aka Bruce versus Cass with her wanting to remain being Batgirl.

Why indeed Cass. Why indeed.

Do we have a Bat Dickery tag? If so where would that be?

#49 was regular so seven scans of that. #50 was double sized by I think 40 pages. I just went to the scans I thought best that highlighted the fight. I know the moment below was scanned before during One Perfect Moment week and the end was posted as well. Should I remove one page given that page was posted?

To summarize the events why this happened, Bruce was giving out some serious Bat Dickery moments. He put a end to Cass's relationship with Superboy, and other questionable acts all leading up to him "firing" her from the role. We start with #49 with Alfred giving her a new place to live:

Babs goes on to offer Cass anything, to which the later begs to be Batgirl still. Babs says she can't so Cass runs. Not before taking off with one item, Babs' Batgirl suit.

After making some modifications Cass begins her usual patrol and stuff (taking out some thugs for Tim whose all O_o what just happened?) Babs calls Bruce and he begins to add up what's going on.

Cass meanwhile finds Dr. Death ready to perform for some cilents a test of his latest drug compound. She crashes it but finds out she isn't the only one doing so:

#50:

Death throws the compound he wanted to test. It's called Soul, and it supposedly heightens aggression. Oh boy...

Bruce and Cass take their fight to multiple other levels. Dick tries to stop them only getting his butt handed to him by both. Tim tries the opposite route by going back to Death en route to jail in police convoy and getting a cure out of him.

The fight between Bruce and Cass reaches it's climax when:

Bruce drops the charge and ignites the bridge. Thankfully nobody is harmed from the explosion.

The two where effected by the drug though Bruce claims, "not as effective as Death claims." Still the two fought it out in as Babs puts it, "one screwed up therapy session." Still that's how it went down and why Cassandra was loyal to the symbol, not the man.

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	ladymirth 2009-08-20 02:25 am UTC (link)
	"I don't want to fight you." Well, of course Bruce, your protege is only THE BEST HUMAN MARTIAL ARTIST IN THE WORLD! smug then cries WHY, DC, WHY?! Say what you like, but I've always loved that fight. And of course, them having warm snuggly father/daughter cuddles. sob (Reply to this) (Thread)

	jlbarnett 2009-08-20 02:31 am UTC (link)
	so? He can beat superhumans with prep time. Seriously, if there's one person out there who could make his body language say something different from what his mind is intending, I'd say it's Bruce Wayne. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	dr_hermes 2009-08-20 02:43 am UTC (link)
	It's something Remo Williams in the Destroyers novels was taught early on (and other martial arts masters should know as well), not to give away what he's going to do by his body language. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	aaron_bourque 2009-08-20 02:42 am UTC (link)
	It's apparently very easy to beat her, though. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	zechs27 2009-08-20 02:44 am UTC (link)
	yep, all you have to do is fight throw techinque out. ;) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

jlbarnett
2009-08-20 03:17 am UTC (link)

I was thinking about that and it did strike me that the way to beat her, depending on how she is grappling and what your pain threshold is, would be to fight sloppy.

Imagine Tim throwing punches that miss by a mile and leaving himself wide open. Then we she aims a kick at his stomach wait till the last second to catch her leg then fall on it. At that point her leg would be wrenched and trapped under him and they're suddenly right next to each other

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	aaron_bourque 2009-08-20 06:22 am UTC (link)
	Fighting sloppy just means a) you overexert yourself, b) leave yourself open stupidly, and c) Cassandra can't analyze your style. Which is irrelevant. She can still see your attacks coming, sloppy or not. The way to take down such a concentratedly direct fighter as Cass is not to fight her directly (see my other post). (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

sistermagpie
2009-08-20 02:13 pm UTC (link)

I hated it when they seemed to try to make it about fighting style. They did that once in a fight with Dick/Cass too and it made no sense. She hasn't just memorized different fighting styles. Nobody could memorize all the styles there are. Most styles, even if they have the same name, would vary all over the place. The point is that she's reading your body's movement so can tell what you're going to do, not that she's recognized you're doing X-style and therefore are going to make X-move.

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	ladymirth 2009-08-20 03:04 am UTC (link)
	Heresy! Begone from my canon! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	scottyquick 2009-08-20 04:09 am UTC (link)
	Don't you know anything about martial arts, Aaron? You don't? Good. Now you can beat up Batman. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

aaron_bourque
2009-08-20 06:18 am UTC (link)

The sad thing is, I do actually know (a little; I've never taken a class or anything, but . . . well, Batman is my favorite character--so much that I harbor the silly fan's secret desire to maybe write for him one day, so I made a point to learn a little bit about his more iconic stuff: great in a fight, so I learned a bit about martial arts; a detective, so I learned a little observation and criminology; good at sneaking around and scaring people, so I learned a little stealth and psychological warfare) and that's why when Tim's "I'LL THROW OUT TECHNIQUE" hurt so much. Throwing out technique and being unpredictable might have worked on a precog, but that's not Cass's shtick. Her shtick is that she can read body language so well, so intuitively, that any opponent she faces--assuming basic humanoid shape and musculature--is automatically telegraphing their moves. It's impossible to "be unpredictable" with her, the most it would be would be to cut down her reaction window from several tenths of a second to dozens of hundredths of a second . . . and she'd still be fast enough to block/parry/dodge/subvert such blows. Bruce Lee supposedly had a striking speed of .05 of a second (5 hundredths of a second), and you have to assume that in comic books, the best martial artists are going to be at least as fast.

No. Being "unpredictable" isn't going to work. Throwing out technique also isn't going to work. The way to take down someone like Cassandra Cain in a fight . . . is not to fight her directly. For instance, no matter how good she is at reading body language, she can't read a wall collapsing on her. Or, if out in the open, pop an iconic smoke grenade. Can't read body language if she can't see your body. Entangle her--I'm pretty sure the utility belt has some "glop grenade" type weapon, for crowd control of course. Never throw a punch or kick, never try to grab her, never try to hold her yourself. If you don't use your body against her, again, she can't read your body language.

It doesn't guarantee a victory, but it's at least plausible that someone could take her down this way. And think about how interesting, visually, viewing such a physical chess match would be. In fact, in my fanon, I've retconned Shiva's defeat at the end of Tim's Robin title to be that--I've already retconned Cassandra's ridiculously out of characterness as never having happened. She was on vacation, or undercover with the real Anarky. Who also didn't appear in Robin's title post-1YL.

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	mxlm 2009-08-20 07:02 am UTC (link)
	For that matter, you could probably make the case that she can't read powered armor (Starship Troopers/Fallout/whatever), or at best can only partially read it. Of course, simply being encased in that sort of equipment would make it harder for a martial artist to totally kick your ass. (Reply to this) (Parent)

sistermagpie
2009-08-20 02:29 pm UTC (link)

This reminds me of Avatar when Aang the air bender is the only person who can beat Toph the earth bender in the ring. Because his style is completely about avoidance and he spends so much time off the ground, Toph can't even tell where he is half the time. Though later when she teaches him earth bending we can also see this as a weakness, that earth bending is about standing your ground, and that's the opposite of air bending, which is going around something.

Might be a random tangent, but just backing you up on how this makes the most sense. If you know how Cass reads her opponents so well, you need to take that information away.

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	jlbarnett 2009-08-20 10:02 pm UTC (link)
	a smoke grenade could work. Dropping a wall on her requires more destruction than is justified in a non-super fight. Entangling on works if she's unfamiliar with the weapon because if she's so good at treading body language and is at al familiar with bat gadgets she'd see it coming. Every movement a person makes is conveyed in body language. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	btravage.livejournal.com 2009-08-23 06:58 am UTC (link)
	She'd know you were up to something by that sly grin you'd be trying to hide. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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