swatkat

( spoilers till TGW 4.04 )


*

( Wonder Woman #13 )


*

( Homestuck )

I'm not entirely sure what's going on with Jones' backstory in the most recent Gunnerkrigg Court story, but I do love all the pretty art.

+ Rec:
Mama Said Knock You Out by AbsoluteDestiny, featuring everybody's favourite mother-and-daughter duo, Toph and Lin Beifong. Watch it, because it's glorious.

+ I'm all caught up on Warehouse 13, and ( spoilers till 4.04 ) One of the best things about Warehouse 13 is all the unusual love stories it tells, and its commitment to telling these stories and not pushing them to the sidelines in favour of yet another love story between the two heterosexual leads.

+ I read Wonder Woman #12, and can we discuss this please, guys? ( spoilers )

And that wasn't enough, we had a Batwoman and Wonder Woman team-up in Batwoman #12! Which is a three-issue arc! ( spoilers )

Batwoman also teamed up with Batgirl in Batgirl #12, ( spoilers )

Birds of Prey #12 was fun, although I'm not entirely sure where they're headed? Oh well. The #0 issues next month should be something to look forward to.

Things I am doing:

1. Entertaining myself imagining all the ways in which Toph tormented Lin while in office, including making her (and/or poor Saikhan) do ALLLLL the paperwork while being insufferably smug and cracking numerous blind jokes.

2. Basking in the glory of the various cop/PI AUs fandom has been coming up with for Lin. GIVE ME FIC DAMMIT

3. Coveting Wonder Woman's coat.



(No, she's not giving us fashion advice, she's talking to the actual Hermes.)

(Also, Cliff Chiang, sir, welcome back, welcome back. You were missed. Your Diana is statuesque, and I never want anyone else drawing her again - unless it's JH Williams III.

Speaking of JH Williams III: I will be very upset if Kate doesn't hit on Diana at least once. Very upset. I've, uh, fallen really behind on Batwoman, not having read beyond #4, but I intend to catch up before Diana shows up. It's just, the absence of Renee Montoya depresses me so much.)

4. Considering watching more Xena. (Hyperion is evil and has greasy 80s hair. Keats would be so upset.)

Things I'm Not Doing:

1. Finishing this damn sentence and writing the next one. Oh god, WHY did I opt for higher education again? *wails*

I owe people comments. I will get on that shortly - things have been... disorienting. Yesterday I traveled halfway across the city early in the morning just to cater to my paranoia (I did get a lift from a generous friend, but nonetheless). *facepalm* The heat, I think, is slowly melting my brain.

+

Thoughts on Lois Lane's place in the DCU, which then veers on to a fascinating discussion about Steve Trevor as well. The discussion continues here. I'm lacking in brain cells at the moment so I have nothing insightful to offer, but as a fan who is mostly apathetic towards Steve Trevor's presence in Diana's life, this is a great read:

In the 40s, in the middle of wartime, there would be scenes with General Darnell, Colonel Trevor and other high-ranking military officers standing around listening to Wonder Woman’s ideas. That in itself is amazing. What is even more amazing is when you stop to think that she is the girlfriend of one of these officers, and she is not being written off and he has no problem whatsoever with his girlfriend being better at his job than he is.

And that’s why we still need him in the narrative, because even today we have parts written out of movies because they feel an action heroine saving her husband emasculates him. With Steve we have a guy who is uniformly happy with being outmatched in the “manly ways” by not just a woman but a woman he’s involved with, and retains a traditionally masculine demeanor. This is pretty much the only character who plays this role to a heroine of iconic status, and it is a tragedy we never got to see him developed in the modern-story-telling line as we did Lois Lane.

I caught up on Wonder Woman after a couple of months separation, and ( spoilers ) It's a good thing the previews for the next issue are up because I cannot wait, Tony Akins art notwithstanding (GUESS WHO IS IN THE PREVIEW? ♥♥♥).

+

hibernate has a Myka/HG recs post that looks utterly fabulous. I haven't read all of them yet, but there's this one story I insist all W13 fans read at once:

Perhaps not to be by ladyshinkicker. Long post-S3 not-fix-it. In fact, it's so far from being a fix it that it will break your heart into tiny little pieces and then stomp all over them, grinding them into dust. It's also the best HG I've read.

For as long as Helena still exists, there is a chance that she will find the artefact, or perfect her time machine, or find some other way to save her daughter: knowing this is not hope. Knowing this is to count every passing second as another one in which Christina is in danger, waiting to be saved. Knowing this is to spend every moment without Christina cursing her failure as a parent, because Christina is still in danger, because at a point in time Helena believes she may still access, her daughter is dying, and Helena doesn’t know how to save her. And if there is the slightest chance, however remote, that she can change the rules of linear temporality itself, Helena will do so because there still exists a time in which her daughter is alive and that means she can still be saved.

I was re-reading Batgirl #24, and god, I hope someday I'm able to revisit this series without getting a little teary-eyed because this was, for about the course of the fifteen months or so when I followed the title every month, my #1 pick-me-up, the one thing that never failed to cheer me up. I do not know how Stephanie Brown replaced Barbara Gordon as the Batgirl of my heart, except that I now think of the DCnU and realise that Barbara's Robin is now Damian, and a part of my heart just shrivels up and dies.

It is a difficult time to be a Bat-fan, in some ways—Snyder's Batman might be on fire, but for those of us who had fallen in love with a particular set of characters and relationships in a status quo that was never going to last (I realise now, reboot or no), and who are, perhaps, less used to reboots/cancellations/resurrections the way long-term comics fans undoubtedly are, the Batverse doesn't feel like our Batverse anymore. Barbara's Robin is Damian and Damian's Batman is Bruce and Stephanie and Cassandra are god knows where, and that is very, very painful. Equally painful is the knowledge the Black Canary and Oracle, as I knew them, were probably never friends that way, or that Huntress, as I knew her, no longer exists. It's only the end if you want it to be notwithstanding, fandom is hard.

It's also a difficult time to be a Barbara fan, in some ways—because I am, Barbara's girl through and through, and even the loss of Oracle won't change that, even if I despair over how much they have erased along with it. Apart from Wonder Woman, Barbara is the only female character of the DCU to have any sort of legacy, and it isn't coincidental that both Diana and Barbara's legacy's have been severely affected in the DCnU—with the erasure of Donna Troy, with the seeming disappearance of Diana's supporting cast (even STRIFE—yes, I refer to her in ALLCAPS now—cannot make up for the loss of Phillipus or Artemis), with the erasure/benching of all the three women who wore the Batgirl suit after Barbara, with the re-writing of the history of the Birds of Prey (from what we've seen of it).

It was, therefore, a bit of a surprise when I finally picked up the new Birds of Prey and found myself enjoying it tremendously: ( spoilers till BoP #5 )

I will also admit to shamelessly shipping Dinah/Evelyn. The subtext is certainly there, and while I was earlier held back by my Babs/Dinah OTPness, I've now come to accept the fact that Barbara and Dinah as I knew them don't exist anymore. (This is not to say I won't ship Babs and Dinah once more once we get to know these characters a little better, note.)

Wonder Woman, of course, has been an utter joy—despite my various misgivings, I've enjoyed the title thoroughly. ( spoilers for Wonder Woman #5 )

PS: DIANA'S GUN SHOOTS LOVE BULLETS, YOUR ARGUMENTS ARE INVALID.

I'm not sure I'm going to finish reading the Huntress mini right now. I thought I was reading about my Huntress, and I wasn't—I feel a little cheated to be honest. This will, of course, change if the new book is good and I grow to like Helena Wayne, but right now I need some time to mourn the Huntress I loved.

+

netgirl_y2k has written fabulous DVD commentaries of Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle (Morgana/many female characters) and Walk Softly and Carry a Large Stick (Cara/Kahlan), with wonderful insights into the characters that you should run to read right now. Or read the stories first, if you haven't already.

High D'Haran Love Poetry by nike_ravus (Legend of the Seeker, Berdine/Raina): This is not a pairing I normally read, because I don't care about the bookverse and I don't know the characters at all, but the writer introduces them as 'their TV-show version incarnations. These are the girls who would hang out with our Cara and (sometimes) put up with her shit', which is really all I needed to know. At 20K words, it's a sharp, intriguing - and at times disconcerting - look at the world of the Mord'Sith, and a consideration of the eternal problem: "How do Mord'Sith fall in love? No really, how?" Read this right now, and go shower your love upon the author so that she writes more stories in this fandom.

+ This is Bridget Regan on Person of Interest. You're welcome. (favouriteyear pointed me to it - I haven't actually seen the episode, but I am tempted).

+ This is the preview for Batman: Leviathan Strikes. It... appears to be set in pre-Flashpoint DCU. But Steph is Spoiler. Wut?

This, meanwhile, is the preview for Wonder Woman #4. Strife is my very favourite. I want her to stay forever and ever and be the Loki to Diana's Thor. Seriously, her EXPRESSIONS, and Diana's responses - Cliff Chiang is a god amongst men (he's also clearly having fun with his rockstar!Diana headcanon): ( image under cut )

WHY IS IT NOT WONDER WOMAN TIME YET

(It feels strange, being excited about a Wonder Woman issue. Strange, and awesome.)

+ The preview art for Wonder Woman #2 is out, and OMG, Diana, how are you so prettyyy. ♥__♥

PS: The article is crap ("she's Superman, but kinky", really? also, the clay origin is fantastic, if reviewers cannot grasp the concept of, say, Galatea coming to life, it's their problem and not Diana's or her creators'), but whatever, look at the preview art. I have hearts in my eyes.

+ A lovely HG/Myka ship manifesto by lysachan that is relevant to your interests.

Apologies for being repetitive, but allow me to reiterate: in the magenta!verse, Dunham and Dunham run a detective agency. They bicker a lot and fight crime. Peter Bishop is the resident ghost who haunts their mansion. The green!verse is actually the DCU, and Olivia "Deadshot" Dunham (© fivewhatfive) is a superhero. She may or may not have an evil(ish) twin who is in fact even a better shot than she is and wishes to claim the 'Deadshot' title for herself. Sometimes Olivia spars with Wonder Woman.

I haven't read the end of Flashpoint and neither do I intend to - and anyway, judging by the spoilers, none of it makes any sense. My personal explanation is 'Flash ran really fast and rebooted the universe', and I'll stick to it. It's like the Superboy Punch, in a way.

Meanwhile, Justice Leauge #1 was a light, fast read, ( spoilers ) I wish it was Wonder Woman time already. Also Batwoman, eeee. And Blue Beetle. ♥

I cannot believe we have to wait till September 21 to get our hands on this (press ESC to stop the gif):



(courtesy sadieblodgett on Tumblr)

Wait, I'm supposed to be cynical and not at all optimistic about DCnU. *facepalm*