According to an article at The Mary Sue, Stephanie Brown appears in an upcoming video game. Something to do with Scribblenauts, I think. I have no idea what that is (astronauts who can't draw very well?), but I do know who Stephanie Brown is. She's the former Spoiler/ex-Batgirl who, along with Cassandra Cain, DC unceremoniously dumped from their ongoing continuity. The comments attached to the story are a litany of fan joy, which is a wonder to behold. When fans are happy, all the world is filled with song. Fans are happy so rarely, after all.
One of the comments attempts to pre-empt and "boo Steph, yay Cass" kind of responses. Yeah, don't do that, people. Doing that is a terrible idea.
This kind of thing makes me sad. While I think it's fine to poke fun at various characters-- I do this all the time because if we're not having fun with our comics then why are we reading them?-- as we've seen, it's not necessary to express your love for one character by expressing your hate for another. I've been accused of this myself because I once wrote a little piece about Cass with a few jokes aimed at Steph and Tim Drake. Someone read it, didn't like it, blogged about it and her friends played soccer with my severed head in the comments. I changed it in a moment of weakness and yet every time someone does a Google search for Cass and Steph this will be among the results.
I mention this because, coincidentally, one of the search term hits for one of my other blogs is a link to that response. I now believe I should have just shrugged and let my original stand, but the last thing in the world I would ever support is the idea you have to hate one character to love another, that it's either Cass or Steph. Certainly there's room for both. I have no stomach for Cass-Steph wars. Partially because I can't fathom truly hating a comic book character and partially because while I'm very into Cass, I don't take any of this that seriously.
What makes me sad we even have a fandom where people have to think about these things. Where we're hyper-sensitive on behalf of imaginary superpeople and pixies from other dimensions and you can't just enjoy an announcement without anticipating backlash.
So I'm glad about even this reemergence of Stephanie Brown. I hope her fans do more than just happy-blog about it. It's probably more effective in terms of bringing Steph back into the DC universe to spend a little money on this game. The people who own Steph's trademark or copyright will get some of that cash and that's what they live on, not love or good intentions or packages of waffles. Support Steph financially and you just may get Steph's triumphant return in the pages of Batman or Detective Comics.
Now. If they'd just do the same for Cass.
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