Fanon Vs Canon - Tumblr Posts
attempting to make a birth chart for harry james potter... it’s not going the best
Gotham Pride: So many WE sponsored posts that are bland and tacky. A bunch of cops with night sticks. Very boring. Bi Robin and lesbian Batwoman aren't even there. People are literally getting maced in the crowd. Police warned Catwoman not to go.
Metropolis Pride: There's a whole ass LOD float. Lex Luthor was in drag, got kissed by Superman AND Lois Lane. It lasts for a solid 4 days. No crimes are committed because no one wants to be called homophobic by the Superboys. Dreamer and Supergirl lead the parade. Everyone is having the time of their lives. Bi Robin was found dancing with Superboy and Impulse.
I hate when people think that Sirius has to be either tall, strong, hyper-masculine, big-dick, badass, witty, sarcastic talented, and brilliant, or he has to be short, weak, extra-feminine, little-dick (NOT DEROGATORY FFS), useless, dumb, silly, pathetic, cross-dresser twink. This is completely ridiculous.
I would like to suggest an alternative (that is way closer to cannon and actually keeps his character intact, as opposed to whatever fannon is doing to my boy): Sirius Black is tall, strong, hairy, tattooed, talented, brilliant, scarred, and a badass… but he also wears skirts, makeup, and has long hair, which he styles frequently, wears a lot of jewelry and is heavily pierced.
There is no need to make him one of two extremes. Let him be a big, muscular man who wears feminine AND masculine clothing. Let him be more than stereotypical gay guy. Let him maintain his personality. Let him be what you all make Remus into (I could go on another rant about that in this post but I’ve already done that too much).
Let’s stop deciding that him being gay has to make him a derogatory, homophobic stereotype of a queer man.
There’s “Death of the Author” a critical perspective that hold that an author’s intentions and background don’t really matter to the intepretation the work evokes in the viewer. You can still enjoy, transform or derive whatever meaning you like from the work regardless of whatever the author is doing on twitter.
Since many series that have inspired transformative works are not written by a single author- they’re the work of a creative team, or a series of directors, or so many writers that the latest weren’t even alive when the series began- I propose a new term: Cataclysimic Exctinction Of The Authors, a critical perspective that acknoldeges that Group Projects Are Terrible and that the veiwer should feel free to sift through the rubble like a paleontologist, looking for exciting fragments to reconstruct into new interpretations, and to disregard the dirt.
ONLY ONE IS CANON. PLEASE READ THE QUESTION.
* For the purposes of this poll, both Legends and Disney qualify as canon.
** Eminent domain
Don't give away the answer before the poll ends! I'll reblog with an explanation once it's done.
"Why the big red--" I've already had five people vote in the wrong direction.
let’s talk about Jason
One of the things I used to hear the most about Jason - and that I still see nowadays now that I’m coming back to batfandom - was that Jason was “the angry Robin.”
This is categorically false for several reasons, all of which have been discussed at length by various people who have studied this much more than me, but I think that we need to address and reproach the inherent classism in the way that the fandom and DC itself discusses Jason Todd.
At his Post-Crisis roots, Jason is a kid from Crime Alley. Before becoming Robin, he was homeless (let’s leave aside the issues with Ma Gunn’s entire story-line) and fending for himself after the death of his mother. Jason’s first encounter with Bruce isn’t (just) a quirky aspect of his backstory to to show how audacious he is, it’s a marker of how desperate he was at the time. Stealing the tires off the Batmobile while Batman is still around? Absolutely off-the-charts unheard of. No one would have even dared to think about that, not when the Batman of the time was still half-myth half-legend full-on terror of the night. Then there’s the fact that Jason would have gotten away with it, if he hadn’t gone back for that last tire. And when Bruce does show up? He hits him and insults him and while Bruce is surprised, tries to make his escape.
[IMG ID: panels from Batman (1940) #408. Bruce tells Jason to return his tires. Jason, holding a tire iron behind his back, asks why Bruce thinks he took them. Bruce, with his hand on his hip (and in his dad voice) asks what else the tire iron could be for. Jason says “This!” and swings it into Bruce’s stomach then runs away, shouting “Try and catch me, you big boob!” /END IMG ID]
What does this tell us? That he’s daring. That he was desperate. That he knows how to seize on an opportunity when it presents itself. That he’s quick on his feet and quicker with his mouth. All of this leading to….
Jason is smart. Despite the fact that Jason has consistently been written as a nerd who loves classic literature and theatre, both DC (most recently and egregiously in Titans) and fans continue to claim that Jason wasn’t smart, didn’t like to read, and did poorly in school and dumb Jason down in favour of uplifting other characters.
There’s always some confusion over whether things are canon or fanon but Jason liking to read is most assuredly canon (and has been addressed by user @/thebatmanfiles-blog recently.) He and Alfred bond over books, he reads Pride and Prejudice for fun, and he gifts Alfred a first edition of a book.
[IMG ID: panels from Batman: Under the Hood Issue 648 All they do is watch us kill part 1. While walking to the mailbox, Alfred reminisces that it was something he and Bruce used to do. Now, despite the two of them growing older and apart, Alfred muses that they both still like to collect first editions of novels. According to Alfred this is a hobby only [Dick] and Jason know about. Alfred returns to the manor then opens the package, revealing two books and a green giftwrapped box with a note that reads B & A, just two to add to the pile. Cheers - Jason /END IMG ID].
So Jason is both street-smart and book-smart. I’m not going to claim he’s smarter than Dick or Jason or Bruce or whoever - I think it’s dumb to rank them when each member of the batfam is a genius and while they all of course have different areas they prefer, they were specifically trained to excel in every aspect. That’s not even going into the fact that in Jason’s first appearance as the Red Hood, he ran circles around Bruce up until he finished drawing his trap closed.
So Jason is smart. Why does that get overlooked?
Let’s talk about the fact that Jason was originally written Pre-Crisis to be a carbon copy of Dick, just with different coloured hair. When his backstory was rewritten, it was done so as to present the absolute strongest possible contrast against Dick and Bruce since Jason would be the child of a criminal and an addict, and come from a completely different world than Bruce.
The writers have spoken at length about the way that fans flipped after Jason’s backstory changed - Dennis O'Neil said “Collins’s Robin was dramatic, did have story potential. But readers didn’t take to him. I don’t know now, and will probably never know why. Jason was accepted as long as he was a Dick Grayson clone, but when he acquired a distinct and, Collins and I still believe, more interesting back story, their affection cooled. Maybe we - me and the writers who followed Collins - should have worked harder at making Jason likeable. Or maybe, I guessed, on some subconscious level our most loyal readers felt Jason was a usurper. For whatever reason, Jason was not the favorite Dick had been. He wasn’t hated, exactly, but he wasn’t loved, either.”
The thing was, Jason wasn’t unlikeable. He was outspoken, sure, and he was plenty passionate, but the other characters in the DCU loved him. Jason was a sweet kid and he absolutely adored being a hero. He looked up to the vast majority of supers and he had a strong sense of morality and justice and what was right or wrong.
There’s this whole agenda that DC and fans try to push, that Jason was unruly, that he acted out, that he was always aggressive and took it out on criminals. I don’t have the panels but I can say flat out that this is heavily skewed. There’s an issue where Bruce comments on him being more aggressive but you know when that happens? After Jason finds out his dad was Two Face’s goon, and was murdered by Two Face, and that his birth mother wasn’t Catherine after all.
The fact that Bruce states that he’s worried about Jason’s aggression at that point means that before this, it wasn’t an issue at all. The Felipe Garzonas incident is also one that used to have a lot of finger pointing as well, but it was deliberately written to make the reader question what the truth was, because it was from Bruce’s pov and he hadn’t seen Felipe fall - so or course he wouldn’t take it at face value when Jason said he didn’t push him. And like. If he did, so what? Like. For if you didn’t read that issue it’s not as clear cut as people like to make it seem. Garzonas had raped a woman who later committed suicide because of it and was running cocaine, and both times they caught him, he was back out on the streets under less than an hour without even getting booked, because he was the son of a diplomat and had immunity. At the time, it was call to the limited power that Batman and Robin have as vigilantes, and commentary on the inability of the justice system to provide victims with relief. Now, however, the Garzonas incident is referred to as some kind of proof that Jason was unfit to be Robin.
ANYWAY all that to say that like. Jason certainly didn’t do anything in universe to “get himself killed.” He wanted to find his mother on his own at first because he didn’t think Bruce would help him, what with him being benched so that he could clear his head after the Garzonas case. But when Bruce found him again, he was supportive! He understood why Jason wanted to find his mother! He would have helped! The thing is. The fucking thing is. Jason was a kid and his mother betrayed him and both she and the Joker took advantage of his trust.
Jason didn’t die because of his actions. He died because DC received 72 more calls saying he should be killed than they did from fans who wanted him to live. 72. And since that time, O'Neil has stated that he thinks it was possible that many of the negative votes were from one person, “who programmed his computer to dial the thumbs down number every ninety seconds for eight hours, who made the difference.” One person. Who hated Jason so much they wanted him gone. When O'Neil proposed the poll, it was literally just as a gimmick to increase reader engagement. He thought it would be overwhelmingly in favour of Jason living. He wanted Jason to live.
The fact of the matter is though that after Jason died, he was replaced with a rich Robin who went to a private prep school, and Tim was miles more popular than Jason ever was during his run.
And you know what! Damian is angry! Steph is angry! Cass is angry! Tim is angry! Dick became Robin because he wanted vengeance for his parents. Every single one of them saw injustice and wanted to fight against it. That’s why they became vigilantes in the first place. Instead of talking about that, though, Jason gets painted over as a black sheep among the Robins. His time in the shorts is commonly referred to as the Jason Todd problem. Consistently, he is blamed for his own death. He was fifteen years old! He was angry, yes, but he was hurt and fundamentally lacking the support to heal.
Jason’s revamp and successive rewrites are admittedly a mess, but too often I see his actions post coming back to life being conflated with who he was before he died and that is fundamentally untrue.
This got way off track from what I originally meant to discuss but anyway neither DC nor fandom is innocent in this. Stop calling Jason and Steph dumb, stop making them and only them the comic relief, stop coding it into your narratives that Jason did drugs just ‘cause he was poor just. Stop and think about why you’re doing this.
Okay, but the fact that Leo and Percy are considered the “stupid ones” by the fandom, usually for their ADHD traits.
Okay, BUT THIS?! Though I don’t think it’s just the ADHD, but the ADHD was part of it.
And the fact that Leo was written as a very intelligent character in the books, but he gets written off by the fandom as dumb because he makes stupid jokes and doesn’t interact well with other people? The not interacting well is a neurodivergent thing, by the way.
Also the Percy thing pisses me off, because when people do this, they do it by comparing him to Annabeth. They call him stupid for not knowing things in the first couple of books, which, I mean, of course he wouldn’t know things, or he would know less than Annabeth? Annabeth has been doing this shit since she was a little kid... Percy has not. Annabeth is going to be more educated on this stuff than Percy is.
The same thing happened with Leo to an extent in TLH. He was the one asking a lot of questions, because Jason had been doing this shit for years, even if he didn’t know and Piper had done research on it long before camp. Leo really doesn’t know as much as the other two about Greek Mythology, but that’s okay!
Nobody is stupid for not being the expert on one area, and it’s not like Leo’s expertise in other areas didn’t come in handy, or that Percy didn’t get more educated the longer he was involved in the world. It’s not like their lack of expertise in Greek Mythology made them completely incompetent.
Also, moving onto the ADHD things, starting with Percy.
Percy’s ADHD and dyslexia made him struggle in school a lot, and people tend to use this in justifying how “stupid” he is. Now, this isn’t just ableist towards people with ADHD, but equating grades to intelligence is really harmful to all neurodivergent people who struggle in school because of their neurotype, and ignores how ableist the school system is.
Notice how the one teacher Percy felt believed in him was not only a magical centaur, but a magical centaur who literally ran a summer camp full of neurodivergent kids, and most likely knows how their brains work? That’s because teachers aren’t equipped to handle anyone other than NT kids, and oftentimes blames the child on their struggles, rather than help them not to struggle.
Percy not doing well in school because of his neurodivergence isn’t reflective of his own intelligence- it’s reflective on ableism in the school system, and tbh, as much as Rick Riordan got wrong, he got that part right.
Then it’s the fact that Percy and Leo are impulsive... which, impulsivity is a classic ADHD trait... even people I know who seem to have a stereotypical or basic understanding of ADHD knows that...
And again, this doesn’t make them incompetent. In fact, their impulsivity is a lot of times their biggest strength, because a lot of times, especially in times of war, you don’t have time to make a plan. You have to just be able to react to your surroundings. This is what Percy does, and it is shown as a foil to Annabeth, who is a planner.
Percy’s impulsivity and Annabeth’s careful planning are two different strengths that are useful in different situations.
As for Leo, I don’t even really see him as impulsive? Because he does typically plan things out before doing them, but he does so quickly. He isn’t a careful planner, but he is an efficient planner, and this has come in handy several times. He does take risks, but they’re calculated risks, they are usually risks he’s put some thought into.
I wouldn’t say Percy and Leo’s ability to take risks makes them stupid, in fact, I’d say their ability to take risks and come out unharmed actually makes them pretty fucking intelligence.
uuahghhghghgh it's huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrts
