In other news,
sharpest_rose's new project is worthwhile and interesting. I hope it leads to some good things -- particularly in the form of better stories, which tend to result when writers and editors start doing good things with *all* their characters. I was particularly struck by the fact that Mary's initial four statements/demands were largely story-based. I tend to like those critiques in general, but they could be quite useful here. Story-based critiques have the chance to be especially effective for an audience that might be inclined to shrug off comments about, say, the depiction of Steph's torture being sexualized. "Well, that's comics," doesn't really serve to answer stuff like:
Batman lost Robin. Tim Drake lost his girlfriend of three years. Neither character mentions Stephanie with any regularity or depth of emotion, in comparison to other deceased persons (such as Jack Drake and Conner Kent) who get frequent mentions and storylines devoted to the fallouts from their deaths.
because, damn, you can clearly see the failure for editorial. Their dismissive attitude shortchanges Steph -- and if you don't care about that, you might care about the fact that it results in them missing out on an angle that they could be using to tell effective stories about the characters on the marquee. Even people who wouldn't be inclined to listen to gender-related critiques can understand that -- and that they can understand it might make them more inclined to listen to the other reasons.
(On a peripherally related note, we saw a fair amount of fic with Stephanie being haunted (literally or metaphorically) by Jason when she was alive and he was dead. Now their positions are reversed. Could get some stories out of her haunting him...)
