awyeahlongbox:

dcwomenkickingass:

Bleeding Cool has unveiled a very interesting video. And sad. It’s a DC writer Dylan Horrocks speaking at the Auckland’s Reader’s Fest about what was going on at DC when Stephanie Brown was killed in War Games.

It’s upsetting. And it’s depressing. Here’s some of the comments:

The whole way through it was planned purely as a trick to play on the readers, that we would fool them into thinking that the big event was that Stephanie Brown would become Robin but we knew all along it was a temporary thing, and she was then going to die at the end of this crossover story. It was really seedy, and I think about two days into it, I basically said look, I don’t want… because they planned this big long torture scene, I said I don’t want to really have anything to do with that

So when there was that big online debate about Stephanie Brown’s death I felt kind of really pleased and vindicated, and the other person who I think was probably happy about that but I don’t think she’s ever said so in interviews was Devin Grayson who was writing Nightwing at the time… she raised several issues during this meeting, she was one of the other writers in the meeting who said how come we’re always killing off the girls, and also how come we’re killing off the ethnic characters,[Karen mentions Orpheus], there was a lot of debate in that meeting, well ultimately it all came down to this is what we’re going to do.

I was at this talk, and it was really interesting, and also made me love Dylan Horrocks (and can I recommend his Hicksville once again? Among other things, it has a WoC characters who is in charge of her own life and totally unapologetic about it (and who gets a happy ending, although really all the characters do excepting the bad guy who sort of doesn’t.)

Um anyway my favourite part was when he was all “Steph was Cass’s only friend and they were trying to kill her off ;_____;”. He was really defensive of Cass, and it was sweet, and gratifying to know that even though he had a shit time writing for DC he seemed to really love the character he was writing for.

Yeah Dylan did not always do a fabulous job writing Cass (and Babs) but he DID do some really good issues (Batgirl and Robin um my favorite forever) and he obviously really cared about Cass which is great and improved as he went along! I had heard of this before, it’s nice to revisit it and get more info. I really really appreciate that he stuck up for Steph. I love him for not wanting to be involved in that crap. and that Devin did too and stuck up for Orpheus! It’s really great to know that they cared enough to contest that and saw how wrong and shitty it was.

omg and the Cass’s only friend thing :’(