Holdovers from the past in weapons or fighting

Feb 15, 2011 20:14

I'm working on a Batman story involving Cassandra Cain. For anyone not aware of her, she was trained to be a fighter (or more accurately, an assassin) by reading body language as if it were an actual language, but in order to do this, her father kept her from learning to speak or read. She later (magically) learned to speak English, but had ( Read more... )

~weapons (misc), ~weapons: swords, ~martial arts

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Comments 22

londubh February 17 2011, 12:20:48 UTC
Not helpful, but OMG I want to kill the writers of batman for the whole "fighting as language" thing.

There is NO WAY for her to have worked as described in cannon. I mean, it's just Not Possible to keep a child from learning language if exposed to it, and not exposing them to language seriously impairs cognitive ability.

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captaintwinings February 18 2011, 00:16:46 UTC
To be fair, her mind was "messed up" until a psychic went in and implanted English in Batgirl #4, which involved reordering things into "normal" patterns. Before that, she struggled for months with spoken language without learning more than a few simple words, and even afterwards she had trouble with reading, as well as with social interactions not related to fighting or training. "Fixing" her mind like that was a pretty big copout, but at least they were aware that it had to be done.

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ext_432707 February 17 2011, 15:58:23 UTC
Link when you're done, please? I miss Cassandra...

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captaintwinings February 17 2011, 23:13:45 UTC
Absolutely. If I forget, I'm on fanfiction.net as Twinings. It should be going up soon, but I can't say when exactly.

Cassie was a great character, and while they did some stupid things with her, getting rid of her was the stupidest of all.

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full_metal_ox February 17 2011, 21:32:42 UTC
How about the handshake? It's a common nonverbal gesture that Cass is presumably familiar with, and supposedly originated as an assurance that one wasn't holding a weapon (at least in the majority's dominant right hand), eventually outlasting its martial context to become a standard Western greeting.

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captaintwinings February 17 2011, 23:06:04 UTC
Good idea, but I don't think that's the thing to use. In Cassie's early appearances, she was definitely not familiar with the concept of a handshake, or with any greeting at all, and I'm sure the others would remember her initial tendency to greet fellow warriors with a friendly hand punch.

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majolika February 17 2011, 21:48:18 UTC
captaintwinings February 17 2011, 23:01:25 UTC
That's perfect! Thank you so much.

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majolika February 17 2011, 23:45:09 UTC

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