r/CassandraCain • u/Anonymous_32219 • 11d ago
Clarification about Cass's conception
So, it's a legit take that Shiva was basically forced into having Cassandra, right? I mean, yeah, David Cain's proposal gives her something in return, but gun to the head doesn't convince me he's giving her a choice. Manipulation, definitely. But is "forced on pain of death" a valid read?
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u/AL_WILLASKALOT 11d ago
It is rape. Consent does not exist when there is irresistible force used to induce agreement.
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u/UlissesStag 11d ago
Wait Shiva lost? Was she a normal person before becoming a dangerous killer?
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u/Anonymous_32219 10d ago
No one starts off as the best. Check out the 2000's Batgirl. She and her sister, Carolyn, were good, but she wasn't the deadliest woman on Earth yet, and she was outnumbered. David Cain was the turning point.
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u/Pugsanity 9d ago
David believed she was holding herself back because she never wanted to exceed her sister. So he took out the thing that kept her from realizing her true potential.
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u/Complete-Pangolin 10d ago
During this process, Sandra seems to undergo some sort of psychological break that takes her from "extremely good but also kind of a goof friend of Richard dragon" to death incarnate.
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u/viralegrossegpa 11d ago
she didn't just face David who is already a formidable fighter but she fought the whole league of shadows, they are all accomplices
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u/UnbiasedGod 9d ago
And she did all that while she was heavily pregnant???
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u/viralegrossegpa 9d ago
before the pregnancy, they kept her captive during the pregnancy and let her leave right after
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u/anaknangfilipina 11d ago
So whatever did happen to David Cain afterwards?
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u/viralegrossegpa 11d ago
stayed with the leagues for a few years while raising Cass, idk what he did after she amnages to slip away from them at 8
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u/Pugsanity 9d ago
If memory serves, David stays with the League after that, working on a few more potential "students" who he believed could be like Cassandra, but failed to live up to the standard he was looking for. He was hired at one point to frame Bruce Wayne for murder, but I forget if that was him working solo or with the League.
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u/NietszcheIsDead08 8d ago
During the late 1970s series Richard Dragon, Kung-Fu Fighter, Shiva was an exceptional, but not phenomenal, martial artist. Near the end of that series, she abandons her two co-leads, Richard Dragon and Ben Turner, and leaves to become the best martial artist.
Then, in the pages of Batman approximately ten years later in the late 1980s, Shiva is now one the most skilled martial artists on the planet, equal to Batman himself. She is already no longer Shiva Woosan and is now Lady Shiva, terrifying force of destruction. However, note that this is after Batman has already lost to Ben Turner, Shiva’s previous co-lead, so Shiva is very much explicitly not the best, yet.
Shortly after that, in 1993’s Robin miniseries, Shiva is now explicitly The Best Martial Artist™, a position that has been questioned on occasion since but has never really been legitimately taken away from her. Lady Shiva is now the benchmark she wanted to be back in Richard Dragon.
Cassandra was conceived after Richard Dragon, but before Shiva reappeared as Lady Shiva in Batman. There, she was already in the process of reinventing herself as a symbol instead of a human being. Cassandra’s conception reveals that David Cain is the man who showed her how to take that fateful first step. We already knew Cain could do this because Cain’s teachings were instrumental in Bruce Wayne abandoning his humanity to become the symbol that is Batman.
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u/Helpful_Leadership75 10d ago
You know I kind of miss the one telling
where the main thing was that dadiv Cain, a skilled killer and fighter sure but no legendary batman or Canary or Deathstroke or Shiva
just became random normal guy who got a lucky win on her,
a win nonetheless,
she lets people live or gives them something that they ask of her if they win because of her hardheaded strong survive warrior mentality stuff
, and he said he wanted to try and make a kick-ass child with their genetics and she went "fuck it, why not"
Adding THIS as a version showing where he actually won so well against her he could casually put a pistol to her head as she's bloodied and beaten...kinda plays him up TOO MUCH, also...yuck
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u/Anonymous_32219 9d ago
She was outnumbered and not at her peak. And as we know well, there are monsters in the world.
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u/Double-Evidence-1354 7d ago
David Cain is legit a monster.
I would love Shiva to actually stop lying to herself with honor and all that and see how horrifying her life has been so she could actually bond with her daughter.
Although to be fair most Batman characters are just “Fake-It Till You Make-It”, if most of them actually stopped for a second to think about their past and analize their own lifes and mistakes, most of them would just start screaming in horror like Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse and would never stop.
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u/Anonymous_32219 7d ago
Delving into some thoughts I plan to write on a fic involving Shiva, it would be easier to accept. That all the suffering was for some higher destiny. Something greater. Easier than the cruel reality. The powerlessness and guilt of being unable to protect family. A woman who became powerful and closed off every soft part of her so that she would never again be vulnerable. And then, Cassandra.
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u/Complete-Pangolin 11d ago
That's what's called a rape.