Originally Posted by
Tzigone
I mean, I think that's there's a heck of lot more to her than her smile/smirk and laughter - to call that 90% of her game is ridiculous to me - laughing doesn't matter if the hero gets curbstomped two seconds later. I don't prefer the quippy version of Steph, anyway. She's very capable, of course, but meta-wise treated very much like a joke - a mascot or the "moral support" instead of a highly capable professional. You can say the evidence doesn't support that, and that's absolutely correct - canonically she's done some fantastic things. But I think writers do need to think on how the audience perceives characters, too, even if they aren't perceiving reality (or only part of it). Steph is perceived as at least a little flaky/airheaded/no-filter-on-her-mouth (which was absolutely not true early on), and then it gets amped up by next writer and so forth. I mean, look at fanfic or at Tumblr. Saw one listing all the highly skilled Batfamily - except Steph who was moral support. Or all their driving - Steph hits parked cars. Saw both of those in the last week. And in fanfic, she's never the primary hero in a plotty-fic - she angsts (they all do) or gets rescued or provides emotional support or regular-person-lessons to Damian, Cass, or Tim (not the lessons to him, of course).
Now, I like her original characterization (though, of course she needed to grow), and she was not the happy/smiley one there. I also liked Tim's early characterization before he became Mr. Broody. It's like all his lightness went to her and all her darkness went to him, and they both ended up unbalanced to me. I know it's not like that all the time (and I'm really speaking about pre-52), but it's irritating. Mind you, I'm also still stuck on Dick's 1980s and 1990s characterization and Kon's 1990s backtory. Started reading DC in 2015 specifically for Spoiler (read her three Detective Comics appearances, then 100 issues of Robin, then branched out from there), and so was reading back issues, and I know I'm rather living in the past. I preferred Ollie's pre-COIE characterization to post-COIE. Batman's too, but so much of the angst and dysfunction the Batfam is tied up his later characterization.
I also have a general irritation with how female characters get gigantic eye-holes in their masks to be attractive, and males are much more likely to have small eyeholes and white lenses where you can't see their real eyes. I don't like Barbara in a domino instead of a cowl, either.