Been trying all night and morning to hold back tweeting about how fandom forged the woman I am. I cannot do it. This is how a corporate IP property brought me back to my own history, the history of a queer, Trinidadian woman. This might be rambly but I do have a point.

First, I love plants, I grow food, I love the forest, I have a degree in English lit. I've read the fuck out of the cannon. I could fire the cannon I've so much time with it. I was born in Trinidad, I grew up very poor. I taught ESL was the academic director of a language school.

When I was a kid we had no internet, we didn't have cable the library was a bit of a walk and filled with books that had nothing about me, there was no money for comic books, or very many toys. We didn't have cable. We had an antenna and we got the free channels.

Do you know what was on the free channel? I watched it all the time. *Bam* *Pow* *BOOF* but holy rusted metal, Suzan how does this campy show have anything with literature????

A lot of my Gothic tastes have their origins with this show. Ppl, it's a man who dresses like a bat and has a cave. But what transfixed me was Batman's rogues gallery. Particularly the female villains. I loved Eartha Kitt as Catwoman. who couldn't love her

Batman villains had style, they were funny and interesting and weird as ass and they didn't give a fuck. I was a weird, awkward , sickly kid with no friends, who always seemed to be drawn to women and as I turned into an adolescent was terrified of being queer.

I watched the 1989 movie and the sequel. I somehow got my hands on a copy of the novelization of the first movie and devoured it. "Ever dance with the devil in the pale moon light?" Tim Burton's aesthetic was huge for me then - no one was making movies that looked like that...

Then the animated series came out and I was obsessed. And when Poison Ivy walked on the screen it was over. She was angry about in justice and loved plants and she was brilliant and beautiful and did what she wanted.

meanwhile, I was old enough to walk to the library.I read every classic I could get my hands on. I loved literature and art. ppl called me white washed cuz I was a nerd but whateve, Ivy was a botanist, she was smart. I wanted to be a botanist maybe I'd grow up to be hawt too. :p

Ivy is the origin for my love of plants, why I spend all summer growing things. I wasn't great at physics so I ended up taking by other love in school. Literature. Now here is where it get's going.

In lit. theory we read a classic by Hawthorne, "Rappaccini's Daughter". You can read it here, if you. It's about girl who tends to her father's garden of poisonous and becomes poisonous herself. You can read it here, it's serious literature Yo http://www.columbia.edu/itc/english/f1124y-001/resources/Rappaccinis_Daughter.pdf

Years later, I returned my fandom of her many years later and now that I have resources and time, I've been able to research how she was created.

Poison Ivy was created for DC by Robert Kanigher and Sheldon Moldoff....do you know who she is based on?? Wiki: "Partly inspired by the titular character in Nathanial Hawthorne's short story "Rappaccini's Daughter", she is a Gotham City misanthropic botanist and biochemist"

SUZAN WTF DOES THIS HAVE TO BE WITH BEING BROWN? FUCK ON AND ON GET TO IT, BITCH. lolol, I'm almost done hang on.

Poison Ivy, is Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Cannon fan fic but I wondered where Hawthorne got the inspiration for his poison daughter in the story.....

Here's an article, on Rappaccini's Daughter, in the story one of the character's mentions reading a classic Indian story of a father who feeds his daughter poison and is given as a present to Alexander the Great in order to seduce him and kill him. http://somatosphere.net/2017/beautys-knowledge.html/

INDIAN PRINCESS??? WTF? They did not teach us this in lit theory. Hawthorne is a White American Literary Legend, Puritan's are bad, what do brown ppl have to do with this??? Okay, let me loook!

This led me to the Mudrarakshasa an creative non fiction play about a king of India and Alexander the Great. This is likely in part the story Hawthorne is citing in his short story... http://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/06/mudrarakshasa-of-visakhadatta-sanskrit-drama-with-english-translation/

In this epic there are character's called Visha Kanya's - Poison Damsels, who are fed small amounts of poison from infancy until they themselves become immune. These Damsels were then sent out as assassins to seduce and dispatch the kings enemies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visha_Kanya

AND THERE WE ARE. BATMAN'S POISON IVY CAN TRACE PART OF HER ORIGINS BACK TO THE INDIAN EMPEROR CHANDRAGUPTA (c. 340–293 BCE) JUST LIKE I CAN TRACE PART OF MY HISTORY BACK TO INDIA.

VISHA KANYA are woman infused with natural venom used to seduce men. Now, Do you want to tell me that Ivy did not bring me back to my history? Or let's talk about how western cannon steals our stories and feeds them back to us obscuring our history under the guise of LITERATURE

Poison Ivy is my story and my history. My next WIP will center the Visha Kanya. People who want to talk about how fandom cannot teach us anything about history or art or literature are severely ignorant and need to take several seats fast not on a chair on the floor.

Thank you for your patience in reading this. I apologize for my typos. I leave you with this song...from birds of prey because yesterday when that fool talked it reminded me of the joker - and like Harley (MY IVY SHIP <3) I'm done with jesters....