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Not Actually My Rainbow Princess Diary With a Heart-Shaped Locket - I am clearly too brilliant for my own good.
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Sat, Aug. 2nd, 2008 11:08 am
I am clearly too brilliant for my own good.

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katarik
katarik
katarik
Fri, Aug. 8th, 2008 04:27 pm (UTC)

I am actually totally with you here re: Grell and Shado. Agh, the *tattoo* -- I may not have actually said aloud "What the *heck* were you thinking!?!" but I was thinking it!

But... you haven't said why you dislike *her*, only why you dislike how Grell *wrote* her; yeah, you can't take her in a vacuum, because then the explicit, canonical (GRELL SERIOUSLY WHAT) "dragon lady" aspects get *dismissed* and that is not okay. You dislike how her stories are told and you dislike what she represents, and you don't have enough fannish energy to spare talking yourself into liking her despite the severely racist overtones/undertones/um. canontones of her portrayal.

But do you dislike *her*?

Because I am with you on these first two points! But I dunno. Shado just interests me. The stories I can see behind the page, the characters I would love to have her run with. I want Shado to meet Shiva -- Shado the artless art and Shiva the incarnation of elegant death. THAT WOULD BE SO AWESOME.

I want Shado to meet *Cass*. I want her to meet Tim. I want her to meet Slade, of course, I want everyone to meet Slade.

I want her to be the real person I can see just behind the stereotypes, because I *do* see a person there.


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arionhunter
arionhunter
Oh, If Only It Were Witty...
Sat, Aug. 9th, 2008 08:47 pm (UTC)

Well, no one has ever written her in any other way, so any other perspective on her would be a fan-interpretation. Now, I totally respect fan interpretations and am on board with them, but I just...okay, I don't dislike her as much as I am severely apathetic toward her and get irritated by attempts to point out her good parts because they're not in the canon.

And the canon is what most people are reading and interpreting as okay/acceptable. And so at the gut level (not to say that others can't have different feelings or anything, but this is just me) it feels like I am implicitly forced to accept the very racist crap Grell is presenting and am giving it the okay in putting the effort into liking Shado.

And I can't, no more than I can like Conner and let myself feel it's okay to disrespect and misunderstand Buddhism like Dixon does.

I'm glad people are fannishly repossessing her beyond Grell's racism. These repossessions work by rejecting the problems written into her. But that's not me. That's not me making the impact on minority representations in comics I want to make, wherein I am willing to stick to my guns and not let things go because "that's just the way it's done/well, everything starts from stereotypes/another shitty unacceptable reason." Of course, you're not saying that nor is anyone who is repossessing her in a positive manner, but other privileged fans and/or the industry to whom I would present the facts listed here would, and that is just too Not Okay for me to accept.

Does that make sense?


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