Warrior Princess Exchange!
3 June 2014 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frayadjacentchaila and I recently did a Warrior Princess Exchange: she gave me some Wonder Woman comics to read and I suggested some Xena episodes for her to watch! My Xena suggestions were "One Against an Army" -- an obvious choice, IMO, for the the competence porn and the Xena and Gab being awesome and having an amazing relationship -- and "When Fates Collide". The second one seemed a little counter-intuitive but I still think it was a good choice for chaila, and for showcasing how awesome the characters can be. Also I re-watched the episode for Research and OMG so much fanservice. It was delightfulChaila gave me The Hiketeia, which I devoured pretty quickly (well, after I figured out how to get Simple Comic to work right). It was a great story with some awesome Wonder Woman action and two great women characters.
I was surprised a little by how Diana claimed she didn't care what Danielle had done, to the point of kinda cutting off the conversation. It was an interesting ethical dilemma where I didn't really agree with anyone. I mean, I am fine with what Danielle did, but only because of the reason why she did it, which Diana claimed to not care about. (Though it seemed like she did care about it, since she was contemplating how she'd have felt if it were her sisters.) But honoring the Hiketeia was the major motivator for her, which I obviously don't identify with but it was pretty interesting nonetheless.
It definitely made me want to read more, and I imagine that if/when I do read more WW, I'll go back to the story and read it with a new level of emotional/intellectual engagement with the characters and stories.
I also thought the art was quite pretty, though I do predictably dislike the way women are drawn. It's not as bad as many comics but the contorted-torso-butt-and-boob poses were definitely there. But I liked how it conveyed the action.
The only thing I really wished was different was that it had spent more time on Diana and Danielle's relationship. I wish I had gotten to see them spending time together, to see how Danielle got good at her job instead of just having Diana tell me. But I wouldn't have wanted that at the expense of anything else, so I'd have wanted the book to be longer. :)
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on 3/6/14 05:51 am (UTC)I shall have to go back and see which episodes you recommended.
Hiketeia: some WW artists are boobtastic, some are not. Of what I've read so far (Rucka's and Simone's runs), Hiketeia is the boobtasticest, by a good chunk. The artists for Rucka's run didn't make me grind my teeth like the artist for the Hiketeia did.
...and for me, the story lost its integrity when Diana started caring about what Danielle's story was: under hiketeia, that doesn't matter. Hiketeia is part of a system of justice in which one can essentially declare moral/ethical bankruptcy: you can walk away from what you've done, at the price of walking away from it all. There's something essentially compassionate about that, that I can respect. And I find it more honest than a lot of redemption arcs. (Batman, on the other hand, feels that one should never ever ever get to be redeemed or anything else.) But I talked about my response to the Hiketeia here, if you're curious. (Latter half of the post. The first part isn't really spoilery for Rucka's run? But maybe a little bit.) But yeah, I'm very much approaching that story from the context of classical Greek tragedy.
Chaila has got a different reading of the conflicts of justice in the Hiketeia -- which I find compelling, even though I prefer the Greek tragedy lens -- but I'll let her talk about that. ;-)
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on 5/6/14 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
on 5/6/14 04:40 am (UTC)Though actually, one thing this reminded me of is that I so often am really frustrated with the Amazons on Xena because they are so ruled by their unchanging traditions and laws, and so often unwilling to consider context when making decisions. And this sorta reminded me of that, though it was also different. I guess because it was written from the POV of the person who was working with inflexible, amoral rules, and who nonetheless was acting on the side that felt both compassionate and morally correct (according to me, and probably most other readers). Whereas on Xena the conflict is often Gabriele and Xena trying to convince the Amazons that they're being unfair, or finding some way to circumvent the problem altogether.
(And of course Batman was just as inflexible as Diana.)
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on 5/6/14 06:35 am (UTC)So, begging our host's indulgence to continue this convo about a natural history museum having an exhibit on the WW Amazons, and what that means in terms of how the Amazons are coded... (
So, what I had thought about saying in that convo, but didn't, because I'm not sure how much it would have added:
In Xena, the Amazons are coded as straight-up indigenous. (Which I have got some major problems with, actually: the "main" tribe in the show is coded as Australian Aboriginal, the northern tribe has got some vaguely Arctic indigineity going on, and there's another tribe that's so blatantly coded as Native American that Gabrielle all but does redface in that episode.) (She wears fringed buckskin. She shoots a deer with a bow and arrow, and then does warpaint on her face with its blood. If I ever make that redface in SFF vid, that scene is absolutely going to be included.)
But I digress: in Xena, the Amazons are not Greek, but culturally distinct from the Greeks, the Romans, and the Chinese, and are absolutely coded as indigenous. It would not surprise me one tiny bit to see a natural history museum exhibit about them. (And while Xena and Wonder Woman are different fandoms, with different directions and choices, they do share source material, and that means I sometimes see strong echoes between them.)
Combine that with some of the observations Mercedes Lackey made in her introduction to the first Gail Simone WW trade, The Circle, about the Greek stories about the Amazons, and how the Greeks were very much building a loved/hated Other when they were making up those stories...
...um, and this moment right here is why I didn't make the comment! I'm not sure how to sum up! Yeah, I see what you mean about the WW Amazons being seen as primitive by in-story Americans? That despite how Greek they were under Rucka's pen, they're portrayed much more clearly as other-than-Greek in at least some other presentations? And that makes it easier for me to see it in WW? *handwaves vaguely*
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on 5/6/14 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
on 5/6/14 01:30 pm (UTC)Huh, they say it's the "Northern" tribe, but it's all tipis and arrows and fringed buckskin (as it is in the rest of the season, cf 5x16 Lifeblood and 5x17 Kindred Spirit), which is not what I remember the styling from 4x01 and 4x02 Sin Trade to be like?
*quickly reviews 4x01 and 4x02 Sin Trade* Yeah, I guess there was fringed buckskin then, too? But the stylistic details were a bit different: the buckskin was buried under lots and lots of animal pelts and shells and things. And wigwams instead of tipis? *shrug* I dunno. But in S4 I did not feel hit over the head with "pseudo Native Americans," while in S5 I did.
But concerning the variety of tribal stylings, when you get into S6 and all the Amazon tribes are banding together under a single queen, the camera pans around the queen's council and there's the suggestion that there is more cultural diversity within the Amazon nation than just the "Greek" and "Northern" tribes.
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on 6/6/14 01:30 am (UTC)I wonder how much thought the design people put into those differences between the Sin Trade episodes and Them Bones? I mean, I imagine the set designers at least thought about them, but then again maybe the writers described the scenery and the set designers just went with that. It might not even have been the same people.
But it does definitely sound like there were deliberate attempts to code different tribes as different real-life indigenous groups, which is all sorts of messed up. Thanks for pointing that out.
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on 7/6/14 01:31 pm (UTC)And yeah, I know that nearly everyone on-screen is white, but that's still so clearly the trope playing out... Ugh.
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on 6/6/14 01:02 am (UTC)And with some very slight spoilers for Perez--which is what Rucka is calling back to all the time--IIRC, their origin there is basically that they escaped imprisonment by Heracles (the comics kind of remove the political bite by making the oppressors the gods, always, and PS Perez's stuff is really problematic in some ways and there is a lot of rape in the backstory) and are basically given Themyscira and immortality by some of the female gods in recompense. And then they live apart for centuries, and re-create and/or newly develop all that advanced technology and culture (and keep their old language, religion, etc., unchanged by the outside world). And even in Simone's run, at the beginning the whole situation is that yet more people are trying to invade Themyscira *again*, because over the centuries, people are constantly trying to invade it because they want the land and all the stuff that it has. So some of these story elements are kind up calling up what happens to indigenous peoples?
It's more just that they turn the narrative and political trajectory of stories about indigenous people on its head? So like the museum exhibit isn't necessarily coding of primitiveness the way it otherwise might be, because by the time Diana is an ambassador for them, they're very able to maintain their cultural power and very able to define the terms of their own exchanges. So it's all kind of just a mess, coding-wise. Which is basically what you started out saying, which is it's hard to figure out what, if anything, Diana or the comics or anything means with regard to any of this?
Which kind of just leaves me also without a sum up. I tend to think it's cool that all this is part of the power fantasy that is superhero comics, that the Amazons are part of the power fantasy that is Diana, that they do have some of this coding as a minority or indigenous culture, and they have achieved the cultural power and self-sufficiency and power/ability to tell the dominant culture/nations to fuck off that they have. So like when their stuff shows up in an American museum, it's because Diana or they agreed that it would. And Diana deals a decent amount with being a representative of her different culture, and living basically in exile and trying to balance both worlds. But most of the real issues the stories are often trying to piggyback on are not really dealt with? Like we don't see indigenous people who can't do what the Amazons do in terms of power, or really even discussions of why it's important to the Amazons that they preserve their language, religion, etc. And idk what crosses the line into appropriation or that anyone involved in thoughtfully engaging in any of that.
On one hand, I am not sure what I will think of the Xena Amazons. On the other, bad interpretations of the Amazons and the idea of the Amazons who are stuck in the old world and the old ways is pretty often a theme in Wonder Woman also. Comics are just so confusing because they're so cyclical and everything gets retold over and over. So I feel like "Perez Amazons" and "Rucka Amazons" and "Simone Amazons" are all coded slightly differently, and that doesn't even get into the six other ways six other writers did it differently (and worse).
And of course the Amazons are always getting screwed over, narratively, even in Diana comics...I throw a lot of comics at walls over the Amazons.
(ALSO I DID THE THING, I went to Wendy's and got an invisible plane of my own. It is a silly little paper plane with a Diana sticker and I don't care I love it!)
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on 7/6/14 01:52 pm (UTC)(I had all sorts of thinky thoughts, and then that was completely derailed by CHAILA HAS AN INVISIBLE PLANE.)
What indicates its invisibility? Does it fly??
*wrenches myself back to the topic*
:: Oh I definitely didn't mean that the Amazons are generally *not* coded as indigenous in Wonder Woman? ::
...and I think I mean to say that in WW, they don't code indigenous for me at all. (Which is why I was so flabbergast about the natural history museum exhibit.) If I squint I can kind of see it, especially if I bring in other places where they are coded as indigenous, but...
They have an embassy. They're not considered to be childlike not-really-nations under the "protective" guardianship of "real" nations. They have an embassy. That's pretty much the place that I keep getting stuck. Well, that and all the marble and statuary and Greek gods and other symbolic cultural shorthands for "civilization."
But then, I know that's more in Rucka than Simone, and I haven't read Perez yet. (I blew through Simon's run last weekend. Sat in the backyard in the sun with the collected trades. It was a nice way to spend the weekend.) So maybe after I read Perez, I'll see it better.
I find the Xena Amazons as problematic as all hell, because of the way the show misappropriates actual ethnic identities for them, and then goes on to use a lot of the icky narrative tropes about indigenous peoples. There are some storylines involving them that I'm fond of, but as a group of characters... Well, I mostly want to go in there and rewrite them from the ground up. :-/
Except for maybe their thing with the Centaurs. That I just find gloriously weird.
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on 7/6/14 07:04 pm (UTC)...and I think I mean to say that in WW, they don't code indigenous for me at all. (Which is why I was so flabbergast about the natural history museum exhibit.) If I squint I can kind of see it, especially if I bring in other places where they are coded as indigenous, but...
Lulz reading comprehension and words, why can't I do them?! I don't think anything in the other runs (that I've read so far) will change your view in any significant way, but you might have to squint less to see it? But always a lot of the things that I've been talking about that call up some indigenous coding to me are backstory, and not the focus of the actual stories in the comics. But Rucka's is the only one that has Diana as an official ambassador with an embassy and all those trappings. Like "ambassador of Themyscira and its people and culture" is always part of what Diana is and does, and occasionally in other comics there will be a throwaway line about her having a role at the UN or something, but nobody else gives her an ongoing formal ambassadorship the way Rucka does (much to my ongoing disappointment).
YAY you read Simone! You should tell me what you thought sometime. :)
Before you read Perez, I feel I ought to alert you that, well, everyone has A LOT of love for Perez, but this is heavily, heavily colored by nostalgia. His run was the beginning of a lot of elements in Diana's stories that recur and that are great (the mythology elements in particular, and removing Steve Trevor as a love interest earns him my undying gratitude), so he does deserve a lot of the credit for establishing her in a new way. But even apart from its general dated-ness, it has A LOT of stuff that made me side-eye really, really hard, particularly around the Amazons and Diana's origin. I can be spoilery in email if you want, but let's just say, other stories have kept the good parts of his run and built on them, but there's plenty that I'm happy to leave in the 80s where it belongs. It's worth it for Julia Kapatelis alone, but it'd probably be good not to go in expecting Rucka-level greatness!
I find the Xena Amazons as problematic as all hell, because of the way the show misappropriates actual ethnic identities for them, and then goes on to use a lot of the icky narrative tropes about indigenous peoples. There are some storylines involving them that I'm fond of, but as a group of characters... Well, I mostly want to go in there and rewrite them from the ground up.
This makes me sad but not surprised. :( And is part of the reason why I'm perpetually glad that the established characteristic of the WW Amazons is that they are more advanced than pretty much the whole rest of the world. So at least sometimes they get to subvert all these myths and stuff. But now I do sort of want to see what this thing with the Centaurs is!
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on 7/6/14 08:10 pm (UTC)But! All Centaurs are male, and they live across the river from the Amazons (this was established before the show decided there was more than one Amazon tribe). And early on in the show, the Centaurs were pretty squarely positioned as the answer to any "but what about the menz??" (How do you procreate? What do you do with male babies?) question one might have about the Amazons.
That, and the Centaur-suits are hilariously bad. Around the time the barn episode that you watched, the show's budget expanded enormously, and they actually started using special effects and depicting "armies" as more than six people. (One of my clearest memories of the barn episode was goggling that they must have hired every stunt actor in New Zealand for that ep.) But somehow, the hilariously-bad Centaur-suits never got updated when the show's budget expanded.
Basically, I look at the Amazons, I look at the Centaur suits, I listen to characters seriously intoning another installment of the epic Amazon/Centaur backstory of war and alliance and betrayal, and I collapse into a fit of giggles. Because I DON'T EVEN.
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on 8/6/14 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
on 8/6/14 11:25 pm (UTC)But I think embracing the camp might be easier via an episode whose strength is camp? One is perhaps less likely to view camp as a nuisance in the serious eps, if one has an independent love for some of the campy eps?
...but maybe we should just keep the camp as far as way from you as possible, for as long as possible, until you are capable of shrugging "because Xena" about bewildering-wtf-was-that things, the same way you've learned to shrug and say "because comics."
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on 8/6/14 11:43 pm (UTC)no subject
on 8/6/14 11:51 pm (UTC)In the meanwhile, maybe Fray will drop the Caesar plotline on you or something.
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on 9/6/14 12:38 am (UTC)(Actually I think that might be in "Many Happy Returns", which is coming up for you, sanguinity!)
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on 9/6/14 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
on 9/6/14 12:44 am (UTC)Well, the centaurs are only in a few episodes. Aaaaand I'm not a good candidate for nominating a centaur episode, as I don't really like them either, for the same reason!
(I don't think Centaurs are really the show's answer to WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ because when an Amazon and a Centaur hook up it's always super controversial. But I do think it's pretty weird that all the Centaurs are men, apparently. Still, in general I feel like the show doesn't make very much effort to explain how the Amazons reproduce. I think at one point they might mention shipping off their boy babies, but I could be confusing it with descriptions I've read of Amazons in other stories.)
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on 9/6/14 01:33 am (UTC)I liked the front half of the Hope arc, and I'm pretty sure there were some Centaurs in there along the way. But I can't think of anything else with Centaurs in that I'd recommend.
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on 9/6/14 02:05 am (UTC)They very well might have been. I'm with you RE: hunting, so we might never find out. :D
That's true, Centaurs are important in Maternal Instincts, which is a good episode. I also like that part of Xena's backstory is betraying Borias right when he was redeeming himself (by negotiating a truce with the Centaurs) because then she gets to have manpain. But the Centaurs are pretty incidental to what's good about both those stories.
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on 9/6/14 01:32 am (UTC)Word. And I seem to have lost track of the comments, but somewhere in here you mentioned the These People Need a Honky trope with Gabrielle, and that's a really good point that I hadn't noticed before.
And then there is the Horde, and their casting choices for Maori actors*, and the Let's Genocide the Cannibals episode (and the fact that there are some gorgeous Xena/Gab scenes in that one just kills me).
*On one hand, the fact that the show doesn't try to be "realistic" by only casting white actors as Greeks/Romans/Gauls is a step above many fantasy-type movies and shows. But they still tend to cast Maori actors as dumb villains and give most of the interesting villains, as well as the heros, to white-looking actors.
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on 9/6/14 01:43 am (UTC)And yes, the Horde. I skipped those eps outright, because there's shit I don't need on my TV. When you hit that many OH NO YOU DIDN'TS in a row before you even get to the credits, I decide that I don't need to see wherever it is you think you're going with this.
Yeah, there's stuff that I DEF wish they had done better. Or, in some cases, not at all. :-/
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on 9/6/14 02:09 am (UTC)(Do you remember if you skipped the episode "Destiny", the one that shows Xena and Caesar's backstory? Because the pre-credits stuff is basically made of OH NO YOU DIDN'T, and then it is completely different for the rest of the episode.) Like, the teaser could be completely skipped on rewatch and the episode is only better for it.
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on 9/6/14 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
on 9/6/14 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
on 5/6/14 04:30 am (UTC)Ooooh that's so awesome. I can't wait to get there. :D
Thanks for sharing your thoughts; I am not that familiar with Greek tragedy (besides high school level exposure to Oedipus and Antigone) so your take is interesting. I'll go back and read your longer take on it after I've read Rucka's run, which I have no doubt I'll do. :D
Hiketeia is part of a system of justice in which one can essentially declare moral/ethical bankruptcy: you can walk away from what you've done, at the price of walking away from it all. There's something essentially compassionate about that, that I can respect.
Huh, yeah, that's an interesting point. There are definitely cases, for me though, where I wouldn't be OK with that, whereas with Danielle I definitely was -- and it all depends on what they've done, which is supposed to not be the point. So I guess I wouldn't be very good at it after all.
Batman, on the other hand, feels that one should never ever ever get to be redeemed or anything else.
Ha ha ha, I suspected as much. (I've managed to steer clear of like 90% of Batman everything in pop culture, somehow.)
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on 5/6/14 04:21 pm (UTC)...I might have THOUGHTS and FEELINGS about this book. *cough*
Anyway, I think hiketeia makes at least as much practical sense as life-in-prison (hella less toxic, without the train-you-to-be-a-better-criminal dynamics of running and maintaining prisons), and I have an easier time with hiketeia than I have with the death penalty. And it's not as if your past disappears: it's more suspended, conditional on your choices and behavior. If you ever leave hiketeia, then your past all comes back, needing to be paid for; likewise, if you violate hiketeia, it again comes back, needing to be paid for. My biggest issue with hiketeia is that it places an awful lot of responsibility on the person who accepts hiketeia. Diana has the integrity and power to make sure that her charges aren't getting up to shit, but your average Greek noble? (Well, we were shown an average Greek noble being an abusive fuck, were we not?)
Batman being an asshole: Chaila had to slip me some non-WW comics to explain Batman's hardlining in Rucka's run of WW. I knew he was an ass; I didn't realize how much an as ass. (btw, Rucka did an amazing forty-issue title called Gotham City, which is from the point of view of the detectives in Gotham's Major Crimes Unit, and the whole thing is about what it's like to be a NPC in a Batman title. Batman's hardly in it at all, and it's a wonderfully satisfying story for those of us who enjoy side-eyeing Batman hard.)
...and that was probably enough words. FOR NOW. :-D
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on 9/6/14 01:08 am (UTC)Yes, for sure. But then I imagine, what if one of the guys that Danielle killed had sought hiketeia (not from Diana, obvs, but from someone who for some reason exists in a modern context and knows what the ritual is). And that guy had followed the rules, and done what he should, and Danielle and the other people he'd hurt would never have had the opportunity to face him. Agreed that this is better than prison or the death penalty, no doubt, but it wouldn't be my first choice system of justice.
(Though if the Furies operate like you say, then hiketeia wouldn't have stopped them from making Danielle go after the guy, only she probably would have failed. Which I guess would have been the same result for her. Hey, sounds like a Greek Tragedy!)
I did think it was surprising that the Furies went after Danielle to avenge her sister's death, and it seemed like Diana was also surprised? I do wish that had been explained. I mean, if the Furies still operate in this world, why haven't they taken out, like, every US president ever? For example.
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on 4/6/14 06:16 pm (UTC)But yeah, I agree with
My reading of Diana cutting off Danielle was not so much that she didn't care, but that she felt she couldn't. Or rather, it would make no difference what her personal feelings - she'd be just as bound to protect Danielle and if she refused, the Furies would intervene. I think that's the emotional "in" I have with the story. Danielle is, in many ways, blackmailing Diana, or at least manipulating her. But it's a manipulation Diana is well aware of. It's one she capitulates to with a fascinating mix of compassion and cool practicality. Like the French Foreign Legion - Danielle breaks that unspoken contract by trying to justify what she's done - by bringing up her past. As if that could ever justify her manipulations (even if it also...does.)
I think I find the story fascinating because Diana does love and accept so much. It's interesting to see her forced to protect someone she might well have chosen to protect otherwise. That's...at least what I took from her statements about not caring. Danielle didn't understand: she'd invoked something so powerful, she could have been a sadistic mass murderer and Diana would have been bound to the same path.
Equally, Batman's inflexibility and lack of compassion is what drives Danielle to that desperate place, and his repeated refusal to compromise at all is ultimately what turns the conflict into something fatal - even though Diana is the one bound by a code that has nothing at all to do with morality.
And yeah - it's very consciously written as a Greek Tragedy in the traditional sense. Most of Diana's stories - even the ones steeped in Greek Myth, don't follow this kind of trajectory. Nor is she usually bound by arcane traditions. I mean, she has respect for them - her polytheism being actually demonstrated is pretty wonderful during Simone's run, for instance? But she also has a habit of defying stupid rules Gods attempt to impose on her and occasionally declaring that if this is how it's gonna be then SHE WILL HAVE NO GODDDDSSSSS and things. Because she's awesome. ;)
(ALSO XENA! I am curious what
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on 5/6/14 07:33 am (UTC)I really, REALLY like your interpretation. Especially this:
My reading of Diana cutting off Danielle was not so much that she didn't care, but that she felt she couldn't. Or rather, it would make no difference what her personal feelings - she'd be just as bound to protect Danielle and if she refused, the Furies would intervene.
and this:
Equally, Batman's inflexibility and lack of compassion is what drives Danielle to that desperate place, and his repeated refusal to compromise at all is ultimately what turns the conflict into something fatal - even though Diana is the one bound by a code that has nothing at all to do with morality.
So, do you think Diana was actually trying to protect herself by refusing to hear what Danielle had done? I.e., if Danielle had been a mass murderer, it would have been much harder (emotionally) for Diana to protect her?
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on 7/6/14 10:07 pm (UTC)I'm glad what I said made sense. In answer to your question, I guess...yes. I mean, I think it's more complicated than that too, because Diana never, ever runs from difficult truths, and if she thought it was relevant she'd ask without hesitation. But it's not. And I also think it's important to note that after taking Danielle in, she puts her to work and observes her. She takes responsibility for her. It's established that it's extraordinarily difficult to lie to her and she sees to the truth of people, so I don't for a moment doubt that if Danielle had been a dangerous person, Diana would have seen it. Even if that just meant deciding that this was her opportunity to either reform her or ensure she didn't have the opportunity to hurt more people.
So I feel that "it would be easier," is probably unfair to the fortitude of her character, but "it's irrelevant," really gets to the heart of the fact that she frames the situation in a competely different way to Batman?
Her choice to protect Danielle was already circumvented (well it wasn't, because she defies gods and traditions when she chooses to do so, but not without reason and consideration), so listening to Danielle's history as an attempt to justify her actions, like, as an attempt to convince Diana that she's doing the right thing, is irrelevant. Her moral decisions now need to be considered from a different angle.
Telling Danielle that is also a teaching moment. It forces Danielle to confront the truth too (ugh someday I will indulge my desire to go on a giant tangent about Diana and truth symbology but not right now...)
I...hope that makes sense? UGH SO MANY DIANA FEELINGS. ;) <3
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on 8/6/14 11:02 pm (UTC)Yessss. I mean as much as I missed most of the Greek mythology stuff on the first time through, this is also so true. I think Danielle went to Diana partly because she thought Diana would listen and would agree with Danielle that protecting Danielle was justified, which would be comforting? But instead Diana offers protection on the grounds that Danielle asked for it, where what she did and why becomes irrelevant. In some ways, I think Diana knowing and caring about the history makes the situation actually more emotionally difficult for her, in the end? Like I guess if Danielle had been a cold-hearted mass murderer, Diana would have been more conflicted about protecting her, but it wouldn't have made her act differently once the ritual was invoked, AND it might have been easier in some ways too because she wouldn't have been emotionally involved. She could've stayed coolly practical, bound by the Furies and hiketeia, but not necessarily by her own personal feelings or motivations. Like Diana doesn't do what she does later specifically because she thinks Danielle was justified, but she's devastated by it because she thinks Danielle might have been? The why is supposed to be irrelevant under the ritual, and I think it's easier from both sides--whether Danielle's crimes are worse than she imagines, or more tragic than she imagines--if it remains irrelevant. So like I think it's kind of a protective measure from either angle (which fails, because Diana, self-protection isn't how she actually does anything <333). Which is where I get tangled in my inability to use words to capture all the boundless contradictions that Diana manages to inhabit at the same time.
UGH SO MANY DIANA FEELINGS.
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on 9/6/14 01:12 am (UTC)tl;dr like always
on 5/6/14 03:56 am (UTC)Lots of words here, but short version: I kind of read the central conflict as clashing ideas and ideals of justice, via Diana and Batman *and* the Furies. Batman's all about punishment and deterrence, so to him it doesn't really matter WHY Danielle did what she did, what matters is that the bad action caused harm and is prohibited and was committed anyway. Diana does I think care about why Danielle did what she did (even though according to the ritual, she shouldn't). Danielle was actually punishing a wrong done by her "victims" which went unpunished by the formal justice system AND BY BATMAN. Because Batman's punishment theory is only effective as justice if it's actually fairly applied to rich and poor, and powerful and powerless. Which it is not.
I think Diana eventually does genuinely take Danielle's side on principle, even though the ritual says it doesn't matter. Like she isn't devastated at the end just because she failed in the ritual, but because it's all so damn unfair. The Furies and Batman are both satisfied at the end (maybe not happy, but what their rules required had happened), but Diana is not. Between all the "forces" of justice in this story--Diana, Batman, the Furies--Diana is the only one interested in why Danielle committed the murders that she did, the only one interested in the real justice of the situation, rather than adherence to inflexible rules. But Danielle gets crushed between the inflexible rules anyway, because this is an intractable Greek tragedy but also because in this new patriarch's world that Diana now lives in (and in the ancient ritual), there's very little room for real justice.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it! I don't know how good of an intro it is though. I just love it so much that I cannot even judge.
I can almost forgive the awful contorted poses for Diana standing on Batman's head in the rain puddles, ALMOST. And I fully admit that part of the reason I love The Hiketeia is for Diana thoroughly whipping Batman TWICE ("My apologies, Princess." "Mine as well. *sends him flying two stories down to the street*" <3333), particularly given fanboy obsession with Batman. I'm classy! :D And I always want *more* from comics, especially more character and relationship moments. Never enough.
Anyway! Xena! I watched both eps! I'm not sure I have an epic thoughts, sadly, but I generally enjoyed them. I do like the competence porn of Xena, and Xena being a total badass who can stare down an entire army herself. And like I said on Twitter, wow, no sub in this subtext! I was genuinely surprised at how texty it is. It is obviously such an epic love story, complete with deathbed confessions of love, wanting to give up the whole world to save each other, and obviously being destined to be together, Fates and their loom be damned! The campy way it rolls around in all the mythological stuff is fun too.
I'm not sure I'd be motivated to watch a bunch of seasons of Xena, but I'd definitely be up for more exchanging of specific eps/issues if you are! *vows to get you to read Medousa*
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on 5/6/14 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
on 9/6/14 01:14 am (UTC)Re: tl;dr like always
on 9/6/14 01:20 am (UTC)I fully admit that part of the reason I love The Hiketeia is for Diana thoroughly whipping Batman TWICE
Ah, that was fabulous. I steer as clear as I can from all things Batman, but even with my relative ignorance that was pretty damn satisfying.
And I love to do more exchanges! I wouldn't have gotten through 6 seasons of Xena on my own. I only watched it all because I did so with a friend, with wine and popcorn, about once a week for over a year. I honestly didn't get really into it until sometime in Season 4 (I'm a big fan of the Rome arc that sanguinity mentioned above) and didn't really fall for it till S6 when it goes full on texty. But now I love the earlier seasons much more in retrospect. (But even with that, there is a lot of filler material I have no interest in rewatching.)
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on 5/6/14 04:30 pm (UTC)THE ONE IN THE BARN!! Damn, I don't have time to rewatch that right now. But yeah.
Oh, and the other one is the next ep up for us! We stalled out a couple of times trying to make it through S6, and are stalled out right now. When we finish our ATLA rewatch, I'll use the fact that you rec'd the ep to
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on 6/6/14 01:42 am (UTC)For the rest of the series, everytime Xena faced something that seemed like way too much, I said, "well, she fought off a whole army that one time, so she'll be fine."
I liked that the show basically dispensed with any tension around whether Xena would win the day, and instead built drama/suspense in other ways.
Many fans consider the next episode, "When Fates Collide" to be the finale, because the actual finale is, well, upsetting. If I were to argue against "Friend in Need" as the finale (which I seem to be constitutionally incapable of, I am really not very good at deviating too far from canon), I'd argue for the one after, "Many Happy Returns". It's a bit silly -- OK, it's really silly -- but it has a delightful ending.
Which is a long way of saying that, should you stop after the next episode or the one after, you'd still have earned your Xena badge.
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on 7/6/14 01:58 pm (UTC)And thanks for the advice on where to stop!
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on 9/6/14 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
on 9/6/14 01:46 am (UTC)