Warrior Princess Exchange!

[frayadjacent]

chaila 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 delightful

Chaila 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. :)

Comments

[frayadjacent]

There are a few Diana & Ares convos during Rucka's run that I absolutely hear in Lucy Lawless and Kevin Smith's voices!

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.)

[sanguinity]

Hm... Re hiketeia-as-bankruptcy, and whether that's acceptable in all cases... I'm gonna c&p part of one my comments from that post I made about the Hiketeia, so that you don't have to worry about encountering spoilers from Rucka's run.

I very much read The Hiketeia as being about... ergh, different ways of paying the price of your past? Asking for hiketeia is like declaring bankruptcy: a way of drawing a "from this day forward, we begin again" line, but only at the price of your entire life that went before. You gain protection from your past, but you also surrender everything: not just pride and honor, but also history, purpose, desires, identity... The custom of hiketeia says that if, for whatever reason, you find the price of your past too heavy to pay (good reasons, bad reasons, just reasons, unjust reasons, it is irrelevant!), and you can find someone with sufficient power who will grant you both protection and a new purpose for existing, then you can walk away from your past. Just as long as you walk away from it all, good and bad both.

Whereas Batman is running very much on the debtor's prison model: you must pay, you must always pay, and you must pay in full. And if that means that you spend life in prison for trying to eat, well then: you spend life in prison for trying to eat.

Whereas the Furies are... nature itself, kinda. What Diana and Batman are doing are two very human models of accounting for the price of one's past, but the Furies are like forest fires and avalanches and circular storms. If there is too much of a concentration of past-that-has-not-been-paid-for... Too much accumulated potential energy somewhere (haha, I'm switching metaphors, go with it), the Furies come along to vent it, and let the outcome fall as it may. It's an effective but incredibly destructive way of stabilizing a system, and has not one thing to do with human notions of justice. Witness the story of Orestes and Clytemnestra: both patricide and matricide are too major to ignore, they must be paid for, and the Furies coolly do not try to pretend that there's anything left to be salvaged of a family once a woman kills her husband. The instability of that act is such that the entire family will be consumed in the avalanche, and if that seems cold and harsh and unfair, well, reality and its consequences are often cold and harsh and unfair. The Furies are cats knocking shit off of tables: here is a thing that CAN fall, therefore it someday WILL fall, so one might as well make it fall today. And if one stays on top of one's knocking-shit-off-of-tables regimen, then the tables stay mostly clear and things mostly don't get broken too comprehensively. But if one neglects to knock-shit-off-tables for a while, when something finally does fall off the table (whether due to cats or not), you'll have an unholy destructive avalanche of broken things before things stop falling.

So what Diana and Bruce are doing are two human ways to try to manage social instabilities that need managing, and the Furies are cats that have no fucks to give about any of it, but are very matter-of-fact about noticing major instabilities, and will address them for you if you don't address them first. And if there is no "humane" or "fair" way to address them, well, cats the Furies don't have any fucks to give about that.

(Remember when Diana goes out to confront the Furies, trying to get them to back off from Danielle, arguing that whatever Danielle's past, hiketeia should be enough to satisfy them? In this specific case, the Furies actually had no beef with Danielle -- she avenged her sister's death, so the Furies had no need to -- but if Danielle had left her sister's death unavenged before seeking hiketeia? In that case, hiketeia may not have stopped the Furies: there are wrongs so great that they must be answered, hiketeia or not.)

So you've got this thing going on where the Furies are a force of nature that must be answered, and Bruce has got this code of ethics that insist that all crimes must be answered. And you'd think -- Bruce certainly does! -- that Bruce's unwillingness to compromise would be the kind of thing that would preemptively satisfy the Furies. And yet it is Bruce's very own Fury-like ruthlessness that creates the instabilities that have the Furies hanging around in the wings, waiting for their moment.

...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

[frayadjacent]

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.

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.