batmenplayingpoker

[batmenplayingpoker]

Let’s talk about: Arrow 5.19

In which I’m forced to defend Felicity.

After a month’s hiatus, Arrow has returned. Adrian Chase has been exposed as Prometheus, but he’s escaped, and the entire episode revolves around Felicity’s acts of desperation conflicting with the higher moral ground that Oliver has decided to occupy this week.

First off, shout out to Dinah Drake, who didn’t have a whole lot to do but worked what she got.

So anyway, as I mentioned, the dramatic tension of this episode revolves around Oliver v. Felicity (or Oliver and Diggle v. Felicity) with a little bit of Diggle v. Lyla thrown in there at the end. I should say that my feelings about Felicity throughout the course of the series has been conflicted at best. When she was basically a vehicle for “witty” one-liners and double entendres, I mostly rolled my eyes and ignored her. When she was elevated to romantic lead and Supreme Goddess, I hated her. And yet for most of season 5 I’ve ping-ponged back and forth between ambivalence to maybe, sorta, almost liking her in spite of myself?

And yet throughout the series, regardless of my feelings for the character, I have loathed the paternalism levied on her, levied on every prominent female character, in fact, with perhaps the exception of Sara (I would have to go rewatch S2 to be sure). The entire conversation between Oliver and Diggle had me practically seeing red, as they bemoan Felicity’s descent into that moral gray zone that only they are supposed to enter.

The face I was making, it was kind of like this:

Consider this line of dialogue:

“We knew she was involved, and we let her get in deeper.”

The entire conversation is framed in this way, as their failure to exercise control over Felicity’s actions. To be clear: it’s perfectly fine to express concern when you think someone is making poor choices, but they did that. Both Diggle and Oliver on separate occasions expressed their concerns to Felicity, and she took note of those concerns and decided to continue on the path she was going down, because she’s a grown ass woman who can make her own mistakes. It doesn’t mean she’s justified in what she does, she can be wrong! But at the end of the day she is the one responsible for her actions.

To make matters worse, it’s clear this conversation between Oliver and Diggle is not about Diggle taking Oliver to task for failing to exercise control over a team member as the leader of Team Arrow, but for failing to exercise control over her as her ex-fiance! 

Felicity did look pretty amazing in her heist gear, I must say. It was completely inappropriate for the occasion, and I’m not sure why you need 3″ wedge heel boots and smoky eyeshadow for a caper, but whatever, she was wearing something other than those glasses and those ugly designer dresses and she looked amazing! That works for you, Felicity. You should go on capers more often. 

But back to my rant: Sometimes Felicity’s bad choices are just Felicity’s bad choices, and she should be allowed to make them and live with the consequences of making them without being immediately absolved. But the show writers have consistently shown a wariness or inability to give Felicity any kind of moral complexity. She is routinely deified as “the best of us,” “the strongest of us,” “our moral voice,” and her questionable choices are always narratively justified or nullified. Her complicity in Susan’s firing earlier in S5 was waved away with a weak “I didn’t know what Thea was going to do!” (she asked you to plant leading evidence on Susan’s computer and you didn’t know what she was going to do with it? I thought Felicity was supposed to be some sort of genius!) It makes for a character who, when you get down to brass tacks, is pretty boring, who isn’t allowed anything by way of character growth. The scrapes and bumps she must heal from are always inflicted from the outside; her problems are never hers, she’s a victim of the mistakes of others.

For whatever reason, the writers can’t stop themselves from tripping over themselves to elevate her, even with awkward throwaway lines like the one from Diggle in this episode:

“Felicity Smoak is one of the best people I’ve ever known.”

It’s weird, the way other characters talk about her. I have some very close friends who I love with all my heart, but I don’t think I have or would ever appraise them in quite that way, surely not in a pseudo-argument with my spouse (especially since Diggle was basically saying “If even Supreme Goddess Felicity could go darksided, then oh god you, my wife, it could definitely happen to you.”) And this is far from the first time that other characters have talked about Felicity in a way that is entirely unique, that is not found in the way characters talk about any other character. It’s like an edict from on high; every now and then the Powers That Be must possess someone and use them as a mouthpiece to remind the audience that this is a good character and we love her, OK? 

This was also true about Oliver and Felicity’s relationship when it was getting off the ground and/or in full force, by the way. Diggle’s descent into the king of Olicity shippers was just weird, but even that pales in comparison to Laurel shipping Olicity on her deathbed. Why do we need everyone to love and endorse this relationship, this character? It suggests a lingering, uncomfortable insecurity in the writer’s room, a fear that they can’t adequately convey how good and right this relationship or that character is without having it explicitly reinforced by anyone and everyone. 

And let’s talk about Lyla for a second. Unpopular opinion: I hate Lyla.

I know, Digg. But hear me out. In a meta sense I have never warmed to Lyla. She was introduced as a replacement for Diggle’s S1 love interest, who we never saw or heard from again, and she eventually became Amanda Waller’s ARGUS replacement. That’s two black women that Lyla’s stepped in the shoes of, taking their place in the narrative. I’m not trying to draw anything from two data points, I’m just saying it’s enough to give me pause.

Amanda Waller was not a good person. Her decisions as the head of ARGUS weren’t even morally questionable, they were often morally wrong, yet in spite of that, Team Arrow worked with ARGUS on a number of occasions for their own ends (and, again, going back to Felicity, I can’t blame her being frustrated for being told she can’t follow the team’s general “ends justify the means” ethos because she’s been placed on a pedestal as the team’s moral beacon). In this episode Diggle expresses dismay about Lyla becoming “like” Amanda Waller, but what? Excuse me? Wasn’t she always complicit, if not outright involved in some of Waller’s questionable leadership decisions? Lyla wasn’t some powerless lackey, she was fairly high up in ARGUS even before Waller’s death. She chose to be there, she chose to act in concert with Waller, and Team Arrow often benefited from those choices. They’re all hypocrites.

This episode maybe (for me, hopefully) has sewn the seeds of the dissolution of Diggle and Lyla’s marriage. At the very least, it’s a problem that will doubtless linger. Early in the episode when Lyla takes a piece of evidence for ARGUS, the camera lingers on Dinah’s disapproving expression. This suggests to me that there is some merit that perhaps they’re going to explore Diggle and Dinah’s relationship to some extent. How do I feel about this? I don’t know. I’m happy to have Diggle do something other than act as Oliver and Felicity’s cheerleader, I’m happy for him to finally take a stance against his wife’s dubious actions, so I’m certainly interested to see where this is going. But I fear for Dinah if she devolves into Diggle’s arm candy.

The B-plot is Quentin “Hoss” Lance ignoring Rene’s boundary-setting by taking it upon himself to summon Rene’s daughter for an impromptu, surprise meeting, which ends with Rene’s renewed commitment to getting his daughter back. 

I get that this plot is supposed to be heartwarming, but Quentin bowls through Rene’s concerns due to his fresh grief over losing his daughter. To Quentin’s credit, he’s doing remarkably well for someone who’s managed to lose his two daughters THREE times, but sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is recognize that you’re not good for them, and if Rene truly feels that he isn’t good for his daughter, then it’s a good thing that she’s in a more stable environment. Let’s not forget this is a guy who runs around in a hockey mask and carries a gun; he may not be passing out drunk, but I still have some serious concerns about his ability to provide a stable environment. And for Quentin, it’s not even about Rene--not really. It’s about Quentin vicariously living through Rene, because he misses Laurel.

And finally, there were at least three references to Curtis’s “lawyer friend.” This is a strange turn of phrase to be repeated multiple times throughout the episode. Not “Curtis’s friend, who’s a lawyer,” not “a lawyer I’ve been put in touch with, thanks to Curtis,” but Curtis’s Lawyer Friend. Curtis’s Lawyer Friend. Curtis’s Lawyer Friend. Is this alluding to something (someone)? Or is is just strange dialogue? The writing on Arrow is so uneven that it’s difficult to distinguish when they’re attempting to signal something and when they’re just writing sloppy dialogue. Is “Curtis’s Lawyer Friend” supposed to ping something? I honestly can’t recall if we’ve got any relevant lawyer characters waiting in the wings; personally, I’d love for “Curtis’s Lawyer Friend” to be Damon Matthews, but again, maybe they weren’t attempting to signal a new, incoming character. Maybe Rene’s lawyer will, forevermore, simply be known as “Curtis’s Lawyer Friend.” Maybe that’s his actual name. I don’t know. ‘Til next week, which looks like a bottle episode.

[batmenplayingpoker]

DC Rebirth volume 1 TPBs reviews, part 1

Oh the glory of Hoopla, which has allowed me to get back in touch with the DC universe in a big way. If you’re not familiar with Hoopla, it’s a digital service available through some libraries, where you’re able to check out X amount of titles per month, with no wait (unlike, say, Overdrive, where there is a limited number of “copies” your library can loan out). They have books, movies, TV shows, and comics (well, trade paperbacks). Lots of NEW comics, including DC’s Rebirth titles. I haven’t felt this plugged into the DCU since before the New 52 (and in fact that were several years there where I was not reading any current DC titles). And now I’m currently subscribed to several series on Comixology; it’s nowhere near the heyday where my pullbox contained a small stack every week, but for me it’s a step in the right direction. 

So with that said, I’ve been able to read a wide swath of the first volumes of various Rebirth titles. And without further adieu, I shall now provide my assessment of them both as separate entities and on their potential as a series going forward. I was originally going to rank them, but basically they fall into two piles: excellent and meh. There may (probably will) be spoilers ahead. This post will be broken up into several pieces, for size.

First, let me say that, in general, I think Rebirth has been very good. I think the creative vision of the new 52 was severely misguided: characters rolled back, characters disappeared, marriages axed, and some truly ugly costume designs. Regarding the first point, superhero comics of the Big Two always hew close to the status quo, or return to it, but the way it was done was sloppy at best. But that’s the topic of another post.

Titans -- Dan Abnett (writer). WALLY! Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the wa--WALLLLLY! Wally is easily one of my favorite DC characters, and my antipathy for the new 52 in large part has to do with the fact that Barry Allen (the greatest supervillain of the DCU) erased him from existence. Barry Allen is an insufferable, selfish character and I could go on and on about how he should’ve stayed dead, but that’s a topic for another time. Titans sees Wally returned to form. There is, of course, another Wally running around (I have yet to read any comics with him, waiting for the Teen Titans tpb to release), but he has none of Wally’s history with the Titans, with his family, and so he’s basically just another character with the same name. The character I missed was Wally West, BFF to Dick Grayson and husband to Linda Park-West, and with the advent of Rebirth, that Wally has been restored--sort of.

But this series suffers from two fundamental flaws. The first is the art: I hate Brett Booth’s art, it is so ugly and to my dismay his niche seems to be Titans titles, which means I either have to learn to endure it or forgo the title. In the past, I’ve opted to forgo (and with Lobdell writing, it was no real loss), but in this I must endure, because Wally.

The second fundamental flaw is that even with Wally’s restoration, it’s still unclear how much of the Titans’ past is canon. They had forgotten him and now remember him, great, but just how much of Wolfman and Perez’s NTT run is canon? Any of it? I’m guessing not, which is partly a function of the PTB’s insistence on kicking Cyborg upstairs to the JLA where he doesn’t belong. Because so much is still up in the air, I have a hard time connecting with any of them or feeling invested in them as a group. The original Teen Titans were a casualty of the new 52, and they’ve attempted to cobble together a solution, but it only partially works, and the seams still show. 

But WALLY!

Justice League -- Bryan Hitch (writer). This series was pretty forgettable. Honestly, I can’t think of much to say about it. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t terrible. Team books often seem to suffer from too zoomed out a picture, trying to focus on everyone at once. And a new colossal threat just makes the stakes feel low; I know Superman’s not seriously in danger of dying, they’re not going to kill him off in the opening arc of a comic that isn’t even his, so why are they trying to sell me on that danger? How much better if they were to take the Justice League Unlimited approach by focusing on a small number (or even just one!) Leaguer with each issue/arc. Just because you have an entire box of toys doesn’t mean you have to play with them all at once.

Batgirl -- Hope Larson (writer). Average. I think it was a mistake for Babs’ opening arc to take her to Japan. If this is supposed to be a jumping on point for new readers, you need to introduce those new readers to the supporting cast. I haven’t yet read Batgirl of Burnside, and I tuned out pretty quickly early in Simone’s lackluster New 52 run, so I had no idea who this “Frankie” that Babs was talking to until they finally showed her. In solo titles, a strong supporting cast helps to carry the load and can make or break the series, but for this first arc we’ve got Barbara wandering around Asia alone. But perhaps the most puzzling thing for me is the fact that Barbara is now upholding the masquerade by claiming that Batgirl is some sort of personal bodyguard, a la early Iron Man? 

Again, I am ignorant of any developments to Barbara’s character in the past couple years, but you truly expect me to believe that Kai doesn’t recognize Batgirl as Barbara? Look at that hair! I know this is a debate as old as the genre, but we’re not talking about someone recognizing Clark Kent on the street as Superman, who saved them from a burning building. We’re talking about two characters so tightly tied together that at one point Kai, locked in a bathroom, shouts “Batgirl?!” only for the door to open and there’s Barbara. I mean, come on. Tony Stark as Iron Man was locked in a giant tin can. The only thing that separates Barbara from Batgirl is some leather and a bat symbol.

I’ve also never been a fan of Barbara’s de-aging and de-maturation. Putting her back in the Bat costume--fine. I think her evolution into Oracle was monumental and I think it was a mistake to put her back in costume, but it is what it is. What’s harder for me to accept is her being written like she’s eighteen years old. I miss my slightly battle-hardened hacker.

Birds of Prey -- Benson and Benson (writers). I have a hard time recalling the actual plot because the artwork was just so jarringly bad. In a comic that revolves around three female heroes you have someone who cannot. draw. women. This is not to suggest that I’m advocate of the pornified comics artist; I like that Dinah, Helena, and Barbara are not objectified, but they’re blocky and same-faced, and there was at least one panel where I was briefly under the impression that Batgirl was not Babs but rather a guy cosplaying as her. What happened here? There was some guy calling himself Oracle. And Dinah’s ass cheeks are kinda-sorta hanging out. That’s basically all I remember.

[batmenplayingpoker]

On Tribalism and Toxicity in the Arrow Fandom

Let’s get some things out of the way: I am a card-carrying comics fan, and I think Olicity is an awful ship. Already I can hear the distant rumble of trouble, the hue and cry of a certain, vocal, segment of the Arrow fandom. 

I have witnessed a lot of bad behavior from this segment. I don’t think I need to produce receipts; they’re out there, easily accessed. Just, ya know, browse the relevant twitter tags. What’s most instructive is browsing tags related to “the opposition,” i.e: Laurel fans, Black Canary fans, Lauriver fans, etc.

There’s a reason why I won’t be posting this into the olicity tag, and that’s because I think people should be free to browse posts related to their favorite ship/character without having to sift through a bunch of “hate” posts; I follow that rule even when I think it’s a ship or character that has generally been a reflection of (if not the embodiment of) a show (or other property) at its absolute worst.

This post isn’t “about” Olicity fans, however, because (and at the risk of this post descending into a trite “both sides do it!” dismissal of legitimate grievances) as I have watched the fandom segment and fracture (if it could ever have been accurately considered whole) and propel itself outward to ever greater extremes, the bad behavior truly is not limited to Oliciters. And what I have witnessed in addition to the generic rudeness and bad behavior that is part and parcel for social media, is an emergent tribalism between two segments of the fandom that have defined themselves in opposition to each other, who treat the shows canon and direction as a battle that can be somehow “won.” In other words, people who appear not to identify foremost as Arrow fans, but as “Oliciters/Olicity fans” and "Pro-Laurel/BC/Lauriver fans.” In fact, far from identifying as Arrow fans, many seem to obstinately identify themselves as not fans, despite obsessively following news and developments about the show. 

Here’s a confession that will lose me the other half of these vocal fans: I like Dinah Drake. Although she hasn’t really had much to work with yet, if we were to go back to Arrow’s inception, and Dinah Laurel Lance’s casting, I would love if Juliana Harkavy had received the part. Nothing against Katie Cassidy, who is a fine actress and who certainly is not deserving of the hate she’s gotten, but her casting was very much emblematic of how “CW-fied” Arrow was in its nascency. 

I bring this up because the drama surrounding the creation/implementation of a “Dinah Drake” and the subtly sexist connotations that accompany the derisive nickname “Tuna Canary” are a prime example of the Pro-Laurel/BC fandom becoming unmoored. When I wandered into the twitter tags around the time of her introduction, I saw a number of tweets from Pro-Laurel/BC fans decrying this development as poor storytelling (fair assessment) and accusing anyone who accepted her introduction as “not a real fan of BC” (unfair assessment). I like Dinah Drake, I’m happy she’s there, and I defy anyone that knows me to accuse me of not being a “true” fan of Black Canary. 

What I see on social media from these two sides is a sense of entitlement that truly defies belief. And the worst of them are overtly combative against the “enemy,” and gloat about things that decent people do not gloat about (in this respect I’m referring to gloating about misfortunes faced by the actors--real people, as opposed to characters). I see Oliciters goading Pro-Laurel fans, and pro-Laurel fans goading Oliciters, and the casualties of this fandom war are the generic Arrow fans, those who want the show to be good without having an investment in a specific outcome. Those fans get lost in the loud jockeying for attention, the petty bickering, and I suspect most of them either find themselves drawn into a side or, like me, slowly back away and vow never to return. Because I’m sexist if I think Felicity should have less screen time or No True Comics Fan if I think Katie Cassidy wasn’t the perfect casting for Dinah Lance.

But the real casualties are, I think, the Oliciters and the Pro-Laurels (do they go by another name?), because they’ve become personally invested in a specific outcome to the point where it has compromised any enjoyment they initially got out of the show. Do I need to explain why this is a bad thing? You can wish and hope for X to get together with Y, for Z to happen, but when you are consuming media (instead of creating it), it is outside your locus of control. What will happen, will happen. And instead of fandom being an outlet for the elseworlds, for the could-have-beens, instead of fandom being a release valve, an expression of the subtextual and unspoken, it has metamorphosed into entitled packs of people who really should know better, who push for their vision to be the show’s vision, and if it is then they win and if it isn’t, they lose, with all the attendant emotions that accompany winning and loss.