Thank you! Yeah, I don't know that on its own that sentiment would inspire a desire for warning, but in the context of something I expected to be analyzing through the lens of gender and sexualization, that was a rather jarring sentiment. Personally, I actually tend to be more cognizant of seeing sentiments like that in meta or notes than in fic, on the logic that while a fic can perpetuate upsetting messages, it is ultimately fictional characters getting that treatment and how readers will be affected by that varies (though warnings and tagging are generally helpful). While with meta or notes, you are more likely to get discussion of a topic in general, which tends to implicitly or explicitly cover the issue in real life. (That's one of the reasons I strenuously object to people drawing a one-to-one connection between fictional violence and real-life violence; all too often, I see people assure themselves and others that they aren't engaging in "abuse apologism" by insisting that the actions within a fictional work aren't really abuse--essentially denying the experiences of real-life survivors for the sake of protecting fictional characters.)
Yeah, I have mixed feelings about the Mirage arc, even more so because it is actually the reason I started to read Batman comics. I read the comics around that arc as part of a larger semi-work related project around the depiction of sexual violence against men in fiction and the relation to meta discussions of those events in fandom, and then I fell down a very large rabbithole. Now I have a whole theory about evolving perceptions of masculinity in stories with a long-running collaborative canon (mainly Arthurian legend and mainstream superhero comics). It's mostly for fun at this point, though it still occasionally informs my work since perceptions of interpersonal violence in pop culture is a major professional interest of mine. So, it is hard to hate something that got me into this fandom in the first place, even if canon handled it poorly, especially since I engage with this fandom in an analysis-focused manner specifically because the pop culture impact is so interesting to me.
I frankly adore the way you worded, "while insider perspective can be invaluable, even having firsthand experience of something doesn't automatically make your word gospel and mean that your viewpoints or desires related to it are healthy/advisable." There are even some variations on rape culture myths or victim-blaming that tend to be specifically repeated by survivors; ultimately, no one is immune from societal messaging, and sometimes firsthand experience makes people even more defensive in response to related criticisms of their behavior. I actually really like that Mirage herself is also a survivor in canon--even if I am not necessarily a huge fan of the specifics of that plot point. She is ultimately an interesting character to me, in that she could reflect a lot about interpersonal violence as a societal issue.
I do think canon could have done something interesting with victim-blaming from Kori for that reason. What really annoyed me about how canon handled things was that Kori's opinions seemed to drastically turn mostly for the sake of easy plot drama. She really didn't initially blame Dick (though some other Titans did, insert infamous panel of Pantha calling Dick a slut, which people mislabel as Kori calling him that). In fact, they worked together to literally con Mirage into helping them stage a breakup between Kori and Nightwing so Kori and Dick Grayson could publicly date, which I personally thought was a really cathartic narrative of them turning emotional manipulation and her shapeshifting back against her--the very same tools she used against them. I honestly could not figure out why they went from that, a narrative which, while it downplayed the violation of Mirage's actions, ultimately had Kori place the blame fully on Mirage, to Kori blaming Dick. I could maybe see something like that happening with external pressures, but I just didn't see any believable turnaround. It felt cheap.
I am with you on the yeeting the plot from existence with Talia, though. Honestly, as much as I see people do interesting stories and discussion about canon sexual violence against the men in the Batfamily, I can only take so much of it before I get sick of discussion about Talia al Ghul, Liu, Catalina Flores, Miriam Delgado, Rose Wilson, the Daughter of Acheron, etc. which does not seem to give the same consideration, if any, to similar actions from white women such as Catwoman, Stephanie Brown, or Poison Ivy, all of whom you would expect to warrant more discussion given their more major roles in the Batman comics family. Though that isn't a fandom-exclusive issue, to be clear; canon writes these things very differently and that gets reflected downstream in fandom.
Comment on Seeing Red
the_bi_ballerina on Chapter 3 Fri 31 May 2024 11:48PM UTC
Comment Actions