About Babs/Dinah and Gail Simone

[galateus.insanejournal.com]

Funny question: On a TV Tropes example page most relevant to our interests, someone wrote that Gail Simone 'encourages' femmeslash. What interview was that?

Relatedly, a moment from Birds of Prey 21. You know the one.

Comments

[bluejaybirdie.insanejournal.com]

Heh. Look at Dinah cop a feel there. And Babs is about to!

Reportedly, the "hetero to the BONE" line was originally something like "80% hetero", but got changed by the editors :(

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Shit, I wish I still had the email, or we still had comments from the old site. IIRC Gail said it was "placeholder dialog," as in, that's what she put on the page, intending to later get clearance to change it (which she expected she'd be able to), but never got around to it.

It's not a real hard line to work with as is, though, you can easily go the "deep denial" route, since "I AM SO VERY HETERO THAT I AM HETERO RIGHT DOWN TO MY BONES" spins pretty well as "doth protest too much," and the whole running-off-to-Asia-when-Babs-gets-engaged and marry-Ollie-despite-not-having-a-single-real-reason-to shenanigans support the reading of "desperate to assert her heterosexuality."

I love this post, I get to give my favorite icon a workout.

[scottyquick.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember that bit clearly. And then we were all "GAILLLLLLLLLLLLL!" and she was like "Of all the dialogue not to go through :(" .

What's funny is that I remember this from looking through two year old backposts.

[bluejaybirdie.insanejournal.com]

That was the day I went from really liking Gail's writing to loving Gail. Because seriously, how can you not love that she was going to write Dinah as canonically not completely hetero?

[gailsimone.insanejournal.com]

I am not done with Black Canary, I promise.

[bariman1987.insanejournal.com]

Should we start cheering now, or wait until the previews?

!

[bluejaybirdie.insanejournal.com]

Ms. Simone, you have just made me a very happy woman! :D

[ladymirth.insanejournal.com]

What "hetero to the bone line"? What's that about?

[galateus.insanejournal.com]

Dunno the issue, but according to ye old trope example list (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday), it was some banter Dinah threw out when fighting Talia. Who was apparently overpowering people with her mighty femme fatale wiles at the time.

[gailsimone.insanejournal.com]

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. I often try out a lot of different dialogue, and most of my scripts go through several stages, but the crucial one is the one right after the art comes back with tentative lettering, because that's the final stage.

I am not sure where the 'hetero to the bone,' thing actually was coming from, as it's not how I think of Diana. I needed the line to be fierce, and while I thought her saying "and at least 70% hetero" was a much better line, it didn't have the appropriate dramatic punch I needed for that moment. In the end, I switched it to that anyway as I felt it made the point.

I still have the corrected script. When the actual issue came out and none of the fixes had been made, I was heartbroken. It not only didn't say what I wanted to say about Dinah, it sort of flew in the face of the interactive flexibility that I had wanted to build with the character. It should have been an important moment, because it states, for canon, a bisexual curiosity, at least.

But a couple important things...the editor of the book at that time was an openly lesbian woman and activist. She didn't take the comment out on purpose, it was simply a matter of the book running very late. A similar thing happened on my first Teen Titans issue, to much more devastatingly terrible effect, unfortunately.

And yeah, I'm still bummed about it. Even more irritating is that I had a chance to fix it in the TPBs and wasn't told about it in time.

Bleah.

Dinah's love for Babs is pretty obvious anyway, I think.

[drsevarius.insanejournal.com]

to much more devastatingly terrible effect, unfortunately.

What do you mean?