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scans_dailyI have a question about Huntress and Arsenal's one night stand so of course I turn to the lovely ladies and gents of scans_daily to hopefully find the answer.
The first I heard of it was in BoP: Dinah, Babs and Helena are meeting in a park to discuss whether or not they can work together as a team and the subject of Helena's one night stands with Dick and Roy comes up and Helena has the brilliant line 'Archers... they pull a mighty bow but they're quick to let fly'. Which of course pisses Dinah off royally and nearly ends the team before it even begins.
I went back and read the Outsiders issues where Helena takes Roy's place on the team while he recovers from being shot, thinking that would be where I could find the Huntress/Arsenal stuff (I'm a massive Huntress fan and I've been trying to track down and read pretty much everything she's been in because yes I am obsessive) but apart from the kiss at the end
there's not really any interaction between the two and certainly no sexy times going on between the pair.
So folks my question is this: is this the first time it's ever referenced or is does the Helena/Roy stuff happen in different issues to the ones I've been reading?
The first I heard of it was in BoP: Dinah, Babs and Helena are meeting in a park to discuss whether or not they can work together as a team and the subject of Helena's one night stands with Dick and Roy comes up and Helena has the brilliant line 'Archers... they pull a mighty bow but they're quick to let fly'. Which of course pisses Dinah off royally and nearly ends the team before it even begins.
I went back and read the Outsiders issues where Helena takes Roy's place on the team while he recovers from being shot, thinking that would be where I could find the Huntress/Arsenal stuff (I'm a massive Huntress fan and I've been trying to track down and read pretty much everything she's been in because yes I am obsessive) but apart from the kiss at the end
there's not really any interaction between the two and certainly no sexy times going on between the pair.
So folks my question is this: is this the first time it's ever referenced or is does the Helena/Roy stuff happen in different issues to the ones I've been reading?
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Date: 2011-01-16 09:32 pm (UTC)Of all the men she's been linked with - Charlie, Dick, Roy and Thomas - she didn't sleep with a single one of them 'because they're hot'.
Well, except Roy. I don't know WHY she got with Roy which is the thing that's bugging me most about the way it's just kind of dropped in at the end of her time with the outsiders.
As for the others, well they ARE hot of course but there where other reasons for her to be with them apart from just hotness.
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Date: 2011-01-16 09:49 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-01-16 10:12 pm (UTC)grass is green".. sorry, Freudian slap... SLIP!!no subject
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Date: 2011-01-16 10:16 pm (UTC)The line she uses is 'maybe I was looking for some happiness but it's pretty clear that all he was looking was you.'
I never said they were good reasons. Just that there were other reasons.
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Date: 2011-01-16 10:47 pm (UTC)But then, I've never liked Roy Harper... even before he started hitting people with dead cats.
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Date: 2011-01-16 11:57 pm (UTC)The only good part of that whole story was Dick channeling his inner Batman and kicking Roy in the face, whilst calmly declaring, "I'm your friend." Still unintentionally hilarious, but not headshakingly so.
Bizarro-Roy with a quiver full of dead cats was intentionally hilarious, which is much better.
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 11:55 pm (UTC)As for the Rise of Arsenal stuff, what happened? Bad things happened. Right the way through. Bad writing, bad art, bad characterization.
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Date: 2011-01-17 01:09 am (UTC)Personally, I found that just about as crass as if Roy had said Helena sucked in bed. I guess I just feel that way because I have a crazy policy of not talking smack about the guys I bone.
But really, if we must accept that they hooked up then I'd like them both to get a good time out of it, at the very least.
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Date: 2011-01-17 01:50 am (UTC)I feel the same way. I feel like, whoever you sleep with, even if it's a one night stand, respect them..unless they were dicks to you. As for Roy and Helena, this is one of those scene where I thought nothing of it. There's no kind of love thing or shipping going, it didn't make Roy seem like "the man" nor do I think it was an attempt at such a thing because well..it's Roy, he inherited plenty of Ollie's traits and I'm saying that as the Roy Harper and Team Green fan that I am. All that and due to their character portrayals in the past, eh, this was one of those hook ups that just made a little sense to me actually.
P.S. Can anyone post the BoP scene in question?
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 10:29 am (UTC)Mostly I just want to see the setup. Something really interesting could have been done with Helena helping out Roy after he got shot since, you know, she knows exactly what he's going through. But no. We get a crappy handwavey kind of aside that it happened and that's it.
And it's not like they didn't have time to show it either because the previous issue spends four or five pages dealing with Roy paying a booty call to Grace.
Poor story telling IMO that suggests Huntress/Arsenal was just added in to get that exchange between the boys.
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Date: 2011-01-17 03:17 pm (UTC)I have no idea, either, and I actually wish there were more female characters who engaged in casual sex.
Mostly I just want to see the setup. Something really interesting could have been done with Helena helping out Roy after he got shot since, you know, she knows exactly what he's going through. But no. We get a crappy handwavey kind of aside that it happened and that's it.
But how would you have envisioned it happening? I mean, I personally am not all that keen on the artist portrayal rather than the actual story portrayal. (crotch shot as she walks away)
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Date: 2011-01-17 03:29 pm (UTC)I've always thought that was the WHOLE POINT of this storyline. Which is why I personally dislike it so much. Winick having Huntress act OOC (at this point in her characterization) was basically just so Dick and Roy could josh about it. Not about her. At all. He could have inserted basically any other super-heroine - that's how little she means to the story. And THAT is insulting (and it's from this scene that she get the rep amongst DC writers and some readers as the kind of girl who'll sleep with anything) which is even MORE insulting.
All so Judd Winick could write a joke.
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Date: 2011-01-17 03:56 pm (UTC)Yeah, I think you've got it bang on the nose there. I guess I was just hoping that there was more to it than that, hence why I wanted to know if I was missing something.
Thanks.
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Date: 2011-01-17 07:17 pm (UTC)Same reason as why Oliver Queen is considered a ladies' man, in spite of the fact that, until his first death, he was largely loyal to Dinah. Some writer took a bit of information about the character without understanding the context, and other writers picked up on it.
Also, fans are often an immature, puerile lot.
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:24 pm (UTC)I think that in order to get really annoyed by this scene one would have to accept that there's something uniquely awful about a woman engaging in casual sex. And I just don't.
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Date: 2011-01-17 10:42 pm (UTC)This is what I find truly ironic. That the people most outraged on Helena's behalf appear actually to be the ones judging her behaviour.
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Date: 2011-01-17 07:31 pm (UTC)Liu (retconned in in the past 5 years)
Kory
Babs
Helena (one night stand)
Tarantula (don't even get me started on that one)
Cheyenne (Very briefly)
and I think that's it, in 70 years, well 42 years if you want to count from confirmation that he was 18....
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Date: 2011-01-17 06:25 pm (UTC)The only thing I see is faint eye-rolling disapproval on Dick's part. I definitely don't see how it's intended to make Roy look like the man.
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Date: 2011-01-16 11:16 pm (UTC)maybe its just this community but his "Is there anyone you WONT sleep with" came out like either "Roy, YOU bitch, i thought i was the only one," or "Dammit Roy, why won't you LOVE ME!"
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Date: 2011-01-16 11:19 pm (UTC);D
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Date: 2011-01-17 01:11 am (UTC)The reading order is all over the goddamn place.
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Date: 2011-01-17 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 03:03 am (UTC)At least it's an archer's bicep and not, say, Plastic Man. Yay for the small things?
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Date: 2011-01-17 06:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 03:16 am (UTC)I think that in looking over the art, the blackness of the cape created a visual "mass" there and I completely missed that her waist is about the size of two forefingers.
That is really shameful.
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Date: 2011-01-19 12:35 am (UTC)At a guess, that's what Helena said when she went looking for most of abdomen in the next scene.
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Date: 2011-01-17 10:09 am (UTC)Quite possibly what I find most offensive about this issue, far more than the idea of Helena sleeping with Roy, is that Winnick has her talking like an extra from Cluseless ('Aw man it's all under my costume and stuff. Dude.') and she apparently only has one comeback in her vocabulary ('eat this, hero.') which she uses twice in as many pages.
Score zero for meaningful and snappy dialogue, Winnick.
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Date: 2011-01-17 12:14 pm (UTC)Also, ew, Soulpatch
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Date: 2011-01-17 12:24 pm (UTC)Simone and Rucka do a pretty good job of it IMO.
But to be honest Simone and Rucka are pretty much the only writers that seem to understand how to write Helena at all.
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Date: 2011-01-17 03:16 pm (UTC)Now, thanks to Winick, all of a sudden she'll go to bed with anyone - whether it be Roy or Josh the parking attendant who treated her like a piece of meat (though I think Gail was actually using that to move Helena away from this characterization). Prior to her "guest" appearance in Outsiders she had not only never seen to be the slightest bit interested in Roy - she had never had scenes with him, and after this (aside from the BoP mention which seemed like another Gail meta-comment on this Outsiders thing) she never mentions him again - and has had no scenes with him since.
Winick basically brought her onto the book just for this. So she could be used as a sexual sparring joke between Roy and Dick (who've both slept with her - ha, ha, right, Judd). It's not even about her.
Winick does that a lot. Reading back the Lost Days of Red Hood mini he sexed up Talia more than she had ever had been before (she has sex with nameless minion AND Jason in story where she's a supporting character) and the whole point of the story seemed to be getting to Jason and Talia having sex. Literally that was the climax (pardon the pun) of the entire mini-series and what it seemed all to be building up to. And just like this Outsiders story it was a story about the GUY where the woman in question is basically used as a prop and nothing more.
In case anyone missed I really, really, REALLY hate this story.
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Date: 2011-01-17 06:18 pm (UTC)Except that if anything, the exchange seems to be about Roy and his promiscuity. He's the one getting negative judgement from Dick, however mild it might be. Dinah and Helena's joking over Roy was in much, much poorer taste than anything Dick and Roy said - particularly considering Dinah's relationship with Roy.
prior to this she was never presented as a casual sex with no feelings kind of person
Not everyone agrees that that is such a terrible thing to be. I actually find Simone's portrayal of Helena's sexuality far more offensive. I'd take a happy slut any day over a woman who sleeps with Josh just because she has low self-esteem, then decides to "reform." Ugh. Then again, I've always hated the trope that women only sleep around because they have emotional issues.
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Date: 2011-01-17 06:25 pm (UTC)No disagreements about the thing with Dinah or with..ugh...Josh. I gather that those both those situations were actually Gail commenting on Helena and the "rep" she got from this scene above. But it actually made it worse. Josh was a distasteful person and the fact that she slept with him after that made me question her sanity (whereas sleeping with Roy just makes me question her taste in men).
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Date: 2011-01-17 06:36 pm (UTC)Well... Yes, it could have been any heroine. I don't agree that it's a disservice though, because I can't see anything inherently negative about her sleeping with Roy.
I'm afraid I just don't really understand why a casual hook-up means that her character is being trashed, or that she is less worthy of respect.
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Date: 2011-01-17 07:26 pm (UTC)Now whether Helena could or would isn't the question really. It's whether Winick gets to write something that Helena did that would/could have an effect on the main book she was appearing in. Which he did.
I'm not fond of the scene where the birds all talk about who slept with who. I understand the purpose of the scene, to show how the nascent team was still quite fragile, but the slut shaming just pisses me off.
The other thing about Winick's writing of her that I hate is when Helena says to Nightwing, "The rest of the team is okay. Except Grace. She's a total bitch."
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Date: 2011-01-17 08:04 pm (UTC)Ugh, seriously? Unimpressed.
I'm not fond of the scene where the birds all talk about who slept with who. I understand the purpose of the scene, to show how the nascent team was still quite fragile, but the slut shaming just pisses me off.
Which issue is this?
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Date: 2011-01-19 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 12:24 am (UTC)P.S. Where have you been? :O :):):)
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Date: 2011-01-19 12:33 am (UTC)I ... had to take a long break from comic fandom because it was pissing me off, hahaha. WHENEVER I HAVE TROUBLE SLIPPING INTO THE MODE OF NOT TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY I feel like it's time to step away for a while. :) I'm slowly making my return (and will get back on tumblr soon!). I still stalk you all ;)
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Date: 2011-01-19 01:16 am (UTC)Oh, yeah, I read the issue with her and Jenny and was like whoa, what? LOL At least it's not Sarah Palin Donna? ....Poor Donna. :(
I still stalk you all ;)
:D:D:D
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Date: 2011-01-19 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 01:23 am (UTC)Which I kind of feel is a bit more acceptable, I don't really like calling other women bitch or cunt. Jerk, jackass -- I totally use those liberally among friends. I have a friend who calls girls bitch in a friendly way, but I'm still not a fan. And then again, swear words in general coming from Bea would be like swear words coming from Donna. Just... weird and off.
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Date: 2011-01-19 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 01:54 am (UTC)(And Ooops I realised I accidentally wrote Bea up there when I meant Tora)
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Date: 2011-01-17 07:34 pm (UTC)Because we as the society (and I am not just talking about Americans here) are still struggling with the cultural implications of sexual revolution. We want to treat men and women as equals, yet we still tend to judge behavior based through the prism of gender. When men engage in casual sex, it is a sign of their virility. When women engage in casual sex, they are being improperly permissive.
There are arguments to be made against casual sex, but this sort of double standard bugs me.
P.S. Another thing that occurs to me is that while it is possible to show a character having casual sex without compromising her dignity, as (jaybee3 said) too many writers fall into the trap of treating a woman as a prop, as if she has no thoughts, feelings or motivations of her own. I think Roy/Helena thing would be far more palatable to our merry community if both characters were treated with the same level of thoughtfulness and complexity.
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Date: 2011-01-17 07:54 pm (UTC)Some women don't sleep with guys they're not pretty seriously into. That's not a judgement on women who do, in any way. It's simply a reality that that's a choice some people make. It was established, over several years of character work, as Helena's choice. To have her act in a way not in accordance with that is, yes, a disservice to her character, in exactly the same way that Clark Kent waking up tomorrow as a die-hard emo with Crow mascara would be a disservice to her character: failure to respect prior characterization is a fundamental failure of respect, period.
As for whether it was insulting beyond merely the fact that it meant Winick didn't care about who she was as a character? That has far less to do with objective fact and far more to do with how Winick saw it and how he expected his audience to see it. You can think penises are the most awesome things in the entire world, it doesn't make someone calling you a "dick" any less an insult.
Basically, Winick writes this scene as a sexually-based indictment of Helena. "Is there anyone you won't sleep with," Dick asks Roy, as though Helena were somehow sexually distasteful. "Casual sex with people you aren't in love with is bad," Dick tells Roy, as Helena says goodbye to someone she had casual sex with and doesn't even appear to like. There's no way he wasn't looking down his nose at Helena as he wrote this, and no way the dudebros that make up 80% of the comic-reading audience would interpret this as anything other than a massive validation of the natural dudebro inclination to slut-shame, with bonus offer of a tasty new target.
The fact that that's an effective insult is horrible, yes. It's a disgusting truth of kyriarchy. But it is a truth nevertheless, and that damage had to be answered.
(Not, mind, that I'm all that fond of how Gail chose to answer it.)
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Date: 2011-01-17 07:55 pm (UTC)His character, even.
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Date: 2011-01-17 08:14 pm (UTC)I totally understand what you're saying in this wrt this scene and while I agree for the most part, sometimes women in reality themselves change. ie. I know a woman IRL who recently got divorced and was monogamous with her husband of 15-plus years, and has now been enjoying a newfound sexual freedom.
Here, in this scene, we don't see some kind of character development for Helena, but I don't know if I really like this idea of saying, "well this character has been written this way and that can never change" in regards to the character's sex life, especially if that character is a woman.
And even more so if that character is a woman and a heroic one because then it starts to go down the whole "good girls don't do that" route.
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Date: 2011-01-17 08:23 pm (UTC)It's true there are an awful lot of serial monogamist women in capes. Renee and Zinda are, offhand, the only two I can think of at DC who aren't, though I'm sure there are probably a few more. But most of the guys are too, after all. These are all pretty old characters with old sensibilities, and the new characters are all subject to the blanket "let's not delve too deeply into teenagers' sex lives" policy.
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Date: 2011-01-17 08:37 pm (UTC)Kate Kane, Kory, Grace Choi, Jess Jones (pre-Marriage) are a few I can think of. And Mia Dearden, she definitely wanted to have sex with Dodger, she brought condoms with her to visit him. (I don't know if they ever got to do anything since he cheated on her with Emma Watson.) And she hit on Connor a lot.
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Date: 2011-01-17 08:56 pm (UTC)Though she and Mia do both have that whole "past history of sexual abuse" thing going. I appreciate that the writing for both of them (so far as I know at least, I'm not a big Arrow fan) has avoided ever drawing that "promiscuous because damaged" conclusion -- Grace has a healthy and varied sex life, and also she was abused once, and these things are unrelated as far as the narrative is concerned -- but the implication is still just sitting there waiting for someone to make it, and I worry that sooner or later someone will. I mean look what happened to Shulkie. These gross sexist cliches have real traction with some writers. :/
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 12:11 am (UTC)Which I know I am, hahaha. BUT STILL. You see less hetero-identified girls with "good" backgrounds doing this.
Ah, I fondly remember the slut shaming even Donna Troy went through...
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Date: 2011-01-19 12:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 12:30 am (UTC)Roy gets a lot of slack for this, too. It's character memes spread around in fandom and by writers, ideas getting taken and run with and it just gets embarrassing to read because people repeat these "truths" without really trying to dissect the numbers and reality behind them. Donna Troy immediately, by glorious Kyle fangirls and boys, got branded as a slut the moment she touched Roy Harper. So did Helena. And even Kendra got bad reception for that reason. Donna also was suddenly a "slut" for ... being nice to Jason? All because she had touched Roy Harper before, which obviously WOW HOW LOW CAN YOU GO, GIRL?
So because of the treatment of a fave of mine, my eyes were VERY open and peeled to how Helena was treated after this. And it was not good. I honestly am baffled that Helena gets treated as the go-to casual sex girl in the DCU by so many fans, when her number isn't even "high." It's even more disturbing that people act as if it would be a bad thing if it was so.
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Date: 2011-01-19 12:40 am (UTC)Exactly and this is what I was trying to say elsewhere, but you've outdone me as usual. ;)
Donna Troy immediately, by glorious Kyle fangirls and boys, got branded as a slut the moment she touched Roy Harper. So did Helena. And even Kendra got bad reception for that reason. Donna also was suddenly a "slut" for ... being nice to Jason? All because she had touched Roy Harper before, which obviously WOW HOW LOW CAN YOU GO, GIRL?
Ugh, so gross. Not only that but branded a slut because the fans also don't like the male character (ie. Jason or Roy) so she gets shat on by proxy.
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Date: 2011-01-19 12:54 am (UTC)It is because Roy has been more brazen and honest about his sexual desires than most that he's seen as sleazy, I guess. And then it becomes a caricature of sleaziness: He frequents strip clubs (and strip clubs are dirty, and strippers are dirty, so let's make STD jokes about Roy!), he ranked girls in bed in Rise of Arsenal during a sadistic fight...and yet, his impotence also gets made fun of. It's just like...Roy has been retconned and retroactively made into being pinned with character essentialism, where he was "doomed" to always be troubled and come from a broken lifestyle, so let's include being sexual in that "brokenness."
And, yes, any girl who touches a man THAT sleazy has to be sleazy herself, right? It's just all really backwards ideas, in general, and the sad thing is I see them projected by lolfeministbloggerslol in comic fandom just as much.
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Date: 2011-01-19 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 08:24 pm (UTC)Whether or not a woman ever could/would enjoy casual sex or not is not something germane to most comic book conversations. Pretty much the only way to introduce that possibility is to write her as having casual sex at some point. And actually, it kind of bugs me that we even need to establish a "type" of female character who would do that - particularly when most male characters are assumed by default of being capable of casual sex in at least some situations.
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Date: 2011-01-17 08:50 pm (UTC)Ohmygod Yes. But by comic book logic, it seems that the fandom equation is, for example: Cheshire having casual sex is OK; Stephanie Brown is not. (
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:12 pm (UTC)While this sounds reasonable on the surface, it ignores the fact that the default orientation for characters has always been straight - just like the default sexuality for "good" female characters has always been committed and monogamous. You need to actively declare a character gay; there is no need to declare them straight, unless you state otherwise that's just assumed. The burden is on the writer to declare that a heroine might enjoy casual sex - because otherwise it's conventionally assumed that she doesn't.
And if a writer does make that declaration, people will be unhappy with it because she's never been written as that "type" before.
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:26 pm (UTC)And we have no idea unless a person tells us about their sex life and since that's such a personal topic, the automatic assumption is that good person = chaste person.
And don't even get me started on how disgusting it is to be OK with a Talia who pines away for a man who loves another woman over her (in fact that man loves many women!) and be chaste for him, yet when she has agency and makes her own choices of who she's having sex with, that that is the truly bad move.
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:45 pm (UTC)Um yeah, that's the point I was trying to make, but maybe it got a bit lost. I meant that considering everyone straight by default is a product of heteronormative thinking, and actually not at all a reasonable assumption to make.
But a similar assumption of chastity operates in the way we see (and the way writers write) heroines. Casual sex apparently needs an established history of "sluttiness" in order to be in character - which is weird because I'm fairly sure that Helena never explicitly said "btw guys, I only have sex with men I love and am in a committed relationship with."
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Date: 2011-01-17 11:45 pm (UTC)I have nothing to add except thank you for this very awesome point!!!
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:33 pm (UTC)I wouldn't be too thrilled with a Superman comic that abruptly had "Batman's ex-boyfriend" show up to make Clark look all super-accepting and liberal either.
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Date: 2011-01-17 09:55 pm (UTC)Is it bad that I might be at least a little bit thrilled by that?
Joking aside, yes, I do get why fans aren't happy with this happening while Helena's essentially a bit-part character. That's pretty much the only aspect I do get, but yeah, I get it.
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Date: 2011-01-17 10:30 pm (UTC)No but yeah, that's basically my point. The other thing is that Winick has a longstanding habit of ignoring prior characterization, so even if I didn't have an issue with him developing Helena's character in such a glancing, bit-part manner, I don't actually believe he's developing her here at all, just grabbing a convenient blank slate for his Roy/Dick whim. And pretty much just carelessly slapping a target across her chest for all the dudebro contempt the fanbase can muster while he's at it. He doesn't care about her here, not who she was before or where she'll go after. That's not an okay attitude to have when you're writing about someone else's character, period; that as volatile a subject as female sexuality is at issue is just icing on the failcake.
Then of course Gail came and tried to solve that problem by, um, validating that slut-shamey default dudebro read and throwing in some no-no-yes to boot. I'm willing to bet that a lot of the read you see from fans on this scene now, as opposed to when it was published, involves some back-propagated slut-shaming from that. -.-
dudebro, dudebro, dudebro, let me say it a few more times it hasn't yet entirely lost all meaning
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Date: 2011-01-17 10:45 pm (UTC)Hmm. I'll admit that maybe I hadn't fully considered the perspective of fans who, while not being inclined to slut-shame themselves, dislike this scene because it exposed Helena to a lot of nasty remarks from dudebros.
Female sexuality is a really contentious issue. I don't think it should be, but it is. I guess I can see why you'd be unhappy with Winick for not anticipating/not caring about the fallout for Helena. I suppose it would have been different if he'd been her main writer at the time, and prepared to go the distance and defend her decisions.
It's really unfortunate that her actual main writer's attempts to "fix" this were far more offensive.
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Date: 2011-01-17 08:19 pm (UTC)Does this bit happen somewhere else in the comic, or is it something you're inferring from the page above? Because Helena and Roy seem to like and respect each other there - he thanks her, said he knew he could count on her, they kiss, she leaves.
I agree that Dick seems vaguely slut-shamey here, but towards Roy, not Helena. I thought the "is there anyone you won't sleep with?" comment has more to do with - as Roy himself points out - the fact that Helena and Dick had a history. Dick is chiding him, albeit mildly, for breaking a code of friendship.
There's no way he wasn't looking down his nose at Helena as he wrote this, and no way the dudebros that make up 80% of the comic-reading audience would interpret this as anything other than a massive validation of the natural dudebro inclination to slut-shame, with bonus offer of a tasty new target.
I think there's two ways you could take this scene: 1, that Winick really was looking down his nose at Helena and knew exactly how the fanboys would react; and 2. That Winick, perhaps naively, assumed that the average reader had more egalitarian views on gender and sexuality than they actually do.
I can easily imagine an identical scenario with the genders reversed (not in comics - perhaps in Sex and the City or something like that) that wouldn't be taken as insulting to anyone. The fact is that this type of thing isn't always an effective insult any more, not everywhere. Perhaps Winick just misjudged his audience?
I think most of the seediness on this page comes from the art, not the writing. The scene would read completely differently if the kiss between Roy and Helena was subtler, and the panel didn't centre on Helena's waist and hips.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 08:26 pm (UTC)Elsewhere in the comic. Helena's pretty contentious with the whole team the whole time she's there, but she has some extra-pointed insults for Roy IIRC.
I dunno. You could be right, but Winick's treatment of women elsewhere has pretty much robbed him of any remote shred of the benefit of the doubt with me.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 08:32 pm (UTC)I haven't really read much of Winick's writing apart from his Jason-centric stuff. I know some people took issue with Talia's portrayal in Lost Days, and I definitely don't think we were intended to look down on her there - she was obviously written to be a sympathetic character imo.
I guess I'm also giving Winick the benefit of the doubt because he is heavily pro-LGBTQ, and that doesn't normally go hand-in-hand with misogyny.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 08:41 pm (UTC)You would be surprised. -_-
As for Winick, I'd recommend you read his run on Green Arrow/Black Canary to see a few examples, but I don't actually loathe you with a deep, abiding visceral hatred, so I can't in good conscience inflict that on you. On the whole, Winick's liberalism reminds me of a kid who discovers his mom's makeup and does himself up like Ronald McDonald, then goes and finds her and says "hey look now I'm just like you." He sort of gets the message and he wants to play, and those are both good things, but he has a habit of still wildly missing the actual point.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 08:44 pm (UTC)He sort of gets the message and he wants to play, and those are both good things, but he has a habit of still wildly missing the actual point.
I know exactly what you mean.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 12:10 am (UTC)Ummm, how does that tie into her sleeping with Nightwing, who she hardly knew, and with no intention of taking the relationship further?
no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 12:17 am (UTC)Beyond that, it's my understanding that Grayson actually did intend for Helena to continue to pursue Dick and for them to take that relationship further, but was ultimately overruled by Dixon's Babs/Dick before it could get off the ground.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 12:27 am (UTC)I've never been a huge fan of the Dick/Babs relationship, but if the alternative would have been Dick/Helena (And Devin Grayson written Dick/Helena) I think I'm grateful.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-19 02:27 am (UTC)I admit I don't really get Dick/Helena. I mean, Grayson's theory, as voiced by Babs in Nightwing/Huntress, is that Helena reminds Dick of Bruce. And you know what, that's fine with me. I read Bruce and Dick as solely father and son, any kind of serious shipping of them squicks me right the fuck out, but it's a true fact that many people are romantically drawn to people who resemble their parents. I don't have an issue with that justification for Dick's romantic choices. It's just, you know. That would be Babs (at least if Dick were actually attracted to Babs now and not the memory of Babs ten years ago). Helena's almost nothing like Bruce.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-17 09:31 pm (UTC)Mod note!
Date: 2011-01-18 04:26 pm (UTC)It's reasonable to criticize writers not showing the journey between one attitude towards casual sex and another, but comments about a character being "sexed up" because they're shown having sex with two characters definitely tips towards slut shaming, and we've had correspondence from a number of members who feel the same.
It is simply not okay to shame based on when a woman is shown enjoying more sex than a commenter feels is "appropriate".
Please consider this if commenting further.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-18 12:17 am (UTC)