I really disliked Warbringer

[leahandillyana]

The comic adaptation of Leigh Bardugo's novel utilizes some problematic elements after original. Spoiler for the whole story.

Let's first see the explanation of what a Warbringer is.

A scapegoat. Warbringer is a scapegoat treated 100% seriously, without explaining how she is a responsible for the calamities and why is it always a she. I also find the constant talk about bloodlines in the story to be unnerving.

Note that this was said soon after Helen was blamed for the Troy War, which annoyed me. If you start applying cynical reading of history, apply it to all of history, but then the idea of warbringers wouldn't make sense.

Honestly at this point I find the idea just offensive. Have the authors thought for the moment what they were doing there, that they are shifting the blame of numerous atrocities and genocides from actual perpetratrots to... some young girls?!


By the finale I hated the comic. So, the surprise villain turned out to be a teen BLACK boy firmly beliving in eugenics and survival of the fittest and all the nazi crap without calling it nazism? And then WHITE girl beating him and treating him cruelly for some added GAL POWAH (there are so many shallow girl power moments in the comic)?! I was shocked how something like this could have been greenlit, but then remembered that DC still publishes Frank Miller.
I assume the author wanted to write a story empowering brown girls. She ended up writing a story that normalizes racial unequality, and having a boy from a minority group targeted by eugenisc spewing eugenic crap is HORREDOUSLY RACIST.

Comments

[icon_uk]

Hang on, this is a Wonder Woman story??!?

That would not have occurred to me reading these scans. It's only the author's wiki page that mentioned it.

The idea that it's women creating wars through some mysterious genetic power is... what the actual hell? None of that even lines up with any of the myths I know... Helen's only involvement in the war was being beautiful and desired by others. It was Aphrodite and Paris who caused the problems.

Is the novel any better, because this seems shockingly bad.

[malitia]

That women are responsible for all kinds of shit, including war, by being so darn sexy (etc.) and men can't help themself, is a fairly standard manosphere trope though.

[deh_tommy]

Pfft, women, amirite?

Joking aside, women are responsible for all kinds of poop in mythologies all over the world, but apart from the whole Aphrodite/Helena debacle, what other myths had that being because they’re so gosh-darned sexy and men couldn’t help themselves?

[thediiem]

A teenage girl coming into a mysterious, barely understood power that can destroy the world if left alone is a pretty standard YA trope. I'm just a bit surprised at Amazons blithely accepting that young powerful women must be killed to prevent war without doing a bit of their own investigation. If we follow the YA trope at play, it serves that Alia must come into her power, knowing about it, and learning to wield it rather than having it destroy everything around her uncontrollably.

It's curious, but the reviews from Amazon and Goodreads largely say the book was, above all else, fun (and not very heavy) but that's not the feeling I got from the comic scans.

[icon_uk]

Agreed, her learning to use her power to counter the prophecied disaster would have been far more interesting.

I mean, IS there a positive spin you can put on a story about someone whose powers cause others to act violently? I don't know, but I'm not an award winning novelist, so I don't feel too bad about that. But there has to be something.

[jlbarnett]

depends on who the violence is directed at I suppose, and that the problem comes from it not being understood.

I mean stick the story in Buffy and maybe besides being a superstrong young woman she could also empower others and you've got a stronger fight against demons

[akodo_aoshi]

In all honesty that is a power that seems to belong to Ares and the greeks hated him, according to what I know of greek myth/religion he could cause others to act violently (but he could also do the reverse too).

[leahandillyana]

It is. Only in most stories the youth learns to control their powers and use them for good. In this story, the possibility is not even discussed - Alia must either get rid of her curse or die. Given that both Alia and her surprise villain brother Jason are Black, in current circumstances the book is simply offensive. I also hated evil gods appearing in a Greek Orthodox church, but it's smaller offense compared to the ones I discussed before.

[lordultimus]

Um... I liked that Diana had the clay origin?

[shakalooloo]

So who was responsible for giving the Warbringers their 'power'? The gods? The titans? Darkseid?

[leahandillyana]

It wasn’t discussed at all.

[lieut_kettch]

So they didn't do the obvious and make them descendants of Ares? Which would've tied in nicely with Hippolyta being Ares' daughter.