lokifan

So I haven’t got too deeply into Steven Universe fandom yet, and I don’t think the conversation about Jasper & Lapis Lazuli is the top one right now. But I had an interesting conversation about it at Nine Worlds yesterday. So my reading based on what we have so far is that Jasper and Lapis had an abusive relationship, in which Lapis was the abuser.

Totally happy to expand & discuss in comments/future posts, but that’s not really what this one is about.

It’s about setting something from a fantasy world up as a metaphor for something from ours, and the confusion that can result when your characters’ reaction to the something, while logical within their in-universe laws, messes with the metaphor.

( cut for discussion of sexual assault - allegorical and otherwise - in Steven Universe and Buffy )

( cut for extended Tru Blood example of extending a metaphor in terrible ways )

This stuff is so hard. And that’s without even getting into changing what something in-universe is a metaphor for - I actually don’t have a problem with this, but I know a few people who really hated how in S4 of Buffy magic was lesbian connection/love/sex, and in S6 it was drugs.

...I have no snappy concluding sentence, apparently.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Crossposts: http://lokifan.livejournal.com/353574.html

Supergirl is adorable, and Melissa Benoist is knocking it out of the park. I’m hoping the writing will tighten up a bit, and also PLEASE QUEER ALEX PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE, but it brightens up my day every week and James Olsen is the hottest thing I've seen in a while. I find the casting of her parents unbearably cute, and so many relationships between women are emphasised and that gives me great joy.

But there’s one aspect which blows my mind constantly, and I don’t think it gets enough attention for how genuinely revolutionary it is.

Kara loves using her powers. She likes being a superhero, and she wants to be seen and appreciated and even loved by her city for the work she does, and her power is something she enjoys and loves and is natural to her.

That is ENORMOUSLY unusual for a female superhero.

Female superheroes so often have an origin story soaked in trauma. More than that, their power itself is often rooted in violation – whether in straight-up rape or other sexual abuse, or other forms of violation such as Black Widow’s brainwashing. And even if that’s not true, the very use of their power is often painful or isolating in itself (as opposed to ‘I am isolated by my need to keep secrets’, which I’d argue is a separate thing).

( minor spoilers for Jessica Jones, among other things, below )