Saturday, October 21, 2017

Nate Heywood Is An Emotional Abuser

Rewatched last Legends of Tomorrow Episode again because my brother missed it and he loves Victorian Circus motifs and Billy Zane, so he had to watch it.

On watching this a second time, I've come up with why Nate bothers me. I'll get to that, so let me explain the situation before I make accusations:

Nate's upset about Amaya showing up after leaving without saying goodbye, he decides to get drunk and blows the team's cover. Whatever everyone ends up idiot balling in this episode even Sara so he's not the only offender and everyone can take some of the blame here, but man is Nate the cause of the idiot snowballing.

Everyone else has explained better than me why Nate's been acting like an asshole before he got drunk and how he basically seems to be dense when it comes to reading the room with his beau when making donuts. I'm aromantic and even I'd be charmed by Amaya making donuts from scratch. True fact my greatgrandmother made homemade donuts. I've never tasted them, but my grandma raves of them and can find only one bakery that's open in limited hours, limited days of the week and has a first come first serve policy and those are the closest she'll ever get to tasting something similar to her mother's homemade donuts because she don't know the art of making them herself. She was a child when Amaya would have been an adult to put it in perspective. Getting off topic.

Amaya comes back to the Waverider trying to be professional for this mission she got dragged back under false pretenses that Nate was okay with it. Later when things go wrong she talks to him about her reasons for leaving, he makes the whole mess about her and blames her for all of it backfiring. The whole mess they are in this episode, he puts on her shoulders for not being honest with him. Basically he won't own up to any of his own mistakes, whether they be mutual things like the two of them aren't communicating with each other well (Barry and Iris dealt with this), or how he makes everything about himself. Maybe drinking his problems away and denying it as anything more than hanging out isn't a good look and did in fact cause the whole cover to blow. What it turns into is Amaya withholds secrets (well he doesn't exactly give her confidence she can talk serious when often he just wants to have amazing sex and eschew romantic things and kind of brushes off her need to make sure her grandchildren are born and the timeline is stable last season).

It turns into “Look what you made me do.” Nate Heywood is an emotional abuser. Is he ever nice to Amaya in their downtime? He seems to only be tender to her when their lives are in danger because otherwise it's he won't talk to her, okay he'll talk to her and call her out on her bullshit and sweep his own under the rug. That's their relationship.

Friday, October 13, 2017

Cross Media Will Never Understand Oliver Queen And Dinah Drake-Lance

I know this is old news and old complaints, but man do I hate cross media missing the point on Oliver Queen. They get it in their head that he's Bruce Wayne and then make assumptions based on that. This is what's ruined him in Smallville and Arrow. They decided that Oliver can't marry his should be battle partner Dinah, or Laurel depending on the media and that he better marry the cute, nerdy blonde girl with the laptop that the showrunners poured all this time into when they decide they don't know how to write a girl vigilante better than Oliver, nor fathom he can be into such a woman. This is an irritating trend, i hope they don't repeat if ever they're adapted in the movies.

Oliver Queen loves badass women. Honest. He can be a blowhard and border on patronizing, but he knows to let Dinah steal the show because she doesn't need him. but they like each others company and fighting crime together. He's not the guy who makes his women stay safe at home, the office or in the arrow cave punching computer codes talking into his earpiece. Never was. Why does tv get this wrong? He trusts Dinah to get them out of situations when he's at a loss. Trusts her to be the powerhouse fighter she is because while he has some moves, he's more of a long range kind of guy and she's hands on. They're a team. No media outside the better comics runs get this and yes there's plenty of shitty comic runs that throw this out the window for the sake of drama and writer's male insecurities. That's a problem, no doubt, but so is these tv shows being unable cast the appropriate actors and screen test them for proper chemistry and then write them without undermining Dinah/Laurel as a character.

Look I know we all prefer Dinah to be with Barbara Gordon, but because of the Bat embargo on cw this shouldn't even be an issue. That showrunners have to undermine Dinah/Laurel to prop up Oliver's usefulness is the problem. He's not the alpha male. He's the battle partner. He's not Bruce Wayne. He's closer to Steve Trevor, but that he has a specific skill in trick arrows and street fighting instead of guns and military training. He and Dinah are battle couple, but she takes down most of the enemies more efficiently. He does his part, but he's not the star of the show. This is why Arrow is a faulty premise. They had to change Oliver's character out of the gate in order to justify him dating Felicity, or Chloe instead of Laurel/Dinah. They had to make every other woman vigilante evil, reckless, incompetent, or just utterly undermined to make them all bad choices so the real woman who doesn't fight gets the prize. What the hell does that say?

I understand that we need more female characters that aren't martial arts badasses, but are useful in less glamorous ways like being a hacker, a journalist, a doctor, a scientist. That's not the problem. It's the problem that there's no room for women who are brawlers to have the same kind of humanization and nuanced femininity. Dinah in the comics is not only the best martial artist, sometimes a g-man, sometimes a cop, field agent to Oracle, chairwoman to the JSA and JLA, she also owns a flower shop, likes gardening, is a mother figure to many characters, is arrow's team mom when they stop embargoing her. She's not just miss fanservice badass. This shouldn't be an argument on being a better character, or worse character for your fan favorite blonde support character.