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cleromancy · 6 months

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still thinking about mia!

in particular i found the deliberate and thoughtful way ga01 approached the concept of a plucky teen sidekick refreshing... because sidekicks are a staple of the genre, right, and moreover most of us *like* them, so how do we justify the "good guys" *having* them when we're also writing stuff with way more realism than the old stuff?

and to be honest i don't really need that when im reading, i can suspend my disbelief. but you have to commit to the bit when you're the one writing it, you have to believe it. and a lonely place of dying... it did ok for what it was and im extremely fond of it, but i also think it was already walking away from like... the fact that batman got robin killed, yk. it was walking away from what that meant. and like i said thats fine. if they never brought robin back i never would have gotten into comics in the first place, yknow?

but i think the exploration of some of the thorny concepts around mia sidekicking in ga is great because like. this is *emphatically* not an omelas situation. green arrow definitively does not "need" a speedy and it is also emphatically not speedys job to provide a counterbalance or whatever.

ok this got long. putting in a cut here

and both dinah and roy absolutely tear into ollie about his decision to let mia sidekick with him--and i feel like ive read a fair few kid/teen sidekick stories which have the kid wind up in danger (or whatever) regardless of the adult trying to discourage them, and the adult at that point figures if theyre going to sneak out/disobey/whathaveyou its better to do it where the adult can keep an eye on them. and there are times when this is presented like the adult literally cannot convince the child not to do those things, which. yknow. we understand how fiction works so we also know if the writer says the kiddo wont listen to any reason, that the adult just doesn't have the power over them to stop them, then thats what happened... but the implications about the power dynamic and the adults ability to set reasonable boundaries dont paint a *great* picture.

but GA doesn't do that... i would argue mia was being set up to be the 2nd speedy all the way back to dinah and roys conversation in that plane where they just learned ollie might be alive and cant stop bitching about him lol. and iirc this is within the first 6 issues. and dinah and roy are both throwing around unfair accusations at the time, but roy says smth to the effect of what do you want to bet he's already training her to replace me. and i don't think he really believed that but it obviously planted the idea in readers heads if it wasnt there already! but yknow after that, mia doesn't debut as speedy until ga 46, or thereabouts im not looking it up, several years later both IRL and in-universe (or well in-universe its almost 2 years. iirc.).

(i can't even imagine how it must have felt if youd been following that series the whole time *finally* seeing that enter speedy cover. id have been screaming my damn head off.)

anyway. i already talked about comparing and contrasting the man mia killed during her test run vs the jason and felipe situation but i also wanted to say that i think it was great that the whole conversation pretty much *opens* with that. like forget physical danger the kid might be in--what about the psychological toll? what about the choices hes putting her in the position to make?

despite ollie very much being the protagonist of the series and mia very much being a supporting character, the focus of the emotional impact is on her, and the focus of the *responsibility* is on him. (now compare and contrast batman with robin...... listen, i absolutely do not believe it wasn't set up as a deliberate contrast, ok.)

and you would naturally think that would mean she doesn't... get to be speedy. she doesn't get to be a hero. she doesn't get another chance. but then she gets her HIV+ diagnosis, and the focus for mias character turns specifically to *living* with HIV.

and i think that's what makes it clear, to me at least, that the whole... fighting crime thing is supposed to be a metaphor. at least on some level. its a power fantasy, its a metaphor, its about the *good guys winning.* heroes being heroes. and i think a lot of the discussions around representation have gotten so overblown for what they are, but--unironically--sometimes its really meaningful and important just to see yourself. and to believe that no matter what youve lived through, you can be good, you can be wanted, you can make a difference.

which is why mia gives her presentation in the auditorium about her diagnosis, and i feel like this was also a deliberate callback to roy "only you can prevent forest fires" harper and his anti-drug PSA. because roy decided, after snowbirds, he was going to go public about his addiction because he wanted to help other people going through the same thing he did, or prevent other people from going through it yk. and there are two incidents i can think of where, years down the line, he feels some regret over it because now hes just known as the heroin guy, the guy who used to do drugs. but i also don't think he would ever have chosen to do anything else. both speedys are actively choosing to bear that stigma openly in the hopes of reducing it, you know?

speaking of which! i thought it was a *fantastic* - and no doubt deliberate - contrast to how roys drug use was treated, to have mia only talk about it *once* (this is in the HIV+ issue. 45ish?) that she regularly did meth when she was on the streets, and its explicitly clear she did it to survive. and it never comes up again. there's no condemnation, there's no literal war on drugs propaganda here. (the first roy comic i ever read was the mini ntt one in the mandatory fucking D.A.R.E program in middle school, btw.) it was a fact of her life because her life was *fucking dangerous,* and meth helped keep her alive until she managed to find her way out of it!

so this is another concept mia becoming speedy explores--the fact that the people who should have kept her safe as a child did the opposite. mia has never been safe her entire life until moving in with ollie. and the people who hurt her left permanent damage in a physical way in the form of HIV. so now ga is exploring like... what it means to be safe. what it means to be mortal. what exactly is a childhood. and it doesn't dig *too* too deeply into these because its not that kind of comic book, its the kind of comic book where the good guys shoot glue arrows at bad guys and stick them to the floor. but it approaches it and sits you down with those questions and i mean, for me at least, even putting aside exactly how hype i was for mia to take on the mantle, it felt *right* that ollie would say yes.

and the next issue i think or the one after that (its the teen titans one! tim is there later). is the one where roy reams ollie out for this, they talk about it, roy lampshades the different... contexts of having a speedy. like its not like how it used to be. the bad guys are worse, its not safe enough for a kid anymore. and this is where ollie relays mias diagnosis (<- she had already decided to go public about it as i said before, so ollies not sharing information that isnt his to share here). and roys like that could have been me. its a good issue! i like what it does with what its doing.

and then some 20 issues later, once mia is reasonably well established as a superhero and a titan....... Enter Jason.

(🥰)

i have so much to say about this arc i love it so much. let me preface by saying none of this is a condemnation of jason, hes pretty much my favorite fictional character of all time. im not interested in wagging my finger at the guy styling himself as a supervillain at the time and going Naughty Jason! Thats Not How We Make Friends!, yk. im also not endorsing it, bla bla bla, whatever, this really aint about him right now. right now we're just talking about what he does for the story, the questions he poses about mia and sidekicks and shit.

god, where to fucking start.

i guess ill start with jasons "were not so different you and i" villain speech. and yknow at least on the surface level theres like. a certain join-me-be-my-robin element to it or like he's encouraging her to cross the line or whatever. but honestly, jason was less there because jason todd the fictional character wanted to be there, and more because winick as the writer thought it continued to explore the concept in an interesting way.

because we've talked about green arrows responsibility vis a vis letting her be a sidekick bc of the psychological impact of it, about the choices she's put in a position to make, about HIV and what it means to be a hero and safety. all of those things. and jason shows up to *demonstrate* that--

--it really is not fucking safe to do what they do.

and Jason is, i think, at his most terrifying here, and thats on purpose. it is *visceral*. it is so, so incredibly well done. and it throws ALL those questions of safety and responsibility and mortality and heroism and do-gooding into a new light because you really feel like, oh my god, her life is in danger.

tbh i think some of the reader anger at jason for this arc--and titans tower, just to a lesser degree because it wasnt NEARLY as good lol--is the fact that he *is* challenging us, the readers, to think about our beloved kid/teen sidekick trope. he brings back the element of realism that GA was drawing away from somewhat, the element of *real consequences.* and as a reader it is so much easier to just be mad at jason because well hes the villain of the story...... and ignore the fact that hes demonstrating--both by being the dead robin cautionary tale, and by being ~red hood, the scourge of the underworld~ lol--that if this is not something she's prepared to face, a possibility she's prepared for, then she shouldn't be wearing that uniform.

and that the person she relies on to protect her can't always be there to do it.

and, mini tangent, there's absolutely no way jason was trying to kill her here. he terrified her, he kicked her ass, but he didn't do any permanent damage and he didnt "lock her in" (<- real reading i saw once 🙄 try reading it again with your eyes next time genius) he stabbed his knife into her cape. if jason were being written by anyone else i would entertain the idea but it was winick, who knows exactly how smart and thorough jason is supposed to be *because he was the one who made him that way.* there's no doubt in my mind that jason was perched somewhere watcging to make sure she got out before the place went kablooey but you know what, in fairness, thats not on the page. BUT, like. the reason mia *thinks* jason was going to kill her--before she realizes he could have if hed wanted to, and purposely let her go--was because he wanted her to think that. he wanted to scare her and he wanted to warn her and he wanted to make her think.

really really love this arc.

anyway. i mentioned in my other post that winick tweaked mias backstory so she was also homeless like jason, which i sort of have mixed feelings about. in smiths version, her dad trafficks her and later she winds up as one of the "girlfriends" (euphemism for victims) of his associates. and that was ... not really the picture of child trafficking you usually see in comics, the more common real-life scenario rather than the sensationalized version of quote-unquote child prostitutes on street corners. but at the same time i think winick kept the most important part (the familial trafficking) and i also think he changed it in order to explore all the aforementioned topics in an interesting way. it doesn't feel like it was just an arbitrary change, or to make it more exciting or whatever. like he was exploring stuff with it, it was purposeful.

for example--going back to mia and meth. the more you read of winick the more you notice that intravenous drugs and illnesses associated with them (so including but not limited to HIV/AIDS) are something of a... recurring... motif, i guess? they're something he regularly comes back to explore. and thats interesting in the context of mia for a lot of reasons but well. when mia defensively says to ollie that she used meth, the reason she gives is they used it to stay awake on the streets. and i do think winick deliberately--and *effectively*--explored the pre-existing (and historical) parallels btwn batman and green arrow in a bunch of other ways, so i don't think im off base in saying the fact that *robin* 2.0 famously lived on the streets *probably* had something to do with the backstory tweak for speedy 2.0, particularly again bc of jasons "we're the same" villain speech. but also, like i said, she mostly used to stay awake(/alive), which is something of a harder sell if she hadn't been homeless, and also like i said, winick likes exploring drugs and wanted to write a hero living with HIV.

before i get into the comparisons with jason and mia, i also want to say that i think jason--who im constantly affectionately calling a revenant--is such an effective contrast for mia because the emphasis for mia! was always on living. it was always on healing. despite having a *distinctly* non-everykid origin story, mia absolutely embodies something i think was very characteristic of her generation of teen titans, or at the very least early days cassie and tim, which was this simultaneous like... they're normal kids, they're *relatable,* but they're also superheroic in determination, and resourcefulness, and they want this, and they know they can do it, so they will. and thats what its all about, man.

...actually i just ran out of steam, ill write out some thoughts on jason telling mia theyre the same later lol sorry. im toired!!!!

anyway mia is soooo good.

#dc #text #many thoughts head empty #meta #mia

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