Dear Connor,
It’s been two years now since you’ve been my DC imaginary boyfriend. I still adore you, but I’m afraid I have some serious complaints over your recent conduct and the general atmosphere of Connor Hawke: Dragon’s Blood.
Let me just state first that I love how you look in this series. I love how everyone looks in this series. Derec Donovan should draw you always.
That said, I’m uneasy about some racist and sexist stereotyping in this work.
First, there was the cover where you were kissing daddy’s rapist. I didn’t think the cover could get any worse, but the actual title of that issue turned out to be ‘Wicked Stepmother!’
Shado isn’t actually your stepmother. She’s the woman who raped your dad and one of the results was her son, your half-brother. But, hey, let’s not bother with accuracy when your writer can pull out yet another negative female stereotype out of the bag and slap it on her, right?
You have a legitimate beef with Shado. On top of being an assassin, which is a job to which you, as a hero, object, she raped your father. However, because this still goes unacknowledged by Ollie, or by any other character in the DCU, you instead dodge around it with a lot of stuff about Shado ‘corrupting’ Ollie and ‘turning him into a murderer’ with her sexy evil ways, so:
When you confront the woman herself with this crap, Shado sensibly points out that your dad is (at least technically) all grown-up, and fully capable of owning his responsibility for his actions, but you never actually seem to acknowledge the justice of this argument yourself.
Second, Connor, for fuck’s sake, don’t do this:
Ew.
The thing is, Connor, you just can’t have it both ways. Either Shado’s a rapist, which is what the canon factually provides, or she’s a beautiful Asian woman seducing upright men into committing evil deeds, which is what the text would have us believe. (That she’s then warned off by your protective older hypermasculine friend and goes back to her redemptive role of mother does not much pacify me.)
Shado-as-rapist would be interesting if it was ever dealt with unacknowledged, it’s misandrist and misogynistic stereotyping. Shado-as-Dragon-Lady is unimaginative writing and offensive stereotyping of Asian women. And just in case we weren’t aware that this is what we’re supposed to take away from her portrayal, your friend/guardian Eddie Fyers spells it out to Shado: ‘I’m here to protect him from dragons… and dragon ladies.’
Connor, please! I am well aware that, being half Irish-American/quarter African-American/quarter Korean, you are conscious of prejudice. (Even though you are mysteriously blond* and the colorists frequently bleach you.)
Surely you can exert some force on Mr Dixon, since he will almost certainly work with you in the future? In addition to this weird desire to have it both ways with Shado, I’m unhappy about all the Chinese characters in this mini being evil or hapless bystanders. Most of the non-white characters don’t get even background lines. And the only good characters who aren’t white are you and a Japanese kyuudo master who turns up to confer his Mystic Old Master Advice and then die.
In memory of all the good times we’ve shared, can’t you do something about this?
Because if not, I’m afraid this imaginary relationship is over.
Yours, with love,
Karen.
- P.S. In my head, you dyed your eyebrows in that monastery because you were such a huge Green Arrow fanboy and now you’ve met him and he’s your father and you’re just too embarrassed to let anyone know it’s not natural, but one day real soon Ollie is going to come roaring out of the bathroom complaining about Dinah staining the sink and she’ll say it wasn’t her, she gets hers done at a salon, and Mia will indignantly claim she doesn’t need to bother with dye and then everyone will stare at you as you blush. This is my beautiful vision.
