Jesncin, Your Reply Is So Educated And Polite (which I Love!!! And Huge Agree Btw), Yet I Am SCREAMING

Jesncin, your reply is so educated and polite (which I love!!! And huge agree btw), yet I am SCREAMING at once again seeing someone (this anon) misunderstanding Lex Luthor's character and clearly having no knowledge whatsoever of him in actual DC media.

This constant ignorance about Lex's motivations and reasons behind his evilness make my head hurt. It's almost as ridiculous as people who think Joker would be homophobic.

And yes! Lex has been coded as a person of color for years. From being written as the child/grandchild of migrants to have explicit non white features.

And I think there's something to be said about how fandom has this weird tendency of ignoring coding when it comes to characters that don't satisfy stereotypes while also encouraging headcanons based on hurtful stereotypes (coff coff thinking that making characters who are killers Mexican is cool for some reason).

People get SO uncomfortable when forced to acknowledge Lex's coding as a person of color and queer man, as well as a past victim of abuse. He is not a perfect victim, he does wrong, he shows evilness, he has power, he is arrogant. He doesn't feed people's fantasy about what people of color should be, and it makes them angry.

(P.S. Sorry for the spam, Jesncin! Your post is 1000/10 and I loved it. Extra kudos to you!)

I really hope this doesn’t come across as rude, but why did you decide to make Lex Luthor, whose motivation is basically racism and xenophobia from my understanding, a person of color? This isn’t like, a criticism, more just, I really like your JL remix stuff and you usually have cool reasons for the stuff you change, so I was surprised by this one

I understand the curiosity! But I have to point out that "you usually have cool reasons for the stuff you change, so I was surprised by this one" made me laugh, haha. Long answer coming because I have a lot of feelings- but the point in the very end is worth it, trust me.

So for one, Lex is Afro-Greek in my version. This comes from the popular headcanon that STAS/DCAU Lex is Black (and his design is based on a Greek man). His character design, skin tone, and Clancy Brown's enigmatic performance became unintentional perceived representation for Black fans (and even DC writers). And now in the Harley Quinn show, that's become canonized! For why they like it, that's not my place to say as a non-Black person- so I listen!

I don't agree that Lex's motivation is "basically racism and xenophobia"- his themes are much broader than that. It's the desire to be the Man of Tomorrow, his jealousy of Superman, the way his intellect alone is a match against Superman's strength. Sometimes that jealousy is expressed through bigotry, but it's all a means to an end for Lex. My approach is: if Lex being Black is something we want to integrate more into his character, what opportunities does that open up narratively? Because there's rich potential for him and the characters connected to him.

When discussing MAWS I talk a lot about how when you're writing a bigoted marginalized character, there needs to be specifity with where that internalized bigotry is coming from. So a change like that for Lex Luthor could, for example; discuss how privileges like wealth can assimilate otherwise marginalized people into the kind of power that harms others in their community.

The ripple affect this has on a character like Superboy/Conner is that we get to see how -even though they're both Luthors- Conner is profiled, othered and further marginalized as a Kryptonian and a Black homeless teen because he doesn't get to benefit from any of Lex's privileges. This is just part of the many reasons why I think Conner would be infinitely more interesting if he didn't look like Kal El despite being a clone. You get to see a new intersection of how the Kryptonian identity intersects with Blackness on Earth. The potential ripple effect for a character like Lena is also really fun! What if she's struggling with her own model minority pressure when she's making up for her brother's crimes? It's all very compelling!

And MOST importantly, in a 3 trillion IQ Lex Luthor-style move-making Lex Luthor Black means that some version of Matt Fraction & Steve Lieber's Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen arc exists in my au. Which famously hinges on the twist that LEX LUTHOR AND JIMMY OLSEN ARE DISTANTLY RELATED. THEREFORE!!! We have now found a convoluted way to have Wacky Renaissance Artist Jimmy Olsen connected to The Manifestation Of Black Excellence Evil Edition Lex Luthor in this au.

"I'm gay" "I'm straight" okay??? I made you??? I showed you infinity??? And what did you do with it??? Hang out with my grandson??? Raise echoes of my daughter??? What's your life without me??? Admit it??? You would've been me??? I just walked into your garage before you walked into mine??? But eventually you did??? You lived in my house???

"And I will love with urgency, but not with haste" -

I'd make a longer post (and maybe one day I will) but since Lore Olympus, the story that introduced me to webtoons is coming to an end I'd like to say something:

I can't believe it is considered problematic. It has to be one of the sweetest, fluffiest, simplest stories I have read (hence why I still like it, it's a relaxing read before bed) and somehow it got too "kinky" for mainstream. It's laughable.

Everytime I dare to click on their tag or look for the # on Twitter or FB I see people clutching their pearls as if Lore Olympus were brainwashing teenagers into marrying a non existent God of the dead and have babies with him. What the hell?

The fact that people think LO is too dark makes me laugh. A single episode of Rick&Morty, BoJack Horseman or HQS has way more explicit content and dialogue. In fact!!! If it were up to me LO would have gotten genuinely kinky!!! All it does is have some surface spicy tropes that get sugar coated to not make puritans awkward and tbh that's sad. LO and the author get terribly hated anyway for daring to portray the most common female fantasy.

And this all makes me laugh but also mad because you'd think LO at least has some genuine dark themes but no? At most we have Persephone's trauma due to Apollo's abuse and yet that topic is treated as a therapy pamphlet because people couldn't handle an imperfect victim. Hades is a wife guy who shows little to no anger. Hera was re written to be sort of a feminist so that people stopped being annoying about women having emotions.

LO is a sweet, simple story with tiny spicy things here and there that were eventually pushed aside because people couldn't handle it. I wonder how Rachel feels about this, because at the beginning the story was extremely spicy and the only crime was being published in a platform as webtoon, full of people who can't differentiate reality from fiction.

Is LO a masterpiece? Idk! I enjoy the story, it's very self indulgent for me, but I won't go and analyze every detail to see how it should be labeled as it's not meant to be a perfect media. It's meant to be an entertaining, nice story of romance and it does that job very well. This need to demand perfect writing while also crucifying authors over "dark" themes is ridiculous and contradictory.

And I keep wondering, if these people loathe LO so much, why dedicate all that time to the infinte posts they make about how they would have told the story? And all those re tellings are boring! It's always "So Persephone and Hades won't ever kiss here because she's a lesbian. Also he doesn't appear at all. And Demeter isn't an abusive mom! Oh and everyone is ugly because gods shouldn't be beautiful! And Apollo isn't evil he's uwu baby. And no toxic relationships here, Zeus is a good husband!"

Sweet Gaia, you guys wouldn't handle Saint Seiya having Athena in the body of a teenage girl with big tits and who's constantly in the edge of breaking her virginity vows. This attitude screams of jealousy and puritanism and both are disgusting.

TLDR: LO being too problematic for people is both funny and annoying. I wished it actually were as kinky and dark as people insist it is. I'd pay for a toxic romance, but that being said, I LOVE it very much as it is and it's nice to have a re telling that, while not pretending to be loyal to mythology, didn't go for a route of sanitizing all the myths. I hope that once it ends haters will move on and let real fans and the author alone. 🙏

I'm probably making up things but I have been thinking about how Tim's relationship to the Batman and Robin mantles resemble the one of a noble lady to her title back in the golden era of monarchies.

Like a lady, Tim can only be Robin as long as a Batman allows it.

His title taken from him by whoever man takes the Batman cape, as Tim has no right to it due to his status. Tim can only have what the Batman will allow, whether it's little (Jean-Paul) or simply nothing (Dick).

Something something Tim loses his status when Bruce dies and the only way he can do anything it's with the support of a marriage (the deal with Ra's) and yet Tim's crucified over it.

... Ra'sTim in Red Robin being basically a convenience marriage. Tim who can never inherit the Batman title, condemned to have Robin only as long as the Batman allows it. Yes, he's a child of the bat but that means nothing when it comes to inheritance. So he must get his power by marriage, and who better to give him that than the most powerful and dangerous king to ever exist?

(Taken from a rambling at discord.)