Wonder Woman 10 (Spoilers)

[dshipp17]

We've seen Wonder Woman comfort Zola, be honest with her, rescue her, tease her, protect her, have at least two heart-to-heart talks with her, teach her, learn from her, be humble with her, call her a member of her family, put herself in harm's way for her, and almost marry a candle-headed-boy-hell-god for her.

We've seen her love herself too much to allow herself to marry said candle-headed-boy-hell-god.

We've seen her rescue Hermes, protect him, and be glad for him when he's able to return the favor.

We've seen her attempt to reconcile with her mother and sisters after a remarkably short interval, considering what she had learned.

We've seen he welcome brothers she had never known and try to lead them to freedom.

Now we've seen her give a big gift--the gift of self-love--to someone who wanted to perpetually consume her.

What kind of love do you want to see?

Well love is supposed to be something you extend to others not to yourself; we still have the question of rather this love is for women only which is not all loving (or to extend only to men desirable to her, along with a general love of all women). That's not quite what all loving really means.

[slvn]

Well love is supposed to be something you extend to others not to yourself

Psychologist Erich Fromm, in The Art of Loving, distinguished healthy self-love from being conceited and argued that you have to have self-love in order to be able to really love others. Even Christianity says to "Love your neighbor as you love yourself," right? Doesn't that presume that you do love yourself?

we still have the question of rather this love is for women only which is not all loving (or to extend only to men desirable to her, along with a general love of all women). That's not quite what all loving really means.

I'm not quite sure I'm following you there, but she says "I love. Everyone." and this includes Hades, a male god whom I don't think she finds very desirable. She also acts lovingly towards the male Amazons.

[slvn]

Likely, they did have a choice or there would have been some type of warning about men being on the island other than threatening men simply by virtue of labeling themselves as Amazons.

I don't follow. This implies that at least some of them distrust and possibly hate men, but not necessarily that this attitude led to their choosing seclusion. They might even have developed this attitude after they were settled on the island--perhaps, as I mentioned, in part because of bad conscience and their emotional need to "other" their victims..

Why even mention being rescued even after using 'if' if you we're making a broad assumption that being rescued wasn't involved?

It's a hypothesis, not an assumption--and if anything, I would hypothesize that rescue was involved. But we don't know. I thought of it partly because Outside_85 mentioned that they had seen men from the worst perspective, and because, as I mentioned, Amazons were reincarnated victims of murder by men in Perez's run and were victims of an abusive invasion by Hercules' men in various runs starting with Marstons.

Being in a bad experience still doesn't mean that anyone involved was misogynistic; that's a strong word; treating someone badly is a gender neutral action so you should dispense with the phrase "treated misogynisticly"; a lot of men have also been treated badly by women.

I'm not sure individual violence would have been as likely to lead to withdrawal from the world as a widespread pattern of misogyny. Certainly people of both genders can abuse people of both genders, but historically,women have often been in a vulnerable position and have been victims of systemic misogyny.And it's that kind of systemic, ubiquitous hostility that seems (to me) to be more likely to motivate people to retreat from the world. But sure, if you're point is that their retreat from a two-gendered world could possibly have been inspired by something other than misogyny, I can' disagree with that.

I can't see how someone can be rational with themselves and say they hate the entire rest of that group

I agree with you that it's irrational, bu sometimes, people do act hatefully towards an entire group of people, whether they explicitly say they hate that group or not.

[dshipp17]

Psychologist Erich Fromm, in The Art of Loving, distinguished healthy self-love from being conceited and argued that you have to have self-love in order to be able to really love others. Even Christianity says to "Love your neighbor as you love yourself," right? Doesn't that presume that you do love yourself?



I'm not quite sure I'm following you there, but she says "I love. Everyone." and this includes Hades, a male god whom I don't think she finds very desirable. She also acts lovingly towards the male Amazons.

Well, you said she loved herself too much to marry Hades; that is reflective of conceited self-love; and stating that she loved herself too much to marry Hades places limits on loving everyone, particularly certain types of men, although, I think we can make an exception of someone like Hades; well, she wanted to help the male Amazons from what she perceived as a situation of slavery. Love is something you extend to others; loving yourself could mean having a healthy respect for yourself, but, seeing someone with self-esteem issues actually makes me more included to find ways to help that person rather than avoid that person; otherwise, it's a cop out and hypocritical to use a person's self esteem issue as a means for supporting the proposition that it's more difficult to love that person; actually, it would separate any inkling of lust from love for that person to really love that person after feeling the accomplishment of removing that from their shell; and, in Christianity, loving someone as much as yourself is equivalent to saying do until others as you'd have them do unto you; that's usually the context; Jesus said something else, actually, which goes to the implied love your neighbor as yourself when he said give your life for your friends just before going to the cross.

[slvn]

Well, you said she loved herself too much to marry Hades; that is reflective of conceited self-love

What? She wasn't in love with him, or didn't love him in that particular way in which one loves a spouse, and he tried to entrap her by shooting her in the heart and by theatening someone she loved, and then he tried to test her love on penalty of death. Not wanting to marry someone on those conditions has nothing to do with conceit; it's matter of self-respect and integrity.

stating that she loved herself too much to marry Hades places limits on loving everyone

She didn't say she loved herself too much; I'm saying that her healthy self-love or self-respect wouldn't allow her to marry someone whom she didn't love in that particular way, or someone who wanted to possess her and didn't trust her.

Jesus said something else, actually, which goes to the implied love your neighbor as yourself when he said give your life for your friends just before going to the cross.

Certainly, and Diana has shown that she's willing to sacrifice itself. That doesn't mean that she shouldn't love herself (in the positive sense), or that she should allow herself to be possessed by someone who doesn't trust her.

[MelDyer]

I've never seen you talk about Strife before, so please, could you explain what this "macho-girl" has to do with her, or point to the nearest explanation?

Strife is sarcastic, aggressive and caustic. Is that what makes her a macho? Being aggressive and possessing an acid sense of humor are attributes that come only with testicles?

Strife is like a dragqueen archetype. She's Terrence Stamp's Bernadette or Raven on RuPaul's Drag Race. She's not traditionally feminine, but, brassy. You can see that much.

[Outside_85]

Sorry, folks, but to me the characters are all still cardboard, the focus is still on the Olympians—particularly the male Olympians, with Stryfe being a very macho female. Motivations are almost nonexistent, and all the talk of "love" is hollow. It's used as a word, not a living concept. I don't believe it for a minute because frankly, we haven't been shown it. The focus is still on the past, not a modern-day setting for comics' premiere female hero. She's still not Wonder Woman.

When exactly has Diana last used love as a living concept? When she blasted zombies with it when she was a Star Sapphire? When Aphrodite lured her out of the BLC? Or was it back when she was Trevor's secretary?

Btw this is the character called Stryfe:


and he's from Marvel.

[Rob_Olivera]

We've seen Wonder Woman comfort Zola, be honest with her, rescue her, tease her, protect her, have at least two heart-to-heart talks with her, teach her, learn from her, be humble with her, call her a member of her family, put herself in harm's way for her, and almost marry a candle-headed-boy-hell-god for her.

We've seen her love herself too much to allow herself to marry said candle-headed-boy-hell-god.

We've seen her rescue Hermes, protect him, and be glad for him when he's able to return the favor.

We've seen her attempt to reconcile with her mother and sisters after a remarkably short interval, considering what she had learned.

We've seen he welcome brothers she had never known and try to lead them to freedom.

Now we've seen her give a big gift--the gift of self-love--to someone who wanted to perpetually consume her.

What kind of love do you want to see?

To be perfectly honest, I must say I think that Azzarello was totally OFF the mark with that final scene.

The concept of "loving yourself before being able to love others" was totally misrepresented in the context presented by the mirror. To love yourself does not mean that you love your reflection in a mirror. It means that you are content with who you are and the decisions you have taken in your life, or having come to terms of acceptance inspite of them. It means that you feel fulfilled and comfortable in your own skin.

Loving yourself in a mirror just makes you some form of narcissistic shallow being.

Did anyone see the classic Snow White...? I doubt the evil queen was capable of loving anyone even though she loved her beauty and reflection.

[Gaelforce]

To be perfectly honest, I must say I think that Azzarello was totally OFF the mark with that final scene.

The concept of "loving yourself before being able to love others" was totally misrepresented in the context presented by the mirror. To love yourself does not mean that you love your reflection in a mirror. It means that you are content with who you are and the decisions you have taken in your life, or having come to terms of acceptance inspite of them. It means that you feel fulfilled and comfortable in your own skin.

Loving yourself in a mirror just makes you some form of narcissistic shallow being.

Did anyone see the classic Snow White...? I doubt the evil queen was capable of loving anyone even though she loved her beauty and reflection.

I don't think the idea was that he loved his reflection.

The classic Eros 'bow shot' is that 'you fall in love with the next person you see.' The next person Hell saw was himself, so that's who he now loves, or at least that's the plan. He doesn't love his appearance - that's not how Eros works - he loves the person, just as Diana was supposed to love him.

[Rob_Olivera]

I don't think the idea was that he loved his reflection.

The classic Eros 'bow shot' is that 'you fall in love with the next person you see.' The next person Hell saw was himself, so that's who he now loves, or at least that's the plan. He doesn't love his appearance - that's not how Eros works - he loves the person, just as Diana was supposed to love him.

I guess the next step given your interpretation of it would be to figure out what kind of love does a person shot by Eros's bullets feels. It is hollow, not real and certainly not earned by the targeted person of the victim's new-found obsession. This could possibly make matters worse. A farce.

The effects must be of some limited longetivity.

[Don-Jack]

I guess the effect is different. It must be the person you are looking at the moment you get shot. If not, then Diana would start loving unconditionally Zola or Hermes (if Hades loved himself and the guns worked)
But yeah, he will start loving himself, not his reflection, anyway.

[slvn]

I guess the next step given your interpretation of it would be to figure out what kind of love does a person shot by Eros's bullets feels. It is hollow, not real and certainly not earned by the targeted person of the victim's new-found obsession. This could possibly make matters worse. A farce.

The effects must be of some limited longetivity.

Interesting thoughts.

Maybe it's like what people often say about young love--it's white-hot passionate, and depending on what the lovers do with it, it might flare out or mellow into something mature. (But the chances probably aren't very good if someone used the gun on his or her own behalf or asked Eros to do it; trying to force someone to fall in love with you can't be a good start.)

As for loving yourself vs. loving your reflection, I think it's a really interesitng question, but kind of a fine line. To love yourself, even in a good way, you probably have to have some kind of image of yourself that you find worthy of love. From what Heph says, it sounds like Eros is genuinely at home in his own skin--in at least hjealthy enough a way to make the guns work--but also loves himself more than he needs to and is narcissistic (ant least enough for a loving but wry dad to make fun of). I know vanity can come from insecurity--which is the case with the Queen in Snow White--but in Eros' case, maybe he just genuinely finds himself awesome.

I wouldn't mind if this actually were to acutally become a plot point later on. Maybe Hades will more secure but also a bit vain. Maybe to make it work, Heph had to make a mirror that shows a person who he or she really is, not just a mirror image, and Wonder Woman or someone else may need it later on.

Byu thw way, I also wouldn't mind if it turns out later that Hades' father Kronos managed to escape during all the uproar. He makes a fien chair, but could probably also be a good troubelmaker.

[MelDyer]

Here's a graphic I made for a Villainy, Inc. revival page that I never built. Honestly, I don't think Strife looks anymore grotesquely feminine than Wonder Woman's other villains. All of the villainesses, I think, are appropriately creepy or monstrous, and I can't say that Strife's cold-ass attitude makes her any less feminine than Doctor Cyber.

I don't think the woman-as-monster is anything new in the pages of WW. If anything, it's classically WW.

BTW...my Virbius the Unkillable (Wondy's cousin, Prince Hippolytos) page is still up here.

[americanwonder]

Slvn - I really enjoyed your post on the various ways Diana has shown love/concern for others. Well done, sir.

If the Amazons are evil everyone must be evil?

We've seen good and bad gods and gods that stand somewhere in between like Poseidon and Hades. Why cant Hephaestus, Athena and a couple of others be good gods? Yes we havent seen most of the female ones, but i'm sure not all of them will be b****.

Everyone must be evil? lol. No. Give me some credit, Dr. Hurt.

Maximum Impact already covered this with his statement: "The crux of the point with the Amazons is they were trashed yet characters we don't care about like Heph and Lennox get to be good."

But I'll try to elaborate, hopefully without ranting (too much ):

In short, I want more balance. In terms of the supporting characters, the background, the changes made, it has been very male-centric, so far (imo).

- As you said, "Yes we havent seen most of the female ones," and what we have seen has mostly been very negative. While for the males, we get to see many of them, and get to see a variety of personalities (eg, good and bad, etc). Not balanced.

- Azzarello said the Amazons were too "perfect" and needed "dirt." Then he creates a peaceful group of artisan men led by all-wise, all-caring Pappa Smurf version of Heph? Not balanced.

- Posters have claimed that this version of the Amazons is more inline with the myths (which is true). Well, Azzarello's version of Heph is a glorified white-washed version, leaving out his vindictive side. Not true to the "dirt" in the myths. Only the worst of the myths for the Amazons, but the best of the myths for Heph? Not balanced.

The DCU is already very heavily male-centric, so more and more men added to one of the few titles to actually showcase women, and done in a way that trashes many of the women, namely the Amazons, does not make me a happy camper.

[Don-Jack]

It could be that since Hades didn't have any love for himself, a bullet of love would make him love just a little bit, not in some obsessive way.