Relatable when you think about it

Between Black Canary and Felicity Smoak, admittedly I’m more familiar with comics despite not reading comics that often, I have a nagging feeling that the former has the potential to be relatable to other people especially when it comes to online businesses. Online businesses have become quite commonplace, given how people will do things to find ways of selling something so the Internet becomes a tool to sell something with. Not just Amazon, Shopee, Lazada and Carousell but also Jumia, Etsy and Redbubble.

I have encountered artists who sell their wares online, Dinah Lance could easily do that with flowers as she’s a florist. That’s not to say there weren’t any online businesses before, one of the earliest and best-known examples would be Amazon. Amazon is a rather influential brand, especially one that opened the doors for other online retailers to emerge and flourish. Without Amazon, we wouldn’t get Shopee, Lazada, Carousell, Jumia, Indiamart, Etsy, Redbubble, Society6 and the like. Now that’s what you call a trailblazer, especially in the early days of the World Wide Web.

Being unfamiliar with the comics is one thing, considering some other character’s potential to be relatable is another. That involves realising something about either one of them that might click with other people, as well as the odd possibility that somebody like Black Canary might be more attainable in a way. Think about this, a good number of people have set up businesses online. Surely they’re not big businesses, they may not be rich but enough to get by in life. With the Internet, you could find stores and buy products by proxy.

You could sell something online and have it be sent to somebody else, especially the purchaser/buyer in question. Actually you could sell anything online, it could be used books but also fabrics, newly made clothing (though mine is offline), plants, foods and toys. I do know some people who sell fan-made merchandise online, yes that really is a thing and I’m not making this up. But the stuff they make pertain to other franchises, such as Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures and Good Omens. Not that Oliciters are any less creative, but that Black Canary could be relatable to other people in a way Felicity Smoak couldn’t do for them.

Maybe in ways they don’t expect or consider, especially when it comes to online businesses being ubiquitous these days. While the number of women in computer science is pitifully small, women who operate small and medium businesses aren’t that rare. But that could be because I know female owners of small and microenterprises, my grandmother sells jewellery, one of my aunts sold biscuits and I have a habit of selling clothes to people. There are women who sell fabric online, so Dinah selling plants online isn’t much of a stretch when you think about it.

Though that would mean not everybody can be Felicity Smoak, I don’t have a strong interest in computer science. I’m not that tech-savvy, maybe save for low tech stuff. The only one in my family who knows computer programming well is a man, I don’t think Oliciters will realise or get this but that would mean Felicity isn’t relatable for other people. Not everybody can be Black Canary, but not everybody can be Felicity Smoak either. It’s been brought up elsewhere that Felicity isn’t relatable for other people, but that involves realising the sort of life she leads isn’t attainable for others either.

A real life Oliver Queen (as presented in Arrow), complete with immense wealth as a CEO and womanising, would be more like Elon Musk than Mark Zuckerberg. A man who has a habit of dumping each woman after another, wealthy but one prone to objectifying women. If Elon Musk dated Felicity Smoak, he could dump her at any time as he did with others. Elon didn’t care much about his first wife’s feelings, especially when she got a miscarriage so he really isn’t fun to be around for others.

Let’s not forget that unless if they’re athletes, musicians or actors themselves, other men who get paid to be looked at aren’t going to be rich. I don’t think there are any romance novels where a woman dates a male model, not just because it’s too revealing but also because male models aren’t that well-paid. A couple like Oliver and Felicity (as presented in Arrow) would be a needle in a haystack, if they ever existed at all, though you could say similar things about Oliver and Dinah as they are in the funnybooks. But that would mean how unattainable Olicity actually is.

The sexualised billionaire CEOs that populate (some) romance novels are so unattainable, that they make athlete heroes look like total boys next door. If because these characters are more attainable in the real world, though I think athletes get away with it more than male models since they’re more likely to be praised for their skills and that sports is popular with men. Men are going to be more forgiving of a Steven Gerrard, David Beckham and Robert Pires (all footballers by the way) over a Fabio, Sean O’Pry and Jason Aaron Baca. You might say that Arrow and the like are works of fiction.

But as I said before, however about Cathy, is that Oliver Queen is pretty unattainable compared to Irving. While there certainly are women who marry into rich families, not just business magnates but also actual aristocrats they’re not all women. Admittedly it is sexist for me to say that not all women become CEOs of multinational corporations, but I don’t think a lot of women are like Felicity Smoak when you take things into consideration the way Oliciters do with Black Canary. I’m way more into fashion and soy milk than gadgets and wine.

Felicity Smoak, if she ever existed in real life, would be somebody who’d belong to the one percent. Maybe not entirely one percent, but she’s not a figure everybody else can relate to. Any woman can be a businesswoman, though the kinds of businesses they run aren’t (always) big multinational corporations. Rather, they tend to be smaller scale. They may not be rich, just enough to get by. In this light, there are more women who’re like Black Canary than Felicity Smoak in the sense of running small businesses. I own a microenterprise built on making and selling clothes.

I know women who operate and own small businesses themselves, so I do run into Black Canary-like characters in the real world (and online, if it can be stretched). I know very few, if any, women who’re like Felicity Smoak in any way. It needn’t to be Black Canary to be relatable to others in a way Felicity Smoak wouldn’t be for them, it could be Oliver Queen himself whether if it’s his attitude or his skills. There are people who do archery, especially as a sport for games like the Olympics. It could even be Helena Bertinelli, besides I do know people who not only use crossbows but fashion them out of scratch.

I feel for some people, their idea of a relatable character is a glorified audience surrogate. Somebody at Ganriki pointed this out, I guess it’s no different with Felicity Smoak on Arrow. Or for another matter, Barry Allen and Cisco Ramon on the Flash. I may’ve toyed around with having a self-insert before, but as I get older I find the self-insert type characters more irritating. They’re irritating because of how disingenuous they are, they’re supposed to be everypeople but are ironically far apart from them.

I have a nagging feeling that since Felicity Smoak really isn’t much of an everyperson compared to say Cathy, she might as well be a power fantasy for certain women. She’s got a high-powered job a few times over, succeeds in male-dominated fields and kind of openly leers at somebody like Oliver, you have women who feel repressed and shamed for having any sexual interest in men. You have women who want to succeed in male-dominated fields and kill for a high-paying job, Felicity has done them all.

Cathy, as far as I remember, struggles to lose weight, surely is neither the smartest nor stupidest person in the room, dates otherwise average men and tries to find stylish clothes. I know someone in the family who’s made to lose weight in the family, I myself try to lose weight through lifting weights so Cathy’s attempts to lose weight by exercising is quite relatable. But that goes to show you why Cathy was such a popular character as is the story she’s in, even the men she dates are rather attainable.

She may not have a high-powered job, but so do other women in the world. If Felicity Smoak isn’t particularly relatable to everybody else, I guess there are some people who aspire to be like her. Well in ways they don’t immediately recognise it, if because much of the character’s rather unattainable in some respects. They want a way to get away with lusting after men, get into male-dominated fields with ease and earn as much as men do. Not that they can’t be done in the real world.

But rather I’m advancing my theory that Felicity Smoak is a power fantasy for some women, in ways Cathy could never be because she’s always such an average person. Now that’s a character who’s actually quite normal, average or at least not too out of touch in the real world. But it’s also proof that it needn’t to be Felicity Smoak to be relatable to the audience, others see themselves in any other character really.

In-Jokes

When it comes to fan-pandering, I feel if you pander hard a lot, it will mostly or only consist of things diehard fans will be into and get. It’s like the thing with Dick Grayson, the fact that he became one of DC’s few male sex symbols because of his butt that later on you’d get many in-jokes about it. So much so that in one story where no matter what disguise he uses, he can be recognised by his butt alone for some reason. (Rao help if there’s a man in DC Comics who could best him in having a shapely backside.) I feel this is one kind of fan pandering, especially if it’s something only a handful will ever get because they got what they wanted.

Arguably until recently, DC and Marvel have been pandering real hard to a certain audience. So hard that a good chunk of the stories they publish are full of references and in-jokes only certain people will get, so much so that anybody who isn’t a big fan will feel left out because DC and Marvel doesn’t pander to those people anymore. Well until now that is to some extent, especially with the DC Comics aimed at younger readers such as The Oracle Code. I don’t think Nightwing appeals to me as a reader, especially someone who’s a casual reader at that. Like I feel all this talk about his sex symbol’s only something a few people will ever get.

It’s not helped by that both statistically and anecdotally, not a lot of people regularly read comics let alone DC and Marvel ones at that. I’d say that newspaper cartoon strips are more popular, not just because they’re published in a more accessible and affordable format but that they’re very light on the lore side of things. So these are the things that are easy on casual readers, as opposed to DC and Marvel which have gotten heavy on lore. One example of heavy fan-pandering would be Arrow, wherein the relationship between Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak. As somebody who just watched a few clips of this and am not so big on Felicity Smoak, it does feel like pandering where it went from fanfiction to canon.

Well canon to the programme that is, but even then it’s really a form of fan pandering when these fans wanted that relationship to be canon that the showrunners granted their wishes and it came into being. You might say that Felicity Smoak has become a famous character because of it, but since one of my relatives has just recently heard of Harley Quinn and is evidently not big on superheroes in any way so if Harley Quinn isn’t well known to other people so is Felicity Smoak. It’s still fan pandering either way, especially if it’s something that only has a cult following and that audience only knows what it gets what it wants.

The constant validation these fans seek and that they get rewarded for it is really pandering, the most sophisticated form of fan pandering I’ve ever encountered in the whole of geekdom. Anybody who’s a normal person, a real normal person, will not get this in any way. I don’t get it myself, despite reading comics since childhood. But then again I’m a casual reader, so these are things only a diehard reader will get. Likewise I don’t watch that much stuff, owing to my devotion to radio and streaming music, that I feel when it comes to Olicity it’s really a good example of fan pandering in action.

These are things only somebody who’s into something will ever get and know in any form, most people from my experience don’t watch Arrow so they wouldn’t care about it in any way. My father watches aeroplanes and boxing matches, not Arrow and it’s something he wouldn’t and will never get either. It’s fan pandering if you make their wishes come true, pander to their every whim and cater to their in-jokes. Fan pandering is fan pandering, whatever the context it takes on and may be. I feel as I get less involved in fandom, the more blatant fandom pandering is and gets. It’s not necessarily wrong to be a fan of something, or anything else in general. But fan pandering gets real irksome if it’s something that’s rather unpopular in real life.

Something like superhero comics, which doesn’t have the highest sales in recent days. Neither did Arrow, which often had low ratings. So it could be argued and said that they’re rather unpopular, not necessarily so unpopular as to be entirely unheard of, but more unpopular than say FIFA and The Voice and that’s saying. So there’s the big risk of fan pandering, especially if the audience is so small and loyal that it’s going to turn off anybody else.

No mystery

When it comes to racebending and representation, some people racebend characters is that while they do identify with the characters (as with Mindy Kaling when it came to Velma*) they also want to see themselves represented especially if their ethnicity is underrepresented in the media they consume. HBO Max’s Velma is pretty much a professional example of this, well I guess if somebody has the guts to make Felicity Smoak into an Indian werehyena seamstress well that will definitely cause a backlash among Oliciters. Especially if the Felicity Smoak they knew on television is replaced by a new version, especially if she’s no longer a white westerner that Oliciters will start acting and sounding exactly like alt-right trolls.

However if Mindy Kaling’s any indication, a racebent Felicity Smoak who’s into fashion might be easier for some South Asian and Indian women to identify with. Especially if it’s a portrayal that’s not commonly found in western media, that I think this Felicity Smoak might provide a welcome relief and a lifeboat for any South Asian woman who’s into sewing and fashion. But that does make one wonder if certain white women identified with the earlier version of Felicity Smoak so much, that once this version shows up in DCEU and DC Comics she’ll face a far bigger backlash than what she got when she was a white Jewish woman on Arrow. Even if it’s a portrayal that’s not found often outside of Bollywood I guess.

Interestingly, there was an Indian werehyena character in the Firestorm comics, the same comics magazine that Felicity Smoak came from so this makes it a return to form in a way the Arrowverse Felicity isn’t and probably never was. A kind of Ultimate Marvel version of her when you think about it, since Ultimate Marvel was initiated as an attempt to modernise the Marvel stories in the early 2000s. I haven’t watched the Velma series yet, but what Kaling’s doing the same as what others have done for other fandoms before. That’s seeking representation by racebending an existing white character to represent themselves better, since all the other nonwhite characters are either stereotypes or too obscure and few.

That’s the case with DC’s Celsius, an Indian woman with the ability to create both fire and ice. She is an original Indian character, but she’s way too obscure to gain traction unless if DC did a Marvel with her (no pun intended). Felicity Smoak being Indian would really catch a lot of fire (and heat) since this reinvention will be really controversial, even though it’s closer to her Firestorm roots in a way. One could imagine this leads to complaints about ‘white blonde erasure’ since she and Valentina Vostok will be made into women of colour in the DCEU and DC Rebirth, they first appeared as white women.

Making them in Indian and Yakut respectively would really be controversial, but this also shows how underrepresented these portrayals are. It’s not only rare to see Asian characters who aren’t involved in STEM in any way in western media, it’s also rare to see Yakut characters outside of Russian media. The only famous western portrayal of Yakut people is a nonfiction book by Farley Mowat called The Siberians, which is saying when it comes to Yakut representation in non-Russian media. Even Russian media might have degrading or stereotypical portrayals of Yakut people.

So a Yakut Valentina Vostok who’s both a good guy and a pilot would be much needed representation for some Siberians, not to mention it would even show a side of Russia that’s not always about white people. That’s because Russia expanded eastwards to Siberia, which has nonwhite people and that makes Valentina Vostok a good example of an indigenous Siberian in something as high profile as DC Comics. Prior to Vostok’s reinvention, there were virtually no indigenous Siberians in American comics whatsoever. The Russians that do show up are white.

Even if Russia has a lot of white people, that doesn’t mean people of colour are nonexistent there. There are the immigrants and then there are indigenous people, especially when you go east that’s when you encounter the Buryats, Evenki and Yakuts. Iceland might hold up much better as one of those European countries that didn’t get much immigrants since it was and still is very isolated, but the same can’t be said of Denmark, Norway and Sweden which not only met immigrants in the form of Romani people. But the other two were inhabited by other people before, well the Sami in their cases.

Russia’s a mixed bag in that while it started out in Europe, it expanded eastwards onto Siberia which would make the Yakut of the Far East indigenous in a way. You could argue for making Valentina Vostok any one of the white Russian ethnicities, though I think making her Yakut does something that Western media outside of nonfiction hasn’t done before. That is the inclusion of a nonwhite Russian character, let alone an indigenous one at that. When it comes to representation, there will always be people who hunger to see themselves or something represented in the media they consume and identify with.

It could be an Indian seamstress Felicity Smoak, it could also be a Yakut Siberian Valentina Vostok. These are the representations that some people would like to see, sometimes these are the representations people don’t expect to see. But it will happen either way.

*Admittedly, this programme’s rather loathed by many people.

Racebending Felicity and the limitations of audience identification

If somebody at DC ever has the audacity to racebend Felicity Smoak and turn her into an Indian werehyena seamstress, I can easily imagine and anticipate an outcry from Olicity fans who say that Felicity shouldn’t be racebent and a new character should be used instead. While that’s understandable in theory, the problem is most Indian DC characters aren’t anywhere as famous and to make matters worse, Teen Titans’s Jinx was originally Indian and she could’ve been the most high-profile Indian character DC ever has but that never happened when it got adapted for TV. Making Felicity Indian would be doing the very thing that Teen Titans writers should’ve done with Jinx, since she got whitewashed.

Not just because she now has paler skin, but she’s portrayed as a generic Western witch instead of the Indian she was. It would be in some regards far more controversial, if because it’s so common for some fans to identify with and relate to her a lot that turning her into an Indian werehyena seamstress would be taking away the Felicity they knew and identified with. But one that’s compounded by anti-Indian/anti-South Asian racism, now that Felicity Smoak is part Indian. Expect them to sound and behave exactly like alt-right trolls, since they essentially and practically are one themselves.

The fact that these women identified so much with her that it’s not a surprise they live vicariously through her and bash on Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen’s original girlfriend in the programme early on. Imagine if Felicity Smoak’s retooled to be an Indian werehyena who sews for a living, is shy and wary of people, watches football matches and reads books in her spare time. Fans would say she’s no longer relatable, if because she’s now the near-opposite of how she’s portrayed on television. Ironically Felicity Smoak, as originally presented in comics, is wary and dark-haired so this Felicity’s closer to that portrayal.

If Olicity fans say Arrow showrunners can take liberties with the source material, they should be fine with this reimagined and rebooted Felicity Smoak. But since she’s no longer this white self-insert now that she’s Indian, they’ll complain about her a lot and all day long on their social media profiles. Like I said, they’ll start saying that she’s unrelatable and unrecognisable. It’ll be worsened by racism, since the Felicity Smoak they know is now replaced by this distrusting, timid Indian woman. Weirdly enough, since both Felicity Smoak and the Hyena (a werehyena) come from the Firestorm comics this makes her reinvention as a werehyena a proper update in a way the Arrowverse version isn’t.

Let’s not forget that before Felicity Smoak showed up on telly, there was Smallville’s Chloe Sullivan. Smallville is a reimagining of Superman where you have a blonde hacker with an unrequited crush on the protagonist, except that she’s Chloe Sullivan an original character for that programme and she ended up with Green Arrow instead. An odd coincidence at first, but since Smallville was around earlier it’s only realistic for (other) people to be more familiar with it than they do with Arrow. It would’ve even influenced the way Felicity Smoak got to be presented, perhaps unconsciously so whether or not Oliciters like it or not.

In fact, I could go on saying that Arrowverse Felicity Smoak is really just the 2010s version of Chloe Sullivan. Smallville was around since 2001 and ended in 2012, Arrow was around since 2012 and ended in 2020 so this proves my point right. But it would be interesting that if Felicity Smoak ever gets reimagined as an Indian werehyena, one would wonder who’d be the successor to her Arrowverse incarnation now that Felicity has become too difficult and too brown for Oliciters to identify with and live vicariously through. I guess it seems relatable in this case is essentially a white geek insert.

Rao forbid if you make Felicity Smoak into an Indian werehyena seamstress with a penchant for watching football and shying away from people, because that would mean Oliciters will no longer project themselves a lot onto her and would probably move onto the next white geek character to live vicariously through instead. Felicity’s only relatable if she’s a white geek, which says a lot about their contempt for Laurel Lance. A woman who might be their rival in some sense as she was Oliver’s first girlfriend (or something like that), an Indian Felicity Smoak would be Laurel Lance squared as it’s compounded by racism.

I do wonder if it’s a vicious form of living vicariously through a character, especially if that character’s a white female geek like them as if they can’t relate to a character who’s not that geeky let alone who’s the lover of somebody they have a crush on. Like they really want that guy for themselves, but can’t stand it if he’s with somebody else so they bash that other girl real badly. It would be worsened by racism, since it gives them a bigger reason to hate her if Iris West’s any indication. An Indian Felicity Smoak would really be DC Comics’s version of Arrowverse Iris as regular Iris is white there.

I remember writing about what would happen if Patty Spivot were presented as fat and big into romance novels, the big problem with her as I realised is that she’s created as a sort of distraction for Barry Allen. If she was portrayed as more into romance novels than comic books, is fat and also richer than him it wouldn’t be a portrayal that would endear to fans that much. Not only she would be harder to project their fantasies onto, but with Barry coming from a working class family means she has all the means to not only get an education easily but also more to spend on. Even if she has worse taste than he does.

Likewise, an Indian werehyena seamstress Felicity would be harder for white Oliciters to project onto since she’s so unlike the version they identified with a lot. She’s not a self-insert anymore, but a threat to the Felicity they once knew and loved. As for Caitlin Snow, it would be darkly ironic (and comical) that for all their habit of dehumanising Iris West it’s Caitlin who’ll be dehumanised big time in the new Flash season since she’ll become a werewolf sooner. But that would also test the limits of the characters they identify with a lot, since that involves a big change to her.

Far bigger than racebending Iris, since Caitlin now has a different powerset and would even be part of DC’s Creature Commandos (a monster team) replacing their earlier werewolf character. Making Caitlin Snow into a werewolf means she now has her own niche and role, since the Flash’s original ice character is none other than Captain Cold and in the comics he was a Flash character longer than she has. But that would mean Captain Cold was underused in the Flash, since he could’ve easily done the things Caitlin Snow did. Well, it might even be the right time to bring him back now that she’ll be a werewolf in Season 9.

Who knows if Snowbarries would still relate to her now that she’s a werewolf, but that would test their limits of identifying with her now that she’s gone off the deep end with her new powers. (Well, the only good to come out of this is that DC now has their own Rahne Sinclair, who is Marvel’s female werewolf character by the way.) But I think this would test the degree of identification they have with these characters.

Kind of uncomfortable to wear

It seems in the case with live action superhero productions, in the quest to make superhero outfits look realistic they ironically went for the more uncomfortable outfits. They look good, but don’t do good for the wearers. According to this link, it was so uncomfortable that one of them hallucinated and sweated too much and others couldn’t heart well. To be fair, there are some superhero productions that do take cues from the real world. But if they did it more often, that involves realising what is not only comfortable to wear but also what actual people wear.

Sometimes it’s even racier and flashier than what you see in superhero films and television, so it’s going to be a case of real life being weirder than fiction. Funny enough, the fashion designer Pam Hogg has made an outfit that resembles one of the Huntress’s costumes. It’s not an exact copy, but it’s a funny little coincidence that a garment made by a fashion designer looks more like what the character wears in the comics than what she did in Arrow. Outside of cosplay, this gives a good idea of what one of Huntress’s outfits would look like in the real world if because there’s an article of clothing that resembles it.

I guess when it comes to making a believable superhero outfit, the real lesson isn’t just to make it comfortable but also have an actual basis in reality. If because celebrities like Beyonce as well as fashion models have worn outfits similar to what cartoon superheroes wear, sometimes uncannily so, you got a good foundation for making superhero outfits look realistic but by basing them off of what actual people wear. Because Beyonce wore fishnets before, if you want to know what a real black Black Canary would be like just google Beyonce fishnets and you’re good to go.

It would be an awkward epiphany realising that some celebrities, who aren’t cosplaying any cartoon character, dress more like the characters in question than the live action actors who play them. I guess when it comes to attempting to make superhero outfits look realistic is that not only do most of them only look good on paper, but also they don’t resemble outfits worn by actual people especially as time passed. It would be like trying to draw realistic looking humans but never taking up life drawing classes and drawing cues from photographs and real life.

I guess this might be why they’re so uncomfortable to wear, unstylish even (well for some outfits) as it seems like most costume designers don’t bother taking more cues from the real world to actually make a realistic superhero outfit, let alone one that’s comfortable to wear. If there’s anything that can be learnt from dressmaking, especially if it’s never used for production costuming, is to strike a sweet spot between comfort and aesthetic appeal. It’s not just about making the right fit, but also making it actually wearable especially if certain cases don’t turn out well.

Well, I’m speaking from personal experience cutting and sewing outfits. I still think my analogy makes sense, especially if those cartoonists not only don’t bother taking inspiration from actual fashions and clothing but also don’t know how to sew outfits themselves. That’s what I suspected, if because that involves realising what not only fits well, but also what’s comfortable to wear at all. I know this from experience, so that’s going to be a valuable experience to have and share.

Admittedly, most superhero costumes don’t look good in the real world. It’s not just the cut and the colours, but also the way the garments are coordinated sometimes clash real badly. Jean Grey’s Phoenix outfit only looks good on paper, cosplayers can’t make it look good in the real world. Same with Wolverine’s outfits, they’re too garish and ugly to ever look good in reality. So changes are made, especially if these outfits look terrible. Opera gloves and thigh high boots don’t look good with a sash together with a catsuit.

Why on earth would a speedster like Barry Allen wear what appears to be yellow rainboots when sneakers are more practical? Even without live action productions taking liberties with the outfits, most superhero costumes are as impractical as they’re ugly. Not only do certain organs risk spilling out by chance, but they’re not what actual athletes wear when they do similar things. My father runs in a shirt and leggings with sneakers, that’s more sensible than a catsuit with gloves and rainboots.

I guess costume designers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, they have to please the fans even as they take liberties with the characters’ outfits. For some characters like Barry Allen, a radical redesign’s needed if because the actual outfit’s too cumbersome to bother running or sprinting in and it goes both ways. The tights could stay, well in some form or another, but the boots, cowl and gloves have got to go. It shouldn’t be replaced by a hoodie, since that’s not what sprinters and runners actually wear.

When creating a superhero outfit at all, you’d have to look to what dancers and athletes wear. They wear outfits designed for people to wear when doing any or a specific form physical activity, you can even look to what celebrities wear when you’re itching for a flashy superhero outfit. Even then, you’d also need to learn how to sew your own garments to know what it’s like to dress in something that’s comfortable (or not).

Iconic

There’s a Twitter thread made by somebody where he said that the most iconic cartoon characters of the 2010s were actually from Internet memes, though I might add the rage comics characters since they appeared in the early half of the 2010s and later half of the 2000s. This got me into thinking which sort of fictional characters (in general) and celebrities are more iconic to the general public, the normies among us geeks. I have a relative who didn’t know who Harley Quinn is until recently, so it’s not a stretch for other people to not know who Felicity Smoak is either.

Harley Quinn is a clown-themed villainess while Felicity Smoak is a hacker and computer programmer, I suspect that since most people (including myself at times) don’t regularly follow and consume superhero media especially as time passes either they don’t know them, mistake them for another character (my father did this with Jon Lane Kent, Superman’s son when he came out as bisexual) or pretty much forget about them. While it could be said there are celebrities that also get forgotten with time, except that when it comes to regular exposure you’d have to guess who still makes the headlines when they hit them.

They might be relevant for all the wrong reasons, like whether or not Johnny Depp abused Amber Heard, but they still carry far more weight than whatever Stephen Amell’s up to. More people have watched Johnny Depp’s movies (including Pirates of the Caribbean) than they do with Arrow, so more people know who Depp is than they do with Mr Amell. As for fictional characters, if we were to exempt memetic ones like Pepe, Forever Alone, Virgin and Chad, we’re left with the likes of Dracula, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. They belong to the upper echelon of iconic fictional characters.

Felicity Smoak’s way too cult to ever achieve Miss Marple’s heights, no amount of piracy will make her anywhere as famous as Marple is. The Winchester brothers of Supernatural are nowhere as iconic as Hercule Poirot and the Tuppence couple are. Most people don’t watch Arrow, let alone on a daily basis and obsessing over it that much and if they did have something to obsess over it would most likely be either a popular celebrity (like say Dua Lipa for instance) or something in general that’s popular with the masses. It could be football for most countries, it could also be any other popular sport.

I still don’t think Felicity Smoak’s anywhere as iconic as say Miss Marple is, well perhaps outside of her fandom and even then the number of Felicity Smoak fans is smaller than the number of Agatha Christie fans. While piracy does lead to greater accessibility, now with the Internet it’s possible to find a pirated copy on the go but when it comes to media that are proven bestsellers, blockbusters and ratings hits there will be more people who know those stories better than they do with something that’s not that popular. Online piracy helps but to an extent since there wouldn’t just be books that lack readily available pirated copies and not just due to copyright laws.

But also because sometimes the books that become bestsellers are also the books that get pirated a lot and that there will be things people prioritise over, it could be personal preference but sometimes it’s got to do with having something important to do. It might be possible to take a break from parenting and having a job, even two jobs, to watch something like Arrow but even then not everybody has the time for Arrow. They don’t the time to stream Arrow or pirate it in any way, even on YouTube they’d watch (or listen to) something else instead if they ever did. So Felicity will never be as iconic as Miss Marple is.

While there are characters who are iconic to some people, only a handful are truly iconic to many more. Sometimes they might not even have a single creator/author and they may even have anonymous authors like any memetic cartoon character around.

Why do people racebend?

It bears repeating because I think a good number of people racebend is either they want to see themselves represented in the media they consume or want something else represented as it gets tiring to see the same old stereotype or portrayal again. There are non-racebent characters that may qualify but they’re either too obscure and unpopular to ever register in their minds or that some of them are demeaning portrayals and stereotypes. In the case with Disney’s Pocahontas, this is a gross distortion of an actual person’s history.

If you believe the Mattaponi people and their oral traditions, Pocahontas was raped, traumatised and poisoned to death. Some even compare this to what happened to JonBenet Ramsey, if this is true then it’s not a good idea to age up an otherwise underaged child even if she lived long ago. Pocahontas was believed to be about 12 when she encountered John Smith, she never saved him and in three to four years time, she married Kocoum and had a family with him. Then she got kidnapped and abused, to the point where she got depressed and needed both her sister and brother in law to console her.

It’s quite unfortunate to see that she’s better remembered as a cartoon character rather than as an actual victim of repeated assault, even worse that Disney did the research and had Native people playing the characters only to create a blatant lie about her life. That makes reimagining Poison Ivy to be Native American less offensive than this, if because one involves glamourising the trauma the real Pocahontas went through. Poison Ivy’s not a fictionalised portrayal of a real person, plus Native American representation is utterly lacking in the Batman comics.

Funny enough, I see Tim Drake as part Native American because it’s interesting to explore that angle and similarly there’s not enough Native Americans living in Gotham (and Metropolis). Even though a good number of indigenous people actually live in cities, this doesn’t get represented in the media. Even then, I think racebending two existing white characters may be preferable to a bastardised portrayal of a real person in this light. It’s not perfect representation, but it’s better than having a real culture or person misrepresented.

Supposing if somebody at DC has the audacity to racebend Felicity Smoak by making her Anglo-Indian in both the movie and comic book, you might say that DC would be better off making original Indian characters. This would be fine and dandy if only these people patronised comics and fictions as made by actual Indians, some of these aren’t hard to find online (go check out Arvind Gupta’s collection at Archive.org). It seems unless if they actually read Indian comics and watched Indian programmes, their complaints about making original Indian characters ring hollow.

Especially when these original Indian characters are either really obscure (Celsius, the original Hyena), whitewashed (Jinx from Teen Titans) or offensive stereotypes. Like I said, this makes racebending one of the more doable, though less than ideal ways of creating more representation where there was none. I don’t think there’s ever an Indian Arrow character, there’s no Indian Arrow actor/actress either. Turning Felicity Anglo-Indian may not be the most ideal way to bring in Indian representation.

But that’s preferable to creating a stereotypical Indian character, it would like expecting Native American women to identify with Disney’s Pocahontas when in reality she’s a massive distortion of the real character in question. Making Tim Drake Native American would actually be less offensive in this regard, if because Native American representation is lacking in Batman comics and there aren’t a lot of geeky Native American characters either. Same with making Poison Ivy Native American.

To return to the topic of Felicity Smoak, would Oliciters identify with Felicity Smoak more if she were portrayed as more stereotypically feminine (obsessed with fashion and makeup, doesn’t know how to use computers and read romance novels)? I suspect there are people who do want an original character of colour to identify with, the problem is they get confronted with stereotypes that racebending existing white characters is the viable alternative.

Native American women don’t identify with Disney’s Pocahontas because she’s a massive distortion of not only a real person, but also perpetuates misconceptions about indigenous women that even contributes to the phenomenon of MMIW. I doubt anybody would identify with a Felicity Smoak who’s portrayed as money-obsessed, fashion-obsessed and ditzy. Nobody wants a distortion of what white women are like, so it’s wise to avoid doing the same to indigenous women or anybody else really.

Now that’s something Oliciters need to consider if Felicity becomes Anglo-Indian. Perhaps outside of Indian media, Felicity Smoak being an Anglo-Indian seamstress is something you don’t see it often in Western media. Even if fashion houses have a habit of outsourcing production to South Asian countries like India, even if Asian American women do work in the garment industry Asian seamstresses are pretty underrepresented in Western media.

It seems the most commonly encountered portrayals of Asian women in Western media are either submissive, seductive, involved in STEM or martial arts but not somebody involved in dressmaking even though studies about Asian women in the garment industry aren’t that hard to find online. Now that’s the representation that’s necessary if because we really don’t get to encounter them often in fiction, one would be lucky to stumble upon PDF documents about Chinese American seamstresses.

But you’d be really unlucky to find these same characters in fictional stories, if because many writers tend to be bound by stereotypes about Asian women. I could also say the same things about black seamstresses where outside of black literatures, you don’t see them that often in fictions by nonblack writers. They do exist in the real world, but they’re unheard of in fiction. Turning Felicity into an Anglo-Indian seamstress provides representation in a way an Ashkenazi Felicity doesn’t.

You might say that Jewish seamstresses are also underrepresented, but if you wanted me to be honest despite being the daughter of somebody who knows coding and having never left the Philippines I’m not that technologically proficient beyond using a PC (and that’s about it). But I do know how to sew, I first got into it when I was in high school and didn’t do it often until I was in my early twenties. Felicity Smoak, as presented in Arrow, is a character I can’t immediately identify with in any way.

I think the only people she ever struck a big chord with are either massive geeks who like geeky characters, technology connoisseurs and people who like looking at a shirtless Stephen Amell (evidenced by that she also does the same thing too). Pardon if it sounds too cynical and harsh, but it’s clear with the latter that they hate Laurel Lance (who seemed to be Oliver’s original girlfriend and was based on his comics girlfriend Black Canary). If because they want Oliver/Stephen for themselves.

Now if Felicity Smoak were to be reimagined as a timid Indian woman who turns into a hyena and wants her parents to find a partner for her, you might say this Felicity lacks agency because she wants her family to find a husband for her even though that ironically shows more agency than merely having the guy you have a crush on fall in love with you. That would be more feminist this way, well as feminist as it gets as arranged marriages are still popular in India.

It would be white feminism in action, in the sense that Oliciters and especially white Oliciters would impose their cultural values onto Indians (decried as inferior) without knowing or taking into account that arranged marriages make up the majority of marriages in India. It seems Felicity Smoak would only be feminist, if she were measured by white Western standards instead of being evaluated by Indian standards. At best it’s misguided, at worst it’s patronising. It seems white Oliciters would start acting and sounding exactly like Alt-Righters here.

While not all forms of fan racebending are made equally, in some cases it creates even more stereotypes as it is with making Tim Drake Asian American, it does open up a room of possibilities to what else the characters can be. Sometimes there’s even official racebending by actual DC staff, take Batwheels for instance, Mr Freeze was made black there. A rather unexpected choice in some regards, but it does count as an official instance of racebending by DC itself. Don’t be surprised if DC has the audacity to make Felicity Smoak Indian or Valentina Vostok Yakut, they’ve done this before and they will do it again.

Who is this Harley Quinn?

I have a relative who recently stumbled upon the DC character Harley Quinn, saying she didn’t know about her until now. Comes to think of it, there are probably a lot more people who don’t know who Felicity Smoak is in terms of what they’re exposed to, what they consume and what they actually know about. This isn’t helped by that Arrow gets rather low ratings, which got lower as time passed, so the number of people who really know Felicity Smoak would be pretty small. Perhaps much smaller than the ones for Geoff Hurst, Steve Gerrard and Matt le Tissier.

Okay not everybody knows these guys either, especially in countries where football’s not that popular but since it’s a globally popular sport it’s safe to say that in places where the sport is popular people in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda would’ve known these people on some level. You’re much likelier to find a Ugandan who’s into Matt le Tissier than one who’s into Felicity Smoak, or at least knows this guy to some extent. If Harley Quinn isn’t that well-known to those who aren’t big Batman or DC fans, then Felicity Smoak isn’t well-known to those who’re not into Arrow either.

At best, they are semi-obscure characters. They’re not entirely that unknown but still not so well-known to the general, not-geeky public as far as I know about it. You might try to disprove my claim, but as it stands if not everybody knows who Felicity Smoak and Harley Quinn are it’s safe to say they’re not too exposed to these characters. They are semi-obscure at the end of the day, especially to non-geeks no matter how hard you try to assert your opinion.

You can’t steal my guy

For certain female fans, they get too attached to a hot guy (or hot guy character) that they get sussy of any female character who gets close to them, worsened if they are either of another ethnicity or are disabled in some way. While this would be understandable if they were merely jealous, if it gets compounded by either racism or ableism this would be really horrible and makes you wonder how they actually feel about being usurped by anybody who isn’t like them especially if they’re not the majority.

The Olicity fandom’s one such example of a fandom that’s rather ableist, especially when it comes to one of the characters having a drug addiction and possibly mentally ill. To reiterate what I said on Tumblr on what makes a character relatable, I can’t name any Felicity Smoak in real life but I could name more Laurel Lances. They are Marianne Faithfull, Gia Carangi, Meg Ryan and Nicole Richie*, probably many more which I’m afraid Oliciters turn a blind eye to when it comes to the possibility of more Laurel Lances in the real world.

Now let’s say DC has the audacity to reimagine Felicity Smoak as an Anglo-Indian seamstress with crippling shyness, there will be a backlash to her being racebent especially by white female fans who identify with Arrow’s version a little too much. As what Stitch said about Blaise Zabini, sometime before he was revealed to be black he was the subject of a lot of fanfictions and fan-made couples (shipping). Once he turned out to be black, white fan support for him declined though there were those who identified with him now that he’s one of them.

Racebending Felicity Smoak in official DC canon would be no different, though one with greater infamy in that a good number of able-bodied white women identified with that version’s Felicity even though it would be fair for South Asian women to have their own Felicity should it ever occur at all. The former was already catered to a lot, to the point of being spoilt by showrunners when they got their ship validated and canonised. While there are people who did racebend Felicity before, this one would be the one DC will do.

It would not be something Olicity fans ever wanted of their favourite character, the one character they identify with a lot. But I think this is the Felicity Smoak others will gravitate to, it may not be ideal since you have pundits saying that DC should’ve used an original Indian character. But when the other Indian characters aren’t that well-known (Celsius, the original Hyena), whitewashed (Jinx) or are racial stereotypes that racebending Felicity’s a doable option.

Not the best, but still better than the other options since Felicity Smoak’s better known than the others perhaps save for Jinx. But since Jinx got whitewashed on the Teen Titans cartoon, Felicity Smoak would be the best known Desi character DC’s ever got. The backlash against Felicity Smoak would be really vicious, that’s if she got played by India’s Kareena Kapoor instead of Emily Bett Rickards even though the latter already has had a good run at playing the character.

So it’s only fair Kapoor would play her too, that’s if she were to appear in DCEU at all. Since DCEU has a wider audience than Arrowverse does, given the latter tends to have rather low ratings this means the Kareena Kapoor version will be better known to many more people than the Rickards version does. Also, Kareena Kapoor has relatively more experience in acting than Rickards does but one of the first international productions she’ll partake in so this would be really big news.

Especially if you look at the bright side from an Indian perspective where a Bollywood actress works for a well-known film brand that it’s a badge of joy for a countryperson like her to participate in such a production, though I’m afraid too many Olicity fans would miss this one. I think that’s the case with what Arrowverse Iris West got, too many fans overidentify with Caitlin Snow even though she’s the one who could turn into an evil werewolf someday.

Karma for calling Iris’s actress a gorilla when it’s Caitlin who’ll get dehumanised big time, likewise it would be karma for Olicity fans to say that Arrow can take liberties with canon when they start throwing tantrums over a racebent Felicity Smoak. Racism is the main culprit behind their sentiments, it could be in the present for Snowbarry fans or Felicity being an Indian werehyena in the future. They don’t want any nonwhite woman stealing their man, then attack them if they do.

It’s the same thing they did to Joan Watson’s actress Lucy Liu in that version of Sherlock, no nonwhite woman can steal the white man they want. They may say they’re not racist if they desire a nonwhite man, but if they have no sincere interest in social issues affecting people of colour, allowing POC to speak for themselves and do whatever they wanted or no real interest in their cultures then their interest is superficial. That’s why I think Rey would’ve been worse treated had she been played by an Asian actress.

Some people would ship her with Kylo Ren, most wouldn’t because they’d say they can’t relate to a Asian or any nonwhite woman. This is the fate that will befell Felicity Smoak should she ever be racebent in the DCEU at all, Olicity fans will turn against Felicity now that she’s no longer a white westerner they’ll call her unrelatable. Ironically this Felicity, with her experiences with missed arranged marriages and the like, would be more relatable to South Asian women as arranged marriages are still the norm there.

When able-bodied white women overly identify with a certain character, they’re quick to lash out any character who they see as competing with them over the same man. They project themselves onto the characters so much they see others as competition, even when they really don’t. And then they get what they want, sometimes at the expense of others. When they don’t get what they want, or rather they don’t get what they expect they lash out.

To the point where it’s not even a good idea to pander to them at all, if you give them something unexpected by doing something new and different to the character they love. This gets worse if it’s compounded by other evils like ableism and racism, like say supposing if Caitlin does become a werewolf that not only takes Snowbarry shippers by surprise but also horrifies them now that she’s no longer human. Should these ever happen at all, Oliciters and Snowbarrys would get a taste of their own medicine.

*The four horsewomen of the apocalypse if you’re an Oliciter.

Can’t get casual readers

When it comes to outcries about the American comics industry not doing as well as the Japanese one, it actually does well if you were to bring up not only graphic novels aimed at younger readers but also comic strip compilations. Garfield has frequented the New York Times Bestseller list several times over, probably far more than any Marvel graphic novel has done. Newspaper comic strips, by default, tend to have more casual readers than Marvel does.

I think this was brought up in an article about Webtoon having more readers than Marvel does, which says a lot about which kinds of comics more people actually read. That’s not to say Marvel and DC lack casual readers, they do to some extent and I’m one of them. But the problems lie with not only inaccessibility but the fact that Marvel and DC (until recently) have come to pander to hardcore readers a lot so it’s inevitable they’ll struggle to grab casual readers.

By hardcore readers, you have constant references to things that will be missed out by others and in-jokes. In-jokes like whether or not Captain America will date Bucky, these are things those who like them will ever get. There will always be people who will not be beholden to those things, just as I’m not beholden to Nightwing. He’s generally touted as DC’s male sex symbol, never mind those who may be more attracted to others.

It still feels like pandering if they pander to a certain audience in-canon, so that’s partly one of the reasons why DC and Marvel have a hard time getting casual readers at all. Although newspaper comics aren’t any better, because they don’t pander hard to certain readers so they don’t have much difficulty getting casual readers.

Even if they gravitate to certain cartoons, they’re not in danger of losing more readers the way DC and Marvel have until recently. I have yet to read the Marvel Infinity webcomics, but I do get the impression that Marvel and DC struggle to get new readers. This isn’t helped by the fact that some of those who would’ve been fans of Flash through the television gravitate more to the television series.

Worsened by that the comics themselves don’t resemble the television series, in which their version of Wally West is white and has Linda Park as his wife. She also never became a superhero, which says a lot about the liberties taken with the adaptation. (This would worsen if Caitlin does become a werewolf.) While many anime adaptations aren’t any better, some do take liberties with the source material through fillers.

But it’s easier to get into the manga source material in the sense of having greater fidelity to the original medium than you do with DC and Marvel so it seems like the manga industry is doing better. Some anime character designers try to faithfully replicate the mangaka’s art style, sometimes so well that nobody can tell the difference enough to easily get into the source material.

Fidelity to the source material can help more people get into it, which may be anime’s advantage over DC and Marvel. It also helps even more if such material’s more readily available and cheaper, which’s what I got with comic strips as opposed to superhero comics. You could even find comic strips in some official newspaper websites for free, you can find comic strip books in grocery stores.

But these are things I encountered before, so I could be projecting my experiences here. Marvel and DC still have casual readers, but there are things complicating their efforts. It could be continuity, lack of fidelity to the source material or fan-pandering that keeps people from getting into comics at all.