InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Notifs where are you?!"

bluefall (bluefall) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-05-16 14:52:00

Entry tags:

char: cheetah/barbara minerva, char: wonder woman/diana of themyscira, creator: gail simone, creator: greg rucka, publisher: dc comics, series: when wondy was awesome, series: world of wondy

WWwA update, and Diana's take on 24
Look, pretty Diana!

For those who're interested, Chapter 17 of When Wondy was Awesome (in which Veronica Cale is Not A Nice Person and Diana writes a book) is now up at my journal. I can't put it here, because while each individual chapter is actually not so bad, the Rucka set as a whole is in flagrant violation of the 1/3 rule, and there was no way I could trim it down from the 1/2 issue format of our old LJ incarnation without shredding it. But it's good stuff, so go over there anyway. ^_^

Offered, for once, without comment.

From Rucka:

From Simone:

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bluefall
2009-05-16 06:48 pm UTC (link)

Haha, now this is the debate I thought I might provoke with those scans. I was wondering when it would come up.

See, I think the contrast is really interesting, because in the Rucka scan, we've got Diana feeling so strongly that putting a stop to torture is important, that Garibaldi thinks she won't even answer Justice League calls during her meeting with the CHR. And then in the second scan, we've got Diana threatening, if not outright indulging in torture with her own two hands.

And the thing is, I don't find those two things at all difficult to reconcile. I don't think Diana's OOC, here, with the tail-slashing, but I do think she's being stupid (torture doesn't work in situations like this, and Diana knows it), and failing to live up to her own principles. It's not unusual for that to happen to people under extreme duress. Even to people who have no possibility of getting bad mojo vibes from having a direct magical line to their soul currently sewn into the body of an evil golem. Diana has lots and lots of reasons to be failing to live up to her own principles right here. That doesn't mean she doesn't still hold those principles *or* that she's acting OOC.

(Or, necessarily, that she's being unheroic; the standard Diana strives for is quite high, and an action could easily be moral but still insufficient by Diana's reckoning. Whether or not the torture of an evil woman in an attempt to save hundreds if not thousands of innocent lives is one of those things is an argument I have no real interest in pursuing.)

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batcookies
2009-05-16 09:13 pm UTC (link)

Threatening torture?

She'd already cut Cheetah's face to get her point across.

Even if she stopped right there, she's already wounded a captured and defenseless Cheetah in order to get Cheetah to talk. The torture already started.

And I'm okay with that. I do think it's a remarkably dangerous "slippery slope" but many things heroes do fall into that category. I think most of the time things we call "torture" are unjustified, and unlikely to yield results anyway.

But I do allow for common sense, and I think it would be a poor stance for the "Avatar of Truth" to take, saying it's cut and dry/black and white. The truth of the matter is that things get complicated out there.

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bluefall
2009-05-16 09:32 pm UTC (link)

I dunno, if you're going to count a superficial cut to the face as torture, you have to start counting things like Dinah punching Ollie off his feet or Bruce smacking the Cluemaster upside the head to keep him moving as torture, too. Minerva isn't even hurt by that, her only response is a big ole indignant WTF; Bruce breaking a guy's nose in a fight is more damage and more excessive than Diana cutting Minerva's face here.

(And Minerva's hardly either captured or defenseless. I still can't buy for even a second that that flimsy-ass coil of rebar could hold her in any meaningful restraint. Admittedly, though, that's probably either a writing oversight or a penciller failure, rather than an intentional indication of something more subtle in Diana's comprehension of the situation or Cheetah's behavior, so it's probably not relevant to the conversation.)

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	batcookies 2009-05-16 09:59 pm UTC (link)
	The difference is that those things are not done with the intent of using the pain to coerce the prisoner into giving up information. Batman uses psychological torture the whole time (and honestly, how much difference is there between waterboarding and dropping a guy off a bridge then grabbing him at the last minute?) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

bluefall
2009-05-16 10:11 pm UTC (link)

Torture's not always about getting information. It can be about asserting dominance, instilling fear, coercing a particular behavior, or simply an exercise in sadism. Breaking a guy's fingers because he failed to come up with the money he owed you isn't going to get you information, but that doesn't make it any less torture. Beating and raping the new inmate because he needs to know he's at the bottom of the totem pole isn't going to get you information, but that doesn't make it any less torture. Branding the uppity POW to stop him leading prisoner revolts isn't going to get you information, but that doesn't make it any less torture.

Dinah hit Ollie to assert dominance. Bruce smacked Cluemaster around to coerce behavior. If torture is just (any degree of violence + motive associated with torture), they're both torturers.

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batcookies
2009-05-16 10:36 pm UTC (link)

Well that's where it all gets a bit sticky, doesn't it? Because hurting someone to get information IS torturing them (and yes, there are many other things that are torture too), so where do you draw the line? Cutting the face is okay, cutting the tail is not? Or maybe cutting the tail and the face are okay, since she's got a healing ability, but something else isn't? Even in the real world it's all very murky, and we can make up all the rules we want, but it's not exactly science. We can't hook up people to a machine that beeps when what you're doing is getting dangerously close to being torture (and I'm not sure what kind of consensus we'd get if we went out and tested people to find out where they really feel the "do not cross" line is). It's not something that's clear and well defined at all and I hope that "The Avatar of Truth" doesn't end up saying otherwise.

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gargoylekitty
2009-05-16 10:13 pm UTC (link)

While I agree that she's hardly defenseless, I do think that the 'superficial cut to the face' counts as the torture being started. Cutting someone's face with something you just threw at them is a lot more of a threat than the action with the tail. The face is more visible and your head is home to the organs that perceive 4 out of 5 senses. It's serious, despite it not being treated as such. Also it wasn't done in a fight, so the comparison to Bruce breaking a nose isn't applicable. She wasn't stopping her, she was attempting to intimidate her.

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bluefall
2009-05-16 10:20 pm UTC (link)

Also it wasn't done in a fight

Precisely why I used that comparison. Bruce's act of breaking someone's nose, in a fight while attempting to subdue someone, is excessive violence. It's extreme, over-the-top, painful and disfiguring and dangerous, more than is needed and more violent and cruel than can actually be justified.

It is in every way more extreme than a superficial cut to the cheek.

It is far more brutal compared to what is actually required to subdue someone, than a cut to the cheek is compared to what is actually required to keep someone subdued.

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	gargoylekitty 2009-05-16 10:24 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, it is and Bruce isn't Diana. Though honestly a good writer wouldn't have him doing such things. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	broblawsky 2009-05-17 11:10 am UTC (link)
	Wait, how is breaking someone's nose over the top when trying to subdue them? If you want to disable someone efficiently, you pretty much have to hit them in the face. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	scottyquick 2009-05-17 05:19 pm UTC (link)
	Bruce can do this. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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