unserious.

she • 22 • Asian

[elektrastat]

this weird trend of dc comics giving blonde hair and green/blue eyes to half asian female characters

[elektrastat]

this has been nagging me since the issue came out tbh.

rose was acknowledged as asian in issue #4 of this run. she was racially profiled by some racist in a diner, and yet, she looks white. the writing, i can tell, IS trying to acknowledge her heritage which is great bc it rarely ever is in the comics. but idk if it’s an editorial thing or just lack of communication b/w the writer and artist or just a decision on the artist’s part ….bc why did she look so white ??? she looks white passing enough that the profiling doesn’t even make sense. this is why i feel some major changes in her character design need to be made.

this is her in the latest issue. why does she have blue eyes ??? it makes no sense ! lol !

[elektrastat]

Hey! I'm curious—do you have an all-time favorite Slade and Rose panel?

hey ! sorry it took me so long to reply to this.

no, i don’t think i have one particular favourite panel of theirs. the few that come to mind are:

this one from blackest night (?) i believe. i think about it constantly. love this whole issue and this arc of the wilson family. this panel, i feel like, encapsulates rose and slade’s relationship perfectly. something about him seeing her in his very reflection. and her catching him off guard. i love how afraid slade looks here lol. as he should be. (at what he himself has created lol)

another one that comes to mind if this one from ds16.

rose and slade basically go on this messed version of a “daddy-daughter road trip”. they’re both in disguises so it’s almost like they’re playing these parts of a father and daughter that they didn’t actually get to be to each other. billy mentions how slade has a tough time expressing that he actually *wants* her there by his side. and how she can hug him, but he can’t hug her first bc “he’d burst into flames”

so we basically see rose sneakily break that barrier while they’re on a mission. it’s such a tender moment and so weirdly sweet. it also makes me really sad cause you can see she craves a connection with her father (or any familial connection at all that she’s starved for) but has to find it in these small moments by herself.

this one is also from blackest night. surprisingly tender moment from slade who actually apologises to a grief stricken and distraught rose for the first time (they both think joey is dead) after she loses her brother. one more thing slade takes away from her. not that it actually matters or makes a difference at all. but he’s genuinely remorseful here

[frenchcoucou]

nobara ☆

ac: _3aem

[elektrastat]

as hopeless as it sounds. i feel like rose is going to continue to be whitewashed as a character as long as they keep giving her white hair. it’s a deliberate move on dc editorial’s part imo. it’s given comic book artists the excuse to continue to draw her as a white girl and, in turn, the writers to continue to ignore her ethnicity and heritage. it’s erasure straight up

[elektrastat]

i don’t like jayrose as a ship at all (even as hetslop it’s just so uninspired and boring to me) but there is something about them being fwb-ish idk something about them teaming up and finding out they have lots in common and then rose’s hypersexuality taking over fueled by loneliness and the only way she knows how to get under people’s skin and dominate them/feel in control (men and women both) is by getting them into her bed…or she just fucks him to have a good time/to pass the time and jason in his own right is soooo fucking lonely and isolated that he ends up obsessing over how much they’re alike and ends up falling in “love” with her, but it’s not reciprocated so jason just ends up following her around like a lovesick puppy and rose berates him and calls him pathetic (she’s genuinely uninterested in him) and later on he recounts the tale of how “deathstroke’s daughter broke my heart” and rose laughs in his face

[elektrastat]

buzzcut rose 🫶

[elektrastat]

does anyone else ever think about the talia/lillian link of it all wrt to damian and rose. the similarities between them as characters with the caveat in mind that lili has barely been explored all that much in depth by the comics….a lot of untapped potential there

[getanshi]

to that end, i think sexism and misogyny also have something to do with the fact that like. damian is still visibly asian whereas rose’s half asian heritage (along with her mother) gets completely erased. she’s drawn with pale skin, blue eyes, light silver hair. very ostensibly a white girl. whereas with damian yes ofc whitewashing/lightwashing is a problem but i feel like as a male asian character he’s allowed to keep some of his features. darker features that is. (the fake hair eyes and in *some* cases slightly darker skin) but rose is not. it’s kind of frustrating for me as an asian female comic reader to see her keep getting whitewashed i mean it’s legit ethnic erasure atp.

cass though, like you said is allowed to be ostensibly an asian girl. whereas with rose it would make more sense narratively bc she had a closer connection with her culture and a deeper familiarity with it (she grew up with her hmong-cambodian mom, cass was raised entirely by her white father) idk when it comes to these wasian kids in dc with white dads, it’s funny how rose’s asian-ness has been completely erased and remains largely invisible

yupppp to cass and rose. i’ve touched on this b4. i think it also comes down to extremely simplified ideas about mixed children irl, that people who look more like one ethnicity are going to be closer to that ethnicity emotionally, and obviously that’s a stupid and reductive conclusion.

i’d say in the past six or so years there’s been slightly more recognition of rose’s heritage but again, not super tapped in. and i do mean *slightly*, though in my memory times when she’s really whitewashed are also times when the artists whitewash other characters like cass (COUGH COUGH DAN MORA). at least we’ll always have travis moore’s rose and the rose from that one animated movie they look so gooooooood dont talk to me about the writing idgaf

also i think damian’s whole deal also comes down to talia being a fairly well-known character in comparison to lillian (up to and including some botched sources online who list addy as rose’s mom :|) so dc can’t fully do away with it. he’s also at a different contrast with his father than rose; slade is more villainous than rose, so she can’t be demonized via her heritage, but damian is “more villainous” than bruce, so it’s more useful to use against him. scare quotes because it is scary. et cetera. comic book artists are also so dogshit at drawing nonwhite features but especially on women because 90% of them love samefaced big booby breastily looking like barbie dolls and so on but also my truth #mytruth is that artists as a whole a fucking awful at drawing asian features that don’t look like a propaganda cartoon from 1940. i blame anime.

[elektrastat]

oh, i did not mean to imply that looking one ethnicity as a mixed kid means you are more emotionally closer to it (though i mean having ethnic features does affect how you’re seen/treated in this world) i agree that overall that’s a reductive take on it. i just mean that representing rose as asian (important just in itself) would also lead to the writers not being able to avoid bringing her heritage/mother into the conversation. it also goes vice versa i think. but yes, comic book artist and how they draw the characters immensely affects how that character (of colour) is perceived

i also agree with you about the damian. talia being a famous and significant character in the comics (as well as ra’s, the league, etc) means his ethnic origins can’t be ignored. so yeah lillian as a character in her own right should be done justice. i just meant that i feel like asian female characters in particular are drawn as western by white comic artists more so than male asian characters…maybe it’s the fetishisation of wasian female characters…but i agree one again that damian’s ethnicity is weaponised against him so.

[elektrastat]

fernando pasarin’s rose in deathstroke (2016) is my absolute favourite rose. this is undoubtedly the most asian rose has ever looked. just beautiful.

[elektrastat]

so there’s this cycle

[elektrastat]

that whole “batman vs deathstroke” dick-measuring contest arc in deathstroke (2016) where they were both lead astray that damian might be slade’s son (a plot by talia to mess with their heads) got me thinking how much nuance the comic writers took away by giving rose white blonde hair. if she hadn’t been whitewashed and had been born with asian features (brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin), everybody would have doubted her parentage (except slade and lili imo). then her being born with meta-human abilities/super solider genes would have come into question as well as the fact that she was potentially someone else’s…it would have been the opportunity to explore such interesting things for both. when the dna tests are done and it’s revealed that rose IS slade’s child cause she DOES look like him despite being asian (see damian) and the fact that she has his exact abilities/enhancements by birth…it’s like have been so compelling to explore…imagine there even being a plot about someone playing with slade by suggesting that rose might actually be bruce’s….and then bruce and slade fighting about it…IMAGINE A BRUCE/LILLIAN CONNECTION ughhh it would’ve been so juicy

[elektrastat]

one of the things that irks me about rose being made cass’s mirror in the comics (which she undeniably was in the 2000s especially) is i feel like it led to her early life and the influence her mother had on her to be completely erased…like kind of in the same vein as lady shiva. an erased and absent asian mother (though shiva being a mother at all is still contestable) and a life spent being moulded by one’s father (which in rose’s case doesn’t make much sense) it’s one of the reason that i push more for the rose-damian foil bc in damian’s case….his mother and the league formed him in his early life and THAT is an important plot point in the comics i.e the league’s influence on damian and how bruce tries to…combat that if not deal with it. but lillian worth just. doesn’t exist. bc if any of the writers really wanted to expand on rose’s early life and how that affects her as a character like damian they would have to go deeper on lillian’s character and they just. don’t bother.

[paningiere]

While drawing I was thinking of Damian from Batman&Robin (2014-2017). I appreciate his haircut.

As a child and even now as an adult I always found comfort in this kind of back rubs. It warms you up and quiets the mind.

Thought of giving Damian the chance to experience that too.

[elektrastat]

rose and cass both being perfect mimics/copycats, with rose having super solider serum-powered eidetic kinaesthesia but still, is so special to me… their ability to anticipate their opponents movements and copy them perfectly…they’re each other’s perfect opponent. they compliment each other so well…

[elektrastat]

rose wilson should be a foil to damian wayne in the comics….NOT cassandra cain

[zobjilan77]

In a way, I think both works well. Starts off abit younger than Cass a decent bit older than Damian, counterpart friend enemy to both depending on the era.

[elektrastat]

i agree with this, and i do take into account the fact that rose and cass as two characters are inextricably linked in the comics but i think (and this is just my reading of it) rose is more paralleled and more similar in general to damian.

they’re both the “surprise” kids of the family (their fathers discovering of their existence after a decade of being hidden from them). they were both raised by their respective asian mothers, in cultures completely different to the cultures of their fathers. they both feel as though they have to compensate for that. they were both forced to assimilate into “western” culture and their white fathers’ doctrines. lili and talia both trained their children in combat first. their fathers were secondary influences. in general they bare resemblance to their father (in physical traits and personality) but there’s a rift between them and their fathers and they can’t really understand each other. also as the only asian kids and “bastards” of the family they feel othered by their father’s white children. i could go on.

[foggywastelandcollectorus-deact]