Okay, seriously, this is not funny. I just looked over Lamashtar’s Green Lantern Master Fic list (still being compiled). She found Donna Parker fic, but her two Jade stories are actually about Obsidian?

Where are all you Jade-fans who came out of the woodwork when she died to complain? Where are the resurrection stories and the alternate universe stories where Kyle died instead?

I mean, I’ve laid out my reasons for hating her on numerous forums and blogs, and no one’s been able to convince me not to, but honestly, there has to be someone out there who likes her enough to write a story that’s just about her that’s not actually about Alan, Kyle, or Todd. Don’t tell me she really is all green skin. Someone had to have liked her for her personality and not her character design or family relations, right?

A woman defined solely by her appearance and her relationships to men.

That is depressing.

As I stated earlier, I went to three different message board with Thirteen Questions about Green Lantern and asked for a general response. On Comic-Bloc the thread was entitled “Women in Green Lantern.” On YABS, it was simply called “Survey.” On Girl-Wonder.org it was called “The Green Lantern Thread.” I’m sure these things affected the respondents. As I was putting all of the questions together in one palce so I can organize my thoughts anyway. I figured I may as well publish them for the rest of you:

I counted noncommittal answers, such as “Yes and No” as ‘Abstain’ for most questions. I counted “It’s reputation is why I avoided it” as a “would drop the book over it” for Q4. I also counted “Friends told me” as countable answers because it reflects your viewpoint, even if it is based on someone else’s and this wasn’t to definitively say whether or not GL has these problems, this was purely about perception.

Since my posting record is growing increasingly pathetic in comparison to that of my distinguished peers, I figured it was high time I did a post of my own. While I was bouncing ideas around, Ragnell suggested I do an Arisia-related post. The advantage of this is that I have a lot to say about Arisia. The disadvantage– well, it’s also that I have a lot to say about Arisia. So the challenge, here, is finding a balance between saying what I want to say, and not going off on too many tangents, and if I continue this paragraph any further I’ll probably end up doing just that.

Ultimately, I decided to narrow my focus down to two particular issues– #205 and #206 of GL v2. For those of you, like myself, who have trouble associating a random number with a random event, these two issues mark the beginning of the Hal/Arisia romance. They also skeeved me out but good, which is why I decided they were worthy of analysis.

Interestingly enough, upon re-read, I found that #205 and #206 were not irredeemably skeevy material. The events in the story do make for a very problematic set-up, but the climax of the story presents a choice: Hal and Arisia’s choice to pursue a relationship. Unfortunately (and I say this from over here on my feminist soapbox) I think Englehart ended up making the wrong choice for the characters.

But, before I’d like to get into the ends of the story, I’d like to discuss its means.