eloquentdrivil:

There’s way too much
pro-Mon El/pro-Karamel

discussion taking place under the protective veil of ‘Word of God’/’Death of the Author’.

• “He’s not human; stop holding him to human/earthly standards.”
• “He was born into a slave-owning society; that’s not his fault.”
  
• “When he said [x-y-z], he didn’t mean [x-y-z], he meant [a-b-ampersand]; stop taking things so literally.”

He didn’t do anything. He wasn’t born anywhere. He isn’t real.

He isn’t an actual person functioning under the circumstances of his upbringing, or reacting to outside stimuli based on the chemical impulses in his brain, because he doesn’t have one.

He’s a fictional character, whose actions, speech, history, and traits are written for him, by actual, living, breathing, thinking human beings, who sit down in a room and consciously decide who he’ll be, where he’ll come from, what he’ll say, and how he’ll react.

So when he does something on-screen, it’s reflective of the Supergirl writers who decided he would do it.

He is not real, but the people who control him sure-as-hell are.

So when we criticize the racism of replacing James – a successful black
man with a good heart and a deep, continued respect for Kara – with Mon
El – an irresponsible, entitled white prince, who owed slaves and has
openly mocked, criticized, and degraded Kara (in public) on multiple occasions that
span the entirety of the season – we’re criticizing the writers, who
purposefully decided to make these things happen.

When we criticize Mon El’s abusive behaviors – the disrespect, the mean-spirited hyper-criticism, the lying, the possessiveness, the ignoring and defying Kara’s wishes, etc. – 
we’re criticizing the writers, who purposefully decide to continue this behavior, episode after episode.

When we criticize the huge amount of screen-time dedicated to Mon El at the detriment of the other characters who play more relevant roles in the greater plot of the series, we’re criticizing the writers, who have purposefully decided to write him into more and more of the script in increasingly more irrelevant ways, while purposefully deciding to leave out the veteran characters to give him a spot (like James).

None of your arguments are actually relevant to the discussion that’s clearly going right over your head.

You’re angry that we’re attacking your ship and your character, so you jump on the defense like you think we’re grasping for unfounded arguments in a jealousy-driven ship-war, instead of acknowledging the problematic aspects of it and joining the conversation to rally the fandom against the writers who continue to disrespect and portray the character you love, and relationship you adore in a way that undermines the reasons you love it, and the potential you see in it.

The writers didn’t have to break Kara up with her black love-interest in order to be with a character who didn’t have to be a white slave-owner.

The writers wanted to break Kara up with her black love interest, and they wanted her new white love-interest to own slaves.

They weren’t obligated to make him this way.

Someone chose to give this white man the title of slave-owner, when only 151 years prior to that decision, white people literally owned enslaved black people. That means there are absolutely middle-aged people watching this show whose parents and/or grandparents either were slaves, or owned slaves.

This is not an irrelevant issue, and you cannot argue that the writers didn’t make a harmful, racist choice to include it.

They did that, they chose that, and they will continue to make this same kinds of choices regarding your favorite character if you don’t start getting angry at the writers who keep giving you a shit character to work with.

tl;dr – Mon El didn’t have to be a such terrible person; how are you not angry at the writers who continuously choose to degrade him as a character

I haven’t seen season two yet (delaying because of hearing about all this on tumblr ha) but I really appreciate this. It’s something good to keep in mind looking at all media–you can debate something in the context of a particular universe all day but it really comes down to the story the writers are choosing to tell. What kind of values does that story inherently have? What does it say? It’s a choice someone has made.