Yet another rant on Brand New Day

[liliaeth]

I've been thinking about BND, and one huge problem I have with the current supporting cast is that Lilly Hollister, whom the writers see as the new love interest, is boring as hell. She is so one dimensional that she makes Gwen Stacy look interesting and coming from me that's saying something.

Not only is she's a clear sufferer from the designated love interest syndrome, but on top of that, they seem to have given her only two defining features.

1. She's Harry Osborn's girlfriend
2. She's this politician's daughter

And that's it, that's all the writers deem important about this character.

I'm just saying, why should I give a damn about a character who's only importance is in how she relates to the male characters around her?

This isn't just me being a Mary Jane/Peter shipper and wanting to get the marriage back, this is a pure case of bad writing and clear disinterest with female characters by the male writers of Amazing.

Carly might be salvageable, but Lilly... they'd have to completely rewrite her, to give her even a hint of a personality. (kinda like the writers of the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon did with Gwen Stacy)

In fact, right now, I'm more interested in seeing Peter get together with Vic Tanner, the cop that keeps showing up, than I am in seeing him get anywhere near either Lilly or Carly who's tainted by proximity.

Just think about it, if they'd made Vic a woman, and given said woman the exact same lines they gave the male character. Putting her in the exact same situations. Then she might actually be a potentially interesting love interest. Primarily, because she'd have a life and interests beyond who s/he's dating or who her/his daddy is.

And you'd have an understandable reason for Peter not telling him/her that he's Spider-Man, because Vic would ahve to arrest him if s/he knew.

But of course, Vic is allowed a personality, because he's male, something that female characters are no longer allowed to have since OMD started.*grumble*

Comments

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Also: Lilly is, as far as I know, the Spider-verse's first noticeably mixed-race character (her dad is black, but assuming that her blonde hair is at all natural, her mom must have been white), and her third personality trait so far, which you left out, is that she appears to be ready to cheat on Harry with Peter.

If she'd simply been a white female character, this would merely be unimaginative characterization (after all, the Spider-verse already has a number of admirable white female characters, to offset the potential bad behavior on the part of an individual white female character), but because she's the first female character in the Spider-verse whose parents are two different races, it creates all sorts of (to be fair to the writers, I'm sure unintended) issues regarding racial characterization.

In that sense, it's kind of like Martha Jones on Doctor Who; it's great that they finally got around to giving the Doctor a black female companion, and Martha is an awesome character besides, but regardless of the writers' apparently genuinely good intentions, it feels really creepy that the first black girl in the TARDIS is the first companion who was explicitly unloved by the Doctor.

[liliaeth]

Honestly, I don't think they really even thought about it that far. See, I don't think they even realize just how stupid and boring they're making her look.

Because they just don't care about the character of the love interest, beyond, 'see pretty girl'. Well that and she would have to be blond, cause how else could they use her as a Gwen Stacy substitute.
Which I'm pretty sure she's supposed to be.

Nice quote

[(Anonymous)]

If a thing's worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
-- G.K. Chesterton


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Hello

[(Anonymous)]

I'm new here, just wanted to say hello and introduce myself.