Annotated 27-20
So if this sequence opens a bit like a coffee date and its climax involves one of our figures releasing pent-up emotion in the other’s arms, this would be the part where one of the lovers gets a sudden rush of sexual shame. Maybe they’ve woken up in the wrong bed, or maybe they just got a text from their husband at the wrong moment. In any case, they realize in a rush that they’ve betrayed their husband and/or their own self-concept, and then they turn that self-hatred outward. “You twisted temptress! How dare you do this to me, you whore!”
There was a vocal minority of commenters still siding against Shanna at this point (one of them cheered on the slap, facetiously or not). I’m pretty easygoing about people reading my work how they want–if you don’t agree with the interpretation in the last paragraph, for instance, that’s fine by me–but that got on my nerves. Sometimes I want ambiguity about who is and isn’t the bad guy, but this wasn’t one of those times: the ones committing and abetting murder are, in fact, the bad guys, and the one trying to stop them is not.
I say that, fully aware that Shanna is a challenge for the nerdy reader to like, especially at first. Accepting her as a protagonist means accepting it’s possible for good people to hate your nerd shit and sometimes even have a point. That can be hard to do if that’s where you’ve built your identity, and unlike in Fans, this Shanna is not (yet) surrounded by a bunch of nerds whose sentiments balance hers out a bit. But regardless, thinking outside the tribe seems like a necessary exercise to me. Unthinking loyalty hasn’t helped our society much of late.
I like Shanna and I agree that she’s not an easy person to like at times. The genius bashing a few days ago seems like the bitter envy of someone who’s great at criticism, but not creativity.
I think “genius bashing” is an unfair characterization. She didn’t criticize Mozart, Einstein or HR *because* they were geniuses, she simply called BS on the idea that being a genius means that you’re above concerns of petty morality. That’s a very Randian viewpoint that, frankly, I find abhorrent.
This. She never said (or implied) he was bad because he was a genius. She said being a genius isn’t a moral “get out of jail free” card.
And I’m inclined to agree. In fact, if anything, the smarter you are, the harder it is to argue that you “couldn’t think of a better solution”.
If anyone read it as “genius bashing”, that’s… something they’d have to have brought to the table from the outside, and thus more telling of them than the comic.
It’s Edison not Einstein and it sounds like the same reasons all the Tesla disciples cite. And it’s not just the genius bashing, but the iconoclasm. I take a dim view on critics who never lived in those times and had to make the decisions they did.
“Einstein” was just a typo. I’m not a “Tesla disciple” by any means; I happen to agree that Edison did some pretty shady things, but I don’t think that devalues his achievements, and I’m not really interested in debating whether he was justified in his actions. It’s just an example. Like CBob said, it sounds like your reading of Shanna’s line is being colored by past arguments you’ve had.
People have always had trouble separating a person’s character from their accomplishments. Nowadays it often manifests as “cancel culture”, but it’s not that different from McCarthyism, it’s just coming from the other side of the political spectrum. People boycotted the Beatles because they claimed to be bigger than Jesus; people boycotted Elton John because he’s gay.
Personally, I try to avoid that. Wagner was an antisemite who had multiple affairs with married women, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy his music. The point is that “geniuses” have human foibles just like all of us, and there’s no sense in pretending otherwise. Putting them on a pedestal is setting yourself up for disappointment. Just like Carol.
But there are always plenty of people who did live in those times who managed to not possess the faults in question. “The times they were in” is never more than an amelioration rather than an excuse
That sword cuts apologists who weren’t around just as readily as critics. Arguably more so, as at least the critics are arguing from a framework of some kind, as opposed to just a blank appeal to “but you weren’t there, so you can’t really totally know for sure”.
The position is also weak because it implies a demand for absolute conditions: either you know exactly everything about how it was, or you know nothing. Literally no human knowledge can survive this test, so it’s a pretty obvious shutdown tactic rather than a real argument.
I never thought Shanna had even the tiniest of points with the attitude she would later sum up as “I have a problem with fucking unreality being marketed as a market alternative to reality.” Or that that really qualified as nerd-bashing, unless you define “anyone who sees value in any fictional medium” as a nerd.
That said, completely unconnected to that, I didn’t think there was any ambiguity that she had a whole ton of “you’re an accessory to murder and I’m trying to stop what will eventually turn out to be a literal supervillain” moral high ground over Carol.
If there’s any ambiguity left, it’s about Carol’s potential for redemption. There’s still hope for her at this point in the story, but it will have to come from within herself, now that Shanna failed to convince her.
P.S. I like the juxtaposition of perspectives in the last two panels!
“I’m fully aware that if you don’t side with Shanna and/or have criticism about her, you’re a nerd who needs to look away from your computer box.” XD
Got to love those.
I think you’re conflating two very different things with that “and/or.” I criticized Shanna earlier in this chapter (see “she will always take that shit too far”), and likable characters will criticize her later. Criticism is fine. It’d be pretty hypocritical of me to demand unquestioning worship of my fictional character who rails against the unquestioning worship of fictional characters.
Taking sides goes further. It’s the claim that she’s somehow worse, or more of a threat, than the people who straight-up killed an innocent person and covered it up that makes me concerned about the claimant’s priorities. It might have been reasonable to believe Shanna’s investigation would do more harm than good back when HR’s nature and motives were more mysterious. But at this point in the original run, that boat had sailed.
Good character isn’t always a likable character. My only probably with Shanna is she reminds too much of actual personalities who do blame the ills of the world on media. HR is definitely the villian of the story (kidnapping and murder) but you did too good of a job with Shanna’s character like her right away inspite of her flaws.
Hear, hear. I do also love… Well, pretty much the whole cast, but so too Shanna’s character.
The disclaimer was just written in such a way that it’d be an automatic red flag to someone with suitable character.
Kinsa like the homebrew DnD battlewheelchair. An absolute marvel of an idea. But they sold it with “of course it can do stairs. you wouldn’t keep your more ablebodied players stuck on first floor? No, you can’t break it, ‘cose you don’t break other people’s swords or grappling hooks? And yes, it can be used as weapon, ‘cose others use weapons too. And it has magic and it flies, it bends, fits everywhere, has all the pouches everywhere, can even be upgraded to be moved with thought and everything! ‘Cose F you, that’s why!” and then there was puzzlement why there was some uproar about it…
Yes. People will have differing opinions and no, they are not always the “smart” ones or even the “right” ones. But whenever something is written with “I know some have trouble seeing how this could be like so”, it’s easy to write it in a way that reads “if you did think about it, you’d see I’m right. But did you?”
Lord knows I’ve done it a few times…
And since I have no idea how, why or what was said against Shanna, I can only read about the “you nerds need to stop nerding so much and start thinking”. XD
But yeah, i’d say Shanna is more on the right here. :D
“But whenever something is written with “I know some have trouble seeing how this could be like so”, it’s easy to write it in a way that reads “if you did think about it, you’d see I’m right. But did you?””
That sounds like a personal assessment to me.
To me the first line sounded like “I understand this can be polarizing or ‘a hot take'” while the second is already claims “I’m right and you’re wrong”.
I don’t know what’s so deep and confusing about a character being rather abrasive towards a demographic to logically be an easily unlikable character for that group, and recognizing it. He didn’t say “if you dislike Shanna you’re a filthy fucking nerd, EW!” he said “If you’re a nerd, you might understandably dislike her. As she doesn’t like the culture very much and acts on it.”
“have criticism about her” — on principle, I never have any issues with somebody having criticism about anyone or anything. I understand “criticism” to be the mention of aspects which are not as good as they could be, not as bashing the entire person/thing (which is unfortunately the way it too often turns out).
In fact, I only become concerned if somebody considers a person to be either above criticism or beyond redemption.
The annotations mentioned that some readers seemed to have fallen into that last category, with regards to Shanna. I’d find that concerning, too. In some funny way, it indicates the same type of blind spot which Shanna has for nerd culture, except directed at people who don’t get nerd culture…
Imagine cheering at a person failing to rescue a person from an abusive relationship. Yikes.
I have always liked Shanna, despite being a nerd myself.
I think it’s not hard to relate to a character who wants the truth.
I frankly find it harder to relate to a character who wants the truth to be in their favor badly enough that they’re willing to construct an entire identity around the hope that they’re right. In the face of compelling evidence otherwise.
Both Shanna and Carol, for different reasons and in different ways, fall into the latter category – Shanna’s hope is that she can wring a story out of a proverbial stone (a game company she’s not got good connections in, and is very suspicious of, initially, for no good reason other than suspicious timing), while Carol very obviously was hoping to be a divine understudy in the most literal way.
Between the two of them, Shanna is still closer to the first archetype I mentioned than Carol is, so her likeability isn’t really an issue, for a spirited caricature of an investigative journalist.
I’m not sure she’s more believable than Eddie Valiant, in the hard-boiled investigative capacity – but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, to the degree of difference that the two are separated by. Nor, at least in hindsight, is her vague hostility towards nerd culture, given the trappings that apparently comprised a lot of it at the time this was written.
Which is really to say that there’s only as much of a dearth of relatability in her character as in that of the fictional private eye I mentioned; Shanna is likeable to a point, and it’s enough to give an understanding of who she is while making her seem like she might have ulterior or questionable motives in pursuing her leads.
Plus, the frame story (or is Sepia world the frame story? Hm, that’s a temporal versus spatial-geometrical metaphysical debate of sorts, isn’t it?) does help to keep the reader grounded enough to know she’s only sorta following HR’s breadcrumbs, so we know she’s gotta get schooled on her unintended ignorance at some point. It’s Chekov’s ignorance, a bit.
“Chekov’s ignorance” — love that term :)
Shanna’s anti-nerd stance is the reason she’s been looking for indications of wrong doing, and the thing that helped her find them. So in some way, it’s what has even allowed her to uncover the whole issue. There’s a powerful lesson in here: If you want to improve something you really like, listen to the people who like it least. Of course, don’t go and do what they say, but investigate which of their gripes have merit. Because the people who are already fans will be much less likely to find and point out flaws than the ones who are not.
This is why diversity (of perspective, culture, education…) is such a powerful and useful thing. And can also be rather straining if you’re used to everyone thinking along the same lines as yourself and aren’t used so much to hearing diverging opinions.
Shanna is indeed a difficult person to like.
She is a GREAT character, and this scene had me rooting for her even as I looked askance at her unseemly methods. It’s easy to *say* I wouldn’t do what she did, but I also wouldn’t have gotten the results she did, either.
I’m the guy that cheered at the slap. There might have been others, but I definitely remember my comment kicking off a lot of discussion. I didn’t realize my (and others’) reaction had been so upsetting to the creators, and knowing that now makes me feel worse about a comment that I didn’t really put thought into at the time.
To be honest (and I may have said this at the time) Shanna felt very predatory and manipulative to me during this whole sequence. Of the two she clearly has the moral high ground, but she felt very slimy — and knowing that there was intended to be a sort of sexual/romantic vibe for this whole scene brought into focus why I felt that way. To me, at that time, the slap felt justified. I wanted the good guys to win, sure, but this didn’t feel like winning.
That being said, I know more now than I did then, both in the story and in real life. I know a lot more about abuse victims, for one, and the parallels are clearer now than they were when I originally read this chapter so long ago. The things Shanna’s saying and doing feel less slimy and more well-intentioned than they did on first read-through.
Perspective helps. I was never rooting for the bad guys, but I wanted Carol to do the right thing and blamed Shanna’s approach when it didn’t happen. It was a bad read of the situation, and I feel pretty awful that it exacerbated bad feelings for people whose work I actually have a lot of respect and admiration for.
Thanks for coming forward, and no hard feelings!
Thanks a lot for this explanation (and well-written, too!)
The power of perspective is immense, and it’s embarrassing how many decades it took me to get a sense of that.
Whenever there’s any kind of flamewar (or worse) going on, you can bet that most of the people involved are either not aware or have temporarily become blind to this very essential limitation of our own senses…