r/KamalaKhan • u/jblee44 • 28d ago
Comics On Zoe- questions and thoughts in gww run and beyond.
from what ive been web browsing in the net, Zoe is a kinda of a divisive character. i mean, people dunk on Bruno(mainly for the will they won't they dynamic with Kamala) but people know where they stand on Bruno and Nakia is generally well liked overall.
cuz some people critique how her redemption arc in GWW run was handled, some say it does come across as a "white girl apologizing for her racism", - is this fair criticism or not? also doesn't help Saladin sort of ruins this development with that traitor arc at his run during outlawed. for me, I just feel its inherently OOC cuz why would she betray the person who once saved her life, to the point zoe even dressed up as Ms. Marvel during that teenage wasteland arc in gww run. also, why would someone who got forcibly outed as gay in front of the entire school would essentially try to out someone's secret idenity to CRADLE?
sure, you can say it was all due to "trauma" but saladin doesn't explore well enough, doesn't give it enough interiority
so, is zoe a bad character? a good character? somewhere in between? Average?
Thoughts-
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u/AcisConsepavole ⚡️🍕 Unciemuni! 28d ago
So, on the snitch aspect: I heard Nakia was supposed to be the snitch to CRADLE, but Saladin changed his mind. Do with that hearsay as you will, but it doesn't feel out-of-place as information. The traitor reveal is very sudden and inconsequential -- Kamala forgives her immediately, and it ultimately comes off feeling like "Well someone had to be the traitor, for drama, and Zoe happened to pick the short straw".
Zoe is a good model of personal growth. She's a character who people should use as a critical examination of what whiteness is as an assigned ideal and caste role. She's also blonde, skinny, wealthy, and generally pretty -- she's the quintessential colonial ideal. So how far can you as a reader or even a writer carry her rejection of the status quo? How do you make her anti-casteist/anti-racist in a way that matters and showcases the obvious agape (community love, love of people) she genuinely feels and has grown into? It's there. Ignoring it has consequences on the story.
The criticisms for Bruno and Zoe internally in the fandom, in my experience, have come from performative, hegemonic, and Brahministic spaces -- that says: "Zoe and Bruno are highlighted/made to be as antagonistic because of their identity so as to put Kamala more on a pedestal labeled 'The Most Marginalized Person in the Universe, and Reflective of All Marginalization' instead of reflecting on how she is also privileged, but in different ways". That isn't to say that the criticisms don't usually come from genuine traumas surrounding whiteness, but the lack of communication and reflection affirms caste roles instead of challenging them. Remember, whiteness is a colonial construct and not a biological reality -- physiologically, it's the biological lack of a pigmentation, in a system where colonial interests would have been happy to continue to use "white people" as feudal serfs, but pale people burn very quickly working outside where crops grow the best in the "Americas", according to capitalistic interests. Letting Zoe stagnate in an antagonistic role because she's white and Kamala is brown says that this discrepancy is enough for the conversation, and a lot of the nuances I just mentioned about how whiteness was crafted never get said and challeneged. It's similar to the difference between simply not being racist versus being anti-racist.
There's an addage. "An apology without changed behavior is manipulation". This shouldn't be taken as an absolute fact, because worshipping the phrase can also be used to manipulate and cause stagnation. But, generally, it's true, and Zoe not only apologizes but fundamentally changes as a person. She doesn't get a lot of focus, and why should she? It's not her book. She gets as much focus as is reasonable to include her as a member of Kamala's community, and that can make her feel a bit underdeveloped. How do you fix that? Personally, I feel like there's opportunity for Nakia to spur and encourage the full growth, the rest of the way. Not because it's Nakia's duty as a brown woman to "fix" Zoe, but because it's the responsibility of people who read to disseminate knowledge and make it accessible. Nakia knows things, Zoe can understand, and, more importantly, Zoe can continue to change and practice behaviors to add to social tipping towards counter-hegemonic action, rather than Nakia becoming some sort of armchair philosopher who knows things but doesn't engage.
There are some fair criticisms about how Zoe's change is shown. Her decision to grow as a person was pretty sudden. She spent more of her life being who she was, versus who she's becoming. The trouble is, she is difficult to woobify -- where her faults and room to grow are ignorable -- but a lot of the spaces that make a brand out of villainizing her and Bruno are spaces that woobify Kamala and Nakia. Characters shouldn't be woobified -- it stops them from growing, because the audience isn't demanding it. The criticisms about her behavioral changes should be about telling new stories (either with her, or with new characters in another story, because storytelling is cooperative), not used to define what her role is and why she should stay as an archetype.
Bruno is also more than the "will they, won't they" angle, and he's reduced down to that in a way that's drenched in amatonormativity -- most people are familiar with heteronormativity, which is a fairly similar word. Where heteronormativity mandates that a "normal" relationship is a heterosexual one, amatonormativity is a social demand that a person only has value when they're in a romantic relationship, and their social value comes from that relationship. Bruno and Kamala have more in common as products of diaspora than people give credit to. The difference between them is that Bruno is offered a settler colonial identity under the Italian-American label, but holding him too strongly to that settler identity will serve colonialism by erasing how he's a rare positive example of Meridionale diaspora that can counter colonial narratives if more room is made for truth-telling about how the settler identity replaced the diaporic one. Kamala is also being tempted into a settler identity that can replace her diasporic one, but it's quiter because Bruno is assigned to a privileged white role and Kamala is assigned to a marginalized brown role. What about Meridionali who are/were brown? What about South Asians who, unlike Kamala, are largely unrepresented Dalits, Dravidian, Adivasi, and so on?
Side note, can you tell that Nakia is my favorite Ms. Marvel character? Like, she (and the rest of them) are fairly responsible for why I'm like this, writing paragraphs about communication, constructive criticism, community care, anti-casteism, and avoiding performativity. Zoe is also partially responsible. That can be added to her value as a character that collaborates with the criticisms, instead of canonizing them and leaving the subject in one spot.
Overdefining Zoe Zimmer with a self-satisfied label betrays these words, in my eyes, from issue 17 of the Post-Secret Wars run. "It could have been me. So I'm going to help you through it. I'm gonna stand with you through the mortifying waves of embarrassment and it's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay because we're gonna make it okay". We have to make it. Accountability and countering systems sit at the heart of who Zoe is and can be, and wouldn't Kamala want her to shine as the best person she can be?
If this examination has interested you, please know that I'm working on a Kamala fanfic where themes like this are explored, and characters like Zoe get to shine in an anti-casteist and counter-hegemonic environment. I would like to know that people want to read a story like that, because I've largely only seen enthusiasm for stories around a more commercial idea of representation -- where visual signifiers are the absolute indicator of what a character should be. That's not a result that has its own nuanced reasons, but it's been a locked result that has weighed in my heart for the past few years. Thank you for offering a post to talk about some of it, and loosen the strains on my heart a little.
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u/Dragonic_Overlord_ 28d ago
Alhamdulillah, thanks for writing such a cool comment. Link to the fanfic when you're done writing it please.
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u/AcisConsepavole ⚡️🍕 Unciemuni! 28d ago
I'm tremendously honored by your response. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I have drafts at the moment, but I keep revising and expanding the story, and I want to have a full arc written before I post the second version. I wrote a previous version of the same story up to a few chapters, but it became very obvious that this wasn't a story that could be told by just updating with new chapters. So I scrapped that version and started over. There's too much meditating and research to do, and I don't want to write myself into a corner.
If you would like to beta read or have a conversation where I can also double-check some of my homework as a non-Muslim writing a story with multiple Muslim characters, I'd be more than happy to share and talk. My roots are Sicilian. Heterogeneity that includes Muslim neighbors is in my blood. I'm not writing from a totally uninformed POV, but I welcome an informed sensitivity/beta reader if the interest is there.
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u/Dragonic_Overlord_ 28d ago
Don't worry, I'm interested in beta reading. Just send me the link and I'll do it. I have a fairly busy schedule myself, but I think I can find time to beta read for you.
I'm a Singaporean Muslim, so I live in a harmonious society where all religions and races are treated with respect, so I'm grateful to be here.
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u/AcisConsepavole ⚡️🍕 Unciemuni! 24d ago
Hello, sorry to reach out through a reply this way, but I noticed you don't have DMs open. What would be the easiest way to share story details with you? Sorry for the delay -- I started a new job recently and I've been training.
Also, the last sentence of your comment makes me all the more grateful. I think you're the exact kind of reader I want to reach, to begin with.
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u/AcceptableWheel 28d ago
She’s a fan favorite for sure. Her coming out sequence is one of the best in comics (namely because Jean Grey isn’t involved). While I disagree with Ahmed’s decision I get it, she has a strong desire to protect her friends and watching Kamala almost and actually die several times took its toll to the point she considered drastic measures to save her. Also I’m still convinced she has powers based on that part of Teenage Wasteland when one of Inventor’s bionic weapons smashes her through a concrete floor.