Current mood:	amazed
Entry tags:	fandom witterings, ibarw

Late to IBARW...
This is a blog, and it is against racism, and I apologise for being late. Here's the del.icio.us page, and there's so much there. fickle_goddess writes about Disney's Esmeralda and privilege; starfishncoffee posts a disturbing article; matociquala has an interesting post up; the-willow at InsaneJournal writes about Fillmore (I've seen a couple of episodes and think it's excellent); lea_hazel posts a brilliant Fables expose about the Arabian Fables; ciderpress writes about communication; kittiekattie's post on overt versus covert racism is marvelous; bibliotech posts and links to womanism resources; kate_nepveu makes a great point about defaults; and ibarw does daily round-ups.

rydra_wong began a meme to pimp a CoC of choice, and I thought I'd go for a character from my favourite obscure fandom ever, Ace Lightning. (See icon!) Credit goes to sapphiresilver and mystifiedstar for screencaps and transcripts, to Rotgut for his transcripts, and to scarab_dynasty and lightningflash8 for their excellent help. rydra_wong's roundups are here and here.

I was completely neutral about Sam at first. My Mary-Sues were warrior princesses with really big swords; Samantha Thompson is not a heroine, no fighter of legend with swift spear and a thousand lives. She has not saved the world; her birth was never prophesised at the behest of some strange destiny; she has no strange powers, and neither martial arts skill nor extraordinary intelligence. In a canon with so much more going on than her attendance at middle school, compared to the superheroics Samantha is quite frankly dull—and worse, she abruptly leaves the series two-thirds of the way through due to her actress’ other commitments.

And yet, as I grew old enough to understand that the young characters were young and to be excused their failure to be the great perfect heroes I was so sure I would have been in their place, I started to see Samantha's strengths. Not another useless human whose screen presence was to be suffered through in order to get to the superheroics, she turned out to be a strong and compassionate young woman, whose presence contributed a good deal to the warmth and resonance of the story.





I always thought I'd feel better knowing that there's something else out there…Have you ever imagined how many amazing things haven't been discovered yet? You know, things that people say are impossible, or could never happen. Well, I want to see those things one day.

Mark Hollander's only just moved to America from England, a bunch of superheroes and supervillains have just come out of his Ace Lightning videogame and announced their intention to continue their battle for the Amulet of Zoar on Earth…and even worse, he starts his new school today.

Samantha is the girl next door.

Sam: So you're the one.
Mark: I am? Who told you? Wait. The one what?
Sam: The one who moved into the Anderson house. I'm Samantha, your neighbour.
Mark: Oh, hi. I'm Mark. Nice to meet you.

She notices the manual he carries:

Sam: Hey, Ace Lightning!
Mark: (freaking out) Where?!
Sam: In your hand.
Mark: (looks down at the book in his hand) Oh…yeah. So you play?
Sam: No, but my boyfriend does.

At school, Mark finds out more about Sam from his new carsick friend, Chuck:

Mark: Samantha? She's popular?
Chuck: Yeah! Like the most popular girl in school. She's at the top of the popularity pyramid. Along with her boyfriend, Brett.
Mark: So if they're at the top, then where are you?
Wayne: Yo, Prince of Puke!

She's the most popular girl in a school (and a cheerleader to boot) where the least popular boy gets bullied. This sounds like the setup to the standard mean-girl story, except—Samantha quite simply isn't. Oddly enough, she's popular because she's actually a nice person who people like spending time with. Chuck's fundamentally good-hearted, but he Does Not Get Social Cues, and as a result he's not on her list of favourite people (apparently they haven't talked for a year or two)—but over the series she spends a lot of time with him as Mark's friend and comes to like him, and even at the beginning she never deliberately puts him down; I can't think of a single occasion where she's maliciously nasty to anyone at all.



She does dump her boyfriend, though, because she's more interested in Mark; but in the first place there's no way a thirteen-year-old girl has an obligation to stick with one boyfriend (and is it just me or is thirteen way too young in the first place to have a boyfriend?!), and she and Brett stay good friends.



Mark has his first adventures at school, and blows off her friendly offers of pizza with her and her friends to go save the world; she stands up for him to the teacher Mr Chesebrough over unfair treatment (to the supervillain Lady Illusion, actually, because she was morphed into him at the time—but Sam didn't know that), and after his adventure's over she and Mark finally get a chance to chat on the lawn with pink lemonade. It's odd that she's attracted to someone who constantly ditches her for what seem to be very nebulous reasons—but she's attracted to interesting things, and when actually spending time with Mark enjoys it, and once his absences become too much she proves that she is not a doormat, fascinated by him though she might still feel.



Sam takes a job at the supervillain-controlled Carnival for a short while, and unknown to her Mark rescues her from the evils; on a trip through the woods, she gets rescued by Mark again from a treehouse; and later she rescues her classmates from a sealed funhouse while Mark pretends not to notice anything wrong for the sake of chatting about their currently-broken-off relationship.

Mark: I dunno how to say this, so I'm just gonna say it. But maybe I shouldn't, 'cause then you'll think I'm some kind of freak, and never look at me the same way.
Sam: Mark, it's okay.
Mark: Right. You might've noticed, sometimes I can act kind of odd.
Sam: *smiles and nods*
Mark: Right. The reason is…
(Trapped people)
Mark: Is…
Sam: Did you hear that?
(Cut to trapped people)
Mark: Uh, I'm...sure it's nothing. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is…
Sam: No, that's not nothing.
Mark: It's probably just Wayne causing trouble.
Sam: That's not Wayne. C'mon.

She knows the right thing to do, and even if Mark-the-protagonist gets most of the heroic duties, she can still do a damn good job of kicking in a door or seeing injustice and wanting to remedy it.

Brett: Let's hear it for Sam!

And one night out walking with Mark, she has the following conversation with him:



Mark: Sam, what do you think people would do if they saw an alien?
Sam: I don't know, run, scream, freak.
Mark: Right, that's what I figured.
Sam: But I wouldn't. I always thought I'd feel better knowing that there's something else out there. Okay, this may sound silly, but have you ever imagined how many amazing things haven't been discovered yet? You know, things that people say are impossible, or could never happen. Like the paranormal stuff on TV. Well, I want to see those things one day.
Mark: It doesn't sound silly at all. In fact, an amazing thing really did happen to me. I've been trying to tell you about it for some time now.

Cut to the evils with a convenient distraction. But this is most definitely Foreshadowing Like Whoa (aka: Neil's Foreshadowing), for what she would discover in seasons to come, Mark's close friend and a girl brave and open-minded in her own right.

Sam breaks up with Mark (again) not long afterwards thanks to Lady Illusion spending a day as him, and her best friend Heather is keen to pick up the slack. It's a bit questionable that they all fawn over the White British Dude with a tendency to ditch with neither excuse nor explanation, but at least friendships get maintained in the process.

Mark: I still want us to be friends, or whatever.
Sam: You do? Well, keep talking, Hollander, I'm listening.

Sam: I'm serious. My days of trying to pry him away from that video game are over.
Heather: Good for you, Sam. You deserve better than that.
Sam: Thanks. What about you?
Heather: …What about me?

Though the Drama-Filled School Dance has Sam get her cattiest (to Brett: Yeah, just because [Heather's] my best friend doesn't mean I have to like her), she chooses to spend time chatting to her friend when Mark fails to turn up rather than dancing with her date, and in second season Heather seems to hate the world aside from Sam. They're friends, and they stay spending time with each other no matter which of them is dating the coveted Hollander.



Sam wins a piece of the amulet by chance in a game at the Carnival, and uses it as part of her costume in the school production of Phantom of the Opera; she refuses to give it up to Mark without a full explanation, and of course the evils come to attack the play; Mark improvises Sherlock Holmes on stage to save her and Heather's characters, presumably Christine and Meg Giry. The amulet is lost to him, though…which precipitates the CGI background to the School Dance Drama.



She takes the initiative of asking her friend Brett once she hears Heather has Mark, and the big night comes around…while the Lightning Knights are facing a final desperate battle to stop Lord Fear taking over the planet. Mark eventually decides to ditch Heather for this, and runs off to the Carnival. She decides enough is damn well enough, strikes up a conversation with Brett about the action movies they suddenly realise they have in common…

…and when Mark finishes saving the world and goes back to the dance, Sam's been left alone. So they do what every main pair of characters has done in school stories since times modern: dance.



Mark: From now on, you're going to see the new and improved Mark.
Sam: Really? Well that’s too bad, ‘cause I kind of liked the old Mark.
Mark: …What?
Sam: Who made friends with Chuck when no one else would? Who stood up to Wayne? Who put Mr Chesebrough in his place and convinced him to have the dance?
Mark: ...But I was just—
Sam: Just doing the right thing. And you were doing something else. Actually, my favourite part of all—you were being my friend. And that's what makes you my hero.

I'd rather she was a heroine in her own right. But she gets credit for insight, and empathy, and sensibility and kindness: and there was foreshadowing, we shouldn't forget, for amazing things to happen. And so ends the first season, music and dancing and neatly coupled het pairs.



--

What happens in second season is that…Sam departs for boarding school, just as her actress (Shadia Simmons) does for Black Hole High. And that's the big disappointment in the end.



Sam: Mark? You're home? Did you get my messages?
Mark (recently back from a trip to England): Yep, all fifty of them. So where are you?
Sam: At school...
Mark: What are you doing? Scoping out a new locker?
Sam: Not exactly. I wanted to tell you in person, but you were in England and I was here, and now I'm gone...
Mark: Whoa! Slow down, Sam! Gone where?
Sam: Westleafe School. It's a boarding school. I didn't want to say anything until I got in. But, an opening came up last minute and...now...I'm...
Mark: Gone?!
Sam: I'm only four hundred and thirty-two miles away!

She's absent, and we all notice, Heather's permanent bad temper and the way the new girl seems implausibly quick at figuring it all out. A missing piece from the universe, a whole lot of ruined foreshadowing that never got fulfilled when she didn't manage to become the full heroine who experiences the something amazing. At least her leaving is handled with a good deal of dignity; she's still noble and decent, still a friend of Mark's, tactfully kind towards Mark's latest love interest, and has clearly chosen her education above her teen relationship, which makes her a pretty good role model by my lights. (She's also chosen a new boyfriend.)



Mark: So, Sam, there's something I need to tell you.
Sam: You know, ever since we met, you’ve said that to me about a hundred times.
Mark: Yeah, I know. That’s why I need to tell you…that I really like Kat, and I’m sorry if I’ve been sending you the wrong signals, and I still want us to be friends…
Sam: She likes you too, you know.
Mark: Really? That’s great! How do you know…Wait, how come you’re so cool about this?”
Sam: Because we’re friends, and I want to see you happy. And because…I’ve met someone too. His name’s Jeremy.
Mark: How long have you been going out?
Sam: Just a while. He goes to my school. I wanted to tell you about him but I couldn’t do it over the phone.
Mark: So…I guess our book is closed.

And she kisses him on the cheek, and…her place in the story is over.



This avatar by scarab_dynasty, I think, is a great quote to sum up Samantha: she loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the dark.



--

There's another really interesting aspect to Sam: her parallel with Ace Lightning's CGI love interest, Lady Illusion, originally one of the villains.



Lady Illusion (watching Sam and Mark chatting): Look at them. Must be nice to be mortal.

Lady Illusion is, of course, green-with-elfy-ears—not counted as a CoC. But the evils are Other (not actually invoking bad PoC stereotypes, though, as far as I know), the Knights are Aryan, as per all the racism and homophobia that went into the forming of the stereotypes used. Lady Illusion and Ace throw off their programming to make a choice to save each other—while Mark, who resembles Ace, dates Sam, who does look a little like Lady Illusion, while Mark's other classmates include a redhead with a temper and a computer genius, for the other Knights Sparx and Random. Sam and Lady Illusion don't share many personality traits, but they do reflect each other—and Ace/LI is some sort of intercultural relationship represented as an entirely positive thing, even if Sam's presence doesn't turn LI into a CoC. I like the parallels, the depth and reflection.

--

And finally—the main point, really, to blogging about this character for IBARW—is…how is Sam written, racist or not racist? Does the show have racist aspects?

Sam herself is an archetype more than a stereotype, Sweet Love Interest; she carries it off as a fairly well-rounded character, not self-contradictory or implausible and clearly a pretty good foil for Mark. Racism never gets dealt with in the show, bar maybe being barely hinted at by the other Knights' dislike of Ace/LI; Sam's the most popular girl in school and Brett Ramirez (apparently Hispanic) is the most popular boy in school. Is this an example of Heinlein coloured people, "a character who is of pigment on the surface, but in all other respects is as culturally white, Western and as middle class as yourselves, who also tend to exist in a speculative or fantasy world curiously free of any ethnic, cultural or socioeconomic nuance", or a well-intentioned way of showing appreciated characters of colour, both popular because they're thoroughly nice people and not discriminated against because of course they shouldn't be? (I came across the term via the angry black woman.) I'm...not sure about this. There really aren't enough characters of colour in the Aceverse, and Brett isn't a particularly important character; at least, though, with Sam and Mark and Ace and Lady Illusion, the show comes out entirely in favour of the idea that diversity is excellent and stereotypes of all sorts deserve breaking.

The elephant in the room is that Sam was replaced by a blonde white girl, who went one better than her in finding out the truth about the CGIs in thirteen episodes flat, and although this would not have been done if not for external circumstances, it still looked really very racist, and the writers had a responsibility to notice. At least, I suppose, Sam left to pursue education at an excellent school, and wasn't reduced to evil-ex caricature, and…can still be remembered and used by fanficcers for all the strong resonance of her presence in the first series.

Sam herself rocks. Brett's right; let's hear it for her.

--

Fic:

Because most of the fic is focused on the superheroics, there's not much Sam-centric, but scarab_dynasty wrote this great Five Things Sam Noticed About Mark (also five things Heather noticed about Sam), Allison Lightning has Sam returning to Conestoga Hills in her fic Once Upon A Time, and I've written one Sam-POV fic, Flight, though it's a bit freakywrong.