delacourtings: (skins)
forever is the sweetest con ([personal profile] delacourtings) wrote2017-08-03 01:18 am

[comics commentary] on kate bishop, clint barton, and mental illness



i want to preface this by saying that i have read the entire 2006 - 2012 run of young avengers and i love that kate bishop. i'm also currently reading the 2013 young avengers run and i'm thoroughly enjoying that kate bishop as well. but i recently started rereading the fraction/aja hawkeye run and i despise this version of kate bishop.

for one thing, i'm not a fan of her being in "love" with clint but that's a whole other can of worms i'm not going to get into right now.

for starters, i think she comes across a lot more immature in this series than she's been shown to be in the various young avengers issues. secondly, and this is my main problem, i hate the way she treats clint. i don't mean the barbs and calling him out on his shit, that's great, that's the kate bishop i love. i'm talking about the kate bishop that steals a mentally ill man's dog.

clint struggles with depression. that is made very clear. what's also made clear is that clint loves his dog, lucky, and that this dog is a large reason for the minuscule amounts of happiness he experiences. not only is this dog clint's main source of happiness but he's also the only thing that clint believes loves him. clint thinks/says that the avengers won't notice/care if he disappears multiple times. in clint's mind, this dog is the only thing he loves that loves him back. and kate just steals him.

she's young, i get that. and she's probably hurt and frustrated but i don't see how that translates into stealing someone's beloved pet. especially the pet of a mentally ill person who depends on that animal in some capacity. maybe she doesn't realize that clint's depressed, sure. but the readers should. and they should criticize her actions. but i haven't seen that. i've only seen people praising her stealing lucky and variations of yaaas kween and when will your fave ever which i don't think is something that should be said about a character stealing a mentally ill character's only source of happiness. i'm mentally ill. i struggle with anxiety, depression, ocd, and ednos every day. i'm currently in one of the worst bouts of depression i've ever had. i can count maybe four things that currently make me happy: my family, my dogs, television, and reading. but even television and reading, two things i love dearly, haven't been bringing me much pleasure lately. if someone were to take away my dogs from me (which almost happened recently), i would break down completely. i would be in an even worse condition than i already am, which i didn't think was even possible.

tldr, i really don't think her actions should be condoned let alone praised the way they are. those actions are harmful. yes, this is fiction but mentally ill people are not. and neither is the way neurotypical people treat us.