Did/does anyone ever feel how important Rose Wilson is as a character to south-east asian kids? I’ve always been drawn to her since I saw her character as a kid, and both when she was Khmer and now Hmong (which I know Hmong people live in various parts of Asia), I was so happy to see a character from the same part of asia as me who was cool and could fight with swords, and had a complex upbringing/birth.
There are so many layers to her, and there always have been, and she’s grown and become even more intriguing and complex. She has a difficult relationship with not just her father but her siblings too, with herself, even. Her behaviours and how views herself and the things she must do, why she fights, what motivates her, taking on the mantle and suit of Deathstroke, are things that we rarely get to see in south-east asian characters. That trope of ‘big us army man and small sea resistance fighter have a child and then split’ is also arguably done better than other instances of it; there’s research into the conflict, it’s not too overtly sexualised from memory, and Slade is not a good guy, he’s terrible in so many ways.
I think Rose shows us that we don’t have to fit into the stereotypes placed on us, that we are allowed to see our conflicts and relationships with nuance, that we are just as human with lives just as others. That, and she’s SO cool, I mean the swords???? Woah.
