#because why are you holding clark to this standard and not DUBBILEX???????

[mamawasatesttube]

the thing about clark re: kon's early living situation is that you really cannot argue that clark was negligent for two reasons. a) clark was not responsible for him. cadmus was, and dubbilex was, and if anyone was negligent of kon's needs and situation it should be dubbilex, but moreover b) the writers did not acknowledge that anything about kon's situation was fucked up and the kind of thing that should merit adult intervention.

like, there are plenty of adults in kon's life other than clark who feasibly should have said something about tana dating him. sam makoa was right there! the man's a police officer who watched this adult woman go report on her boyfriend's first day in high school as a freshman and was like "yeah that seems fine haha" like ???

and we know it's because karl kesel & co simply did not see a problem with kon and tana dating. no one at dc did! we see this in sins of youth superman jr and superboy sr. we see this in adventures of superman #541. clark is written to not see anything wrong with it because karl kesel didn't see anything wrong with it! and clark is far from the only adult in kon's life. clark did not live with kon. clark was not kon's primary adult caretaker. not even close.

so why is it that people like to point fingers at clark for negligence first and foremost? is it because people still assume that a genetic link = responsibility, or because clark "should have" known better (despite. you know. being written sometimes by karl kesel) just because he's superman?

like idk man i just think any discussion of kon's history with grooming and abuse that doesn't factor in karl kesel's biases as a writer is fundamentally missing the point. yes, superman is a character that would act to protect a child if he knew that child was being preyed upon and exploited. yes, kon was a child being preyed upon and exploited. no, superman did not know about it, because the narrative was written by a man who would not acknowledge it as such.

of course, that involves doing some restructuring of how it ought to have played out - like, just bc karl kesel saw nothing wrong with kontana does not mean that there's nothing wrong with a 23yo dating a 15-16yo. so clark and lois meeting up with kon and tana during their honeymoon feels off. that convo during sins of youth feels off. there are a good few of these instances, and there are certainly discussions to be had on how to interpret them because of that lens of authoriaal bias. but to pin blame on clark as a character (as opposed to, say, dubbilex or makoa) is such a reductive reading to me.