One thing, I do feel allegory is powerful and important, and the X-Men are often (not always) a great example of that. Sometimes, the reader is doing the heavy lifting in this.
It's just that I also feel marginalized people need representation IN CANON and not as robots or aliens sometimes.
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It's just that I also feel marginalized people need representation IN CANON and not as robots or aliens sometimes.
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Comments
Allegories are nice but intentions are better.
I think Felker-Martin did write a HQ short, though.
Sorry for not fact-checking <3
Here are two I like to recommend:
Like Jules Jourdain/Circuit Breaker from DC.
It's really @tillybridges.bsky.social 's fault. My sister has turned me into a tireless advocate for the power of allegory. 😁
One thing I hate is when.characters are suddenly gay out of nowhere. As a gay man, I find that borderline offensive unless handled with care.
The recent Alan Scott thing was fairly well handled.
A character's inner dialog should reflect that
especially when executives and editors will tell you “trans” is a “bad word” that you can’t say, and getting trans stories past cis gatekeepers can be nearly impossible
we need allegory, and we need actual surface level rep too
they’re both important 🩷
(And Marvel soon chickened out & memory-holed it, obviously. Same as with the nonsense with Northstar at the same time.)
I have marfanism (a mutated gene that causes an array of medical problems). Heart, Back, etc.
I think we can do better.
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But fuck, at some point, you have to say no, we need a trans person, in canon, stated openly. I'm thinking of Alysia Yeoh in Batgirl, stating it outright. "Babs, I'm transgender."
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I have sadly encountered too many Star Trek “fans” who thought it was a mistake to include a trans character in one of the new shows.
Totally blind to how their knee-jerk aversion was the strongest argument that we need these characters made explicit
But Alysia, who was a big controversy and an actual news story when it happened, was not an allegory, she was a regular, well-liked character.
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But she stated openly she was trans. I think that means something.
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Loved that line.
She was cast in a major film the studio botched.
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That was SO CLOSE to being a triumph, pulled away for reasons that mean nothing.
But maybe the NEXT trans character makes it, breaks that wall.
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As part of the OG "others" group, I can see what they are trying to do with the trans people, and it is wrong!
i remember fighting a CGC rep because they wouldn't acknowledge her first appearance. (they still haven't)
they ignored them
I wish it was in stores too, but Marvel is willing to take more of a chance on digital
https://bsky.app/profile/meakoopa.bsky.social/post/3lngwi2j6ek2t
But I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention that not all mutations are inherently dangerous.
Like, Longshot or Iceman.
A human with a gun is more dangerous than a human without a gun.
Not all humans are equally dangerous and not all mutants are equally dangerous.
The old slogan has it that "racism is prejudice plus power". If the minorities were the ones with the power, then prejudice against them wouldn't be simple bigotry, because it would be rooted in rational fear. Eg - minority whites in apartheid South Africa
It’s not that being scared of mutants is weird. It’s being *only* scared of mutants that makes it weird.
Some mutants are absolutely walking WMDs, but Thor and Captain Marvel also exist, and that!s just on the heroic side.
Like, that's the original Xavier/Magneto divide to begin with.
Regardless, the whole point is that mutants as a class are not inherently dangerous...
It's the same point raised in Civil War. Is registration and authoritarial sanction necessary for "oversight" or is it a trampling of individual freedoms and personal responsibility? Should everyone pay for Tony's fuckup?
Predators DID eat them, even if it was forever ago, so there’s a level of rationality not present in real-world racism.
The key thing about oppressed minorities is that they don’t have power, it’s why bigots feel safe picking on them. Mutants are a bad allegory.
Wonder if Ta-Nehisi Coates would write for that.
And a minor problem is sometimes fans decrying any rep that is not 100% explicit with the words as "bad rep" regardless how the rep actually is.
Genuinely curious, it's years since I read them