#mutant metaphor

[racefortheironthrone]

Are there any notable examples of anti-mutant prejudice towards the X-Men coming from within the superhero community?

This is a great question!

This gets to the complicated nature of how mutants fit into the Marvel Universe. I've always been a vocal proponent of the idea that, far from the mutant metaphor only making sense if it's in its own little bubble where mutants are the only people with superpowers, the mutant metaphor actually functions better in the context of the Marvel Universe, because it allows you to explore more complicated and more subtle ways that prejudice functions.

While there are plenty of super-villains who have quite blatant anti-mutant prejudice, you don't tend to get that same kind of overt bigotry towards mutants among super-heroes. Partly, this is because bigotry is a very unheroic character trait, but it also has to do with the way that the way that Marvel historically portrayed the spillover effects of anti-mutant prejudice.

Following in a kind of Niemöllerian logic, it's almost always the case that groups that hate and fear mutants also end up hating and fearing non-mutant superheroes. Thus, Days of Future Past starts with the Sentinels being turned on mutants, but it ends with the Sentinels wiping out the Avengers and the Fantastic Four too - because the same atavistic fear of "the great replacement" applies to both mutants and mutates. Likewise, the same forces that line up to push through the Mutant Registration Act inevitably end up proposing a Superhuman Registration Act, because once you've violated the precepts of equality under the law for one minority group, you establish a precedent to do it to another.

Instead, I would argue what you see in the case of anti-mutant prejudice among superheroes is explorations of liberal prejudice. This takes many different forms: in Civil War, you see Tony Stark insensitively try to wave the bloody shirt of Stamford in the face of a survivor of the Genoshan genocide or Carol playing the good liberal ally but ultimately trying to get mutants to set aside their own struggle in favor of her own political project. (For someone who's spent a good deal of time working, and living with, the X-Men, occasionally against the interests of the state, Carol does have a tendency to stick her foot in her mouth. Hence in Civil War II, you see Carol essentially goysplaining the dangers of creeping authoritarianism to Magneto.)

In Avengers vs X-Men, you see the Avengers acting like they know the Phoenix Force better than mutants and ultimately prioritizing the safety of mankind over the efforts of mutantkind to reverse their own extinction. This is where the "Avengers are cops" meme in the fandom comes from. (I would argue that Captain America is badly mischaracterized in the latter event - we know which side he's on when the interests of mutants and the interests of the state come into conflict.)

The common thread here is that anti-mutant prejudice among superheroes emerges as a kind of unthinking, unreflective callousness brought on by a worldview that thinks of humans as the universal default of lived experience - while thinking of mutants as a somewhat annoying special interest group that fixates on their particularist grievances rather than working for what the heroes consider to be the common good.

For a more intimate version of how this plays out, I think the Fantastic Four are a great exploration of how "well-meaning" liberals can massively fuck up when they don't do the work of examining their own biases. We've seen this since the very beginning: in Fantastic Four #21, Kirby goes out of his way to depict uber-WASP Reed Richards blithely assuming that the "free market of ideas" will take care of the Hatemonger, while the subtextually Jewish Ben Grimm knows that the way to deal with a mind-controlling Hitler clone wearing purple Klan robes is deplatforming-by-way-of-clobberin'.

Then later on, we see Reed Richards debate Congress out of passing a Superhuman Registration Act, while saying nothing about the Mutant Registration Act - even though he has a mutant son who is directly threatened by it. (See that adorable blond moppet with the slur scrawled across his face in the fictional advertisement above? That's Franklin Richards.) This is why I have a crack theory that Franklin's biological father is actually Namor rather than Reed, which is why Reed so consistently shows a passive-aggressive hostility to his son's mutancy.

At the same time, Sue also has her blindspots when it comes to mutant rights. In the underrated FF/X miniseries, Susan Storm acts like an understanding and supportive parent to Franklin - right up until someone suggests that Franklin might want to come to Krakoa and explore his mutant identity, at which point she goes full Karen and starts lashing out with her powers. Chip Zdarsky, the writer, explicitly compared Reed and Sue to liberal parents who support gay rights in the abstract until their kid comes out as trans and wants to spend time in LGBT+ spaces.

#marvel #marvel meta #xmen #xmen meta #mutant metaphor #krakoa #avengers #fantastic four

[ewzzy]

I always felt the "mutant metaphor" for civil rights was overplayed. The King / Malcom parallels were entirely unintentional and I really don't think there was any effort toward gay/trans people. However, reading X-Men #14 and seeing the actual start may have changed my mind.

We've had 14 issues of Stan & Jack doing pretty straightforward Superhero stories. Nobody hates or fears mutants. Here we get the debut of Dr Bolivar Trask clearly echoing rhetoric from the civil rights battles of the time.

The next page we see the X-Men getting ready for a break from school & heroics. Angel uses binders to hide his wings. His parents don't know. He did know until military school.

"Aww, if you ask me, nobody would care even if they found out about us!" -Bobby

"That's why I left school--I couldn't afford to face a physical exam!" -Warren

In fact the whole team has adaptations to hide their differences from the world.

After seeing Trask's headlines, Xavier goes on TV to to defend mutantkind. The world doesn't know that he himself is a mutant, rather he's a well respected scientist. He's been on TV a few times in the comics and it usually goes great. This time we see how the world reacts.

And the we get the sentinels. They look so cheap! I'd say they look like Doctor Who enemies, but the Cybermen would appear a year later and look much worse.

The sentinel saga ends with Trask realizing his robots are bad and the X-Men are heroes, but the mutant menace bell can't be unrung. Most stories in the years right after this barely touch on public perception of mutants, but it would eventually become the focus of the series.

#x-men #jack kirby #stan lee #lgbtq #mutant metaphor #marvel comics

[mutantmayhems]

My friends think I like to fight, but it's just not true. Sometimes I lose my temper and blow off a little steam—but I've never enjoyed it. I'm not a violent dog. I don't know why I bite.

RAPH AND ANGER

[in/sp]

huge shoutout to @shalaaex and @amascomet for their incredible art that inspired this! check out their beautiful posts!!

quote is from isle of dogs (2018)

#i thought having krang raph for the last line would be a pretty good gutpunch. cause yknow.. he can't control himself in that scene. #he doesn't know why it's happening. pretty good metaphor for his anger dontcha think #rottmnt #tmnt #tmntedit #rise of the tmnt #animationsdaily #tmntdaily #tmnt 2012 #2012 tmnt #tmnt 2003 #2003 tmnt #raph tmnt #tmnt raph #mutant mayhem #may makes #rise #2003 #mm #2012

[explodingstarlight]

ngl I was in the mood to draw an unhinged character today and I’ve been eyeing @snailsnaps "Programmed Obsolescence" AU for a hot second so,,,

AU Playlist (for funsies)

#error 404: brother not found #i allowed myself to go a bit wild with the color palette cuz I don't think there's a colored ref for donnie yet #but if there is: whoopsie doopsie 💀🖐️ #i'll have you know that i did in fact have to redo the headgear lineart a bit cuz my muscle memory had me drawing his goggles agshshsh #i may or may not have made a whole Au playlist to get in the zone while drawing #that's a secret i'll never tell (lying) #unhinged mad scientist AUs are my bread and butter despite the Pain and Agony ™ #rottmnt: [exists] the fandom: i can make it sadder :3c #and honestly? im here for it #what else are we to do but shove our favorite characters into a metaphorical hydraulic press??? #explodingstar art #programmed obsolescence #rottmnt #rottmnt au #rottmnt fanart #my art #i did this in the wee hours of the morning so hopefully it turned out alright lmao #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #tmnt donatello #rise donnie #villain donnie au #tmnt #proau #proau donnie

[silversodas]

Leo’s Greatest Defense

I haven’t seen anyone mention or notice this, but nothing can actually get to Leo, not as long as Mikey is around. It shows it in the beginning of the movie

He appears out of thin freaking air!!

And delivers a devastating blast that could take out a city block. You don’t even know where he could be coming from

And even demonstrates this a second time at the end of the movie, you think he is done for because he trapped himself in the prison dimension with the Kraang, but TEEN MIKEY!? Hell no, he rips open time and space, with his brothers help

And plucks him right the hell outta there. Like that’s….I mean..he LITERALLY WENT FUCK YOU FABRIC OF SPACE AND JUST PLUCKED HIM OUT!!

I don’t know, I just feel like these two moments were a way to show that not only is Leo the new king piece of this chess board but Mikey is the new Queen piece, the most powerful and the best at protecting the king.

And I just find it funny to think of them as Chess pieces, because when I learned Chess growing up I was taught that it was kinda dumb to try and take the King before taking out the Queen

#rottmnt #rottmnt movie #rottmnt leo #rottmnt mikey #rise of the tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #chess metaphor

[reluctantscribe]

"To me, my X-Men."

Hey, all! So, the trailer for, "X-Men '97," came out four days ago, and for some reason, the trailer sparked controversy in the fandom. The main controversy surrounded Morph, who in the revival will be nonbinary. Which just makes sense for their character, honestly. Of course a character whose gender is fluid because of their ability to shapeshift wouldn't conform to one of the binary genders. But the controversy came from conservative X-Men fans, which in itself is an oxymoron. There are no conservative X-Men fans. At least, not real ones. Because fans of these characters and their stories would understand that they have always been stand-ins for oppressed minority groups fighting for equality. The metaphors may be a bit dated in our modern world, but still, when used well, they are still effective.

I don't understand how you can watch or read any story in the X-Men's history and not understand, let alone SEE the themes in play. Humans calling Mutants slurs, throwing things at them in public, calling for them to be hanged hearkens back to the Civil Rights movement of the 60s. Bobby Drake's parents asking him, "Have you tried not being a mutant?" in, "X-Men 2," is similar to parents asking their gay children, "Have you tried not being gay?" some of it is subtext, but most of it is hammered over your head, "THIS IS AN ALLEGORY." Not subtext. Just text.

The other controversy stemmed from someone on Twitter stating that, "Cyclops would have a Blue Lives Matter," sticker plastered on his bumper." And um. NO. Scott Summers is lot of things. Bootlicker is not one of those things. Scott is as anti-cop as they come.

To end this little rant, I'll just post some of my favorite Cyclops moments from comics!

"Cyclops was right."

#x men comics #x men #cyclops #scott summers #x men 97 #metaphor #civil rights #lgbtqia #gay rights #equal rights #chris claremont #stan lee #jack kirby #morph #mutant #mutie #charles xavier #erik lehnsherr #wolverine #jean grey #gambit #rogue #ororo munroe #storm #beast #hank mccoy

[buggbuzz]

lemonade leak just updated so we are celebrating with another bit of art!!! i was gonna wait to post til my account got unshadowbanned but screw it here we go

(fanart of the lemonade leak by @turtleinsoup!!!)

#AAAAUGH SO GOOD #big BIG fan of characters being written in unique ways to suit their personalities mindsets and knowledge #ESPECIALLY in stories with multiple perspectives #it def def adds something to their character #i super DUPER love it when those writing styles involve things like coding and other specific formats not usually found in literary writing #(DONNIE!!) #like for ex im a biology major as many of you may know #and i absolutely use fancy biology concepts as casual metaphors and analogies for normal things #(​compared someone's thought process to leading and lagging strands of dna replication like a week ago 💀💀) #and i also like to think in formats like definitions and code sometimes #SOOOO fun to see in writing #im desperate to see the storyline continue but establishing donnie's general mindset was definitely crucial #cannot WAIT #also side note thank you for linking me in ur fic's notes 😭😭😭 too fuckin sweet #buzzart #the lemonade leak #rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt #rottmnt leo #rottmnt donnie

[jokingmaiden]

donnie’s brothers always tell him (well, not always—hardly, actually. they pick on him a lot) he’s an important member of the team.

but is he? is he really?

why would they need him if they’ve got cooler weapons, inexplicable magic, and stronger physiques? the mysticism only confirms what he already knows, only wedges a stick into the forming cracks.

so donnie makes himself irreplaceable. genius, a tactician, versatile—what you need, he can make. donnie becomes his tech; infallible, indestructible, irreplaceable. he and his work become inseparable. because that’s all he is to the team, right? his work?

so when april tells him in the witch town—really tells him, in her “doctor delicate touch” kind of way—they love him for him and not his tech, it strikes a chord. it’s not just because they care for him outside of his products, his safeguards, his aides in being just barely good enough to keep up with his brothers (by his own standards). it’s also because she’s calling him separate from his tech in the first place.

she’s telling him they see him for donnie. when the team pictures him, they see him without his tech. they see his soft shell, unafraid to imagine it; because to them, it’s nothing to be ashamed of or disgusted by. it’s just a part of donnie, their wonderful, eccentric, genius middle brother.

maybe, he thinks, if they can see him for his natural self, maybe he isn’t as much of a burden as he thought. if they can love him this much, even when he feels like he’s holding them back, then there must be some worth to him past his inventions, his crutches.

so, maybe for the first time in his life, maybe donnie decides to change his mind. maybe he’s more than his shell armor and his drones and his tank and his science.

maybe he belongs on this team after all, soft shell and all.

#rottmnt #rottmnt season 2 #rottmnt donnie #rottmnt donatello #rise donnie #rise donatello #rise!donnie #rise!donatello #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #rise of the tmnt #no bc like #his soft shell being a metaphor for chronic disability is something that can be so personal #and him feeling like his disability aides are a part of him because he can’t go around without them #but they love him. they love him #and he needs to know it #he is donnie #all of him #and it’s nothing to be ashamed of #they wouldn’t have him any other way

[captaincolorblob]

I cant decide which option is funnier, Draxum getting the turtles from a pet store or stealing them from a zoo. Imagine this 6″8 armored humanoid goat walking into a store/zoo and you’re just confused and terrified and all he does is yoink some baby turtles and maybe break an employees neck

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #barum draxum #dia rambles #i think zoo is more likely cause i doubt alligator snapping turtles specifically are able to be bought from regular stores #HOWEVER i think the pet shop option is WAY funnier #especially if you imagine its a human one cause idk if the hidden city would have regular animals #i also had to google how tall barry is and just got reminded how much taller everyone seems than they actually are #like you mean to tell me Raphael 'build like a tank' Hamato is JUST barely 6 ft????? #i'm cursed by the fact that leo is the same height as me #he either needs to be taller then me so i could kick him in the metaphorical balls by lifting my knee or short enough to easily punt him #yes i am a donnie kinnie yes the cain instinct comes with that why do you ask

[blindaysblogforturtles]

When I have free time in my hands I like to draw dangerous women.

#Tang Shen #jorogumo #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt au #my tmnt iteration #tmnt iteration #my art #tw eyestrain #maybe. idk #traditional art #Jorogumo Tang Shen #colored pencils #bro. every bit of red u see? my blood. metaphorically. it was actually my time and pencils ofc #i am. very proud. and I kinda like it. she looks beautiful and menacing #i also experimented with the colors

[racefortheironthrone]

Hello. I was recently reading your "People's History of the Marvel Universe" series (an excellent read btw).

You made reference to critiques of Xavier and his political strategies, which got me thinking. Has anyone ever brought up the idea of a mutant advocacy group in the comics? Something akin to a NAACP, or an NGO? It feels like something that should exist, but I genuinely can't remember a writer ever attempting to create one.

This is an excellent question!

So I have certainly mentioned the issue in the past. If we think of the Marvel Universe as being roughly co-terminous in time with our own universe, as it was before the invention of the sliding timescale in the 90s, there should have been a mutant rights movement founded in the 70s during the "movement of movements" that saw the explosion of gay rights movements, women's liberation movements, environmental movements, etc. coming out of the 60s civil rights movement and New Left/anti-war movement. (I certainly would have been fascinated by how the All-New X-Men would have wrestled with the concept of "intersectionality" when it was brand-new coming out of the Combahee River Collective.)

In the comics, there have been sporadic mentions of mutant advocacy groups and NGOs - mostly in the context of campus organizations - but often very sporadically. Grant Morrison really changed the game completely by making X-Corp (a global mutant rights NGO) a significant element of his celebrated New X-Men run, and creators who followed their work have gone on to invent new groups with examples like Super Trans (a support group for trans mutants), Mutantes Sans Frontières (a mutant medical NGO), MUSE (a mutant rescue and shelter NGO), and Magnetic North (a pro-Magneto radical student group).

Whether the Krakoan Response Team (disaster relief) or the Marauders (refugee and black market pharmaceuticals) count as social movements or NGOs probably depends more on your theoretical perspective on social movements. Both organizations are state-sponsored, but aren't formal state institutions, but then again Krakoa doesn't have a well-developed political system. Most theorists insist that social movements have to be outside the political system, but I tend to agree with those who argue that social movements and political movements overlap, and that a lot of social movement work historically and today is done within the system of electoral politics.

#xmen #xmen meta #sliding timescale #political analysis #historical analysis #mutant metaphor #social movements #krakoa #people's history of the marvel universe

[duncneydivorce]

not to sound like a monster fucker but I have a guilty pleasure for human/ non-human ships. I like what wanda/vision says about Wanda’s character and it’s very fitting to me she would have a significant romance with a mysterious otherworldly being. Her shape of water moment fr I love that for her.

That being said vision is somewhat of a plague to the maximoffs. While I enjoy the good moments of their relationships I think it’s vastly outweighed by the bad. I don’t blame vision for the white vision stuff or other robo-shenanigans. But both wanda AND pietro were so often turned into props in service of vision’s drama. And man they loved to drag it out. This wasn’t always the case but it happened enough to cause some serious and permanent damage to their characters. That’s my real problem with wanda/vision and the reason I have no attachment for this ship.

I appreciate the tender moments of their relationship and that vision will always be connected to the maximoffs in one way or another, but I’m just so sick of him constantly coming back into their spheres, especially because half the time it’s always about centring the robot. The fact that all this scarletvision bait as of late is to pander to mcu fans just makes me even more bitter towards the pairing. They broke up like 30 years ago marvel move on!

#wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #this isnt intended to be character hate or ship hate i get the appeal #but LORD it was not worth it that romance is literally the root cause of both wanda and pietros character assassinations #also vision had the same problem as the mutant metaphor. the story always went on about robo oppression #meanwhile the actual minority characters around him: 😶

[heywhattheshell]

“Everything I knew is gone. My wife. My daughter. My clan. Even my humanity. You four are all I have left.”

so I’m making my way through the 2012 series because rise gave me TMNT brainrot and I wanted to talk about this scene from ‘I, monster.’

up until this point, splinter hasn’t really talked much about his life pre-mutation (apart from shredder-centric conversations), and as a result, it’s really easy for me to forget that the turtles know so much about it. and that’s such an interesting perspective for them to have as characters. like, your dad/sensei had a whole human life. where you might be used to sticking to the shadows and living in a sewer under nyc because it’s all you’ve ever known, it isn’t all he’s ever known. it reframes so much of splinter’s character, but it also just has to be kind of weird for leo & the others to think about.

this is probably incoherent but I’ve been thinking about it all day

#tmnt #tmnt 2012 #tmnt 2k12 #teenage mutant ninja turtles #liza watches 2012 #<- tag for my Thoughts™️ as i have them #anyway i wonder if this is kind of a metaphor for that moment everyone has growing up #when you realize your parents were like. people before they were your parents #you know the moment #only in this case #there’s been such a distinction between the human world and their reality #there’s an ever-present barrier they can’t quite get past #even in this episode #mikey comments something about the city being so nice during the day #because they rarely go above ground in the daytime #but splinter remembers being human #splinter remembers the human world #he remembers the daylight #and the turtles *know* he does #he is a mutant like them #but at the same time there’s that barrier in their understanding of each other #and a weird awareness that he was something ‘more’ #before he was stuck living in the sewer eating like whatever that weird green goo was in the first episode #and he had a family! do they ask about them? do they think of them as their family too?

[fabuloustrash05]

Just gonna say, The Last of The Real Ones by Fall Out Boy is such a 2012 Raph x Mona Lisa song.

Specifically, the opening lyrics sound like Raph talking about Mona and how special/important she is to him and how much she influenced his life.

You are the sun and I am just the planets. Spinning around you, spinning around you

You were too good to be true, gold plated. But what's inside you? But what's inside you?

I know this whole damn city thinks it needs you, but not as much as I do, as much as I do

#The song uses celestial metaphors and is about finding love that is so pure and full of trust #been listening to this song a lot lately #it’s a bop #highly recommend #random thoughts #tmnt 2012 #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt raphael #tmnt raph #raphael hamato #tmnt raph 2012 #tmnt mona lisa #mona lisa tmnt #Y’gythgba #tmnt ramona #raphmona #raph x mona #raphael x mona lisa

[achilles-invulnerable-heel]

"you know, I wonder why I love the simple concept of the mutant part of the tmnt so much. It's not like I have any reason to relate to the feeling of having a body that's wrong or different from the rest of the society and because of that I'm outcast and struggle to fit in and often find myself marginalized due to it- oh. Ooohhhh."

#tmnt #trans #queer #teenage mutant ninja turtles #it could be a metaphor for a lot of things but #yk

[brw]

i wrote a big long thing but kind of forgot where i was going with it so i'm just gonna write . i think one of the things with krakoa and the mutant metaphor as an extension is that krakoa genuinely like. is a eugenics state. i do not think i could actually live there without in some way being endangered. what i mean by that is that krakoa is not accessible in any of the images we have seen from it. what i mean by that is that krakoa doesn't visibly have an actual functioning hospital & healthcare system so much as it has a bunch of people that happen to either have healing powers or were doctors before krakoa act as the healthcare system, but very little seems to be organised. what i mean by that is that the emphasis on krakoa seems to be first and foremost on curing the disabled and not supporting them. and idk, the frustrating thing is that this isn't really expanded on like... at all by writers because disabled people are not in the writing room at all. it just isn't considered. maybe vaguely alluded too, but there seems to me be very little acknowledgement that krakoa is actively hostile to disabled people in a lot of ways.

#brieuc.txt #this is basically word vomit i might add on later #but i always feel frustrated i guess. abt how the mutant metaphor likes to sometimes aestheticise disability in some storylines #but very rarely is the lived experience of disabled people actually included #bc as i keep saying. if marvel's most icon & well known disabled character (charles) was to live on krakoa as a disabled man. #he would face a lot of barriers! it would be hard! the quiet council is surrounded by steps. there are very few ramps on krakoa etc. #n rather than this be acknowledged like attilan acknowledged it and lent into the issue of eugenics its ignored #idk. thinking abt it