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scarletwitching · 6 years

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I know you would probably hate this, but, what do you think makes House of M popular? How this comic cloud people's judgement? How it affect new readers/casual fans's views? What are the factors that draw people in and fixed their impression? Just some observation, some people seem to enjoy the touchy family "feels", some may just like heroes snapping(like it's so cool), and sometimes it's Power Parade(it's deemed disrepctful to say she is less powerful than someone else).

It’s popular(ish) in mainstream fandom because its effects lasted a very long time, which makes it seem important, and because it’s a mash-up of a couple of enormously popular and beloved storylines, Dark Phoenix Saga and Infinity Gauntlet, set in a then-new alternate universe. It’s two old things smashed together and combined with a new thing.

That’s the short answer. The long answer is… long, and it’s actually about the underlying reasons people are okay with some offensive stuff (because that’s what I wanted to talk about). I’m putting this under a cut so that, when people who don’t agree with me inevitably read it, I can link them to this.

There really is a country song for everything.

It maybe goes without saying, but this is a House of M post so it mentions, however briefly, the usual HOM-related subject matter: ableism, infertility, people on the internet glorifying genocide.

Everyone likes things that have somewhat unsavory elements or unfortunate implications. With superheroes, the whole thing is – forgive me – problematic. You can find meaning and value in parts of it, but something is rotten at the core. One of the uncomfortable aspects of speculative fiction fandoms is how terrible things become normalized. Because we’re only talking about fiction. That makes it okay, right? It’s tempting to parrot these notions of “good” queens and “rightful” kings or to go along with the canon logic that justifies violence and ignores the sovereignty of nations that aren’t the US.

I bring up that last one because, in modern superhero fandom, buying into the canon logic often means defending US imperialism under the guise of defending a specific character or story. There’s always a justification for it in-universe, so the way it relates to the real world becomes some extraneous detail that only a jerk would mention.

It’s the Thermian Argument. It doesn’t matter what the underlying message or consequences, however (un)intentional, are. It matters that I like Thing and any problems you find with Thing are the result of you not focusing on very specific details that make it “make sense” in the story. Remember the old Tumblr adage that you can like problematic things so long as you acknowledge the problems? I would just say you can like whatever so long as you don’t bury your head in the sand and scream, “It’s fine! You just didn’t pay attention to the story!!”

What I’m saying is that there’s a lot of justifying how bad literally every part of the story is by saying it all “makes sense” and so all criticisms are invalid. If a person is traumatized, it just makes sense that they would [waves at the entire story] do that. It’s very sad when your imaginary kids die, y’know?

The people who like House of M tend to cite its fetishizing gaze on women’s mental illness as a feature and not a bug. The fault in that argument is that, as far as I’ve seen, none of the people making this argument have Schizophrenia. Or Schizoaffective Disorder. Or any personal experience with psychosis whatsoever. At the very least, the vast majority of them don’t, so they’re not part of the group being misrepresented.

The issue of what is “good” mental illness representation is complex. Sometimes, people who are struggling or have struggled relate to characters who lash out or do destructive things. People can find solace in imperfect places. Everyone’s just trying to get by in this hellscape, and if a comic made you feel understood or just plain better in some way, that’s a good thing. But It’s a very “I got mine” argument to focus on that and ignore how those stories might affect others. You can’t reclaim something that wasn’t insulting you in the first place. I find the claim that there’s something universal about Sad Wanda Crying unconvincing given how emblematic HOM is of media representations of psychosis. If you’re not always being portrayed as a serial killer, the weight of this story will easily fly over your head.

Then there’s the not-small matter that the people being insulted – really, specifically insulted – by HOM are groups that aren’t a big part of public discourse. The severely mentally ill and people with fertility issues. Not that those are on equal footing, but they both have a certain invisibility and the idea that something might be hurtful to them is treated as a joke. Reproductive issues are intensely personal, and most people want to keep them private. There is a lot wrong with media representations of infertility, but if talking about it means opening up about your experiences, it’s no wonder people don’t want to or are only willing to in a receptive space.

Also, I suspect a lot of people didn’t read the X-Men stories that came after and are viewing this entirely from Wanda’s perspective. There’s something narcissistic about sad, sad, sad characters being sad about their sad, sad, sad life. It invites the audience to focus on that one person’s struggles – often as a stand-in for their own problems – and ignore everything else going on. This is one of the critiques of “manpain” storylines. There’s a layer of self-involvement built in. Killed a bunch of people? But they were sad! Sad, sad, sad! We’ve all got problems, man. The world breaks everyone. Not everyone kills Hawkeye two different times.

This is particularly true in spec fic where every backstory is a trauma conga line. Your fave may have suffered, but realistically, so did everyone else.

Redemption arcs can have that air of narcissism too. Woe is me, I have done bad. If they get really self-obsessed, you get The Very Worst Kind of Story, the one where the villain is someone who has been wronged by the “redeemed” character and they want revenge. It’s a way of appearing to confront the damage done while actually minimizing it and discrediting the victims. Protagonist-centered morality to the extreme. Only Good Victims™ matter, and therefore, the redemption seeker is exonerated. All charges dropped on account of the victim turned out to be a jerk!

(That’s not what this post is about. I watched a movie the other day that had this problem, and it gave me a lot of feelings. It was Power Rangers. Leave me alone.)

Getting back to what I said at the beginning, the thing that bothers me isn’t so much that people like something I don’t like. I agree with Grant Morrison’s assessment that HOM is lukewarm at best, but I can still see why someone might like it. The bigger problem is how people like quote-unquote problematic things.

Which is to say oh my god, you guys have to stop acting like genocide is cool and badass. Finding a story valuable is one thing. Claiming that Wanda is so awesome because she can warp reality and wipe out all the mutants and “when will your fave” is another thing entirely. It is not okay to brag about genocide. Ever.

EVER.

Not even when you’re talking about fiction.

I know that saying a character is more powerful is the unquestioned trump card of comics fandom, but 1) that’s iffy in the first place and 2) it’s especially bad in this case. I used to think of the “my fave is more powerful than yours” dick-measuring contest solely as an expression of Boys Club thinking, something juvenile that celebrates physical strength above all else. But there is something more insidious to this logic. Saying that having more power – by which you mean a greater ability to commit acts of violence and hurt others – is the same thing as having more value is disturbing logic. The way that superhero comics equate power with goodness is part of why they’re considered fascist. Every time you indulge this fantasy that having more power makes something better, that power is virtue, the spectral form of Alan Moore appears and hurls copies of Watchmen at your head.

Buying into this furthers one of the worst messages in the genre. I’m not saying anyone who argues over which character is more powerful is a fascist, but this logic should not go unexamined. Why does it matter so much which character is the better at inflicting harm than all the other harm inflicters? You can use the cheap argument that they’re heroes and they’re doing good, but superheroes are, to a worrying degree, used as avatars of the US military. They’re only unblemished, pure-hearted Social Justice Warriors™ if you don’t pay attention to any stories featuring them.

And when you’re not just arguing that being powerful is better, but that the act of committing genocide is a key part of that superiority?? That’s beyond disturbing. How can people not notice how terrible that sounds? Outside of the narrative and the twisted reasoning of superhero comics, what are you really saying when you say that? Might makes right is questionable enough, but when the expression of “might” is ethnic cleansing?

Someone, please explain the thinking that leads to these posts. I’m lost in a flurry of question marks. What compels a person to declare, openly, that what’s cool about Wanda is that she got rid of all the mutants? How does someone conclude that glorifying genocide is okay because it’s a fantasy genocide? Why do thousands of people reblog these horrifying posts?

Why?

WHYWHYWHY?

On second thought, don’t explain it to me. I don’t want to know.

#anonymous #answered #house of m #meta #comics meta #written by me

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