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#she has some incredible stuff to say about female heroes and the western ideal of white feminity
sophiainspace · 2 years
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"I’ve never genuinely rooted for a superhero. They’ve never felt like they were on my side, no matter how much they try to convince me. Maybe because they hide so much of their complexity from the public—their origin story, their trauma, their conflict. Their nobility isn’t enough for me. I want to know how their heroism intersects with their humanity. I don’t know how to get behind the self-righteous indignation, the arrogance, the belief that their version of good and evil is so universal the rest of us should just surrender to it and wait to be saved. These are qualities that remind me of my own nemeses, the ordinary people who want me dead or vanquished. The ones who passionately disagree with me or who/what I am. The ones who think they should be running the world so much they don’t mind running right over me to do it..."
"The villain is usually more honest about what they want and what they’ll do to get it. Living in a deceitful world as the many things I am, I find this level of honesty refreshing, far more refreshing than a white man with an enemy, armed with superpowers or a fleet of super-white super friends, indebted with a noble pursuit.
"I relate to the conditions of villainy."
- Jill Louise Busby, 'In Defense of Supervillains'
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ouchmaster6000 · 4 years
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Does it hurt to be a Western comics fan given the horrific SJW state of the industry? My uncle collected mints growing up and I don't even want him to look at comics these days...
To some extent.
There's definitely some decisions Marvel and DC (but especially Marvel) have made in the past year that piss me off, but at the same time, American politics in relation to anime and politics in relation western comics are a bit of a different thing.
In regards to anime, SJWs try to censor and force stuff from another country to fit their ideals (while hypocritically complaining about cultural appropriation in other instances). Take shield hero for example. Obviously alot of idiots were pissed off that it would even consider showing false rape accusations being a thing, but even SJWs that weren't absolutely raging and trying to give it a chance claimed it was "tone-deaf" to show something like when the #metoo movement was trending.
Now I'd argue it was the PERFECT time, since people more than ever need to realize false accusations can and do happen frequently, but what's funny is calling it "tone deaf" when in Japan THERE WAS NO CONTROVERSY. That hashtag isn't a thing there, and none of the people who made the anime knew what they were going on about.
Basically, American politics has no place in anime, and it's shitty to try to censor someone else's work to fit your values.
By contrast... Superhero comics have always been at least a little bit political. Captain America, Wonder Woman and X-Men in particular have always been tied to certain political and philosophical concepts. So it doesn't necessarily bother me too much when Cap talks about facism, the X-Men discuss discrimination, or Wonder Woman talks about feminism as much, even if I may not agree with EVERYTHING they say, since it's always been a part of there character (at the very least, it's not as awful or insulting as when Funimation dubbers throw in random jabs at gamergate, or the female characters clothes, putting words into the mouths of characters that were never theirs)
I should also point out that, and this may surprise you, when I first started reading comics I was pretty liberal myself (though, I first started reading in middle school, so my ability to fully understand politics was questionable at best) But I feel like things have changed since then with left becoming increasingly more crazy and obsessed with identity politics in the past several years. I've definitely changed as well, and would identify more as centrist at this point, but honestly, I feel like the political landscape itself has changed even more than I have. As a result, reading a comic (or anything really) with liberal overtones written in the 70s or 80s feels very different than one written today, as I'm more inclined to find myself agreeing with sentiments in the former than the latter.
So I don't have an issue with politics in comics per say, and even today's dumbass sjws have a right to freedom of speech and to express their opinion in fiction (as cringy as reading said fiction can feel) what is frustrating and, in my opinion, crossing the line, is that with the rise of identity politics were seeing more and more creators actively CHANGING older characters with an already built in fan base to fit new agendas (as opposed to just making new characters) often to please demographics that were never all that into comics, thereby insulting and pissing off the older fans, and disrespecting both the character and the characters original creator.
Big examples of this are altering She Hulk from a sexy amozonian woman to a big ugly brutish female version of the Hulk, and randomly making Iceman gay (even though he's been around since the 60's, has had several girlfriends over the years, and has never shown ANY signs of swinging that way)
It'd be one thing if they just tried to make a NEW she hulk (there already hulk, red hulk, she hulk and red she hulk, so why not) while still letting the current one be herself. They'd be keeping She Hulks current fans happy, while testing the waters to see if there's a market for the other (though I SINCERELY doubt there is.)
The Iceman situation is even more frustrating since they wouldn't even HAVE to make a new gay mutant, there are already several (Northstar, Anole... Mystique, if we're counting lesbians and villains. Probably more I'm not aware of, given how many x men characters there have been over the years.) They could easily make a book about one of them.
Actually, Anole has a pretty interesting design/powers, and many of his interactions with his friend Rockslide are incredibly funny (with Anole, ironically, playing the "straight man") I think a team up book about them would be a lot more entertaing and probably sell better than "gay Iceman" (whose books, I should clarify, are some of the worst garbage Marvel's ever shat out, and make Chuck Austen's maligned Uncanny X-Men books seem like fine quality literature gold in retrospect)
Wow, I rambled on quite a bit here, but hopefully that explains my take on things.
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