okay but seriously lets talk about Peggy Carter for a second
the sheer amount of kids who came up to me at Megacon while I was dressed as Peggy Carter was absolutely heartwarming, especially the little girl with a mass of kinky curly hair all on top of her head dressed in a pink sparkly supergirl dress who asked for a photo whose mom was like “we love that show so much it’s so great!” and the multiple little boys in captain america halloween costumes toting plastic shields who blushed and hid behind Mom or Dad until I knelt down and waved
the parking ticket guy, who must have been 50 immediately recognized me and said “I love that show! she sure showed all those men, didn’t she?” and told me to watch out for the russians with a smile and a wink.
i sat down in the food court at a table with a very classy looking older woman who proceeded to strike up a conversation with me about her mother, who started working in 1913 and was a suffragette. we had a brilliant conversation about feminism and she ended with “I hope to God that show gets renewed for a second season, we need shows like this.”
dear ABC: this is what your show has done. this is what our children are watching. please, for the love of all that is, bring back Agent Carter
Monthly Archives: April 2015
if you’re still unlearning internalized problematic shit clap your hands
So I know the new Age of Ultron isn’t out yet but from what I’ve read Wanda and Pietro aren’t going to be mentioned at all in the context of there comic Jewish and Romani heritage. I’ve heard blame cast around to various parties, what’s your take?
Well, IDK who’s to blame for the whitewashing*, so in that sense I couldn’t say. But I’m not sure if people are aware that it’s ongoing not just in the movies – in 616, Wanda and Pietro recently discovered that they are genetic experiments of the High Evolutionary, so not only are they not Jewish (not Magneto’s children) and culturally by upbringing but not ethnically Romani/Rroma**, they’re not mutants as mutants are generally established to be (ie, humans with a specific and spontaneous genetic alteration in a specific gene).
So, yeaaaaaaah.
There is some difficulty surrounding their original heritage, because their ethnicity as Romani/Rroma was not based on reality but on the stereotypical idea of the “gypsy” in the sixties. As far as I know (I could be wrong) they’ve never identified as Romani/Rroma; at first they were “gypsy” and later their heritage was given a fictional name, Transian (from Transia) which has never existed. The fictional aspect’s not great, but at least when that happened the writers were trying – for example Pietro at one point in Avengers visits “Little Transia” in New York and reflects on his difficulty integrating his existence with the Avengers and his cultural heritage.
All of this is not to say that I think people of Romani/Rroma descent shouldn’t claim them, just that between “Transia” and them basically being Jewish because someone in comics belatedly wanted to make their dad Jewish, I want to acknowledge that their original heritage comes from a pretty fucked-up place.
I don’t know why Marvel seems intent on removing every possible aspect of diversity from their characters by literally turning them into genetic blank slates the High Evolutionary (a genocidal alien) slapped his stamp on. It’s weird and creepy, especially since two of their three intersecting identities were major victims of genocide in the early 20th century. It’s possibly to do with a non-Marvel/Disney company owning the rights to mutants, so they had to remove the “mutant” aspect in the films, but it seems weird that in so doing they’d remove the mutant aspect in the comics, as well. I was going to say “especially since there was so much controversy over the whole m-word thing, with comic book writers taking swipes at each other” (justifiably so in some cases) but that could be why – Marvel might be trying to de-escalate the controversy by removing Judaism, Romani/Rroma heritage, and Mutantism from its newly-most-promient-because-of-MCU comics characters.
I think it’s kind of weird and stupid either way; Marvel has been pushing for diversity (not as hard as they could or we’d like them to, but still) and to mayonnaise-up the twins is pretty violently counter to that goal. I’m against it, but on the other hand I’m sure in a few years’ time we’ll learn that the High Evolutionary was lying and that Magneto wasn’t hurt by Wanda’s “hurt all my blood relatives” spell because *handwave* and that they actually are Jewish Romani/Rroma Mutants.
God, fucking…comics. Sometimes I swear.
* I’m aware Jewish and Romani/Rroma people both have a wide variety of physical appearances and that particularly in the case of Romani/Rroma there is a great deal of pain around “passing white” because kids have been taken away from parents for “looking too white” to be their kids. Whitewashing is semantically not the best term in this case, but it’s just used to imply the removal of an important marginalized heritage.
** I’m sorry, I’ve seen both used, I’m not sure which is correct or if one is a subset of the other and there seem to be conflicting views on it. Happy to take correction if I’m fucking it up.
furiouslystinginghiddentragedy:
Let’s face it, if Marvel owned Wonder Woman she’d have two movies by now.
Yeah, just like Black Widow and Captain Marvel right ? 🙂
Like Agent Carter, like Jessica Drew, like Quake…
I’m getting really exhausted seeing people bring up the “Lady Loki” arc that Straczynski wrote and trying to talk about how they didn’t actually see her IDing as a woman during that period.
And guys, I need you to understand something. Suddenly having boobs and a vagina doesn’t force somebody to present feminine. If Loki didn’t want to be feminine, then she wouldn’t have.
That whole arc was incredibly transphobic and transmisogynistic, and Straczynski ought to be ashamed of himself. All of the issues in these arguments ultimately stem from the flawed perceptions of gender by a cis author, but still you ought be conscientious of these things when discussing this topic.
I admit, all of these reasons are in part why I’m increasingly sure that the Loki we’re seeing on A-Force can’t be Lady Loki.
(”Lady Loki” here being used as a term to distinguish “Loki in Sif’s body” from “Loki presenting as feminine”.
Also, really? Does it really cost people anything to refer to Lady Loki with female pronouns? Maybe it could be said that they went back to identifying solely as male once they got their original body back, but the above post is quite correct, there are a lot of bodies Siege Loki could have stolen. A lot of Asgardians at the time weren’t really using them.)
I mean, that was actually a pretty desperately problematic arc, and yet the writers of A-Force are, respectively:
1. G. Willow Wilson, a.k.a the brilliant mind behind Ms. Marvel (2014)
2. Marguerite Bennet, co-author of Angela: Asgard’s Assassin, which gave us an out and proud, tastefully done trans character of color.
Not to mention that this series is giving us Singularity, who is agender and who they specifically want to use to explore such concepts as gender identity.
I can’t believe that they wouldn’t know better than to go down that route again. It’s got to be an alternate universe Loki, maybe one who always identified “only” as female, maybe an older one who’s still genderfluid (she looks kind of noticeably older than Agent Loki). I don’t think it’s Agent Loki – the broken horns motif has been batted around for a while, I don’t think they would undo it that quickly. But neither do I think it’s just Loki in Sif’s body again, and not just because I can’t see the other ladies on the A-Force team standing for that.
I’m pretty sure that in one of Thor’s specials were Lady Loki was a character Thor and Balder used she/her pronouns (Thor was calling her a god and then corrected himself and called her a goddess) so either Loki was switching pronouns at the time or they wrote Thor as transphobic… (I’m going to add pics later)
No, while I don’t have pics, I’m, like, 90% sure you’re right. I think the OP might be referring to readers who insist on referring to Lady Loki with male pronouns? Which I can totally believe is a thing, unfortunately.
Hey, OP here.
Yeah I was referring mainly to discussions in the fandom about Lady Loki, although as I understand the actual run itself is a mess wrt Loki’s pronouns. The fandom’s pretty bad about it, though, and I see a lot of arguments people make trying to dismiss Loki’s gender identity that are really lacking in understanding of the topic.
Hey, OP! Sorry, didn’t mean to talk over you. It’s just that kajiyafujiro is a follower and I wasn’t sure how closely you might be reading these. I would keep an eye out for their pics, though. Siege and its aftermath were library books for me, so my memory on the exact happenings is a bit hazy.
(I believe Lady Loki was handled by a couple of different writers, actually. She was around for a while. So that could be where the discrepancy in our respective recollections is stemming from.)
NOBODY IS SAYING THAT MAKING BOBBY GAY IS BI-ERASURE.
EVERYONE IS SAYING THAT HAVING JEAN TALK ABOUT HOW “EVERYONE SAYS THEY’RE A LITTLE BIT BI” AND NO, HE’S REALLY GAY, NO MATTER WHAT HE SAYS ON THE SUBJECT, IS BI-ERASURE. ESPECIALLY WHEN SHE IS CLEARLY MEANT TO BE OUR AUTHOR AVATAR IN THAT SHE’S THE ONE WHO MAKES THE “REVEAL” THAT BOBBY IS GAY IN THE FIRST PLACE.
SERIOUSLY, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY TO FIX. EVEN JUST HAVING HER GO “YOU COULD BE, BUT YOU’RE NOT” WOULD HAVE STILL BEEN SKEEVY, BUT IT WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN AS BAD. AND SHE’S ALREADY IN HIS HEAD, SO WE’RE WAY PAST SKEEVY.
AS IT STANDS, SHE LITERALLY WENT “YOU’RE NOT BI, YOU’RE JUST CONFUSED/IN DENIAL/WHATEVER.”
ALSO BECAUSE FORCIBLY OUTING SOMEONE CLEARLY AGAINST THEIR WILL IS NOT OKAY.
NEVER DO IT.
NO, NOT EVEN “FOR THEIR OWN GOOD”.
THIS WOULDN’T BE AS BAD IF BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS WASN’T BEING SUCH A DEFENSIVE LITTLE SHIT ABOUT THESE ISSUES ON TWITTER. BUT HE IS.
I AM SO LEGITIMATELY ANGRY WHAT THE FUCK.
I’m getting really exhausted seeing people bring up the “Lady Loki” arc that Straczynski wrote and trying to talk about how they didn’t actually see her IDing as a woman during that period.
And guys, I need you to understand something. Suddenly having boobs and a vagina doesn’t force somebody to present feminine. If Loki didn’t want to be feminine, then she wouldn’t have.
That whole arc was incredibly transphobic and transmisogynistic, and Straczynski ought to be ashamed of himself. All of the issues in these arguments ultimately stem from the flawed perceptions of gender by a cis author, but still you ought be conscientious of these things when discussing this topic.
I admit, all of these reasons are in part why I’m increasingly sure that the Loki we’re seeing on A-Force can’t be Lady Loki.
(”Lady Loki” here being used as a term to distinguish “Loki in Sif’s body” from “Loki presenting as feminine”.
Also, really? Does it really cost people anything to refer to Lady Loki with female pronouns? Maybe it could be said that they went back to identifying solely as male once they got their original body back, but the above post is quite correct, there are a lot of bodies Siege Loki could have stolen. A lot of Asgardians at the time weren’t really using them.)
I mean, that was actually a pretty desperately problematic arc, and yet the writers of A-Force are, respectively:
1. G. Willow Wilson, a.k.a the brilliant mind behind Ms. Marvel (2014)
2. Marguerite Bennet, co-author of Angela: Asgard’s Assassin, which gave us an out and proud, tastefully done trans character of color.
Not to mention that this series is giving us Singularity, who is agender and who they specifically want to use to explore such concepts as gender identity.
I can’t believe that they wouldn’t know better than to go down that route again. It’s got to be an alternate universe Loki, maybe one who always identified “only” as female, maybe an older one who’s still genderfluid (she looks kind of noticeably older than Agent Loki). I don’t think it’s Agent Loki – the broken horns motif has been batted around for a while, I don’t think they would undo it that quickly. But neither do I think it’s just Loki in Sif’s body again, and not just because I can’t see the other ladies on the A-Force team standing for that.
I’m pretty sure that in one of Thor’s specials were Lady Loki was a character Thor and Balder used she/her pronouns (Thor was calling her a god and then corrected himself and called her a goddess) so either Loki was switching pronouns at the time or they wrote Thor as transphobic… (I’m going to add pics later)
No, while I don’t have pics, I’m, like, 90% sure you’re right. I think the OP might be referring to readers who insist on referring to Lady Loki with male pronouns? Which I can totally believe is a thing, unfortunately.
I just bought all the issues of Angela: Asgard’s Assassin that I was missing off of Comixology because fight me that’s why.
I still don’t quite get how Angels work, and I’m not at all sold on the artwork, but fuck it, I will forgive a significant deal for good narration and characterization.
(Romance of the Stabby Girls for the win.)
Also, it’s kind of bugging me that “coming out” storylines continue to be a hip, “edgy” thing for mainstream media to tackle for the sake of buzz and ratings.
Like, it pretty much always plays out the same way. Character X (usually the most stereotypical choice, like the jerk jock or the awkward girl) is dramatically outed, there is much angst that turns into hugs and understanding by the time the credits roll, and then everything is hunky dory. They might get a token romance later, but that’s usually all she wrote.
It’s like the creators want all the backpats of being labelled “progressive” without wanting to put in the effort of seeing that it’s all a little more complicated than that.
I’m getting really exhausted seeing people bring up the “Lady Loki” arc that Straczynski wrote and trying to talk about how they didn’t actually see her IDing as a woman during that period.
And guys, I need you to understand something. Suddenly having boobs and a vagina doesn’t force somebody to present feminine. If Loki didn’t want to be feminine, then she wouldn’t have.
That whole arc was incredibly transphobic and transmisogynistic, and Straczynski ought to be ashamed of himself. All of the issues in these arguments ultimately stem from the flawed perceptions of gender by a cis author, but still you ought be conscientious of these things when discussing this topic.
I admit, all of these reasons are in part why I’m increasingly sure that the Loki we’re seeing on A-Force can’t be Lady Loki.
(”Lady Loki” here being used as a term to distinguish “Loki in Sif’s body” from “Loki presenting as feminine”.
Also, really? Does it really cost people anything to refer to Lady Loki with female pronouns? Maybe it could be said that they went back to identifying solely as male once they got their original body back, but the above post is quite correct, there are a lot of bodies Siege Loki could have stolen. A lot of Asgardians at the time weren’t really using them.)
I mean, that was actually a pretty desperately problematic arc, and yet the writers of A-Force are, respectively:
1. G. Willow Wilson, a.k.a the brilliant mind behind Ms. Marvel (2014)
2. Marguerite Bennet, co-author of Angela: Asgard’s Assassin, which gave us an out and proud, tastefully done trans character of color.
Not to mention that this series is giving us Singularity, who is agender and who they specifically want to use to explore such concepts as gender identity.
I can’t believe that they wouldn’t know better than to go down that route again. It’s got to be an alternate universe Loki, maybe one who always identified “only” as female, maybe an older one who’s still genderfluid (she looks kind of noticeably older than Agent Loki). I don’t think it’s Agent Loki – the broken horns motif has been batted around for a while, I don’t think they would undo it that quickly. But neither do I think it’s just Loki in Sif’s body again, and not just because I can’t see the other ladies on the A-Force team standing for that.
I'm really not that boring, I'm headstrong and annoying 