The very many questions-not-worth-their-own-thread question thread XXVII

[Takhisis]

I'll watch kickstarter for that.

 

[timtofly]

Why did you put a little cap on top of that W?

The answer to your question is probably that Takhisis is asking a random question in the "ask a question thread" and has nothing to do with the current topic.

@ Takhisis

Is that not what they call them in Europe?

 

[Traitorfish]

Superhero blether spoilered, because: "questions not worth their own thread".

Spoiler :

It's representative of it's readership and the demographic in the countries where it is prevalent.

Demographics, I'm sceptical; the US is, what, 30% non-Latino white males? Which is hardly reflected in the A-list or even B-list of DC and Marvel roosters. Readership, I'll give you that, but that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy pretty quickly. If you routinely fail to produce stories about people who aren't straight white males, you're probably going to struggle to attract readers who aren't straight white males. And I suspect that's what's behind Marvels efforts to diversify, the realisation that their consumer base is ridiculously narrow given the size of their industry, and that if they want to stay competitive with minor, indie and foreign publishers, they're going to have to be willing to expand beyond that.

(Honestly, they're not even very good at representing white American males. How many members of the Justice League are Polish? How many Avengers don't roll on shabbos? It's pretty much WASPs and space aliens, for the most part.)

^Why do people insist on calling Gypsies 'Romani'?

"Gypsy" is widely considered to be, if not a slur, then at least somewhat thoughtless. Romani is considered to be the more proper term.

I agree with Quackers. Who gives a damn that they are straight white males, Jesus Christ.

Given the number of outraged reactions to a black Captain America and a female Thor? Readers of Marvel Comics.

Changing the demographics of white male superheroes will just tell children that those things are defective or undesirable in some way.

 

[salty mud]

No idea what the point of your comic is. Seems like absolute nonsense. It's usually a sign people don't know what to say when they resort to posting daft pictures.

What irks people the most is that these characters are being changed just so some sock and sandal wearing hippy won't get their beards in a twist. Why should Captain America be black? He was originally a white male and has been for decades. Why change it now? Thor has been a Greek god for centuries. Suddenly making him female is just madness. As already suggested, make a black superhero if you feel so inclined. Do you people really think that people should be "represented" in movies? Like it's some kind of travesty if certain groups of the community aren't given an arbitrary amount of screen time to satisfy you?

 

[Traitorfish]

Where are you finding these demands, which you seem to believe I am making? All I'm saying is, these moves are a good thing, and we should welcome the dissatisfaction of their opponents as proof that Marvel is however clumsily moving in the right direction.

 

[Quackers]

Haven't actually addressed any of my points. Just played the race card. Oh well, it is what i expect from you.

 

[Farm Boy]

As already suggested, make a black superhero if you feel so inclined.

Spoiler :

They do do so. They do so more when those movies/comics get traction. After Lucy has been hitting it (relatively)big this summer, I'd expect more female characters in this vein. We're into tricky territory now though, because comic books and reinventions from old comic books seems to be what TF and Quackers are caring about. Quackers seems annoyed when a genre notorious for "He's dead. No he isn't. He's a she. Not he's a dude. This is his cousin. No wait, it was a clone." reinvents a non-white dude from an old white dude character. TF seems annoyed that they don't re-write tried and true older characters more often, then bogglingly tosses out examples of both older non-white-dude-WASP leads and newer heroes that aren't cast as such because they aren't the tried and true. I'm winding up confused and vaguely annoyed.

 

[Traitorfish]

Spoiler off-topic :

Haven't actually addressed any of my points. Just played the race card. Oh well, it is what i expect from you.

Race card, ethnicity card, gender card and sexuality card. I'd have played the gender-identity card, too, but I really don't trust mainstream comics not to make a pig's ear of that one.

TF seems annoyed that they don't re-write tried and true older characters more often, then bogglingly tosses out examples of both older non-heteronormative WASP leads and newer heroes that aren't cast as such because they aren't the tried and true.

Honestly, I'm not all that interested in what the Big Two get up to. They're circling the drain and I honestly welcome their demise, or if I was feeling more charitable, their contraction and reinvention. So I don't really have any investment in their overall policy, I'm just glad that the winds are blowing such these sorts of revisions are being made. It's nice if people who aren't straight white men are made to feel a bit more welcome in comics, but at this point I don't think we need to look to the Big Two for that, and as I said this reads like an attempt to keep up rather than to clear the way.

 

[Arakhor]

Other than that Thor is a Norse god, I think it's pretty silly that suddenly Thor is a black female. If we were going with a transformative superhero, that could make sense, but suddenly handwaving the son of Odin into a woman is very odd.

 

[Traitorfish]

Marvel's Thor isn't actually a Norse god, though, he's a humanoid alien based on Norse mythology. In-universe, he's a humanoid alien on which Norse mythology was based. So Thor can be pretty much whatever the editors want it to be, provided they can maintain a thin gloss of conceptual of coherence.

 

[Tahuti]

For some reason, I have always imagined Freya as being ethnically Jewish.

 

[Takhisis]

The answer to your question is probably that Takhisis is asking a random question in the "ask a question thread" and has nothing to do with the current topic.

The answer to why I posted a Ŵ is, rather simply, that I mis-typed.

I was really testing you, honestly!

Is that not what they call them in Europe?

It's a made-up name which, to many of us, sounds like calling black people 'colo(u)red' because it's somehow less discriminatory.

For some reason, I have always imagined Freya as being ethnically Jewish.

Because the Jews you meet in East Belgium are most probably Ashkenazis, interbred with the local populations for so long that they are now nearly indistinguishable. The historical Hebrews were typical Semites.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's a made-up name which, to many of us, sounds like calling black people 'colo(u)red' because it's somehow less discriminatory.

"Romani" is the name the Romani use to refer to themselves, and I generally think we should defer to people when the alternative is using a slur.

 

[Takhisis]

'Gypsy' is not a slur, it's an exonym. And I haven't ever called myself a 'Romani' or met anyone who did.

 

[Traitorfish]

"Gypsy" is widely regarded as offensive. "Roma" or "Romani" are generally preferred. The former may offend, the latter will not, so it makes sense to prefer the latter.

edit: Also, both the European Roma Rights Centre and International Romani Union favour "Roma" or "Romani", so there's that.

 

[Takhisis]

'Gypsy' used to eb spat by some people, but is not intrinsically an insult, any more than calling a black person 'black' or a Jew 'Jewish'.

The Roma Rights people are idiots at best.

 

[Traitorfish]

Eh, like I said, "Gypsy" may or may not cause offence, but "Roma" will not cause offence, so it makes sense to prefer the latter. There's no reason to prefer "Gypsy" other than, I don't know, achieving some sense of victory over those sock-and-sandaled hippies that give Salty Mud some many sleepless nights?

 

[Tee Kay]

Haven't actually addressed any of my points. Just played the race card. Oh well, it is what i expect from you.

A race card is still a race card if it's white.

 

[Takhisis]

I don't want to hijack the thread much more, but I see your point, Traitorfish, yes, although one big problem with the use of that word is that many people described by it don't identify with it and are sometimes offended by people using a name they don't want them to.

 

[Traitorfish]

"Roma" is literally the Romani-language word for "Roma".