Marvel's animated revival of the beloved X-Men cartoon is bringing back a very special mutant—with a few changes worthy of the mutant metaphor.

So in the latest installment of what won’t make MAGA throw a tantrum.

  • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    52·
    10 months ago

    Wait - X-men has storylines regarding being different from the norm?

    What is this woke garbage.

    Next thing you’ll tell me is that the whole concept of being a mutant is a metaphor tied to acceptance of different races, sexual orientations, etc.

    I bet with their woke agenda they even do something ridiculous like have some plotline about ableism and have their most powerful mutant be in a wheelchair.

    • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
      1216·
      10 months ago

      … Sigh… Okay so not to be ungrateful as any non-binary representation is basically a good step… But there’s weird issue with non-binary characters so regularly being rendered as shapeshifters or intersex aliens or whatever.

      Like, yes, you talk to us and do the “what superpower would you want” thing and like 3/4 of us would say shapeshifting. But there’s still this really weird thing where the audience is lead to accept the character’s gender because of the character’s body. It’s sort of just more gender essentialism but via sci fi fuckery. The character is sort of more arguably intersex with non-binary simply being like Prisig’s Buddhist principle of “Mu”. Are you sexually male or female? - mu. Un-ask the question as the binary does not apply.

      Not so much trans representation as the character’s gender is in fact kind of in line with their body’s physicality. The cis third gender with a presentation that your brain recognizes as both and neither.

      I am sure that the character will end up being endearing but like… It’s not exciting.

      • UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT
        5·
        10 months ago

        Interesting, I hadn’t really thought about how I perceive non binary people. Clearly you’re very well read on the topic. I think your comment might be coming out of left field for some people (heh, “left” field also kind of implies a binary - this shit is everywhere), but I appreciate you taking the time to share.

        • Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world
          3·
          10 months ago

          Thank you…and you are not alone. Generally speaking my experience is that people sort of treat non-binary folk as just a third category, like pips on a government questionnaire. A friend of mine started dating a non-binary person and was quite startled when after a few meet ups I asked them where they sat inside the non-binary spectrum. It simply never occurred to him that how we hope others would ideally conceptualize us individually is a way to feel like people actually see us better underneath the obsufcating factors of physical phenotype. Most people just ask for pronouns and figure job done… And that is fine really but any two non-binary people might have very different emotional needs or presentations. Most people just assume something like agender and then stop really thinking about it. Most of us will never bring it up but when someone doesn’t actually know the details of our deal it can be very difficult to feel holistically understood in the way we sort of hope our nearest and dearest would.

          But yeah… When you look at non-binary characters in media you see a lot of shapeshifters, aliens and robots. Things where they physically aren’t strictly male or female in a reproductive sense which is more an intersex thing, not a non-binary thing . A lot of our general struggles involve asking for something the human brain isn’t strictly programmed to do in ignoring what they see so a lot of the time these depictions sort of naturally exclude a lot of our everyday struggles by simply being physically provable. So when you hear of another non-binary shapeshifter added to a growing list of shapeshifters the reaction becomes “oh. Another one”. Like you aren’t mad at it but it’s definitely not reinventing the wheel. Disney particularly tends to be like 10 years behind on representation and when that antiquated train finally pulls into the station the media makes a big deal and the attitude is that they are being bold and we’re generally expected to cheer for whatever stale crumbs they throw our way.

          And none of this is to say that enby shapeshifters can’t actually be great. Nimona was fantastic rep that dug really deep into trans themes and felt real about misgendering even through it’s fantasy lens that somehow managed to punch waaaay above what you expect for a trope normally the domain of very lazy unexplored surface level cnon-binary" rep. That just finds the least potentially hard to grasp situations to use they/them pronouns in. They managed to go very deep into the weeds…

          But most of the time in an ensemble peice these shapeshifters are not really ever explored in a way that really resonates or feels real.

      • june@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        As a very male presenting nonbinary person, this comment hours the nail on the head.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
      616·
      10 months ago

      But this is a throwback show to 90s x men and in the series he very much was drawn and portrayed as a man.

      This is probably less than half about the non binary thing and more about just changing a character that already had a Fandom. Like, you never heard anyone complaining about Todd from Bojack Horsemen being asexual. Or the multitude of characters all across the board in the Questionable Content comics. It’s almost always people angry about some major change to an established character that doesn’t mesh with their history. You never hear about it when it’s a new character.

      • Kachilde@lemmy.world
        132·
        10 months ago

        Of course, the fandom for the quintessential X-Man, Morph, who was so well loved that he starred alongside Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry in the 2000s X-Men film.

        Morph, who was such an established Marvel character that they had to change his name for the animated show because there was a DC character who had a better claim to it.

        Morph, whose iconic design was “a dude”. I remember when every kid wanted the “a dude” action figure.

        That Morph?

        I would bet good money that not a single soul who is being vocally upset online about this was a part of the “Morph Fandom”. It’s people who assume that a show featuring a non-cis or non-straight character is a personal attack.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
          611·
          10 months ago

          Spoken like someone who never watched the show and just parroted some of the info that article just gave you.

          Morph was on a fair amount in the show and had his own arc. He was sort of based off Changeling from the comics, but was a different character completely, just with the same ability and created just for the show.

          Also, Gambit wasn’t even in the movies. Jubilee also didn’t really have a roll in the movies, but Gambit, Morph, and Jubilee were all major characters in the cartoon.

  • glimse@lemmy.world
    173·
    10 months ago

    “I can’t believe X-Men went won’t!” say the “fans” who has apparently never read X-Men

  • DosDude👾@retrolemmy.com
    71·
    10 months ago

    Who cares. I’m glad they went with the white featureless morph. He was my favorite character in exiles.

  • Clbull@lemmy.world
    78·
    10 months ago

    I’m more miffed that they nerfed Rogue’s butt and made it almost pancake-flat for the sake of trying to keep everything E-rated. Original vs reboot for comparison.

    If you’re rebooting a 90’s Marvel animated series and trying to make it as authentic as possible to the original art style and source material, maybe sanitising female body proportions to appear more modest whilst keeping every guy jacked isn’t the way you go about things? But then again, maybe the House of Mouse should’ve realized that the core demographic who read comic books are vastly different to those who consume non-acquisition Disney media and that if you put the two audiences on a Venn diagram, you’d damn near get two perfect circles.

    At least the Morph changes make thematic sense and people getting upset over them being non-binary are the same kind of snowflakes who flipped out because Starfield asked them to select their character’s pronouns - a choice that took all of about zero to three button presses to select on the character creation menu and also makes thematic sense for a game set hundreds of years in humanity’s future.

    • Sprawlie@lemmy.world
      93·
      10 months ago

      I’m more miffed

      I’m more miffed that anyone gave enough shits about a cartoon depiction of an ass in a childs cartoon show to have spent the time even getting miffed about it.

      • Clbull@lemmy.world
        21·
        10 months ago

        1. When I may miffed, it’s more like minorly inconvenienced,

        2. Wasn’t aware that the show was produced specifically for Fox Kids, probably because Fox Kids/Jetix in the UK was known moreso for hours of Power Rangers reruns and the occasional good show. That changes things slightly.

        3. Wasn’t the reboot commissioned specifically with fans of the original 1992-97 show in mind? It feels weird to do this when the core demographic that has nostalgia for the original animated series is likely in their thirties now.

        • Sprawlie@lemmy.world
          12·
          10 months ago

          OR

          Get this.

          It’s completely irrelevant and spending that much time and mental effort on it is not a thing that warrants as much focus and attention you’ve put on it.

          this focus on her ass is bizarre and borderline creepy.