By David Futrelle
You can always count on the dude who calls himself One Angry Gamer to have a highly nuanced reaction to developments in the gaming and comics worlds. For example, take his reaction to the news yesterday that the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder movie will feature Natalie Portman — a LADY — as none other than Thor himherself.
“This is the kind of news that strips the threads away from the very fabric of your soul,” he declared in a post on his One Angry Gamer site, really leaning hard on that fabric metaphor. “As always, Marvel is moving the dial ever further Left.”
Well, not that much further left, in that Portman played Man Thor’s gal pal in several past films, and that there already has been a series of comics in which Thor was a lady. But as One Angry Gamer sees it, those comics sucked and the movie will too:
For those of you unfamiliar with the Female Thor, it was as bad as everyone said it was, laced with the sort of propaganda that the Marvel comics have become infamous for … and included blatant agitprop such as Jane sharing an interracial kiss with Falcon after beating up some “racist” agitators.
But it didn’t end there… Jane ended up sleeping with the Falcon later on.
Oh my goodness, the comic book characters are miscegenating!
It’s the sort of thing that makes you sick to your stomach; churning your insides with a nausea-inducing swirl, as if you were butter in a theki.
If interracial sex makes you feel like butter in a sort of centrifuge used ito churn butter in Nepal, you might just be a teensy weensy bit of a racist.
“But it gets worse,” the Angry Gamer continued.
There were misandrist threads throughout the female Thor run, including one where a female villain refused to let another male villain fight female Thor out of “respect” for what she was doing. This is not even a joke.
Er. what? I’m having a hard time even parsing what exactly he’s mad at here.
But wait… it gets even worse!
According to ScreenRant’s tweets, actress Tessa Thompson said that as the new king of Asgard, the Valkyrie has to find a queen, since she’s obviously a lesbian!
I had to stand up and then sit down for a moment.
It’s a lot to take in. It’s like a hammer to the gut.
By Grabthar’s hammer, what a dingus.
If the news that a character in a comic book movie might be lesbian hits you “like a hammer to the gut,” you may be taking comic book movies just a teensy bit too seriously. And also you pretty definitely are a huge homophobe.
But it turns out Mr. Angry Gamer is just getting warmed up.
Starring [sic] at the floor, I began to realize that whatever good the Marvel Cinematic Universe brought to the world would be undone by the heathens of Hollywood.
Whatever memories or joy that you thought you could embrace from the previous three phases of storytelling, are gone.
Your joy is being systematically erased by the diversity agenda, and Phase 4 will taint these legacy characters… forever.
Ah bloo bloo bloo.
I wish there were words that could express the sadness that envelops my heart, to see Marvel wielding an axe of destruction for which all that you loved will be torn asunder and ripped apart like a pig’s intestines in a slaughter house; all for the sake of brainwashing the masses with their agenda.
Angry Gamer dude really loves working those metaphors, huh?
But there are no words… just bleakness and the realization that cultural entertainment is on the cusp of crumbling due to these degenerates.
Ah, I was waiting for him to work the word “degenerate” in there somehow, as if anyone had any doubts about his basically fascist sensibilities.
Anyhoo, after the Nazi dogwhistling, our Angry Gamer boi predicts the end of the world:
The end is nigh, and it will be ushered in with trends, claps, and applause.
The San Diego Comic-Con was the messenger of Armageddon, and you get to stand at ground zero to witness the complete and utter annihilation of comic-book movie culture.
Take some deep breaths, dude, you’re losing it. I don’t think even fans of Bewitched in the 1960s were this upset when they replaced Darrin with a whole other Darrin without saying a word.
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Here’s the thing: Marvel’s Asgardians and related beings are very, very different from Norse mythology.
In the Marvel Universe, the Asgardians are not true gods, but powerful interdimensional aliens.
Loki is Odin’s adopted son, not his blood brother.
Thor has blonde hair and has traditionally been clean-shaven, not a bearded redhead.
Sif has black hair instead of golden hair, and for the longest time had no romantic connection to Thor.
The list goes on and on.
So when someone doesn’t object to all that, but does object to Marvel using Thor as a gender-neutral title because “that’s not how it is in Swedish tradition?”
Yeah, that comes across as very suspect.
@Allandrel
I’m well aware of the differences between Marvel and Norse mythology, and if you’d go back to my original comment you’d see that I named a few of them myself, though most of the changes were what I’d expect from any American adaption of foreign stories, it was just the name that stuck out to me because of the the language and culture I was raised in, and giving male names to female heroes isn’t part of any American adaption trends I’m familiar with, but I did see it as part of a tired trend where male things are seen as universal but female stuff as niche paired with marketers being reluctant to put female names in the title.
But as I said, I think I can see the point looking from the perspective of somebody not familiar with all the already existing variants of Thor’s name and want their comic hero to have the name/title they’re familiar with.
Anyway, if you think keeping the name Thor intact is a vital part of the character, what’s your thoughts on Marvel feminizing already feminine names on Norse goddesses, changing Hel to Hela and Frigg to Frigga?
My interpretation of your words is accurate. Saying that you don’t have a problem with Jane taking up Thor’s mantle or doing the stuff he did when you’re denying her the right to call herself “Thor” is ridiculous. She is Thor because she holds the power of Thor. That’s the way it’s worked in the Marvel universe since 2014.
And now you’re claiming that you didn’t understand what this discussion was about because you’re Swedish. Really? Seriously?
Last of all, this
is bullshit on a quantum level. We’re talking about the American comic book Thor, so the various Scandanavian spellings of Thor aren’t even remotely relevant. The only one here arguing that Jane isn’t an equal to prior Thors is you, because you don’t want to her to have the title every previous Thor has held. And you’re don’t want to argue any more (or at least you’re saying you don’t) because you don’t want hear that you’re wrong.
@Hippodameia
<3
Scanisaurus
I’m pretty sure those are changed not to be more feminine, but to avoid them being named for homophones of the english words frig and Hell.
@Jesalin -thank you. 🙂
@Tessa
Frigga was introduced in 1963 and Hela in 1964, when the Comics Code Authority was all-powerful, so I’m sure you’re right.
That depends heavily on what stories we talk about. MCU went with aliens, current comics interpretation is closer to Gaiman’s idea of people dreaming up gods, and Jason Aaron used them to talk about his feelings about gods (which didn’t exactly fit with polytheism, but that didn’t deter him).
My favorite is probably the world tree having 10 realms. The 10th being Heven, world of the Angels (not the Christian ones), who live in a woman supremacist libertarian dystopia.
And as I pointed out, which you ignored, it’s NOT.
In comics if a character of a different gender gets a gendered mantle (or exists with it in an AU), that almost without fail means it will be changed to fit their gender. So not changing it is a goddamn rarity and a welcome change. (Next they should do it genderflipped, like Wiccan taking up his mom’s Scarlet Witch title without change.)
Which you were mistaken in, and quite frankly made you sound like every single Status Quo Warrior whining about “feminazi agenda destroying comics” we argued with since 2014.
Also the trend I talk about and the one you do aren’t mutually exclusive. See Riri being the main character of an Iron-Man book, while going by Ironheart. (And reactionaries still whining about it, while fully ignoring the other Iron Man book featuring Victor von Doom as Iron.)
@Scanisaurus
I shared your initial confusion at the name. I wasn’t aware that it was being used as a title until I read the explanations of others. Norse mythology is still a closer association for me than Marvel when I hear the name and I have to remind myself to keep in mind the differences between the two that were mentioned here. So I get where you’re coming from, I think. Are you Swedish?
@everyone
As to the gendered name discussion, it made me look things up and in Germany a court apparently decided recently that – since only “degrading or embarrassing” names can’t be given to a child and there is nothing “embarrassing or degrading” about a girl having a “boy’s name” those names can’t be vetoed anymore. Which makes sense since we also introduced a “third option” for giving one’s gender on official forms (I was really happy to see the “m/w/d” added to job advertisements in my field recently) and therefore maintaining the previous rule that names have to enable people to “unequivocally tell a person’s gender” where seriously out of date.
We’re making progress in small steps here, it seems. At least on the legal front, the cultural side of things is a different story. I guess it will take quite some time for most people to accept traditionally “male names” on women. Traditionally “female names” on boys will be even harder, I think, even though the only “gender-switching” name that was always accepted here was interestingly Maria as a middle name for boys. Yeah, logic is not the strong suit of German bureaucracy… In fact, with us being a lot more inflexible with naming than for example the US and given the extend to which misogyny is still prevalent, there might actually be some courts or officials making the argument that a boy called say “Katharina” or something like that would be at risk of so much ridicule and bullying throughout childhood that they’d forbid it for a newborn. Though hopefully not for an older person choosing their own name or, you know, a non-cis person… We’d need to get rid of the current conservative government to make meaningful progress in that area, I guess.
Moreover, as a really ugly side of our culture, there’s a lot of class consciousness and prejudice still going on here – more than in the US perhaps? – and names are “class markers” in a way. To the point where “Kevinism” and “Chantalism” are a “thing” here. In case that sounds as weird as it should: The doctors, lawyers and professors here call their kids Caroline, Charlotte, Justus and Konstantin and usually wouldn’t be caught dead calling them something English sounding (Jaden seems currently particularly unpopular) as that would sound “working class” or “Hartz IV (the name of the German unemployment welfare program, which has turned into a snobbish, classist stereotype in and of itself…). It’s that bad still. Even within the traditional working class there’s a lot of snobbish prejudice attached to the name thing. To the point where people in my non-academic extended family sometimes comment that at least they gave their children “proper” names…
Over the last decades there’s also been an addition of racism to the classism mix. People with a Turkish sounding name in particular get so much crap.
I really hate this side of my culture and I don’t know how it will change even with the legal side changing, because narrow-minded snobbery is so strong here. And as it is, I’d probably follow some of these silly name rules myself if I have children, so their chances in life won’t be hurt by their freaking name in addition to how “uncultured” their mother is. (I recently got told by a professor that they could “tell within five minutes that I’m not one of “them”” and that I had to “understand” how “hard” it is to deal with that, (for them, not me) “even though” I was “quite smart, really”. And she meant that “nicely”…) I still have it paradisically good in comparison to a friend with a Turkish first-name, though.
And now I’ve made myself depressed. I hope the younger generation can take inspiration from the social justice movements in other places and make this country better in the future.
@Hippodameia
Saying my interpretation is wrong and your interpretation of my words is the right one is starting to sound a lot like gas lighting.
I wouldn’t consider a version of Thor with a slightly different name, but the same hammer, the same mantle and filling exactly the same role as the old one to be a lesser substitute for the “real Thor”, I’d see Tora as just as much the real Thor as Thor. If you want to argue that a spelling change would ruin the image and identity of an established superhero or feminizing a title for a woman is sexist, fine, but I really hope you can stop talking like I wouldn’t want to see her do the same things the other Thor did.
I’ve already explained that I come from a different background and culture than you, and that I’m mainly familiar with the Norse mythology version of Tor.
I’m not offended by any of the changes in Marvel Thor, but the idea that I can’t critique any artistic choices on an American adaption of a character from a mythology I grew up with does feel massively unfair to me.
Are you saying that a Scandinavian perspective on a character originating in Scandinavia isn’t relevant? It feels like you are straight up arguing for cultural appropriation when you say it like that.
No, I said that because I thought Tessa made a fair point and I thought I was starting to see why Americans would think a feminine version of the name would be a lesser alternative.
@Malitia
I was speaking from my perspective and from what I’d seen of the American pop culture that made it’s way to Sweden, if the actual trends in american comics are different I’ll concede my point.
As for the Thor being a title and not a name thing, my problem with in-universe arguments like that is that it only exists because that’s how the writers made it, and I’ve seen the same argument (“that’s how it works in this fictional world”) to defend some problematic or just bad tropes, like bikini armor or plot holes. So to me, saying Thor works as a gender neutral name in the comics isn’t that different from saying spandex works as combat armor in comics. But with that said, I still see and respect your argument on how the name change would be an unfair double standard by real-world logic.
@Alaniel
Yeah, I’m Swedish, and I’m glad I’m not the only one miffed about the name.
And yeah, we have some rules about what names you are allowed to name your kids in Sweden too, but while they can seem restrictive from an American perspective, those laws were primarily there to protect the children from parents giving them embarrassing names just to bring attention to themselves, for example, I read about a neo-nazi couple who named their kid “Adolf Hitler” and that would never have been legal in Sweden because of the history of that name (just naming the kid Adolf is fine though, but it’s fallen hard out of fashion).
That’s nice. Too bad it wasn’t my main argument.
This is hilarious given you’re literally protecting the entrenched “bikini armor” (problematic trope) of “If a gendered title is given to a character of different gender it must be changed to reflect that”. Which is what I’m calling out.
So you literally don’t understand my argument, huh? I try rewording it for the 3rd time (not native English speaker, so my syntax can be weird):
If we have virtually identical (or in this case literally the same) hero identities*, and men get badass armor** (masculine-coded-name) with it, then the women shouldn’t be forced to wear a boob plate*** (obviously-feminine-name). And if women get glorified swimsuit as a costume with it (overtly-feminine-name) then a dude shouldn’t automatically get more spikes-and-covering (masculine-name) with the same.
* Establishing this was the “Thor is also historically a title in Marvel comics” part for.
** I deliberately didn’t write practical. Superhero costumes (and names) are often ridiculous, it’s part of their style.
*** I wasn’t a fan of that part of Jane’s Thor costume design one bit. I wasn’t a fan of a lot of things in that run.
@ scanisaurus
They’ve been incorporating spandex into tactical gear for decades. Those pants in my old gravatar were spandex; and they were made by Sig Sauer, the gun people.
https://tacticalgear.com/stretch-tactical-pants
@Maltitia
I was just addressing everyone making that argument in general, sorry I forgot to clarify that.
That’s not how I meant it at all.
If we should compare names to costumes/armor, then from my perspective, it’d be like if Thor had a muscle curaiss and codpiece on his armor, and his female successor got exactly the same armor and codpiece, and I’d say I’d think that the new female Thor would look better in an armored suit without codpiece, and when I’d be picturing feminine armor, I wouldn’t be picturing boobplate/bikini, I’d be picturing something like this or this, but you’re thinking feminine armor automatically means boobplate/bikini.
From where I’m coming from, I genuinely didn’t see why giving a female Thor a feminine name would be demeaning to her, because I was raised in a culture where it isn’t considered so.
I really don’t like the “you’re either with us or against us” mentality I’m seeing here. I’ve already said that I do see why you think that giving a female Thor a name alteration would be a sexist double standard and I respect your opinion, I don’t know what more to say.
Well, since everyone’s seen through your bullshit and your efforts at backpedaling haven’t convinced anyone, you could just stop talking.
@Hippodameia
That’s just being petty and willfully obtuse.
I’m not backpedaling, I saw arguments that didn’t convince me, and then somebody made a new argument that made me see the issue in a different light.
And secondly, I already told you, different countries have different cultures and not everyone was raised with the same parameters as you. Would you say a Japanese person has no business critiquing an american interpretation of Amaterasu or a west African person a story about Anansi?
Why do you keep acting like I personally hurt you?
You haven’t personally hurt me, though it’s not for lack of trying. But do keep trying to use that as a distraction from the way you’ve been wrong over and over and over in this thread.
And I have to go to work, so I’ll be back this evening if you’re foolish enough to keep digging.
If their reasoning was “girls should get girl names” then they would get the same pushback here because this is a feminist space where we (shockingly) don’t accept “it always has been” as an argument for why genders need to be treated differently.
Sorry, I didn’t have time for a more in depth post until now.
Scanisaurus:
I wouldn’t use the word weaker there. It’s not about femininity or strength. It’s about othering. It has to be different because she’s a woman.
Scanisaurus:
OK, let’s dig a little deeper here. As I mentioned, there was no Thundergod Thora or tora. We know that sometime between today and the origins of the god Thor/Tor a “female derivation” of the name Thor started being used. They added an -a so a girl could use it. So I ask. Why? This name didn’t just manifest in existence as a force of nature. Somebody was the first to name a girl Thora. Because they didn’t want to name a girl Thor, they had to change it. So even in this case, the name Thora (or Tora) is not and never was “female stuff,” it’s originally “male stuff” changed because they couldn’t let a woman have the “same stuff.”
But that’s what you ended up saying.
Which would also be goddamn femininity policing. And I actually wouldn’t mind seeing that If they could pull it off without playing it for comedy.
Anyway, back to metaphorical clothing…
This whole conversation from my point of view (as someone who knows unhealthy amount of comics and especially Marvel’s Thor):
We’re currently looking at one of the very few comic book characters who took up a dude’s “badass-armor” (male-coded-mantle) and it didn’t magically transform into a “boob-plate” (feminized-name) on her, Jane Foster as Thor, and:
You: “WHY ISN’T SHE IN FEMININE ARMOR!!!!!”
Me: “Um… We’re at BoobPlates-R-Us (talking about American comics), this is rare and exciting.”
You: “But in that other shop I was at (my culture)…”
Me: “She is also one of the few, whose didn’t transform. I so wish spontaneous armor transformation wasn’t that damn common.”
You: “But I thought of these type of things *show shit not available in store*… I don’t see how her wearing a feminine armor would be a bad thing. You’re bad for thinking at boob armor and that I wanted her in it!”
We both continue to stand in the middle of goddamn BoobPlates-R-Us and armor transformation is still the norm.
Me: “You’re not listening to me, do you?”
I feel like you don’t allow any room for any nuance here, like you’ve already decided that there can only be two camps where either somebody fully agrees with you from the start or is willing to immediately agree with all your arguments without question, or they belong to the camp of angry reactionary manbabies like the one in the original post, and anyone hesitant to agree with you, or agreeing with some points but not all are tossed into the latter camp by default.
I already said that I respect and understand your argument that the first female hero to pick up the mantle not getting exactly the same name/title as her male predecessors would be a sexist double standard, and I do think it’s a fair point when you say it like that, I just don’t think every argument that was made before was a good argument, and from my pov I didn’t see anything sexist about a spelling change in a name.
But it feels like because I initially disagreed with you on this one thing, you have decided that I must necessarily disagree on everything else you think about Thor, and if you wan’t to see Thor with the same name, doing the same stuff and wearing a badass costume, that automatically means that if I would have preferred a different name/title for Thor, I must automatically not want to see her do the same stuff or wear a badass costume, even when I explicitly say otherwise myself.
And I get that to you, it’s probably refreshing to see a female character as a legitimate superhero successor and not just a sidekick/spinoff character with a name ending on -girl, and in all other cases I’d be all for that name takeover, I only took umbrage with one name on one character, but as I said, I get your point of view, I just wish you wouldn’t put words and opinions in my mouth that I never said.
I’ve been in arguments because neither I nor the ones I were arguing with wanted to change their mind, but this is the first time that I’ve admitted that you’ve had a fair point worth considering and I can agree that it makes sense to me, and you’re still trying to argue against me like I’m some reactionary demanding all female leads should follow all gender stereotypes all the time.
Scanisaurus: Who was that directed towards?
@Tessa
Mainly Hippodamia and Malitia, because it feels like they won’t accept that I already said I agreed to the point you made.
Sorry that I wasn’t clearer, but it just feels like many of the comments are putting words in my mouth that I never said.
Scanisaurus, I don’t know how well this manipulative behavior works for you in real life, but it’s not going to fly here.
@Hippodameia
♡♡
@Hippodameia
I’m not manipulating anyone, I disagreed with you on something and then changed my mind after seeing an argument that made me see the question from a different point of view, and I’m trying to explain that to you.
I’m not going to argue with you that Thor’s name is wrong anymore, I just don’t want you to keep insisting that I had a bunch of views and opinions I never had or agreed to.
If disagreeing with you is wrong, but changing my mind and ceding my point is also wrong, then what is the right response to you?
Grow up and try acting in good faith. You haven’t so far in this thread.