#MAWS just found a creative way to do fantasy reverse racism with extra steps | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jesncin · 4 months

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I love MAWS but your writeup really made me realize how much of a missed opportunity Lois was. I'm generally not opposed to minority characters having stories which don't focus on their identity or trauma because those types of stories are legitimate and deserve to exist, but MAWS deliberately invokes xenophobia as a major theme, so to do that while also having an Asian Lois and Black Jimmy not really interface with that aspect of the story feels like a major oversight.

Exactly! I've said very similar things before. This isn't a made-up planet world like She-Ra or anything. While Metropolis isn't real, it explicitly takes place in America, which is the only country mentioned by name in MAWS. And Superman shines best when he's acknowledged to be an inherently political character, facing problems that reflect our real world issues in some way. My lowest expectations for the show was that it would be like the "American Alien" Superman comic, where it was a missed opportunity that the POC characters' identities weren't integrated more, but there's potential for it. MAWS went so hard in the other direction that the characters are just white under their designs.

Stories about POC not revolving around marginalization or racism are so valid, and we're obviously more than just the hardships we face! But when the narrative introduces marginalization and even specifically xenophobia for only the white characters (and a gorilla) to go through, with characters of color oppressing white characters even?? Like genuinely what's the lesson there.

When an East Asian character tortures a white passing alien man and says "how many of your kind will come through this time?", and another East Asian character spouts Replacement Theory "he's wiping out good American jobs" rhetoric, and ANOTHER East Asian character tells Superman to "try being normal" after he's told to "go back to where he came from", what am I- an Asian superman fan- supposed to get from that?

#askjesncin #jesncin talks maws #the cursed “Black Jimmy doesn't understand bigotry” joke reeks of The White Gays think POC don't understand marginalization. it's pathetic #there's a larger convo to be had that when we make escapist worlds “with no bigotry”-#-our only frame of reference is to write the characters of color as white. that's the “happiness” default #anyway read Lunar Boy where I design an escapist world that doesn't ignore colonialism and culture to be hopeful #MAWS just found a creative way to do fantasy reverse racism with extra steps

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