glitterpancake

Such a parent moment

First off, this wasn’t an official Marvel panel. It was being held by the New York Times. The panelists were Peter David, Chris Claremont, Max Wittert (who does that Jean and Scott webcomic), and Marvel editor Daniel Ketchum. The focus was on the history of gay X-Men characters and mutants as a queer metaphor, although it didn’t really end up focusing on that very much. Wittert and Ketchum, who are gay, did most of the talking about LGBT issues while Claremont and David were just playing the part of lovable crotchety comic uncles. Everything was fine until the Q&A. The second person up introduced himself as a Romani activist, and launched into what wasn’t so much a question as a long plea for writers to stop using the g-slur and for his people to get better representation. He ended by lobbing a super-softball “do you guys agree” question at the panel.

At that point, before anyone else could speak, David glared at the man and said something along the lines of “do you really want to ask me that question.” The room went dead silent. He then launched into a diatribe about having been in Romania “for the movies” (not really sure what that meant) and seeing a child pulling “itself” along behind its mother because both of its legs were broken. His guide then told him that “g*****s do that to their own children to make people want to give them money” (paraphrasing). David concluded by telling the man (again, paraphrasing) “I saw those broken children, so don’t complain to me about the suffering of the Romani people”. When the man tried to respond from the back of the room, David shouted “I don’t care” over and over, eventually driving the man out of the room. People were fucking shocked. A lot of people in the audience were muttering “no dude” and “stop” while he was getting into it, and everyone was clearly uncomfortable, but the Q&A kept going for a few more minutes. As the panel ended and everyone was walking out, David leaned in to the microphone and apologized, saying that “the Romani situation is a very sensitive subject” to him.

There is a persistent racist myth in Romania that Roma parents mutilate their own children so that when the children are sent out begging, they will inspire more pity and bring back more money.

Like, it sounds to me like his Romanian guide (assuming his guide was Romanian, which I think is most likely) might’ve passed on this racist urban legend on to him.

If he did see a disabled Roma child trailing after their parents, there is the more obvious (and more objectively real) explanation that Roma have very limited access to healthcare, and the Romanian medical community fosters a lot of intense racism towards the Roma, so feel free to put two and two together here.

We have Mayling Ng, a Chinese-Singaporean actress, playing Orana.

Samantha Jo, a Chinese-Canadian actress, playing Euboea.

Eleanor Matsuura, a Japanese-English actress playing Epione.

They’re a mythical people created from gods. Here’s a picture of them from the comics:

The Amazons have never all been white, Greek women, and they sure as hell shouldn’t be portrayed that way in a film that is supposed to empower ALL women of ALL races. Asian women should not be excluded.

tim or tim/cassie/bart/kon phone backgrounds requested by @timberwayne

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