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Superman spent his childhood baling hay on a farm, he’s a working class hero and people don’t like that. Whereas Batman is a billionaire who sleeps until three in the afternoon, puts on a rubber suit and beats the shit out of poor people. Now that’s a wish fulfillment fantasy.

Grant Morrison during a panel at the Edinburgh Book Festival (via operationfailure)

#i mean superman is wish fulfillment too but for two jewish guys wanting to help people they couldn’t as opposed to like#taking out the privilege of the rich thru violence against the poor#it depends on how you want to define wish fulfillment#but it is true: superman is a working class hero and batman is not

(via anartinsorcery)

 # i guess it’s worth mentioning that superman’s narrative was (and remains) heavily coded but that fact is often lost on modern readers # to whom he appears to be an anglo-american masculine archetype and a perfect vehicle for wish fulfillment # you’d think though that people would’ve figured out by now that if straight white dudebros can’t (or refuse to) relate to a character # it’s probably because they /aren’t serving them as wish fulfillment well enough # not because they’re ”not realistic enough” # hence the popularity of batman # and iron man # and wolverine # and the overwhelming dismissal of PoC/queer/women heroes # grant morrison # superman # comics # *isms

(via twoxheartedxdream)

forever reblog, especially with those tags

(via whenyourenotsavingtheworld)

Funny because I just argued about this point about Batman only a few short days  with a guy who, otherwise, is intelligent and well spoken.  Yet, this idea that Clark is an “othered” figure was totally lost on him.

This is why it doesn’t just make me angry but actually makes me uncomfortable when dudebros get super excited about Batman beating the shit out of Superman.

The last 3 live action adaptations of Superman—-all of which found huge audiences—-have particularly focused on this idea that Clark Kent grows up feeling othered.  (In one of those adapations, Clark Kent was actually played by an actor who is bi-racial and was abandoned by his father at a young age btw.)

In several of these adapations, Clark Kent learning to accept his body and accept his heritage balanced with his intense love and identification as a human is not only a right of passage but the driving force of his identity and self-discovery.  The fact that a lot of this self-discovery also often includes a human female who accepts him fully and without fear or persecution for his “otherness” is vital and important.   Superman is not supposed to be “wish fufillment” for all of your white, male privileged bullshit, guys.  He’s also not supposed to be wish fufillment for those of you that believe that if you had Superman’s physical power and looks you would obviously use them to bang the hottest girl in the world AKA Wonder Woman.  He’s not supposed to be wish fufillment for your shallow, macho BULLSHIT.  He was wish fufillment for two Jewish men who longed to be accepted in a world torn with bigotry and oppression and longed for the love of a human working woman that worked one desk over.

So when I see people talking about how “awesome” it would be for Batman to come into Superman’s movie and “beat the shit out of him”….I’m not just annoyed with you.  I’m not just angry at you.  You actually make me uncomfortable.   Your thoughts about fictional icons and myths make me uncomfortable.  I’m uncomfortable with you taking a unique and special male icon that actually is meant to challenge oppression and bogging him down with your god forsaken privilege.

(via dytabytes)

1. all of this is wonderful and good and ghostorballoons actually enlightened me to the fact that superman’s original basis was the strong man, who is pretty important in jewish american iconography so even taking away his “stupid underwear” as so many people have wanted to do for so long (and succeeded) is actually an effort to remove superman from his roots as a jewish figure.

2. who played superman that was biracial? 

(via alienswithankhs)

Dean Cain.  His background looks mostly flavors of White, but his paternal grandfather is Japanese.  He was born in 1966 as Dean George Tanaka, but his wikipedia page says his mother married film director Christopher Cain in 1969, so… (Also Christopher Cain adopted Dean and his brother)

Also Superman himself is adopted and an illegal alien.  Let’s not forget that.  He accepts both his birth family and his adopted family as family and doesn’t make one family more important or “real” than the other.  He has both parents and they love each other and their son very much.  It’s not the typical adoption story that we tell, where the birth family is called the “real parents” and either the child or the adopted family is vilified. 

(via buttphantasmic)

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motellights:

and now I’m thinking about that trope in fanfics where they make the slutty playboy character asexual and how cool I think that trope is because if a character like tony stark for example is asexual, them his reason for all the sleeping around suddenly becomes WAY more interesting.

and that’s why moffat’s whole “asexuality isn’t interesting cuz there’s no sexual tension” thing is bullshit. if sexual tension is your only tool for making a story that includes sex interesting, then you are a pretty shitty writer and hey, hundreds of fanfic writers have already proven you wrong.

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When you watch Torchwood there is a warning at the very beginning that some scenes may offend or disturb people, so if you allow your children to sit and watch it with you that’s your responsibility, it’s not ours anymore. We kissed, we held each other, we lay on top of each other in bed… and there were lots of complaints about that. Nobody complained that I was shot in the head four times, there were burning people in ovens, that I was stabbed by a mob of 50 people hundreds of times, and I was hanging dripping my blood in a pit. So that’s what confuses me, because you’re not complaining about gay sex, you’re complaining about two men kissing. And it’s 2011. And people say, “Well why should we have that on television?” Because the BBC have to represent the greater public — and there are gay people out there who pay their television license. For people to complain, that’s your prerogative — but you know what, none of them turned it off! They were just embarrassed because it put them in a position where they had to explain things to their kids or their family which probably should have been explained a long time ago.

John Barrowman.

image

Barrowman, everyone.

This is why I love him, and why I will always love him. 

(via thedoctorandthewoman)

The fact that people complain about sex, while never complaining about violence is so very revealing about our society.

(via threebeerproblem)

IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE EXPLAINING “COUNTRYCIDE” AND “CHILDREN OF EARTH” BUT NOT SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS TO YOUR CHILDREN 

GET THE ACTUAL FUCK OUT.

(via armydoctorpeterpotter)

This is EXACTLY what my problem was with Abbington when she complained about the presence of homoerotic fanart involving a character played by Martin. It’s WAY easier to find pics of Martin in naked/hetero scenes, or either of them with a gun, than it is to find Johnlock fanart. Barrowman nails it perfectly: nobody’s complaining about the violence; they’re complaining about the gay. And secondly, it’s no one’s job but a parent’s to control what their kids see. Bless, Barrowman. Bless. 

(via silentauroriamthereal)

YES YES YES YES YES YES, ALL OF THE ABOVE. My children have asked me about John and Sherlock specifically, because I talk about it so damned much. And I simply say they’re in love and I wish they’d be together. And my children, bless them, have never flinched at the idea of two men being in love. They just agree they should be together if they love each other. We listen to my Johnlock mix of music, and my daughter asked me about certain songs, and I say it just reminds me of them because it’s about two people who really love each other a lot. 

Kids should understand that love is love. If you teach them anything else about same sex relationships, it’s planting a seed of bigotry. 

(via anigrrrl2)

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darkestelemental616:

merindab replied to your post:merindab replied to your post:I did an analysis of…

No, but even my own fic default character is male. I realize that’s a habit. But it’s hard to break

Most of my books tend to be about women, funnily enough. But I grew up on a lot of Tamora Pierce…

See almost every story I read growing up, it was male heroes. I grew up on a lot of classics and King Arthur and Robin Hood and Phineus Fogg were all men. Later I got into scifi and fantasy and the trend continued with Lazarus Long and Ender and Baginsses.

TV wasn’t any better with Captain Kirk and Picard and Bridger and Sheridan. Sam Beckett and The Doctor.

Movies gave me Indiana Jones and William Wallace.

I realize this should make me want to write more female characters. I know the problem with representation. But it’s still very, very hard for me to write female characters, though I do try. At least I’ve written River and Tamara.

This is also another part of why I changed my major.