{I'm going to eat the words in the following post. I'm not going to erase them, but just full on EAT these fuckers. I was wrong here, and while I still love Thor to pieces and pieces in his sheer unadulterated maleness, my view on the issue has changed.
This happened when Johnny Storm, a popular comic book character from the Fantastic 4 became a black guy at the whim of someone in Hollywood. I listened to the arguments made for Johnny being white and staying white, and I saw some of the same arguments that I proposed here.
I became just a little bit disgusted with myself in the viewing of those arguments, quite frankly. There's a part of me, the creative part, that wants to say that it's cheap to change the makeup of a character physically in order to draw in a larger audience--and that this may be the reason these companies change these characters the way that they do. But there is another part of me, a hopeful part that looks at this and sees something rather wonderful. I can scarcely believe that this might be true, and yet, I still hope that it is now that I have seen it.
In the end, we are all the same, and the little shit doesn't matter. A hero is a hero and it doesn't matter what their raciE, gender, or sexuality is if they're coming to save your ass some terrible day when you desperately NEED saving.
It's so easy to see the bad stuff first.
But...
There is the potential for great beauty here.
I apologize, dear Marvel, who will never see any of this anyway.
I was wrong. }
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My initial thoughts on Thor turning into a female were pretty fucking negative. It seems to me that these large creative companies will do anything in order to gain more readers--anything but create original content, that is. It doesn't seem all that hard to me to create the female superhero that they would want. They have all the time and the money in the world to do so. The whole nature of their job is just to sit down, think, and be creative. I dare to say that this would be a simple job for me--a dream job. And, yet, here they are ... screwing this up. Lazily. But, I believe, with good, albeit greedy, intent.
Thor is an old myth and should be respected as such. As the son of Odin, just gender swapping him (as I originally thought) was a nightmarish concept for me. I have come to find that this isn't the case though, and I give Marvel a little credit for that. They do take the time and try and build a reasonable story for their characters. I think this is a stupid, rather unnecessary turn in the overall plot of Thor's comic life, but, hey, whatever.
The hammer apparently says that whoever wields it will have the power of Thor. Thor for some reason can not wield the hammer anymore. A woman finds the hammer/is given the hammer/gains the hammer in some way and BAM she's Thor now--name and all.
Personally, I wouldn't do this. She's not Thor, she's whatever-the-hell-her-name-is. It feels cheap to me. But, it's a plot, I suppose. And with this plot, I can hope for the day that Thor gains his damn hammer back.
Less negativity.
More patient spider waiting until things are right again.
I understand that a lot of females don't read comic books and Marvel is desperate for the market. This move is a blatant pandering toward a female audience. It's the wrong kind of move in my humble, insignificant opinion. All they're going to get is a bunch of teenage boys stroking off to glossy fold-outs of Lady Thor (with a certain amount of apprehension), which is, basically, the same thing they had before when Lady Thor was, oh say, Wonder Woman.
In India, women are being killed at an alarming rate. Little girls dying before the age of five years old by brutality and murder are commonplace. Rape and child brides are ordinary things that the police don't take seriously. The laws are screwed up. Being a woman is only a little better than being a dog, and one has about the same rights. China prefers boys, the suicide rate for women there is sky high. In Africa, they're cutting off female sexual bits so that they never experience pleasure. Lack of education. A small, limited world view purposely kept that way, etc.
While these things seem far away from the Marvel-verse, most intelligent women are aware of them on some level because they have to be. Create a hero from some of these issues. Big tits, a shapely ass, and a big ole stolen hammer are not what girls need in terms of spending time in the Marvel-verse. Don't preach. Most people will be bored to death, and it's certainly not what I mean. Insert, somewhere in Wonder Woman's plot (since it's so hard to create an original character), a thing that matters to females, build a greater plot over it-- a more common plot, and teach the world both men and women a little bit at a time. Gain the readership desired.
Turning Thor into a girl, physically, is not going to be the answer to the problem in terms of gaining female readership. As a BIG THOR fan, my only thought upon hearing it was something like: "OMG, Thor, how'd you lose your power and how will you get your power back?" That's the plot I'm interested in when it comes to Thor. She could fall off the nearest bridge for all I care.
She looks both moody and annoying--in that Joker Why-So-Serious type way.
The people at Marvel have one of the greatest, creativity free, beautiful, jobs in all the world. How are they fucking this up???
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It's My Blog And I'll Cry Into The Empty Void If I Want To
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