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yellowocaballero · 2 years

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Iron Fist is Kinda Weird

Or: How do we talk about talking about social justice?

I have a diseased brain poisoned from reading comic books since elementary school, and I think it's fun to look at bad things and wonder why they're bad. I ended up writing Danny Rand AKA The Immortal Iron Fist for my Moon Knight fic series and I got so deep into researching him and the Heroes For Hire that he began to interest me. I ended up having a lot of opinions about it, things went out of hand again, I wrote a very weird Iron Fist story, and I'm officially giving up and putting my thoughts down about the character.

TL;DR: Iron Fist's history, character, and most notable relationship has an intrinsic relationship with race that really shouldn't be ignored, but the consistent framing of the character is highly revealing of the assumed context of media about social issues.

Yeah, there's some stuff to talk about. Rest under the cut. I want to make a giant disclaimer here that I am speaking from the perspective of the origins and histories of the characters, and that I am sourcing from the 1970s-1980s Heroes For Hire comic.

Unfortunately Important History

In 1974 comic book executives realized that martial arts movies were highly popular among teenage boys and were making a lot of money. Similarly, the other comic book execs across the hall were also realizing that Blaxploitation movies were also super hot right now. Thus, Iron Fist and Luke Cage were born. With this identical genesis, it's fitting that they ended up so tightly paired.

Thanks in part to the martial arts movies and the booming Hong Kong and Japanese industries, Orientalism was at a huge high America. Probably highest since the 1920s when the whole archeology thing and movies with dancing women were really taking off. TV shows like Kung Fu, about a man who wandered around knowing kung fu, were about the glories of kung fu and featuring a half-white half-Asian man played by a white man. Similarly, Blaxpoitation movies (which I know relatively little about besides the fact that the NAACP hated it, so that's probably the main takeaway here) were probably the first American film genre predominantly featuring Black people. Blaxploitation films...talked about Black issues...kind of...in a way, and you can see that thread in Luke Cage. The main thing you need to know about Luke Cage was that Dwayne McDuffie, one of the founders of the imprint featuring the only comics that actually deserve to talk about race (DC you neutered Static Shock), hated him. The background for these guys and the cultural & media landscape that gave birth to them is important, but you mostly just need to get that they were born from an American voyeuristic fascination with sensationalized depictions of other cultures.

Frog (Luke) and Toad (Danny) Are Friends

To their credit (?), they did eventually realize this about themselves, and Danny and Luke's strong friendship was characterized by their polar opposite backgrounds. Danny had been adopted at nine years old by the mystical Oriental city of kung fu etc, became the specialest little white boy and harnessed his chi to become the hero of K'un Lun, and travelled back to America in a revenge quest to find his father's killer and avenge him and inherit a fuckton of money. Luke was in a gang and then prison and he's very bitter about the prison industrial complex. They're good friends and a great team, but you can see repeatedly that no matter how seamlessly they work in the field they essentially can never understand each other. The most interesting parts of their relationship involve the push and pull of this disconnect, where Danny's naïve and clueless about America and Luke has to teach him about how the world works and the injustices that POC face. Luke teaches Danny about racism and checks his privilege like a thousand times a day. Observe.

Danny doesn't know or give a shit about money so he cluelessly tells Luke that they are best friends, what's mine is yours! Luke's tetchy about it because of Blaxpoitation Baggage. Danny's offended and he doesn't know why, Luke's old wounds are reopened and he struggles to explain it. Frog and Toad have racial conflict.

Danny is, basically, the clueless white guy. The backstory panels highlight that: he was trained in kung fu in K'un Lun, and now he's swimming in money and privilege in America and Luke feels weird about it.

Look at the way Danny talks about himself - Danny talks about his life in K'un Lun as if he had gone to the weirdest boarding school of all time. He talks about K'un Lun from a distance, using words an American would use. Danny is the privileged, sheltered white guy.

He does not think of Asia as an actual home. He doesn't identify with it. Narratively and thematically, he is a white guy who grew up in a sheltered place learning kung fu and now he's Dazed And Confused in America struggling to connect with his best friend's very unsheltered experiences.

The conversations Danny has with Luke about race are held as a white person. It is Luke explaining racism to a white person over and over again. It is a white person's clueless privilege being knocked down a peg again and again. Danny could be from Antarctica or Mars and his relationship with Luke would be he same.

Wait, Why Would A Dynamic Entirely Around Race Never Engage With The Fact That One Party Grew Up In Asia

You tell me buddy!!!

Why! Why make this choice? It is RIGHT there! Why would a guy whose entire schtick is living in Fantasy Vaguely Tibet from ages 9-19 never once speak from that cultural perspective? Why flush all of that experience and perspective down the drain?

Why would Danny engage with the world as a privileged, clueless white guy? He was just a kid when he left America. He doesn't engage with these conversations with Luke as, "Wow, your weird American situation's fucked up", he engages with it as "That can't possibly be what America is like!". Like a white person. There is no difference between Danny and someone who never left their boarding school as a child.

Is this really the most interesting way to talk about race? The characters, by virtue of their history and genesis, are inherently about race. Why are we talking about it as a Black guy constantly educating a white guy instead of as a Black guy talking to a white guy who grew up in Fantasy Tibet? As a a product of capitalism to a product of Whatever K'un Lun's Fantasy Economy was. As a product of a highly racialized society to an aracialized society. As someone who's from an area of great cultural and racial diversity to someone who grew up in a racial and cultural monoculture.

Why does Danny not have a complex relationship with his own race? He was the only white guy around for ten years, that has to be kind of weird. How does he relate his adopted culture to his home one? How does he deal with the white privilege he does hold when he doesn't understand why he holds it? I can seriously go on. I absolutely did go on.

None of this makes any sense. And the only way it makes any sense if if you see that Luke & Danny's conversations about race are not actually conversations about race. They are Luke explaining racism to the reader. Danny is the audience stand-in. The audience is obviously American white guys, so Danny has to be white and engage with the entire thing as an American white guy would. As he audience stand-in Danny has to come from the same place and viewpoint as the assumed reader, so he has to come from a place of white privilege.

It sucks. Not every reader was a privileged white guy. Not every reader was white. This narrative decision, conscious or unconscious, cut off a lot of interesting choices at the kneecaps. Because there is a basic assumption that white audiences cannot relate to nonwhite characters, and that they are incapable of looking through another's eyes and learning from their perspective.

How Do We Talk About Talking About Race?

Why should we care that Iron Fist is uninteresting and bad? This is not news. The premise has always been vaguely racist and boring. I've read some pretty nifty Iron Fists in my time and there are a fair handful of good Iron Fist comics, but the very root of the character is Orientalist. This Dances With Wolves style of 'story about POC but the lead has to be white or white people won't watch it' scenario is very old hat.

Heroes For Hire is interested in race. Luke Cage & Iron Fist are characterized by race. Their writers can admit this or not, but it's true. At its best, this inherent disconnect opens up the comics for potentially interesting breakdowns of racial dynamics, prejudice, the prison industrial complex, privilege, and American society. Luke & Danny talk about everything from capitalism to crime. Pretty reliably, the comic tends to actually try.

But all of these conversations are fixed through a white gaze. Luke talks through a white gaze, Danny's characterized by a white gaze, and these conversations are written with the white audience as the implied constant observers. At a certain point it never really feels like two different perspectives clashing and changing - just one perspective, talking about two different issues from both sides of its mouth.

I have mixed feelings on #ownvoices, but I think this is what people mean when they talk about it. There is a provincial, reductionist scope of perspectives allowed into the conversations Heroes For Hire holds, and although that's not a crime it's abjectly disappointing when compared against the interesting stories that could be told.

I haven't read a modern Iron Fist comic in like ten years, and the last time I read Heroes For Hire was during the cursed Civil War situation. I really don't know if modern Heroes For Hire and Danny & Luke are still like this. They probably aren't! But the same problems probably still underlie the two characters, and their origins will always occupy this strange space.

TL;DR: Read Milestone comics. Start with Static and move to Icon & Rocket. These are the only comics about race people should read. Look up their history sometime, it's fascinating. Ignore Luke Cage & Iron Fist. Good god.

#my writing #iron fist #luke cage #danny rand #heroes for hire #it was all RIGHT HERE and they didnt DO ANYTHING WITH IT #i got pissed off and decided to. do something with it #I think when you make it so that danny doesn't remember america #and change danny from #weirdest boarding school member of all time #into #guy who is from this country #more interesting stuff opens up. if ur not a coward.

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officialspec · 2 months

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hi! i love your brisbane meshi au and saw you mention that you headcanon senshi as japanese-iranian. genuinely curious, is there a reason why?

a lot of the reasons i read him as japanese are most likely little bits of cultural influence from miss ryoko herself but i still think its fun to tack them onto his characterisation (like the type of food he makes and his quiet, self-sufficient style of masculinity)

the iranian part mainly comes from how hes drawn in modern au sketches/with his helmet off hehee i was reading the ddh volumes in between chapters and it rly struck me how much he looks like a very beautiful middle-eastern man LOL

#like i know him. i seen this guy in the city #ask #im sure theres characterisation to be gleaned from this beyond the surface level stuff but im not the white boy to do it #i just think hes neat #iranian was a dart thrown eyes closed btw theres no particular reason for that country. i could see him as turkish or some other variety of #mediterranean/mid eastern #the face of a man who dips a bread in an olive oil

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ryllen · 2 months

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Look what came through the mail today! The letters & ( •̀ω•́ )σ 3 little gremlins from letterstoear.

Just wanna say i adore the flower stickers on the letters too much, they are that much worth mentioning.

#letterstoear #nui #twst #twisted wonderland #sebek zigvolt #malleus draconia #twst grim #mod posting #okay but i love squishing the bears with my thumb; they just have the right thickness to be pressed on #i really like the flower stickers; they look like romantically artistic wax seal #the letters are pleasantly nice #i love the part where cheka personally request for an audience with yuu thru sebek 🥺🥺🥹🥹 too cute hnggh .......#sebek becoming our little mailman for our little invitation aw 🥹 for those who wanna know the context of the letter;#i requested a letter from sebek that he sent home while he was away accompanying malleus on other country duty #my other favorite part is just him simply opening the letter with 'My love'#i'm sealed 🥹 the first paragraph is written so sweetly #i enjoy reading the letter slowly outside in peaceful afternoon today; i ran it through together with sebek nui #this will be my treasured keepsake from now on 🥹; it seriously made me miss letters and wish i have someone to send this kind of letter to #it was a bit funny how the envelope sebek's letter came from is sticked with the guys from free! sticker fhsdsh 🤣😂#and me with the white haired guy like WHo are u?? fsjdsdjsd (´つヮ⊂); but it's a really nice service #the thank you letter came with such a cute and yummy folding paper; thank you for the stickers too #i feel like there's a bit whoopsie on grim's winky eye fshfh like i think the sharpie just blurs the separating space '<' supposed to have #and just combine it all together into one angry eye; and sebek bear's eyes are just a little bigger than i expected it to be #but the more i look at them i think they are just having a little individuality & still cute #i embraced it all together while knowing the fact none of handmade thing would always be the same one with the other; hehe sebek nui has fr #i kinda forget that there's this kind of clip earring fshd; because i always get the ones that work like screw from aliexpress #i know that the literal clip one would just be literal meaning of pain fsh; just like the magnet one my father once got me when i was a kid #it was painful but pretty; tho i lost it quickly bcs magnet easily get loosed once one part of it moves around when u touch ur hair or face #anyhow i had a pleasant day because of this; thank you very much ! sebek nui said 'thank you' too! ‧₊˚❀༉‧₊˚. ❀ ✿ 𖤣…

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scltbvrns · 2 months

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homogenising something that has always been inherently diverse will kill us all one day.

#-> myra text #political critique #that is why hindutva should have not been popularised. hindutva is not decolonisation or reclamation.#it is homogenising and exclusionist. it takes away the diverse history of this country.#but this statement will reach deaf ears. rather than critiquing nobility they will go and bark casteist and islamphobic bs.#did invaders did what invaders do? yes. but this whole property destruction and lives being at risk has been going on for years.#biggest example who are quite popular: ajatshatru (son of bimbisara) & ashoka the great (the massacre at kaling)#i'm all in for criticising nobility i have no respect for any kings despite their religion and community and whatever.#they're all shits who benefited and left the common people to rot.#these people will say that tipu sultan is the devil reborn but will go on praising the marathas #as if the marathas did not cause a bloodshed in bengal karnataka and the punjab regions. not saying tipu is good but i rather #wanted to point out the hypocrisy of people in certain spaces. its a good thing to appreciate history and even better thing to learn from #the mistakes made in past but some of you guys did not understand the whole point.#absolute shit head cunts some of you guys are. come at me brand me whatever slurs you fuckers use i don't give a shit #calling people sex slaves just because they don't subscribe to your viewpoint is not the big own you think it is.#sanghi bs #india #hindutva

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sergle · 5 months

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I think my favorite thing about doing ginger red hair instead of cherry red hair is: lying to people about it

#I love the cherry red / wine red and I'll probably go back at some point bc it's my Origin.#but for now.#I don't actively lie to people but bc it's a Natural and Plausible hair color #and I'm already pale and I dye my eyebrows to match my hair. ppl figure it's natural #and it has come up MULTIPLE TIMES. and I've recently been rolling with it instead of correcting ppl. bc who cares?#recent examples that come to mind (but I did correct them in this one) my surgeon assuming it was natural #and using my genetics as a natural redhead as a baseline to tell me about what I can expect from my future scarring #and then again later with the anesthesia. they were going to dose me differently #the anesthesiologist glanced at me when I came into the OR and was getting the stuff ready on his cart #and when he heard me talking to my doc and re-telling him that oh the hair isn't natural #he was behind the curtain like FUCK #taking shit off his cart and quietly redoing his setup #that's how I learned that redheads need higher doses of anesthesia than other ppl.#they also need more of the topical stuff like lidocaine. apparently they metabolize it faster(?)#ANYWAY he was going to up my dose thinking I needed it lol #so i almost got way more sedatives and pain meds than i needed bc of my hair dye LMAOOO #other more Normal Life examples was a country dude in full hunting gear holding a door open for me someplace #and I said thank you and he lifted his hat up to point at his (natural) red hair and said ''twins!''#this one sticks with me because that was such a cute thing to do. what the hell #and at snakefest I was talking to some people at their food truck. there was an older guy who trapped me into a convo for like 30mins #he was Very Nice. and they were going to some type of irish festival next and said I should go too bc I'll be right at home #flat out just was like. this bitch looks irish #and I don't know why all of this is so funny to me. it has no reason to be.

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pinkgibbon · 3 months

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obsessed w this movie recently

#this is a really really good movie to study artistically. composition and silhouettes and lighting/contrast. it has some good stuff #this guy has good shapes but i cant quite figure out how to draw his face #no country for old men #ncfom #anton chigurh #i gottaaa read the book !!#showed the traditional ones to my dad (which is weird i never show him my art) and he was like thats the guy from the little mermaid right.#and i was like what. um. ...no? who?#we went back and fourth for like 20 seconds b4 i realized he meant javier bardem was in the new little mermaid (which i didnt know!)#my art #fanart #no country for old men (2007)

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iamacolor · 11 months

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all is well in france! they didn't just lie about the teenager trying to run over a cop who was supposedly standing in front of the car to stop him (when in reality he was on the side at the car window pointing his gun directly in the car), most of the first media reports presented the kid as a recidivist delinquent to twist the narrative in their favor even though he had no record! also in the video that debunked their claims of legitimate defense, the policeman can be heard saying "open or I'll shoot you in the head". also it's not said here but most of the poc killed by the police in france are men and the numbers of killings by the police are steadily on the rise over the last few years (because of one law that was put in place in 2017 or around that time and gives policemen more situations in which they can use their weapons for legitimate defense or public security) if you still think France is the country of human rights and freedom bla bla bla, think again

#france #police violence #racism #death tw #violence tw #french stuffs #and now the police minister is calling for quiet over the protests and outcries happening in the streets especially where the kids was from #and he's sending more policemen to stop things when they're the problem like... sure people are going to be pacified now that they have 200 #colleagues of the guy who killed their friend/neighbor/co-citizen #some of this country is soooo ugly ugly ugly and so rotten #vinformation #police brutality

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thedoubteriswise · 2 months

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so I get to my shuttle at the airport to go home and it turns out the other group that's supposed to be in my van is really late, so they're putting them on the next time slot and I have this van all to myself. cool, that means the trip home will be relatively short. this was a greater stroke of luck than I could possibly have imagined, as I have been awake for uh. I'm not going to do any math right now but it's been a lot of hours, and this driver is a guy who loves to hear himself talk.

at first this is fine. he starts telling stories about the awful job he used to have working at a piece of shit movie theater in pasadena 13 years ago. it's vaguely concerning that he leads with (while speaking to a woman he just met, with whom he is alone in a van) a story about a frequent flier they used to have who would sneak into movies, sit next to random women, jerk off, and then escape before they could identify him conclusively, but admittedly I do find this story compelling and am not offended, so that's whatever. he proceeds to tell a longer story about how he got fired from this job, and how his manager also later got fired from this place for, seemingly, embezzlement. this also amuses me, even if I'm puzzled by the combination of hatred and admiration he seems to have for this manager. the specific cadence of his speech is ringing some alarm bells, and he seems to find a woman to dislike in every story he tells, and also I was unsure why he needed to specify that The Phantom Masturbator (his title, not mine) was black, but like. okay man proceed with your fascinating narrative I guess.

this is the point where we get into what he was doing in the LA area in the first place, and that was trying to be a TV writer. this didn't work out, but it turns out he had a fairly popular youtube channel for a while. and he asks me.

"so, have you heard of gamergate?"

"uh, sure."

"oh boy. yeah, sorry."

he then runs down his entire involvement in gamergate, because boy was he involved.

well. I say "entire," but he definitely left out some details!

for 50 straight minutes my new best friend does not stop talking. he expresses regrets about some of his past choices and says he's "absolutely a leftist" now, and that he has two daughters, which apparently changed his perspective on things. he has still found a woman to hate in every story he's told me. we finally arrive at my house. I get out of the car and realize that at the beginning of this story he told me where he lives, which is the same town where I live. god help me there is a nonzero chance of me running into this loser in a bar.

#america. beautiful country.#the guy who drives you home from the airport might be a turbo-misogynist #who wants to tell you that someone he knows wrote a book in which they indirectly blame him for trump getting elected

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irhabiya · 6 months

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"my friends over at the mukhabarat will get your parents, they want a picture of you ... they'll rip out their nails one by one"

i was gonna say something but actually i'd rather not risk it i'll leave it up to your imagination

#that poor guy...#idk if he's actually egyptian or not but given that there are a lot of egyptians in ny and that pasty fucking demon brought it up #i'm assuming yes. incredible coming from someone who worked in foreign affairs in the obama administration #the dissonance is so wild “my friends at...” then in the same breath “this is a free country this isn't egypt”#how do you acknowledge your involvement in royally fucking over a country a continent and an ocean away then act like #we're inherently backwards

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noahfromjungle · 24 days

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But honestly like if contestants were going to drop out in protest then obviously it would be just before the final

#inconvenience them in the biggest possible way #i think I said this somewhere on like march already #like who’s missing Romania this year? no one because they’re not there in the first place #same thing would have happened if other countrys dropped out before the semi finals #because the large majority of people watching don’t follow the contest beyond this one week #and even if it was for a different reason a lot of people will be wondering were the funny blue guy from Thursday went #eurovision #esc 2024 #esc #eurovision 2024

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themyscirah · 7 months

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Amanda... I miss her.

But I don't trust a single person to write her other than Ostrander/Yale. Like I don't trust them to do it right. Because like it's easy to write her being shady and manipulative and involved in secret government conspiracies. That's what she does. But it feels so hollow once you've seen her character in the way Ostrander describes it. Like she is a woman who is desperate and trying to do what she thinks is right. She has found a place of power (as a fat Black woman in the 1980s) and is doing anything she can to fight and hold onto it as powerful and ambitious men try and steal it from her. So she doubles down. She doubles down on the shady deals and the broken promises and the violence and she destroys her enemies, and loses a part of her soul in the process. And then some other ambitious politician rises up and the process repeats itself over and over and over again as each time she loses more of her morality and more of her soul and more of the respect her colleagues had for her. In place of that she gains more power, she gains fear, and an even more badass reputation. Until by the end of the book the villains begin to understand/sympathize with her more than the heroes ever will. Like THAT is who Amanda Waller is. It may happen subtly, it may happen over a longer period of time but that descent is a critical part of her character! She is a tragic character! And I feel like every perception of Suicide Squad I've seen outside of the original has her as this static villainous snapshot which is just untrue to her core imo. Like she is not a hero. But she is also not JUST a villain. She is a highly flawed character who is always descending farther and farther into villainy as she is led there by what she believes is right.

#maybe the problem is there isnt as much of a side cast in the later suicide squads from what ive seen.#bc the reactions of the government workers and prison workers are CRITICAL in this #also like. suicide squad isn't all villains guys. its a mix of prisoners and government workers with various moralities who can all general #ly join together in one thing: hating amanda waller #GOD I-#so many feelings abt her #also like lemme know if people think shes actually done okay in non 80s comics bc from what ive seen and the vibe it gets it seems bad #maybe i should go back to the 80s i probably missed some appearances there #but 80s plots are so annoying though 99% of the time its either new gods space shenanigans but weirder or visits to a made up country #obviously based on real ones which are then used for cold war propaganda #hgggggg #but like you can tell so easy when ppl dont get her. bc theyre all like amanda waller (derogatory) when REALLY its waller (derogatory)#(affectionate) (derogatory). at times with another affectionate or derogatory (or repeat of both) thrown in at the end #amanda waller #suicide squad #the suicide squad #dc meta #dc comics #blah #she gets painted as this 2 dimensional villain when to me shes literally like the hero of a greek tragedy #tonight is an amanda waller thoughts kind of night ig

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