I’m sick and tired of the MCU fandom acting like this man doesn’t exist:
And please don’t explain to me how Phastos isn’t as popular because he’s a “side character”, or has less screen time because Phastos has the exact same screen time in Marvel’s Eternals than fandom’s sweetheart Druig, yet you’ll never see anyone call Druig a side character.
I know what you’re trying to do, and I’m with you, I hate Disney as much as the next person but stop with the:
“There’ll never be a Gay character in the MCU” There already is.
or the “Thor Love and Thunder is the gayest MCU project” No it’s not.
It’s amazing how people will praise shows for their “groundbreaking” LGBT+ representation when there have been other forms of medium that have explicit LGBT+ representation. Like they had Phastos kiss his husband on screen, and they didn’t kill him off in the end of the movie. Yet people will simp over Druig who is quite problematic if you really think about it.
Like the dude brainwashed an entire community for centuries, and it was framed as if it was a good thing. I know Wanda’s not necessarily a good person. She’s made mistake, but Westview was an accident and she did let them go in the end. Multiverse of Madness is a whole other thing, but I can definitely sympathize with Wanda more than Druig.
Besides that, there are more blatantly obvious forms of LGBT+ representation that is in media and people keep ignoring it. Don’t.
The reaction to Phastos still absolutely infuriates me. “Oh, we just don’t think we can count him as a gay character because he gave humans the power of technology and they used it to make atomic bombs! That makes him no better than a weapons manufacturer!” Buddy, I have some bad news for you about Iron Man.
There’s this pattern happening in MCU fandom that feels kinda racist, really. Regarding the handling of queer characters in that franchise, there’s something I keep coming back to – Loki and Eternals came out in the same year. Loki had the main character make one comment about being bi and everyone loved it, but Phastos in Eternals was taken much further, he had a husband! Who he kissed onscreen! And yet he Didn’t Count as a queer character for some reason.
I saw so much of that, he just… Didn’t. I saw a lot of “Well, that character created the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima :/” (he didn’t) but at the same time everyone was falling over themselves about Loki being queer, when Loki has murdered and enslaved countless people on screen and was vaguely compared to Hitler once. (Loki’s more horrifying crimes have been completely forgotten these days. He’s never expressed much regret for them either in canon either IIRC.)
So Phastos Didn’t Count, and his Middle Eastern non-superhero husband Ben also Doesn’t Count it seems, for… What reason?! Both are canonically queer characters and their sexuality had a hell of a lot more time dedicated to it than Loki’s did. (I still wonder about Eternals. That bit of misinformation about Hiroshima spread so far and wide it makes me think it was deliberately being promoted by bad actors. The ‘go woke go broke’ crowd HATED that movie and they got to crow about a victory when it flopped.)
And now – Wakanda Forever isn’t even out yet and people are already making excuses as to why Michaela Coel’s character Aneka isn’t going to Count. There’s an interview with Coel going around where she states her character is going to be queer in the movie and people started posting that meme response “being queerbaited by the MCU is like losing at chess to a dog”…which feels incredibly mean and racist when posted in direct response to something she said: it’s like they’re implying she’s the dog. Plus, why do you think it’s queerbaiting? You HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE! Nobody has yet!
So yeah. I feel like when people started saying “We want queer characters in the MCU” they meant “We want WHITE queer characters in the MCU” because the mental gymnastics people have done to not accept the queer characters of colour has been ridiculous.
“The Independent , based on research from Preply , revealed that there has been a 250% increase in inquiries about learning sign language after the debut of Marvel Studios’ Eternals .
Lauren Ridloff’s Makkari, who is deaf in real life, communicated entirely using ASL in the movie, and searches for her personally have increased by 550% since early November.”
I legit do not understand where the hate for this film is coming from. There’s been lots of complaints about how the MCU never deviates from formula but this one does deviate from the formula, and it got rewarded with a 47% RT score? What?
I’m so glad I avoided most of the promo material for this movie because I had no idea what to expect, and it turns out it was telling a very different story to the one I assumed it would be telling. And one that tied into the MCU better than I assumed it would as well. Oh and it also presents a wonderful heroine in Sersi, someone who’s defined by her compassion rather than snark or strength, and also characters the MCU has rather shamefully never presented before, a gay superhero (who actually gets to kiss his husband on screen) and a deaf superhero.
There are some moments in the film that stretch the credibility of the MCU as a connected universe (why are no other superheroes present when the earth starts exploding, has no-one else really ever encountered a Deviant if they can just emerge from ice sometimes?) and a few bits of wince-worthy dialogue, but on the whole it’s really good.
After leaving fans guessing for months, the first openly gay Marvel superhero has been revealed in the trailer for The Eternals. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed that there would be an openly gay superhero at the D23 Expo in California in August, but did not confirm the name of the character or the actor…
Okay, I had no idea about this. Honestly, Gemma Chan aside, I don’t really have much interest in The Eternals. But hey, well done MCU! It only took you, what, over a decade…
