The fact that so many LGBT writers seem to think that having characters be LGBT forgives them of things like mass murder and terrorism says quite a bit about how the LGBT community sees itself.

More of this weird greying of villains. It's so annoying. Marvel and DC just copied each other's bad ideas. Harley and Ivy are unrecognizable as characters now. The most successful thing that's come out of this is an out-of-continuity animated TV show. And when they made a tie-in comic, guess what? People didn't buy it. It should be studied one day how social media tricked the comic book industry into supporting these bad ideas.

Them getting married in Avengers Mansion really bothers me. Mystique and Destiny should be in jail, not getting married in the original headquarters of Earths mightiest heroes. It just feels so wrong and makes the heroes look like morons who are harboring fugitives from the law. Doesn’t that make them criminals themselves?

Modern comics sucks so much. They turned Xavier in a villain in the end of Krakoa Era but maked Destiny and Mystique in anti-heroes.There's no morality anymore in Marvel today. This is awful.

Mid-40s gay man here. Not a big fan of the Pride issues, but not sure I'm their target audience (probably more geared toward Gen-Zers). Anyway, something that I think might be good context is the concept of "queer joy" that's become prevalent in media in the last few years. It's a reaction to the gloom-and-doom that was thematic in a lot of previous LGBT representation, where if a character was depicted as LGBT, they were usually lonely, miserable, the target of hatred, disowned by family, predatory/psychotic, or dying of AIDS. It really felt like it was all you saw in movies and TV back when I was a young adult. Today maybe some creators are responding to those portrayals by going to the other extreme - where everything about being LGBT is fun and liberating and carefree, and that's where you get two gay characters PDA-ing in the middle of a fight to save the planet. Maybe not realistic, but perhaps those creator see it as cathartic for their audience. This would also explain why you don't see CIS hetero couples depicted this way - because there's nothing in previous depictions of them to respond to. I'm not saying this is good writing, or even good portrayals of LGBT characters, but I do think this may be where the sensibility that leads to these kinds of portrayals are coming from.

"Against stupidity the very gods contend in vain." Friedrich Schiller.

7:01 The author is doing this weird infantilization of the characters. There's no serious threat, no real issues from the villain-just "la la, we're so happy, kill kill." It's not good storytelling to dumb things down this way. 10:07 With Marvel being as talent-deficient as it is, I wouldn't be surprised if something like this happened. Let's be honest, they'll just sell some Jim Lee variant covers of Jubliee to make up for the few of us who still read the actual comics, rather than just collecting comic art.

I always hated when writers or creators When they say it was always our intention to to do this and then just do the opposite

6:44 But how will you know that they’re gay if they’re not kissing and holding hands?? Come on now, they need to really point it out to you.

This is a small reminder to everyone here that Claremont was behind the very reveal of Nightcrawler's longtime girlfriend of the 70s, Amanda Sefton, being his adoptive sister catfishing him in 1980. He made them both date before he left the circus and long after the reveal and had them use their weird family relationships in their flirts. He had them even date again in the Nightcrawler solo run he wrote in 2014. All this to say, not all of Claremont's ideas were good and not all his reveals had the right setups or were good payoffs to read through.

...now, we couldn't have had Mystique marry an old crinkly lady that Destiny priginally was, could we? No. Nonono, both have to be very hot, because the masses will like them both hot.

The acceptance they want is to silence anyone who dares to object. And that will never get them respect.

A good friend of mine told me that in order for gay representation to actually impact, the characters have to show their sexuality. I was baffled due to not seeing straight characters, not particularly doing that. I then told him that mindset was boring. We want to see characters develop, be interesting, so to speak. The love junk is the last thing unless it's a love story. Hopefully, he changed his mind. I'm with you. It's bizarre that the Avengers associate themselves with big-time criminals. No wonder the average citizen does not trust them, lol.

My problem with Mystique and Poison Ivy is how woobified they became. You can still have lgbt characters being ruthless villains. You don't have to water them down to this safe slop.

There were times when our only source of comic book encyclopedia were the trading cards. Qe didn't care about their politics and sexuality as long as good character bios and story arc existed. Good times!

I'm of two minds about Claremont's intent for Mystique and Destiny. I think for 90% of their appearances, he was not writing them to be lesbians. Marvel Fanfare #40 is the real exception to this. In that issue, they go to some bizarre bondage club, Irene heavily implies Mystique is just as old as her. Mystique holds Destiny's face for several panels, calls her "my love," and then transforms into an elderly man so they can slow dance together. That would seem to go alone with Claremont's claims that his original plan was for Mystique to be an older man who was Destiny's husband and had shapeshifted to hide his identity. But after that, the only Claremont comics left with them were the Muir Island story where Destiny dies. If I had to guess, I'd say Claremont didn't intend them to be romantically involved until he wrote that Marvel Fanfare issue. It's also hard to gauge, because Claremont would use expressions like "my love" in non-romantic ways, making it unclear if that should really be interpreted the way most would interpret it today. For example, he would often have Mirage and Wolfsbane refer to each other as "my heart." But that was due to them having a psychic bond, not because of a romantic connection. In the era when they would call each other that, Mirage crushed on various boys and Wolfsbane was really into Cannonball.

Scott and Jean held hands fighting off the Imperial Guard on the moon. But I get what you're saying

Is Rachel gay or bi now? Is there ANY impetus for Rachel being gay, even going back to a Claremont kinkism? Or is this just Tini declaring gay by fiat?

Destiny Mystique romance is pretty much performative in my eyes.

It's males no sense for Psylocke, Iceman, Rictor, Shatterstar, Rachel and many I've forgotten to suddenly be gay. I'm still hanging on as an X-Men fan but instead of looking forward to these comics I wait for them to hit the dollar bin because that's the most they are worth.

The writers doing dumb gags for their flag ship representation chatacters, could lead people to think everything related to the representation is dumb. And when you say "you are just no fun, it was just having a silly moment" some times silly ideas go talking with each other, not a complete comic that is supposed to be sold

claremont doing a JK rowling with mystique and destiny

They don't care. They just don't care.

Maybe they are trying the very concept of Pride by challenging it with such intensely embarassing material all Pride Month long?

What's Arby's doing for Pride month?

Kieron Gillen wrote everybody so campy and out of character in this special that users on Reddit couldn't recognize his writing. They went on to complain that Marvel should have gotten him to write this because of how much they enjoyed his portrayal of the couple in Immortal X-Men.

It really doesn't make sense that many of these characters just became gay out of the blue, and then they use the excuse that "they were bisexual all along" bullshit! In a media where you literally can read the character's thoughts they could have shown years ago some signs hinting that those character at least had some interest in the same sex, you just don't become gay or bisexual suddenly.

I read the Wedding issue its funny that you bring up the irony of celebrating two villains just because they are gay because that was part of one of the stories or rather the character Anole brings that up. One of the three better stories in that issue imho.

Editors fail to ask the most important question when a story is pitched: “Why?” And get an answer other than “because I think it should be done”. How does it move the story along? What does it bring to the story?

I always read it that Rogue had 2 mommies. Sure there was that age difference but some people are into that.

This is the stuff longtime readers complain about. Not that there's LGBT+ characters in comics, but that writers a shoehorning visualations every chance they get. It's now not "a superhero who happens to be gay," it's "AAA GAAAY CHARACTAAARRR!!! ...who uh, happens to be a superhero, or whatever..." And two superheroines holding hands, looking like their frolicking in the flower fields while fighting? Well, don't that make for an exciting comic to read! And if anybody says "What's the big deal, It's only comic books," respond with "What's the big deal? It's only a Football game" when their team loses. See how quickly the topic changes.

If I'm a billionaire multimedia mogul who wants to protect my power and wealth and keep the peasants in their place, divided amongst themselves, I'd use a portion of my money and influence to push hyper identity politics in all things media: news, gaming, comics, film, television, all other sorts of media and entertainment. Equate hyper identity politics with progressivism, so when anyone left-leaning, liberal, progressive, etc. wants to advocate for their political and social positions, they have no choice but to embrace hyper identity politics, whether they personally like it or not. Predictably, the conservatives, reactionaries, right-leaning groups will be meeting them at every turn, and everything will be a battleground of these trivial, bullshit, in-the-grand-scheme-of-things totally unimportant ideological struggles.

Graying of villains just darkens the heroes and its just character sabotage. Also comics could just fully embrace Bi sexuality with their LGBT characters. So instead of going against 30+ years of relationships history that actually fans of the character have invested in, they could say hey this is just another person that they love." Also Destiny & MYSTIQUE are horrible "people". Can we have some good people that are gay to root for 😂

Marvel and DC heroes/villains are a backdrop for all the zeitgeist, and because this takes precedence over good storytelling and a compelling narrative, people that look for that in their product are taken aback. I'm so not into most of what the big 2 are doing that I suggest they should make the whole Marvel/DC universe characters lgbtqxyz, ban white males and be done with it. Honestly, I m fine with whatever they want to do. If it's a product I m interested, I ll buy/read. If not, I don t give it a second thought

Funny how if body positivity is so big NO ONE in the MCU (when they go through changes or de-aging) never turns up fat or even chubby.

I really Like LGBT representation WHEN it's written well. My favorite X-Men related run is Peter David on X-Factor, but the problem is with alot of the new Writers making LGBT characters BORING or even at times REALLY annoying. Even when they write formerly Amazing LGBT characters, they seem to fall flat. It seems like alot of these new writer only know how to write these characters one way, and it's frustrating. And then when you complain about the changes, then your the problem, not the writer😵‍💫

I initially assumed that Mystique was Destiny's mother, in the earlier stories. At some point years and years ago they started hinting that Mystique and Destiny had been a couple at some point in their histories, though, with Mystique being bisexual. If you had asked me ten years ago to point to a female-female couple in Marvel, Mystique and Destiny are who I would have said were the most likely. There really hasn't been any indication in the past that the other X-Men you mentioned (and Iceman) were, though.

Thank you for a fair, even-handed take.

Ah, yes, Claremont's go-to "sister-friend" trope, where two women can be perceived as either the very best of friends or as lovers.

But perch how would we know the characters are gay unless they show it in every panel. 😂😂😂

If it's just a comic, then the creators shouldn't care when people dunk on it.

Your example of Jubilee being retconned to trans might not be far off considering how in many of her early appearances just after the Outback, she routinely did the "go into situation disguised as a worker" thing and every time, they called her "boy".

My comic haul this week was- Creature from Black Lagoon Uncle scrooge & the infinity dime And the TMNt/Stranger things trade There are always fun comics out there, good art, and good storytellers. You can’t find them at Marvel. Hell, the Uncle Scrooge comic was the first new, current, Marvel comic i have gotten in years at this point. True love letter to Carl Barks and a fun adventure story for a classic Disney character.

It's tumblr fan fiction made by the big two. I wouldn't waste my time or money on any of it.

Am gay and I don't buy this shit 😂

I don't know if there's any contradiction here - this audience just wants something fluffier and less stressful from their comics. They want light shenanigans and low-stakes cute boys and cute girls making bedroom eyes with flushed cheeks and kissy lips at all times. The heroics in the comic is just cosplay, and they get upset if anyone messes with the fun make-believe by introducing stakes, drama or anything bad happening to anyone ever.

i found their relationship back in the day that it was more mother daughter or at least mentor Destiny was an older woman And they were bad guys! And cringe dialogue

"We adults are very proud that we have these characters having very adult relationships and make very adult decisions in these books made for teens and adults." "But none of this makes sense storywise." "'Sense?' Comic books have historically been for kids, they're just stories."

DC and Marvel boxxed themselves into a corner making all these characters gay. They could never go back because all these people online would lose their shit.

This sounds like Perch is jealous of Mystique & Destiny because they got their gay wedding, whereas in real life, he wasn't able to marry his college boyfriend. Writing 2 characters holding hands in a fight & killing enemies, the writer probably thought "tee hee, this is so adorbs". Superman would never kiss Lois while fighting, even if Lois had powers and she was fighting alongside him, that seems irresponsible, and it's like gloating, which Superman wouldn't do.

7:23 Because the LGBTQ stuff is about cultural vandalism and nothing else. If this was about actual representation, they'd be written like normal characters instead of weird parodies

Something i find curious: since the 1940s, Madame Fatal has been at least really into crossdressing, and pretty damn easy to argue as trans. You know who DC never seems to remember, much less show any Pride in? Madame Fatal.

It makes perfect sense to see LGBT couples kiss and hold hands while fighting villains in comics. That's what I see in town. Normal couples act normal, but there's multiple "lesbian" couples standing around making out. Why do they do this? You be the judge.

Making them ludicrous stereotypes actually is NOT counter-productive to what they are trying to do. The point is not to write good stories or make gay people look normal. The point is to call you a homophobe. I'm surprised you haven't figured that out yet. But also, you're talking about terrible writers. Even if they were trying to write something good, they couldn't.

Haven't bought a marvel comic in over a decade. What a train wreck this company has become. Toxic pornography.

Would it be fair to say that the authors involved bring the same care and attention to the gay characters as they do to any other comics that they write?

I wouldve bought the x-men lesbian wedding thing if it wasn’t 9.99 but not the weird dc pride things and the one as the image in the beginning, bc it was an x-men lesbian wedding

Modern creatives don't know how to depict "queerness" without visual stereotypes and tropes. Having to shoehorn in scenes of them in bed, or making out just to show the characters are queer really destroys the storytelling IMO. Just once I wish these pride books would tell compelling story that drives characters or moves plots along in some way.

Ever since Mags revealed the thankfully rejected plans for trans Connor Kent I knew someone at DC (or Marvel) would take a page from that but at the very least be smart enough to apply it to a much more obscure character. Trans is trendy nowadays so I can see either DC or Marvel pulling that out of their hat. I'm also concerned for your friends and their kid depending how old the daughter really is and hopefully she wasn't a tomboy who was pressured into this decision like so many these days.

You saw the Mystique mini comic? Because it announced but in a silhouette, Aipt tweeted Declan Shavely is gonna be the writer. He Retweeted I can neither confirm and deny it. And it turns out he’s writing the Mystique comic. How feel about *Mystique written by Declan Shavely? I read Old Dog from Declan but I didn’t read his Thundercats. And there Sentinels comic by Alex Paknadel. I think Alex is decent writer. I still need to finish his All Against All comic. If his Sentinels comic is good. I believe it is worth it his Sentinels has a crossover with Geoffrey Thorne’s X Force. It makes perfect sense, cause Forge and Surge has fought a Sentinel name Nimrod. Imagine Nimrod is Xavier type mentor to the Sentinels.

Can I get your mail perch? I’d love to send you a question about whether the indie scene has a talent problem

And people wonder why Comics are dying. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have been destroyed by woke stuff and now Marvel wants to join up in that woke stuff. DC and Marvel constantly destroy themselves with this woke stuff and very soon, they will COMPLETELY destroy themselves. Maybe then, they'll snap out of it.

I'm going to disagree with you a little bit here. Claremont may not have intially intended for Destiny and Mystique to be gay, but it is something that he began seeding in Uncanny X-Men #255 or 256. Destiny is even referred to as Mystique's "leman" or lover about 10 issues or so later. So they probably weren't originally created as lovers but it is something he intended going back to 1988 or '89. Especially since he wanted them to be Nightcrawler's parents. It is a retcon, but it goes back further than you suggest. Mr. & Mrs. X had Rogue and Gambit being obnoxiously in love during their adventures so there is a straight version of that trope. It's really hard for me to judge any of this stuff since I'm not gay, but I have see comments from gay people that agree with some of your points. But I've also seen comments from gay people who also don't believe that X-Men is "gay enough." At the end of the day, I just want goid comics. And if you're going to make established characters gay (tread carefully here) at least do it in a well thought out, believable way. It felt like Betsy and Rachel went fron straight to gay in like 0.2 seconds. Lije, here's Knights of X #1. Betsy and Rachel are hot for each other! Surprise!

What happened to your sound?

Wait, is Betsy blonde now?

Perch just realized a gay comic is gay...

Mystique getting married in the Avengers mansion? That is actually pretty ridiculous. But them again I don’t read too many corporate comics nowadays anyways.

Fantastic Four Epic Collection Vol. 4: P314, upper right panel- Sue and Reed RIchards cup each others' shoulders whilst fighting Ronan the Accuser. P293, lower left panel- Sue & Reed Richards hug each other whilst fighting the Kree Sentry (they are about to be inundated by a tidal wave). P283, lower right panel- The Thing protectively hugs Sue Richards as they are about to crash their pogo plane. There are other examples of physical contact that might be described as cradling, pulling up, or hugging during fight scenes, too numerous to count, including on p216 (middle panel); p214 (splash page); p215 (middle left panel).... And there, on p211, upper right panel, Reed and Sue Richards unambiguously hold hands whilst fighting Doctor Doom. I have not been able to hunt down the exact pages Perch is describing where apparently Rachel Summers and Betsey Braddock engage in a fight while constantly holding each others's hands. I assume there is something about it that makes it qualitatively unrealistic or impractical in his eyes in a way that, say, comparable physical contact as depicted in the works of Jack Kirby did not. I understand that, like Kirby, the artist who did this is making a stylistic choice, one that Perch finds exceptionally jarring and unrealistic in this instance. I will be looking for it to make my judgment... But Perch, you haven't convinced me yet.

While some of these LGBTQ+ reveals did come out of nowhere, it's not entirely unrealistic for people who were previously in heterosexual relationships to suddenly switch. My ex-girlfriend had only ever been in relationships with men when we got together, but she's now happily married to another woman. I totally agree that they shouldn't be making out in the middle of a fight though because that's just stupid, and Mystique and Destiny should still be treated as villains whether they're gay or not.

Celebrating and Glorifying Mystique for Pride month is like celebrating and glorifying Jeffrey Dahmer for Pride month. 6:15 Betsy Braddock seduce Cyclops in the 90’s comic and Jean was still alive in that 90’s. Rachel summer had romantic relationship with Nightcrawler. 7:50 Yes. Yes it is sad. That is Stagnation for ya. 11:54 Okay Perch. I am going to email you about an “modern” LGBT character that is taken seriously. I am not saying their name Because since that character is taken seriously everyone seem to forgot about the character. Wes made a video about that character. A year later, Wes does not remember the character at all. Like, does most people only remember just cringe stuff like that trans girl from Gotham whose has a baseball bat with trans flag around it? If LGBT characters are taken seriously will you remember them better or you only remember them for the cringe stuff? F*¢k, Maggs tries to make Connor Kent Trans still haunts me. Stitch from Teen Titans Academy still haunts me. But want to hold a positive memory of an LGBT that is taken seriously. You most likely gonna said Midnighter and Apollo. You need to expand your knowledge. I believe you already talk about NorthStar. *You should talk about Karma.* People comments on your channel, and claimed Zeb Wells retcons Karma’s sexuality. Even though that is false info, Chris Claremont always intended to make Karma as lesbian. Talk about her, Perch. Seriously, as much I don’t like Zeb Well’s ASM I will not tolerate make stuff up in his past work. It goes against common sense. I remember Anole being as hero during Quest of Magik arc. I still remember him before that. Even after that I remember his friendship with Rockslide. Thankfully Rockslide is dead so his sexuality won’t be retcon. I don’t remember what Anole do during 2010s and Krakoa era by Charles Jane Anders it is mostly cringe. Why hold that memory. I would hurt. I remember the cringe of Gwenpool coming out as Asexual. Which that make no sense she at all. *She made out with Kid Omega.* And Gwenpool use her 4th wall breaking powers to killed two guys during pride month. Not sure about Dreamer though. I haven’t stories about her. I do remember she in Jon Kent series. How did Supergirl CW treat Dreamer? Since it is CW it most likely not serious. Galaxy by Axelrod. Ugh she is not taken seriously in Hawkgirl comic. But we have read the actual Galaxy comic if she taken seriously. I doubt that. So make a video of lgbt characters that is taken seriously. It can be before the 2010’s. But don’t repeat the same people you already talk about.

Just out of curiosity, how do you criticize people in the alphabet mafia? I've never seen a shield against criticism as strong as theirs. Ridiculous .

All this pride stuff is a net negative to the comic book industry. This phantom audience is not coming in to comics.

Im kinda sick of this not just this forced stuff but im kinda sick of surrounding myself with just things that upset me.

I was done with the representation stuff when they retro Iceman Bobby Drake. Great video Perch

I mean you right they treat these characters like jokes and people are tired of it until they write these characters correctly stop trying to force me agenda on here and then when they have opportunity the right true daycare stop making a joke and people would respect it because there are plenty of day characters before this deep dive of oh we need to gay up a character every year used to be respected now they're not respected anymore because everybody knows that for an agenda and this notion of taking popular characters and trying to make them gay doesn't work especially when I'm trying to sell them to people and especially to kids anytime they take half these characters and make them gay They minimize the effect of them being marketing and sellable to children You can't have it both ways either you want these characters to be gay or you want them to be sellable to the masses You can't have both ways especially when you're treating my eyes jokes especially when you're a retcon in history and then telling people like it's not ridiculous just comments well if it's not a big deal then why did you change it Why did you feel about people are getting tired of it

Betsy being Bisexual isnt suprising to me since she dated the female version of Fantomex but with Rachel who has dated only men it does and I would actually find Kitty Pryde to have more in common with Betsy as they are both are Ninjas and Kitty went through that whole character arc of revealing she is gay or bi. Lastly i feel Rachel should be destined to be with Franklin.

🤦🤦🤦

I think that's enough pride there for a while. Preferably forever.

First!

More gay crap ugh so tiring

This crap is embarassing.