Saturday, July 14, 2007

PoC Marvelverse

I should be sleeping, or making breakfast but - sometime on Thursday someone dragged an old rp character (female!Logan) out of my head for random chat meta. And the concept grew and grew and now I'm finding myself over at GJ trying to remember how to set up a game and doing a lot of head scratching.

But that's not the point of this post. Remember PoCkyGATE? And how I thought it'd have been interesting to start a fanfic universe or rpg of a People of Color version of the Stargate (SG1 & SGA) Universe?

Well, shifting from the concept of a gender-shifted Marvelverse, I pondered a racially shifted Marvelverse.

What if, Isaiah Bradley was the Captain America who was frozen? What if Wolverine, as Weapon X (ten) wherein the Captain Americas were Weapon I was another black guy experimented on by the government but who happened to have healing abilities?

What if Peter Parker was a Puerto Rican boy from Brooklyn?

I can't foresee circumstances where the Fantastic Four could end up as People of Color being allowed into space with their history. But they aren't the only team up in Marvelverse.

What if Namor was brown?

What if Jean Grey was Oneida?

What if Scott were Inuit or Black?

What if Alison Blaire came from an affluent African American family based in NYC? How much more weight would it bring of her father's determination that she have a law career instead of one in the entertainment industry?

What if Jean Paul and Jeanne Marie were instead born Chinese-Canadian and then adopted when their parents died?

What if instead of Thor there was Huitzilopochtli or Shango?

What if She-Hulk were Hispanic?

What if Charles Xavier was a non-white man talking about evolution, trying to spread a message of peace, while saying words like homo superior and seemingly building a private army? Would parents from Indiana etc, willingly give their child over into the guardianship of a non-white man from NY?

Marvelverse would be a very, very, different place, wouldn't it? And the various themes of Sentinels, mutant camps and things like Civil War would have been very different too.

I'd almost want to organize a game to try and re-enact pivotal moments in Marvel history under those circumstances. Logan and Captain America during WW2. The responses of those created to be super-soldiers towards a majority white government trying to control their lives. If Charles Xavier were black and Jean Grey were white, would she have so easily gotten the help she needed to control her power - up to living at the school? Heck if Charles and Jean were white but Scott was a minority, how would that change all those interactions; the attitude of Jean's parents, if Scott could be seen to reliably believe or believe in Xavier....

It's odd how the Marvelverse seems so strangely simple, in a moment's pause, without including those cues and motivations in the lives of the major characters.

xPosted Personal Journalg

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