salarta

This is a Polaris post. About authority on defining and understanding characters, and companies vs fandoms.

Companies have their own ideas of what deserves or doesn’t deserve attention. How to use their “assets.” What they want people to think and believe about those “assets.” Within that, as the rightsholders, they want a constructed reality wherein the only “true” and “legitimate” version of a character or relationship or story resides with the company. With the people who own the rights and are legally allowed to profit off of it.

There’s a problem here. Even the best, most well-intentioned companies can’t cover everything. They can’t grasp everything. And that’s just the optimistic POV. It’s not counting companies with people who look at various characters with hate on their minds, or presumptions of lack of worth, or looking at everything through their own fandom and not considering the fandom of people other than them.

That’s the risk.

If you buy into a company’s narrative, that they’re “the authority” and you must abide by what they say, then you have no options even if what they say is garbage. It could be racist, sexist drivel. But if you just accept “only the company gets to decide what counts,” then that’s what it is. Marvel could write Captain America as a sieg heiling Nazi and you have to accept it (hi, Secret Empire). Now, he’s a Nazi. Nevermind whatever he’s been before.

This is where fandom comes in. Fandom by its nature hones in on the beautiful, the sad, the dark, the powerful, everything about the object of its fandom. It explores the myriad dimensions that the company either can’t or won’t. Furthermore, authority is decentralized in fandom. There isn’t one lone person who gets to decide everything. It’s a work in progress of many anonymous and non-anonymous people all over the connected world.

Case study: Magnus family

Marvel demanded via Axis that people accept “Wanda and Pietro are not Magneto’s kids” as canon. According to Marvel, they’re not related, and they shouldn’t have family-based stories together.

If you stuck only to Marvel’s narrative and nothing else, that’s it. Done. The family is over. No stories to tell, nothing to engage in. Time to move on and do other things.

Fandom didn’t do that. Fandom refused. It doesn’t matter what Marvel puts out, how fiercely they try to reinforce the retcon. The fans have decided it was a stupid ass decision and have chosen to ignore it. And we’ve been better off for it, because we’ve seen some amazing fanart, fanfic, fan comics, cosplay, etc come out of it.

This cycles back to Polaris specifically, not just in the context of the Magnus family.

Consider Marvel’s behavior for the past few years (don’t even need to consider decades). Marvel’s constructed authority, what they want people to believe, is that Lorna has no value outside of providing support for other characters – primarily Havok and Magneto. She gets no stories actually focused on her. She leads no teams. When she shows up, it’s to reinforce Magneto being powerful and wise, or Havok having a woman he dated, or how helpful she can be in telling the stories of Bishop or Northstar or whoever else.

If you stick to Marvel’s constructed “authority,” then Lorna really isn’t worth much. According to Marvel, she has no history with Genosha or Krakoa, has no past dynamics with Jean or Iceman, nothing worthwhile.

Fandom says otherwise.

Fandom has looked at her character history and seen these things that Marvel, in all its “wisdom,” deliberately pretends never happened. Fandom sees the importance of Genosha in shaping her world view. It sees the fun she must’ve had with Jean, or the insight of Iceman’s relationship history for an outsider view. And then fandom does something with it – unlike Marvel.

Fandom presents an actually proper, accurate picture of who Lorna is and what she offers at the same time that Marvel presents an atrophied, dismissive, ignorant view. And ignorant has two meanings here. Ignorant in that they aren’t willing to consider what she truly offers as a character. Ignorant in that they literally ignore key aspects of who she is and what she’s done.

This is why you see me spurning HoX/PoX/DoX and talking about fandom being Lorna’s salvation. Marvel’s “authority” is not to be respected, because it’s false. It lacks anything other than a spiteful cardboard conception of her. Fans have the true multi-dimensional view of her. So they’re her future.

Marvel’s just the people who own the legal rights. That’s all. They’re not even her creators. Her creators (Don Heck and Arnold Drake) died over a decade ago. Steranko’s the only one still around art-wise.

That’s all I have to say at the moment on the topic. May add later or write a sequel if I feel it’s relevant.