Staying in the Metahuman Closet, Part II
It's interesting that you mention the X-Men, because the comic was very popular among the gay community as being a mutant was seen as a metaphor for being gay. (*) My deceased best friend (who was gay) was a huge fan of the X-Men and although I never talked to him about the X-Men/gay connection, I'm sure he would have agreed with it.
It's funny because between 2008 and 2016, I wrote for various online websites about women's basketball, and near the end, for an actual WNBA team itself. I had assumed that "being in the closet" was a binary, that you were either in or you were out. But as it turned out, a lot of WNBA lesbians were what someone called "all but out": their families knew they were gay, their friends knew they were gay, but the general public didn't know. They weren't keeping their homosexuality a secret, but at the same time they weren't going to hide it from anyone either. It really just wasn't anyone's business, except for those people who knew and loved them.
As regard to the few metahumans around, I believe they'll start to fall into four categories:
1) Closeted. Absolutely no one knows about their powers, and those who do know are under strict guidelines not to say anything. There will be a few people out there that get "outed", though.
2) All but out. They don't make a secret of it, but they're not open about it either. They generally don't take any sort of public position, except for being generally pro-meta.
3) Out. They know, and they don't care who knows. They identify publicly and politically with being out. They will talk to the press about being meta.
4) Flamboyantly out. They use their powers in public (**), and are loudly and vociferously metahuman.
The Legionnaires would be considered at minimum a "3" on this scale; they can't be anything else. Where the USAES grads will end up will be up to them, but they might end up as "3s" by default - if your degree has USAES on it, people can only jump to one conclusion.
As you stated, I think that there will be a lot of rejection and heartbreak. ("I didn't know you were ONE OF THEM!") But there will also be a "reordering of communities", people cast off from their birth families will hook up with self-forged families of other metahumans. (***)
As for the initial long-term public reaction, one it is revealed that metahumans have existed for a long time, it will make the telling of Claremontesque "mutant persecution" stories a bit hard to swallow. As you wrote, the fact that no metahumans have taken over the world yet (****) will go a long way in leading to public acceptance of metahumans...although it will be very bumpy and uneasy.
I still haven't figured out a lot. The story is going to have to tell itself in a lot of ways.
* Will crime go up or down?
* Will we have a Batman effect, where out-in-the-open metahuman crimefighters cause a bunch of fucked-up metahuman criminals to say, "to tell with it, I'm a supervillain?"
I agree that there will not be a lot of other RLSHs (*5). Really, there is more strength in numbers than working on your own, and having a "secret identity" really doesn't work very well. (It is probably the Least Believable Trope in comics.) Of course, there will have to be a line drawn between RLSHs that have powers and those that don't. (I expect the second group to just fade away - with real supers out there, there's no need for dress up.)
(*) - I don't think that either Stan Lee or Chris Claremont were consciously writing in those directions, despite the efforts to retrofit either of them into being "woke". They were writing stories to entertain people and get paid, without any greater goal in mind. I don't think either of them is particularly liberal (or conservative) and in terms of cultural awareness, I think Claremont's take on Japan as The Land of Ninjas and Geishas is particularly cringeworthy.
(**) - I expect the more flamboyant metas to become rather outre - using their powers in public, wearing weird "costume-y" clothes, taking metahuman "code names" as middle names or even as legal names, but not being crimefighters at all.
(***) - Will San Juan be to metahumans what San Francisco is to gays? Will it become the #1 vacation and work destination? Food for thought.
(****) - This ignores the Arete, who have already taken over the world.
(*5) - The biggest problem in the post-Masquerade universe is going to be vocabulary. The Elite already has its own vocabulary and I have already forgotten what "opossum" means.
It's funny because between 2008 and 2016, I wrote for various online websites about women's basketball, and near the end, for an actual WNBA team itself. I had assumed that "being in the closet" was a binary, that you were either in or you were out. But as it turned out, a lot of WNBA lesbians were what someone called "all but out": their families knew they were gay, their friends knew they were gay, but the general public didn't know. They weren't keeping their homosexuality a secret, but at the same time they weren't going to hide it from anyone either. It really just wasn't anyone's business, except for those people who knew and loved them.
As regard to the few metahumans around, I believe they'll start to fall into four categories:
1) Closeted. Absolutely no one knows about their powers, and those who do know are under strict guidelines not to say anything. There will be a few people out there that get "outed", though.
2) All but out. They don't make a secret of it, but they're not open about it either. They generally don't take any sort of public position, except for being generally pro-meta.
3) Out. They know, and they don't care who knows. They identify publicly and politically with being out. They will talk to the press about being meta.
4) Flamboyantly out. They use their powers in public (**), and are loudly and vociferously metahuman.
The Legionnaires would be considered at minimum a "3" on this scale; they can't be anything else. Where the USAES grads will end up will be up to them, but they might end up as "3s" by default - if your degree has USAES on it, people can only jump to one conclusion.
As you stated, I think that there will be a lot of rejection and heartbreak. ("I didn't know you were ONE OF THEM!") But there will also be a "reordering of communities", people cast off from their birth families will hook up with self-forged families of other metahumans. (***)
As for the initial long-term public reaction, one it is revealed that metahumans have existed for a long time, it will make the telling of Claremontesque "mutant persecution" stories a bit hard to swallow. As you wrote, the fact that no metahumans have taken over the world yet (****) will go a long way in leading to public acceptance of metahumans...although it will be very bumpy and uneasy.
I still haven't figured out a lot. The story is going to have to tell itself in a lot of ways.
* Will crime go up or down?
* Will we have a Batman effect, where out-in-the-open metahuman crimefighters cause a bunch of fucked-up metahuman criminals to say, "to tell with it, I'm a supervillain?"
I agree that there will not be a lot of other RLSHs (*5). Really, there is more strength in numbers than working on your own, and having a "secret identity" really doesn't work very well. (It is probably the Least Believable Trope in comics.) Of course, there will have to be a line drawn between RLSHs that have powers and those that don't. (I expect the second group to just fade away - with real supers out there, there's no need for dress up.)
(*) - I don't think that either Stan Lee or Chris Claremont were consciously writing in those directions, despite the efforts to retrofit either of them into being "woke". They were writing stories to entertain people and get paid, without any greater goal in mind. I don't think either of them is particularly liberal (or conservative) and in terms of cultural awareness, I think Claremont's take on Japan as The Land of Ninjas and Geishas is particularly cringeworthy.
(**) - I expect the more flamboyant metas to become rather outre - using their powers in public, wearing weird "costume-y" clothes, taking metahuman "code names" as middle names or even as legal names, but not being crimefighters at all.
(***) - Will San Juan be to metahumans what San Francisco is to gays? Will it become the #1 vacation and work destination? Food for thought.
(****) - This ignores the Arete, who have already taken over the world.
(*5) - The biggest problem in the post-Masquerade universe is going to be vocabulary. The Elite already has its own vocabulary and I have already forgotten what "opossum" means.
Comments
Post a Comment