scolek asked: ok but even if wanda and pietro aren't magneto's, they're still roma and/or jewish, right? mr brev, we can't just look back on comic books' history of being a medium for jewish empowerment without giving marvel's two newest a-listers, courtesy of AOU, their pretty gosh-darn important ethnoreligious background, can we?

goldenegg31:

mcufandomhatespeopleofcolor:

bisexualzuko:

allofthefeelings:

teaberryblue:

brevoortformspring:

I’ve asked this before, and had no takers: can you point me to a single story, just one, in which the “fact” that Wanda and Pietro come from a Jewish background is in any way relevant?

I don’t think you can. So far as I can see, no such story exists. So this feeling of Jewish empowerment exists solely in the minds of readers who projected it onto those characters via the background of Magneto. So eliminating that link doesn’t actually eliminate anything tangible, just an idea that some people had in their minds rather than anything on the page.

Wanda and Pietro are still Roma, in fact they’re more legitimately Roma now, as they’re no longer Jewish kids brought up by a Roma family, but legitimate members of the Roma people. That’s a background that informed a whole lot of stories over the years, so that all needed to remain in place regardless of whatever else we might do.

I mean, Tom, narratively, this all makes sense, but it’s not really very sensitive to Jewish identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  You know how many people of Jewish ethnicity have had their identity ripped from them in ways that were out of their control?  Because from a metaliterary perspective, that’s what’s happened here, and that’s why people are upset about this.  It’s not necessarily narratively important to you but for people who identify as Jewish or part-Jewish, it’s all too similar to things that have happened to us and our families in real life, and that’s why you’re getting pushback.  Yeah, narratively, sure, your argument is perfectly cogent, but that doesn’t make it considerate of the full implications of what that story means to readers, and that means that your explanation isn’t even touching on the aspects of the question that matter to readers who are bothered by this.

Hey, so I’m probably like the worst person in the world to jump in here. I only got into comics a few years ago with the Avengers movie, and I’ve caught up a fair amount (thanks Marvel Unlimited!), but I’m still not really well-versed. I can’t cite chapter and verse on most comics-related topics.

But I can say that I pay close attention whenever people talk about Jewish superheroes, and when I heard the twins were going to be in Age of Ultron, I was

thrilled, precisely because of that, and it made me read more about them, particularly after I read The Magneto Testament and fully understood how deeply ingrained the Jewish and Roma cultures were in their familial history, even if not in their day to day life. (As I understood it, they were ALREADY Roma to begin with- Magda was their mother before the most recent retcon, wasn’t she?- so they simply had two heritages and were raised more strictly by one.)

The fact that their ethnic background wasn’t relevant to the particular stories didn’t matter; my being Jewish often isn’t relevant to my day to day activities, either, but it informs those activities nonetheless. Whether or not it was intentional on the parts of the writers, artists, and editors, these characters’ Judaism colored my understanding of their actions, the same way it informs my understanding of Ben Grimm’s and Kitty Pryde’s.

It may not have mattered in terms of who they saved or how they did it, but it matters to me as a reader.

‘more Roma’ THEIR MOTHER WAS ROMA GESUS FUCKING CHRIST

Just adding these links to other good and valid points that are replies to this post x, and this one is more of an emotional reaction which ofc is also valid x. 

If you’re working for Marvel and looking back on decades worth of stories with Jewish characters and saying those characters’ Jewish background doesn’t matter because it’s not “relevant” then you should write stories in which their Jewishness is important, not make the character not Jewish and act like it doesn’t matter. To do otherwise is lazy writing. And honestly to me it’s anti-semitic. You can’t just say that a character suddenly isn’t Jewish and act like it doesn’t matter to the character or to readers. Because even if it’s not “relevant” to our day to day activities or aren’t religious, it’s a part of our identity.