Bad to the bone

Since there are a lot of people who say that America is Mystery Babylon, it might be wise to turn to AA Allen about the matter. He’s one of those prophets who even said that America would get destroyed by Russia for its sins, maybe not in his lifetime, but most definitely in the future where he sees a dying Lady Liberty after getting both stabbed and drunk at the same time (this sounds like a certain Biblical passage about Mystery Babylon), how and why America produces so much morally corrupting media that are even widely accepted by the masses that such media get banned or censored elsewhere. Mind you Denmark even banned a movie featuring the late Shirley Temple, Australia banned Forever Amber where somebody said that the Almighty God would also find this unreadable, and so on in a way others like France and Britain didn’t get to with their own before. True France has Marquis de Sade who produced really vile stuff that got him banned and imprisoned, alongside other activities like killing people and abusing those who’re still alive. But it’s really shocking to think that a country like America, which sees itself as a very Christian nation, producing and popularising such filth that are widely enjoyed by many.

It’s bad enough that at some point in the 1970s when future singer Neil Tennant was working for the British branch of Marvel Comics, he and his crew not only had to localise the comics they were republishing for the British market but also censoring them too. You may know him as one half of the New Wave duo Pet Shop Boys, but even then it’s telling he was charged with making Marvel stories palatable for British readers, knowing the materials they’ll be exposed to would be indecent by their standards. One might wonder why Britain even instigated the Sindy doll, which was a reaction to the worldlier Barbie who’s based on cartoon prostitute Lilli. That does make one wonder if Danish band Aqua seemed uncannily prescient about the revelation that Barbie is based on a cartoon prostitute when they released the song ‘Barbie Girl’ with lyrics that were widely regarded as misogynistic at the time, even if they weren’t immediately aware of the fact back then and like The Prodigy, they might have created a very controversial song by accident and still be seen as sexist despite their best intentions. In the same year, no less! And almost into the new millennium to make matters worse!

America does have quite a knack for popularising and refining such media that their originators don’t get to that many western animations are actually American, for every Totally Spies and Oggy and the Cockroaches (both French animations), there are things like Justice League, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Mickey Mouse Clubouse, Gravity Falls (itself no strange to certain allusions), Steven Universe and Power Puff Girls. But it could be that a number of other French animations aren’t widely exported and dubbed the way their American counterparts often got, which also goes for their print counterparts (cartooning/comics) that for most of the part, Americans are much likelier to recognise something like The Smurts but not Pussycat despite having the same author together known as Peyo. It’s similarly unlikely for American readers to have heard of things like Lanfeust, Titeuf and Gaston for most of the part, whereas a good number of Francophone readers have heard of things like Batman and Superman. Some Francophone readers have even heard of lesser known characters like X-Man and Wolfsbane (a female werewolf who’s known as Felina in French, also the name of another character, for some reason).

Maybe it’s not the case anymore given China’s and Russia’s resurgence to power, but with America being Mystery Babylon that it popularises or refines vices and new media alike, often combining the two together to create something as potently popular as it’s potently perilous. Then we get the fact that America is actually under judgement for its sins, for refusing to do good even when it’s told to (and when it does, it’s either surprisingly rare or mixed with the bad things it does) and stuff. It would be particularly frightening if America truly becomes everything it hates about China in the future, that even if it completely doesn’t for the meantime, there’s something strange about where America’s heading. Or perhaps maybe not as it’s always been a really double-minded country on the verge of civil instability at any point, not helped by its strongly bipartisan politics and it’s a place where a porn industry coexists with a substantial Christian media one, that makes for a really curious cultural/national character. Even if places like Denmark, Britain (though it will get judged and dissolved), France and Sweden aren’t any better, America is something else altogether.

If it’s the headquarters of Satan on Earth, then America can also be described as Hell on Earth. Hell in miniature in a way if there ever was one at all, one that makes one wonder how and why it got there. God will save a remnant like he did to those in Sodom and Gomorrah, he might do this to any Christian ministry still active in America. But in the near future that will be all there is them, along with what influence America continues to have in the future, however greatly diminished it will be in the future. It’s already getting undone in countries like Canada and Denmark, but this will be sped up and magnified in the future and may even reach the Philippines one day. That in the future, both the Philippines and Canada will be made highly unrecognisable from then on, where much American influence has been purged from these two. There may even come a time when almost nobody remembers American bands and musicians that much, or other American institutions like DC and Marvel, that it’s kind of shocking to think this might happen to me one day.

I might end up remembering very little of the American things I grew up on, so little that it’s practically mostly erased from my mind by then. I might not even be using English anymore this often in the future, mostly writing in Tagalog more fluently and often than at present. Another case of US influence getting greatly undone and removed wherever it went, wherever it was and wherever it is. Even then there’s no mistaking that America is quite possibly the most evil country on Earth and will be revoked for this.

A vision of America’s destruction

AA Allen had a vision of America getting destroyed but he also talks about America being home to corrupting entertainment products that even get banned in countries like Australia at some point (especially when it comes to Forever Amber), as well as Americans being less religious than they think of themselves as (or less devoted to God just the same). Technologically speaking a lot has changed since the advent of online streaming, social media, the Internet, podcasts and computers, but it still holds up in a way that it’s not a stretch to assume that a good deal of Americans would rather listen to worldly musicians like Sabrina Carpenter (who blasphemes God a lot) and Chappell Roan (who came from a Christian family and turned to the world for comfort and love that she didn’t get with her own family), than they would with sermons despite the advent of streaming.

More Americans would rather drown their sorrows by watching bad things (including porn), reading bad things, listening to bad things (not just explicit music, but also audio porn) and even spending a lot more time playing worldly video games, than bothering to dedicate themselves to God even if Christians do mess up themselves every now and then (as it is with myself). Anyways he had a vision of the Statue of Liberty drinking a cup of wine, whilst getting stabbed at the same time and then drowning to death, then he has a vision of America getting destroyed by things like natural disasters and its rival Russia. As this was written sometime between the 1940s and 1950s, which is exactly when the Cold War started, the idea that Russia was really America’s enemy was really strong then. It’s resurging again but together with China this time and both of them will take down America per prophecy. That these two will be the biggest hegemons in the post-American future is saying.

The one thing more horrifying than this is if America becomes everything it hates about other countries like becoming a legitimate dictatorship one day, but it’s a case of America being really hypocritical as it’s got that plank in its eye. Celestial also said that Russia might house a form of capitalism (and likely already is doing so) that it makes for a weird role reversal, though similar things can be said between Nigeria and America in other regards. Sometime towards the 20th century, Nigeria wasn’t yet majority Christian and did very anti-Christian things like being gay and stuff, whereas America was truly Christian and pious. Come the 2020s and it’s Nigeria that’s much likelier to house prominent Christian ministries, meanwhile America has come to condone the very things it forbade Nigeria to do. That’s if there were American missionaries that went there at all.

Somebody else said that other parts of Nigeria might not remain Christian for long due to its own sins, that it might become more Islamised over time (due to the consequences of its own misdeeds). One would wonder if the southeastern part might become the only part of Nigeria that remains majority Christian well onto the future if this happens, unfortunately Nigeria has its own porn addiction and parts of Nigeria will get destroyed in the future. Or the Philippines for another matter now that it has the audacity to even pump out idols as to warrant getting subjugated by China in some way, that it’s pointless for it to call itself Christian when it’s anything but, to the point where the Philippines may get highly secularised in the future and ultimately like any other East Asian country in nearly all regards. But America is a modern Babylon.

Or at least a version of Babylon that due to technological innovations even manages to corrupt the entire planet with its filth and abominations, as to warrant getting removed in the future and its influence undone (which already is to an extent). As for sports it’s not necessary wrong to like sports, but it’s kind of telling that Americans would rather pay more mind to something like the NBA and Super Bowl, than they would with sermons, devotionals and lectionaries even when technological innovations has made it possible to do with the same with the latter three. This isn’t unique to America as it’s also like this with countries like the Philippines towards the PBA and FIBA, or Britain and Ghana towards FIFA and so on. But America’s also a country that’s not just one of the current superpowers around, but also a legitimate hyperpower (a step above a superpower) in the 1990s and 2000s that coincided with the rise of not only Internet usage, but also streaming and blogging to further lower people’s inhibitions with other things.

And if a form of dictatorship were to emerge in America that the fascists in charge will be far worse than they were in WWII, even more shocking that American tech companies like Amazon and Apple will even kill Christians behind closed doors until it gets found out by the Russian government when it takes over America. Even something like Disney might get in the act just the same by turning its remaining theme parks into concentration camps to round up Christians with, especially wherever it goes like China, Japan and now the United Arab Emirates that if their own governments were to find this out themselves, then Disney will get dissolved immediately. The entire Radio Disney network might be given over to Globo to become Radio Joven/Radio Jovem instead, even if it keeps the same songs and staff for long (or at least much of it, if American influence also gets revoked in music).

The band Queen will have its entire catalogue bought by some other, albeit European, company when Disney gets dissolved by the Russian government (and so will other companies like Netflix, Microsoft, possibly Google/Alphabet, Comcast and more). Actually even if not all of these companies get forcibly dissolved, they could get forcibly bought by another country’s company due to their own sins/failings/vices that it’s feasible Alphabet might become Chinese owned by then. Riot Games is an American game studio that got bought by China’s Tencent, Livejournal was an American blogging platform that got bought by Russia’s Sup Media years ago. As for the subject of underage pregnancies and the like, it might have decreased at this point if it weren’t for the rise of antinatalism among young women, but it still rings true for things like audio porn (if you wank to it) and polyamory.

Polyamory is one of those forms of consensual nonmonogamy, not unlike polygamy and polygyny of yore. Forms of consensual nonmonogamy did exist in the past, especially as concubinage among royals in both Turkey and China, and it did show up in the Bible but as a shameful reminder with blowback like David losing his child or Rachel being unable to conceive for awhile. And then comes the existence of men who either crossdress or deliberately live as women (the transwomen among them, even if not all of them molest people themselves), some of whom rape men and/or women. Some of them even enter consensual marital relationships with them, but if it’s still homosexuality despite the transwoman passing off convincingly as a natal woman would, then there’s no point in hiding it from God when he still sees you for being you. If this means that a transwoman will never be a woman, despite attempts to pass as one, then they have to accept that they’re a man all along.

As somebody who had gender dysphoria for awhile, it lasted for a few years I think and part of it had to do with the changes done to my body, that wanting to be a boy is a way to undo this. It’s probably no different with transwomen and transmen alike who do this, especially given they have the economic/financial means to pay for their surgeries and treaments to undo what’s been done to their bodies in a way. There’s a high profile cartoonist named ND Stevenson who was known by their real name Noelle when they were younger, who gained traction for their fancomics and then their original stories that they ended up helming an animated programme called She-Ra. They also have gender dysphoria to the point of living as a man eventually, their spouse Lee Knox Ostertag also lived as a woman before. One would’ve assumed they would’ve remained the wife, as ND came to live as a man. They were also another cartoonist who made it big in the comics industry as the woman they actually are.

But if bad company corrupts good character, unfortunately they too came to live as a man as of late. Regarding Celestial’s post that transwomen who do enter romantic or marital relationships with cishet men are still men indulging in homosexual activity, then both Ostertag and Stevenson are still lesbians and were married as such before their own respective, successive transitions. That doesn’t necessarily mean women who like ball games are lesbians or vice versa with men being into dolls, this is kind of tempered by one’s cultural upbringing where something like football called cuju was widely played by both men and women in China before. A version of cuju specific to women was even called beauty cuju, but boxing’s considered to be so masculinised that if a woman were to do this, she’d be suspected of being a lesbian there. I remember somewhere else on Reddit that gay men also partake in gender atypical behaviour.

Thus furthering the view that even some gay men of transwomen is that they’re really gay men all along, that doesn’t mean all gay men who undergo this necessarily live as women eventually. Well I did have a classmate who was friendly to me and never seemed to be one of the lads, interacting more often with girls, then years later he came out and admitted somewhere that he was more interested in playing with dolls than playing basketball and being kind of effeminate himself. He also seemed to be into anal sex, which Celestial considers to be really demonic, and if you have people saying that demons do enter people through even unlikelier means like animated cartoons, this might explain why some people end up this way as it is with me before (hard to admit this, it’s a cartoon that got me to lust). No sooner or later because of the widespread sodomy and the like in the United States that it’s going to get nuked by Russia and China, it will be held captive by these weapons of indignation for its evils.

And America will truly fall, then disappear forever.

Meet the substitutes

This is something I’ve talked about before regarding the future loss of American influence in the Philippines that if the Philippines were to pull a Canada on America, when the latter doubles down on taking control over both Greenland and Venezuela at all, that substitutes might actually be readily accepted by the general public when this happens at all in the future. But the fact that a good number of books found in the Philippines come straight from America that having to personally translate books from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand would be a hassle at first, not just due to acquiring the rights to these publications but also learning such languages like Indonesian and Vietnamese beforehand as well as having the writing skills to make it readable. It would be no different if Philippine publishers did the same thing to comics from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and China as the comics industry is really a subset of the wider publishing industry.

(Maybe except the word balloons that workarounds are necessary here.)

It might lead to a less westernised Philippine publishing industry than at present, but this means the Philippine publishing industry would come to follow publishing trends of its neighbours more from then on. As for the subject of superheroes seeing that there’s a lot of Philippine fans of cartoon heroes like Batman and Superman, that both homegrown favourites like Lastikman and Indonesian imports like Sri Asih might gain traction here in an anti-American Philippines. What’s weirder still is that Indonesia successfully cultivated a shared universe of pre-existing Indonesian characters like Sri Asih again for years, whereas something like Bayan Knights didn’t last that long. And even if it would’ve been possible to create a kind of shared universe featuring the likes of Lastikman, the nature of American neocolonialism in the Philippines means it feels more appealing to work on American publications, than to actively better the local comics industry more.

To the point where if local superheroes are unable to compete this well with their US counterparts, or for another matter Indonesian superheroes here in the Philippines, well at least at present that the Philippines might as well have to favour another field in the comics industry that the US counterpart has been unable to gain a foothold of. A more shocking future is when the US does collapse (per Christian prophecy as it’s Mystery Babylon, the country that corrupts the entire world with its filth and abominations), that Philippine publishers would turn to both prioritising local stories and translating their country’s neighbours’ products more out of necessity. But one that results in a highly Asianised Philippine publishing industry, if this ever becomes the norm in a post-American world. It’s even more shocking that the United States might cease to exist as a nation-state, coupled with the undoing of its influence, that the need for substitutes is far more urgent than ever.

(Don’t despise Godly prophecies, though this is something I sometimes struggle with.)

It’s like if American influence gets undone in tandem with the United States collapsing real badly, that in order to survive food companies like San Miguel and Jollibee turn to localising Indonesian foodstuffs like tempe and oncom to adapt to changing tastes and mindsets. This is hypothetical for now but it’s something that I interceded for others to cope with that this is highly plausible, even if it might turn out the way I expected it to at times (which I also struggle with). It would be no different from praying to God to help others (people you personally know as well as celebrities and the like) cope with the popularisation of Vietnamese and Laotian food in the Philippines, that inevitably local food companies would adapt to changing preferences also out of necessity when American influence gets undone in some way or another.

And even if American influence doesn’t complete disappear, it will be greatly minimised in the future. Consider the country that America’s been compared to by prophets like Celestial: Babylon and whilst God used it to punish his people for their rebelliousness, but the fact that it’s so corrupting and they don’t want to be corrupted themselves that he ended up undoing Babylonian influence to set them free. Not just by getting the Persians (ancestors to modern day Iranians) to free them from their captors, but also deserting Babylon for long and even euthanising both the Akkadian and Sumerian languages, as well as the use of cuneiforms, that its influence really got undone and moreso when the Babylonian Empire finally got Arabicised that come the 2020s, there’s very little Babylonian influence left in the world.

Much of it survives in the sciences and to a lesser extent as loanwords in some languages like Aramaic and possibly some Arab dialects in places like Iraq (where Babylon originates in). A degree of American influence might persist into the future, especially when it comes to computers and information technology like the Internet, but that will be all there is to it in the future. It would be shocking if future Philippine people will no longer be fluent in English and Tagalog, but rather Mandarin and Tagalog instead should the Philippines come under Chinese influence in some manner due to its own sins and the like. An even more disturbing possibility is when US companies like Microsoft and Apple have the audacity to kill Christians behind closed doors, which is also something Celestial prophesised before.

One would wonder if China’s Huawei not only introduces its own version of Microsoft Windows but also substantially improves on it that one can import not only programmes and documents from a previous operating system onto it but also the browsers’ bookmarks and histories that makes the transition really smooth, to the point of becoming widely accepted by many people all over the world and turning Huawei into a world leader in computing by innovating a system that makes it easier to retain everything and anything from the previous OS, right down to the bookmarks, into a newer one. As for Russia’s Ucoz that it’s possible it would be used more often by other people if its company makes major improvements to its products that make it much easier to make websites with, essentially substantially improving on the very technology America introduced similarly.

If the blue dye is bluer than the indigo plant itself, then both China and Russia are the pupils who’re going to outshine their teacher (America) when they succeed at improving on the very technologies America introduced to the world. It’s already like this with both superapps and short-form videos, the latter is introduced by America as Vine but China improved on it significantly and even popularised it to the point where YouTube now rolls out YouTube Shorts and Facebook with Reels. A more horrifying possibility if is China were to buy Alphabet (YouTube’s owner) and Russia to buy Meta (Facebook’s owner) only to merge it with VK, then they have effectively displaced their professor by buying the very companies America originated, or for another matter things like Automattic as there’s a precedent with Russia buying Livejournal.

If God can give back more than one lost, it’s going to be this way with China and Russia or is already there to some extent. It would be surprising if Russia succeeds in getting all of Europe and half of North America, but this is comeuppance for their own sins that they will give into their master the way the Philippines and others would under China. With China it should be noted that it used to influence much of East Asia to varying degrees that this is a return to form, but strengthened and restored this time due to declining US influence that these relationships might return in another way or already is but will grow in the future. Russia might be no different with other countries like Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Romania that it could get these back, in addition to countries that historically weren’t under Russian influence like America, Canada, Britain (soon to be divided into England, Scotland and Wales due to Trump and Prince William’s decision to end the UK as we know it), France, Italy and Spain.

The loss of America might accelerate this and even then it’s already underway to an extent, but God’s judgement on America would only hasten the deAmericanisation of the world.

Loss of America

This is something that I brought up before and this would be really existential to think if God’s out to undo much American influence wherever it went, what would substitute for it in fields like animation, comics and gaming (ACG in other words) then? I admit this is how I feel about sermons that it’s going to be awkward turning to a substitute when you want the real thing more, that it would be really painfully awkward to live in a world where Marvel and DC get revoked from the Philippines and the like over time, that warming up to a substitute is hard and awkward, even when it’s necessary. It’s even more vexing considering that America has the world’s largest publishing industry, which the US comics industry is a subset of this really. So it would be awkward trying to fill in its shoes, considering how massive this really is.

Even if you put both the Nigerian comics industry and the Kenyan comics industry together, they’d still be much smaller than their American counterpart is. The most profitable outlet for any cartoonist to do comics in any way that can be recognised as such would be to do newspaper cartooning, which is like this for a number of African cartoonists working for publications like Vanguard and Guardian.ng. Both Nigeria and Kenya don’t have this many publishers specialising in comics the way America does, both of them don’t even have their own equivalents to both DC and Marvel, as well as Image and Dark Horse to the same scale and length America has. South Africa might be better off but still not much because its own comics industry is smaller than that of America.

So the loss of the American publishing industry would pretty much be a case of throwing the baby with the bathwater because the US comics industry is a subset of this, scrambling to find substitutes from other places will be pretty awkward because of the scale the American publishing industry has at this point. This is actually why I’ve been praying for a number of cartoonists and people I know in my life who read comics to cope with local (read Philippine) publishers translating comics from China, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and Vietnam, especially should American influence ever get undone or stopped at this point in time or in the near future. The loss of any cultural exchange between America and the Philippines will escalate once Uncle Sam starts attacking Mexico after he’s done with Venezuela.

Embracing realpolitik would be painfully awkward at first, but necessary given the escalating tensions between America and its allies. I remember a preacher talking about ravens being dirty birds yet they still gave Elijah bread and God can multiply otherwise limited resources like bread to feed people with, so it’s possible Chinese alternatives and the like might grow on Filipinos over time should the Philippines cut off ties with America for good. Maybe not in a way I’d expect as this involves the Philippines getting permanently given over to China due to its own shortcomings/sins/vices, but it is inevitable that if God’s out to revoke much American and possibly general western influence here, that East Asian substitutes will be preferred out of necessity without even realising.

It’s true that God can restore things more than they were before, so this would also be the case for the Philippines if it repents. But with America being Mystery Babylon that American influence will get revoked here and elsewhere anyways, so we’re going to put up with substitutes instead however painful it may be as we secretly yearn for the real thing more. The best case scenario if American influence will be permanently revoked all over the year is to seek the other things that were a part of our lives before or to seek out very similar substitutes as to not feel too grieved, though the former might be more doable as to keep some remnants of a lost memory in some way or another. Which is likely how I feel about music growing up, that if God makes everybody on the planet forget about America, then they’ll be left with remembering things that aren’t American.

At that point in the future I might be stuck with memories of bands like Bauhaus, Ace of Base, Capercaillie, Aqua, The Prodigy, Clannad, Altan, Massive Attack and Siouxsie and the Banshees instead, though Aqua would be the only band I actually know and recall vividly from my childhood as the rest came into my life when I hit my teens and twenties. Which makes the idea of America becoming a footnote in every future history book all the more salient and telling, that even if America’s not entirely forgotten it wouldn’t be remembered much for most of the part. Whatever edifies will be remembered and kept for long, whatever that defiles will be discarded and forgotten forever. God will do a new thing following America’s collapse at any point in the future, though we’d have to wait and see unless if we get a prophecy of it.

Or if our prayers get answered, even if it may not turn out the way we expected it to be as it is with me before. And even then it seems if America truly is Mystery Babylon, then it is better that it will be forgotten to time, if its influence turns out to be devastatingly regretful at that and even in the past in other countries, it was regarded as such. When it comes to the loss of any American influence in the world that the logistics would be tough to work out when dealing with countries with smaller comics industries than that of the US like Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya, or Armenia and Kazakhstan for another matter, especially at present. Should Canada ever translate comics from both Russia and Europe to make up for a loss of American influence on its soil, it would be tough to work things out as others don’t have particularly large comics industries of their own.

The difference in the scale of influence isn’t the same and it becomes more obvious when you compare how small the Nigerian comics industry really is compared to its American counterpart, the most accessible venue to publish comics there is to do newspaper cartooning instead. Whereas America is large enough to support multiple specialty publishers for long, Nigeria doesn’t have its own longstanding equivalents to both DC and Marvel. Much less things like Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, Image, Dynamite, Universal Press Syndicate, Comics Kingdom and IDW, that the Nigerian comics industry has practically almost nothing on its US counterpart in this regard. So it’s going to be awkward filling in for America when it’s going to have a bigger comics industry than those of Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria and South Africa combined.

Having Canadian publishers translate comics from formerly communist countries like Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia would be really awkward that even when taken in the aggregate, their own comics industries aren’t that big beyond certain types of publications like newspaper cartooning and the like due to a prior ideological distrust of all things American (though this is resurfacing in a way as of late). Adding their Scandinavian counterparts to it in addition to Canada’s domestic comics offerings would buoy things a bit, as their own comics industries are bigger than those coming from the formerly communist countries. But it would make for an awkward fit considering this is quite a big vacuum, so filling in with translated comics from these countries might not be sufficient in some regards.

Having Philippine publishers translate comics from its closest neighbours like Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Hong Kong and Myanmar might be better than what would happen in Canada, but most especially Japan as it’s got a really big comics industry that Philippine publishers might strike gold by translating more Japanese comics into Tagalog and other local languages if/when American influence gets seriously revoked here. This is largely hypothetical for now but highly plausible as there’s a substantial Philippine audience for anything anime-related, coupled with a big loss in American exports that filling in with Tagalog translations of comics coming from the Philippines’s closest neighbours might help things out. The comics industries in Indonesia, Japan and China are much bigger than those in say Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, that this would make for a really adequate substitute in the aggregate for the Philippines.

But even then this speaks to a kind of realpolitik that when it comes to the growing loss of US influence in both Canada and the Philippines, owing to it being Mystery Babylon, that turning to substitutes would be the only viable option around. Canadian publishers developing a habit out of translating comics from both Russia and Europe would lead to a more Europeanised Canadian comics industry, not necessarily completely less North American, but a good deal less Americanised than at present. Not that superheroes would entirely disappear in Canada, but rather they’d undergo a transformation that’s brought upon by a stronger European influence in the future. Philippine publishers developing a habit out of translating comics from countries like Korea, China, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand into local languages would lead to a more easternised Philippine comics industry, one where American influence has been substantially reduced by then.

By then in the future as American influence gets thoroughly erased throughout the world, the future Canadian comics industry would be Europeanised. The future Philippine comics industry would be more easternised than at present, but ones that are highly plausible given both countries’ growing distrust towards American foreign policy.

What would it be like without America?

It’s still possible for a degree of American influence in ACG media to remain, though that’s only to the extent if/when American influence gets undone the world over, that it seems existential regarding what will replace American influence when this happens. Actually China might be a good contender here, given a number of its games like Black Myth Wukong and Genshin Impact have seen international success before, and its very own Tencent owns America’s Riot Games. But I suspect if one were to make a game at a time when America’s in decline, considering international markets would become much more important. This is something even US film studios have been doing for some time, but this means China’s truly a rival to America at this point.

It’s telling that YouTube rolled out YouTube Shorts because of China’s Tiktok, Elon Musk turned Twitter into a superapp because superapps are popular in China. There’s actually a saying in Mandarin that says that the blue dye comes from indigo, but it’s bluer than indigo indicating that the pupil has surpassed the teacher or is surpassing the teacher, which can be applied to China turning out to be technologically ahead of America in this regard. It’s even popularising the very thing that first originated in America: short form videos were first pioneered in Vine, but TikTok pretty much popularised and refined this. Now YouTube and Facebook are catching up with their own versions of these things, this means China is well-ahead of America technologically speaking.

But given China has a much longer history as a unified nation-state, it’s also ahead of the west sartorially speaking when it comes to women’s trousers. As early as the 18th century, Chinese women were already wearing an outfit composed of a blouse and a pair of trousers, sometime before western women got to it (actually they started wearing this more often towards the 21st century). And Chinese women were already playing ball games without question before western women got to it, so it could be said that nonwestern countries like China and India might be less sexist in some regards. Or Russia, Iran and the Arab states just the same but when it comes to STEM, or Japan and South Korea when it comes to female readers of comics being well-established there.

Even then it does speak volumes about the way western countries evaluate sexism and misogyny, and it’s often on their terms, not those of other people even if sexism and misogyny remain issues in other places as well. What I’m saying is that countries like China, India, Russia, Japan and Iran are ahead of the west in other regards, whether if it’s fashion (women were already wearing trousers in India and China long before western women got to it), comics (there’s already a well-established comics industry specific to female readers in Japan) or STEM (Russia and Iran). It shouldn’t be surprising that given the west’s declining stature that the global east (if it does deserve to be called as such) would also be ahead of the west technologically speaking, especially when it comes to superapps.

A more vexing concern is the area of the arts regarding things like animation, comics/cartooning and gaming (ACG) that once American influence gets mostly and deeply revoked that’s going to lead some shoes to be filled and worn, however awkward the substitution may be (this is how I feel about sermons on bad times). If because we want the real thing real badly, even if the substitute’s just as good, but the real thing is what we want deep down inside. It’s also logistically awkward because of America’s outsized influence on matters like animation and comics/cartooning that if we’re talking about Canada, given Canada shares a border with America that substituting American influence with foreign influences would be pretty tough. The US comics industry is far bigger than its Nigerian counterpart will ever be, or for another matter the Estonian comics industry just the same.

To make it up for a loss of US influence on the Canadian comics industry is to fill it up with a lot of substitutes, given how big US influence is in Canada and much bigger than most would realise. The substitutes might come from countries with smaller comics industries that you’d have to get like a big industry of translated comics from 23 countries to make up for losing a big industry of imported comics from just one country, although Denmark does have a bigger comics industry than in Jamaica it’s still smaller than that of America. Armenia’s comics industry is comparable to Jamaica becaues it’s largely focused on social commentary, and also newspaper orientated in order to make it big in any way. Considering that Canada’s also Francophone that the loss of US influence would result in a Canadian comics industry that’s closer to Europe and even Russia. So translating European comics would be the norm there from then on.

The Canadian comics industry is unmistakably largely influenced by America just by sharing borders with it, to the point of following the same trends there like entertaining cartoon strips, novel-length comics aimed at children in mind and also superhero comics. The loss of US influence in Canada, especially once it gets heavily influenced by both Russia and Europe, would have the entire Canadian comics industry more closely follow European trends more from then on. The Philippine comics industry would find itself in a similar situation, but where American influence gets substituted with a stronger East Asian influence because the Philippines is in East Asia itself. It’s also logistically just as awkward, well at first, because you need to have a big industry of translated substitutes from several countries to make up for a loss of imported comics from just one nation.

Like supposing if it becomes the norm for Philippine publishers to personally translate Japanese comics as well as Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Korean, Burmese, Thai and Cambodian comics that the Philippine comics industry would end up closely following the general trend in East Asian comics as well, given the strong US influence here that manifests as entertaining daily strips, graphic novels aimed for children and superheroes. Or Nigeria just the same given it’s more sympathetic to China than the Philippines is at present, so the Nigerian comics industry will follow Chinese trends from then on. It’s kind of telling who they’re affiliated with that’s going influence trends in their comics industries, that in the case with both Canada and the Philippines that given their close ties to America at present that they’ll inevitably follow American trends more.

The loss of US influence in both countries, should each one of them fall to either China or Russia in some way, would have each country follow their neighbours’ trends more. A post-American Philippines would follow wider East Asian trends more, a post-American Canada would follow European trends more. This would go hand in hand with their publishers actually translating their new allies’ and neighbours’ comics more, like if Canada continues to cut ties with America by choosing to join Russia as one of its protectorates, its comics industry would actually become this heavily influenced by Europe than today. It might have done something similar before, but it would become the norm if American influence were to be irreversibly declined further.

This would be the one situation where European comics become really popular in Canada, but to make it up for a loss of American influence in the Canadian comics industry, that relying on European substitutes would be one of many doable resources from then on. Loss of American influence would be where Philippine publishers actively and personally publish Japanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Malaysian, Cambodian, Thai, Korean and Burmese comics more, which might even be a good thing because I think the Philippines is far too westernised for its own influence. Whatever Korean influence that exists in the Philippines is rather minimal compared to its American counterpart, like this only involves food, music and audiovisual media.

But not books and comics, even when there are other people who have not much interest in watching stuff, mind you I spend much of my time listening to something while reading like listening to sermons for instance. The argument doesn’t hold water when the Philippines actually gets a lot of books and comics directly imported from the United States that Korean influence at present will be a distant second to the US influence here, it’s even weirder to think the Philippines could’ve easily done the same with Malaysia and Malaysia’s much closer to us than we are to both South Korea and the US. Which should make it logistically easier to import and even translate Malaysian comics and books, or for another matter Philippine television channels dubbing and airing Malaysian audiovisual media.

I still don’t think there’s much cultural exchange between the Philippines and Malaysia, even when they’re much closer to one another than the Philippines is to both South Korea and America. There’s very little, if any, cultural exchanges between the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia, as Indonesian and Thai music don’t get played much on Philippine radio (most likely never at all at present). Considering that the US entertainment industry has an outsized influence over the world for years, that even with South Korea’s ascendance it’s hard to beat America in here without the aid of other countries to the cause. It might change when WWIII starts kicking in for real, though it would take time for American influence to be undone elsewhere, but it might be undone sooner than expected.

And there are even people who say that the US is Mystery Babylon, a prophesised nation-state in the Bible said to corrupt the entire world with its abominations. Some of these things didn’t originate in America per say but America popularises them in a way no other country ever got to it, despite originating it until recently with China’s re-emergence and popularising the very thing America pioneered: short-form videos were there on something like Vine but it’s China’s TikTok that popularised and refined it like no other. A case of throwing the baby with the bathwater, where the good goes with the deplorable. Even if some Americna influence were to remain, that will be all that there is to it. So it seems any nation closely allied with America will also suffer from God’s wrath as well, then American influence will be undone the world over.

Even if the spiritual angle were to be ignored in favour of the naturalistic one, there’s no mistaking that American influence is currently in decline. The spiritual angle is just as credible as the naturalistic one, regarding how and why America was prophesised to decline and then fall into obscurity, or perhaps more credible than the naturalistic one that if God is honest and doesn’t lie, then the spiritual angle’s better at deconstructing America’s downfall than the naturalistic one. America, despite calling itself a Christian nation, seems obsessed with undermining Christian values like no other to the same degree. It has promoted and popularised anti-Christian entertainment like X-Men where the preacher is a villain and the demons are heroes, it’s shocking why it’s hardly ever scrutinised much like others do with Harry Poter, and it’s kind of more than coincidental that a number of X-Men fans are also anti-Christians themselves.

It’s even alarming that X-Men stories haven’t been scrutinised much by Christians over other things like why vindictive, promiscuous characters are portrayed as heroic and do things without lasting consequences, why would somebody like Kitty Pryde be considered a good character when she’s not above murdering people out of anger, lashing out often out of anger, being promiscuous herself and stuff? In real life if she did these two things in real life, she’d actually be a villain. And there are two people who’ve done the same things as she did: Audrey Hale and Axel Rudakubana, they’re also rightfully seen as criminals despite being members of oppressed demographics themselves. Just like what Kitty Pryde is in Marvel Comics, which makes you wonder how morally nihilistic the X-Men canon is.

Perhaps taking out America would ease things, or at least keep it from getting worse than it already is. But it’s also a matter of seeking out the most viable alternatives, as to make up for such a painful loss even when it’s not something people would’ve actually wanted themselves (that’s how I feel about sermons online or on the radio). Not to mention World War III is coming closer than one realises, with Russia out to get Poland before it gets to the rest of Europe, whilst America burns real badly. Britain might not remain a monarchy for long, and even if it were to remain a monarchy in some capacity the current House of Windsor would get replaced by some other royal house altogether. And Britain will also get conquered by Russia just the same, resulting in a new version of the Soviet Union.

Or a new version of the Russian Empire but one where nearly all of Europe and half of North America are included in it, one where Britain, Ireland and Canada are back together but as Russian protectorates or commonwealths of sorts. Australia might go to China as one of its Lesser China satellites as the Philippines will be part of Greater China, along with Vietnam, a reunited Korea, Indonesia, Japan and then China itself. A new global order will emerge from both the ashes of WWIII and the end of America, where we have a Russified Europe (and a Russified Canada to go with it) and a highly sinicised Philippines. Like I said before that once US influence gets revoked in the world, that the Canadian comics industry will strongly follow European trends and the Philippine comics industry will follow East Asian trends more. And even if Britain were to remain, it would not be united any longer.

As a result we’d have England, Wales and Scotland all living as separate countries not seen in centuries, Northern Ireland will be reunited with the rest of Ireland and the latter three’s native languages will get popularised big time. Even if Britain were to remain united in any way, Jamaica will not remain as a British commonwealth for long. Same with Canada but not in a way it likes as it will get conquered by America, before it gets conquered by Russia once the US gets nuked. The United States will be so utterly destroyed, both from the outside and inside out, that it ceases to be a country anymore. Britain too to some extent, supposing if it were possible for it to remain a united kingdom of England, Scotland and Wales, but it’s going to lose Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland. Jamaica will secede for real and so will the rest.

Canada might try to secede, only to get conquered twice in a rapid go. And if Britain is just as bad as America is, then British influence might also be revoked to varying degrees as well. Ghana, Nigeria. Uganda, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Kenya might use their native languages more, same goes for Ireland and Malaysia that perhaps this is how Britain might also get snuffed out in another way. If dissolving the British monarchy isn’t enough, we might see the United Kingdom as an institution dissolve when Northern Ireland reunites with the rest of Ireland. And we have prophecies of whatever dark secrets lie in the House of Lords, so this is a sign that even if a United Kingdom were to remain in some fashion, both the aristocracy and the monarchy will be abolished.

And even if it were possible for at least some of the countries to reunite, it’s only by joining Russia’s Commonwealth that this will happen. Meanwhile to counteract or rival this, China might create Greater China including all of its neighbours in East Asia, it would be practically half way between the European Union and the Soviet Union of yore. The Lesser China states (both nearly all the African countries and those in Oceania) would function similarly to the Soviet satellites, which means there might be a reemergence of a bipolar world. But one that’s not a repeat of the original Cold War, where Russia unseats America as the face of western civilisation for years to come.

And even then it’s not going to be a continuation of the days when America was still a superpower, rather it’s the final nail to the hyperpower that was and will never be again.

Zionist cartoons

When it comes to discussions about Zionism in X-Men, it does become particularly obvious concerning one particularly prolific scribe’s contributions to the X-Men canon. Chris Claremont is a man who admitted he doesn’t relate well to black people and Russians, spent time in Israel and the like to the point of feeling more sympathetic to Jews than he would with black people. Not that he dislikes them but it does explain why Storm’s written the way she is, and why in the earlier stories she was kind of othered. She is written through an Orientalist lens where she is an exotic black woman, the way she’s written is communicated through outdated ideas about Africans and African women most especially. From what I’ve seen African women don’t really go about in really skimpy outfits anymore, they even dress no differently from their western counterparts at this point. They speak the same languages as their colonisers do, well that’s what colonialism does to places like Nigeria and Ghana.

Many Africans are Christians and a good number of them are practising Christians even, something common depictions of Storm fail to take into account. She is ostensibly Kenyan but apparently doesn’t know that Boxing Day exists, even when it’s recognised as a holiday in not only Britain but also Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana. Given writers indicate that Nightcrawler is German by sprinkling in German words whenever he talks, it shouldn’t be any different if writers did this to Storm when it comes to Swahili. It might even be more plausible because both Swahili and English are the national languages of Kenya, so a degree of code-switching would be inevitable. Unfortunately Marvel never bothered hiring Kenyan writers to do Storm stories, even when Kenya’s own Shujaaz publishes comics as well.

So roping in Shujaaz writers to write Storm stories shouldn’t be a stretch, since many Kenyans are bilingual in Swahili and English to varying degrees. There is a good argument for the Jewishness of the X-Men canon, given a number of X-Men’s seminal writers are Jewish themselves. Most notably Stan Lee, Brian Michael Bendis and Chris Claremont, where it does make sense to see mutants as glorified Jews. They don’t look much different from humans, but are distrusted for certain reasons. The strongly Jewish and then the strongly Zionist sensibilities inculcated into the X-Men canon could explain why there’s not a lot of mutants who speak in Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Scots, Welsh, Cheyenne, Apache and Hmong, as opposed to just one character (Kitty Pryde) speaking in some Yiddish herself. Whilst having mutants speak minority languages other than Yiddish would powerfully push the metaphor more, it’s not something that interests them.

Or most X-Men fans for another matter, even when it would’ve helped people learn minority languages themselves. I really got into learning Irish from listening to bands like Altan, people get into learning Japanese from watching anime (Japanese animations). People get into learning Korean from listening to K-Pop, having Pixie speak Welsh or Rahne Sinclair speak Scottish Gaelic is potentially no different either. But these never really came to pass, even when it could’ve piqued someone else’s interest into learning such a language. The X-Men canon is Zionist nearly all the way, whether if it’s the mutant homelands being frequently likened to Israel, the antagonistic Arabs in the form of the Shadow King or how and why more attention’s paid to Jewish languages like Yiddish than to Gentile minority languages like Cheyenne, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. It even makes speakers of these languages even more underrepresented this way.

If Hebrew deserved to get revived, shouldn’t it also apply to Welsh? The argument is just as strong given it was suppressed in Wales for ages once it got incorporated into the United Kingdom, having Pixie speak in Welsh might make other people want to learn Welsh, even when they’re not Welsh themselves. But the pro-Zionist bent a number of X-Men writers have, accidental or not, would have this ignored for long. The pro-Zionist bent would explain why Jewish characters like Kitty Pryde and Magneto that even at their most deplorable are still portrayed more sympathetically than is given to others, sort of like how and why Kitty gets away with the same thing that got John Proudstar, a Native American, into trouble but thrice as he died until lately. That is angrily talking back to Professor Xavier, who’s the actual leader and figurehead of the wider X-Men organisation, John Proudstar did this once and then died. Kitty Pryde does this thrice and gets no lasting consequences for this, that it’s racist why a brown character had to suffer from the consequences of doing the same thing that a white character often gets away with.

It’s kind of bad enough that Chris Claremont identifies more with her to the point where assumptions that she is a Mary Sue might be kind of justified in here, which would explain why she’s written the way she is and doing the same thing that gets a brown character into trouble. If a Mary Sue character is an idealised author-surrogate, then it makes sense to label Kitty Pryde as such when under Claremont’s pen. It risks being kind of racist whenever an Arab character’s portrayed kind of unsympathetically, especially if they’re the only Arab around or that a brown character like John Proudstar is unable to get away with doing what Kitty Pryde does to Professor Xavier on a really bad day. The Zionist influence still lingers as Kitty Pryde’s apparently not above massacring an entire group of people and yet not get charged with murder, whereas actual marginalised criminals like Axel Rudakubana and Audrey Hale are slammed for doing something similar.

It’s even more telling that both of them are like Kitty Pryde in the sense of being moody but unassuming people with marginalised identities who take their anger out on people by killing them, Kitty Pryde even did this multiple times before. She killed somebody with a sword, threatens to kill William Stryker, has killed Emma Frost in one apocryphal story and isn’t above killing a lot of people in a single go. Whilst it’s true that Chris Claremont didn’t write these other episodes himself, but there is a precedent for this in his own run. It’s not just that Kitty Pryde has killed somebody out of anger before, but that she’s shown to fly into a rage quite often. She’s thrown tantrums, overreacted to Storm’s makeover, beating up a boy for being a bigot, beating up her classmates out of anger and then getting mad at a creature named Douglock.

Both Rudakubana and Hale were described as irritable and the former was even violent to his own classmates, that seems to resemble Kitty Pryde a lot. It could even be argued that what became of Kitty Pryde gives an idea of how and why both Audrey Hale and Axel Rudakubana ended up doing what they did to others, the anger at others was there before but it eventually escalated to the point of becoming very vicious. Kitty Pryde’s actually shown to be rather vicious when moody, vindictive even towards those she hates that she’s actually far from a nice person when looked at objectively speaking. But it’s not seen as it actually is because of the Zionist bias many X-Men writers and fans have, even when Kitty Pryde’s resulting personality more strongly resembles those of Axel Rudakubana and Audrey Hale than it does with the nonviolent protests done by many well-meaning activists.

DC’s Stephanie Brown does have a temper herself, but Kitty Pryde’s consistently more ruthless in her dealings. To my knowledge, many Batman writers don’t seem Zionist and it shows that a Gentile character like Stephanie Brown is allowed to suffer from the consequences of her mistakes in a way Kitty Pryde’s not allowed to when it comes to Zionists like Chris Claremont, even when she’s shown to be much more vicious towards people than Stephanie will ever be. My experience with the Batman canon’s pretty limited but it’s kind of obvious that Stephanie doesn’t seem to be excused a lot for her shortcomings the way it’s done to Kitty Pryde, despite both characters being kind of hot-tempered. It’s kind of telling that another Gentile like Jason Todd also doesn’t get excused for what he does either.

On a geopolitical scale this is reflected in the way western media portrays Russia and Israel as, both of them are white-majority countries but when Russia oppresses Ukraine it’s immediately painted as a bad guy. When Israel does the same thing to Palestine, it gets excused for doing this. It’s a double standard that gets people into boycotting Israel a lot, that if Eurovision banned Russia for oppressing Ukraine then it ought to do to Israel in kind towards Palestine. Israel has a strong one of us vibe that Russia doesn’t have, in the sense of being pro-gay rights and allied with America. Russia, despite being white-majority, is farthest from this in a sense. It’s not big on gay rights, kind of politically incorrect and one of America’s biggest enemies, Israel resembles other western countries more. Not just in being pro-gay rights but also having a lot of immigrants from nearly all over the world.

No different from countries like Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands in a way, to the point where any suspicion of Israel being a settler colony might be onto something. Though a historical Israel did exist, it’s most likely very different from political Israel. The modern nation-state of Ghana named itself from another African empire altogether, since it’s really the successor state to the Ashanti Empire. Another point of difference is that Ghana’s not that big on gay rights like Russia, which makes it more different from the west at present than Israel is. One possible reason why a number of Gentiles readily warm up to Zionism is the subconscious belief that Jews are the ultimate model minority, in some regards much moreso than with East Asians. Not just numerically because many East Asian countries (Vietnam, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan and Thailand) are densely populated.

But that Jews have resided in the west for a much longer period of time that they’re practically less othered than East Asians are, despite three of them being subjected to European colonialism before. Most especially Indonesia and the Philippines for nearly the same period of time together, but when it’s not uncommon for Jews to make it in high-earning fields coupled with being less ‘different’ from presumably Protestant-majority populations in some European countries that gives them a strong model minority glow that’s not afforded to others to the same degree. Coming from a Protestant background it’s not uncommon for a lot of Protestants to be more sympathetic to Jews, on the belief that Jews are Protestant-lite. I really personally don’t know much about Judaism but it does have the appearance of being Protestant-lite in some regards, even when Jewish temple services could still differ from their Protestant counterparts.

With both Protestant and Catholic sermons, they start with reciting Bible verses/scriptures before getting to the meat of the message. But Judaism seems more Protestant-lite simply because Catholicism relies on the intercession of saints and Mother Mary to help sort things out, even when it doesn’t always appear to be this way with the latter where despite the existence of feast days many Catholics don’t actually worship them for most of the part. Mind you I have a habit of listening to Catholic sermons a lot these days, though it can be selective at times but generally it’s not always the case. Even then I feel Zionism is an ideology that’s easy for Philo-Semites (which Protestantism has a lot of those) to latch onto due to a feeling that Jews are kind of Protestant-lite, that feels much easier to co-opt from and project onto. So they really are a model minority’s model minority in a way that’s not the case with the Romani.

They’re another immigrant group that moved to Europe but from India and although they’re just as disadvantaged as Jews are at various points, they don’t attract that same model minority glow. Although both Jason Todd and Stephanie Brown aren’t Jewish, nor are they Romani, I don’t consume Batman media enough to know which Batman writer might harbour a Zionist bias themself in any way, but it’s still telling that they’re allowed to suffer from the blowbacks of their mistakes in a way that Chris Claremont and his ilk would never do to Kitty Pryde. It’s like this in the Power Mark comics where the Chinese, Russian, African and Latin American characters are allowed to have flaws to grow from, but other than Biblical characters the Jewish characters don’t seem to have any flaws to get worked on in any way. It’s as if being Jewish is enough to cancel out any failings they have.

It’s like being Jewish is enough to absolve oneself of their own failings, as it’s quite evident that Chris Claremont identifies more with Kitty Pryde than he does with Ororo Munroe and Pyotr Rasputin. The Zionist mindset can’t really imagine that Jews can be and should be held accountable for their own mistakes, the way Gentiles are often allowed to or made to in any way. That’s why Kitty Pryde doesn’t face lasting consequences for her own shortcomings throughout the X-Men canon, if writers did that would mean she actually messed up big time. And why the Zionist bias is painfully strong in the X-Men canon.

Living without America by tomorrow

Given there are prophecies of forthcoming famines and economic collapses coming to the US as well as judgement of the western world, that makes one wonder if it were possible to truly survive without American influence at this point in time and also in the future. It’s one thing to live in a way where there was practically no American influence before, it’s another to live in a world where there is no more American influence that it’s kind of existentially frightening at times. Considering that America has both the world’s largest publishing industry and the world’s largest music industry, it would take really big shoes to fill to make up for a loss. A loss others never foresaw nor wanted, since this is how I feel about missing sermons at times. It would be painful living with a substitute when we want the real thing real badly, which is also how I feel about sermons at some point.

If American influence were to be truly revoked around the world, or even greatly minimised at that, it would be awkward scrambling for viable substitutes to make up for such a profound loss. It’s like what Canada’s doing at this point where it does a lot to seek local alternatives to American products, but since it’s not a superpower like America is that it would be wiser but more awkward to turn to substitutes from anywhere other than America. It would take products and influences from more than 26 countries (especially from both the former Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc, plus Scandinavia) to make up for a loss of American influence in Canada, though it would take time for Canadians to warm up to the likes of Sweden’s Bamse, Norway’s Pondus and Denmark’s Rasmus Klump.

It would take time for Canadians to learn some Russian, Ukrainian and the like to dub such programmes into their languages, it would take time for Canadians to warm up to things like the Russian version of Winnie the Pooh and so on. It remains to be seen if something like Nelvana will dub this version of Winnie the Pooh into indigenous languages like Cree and Ojibwe for instance, or even something like the Ukrainian version of Treasure Island just the same. There’s not much of a language barrier to getting bands like Denmark’s Aqua and Sweden’s Ace of Base getting popularised again in Canada, because they already tend to sing in English a lot. But when American influence is so highly minimised in Canada, that sticking to European and Russian substitutes would be one of a handful of viable alternatives to make up for such a strong loss.

I suspect if Canadian publishers were to develop a habit of translating Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian and Romanian comics a lot (well among many others), that predictably and consequently Canadian comics will follow European and Russian trends more. At present that due to greater geographical and cultural proximity to America that Canadian comics trends tend to follow or mirror those of their American counterparts a lot, but the loss of American influence could result in something. Maybe it might be a blessing in disguise that for Canada (and the rest of the Americas, sans America itself) that European comics would finally be popularised there, but because American influence has been so greatly revoked that European substitutes would have to take their place instead.

It would be really no different if the Philippines were to rely a lot more on its closest neighbours (Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, China and Laos), since the loss of American influence here would be just as colossal. It would take substitutes from other, similarly highly populous countries in East Asia to make up for this, though it would take time for us to warm up to Chinese and SEA products and influences more. It would be really awkward at first because we want America more deep down inside, so warming up to alternatives would be rather painful at first. Taking time getting used to say the popularisation of traditional Han Chinese clothing (hanfu) in the Philippines and the like would be just as jarring at first, even if or when such alternatives would inevitably be adopted to make up for a loss of US influence here.

For those seeking a less westernised Philippines, this might be the right time to do so given America’s waning influence. It remains to be seen if Philippine publishers are willing to translate the likes of Oriental Heroes and McDull into Tagalog, as well as personally translating something like Chi’s Sweet Adventure and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure as well. But the loss of American influence would necessitate the need for substitutes, however awkward and painful it may be since we crave America more deep down inside. I feel it would be tough for some Filipinos to warm up to something like not only Bumilangit, but also something like Ashita no Joe. It would be really awkward to think that American superheroes and their ilk might eventually decline a lot in popularity, that non-American substitutes would inevitably take their place from then on.

Since I brought up hanfu before that when it comes to the loss of or eventual decline of American influence in fashion that under their new owners (in a way) Canada and the Philippines would follow Russia and China respectively from then on, which means whatever that’s trending in Russia will follow suit in Canada. Whatever that’s trending in China will follow suit in the Philippines, even if these are rather far from ideal at first. But I feel the loss of American influence in both countries if these were to go with Canada going to Russia and the Philippines going to China, that accepting the substitutes would be a very painful process to go through. Because they still want America to remain in their hearts in some way, they still want the real thing real badly. Maybe some American influence will remain, as God preserves a remnant for years to come.

Some secular American influence will remain as well, particularly pertaining to technology that it will remain for as long as it services Christian ministries around the world. If America were to get revoked from the planet for its evils, that Canada might suffer from a form of survivor’s guilt. Being a stronghold of what was an Anglophone North American civilisation for years to come, it would be in a really awkward position of being both Russia’s sole North American protectorate/territory after America’s disappearance and a reminder that there was a country called the United States of America, culturally speaking. It remains to be seen if nearly all American influence will be revoked in Canada or if some American influence were to remain there for long, most especially in terms of faith/religion and technology.

Possibly sports, music and the like but these are tentative, who knows if Canada will develop a stronger liking for football/soccer once US influence gets revoked there big time. Or the Philippines just the same even though the argument would be stronger in our case, because Filipinos aren’t genetically predisposed towards tallness on average. But even if you have some countries that are predisposed towards it, football takes basketball’s place in terms of popularity there. The most popular sport in both Europe and Africa is football, whereas American sports like baseball and basketball are only really popular in a handful of countries that are also under US jurisdiction like Japan and the Philippines. American imperialism much. Though this might change in the future, whether if these will remain or not.

And even then it’s going to change a lot once American influence either gets revoked or highly minimised the world over.

The Mountain and The Mutant

I feel one reason why X-Men is more popular than say The Boondocks is that it’s far more palatable to white audiences in how it handles prejudice, especially if it’s conveyed through able-bodied white cartoon characters, combined with bouts of anti-black and anti-East Asian racism every now and then. The way The Boondocks handles racism, especially anti-black racism, is kind of realistic in the sense that even when you have well-intentioned characters like Cindy around, they still resort to racist preconceptions every now and then. It’s like knowing a lot about black people personally, but still resorting to racist ideas of them at the same time (it’s like this before). Or that white people may not be able to completely relate to what black people go through, especially in the western world, which explains Cindy’s cluelessness towards Jazmine’s feelings.

Characters like Jazmine and Riley struggle with internalised racism, but in their own respective ways, where the former denies her blackness and the one struggles to live up to such stereotypes from time to time himself. I don’t think the X-Men stories deal with this a lot, from my experience, but most X-Men writers like Chris Claremont are white. Add to that Claremont admitted he can’t relate to black people that much, to the point where it does explain why black characters are written the way they are in the X-Men canon, especially whenever he’s at the helm. Also in the X-Men canon you have characters like Emma Frost lashing out at South Asians for not understanding her, that and recurring themes of eugenics, where you have a guy named Mister Sinister doing a lot to engineer the perfect mutant. To the extent that X-Men could easily invite a white supremacist reading at any point.

With Storm being the good black woman who barely questions the white people she often hangs out with, Cheryl Lynn Eaton went on saying that she’s so disconnected from blackness that she should’ve been written as a weird black woman or something like this, though she’d eventually write a story featuring her as well. I’d say that she’s a good example of an exotic black person as written by a white person, where seems to be a kind of Orientalism aimed at black Africans that treats them as the antipode of white westerners. Albeit a black Africa that’s forever stuck in the past, whilst the west appears to be oh-so progressive (read civilised). Part of it has to do with that white westerners (until recently in Europe) aren’t really that constantly exposed to African media, let alone for a sustained period of time, as to truly know what else is going on in Africa itself.

White Americans’ exposure to African media is generally far more limited than in Europe, due to the latter’s closer association to Africa by prior colonisation. That’s why things like Afrobeats are popular in Britain, whereas this would be replaced by hip-hop and soul in America’s case. To think if Aaron McGruder had been British, the Freemans would’ve been from somewhere in the Caribbean, with Riley being really obsessed with grime and Jazmine would most likely have a posher name instead. And her father Tom DuBois would most likely be a recent African immigrant or at least the scion of one, someone who’d look down upon the unapologetically Caribbean Freemans to boot. But even then a British Boondocks wouldn’t be that massively palatable to white Britons the way the X-Men canon would for them just he same, despite the prominence of bands like Massive Attack and Lighthouse Family.

Ditto Shirley Bassey, Goldie, Morcheeba, Benjamin Zephaniah and the like. British or not, I guess black people can only succeed in the white mind if they’re into sports or music. But not truly relating to them as people, the way superpowered white cartoon characters do. Looking back more than a decade ago, I went about seeking nonstereotypical African representation in comics. Things might be better now in many ways, but it’s mostly not much different at DC and Marvel. There’s yet to be a Kenyan writer writing the adventures of Storm, the way there’s a Vietnamese American writer for a story featuring Karma. The Shujaaz magazines actually have comics in them, many Kenyans are bilingual in English and Swahili, one of them could’ve been hired to write a Storm story themself. But there are still no actual Africans at X-Men, much less writers, even if a Nigerian got to write a Black Panther story. Ditto making Kenyans write Storm stories themselves, even if they share her cultural background and experiences more.

Whilst The Boondocks might not be without its own faults at times, it does a better job at understanding antiblack racism. Cindy may not seem outright hateful towards black people, but that’s because she’s racist in another way. Meanwhile an X-Men story had a white woman like Emma Frost lash out at South Asians for not understanding her or something, where there are like only five actual Africans in the X-Men canon (Temper, Storm, Maggott and arguably both Apocalypse and his wife, Genesis, as they’re both Egyptians, Egypt is also an African country by the way) and stuff. Temper’s from Nigeria, Storm’s from Kenya, Maggott’s from South Africa and both Apocalypse and Genesis are from Egypt, whereas X-Men has a lot of white characters from actual western countries.

The Wolverines and Northstar are from Canada; the original five members plus the Guthrie family, Emma Frost, Kitty Pryde, Dazzler, arguably Professor Xavier and Sage, Rogue, Gambit, the rest of the Summers family, Elixir, Mercury, the rest of the Hellfire Club, Firestar, Hellion, Cypher, Lorna Dane and Multiple Man are from the US. Moving onto Europe, characters like Rahne Sinclair, the Braddocks, Pete Wisdom, Quentin Spire and Chamber are from Britain, the Cassidys are from Ireland, both Nightcrawler and Mystique are from Germany, Pyro’s from Australia and if one argues, characters like the Rasputins, Omega Red and arguably Darkstar are from Russia. There’s a viral tweet stating that the most prevalent X-Men characters are white, able-bodied people. It’s kind of telling that white North Americans, white Europeans and white Russians significantly outnumber those from real African countries by a lot.

You’d really have to look in vain to find prominent Senegalese, Moroccan, Algerian, Ethiopian, Namibian, Rwandan, Tanzanian, Eritrean, Cameroonian, Ivorian, Malian, Ghanaian and Libyan mutants in the X-Men canon, because there are practically none at all and still none to this day. There’s really only one African Caribbean mutant that I think of and she’s Cecilia Reyes, a doctor and X-Men’s African Caribbean representation is also lacking, much less those from actual Caribbean countries to boot. So the tweet’s point still stands that white people from real white-majority countries significantly outnumber those from both real African countries and from the Caribbean, which means the search for more African representation is going to be hard unless if people turn to African media more instead.

But African media will feature African characters and mindsets by default, because they are made for African audiences in mind. The same thing can be said of Caribbean media, but African Americans are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are highly influential in America, but they’re also marginalised and ostracised there. The Boondocks cartoons show this where there is white awareness of prominent black celebrities through the character of Cindy, but there’s not much real compassion for what African Americans go through. Then you have black people struggling with internalised racism that they either deny that they’re kind of visibly black (Jazmine in a way as she’s biracial) or struggle to live up to the stereotypes they’ve internalised themselves (Riley), then you have those who’re truly aware of the racist portrayals black people face like Huey, Riley’s brother.

I don’t think most X-Men writers (who are white) will get these themselves, if Chris Claremont’s any indication, so whenever they address prejudice it’s almost always directed at able-bodied white characters, and more specifically white Americans to boot. But it’s telling which is more palatable to white people and one which isn’t.

Underrepresented

I said before that Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians and the like as well as actual African nationalities are painfully underrepresented in American ACG media until recently, but even then it’s kind of hard naming an Estonian character in either DC or Marvel who’s not a background extra. If because there’s really none at all, and there still isn’t one to this day. Senegalese characters are in short supply in DC and Marvel, but they might as well be similarly nonexistent. The same can be said of Latvians, Georgians (as in those coming from Georgia the country), Lithuanians, Armenians, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Tajiks, Krygyz, Ghanaians, Zimbabweans, Ugandans, Liberians, Angolans, Gabonese, Congolese (and Kinois), Mozambicans, Ivorians, Rwandans and so on.

It’s kind of hard naming any prominent Czech, Hungarian or Slovak DC or Marvel character because there’s really none at all, none to begin with and still none today, like if you want real Czech, Hungarian or Slovak representation you might as well persue and peruse Czech, Hungarian and Slovak media instead. Romanians might as well be vampires and not ordinary people like everybody else, Estonians could easily be mistaken for Russians, and many Americans would think of Georgia as a US state, not a separate country somewhere in the Caucasus. So whatever Georgian mutant that shows up in the X-Men canon will mostly probably come from Atlanta, not somewhere like Tbilisi for instance. Who cares about Moldovans, they might as well be Romanians all along.

Ditto Croatians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Bosnians and Slovenes unless if they appear in Joe Sacco’s comics, and unfortunately Joe Sacco seems to be one of the few US cartoonists who do bother putting Yugoslavs in his comics. It’s even odder still to think that despite DC rebooting its canon every now and then, Slovaks and Latvians have yet to show up there even when it’s now possible to do so, or for another matter making existing characters like Terra and Vixen belong to actual nationalities this time. Terra being a Slovak woman and Vixen a Zimbabwean woman, DC writers could be free to grandfather a Congolese nationality onto Bwana Beast. Marvel’s no different to some extent, yet not a single Marvel writer bothered to retcon both Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver into being Romani Slovenes.

Making Victor von Doom Croatian would be nice but it destroys the illusion of plausible deniability if he actually came from somewhere in Croatia himself, who knows what would happen if somebody like Shuri were to be retconned into being a Bamileke Cameroonian herself. It’s even wilder to think there are practically no Namibians, Botswanans and Nigeriens in Marvel, there is some Botswanan representation in DC but he’s just a bitplayer. Just a character to be saved by Superman and nothing more, Superman being the resident All-American hero at DC Comics. There are really no Botswanan superheroes in either the DC or Marvel canon, not even a recurring Botswanan supporting character like what Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are to the Superman canon.

Botswanans are cannon fodder to DC and Marvel writers alike if they ever show up at all, Storm is pretty much alone in the entire US comics canon as the best known African character there. One would be hard-pressed to find any Kazakh characters in DC and Marvel, because they’re practically nonexistent there. You’d have to find Armenians in DC and Marvel in vain, even when Armenia’s no longer part of the Soviet Union at this point. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all part of the European Union now, but there’s not a single Baltic superhero to this day at either DC or Marvel. Not even a Baltic supervillain at that. Supposing if someone made a story involving an Estonian man named Ilmar Tuglas. He doesn’t just generate and manipulate strings, but also emeralds.

He also works as a financial adviser, despite having harbouring pro-socialist sentiments every now and then, come from a family of communists and fur farmers and lives somewhere in Ahja, Estonia, with family somewhere in Saaremaa (an Estonian island). He’s based on Kakyoin Noriaki from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure right down to his fashion sense and personality to a large extent, JJBA being a Japanese comic involving superpowers by the way. Let’s say that his author isn’t from Estonia themselves, and this character shows up in a North American comic or video game, he may not be a Marvel or DC character. But it does speak volumes about how strangely underrepresented Estonians are, despite Estonia being an EU member at this point in time, but I guess US writers could rather pay more mind to America’s longer-standing allies instead.

Estonia might not be that poor either, compared to say Georgia for instance, but it’ll often be overlooked by DC and Marvel. Especially when it comes to having a particularly prominent superhero of its own or more, compared to long-standing US allies like South Korea, to the point where Estonia might essentially serve as cannon fodder to US superheroes instead. Estonia had been thoroughly influenced by Russia before, around the time South Korea was created to contain the spread of socialism throughout the Korean peninsula, Russian influence was already years deep in Estonian culture. South Korea kind of inherited the showbiz culture from America, both K-Pop and K-Rap are evidently derivative of American popular music. It’s not that a showbiz culture is nonexistent in Estonia, but that it would’ve resembled Russia’s own instead.

It’s kind of astonishing to think that Russia was at some point the only other major superpower in the Cold War, but it never got its own Hollywood even when it had all the other communist allies around, or at least nowhere near the scale Hollywood does for America. As South Korea is a longer-standing US ally than Estonia is, it would’ve inevitably inherited the American showbiz culture. To the extent that US publishers are more willing to represent South Koreans than Estonians, because of the residual feeling that South Korea is really on its side, despite Estonia being a western country itself and it was a US ally for quite a while in recent memory. You could also say that South Korea has K-Pop, but then again K-Pop is derivative of American popular music in many ways, so it’s going to be more palatable to US and US ally tastes.

That’s why Marvel has Luna Snow, a K-Pop musician who moonlights as a superheroine, even if Estonia’s currently capitalistic at this point but it’s still going to have the suspicion of being a Russian ally despite appearances to the contrary at this point. That’s why Netflix, a US streaming service, has KPop Demon Hunters. Even if Estonia was for a long time a Swedish colony, then a Russia colony and now a ceritified member of the European Union, South Korea is a US ally from the get-go and its exports are going to be more compatible with American and US ally tastes, than with their Estonian counterparts (if they exist at all). So Estonians as well as Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Armenians and Moldovans are going to be this underrepresented in DC and Marvel, or for another matter Hungarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bulgarians.

A common thread with many of these countries is that they’re all former socialist countries, as to be conflated with Russia especially if they’re European countries at that. I suppose if somebody were to substitute Latveria, Transia/Trasnia and Sokovia for Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary, it could still run into problems but if they got represented in Cold War era stories, their characters would either serve as antagonistic foils to US heroes or join US teams if they’re heroic, which Natalia Romanova is both of these things and she’s Russian. From my personal experience reading US comic books and the like, the only times actual Yugoslavs get any representation at all in is Joe Sacco’s nonfiction works. But these highlight a strong disparity between Yugoslavs and their fictionalised proxies, because Joe Sacco’s a journalist who uses cartooning to talk about social issues in other countries.

Similar things can be said of the differences between the way actual African countries are portrayed in nonfiction as opposed to say the DC and Marvel canon, where in the former they actually show up and sometimes realistically so. But in the DC and Marvel stories, most actual African countries are nonexistent. There are practically no Angolans, Cameroonians, Ugandans, Namibians and Rwandans in either the DC or Marvel canon, which gets really weird because these two are no strangers to retcons and reboots that at any point where a writer could’ve grandfathered a Cameroonian nationality onto Black Panther and Shuri, this never came to pass. DC’s no stranger to reboots and the opportunity to make Vixen Zimbabwean never came to pass either, you might as well tell me to make my own characters so I did.

Fabrice Tientcheu is a Cameroonian forensic scientist who has the ability to soften things, is very high-culture himself (he likes reading books on sciences like astronomy and chemistry, as well as books by Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus), owns cats because his father’s afraid of dogs (Cameroonian rapper Mink’s is afraid of dogs himself as well) and is actually based on another Jojo character, Trish Una who also has the same ability herself. He lives somewhere in Cameroon, whether if it’s Bamendjou or Bafang. But these are real places in Cameroon and also Africa, you could go there if you want to. He has a twin sister named Yvette, a seamstress who’s in love with his colleague and the resident detective Jean-Louis Lumiere.

Nigerians do get some representation in Marvel, via the character of Temper. But she’s not as well-known as Storm is, so Storm’s practically alone in the entire US comics canon as the best known fictional African to come from a real African country. If the adage the more, the merrier works; then it serves to have another Nigerian character around in the form of Tifeoluwa Babatunde Olatunji. He works as a lawyer and lives somewhere in Lagos, he sometimes gets into joking banter with Fabrice over rice and other foodstuffs. Even odder still over at DC is how and why there’ll never be an Elseworlds or Imaginary Story featuring an Icelandic Fire and a Chilean Ice, but I feel it kind of ties into stereotypes about Latin Americans and Scandinavians. Not just in terms of ability, but also personality.

From what I’ve read, Beatriz da Costa (Fire) is shown to be brash and flamboyant but Tora Olafsdotter (Ice) is more mild-mannered. That’s not to say there aren’t any Brazilians who act like Beatriz nor are there any Norwegians who act like Tora, but it still wouldn’t fit into the way they actually see themselves as. Supposing if there are characters with abilities similar to these two, but Fire is Scandinavian and Ice is Latin American this time. Sometime as early as 2010, I came up with an Icelandic male character who is Fire and manipulates volcanism himself, and Ice is a Japanese woman. This time both characters are female, thus further paralleling their DC counterparts. Linhildur Solveig Arnleifsdottir is analogised to Beatriz da Costa, though she has red hair and often at the receiving end of her husband’s affairs.

(She’s also a natural redhead to boot.) She comes from somewhere in Iceland, more specifically Reykjavik and she works as a government official. That’s not to say there aren’t any Scandinavian redheads out there in American ACG media, but it seems Age Of Mythology’s the rare instance of this unless if Jimmy Olsen counts (he’s obviously of Scandinavian descent himself). Dark-haired Scandinavians in DC do exist, but particularly in the form of Pieter Cross. Marvel’s Loki could also count in a way, because he’s based on Norse mythology. That’s not to say all Scandinavians are dark-haired (or red-haired or blond-haired either), but it still wouldn’t reflect the way they see themselves. Linhildur being a redhead reflects on the fact that Iceland does have a good number of redheads itself, then come Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

It seems within the Marvel canon, if foreign redheads do exist they’re usually more likely to come from either Scotland or Ireland. Not that redheads are nonexistent in both places, but it still wouldn’t be how they see themselves as. Quite frankly, I’m unable to name a famous Scottish or Irish redhead in music. People like Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, Ronan Keating and Nicola Cloaghan are all Irish blonds, though with the last one you wouldn’t guess this until she stops dyeing her hair red for Bridgerton. The rest of Boyzone and Altan all have dark hair themselves, everybody in Clannad has natural dark hair (until lately as they’re getting older) and the same can be said of everybody in the band Capercaillie. Sinead O’Connor had natural dark hair. Nightcrawlers’ John Reid had natural blond hair when he was younger, Kevin McKidd’s also blond.

Karen Gillen are Moira Shearer are both the only natural Scottish redheads that I can think of, but since natural red hair’s rare so it’s to be expected that it would be easier naming blond and dark-haired Irish and Scottish celebrities instead, especially in my case. Moving over to England, I could name some natural redheads there. You have Mick Hucknall, Patricia Hodge when she was younger, Newton Faulkner, Ed Sheeran, arguably David J from Bauhaus when he was younger and Jess Glynne, even if red hair’s not stereotypically considered to be an English trait. Marvel’s Elsa Bloodstone could count, but in her earlier appearances she had blonde hair. Betsy Braddock’s also a natural blonde and so is her brother, though you could say that I’m very much wrong in here.

But it still reinforces a message that rufosity’s the domain of Irish and Scottish people, especially in the Marvel canon. Even if not all redheads are Scottish or Irish themselves within Marvel itself, it still reinforces a particular view about these people. A view that some Irish and Scottish people internalise themselves, not that they’re any less red-haired either. It’s likely why outside of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic media, redheads are rarely ever Scandinavian in American media. I’m thinking in the lines of things like Age Of Mythology being the rare instances where you can find Scandinavian redheads in any way, the other one being God Of War when it comes to its own version of Thor. Ditto Latin American blonds, even when Cameron Diaz is a thing in real life.

Despite Cameron Diaz’s prominence and moreso when she was younger, given her father was Cuban himself, whenever Latin Americans show up in American media they usually tend to have dark hair. Beatriz da Costa might be the only instance that I can think of in American fiction who’s not dark-haired herself, one would wonder why there are so little to no natural Latin American blonds and redheads within DC and Marvel. They do show up in Latin American media, both nonfiction and fiction, but they’re very rare in DC and Marvel, if they show up at all. I do know that white Latinos exist and characters like Julio from X-Factor reflect on this in a way, even if natural blond and red hair aren’t necessarily common in Latin America either, but the fact that these two traits show up in Latin American comics among fictional characters acknowledges their existence.

The character I came up with is Piedad Franulic Kristof, a Chilean woman of Croatian and Hungarian descent. She’s analogised to Tora Olafsdotter in that both of them are light-haired women who manipulate the cold, but she’s also based on Nijimura Kei in that they’re resentful towards the people they serve (the Orvilles in Piedad’s case) and Kei also manipulates the cold herself. Piedad more specifically has mousy blonde hair which can also be regarded as light brown hair just the same, though it’s lighter than that of Colin Sallow. I feel it’s easier to think of Latin Americans as not only commonly dark-haired, but also somewhat darker than that of white Americans is the way the latter views the former and vice versa at times, when it comes to othering one another. Like if the prototypical American’s of either Western or Northern European descent, then the prototypical Latino’s of indigenous descent.

Blond hair’s more commonly found among countries like Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, even if not all Britons, Germans, Dutch, Swedes, Norwegians and Danes are necessarily natural blonds, let alone for life. Like I said John Reid had blond hair when he was younger, Liam Howlett had blond hair when he was a young boy. But this is also where most white Americans come from, so to the prototypical white American resembles the prototypical Northern European. The prototypical Latin American is someone who’s either of indigenous or Spanish descent, and the Spanish are often assumed to be dark-haired themselves. Not that the Spanish are any less dark-haired in reality, but the way Americans conceptualise both Latinidad and Spanishness is different from how these people view it in themselves.

It should be noted that there are Latin Americans of Polish, German, Dutch, Croatian, Hungarian and Ukrainian descent, Piedad is a Chilean woman of both Croatian and Hungarian descent. So it reflects on this in a way but perhaps outside of Latin American fictions, this is very nearly nonexistent in US media. There’s a version of the Babysitters Club where one of the blonde characters got made into a dark-haired Latina, but I feel this is one of the few instances that kind of reflects on it in their own respective ways. But I feel when Latin Americans are in the US themselves, whether in real life or in fiction, they will be othered in a way they aren’t back in Latin America. Even if not all Latinos are practising Catholics or even Catholics in general, if being American means being Protestant, then the othering’s bound to happen anyways.

It wouldn’t be the case in countries like Ireland, Poland, Croatia, Austria, Slovakia, Czech Republic and France, where Catholicism’s part of the cultural mainstream there. Not so much in countries like America, Britain, Canada and Finland where Protestantism’s part of the cultural mainstream there instead, so even white Latin Americans would be really othered in those places. It may not always be the case within DC and Marvel, but being American institutions, it’s going to play a role in some way. It’s not hard to see how and why Latin Americans, real or not, are going to be othered in American culture. It’s not that the Baptist church, Methodism, Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism are nonexistent in Britain, Finland, Latvia, Canada, Sweden and Norway, but America has been the hotbed of world Protestantism until recently.

If because due to Christianisation, the African countries are catching up real quickly here. Especially places like Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, though they’re not without considerable Catholic populations to boot. But even if denominations don’t always get factored into the equation, Latin Americans are still going to be othered in America in other ways. So that’s why Latin American superheroes like Beatriz and others are portrayed the way they are in American ACG media, the portrayal’s not always racist but there’s a kind of implicit othering in some cases. Central Asians are weirdly very underrepresented in US fictional media in any capacity, given they don’t neatly fit into American boxes regarding not only both East Asia and West Asia, but also Eastern Europe.

This becomes particularly the case with both Kazakhs and Krygyz, because although many of them look East Asian, they also aren’t from somewhere further east like in both Indonesia and Malaysia, speak Turkic languages and actually have a degree of Western Eurasian DNA themselves, so they don’t neatly fit American prototypes for what Muslims ought to be. Both Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmens may fit American conceptions of Islam in many regards, but sadly they remain underrepresented in the American imaginary. Instead of actually representing Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmens this time around in both DC and Marvel, DC creatives like James Gunn and Greg Weisman would rather use proxies like Jarhunpurians and those from Qurac instead. Ditto Syrians, Lebanese, Jordanians and even Palestinians to my knowledge.

There are Marvel writers who do kind of represent those coming from Lebanon in a way as it is with Sina Grace, but then again a good number of Marvel writers like Chris Claremont are Zionist, to the point of portraying even the worst Jewish character like Magneto more sympathetically than he would with an Arab like the Shadow King. David Haller, when he initially appeared, was the illegitimate teenage son of Charles Xavier and an Israeli national, who got possessed by the Shadow King. So with the combined efforts of Xavier and somebody else, David Haller finally got exorcised. But I don’t read comics that often, much less the DC and Marvel variety at this point, so I’m going by what I recall reading. But it kind of insinuates a message that Arabs are ought to corrupt minors like David Haller, well at the time so.

And more recently in Absolute Superman, West Asians Ra’s Al-Ghul and his daughter Talia have invaded the US. Even as a Christian it’s kind of telling that it plays into a kind of xenophobic sentiment, but aimed specifically at West Asians regarding their supposed ability to ruin and undermine western civilisation (as represented by DC’s quintessentially Midwestern town Smallville). Palestinians are very underrepresented in US fictional media, especially when the US itself has a strong Zionist streak, that it’s this easy to demonise them. Even weirder still is that Palestine actually houses the world’s oldest Christian community, coupled with that there are some Israelis like Paul Wexler suspecting them to be the actual direct descendants of the ancient Israelities in a way Ashkenazi Jews aren’t.

Arthur Koestler, a Jew, was one of the earliest to point out that Ashkenazis aren’t related to the ancient Israelites as much as they are to the Khazars, a long-lost Turkic people. Even studies pointing out that Ashkenazis are the descendants of Judaised Caucasians, Slavs, Greeks, Turks, Iranians and East Asians (who may be Mongols, the folks who were close to the Turkic tribes) would still bring up the Khazar ghost in some way, given the Zionist insistence on the idea that Ashkenazis are the direct descendants of the Israelites. Actually Ashkenazis being more closely related to Slavs seems more plausible, not only because their folkways are more Slavic than West Asian, but also because they lived in Slavic lands far longer than they do in West Asia, as to be Slavicised over time. Mr Wexler even said that Yiddish really is a Slavic language with a heavy Germanic influence.

Not helped by that Ashkenazi Jews lived in Slavic countries like Slovakia, Poland, Belarus and Russia for so long, that they’d inevitably be fluent in Russian, Polish, Slovak and Belarusian which would’ve further Slavicised Yiddish despite having Germanic influence too. And Yiddish sounds like a Polish speaker trying to speak German themselves, or sing in my case since I listened to a duo singing the song ‘Tumbalalaika’ which seems like a German song with a Polish accent. (This is what you get for finally listening to something in Polish.) The profound Zionist streak that a number of DC and Marvel writers exhibit is likely why there are practically no Palestinian superheroes in both the DC and Marvel canons, why somebody like Kitty Pryde gets away with the very thing that got a Native American like John Proudstar into trouble and so on.

It’s as if being Jewish is enough to automatically absolve somebody of their wrongdoings, which reflects in the way the western world continues to support Zionist Israel at any time. It’s kind of also like this in something like Power Mark, where a number of characters who aren’t Biblical characters who get to be flawed are a Russian boy, a Chinese woman (Power Mark’s sister) and a Latin American girl, but the Jewish boy’s portrayed as rather flawless. I feel as if western countries readily support Zionism is partly because Jews are a kind of model minority’s model minority, if you know what I mean, as opposed to the way the Chinese, Indians and others are regarded as such, especially if they’re not only Gentile but also significantly more numerous and oppose western values themselves in some manner.

This might explain the orientalist othering these people often get in western fictions, where a westernised East Asian like Jubilee is considered a good guy but not the Mandarin. Or for another matter, characters coming from former European colonies like Vietnam (Karma) and the Philippines (Galura, Wave), which kind of insinuates the message that western countries are the gold standard for what’s good and progressive. Even when both China and India were far ahead of the west when it comes to women wearing trousers, West Asian countries and Russia having more women in STEM, China having had women play ball games in ancient history, Japan continuing to have a solid tradition of and industry for female readers of comics and so on.

Or even the odd fact that Japan’s ahead of the west when it comes to publishing professional M/M fiction out in the open, Patalliro being an old anime that features a sympathetic gay couple at the front. I’m getting off-topic but when it comes to media like DC and Marvel as well as their writers, being westerners they often promote western worldviews, sympathies and preferences, sometimes deliberately but more often than not unconsciously because of what they’re socialised and exposed to for years. The underrepresentation of other former communist western nationalities like Estonians and Latvians has to do with conflating them with Russians proper, even when at this point Estonia and Latvia are currently capitalist, that it shouldn’t be a stretch to actually introduce Estonian and Latvian superheroes right now.

Maybe not as America ended up alienating these two, them being staunch European Union members at this point, but I feel it’s possible to create an international media franchise that features actually Estonian and Latvian characters at the front and centre this time. It’s kind of obvious that as a lot of DC and Marvel writers are Americans, they’ll inevitably and usually have pro-US sympathies, sentiments, mindsets and sensibilities that get reflected in the stories they write about. Whether if it’s the othering of nonwesterners like Africans, West Asians and East Asians, the continued underrepresentation of certain nationalities and ethnicities (Latvians, Estonians, Georgians, Kazakhs, Slovaks, etc), or the propagation of western values and sensibilities, it’s there with many DC and Marvel writers for years.

Although the character of Linhildur might play into the redhead with fire powers stereotype in a way, she also represents a kind of Scandinavian character not commonly represented in US fiction stories. So far the only Scandinavian character with a fire ability is Karl Hansen from the Wildcats stories, whereas Norwegians like Sigrid Nansen and Tora Olafsdotter both have ice-based abilities. And even if Norway has glaciers, so does Chile and Chile’s close to Antarctica. It’s not a coincidence that both DC and Marvel writers habitually give fire-based abilities to Latin Americans, as if they’re so hot-tempered they’ll burst into flames anyways, when it comes to characters like Dante Pertuz, Firebird, that tattooed guy and Beatriz da Costa, even if it’s not true for all of them. Magma could also count in a way, as she has power over volcanism herself.

And she’s also a Brazilian citizen by the way, though similar things can be said of Iceland too. But it still plays into a kind of American conceptualisation of Latin American nationalities and countries, regardless if countries like Argentina and Chile both beg to differ as they’re closer to the South Pole as to get cold and dark around June and July, that Chile has glaciers says a lot about the missed opportunity to have a Chilean version of Ice this time. Sunspot being able to manipulate solar energy himself plays into the American belief of countries like Brazil having nearly constant unlimited daylight hours, but even if it were true and the same can be said of a certain Peruvian Overwatch character (I think), one would wonder why there’s no Argentinian character at either DC or Marvel who manipulates darkness themselves because it gets dark in Argentina every June and July.

It’s kind of depressing to think that in 2025 there are still no Namibian, Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh, Armenian and Georgian superheroes and even supervillains at either DC or Marvel, when it comes to Georgians these characters come from somewhere in Batumi, Tbilisi or Gori. Not somewhere in Savannah, Atlanta or Douglasville, Georgia here is a country in the Caucasus. Latveria is real but not Slovakia, Transia is real but not Slovenia. So logically Wakanda is real, but not Cameroon. Qurac is real, but not Syria. What I’m saying is that Latveria, Transia, Qurac and Wakanda are treated as if they’re real countries in Marvel and DC, but for some reason their real-life doppelgangers are nonexistent in their place. You could actually travel to Ljubljana and even stay there for long after acquiring EU citizenship, but Transia will take its place in Marvel stories instead.

Singapore is so nonexistent in the Marvel canon that Madripoor takes its place instead, even when you could actually go there to Singapore yourself. Some of my relatives have done this more than a decade ago, you can even access to Singaporean websites too. Singaporeans speak English like Americans, but Madripoor is used in its place in Marvel. You should get an idea of how underrepresented Singaporeans are in Marvel, or for another matter Malaysians and Burmese since I can’t name a single character from either Malaysia or Myanmar in both DC and Marvel. Ditto Laotians, Cambodians get some representation in the forms of Rose Wilson and Sweet Lili. But I suppose no such equivalent exists for those from Kazakhstan, even to this day that Kazakhstan might as well belong in the world of Elseworlds and What If.

But countries like Qurac are serious business, despite being technically nonexistent in the real world.

Something shocking really

I still think it’s kind of shocking why there’s not much Christian ire against the X-Men stories, even when they’re just as odious as their Harry Potter counterparts are, given it contains some of the same things Christians hate that it should be logical to chastise the former just the same. This includes a character who repeatedly gets into fights with her elders (Kitty Pryde for some reason manages to escape consequence free for doing the same thing John Proudstar did to Professor Xavier, which is also racist because she’s white while he is Native American), disrespect towards God’s word (Apocalypse, his wife Genesis and his own Horsemen), negative depictions of Christians and especially Protestants of all people (thus leaving Rahne Sinclair as the lone sympathetic Protestant and even then she gets brainwashed twice, like as if X-Men writers insinuate that such people readily fall for those kinds of things), flaunting LGBT, flaunting openly demonic characters like Illyana Rasputina who’s even a heroine there and so on.

It’s just as shocking as realising why not a lot Christians go after Discworld since it’s written by an outspoken atheist, but as what someone on Reddit said that the double standard exists because a lot of Christians are worldly and allow things that should’ve never been allowed due to their rather low standards for what’s edifying. Take no part in darkness but expose it for what it really is, whether if it’s X-Men or Harry Potter, but most especially X-Men as it’s something most Christians don’t seem to actually care to realise how ungodly it really is. Or for another matter, Daredevil because there’s something questionable about making an ostensibly Christian character dress up like Satan, it doesn’t make sense why would a Christian be shown to openly dress up like the enemy. It’s like Christianity’s fine for as long as it’s questioned and defamed endlessly, whereas other religions are usually portrayed more respectfully. It’s one thing to say that X-Men portrays Jews well, it’s another if it’s Protestant Christians in the same.

Either that they’re massive bigots who deserve to be killed like the entire Orchis group getting killed by Kitty Pryde in a fit of rage (she always has anger issues so), they’re massive bigots who’re out to kill people like Reverend William Stryker (this got toned down outside of comics) or they’re very misguided people like with Rahne Sinclair. Actually I don’t think it’s any better with Catholicism at times where for some reason within the Marvel canon, devout Catholics are almost always portrayed as kind of demonic looking. This risks sending a bad message that Catholics have been struggling with for years due to misinformation being spread about this denomination, where if you actually expose yourself to Catholic media it’s not exactly always the case. In Catholicism there are feast days or days dedicated to a saint, there are Bible scriptures getting recited before the sermon, but it’s not that anti-Christian. Online Catholic websites include both devotionals and lectionaries, which some Protestant websites do just the same. In a sense, it’s not much different.

(It’s not much different if one makes an idol out of Protestant preachers that it’s going to be the same thing anyways.)

There’s still something wrong about the Marvel canon’s treatment of Christianity where it’s either aligned with evil in some way or another, or questioned and defamed openly that it’s shocking why not a lot of Christians went after this. It’s even worse when Marvel itself has other openly demonic heroes like Satana and Damian, Son of Satan that it’s terrible why Christians don’t seem particularly concerned about this until recently, and even then it goes to show you how worldly Christians are and why others are in the right to suspect them of having double standards when their concerns don’t extend much to other things. Not a lot of Christians care about Discworld, much less the fact that it’s written by an atheist. It’s easier to complain about witchcraft in Harry Potter, than to complain about a Christian like Matt Murdock choosing to dress up as the Devil for some unknown reason, even when the latter’s just as questionable. I guess the Devil succeeded in getting their guards down when posing as a superhero, well literally in this case.

It’s harder to question idolatry with superheroes because it feels innocent even when the problem risks being the same thing really, but it’s harder to admit this outright because I feel it’s easier for Protestants to complain about things like Catholicism and Harry Potter, than something like DC and Marvel even when they do many of the things they hate (in theory). There are those who chastise DC and Marvel for having gay characters, but not much realise that they have a lot of openly demonic heroes like Blue Devil, Kid Devil, Lucifer, Daredevil, Illyana Rasputina and Nightcrawler in their echelons that it seems they’re never going to be on God’s side for real. It’s likely the real reason why there are so few truly Christian superhero stories out there, there was something like Power Mark and at any point where the character could’ve beaten up his sister for going evil, he forgave her instead.

Compare this to Marvel’s Kitty Pryde who has a habit of either killing people out of revenge or threatening people just the same, where if she doesn’t face any consequences for her actions, it risks sending a message that it’s okay to wallow in grudges because it’s alright if she does it. It’s alright to make fun of Christianity if Marvel does it, though it’s been covered before by a few people. But they’re unfortunately a minority because it’s more common for people to complain about Harry Potter this and that, over DC and Marvel having a lot of demonic heroes around. There are those who complain about witchcraft in Marvel, but there’s yet to be complaints over how and why there are even openly demonic heroes like Blue Devil and Damian among them. If Harry Potter inspires people to be anti-Christian, it would be no different if Marvel does the same to others.

I have a relative who’s like this where he watches Marvel and he despises Christianity a lot, as if he drank Marvel’s anti-Christian beverage so hard he internalised its message a lot. There’s something wrong about the way Marvel presents Christianity outside of lip service to popes every now and then, especially within its own canonical body of work that it’s more likely to be negative and suspicious, than glorifying and edifying. Or DC Comics for another matter, since it does more of the same thing. It’s not wrong to like superheroes but unfortunately both DC and Marvel indulge in such worldly things as to be judged for this, but this is unfortunately rather rare to encounter. I even struggled lustful thoughts for awhile because of getting back into a character like Supergirl to be honest. But the more corrupt DC and Marvel turn out to be, the more they’ll be judged for corrupting people to the point of being revoked from the planet for good.

It’s even shocking to think that secular DC and Marvel fans show more critical thinking than most Christians do, especially towards DC and Marvel’s problems not only frequently but earlier as well. This is to be expected when it comes to things like sexism, racism and ableism that they do deserve to be called out for these, It’s like when it comes to things like the sexualisation of cartoon women, from my experience Christians would think it’s a mistake on their part, but among a good number of comics fans it’s got to do with the cartoonists being misogynistic perverts that it shows in the way they portray them. Whether if they’re sexual fantasies depicted out in the open for all to see, demeaned when they shouldn’t be given their status and so on. That seems more honest and it’s unfortunate to think that secular fans show better media literacy than Christians do here.

As in being more aware of their publishers’ shortcomings earlier and more often than Christians do, maybe not always for reasons they immediately realise, but it does say things about the way a number of Christians lack real critical thinking. It doesn’t help that anti-intellectualism is openly encouraged in some Christian circles that makes it harder to critically analyse and evaluate whatever problems other stories may pose, especially if it’s something that seems innocent enough for them to not appear threatening or suspicious even when they should. This is also partly the real reason why not a lot of Christians seem concerned about the anti-Christian messages Marvel writers like Chris Claremont pose over the years, that they’d rather complain about Harry Potter than to be concerned about the anti-Christian messages other writesr harbour. Which makes for a depressing situation where it’s secular fans who have better media literacy here, or at least more likely to from my experience.