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.

On the lack of Estonians in DC and Marvel

Or at the least the lack of any famous Estonians on par with their Russian counterparts there, where I feel they wouldn’t just be conflated with Russians proper (moreso when the Soviet Union was a thing), but also that they’d be immediately outed for having any possible communist sympathies back then. Even if countries like Estonia and Latvia have finally transitioned to capitalism lately, they’re still weirdly underrepresented in Marvel and DC. I feel it’s much easier for American writers like Jude Winnick to unconsciously have South Korean characters around in place of their Estonian counterparts, or Filipinos for another matter, that despite Estonia and Latvia being technically capitalistic at this point, Americans would rather represent its staunchest, earliest allies over its more recent ones.

This is also why there aren’t any prominent Ukrainians in either DC or Marvel, it’s as if America’s interests in its new allies are oddly conditional and even performative, it’s like they want to stand up to Russia but tend to continually not represent Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Moldovans and Latvians despite their newfound penchant for capitalism. Another is a tendency to put prior storytelling canon above recent political and economic developments in these countries, to the point where they didn’t effectively remove the ghost and corpse of the Soviet Union, they just removed the external signifiers of it whilst keeping the corpse around for some reason. America would rather much invest in its earliest allies like Britain, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, above the newly capitalist Baltic countries, which is telling why there’s not a single prominent Latvian in either DC or Marvel.

It’s weird trying to name a single Ukrainian in the Marvel canon, let alone a supervillain or superhero, that despite America being technically sympathetic to Ukraine, it’s weirdly conditionally performative. Deep down inside that when it comes to the insistence of upholding the status quo, they’d rather represent Russians to this day, instead of sincerely representing Ukrainians, Romanians, Moldovans, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles, Georgians, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians and Armenians. America’s interest in the other former communist countries, especially those that are neither Vietnam nor Cambodia, is painfully conditional and superficial, because America would rather invest in either its allies or the countries it has invaded, over the ones that got invaded by Russia. Americans’ interest in Ukraine is superficial really, or perhaps the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for another matter.

To the point where despite being technically sympathetic to Ukraine, America never really got over the ghost of the Soviet Union this way.

Not quite

I feel when it comes to media literacy, it’s a practise based around deciphering and understanding the messages and themes media impart and inculcate onto others, like if you’ve been solely around Anglophone websites regarding the status of Christianity in Indonesia, China and Vietnam, there’s almost always a tone of suspicion on the latter three’s part on how hostile they are to Christianity. But if you go to their online lectionaries and devotionals in their languages, a different and more sympathetic picture emerges. Not necessarily any less apprehensive towards it at times, but nowhere as bad as western media sources make it out to be, if you know where to look. It should be noted that Indonesian and Vietnamese Catholic churches even air their church services online daily and it’s usually for free.

Likewise countries like Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, France, Britain, Spain, Norway and Sweden are less secular than one makes them out to be if you do the same things with them, but it seems to be this way is because there’s apparently less practising Christians in those places than in the United States. So the real difference has more to do with quantity as these countries don’t have a particularly substantial Christian political bloc the way America does, but online lectionaries and devotionals are pretty much present enough to meet their needs in some capacity or another. Conversely speaking, America might be more anti-Christian than one realises. Maybe not in ways it immediately recognises those traits as, but in the sense of calling good bad and bad good.

Having to go with the flow and honouring your community’s and family’s wishes above your own are the very things that are in line with what the Bible says about the same things, well sometimes if God sees it fit whereas in American culture it’s a matter of doing what you like for as long as people are fine with it, which sometimes work if someone has to accept somebody as they are, which is also in the Bible to some extent. But with America being such an individualistic society that’s going to be at the forefront of things that put individual expression above communal dedication and responsibility, especially regarding things like polyamory and any other form of modern consensual nonmonogamy. Do what you want to do, judge and the jury too as one song went.

This epitomises the American individualist mindset, the American individualist approach and the American way of doing, I feel a Japanese band wouldn’t have come up with this song at all. Not that collectivist countries like Japan, China and Vietnam restrict individual expression this much, but there’s a bigger emphasis on having to accomodate others’ needs and wants above your own, as well as their best wishes for you above your own. But I feel for a number of people that to be Christian is to be American and vice versa, even when facets of American culture go against Christianity a lot. To be fair, there are Americans who are truly Christian in belief and demeanour, though Christian nationalism is unfortunately very ingrained in American Christian culture.

Like you can’t be a Christian without having a very high regard for American culture, even when the religion long-predated the founding of America. If countries like Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya are any indication, Christianity can easily be decoupled from the west and be very widely applicable to African countries. Christianity can even thrive in large numbers in unexpected places like Indonesia, Vietnam and China really, but unfortunately associating Christianity with American culture a lot results in people becoming put-off by it even when it shouldn’t be and should never be. Christianity long predated the American nation-state by centuries, not to mention America is a settler-colony. A country built on someone else’s sovereign territory.

If China is actually less anti-Christian than one makes it out to be at times, since online devotionals and lectionaries are easily available and fairly numerous enough to meet the needs of Chinese Christians, then I suppose it’s easier to make it more anti-Christian than it actually is and even if it has a vexed attitude towards Christianity, this sentiment or suspicion is Sinophobic to some extent. Surely China does take down some Christian websites, but others are still up and running, speaking from personal experience. Though usually a number of these websites that are still operational in any way tend to Catholic and Catholicism does have a longer, earlier presence in China than Protestantism does, not all but a decent number of them are.

Same goes for Cambodia and Vietnam, which are both former French possessions. If you do bother looking for these at all, these countries are less anti-Christian than one makes them out to be. Maybe not necessarily any less distrusting of it, but in a way that makes you realise that the number of Christians there is substantial enough to justify a plethora of online lectionaries and devotionals. There’s clearly an audience for them in these countries, which you can use to gauge the actual breadth and depth of Christianity in these countries. In the case with China, it’s easier to exaggerate the role of anti-Christian sentiment there due to overall Sinophobia, instead of deliberately looking for more online lectionaries and devotionals in simplified Chinese (which almost always leads to Chinese media online).

Coupled with really bad media literacy and you get a situation where China’s made out to be more anti-Christian than it actually is (sometimes), regardless of the fact that you can scour for online readings and devotionals coming from this country and its associated territories alone. Likewise India really isn’t that anti-Christian either in that you could also scour for daily readings and devotionals in any of its languages, that Indians do air or upload sermons online in any capacity suggests that there is an audience for these media. When it comes to media literacy, one has to be alert to certain biases that paint a skewered picture of something or someone. Especially China where it’s made to be more anti-Christian than it really is, and even if it were true to an extent, this hasn’t stopped some websites from continuing to be operational and updated.

(Though there’s no mistaking that China seems more lenient to Catholicism, being longer established sort of helps things in a way.)

Sometimes other East Asian countries like Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia get this same treatment, even if you could easily play sermons from their social media channels and gain easy access to their online devotionals and lectionaries just the same. Likewise European countries like Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, France, the Netherlands and Germany aren’t as secular as others make them out to be, because they still offer online lectionaries and devotionals for those looking for them at all. If God saves a remnant, then it’ll be the audience for these media. One would wonder if their impressions of China and Germany aren’t just informed by their own views, but also their lack of any extensive exposure to their own media if they can’t afford to save there for long.

But if they did the latter, it would fundamentally change their views of any one or both of them. It’s like in my case I used to think Japan is anime-land until the day I perused certain keywords in Japanese to look up on stray dogs in Japan and a different picture emerges, one that’s at best very indifferent to it. If you use certain keywords in simplified Chinese to find online lectionaries and devotionals, a different China emerges and one that’s not as hostile to Christianity, despite its own recurring apprehensions around it. Or for another matter, Vietnam and Indonesia, that when coupled with extensive exposure to such media gives a better idea of what Christianity’s like in those places. This could also be applied to both Malaysia and Germany as well.

To the extent that it’s not the same impression anymore for most of the part, since the average Vietnamese/Indonesian/German/Chinese don’t speak English too well, as opposed to many Ghanaians, Nigerians, Kenyans, Filipinos, Britons and Irish, speaking from my own experience perusing such media. Actually by using foreign language media a lot (websites, social media, podcasts, radio stations), you get a better idea of what Christianity’s like in countries like China and Vietnam, if relying on secondhand sources isn’t always this reliable and trustworthy. Since with the latter they’re almost always somebody else’s impressions of the country or culture in question, instead of actually checking it out for yourself. This also goes for countries like Ghana and Nigeria, if you know one of their languages well.

But this involves being this exposed to their media for so long and so often that your impression of what Christianity looks like in those places starts to form independently of reading up on secondhand accounts of the same, because you exposed yourself to the real thing quite frequently. When it comes to the Anglophone part of the world, it’s this easy to heavily expose oneself to American media even without trying given America’s standing as the current superpower of our day. Foreign language media insulates countries from being this influenced by America to a doable extent, but this also means they have peculiarities onto themselves. A good number of western Christians, especially practising Christians at that, tend to be American.

But this means being so immersed in American culture as to have a very American worldview and perspective of things like China for instance, even if not all American Christians feel or think this way, but it does seep into their view of the world. Exposing oneself to foreign language media a lot, especially whenever it pertains to devotionals and lectionaries at all, whether if they come from Germany or China, will risk changing one’s view of any country. Maybe not always so drastic but in a way that enables you to see the other side to its culture, one that’s not commonly represented in the media that you’re usually exposed to. Like say China actually has a large, thriving Christian community that’s more obvious if you peruse online devotionals, sermons and lectionaries from it alone.

(Though in my case, I tend to listen to Mandarin language sermons from a Malaysian social media channel every Sunday.)

This could also be applied to Indonesia, India and Vietnam, that it would be really hard to realise Christianity actually exists there if you don’t even peruse their media at all. With machine translations and the like, you could find a way to understand these lectionaries and devotionals yourself. But this would involve realising the greatest concentrations of practising Christians have shifted towards both Africa and East Asia, including China, that it would be hard for some people to recognise and reconcile with. Or in the case with European countries like Sweden and Belgium, there are still Christians out there that God has preserved and provides for. But with America being the epicentre of both western civilisation and for a long time, world Protestantism, that it would be easy to spread and inculcate American ideas onto folks.

Something like creationism and anti-feminism that this gets transferred to the countries closest to the American sphere of influence in some way like the Philippines and South Korea, that if they were (still) under the Chinese sphere of influence it would’ve turned out somewhat differently. But to my knowledge, however limited it is, I don’t think any one of those presents a major hot button topic in Chinese Christianity the way it does in American Christianity. Though it’s a lot to do with Christianity in China being more of an outsider’s faith, despite some denominations like Catholicism being well-established before, that it’s going to be aware that its own views and sentiments aren’t mainstream and are often challenged by a more popular belief system.

Whereas American Christianity feels deeply threatened by anything challenging it in some fashion that it has to fight back real badly, so it often makes boogeymen (boogeywomen, boogeypeople?) out of China, Russia, communism, feminism, Islam, so on and so forth as to readily and frequently engage in culture wars every now and then. American Christianity is very combative and belligerent in a way Chinese Christianity isn’t, feeling the need to attack anything that opposes it when the feeling arises. Indonesian, Indian and Vietnamese Christianities are in the same position as their Chinese counterpart, self-aware of the fact that they are outsiders to the more popular belief systems and ideologies that there’s no point in fighting back when surviving and making the most of it matters more.

If China, Vietnam, Indonesia and India aren’t that anti-Christian, especially if one’s exposed to their own Christian media a lot, then it’s really a matter of media literacy where there’s a kind of Sinophobic sentiment in some American Christian quarters. It can be hard to check out Chinese Christianity yourself if you encounter anti-Chinese sentiment a lot that you’d have to seek out Mandarin language lectionaries, sermons and devotionals instead to better know what Christianity’s like in China, or for another matter the same things in India, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Subset Of A Greater Nation

Regarding the prophecy of God removing America from Earth, Celestial said that some countries that strive to secede from their siblings are really a subset of the same nation. This is true for places like what Slovakia is to the Czech republic, Taiwan to China (as these were part of the same country before, same with North and South Korea) or for another matter, what both Bangladesh and Pakistan are to India. My father said that both Russia and Ukraine were part of the same country before, as Russian culture as we know it originated in Kyiv (hence Kievan Rus). Both Bangladesh and Pakistan were part of India proper to the extent that the latter actually uses the same language as India does, but with a different vocabulary that owes more to Iran and the Arab nations.

Similar things can be said of both Indonesia and Malaysia as they both have the same language and many of the same things, but with different colonial masters as Indonesia was given over to the Netherlands and Malaysia to Britain. Likewise Singapore was part of Malaysia for a time being, doncha know? But with America getting removed from the planet, there are people who say that it is Mystery Babylon. For those who don’t know, Mystery Babylon is a prophesised country said to corrupt the entire world with its filth and abominations. It sits on many waters and was once the golden cup of God, having maddened the nations that drunk its wine. It will be eventually removed from this planet in the future, mainly for its abominations and filth it popularised and inculcated onto Earth.

Even if some American influence remains, that will be all there is to it in the future. The post-American future would still have its fair share of unrepentant sinners, since we’re living in the end times but that America being Mystery Babylon is already in the present. Its removal would come sooner than expected, but it’s still a way from here and still in the future. The future would still have unrepentant sinners, but it’s also a time where much American influence has already been minimised. To the point of being practically unrecognisable from now really.

It’s still there

From my experience perusing and discovering both devotionals and Bible reading websites from countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Hungary, Croatia, Poland, Britain, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Romania, Finland and Russia, whilst it’s true that Europe is less religious than America but I’d argue Europe seems less religious than America is because it doesn’t have a particularly substantial Christian right wing bloc comparable to the United States. It could vary between countries but even then I don’t think many of them have this much of a substantial Christian media industry the way America does, like how practically none of them have their equivalents to things like DC Talk, Veggie Tales, so on and so forth, let alone be famous outside of their borders.

The Chronicles of Narnia, Divine Comedy and the like may count, but they’re from the past and it’s kind of hard coming up with what amounts to the European equivalents to Veggie Tales and DC Talk, and even if European countries do have their own Christian media industries they still wouldn’t be on par with their United States counterpart in terms of quantity, scope and scale. Thus contributing to the perception that Europe is very secular compared to America, even though by going to online Bible readings and devotionals from these places reveals something to the contrary. In the same way that China might be less anti-Christian than one realises, especially from going to its own online Bible readings and devotionals, or for another matter India, Vietnam and Indonesia. And even if they have their own issues with Christianity, this hasn’t stopped Christian ministries from being operational in any way.

This hasn’t stopped Christian ministries from growing and popping up whenever one discovers or finds them at all, to the point where they seem to be this way due to something like media illiteracy. Media literacy is when somebody critically analyses the way media communicates messages and portrays or conveys ideas and sentiments to people, which may reveal certain biases that may not be found in media coming from said country this nation’s talking about (i.e. China, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Indonesia, Cambodia, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Greece, Italy, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Ireland and etc). Countries like India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and China have more of a Christian presence than one realises, so logically countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania still have more of a Christian presence than one realises. They seem less Christian because they don’t fit American expectations of Christian religiosity/fidelity.

Not just in terms of numbers/quantity (though in China, Vietnam and Indonesia it is growing), but also the apparent lack of a substantial Christian socioeconomic bloc that contributes to the perception of being less Christian than America is with the odd exception of Israel. I could be wrong about countries like Germany, Ireland and Italy, but as it stands I don’t think all three of them have a substantial right wing Christian subculture the way America does. That doesn’t mean they’re this irreligious as they do have Christian ministries putting out online devotionals and Bible readings, as much as they don’t have a substantial insular Christian subculture the way America does. They do have Christian media industries but it’s not as large as the one in America, I don’t think European Christians have their own versions of people like Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson and James Dobson, let alone enjoy the same scale of influence these three have outside of their borders.

A Christian media industry exists in each respective European country, but it’s not particularly substantial compared to the US counterpart, thus contributing to the assumption (or perhaps presumption) that Europe is less religious than America. Or for another matter, China, Vietnam, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. If God keeps a remnant of his in Europe, then they will persist and go on for long.

I said before

I said before that when it comes to extrapolating hair colour percentages from one country to its neighbour, it makes the most parsimonious sense when it comes to geographic and possibly genetic proximity (history of intermarriage and immigration, don’t be surprised if a Slovene community exists in Italy as it’s right next to it).

Logically, with Belgium being right between France and The Netherlands that the percentage of blonds to brunettes and in-between would be similar to its neighbours to a degree. But that also opens a can of worms where the hair colour percentage of Ukraine and Russia’s similar to Poland.

The number of blonds and mousy blonds in Austria’s similar to Slovakia and Northern Italy, so on and so forth.