I'm gay and I like Persona. I haven't gotten to the stuff everyone is huffing about in P5, but I do remember Kanji's level in P4 being a direct reference to the psychological power of negative gay stereotypes. It would shock me if P5 was as tone-deaf to this as these comments seem to indicate. Whatever, we'll see.

Honestly, I think the problem is the modern approach to film criticism, where we have to find all of a character decisions morally acceptable before we can find any merit in a film. Which is a very weird position to take. People were doing the same thing with The Leftovers last year when there was a question as to…

Ugh, AV Club. You need to get yourselves under control. I actually saw this movie on a airplane last week and was shocked to find out that it was totally fine. It's not a classic by any means, but it clearly isn't trying to be Solaris. It doesn't make any offensive statements of rape or consent or any of that and it…

Also, for an early and excellent example of a writer treating a large number of LGBT characters the right way, I have to give a shout-out to Neil Gaiman in The Sandman. I was re-reading the first half of the series recently and was consistently amazed at not only how many LGBT characters Gaiman wrote (amazing itself…

Yes. And gay men resent being portrayed as fashionable, witty quip machines. Though honestly that seems to be improving a bit since the late 90s.

Now, the last time I read a New Warriors comic was the 90s, but I remember Night Thrasher essentially being a ninja-type character with the batons. I have no idea WTF this "social media" thing is about, but as I understand it New Warriors got pretty weird in the 2000s. I wonder why they decided against using…

The director is a native Spanish speaker, so he may not have immediately realized the pun.

Maybe . . .? I might have missed that part. I thought they were going south to look for one.

I actually know a woman named Michael. Life is generally very confusing for people who call asking for her and expecting a man.

Colossus was definitely a communist. At least in the 80s.

That is a great way to explain "L.A. nice."

Nah, they just raped by grandmother's childhood.

I'm not quite old enough to remember the cultural context, but I have to believe that Colossus and Magik raised some eyebrows over sympathetic portrayals of Russians during the Cold War.

The point is that Storm and Sunspot were original characters who were written in books that were specifically about international teams of characters. They weren't "black Storm" or "Brazilian, multi-racial Sunspot."

Yeah, I think it is a bit silly for both sides to treat this as a black-or-white proposition. Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants in the 80s were diverse even by today's standards (with occasional missteps, sure, but that's how you know they were FAR out there). And they were good stories because they weren't TRYING to be…

My young son is a huge Hulk fan, and I can confirm 100% that the anger thing is a big attraction for him. He likes more optimistic/brighter superheroes too (notably Supergirl), but his Hulk fascination is very specific.

I didn't get really annoyed with it until Episode 6 or 7, which basically stopped all narrative momentum just for the sake of being weird. (Anyone want to talk about the Shadow King's weird Bond girl dance? What the actual fuck???) It finished very strongly, though.

Yeah, the SK was the first thing I thought as well. This was a good show for that villain, as he doesn't fit very well with the X-Men's rogues gallery the way it's been portrayed by the movies.

Unfortunately they can't do Moira because Singer fucked that character up by making her an American FBI agent. (WHY????) Same with Madrox, who was basically a dumb special effect in X3. But I agree with you that Melanie and Kerry seem to be analogues for those two.

The Shadow King kind of just floated in the ether in the comics, with occasional trips into the astral plane. That may be where they are headed (a la the second half of this season).