"HE'S NOT GAY, HE'S A FAIRY!!!"

[eliyes]

I inadvertently bought that issue of Alpha Flight today. Also the one where Walter gets turned back into a dude (note: it is still Snowbird's body!) which is just not very good at all. Of all the AF I bought today, the one where Kara Killgrave brings Northstar back to Mansion Alpha is one of my faves.

Regardless of the book, I did notice something. Everyone does a lot of ragging on JP all the time. Walter, yes, all the damned time. Heather. Puck. Maddie. The only one who likes him unreservedly is Kara, in fact.

Northstar: *saves Kara's mom from baddies*
Kara's Mom: Oh my -- you're Jean-Paul Beaubier! My daughter has posters of you all over her room!
Northstar: How flattering. -_-

It's no wonder he's a bitch to you guys, people! Try not being a complete jerk to him all the time! Fortunately things will get friendlier later.

The twins have this adorable "shouting something in unison" thing going on when Ernest St. Ives came back. X3

I look at the older issues, long long before JP was officially outed, and I wonder if the artists were told to draw his body language as coming across gay. I really do. There are poses and gestures he gets drawn doing that the other guys don't, but some of the girls do.

Comments

[justlikemagic.livejournal.com]

I just cannot believe all the innuendo in those issues. Yeah, they did rag on hi, but he was an arrogant little beast (as seen in his back story in issue 10 I think - the whole "I only speak French" part, can we say snarky?) so I think he probably pissed everyone off upon meeting them and the retaliated.

But I LOVE Northstar. Until you know who got his hands on him. Except for the crush on Iceman, I liked that part.

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder if that whole mystic thingum they did to save Walter's soul would have gone a bit more smoothly if they hadn't chosen JP to represent "Hate", given that in the very next issue he confesses he loved him. Just... yeah. But really, honestly -- yes, he's an asshole, he's elitist, he's "hypercritical" as Judd called him, he always has something to say and it's usually not the nicest thing he could say, but giving him a hard time isn't the best way to get him to stop acting that way.

And yet, I know that's how people work. *sigh* And like I said, it does get better. Slowly.

Personally, I think a former Olympic athlete is going to be hypercritical. When a fraction of a second can mean the difference between a gold and a silver, or a medal or no medal, the coaches are hypercritical and the athletes even moreso, of themselves and others.

Besides, I like prickly characters, especially ones who are squishy in the middle, at least about some things. ;3

Yeah, I know what you mean! I'm still bitching about him being written as holding a baby and going "what am I supposed to do with this?" He had a baby. X| But liking Bobby I approved of because I'd been thinking about that pairing off and on for years -- if only that Bobby had, y'know, acted like Bobby.

[justlikemagic.livejournal.com]

I just wonder how he'd react if people were nice to him...he might keel over in shock ;)

Yeah Bobby not acting like Bobby, Paige dressing a whore, dating Angel, the whole sex scene in front of her mom...Bobby has been questionable to me since the Cloud thing.

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

It seems to depend on who's doing it. He was amused by Jeanne-Marie's students thinking he was totally awesome, but they were just kids. Basically, if he doesn't like you and you're nice to him, he ignores you if you're obsequious, disdains you if you're fawning, smirks at you if you're funny, and distrusts you if you're in a position of power over him.

Jean-Paul has real issues with power and the rights of precedence. He's oversensitive to situations where his rights may be reduced or ignored, even if it's something like deciding what they're all having for lunch. You can place the cause of this on his Separatiste politics, but I think that it's actually his background before that that drew him to that cause in the first place. Before Belmonde, he had an unhappy childhood: orphaned twice, bounced around foster homes and then out on the street. Maybe he's always been difficult, or maybe the world made him that way, but he has had to fight for everything he has, and the only one who ever gave him anything with no strings attached was Belmonde -- and even then, you could say their were strings, but I suppose it depends on what you think Belmonde gave him. (I think "a home, discipline, moral guidance, and a role model of self-acceptance" would describe it.)

That was a HUGE digression! O.O

Oh, don't get me starte on Paige! I'd like to know how the Hell Jay ended up younger than her, when he was in the 17-21 range when she was 13-14. I'v seen fic from people who never saw her before she was in X-Men describe her as a confident, well-traveled young woman who has dated all kinds of guys and thus shouldn't be shy about pursuing Warren, and I'm like "since when?" *gnashing of teeth*

[serenity-ca4.livejournal.com]

I bought a stack of Alpha flight, I think the first couple of years, and hit the one where the original writer left, you know.. the one where they're in an epic battle, and Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie are sitting in a corner crying their eyes out over (a-not-even-dead-yet) Walter while everyone else is fighting for their lives.

Yeah... I was a bit disgusted... and it only got worse from there, so I never did finish reading the whole stack. Sigh.

As for the artistry and JP's sexuality, yeah, that was intentional. JP's artist and authors conceived him as gay long before they were ever allowed to actually say it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northstar (see the section on sexuality)

[eliyes.livejournal.com]

Oh, some of the older stuff is horrid, I agree. The art, the storylines, the interactions, the dialogue, the characterization -- one or more of these things is likely to be repellent. It was never a very popular title, and that's a big part of why, really. But still, you take what you can.

Oh, I know, it's just a little jarring sometimes to notice this really flagrantly obvious use of body language. A lot of the comics I read will randomly have some characters doing some action or caught in some pose that is very suggestive of (stereotypical) homosexuality, and it's often completely unintentional (or meant as a joke), so realising that yes, I'm seeing this, and yes, it's intentional... it's a little mind-blowing from time to time. ;3

It's funny, he came across as a lot more "gay" before they officially outed him -- but then, the artist for when they outed him was terrible.