Originally published at: https://happy.geektherapy.com/2024/04/09/the-power-of-nostalgia-activated-by-x-men-97/
38: Ariel and Stef unpack the continuation of a beloved series with X-Men 97, exploring its impact from therapy to education. They discuss nostalgia’s role in healing trauma and connecting with students, the nuances of characters like Rogue and Storm, and how X-Men’s diversity and inclusion themes resonate today. Tune in for a journey through the past, present, and future of one of the most iconic superhero teams.
Download free some hand-dany worksheets on social and emotional learning and healing that are X-Men themed:
Summary
Summary of HPOE38:
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Introduction: Ariel and Stef introduce the episode by discussing the critical lens they apply to Disney mediums and their expectations from the content they consume.
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X-Men 97 Discussion: The hosts delve into the newly released X-Men 97 series on Disney+, exploring its continuation from the original animated series and the incorporation of nostalgia through commercial breaks and episode pacing.
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Therapeutic and Educational Uses of Nostalgia: Ariel shares how nostalgia in media can aid in trauma therapy, while Stef discusses its application in educational settings to connect with students.
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Character Analysis: The discussion covers the character dynamics in X-Men 97, including the controversial Magneto and Rogue storyline, the depiction of characters like Storm, and the evolution of Jubilee.
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Memory and Identity: They explore how the series addresses themes of memory, identity, and perspective taking, particularly through the neurodivergent experience and the fresh perspective of children.
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Closing Thoughts: The episode concludes with reflections on using X-Men in after-school activities and classrooms, highlighting the series’ potential to discuss diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB).
Hello everyone, welcome to Happiest Pod on Earth. I’m Ariel, a licensed therapist who uses clients’ passions and fandoms to help them grow and heal from trauma and mental unwellness. And I’m Stef. I’m an educator who uses passions and fandoms to help connect with my students and help them grow and learn about themselves. Here at Happiest Pod, we dissect Disney mediums with a critical lens. Why? Because we are more than just fans and we expect more out of the mediums we consume. So Stef, what are we talking about today? Well, it’s a hot topic.
Transcription
Hot and old at the same time. And then it goes into Whitney Houston’s whatever you want from me. Just kidding. We are not talking about Whitney Houston, even though she is an icon and a goddess. RIP. We are talking about X -Men 97. Those are fireworks. Why are we talking about this? Well, obviously the new series has come out on Disney +.
if you’ve been living under a rock, which is okay. X -Men 97 is essentially starting where the old animated X -Men left off. So it is taking place in 1997. I do have some questions about that. However, it is even bringing back the nostalgic experience of commercial breaks and having to wait for the next film.
Yeah, and also the pacing, I think, of it. Just short 30 -minute episodes, things that we would watch after school every single day, or maybe even before school, if they did a rerun before you headed out to the bus or the car, however you got to school, walked. I think it really transports not only millennials like us who experienced it back, but also kids now who are viewing it on a streaming site.
but also being limited in how much they can consume each episode. So it’s very interesting to play on nostalgia. And I know we both talk about nostalgia in our practices. So what do you use nostalgia with connecting to your clients or maybe helping them through something that’s difficult? Well, so as you know, I work with a lot of clients who’ve experienced trauma and oftentimes that trauma occurred when they were a child or in childhood.
So reclaiming memories, reclaiming experiences from childhood in their adulthood with the experience of childlike wonder is a huge healing process. Oftentimes what happens is that clients experience a loss, a lot of grief and loss around something that mattered to them, something that really brought them joy. If the trauma happened,
in childhood during those times. So I have like, even now with the X -Men, I have clients who didn’t finish watching the series because that was around the time that something severe had happened. So getting an opportunity to re -experience new stories and still activate that inner child that loves the show, that hears the music, is ready for the intro, it re -formats parts of the brain and…
creates the ability to have new memories as well as retrospective memories of that trauma through traumatic growth. Right. And I’m so happy that you said a lot of the things that IE would use, but in a different way. In the classroom, nostalgia is really another word for connecting with kids and where they’re at. So everything that they have coming into the classroom is an experience. It’s a memory. So whenever you’re introducing a math lesson, a reading lesson, you ask them, have you seen something like this before?
How can you connect this with something that you already know? So nostalgia is just a fancy way of reaching even further back. Because I mean, to them, nostalgia is maybe like four to five years back when they were like five. If I’m thinking about my fourth graders when I was in the classroom, their nostalgia doesn’t reach that far back. So I don’t think maybe the word is correct, but the concept is still the same. If you’re trying to…
connect to kids wherever they’re starting off from in order to teach them a new concept, you have to see what’s there first. And that includes trying to figure out how they react to a certain procedure, how they react to a certain thing. That’s why sometimes math is triggering because kids did not have a good introduction to math. And sometimes kids didn’t have a good introduction to reading. So maybe the setting, because they’re controlling it as the teacher, you may be able to…
I guess, for lack of better words, manipulate the situation to make it so that they’re comforted and are able to be vulnerable and learn about whatever you’re teaching them. No, that’s really beautiful because you’re right, the memory for children doesn’t reach as far back in the same as adults. So the memory is actually even fresher and might even be more accurate. One of the struggles my adult clients have is trauma gets stored in a part of the brain where it is only
accessible through feelings, which is why when traumatic memories come up, it’s hard to verbalize them. It’s actually difficult to describe it because it’s not put in the part of the brain where words are accessible. But we can sort of describe the emotional sensation if we have learned enough emotional words. Whereas with children, I think it’s not only visceral. A lot of the research is showing that they’re accessing it pretty much exactly the same as they experienced it, especially if it is
a memory of like, you know, just a week ago or two weeks ago where it might not have been coded for us as like caregivers or parents that it encoded really well. And I know you’ve talked about this with your son and like him knowing I know where my toy car is. Oh yeah. Like I asked him to find things that I’ve misplaced because I cannot remember where I put them, but yet he knows exactly where it is.
not just because he’s eye level to the floor, but because his memory is so fresh, his brain is still rapidly producing new thoughts, new ideas. But yeah, I mean, his memory is just top notch right now. So I mean, for him to be able to remember something and they can articulate things without a bias or a lens because they’ve had such a little experience in the world, they can tell you exactly like it is.
you know, a kid will tell you if they don’t like milk. A kid will tell you if they don’t like the lunch and they’ll tell you straight up, this is nasty. So because they have those fresh memories in their mind, it’s literally like it happened yesterday. Yes. Yes. And really pointing out that bias with the lens, because even with our own memories, like if we are not feeling good about ourselves, that bias of like, I was a bad person back then, or I didn’t do good enough to protect myself, or I wasn’t.
smart enough or savvy enough, especially if it’s like trauma that involved someone harming you, we have that blame. And then when we get post -traumatic growth, we might be able to have a more compassionate look back. Whereas with children, they’re still learning to understand how to interpret a memory. And it might be the younger they are, just this is what it is for me.
And I do want to mention my neurodivergent kids, they are even more expressive as to, you know, being reactive to something, whether it be negative or positive, that you’re introducing them. So for me, my neurodivergent kids are the ones that give me the raw data that I need to be able to move forward with a lesson, to see whether I can pivot or not, because they’re processing things in…
a different plane sometimes. And being able to access some of those memories, you find it in their physical movement. You’ll find it in the way that maybe they’ll make eye contact or avert eye contact. So it’s really all of those physical cues that really help you into making those split decisions on whether you should go forward with the plan at hand, or if you wanna do something a little bit different or try on a different day. I’m curious for you before we go into our reactions to this.
Reboot? Reboot? Continuation? Continuation? Yeah. I’m curious for you, how do you see yourself using X -Men in the after -school activities? Or how to maybe talk to other teachers who use it in the classroom? Yeah, I mean, there’s so many different ways you can approach it. I think my synapses are firing immediately when I saw X -Men again, because I think X -Men is such a beautiful representation of diversity and inclusion, and also the pros and cons of people
being diverse but living in a world where not everybody sees things the same way. So for myself, I work in a school that is SEL, Social Emotional Learning, and DEIB forward, which is diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. So we can definitely use our mindfulness blocks with little snippets of X -Men, even the snippets of conflict that you’ll see in the series where they’re faced with, let’s say the new character, Roberto.
He doesn’t even want to talk to his parents. He wants to be isolated from everyone because he’s so afraid of his powers and how they perceive it because he has such a strong bond with his family. I think that’s something that’s very relatable to a lot of people. If let’s say they’re growing up maybe thinking about what they want to do in life, but going against the status quo and maybe not doing something that their parents might not want them to do. So it’s not even about your even physical identity or the way you identify yourself.
It’s really the way you choose to live your life, whether it be where you go to school, what you wanna do. You can go that route for older kids. For younger kids, you could just look at all the beautiful colors and see how different everyone is. Beast is a bright blue, Jubilee is a bright pink and yellow. Whenever I’m talking to younger kids, it’s always, what’s your favorite color? Or, Miss, what’s your favorite color? And so that’s how they start forming those first…
concepts of identity and because all the X -Men are so colorful, they can immediately latch to someone if they think they’re pretty or handsome or just fun to look at. So there’s different ways on different levels depending on how you wanna approach it. And I think that’s the beauty of X -Men because it is so diverse visually and socially and so many other ways. Yeah, I think even talking about that color blocking, like we’ve talked about color blocking when it comes to Dapper Day.
but actually when you introduce the idea of looking at a character through color blocking for children, you’re teaching the ability to be abstract. You have created abstraction about a representation of a character. If you can say like think blue, Beast. And if we’ve just only focused on that one part of that character, you’ve immediately introduced that new neural pathway in that way of thinking. Yeah, yeah, I love it. I just love because they use such.
different animation than kids are used to now. Now everybody’s used to the CGI through like Cocoa Melon and like, you know, using more digital arts. This is very old school and it takes them back to the way we would perceive things if we were to even draw them on a paper. Because I remember when I was young, I would draw a Rogue, I would draw a Jubilee, I would use, you know, just colored pencils and crayons to recreate some of my favorite characters and this is very accessible in that way. Beautiful, beautiful. And…
Now in the classroom setting, I’m curious, because there’s always the go -to, you can make a worksheet, right? But I’m thinking like, would you ever highlight a very like specific character? Like in talking about the new character, well, sorta new, Roberto. He’s Portuguese. And I think living here in LA, we hear a lot of Spanish. And when I heard him speak Portuguese in this last episode,
It was like, that sounds nothing to me like, Spanish. I think this is why X -Men is so great because they globalize it. And many shows,
only stay in America or their made up land, here we actually go to far away places that exist in real life. because X -Men is so situational, I would think of the day because in after school, we have a little bit of leeway to not have.
such structure in the day. So it’s not like I’m working through like an arc where I’m like teaching kids how to make an essay or something like that. We can take situational experiences in real life, let’s say during recess or something that happened yesterday and pull a scene and say, hey, let’s look at this and see if you pull anything from something that’s happened recently. I used to use that in my SEL lessons. Let’s say if two kids or a couple kids had a conflict on the yard during like soccer or something.
I would try to show like an avatar episode or show like a little clip that I can find on YouTube and like kind of mirroring that situation of, of course I’m not gonna find the exact same situation, but something similar to where people have conflict and they resolved it in a certain way. Or look at that conflict and say, how would you resolve this? These are real life situations. I know we’re gonna talk about WonderCon later, but I think something that one of our colleagues,
Dr. Elizabeth Hahn said, she said that pop culture is just a mirror for real life. And when you’re talking about using it in therapy or if you’re using it in the classroom, pop culture is such a powerful tool to say, hey, let’s look at these things that happen and look at the way that we go about life and see, could I have made it a different way? Could I have made different decisions? And if so, how, and would that be positive or negative? So I mean, for you,
How would you use X -Men? Because it’s so fascinating. Yeah, I think as a narrative therapist, we do exactly that. We perspective taking with stories. Traditionally, it’s the story the individual is telling themselves. But a safe space to do it is looking at someone else’s story. And it immediately makes me think of Magneto when he was facing the council. Yeah. Was it the UN or? I think it was the UN, yeah. Yeah.
He’s facing the world. It was pretty serious. His crimes against humanity. Yeah. And he literally has a monologue about the fact that there has always been discrimination and oppression of people who are different, who are marginalized. And I know, perspective taking, a younger version of me could never see Magneto as someone that I had aligned values with. Right. And now as an adult, I’m like, yeah, yeah, you are.
This is human history and he’s even bringing in his own traumas and experiences losing his family because of the Holocaust and his parents dying in the gas chamber. He doesn’t say those things, but he says we were persecuted because we dared to call a God by another name. And so that perspective taking allows us to have.
more empathy. And I think for my clients, when they see themselves as the villain in their story, I would show that clip and be like, do you even like, agree with any of this? Cause I know that’s what we did with Killmonger. Like everything he said, I was like, point, valid. You can go ahead and sit there, I guess. So.
This is now another introduction of that. And we get the retrospective. If you grew up with the X -Men, you probably always thought of Magneto as the bad guy. And literally the intro scene is these two groups smashing into each other. And we always saw that other group as the bad group. Now we’re starting to see that nuance. And so through narrative therapy, I would highlight perspective taking. Take on that perspective. Be that individual of you are just fighting for your people.
is that inherently bad. Right. And in the classroom on the playground, we call that putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. Yep. It’s exactly what it is. It’s just saying, hey, let’s just take a minute and like, think about it this way. Break it down and be like, how would you make that decision differently now? And I think this reboot of X -Men is so clever in the way that they presented Magneto this time, because you’re right, when I was younger, Magneto, bad guy, has a helmet, looks like a Sentinel.
Yes. All of that stuff like has to do with metal cold like all of those like things made me think bad guy. Yeah. They took off his helmet. Yes. So now you see more of his he’s more humanized. He’s more humanized. He’s a little buff, a little bit of a zaddy if you just a little bit. I’ve heard from friends not speak for myself, speak for other people. And his voice is like like a leader.
And when you’re looking at Cyclops and his struggle to identify himself as a leader, you immediately see it in Magneto already. And you’re not immediately thinking bad guy. You’re thinking of, oh, this person is making decisions and we should probably listen to what he has to say. Even though there is a power dynamic clash between the two, you can obviously see that there is history there and he has experience. So that’s naturally somebody who.
people are gonna gravitate to. And that’s not the Magneto that I grew up with. Well, and then even talking about perspective taking, how many times have we been in a class with a coworker and they have now been promoted and we must see them as leadership and treat them differently, right? You can also take on that perspective that Cyclops took when he thought, well, I’m the natural leader, one, because I’m one of the first and because this is what I think Xavier wanted. And we’ve always seen him as like the…
aside removing Xavier, we’ve kind of always seen him as like the de facto leader. Yeah, like the lead. So now that someone is actually identified as like, no, they are. That’s that can be there’s some relief there. That pressure is removed from me. But also it’s like now I don’t feel like I’m good enough. We can take on that that perspective, right? What it feels to be put in that position and then try and put.
all those hurt feelings aside. Cause maybe it’s like when we’re working, like that person made a snide remark, but in this case, like literally Magneto has attempted to destroy the world and everything that he’s loved multiple times. There’s a track record there. So it’s a little bit of redemption for him, but also things are happening in Cyclops’s life that does not allow him to be the leader and step up because his family’s getting torn apart. I don’t know if we did a spoiler alert, but at this point we are going to be talking about
episodes all the way up until the most recent one. So spoiler alert, if you haven’t started it, turn this off now. Turn this off now. We won’t put that in the show notes. It will be known. There will be spoilers. It will be known. But moving forward, now that you’ve done all that, you’re coming back, seeing all the episodes. Cyclops does not even know who his wife is right now. No. And he just had a baby. So I think he’s not in the right mental state to be leading a whole group, let alone a mutant revolution. Yeah.
and going against Washington and all the factions of the UN because he is just trying to pick up the pieces and trying to figure himself out. So Magneto clearly is just the natural one to, quote unquote, slide on in and lead the team whenever needed and actually make up a plan to figure out the future of the X -Men. Yes. Yes. And mutants.
So I’m curious for you, because we’re already on the topic of Magneto. Thoughts on Magneto and Rogue? I don’t know if I needed it. OK, so Rogue is one of my favorite X -Men. She was one of the earliest cosplays that I’ve done. I remember one time me and my friends, they were Halloween partying. We were all members of the X -Men. And I could not, this is back before Amazon, before you could do, you would have to go to a wig store to find a wig.
you would have to go to a costume store to find a costume. I remember buying green leggings and yellow leggings and cutting out the crotch part and figuring out how am I going to sew this together? I didn’t. I glued it and it fell apart by the end of the night. But the visual was their early days of cosplay with no sewing experience whatsoever because I thought Rogue was so cool. And I think I know I think the X -Men movies had just
come out with Anna Paquin as Rogue and I loved her and I love her as an actress and she did such a good job of bringing Rogue to life on the big screen. Your hair is a little Rogue. Yeah, a little bit, oh my God. Yeah, you’re right. Because I’ve always wanted to do that, just have like the piece of, you know, white hair because it’s cool and I can suck people’s powers. And you know how people always ask like, what your favorite superpower is or if you had a superpower, what would it be?
It’s like a classic icebreaker thing. We do it in classrooms. I’m sure you’ve done it in therapy. And ever since I knew about Rogue, I’m like, I want her powers. The ability to take other people’s powers for a short time, just so I can taste it, and then move on to another one. No, there was, did you ever watch the show Heroes? Yes. And then antagonist Sylar? Yes. Yeah, I was like, I want that. I want that. He got to keep them forever, although he murdered people. And apparently he didn’t have to, from what I remember. He could have just taken the power.
or learn how to do it or poke someone’s head, I don’t know. Yeah, I mean, Rogue was like cool. She was very like, I mean, she had a cool love interest, Gambit. And that’s why I think I’ve had that in my mind. And when I saw the first couple scenes with her and Gambit, I’m like, oh my God, they’re they all. And Gambit’s so cute. Look at him and his crop top. Cute, he’s hot. He’s hot, yeah. I was a pure simp for that. Anywho.
And then all of a sudden, Magneto comes in and I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Because Anna Paquin was young Rogue. I’ve always seen rogue as like somebody who may be college age, high school age. No one older than, even in the old X -Men, she didn’t seem that old to me, maybe late 20s. So I always thought of her as like a young soul because she was very playful. And then I saw that happen and I’m like, oh. And it.
It hasn’t added anything for me yet in these four episodes. I think if, I don’t know if they’re gonna expand upon it later on, their history, I know there is a history, it is in the comic books. I’m not super familiar with that storyline, but I mean, as far as I know, it is Rogan Gambit and they look so good together and I stan. I am on the ship, it is sailing. But what are your thoughts about it? Because…
So I had to look it up and I’m trying to find the reference. I’m like, how can they touch? And so a lot of people have been theorizing that Magneto’s magnetism, he’s able to make like basically like a human condom with it. Okay. Right. And so they can like a whole body suit. Yeah, a whole body suit. Yeah. And that’s how they’re able to touch. Because he can manipulate the elements. But in the comics, she absorbs the power of
Polaris, that was Polaris. Polaris’s powers in a previous timeline, which they had revisited. And it is canon in the comics that they get together. And what’s something that my roommate really highlighted, which I realized in retrospect after they had shared that was,
this is more adult, like it does feel a little more violent. So it makes sense that they are trying to really up the ante with like romance triangling, but even the physicality of it, because the whole point is that Rogue can’t touch anybody. So to see her touch someone and someone we’ve always seen as the bad guy, like that had so many emotional layers and lots of like, right? I think there were a couple of moments that you had that sort of thing because,
when Jean Grey or not Jean Grey, Madalyn Pryor was having her baby, I was like, they’re doing this. Yes. They’re doing this. And the last time I saw somebody give birth was on House of the Dragon. That did not go well. So I was like, they’re actually showing somebody who’s pregnant giving birth and somebody delivering her baby. I didn’t think that they were going to go that like visually accurate with it. But the fact that there may be.
some kids watching this or teenagers or yes, like you said, it’s more tailored towards adults. These are – Because of the nostalgia. Because of the nostalgia, but also I think so many of the elements of X -Men are transcendent in that way and they’ve always been tackling the big issues, but behind this sort of veil of superheroes. And cartoons. And cartoons, which is a very childlike concept, but in reality,
I mean, the creators of X -Men were so smart to see beyond that and use them as social commentary and, you know, human commentary too on the ways that we deal with people who are othered and how they do the same exact things that everyone else does. Absolutely. And I think you’re highlighting all of these different moments that are, are adult, not just like the violence, but…
we hear about a baby being born. We don’t really get to see it on TV too much. And I don’t think, I mean, I can’t remember a comic where there was a birth scene. It was just, if there was like people in the waiting room and you’d hear the cry and then they’d come in. And never did you see like potential pain. And again, that layer of discrimination, Rogue had to be the one.
to birth this baby. Yes. Simply because parents were mutants. That was it. Yeah. And again, that layer of discrimination does exist in the world. And how they were in the hospital and they were like, no, we will not deliver your baby. And she was just like, no, you will deliver this baby. Yeah. And given that…
when it comes to civil rights and civil rights movement, more marginalized individuals have been added, more experiences of protection. But this, you know, the show does mirror, like, there’s always someone that hasn’t been included. In this case, there’s no law that says that you can’t discriminate against mutants from what I remember from the show. So yeah, there’s a lot that…
this show is tackling that we haven’t seen in cartoons, especially one that looks the way it does. Yeah. Now, speaking of the timeline and it being 1997, there are some things that make me think that I don’t remember that being things that we talked about back then or words we use. So the first one is Jubilee when she’s explaining to Roberto who Magneto is, he’s like Xavier’s ex -bestie.
I never used the word bestie in 1997. Never. Did that exist? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t know who was supposed… Isn’t that someone on a set that makes sure something’s historically accurate? Yes. Not a dialogue coach, but whoever’s editing this. That is clearly 2000 and… By gosh. 2020 and now? Bestie is not something like best friend. Best friend.
You would have those necklaces. Yeah, BFF. Yes. Definitely could have used BFF. Could have used BFF. There are no totalies, the amount of totalies that she could have said to mask that. Yes. I did clock her say bestie. Yes. But that like –
there are these moments where I’m watching it that I’m pulled out that it’s 1997. Cause I’m like, we didn’t talk like that. We just didn’t. I’m sorry. I mean, even, okay. So speaking of the recent episode, they did so many great things. I know when I was watching it, I recently dressed up as Jubilee at WonderCon. And I’ve always loved Jubilee because I identified with her. She’s Asian American. It was the only one that I identified with when I was younger. So naturally I wanted to dress up like her.
And I think she’s such a fun character who would not want to use fireworks as her powers. That’s just fun. That’s just fun. And I love 80s video games. So this whole entire episode, which is actually half of an episode, I think it was great the way they did it because they pulled from the actual X -Men arcade games, which I used to play a lot. And the eight bit, the 16 bit, and it gradually got newer and newer. I think that was very clever.
But yeah, the way that she said a lot of things, even when looking at the console, like, I’ve never seen this before, but it’s here in my room. I just want to celebrate my birthday. Let’s just escape. Everything about that was so teenager. It was teen angst, teen yearning, teen longing, teen romance. I think it definitely played to a lot of the things that make YA so like palpable
because these are all emotions that we’ve all been through. But yeah, I think that her little storyline really catered to a group of people that we don’t normally make content for anymore. A lot of their content is accessed through their phones on like little clips. So I think this was just like a beautiful way of.
saying, hey, tweens, we didn’t forget about you. Even though this is kind of adult, I know you may be interested in this. And this could be a gateway for you to experience X -Men in a way that speaks to you. Well, and I think even the really beautiful moment of her digital adult self, one saying, I understand. I totally understand why you would want to live in these old memories, which again brings us back to this episode and the nostalgia.
But also saying that new discovery, new memories are also good too. Yeah, and wrinkles are okay. White hair is okay. And like that, like your personality isn’t gonna go away. It’s just like, I still love video games. I’ve been playing this game like literally multiple digital worlds. On the last surviving bit. It’s very reminiscent of Ant -Man. And the way that they showed timetravel
I’m traveling that way and how you could still exist in another world but still have a part of you be there. I think that was, now that they’re playing with the multiverses, I’m so like enthusiastic to see the different ways that they’re approaching it and address things like growing with age, dealing with aging, letting go of your youth and what that means to you because I think all of us, especially all of us, you know, geeky kids, we’re all grappling with the fact of,
how do I still retain myself or what I knew about myself now that I’m growing into these different stages of my life? Yeah, just like that episode was talking to the tweens, it was also talking to adults who are struggling with literally, like we say, like adulting, right? Like I need to accept the fact that I’m grown. That doesn’t mean giving up my passions, but it also means that I can’t only live in my past. I can use those great things about my past to,
elevate myself and to evolve and be a better version of myself because she was really cool. She was so legit. She was so legit. And I’m like, great. We’re going to see a lot of this at San Diego Comic -Con now. I want to see how people dress up as her because she’s so cool. And to see her like spinning blades. That was cool. And like, oh my gosh, I can do that. Yeah. Very Tron like. And those are, and I’m thinking like fireworks when I…
Well, there are all kinds of fireworks. There are ones that spin. As Disney enthusiasts, we’ve seen lots of fireworks. Yes. So this might be a way for us to see her power start to elevate. Because the joke used to be that her power was simply sparklers. And I never thought that as a kid. I thought her power was the coolest. Yeah.
But now I think we’re also seeing that evolution, that growth and that change. Cause all of the other X -Men are adults. They’re kind of fully fledged in their powers. At least like the way we’ve been introduced to them. I mean, Jean Grey is already discovering all these other powers that she’s had. My God. There’s even been been people. She’s been a Goblin Goblin and a phoenix. Like, yeah, she has way too many powers. So now we can start to see that evolution with.
Jubilee, I think is exciting. And I think that’s very formative that it’s on her 18th birthday. Something that’s a rite of passage for many young women. I know it happens different ages and different cultures, but 18 is normally the age where you’re like, okay, this is another step into young adulthood now. Like, how do I want to celebrate? So I think all of those were very subtle, like nods to how people, how kids grow up, how young women grow up and see themselves. And you know, how they…
now are like, I’m gonna age one day. And you know, how is that gonna look like? Is it scary? And so we definitely see that through Jubilee’s episode. And as part of our closing out, we did just finish WonderCon. We did have our food panel, which was hilarious and a lot of fun. And connecting the two, I don’t know about you, but they need to give me Gambit’s beignet recipe.
I want to see how it stacks up against Tiana’s beignet recipe.
if anybody out there has a Gambit beignet recipe, I wanna know it. Like, does he put a little something else in it? That makes it delicious? Is it spicy? Is it fiery? Like, is there something about it? Because we know we can stuff them. Yeah, absolutely. And if you are gonna make them, you gotta wear the crop top, because that has been a cultural phenomenon. I know the voice actor of Gambit at WonderCon wore, I don’t think it was a crop top, I think it was just like,
a sleeveless shirt. Yeah. But it did have that like generic rock symbol on it. I think that was really cool. I’ve seen a ton of memes about it on the Internet. But yeah, I’m very curious to see what Gambit’s beignets taste like. Yes. Yes. And I would like to see them stop doing him dirty with the rogue and magneto story. You know, I’m very upset about that. I think somebody who looks statuesque. Yes.
and has such a cool haircut. Shout out to the hairstylists this time around, animators. Ororo Storm’s haircut. Beautiful. Beautiful. I think I saw one Storm at WonderCon and she was so beautiful. I love the way they did her hair. Also, they’re doing our girl dirty. She had to be the martyr. Yes. How do we feel about that? I am angry about that. And again, it’s in the comics and they’re trying to introduce more canon in.
Love that. I do not love what they have chosen to introduce Cannon in because I think I can do away with the Magneto and Rogue thing. But it exists, whatever. But I definitely could do away with Storm losing her powers. And I am really excited for when, I’m hoping, she actually reclaims them and gets them back. But I think for me, because her powers have never been presented as like a mutation, but they like literally call her a goddess on the show.
So the idea for me that she could lose something that is part of her god, like her goddessness and her being a black woman, like it just angers me that she had to be, like you said, the martyr. She is the one who got sacrificed for humans to be like, okay, so I guess we like shouldn’t have our foes, which as a child, I did not get that, but now I got it. Yeah.
jumped in front of Magneto because her heart is so big that she did not see any of that. She just wants to save a life. A life. She could have done it for a human. She could have done it for a mutant. That’s just the type of – She would have done it for an animal. Yeah, she would have done it for an animal. She would have done it for a cloud. That’s the type of person she is. And I think to bring her down, I mean, yes, it is a testament of how strong she is, but we don’t have to put her through that. Yeah, I guess for me, I only see those types of arcs necessary when we are –
trying to sort of make somebody get rehumanized. And what I mean by that is like access their humanity. Like Iron Man, for example. Yes, but she has never been haughty, high and mighty and has had a lot of humanity despite being called a goddess and pretty much is one. And even like Omega threat, right? So the fact that we have taken her down to now she is just a human, a very powerful, strong one, she’s still –
Very welcome to nature, very fit. But again, it had to be the black woman, come on. Yeah, we could have chosen somebody else. We could have chosen Magneto, he needs to be. As much as he’s changed and I have some like allyship with him and the fact that yes, discrimination exists. Yeah. Yo, yo. Yet again, we do not know how this is gonna conclude yet. So these are all thoughts midway. Maybe we’ll do an end of the series recap. I’m very excited to see.
I’ll be tuning in every single Wednesday. I think it’s so accessible for me as a parent to watch 30 minutes. Speaking of the 30 minutes, I like how they broke this episode up into two, which is very common in not only kids shows, but 90 shows. They have an A storyline and a B storyline. And then they did that very, I think they did it very perfectly. The pacing was fast, but it was enough for me to be like, okay, that began and ended and now this one is beginning. And then there’s that part.
too, which is another very nineties thing. I remember sitcoms used to do this, stay tuned for next week, cliffhanger So I really liked those little details, but I really like it so far. It was more than I ever thought it was going to be. Yes. Yes. I think this is the first time a reboot’s been like, executioned well. And then I think some other things aside from seeing how Storm gets her powers back.
I’m really interested to see if we’re gonna see some of the other well -known villains and how they are going to be introduced, especially if we’re trying to work in harmony now. Yeah, and I think it’s gotten so big to where people are breaking down the intros and the differences in like Jean Grey’s hair. First it was Madalyn Pryor, now it’s Jean Grey with the little face mask thing. People are already noticing Mystique, they’re noticing Sabretooth, they’re noticing Juggernaut.
We have yet to see all of these people. I’m not sure how many episodes we’re getting. Maybe 10? I don’t know. That’s something I’ll look up later, but hopefully we get, I mean, if it’s like a Disney plus arc, usually it’s about 10 episodes now because the original ran from 92 to 97. They had five seasons. So we’re going to see with the popularity, how long it’s going to go. I mean, they’re giving a new life into the voice actors because almost all of them have come back in one way or another. So there’s definitely, um,
There’s some praise in that too, because we’re getting real life nostalgia. Yes. Yes. So if you have been watching X -Men 97, please let us know your thoughts and feelings around apparently Zaddy Magneto. Zaddy Magneto. Or technically Zaddy Gambit. Zaddy Gambit. Go ahead and tweet at us, DM us on Instagram at happiestpodgt.
and on Twitter, xhappiestpodgt. And let us know your thoughts with these show notes. Actually, for this episode, we will have some worksheets that you can give your clients or students that are X -Men themed. So you can download those for free. Yep, definitely. And shout out to Stack Up for hosting us with this beautiful background. We also did not mean to wear.
black and white Mickey shirts by accident. Also vintage, like nostalgia. I got this from a thrift store and yours looks very vintage because it’s black and white. I got mine on Walmart. Okay, you know what? But you didn’t just get it, right? No, I’ve had it for like four years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this was like a repurposed tie -dye. And now we can show it because we have video. Yay! Thank you to everybody who joined us on our panel at WonderCon. Hopefully we’ll see you soon. But yeah, we’ll see you on the next episode. Thanks everyone.
Media/Characters Mentioned
- X-Men 97
- Animated X-Men
- Magneto
- Cyclops
- Jean Grey
- Rogue
- Storm
- Jubilee
- Roberto
Topics/Themes Mentioned
- Nostalgia
- Character analysis
- Memory
- Identity
- DEIB
- Storytelling
- Human rights
- Mutants
- Education
- Trauma
- Memory
- Perspective taking
- Being in someone else’s shoes
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