Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / Fictional Women Around the World: Storm

Transcript

Fictional Women Around the World: Storm · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I never told you a production of iHeartRadio. And welcome
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: to another edition of the sub Sub Sub Sub segment
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Fictional Women around the World. And I'm just going to
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: say I've been putting this one off, oh because it's huge. Oh,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: but we're finally doing an episode on Storm from the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: X Men. Now that being said, this character does have
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: an enormous history, and not just a fictional one, but
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: one that reflects societal touchstones at the time. She was
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: written like the US Civil rights movement, a lot of
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: social movements. So I think we should do a full
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: length episode on her and all the stuff around her.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: But for now, we're doing a condensed segment, all right,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and best let's see. Don't test me. I do love Storms.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: She was one of my favorite She was one of
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: my favorite X Men for sure. But on top of
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: that standard Marvel disclaimer, Oh my gosh, reboots, Red cons
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: so many conflicting narratives multiverses there is no way we
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: could possibly cover them all here or even in a
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: full length episode. To be honest, I'll talk about her
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: accent changes in the actual show. No, I don't talk
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: much about the movies in here, honestly. Okay, okay, but yes,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: that is something we could revisit. Yeah, I will say this,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: We're largely focusing on her earlier stories. Okay, And if
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: you didn't know, I'm always curious if someone will be like, oh,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I've never heard of X Men. X Men is a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: huge property with over twelve movies I think, and now
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Disney is involved, so who knows what's going to happen.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: A ton of comics, of which Storm appeared in over
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: seven five hundred of them. She's in games, she's the products,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: et cetera. She is a popular character. She's in all
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: kinds of things. With all that said, Storm is one
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: of the most powerful mutants in the X Men universe,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: with the ability to control the weather. They are actually
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: really fun limitations she has that I love. It's like
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: about atmospheric pressure and stuff. Oh so nerdy. She was
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: first introduced as a character in nineteen seventy five's giant
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: sized X Men Number one comic, developed by writers and
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: artists Lynn Wine and Dave Cockrum. This comic was looking
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: to revamp the X Men franchise and renew interest, and
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: one way they were going about doing that was introducing
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: new mutants, and a lot of them were multinational and multicultural.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: You can imagine some of them were better representations than others,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: but Storm was one. Later Chris Claremont took over writing
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: of this character and gets a lot of credit for
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: her earlier storylines. So for the origin story, Storm was
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: born Aroa Monroe in New York. Her mother was a
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Kenyan woman descended from royalty, while her father was an
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: African American photographer. As a baby, she and her parents
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: moved to Cairo, and at the age of five, her
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: parents died after a plane crashed into their home. I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: don't remember that. The crash buried her and her dead parents,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: her alive parents dead, and left her with claustrophobia that
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: she would continue to struggle with for the rest of
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: her life. It took her three days to dig herself out,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: so pretty grim origin story. From there, she survived by
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: pickpocketing on the streets of Cairo until she eventually traveled
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: to Kenya and discovered her ability to control the weather.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Some of this is kind of, like I said, a
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: lot's happening in these comics, so some of the timeline
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: is a little messy. She then started to use her
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: powers to do things like water the crops for the
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: local so she was really respected. Eventually, word got out
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: to Professor ex leader of the X Men, and he
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: recruited her to join. After she tried to pickpocket in
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: he was like, think, I know where you should go,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and this is where she learned she's descended from a
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: line of African women who were mutants. Just to break
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: down her powers a bit, because they are pretty cool.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Storm cannot create situations that do not exist on Earth.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: If she's upset, she can accidentally manifest a storm. So
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: her emotional and physical wellbeing play a role in her abilities,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: and in some instances she can control the air in
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the human body or the pressure in the human ear.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: She's also connected to the Earth and can occasionally feel
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: its pain. On top of that, she's really skilled. I know, right,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: it sucks. Oh, okay, keep going. Yes, no, I had
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: the same reaction. She is also very skilled in combat,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: weaponry and piloting. Honestly, if I had listed all of
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: her skills it would be forever. But she's all around
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: a good fighter. You want her on your team and yes,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: condensing here Okay. At one point she lost her powers.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: At one point, she was married to T'Challa aka Black Panther.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: It didn't in will. She became a leader of the
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: X Men of the team and Wolverine. No it wasn't Wolverine,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: it well, no, Wolverine did push back against her at first,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: and then Cyclops came in and was like, I feel
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: like I should be leader. But she won the battle
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: between them, and ultimately people were like, yes, she's the leader,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: we accept you. She was possessed by Dracula, yes, yes,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: uh huh, they go places Samantha. Because of her strength,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: she attracted a lot of enemies who wanted to use
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: her abilities. She was deaged at one point and teamed
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: up with a Gambit, who you probably know is like
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: the New Orleans Gambler mutant. She led a rescue efforts
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: of mutant children. She learned she could become an elemental being.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: She had a thor like hammer at one point. And yes,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: there's a multiverse too, so there's lots lots of different storms.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: But she's I think what they call her Class six,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Omega six. She's like one of the most powerful mutants,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and this leadership part was really big. She lost her powers,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: thinks in part to a dude who she was romantically
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: interested in. I might they had kind of a strange relationship.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Returned to Africa to sort some things within her, and
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: then returned to challenge Psyclops to a duel, as I said,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: over who should lead the X Men, and she won
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: without her powers. This was so new at the time
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: to see a black woman leading in mainstream media like this,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and she did it even without her abilities. Who this
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: character is often praised as the one that got the
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: ground work, the backstory, and led to her becoming a leader,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: so like people really put in the work instead of
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: like shoehorning in a token, you know, Like it was like, really,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: she had a really fascinating story and she had these
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: really interesting powers, and people really liked her. She also
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: became friends with Jean Gray, who helped her acclimate to
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Western culture and overcome or at least manage her claustrophobia.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know if this is true, but one thing
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I read said she lost her virginity to black panther
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: at the age of twelve. Yeah, I don't know. I
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's sure, but I did read that somewhere.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: No I don't like this either. After that she killed
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: a man after an attempted sexual assault in nineteen eighty three,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: her look changed drastically, with a white mohawk and a
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: lot of leather. I laughed because apparently the artist was
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: doing a joking riff on mister t who. I realize
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: a lot of people listening might not know, and it stuck.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: I think maybe a lot of people listening don't know.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I can't be wrong, right in Oh No, this was
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: for the uncanny X men, and I will say she
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: was not immune to the sexy costume treatment. I can't
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: think of a single woman comic book character who was,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: off the top of my head. I'm sure someone, but
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of hers weren't terrible. Some of them were,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: but a lot of them were okay. But yeah, she
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: was just this hugely impactful character, truly arconic. I'm one
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: of the first black women leaders in this space, and
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: she is really popular to this day, ranks as one
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: of the most popular X men. She's just cool and
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: her powers are cool. She's a good leader with a
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: good story. Please write in if there's any storyline our
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: thoughts you have about this character that you think we
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: should come back to because I do want to do
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: a whole episode on her. You can email us at
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Hello at stuff Onever Told You dot com. You can
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: find us on zoo sky at mom Stuff podcast, or
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: in Instagram and TikTok at stuff One Never Told You.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: We're also on YouTube. We have a teepelt the store,
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: and we have a book you can get wherever you
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: get your books. Thanks as always too our super producer
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Christina expect to producer My and a contribute Joey. Thank
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: you and thanks to you for listening. Stuff I Never
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Told You is protection of my heart Radio. For more
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: podcasts on my heart Radio, you can check out the
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: heart Radio app Apple podcast, where you listen to your
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: favorite sho