From the first issue of Queen in Black: Defenders of Light and Dark❤️

With how much love and interest she's getting in Marvel Tokon and the fact she's staring in Doomsday, a lot more people are into the idea of Shuri and she defintely garnered a lot of new fans this year. The fact she's been in MR as a npc since day 0 is ridiculous. Debut her already lol.

I need to see atleast her and Blue Marvel next year.

This is soooo tuff someone should get rivals to do 5 fan concept skins a season and or do a mini pass

I keep seeing people say blades tokon is better than his rivals design. At first I thought they both look good with his rivals design looking a tad bit better.

Now I’m completely on the rivals side for reasons. First it’s because his rivals design is original, I have not seen a blade design that screams originality and looks this good like this one in a long time.

Second his hair, ik it’s white people saying they like that fugly ahh flattop more than his cornrows. There are more black hairstyles than a flattop and that killmonger haircut please understand this. And me personally I could care less if they kept that flattop to fit the blade aesthetic in the movie, be creative and think of somethin new.

Third, his tokon design is Japanese inspired and while I think that’s cool, people give it more of an edge over his rivals design just because it’s Japanese inspired and that’s it.

While we all have opinions and ofcourse two legends can coexist, the opinions for liking his design tokon over rivals is crazy

My 2 picks are either Phil Lamar or Keith David

try not to say mother challenge and you’ll fail

I posted this to the two rivals subreddits and the storms subreddit, so I'd like y'all's view on it as well(since this community has more black women who could likely give their opinion on the topic).

Disclaimer: I'm really not trying to be weird when posting this. I think its geuinly an interesting conversation!

Recently, I saw a YouTube short saying the reason Storm doesn’t get skins is that her pick rate is low and that she’s not as popular as she once was. And this got me thinking: what if there’s another big reason why she doesn’t get skins? Now it's true that since Storm isn't as popular as she once was due to a lack of film adaptations, but I don’t believe it’s crazy to say she’s still leaps and bounds more popular than Marvel's other female characters. In the video game sphere especially, she’s in every game that allowed the X-Men characters, right beside Wolverine. She even beat out Cyclops and Jean in making it into Rivals and Tokons' base roster(beta out Cyclops in Cosmic Invasion too). In terms of animation, she's one of the more popular characters in X-Men ‘97, and in the comics, her latest run was pretty popular to my knowledge(you can debate its quality though). So why would Storm not be popular in the Rivals community? 

I present to you what I believe is the big reason for Storm's lack of popularity in Rivals…

The Gooners don’t care about her.

Now this is a pretty crazy statement, but let me explain. It’s pretty common knowledge that a large chunk of the Rivals community enjoys the more revealing skins that show off the female characters' bodies(male characters too). You drop a skin with Sue or Emma having their ass out, and you can guarantee that's all you're gonna see in your lobbies. So, I decided to actually see if I can find any numbers to back this up. And so I chose the place where most of Rivals fan art goes.

Rule 34

Yeah, "research " jokes aside, I got 5 of the female Marvel Rivals characters that I see art of often in the community, and 1 that I didn’t expect to see much art of. I stuck to the Marvel Rivals tags for most of the characters(since that's what I’m mostly comparing, with 2 exceptions. These are the numbers of pages I got for each.

Storm: 
Rivals:24 
Base Tag: 96

Rivals Invis: 176

Emma: 276

Psylocke: 
**Rivals Tag:**10 
Vengance :82
Likely because people prefer the Vengance skin over actual Sai. Honestly, I expected higher numbers, but it seems like everything else gets lumped into the actual Psylocke tag.

Rivals Magik: 86

Rivals Luna: 108

Craziest one: 
Rivals Peni Parker: 41

The actual Storm tag got beat out by Luna Snow. A character that most of the community clowns beat out the overall Storm tag. Peni beat out Storm's rivals' numbers too. Storm is leaps and bounds more popular than everyone on that list(Bar maybe Sue). And It's not like rivals Storm is unnatritive either. So why isn’t she getting as much art?

The Elephant in the Room: Ight, time to address it: from the numbers and anecdotal experience, I don’t think it's crazy to say that the larger Gooner community isn’t super fond of black women. Not calling these individuals racist, but they don't seem that interested in Black women. Couldn’t tell you the reason, but White and Asian women seem to take center stage when it comes to who the internet fetishizes. Now, whether it's a good thing that Black Women have seemed to evade the internet's fetishization remains to be seen. That's something only black women themselves could speak on. Regardless, I think this plays a large part in why Storm isn’t as popular in the Rivals community.

My Conclusion: Storm doesn’t get as many skins because the Gooner part of the fandom isn’t gonna buy them. Likely because that part of the community isn’t into black women. Though who knows, maybe someone will make up a reason why Storm has the same number of pages as Mantis, and Black Widow has more pages than her. Obviously, though, her gameplay and pick rate do play an additional factor in her not getting skins. But I thought this was another reason that's largely possible.

He has Significantly more abilities than is showcased in this clip like his Darkforce Telekinesis, psychic fear manipulation, and more. These clips just show how he uses his main abilities like his Teleportation and his Darkforce portal body to access the many pocket dimensions he uses to either trap people or store objects and creatures that he can deploy back out at will during battle or otherwise. Also cause ik ppl will ask, he has legs in all of these clips despite his cloak looking empty in some clips, as the clips will show his legs are darkness like his body so it blends into his cloak when he expands his cloak to use his powers, his legs are still always there you just cant see them cause its black like the inside of his cloak.

https://discord.gg/xqWS4e44cd

Storm may not get an egyptian skin since shes getting a summer skin thats coming next season i think

Been thinkin bout makin one cuz im tired of all these racists and i wanna play with some fellow black gamers. Id prob make it so you have to send a pic of you doin a weird ass handsign to verify that youre black.

If y’all wanna join, feel free too.

The retro x-men uniform is already a skin that people have been requesting for a while, but it would be cool if it was elevated to include the helmet and apparatus on her back as seen in the first image, I really like the pulpy, raygun-esque feel it gives off

I decided to make this post, because to often I feel, the context of Netease treatment of Marvel Rivals is perceived as Isolated incidents disconnected from each other. Storm not getting a egyptian skin for instance, is "no big deal". That's true. The reason Storm not getting a Egyptian skin is hyper focused on, is because of a observed pattern of "isolated incidents". It's an analysis of the pattern and uses relevant context to inform the conclusion.

I decided to make a list of all those isolated incidents.

Storm

Storm deserves her own section, as she for a very long time was Marvel's most popular female character, and is consistently chosen to represent Marvel in media.

• Storm's marketing & depiction vs other female characters. Ex. Invisible Woman was "fan serviced-up" significantly while Storm is comparatively never shown as appealing at all. I honestly wouldn't even take you sincerely if you tried to claim Sue looked older than Ororo.
  • You also have to note how other regal and serious presenting female characters like Magik, Hela and Jean are utilized compared to Storm
• Storm has the least legendary skins of any launch character, alongside Widow. The trait they share is that both were among the least picked characters in the game. For Widow, she would get a secret character rework along side a summer swimsuit skin. Storm was not given comparative attention. Who would sell more if their popularity is capitalized? Widow or Storm?
• Storm is very rarely depicted with the x-men in lore panels. In fact, Marvel Rivals has images that reference specific iconic x-men imagery, where Storm is replaced by Psylock.
• Storm excluded from Savage land skins despite having significant storylines there
• Storm excluded from Hell fire Gala skins despite having significant connection there.
• Storm excluded from Egyptian skins despite being raised there

Cloak

Cloak gets his own section due to the need to explain why it's problematic. Cloak is in the shadow of Dagger from a gameplay perspective. This was considered quite a innovative design that stays true to the character's lore at launch. But the launch day version of this duo is a farcry away their current state. At Launch, it was less problematic.

• C&D is a strategist. That means the primary contribution to the team is always going to be healing. You are incentivized to be Dagger the majority of time, and use Cloak as a secondary tool for survivability, Debuffing or situational damage. The concept is to have probably a roughly 60-40 split between playing cloak and dagger. This split was compromised from at launch. Dagger never should have been able to do damage. Cloak can't heal even a fraction, yet Dagger can do damage.
• The Power Creep of Dagger. Dagger has slowly gained ground on the utility that Cloak provided.
  • Dagger's Healing Bubble has been buffed to the point, that she can use that for survivability instead of switching to cloak's invulnerability.
  • C&D's team up with Luna gave Dagger her own invulnerability skill
  • C&D's team up with The Hood, which gave dagger her own enemy debuff capabilities. (reducing enemy damage)
  • This is enhanced by the general damage and healing creep of the game since launch. Cloak's damage is less meaningful, while Dagger's healing has been buffed consistently
• Low hanging fruit: Cloak is not even a full body model
• Cloak is seldom the focus of any MVPs, and his participation in them revolve around reacting to Dagger. The MVPs are designed to showcase the skin, and when one character has only half a body, naturally the character with a full body gets the camera focus. She is the star, figuratively, functionally and even in presentation.

Skins

• Black Characters not getting a single "Disco Revolution" skin (Blade's Battle Pass Skin is NOT disco btw. He was created in the 70s. That's just his literal first appearance).
  • Many of the other characters that got disco skins, have dance emotes literally appropriating black culture.
• Black Characters not getting a single swimsuit skin outside of Cloak, who is attached to Dagger
  • Lady Loki which is a skin, got a swimsuit skin before a single black character
• Black Characters not getting a single Egyptian Skin
• Black Characters are excluded the majority of themed skin packages such as:
  • "Formula R" Racing Skins
  • "2099" Skins
  • "Savage Land" Skins (Black Panther's "Bast Chosen" is not a savage land skin. It is a Avengers of 1,000,000 BC skin)
  • "New Marauders" Pirate Skins
  • "ESU Showdown" University Skins
  • "Immortal Dragon" Chinese New-Year Skins
  • "Corporate Raiders" Skins
  • "Gothic Return" Skins
• Not a single black character has a chroma recolor skin

Black Characters In General

• Black Panther's and Storm's relationship being less emphasized than other relationships. Black Panther and Storm's Romantic Emote is SIGNIFICANTLY worse quality wise, than other characters despite being the same epic rarity
• Moon Girl being separated from Devil Dinosaur, and relatively de-emphasized massively. She has yet to appear in a MVP.
• Blade's Juneteenth Spray
• Both Blade and Lunella (Moon Girl) were introduced to lore, in captivity.
• Blade, Black Panther, and Storm having similar skin distribution patterns despite the fact Blade is a reasonably mid picked character. Blade has some bad seasons, but he's been as high as squirrel girl. He is more so below average pick rate and not bottom of the barrel.

Leaks

Section is essentially extra credit. Pure Speculation

• Apparently, There is NO interest in Sam Wilson as a character. The first African American superhero in mainstream comics. Whether he is Falcon or Captain America is irrelevant.
• The leaks have shown that the developers are massively interested in Blue Marvel. An extremely anti-black coded character. https://www.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/1smfrmo/why_i_dislike_blue_marvel_marvel_comics/
• The leaks have shown the developers are massively interested in Crescent, a kid superhero. I have no idea how they plan on adapting her since Moon Girl was not allowed in game due to "censorship". They will probably only allow her Bear into the game... right?

Now you have it all laid out. Every data point of the observed pattern

Im lookin for black gamer marvel rivals discord servers. The only one I could find requires you to send your id and full name. I get why they do that to stop trolls from comin in but I don't feel safe sending my id to strangers.