#a fun fact about me is that I have 37 pages of notes on rictor and shatterstar's comic history in my google drive LMAO

[libraryleopard]

genuine question: why does fandom hate calling shatterstar gaveedra? people say it's his slave name but I want comic book citations for that.

This got a bit long, so I stuck it under a cut!

I'd assume largely because it's not the name his friends/teammates/boyfriend call him and therefore people tend to associated it more with Mojoverse, which was a very dehumanizing place for Shatterstar. Keep in mind that I haven't read all of 1991 X-Force which is probably the most relevant comic for this question (because at a certain point I was like "Oh wait, this would probably make more sense if I read New Mutants first" and now I'm in the process of doing that), but let me see if I can pull some comic citations from the notes I took when reading a bunch of Shatterstar's history.

He first appears in New Mutants #100, which is drawn and plotted by Rob Liefield with script/words by Fabian Nicieza, where he introduces himself as Shatterstar, "a blood warrior of the Cadre Alliance." Then, when New Mutants spins off into X-Force with a similar creative team tat the start, he's called Shatterstar there as well, both in dialogue and the little text-box introductions. Characters on X-Force/New Mutants do call him a variety of other things like "Shatty" and and "Star" (and, mostly in Feral's case, things like "pretty boy"), but not Gaveedra-Seven or any variation of that.

Later on in X-Force #39, Prosh (that computer/AI/robot thing X-Force has for a bit), calls Shatterstar "Gaveedra-Seven," which I think is the first use of that name? Cable has a little thought-bubble that says "Gaveedra–huh?" in reaction that, which implies that he's never heard that name before. Then Prosh has to leave because…IDK techno-organic plot-stuff I don't remember right now, so I don't believe that particular comment is really followed up on. (Sorry, I wasn't really paying attention to that stuff other than I think Prosh is some kind of AI ship often associated with Cable.) Future issues of X-Force don't start calling Shatterstar Gaveedra or anything, from what I remember. Rictor, who Shatterstar is closest to at that point, mostly calls him 'Star, which you can see in issues like #43, when they have a pretty vulnerable conversation about sex and romance or issue #59 in which Rictor briefly rejoins the team to help Shatterstar when he's having an existential crisis about the whole Benjamin Russell thing. (Which is very confusing and honestly never resolved in a satisfying way–basically that time the police told Shatterstar he was actually a human runaway named Benjamin Russell and not from Mojoworld at all except then Mojo kidnapped Shatterstar and made him fight and then when he was dying Mojo's sorceress Spyral found Benjamin in a coma in an insane asylum or something and merged their bodies/souls together while saying something cryptic about how she really cares about them both??? It's never resolved beyond that.)

In the 1999 X-Force annual, this is addressed a little bit when Shatterstar gives the name Benjamin Russell at a hotel and explains that he doesn't really know who he is–Gaveedra-7 the genetically modified gladiator or Benjamin Russell the human–and he's trying to respect all possibly versions of himself. (This has way more to do with the Benjamin Russell conundrum but I figured I'd mention it.) Rictor still refers to him as 'Star or Shatterstar in his narration and I think it's more of Fabian Nicieza trying to hand wave the whole Benjamin Russell thing as best he can.

So the general impression I'd get from X-Force (at least what I read of it), is that Shatterstar is what he considers his name, what he introduces himself as, and what people who are close to him or work alongside him call him, with nicknames all being derived from that name. Part of this is, of course, because Shatterstar is just a cooler name for a 90s action hero character than Gaveedra-Seven and I imagine that Shatterstar's initial character concept was probably just Rob Liefeld going "Wouldn't it be sick if there was a reality TV gladiator who had two swords and a cool name."

I don't think a comic has necessarily ever come out and said "Gaveedra-Seven is Shatterstar's slave name," but if it's tied to Shatterstar's time in the Mojoverse, it's not necessarily an unreasonable conclusion to come from. It's clear from both X-Force and the 1985 Longshot miniseries (which is where the idea of the Mojoverse came from), that bipedal humans are dehumanized, enslaved, and treated as essentially cannon fodder for Mojo's entertainment, from gladiators like Shatterstar to stuntmen like Longshot. Over the course of X-Force, you get glimpses into Shatterstar's past and treatment in Mojoworld, like in #34 when he says he had no parents or in X-Force #76 when Mojo says "Shatterstar is still the copyrighted property of Mojoworld Interdimensional Entertainment Incorporated…which means he belongs body and soul to me." So like, yeah, it's not exaggerating to say that Shatterstar was a slave during his time in Mojoworld because it's been established that's how all human-esque people are treated there. (Longshot also doesn't even get that name until he turns up amnesiac on Earth someone dubs him that because of his luck powers and yes I'm ignoring that retcon where Rictor gave it to him because that makes my head hurt.)

I think you can read a lot of Shatterstar's arc as being about finding autonomy and self-understanding, from trying to find a cause to fight for to understanding/experiencing emotions, and I guess that picking the name he goes by could be a part of that. He starts off as a Tough Emotionless Warrior Guy™ who fights for honor and glory, but over the course of X-Force we see him become more emotionally vulnerable and finding a cause to fight for. I've mostly just assumed that Gaveedra-Seven was the name he was first designated in Mojoworld and Shatterstar was maybe more of a name he earned or took on when he became more popular enough to have a distinct persona. The bad guys like Mojo and Arcade call him Shatterstar, but I think it's important to note that it's the name he introduces himself as and what people who are close to him refer to him as, so even if it originated from his time in Mojoworld, he still claims it as his name.

Apparently there's maybe some thing in 90s X-Men comics where a pregnant Dazzler turns up briefly and Longshot mentions they're thinking of name their kid Shatterstar but I haven't actually read that and it also ties into the extremelyyyyyyy confusing parentage paradox. This is because rather than revisiting the Benjamin Russell conundrum, Peter David added a new one by making Shatterstar his own grandfather. (I personally think he did that because the idea that Shatterstar was Dazzler and Longshot's child was something already floating around and he wanted to throw in a twist that people wouldn't see coming, but it bears pointing out that therefore Shatterstar's name is therefore tied to his really confusing backstory that writers basically rewrite at their whim.)

X-Factor Investigations, I think, is when the name Gaveedra-Seven starts being used more regularly for Shatterstar, but that's only in the little character-intro bios from what I remember. I.e. Jamie Madrox's character box at the front of issues would say something like "Multiple Man. Jamie Madrox. Duplication" and Shatterstar's would say something like "Shatterstar. Gaveedra-Seven. Teleportation." I don't think people really call him Gaveedra or any variant of that but admittedly I was skimming a fair amount of that comic because I didn't enjoy it. Rictor still refers to him as Star–for instance, during the conversation, about their relationship issues in the confusingly-numbers X-Factor #207, that's the name he uses. I'm not sure it makes sense to position Gaveedra-Seven as that kind of "real name" because Shatterstar isn't really the kind of character who has a civilian identity like Madrox does, but it's what this comic does in the character introductions.

Tim Seeley's Shatterstar solo series brought back the use of the name Gaveedra because Shatterstar is going by Ben Gaveedra during his time as a landlord. Seeley obviously did some homework on Shatterstar when writing this solo series because he mentions very specific stuff like Rictor introducing Shatterstar to rap music, which was a thing in X-Force, but I found his take on that Shatterstar somewhat puzzling at times. (Like, for instance, introducing an ex of Shatterstar's from his time as a gladiator when that directly contradicts Shatterstar's understanding of sex, romance, and relationships in X-Force.) Tim Seeley just sort of does whatever in that series and I didn't find the execution incredibly strong, so I don't put a ton of weight behind that decision.

The most recent update on the whole name situation was, I believe, in the issue of Excalibur 2019 set at the Hellfire Gala (issue #21, I think? I'm not caught up). When Shatterstar crashes the gala and reunites with Rictor, Rictor calls him "Shatterstar" and then "Gav." I saw panels of that and was a little puzzled by that dialogue, because don't think I remember Rictor ever calling him Gav before.

Rictor and Shatterstar both actually have kind of complicated things around names–like I don't think Rictor's full name being Julio Esteban Richter was actually revealed for some time (he's introduced as Rictor and goes by either that or Ric in most of the older New Mutants or Simonson X-Factor comics I've read) and he's canonically touchy about who gets to call him Julio, which Shatterstar does. So I think the fact that Rictor calls him Shatterstar or Star is telling, because that's coming from someone who knows that what name you call someone can be meaningful.

tldr I think a lot of people refer to Gaveedra-Seven as Shatterstar's "slave name" because a lot of Shatterstar's stories across his publication history have been about escaping Mojoworld and its brainwashing. The fact that he intentionally introduces himself as Shatterstar and is called that (or a variation on that) by people who are close to him does imply that Gaveedra-Seven is a name that he's left behind or rejected even if that's been somewhat inconsistent among recent writers.