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#I refuse to give up my healthy marriage to a fictional character in a universe I made up in my head
skadivalholl · 3 years
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do parasocial relationships count if the other person is totally fictional? asking for a friend
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Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours Thoughts
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Many years ago I was contacted by someone who recommended this novel to me and others from a Mary Jane fan point of view. You can read the recommendation here.
Whilst I own the novel and started it at least twice for whatever reason I stopped reading it before the start of the first big action set piece. However since Dreamscape audio released the novel on audiobook I’ve finally been able to experience it for myself.
So how’d it fair? SPOILERS ahead
I don’t usually do this these days but because this story is relatively obscure I’m going to provide a synopsis. Or more accurately marvel.wiki is:
“Even though he is a chemistry teacher, Peter Parker has now been forced to be a substitute basketball coach over at Midtown High where he works. His ineptness soon negatively draws the attention of basketball star Samuel Larkin, who challenges Peter and refuses to cooperate with his own teammates. Going over the player's records, Peter soon discovers that Larkin has not taken all of the required vaccines needed to play at the school, which will mean his automatic expulsion from the team for the remainder of the season, as well as dwindle his chances of getting a scholarship to a good university.
After a long day of coaching, Peter returns home and discovers that Mary Jane has won a part as Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's Macbeth. However, the play is held in Atlantic City, so in order to compensate for the long drive, MJ bought a car despite not having a driver's license, let alone any idea how to drive. They began discussing whether or not Peter should teach her. In the middle of the talk, however, the Rhino attacks Times Square, so Peter leaves to go fight him as Spider-Man.
While on the way there, Spider-Man runs into Black Cat, who claims the rampage is a trap and that Peter should not go. He ignores her warning, though, and continues to head there. Peter easily defeats Rhino, knocking him unconscious in the process. Just as he does, however, the siblings of Morlun - Thanis, Malos, and Mortia - appear. They blame Spider-Man for their brother's death despite the Other being the true person who ripped his throat out, and now want revenge by killing him. Spidey initially flees, but with the help of a SWAT team and Black Cat he eventually takes them on (he also seeks help from Doctor Strange but is declined, with Strange asserting that his interference would harm the cosmic balance). Mary Jane comes to the fight scene and becomes jealous that Felicia is able to help Peter fight the siblings, as well as how the siblings are treating her husband. Enraged, she takes her car and runs Morlun's siblings over, distracting them and giving Spider-Man the time needed to banish them to a barren netherworld using three trinkets Strange had secretly arranged to be given to him.”
Let me get some admissions out of the way.
a)      I’ve not read a ton of Spider-Man/comic book based novels, although I own the majority of the Spider-Man ones that Wikipedia claim exist. I dunno why, I just never manage to get around to them for whatever reason. Perhaps it’s because comic book superheroes being designed for a visual medium which so often emphasises action makes the jump to prose (or in this case audio) difficult. Indeed I must admit when reading/listening I do zone out a bit when action scenes occur.
b)      I’m not familiar with the work of Jim Butcher although I hear great things
c)       I’d actually forgotten the specifics of the recommendation for this book. I just remember it was recommended and it was because it should feed the MJ fan/shipper in me and others. Forgetting this was lucky actually as it allowed me to enjoy some aspects of the books I’d otherwise have not been surprised by.
Let’s also get the technical aspects out of the way since this is an audio book I am discussing.
The narrator, Jack Meloche is...okay...mostly.
I find his performance of Peter a little too nasaly and early on in the audiobook you do have to kind of power through his performances of Mary Jane and especially Felicia. By the end of the story I grew to tolerate them but never love them. Hearing a grown ass man do his best to convey a sultry kinda sorta femme fatale can be a bit cringe inducing I must admit. His best performance is as the Rhino though.
Other things you should know is that this novel is loosely in continuity with ‘Spider-Man: Drowned in Thunder’ (which I talked about here),
https://hellzyeahwebwieldingreviews.tumblr.com/post/140091613524/spider-man-drowned-in-thunder-my-thoughts
another novel from the same range of books. It was published and is set after the events of this novel and both are set chronologically during the J. Michael Straczynski ASM run prior to Spider-Man joining the New Avengers.
I’ll be upfront with you I found ‘Drowned in Thunder’ to be better for the most part and downright ingenious. It did not however use Mary Jane as much or as critically as this story. She was important but didn’t have as big of a role as she does here. Does that make one novel better or worse than the other? Neither, they’re just different. It’s healthy to mix up the emphasis certain supporting characters get after all.
Looking at ‘Darkest Hours’ on it’s own merits for the most part it nails the characters in terms of the sentiments but my personal problems with it are in the presentation at times. Not even all the time just some of the time.
Let me put it more clearly.
There is exactly one scene featuring Aunt May, specifically a phone conversation. And this phone conversation progresses into a very involved inspirational speech from May to Peter about how awesome he is as a person/hero and the scene’s drama stems from the fact that Peter might be fighting his last battle soon after this. Are the sentiments Aunt May expressing in character? Of course. Are these things she would say? Yes!...but...I felt it was kind of...off that her one scene in the whole story is her showing up and giving the most involved inspirational speech Spider-Man has ever gotten from her or anyone else. Spider-Man 2’s backyard scene was tame by comparison. I just feel it would’ve been better for May to have both featured in some way prior to that scene and for the speech to have been dialled back a bit.
Much more relevantly though is the book’s handling of Peter and MJ’s relationship.
Throughout the novels there are scenes of Peter and Mary Jane being very much in love. The most common way this is expressed is via Peter complimenting Mary Jane in his head.
Would Peter feel this way about Mary Jane. 100% yes! But...I don’t know if it was the vocal performance, the fact that we have this back in the comics now, or really JUST me but personally I kinda...cringed a bit.
I’m not saying it’s bad!
I’m not even saying it could be better!
I’m sure there are many readers who adore this.
I’m not well versed in romance fiction so maybe I’m missing something here and actually it’s perfectly acceptable or great writing.
I’m saying just for me personally again...I’d have wanted it dialled back. It just got a little much, a little cringey for me personally.
But you know that happened sometimes in the JMS run which I loved and agree with everyone else wrote the marriage better than it has ever been written.
Speaking of Straczynski we really need to talk about his Spider-Man work.
Commonly original Spider-Man novels (i.e. not novelizations) that are trying to vaguely present themselves as being canon (so we aren’t talking about stuff like ‘Hostile Takeover’ set in the Marvel Gamerverse) try to have synergy with the status quo of the day or a very recent one.
This novel is no exception. My research tells me it was published in 2006 and whilst it’s not reflective of the then status quo of the comics where Spider-Man was unmasked and a member of the Avengers, it is reflective of the dominant status quo immediately preceding that which ended circa 2004-2005.
To refresh your memory that involves Peter being a teacher at Midtown High, Mary Jane being an aspiring stage actress who recently reconciled with Peter, and both Aunt May and Black Cat knowing his secret. To drive the point home about just when this novel is set there is an entire dialogue exchange discussing the idea of him hypothetically  joining the Avengers. A discussion that in my eyes throws some wonderful shade at the idea.
This is the same status quo that ‘Drowned in Thunder’ was set during but ‘Darkest Hours’ hardcore embraces  this status quo in a way ‘Drowned in Thunder’ never did. ‘Drowned in Thunder’ if anything drew more from the Paul Jenkins PPSM run than JMS’ run and exempting Aunt May being in on the secret felt like with a few changes it could’ve exorcised every other element of his run. Peter’s teaching job was a factor in the story but it was used as a brilliant and organic segue way into a Bugle/Jonah centric investigation.
‘Darkest Hours’ though...doesn’t do that.
Rather it is practically a lost arc from JMS’ run. No, not his ‘era’ wherein we’re talking about every title during his time in charge. I mean that if this was a comic book story it could’ve been straight up slotted in directly before or after ‘Sins Past’ and no one would’ve batted an eye.
The way the story tries to handle Peter’s marriage to Mary Jane, Peter’s teaching job, the inclusion of Doctor Strange and Dex, the potted history of Ezekiel, the direct references to Shathra and friggin ASM #500, and of course Morlun’s siblings. This FEELS like the JMS run!
And for a lot of people that’s going to be a huge deal breaker for this novel.
In my experience of Spider-Man fandom whilst there is a lot of appreciation of JMS’ run it was divisive for various reasons. A lot of people just for whatever reason turned off by Peter being a teacher (or more accurately not being a photographer for the Bugle) and recoil even more over the presence of mystical elements like Morlun or Doctor Strange.
Now if you liked or tolerated that stuff then this novel is a hidden gem of sorts, whether you want a shot of nostalgia or just found that stuff compelling.
Me personally, I liked the first half of the JMS run for the most part. And Jesus Christ looking back at it after what we got after he left it’s a Hell of a lot better.
Say what you want about Ezekiel and Peter being a teacher but I’d take that stuff over fucking Superior Spider-Man and Parker Industries!
Of course the elephant in the room regarding this novel in the modern day is that it predates Spider-Verse and Spider-Geddon as stories establishing Morlun had a family.
And...did...it...BETTER!
In Spider-Verse/Geddon Morlun was the main character and his family had unbearably simplistic personalities that boiled down to being variant action figures of him!
Now don’t get it twisted. Mortia and her brothers are a million miles away from the greatest villains in Spider-Man history. In fact they have LESS personality than Morlun did.
And yet in context this actually works for the story more effectively than in Spider-Verse/Geddon.
Morlun as originally presented was essentially a very eloquent predator and a hunter, not quit a full on force of nature but close to it. He was intimidating because he really didn’t do anything besides hunt Spider-Man and want to eat him.
Where Spider-Verse/Geddon failed was in reintroducing Morlun and then immediately watering him down by having him appear alongside his variant action figure family with moments and even back up stories told specifically from their POVs. Sure JMS gave us moments focussing on Morlun’s character outside of Spider-Man or Morlun, but they existed to introduce  the character and briefly build him up before we realize just how utterly outclassed Spider-Man is against him. When we already know who the Hell Morlun is we don’t need scenes focussing upon him because he isn’t a character who can support that level of attention. Nor should he be because he’s SUPPOSED to be a one not hunting and killing machine basically.
That’s why this novel makes better use of ‘the Ancients’ than S-V/G made of ‘the Inheritors’. We don’t have scenes from their POV thus they can basically be what Morlun was when Spider-Man first met him. Ruthless predators on the hunt, except now there are three of them so Spider-Man is truly screwed!
The plot cleverly focuses instead on the characters who have to DEAL with the impending threat the Ancients pose rather than trying to pretend these guys have actual characters. Butcher also makes them much scarier than the Inheritors because rather than monsters who basically just port in wherever and kill indiscriminately, the Ancients have riches and resources. They are a part of society and Peter is racing against the clock hoping those resources don’t zero in on who he is and where his family lives. This dread, this tension is delectable and far more effective than what Slott of Gage ever did. It helps that we actually see Peter reacting believably to the pressure and stress of his potential demise rather than be a generic and passive as he was in Spider-Verse.
Also the fact they appear alone rather than alongside Morlun is better too as it means Morlun doesn’t look less unique and they look less like variant action figures.
Additionally Butcher does a great job fleshing out the backstory to the Ancients, helping to integrate them well into the established Marvel Universe, developing their abilities and how they worked. Hell he even remembered how they were supposed to work as JMS defined them rather than how Spider-Verse and Spider-Geddon just ignored these abilities and did whatever they wanted. For instance Butcher establishes clearly the Ancients CAN feed off of life forms other than Spider-Man as opposed to S-V/G just having them do that with no explanation and feed off of just anyone. Butcher also remembered Morlun saying that eating Peter would sustain him for a looooooong time and incorporated it into the plot. Similarly he provided a clear explanation for why Spider-Man couldn’t simply use the same trick he used against Morlun again (because he’s outnumbered!) or get help from other heroes like Doctor Strange. Speaking of which we got one of the best ever explanations for how magic works in the Marvel Universe ever. Wasn’t expecting that nor for Wong to be so delightful!
The only real misstep Butcher makes as far as the Ancients are concerned is the idea of the Rhino being a potential snack for them when he never got his powers from a real rhino or anything like that. He was even referenced as one of the pretenders to totem powers by Ezekiel. I guess you could that the Lizard (who was also referenced) should  count so...whatever the rules aren’t clear here.
Let’s leave our main villains behind and talk instead about our more grey characters.
So yeah...Jim Butcher wrote one of the all time great Rhino stories here!
Again wasn’t expecting that!
The Rhino in Aunt May’s home breaking bread with Spider-Man is so insane an image that you’d love it for the absurdity alone, but Butcher makes it totally organic. He also keeps Rhino in character (with the exception of a time he refused to kill Spider-Man which I don’t remember being a real story) and fleshes him out rather wonderfully. He draws some great parallels between Rhino and Spider-Man and frankly the scene where Mary Jane is literally shaking with laughter over these comparisons is unquestionably the highlight of the whole novel!
What was really great was that Butcher didn’t change the Rhino or compromise him. He’s still a mercenary, he’s still not really a good guy, but he’s more human. He doesn’t like Spider-Man, he wants to beat him, but he also on a certain level respects him.
It’s just expertly done!
Then there is Felicia. Had Spencer not already fixed Felicia this story would’ve ignited fury within me. Not because this was bad but rather that this story used Felicia so wonderfully that BND and Slott’s ruination of her would’ve stung all the more.
Felicia is purrrrrrrfect here!
Not quite good, not quite bad, sultry, catty, territorial, smart, aggressive, dangerous, loyal. Butcher NAILED her character!
The fact he uses her to open up a philosophical debate about the differences and moral justifications between Peter, herself and the Rhino is inspired. There are differences but the lines aren’t as clear cut as Peter treats them as. In a sense he really does have a bit of a double standard in regards to her and everyone else. This isn’t the only time Butcher brings out Peter’s flaws very well. The scene where Peter has momentary lapses into light machismo are well done. Spider-Man is a hero but he ain’t perfect that’s why we love him!
This brings us to Felicia and Mary Jane. Sorry...I love it. Maybe it’s problematic, maybe it’s problematic that I do love it...but I just do.
Okay from a strict continuity point of view Butcher puts MJ and Felicia at greater odds than they really should be. By this point in time there were tensions but there was also friendship. Truth be told Butcher puts that friendliness in there but only at the very end of MJ and Felicia’s arc together and the resolution to the tensions are off-page. And yet...what can I say the pure soap opera of it was fun for me on a very base level. Who says marriage is free of tension again?????
The peak of my enjoyment was when the pair were just unrestrained hurling insults at one another. Again, shallow I know, but it was just fun for me and I really loved Peter having to step up and be the grown up in that situation and coldly let everyone know where they all stand. MJ doesn’t get to talk to Felicia that way because she’s their friend. Felicia doesn’t get to talk to MJ that way because she’s his wife.
This brings us to Mary Jane herself. Apart from again the romance stuff for me personally going a bit too far she’s mostly done very well. She’s supportive, she has a subplot of her own dealing with a real life problem (learning to drive), she makes mistakes, she’s great at analysing Peter,  and helping figure things out via being a confidant. Oh and she totally saves the day at the end. No straight up she does. If not for MJ the day would’ve been lost and Spider-Man would’ve been dead.
It was such a baller as fuck scene I am slightly pissed off that it wasn’t realized as a comic. Her throwing shade at Doctor Strange was also priceless.
The final thing to mention is the subplot involving one of Peter’s students.
I am once again going to draw comparisons to both the JMS run and ‘Drowned in Thunder’ as they are apt here.
Okay basically strictly speaking the subplot regarding Peter helping one of his underprivileged kids retain a spot on the basketball team was a weak spot of the storytelling. Not because it was necessarily bad (though a 30something trying to write ‘inner city youths’ leaves something to be desired) but because it really didn’t tie into the main plot all that much.
In ‘Drowned in Thunder’ Peter’s teaching job was integrated seamlessly.
But in this you could tweak the novel and exorcise the whole subplot. It’s relevance really is mostly thematic (Peter and the kid both need to embrace team work to succeed) and to illustrate character traits of Peter Parker. He’s so responsible he would still make time to help out this poor student even whilst his life is potentially ticking away. Nor will he abandon this kid to save his own skin, even though the kid’s physical life might not be endangered at all if he did.
Now that all being said I LIKE the subplot’s inclusion. Not only because it does demonstrate Peter’s character and the lesson he needs to learn for this story, but because I view it as part and parcel of this book’s mission to be a lost JMS story.
Really the subplot could’ve been one of the handful of stories told during the JMS run concerning Peter helping out his impoverished students. If viewed as part and parcel of trying to capture the ‘flavour’ of the era the subplot succeeds.
Finally I must say I loved Peter’s words of defiance before his possible demise.
Over all I’d say this was a very strong story. Okay, as an over all package not quite as good as ‘Drowned in Thunder’ but still up there, with moments and aspects that are as good if not superior to the latter.
Highly recommended.
P.S. I can’t believe we got development and a great use out of Dex of all the obscure characters out there!
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tzigone · 5 years
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Favorite characterization of Dick Grayson
What's your favorite era or writer for Dick Grayson?  What characterizations do you like or dislike?
Here are my opinions.  I may ramble a bit. Sorry about that. 
You can skip this paragraph if you don't care how I ended up here and which comics I’ve read  - it's not particularly important, I just wanted to share.  First, while previously having seen on-screen versions of Dick Grayson, and read a bit of DickBabs fanfic (Batman: TAS sold me on them before the show went directions I loathe), I never actually read any issues of DC until 2015ish.  Had been a Marvel girl because they didn't do reboots, but then they destroyed Peter Parker's marriage and rebooted the universe, so I abandoned comics for a while.  But then I saw some reruns of Young Justice cartoon.  So I read some fic.  Many fics incorporated comic characters.  There I discovered Spoiler, who I really liked the idea of as Spoiler (someone who works against Batman's wishes and doesn't obey his orders and refused to back down, but isn’t a killer).  So I read the Robin series for the first 100+ issues (quitting when I knew War Games was near because the storyline sounded bad).  But that made me decide to read the Nightwing comic that stared in that era.  Really liked that, and really liked Dick Grayson (on-screen portrayals had already lead me to favor him).  Then Birds of Prey, Dixon-era, too.  Then, because I liked Dick, the Original and New Teen Titans. Original was too Silver Age for me, but really enjoyed 1980-1986ish New Teen Titans (thought it went downhill after that, and abandoned when I reached 1990 issues).  Also read assorted Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age comics.  So I have relatively broad, but very shallow knowledge of most Bat-eras, with more in-depth knowledge of the '90s and much less of post-2000 (mostly fic, which isn't always representative of the comic).
While I have opinions on various Bat and non-Bat characters and storylines, I'm starting with Dick here. He was my favorite. It's so dependent on writing (as is ever character), and right now he’s Ric, and that is something I’m not interested in. 
While I absolutely like aspects from other eras, and I dislike some aspects from these eras, my favorite time periods for Dick are probably 1980-1986ish and 1996-2000.  There’s some good 70s stuff and I like certain dynamics of him as guardian/mentor to Damian (and some stuff with other family), but as whole, these two eras in his titles (Teen Titans and Nightwing) are my favorites.  For his characterization as stand-alone (rather than his relationships with other characters).
Golden and silver age Dick merit a bit less discussion. Characters weren’t as distinct from each other back then.  Nor, really, as consistent.  But Dick was sometimes regarded as quite a mature young man in the golden age.  Responsible, good grades, intelligent, etc.  But so was Speedy - like I said, not much distinction.  Despite some impressions, in the stories I read I did not notice Robin to make lots of puns or be unusually cheery and smiley.
Come to the mid-60s and Dick was so much a teenager. I mean the original Teen Titans fairly scream with it early on (so much slang, really folks). One writer I didn’t like had him behave like an idiot (I’m not the only one who thought so, judging by the letters pages, though opinions were split).  Really, though, in the early original Teen Titans it felt like writer(s) were trying to push the “teen” thing too much, and they sometimes came off like caricatures.  But it was a time in comics when stories and characterizations were shifting and there were, IMO, both failures and successes in trying to embrace new and different.
The ‘70s were okay. Some bits I liked, and some I didn‘t. Dick is usually responsible in Detective Comics stories. He did a little bit of playing the play-boy (with Silver), which isn’t my speed, since I like the idea that Dick, unlike Bruce, doesn’t put on a facade in day-to-day life.  Had a few girlfriends - very normal and not either stunningly celibate or shockingly promiscuous. Though the entire 70s was one year of college for Dick.
I am not at all fond of the "goofy" Dick that seems to have popped up fairly often in the past 20 years.  They often seemed to have seriously dampened his brainpower and detective skills (because Tim is the smart one and the detective and for some reason they can’t both be that).  I’m not a fan of separate out all Batman’s skills and assigning one to each Robin. It makes the Robins all less than Batman and inferior to him and sets that they will never be his equals and that I do not agree with. Now this is by no means a *consistent* thing, but it does happen, and it does irritate me.  I don’t like seeing characters diminished.
I really love old-school Dick.  Back when he was young (late '70s to mid '80s), they showed us how mature he was (probably to contrast his youth and make him a viable peer to older heroes).  Both Wally and Roy commented on it. Roy said how he always felt so much younger (issue where he got custody of Lian).  Wally though Dick was always on top of things (Kory and Donna knew better).  Heck, Terry's (Donna's ex) bachelor party was another fine example how much more of an adult he was than some men twice his age.  He was pretty cerebral, a fantastic detective, a good fighter, etc.  He could hang out and have fun, too, of course. He wasn't a stick-in-the-mud.  He was too closed off and unwilling to talk sometimes (moreso with his team, and perhaps because he thought he needed to project confidence as a leader?).  He was, in a reverse, quite willing to talk about other people's emotional issues.   Sometimes as a friend, and sometimes as a leader.  He behaved most immaturely when dealing with Batman, particularly as their relationship became more difficult - there were times when they brought out the worst in each other. Though it wasn't steady, of course.
We really got to see Dick as a leader in this era. Someone people respected and looked up to.  Not that his team always agreed with him or that he was always right, but that but that he was a person that people did have trust in. And that he usually did a good job of deserving it.  It’s not just other teenagers, though, but the older heroes respect him as well.  It’s also the first time we a real, substantive romance - with Kory.  Saw where he floundered and how he loved, and such.  Which I thought worked well until it reached a point where I thought it needed to end, and it didn’t (or rather it did end, but didn’t stay ended).  Readers who like the ship, though, will likely have a different perspective, if they are like me (I just blame the writing when this sort of thing happens with ships I prefer).
Batman: Year Three - not the best story.  I don't remember most of it, to be honest.  But one thing I really liked was the highlighted difference between Bruce and Dick.  It hits that Dick is more emotionally healthy than Bruce. That Dick had the emotional support Bruce lacked as a child (I don't think continuity had yet settled on the idea of Alfred as a father-figure to Bruce).  That could segue me into changes in Bruce's backstory and characterization, but I'll refrain.  I will say that I preferred Dick with the nice-nuns orphanage to Dick-in-juvenile-facility (though I really, really like Dixon's run on Nightwing).  It makes Bruce less of a "rescuer" of Dick, which I prefer. I do not like the idea that Dick was doomed to end up dead on street (or a criminal) if not for Bruce.  Though I admit to preferring old-school Dick-goes-directly-to-Bruce's-home, no matter how unrealistic.  I dislike the entire Talon thing even more. I hate the back-projecting of more angst and more terrible things, like his parents being murdered wasn't bad enough.
Now we come to Nightwing series. I  really liked Dixon's run.  I'm a DickBabs fan, so seeing them get together was great.  I did read he wanted Dick/Donna, and I'm glad that didn't happen.  Partially because I'm a DickBabs fan, but also because I really, really liked the platonic friendship between Dick and Donna during the New Titans.  And I liked that it was platonic and that a friendship - rather than romance - could be so very important.  I don't think friendships get near the credit they should as important relationships in fiction, and so often fans want them to be romantic.  And the older I get, the more I value good fictional friendships and sibling relationships and so on.  For the record, I also really liked the Vic/Gar friendship. And I still tend to think of Donna, rather than Wally as Dick's BFF. Though he has many friends.
Anyway, I really liked seeing Dick working on his own and having his own city.   He was finding his own path and his rogues were being developed. I liked the idea of him as a cop, and I enjoyed Amy. I liked a lot of his banter with Barbara. But not just the banter, the serious stuff. Dick was looking for a real, long-term, serious relationship.  And Barbara was the hesitant one - for understandable reasons.   It's an everyday reminder of the things they used to do together.  Things he can do that she no longer can.  And she really wants to.
Of course, in this era, he was totally a big brother to Tim, a relationship he never really had with Jason (post-crisis).  Now, Bruce's character was becoming worse and worse in this era, so that provided some conflict for Dick.  Early in the series, Bruce wasn't that bad yet, and he and Dick had some nice bonding/reconciling moments.  And so some of the issues were just on Dick's side.  He has, since at least the Titans days, had a persistent need to prove himself Batman's equal.  To others and to Batman. I was kinda peeved with Donna when she said he'd never be as good. He thinks Bruce thinks less of him on occasions when Bruce doesn't. But Bruce still treats him like an underling a good portion of the time.  He expects Dick to take orders with no questions and doesn't give him full details of plans and doesn't listen to his opinions or consider Dick's needs.  Way too often, Bruce just puts his goal ahead of everyone else.  That's an issue with Bruce.  But Dick feels like it's Bruce not seeing him as equal.  Which it is, IMO, but mostly in the sense that Bruce tends to put himself/his goal above all others in terms of importance (a problem that has only gotten worse with time).
I wasn't real fond back-projection/retconning of the Dick/Babs relationship over the years. Or her de-aging.  I like her at least 4 years older than Dick.  With no involvement when he was in highschool.  Flirtation when he was in college (1970s Batman family issues), sure, but nothing really happening until he's in Bludhaven and in his mid 20s and the 5-7 year age gap doesn't matter because they're both adults.  I much prefer her pre-crisis background with Batman to the post-crisis one, but that's a topic for my post on her.
Then the Devin Grayson era - I don't agree with all the positions of the author, but I do agree about Devin Grayson: http://theflyingwonder.tumblr.com/post/107703923021/you-made-me-curious-and-i-couldnt-resist-it-tell and I think way too many of her aspects stuck with the character.  Which I guess makes her a success, but doesn't work for me at all, because I don't like the character she describes at all and he is not Dick to me. I've read her interview on Dick Grayson and her perception of the character was just nothing like mine. She acts like he's not a thinker (even though got called too cerebral in the old days).  She acts like Dick either "fights or fucks" everyone he meets, and totally disregards so many other types of relationships. Now, the Mirage-rape had already happened (and was horribly handled), plus the Raven-mind-controllish thing (also didn't work for me), but Grayson made Dick the sleeps-around type.  That was specifically contradictory to earlier characterizations where Dick was the committed-relationship type - something he actually discussed with Roy at one point.  I liked Dick being a relationship-only guy, it was a big contrast with Bruce (particularly post-Crisis Bruce).  I don't like Dick being Batman-lite at all.  
Not Devin Grayson, but Nightwing Annual #2 - ghastly. So incredibly out of character for who Dick was back then.   Another not-my-review at http://theflyingwonder.tumblr.com/post/93534635531/can-you-explain-the-nightwing-annual-2-thing. Though I would go further in that it's  reason I don't like post-Kory’s-political-wedding Dick/Kory.  It felt like a lot of build up to "love isn't enough" and then he basically chunked his beliefs to stay with her, which makes the relationship a bad thing to me. Here's my less-well-worded thoughts when I read the wedding. http://tzigone.tumblr.com/post/170389768364/nightwing-and-starfire
So, Dick's life in Bludhaven was destroyed.  His life as independent hero was destroyed.  I enjoyed Dick with the Titans, but him in Gotham is a no-go to me.  Because he goes back to being an appendage of Bruce.  He's working in someone else's city, he's a subordinate (at least with Bruce is actually there).
I haven't read as much of the Dick/Damian relationship as I maybe should have.  While interested in their dynamic, I'm not keen on Dick's wider characterization.  I do not like lothario-Dick.  And I do not like Batman-lite Dick.  So I deeply disliked him taking Robin from Tim and giving it away without discussing it, just like Bruce did to him.   Yeah.  To top that off, I unlike many, did not like the first 12 issues of Red Robin, so there wasn't even pay-off.  And then later we'd get Dick faking his death and hurting his family for the sake of the mission (Batman's mission).  Too Batman-like. I do get incredibly frustrated with that no matter how badly he treats them, Bruce's "kids" keep coming back and following his orders.  I didn't like his non-masked storyline, in N52, either. Sadly, at least Barbara (who I don’t like being a student of Bruce’s), Dick, and Tim have all adopted some of Bruce’s worse traits in regards to secrets and manipulation at one point or another.
But my biggest thing is that Dick all to often (not always, but even once is too often) gets treated like a joke. He's the lovable brother, and that part is okay. But he's all cuddles and cartoons and Disney and most of his maturity is just gone.  This is heavy in fic, but it's present in the comics, too.  At 19 he was man, and now he's a man-child. Not when he's working, I mean, but in personal life.  Lex Luthor says he's not a big thinker and some people agree. And that is just totally wrong to me.  For me Dick, while far from perfect, is a person that has earned and has respect not only from his peers, but from the first-generation heroes.  And it just gets worse later.  Late Pre-Crisis they de-age him and he's 21 in N52 (when it starts anyway). And I hated his de-aging, and Barbara's.  It feels like they're being drug backwards and not allowed to grow up. Even though Barbara *started* grown up and Dick had pretty much been a man even during his endless year at Hudson.  I don't like the idea of Dick as someone people don't take seriously. Bart or Booster, maybe is someone villains don't take seriously, but should. But Dick, at least as he reaches his adult years, should be someone that people (villains and colleagues) do take seriously and respect.  Thought without the intimidation Batman has, at least with criminals.  I will say I do think it was done partially to keep Batman from getting too old to do the job, but I still don’t care for it.
Don’t get me started on Dick and what he thought was Bruce’s body and the Lazarus pit.
I thought the entire issue with Dick and Bruce after Bruce’s failed wedding was bad.  Dick tries to be the goofball. They try to redeem it at the end, but it falls flat because he was stupid enough to think it would help in the first place.
Some people seem to think it's the sweetest thing ever if Dick moves back to Gotham and lives in the manor and Bruce takes care of him, and that's just a no-go to me.  It's infantilizing. He's grown up and should be allowed to grow up.  I see a lot of infantilizing of Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian.  I get why it's done (to see Bruce the dad), but dislike it intensely.  It's demeaning to me. I like Bruce the dad, too. But he can be a dad to adult children and treat them like adults (well, the grown ones). And yes, like equals, but that it what I think the relationship between adult parents and children should be.  Though it’ll be a long time before Bruce gets to a point where he’ll consistently do that.
Side note: the comments on Dick's body get a little old.  I totally get that he's stunning.  I'm cool with Kory or Barbara or his current girlfriend enjoying his body or complimenting him on it.  But sometimes it seems like various characters (usually female) are discussing him like a piece of meat. Particularly frustrating when his hero colleagues do so.  I know a good bit of this comes with me binge-reading, making it seem more often than when issues are read a month apart.
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divagonzo · 5 years
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I know this is gonna step on some toes but it;s really bothering me. Why is it now that when people try to pair up the golden trio into different pairings it ends up being 'oh let's make the third one gay/lesbian too!!" like what is wrong with not wanting to be in a relationship or staying single and getting validation in friends/family??? why does everyone has to be paired up? either straight or lgbt?? it honestly makes me feel people arent worthy or fullfilled if they arent paired up >:(
‘Ello Nonnie. Here in the caverns toes are welcome to be stepped on - even if there are consequences for it. (AKA I’m sure I’ll annoy some too with this post as well, even if I will put it under a cut just to spare some sensibilities for others. Though I expect some to speak up and out on Anon about what I’m going to say below the cut.)
I’m gonna make an assumption that you’re probably Ace like I am - or maybe even Het, too, and seeing how far shipping culture has gone for characters in question.  There also are questions on how characters are perceived in the text (is Harry Bi? Is Ron? Is Luna Gay? Ginny a lesbian or bi? So many questions - but it’s also down to the reader and their need (coupled with the death of the Author) for representation - including how little is out there for anyone who is part of the 1% - like a Charlie.) But if I'm guessing what has you bothered is the one maybe from yesterday about Luna and Ginny and Hermione (or something else and if so, point it out so I can read that and adjust if need be) and having an AU where the three of them are in a polyship.
Frankly, that’s the era we are in now, Nonnie, in that every character is possibly not straight and some of it is, Why not? While some is, How can we make our story more interesting towards those who aren’t strictly het? That is the entire basis and origination of AU - it's an alternative universe where the canon barely means a thing and it becomes like Sims, where you can re-write everything to how you want.
So I’m told, those who aren’t Cis and Het exclusively tend to spend time with those who share those traits/actions. (Birds of a feather and all) and it makes sense. (Being introverted gives me some distance to see these things.)
So the shipping goes 3 steps further, in the expectation that if Characters A&B are romantically involved, then Character C should be dating, too. That is an unfortunate toxicity of the trope that women are fed -  that they are there for the consumption of others, either for emotional labour or for validation of the others. They aren’t seen as having inherent worth for existing, only what they can do for others, either in RL or in fiction.  Having independent agency, finding their life content while being single, or content being Ace/Aro/questioning is harmful to those who have bought into the theory that they are only valued for who they date/physical romantic relationship - and not for the fact that they are people and have their own inherent worth.If a man is single (*yet having plenty of icky squicky skiddly doo*) they are seen as the swinging bachelor and celebrated - while women are held to an inherently different standard of “your only value is for what you can do for your man. (I won’t even get into the LGBTQIA side of it with all of the inter-niche dynamics of relationships.)That idea leads to an unhealthy codependency (mostly towards women) where the problematic ideal that women are to be living at home with their parents until marriage while men get to cavort on their own 'til they settle down with a partner.
The toxicity of "you have to be in a romantic physical relationship to have worth and value" is harmful towards women who are single (either by choice or not) and the older a woman gets and is single, the less people do see her. (Sad but true fact.) One of my sibs from another crib is absolutely amazing (and ambitious, highly driven, a workhorse; in amazing shape and a wonderful person - but because she refuses to make herself small for less than stellar men, she gets zero notice ‘cept from Sugar daddy scammers. *snort*
All of it is corrosive - straight or gay. People have worth because they are people - not because of who they are f* or dating. People have value at 18 and at 48.
Having Ron/Harry as a romantic couple is a *shrug* for me but for others, it's a healthier one than some in the fandom (not going there at all) but then changing Hermione to where she is written as being gay/pan/bi is why AU is there. While I don't personally agree, in an AU universe anything is possible and mostly anything goes. Her representation is needed, especially for those teens who wonder “If Hermione is gay in this, what can that explain for me, too?”
I do think the automatic assumption of Two guys as best friends automatically equals gay is toxic. It takes a dump on those men who are healthy and have guys who are friends - even to ride or die bff - and aren't gay - but because everything in media shows that it's inherently gay that you develop problems, including touch starvation - and that is an enormous Pandora's Box of problems. O_O
Personally, I don't see it and disagree with the assumption - and especially because I think it does an enormous emotional disservice and harms men where they can have a healthy platonic relationship, even to the point of having physical non-sexual affection and everyone including Great Aunt Tessie says, "They gay" and I just am boggled. Like, what the hell? Are they gay or can they be guy friends and not have the inherent desire to f* one another?
It's a double-edged sword, where people crave healthy male relationships with other men and with women but the moment it happens, there is an enormous segment (mostly women) who scream, "Just Kiss Already" and I find it so damn tiring. Like, can we just focus for one minute on a male/female relationship and not once bring up sexual tension? (side-note: This is why I am in serious appreciation for Avengers:Endgame in that Clint and Natasha are shown as having BFF platonic relationship and how damn deep and intense and emotionally fulfilling it is without having the side-trope of "friends with benefits". It makes my dark crusty Ace Heart scream in glee that it didn't have a romantic sub-plot shoved into it.)
But to automatically make every interaction as a potential romantic one hurts almost everyone - including those kids who aren't straight - because of the assumption that you only have value in who you are dating. It hurts guys who might actually come across fic and realize, Hey, I can have a best mate and not have the desire to get sweaty and sticky with them.
Y'all do what you want and do. But I'm gonna disagree on some points of note, too. I personally want more healthy relationships that are familial or platonic. Lord knows there's enough focused on romantic ones - and I'm a sap for a healthy romance/relationship.
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faithfulnews · 4 years
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Work, Play, Poetry
Work, Play, Poetry
By Anthony Domestico
March 4, 2020
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The life of the late novelist Robert Stone was filled with improbabilities. As Madison Smartt Bell puts it in his new biography, Stone, whose globe-spanning novels took on American history and the American soul, had “a taste for marijuana and alcohol (and for quaaludes and opiates).” In the 1960s, Stone was friends with Ken Kesey; you can imagine how much imbibing that entailed. While in Vietnam on a reporting trip, he experimented with heroin. (He “snorted, smoked, [and] possibly drank it on one occasion,” Bell writes.) Yet Stone lived to the ripe age of seventy-seven, writing a strong novel, Death of the Black-Haired Girl, two years before he died in 2015. “A connoisseur of women of all varieties,” Bell writes, perhaps a little too forgivingly, “Bob was far from above the occasional fling.” He had an open marriage—so open that he had a child with a family friend in the 1960s and a tempestuous affair with a younger writer three decades later. Yet he stayed with his wife Janice for fifty-five years. By Bell’s reckoning, and it seems accurate, theirs was a happy marriage.
But the most pleasant surprise, for me at least, was the decades-long friendship Stone had with Marilynne Robinson. What a literary odd couple they make: Robinson the proud Calvinist and Stone the lapsed Catholic; Robinson known best for her quiet, lovely novels about mid-century Iowa and Stone known best for his wild, prophetic novels—A Hall of Mirrors (1967), A Flag for Sunrise (1981), and others—all probing the manic brain and corrupted heart of American empire. What must the two writers have talked about? The nature of God, I’m sure. (Stone in an interview: “As a result of having been a Catholic, I’m acutely aware of the difference between a world in which there’s a God and a world in which there isn’t.”) The nature of craft, I imagine. (Stone taught at Johns Hopkins and Yale, among other places.)
Bell was friends with Stone, and his affection for his subject comes through. Writing in the first person, Bell recreates trips the two took to Haiti and conversations they had about fiction’s moral purpose. Despite this love, though, Bell doesn’t hold back, especially when it comes to the suffering brought on by Stone’s addictions. The last hundred or so pages are difficult to read, an onslaught of car crashes—Stone was a terrible driver, even when sober—narcotic dependence, increasingly frequent falls, and an attempted suicide. Stone was charismatic, everyone agrees. He was also destructive, to others occasionally and to himself consistently.
Bell is an accomplished novelist in his own right, and Child of Light, like a good work of fiction, lives through its details. Stone “huffed as much oxygen as possible in a back room of Politics and Prose” before giving a reading. David Milch, the producer of Deadwood, put Stone on the payroll at his production company to give him something to do, and some money, after a stint in rehab. Annie Dillard and Joy Williams vacationed with Stone in the 1990s. (Dillard and Stone went white-water tubing in Missoula and saw a brown bear.)
Stone’s writing offers an imaginative record of America’s political and spiritual dimensions: “That is my subject,” Stone wrote, “America and Americans.” Bell reads this wild life and lasting achievement with grace and sympathy.
Child of Light: A Biography of Robert Stone Madison Smartt Bell Doubleday, $35, 608 pp.
  Baseball here is a business, and Nemens gives it to us from all angles
Robert Coover’s The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. is the best baseball novel ever written, and I won’t hear otherwise. But The Cactus League, the first novel by Paris Review editor Emily Nemens, is also very good.
If Nemens’s debut is not quite in the same league as The Universal Baseball Association, that’s partly because it’s playing a different game. Coover’s is a postmodern novel about the postmodernism of America’s pastime. (We often care less about the game itself than about its statistical representations—batting averages and win shares.) Nemens’s is a work of straightforward realism. Baseball here is a business, and Nemens gives it to us from all angles: superstar outfielders losing fortunes at the gambling table; groupies hanging out by the bullpen; agents hushing up scandals; elderly stadium organists whose stiff hands can’t hit the keys they once could.
The Cactus League takes place in Arizona during spring training. Each chapter, nine in all, follows a different figure associated with the imaginary Los Angeles Lions franchise. Most of the particulars are right. Nemens knows that Notre Dame’s baseball team is in the ACC, and she nicely skewers the increasing encroachment of hot tubs and goofy sound effects in new ballparks. A lovely small detail: Jason Goodyear, the book’s self-sabotaging superstar, gets a signature sneaker—“the first time they’d named a shoe after a ballplayer since Griffey.”
Not everything works. No fan would call a pitcher a “fastballer,” as one character does. (At least it’s not “speedballer,” à la Bruce Springsteen.) No partial owner could demand that a prominent outfielder be traded because of sexual jealousy—and then have it happen within days. (Partial owners don’t have that much power; star players don’t get traded overnight, especially when their replacement has only played college ball.) Such details wouldn’t much matter in a postmodernist romp. They do here.
But the pacing is good and the prose generally strong. Nemens refuses to engage in the romanticizing many fall into when spring comes around. Bartlett Giamatti famously and poetically said that baseball “is designed to break your heart.” After all, Giamatti rhapsodizes, “the game begins in spring…blossoms in the summer…[and] leaves you to face the fall alone.” Fair enough. But Nemens shows how baseball also breaks your heart for more prosaic reasons: because rotator cuffs fray, because spring-training towns are depressing, and because billion-dollar franchises don’t give a fig about poetry.
The Cactus League Emily Nemens Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27, 288 pp.
  In baseball, there can come a point when you’ve so often been described as underrated that you cease to be underrated. Trot Nixon, for example: a decent right fielder in the early 2000s who Red Sox fans so often dubbed underrated that he became overrated. Charles Portis, the Arkansas-born novelist who was famous for being underrated and who died on February 17, never suffered this fate. There’s a certain kind of greatness that, no matter how many times we remark upon it, will always be underrecognized.
People who know Portis, whose out-of-print novels were reissued in the 1990s, probably know him as the author of True Grit. It’s a great novel, and it’s been made into two great movies. But every shaggy-dog story he wrote, every picaresque comedy of American naiveté and dreaminess, was great. His sentences display a funny, poetic, loose yet disciplined, absolutely American prose style. Since his death, fans have been passing around some of their favorite passages. Here are a few of my own. From The Dogs of the South: “I don’t believe we’ve ever had a President, unless it was tiny James Madison with his short arms, who couldn’t have handled Dupree in a fair fight.” From Masters of Atlantis: “It’s not healthy, locking yourself away in here so you can eat pies and read all these monstrous books with f’s for s’s.”
Rest in peace, Charles Portis.
The Dogs of the South and Masters of Atlantis
  For decades, the poet and critic Paul Mariani has been a shining light for those interested in the Catholic imagination. We can hear Gerard Manley Hopkins, that great poet of the dark night, when Mariani laments no longer being able to see the “greengold grass, / glistening the bright skin of the copper beeches.” And we can hear Hopkins again, that great poet of the shining day, when Mariani describes “know[ing] that somewhere, now as then, the wind keeps whispering still”—the Holy Spirit moving and transfiguring always, even when we can’t sense it.
Mariani’s new work of criticism, The Mystery of It All, is a twilight book. Its epigraph, addressed to his wife of more than fifty years, begins, “Moon, old moon, dear moon, I beg you / answer when I call out to you.” Its final sentences read, “‘In His Will Is Our Peace.’ The very words I have etched into our gravestone.” In recent years, the eighty-year-old Mariani has been diagnosed and treated for brain cancer. This gives his epilogue, titled “On the Work Still to Be Done,” particular force.
Yet what is most striking about this book is how buoyant it is, how joyful is its account of a life of reading and writing. Hopkins, Stevens, Berryman, O’Connor: they’re all here, and Mariani attends both to their smallest formal decisions and their most expansive metaphysical concerns. “I have read and taught Stevens for over fifty years,” he remarks. “He is someone who never ceases to delight.” Great critics are able to turn the readerly delight they experience transitive: to explain it, yes, but also to pass it on to the reader. By this and many other standards, Mariani is a strong critic.
Here he is on Hopkins’s darkness: “All is unselved, untuned, and, just as violin or catgut strings go slack, all clear voweling lost, so do we, the words themselves as if swallowed, until ‘all is enormous dark / Drowned.’” And here he is on Hopkins’s sacramental, perceptual joy: “Look at the Welsh farmers with their horses in the countryside about him, breaking up the moist clods of earth: how the light shines upon them, catching the quartz glints, in an instant turning them into diamondlike shards of light—‘sheer plod’ itself doing this, allowing the plow and the sillion both to shine in God’s light.”
Even and especially in twilight, Mariani shows us the light.
The Mystery of It All Paul Mariani Paraclete Press, $25, 240 pp.
  Even and especially in twilight, Mariani shows us the light.
Hopkins, who broke and remade form in almost everything he wrote, would have loved the poet Jericho Brown. The Tradition is Brown’s third collection of poetry. It’s also his best—the most interesting in form, the most wide-ranging in reference, the most daring in its wedding of the private and public, the spiritual and the sexual.
Brown has talked about reading T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” obsessively while working on this book. Eliot’s influence can be felt in this collection’s sense of tradition speaking to, and being changed by, the present. Eliot’s ghost is here. So too are the ghosts of James Baldwin, Lucille Clifton, and Essex Hemphill.
Brown writes several poems in a new form he calls the duplex: a combination of the sonnet, the ghazal, and the blues. “Though I may not be, I do feel like a bit of a mutt in the world,” Brown has said. Queer, black, and Southern, he wanted to create a form that felt as unlikely as himself. These duplexes work by repetition and reconfiguration. Here’s a snippet:
                        My first love drove a burgundy car.                         He was fast and awful, tall as my father.
Steadfast and awful, my tall father             Hit hard as a hailstorm. He’d leave marks.
Light rain hits easy but leaves its own mark Like the sound of a mother weeping again.
As seen here, Brown often writes about trauma: the trauma of being a hurt child or a hurt lover; the trauma of being black in America (“I promise if you hear / Of me dead anywhere near / A cop, then that cop killed me”) and the trauma of being queer in America (“My man swears his HIV is better than mine”).
But The Tradition also gives witness to joy—in sex and language, in the traditions of black art and the black church. Brown was raised Baptist, and you can hear this legacy in his imagery and music:
                        Forgive me, I do not wish to sing                         Like Tramaine Hawkins, but Lord if I could                         Become the note she belts halfway into                         The fifth minute of “The Potter’s House”
                        When black vocabulary heralds home-                         Made belief: For any kind of havoc, there is                         Deliverance!
That duplex I quoted from above begins and ends with the same line: “A poem is a gesture toward home.” Brown finds a temporary home, a form of deliverance, in and through tradition in its many forms.
The Tradition Jericho Brown Copper Canyon Press, $17, 110 pp.
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