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pynkhues · 3 years

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You’re into marvel?!?! YAY! Now I have many questions (since I’ve gathered that you have IMMACULATE taste in movies). What’s your fav mcu movie?!? Are you enjoying WandaVision? What did you think about Evan peters replacing Aaron? And, since we’re in the superhero movie bit, do you like dc? Like suicide squad, birds of prey? wonder woman or the recent ww84???

Ah! Hahaha, yeah! You’ve totally sprung me! ;-) I’ve seen everything Marvel Studios / the MCU has put out! The original X-Men trilogy + the X-Men: Evolution cartoon were really formative parts of my childhood, and the latter being cancelled after three seasons was definitely my gateway into reading comic books (I’ve been Rogue at three different dress-up parties, haha). As a result, I’ve always had a pretty huge softspot for Marvel generally, and it’s been really fun to see the way they’ve built up their studio.

Favourite MCU Movie

It’s not a movie, but I love, love, love the Jessica Jones series. I think it does such an incredible job of navigating the long tail of trauma and the way that impacts not just the individual who experienced the trauma but the people closest to them too.

But! You asked for a movie! It’s probably controversial, but I think I’d say Spiderman: Homecoming. I love a good coming of age story, and that movie just came with such a sense of joy and vulnerability, innocence and loss that it would’ve been impossible for me not to fall in love with it. I also think it has one of the universe’s more compelling villains and a really satisfying twist. I just love it.

A close second would be a three-way tie though between the first Iron Man, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Black Panther!

Are you enjoying WandaVision?

SO. MUCH.

I’m really, really loving it actually, and if it manages to stick the landing, I think it might tie for Jessica Jones as my favourite MCU story generally. I’ve loved how different it feels, and how it really embraces not just the absurdity of the premise, but the emotional root of it for all of the characters.

I’ve talked about it a bit on here before, but my favourite types of stories are the ones I like to call ‘collateral damage’ narratives, where it’s not so much dealing with the big heroes, but the aftermath of what happens around them? It’s a big part of why I like the Spiderman: Homecoming villain so much (it being a man who’s hired to clean up the damage of the big superhero battles and turning the scraps of alien weaponry he found into an underground arms trade. I think that’s a p brilliant way to explore the ramifications of the more epic stories), and WandaVision similarly exploring the traumatic aftermath not just for Wanda, but for the people brought back by the Snap, is just - - so good!

And I like Evan Peters, but already miss Aaron Taylor-Johnson. I’ve felt robbed of his Quicksilver since AoU. :-(

Do you like DC?

I’m definitely more of a Marvel girl, but I do like some of DC’s output. I watch most of their shows on The CW and have seen a lot of the movies. I really, really didn’t like Suicide Squad and Batman vs Superman, but really enjoyed Birds of Prey and Wonder Woman and Shazam! I haven’t seen WW84 yet, but I’m hoping to check it out soon.

I like DC best for their animated shows though! I loooove the old Teen Titans cartoon, Jusice League Unlimited and Young Justice! I’m hoping to watch the Harley Quinn animated series soon too! I just need to find some time, haha.

Thanks for asking though! What are your faves? And are you enjoying WandaVision? :-)

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waveridden · 4 years

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top 5 fics you've written, and top 5 fics you've read!!

i just wanna say up top that i fucking cheated on the numbers

i did non-aucembers in tam’s ask, so here are my top 6 aucembers

a ten-year concussion (counter/weight, ghost!jace au) - by FAR my favorite thing i wrote that month. if you asked me i could outline the entire story right now, it exists so clearly in my head

the end of all things (skyjacks inception au) - i don’t go in for lyrical or dreamy that often, because i think it’s really hard to get right. but this is something where i’m really happy with the characterization, and while even though i don’t necessarily think my writing is up to the standard i’d like, i think it is evocative enough for what i was trying to do? and that’s pretty neat

apple cider i don’t mind (neoscum modern au) - the thing about aucember is when you try and write a complete story in one day, a lot of the time i can paint something with really, really broad strokes. but this is another one that is so clear and specific to me, and what’s more i think it comes across in the fic? and also it’s fuckin cute

now i’m a stranger (sp7 go on au) - this is my favorite one from that first year. the nbc sitcom go on is very dear to me for absolutely no reason beyond john cho and watching it with my mom, and it’s such a weird and specific premise that i was happy to play with it and come up with something

the neon limelight (neoscum band au) - me? liking a band au that i wrote told through a fictional magazine profile? unheard of

i know this makes six but i do want to shout out the neoscum/starship iris au, which was so fantastically niche that i was sure nobody would even read it, and which i’ve gotten a few very lovely comments on. the lesson here is that even if you are sure you’re writing just for you, there will always be someone waiting for it.

and top 5 fics i’ve read (this post is so long already that i will not wax rhapsodic but just know i Could at a moment’s notice)

limited release, an x-men first class white collar au which was formative for me in a number of stylistic ways and also is the reason i watched white collar

united states v. barnes, a post-tws fic about bucky going on trial for treason and terrorism told through news articles, court transcripts, text messages, and other such sources. so fucking good.

next thursday, a stiles/danny fic sometime after s2 of teen wolf, which - like, listen, i quote this all the time and nobody will ever understand, and i know that, and that’s okay, but i say “conversations in parking lots aren’t real conversations” all the time and nobody gets it. also it’s very cute and romantic and teenagery in the best/worst ways

i’ve got nothing to do today but smile, an arthur/eames coffee shop au and the only coffee shop au you’ll ever need. seriously.

asunder, the only spn fic i care about. you know what i was saying about good aus being thoroughly rooted in canon? that’s this

this sudden burst of sunlight, which is a cr1 fake dating fic where the two people who are fake dating do it fully as a joke and then have to deal with their romantic interests being really put out about it. really thoughtful and a fun new take on the trope

these lines of lightning mean we’re never alone, a c/w cass/mako “so you need a fake date to piss off your family during thanksgiving?” fic that features a waking-up-sharing-a-bed scene so lovely that i often go back specifically to revisit that scene. and then reread the whole thing because it’s maybe my favorite take on euanthe tbh?

keep talking, i’ll keep walking towards the sound of your voice, an it ch2 fix-it. wherein eddie and stan become ghosts and have to watch over the rest of the losers... unless they can figure out a way back to life. i’ve read a lot of fix-its and this is maybe my favorite, because it does the right thing and also brings stan back

#waveridden.ask #katasstrophee #long post //#LONG long post #thank you kat!!#this was fun sorry for ignoring the numbers here is a very specific look at my tastes and preferences

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mrsspidermanmaryjanewatsonparker · 5 years

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Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #13-15 Thoughts

Previous thoughts here.

Yes I know I couldn’t be later to this party but I started this series so I’m going to finish giving my thoughts on it.

I tried very hard to finish Houser’s run on RYV in time to read Spider-Girls but it just didn’t happen, I only made it up until just before the penultimate arc and I didn’t write up a proper post of my thoughts back then. So I re-read her first arc today with ambitions of re-reading the next 2 stories before finally experiencing the final arc and then Spider-Girls as part of reading over most of Spider-Geddon. What you will read below are a mixture of some initial thoughts I jotted down during my first read through and my thoughts upon revisiting the story, mostly the latter.

Oh SPOILERS I guess

So let me immediately get some obvious business about Renew Your Vows’ direction from here on in. The book, sans its covers, desperately misses Stegman. It also misses Conway but that is not a condemnation of Houser at all.

Houser in this arc does a good job with the situation presented by the new direction. Whether that new direction was her idea or editorials is unknown, though likely the latter.

And really that is the absolute worst thing about this story, the new direction itself.

It isn’t so much that it is bad unto itself but it is reductive that after 12 issues building a certain status quo, the one also built by the RYV Secret Wars mini-series and was promoted by Marvel prior and during the book’s initial release that we are abruptly changing course in a big way.

The book is still unique, at least the Spider-Books on the stands (even now). But it is less unique for various reasons.

Firstly we simply have way more teen heroes than pre-teen ones. Secondly a book that pays much attention to Spider-Man’s super powered teen daughter is going to either tread upon familiar ground that Spider-Girl stood on or else it will evoke Spider-Girl in the memories of the readers. Annie unto herself innately did this anyway, but that was offset when she was much younger than Mayday.

It also throws away the world building and set up Conway enacted in his initial arc, not to mention it just fast forwards a lot of Annie’s potential character development.

Does this render Annie uninteresting or the premise less likable? No because Houser has a strong handle on both the characters and more specifically what RYV as a book is.

Perhaps this is nowhere more apparent in how she structures her opening arc. Each issue shifts the POV to one of the Parker family, starting with Peter, then handing off to MJ and concluding with Annie, exactly like Conway’s first three issues did. This is a pretty clever way of conveying to readers Houser ‘gets’ the book and reassure readers who might not be thrilled about the time skip that these are the same characters just at different points in their lives, and not even that different, sans Annie.

This is rather realistic because Peter and MJ being the adults are comparatively less likely to change all that much even within 8 years whereas Annie inevitably will drastically change going from a pre-teen to an out-and-out teenager. Fittingly Houser compensates for this by showcasing Annie’s new state of being throughout the issues that are about Peter and MJ.

On the one hand this does somewhat undermine the idea that this book is about the family collectively as opposed being about Annie or placing Annie as the ‘first among equals’ in the team dynamic of the book.

On the other hand since the book is about the Parker family it adds up that so much of Peter and MJ’s characterization will stem from their relation to Annie; your child is after all the most important thing in your life.

So we get Annie’s somewhat more salty and disconnected relationship with a Peter who is very much starting to feel his age. Which is GOOD, the obnoxious proliferation of teen Spider-Man renders almost any older portrayal interesting by default. With MJ though, Annie seems to have a much more conciliatory relationship, its more that she exhausts her mother and seems more comfortable going to her about stuff. Also as a nice way of distinguishing her from Mayday, Annie seems to share her mother’s passion for fashion which Mayday actively didn’t.

Speaking of fashion lets talk about Annie’s new costume. I’ll level you all..it looks better than her prior costume, but also less unique but neither is...all that great. I guess when you have Mayday Parker and Spider-Gwen and all the Spider-Women running around, coming up with something thing that fits the general Spider-Man motif, looks unique and also is really dynamic can be difficult. I can see where the designer was going though. Peter, MJ and Annie share the same outlines for where the chest areas of their suits turn into another colour. Peter’s is red and blue, MJ’s red and white and Annie’s is blue to black. So the ‘shape’ of the suit lends to the ‘unified family’ idea. The colours also make her stand out but maybe too much. If her parents had red chests and then she has blue it’s kinda weird. If the idea was she was trying to strike out on her own sure but I don’t get that impression at all. It is kinda cool she has MJ’s mask design but I preferred her old mask which was a compromise between her parents’ masks.

As for the main plot, I think Houser could’ve milked it much more than she did, we could’ve done with much more of the slice of life stuff and the Lizard was underutilized. There is a strong element of family defining the Lizard’s character because of his wife and child. In a book about family I presumed that was where we were going when he showed up. But...no he was just used as a monster amidst monsters.

I’m not saying Houser got the Lizard wrong just that there was an obvious and more compelling angle to exploited in the story.

The two big reveals surrounding the plot, that there is a zoo full of near-human people, and that it’s being run by Mister Sinister was also...underwhelming.

Spider-Man has the best supporting cast and rogue’s gallery within Marvel comics. Not only does this mean we don’t really need to see non-Spider-Man characters (like the X-Men) pop up, it’s frankly less interesting when we do because they have little-no history with Spider-Man or his family.

It was also just kind of a reveal that didn’t land for me, I could not care at all.

Mister Sinister was a little different because, I like Sinister as a bad guy I really do...but not in Spider-Man. I get including and referencing the X-Men in this arc because for some reason they were practically supporting cast members in Conway’s run, so paying that off makes sense. But why double down upon it with a major X-villain? Like the Jackal, even Doc Ock, either of them would be more fitting villains in this type of story or where the series implies it will be leading onto later.

It didn’t help that when we met Sinister initially in disguise there was just very little gravitas to him because he obviously looked like a no-name 18th century circus reject.

The ending let this arc down is what I guess I’m getting at. Issue #13 and #14 had pretty nice hooks for the next issues.

What was a letdown throughout though was the action sequences. They were pretty pedestrian along with the art overall. Like it wasn’t BAD per se (except Peter’s eyebrows...wtf?), it just was a major step down from Stegman and even Stockman, the latter of whom I think the artwork was chosen to be more like. It had this softer undefined element to it, and not in a Romita Senior way.

Returning to the character though, I do commend Houser for having a good grip on everyone and efficiently finding a way to distinguish them from one another across the three issues.

Peter dealing with being older and now decidedly less cool and engaging to his teen daughter is delightful..even if at points it feels like the narrative is kind of undermining him, especially in the Wolverine scene at the start of the story...still Dad Joke Spider-Man is awesome. Even more awesome is how together he over all is. This isn’t an angst ridden Peter Parker or one who is introspectively questioning himself. Throughout the story he gives off this air of relaxed experience, like he knows what he’s doing and can tell the situation allows for a few jokes and a bit of fun. Refrshingly he doesn’t angst about not pursuing the bad guy at all.

Moving on, Houser probably dissing MJ’s place in the Iron books at the time with her reprimanding and smack down of Tony was awesome (although I don’t get why she was so miffed at him). Her playing Spider-Mom, and more poignantly dejectedly owning it, was hilarious. Her sense of exhaustion is relatable whether you’ve been a parent or just been around them. It very much taps into Conway’s characterization of MJ as a juggler

Houser’s Annie also shines. She is believably an older version of the kid Annie we once knew but also stands firmly as her own person. She’s somewhat embarrassed by her Dad and wants greater independence. She loves being a superhero, but is (also in contrast to Mayday) a more of a punch first think later kind of gal with a dash of overconfidence.

She is untrustworthy of the Lizard and more gung ho, whilst MJ and especially Peter (to my delight) are both more reigned in and trusting.

This is nicely explored in the family’s single page descent underground where Houser gives Peter a really great speech about what it means for Annie to accept the great responsibility of the mask, that it might mean trusting those who are not trustworthy for the sake of others. This serves to nicely develop Annie as its her Dad treating her as more of an adult for the first time. the fact that it’s her Dad, the iconic hero Spider-Man conveying this wisedom onto her is very fitting and helps further legitimize Annie as a Spider-Hero to the readers of RYV and legitimize the new teen version to those jumping aboard at this point.

Not to be outdone, MJ an issue earlier got a wonderful piece of dialogue about how in spite of how their lives might be messed up by being heroes she and her family will still endeavour to make plans and live normal lives. Which is both a wonderfully inspiring heroic statement but also so very true to who she and Peter are as people.

Some other small points:

I saw Carrion amidst Sinister’s menagerie

The underground nature of the story’s conclusion nicely evokes the first arc by Conway

Overall Houser sells/sold you on the new dynamic with this arc as much as I preferred the older one and wish they hadn’t changed.

B+

#RYV Thoughts #Jody Houser #Nick Roche #Annie May Parker #Spiderling #spinneret #renew your vows #Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #mary jane watson #Mary jane watson Parker #MJ Watson #mjwatsonedit #Spider-Man #Peter Parker

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thebibliomancer · 5 years

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50 More Days of Comics! 27/50: G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero! #30 (1984)

Somehow I forgot that Marvel had the license to make G.I. Joe comics.

Marvel sure handled a lot of licenses back in the day! Doctor Who, Transformers, GI Joe, Star Wars, ElfQuest, Groo the Wanderer, 2001 Space Odyssey, Micronauts, ROM Space Knight.

And people have fond memories of a lot of these. I guess Marvel licensed good and then probably crossed the license over with X-Men for good measure.

Interestingly, Marvel basically created the premise that G.I. Joe became known for. Writer Larry Hama took an unused pitch for a special anti-Hydra SHIELD team called Fury Force and repurposed it. Hydra became Cobra. And G.I. Joe became at one point Marvel’s best selling comic.

Its both super easy and weirdly unsettling imagining G.I. Joe existing in the Marvel universe though. Cobra would fit in with a lot of their weirdo evil groups like AIM and Hydra. But, I dunno, I can’t as easily see the Joes co-existing with SHIELD for some reason. I try to imagine them existing as separate entities and they just glorrrrrp together into the Venture Bros OSI in my brainmeats.

But look at me trying to talk around the book. Which has a cover where three shirtless dudes in vests beat up an airplane.

Are we sure this isn’t a Street Fighter comic? Street Fighters love beating up parked vehicles. Its inexplicable.

The three airplane dudes from the cover (apparently motorcycle riding henchmen called Dreadnoks?) and master of disguise Zartan are loitering outside McGuire airforce base for reasons I’m sure would be perfectly reasonable if I had read G.I.JOE: A Real American Hero! #29 when they spot a familiar helicopter landing.

It is a helicopter that raided their lair in Florida. And is now landing at McGuire. In New Jersey.

Goddamn the Joes are uneconomical.

Anyways, yes, it’s a Joecoptor (sold separately) and Zartan disguises himself as boss-Joe Hawk to investigate. He finds that the helicopter is unloading a wounded Wild Bill to place on an ambulance. Wild Bill reports that they lost a copter but also burned Cobra’s Florida operation off the map.

Zartan as Hawk awkwardly salutes Wild Bill, trying to cover that he doesn’t actually know the man’s name.

Zartan calls Cobra Commander and tells him about this choice intel and Cobra Commander is faiiiirly sure that G.I. Joequarters are hidden somewhere in McGuire so he cobra commands Zartan and the Dreadnoks to keep an eye on the place.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, on Staten Island, some Cobra operatives (Cobratives?) under cover of being a Normal Family purchase a house near Fort Wadsworth and fill it with an excessive amount of surveillance gear.

“It’ll be set up and operational by midnight. We’re not going to miss anything!”

Aaaaaaaaas the ambulances carrying the wounded Joes drive into Fort Wadworth and take a secret elevator from the motor pool down into Joequarters.

Waa waa waaaaa~

Cobra comedy.

Of course, the Joes have their own moment when Wild Bill sees Hawk in the Joequarters and wonders how he got here from the airport so fast. But Hawk has been in the base all day! So who did Wild Bill see at McGuire?? (It was Zartan)

Meanwhile some more, in Springfield, at the offices of the Arbco Brothers Circus, a young boy or maybe a teen boy named Billy is snooping at the circus records because under guise of circus is how Cobra has been moving troops and tanks around the country!

In fact, a contingent of circus trucks driven by Cobra Commander is on its way to McGuire right now. God forbid he get pulled over because he is wearing the full reflective visor while driving.

Anyway, Billy gets caught by the Baroness but she seemingly wants Billy to join her against Cobra? I dunno, maybe she was splinter factioning.

Meanwhile, back at Staten Island, Cobra Fred finally finishes setting up all the surveillance equipment just to receive a call recalling him back to Springfield because Cobra Commander believes that he’s found the GI Joe headquarters and doesn’t need spies all over the place anymore.

And as Fred and his wife or maybe the person undercover as his wife smash the surveillance equipment in rage at the ten hours wasted setting up the equipment, Fred bemoans.

Fred: “Ten hours it took to set up this gear – and I didn’t even get a chance to turn it on for one minute!”

As a convoy of GI Joe vehicles pass his house and his now broken surveillance equipment that would have revealed a heavy Joe presence at Fort Wadsworth.

Waa waa waaaaaa~

In the intervening hours, the Joes contacted the McGuire sentries who saw ‘Hawk’ come onto the base and they reported a glowing and shimmering. Which clues the Joes in that the ‘Hawk’ was actually Zartan under holographic disguise.

Better safe than sorry, they mobilize a few tanks and assorted vehicles (sold separately) to McGuire.

Meanwhile, AGAIN, the Dreadnoks have finished cutting a hole in the McGuire fence so that when Cobra arrives they can just drive on in. But they’re dumb and bored so against Zartan’s orders, they decide to sneak onto the base to break stuff just for the sake of breaking stuff.

So a rare occasion: the cover of a comic being 100% truthful! Some dudes break a plane just because!

A Dreadnok: “Zartan said Cobra Commander was a stickler for detail! I’ve just de-tailed this plane!”

Another Dreadnok: “Detail? De-tail! I get it! Har!!”

These guys have fun.

The circus trucks arrive and start unloading Cobra Hiss Tanks and Snap Helicopters (sold separately). Cobra Commander wants this done clever and quiet. The tanks and helicopters are to stand by to cover withdrawal by the insertion unit.

But here’s something: Dreadnok Buzzer accidentally caused a loud, obvious explosion while vandalizing a plane cuing the control tower that something is going on. Obviously, they signal the alarm.

With stealth kaput, Cobra Commander makes an ehxecutive decision and goes eh whatever, full frontal assault and has the tanks and helicopters charge the control tower.

Cobra Commander also spots the Dreadnoks fleeing the mess they made and realizes that they’re the ones that botched his plan. But he’ll Deal With Them Later.

As for the Dreadnoks, they run right into the Joes. But since the Joes just got the alert from the tower, they let the Dreadnoks go so they can deal with the more obvious problem.

The control tower blinds the Hiss tanks with the searchlights but the Snap copters shoot out the lights.

Speaking of the Snap Helicopters. Nothing looks quite so blatantly toylike as them. They’re ridiculously small for a helicopter and the blades are right above the pilot’s head in the OPEN COCKPIT. It looks like the slightest turbulence would lead to chunky salsa.

Anyway, after all this meanwhiles and goof and counter goof, the actual battle is over quickly. The Joes quickly take out the Cobra attack force and the last Snap copter swoops down so Cobra Commander can escape under cover of explosion.

The next morning, Hawk jokes to Ace that Uncle Sam will buy him a new Sky Striker while Ace grouses that he had just broken in this one.

And in a tiny boat, Destro and another silhouette plot revenge against Cobra Commander’s treachery in Florida by rejoining him in Springfield and pretending they suspect nothing. And then when he least suspects it: revenge probably!

Geez this is a very continuity dense book. Gotta give it to Larry Hama because this is a book in which a lot of things happened. Hence the meanwhiles meanwhiles meanwhiles. But because it was all leading up to one event: the Cobra attacking McGuire and getting repelled by the Joes, its all condensed into one book instead of drawing it out. Probably for the best. We know that the Cobras are operating under false assumptions so imagine waiting several months for the farce to fully pay off.

But it was a very dense book and it doesn’t really have a recap page or a character page or remind you who is who and why and what they’re about so its very dense and very impenetrable to the poor idiot that jumps on at issue 30. Why would you do that?

I dunno. The box willed it.

#50 More Days of Comics!#G.J. Joe #Marvel G.I. Joe

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galactusaurus · 6 years

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Foes of the Arcade - X-Men - Pyro

Note: Foes of the Arcade is a new series I’ll be undertaking as an excuse to both exercise my incredibly rusty writing skills and spend more time in my office tinkering with MAME under the guise of doing something useful so as not to draw the ire of my wife. If you realize that last sentence was a run-on, you can see why this is a necessary exercise.

The Game

X-Men is one of Konami’s most fondly-remembered 90′s beat-em-ups and while most people my age have better memories of the first TMNT or Turtles in Time, this six-player cabinet (in the US, at least) will always be my favorite. The gameplay is straightforward: you walk to the right and punch increasingly larger and more difficult series of bad guys. The X-Men franchise lends itself nicely to this premise as the plot of most of the X-media I would be exposed to throughout the 90′s revolved around mechanized, gigantic, death-bringer Sentinel robots. Also, Magneto is the big-bad and he’s technically capable of everything short of raising the dead in the comic through one extension of his powers or another, he can definitely create and command a repetitive, useless, bad-guy army.

The game itself is overall great and definitely merits a run-through in MAME, however there’s one distracting element to the aesthetic, especially to a 90′s a kid: the characters don’t match the Fox Kids Cartoon! By the time anyone saw this game in an arcade, most kids had seen promo art of the X-Men series that was to be a launching point for the Fox Kids afternoon and Saturday-morning line of cartoons. The weekend was styled upon the look of a new monthly X-Men comic drawn by 90′s comic visionary Jim Lee, a book launched in 1991 and whose colors and styles informed the look of the team for more than a decade.

The proper look of an X-Men for 90′s kids versus the 80′s theme

Supposedly the outdated look owes itself to a licensing deal struck by Marvel around the same time when they were shopping a pilot for a self-developed series starring Kitty Pryde: Pryde of the X-Men. This also explains the inclusion of Dazzler, a character so locked to the 80′s that she wouldn’t merit bringing out of the vault until the Britney Spears / Christina Aguilera fandom-wars of the almost-2000′s and beyond. If you were to make an X-Men beat-em-up today, you would have to offer no fewer than a dozen playable characters, and if you chose Dazzler over someone like Beast, ten thousand MRA-Twitter-Nazis would have pizzas, swat teams, and death threats delivered to your house daily.

A low-res image of the show that made this game possible. Note Professor Xavier’s blazer + turtleneck look, a hallmark of 80′s Dad-figuredom.

The Hero:Storm

Born into an American-Kenyan family, Ororo Munroe lost her parents at a young age and developed the claustrophobia that would be her defining weakness for the next four decades. She would eventually develop what is arguably the most badass power in all of comic book history: complete mastery of the weather and shortly afterward she was recruited to join (and ultimately lead) the X-Men by Charles Xavier under the pseudonym Storm.

Storm is an awesome character and is really a much better leader of the X-Men than Cyclops would ever be. It was quite a progressive choice at time for Chris Claremont to cast-aside Cyclops in favor of team-lead that is a woman of color, but the character was simply so strong and likable that nobody really questioned the choice. Over the years, X-writers would continually try to reinsert Cyclops as the leader, or at least as the team mentor, and although much would be made of the power-struggle dynamic between the two, Storm is the better leader and better character. Cyclops ultimately became the guy they would periodically kill off to boost distribution.

For the purposes of this game, Storm is the Donatello of the group. She has the the best range and probably the best special move, making her a great choice for any serious player’s run through this game. I almost always play as Storm because her reach advantage is such that you rarely get into a position when you need to burn a special, saving those precious elements for when they’re needed: the cheap-ass bosses.

The Foe: Pyro

Pyro was a creation of the Chris Claremont / John Byrne braintrust and basically served as filler on the anti-X-Men lineup Magneto was fielding over at the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants for most of the 80′s. His power is a fairly-unoriginal control over flames that, unlike the Human Torch, requires the fire to be created before he can command it. Because of this, he walks around with a napalm canister on his back that is somehow never targeted by anyone. He would later show up as an angsty teen in the Fox/Marvel series of films and as a boss character in the X-Men Legends / Marvel Ultimate Alliance series of games.

His role in this game is to be the first level boss of an arcade beat ‘em up, and I think if you’ve read this far, you know what that means. His pattern is simple for anyone that has played the game more than once and if you can’t get past him, you either only have one hand or haven’t played a lot of arcade games.

The Damage: Great Success!!

Pyro is a bit of a joke for the experienced among us in this type of game, but the first level here is really fun. I forgot about the stupid fire-blast that comes out of the wall so he got one decent hit on me. His pattern is that he jumps around and shoots fire, so hit him before he shoots, it’s really next-level stuff. I used to be able to get to the third level of this game on a single quarter, which is kind of impressive; these games are built to steal your money! I ended up eating shit before fighting The Blob, but I had a lot of fun. I definitely recommend this game for anyone that’s into the MAME scene and double-definitely for anyone that sees this one in the wild.

youtube

#xmen #comics #marvel #mame #arcade #retro #videogames #video games #retrogaming

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newx-menfan · 6 years

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What do you think of the mini-series "Spider-Man & the X-Men?" Personally it's one of my favorites, but I also like hearing your analysis of things. (also why does Julian wear the yellow training uniform in #1 and have purple tk?)

I’m… mixed on Spiderman and the X-Men.

On the one hand- it is hella funny and enjoyable! It’s everything ‘Wolverine and the X-Men’ comic tried to be, but just wasn’t.

The Sauron panel about curing cancer, is probably one of my favorite comic book panels/scenes.

It’s useless fluff, but it’s enjoyable useless fluff.

On the other hand- there’s basically zero character development in this book.

If you’re hoping for a storyline delving into Julian’s trauma and character motivations- this isn’t it.

If you’re looking for a storyline where the X-kids move past being generic students-this isn’t it.

Julian still gets the 'Jerk with a Heart of Gold’ character development; just a whole lot less well written than DeFilippis and Weir/Kyle and Yost.

It’s another book ignoring how the kids have been repeatedly screwed by the adults and undergone various horrors.

It just politely sweeps all that under the rug, because this book is supposed to be 'fun’. We can’t be reminded that Rockslide and Julian have been ridiculously loyal to the X-Men despite almost dying several times, being abandon and neglected, watching their friends die in a bus explosion, ect… So the idea that one of them would be a mole is preposterous; because that would be a 'downer’.

On top of that, then you have Julian in that horrid school uniform/Hellion’s uniform hybrid (Let’s be honest, Julian loves his Hellion’s uniform too much to ever stop wearing it…) and his TK aura being wrong… And Eyeboy being in it (Sorry to Eyeboy fans, but I will never be made to actually care about that character…); so all in all…SMATXM is OKAY. Fun when you need something light and 100% better than WATXM; but disappointing when you compare it to New Mutants/original Generation X/Academy X.

On recent Teen Books, in General:

I haven’t really been impressed by recent teen books; because it seems like all writers are hopped up on this 'lovable loser’ trope, Marvel keeps making horrible marketing decisions, and they rely too heavily on the adult X-Men instead of the X-kids to sell the book.

* The problem with the 'lovable losers’ trope is A] Grant Morrison did it so perfectly with all his meta commentary in New X-Men (the 2001 series, not Academy X) and B] can you realistically keep that plot point going for more than a year, without it getting stale (Just look at GLEE, for further example). Even Morrison didn’t do an entire series on 'the special class’, he just had it be the B-plot of his X-Men run.

* Marvel made so many horrible marketing choices for Generation X Volume 2, in my opinion.

The first being naming it 'Generation X; you had a lot of old fans hoping for reunion for years and when this was announced SO MANY fans got their hopes up, only to be disappointed when it was announced that it would be about the X-Kids.

The second was advertising it with multiple teen X-teams in the Resurrection teaser; making readers think it was going to be a mix of New Mutants/Original Gen X/Academy X/Generation Hope/ect… You had a ton of people pumped about their favorites showing up or guessing who would be chosen… Only to be disappointed when it was announced it would mostly be WATXM kids…

Leaving people guessing can be worse that just immediately announcing the lineup, because potentially fans will come up with WAY BETTER ideas than you did. Why Marvel keeps doing this 'one at a time character reveal/blacked out characters’ on social media MAKES NO SENSE to me, because you’re almost always guaranteeing disappointment instead of excitement…

Then Marvel priced it at 3.99; at a time when DC was releasing 2.99 books for some pretty big name characters.

The only big names on this team were Quentin Quire, Bling, and Jubilee; everyone else were pretty minor characters, even among X-teens.

2.99 is reasonable for this book; 3.99 is putting it in competition with some pretty big name DC and Marvel characters- if I have to chose between 'Doom Patrol&rsquo (a book that DOES basically do Strain's premise...but a million times better...) ; or 'Generation X’ on my pull list because I have limited money- sorry, but Doom Patrol is totally winning out.

I could have justified purchasing this book if Strain had used some Academy X kids more in the book; but the fact she used Quire and WATXM gang kind of sealed the deal for me, despite the fact that this series was pretty well written…

* Anymore Marvel seems to think the only way to sell teen characters is by focusing on a big name A-lister.

For 'Wolverine and the X-Men’, it was Logan and Kitty.

For 'Spiderman and the X-Men’, it was Spiderman.

For 'Generation X Vol. 2’, it was Jubilee.

Here’s the thing- I read the teen books to get a BREAK from the A-listers. I like teen books, because you can do really interesting character growth and plot points, you can’t with adults.

The original New Mutants UTILIZED Xavier and Magneto: but generally it was always about the students.

The original Generation X usually UTILIZED Banshee and Emma: but generally it was usually about the students (plus, Banshee rarely gets a push in main X-books ANYWAY and Emma was a B-lister at that point, so I didn’t feel all that bad about Emma and Sean getting a push at that time…)

The original Academy X MOVED AWAY from focusing on Dani and the original New Mutants pretty quickly, to focusing on the students. Emma and the other adults were also secondary characters in the book.

You DON’T need A-Lister adults to sell the story if it’s well written; yet Marvel keeps doing this despite the fact that it’s essentially turning the teen characters into secondary characters or wallpaper IN THEIR OWN BOOK!

Overall I’d rank the recent teen books as:1. Generation X being the best- because IT was decently written despite A LOT of plot holes and questionable marketing choices. It’s the only slightly serious teen book to come out recently.2. SMATXM- it was funny and did the 'lovable loser’ shtick better than most other series.3. WATXM- the WORST; useless fluff THAT was poorly written, too much focus on Wolverine and Quire, Quire being OP and having zero character growth, problematic things like sexualization of Oya or making fun of her religious struggle, ect.

Overall though, all three of these books are disappointing when you compare them to any of the older X-teen books written…

#question #answer #Spiderman and the X men #wolverine and the x men #SMATXM #WATXM #Hellion #Julian Keller #Marvel #generation x

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cindyfelicia · 6 years

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Hi, I hope you’re doing well!! I was just wondering if you read comics? If so could you recommend some/ how to start getting into them? I want to start reading them, but it’s so stressful trying to figure out where to start. Also I love you blog!

Hi there! you’re all manners of sweet and kind thank u my advice abt approaching comics is going for solo runs first, this is how I, personally, did it and it’s way easier than jumping in on team books, or worse events bc they tend to be messier and need more bg info and pre-existing knowledge than a comic that focus on just the one character; I also feel it’s good to start with current or at least recent comics, you can always read the old stuff when you’re better acquainted with how comics work and which characters, artists and writers you like (or can tolerate).

actual recs under the cut because this got so long

i was gonna do a whole list of mcu characters’ solos because most people entry point to comics rn is superhero movies, and hmu if you want that, but instead I think I’m gonna rec you some good comics that are either separated enough from main marvel continuity as to be intelligible without extensive info gathering, or I just think they’re great and worth a bit of confusion (part of starting out reading comics is not knowing fully wth is going on sometimes, but stiking with it for some good art or for characters you love -I’m not gonna go so far as to say for good writing bc that’s just not realistic):

if you like yourself some spider-people:- silk (2015) and vol 2 (2016) are my absolute favorites- I’m not very much into spiderman but I read renew your vows and it’s lovely, it’s just not a main universe comic it’s an au where things are as, imo, they should be with ye old web slinger, and it’s good for getting your feet wet in the huge pool of spider-man comics;- I love miss jessica drew (spider-woman) but her solo is……. questionable if someone has a good jess drew intro rec pls tell me so I can pass it on, - miles morales has been written badly in more ways than one but I love him so I suffer, I can direct you without scruples only to his novel tho, absolutely lovely and not written by brian michaelbendis lmao- anya corazon is a really good character that marvel loves to forget it has, let’s not make the same mistake;- black widow 2014 and 2016 and bw: the name of the rose are all good comics (I know technically nat isn’t a spider person but like nothing about spider-woman’s powers screams ‘spider’ either so..

for wakanda I’d say good recent start-ups would be: - black panther (2016), - black panther: world of wakanda (w/ a lesbian couple as protag), - and rise of the black panther (ongoing)

some non x-men team books that are easier to approach as a beginner imho:-young avengers vol 2 (vol 1 has its moments if you want to start from the beginning with them but a lot of it involves the civil war arc and stuff.. also some characters die, the art is less good and I want to protect people from 17’s yo cassie lang’s nipples poking through her shirt.. I wish someone had protected me tbh) -I want to rec some Runaways but besides the current run (which is alright) there’s a lot to be said against the writing in most of the rest of them maybe vol 1? to have the origins pinned down-I feel like after a small read through of what exactly the hell was going on with secret wars you could approach A-Force vol 1 and the first half of vol 2 (the second half ties in with civil war II and I’m not touching that mess) and that and avenger world and sometimes secret avengers to me are good avengers books-she hulk 2014 and totally awesome hulk are my greens of choice but if you want an intro to bruce banner idont actually know, sorry-for the asgardians: thor 2014 and it’s follow up mighty thor, thor: god of thunder, angela: asgard’s assassin and its sequel angela: queen of hel, and loki: agent of asgard are my pick of this crop-we also have Fun here at marvel comics on occasion and both patsy walker aka hellcat and squirrel girl are nice in their own way although the latter isn’t really my thing

some follow up on the young avengers:- hawkeye (2013) an absolute fan favorite, good to discover that actually clint barton was a good character it’s that the avengers movies are just bad and hate people with disabilities- a couple of follow-ups to that (x) (x) and the kate bishop solo all pretty nice- america chavez’s solo (I’m just here to suggest gay comics, that’s almost all I read really)

I want to rec Champions to people but frankly it’s just a long series of event interruptions and bullshit interspersed with a couple of nice moments so far, so I’m gonna rec you some kids that are in the champions and have solos I haven’t already mentioned:- kamala khan’s book is probably my favorite ongoing series at marvel right now about any non-mutant char, I cannot say enough good about it,- nova is nice,- miles morales (spider-man) and amadeuscho (totally awesome hulk) are also there but I’ve already mentioned themalso in this house we love and respect elektranatchiosand any other attitude just isn’t tolerated.

on to the x-men, gotta love those guys, you just gotta:- like I said I prefer to tell people to start from recent comics but with the xmen that’s so difficult? it’s been 10+ bad years for them because of the movie rights situation and just marvel being shit in general, so my one recent team book to approach the x-men is prob x-men ‘92? because its based off of the xm animated series so you don’t have to straightaway deal with some mutant plague, eugenics plots, and other catastrophic events, but you can still get to know more of the char we all love - I want to say generation x vol 2, it’s not a good starting point for anything really but I love it so so much I had to mention it even tho it was cancelled and I’m still angry as hell about it.

the solo situation is better. I’m gonna be able to breathe without tasting my own bile while I type this, hurray!-all new wolverine follows laura kinney as she takes up the mantle from logan-iceman, good solid comic abt coming out and ice puns, who doesn’t like bobby really-jean grey, yes she’s a teen girl in this, yes it’s weird and I hate de-aging characters but it’s nice to see her train with different mutants, struggling with the incoming phoenix force and her adult self’s shadow, not really great entry point to jean grey but id read it anyway-if you were into the 00’s xmen movies like me, or at least a normal person’s amount the phoenix recently returned and with her adult!jean grey, it was a good book for me and good if you want to later start reading the actual phoenix saga (which is a lot of material so starting small with this might help) -I love wandamaximoff and despite what they’ve done to the maximoffs in order to bring them into the mcu (was it worth it for that result btw? really?) her recent book was good and I genuinely loved it -storm’s solo is so good, you’re gonna fall in love with an het ship and you’re not gonna regret it either-rogue and gambit, is ongoing and it’s good to get a little acquainted with these characters but mostly it’s about explorign their relationship

I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of good x-men content atm but I can’t stop thinking I need to mention that there are ongoing series you could pick up its just.. I hate them.. some started out promising (xmen gold, astonishing xmen), but they’ve not developed in good directions imo, but I still feel they should be mentioned, there’s also a weapon x comic if you want to go for a more bloody kind of book and xmen blue if you like time displaced teens or something? god its bad

jeez this is so so long and guess what? I haven’t even finished yet.. there’s some excellent indie comics out there and with those you really don’t need to worry abt knowing any 30 years old lore or anything you pick them up and they explain themselves like any other normal media out there, I know, be still my heart:

- lumberjanes is my absolute favorite, a little corny, but so much fun and cuteness and if I could go back in time I’d give it to my little bi self so she’d know she’s not alone and anything I feel that ways about has a special place i my heart js

- Motor crush, there really isn’t any other comic book with a black lesbian as protagonist out there that I can think of, good if you’re into motorcycles but if like in my case that threatens to put you to sleep, it also has a sci-fi streak and solid character work, you won’t regret giving it a try

- moonstruck, cute non-white gay werewolves and other mythological creatures are there, I feel this cathers to me specifically every time I open it?? bless

- Hi-Fi fight club or heavy vinyl (they changed the title) if you want a period piece that’s fun and cute and gay (I meant it about me reading only gay comics as you can tell)

- saga, for a space, well ya know.. saga I feel that I can describe it as romeo and juliet in space with added racial commentary except they don’t kill themselves, I have to say not my favorite but you might stick with it for the characters, I sure do

- the wicked + the divine, I feel very much the same about this as I do about saga, only this is mythology based so like.. I sold my soul to it, but please do tread with care there’s a lot of deaths in it and so many of these dead people are gays and/or poc.. I’m none too pleased about it and I’d understand anyone not wanting to pick it up, I mean the deaths are basically in the premises of the books but that doesn’t change the end result..

lastly like I said dc is not my area of expertise but I’ve been following with pleasure both batwoman and green lanterns, and mr miracle was an amazing comic so I thought I’d mention them

#this is so long I'm sorry #I do hope it's somewhat helpful #Anonymous

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tessatechaitea · 7 years

Text

New Titans #100

Surprise! The person behind the Darkening was Raven all along! We were all fooled by her bones on Azarath!

Why would you need a blood test to get married? To find out if the woman is pregnant so you can judge the couple? To make sure the husband isn't riddled with STDs? Oh! I should ask Lord Google!

So I guess the blood test was to reveal which member of the loving couple was a total skank whore! I mean, you know, for medical reasons so the STD could be cleared up before the honeymoon and not to totally drive a wedge between the two by making one member of the loving couple bitter and resentful that they didn't also live an awesome previous life riddle with sexually diseased partners! I guess there's also some commentary about mixed marriages or something on that page. Now it would be commentary on gay marriage. Look how far America has come into the 21st Century! We've partially opened the door to matrimony for a few more select groups! Way to go!

Bruce saw how clean your blood test was and was ashamed.

Dick Grayson: "Hey Alfred! I'm getting married! Did Bruce get the invite?" Alfred: "I'm sorry, Master Grayson, but he won't be able to make it." Dick Grayson: "What?! That selfish bastard! He never cares about my feelings! He was the worst father ever!" Alfred: "He's currently in a coma with a broken back. So, you know, thanks for not answering our calls for help when all the inmates in Arkham escaped and Bane destroyed your dad's dreams of always knowing when he's pooped." Dick Grayson: "Oh. Yeah, um. Well. I was busy with Titans' business! We've been really busy! Titaning and stuff! Anyway, will you be here? And Jason? Err, I mean Tim?" Anyway, the wedding winds up being a beautiful, romantic experience.

Oh, except for this part, I guess. I don't think the officiant usually explodes in a ball of flame at the conclusion of the vows.

At the point where the officiant blows up, the wedding sort of goes off the rails. Raven, Deathwing, and the Team Titans Judge and Jury attack. Everybody but Raven is defeated and you'll probably be surprised by what happens next if you haven't been paying attention to one of Marv Wolfman's favorite plot points.

Raven rapes and seemingly impregnates Kory at her wedding while everybody watches in horror. Well, everybody except Tim who watches in both horror and intrigue.

I don't know how much you can blame Raven for all the raping she's been doing lately. She was raised by Trigon who basically spends his time raping his way across the universe. She's just living the only way she knows how! That's basically the end of the issue. Starfire is hauled off to STAR Labs to be studied. I mean cared for. And Roy Harper is told by his bosses at Checkmate that he needs to become leader of the Titans. I'm not sure if the marriage was legalized or not because the officiant never finished saying "I now pronounce you man and wife." I think that part is just show anyway. Once you sign the licenses and the witnesses sign "Ben Dover" to the certificate, the other shit is just pomp and circus stances. New Titans #100: One inappropriate pin-up at the end of a comic book where the bride is raped out of one inappropriate pin-up at the end of a comic book where the bride is raped.

Why is Starfire ripping her bathing suit apart?!

#New Titans #Teen Titans #DC Comics

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fipindustries · 7 years

Text

All the novels i (tried) to write in my life.

abecause why not?

K-404 (unfinished): written at 15.

a sci-fi thriller mainly inspired by me watching an out of context scene from alien 3. Set in a larger shared universe that i had been building out of short stories back then. The story is about a space prison where they would sent people who couldnt be sent to regular prison because their crimes were too ambiguous. The main idea was that this was a prison of intellectuals, rather than of violent criminals, and through the characters i would wax about my philosophical and political views, views that i had gotten as a teenager who read existentialism for begginers and watchmen and v from vendetta, you can imagine the quality of the text. At one point a nanite container would go haywire inside the prison and then a grey goo event would start consuming the station so the four main characters would have to find the way to escape the prison before it was consumed by the nanomachines. The main characters would be a robot who pretended to kill his creator so everyone would be afraid of him , a female serial killer with aids who killed by sleeping around with people, a guy who tried to kill himself by jumping off a building and just so happened to fall on the guy who bullied him in high school, and just some random douchebag with nothing interesting to him besides being the POV character.

Kratae (unfinished): written at 16.

imagine X-men mixed with avatar the last airbender. An ancient fantasy world where some people are born with superpowers and chased away because of it, the people with superpowers get together and fund their own nation, called Kratae. Hilariously this story was inspired by me reading eclipse, from the twilight saga. In this world if someone with powers uses their power on you then you also get powers, so there is this couple and the guy gets powers and then the girl rejects him so he decides to get revenge by using his teleportation power on her and she develops her own powers and becomes a pariah and looses her entire life. The story starts with her trying to find the guy so she can kill him but when she does find him it turns out someone already killed him before her and then the story turns into this crime mystery where she will try to find the person that killed the guy she wanted to kill. It had this huge ensemble cast that included a lesbian time traveling history teacher and her street urchin aprentice (AKA the next season of doctor who) , two gay war veterans who met each other fighting in opposite sides of the same war, a creep with a crush on the protagonist and many others. There was also on top of all this a giant conspiracy trying to stifle research into free energy, the history of the world and the political dynamics between the faction of the people with powers and the people without.

The Demiurge (semi-unfinished): written at age 17.

basically a huge rip off of sandman.

imagine if god was one of us. If god instead of living above us in a cloud decided to live as a human and to grow old and die as one and the get reincarnated and then start all over again all throughout history, and jesus christ was the one time he tried to tell the truth to anyone. And THEN in modern times something goes wrong with the reincarnation process and he only realizes he is god once he becomes 16, and he is a white, straight, cisgender male, and he just happens to share all of my opinions on life and the universe and religion?????

a lot of this book is just me having fun while creating a whole cosmology that fits my view of the world out of pop-christianity, there are things like yawhe being imprisioned in hell in a cage made out of logic next to calvin, there is a part when adam and eve turn out to be also death and mother earth, and also Time and Space AND ALSO cain and abel are lucifer and Yaweh, there is a part where we see the antropomorphic representation of the fine arts giving birth to a ninth brother: comics. At some point the story makes a 180 and changes focus from god, who dissapeared for mysteryous reasons, to his best friend, some teenage girl who dies in the middle of the story and then we see her ghost searching across the universe to find him and bring her back to life.

i say its semi unfinished because at the last moment i got bored of it and simply slapped together a sudden ending for it out of nowhere.

Eigen (finished): written at age 19.

Eigen is one of my proudest achivements in a way. Written right after gorging myself on Portal and QUBE and the cube, and particularly inspired by the bathroom in the cyber at the corner of my street, i decided to write my own story about a guy trapped inside a grid-like onthological maze with a robot voice as a companion and a weird old guy chasing him trying to kill him.

thing is, i was studying advanced algebra back then, you know, matrices, subspaces, eigenvalues, etc. and it was the second time i was doing that class because i had failed at it the year before. So in order for me to learn the subject better i would take everything i learned in class and use it as inspiration for the story i was writting, ortogonalization, matix multiplication, transposition, etc.

i actually passed the course at the end of the year and i was fucking stoked about that.

at the end of the story there is a bunch of epic twists where it turns out the maze had been built by the main character who suffers amnesia, the old man was the main character from the future and the robot voice was actually the MC’s partner who also suffered from amnesia and was convinced she was a robot, and was trapped in the surveillance room for the maze. they never escape the maze.

Bigender (unfinished): written at age 21.

now this i think was my shortest attempt at wrtting a novel which i was really dissapointed about at the time since i had spent most of 2013 working the story in my head but when it came the time to actually put it all on paper i could barely get to the end of the second chapter.

the story is about a young girl who one day wakes up and discovers she turned into a boy. She is ovbiously distraught about this but it quickly reverts. Afterwards she decides to investigate if she’s the only one who can do this and it turns out not, there is a documentary about a person that also had the ability to genderbend, so she seeks this person and ask their advice as to how to manage a life with this condition. The teacher turns out to be some antisocial jerk who’d rather not have any kind of human interaction with anyone so it’s up to our spunky protagonist to break this ol’ scrooge out of their shell.

thing is i had no real plot here, it was going to be mostly a slow burn character study about the relationship between these two people and how they deal with their genderbending each in their own ways. this didnt work out because back then i felt really inadequate when it came to writing the life of other people with different experiences from my own, the teacher was supposed to have a boyfriend, the girl was supposed to have a bunch of lady friends, etc. so that’s why i never went to far with it.

F.I.P. Industries (finished): written at age 21.

ah, my magnum opus. the first novel i ever wrote. my crowning achivement.

and all it took was for me to abandon my career and read the entirety of wildbow’s ouvre for me to complete it. and this is not a joke. I doubt that i would have ever written this had i not lifted wildbow’s style and structure wholesale. The basic premise of, ok, we have this largely inadequate MC, let’s drop them in an impossible situation and see how they manage, was what fueled the writting of this book.

The story is about a college student who cant finish his thesis and is desperatly looking for a job (fucking prophetic, goddamn) and so he unwittingly gets hired by a company that works as a front for a cabal of mad scientist who are using the power of synergy and networking to take over the world, working on a dozen different projects at the same time and trying to see what happenes when you combine them into bigger more complex projects.

what is so important to me about this story is that i came up with it when i was 11 years old and i promised my self that some day i would make that story real. You guys have no idea how many false starts i had with this story. there was a time this was supposed to be a webcomic but it never went beyond a couple of strips. again, very much like wildbow with worm.

Multiple story arcs, a sprawling ensemble cast, a bittersweet ending, this story has it all and is one of my proudest works.

The empire of tomorrow (finished): written at age 22.

oh shit, we’re leaving behind the one word titles, i must be finally growing up as a writer!

The empire of tomorrow was a source of guilt and anxiety for me on some level because i remember reading fun home and are you my mommy from allison bechdel and afterwards finiding a lot of “incredibly problematic” themes in the story and being really upset at this.

the story is about a dystopian world where there was some sort of apocalypse and there is this feudal lord that controls one of the last remaining cities with an iron fist, so ofcourse the plucky rebellion comes up with the following plan:

to steal some of his super advanced technology and hack together a device very similar to the one in eternal sunshine of a spotless mind and use it on the feudal lord to project themselves into the lord’s mind when he was a teen and try and guide him into becoming a better person. Throughout the story is made ambiguous if they are rewritting his memories or actually going into the past, there is a lot of wild speculation about how the time travel works in this universe.

the main focus of the story is the relationship between the woman sent to do the mission and the feudal lord, which is the classical “she is a tough, no nonsense, paladin/ he is the snarky, slimy douchebag with a heart of gold/ will they, wont they” dynamic (spoiler alert: they kind of do).

thing is, mid-way through the story i throw this weird tangent towards reproductive rights and abortion and transexuality and i get the distinct feeling that the conclussions to where the story goes on these topics are not exactly kosher, but im not sure, i’ve never really shown this story to anyone besides my grandma who aparently loved it.

fun fact, for those who read disregarding reality, this story was the first time i used the character of erik, i reworked him fro the comic of course but not as much as you’d think.

Fan.Tastic (unfinished): written at age 22.

this was the point where i started to actually write my works entirely in english and upload them to the internet.

the story is set inside the internet, where the internet would be a physical place, following the rise and fall of a blogger who recently became tumblr famous.

again, im sure if someone who really cares about social justice issues took a look at this work they’d probably find a lot of things to be upset about, suffice to say in arc two of this story i show my own take on gamer gate and end up the story with the main character using every single slur i could think of towards her once friend and fucking off to 4chan.

the story was supposed to have 4 arcs, each one based on a website or piece of internet culture that i was involved in. The first arc was Deviant art, the second arc was Tumblr, the third arc was going to be 4chan and the fourth arc was going to be LessWrong.

thing is i found i only had things to say about the first two, the third one i had already said all i had to say on my /co/nrad comic and the fourth one i was still experiencing and thus i couldnt properly make a retrospective about.

it kind of boggles the mind how much work i put into this, i wanted to make it a true multimedia experience so i would invent all of this fandoms about things that dont actually exists and photshop tumblr posts and fanart and rotten tomato scores about these things to make it feel all a little more real. i dont think i ever went that far for any other story i made.

WE ARE MAKING A GAME (unfinished): written at age 23.

this, more than an actual novel is more like a series of scripts about this hypothetical webseries i’d like to do some day filmed in the style of the fourth panel from penny arcade, or the office, or the thick of it, or nirvanna the band the show, or, you know what? i think enough people have done that style now i dont feel like doing it so much.

Any way the story is about this popular girl in high school who one day decides she wants to make a videogame and thus she teams up with the nerd kid to do it, as time goes on we find out there is actually a lot more behind the popular girls than we thought at first.

the whole plot is just the dialogs between these two (and evetually three) as they come up with the game, right there, in real time, in front of your very eyes. What’s fun about this is that the game (called Maxplosive) actually shows up in the story of Fan.Tastic, except there it is this cult classic children’s movie.

i managed to finish what would basically be “season 1″ of the story but then i just lost interest since i was busy making my own actual game for college and i hadnt progressed much beyond what the characters in the story had and so i felt i couldnt properly write from experience.

i wrote the first chapter from season 2 recently in what was an extravagant moment of nostalgia from my part. I swear i NEVER go back to work on a story that i abandoned and i truly dont know how that happened.

The harpsichord crew (unfinished): written at age 23.

a new first, first time i actually have my main character be black women, yes, i know, im the wokest, now bring all the pussy towards me please.

but joking aside, the harpsichord crew was supposed to be the sequel to F.I.P. industries and the logic was sound, i would grab all these disparate ideas that i had been acumulating for years and mesh them all together. My main inspiration behind it was Gurren Lagann, where we would have these people with no power come across this incredible device which would slowly allow them to grow bigger and stronger with time until they became the greatest super villains the world had ever seen.

The story is focused on patricia, an overworkd lawyer and Lilly, a pole dancer. one day lilly decides to become a supervillain after being inspired by the fallout that came from FIP industries technology going public and ends up draggin patricia long for the ride. As the went, in true anime fashion, the would acumulate this quirky supporting cast, each one with a fun and weird origin story.

i think the biggest downfall of this story is that, much like all of the unfinished stories on this list, it didnt have a particularly strong ending that i felt i HAD to get to and so i managed to get 3 chapters in and then i forgot about it.

There is a crack in the world (finished): written at age 24.

i think i wrote more than enough about this story.

suffice to say that a lot of horrible things happened to me during 2016 and it took me until may of 2017 to finally feel like i could process all of that and work through it in my art. There is a crack in the world is a miseable story filled with horror and despair and the feelings in the words are raw and bared straight from my heart.

this is something a never do by the way, to really use my emotions as direct fuel for the art that i make. ususally i use my art as a form of escapism but in here, well, i guess there were things that i was trying to escape from too, like the horrible reality of being unenployed in a city you just moved to, a different, more mundane kind of horror when compared to the one i went through the last year but a horror i wanted to escape from all the same.

point being, there is a crack in the world is weird in a lot of ways when compared to the other stories in this list and curiously the only one that resembles it in any way i’d say is Fan.Tastic for the cynicism and bitterness that fueled both stories inceptions.

Final conclussion.

well, there it is, i of course didnt include the myriad of short stories and comics that i made or tried to make, these stories hold a special place because i put some extra bit of effort in them, because every single one was a universe that i dedicated several weeks or months to craft and i’d like to think they say something about me. My therapist once said that the common thread between all of them is that on some level or another, they are all about someone feeling trapped and trying to escape from a situation. this was before WE ARE MAKING A GAME.

i wonder if the theme changed or evolved in some way.

#writing #me

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twiststreet · 7 years

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Watching this show Legion. I’d never gotten into Fargo -- I couldn’t make it past the first 5 minutes; I saw that movie a trillion times in college, just over and over; so that first 5 minutes, I couldn’t handle it; it was like coming home to a home intruder wearing your dad’s pajamas. I have been wanting to go back and try the second season-- but I’ve also been wanting to go to Barcelona; time’s a motherfucker. So I missed out on that Noah Hawley guy-- don’t really know his deal except people rank him; this show, it’s him doing Classic X-Men so, like, also territory where I have too many opinions, from years of being all messed up, messed up in the head, and it makes watching hard.

If Noah Hawley does a show about a middle age sad man with a cookie dough addiction, I’m going to think he’s reading my diary; it’s going to get awkward.

The first episode was interesting for a while, as kind of its own thing, then at the end just swerved into classic Claremont “welcome to the x-men hope you survive” where I got whiplash. Cue price is right song. Seen about half the second one and it’s just felt like all Claremont but not the stuff I’m that into, not the “I love weird sex and Storm is going to explain that very slowly to the reader” Claremont; instead, it’s one of the characters basically being Rogue and being like “I can’t fuck cause touching makes me feel ooky.” Which is cute when you’re a teen, that’s primo when you’re 14 and ever part of your skin is ooky, but past a certain age, it’s like “okay, well, let’s take off all our clothes and figure out our own bodies in front of each other, then go to Black Angus for some dinner and call it a night.” Past a certain age you just learn to problem solve because you can’t just wait around aching -- somebody’s got to make the donuts; time’s a motherfucker.

And it’s like a lot of “I’m a boy who’s too special for this world” that’s cute when they’re doing something that feels like it’s thinking about Tommy or some shit like that, and not fun at all when it’s just, like, superpowers for me. The part of me that was ever into that is all burned to fuck. You know, I know where all those roads go; nowhere good. Read the papers. I suppose that stuff will get okay eventually because they’re going to try to Breaking Bad the premise, make it a show about a villain (figure that’s where they’re headed)...? At least, it’s sort of hard to watch that stuff without going “oh, I guess they’re hinting that he’s actually joined the hellfire club and doesn’t know it yet”, and knowing the comics, and having read those Legion issues (which I don’t remember being that into-- Morlock Massacre over everything forever), to not have that as my guess. I kinda want to see it out just to see the hype on this Noah Hawley guy, but not much is engaging me besides. Aubrey Plaza’s fun but the better show’d be about her (is she going to end up being an imaginary friend? that’d be lame); Dan Stevens being in a superhero show makes total sense after the Guest, but he hasn’t really done anything that interesting yet; the rest of the cast is dull. It feels like just a hyped version of that show the Magicians and I didn’t get deep into that one either-- dude in that show sucked too hard.

Also: if they’re teasing the Shadow King...? Except for that bit with Professor X murdering him in a restaurant, that character kinda blew. I’d watch a show of Patrick Stewart murdering people in restaurants, but maybe TV isn’t ready for that yet. They could call it Cutthroat Kitchen, though, just to confuse people with TIVO’s. Every day that doesn’t exist is a day that God has robbed us of transcendence; time’s a motherfucker.

#All I Ever Write About on this blog is Television...

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