#with an asian guy. the nazis would hate his ass
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Just saw a really clickbait-y youtube video that called Blue Lock fascist in its thumbnail and I will admit first and foremost that I didn't watch it and yes I've been informed that it isn't implying that Blue Lock is some fascistic propaganda but it still got me thinking so-
here's my rant/breakdown about the ways that Blue Lock is specifically anti-fascist
So first of all, popular animes and mangas having possibly fascist undertones is nothing new. I won't deny that there's a long history of Japan being a colonizer and commiting atrocities that are still brushed off or forgotten about to this day. And this does seep into some works that I personally choose to not engage with for exactly that reason. Miss me with trying to be an apologist for or glorifying real world war crimes- But Blue Lock specifically? I'd be extremely hard pressed to call it fascist.
Fascism is defined as an alt-right, ultra nationalistic political ideology usually characterized by a centralized autocracy, forced suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy and subordination of individual interests for the believed good of the nation or race according to Wikipedia. First let's go through the ways Blue Lock does match up with that.
Ego can be easily viewed as a dictator near the beginning of the manga
Most characters thrive on putting others down for their faults and strictly believe that there is some sort of natural order where people who lack "ego" are at the bottom
There is a sort of central autocracy with the top 6
Near the beginning especially, there is a violent snuffing out of any ideology that dares oppose egocentrism or the idea that you need to be a solid team to win a game
Now let's go through the ways Blue Lock denies and even goes against Fascism.
BLLK's main goal is to make a Japanese soccer team that can win a World Cup. In a more fascist manga, we would see racism ga-fucking-lore. We can see this in animes that have more right wing leaning undertones like Attack on Titan where when race is brought in it's for conflict. There's no possibility of harmony, only winners and losers. Those protected and those put down and punished.
And Blue Lock does have an extreme focus on who wins and who loses. It is not afraid to include racism against Japanese people like with Adam or portray black people in unsettling and kind of racist ways like Dada's original design. But these elements don't automatically spell fascism. Blue Lock is careful to portray characters of color as just that, characters. They don't exist to tell you about their lives of hardship and struggle and they don't exist to justify Ego's obessesion with creating a good Japanese team. As you read BLLK, you'll notice that the artist has taken care to get better at drawing different body types and facial structures. The character design isn't trying to sell some perfect ideal like fascism so famously does, it tells you a peak athlete doesn't have one distinct look. It tells you characters from other countries are just as if not more capable than the Blue Lock boys. Hell, even Sae's hatred of Japanese football is portrayed as less of a betrayal of country and pride and more of a cultural clash. The issue to be solved in Sae's character is the way he looks down on his brother, not how much he despises Japanese football teams' tactics. We know this because Ego himself rails against them too.
A fascist manga would paint Sae as a villain for even learning from and joining teams from other countries, lending them his talent instead of keeping it in his home country. But Blue Lock encourages diversification and collaberation with other nation's teams so heavily that it is literally an entire like 5 part arc right now. Ego isn't ultra nationalistic, he just wants to make a better soccer team for his country and he isn't afraid of praising and adopting from other countries in the process. The biggest win to come out of a Blue Lock team wouldn't be that they're all Japanese but that they all follow his ideology.
Speaking of his ideology, Ego is extremely harsh and controlling, yes, but he also believes in the boys. He lets them do what they believe is best. He pushes them to their limits, not because they disobey him, but because they dissapoint him. A true fascist dictator would rule with fear with no introductions of other ideologies, he would strike at any sign of weakness or opposition. At the beginning, he does do this. But as the manga goes on we see how much wiggle room he's willing to allow. He lets Isagi curse at him and question his leadership, he lets Shidou play even though he's clearly queer and extremely volatile, he doesn't punish any of the boys for injuring each other. In a fascist society, you are expected to fit an ideal or be othered, be perfect and work together with a sense of comradere because that's the only way to prove your claims that you are the best race/nation. There can be no imperfections or cracks in the facade...But Ego lets the boys be messy. He never forces them to change who they are, only forces them to believe that they can do great things all on their own. Even with Kunigami, Wild Card wasn't a correction of his disbelief in some nation or race, but instead a correction of how limited his mindset was. In fact, in a more fascist society, Kunigami's love of playing hero and protecting his teammates would be praised and celebrated. Ego putting individuality and aspiration over the good of the team as a whole is literally a middle finger to fascism.
The villain of the series is literally a greedy Japanese man that wants to commercialize the team and make them less individualized. I don't know how much more anti-fascist you could get-
Also, Blue Lock handles disability very carefully and very well. In more alt-right ideologies than not, something you'll see again and again is this idea that disabled people don't deserve the same rights because they can't contribute to society. Disabled people are a stain to be pushed away and hidden because they contradict the central idea of a "perfect" nation. In a fascist retelling of BLLK, Chigiri would be kicked from the program, not given power and influence. In a fascist retelling of BLLK, Kenyu would be attacked and beaten as soon as it was discovered that he made it into the top-six with failing eyesight. Any physical disadvantage could easily put an athlete at the bottom of the social hierarchy as well, Blue Lock could have very very easily made fun of its disabled characters for even trying. It could get away with mistreating these players and be defended for it so fucking quickly. But instead, it lets you root for them and gives them just as much care and weight as the others. It's trying to tell you that being a good player sometimes means knowing your limits and getting help, not punishing yourself because you have some biological disadvantage. It also takes care to demonstrate that no race is inherently worse at soccer than the other.
And, of course, the elephant in the room, Noa and Kaiser. Okay...if you see German characters and immediately think OMG NAZIS??OMG FASCISM?????OMGGGG HE HAS BLONDE HAIR???AND BLUE EYES?? That's a fucking you problem and you clearly aren't reading the manga. Even Noa Noel being an older man and still being allowed to play and looked up to as the best is an example of how Blue Lock goes against steriotypes about athletes. Kaiser does have blonde hair and blue eyes yes, but he also wears eyeliner and eyeshadow and has a tattoo and dyed hair... None of that would be allowed in an actually fascist Japanese manga unless it was as caricature to make fun of and dominate. But instead, Kaiser is an actual threat who has complex arcs and behaviors. Also, Kaiser isn't fascist himself, he clearly views Isagi as an equal even though they're different nationalities and he doesn't believe in any one authority or greater cause except for himself. Noa is very strict yes, and he does rank and rate the boys, but he specifically doesn't factor race into it. He also, just like Ego, allows other ideas and patterns to emerge even if they mess up his own plans for matches. He doesn't suppress anyone and is actually extremely lax. If you think he or BLLK is "fascist", look at actual real world sports teams and their strict practices or past statements about other nationalities.
Isagi as a protaganist is anti-fascist too!!!! He's a Japanese everyman who has good Japanese parents, no disabilities, an honest personality and believes in a future where Japan wins the World Cup. In a fascist story, he'd be fucking untouchable (ESPECIALLY against characters from other countries) and all of this would be paraded as proof that a Japanese soccer team is clearly superior and all-dominating. But no! He gets beat down, questioned, disrespected and constantly shown up by others. He's not special and he's extremely self-centered. He doesn't water his own beliefs down for the "good of the nation" or whatever the fuck and he grew up idolizing foreign players. Isagi never supresses other people's ideologies, he just makes fun of them if they fuck up. He's never xenophobic, even when other characters have moments that have xenophobic undertoens like Adam or Sae's comments. Isagi Yoichi's character could have a few traits flipped and be a poster boy for some alt-right manga about how superior Japanese people or hell, Ego's pupils are. But he doesn't. He's simply designed and he's rude and he looks down on people, but he also apologizes, humbly accepts when he can improve by questioning his own ideals and is open to talking with everyone he comes across.
Calling Blue Lock a "fascist soccer manga" is not only demonstrating that you have no idea what fascism is, but also disgustingly painting over all the beautiful themes and messages within the manga.
Again I'm aware that that original video wasn't aiming to negate any of these points but I have seen people make claims and jokes before that about Blue Lock's more *beat it into your head* tendencies with ideology. And I've seen jokes specifically about the German team/the way Sae seems to just hate Japanese culture. I just dislike the painting of Blue Lock as a jumping point for discussions about fascism and its effects because of the way it handles themes like cross cultural connection, family pressures, capitalism and disability so carefully.
#blue lock manga#bllk#blue lock#plot analysis#JUST HAD TO GET THIS OUT THERE#and yes i have blocked people for kaiser nazi memes so don't fucking make any . he literally wears eyeliner and has a homoerotic obsession#with an asian guy. the nazis would hate his ass#character analysis#character examination#bluelock#bllk manga#bllk anime#bluelock anime#anyway i detest everyone who acts like blue lock having some extremely strict rules etc = it being ultra right wing#there's horror in it for sure but not that way#in fact it takes EXTRA EXTRA care so that it wont be taken that way#like you clearly dont actually take japans history seriously to try and paint BLLK as nationalistic#There are so many better examples..stop eroding peoples media literacy#And i DO NOT want people to start reading blue lock bc they think its fascist or they think it has controversial shit in it. like ew.
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Hi! I don't want to start anything on here and am always willing for civil conversations. At this point there's so much I've found out about Seb (besides the video he liked, the tommy lee thing, and the girlfriend thing) that I feel so guilty if I would continue to support him. I love him sm but it just doesn't look good rn. He is associated/follows an organisation (for helping veterans) that has posted a blue lives matter flag picture and who's co-founder has sexual assault allegations against him, and worked with him in 'The last full measure'. His friend Paul Walter Hauser has done blackface in the past, and when called out on it he just listed a few people that also did blackface. There's more, I found a discussion on here that I can link. I seriously don't support "cancel culture" bc I don't think it helps anyone but there are just a lot of 'mistakes' and shady people that can be linked to Seb, I wish it wouldn't be that way. I honestly don't know what to think about it anymore.
Hi! I’m also open to having civil conversations and I don’t believe you’re trying to start anything. I really do think this situation of dragging up a four year old video and taking it completely out of context is harmful not just to Black people, but to fandom/activism in general. This is gonna be long because I’m going to take your points one by one, and I want to preface this by saying that I will not answer any derogatory, sideways asks pertaining to this subject. I will delete every single one and will block your silly ass. I’m not going to argue with people who think I’m blindly supporting Sebastian because I’m just trying to get fucked by him, or people who think I hate myself and am trying to appease some white man.
So, on with the discourse!
The video he liked - this video was taken completely out of context and that is my main issue with this whole situation. It was not a video of a white man saying that he thinks he should be able to say the n word as everyone claimed it was. They were quickly debating on whether or not it's okay to say in rap lyrics. He was told no, that's not okay, that's never okay and they moved on from it. That's it. End of story. That somehow was twisted into a click bait style headline of "Sebastian Stan likes a video of a white man defending his right to say the n word" when that is absolutely not true. My other issue is that people are more upset that Sebastian liked the video than they are about the white man in the video literally saying the n word. So, do you really care about the use of the n word like you're claiming? Cuz if you do, you'd be more upset at the white man that said the word than you would be about the white man simply liking the video. Or, are you just using this as an excuse to grandstand against a white man you don't like?
The Tommy Lee thing - Sebastian Stan playing Tommy Lee does not make Sebastian Stan a bad person. Is Charlize Theron a bad person for playing Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who started murdering men? Is Leonardo DiCaprio a bad person for playing a slave owner? Is Edward Norton a bad person for playing a nazi sympathizing racist? Actors play bad people. That doesn't mean that they themselves are bad people. 1990's Tommy Lee was a bad person, but that should have no bearing on who Sebastian Stan is or his character as a man.
The gf/Paul Walter Hauser thing - Why are we holding Sebastian accountable for what the people around him are doing? Again, why are we more upset that Sebastian is associated with people who have done questionable things than the specific people themselves? I'm not going to speak on the kimono wearing -- I'm not Asian. It's not my place to say whether or not its offensive because it's not my culture, but she posted that picture and attended that party before she started dating Sebastian, quite possibly before she even knew him. Same with Paul. I think that black face thing was long before he knew Sebastian. Now, if Sebastian was defending these actions, going around saying "I think it's okay for white women to wear Kimono's" "I think black face is fine" "I think white people should be able to say the n word" then we'd have a different story, wouldn't we? But that's not what we have, and that's not what he is doing. He is not responsible for the things his friends do or have done in the past just because he's more famous than they are, and he is not required to speak on them. Let's put it this way -- would you be comfortable having to be responsible for something a friend of yours did before you knew them? Would you want to have to be forced to answer for your friend when you yourself had nothing to do with the questionable behavior?
The organization that supports the military/blue lives matter - Sebastian cannot control what message that foundation puts out and it does not mean that he is or is not pro-police himself. There is not enough concrete evidence -- if any evidence for that matter -- that Sebastian is a blue lives matter supporter. Did Sebastian donate before they put up the blue lives matter post? Or after? I don’t know, cuz I don’t follow him that closely, but if he donates before they come out with a particular stance, that means he should be held accountable for that? I know I donated to an organization once and they turned out to support something that i’m 100% against. That means I’m a bad person because I couldn’t see into the future? Another point, how can we be certain that Sebastian saw the blue lives matter post in the first place? I know I’m not online 24 hrs a day, I miss posts all the time and I’m just an average person. I make three or four tumblr posts a day, and I’m gone. I have to play catch up on social media, and even then, I still miss stuff. So I’m sure the same happens to a working actor. As for the co-founder, I don't know who this person is and would rather not get into any allegations against them because I don't want to trigger anyone who comes across this post. If Sebastian knows about these allegations, is a willing participant/supporter of this person then yeah, that's pretty shitty, but we don't know the inner workings of this friendship/acquaintance/work relationship. We don’t know how close they are or if they even still speak.
I’m a pretty big fan of Don Cheadle. He’s a stand up guy, he’s a great actor, he’s funny, he’s political and stands up for what he believes in and in a very public way. I support him. Don Cheadle is also friends with Chris Evans, RDJ, Mark Ruffalo, and Letitia Wright (just to name a few). Chris Evans has a bipartisan forum that highlights/promotes right wing politicians, RDJ defended Chris Pratt during the whole “he’s the worst Chris in Hollywood” crap, who’s technically done black face, and who once said to a female reporter “nice tits” when she walked into the room, Mark Ruffalo just walked back his support of Palestine, and Letitia Wright retweeted/supported an anti-vaxxer/anti-trans Pastor who equated an ingredient of the covid vaccine to the devil because it contained some parts of the word Lucifer. Does that mean Don is now a bad person because he’s friends with these people? Why isn’t he getting any heat for his friendships with them? Why isn’t he being held accountable for what they’ve done and said? Oh right, because he’s not a white fave. So people don’t care one way or the other, which brings me to my next point.
I can guarantee you that if Sebastian’s gf or Paul or this co-founder were not associated with Sebastian in any way, nobody would give a shit about her wearing a kimono, about Paul doing black face, or about the co-founder/organization being blue lives matter supporters and in that lies the actual problem. Being critical of people and their actions should be consistent and should happen all the time -- not just when they interact with your white fave. That’s when it becomes performative and looks like you just want to be able to show internet people that you follow/support/stan unproblematic celebrities, when really, you don’t care.
I think the moral of this post is that I think it's unfair to hold a complete stranger to a standard that I cannot hold myself to. I also don't view celebrities the way most teenagers/twenty somethings do, and that’s because when I entered fandom we didn't have social media, so I grew up with a wall between myself and said celebrities. There is no wall now with the presence of social media. "Fans" nowadays have a weird ownership feeling over celebrities because they can read their personal thoughts or view personal pictures and think that they have this personal quasi-friendship with them. I can't get on board with that. I prefer having the wall and I still keep the wall.
If supporting Sebastian makes you uncomfortable, then by all means, stop supporting him. Just make sure you are making this decision for yourself based on credible sources and concrete evidence and that you're not letting this fake woke activist mob make you feel uncomfortable. Internet activism means nothing unless you put your money where your mouth is in your real life and 90% of the social justice internet warriors do not. Real activism is bigger than changing your avi to a black square.
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MEET THE NEW WEST, SAME AS THE OLD WEST
In the second act of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, washed-up actor Rick Dalton is on the set of a TV western as his stuntman and best buddy, Cliff Booth is revisiting Spahn Ranch, a former set for movie westerns. The ranch has been taken over by a bunch of hippies who follow some guy name “Charlie”. The heavy of the hippies is a fella by the name of Tex Watson. When conflict arises between Cliff and the hippies, one of the girls runs off to fetch Tex, who’s busy showing a tourist couple around the ranch. Hearing that there’s trouble brewing, Tex snaps to it, galloping across the western landscape on horseback and wearing a black hat. It’s a sweeping shot straight out of a John Ford film. That’s when it clicked for me…
Tarantino has made his third western.
Although there were always spaghetti western elements in his films (especially in Kill Bill vol. 2), QT hadn’t made a full-fledged western until 2012’s Django Unchained. Though entertaining and with an African-American lead, the film is his most straight-forward movie. We know who the heroes are, we know who the villains are. Wrongs are righted with a six-shooter and a hero’s grin. Its followup was another western, 2015‘s The Hateful Eight, a much darker and far less heroic film. All of the characters are flawed if not outrightly fucked-up. If Django Unchained was the sumptuously shot crowd pleaser, The Hateful Eight was the claustrophobic, nihilistic reversal. The western myth of heroes and villains is subverted by an unsavory group of characters who drag each other through snow, blood and racial slurs. Maybe the Old West was a pretty rough place to live in after all!
And now, in 2019, QT transports us to another Old West: 1969 Hollywood.
Fifty years ago. Half a century. Pretty old, right?
Already contentious with reviewers, one of the main debates surrounding Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood is its handling of Sharon Tate and the Manson Family. In the summer of ’69, when Tate, her unborn baby and her houseguests were brutally murdered by three members of the Manson Family, it sent shockwaves throughout Hollywood and America. The utopian dream of the 1960s was over. That’s the sanitized, less complicated history anyway. At the time many people were blaming satanism and Tate’s husband Roman Polanski for his hedonistic ways. Plus anyone deep in the trenches of late 60s hipdom knew that some of the peace-and-love spouting Flower Children might be psychopaths that could turn on a dime. Such darkness was foreshadowed in the music of The Doors and Velvet Underground. As Joan Didion recalled in her seminal work The White Album:
“Black masses were imagined, and bad trips blamed. I remembered all of the day’s misinformation very clearly, and I also remember this, and wish I did not: I remember that no one was surprised.”
Knowing this I find it disappointing just how many reviewers fail to see how sympathetic QT is to Sharon and her friends. They’re shown as cool people with a good vibe (only Roman is shown to be prickish when he speaks rudely to a dog). Sharon and Jay Sebring like to listen to records and enjoy life. No satanism. No orgies. And Sharon’s a generous person. She picks up hippie hitchhikers and buys her husband a Thomas Hardy novel. She relishes the communal experience of watching herself in the Dean Martin film The Wrecking Crew. It’s not just about her. She’s enjoying the connection she’s making with the theater’s audience. On the infamous August night, the film’s narrator talks about how Sharon, in the late stage of her pregnancy, was feeling hot and anxious. In short, Sharon is humanized. She’s a thoughtful, spirited and benevolent presence throughout the film. I think reviewers who view her just as “a Barbie doll” are revealing more of their own lack of empathy than QT’s. And people getting hung-up on how many lines her character speaks have some skewed priorities. As if the only way a person has worth is if they talk a lot. Talking. Talking. Talking. There are so many empty vessels running at the mouth these days. Social media voices bombard us constantly. There’s something to be said for some quiet dignity every once in awhile. Regardless, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood isn’t Sharon’s film and it’s not a biopic. It’s Rick and Cliff’s film and it’s a western.
If comedy is “tragedy plus time”, then the same can be said for any work of art. The mythology of the Old West often mixed historical and fictional characters. Whether they were Billy The Kid, Wyatt Earp or Butch Cassidy, we’ve seen countless retellings of their exploits, never exactly the same, never entirely accurate. That’s what makes it a myth. A good portion is made-up. Going back to Homeric and Arthurian legends, the foundation of storytelling has always been a collision of fact and fiction, chronicle and embellishment. People make too much of QT altering historic events. Are the Nazis of Inglourious Basterds and the Manson Family of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood any different than any other mythical villains of earlier works of art? If a filmmaker can’t riff on a fifty-year-old historical event, then what are we really doing here? Do we just want the cinema of Marvel Comics and discreet biopics? QT doesn’t treat history any different than the filmmakers of the 1960s treated the events of the 1860s. Tex Watson, galloping away in his black hat, is a signpost for this. It’s QT’s way of saying: “Every time has its myths, every time has its black hats and white hats”. And the Manson Family, filled with bloodlust and megalomania from the top down, fulfill the role of black-hatted villains quite perfectly.
Does this make Rick and Cliff, two middle-aged white guys who love booze and hate hippies, our white-hatted heroes? Hell, no. With the exception of Django Unchained, that was never QT’s bag. He’s all about the anti heroes of spaghetti westerns and Sam Peckinpah films. Men who have done plenty of bad, sometimes unspeakable, things. They’re only the hero because they wrestle with their past and because there’s always a meaner, badder fella waiting to shoot it out with ‘em. Clint Eastwood’s character in the The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is only “Good” because Lee Van Cleef is so clearly “Bad” (and Eli Wallach “Ugly”). In 1992’s The Unforgiven, Eastwood’s character talks of killing “women and children” in his past. Yet he’s still clearly our hero. The Old West is a morally complex time in which one’s heroism is often defined by a greater and competing villainy.
So when it’s revealed that Cliff possibly murdered his wife and got away with it, he’s stepping into the role of anti hero with a dark past. Is Cliff haunted by his past? Not seemingly. He’s more inclined to shrug it off with a smirk and swig of beer. Shit happens y’know. This makes him exactly the type of guy murderous hippies shouldn’t fuck with. They justify their bloodlust with a self-serving philosophical bent: Entertainers taught them to kill via TV and movies, so it’s okay to kill the people who are involved in making TV and movies. QT makes the bold and provocative choice to not confirm whether Cliff did or didn’t kill his wife, but if he did, he probably wouldn’t dress it up as anything other than a burst of brutish violence that he was lucky to get away with. He loves his dog though, and he’s a good friend. In real life that might not justify liking the guy, but in a western that’s usually enough. Ultimately these character choices made by QT are to set up a mythic showdown between Cliff and the Manson Family. He’s good because they’re bad. It’s the same reason Cliff was shown going head-to-head with Bruce Lee. Masked racism by QT, a known lover of Asian and martial arts films, or a way of building up Cliff’s status to mythical proportions? There was once this ex war hero, who became a stuntman and maybe killed his wife, and he once threw Bruce Lee into a car door on the set of The Green Hornet! Cliff is Paul Bunyan. He’s Bill Brasky. A folk hero for stuntmen and for his time.
And did you hear that one tale about Cliff and the Manson Family…?
Rick’s bread and butter is now guest-starring on various TV shows in which he plays the heavy and gets his ass kicked by the show’s star at the end of the episode. Rick is a boozy, bloated hot mess of a man who’s prone to crying. A lot. His first burst of tears in the film is at the Musso & Frank parking lot, after an agent gives Rick a harsh dose of reality regarding the state of his career. Cliff, always keeping his cool, gives Rick his sunglasses and says, “Don’t cry in front of the Mexicans.” Remember — this is a western. Anyway, if Cliff fills the role of macho, gives no fucks, murderous outlaw, Rick is the contrasting “modern man” or, to use a western term, “tenderfoot”. The film begins with a behind the scenes segment for Rick’s old show Bounty Law. In it an interviewer talks to Rick and Cliff about what a stuntman does. During the interview there’s a quip about Cliff carrying Rick’s load. So right out of the gate, QT brings our attention to the idea that Cliff is the real deal and Rick’s the actor playing a role. This notion is repeated throughout the film (even one of the Manson Girls, “Pussy”, makes reference to Cliff being more authentic because he’s a stuntman rather than an actor). Regardless of whether Cliff murdered his wife or not, he’s an ex military man and war hero, so obviously he’s killed people before. So in addition to taking falls and performing dangerous stunts for Rick, he’s more of a bona fide western anti hero than Rick ever could be. Fittingly, while Cliff and the Manson Family black hats are sizing each other up at Spahn Ranch, Rick is busy acting in a TV western. And Rick keeps crying. A lot. He even cries in front of a little girl who simultaneously coddles and reprimands him. No doubt, Cliff would view this as potentially worse than crying in front of Mexicans. But Rick can’t help himself. He’s both a man of his time and out of time. He can’t roll with the hippies and spaghetti westerns but he’d never last a day in Cliff’s shoes let alone the wild frontier. Even at the end, in which Rick finally gets the chance to become an avenging hero (involving possibly the greatest payoff in cinematic history) if one steps back and thinks of the climactic set-piece, Rick is merely stepping in at the end to grab all the glory after Cliff and his wonderful dog Brandy did most of the heavy lifting. Thus Cliff is yet again carrying Rick’s load.
But this doesn’t mean Rick doesn’t have a victory. He does. It just comes at the midpoint, and it’s the closest thing to a real-life victory in the film. When Rick shows up to play the heavy in the TV western, he’s reached his low-point. Like a different part of the anatomy going into ice-water in Raging Bull, Rick is submerging his face into ice-water in his trailer, struggling with a hangover and hopelessness. Making matters worse, the artsy director shows up and tells Rick he wants him to play a hippie-style outlaw with a fringe jacket, mustache and long hair. The only thing Rick does more than drink and cry is insult hippies. He’s living his worst nightmare as an actor. QT makes another one of his most interesting choices by showing the subsequent scenes from the TV show in the same film stock and style as the main narrative. Thus when juxtaposed to Cliff at Spahn Ranch, Rick’s battle with his growing irrelevance as an actor is given the same cinematic weight. This isn’t just a TV show within the movie — it is the movie! This battle or showdown is just as important as Cliff’s eventual showdown with the Manson Family. Rick struggles. He fucks up his lines. He comes totally unglued in his trailer. This looks like the end of the road for him as an actor. He eventually gets his shit together, embraces the role and goes for broke. It’s a credit to both QT as a filmmaker and Leo DiCaprio as an actor that the villain Rick plays in the TV show ends up being more intense and visceral than the one he played in the main narrative of Django Unchained. Rick’s chops as an actor are restored and he decides to go to Italy and star in spaghetti westerns. He learns to maximize his talent in order to roll with the times.
A protagonist who is at odds with changing times might seem regressive or even reactionary to some people today, but it’s also a hallmark of westerns, especially the westerns of the late 1960s and early 1970s. From Once Upon a Time in the West to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, an impending future of railroads and industrialization is always treated with uneasiness by the heroes. These changing times aren’t going to include them. Their wild and free ways will soon come to an end. Nowhere is this theme most prominent than in the work of Sam Peckinpah. In many of his westerns, The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, the heroes are viewed as endangered creatures who are all too aware of their fate. The character of Cable Hogue even meets his end when a motor car rolls over him. He’s killed by the modern age! Another Peckinpah film from this era, Junior Bonner, is set in 1972 Arizona but can also be considered a western (creating a template for QT’s western that’s not set in the canonical “Old West”). The protagonist and title character is an aging rodeo star (brilliantly played by Steve McQueen, who perhaps not so coincidentally also appears in QT’s film). In Peckinpah’s film, Junior has lost his edge and returns home to take a breather and maybe get his chops back. His struggle is not unlike Rick Dalton’s. They’re both aging entertainers and they both fear they’re washed-up. And as with all of Peckinpah’s westerns, encroaching progress is a threat to Junior’s simple cowboy ways. All of these above mentioned westerns are filled with a bittersweet quality; a nostalgic snapshot that’s destined to become yellow and brittle. The power of myths is they suggest immortality for our heroes.They might be long gone but they live through these tales. Whether’s it’s the Old West of outlaws in dusty little towns or the Old West of ’69 Hollywood, people once lived in these places and they lived vibrant, foolhardy and sometimes dangerous lives. Maybe they didn’t live or die exactly as the tale accounts, but they did indeed live and they did indeed die.
In his film QT references another “man out of time” western: The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Written by John Milius, directed by John Huston and starring Paul Newman, the film is a highly-fictionalized account of the life of Judge Roy Bean. At the climax an elderly Roy Bean reemerges from a self-imposed exile to have a showdown with businessmen who have surrounded his beloved town with oil rigs. When his enemies ask who he is, Roy Bean shouts “Justice, you sons of bitches!” This is immediately followed by a shootout in which Roy defeats his foes, blows up the surrounding oil rigs and goes out in a blaze of glory. In real life Roy Bean died in his bed after a heavy bout of drinking. What’s most interesting is how QT referenced The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. After the climax of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood there’s a triumphant but wistful epilogue in which one of our heroes is faced with a future that we all know is a fantasy. Over this scene is an evocative piece of music that sounds like it’s from a fairytale and it plays over the end credits. The piece of music is entitled “Miss Lillie Langtry” and it’s the main theme from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. Lillie Langtry was a British-American socialite Roy Bean was enamored with and he even went so far to name the saloon in his town after her. “Miss Lille Langtry” plays over the end credits of Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood and the opening credits of The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. But before the credits in Roy Bean we see written in storybook fashion:
“Near the turn of the last century the Pecos River marked the boundaries of civilization in western Texas. West of the Pecos there was no law, no order, and only bad men and rattlesnakes lived there.
…Maybe this isn’t the way it was… it’s the way it should be.”
With Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino pays homage to a socialite/actress who was tragically murdered before her time and two endangered heroes—one an outlaw stuntman, the other an entertainer—neither of who existed but men like them did. For two hours and forty-five minutes, the onward march of tragedy and time is defeated through a spirited, Old West mix of bravado and audacity. Maybe it’s not the way it was…
But it’s the way it should be.
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622: Angels Revenge
I would pay folding money for a half-hour gag reel of all the times Mike swung too hard or in the wrong direction or the wind was wrong and he took off Crow’s head. It had to happen at least twice. MST3K was not known for the sturdiness or sophistication of their props and we love them for it.
A fourteen-year-old boy steals some stuff from a drug dealer who looks an awful lot like Ben Murphy. In revenge, Fake Ben Murphy and Actual Jack Palance beat the shit out of him. This upsets both the kid’s sister, an up-and-coming musician, and his schoolteacher, and they hatch a plot to destroy the drug depot. They recruit a few friends – a Hollywood stuntwoman, a karate teacher, a model, a cop, and one of the teacher’s students – and steal some ammo from a bunch of neo-Nazis, and then it’s on to beat up the druggies!
I guess the idea behind this movie is fairly sound – a group of women get together to do a job the men aren’t willing to do. The question of just why the men aren’t willing to do it is an open one. Do the drug dealers own the police or something? I dunno. At the time it came out, Angels Revenge was panned as a ripoff of Charlie’s Angels, which it most unquestionably is, but there’s a reason that was a successful formula: women enjoy movies in which women kick ass, and men enjoy looking at boobs. In the right hands, it would still have been a ripoff, but it could have been a much better ripoff. Unfortunately, the grubby hands it got into were those of Greydon Clark.
The opening of this movie is a series of annoying missteps. A group of women we do not know (we’re not even sure how many there are) invade a gas station in the middle of nowhere and start blowing stuff up. Their names are given in the opening shot but not in a way that makes them memorable. One character apparently dies, the others go on without her, and then she reappears to save the day. None of this makes much of an impression beyond ‘oh, look, tits’, but we can tell they’re trying to get into the main building. We get into it just enough that we want to see what’s inside, and then bam. Freeze-frame, narration.
The time for this would have been about five minutes earlier. Seriously, this ‘action opening’, obviously patterned after things like James Bond, goes on for five minutes at least in which we don’t really know what’s happening or who any of these characters are. If we had just one to focus on that might help, but we’re watching six or seven of them run around doing different things and we don’t even know what their plan is so we can’t tell if it’s going right or wrong. The whole sequence should have been either massively cut down to just enough to tell us action is happening before it goes into the flashback, or just moved in its entirety to its proper place later in the narrative.
Then when we finally do start meeting the characters, the first one we meet is not the one who began narrating a moment earlier! It’s the beat-up kid’s sister, the one who so-far looked like she was in charge. Finding out she’s secondary in the whole plot is a bit of whiplash, and as far as I can tell the main purpose of the Vegas sequence (besides showing us her midriff) is to give a cameo to Arthur Godfrey as himself.
From there the rest of the characters are introduced and we finally find out who the hell they all are and what they bring to the table. April, the teacher, is the mastermind. Michelle, the singer, is the backer. Terry, the stuntwoman, is their engineer. Keiko, the karate teacher, is the hand-to-hand fighter. Maria, the model, is a distraction. Elaine, the cop, is the tactician. And Trish, the student, is… uh… somebody wanted a kid in this movie. The point is, if you go back and watch the opening sequence after the bit where everybody’s introduced, it’s much more involving and makes infinitely more sense! They could have had five minutes of action, but they gave us five minutes of boredom just by putting it in the wrong spot!
After some of the movies I’ve see, incidentally, it is a point very much to this movie’s credit that I remember everybody’s names. Well done, Angels Revenge!
That does not, however, outweigh the many other things the movie does badly. The actresses are mere eye candy, hired for their looks and not for their talent. They stand around in ‘sexy’ poses without bras on, and recite their lines like they’re in an eighth-grade play. Even so, they’re better than the men, who are just as bad at acting but aren’t distractingly nice to look at. The best actor in the entire movie is Alan Hale Jr and he’s only got about three lines.
Then there are the bits where the movie tries to be funny. The Neo-Nazis are supposed to be funny, which I’m honestly okay with – Hitler hated being made fun of and so it’s the responsibility of all right-thinking citizens to mock him and his movement whenever possible. But they aren’t funny, just a bunch of fat clumsy guys with Hitler mustaches. I don’t know how people who make movies fail to understand that in order to be funny, characters have to do funny things. Both the Neo-Nazis and other ‘comic’ male characters in the movie are presented simply as ‘lol, men are oafs, right girls?’ without any attempt at an actual punchline.
Another running gag is April, who insists she’s a Very Organized Person, and her over-full purse. That’s not really funny, but I can’t argue with it. Two years ago I bought a bag big enough to hold my knitting and I haven’t seen the bottom of it since. Someday I’ll be rooting around for something, fall in, and end up in Narnia.
The sequence in which they rob the Nazis does provide some action and acts as a trial run to show us the women can work together successfully. But we already saw that in the out-of-place opening sequence, so it’s not really establishing anything we didn’t already know. The fact that we’ve also seen what comes after also tells us that they will succeed at this mission with nobody getting hurt (not that these idiots they’re robbing are in any way a threat), and sucks all the suspense out. Man, the longer I think about it, the more ways in which that opening makes the movie worse! Whose idea was that anyway?
The characters are stereotypes, boring at best and deeply offensive at worst. The black woman is six feet tall and works on vehicles, because black women are butch! The Asian girl knows martial arts and uses a katana, because she’s Asian (and although she’s said to be from Vietnam, she has a Japanese name… it’s possible to come up with a backstory for her that incorporates this, but that’s not my job as an audience member)! The white women are bitches and bimbos, more distinguishable by their hair than by their personalities. April is presented as ‘the mousy one’ simply by not wearing lipstick on a heist.
I guess by having tough women and weak men, the writers thought they were being feminist, or at least appealing to feminists, but that’s not how feminism works on any level. Strength and intelligence isn’t pizza – you getting an extra slice doesn’t mean I don’t get one. Portraying the male antagonists as buffoons is actually deeply misogynistic, because it suggest that women can’t even play unless the men are idiots. The point of feminism is that women are people just as much as men are, and deserve to be treated as such – by other women, by men, and by screenwriters.
Let me illustrate with an example from the opposite extreme: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility are sisters who each need to get married for the sake of their financial security. That might seem a very sexist premise for a story – and it is, but only because it takes place in a sexist culture. Elinor and Marianne have distinct personalities and different ideas of what makes a happy marriage, and they make decisions as individuals, not simply because they are ‘women’. Each makes her own mistakes and learns her own life lessons, and the narrative explores what society has taught them to expect out of life versus the less romantic reality. They are two human beings. The characters in Angels Revenge, by contrast, are a bunch of pretty props.
It would have been so easy to make something actually enjoyable out of Angels Revenge. As I noted above, it uses a successful formula and it really could have been a fun little piece of exploitation cinema. Every decision made along the way, however, seems designed to sabotage it. It’s badly-written, lifeless, cliched, racist, and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of feminism. They hired women with no acting experience to play the main characters, and can’t decide which of those characters is our heroine. And of course, they edited it together in the wrong order, confusing and boring us and undermining what should have been important and suspenseful scenes. This sort of thing just leaves me frustrated and annoyed. You’re making a movie, people! Could you not put a little fucking effort in?!
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Let’s Talk About Steven Universe
*WARNING* This … “essay” has my opinions only. I am not speaking for the community, I am speaking for me because I like to express myself and there are people like @susanaaatc out there who like these kinds of discussions. So if you want, I’d like for others to give me their whole opinions on the show as well. Hell make a whole post about it like I did and tag me in it so that I can see your opinion. With all that stated, let’s get down to Bismuth.
So Steven Universe came out in 2013 and I was 11 years old at the time. I liked Regular Show and Adventure Time, not to mention I was obsessed with Rise of the Guardians and Monster High, so I was a bit preoccupied to watch the show. Eventually though, my best friend at the time talked about it constantly and she brought up the concept of fusion. She showed me the art book of the show that she bought and it showed how two completely different gems could fuse into one gem to become stronger. This is where my interest started, and it was the same concept that started pushing me away from SU later in it’s show run.
So fusion in Steven Universe is mostly treated as a relationship, and it’s not always just romantic. It can be between two friends, it can be seen as a more sexual relationship between two gems, a romantic relationship, or a parent-child relationship like with Steg (Steven and Greg’s fusion). This is an amazing concept and I love it so much but… I’m not here to talk about what I like, I’m here to talk about what I dislike.
One of the best characters in the show is Garnet. Garnet was revealed in season 2 (I think) to be a fusion between the two tiny gems Ruby and Sapphire, and Garnet is the manifestation of their love. She’s an amazing example of not only a healthy, respecting, and loving relationship between two people, but also is an amazing example of a healthy same-sex relationship. You see, Steven Universe uses “code” to represent something like race, gender, and age… But we’ll get to that later. My problem isn’t really with Garnet herself, but what Rebecca and the Crewniverse has made her in to. Many have said it before, and I agree. After her reveal as a fusion, Garnet was no longer the cool, collected, fun-in-her-own-way “mom” we knew before, she turned into a fusion, and a symbol for fusion, and a representation… of a fusion. After the reveal, all the crewniverse seemed to view Garnet as… was a fucking fusion! She lost a lot of personality in the 3rd and 4th seasons in my opinion and was really only used in the plot when it had something to do with fusion. To me it’s like having a friend group with only one Asian friend and the rest a different race, and then only inviting the Asian friend to hang out when you’re going to watch Anime, or a Kdrama. It’s a bit racist is it not? Just because you can relate a character to something in the plot does not mean that character has to be there. Maybe instead of putting Garnet in every fusion episode (with the exception of “Earthlings”) just mention her. She doesn’t have to be in every damn episode that has to do with the subject.
A lot of people have an issue with Bismuth… and I can understand that. Let me explain why. “Coding” is what a creator of any media does to give the consumer an idea of a character’s personality, race, age, gender, etc, without it being too obvious. Off the top of my head I’ll state what I view the “coded” characters as.
Garnet, Sapphire, Sugilite, and Bismuth are coded Black.
Amethyst to my knowledge is coded Hispanic or Latina or something like that.
Pearl, the Diamonds, Opal, and Rose Quartz are coded White.
Rainbow Quartz and Aqua Marine are coded White and British.
And I’m not sure about Peridot, Lapis and Jasper are supposed to be coded as.
So the race thing has brought up some issues. In the official artbook that I mentioned earlier there was a concept design for Concrete and the design was a little… oof. People weren’t very happy… lemme just show you.
So obviously people weren’t happy that good ol’ Concrete here looks like a blackface character from the early 20th century animations. And I agree it’s pretty bad, but I don’t think it was intentional.
Some controversial things that come from the show (other than countries like Kenya being assholes and trying to act like LGBTQ doesn’t exist) are the portrayals of two specific characters, who also happen to be fusions, and I agree with most things people don’t like about them.
Let’s start with Stevonnie. Stevonnie is the nonbinary (but let’s be honest she’s a girl) fusion of Steven Universe and his love interest Connie Maheswaran (I had to look up how to spell her last name smh). They’re supposed to represent Steven and Connie’s closeness as best friends and their growing crushes on each other. Rebecca Sugar has also stated that they’re a representation of puberty…. Excuse me? Puberty must have went swell for you Sugar. There’s someone who made a video about why they hate SU, that person being the ever controversial Lily Orchard, and she covered why Stevonnie is just… honestly she’s waifu bait. I agree with probably everything Lily says about this character because… it’s true. Puberty seriously ain’t pretty, and it sure as hell ain’t sexy until after it’s done… sometimes. Also, Sugar is contradicting herself saying that the Crewniverse isn’t sexualizing two very under age kids because Stevonnie is Steven and Connie’s ages added up… which would make the fusion 26 years old… that’s a bit old for puberty Rebecca. It feels to me like they wanted to make a sensual character, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but they didn’t really want to add a new character so they just put the two love interests together. But that’s so fucking wrong. I’m sorry, but sexualizing Stevonnie, which they are doing btw, I will make a post if you question it, is like people shipping siblings or an underage person with someone way older than them and saying “it’s totally fine because they’re just characters” (*cough cough* Ereri *cough cough* Hitachiin shippers *cough*). If you’re going to use that excuse, but then get angry at people who don’t take the character seriously because they are just a cartoon, then you’re a hypocritical asshole. Sorry to tell you. Stevonnie is a very good character overall though. I’m just uncomfortable when they appear because they’re two kids in a trench-coat with curves like an anime schoolgirl and moves like someone who just successfully seduced a poor guy into giving them the secret to the Crabby Patty formula.
Now let’s move on to Steg, the fusion between father Greg Universe, and son Steven. There’s nothing wrong with them fusing because fusion in SU symbolizes a relationship, no matter what kind. However… why do two chubby men make a sex symbol rock idol??? That’s… that’s gross. Why the fuck is Steg so “hot”? Why on earth would you create a fusion out of a father and son and think it’s appropriate to sexualize them and make them gyrate their genitals like they’re an Elvis Presley impersonator? Just… WHY? Do I even have to explain why this is so wrong? Really? Honestly??? You can fuse Steven and Greg and not make it so sexual, but nah let’s give them rock hard abs, a humongous bulge a sharp jawline that neither of the two have, and a tight ass. What the actual fuck??
That’s not my biggest issue though. My biggest issue is giving the Nazi bitches a redemption ark smaller than my nonexistent cock. Endeavor from My Hero Academia is an absolute prick right? He abused his children, notably his youngest, and his wife, and is an absolute asshole to everyone, but he gets a redemption arch. Do you know why it makes sense though? First off because as far as we know Endeavor never committed genocide, and second because he’s not a Nazi, he’s an abuser. Abusers, whether we like to admit it or not, can eventually see the error of their ways and understand that what they’re doing is both wrong and that it doesn’t work. Endeavor is getting a redemption arch because he obviously loves his kids, he just doesn’t know how to show it because of some circumstances we may not know. 90% of the time an abuser was abused themselves growing up, so they grow up with that resentment and they go one of two ways. They see how wrong it is and knows that it won’t get them anywhere in life if they bully others to stay on top, or they think that since they went through it and came out alive, then others should go through it too. I should know, because my dad was from an abusive family, and he turned out fine(ish… long story) while his brother and sister are pieces of shit that can’t hold a job or a home because they’re too involved in criminal activity to do so.
What does Endeavor from MHA have to do with the Space Nazi Diamonds in SU? Well people were sending Horikoshi Kohei death threats because he had the gull to redeem an asshole, and SU fans are pissed because Rebecca Sugar had the lady balls to “redeem” space Nazis. The difference being, you can be redeemed if you were an abusive cock, but not if you’re a genocidal bitch. There’s a huge difference.
Rebecca and the Crewniverse giving the Diamonds a 4 episode redemption arch is absolutely abominable. Peridot’s redemption? Fucking amazing, beautiful, couldn’t have done it better myself. Jasper’s? It’s currently going amazing and they’re doing a great job keeping her in character while also making her likable and even a bit charming. Lapis? Oh… let’s talk about her shall we?
Lapis Lazuli’s character is an absolute disaster. She’s a cunt, she’s a horrible friend, and my god is she abusive! Lapis was supposed to be a sympathetic character, and for a while she was. You could feel bad for her because her gem was damaged and she was trapped in a mirror for thousands of years and when she’s finally released, you understand her want to go back home and why she took the Earth’s ocean to try and reach it. It was understandable when she didn’t want to break out of the prison ship because she was anxious and scared of being locked away for another thousand years. It was easier in her mind to just behave and wait. When Jasper convinced her to fuse with her Lapis didn’t really want to, but saw an opening for the freedom of the humans and mostly for Steven, the one person who saved her from hell. But then everything went south.
Lapis and Jasper were fused as Malachite for months, obviously in a very stressful “relationship”, and apparently a very abusive one as well. When they were finally able to unfuse, Lapis was played off by the Crewniverse as a victim of abuse. This may be half true. After all we don’t know exactly what happened with them at the bottom of the ocean. What we do know however is that Lapis admitted to being abusive. This makes her an abuser. She described how it made her feel happy to abuse Jasper, or “taking my anger out” on her. She admitted to abuse and the Crewniverse still painted her as a victim. They’re both victims of abuse, and they’re both abusers. But that’s not what makes Lapis a horrible person… gem…
Lapis is a cunt… again. It’s okay to be antisocial, it’s okay to be cautious and stand-offish because you’ve been trapped, imprisoned and used so many times. What’s not okay is being a bitch to people trying to comfort or make friends with you, or try to cheer you up. Poor Peri, she was just trying to make amends and comfort Lapis after her whole ordeal with Jasper. Peri offered the cunt the thing that helped her organize her thoughts, the thing that calmed her in situations that made her anxious, the thing that comforted her and the first gift given to her by her first friend and the first person that listened to her thoughts, and the cunt destroyed it. She destroyed Peri’s recorder right in front of her, calling it garbage. Oh and the abuse doesn’t stop there, it only really began, because when shit started to hit the fan, instead of helping each other through it, Lapis abandoned Peridot and took the home they shared. Without a single thought she just took it and abandoned her, and it devastated Peri. I don’t remember her apologizing, and if she did it doesn’t matter because if I don’t remember then it must not have been very sincere.
I’m sick of spitting negative shit so I’m gonna end this here. Personally I’ve been liking the last few episodes, but I’m not too confident that the finale is gonna be satisfying. Those are my thoughts, do with it as you will, but for God’s sake be fucking adults about it. If you don’t got the guts to curse without saying “h3ll” or “pu$$y” or something like that then you’re not mature enough to respond to this. I’m not gonna argue with 9-year-olds. I’ll only have a conversation with mature people.
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40K factions and you
Space Marines:
Your favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla, but occasionally you might try some Neapolitan, if you’re feeling dangerous. You’re faction’s lore is designed from the ground up to accept your self-inserts, and the models are some of the easiest to paint in the entire range. None of this matters because no matter how unique you think your super-cool “realistic marines who use real tactics maaaaan” are they’ll always come out looking like a slight variation of the ones below
8th edition has finally allowed you to feel a tiny sliver of the unbalanced and over-costed hell other factions have been stuck in for years, but unlike them, daddy GW is more than willing to spend a little extra on his bulky good bois so they still get all the coolest gear and lore. Like vanilla, small children love them, but they grow out of both eventually.
edit: it was only a matter of time before GW stamped its foot down and made the inevitable decision that its favorite kid needs to be busted again. Then again in all fairness they toned down their overpoweredness from “godlike” to merely “demi-godlike”
Imperial Guard:
You’re a big “history fan”. You’ve seen Enemy at the Gates, watched some history channel shows about Nazi wonder weapons, and make 54 karma post on r/history_memes recycling debunked Eastern Front jokes. Only your intelligent eye is able to conflate this factions obvious Metal Slug levels of cartoonish design and tactics with realism, and you make sure to remind everyone else of said realism by comparing your tabletop exploits to your military experience in the reserves. Everyone used to like you back when the faction was actually made up of underdogs and under appreciated, but the Guant’s Ghosts references have gotten kinda stale, and no one appreciates the brass balls of these Starship Trooper knockoffs now that 8th edition supports and rewards the very same mindless horde tactics the Guard used to be mocked for in Lore. Despite having some of the most tried and true designs in the game, as well as an incredible amount of options, you will quickly find how limiting the only “realistic” army is in terms of customization and paint schemes, as anything but camo, grey, or tan looks goofy and reveals how silly this faction actually is.
edit: If your army consists of wrapping 30 guardsmen around basilisks I recommend you take a short fall down a long flight of stairs. Fuck you, Evan.
Eldar:
You’re a real shooter. You know what you like and you stick with it, cause lets face it, it takes a lot of loyalty to stick with these arrogant pricks. Their designs are unique but dated, their lore is a uneven mishmash of 40k grimdark schmultz Tolkien telephone, and Oliver Twist-esque whipping bois for whenever GW writers need to remind us how cool Space Marines are. But none of that matters because you know the truth: Eldar can kick tons of ass on the board, and look good doing it, as their unique designs lends them to all sorts of brilliant color combinations
And unlike other armies their rare design updates improve on their aesthetic while keeping their 40k-ness, something that is becoming increasingly rare in this era of Tacticool marines and Fantasy-creep. Just don’t expect to be taken seriously by anyone but the old-heads.
Edit: Leave it to the whipping bois to be outshined in their own event and get a single model update. Thanks GW, very cool.
Dark Eldar
You are one of two people: a meta hopping smooth brain who only jumped ship once these guys got one of the best updates in 40k history, or a true intellectual who understood their hidden merit all along. Other faction players like to make fun of you for being edgy, when in reality you know that the Dark Eldar are just a bunch of sociopathic theater kids. They, like you, know how fucked from top to bottom this universe is, and instead of getting depressed they exclaimed “how can we be the best cartoon villains we can be?”. Despite having a relatively bare army list, the fact that these d-bags come in 3 flavors of crazy in a single army offers a ton of variety: the mustache twirling villainy of the Kabals, the crazy bloodstained snuff-stars of the Wych cults, and the BDSM horror show of the Covens. All three offer substantial benefits and drawbacks and must be played carefully in order t-
Who am I kidding? You’re just gonna stuff a bunch of Kabal warriors into Venoms and zoom around the map, aren’t you? Enjoy that speed, because your abysmal save stats wont protect you anything more than a furiously thrown walnut. At least your corpses will look rad clad in some of the grimest armor and gear in the game.
edit: no longer anywhere near as dominent as they were in the earlier years of 8th, but they still look slick as hell and play great.
Orks
Your IQ randomly jumps from 20 to 200 throughout the day. There is no predicting this, no planning around this, no stopping this. You’re best bet is just to go along with it, and that’s why you play Orks. Orks are roudy good-time buddies who love slapstick slaughter, not having thoughts, and occasionally pulling of cunning plans that human savants would struggle to comprehend. Orks seem to be the only faction that know what joy is, which is why you as a player spread it to everyone else. Yes, the memes and screaming can be a bit much to others sometimes, but like with any other mentally handicapped child everyone around just grits their teeth through your bad episodes if it means not upsetting your unique sensibilities. And considering that this army’s aesthetic revolves around cobbled together nonsense, you have a lot of uniqueness to give. Orks are easily the most creative faction in the game when it comes to conversions. Nothing is too goofy, too dumb, or too silly to scrap together. As for performance on the tabletop? Go ham. This is an army that rewards merry bullshit and randomness. Remember, you didn’t pick Orks to win, you picked them to have fun.
edit: So are Orks actually getting anything or what? GW’s plans for this faction is as chaotic as the minds of the ADHD scrambled minds who play them
Necrons
You have a very specific taste in... funky weird-science space Egyptians. Seriously, these guys are practically a completely different army to what they were a decade ago. Gone are the terminator references and eldritch lore nonsense, and here to stay is senility and glyphs. You lie to yourself, saying that you’re not really sure why you chose Necrons, but I know the truth: you chose them because they used to be busted. They used to be unfair. They used to be able to take out top-tier tanks with their version of pea shooters and come back after every turn. So overwhelmed were you by their dazzeling stats and bullshit cheese your brain’s wiring fried and the erratic firing of billions of flayed neurons made you think Necrons had cool lore and interesting models. But now they’ve been nerfed to hell, and you’re no longer stuck in that lasting state of sensory overload. Like a drunk snapping awake with a hangover you come to the painful reality: Necrons are kind of dull. So like me, you put them away in a shoebox forever, leaving their fragile sculpts to slowly fall apart.
Edit: FUCK WHERE IS THE SHOEBOX WHERE DID I LEAVE IT OH GOD OH OH NO OH FUCK THEY’RE ALL BROKEN MAYBE I CAN PUT THEM BACK TOGETHER BEFORE 9th EDITION LAUNCHES I’M SO SORRY FOR WHAT I DID TO YOU NOW MORE THAN EVER I NEED YOU, I NEED MY BOOOOOOOOYS!!!
Tau
You will forever be hated by the community unfairly. You are accuse being anime - and this is true - yet the Eldar get away with being copied wholesale from 80′s space anime and no one seems to notice. You are made fun of for your bad melee, despite having one of the most comprehensively designed niches in an otherwise sloppy game and dominating with nearly every edition. You are made fun of for your lore, despite being largely separate from the cliches and story traps that everyone else has fallen into. You are hated because you are different; hated because you are Asian.
Tau are an anomaly in 40k: a completely new faction that wasn’t directly ripped off of some other franchise and with an aesthetic that is wholly their own. I won’t be making fun of them because they get enough of that, and you don’t deserve it. Just know this dirty secret: Tau outsell almost every other xenos faction, and despite the supposedly unanimous hate are probably one of the strongest factions in terms of play-style and modelling in the franchise.
Edit: The tau are grittier than ever, happy now? They still do the same thing they have always done anyways.
Chaos
Unlike the DE you actually are edgy. You worship satan, you throw rocks at homeless people, you start fires because your dad doesn’t spank you enough. Chaos are the closest things that this cluster fuck of a universe can get to being the main villains. Their lore is at once intricate and stupid, both childish and metal as hell. You play chaos because getting your fingers pricked by the models’ spikes is the closest you can come to feeling anything anymore. Just like the chaos lore you love to hype yourself up, to puff your chest and revel in the darkness inside, but when confronted you tend to fold like wet tissue paper. You’ve stopped playing public games with these guys, because the other players don’t understand you and abuse the meta and make fun of your painting skills and everything is so unfair and don’t you think that chaos marines should get buffs for their points cost, fuck?
Edit: The new models are slick and more power-metal minivan than ever, though the rules are still abysmal despite GW desperately wanting everyone to takes these guys seriously for once.
Sisters of Battle
GW writers and designers hates Catholics and they hate women, so naturally they hate Sister of Battl. They also hate you for playing them. Because of this SoB are a monument to neglected potential. They have one of the best female armor designs in fiction, great lore, and an interesting playstyle that relies on faith/determination based feats of strength and valor... but GW hate Catholics and women, so SoB get shafted everywhere all the time. More often than not you will be disappointed reading about their exploits as they continually get unfairly slaughtered, corrupted into the horny service of the pervert god, or used as receptacles for blood-based paint when the writer’s favorite faction needs to fight demons. With no plastic models in sight for over a decade everyone began to come to the slow and dreadful realization that GW was looking to Squat our favorite estrogen warriors, until a new revamp was announced. Unfortunately the beta rules look as lackluster as ever, but that’s fine, because as a SoB fan you have learned to expect that GW hates you, Catholics, and women.
Edit: GW found God and got woke because now they love women and Jesus’ one true Church, but let it be known that reformation doesn’t occur overnight, as the SOB’s faces still betray GW’s lingering discomfort in the female form:
Their rules are fun, and if every codex was designed like it 40k might actually be a fun game
Tyranids
nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom nom no- and that’s it that’s the Tyranids. I don’t know anything about them besides that, and neither do you, cause that’s their lore. Yes they have cool models, but next to no reliable updates. I’ll pray for you.
Edit: it really looks like GW has just completely forgotten about you poor souls huh? The Night King, a character who is closely associated with the totally-not-reconned-Tyranid-invasion, comes back and not one word about you guys. They don’t even actively hate you like, say, they hate the Eldar. It’s just... apathy.
Grey Knights
HAHA AHAHAHAHA HA HA UHAHAHA HAHAAHAHAAHAH HAHA ha ha Ah......... he. hehahaaaAHAHAHAHA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
edit: I hope you all realize that Grey Knights are far too specialized in fighting the permanently under performing forces of chaos to be 40ks “elite among elite.” You and your entire faction has been made completely obsolescent by the Custodes. The rough times will continue, say hi to the Squats in heaven will you?
Custodes
You are either insufferably full of yourself or a fine practitioner of the model making craft. Most likely though you are neither, and you picked them because you only need gold and red paint to make them look good. Custodes are the space marine’s space marines, and they’re better than you and everyone else. period. At least in lore. On the table their incredible individual stats and elite status are reflected in points cost, so for most large games you will be fielding what amounts to any other faction’s skirmishing army. Unfortunately, since 40k is a stat-sheet battler that favors raw bulk of rolls and stats over the quality of them, you’d be hard-pressed to do well in any serious game. However, for the luminous of mind, the small size is a blessing in disguise since you don’t need to buy and paint as many units as the other armies, and no matter how hard the guard player trashes you his 50 unpainted manlets will never look as good as your 15 gloriously crafted golden Chads. Stick to smaller games, and the individual strength of each model will make up for the glaring absence caused by their loss.
Ironically enough despite being an elite faction from a relatively obscure part of 40k lore, these attributes make Custodes the perfect casual player’s faction. It is my personal theory that if GW didn’t grossly inflate their prices to such a high degree everyone would have a Custodes army.
Oh yeah, Henry Cavil plays these guys, because of course he does.
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sooooo i just watched Endgame and.... yikes yikes yikes, what the fuck was that, spoilers and messy rant under the read more!!! it’s also anti-tony, just in case!
so first of all the movie was way too fucking long, like only the last 45 minutes are interesting, the first two hours feel like they are padding run time, which of course they have to do since they want to make a movie in two parts to get that cash money, because im sure that disney is really struggling to get money lol!
so that movie was almost 3 hours and ob-vious-ly about 1:45 was dedicated to rdj, his lines, or seeing him, and goddamn i hate his goddamn face, i dont want to ever see him again, at first hes like this is your fault steve! we should have done what i did in the first place, so ultron then, which if i remember correctly didnt go so well, then 5 years later dude’s got a kid, of course, and hes like noooooooooooooo i dont want to help im fine now then boom he’s the hero that’s gonna pull everyone together, while thor has become like not even a shadow of himself? i didnt even recognize him ,mentally not physically, even though that was v v v v strange to see him like, so out of character, defeated and everything, thats not the thor i know
also what the hell happened to banner, it was so weird seeing the hulk interact like that it felt so cartoonish??
natasha’s death was so funny to me, like she really dies like a dog, completely forgotten while tony has the huuuuge funeral, and he gets to be THE HERO, because of course he has to be, he’s a martyr he saved the planet on his own and why not just make like a huge statue of him and worhsip him every sunday while were at it? but SHE doesnt deserve shit apparently, just a few lines in passing, despite the fact that without her none of this would have happened it felt like a repeat of gamora’s death, like the sexism, as always is, off the charts, oh btw why did she sacrifice herself? for clint? the whitest piece of bread in existence? really? i have to laugh, i love seeing ladies dying for the sake of that one bland ass potatoe sack looking dude, love it! (can you feel the sarcasm?)
so the only good scenes in all of this garbage was when they all come together at the end, when they slowly appear and steve is standing on his own ready to battle by himself, that was amazing, and when he uses Mjolnir that was dope and i got chill (although i can understand if thor’s stans didn’t like it, i get it 100% but i’m a steve stan first so i loved it), wanda’s fight scene was cool too but waaaay too short
so let’s talk about the NAIL in the coffin goddamnit, steve coming back old af and that hetero ass bullshit ending, listen i don’t understand why it was sam that came to see steve at the end? and not bucky? i just don’t fucking get it? like listen sam is a cool guy and i like the character, but we’ve had close to zero scene with bucky despite their like 90 years of shared experience? like what the fuck? they shared so much and we don’t even get an ending to their relationship, also soooo he cares more about peggy , who he spent like what, months? together when they were young? but his childhood best friend he doesn’t even say goodbye to? the guy who was brainwashed for 70 years and got his memory back by seeing steve? give me a fucking break
they just pissed on everything that made steve a good character and just gave him like motivating speeches and lines and thats it, jesus what happened to my little guy from brooklyn who wanted to fight nazis because it was the right thing to do?
he doesn’t even get to die as a hero, he dies as a fucking old ass dude, i guess only iron man get a triumphant ending right!
honestly again all of this was fucked up because of the russos and everyone at marvel is constantly humping rdj’s leg, it leads to bad fucking writing, and zero resolution and im disgusted
also i wanted to see valkyrie ( i gasped when she appeared on the horse, i loved it so much), T’challa and Shuri in action and they both have what 34 second of screentime? and not even a speaking line for Shuri, or anyone else really, like goddamn there was so much fucking tony in that movie there was no time for anyone else I guess!
also the time travel thing , i hate that trope so already it wasnt gonna work for me, but it was confusing and badly done, like are you telling me that when steve came back in time he was letting bucky get tortured and brainwashed for 70 years? like i get that the russos aint that smart to think about it but like, they should!
and where the hell is loki? he just bailed? the fuck?, and the entire movie was written with the ass anyways, and every joke landed flat, and god nothing was right with that movie, nothing, execpt the scene i mentionned above and that lasted like 3 minutes into such a long ass movie
oh also, that was hilarious how we find clint in japan, killing asian people because of his angst, loooooved it, amazing how marvel only hires asian to get them killed by the white man, with their own weapon too!, but i guess theyre not racist since they have mantis, who’s asian! but wait she has to be colored in paint, no one can knooow she’s asian, like ... fuck off marvel, fuck off!
so here’s the movies that i consider canon: captain america 1 & 2, black panther,the thor movies, and i guess the first avenger? but thats it lol, the rest i dont care about
in conclusion: a big fat yikes! and i kinda want to throw up now, and the russos can choke :)
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Marvel Cinematic Universe: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Does it pass the Bechdel Test?
No.
How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?
One (7.69% of cast).
How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?
Twelve.
Positive Content Rating:
Three.
General Film Quality:
Excellent! Full of as much heart as action, the film takes on the complicated task of delivering a Captain America for the modern world, avoiding jingoism while also acknowledging the origins which brought the comic-book hero into being. Against the odds (and my personal expectations), it is a sound success, and I consider it easily the best of the Marvel franchise’s early films.
MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:
Passing the Bechdel:
Obviously, that didn’t happen.
Female characters:
Peggy Carter.
Male characters:
Johann Schmidt.
Steve Rogers.
James ‘Bucky’ Barnes.
Howard Stark.
Abraham Erskine.
Arnim Zola.
Gilmore Hodge.
Chester Phillips.
Brandt.
Fred Clemson.
Timothy Dugan.
Nick Fury.
OTHER NOTES:
I’m mad about the Hydra symbol being the coolest insignia in this franchise. I would wear the heck outta some Hydra merchandise, if it weren’t for the, y’know, evil Nazi fascism stuff.
I love little Steve. They pulled that off so well.
I don’t love that Peggy’s introduction revolves around her being disrespected by a guy and then knocking him on his ass. It feels far too prescribed, too Strong Woman Cliche, so expected as to be rendered essentially meaningless. It implies that these are the most important things about the character - she’s a woman and she’s tough - and it panders to the sexist perspective by requiring Peggy to ‘prove herself’ upon arrival in a traditionally-masculinised way. They could have handled this introduction much better.
Man. This movie has such a good cast. The goodness of this cast has no chill.
“So many people forget that the first country that the Nazis invaded was their own.” This the good shit.
“Go get him! I can swim.” Snort.
Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, ‘Star Spangled Man’ plays over and over again in my head. That’s probably why I can’t sleep.
“Do you...fondue?”
The thing where someone gets hit and they fly off-screen in an exaggerated fashion is never not funny to me.
Characters surviving explosions without a scratch, however, is never not rubbish to me.
A super-soldier is never late, Peggy Carter, nor is he early; he arrives precisely when he means to.
Steve really isn’t very precious about choosing his team: they’re all just Bucky’s friends. He basically just went “ok, show of hands, who loves Bucky Barnes? Good, you guys are with me”. I mean, it’s solid reasoning - he trusts Bucky, and these guys have Bucky’s endorsement, and that’s good enough for Steve. I note that only one of the other guys on the team besides Steve and Bucky is a white American - the other guys are a black American and an Asian-American (and I see you there, recognition of racism against Japanese-Americans which led to their incarceration during the war, etc.), and then there’s a French dude and a Brit. That’s Captain America’s elite team: not all-American, and racially inclusive. I DIG that subtext.
*hisses* why is this whole Natalie-Dormer-mackin’-on-Steve thing even here? It’s a useless contrivance, plus I am extremely displeased at having Peggy being so petty in her jealousy that she actually fires a loaded gun straight at Steve. I sure hope she heard Howard’s explanation about the properties of the vibranium shield, or that she already knew them, because otherwise this is completely outrageous, but even then: what if the shield hadn’t performed as advertised? What if a bullet ricocheted and hit someone else? This is such a dangerous thing to do, and did I mention it is in service of a useless contrivance anyway? Peggy deserves better writing.
Lemme tell ya straight up: I thought I was gonna hate this movie. I mean...it’s Captain America. I expected cloying patriotism, a blandly self-righteous hero, probably some good ol’ war glorification as well. What we got instead was a film that barely even mentioned the good ol’ USA outside of the (explicitly recognised as) propaganda rigmarole that Captain America slogs through - a tool used to excellent effect to acknowledge the character’s history (the comic was created as propaganda during WWII in real life) while also carrying through the idea that what Captain America stands for is something far grander than nationalist fervour - and Steve himself is imbued with unassuming charm, fueled by the strength of his personal convictions but never forcing those convictions upon others in a show of moral grand-standing: an essential facet of the character is that he’ll pursue what he believes to be right regardless of whether anyone else follows him, and he accepts that there are consequences to his actions; he never props himself up with holier-than-thou declarations, he never shames anyone for disagreeing with him, and he never claims any kind of superiority over others (an important distinction when you’re juxtaposed with a Nazi Ubermensch villain). Other characters are inspired by Steve, but the film wisely never positions them as if they were weak or wavering without the symbol of Captain America to unite them: the war is a grindhouse, and they know the only way out is through. No one is fighting because they perceive battle as a great and noble cause, nor because they are righteously empowered; they fight because their enemy is too terrible to let pass, and there is no room for glory in that.
I can (and will) still quibble about the representation of war in the film: while the fact that it is sparingly shown does help to avoid the glorification of violence and death in battle, it also undersells the horror of war, which runs the risk of looping back around to glorification by making it all into fun skirmishes with faceless goons and glow-weapons. Additionally, Captain America clashes exclusively with Hydra and its operatives; while Red Skull severs his ties with Hitler early on through the welcome disintegration of a few Nazi representatives, the film cannot entirely distance itself from Hitler’s legacy (which Red Skull actively takes on for himself), and I take long-standing issue with anything which uses Nazis as an evil catch-all but fails to acknowledge and respect the victims of their reign. After Steve’s heroic nose-dive in the Valkyrie ends Hydra’s campaign, the film cuts to celebrations of the end of the war; they don’t actually state that it was Captain America who just defeated the Nazis by taking down Red Skull (despite the fact that Hydra’s soldiers with their fancy tech and also, um, actual-Hitler and his armies, are all still out there), but the implication is there, and it feels a mite bit insensitive, to say the least. I do think it is better that Steve has his own corner of the war to fight, rather than taking on the whole thing and battling actual-Hitler in the end (now THAT would be insensitive), but I do wish that the destruction and evil of the war at large were the backdrop of the film, rather than the comparatively sanitised Hydra operation that we see.
In this context, the weight of the war and the toll that it takes on the psyche of those suffering through it is carried almost exclusively by Bucky Barnes, who emerges from the unseen tortures of a Hydra work camp changed, his buoyant enthusiasm from the beginning of the film subdued, locked up behind the shattered look in his eyes and the fragile way he carries himself, determined to see this thing through to the end so that he can fall apart later, if he makes it that far (he doesn’t). Fandom has made much of Sebastian Stan’s understated performance, and with good reason: despite a minimal number of scenes there is a richness of detail in Bucky’s character, and as the emotional sinking ground for tragedy - both as the personification of the war’s devastation, and as a personal loss for Steve Rogers - Bucky’s narrative importance belies the amount of time dedicated to him in-text. Fandom has also made a strong point - with which I agree entirely and for which I will not pretend to take unique credit for noticing - that despite expectation, Bucky’s archetypal function in the film is not as the Hero’s Sidekick; he is, in actuality, fulfilling the cliche of the Love Interest, not in competition with Peggy Carter but instead of; Peggy, likewise, is not an archetypal Love Interest at all, because she’s the Hero’s Sidekick.
I am entirely of the opinion that this is an essential part of what makes Peggy - the sole named female character in town - work out so well, against the odds. As Steve’s sidekick, Peggy’s primary functions are to support him and give him advice; the sidekick is traditionally a rational role, someone who keeps the hero grounded and helps them to make the right choices, especially when they are emotionally conflicted. The Love Interest compels the hero’s emotions, sometimes (often) framed as driving them to acts of recklessness, to joyous heights, and depressive lows. Bucky is Steve’s damsel in distress; Steve is compelled to act when he learns that Bucky has been captured by the enemy, action which is tempered and assisted by Peggy’s influence and which ultimately brings Captain America out of propaganda mode to practice what he has preached, and be the soldier Steve always hoped to be. When Bucky falls, Peggy is there to talk to Steve, as a friend, and help him stop wallowing and concentrate his grief into the resolve which carries him through the climactic confrontations of the film’s final act. I’m not going to argue that Steve wanted to join the army just to be with Bucky (presumably that was a factor to some extent, but to call it the primary motivator would be to ignore the value set which made Steve into Captain America in the first place), nor that he was willing to sacrifice himself in the end because Bucky was gone (Steve’s mourning for Bucky certainly played a role in his mental state at the time, but ultimately, bringing down the Valkyrie was a practical choice, not an emotional one), but undeniably, Bucky was either integrally or tangentially attached to all of Steve’s major decisions across the film, as is common for a Love Interest, whereas Peggy consistently filled a support-and-guidance role, as any good sidekick should.
This is not to imply, by any measure, that Peggy can’t or shouldn’t be seen as a viable (lower case) love interest (or that Bucky’s time as a hero’s sidekick somehow doesn’t count as what it is); actually, I think that both character’s relationships with Steve benefit from being framed in this switched fashion. Bucky’s lifelong friendship with Steve comes across stronger and more meaningful due to the emotional pitch, allowing it to resonate as something deeply significant to Steve despite the limited exposure we have to it in action - extra important considering that Bucky is also fulfilling that sacrificial-character role. For Peggy, the fact that she is presented as a love interest but coded as a Hero’s Sidekick is even more important in its effect: since she is the only woman around, we have been taught by approximately All Media Ever to perceive her as the Love Interest from the second she steps on screen, and with that perception we are also encouraged to devalue her character as essentially existing for no other purpose than to be an attractive female prize for the Manly Male Hero to win by story’s end. By reinforcing Peggy as a friend to Steve, we subvert the expectation that she has no real function and/or that her personality is irrelevant, because narrative coding has taught us that sidekicks (almost exclusively male) matter, they have things to say and their influence on the hero is meaningful. Whether they are stalwart sidekicks, or bumbling fools, comedic, or secretly-insidious, a sidekick should be noted, because they’re a lot more likely to have something plot-relevant going on than a boring old Love Interest. Being presented as a helpful, sympathetic presence in Steve’s life who also Has Her Own Shit Going On allows Peggy to meet Steve on more even ground, and her interactions with him are not built around being romantically or sexually available: by having a working relationship built on a foundation of understanding friendship rather than attractive chemistry, the development of feelings between the characters comes across more as extraneous and organic, rather than a prescribed cliche. It still is a prescribed cliche, but it’s not one that compels Steve to do dumb stuff or that undermines Peggy’s relevance as a person in her own right, and that makes it a much more palatable romance than what we usually get.
This is also why that idiotic ~jealousy~ contrivance I flagged earlier is so out of place - I mean, it’s out of place because it’s idiotic, it has no impact on the story in any way and its an insult to the characters and I don’t know why it exists or why they kept it in the final cut of the film because it’s asinine rubbish, but it’s also out of place because it approaches Peggy as a Love Interest, scorned and emotionally lashing out, an attempt to generate Love Interest drama where it has no place in the movie, for the characters as the people that they are, with the established dynamic that they have, or in the context of their situation. Throwing a misunderstanding and some hurt feelings on top of a relationship which has worked refreshingly well thus far because of the honest and open conversations the characters have shared is utterly tone-deaf, and it’s one black mark on what is otherwise a shockingly strong and tonally-consistent film. She may be all alone in the movie, but I will happily argue that Peggy is the best, most-rounded female character in the MCU at this early stage, and she’s playing across from an eminently worthy leading man in Chris Evans’ charmingly-sincere Steve Rogers. The supporting cast is there - Seb Stan, of course, but also Stanley Tucci! Tommy Lee Jones! HUGO WEAVING! - being wonderful and engaging across the board, and there are no weak links (except Natalie Dormer, but that’s not her fault, and at least the misstep is brief and POINTLESS so that it doesn’t taint the rest of the film). Captain America: The First Avenger may not be absolutely perfect - nothing is - but it is a great ride, sometimes surprisingly nuanced, sometimes intriguingly subversive even while it plays straight with the expectations of its genre. I went into my first viewing of the film just hoping it wouldn’t make me mad, and I gotta tell ya: I ain’t mad at all. As far as I’m concerned, this is the platonic ideal of superhero films.
#Captain America: The First Avenger#MCU#Marvel Cinematic Universe#Bechdel Test#female representation
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ER
This is a no power AU with Stephen in his usual surgeon role, and Tony as his usual engineer/ CEO self. This is quite Stephen-centric and follows him though a bad day at work with some Tony at the end. Somewhat inspired by that one Grey’s Anatomy episode where Bailey get stuck doing surgery on that Nazi asshole. (Also, as always when I write him Stephen is Nepali).
Stephen hates working in the ER but Christine insists that he pull some hours there. Truthfully he only does it out of respect for Christine, but respect for her doesn’t mean that he has to like it. Nick comes running up and Stephen rolls his eyes, prepared for yet another wrong diagnoses that he will have to fix when he stops in front of him, huffing. “There’s been a nasty accident not far from here. We’re about to get flooded so I suggest making sure there are OR rooms free,” he says.
“I already know which ones are free,” Steven tells him. “Because unlike some people I do my job,” he adds under his breath. Nicky gives him an annoyed look but says nothing as Stephen goes to make sure the supplies they will need will be within easy reach and, true to Nick’s word, the hospital is flooded less than fifteen minutes later. He works mostly methodically, most wounds are superficial in nature, but when Christine calls him over to work on someone else he’s relieved. If she’s called him over than she’s got something more his speed and he’s damn tired of stitching whining people.
When he gets there though Christine looks right irritated. He raises an eyebrow and she makes an annoyed noise, “he wants a guy- his spine is a mess and he won’t let me treat him because I’m a woman.” Her distaste and disgust is clear and frankly Stephen is surprised. Hospitals don’t tend to be places where people care about that kind of thing- the sick don’t get the luxury of deeply held prejudice but this guy is apparently steadfast clinging to his.
“You know I can hear you, right?” the patient tells presumably Christine but its Stephen who responds.
“Something tells me she doesn’t give a damn,” Stephen says, coming up behind the patient and examining what Christine had called a mess and frankly that was being polite about it. “I’m assuming you were in one of the cars closest to the initial crash, then?” he asks. Nasty pile of cars after one spun out and hit another, they think, but the results are bloody nonetheless.
“Yeah,” the guy mumbles.
“Unlucky,” Stephen murmurs more to himself than the patient and in the chaos his comment gets lost anyways. He asks a few more routine questions, figuring out the best course of action, before he cuts the man’s shirt carefully to get a better look at the damage. When he catches the snatch of ink its not really unusual- tattoos are especially popular for young people- but something makes him cut a little higher than he needs to.
His eyebrows fly up and across the room its like Christine knows to look up because they make eye contact. He jerks his head, gesturing for her to come over and she does, reluctantly. When she sees the tattoo her jaw drops and Stephen snickers a little. Fucking idiot has no idea that Stephen isn’t white- he came up from behind and thanks to his deep voice and lack of an accent this moron had assumed he was white. Or at least given the rather large swastika on his shoulder he assumes the patient thinks he’s white.
“If you’re not comfortable-” Christine starts but Stephen shakes his head.
“Are you kidding me?” he hisses, “this idiot has no idea I’m not white, this is hilarious.” Christine looks confused, very confused, but Stephen has always delighted in making a fool out of people with stupid, pseudoscientific beliefs and this is no exception. So he’ll continue to do as much work as possible before his patient catches on to the fact that Stephen is very much Asian.
Christine shakes his head at him and walks off. “Uh, everything alright back there?” the patient asks and Stephen snorts. Not even remotely, the fact that this guy isn’t dead or even unstable momentarily is a god damn miracle. Or, more likely, indicative that something else is wrong and he can’t see it yet.
“Nice tattoo,” Stephen says in a pleasant tone that his idiot patient assumes is approval if his response is any indication.
“Oh I... wouldn’t have figured someone here would understand,” he says eventually.
Stephen lets out a small laugh, stepping around the bed and into the patient’s view. “Oh I can’t say I understand,” he says, pleasant smirk on his face. The patient jerks and Stephen almost winces for him given the circumstances but its his own racist opinions that did that to him. Stephen would lower the dosage of his pain killers too if not for a potential malpractice suit. He’s sure it wouldn’t matter in the end, Tony has the best lawyers money can buy and he’s hardly short on cash himself, but he figures its best to play this right. “If you’d like I can grab a white man,” he says, same pleasant tone in his voice and the patient looks damn confused but Stephen knows exactly what Nick will think of this. The man doesn’t work well when uncomfortable- a bad trait for a doctor.
He goes off to fetch Nick, sending him over to the Nazi while he goes back to stitching patients who are whining more than usual. Ugh. If only he could be a doctor without the whole ‘dealing with people’ thing. Christine says its impossible but Stephen firmly believes in medicine without people. Let robots gather their symptoms, he can deal with them after they’re knocked out.
“Stephen,” Nick says from behind him and he turns, dropping his tools in the small tray sitting beside him. “I can’t... that guy... he’s a Nazi Stephen, I can’t work on that.”
He raises an eyebrow, “and you’re talking to me because?” he asks even though he knows where this is going.
Nick sighs, looks away with a clearly conflicted look on his face before he turns back. “I know this is profoundly selfish to ask but...” his words cut off and he looks away again.
Stephen gets the point anyways. “Fine then, I’d appreciate you in the operating room though. I’m not certain Christine will be able to resist killing the man and someone should keep her from doing so,” he says, walking swiftly away.
**
Its almost twenty seven hours later when he finally gets done with the surgery. He’d been right about not seeing everything that was wrong, the guy almost died four times, but Stephen managed to save his ass while both Nick and Christine watched in utter confusion as he did his best to save a Nazi’s life.
Tony meets him outside and he all but collapses onto him, which probably isn’t fair since he’s nearly a foot taller than the poor man but he handles it well. “I am ready to die,” Stephen mumbles into the top of Tony’s head.
“Yeah,” Tony says from underneath him, “I kind of got that memo. Guess surgery went badly?” he asks, hedging his bets Stephen guessed. He’s never taken surgeries gone wrong well, not that they happened often, but this isn’t that.
“Oh it went fine. The patient almost died four times but he’s fine. That’s not what’s on my mind though,” he says, pulling away to stop squishing his poor partner. Tony frowns, eyebrows drawing together in confusion. God, he’s beautiful- dark features and fair skin, its a stunning combination. It helps that Tony is like him in a lot of ways and the ways in which they differ aren’t differences that draw them apart like they had with him and Christine.
“Are you okay?” Tony asks, reading what Christine and Nick hadn’t been able to on his features.
“I’m fine, Tony. Mostly. But the man I just saved is a Nazi.” Tony looks almost more disgusted than Christine and Nick had when they discovered that fun fact.
“You should have let him die,” he says in a harsh, unforgiving tone but Stephen knows if it came down to it Tony wouldn’t have killed the man. But he probably wouldn’t have done what Stephen did either. He’s far far less vengeful than Stephen is.
*
There days when Tony doesn’t understand Stephen- they’re rare, but they happen. And usually when he’s confused Christine can fill him in, but this time they’re both at a loss as they watch Stephen fuss over the man who clearly wants Stephen the hell away from him. It disgusts Tony to watch the way the guy fucking cringes every time Stephen comes near him when he saved that piece of shit’s fucking life but Stephen doesn’t seem to react at all.
“I don’t understand that,” Christine murmurs, “I thought he was an asshole for requesting a male doctor. Turns out he was worse.”
Tony shakes his head, “if I were you I would have make it look like an accident,” he murmurs.
“I was almost sure that’s what Stephen was going to do, almost perfect record be damned, but I swear he tried harder to not let him die,” Christine says. She’s baffled and frankly so is Tony. Its not like Stephen could possibly have any love for Nazis but their Nazi friend decides to ask for the both of them.
“Why are you doing this?” he asks eventually, flinching as Stephen continues to ensure he’s not about to die or whatever other doctor things he’s supposed to look for. Tony shakes his head, clenching his jaw at the utter disrespect. Its painful to watch Stephen get treated that way. Tony hopes Stephen lowers the dosage on those pain meds.
Stephen stops for a moment and looks down at the man in the bed before he lets out a soft, cruel smile. “I thought about letting you die- I’ll be honest and say the world would be better for your loss. Not that I’d even call it that much. But then I thought why kill him when you can get revenge? So I kept you alive, I worked hard to do it too, and I did it because there is nothing more satisfying to me to know that for a man like you having an Asian man and a woman save his life is a fate worse than death. Every time you even think you’re superior or better you’ll have to remember my face, my race, and know that the only reason you even have a thought in that vile mind of yours is because I allowed it to happen. Welcome to your waking nightmare every day for the rest of your shitty life, asshole. I am infinitely pleased to have delivered you here,” Stephen tells him in a low, threatening tone.
Tony and Christine share a surprised look, “remind me not to piss him off,” Tony tells her.
She swears under her breath, “no shit. I knew he was spiteful but wow, that’s a new level even for him.”
“Still think the Nazi was better off dead,” Tony mumbles. But he has to admit Stephen’s creative method of revenge is... well, creative.
**
Tony doesn’t understand Stephen’s love for watches, they’re utterly useless, but he deserves something after that Nazi fiasco so Tony and Christine hunt down a couple rare, expensive watches for gifts. Stephen raises an eyebrow when Tony hands him the box with their spoils in it but the absolute delight on his face when he finds the watches inside is so worth the price he paid for them.
“Thank you,” Stephen says, pulling a Rolex out of its box. “I’ve been lusting after this for years but its always been just a little out of my price range.” And he’s terrible with money, Tony knows. It goes out almost faster than it goes in. But he deserved a nice gift and Christine happened to remember what it looked like when Tony only remembered that it was a Rolex. Between the two of them they managed though.
“I thought you should get a little something nice, you’ve had a stressful few weeks,” he says, wrapping an arm around Stephen’s waist.
Stephen leans down and kisses his temple, “having you around always makes things better. And I guess you too Christine,” he adds in a far less loving tone.
Christine rolls her eyes, “typical,” she says, shaking her head fondly.
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https://rwdestuffs.tumblr.com/post/178357985392/done-dirty-the-white-fang
Too bad both are technically terrorists because both use fear to achieve their political goals and both ultimately are failures because both are just inferior versions of Ghira’s philosophy who, mind you, is the only ACTUAL civil rights leader the White Fang had.
Yeah, I maybe getting into my own political beliefs here but at least I can explain myself better.
Y’know, finding interesting ways to showcase the subject at hand is getting difficult…
How, you’ve just used common as fuck memes. These aren’t even your ideas, they’re the ideas of others you’re using.
You want to know something?- I’d say that the humans were pretty damn fortunate that all the faunus wanted was equality. They could have easily had enslaved their would-be-racist asses after they had won that war (actually, this sounds like a kickass ‘what-if’ story, if someone wants to make that, send a link my way please).
1. That is racist Dudeblade. Ruby, Yang, Jaune, Nora, Ren, Pyrrha, Coco, Yatashuri, Neptune, Ozpin, Oobleck, Glynda, Port and so many more have not display racism at all. Hell, most of these have actually displayed the EXACT OPPOSITE by just treating as normal people. Anything else would be racist.
For fuck’s sake, weve seen four racist characters in RWBY. One of which is reformed, one of which is a jackass bully, one of which was an attempted TERRORIST and the last is Snowy Satan.
2. Dudeblade, mind explaining to me how the people of Remnant today are responsible for the actions of PEOPLE THEY’VE NEVER MET? Especially since, by your logic, every single Fanaus is responsible for the actions of the WF. Meaning they have more blood on their hands due to the Fall Of Beacon than humanity as a whole.
And 3. Goes to show your mindset for this doesn’t it? Goes to show you have a political bias to make things look bad.
But really, the narrative seems to be really split on how we’re supposed to treat the WF. If we’re supposed to sympathize with them, then making them a terrorist group that Blake has to reform makes that hard. If we’re supposed to hate them, then making it so that they were retaliating against oppression and racists was a poor choice.
Yeah-
You know you can sympathize with people while also condemning their actions right? I mean, that is literally the only thing that stops me from feeling completely detached from you people. After everything you’ve done with LESS justification, I can still see you all have your issues.
Or can you only see the world in monochrome?
To clarify before I go any further: I side with the White Fang. Not with Adam. The WF is a civil rights group made to ensure the equality of Faunus (And is for some reason the only civil rights group to do so), and defend them. Adam, on the other hand, is a white kid who kills people in schools because he got rejected by a girl he liked (arguably the most accurate thing about the racism plot). This is the main point of the image used.
Too bad Dudeblade, that’s not how that works.
When you side with one side, you side with everyone in control of that side. That includes Adam. And thing is: you just displayed the exact same thought process as Adam with your opening paragraph.
That’s like if a Nazi said “Oh, I just side with the idea of rebuilding Germany. I don’t with the Furher.” The people charge DEFINE the meaning of the group. And the last two were terrorists.
Also, as BLM shows, you can’t get equality through fear. You just devolve yourself to your enemies’ point.
On it’s own, the idea of Faunus isn’t necessarily a bad one. Taking inspiration from racism in America isn’t a stupid choice. But they didn’t take inspiration from racism in America, they based it on the struggle of African Americans in the US. And when you just copy/paste that onto your fantasy minorities that are supposed to be a stand-in for all racial minorities, it creates a problem.
A. The Fanaus were never enslaved. That alone disproves the ‘copy paste’ bullshit.
And B. You’re using American sensibilities to argue about the Fanaus so by your own logic, your arguments don’t work.
See, there are reasons as to why people would be afraid of faunus outside of them looking different. They hold inherent advantages like superior hearing, and night vision.
An easy fix for this would be to make it so that different faunus types are treated differently.
Dudeblade-
Name me one advantage an African man has over a Caucasian man.
The moment you make this about genetics, the moment the racists have a point.
Racism is petty, nonsensical, destructive and superficial. Your way would just justify that.
For example: Velvet. She’s got bunny ears. That means that she’s one of the “non-feared (Read: ‘good’)” faunus because all her trait does is give her better hearing. She’s ‘cool’ because she poses very little threat. Blake could also be in this category because she also only gets better hearing, but she might be trusted a little bit less because she gets better night vision thanks to her feline heritage. She is also ‘cool’ because she poses very little threat.
Except ALL fanaus have those traits. So there’s no difference.
Also people are racist against Asian people despite being genetically shorter than Cauasians. How are you gonna justify that? Easy answer: there is no justification. You just don’t understand racism.
Now we go to the other side of the spectrum and go to Tyrian. He would be one of the “Feared” faunus. Scorpions on their own already freak me out, so making one human-sized and still letting him keep his venom is terrifying to me. Tyrian is ‘uncool’ because he poses a very clear and dangerous threat.
Again, no one cares about ‘safety’ or whatever. Doing that would JUSTIFY the racism as natural paranoia. It’s the same reason why the X-Men don’t work as racism standins-because the bias against the mutants is JUSTIFIED since mutants have abilities that grant them a distinct advantage over normal people AND they can kill so many people so easily.
Faunus could have been used to showcase multiple forms of fear. In fact, these natural weapons and abilities would be an easy reason to justify humans hating them (again: Jealousy is right there).
THAT. IS NOT. THE POINT.
How do you NOT understand that doesn’t work because it sends the message of ‘racism is okay so long as the race is a threat to you!’ God, are you TRYING to make RT look racist? Or are you THAT blind?
See, if it were jealousy that fueled the hatred, then a lot of things would make sense. Humans are mad that they can’t have the advantages that faunus have, so they attack and belittle them. Not only would this make sense, but it would be a far better idea than what’s going on right now (though, to be fair, it’s not that hard to be better than the canon story for faunus discrimination).
And yet somehow, you made a plotline where Jacques Schnee’s abuse of the Fanaus and Cardin’s racism would be JUSTIFIED and make THEM the good guys.
People in the real world do not fear races because of genetics. That implies an idea like racism could exist in an intelligent world. People are racist because they were either taught that and never taught that was bad, they have a fear of what is different (an irrational holdover from our primitive days) or they had a bad experience and irrationally connect that to all people of that race. Racism is NOT justified. It is completely and utterly IRRATIONAL.
And this would miss the entire point of the WF plotline and just make Remnant so far removed from our world that no one could relate or care about the characters. You bitch about the fucking plotline and yet make the WORST POSSIBLE VERSION of it.
But it’s not just the Fang as a whole that’s been done dirty, there are also several members that have been dirtied too. Like Sienna Khan.
Oh goody, we can watch Dudeblade fail to understand individual character purposes as well as entire fictional race purposes.
The woman is a skilled fighter, has an interesting motivation, and managed to take over the White Fang.
And then she goes down like a bitch.
The writers tried to fix this by showing her off in the trailer, but that makes the situation far far worse.
- Sienna fights like that, and she gets defeated so easily?
Speaking of the trailer, it shows exactly WHY Sienna went down so easily.
Namely, Sienna TRUSTED Adam. Adam was her golden hero, her shinning example, her prepared successor/second in command in waiting. Adam was suppose to be the pinnacle of what Sienna’s ideals were. So even when he was within killing range, she never thought Adam would harm her.
Same thing with Batman and Miranda Tate in The Dark Knight Rises. Batman never considered the idea that Miranda was a threat to him because he trusted her.
Look, it’s possible to have a character show off how badass they are even if they’re already dead. Take a look at Episode of Bardok from Dragonball. We, as the audience, know that Bardok is going to die, but seeing Freeza using his deadly technique after Bardok gives it his all in one final attack against the tyrant is one hell of a way to go out.
But Sienna just gets stabbed after less than five minutes of screentime.
A. That’s Bardock, Father Of Goku you idiot. Episode of Bardock is the one with time travel and him becoming the Super Saiyan that Freeza’s family feared.
And B. So are we gonna just ignore how Freeza negated that attack by simply POWERING UP an attack of his own, in his first form no less, thus suffering from the same issues that you bitch about here?
For a show that got known for it’s fight scenes, it really lacked in the fighting to justify why Adam managed to beat her.
And to preemptively shut down any argument that “Sienna didn’t have her aura up,” I have to ask you why you wouldn’t have your own guard up if the people around you were pointing their weapons at you, and had very clearly betrayed you.
Because Adam was still a trusted lieutenant in her eyes as well as the reason why Sienna was able to become High Leader in the first place.
Do yourself a favor and never play a Danganronpa game. You wouldn’t make it past the first trial.
Sienna not having her aura up seems a lot more stupid now, doesn’t it?
Maybe if I smoked a bunch of weed, drank a bunch of beer and smashed each bottle against my forehead.
Adam is also a character that was ruined. Not because he’s a terrorist, mind you (see comment about him being rejected above), but because they decided to make him a bitter ex.
A. So was Sienna. She literally said she wanted respect through fear, which is the same as being feared.
And B. He was always gonna be an abusive lover. The evidence was always there. The disconnect between what Blake described and Adam’s actions, her irrational fear of Adam, the worry and fear she has of people becoming like Adam. Not the show’s fault you reject reality.
Adam being a mentor figure and only a mentor figure should be enough to justify his relationship with Blake. There’s more relationships out there other than romantic and friendships. There’s student-teacher relationships, familial relationships, co-worker relationships, etc.
Except it always had romantic undertones and it makes the pain of Blake leaving even more poignant-
Oh wait, you don’t understand writing. What was I thinking?
Adam being Blake’s mentor that fell from grace is really the only relationship we need for those two. It establishes a real fear, and it doesn’t add……… the problematic complications of an 18-year-old dating a 13-year-old.
Adam is a mass murdering, genocidal, racial supremist douchebag.
Adding Edhepophila isn’t even worth discussing.
Not only could this be a means of mirroring the relationship that Jaune had with his dead prop Pyrrha dead prop, but it would serve as a really cool moment of Blake surpassing her teacher when she inevitably defeats him. While I will acknowledge the fact that standing up to an abuser takes a lot of courage, it also takes courage to stand up to a mentor that you looked up to and admired- and finally tell them off or defeat them. That abuse story could have gone to Weiss, and her standing up to her abusive father- which she did. That was an awesome moment for Weiss.
A. That’s sexist dudeblade. You never call Jaune a prop to Ruby.
B. But it DOES seal the idea of fear and Adam’s sheer madness and evil. Just because a character wasn’t what you thought doesn’t make them bad.
But I guess Blake dodging into Adam’s sword and Adam somehow forgetting about Blake’s semblance was a higher priority. As was a priority for the writers to make sure that Adam goes down like a bitch.
You know, kind of like how Yang forgot ‘Gee, swords are kind of a bad thing for me?’
Not like Adam and Yang have direct paralells to each oth-
Oh wait, they do.
... Don’t you look stupid?
I’d like to reiterate that as a surface-level idea, faunus racism isn’t a bad one.
Well your version is.
I’m sure that when we were younger, we all slapped animal parts onto a human, called it a new race, then called it a day. But it’s the poor implementation that makes it hard to sympathize with either side.
Despite the fact that you don’t argue against the Fanaus side AT ALL and in fact side with them (well, superficially since you side with the terrorist group that uses them as a shield.)
Yeah I call bullshit.
Apparently, when fighting against the grimm, you can only resort to violence. And the grimm are a force with no mercy.
But when fighting against inequality, you can’t use violence at all. Because the racists will obviously learn the error of their way if they see their targets sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya.
Dudeblade-
The Grimm DO NOT have the intelligence for discussion. They have animalistic intelligence AT BEST. You cannot reason with a wild animal, you can only run. But even worse, the Grimm DON’T WANT to stop. They WANT to kill. They WANT to destroy. You cannot reason with something that not only cannot understand you but doesn’t want to stop.
Let me give you an example of this. In Persona 3-5 games, there is an entity called the Reaper. Under certain circumstances, the Reaper will seek out and attempt to fight you. In Persona 5, you can actually communicate with the Reaper. You can ask it for an item, or for money or even to join you. But no matter what you try, it will always say this:
This is the Grimm.
You are trying to compare the complexities of racism in individuals to this, a creature with no desires other than your demise.
That is how stupid you look.
Also: I don’t wanna here this shit from a guy who, in this same post, tried to portray racism as something that could be rational.
And the fact that there are no humans pushing for equality is also a historical mistake. For a bunch of writers who basically copy/pasted the struggle of minorities in America onto their animal people, they seemed to have missed the part where even people in the majority were on the side of the minorities.
Proof?
Because no shit no human would join the White Fang, they’d probably just kill him. They’re racists.
As for actual equality: Ozpin, Ironwood and Leo all accept Fanaus without question, even former White Fang members. That is a push for equality.
Sympathy is a great start, but that has yet to go anywhere.
Aside from Vale letting fanaus own stores and not showing an ounce of racism aside from one asshole who could be from mistral for all we know and a convicted criminal?
There was no mention of any humans at the protests siding with the Faunus, there were no mentions of humans boycotting restaurants alongside them- It’s just the faunus struggle.
Maybe that’s because the only protest we’ve ever seen was interrupted by the White Fang, meaning that if humans DID try to protest they’d actually be at MORE risk than anyone else because they run the risk of being murdered by the White Fang AND human racists unlike the Fanaus. Kind of like you usually don’t see BLM members who are white.
And it would be great if the writers would think this through a lot more than they have
A. Excet you know, anytime they do you just ignore it so why even bother,
And B. *throws him a shovel* the guy you want to talk to is over there, six feet under. You had your chance, you never said it. Now you get to pay for it.
Because all a lot of us want, is some freaking nuance for the racism arc.
Except you know:
Not only have most of the people who bitch about it shown they don't want nuance, they want their side to be seen as absolute good and everyone else as absolute evil.
Not only have you suggested a version that would make the racists JUSTIFIED in their actions, thus making the fanaus the bad guys here.
But there is nuance. You just ignore it.
I would say that I want you assholes to acknowledge your bullshit but-
Yeah we all know how you’d react...
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Just say you're white and don't give a fuck if you offend people of colour by stealing their culture and using it to benefit you and GO
Alright then, let’s see
Yes, I’m white, I also happen to be Jewish by ethnicity, and am also sorta-bisexual and am on the autistic spectrum.
Again, the only relevance this has to the discussion is that I’m not a complete stranger to suffering discrimination; excepting that, my opinion wouldn’t be any less valid were I an allistic cishet white man.
And now regarding the rest of your statement:
I do care about people of color, just as I do all humans, and I don’t want to hurt anyone in any way imaginable.
My point in the spreading-of-culture debate was that you shouldn’t be offended by people learning from your culture and implementing it in their own lives.
And that sometimes people will forget where some pieces of the cultures they use came from, and while you have every right and maybe even a duty to correct them in case they forget the origins of something from your culture, there’s no need nor right to be mad at them for it, so long as they don’t intentionally hide\deny the role of your culture in creating it.
My point was that neighboring cultures naturally mix, so long as people don’t actively segregate themselves.
And that such purposeful segregation is the worst thing any ethnic group can do to themselves.
Isolation leads to people viewing you as aliens rather than as comrades, a view which inevitably leads to intense hatred & prejudice.
Now true, in the case of black people, you’re already discriminated against purely due to the color of your skin, which marks you as visibly different than the rest of the population, regardless of anything you’ll do.
However, I’d like you to ponder something for a second.
Most Jewish people are white, and have no visible characteristics separating them from the rest of the population.
And yet, which minority currently has the most hate crimes committed against them in the US, annually?
And in the time of the Nazi regime, that sought to enslave all people not “aryan”, black people included, which minority did they seek not to enslave, but rather to kill and butcher every last one of?
The answer to both of these questions is “Jewish people”.
And why is that? After all, the absolute most of us are white, all of us who lived in the US & Europe, actually; how did other white people come to hate us so much, even more than they did black people?
The answer is “cultural segregation”.
In the case of my people, I don’t think they ever had a problem with gentiles (non-Jews) learning of our culture & implementing it in their own lives, but they did, due to religious reasons, have a huge problem with learning the cultures of the gentiles, and a huge problem with mixing with said gentiles.
They feared of losing their Jewish ways & of picking up non-Jewish beliefs, so they closed themselves off from the rest of the world, lived mostly in isolated communities, and generally did everything they could to separate their culture from those of the gentiles.
That had the effect of gentiles not really knowing Jewish people & our culture, and as a direct result of that, Jews became outsiders in the very countries they lived in all of their lives.
And outsiders living within make for great targets of prejudice & hatred, a fact which many kings & leaders used to their advantage.
Wanna impose unfair taxes and avoid being overthrown? No problemo, just pick a Jew to be in charge of tax collection, and blame everything on them. (that’s the origin of the antisemitic “greedy Jews”, “Jews control everything”, and “Jews are weirdly good with math” stereotypes, btw)
And so, thanks to segregating themselves from the rest of the population and keeping their culture separate, the Jewish people became the most hated minority world-wide, in Europe even more so than black people.
So hated that people started randomly butchering entire Jewish communities in acts named the pogroms, and eventually, the Holocaust itself.
And we were white; not black, hispanic, asian, arabic, or in any way visibly different than the white majority of the population.
Now imagine what would happen if black people, a minority group already discriminated against due to looking different, started doing this.
Started separating themselves from the rest of the population, and keeping your cultures separated from the rest.
Yeah, there’s a very good reason I’m begging you not to fucking do that.
Separating yourselves and your cultures from the rest of the population is quite literally the worst thing any ethnic group can do to themselves.That’s what the KKK would like you to do, keeping white & black people separate is what they want above all.Don’t aid them in their wish.
On the other side of that coin, there’s a known & proven cure for racism in a society; exposure.
Kids who grew up with kids of other races are obviously far less likely to become racist.
Even some KKK members have abandoned their racism & left the KKK, thanks to a black musician who befriended them and through that friendship showed them the error of their ways, and even a guy who was a neo-nazi since ~14 managed to leave his racist ways & rescue another neo-nazi friend of his from them, thanks to & using exposure.
Exposure & mutual sharing of cultures is not an instant “magic cure” to racism & prejudice, but it’s by far the most powerful tool to combat it in the short & long term.
I’ve already promised my followers not to continue this repetitive discussion any further, I’m only responding because you came to my inbox rather than that long-ass chain of reblogs & messy conversation, but I really won’t say anything further on the @question-why-not blog.
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finally watched the last jedi again. thought i’d hate it this time, what with all the shit being thrown around
...y’all think this is the worst one? like. really?
y’all think
the one with a young black man getting to look his childhood tormentor in the eye as she insults him and tell her he knows EXACTLY who he is and what he stands for is the worst one? (what are we all)
the one script doctored by carrie fisher herself
the one with the same guy being stopped from needlessly sacrificing himself by a young asian girl who just lost her sister, then telling him that the only way to defeat their enemy is to fight to save what they love not to kill what they hate, is the worst one? i dunno that sounds familiar
the one where bb8 gets to be the one to say “i have a bad feeling about this” AND ONLY POE KNOWS
the one where the point of Rey’s parents being nobody is not that she means nothing, but that she is all the stronger and greater for having come this far, almost all by herself, and that she doesn’t need to be someone important’s kid, because she’s already important, she’s rey, and therefore reinforcing that relation is not relative to how story important a character should be
the one where maz kanata implies that not only does she want to bang chewie, she’s already banged justin theroux cosplaying harrison ford from the temple of doom?
the one where general leia fucking organa proves in one beautiful scene that she is just as if not more powerful than any dude from her family (but ye reduced that to mary poppins jokes good job) and is explicitly said to be the leader all the galaxy should stand behind
(MY GOD SHE’S BREATHTAKING)
the one where luke skywalker saves his sister and everyone else JUST BY SEEMING LIKE HE’S THERE (in his most perfect robes and with a trimmed haircut his mother is so proud somewhere)
the one where muppety yoda, the lord and king of all hypocrites, admits, yeah, the jedi order fucked itself by not changing, failure is the greatest teacher, lets let the next generation do it differently and see how it pans out, can’t be worse than us, after trolling the shit out of his student one last time
the one where the movie stops to say, if you actually believe that shite rhetoric of “BOTH SIDES ARE EQUALLY BAAAAAAAAD AREN’T I SO INTELLIGENT FOR NOT FOLLOWING LIKE A SHEEP” you are an actual asshole and even though you say you’re neutral, that you don’t help either side, YOU ARE PASSIVELY AND ACTIVELY HELPING THE SPACE NAZIS
NO DJ, NOT MAAAAAAYBE, YOU ARE IN FACT A MASSIVE COLLABORATOR PRICK AND I HOPE LANDO BEATS YOUR ASS WITH AN AWESOME WALKING STICK
the one that shows that tussling over the remnants of the past is just gonna more destruction gosh what would be a good visual metaphor for that oh
the one where bb8 defeats prison guards using the gold coins he got cos someone thought he was a slot machine?
on the same planet where finn and rose inspire a new generation of rebels with a simple act of kindness
(its late i dont have a gif sorry)
the one with, for the love of god, this scene?
and this scene
and oh good lord this scene
and above all, if you think the main message of the movie is, from the whiny fuckboy bad guy, “NOOO LET THE PAST DIEEE KILL IT” when everything bad that happens to him is a direct result of not learning from the mistakes of the past and not trying to use old tools to make something new
i don’t know what movie you watched
can we at least agree we need a ewan mcgregor obi wan movie?
i dunno it just seems to me that at this time in this climate we should be celebrating diverse films where the message is FIGHT THE NAZIS
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FIGHT THE NAZIS
EVEN IF THERE’S ONLY LIKE 16 OF US LEFT PLEASE STAND UP AND FIGHT THE NAZIS
in closing here is a space nazi getting verbally slapped around by Poe Dameron, (Leia Organa’s Actual Real Son, Heir Apparent To The Resistance And Just So HAndsome)
and getting physically (psychically?) slapped around by his nutsack head space nazi boss
domhnall gleeson could have a real future in comedy slapstick is all im saying
#star wars#tlj#the last jedi#rey#leia organa#luke skywalker#finn#finn had the best arc in this movie and i loev him#rose tico#general hux#wheeee look at him go#amilyn holdo#is a badass#poe dameron#is gonna be a great leader in 9
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Comments: “I have an idea. Maybe we shouldn’t give the CEO a raise when every time you release a product. Regardless of sales numbers. And stop giving a bonus to executives, and corporate office every time a day passes.
And stop laying off developers to save money. Just to spend that same saved money. On the CEO's salary.
2. Totally stop making remakes and remasters of games. Just because someone lost in a bygone era is willing to spend top-shelf money on it. And instead, just make a sequel for the game. I like remakes/remasters too. But F***ING DAMN! Half the market is re-makes/remasters now. And more importantly, stop making remakes/remasters for games that you’re not going to make a sequel for. Regardless of how well it sells.
3. Stop spending so much money on a video game that's trying way too damn hard to be an Oscar/Emmys award-winning Movie/TV show. And worry more about making a fun experience (Give the evil eye to Sony).
4. Realize that art direction is more important than being able to see every single individual strand of hair in someone’s armpit hairs.
5. AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: Invest in developers to make experimental games. That would revolutionize the gaming space to make better games. And give them more space and time to work on it. I mean if you can give another few million to your CEO and CFO, and tens of millions to your executives. I think you can grab 10 million and give that to a few developer studios to make new game ideas. And for those thinking this is a silly idea. That’s literally how we got Demon souls & the Call of duty Nazi Zombie mode.
6. (This is adding on to 5) give the developers space and time to make the games they want. You want them to make new experiences. But you give them guidelines of “How to make a good game”. On top of giving them restricted deadlines, and time frames. Which makes no sense. How are they going to make something new if they’re forced to follow a set path, that is also on a timetable?
7. AND THIS RIVALS POINT5: BRING BACK OLDER IPs!!! Do you guys know that Nintendo owns the rights to about 10 Ips that they just won’t make a new game for? Like Earthbound, F-Zero, 1080, Ice Climbers, Game & Watch, Nintendo dogs, and more. The same goes for Sony and Microsoft. Hell Capcom has as much fan art and fan support for Darkstalkers as RE, and SF. Yet we don’t have any new games for it lined up. I have nearly 30 IPs I would love a sequel of. That they’re just not making new games for. Like where the hell is burnout 6!? And where hell is SSX snowboarding?!
8. Stop trying to make every new IP a multiplayer game, and or an E-sport. I and the majority of us just want to play a fun experience. Not the next game a bunch of out-of-shape sweaty Asians piled in a coffee shop LAN party. Is going to train to be the next big winners of.
9. put meaningful content in there, and really ask yourself, “Is this fun and enjoyable”. Instead of making grindy content. That consists of collecting 60 Yeti ass hairs. For god knows what reason.
10. And this is another point that is UNBELIEVABLY IMPORTANT!: STOP!! STOP WITH THE F***ING DLC!!! Just let us unlock the content! And if you are going to do DLC. Don’t paint the gun blue and call it DLC, put way more effort into it. And stop with the damn season passes! Because I think I speak for every gamer to every live when I say this, “We don’t want to spend full price, just to have to spend full price AGAIN on a video game.”. I spent $60 on it already, why do I need to spend another $60 for the rest of the content? And to make it worse. There are some games where you need to spend $1,000 just to get the full experience.
11. And finally, and this is just bringing up point 1 again. But it’s that important that I have to bring it up again. Stop overpaying the wrong people, and underpaying the right people. I hate the fact that there are countless games that didn’t come out. Because the CO-CEO didn’t get his 9TH Audi with golden Rims.”
“Counter-point: Hollow Knight was made by two people, and Kickstarter exists.
I mean, he mentions PaRappa, a game also created by two people. If Hollow Knight can succeed, so can PaRappa. There's a rhythm game called Unbeatable that got funded on Kickstarter in like 15 hours, for example. There's no way a game like Project Rap Rabbit (failed spiritual successor to PaRappa) needed a million dollars just to get made. It's like they forgot that the game would continue to make money after being released.
A great game will sell regardless of how much it cost to make. Make games with N64 graphics if you must, there's an audience for those too (Dusk, Gloomwood, etc.)
There are times when great games don't get the recognition they deserve, and that's a shame, but that's less due to rising costs and more due to the sheer quantity of games that get released in a year. And lack of awareness. I know Shawn Layden doesn't work at PlayStation anymore, but let's pretend he did. Why not take some of those smaller games under your wing and give them that proper spotlight?
When PlayStation is proud of their smaller titles... when they believe in a new IP like LittleBigPlanet so much that it becomes the mascot of the PS3 - that's when those games are given a chance to shine. He mentions Vib Ribbon. As cool as that game was, it was more of a tech demo, but still. If you're a PlayStation boss and you want to draw attention to that game.. just do it? Grease some palms, make it happen. You can't blame the industry for not letting smaller games come out on stage, when you are the industry and the stage.
The average person doesn't have time to research every game ever made. As such, many people are only going to pay attention to games they see in ads. I think that's always been the case. If you want to bring down the cost of game development, all you gotta do is advertise great games that cost less to make, so that way people will play those, grow healthy standards and not see 200 hour-long open-world games as the norm. Then, it becomes a matter of who can make the best games, instead of who can waste the most money developing massive games that people barely even enjoy.“
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UFC's Andrea Lee issues second apology over husband's Nazi tattoos
Andrea Lee after her first UFC victory. (Getty)
So, look: you can argue about whether America in 2018 is too touchy, is too quick to take offense at perceived slights. But even in the burn-it-all-down world of today, you can’t get away with calling people who are upset by Nazi tattoos “sensitive-ass mofos.”
The backstory: newly-minted UFC fighter Andrea Lee shared an image of herself and her husband Donny Aaron enjoying themselves on a lake. All was well until someone noticed the Nazi tattoos on Aaron’s arms, including a swastika and an SS logo:
Via Instagram/@andreakgblee
The backlash came fast and furious. Lee fired off an immediate response to critics that, well, didn’t go over so well: “Neither one of us are racists, we have an Asian & a black guy that live with us! Oh my gosh guys it’s a tattoo he got when he was in prison, get over yourelves. He covers them up all the time & we happen to have a lake day and it makes an appearance. Sensitive ass mofos.”
Yeah, the “some of my best friends are [minority]” defense is never a winner, and while you can get away with calling someone a sensitive-ass mofo if they’re upset about, oh, getting the wrong name scrawled on their Starbucks cup, you can’t really play that card when it comes to, you know, Nazi symbols.
Meanwhile, Aaron issued a long apology on Twitter, noting that he got the tattoos while in prison but is a changed man:
Please read. pic.twitter.com/hu7cf5LdJO
— Donny Aaron (@outlawmuaythai) June 3, 2018
“It’s with certainty that I can promise you that she didn’t marry a racist,” Aaron wrote. “When Andrea and I met, I had already began to reinvent my life and if she’d seen any racist behavior or attitude she’d have never given me the time of day. … Please don’t let your hatred over me bleed into hatred toward Andrea. If you have to hate someone then please hate me. She doesn’t deserve it. She is genuinely the best person I know.”
So Lee took a second shot at apologizing for popping off, and this one was a bit more market-tested:
Please read my full apology, this is to everyone who was upset or offended by me and my initial response. I sincerely apologize, it wasn’t thought out when I sent it, I deleted it immediately after I sent it when I was more rational and clear minded. forgive me pic.twitter.com/9td65xNAmo
— Andrea Lee (@AndreaKGBLee) June 3, 2018
“My comments the day before were meant to just defend my husband not his tattoo. I never intended to make light of the situation, the history of the symbol or dismiss anyone that was offended, This mistakes he made in his youth are not a representation of who he is today, which is a man that loves and respects everyone. Donny was my coach long before we got together, when I first met Donny, I question him too about his tattoos and he explained to me about his past and who he was now and how he’d changed. The more I got to know him as a person the less I noticed his skin.
“I’m truly sorry for responding the other day the way I did, if you think I don’t I DO! I’m not racist, I’m not a nazi and I don’t hate people and neither does Donny.
“I’ve always believed in the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you, I personally try to live by that and I tell my daughter that all the time. I Also don’t believe in hating a person for things they have done to you or things have done, Period, If I don’t like someone. I never ever say that I hate people or a person, if anything I just extremely dislike a person, but never hate.
“I’m the type of person to help anyone out no matter the color of their skin or the religion they believe in, I don’t judge people based off a single thing or action or because of what someone else said about them, I choke to get to know them first and then make my own person opinion, that’s how I am that’s who I have always been.
“So I am sorry if I offended anyone, I apologize, please forgive me.”
____
Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
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Muslims & Conservative Joe
Having a nice conversation with a guy about nationalism vs respect, which turned into a conversation about indoctrination and Islam, but we left on good terms. You know, like actual mature adults.
Then Joe showed up. He wasn’t a mature adult.
I unfortunately do not have his side of the conversation, because they have been since deleted. I don’t know if Joe did it, or if my friend did (my comments were intact), but I thought I would share my side for posterity (also so I don’t have to look up the links again later).
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Oooh, Joe, just remember that you decided to engage me as you read through the novella I'm about to write... just for you. :-)
1. It's spelled 'pity'. Or did you mean to call me an endearing term for pitbull? Cos I'll take that, too. :-)
2. "The statistic shows the number of mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2017, by race and ethnicity of the shooter(s). Between 1982 and July 2017, 50 out of 90 mass shootings were initiated by White shooters." (source: https://www.statista.com/.../mass-shootings-in-the-us-by.../)
If you need more information, you should read this: https://www.splcenter.org/.../2016/year-hate-and-extremism
I'm not just about rhetoric. I like actual facts and statistics to back them up, but let me continue:
3. Christians wouldn't say, "Death to Americans! In the name of Allah!", -- hello, they don't call God, Allah -- but they sure as shit say death to their fellow Americans as a right under their God. Ask any white supremacy group on our soil if they'd like to kill us non-white, non-Christian folk. Or better yet, just read their propaganda.
Ooh, or the winning Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins who said, "Hunt them, identity [sic] them, and kill them. Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all.” He didn't say report possible radicalized Muslims. Nope, he just said kill them to save all of Christendom.
If you want to read the whole thing, go here: https://www.facebook.com/captclayhiggins/photos/a.655256107910738.1073741829.581436541959362/997878010315211/?type=3&theater
I'm not even including all the lone wolf acts of terror against innocent Americans done in the past five years. I can, however, if you're unable to Google them for yourself.
4. I'm glad you haven't bought into the "9/11 was an inside job" conspiracy theory! Good for you! You're absolutely right that no Christian has ever flown a plane into a building though. No, they'd rather blow up federal buildings with children in them
You know, Timothy McVeigh
(Source: https://www.biography.com/people/timothy-mcveigh-507562)
Oh, or more recently, "Robert Doggart, 63, allegedly planned to burn a mosque, as well as a school and a cafeteria in the community. Investigators said he sought others to join the plan through Facebook posts and in telephone conversations."
(Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/.../ex-tennessee-congressional.../)
So please, don't tell me that Christians don't do acts of violence in this country. Just because mainstream media makes them out to be poor unfortunate boys doesn't mean they're not terrorists.
5. As for the things foreign armies do to American Servicemembers, I will remind you that we're not innocent in atrocities against citizens of warring nations either. It doesn't make what they did right, but let's not pretend that we do not have bad eggs in our Armed Services who do bad things.
We routinely (sadly) have incidents of rape and murder wherever we are abroad. It's a small minority of the military, yes, but these incidents still happen, but we do not condemn the whole Department of Defense as evil (well, not for this ;-) ).
And just remember, in case you missed that conversation and only focused on the one piece I wrote about Muslims, I am a veteran from a long line of veterans.
So... I realize I gave you a lot to read. It's okay. I'm patient.
Let me know what you think. I mean, like seriously, with cited sources. Maybe charts. I like charts. And you can't use Fox News or Breitbart as sources. Cos, um, yeah, I didn't use a single liberal-leaning source on purpose. :-)
I look forward to your educated response. :-)
Wait, TL:DR?
In a nutshell, there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. There are about 100,000 fighters for ISIS. If you do the math (it's okay, I'll do it, Asian math nerd and all), that's 0.0001% of the population being bad terrorists.
Conversely, there are 2.2 billion Christians in the world. There are roughly 8,000 active KKK members, 18.2 million people were Nazi/Nazi supporters (35% of Germans during the height of Nazi Germany), 3000 people at the height of the Lord's Resistance Army.
I'll stop there, bc otherwise, it looks really bad for Christians globally.
That math equals 0.008% of the Christian population doing bad things in the name of God.
That is a higher percentage. So why is it okay to blanket label the whole of Islam by their minority, but not Christianity with theirs? Oh, I'm sure you could say that they're not real Christians (but neither is being a judgmental person), but if you ask any American Muslim, those terrorists aren’t good Muslims either.
Jesus said love thy neighbor. Without caveat.
Try really hard next time to remember that.
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He responded by calling me a ‘liberal type’ and said that he could use Google, too. Except he half-ass linked a Time Magazine article about the fallacy of the FBI’s shooter list.
Except, of course, that I hadn’t used that list for the stats
Oh, and he called all my cited sources ‘Fake news’ and ‘fake media’. Um, no.
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Actually, I was born overseas in South Korea to an American dad. I hate to break it to you, but I'm an actual American, too. However, two things:
1) It doesn't matter if I'm American or not. My points still stand. Just because you're a stubborn man doesn't change that, and
2) I didn't use the FBI Mass Shooting Report in my response to you, because I know there were issues with it? Cos I read things.
Also, I use punctuation, but eh, not everyone can be expected to do that.
Dear Joe, this will be my last missive to you, simply because, unlike Paul, you're not actually interested in a conversation. You just want to be right, and given that I, a poor liberal type, am not likely to do anything but give you facts and data that prove otherwise, I am content with letting you have bragging rights to say you sure showed another liberal.
*slow golf clap*
Whew! You're full of win.
Have a wonderful day. :-)
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Yesterday I felt like we were making progress in this country.
Today I feel like I was just lying to myself.
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Not Muh Marvel
I recently saw an editorial on the Youtubes about the plummeting sales of Marvel comics. This individual attributed that decline to the push for diversity within the company. As a black dude in America, I don’t think that was the problem. I think it’s much more serious than that. Dude was upset that all of these legacy characters were getting the boot on top of all this “PC” nonsense. Mockingbird is a bra-burning, SJW, third-wave feminist, The Hulk is some Asian kid named Amadeus, and Thor is a cancer riddled Jane Foster! The FF are gone, Captain America is a Nazi, Captain Marvel is a women and an apparent fascist, and the X-Men are slowly being replaced with Inhumans. Hell, they “killed” off Wolverine! How does one “kill” Wolverine? And then you replace him THREE TIMES! Seriously, Laura, Old Man Logan, and Jimmy Hudson from 1610; All claiming the title of Wolverine. Why even “kill” our Logan off at that point? Or that whole Superior Spider-Man situation. Doc Ock in Pete’s body? Really? Superior was a decent book and it made a ton of sense about how they went about it, then to just write it off after a year? Ridiculous. And THAT’S the problem. Not all of these SJW politics. Not all of this Legacy tarnishing. No, the problem is, at its core, terrible f*cking writing and false sense of entitlement to characters the world has laid claim to, long before these asshats got hold of them. Marvel’s writers and executives are terrible, that’s the issue. They’re ruining the brand with their poor skill set and ridiculous egos.
Comics are art and art is a reflection of the individual creating it. If you’re a writer, your prose reflects your innermost self. Of course politics, onions, and the like are going to find their way into your work. You draw from what you know, obviously. And the illest thing about all of this is the fact that Marvel has always been that company to address social issues. Like, Marvel was an allegory for society. All of their major characters represented a facet of the underlying issues with the country as a whole. Stan Lee’s self-insert, Spider-Man, is essentially a tale of adolescence to adulthood. Skinny nerd, constantly picked on, thrust into a much larger, fantastical world where he is an outsider who has to learn to be better than he was. The X-Men are basically Minorities and their whole being hated for who they are is a direct distillation of the civil rights movements of the 60s. Literally Magneto and Xavier had their overall philosophies directly molded after Malcom X and MLK, respectively. And those books sold so well, X-Men became the number one comic for, like, 20 years. And do you know why? Because the writing was GOOD! The Hulk? Mental illness and abuse. The FF? Choice and consequence. Reed Richards is a malignant narcissist who is a vocal atheist even though he’s met and had a conversation with Marvel’s “God”. Big G, son! Where was the outrage for that? Nowhere because the writing of that character was so well done, people bought into him as a hero. Carol Danvers was essentially raped by her future son to ensure that he would be born. How is that not addressed? Hell, Carol Danvers herself was created specifically because of the 2nd wave feminist protests of the late 60s and 70s. No one has anything to say about her, overall, as a character. Hell, she’s Marvel’s Superman sort of, the biggest of guns! Politics, all over. Captain Marvel has become one of the biggest heroes in the Marvel Pantheon, even getting the first female led, Marvel film! And that’s an issue in itself.
Much to the chagrin of Marvel Comics, the MCU has exposed the world to what can be done when you write good stories for lived in characters. Guardians is a perfect example of what can be done when you write a good script. Guardians II shows what can be done when you actually sit down and think about where these characters need to go, instead of what big ass, laughably shallow, unnecessarily convoluted event you need to push for f*cking sales. That team, those characters, they’re nothing in Marvel. Who cares about Star-Lord? What the f*ck is even a Gamora or Nebula to a casual fan? Who the hell thought a talking anthropomorphic, raccoon and a big ass, half retarded, tree could be so goddamn compelling? James Gunn did. And Marvel Studios trusted him to craft a story that would make these characters relevant. And he did. Twice. Groot, along, is a goddamn pop icon. Who doesn’t know the phrase “I am Groot” now? Before this film, before Gunn created the modern Groot we know today, he was a deep cut in the Marvel universe.The MCU is murdering the comics on scale, accessibility, and lore. Since 2008, in just 9 years, we have seen three phases of films that have taken B-list characters and given them more depth, range, growth, and personality than the comics have in probably the last 20+. Do you honestly think anyone would have cared as much if Riri Williams took over for Stark in the Iron Man book if this sh*t happened in 2000? Hell, 2006? No. Because it’s been done before. Rhodes was iron man for a rather long stint and no one gave a sh*t. But because RDJ has done such a fantastic job creating that character over the last 9 years, far more people are invested now. And it started with Favreau’s script. That treatment was so well done, it took nothing for RDJ to bring Stark to life. The comics, not so much. The very best version of Tony Stark I have ever seen in print was the 1610 version of him. That’s who Stark is. That’s how Stark would operate. That’s what the MCU Stark, and the entirety of the universe as a whole, is based upon. That’s what the MCU understands and the comic cats don’t. Hell, look at Daredevil. His show is the very best of the lot on Netflix and it is, again, because of how well those characters are written. The actors give outstanding performances but the core of that vision begins what is in point, that words in those scripts. Do you actually thin D’Onofrio would have been as compelling as the Kingpin if he had to create the character from the schlock the movie presented? F*ck no! That’s because those writer had no idea what the character was about. They had no theme. They had no understanding of how to bring that character to life outside of getting Ben Affleck to headline a film.
The second, and probably biggest problem with Marvel right now has to be their collective ego. Seriously, the audacity these mother*ckers have right now is ridiculous and it’s directly because of how successful and popular the MCU has become. But that’s a not your wheelhouse, Marvel Comics Executives and Writers. The MCU is a completely different animal, run by completely different people. They even separated those operations further but creating separate Film and television divisions. Sure, it’s all one big pot (when you one of your branches is making a couple billion a year, you tend to drink some of that milkshake, even if you didn’t pay for it) but that doesn’t mean you get to just coast along with your responsibilities. It doesn’t mean you can do whatever to these characters because the Superhero cinema bubble is so prominent right now. Eventually, those characters and this trend are going to go the way of the Dodo, as most films do, but the comics will endure. Unless your ego gets the better of you and just alienate everyone trying, wanting, to support your craft. You don’t have to look further than Dan Slott for this bullsh*t. You ever just skim his Twitter? That motherf*cker has a disdain for the fans. He has a disdain for the Spider-man character! Everything that was built before his got his creatively bankrupt hands on my favorite Superhero is a awash to him. He’s effectively replaced Pete with Doc Ock, not once, but twice! Doctor Octopus is literally running around in a clone body of Peter Parker because Dan Slott was just SO in love with his Superior Spider-Man arc. Which, was just okay at best! Spider-Island was a better arc and that was little more than just fan service and a way to retcon Kaine’s awful characterization. But that scene where MJ says to Pete “I love you” only to immediately disregard that in subsequent volumes was disrespectful. It was a dick move by a dick writer. And he does this sh*t all the time! Like, all of the time! No more Pete and Mj. Made a deal with the devil (literally bullsh*t writing) to annul that marriage. Oh, but here’s some Renew Your Vows. This is the book you want. And it is! Fans are eating that sh*t up so why not fix that relationship in the 616 universe? Because Dan Slott’s ego won’t allow it. So move him off the book then. Get some fresh blood in there to see what they can do with the character. Nope. Because Dan Slott has declared himself the master and writer of the Spider-Man mythos, forever. Even if he sh*t’s on the lore. Even if he writes the characters completely against type. Even if he makes Doctor f*cking Octopus more of a Spider-Man than Spider-Man himself! Because he’s Dan f*cking Slott. I adore Spider-Man. He’s my favorite superhero. As a kid, I was Pete. I was that comic nerd who was too good at math and never really fit in with his peers. I wanted to play Fina Fantasy instead of Madden. Pete made it okay to be different. It’s ridiculous to say, but when Pete and MJ began dating, I knew that there was someone out there that would love me for me. It was reassuring to know that, even a goober like me or Pete could find someone just as goobery to spend out life with. And I eventually did find my MJ. To see that kind of love just f*cking erased because a guy liked it more when Pete was “a swinging bachelor” (which he never really was) is absolutely asinine to me. It erases that depth and stunts the character. All that growth, all those experiences, everything that made Mj and Peter so compelling, gone at the drop of a pen that saw the literal Marvel devil, erase everything they had, over f*cking Aunt May. How much of a hack do you have to be to write such a terrible conflict, give such a weak motivation, and resolve it with one of the most cliché resolutions imaginable?
Marvel Comics is facing the same problem the DCEU is facing; They have forgotten who they’re characters are and who they’re writing for. Secret Empire is going to be sh*t because no one is buying Captain America as a Nazi. Civil War II was sh*t because no one was buying the whole McGuffin of Ulysses or that Captain Marvel was that much of a goddamn Fascist. One More Day was a terrible alteration to the status quo and antagonizing the multitude of fans who have cast their support behind Renew Your Vows is the most ego-maniacal and shortsighted situation I have ever seen a business commit. The disrespect being hurled at Jane Foster’s Thor is less about Thor being a woman and more about the characterization of her sudden godhood. I rather liked Schism, for the most part, because that was the natural progression, I think, of those characters. Kitty siding with Cyclops, though? Not even realistic. Neither was Laura going that way. But Scott becoming Magneto? That was an inevitability. That was where that character had to go. Giving him the Phoenix force (along with those other forgettable ass characters minus Magik because i adore Magik) though? Stupid.
There’s nothing wrong with SJW Marvel. There is everything wrong with the cats writing SJW Marvel.
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