#I may have just infodumped my psyche on you guys

[depizan]

Nothing in fiction makes for nice, tidy, clear cut categories. Concepts bleed into one another and there's no escaping the subjectivity of it all.

As my recent post about [fantasy series that will not be named] said, I don't like special protagonists. I especially don't like Chosen Ones, but a character can be more low-key special and I'm still just whyyyyyy. But there are characters who are special, or special adjacent, or special depending on how you define it, that I do like. And I don't know where the boundary between arguably special character and ugh special character even falls.

Even if we set aside weird anomaly characters like James Bond (How is he not special, being special is absolutely his thing. Is it that he's special in a way I can't quite take seriously? Despite also kind of working as a wish fulfillment character? I mean, who doesn't want to be amazeballs at everything? Besides me, when I'm not watching a James Bond movie.), I have trouble putting that line into any kind of words.

Take MacGyver (original flavor. I have not and will not watch the remake. WTF) for instance. Is he special? You could argue either way. His ability to pull sciencey solutions out of thin air is pretty extreme. But he doesn't feel special, at least not to me. Maybe that's because he's really pretty ordinary in every other way - just kind of an average dude who happens to be absurdly good at applying things he learned in his college science classes. Maybe it's because it feels like anybody could be MacGyver. Take a few science classes and practice thinking outside the box and there you go. You, too, can pull wacky science solutions out of thin air.

What about other woman warrior with a magic sword, Kerowyn? She could be argued to be special. She's got a little bit of the pervasive Valdemar books magic nonsense, and there is that whole magic sword thing. But Need's magic barely comes up, and mostly she's just an ordinary woman who becomes a mercenary. She's very good at what she does, but it all feels very in-universe attainable rather than special. Still, if someone said she was special, I'd have a hard time arguing why she isn't, other than ~~vibes~~.

Hell, there are characters where one version of them is special and another version isn't. I like classic Doctor Who, despite its many flaws and a special effects budget that seems to have been what loose change the crew could find in their collective sofas. The Doctor of that era of Doctor Who doesn't feel special. He's just a dude who can't resist sticking his nose in other people's problems. He just happens to be a dude who comes from a place where they have time/space ships. But I've just never warmed to nu!Who because now the Doctor is special. And, like, I can't even argue with why they decided to make him special. I just don't like it. I don't care how much it makes sense that all his meddling would eventually get him a reputation. I want my random dude with a police box back.

(And, again, I can see how people could argue that the Doctor has always been special. And I'm not sure what my counter argument is, besides ~~vibes~~.)

There's just something that grounds the characters I like and keeps them from feeling special (to me). And I don't know what that thing is, because everything I try to plug in there either should push some of the not-special characters into special or says something too extreme about the special characters. It's not about whether they have powers or whether they're good at their job or whether they're fallible or any of that. It's...

It's how the world and the narrative interact with them.

Yeah, people notice MacGyver's skills and make use of them, but for the most part, he is just a guy. He can't show up and introduce himself and have the bad guy go "oh no."

A few of the enemies on classic Doctor Who have beef with the Doctor specifically (mostly Davros and the Daleks) but that's never helpful. And the vast majority of the universe is just like "who the fuck is this weirdo and why did he offer me a jelly baby or pull out his recorder in the middle of a tense situation (or whatever)".

Yeah, there's an in-universe song about Kerowyn's first act of heroism, but it doesn't really have any effect on her life. She's just a dude. A dude who happens to be a skilled mercenary, but just a dude, none-the-less.

It even explains why Luke Skywalker inhabits this weird place between just a dude and special. Obi-Wan and Yoda keep saying he's special, but the rebels think he's just a dude. And the narrative can't make up its mind.

But as soon as a character is chosen by a god/dess or so famous that their very name can be used to make enemies go away or people act on them being the Chosen One,* or everyone knows that they're the best of the best, or... it still kind of ends up sounding like I'm saying that special characters are Mary Sues, but that's not really what I mean. They can be if it all goes too far or the universe starts turning into a pretzel around them, but there's this whole space long before that where characters are just better than normal people in some kind of way that I find off-putting and other people are on like catnip.

It's the difference between vanilla SWTOR and the expansions. At least for the non-Force Using classes. (It's more complicated with the Force Using classes.) The player character is really good. Characters may know who they are. They do some impressive things. But they are still, largely, just a person. (And you can play into that more or less. The player has a bit of agency over how much their character is special and how much they're just doing their best.)

But in the expansions, more specifically the KOFEETS, suddenly the player character is important, and important for reasons than have nothing to do with who they are as a person. (FFXIV and Guild Wars 2, as the game goes on, do this also. And I hate it. I just want to be a dude. I don't want to be the Chosen One. Please, just let me be a dude!)

Everyone is just like "you're special" and things happen that prove you're special and nothing will let you stop being special and dear god it's exactly why I hate all the specialness. Please stop making me relive being supposedly "gifted" in school. This is not my idea of a good time.

Okay, that's drifted into complaining specifically about Chosen Ones. That's specialness plus dehumanization and that horrible crushing sense of needing to kill yourself (literally or figuratively) in order to meet the bare standard of good person. Except it's not a sense, the narrative literally agrees with it. God I hate Chosen One stories.

Hem. Anyway, the circle of special doesn't just contain that. Doctor Who isn't a chosen one, but the reboot kind of made him a demigod. There's this unattainablely beyond the ordinary aspect to special characters. They're not just good, they're the best. They're more than. And, on the one hand, I get it. It's a power fantasy. But on the other hand, I really don't. I like my characters to feel attainablely good.

And that's about half me not being inspired by the unattainable. And half me hearing Spider-Man say "with great power comes great responsibility" and going "cool, don't want great power then."

*I had to specify acting on it, because Anakin is the Chosen One, but no one really acts on that. It's kind of just angst icing on what actually happens. You could delete the references to his being the Chosen One and nothing would change. I'm not saying he's exactly just a dude, but he falls more into the same category as Luke where some aspects of the narrative and some people treat him as special and others don't.

[nightcolorz]

Random Gotham Rogues Headcanons

(In honor of all the wonderful people who wanted more after my last post, yes I see y’all)

*Jonathan has a huge sweet tooth, the poor bastard didn’t try sugar until he was like 12 and eats candy like it’s his last meal.

*He’ll forget he needs food to live for way too long and eat a gallon of ice cream or some shit that’ll give any sensible man heart palpitations and just be like “😐👍”.

*Selina tells the newer rogues she was raised by cats to freak them out, Jervis still believes her. (Tbf, Selina does walk around with a cat tail on hissing at people and purring on their laps, I don’t blame him).

*Edward has a tiktok account that he made to fule his own ego, he’s a fragile little shit, literally all of his hate comments have video responses (as you can imagine, Edward gets A LOT of hate comments).

*One time a teenager called Edward “submissive and breedable” and he was too baffled to make a clap back.

*The Rogues have a surprising amount of stans. Ivy’s fan base consists mostly of lowly simps, Joker gets stopped on the street daily by greasy redditors and zealous scene kids.

*No one likes Joker, he thinks it’s because he’s “Batman’s favorite” (it’s not).

*For a while Joker has been insistent that he fucked Bruce Wayne once at one of his many parties, no one believes him except for Harvey (begrudgingly).

*He says it’s “Perfectly in character for Bruce” as much as he may hate it.

*Selina denies everything.

*Oswald and Jonathan share solidarity as “the weird bird people”. At first Oswald was a little put off that Jonathan only held knowledge of crows but soon got over that when he realized that now he had an excuse to infodump on someone who might actually be interested.

*Every time Jonathan visits Oswald’s aviary to pick up Nightmare and Craw Oswald jumps at the opportunity to talk about his numerous birds in excess, Jonathan’s a surprisingly good listener.

*Despite Edward and Joker’s long term rivalry Edward has remained relatively civil when faced with Joker’s constant egging on. That is until one iconic day in Arkham Asylum when Edward beat the absolute, ever loving shit out of Joker in the cafeteria. To this day no one knows what exactly got him to snap, not even Joker.

*Harley keeps a scrapbook about all her misadventures + friendships as a rogue, she has a habit of taking pictures of the others at the most inappropriate times (during a heist, while being beaten to a crisp by Batman, ex).

*One time Harley asked Batman to pose for a picture to put in her scrapbook, he obliged to everyone’s surprise.

*Edward is wholly insistent that he doesn’t belong in Arkham, and is convinced he’s completely sane. He’s weirdly obsessed with the fact that Oswald is sane “as well” and will make unprompted snide remarks like: “Blackgate sounds terrific, unfortunately I’ve been misplaced among MORONS, it’s a shame that the system is too incompetent to properly judge my un-categorizable psyche.”

*Oswald usually responds with a simple “🙂👍” or “ok” to avoid conflict, disagreeing with Edward could be catastrophic.

*Art therapy is an occupational hazard for all the Arkham staff. (Seriously, who thought giving super villains an outlet to express themselves was a good idea).

*Edward can’t draw so he spends his time harshly criticizing the other rogues art, that’s caused more than a few fights. The one time Edward’s ever actually done art in art therapy was when he drew a green triangle and explained in complex detail how he colored it to perfection.

*Jonathan is no longer allowed to share his art with the group before having it reviewed by a staff member after emotionally scarring a few patients. He’s one of the few rogues who presents his art every time, just to see the disturbed looks on the others faces when he explains whatever twisted art piece he came up with this time.

*Jervis is probably the most dedicated artist of the bunch, he‘s not allowed to make himself any hats (for obvious reasons) but he’s still a very skilled seamstress and has a very interesting art style (Jervis tries not to draw anything explicitly linked to Alice in Wonderland in fear of getting repercussions, as rogues often do when they engage with their ‘personas’).

*Harvey isn’t very technically skilled in drawing, but Harv usually spices their art up enough to make it interesting. Their drawings are always two themed, as expected. One time Edward criticized a painting of theirs for being “too unrealistic” and Harv had to manually restrain himself from kicking Edward in the teeth.

*Victor can’t draw either, but he writes pretty good poetry. His writing is excessively melodramatic and flowery, and his themes even more so. Half of the presentation period is spent listening to Victor muse about the meaning of life or some shit, his poems are VERY long.

*Waylon and Ivy are the obligatory pretentious painters, both have a fondness for flowers (for very separate reasons). The two will often compare their paintings and wax poetics about the beauty of nature or some bullshit before never speaking again. That’s one of the positives of Art therapy, it brings rogues together who would otherwise not grant each other a passing glance.

*Group therapy is just as (if not more) atrocious than Art therapy.

*The only one who ever talks is Joker (and sometimes Harley, but way less).

*Joker is the embodiment of an irl troll, he does a much better job at getting responses from the other rogues in therapy than the therapists ever could (usually hostile responses but still).

*Occasionally a new and bright eyed therapist will try and coax childhood memories out of the rogues, it never ends well (usually with the rogue or the therapist in hysterics).

*The majority of the Arkham staff are either terribly unqualified or terrible period.

*Music Meister lived with Edward for a short while after escaping Arkham together but he was promptly kicked out because he wouldn’t stop singing.

*Selina and Ivy had a huge argument once because Selina’s cats nibbled on Ivy’s plants.

Okay this post is all ready super long so I’m gonna end it here, as I said last time I can always make more if you guys like these (I’m not running out of headcanons anytime soon!)

[paradoxicalloop]

Ok, so I promise I’m only going to make one post about this and then I’ll shut up. But...I have a fascination/crush/obsession/idolization/squish (idk I know it’s at least one of those things. Feelings are confusing.) on the Tiktok Willy Wonka guy aka Duke Depp. Anyway I’m going to infodump all my facts/opinions about him because I can.

Strap Yourselves in Cause This is a Lot

Ok so, just to preface; I know he’s “The Thirst Trap Willy Wonka” but tbh I don’t really think that’s the thing that attracts me to him. It’s just he has a very interesting life and personality that my psychology-loving self is very interested in. Anyway, before we get into this I’ll give some backstory for anyone who doesn’t know who I’m talking about.

Duke, known online as Duke Depp/Duke Moose, is a 19 year old kid who does a pretty decent Johnny Depp Willy Wonka impression. He started a tiktok account as Willy Wonka on May 3rd of this year with a really low quality blond wig and sunglasses, keeping his identity secret. His content consisted mainly of him reciting lines from the movie and talking to his viewers as Willy Wonka. His account grew rapidly and once it hit 200k followers, which happened in a mere few weeks, he upgraded his costume, complete with a black wig, top hat, and custom made jacket very similar to the one Johnny Depp wore in the movie. When he hit 1M followers within another few weeks, he did the much requested face reveal and started a second account as himself, going by the name Duke Depp. As of right now willywonkatiktok has nearly 14M followers and both willywonkatiktok and dukedepp are verified. Willy Wonka has evolved into a sex symbol of sorts for the people of Tiktok and is the crush of many Gen Z’s, this is primarily the result of a shirtless “thirst trap” to the song “I Wanna Love You” by Akon posted on July 26th. While he has uploaded many more thirst traps since that one, that video currently has 103M views and is his most viewed tiktok. His account now consists of tiktok trends, dances, and interactions with other famous tiktokers.

(That really looked like a Wikipedia article or something lol) Now let’s get to what many people may not know about WillyWonkaTiktok/Duke Depp’s life. Particularly, the things I find interesting.

He is an international wedding photographer. He graduated high school 2 years early (despite not being particularly great at school) in order to become a professional international photographer at age 16! Um... how?? Anyway his photography is actually really good and you can check it out @/dukemoose on Instagram.

His name is not Duke Depp or Duke Moose. According to Willywonkatiktok’s Famous Birthdays profile (which Duke has seen and confirms the information on it is true), his real name is actually Tyson Duke Charlesworth. This fact isn’t particularly shocking but I thought it was interesting.

Willywonkatiktok, while it is Duke’s claim to fam, is actually not Duke’s first experience as an online content creator. On top of being a fairly well known photographer, he also has a podcast with his sister Kaestle (pronounced Kest-lee) (on tiktok @/kaestlecastle) that has been ongoing for over a year; “The Mode Podcast.” On this weekly podcast they talk about everything from childhood memories to tv shows to current events.

That was an overview of the parts of Duke’s life that interest me, now here are some “facts” about his personality

He is very self centered (sorry it’s true). But honestly who can blame him? He put a wig on and said a few words and suddenly he has a million followers less than 2 months. Did a few tiktok trends and danced with his shirt off and now has 14M followers in 6 months and is hanging out with Iggy Azalea. (tbh the psychology nerd part of me is so intrigued with how this is rapid fame is affecting his psyche) But the point still stands, he is a bit cocky.

He hates starbursts. The second time he tried one he literally threw up because of how bad it was.

He doesn’t like the color red.

He has a crush on Emma Chamberlain (go watch his YouTube video on that if you want more info. It’s actually pretty funny)

Which leads me to my next fact: he has a sense of humor. He is very self aware of how weird his current job is as the “hot” Willy Wonka and he has fun with it. Making fun of himself and his situation via comments and videos on his dukedepp account. He also has frequent comment “arguments” with his alter ego.

He goes through random phases where he gets obsessed with certain people and/or things (definitely can’t relate to that one pfft idk what you’re talking about).

He loves chihuahuas.

He loves reality tv.

And finally, he is, objectively...very attractive.

That’s about it for my Willy Wonka/Duke infodump. If you made it this far I’m very impressed. Have a cookie. 🍪

[themyskira]

The Life of Captain Marvel - issue #4, part 1

Last time, as Sadie the Kleaning Lady closed in on the town, Carol and Marie pulled out all stops to avoid progressing the plot, throwing tantrums, chucking mysterious alien devices out the window without a second thought and melodramatically swooning into a lake.

But despite their best efforts, the plot has arrived in the form of a naked blue cyborg, forcing Marie to reveal her true identity as a Kree soldier.

This issue, we get hit with Carol’s new origin story, the sheer stupidity of which is so immense that I’m going to split this recap in two to cover it.

The issue opens with a flashback to Marie/Mari-Ell’s childhood, narrated by Marie. The POV shift is jarring and out-of-place (until this point, the entire story has been told from Carol’s perspective), but this is what happens when you spend three issues of a five-issue mini doing nothing to drive the story forward: the next twenty-odd pages are going to be all infodump.

We see a young Marie — I’m just going to keep calling her Marie, to cut down on confusion — in combat training, systematically taking down a good dozen bigger and stronger Kree teens. Marie tells us that this was her childhood, raised to be a soldier in the Kree Empire’s endless wars, taught to survive but not to live.

As she grows older, she seeks harder and harder training, pushing her body and her abilities to the limit and, fuck me, you just went ahead and stole Carol’s origin story, didn’t you?

Marie: Come on, General F’Zon! Gimme another shot at that Pain-Trainer! General: No, Mari-Ell. Marie: But I’m supposed to be seeking painful learnings, remember? General: Learn that a Level 11 Pain-Trainer will rip your suit to ribbons. Marie: Ugh! It’s my turn, I’m going! General: Mari-Ell! Wait!

Ambitious? Impatient? Forever pushing herself to go higher, further, faster, to punch holes in the sky? Look past the hacky dialogue, and this is Carol to a tee. Or it was Carol, before you went and made her an alien who didn’t need to push herself to her physical and mental limits to succeed, because she was already superior and destined for greatness.

Wait, no, I take it back, turns out Marie is just ~*special*~ too, because on the next page she tells us that she never lost a single battle and enjoyed an unbroken path of success and promotion until she was appointed the youngest captain in history of Intelligence Empress Pam’a’s Elite Guard.

Yes, Carol’s mother is Captain Mari-Ell. Captain Mari-Ell. Kill me now.

Pam’a sends Marie on a covert mission to Earth, and then we cut back to the present day, where Carol has been once again reduced to a blithering incompetent.

Carol: M-ma? Who— who are you? Marie: I’ll explain, I promise. But right now, we need to move. That thing’s a Kree Kleaner. And it’s here for me. Carol: But if you’re… you’re… Marie: A Kree soldier. Carol: …then… then I’m… Marie: You are Car-Ell, daughter of Mari-Ell, Captain First of the Supreme Protectorate, Champion of the Kree Empire, Daughter of Hala by bloodright and by starlight… Carol: Ma, stop it. This is crazy. You’re you. You… you just made me pancakes…

Oh, bullshit.

This is insulting, and I don’t just mean “Car-Ell” (CAR-ELL, FOR SHIT’S SAKE).

Carol is a soldier. She knows how to compartmentalise and she doesn’t crack easily under pressure. Her mother has just revealed herself to be an alien, and that is some personally earth-shattering stuff, but right now there’s a deadly Kree cyborg threatening innocent lives — including those of her family — so the identity crisis is gonna have to wait. She is going to get in the game, stop the bad guy, and then she’s going to have her meltdown.

Ah, but it gets better.

Marie: It’s coming. Get out of the way, Carol. Let me handle this. Carol: Ma, you can’t!

While Carol and Marie argue over who gets to punch the bad guy, Pine-o-Klean is able to get in a barrage of laser-fire. Both women dive out of the way; Carol full-on faceplants, while Marie lands in a neat crouch, saying, “Trust me, Pumpkin. I can.”

Carol is a tactician. She has commanded troops and she’s led superhero teams. She has led alien armies into war. There’s no way Carol wastes time arguing over this. Because while her heart may be crying out at her to protect her mother, the soldier in her would recognise like — would recognise a fellow officer and somebody with superior knowledge of their foe.

And, you know what, let’s assume Carol’s not at her best. She’s shaken by this revelation, and the instincts to protect her mother and to distrust this stranger with her mother’s face are both shouting at her to keep Marie out of the fight. Here’s what happens: After the initial moment of shock and ‘who are you?’, Carol forces herself to focus her mind on their attacker. She turns to Marie: ‘You said it was here for you. What is it and how do I stop it?’ Marie starts to answer, and before she reaches the ‘but’, Carol has impulsively thrown herself into the fight. She’s not prepared for it; she gets in some hits, but the villain gets the upper hand before Marie appears between them and staves it off.

This establishes the villain as a formidable threat, demonstrates Marie’s fighting prowess and sets the stage for the inevitable team-up in issue #5, all without having to throw Carol under the bus. She fails, yes, but not through abject incompetence: her actions are understandable and in character.

Anyway, yeah, none of those things happen. Instead, Carol freaks out for two pages, falls on her face, then watches helplessly while Marie fights Dishwasher single-handedly.

(lol bum)

No really though, whose idea was it to make the assassin a nudist?

Of course, it was a man. Forget I asked.

So then Marie… temporarily explodes the Janitor? Or something?

idk, it’s unclear and nobody particularly seems to care what’s happened to the homicidal naked cyborg or how quickly it might regroup or what it wants or how many ways it can kill them.

“Um, wut?”

JJ Danvers asking the question on all of our minds.

Carol: Ma? I mean… Captain? Marie: Thanks, Captain. JJ: Captain?!

JJ: Hold up, Beans. The Kree thing is contagious? You gave it to Ma? Carol: I think… she gave it to me. Right, Ma? Marie: What humans see as Kree ‘powers’ are just our biological adaptations to a life of combat. JJ: “Our”?! Marie: They’re triggered in battle, usually around adolescence. Sadly, most of us have known war by then.

So, um. Can somebody who knows more about the Kree tell me if this is even vaguely the way that their powers work? Because I am not hugely up on the Kree, but my understanding is that the usual Kree powerset is simply superhuman strength, stamina, agility and durability, and that those Kree characters with additional abilities like flight and photon blasts are the result of genetic/mutagenic manipulation, advanced technology and/or mixed parentage (e.g. Teddy is part-Skrull, Phyla-Vell and Genis-Vell are part-Eternal).

Marie is basically telling us that she — and, later, Carol — developed the powers of flight, energy absorption and photon blasts purely as a biological reaction to being hit often and hard enough.

But wait, there’s more.

Carol: Wait— So if I didn’t ‘get’ my powers when the Psyche-Magnetron [sic] exploded… Marie: You activated them. You triggered an ancient Kree defence mechanism. Not borrowed. Not a gift. Not an accident. Carol: My powers. Marie: They’re not anyone’s but yours. They never have been. Carol: I don’t… believe it. Marie: But you feel it. Light and power and speed and strength, because it’s who you are. Carol: Who we are.

YOU FUCKING WHAT.

“Not borrowed. Not a gift. Not an accident. … They’re not anyone’s but yours. They never have been.” YES AND NOBODY HAS EVER SAID OTHERWISE, YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKNOGGIN.

So, okay. Let’s pick this apart.

The assumption that the writer and editors behind this comic appear to be working from is that Carol’s pre-existing superhero origin is flawed in that it denies her power and agency within her own story.

There is an argument to be made that this is the case.

Looking strictly at the 1969 Captain Marvel #18, in which Carol first gains her powers, we see a story that casts her as a pawn in a battle between two men, a woman halfway into the refrigerator. She has been kidnapped by the villainous Yonn-Rogg, when her love interest Mar-Vell arrives to save her. Yon-Rogg shoots at Mar-Vell, but hits Carol instead, inciting Mar-Vell into a rage.

“Carol! Carol Danvers! She was struck by your wild-eyed blast... perhaps killed!”

Yon-Rogg has already been responsible for the death of one of Mar-Vell’s loves, and now he may have caused another! Mar-Vell is on the brink of killing his foe when he reels back in horror at his own actions — and suddenly realises the Psyche-Magnitron is about to explode. He grabs Carol and runs, shielding her from the blast with his body.

“WAIT! That humming... growing ever louder...! The Magnitron... it throbs with heat... light... as if to explode! And the girl... still draws a faint breath!”

In fact, it was only much later, in 1977’s Ms Marvel #2, that this was retconned as the moment in which Carol became superpowered. As written, her experience in Captain Marvel #18 truly was nothing more than a helpless damsel being rescued by the noble hero.

Ms Marvel doesn’t give Carol much more agency in her origin story: while the exploding Psyche-Magnitron is said to have given her incredible abilities, the strain on her mind was such that it split into two personas, ordinary human Carol Danvers and Kree warrior Ms Marvel. The two are initially unaware that they even share the same body, let alone that they’re actually the same person. Since each 'blacks out’ when the other assumes control of the body, for a while Carol genuinely believes she’s going crazy. It’s not until Ms Marvel #13 that the two personalities are integrated and Carol is able to fully own her superhero identity.

“Oh no... this can’t be happening. I’m in my apartment, in my bed... and I don’t know how I GOT here!”

Superhero origins are rarely static, though, and in the four decades since then Carol’s story has undergone various additions, transformations and retcons. Her background as an Air Force pilot and civilian contractor has been fleshed out to establish her as a hero and legit badass long before she became super, and some of the dodgier aspects of her backstory have either been re-interrogated (Yon-Rogg and the Psyche-Magnitron, in DeConnick’s run) or else studiously ignored (there’s a reason nobody remembers the split personality nonsense).

Nevertheless, the broad strokes of Carol’s origin — a woman caught in the middle of a confrontation between two superpowered men, an exploding alien device that imbues her with the male hero’s powers, and her subsequent adoption of the male hero’s symbol, costume and name — remain more or less unchanged. And with a movie poised to introduce the character to a new generation of readers, now is a good time for a modernised reinterpretation of the story that addresses some of the dated or sexist elements.

So if we accept that Carol’s current origin story is flawed, the next question we have to ask is, what’s the problem that needs addressing?

And this is where The Life of Captain Marvel comes undone.

Because the problem the creators identify is this: Carol gets her powers as a result of a battle between two men. She gets powers patterned after those of a male hero. She carries on the legacy of a man, and she bears the name, symbol and costume of a man. And for this reason, they conclude, Carol’s origin is Sexist™.

Based on this simplistic assumption, the creators set about displacing the male Mar-Vell in favour of a woman. They create an alien mother as the source of Carol’s powers. They give the mother a name, costume and symbol reflective of those Carol uses. And then they smugly congratulate themselves for being Feminist™, despite having only served to erode Carol’s agency further.

The real problem with Carol’s origin story, I would argue, is that she’s an entirely passive character within it. A helpless captive, she does little but yell at Yon-Rogg that he’s mad and that Captain Marvel will stop him, before being hit by a laser blast for the sole reason of making Mar-Vell sad. She collapses, semi-conscious, and is carried to safety by Mar-Vell, unaware that the radiation from the Psyche-Magnitron is transforming her.

It’s crappy by any standard, but it’s particularly egregious in the context of the hero Carol is today — one whose story has come to be defined by unerring determination, an urge to constantly push further and reach higher, and a refusal to ever back down.

Making Marie the source of Carol’s powers doesn’t repair this lack of agency — it makes it worse. Carol not only remains a passive figure in the events that (for all intents and purposes) bestowed her powers, she becomes an increasingly passive figure in her own life.

Her ambition and determination to fly, to punch holes in the sky and glimpse the other side of space? It’s no longer a personal calling that she doggedly pursues in the face of every rejection and roadblock. It’s her Kree blood calling her home, a ~destiny~ that’s written in her DNA. Her fierce grit and persistence as she pushes her body to its very limit? No longer particularly relevant; as a half-Kree, she has always been physiologically superior to humans in every way. Her successes in the Air Force and in NASA are no longer hard-won; they’re just second nature.

By contrast, consider Kelly Sue DeConnick’s early run on Captain Marvel, which revisits Carol’s origin story through a time-travel adventure. It introduces past and present female mentors in the form of Helen Cobb and Tracy Burke -- women who have supported and inspired Carol throughout her life in a way that the virtually absent Marie/Mari-Ell never does in this story. It subtly retcons the effects of the Psyche-Magnitron to underline Carol’s agency — it’s not merely a freak accident that turns her into a Kree hybrid with Mar-Vell’s powers, it’s the overloading machine responding to the force of Carol’s willpower and making her wish manifest.

“I wished... for more time, that I’d done things differently, but mostly I wished that I’d been powerful enough to stop it. That I’d been strong enough to save myself, to save my friend. The device magnified brainwaves and manifested them as tangible weaponry. It was a wishing machine, almost... but one designed for war. In its last act, it gave me what I wanted. It made me powerful.”

It enables Carol to confront her own self-doubts and affirms that, powered or not, no matter the personal stakes, she is a hero who will not quit.

Carol [narration]: I don’t go in because I’m choosing to change anything. I go because he’s hurt and I can help. I go because I’m an Avenger and that’s what we do. Carol: Mar-Vell! Mar-Vell, can you hear me? Past Carol: [reaching for Yon-Rogg’s gun with a bloodied hand and pointing it at him] Y-you’re mad. C-Captain Marvel... battles to save both his world... and my own!

And you could absolutely go further on this! Give us a retelling of Carol’s origin in which she’s not Mar-Vell’s damsel, but his equal ally. Go a step beyond the original Captain Marvel comics — in which Carol rightly suspects that ‘Walter Lawson’ (Mar-Vell’s secret alter ego) is being duplicitous and goes to great efforts to catch him in his lies — and have her actually uncover Mar-Vell’s true identity. Have them confront Yon-Rogg together, and have Mar-Vell be the one who gets shot. Have Carol — injured, outgunned and hopelessly outmatched — defy Yon-Rogg even in the face of certain defeat, and let this be the moment when the overloading Psyche-Magnitron answers her unbending will with the power to enforce it.

And yes, by all means, give Carol’s mother a more substantive role in her backstory, give her more female role models and colleagues and friends, and continue to build the diversity of the Marvel Universe! All of these things are important! But boosting women’s representation is fucking meaningless if none of those women are given any agency, and that’s what is happening in this comic.

That’s it for this time. Stay tuned for part two, when Marie reveals the story of how she came to Boston, why it’s totally not Joe’s fault that he was an abuser, and why we should overlook the hulking mountains of evidence that Marie is a terrible parent and embrace her as Carol’s One True Hero.