#also in general like there are a lot of people that handwave ‘evil’ as a category

[frankensteincest]

my two cents on the whole ‘evil isn’t interesting to explore in fiction’ take is that (1) yeah it’s a non-issue and this stance seems to me like an extension of the mandarin-sharing, horror is for love, make everything nice and simplistic trend and (2) in the cases when it is an issue. well, I think morality is an interesting concept actually, and good and evil are a part of it. evil has just occasionally been written about in deeply uninteresting ways. blame the interpretations, not the concept.

[knife-eared-jan]

Ok, as much as I have been hyping and playing 12 hours a day since it got out (still in Act 1 though, bc I'm a slowass player and completionist), I feel like I have to say something that is getting hard to ignore at this point... and I wanna preface this by saying that I am loving a lot of aspects of the game and I adore the writing when it comes to the companions, who I am obsessed with.

And maybe this will get better yet, as I generally heard the writing picks up once the story progresses beyond picking up all companions..

But I'm starting to get quite upset at the way the writing just does NOT care about the established lore and the politics of Thedas like at all, when to me - and many others - that richness, nuance and depth of the world is what makes the games so special.

(Spoilers below)

I looked past the way the elves in Arlathan just seemed to know that their gods are evil and Solas is "kind of a dick" but was right about that. When, you know, that made him basically the Satan of their pantheon up to now.. It was after all the tutorial stage of the game and I understand that you wanna ease newcomers into the lore. I could also handwave it in-universe with Morrigan being there - she could have filled the Veiljumpers in on the discoveries of the Inquisition or even what the Well told her.

It felt a bit weird that our contacts in every other faction just accepted this huge revelation without a blink, but again it was the early stages and I also get that having a discussion about it 6 times with different faction leaders would have been incredibly tedious. So I ignored that. And yeah, at least the First Warden found it hard to swallow.

The fact that they brushed aside the gods finding elven subjects - many of whom after all still worship them - with one sentence from Solas was disappointing though. Instead they chose to ally them with the Venatori and the Antaam who are the pure evil factions with no nuance or motive to side with them besides a comic book level of hunger for power. They didn't even throw in a sentence about the gods maybe speaking to the Venatori through the Archdemons to get them on their side or how it's very ironic that the Venatori, who want to make Tevinter great again, stoop to working with the pantheon of the people they oppress because they see them as lesser and other. No political exploration of the massive lore implications at all.

It really hit me when I picked up Davrin and he commented how Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain blighting the world would really endear us (elves) to the rest of Thedas - this was the first time anyone actually mentioned the political impact of the elven gods being real, freed, evil and blighted on modern day elves at all, when this should be HUGE. It should be ugly. It should be complex. It should be explored in as many examples as bloodmagic and the oppression of mages was in DA2. It should be a central point of Act 1. (This btw made me love Davrin so much in that moment because this was the first time in the game for me when I actually felt like talking to a Dragon Age elf and even just that one line felt like home.)

And now I just did Taash's first companion quest and it seems Qunari lore is also being ignored (except for the gender aspect of it, which I look forward to). Taash's mum was a scholar and had a baby and the only problem about that was that it could breathe fire and was special but otherwise all would have been dandy? Like she would have just been allowed to keep Taash long enough to find that out about her baby if she was living under the Qun? That directly contradicts everything we know about how the Qunari's culture around reproduction and childcare works.

Sorry to be negative and talking myself into a rage - I know it's not something people want to see rn. But like, I realise you have to brush over some lore intricacies for brevity and to make it digestible for new players. But this is a world initially inspired by Wheel of Time and ASOIAF, both of which are interesting because of the depth of ficitional cultures, lore and politics, and hence it's also what gives Dragon Age its appeal. And now they take us to the most politcally interesting areas on the world map and just get rid of all of political depth?

That's really disappointing. Imagine if Winds of Winter dropped all political themes just because there's several previous books and it's been some a lot of years.

Also, I managed to play DA2 before I ever played Origins and they could introduce me to a vast established background of lore just fine back then.

Sorry. Rant over. But I had to get that out of my system.

[jesncin]

Spirit World, Ride the Cyclone and Death. A weird comparative analysis

Gonna combine my musical nerd and cape comics fixation together for a rambling meta thought. I've been reflecting on how taboo the topic of death is in media after getting into Ride The Cyclone (highly recommend watching the slime tutorial and Waiting in the Wings' documentary on it) but also contrasting that musical with how Spirit World handled similar topics.

Both stories cover characters whose lives were cut short from a tragic circumstance, but while Cyclone directly talks frankly about how each character uniquely grieves over their lost life (and eventually accepts death)- Spirit World uses death as largely an aesthetic to a generic fantasy superhero adventure.

[spoilers for Ride the Cyclone and Spirit World]

Spirit World is about non-binary, half dead half living Envoy Xanthe Zhou, as they go into the Spirit World with John Constantine to rescue Cassandra Cain Batgirl. They eventually go toe to toe with the spirit of a bitter dead poet.

Ride the Cyclone is about 6 choir teenagers who die in a roller coaster accident in their small town. In the afterlife, they are given the chance to vote which one of them they believe should be resurrected.

For Spirit World, do we even know how Xanthe feels about being "half dead"? What does that even mean? They died as (what looks like) a 3 year old, and have clearly aged 15 more years since then. So they can age? Do they need to eat or drink (they're seen with a drink in a Pride comic)? Xanthe keeps mentioning they're half dead and half living, but the comic doesn't seem to want to discuss what that means. How would Xanthe feel that they were essentially given a job as an Envoy the minute they died as a very young child? Was this even a choice?

We've already covered the numerous plot holes in Xanthe Zhou's poorly thought out backstory so I won't go over that again. But honestly apart from the thematically loose "the dead shouldn't be forgotten" moral, a lot of how death is presented in Spirit World feels so superficial. When Xanthe is formally introduced as this cool character with a giant sword hanging around a gravesite, fighting all these hopping vampire creatures... this scene would play out the same if you swapped the setting with a forest and zombies as bad guys.

The Spirit World is less an afterlife for the spirits to move onto and more an MMORPG setting for our superheroes to travel across and fight generic evil beings and encounter eviler, bigger, boss battles at the end. Then there's the poet clout villain whose problems are just easily solved by Xanthe promising to remember her. I've already covered what a lost opportunity thematically this character was in my last Xanthe essay, but this time I want to contrast her with Ride the Cyclone's Jane Doe. I also want to compare Xanthe with Noel Gruber afterwards.

Ride the Cyclone's musical numbers follow each character performing a song reflecting their wishes, and musings on life (this sounds depressing but the musical handles all this with comedy and wit), hoping to prove themselves as worthy of a second chance at life. Of the characters, Jane Doe is the mysterious odd one out. The accident decapitated her, leaving her to enter the after life with no memories and the people of the living unable to identify her.

You might see where I'm going with this. So in Spirit World, Wan Yujing was this famous poet mourned by an entire empire. She only goes monster mode when a handwave-y "time erodes all" happens in the Spirit World and she is eventually forgotten- so she becomes desperate to demand to be reincarnated by the Jade Court. Because her clout ran out. Again, I already made the critique in my previous essay that this villain would better link to our protagonist if she was a queer poet whose poetry was being purposefully straight washed as an act of queer historical erasure. But I want to bring up how truly unsympathetic this villain is. She gets Shakespeare levels of clout but still demands more because she isn't getting reincarnated fast enough. Xanthe promises that as an immortal "half dead half living" person that they will remember Wan Yujing, so she too can be immortal in some way.

I think about all the Jane Doe-s in the Spirit World who don't get to be famous poets that have Empires remembering who they were. People who died anonymously without a past. In Cyclone, the main character chooses Jane Doe as the person who should be brought back to life. Our cast of teens come to terms with the fact that while it's tragic that their lives ended shortly, they conclude "to say that if one dies young, they die needlessly... that is to discount the years we had. We had a life, she didn't. That's my vote." Since Jane Doe has no memory of who she is, it's only fair that she is given that second chance.

I get that Spirit World is choosing these "larger than life" characters as villains, but it's at the expense of their own supposed themes. Of all the people to die and face off our hero as the villain, a character who's essentially an influencer but somehow has an entire empire forget about her anyway feels thematically hollow.

Modern Superhero comics are suffering from a specific problem right now; they're not really about anything. Characters don't feel like people with interior lives informed by the context of who they are. Class, race and bigotry are only touched upon as lightly as possible. Queer characters are now Pride ads with no personhood or flaws. They punch gentrified crime and fight for no one in particular. Even recent adapted media such as My Adventures with Superman and Caped Crusader follow this. Superman fights white-washed xenophobia, while Batman fights gentrified, white-washed classicism. It's why comics like Superman Smashes the Klan, Catwoman Lonely City and Alan Scott Green Lantern stand out so much. It's been a while since these characters talked about anything that matters. Don't get me wrong, slop that's about nothing exists in every industry. But when these characters and worlds historically used to have more bite- it's especially obvious.

If I could be playfully conspiracy theory-like for a second; I believe Xanthe Zhou was pitched so that DC Comics can buff out their Pride Anthology or AAPI anthology with a new younger character. The company will give this character one limited series, but that's it. Xanthe will appear in the larger DC universe whenever big magic plots happen, but that's it. Maybe they'll get a YA graphic novel. I would love to be proven wrong, but the problems with Xanthe are baked in the dough.

Because they don't feel like a person, Xanthe feels more like an industry planted Pride ad. They're designed to be the most palatable and marketable image of Asian androgyny. They literally have no flaws to grow out of, and their backstory makes no sense. They weren't built to be a sustainable solo character.

So I want to contrast Xanthe Zhou against Noel Gruber from Ride the Cyclone. Because they're both queer characters whose lives were cut short at a young age.

In a dramatic lament, Noel Gruber expresses how if he had a chance to live, he'd want to live the horrible cinematic messy life of a French sex worker woman in post-war France. He struggled as the only gay boy in a small town and never got to kiss a boy before he died. It's a look into a queer life that could've been lived, one with all the messy texture and self destruction Noel couldn't have but desires. We get to see how death and queerness intersect into rich, unflattering, gender-messy themes. "I want to be that fucked up girl." Noel sings.

But what's Xanthe's deal? They died as a 3 year old, got brought back, avoided their family at all costs for 15 years, and then had a transphobic confrontation with their family when they're invited to dinner way later. If Xanthe grew up in a transphobic household, how did they ever figure out they were non-binary when they were 3? Could they even verbalize it? Or did they instead figure out their queerness after they died? But how is that possible when they already held a level of familiar resentment towards their family's transphobia as if they've had several fights about it? It's hard to picture a 3 year old having multiple heated debates about gender with their parents for this level of resentment to make any sense.

Details aside, how does Xanthe's queerness intersect with themes of death and grief? Well, it just doesn't. This scene ends with Xanthe's sister telling them that she bothered remembering them even though their parents moved on from their death (which makes no sense since the parents wanted to have dinner with a random 18 year old they correctly assumed was their long dead "daughter" but whatever). Honestly, the only reason queerness exists in this family drama is so that Xanthe has a tense relationship with their family. The story would be exactly the same if Xanthe was a troublemaker that brought shame to their family. Who they are isn't specific to whatever grief exists in the comic.

When people give the critique that modern Superhero comics aren't about anything anymore, we usually think of these comics as "lacking political bite and commentary". We don't often think of something like Death to be political. And even though it is in many ways, it's also a social taboo to talk about. Death is an uncomfortable thing to confront, even in the safety of fiction. It's what made Ride the Cyclone such a difficult stage musical to market.

So how does a modern mainstream comic like Spirit World fit into that? It just sits there in this non-committal way. Yes, this is a story about a trans teenager who died, but only in a cool Superhero Origin Way, not in any way that would make readers uncomfortable. Bury Your Gays is a stereotype after all, so we can't talk about how queer people feel about death. We don't get to know how Xanthe feels about death as a non-binary Asian American. Especially if it's messy. It's the reason why Wan Yujing's character can never commentate on themes of historical queer erasure. God forbid superhero comics be about something.

I think about how, in the original Hellblazer run from the 80s, John Constantine had an elderly gay friend who was diagnosed with AIDS but was killed by a homophobic hate group. The comic openly talks about the sheer amount of gay people dying of the epidemic, a looming threat that informs John's queer life. It's such a culture shock, to contrast these early comics with how John Constantine is written in Spirit World. A character stripped of his own queer history and is at the mercy of incessant slutty bi jokes. Where is the desire to talk about how death informs a queer person's life? The mourning of a lost generation to the AIDS crisis? Something John lived through?

How about how any of this intersects with being an Asian American queer person? Queer people of color are often erased or purposefully excluded from queer history and communities. As a Queer Asian American, what does it mean to have identities that are often perceived to be in conflict with each other? Would your queer Asian ancestors even be remembered? Cultural differences with how you'd mourn your communities? But answering any of these questions means an uncomfortable conversation for Spirit World. For Xanthe. It threatens to be about something.

Which makes it all the more silly that, of the two stories, a musical about teenagers dying from a rollercoaster malfunction is more willing to have that uncomfortable conversation. You should ride the Cyclone.

[qiu-yan]

I think if MDZS was truly about moral good, then Cultivation Society would have been fundamentally changed and everyone who tried to change it wouldn’t be dead. The fact that XXC and SL wanted to change cultivation sects from being dynastic to more merit based and they got such horrible fates is tragic. JGY wanted to use his power to help the more common folk, but he was struck down and any good he’s done is going to be tainted. WWX and LWJ choose to walk away rather than do anything in the novel, so I’m not sure if their actions can be considered a net positive. There’s only so much good they can do as wandering cultivators, there needs to be some kind of structure to help the community but most sects are unwilling to put in a lot of effort if it doesn’t benefit them specifically. There was no social change in MDZS.

thank you for the message! and sorry it took me five million years to get to it...

from a utilitarian point of view, i think you're completely correct: the one individual the novel holds up as the most righteous out of everyone has a far greater negative than positive impact on the world at large; society and the plight of the common folk are in a worse state at the end of the novel than they are at the beginning. postcanon, no matter how much individual nighthunting wei wuxian and lan wangji do, the life of your average commoner is probably going to get more dangerous. you are correct that there was in fact no social change in MDZS. shit did not change on a major scale.

two comments about this: first, the moral framework employed by MDZS is decidedly non-utilitarian. second, as you said, MDZS is not About Moral Good.

first, the moral framework employed by MDZS is not utilitarian at all. wei wuxian and lan wangji are not "righteous" in the way that someone who pulls the lever in the trolley problem can be called "righteous" via utilitarian reasoning; rather, wei wuxian and lan wangji are "righteous" in the way that someone who walks away from omelas is righteous. from a utilitarian perspective, walking away from omelas doesn't accomplish shit because the child is still suffering and one person's absence is not going to change that. from a non-utilitarian perspective, though, walking away from omelas isn't about bringing about a certain result but rather is about living in accordance to your own ideals and code of honor. it's not about helping as many people as possible or about bringing about the best possible outcome, but rather about living your own life without any regrets.

this isn't a philosophy i (a utilitarian) really buy into, but many people do find it persuasive. and though there are still some logical holes induced by protagonist-centered-morality, i do think that MDZS is overall thematically cohesive if analyzed through this non-utilitarian lens. unfortunately, one side-effect of this lens (as well as the general non-utilitarian sorts of philosophies this lens is based in) is that the story ends up somewhat handwaving actual negative consequences.

second, MDZS is not Purely About Moral Good. it has an internally consistent moral framework and it has a lot to say about what it thinks is righteousness, but it isn't a "ringing endorsement of the Correct Course Of Action" book in the same way many other works of fiction are. MDZS is about a certain kind of righteousness, but it's also a cynical condemnation of society, a remark upon the role and unreliability of rumors and hearsay, a subversion of typical xianxia/wuxia genre tropes, an interpersonal tragedy of love and duty and sacrifice and hubris, and a thorough rejection of the just world fallacy. it's also a romance.

i say that MDZS is also a social critique and a rejection of the just world fallacy because, in my view, we aren't meant to read characters like jin guangyao as "unambiguously evil characters who got what they deserved." i do think we're meant to see the way in which society turns on jin guangyao, the way in which that parallels wei wuxian's unfair downfall, and the way in which the genuine good jin guangyao did for the world is now at risk, as a tragedy. as a rather depressing insight upon the morally bankrupt nature of society. MXTX wrote it that way on purpose. you're not meant to read jin guangyao's downfall and go "he got what he deserved;" rather, you're meant to look at the black-and-white, hypocritical, and classist way in which society turns upon jin guangyao as a criticism of that society - one that builds off of the social criticism baked into wei wuxian's character arc.

there is no structural change in MDZS because MDZS is a criticism of society, not a story about how society got better. MDZS posits that this polite society is classist and morally bankrupt, and then does not fix said society. MDZS says "this polite society was hypocritical and self-serving then, and it still is now." in that sense, then, the ending is deliberately rather tragic.

in that sense, then, wei wuxian stepping away from the cultivation world does also feel like him giving up on society. which, from an interpersonal perspective, is fair: he already set himself on fire and literally died trying to do the right thing, so i don't think we can really begrudge him for not wanting to risk it a second time. maybe this time someone else can try to fix things (and die in the process). also, given his and lan wangji's absolute lack of any political ability, it's probably also for the best that they not try to involve themselves in politics to better the world, because realistically they'd probably just make a bunch of enemies and solve zero of the problems.

MDZS tries to give us some hope for the future of its fictional society: both the novel and the fandom (including me myself) posit that said hope for the future lies in the juniors, by whom wei wuxian's generation tried to better than their parents did for them. jin ling's generation certainly seems kinder than wei wuxian's generation. i think we're meant to conclude that things aren't completely hopeless because jin ling's generation, kinder and nobler than the previous one, will try to fix things.

but personally, i'm not sure how i feel about placing the hopes of social reform on the specific personalities of citizens and leaders, rather than the structures those people exist in. instead, i'm reminded me of what i wrote a few months ago about the granularity of morality in MDZS being the entire individual and not the action, by which i mean that MDZS seems to assess and conclude entire characters as "good people" or "bad people" or "complicated and morally grey people," rather than analyze the morality of specific actions. and i think it's because MDZS treats the unit measurements of morality as people rather than actions or policies, that MDZS is ultimately able to posit that the future will be better because a specific group of individuals from the next generation have kinder personalities - even though there was no structural reform. as if the state of a society is determined purely by the personalities of a select group of future leaders within it, rather than the laws and institutions that bind it and the material conditions its populations live in. to put it in other words, this is peak "we replaced the evil king with a Wise And Just king (and made no other changes), so we've saved the day!!!" thinking.

.

i feel like i rambled a lot in this response, so i apologize for its relative lack of cohesion. i hope i haven't misinterpreted your points and that i've continued the conversation in a relevant manner.

[crusherthedoctor]

👛 your favorite rare pair?

♟️a character you feel is overrated?

🐇 longest fandom you’ve been in?

👛 - your favourite rare pair?

EggmanXMyPen

Because who else can I trust with him. :'<

♟️ - a character you feel is overrated?

The usual faces:

The IDW cast, cause they get hyped up as the best characters of all time despite them being idiots, cunts, or idiot cunts. Some of them could have been promising had things turned out differently, but others were doomed to be shite from the start.

Scourge, cause he's the lamest take imaginable on an already boring premise. (What if Sonic... WaS eViL???)

Nine and Thorn, cause these two are held up as defining examples of Tails and Amy, which makes me a sad-but-not-surprised panda.

Mephiles, cause outside of Dan Green's voice, he's another poorly written villain of many who people treat as though he's somehow better than the rest when he's not.

The End, cause it's as nothing and artificially hyped as the rest of the plot it's part of.

The Freedom Fighters, cause folk believe so vehemently that they deserve special privileges, and are somehow more integral to Sonic than the actual game-born characters. They go on about their perceived legacy, when you could say the same thing about AoStH characters, Underground characters, etc, yet they never get this level of deification.

Silver, cause despite disapproving of his off portrayals in the comics, I've never cared for his in-character portrayal either. And his design still doesn't work in execution.

Sage, cause she's as compelling as watching grass grow, and bastardizes Eggman's character all the while. (I don't care what their intention was, they really should have predicted how the fandom would react to it, and they've continued pandering to the Eggdad crowd on occasion even after the fact. Until Eggdad gets more thoroughly debunked in-universe, a lot of the rationalizations surrounding it currently sound like copium to me... like a lot of handwaves for Sonic "Best Story Since Black Knight" Frontiers in general.)

More controversially, while I do respect Shadow, even if he's never been one of my top favourites, I kind of resent how the attention given to him always comes at other characters' expense. I also don't appreciate when, in the process of fans hyping up and down how deep/complex/etc he is, they usually dismiss Sonic, Eggman, and most of the others while doing so, because they're perceived to be simpler, ergo they consider them lesser. Being the Eggfan that I am, you can imagine why I'd take offense to this.

🐇 - longest fandom you've been in?

I guess Crash and Spyro and Gex would qualify, since I grew up with a PS1. As Sonic-pilled as I would eventually become, my knowledge and firsthand experience with the latter was non-existent until 2003.

[nxthingtxwn]

//Bit of dash commentary I suppose, but I saw someone post an ask about it, so my thoughts on that twist in Ruby Gillman.

To preface this, this is not coming from the perspective of a self-important Ruby/Chelsea shipper who feels personally slighted by the film not making them canon.

I just think the twist itself was poorly executed, and there are parts of it that just flat out don't make sense. It's painfully obvious, to me at least, that Chelsea and Nerissa being the same person was a rewrite, and that they were intended to be two separate characters.

I'm not dumb enough to think Chelsea was never going to be the villain. But I feel like her character would have been a lot more interesting if she really WAS Nerissa's daughter, and it would have made a lot more sense. Plus it's very obvious the "mermaids don't age" line was a shaky attempt to handwave why she looks way younger than she should.

I also don't really like how the ending carries implications of "being prejudiced is right actually, because some people are just inherently evil", which I really don't think was intentional, but more just the writers not thinking things through.

So, yeah, that's why I portray Chelsea as being Nerissa's daughter, motivated by getting revenge for her mother's death. It makes her a much more interesting character than just "Sike, I was evil all along, and am actually your mother's age or older, now I'm gonna do generic villain things because evils"

[softpsycho]

I bit the bullet and just watched a silent walkthrough of psycho krieg and the fantastic fustercluck and It feels like they actually decided to go back and read what the fuck DID actually is and write krieg to be more nuanced but they also hired a guy whose job is exclusively to make really stunted whedonesque jokes to ease off the tension at incredibly inappropriate times. Also I’m pretty sure gearbox has completely fucking forgot who tannis is as a character other than an autism caricature to the point of even contradicted the backstory established for her in borderlands 1. I really like how we got to see Maya as a character in this one, I feel like I’m anything else her characterization is really flat in comparison to the other vault hunters. In general I feel like everyone involved in writing this DLC didn’t play or doesn’t care about borderlands 1, spoilers ahead; I think it was a really weird decision to make psychos violent evil screaming cannibals because hyperion pumped them full of violent evil screaming cannibal juice instead of pandora just being a former penal colony where corps dropped their worst convicts and decided to fuck off when the money dried up leaving them to fend for themselves, I’m pretty sure the masks and buzz axes are supposed to be mining equipment used by them in prison labor. I also think Tannis is comically underqualified as a neurologist cause the whole “vaulthalla” thing is honestly just a really ok metaphor for dealing with PTSD which uh like, I’m pretty sure is a prerequisite for Pandoran citizenship at this point though handwaving it as “medicine is Tannis’ weird new hobby and she’s only really qualified to do geochemistry” makes a lot of sense. Also seeing all the really dogshit side quests that boil down to “press the X button 5 times�� or “walk to this location and walk back” make me really glad I ended up not buying this shit. On the bright side I like the psychedelic imagery and I think this + the better parts of Wonderlands I hope it’s an aesthetic they go forward with (but obviously like, improving from the dogshit they’ve been serving up since BL3’s release)

Also I find krieg even more relatable now because he also had the moment of having his delusions justified in one small event that caused his mental health to get severely worse and getting extremely attached to people that put up with and understand his quirks that make other people uncomfortable. (Also lol I realized he has the exact same backstory as an old borderlands oc of mine, the one that I’ve had as an icon for a while now, though idk I should probably change it at some point.)

[hellostarfleet]

hello i finished new vegas

wall of text thoughts. under read more bc sooooo many.

was kind of wishing by the end i'd known how much the game rewards rly picking and choosing what to make your stats... i didn't really appreciate this until i went from like 45 in energy weapons like this feels fine to 75 and was like I AM A PLASMA GOD!!!! so noted for next run (i did end with 100 in science and energy weapons I GOTTA be nosy and hack every terminal i see. or my courier will die.)

rly thought this about hour 5 but i wasn't expecting the legion to be so cartoonishly evil actually i knew they were bad but like. lol. CMON GUYS PUT SOMETHING BACK ON THE SHELF FOR OTHER BAD GUY FACTIONS... instead of the vipers/jackals/powder gangers/fiends just kind of being. free karma estate. (in retrospect i don't rly understand the point of karma as a system because after like level 5 i never even dipped to neutral karma. my courier was an angel. an angel who stole every cap, stimpak, box of ammo, and piece of scrap metal she could find from everyone and anyone in the greater mojave area. and killed. SO MANY PEOPLE.)

was kind of expecting the hoover dam battle to be like... bigger???? like just having more guys around. more chaotic. actually have a reason to go down into the hoover dam sublevels that they. built and modeled but i had no plot reason to go into and did wander into the first time i was there (mostly i was like "how much does this look like the real hoover dam" and then realized i don't really remember enough about the particulars of the interior to judge that kdjhdkdhdkj).

also maybe im just too much of a bioware kid but i also think it was kinda weird to not have all the little guys you recruited there but shrug. (also i wanted to see the superfortress. WHERE IS IT) anyway i did independent ending bc OBVIOUSLY the ncr has problems and OBVIOUSLY my courier could do better. i mean she has already almost single handedly solved every personnel and supply chain issue the NCR was having. she will definitely TOTALLYYYY set up some sort of council of local factions as soon as she's done having some portion of the securitrons clean up all the fucking rubble laying around in freeside bc it's bothering me. WHY HASN'T ANYONE EVER SO MUCH AS SWEPT MCCARRAN AIRPORT TERMINAL. i bet everyone would be slightly less miserable if you could walk down the street without the threat of tripping on rubble and impaling yourself on rebar. sorry what. you want local governance. citizen. pick up that can. then we'll talk.

anyway idk handwaving not storming through the legate's camp to the main part of the fort to get caesar with the securitrons was kind of weird. i wanna kill. which means i also apparently i missed my chance in life to kill vulpes. SAD. but i got to order yes man to throw a guy off the hoover dam. AND HE DID. so that ruled. (the duality of courier: last week she saved your president from assassination. this week she went hmm. i see. and tossed your top general off a dam.) also im sure yes man installing some updates to become more assertive will definitely not cause any issues. it's fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!!

ANYWAY despite all that i had a good time as evidenced by finishing it in the time i did oops. i had a good time. i actually didn't realize this game had a companion system i just thought it had a collection of pathetic men. which it does. but also i love having companions (although did get kind of tripped up on only being allowed to have one humanoid companion and one ed-e/rex. it was always ed-e btw bc rex was like continually under my feet im sorry boy.) i also travelled with boone for like 20 hours so it took me a while to realize like any other companion talks a lot more since im pretty sure stringing more than 3-5 words together causes him physical pain. i love that there's a scene for if you do give veronica a dress!!! i am still thinking about how hard arcade dissed me the first time i asked if he wanted to travel with my courier!!!!! i also asked if it could wait when i got his quest and he was like no actually im gonna keep talking and like. lmao. STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT THE ENCLAVE DOES I FEEL LIKE THE ANSWER IS JUST "GO PLAY FALLOUT 3"??? kind of like how visiting jacobstown was just "go play fallout 1 & or 2"

misc briefer thoughts ig:

WHY IS THERE A SNOWGLOBE IN SARAH'S VAULT 21 ROOM. HASN'T SHE LOST ENOUGH TO MR. HOUSE. i did not sell this snowglobe. please clap bc $$$.

loved exploring the vaults in that i hated exploring the vaults man. i think vault 11 wins for most fucked up and vault 34 wins for most times i thought "i fucking hate this" while i was there (but that's a personal problem bc feral ghouls. ueueuueueueueueue cries in a corner while arcade and ed-e shoot everything. nice moral dilemma at the end though. i saved the groundwater but oof. oughf.)

why do the options with dealing with the great khans suck so much lmaooo.... shoving ncr soldiers up against the wall for being like HA we showed theM CHASED THEM RIGHT OUT!! like girl no i told them to leave bc UR COMMANDING OFFICER SAID SHE'D USE THEM FOR CANON FODDER IF THEY ALLIED WITH THE NCR

also honestly same for all the dialogue about neslon bc sorry WHOOOOO kicked the legion out. bc it wasn't you guys it was boone and i doing a sidequest and then just going fuck it kill them all actually -

ok but speaking of NCR guys sorry to the misfits bc i did not have enough explosives to teach u how to explosives and then u all deserted and were hung. skill issue but sorry but skill issue -

because i had done all the vaults i. did finish most of the brotherhood quests ig and honestly was probably going to leave them alone except then i triggered veronica's quest and they wiped out that followers station so. hot take maybe you guys shouldn't have had like three terminals of kill everyone dead. also maybe don't preface yay we can leave again with thoughts on going at it with the ncr again imMEDIATELY what is wrong with you guys.

i feel like some other run im gonna go all in on punching and sneaking that sounds fun. or lead pipe run. i hope primm appreciated me liberating their big hotel in town and didn't think too hard about the piles of guys beat to death with a lead pipe.

the powder gangers and guys in vault 19 rly didn't do anything to me but if it will get me better epilogue slides. well i did get this gauss rifle too late in the game to really use it (ENERGY WEAPON SNIPER RIFLE. IDEAL WEAPON!!!)

i can't believe i have to pay $5 to experience mormons. actually is it even specifically mormon bible thumping or am i just assuming bc it's utah. anyway im gonna do it. but. lmao. (i was also surprised how much man on fire stuff was mentioned in the game proper since it is apparently dlc.)

is the ideal dlc order release order btw

[qqueenofhades]

Looking at what Biden is doing, and this is purely observation, I think he really can’t fathom the idea that the GOP are pure evil. He seems to think that all the evil is just rogue elements like Trump, and that the GOP, his “old pals” are just acting evil for politics sake and not because they’re genuinely evil and were never good at all.‬

I feel like it’s partly because he’s been part of the Senate clique (I tend to see a lot of American Society in terms of cliques instead of proper communities at times) for so long that he’s gained a nasty blind spot to a lot of his colleague’s moral failings, because “that’s just how they’ve always been”. To him they’re “respectable comrades” who he just learns to disagree with, and who he’s probably shared a good laugh or two in the past…but this means he can’t accept that this image of them might be false and that they’re just evil backstabbing schemers who’ve only “respected” him only insofar as to gain the long term upper hand on him.

In turn there is also another factor; he’s too devoted to the law and sees it as at the least an inherently just thing and thus will ultimately do what needs to be done to deal with rogue elements. He can’t entirely accept that the GOP have hollowed out the institutions of law that he’s been part of his whole life and are just puppeteering their corpses around in front of him to undermine democracy.

Yes, there are plenty of legal reasons why he can’t do some things, but the above mentality probably doesn’t exactly help.

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I said in this post. Biden obviously ran on the idea of uniting the country and overcoming polarization after Trump and etc etc., but while there might be general and broad-strokes agreement among the American public on various issues, the formal political process has produced increasingly more radicalized and insane Republicans in the House and Senate, since the vocally crazy ones are now the ones who get funding and Trump endorsements and the support of the institutional party. It's confounding that Biden, who spent eight years in the White House as Obama's vice president and watched what the Republicans did to him, really thought that he could just handwave that away and start fresh, but I feel like he really did believe that the Republicans were just obstructing Obama for being the smart black guy, and that he could rely on his old relationships and friendships to get them to be more reasonable. He was also on record predicting that once Trump was gone, the GOP would swiftly de-radicalize itself and return to something more like what it used to be. At which, to say the least, he was very wrong. Instead, they have SPRINTED in the opposite direction even faster. There is no putting the fascism genie back in the bottle, once you've gotten your insane supporters willing to accept nothing less, and Biden obviously didn't want to believe it because, well, none of us really did. But that's still what happened.

In recent months, Biden has clearly moved more in the direction of getting the fact that there is simply no negotiating with the "MAGA Republicans," but he still keeps hammering on about "bipartisanship" and his belief that the American people "want bipartisan solutions." He is essentially a good man and well-meaning old-school Democratic politician who has spent his entire career working within this system and believing in it, and now that the system is just completely collapsing at unprecedented speed, he doesn't know what to do and basically seems paralyzed. There is absolutely a lot more that he could do in specific regard to Roe, and yet there's still no sign that he's prepared to embrace an aggressive strategy that takes full account of the situation and how dirty Republicans have played to get here. The HHS secretary, Xavier Becerra, said something to the effect of, "well, we have to respect what the Supreme Court says and that limits what we can do." And I'm just over here like... the Democratic electorate is furious, fired up, wants tangible action, and may very well turn out en masse, in unprecedented fashion for a midterm year, if you show that you are actually going to FIGHT instead of just meekly sitting back and hoping that voters return enough of a Democratic Congress to break the filibuster for abortion/voting rights. You... don't HAVE to just "accept what SCOTUS says," especially when YOU ARE THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE, have plenty of options within your purview, and have additionally promised to, y'know, USE SOME OF THEM.

As I said in the other post, Biden seems afraid of appearing too "pro-abortion," which is a reflection of his experience in the '80s and '90s Democratic party where they generally supported abortion rights but didn't really run on or advertise that (and there were still a significant minority of anti-choice Democrats). But 67% of women and 60% of the whole country opposed the overturning of Roe, and the first post-Roe poll out of the bellwether state of Ohio has Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan leaping into a seven-point lead over Trump stooge J.D. Vance. Yes, we all know that the polls can be garbage, but there have been similar recent results for Fetterman vs. Oz in Pennsylvania, Warnock vs. Walker in Georgia, and the generic Congressional ballot for Democrats and Republicans. People are MAD, they want ACTION, and they also want Biden to show some leadership on this, rather than being pushed into action by House and Senate Democrats. This is not something that he needs to tiptoe around or treat with kid gloves, and that is likewise something that I don't think he fully understands. SCOTUS expansion and reform is likewise no longer a fringe issue; increasing numbers of people don't trust it, want term limits or more justices, or some other way to control or rein in its power. Biden likewise is reluctant to radically tamper with existing institutions, and he doubtless knows that FDR got shot down HARD in 1937 over his own attempt to expand the Court. But given the other parallels to 1937 going on right now, with the whole rising fascism thing, we are going to need some drastic action.

Anyway, yes. Biden seems to be somewhat in denial about the magnitude of how bad the GOP has gotten, is reluctant to call the current SCOTUS illegitimate or act to correct its evil influence, and still seems to be hoping that people just come to vote for Democrats in November and open up a broader suite of possible options for him. Which, like.... this may be the most important election in our lifetimes apart from 2020, and people NEED to show up for it. But Biden isn't going to be able to coast on well-meant boilerplate tweets about women's rights all the way to Election Day, and hopefully somebody gets that message through to him ASAP.

[judasisgayriot]

I’ve probably fallen for the front Nathan puts up but maybe I’ve fallen for the consequences of his actions while masking? Idk. Maybe it’d help if someone elaborated (aka pls feel free to go off about Nathan but I still may end up disagreeing depending on the results)

Ohhh my god I didn’t mean to write so much but I have so uhh fair warning I have Feelings on the subject:

I have a lot of complicated feelings about Nathan the same way I have a lot of complicated feelings about Heroes, lol. Don't get me wrong, though I may seem like a grumpy fucker, the show holds a v special place in my heart and has for 16 years, it does mean a lot to me but at the same time there are whole chunks of it that I find just bad/stupid/infuriating, and that also colours my perspective on characters too -

I actually think villain!Nathan could have been done well/interestingly, for example, and the building blocks were there - Nathan is someone who is incredibly self-loathing about his power in particular and believes it makes him some kind of freak, and makes comments to similar effect in s1 about how he thinks they should all be locked up etc, so I can see how he could slide into that villain lets-lock-everyone-up thing if done well, but the way it's done in s3 is a mess and comes out of nowhere and makes no fucking sense lol, like he’s misguidedly going along with his dad’s idea of giving people powers, then peter knocks over his Vats of Stuff and for no clear narrative reason Nathan decides to do a 180 and like dob everyone in to the President lol, like it could have been done well as a “tragic self-hating villain who you kind of understand but his path of destruction is still bad” thing, not a “I guess he’s just an Evil-Now Kind of Metaphorical Racist” lol.

so I'm like ehhh *handwave* whatever, I don't even think of it as, like, in character, as opposed to the General Jerkery he displays in say, s1, which I do think is representative of him, or at least the front he puts up -

ALSO, it's not that I think 'Nathan is constantly masking/pretending to be someone he's not (which is true) so therefore he did nothing wrong' - he still hurt people and did morally questionable things lol, that doesn't absolve him. I just think it's easy to see why he is the way he is and it adds a lot to his character. Nathan has layers! Nathan is like an onion! Oh no I'm writing an essay! Lol.

At the same time I'd like to emphasise that despite being a Proud Nathan Apologist, I'm not like "Nathan has never done anything wrong ever in his life!" - he can be a jerk and a shitty person, he's done plenty of Bad Things and fucks up near-constantly, and I actually love him more for it - I love him bc while I find him deeply sad and sympathetic, he's a very complicated, morally grey character (well, I'd argue morally *confused*, lol) with so much compacted self-loathing that he takes it out on other people too, and that's Bad, and yet he's still so, so tragic to me (he's my poor little meow meow OK, I get to woobify him, SOMEONE has to - half the fandom are Sylar apologists which is their god-given Blorbo Right which I will defend, but I don't rly care for him so I'm just like *eyeroll* well *I* don't give a fuck that he's Sad or forgive him that easily lol. So I do 100% see the other side of the coin lmao.)

Anyway all that said (oh my god that was a long preamble sorry), it's easy to see how people miss it if they're not that interested in Nathan as a character tbh bc I think you need the context of like, s2/early s3 Nathan to see the full picture, but basically all of his arc in s1 is about how Nathan is wearing a mask all the time of being this kind of Jerkass Alpha Male I'm a Totally Normal Man that he's been expected to be his whole life

(see the way Angela blatantly manipulates and controls his whole life and simultaneously treats him like he's about 5 years old and a stubborn child to be given orders ("that's my boy") and told off, while also being vaguely creepy and clingy in a "you're the man of the house now" kinda way, see "everything we are is what people expect us to be, if you take that away nothing means anything" and his admission that without Peter he doesn't even really have a sense of self, cf. his COMPLETE spiral into rock bottom in s2 without him, see later in s3 Arthur's "I made you" and Nathan's admission that everything he's ever done in life has been because of his dad - becoming a lawyer, becoming a politician (which I genuinely think Nathan doesn't even LIKE or want to do lol. I'm serious, it’s presented as this key facet of his character but I don't think Nathan is even that Ambitious deep down or particularly, like, wants to be President or whatever - it's all what he keeps being TOLD he should want, which he goes along with), like even who he was set up to marry, apparently. His life is being like, puppeteered from his fuckin birth by his terrifyingly morally bankrupt parents who experimented on him and "wanted to be better than God". Jaysus. Ahem anyway this parenthetical got LONG-)

Anyway his arc is about how actually, that isn't the person he actually is at all. He feels like he has to be this Persona of Alpha Ambitious Arrogant Very Normal Heterosexual High-Flying (loool) Successful Manly Man but actually, the main choice he makes, which changes everything, is that even though this has all been conditioned into him from day 1, he does what he's told like a good little attack dog, he *chooses* Peter/love (and aren't they the same thing? Awww) over all of that, precisely when no-one expects him to. Of course, Claire is no small factor in this (see: how his parents LET HIM THINK HIS CHILD WAS DEAD FOR 14 YEARS, how he does clearly want to see her but then gets too overwhelmed to go through with it and conceal-don't-feel nearly cries in the back of the car on his way back (even tho he rightfully looks bad in Claire's perception at that moment), how Angela literally says that she knows that deep down under his gruff exterior "you're a sap" and if he sees her "sad weepy eyes", "you're gone, you're finished". Like Yeah, precisely lol). It's another tangent but she really is the one who makes him realise there IS a way to break free from everything that's been suddenly heaped on him re: The Plan in s1 (shout out to my babygirl Claire I love you so much Claire mwah).

Anyway there's that, but then you start to see just hoooow Mentally Ill Nathan blatantly, actually is (plus, very clearly ND/autistic to me in a lot of ways, which the masking is a serious part of too). In S2 obviously he's in just a complete black hole of depression, is hallucinating his Burned Self as this kind of conceptualisation of all the things he hates about himself, and literally self-harms because of it (punching the mirror), and then in early s3, when he's literally died and been brought back to life, has a full-on mental breakdown and is just literally so fragile and vulnerable and it makes me so sad - never mind the weird religious mania and delusions, he's terrified bc he's seeing visions of a man he hates and fears (which yeah is just his dad fucking with him deliberately, but like - yeah that’s WORSE) - no one really seems to like, care if he's OK at all, he pleads with Future Peter to tell him what "the right thing to do" is because he literally does not know (see "morally confused" as I said earlier, he straight up doesn't have much of an innate conception of what the "right thing" even is) and gets basically no help, like this man is NOT OK and to top it all off he has a complete mental breakdown LIVE ON TELEVISION and gets handpicked to become a Senator literally because someone witnesses that and decides that he looks like he'd be easy to manipulate and control (like, He Is Not In An OK Place! Let The Man Rest! Get Him Some Therapy, from a Person who Knows About Powers Preferably so He Doesn't Have To Mask Further! I'm So Angry Oh My God!) and like. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway wrapping back around to the original question I guess (again I… don't know how this got this long. Clearly I Feel Things About This lol) I feel like a lot of people just take that surface-level Nathan, the one who's just a kinda callous jerk sometimes and doesn't really have much to redeem him, at face value and. hate him. and don't like Look Underneath! At the Layers! He's So Tragic and textually there was really no way for him to like, Live and Be OK. Like the only road for him was death and he didn't (despite all the jokes about how many times Nathan dies lol) get a Chance to get past all of that and feel, like, Relatively OK, Ever. Oh god you can fit so much repression inside this man *slaps Nathan's head* and then he kept being repressed despite tentative attempts to like Come Out of The Metaphorical Power Closet (sidenote Nathan is ostensibly meant to be like textually straight but he has literally such a Closeted Gay Man storyline that it's almost textbook 1-to-1 allegory. That's A Long Meta For Another Time though) and then he died :( and maybe he did a few war crimes too but that whole thing was stupid, man, idc

This is like fucking ungodly long now lmao and you DON'T have to read all of this but like. Anyway if you still just don't rly like Nathan or care about him as a character, 's all fine and I'm not gonna convince you otherwise bc everyone has Faves and Unfaves and Whatever, Blehs. I clearly just have a lot of fkn investment in Nathan's Layers, lmao.

[nocek]

Don't spare us the long rant! We want to hear your thoughts!

Oh you are going to regret this ;P

So here goes my loooooooong angry rant about Taskmaster and also the Black Widow movie in general.

Let's start with my point of comparison. Captain America the Winter Soldier was a good movie. It's still in my top 3 Marvel movies as I'm sure is for many people. And statistically speaking everybody likes Bucky. He is like the most beloved side character right after Loki. I guess.

Anyway. My point is that Taskmaster and Winter Soldier have bit for bit the exact same building blocks: hypercompetent antagonist that is a serious threat to our hero who just can't win with in one on one combat. But then plot twist: our antagonist was just a victim and puppet without free will in hands of actual villain who is bland bureaucrat.

So why did Winter Soldier worked really really well and Taskmaster was just ehh.. ok?

Well the short answer is that catws was a much tighter movie that had clearer goal (and also that goal/theme was singular: good things get corrupted with time and sometimes you get to start over) compared to black widow which had to jump through too many hoops and still somehow managed it but it wasn't as graceful as it would be if they (as in executives) resigned from one or two hoops and flips and explosions.

And I'm omitting a BIG disadvantage of making a prequel movie about a character that they killed off in shitty way. Though that created one of extra hoops for them to jump through: quickly build up Yelena as a character.

And character build they did. Because srsly Yelena is awesome and I love her. BUT. That came at a price.

Lets compare to catws. The new character there is Sam (and kiiiiiiiinda also Natasha a bit but that's a topic for a different rant) who is nowhere near as well build as Yelena. At the beginning. Because he had time to be fleshed out and naturally grow in few different movies and then we got a deep dive in the Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

But Marvel can't give Yelena few movies because she will appear in Hawkguy an Hawkeye series and also Marvel is generally dividing their assets into: outer spaaaace, down to earth heros and magic stuff (aliens, androids and wizards ;P). But also they can only create so many things in a year.

So yeah. Yelena offtopic can be summarized that I love that we have her as we have her but it came at a cost of air time of the movie.

So comparing the movies again:

Catws had the theme of good things being corrupted with time. And the theme was underlined 3 times through Peggy, Bucky and then Shield/Hydra. Which are interconnected and also make nice scale from inner conflict of the main character to the outer conflict of the movie.

In Black Widow there is the topic of the past evil that never went away and is still taking away free will from people. And again we have it shown through 3 outlets: Yelena, Taskmaster and Black Widows. But there is also whole family subplot attached to Yelena and there is Red Room attached to Black Widows. So as you can see things are getting crowded. Which in turn make the theme a bit blurry.

I mean, sure, the Red Room should be the Shield equivalent. Even it could take smaller space because good Shield turns out to be evil Hydra is generally more time consuming to explain than Red Room bad. But still combining Red Room and Black Widows make things a bit crowded.

(There is a reason why the surprise subplot of there is more Winter Soldiers was in separate movie and was kinda handwaved and cut to minimum. But they couldn't do that here).

But it's time to stop my ranting about whole Black Widow movie and focus on comparing Taskmaster and Winter Soldier.

Because to be honest both are bare bones of character and more of an carte blanche in the movie. Both have barely any screen time yet there are colossal difference which stems out of:

first introduction: as I mentioned they are hypercompetent and unstoppable threat that you can't win with, you can only hope to run away (both done equally well)

programmable killing machine:

For Taskmaster we just get a scene with her watching other heroes fighting at the screen. For the sake of building up the mystery of character we think that "he" is just watching. Maybe learning or more likely just being creepy. The information about the chip and literal programming is given to us much later in the movie which makes this scene lose the power. idk how it will work on rewatch? Maybe better? Hopefully. right now there is too many new movies in cinemas to go for a rewatch and disney+ still isn't available here -.-

For Bucky we have literal torture scene. You just can't be more blunt than that. It also hammered the next point in.

there is human behind the mask:

Winter Soldier is introduced with full face mask which he gradually loses and then we have the big reveal of not only: that's a human but also that's a human our main hero cares about deeply.

With Taskmaster they fucked up it for chap plot twist. We are learning quite late that oh snap that's Antonia (that we don't really care about) and our main hero kinda feels guilty about her.

I think the big difference is what kind of character Steve and Nat are and also the way they reveal this secret. Steve actively recognizes Bucky by himself and is very openly shocked. Nat is passively told and shown that hey, this is Antonia. And there is no time in the movie for Nat (and for us) to be shocked because that's the 3rd act and we need time for explosions and stuff.

Besides, the problem is that all the big plot twist reveals are boring on rewatch (stil big props for Pacific Rim and giving us the monster reveal in like second minute of the movie, I will never not appreciate that).

Also on related shitty note. We the audience. Bucky is handsome and vulnerable and we can drool all over him (and oh man, we the fandom did a fair share of drooling). Antonia is disfigured and not sexualized in any way. Which I'm actually grateful for but there is no pretending that doesn't make a hell lot of difference. But that's a whole different, ugly and big topic I'm not remotely qualified to write about. I'm just angry ranting here.

they don't have free will:

For Winter Soldier we have amnesia + torture tropes which to be honest have been done over and over again and it shouldn't have worked as well as it worked. Bit it did. In context of Black Widow movie it worked because it was just one guy that actively broke through brainwashing with active help of the hero.

In Black Widow there is a lot of characters that are pasively "woken up" out of mind control over and over again by active protagonist. Unfortunately the repetition kinda cheapens it. Especially in comparison to main gut punch right in the feels scene in the other movie. Which is why it's not fair to compare the two.

So lets talk about lack of free will aspect itself. To be honest the mind control aspect in Black Widow was done really great from story perspective. Evil scientists perfected it to the point it being (bit handwavey but) completely impersonal but also completely dehumanizing to the subject. So I'm buying that it can be completely switched off in equally efficient and impersonal way. Even the way they explained it with Alexei the pig was great and terrifying... to a point. Because then kicked the main problem with this movie. Clearly some execs came and saw it and went whoa... that's too dark for pg13 blockbuster. Let's put some cheap jokes here. And it happens over and over again in this movie :S

humanizing flashback scene that ties them to main hero:

For Bucky, sure we had Captain America First Avenger but a movie needs to stand on it's own legs. That's why we have the flashback scene which shows us that Bucky cared about Steve. Leaving it at the narration in Smithsonian of "best friends since childhood" would be just telling us. And we needed to be shown and we needed a space for the "till the end of line" so it could come back and stab us right in the feels.

Also because we are ignoring previous movie Russos cleverly made us care about Winter Soldier because Steve cares about Winter Soldier. And we already know and like Steve so building up our main character gives us more mileage out of new bare bones character (because let's be honest, Winter Soldier is just that). Two birds one stone thing.

In Black Widow there is no such thing which IMHO is the main reason Taskmaster doesn't work. We just get information about cardboard cutout: insert cute little girl here (only told, not even shown actual cardboard) and all of the emotional connection to Natasha is: I know that my boss that I hate has a daughter, she got in the crossfire. Which means nobody cares.

All it would take is adding a short flashback scene. idk Dreykov is an asshole and doesn't care about Antonia but she is she cutest and most adorable little girl. She treats the Black Widows as older sisters. Hell if you want to make it more horrorish copy of the idea of Thor wanting to be a Valkyrie when he grows up or T'challa wanting to be a Dora Milaje. Little Antonia wants to be Black Widow when she grows up because they are badass and they are nice to her (and are also slightly confused by her) because she is nice to them and is only person that treats them as humans. Hell we could have short interaction between her and Nat. Just a smile between them would be enough.

You could get a lot of character buildup mileage out of such a short scene.

But it couldn't happen partially because the movie didn't have time for that but we didn't get that mostly because it would show us instead of telling that Nat killed a cute little innocent girl for her own personal gain. (well she thought she was destroying Red Room but mostly wanted to get away - vide she didn't check on Yelena or other widows. But I wouldn't hold that against her. It was put your oxygen mask first kind of situation. But still it would make her look bad)

Besides, that would take guts to actually show.

And technically they could have afforded to have that guts. That was last movie with Nat anyway. It would actually make this plotline about her feeling guilty about Dreykov's daughter and red in her ledger work. But well... It was last movie so they wanted to leave us with the most goodest and bleeding hartest and heartwarming mary sue version of Nat with just telling us without showing hey, she got dark past.

On the other hand if we had the rumored Endgame plotline of Nat running an orphanage. Damn that would tie to this plotline so well. We could tie the loose widows also. Dam we were robbed here I tell ya >.<

Ok I'm overdoing offtopic about Nat. Sorry

design

So yeah. Design wise Winter Soldier is like great. For Taskmaster, she sure looks cool but also kinda generic? If in 10 years you'd show me her and say it's antagonist from GI Joe or something I'll believe you :S (not touching the debate that in comics something something because unfortunately I don't know Taskmaster from comics. Although I hear that few recent ones were quite good so I'll check them out sooner or later)

snapping out of mind control

I mentioned before. It would be unfair and there is no point comparing main emotional scene of the movie versus means to an end that were repeated several times through a movie.

Natasha freeing Antonia even if she thought that Antonia will kill her because that would fair was great. What I'm annoyed is a cheap fakeout that went with that. It was just after the bombastic finale with explosions and all the cgi shit. Even without looking at the movie runtime it was obvious there will be no extra fight scene.

In catws it worked because the cgi pew pew extravaganza was a background noise and was part of a continuous fight. In BW helicarriers fell already, there was a second of dust settling and then Nat throws away the shield (uses that capsule). Tension just fell from highest place in a movie (quite literally lol), trying to rise it again for such a short moment just doesn't work.

But that's the general problem with Marvel movies. Bombastic CGI fest as grand finale that probably is "outsourced" and then actual director comes back and needs to end movie super quickly.

disappearing act at the end

So in catws there is mystery of what will Bucky do. We are given some hope since he dragged Steve out of river and visited the museum but thats all. I mean there is this annoying Marvel thing of skipping over the interesting ending of last movie and starting with next plot point. We were hoping for the grand roadtrip/hunt for Bucky but nope. We must run ahead with all the plotlines (same way I'm sure that the Spiderman is Peter Parker and he killed a guy thing will be already dealt with in the beginning of the next movie -.-) But that's bonus mini rant.

In BW they needed to wrap up to many plot lines too quickly so Antonia wakes up and that's all. We don't get a suggestion what she may do. The problem of the chip she still has installed is omitted. There is nothing. She just fucks off to lalaland with other Black Widows the end. Because we needed ending for Nat's actual family which was ok but also kinda rushed.

As I mentioned waaaay before (god, this rant is pretty long) too many hoops to jump through.

Which really sucks because if they added that one flashback scene just for Antonia and spared few more minutes for the overall ending it would work so much more better.

And I even know where they could have saved few minutes (besides the explosions thingies). The supply guy. One extra character in a movie with too many characters. In catws the supply problem (with wings) was solved with nbd shrug. If you wanted to show that Nat has her own web of contacts it should be more than one guy. IDK in Budapest there could be 10 second scene with neighbor saying hi nice to see you again we reinforced the walls after last time. In Norway we could see her visiting some special secret supply stash run by some rando before getting to the mobile home.

But oh she was on the run so that would be too many people. Then cut the people entirely. The shitty helicopter can be worked around with joke that I'm not on speaking terms with Stark rn and that's the best we can have on short notice.

Eh.. side rant again. Sorry.

So to wrap it up. I actually really would love to see what will happen with the loose Black Widows and Antonia because here they were really underdeveloped. And while widows were more of a group hero and we have Yelena as a representative so in a way it balances out but Taskmaster needed so little extra care to make her character so much better and I'm a tiiiiiiny bit salty about it.

[inksandpensblog]

That makes sense. I like to stick as close to canon as I can, though with some characters canon characterization can be difficult to pin down, so with them I’m left trying to build on minor details that I hope mean something indicative XD

Maybe I can provide that explanation for why so many fanon Victim interpretations contradict canon? If you’ll allow me to ramble on for a bit ^_^

tl:dr fanon Victim contradicts canon Victim so much because we were interested in him long before the series decided to address him again and so we didn’t bother waiting for canon to shift attention back to him and instead just forged ahead with our own ideas o7

I became a fan of the show sometime between Animation vs YouTube and AvMs1ep1 The Rediscovery, but I didn’t really find a community within the fandom until after The Showdown aired. Most of us were also pretty sure that Victim was never coming back, but that sure didn’t stop us from talking about him. I mean, the whole thing started with him, and yet nobody except Alan knew he’d ever existed. Talk about thematic potential XD We had speculations aplenty, from what might’ve happened to him after AvA1, to how the color gang might react if they learned of him and what Alan had done, to roles the sticks might play in his reappearance if he were to somehow return.

I remember there used to be an idea floating around that Chosen was Victim, reincarnated somehow (because noogai almost reused the name when creating Chosen, and Chosen didn’t even take time to look around before going on the offensive), and how that might affect Chosen’s characterization. I remember friends pointing out that Orange shares more similarities or parallels with Victim than he does with Chosen, leading some to wonder if Orange was actually the second coming of the victim, despite his title announcing him The Chosen One’s Return.

(I remember a bunch of us being frustrated by conversations in the official server where people were calling Victim evil. As in, AvA1 Victim. That guy. Before the rockets and boxes and whips, back when he was just a little stick whom god picked a fight with. They were calling him canonically evil. As you can probably tell, I didn’t agree XD)

I remember void Victim: there was a time in the fandom when it seemed like most people who wanted to include him in their stories would handwave his apparent death with the explanation that he was “in the void.” (We actually tried to figure out where this idea originated, a while ago, and as near as we can discern it seems that multiple people had the idea independently of each other at around the same time.) Others instead made him a ghost, lingering on and witnessing the events of the series without being able to influence them. Either way, this saved many of us the trouble of having to figure out plausible mechanics for how he could’ve survived, and let us get right to the fun stuff: character dynamics.

And that meant a lot of us started filling in the giant blank slate that was Victim’s canon characterization, at the time, with whatever suited our fancy.

I don’t know if there’s a term, for this phenomenon of fandom fleshing out a bit character to the point where they’re almost completely divorced from their canon representation, and the character in turn becoming recognizable mostly by their fanon portrayal rather than their canon depiction; but AvA isn’t the first fandom to do it and I’m sure we won’t be the last.

What I haven’t witnessed before now is that bit character being brought back for canon to fill in that previously blank slate. So this is a new experience for me XD

(For my own part, my characterization of Victim took shape when I looked at the tragedy of his situation and all the talks about how awful his experiences must be and went “okay but what if he’s not angsty actually?” It was a bit of an intentional departure from what seemed, to me at the time, to be his general fandom characterization, which from what I saw mostly focused on how pitiful he must be. My Victim’s story also involved prolonged solitude in the void, so contact and connection became a theme with him, for me.)

(Handshakes and hand-holding were a big thing, with him; every friendship in canon seemed to start with a handshake, or at least a grasp of hands in camaraderie, so I used that. He’d also insist that he won the fight with noogai and refuse to hear otherwise. I wanted him to be scrappy and resourceful, since that’s how I saw him in AvA1, so…he doesn’t start fights, but he can finish them. Unfortunately his understanding of what constitutes “starting a fight” is…not finely honed, let’s say.)

(I also gave him a fondness for small, enclosed spaces. Like boxes. As a contrast to Chosen’s possible dislike of small, enclosed spaces.)

(Like boxes.)

(…revisiting some of my old headcanons feels really bizarre now.)

Did Vic already got asked for the bingo?

nope!

the reason i put a question mark above the 'everyone is weird about them' is because ava 6 is SUPERRRRR recent and the main thing i don't like is the previous interpretations that had a completely different idea of who they'd be (more kind and friendly)

so basically i dislike the non-canon interpretation but canon is recent enough that it's understandable that there's still takes from before they reappeared floating around

[phantomato]

I would love to hear your take on morality in the HP series. I dropped the series around book 6 and moved on to fanfictions because there's only so much Christian preaching I can take in a series about witchcraft. (No hate to author/fandom, just a personal preference)

When it comes to the morality of HP, my interest lies less in whether or not it’s particularly Christian-influenced (is it? Yeah, probably about the same as nearly every western media property), but what the narrative tells us about the meaning of heroism and villainy.

There’s this lovely article I’ve reblogged before, Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic, that I’ll sum up (though I encourage you to read it) with the following:

Many media properties use the aesthetic of violent rebellion to suggest that heroes are revolutionaries, but when you dig into the political values of said heroes, they often are restoring the status quo as it existed prior to/at the beginning of the narrative. Often, if there is any entity with political values of revolution in the story, those characters are cast as villains.

This is separate, of course, from the question of whether all revolution is good according to any particular definition of ‘good.’ But I’m fascinated by the combination of the anti-revolutionary message and the flat characterizations of good and evil that are nearly inherent to mass media, including YA literature. If the heroes are always unquestionably good, or if their lapses in goodness are speed bumps along the path of their hero’s journey and ultimately serve to cement their goodness, and if the heroes largely serve to restore or reinforce the correctness of existing societal structures… that’s a message to which I’m actually quite opposed! I’m not an anarchist by any means, some structures are worth seeking to adapt rather than to tear down, but by definition, the prior structures of society are what led to the revolutionary politics of the villains. It’s a contradiction in that these narratives assume something like the epilogue of Harry Potter are free from the same types of strife that made up the central conflict of the main story, but they’re also exactly the circumstances that produced the villain(s) of the main story.

I mean, unless you want your takeaway message from HP to be that the magical world’s structure was always perfect and improvements in the non-magical world are what will prevent another generation of dark lords and their followers. I am the wrong author to co-sign that lesson.

This is the enduring complication of discussing politics within the HP universe. Most people avoid it, and they handwave this issue by accepting the books at face value: Voldemort is evil and a blood purist, the Order is good and not purist, the conflict of their story uses Voldemort as the flat villain of the books. That’s perfectly reasonable, in my mind. If you find Voldemort interesting, at some point, you ask yourself: “But why would a half-blood support a platform of blood purity?” And how deep you go into trying to answer that will probably determine a lot about how you view his character.

You can take the first exit ramp off of the highway and decide that Voldemort chooses to value his pureblood heritage and Slytherin ancestry more, so he doesn’t see his purism as contradictory. Okay, slightly less flat of a villain, but still pretty flat. This is essentially what canon tells you when you start asking the question in the paragraph above.

But you can go so much further. What do his circumstances tell us? Oh, maybe he would have felt alienated by his pureblood peers at school, because he likely would not have fit in. Maybe they bullied him or otherwise mistreated him, and maybe that gang of followers Dumbledore describes isn’t fully accurate. Maybe he took a job at a pawn shop because he didn’t have many options, as a presumed-Muggleborn. Maybe he worked there so long because he didn’t have anything to serve as a draw to potential followers until after he went abroad, and maybe he needed a decade of work to save enough money to support a decade of travel, and maybe some of those longtime followers were actually friends, and maybe he really wanted to teach, and maybe—?! Ah, shit, maybe the whole fucking blood purity platform was a charade.

But then Voldemort is a man leading a revolution, and yes it’s violent and yes his party line is hateful, but… civil wars are not always, and do not need to be, about people with the “most good” morals triumphing over people with the “most evil” views. They’re political conflicts, matters of state, in which it would be absurd to presume that one side is totally morally bankrupt. Yeah, the people with diametrically opposed political values to my own are morally bankrupt in my mind, but they have a different moral value system that says I’m the one that’s wrong. How do we know who’s correct? Well, millennia of philosophy tell us—er, come back later, we’re still fighting that one out.

I mean, all this to say that I think murder is bad (probably, most of the time), but it’s not fully clear to me whether I should call Voldemort’s actions ‘murder’ in every case, because then we have to get into the definition of ‘murder’ versus ‘casualty of armed conflict,’ and that is fucking wonderful. I love it. I love that this series I grew up with blindly relied on a universalist interpretation of morality and that I get to pick that apart as an adult.

[thevindicativevordan]

Any thoughts on Grant Morrison's Action Comics run? Beyond T shirt-and-jeans Superman being great.

That whole run reinvigorated my love of the character.

There have been numerous thoughtpieces about New 52 Superman, how he worked and how he didn't but these two entries really do a great job of summing up why Morrison's take on Superman was great. Morrison laid the foundation for a new generational Superman that DC completely fucked up and ran into the ground. I'll always be bitter about that, even if I had tapped out of reading the New 52 Superman books by the end due to how bad they got. Editorial and their idiotic mandates were what screwed over the potential of this take in my eyes.

Now I get that it wasn't to everyone's taste, but I cannot fathom how anyone could ever claim that Pre-Flashpoint Superman was better. If you liked Byrne's reboot better, your guy already got rebooted after Infinite Crisis. For someone like me who really enjoyed the Johns/Busiek era, that era's potential got spoiled after Johns & Busiek left, with New Krypton imploding and the awful Grounded taking it's place. When you get to the point where the best Superman book is the one starring Lex Luthor, it's time to reassess the franchise and figure out where the hell it went wrong.

Which is exactly what Morrison did. For this new Superman, Morrison mined all the best ideas of every Superman era to really give what I consider the ideal "base" for Superman. They also took pains to address common criticisms about Superman, working to correct his pop culture image. People have been complaining that Superman is "too perfect", "too unrelatable" for a long time, so Morrison addressed that. They gave Superman his balls back, and let him reacquire that Golden Age edge he had originally.

There are a lot of complaints you can make about Morrison's Superman, but I don't see how you could accuse this guy of being "flawless" or "bland". He definitely had a personality that you could describe, love him or hate him. Compassionate, but not a pushover. Clearly holding himself back, but unafraid to occasionally let loose. Flaws that were patently obvious, Clark had a temper here that could get him into trouble. There was a real showcase of anger here, of Superman being furious at the way people were treated by the rich and powerful, then doing something about it that I ate up.

I read this run just as I was coming into my teens and it hit perfectly for where I was in life. Did not want a Superman who would smile and tell me it gets better, I wanted a Superman who looked you in the eye and told you he felt that same anger, and then encouraged you to go out and do something about how you felt. That was what this run delivered in spades, and it expanded what I believed could be done with Superman.

While it totally blew my mind to see Superman acting this way the first time I read Morrison's Action Comics run, in retrospect it really isn't that different from how Superman has acted even under Byrne. One of the few traits I've seen carry across Superman incarnations in the comics is that he has a temper underneath that affable nature. "Don't tug on Superman's cape" as the old song goes. This run simply elevated that to the forefront of the character again, for the better in my eyes given I believe "Wrath" is Superman's Deadly Sin.

In fact, one of the strongest features of this run is that Superman gets actual character development over the course of the run, analogous to what Batman underwent in Morrison's Bat-Epic. While the Bat-Epic was merely Morrison re-canonizing Batman's entire history, and applying a retroactive character development storyline that culminated in Morrison's current Batman work, their Action Comics run had them attempt to craft something similar for Superman from scratch. What that meant was Morrison attempting to draw on the most important traits of every Superman era and incorporate those into this new take. So Superman had the Golden Age temper, compassion for the oppressed, and cockiness. The Silver Age supergenuis, proud scion of Krypton who cherished his Kryptonian nature, member of the Legion of Superheroes, and participant in stories that weren't afraid to get weird. Superman's wrestling with his place in the world, the importance of Clark Kent, and making journalism a key part of the character strike me as all being hallmarks of the Bronze Age. From Post-Crisis we got that Clark views himself as human and loves his adopted parents, considering them as equal to his birth ones.

One of the big frustrations for me with the endless origin stories for Superman, is that so many of them follow a predictable and stale formula where Clark puts on the suit and is essentially ready to go. Doesn't interfere with human affairs, is modest and humble, restrained in usage of his powers, it's like Clark has meta knowledge of what he "should" be, despite that he shouldn't have any foreknowledge of what a "superhero" should look like. He operates the same way at the start as he does in the modern day, and that's really boring to me. This Superman, because of the difference in powers and attitude, operated extremely different from his "present day" incarnation. Dangling Glenmorgan over the edge of a building isn't something a fully powered and mature Superman should do, but it works great to make his early days different and exciting to read about, it makes returning to that era something you can do different storytelling with. This run is the only time where I really cared that Superman is "supposed" to be the first superhero, because figuring out what that means here is a big part of how he develops.

We all know the common complaint that Superman is "too powerful" and that "nothing can hurt him" (funny how Thor never gets hit with those accusations), so Morrison made sure to show that this take on Superman could be beaten even if he could never be defeated. Events conspired to force Clark to use his brains as well as his powers to overcome the challenges in front of him.

Examples include him using his heat vision to fry Lex's equipment and escape the military, using his rocket ship to defeat Brainiac, and rallying the population of Metropolis to banish Vyndktvx. Not to say that Clark never used his brains before to win, but this run was very upfront and in your face about how important Clark's intellect is to triumphing over his foes. Can't take seriously the complaint that Superman is too overpowered when Morrison constantly showcased how even a very powerful Superman could get his shit wrecked by his Rogues.

Another example of Morrison addressing criticisms is Kryptonite. A lot of people poke fun at how convenient it is that pieces of Superman's homeworld follow him all the way to Earth. Isn't that a bit of an asspull? So Morrison made Kryptonite the power source of Superman's rocket, giving it a perfectly natural and believable reason both for it to end up on Earth, and for Lex & the military to get a hold of it since Pa Kent gave the military the rocket. That's still my preferred explanation for how Kryptonite ended up on Earth.

It also provides a better explanation for all the different Kryptonite variants. DC can handwave away the different types as a result of Lex experimenting or the different "forces" on Earth such as magic or the Speed Force or whatever creating the different variants. That to me is much more believable than Kryptonite travelling all across the galaxy yet still ending up on Earth somehow.

There have also been a lot of complaints about Superman's villains, and Morrison diligently set about reworking them. By far one of my favorite aspects of the run, was the villain revamps. Nimrod felt like a clean revamp of Terra-Man, making him into Superman's Kraven the Hunter struck me as a patently obvious route to go, wild no one has followed up on that or used him since. Metallo felt like a good synthesis of Johns take of him as an Anti-Superman weapon, and the sympathetic aspects of Corben's origin that are always there, I liked that Morrison didn't make him a total bastard before his transformation like Johns did. Brainiac got some sympathy added to him in that the collected worlds that were already marked for damnation, thus he was "saving" them in a fashion. Clay Ramses embodied toxicity as a wife-beater even before becoming Kryptonite Man, and I thought his backstory was a great way for Clark to still deal with "real" issues via a manner he could punch. Ramses is still the best take on Kryptonite Man. Vyndktvx felt like the greatest realization of the threat Mr. Mxyzptlk could pose should he decide to get serious since Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, plus I'm a sucker for stories where superheroes fight the Devil. Drekken and Superdoom took the only interesting aspects of Doomsday (his ability to evolve and that he can kill Superman respectively), and were much more interesting characters.

And oh my God, speaking of Superdoom, that part of Morrison's Action run has aged like fine wine. I don't know if they caught wind of DC's plans for the character, or if they were just prescient, but everything that Superdoom is playing on is still sadly all too present. What Superdoom is as a character is a condemnation of what DC keeps doing with Superman: killing him off or making him evil.

When you realize what Superdoom (demand for a more violent and "realistic" Superman) and Vyn (WB/DC) stand in for, it makes the frustration Morrison is channeling much more palpable. Those two plotlines are all DC can think of to do with the character, returning to those again and again. Endlessly attempting to recapture the high of Batman and Doomsday beating the shit out of Supes in The Dark Knight Returns and Death of Superman. Overcoming these two obstacles is Superman's greatest challenge as conceived by Morrison, because both are out to corrupt and ruin the very idea of him. It's not just a physical death he faces, but a metaphysical one as well. Sadly it's a threat Superman just can't seem to lick in the real world, with more and more takes on "Evil Superman" coming.

Lois and Jimmy are great here, because Morrison actually made the investigative journalism aspect of Superman important. Lois is an active participant in the story, trying to break in to the base where Clark is being held by her father, competing with Clark for stories (I love how Morrison writes the banter between the two of them), and generally being classic Lois. Jimmy though benefitted from being positioned as a peer rather than as a kid in comparison to the two, something I wish the comics had carried forward. It looks like My Adventures With Superman is going with that interpretation at least, so I hope others do as well. Jimmy being Clark's roommate really adds to their bond, and I wish we had gotten more stories with that status quo.

Investigative reporter Clark Kent was so actively used here that it feels jarring reading other Superman runs where they tend to downplay and ignore it. Following Clark as he travels to different areas of Metropolis and actually interacts with people, instead of hovering above them as Superman, makes him feel human. Watching Clark actively pursue stories aimed at bettering peoples livelihoods, and seeing how those stories crossed with the superheroics, was one of my favorite aspects of the run. It's one unfortunately few other writers seem all that interested in, especially the New 52 writers who followed Morrison (I know editorial probably bears a lot of blame for that though).

Besides all that, this run was a lot of fun! The Legion of Superheroes showed up, their connection to Clark restored, and they got to play a big role in Clark's adventures! Krypto the Superdog! Martian colonies! Memorizing all of medicine, Superman performs a lifesaving operation! Lex using a "bullet train" to knock Clark out! 5-D imps! Rampaging robots from beyond! A Phantom Zone Halloween story! John Henry Irons suits up as Steel and kicks ass alongside Clark! Every Superman Rogue teams up to try to kill him, but Lex Luthor saves his life because that's a privilege he reserves for himself! Showcasing their trademark love for the Supermythos, Morrison took us on a tour of Superlore that demonstrated the depth and width of what could be done with Superman. Meanwhile the backups by Sholly Fisch excelled at giving us smaller, more human stories about Superman (the one where Clark meets Pa again via time travel "after" Pa has died always gives me a lump in my throat to read).

Ultimately this didn't get to be the foundation for the next generation of Superman stories as it deserved. Johns made New 52 Superman the scapegoat in Doomsday Clock for a lot of storytelling choices he did over in Justice League, something that pisses me off to no end. You want to tell me that this guy "didn't relate" to people, didn't inspire "hope"?

Like hell he didn't. This guy was Superman in every way that mattered and he deserved better than to be framed as the scapegoat for all the stupid decisions DC made about what to do with him. Greg Pak was able to do some great work with this version after Morrison, and just like how Gene Yang got a redemption work starring Superman, I hope to one day see Pak return to the character. Would love to read a Black Label Superman story by Pak that follows his take on young Superman.

All wasn't lost however. Against all odds, and Rebirth trying it's damndest to sweep everything under the rug, it looks like parts of this era have actually survived to the current Infinite Frontier era. With Morrison being heavily involved no less, both as an ideas guy and as an actual writer.

Superman & the Authority is explicitly Superman coming full circle back to the attitude displayed by his young counterpart under Morrison. Janin has outright said that the costume Clark wears here is reminiscent of the t-shirt and jeans era of Superman, and this book so far feels saturated with an energy level from Morrison I haven't seen in their work for hire since they left Action. Reaching old age and realizing he never really delivered on the high ideals of his beginnings, it's Superman putting together a team to hopefully succeed where he couldn't alone. Scathing in how it criticizes the superhero status quo, this has been extremely entertaining to read. Wish Morrison was writing 12 issues with this team, and that ultimately it will be up to PKJ to deliver on the potential is a drawback (although I've loved PKJ's Action run so far), but I'm glad to see DC finally treating Morrison and their ideas with more respect than was shown during Rebirth.

Jon meanwhile feels like an even more explicit attempt at redoing New 52 Superman. There's the updated new suit, designed to appeal to a new generation with it's streamlined look. Positioning Jon as a Superman who wants to tackle the "real" issues, with Taylor explicitly comparing him to Golden Age Superman which as I mentioned was an era Morrison tried to reincorporate into their reboot. There's the Legion of Superheroes connection which played an important role in Morrison's reboot. The rumors about Jon's sexuality are interesting, hinting that DC is willing to go outside the box with him in a way they never would with Clark. I'm excited to see what kind of Superman Jon ends up becoming, if he can deliver on the promise of the New 52 Superman all the better.

This run deserves to be remembered and to have the lessons it tried to teach respected. Probably my favorite mainline run on Superman, I hope more people come around to liking it as time goes on.

[convenientalias]

Lovers of the Red Sky Review (a little belated)

So a few weeks ago now I finished watching Lovers of the Red Sky. It was pretty good.

(Review below contains some spoilers.)

Some Things I Really Loved About Lovers of the Red Sky:

The two main characters! Definitely my favorite thing about the show <3. I love Hong Cheon-gi. She's such a fun character. She's a mix of career ambitions and concern for others and not incredible professional ethic (I love a forger haha, tho Prince Yang-myeong is right that there's something shallow about forgery). She has so much painting talent; watching her paint and listening to her talk about painting is one of my favorite parts of the show. She cares tremendously about her father and Ha Ram and her friends. And at the same time, she's not too serious. She can be sassy, get panicked over doing something awkward or improper, get a little dreamy-eyed over seeing her crush. She just feels very three-dimensional and very alive. I love her.

Ha Ram I had more mixed feelings about. Mostly I really like him. He gets whumped a lot, which is always a point in someone's favor for me. He has a secret identity. He can fight well, and he's calm and collected except when he's really really not. And he's a love interest who isn't too tsundere about having a crush (I've gotten tired of dramas with a lot of bickering lols) even though he has reasons that having a relationship right now would be inconvenient. Also, a desire for revenge! Always fun.

The other thing I really like about this show is its aesthetics. The paintings are all beautiful and showcase different styles and interpretations of themes, both the paintings by Hong Cheon-gi and those by other painters. And aside from that, it's a pretty show in other ways too. People's costumes generally suit them, Cheon-gi and Ha Ram always look good together, and there are some nice lingering shots of starry skies. It's a pretty pretty show <3

Things I Did Not So Much Love About Lovers of the Red Sky:

I guess the thing that frustrated me the most was the ending of Ha Ram's arc. When a guy wants revenge--when it's his character's driving motivation--I want to see him either get that revenge or go through a process of letting go of that desire. But Ha Ram barely does anything to get revenge; some actions he takes towards it are kind of ambiguous to me (sure, Ha Ram, you totally predicted that having the truth of the Crown Prince's illness would send the king into a coma. sure.) and others I'm not sure what he's going for (if he was trying to ruin that first sealing ritual he was part of, I don't see how--he spent most of it possessed and didn't really accomplish anything). And then when he decides to let it go, it's because it turns out the thing he was trying to avenge... actually just never happened? and NO ONE explained this to him at any point even though at least one person (cough the king cough) KNEW he was obsessed with revenge (I think? the ending was kind of confusing that way). It's so anticlimactic and boring. I WANTED TO SEE HIM MURDER SOME ROYALS. Well, at least he killed one subordinate... but apparently he wasn't entirely justified in that anyway? Oh well?

I also think the two princes could have been better developed. I wanted to see more of their relationship to each other, to their father. I wanted Prince Ju-hyang in particular to be more complex of a villain; it's not like he doesn't have reasons for what he's doing, but the show kind of handwaves this with "well, he was evil all along anyway tho, he should have just been FINE WITH DYING OF SLOW SPIRITUAL ROT" wtf. Didn't really dislike either prince, tho--I know some ppl get frustrated with Prince Yang-myeong but eh, if we're going to have a love triangle I'd as soon have the second male lead NOT be the one I'm rooting for anyway, and he was at least interesting in his dynamic with Ha Ram. (And his crush on Hong Cheon-gi--honestly, relatable.)

Finally, the depiction of Ha Ram's blindness is so inconsistent. The way he fights seems kind of unrealistic for a blind man, for one thing, and he often seems to be making eye contact with ppl or looking at things. Also, the whole point of his blindness is that MAWANG isn't supposed to be able to see--but it always seems like Mawang can, when he possesses him? What the fuck was the point of giving Cheon-gi his eyes, then? Just for the drama of it all?

Overall

Despite my complaints, I really enjoyed this show! The romance is cute and fun, the political intrigue is... not awful, and the paintings are lovely. Would recommend to ppl who like female leads who are fun, driven and a little bit tricksy, and male leads who are calm and collected and get whumped a lot.

[eightyonekilograms]

That MIDI thread feels like I am reading a Deep Lore slapfight bitchfest, and none of it makes any sense. Glad it translates to you.

This is deep lore, yeah. Rambling, including #cw sexual assault, to follow.

The most annoying thing about this is that I agree with, like, 90% of what LS is saying (and obnoxiously implying). I actually have a pretty low opinion of MIRI: I think their research agenda is mostly useless, that they have contributed basically nothing of substance to the field of AI in nearly 20 years of existence, and that if superintelligence risk turns out to be a real concern (which I do not grant, I think it is possible but far from certain), MIRI will have done very little to help mitigate that risk.

This isn’t even their fault, per se. In the past, I have compared MIRI’s efforts to like if Ada Lovelace realized that computer hackers would eventually be a problem, and spent the rest of her life trying to develop theory and praxis around computer security. It wouldn’t have worked. No matter how smart she was, she just wouldn’t have been able to contribute anything useful: the availably knowledge in her day was just too far behind; she could not possibly have known what actual, realized computing was going to look like. That’s not her fault or impugning her abilities, it’s just the gap between when she was around and when the technology was ready.

Similarly, while I think we will have “strong AI” eventually, right now we have no idea what the architecture of that is going to look like. I have a high degree of confidence that it won’t be neural networks, RL, or anything else that’s state-of-the-art in the industry right now, nor will it be the weird-ass quasi-GOFAI formalism that MIRI’s research tends to emphasize. In my estimation, if and when strong AI emerges, it will be as a result of a complete paradigm shift, and all the literature MIRI has produced on the subject will be totally irrelevant to it.

The unpleasant reality is that there may not be anything we can do at the moment to meaningfully reduce AI X-risk (although I have trollingly suggested that advocating for worldwide Communist revolution might help). People in the orbit of MIRI don’t consider this possibility nearly as often as they should, for reasons about identity and institutional blind spots-- IME, in the past a lot of LWers tied up too much of their identity in “being the only ones taking AI X-risk seriously”, forgetting pg’s “keep your identity small” advice. And what happened was exactly what pg warned about: people really resist the implication that a big part of their identity, and the thing they’ve been passionately working on, is a waste of time. But it is what it is.

So, point #1 I agree with l-s on: MIRI is kind of dumb.

Point #2 I agree with l-s on: Peter Thiel is a goddamn Saturday morning cartoon villain. No argument from me there.

But it doesn’t necessarily follow from that that he has sinister motivations for donating to MIRI. I mean, he has also donated to climate change organizations in the past. Couldn’t he just be genuinely concerned about AI X-risk? Plenty of people are, especially in the Valley. Even if you think Thiel’s motivations are purely selfish, billionaires probably have just as if not more interest in reducing X-risk as the result of us: you can’t enjoy your spoils of capitalism if the world has been destroyed.

Frankly, I can’t see what sort of sinister agenda you’d advance by giving money to friggin’ Eliezer Yudkowsky. At the end of the day, the rationalists are just not that important. It’s a small number of weirdos-- many whom infamously have giant executive dysfunction issues! If you want to manipulate the world by handing out money, anyone-- lobbyists, politicians, the media, universities, anyone other than the damn rationalists-- is going to give way better bang for your buck. And Thiel, scumbag though he is, is a shrewd investor; it’s safe to say he knows how to allocate his dollars. The MIRI donations really are about the X-risk.

And I suspect l-s knows this: my reading of that thread was that she kept on Darkly Hinting about Thiel’s true motivations for donating to MIRI, over and over, until argumate got fed up and just asked her to state plainly what she meant, at which point she hurriedly switched the conversation to Kathy Forth.

And yes, what happened with Kathy Forth was incredibly shitty, and I’m still angry about it to this day. That’s agreement with l-s #3. Not only because of what happened, but also how in the immediate aftermath, several trusted people quickly used their platforms to slander her as having always been a liar. That was fuuuuuucked up.

But everything else about what l-s said/implied about that was just wrong:

- That and the Brent Dill affair around the same time actually did cause a bunch of reforms. The “whisper networks” were replaced with more formal processes at REACH, the Alumni Committee at CFAR was dissolved after that godawful memo, and a whole bunch of missing stairs and several generally awful people were banned from events. 

- My reblog was admittedly angry and reflexive, but her reply to me was projecting so hard it could illuminate the far side of the moon. I’ve already said I don’t like MIRI nor what happened, but I’d bet good money she dismisses equally serious problems in her own camp all the time. And trying to handwave that away by saying “well my group is much bigger so you can’t take sexual assault problems as systematic, but for your group I can infer all your evil intentions from one incident” is both groundless and despicable.

- Tying it to Peter Thiel makes no damn sense. What would he possibly gain from such a thing? That is l-s trying to lump together all the things she dislikes into one Vast Conspiracy and harrumph away any objections by saying that anyone pointing out how and why it makes no sense must be In On It. That’s QAnon-tier crazy nonsense.