#it might just be good propaganda and the reality of the situation is relegated to academia (see tsukauchi makoto)

[delawaredetroit]

This...certainly is a selective retelling of their society's history.

Because from the little we've seen from the Dawn of Quirks era, it was less about "no weaponized quirks" initially and more like "the metahumans are unclean and should be shunned/eliminated". There probably weren't any out quirked people in the police force when this decision was made in the first place. This no violent use of quirks concept feels like a justification made after the fact.

And it's more likely that there were groups of vigilantes that gained public support first which forced the powers that be to accommodate them, and not the other way around (see the entire plot of the Vigilantes manga for an example of this even in their current hero society).

As heroes started out as vigilantes, it's more like they began outside the law and then the law changed to incorporate the ones it found to be the most useful to try to regain stability after their society realized the genie couldn't be put back in the bottle on the quirk situation.

On another note, it sure was an interesting choice to have a heteromorph character be the one to explain hero society's current spin on the history

[okay-victoria]

Status of Women in The Empire

Summary: LN gives some evidence women have a better status than they did in OTL Germany. It gives little to nothing in the way of evidence that we are in post-sexual-revolution territory. It presents little enough evidence generally that you can use this issue in your own story as you wish; however, using how humans actually work as your baseline, it would be a very definite handwave to think that gender equality is much more than marginally better than OTL would have been at the time, or that Tanya wouldn’t be negatively affected by it in some significant ways in daily life. On the other hand, the original story handwaves an eight year old enrolling in a modern military and getting promoted to a mid-ranking officer by age eleven, so as a reader, I’m obviously pretty down for handwaving some realism for the sake of a good story.

Evidence:

V1/C1

“The armed forces have a practical exception in place for just about everything.” <= I think in fanon the entire Empire as seen as this sort of “everything we do is logical” territory where gender discrimination would have had to be eliminated, but in reality it’s presented as the military, and they are making an exception for a rare and incredibly militarily useful type of person to be able to be put to use by them without gender discrimination stopping it.

V1/C4

“But in the far-from-gender-free world of “ladies first,” Tanya with her outwardly girlish appearance is, albeit only relatively, blessed compared to the other students” <= YMMV, but I would not describe modern society as a world of “ladies first”. Do people do/say it to hark back to pre-1960s chivalry? Sure. Is it really the standard we live by anymore? Not so much. Tanya seems to pretty definitely still be living in those days.

“Basically, apart from the mage branch, the army is a man’s world. Actually, even most of the mages are men.” <= this is notable because it is said when Tanya is in War College, at which point the war has been going on for long enough that available mages have been conscripted, so there is no selection bias that men have simply chosen to pursue a career as a mage more often than women. This is actually weirdly important because it either means:

Magic talent is like, an X chromosome trait and men are thus more likely to have it [in which case, it would probably be taken as natural evidence that men are superior and worsen the gender equality situation]; or

There in fact is a Youjo Konki-esque exception for married women and/or mothers. A nation has to still be relatively in the infancy of gender equality if Female Mage #102 has children with Infantryman #1,000,102 and the military decides that since it can’t leave these children parentless, it has to conscript the dude who is substitutable for literally anyone else and not the human weapon.

Tanya has a long-ish reflection on women in the military. Important points are, the rules have only been overhauled recently to make it practical for women to serve in combat. Women in combat didn’t really exist prior to this war, and women in the military were basically limited to noble/imperial families having their daughters serve out nominal duties. Whatever boost women as a whole get from serving in a capacity that people are used to seeing men in, it has not had time to transform society all that much.

V2/C2

“Women administrators are not uncommon, but in the Empire where gender equality still has a ways to go, their qualifications are always questioned.” <= YMMV as to what degree this is meant to be a statement on something that still troubles women in modern times, or something that indicates gender equality is not particularly close to modern.

V2/C5

“After all, now that I’ve been turned into a girl, I’m faced with this annoying military framework where men are superior. Just the thought of my promotions being blocked by an invisible glass ceiling is enough to dampen any desire I might have to act all girlish for propaganda…apart from that, the Empire’s personnel system has adapted extremely meritocratic principles for the war, in a way, so I’m more or less satisfied with it.” <= sort of same as above, YMMV on whether this is just Tanya realizing what life is like for a woman in modern society or meant as a “no, it was worse” point.

However, I will say this: I highly, highly doubt any men chosen for high military honors were photographed doing anything other than looking ultra manly in uniform. Women serving in modern militaries are not forced to put on showy dresses when they get their photos taken, they are treated, at least in photos, with the same respect as their male colleagues. The fact that anyone found it appropriate to only photograph the recipient of the highest military honor in cute girl clothes speaks to some deep discomfort with anyone outside the military seeing women not doing what they’re supposed to.

V6/C6

“The Imperial Army has already tapped all the population pools that can be mobilized, but it still has two options. One is to begin the general conscription of women. That said, they’ve already been mobilized in the industrial sector.” <= YMMV, again, on how willing a modern country would be to conscript women to fight a world war, but if you are as deep into a world war as the Empire is and no one’s trying it, at the least we can say the Empire is not the bastion of cold logic it fanonically is outside the military. Also, it pretty much seems like women working in large numbers has only become a thing because all the guys are off fighting, which very much sticks us in pre-1950s territory.

V8/C1

Andrew reacts surprised to see a female reporter from the Federation, and reflects that they are quite liberal in some ways <= while this is a non-Imperial guy, given his familiarity with the Empire, it would seem weird that if the Empire was particularly more advanced than his country that he would still be so surprised.

Other Working Knowledge Your Author Has On This Subject:

Women serving in the military, while certainly helpful to the cause of gender equality, by itself is not going to create a broad-based transformation in society. That sounds a bit like saying: As we all know, the US dropped any racist laws or regulations as soon as we started allowing non-white units in the military. After Elizabeth I serving as the Ruler of England, a very manly role that her tiny woman-brain didn’t fuck up too bad, the people who thought women were naturally stupider than men were quickly relegated to the margins and gender discrimination mostly became more of an annoyance than a real hindrance to the average woman’s goals. It just doesn’t work that way. And I’m not here to say that the US is a post-gender paradise, but the US, which has never had a woman president and is pretty slow about expanding military opportunities for women, nonetheless is a lot better on the gender equality front than some countries that have had women leaders and allow women a fuller range of military opportunities. There’s a lot more complexity to it than: My country respects military => military allows women => guess I’m going to stop being sexist

The same goes for something that isn’t about gender equality at large but how it relates to Tanya: The view that while gender equality may be non-advanced, Tanya specifically is exempt from dealing with it because she is “one of the boys”. It Does Not Work Like That. At All. And the further you go back in time, the less it worked like that. Within the military specifically Tanya will probably be alright, but society at large punishes men & women that break gender roles as brazenly as she does more than it rewards them. This is an entire essay unto itself, Google is your friend.

This is going to sound silly and facetious but I’m being dead serious, from what little we know of fashion in the YS world, it matches what would have been the case in the real world in the WW1 era. If society at large was really that different, that wouldn’t be the case.

There is no canon evidence that magic has made any scientific advancements outside the military sphere of influence. Before the advent of things like dishwashers, vacuums, microwaves, especially refrigerators, and especially laundry machines being common household items, the ideal family model was: one person makes money outside home, one person takes care of house. There wasn’t enough time in the day to work and run a household. Many women in poor households had to work, generally at the expense of being able to keep their own household running smoothly, and even then they often worked in capacities that allowed them to be at home or ones that allowed them the flexibility to take care of some of this stuff. It really just isn’t possible to have a society remotely approaching equality when one gender is automatically assigned to home unless necessary.

Same goes for something else - contraception. Women having access to a contraceptive device that they control is a major component of setting a society on a path towards equality. Birth control pills didn’t become widely available until the 1960s. Without being unable to at least kind of balance the outcome of sex (even between married couples) between men and women, women as a class have a hard time escaping from the housewife-mother archetype.

Not to get too political here, but the Empire matches OTL Germanic-Prussianness too much to ignore. Living under a military-worshipping, religiously-inclined traditional monarchy has not, in any real life example I’m aware of, gone hand-in-hand with anything other than a fairly conservative and patriarchal society, and I feel like the burden of proof is on the other side to explain why that isn’t the case in the Empire, and our original author makes approximately zero effort to do this.

Being X turns Tanya into a woman for the purpose of making her life worse. It seems simply illogical [although I guess Being X’s decision-making skills are questionable] that he would then drop her into a world that had undergone broad-based gender reform instead of a world that was just barely tweaked from our own in such a way that it would allow Tanya to serve in the military.

My conclusion: the most likely option is that gender equality is exactly enough better as it needs to be to allow the military to convince the lawmakers that they should be able to use a very rare & dangerous ability to be part of their arsenal without respect to gender, or age, and no more. That difference is not likely to make life for women significantly better than it was in the equivalent OTL time period.

[theliterateape]

Commie Puke-Faced Panty-Waisted Girly Man

by Don Hall

New comment from Ed Parker on They Learned it from the Wolverines:

It's hard to believe that one author can be so twisted, so wrong, and so proud of it in one article. "Soyboy" doesn't describe him well enough. Don Hall is what GenXers would call a MANGINA. But we Boomers used to call guys like this Commie Puke-Faced Panty-Waisted Girly Men. I suppose it would be pointless to argue that the frame-up on Kavanaugh had nothing to do with any reality outside of Whoopi Goldberg's psychosis, or that the obvious fraud of the recent election was nothing more than the installation of a Chinese puppet by a Chinese-owned Congress, or even that the remake of Red Dawn was censored by the Chinese, as it originally portrayed them as the invaders. Facts don't matter to thong-wearing pajama boys. As a spew, this article was a decent attempt to be obnoxious without being factual, but Donny's efforts were all in vain anyway, as his target audience doesn't read, can't think, and functions primarily on "feewings" manipulated so well in his Public Fool System edumakayshun. I'm sure he's very proud of himself, as any hocker that manages to crawl all the way up the side of a toilet bowl would be, but the intelligent reading public will just flush him down the swirly of irrelevance from whence he came, and where he should have stayed. All you've got is snark, Donny boy, and you're not even very good at that.

Dear Ed—

We at LiterateApe.com don't get too many comments on our articles despite our impressive (at least to us) average 98K unique reads per year, so yours stood out. It also stood out because, in terms of kind of brilliant takedowns, yours is quite the feat.

In 236 words, you manage to include some excellent Trumpian putdowns (soyboy, MANGINA, thong-wearing pajama boy, hocker that manages to crawl all the way up the side of a toilet bowl, and the classic Commie Puke-Faced Panty-Waisted Girly Man), you also adhere to some fantastic (but erroneous) GOP talking points like a champ! "Kavanaugh was framed." "Biden is an illegitimate president because Trump really won." "The Chinese are defrauding our elections (as opposed to the Russians)."

All unleashed due to my observation that guys like you have been pining away for your "Wolverine" moment since we all were in high school, desperately clinging to the possibility that we, too, could avenge Harry Dean Stanton while looking like a teen heartthrob.

I could simply ignore your comment. I could answer it in the comments section. But, no, Ed. You deserve better. You deserve more.

Throughout history, humans have not handled new technologies well. Gutenberg's printing press has been implicated in the Reformation, the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, all of which had profound effects on their eras. The shift from an earth-centered to a sun-centered universe were unintended consequences in the printing press era. This influx of books, pamphlets, and ideas destroyed the existing paradigm and those in power at the time did not respond well. Excommunications, torture, executions followed the spread of information previously gated from the rabble.

436 years later, Bell received his patent for the telephone. Give or take fifty years or so and a large percentage of American households contained a phone. All of a sudden, when tempers flared and your neighbor needed to be insulted or wrangled, you no longer had to leave your home, walk to his house, and confront him face-to-face. Now, sans the brief time to diffuse the rage, you could pick up the phone, call him, and tell him what a MANGINA he was in an instant.

In the onslaught of the Information Age, we now have the internet. No longer even required to know the neighbor you get to insult, everyone is a neighbor by proximity to a computer screen and some broadband. Instantaneous outrage, immediate written bitchslapping.

This, like the fallout from every invention of new technology in communication indicates, is not the end of all things. It is us getting used to new ways to engage and, because we are humans, fucking it up for a while until the newness wears out.

In the nascent days of digital communication, I found some fun in trolling some people. I recall creating a fake character—Kaufman—and trolling the Chicago Improv Message Board. It was pointless, it was antagonistic, it was a series of namecalling and juvenile bullshit. On the other hand, I was in my twenties and, like all people in their twenties, a bit stupid.

I am, however, curious about grown people who continue to engage with online communication in the same manner.

Specific to your comment, Ed, I can say that the insults are like throwing a basketball at an armless kid. Just bounces off and I stare at you wondering what else you have for me. I've been called a Nazi and a racist by some on the Extreme Left ("The Woke") and that doesn't bother me because it isn't any different than calling me a Unicorn or a Bowl of Potatoes. I'm obviously not those things so why would it bother me?

I can't speak for being a "soyboy" as I'm not entirely certain what that means but I can say I dig meat. Not sure what a MANGINA is but I applaud the creation of the word. I might very well be a MANGINA.

I'm definitely not a Commie. I'm no more in favor of the "Oppressor/Oppressed" binary of Marxist thought than I am a racist. Binary is too simplistic in my opinion. I may be Puke-Faced (subjective), I wear boxer shorts so no panty-waist, and I'm thinking that you see "Girly Man" as a derogatory but I see it as being feminist (which I am).

Still, pretty creative stuff and you managed to evoke "libtard" without using it so my hat goes off to you.

You, by your choices of real info, present yourself as a member of the Alt-Right Tribe and so your insults are pointless and juvenile (like mine were when I was a 22-year old "Kaufman").

The meat of your comment centers on three issues we can disagree about but could use a bit of genuine conversation.

I understand how someone would see the Kavanaugh accusations as merely a "He Said/She Said" situation. The Whoopi Goldberg thing misses me but I can see how someone might disagree that Brett is a rapist. While I don't believe all women in these cases, I believe these women so we'll just have to leave it at that.

As for your contention that the presidential election was fraudulent ("that the obvious fraud of the recent election was nothing more than the installation of a Chinese puppet by a Chinese-owned Congress"), man, there's so much actual data available that disputes everything in that excerpt it's hard to take you seriously. You seem to be a True Believer and I've found that talking to you and your type is more like beating my forehead up against a building or giant rock than dialogue.

Keep in mind, the fact that your comment sort proves the point of my article doesn't mean I dismiss you entirely. I have friends and family who believe in the concept of Christianity and I don't relegate them to idiot status due to the fairy tale to which they ascribe.

As for the remake of Red Dawn I have no opinion on it either way so you may very well be correct that it was censored by the Chinese government. They tend to do that on the regular with Western film so it would not be a big surprise.

My curiosity comes back to why you would feel it necessary or worth your valuable time to write those 236 words?

I suppose one could also ask what pragmatic purpose I had in writing the article in question and my response would be for entertainment purposes in general. I found the idea of men my age being slowly indoctrinated by the pop culture of our youth fascinating. I remembered that the Milius version of Red Dawn was in line with the "Trust the Military/Distrust the Government" propaganda of the Reagan years. In terms of pragmatics, I suppose I thought this was interesting enough to pen and publish. I could be wrong.

What pragmatic purpose would you, Ed, say justifies your response in writing? You don't know me. I don't know you. You decided that the article was so enraging that you needed to respond, not on your own social platforms, but on mine so there must be a reason other than sheer spite?

The landscape of our current version of the same culture wars we Americans have been fighting since the founding of the country aren't that different from the days of incendiary pamphlets distributed by Patrick Henry. The difference, I think, comes into play in the immediacy of response (which eliminates the time to calm your "feewings" and focus your thoughts) and the vast reach the internet provides.

I can't make too many assumptions about you, Ed. I could assume that working IT at Sears for years (which, these days resembles working at a Blockbuster Video as a tech support guy) left you feeling cheated by life. I could assume you sat there in your Sears polo shirt imagining the coming Red Dawn and how you could be a Wolverine yourself—fighting for the freedoms of "real Americans" against the Commie Puke-Faced Panty Waisted Girly Men. I could assume your sad existence led you to open your own firearms school and wear t-shirts that declare your fealty to "Beer & Guns & Bacon & Freedom".

I could but I won't.

I find that kind of assuming makes an ass out of you. You might be a great guy. Or not. I can guarantee you are far more than your online vitriol. Most people are more than what we can see on the surface.

Ask yourself, Ed—why? Why even bother when you know how meaningless and empty your screed will be? Is it a sort of bragging for your friends to see and applaud? “You sure told that pussy what’s what, Ed!”

Is this the person you hoped you’d be when you became the age you’re at now? If not, what went wrong and is it too late to change course?

[smokeybrand]

Disappointment

I love comics. I do. I’ve loved them since I was a small boy. I remember fondly, journeys to my local comic shop before it closed. I remember buying first editions of Aliens versus Predator, Alien: Earth War, The Killing Joke and those three issues of Amazing Spider-Man where Carnage debuted. That panel where Pete realizes carnage left him a message in his own blood? Chilling. I remember the dour feeling I got when I first witnessed Miller’s bleak, almost nihilistic take on Batman with his masterpiece , The Dark Knight returns. I remember the jubilation as I scanned the pages upon pages of graphic violence in McFarlane’s Spawn for the first time. The Violator fast became one of my all-time favorites Comic villains. I watched the comic bubble grow and grow until it burst and the fall of an entire industry toward the late 90s, early 00’s. I remember the cringe worthy, poorly written, maxi-events born distinctly from that ridiculous “extreme everything” epoch of the mid 90s. I was excited when the industry rebounded on the back of epic storytelling and art that was head and shoulders above what I had as a youth, in the late 00s, early 10s. Even now, I pick up any one of the Bat books DC is shilling and I am wildly impressed. Capullo’s run, in particular, has been a creative and narrative refreshment. I’m going to miss him when he’s gone. I love comics as much as I love film, cinema, anime, manga, and f*cking pancakes. My geek card is legit and punched, particularly for Marvel Comics.

I love a good Marvel book. Don’t get me wrong, I can dig a DC outing, I rather enjoyed Judas Contract and Death in the Family in particular, but Marvel always felt real to me. DC comics was escapism. They were Gods pretending to be human in my eyes, the ideal way to live. That made sense to me as I grew older because they were created in a time where escapism was needed. Most of the groundwork for DC was laid in the 30s. WWII was beginning to rear it’s ugly head and there was a necessity for the American populace to have a place to divert their attention to fantastic tails in order to distract from the horrific realities of the world.  Marvel was born in the sixties. They’re a product of one of the most socially tumultuous times in out history. Marvel heroes are people thrust into godhood. They have to learn how to be heroes because they are inherently flawed. There are no Superman allegories here, no perfect specimens to light the way for humanity. Nah, these cast are assholes just like the rest of us, trying to stay above water. Only they can shoot f*cking lasers from their eyes sometimes. While DC relegated their more socially experimental or controversial stories to the oblivion of Vertigo or Elseworlds, Marvel embraced them. Reed Richards became an emotionally distant asshole. Tony Stark became a functioning alcoholic. The allegorical comparison of Mutants being black people struggling for human rights during the civil unrest of the 60s was not lost on anyone with a brain. I loved that Marvel let their heroes be human. I loved that they made mistakes and that those mistakes had real consequences. I loved that I could look at a comic and see myself, in both demeanor and ethnicity. Spider-Man is my all time favorite comic character. I wrote about this before but I WAS Pete as a kid and I think that’s why he’s so endearing. He is the best of that Marvel lot and epitomizes the genius Stan, John, and Jack had when they crafted the most endearing literary universe in the last century.

The fact that i love Marvel so much is why I am hurting with the direction they have decided to take with all of this SJW nonsense. If you know Marvel’s history, if you’ve read their books, then you know they were already one of the most progressive companies out there. I mean, they’re genesis was one steeped in social awakening! Hell, I’m not even mad Marvel is shoehorning all of this PC propaganda in their books or killing off characters I love (**cough**Wolverine**cough**), or subsisting on year-long maxi events or allowing Slott to ruin Spider-Man! Actually, I am livid about that Slott nonsense but I’ll get to that. I’m not mad Thor is a woman. She is a great character and a breath of fresh air in a narrative that was growing a bit stale for me. Jane Foster being Thor gave way to The Unworthy Thor story line, which is probably the best written Thor arc I have ever read. I’m not mad Mockingbird is a feminist. How can she not be? I rather enjoyed Spider-Island and that little tease at the end with MJ and Pete? That made my heart all aflutter. Speaking of, my favorite book at the moment is Renew Your Vows. Goddamn do I miss Pete and MJ and that book just reminds me of everything that could have been. F*cking Slott, man… I ADORE the direction they’ve taken Talon (X-23 and the current Wolverine for those of you who don’t know Laura’s actual X-Men code name) and even like a little of that whole Cyclops fiasco fallout. A little bit, not all of it. There are a few things SJW Marvel has done well, their increasing diversity is a big one, but it feels like those good things pale in comparison to the issue I think that is crippling Marvel; The writing is sh*t now.

SJW Marvel feels like they’ve traded actual, inspired, storytelling for “Woke” gimmicks and a pandered slathering of social commentary. There are too many soap boxed now and not enough passion in crafting a compelling narrative. Dan Slott (I told you I’d get to this asshat) is a perfect example of this bullsh*t. Bro has taken Spider-Man and basically turned him into Tony Stark. He’s erased, literally erased by having Pete and MJ cut a deal with the goddamn devil, their marriage. Slott, in his run on Amazing, has regressed Spider-man back to those harrowing and swinging days of being a College Freshman but with a multi-billion dollar tech company. For a second there, I even think Peter was an international spy or some sh*t. It’s wild nonsense that is just north of embellished fan fiction! What happened to the great tales we got like Kraven’s Last Hunt or Torment? Why do I have to sit through The Superior Spider-Man?? F*ck, then there’s THAT fuckery. Doctor Octopus is literally a Spider-man clone now. He is, and I am not sh*tting you right now, living in a perfect clone of Peter Parker, powers and all. But he leads Hydra or some sh*t. We’ll circle back around to that in a second, let me tell you, but first, this whole Fantastic Four bullsh*t. I liked Secret Wars II. I thought it was interesting that Doom finally got his wish and became a f*cking god. I thought his characterization in that whole event was brilliant. What I didn’t like? Marvel using that even to essentially erase the Fantastic Four. I liked Sue. She was a great character and had grown considerably over the years. All of that, gone. More to the point, I loved Valeria and her interactions with Doom. Those few books where she actually plays Robin and conscious to Doom’s villainy are spectacular. Marvel essentially nixing that relationship just to scorn Fox feels a lot like Slott nixing MJ because he thinks Peter should be a hoe.

Both circumstances are f*cking ridiculous and do nothing but leave the characters and company less. And it’s not just these instances. Riri Williams has a ton of potential but sucks and everyone hates her because she’s written as a smart-mouthed b*tch. America Chaves is another missed opportunity! And, oh my god, what did they do to my Carol Danvers?? I LOVE Miss Marvel. Her stint in Might Avengers and Heroic Age solidified that she could be the premiere female Marvel hero. In my eyes, Carol is their Wonder Woman and, for a time, she was on her way. Now? After all of this SJW branding and agendas have made her power absorbing Hitler. They’ve destroyed her character, assassinated nay real progress in an effort to portray her as a feminist icon. She was already one of those!

Carol Danvers doesn’t have to be the new version of 1610 Captain America! And then there’s THAT debacle. Secret Empire was a goddamn cash grab and the biggest farce I have read out of Marvel since Onslaught. Cap is a Nazi? Really? Get the f*ck out of here with that nonsense. And the ending? Just a bit too fan service-y for me. There was literal deus ex machina. Seriously, ClassicCap came out of the cosmic cube to punch out NaziCap. He allegory is just so heavy handed, it’s borderline insulting to my intelligence as the reader. I cannot stress how ridiculous this entire situation was, this entire stupid goddamn “event”. Also, the f*ck was up with Dead No More? Didn’t we learn our lesson about clones with Ben Reily and that whole clusterf*ck? Why are we even doing this nonsense again??

It’s not just the writing though, either. The art for most of these books is atrocious. Anything Olivier Coipel or Esad Ribic touch with a pencil is god’s work and Kris Anka is one of my favorites but the redesigns of some of those classic outfits are terrible. I mean, Spider-Man’s tech suit is ass. Riri’s armor looks like a knock off Rescue mod, and Foster’s Thor comes across as a hodge-podge of nonsense. That classic Ms. Marvel Leotard is my favorite of her outfits but I get the upgrade to her current garb. Running around in stilettos with your ass out doesn’t really bode well for gaining confidence you can protect the general public from giant, interdimensional, crab monsters or rouge government assassi-bots. What i don’t like is how masculine Carol’s drawn now. Chick isn’t She-Hulk, yo. Why you got her so yoked? Carol Danvers was a vision of beauty, legit model caliber. She’s always been fit, yeah, but there was still a softness to her. Just a touch, I’d say. Now, chick is a rock of f*cking angst granite. Not only is she poorly written but her overall design is sh*t! It’s like, goddamn Marvel! You want to push Ms. Marvel to the front, give me something to work with How am I supposed to root for an ugly, b*tchy, incompetent who constantly makes decisions that get people killed? How is THIS “Captain Marvel” a leader?? Bro, speaking of “leaders”, Sam Wilson Cap is ridiculous. That sh*t feels like blatant tokenism, particularly when there have already been several black captain Americas in Marvel history. There was this whole Tuskegee allegory about it. One of the grand kids was the Young Avengers, for chrissake!

I don’t know, man. I think Marvel need to take a step back and figure why things were so good back in the day. Why the Ultimate universe was so successful and then why it wasn’t. I think they need to get some fresh blood in those executive chairs, cats with actual vision and a very poignant, very innovative story to tell because what I’m getting now feels a lot like that Extreme nonsense I got right before everything fell apart. The art might be better but the narratives are not. What I got with Secret Wars II feels a lot like what I got with the Clone Saga or Identity Crisis and them sh*ts were terrible. Legacy has a ton of potential but if it’s just a way to bring actual Jean Grey back from the dead, you can keep that sh*t. Give me back Wolverine. Let Laura and her father have some adventures. It feels like a crime Gabby hasn’t met her grandpa. Give me back Pete and MJ. You’ve already taken his daughter, first love, and uncle. At least let the guy have his wife. Give me back Doom and Valeria. The potential those two have together is profound and vastly untapped. Look, I get it. I’m pining for a bygone era.

Times are changing and this SJW sh*t is becoming the status quo. If you want to exist in this society, you have to embrace that sh*t to an extent. All I’m saying is don’t be so heavy handed with it. Have some tact. Use a deft touch. It‘s not difficult to be inclusive without being obnoxious about it or ruining entire character histories for a year or two of upped sales. Marvel is actually hemorrhaging money at the moment because of this ridiculous turn in narrative. Marvel Studios is essentially holding them up. Those motherf*ckers are printing money for Disney. Actually, Marvel Comics only has to look as far as their cinema counterpart to get the blueprint. Spider-Man: Homecoming is how you traverse this new age of social wokeness. Those cats wrote an outstanding story, full of diversity and social commentary, and grounded it in a world that felt real. And they did it with excellent characterization and a true reverence for the source material. Homecoming felt more like Spider-Man than any of the other Spider-Man films and it kept true to the current social current effortlessly.

That’s how you write Spider-Man. That’s how you write, period. That’s how Marvel Comics needs to write if they want to salvage their company. Hell, Logan is another great example. So are both of the Guardian films. Pretty sure Ragnarok is another but that remains to be seen. It’s wild to me that films, created for the sole purpose of getting scratch, cobbled together by a committee of producers and executives, can create something that has more depth, scope, vision, and soul than the motherf*ckers entrusted with the goddamn source material, themselves. That says so much about the people in charge of my beloved Marvel comics and what it says depresses the f*ck out of me.

[redvalravn]

Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation War - Chapter Two: Hamburger University

When President Eisenhower of the old USA visited Dartmouth in the 1950s, he said it looked exactly the way a college ought to…those were the days when art was defined as whatever was ugly or shocking or out of place, rather than what was beautiful.

Art is supposed to be expressive, not just beautiful. The best art might highlight ugliness or use it to say something profound. William Lind strikes me as someone who has awful taste in art.

Professor Sanft had retired from the German department in 2012. He was driven out by the weirdos who then populated college faculties –the feminists, freaks, and phonies who had replaced learning with politics. I found him at a house in Hanover, which turned out to be not his residence but the college-in-hiding, otherwise known as the Martin Institute. It seemed some conservative alumni, recognizing that the barbarians were within the gates of their alma mater, had bought a house in town, brought in Professor Sanft and a few other genuine scholars, and were offering Dartmouth students the courses the college would no longer teach, like the great books of Western civilization.

Sounds cult-y.

The philosophy he teaches the author’s Mary Sue is a good indicator of why he was unpopular and makes one sympathetic to the feminists, freaks, and phonies. 

The Professor asks Mary Sue what he thinks an education is. It’s not getting a degree, that’s just credentialing. It may help you get a job, but real education leads you out beyond where you are, in terms of your understanding of life, the universe, and everything. He says that without the songs and stories of our Western culture, we are impoverished, Luftmenschen—German for “airheads.”

Our Western culture. Meaning white, male, Protestant Christian culture.

Mary Sue loves history, especially military history. Guess what William Lind has a Master’s degree in?

“In the Marine Corps,” I said, “I saw that people who hadn’t read much military history could only follow processes, which they learned by rote. They could not understand the situation they were in. They had no context.”

“That’s an insight most Dartmouth students don’t have,” said the professor. “And it is what I’m talking about, on a larger scale. Just as your fellow Marines could not understand a military situation, so you can’t understand your situation in the war for our culture. Literally, you can’t see your place—situ—in it.”

Mary Sue is soooo much smarter than the other Dartmouth sheeple.

For a guy who loves military history, he sure tends to insult the US Marines often.

It’s really weird that in the time this scene takes place, in 2016, after Black Lives Matter got started, LGBTQ marriage was nationally legalized, and Donald Trump’s candidacy brought the urban vs. rural culture clash into the public spotlight, Mary Sue has no clue about the concept of a culture war. Granted, this was published in 2014, but political correctness has been around a lot longer than that.

Chick Tracts frequently start this way. The protagonist is put in a monumentally exaggerated situation that wouldn’t happen in reality, and then is completely ignorant of the world around him so the Christian/Alt-right Obi-Wan can impart their propaganda.

Professor Sanft says Western culture is under attack, and that the universities, entertainment industry, and many politicians are “active and conscious agents in its destruction.” Code-words such as racism, sexism, and homophobia are the sounds of the worms gnawing at the foundation. So if you call someone out on their racism, sexism, or homophobia, you’re actively and consciously destroying Western culture. That’s nice.

The Professor gives Mary Sue a book to read called Smiling Through the Cultural Catastrophe, and tells him to watch a video documentary on the Frankfurt school on TraditionalRight.com.    

What a surprise, both these things are real. Cultural Catastrophe’s synopsis seems academic enough and not quite like an obvious alt-right shill as this book’s synopsis did, though it’s probably just more subtle. TraditionalRight.com is William Lind’s own site, with his own blog. You can guess the content. There’s one interesting post where he advocates that the hard-leftist cities in culturally traditional states such as Portland should secede from their states and become free cities. He does say that Donald Trump “is rapidly being relegated to the role of the crazy uncle who lives in the attic.” So at least we agree on one thing.

Mary Sue asks about the Frankfurt school, “Is that McDonald’s Hamburger University?”

Pfffft. I’m not sure if that was meant to be a serious question on his part. It’s definitely the book’s attempt at humor.  

In an article for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Bill Berkowitz describes Lind as a key proponent and popularizer of the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory--a theory which alleges that a cabal of Jewish-German philosophers have seized control over American culture and have been using that control to systematically subvert American values. Because the supposed architects of the putative Frankfurt School plot are Jewish, and because many proponents of the theory emphasize the supposed conspirators' Judaism or even blame Judaism for the conspiracy, Berkowitz and the SPLC characterize the Frankfurt School conspiracy theory as anti-Semitic.

“Political correctness” in the author’s, and Professor Sanft’s, worldview, is a Marxist conspiracy created by Jews.

Of COURSEEEEEEE this guy is German. There’s no description of him (or of anyone, anywhere), but I imagine he looks like this.

[smokeybrandreviews]

Disappointment

I love comics. I do. I’ve loved them since I was a small boy. I remember fondly, journeys to my local comic shop before it closed. I remember buying first editions of Aliens versus Predator, Alien: Earth War, The Killing Joke and those three issues of Amazing Spider-Man where Carnage debuted. That panel where Pete realizes Carnage left him a message in his own blood? Chilling. I remember the dour feeling I got when I first witnessed Miller’s bleak, almost nihilistic , take on Batman with his masterpiece, The Dark Knight returns. I remember the jubilation as I scanned the pages upon pages of graphic violence in McFarlane’s Spawn for the first time. The Violator fast became one of my all-time favorites Comic villains. I watched the comic bubble grow and grow until it burst and the fall of an entire industry toward the late 90s, early 00’s. I remember the cringe worthy, poorly written, maxi-events born distinctly from that ridiculous “extreme everything” epoch of the mid 90s. I was excited when the industry rebounded on the back of epic storytelling and art that was head and shoulders above what I had as a youth, in the late 00s, early 10s. Even now, I pick up any one of the Bat books DC is shilling and I am wildly impressed. Capullo’s run, in particular, has been a creative and narrative refreshment. I’m going to miss him when he’s gone. I love comics as much as I love film, anime, manga, and f*cking pancakes. My geek card is legit and punched, particularly for Marvel Comics.

I love a good Marvel book. Don’t get me wrong, I can dig a DC outing, I rather enjoyed Judas Contract and Death in the Family in particular, but Marvel always felt real to me. DC comics was escapism. They were Gods pretending to be human in my eyes, the ideal way to live. That made sense to me as I grew older because they were created in a time where escapism was needed. Most of the groundwork for DC was laid in the 30s. WWII was beginning to rear it’s ugly head and there was a necessity for the American populace to have a place to divert their attention to fantastic tales in order to distract from the horrific realities of the world.  Marvel was born in the sixties. They’re a product of one of the most socially tumultuous times in out history. Marvel heroes are people thrust into godhood. They have to learn how to be heroes because they are inherently flawed, they are inherently human. There are no Superman allegories here, no perfect specimens to light the way for humanity. Nah, their cast was a cast of assholes just like the rest of us, just trying to stay above water. Only they can shoot f*cking lasers from their eyes sometimes. While DC relegated their more socially experimental or controversial stories to the oblivion of Vertigo or Elseworlds, Marvel embraced them. Reed Richards became an emotionally distant asshole. Tony Stark became a functioning alcoholic. The allegorical comparison of Mutants being black people struggling for human rights during the civil unrest of the 60s was not lost on anyone with a brain. I loved that Marvel let their heroes be human, first. I loved that they made mistakes and that those mistakes had real consequences. I loved that I could look at a comic and see myself, in both demeanor and ethnicity. Spider-Man is my all time favorite comic character. I wrote about this before but I WAS Pete as a kid and I think that’s why he’s so endearing. He is the best of that Marvel lot and epitomizes the genius Stan, John, and Jack had when they crafted the most endearing literary universe in the last century.

The fact that i love Marvel so much is why I am hurting with the direction they have decided to take with all of this SJW nonsense. If you know Marvel’s history, if you’ve read their books, then you know they were already one of the most progressive companies out there. I mean, they’re genesis was one steeped in social awakening! Hell, I’m not even mad Marvel is shoehorning all of this PC propaganda in their books or killing off characters I love (**cough**Wolverine**cough**), or subsisting on year-long maxi events or allowing Slott to ruin Spider-Man! Actually, I am livid about that Slott nonsense but I’ll get to that. I’m not mad Thor is a woman. She is a great character and a breath of fresh air in a narrative that was growing a bit stale for me. Jane Foster being Thor gave way to The Unworthy Thor story line, which is probably the best written Thor arc I have ever read. I’m not mad Mockingbird is a feminist. How can she not be? I rather enjoyed Spider-Island and that little tease at the end with MJ and Pete? That made my heart flutter. Speaking of, my favorite book at the moment is Renew Your Vows. Goddamn do I miss Pete and MJ and that book just reminds me of everything that could have been. F*cking Slott, man… I ADORE the direction they’ve taken Talon (X-23 and the current Wolverine for those of you who don’t know Laura’s actual X-Men code name) and i even like a little of that whole Cyclops fiasco fallout. A little bit, not all of it. There are a few things SJW Marvel has done well, their increasing diversity is a big one, but it feels like those good things pale in comparison to the issue, I think, that is crippling Marvel; The writing is mostly sh*t now.

SJW Marvel feels like they’ve traded actual, inspired, storytelling for “Woke” gimmicks and a pandered slathering of social commentary. There are too many soap boxes now and not enough passion in crafting a compelling narrative. Dan Slott (I told you I’d get to this asshat) is a perfect example of this bullsh*t. Bro has taken Spider-Man and basically turned him into Tony Stark. He’s erased, literally erased by having Pete and MJ cut a deal with the goddamn devil, their marriage and all of the history they’ve had together. In the process, he’s ruined Mary Jane as a character and that sucks. Well, Joe Queseda did but Slott has perpetuated this bullsh*t and treated SPider-Man as little more than a goddamn fan fiction. His run on Amazing has regressed Spider-man back to those harrowing and swinging days of being a College Freshman but with a multi-billion dollar tech company. For a second there, I even think Peter was an international spy or some sh*t. It’s wild nonsense that is just north of power fantasy and it’s stupid! What happened to the great tales we got like Kraven’s Last Hunt or Torment? Why do I have to sit through The Superior Spider-Man?? F*ck, then there’s THAT fuckery. Doctor Octopus is literally a Spider-man clone now? He is, and I am not sh*tting you right now, living in a perfect clone of Peter Parker, powers and all. But he leads Hydra or some sh*t. We’ll circle back around to that in a second, let me tell you, but first, this whole Fantastic Four bullsh*t. I liked Secret Wars II. I thought it was interesting that Doom finally got his wish and became a f*cking god. I thought his characterization in that whole event was brilliant. What I didn’t like? Marvel using that event to essentially erase the Fantastic Four. I liked Sue. She was a great character and had grown considerably over the years. All of that, gone. More to the point, I loved Valeria and her interactions with Doom. Those few books where she actually plays Robin and conscious to Doom’s villainy are spectacular. Marvel essentially nixing that relationship just to scorn Fox feels a lot like Slott nixing MJ because he thinks Peter should be a hoe. It’s all stupid and disheartening. But the fact that these “creators”, cats that have been entrusted with character beloved by generations of people, are simply doing sh*t they want on a whim because, and i’ve seen said creators post sh*t like his on the Facebooks, fans don’t know what they want. They have to tell us what we want. F*ck you, bro.

Both circumstances are f*cking ridiculous and do nothing but leave the characters and company less. And it’s not just these instances. Riri Williams has a ton of potential but sucks and everyone hates her because she’s written as a smart-mouthed b*tch. America Chaves is another missed opportunity! A latina lesbian who ha the power to Super Boy-Prime punch her way around the galaxy? Sign me up! Wait, never mind, because the people writing your book are lousy. And, oh my god, what did they do to my Carol Danvers?? I LOVE Ms. Marvel. Her stint in Might Avengers and Heroic Age solidified that she could be the premiere female Marvel hero. In my eyes, Carol is their Wonder Woman and, for a time, she was on her way. Now? After all of these SJW brandings and agendas have made her power absorbing Hitler, basically, not so much. They’ve destroyed her character, assassinating any real progress she’s made as a person, in an effort to portray her as a feminist icon. She was already one of those! She was becoming more than that. She was transcending that whole Rule 63 action of her origins. She was becoming real. Now, she’s a f*cking cartoon, worse off than when she flew around in the stomach bearing bikini, pretending to be Mar-Vell’s side kick or lover or whatever.

Carol Danvers doesn’t have to be the new version of Captain Hydra And then there’s THAT debacle. Secret Empire was a goddamn cash grab and the biggest farce I have read out of Marvel since Onslaught. At least Onslaught had a dope antagonist. A villain that was connected to the lore and true it’s roots. Cap is a Nazi? Really? Get the f*ck out of here with that nonsense. And the ending? Just a bit too fan service-y for me. There was a living deus ex machina. Seriously, ClassicCap was pulled out of nowhere, by the power of a sentient cosmic cube, to punch out HydraCap. The allegory is just so heavy handed, it’s borderline insulting to my intelligence as the reader. I cannot stress how ridiculous this entire situation was, this entire stupid goddamn “event”. Also, the f*ck was up with Dead No More? Didn’t we learn our lesson about clones with Ben Reily and that whole clusterf*ck of a Clone Saga? Why are we even doing this nonsense again?? SO not only are your new arcs stupid, but you are rehashing old, failed, ones as well? Really Marvel?

It’s not just the writing though, either. The art for most of these books is atrocious. Anything Olivier Coipel or Esad Ribic touch with a pencil is god’s work and Kris Anka is one of my favorites but the redesigns of some of those classic outfits are terrible. I mean, Spider-Man’s tech suit is ass. Riri’s armor looks like a knock off Rescue mod, and Foster’s Thor comes across as a hodge-podge of nonsense. That classic Ms. Marvel Leotard is my favorite of her outfits but I get the upgrade to her current garb. Running around in stilettos with your ass out doesn’t really bode well for gaining confidence that you can protect the general public from giant, interdimensional, crab monsters or rouge government assassi-bots. What i don’t like is how masculine Carol’s drawn now. Chick isn’t She-Hulk, yo. Why you got her so yoked? Carol Danvers was a vision of beauty, legit model caliber. She’s always been fit, yeah, but there was still a softness to her. Just a touch, I’d say. Now, chick is a rock of f*cking angst granite. Not only is she poorly written but her overall design is sh*t! It’s like, goddamn Marvel! You want to push Ms. Marvel to the front, give me something to work with. How am I supposed to root for an ugly, b*tchy, incompetent who constantly makes decisions that get people killed? How is THIS “Captain Marvel” a leader?? Bro, speaking of “leaders”, Sam Wilson Cap is ridiculous. That sh*t feels like blatant tokenism, particularly when there have already been several black captain Americas in Marvel history. There was this whole Tuskegee allusion about it. One of the grand kids was in the Young Avengers, for chrissake!

I don’t know, man. I think Marvel needs to take a step back and figure why things were so good back in the day. Why the Ultimate universe was so successful and then why it wasn’t. I think they need to get some fresh blood in those executive chairs, cats with actual vision and a very poignant, very innovative, story to tell because what I’m getting now feels a lot like that Extreme nonsense I got right before everything fell apart. The art might be better but the narratives are not. What I got with Secret Wars II feels a lot like what I got with the Clone Saga or Identity Crisis or Future Imperfect and them sh*ts were terrible. Legacy has a ton of potential but if it’s just a way to bring actual Jean Grey back from the dead, you can keep that sh*t. Give me back Wolverine. Let Laura and her father have some adventures. It feels like a crime Gabby hasn’t met her grandpa. Give me back Pete and MJ. You’ve already taken his daughter, first love, and uncle. At least let the guy have his wife. Give me back Doom and Valeria. The potential those two have together is profound and vastly untapped. Look, I get it. I’m pining for a bygone era but what an era it was!

Times are changing and this SJW sh*t is becoming the status quo. If you want to exist in this society, you have to embrace that sh*t to an extent. All I’m saying is don’t be so heavy handed with it. Have some tact. Use a deft touch. It‘s not difficult to be inclusive without being obnoxious about it or ruining entire character histories for a year or two of upped sales. Marvel Comics is actually hemorrhaging money at the moment because of this ridiculous turn in narrative. Marvel Studios is essentially holding them up. Those motherf*ckers are printing money for Disney. Actually, Marvel Comics only has to look as far as their cinema counterpart to get the blueprint. Spider-Man: Homecoming is how you traverse this new age of social wokeness. Those cats wrote an outstanding story, full of diversity and social commentary, and grounded it in a world that felt real. And they did it with excellent characterization as well as a true reverence for the source material. Homecoming felt more like Spider-Man than any of the other Spider-Man films and it kept true to the modern social current effortlessly.

That’s how you write Spider-Man. That’s how you write, period. That’s how Marvel Comics needs to write if they want to salvage their company. Hell, Logan is another great example. So are both of the Guardian films. Pretty sure Ragnorok is another and Black Panther was all about that sh*t. It’s wild to me that films, created for the sole purpose of getting scratch, cobbled together by a committee of producers and executives, can create something that has more depth, scope, vision, and soul than the motherf*ckers entrusted with the legacy of goddamn source material, themselves. That says so much about the people in charge of my beloved Marvel comics and what it says depresses the f*ck out of me.