#it's stupid because it's not that deep at all literally just poorly written childrens books about feral cats with religion and politics

[yisanged]

i want to say i miss warriors but it's not even true. like i think about it and getting back into it on a fairly regular basis but that basis is only when i'm in the tranches. like i'm not a feelings guy so i can't always tell immediately when i'm in a worse place than usual but one tell is that i think about reading warriors again. it's literally like an addiction i think i'm free but as soon as i'm in a bad spot i turn towards it again

[thegreymoon]

Ever Night

How does she always make the worst decisions 😑

I am trying SO HARD to stan but she makes it so difficult 😒

***

These people are the only ones I stand behind on this show. The rest are all getting on my very last nerve. 

I am so sick of the Tang Emperor, he has no spine and no common sense and this pitiful attempt to give the Empress a story arc of her own was beyond underwhelming. Like, choose your position and stick to it, ffs!

***

LMAOOOO, weren’t you trying to murder her, like, 2 seconds ago? 

When will this show go back to being intelligent 😫

***

I mean, he’s not wrong, but who the hell wrote this script? 

=> the Elder sneaks in to murder the Emperor

=> the Elder tries to murder the Empress when she won’t aid him in killing the Emperor

=> the Elder gets the Emperor to agree to his terms with severe political, religious and military repercussions with no real leverage whatsoever except pointing a stick at the Empress

=> (the royal guard is somehow unbothered and nowhere to be seen)

=> the Elder is suddenly worried about the state of the royal marriage again and apparently concerned about Empress’ happiness after she unrepentantly abandoned their people in a frozen wasteland to live a life of luxury and he tried to murder her for it

=> the princess does the only logical thing there is to do when an assassin infiltrates the goddamn palace to threaten the lives of her royal father and his wife

=> (the captain of the royal guard appears and remains unbothered)

=> Emperor: “Tell my daughter to go away, nothing to see here, it’s not an assassination attempt, just a tiny squabble with my in-laws!”

=> the Elder points out the absurdity of this entire situation as if we’re now supposed to laugh off this whole debacle of a script and write off literal attempted regicide on a quip from a quirky old man who ~loves~ his daughter even though he just tried to kill her

Me: ................................................... 🙄🙄

***

LMAO, and since there was obviously no logical resolution to this whole damn ridiculous mess, the writers decided to conclude the entire shitty arc by having the Elder commit suicide for no good reason via terrible special effects 🤣🤣

I cannot with this nonsense 🤣🤣

***

I’m becoming more and more sympathetic to Li Yu. I mean, she’s insufferable and a brat, but her father is just so... worthless. He replaced her mother with his mistress (and could do it with no repercussions because he’s the most powerful man in the country), had her married off to a feral tribe when she voiced her objections and is now threatening to kill her. 

Yes, she’s cold-blooded, somewhat selfish and self-centred and has a massive blind spot when it comes to her sadistic idiot brother, but her father is a really shitty parent to all of his children. 

I feel like the narrative keeps trying to make the Emperor a sympathetic, honorable character but he’s just so self-serving, spineless and cowardly and all he does all day is angst about how hard his life is. Also, there is no honour to be found anywhere. It’s canon that he’s more than willing to let corruption go unchecked and his family to get away with murder, torture and a bunch of other bullshit, as long as it benefits him. Chao Xiaoshu was right to wash his hands of all his filth. 

***

Ha! Here we go! Finally, we get to the bottom of his age!

So, he was 8 yrs old when Xia Hou attempted to kill him, fifteen years passed from that point until his arrival in the capital, which made him 23 yrs old at the time, and at least a year has passed since then. That means he is at least 24 right now. 

@dangermousie​ I suppose they upped his age because they cut the transmigration part and there is zero chance a four-year-old is going to survive killing to stay alive and taking care of a baby at the same time. Even an eight-year-old is pushing it. 

***

Every single scene with that Mo woman is such pure nonsense. Elementary school villains trying to boost her relevance, nonsense all over the place. I am losing braincells by the moment. 

***

OMFG, this stupidity is never-ending 😑😑

It is really, really hard to be invested in the story when the stakes are this manufactured. 

***

When the writing is so bad, it literally gives you second hand embarrassment. 

***

All the hate 🤮

The fact that Sang Sang is waiting for him at home, thinking of him every minute of every day, and here he is, sowing his wild oats, just gets to me on a visceral level. Fuck this entire collection of (poorly written) tropes with a cactus. It absolutely ruins stories for me and this one is also very much ruined at this point. 

***

I am beyond pissed off. Crystal Yuan is now firmly on my no-watch list.

***

This is how this useless character is described on Wikipedia: Gentle and delicate, her pureness is reflected in her cultivation as well as her honest attitude toward love.

Nauseating 🤮🤮

***

Exactly! The note is for Sang Sang, not you!

Go fuck yourself.

***

“When will he write a little note just for me?”

Bitch, never! At least I hope. 

***

LMAOOO, “Do you know how many girls I have lining up for me?”

I very much doubt anyone is lining up for your stank rapist ass. 

***

LMAOOOO, he is such a mood 🤣🤣

This is my exact face when some moron starts rambling about Heaven and Hell, how the Devil is coming to bring about the end of the world and how we must kill all those who practice the same faith a bit differently because some old man proclaiming himself as an authority figure says so and claims it’s written in a book in an ancient language that I can’t personally read and have never even seen 🙄🙄

Come to your senses already, Ning Que! Is this sheltered fool really who you want to be in love with? Ask yourself, is she really wise, deep and intelligent, or is she just rich and conventionally attractive? 

Also, let’s not get into the idiocy of her old man shifu sending this stupid child into the wilderness in the middle of a war to look for the original copy of a holy book that every single power faction is also looking for and will definitely kill to obtain. And that is before we even get to the two of them travelling alone, her wearing a pristine white outfit, and apparently carrying no supplies with her. Like???????  

I want to go back to the first episodes when this show was still good 😭😭

[oldadastra]

Letter to Lucasfilm

So, I’ve written a letter to Lucasfilm. It could be better, but this is what came out this afternoon. I hope others who are writing will share what they are putting into the mail. I was trying to be concise, but it still ran to several pages. Find it in its entirety below the cut:

***

Lucasfilm, Ltd. Attn: Fan Mail PO Box 29901 San Francisco, CA 94129-0901

December 30, 2019

Lucasfilm/Disney:

I am writing to express my anger, shock, disappointment and deep sadness with the final installment of the Star Wars saga, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

I was ten in 1977 when the original film was released and have loved Star Wars ever since. I was thrilled by the reopening of the saga in The Force Awakens, and delighted by the excellent script, rich visual storytelling, nuanced character development, and thematic direction of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.

Disney took on a sacred trust when it acquired Lucasfilm. Star Wars is deeply important to many people, and if you couldn’t do justice to the characters and themes of the saga, I’d argue that you had no business being involved in these stories. There is so much Disney/Lucasfilm got wrong in Rise of Skywalker, I’m struggling to gather my thoughts or express them coherently, but here goes:

Ben Solo. You created the most compelling character in the new trilogy by destroying the happy ending of the original trilogy. I was willing to go along on the ride Abrams and Kasdan began in The Force Awakens, because the fate of Ben Solo felt like it mattered. The questions raised in the new films: the nature of good and evil, the degree to which one’s family legacy defines a person, whether a one can atone for past sins; all of it felt alive and urgent in the person of Ben, a character I loved like one of my own children from the moment we so traumatically met him in The Force Awakens. His story was the beating heart of the new trilogy. His story is the one that mattered. His life was the one to be saved.

Ben solo was never an exposition device, cool villain, or disposable baddie to me. He was Han and Leia’s only child; loved, targeted, broken, lost.

The Rise of Skywalker redeems Ben Solo in the final act of the film, only to destroy him. Was it always your plan to kill the last Skywalker in the final installment of this story, to render the overarching message of all nine films as tragedy? If so, I wish I’d known this was your intent; I would never have engaged with these stories and made an emotional investment in them. If tragedy was your goal, that was certainly your choice to make, but I’d argue that you owed it to the audience and the cast to do a better job of it.

For example: You give us evidence that Han and Leia’s child was targeted by evil old men from before his birth. It’s a disturbingly explicit allegory of grooming and child abuse.

You give Ben Solo a backstory which implies he is guilty of vile, Anakin-style crimes against other young people, coding him as a school shooter, and then chose to exonerate him of this crime in a comic book, where the general audience will never know he was innocent. It’s a form of character assassination.

You consigned Ben Solo to the darkness for almost the entirety of three films, then denied him his voice in the final acts of his own story. “Ow?” The only words the redeemed Ben Solo will ever speak. Apalling.

You brought back Palpatine for this film (arguably rendering the message of the first six films meaningless), identified the Emperor as Ben’s tormentor all along, then denied Ben the opportunity to fight his enemy in the final act of the film.  Rise of Skywalker literally throws Ben Solo into a pit, and forces him to climb out alone and unaided while Rey is whispered to by “all the jedi,” offering her words of encouragement. It’s grotesque.

I’m getting lost in rage and sadness again here, so let me just say that even if you inexplicably didn’t care about the last Skywalker in the Skywalker saga, you have done a grave disservice to Adam Driver in your treatment of his character in this these films.  Perhaps you’ve heard of Driver’s non-profit organization, Arts in the Armed Forces? He’s deeply committed to the importance of stories as a way to make meaning out of the inexpressible. Did he really sign on to this project thinking that the final message of his character would be to say that even if you are able to come back from the darkness, your final act must be to die? That imperfect children don’t deserve compassion, forgiveness, life? You owe Mr. Driver an apology, but you can never really atone for what you’ve done to him.  

You ended a nine-film, forty-two year saga with all the Skywalkers dead, and a Palpatine the last one standing. You spent three films tormenting Han and Leia’s child, only to kill him in the final act.  What you did to Ben Solo (and frankly to us, who loved him) feels more like a horror story than anything else. In my dreams, I walk right into your offices and flip over tables.

There’s a lot more I could accuse Rise of Skywalker of bungling, but I assume you are hearing this feedback from others besides me, so I will summarize:

Rey Palpatine. Was is all about the midiclorians after all? By making her Palpatine’s granddaughter, you deny Rey everything that made her special; you deny her agency, and you negate the beautiful message I thought you were trying to communicate in the first two films with Rey Nobody: that the force belongs to us all, and that anyone can be a hero

The erasure of Rose Tico. It’s difficult to interpret this as anything but a capitulation to a loud, racist, and misogynist element of the fandom. It’s a very bad look, Disney. Please pay attention to the message you are sending.

Character development in general and a truly horrible ending: Rey goes back into her child-like costume, Ben Solo spent much of the film forced back into his stupid mask. Ben disappears at the end with no one to mourn him. Rey ends the film alone in a desert wasteland.

Rise of Skywalker is the most bleak, hopeless, and depressing Star Wars film ever made. As days go by, it’s becoming clear that it was also poorly written and edited. These stories matter to us, and we pay close attention to them. Disrespect us at your peril.

I don’t expect anyone will ever read this missive, or care at all about what an old shepherd on a mountainside thought about the execution of your multi-billion dollar movies. This is a personal exercise in catharsis as much as anything.

But here are a few notes in a language you might understand. I made some quick calculations about how much money I’ve spent on Star Wars over the past four years, and I’m sharing that with you now.

Movie tickets:  I’m one of those people who sees movies I love more than once (I saw Empire Strikes Back eighty-one times in the theater!). I saw The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi at least ten times each. I’m not counting the cost of tickets for my extended family, whom I brought along to a number of screenings, or tickets for birthday party guests we treated to these movies. My teenaged daughter came along for all the screenings I am including, so I calculate I spent about $360 on tickets. We also bought tickets to Rogue One and Solo, so it was actually more, but you get the idea.

Books, tie-ins, DVDs, merchandise: I invested in The Art of the Force Awakens and The Art of the Last Jedi books, as well as at least one SW Visual Dictionary. I bought DVDs of the films of course, and CDs of John Williams’ beautiful scores. I bought and read a number of books; Boodline and the Leia novel, The Force Awakens novelization and Junior novelization, Aftermath, and a couple others whose titles escape me. At least seven action figures. Toy light sabers for me and my daughter. Posters. T Shirts. I know I’m not remembering everything, but it adds up to an expenditure of at least $347 in books and other Star Wars merchandise.

Star Wars Celebration: I splurged on passes for my daughter and I to attend Star Wars Celebration in Chicago this past spring. It cost me about $400, and a last-minute family emergency meant we were unable to attend, but the tickets were non-refundable, so it was money I spent on Star Wars nonetheless.

Total: $1,107

A laughably small amount to you guys, I’m sure. Perhaps a contrast is useful:

Total amount I have spent (tickets for my daughter and I on opening night) on Rise of Skywalker: $22.

Total amount I plan to spend on Disney Lucasfilm merchandise in the future: $0

I invested quite a lot of my time in Star Wars over the past four years. I’ve written thousands of words in essays, appreciations and analyses (mostly on Tumblr), where I amassed a modest following of just over a thousand people. I’m sure I occasionally bored my friends and family by going on and on about Star Wars. This kind of ‘work’ has no dollar value of course. I will say that it was great fun while it lasted, though I feel foolish in retrospect, remembering all the times I came to your defense, arguing that the saga was in good hands, that you had a plan; that you were going to tell a good story.

Sadly, I don’t think you can fix the damage you’ve done to the Galaxy Far Far Away with The Rise of Skywalker. You made this film, made your choices, and put it out into the world. I have no control over where you go from here, but as a person who has loved Star Wars since I was a child, I beg you to take some time to reflect before making another Star Wars film.

You’ve broken so many hearts. Mine was one.

Andrea ____

...my full name and address, blah blah, I live in Vermont

[santaclausdeadindian]

Sorry for doing it this way, I think OP deleted their post or blocked me like a mature, balanced person would, so I have to tag you in

@mr-laugh

Oh boy, lot to unpack here.

So you didn’t even know there were that many subgenres of fantasy, one of the most popular classifications of fiction on the planet... And you think you know enough to tell ANYBODY what classic fantasy is?

And where exactly I attempted to do that, huh?

If you don’t even know the most common subgenres of this vast pool of fiction, why are you jumping into this discussion? You just admitted you don’t know anything!

There is no discussion, there is a stupid ass post. Don't flatter yourself, you don't know jack shit.

Me not knowing what exactly are the precize subgenres of a genre of literature, which, btw, are completely arbitrary and for your information, sword&magic is a legitimate category, has absolutely nothing to do with what that post you were so keen on agreeing with above. It was you who said pretty much any classic fantasy is like that: some poorly written, self-indulgent and borderline racist.

Did ya read the link, buddy? Howard talked about knowing what burning black man smelled like. He was quite approving of these things! And the books are pretty racist, it’s not hard to see, unless you ain’t looking.

Yes, I started reading and by the end of the first paragraph I was convinced he was ahorribly racist man. And? Still doesn't change the fact, that for my 12 year old self, there was nothing racist about it. I definetly wasn't looking for it, that much you got right. If I'd read it again, I'm sure I'd catch on to it now, that I know what kind of asshole he was. So the implied racism would be there. You got a point for that.

Rugged individualism? It always amuses me how that argument always pops out of the mouths of guys who are aping what they’ve heard their buddies say. If ten thousand mouths shout “rugged individualism”, how individualistic are they?

Then you should amuse yourself by looking up why this thing crops up as of late. It's coming from certain, supremely racist yet unaware of it publications that claim ridiculous shit like "rugged individualism" is a hallmark of white supremacy, among other, equally laughable things, like punctuality. It's a joke.

Again, I will give Howard to you, if someone that racist writes a black man saving the hero of the story, I bet there was something else still there to make it wrong.

Conan’s not some avatar of rugged individualism.

Uhm, yeah, he pretty much all that.

He’s as unreal and unrealistic as the dragons are,

It's called fantasy for a reason, buddy.

but more dangerous because White Men model their ideas of reality on Big Man Heroes like him;

Glad you are totally not racist, yo!!! It's such a relief that White Men are the only ones with this terrible behavior of looking up to larger than life, mythic superpeople and nobody else. Imagine what it would be like, if we would have some asshole from say, hindu indian literature massacering demons called Rakshassas, by the tens of thousands, or some bullshit japanese warlord would snatch out arrows from the air, or a chienese bodyguard would mow down hundreds of barbaric huns without dropping a sweat, or some middle eastern hero would fight literal gods and their magical beasts in some quest for eternal life.

it's a poison that weakens us, distracting us from actually trying to solve the world’s issues, or banding together to deal with shit.

This is what you just said. It's up to the white man, to get their shit together, be not racist and solve the world's problems, because those poor other people's just can't do it. If we would just not be oh, so racist, then China would surely stop with the genocides they are doing now, or blowing more than half the greenhouse emissions into the athmosphere, the muslims would stop throwing their gays from rooftops or ramming trucks into crowds and would just start treating women as equals, India's massive rape problem would be gone, subsaharan African would be magically bereft of the host of atrocities committed there on a daily, yeah, you sure have that nonracism down, buddy!

A rugged individualist would be smart enough to realize that even the most individualistic person needs others; no man’s an island, and a loner is easier to kill.

Individualism doesn't mean at all what you think it means, it's a cluster of widely differeing philosophies that puts the individual ahead of the group or state, it's ranging from anarchism to liberalism and is also has nothing to do with my point.

Central Europe?  What, Germany?  Because let me tell you, historically they are SUPER concerned about race!

Germany traditionally considered western european, central europe would be the people stuck between them and the russians, to put it very loosely. We are equally nonplussed by the self-flagellating white guilt complex and the woe me victim complex of the west. We did none of the shit those meanie white people did to the nonwhites and suffered everyting any poc ever did and then some. We don't give a shit about your color, we care about what culture you are from and if you respect our values.

I’m an American from a former Confederate state; trust me, race is everything.  It always is.

No it really isn't. How old are you? Asking without condescension, genuinly curious, because if you are in your low twenties at most, it's understandable why you think like this.

See that hike? Do you know what happened at that time that made virtually all american media suddenly go all in with racism?

Occupy Wall Street, that's what. It's a brilliant way to sow victimhood and hate and desperation amongst the people who have one common enemy, the powers that be, the banking sector, the politicians, the megacorporations.

Can't really blame you if you are in your early 20's at most, you grew up with this bullshit hammered into you. If you are older, step out of your echochamber please!

If you actually believe, that mankind doesn't progress naturally towards a more accepting society purely on the merit of there being more good people than bad and sharing a similar living with all the hardships in life, seeing that our prejudices inherited by our parents are baseless, that's how we progress, not virtue signalling courses and regressive policies. I was raised as any other kid, I had a deep resentment towards the neighbouring nations, I said vile, racist shit against people who I actually share a lot of genes with, of which fact I was in deep denial about, and then as I gradually got exposed more and more actual people of these groups, I started to realize I was wrong and everybody should be judged by their individual merits. It works throughout the generations, my grandma was thought songs about Hitler and how all jews are evil in school, she legit thought all black people at least in Africa are cannibals and shit, my mother stillsays shit that would get her cancelled in the USA, and I will probably have a mixed race kid as we stand now.

This whole racism is an eternal problem is laughable and disingenuous and I am actually sorry for you that you feel like that.

Moving on. As for Dany, the “noble white girl sold to scary dark foreign man” is a very popular trope, especially in exploitation films, which Martin draws on much more heavily than most authors do.

No, he fucking doesn't. I already wrote a bunch of examples from the books you seeminly ignore willfully. First of all, she is sold to those olive skinned savages by a white man, who is a terrible, increadibly evil man. He want's to fuck the then 11-12 ish Dany so bad, she picks his slave most resembling her and rapes her repeatedly, "until the madness pass." He also maimes children and traines them as disposable slave spies by the hundreds. There is no boundaries colour here, GRRM prtrays all kinds of people as reprehensible, evil and disgusting. Just like you can find plenty of examples to the opposite.

What is he drawing from your exploitation movies exactly? He writes about the human anture, he writes about the human heart at war with itself, that's his central philosophy of writing.

ASOFAI is basically just a porn movie with complicated feudal politics obscuring it, which is probably why it worked so well as an HBO series (up until the last two seasons or so.)

There is no gratuitous sex scene in the books, the rapes are described as rapes, they are horrible, they are very shortly described and usually just alluded to.

The people commiting them are not put into generous lights and one of the single most harrowing stories hidden behind the grand happenings of the plot is a girl named Jeyne Poole, whose suffering although never shown, is very much pointed out, along with the hypocrisy of the people who only fight to try and save her, because they think her a different person.

Honestly, if you actually read the books and they came of to you as porn, you might want to do some soulsearching.Btw, the HBO series was a terrible adaptation, it immedietly started to go further and further from the books with every passing season and the showmakers made it very clear to everybody, that they didn't understand the very much pacifist and humanist themes of Martin. And neither did you.

We also get no indication Essos will eat it when Winter comes; hell, they seem to not know Winter exists, given the way people act, even though that is also unrealistic and weird.  Essos was just super badly designed, and Dany is a terribly boring character.

to be continued

[frasier-crane-style]

Cliches. Things that crop up with such frequency that an alert person can spot them coming a mile away. While cliches can be found in all walks of human endeavor, this month I'm going to talk about comic book plot cliches. My inspiration for addressing this topic comes from one of my favorite correspondents, Dean Shomshak of Gig Harbor, WA, who out of the blue sent me his list of candidates for the five biggest cliches found in Marvel Comics. I'm going to quote him verbatim now, then I'll be back with my own list. (Who says writing a monthly column has to be hard?) Take it away, Dean... '1. The U.S. government is up to no good. Okay so the government really does do a lot of bad stuff, but it does good things, too. Some of the bad things are done from good (if mistaken) intentions. Why can't a government agent or agency be in the right once in a while? Even Sikorski, the most sympathetically presented government employee I can think of, keeps being forced into duty playing the heavy. 2. When mystics and technologists disagree, the mystics are proved right in the end. Alas, no matter how much I like Dr. Strange and other magical heroes, the plain truth is in real life mystics are often lunatics or fools. Several Nazi leaders were mystics. The dehumanizing Hindu caste system is based on mysticism. On the other hand, every improvement the modern age can claim over the Renaissance can be traced to solid scientific investigation. I would love to see a mystic be shown up by a scientist or technologist, just once. 3. Anyone who doesn't hate mutants is a latent mutant, or has a super-powered relative in the family. None of the mutant heroes has a human friend who's appeared more than twice in the last four years. The senator who disaproved of the Stryker Crusade turned out to be a latent mutant. The Power parents have super-powered children though they don't know it yet. Fortunately Chris Claremont, who built this cliche singlehandedly, may now be dismantling it. I'll be watching to see if he wimps out with Alistair and Alysdane Stuart in EXCALIBUR and X-MEN. 4. Mutants always talk about themselves as a separate species. 'Mutants and humans must learn to live together'-- not 'people with and without weird powers must learn to live together.' Talk about letting the opposition control the dialog. 5. Amerindians always call on the Great Spirit. Never mind up to 400 years of missionary work. American Indians are never ordinary Catholics or Presbyterians or Baptists-- and these do exist in real life. (Wyatt Wingfoot may be the exception, since I can't remember him showing any religious inclination at all.' Okay, I'm back. Neat list, huh? My second reaction after I read it (my first being 'Neat list, huh?') was didn't I make up a list of comic book cliches I wanted to avoid once? So I dug deep into my closet, skimming through idea notebook after idea notebook until I found it, a list of cliches I swore to avoid as a comic book writer. It's dated May 1976, the year I moved to New York, and two years before I was to write my first professional comic book. Here's what it said: 'As a comic book scripter, I vow to never write comic book stories that contain the following cliches: 1. A time travel story that undoes itself; where reality twists about such that at the end of the story nobody remembers doing any of the things in the story. Why do a story that doesn't make a difference? 2. A story where the villain is defeated when the hero or heroes somehow harness emotions, 'goodness', or some abstract value and bombard the villain with it. I hate that stuff. I don't really believe these values exist as literal, objective energies so they shouldn't be employed as if they were. 3. An alien invasion story where the aliens waltz down and want to: a) steal and deplete Earth's natural resources, be it animal, vegetable, mineral, plankton, water, etc. Any alien culture with the technology to transport billions of tons of whatever back to their world should be able to come up with an easier solution to whatever shortage they have. b) colonize, apparently unaware that four billion inhabitants already live here and have done a number on Earth's resources. And if they intend to exterminate the population first, what a stupid, messy, time-consuming job. Wouldn't it be easier to terraform Mars? c) destroy Earth for its energy. As if Earth were the only possible fuel source in the tri-planet area...! 4. Poorly motivated hero vs. hero battles. Poor motivations include simple misunderstandings, 'just testing to see if you were all you're reputed to be', and 'just wanted to make sure you were who you say you are'. 5. Stories where good triumphs simply because it is 'better' than evil. I don't think that's the way the world works, and it's a bad message to put in comics. A better message would be the one who works or tries the hardest wins. 6. Stories where villains don't take into account past defeats and haven't solved whatever shortcoming it was that allowed them to be defeated last time.' And that's my list. While this isn't particularly a list of Marvel cliches (hey, I didn't know what company I might write for at the time), I have read stories employing these cliches published by Marvel as well as by other companies. Looking back over them thirteen years later, I still stand by them all, though I just might have violated my 'poorly motivated hero vs. hero battle' cliche once or twice somewhere. Go ahead, somebody, make me a list of poorly motivated hero vs. hero fights in stories I've written-- I challenge you! What I'd like the rest of you to do is send me your list of annoying comic book cliches like good ol' Dean did. If I get enough good ones, I may devote a future column to the topic. Now I'm going to leave you this time with a quote I found scrawled in the inside front cover of the idea notebook I cribbed my cliche list from. I have no idea where I got it from since I didn't list the source. For all I know it may be original. Anyway, till next time, ponder this sentiment: 'A mutant deliberately creates conditions for himself so severe that he must either transform or become extinct.'

Mark Gruenwald

3. An alien invasion story where the aliens waltz down and want to: a) steal and deplete Earth's natural resources, be it animal, vegetable, mineral, plankton, water, etc. Any alien culture with the technology to transport billions of tons of whatever back to their world should be able to come up with an easier solution to whatever shortage they have. b) colonize, apparently unaware that four billion inhabitants already live here and have done a number on Earth's resources. And if they intend to exterminate the population first, what a stupid, messy, time-consuming job. Wouldn't it be easier to terraform Mars? c) destroy Earth for its energy. As if Earth were the only possible fuel source in the tri-planet area...!

1976, people...