#kryptonite factor

[skjam]

Comic Book Review: Adventure Comics #499

Comic Book Review: Adventure Comics #499 edited by Carl Gafford & Nicola Cuti I managed to find another issue of the digest-sized Adventure Comics from 1983. Let’s take a look at the treasures inside! Cover by Gil Kane “Plastic Man” (no chapter title) written by Len Wein, art by Joe Staton and Bob Smith features the obvious character. Plastic Man was Eel O’Brien, a petty criminal, before he…

[queenofbaws]

like wringing blood from a stone is a super serious fic about familial trauma and grey morality and coming to terms with your upbringing, i say to myself, blocking out yet another scene where a bunch of 40-60 yos talk about dressing up like bigfoot for profit

[headlesshorsemanxiii]

I suspect comic-book Madelyne Pryor (because I got into X-Men too late to know who Jean Grey was, until I started reading X-Factor) was the catalyst for my enduring love of redheads.

Also, how cool would it be to get an adaptation of The Inferno Saga?

X-MEN 97' - 1.03 | Fire Made Flesh Madelyne Pryor

[threewaysdivided]

compared to the other hero's in YJ how do you think Phantom stands up power wise. like Future Danny ripped the world apart and i know in some fanfiction that it is used as an indicator that he is high up there, but i'm interested in your thoughts.

This is an interesting question nonnie!

I generally agree with the idea that Phantom is in the upper-tier of crossover superhero powers, but I do have more specific thoughts so let’s break it down:

Danny’s power level

Just looking at the variety and strength of ghost-powers that Phantom displays in his show, I would put him in the higher rankings of most heroes when it comes to raw ability.  I alluded to this in my main DP x YJ Deathly Weapons fanfic, but to me Phantom shows signs of a pretty common power-scaling differential that happens when a solo-protagonist hero gets transplanted into an ensemble setting.  Within his own setting, Phantom had to be (or become) powerful enough to solve most problems/ fights all by himself – and some of those ghosts he ended up facing towards the end of his canon were impressively strong.  By comparison ensemble heroes are generally less-powerful because working as a collective means they don’t have the same need for aggressive self-sufficiency and also so that no one character upstages or outmodes the rest of the group from a writing perspective.

There’s also the nature of ghost powers.  Phantom needed to develop the raw strength to fill the role of solo combat heavy-hitter, but his base powers are versatile to the point of unsettling.  He has to physically fight against other ghosts because they have (and to some extent are immune to) the same abilities as him, but in a fight against other species he could potentially avoid, manipulate or exhaust an opponent with strategic use of invisibility/ intangibility/ overshadowing.

The back of Dinah’s neck prickled.  With flight to mask footsteps and intangibility rendering them undetectable by touch…  Nonthreatening as Phantom generally appeared, she was starting to understand why his kind had developed such an unsettling reputation.  The idea that a ghost could be present at any time - eavesdropping, spying, interfering - without any of them being the wiser was… disquieting to say the least. - Deathly Weapons, Chapter 17: Assessment

On top of that, he seems to be in a similar boat to Superman when it comes to physical weaknesses – he doesn’t have that many, and they’re often quite specific or hard-to-find.   The most easily-exploitable one is that Danny can run out of power, be slowly starved of ectoplasm or be knocked unconscious; all of which would forcibly revert him back to his weaker human state.  After that, he’s vulnerable to certain magics and ghostly-artefacts, which are more likely to be accessible to various DC/ Marvel heroes (although they might not know exactly which spells/items will be most effective or why).  Beyond those two, most of his weaknesses need to be specifically known about and actively sought out – anti-ecto-technology is obtainable but not mainstream, blood blossoms naturally repel/hurt ghosts but they seem to be rare in nature (or even extinct in the modern day) and then assuming you acknowledge Phantom Planet there’s ectoranium which is basically ghost-Kryptonite in rarity (and possibly even the same mineral in DP x DC settings depending on the crossover).  Much like with Superman, the most reliable ways to take down Phantom require actively knowing what he is and having prepared accordingly.

Based on those metrics, I want to place Phantom in the same power-band as Superman or the Martian Manhunter.  I’d consider their powers to be equivalent incomparibles – it’s hard to stack their abilities side-by-side and say one is objectively better than the others.  A no-holds-barred, knock-down drag-out fight between those three could get very nasty but it would be hard to confidently call a winner without knowing more about the external factors around them.

That said, I think the thing holding Danny back from being fully at that level is his experience: or rather his lack thereof.   Danny hasn’t had much formal training (except maybe some basic self-defence instruction from Maddie/Jack) and he doesn’t have a proper mentor either.  His personal experience mostly fits the narrow niche of direct open combat with other ghosts, mostly throughout Amity Park and surrounds (although occasionally in the Ghost Zone or further from town). 

Phantom has enough raw power and innate talent as a strategic lateral-thinker to get by, but I think that hyperspecialisation and lack of guidance would leave him with a lot of blind-spots.  His hand-to-hand is self-taught and probably missing a lot of best-practice basic techniques.  He’s also never had an experienced third party to observe him in the field and offer suggestions on alternative approaches to using his powers/ keep him from developing bad habits.  This is something Danny actually comments on in canon; he can take a long time to identify solutions (even obvious ones) that deviate too far from his default throw hands approach to fighting.  His powers could be more effectively deployed as a precision-instrument but a lack of coaching means he tends to falls back on using them as a blunt hammer because that was the pattern that came naturally when he was first starting out, and no-one was around to keep that habit from ingraining.

The place where you can see this lack of experience hurting him the most is in his lack of soft-skills.  Phantom didn’t have anyone to advise him on de-escalation, damage control, comforting civilians, interacting with authorities etc.  Add in the naturally-frightening nature of many ghosts and it was easy for him to fall into a public perception of being “the town menace”.  Danny is pretty decent at rallying both humans and ghosts (even erstwhile enemies) to his side in crisis situations but no-one has taught him how manage public relations outside of that.  He says it himself: he needs a PR agent.

On the other hand, Phantom’s heroics have inadvertently earned him a decent amount of potential political pull in the Ghost Zone.  He has enough positive rapport that some regular rogues will take his side or even actively seek him out for help in the right circumstances, and other more antagonistic ones have at least developed a degree of grudging respect.  There are several powerful ghosts that either have direct debts of gratitude to him/his team (Princess Dorothea, Pandora) or who hold him in high esteem for re-sealing Pariah Dark (The Far Frozen).  It’s possible that defeating Pariah might even have granted him a potential candidature/claim to an official position, and judging by the way the Observants and Clockwork pay attention to him, it seems that Phantom’s slow accumulation of power/influence isn’t going completely unnoticed.  However, again, Danny doesn’t have the awareness, experience or training needed to leverage that effectively – heck, he’s not even doing it on purpose.

With all that taken into account, I think Phantom would rank very highly in terms of overall potential, but at his current level he’d be in the lower ranks of the A-tier.  He could become a much more powerful figure with the right guidance but in his canonical state he’s underutilising or outright overlooking a lot of his most effective tools.

TUE Future/ “Dark Phantom”

The “Dark Phantom” presented in the TUE Bad-Future is interesting to me because while he’s a very powerful figure within that story, I don't think he’s a very good reflection of canon-Danny’s potential to do harm.

Gonna complain about The Ultimate Enemy for a bit: I’ve tag-muttered about this before but I’m one of the Phandom members who finds The Ultimate Enemy to be a frustratingly weak episode.  It has a potentially fascinating core premise (the “evil future/alternate self”) but the execution is so convoluted and driven by improbable contrivances that the whole ends up being far less than the sum of its parts.   

One of the biggest problems is that, rather than being a straight future/alternate version of Danny, “Dark Phantom” is actually a hybrid of Phantom and Plasmius’ worse sides.  He’s a distinct, separate entity which means he can’t work as an effective dark mirror to either of them.  (Compare and contrast the Justice League episode A Better World in which the Justice Lords acted as a dark mirror of what the actual Justice League members could become if they chose to abandon their morals and compassion in favour of seizing control and instating a totalitarian system of draconian crime prevention.)

The episode also tried to graft on a really mismatched moral of “don’t be a cheat”.  Rather than being a lesson on choices/ values/ power/ responsibility, Dark Phantom almost ends up being an offhand biproduct of Danny getting caught cheating on a freshman/sophomore-year career-aptitude test.  Instead of learning a lesson about himself/ his ideals/ his personal faults, Danny comes away from the episode with a cool new superpower after deciding not to cheat on the test after all.  Not exactly satisfying.

That mismatch and the convoluted levels of moon-logic required to make it fit severely undermine the idea that this version of Dark Phantom is “inevitable”.  There are too many steps that are too highly-specific and too easily-avoidable for the threat to feel real: Danny has to care enough about an early-highschool CAT to want to cheat, he has to somehow get the answers which he wasn’t intending to do in the canon timelineand only does as a result of Clockwork’s meddling, making it a self-fulfilling situation, he has to get caught using them, Mister Lancer has to hold the resulting parent-teacher meeting at Nasty Burger rather than a school office for some reason, the Nasty Burger Sauce has to 1. be dangerously explosive and 2. coincidentally explode while not only Danny’s parents but his friends and sister are inside, Danny has to be placed in Vlad’s custody rather than with his Aunt Alicia or closer family-friends, Danny has to ask Vlad to remove his Phantom-half and finally, Vlad himself has to agree to do it.  Take away any of those steps and this version of Dark Phantom doesn’t happen.  That’s not inevitable, it’s contrived.

But anyway, let’s look at Dark Phantom as his own entity:

One of the things that makes Dark Phantom much more potentially dangerous is that he combines Phantom’s raw power with Plasmius’ experience.  Like I was saying before, one of Danny’s biggest handicaps is that he lacks training/guidance and tends to underutilise his most effective abilities.  Vlad meanwhile has had years of relative freedom to practice and finesse a lower raw-power level; he’s much more skilled at advanced techniques like duplication and overshadowing (which he canonically used to force through his fortune-making business deals), as well as ecto-constructs.  Plasmius is also a lot more tactical and manipulative in how he applies their common powers.  Plus, the TUE version of Dark Phantom is a full-ghost, which means he doesn’t have a vulnerable mortal state that can be exploited as a weakness.

This is why I think it would be possible for TUE!Dark Phantom to successfully decimate other heroes in shared-universe crossover situations where ghosts aren’t common knowledge.  He’d be an unexpected, unknown enemy that the heroes have no effective way to fight (outside of a few magic users).  Combine that with many of the most powerful heroes being visible as public figures, and Dark Phantom having inherited Plasmius’ strategic/manipulative traits and it could be very easy for Dark Phantom to basically launch a premeditated paranormal blitzkrieg attack, using Plasmius’ skill with duplicates and overshadowing to subjugate any hero he couldn’t overwhelm with Phantom’s raw power level.  It would also make sense that Amity Park would become one of the remaining bastions in any TUE-style future, since having advanced knowledge of ghostly abilities and access to anti-ecto technology would tilt the balance more evenly and allow them to at least keep the danger out.

Mentally, it’s also worth noting that Dark Phantom is a lot more dangerous than either Phantom or Plasmius.  He’s basically the most toxic traits from both of them, removed from their more moderating/ compassionate instincts.  Based on the canonical explanation given, TUE!Danny had Phantom forcibly removed in attempt to remove the pain/ rage/ grief he was feeling over the death of his family.  This isn’t a model-hero-persona conceptualisation of Phantom a la Splitting Images; the TUE-version of his ghost half is a big ball of churning negative emotion.  And what are some of Danny’s toxic traits when it comes to negative emotions: he lashes out, falls into self-blame and self-destructs.  Then we add in Vlad’s toxic traits: he’s egocentric to the point of narcissism, he projects negative feelings/ blame onto others rather than accept responsibility for his own actions and he has a controlling/ sadistic streak.   

TUE’s Dark Phantom is the worst possible combination of an emotionally devastated teenager and an emotionally immature adult.  He’s a ball of pain and rage that blames the world for that pain, lashes out at it, feels worse for doing so and then blames the world for making him feel worse because he doesn’t have the emotional capacity to accept that he’s the one causing it.  Grief is love persevering but the feelings of love, connection and guilt that contextualise his pain were left in the human shells that remained of Danny and Vlad.  It’s possible that the Dark Phantom presented in TUE might not have the capacity to feel positive emotions or compassion.  He was never meant to exist as his own entity – he was an attempt to destroy Daniel Fenton’s negative emotions which went horribly wrong.  In some ways it seems like his reign of terror could be an angrier version of Dracula’s scheme from Netflix’s Castlevania or Haliax’s goal from the Kingkiller Chronicles – a drawn-out suicide note from an undead being who’s been dead inside for much longer, destroying whatever peace/happiness he encounters in revenge for being denied it himself, until such time as he either attains catharsis or finally ends the pain by destroying reality and himself along with it.  That’s the final thing that makes TUE’s Dark Phantom more dangerous than either Phantom or Plasmius – he has nothing to lose and no “better nature” or personal dreams that other heroes could try to appeal to.

So yeah, the TUE version of Dark Phantom could absolutely rip the world and other heroes apart, but I don’t think he’s a particularly good reflection of Danny’s capabilities in terms of either powers or personality.  There’s too much Vlad in the mix, and even then he represents such a narrow and extreme edge-case for each of their personalities that it’s barely representative at all.  At best he’s a warning for what these kinds of powers could be capable of in the wrong hands.

Meta-question: What is “power” in narrative?

Alright, now that I’ve (hopefully) answered the question, let’s finish with a self-indulgent thought exercise for extra credit.

There’s an anecdote which I’ve heard attributed to the Stan Lee, in which a fan apparently asked him “who would win in a fight between Superman and the Hulk?”  To which Stan apparently replied, “whoever the writer wants.”

While it can be fun to make tier-lists and try to rank how strong different heroes/villains/creatures are based on the rules of their respective universes, I think it can also be helpful to consider that– like all things in storytelling – power is a narrative device.  It’s a tool that the character(s) and storyteller(s) can use to create and solve problems.

A character can be extremely physically strong/ skilled/ knowledgeable/ influential in a specific area but how much narrative power they have depends on how well their abilities allow them to influence or resolve story problems.   And, as the omnipotent god(s) of the narrative, the storyteller(s) can choose whether to confront them with challenges that play to their existing strengths, or that force them to find other solutions.  What’s the best way to kill a vampire?

This is actually part of what makes Lex Luthor such an effective Superman villain.  Objectively most versions of Lex are just A Guy™ – on a physical level he doesn’t have anything close to Kal El’s Kryptonian strength or superpowers.  But he feels like a serious threat because he often comes after Superman in ways that Clark can’t easily steamroll with that brute strength.  Lex uses manipulation, money, influence, connections, politics, public opinion; Superman can’t physically fight him without playing into Luthor’s plans, and trying to face him in those other fields requires tools that Clark wasn’t handed as part of his Kryptonian heritage.  An invading alien army is objectively a bigger physical threat to Earth, but a competent Lex Luthor scheme feels more dangerous because – while we feel confident that Superman can beat down a legion of monsters – when it comes to the question of whether he can outwit Luthor, the outcome is a lot less certain.

Situational disempowerment is another of the ways a narrative can reign in an otherwise “overpowered” character: placing them in circumstances where they either aren’t given many opportunities to showcase their best strengths, or are kept from using them because the drawbacks/ risks/ consequences of using their abilities makes their power(s) a liability.  I’ve mentioned it before, but this is actually one of the tricks I’m personally using to keep Phantom’s massive powerset balanced against the other proteges in Deathly Weapons.  It’s also something I’ve been struggling with when it comes to Conner’s place in that story since the stealth-mission plot structure doesn’t allow as much room to highlight his core powers and personal strengths.   

Stories can create additional stakes for powerful characters by giving them emotional arcs which their powers can’t resolve.   For a published example, consider the series One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100.  Despite how high-ranked Saitama and Mob are within the power-scaling of their respective stories, those powers don’t kill the emotional stakes because the things they actually want/ need can only be gained through self-improvement or making connections in ways separate from their powers (and in some regards their power level actively gets in the way of that).  This is also something I’m doing with Danny’s main grief arc in DW.   

Final Conclusion time

In terms of physical strength and range of abilities, I think Phantom would be pretty near the top of the power-scale in most superhero crossovers.  While the Dark Phantom presented in TUE might not be a particularly good reflection of Danny’s specific potential, a crossover version of the TUE timeline offers a pretty good litmus-test for how dangerous a strong ghost could be in a given universe: the combination of power level, ability range and highly-specific/ inaccessible weak-points poses a strong strategic threat.

On the other hand, physical strength isn’t the only strength.  Phantom has a decent level of potential political sway as well, but he also lacks a lot of the soft skills and experience needed to make use of his toolset to its full ability.

Stepping back further, the answer to how powerful Danny is in a narrative sense is really just “however much the writer wants”.  Phantom’s narrative power depends on the kind of story he’s in and the challenges placed around him – there are as many ways to situationally nerf our ghost-boy as make him OP, all without needing to alter his on-paper powers.

[practically-an-x-man]

Fifty Superhero-Inspired Whump Prompts

Couldn't find a lot of whump prompts I liked, so I decided to compile a few of my own! Here's a jumbo list of prompts for superheroes and enhanced characters:

Powers Stripped Away (permanent)

Powers Blocked/Forgotten (temporary)

Powers Enhanced/Too Much Power

Powers Out of Whack

New and Unwanted Powers

No Longer Human

Healing Incorrectly/Healing Around Embedded Object

Allowed to Heal... Just Enough to Survive

Loss of Healing Factor (first time healing at a normal pace)

Anesthesia/Painkillers Burned Off Too Quickly

Awake Through Surgery

Forced to Watch Loved Ones/Sidekicks Injured

Confronted with their Weakness/Kryptonite

Betraying their No-Kill Rule

Put Under Hypnosis/Mind Control

Coming Out of Hypnosis/Consequences of Hypnotized Actions

Telepathic Torture (it's all in their head)

Forced to Relive Trauma/Memories/Nightmares

Forced to Defeat/Kill a Former Ally

Downfall into a Supervillain

Chronic Pain from a Lifetime of Hero Work

Deemed a Villain/Public Scrutiny

Wrong Choice, Right Reason

Trolley Problem (risk a loved one to save civilians)

Dangerous Powers/Forced to Isolate

Alter-Ego Friend is Super-Ego Villain

Superpowered Sleep Deprivation

Starved Until Their Powers Shut Down

Made Into A Lab Rat

Identity Stripped Away/Living Weapon

Loss Of Limb/Eye/Something That Won't Regenerate

Enduring Extreme Temperatures

Physically Unable to Die

Supersuit Melts into their Skin

Child Mistakes Them for a Monster

High-Tech Imprisonment

Alien Disease/Parasite

Unwanted Tech/Cybernetic Enhancement

Adapt or Die/Powers Emerge

Grieving their Normal Life

Outliving Friends/Loved Ones

Accidentally Hurting a Teammate/Innocent

Died and Revived

Working for the Enemy/Undercover/Forced to Defy Moral Code

Foresight/Too Predictable/Can't Get Ahead

Trying to Escape Superhero Life/Tracked Down

Emotions Manipulated

Injected with Paralytic

Dazed, Drugged, or Concussed

Fighting Until They Tear Themselves Apart

[frownyalfred]

Hi! I don't know a whole lot about batflect but I saw you answer that last ask about it

I was just wondering, would Bruce being pushed over the edge by Superman to break his no kill rule because he sees a man who can't die (so it seems) and that breaks something in him psychologically

After losing people so many times to meeting someone who can't die would seem like a major fuck you by the universe

I can see why you'd ask this question, but I think an interesting thing in BVS specifically (not all DC media) is that, at no point is Superman ever publicly or even privately 100% confirmed (by Lex, the Government, Bruce, etc) to be immortal/unable to die. We're not even sure, as an audience halfway through the movie, what the total effect of Kryptonite is on him. Could Bruce's spear have killed him? Why did the Kryptonite gas work? Why did Doomsday manage to kill him? Etc.

The way Bruce hunts Clark down in the movie, it appears that he was convinced by Lex's research that Clark could be killed. But he's clearly not 100% (key word) certain, or at least not certain about why and how. Hence all the contingency attacks/weapons. We know that Kryptonian cells degrade upon contact with Kryptonite -- but what does that mean for death itself? We see Superman get hit with a nuke onscreen, but he doesn't die.

I believe Bruce 1) thought Superman could be killed somehow by Kryptonite but 2) was unclear on the specifics and 3) this was mostly because he wasn't thinking the why through, thanks to Lex's manipulation and other factors. I don't think he was motivated, or primarily motivated, by the idea that Superman couldn't die. If anything, his primary motivation was that Superman should die, and that he was the only person motivated and equipped enough to do it.

[zvaigzdelasas]

China’s economy is currently on the operating table, hunched over by surgeons, chest cavity splayed open, hooked up to a cardiopulmonary machine, surrounded by nurses staring at monitors flashing vital signs. It all looks rather grim.

This surgery, however, is not an emergency bypass. That would be too easy. China has had many of those already – stimulus packages, grand infrastructure projects and many rounds of directed lending.

Every two decades or so, going all the way back to the founding of the PRC in 1949, the surgeons get ambitious. These guys are mad scientists attempting a comic book trope – to create the ultimate superhero.

They want to inject super serum, replace skeletal calcium with adamantium and dose the patient with gamma rays, giving China the powers of shazams out the wazoo.[...]

In the lamented “pre-reform” era, China’s mad scientists engineered spectacular growth by increasing investment from a prewar 6% of GDP to 20% in the first Five-Year Plan, covering 1952-1957. This led industrial output to register a compound annual growth rate.

The Great Leap Forward accelerated this growth to 66% in 1958 and 39% in 1959 before crashing and burning in 1961 when mismanagement of communal farms and “backyard blast furnaces” caught up with the mad scientists.

Course correction starting in 1962 recovered all lost ground by 1965. According to economist Cheng Chu-Yuan, China’s GDP growth averaged 11% between 1952 and 1966, the eve of the Cultural Revolution. (T. C. Liu of Cornell and K. C. Yeh of the Rand Corporation have a lower estimate: 8%.)

More importantly, China built a full kit of infrastructure, machinery and equipment capable of driving future industrialization.[...]

Many analysts have a tabula rasa understanding of China’s reform era, as if there had been no economy before Deng Xiaoping. In reality, China’s industrialization started right after the formation of the PRC with some of the fastest growth recorded in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Even during the “low growth” Cultural Revolution, resources directed towards public health (for example, barefoot doctors) and primary education doubled life expectancy and quadrupled adult literacy by 1980 from pre-PRC levels.

The mad scientists are now at it again. They have about twenty years of new data not just on China but from the rest of the world. When Zhu Rongji was head surgeon, history had ended and markets reigned supreme. This time around, the surgeons are correcting for market irrationality and negative externalities. The next twenty years is again being determined on the operating table.

Three years ago, the surgeons pried open China’s chest cavity with the three red lines credit limits, instantly seizing the speculation driven property sector. Since then, they ripped out unnecessary organs like education companies, clamped the Ant Financial artery and eviscerated the video game industry. All of this has caused spasms in vital signs from lackluster growth to rising youth unemployment. Wondering whether China will or will not stimulate the economy next quarter or next year is missing the forest from the trees. For the next few years, China’s economy will still be under the knife and whatever adjustments will merely be anesthesiologists and technicians nominally dialing the drugs up and down and adjusting the heart-lung machine to maintain vital signs.

What are these mad scientists trying to achieve? We believe President Xi Jinping’s 2020 target of doubling China’s GDP by 2035 stands. That is an average growth rate of 4.7% for 15 years. But beyond just a numerical target, it is important to figure out what superpowers China is trying to acquire. And just as importantly, what Kryptonite factors China is attempting to inoculate itself against.

China wants America’s Silicon Valley, but regulated; Japan’s car companies, but electrified; Germany’s Mittelstand, but scalable; and Korea’s chaebol conglomerates, but without political capture. It wants to lead the world in science and technology, but without cram schools. A thriving economy, but with common prosperity. Industry, without air pollution. Digital lifestyle, without gaming addiction. Material plenty, without hedonism. Modernity, without its ills. This is, of course, a wish-list and unrealistically ambitious. But these mad scientists sure as hell are going to try. They’ve developed a taste for it.

In college, early into the semester, we went through a ritual called course exchange. Students gathered in an auditorium to swap classes after sampling lectures for three weeks – satisfaction was not guaranteed. The strategy passed down to underclassmen applied to both course exchange and significant others: “Add before you drop.”

China is undergoing – but perhaps botching – the same process with a more party-esque slogan, “Establish the new before abolishing the old.”

The surgeons have been on a tear gutting the old. The big kahuna is, of course, the property sector. But right behind are platform monopolies, private education, financial services and video games. The new has been playing catch-up, with 5G equipment, electric vehicles, photovoltaics and wind turbines being leading examples.

From all appearances, the Industrial Party is in ascendance and China will double down on climbing the manufacturing value chain. The Industrial Party is a political identity that believes industry, science and technology should determine China’s future. Adherents believe that China’s strength lie in the technical skills of her population and thus favor hard-science, high-tech industries as opposed to services and business model innovations.

Therefore, Chinese politicians, whatever their predisposition, must find a way to create space for this next generation of scientists and technicians to develop themselves. They cannot be confined to a production line at a Foxconn plant. Maintaining social stability means finding a use for future scientists and technicians, which means pursuing industrialization. Is there any other way? The key variable for determining the course of China’s future development is thus the massive number of talented technical and scientific workers.

If mistakes were made, it would have been in sequencing and in faith – dropping before adding is a poor strategy in both love and course exchange. China’s mad scientists may have been too confident that electric vehicles and renewable energy would be followed quickly by semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and commercial aircraft.

Perhaps they have reason to be confident. Planning for this surgery has been in the works since 2015 with the Made in China 2025 project. China has been steadily eroding imports of high value added intermediary goods like batteries, precision parts and electrical components, flipping trade with South Korea from deficit to surplus.[...]

China never properly transitioned from its Soviet era Material Product System (MPS) of national accounts to the United Nation’s System of National Accounts (UNSNA) standard, leaving out much of services from reported GDP.

We calculate that China accounts for 22-24% of global GDP and 20-23% of global consumption. We also calculate that household consumption is 50-55% of China’s GDP, in line with global averages. China should easily be able to grow at 4.7% through 2035 with only a modest increase in consumption’s GDP share (5 percentage points over 10 years) without upsetting global economic balances.

In the reform period prior to Xi, everything was sacrificed at the altar of economic growth. In the new era, growth has been walked down from 9.6% in 2011 to an average of 4.7% in the Covid years (2020-2023) as an increasing litany of issues were given precedence. Debt however, soared over this time from 175% of GDP to over 300%. What exactly did all that debt buy?

When Xi assumed leadership of China, he declared that inequality could not be allowed to increase further. Inequality is perhaps the major Kryptonite factor of the American economy which China wasted no time in matching as the economy roared with market reforms.

While still problematic, inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, has steadily fallen since 2010 largely as a result of massive investment in urbanization, pushing people into cities and pushing cities up the tiering ladder.[...]

China also poured resources into stamping out last-mile poverty. While most poverty alleviation in China was through economic growth, recalcitrant extremely poverty could only be eradicated by concentrated marshaling of resources, from relocating entire villages to weekly visits by social workers.[...]

Since peaking in 2012, air pollution in Beijing has been cut by over 60%, with Shanghai falling over 50%. China, which used to dominate the list of most polluted cities, now only claims one spot in the top 20. None of this came cheap, from installing scrubbers in smoke stacks to increasing renewables to moving heavy industry to strict emissions regulations for cars.[...]

Before Hu Jintao handed the reins to Xi, Hu warned delegates to the 18th Party Congress in 2012 that “[corruption] could prove fatal to the party… and [cause] the fall of the state.” The popular opinion in the West is that Xi ended China’s highly successful reform era because of an ideological bent. This is off the mark. Xi was brought in to clean house as the wheels were coming off from excesses of the reform era.

Throughout Xi’s decade in office, there has been no letup in his anti-corruption campaign. In 2022, a record 638,000 officials were punished for corruption. While there haven’t been any large scale ideological appeals to the public, it’s a different story within the 98-million-member party.

During this time, free market capitalism and liberal democracies also faced their own existential tests. Success or failure going forward will depend on whether liberal institutions remain intact in the West and whether party discipline can be maintained in China. What the PRC has had since 1949 is a governing party with the political autonomy to play mad scientist. [...]

Of course we live in the real world, not a comic-book world. The question in the real world has always been whether the economy can be engineered by mad scientists from the top down or is it best left to the invisible hand of the market? [...]

The standard economic opinion – against all evidence – is that China was economically stagnant before Deng’s market reforms. The thinking on this for the American economys is undergoing a transformation in egghead land – just how has neoliberal economics benefitted the American people over the past few decades?

In a Q&A exchange at a conference in Malaysia, Eric Li, the barbed-tongued venture capitalist, was asked, “Do you think top-down directives are sustainable in the long run?” To which he replied, “It’s the only thing that’s sustainable.… That’s why America is failing today.” After World War II, Li said, the Americans “lost the ability to do top-down design.”

Dec 2023

[beastboyisbestboy]

Beast Boy vs the Robins is a really interesting question because the way they present themselves and their personas is so radically different.

Robins, for example basically start from square one, maybe with a skill in a very specific lane like gymnastics or acrobatics. Then they work to build off of that, weightlifting to stand toe-to-toe with demigods, sourcing tech to fly alongside superhumans. And they have to think around their problems, improvise on the fly, swing up rather than punch down, flee rather than fight.

And they always, always have to over-posit themselves. Leverage the intimidation factor as much as humanly possible because everything else counts against them. If they’re in pain, no they aren’t. If they fucked up, no they didn’t. If they improvised that, no they planned it from the beginning.

The most important thing is that a Robin backed into a corner always bites.

Beast Boy however was granted legendary power as a matter of luck. And he’s lived with that, trained to utilise that for most of his life. At the slightest provocation he could stomp you under an elephant foot or bite you with a crocodile mouth. A tiger paw can decapitate a person with a hard smack. Or if he’s feeling creative, he can sneak into an apartment as a fly and then inject the target with the deadliest venom known to man.

His power is pretty much limitless, with no conceivable drawbacks like Kryptonite or “yellow”. He can turn into a dinosaur or a dragon. He can turn into fucking Starro, a creature that goes to toe to toe with the Justice League regularly! If Garfield Logan so desired, he could turn into a big space whale, crush the earth and then live his merry life.

You wouldn’t know that by talking to him.

He pretty much downplays his skill at every given opportunity. Preferring to pour his energy into socialising, acting, playing with his friends. He has one of the most tragic backstories in Titans canon, but he’s a friendly happy-go-lucky dude who doesn’t take sparring seriously and could take or leave the superhero life, but he just wants hang out with his bros.

So that’s the kicker isn’t it. Who would you rather be defeated by. A team leader, who no matter what, is gonna try and bring their all against you, every time.

Or

A superhero who isn’t even trying?

[pluckyredhead]

I've been meaning to ask for a while, since you've read so much more Supers books than me, but what are your thoughts on Kon being retconned as Clark and Lex's lab grown love child? Asides from that one mind-controlled-into-shaving-his-head incident, did that ever factor into anything again? Is it even still canon? If it were up to you would you keep it and try to do something interesting with it or just sweep it under the rug and pretend it was never true?

I think it would be a great retcon if they ever did anything with it aside from one (1) incredibly stupid story.

Because the thing is, originally Kon's human donor was Paul Westfield, and genuinely, who the fuck cares about Paul Westfield? He was only relevant for, like, a year. He's a footnote at best.

But Lex? There's so much potential there:

How does Clark feel about it? Does he trust Kon less? Does he feel guilty about that? Does he defend him to people (Batman) who would question him?

What are Lex's plans? You can't tell me he would sic Kon on other heroes once and give up. Lex always plays the long game. He has to have other Machiavellian schemes. What if Kon gets the clone plague again and Lex has the cure? What if he built in a vulnerability other than kryptonite? Most interestingly, what if Lex cares?

And of course, most importantly, how does Kon feel about it? We've seen him ignoring it and then moping about it. And I think it was his Adventure Comics run where we saw him tracking his own behavior to see if he was more like Superman or Lex. But what if a story really interrogated the fact that Kon is a very different person than Clark? (Especially in light of Jon, Clark's mini-me.) Kon likes money; Lex is a billionaire. Kon loves attention; Lex is functionally a supervillain because he's jealous that people like Superman more. Kon is a sweet boy but he's not a shining paragon of virtue. Is that because of Lex's genes? Is everything good about Kon simply Superman's genes? Is Kon is own person with free will that exists beyond picking a donor to emulate? Is a clone a person at all? Let's get into it, DC!

If it was up to me, I would write two stories about it:

First is the story where Kon and Lex actually develop a relationship. Kon and Clark has never been close, and Kon has rarely had a stable home or consistent parental figures (Rex was untrustworthy, Dubbilex got written out a lot, Guardian died and came back as a child, Pa died, Ma lived but Kon died and then got retconned into another dimension...). Kon is primed to fall for lovebombing, especially if Lex is doing one of his regular "no, really, I'm Redemption Arc-ing for real this time!" routines. Especially right now with a trillion Supers Clark likes better hanging around Metropolis, and Lex swearing he's going to be Good...what if he stopped trying to convince Clark, and started trying to convince Kon? What if he spent time with him, and listened to him, and took his side against Clark, and let's be real, probably spent money like water on him? And what if Lex, despite himself, discovered that...he actually cared about his clone son?

Of course, Lex's self-interest would eventually win out. We see this over and over again, where he sacrifices his relationships on the altar of his ambition, where he just can't quite love anyone else as much as he loves being evil. And yes, Kon ends the story hurt, but also with another reminder that validation needs to come from within and not from a billionaire who wants something from you, even if he is your other dad.

(And maybe Clark is reminded that he has failed Kon. Again. Ahem.)

The second story I would write is the one where Lex goes to jail and Kon somehow inherits Lexcorp and many billions of dollars and is cartoonishly irresponsible with all of it. Lex gets out of jail and there's a giraffe in his office and all of his doomsday devices are full of Zesti Cola.

But yeah, instead DC does nothing with it. Literally a few months ago they had Clark and Kon and Lex all having a conversation about a villain Lex created and gave TTK to - so like, talking explicitly about how Lex created Kon, too - and aside from Kon being mildly snide, that was it. That was it! DC WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS. WHAT IS THE POINT OF SETTING UP SOMETHING SO JUICY AND THEN LEAVING THAT JUICE UNSQUOZE.

[skjam]

Comic Book Review: DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #22: Secret Origins of Super-Heroes

Comic Book Review: DC Special Blue Ribbon Digest #22: Secret Origins of Super-Heroes edited by E. Nelson Bridwell “Secret origins” are a big part of the superhero genre. Since, back in the day, most superheroes had secret identities, just how exactly they’d come to gain powers or the motivation to fight crime was also a secret to the public. But we readers got to be in on the secret, creating a…

[necrotic-nephilim]

hello, it's me again. so i saw you mention on my prompt how jason would be jealous of rose's healing factor when it comes to fucking kara and the jaycass you wrote and i thought why not combine them? in young justice jason and kara are part of the light and cass was in the shadows before defecting and joining the bats. what if she doesn't? childhood friends/lovers jaykara but kara becomes a red lantern after jason's death. after a while jason heals and goes on a mission with kara and they recognise each other. they cry, fight, fuck, all of that before breaking free of the light and run into cass. maybe cass and jason fucked a couple of times in the league to release some stress, and kara would be attracted to cass, so all three of them have a threesome inside a lazarus pit. just a cycle of fucking and breaking and dying and soul breaking healing. you can get really kinky with this too, like kara could ride jason to death, jason could fist cass until she needs the pit, cass could ride jason's face until he chokes on her juices, could even have kara bring a strap and her and jay could fuck cass at the same time (regular dp or anal dp) or peg jason until he can't walk. maybe they force kara to take a kryptonite shard up her pussy while jason fucks her and cass rides her face. technically the lazarus pit would boost their stamina every time they dip, and kara's a kryptonian, so they'd fuck for actual days or weeks. maybe they fuck so long they don't realise it until a team associated with the justice league walk in on them on a mission to rescue cass or something

HELLO YOU. YOU GET ME. it's my favorite thing EVER when the Laz Pit is utilized for a vicious cycle of fucking, dying, and fucking again. the altered mental state, the violent levels the sex can be taken to when dying no longer matter and longterm injuries aren't an issue... it lives in my brain.

i'll be honest, i don't know or care much about the Young Justice tv show so you'll have to forgive me for this being divorced from that world bc it's just. foreign as fuck to me so my apologies for that but as for the porn. (decided to put this headcanon/concept under a cut bc i feel like what could be considered snuff is probably a jumpscare for most ppl so. click at your own warning)

i just. i adore brutal dead dove sex that is destructive. like the whole "i want to crawl inside your chest" but it's *literal* and no one takes advantage of Laz Pits enough to do just that. like sex where you just physically can't hold yourself back from tearing open the flesh of the person you love bc you need to see their blood, you need to hold their heart in your greedy fist type shit. and if this is an AU where Jason and Kara were close but got separated by Jason ended up with the League, i do think their reunion could bring about just that. for once Kara isn't holding herself back and she's clawing at Jason's skin until he's bloody. i think it's fun if sometimes she just fucks him *in* the water bc it's quicker that way and Jason is constantly on this edge of death and rebirth at the same time. and with Cass in the mix too. JayCass you get me anon <3 Jason loves Kara still but it's clear he and Cass are a sort of package deal now and Kara might not know Cass well but if Jason loves her, she can trust that. so she gets to know Cass in the only way she cares about at the moment, pinning Cass down and fucking her. with a strap, with her own fist, anything that she can get inside of Cass to feel her body. maybe she pushes in too far and fucks Cass bloody until Csss needs the Pit sooner than even Jason did. and for Cass, who has no benchmark for real love but this dizzying feeling of being revived over and over, this is all she can ask for. devotion.

them suffocating on each other is so good- Kara doesn't care if Jason or Cass need to breathe, she cares about getting off and feeling whole again. she holds them down until their body gives out and forces them into the Pit again. maybe at some point she gets curious and holds one of them down facedown in the waters just to see if it's even possible to drown in the Lazarus Pit or not. she breaks bones just because she can and she wants to see what level of pain it takes for Cass to actually react to. how long it takes for a human body to bleed out. exploring their bodies means memorizing the limitations of them. it means she learns what them getting close to death looks like the same as getting close to an orgasm and whispers filthy dirty talk about how she can hear Jason's heart about to go out as he's trying desperately to come before he dies again. she counts how many minutes it takes before they die from lack of oxygen and compares who can last longer.

the Kryptonite shard is also enlightened- eventually Cass and Jason want to be the ones in control bc fair is fair and they deserve to do the same to Kara so they find some stash of Kryptonite and hold Kara down until it's deep inside of her and she's weak and in pain but still getting fucked. and she gets to taste the Lazarus Pit too, which i think would make her absolutely feral. Kara deserves some Pit rage for fun, i think even if she only gets to taste it while Cass is holding her down so Jason can fuck the Kryptonite deeper inside of her. every now and then Kara actually manages to strike one of them hard enough to injure them and it doesn't matter bc the Pit is right there.

all of it lasting for Days is just. good. like the haze the Pit has on the mind, being used over and over? almost like a spell none of them can break. they'd live the rest of their lives like this if they could and there would never even be a realistic end. it takes someone else walking in and managing to separate them before they actually calm down. and days before all the Lazarus Pit wears off and it finally sinks in just how fucked up what they did together was. and how fucked up it is that they don't even regret it. they're already trying to figure out where another Lazarus Pit is and how they can get control of it. i think it's fun if they spring it on each other too. like Jason will fall asleep in his bed but wake up to Cass and Kara holding his head under the green waters as he thrashes on instinct. Cass will be minding her business until Kara literally grabs her at superspeed and just flies her off to the waters to spread her legs and fuck her at superspeed until she's a bloody mess. they never know peace with each other and they irreparably damage their psyches over this. ty and gn.

[winter-rp-memes]

Let's talk; Fights! How does your muse do in battle?

Experience; Is your muse a skilled fighter? Do they get into fights often? Do they have any professional training? Do they train at all and if so how often?

Strength; How physically strong are they? Do they rely a lot on strength, or do they have other factors that carry them through a fight?

Type; What's their style of fighting? Do they even have a style?

Stamina; How much energy do they have and how long they can last in combat? Days? Hours?

Weapons; Do they have any weapons? Know how to use weapons? Can they fight without weapons? Are they against using any type of weapon, and if so why?

Integrity; Does your muse play fair? Fight dirty or use any type of trickery? If so is it frequent or only when they need to use it?

Distractions; Do they ever attempt to throw off their opponent via smack talking, flirting, environmental factors, or other methods?

Groups; Have they ever fought in a group? How tell do they do working as a team? Are they the type to take the lead or prefer to have someone else give them orders?

Team mates; Following the last question, how good of a team mate are they when fighting in a group session? Do they always look for the others? Are they more careless?

Ruthlessness; How far do they go when fighting? Do they never hold back and let their opponent have it? Are the type to outright kill their opponent for any reason?

Outmatched; How do they fight against someone they know is more powerful / skilled than they are

Speciality; What's your muses "special power move" so to speak, what's something unique they can do in battle?

Weaknesses; What's a weakness that can be exploited in a fight? Do they have blind spots? A certain kryptonite? Something they overlook about themselves?

Intelligence; Do they ever really on being witty, clever or crafty to win a fight? Is there a strategy or plan they make when going into battle?

Environment; Where do they strive best at? Can they fight anywhere anytime or are certain areas harder to work with than others?

Destruction; How destructive are they? Do they have no regards for others around them and consider it a free for all? Or do they try to avoid getting bystanders caught in the middle of it?

Eagerness; Does your muse enjoying fighting be it in a friendly or a serious manner? Are they more of a pacifist that avoids fighting when they can or it is easy to provoke them?

Durability; How many hits can they take and how well can the manage the pain?

Magic; Can they use any magic at all and if so to what extent? How can they use it in a fight or do they heavily rely on magic to win in a battle?

Stealth; Can they manage to be sneaky at all? Do they often sneak up on their opponents or ambush them unexpectedly

Dodging; How good are they at dodging attacks or are they even the type to bother dodging if they know they can endure it?

Recovery; If your muse (regardless of if they win or not) got roughed up during an altercation, how long does it take for them to recover? How do they handle physical recovery?

Sportsmanship; Are they a sore loser when don't win a battle? How well do they take the lost and go from there? Does it inspire them to do a training arc or do they just shrug it off?

[rockybloo]

Save for Sweetheart, does Bitterbat have any weaknesses? Some type of 'kryptonite factor' so to speak?

Sweetheart is his only weakness.

But one has to go about using Sweetheart as a weakness very carefully because the second she is on the scene, and potentially in danger, Bitterbat is at his most dangerous.

[brucie-wayne-official]

You know, maybe Kryptonite itself isn't your weakness, but something that, for now, only Kryptonite can produce. Let me explain.

I think that Kryptonite can produce a very specific electromagnetic wavelength that's almost imperceptible to most sensors, and at the moment, is virtually impossible to reproduce, even with the most advanced tech in the universe.

Give or take at least a few centuries, and that might change, but by then, there will probably be no use for it, as you will be long gone by then. Just being realistic here about that factor, I doubt that even Kryptonians can live for centuries without some form of cryostasis, even with their advanced technology.

However, a sort of "Anti-Kryptonite Sunscreen" might be possible to develop with the current technology of today, and in large quantities, in fact. We'd just need to figure out what said Wavelength is in order to block it out.

Looks like you've put a lot of thought into this! Maybe Bruce can put you into a research project regarding Kryptonite.

[aerkame]

Any advice on how to break out of an insane long art/writing block? My minds been going crazy with ideas, yet my hands say “Nope! lol!” Mode for some time.

I absolutely hate art blocks they're the worst. I've had some that lasted for months on end, sometimes a whole year so I'll give what advice I can to help you break out of this funk. 👍

Important bits are highlighted.

I suggest changing up your drawing environment for a bit, declutter anything on your desk or drawing spot, clean anything that could be in the way. Sometimes a change in your environment can help you feel less stressed. Cluttered spaces can change how we behave and it can also mess up our thinking process without us even noticing it so give that a try. (This applies to studying and doing homework as well!)

If you can, go to a new location and just try relaxing. Try going to a park, a colorful part of a city, a zoo you never went to, or even just walk around a neighborhood. This works similar to the above advice with changing your environment.

Write down the drawing idea you had for later and sketch something else lazily, do not put effort into the sketch, just feel and do whatever. After that, practice SKETCHING (sketching, not drawing, this does not need to be perfect or a masterpiece or a final product of sorts) parts of your desired drawing idea. Do this until you feel yourself being more comfortable.

RELAX! A lot of times when I start to feel an art block coming on mid-drawing, I notice my hand and face is not relaxed. If you feel yourself gripping a pencil/pen hard when drawing, take deep breaths in and out and relax. Drawing with your hands gripped is a sign of stress and art should be relaxing, not a stressful chore.

This follows up on number 4. Try lightly exercising. And I emphasize lightly. Especially if you are not someone who regularly exercises (remember to stretch before). Do something to get your heart going just a little bit. Sometimes doing this helps relives stress you may not be aware of and it also makes you feel more loose and energetic afterwards. This is because your body will release endorphins (the hormones that make you happy) into the body after exercising. Along that, make sure you're hydrated. No really, drink water.

SLEEP WELL! Make sure you are taking care of your body by getting enough sleep.

Draw out of your comfort zone. Try to start practicing on drawing things you are not usually used to drawing. Your Kryptonite basically. Personally, my kryptonite is cars and mechanical things.

That's all I can think of for now. If I think of more, I will reblog this with the attached new list.

You may or may not be confused on why I am focusing so much on the body and not actual drawing part itself. The thing is, art block is both a mental thing and physical thing that results from stress, exhaustion, or other factors you may not be aware of that can be helped (usually). An example? When I'm busy with college or when I had my first job last year I was so stressed out that the very idea of getting out my graphics tablet and drawing made me feel like I didn't want to draw anymore. I lost interest in doing something I really like. The same happened when I was in a STEM high school. I was too stressed out to pick up a pencil and draw.

You need to make sure your brain is stimulated and relaxed before you draw and after you draw and that can be done through exercise, new changes to the environment, or simply just trying new things with art. Your brain is in charge of so many things and that includes how you're feeling, so do what you can to take care of it.

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

Plus, in a world where magical powers are commonplace, NOT having magical powers could be seen as a form of disability.

(See My Hero Academia, Full Metal Alchemist, and, to a lesser extant, the Legend of Korra for examples of this.)

There are literally multiple tropes about fantastic disabilities. It can be great worldbuilding if done right.