#most of the time they make them look like nazis obviously

[yiddishfisting]

thinking abt how media will shorthand villains by dressing them similarly to certain groups and remember when that one my little pony movie had an anti communist bad guy so blatant he was literally red

[insert-content]

a summar(ule)y of 196 culture

since the tumblr veterans have been kind enough to introduce us newbies to their site and culture, i think it is only fair that we explain the culture of our glorious former home to any tumblr users who might be interested in the #196 tag. keep in mind, all these things are based on my perspective of the situation.

first of all, some general information (that you might’ve already heard):

196 (r/196 on reddit) was a subreddit with only one (official) rule; "post before you leave." it was mainly a meme/shitposting sub, but it cultivated a large queer and left-leaning community. in protest of the recent api chances in reddit, 196 has shut down indefinitely until reddit reverts these changes.

now for some culture/references that you might come across

spronkus kronkus:

spronkus is this yellow, rabbit-like creature.

they were the mascot of our subreddit. their appearance can vary from images to image, but as far as i’m aware, their full outfit consists of a bandanna in the colours of the trans flag around their neck, a gun labelled as such (other wise you obviously wouldn’t know what you’re looking at), and an axe also coloured like the trans flag.

r/place:

this is a rare event on reddit where the entire website gets a huge white canvas and can start creating pixel art on it. 196 participated by collaboratively creating our mascot, spronkus with "196!" written next to them.

this version of the pixel art was recreated by me as i couldn't find a nice image of it. there were some changes between the first version and the end result, so this might not be exactly how it looked in the end

post titles/"rule":

reddit forces it's users to title every post they make. as most of the posts on 196 spoke for themselves, many user instead titled their posts "rule", to indicate that they followed the subreddit's only rule. some people also tried to make puns with the word or tried to include it in words that shared some letters (example: wor(ule)d).

anarcho-stripperism:

as the amount of cropped porn jokingly posted to the subreddit increased, the moderators decided that porn would be banned from the sub, with one exception: anarcho-stripperism. she made food fucking videos, in which she jokingly tested the fuckability of different food items (fruits, pasta, etc.)

bigotry showcase:

bigotry showcase was a post flair (basically the reddit equivalent of tags) on the subreddit and was later restricted to only be used on saturdays. under this flair people posted instances of different forms of bigotry to make fun it.

eating babies/hungryposting:

at some point, the subreddit started to pretend to like eating babies, which started a variety of memes regarding the subject. even a post flair called "hungrypost" was added because of this

goblinhog:

goblinhog is the most prominent and well-known member of the 196 moderation team. besides this, on 196 he was mostly known for changing people’s flair if you enjoyed him enough about it.

flairs:

flairs are little tags that are displayed under your name in posts or comments, they are also subreddit specific. most subreddits give their users a palette of preset flairs and the option to make your own custom flair. however, in 196 you only had the option to customize your flair during special events. if you wanted to customize your flair outside of those events (which was basically the entire time), you had to ask a mod to do it for you.

punching nazis:

from time to time, the same gif of a person with a nazi armband getting punched in the face, and promptly falling to the ground, was reposted to the subreddit. this became a sort of tradition.

discourse/drama

wasp discourse:

the wasp discourse was a one to two weeks long heated discussion that generally divided the subreddit into two factions. one side said that they were justified in killing wasps if they were attacked by them, while the other claimed that since wasps are just animals, they aren't aware of what they're doing in the same way humans are, and therefore should be spared.

drama about the british:

there was a time when jokes along the lines of "ew, british" became pretty frequent on the subreddit. as a response, some user claimed that this was akin to racism and tried to get others to stop with the jokes. a debate over whether or not it was important or necessary to stop followed afterwards.

pillar discourse:

this was a debate over which type of pillar should be considered the best (ionic; doric; corinthian). i have seen the question "which pillar is the best?" being used as a sort of greeting between 196 refugees on here.

related subreddits

195:

195 was the predecessor to 196, and also was a social experiment with the same premise as 196 (one rule, post before you leave). as the creators of 195 ended the experiment, the community wanted something with the same vibe to continue posting, and thus 196 was born.

197:

197 is another part of the 196 ecosystem and is commonly understood to be the more politically right-leaning and bigoted as 196, as some people who were banned from 196 continued posting there. besides that, the subreddits were essentially the same in terms of how they functioned.

19684:

this subreddit adds a second rule which banned all mentions of sex (that’s why it’s name is a pun on 1984). some people took this as banning all discussion of sexuality, which resulted in a community that was slightly less accepting of queer people. it is currently still up and running as the 196 moderation team wants a way to stay in contact with the community.

amendments to the posts:

u/femboy_expert:

another well-known 196 user. as the name suggests they're an expert on the subject of femboys, with their flair on 196 reading "phd in feminine boys". as the subreddit was somewhat obsessed with femboys, it's no wonder that they became popular.

u/shitcum_backup:

this was the main account of a pretty popular shitposter on the subreddit. although i didn't see them as much in the last few months, i remember them sometimes having a unique speaking pattern, in which they referred to themself in the third person.

u/monko74:

this user commented "Every day I thank god for not making me a r/196 celebrity," which led to many users of the subreddit treating them like a micro celebrity. there are even a few subreddits solely dedicated to u/monko74.

691:

a sister subreddit that inverts the rule of 196, here you would be (temporarily) banned for posting. some time ago the members of this sub initiated a rebellion/revolution against the bot who performed all the bans (roomba).

u/Smart_Calendar1874:

this wasn’t necessarily part of the subreddit, but it was a pretty popular meme. and since it’s getting posted on here again, and i know enough about it, i’ll add it to the post. this user made a post to r/AskReddit titled "How would you get a small cylinder (5.1in length, ~4.5in girth) unstuck from a mini M&Ms tube filled with butter and microwaved mashed banana? [sic]" it was pretty clear that they were referring to their penis, yet they continued to claim "it’s a cylinder," in the comment section. this lead to comments like "it is imperative that the cylinder […] remains unharmed," in response to people’s advice of cutting the m&m tube.

it's going to be very interesting to see which aspects of 196 culture are going to survive the tumblr migration, and which aspects won't be applicable on this site.

i'm obviously not the ultimate scholar on 196 lore. if i’ve missed or left out anything, or said something wrong, please comment it.

[a-s-fischer]

Antisemitism and the Nazi Worldview: a Guide for the Perplexed

While most people know the Nazis hated Jews, few people understand just how integral Jew-hate was to the Nazi philosophy. This leads into many of the misconceptions about Nazis and the holocaust that regularly pop up, so it bears discussing what Nazis believed about racism and the Jews.

The Nazi conception of "race" was much narrower and "scientific" than we think of it today. The Nazi conception of race was that humans were split into subgroups with distinct traits, that set them apart from each other and gave them advantages in a great and bloody contest of the races. These races pattern on better to ethnicities, nationalities, or even language groups, than race as we think of it today, which is why it would make sense in a Nazi framework to talk about an Irish race, or a Polish race, for example. And of course in the Nazi mind, these races were a real biological reality, and not a social and cultural construct, and the strength and purity of a fit race might be lost through race mixing.

And of course races were differently fit or unfit, superior or inferior, and through the races warring against each other in a battle of the fittest, the superior race would rise above the rest, and subjugate the earth. Hitler came of age in a time of scarcity, war, and famine, and he believed there was no way to feed the entirety of the human race, so eliminating the lesser races through this perpetual struggle of races against each other was the only way for humanity to survive. It was all very Darwinian except that it completely misunderstood how the Darwinian model of evolution actually works, since the unit of selection was the nonexistent race, not the individual.

This struggle of the races was in Hitler and the Nazis' conception not only natural and necessary, but good. Conquest and the slaughter of inferior races was good. The state of the world with nation states and silly notions like laws, and morals, this was bad and unnatural. Humanity, or the strongest race, needed to do away with this system, or humans would all perish of starvation in a degenerate race-mixed scrum. The Nazis were heros, looking to save humanity from this foul unnatural state it had been tricked into adopting.

Tricked by the machinations of one race. One race had broken away from the others, and learned how to hack the system, to survive over under the rule of other races, when it should have been destroyed as a weaker lesser race. This race figured out how to lie and cheat, and live off other races as a parasite, while controlling them from within with fake, unnatural, vile concepts of laws, ethics, notions of justice and compassion, human rights, and international cooperation. And also with money. That race was the Jews.

In the Nazi mind, other races might be lesser, weaker, worthy only of a slow starvation under Nazi rule, but Jews, Jews were unique, special. Weak but cunning, only the Jews had figured out how to subvert and pervert the noble struggle of the races. The Jews were not only especially hated in the Nazi mind but they also served an explanatory purpose. The Jews were the reason humans were not in what the Nazis viewed as a state of nature, and the reason that the areas hadn't eliminated all the other races and taken over the world already. And anything that went wrong for the Nazis was of course caused by Jewish manipulation. The Jews had to be stripped of their unnatural power and control, and eliminated quickly, to keep them from continuing to undermine the strongest race, the Aryan Germans.

Early on, there was some discussion about how this was to be done. The mass slaughter of Jews under this philosophy might have been inevitable but it wasn't obviously inevitable to all Nazis. The important thing was to reduce the Jews to a state of nature, to take away their unnatural control, and leave them in the position of any other lesser race. This is where ideas, like sending all the Jews to Madagascar, to "build their own state" but really to inevidably die in the wilderness, came from. If Jews were separated from their stronger hosts, the logic went, they would just be one more weaker race and they would die just the same. This was also why so many Nazis took a special delight in simply denying captive Jews the means of survival, leaving them to starve, freeze, and die of disease in a state of nature, without the resources they had parasitically leached out of their host races.

But that process took too long. There were simply too many Jews, and too many (to the Nazi mind) Jewish controlled enemies. As Germany and the Axis' began to lose the war, and then as that loss became increasingly only a matter of time, the Nazis ramped up their efforts to kill Jews, by bullet and by gas, because if they could kill enough Jews, surely that Jewish control over their enemies would break and the Aryans among those enemies what recognize their racial interest, and join with the Germans, giving them victory. Instead the resources poured into the wholesale murder of Jews were resources stripped from the Nazi war machine, hastening the Allied victory.

Antisemitism wasn't simply one more bigotry for the Nazis to tack onto their general racism. It was foundational to the Nazi conception of how the world functioned. It was the explanitory mechanism in the Nazis' conspiratorial framework. And with this philosophy at the core of Nazism, the Holocaust became not only inevitable, but the highest calling of the Nazis, their sacrifice for humanity, or at least what was left of humanity after the strongest race had triumphed over all the others. Very little about Nazism is unique. Their militarism, their glorification of violence and struggle, their racial pseudo-Darwinianism, certainly their conspiratorial antisemitism, all had plenty of precident long before they came on the scene. It was their particularly potent combination of these existing elements that made them Nazis. And in this combination, it was the Jew-hate which held everything together and which provided the energizing force.

[crowhoonter]

rating Parahumans guys on how well I think they'd be as parents

Brian: I think Brian would believe he is a great father, but there is too much repressed emotions and depression in there to properly care for and raise a child. 3/10, Not particularly good.

Alec: Alec has lacked a real positive parental unit in his life, and while I don't think he would purposefully be shitty to a kid, I think he might fall back on what he knows from his own youth. Might be a fun older brother though. 3/10, needs to focus on himself first

Danny Hebert: Too sad about his wife dying to properly parent. no further notes. 2/10, Danny please get it together Taylor is relying on you

Armsmaster: Would rub off his worst personality traits onto a kid, resulting in them being the average r/malelivingspace user. Might also encourage child to grow poor facial hair. 1/10, I feel bad for whatever unfortunate soul is consigned to this fate.

Coil: Coil would be an absent father for 90% of your childhood, unless you were useful for his plans. In that case, he would feed you drugs or some other unethical thing and make you work for him (child labor (bad)). 2/10, conditions are poor but you might get to meet some of the other children he has, fixing the playdate situation.

Kaiser: See in story results. -5/10 Nazis don't make good parents.

Uber and Leet: They come as a package deal obviously, and they are actually pretty okay parents, they aren't great obviously but they aren't tremendous failures either. That is until you show up on one of their livestreams and then you are the laughingstock of the school. 4/10 Don't upload your kids online.

Scion: Too sad about his wife dying to properly parent. Also not emotionally available. 1/10, get it together man people are relying on you.

Mark Dallon: Not necessarily a bad parent, but he has a laundry list of problems that he needs to work through before he can begin to think to focus on his kids. 3/10, he's trying by god. He's not doing good but he's trying.

Number Man: He would probably respond to any question his kid asks with some weird philosophical math metaphor. Is a killer cook though. Also math classes would be a breeze. Unfortunately, most of his time is dedicated to cauldron. 5/10, grades will be great.

Accord: The worst type of helicopter parent. He would make itineraries to follow any time his kid went out and would require them home in pristine condition super early. Has a rigorous study schedule and puts a lot of pressure on you to succeed, and you know he wants whats best for you but like its stifling and you aren't really living for you but for him. Sure grades are good but you just can't do it anymore. 4/10, the depression and GPA are soaring.

Jack Slash: As seen in Worm, he is an absolutely killer parent. Has a fun family vibe? check. Engages with his children's interest and allows them to pursue it? check. Keeps his child intellectually and creatively stimulated? check. Takes his family all over the country to see new exciting places and people? check. Dude is simply top tier on the parenting skill. Sure the family dynamic is a bit unorthodox, but when the results look this good can you really argue? 10/10 Jack Slash has got it going on.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

So let's talk about rape, and porn, and why porn isn't rape.

By now, I've seen more than a few people talking about that OnlyFans chick who fucked 100 guys in a single day and ended up crying afterwards. Let's just say this up front: That's incredibly sad. It's not unique, because there have been a lot of pornstars over the years who have had gangbangs with hundreds of guys before, but it is sad. She obviously wasn't mentally prepared for what she did, and it obviously affected her in ways she wasn't expecting. I feel bad for her, and I hope she ends up learning a lesson from this about the emotional impact of casual sex and treating her body like a commodity to be sold to strangers.

But I've also seen way too many people equating what she did to being raped, and the men who had sex with her to rapists. And that's just not even remotely true. Regret is not rape. She chose to have sex with those men. She chose to keep going with every new guy that showed up. At any point she could have said "Okay, this isn't good, I want to stop now". But that never happened.

Now, I know some people will read that and say that all porn is a form of rape, because paying a woman to have sex is taking her agency away or "forcing" her or "coercing" her. Those people are wrong. Unless someone is actually being forced to do porn, porn is voluntary. Porn stars and OF people and camgirls/guys all choose to have sex in front of a camera for money.

"But the money!" some of you are saying. "The money makes it coercive!"

Well, okay. Let's look at that argument. So, what does coercion mean? It means, according to the dictionary

the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats

Note the last three words. Force or threats. I think we can all agree that threatening or forcing someone to have sex is wrong. But accepting money to perform a job, even if that job is having sex, is not coercion. It's never coercion. It's a voluntary pact between buyer and seller. Even if the person doing the selling is dirt poor.

"But," some others may say, "what if she wanted to stop but some of the guys talked her into continuing?"

To that I say, "So what?"

Convincing someone to do something is not coercion. Even if you're convincing someone to do something they don't want to do. Even if that person really wants to say no, but ends up saying yes. Unless there's force or a threat, it's not coercion. Making bad decisions is not equal to being raped. Talking someone into making a bad decision is not equal to being a rapist. We can't just throw around the most emotionally charged terms we can think of whenever we want to make a point about something that upset you. That's what the left does, and it's the reason why words that should mean very specific things have become watered down. It's why words that used to elicit horror and revulsion now barely get a shrug. Nazi, racist, rapist, fascist, abuser, war criminal. All these words have specific meanings. All these words are used everyday on social media to talk about exes or parents or politicians or friends or celebrities or strangers. Think of how many times you've heard someone use those words. Now think of how many times you actually took the arguments of the person using them seriously after they used them. I'm guessing that first number is pretty high. And I'm guessing that last number is low, if it isn't actually zero.

Don't turn yourselves into the leftists who presided over the biggest electoral shellacking in a generation. Don't adopt the language and tactics of the people who have turned nearly every demographic against them by doing exactly this same shit. If you want to hate porn, go ahead. If you want to advocate against it, go ahead. If you want to get angry at the way sex is treated these days, go right the fuck ahead. But when you do, really think about why you're doing it, and articulate those reasons without trying to get people to respond emotionally by using the worst, most incendiary language you can think of. That's not how you're going to get anything done.

[fandomhype]

Plagiarism Somerton

I obviously didn't watch the new James Somerton apology video ON his channel because I did not want to give that man the views and you shouldn't either! It has been re-uploaded and summarised elsewhere so that he doesn't benefit if anyone wants to see it.

The original hbomberguy video was wild to me because of all the stealing, I found it highly entertaining, loved all the Memes and it honestly did my imposter syndrome wonders! but then I watched the Todd in the shadows video and it really upset me.

He didn't just steal from other LGBT creators he lied to his mostly young LGBT audiance who were looking to an elder gay for guidance and to learn about their history.

Todd's video starts with a clip of James lies being spread by another person on a podcast, there's clips of people discussing his made up gay nazi fanfic he has presented as hard facts. He actively harmed his own community for cash! There are young gay men bringing that subject up in conversation being laughed at for falling for it and that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

Now I'm not a part of that community but a lot of people I love are so that angered me a lot.

...and then he comes back with another apology video, conveniently within the three months he would have had to post something on his channel to retain his monetisation status weirdly?! In which he blames both a head injury and his ADHD for his theft - at no point does he address the lying in either apology video or any of the apology posts he made that I could find.

I have combined ADHD, when I was first diagnosed the NHS referred to it as ADD with Hyperactivity element but everyone seems to have gone back to calling it ADHD and that is the term used most commonly online so that is what I refer to it is as.

I am medicated but there has been a world wide shortage of my medication and I was without it for some time over winter, which was HELL! I got nothing done.

I am in no way a big creator, Youtube for me is a fun wee hobby that will hopefully grow and allow me to collaborate with other people with similar interests but ADHD is for sure a large part of my journey as a creator.

I've published like 7 videos and currently have around 10 being worked on because, you know... ADHD! *siren noises*

I know that I am forgetful sometimes, just for the record I also had several head injuries and concussions as a child because Lil undiagnosed at the time me truly had no fear of climbing or other dangerous activities so I have my script (because free talking a subject with this brain would be nearly impossible) open in one google doc and my research open in another. It's not hard.

That's the way it was at school, college and Uni too. James claims he went to Uni to do business. Every university uses anti-plagerism software for essays and has done since like the mid 2000's? so he knows not to copy pasta. He's straight up lying there.

Another thing he's lying about is his ADHD making him forget he copied things. Now if you tell me a joke that I like it'll stick in my head and I will straight up tell it as my own later, I've been called out for this many times! But entire articles? whole sections of other peoples videos? (he also flipped a fan Vid he had ripped off of another YouTube to avoid detection and tried to pass it off as his own) No that's not something you can accidentally do even with a swiss cheese brain like mine.

Weirdly all the the paragraphs James claims he accidentally copied were also edited to remove aspects of the Trans, Bi and Ace experiences that James markedly does not believe exist. Strange considering he accidentally copied them and assumed they were his own words? Imagine going back through a paragraph you think you wrote yesterday in the edit the next day and finding swarths of things you don't agree with there?!

Why am I telling you all this? Well because I wanted to put my two cents in as a creator with this condition, partly because I felt it was somewhat of an attack on us!? He's put it out there that ADHD creators are liable to steal from others and that's not ok by me. Also I just really like the sound of my own typing!

TL;DR : James Sommerton is a suck ass liar and he doesn't get to use his disability as an excuse for what he did! and...

****** ADHD DOES NOT MAKE YOU STEAL SHIT!!! ******

Also watch Todd's Vid, everyone saw the Hbomberguy one but this one goes deeper:

[co-mixed]

Fantastic Four (& FF) by Jonathan Hickman

Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four equals a ton of expectations. Capital E. After the original one by Lee and Kirby, this one is probably considered to be the most defining for the team. At least that’s what I kept hearing before picking it up. It’s a fan favorite, hence the E.  So it doesn’t need any extra introductions. 

Next — spoilers, questions, enlightening conclusions, and more reasons to despise Reed Richards...

When I couldn’t come up with anything to say about the previous Millar run, I thought that was because the run didn’t affect anything (seriously, you should see my review — it’s pretty much me going on and on about how Reed messed up again). Turns out, I was wrong. Not about Reed, about the run. It was just a prelude to Hickman’s cooking. 

Almost everything makes a comeback: dead Galactus, living Galactus, Nu-Earth, Doom, Val’s brilliant mind, etc. Topped off with Hickman’s love for large-scale events, his style of storytelling (where time is a flat circle), and even text pages. Don’t worry though, they make an appearance but don’t take up half of the book (yet). 

A lot is going on in this series. When I say a lot, I mean almost overwhelmingly. Hickman’s style is throwing bits and pieces at you at random points and making them come together at another point. Now when’s that gonna be — you never know. This makes his runs fun and just a little chaotic, kind of like life. And if you pay attention, the bits come together like a puzzle where everything fits and nothing is left to chance. 

The narrative also happens in two books: at some point he introduces FF as in Future Foundation, thus solving the question that plagues many a writer — what to do with the kids. 

As much as I don’t care for kids' adventures, these worked just fine, so I don’t even feel the need to defend their existence or convince anyone not to skip them. 

Too many Reeds

There is a whole council of Reeds and we learn that despite being so obviously the worst of all humans on Earth, our 616 Reed somehow turns out to be the best Reed out of all Reeds. Imagine how low the bar is…. Oh wait, there’s no need to imagine if you check out the story of Reed-98570 (Fantastic Four #605). And that creep is one of the founders of the council. 

So between the nazi scientist Reed who stole Doom’s brain, other Reeds who turned their back on their families, and Reed Reed who is just garbage, there’s really only one question: why are all Reeds so awful? 

Hickman proposes a possible answer — his father wasn’t around. Kind of sounds like bs. Look at the Marvel Universe: how many heroes still have their parents? And some parents had been awful. Not everyone turned out like this (except maybe Stark…). No, I say, Reed is bad because of Reed. And Val is probably gonna turn out just as bad. 

There is so much to choose from. At this point, the list of his misdeeds (as I just mean Reed 616) exceeds the list of Daredevil’s dead exes.

It doesn’t take Reed 10 pages of the new run to start lying to his wife. 

But that’s not news. What blows my mind, is how obsessively Reed is trying to prove to Wizard that he’s going to raise his clone into someone better. Pffft, Reed. Take care of your own kids – they’re out of hand. One is making deals with your arch-enemy, and the other is doing god knows what in the middle of the night in his own universe. You have your hands full.

And that is not even remotely close to being all that Reed’s been up to. He starts Future Foundation as a way to bring young forward-thinking kid geniuses together and solve everything. Ambitious and fair, fair because he sees how the existing scientific community has stagnated. The old, experienced scientists have no interest in building a future they won’t get to see. But kids, they do. Val is a perfect fit for this foundation (and so is Bentley-the-Wizard’s-clone) and that’s a great excuse to start neglecting Franklin. You know, build a little competition. If Odin’s guide to healthy parenting has taught us anything, it’s that kids should fight for their parents’ love and approval... Fine, I’m exaggerating but just a little. After all, Reed manages to neglect FF too. Whenever he does, he usually dumps it all on Johnny. 

Johnny’s reign

It’s on one of such days that Johnny ends up locked forever in the Negative Zone. He is presumed dead and it’s all very tragic for the next few months. But it does bring Spider-Man out of his neighborhood and into the family drama. He actually fits in quite well, with nothing to prove and his easygoing attitude (but even he wonders if Sue is fine with whatever Reed’s doing at a given moment). Still, it’s not about him, so none of his personal tales make it into the book.  Of course, Johnny soon returns.

Not only he shows up at the best possible moment, he has Annihilus on a leash and complete control of the Zone (which gives us the ‘hold my Annihilus’ panel). I swear, whenever Johnny sends his ships and troops somewhere, you can feel Reed’s green envy. Reed probably thought he deserved it more… (I don’t have any proof but it seems like something Reed would experience.)

Johnny seemingly matures, he’s supposed to be 2 years older now too, but that doesn’t last long and he quickly reverts to his classic irritating self. As if dying and coming back doesn’t mess with one’s mind. 

What’s worse, he gives the Zone free elections, and guess what? They vote for Annihilus. Again. They got rid of him with pain, sweat, and blood, and they voted him back in. Now that’s just unrealistic! Can’t happen. Right?

That’s probably everything of note that happens with Johnny. I have to assume that writers, for the most part, still don’t know what exactly to make of him. But my guess is his image needs a serious makeover. I don’t know where he’s at right now, but I don’t think this party-hard, drink-’till-sunrise, never-be-on-time, have-no-purpose persona should live past 2012. 

Sue’s enchantment under the sea 

How did Johnny even end up on the other side of the gate to the Zone? Well, Ben was human, Reed was busy with Nu World and Galactus, and Sue… oh, Sue was ruling the seas. 

No, unfortunately, she still hasn’t left Reed for Namor or any other fish person. But she did spend a ton of time negotiating a truce between Namor’s kingdom and other fish in the sea. Even punched Namor, which only made him want her more. 

And I know that’s a whole other book but there was a jealous vibe from Emma, who also makes an appearance, and I don’t know what to make of it. From all we know, she can still have him as a backup if she wants to. Maybe she just hates being a second choice and Sue doesn’t exactly have Jean’s habit of dying and vacating the partner. 

Other than that, Sue waters flowers, kicks celestial ass, and wonders if she’s a good parent. She is (her husband isn’t). She has confidence which is very nice to see. But she still doesn’t give Reed the grief he deserves. He keeps lying to Sue and deceiving her, which leads to bigger and bigger problems and she, along with other heroes, ends up having to deal with it. It’s a vicious circle and it’s an exhaustingly old issue even at that point (2011-12, people, the Avengers just came out!) Don’t get me wrong, I would be complaining if their married life was all suns and rainbows, because that’s just boring. But I need to see her confronting Reed. At this point, she just looks the other way and leaves him to his devices. I’m almost not surprised she jumped at the chance to hang out with Namor, even though he once again showed his more obnoxious side. At least he isn’t spending time with a bunch of himselves instead of her. 

I never not feel bad for Sue, mostly because we still don’t really know her. Writers make small improvements and adjustments for her, and they reassure us that her love for Reed is real, but I can’t believe that. She has nothing of her own, nothing that isn’t attached to her husband, kids, the team, or Namor. She makes sandwiches and cuts off the crust. 

The week of Ben

Now back to Johnny’s trip to the Negative Zone, where was Ben? Right beside him. Only Ben was human because the FF kids created a serum that could turn him human for a week every year. That was so shocking to everyone — the kids have figured out something Reed never could. Only that’s not true at all. Throughout the FF's history, Ben’s become human again at least 5 times, maybe more. Several times Reed figured out how to change him for good, some times he gave Ben the option to turn into The Thing at will. It never lasted but not all of that was Reed’s fault.

Regardless, Ben became human for his week, spent it hanging out with Johnny (worst choice ever if you ask me), but he also reunited with Alicia. The part that does bug me is he still thinks she loves him only for his looks. You know, as if his charming and not-at-all-angry personality is not enough. Also, no one is even mentioning Debbie who just a week ago was the love of Ben’s life and nearly became his wife and Sue’s best (only) friend in the process. But no sense in dwelling on the past. 

Of course, after failing to sacrifice himself instead of Johnny, Ben takes a guilt trip. No, he actually leaves the team to go mope around in the Avengers mansion. And feels that it’s really all he does during this run aside from backing up the team and announcing clobbering time. But we do take a little trip to the future with Reed’s father, and we see what the kids’ serum does to Ben – he only ages a week every year so he gets to outlive everyone and that’s when we get a little moment that reminds us that he and Reed are actually best friends. Something that’s been buried under Ben’s loyalty and resentment, plus occasional (permanent) selfishness on Reed’s side. 

Moloids though, they worship Ben. So that’s something.

The kids won’t be all right

We get to see future versions of Franklin and Val. To call these kids shady is an understatement. They are straight-up nasty creeps. And in a very mutant tradition, they come back from the future to mess around with history. Franklin gives himself his powers back, Val constantly states how much she doesn’t like her kid self.

Meanwhile,, their younger selves, accompanied by the FF, constantly get into trouble. We do address kid Franklin’s issues that I felt were dropped by Millar, his budding envy for Val. And when it comes to Val, I don’t think she’s going to change. She is Doom’s child at heart… everything about her is Doom, her arrogance, her sinister ideas, her elaborate plans. She did get one thing from Reed though — lying. Sneaking around and doing shady things – that’s all Reed. It makes me curious, the more I read about her, the more I want to see her turn into a self-righteous villain. She has everything for the part and she’d make a far more exciting villain than even Franklin with all his world-ending abilities. Val is also more suited to rule Latveria than Kristoff. Not trying to give Doom advice on how to run his land but… just something to think about. 

What’s There to Do(om)?

The Reeds have historically been very unkind to the Dooms. And before we get into it, remember that I’m not giving props to a dictator, but let’s agree that turning Dooms into talking plants or brain donors is certainly not the way to achieve your goals of universal peace and prosperity. But the council of Reeds hunts down every Doom in existence, which I don’t know if it does make our 616 Doom special. He keeps jumping higher and higher up in the power ranking, and at this point, it’s hard to imagine he could be defeated. With some help from Val, he even obtains an Infinity Gauntlet (from a different universe) and creates a whole world. That makes him a god and I know this Doomiurge will return in Battleworld. 

To make things worse (for Reed), through the course of the run, Doom is saving Richards and his family left and right. First, he saves Reed’s absent father (by killing his variant), then he sacrifices himself during the fight with the Celestials, and so much more in between. All while being very nice to Val and not breaking his word once. Oh yes, he’s a better parent to Val than Reed is.

This is once again, a story about the family. Reed’s family, because even when they all deal with their own things, they can be sure that somehow Reed is going to screw up everything and bring about the end of the world.

All of it makes me understand one thing. When you’re writing a Fantastic Four run, you gotta be either pro-Reed or pro-Doom. If you’re pro-Reed, you’ll go out of your way to prove that Reed’s doing the right thing. Even when he does the wrong thing for the right reason, which is a - always, b- a clear sign of a villain. 

Pro-Doom writers don’t argue with Doom being evil and ambitious, but they always try to remind us how honorable Doom is and that his heart may be black but there’s a soft blueish spot in it for Valeria. A bit of healthy disdain for Mr. Fantastic usually correlates with at least some Doom apologism. 

[quidfree]

accidentally deleted this ask but for the anon asking what my gripes were with iwtv’s finale / this season:

look i love this show. ive never read the books* and i thoroughly enjoyed the one time i watched the movie mostly bc of tom cruise and kirsten dunst acting circles around bradd pitt. the show to me really elevates the material, it has phenomenal writing, the acting is obviously stellar, i think it does a great job at being that dark gothic romance that is both deeply tragic and fucked up and funny etc etc.

a key element of the adaptation is evidently that they have recontexualised the characters in ways that both add depth and nuance to them. when we meet him louis is a black gay man in a deeply racist and homophobic setting who hardens himself to survive and rise above as much as he can. claudia is a young black woman who has always faced societal violence and neglect because of this. armand’s whole arc as an exploited and fetishised child whose trauma has become his identity is also encased in colonial violence. i’m not from the communities they are so i can’t speak for everyone, but i think for the most part the show is pretty good at having these changes enrich the show and acknowledge what an impact this has on dynamics and the characters. s1 explicitly addresses how lestat handwaves away the racism louis experiences as something he can just overcome because he’s a vampire now, how lestat himself plays into racist imbalances of power in his patriarchal relationship in their home esp wrt claudia, how he goes to capture claudia on the train being portrayed to echo a slave-catcher, etc. s2 has the trial obviously set up like a lynching (claudia says so much herself), with lestat’s testimony framing the two black people he abused as the aggressors and himself as the victim, and even when lestat is genuinely apologetic and remorseful it’s because he’s allowed his tears and victimhood while louis and claudia are not. all this to say there is obviously lot of conscious thought that goes into the way the characters’ races feed into the show and the story and it oftentimes is very effective, as well as aware of audience perceptions of the characters and how the irl audience’s own biases might need addressing.

unfortunately for me there are two aspects of s2 that i feel are kind of outliers in this regard, and not in a way that makes sense/feels intentionally uncomfortable to me. 1) is madeline’s backstory, and 2) is the change of having armand actually have been plotting to murder both louis and claudia at the trial, and lestat have been the one to save louis.

1) to me is just really… weird. i feel like i know why they wrote her that way. it makes madeline a ~morally grey character~ by default so she fits in with the rest of the cast, and there is an element to the very real misogynistic vitriol and violence post-ww2 directed at french women even falsely accused of having slept with the invading nazi occupiers that feels very in line with the things the show likes to examine and point to as examples of plain old human barbarism and othering. but the way they present it in the show, unquestioned, not as a dubious survival tactic or a multi-faceted situation but an actual love story that madeline has no remorse for, is very off-putting to me. madeline is not louis and claudia who ignore the atrocities of the war because those are human affairs and they are no longer human but supernatural monsters. madeline is a normal person whose peers- jewish people, queer people (surely her own community), political dissidents of any kind- have been put down like dogs throughout the occupation, sent to prison camps at best and death camps at worst, and she never even has a line of dialogue addressing conflicting feelings about this? no one ever challenges her on it? the people painting nazi symbols on her shop are consistently framed as villainous? it just feels weird to me that claudia’s “weird white lady” has this saccharine romance with her, a black woman, without the show ever exploring any friction in that dynamic given madeline’s apparently uncomplicated nazi romance. madeline being a femme tondue is a great idea, but the execution leaves to be desired imo.

2) … oh boy. i feel like i’m wading into discourse here bc i’ve seen really confrontational takes on this, esp a lot of “responses to” people who didn’t like this change, where this is presented as those people being dumb babies who are blinded by their liking of armand and don’t Understand The Show. im sure there are those of which this is true (and ppl have explained better than me how antiblackness feeds into everyone jumping into ship wars and defense of louis’ abusive partners in general) but also it feels very reductive of some valid questions people have. people can argue the change is consistent with armand’s characterisation, which, sure, even though i feel like it feels a little flimsy / contradictory for armand to finally Choose The Coven and allow for them to execute louis but then go feed him blood and allow him to revenge-kill all of them immediately afterwards, etc. i don’t mind characters being More Evil on the Evil Vampire show.

my bigger question is why this change was made. bc my sense is that the change is less about armand than it is about lestat, and specifically setting the stage for the loustat reconciliation, and i do not love that. it’s one thing to make it so armand wanted to kill louis too, just for the extra drama of daniel’s reveal and scale of his betrayal, another push for louis to leave. it’s another to make it so lestat was the heroic captive who not only was forced to be there by armand as per but also bravely exerted the limits of his strength to save louis from execution and then nobly didn’t tell him about this. these are both monstrous vampires who have abused and betrayed louis in their own ways (armand has already orchestrated claudia’s death and kept louis in a purportedly protective mind prison for decades! that’s betrayal enough! you could even have armand originally want to kill louis too and then change his mind!), so why at this juncture choose to have lestat save louis in a move that was originally armand’s? just from the way the audience (fandom and casual watchers) is reacting it makes me wonder if the showrunners were just oblivious to how much this worsens people’s takes of armand (the brown man) being the “real villain” and lestat (the white man) being the redeemed self-sacrificing figure. i’m sure people will say this is placing too much weight on race blah blah blah but it was so jarring to me and the change in viewer attitudes so immediate that it left a really bad taste in my mouth.

inb4 the inevitable: i actually really liked the loustat reunion in the finale! i don’t hate loustat! i like all of the dynamics between all of the characters, albeit my favourite louis ship is louis x therapy (an obvious inference from my favourite character being daniel lmao). this is not a change that i hate because i’m a bitter lestat hater. i have no issue with armand doing bad things, episode 5 was my favourite episode! i just think this particular choice was weird, and felt kind of thoughtless in the service of speedrunning a lestat hero role in advance of his season.

i have other less tangential complaints but overall i think this is a great season of television. these are just two points that stood out to me as being handled with less grace than i expect of iwtv.

*i just started reading the first book today on the airplane so. we’ll see how that goes. book loustat is so funny compared to the show. book 1 louis hates his ass 😭

[max1461]

I really have to say that when I see people engaging in, uh... soft apologism for Israel (I mean like, drawing focus in Israel/Palestine discussions away from Israel and onto how bad Hamas is, or how the Israeli side is being unfairly represented, or so on), it basically always makes me lose a little respect for them. Like.

Obviously Hamas is awful. There's nothing wrong with saying this straight up. I don't believe in the kind of neurotic narrative-crafting bullshit that other leftists seem to. People will call it manufacturing consent for US support of Israel or whatever, but I think this is silly. You can't sway US foreign policy by policing a conversation. I've compared it before to the inefficacy of weaving in traffic. It's like, no matter what your goals are, better (except in various edge cases) to go with the slow and steady strategy of "say what you actually think is true, or don't say anything at all". And what is actually true is that Hamas is an awful organization, and I won't hesitate to say it when I think it's relevant.

But. There is a genocide being committed right now, and it is not by Hamas. The current death toll of the war is ~26,000 Palestinians and ~1,400 Israelis. That's 4,000 more Palestinians than last time I made this exact same fucking post a few weeks ago, and... maybe a few more Israelis? It's hard to tell because there's some variations in the numbers that are being reported. That's not even to mention the people who have been expelled from their homes, the infrastructural damage, the damage to public health, etc., which has been exclusively concentrated in Palestine.

This is not a symmetrical conflict. This is a genocide.

I just... there's no other way to say this, but I've seen some people I otherwise respect on here come into I/P discussion and say things like "well this is all true, but Hamas is still terrible blah blah blah", and I see this in pretty much the same light as someone during WW2 being like, "well, the Nazis are awful, but" or "well, the Rape of Nanking was awful, but".

Like. It's not that there's never a time to talk about e.g. atrocities by the Allies in WW2! Those are actually pretty important to talk about! But when there's an ongoing genocide, when the situation is what it plainly is, and I see people repeatedly redirecting discussions of the genocide in away from the actual perpetrators, it's like...

Frankly it just makes me think they are bad moral reasoners. Like I interact with some of these people, I may not know them personally but I know them well enough to be confident they aren't evil or malicious or bloodthirsty. So instead I think they're blinded by bias, or they're in some discourse bubble with the kind of leftists who say Hamas is great and they're being too myopic to realize that dumbass internet leftists (who have always and will always exist) are not the most important issue right now, or whatever. I think they're engaging in a simple failure of moral reasoning. And, I think, an avoidable failure, the kind of failure that makes me look at someone and go "c'mon, man... really?".

The reason I am not so governed by myopic annoyance at internet leftists is that when I see them be dumbasses I say to myself "c'mon, man... really?", and when I have said this enough times about someone I stop taking what they say very seriously to begin with. And so too I often find myself reading I/P discussions and upon seeing one of these "reasonable" voices enter the scene, say to myself "well, this is probably gonna be a silly contribution". Well, anyway.

[fiepige]

if miles and hobie got into a fist fight who would win? (If they had no powers)

oohhh that's a tough one!

Hobie is my guy so I'm obviously biased towards him, but I'll try not to let my biases get in the way of my conclusion too much!

Hobie has the size advantage but since we're saying 'no powers' I think Miles would have a slight strenght advantadge? His build looks more muscular than Hobie's so I'm assuming Miles has more muscle mass compared to him.

But I feel like Hobie would also have more experience when it comes to fighting? We don't know much of ATSV Hobie's background (I'm assuming we're talking ATSV characters here lol) but even with no powers I can't imagine Hobie wouldn't get in a fight with fascists, nazis, police officers etc.

Not saying that Miles haven't been in a fight before, but I feel like Hobie would be way more experienced on that front. (And depending on the context of their fight, Hobie would also know how to fight dirty and not be afraid to use that to gain the upper hand). But then again, Miles' dad is a cop and it'd make sense if he'd taught Miles some moves at some point, so maybe it'd be more even than one would initially assume?

Honestly, Hobie's got size and most likely experience on his side so I'm leaning strongly towards him winning over Miles in a fist fight

(Just look at the height difference here, Hobie would get the upper hand so fast)

Of course there are many factors that could be at play - What are their motivations for the fight? - Did one of them have time to plan the fight? (If Miles somehow managed to catch Hobie by surprise he could increase his odds of winning) - Are they both healthy and well rested? (Hobie's experience with getting into more fights could backfire if he was injured from a previous fight and didn't have time to recover)

(I'm honestly just grasping for straws here to try and make it look less biased towards Hobie but who am I kidding lol) My conclusion is gonna be that Hobie would win the fight in most cases - Place them in an empty room and make them fight and I have no doubt Hobie would come out on top

(though if anyone has any evidence that says otherwise I'd be curious to hear it)

[meyerlansky]

Something I think is interesting about the punch on the wing scene in MOTA is that Bucky says “I order you to hit me,” and then immediately after (I’m 90% sure it’s his next line after Curt speaks) says “ranks off.” Like… you can’t order someone to punch you (effectively pulling rank) and then say no more ranks. I mean you can, because he did, but yeah

Y E A H! IT DRIVES ME CRAZY ACTUALLY!!!

like you can take bucky's "that's an order" as a wink-wink nudge-nudge crack at the fact that uhhh neither of them really give a shit about rank on the ground: if curt did he wouldn't step up to gale about the RAF captains, and if any of the four majors in the scene did they'd have stopped a lieutenant from taking a hit his commanding officer stepped up for. i don't even really think curt cares about bucky ordering him to hit him, not in the sense of "i am a good little soldier, i can't disobey an order 🫡" anyway. when curt brings the ranks up, he's really REALLY obviously using it as a soft no, both to give bucky an opportunity to laugh it off and save face AND to try and get out of being made to do something he does NOT want to do even though his friend asked him for it. and even after that, he has to be pushed EVEN MORE into actually swinging. he gives bucky two very obvious soft no's, and only throws the punch after bucky physically pushes him into it. that's what we in the know call "coerced consent," baybee!

and then, boy i wish i wasn't at work so i could post caps, but AFTER THAT they have this little exchange that just feels fucking awful to watch: curt is watching bucky reel from the hit looking very concerned, and when bucky stands up he kind of backs away and puts his hands up like he thinks bucky's gonna swing back. bucky kind of sidles up to him and pats him on the shoulder—very "big dog who wants to play-fight with someone smaller" body language, as a note 😳—and it looks like everything's fine, but then as he walks over to the edge of the wing he shoots curt this look that's... a little resentful? maybe? like he wasn't expecting curt to hit him THAT hard? and curt turns away AFTER that look, so i think he caught it, and he looks SO FUCKING MISERABLE for the rest of the scene, even after bucky grins at him and i want to rip my own throat out about it actually

tangent ahead, my meta-writer roots are showing, i cannot help myself: bucky's relationship to his rank and authority is fascinating to me, actually. he really only wants it when it's convenient and it gets him what he wants. he doesn't want air exec because he feels left out of the fighting and guilty for being safe when everyone else is up, which is not THE most selfish on the surface, but it is still him prioritizing his feelings over doing the job he was given and thereby keeping the ENTIRE GROUP safe. he's buddy-buddy with the other pilots until he wants curt to hit him or crank to stop saying shit he doesn't want to hear [which imo is worse, even though i agree with bucky wrt Fuck 'Em; at least he was alone with curt on the wing, but making crank say "yes sir" in front of his ENTIRE CREW? ouch. ouch!]. he plays favorites in the air, with curt AND gale, and puts MULTIPLE FORTS FULL OF MEN in danger to get them out of tight spots. he basically abdicates all leadership responsibility in the stalag and puts it all on gale, up to and including only really discussing escape for the two of them, not their crews.

and like, i get it! i 100% understand why he's as selfish as he is, and in particular i wouldn't expect his internal logic to be consistent while he's White Girl Wasted as a—very bad, but really his Only Available—coping method for very deep trauma and grief. but he's SO self-centered, basically all the time, and it is such an interesting trait in contrast to the rest of his character, which is: he's fundamentally a good guy. i buy what he says to paulina, that he signed up because he wanted to help right nazi germany's wrongs. he's the one who says "maybe we should think about them" when the tuskeegee airmen roll in, and you can take that a couple of ways, but i personally don't think gale would've talked to alex without that push from bucky. he gets bitter about lil and dye for a hot minute [again, while drinking] but then gets over it REAL quick to reassure her dye'll be fine. he writes the letters to the families of the guys they lose over bremen even though it's not his responsibility As Of Five Minutes Ago. he SNAPS after the mustang fires on the march column, because simoleit put his men in danger with the night marches. he was absolutely NEVER going to shoot the german kids in westphalia, vs gale who is SO OBVIOUSLY talking himself OUT of murdering a child. he does actually care about people! even people he doesn't know! and i don't actually think he'd shrug off his abuses of rank and skirting authority, if it was pointed out to him and it impacted people he didn't want to hurt. which is why i wrote 2.6k of navel-gazy fic about it, even though he only finds out curt's hurt because of him at the end of the fic but shhh

[child0feden]

i have a little question, i hope it doesn't come off as rude bc im genuinely just curious.

how do u deal w all the shit most bm artists have said or done? e.g. varg vikernes and jan axel who are apparently nazis, and fenriz avidly supporting varg and saying he's an amazing guy?

as i said, i'm genuinely just curious and i want to know your opinion about it, if you're comfy sharing obviously

have a great day!!

hey there, honey!

not at all, this does not come across as rude at all! questions are very rarely rude to me, i myself am quite a curious soul and questions are only natural :)

honestly in short, i just… look over it? like i know it is there and i am not blind to their views on things but i choose to just not focus on it all that much because i think a lot of the time, people are a whole lot different than how they portray themselves to the public and how they talk about their views, you know? and even then, when it comes to my works, i write fanfiction! so sometimes, that fiction half comes in very handy for ever so slightly changing their personalities in small ways like that though i never really mention stuff like this in my works anyways…

i just think that people are people, everyone will forever have differing views on things! hell, some of my family members have insane views that i do not agree with or really like at all but does it make me hate them or lessen my love for them? not particularly because human emotions are so intense and deep, humans as a whole are so intense and deep!

i think i would kind of be able to explain my stance on this much better in person but in short i just mean that whilst i do not support a whole lot of their views at all and i have very differing views to them, if i spent my time choosing to police who is right and socially acceptable for me to be attracted to and so on, my life would be utterly terrible lolol… attraction works in many ways, i dislike parts of their personalities whilst loving other parts and that is the human spectrum! who cares! all i can really say is that once again, i do not agree with a whole lot of their views…

life, feelings and humans are confusing little creatures! i am a simple little bisexual lady who writes about whoever i find attractive! i mean, bård literally brutally murdered a man ( as well as varg too ) but i think both of them do ( or did when it comes to varg ) have redeeming qualities and one action / opinion does not define a human being

i apologise if this is a confusing answer or anything like that, i think it can be kind of hard to explain my stance on this without just saying “ i do not care about their opinions because i think they are hot ” and sounding like a complete cunt lol… i get myself in trouble quite a bit with stuff like this because i am kind of bad at explaining my points and my stance…

anyways, thanks a bunch for sending this in! i am always more than comfy to answer any questions that you guys have about / for me <3

[kaccvcate]

To those concerned with my previous post, I am demonstrating how to survive on the street as a lone and defenseless non-white and obviously female person. You have to be kind to everyone you meet, not just because it's the right thing to do and you could change their mind, but also because they could kill you. Sorry if my post was unclear, but I wrote that piece and drew that comic for people who needed to see it. It isn't the first time I've talked about native (or native + white) punks using Nazi symbolism unawares. Lots of impoverished people have to drop out of school to work, and if they live somewhere where Jewish people are rare (like most of the US) then they don't even realize. "People should educate themselves." Not everyone has this opportunity, many people struggle just to make enough food to eat, and often they are trapped in abusive and isolated communities. If their grandpa was a white supremacist and told them the holocaust was fake, that's more than school ever taught them about it. My native cousin didn't even know what a swastika was when we met, he was 17. I'm often the first Jewish person these people have ever spoken to. I've found comparing the holocaust to colonization helps people understand. I'm not saying go out of your way to talk to skinheads, but if someone is nice to you, like the gentleman who complimented my Red Lives Matter sticker on the back of my van, you shouldn't judge them based on how they look.

[philosophicalparadox]

The term “Modern AU” for Naruto fandom needs to die. (Jk, sort of). It needs a new name, for ontologies sake.

Like. There is no consistency to the technological advancement in Naruto at all, but nonetheless, it is a demonstrable product of its initial years of development, which is the 90’s.

Throughout pt1 and Shippuden, we get a weird and nonsensical mix of Showa era (all of it, from 1886-1949) postwar period (1947-1980 thereabouts, though Wikipedia will disagree with me on that) and mid-late 90’s tech boom.

Now you could solidly argue for a “modern” interpretation of the Showa-era systems and customs, although that very much interferes with 1. the Uchiha as a clan, because they are 100% late Showa / WW2 period culturally. Hyuuga are more representative of the earlier Showa era, like 1920’s or so. SO yes you could do away with that, but frankly those clans are not themselves outside of that satirical context. (And I do actually think Kishimoto meant it to be satire, or at least his editor, who came up with most of the Uchiha premise, did). And

2. The whole Shinobi premise, which had still-living threads during that time period despite Shinobi as a profession supposedly dying in the 1850’s. (Pfffffft, Like mercenaries went anywhere during the European renaissance; they simply went from mercs to commissioned officers. Title change but not role change. Same idea.)

Furthering this, if you take them out of the dirt, so to speak, then they cease to have the in-universe function that they do. They don’t have to — you can still absolutely mock up a Mercenary-Paramilitary-Mage Caste for the “modern” world, by which is typically meant: In Japan/Our World, not the NarutoVerse.

Yes I know I’m being pedantic, but to say “modern” implies “past” and while there’s lots of that in Naruto, there’s also:

90’s Telephones (why doesn’t the Hokage have one in their office??? Landline is pretty darn secure.)

90’s Electricity

Computers (90’s era, but clunky things with limited functionality but can store data)

Floppy Disks to go with the above

Security cameras

Polaroids (again, 90’s era)

The cutting-edge-of-its-time (90’s again) radio collars

Industrial production of steel (how? We don’t know. But they can build 80’s-90’s skyscrapers, somehow.)

Steam engine (not that impressive or modern, but like, Where Are The Trains. We got 90’s steam boats in Kiri, but no locomotives? How? Why?)

Medical devices. Oh the list I could make about that. All like mid- late 90’s, at least in Konoha/Orochimaru and Co. The iron lung does not exist, replaced by stately 1999-2002 ventilators. (Kimmimaro) The concept of IV nutrition exists and is applicable, even if Kishi did an absolutely abysmal job of demonstrating that. (On Kakashi) (the reality: So. Many. Ports.) That little innovation didn’t exist until 1982, and didn’t actually work until 1996. (Because figuring out how to synthesize metabolic fats and proteins was really hard); you’ve got Ostomy tubes and bags that belong in 1995, (Kimmimaro again) and don’t even get me started on Lab equipment. Do you know how long it took to produce incubators that didn’t take up a quarter of a room? Do you have any idea what the world of cloning looked like in the 90’s? (Actually, it was a lot more advanced at that point than it is in Naruto, which is stuck in like, 1980’s with that notion).

And I could go on!

And there is just as many examples of the inverse, too, where there’s things juxtaposed to the past level. Example:

Psychiatric care. Granted we don’t see a lot of that outside of Kakashi’s little stint, but it is very 1940’s-1950’s type BS.

Similar to that, most the stuff in the Interrogation Unit. From attitudes to technology, but mostly in just the very weird, 1930-1950’s way the whole thing operates. Kishimoto did not do his research there, very obviously (Torture does not work like that), but nonetheless they give me Nazi vibes. (Well, Inaba and Ibiki do, respectively). That part might be intentional, but it still doesn’t really make sense in the bigger scope. (Why doesn’t the village know things when they are a SHINOBI VILLAGE. A postwar village no less! Make it make sense Kishi!)

Some elements of medicine. There’s a very weird divide there, between synthesized chemicals that are complex poisons, which SHOULD mean complex medicines exist, (because the only difference between medicine and poison is the dose and many toxins have medical value) and the demonstration of this, which relies upon herbalism. I suppose both those would exist in a Shinobi’s world, but there’s a bizarre element of “only the bad guys actually have good medicine” going on, which again is a very 1940-1950’s thing.

Idk, I feel like “modern” sort of fits? But not entirely. Because fundamentally the NarutoVerse is a completely separate dimension, a twisted alternate reality that is very removed from our own yet also very like it.

Gahhhhh the world building in this series is hot, messy garbage 🤣

I would love to see an AU where it’s more homogeneous, like smack-dab postwar all over the board. Or even just bring her up to the 90’s. That would be actual modern-NarutoVerse.

But using Modern to mean “Our World” has always just been a small thing to bugger me. Use what you want, because I don’t think the term is going anywhere, but if I can’t share this anywhere else I can share it here.

[majaloveschris]

I need to vent a little.

Even though we had the Page Six article of Chrisba meeting Harry and Meghan and that Mark started following Justin, things had been relativly quiet. No big drama, no something that seemed too important. This morning I woke up to this whole Carlisle and IMDb thing, and I don't know why, but it's usually the Carlisle house and blurry pictures that make me realize how much I hate this whole situation. I'm just tired of it.

I made this account around April 2022, a year and a half ago. Looking back at it, it's crazy how things have changed. How all of us changed. How our view of Chris has changed.

My only goal with this blog was to share my opinion about this and my point of view. In the beginning, I think most people were confused about what's going on here and why everything was so weird. People were freaked out because of her age, and 16 years turned into racism, fatphobia, and people who support nazis.

We all said and still say it's going to get better, but when? I find myself not wanting to talk about this or deal with this whole situation, especially on those days when life feels too much for me. I don't want to argue with anyone; I don't want to argue whether the Carlisle house is his or if they are going to live there or not. I don't want to argue whether he was in a blurry picture or not. I don't want to argue whether they are real or not. I just don't anymore. I never wanted to convince people that I'm right or that I know what's going on, because I'm not. I only want to share my opinion; that's it, and sometimes people here make me want to leave much more than this weird whatevership does.

I'm just tired of them. Tired of their stupid followings, likes, and comments...Of their stupid stories filled with little signs and tired of them tiring to make this believable when they are clearly incapable of selling whatever this is. I'm tired of their games, and I'm surprised that they aren't tired of playing them. I'm tired that now even those who aren't involved are trying to "troll" the fandom for attention.

Whenever we think it's getting better, they just do something even worse, and it obviously has an effect on us. His actually being in love with her and wanting to spend the rest of his life with her (which seems very unlikely when you look at them) would mean he is okay with their values and that he agrees with them. I think I could "forgive" him for this being PR, but if he wants to actually be with her, I don't want to support that with my money and time.

There are always and will always be people who cross the line when it comes to their favorite celebrity, but this situation seems to get the worst out of everyone, of those who are directly and indirectly involved. Since the very first Las Vegas day, we have been shown that if you want to know what is actually going on, you need to look for clues. On videos, on pictures, among somebody's following list, or among those people who liked something, I know that now people say, Why do we even care about whom he dates? I didn't really care that much about them being real or not until her and her friends pasts came out. Up until that point, the only thing that bugged me about this whole thing was that Justin and Alba seemed to troll the fandom for attention, and I didn't like the way they tried to take advantage of Chris and his fandom.

Some people can't seem to understand the actual problem with him being connected to them. I don't want to support someone who is okay with the behavior of Alba and her friends. But it's hard to believe and seems impossible to me that the man we'd seen for 20+ years has never existed. He is not that good of an actor, and I don't think somebody would be able to play a role for decades.

I have a lot of movies with him in them that I love and want to rewatch, but this whole situation makes it really hard for me. I only see him. I see him when I look at Colin, or Andy, or Ransom, or Steve, or any of his characters. I miss that guy who was always smiling and laughing during an interview. I miss the guy who seemed happy and healthy. Right now he isn't even the shadow of his old self.

I don't want this to come across as me complaining. I know that nobody forces me to be here. I know that I could just delete this blog and go on with my life, but I like having my blogs. I like coming here and talking to my friends; I like seeing funny edits; and I like making funny edits. I would love to talk about his projects, make edits, and share photos and videos. I had so many things in mind prior to the whole wedding thing, which may always remain in my gallery and my drafts.

I will still continue with this blog, but I needed to write it down how I feel, because I think a lot of us feel this way. I'm staying; I'm not leaving because I need to know how this whole thing is going to end, and I still have some hope in him.

[seriousfic]

I also watched Megalopolis, which is... ah... it's gonna need a longer review than The Wild Robot.

On the one hand, I don't want to be a philistine and just say "it's so bad lol". But I don't want to be pretentious and pretend people who don't like it just don't get it, because it's stupid as hell and not good.

The best way I can describe it is a Jack Kirby comic from late in his career, while he was having an off day, as brought to life by the special effects of a Spy Kids movie, with a vastly overqualified cast and overinflated budget, which at several points goes to embarrassingly literal poetic imagery. And also to buying out Aubrey Plaza's nudity clause, which is obviously a far better use for it.

(That, or if someone decided to make a Disney live-action reboot of an unreleased Ralph Bakshi movie. There, there's your pull quote.)

Is it watchable? Yes, and moreso than a lot of would-be franchise starters and rebootquels we've had to suffer over the years. You'll definitely remember this one better than you will RIPD, if you were to watch them on the same day. And they cost about the same.

I don't want to list just weird things that happen, but indulge me a bit.

Adam Driver says that he misses his dead wife. Nathalie Emmanuel gasps in shock that he misses his dead wife. Laurence Fishburne narrates "Such are the mysteries of the human heart." Is it? Is it a mystery?

Shia LeBeouf, who is both Trump and an influencer and a rapacious bank president, forms a literal Nazi party out of disgruntled immigrants. Yes.

To be nice, while the Kings-like alternate reality where America is replaced by 'New Rome' is... pretty pointless... it does lead to some good imagery where the characters wear business togas and cloaks and fedoras. Gus Fring has a gold laurel he wraps around his neck instead of wearing a tie. It's kinda great. And really refreshing after how many sci-fi shows just put people in business suits or military uniforms.

Look, everyone, it's the future! Look what crazy clothes we wear in the future! Neutral colors and no hats! It's not a phase, Mom, this is fashion!

But Megalopolis also feels weirdly dated, like F to the F to the C didn't bother updating his screenplay in twenty plus years. Like one of the observations he makes is 'oh, bread and circuses in Ancient Rome, that's a little like pro wrestling these days!' What? Pro wrestling? Is that really the best modern example you can think of for decadence and debauchery?

And later he goes "oh, these pop singers who go on about how virginal they are, they're like the vestal virgins, aren't they?" Fuck, man, God knows I don't pay attention to pop music, but is anyone doing that? Aren't most pop stars bragging about how slutty they are? I don't think anyone's really pretending to be a virgin while secretly having sex.

So I don't know, I can't really recommend it as a good movie, but I did feel it was worth a watch, so if you don't go in with the expectation that Coppola is going to blow your mind, hopefully you'll have a good time.