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sailormoonandme · 4 years ago

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Checking Out other Magical Girls shows Part 4: Miraculous

Of all the Magical Girls shows I’ve been researching this was one of the ones I was most hotly anticipating. See, in addition to Sailor Moon, American superheroes are a big passion of mine and Spider-Man is my all time fav. So a show that ostensibly combines the two was fascinating to me.*

I checked out three episodes from the first season, ‘Stormy Weather’ and the two part ‘Origins’ episodes. I was initially recommended the former as the best place to start but honestly I kind of regret doing that. Every ‘watch list’ I consulted recommended I NOT start with the origin episodes and I do not know why, they were a perfectly natural jumping on point and a far better introduction than ‘Stormy Weather’ was. Not that ‘Stormy Weather’ was bad, but I was a little lost.

Let me get some negatives out of the way before I move onto positives.

So the origins episodes I think at times dropped the ball as far as laying out the ‘rules’ of how Ladybug and Cat Noire’s powers work.

-The five minute time limit comes out of nowhere and I don’t understand if it applies just to Cat Noire or to both of them, when the timer begins (from the moment they transform or from when they use their unique powers).

-I’m uncertain if Ladybug has some kind of special visionary power because in 2 episodes items are lit up in a ladybug pattern in sequence and this is how she deduces how to use her Lucky Charm. But I don’t know if that’s a power of if it’s just an artistic representation of her figuring out what to do herself

-I also think the show should’ve clarified that when they refer to their ‘super powers’ they mean their special unique abilities, because obviously they both get enhanced reflexes and whatnot.

-I guess also they seemed to know their the special phrases to activate their abilities without anyone telling them, but that’s standard Magical Girl fare I won’t hold that against the show. Same thing with how intuitive the characters seem to be with their powers, although I don’t know why Adrienne seems better with his powers off the bat than Marinette did?

-Finally, I’m very much in two minds about Ladybug’s unique powers. It’s certainly novel as super powers go and I guess works with the magical aspect of the characters. But…she gets a random item that will somehow help her resolve the issue? So…are things just predestined here? Her powers just know what will happen because she clearly needs to make certain events happen for the Lucky Charm to help her, and even then it doesn’t seem to just fix the problem outright. I can see that power being problematic from a creative POV and possibly overpowered. I hope the sow addresses that going forward. The same applies to her ability to essentially undo all the damage caused, including restoring a collapsed building. I mean…does this apply to anyone who’s died too?

One other issues I noted were how Hawk Moth seems to know Cat Noire and Ladybug’s names when he wouldn’t, especially the latter since Marinette had yet to even label herself as Ladybug.

I know that sounds like I’m really down on this show but the opposite is true. I think those are issues with it but I nevertheless REALLY LOVED THIS!

Marinette is charming and relatable and even Adrienne, in a more abstract way, can be understoof by his desire to feel normal whilst also feeling like an outsider. These might not be brand new teen hero archetypes but they’re classic, and the classics stick around for a reason. Marinette reminds me of Usagi and Adrienne is vaguely Bruce Wayne esque, although given this show’s influences perhaps Tuxedo Mask would be a better comparison.

The show also built up a decent supporting cast in it’s origin episodes, giving both characters a best friend, a rival/possible romantic interest in Chloe and decent tertiary characters ripe for expansion in their parents and body guards. Plus the school setting is a great story engine for the show, capable of giving us emotional drama but also a possibly endless supply of super villains for Hawk Moth to exploit. I also love the Parisian setting if for no other reason than t is refreshing to see a superhero story set outside of New York, Tokyo or an fictional American city like Metropolis or Gotham.

Hawk Moth himself, whilst perhaps standard, worked for me. He sort of reminded me of Professor Tomoe, but with a little extra spice since he’s drawing upon the same powers as our heroes. And of course…he’s clearly Adrienne’s father (unless the show is setting me up for a huge twist). Again, MAYBE that’s nothing new but…it’s still a fun trope to play. And if I’m right I think I also know his motivation but that’s probably me having consumed super hero media all my life. Aeshetically he’s cool and the moth motif works well for his character.

In fact the look of the show over all works very well. It is a sad fact that the CGI in this show will look dated sooner rather than later since that’s the nature of CGI. But the animation style also allows for dynamic camera movements and action set pieces so I don’t mind. And frankly, this is the closest I’ve ever seen CGI come to evoking anime style animation so I’d be happy to see this style continue/evolve over time in other shows (honestly, a Spider-Man show might look really good in this style).

In particular I was surprised that the show allowed for decent facial expressions and body language, which I was concerned about since I know the show plays in some romance and that might’ve been hard to watch if the animation wasn’t up to snuff. Thankfully it was and I’m invested in seeing their relationship evolve. I particularly like the dynamic in play here. In Sailor Moon you had 2 people who disliked one another as civilians but were very much attracted to each other as superheroes. There they get on in both identities, but whilst Marinette tries (and funbles) to initiate things with Adrienne, Cat Noire is the one coming onto Ladybug who seems to rebuff his charms (even though she seems to like him). That’s at least relatively unique for this genre and I’m here for it!

So overall, I really liked this and would watch more if I got the chance.

*Cat Noir is even named similarly to Spidey’s girlfriend the Black Cat.

P.S. I enjoyed the reference to Wonder Woman/Captain Marvel in the comic book Alya’s comic book.

#My Essays #Miraculous #miraculous: tales of ladybug and chat noir #Cat Noire #Ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #Hawk Moth #sailor moon r #Tuxedo Mask

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tfw-no-tennis · 4 years ago

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mtmte liveblog issues 4&5

its delphi time babey

I'm sorry but drift & co look like such fuckin nerds on their scooter things on the cover lmaooo

oh god. seeing the first page just reminded me of how horribly confused i was for this whole little arc the first time i read it. i was like ok, who are all these new characters, and also why does everyone look so similar

anyways now i now what's going on. i love first aid

love the running continuity of rung being the literal only psychologist on cybertron (except for fr*id but that's later). no wonder everyone's fucked up they all have to share a single therapist

ok i find it extremely funny that first aid was demoted from doctor to nurse, as if that's a thing that happens EVER - I mean it'd be one thing if first aid was a nurse practitioner (which i doubt is a position that exists here), at least that demotion would make sense, but like...the doctors i work with don't know how to do most nurse stuff (like BP, cathing, vaccinations, hell even using some of the thermometers - that's all stuff nurses/etc do), so demoting one to a nurse would be a disaster (just like promoting a really good nurse to a doctor would be a bad idea). anyways i know I'm being pedantic but it Be like that when you work in the medical field and read something that has medicine-related stuff in it

i love swerve giving ratchet the tiniest free drink ever lmaooo

is that skids being a rowdy drunk in the bg lmaoooo

unironically i love medical statistics. keep it comin

i love magnus’s giant sternal chestpiece thing. its like a bird’s sternum but without the massive pec muscles attached

i love magnus and rodimus’s dynamic so much

oh pipes....im so sorry but this fun space adventure is going to be not so much fun for you

ratchets ideologies are certainly interesting, and i liked seeing how they changed over the course of the story

drift: why would i be SCARED of the DJD, I've got a SWORD, two swords even,

hvbhajkhfbsdjkf pipes really said ‘oi, you two - what's this, then?’ that's the most british fucking thing, that's literally something i say when I'm doing an overexaggerated british accent, oh my god,

PIPES IS SUCH A TINY DUMBASS. ILY SIR BUT WHAT ARE YOU DOING

aaaand now you're covered in dead bodies, pipes. look at your life, look at your choices

drift epic sword moments

drift confirmed for the kinda weird guy who has katanas that he uses to like, cut up fruit and water bottles in his backyard while rodimus films him

‘i thought i heard...bickering’ lmaooooo

ah, so its covid

this arc is how i feel working in healthcare lmaooo especially now that i probably have covid

so rewind condensed the entire war into an 11 second long cringe compilation. nice

seeing the mechanical stuff past tailgate’s visor is so cool

poor tailgate, this guy is getting slammed with history from multiple sides. and like, bias is inevitable in ANY sort of recounting of events, especially controversial historical events, so poor tg just kinda has to take it all in and decide who to listen to

that’s...not really how immunity works, guys. also, you shouldn't be exposed to so much disease with proper ppe usage

is there even such thing as ppe in the transformers universe?? there are fluid- and contact-transmitted illnesses, so there SHOULD be

is there even OSHA in this universe??????? unbelievable

first aid, holding a giant fucking claw clamp: we haven't tried EVERYTHING............

first aid read a human wikihow article on how to jumpstart a car and took notes

i love tailgate’s ‘mom says its my turn on the xbox’ pose

tailgate has a point - he’s from pre-war times, where things weren't as grey so of course he would try to divide the two sides into ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’

CYCLONUS BE NICE DONT HIT UR FUTURE HUSBAND

go get some character development and then maybe you'll feel better

seeing the word quarantine is making me twitchy w/my possible month-long complete isolation quarantine on the horizon

drift pulling his swords on pipes and ratchet pushing down drift’s arms...lmao

poor pipes...even tho this is completely his fault, its still rough

also jesus, pharma and ratchet look so goddamn similar, reading this was so confusing the first time around

drifts idea of subduing pipes involves turning into a cool car and also posing with his sword

also. never gonna be over drift’s massive thighs. jesus man

ooof now drift has the rona. ouch

poor drift, his covid realization is getting overshadowed by pharma being flung around

first aid bustin thru w/the epic medical nipple clamps and some Big Boi Backup

ok that's an epic pre-beatdown speech from fort max right there, daym

im just gonna continue on w/issue 5 now for continuity’s sake. yay!

the cover of tailgate in magnus’s autobot school is so cute

and we open with an incredible shot of fort max str8 up ripping a guy in half. i mean, to be fair, he DID just give an epic speech about how much he was gonna do that, and he certainly followed thru

yeahhhhh, fort max is not doing so well atm

when he puts that dudes head in his chest vent thing and then snaps it shut....man

also i fucking LOVE when their faces are shaded all in black w/only the eyes/mouth fully drawn...fantastic stuff

ratchet: phew i am not equipped to deal w/this level of Fucked Up Mental Trauma. u good m8?

ratchet is already writing up a referral to rung for fort max as this is happening

drift is just laying on the ground dying like, oh hey yeahh I'm still here too

i fucking love when punctuation is drawn in story - like here where first aid has a little ? over his head....fav

ratchet holding drifts hand ;_;

ok tbh ambulon having switched sides 10 yrs ago is wild bc like, 10 years is barely any time for these guys, especially in a war that lasted 4 million years. that would be like a human switching sides in a war like, 3 months before it ends. probably. i sense some math bs, I'm just extrapolating here

all that mexican standoff shit is going down and first aid is just like But That's None Of My Business

ah so ambulon is an asymptomatic carrier

and there's first aid with the save! iconic

pharma calling ratchet ‘buddy’ hbvakjdsbfhkasdf

ooooh i love that they figured it out - and i love that twist, that transforming is what triggers the start of symptoms. remember when drift turned into a cool car? yep

s/o to Ambulon Transformers for helping me in my medical terminology courses, bc now ill always remember: Leg(tm)

also this explanation makes a ton more sense (in universe, at least) than the whole ‘i guess we as medical staff have been exposed to enough Germz that we’re more immune to this or something’ theory

ah, i love the meaningless (to me) alien robot medical jargon

drift and ratchet hhhhhhhhh

‘I'm too wide’ fort max L O R G E

also once again drift is forgotten in favor of a bunch of other dramatic stuff happening vbhjksdfbjhskdf

godddd i love tailgates little flashbacks where we see how Important and Special he is, complete with his ‘bomb disposal’ arm label...augh its so good!

and tailgate’s autopedia page even reflects his lies! like, did tailgate go edit that first thing upon waking up??? seriously, I'm fascinated by tailgate’s meticulous dedication to his fake life

also the fact that ultra magnus believes everything he read on autopedia is amazing lmao

ultra magnus: you think somebody would just go on the internet and tell lies?

fuckgin love magnus’s long ass name/title placard

tailgate hvbahjkdfbjhaskf i mean, he’s gotten the abridged version of everything else, of course he would assume that’d be the case here too...but not on magnus’s watch

magnus cant even say ‘fun’ hvukdasdbjfkjsadf i love my uptight law dad

love rung implying that upon questioning, he would easily divulge a patient’s name and maybe even information about said patient’s treatment while under him....love the disregard for patient confidentiality and hipaa in general

not that hipaa seems to exist here, at least not in a fully realized form

also i mean the above genuinely, i think rung’s tendency towards at least slight malpractice is very interesting

poor red alert....super bad luck that HE was the guy to get roped up in that overlord business

I'm glad that, at the very least, red alert was able to prove that he was Actually hearing something to rung, rather than get brushed off completely

god magnus and tailgate’s interactions are golden

also tg is much more sarcastic/quippy than anyone gives him credit for tbh

‘thought warfare,’ ultra magnus says with complete seriousness. god i fucking love this comic

now i can tell pharma apart from ratchet bc pharma has let his true Petty Bitch nature emerge and you can see it in his expressions

the whole ‘tarn is addicted to transforming’ thing didn't really go anywhere, right? i feel like i noticed that on my second readthru as well

also pharma is such an interesting character given the context of him like, trying to strike a bargain w/the djd to keep them from destroying delphi, but that arrangement inevitably kinda making him lose it as the situation escalates. he’s also just really entertaining bc i feel like he kins the joker or st and probably gets into really heated arguments w/people on twitter about just abt anything

‘sound bomb’ i love this comic

another important facet of pharma’s character becomes clear around this time as well - how he’s really into ratchet. i also choose to read them as awful exes tbh, it makes their dynamic even more entertaining

‘killmaster, with the wand’ is one of my favorite running remarks lmao

also, was killmaster even a character before mtmte? or, if he was, was he an important one? it would crack me up the most if he literally didn't exist at all, but any way you spin it is still funny

ratchet’s tiny humansona facing off against pharma is wild

‘I'm miles from anyone i truly care about’ brutal, ratchet, drift is dying like 2 floors away (im p sure)

SUDDENLY DRIFT IS HERE, ACTUALLY

oh don't worry first aid, that sure isn't the last we’ll be seeing of pharma

so like, did first aid save everyone by posting that data log to his wreckers fan blog or something? lmao love it

i love the pretty fucked up reveal of ratchet having stolen pharma’s hands. like, damn dude.

and that wraps up the delphi arc! our first true ‘arc’ of mtmte, and a fantastic one at that. short and snappy and fresh, with some very clever writing and cool new characters, and a lot of great plot threads to be picked up later. plus, we got to see the beginnings of drift and ratchet’s whole thing (and ratchet and pharmas whole thing). and the lost light gets some much needed extra medical staff, so everyone wins!

well, we’ll see how fort max feels about this all pretty soon.....

#lj rereads mtmte #love me some delphi

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alternativemiraculous · 5 years ago

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Miraculouses hcs.

Hey! As you already know, Miraculouses are pieces of jewelry that tie tiny creatures known as Kwamis to our world. As the comic says, it was a magician who created them because normal people couldn't see Kwamis. Kwamis embody concepts like Creation or Protection. They're affiliated to an animal.

However, this is quite inconsistant. Why are they affiliated to an animal? What came first, Kwami or animal? Is that their true appearance? Why did the magician create jewelry with tools? Was he already planning to use them as power conductors? Who the heck was him?

So I'm gonna write some of my personal headcanons about Miraculouses. They are non-canon and probably differ.

That magician discovered these deity-like creatures while investigating magical power sources. He wanted them to combat some kind of evil, maybe a mythical monster or maybe just corruption in society. Maybe to defend himself of being killed by ordeal.

Kwamis aren’t animals nor are related to them; the magician just created jewels based on animals to make them friendlier to people. So Kwamis took a corporeal form mixed with their animal.

Magician created these jewels to be indestructible, only the destruction god could harm them. However, in my headcanon he did not create tools; they were created by the first contact between the Miraculous and its first holder. So, basically, they represent first holders wishes. We can assume, for example, F!Fox (First!Fox) was a flute player or F!Butterfly wanted to be elegant but also harmful.

But humans are bad, so eventually they started using Miraculouses wrong. They were hereditary at first, by the way. Point is, people tried to destroy them but couldn't.

This probably led to Peafowl's corruption. I like to think it was a binding spell put there to stop people from using it. They tried to do this to all Miraculouses, but Guardian Order was created instead.

Butterfly Miraculous will probably be corrupted in some time if it continues being used evilly. Nooroo will probably start to get sick. He's been used badly for ages.

I don't like the idea of "adults = no timer", so I'll go for another route. The powers we're seeing are just small portions of the real powers. So there's indeed a "full power mode". Currently they're limited by some Guardian's ancient spells. Full power Miraculouses are too dangerous for humankind and holders. Only the Guardian knows how to break it. This liberating spell is known as The Forbbiden Truth (sounds cool, ok?).

They start choosing holders at teen ages because at young age, body will get used to magical power. Yes, they need years of training to use all of their Miraculous' currently usable powers.

So that's why Hawk Moth acts so dumb. He isn't trained nor has experience.

Potions were created by a sorceress who spent her life creating all kinds of spells and magic. She wanted to surpase Nature's power by granting Kwamis the ability to adapt to areas. She succeded, but trying to show her advances, was called a witch and killed. These potions were not used for ages until someone realized they weren't curse-ish magic.

Instead of the Peafowl creating familiars, I like to think each Miraculous can summon a familiar, a mix of Kwami's power and animal. However they're really hard to summon and require years of training. These were known as Teardrop Beasts, because it was said they were born because of a Kwami's tears. Just legends. (Based on Duusu's concept art).

Some kind of spell can give Kwamis human-like forms. This way they’re able to fight, but also have more freedom.

Besides the potions Fu has information of, there are more minor potions created by other magicians. Curse-ish and deadly potions are forbbiden, because they release dangerous magic. Pssst, they’re Plagg’s favs.

An experienced holder can manifest some kind of secondary powers, like Félix’s bad luck powers in early concepts. They will also get along with their animal (ie Marinette and ladybugs).

I like to headcanon that Holders can’t control Kwamis as Gabriel does with Nooroo (cause why would deities be enslaved? And why did they think this was ok?), but maybe a spell can do it.

Miraculouses have a duality within them. Each Miraculous has an active and a passive trait (ie creation as active and good luck as passive). Active is more related to their superpower, passive to their secondary abilities.

Miraculous book is actually a spellbook that uses at least four codes and ancient languages passed to Guardians.

There’s another hidden spellbook with forbbiden spells. Hawk Moth totally wishes he had it.

More than one Miraculous can be used at the same time, meaning it is more powerful, but also more dangerous (actually proven canon lmao).

There are levels on fusion. You can fuse everything, but some combinations lead to special results. Normal fusions just let you have both powers, special fusion let you combine them creating a somewhat new one (this can be seen in Miraculer, where Sabrina only fuses Lucky Charm and Cataclysm).

To actually gain deity powers with Ladybug and Cat you need a special spell. The wish isn’t really a wish, it’s just you manipulating reality.

In the triad AU, Ladybug+Cat is just a chaotic combo that lets you create and destriy everything you want, to fix and ruin at will. Ladybug+Butterfly lets you create and evolve what you create. Cat+Butterfly lets you age up things until they die, de-evolve them, transform them into weaker versions. Ladybug+Cat+Butterfly is the deity combo that lets you manipulate reality at will, becoming a literal deity in the process (imagine Madokami or Akuma Homura from Madoka Magica, for example).

I think that’s everything important I can think of!

#ml potions #miraculous potions #miraculous #miraculous ladybug #ml season 2 #ml season 3 #miraculous headcanons #alternative miraculouses #miraculous fusion #miraculous spellbook #miraculous grimoire #kwami #kwamis #miraculouses #zodiac miraculous #alt!potions #alt!butterfly #miraculous triad au

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mizushimo · 6 years ago

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Chill (IDW2 spoilers)

Guys, please just chill a little bit. It’s fine to make memes on tumblr and be sad about your fav dying, and scream at the uncaring universe, but please don’t harass the new writer.

IDW2 is a completely different continuity, hence the reboot. There’s a good chance that EVERYTHING will be different in this iteration since it’s being helmed by a different writer who was tasked with rebooting the continuity. That means character importance, character relationships, personality and worldbuilding are all up in the air. I think it’s fine that he didn’t read all of mtmte, it’s not his job. IDW hired him to create something new, not to continue Jro’s legacy. That story is over.

Brainstorm’s death isn’t a case of the ‘bury your gays’ trope. He would have to be one of the only established gay characters in the current continuity and then killed off for dramatic effect. A better example of ‘bury your gays’ would have been Rewind before he was resurrected (the story introduced a romance and then killed off one of the participants for drama). I’m not sure if the old idw continuity could do the ‘bury your gays’ trope because everyone was lgbtq (since gender never seemed to be a factor in attraction or romance for the cybertronians) and there were multiple characters in lgbtq relationships by the end of the comic’s run.

Brainstorm wasn’t established as anything in this continuity. If he stays dead, he’ll be a very minor character in the grand scheme of things. That’s something the fandom is going to have to adjust to. Some characters who were hugely important in mtmte/lost light will be minor or background characters in this new continuity, and one thing about minor/background characters is that they have a very short life expectancy in a transformers comic(RiD more then mtmte. RiD had a ridiculously high body count). Think about how many times a bot was introduced only to die a few pages later in idw1? Many of those characters were people’s favs from older series, but they weren’t important in the idw continuity. The reboot is an opportunity for characters who have been sidelined or neglected to be in the spotlight, a fresh start.

The old idw timeline will always exist, there’s nothing anyone can do to change it now. idw2 won’t diminish it somehow if it’s not exactly the same. I have no idea if this new comic is going to be compelling, but at least judge it on it’s own terms rather then how closely it adhere’s to idw1 canon.

tl,dr: New continuity means that old major characters will be new minor characters. Lots of them will probably die because it’s a transformers comic and death is everywhere. The sheer number of lgbtq characters in the old continuity means that some of those characters will be introduced and die right away in the reboot just as a consequence of being in a transformer property rather than as evidence of harmful trope or an insidious problem with the storyline

There’s only been one issue, give the story a chance.

#chill #give the new guy a chance #idw2 #soapbox #mizi talks #maccadam

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miloscat · 5 years ago

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My trip to Japan 2019

I’ve been gone for four weeks! No time for this blog. Well, I did that Hitchhiker’s pixel art. Anyway now I’m back and if you’re interested I’ll tell you what video game-related stuff I got up to over there. Then I can get working on more “hashtag content”.

First of all, I took my reliable old New 3DS. I played a few games on it that you’ll see reviews of soon; most of my time was spent on Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros., which was disappointing. The Streetpass landscape was even more barren than last time, but most of the games in the plaza have exhausted their novelty to me anyway, so it’s fine.

My spouse chose to bring her Switch, and we decided to bring the dock as well for some multiplayer sessions in the evenings at our AirBnBs. This didn’t actually happen as often as I’d expected, and although I’d bought a few co-op and party games digitally not all of them were hits. The most playtime probably came out of Taiko no Tatsujin, the Switch version of which also has a fun Rhythm Heaven-esque minigame mode.

Of course we visited a few random arcades (or “game centres”), whether they be run by Taito, Namco, Sega, etc. Taiko no Tatsujin arcade is a great experience, and I had a go on Mario Kart Arcade GP DX as well. I also bought a few loose Dragon Ball Heroes cards on the cheap, and tried to play that as well only to find that in the transition to Super DBH they’d increased the team size from five to seven so I didn’t quite have enough! As always I was half-tempted to step into one of the many pachinko parlours as well to try and spot the recent Castlevania or Rockman machines, but they’re all so smoky, loud and above all seedy plus it’s really just gambling, so it didn’t seem worthwhile.

We also went to some more exciting specialist arcades in Tokyo. Natsuge Museum in Akihabara was a cool spot, tiny and crammed full of retro stuff; I had a good long session on the rare Space Harrier sequel Planet Harriers. Joypolis in Odaiba is a Sega “indoor theme park”, bringing back childhood memories of Sega World; here we had fun with several game-ified rides/attractions such as Spicy Taxi and Zombie Zoo. We also played arcade games there such as Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and a Sonic Athletics 8-player game that I swear was made from modified Mario & Sonic at the Rio Olympics arcade machines. Anata no Warehouse was a huge game centre in Kawasaki, thoroughly and moodily themed after Hong Kong’s Kowloon walled city, but it also had loads of cool games, old and new. We played Rhythm Tengoku, Pac-Man Battle Royale, and Pop’n Music among others.

I did some game-related shopping but didn’t go overboard like last time with my stack of DS game purchases. I revisited A-too in Kyoto which has since changed hands, as well as Super Potato in Akihabara and Book-Off stores everywhere whenever I could. Since I have access to a Japanese 3DS I picked up a few particular region-exclusive games I was keen to try out, namely Gon: Bakubakubakubaku Adventure, Game Center CX 3, and Maple Story: The Girl of Destiny.

Add to that guides for Donkey Kong 64, Banjo-Kazooie, and Donkey Kong ‘94; you never know when they might contain rare artwork or comics (they didn’t, except the renders on the cover of DK64 but I’ve seen them online before). Still, the maps will surely be useful when I replay them! Volume 2 of the Super Dragon Ball Heroes: Dark Demon Realm Mission manga continues the Xeno story that’s been ongoing in DB game spinoffs since Online. And Super Mario-kun, which I’ve become much less enthusiastic about over the years but I still wanted to check out the unscanned v11, the reprinted Super Mario RPG arc in v51, and see if Pauline showed up in the Odyssey arc in v54 (she didn’t yet).

I’ll spare you a photo of the SD Blade Liger model kit (found at the same Book-Off figure floor southwest of Shinjuku station! I’m telling you, it’s a goldmine there!!), the Little Mermaid figures, and the phone charm of Kotoden‘s dolphin mascot I found since they’re not game stuff. This is the game stuff: a pack of Detective Pikachu Pokemon cards including a semi-rare(?) Mewtwo, the aforementioned DBH cards, a few Pokemon bits including a plush of my all-time fav Corsola, some Yume Nikki badges from a gachapon I found in Harajuku, a second-hand Diddy basketball figure from a Mario Sports Superstars-themed chocolate surprise egg, and several figures of SSJ4 Gohan, a transformation introduced in DBH.

All in all it was a really great trip and I did a lot of fun non-video game stuff as well! But who wants to hear about that?? Well I will quickly say that I experienced a James Turrell art installation on Naoshima, and my appreciation of it was increased thanks to my having played Bubsy 3D: BVTJTR, hehe!

#update #arcade

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wcreaf · 6 years ago

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How would you compare the Gargoyles franchise to the Ghostbusters franchise?

That’s a question I never expected to get. I’m not quite sure how you mean compare, since it could mean quality, the different mythologies, the franchise longevity and vitality as a whole, just lots of things. I’m kinda low energy right now but I’ll give it a shot and see if anything coherent comes out.

I’d say Gargoyles has a tighter and more coherent mythology as a franchise over Ghostbusters. That’s pretty much down to there only being one show and two short lived comics all helmed by Greg Weisman, there’s been some non-canon material (the video game, the Marvel comics, and the third season we do not speak of) but there’s a clear line of what is and isn’t canon. Thus all the mythology, the characters, the world, it all gels together and rules have been defined, ie what magic can and can’t do.

Ghostbusters… well it’s had three movies, two cartoon series, numerous comic series (the current IDW is really good BTW) and video games. There’s been lots of different people captaining the ship so things are a little more… fluid, I guess. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just different since you wanted me to compare the two. As a franchise Ghostbusters is more comparable to other 80s franchises (Transformers, GIJoe, He-Man, etc) that all have multiple continuities, reboots, and different attempts to go back to the “core of the franchise” ie the Ghostbusters IDW comics/2009 video game being set after Ghostbusters 2 and taking the story from there and ignoring all of the other Ghostbusters stories that have happened since GB2. They also added in fan fav characters from other continuities, like Kylie from the Extreme Ghostbusters cartoon. Much like how Transformers will go back to G1 era styled stories and build new things from there while also throwing in fan fav characters from other continuities, like Rattrap being added to the IDW comics.

Gargoyles doesn’t really have that. There’s no multiple continuities, no “going back to the core” reboots, nothing. Helps that Disney hasn’t really touched the series since it went off the air. Every so often there’s a live action movie rumour, maybe some new merchandise will trickle out the pipe, but not much else. So Ghostbusters is a franchise still alive (mostly in comics form atm but in all likelihood there will be new movies and cartoon in the future) whereas Gargoyles is kept alive by the undying will of the fans and Greg Weisman’s sheer determination to keep trying to continue the series.

#anon ask #Did I make any sense there #I pretty much rambled till I made some kind of sense I think #I might have got the question wrong #I'm tired

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 7 years ago

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Why Rebooting is bad and why continuity actually matters

A noteworthy individual in the realm of comic book podcasting by the name of Michale Bailey has stated on more than one occasion that Spider-Man could use a continuity reboot.

Let me explain in a 5000+ word essay why this is so wrong.

To begin with full disclosure on Bailey.

Bailey is a DC fan. A MASSIVE DC fan. He’s a Superman expert and his fav villain is Joker.

He likes Marvel but in a very secondary way to DC. His favourite Marvel characters are Hulk and Captain America. He likes Spider-Man but is no expert on him and is nowhere near as passionate about him as he is Superman.

The problem with him and many DC fans who are so quick to advocate for a reboot for various Marvel characters is that they ignore important context.

To begin with I honestly do not think most people who are DC fans first and foremost understand the value Marvel fans place on continuity, or at least they themselves do not place as much value by it.

From ground zero of the universe it was made clear continuity mattered. If the Marvel Universe was the United States then alongside relative realism and human flaws an attempt at good continuity would be part of the Bill of Rights.

I think the reason DC fans are more quick to dismiss continuity or the value Marvel fans’ place in it is because for DC continuity means far less, far less to the point where it has honestly become meaningless.

Continuity over at DC meant only as much as any given writer cared about it for the longest time. William Moulton Marston might’ve given the Baroness a redemption arc in his Wonder Woman run. Alfred Beagle’s transformation from a tubby clean shaven guy into a lean, moustachioed gentleman might’ve been explained via him going on dietary vacation. DC might’ve been inspired by fans’ letters to explain Barry Allan reading a Jay Garrick comic book via the establishment of Earth 1/Earth 2.

But all these were loose exceptions. Marston was putting in more effort than his peers of the day. DC were mandated to change Alfred’s appearance but didn’t bother to explain his name changing from beagle to Pennyworth which happened arbitrarily. And whilst DC established Earth 1 and Earth 2 they only did so because fans kept asking them what the deal was, when Barry Allan debuted they did just casually ignore the fact that Jay Garrick had existed in the way he did.

Day-to-day though consistency and continuity, the attempt to make the stories one big narrative was arbitrary at best. Superman was suddenly Superboy in his teen years and s an adult went through dozens of new powers that showed up and got dropped just as easily. Each story didn’t matter to the next one and could be read in any order regardless, etc.

DC only started trying to get deeper with continuity pretty much as a RESPONSE to Marvel emphasising continuity from 1961 onwards.

And event his was clumsy and problematic due to their long history of NOT doing that, meaning their universe was adopting continuity and trying to pretend those rules should all of a sudden apply to a universe that up until then was anethma to it.

It’d be like if the Simpson suddenly tried to apply legitimate Marvel style continuity after all the years of Homer having a million jobs and the family going through all these zany experiences that reset by the start of the next episode.

Where continuity worked for DC it did so in tittles like Swamp Thing or Teen Titans where there was a comparatively cleaner history to work with, where continuity might not have strictly speaking existed but where it also hadn’t been as aggressively ignored either.

Unsurprisingly then when it came time to reboot the DC Universe with Crisis on Infinite Earths that the Titans history was retained mostly unchanged (though their writer Marv Wolfman also writing Crisis probably had something to do with that too).

Crisis on Infinite Earths was done EXPLICITLY to reorganize the DC Universe to better resemble the Marvel Universe and having a greater sense of continuity was a MASSIVE part of that.

Suddenly Superman’s history was streamlined and events in his life followed a greater degree of cause, effect and repercussions as opposed to the rotating door of arbitrary stories that can be read in any given order because the status quo would snap back come Hell or high water anyway. Suddenly he and Lois relationship had a flowing narrative where one event could impact the next building and building until they were dating, then in love, then engaged, then married.

The same generally held true for most of the DC universe, in fact the Universe as a whole now had a greater degree of cohesiveness as the Earth 2 heroes like the Jay Garrick Flash were established as existing in the 1930s and 1940s with the more iconic characters like Superman, batman, Wonder Woman and Barry Allan’s Flash having come in as the next generation of heroes as opposed to there being an arbitrary invisible line where everyone transitioned from Earth 2 into Earth 1.

Now the question to be begged is...WHY did DC feel the need to reorganize their universe in this way? Why did they feel the need to tear their house down and rebuild it in a style more similar to their competitor’s?

Because...their competitor was doing better than them that’s why.

Between 1961 when the Marvel Universe began and 1985/1986 when Crisis on Infinite Earths unfolded, more often than not Marvel DOMINATED DC.

And since continuity was a big part of that DC opted to hit the rest button and essentially do a second draft on their characters and their universe taking into account the lessons they’d learned from Marvel’s success, continuity being one of the biggest of those.

I believe it was Mark Gruenwald who used to joke that Marvel didn’t need to reboot their characters like DC did because they ‘got them right the first time’.

And to a large extent...he was absolutely right, and Crisis on Infinite Earths is a testament to that.

And one of the biggest reasons why is because DC DID improve their sales. And I do not just mean they improved them because of their new spat of #1s or the EVENT that was the rebirth of their characters. I mean by the late 1980s and early 1990s their characters were competing far better with Marvel than they had done before. Though still in second place more often than not.

But there were still problems with their universe, ramifications of rebooting that made things muddled and confusing in ways they hadn’t been before. Hawkman is the most talked about example of this to the point where I don’t even know how to explain what the contradictions are. Same story with Power Girl and Donna Troy who’s histories and origins became so convoluted that they were the subject of jokes in and out of the comics. Donna Troy’s history was such a mess there was even a story made to specifically try (and in my opinion failed) to resolve the clusterfuck her very existence had mutated into.

DC decided to clean things up a little with Zero Hour and do a less extensive reboot of their universe. Everything set up via Crisis on Infinite Earths mostly stayed the same apart from a few things.

That was the first warning sign though. The first sign that the universe they’d rebooted into existence was not structurally integral precisely because they’d rebooted it into existence.

Then came guys like Mark Waid, Dan Didio, Mark Millar, Goeff Johns and Grant Morrison and so many others, children of the pre-crisis DC universe (specifically the continuity toxic Silver Age) who were upset at it’s destruction and being replaced by the post-Crisis DC Universe.

In their works and under their tenures much of the Silver Age was in one form or another reintorduced into the post-crisis DC universe created very specifically to exorcise most if not all of that stuff.

Barry Allan, Kara Zor-El, Kandor, etc. Shit, Grant Morrison did the acclaimed All-Star Superman series from 2005-2008 which was flagrantly a love letter to the whacky Silver Age Superman stories of the 1950s and 1960s. That was out of continuity but Mark Waid went further by kinda sorta said that Superman hung out with the Legion of Superheroes in his teen years, something very explicitly exorcised from the post-crisis version of Superman.

Was this a case of these creators simply subconsciously drawing upon their childhoods?

Nope, not even a little bit.

They were very consciously and very deliberately trying to in some way shape or form resurrect the characters, elements and universe they had known and loved and apply it to the version of the universe that had in effect killed and replaced the one they’d known and loved.

They didn’t even try to cover this up.

I believe it was Dan Didio who once said he and Geoff Johns almost entered DC comics specifically to bring back Hal Jordan and Barry Allan.

And Mark Waid even as late as 2008 when he was interviewed about Brand New Day has stated that he felt extremely upset over losing the pre-crisis Superman who was replaced by the John Byrne post-crisis Superman.

Legend has it that not long after the post-crisis era began he even asked Byrne (or someone from DC) about ‘when the real Superman’ would come back.

Hell he did Superman Birthright a story that out of the blue gave use yet another new spin on Superman’s origin that was different to John Byrne’s post-crisis take on the character’s origin, though DC didn’t outright say one was supplanting the other.

They were not alone.

Brian Meltzer stated in regards to his Identity Crisis storyline that he loved the Silver Age of the DC universe despite people proclaiming it to be silly garbage.

Neil Gaiman in a one off Batman story he did made a meta commentary proclaiming his love for the Adam West Batman show.

And, though he didn’t work much in the post-crisis DC universe, acclaimed author Alan Moore took Image comics character Supreme, who was created essentially as a Superman rip-off, and proceeded to even more flagrantly rip-off Superman by morphing Supreme into Silver Age/pre-crisis Superman. Supreme like Superman even had a younger female family member and a super dog. They might not have been beat for beat Supergirl and Krypto, but it was obvious that those were who they were meant to be. He’s even been known to have said that the post-crisis Superman ‘ruined’ what Superman was supposed to be.

The love for the pre-crisis Silver Age had to varying degrees rubbed DC fans the wrong way but they didn’t know what they were in for because in 2006 DC unleashed Infinite Crisis.

Like Zero Hour this was a storyline that rebooted elements of the DC Universe but not as extensively as Crisis on Infite Earths had, though it was nevertheless far MORE extensively than Zero Hour.

How in love with the pre-crisis era and the Silver age was Infinite Crisis?

Well it reinstated the Multi-verse and Earth 2, two explicitly silver age concepts that were equally explicitly removed by Crisis on Infinite Earths.

It swept aside all of Power Girls various history since Crisis on Infinite Earths and just stated she was Superman’s cousin, but not the post-crisis version. She was literally the exact same pre-crisis version of Power Girl who (it was explained) had simply surived erasure during Crisis on Infinite Earths.

It brought back notable pre-crisis characters like Superboy Prime, Alexander Luthor oh and the Earth 2 Lois Lane and Superman who, I will remind you, were literally supposed to be THE Superman and Lois Lane from ACTION COMICS #1!

Then as part of the ramifications of the continuity changes instituted by Infinite Crisis Superman’s history was once more reworked to now explictely reintegrate his silver age history as Superboy and membership with the Legion of Superheroes as well as Lex Luthor knowing him in Smallville.

Yeah, it was pretty obvious what was happening. The guys in charge missed the pre-crisis days of DC and were trying to bring it back.

And this is the crux of why REBOOTING DOESN’T WORK.

The argument from people like Bailey is that if creators like this didn’t try to recreate their childhoods like this and remained committed to the rebooted universe established when they walked into their jobs the rebooted universe could work.

Except reboots by their inherent nature make that possibility extremely unlikely if not outright impossible.

Superhero comic books are a medium in which the reader pays money at least once a month for years-decades following the lives of the protagonist characters in a greater degree of detail than pretty much any other medium could muster.

Much like novels comic books go inside the characters heads forging a personal connection between them and the reader the likes of which is less likely and less frequent than with TV or film characters because that degree of intimacy is rarely present.

However unlike novels comics do this not only to multiple characters at a time but also get published more frequently.

As much emotional investment the average readers might have in Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley or Neville Longbottom, the fact is because they are not characters who’s heads we inhabit to the same degree as Harry Potter’s meaning there is less likely to be as personal connection forged.

This isn’t the case in comic books where we do, to lesser degrees, inhabit the head spaces of supporting cast members and even villains very, very frequently, meaning readers on average have (compared to the Harry Potter characters I listed) likely a greater degree of investment in characters like Foggy Nelson, Mary Jane Watson, Lois Lane, Alfred Pennyworth, Robin, etc. It even applies to villains even if the readers obviously do not feel sympathy for those characters.

And that form of intimacy between characters and readers happens across a mimimum of a month to month basis, not maybe once a year if a novel series is really on it’s game.

Consequently comic book fans moreso than in any medium, even daily shown soap operas, follow the metaphorical LIVES of these fictional characters.

And unlike soap operas they have to pay an inordinate amount of money for the pleasure of hanging out with those characters that they have that connection to.

So when a reboot comes along and essentially DELETES those characters and at best replaces them with new versions who aren’t the same in various ways it is the equivalent of taking away your beloved friend or pet and presenting you with a new friend or pet who’s sort of similar but obviously not the same thing you knew and loved, but asking you to accept them all the same.

And there are major ramifications to doing that have very long term ripple effects.

The most obvious one being that companies will LOSE the business of the old fans, which is exactly what happened with the New 52.

But more poignantly it is a veritable GUARANTEE that old fans will become VERY embittered and seek to in some way restore the characters they knew and loved, often by tearing down or warping the things that erased and replaced them.

At the same time erasing and replacing one version of the characters and universe with another sets a dangerous precedent even for creators who do NOT have an emotional connection to bygone eras.

That being that it can be okay to erase and replace things whenever they damn well please.

Or to put it another way...nothing matters.

The problem being the inherent nature of the comic book medium REQUIRES the readership to care.

It REQUIRES that emotional intimacy and connection to grow and be maintained in order for them to keep coming back and wanting to follow the lives of the characters.

And when you make it clear that whenever convenient everything you’ve spent time, money and emotional energy on can be utterly invalidated what is the point of bothering at all.

Now I know the argument would go ‘but for NEW fans that isn’t the case’

Except it is.

The halcyon days John Byrne likes to wax lyrical about when the readership would rotate every five years are DEAD and they’ve BEEN dead for decades. They died essentially the moment Marvel instituted continuity.

Because in instituting continuity it actively encourages people to CONTINUOUSLY read the series and follow the character.

Marvels’ success and DC’s greater success post-crisis have PROVED that that creative model is simply more popular and profitable than operating under the idea that the readers invest for a little while before they notice the illusion, that nothing matters and then consequently leave to be replaced by new people who’ve yet to notice that.

But in this day and age trying to maintain that illusion is not just a mountain to climb, it’s downright financially irresponsible.

We live in an age where the average audience member for any given piece of media is intrinsically more genre savvy than they were 20-80 years ago.

An age where there are countless instantly accessible websites discussing storytelling quirks and mechanics, where there is a whole website called TV tropes detailing every trope in storytelling known to man and giving vast EXAMPLES of them within popular stories.

An age where there are highly popular internet reviewers who deconstruct and point out those tropes thus training up their audience to spot them too.

And if you think they’re just over in a little corner think again.

Before his death notable film critic Roger Ebert recognized the work of the Nostalgia Critic who has won awards for his internet based awards show.

The acclaimed TV series Community actively engaged with the TVTropes website when writing it’s episodes, laying layer upon layer of meta commentary upon almost every episode and being hailed as the most genre savvy show on television.

The filmmakers of the Winter Soldier and Civil War movies took note of the internet series ‘How it Should have ended’ in order to make the resolution of their movies as watertight as possible.

The director of Kong: Skull Island went on a rant about a popular internet video series that pointed out problems in his movie and he even guest starred on another similarly popular internet series to point out further problems with the film in person.

Combine the above with the existence of trades, internet resources, info books and just discussions about comic books on social media and podcasts and the notion that most if any potential new readers are going to be fooled by the illusion that the comic books they are financially or emotionally investing in actually matter becomes less and less likely by the day.

Hell I was a kid with little internet access who wasn’t a big DC guy and who hadn’t read Crisis on Infinte Earths but I KNEW about it.

The rebooting of your universe is such a huge colossal thing that it’s something that comic book fans pick up on very quickly upon entering into the hobby just via osmosis.

That was in the days when the internet wasn’t what it is now, so the notion that you can trick new people into not realizing the stories they are investing in can be thrown out the window at any moment is ludicrous because they WILL know about reboots very quickly.

Sure, you could argue that the relative success of the post-crisis era proves that even KNOWING about reboots as a potential phenomenon doesn’t mean that they won’t be successful so why NOT do them?

Because again, I think that ignores the context of the time period.

I don’t think MOST people (even the creators involved) actually realized or had the mentality that reboots could be a recurring phenomenon.

I think fans and creators alike entered into the post-crisis era truly believing that Crisis on Infinite Earths was a one off affair and now that the DC universe had been ‘fixed’ or ‘realigned’ or whatever you want to call it, that was that. It wasn’t going to happen again. Sure there was Zero Hour but that was to clean stuff up and reinforce the new universe they’d made, not a desire to scrap what’d come before. It was a patch up not a clean slate deal.

In a sense Infinite Crisis was a testament to this. It demonstrated a desire to reboot again but also a sense that it was somehow taboo to do so thus it didn’t go all the way.

But then in 2011 we got the New 52, something that J. Michael Straczynski has stated Dan Didio had wanted to do for years. And if you pay attention to it you will see more than a few pre-crisis elements present in it. Wonder Woman’s mother being blonde haired. Superman being single and a lonely alien. Few if any legacy characters, etc.

The new 52 was the most extensive reboot SINCE crisis on infinite earths and it so colossally backfired that in 2016 DC launched Rebirth which has since then been essentially transforming the New 52 BACK into the post-crisis era.

And whilst yes a major reason for that was the overall poor quality of the universe, the fact is another major reason was that same invalidation of reader emotional investment made worse by the further erosion of the illusion that the stories matter.

If the post-crisis era that lasted almost 30 years could be swept away so casually, why give a damn about anything the new 52 had to offer? Why give a damn about this universe when Dan Didio EIC of DC STATED that he feels that there SHOULD be a reboot every so often, that the stories you have spent time, money and energy on in the here and now SHOULD be erased and invalidated.

It was demonstrable of a fundamental misunderstanding of why the modern comic book reader of the last 50 or so years picked up a book. They weren’t looking for a disposable adventure, they were LOOKING to emotionally invest. The ball game had intrinsically changed in the 1960s thanks to Marvel and largely thanks to their institution of continuity, flawed as they hemsleves might have been in applying it at times.

Again, thing is part of why we got Rebirth. It’s called REbirth for a reason. It’s because the world and universe that is coming out of it is like the one people knew and loved.

Superman is again the most poignant example of this as his history via DC Rebirth has been nce more changed but this time changed BACK into what it was more or less just before the New 52.

I think that for a lot of fans there is a HOPE with Rebirth that DC have actually now recognized reboots as destructive and that they are now endeavoring to reorganize their universe back to what it was and, as was the case post-crisis, honestly leave it that way. Hope for this recognition is corroborated by the in-universe meta-commentary by the cosmic entity Metron during the Convergence storyline, during which he more or less said the DC universe cannot survive another reboot and then sent heroes to outright prevent Crisis on Infinite earths from ever happening, literally preventing the first ever reboot from happening and thereby all the ones thereafter.

DC at the time of this writing are doing great. Depending upon who you ask they are even financially beating Marvel and DEFINITLY creatively kicking Marvel’s ass.

However throughout the ups and the downs I’ve listed with DC the fact remains that Marvel more often than not have always trumped them in sales.

There have almost always just been more people who want to read and financially and emotionally invest in Marvel’s characters and universe than DC’s. You can’t handwave that off on the success of media adaptations either. Marvel’s media dominance didn’t truly begin until 2000-2002 with X-Men and Spider-Man and prior to that DC had a larger number of higher quality cartoon shows like Batman and Superman the Animated Series, the former of which even got shown on Prime Time.

And yet Marvel continued to trounce DC most of the time and among it’s highest sellers, among the franchises which routinely beat MOST of DC was...Spider-Man.

Spider-Man who’s whole concept was for him to be relatable, that is to say his whole concept was actually BUILT around the idea of making you the reader emotionally invest in him. Whilst Batman and the Fantastic Four might’ve held that ambition generally speaking for Spider-Man it was intrinsic to who he was, he was MADE to be like (what Stan Lee believed was) the average reader (relatively speaking).

And then...you followed his life.

There is perhaps no character in Marvel’s history who’s life has been AS detailed and fleshed out as Spider-Man’s.

He has no dark mysterious past like Wolverine or Deadpool.

His story didn’t begin with him as an adult who’d lived a long life upon his debut like Reed Richards or Bruce Banner.

And he wasn’t a member of a team, but rather the lead in his own right unlike the Human Torch or any given member of the X-Men.

Consequently what we got was a character who debuted with you knowing almost everything about him. he hadn’t lived long enough to HAVE a past of mystery or life experiences you could pull out the bag for big flashy reveals. And the story was DEVOTED to his life and his journey of growth.

All of this has led Spider-Man to being both the most (relatively) realistic character in Marvel’s canon and the one who encourages the most emotional and thereby financial investment.

Because not only are you supposed to identify with him but you can honestly watch him grow up, you can watch him evolve even alongside yourself and see him hit life milestones we all are familiar with even if we have not ourselves hit them.

And just to prove that it was no fluke Marvel created a wholesale second version of Peter Parker in the form of Ultimate Spider-Man and succeeded in the same experiment AGAIN.

But following Peter’s life, his development and emotionally investing in him REQUIRES continuity to be intrinsic to his narrative. It is a REQUIRMENT that within the fictional realm he inhabits there is to a large extent a sense of cause and effect and a forward moving passage of time.

Continuity reboots DESTROY that because they rip out a character’s past and make it clear to the readers that the cause and the effects are illusionary and don’t actually matter.

Couple that with the greater degree of emotional investment Spider-Man’s story encourages and rebooting him would be positively disastrous.

And that’s not even a hypothetical.

It proved disastrous when they rebooted him IN FILM a mere five years ago and even his soft reboot from 2007 has had vast damaging ramifications for the fanbase. Not AS bad the new 52 because the fanbase still holds onto the idea that something like OMD won’t happen again. But realistically the precedent has been set now.

Now sure...you could flip the script on some of what I said. You could argue that OMD is representative of how, continuity or not, reboots or not, creators will always reinvent their childhoods come hell or high water so why NOT reboot?

The answer being that when you have a continuity driven narrative that HASN’T had the precedent of rebooting it established creators recreating their childhoods nevertheless becomes more difficult and becomes less likely and easier to fix by writers who aren’t blinded by their nostalgia goggles.

Case in point, Marv Wolfman didn’t ACTUALLY put Spider-Man back into High school.

Dan Slott didn’t LITERALLY have him date Deb Whitman again.

Joe Quesada didn’t ACTUALLY go through with resurrecting Gwen Stacy, even though he came damn close.

Shit even with One More Day Marvel tried to sort of compromise between removing the marriage and just erasing those stories outright by (falsely) claiming every story happened the same way except they happened to not be married. They TRIED to keep as much continuity as possible. They even made a point of resurrecting Harry Osborn in a way that didn’t just Crisis style reboot his history, but in-universe explained his resurrection.

Why?

Because they KNEW there would be vast negative ramifications if they did anything more extensive.

Oh...and because they KNEW continuity was an important part of storytelling and financially profitable.

Like...their whole company was testament to that.

And wider pop culture corroborates that.

Soap operas.

YA novels like Harry Potter and Hunger Games

Telenovels such as Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time, the Sopranos and House of Cards

Children’s shows like Adventure Time and Steven Universe

Every manga and anime series that has on balance been more successful than most DC or Marvel comic book series...which on balance is MOST manga and anime

The Marvel Cinematic Universe

Oh and the DC Animated Universe!

All these things have intrinsically involved continuity and found varying degrees of success. Whether it’s a reliable money spinner like daytime soap operas or vast critical acclaim and billions of dollars like the MCU, continuity has been one of the vital elements to ALL those things.

Now the arguments when it comes to at least Spider-Man specifically, is that a reboot can be a good thing because you can sweep away the bad stuff right?

Except most of the time the stuff you consider bad, even if it IS bad, is beloved by SOMEBODY.

Speaking from experience her I’d love to just erase Spider-Man from 2005 onwards but I’d never do it if I had that power because I know people love what has come since then, so I’d try to mind a compromise between what I want and what they like.

And I’d do that WITHOUT erasing and supplanting anything via a crisis style reboot because, as I’ve detailed, it simply plants the seeds for long term erosion and destruction.

It’s not even necessary.

Perhaps the single biggest clusterfucks of the 90s were the Clone Saga, Avengers the Crossing/Teen Tony Stark and Heroes Reborn.

All those stories created massive, ugly confusing messes for those characters.

It would’ve been so, so, so easy to just hit reset and delete those things but Marvel didn’t do that.

Instead they found in-universe solutions to fixing the problems. They in-universe made Peter Parker Spider-Man again and explained everything about the Clone Saga. They in-universe restored the original Tony Stark and fixed what they’d broken about him. They in-universe brought the Avengers and F4 back without rewriting their histories.

So all the problems Marvel and Spider-Man might have developed CAN and SHOULD be resolved IN-Universe as opposed to employing a cosmic rest button.

Finally I’d like to quickly address the argument (another on favoured by Bailey and DC fans) that the failure of the New 52 and most reboots was that they were not ‘clean breaks’.

That is to say that the New 52 COULD have worked if only stuff like Batman and Green Lanterns’ histories had also been begun from scrtch as opposed to retaining most of their pre-rebooted stories.

This is a patently nonsense argument when one considers that y this logic, the post-crisis era was itself not a truly clean reboot either.

Batman post-crisis actually DID retain a lot of stories from his pre-crisis self including most of Denny O’Neil’s iconic work on the character. Not to mention the fact that Dick Grayson had for years and years operated as Batman’s sidekick Robin.

Gaps were left in Superman’s history that allowed readers the flexibility to image certain pre-crisis stories happened during them, including all those times Lois Lane suspected and tried to prove Clark Kent was Superman.

Barry Allan despite dying in Crisis on Infinite Earths and beginning the post-crisis era as a corpse, had SOME kind of long history as the Flash (presumably one similar to his pre-crisis self) that led to him being the inspiration for his sidekick Wally West to become the new Flash.

And as mentioned the Teen Titans/Titans histories, especially as a team, were almost entirely retained going into the post-crisis era to the point where (much like Green Lantern and Batman in the new 52) they began life in the new rebooted DC universe as essentially a continuation of the storylines and big picture narrative that had been going on before the reboot.

When you think about it, there was maybe even less of a clean break for the post-crisis era as there was for the new 52 so the notion that it’s failure as a rebooted universe owed much to it not rebooting ENOUGH is ludicrous.

So...What are my over all points in all this?

· Continuity actually IS important, it’s not just a fan concern. Continuity is intrinsic to developing characters and world building, setting up stakes and over all building emotional (and thereby financial) investment for the audience.

· Reboots are toxic to this and form short term solutions that create far worse long term problems

· DC’s near perennial second place next to Marvel owes a lot to the lesser value DC places in continuity

· A reboot would be especially toxic for Spider-Man who, more so than any other Marvel character, really does NOT need one.

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gundam-jones · 7 years ago

Text

tagged by @sablestine

questions questions game!! the rules are: you post the rules, answer the q’s you’re given by the person who tagged you, write 11 q’s of your own and then tag 11 people and the cycle continues thusly! below a cut for length!

1. what’s your go-to self soothing when you feel the anxiety coming on? Typically listening to music or singing? Both help to release tension when i feel it coming on, but if a Loud song comes on my shuffle then that can sometimes make it wors e

2. basil, cilantro, or mint? just two? all? none the above?? All are ok for me depending on what they’re in .3.

3. current special interest/intense fixation? can be media or not! Oh god, right now it’s mostly BNHA and pokemon for me? Some of LL is sprinkled in there too, but its still mostly the former because interest in both hit me like a train this summer whoops

4. become invisible or able to cancel out all noises surrounding you? Canceling noise around me would honestly be so good for recording holy shit

5. favourite transformers character and why? if you’re not familiar with transformers just pick your fave media character and say why! I cant choose anyone from mtmte cause ill just say the whole lost light, but from TFP my fav is Optimus Prime :0 Half is cause he seems like a really mellow character and he’s just generally one of my comfort characters, and the other half is that I’m a predictable bisexual

6. favourite transformers continuity and why? again if not familiar with transformers just pick your fave show and tell why!

Oh god I have no idea? Like I think its a tie between Rescue Bots and MTMTE? Cause MTMTE made me cry and Rescue Bots had a lot of character development I was totally not ready to see in that show? Both also and helped me come to terms with the fact that im really fucking gay too lma

7. keepin up with any good webcomics? recommend me some! I only keep up like with 2 web comics rn, and one is Check Please! I’ve been reading it since my sophomore year of high school, i feel old. It’s about a guy, bitty, who joins a college hockey team, and there is gratuitous baking and bitty crushing on a dude and sometimes crushing it in hockey? Overall it’s very sweet and genuine I think. No prior hockey knowledge is required to read it since it mostly focuses on the character’s relationships and interactions, but the hockey tidbits that are thrown in are p cool. the progression in art/style/color is really cool to see if ur reading it from the very beginning. i’ve cried like 3 times reading it

8. where do you go when you space out? I have no idea?????? I can never remember when i get out of that headspace

9. what’s your fave meme/the one you think is the funniest? God it keeps changing from day to day, but Advanced Country is good. And Kerchoo is also good, my bros have been saying it ever since cars 3 came out

10. animal that you feel most represents you? Oh god i have no idea. I’m gonna say goat, because you can give me almost anything and I’ll eat it. Also, I’ve been told I can climb things pretty well

11. what seems to help you out when you have art/writing block? Typically reading, watching, or learning new things? They help me get inspired and see some new perspectives to try to put in writing or on paper.

Questions? 1. What’s one song from middle school that you still listen to now? 2. If you could turn into any animal, what would you choose? 3. Were you a dinosaur kid, cat kid, or a horse kid in elementary school? 4. What was your least favorite required book to read in school? 5. Who’s the oc you’ve made most recently? Are they from a particular fandom or an original work? 6. What’s a place you would visit solely because it’s aesthetically pleasing? 7. What was the first video game you played? Do you still like it? 8. What’s the weirdest music video you’ve ever seen? 9. Hoodies or knit sweaters? 10. Do you like baking? If so, what’s your favorite thing to make? 11. If you could get really good at playing any instrument of your choosing overnight, which would you pick?

tagging: @gold-storm, @crudimus @the-ultimate-owl @mangoshota @forgedmedic @red-automaton-viii @redacted-metallum @acidwaste @amagurith @dirgeofthedeep @princess-bedhead @dogfjght

#tagged #u dont have to do it if u dont wanna :0 #this was fun tho!

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lupintyde · 8 years ago

Text

Master List of ML Crack Posts: #1

As some of you may know, my memory sucks. This list is as much for you guys as it is for me ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

I’ll be updating this thing periodically. I’m putting the links under a “read more” so the updates will show up in case someone wants to reblog this. I love it when something is reblogged (especially when I can read the funny tags), but y’all are random af. You give me a good laugh on my rough days and I love each and every one of you ＾ω＾

Have fun down the ML rabbit hole of crazy (after the cut)!:

*PLEASE READ THE GENERAL DISCLAIMERS*

i won’t tell you how to live your life

but it’s probably a good idea to read the general disclaimers

I am no longer in this fandom for several reasons

so there won’t be any updates to this list

but here are the posts I’ve done

we watched the English dub because I have a kid who can’t read

and a husband who doesn’t want to

I prefer the French, but use the English names for all but Chat Noir

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Master list of ML Crack Posts: #2

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Have Y’all Noticed...?

This show is not just for kids

Episodic Nerdery

Homages by episode

The Opening Credits Homage to Anime (Opening) ML’s Love Letter To Horror Movie Fans (Horrificator) Obvious homage is obvious (Kung Food) No one is above Naruto running (Kung Food) Gamer Geeks: UMS3 = Street Fighter (The Gamer) The Mime = Marcel Marceau (The Mime) Where have I seen that...? (Multiple) Historic Miraculous Holders (Multiple)

The Walking Pop Culture Reference

aka, Adrien is a NERD

Adrien the Old-School Nerd (Adrien = Fred Astaire) Dorito chins are easy to grasp when flirting… (Adrien = Tamaki) The Devil’s in the Details (Learning to make friends through anime) Life skills through gaming (Chat = Frogger)

That Was Random

Did...they mean to do that? Yes. Yes, they did.

The ZAG license plate Is this an inside joke or…? Continuity in ML Nathaniel the art director Dotting their eyes WTF psychic Hawky

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Jen & Dave’s Arting Adventure

My husband’s amazing fanart and my crappy artings. I encourage reblogging, but please do not repost Dave’s art. If you don’t know what that means, check out my rant.

Jen’s Crappy Artings

Don’t expect much -_-

Jen attempts to art (Chat Noir) Poor Hawky... (Hawkmoth/Papillon) Chat Noir Car Art Jen crappily arts all over Chat Noir

Jen’s Attempt to Comic

Comics is HARD

Jen’s Arting Problem: Silent, But Not Deadly

Dave’s Amazing Artings

You can tell which of us is the household artist

Hawmoth/Papillon

Jen & Dave’s Collaborations

Where we work together for once.

Chat & Nino: The Bromantic Fluffcanon (DJNoir Bromance) Jen continues to art (with special appearance by Dave) Battle of the Nino Artings (Nino)

Miraculous Sewing

I sew for a living. This show was bound to influence me...

Jen’s Completely Free ML Doll Tutorial So, I found this fabric... I made this thing... Then I made all the things All. The. Things.

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Adrien Agreste/Chat Noir

Our favorite sunshine cat son and what the majority of my posts are about. Let’s be honest with ourselves. He’s deserves a category of his own. Literally.

General Adrien Goodness

Grumpy Chat (Adrien = Grumpy Cat) Chat Noir, the Blue Paladin (Adrien = Lance) Adrien’s Adorkable Wink Master of the Cheese The Real Agreste Smile Chat’s gravity-defying hair When you’re making a You Tube video... It looks like he’s requesting takeoff First day of school...again Adrien Agreste, Professional Fanboy HIS SARCASM LEVEL IS OVER 9000!!! Chat’s face in Volpina He’s not gonna try to get out of this one Someone should put a bell on him Let it out Adrien’s...er...”talents”

Let Adrien Eat 2K17

Someone please feed this kid

Feed Him Rule #1

Actual Model Adrien Agreste

In case you needed a reminder about what he does

The Photo Dump The Reality Your Chat Is Showing Taking Flight Sneaky Alya

Chat Is A Cat

=^..^=

That rare cat that comes when you call Coming home to your kitty Chat, The Jellicle Cat Chats don’t always land on their feet Cats can sleep anywhere It did him a startle Cat Memes: The Box Cat Memes: The 3:35am Marathon Cat Memes: The Invisible Fly

Adrien vs. Chloé

Exploring the dynamic between my favorite blondes

Adrien Vs. Chloe: Round 1 Chat can relate to this Chloé: The Mountaineer When Chloé adopts Ladybug’s moves DO NOT WANT Slasher movie poster Marinette’s escape plan

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Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Ladybug

Our favorite Fearless Leader/Low-Key Stalker

Marinette vs. Cat (Part 1) Marinette’s not a cat person (Marinette vs. Cat Part 2) Mari Be Scary Ladybug Be Scary Epic conversational Skills LB = ctrl+z Mari’s charade game is STRONG Writing LadyNoir Fics Adrien’s Controller Learning an important lesson Marinette’s Guide to Being Hands-Free

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The Miraculous Holders

I think this category will grow next season. Call it a hunch.

Cat and Bug Team

The LadyNoir meet-cute (Origins) Look at these dorks The Chat In the Hat The True Meaning of Bugaboo Raining Cats and Bugs: The Horrible Pun Transformations Reverse Transformations Chat’s premature gray is named “Ladybug” LB puns against Chat (Mr. Pigeon) LB puns against Chat (Reflecta) Lady Wifi’s plan went to pot The Cat & Bug Team (Bubbler) Ladybug Is Done, Y’all He was just kitten (Puppeteer) Breaking the laws of physics as a team (Stormy Weather) Synchronization LB grabs some tail

Chat Misses His Punportunity

Bad puns based on lucky charms. That’s pretty much it. Sorry not sorry.

The Bubbler Stormy Weather

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The Kwamis

Again, mostly Plagg because I’m a cat person.

Plagg & Adrien

My favorite dynamic in this show

Plagg: Adrien’s Literal Shoulder Devil The original trash son (Plagg) Plagg’s True Love (Plagg/Camembert) Plagg’s True Love Pt. 2 (Plagg/Camembert) The Poster Child for Chaotic Neutral How can something so devious be so cute? It’s not like he’s magic... Plagg’s cheesy undoing When people look like their pets When you can’t see your cat...

Tikki & Marinette

aka Mari and her conscience

Tikki: Marinette’s Shoulder I-Told-You-So Tikki is Mari’s Toddles

Wayzz

I See No Difference: Wayzz = Kif Wayzz is Chat’s biggest fan

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The Others

The-other-but-no-less-important characters

Nino Lahiffe

My second fav ML character

Nino the Peacock AU Pt 1: Shell or Feathers? Nino the Peacock AU Pt 2: Cluck cluck you guys Nino the Peacock AU Pt 3: Nino should have gotten the Troll Miraculous… WTF Nino… Nino Models

Alya Césaire

The real MVP of this group

Alya’s default reaction to Mari’s “love life” Alya’s Adventures in Matchmaking: This’ll Be a Breeze!

Secondary Characters

Mostly Chloé because I love her so

What would have happened in Dark Cupid... (Chloé Bourgeois) The Seeds of Chloe’s Redemption (Chloé Bourgeois) A dad & his baby girl (Mayor Bourgeois & Chloé) Poor Gorilla (The Gorilla) On no you didn’t! (Sabrina Raincomprix) Kim’s expressiveness (Kim Lê Chiến) That sneaky tomato (Nathaniel Kurtzberg) Fang is a good boy (Fang & Jagged Stone)

Background Characters

What happens when the animation team only has a set number of characters made up for the background, but still needs a crowd.

The Return of WTF Dad WTF “Family” WTF Kids Xmas Special Minor Characters in ML (Mireille and Aurore)

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Gabriel Agreste / Gabe Is Hawkmoth Theory

OR Gabriel’s evil twin idk

This is why he doesn’t smile The unmentionable post Dr. Hawkmoth’s Guide to Parent/Child Relationships

The Main Theory Posts

Gabriel is Hawkmoth/Papillon Hawkmoth/Papillon’s Room Gabriel Has a Sense of Humor (Adrien’s butterfly shoes) Gabe’s Safe Gabe’s Old as Crap

Gabriel Notices Crap in Simon Says/Jackady

The cat’s out of the bag (also under “Crazy Headcanons”) If you want something done... (LB’s earrings) Not today, Dad (CN’s ring) There goes his freedom (Adrien’s ring)

(Insert Name) Is a Better Dad Than Gabriel

The Dad Clap™ (Nino Lahiffe) Kindred Spirits (Tom Dupain)

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Speaking of Outrageous Theories...

Theories, predictions, headcanons and CRACK. It’s all crack.

Jen’s Crazy Headcanons & Bullet Point Fics

I apologize for what you are about to see

Crappy Gif Theatre: Hawky’s Cold Crappy Gif Theatre: Adrien’s Thirst Crappy Gif Theatre: The True Identity of the Easter Bunny

Second-Rate Storytime: The Epic Tail of a Girl and Her Cat Second-Rate Storytime: The Bully Blues

The cat’s out of the bag (also under “Gabriel Agreste”) LB Gets Woke: A Bullet-Point Crack Fic (Chat x OC, Ladynoir) Chat & Nino: The Bromantic Fluffcanon (DJNoir Bromance)

ML Theories & Wild Predictions: Spoiler-Free

Theories based on common knowledge

Gorilla KNOWS (Gorilla and the Kwami Social Club) That…makes so much sense (their identities are safe!)

Spoiler City: NOT Spoiler-Free

Theories using spoilers from upcoming seasons of ML

ML Season 2 & 3 Predictions Poor Kim... Is this foreshadowing or...? That leaked season 2 ep Who has the Butterfly Miraculous?

ML S2 Trailer Shenanigans #1: Adrienette vs. Chloenette ML S2 Trailer Shenanigans #2: Frenemies ML S2 Trailer Shenanigans #3: New Miraculous Season 2 Trailer (10/17)

ML S2 #1: The Collector ML S2 #2: Despair Bear

Thank you for visiting. Please come again.

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