#obviously war crimes still war crimes btw idiot

[mossywizard]

Once again so grateful for my AP gov teacher who made us read all of Martin Luther King He’s letter from Birmingham Jail

“I have reached the regrettable conclusion that the [black people’s] great stumbling block in his stride to towards freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klan, but the white moderate, who’s more devoted to “order” than to Justice; who prefers negative peace which is the a sense of tension, to positive peace which is in the presence of Justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your direct action”: who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and constantly advices [black people] to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than abolish the misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Emphasis by me

Thank you AP gov teacher you were scary but in the best way

[viscountessevie]

I'm so sad about the possibility of Philoise' story being switched to Theloise.

Phillip sacrificed the chance for true love to help Marina and make up for his beother. Both are obviously content but not happy. And even though I'm don't like the idea of Marina dying, at least one of them would've at least gotten the chance to become happy with someone else.

Sure they can suddenly turn them into lovers but I feel like it still feels so wrong and maybe it wouldn't have been nessecary to introduce them in my opinion.

There were so many Philoise hints and now it could be for nothing.

[Shoutout to the Kanthypants GC and especially Lav @sweetestviscount, Dani @hella-sirius, Franzi @anthonykatebridgerton and Trivia @hptriviachamp for an amazing and fruitful discussion about the Phillip/Marina storyline and the Colin of it all in S1!]

Not going to lie anon I feel SUPER conflicted about the tone of your ask and what tone to respond in because while initially I was like Oh they seem nice and aren't calling Marina a hoe who deserves to die for once like most of the Philoises and Pelicans. But rereading this over the last few weeks, I'm going to take it as misplaced sympathy for Phillip that resulted in tearing down Marina. It also kinda reads passive aggressive ngl - feel free to correct me if I am wrong in the notes or a future ask if you'd like. But that's how I have taken it and will be responding as such.

Also I am going to be slightly harsh because you came to the wrong place for Philip/Philoise sympathy, ya non-binary pal here is Marina lover and will defend her til my dying days. 

First off, let me squash your worries and sadness, you’re fine. I’ve talked about it here but to reiterate: All the book canon couples will be fine on the show. No matter how many shitty love triangles they throw at us, the endgame couple wins. So the Philoise hints will come to a head at some point just chill out please. Just because they have an endgame doesn’t mean they are supposed to have a chastity belt on - not everyone needs to be a Daphne or Show!Colin lmao. Let them have some fun! 

As for the rest of your ask, let me turn this around: She would have found herself a fine husband or Colin would have changed his mind after the anger dissipated. See: Their scenes in S2 (minus the end where Marina magically turns into Penalty’s mouthpiece thank you idiot writers 🙄 ) & this scene in S1: 

[Btw yall rewatching this scene BROKE ME! HE SHOULD HAVE MARRIED HER!! They are so much better suited on the show than Penalty and him. Marina saw him as a real person and was realistic about her expectations, unlike someone who is obsessed and is willing to ruin everyone around her to get to him,,, anyways that’s for ANOTHER day and post]

Anyways I digress, she would have been fine tbh so Phillip didn’t HAVE to do anything neither did he ‘sacrifice’ anything lmao. They got married which back then were mainly transactional so they could have had an arrangement to take lovers. He didn’t go to war for her unlike her first love George so please calm down. He chose to it. Yes, he felt duty bound but no one put a gun to his head. Let’s grant the man some agency. 

On the other hand, let me ask you, didn’t Marina sacrifice too?? She had her love!! He died in the war and she barely got to mourn him before she was pregnant with the twins and Penalty was like Let’s make this grief worse and expose her <3 Like what the actual fuck is wrong with you Pen. So between the two, Marina actually lost the first love of her life, Philip still has time. 

Next, if I hear the word ‘content’ one more time, I am going throw something at the writer who wrote that shit S2 storyline for Marina. The biggest crime against Marina other than the one Penalty committed is not making her disgustingly happy in love with Phillip. Yeah, they are a little mismatched but both very practical people, caring parents and I’m sure Marina found his plant rambles cute - she was just very nervous with her ex and husband in the same room in S2. 

Why doesn’t the glitter and glamour of the Bridgerton world rub off on Marina?? Our main WoC in S1 who had substantial screen time and was a pretty big character. She deserves happiness too. (credits to Trivia for saying this in our GC discussions earlier!)

If you don’t like the idea of her dying then why should she be the one to die?? Why should Phillip be the one in your “at least one of them would've at least gotten the chance to become happy with someone else.” to be happy? What makes Marina less of a person deserving love and being happy with someone else? Think on that. Why does Philip man-pain Crane automatically get it in your eyes and the fandom? Book canon aside, genuinely. Why?? 

On that note, screw someone else! As I mentioned before Marina/Phillip should have just been a thing! You’re entitled to how you feel about it and your opinion but I have to strongly disagree. Marriage of convenience to lovers is TOP-TIER BABEY. We had a year time jump; they could have easily become a love match - that would have been iconic. Fuck this one or the other mentality; BOTH!! They both deserve happiness at least Show!Phillip gjdgfjsk

Despite all this and my salt in this ask, I do appreciate you feeling safe enough to send this to my blog but yeah think on why you place more importance on Show!Phillip over Marina. I’m not going to say it but you and most of the larger fandom know exactly why. 

[lovelyirony]

Why Mona Lisa Is So Famous 

with the help of this article: https://www.thoughtco.com/mona-lisa-stolen-1779626

So. Why is the Mona Lisa Famous? Well, a lot of people will answer that it is because of her smile. They say it is mysterious. They will tell you about the fine details of the painting, from the thin veil over her hair to the eyebrows that may or may not have been styled for the times (or taken off with an unfortunate restoration job.) 

They would be wrong. 

The Mona Lisa is famous because of Vincenzo Peruggia. He had worked at the Louvre in 1908, and had had two accomplices who entered the museum on Sunday and stayed overnight. 

(This is not relevant to the story but the museum is still closed on Mondays and that is most likely the day that the Carters filmed the music video “Apeshit. Excellent song btw.) 

The two accomplices removed the glass panels that the museum had installed in 1910, took off the frame, and Peruggia tucked the painting underneath his smock and walked out of the museum. 

This worked because he still knew most of the guards and they wouldn’t have suspected him of theft. 

Now, the other question comes up of: why? 

Well, this brings up the excellent point that the Mona Lisa was not famous yet. There were not queues to go check her out and see her in well-conditioned, bullet-proof glass glory. 

Peruggia didn’t like this. He believed that Mona Lisa--or La Giaconda--should be at home in Italy. 

The main flaw in the plan was that he most likely didn’t expect this to become one of the most talked about stories on earth. 

Director Homolle of the Louvre had once compared stealing a work of art from the museum as “stealing a column from Notre Dame.” It was supposed to be impossible. 

But...it was not impossible. If I could go back in time right now I could steal anything I could carry/hide underneath a jacket. The Louvre is fifteen acres, which is giant and makes it the largest art museum. For the largest art museum, they had hired only 150 people to help guard the whole area. Bad idea.

The French thinks it’s Germans, the Germans are like “you idiots it’s not us it’s probably you” and a ton of people think it’s this highly sophisticated plot instead of what could’ve been the plot of National Treasure 3. 

Peruggia doesn’t give up the painting for these two years because selling the Mona Lisa is quite a bit harder when it makes international headlines. 

But after two years he’s ready to sell it and contacts Alfredo Geri, who was a well-known antiques dealer at the time. He signs his note “Leonardo” which in my opinion is a stupid move. Selling a famous painting and signing it with the artist’s first name. Dumbass move. 

Now Geri is suspicious because someone could’ve copied the painting, so he tells “Leonardo Vincenzo” that he needs to see the painting. 

Peruggia replies that he has to come to Paris to look at it. Geri says “um I think not” and they agree to meet in Milan on December 22nd. 

Well...Peruggia is obviously anxious about all of this. On December 10th he rolls up to wherever Geri is staying, takes out the painting, and is like “here you go I want half a million lire and also this painting has to stay at the Uffizi gallery and never leave because fuck Napoleon.” 

Geri is like “yeah okay but the director of the museum has to see it first.” 

Peruggia accepts and says “okay see you tomorrow” and LEAVES. 

Can you believe the French thought this was a sophisticated heist? Can you honestly believe this? 

So the police and the museum director are there the next day, although Geri and the museum director walk over to where Peruggia is staying and they see that the Mona Lisa has the Louvre stamp or whatever and they’re like “oh shit this is the real painting.” 

They don’t tell Peruggia they’re gonna get him in trouble and instead say they need to compare the painting and take it for “examination.” 

Peruggia lets them because this man is stupid. 

So he gets arrested. You would think for a heist that captured the world, he’d get something like “twenty years in prison” or even maybe “five years in prison plus community service.” 

Well by this point it’s 1914, and WWI is looming. So he gets a year, which is then shortened to seven months because art heist crimes don’t matter as much as fighting in a war. 

But that’s not the point. The Mona Lisa was famous because Vincenzo Peruggia decided it belonged back in Italy, got two other people to agree, and walked in and took what he wanted. 

Not because of any damn smile. 

[userseokkie]

Steve Rogers is a walking contradiction: the anti military soldier

After reading this meta on a gifset about Steve and Tony i got carried away and wrote essentially an essay about the analysis that had been made. and while i agree with the general sentiment of the post, some things didn’t sit right with me. btw i decided to make this my own separate post because this isn’t intended to start an argument or derail the original post, i know it can be annoying for gif makers to have dozens of comments added onto their posts.

(the meta in question)

ok so full disclaimer I’m not American and I’m not white. i just felt like this analysis was really interesting and when I read it I couldn’t stop all these thoughts that formed in my head, next thing I know I had written all of this in like 30 minutes. I’m not trying to argue or start shit, this is my own personal analysis of Steve’s character and why I don’t agree with some things said above.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way: Steve does not trust the US government. at least not blindly. the fact that he’s still the little shit that had a real problem w authority figures is something they touch upon on catfa a lot. he changed on the outside but on the inside he’s still that idiot punk kid and like, I get what the tags above me are saying but also Steve’s arc is more than that? and let’s not forget this stupid movie was written and directed by thanos Joss “I’m the true feminist ally” whedon so I would take this exchange with a grain of salt. I mean this is the movie that gave us “gOllY tHeRe’S OnLy oNe gOd m'Am” and “sOn oF a GuN” Stephen Rogers which is the most ooc thing I’ve seen since endgame’s Steve. Steve is a fucking potty mouth ffs he’s Irish and a soldier, so that doesn’t even make sense. but anyway, my point is something else, nvm this movie’s portrayal of Steve in general.

I guess we could probably argue all day long abt which Steve portrayal is the most accurate one since his character in the MCU is the one that’s suffered the most at the hands of inconsistent characterization, but I prefer thinking he already WAS someone that was well aware of the horrors of war and how unfair it was to recruit people w lies and the promises of education opportunities and loans for the poor to join the army, because he LIVED that he grew up dirt poor and had to see his mom take on three different jobs to support herself and him, so he’d consider this attempt to bring civilians into the military life by preying on their needs disgusting, he’d be fucking seething with anger. and if he had lived through the 60s (which I think it’s better for everyone involved that he didn’t, can u imagine poor guy would’ve died from the disappointment in what his country had become) I highly doubt he would’ve been the bitter WWII vet that defended Vietnam and shit on the protestors……. Steve would support the citizens’ rights to ask for accountability and demand justice!! even the hippie movement I think he would’ve been ok with when he saw that they were advocating FOR PEACE. that’s why he enlisted on the war after all, to bring the fight to an end and to have Bucky come HOME. I think Steve rogers would be all for peace. I mean, civil disobedience and telling the government to shove it? that’s Steve Rogers’ goddamn ethos. he would be all over that shit.

I agree w op’s tags where they say Steve doesn’t represent America, he represents what America wishes it had been. and I think Steve himself would be well aware he’s the anomaly here, the one that should have been America’s highest ideal. and I think that makes Steve very wary of his own image, anything he endorses becomes what America endorses. Steve rogers isn’t important, Captain America is. but I think Steve’s response here has more to do with his coping mechanisms to deal with loss, rather than coming from a place of “oh we’re soldiers, it’s what we do, we die for our country.” while Tony’s response comes from a place of anger (we are NOT soldiers!!! fuck u old man, i never asked for this!!! coulson didn’t ask for this!!!!!) Steve’s reaction comes from the intrinsic nihilism and dadaism product of his own time. it’s not that he’s minimizing Coulson’s death, it’s more that he’s so used to losing people, the thousands he met that died in European soil, the sick and ill from his ma’s work that died everyday, his own father whom he never even met, that his mechanism is to just. shut down. shrug it off a bit, even. people die. every day. “for believing” means for standing for something, because Steve is WELL aware that people that stand for nothing will fall for anything, and standing for something gives counterbalance to the official agenda. in his eyes, Coulson died not because he’s a soldier and winning the war means being prepared to make a few sacrifices. Coulson died because he chose to believe in something that the majority didn’t care about or even actively sought to destroy (the wsc over fury’s shoulder) and he died because he would not back down from the fight. I can do this all day is something Steve feeds off of because he knows that when you stop getting up from the ground, anyone and anything can strike you down.

but on another note, I get that Avengers happens literally 6 fucking days after he woke up from the ice, he probably had no time to catch up on all the atrocities the US had done on his behalf, or rather on what they said he represented, on the ideal he died defending and the US took and twisted and tore apart until it was no longer recognizable. Steve being a week out of the ice is super sad and to me, the biggest crime this movie did was literally brushing off Steve’s trauma, being riddled with PTSD and shocked from waking up seventy years in the future was not even addressed. at all. this could’ve been easily avoided by setting the movie at least a couple of months AFTER he wakes up. but whatever. After learning of all the shit the US has done, I think Steve rogers would be the first to walk out of there and be like “fuck it, I died for this country and you took it and fucked it up and now young people and people who’ve been killed for protesting your shitty ass decisions genuinely believe I would side with the government. they think I’M the stubborn baby boomer who kisses government boots and would approve of the Gulf War or the Vietnam War or the Central American coups or the war on terror or any of the stupid shit you’ve pulled in the 70 years I was gone!!! YOU MADE ME A SYMBOL FOR YOUR BIGOTRY WHAT THE FUCK”. so he obviously needs time to catch up on all of that before realizing how bad they fucked up his memory and how corrupt the system has become. but Steve’s depiction as a boy scout who believes the US can do nothing bad is inherently wrong and something only this one movie tries to do. no other movie featuring Cap tries to drive the point home that Cap is a goodie two shoes who still believes in american exceptionalism.

CATWS was the gold standard because it truly touched upon the cognitive dissonance Steve experiences coming out of a 70 year nap. the loss he experiences not only for being “the man out of time”, but the true man behind the symbol. heavy are the shoulders that carry the world indeed. and he’s been carrying the entire world on his since he decided to become Captain America. I truly believe the tragedy of Steve Rogers comes from the lack of agency he has over the Captain image, one that has been used to prop up political agendas over and over again. of course, he’s the one that decides to be Captain America as much as he is Steve rogers, blurring the lines between the two men. he could’ve retired, he could’ve adopted a new mantle or even go the old reliable route and try to keep a civilian life away from the superhero gig. but he didn’t. even in the comics whenever he tried to do that it didn’t stick for more than a few issues. so, you know in CATWS he truly experiments what it’s like to pull back the curtain and see the wizard behind it, he faces this disenchantment with the institutions that created him, both SHIELD and the US government. this helps pinpoint the moment he grows super distrustful of politics and agendas, because up until this point he’d only been in the battlefield, and he realizes governments cannot be trusted to make the right decision or even act in benefit of their people.

this way, Civil War does make sense when you see how Steve has grown so disappointed with modern politics that he sees the Sokovia accords as one big red flag, and the first step in a direction that only points toward authoritarianism and civil control. this movie deals with many things poorly of course, but one thing that doesn’t feel ooc is Steve telling the UN to fuck off. He wasn’t around to see the formation of the united nations remember? he literally has no background on what collective security and globalized autonomy are. there’s many things that could’ve been different in CW, but Steve was on the “right” side of the conflict for his character. (i’m NOT saying there’s a wrong and a right side on the Civil war dilemma. that whole thing was badly written so let’s just say it made sense in a hypothetical way). supporting the government in any capacity isn’t a part of Steve’s “thing”, but even when/if he sided with the US govt, he’d never endorse a political agenda that he perceives as “wrong”, knowing it’s hypocritical to do so. 

he doesn’t think the end justify the means, which is highly different from Tony’s pragmatism. if Steve and Tony represented opposing philosophical movements, Tony would be utilitarianism and Steve would be deontology. this brings the analysis full circle by pointing out that yes, Tony and Steve operate differently in theory, but in practice they both work for the same objective. Tony is the cynic product of his own doing, he understands how war can destroy and he knows the US has a bad track record of owning up to its own shit. and because of that, he believes that the most good he can do is in his own hands (and because of his extremist way of thinking, he also equates that with being the only one who can do it and therefore, he must, no matter the personal cost). On the other hand, Steve is the idealist product of other’s people efforts, he understands how sometimes war can be the only way to save what is worth saving, but also how it can corrupt even the noblest of men. and because of that, he believes that the most good he can do must be done because other people believe in him, and because by setting the example, others can follow and make the world a better place. (and because of his very stubborn nature, he also equates that with being the ‘tree that must plant itself in the ground and say no, you move’.)

so what I guess I’m trying to say, is that to me at least, saying that Steve Rogers would be in favor of US militarism or that he equates the word “soldier” with hero is a huge disservice to his character. the fact that he’s a fictional character that was first conceived as WWII propaganda is not relevant, because I choose to believe the idea that says fiction stops being the creator’s own the moment it’s out in the world. And Steve Rogers NOW is a different character and serves a different purpose than what he was originally intended to. His entire origin is based on being a soldier, yes, but what makes his character so compelling is the juxtaposition between being a soldier and being essentially opposed to what the US military complex entails. he embodies a lot of american values ofc, like freedom and right of free speech and so, but my take is that he defends this values in a way that is distinctly non American. setting aside discussions of propaganda and the integrity of an art form, i think he’s been written in a way that evokes patriotism without being exclusively american. i mean heck, Steve rogers makes me proud to be from my own country, and inspires me to be better while never reminding me of the fact that he’s from an imperialist super power. Star spangled suit aside, he’s probably a fair enough representation of what one's love for their own country can bring to the surface, no matter which country specifically. i could delve more into that, but this is already getting too long and, since i already mentioned, I’m not from the US and my cultural upbringing is far different from the US. so i’m not sure i could make such a poignant analysis about the military culture and the way it impacts characters such as Steve. 

[theotherbluewizard]

Prohibition 2 is still just the single stupidest fucking thing America has ever done

At least with the genocides and imperialist shit you can see why a terrible person or a complete fucking moron might go along with this shit. But like, fucking, prohibition was a fucking failure. It was a complete unmitigated fucking disaster. It remains a complete fucking embarrassment. It did not fucking work. It created organized crime. For fucks sake, that is a big deal. It fucking created the fucking American mob as we know it, Jesus Christ people. What fucking moron goes along with this shit. Oh and btw prohibition was racist as shit, lest we forget about the paddy wagons. So then you got Nixon who is complete garbage and he proposes prohibition 2, and later is revealed in absolute fact in his tapes to be a racist, and is fired for being an incompetent piece of garbage. And like. We still just do prohibition 2 like it’s supposed to make sense. And we get all offended when asked maybe if this might be like a racist thing since the last one was and the guy who proposed this one can literally be proven to be a racist. And wow look it disproportionately affects non-whites who could have expected that. But here’s a question. Why the crackheads gotta be rounded up and thrown in the dungeons? What the fuck is that supposed to help? Ok how is throwing the dealers in the dungeons supposed to help, someone else will just deal the crack because there’s still a market. We gonna round up all the dealers AND crackheads? And obviously you can’t just cut off the source since anyone can learn to make it. Like with alcohol. Remember how that didn’t really work out it just invented moonshine. You know, like with crack. This shit is the stupidest fucking waste of money in the first place, it obviously lead to the prison industrial complex and the fucking Floyd riots, what about this shit is helping us? Cos like you can be damn sure the dungeons don’t help the crackheads or dealers. Corrections facilities. Is that some kinda joke. It isn’t funny. Those dungeons are fucking foul. They are dingy, disgusting, wildly and inexcusably inhumane fucking hellholes literally designed to destroy your will. They sexually assault everyone who comes in as standard sexual assault operating procedure just to make absolutely sure no one has Fidel Castro up they ass. Can we talk about how the dungeons are wildly fucking inhumane and it’s fucking inexcusable? How the fuck am I supposed to respect any part of this when everyone can see it’s on the back of a fucked up inexcusable system of fucking dungeons, literally some of the worst on the fucking planet. This imbecile in a fucking smock is gonna pound his baby hammer at you for being dressed too gay or whatever and after a long day of judging people poorer than him he’s going to call himself a fucking Christian and go home to root for Trump’s act of treason against the law. To every black judge, when you tell a black man in chains the words ‘controlled substance’ I want you to afterward picture pulling Nixon’s dead racist cock out of your mouth, you disgusting reprehensible fucking idiot. Black judges aren’t uncle toms they’re the fucking African dictators that sold the slaves to the Spanish.

This shit is embarrassing. Everyone can see how fucked up it is and yet nothing is done cos we gotta intermittently address the serious issue of people buttfuckin. It’s a self-described war. A fucking war we are waging on ourselves. Because we absolutely need to be blowing resources on that right now. It’s perpetuated on the most fucked inhumane bullshit like the dungeons. I mean why the fuck do the cops learn killology, shouldn’t it be fucking apprehendology, what the actual fuck is that. And don’t even get me started on how this stupid thing fucking ruined Mexico by creating drug cartels and being one of the biggest fucking industries on Earth for them. And then we have the fucking gall to tell them to pay for a wall to keep them out. This shit is fucking embarrassing.

[justasmallbloginabigklainefandom]

From Grey, chapter 6

Temperance_V: So this is a special blog post featuring a guest blogger, which I've never done before but it seemed like a pretty fun idea since *basically* we talk more than enough to do this without going out of our way anyway. So, this week the blog is in the form of this chat log between me and Paleanghostly, who's mostly active over in the 'ghostlanx' fandom.

Paleandghostly: You have to put the scare quotes around it to remind people that I basically devote my days to looking at pictures of superheroes like a fourteen year old, of course. TV: I think most of your gang spend more time staring at their butts than most fourteen year olds do, P&G. P&G: You might be surprised. I remember being fourteen. TV: Anyway, we met a while ago now when P&G commented on my blog to insult my taste in whiskey and was somehow sort of charming about how stupid I am, and we ended up chatting. Now we play chess over the mail. P&G: Actually over the mail, on actual paper. It's a thing. TV: I genuinely look forward to the letter sneering at my last move once a week. So we're here to discuss something we've already been talking about anyway but it's been a *particularly* interesting chat, so we thought we'd share some thoughts with the wider internet. So this discussion got kicked off by the fandom reaction to this photograph of the Ghost and Phalanx from I think three weeks ago now? P&G: They'll remember the fandom reaction. It's the kind of wank that's so much bigger than the incident that caused it ever could be. TV: I'm not actually in the 'ghostlanx' fandom, btw, I should put that disclaimer out for anyone who's reading this *from* that fandom. If I seem like a n00b, forgive me. P&G: Please god stop putting it in scare quotes. Temperance usually blogs about anything interesting in the media and reactions to the media, for those who have followed *me* from phandom, and it was during one of her posts on Mad Men that I found it necessary to educate her in what we drink and what we use to clean toilets with. And it's *whisky*, please tell me you are actually drinking the stuff that is worth drinking and is not overpriced rebottled mouthwash by now. TV: Moving on. The photograph is a candid caught behind a police van, and shows the Ghost and Phalanx in conversation with a police officer - in suit and tie, so I'm guessing a detective but he looks a little young for it. No-one appears to be trying to arrest anyone. You'd think that would be have been the main point of discussion, P&G? P&G: *snort* Have you *met* fandom? Get to the interesting substance of the issue? No! We want exactly what we want and we want it exactly when we want it, anything deviating from this is a cause of deep personal offence to me and the *entire internet must stop and feel my pain!!* TV: So, it wasn't the crime scene they *weren't* arrested at that most people were talking about (though presumably, the 'enemy' you actually face on the streets you have more in common with than you do your own boss in their high rise office; if I was police I think I'd think we had bigger problems than superheroes too). P&G brought the discussion to my attention via the medium of much swearing, because she has a lot of feelings about these things. P&G: Oh please do make me sound like one of them. The reason I drew Temperance's attention to the response was - well, threefold. One is that in terms of gender politics and misogyny and homophobia amongst those who claim to not be bigots it was *fascinating*. Slash depressing. Two is that it was an eyebrow-straining example of the fandom entitlement complex. Three is that it gives us a very interesting insight into their identity and how very un-black-and-white that is - because people are more complicated than their labels, always. TV: Let's deal with gender first, though these issues do run through each other. This all came about because of the Ghost's posture in the photograph. He's standing quite close to Phalanx, who's facing and speaking to the police officer - I'm sorry, is that police officer really tall or is he actually that short? It's kind of adorable. P&G: He's like the Swiss army knife of superheroes. Flexible crime fighter, folds into your pocket afterwards. TV: Phalanx is speaking, standing with his feet apart, hands apart, gesturing - something, to what he's saying. Possibly just emphasizing a word. No-one even mentioned how Phalanx was standing? P&G: No. Because the Ghost was innocently standing next to him. TV: The Ghost is standing with his left arm crossed over his chest - his cloak makes it a little hard to see, but he's probably supporting the opposite elbow with his hand, because his right hand is held up loosely at shoulder height, as if propped off a desk. And he's got his hip cocked, and his head tilted the other way, it's a great photograph actually, his posture's like a da Vinci composition. P&G: I knew I liked you for a reason. It is a great picture. It's just enormously aesthetically pleasing, Phalanx standing sort of open and easy, the Ghost a longer but narrower zig-zag of angles, eyes on him. Both the Ghost and the cop are looking at Phalanx; the Ghost's expression, as much as you can make it out under the hood and mask, looks attentive and relaxed. Like you would look at your lover, mid-sentence. What fandom chose to cry and cause wank over is, Jesus fucking Christ, the way he's standing. TV: It's not the most masculine posture in the world. P&G: Why the *fucking* hell should it be? TV: Let's go through this in bite-size chunks so it's not just a string of expletives again. Why, as succinctly as possible, did fandom start a flamewar over the Ghost standing like that? P&G: Because they, the idiot ignorant children, fetishize homosexuality in the most contorted and disturbing way possible. Because they're fine with him being gay - happy that he's gay, since they can use his name and form for all their little m/m fantasies on a whole different level of appropriation now. But how dare he, human being in his own life, how *dare* he not conform to strict gender stereotypes at the same time. He's perfectly well allowed to be gay, as long as he does it the 'right way'. God forbid he be any kind of queer that disturbs them, though. TV: There was a lot of negativity. P&G: They don't want to see a male hero stand in a 'feminine' pose. It demeans him. It makes him less heroic. TV: Because to be female is to be less, and to be a male imitating a female is possibly the worst thing it's possible to be. Some of the responses were genuinely unsettling, I read some of your replies to them. P&G: I might have been angry, but I do not disown a single word of what I said. Disgusting self-absorbed ignorant little shits deserved it. TV: But not everyone was so negative about it. P&G: No. Some of fandom is actually populated by feminists and not by people who think that they know what that word means but have never actually thought it through. And then some of fandom is populated by people who further fetishize his femininity in again the most contorted way possible. We kind of had perfect storm conditions for the wank after that. TV: You posted a short piece of meta about it at the time. P&G: I posted a rant, please don't dignify anything that happened during that shitstorm with a respectful title. I hammered out at my keyboard my undying rage that these people were treating him like a doll to dress up how they pleased, and then throwing tantrums when he failed to live up to what they'd dressed him up as in their heads, or subsuming him under the further homophobic, misogynist, *the opposite of accurate* image of him as a swooning 'heroine' in need of big strong Phalanx to 'rescue' him. TV: Little strong Phalanx. P&G: I sense some favoritism developing. TV: He's really cute now I've *looked* at him. Look, I'm not in this fandom, this is not my war to step into. But it *is* interesting. Because, obviously, there's a lot of misogyny involved in campophobia - even in the queer community, the feminine man is despised. P&G: Yes. A loud part of the queer community, weirdly, strives for heteronormativity. We focus on gay men and women as being 'normal', the way straight men and women are 'normal'. Possibly just because it makes us less threatening to straight people, or helps us deal with internalized homophobia, I don't know. But that 'normality' is a lie whether the person in question is gay or straight, these categories are weird, and troublesome, and some of them are actively steeped in hatred and lies. The only thing to do is let it go. 'Normal' has only ever been an illusion. It is all so much more complicated than that you would not *believe*. Let gender be whatever it will be, and stop trying to shame people into going about it the way you're comfortable with. People are who they are and they love who they love. No-one should ever have to sit in a labelled box that someone else nailed the lid down on. TV: Fandom's largely female and yet we still perpetuate the weird misogyny wrapped up in all of this. P&G: Fuck the patriarchy that lives in our own heads most of all. TV: And the weirdest part of it is, everyone knows who he is - he's a hero. There is so much photographic evidence of his extremebamfery that it was a struggle to narrow down which gifs to illustrate the point with. P&G: He haunted New York on his own for five years before Phalanx showed up. Criminals are terrified of him, there's enough documented evidence of that. He can take down a dozen guys all bigger than him and then stroll away when the cops arrive, the last man standing and still unarrested. He kicks so much ass and we've always admired that. He also just copes with what must be a frequently distressing and draining occupation - most of what he deals with on any individual night could be completely traumatic to many people. I admire his strength and bravery utterly. And somehow people cannot square that strength, bravery, and bamfery with the image of him standing with his hip cocked *like a girl*. TV: Because, really, the two just aren't connected. They literally have nothing to do with each other. It's not that either should make the other difficult, there is no logical inconsistency in his not being traditionally masculine and his simultaneously kicking lots of ass. P&G: No. It was never his testosterone-fuelled uber-manliness that kicked ass. It was him. Exactly as he is. He's the same person kicking ass as he is standing next to Phalanx, in what is to him an unconsciously comfortable position - it's only since Phalanx came along that he's started relaxing like that, btw, *that* is clearly what's comfortable to him, not that wary cloak-covered hunch he always wore before. And it says so much more about fandom, about *people*, than it does about *him* that people somehow cannot make the image of the butt-kicking man who stands 'like a woman' sit right. TV: Because - what, heroism is manly? Girls don't kick ass *like that*? Because like you said, there are those who emphasize and fetishize his femininity, and in so doing they often fail to capture the bamfy aspect of him. P&G: What this links in to is the fandom entitlement complex. TV: Go ahead, I can feel your need to preach. P&G: I have a rant brewing, if that's what you mean. The fandom entitlement complex links into fandom sexism in a really strange and powerful way. Because fandom feels like it *owns* its figures of fetishization; they are what they are because we made them that. There is an enormous sense of ownership, like they're just the scaffolding, *we* construct who they are. And of course, they can't live up to that. They're real people, not our dolls. And when they fail to live up to our particular construction we either ignore the facts and go on as before or else we get *really fucking angry*. How *dare* they be actual human beings. They're supposed to be *my doll*, not any real person. Especially not any complicated real person! They should be as simple as possible because I can't conceptualize more than three personality traits in my head at any one time, I am *actually* that dumb! TV: Ahem. Plus we live in a patriarchal society and we construct our dolls along the strict and misogynist gender lines given to us, which oversimplifies them in very dangerous ways. P&G: That's what worries me about many of the people who make the Ghost out to be 'girly' - they're often people who obviously really *identify* with the Ghost, and they still make him out to be weak. So what does that say about the psychology of some women in this world, that society taught us to hate ourselves so *effectively* that we even want our *heroes* to just be rescued, that when we use him as a stand-in for ourselves in *fiction* we still *make him weak*? Because the fic and meta where the Ghost is effeminate *and* is the still the strong, life-saving hero - well, I've rarely found it under the sheer mass of 'basically all the Ghost really wants is for Phalanx to *save* him' fic. TV: I mean, ouch, but yeah. It explains the bizarre popularity of misogynist romance fiction written for women by women, after all. P&G: Mm. So we construct our dolls as manly male heroes, and then throw a shitfit when the queer man actually turns out to be *too* queer. Or we construct them as weak and flimsy *caricatured* women with dicks, who angst and cry and need a more masculine partner to 'rescue' them. The entitlement complex is so strong that we either write over them with our own images - rewrite the Ghost entirely, forget that he kicks ass, forget his *strength*, because a 'girly' man could never be strong because *girls aren't strong* - or we rage and scream about all our butthurt that the hero turned out to not be a cardboard cut out MAN. The part where he's a hero - do I actually need to remind people that he stopped New York being blown up? (with Phalanx; they are partners, after all) - who is both 'feminine' and 'masculine', because we all are, because those labels fix to characteristics and not to people, *that* part gets forgotten. We want them to be what *we want them to be*. We forget that they're not obliged to be a damn thing for anyone except themselves. And often people in writing their definitions of other people do want to wipe queerness out. They want us to go back to that gender dichotomy. They either want him to be a 'man' (caricatured) or to be basically a 'woman' (caricatured) in male form, but they can't *stand* that he's actually just a human being, and human beings are difficult. TV: No middle ground? P&G: Are you shitting me? This is fandom. TV: So tell us how to fix this, great wise Ghostly. P&G: I appreciate your sarcasm so, so dearly. There is middle ground, I was being facetious. There was a small, feminist, pro-queer faction fighting this corner as loudly and rationally as they could. And Blackbindings - one of the fanficcers in the ghostlanx fandom - wrote a piece after that photograph was published called Graduation, which tried to actually ignore the wank and deal with what the photograph *did* teach us about the relationship between the Ghost and Phalanx. Because all that wank is nothing like the most interesting part of that photograph. In this fandom, *everyone* should have responded to that photograph how Blackbindings did, but unfortunately she's the only one with the brains to see what's actually important. TV: I haven't read the fic. P&G: It's a meditation - all of her fics are strolls around a subject, giving you new angles and a wider perspective to actually *see* something from, I swear she makes me realize I have my eyes *closed* half the time. It's a meditation on the balance of 'power' in their relationship. What power means, and doesn't mean, and how it doesn't have to dominate, those who have power can *share* it. We think of it like it's a limited resource but why can't everyone be powerful, if it's the right kind of power? It's about their teacher/student relationship. TV: You're going to have to explain that for those of us who aren't in the fandom. P&G: Tell me what you think it might mean from looking at that photograph. TV: I don't know. The Ghost is standing slightly behind Phalanx's shoulder, relative to that cop. It could just be that the way Phalanx is gesturing has knocked their shoulders out of alignment. It could be that Phalanx has *put* himself between them. It could be that the *Ghost* put Phalanx between them. It could be that Phalanx is taking the lead and the Ghost is happy with that. It could be that the Ghost is watching over him . . . P&G: Yes. It could be all of those things. And not one of us mentioned it because we were just too fucking busy screaming about the Ghost standing like a girl. The Ghost was there first, and it's pretty long been assumed by many that they had a teacher/apprentice role - the classic superhero/sidekick relationship. But it becomes obvious in that photograph - and when you look back, there's a lot of other pictorial evidence for it - that it's really not that simple, and maybe it never has been. TV: You know I love it when you elaborate. P&G: I'm sexy when I'm verbal. When you look back through gifs and photosets, whenever they're dealing with crime victims, the Ghost tends to be in front. His attention is all on the victim and Phalanx is looking at *him*. When they're dealing with criminals they're usually side by side and their attention is focused on the threat. But whenever they're dealing with anybody else - cops, reporters, fans, bystanders - usually Phalanx is the one in front and talking, and usually, the Ghost isn't looking at who they're dealing with, his gaze and his posture are orientated towards *Phalanx*. The Ghost often isn't even fully visible in those situations. Look at that photograph again; Phalanx is standing very at ease and in control of the situation, very relaxed being the one talking, and the Ghost is looking at *him*. This is not a hero/sidekick relationship. They have strengths and weaknesses and they complement each other. They actually are, in every sense of the word, partners. TV: That's quite sweet actually. P&G: If you're contemplating joining the fandom I advise you not to, it's populated mostly by cretins and children. Blackbindings is special. Very special, actually. She does cryptic crosswords for *shiggles*, I don't know if you've ever looked at one but they are torture for the mind. But it affects her brain in interesting ways. She called it 'Graduation', because partly the fic is about how they educate each other, empower each other (of course education is empowering: in her fic, knowledge elevates). But the fic is also very steeped in color terms. It gives it a really physical, sensual, *there* atmosphere, almost close enough to touch, and it was only when I remembered her twisty-turny cryptic little brain that I realised that 'graduation' is only a letter away from 'gradation'. It's the sort of thing she'd notice and play on, cunning little creature that she is. The way hues run into each other. There is no dividing line. The labels are a lie. Strictly, once you realize how difficult drawing a line between colors is, there aren't any *colors*; there's just *color*, and we fumble through labelling instances of it as best we can, pretending that the labels create real categories. They, the Ghost and Phalanx, are so much more complicated than anything we can paint them. Their identities are human identities and the labels are a *lie*. It's not that the labels aren't labelling something real but that they're only labelling *parts* of people when they are *wholes*. They are complex. They live in a world of gradations. They're not superhero/sidekick except for when they are, but who is which is a very blurry thing. Isn't it for all of us? TV: I can't tell if you're a fan of ghostlanx or of Blackbindings right now. P&G: Probably both. Sometimes I just contemplate that her mind exists and give a satisfied sigh that the world *must* be a reasonable place after all . . . TV: We should probably get back to the wank we were discussing. Did you have any closing thoughts on the subject? P&G: Just that being a fan is a very peculiar thing. We never know the person that we 'love' so much, though I do think that that love is often very sincere and fierce-felt, but we only actually know the doll we made of them in our own heads - with masked heroes the problem intensifies. And what we should do is be relaxed, and accept that people are always more complicated than we think they are - this has wider implications than fandom alone - and discuss these things in a way such that we can *learn* from it. Because learning, and the openness to strange new things that learning requires, empowers. The close-mindedness that treats people as characters to be owned by us, that demands simplicity where simplicity is an act of psychological aggression, that sense that we're entitled to special access to their identities almost more than they themselves are - all those things harm both them and *us* in thinking like that. And if people could not be dicks about gender norms that would also be really cool. TV: Indeed. The sheer scale of the meltdown is something to be appreciated, I dabbled in to take a look and - whoa, basically. P&G: It's a big fandom, when we make wank we make a *masterpiece* of wank. Still, most people did stay out of it. The sensible majority who just duck their heads and reblog gifs whenever the shit starts flying. TV: And do you have this week's move ready yet? P&G: It's in the mail, and you really should have seen it coming. TV: We'll see. So next week I'll probably be discussing US remakes of other countries' movies and TV shows, unless something more interesting happens in the meantime. P&G: Oh god, don't even get me started on that bullshit. TV: And it looks like you'll probably see Paleandghostly in the comments section next week too, ahem. Thank you for your contribution this week, P&G, couldn't have done it without you. P&G: You're more than welcome. I hope it was educational, at least insofar as discouraging people from irritating me quite so much. TV: See you guys next week, signing off!

[janiedean]

Do you have any cracky ideas about Jaime in the iron throne?(with Brienne as his queen obvs) because I agree it'd be hilarious

OF COURSE I HAVE CRACKY IDEAS ABOUT THAT I THINK ABOUT IT DAILY

first thing he does after going like .... I have spent my entire life trying to avoid this and now it’s up to ME? really??? is doing away with the kingsguard. like ‘sorry guys I can defend myself and if not my wife can and honestly either you’re wasted or you could do better elsewhere and anyway this is a crappy institution so BYE DO WHATEVER YOU WANT OR BETTER DO WHAT YOU SIGNED UP FOR AWAY WITH THIS RIDICULOUSNESS’

then he realizes he literally knows nothing out of most technical things he should do as a king so he grabs brienne and goes like ‘now we’re interviewing every sort of decent competent person in the realm and we’re taking them just if they convince both of us’ so they spend a month going through every competent person for anything and at the end he has a small council made of people who know what they’re doing

before then, though, he openly sacks randyll tarly like you tried to tell my wife women couldn’t be warriors well fuck you very much bye and this is how people realize that trying to get into jaime’s graces by corrupting him or something is totally useless because he can’t give two fucks about it

then he goes like shit I need a hand of the king, well I don’t trust anyone and even if he patched it up with tyrion he’s def. not gonna do it so he looks at brienne like ‘k here you go’ and brienne goes like ‘jaime I don’t think it works like that’ and he goes like ‘if I’m the king and I can’t even do that fuck this noise’, so for the first time in westeros there’s a queen who’s also hand of the king. (jokes on that abound. jaime is the first making them probably.)

obviously also some people in the small council are women because he’s not an idiot and he didn’t only ask lords but their wives too especially if the husbands didn’t survive the war

then he’d realize that the city watch has to be a thing but the way it’s going it’s just not gonna work so he sacks everyone who was there under janos slynt and sends the worst elements off to the wall - meanwhile since in this verse jon most probably stayed there and they have a correspondence he goes like ‘listen if you have some decent people there who don’t deserve to be freezing on the wall just send them here and I’m putting them in place of the ones you’re getting’ so the city watch changes commanders and is refilled with the wall’s best people TM (jon sends pyp and grenn to at least train recruits and so on and they’re very smug about it)

‘brienne, you think you want to do something so that women who want to be in your trade can do it?’ ‘well what are you proposing’ ‘meh I can just make it so literally everyone can be a a knight’ ‘are you serious’ ‘who would even try to kill me for that’ (fifteen years later a quarter of the city watch is made of women)

‘why are nobles paying comparatively less taxes in comparison to poor people’ ‘it’s always been like this his grace’ ‘fuck this noise let’s rectify it’

obviously he does audience with commoners regularly and he makes crude jokes during said audiences but everyone approves and it only makes him much more popular which in turn makes people realize that trying to kill him or anything would be a very bad idea especially post zombie apocalypse

the ‘killing dwarves at birth’ practice is very much not a thing anymore but just to make sure he outlaws it blatantly

he’d probably take time to go talk to zombie apocalypse survivors

also under his reign no one even dares denying cripples some sort of employment if they can do it because every time such a case has ended up in front of jaime it’s not ended too well for the employer

at some point some dumbass lord who had it a lot better under everyone else pre-jaime tries to destitute him with the ‘but who says the woman is really his queen’ excuse which doesn’t work out because everyone is aware that jaime’s there because no one else wants the damned job, so it ends bad, but jaime goes like okay well we married in front of a heart tree but it’s valid just for the northerners I guess so we should totally give people a show and have the best royal marriage since ever, brienne’s like it’s been years since the heart tree and he’s like why you think I wouldn’t marry you twice, so obv it’s not opulent or anything because post-zombies resources are what they are but they have the amazing public marriage and all of KL is there and everyone is like omg this is the best wedding ever how did we luck out (the reception is open to everyone ofc they’re not classists) btw they totally swapped cloaks rather than have her put his on

‘too bad clegane is in the north, he should have been the maester at arms’

let’s say that in this verse myrcella is VERY HAPPILY MARRIED TO POOR TRYSTANE AND OUT OF KL COMPLETELY and tommen either met his show fate or died because like hell cersei’s not going to end up with the poor kid dying as a result of her actions but cersei is somehow not dead but they imprisoned her for life or something (listen I don’t want him to suffer oKAY) and like she gets updates from whoever’s her jailer and she pretty much seethes inside. she’s totally not happy when eventually she learns that king jaime first of his name has a heir on the way OPS

‘people getting sent to the wall for stealing a fucking piece of cheese is not a thing that should even exist for the love of the seven let’s change seriously the list of crimes that srsly warrant going to the wall and for the love of everything let’s stop putting kids under sixteen in jail what the fuck is this system’

‘if your daughter wants to be in the royal army I sure as hell won’t stop her, pls refer her to my wife she’s in charge of that’

the city watch has express rules of ‘if the king is ordering something really fucking dumb like trying to make the city explode the commander can destitute him and you don’t have to swear contradicting oaths’

‘brienne this job is shit, can’t we just leave everything and be hired swordsmen in essos’ ‘jaime we can’t’ ‘but why’ ‘OBLIGATIONS’ ‘why did I ever say yes’ ‘because you’re doing your duty and no one else would’ ‘fine but I’d still rather be a hired swordsman in essos’

at some point not too late into his reign he decides that he can’t even look at that damned throne without feeling sick and honestly what was even the idea behind it it’s fucking uncomfortable, so he does away with it, uses all that iron to forge new swords or smth and orders a nice new comfortable one

‘anyway this thing that you can get married in front of heart trees should be a law everywhere’

‘where the hell is the king, hunting?’ ‘depends’ ‘what does it mean depends’ ‘he’s definitely not hunting game’ ‘then what he’s hunting’ ‘he’s hunting down bandits with the queen’ ‘wait what there’s the city watch for that’ ‘he says it helps him relax man you think I actually question that’

in the span of five years he’s definitely the most loved king since way before aerys and he still thinks it’s a shit job but he supposes he’s not doing it too wrong ;)

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

3) No continuity baggage.

 “For new readers, getting into comic book series that have decades of history can be intimidating.”

 Then new readers need to learn to get over that and dive in because that’s honestly the only real way to do it.

 “No matter the amount of recap pages, helpful captions or so-called “jumping on points,” there’s always going to be an unspoken baggage of continuity underlying the modern-day issues they pick up, which, at best, make old enemies feel less stale to new eyes and at worse render plot twists, cliffhangers or entire storylines completely incomprehensible without knowledge of prior arcs involving these characters.”

 Tell that to everyone who ever picked up a Spider-Man comic book in the 1980s and 1990s (which was way more than today btw, with the 1990s having the highest selling issue ever) who didn’t have many jumping on points, new #1s, the internet, that many reprints, no Marvel Unlimited and 20-35+ years of Spider-Man history but became regular readers anyway.

 Shit tell that to anyone who picked up Spider-Man in the 1970s after Amazing Spider-Man #100 who had to somehow find out what happened across 100 issues they had to track down due to a lack of reprints, no electronic services and had to cope with those being collector’s items in high demand and even higher prices.

 Once upon a time comics were written in such a way that every issue was somebody’s first. There was no ‘unspoken baggage’ bullshit like the author is pretending there was.

 Readers went back if they could or wanted to but generally they could roll with the story as was.

 I did it. my first Spider-Man comic book was literally the last part of the last story in the 2+ year long convoluted nightmare that was the Clone Saga and it thrilled me because it was well written and well drawn.

 That’s all you need.

 A good writer writes to the old established fans AND the new comers alike.

  “Spider-Man has a particularly cluttered biography, between the “Clone Saga,” “Spider-Verse” and the history-altering “Brand New Day.”

 Spider-Verse wasn’t a cluttered biography it was one arc. The clone saga makes sense when read in sequence though it is long and BND never altered history, OMD did.

 And the degree to which it rendered Spider-Mans’ history more convoluted was AT LEAST comparable to how Secret Wars fucked Miles’ history.

 But we’re gonna conveniently ignore that so the author can continue to shill Miles I guess.

 “Those coming from other Spidey media expecting more fun stories of a webhead fighting bad guys and maybe tussling with other animal-themed villains might leave disappointed.”

 Nowdays sure because he’s Iron Man.

 But hand them a decent older run and they won’t be.

 “That is, unless they pick up a Miles Morales book,”

 Or the David Michelinie run, or the JMS run, or Marvel Knights Spider-Man, or the Lee/Ditko run, or the Roger Stern run, or the Tom DeFalco run, or the DeMatteis runs, or the Peter David run or the Marv Wolfman run.

 “which despite their own origin in universe-rupturing crossover events are about as accessible as a modern Big Two superhero series gets, lacking that excessive amount of history and backstory.”

 See above about accessibility.

 And...no.

 Kamala Khan and other new characters existing in the same universe they were created in less than 5 years ago is as accessible as it gets.

 Finally Miles’ got shittons of baggage by virtue of switching universes, having his origin story invalidated and you know continuing shit from the ORIGINAL Ultimate Spider-Man series.

 It’s not like Miles series starts fresh that you don’t need to have some familiarity with Peter’s adventures. Ultimate Spider Woman, Mary Jane, Electro, Gwen Stacy, Green Goblin, Aunt May. All these characters are present in Miles’ first arc with a presumption that you know who they are already.

 Also that backstory makes the franchise RICHER not poorer.

   2) He’s still a teenager

 “The debate over whether or not to allow comic book characters to age will never be done.”

 Only because morons keep bringing it up and not recognizing you obviously should let them age.

 “On the one hand, you have the example of “The Simpsons,” where Bart Simpson has been a rabble-rousing 10-year-old for over 20 years and likely always will be there.”

 Putting aside how cliché this example is, the Simpsons stopped being about Bart by like season 3 or 4 and it stopped being actually good in season 10 which was nearly 20 years ago. Which blows up the argument here.

 “On the other is John Constantine who, in the original “Hellblazer” run, aged in real time. Most superhero books land somewhere in the middle, with the de-aging properties of reboots and relaunches accepted into the fold.”

It’s not accepted. It’s practiced by DC to obviously crappy results hence Rebirth is a thing.

 “It can be difficult removing a character from the original age, however.”

 No it isn’t.

 Peter Parker, Smallville Clark Kent, Dick Grayson, Harry Potter, Son Goku and Son Gohan prove that to be the case.

 “Spider-Man is a character whose entire existence is rooted in teenage angst and the drama of high school.”

 No he isn’t. He’s rooted in down to Earth realistic life experiences and the responsibilities one has to contend with as part of that whilst balancing that against the realities of living up to the responsibilities of being a superhero.

 If you think Spider-Man is anything other than something along those lines you do not understand Spider-Man.

 The author is a superficial idiot who’s never read much Spider-Man and is parroting erroneous lines they’ve heard elsewhere, like from Tom Brevoort’s lying mouth.

 Spider-Man was in high school for 28 issues before his creators graduated him.

 He isn’t rooted in angst he simply felt it because all 1960s Marvel characters did but Spidey especially since he was a teenager initially but that changed over time.

 The drama of high school wasn’t that big of a deal early on next to the drama of Jameson and Betty Brant who were unconnected to Peter’s high school life.

 “Removing Peter Parker from that made sense at a certain point, but after he graduated college, creators have floundered to find something for adult Peter to do, cycling through freelance photojournalist to scientist to CEO to public school teacher.”

 Yes.

 The acclaimed Roger Stern, Tom DeFalco and J.M. DeMatteis runs of Spider-Man sure are great examples of ‘floundering’

 Him having to cope with dark stuff like gritty street crime, marriage, existential issues self-identity challenged by the presence of his clone, impending fatherhood, and his own mortality sure was the writers floundering.

 Seriously, all the examples the author listed were just different JOBS Peter has had, not proof writers have floundered constantly since 1983. They don’t even prove Peter’s JOBS have floundered in real life adults often change professions.

 “Miles remains a 14-year-old high schooler,”

 No he doesn’t. He’s been allowed to age and is closer to 17 years old currently.

 “that rich vein far from fully tapped at this point.”

 Because a high school adventurer who deals with crazy unordinary events as well as regular high school experiences is something comic books and pop culture as a whole hasn’t revisited ad infinitum as the default setting of countless series.

 “For fans craving the classic high school Spidey experience, look no further than Miles Morales to deliver the hormone-fueled goods.”

 Or you know read the older Ultimate Spider-Man comics, the Ditko Spider-Man comics, Spidey or watch the Spec Spidey cartoon.

  1)   He Still Has a lot to Learn

 “Miles Morales is still relatively green. He’s been receiving a helping hand from an Avenger here, another Spidey-adjacent hero there, but the fact is he’s a kid. A kid of better-than-average intelligence and the proportionate strength and agility of a spider, but a kid nonetheless. There’s still an almost infinite amount of scope for him to learn and grow, and also for him to completely mess up in the way rookies do, all of which make for interesting stories and a clear character progression in the years to come.”

 Peter Parker has at least 30 decades worth of character development in him if you make him a father, let alone anything else you wish to do with him.

 And this is such a bullshit goalpost moving argument to make.

 Miles is better because he has LESS character development and is at the start of his career as opposed to Peter.

 Okay...I guess every new TV show that just started this year must be by it’s nature automatically better than the Sopranos, the Wire and Game of Thrones.

 I guess Speedball was an inherently better character than Peter Parker because he was 25 years behind Peter.

 I guess every Robin ever is automatically better than Batman and Superman combined.

 I guess the Iron Fist TV show is better than the Daredevil TV show because it’s only had ONE season instead of two.

 I guess the DCEU versions of Superman and Batman are inherently better than the MCU versions of Captain America and Iron Man because they’ve only had 1-2 movies about them whilst Cap and Iron Man have had a minimum of 3 each.

 The POTENTIAL for character development doesn’t make you better than the character who HAS the character development.

 Practically EVERY character has potential for growth. But staying stuck there, or going downhill (as Miles has since his inception) kinda makes you far LESS than a character who’s got the character development.

 Character development>>>>Hasn’t got there yet.

 “Peter Parker, comparatively, is spinning his wheels.”

 Yeah right NOW he is. He didn’t USED to do that, he wasn’t even doing that a mere 15 fucking years ago. This isn’t going to last.

 “He’s done everything, beaten everyone, self-actualized several times over as a spider-god, the literal center of the multiverse in “Spider-Verse,” and now as an international industrialist.”

 a)   Being an industrialist never self actualized him

b)   He was never a Spider God, the author needs to read the damn books

c)   He was also never the centre of the Multiverse

d)   What the hell does self-actualizing even mean in this context?

e)   He’s never been a father in 616?

f)     He’s never owned a small business

g)   He’s never had to make peace with his abusive father-in-law

h)   He’s never turned evil

i)     He’s never learned magic

j)     He’s never swapped powers with anybody

k)   Oh look there seems to be lots of shit whether good or bad he’s never done

 “At this point, writers have to keep applying new gimmicks to the original Spidey to make him interesting, and though the results have sometimes been magnificent — thanks to Dan Slott, J. Michael Straczynski and their innumerable collaborators — it feels like arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

 With Slott sure.

 With JMS no it was never a gimmick it was all natural.

 Notice the author only citing the most recent regular ASM writers as though they did a quick google search and nothing more as research.

 We don’t need to apply gimmicks to make Spider-Man interesting. We just need to allow him to progress again. Renew Your Vows proved that.

 “With Miles, the fascination and entertainment comes naturally.”

 Well it would do if Bendis wasn’t writing him and hadn’t fucked him by switching his universes.

 And it would also help if the fascination with Miles wasn’t rooted in yet another teenage superhero story. It’s been done to death by this point and this is another teenage superhero story about another smart kid who has spider powers and calls himself Spider-Man. 

  What can we conclude form this ‘article’?

 1)    The author is a Miles Morales shill who will move the goal posts and stack the deck in order to paint Miles in a light that puts him over Peter

2)    If this article is indicative of the attitudes surrounding Miles Morales on the whole then Miles Morales is excruciatingly overrated

3)    The author doesn’t understand much about storytelling

4)    The author doesn’t understand or know much about Spider-Man in general (specifically Peter Parker) or the defining philosophies underpinning the franchise

5)    The author wants to generate cheap dishonourable clickbait

BONUS!

CBR is such clickbait bullshit they even made a crappy video to go along with their crappy article for anyone too lazy to read it.

See this video indicates to me the speaker and/or writer and/or researcher of the artcle and video really don’t know what they are talking about.

·         Because they only site Dan Slott and JMS among the creators who;ve worked on Spider-Man beyond the early days which says to me they did a quick google search of Spider-Man writers and since those are the latest two with full on runs they threw the names out to look smart.

·         Because no self respecting Spider-Man fan doesn’t know how to pronounce John Romita’s name

[relationshipcrimes]

I AM ABSOLUTELY HOLLERIN @monierity LOOK AT THIS BALLER CONTENT FROM CASSOWARY

here are some ideas building off of yours

- i sort of figured that carolina wouldn’t abandon the reds and blues if they were entirely alone without wash to help. in canon she was v concerned with dealing with pfl’s war crimes through tracking down their freelancer tech, so i figured she’s probably be interested in the same thing, except now she wants to do it with the reds and blues, because she isn’t going to leave these candy colored human puppies on the side of the road defenseless lmaooo

- tucker actually doesn’t have a problem with that; he’s just tired of being moved around and he doesn’t like being told what to do. they have a conversation about carolina working with her team instead of just telling them they’re going to do things her way, because i’ve always wanted carolina’s arc of being a “bad leader” and themes of inheriting her father’s worst traits to continue. it’s good for both of them

- I FUCKING ADORE UR HC OF EPSILON BEING LIKE “what?? i don’t care that caboose has a new AI friend in his life what are you talking about i have no feelings on this whatsoever but also freckles is a punk ass bitch and OBVIOUSLY i am the superior AI caboose please call me back” THATS SO FUCKING FUNNY

- my immediate instinct is that doyle is too stupid to be manipulated by price LMAO. also carolina will be there and she’ll probably strangle price her damn self even from her hospital bed

- if there’s one thing i really wanted to get into it was the interaction with wash and felix!!!! ur totes right that felix would get along so well with wash and wash’s particular brand of ruthlessness, but also that’s precisely why wash is so dangerous and corrosive to felix’s abilities to manipulate locus using locus’s delusions, because wash doesn’t QUITE see eye to eye with felix.

- locus: hey babe did u like how i shot ur friend thru the throat?? wash: Why Can’t You Just Use Space Grindr Like A Normal Human Being

- so one of the funniest things to me in canon is that wash and locus have this mini arc in season 12 which ends with wash basically nuking locus’s entire world view from the ground up, and then wash is like “cool great talk BYE” and locus is like “WAIT WHERE’S THE AFTERCARE” and wash is like “lmao not my business” and then locus has a breakdown in slow motion for like twenty episodes all by himself like “oh god counselor tell me what to do SANTA TELL ME WHAT TO DO oh god let me crawl into the meta suit to escape all these Feelings WOULD SOMEONE JUST TELL ME WHAT TO DO” while wash has fucked off to do a bunch of other shit. and then the few times wash and locus meet back up wash does literally nothing except “i know i can’t beat you in a physical fight so hey do u remember that time i obliterated every delusion you ever held dear??? i’m still totally right about that btw” and locus goes AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and loses his shit in slightly faster motion

- anyway my point is that in canon wash basically declares locus’s bullshit Not His Business (which is absolutely isn’t anyway) but in this AU, if locus is losing his shit, it’s ABSOLUTELY wash’s business. locus is being an idiot and his self delusions piss wash off but wash can’t enable them in good faith like felix does, so wash is stuck actually dealing with the consequences of locus losing his shit, which is kind of objectively annoying because wash has a lot on his plate and he doesn’t need to be babysitting locus’s overdue therapy on top of that. i predict both of them get REALLY snippy even as they constantly argue over their disagreements. am i saying blackrom locington? ………maybe

- the fact that wash and locus are arguing doesn’t detract from felix’s antennae from detecting that something is up with that relationship because 1 locus even talking is noteworthy and 2 like cmon everyone knows locus has a Type. which probably leads to felix being nice and sympathetic to wash after arguments with locus while internally cataloguing every scrap of information wash gives him for later betrayal

- you thought tucker hated felix for his betrayal?? after carolina gets shot, tucker would suck felix’s dick for a chance to put a bullet in wash’s gut. furious doesn’t even begin to cover it

- i have nothing to add to ur whole thing about the merc trio partnership imploding because 1 totes agree it was never a stable partnership and 2 I LOVE JUST LIKE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS INSANE TRIPLE LAYER BETRAYAL OF SHITTY PEOPLE BACKSTABBING SHITTIER PEOPLE ITS SO QUALITY and also 3 WASH GETTING THE KEY IS AN EXCELLENT IDEA PLUS LOCUS AS A MEATSHIELD wash truly stepped into felix’s shoes oh no………. I LOVE IT

- i know that “wash dies at the end” is for ur other AU but also it’s a legit possibility for cockroaches-verse too

ANYWAY THANKS FOR SHARING THESE GREAT HCS I ENJOYED EVERY SENTENCE

i would love to know if you have any HCs or ideas for merc!wash AU!!!! 👀👀👀👀

oh boy do i!! It’s late here so I hope these are. uh. coherent enough.

specifically within the world of cockroaches:

You mentioned Carolina being the new Blue Team leader, so I guess she stayed in the canyon and bonded with the Reds and Blues instead of going off? I’m really interested in how that played out, lol.

Tucker thought Wash’s training was hard, but it’s got nothing on Carolina’s 

Carolina and Caboose get in an extremely petty (and on Carolina’s end, confused) argument over who’s Epsilon’s best friend. Then Epsilon gets in his own extremely petty argument with Freckles over who’s Caboose’s best friend

None of these are about Wash oops

Aiden Price definitely defects to Chorus (or at least tries to) as soon as he realizes Felix will kill him

Kimball trusts him exactly 0%, so he tries to get into Doyle’s good graces. He and Grey began an extremely vicious battle of psychoanalysis that ends with Price truly disturbed and uncomfortable

Given that Wash sees himself as a murderer and that he interacts with Locus more frequently and more personally in this AU, Locus probably spirals downward into self-doubt sooner - but given that Wash isn’t actually trying to get him to stop committing genocide, it just mutates into a new form.

potentially: he starts by trying to get reassurance from Felix, who is irritated at how the war is dragging out and Wash’s general presence, and is just sort of like, “it doesn’t MATTER if it’s murder or war, we just have to get the job done”

which might have worked, if Wash wasn’t there to undermine Felix’s statements and general life philosophy

which makes Locus redirect his desperate need for validation onto Wash, who wants no part of this, because honestly, Locus, “helping Wash kill one of his few remaining friends” wasn’t actually a bonding experience

the mere idea of Locus expressing non-murderous interest in someone who isn’t him pushes Felix to start trying to “subtly” push Wash into danger so he can’t convince Locus to turn on Felix.

this will end well for all involved parties!

the Reds and Blues spend a lot of time wishing they had just thrown Wash off the cliff after the Meta

with Wash as a mercenary and Carolina dead or out of commission, Chorus has a lot harder time finding victories. instead of big climactic battles like Armonia, the fighting is scattered throughout the jungles, and it drags on. and on. and on.

then they find out what the temples do, and it’s a mad scramble to secure them.

Felix, Locus, and Wash are able to reach the Purge relatively unscathed … until Felix decides that Wash and Locus betraying him is basically inevitable and preemptively betrays them. In a Mobius Double Reacharound of backstabbing, Wash realizes this and betrays Felix before he can finish betraying them.

Wash gets the key, Locus is freaking out.

Wash realizes that there’s no way Hargrove will let him keep the key, and since it can only be transferred on death, that doesn’t look good on the “him staying alive” front. And Locus isn’t worth anything to Hargrove without a partner keeping him in line

Wash drags Locus off to be his meat shield at least until Wash can get a new identity; they escape Chorus

there’s a lot of flailing on both sides when they realize that inevitable death isn’t coming, and the mercenaries have kind of vanished. There’s nothing in the way of the Chorusans and the Sim Troopers taking over the communications tower.

(really, there are a lot of ways this could play out - but I think the Locus-Felix-Wash partnership exploding spectacularly is a very fun idea.)

I’ve also considered a different merc!Wash AU, where Wash is part of the Chorus Mercenary team from the start. 

Instead of being pulled out of prison to hunt down Epsilon, Hargrove deems Wash too close to the problem, but still useful, and ships him off to Chorus. 

therefore, he’s not thankful for the Reds and Blues stopping the Meta; he’s just bitter that they let him go to prison and then get forced into mercenary work

Maybe instead of going to prison, Sharkface gets put on the Great Epsilon Hunt?

he’s actively looking for a chance to kill the Meta, who personally killed one of his friends, so I think the climactic battle would happen significantly earlier

he also thinks he some ~great bond~ with the Reds and Blues because they all got shot at by the Freelancers; this is immediately shot down

maybe forms a weird camaraderie with Epsilon and Tex over how much the Director sucks??

Meanwhile, on Chorus, Wash is an intermediary between Locus and Felix. He’s not affiliated with either army; he runs the tractor beams and does cleanup in no-man’s-land so that Locus and Felix don’t have to wander off.

this one almost certainly turns out worse for everyone, because Wash has more time to settle into the Felix-Locus dynamic, plus Sharkface almost certainly tries to kill Carolina for real when she reappears in season 10, which would take a while to smooth out.

Wash dies at the end

this is really long so I’m going to end it here, but suffice to say: this AU scenario is an untapped source of potential in the RvB fandom