#to be fair they tried to kill ashes for finding out about the bigger schemes at play and chip just had to kill a guy to rank up but

[obitv]

oh btw btw btw. lucky sevens is LITERALLY a chip song. orphan pyromaniac child is recruited into a mob/gang and raised there only to be betrayed and burn the whole place down before running away to become a pirate. i rest my case

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

This is the most offensivly ignorant comment I’ve ever had the misfortunte of reading

Unsurprisingly it comes from the King of ‘What you just said is so aggressively idiotic I feel like you just insulted everyone’: RDMacQ. 

For context you need to read this statement from someone else. Whilst I do not agree with this statement I’m not addressing it’s merits or demerits.

“Let me say that I don't like Evil Superman as a concept, but when written well, like Tom Taylor's Injustice comics, where the guy who wrote it clearly has love for the traditional version of Superman and tries to humanize him even at his worst so you can relate and feel for the guy, I accept it, I enjoy it. By that same token, I was always open to Peter/MJ not working out if it was done well, and not done as in the case of OMD/OMIT with the demonstrable intent of slandering MJ's character and making Peter young hip and open to dating younger girls without him coming off as a creep and sleazebag. I am not okay with it happening to preserving Peter's sainthood. I mean the reason I accepted Peter B. in ITSV is that it did that take on the direction the character went into very well. In the case of Life Story #3, you are meant to agree with MJ and she's shown as a moral force, someone who condemns Venom Peter when he is about to kill Kraven-in-Cloth Suit. And of course people need to keep in mind that in Life Story, Reed and Sue didn't work out either, Vision suffers more guilt than even Peter can fathom, Captain America made a bigger and more difficult choice and faces more consequences for his actions than Peter does. So I feel that whatever Zdarsky is doing he's playing fair in the way that other writers don't when they do the story this way. And also tonally, the story is set in the '80s, the age of Watchmen. I think in terms of decade-specific mood and trend, having a story where Spider-man becomes a deadbeat dad worried about not being in prime physical shape and so on...is quite apposite.”

Then we get to RDMacQ’s bullshit

 “Yeah, I find it weird that the main complaint is "This isn't what happened in the original comics" and I'm like "Yeah.... kind of the point!"”

Here is the problem.

Life Story is intended and promoted as a WHAT IF.

 The way a WHAT IF works is that it takes what DID happen and changes variables to explore how that’d impact the outcome.

With Variables A+B you get outcome 1 (the main universe).

 But what if you had Variables C+D? You would get outcome 2.

 Gwen Stacy died so Spider-Man tried (and ultimately refrained) from murdering the Green Goblin.

 But what If Spider-Man saved Gwen Stacy? Then she’d accept him, he’d stop the Goblin, but the Goblin would expose his identity in the interim and thus ruin Peter’s life.

 Kingpin’s assassin injured Aunt May so Peter beat him up.

 But what If the Kingpin’s assassin didn’t injure Aunt May but simply outright killed Mary Jane? Then Peter would directly murder the Kingpin.

 Life Story doesn’t play fair as a What if in the slightest.

 A what if done properly is confined by the parameters of the original story. Everyone still needs to act in character within the context of the new situation as defined by the older stories.

 That isn’t he case in Life Story

 To begin with it isn’t changing just one variable it’s changing multiple. Spider-Man is aging in real time. The events of his life are happening in roughly the same time period they would’ve been published, but not in the same order. The level of realism is drastically higher since Marvel heroes are going to the Vietnam War.

 Characters act arbitrarily differently in ways they wouldn’t do in the context of the new variables. Case in point, why exactly would Norman Osborn pull the scheme he di in issue #2 just because he’s in prison? His plan never made sense. And in issue #4 his plan was even more asinine. He wanted to destroy Spider-Man and due to being too old to do it himself he pulled the Clone Saga and got Doc Ock to attack Spidey on his behalf. But he knew who Peter was, why not just reveal the truth. Doing so couldn’t harm him as he’d already paid for his crimes as the Goblin and his identity was public knowledge.

 That doesn’t make sense. That’s not an opinion that’s just self-evident by the story. The cause and effect of it doesn’t add up.

 But RDMacQ doesn’t believe in that. According to him Norman’s actions are justified because ‘ a crazy person did something that didn’t make sense’. That’s the laziest most pathetic attempt at analysis. And yet this cum bubble of a human being has the audiactity to claim I  don’t analyse.

 To him authorial intent is everything unless he doesn’t like it.

 Because the point is that it’s supposed to be different from canon that means that characters can act in ANY way that’s different. ANY thing that is different is a viable option. Which obviously defeats the entire object of the project. If you are going to do that what is the point of rooting it in 616 canon in the first place? Why rely upon familiarity with the canon universe if you are going to randomly change anything on a whim as opposed to in logical response to a changed variable?

 In doing that all you have accomplished is a weird and unfocussed Ultimate Universe, not a What if.

 But then ol’ Big Mac starts to step up the game.

 “I think probably my issue arises due to certain recent fan outrages, and a lot of the rationalizations and justifications that came from them. The latest episode of Game of Thrones, for example, had a lot of people- and I mean a LOT of people- decrying a character's "Heel" turn and their "Out of character" moments- while at the same time showing a bit of a misreading of the material or the subject matter.”

 Bear in mind when he wrote this the latest episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones was the penultimate episode of it’s eighth and final season. In it, key protagonist, Daenerys slaughtered a whole city full of civilians with a fire breathing dragon and her army. Throughout the show she’d previously been defined as being unwilling to kill innocents on principle, once claiming that each enslaved person in a city was a reason to conquer the city and liberate it’s people. She was so horrified that one of her dragons inadvertently killed a child that she locked them up. She once affirmed that she did not want to be ‘Queen of the Ashes’ amidst her campaign to retake her homeland.

 It’s fair to say the overwhelming majority of viewers AND professional critics took major issue with this and declared it a travesty and out of character.

 Behind-the-scenes stories also heavily point to Emilia Clarke (the actress portraying the character) being upset and disenchanted with her character’s direction.

For my money these two videos are the best examinations of the disaster that was Daenerys heel turn in this episode of Game of Thrones.*

Also please bear in mind the ‘man’ saying people are misreading things is the same man who has continually insisted that Norman Osborn merely wants to kill Spider-Man in spite of me citing examples to the contrary, including this page.

So you know, not exactly demonstrating great analytical skills there. 

“I think it's far too easy to cry "Out of character" when a character does something different, or simply questionable, because it's an easy catch all phrase that sounds like you know something, but in reality it's just a cover for a lack of understanding of things like characterization or plot development.”

Says the ‘man’ who genuinely once said Norman Osborn doing something nonsensical is justified because ‘he’s crazy’.

 Says the ‘man’ who leaned incredibly hard on the idea that Miles Warren in Life Story would not have intervened in Gwen’s marriage to Peter Parker even though his entire character revolves around his jealous obsession over her.

 Says the guy who once said a writer can randomly decide all of Mary Jane’s character development since the 1980s didn’t matter.

 Says the ‘man’ who once claimed Doc Ock at the end of Gage’s Superior run was he real Doc Ock even though he was literally a clone of his mind in a clone of his body…and then he refused to listen to me when I repeatedly spelled that fact out for him. His rationale was ‘Marvel are treating him as the real guy so he is’.

 Says the ‘man’ that in his ‘interpretation’ Spider-Man regarded Ned Leeds as a ‘viper’ after he was revealed as the Hobgoblin, in spite of literally no evidence supporting that interpretation and you know Spider-Man literally saying otherwise multiple times; including in the issue he learned Ned was a villain. In fact when I pointed this out to ol’ big Mac he referred to such things as ‘arbitrary’.

 Says the guy who once said it’s better for stories to be in multi-parters because before the rise of decompression al stories had rushed endings. Remember how Amazing Fantasy #15, The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man, Sensational Annual 2007, The Conversation and When Commeth the Commuter all had ‘rushed’ endings?

 Says the poor excuse for a ‘man’ who once claimed there was nothing wrong with the JMS run having magic but who also lambasted Peter David’s Spider-Man work for involving magic and time travel, even though JMS wrote ASM #500 which is literally about magic time travel.

 What I am trying to say is this ‘man’ has systemically demonstrated immense hypocrisy and stupidity but a staggering deficiency when it comes to literary analytical skills.

 “The movie reviewer Bob Chipman mentioned this in one of his videos where he talked about the problems that a lot of "Modern" viewers have is that they believe because they watch a lot of movies in a year, that somehow makes them film buffs or gives them insight into the storytelling process, when in reality what they are doing is watching all the Marvel movies or all the big releases, and assuming that gives them the same sort of insight that people who go to school to learn this sort of thing do. And I kind of think that's also true of comics as well.”

 Oh boy, is there a lot to unpack here.

 Keeper of the Gate

For starters let’s call this out for what it is. As much as he might be softening the statement by saying ‘kind of’, what he is actually doing right here is GATEKEEPING.**

 He is saying unless you have ‘gone to school to learn this sort of thing’ you don’t COUNT as a critic.***

 Okay let’s dive into that one.

 Schooling ain’t everything

Gone to school to do what exactly? How to make movies? That’s what film school is for right? So you can learn how to write, produce, direct, etc movies. Correct me if I am wrong but film school does not teach you how to CRITIQUE movies.

 So by this logic going to film school wouldn’t qualify you to critique a movie, just how to make them. Except no one argues that. Bob Chipman himself studied film at school and it is from that point of view that his analyses come from.

 So by RDMacQ’s own logic Bob himself isn’t qualified for his own job, let alone RD himself. At which point why does Bob’s words carry any weight at all?

 But wait, we can go yet deeper.

 What if we aren’t talking about film school specifically? What if someone just studied film as their major in college but not strictly film school? Is that good enough to be a film critic or not? If it is are you a lower echelon of film critic?

 What if you minored in film/media studies instead of majored in it? Are you yet lower on the totem pole?

 What if you went to film school but dropped out?

 What if you studied from home and didn’t actually GO to the school itself?

 What if you studied it at A school but pre-college?

 What if you studied it privately outside of an educational institution? In other words a self-taught film student?

 Shit, what about the first ever film critics or the first ever film makers who pioneered techniques and the art form? If they were going through the trial and error of formulating the art form and medium there obviously couldn’t have BEEN film schools back then?

 Do they not count?

 Not to mention the cultural implications of this. If you are an American who attended a French film school are you unqualified to critique American films and only French ones, even if you grew up predominantly with American cinema?

 Let’s change things up a little and look to TV in Britain. One of the most acclaimed British TV writers of all time was a man named John Sullivan. Sullivan created multiple beloved and acclaimed sitcoms, the most famous of which is called Only Fools and Horses. So successful was this show that it was the most viewed TV show in Britain in both the 90s and the 2000s. The latte in particular is an achievement since the show existed purely as reruns in the 2000s sans literally 3 episodes.

 The show had a total of 64 episodes and ran between 1981-2003. Do you know how many of those 64 episodes Sullivan wrote?

 ALL of them.

 And do you know how many of them have predominantly negative reviews? Arguably  just four.

 Not only has the show been positively received it’s been regarded as the singular greatest British comedy of all time, a title it still holds to this day.

 Amidst the praise that the show has received is it’s great characterization, it’s emotional moments and in particular it’s utter command of narrative structure. Not only do the jokes land they land with grace and make the feat seem easy when it’s all over. The cherry on his record was his OBE, an official government recognition of his positive contributions to the arts.

 So you know, this guy clearly knew how to tell a good story. He did like 60 times in a row single handily.

 So when and where did he study film? The answer is, he didn’t.

 He never studied film. His formal education stopped at age 15 when he dropped out of school with no qualifications. Even if he had completed his secondary high school education he’d have not studied film. Film was not on the British curriculum at the time and to my knowledge still isn’t. At best you can study ‘media studies’ starting at age 16-18 before you go on to university. But up until age 16 it’s just not an available option.

 He did go to evening classes for English and read teach yourself books but that was it.

 By Big Mac’s standards this writer who’s been recognized by the government themselves wasn’t qualified to write anything, let alone critique it.

 Additionally let’s consider one teeny weeny little fact. If you’ve lived through the formal education system in pretty much any Western country you have almost certainly been educated on how to gain an insight into the storytelling process. Because that’s a big part of what fucking ENGLISH class is for!****

 MovieBob

I’d say I’m shocked and appalled at RD’s audacity and lack of self-awareness in citing MovieBob Chipman. But I’m not. It actually makes far too much sense.

MovieBob is a broken clock that’s often not even right twice a day. His credibility as a critic and as a human being is also woefully lacking.

For starters RD is a big Spider-Marriage proponent (though he’s recently turned traitor and says he doesn’t really mid if it doesn’t come back). To his credit he has often called out and deconstructed unfair and disingenuous arguments against the Spider-Marriage.

Bob however is staunchly on the other side of that debate.

He’s even said the marriage was never good, came from an illegitimate place, that Spider-Mans imply should never be married and in fact argued that a late Slott era Spider-Man and MJ were more interesting than they were before.

Thus I find RD’s citing of Bob to back up his claims about who is ‘qualified’ to be a critic the height of irony.

But you know, that doesn’t necessarily hurt RD’s argument. Hell, Bob un-ironically believing in eugenics or intelligence testing for voters doesn’t necessarily hurt RD’s argument.

Nor does MovieBob’s weird, weird views on how society apparently punishes the Big Brains like himself of course. Although it’s so telling that an arrogant prick like RD would invoke the words of a ‘brother-in-arms’ like Bob.

 No, what hurts RD’s argument is where Bob was probably coming from with his initial statement.

 See I heavily suspect that RD’s claims about Bob are kind of stem from his interpretations of this video Bob made called ‘BIG PICTURE: PLOTHOLE SURFERS’. Noticeably that video cites this video by another Youtube film critic named Patrick Willems. Called ‘SHUT UP ABOUT PLOT HOLES’.

The sentiments of both videos explicitly or implicitly echo Big MacQuack’s. Everyone is wrong in how they are critiquing movies except them and people like them because they are ‘professionals’ because they went to school.

None of these arguments hold up to scrutiny both due to stuff I have mentioned above but also for various other reasons I’m not going to bother unpacking here. If you want a detailed look at why Chipman and Willems (and by extension RD) are full of shit there are several Youtube videos dissecting their points, particularly Willems’.

However, I’ve found the most detailed to be this video. 

There is also this video where they more directly address Bob’s video.

Fair warning they are long and get less than PC, and yet they do address why the videos don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Self-taught critic

Here is a crazy thought, if you’ve watched all the Marvel movies and big releases every year, why SHOULDN’T that give you a potential insight when critiquing OTHER Marvel movies or big releases? Those things are competing against one another, they are broadly going for the same audience. If you familiarise yourself with them then it is not beyond impossibility that you could mentally play spot the difference in the storytelling and critically evaluate them. It’s almost like in consuming that media you have formulated a CRITERIA which you are then CRITICALLY judging similar such media against.

Hypocrisy

The best part about RD’s statements? He himself has never gone to film school. Nor has he gone to a school specifically teaching him how to analyse comic books nor write them.

By his own logic he has disqualified himself from partaking in critiquing any story, as he did with Life Story or Game of Thrones earlier on.

But the best part?

If you check out the thread this is from and observe the poster called Chase the Blues Away they often disagree. CTBA  points out holes in RD’s arguments and subtly questions his reading comprehension. Entirely separately they also implied they felt GoT’s writing was illogical towards the end of season 8 as well.

Why is CTBA relevant.

Because they actually HAVE gone to film school!

Furthermore, on both Life Story and most other matters related to Spider-Man CTBA and myself have been on the same page, whether this entails agreeing with one another’s statements or by coincidence having similar positions.

Now me?

I NEVER went to film school nor did I study English literature formally beyond age 18. Oh, I’ve read bits and bobs about writing (my favourite being Russell T Davies’ book ‘A Writer’s Tale’). But I have no college level formal education on the craft of writing. My analytical skills were cultivated from my school experiences and a whole load of osmosis and practice.

I have also found myself often on the same page as another person who at least studied English at a college level. They are another poster on the same forum called MacGoblin, perhaps better known as the creator of the (now defunct) SpideyKicksButt website. For many people the site was THE best source of Spider-Man analysis on the web for over a decade.

MadGoblin still participates regularly on a podcast covering new Spider-Man issues and whether or not I agree with all his assessments the manner in which he analyses (with an eye upon continuity) is similar to myself and indeed all the other panellists on the podcast.

One of the former panellists on the podcast (who I have also been on the same page with more often than not) was called Donomark and he too studied English at a college level.

So that’s three people who meet RD’s arbitrary rules for who is a ‘real’ critic. And yet I (someone who doesn’t meet RD’s criteria) have come to mostly the exact same conclusions as they have through entirely independent analysis.

As have other people I know who didn’t study film or English Lit in college.

So, either I’m just an absolute prodigy, or RDMacQ, Willems and MovieBob’s criteria for who can and can’t grasp plot and characters is full of shit.

“A lot of the complaints I've seen is that Peter wouldn't or didn't do this in the original comics. But arguing "Peter wouldn't do this because in ASM #225, on page 11..." isn't pointing out the flaw in the story.”

As always RD is devoid of nuance or appreciating the complexities of things.

If in Life Story or any Spider-Man story in canon Peter acts in a way at odds with his established characterization  which is DEFINED by ASM #225 then absolutely  that’s pointing out a flaw in a story.

Case in point, here is this poorly drawn satire of Superior Spider-Man RDMacQ himself made:

Most of the gags at the expense of Superior Spider-Man in this page was made through the lens of knowing the characters’ past, of knowing what they did and how they acted in older stories.

The confusion over Crazy Town Banana Pants derives from Superior claiming Peter routinely said this when he in fact never did.

Carlie’s suspicions over Superior’s behaviour stems from he fact that the older stories have established how Peter acts and established that Carlie knows how he acts. Therefore Carlie not realizing the truth when she’s been told is illogical. That’s the gag from someone who’s stamped his foot on the ground and angrily refuted that human beings are capable of being logical.

The same is true of this next page too.

Captain America refers to ‘usual’ people involved with the Avengers (super scientists, etc.). Usual means there is a precedent and a precedent can only be defined via a pattern. A pattern of what? A pattern of older stories!

The second panel is bringing up the OLDER STORY ‘Ends of the Earth’ to prove the hypocrisy of Doc Ock

The final panel references SEVERAL past events. The Clone Saga. The Alien Costume Saga. Every time the Chameleon or another shape shifter has impersonated him. Kraven’s Last Hunt.

It’s also referencing the fact that MJ would KNOW about them and even goes really specific by referencing the events of a few pages of one specific issue of Kraven’s Last Hunt. Not the gist of the story, not the climax or the most famous moments. This one scene in the middle of everything else.

RD is using that very specific moment to draw a comparison between it and the events of Superior in order to point out how MJ is not acting consistently.

Almost like she’s, I dunno, OUT OF CHARACTER or something?

Oh, and or the record declaring Peter would or wouldn’t act this way because of ASm #225 p11 is bullshit because Peter isn’t even on that page.

“That's just spouting comic book trivia, which isn't the same thing.”

But referencing events in the middle of KLH which are hardly iconic and immediately memorable and pointing out how MJ didn’t act consistently with them in Superior Spider-Man?

 Oh no, that’s NOT ‘spouting comic book trivia’.

 Can you see the hypocrisy of this creature now?

 Can you see how BROKEN it is to argue a character being established as acting a certain way by an older story DOESN’T mean it matters thereafter?

 And he says I am bad at analysis, Jesus Christ.

 “Knowledge of trivia isn't the same as understanding plot structure, foreshadowing, character development, or knowing or accepting that just because something happens in issue 1 doesn't mean it will stay that way throughout the entire book.”

 First of all the sheer audacity of someone with such non-existent analytical skills to DARE fucking throw shade like this is astounding. That’s like Michael Bay trying to explain how you make a movie with substance.

 Second of all he’s right and wrong here.

 Knowing the history of the characters is not the same as knowing those things.

 But that doesn’t render it trivia because it’s the fucking histories of the characters that define who they goddam are!

 Everyone agrees Spider-Man would not have acted the way he did in One More Day right? And that MJ wouldn’t have acted the way she did in OMIT right?

 Why? Why do people feel the characters would not behave that way?

 Because they read older stories that depicted them acting in certain ways in certain situations that were then contradicted by OMD and OMIT.

 You know like MJ not realising Superior Spidey wasn’t really Peter even though the situation was incredibly similar to Kraven’s Last Hunt and both entailed imposters pretending to be Spider-Man.

 No, knowing the history isn’t the same as knowing all that other stuff.

 But it is undeniably an integral PART of being able to analyse something because if the prior events don’t matter, if they are merely trivia (or worse trivia when he wants it to be but not when he doesn’t) then NOTHING matters.

 Why the fuck should issue #1 matter when reading issue #2? Or issue #3 when reading issue #5?

 What does it matter if chapter 1 established our protagonist as an adult black man with a wife but by chapter 10, with no explanation they are a teenaged white woman claiming they’ve never been married?

 Hey, chapter 1 is just trivia right. Why should that matter?

 By the way, go ask Harry Potter fans if those little details are irrelevant and see how that goes.

 He’s also (unsurprisingly) disgustingly disingenuous in his final point. Yes, things between issue #1 and issue #25 will change. But there is a world of difference between something changing via development vs. lazy contradictive writing.

 Case in point, in ASM #1 Peter Parker doesn’t have a job, is a pariah at school and runs away crying from a failed adventure. In issue #25 he has a freelance job, isn’t running away crying and 2 ladies are interested in him.

 WHAT? Isn’t this a contradiction? Doesn’t accepting this change mean you accept that issue #1 was mere trivia?

 No, because between issue #1 and #25 we saw how and when Peter got a job, those two ladies became interested in him and we saw his skills, experience and confidence grow. The end result is that issue #25 was different to issue #1 because we’d been on a JOURNEY to get us there.

 In contrast in ASM #700 Doc Ock is seemingly turned into a good guy because all of Spider-Man’s memories were beamed into his head, teaching him Uncle Ben’s famous mantra. But in Superior Spider-Man #1 he’s randomly reverted to what he was doing back in ASM #698.

 So that stuff was just trivia? But that stuff was the resolution of ASM #700 and therefore the set up for Superior #1. The latter couldn’t exist without the former and yet it doesn’t make sense.

 And you see that? You see how that cause and effect problem exists? Yeah, that’s PART of critiquing plot structure and foreshadowing. It’s ALMOST like the older stories aren’t merely trivia but actually very important and play a factor  in the other forms of analysis RD listed off.

 Not to mention, the idiocy of saying knowing the trivia doesn’t mean you understand foreshadowing. Motherfucker, the entire concept of foreshadowing is that you establish details in the present because you want to hint at readers about where the story is going to go later. It practically HINGES upon readers remembering that ‘trivia’.

 If ASM #225 p11 had Spider-Man pass by a black cat and say ‘Boy that reminds me of Felicia Hardy.’ THAT would be foreshadowing for the next issue, but you couldn’t appreciate that UNLESS you remembered what happened in ASM #225 p11.

 And the imbecility of bringing this shit up whilst referencing Game of Thrones too? As if Daenerys heel turn was actually foreshadowed and not just created from splicing old voice overs together in the previously segment of the show.

The next bit is in reference to Life Story again by the way.

“I mean, one of the best bits of subtle foreshadowing here is what happens with Peter and Reed's relationship. In issue 2, Peter reflects on how Reed pushed Sue away with his actions, and how he doesn't want to end up like that. But come issue 3, Peter ends up doing just that, despite his best efforts to the contrary and knowing what happened to Reed beforehand. That shows smart plot structure, which doesn't come out and yell at you "THIS IS IMPORTANT!" or hold your hand in any way. That shows that this story is pretty smart with the narrative choices that are being made.”

No it doesn’t.

Because the way in which Peter pushed MJ away contradicted his character and made no fucking sense. He had a mid-life crisis in spite of being well under 40 years old.

Also, you can have, by skill or by fluke, a dash of GOOD writing amidst your shitty writing.

A LOT of people would argue the podrace or Duel of the Fates fight in Phantom Menace were legitimately good sequences in an otherwise bad movie.

People broadbrush 90s Marvel as wall to wall trash but equally everyone praises Spider-Man 2099, Joe Kelly’s Deadpool run, Ron Marz’s Green Lantern run, etc.

Goddammit, 99% of all Doctor Who is fans celebrating the bits that were great amidst the bits that were bad. There are no end of Dr. Who stories were fans will praise the set design or costumes whilst shitting on the over all writing.

Shockingly a piece of media can have good AND bad elements!

Whenever someone says a story is good or bad they are almost always speaking OVERALL. A New Hope is OVERALL good. It’s not claiming there aren’t flaws to it.

Dan Slott’s Spider-Man run was OVERALL bad. Even I have said there are good elements to it.

But the mere existence of good elements doesn’t prove that something is overall one thing or another.

In Life Story’s case, let’s pretend RD is right. Then Zdarsky executed a good bit of foreshadowing.

Key word there: ‘bit’.

It doesn’t PROVE the over all story is smart with its narrative choices.

That’s such an utterly childish  manner of analysis. ‘Well this bit is good that means everything else has to be good’.

Like how the fuck does doing a good bit of foreshadowing prove that Life Story wasn’t mischaracterizing anyone or knew how to tell a good alternate history story?

Shit, DAN SLOTT had foreshadowing, sometimes it was even competently executed. Didn’t mean it wasn’t happening within the context of mischaracterization. 

Trust Bobby Mac to have no grasp  of nuance.

 “But rather than acknowledging that, instead we get stuff like being concerned with that because Gwen finds out Peter's secret identity at the end of issue 1, that therefore means that Peter is going to be hooking up with Gwen throughout the rest of the story, that this is going to be one big Peter/ Gwen book, that Chip Zdarsky is somehow a Gwen shipper because he wanted to just have her as a best friend in Spectacular, that MJ only having two lines in the first issue means her importance will be diminished overall, and that the whole series is going to try and be a rewrite to push that ship.”

None of the allegedly great foreshadowing RD spoke of above was in issue #1

Even if it was nobody could possibly have talked about that as a point of praise because the nature of foreshadowing is we wouldn’t have realised it was goddam foreshadowing until we finally GOT to the bit it was setting up in later issues

RD has been one of the most involved people in discussions about the Spider-Marriage, frequently clashing with a fell named Mister Mets on CBR and on the linked message board. He knows that Marvel from OMD onwards used to spite fans over OMD and the Spider-Marriage and that circa 2019 when Life Story was being released the latest of such instances had occurred maybe just 1 year earlier in Slott’s Red Goblin storyline. He also knows Zdarsky pissed in the well of the Spider-Marriage fans with his FCBD 2017 Spidey story which involved Mary Jane. So for a heavily burned and abused fanbase to suddenly be concerned that Zdarksy would be pushing an agenda was a totally natural and justified reaction to have at the time even if it was proven incorrect in the long run.

RD is being a shithead again. ‘Ugh, look at these overwrought FaNz. wHy CaNt dey celebrate the GUD stuff and not focus on the WRONG stuff’.The wrong stuff being Zdarsky shitting on the Spider-Man marriage, which he clearly did by breaking up Peter and Mj in the 80s when they didn’t break up then but he needed to ship Peter with Jessica Jones I guess

 “Yet here we, two issues later, and Gwen is dead, Peter married MJ and now they have kids.”

And in LF #3 their marriage was in a toxic place and they split up. In issue #4 they get back together but only by Peter giving up being Spider-Man. Almost like the story was saying having a family and being Spidey are incompatible or something.

Shit issue #3 BEGINS with MJ griping about Peter.

 “All the reactionary nonsense turned out to be for naught, since the story was going in a different direction, and just because Gwen was prominent early on didn't mean MJ wasn't going to play an important role later.”

 It wasn’t reactionary nonsense it was entirely justified  reactionary concern. People weren’t concerned that MJ wouldn’t be important but that Zdarsky would be pushing a pro-Gwen/anti-Mj agenda which he at least debatably did and certainly seemed to be doing in the first 3 issues.

 “And yet we still continue to see that reactionary nonsense continue with decrying because Peter and MJ leave off on a bad note here, it therefore means the rest of the series will be an unending slide into misery.”

Which was proven partially true.

Issue #4 Harry dies, Peter quits like a coward.

Issue #5 Peter’s child is crippled, his identity is outted, ben Reilly dies and he becomes a fugitive as a super human civil war breaks out.

Issue #6 the world has turned to shit because of that civil war and the only way to fix it is for Spider-Man to die.

But again, he’s missing the point like the fool that he is.

People were concerned and upset BECAUSE the series split Peter and MJ up in the first place. Both because that defied the mission statement of the series but also because they know Peter and MJ WOULDN’T split up and the circumstances engineering it were fucking contrived shit.

“Which then unfortunately leads into bashing the creator himself, which I find incredibly unreasonable given the tremendous job Zdarsky is doing.”

He didn’t do a tremendous job.

Chase the Blues Away, the film school student, had been saying so and continued to say so after RD made this comment. So I guess by his own metric he was full of shit.

This is one of RD’s fundamental and fatal flaws. He’s a hypocrite. Everything is subjective unless it’s the shit HE likes or hates. Then it’s objectively good or bad.

Not to mention no one had been bashing the creator personally. He can’t grasp this either. He doesn’t grasp the distinction between bashing the work of a writer vs. bashing the writer personally.

E.g. he falsely claims I’ve sworn at him. I have sworn at him…here. On my own blog here I don’t feel the need to play nice.

On a public forum? Never. I’ve sworn in the course of conversations with him. I’ve sworn in regards to his argument but never sworn to attack him personally.

“Decrying Zdarsky as some form of hack because halfway through a six part story he's had the protagonist go through a rough time and that he is just putting out "Fan fiction," or- as I saw someone else argue- that the reason Zdarsky did this was because he himself went through marital troubles at one time in his life is just silly.”

It’s really not. He admitted that he wrote MJ in FCBD 2017 as his ex wife.

Fanfiction is exactly what LF was. Peter hooks up with Jessica Jones because…no given reason. It’d make infinitely more sense for that to have been Felicia but it was Jessica Jones. Zdarsky invents his own personal new spin on the Goblin who’s wearing kewl black because why not. He has characters randomly act in any way he wants for the story to happen regardless of how little sense it makes. That’s bad fanfiction 101. He has logic holes you can drive a truck through. FFS Russia launched nukes on America in issue #3 and this DIDN”T result in all out nuclear Armageddon. That’s amateuris

 “Just like it's silly to say that D&B from GoT are purposefully destroying the show because they hate it and they hate women and they just want to move onto Star Wars,”

This is at worst a strawman.

At best an utterly myopic oversimplification.

The MAJORITY of people crying out against GoT season 8 weren’t claiming D&B were engaging in deliberate sabotage but rather they were ruining the series via their incompetence and RUSHING to get to the end.

Additionally the idea that they are misogynists is REALLY not a ‘silly’ argument. MANY people throughout the show’s history have made that argument, long before the popular opinion was that the show was bad,

A  season 4 subplot that was heavily embellished (to the point of being called practically original) from the books entailed rogue Night’s Watchmen raping a household of women beyond the Wall. The most infamous line from the subplot was ‘Fuck them all to death.’

In that same season Jamie Lannister makes sexual advances on his sister Cersei even though she was saying no.

Sansa Stark, in a scene not in the books, was raped by Ramsey Bolton with the focus being upon Theon Greyjoy’s horror at the situation.

And of course there is ever so slightly a dash of gratuitous nudity involving women in the show.

Look, I’m not even saying for sure that D&B hate women or that that was at the root of how they fucked up Daenerys’ character in season 8.

But it’s idiotic to just dismiss the idea as wholesale silly as Smac a Mac is doing above.

 “when in reality D&B were the reason the show got made in the first place and all those great female characters were brought to television for a wider audience to experience.”

Hollywood had been wanting to adapt George R. R. Martin’s books for years before he let D&B do it

Their first pilot was so bad they had to reshoot it.

They weren’t the reason we got those great female characters. Martin’s writing was why we got those characters and those good stories and why anyone wanted to make his books into a live action property at all.

Again, RD FAILING at nuance. A female character can have good writing AND bad writing. They can be good over all but drop the ball in certain moments. They can be great for 7 seasons but then fumble disastrously at the finish line. An opinion shared by all those critics that went to film school

Writers can be capable of doing good female characters even if they are misogynists. Writers who are not misogynists are capable of still being sexist at times. Friggin Stan Lee had sexist female characters in spite of also inventing Mary Jane who is lauded as a great female character even in the 1960s. Again, nuance. Mac Attac ain’t good at it.

“We can dislike or criticize a work without having to demonize the creators,”

It’s not demonizing D&B or Zdarsky to call them incompetent writers.

“and I think it's just become far too easy nowadays for people to rationalize their statements by making the creators themselves into remorseless villains, since that justifies them acting however they please in response.”

And it’s become far too difficult for me to stomach any more of this piece of shit.

*For what it is worth, these events are also listed on TV Tropes under the Face Heel Turn page:

Daenerys herself falls victim to this in the final seasons. Her actions in Essos had the purest of intentions: fighting against the Dothraki's misogyny and ending slavery in western Essos. Even her morally questionable acts still had these goals in mind. But when she set her sights on conquering Westeros, which is more or less a standard medieval European setting, her only goal was conquest. Even her claim that the Iron Throne is her birthright falls short since her father was killed due to his madness and love of burning things. Dany really doesn't help her case by burning alive any captive soldiers who don't side with her. This culminates with her slaughtering most of King's Landing's civilian population in the penultimate episode. Had the show started with the sixth season, there'd be no question that she is Daddy's Little Villain, her tragic backstory and past heroic deeds being a footnote at best.

**This is especially ironic as he’s accused me of doing the same.

Me, I’ve called people out or corrected them when they have gotten facts wrong. I’ve even said they don’t know what they are talking about. The difference is I’m not doing it just on principal as he is here.

I’ve never said someone doesn’t belong in the fandom or is not a real fan. Yet here RDMacQ is outright disqualifying people from having the legitimacy to critique comic books unless they’ve gone through what he deems the ‘appropriate steps’.

If I have told someone they are wrong or don’t know what they are talking about or don’t understand the material I have corroborative EVIDENCE to back it up. Their own statements prove that point.

E.g. RDMacQ doesn’t understand Norman Osborn’s character. Why? Because his statements contradicts the clear cut TEXT (not the subtext) of the source material. See? The source material is the EVIDENCE that supports my accusation. But RDMacQ doesn’t believe in analysis that way and has told me so himself.

***This laughable in he modern day and age where film criticism is so transparently ideologically driven as opposed to sincerely critiquing the merits of a film.

Hence why Bob Chipman and most other professional critics laud works like the Last Jedi which a fifth grader can see has little internal consistency.