cuttlefishcommie

[cuttlefishcommie]

Haven't posted in a while, time for a comics rant.

I love booster gold. I love him so much, he's my favourite ever comics character. He has a couple of basic powers like flight and usually blasts, but spends a lot of time using force fields, which is incredibly cool. It makes him a pretty versatile fighter. Similarly I love his costume, colourful, recognisable and not too complicated (plus it has wrist gauntlets, I love wrist gauntlets), which is basically everything you need for a good super suit.

Outside of the basics, I love his premise. He's a time travelling super hero from the future. There's tonnes of room for great time travel related adventures, which are always incredibly entertaining. Plus plenty of space for fish out of water comedy. Furthermore, the idea of a normal guy coming back from the future with high tech stuff to be a hero, is incredibly amusing and one of the most original premises for a character.

I love everything about him, I love that he's on the JLI. I love that he has a little robot buddy (Skeetz). I love that his arch nemesis is called Dick Hertz.

Boosters story is genuinely amazing. He's brash and he's bold, a confident goofball, but also a massive nerd. He comes to the past as a fame seeker with a less than noble history, he's shaky and he's not great at being a hero. He can be arrogant, and over sure of himself, and at the start he really doesn't feel that he fits in. He feels like an imposter in a world of genuine heroes. As time goes on, booster gold the og fanboy turned superhero (honestly this premise is universally delightful - looking at you Gwenpool) becomes more and more selfless. It's the greatest example of fake it till you make it, booster stop trying to hit the A list, and he's relegated to the B-tier, saving the world time and again, without anyone even knowing. Booster turns from being the arrogantly begrudging "greatest hero you've never heard" of to having that title be a thing of pride, an honoured descriptor. Booster becomes a more genuine hero than most others, all because he knew the future was brighter, and because he wanted to help people here. For many reasons, this story is incredibly personally impactful for me, but there's one other thing that I need to talk about for Booster.

This is to the fandom. Booster Golds most important relationship have never been any of his brief flings, it has never been any of the crazy characters from across time, it has never even been his family. The most important relationship booster gold has is blue beetle. Booster and Ted have one of the greatest friendships in comics. They'll hang out all the time, just for fun. They joke around together. They work together when they can. But when times are tough they always turn up for each other. It's an inspiring friendship for the ages. I understand why many people like to claim this. There are not a lot of gay relationships in comics, and that sucks. But, can we please stop this nonsense of pretending every time two people have strong feelings for each other it's romantic. Can for once, we have some characters with a very impactful friendship, that outclasses romantic bonds. I am so tired of everything being romantic, and as weird as it sounds, alongside bill and Ted's excellent adventure and Shaun of the dead, booster gold gets to be one of those breaks. So please, just for once can we accept there is in fact a platonic explanation for this, Booster and Ted are best friends, and their relationship is what being best friends should look like.

[cuttlefishcommie]

Y'know what's really cool. The Brotherhood of evil Mutants. Cause like, they're big revolutionaries and all but also they're all kind of just some guys.

You got an Australian romance author and his grumpy greek lover. You have the most pathetic British man to ever live. You got the blob, who is currently just like a friendly bar tender.

But then you've also got mastermind, mystique, sabertooth and arguably destiny, who are cruel psycho's of revolutionary violence.

And then you have a bunch of total randos.

We have such a weird mish mash of just regular dudes and these crazy guys. Love that about them. Way more of a mess than the X-Men. This is what left wing spaces are like in real life. Peak accuracy.

[cuttlefishcommie]

The best thing about being a comics fan is that you really like super minor one off characters. Like, most comics fans will have a couple really important characters they like (superman, Deadpool, daredevil, several X-Men etc. for me), some absolute faves who are kind of B-list (Kite man, Booster Gold, Howard the Duck) and then just be absolutely in love with characters no one cares about.

For me, I really like Zombie Giant Man from marvel zombies, I am weirdly obsessed with hawk mans rogues gallery (will make a post about this eventually) and I also really love Matthew Kahan, the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum goon present at the park in Tom Kings killing time. It's just beautiful to have all these things that you really love, but that absolutely no one else would recognise. It's a wonderful thing.

I love being a comics fan

[cuttlefishcommie]

Aight, time to get political here, let's talk about cyclops.

One of the best members of the X-Men, Scott Summers grew up with the team into a classic leader. Often presented as a stuck up boy scout by people who are bad writers, Scott is secretly just great.

I deeply relate to him having been relatively academically successful, leading to often being pigeonholed into this sort of goody two shoes persona. But like cyclops, I fancy myself a sort of a revolutionary.

Cyclops goes further for mutant rights than any other X-Man, excluding Magento (but that's not so bad bearing in mind all the early stuff with Eric's genocidal streak). And for this he presents a truly relatable and fascinating contradiction. An ideological bad boy with the personality of a boy scout, and aesthetic choices that roughly align with what other X-Men think of him (red with the X hat is his best outfit).

Brief aside: Scott is often headcannoned as autistic, there is textual evidence for this, and it is great from a character writing standpoint.

I am tired of the resets, and I am happy with how the new run is positioning him again. Yes, I want Scemma back, yes Jean should've stayed dead and yes I want the Bachalo(?) suit back. But more than anything, I want to see an angry revolutionary Scott, who is tired of Xavier's dream.

Cyclops was right!

[cuttlefishcommie]

Saw alien Romulus today and liked it, so I'm doing a post about alien

I love the alien films. There's a nice mesh of horror, action and sci fi across them, which means they all have pretty different feels but also all feel distinctly alien (even Prometheus). It's pretty interesting how Ridley Scott is able to craft this world with so many distinctive genres falling into what is ostensibly the same plot each time.

I also really appreciate that basically every alien film has a female action hero protagonist. They were a big part of kicking off badass female action heroes as a part of the public consciousness and it's heartening that they've stuck to it all these years. Especially as the female experience is so core to the themes of bodily autonomy and sexual agency as portrayed in the franchise.

Alien also never sold out it's anti-capitalist standpoint, even as it got really popular, which is always a big positive for a sci fi franchise like it. Especially as it continues to handle pretty complicated ideas around android person hood, adopted from the blade runner films it shares a universe with. The way the films are able to balance ideas of androids as tools for the company and as people in their own right, who experience a very unique alienation (pun intended) from their peers, is truly masterful. Note: this is especially strong in the most recent installment.

Overall, a big thumbs up for the alien franchise, they're all good, even the third and fourth ones, which everyone hates. Alien gets a big thumbs up as solid left wing media, great sci fi and a consistently cinematically charming experience.

[cuttlefishcommie]

Not to be a hater or anything, but I really dislike Harry Potter. Not just because I loathe J.K.Rowling, but also, it's not very good:

Very lazy characters

Piss poor political allegories, which create tonnes of room for reading stuff as homophobic or racist or xenophobic

Wildly terrible world building (ministry for magic has supreme control over the elected pm, there's manufactured scarcity and a school where they teach 11 year olds that they're evil)

And worst of all is the spells. This is my greatest complaint. It pisses me off to no end that avadacadavra is a banned spell because it kills people, when its so easy to weaponise any spell.

"oooh no. I'm a bad guy, who wants to kill people but I can't because the spell that does that is banned" said no one ever, because even if they didn't want to do that, they can just wingardium leviosa their opponent into the stratosphere.

[cuttlefishcommie]

Mormonism is the greatest mainstream modern religion, hands down.

It's like the other kinds of Christianity, except, as far as I'm aware, God is an alien from a distant star, who created earth but not the universe. And there's not a Godhead, the trinity is separated, but there's also God's wife: the holy mother. Also, good Mormons like Joe Smith (the man who found those gold plates in a hill and then transcribed them and no one's seen the plates except his close friends and siblings and then he lost 116 pages anyway), become Gods in heaven.

And the Mormon capital of the world is just this state in the USA, and even though Joe was really into polyamory, the church is not cool with that, which is such an America moment.

Mormonism is just fantastic, easily one of the most interesting mythologies of the modern religious landscape. Worldbuilding massively outclasses the others. Just great stuff.

[cuttlefishcommie]

Meet me: Commie, the manager of everyone's favourite versatile ranting blog: welcome to bullshit

Some details

He/Him

Far-Left

Big fan of stuff in general

Regular guy

[cuttlefishcommie]

Aight, this one's for the fans.

In my intro post I mentioned ventriloquism as something I'd talk about (less seriously than some of my others), but actually, I think it's important for you lifelong fans of my blog to hear my thoughts.

What happened, man? Where did it go? Ventriloquism used to be a big deal. It was a classic talent. But now it's gone.

It's not like anything really replaced it. A classic kind of comedy show is just no longer widespread.

The humour that can be achieved from one person acting as a double act is nigh limitless. It's an incredible talent, and something that could be used extensively in live theatre and cinema if people were less chicken. But noooooo, it's relegated to the occasional die hard fan of the art, secondary school talent shows and cartoons set in the 1940s.

Well I say, no more! Bring back ventriloquism as a widely respected art form, seen as the versatile comedic talent that it is!

[cuttlefishcommie]

I like a lot of stuff. Communism, history, comics, cuttlefish, Mormonism, movies, ventriloquism. All sorts of regular guy things that all sorts of regular guys love.

Like me, a regular guy.

But I also hate some things, and I'll rant about those. As a regular guy, those things I don't like sure are bad.

So without further ado, welcome one and all.

Welcome audiences near and far.

Welcome to bullshit.