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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years

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I am genuinely concerned that comic book youtubers are going to create a GamerGate situation where there are extremists who poison the mass perception of people who criticise comic books or certain decisions in general.

Like I have genuine problems with Amadeus Cho and Jane Foster being Hulk and Thor and I think Riri Williams and Miles Morales are bad characters (the latter being especially saddening because, unlike Riri, he had a strong initial concept powering him). I think Sam as Captain America was creatively problematic and that Marvel have been pulling the replacement hero thing for social/political reasons (and probably not sincere ones at that) as opposed to genuine creative ones. Similarly I think the America book is a lame super hero comic book and Gabby Rivera isn’t a strong super hero comic book writer. Similarly I think Marvel’s modern editors and assistant editors really do tend to suck at their jobs right now.

But my rationales for all of those things honestly don’t have much crossover with certain Youtube comic book commentators (I’m sure you’ve all seen the kind) and I actually disagree and believe in a lot of other types of characters and directions cut from the same kinds of cloths as those above examples.

I think Ice Man being gay made a certain amount of sense with his history and if you did have to pick a classical character to reveal as in the closet he was one of the best choices for it. We are in a position where Bobby could legitimately be given a strong romantic storyline and an iconic (for him, not necessarily within Marvel as a whole) love interest. I mean before Bendis had Jean out Bobby who honestly knew or cared who Bobby’s (comic book, not movie) love interests were? Hardly anybody aside from hardcore X-Men fans and most of them would argue Polaris was really the big one for Bobby. But at the same time most of them shipped Polaris with Havok anyway so what did that matter?

I’ve said numerous times before Kamala Khan is the best new superhero character to come out of Marvel in the last 20 years. My problems with her series stem from the decompression alongside the fact that I don’t think her villain pool has been managed as well as it needs to be to enable her to last long term.

Carol becoming Captain Marvel is something I find profoundly organic and logical, a brilliant stroke of character development that makes use of an iconic title by giving it to an iconic character who truly has claim to it. Look to me Carol’s outfit is always going to be the Ms Marvel outfit she wore for decades but at the same time to me Carol’s codename will always be Warbird, not Ms Marvel or Captain Marvel. I’m just from that generation.

I think the general idea of temporarily having a black person become Captain America is interesting and understand the logic of making it Sam but at the same time I think the book never fulfilled it’s potential and ultimately Issiah Bradely or even Patriot would’ve been a much more interesting choice. But at the end of the day I cannot accept the creative bankruptcy of replacing Steve for the THIRD time and doing it the SECOND time in less than 10 years.

I like Jane Foster’s Thor outfit, there are moments and aspects to her stories I find interesting but the way the series went about it overly denigrated the real Thor (and yes I will call him the real Thor, it is literally his name and he is supposed to be the actual figure from Norse mythology). I mean he was literally called out as ‘unworthy’ and the reason for his unworthiness made no sense at all. He realizes the Gods are assholes so he loses his worthiness. That isn’t how the hammer works, it’s just a binary ‘you are worthy or you are not’. Conviction in your personal beliefs doesn’t matter or else countless bad guys would be able to lift the hammer too. Additionally there were times where he narrative divulged into cheap, shallow in-universe attempts to ‘comment’ on the backlash against the concept. The Absorbing Man was at least somewhat exaggerating the complaints over a female Thor and at least dabbling in strawman arguments whilst Titania’s solidarity with Foster because she was stepping into the role of a man was utter out of character nonsense considering Titania’s arch nemesis is SHE Hulk. Jane consequently knocking out someone who’d surrendered was also ill considered. And I also cannot get over how we’ve been here before. Beta Ray Bill and Thunderstrike are testament to that. Once again creative bankruptcy.

I’ve spoken countless times before how I think Miles had a good concept and still has potential but he’s been mismanaged and currently sucks shit as a character and how Marvel and certain fans and certain media outlets building him up as the best thing since sliced bread (or at least as great as Peter Parker) is profoundly unearned.

I think the quality of editing at Marvel has clearly gone down hill but unless there really is some weird ass super Secret Empire conspiracy wherein Marvel went hardcore into hiring people because of their gender regardless of their qualifications, I don’t think the reason for that decline in quality is due to some (but far from all) of the editors and assistant editors being women. Frankly Steve Wacker is/was a major editorial player for awhile and his only legitimate qualification for being a Spider-Man editor was he could get the product on the shelves on time. The editing present in that product and their overall quality was shit 99% of the time. The guy lacked sufficient knowledge, passion or understanding of the character to really edit Spider-Man properly. This is a guy who was an amateur stand up comedian before entering comic books and has to my knowledge zero writing experience so why the fuck he was qualified to edit anything is beyond me. Maybe the new slew of editors and assistant editors are the same bunch of unqualified morons but I don’t think that’s got much to do with their sex or gender. After all Ann Nocenti was a solid X-Men editor and Molly Lazer edited Spider-Girl which was obviously a brilliant book. And shit Jeanette Kahn was President and EIC of DC comics for over 20 years and MOST of the stuff under her tenure was baller as shit. John Byrne Superman. Frank Miller Batman. Perez Wonder Woman. Wolfman Titans. DeMatteis/Giffin JLI. Kyle Rayner Green Lantern. Vertigo. Milestone. Watchmen. Frankly she oversaw what was maybe the single best EIC tenure for DC EVER in terms of quality.

I gave up reading Coates’ BP run because I found it dull but I think T’Challa SHOULD have a book along with Blade, Luke Cage, Shang Chi and Jessica Jones.

I think the America Chaves series was problematic as a superhero story but the times where it does focus on the normal life stuff are generally good.

I was very impressed by Spider-Gwen when she debuted and looked forward to her ongoing, even defended her debut issue until I realized the critics were ont he money and it sucked and continues to suck to this day. It’s a profoundly shallow book but it could have been great and I supported it initially hoping it would be great.

I felt the Chelsea Cain Mockingbird series had moments of poor research, mischaracterisation and disingenuousness. I am specifically talking about how in issue #3 (I think) Cain uses Bobbi as a mouthpiece to criticise the lack of female representation within superhero comics. Okay cool. But she did it by essentially pretending that there never were any in the Marvel universe, that they got no respect in-universe and that Bobbi herself was at most a teenager growing up inspired by those male heroes whom she could never be like because she was male. Except there were female heroes, they did get in-universe respect (maybe not as much as was deserved but it wasn’t like people forgot they existed) and Bobbi is clearly too old to have grown up with any of the heroes other than the WWII guys like the Invaders.

Similarly her retconning of the Phantom Rider thing in her final issue fixed one problem but did so utterly illogically whilst opening up multiple other problems. Look I’d also retcon the Hell out of Phantom Rider gaslighting and raping Mockingbird if given the chance I hate that plotline. But Cain retconned it by just having Mockingbird say that the stuff we have clear on the page evidence of didn’t actually happen. She was saying the colour blue is the colour red and always had been but it wasn’t. And Cain’s new spin on that Phantom Rider thing essentially threw Hawkeye under the bus by making him profoundly insecure and an asshole, because he’d rather believe his wife was raped rather than she cheated on him. Not to mention if Cain’s story is to be believed Mockingbird let the man she was sleeping with die for exactly no reason. There were other times during Cain’s run where I felt she was mischaracterizing some people or else was being too on the nose about stuff.

But there were other times I thought the series was really funny, really action packed, i generally loved the pacing and I felt when it did cut more realistic (like the first issue when Bobbi is having a health check up) or in issue #3 when it was discussing the psychology of a sixth grade girl (even though said girl’s story had insufficient resolution, like did she go to jail or what?) it was incredibly refreshing. Truth be told a lot of the stuff in that series writing wise becomes easier to understand when you realize it’s partially a zany comedy and not really taking itself too seriously nor is it asking you to do the same, which is starkly different to say Spider-Gwen’s approach wherein it is playing stuff seriously but there is arbitrarily zany shit thrown in for the sake of it.

I think Laura becoming Logan’s successor makes sense but it doesn’t mean it’s okay to just axe off Logan because he’s broken. FIX him and then down the line replace him. Laura’s book as is frankly just...an okay X-23 book with a new costume. I never cared for Laura outside of X-Men Evolution or the Logan movie (where she was more endearing) anyway.

I didn’t agree with the female exclusive screenings of the Wonder Woman film but I also felt Zeus’s involvement in her origin was an unacceptable compromising of the specific feminist ideas and messages Wonder Woman was supposed to represent. I felt the same way about Azzarello’s run on the character which is where the Zeus origin came from and was happy Greg Rucka tried to fix that in his 2016 run.

I’ve said before a poc actor playing Peter Parker is fine and dandy in my book and I was very open to Zendaya possibly playing Mary Jane (until I saw the movie...ugh...). My only concerns were in a significant way having the characters change to reflect the realities of them now being poc.

I’ve suggested some basic ideas on how to maybe get more representation in Marvel and DC, including for queer, Trans and mentally ill characters and as I’ve seen it I’ve called shit out I found to be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc, e.g. I was disgusted by Civil War II killing off Rhodey and called out the way Cindy Moon was initially handled by Slott. And my frequent lambasting of MJ’s depiction under Slott (especially in Superior #2) should I hope by this point go without saying.

So yeah my views don’t line up with those of Diversity and Comics but nor do they line up with those of ComicsAlliance and their hordes either. But because of people like the former people like the latter are going to broadbrush label and demonize people like me. People who might SEEM like we agree with guys like D&C but actually we’re coming at it from a very different angle and we don’t actually agree with their rationales 99% of the time.

But in the times we live in right now nuance is apparently as dead as Batman’s parents.

Frankly as I get older I guess I see myself socially/politically speaking being more of a moderate when it comes to comic books...and right now that feels like a profoundly lonely place to be.

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esperanzacboronial · 7 years

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Title: Liminality Warnings: Death (you know which one), also all the fun memories that come with Niki’s pov. I swear this is uplifting if you power through. Notes: This has some undertones of Mask Maker ot4 since that’s the only context I could think of where Niki/Monica makes sense. If you can call it Niki/Monica. This is 100% pining. It’s somehow blatant mischaracterisation and more character study than fic?? a mischaracterisation study. new genre. enjoy

Summary: There are so few who ever truly knew Monica Campanella. She does not claim to be one of them, but she will fill the gap they leave as best she can.

Word count: 3,322

Read on Ao3

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Monica Campanella steps into her life like an actress who mishears her cue; she is not supposed to be there, and she is given no direction, but she strides on with the confidence that comes with knowing it is too late to retreat. Enter stage right, a courageous whirlwind of white fabric and blond hair, tearing through the commotion to sweep her up. Her rescuer acts every bit the hero, but — she gets the sense — she is not the one she wishes to save. She glances over her shoulder as she runs, but her blue eyes are focused somewhere beyond the nameless girl she drags behind her. Niki holds fast to a hand that longs to hold someone else’s.

Huey! Are you alright?

Her saviour let’s go of her hand; no longer needing to be as much, for she has been saved. She rushes to his side without another word to her. She is grateful, even so — grateful and afraid, and so consumed by dread and pain that the petty ache of not being the first priority doesn’t register. In her life she has rarely seen a person’s face painted with concern; she does not dare to think that she should be the subject of it.

Her saviour never does ask if she’s alright. This is not the role she set out to play, and she cannot be blamed for lacking the right lines to speak. The boy she fawns over poses the question in her stead. What about you? His voice is as empty as her own, and offers little in the way of warmth or comfort. She tells him she’s fine and lets her bloodied lip and swelling cheek tell the truth.

“You shouldn’t get involved with me anymore.”

Her story does not have heroes. She is meant to die. She has spent too many hours resigning to this truth, too many nights convincing herself it is for the best, convincing herself that she and the others like her should never have existed at all. She almost feels bitter to have been saved so thoughtlessly, so flippantly, when she has put so much effort into binding herself to fate.

But Monica Campanella strides, with footsteps at once confident and out of time, into a scene that does not belong to her — and plays the part she must, not caring how her improvisation has thrown Niki’s well-rehearsed future off script.

To her, it is a forgettable moment; to Niki, it is a focal point. She cannot decide whether she holds love or resentment for this girl who drags her out of the darkness as though it is a simple thing to do.

It is only when she learns that she is also the monster who had promised her that darkness that she knows — she knows to call it love, because her hands have granted her both freedom to live and freedom to die. There is no greater gift than the right to decide; her volition, her autonomy, the deeds to ownership of her own self. The right to break, the right to heal, the right to fade away.

In three hundred years time, she will not remember the way Monica’s hand had felt holding hers. On hazy days she will swear she dreamt her; who would dare touch her hands, dirtied with the sin of her existence? Only a monster, and so this is the Monica who lives in her memory, the one who fits best into her narrative. On quiet nights she will recall the care in her eyes; a girl, soft yet bold, and a boy, jagged yet gentle, and she, a stranger between them. She will not remember the way her hand had felt; she will never be convinced she was meant to know.

Niki cannot describe how she ends up alone with Monica Campanella again — except that it is the same way she ends up anywhere; with no intentions or sense of belonging, dragged under by the sea and crashing onto a new shore in a wave. There’s a strong current which pulls her mercilessly towards things bigger than herself, and she would swim against it if she only could.

She isn’t supposed to know — Elmer had told her it wasn’t for her to know — but Count Boronial has been so kind to her, and he wears his worries on his sleeves so she cannot ignore them. She’s my sister, he says with such great strain that she can feel the tightening in her own throat, I only wish I could ease her loneliness. He looks at her as though she might be the answer, and she does not have the heart to tell him she is not. The stars beneath his eyes seem to glow when she nods, a constellation ignited by hope.

“I told you, I don’t want to —” Her saviour greets her with a start.

No, not her saviour — Monica. She is Monica, the girl, fair hair dishevelled as she lifts her head from her pillow. Monica, red-faced and puffy-eyed, her bold edges blurred by tremors. She wonders in this moment if this is the person who had taken her hand that day, this scattered puzzle — not the put together, heroic thing, and not the masked villain — or perhaps she had been all of them at once.

They are not alike, but in that moment they are the same.

“If Elmer sent you over, you can tell him I don’t care anymore —”

What does she do? All that she can: she cannot keep Monica’s head above the water, but she has enough experience drowning to teach her how to hold her breath.

If she has learned anything from broken bones and bruised skin it is that empathy is not enough, but sometimes it is all there is. In the workshop, where words were not allowed to pass, the greatest kindnesses had been tucked away in the smallest gestures; a pat on the shoulder that lingers a second longer than it should, fingers which brush through her hair gently in passing, hands which bandage injuries with care but do not intervene when a life wishes to end. Theirs is a physical language by necessity.

When she sits down beside her Monica draws away like a wounded animal, but she reaches out to lay a hand on her arm and she crumples at the touch, fingers furling into the fabric of her dress; the paradox of a body that longs to hold something real and a heart that cannot bear to be touched.

“Because it — it doesn’t matter! If he can’t love me — no, of course he can’t… I don’t deserve that. He can’t a-a-and —”

Perhaps in a better world she would be able to speak some reassurance, but she does not have the words to say that Monica deserves love — the concept of deserving anything is foreign. She brushes matted hair out of her face strand by strand.

“I know,” is all she can offer.

“Why are you here?”

She asks herself the same question, and answers: because of waves and coincidences and her brother’s aching grief and the pull of something bigger than herself, because of her and her actions and all of the ten thousand people she has been to her. Nothing comes out of her mouth.

“Why isn’t he here —? I —” “I don’t know.” “W-What do I — what am s-supposed to —”

A small sigh.

“I wish I knew.”

She must frown a little bit too much like he does — colder and more distanced than she would choose to be. They have always been similar in that respect; she does not have the energy to hate the world, and he does not have the restraint to be indifferent towards it, but they carry the same misery with them, the same blunt honesty, sad eyes and down-turned lips —

Lips which Monica’s press against searchingly in the hopes of finding more of him hidden in her. She has never kissed him, which makes it easier to imagine, for a long moment, that her kiss feels the same — and she returns it, not because she is naive, but because she has been used in many ways by many people, and if she will be used again she will choose it.

“I-I’m — I’m s-so sorry —”

She pulls away and covers her mouth with a shaking hand. Niki recognises in her wide eyes the dawning realisation that the person she is looking at is not the person she needs her to be. It is familiar, even after four years; she has already forgotten how her hand had felt holding hers, but she will never forget how she had looked through her, as though she had picked the wrong person to save. Perhaps she had. Perhaps she has again. Perhaps she always will.

She does not let herself wonder how long it will be before she forgets the way her lips felt on hers.

“I shouldn’t have —” “It’s fine.” “You’re not supposed to kiss people you don’t love — I-I don’t know why I…” “Like I said, it’s fine.”

They sit in silence for a long time after this, and the world is a fraction off where it should be. When the Count knocks on the door and invites her to stay for dinner, she excuses herself instead.

“I truly believe you would do her good. Just having you here for her —” “I’m sorry, my lord, but a person like me can’t do anyone good.”

She is content to be a stand-in, to belong to moments that will never factor in to the story of her life, but Monica would not be less lonely for it.

The next time she sees Monica it is through the cracks of prison bars. She hands the letter over to the guard mutely, the red of the insignia a brighter burning mark of shame than it had been before, and tries to smile at the woman, the monster, the girl, the hero, the villain, whoever she is in that moment — who had saved her, and who she does not save in return. When she leaves her eyes are cast on her hands, searching for splotches, ink or wax or blood. They are deceptively clean; she will never be.

In three hundred years time she will still ask herself what role she had played. If she could have read those letters, what would she have found? How much good, and how much harm? Even when she learns to read she will find that in her memory those words remain abstract, black ink swirled in neat dips and curls. She had watched him write them, some nights, and the strokes of his quill had been so elegant, so beautiful. It is difficult to think on the ugliness beneath.

Her funeral is an intimate ceremony.

No, not intimate.

A more accurate term is lacking.

Her lover drops off the face of the earth not long after her passing. Some whisper that he has joined her in death, while others suggest that he runs from the implications of guilt — perhaps he had been involved with her crimes, some say — perhaps he had been involved with her death, say others. With confidence, Elmer tells her he doesn’t believe either; Huey Laforet wouldn’t take his own life, he certainly didn’t take hers, and what he does take is pride in his crimes, too much to run from them. When asked what this tells them about the truth of his absence, he can only shrug.

I guess we’ll find out if he turns up again.

It’s the absence that makes the difference, not the reason for it.

The journey to the service is fairly lengthy — the only church lays just on the city lines — and she cannot help imagining what the Count will look like in mourning; his vibrant colours muted, his stars wiped out by the cataclysm of this loss. The thought of it burdens her so much that it is almost a relief that he does not make an appearance, until the tragedy of it settles over her. She is my sister, he had once told her, in tones that betrayed both a deep sadness and a deep fondness — but in the eyes of the city he rules she is nothing but the monster who killed his family. His grief will forever be political.

The townspeople do not attend, either, nor the other students from the Third Library — not even the patisserie owner to whom she had been a ward — all for fear of the Dormentaires. This is a ceremony exclusively for those who have nothing to lose, and of these there are two.

She stands shoulder to shoulder with a man who can smile through anything, and listens as the priest says his blessings over an empty casket, feeling again as though she is a stand in for someone dearer, closer. There are so few who ever truly knew Monica Campanella. She does not claim to be one of them, but she will fill the gap they leave as best she can.

She wonders if Elmer feels the same. What an odd thing it is to have not quite loved her — yet to have loved her too much to dismiss. To be almost the person this moment calls for, yet not.

When the blessings are said and the dirt is laid, they are left to themselves, odd pieces that they are; they are from the same puzzle, no doubt, but their edges do not fit together.

“I don’t normally go to funerals. There’s too much frowning.”

An unspoken but hangs in the air. He doesn’t normally go to funerals, but here he is. This is different. He doesn’t have to explain why.

“I’ve been to a few,” she replies simply. Those had been sendings off of the already damned, and had never felt like a tragedy. This is different.

“You look nice,” he says, grinning far too wide. “Is that a new dress?” “Mr. Fermet bought it for me.” “That’s kind of him!” “I’ve told you before, he’s very kind.”

She nods slowly, tugging at the fabric of her sleeve; it’s soft, comfortable, nothing like the clothes she’d worn as a slave. Red suits you, he’d told her. She thinks back to the red sealing every letter she’d delivered and wonders how well.

“Did you know white used to be the colour of mourning? It’s too bad that changed!” “White? That would be too bright.” “Exactly! It’d really lighten things up!” “Elmer, you’re — you’re r-ridic — ridiculous —”

She chokes the word out in spite of the clenching in her throat, and then she is lost to tears — how long had they been welling up inside her? She feels too empty to have been holding in such heaving sobs. She tries to breathe, tries to let the tears fall without fighting against them. Struggling always makes things worse.

“Don’t cry, Niki. Give us a smile!”

She presses her palms against her eyes. Breathe, breathe, breathe. Now isn’t the time for drowning.

“… That’s really insensitive, Elmer,” she says after a long moment and a deep breath, lowering her hands by a fraction. “Not that I’m surprised.”

A smile she does not deliver, but she wipes away tears with her sleeve.

“Was she — was it painful at the end? I heard that you and Huey —” “I don’t think so. She was wearing the prettiest smile I’ve ever seen.”

The prettiest smile he’s ever seen. He is such a blunt creature, she doesn’t doubt it when he says it. Monica had found what she still searches for, then: a way to die happily. Something about this knowledge softens the pain in her chest.

“That’s… That’s good. I wish I could have seen it.” “You never know. Maybe you will, one day.” “What do you mean? I’m not going to end up where she is.” “I dunno, I think the church got that wrong.”

She furrows her brow. She has no love lost for the church or for god, yet she is certain she is irrefutably and irredeemably damned; of all the things the church gets wrong, this is not it.

“If there’s an afterlife, it shouldn’t be split between good people and bad people — it should be split between people who smile and people who don’t!” “That’s awful, Elmer — what about the people who can’t smile?” “They just have to try harder, then they can move on with everyone else!” “You’re unbelievable, saying things like that in a churchyard —”

She shakes her head.

“I guess I should shut up, huh?” “You don’t have to.”

Even nonsense sounds like comfort if one longs for it enough.

They leave the cemetery hand in hand and walk for hours. The ocean breeze sings to the city but only they hear the words. They climb the hills. On the paths once tread by four sets of feet, flowers bloom; daisies yellow as her hair and forget-me-nots blue as her eyes. They pick some, and rather than lay them at her grave he tucks one behind his ear and braids one into her hair; there is more of her in them than in that casket.

They mourn, in their own ways — tears to water the plants and smiles like sunlight to feed them — for a friend, for a monster, for a criminal, for a ghost.

She does not voice her suspicions to Huey or Elmer; she considers it, but in the end she decides it would do more harm than good. If the child is not who she supposes, it would only raise their hopes for a harder fall, and if he is — there must be a reason Fermet would lie about it. He’s a kind man, and a better person than she is. She trusts his judgement and follows his lead, not questioning his story, but accepting her own truth in her heart.

She is very good at not knowing things she very much knows; it is something she has been practicing since a masked monster spun her into a tale too big for her little life.

He tells her the orphan had been born to one of his relatives, as though she would not know those blue eyes on sight, as though she could ever mistake the gift her rescuer has left behind for a stranger’s — and it is a gift, she thinks. Forgiveness, of sorts, or a chance at it. He is redemption wrapped up in a bundle of cloth.

Monica had never needed her, but she is reminded with every cry and every tiny smile that this child does. When she holds him in her arms she remembers every kindness every version of his mother has ever shown her; her touches may escape her but her presence never will. Her name will forever be synonymous with saviour.

In some ways she supposes that she is still a stand-in. Perhaps where Monica is concerned she always will be — but this child deserves love, and if she must be a stand-in she will be the best one she can be. She decides this.

Monica Campanella always has given her the right to decide.

In three hundred years time she will have many nightmares, delivered to her in clouds of smoke and fire, searing pain and deafening noise. Some nights these visions will end with a whirlwind of white fabric and blonde hair and the gentle touch of a hand leading her away. She will call these ones dreams.

#monica campanella #niki (baccano!)#when will i stop talking about hands??? no one fucking knows #there r some Choice metaphors here #berylliant writing #femslash february

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