#mostly about got fanboys and mainstreams

[tomorrowusa]

Until this month, Bibi Netanyahu was a HŪGE fanboy of Hamas. Their relationship goes back decades. This is not some wacko conspiracy theory. Much of the information about this comes from mainstream Israeli media and high ranking Israeli former officials.

Here are excerpts from an in-depth article at the CBC – Canada's public broadcaster.

Israelis don't agree on much, especially lately, but polling shows they mostly agree that Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is to blame for leaving Israel unprepared for Hamas's onslaught on October 7. The accusations aimed at Netanyahu go beyond merely failing to foresee or prevent the Hamas attack of October 7, however. Many accuse him of deliberately empowering the group for decades as part of a strategy to sabotage a two-state solution based on the principle of land for peace. "There's been a lot of criticism of Netanyahu in Israel for instating a policy for many years of strengthening Hamas and keeping Gaza on the brink while weakening the Palestinian Authority," said Mairav Zonszein of the International Crisis Group. "And we've seen that happening very clearly on the ground." "(Hamas and Netanyahu) are mutually reinforcing, in the sense that they provide each other with a way to continue to use force and rejectionism as opposed to making sacrifices and compromises in order to reach some kind of resolution," Zonszein told CBC News from Tel Aviv.

Bibi and Hamas could be called "frenemies".

Yuval Diskin, former head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, told the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2013 that "if we look at it over the years, one of the main people contributing to Hamas's strengthening has been Bibi Netanyahu, since his first term as prime minister." In August 2019, former prime minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio that Netanyahu's "strategy is to keep Hamas alive and kicking … even at the price of abandoning the citizens [of the south] … in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah." The logic underlying this strategy, Barak said, is that "it's easier with Hamas to explain to Israelis that there is no one to sit with and no one to talk to."

The Bibi-Hamas relationship goes back almost 30 years. In some ways, Hamas helped put Bibi in power in the first place.

Netanyahu first came to power in the 1996 election that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli extremist opposed to the Oslo Accords. Early polls showed Rabin's successor Shimon Peres comfortably ahead. Determined to sabotage Oslo, Hamas embarked on a ruthless suicide bombing campaign that helped Netanyahu pull ahead of Peres and win the election on May 29, 1996. Today, some of the same extremists who called for Rabin's death hold power in Netanyahu's government.

A reminder that the current Israeli government led by Netanyahu is the most far right in Israel's history. Netanyahu filled it with extremists, religious fanatics, and virulent ethno-nationalists in order to stay in power.

Just two weeks before Rabin's assassination, a young settler extremist posed for the cameras with a Cadillac hood ornament he said he had stolen from Rabin's car. "Just like we got to this emblem," he said, "we could get to Rabin." Today, that young man, Itamar Ben Gvir, is 45 years old and has eight Israeli criminal convictions — including convictions for supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism. Once he was rejected by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for his extremist views. Now, Israel's police must answer to him as Benjamin Netanyahu's minister of national security.

Imagine how a second Trump administration would be and you get a hint of what Bibi's pre-October 7th cabinet was like.

The Bibi-Hamas connection only gets worse.

Netanyahu's hawkish defence minister Avigdor Liberman was the first to report in 2020 that Bibi had dispatched Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and the IDF's officer in charge of Gaza, Herzi Halevi, to Doha to "beg" the Qataris to continue to send money to Hamas. "Both Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas and planned to cut ties with them. Suddenly Netanyahu appears as the defender of Hamas," the right-wing leader complained. A year later, Netanyahu was further embarrassed when photos of suitcases full of cash going to Hamas became public. Liberman finally resigned in protest over Netanyahu's Hamas policy which, he said, marked "the first time Israel is funding terrorism against itself."

Yep, Bibi actually had a bag man deliver cash to Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority's Ahmed Majdalani accused the Qatari envoy of carrying money to Hamas "like a gangster." "The PLO did not agree to the deal facilitating the money to Hamas that way," he said.

Netanyahu fancies himself as a clever Machiavellian playing one side against the other. He has even bragged of this to members of his party.

On March 12, 2019, Netanyahu defended the Hamas payments to his Likud Party caucus on the grounds that they weakened the pro-Oslo Palestinian Authority, according to the Jerusalem Post: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Israel's regular allowing of Qatari funds to be transferred into Gaza, saying it is part of a broader strategy to keep Hamas and the Palestinian Authority separate, a source in Monday's Likud faction meeting said," the Post reported. "The prime minister also said that 'whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for' transferring the funds to Gaza, because maintaining a separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Of course Bibi was ultimately being too clever by half.

Netanyahu insisted that neither the money nor the construction material given to Hamas would be diverted to military purposes. But today, the IDF finds itself showing how Hamas has done exactly that — by diverting and converting civilian funds and materials to warlike purposes. The military tried to warn him at the time, former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot told the Ma'ariv newspaper. He said Netanyahu acted "in total opposition to the national assessment of the National Security Council, which determined that there was a need to disconnect from the Palestinians and establish two states."

A lot of radical chic Hamas fans in Western countries will undoubtedly try to obscure the fact that they are cheering the same group which a far right Israeli politician (until recently) has been lavishing with tons of cash.

And the Bibi-Hamas connection is a reminder that while far right politicians in many countries like to portray themselves as tough on security, they will usually put their craven lust for power above all.

[kamenstrikerace]

HOW NOSTALGIA PANDERING RUINED YGO

On today's topic, we're gonna explain why nostalgia ruined Yugioh and why it became stereotyped 100% because of Konami's bullshit. I call it Alienating 101. You see, I don't care enough to try to explain in too much depth, but let's keep it short.

Let's start off with the reason and why. Konami made new support cards based on one duel from the YGO anime, but people forgot that it's from the manga. The Metal Raiders cards got some support but are all underwhelming and don't feel anything but cheap and uninteresting. Why exactly is that? Well, nostalgia in YGO is just straight-up horse shit. This is mainly because YGO shows past the original were never marketed heavily like the first series. Fanboys in the USA overpraised the first series but overkilled it at the same time.

Konami's current practice of basing Yugioh cards on manga panels rather than promoting creativity is seen as nepotism and detrimental to the game's evolution. You feel this approach limits community creativity and serves primarily to glorify the first anime series, neglecting the potential for new and innovative card designs. This trend frustrates you because it prioritizes nostalgia over fresh ideas and diversity within the game.

In my opinion, Konami just keeps pandering Yugioh cards that are mostly Duel Monsters (first ygo series) way too much towards its fandom. As of this year, Konami has pissed off its fandom and people are fed up. It's also ironic that Ygo fans can't read or explain shit. What is this, the Dragon Ball community?

So what is nostalgia pandering? It's pretty much what happens when you pander nostalgia to anyone who is a baby boomer or a zoomer. But there is something shocking. Yugioh fans are straight-up toxic because most of them are blinded by nostalgia towards shows like DM, GX, or fucking Zexal. In my opinion, YGO shows are often the subject of debate, but in recent years Konami doesn't even explain shit. Most of the reason people view the first YGO this way is because it was the first one that everyone overliked and overlooked the most. Now, I have nostalgia towards 5D's, but unlike DM and GX, I don't consider 5D's as toxic as the first series because 5D's broke the mold for Yugioh in the past and ultimately saved it from doom or cancellation.

But I think the real reason was the 2010s when Konami started to pander this shit everywhere. Take the disaster movie Dark Side of Dimensions, which in my opinion sucked and was nothing more than nostalgia 101 for Duel Monsters fanboys. That movie doesn't deserve to be praised and is trash, in my opinion. The whole movie was nostalgia clickbait gone wrong, and people refused to hate it because if you were part of the 2010s fandom, you would get canceled instantly. I seriously think that movie's fault was Takahashi's.

And let's include YGO ARC-V as well, since that series was straight-up underwhelming due to its choice of nostalgia.

Then we have the fandom finally opening their damn eyes and seeing what's next. On the YGO Organization, I saw this person who told us exactly how Konami is screwing up our childhood. He summed it up perfectly. They print cards based on the anime and manga, and to make things worse, Konami keeps making bad choices in the effect division, with it being once again based off the shows.

See, part of the problem with YGO and its fandom is the influence of mainstream media and the community of other series as well. Nobody cares about newer fans, instead pandering towards the older fans who started the genre 20-40 years ago. Take, for example, Pokemon's community, where Game Freak keeps putting Gen 1 Pokemon in every new game, or the Digimon franchise, where Bandai pandered with movies a couple of years ago. This is because nostalgia for fans of those shows who started it can make money, but in recent years, it started to become a meme. In the 2010s, nostalgia became one of the most problematic things.Konami's focus on nostalgia and its perceived neglect of newer fans can be attributed to corporate greed. They prioritize profit over the integrity of their product and the satisfaction of their fanbase. This approach has led to decisions that favor pandering to older fans who are more likely to spend money on nostalgic content, while potentially alienating newer fans who may not have the same attachment to older series. This strategy has been criticized for undermining the quality and innovation of the Yugioh franchise, leading to frustration and disappointment among fans.

Yugioh fans often struggle to accept realities that challenge their nostalgic views, whether related to the card game or the anime series. This nostalgia can blind them to flaws and shortcomings in newer iterations of the franchise. Some fans may perpetuate stereotypes and illogical arguments, which hinders constructive discourse within the community. It's important to encourage a balanced perspective that appreciates the franchise's history while also acknowledging its evolution and areas for improvement. Promoting open-mindedness and logical reasoning can help foster healthier discussions among fans.

[olderthannetfic]

You mentioned 'one of' your cardinal rule about full frontals in response to the GOT HotD ask. So, do you have more rules? What are the reasons behind them? And how do you figure something like female full frontal but no equivalent male full frontal out in advance?

--

I don't have a conscious set of rules for the most part. I guess I could sum it up by saying it's mainstream US culture + bad values + not my id.

GoT was popular enough that info like that was easy to acquire by osmosis. If I'm interested in a show, I'll watch it unspoiled, and if it has my dealbreakers, I'll be mad, but that's life.

I guess there's nothing that's an absolute dealbreaker in literally all cases. There could always be some other element that would overrule my usual refusal.

But in general, I don't watch anything that centers on women's highly gendered trauma, including "she got raped and now she's a badass" narratives, which I especially loathe. I find that that kind of media pushes this subtext that it's empowering because all women have been there. I find it alienating, depressing, and boring. Xena getting the snot beat out of her by her former underlings in an ungendered way and then wangsting about having been a bad, murderous warlord is fine. That's a typical reformed male villain backstory. It's the Lady Trauma™ backstories I hate.

Special shout out to Joss Whedon who shoves this crap in everything and whom I've hated since the 90s. Ughhhhhhhhh.

I don't watch things where characters should logically get an abortion and don't. Every character involved is either an idiot or an abusive sack of shit.

I generally drop shows that started out being about folklore and then turned jesus-y. (SPN, I'm looking at you.) I like my urban fantasy to be neopagan woo-filled or Asian.

I don't consume dystopian media where society is gone. That's boring. I want to see a complex social context for our leads. (Relatedly, I find "my whole family is dead" a total cop-out. Make them fucking deal with their in-laws or growing old with a partner. That takes real writing chops, you hacks!) I also find ultra gloom more comedic than relatable.

I don't consume "anyone can die" media because it always removes all of the interesting characters while there was still more story to tell with them. Also, it invariably coddles whiny fanboys and their boring fave will have plot armor while all of the better characters will be the first to go.

--

But really, I consume very little media, so it's not like I have to think about these "rules".

They mostly come up when annoying fans are pushing their media I obviously would not like and I have to consciously think about how I'm making that snap judgment.

I'll occasionally check something out because it has a lot of fic. I often check out slashy (but not gay) shows because of a slash vid. I read a lot of original m/m by fandom types and may consume other queer media if it sounds like it has the right vibe. I consume a lot of stuff for research (film noir, nonfiction books, documentary). Even Kingdom, which I now love, I consumed because I wanted to get a feel for Korean historical media for the purpose of writing AU fanfic (which I then never got around to writing).

I don't have time or brain space left for mainstream things unless they happen to catch my eye.

[alrightsnaps]

i don't care about alicent tbh but fandom hypocrisy is getting to me too esp when they make inappropriate comments when her character is still a teenager

Yeah that's what I can't stand lmao

There's nothing wrong with hating a female character but when you're constantly using gendered insults against them or sexualising a teenage girl for “seducing” a grown man (especially when so far she's been miserable with the entire situation)... that's fucked up and definitely misogynistic

There's definitely female characters I can't stand and drag but there are things that go beyond fandom and not being a misogynistic ass is one of them. I thought we were all adults who understood this but I was clearly wrong.

[fishylife]

Street Dance of China, Season 4, Episode 4

- I’ve had issues with Tumblr not saving my posts again v.v I’ll just save often and hope that that does the trick.

- Latrice and Ibuki reenacting HB’s performance haha. From the behind the scenes clips I’ve seen, Ibuki does speak English, so I like to think they are now friends :D

- Hilty & Bosch have known each other since they were six years old T_T That’s cuuuute. Apparently they don’t get into arguments a lot because they always keep a distance between them XD Good strategy.

- San’er’s performance was great! He definitely brings the entertainment in his creativity (including incorporating a story line), but he doesn’t forget about the technical parts of dancing (the popping).

- Bouboo cheering on Rochka when he challenged Jianyan :P

- This spinning move he did was neat

- 不咋地 is going to be the recurring inside joke between Yibo, Rochka, and Bouboo ^^;;

- Yixing singing the SDOC theme song again XD With his super low energy voice XD

- Yibo was tipping the bench which was why Yixing and Henry were like, rocking back and forth at the same pace lol.

- Admittedly George vs. C-Lil was kind of rough. George tried to include Chinese elements in his performance, but he was injured, so he couldn’t really showcase them, and the latter part of his performance became just a typical contemporary dance. C-Lil’s performance was alright, but I think the judges were expecting something more impressive. While break dancing is very impressive to watch, I am starting to see the limitations of it, because if a dancer is not impressive, they are just kind of mediocre. George and C-Lil weren’t able to bring anything superbly impressive, which I think it was difficult for them to vote. Yibo abstained, and C-Lil got two votes, so C-Lil advanced.

- Zyko was incredible as always. It fascinates me how he’s mostly performed with these ballad type songs that don’t really have a beat. Also his flexibility is insane. I’m glad he got through with four votes because we need to see him more.

- I really liked Chika’s performance! I feel like women’s dancing is sometimes a bit limited in the mainstream because people just expect them to look sexy. It isn’t as much the case on this show because all of the ladies on this show are dancers and not idols or pop stars. But anyway, I just love seeing women dance without their bodies being sexualized. Chika’s dance showcased not only control over her body, but POWER. I loved her big movements. Compare the power that she shows vs. the power that say, Ibuki shows. Ibuki is a much smaller lady and it shows in her proportions, so how she expresses power looks different from how Chika expresses power, and Chika’s is the sort of power that I’ve really looked forward to seeing.

- Rochka fanboys over everybody, I love it. Keep spreading the love, dude.

- Ok, Xiaoji’s performance was pretty entertaining. I am not kidding when I say my jaw dropped, at the same time that all the captains went OH SNAP. But this guy definitely has charisma and stage presence. His confidence made up for his lack of ability to improvise XD I was CACKLING when this guy thought the song was done and Yibo was like “bro there’s more” and Xiaoji had to come up with something to end it off lol. I wouldn’t say his challenge was as good as Xiaohai’s, mostly because he hadn’t memorized the music like Xiaohai did. In terms of technical stuff, his performance did seem more impressive than Lai Wei’er’s, but he also did less “stuff” (like, there were a lot of pauses in his dance probably because he didn’t now the music). But Xiaoji’s was definitely more entertaining, though that may just be because of who he is and not his dancing. (By the way, Xiaoji’s real name is 林森. I thought the name 林木森 was just a joke because of how much wood was in it. I never guessed that someone would name their kid 林森 X’D Guess his 八字 indicated that he had a weakness in wood or something lol)

- Have some laughing captains, it’s good for the soul.

- Acky-san acknowledged that he’s probably not going to beat the younger dancers in terms of technique, so what he brought instead was style. The “robot” style of popping is pretty old, but no one else has done it in this competition probably because it’s so old school, and he definitely delivered in a way that only he could.

- Henry singing Frere Jacques with the French contingent X’D

- Thoughts on Han Yu vs. Boris. I can imagine what Han Yu was going for in his original performance, but I don’t think it worked. I don’t have the vocabulary to explain it, but basically the way his performance was choreographed just didn’t really impress. As Yibo mentioned, Boris was impressive in his dance to Han Yu’s music, but his dancing didn’t suit the song as much as Han Yu’s did. So the original dance + challenge was a matter of impressiveness vs. whether the dancing suited the music. Han Yu shone in the battle. I think he seemed a lot more impressive when back in a hip hop sort of groove, music that has a lot of major beats, compared to the piano music that was less grand an epic. As for Boris, I think that seeing a few of his performances in succession showed that his toolbox is a little limited in comparison to Han Yu. It hate to see Boris go because I loved his battle against Zyko but alas. I also wanted him to stay because he’s one of the few non-Chinese contestants who speak Mandarin relatively well. He had no issues speaking in Mandarin with most of the Chinese people on set. The ending was hilarious, when he was asked whether he had any last words, and Boris was like “well, I’m literally going to see these guys in two seconds when I’m back in the audience, I’m not dying” lmao.

- I don’t know how I feel about how the show has decided to deal with the last 29 contestants, of which three would be chosen to join the 49 dancers advancing. They’re competing fairly with the other contestants that haven’t performed yet, but they’re at a disadvantage compared to the previous contestants that were judged individually. For example, what if the fourth best dancer was better than a dancer that had already entered the 49? It would only be fair if the judges were allowed to take out people from the 46 contestants that had passed. It would’ve been a bigger problem if there were still a lot of big names to go though. Most of the best dancers have already secured a spot for themselves, so I think that’s why I’m not like, the most perturbed.

- I was low key waiting for Xiao Jie’s performance because his audition performance during episode 1 was so amusing. I thought his individual performance was fun! He managed to add some creativity and story telling (Chinese dude getting drunk) but also showcase some of his specialty skills (locking).

- I forgot to mention this before, but it amuses me that so the editing team will so diligently put in a “don’t try this at home” warning message whenever a dancer does a dangerous move haha.

- So the captains are doing a dance battle for the reborn event, but I’m not really sure how this is all gonna work. I’m digging Yixing’s look for the battle btw.

- Anyway, pre-battle hugs for all.

- KRUMPMASTER. Also I think he did some of the routine that he did back in Season 3.

- Not gonna lie, I wasn’t super impressed with Han Geng’s first dance but his second dance was pretty hype.

- Lol Yibo feels most comfortable challenging Yixing during his battles. He did move where he dropped onto his back right after Yixing did it (i.e. being like you can do it but I can do it better). Based on what I saw of season 3, I think Yibo would call out Yixing in his performances then too.

- Yixing was definitely heavy on the krump side, though I actually thought his first performance was really interesting because there was barely any krump in that one. He mostly stuck to other elements. As we got through the other rounds, he became more krump heavy, and I think he lost a bit in terms of variety there.

- The thing about Han Geng is that he’s no longer as athletic, so he relies more on power and control, but he needs to make sure he does the right moves that showcase that.

- I think Yibo impressed me the most. He had a lot of variety in his arsenal and he was very entertaining. He is also quite athletic, so as long as he can imagine it, I think he can do it haha.

- As others mentioned, Henry was extremely creative. He used a lot of dance moves to show a certain action, like tugging a rope or playing pool and such.

- Anyway, big hugs.

- Baby needs a nap.

- Yibo won the most points in the four rounds of the battle. This hug with Han Geng is uwu. Anyway, Tony Gogo mentioned that Yibo interpreted the music very well.

- Of course, Tony Gogo as well as the Gogo brothers praised Yixing for his krumping energy

- Philip said that Han Geng had a really good ear, and that was how he was able to take advantage of the best moments to unleash certain dances.

- The five contestants that were saved were A-wei, Boris, George, JC Jun, and Kelo & Uwa. I definitely think the editors purposely showed us more clips of them so that we’d grow attached lol. The only one of these five that I don’t quite remember is A-wei though. Anyway, very pleased that Boris is back haha.

- Pouty boi

- Yibo, Henry, Han Geng, and Ibuki getting really into 煞科 lol.

- I think next episode is going to have some team performances, which I think will be fun. Some of these teams are STACKED.

- Previews for Hot pot!

- They were talking about songs they listened to in their childhood. Han Geng started singing a song about an Office Black Cat? XD I’m guessing it’s a cartoon haha. Yibo listened to Leehom Wang and Jay Chou. Henry mentioned that he looked up to Leehom because he was also an overseas Chinese, plus he played a lot of instruments (just like Henry). As expected, Yixing looked up to Jay Chou (after all, Jay Chou was one of the earliest artists to popularize using Chinese elements in pop songs). Yixing said he also liked Leehom Wang, JJ Lin, and Khalil Fong (I legit have not heard the name 方大同 in a long time so that took me by surprise lol).

- Yibo mentioned Li Ronghao and Yixing was like OH WAIT YEAH HIM TOO. We know from Idol Producer that Yixing and Li Ronghao are bros haha. The captain says “不榮藝 組合” which pronounced the same as “不容易 組合” which is something like “unlikely duo,” except the the 榮 is from Li Ronghao’s name and the 藝 is from Zhang Yixing’s name lol.

- The robot spilled all the tea! Bad bot!

- I think they later played a listening game that Henry kept losing? lol

[moviemunchies]

How the FUDGE do we even begin talking about Dances with Wolves?

It’s become shorthand for ‘White Savior’ film, and I don’t think that’s entirely fair to this movie. But it’s also not baseless--it’s entirely from the point of view of a white guy and the Native characters’ lives all more or less revolve around him and his relationship with their group. And while I’m told (and I want to emphasize that I don’t know this for sure, feel free to correct me) that at the time this is one of the first depictions of Native Americans in mainstream film that gives them depth, personality, and you know, doesn’t have them as a group of mooks for good guys to mow down in Westerns.

Not being an indigenous person, it’s not for me to make a definitive judgment on whether or not the movie’s good in that regard.

Though for what it’s worth, the Lakota officially adopted Kevin Costner as an honorary member of their nation.

So the movie goeth a bit like this: John Dunbar is a soldier in the Union army during the Civil War, and due to helping his unit win a battle he’s given a promotion and told he can pick a post. He decides to go out West because he wants to see the frontier before it’s gone. His outpost turns out to be abandoned, and since there’s no word about reinforcements coming. So he sits and writes as he goes about his business, befriending a local wolf he calls ‘Two Socks’ (because the paws of its feet are white, and look like socks). He starts interacting with the local Lakota, and because of his willingness to help them out whenever he can, he gets adopted by the tribe and is dubbed with the name ‘Dances with Wolves’--after him they witness him playing with Two Socks. He marries Stands with a Fist, a white woman adopted into the Lakota from a young age, and finds happiness and peace of mind he hadn’t before.

But of course, 

Also it’s way too long of a movie.

Okay, I get that this isn’t an action movie--there are action scenes in it, but it’s not a war movie in the sense that there are massive battles (though there are skirmishes) and that’s fine. But I was expecting more of that? I was expecting to see more conflict between the Lakota and the US army. And there is conflict, but in the sense that they have opposing views. After Dunbar gets posted, he doesn’t actually encounter the Army again until the last forty minutes or so of the movie.

This movie is three hours.

So for something that was meant to be the focus of the story, Dunbar’s relationship between these two groups, it felt a bit off that he didn’t have any interactions with the Army until the end of the movie. It’s also a bit odd that he’s not giving up anything, really--he doesn’t fit with the world of white men because they kind of suck? He doesn’t have any friends among them. They’re all rude or crude or bastards.

The Native Americans, or rather, the Lakota of this movie are just better than everyone else. They’re not technically magical Native Americans, but they’re clearly better than the white civilization in this film. That sounds like praise, but in a sense it’s almost fetishization? It’s putting a group of people on an unrealistic pedestal of poetic naming conventions and a peaceful, nature-loving lifestyle. Sure they’re more humanized than in most Western films, but it goes hard in the other direction.

Sure, Dunbar’s not a White Savior, per se--and he’s definitely not the Mighty Whitey archetype. He helps the Lakota out, but he’s not better at what they do than they are. And in the end, they save him. But their lives revolve around his in this movie. And I THINK I get that they were going for: introducing a different culture through a character from a culture that is more identifiable to most of the moviegoing audience. But it doesn’t change that it’s still all about him. Unlike other examples of this kind of story, like The Last Samurai or Marco Polo, we don’t actually get that much about the Lakota culture. Everyday lives and language I guess, and that’s not nothing, but religion? History? And how does Dunbar react to them? It’s a big question mark. And those are kind of big questions, considering he drops everything to go with them at the end of the movie! 

The alternate examples I gave above (which have the benefit of having come out years later, and hence the conversation around these things were much more developed, but they still have their own baggage) can use the excuse, effectively or not depending who you ask, that they’re using a white character as an audience surrogate to introduce the viewer to cultures and peoples they’re less familiar with. But while _Dances with Wolves_ does introduce the viewers to Lakota culture, it’s not in a particularly in depth way. Again, it’s good that they’re shown as people, that’s a good step, and I don’t know enough about the atmosphere at the time to know how revolutionary or big of a step that was. But watching it today, it doesn’t feel like that large of a step.

Dunbar’s also a guy who already admires Native Americans--he asks about them when he’s on his way to the posting, and he comes up with every excuse to talk to them when he gets stationed there. He’s already a fanboy, mostly because he seems to see them as a part of the Western Frontier that hasn’t been yet eliminated, so his joining the nation doesn’t feel like so much like a massive character change as a fanboy living out his dream.

I’m sorry, I sound like I hate this movie. I don’t. I don’t think it’s a bad movie, but I can’t help but think critically about it given the subject matter. Especially because it’s a long and thoughtful movie, it sort of invites one to think about it. I’d like to think this movie was a step in the right direction, and that shouldn’t be understated. But it’s still a step. You can’t watch this movie, especially nowadays, and say you’ve got a good grasp of Native American culture and history and struggles. It’s worthwhile to watch, but I can’t say my life has been changed that much in the viewing.

I can say though that watching this, James Cameron’s Avatar was this movie but IN SPACE.

Also, you know what? I should watch Smoke Signals.

[ceasarslegion]

So im making this young pre-OT Luke Skywalker playlist right now and it made me think about how many reddit-type fanboys think he's whiny and over-emotional

But I never really got that vibe from him. I mean first of all, he's 19 in A New Hope, and in his early to mid 20s in Empire and Jedi, and have y'all ever met a 19-25 year old who wasn't still a bit emotionally unstable? With everything he's been through, I'm actually amazed at how mature he is for his age. He could've easily cracked under all that pressure, but he grit his teeth and braced his feet and stood strong to the bitter end. And I recently watched the OT again for the 500th time in my life because I was showing it to my sister, and I didn't really see him complain all that much, and he definitely didn't whine.

Sure, he was a bit hesitant and freaked out his first time on the Falcon and it made him a bit jumpy, but he also like, just saw his parental figures brutally die, his childhood home destroyed, and in two hours he's making his first ever trip into space, cut him some slack. He was having a recordly rough day. I'd say that was just some light acting out from all that emotion he was forced to bottle up, and I REALLY don't blame him. Fuck man, I'd be catatonic if I were in his position.

Other than that though, I think people perceive Luke as whiny and over-emotional because he doesn't really fit into this hyper-masculine role that most other male leads fill in mainstream cinema. He's shown crying on screen in every single OT film for starters, which is extremely rare for a male lead. He's not super built or tall or toned or muscular, he's more of a short king with a lithe figure and this really soft face with a bit of meat on his cheeks. He's also not an emotional brick wall like men are kind of expected to be. You know what Luke's feeling at every moment because it's written all over his face and his body language, and he's open to a fault about it.

I think that's why he's perceived that way tbh. Luke is very antithetical to what the typical Hollywood male lead is expected to be, which in itself is a product of toxic masculinity. Men aren't allowed to be emotional outside of anger and stoicism lest they be mistaken for homosexual (homophobia is also a massive part of toxic masculinity, which I think is why I love the gay Luke interpretation so much; it just makes him this all-encompassing spit in the face of most if not all aspects of toxic masculinity). But Luke has this really wide emotional range that mostly leaves out anger and stoicism. Even in ROTJ when Palpatine is trying to tempt him over to the dark side, he SAYS he can feel Luke's anger and hatred, but you can't really see that on his expression. It's not stoic either, Luke's "anger" seems to come out as this hesitant conflict that gives him sad eyes, not raging ones like Anakin had in the prequels. Luke doesn't seem like he'd be capable of feeling genuine anger, honestly. And when he does snap in that fight with Vader, it feels more like a cornered mouse with nothing else to lose jumping at a predator for its life, not vengeful wrath. Luke only snaps like that when he absolutely has to and has exhausted all other options.

And another thing-he shows genuine affection and joy for his friends! And PHYSICAL affection!! He runs up to Han and Leia and Chewie just to give them hugs and smile with them, which almost never happens with mainstream male leads in films like these. They're always portrayed as brooding and tortured, but Luke lets himself be happy and show his friends how much he loves them, which is super rare in film.

I really love the healthy masculinity Luke is shown to have in the OT and I think that's also why I really hated his characterization in TLJ. It felt like they were trying to make him that brooding, tortured male lead when it just doesn't fit him. He wouldn't be crotchety and mean like that of he had to endure tragedy, he would be sad and hesitant to get close to anyone because he knows he can't close his heart off to other people even if he tries. He would hold Rey at an arm's length, not bear his fangs and actively shove her away.

Anyway, yeah. I think reddit fanboys see Luke as whiny and over-emotional because unfortunately, men have been so trained to be unemotional brick walls that seeing an average-looking man show actual, healthy emotion feels like being whiny and over-emotional at best, and a threat to their own masculinity as worst.

I just really love how healthy Luke's masculinity is though, I could write papers on it

[blursed-ninjago-ideas]

Okay, idea. Kai has a secret life as a singer.

He goes by an alias (I'm thinking "Rick Roberts" or "Cyrus Chen") and is incredibly popular, but no-one knows that his true identity, partially because he wears his hair down(*GASP*) and uses makeup to cover up his facial scars.

Kai's music is mostly mainstream, however he has a lot less sex/love songs than you would expect(He has only one song that is even remotely "sexy" called 'Hot stuff'. It is full of bad pick up lines and became a meme as soon as it was released.); Mostly his songs are about empowerment, courage and being a bit of an attention whore.

Here's the thing, Jay also has a secret life as an electronic artist called Thunderwave; He always wears a light-up helmet(Think like Daft Punk or DeadMau5) when he's out performing and is best known for his sampling of Tesla Coils(There is always at least one song in each of his albums that has Tesla Coils in it), his distinctively modulated voice(Meant to hide his true identity), and the fact that his music is incredibly varied.

(There was one album called "Bad Things" which has a sappy love song called 'Pretty Waterlily' that is followed directly by a harsh dubstep song called 'Crushed' that seems to be about a love triangle that ends with everyone despising each other, comparing the situation to being crushed in a trash compacter. A lot of people were worried about Thunderwave after this album; especially considering the next song on the album was 'Snowflakes'; a slow, dreary song about mourning someone's death and pushing everyone away in grief.)

The ninja have no idea about Jay and Kai's respective music careers, in fact Jay and Kai are unwitting fans of each other's music. Jay has posters all over the walls and Kai has a bit of a (poorly hidden) crush on Thunderwave.

They only learned of each other's secret identities when they collaborated for an album. Jay had just finished mixing one of the songs and needed a drink of water. He pulled off his helmet... only to see his favorite singer standing there gaping at him. After a bit of a kerfuffle involving Jay saying that he's already got a girlfriend and Kai yelling that he isn't interested in his sister's boyfriend and they realize exactly who they are.

Things became incredibly awkward between the mutual fanboys.

They ultimately decide to not mention it to the others.

("Wait, so you sang 'Hot Stuff'?"

"Shut it, Jay!"

Jay ends up using 'Hot Stuff' as his ringtone for Kai. In retaliation, Kai uses 'Pretty Waterlily' for Jay... Until he realizes that it's totally about Nya. Then he realizes that 'Snowflakes' is about Zane.)

[buzzdixonwriter]

The Four Gospels Of Sci-Fi

The “canon” of science fiction is in the news again in the wake of the recent Hugo awards, and since I’m nothing if not opinionated and I also want to load up my posting queue before diving into my next big project, this struck me as an apt topic to write on.

So settle back; we’re going to touch on the history of sci-fi, the influence of its old guard, how it pertains to religious literature, and perhaps even delve a little bit on Christianity itself at the end.

First off, a quick recap of Christian scripture for those who aren’t read up on the subject.  Vacation Bible School veterans can skip this part.

. . .

The foundational works in the Christian New Testament are the four gospels:  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The first three are referred to as the synoptic gospels because they tell basically the same story in the same beats, differing in style and detail, but essentially the same.

Mark is considered the oldest of the three and the primary source for Matthew and Luke (boy howdy! Am I ever streamlining a lot of Biblical scholarship here but bear with me; I’m doing this to make a point about sci-fi, not religion).

The common Christian reading of the three synoptic gospels are that Mark is the basic story, Matthew (because of its focus on Old Testament prophecies) was written with a Jewish audience in mind, Luke was written for gentiles.*

John is the gospel that sticks out.

To grossly oversimplify, the biggest difference is that the synoptic gospels mainly record what Jesus said and did, John focuses more on the who and why.

And that’s all we need to know at this moment…

. . .

The four gospels of sci-fi are Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury.

(Before we go further, let us stipulate this applies only to those who came to the genre prior to Star Wars -- indeed, an argument can be made it only applies to those who were fans before Star Trek.)

Sci-fi’s synoptic gospels are the oeuvre of Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke; Ray Bradbury is the oddball.

I say they are the synoptic gospels because truth be told, you can only tell them apart by style, not content, certainly not by point of view.

If all three exchanged story ideas and plot outlines, the end results would be different only in tone and vocabulary, not theme or character.

Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke were all technically trained and worked professionally as engineers or chemists when not writing; Bradbury was a gosh-wow! fanboy.**

If Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury are the gospels of sci-fi, their John the Baptist was another John:  John W. Campbell

Campbell is a problematic figure in sci-fi, so let’s just get him out of the way ASAP.

He was a good but not outstanding writer, but when you write “Who Goes There?” (basis of the various film versions of The Thing From Another World) you’ve earned your place at the table.

He was a visionary editor and under his helm Astounding / Analog set the gold standard for sci-fi for decades to come.

He was a white supremacist of the paternalistic bent, and while on the one hand that’s better than being an outright hate monger, on the other it’s more insidious since it presupposes a correct worldview without challenging that assumption.

He was a male chauvinist of the same stripe, not particularly open to female writers but willing to publish the occasional story with a female protagonist…written by a male.

He was a crank who believed a bunch of goofball ideas, from psionics (ESP, telekinisis, etc.) to dowsing to the Dean Drive to the Hieronymus Machine (a device so wonderous that even a schematic drawing of it would work!).***

Campbell by all accounts was not a bad individual and the field is still replete with those who knew and loved him, but like the cranky patriarch**** who refuses to divulge the contents of their will, forcing everyone in the family to kowtow to them, Campbell’s position atop the highest paying / most prestigious market in science fiction shaped much of the genre around him.  (Full disclosure:  One of the greatest highlights in my writing career was finally placing a story in Analog after fifty years of trying!)

Writers would typically aim at Astounding / Analog first, and failing to sell there, the Campbell rejects would start a long, laborious trudge down the stairs to the cheaper markets.

This held true even in the 1950s when sci-fi magazines of a more literary bent (Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy in the US, New Worlds in the UK) started attracting stories written for them, not Campbell hand-me-downs.

As Jeannette Ng observed in her acceptance speech for the 2019 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer*****:  “Through his editorial control of Astounding Science Fiction, [Campbell] is responsible for setting a tone of science fiction that still haunts the genre to this day.  Sterile.  Male.  White.  Exalting in the ambitions of imperialists and colonisers, settlers and industrialists.”

Campbell’s absolute faith in science and technology to solve all our problems (including the ones created by science and technology) while ignoring the very real problems that plague humanity since time immemorial (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride) coupled with his prime market position led to a genre that unquestionably accepted those settings as the only viable ones.

Campbell certainly held more direct sway over the writings of Heinlein and Asimov than he did Clarke, but Clarke’s earliest sci-fi sales were to Astounding and nothing he wrote in his first decade as a writing professional fell outside the big cushy box Campbell crafter for the genre.

And even though Heinlein and Asimov broke off for cushier writing gigs elsewhere (Heinlein in novels, Asimov mostly as a popular science promoter), they remained steadfastly loyal and respectful -- as did Clarke -- to the ends of their lives.

And on a personal, individual level, that’s a good thing -- we all need friends who will stick by us.

But Bradbury never got invited to the party.

Which is not to say he didn’t try to crack Astounding -- he did, on four occasions, two of them humorous short-shorts for the magazine’s “Probability Zero” feature, one run of the mill magic-shop-disguised-as-super-science-store tale sold in the middle of WWII when Campbell’s best writers were on active duty, and the last in 1950 when he was no longer Ray Bradbury, fanboy, but Ray Bradbury, Important American Writer!!! and Campbell published an excerpt from The Martian Chronicles.******

. . .

We’re going to take a sidebar here to discuss one of Al Ries’ immutable laws of branding.

Ries long observed there are only two models for any brand category:

A single dominant top brand with a distant second place competitor then a host of niche brands (Microsoft then Apple then everybody else)

Two big rivals fighting for first place with a competitor placing a distant third then a host of niche brands (Coke vs Pepsi with RC Cola trailing third then everybody else)

The way to break through in branding is not to waste time and effort trying to knock out a dominant brand but to create a new category to dominate!

That’s what Bradbury did in the late 1940s and early 1950s:  He stopped aping the default Campbell / Astounding style and began writing more lyrical / less techno-focused sci-fi.

Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke were no dummies and soon they too branched out more consciously to mainstream audiences.

But as successful as they were, none of them ever fully shook the influence Campbell weighed down upon them.

That is why telling people today they must read the old masters results in eyerolls.

Too often the old masters trafficked in cleverness, not as Faulkner observed “the human heart in conflict with itself.”

Heinlein managed to transcend the genre a few times, but finding the gems in his work requires a lot of effort.  

Clarke remains dry and antiseptic:  it speaks volumes that his best known character is HAL 9000.

And Asimov just isn’t that goof in either concept or execution.  His Three Laws of Robotics demonstrates a failure of nerve and imagination:  Humans won’t build robots programmed not to harm humans because the first thing humans will make robots do it kill other human beings!

So there’s our canon: Mostly irrelevant, often impenetrable. 

The last author standing is the least technology oriented of the lot and Bradbury’s stories continue to work and delight because he doesn’t lecture on weights and measures but allows the reader to imagine along with him.

. . .

Okay, short Christian content now; if you came just for the sci-fi you can either stop reading or skip ahead to the footnotes.

Any field of human endeavor that does not constantly re-examine itself and challenge previous assumptions is doomed to irrelevance.

This does not mean established works need to be rejected out of hand, but we do need to ask what those works mean to us right now.

Truth is indeed timeless, but the package has a sell-by date and the contents do no one any good if they aren’t periodically taken down from the shelf and examined.

Modern Christianity -- in particular mainstream American protestantism -- has failed to closely examine the contents for quite some time.

While the field of sci-fi brims over with exciting new voices, we’re still straining to listen to the cracked / garbled / low fidelity wax cylinders of theologians long dead.

We need fewer Christians.   We desperately need better Christians.

Instead of demanding those outside or struggling with the faith must read things the way we were taught to read them, understand them the way we were taught to understand them, follow along the way we were taught to follow along, perhaps we should show faith in the material and let those who will read and re-imagine the text in the light of their own experience a fair hearing.

The old canon in sci-fi fails today because it is too dated, too rooted in the mindset of a bygone era.  The exception -- Bradbury (he himself a Christian and it shows in his stories) -- stays vibrant and alive and appealing because he doesn’t tell us what to think, he walks with us as we discover things for ourselves.

  © Buzz Dixon

  *  Acts Of The Apostles is a sequel to Luke and while Jesus appears briefly in the beginning in almost a flashback fashion, that book focuses on what his disciples did afterwards.

** An interesting trait Bradbury shared with Harlan Ellison was that despite their fanboy origins, both were one helluva lot more savvy to the business of writing and publishing than anyone else in the genre, and both skillfully created public personas that served them well (Bradbury’s better than Ellison’s, granted) while they guided their careers through the treacherous shoals of gatekeepers and public fancies.  Bradbury has written of his fanboy epiphany when he asked himself if he was satisfied being a fan / autograph hound or if he really wanted to be a creator, and immediately began directing his career in a fashion that could only be described as ruthless were it not attached to such a charming gentleman.  Wannabees are urged to study his career and how he did it if they want to be truly remembered.

***  All well and good as fodder for sci-fi stories, not so good in reality.  As the movie They Might Be Giants states:  “[Don Quixote] carried it a bit too far.  He thought that every windmill was a giant.  That's insane.  But, thinking that they might be... well… all the best minds used to think the world was flat. — But, what if it isn't? — It might be round — and bread mold might be medicine.  If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.”

**** To stretch our Biblical analog to the breaking point, if Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury are the New Testament gospels and John W. Campbell is John the Baptist, then sci-fi’s Old Testament has patriarchs such as Swift, Verne, and Wells plus the matriarch Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, a major prophet in Hugo Gernsback, and a host of minor prophets in various pre-WWII niche media including comics.

*****  An acceptance speech which in turn won a 2020 Hugo for Best Related Work -- how cool is that? ******  Basically, Bradbury was perceptive enough to recognized he turned a creative corner in 1944 with “The Lake” and broadened his submission range to include far more prestigious slick magazines such as The American Mercury and Mademoiselle and Collier’s and The New Yorker and when tipped off that Warner Bros. planned to plagiarize “The Foghorn” as the basis for The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms he didn’t waste time or money suing but sweetly judo leverage this to get his name prominently displayed on the movie posters as “Ray Bradbury…Saturday Evening Post” writer and then holy %#@& he was a Major American Writer!  I loved Ray, but his gosh-wow sweet exterior camouflaged one of the most brilliant strategists I’ve ever met.

[ivalice-tifalucis]

Alright speaking of football, I really and completely dive back into this again. I notice the last time I watch football religiously (like waking up at early morning almost every week just to watch Barca’s game) which was around 2013, I wasn’t active on tumblr yet. I did occassionally reblogged football stuffs. I watched important games like few El Clasicos or Champions League finals. I did sporadic live blogging during the last World Cup. But now that I’m back like really back I notice things are different.

First, women’s football. I once ramble in someone’s post about the inequality of women’s football compare to men in USWNT. I said that women’s football didn’t really develop until 1970s while men’s football was starting to develop since 1900s and so it will take time for women’s football to get more developed. The difference that I notice is that now more mainstream media especially in England, where the center of football is, promotes their women’s team more. I notice Barca also do that for quite a while now, I just couldn’t believe that others do the same!! What I love even more is that if you take a look at let’s say Barca Femeni (who just got a new stadium fyi) or Liverpool’s women videos on youtube, the comments are mostly positive and most come from fanboys. They wish the female team all the best and to succeed, even include them in some banter. People also discuss how to improve women’s football since no matter what female will always going to be physically inferior than men and football is very physically demanding. Like many people suggest that women’s football need to have different regulation with the game. This shows that people care about female football. People also comment on footballers daughter who was just playfully kicking ball with “wow imagine if she becomes a footballer too” like these kinds of comments and discussions didn’t exist 5 years ago.

Second, the wheels are turning. Like a circle of life, there’s also circle of football domination. Last time I’m in, Barca was still a club that everyone are afraid of. Today, we are so poor it makes me sad. Liverpool comeback is just one of those moment. No, not the worst football club yet. We’re just becoming clown now, it’s embarassing. La Masia is also such a mess. That little boy Takefusa Kubo is now Real Madrid young player???!!! I hope we will get better soon (after the board members sacked!!!). I even missed out that Real Madrid won 3 UCL in a row (I only notice 2 until I went to Bernabeu tour and realized they have 13 trophies now 😑). Premier League dynamic has changed a lot. No more big 4 teams, they now have Leicester City too as dark horse. I was shocked when my brother told me they were about to win Premier League like what even the hell was that club?! Manchester United is sucking hard, Chelsea is shifting from rich club who buy everything to so so club to club who grow talents, Liverpool is only few weeks away from ending their 30 years of no league title (no longer a club who only talk about history), Manchester City is undisputedly giant crazy rich team along side PSG. Arsenal is the only one who stay the same, because Arsenal. Germany is suddenly not so good anymore.

Third, best player in the world. Apparently my favorite players are now old and soon will retire (some even have). The banter has shifted to discussion and general consensus that *insert player A* is great player instead of trying to compare A with B. Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo fans have finally find consensus that both players are the best ever. Sergio Ramos is now the best defender ever??? (Make sense tho the guy captained Real Madrid who won 3 UCL in a row, forget the fact that he loves collecting red card so much). Gerard Pique also the best now. Neymar since his departure to PSG has become mediocre, sad. Frenkie de Jong, I root for him to be successful. Who else hmm... Jamie Vardy is top scorer (I like him in a way that his life is motivating that sometime good things don’t come immediately like his life and career is quite insane for pro footballer standard, he supposed to not even become a football superstar!!). Mohamed Salah, I heard a lot about him because I have a cousin who is Liverpool die hard fan and media talk about him, he’s great (and sorta feel proud for him because he’s conservative moslem from Egypt, sadly a politically unstable country, and arab which is great for representation. He manages to lift the image of arab people and moslem especially around Merseyside just by being great). Another talent from Liverpool would be Virgil van Dijk that gd soft tall man and good defender but most important is Trent Alexander-Arnold (corner taken quickly which breaks my heart and amaze me at the same time). Kevin de Bruyne is what Pep really love in midfielder and indeed what a talent he is. Erling Haaland is looking good, I hope he’s not just one season wonder. Manuel Neuer is no longer as good as he used to be since terrible injury (now I understand his bloop in WC 2018) but now there are more sweeper keeper just not as crazy as him. He definitely set standards for future goalkeepers.

Fourth, retired players. One by one, players that I watched while growing up have retired. I saw Puyol and Xavi retired. Then Iker Casillas, the most recent one to retired after heart surgery scare last year, now a candidate for RFEF President. Iniesta is soom gonna be retired. David Villa, Fernando Torres. My favorite Spain NT players are now all retired ☹️. Schweinsteiger, Lahm, Robben, Mertesacker. Mertesacker is now Arsenal youth coach??!!! Mikel Arteta is now Arsenal’s coach. Other star players from Premier League like Frank Lampard (now Chelsea’s manager), Steven Gerrard, all have retired and become football manager. And a bit unrelated because I never actually see him playing (because I only start properly watch football since 2010 and by that time he had retired and I only heard stories) but Gary Neville as Valencia’s manager for short time?? 😂 (of course I would know that’s important information for all Carraville shippers). Everytime I hear news about footballer retirement I would be reminded again that I’m old.

Fifth, shipping. If you don’t notice this already, I now ship Jamie Carragher with Gary Neville which is not surprising since I always low key ship Gerard Pique with Sergio Ramos anyway. Apparently I always have a thing with pinning rivaling defenders who are hot headed, reckless, and hate each other at first until one day they don’t. And I swear that’s the most random ever. I’m not even Liverpool fan and never really into Man United (although my brother is sorta fan because he knows much about MU). But it all starts from me going around Liverpool’s tag on tumblr and found Carra’s instagram live. After watching all of their videos in Sky Sports on youtube, consider my self as a carraville. I even always try to find live streaming from Sky Sports for every Premier League matches that I watch. I must say, they’re the ones that make me want to go back to football fandom again.

All in all, I will never stop loving FC Barcelona. I may watch other games, less Barca games maybe because they’re not that enjoyable to watch these days. But now I understand, the feeling of watching Barca loses is different. It just so heartbreaking 😭 my heart only belong to that team. I’m so happy I finally got to be in Camp Nou even though I just lost my wallet at that time.

[jcmorgenstern]

@superohclair oh god okay please know these are all just incoherent ramblings so like, idk, please feel free to add on or ignore me if im just wildly off base but this is a bad summary of what ive been thinking about and also my first titans/batman meta?? (also, hi!)

okay so for the disclaimer round: I am not an actual cultural studies major, nor do I have an extensive background in looking at the police/military industrial complex in media. also my comics knowledge is pretty shaky and im a big noob(I recently got into titans, and before that was pretty ignorant of the dceu besides batman) so I’ll kind of focus in on the show and stuff im more familiar with and apologize in advance?. basically im just a semi-educated idiot with Opinions, anyone with more knowledge/expertise please jump in! this is literally just the bullshit I spat out incoherently off the top of my head. did i mention im a comics noob? because im a comics noob.

so on a general level, I think we can all agree that batman as a cultural force is somewhat on the conservative side, if not simply due to its age and commercial positioning in American culture. there are a lot of challenges and nuances to that and it’s definitely expanding and changing as DC tries to position itself in the way that will...make the most money, but all you have to do is take a gander through the different iterations of the stories in the comics and it’ll smack you in the fucking face. like compare the first iteration of Jason keeping kids out of drugs to the titans version and you’ve got to at least chuckle. at the end of the day, this is a story about a (white male) billionaire who fights crime.

to be fair, I’d argue the romanticization of the police isn’t as aggressive as it could be—they are most often presented as corrupt and incompetent. However, considering the main cop characters depicted like Jim Gordon, the guys in Gotham (it’s been a while since I saw it, sorry) are often the romanticized “good few” (and often or almost always white cis/het men), that’s on pretty shaky ground. I don’t have the background in the comics strong enough to make specific arguments, so I’ll cede the point to someone who does and disagrees, but having recently watched a show that deals excellently with police incompetence, racism, and brutality (7 Seconds on Netflix), I feel at the very least something is deeply missing. like, analysis of race wrt police brutality in any aspect at all whatsoever.

I think it can be compellingly read that batman does heavily play into the military/police industrial complex due to its takes on violence—just play the Arkham games for more than an hour and you’ll know what I mean. to be a little less vague, even though batman as a franchise valorizes “psychiatric treatment” and “nonviolence,” the entire game seems pretty aware it characterizes treatment as a madhouse and nonviolence as breaking someone’s back or neck magically without killing them because you’re a “good guy.” while it is definitely subversive that the franchise even considers these elements at all, they don’t always do a fantastic job living up to them.

and then when you consider the fetishization of tools of violence both in canon and in the fandom, it gets worse. same with prisons—if anything it dehumanizes people in prisons even more than like, cop shows in general, which is pretty impressive(ly bad). like there’s just no nuance afforded and arkham is generally glamorized. the fact that one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, I will admit, does not help. im not really sure how to mitigate that when, again, one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, but I think my point still stands. fuck you, killer croc. (im just kidding unfuck him or whatever)

not to take this on a Jason Todd tangent but I was thinking about it this afternoon and again when thinking about that cop scene again and in many ways he does serve as a challenge to both batman’s ideology as well as the ideology of the franchise in general. his depiction is always a bit of a sticking point and it’s always fascinating to me to see how any given adaptation handles it. like Jason’s “”street”” origin has become inseparable from his characterization as an angry, brash, violent kid, and that in itself reflects a whole host of cultural stereotypes that I might argue occasionally/often dip into racialized tropes (like just imagine if he wasn’t white, ok). red hood (a play on robin hood and the outlaws, as I just realized...today) is in my exposure/experience mostly depicted as a villain, but he challenges batman’s no-kill philosophy both on an ethical and practical level. every time the joker escapes he kills a whole score more of innocent people, let alone the other rogues—is it truly ethical to let him live or avoid killing him for the cost of one life and let others die?

moreover, batman’s ““blind”” faith in the justice system (prisons, publicly-funded asylum prisons, courts) is conveniently elided—the story usually ends when he drops bad guy of the day off at arkham or ties up the bad guys and lets the police come etc etc. part of this is obviously bc car chases are more cinematic than dry court procedurals, but there is an alternate universe where bruce wayne never becomes batman and instead advocates for the arkham warden to be replaced with someone competent and the system overhauled, or in programs encouraging a more diverse and educated police force, or even into social welfare programs. (I am vaguely aware this is sometimes/often part of canon, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s the main focus. and again, I get it’s not nearly as cinematic).

overall, I think the most frustrating thing about the batman franchise or at least what I’ve seen or read of it is that while it does attempt to deal with corruption and injustice at all levels of the criminal justice system/government, it does so either by treating it as “just how life is” or having Dick or Jim Gordon or whoever the fuckjust wipe it out by “eliminating the dirty cops,” completely ignoring the non-fantasy ways these problems are dealt with in real life. it just isn’t realistic. instead of putting restrictions on police violence or educating cops on how to use their weapons or putting work into eradicating the culture of racism and prejudice or god basically anything it’s just all cinematized into the “good few” triumphing over the bad...somehow. its always unsatisfying and ultimately feels like lip service to me, personally.

this also dovetails with the very frustrating way mental health/”insanity” or “madness” is dealt with in canon, very typical of mainstream fiction. like for example:“madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.” yikes, if by ‘push’ you mean significant life stressors, genetic load, and environemntal influences,  then sure. challenge any dudebro joker fanboy to explain exactly what combination of DSM disorders the joker has to explain his “””insanity””” and see what happens. (these are, in fact, my plans for this Friday evening. im a hit at parties).

anyway I do really want to wax poetic about that cop scene in 1x06 so im gonna do just that! honestly when I first saw that I immediately sat up like I’d sat on a fucking tack, my cultural studies senses were tingling. the whole “fuck batman” ethos of the show had already been interesting to me, esp in s1, when bruce was basically standing in for the baby boomers and dick being our millennial/GenX hero. I do think dick was explicitly intended to appeal to a millennial audience and embody the millennial ethos. By that logic, the tension between dick and Jason immediately struck me as allegorical (Jason constantly commenting on dick being old, outdated, using slang dick doesn’t understand and generally being full of youthful obnoxious fistbumping energy).

Even if subconsciously on the part of the writers, jason’s over-aggressive energy can be read as a commentary on genZ—seen by mainstream millennial/GenX audiences as taking things too far. Like, the cops in 1x06 could have been Nick Zucco’s hired men or idk pretty much anyone, yet they explicitly chose cops and even had Jason explain why he deliberately went after them for being cops so dick (cop) could judge him for it. his rationale? he was beaten up by cops on the street, so he’s returning the favor. he doesn’t have the focused “righteous” rage of batman or dick/nightwing towards valid targets, he just has rage at the world and specifically the system—framed here as unacceptable or fanatical. as if like, dressing up like a bat and punching people at night is, um, totally normal and uncontroversial.

on a slightly wider scope, the show seems to internally struggle with its own progressive ethos—on the one hand, they hire the wildly talented chellah man, but on the other hand they will likely kill him off soon. or they cast anna diop, drawing wrath from the loudly racist underbelly of fandom, but sideline her. perhaps it’s a genuine struggle, perhaps they simply don’t want to alienate the bigots in the fanbase, but the issue of cops stuck out to me when I was watching as an social issue where they explicitly came down on one side over the other. jason’s characterization is, I admit and appreciate, still nuanced, but I’d argue that’s literally just bc he’s a white guy and a fan favorite. cast an actor of color as Jason and see how fast fandom and the writer’s room turns on him.

anyway i don’t really have the place to speak about what an explicitly nonwhite!cop!dick grayson would look like, but I do think it would be a fascinating and exciting place to start in exploring and correcting the kind of vague and nebulous complaints i raise above. (edit: i should have made more clear, i mean in the show, which hasn’t dealt with dick’s heritage afaik). also, there’s something to be said about the cop vs detective thing but I don’t really have the brain juice or expertise to say it? anyway if you got this far i hope it was at least interesting and again pls jump in id love to hear other people’s takes!!

tldr i took two (2) cultural studies classes and have Opinions

[filipfatalattractionrblog]

Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) in the first film is never explicitly called a Nazi, but he is implicitly coded as one, from his taste in music to his misanthropy and affinity for medical experiments. He's what you would imagine Dr. Mengele to be. And he's rooted in both the notion of Europe reckoning with its fascist past, and Six's own fear of medical procedures. The anticipation and description of the surgery is almost worse than the actual cutting; Six uses this to spread things out and give us time to expect that maybe the victims will escape. Nope. If they had, the movie probably wouldn't be as memorable. Instead, it gives you the shocking thing you paid to see. And it ends with everyone either dead or dying. But then, in the sequel, we meet Martin (Laurence R. Harvey), a socially awkward, physically unattractive, living-at-home introvert who becomes obsessed with the first film. And like so many toxic fans online, he identifies with Heiter rather than his victims — think Rick and Morty fans who somehow believe Rick is meant to be a hero and role model. He plans his own Human Centipede for real, which will involve one of the actual actresses from the movie. It's an elaborate plan, carried out in detail...and then, in the last moments of the film, we find it was just a fantasy. He doesn't have it in him to actually do the thing. The "It's all a dream" ending is usually a cop-out, but not here, and here's why: threats on the Internet by obsessive fanboys like Martin, in real life, blur the lines between fantasy and reality, deliberately. If caught, they'll claim their threats were just for the LOLz. But sometimes the threats involve actual stalking, or swatting, i.e. calling in a fake crime at the subject's home address, summoning police with guns drawn who may shoot someone by mistake. Feeling powerless, many of today's alt-right recruits idolize powerful figures both real and fictional, and draw up revenge fantasies about a world they feel rejects them. And yes, those are often directed at favorite actresses who wouldn't give them the time of day in real life, and the characters they admire are often fascist. Part three takes it a step further. The next step is that those nascent Nazis invade real-world politics. In the third film, a maniacal, racist, misogynist prison warden (Laser again) is inspired by his accountant (Harvey again) to watch the first two Human Centipede movies. He does, and is inspired to make his real-life (mostly nonwhite) inmates into a centipede as a formal punishment. The idea has gone from a fringe Nazi concept, to something giggled at by Internet "incels" (involuntary celibates), to becoming actual policy — critics of the White House's "Muslim ban" architect Stephen Miller would say this describes him. It's no coincidence that Laser and Harvey play the inspired and the inspirations; it's a shorthand for saying that in fact, there's no appreciable difference between Nazis and people who flirt with Nazi ideas. The third film ends on a note that implies things will only get worse from here. Back in 2009, the news cycle wasn't quite what it is today, but those looking could see a pattern: fringe blog says something outrageous (think "birtherism"), semi-mainstream commentator discusses it as an item worth considering, then mainstream news pick up on that commentator's take and make it a headline that begins "Some people are saying..." That cycle has only gotten worse, when the president retweets conspiracy theorists and says there are good people on both sides of a pro-slavery debate; meanwhile, right-wing actors like Adam Baldwin deliberately stoke the anger of hardcore video gamers by bolstering misogynist fears that women use sex to get good game reviews, and feminists are coming to ruin and censor violent or sexy titles. The mainstream media spends the day talking about it, the president (who got elected on some of this stuff) sometimes retweets it, until the next crackpot notion takes root in the online fever swamps. The regurgitation and egestion may be metaphorical, but it's a human centipede all its own.

10 Years of “Human Centipede” And It’s Prediction Of The Alt-Right

[chelsieheartstriker]

It's not Zack, but his fans who are making the situation worse. Since I logged in, like you said Zack's haters have been dissing him everywhere. But Zack's fans too have been flocking under many tweets which don't demonize him n are simply stating their opinion on why the movies didn't work for them. I've also realized most of them never read comics n their only justification for bat/supes killing are golden age comics or injustice. They're comparing mainstream heroes to antiheroes n Watchmen-

I think we need to remember the context here: Zack’s haters have spent years vilifying him, to the point that he doesn’t really post on Twitter anymore. After his daughter’s death, you had people gleefully celebrating that it meant he was off Justice League. Under Tweets expressing fondness for his work, you’ll find his haters being like “lol, Martha” or “Snyder sucks”. His fans are more likely to be pointing out when an opinion involves ignoring what actually happened in the movie or objecting to downright defamation of character. You cannot equate these things. Have there been fans of his that were rude? Yeah, sure. But that is a very small percentage of his fans, the majority of whom are generally polite, but protective, because reviewers, bloggers, random people have been downright cruel for years. There is a distinct line between being, hey, stop being an asshole and Zack Snyder is a terrible person that hates his mom. At this point, if you don’t like his work, move on. It’s been three years since BvS. Let the people that enjoy it enjoy it.

And you want to know what our justification for Superman killing is? That he had a choice between protecting an innocent family that Zod was threatening and Zod, who had made it clear he was never going to stop, didn’t care how many people he killed. And that’s no choice at all. It’s about the fact that Clark spent so much time isolated, trying to be good and do the right thing, but there was no easy way out, no deux ex machina that would let him save everyone. Our justification is that Man of Steel put him in a position where he had no choice. Clark has just as much respect for life as any version of the character. He not only doesn’t kill except in the one instant he was backed into a corner, he doesn’t even raise his hands to fight childhood bullies, the drunk guy that threw stuff at him. He cried over Zod’s body. Our justification is that we don’t need to justify anything because the movie made it perfectly clear why it happened. It’s very similar to our justification for Batman killing. The story made very clear how he got to that point and the movie flat out doesn’t work without him having a moral code to which he’s now failing to live up. It’s literally about him getting back to heroism.

That is most definitely not true - or no more true than that most people don’t actually read comics. How is it fair to only criticize Snyder fans for that? What about people that hated on Titans that know nothing about the comics and only hate it because it’s not like the Teen Titans cartoon or the countless people whose idea of Superman comes from the Donner movies and not the comics? What about MCU fans that don’t know anything about how the comics Avengers are all terrible people that have trodden on mutant rights for years and insist that Captain America is an all around great guy that demonstrates the best of what America should be? What about XMCU fans that think Xavier is a hero and Wolverine is the most important character in the franchise? Hell, we don’t even have to talk about adaptations, here - most comic fans cherrypick what they want to accept from canon, and anything they don’t like, dismiss it as somehow less valid than what they do. This website is full of people whose idea of characters comes from fanon. Think about all those posts about the Batfamily featuring Batdad Bruce, happy go lucky Dick, lit nerd Jason, coffee addict Tim, perfect angel Cass, angry child that likes animals Damian - those have very little to do with who these characters actually are, yet those are the perspectives from which people criticize canon characterization! And besides, what gives you that idea? Have you conducted a survey? Have you polled fans of other superhero adaptations and compared the percentages? Have you compared those numbers to that of comic book readers in the general population, regardless of whether or not they like Snyder movies? Because if you haven’t, then I can say, with just as much validity as your “Snyder fans don’t read comics", that Snyder haters are mostly white fanboys and male feminists that refuse to recognize that it’s an immigrant story that is decidedly not for them.

And it’s not that we’re comparing mainstream heroes to antiheroes - or, at least, not in the modern sense. It’s that we’re embracing the idea of the classical anti-hero in just about all the protagonists. Someone that is constantly trying to do the right thing even when it’s hard to tell what the right thing is. A fallen hero that has to redeem himself. Someone that walked away from it all and is now coming back. DCEU Superman is absolutely not an antihero. He’s a very human, fundamentally good person in a deeply flawed world. That’s not a cynical message, it’s a hopeful one, deeply rooted in comic material.

[silverzeo]

No 2nd Chances for Scrappy Doo...

Well… the newest Scooby-Doo movie, “The Curse of the 13th Ghost” came out earlier this week, to give the show “The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo” a proper conclusion after left hanging for… 35 years, give or take. And they do wrap things up… kinda of. I won’t spoil it for those who want to see it… I will talk about ONE subject of the film that they “touched” up on… Scrappy Doo.

We all know Scrappy Doo. The tagalong puppy nephew to Scooby, who is eager to help the gang on their mystery solving (mostly for giving them a must needed ratings boost when he was popular). Known infamously for shouting “puppy power” and running into danger, was part of the franchise for roughly 9 years of the franchise, only to be benched for a decade… then to come back as the “twist” villain in the live action movie, as well as being a series of jokes on Cartoon Network bumpers (and on of their first flash games) and even the Scooby Doo Franchise seem to disown Scrappy,  such as either having his name/image omitted on box art/summary of movies he is in; to even having the Gang themselves stating that have “promised” to never speak of him again…

But for the last couple of years, things have been looking up for Scrappy. In the Scooby Apocalypse comics, he returns as his live-movie counterpart, only with more depth and playing off as an anti-hero. Then he had a quick Easter Egg cameo on Supernatural, where nothing bad was done or said to him (AGAIN, a character like Scrappy was on Supernatural, and NOTHING bad happened to him). And he was even shown on some Youtube promotional videos and DVD covers. Even the series where he stared in just got a DVD a release.

So when this movie, the Curse of the 13th Ghost was announced, and the trailer for it had Flim-Flam, a character considered to be more annoying buy less infamous than Scrappy, to be in it. Hope for Scrappy, who was also in the show, was… mix. It would have been a great chance for Scrappy to have a proper sendoff from the franchise… or yet another chance for him to be the butt end of joke, as WB and productions teams had little to no problem to take a shot at the pint-size pup…

And the results of the movie was this: He was cut out entirely. He was a major character in the show, but they cut him out. The movie has a montage-recap of the entire series, with narration too: And Scrappy was absent for the whole thing. And when the Scooby Gang and Flim-Flam team up entirely, Flim asks about Scrappy, only to have Fred and Velma blink in confusion and Velma asking “What’s a Scrappy?”. It doesn’t help either thay on the movie’s DVD package, they actually HAVE the first and last episodes of the actual show it was based on… which includes Scrappy in them…

….

SO yeah, no matter  what the circumstances are, the "original" Scrappy Doo will NOT exist in anymore Scooby Doo media mediums... or at least, outside of the first movie where they based the coaster on, or the Apocalypse comics where is a vengeful cyborg dog.

In the show, “Mystery Incorporated,” Daphne and Fred acknowledged Flim-Flam, willing to talk about him with some level of affection (even if he was serving prison time according Daph, but when they see Scrappy, they turned away and wish to never speak of him ever again...

And then again, in the OK KO episode with the Ghoul School girls... the girls referenced "that weird guy with the Great Dane." Great Dane. As in singular... and we all know they meant Shaggy, and of course Scooby; and defiantly not Scrappy. So you can take it that he was erased in that "timeline" too.

And with THIS movie, with the "entire" gang back, they did away Scrappy pretty much completely, save for Flim-Flam asking about him, to which Velma seem to have no idea of what he was talking about. The movie took effort to bring back this series back for an ending, despite how it was a "so bad it is good" kinda of show and give Flim-Flam a 2nd chance despite him being more hated than Scrappy, only less infamous than the pup himself.

This movie was pretty much THE last chance for Scrappy, as the creative teams would have been OBILGATED to have Scrappy make a return... but they didn't. In fact, the one line where he is mention can easily be edited out if they want to... which is more disheartening... they only left it in to ensure the people who DO remember Scrappy is that he doesn't exist in the modern stuff now. And with them including the actual episodes of the show where he exists, WB pretty much just says “We don’t care if he had a role or not, he will be cut no matter what.” So if they make a sequel to Ghoul School or Reluctant Werewolf, it won’t matter if Scrappy was in it, he won’t be there again… if not as a joke of course…

Yeah... WBs may tolerate Scrappy's image nowadays, even willing to at least acknowledge the fact that he existed in the past, but that doesn't mean that they will actually USE him again. We MIGHT get to see him appear in the mainstream comics... though DC  Comics had requested via newsletter to the fans to stop asking about him and stated he will not appear in their runs of Scooby Doo...

Remember, Development and Production Wise: Scrappy Doo was added in to boost ratings, and he started out as a great hit with the younger crowds, and was popular and help the show trend at the time; and after all the debate, that is considered that Scrappy's one "REAL” contribution to the gang and show, now that he is no longer selling... what’s the point to having him again?

Yes, I know there is more to him, and despite his faults that fanboys have hammered in about him, he does have the potential to be great assets to the show and gang... but like with this movie, they prove that they would rather NOT have him around anymore than try to make him work...

So yeah... I know everyone here have their idea of how the “Scooby Doo Timeline” works and what IS actually considered to be "canon", but the writing is on the wall: Scrappy Doo will not come back into the franchise properly.

So… for now at least, the best the pup can have now is whatever the fans can give him. And this year marks his 40th birthday. So lets try to make this year really matter for the little puppy.

[too-much-jonerys]

Discussion and Story Time: What is your Jonerys/GoT backstory?

When, how and why did you get into the fandom and ship?

This is mine. Please allow for my essay to commence:

Intro to Game of Thrones

I first learned about GoT in 2010. I didn't know anything about the story other than it seemed like my kind of thing (medieval, accents, murder, etc.). Oddly enough, my interest started when I was doing fancasts for The Hunger Games on a message board. I thought Isaac was a girl when I saw the pic of him with an bow and said, "She'd be a decent Katniss". Realized that "Actually, no... but who is that dark-haired beauty next to him? Gale?" It was Kit. Kit HarRington back then because IMDb and everywhere was misspelling his name. Only three pictures of Kit existed on the internet at that time, but I remembered thinking "He looks a little small for Gale, but I'd tap it for sure."

Side Note: This was also back when Tamzin Merchant, whom I recognized from Pride & Prejudice, was listed as Daenerys.

But at the time I didn't have HBO, so I kind of put it out of my mind.

Fast forward to April/May 2011, I was working on The Hunger Games movie in NC and was staying in a hotel one night. Game of Thrones came on and I was like "Hell yeah! It's that show with that guy!" First episode I saw was the tourney where the Mountain beheaded his horse. I was like "Wha... WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING?!" and continued watching. It only showed up to episode 8 that night, but it stuck with me. Still, I didn't pick it back up again later until that summer, SDCC 2011.

Intro to Jonerys

So, SDCC 2011 was a major turning point. I was following SDCC that year coverage in hopes of more THG stuff and GoT popped up. I was like "There it is again!" It just kept coming back and pulling me in. If you remember that was its first SDCC appearance and Kit, Emilia, Lena, Peter, Nikolaj, Jason, etc. were there.

I was thrist-watching interviews with Kit which at the time always coincided with Emilia's interviews. So, while I was learning all about my new boo thang, I was getting introduced to the adorable little bean that is Emilia Clarke. For what little info there was about Kit, amplify that secrecy by 20 for Emilia.

Does anyone remember when no one knew when her birthday was or how old she was? May or April, 1st or 7th or 28th, 1986 or 87 or 90. No one knew for an oddly long time. We were all ass wrong btw.

Side Note: Word of the IMDb boards was that Kit was there with his dark-haired girlfriend. I admittedly initially thought that was Emilia. It wasn't. It was Heather (? Hannah? Something with an H).

Anyway, their interactions were absolutely adorable. So much so that I hadn't realized that their characters didn't know each other. I hadn't seen the full season by then so I didn't know if they met in the last two eps. I just knew that their actors were absolutely beautiful and really cute together. So I peaked around the interwebz:

"Do they fuck," I asked with sophistication and class.

It was a bit of a question mark back then, but the general concensus was "No." Then I asked the real, pivotal question:

"Do their characters fuck?"

And with that question, I was led into the abyss that was Jonerys (simply Jon x Daenerys then). To call it a rabbit hole is an understatement. This was a black hole. A void. I fell into nearly 20 years of theories, backstories, book quotes, prophecies, R+L=J, Targcest. It was the wildest ride ever, and I emerged from the other side bald and foaming at the mouth. But, all I knew was that I was all in. These ice and fire assholes were going to be in love and by George(R. R. Martin) everyone was going to hear about it from me.

Just imagine me knocking on your door with a pamphlet asking "Do you have time to talk about our Azor Ahai, Jonerys?" I was hooked. I skipped classes to read/watch GoT. I read all the books. All the Wiki pages and message boards. Got my mom invested in it so much so that we bought HBO solely for GoT season 2. I came on here yelling about my love of it and made some friends that way. One of my buddies and I spent years trying to make our Jonerys ship name "SnowStorm" happen on Tumblr. So I was very pleased when it took off after all that time. The ship was more than pretty actors to me. It actually made perfect literary sense in its own.

I helped fight off the naysayers and haters (which were mostly Stannis fanboys then). I watched fan videos and scraped up whatever little morsels of good ship content were given. All while being told "That pairing ain't gonna happen. You guys are all just crazy. They won't even meet." All while knowing that someday, somehow this damned ship of mine would feed me, and I would feast in abundance (and drink the haters' tears).

So, seeing how mainstream and CANON it is now is just so gratifying. I don't fight the haters anymore, because I'm retired. I spend my days drinking up boatsex, dreaming of Targ babies and remembering back when all of that was simply written off as the far-fetched nonsense of "crazy fangirls."

*Eliza Hamilton voice* "Look at where we are. Look at where we started."

[collusioncomics]

Nicholas Warner’s Agents of  S.E.A.L.

Nick Warner, [Maxwell Lord/Nick Fury] was an adept businessman specializing in the marketing of superhero identities in mainstream media, and in many cases even engaging as a kind of talent scout and manager for various well established heroes and their teams.  In many ways he serves as the primary adversary keeping the subversive tactics of [G.Gordon Godfrey/Master Pandemonium] in check.  But he is also a megalomaniac, and as his career grows he quickly finds the level of control and amount of credit he’s given unsatisfying.  To quench this thirst for recognition he establishes his own super hero team, under his direct and explicit command, The Great S.E.A.L., which he markets heavily as an “All American” hero team.  His need to control all facets of his team results in manufacturing backstories, personas, drama, and even adversaries and crises for his team.  He scripts their lives and careers like a reality TV show.  Invariably this turns him into as much a benefactor of super villains as heroes, and as such his competing hero team, in their various incarnations, tend to walk the line on being rival heroes and themselves villains.

As pillars of his original team he recruits...

[Manchester Black/USAgent], The Brand: Wielding the team’s titular Great Seal of the United States of America, the original figurehead team leader; [Lord/Fury]’s loyal lackey.  He uses telekinetic powers to control his flying shield as a weapon.  He doesn’t often do much of his own thinking or decision making, but when prompted to offer up his thoughts, he is quick to reveal himself as a fanatical extremist of nearly every description.

After a series of media debacles and a subsequent shuffling of team roster, he is recast as the stoic and silent big brother of the team briefly before being replaced entirely by a second Brand.  The mantle would be passed down through a long line of very short lived successors, all trying to redefine the character in some way that could prove marketable, yet the legacy would be continually marred by scandal.

[Hawk/Cloak] & [Dove/Dagger], The Talons Dexter & Sinister: The Brand’s  wingmen (hurr hurr...) and eagle themed lieutenants.  They were selected for their marketable qualities as a duo, and as thematic accessories to the Great Seal gimmick.  They possess opposed powers of temperament influence, allowing them to either inspire aggression or passivity in the people in their immediate area with focused intent.  Ironically this makes Dexter, with his pacifying powers, the most effective vanguard in battle and Sinister a better support, buffing his teammates with rushes of adrenaline, bursts of confidence, and even temporary invulnerability.

They would eventually be discharged after sustaining debilitating injuries in a tragic defeat that [Fury/Lord] orchestrated to introduce an element of drama and edge to garner public sympathies and retain interest.  The battle however would escalate out of control and go largely off script resulting in the unintended lasting injuries:  Sinister would be blinded and lose the ability to aim his powers at specific individuals (and gain the involuntary ability to use them on himself), and Dexter would develop PTSD and selective mutism.  But surprisingly they prove themselves quite effective as actual heroes after seeking therapy following their departure from S.E.A.L.

[Stargirl/Firestar], Firecracker: A somewhat distressingly young girl unwittingly roped into the superhero persona to fulfill [Lord/Fury]’s perceived need for a token female with sex appeal in order to sell the team’s image.  She is scouted from [Court of Owls/Massachusetts Academy] by the headmistress Li’l Birdie [Penguin/Emma Frost], and outfitted with some rudimentary equipment to amplify her underdeveloped and largely untrained [meta/mutant] powers, but is relegated largely to posing for photo ops.

Not long into the gig she becomes a target of sexual advances by her older male teammates, which she takes up with [Lord/Fury]. He dismisses her concerns and instead advises her to pick a team mate to date publicly, as he thinks it will make for a better team image.  Instead she takes it upon herself to reach out into the hero community outside her team to receive proper training —not willing to accept being both exploited by and then run out of the hero business, she becomes hellbent on making it as a super heroine for real.

She makes her way through several different mentors at Birdie’s recommendation, putting all her effort into tackling her self designed crash course in heroics until she becomes a competent heroine in what all her mentors regard as a shockingly short amount of time.  She returns to the team hardened and with a dramatic make over, and the next time one of her team mates sexually assaults her, she puts him in the hospital.  [Lord/Fury] isn’t especially upset however, and actually tries to leverage the whole incident to make him look like the hero for siding with Firecracker over her assailant.  This hypocrisy proves the final straw, and Firecracker leaves to join [Batman/Prof.X]’s private academy and the [Batman Family/X-Men].

[S.T.R.I.P.E./Blue Streak], Old Glory: A retired Olympian and war veteran recruited for his existing public image and appeal with older demographics.  Well past his prime as an athlete, he’s aided by an exoskeleton and armor facilitating superhuman speeds, but really he mostly keeps to clean up duty, crowd control, and publicity stunts; often just running to create a blur of red and white stripes for effect. (literally just running in circles)  He’s fine with this of course, because he’s mostly in the gig to relieve his glory days in the public limelight, rather than see any real action.  He becomes notoriously lazy and entitled, with a bad attitude even by S.E.A.L.’s notoriously low standards.

His time with the team ends, when he sexually assaults the underage Firecracker after her return from training and she overloads his exoskeleton with her powers, overextending its joints and breaking both his legs.  [Lord/Fury] drops all endorsement of him following the incident.

[Red Tornado/Beta Ray Bill], Red Chief (Later, Red Condor): The product of a private contract with [T.O.Morrow/Baron Mordo], secretly being used to serve his larger machinations.  He was initially presented to [Lord/Fury] as purely robotic and under his full control (a premise which would later prove false when the Native American wind spirit trapped inside him would gain control of his machine prison) and was deployed as an appeal for superficial "diversity points.”

After the eventual dissolution of the first S.E.A.L. team, [Lord/Fury] pushes for a more “authentic” hero team, employing cutting edge research into the study and manipulation of the [Meta/Mutant] gene to create a line of “designer” heroes, catered to his specific marketing needs.

[Major Victory/Citizen V], The Brand II: Initially recruited in a pinch to replace the original Brand, he’s actually the agent of the corrupt Atlantean noble, [Black Manta/Baron Zemo], working to help spur anti-American sentiment in Atlantis through subtle false flag tactics.

[Lady Liberty/Atlas], New Colossus: A female body builder hired after Firecracker left the team.  She was chosen to fill the new found niche appeal factor for a muscular heroine that Firecracker brought to light after her intensive training.

[Silent Majority/Screaming Mimi], Anthem (aka Vox Populi): An unsuccessful opera singer who volunteered for [Lord/Fury]’s designer [meta/mutant] gene project in hopes of attaining fame an fortune.  He has the power to create duplicates of himself (but only up to four, and not capable of autonomous thought) as well as bionic implants to weaponize his voice.

[Mayflower/Amazon], American Beauty: Another of [Lord/Fury]’s designer [meta/mutant] with the ability to control plant-life and a penchant for tormenting men, hero, villain, and civilian alike.  (Honestly I don’t know what to do with her that’s not just Poison Ivy...)

[Skyman/Mach-I], Full-Mast: A kind of informal legacy character to Old Glory.  His flight suit is based on Old Glory’s speedster exoskeleton.  The unfortunate euphemism of a name after the circumstances of his predecessor aside, he earns the nickname Half-Mast, because he frequently makes a point of flying low to make sure his face is seen in public.

[Sparkler/Techno], Hallmark: Tech whiz, boy hero put in charge of the team’s equipment, he’s basically a superhero ball boy.  Marketable as cute and chipper with a kind of old fashioned boy-ish charm.  He’s the first to die when [Lord/Fury] decides his new team needs some drama. (think the iconic death of Bucky, Jason Todd, and Supergirl covers.)

In [Lord/Fury]’s quest for wealth and acclaim he also becomes well acquainted with [Toyman/Norman Osborn] and his son, [Dollmaker/Harry Osborn].  The family of toy manufacturers are at first rivals and later accomplices in [Lord/Fury]’s marketing crusades.  Their compulsive and often manic love of superheroes fuels their stalker-like fanboy tendencies and feel the need to insert themselves into the lives of heroes by any means, even as antagonists.  They become in turn [Lord/Fury]’s crisis engineers when he begins more heavily scripting S.E.A.L.’s adventures.

This was definitely not meant to be as long as it turned out, or involve as many specific character combinations.  This team is such a heinous mess of a concept and got so wildly out of hand before I really noticed.  I can’t help but love coming up with these disastrous characters, though.  I definitely meant for them to be more of a joke than a tragedy at first, but something about the tone of it all had me inadvertently channeling a little bit of Garth Ennis’ The Boys.  I just like the idea of a bunch of delusional wannabes, glory hogs, and narcissists posing as super heroes.

Hey, there newcomer!  If you are in fact new to this blog, I’m sure you’re a little confused.  But if this has been the kind of confused you enjoy, then check out our about page to have maybe less confused and more enjoy?