Marvel "Legacy", plus other books being cancelled

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Ares
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Re: Marvel "Legacy", plus other books being cancelled

Post by Ares »

Re: Hydra Cap, I don't think anyone really believed they were going to make Cap evil forever, though as we saw with Hal Jordan, an evil personality switch can last a REALLY long time. The bigger issue was, as you said, the timing. Cap is enjoying incredible popularity due to his excellent movie series, while the country is facing political turmoil and divisiveness that hasn't been seen in decades. Taking the symbol of the country and making him the evil he fought against would be risky at the best of times. Doing it now comes off as being in extremely poor taste and lacking self-awareness.

It doesn't help that Nick Spencer doesn't seem suited to writing superhero stuff, nor that it doesn't take a while lot of squinting to make Secret Empire look like a critique of the Trump administration, and calling everyone that voted for him as part of the problem. And this is from someone who voted Libertarian because I don't like Trump or Hillary, so these politics don't directly bother me. But a lot of Marvel feels like they've been going on a 10 month diatribe about how the wrong person won the election.

Re: Anita

I don't disagree that she's taken up way too many people's time, but at the same time, its not hard to see why they do so. She's attacking something a lot of people do for fun, as well as the people who make and play them. And she does it using misinformation , lies and bad reasoning, something easily debunked by anyone who takes a few moments to even try to do so. So people took it upon themselves to do so, partly to keep the truth out there, partly because its easy and fun, much like mocking The Room.

And lets not kid ourselves, Anita would be what she is with or without the folks debunking her. In every way she's basically a female Jack Thompson, only whereas Jack was an old attourney, she's a young woman who plays the feminist card at a time when doing so gets you easy money and support from 3rd wave feminists and virtue signalers. Unlike Nick Spencer, she timed this perfectly. And she was going to do everything to stay in the public eye, including playing the victim. There's evidence that she exaggerates the harassment she gets (though I have no doubt people do troll her regularly), and has played that into her current position.

So I don't disagree that Anita is a waste of everyone's time, but I believe that she'd be roughly where she is regardless of the folks who debunk her claims. So if I have to choose between an Anita that goes unchallenged and one who has some entertaining folks picking apart her argument, I'll take the latter.
"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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CTPhipps
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Re: Marvel "Legacy", plus other books being cancelled

Post by CTPhipps »

Re: Secret Avengers Cap

I'm a big fan of Hydra as an enemy and love when they show up with their various complicated plans and actions to conquer the world. Them taking over the United States is something which I certainly feel like works as a plotline but I may be projecting. Long before Trump was a candidate for President. I actually made it a plot in my book THE SECRETS OF SUPERVILLAINY that the President of the United States was actually a secret PHANTOM agent (from my "Halt Evil Doer!" setting moved to my novels).

Amusingly, I got some 1 star reviews because people ASSUMED I was making a Trump story when it was actually just me combining Handsome Jack with the Red Skull.

I also believe comics can be an excellent source of social commentary. However, I think we're in a weird sort of situation where the idea of a Nazi Captain America taking over the country with Hydra and it being viewed as a good thing is something people actually think applies to anything in real life. That should be so off the charts as to be inexplicable.

I can't help but think fans were feeling overly sensitive on both sides of the political equation. Lex Luthor was elected President of the United States and if the plot had been done now people would think it was all because of Trump (and Lex Luthor is a real estate developer who puts his name on everything) but it was just because a supervillain becoming a government official a time honored trope.

Hilariously, I think the Kingpin becoming President would have worked better but might have felt a little too derivative of LL's success :)

Re: Anita

I guess my opinion is that Anita Sarkeesian is entitled to regulate matters of taste as she sees fit. I think she's far too harsh on certain games but she's also generally spot-on in other places. REMEMBER ME a.k.a the game which bombed by the guys who eventually did LIFE IS STRANGE went through all sorts of hell because it starred a nontraditional female protagonist.

Asking the questions she does enriches gaming even if she's wrong because healthy debate is good in any environment.

Note: Also, she actually DID diss Life is Strange which is probably the singularly most feminist game in video games. A fact even many of her supporters looked at her sideways for.
Author of Cthulhu Armageddon, Lucifer's Star, Space Academy Dropouts, and The Rules of Supervillainy
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danelsan
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Re: Marvel "Legacy", plus other books being cancelled

Post by danelsan »

I personally think the nazi-cap thing is pretty bad taste, especially in the current sociopolitical climate you have in the USA (and the world in general to a lesser degree). From what I can gather, the story itself paints it in a pretty bad light, but these groups easily find symbolism that suits them in it. It hasn't stopped neo-nazis from looking at it superficially as affirmation - so you get some of them dressed as cap during their manifestations, and I have seen at least one case of one wearing specifically a hydra t-shirt.

For instance, many of them considered hydra-Cap holding Mjolnir as coded support for them, as they regard thor's hammer as one of their symbols. Even if that was not the case, it would not be hard to see "fascist cap is worthy of the godly norse power" as support anyway.

Sure, hydra will be the bad guy and the loser of Secret Empire. But for someone who rallies around Nazis or the Confederates, having their symbols be losers is clearly not a problem. They can now forever point to that arc of Cap to their kids "this is America". They didn't have many high-profile, mainstream icons on "their side", and now they can at least pretend they have.

Now, I'm not gonna say Spencer and whoever else is involved in making this arc happen are massive culprits in the rise of neo-nazi boldness and feelings of affirmation, but symbolism matters to a larger extent than some realize in ideological battles, and thus this ends up taking part in the snowball of bullshit that led to people openly marching with nazi flags and salutes while chanting white power, carrying torches and running people over in a car and so on.

In short, an ill-conceived story in general, and a really terrible one for right now.
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Re: Marvel "Legacy", plus other books being cancelled

Post by Jabroniville »

CTPhipps wrote: Thu Aug 17, 2017 10:53 pm Re: The Hydra- Captain America?

Honestly, I'm of the mind the reaction was a little over-the-top. Then again, I assumed this would never stick and was just an attempt to do what has happened before with superheroes by showing who Captain America IS by showing who Captain America ISN'T. That's why US Agent exists, after all. Also, Azrael to Batman and the Four Superman during the Reign.

i think the issue boiled down to the fact this is a rather turbulent time in America (when isn't it?) and Captain America in any form being a Neo-Nazi was just poor timing.

That's just me, though.

Re: Feminist Frequency and Anita Sarkeesian

*sigh*

Okay, I'm going to make an ass of myself here.

People have made hundreds of pages and dozens (if not hundreds) of hours of video rebutting a woman talking about perceived sexism in video games. I've watched Anita's videos and the majority of them amount to, "Yes, there's a lot of sexy women in scantily clad clothes and getting rescued in video games." Which is an amazing example of "water is wet." I don't actually have much stake in the war against Sarkeesian because I actually disagree with her issues that pacifism and feminism should be linked. I also agree with the work of sex-positive feminist Liana Kerzner (you should look her up if you want a really good rebuttal of Anita's work) that she's focused way too much on "sexy=bad" as well as the fact sexism against cartoons is inherently a different kettle of fish versus sexism against real women.

BE THAT AS IT MAY, is it not true that people getting their knickers in a wad and popping their monocles about a woman complaining there's not enough video game heroines who aren't wearing normal clothes and sold on sex sex sex" is a waste of people's time? OH MY GOD, SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET IS WRONG. The whole thing with Feminist Frequency turned into an enormous embarrassment for the gaming industry, I say this as an independent game reviewer, because a Kickstarter for how "video games are sexist" became "Anita killed Christ." Bad publicity is still publicity and the fact everyone and their brother was up in arms about her tiny internet project made us all look insecure.

This is how all the gamers rushing to defend their hobby from the specter of a pretty girl condemning elements of it looked, except with a lot more gnashing of teeth.

Image

I work in academia or did until I became a full-time author and I can tell you that everything in literature has been accused of being communist, fascist, sexist, feminist, Nazi, or progressive because that's just how academia works. You make a provocative title and hopes someone reads your essay--it's the pre-internet version of clickbait. Michael Moorcock's "Epic Pooh" was a cheap attempt at heat (to co opt a wrestling term) where he called out Tolkien and got a lot of brief fame for it--which is a shame because he's already one of the most influential fantasy authors of all time. Tabletop gaming used to have the same sorts of complaints about it regarding women and we moved on it because some of them were valid.

The irony is the industry was getting better well before these videos became what they are because people are recognizing there's a large minority of women gamers (like 30-40%) due to World of Warcraft and other huge games. Acknowledging them doesn't mean that someone is going to take away Call of Duty or even Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball. It's also crazy that, OH MY GOD, male gamers loved Life is Strange.

Did Anita ever do a review of that game? Because it'd be a damn shame if she didn't.
Pretty well-put. I recall rolling my eyes at a lot of the complaining going in, in particular because Fanservicey games were still being made. The occasional shots taken out of Street Fighter V did not make R.Mika be any more clothed, y'know? That whole thing escalated way out of control, giving both sides more attention than they really should have.
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Ares
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Re: Marvel "Legacy", plus other books being cancelled

Post by Ares »

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"My heart is as light as a child's, a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. And by helping those in need, I will be able to keep that feeling alive."
- Captain Marvel SHAZAM! : Power of Hope (2000)

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