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Granted it's been a long time since I read Y so I don't remember every single detail, but just like any other dystopian/future set genre piece the reader is always shown from the protagonists point of view, and focuses on a small subsection of people. So, as with the Amazonian women, we are focused on them because Yorrick's sister is with them. We are shown a functioning society in the prison (again because Yorrick crosses paths with the prison). For the sake of danger and suspense of course Yorrick is going to encounter problems and such. It would be a pretty boring book otherwise. I don't think BKV set out to say "see, look how lovely things would get if it was only women" but more like "wouldn't it be interesting if there was one man left in the world and he had to deal with these type of people".
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Feb 11, 2014 20:56
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Losing 50% of any society will probably throw things into chaos, sex of the bereaved be damned. I don't remember anything particularly sexist about Y: The Last Man's vision of a post-apocalyptic earth.
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Feb 11, 2014 20:56
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Madkal posted:Granted it's been a long time since I read Y so I don't remember every single detail, but just like any other dystopian/future set genre piece the reader is always shown from the protagonists point of view, and focuses on a small subsection of people. So, as with the Amazonian women, we are focused on them because Yorrick's sister is with them. We are shown a functioning society in the prison (again because Yorrick crosses paths with the prison). For the sake of danger and suspense of course Yorrick is going to encounter problems and such. It would be a pretty boring book otherwise. I don't think BKV set out to say "see, look how lovely things would get if it was only women" but more like "wouldn't it be interesting if there was one man left in the world and he had to deal with these type of people". I actually found the book to be very pro-women. Or rather, it treated women as people, not as a boring MRA-fantasy women who can't survive on their own or Xena Warrior Princess who doesn't need men for anything. Their society is hurting without dudebros, but it isn't worthless.
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Feb 11, 2014 20:58
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theflyingorc posted:I actually found the book to be very pro-women. Or rather, it treated women as people, not as a boring MRA-fantasy women who can't survive on their own or Xena Warrior Princess who doesn't need men for anything. Their society is hurting without dudebros, but it isn't worthless. Also its the women who do everything and the man is pretty useless.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:01
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bobkatt013 posted:Also its the women who do everything and the man is %100 useless. There I fixed that for you.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:02
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Sarchasm posted:Losing 50% of any society will probably throw things into chaos, sex of the bereaved be damned. I don't remember anything particularly sexist about Y: The Last Man's vision of a post-apocalyptic earth. If anything, Y portrays women unrealistically well. Actual human beings in that situation would burn poo poo down.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:03
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CapnAndy posted:Losing 50% of any society would be an unspeakable calamity. Losing an entire gender, from every species, is beyond apocalyptic. If nobody can breed, life is loving done, game over, pack it in. They should be going through some Children of Men type poo poo, not the relatively cosy upheaval that Y actually portrays.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:05
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There is a scene where someone points out that all the sewer rats are gone, replaced by insects.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:10
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theflyingorc posted:I think it was just mammals. You could handle a lot of the food backbone through fish.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:13
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redbackground posted:I can't even imagine the sanitation and mental issues created by the instant creation of 4 billion+ corpses scattered everywhere. There's no cleaning that all up, to any reasonable degree. I think Y went into this a bit, but I don't remember, and I'm sure it would be much worse in actuality. Stadiums have been turned into mass graves, and there are people who go around picking up the bodies.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:15
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Y is odd because it is fundamentally a story about a dumb (23 year old) kid growing up and learning how to deal with girls, but it is set at postapocalyptic start of a new world of all woman clones. The end really pulls the book together magnificently well, and I really like the book, but I know a lot of people, all women, who just hate the book because it focuses on the least interesting thing in the world at that point.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:18
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theflyingorc posted:I don't think this is fair at all and that you were looking to be upset, but whatever. This is a really lovely and condescending thing to say, FYI. I ain't read Y: The Last Man but it's pretty dumb to assume someone picked it up hoping to get mad and disappointed at it.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:27
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Let's all pile on to this woman and tell her about how wrong and dumb she is for thinking a comic is sexist.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:33
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theflyingorc posted:I don't think this is fair at all and that you were looking to be upset, but whatever. The meandering and preachy bits I can probably understand, but I think you read your expectations into the book real bad here. I had no expectations going into the book, I was handed it by my husband who said 'hey, you might like this, it was pretty popular when it came out, its about a world without men' to which I said 'oh really? That sounds interesting' and started reading. I had only vaguely heard about it in passing before, all good things. theflyingorc posted:I actually found the book to be very pro-women. Or rather, it treated women as people, not as a boring MRA-fantasy women who can't survive on their own or Xena Warrior Princess who doesn't need men for anything. Their society is hurting without dudebros, but it isn't worthless. It treated women as two-dimensional caricatures who were often cardboard stand-ins for various takes on feminist philosophy. The fact that you consider it laudable that a comic book treated women as people should make you take a step back and consider the phrase 'damning with faint praise.' CapnAndy posted:Losing 50% of any society would be an unspeakable calamity. Losing an entire gender, from every species, is beyond apocalyptic. If nobody can breed, life is loving done, game over, pack it in. They should be going through some Children of Men type poo poo, not the relatively cosy upheaval that Y actually portrays. Except its quite possible to combine the DNA from two eggs and get a viable (if always female) offspring. So no, life is not loving done, though male life is. And similar experiments have been performed since the 70s, so there's not even the 'well that happened since the book came out' excuse, either. I am also not a geneticist or any kind of scientist and I knew about it, so neither is that an excuse. quote:Also its the women who do everything and the man is %100 useless. And yet who is the star of the show? Whose voice takes precedence? Why is it he can only seem to find women who have been hosed up past all recognition by the loss of men as romantic partners? The fact you have this very interesting setting and yet you're relegated to learning about it through the eyes of this twit is really annoying. Its like Twilight for fedora-bedecked neckbeards. 'Oh woe is me I am the center of the world's attention even though I do nothing, am a boring cipher and have no purpose besides being the world's McGuffin! Why won't they just leave me alone to be with my ONE TRUE LOVE? Oh wait, time for a lecture!' I am not saying people would not mourn. I am not saying the world would not be chaotic. I am saying this guy's take on it is laughably unrealistic. No women is going to just cut her left boob off and go riding around the countryside on a motorcycle tearing poo poo up, let alone recruit a bunch of other women to do the same thing, because PATRIARCHY IS DEAD AND WE MUST KEEP IT THAT WAY or whatever bullshit reason was given. The Japanese dating thing came across as both racist and sexist. 'Oh hey they have geishas, those are like fake girlfriends, let's have them become fake boyfriends!' What the hell does he think women do when they're not in a relationship and they want to go out to dinner now? Its like he has no concept of how women act when men aren't around and it becomes painfully obvious as the series goes on. I also apparently have a little more faith in humanity than CapnAndy. Anyway, I do not claim to be an expert on it, I barely remember the source material, its just like, my opinion, maan. And I will leave it there because I'd have to reread it to comment further and I'm just not going to do that. quote:but I know a lot of people, all women, who just hate the book because it focuses on the least interesting thing in the world at that point. Pretty much this. Oracle fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 21:41
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Oracle posted:Except its quite possible to combine the DNA from two eggs and get a viable (if always female) offspring. So no, life is not loving done, though male life is. And similar experiments have been performed since the 70s, so there's not even the 'well that happened since the book came out' excuse, either. I am also not a geneticist or any kind of scientist and I knew about it, so neither is that an excuse.
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Feb 11, 2014 21:49
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CapnAndy posted:Some experiments, a what-if book, and a mouse are hardly a replacement for all the natural breeding of every mammalian species on Earth, dude. Are you arguing that cloning is not a viable method of survival in regards to Y the Last Man?
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Feb 11, 2014 21:50
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Y: The Last Man is way more racist than it is sexist.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:04
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Oracle posted:It treated women as two-dimensional caricatures who were often cardboard stand-ins for various takes on feminist philosophy. 355 is up there with Kate Bishop for awesome female characters.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:05
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mr.capps posted:Y the Last Man's biggest sin is that the I Am Woman comic that shows up in the story near the end sounds way cooler and more interesting than Y the Last Man. Yes, but really Y the Last Man's biggest sin is that it is deeply mediocre. It's startlingly uninteresting for a book about a post-apocalyptic world. Also, realism is a bizarre shield to use in defense of a high-concept work. My complaint about any given genre book is never that it's unrealistic - they're not supposed to be. Edit: ^^^^ 355 is a bog standard Strong Warrior Woman. Again, for a premise with so much potential ("Every male dies but one!") Vaughan gives us very little. The Dagda fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 22:06
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Senor Candle posted:Are you arguing that cloning is not a viable method of survival in regards to Y the Last Man? Look, just off the top of my head and a few minutes on Google, good luck getting a cow pregnant after it's 10 years old. Which means that after XY-day, you've got a hard 10 year clock on figuring out perfect cattle cloning, getting the massive Brave New World cloning complexes up, training all the people you need to run them, and starting production, oh and while you were doing that, thousands upon thousands of species went extinct and the entire ecosystem collapses anyway. There's no loving way you can clone the millions of copies of the millions of species you need to save, not in time, and Y's "oh yeah um 40 years later we've got like five or six dudes, that's good enough right" is beyond ridiculous. No, it's really not, and explain to me again how human civilization looked at extremely likely extinction, with a massive die-off as the best case scenario, and just shrugged its shoulders and made the architecture less phallic? Because I don't believe it.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:07
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Oracle posted:It treated women as two-dimensional caricatures who were often cardboard stand-ins for various takes on feminist philosophy. I'm not even trying to defend the book as great literature, but I don't think you're justifying thinking of it as garbage. quote:Except its quite possible to combine the DNA from two eggs and get a viable (if always female) offspring. So no, life is not loving done, though male life is. And similar experiments have been performed since the 70s, so there's not even the 'well that happened since the book came out' excuse, either. I am also not a geneticist or any kind of scientist and I knew about it, so neither is that an excuse. quote:And yet who is the star of the show? Whose voice takes precedence? Why is it he can only seem to find women who have been hosed up past all recognition by the loss of men as romantic partners? The fact you have this very interesting setting and yet you're relegated to learning about it through the eyes of this twit is really annoying. Its like Twilight for fedora-bedecked neckbeards. 'Oh woe is me I am the center of the world's attention even though I do nothing, am a boring cipher and have no purpose besides being the world's McGuffin! Why won't they just leave me alone to be with my ONE TRUE LOVE? Oh wait, time for a lecture!' edit: My wording here was poor. The series deals with Yorick being a nobody except for his survival. He is the main character, but there's a lot of recognition of the fact that he IS NOT special, just lucky. There's genuinely earned existential angst because the one defining thing of Yorick in this world is that he produces sperm, and that who is is as a person is completely inconsequential. That's interesting to me. quote:I am not saying people would not mourn. I am not saying the world would not be chaotic. I am saying this guy's take on it is laughably unrealistic. No women is going to just cut her left boob off and go riding around the countryside on a motorcycle tearing poo poo up, let alone recruit a bunch of other women to do the same thing, because PATRIARCHY IS DEAD AND WE MUST KEEP IT THAT WAY or whatever bullshit reason was given. quote:The Japanese dating thing came across as both racist and sexist. 'Oh hey they have geishas, those are like fake girlfriends, let's have them become fake boyfriends!' What the hell does he think women do when they're not in a relationship and they want to go out to dinner now? Its like he has no concept of how women act when men aren't around and it becomes painfully obvious as the series goes on. I obviously can't see into your brain, but I do not think your response is in any way proportional to your complaints. I enjoyed the series even if it had some wasted opportunities, uneven pacing, and a few dumb ideas. For a work of its size produced in the comics medium, it was pretty neat-o. theflyingorc fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Feb 11, 2014 |
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Feb 11, 2014 22:07
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Y's biggest sin is its rather heavyhanded (especially the first issue) while trying to be truth is in the middle. I don't even know how you do that.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:07
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Oracle posted:Except its quite possible to combine the DNA from two eggs and get a viable (if always female) offspring. So no, life is not loving done, though male life is. And similar experiments have been performed since the 70s, so there's not even the 'well that happened since the book came out' excuse, either. I am also not a geneticist or any kind of scientist and I knew about it, so neither is that an excuse. And of course society in the book does eventually come to turn to science to rely on asexual reproduction of women (with 2 or 3 individual males DNA codes running around to negligible effect) a solution anticipated by the U.S. Government in the third issue, but that doesn't mean this wouldn't look like a Children of Men-esque end of the world to most women who've experienced an unprecedented global catastrophe, especally in the first few arcs where that story is more prevalent.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:13
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CharlestheHammer posted:while trying to be truth is in the middle. I agree that the series is sometimes preachy, but I think a lot of what happens is that BKV knew he was a male writer working on a largely-female cast, and was overly worried about how the things he said would come across.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:13
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I like how Y was not only was kinda boring and mediocre, but seemed to go out of its way to remain so. Like they would introduce some cool concepts and interesting ideas in there, but then do nothing with them. The male astronauts getting killed off as soon as they were introduce is probably the biggest example.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:15
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The Dagda posted:Edit: ^^^^ 355 is a bog standard Strong Warrior Woman. Again, for a premise with so much potential ("Every male dies but one!") Vaughan gives us very little. Please tell me a comparable character because it is probably an awesome book.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:17
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mr.capps posted:I like how Y seemed to go out of its way to remain bland and uninteresting. Like they would introduce some cool concepts and interesting ideas in there, but then do nothing with them. The male astronauts getting killed off as soon as they were introduce is probably the biggest example. Well the title of the book should have a been a pretty big hint what was going to happen to them, but it didn't do nothing with them, the son of that Astronaut is Emperor of Russia by the end of the series.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:18
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mr.capps posted:I like how Y was not only was kinda boring and mediocre, but seemed to go out of its way to remain so. Like they would introduce some cool concepts and interesting ideas in there, but then do nothing with them. The male astronauts getting killed off as soon as they were introduce is probably the biggest example. Well, they did add a twist with the pregnant astronaut, but that's one of the plot threads that seemed to get away from him. Like, it comes up again, but never in a particularly meaningful way.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:19
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theflyingorc posted:Could you expound on this more? There is a lot of Well so and so is bad as well, both sides are wrong comes up a lot. Also I don't mind preachy but its just not well done. " We don't need men" (and several variations of it) come up a lot in the first issue which just made me groan.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:21
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CharlestheHammer posted:There is a lot of Well so and so is bad as well, both sides are wrong comes up a lot. quote:Also I don't mind preachy but its just not well done. " We don't need men" (and several variations of it) come up a lot in the first issue which just made me groan. That's fair, and like I said, I think a lot of that was BKV overreacting to show "hey, I am writing a ladybook and I am cool with ladies!"
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Feb 11, 2014 22:26
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But is it worth reading? I haven't gotten past the first story arc, and that was... like... when it came out.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:29
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theflyingorc posted:Do you have specific examples? I am not calling you wrong, I'm just curious. There is that bit where the wives of the republican representatives attack the white house wanting to take their husband's spots, and the democrats say no. Then one of the Republicans shoots someone but its cool because the new president (who is a Republican, see there are good people on both sides!) makes everyone compromise.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:31
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Oracle posted:The fact you have this very interesting setting and yet you're relegated to learning about it through the eyes of this twit is really annoying. I have this friend who hates Rabbit, Run because she can't relate to the main character. "He's just an rear end in a top hat," she tells me, and she's not wrong. Rabbit is 100% an rear end in a top hat. You ask John Updike to describe Rabbit in one word, I'm betting the word he chooses is "rear end in a top hat." The trick is that the book never asks you to think of him as anything else. If Rabbit was a Real Cool Guy, it wouldn't be a book. Yorick absolutely is a twit. No one who reads the book thinks anything else. He is, by leaps and bounds, the most useless person in the main cast. It is staggeringly bad luck that he is the only living male left on the planet. And that's why the book is interesting.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:32
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Sarchasm posted:Yorick absolutely is a twit. No one who reads the book thinks anything else. He is, by leaps and bounds, the most useless person in the main cast. It is staggeringly bad luck that he is the only living male left on the planet. And that's why the book is interesting.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:34
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Alien Rope Burn posted:But is it worth reading?
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Feb 11, 2014 22:35
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If BKV wrote as well as Updike this conversation probably wouldn't be happening.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:37
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Alien Rope Burn posted:But is it worth reading? If you like the first volume or two you'll like the book. It has flaws, but a lot of it is really well done, and the art is fantastic.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:37
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CapnAndy posted:Some people like it? The science pisses me off badly enough that I can't see past it; the book tries to ground itself in being real-world (BKV just loooooves to shoehorn in the statistics he learned doing research for each story) and, in my opinion, that makes it all the worse when the time comes for answers about the plague and they turn out to be rooted in the worst sort of discredited psuedo-science and general bullshit. I would have been much happier with A Wizard Did It, That's Also Why Nothing's Going Extinct, Magic, Shut Up. I'm pretty sure all the mammals go extinct, dude. They specifically discuss how it has been long enough that a specific species is gone now. (pygmy shrews or something?) The only part of it that makes absolutely no sense from the science side of things is that they all died at the exact same moment. edit: Mr. Maltose posted:If BKV wrote as well as Updike this conversation probably wouldn't be happening.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:38
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theflyingorc posted:I'm pretty sure all the mammals go extinct, dude. They specifically discuss how it has been long enough that a specific species is gone now. (pygmy shrews or something?) That is what he is talking about. The explanation for how all the mammals go extinct is really dumb and pseudo sciencey. The story kinda prides itself on being "grounded" in reality, and the explanation is just really dumb and goofy. The Amulet of Helene was a way better origin of the plague because it didn't try to explain things in a realistically.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:42
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If I remember correctly they just gave theories. They really did not reveal what was the actual cause.
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Feb 11, 2014 22:44
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