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shame it's largely the territory of villains 
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Aug 11, 2014 22:45
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Tollymain posted:shame it's largely the territory of villains Like Batman!
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Aug 11, 2014 22:58
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Poison Mushroom posted:Now that's a superpower worth having. 
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Aug 11, 2014 23:00
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Superstring posted:Like Batman! billionaire who goes out and beats the loving poo poo out of people who are desperate/mentally ill enough to work for psycho supercriminals, hell yeah he's villainous
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Aug 11, 2014 23:11
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Tiny baby Pintsize is having a tiny baby tanty. D'aww.
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Aug 12, 2014 12:01
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Nobody likes hipsters, nobody.
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Aug 12, 2014 15:45
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Haha oh man. If the superpowers = privilege undercurrent wasn't perceptible before, it definitely should be now!
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Aug 12, 2014 16:53
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Captain Oblivious posted:Haha oh man. If the superpowers = privilege undercurrent wasn't perceptible before, it definitely should be now! Honestly, It didn't click for me until Alison was talking to Daphne's roommates and I thought about how little she has to fear in social situations since she can bench press cars. Although her talk with Cleaver should have been a strong clue towards that theme.
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Aug 13, 2014 05:07
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And every page becomes twice as good when I remember he's still using the chipmunk voice. Imagine Alvin saying "We all got to be loving hipsters about everything."
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Aug 13, 2014 14:00
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The sad part is that he's not wrong about superheroes being a good and straight-forward response to supervillains. He's just ignorant of the fact that the supervillains are gone, either because they got defeated or else also figured out that the whole comic-book reenactment thing was not a very efficient use of their time and powers. It makes me think that he'll end up creating a new supervillain threat down the road to justify his dream lifestyle.
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Aug 13, 2014 14:59
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I remember during Feral's arc that she talked about how other countries didn't expect their bio-dynamics to dress up in patriotic costumes and fight crime at night. I'm guessing other places had problems with bio-dynamic crime but they didn't have any overly dramatic super villains.
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Aug 13, 2014 16:15
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That is still such a dumb idea if you think about it for half a second. Yes they would, they'd insist on it just to keep people from freaking out as bad over superhumans. Behold the bright and identifiable costumes that assure you they aren't mingling with the normal folks, the patriotic colors that imply you government has control over them, the acts of violence against the right kind of people to let you know if you keep your nose clean you are safe from them.
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Aug 13, 2014 16:34
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Slashrat posted:It makes me think that he'll end up creating a new supervillain threat down the road to justify his dream lifestyle. Well, someone's been activating Patrick's former minions. 
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Aug 13, 2014 17:59
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Wyld Karde posted:Well, someone's been activating Patrick's former minions. Now that'd be an amazing twist.
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Aug 13, 2014 18:17
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SirDan3k posted:That is still such a dumb idea if you think about it for half a second. Yes they would, they'd insist on it just to keep people from freaking out as bad over superhumans. Behold the bright and identifiable costumes that assure you they aren't mingling with the normal folks, the patriotic colors that imply you government has control over them, the acts of violence against the right kind of people to let you know if you keep your nose clean you are safe from them. Eh. Cape and tights super heroes are a pretty American tradition. I imagine other countries just integrated the ones that actually fought crime into the police or military.
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Aug 13, 2014 22:48
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:I remember during Feral's arc that she talked about how other countries didn't expect their bio-dynamics to dress up in patriotic costumes and fight crime at night. I'm guessing other places had problems with bio-dynamic crime but they didn't have any overly dramatic super villains. Yeah I'm pretty sure that "in universe" the reason for that is going to be "immediately after the existence of superpowers someone replaced a presidential broadcast with saying they were going to take over america."
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Aug 14, 2014 00:01
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reignonyourparade posted:Yeah I'm pretty sure that "in universe" the reason for that is going to be "immediately after the existence of superpowers someone replaced a presidential broadcast with saying they were going to take over america." Patrick may not think of himself as a person, but I'm pretty sure he's still embarrassed about stuff he did as a teenager.
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Aug 14, 2014 06:48
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:Patrick may not think of himself as a person, but I'm pretty sure he's still embarrassed about stuff he did as a teenager. If the best supervillain alter ego I could come up with was 'Menace' and I had super-mind-reader powers and apparently the charisma of a goddamn vampire to go along with it, I'd be pretty embarrassed too. Poison Mushroom posted:He also gets a mostly-useless power that also happens to mark him very clearly as a Mutant. It's like being Beast or Nightcrawler, but without the actual cool parts of being Beast or Nightcrawler. Marvel 1604 drives home Angel's issue pretty well. Inquisitors are fun! Intolerance is fun! Irony, however, is dead. At any rate, it seems the payout for this round of speculation goes to the 'dousing Pintsize with a bucket of cold water then having realtalk' goons.
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Aug 15, 2014 09:42
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She made the right call ignoring the hysterical criticisms and focusing on the positive to get at the point. I don't know if there was a better way to deliver that message. Only thing that remains to be seen is whether or not Hector wants to hear it. I could take his expression in the last panel either way. I worry that it indicates he's gonna dig his heels in.
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Aug 15, 2014 18:05
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"Things change" seems like a phrase Pintsize is going to throw back in Allison's face once he pulls a Mr. Glass on her.
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Aug 15, 2014 21:58
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I rather enjoyed the alt text on this one though and she's right you don't need a super powered fighting force to deal with non-violent crime except for stealing music over the internet.
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Aug 16, 2014 17:02
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Mr.Pibbleton posted:except for stealing music over the internet. what?
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Aug 16, 2014 19:57
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Tollymain posted:what? The RIAA is notorious for its disproportionate retribution.
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Aug 17, 2014 02:15
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And there goes my sympathy for Hector.
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Aug 19, 2014 11:26
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Wittgen posted:And there goes my sympathy for Hector. Yeah, "Talking in ideas again, making everything all wiggly" is an incredibly naive and childlike way of discussing anything ever. gently caress this guy.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:35
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rotinaj posted:Yeah, "Talking in ideas again, making everything all wiggly" is an incredibly naive and childlike way of discussing anything ever. gently caress this guy. Let alone using the attempted murder of Feral to attempt to vindicate his childish little world. gently caress off Hector.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:12
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Captain Oblivious posted:Let alone using the attempted murder of Feral to attempt to vindicate his childish little world. What is he even talking about? Feral is succeeding, completely, in what she set out to do. The terrorist attack was a setback at worst.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:22
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I think Hector is talking more about how Alison's idea of "hanging up the cape/cowl" has led to acts of heroism that, while incredibly noble, are borderline terrifying in their implication. Have a bunch of kids go off to fight giant robots and gun wielding criminals is "ok" to him, or at least the better option to most alternatives. Having someone relegate themselves to a living organ farm for the rest of the foreseeable future with no way to suppress the pain outside of the feeling of a job well done is probably insane to him. The obvious problem here is that his ideal only works if you have a supervillain to fight against and a team that can bounce back just like heroes in comics do. But what are the guardians doing now that armed police officers couldn't do? And because Hector insists on keeping the Guardians active despite losing their most important member he's subjected all of the remaining members to the changing political and social landscape without protection. Between the fact that your average criminal could kill anyone of them with a stray bullet, and the government is trying to take what is essentially a public peacekeeping force and convert them into something they aren't, its no wonder things are falling apart. There is also the parallel between Alison and Hector because both of them have wound up influencing someone into taking their ideals to a higher extreme than even they would be willing to take them. Alison want's to "save the world" through helping as many people as possible without the need to rely on her destructive powers, and ideally she would want to be the one to do this herself. Feral reflects this by literally sacrificing her body repeatedly in order to provide life for as many people as she can produce organs. Feral managed to take an ability that was previously used to just tank damage, and instead is saving more lives that possibly even Alison has/will. And despite her grieving over her destructiveness; why hasn't Alison signed up with any relief organizations that specialize in construction where she could use her super strength to haul heavy materials or even just learning how to build instead of break? Hector on the other hand wants to "save the world" through acts of vigilantism based on a comic book sense of justice. Mary has been forced to realize that not everybody who goes to court get's justice and that there are people out there who suffer because the system turned against them, just like it turned against her. So she has changed herself into someone who isn't a good guy anymore, just a slasher who can turn invisible. And instead of delivering true justice all she does is deliver vengeance and death. Why hasn't Hector grown like Brad and turned his efforts to helping other supers adjust to a world that just want's them to fit in? Or better yet, why not use his shrinking powers to help technology progress further like Paladin has? In the end both of these characters are idealists that can afford to sit back and soapbox. Alison is practically invulnerable so she doesn't have to fear about a lot of things that most normal people would. And Hector can afford to keep living his superhero dream because at the end of the day the guy who can shrink is still going to be useful in a fight and he still has a couple of white whales left to hunt down.
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Aug 19, 2014 17:51
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Oh good job, that's pretty much everything I was going to say and more even. I think Hector is both terrified and possibly a bit ashamed of Feral's actions and what it means to be a 'superhero'. Remember, Feral used to be a villain, but now she's given all of herself in like, the most hellish act of self-sacrifice imaginable while Hector, the hero, sits in his tower moping. So he's got to be thinking, at least subconsciously, if there's some way he can use his shrinking power to do a comparable act, to help as many people as Feral is. But he's also incredibly, and totally scared out of his mind, because is that what being a hero means? To Allison? To the world? To completely sacrifice your entire being to unending torment? So he clings to his fantasies and the past because there he could help people without getting butchered forever.
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Aug 19, 2014 18:24
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There are a lot of ways to be a hero, but none of them are what Hector's doing right now.
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Aug 19, 2014 19:36
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Mazerunner posted:Oh good job, that's pretty much everything I was going to say and more even. I think Hector is both terrified and possibly a bit ashamed of Feral's actions and what it means to be a 'superhero'. Remember, Feral used to be a villain, but now she's given all of herself in like, the most hellish act of self-sacrifice imaginable while Hector, the hero, sits in his tower moping. Well strictly speaking Feral and her crew were more punisher types than straight up villains. Hector wasn't the one who had to be convinced to work with them, possibly because in comic book morality they're good guys because they're fighting the capital letters Bad Guys.
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Aug 19, 2014 23:52
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Brought To You By posted:And despite her grieving over her destructiveness; why hasn't Alison signed up with any relief organizations that specialize in construction where she could use her super strength to haul heavy materials or even just learning how to build instead of break? Because she believes she can probably do more good in a capacity beyond serving as glorified heavy machinery?
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Aug 20, 2014 00:42
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Alison wants to change the world for the better, not devote her life to a stop-gap measure. Part of her objection to Viral was that, no matter how many lives she saves, she's not actually solving anything.
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Aug 20, 2014 00:46
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Although they are similar due to their slitted pupils, sharp teeth, and potent regeneration abilities, Feral and Viral are different characters.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:13
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Tenebrais posted:Alison wants to change the world for the better, not devote her life to a stop-gap measure. Part of her objection to Viral was that, no matter how many lives she saves, she's not actually solving anything. Tollymain posted:Because she believes she can probably do more good in a capacity beyond serving as glorified heavy machinery? What is philanthropy but a bunch of people constantly using stop-gap measures to improve the short-term outlook of people's lives? Even though Feral can't save every single person on the planet she is currently doing more with her powers to help people than Alison is (at great personal cost though). Likewise, Brad isn't going to be able to help every single Cleaver or non-human looking biodynamic on the planet, but by making the decision to start a support network for people like him he's doing more than Alison is. The same is true for Paladin who turned her intellect towards furthering the field of robotics and educating the next generation of scientists. Heck even Patrick is trying to use his powers to suppress his former criminal network and find out who targeted the world changing biodynamics. Both Allison and Hector's idea of "save the world" are too overreaching and impractical to actually work and the more they try and force their ideal , the less they actually accomplish in the long run. And instead of trying to find new applications for their powers they stick to either hating their perceived limitations, or doing the same old thing instead of changing. Alison doesn't have to have the answer for how to save the world, she just has to start trying to do more than solve the question inside her head.
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Aug 20, 2014 01:19
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You know, Hector could take a few medical courses, familiarize himself with cancer, and actually literally destroy every single cancerous cell in someone's body. That would probably take a long time and be boring though, so I guess he's better off building stuff out of Legos and then shrinking down to minifigure size to have fun with it.
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Aug 20, 2014 15:46
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Atmus posted:You know, Hector could take a few medical courses, familiarize himself with cancer, and actually literally destroy every single cancerous cell in someone's body. Hector could do so much science with shrinky-dink abilities. But that isn't glamorous or cool, usually.
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Aug 20, 2014 16:10
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rotinaj posted:Hector could do so much science with shrinky-dink abilities. But that isn't glamorous or cool, usually. Exactly. Hector would be more useful than Allison to society, if he actually
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Aug 20, 2014 17:45
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Atmus posted:Exactly. Hector would be more useful than Allison to society, if he actually I'm not confident he hasn't. We hardly have a full picture on his life - who knows what he's gotten up to off camera?
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Aug 20, 2014 18:28
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Atmus posted:You know, Hector could take a few medical courses, familiarize himself with cancer, and actually literally destroy every single cancerous cell in someone's body. He's probably seen the movie and played the game already.
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Aug 20, 2014 18:37
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