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She even accepted a beer that wasnt in a glass
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 05:02 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 04:31 |
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There's sections of this series that are just flat-out fascinating, well-written, thought-provoking reinventions of the X-Men mega-narrative and it's no surprise that everyone can't stop talking about this book. There's no question that this is exactly what the X-Men have needed for a very long time now. But then there's the other facet of this series where it is just patently, stubbornly uninterested in how any individual characters would realistically engage with this new world, and it's not enough to say "just wait to see how it turns out" because it has been, is, and continues to be a legitimately enormous flaw with the worldbuilding and narrative. Hickman is doing so great at displaying mutants themselves as interesting and unique -- the Siryn-Dazzler combo during the party was really great -- but at this point he is a master of ignoring things that he doesn't want to deal with, and at this point there's not really any excuses for it anymore. Jubilee is here. Where's Shogo? Even if her baby is allowed on the island, are you telling me she's okay with raising him in this literal "Is there anything good about humans at all?" cult-land? We have enough space in this twelve-issue series to take us on a multi-issue jaunt with random chimera characters in a far-flung future that'll probably never appear again because that future's literally been rebooted, but we can't devote a couple of panels to address any concerns about characters who don't speak in pretentious polysyllabic flappery? Also Nightcrawler's little gently caress-edict seems a bit homophobic and ace-phobic to me but go off I guess Also where are they getting the beer
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 05:09 |
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Synthbuttrange posted:She even accepted a beer Okay, I'm normally fine with creators having different interpretations of characters, but Emma Frost drinking a beer from a can is just a bridge too far.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 05:15 |
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I don’t care what Jubilee thinks.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 05:19 |
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You don't see this, but afterward she turns into diamond form so she can crush it against her head
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 05:22 |
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Skwirl posted:Okay, I'm normally fine with creators having different interpretations of characters, but Emma Frost drinking a beer from a can is just a bridge too far. Don't worry. It's Miller High Life, the Champagne of Beers
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 05:22 |
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Aphrodite posted:I don’t care what Jubilee thinks. Regardless, it's a writer's job to care about what his characters think. Hickman is writing the X-Men. Not having the X-Men react believably to their new status quo is absolutely a fault of writing, and we just went through all this last week so let's just assume there's a bunch of back-and-forth posts for the rest of the page to the point that neither of us care anymore and everyone can talk about the actual important part which is definitely whether Cyclops tops or bottoms.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 05:30 |
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BrianWilly posted:Yeah yeah, we all know that people could type literally anything and you'll find something to make a one-sentence pedantic comment on, it was weird in the past but I guess that's been your forever schtick now, moving on. How is that even a question.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 05:42 |
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Who's the hooded person Wolverine's beering
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 06:02 |
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I obviously have my thoughts which are "He would literally rather die before allowing anything in anywhere" but like I also obviously don't know what brave new rules are at play in this brave new world of theirs. ......also not sure how much we're allowed to talk about this here because yeaaa Synthbuttrange posted:Who's the hooded person Wolverine's beering
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 06:03 |
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BrianWilly posted:Also where are they getting the beer The first mutant they revived is the one with beer taps for fingers. The second? Havok, but with onion rings instead.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 06:57 |
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Abroham Lincoln posted:The first mutant they revived is the one with beer taps for fingers. They're just reviving and murdering Beak for the wings, aren't they?
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 06:59 |
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no they have scanned the dna for beer and chicken wings and are hatching them in the eggs
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 07:04 |
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Synthbuttrange posted:She even accepted a beer In my head cannon, she politely accepts the beer but never opens it. Needs to “powder her nose” in the bathroom 3 minutes later to pour it down the sink.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 07:10 |
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I love that two pages are dedicated to a six pack of beer bringing characters together. Wolverine/Gorgon, Emma/Jean, and Cyclops/Havok. The first panel even has Hank, Bobby, and Warren together. And I can see Exodus telling stories to the kids becoming a thing.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 07:41 |
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BrianWilly posted:Also where are they getting the beer Bar Sinister. Duh.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 07:54 |
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Edge & Christian posted:Sabretooth's mission was an espionage mission into a [probably shady] corporate data center in New York City. The goal was to get information. I dunno. The law itself is somewhat arbitrary. Jean's proposition is that it's a major crime to kill a human because humans can't be resurrected. Both Sabretooth and Wolverine killed humans while deployed against ORCHIS. Wolverine killed guiltier humans in a more dangerous situation, for sure, but there's nothing in Jean's proposition about the moral worth of each individual human or the moral justifiability of each killing. It's phrased like an absolute instead. It would be nice to at least see the characters think about this, or struggle over their goofy autocracy for a second, rather than the way it's written where the character proposing the law makes a grandiose sweeping statement that's coming straight from the authorial voice and the others nod and go, "yes, that makes sense".
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 09:12 |
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At this point I'm pretty comfortable with all the nitty gritty details being hashed out in the actual books that launch out of this nonsense; if those don't bring up a lot of the more obvious questions with what's going on, THEN I'll start getting annoyed But as a self-contained story and a a launchpad for a new status quo, this HOXPOX is 90% along the way to being pretty drat awesome, and the remaining 10% is probably inside the last issue One thing, though: between the mutants and the non-x-gene-gamma-mutants now both having a textual revolving door for dealing with death, I think comics might be a little too self-aware
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 09:15 |
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OnimaruXLR posted:At this point I'm pretty comfortable with all the nitty gritty details being hashed out in the actual books that launch out of this nonsense; if those don't bring up a lot of the more obvious questions with what's going on, THEN I'll start getting annoyed Yeah, I more or less agree. It's a great series. I just found this issue particularly frustrating in how...un-self aware it seems to be about how nightmarish the council's approach to lawmaking and justice is? It seems like the book's view is similar to Xavier's, "this isn't perfect, but it's a very good start", but it actually seems vitally flawed from jump in ways the characters are somehow not aware of. Re: textual immortality, I like this approach in both X-Men and Immortal Hulk because they're using it to tell new stories (and it's a sensible response to a world where people are tired of, and cynical about, character deaths for stakes that are going to be reversed whenever another writer wants to use the character). If death is off the table as part of a story's stakes, you have to think up new, more interesting stakes.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 09:21 |
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Android Blues posted:I dunno. The law itself is somewhat arbitrary. Jean's proposition is that it's a major crime to kill a human because humans can't be resurrected. Both Sabretooth and Wolverine killed humans while deployed against ORCHIS. Wolverine killed guiltier humans in a more dangerous situation, for sure, but there's nothing in Jean's proposition about the moral worth of each individual human or the moral justifiability of each killing. It's phrased like an absolute instead. They absolutely do that though. Mystique asks about killing in self defense, which I think counts for killing people who are building mutant-death-robot-mothers. Magneto says that poo poo is clearly different from what sabertooth did. Edit: although maybe the real issue is that sabertooth disobeyed magneto’s orders. He’s the one who decides what’s right and wrong, after all Billzasilver fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Oct 3, 2019 |
# ? Oct 3, 2019 09:38 |
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Billzasilver posted:They absolutely do that though. Mystique asks about killing in self defense, which I think counts for killing people who are building mutant-death-robot-mothers. Magneto says that poo poo is clearly different from what sabertooth did. Well, Sabretooth's mission was also about fighting ORCHIS. It was the intel his team got that allowed the second team to pinpoint and attack Mother Mold. I'm sure the security guards at a civilian facility were less culpable than the ORCHIS scientists and officers in space, but where do you draw the line on the "killing is alright in a war for survival" edict Magneto comes out with? Let's be clear, Sabretooth is ridiculously evil, but it feels like this legal system they're building is set up on a lot of foggy definitions and uncomfortable absolutes!
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 09:46 |
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What I took from the scene is the audience should be uneasy at what they see. Sabertooth is put on trial, but it's a show trial. The "crime" he is convicted of litteraly didn't exist until two minutes before they passed sentence. No attempt is made to examine his actions or contextualize them. Nobody is there to even ask "the guy we know has a broken brain, problem with authority and whose power is claws for hands. When we sent him in on a non-lethal mission, did we foresee this as a possibility?" No option for rehabilitation is discussed for the guy who had been magically alignment changed into being a not rear end in a top hat for a few years. Sentence is just passed, probably more as an example to others than because they felt Victor had gone too far this time. And yeah a lot of it will get hand waved as "Victor is a bad guy, he deserves it." However that is always how it starts. "Yes we have eroded the rule of law. But we only will use it on bad guys." Just remember this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBiLT3LASk Also I found it hilarious that you have three literal 1%ers decide that "we need to make a new society. An enlightened one. Not make the mistakes of the old one. But those humans had the right idea about capitalism. More money for us."
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 11:00 |
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1. Pretty surprised mags agreed to not killing humans so easily, but it’s good. 2. Xavier’s message to the world was right on. 3. Saying Krakoa wont have prisons before throwing Sabertooth in prison is loving dumb, especially since this society has more ability and resources to rehabilitate and erase trauma than anyone could dream of.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 11:13 |
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The Question IRL posted:What I took from the scene is the audience should be uneasy at what they see. Definitely this. HoX as a whole has been clever about setting up a refreshing new status quo, while making it seem almost too good to be true, and inviting the reader to think that all is not well in this paradise. It's very much the same as Magneto's mutant prison in the WatXM cartoon, where Genosha presented a facade of being a mutant paradise, but had a dark underbelly.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 12:28 |
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BrianWilly posted:he is a master of ignoring things that he doesn't want to deal with Every writer does this in serialized comics! You can't include everything and editorial can't (and shouldn't) hold a creator to 75 years of continuity. "Well, Mr. Hickman, this is a great relaunch you've conceptualized but you have to make sure you include specific references to the fact the Dazzler and Rogue both wanted to gently caress Longshot 30 years ago!" There is a difference between characters acting as their established selves- which I admit that there's a couple here that Hickman just doesn't quite nail, though I think in Jean's case there seems to be a reason why- and being concerned that every continuity detail is followed to a T. Also specifically regarding Jubilee, maybe we're better off just ignoring everything Brian Wood ever wrote? Android Blues posted:I dunno. The law itself is somewhat arbitrary. Jean's proposition is that it's a major crime to kill a human because humans can't be resurrected. Both Sabretooth and Wolverine killed humans while deployed against ORCHIS. Wolverine killed guiltier humans in a more dangerous situation, for sure, but there's nothing in Jean's proposition about the moral worth of each individual human or the moral justifiability of each killing. It's phrased like an absolute instead. Do Goldballs' eggs (lol) only work on mutants? If not, then there's no reason the resurrection powers of The Five can't be used on humans, assuming Xavier backs up their minds. So this came off kind of weird logic to me. Jean says humans CAN'T be resurrected but isn't it more they won't be? And I find it interesting that Xavier trades humanity a bunch of drugs to help stave off illness but saves immortality for his people. Also, I think the law-making scene had a major problem but not the one people are talking about. I definitely don't want to read a comic that's 12 pages of Apocalypse debating Nightcrawler about the Mutant Prison System. And doing 6 pages of that only begs the comments regarding how quick these decisions were made, people deciding things that may be questionable to their character, etc. So my question is: why the gently caress wasn't this done in an info page? They threw a ton of exposition through these the entire series- to a fault at times- but this they needed to have a talking-head section for? Seems unnecessary. If you wanted a scene showing all but one of the council debating something, you could have done the Sabretooth trial just a little differently, with the audience knowing that the three laws were already in place.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 13:18 |
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Yeah, there's nothing stopping the resurrection procedure from working on humans as far as I can tell. The only real limitation is that if you rack up the amount of data Xavier would have to collect and store to that extent, the whole project might become non-feasible. Ultimately that does mean he's saving his best trick for mutants though, yeah.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 13:24 |
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OnimaruXLR posted:But as a self-contained story These books got me back into a comic shop on Wednesdays for the first time in a decade and I am really having a great time dissecting them but... Is this really a story? All the complaints that this is just setup is 100% true in my opinion. I just kinda don't care. But the main thrust here isn't a traditional story in any sense. It's literally just setup. I think there have been stories within it (Moira's issue, the X^2 thing, I guess the Mothermold mission?, X^3 assuming it concludes next week), but there's not a main plot running through it other than the byzantine process of establishing the new Krakoan nation. It's kind of an avant garde way for Marvel to push the X books again, and I'm enjoying it, but it is extremely different than what you would expect. Not only is it not self-contained, it's only chapter one of a self-contained story.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 13:26 |
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Android Blues posted:Yeah, there's nothing stopping the resurrection procedure from working on humans as far as I can tell. The only real limitation is that if you rack up the amount of data Xavier would have to collect and store to that extent, the whole project might become non-feasible. Ultimately that does mean he's saving his best trick for mutants though, yeah. And obviously given his newfound belief system, it makes sense why he isn't giving humanity immortality. But if you're basing one of your laws the the mortality of humans, you know that's bullshit.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 13:28 |
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danbanana posted:And obviously given his newfound belief system, it makes sense why he isn't giving humanity immortality. But if you're basing one of your laws the the mortality of humans, you know that's bullshit. Yeah - it feels as if they're beginning to enthrone some of their decisions about what the human-mutant relationship will be as natural truths, obfuscating the fact that they were decisions in the first place. Like Jean's position is a sort of "mercy for the non-divine" one, because "mutant is the new god" has already circulated so much on Krakoa that it just seems like received truth. Which is interesting!
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 13:34 |
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The Question IRL posted:What I took from the scene is the audience should be uneasy at what they see. Also their big show of making an example out of him... is not seen by anyone else.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 13:37 |
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danbanana posted:And obviously given his newfound belief system, it makes sense why he isn't giving humanity immortality. But if you're basing one of your laws the the mortality of humans, you know that's bullshit. On one level it makes sense. What happened to mutant kind is so many kinds of awful. And space is limited. On the other hand, if I lived in the MU and Charles Xavier told me that yes he has a magical resurrection machine, but no my daughter isn't getting brought back to life because her genome isn't special enough. Then I would probably a mutant genocide machinel that would make Nimrod look like a Go-Bot. Aphrodite posted:Also their big show of making an example out of him... is not seen by anyone else. Cypher saw it. He will spread around the word of what happened. After all, he talks to everyone.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 14:15 |
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danbanana posted:These books got me back into a comic shop on Wednesdays for the first time in a decade and I am really having a great time dissecting them but... Set up is exactly what this series was meant to be though, and they were pretty clear about that. Not every issue is full of omgwtf moments, but there have been enough that I'm more than satisfied with the series as a whole. Honestly it might be my favorite run of X-Men ever so far, even if I think the complaints about characterization feeling non-existent in some cases is fair criticism.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 14:32 |
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Sinteres posted:Set up is exactly what this series was meant to be though, and they were pretty clear about that. Not every issue is full of omgwtf moments, but there have been enough that I'm more than satisfied with the series as a whole. Honestly it might be my favorite run of X-Men ever so far, even if I think the complaints about characterization feeling non-existent in some cases is fair criticism. Oh yeah, I'm loving loving it. But a lot of it, including the actual comics portions, feel like reading a wiki page of the first 4 issues of a new indie book you are interested in. And wiki pages generally aren't stories in the traditional sense.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 15:04 |
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Since when is Magik a general? Dani/Sam/Scott are the generals. Illyana is the bus.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 16:58 |
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Her time as one of the Phoenix Five did give her some experience in commanding the military arm of a dubious regime that tortured prisoners!
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 17:03 |
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Magik has been a fighter ever since she first got aged up in Claremont's Uncanny.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 17:17 |
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Cyclops is the commander general, of course he's going to pick the one other mutant who stuck by him through everything that isn't already busy with the council. She's Cyclops' Right hand.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 17:24 |
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Skwirl posted:Magik has been a fighter ever since she first got aged up in Claremont's Uncanny. she was a fighter, but she was always the loner of the group in New Mutants. maybe that's changed but Dani seems the more obvious choice for general out of that group
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 18:00 |
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danbanana posted:Every writer does this in serialized comics! You can't include everything and editorial can't (and shouldn't) hold a creator to 75 years of continuity. "Well, Mr. Hickman, this is a great relaunch you've conceptualized but you have to make sure you include specific references to the fact the Dazzler and Rogue both wanted to gently caress Longshot 30 years ago!" There is a difference between characters acting as their established selves- which I admit that there's a couple here that Hickman just doesn't quite nail, though I think in Jean's case there seems to be a reason why- and being concerned that every continuity detail is followed to a T. But okay, sure, let's ignore Jubilee for now 'cuz apparently her being mother to a human child is so lame or whatever. Jean Grey is also acting out of character, but we're gonna chalk that up to something to be explained down the line I guess. When down the line? Who knows, but okay. Then we move on to Storm, who I also have a hard time believing would just give up on all of humanity in lieu of Xavier's newfound superiority complex...but I guess let's just ignore her former characterization as well because it's also not convenient to the "great relaunch." Who's next? Havok and Rogue, both of whom served in Steve Rogers' Unity Squad out of a genuine belief that humans and mutants can work together? The countless characters like Kitty Pryde, Cannonball, Husk, Goldballs, Iceman, and Psylocke who still have human family? What about a mutant like Sunfire or Gentle, who already has an allegiance to another country? What's the general number of characters whose histories we shouldn't pay too much attention to because it puts too many holes in this plot? Is there a certain set amount of time that we should ignore their characterizations for before we're allowed to be put off by it, or is it just a general indeterminately-indefinite amount of time? It just feels like there's one rationale after another ready to go for every sort of issue that keeps popping up in this series because we simply can't acknowledge that there may actually be any legitimate, genuine mistakes in this writing. "You can't blame Hickman for not focusing on stuff, certain writers have certain strengths!" Well not being good at something isn't an excuse to omit it from your story. "But a story doesn't need this!" Ah yes it does actually. "Well then in that case this isn't a story, it's just setup." ...Setup also needs to be believable, no different from the actual story. "Well who cares about Jubilee!" ummmm I'm not trying to be a douche, but I'm just real wary about that sort of thing because it feels a lot like -- just for instance -- the same sort of reaction people had to any criticism about Tom King where like, that guy had some pretty legit flaws in his writing, but people kept brushing them off because he was so good at other specific aspects of the story and is so funny on twitter and stuff. But then it turns out, lo and behold, that there really was some seriously flaws in his writing, and it somehow comes as a shock that there would be, except that there were readers who had been having problems with it right from the getgo.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 18:51 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 04:31 |
BrianWilly posted:A long and thoughtful post about characters out of character. You know, and this is just speculation here, but I wonder if what's going on for the core characters is Charles sharing Moria's memory dump with if not everyone, then at least everyone on the council, the captains, and some key other characters (like Wolverine, say). That is what he did to get Magneto on side, as I recall. Learning that "here are nine futures where we did different things in each. They all ended in mutant genocide. Plan Krakoa is the only way we haven't tried yet, let's all get on board" could do a lot to convince people who've spent most of their teen and adult lives fighting anti-mutant racism and literal killer robots sent to end all mutant life. And if some of them harbor private concerns about how some things are being handled, maybe they aren't willing to break mutant unity publicly just yet until things get too bad to tolerate. Which, I expect, will be the core of at least one of the new books going forward.
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# ? Oct 3, 2019 19:02 |