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Lunchmeat Larry posted:I think the joke was that the baddies are robots and his name suggests he's a robot. Open Marriage Night posted:I’m saying Robochrist is biased because he’s a robot. This argument is just an Orchis psy-op.  Rand Brittain posted:They literally said they were going to rule as gods over humans. Krakoa was never remotely "just minding their own business". i dunno this seems very friendly to me 
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Mar 19, 2024 03:50
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This particular nuance seems like something Moira and Magneto workshopped since even if he is, conclusively, A JERK, I feel like Chuck would have been like 'maybe we just tell them to step off and then bring up the life drugs?' OnimaruXLR posted:This is less an issue with this story arc but more in general with this entire line of thinking with mutant books
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Mar 19, 2024 04:16
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Nessus posted:This particular nuance seems like something Moira and Magneto workshopped since even if he is, conclusively, A JERK, I feel like Chuck would have been like 'maybe we just tell them to step off and then bring up the life drugs?' Professor X as he appears in House of X and Powers of X is a supervillain. Like, the art is clearly giving him villain coding. Later on when he's feeling sad he reveals that never actually believed any of that stuff and was just going along to get along with Magneto and Moira, but this feels more like a retcon than a reveal.
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Mar 19, 2024 04:26
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Rand Brittain posted:It's also the view we got all of all the Moira futures that Moira decided were unacceptable, including the ones where nothing bad actually happened to mutants but they stopped being special and lost their group identity because super-powers became hot-swappable. Really, that one took place so far in the future that it's hard to see how those circumstances apply to modern mutant persecution, and it's also hard to imagine that "nothing bad actually happened to mutants" in the intervening bajillion years considering that Moira also saw that humans inventing Sentinels to kill mutants was an inevitability across all her lives. ...Which is kind of getting besides the point anyway, considering how no one -- mutant or human -- knew about these lives before Orchis decided to see mutants consolidating power for themselves, in completely peaceful ways that don't harm humans whatsoever, as acts of aggression against humanity instead? Like y'all keep posting that one single Magneto line as if there weren't five years of books that show other stuff as well, which isn't even to mention that the Magneto line in question as also him grandstanding against the very same people who would genocide his people without a thought and have in fact done so multiple times by now, telling them that they will no longer have free reign to commit their genocides! I mean it's really not as if this oppressed minority group woke up one day and decided to be jerks for no reason, which -- let us reiterate, to be very clear -- what we're defining as them being jerks is actually just them moving to their own island and bothering no one? Is that right?
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Mar 19, 2024 04:30
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No, but if you want to think that it's fine. They lost either way.
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Mar 19, 2024 05:05
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Rand Brittain posted:Professor X as he appears in House of X and Powers of X is a supervillain. Like, the art is clearly giving him villain coding. Ominous maybe. To give the reader a feeling of unease or "this aint right..". But not a supervillain.
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Mar 19, 2024 05:07
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Rand Brittain posted:Professor X as he appears in House of X and Powers of X is a supervillain. Like, the art is clearly giving him villain coding. Nah he said it pretty early on, that he doesn't really believe in Mutant Separationism, and still desires a world of peaceful co-existence.
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Mar 19, 2024 05:43
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MonsterEnvy posted:Nah he said it pretty early on, that he doesn't really believe in Mutant Separationism, and still desires a world of peaceful co-existence. The problem is that X-Men stories kind of require, at some ultimate point, for such a sanctuary to be violated and destroyed. I remember hearing Hickman say that the moment he made his pitch everyone's first response was "and here's how we destroy it!" or something to that effect.
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Mar 19, 2024 06:02
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Nessus posted:I think there was a lot of obvious value, both emotional and political, in some kind of mutant safe-space, and 'we created our own island, it's ours, we didn't take it from anybody, thanks' is a long-hallowed tradition in GI Joe Case Law. Yeah, there was Asteroid M and Utopia (made out of the remains of Asteroid M) already.
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Mar 19, 2024 07:34
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Veg posted:Nothing wrong with that. Not every title has to be foot flat on the ethics/politics accelerator. Oh to be clear in no way did I mean that as a bad thing, both of those books were great. The best were the ones that could mix both cleanly like SWORD/Red and Hellions, but I'd take more books like New Mutants any day.
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Mar 19, 2024 07:46
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Pretty sure Magneto was on the other side of the fences during the Holocaust.
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Mar 19, 2024 07:54
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Rand Brittain posted:Professor X as he appears in House of X and Powers of X is a supervillain. Like, the art is clearly giving him villain coding. Yeah. Like, really, it's his scenes with Apocalypse - plus the villain speech I shared - that make it clear to me Hickman knew what he was doing. And, yeah, I'm not saying Orchis and Krakoa are equally bad. I'm saying they are both bad and both working from the same bad starting premises. But one is definitely worse. Although, I mean, really, if you want to get down to it, Krakoa's responsible for enabling Sinister so you can arguably lump all the poo poo he did in Sins of Sinister and whatnot into it. Because they decided to enable and pal around with a known Nazi. Which, mind, is one of the other things that stuck in my craw, and that much is on Hickman. Magneto canonically knows Sinister personally from when Sinister was doing human experiments at Nai. I'm pretty sure the moment they said "let's let a Nazi into Krakoa, and in fact put them into a place of power" he'd have noped out, let alone "a Nazi you knew personally and who you knew murdered children." But yeah. I agree not everything has to be about politics/morality and shouldn't have to be. I enjoyed the hell out of Sins of Sinister, as I said. And if you did Krakoa as story about Eternals or superheros in total or whatever, it would not carry the baggage it does. But it's a story about a mutants, and that carries certain baggage whether or not the authors like or realize it. About half a century's worth of metaphor, coding, and general baggage doesn't simply vanish into the ether because someone wanted to tell a cool sci-fi story about a transhuman utopia. EDIT: Like, yeah, look at all the times the X-Men get cosmic or are just fighting various villains, or Inferno and poo poo. There's plenty of stuff you can do that don't involve The Metaphor/Allegory. If you want to tell cool sci-fi stories with them, you can. Claremont did for decades. But you cannot take a group of characters that have been allegories and metaphors for marginalized groups for longer than the audience or even the writers have been alive, give them an ethnostate, have them do highly politically charged things, and then expect not to communicate a message. RoboChrist 9000 fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Mar 19, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 08:35
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sinister being a nazi presents a continuity problem because he was working in the us at the time. there's stasis, but i don't think anyone's chomping at the bit to write that retcon. besides, what difference does it make? his alibi is that he was performing equally monstrous human experiments elsewhere. but mostly, writers just ignore the nazi thing because it poisons the well.
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Mar 19, 2024 13:30
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site posted:
For nuance, the two pages before this reveal that all of the 'good faith ambassadors' sent to talk with Magneto were there under false pretenses and that one of them (implied to be an Orchis agent) had brought a gun to what he believed was a meeting with Xavier. So, yeah. I'm not gonna begrudge him for being a smarmy gently caress in this instance.
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Mar 19, 2024 17:08
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I actually think the Krakoa era did a decent job of distancing modern Sinister from the Nazi backstory (itself a retcon) through the X-Gene clone Sinister killing the "original", and Sinister in Immortal commenting on how he literally excised the racist part of him out as part of continually experimenting on himself. Obviously that doesn't make him a good guy by any definition of the word, nor is any of this presented with much sincerity. But it moves him away from real world monstrosity towards a more fictionalized mad scientist.
glitchwraith fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Mar 19, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 17:15
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Caros posted:For nuance, the two pages before this reveal that all of the 'good faith ambassadors' sent to talk with Magneto were there under false pretenses and that one of them (implied to be an Orchis agent) had brought a gun to what he believed was a meeting with Xavier. i think he is flaunting a bit because erik does love a good show, but combined with the sequence in x-men 2 or 3 where he gives his speech on using the drug money countries are about to pay krakoa to buy up all the world's institutions i think he is being more sincere than not here
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Mar 19, 2024 17:29
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glitchwraith posted:Sinister in Immortal commenting on how he literally excised the racist part of him out as part of continually experimenting on himself. I thought his reasons for this were funny. "Everyone is below me, no reason to discriminate among them"
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Mar 19, 2024 17:30
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MonsterEnvy posted:I thought his reasons for this were funny. "Everyone is below me, no reason to discriminate among them" Yup. Still a self-obsessed sociopath, just not a racist one. site posted:i think he is flaunting a bit because erik does love a good show, but combined with the sequence in x-men 2 or 3 where he gives his speech on using the drug money countries are about to pay krakoa to buy up all the world's institutions i think he is being more sincere than not here The thing is, what he is describing is no different than the US or any other world power using it's wealth and influence to manipulate the markets to it's benefit. That's not necessarily moral, and there's no shortage of real world examples of this leading to horrendous evil, but in the vacuum of theory it's passively accepted and expected. Magneto here is supposed to be a mirror, revealing the dangers of weaponized capitalism.
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Mar 19, 2024 18:01
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yes? he literally says that in the dialogue. that is not unknown to me. but like, that also isn't incongruent with the original idea? "using their methods even better than they do to achieve world domination" seems like it actually goes together with the idea that they are the New Gods that erik is trying to impart
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Mar 19, 2024 18:18
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site posted:yes? he literally says that in the dialogue. that is not unknown to me. but like, that also isn't incongruent with the original idea? "using their methods even better than they do to achieve world domination" seems like it actually goes together with the idea that they are the New Gods that erik is trying to impart Sorry, I should have worded that better. I was attempting to expand on your comment, not trying to disagree or imply you weren't aware of anything. It's just further evidence of Krakoa being morally complicated, but not more-so than any real-life nation of note.
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Mar 19, 2024 20:58
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Krakoa is an ethnostate. Its existence is inextricably tied to the belief that harmonious coexistence is not possible and self-segregation is the only way for a marginalized group to ever be truly safe. It is founded on a rejection of multiculturalism and a concession to every single bigot the X-Men have ever encountered that "actually, yeah, you were right, we are an alien other to humanity and we cannot live in peace alongside you." That is not something that is true of every IRL nation. Every IRL ethnostate, probably, but not every IRL nation. I can't speak for others in this thread, but that's my point. It's the ethnostate and what that ays about marginalized groups that is the problematic issue. As I said, if Krakoa had been established simply as a nation for superpowered beings, or perhaps even for some kind of mutant group (in the literal sense of the word) in a generic sci-fi setting things might be different. But that's not the case. You have an explicit ethnostate being established on behalf of a group that have for over half a century served as an allegory and metaphor for pretty much every single marginalized group in American history. Whether or not the writers intend to say things with Krakoa or not is irrelevant, because by its very nature it will say things. Hence why Krakoa is fundamentally not, like, "what if Attilan but on Earth?" In terms of many of its policies, yeah, Krakoa compares favorably to most IRL nations in history. My issue is, again, that I find the idea of an ethnostate fundamentally toxic and predicated upon surrender to bigotry. If multiculturalism/diversity is possible, then an ethnostate is unnecessary. If it is not possible, well, is that really the message the X-Men comic books want to send? That's certainly a position, sure, but I don't think "[insert marginalized group here] should just gently caress off to an island somewhere because they will never be safe as long as they live in America." is the message anyone involved intended to send.
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Mar 20, 2024 00:45
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When Scott asks “Did you honestly think we were going to sit around forever and just take it?” he's not talking about multiculturalism.
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Mar 20, 2024 01:03
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Krakoa is an ethnostate. Its existence is inextricably tied to the belief that harmonious coexistence is not possible and self-segregation is the only way for a marginalized group to ever be truly safe. It is founded on a rejection of multiculturalism and a concession to every single bigot the X-Men have ever encountered that "actually, yeah, you were right, we are an alien other to humanity and we cannot live in peace alongside you." I was speaking specifically on Krakoa's use of economics as a soft power, not on it's status as an ethnostate. All I can say to that is that mutants have always been an imperfect metaphor. I agree, it seemed Hickman may have had more to say on that front before plans changed, and that it is a flaw of the era that the topic wasn't further explored. I disagree about them agreeing with the bigots that they are "alien" or unable to live with humanity. If anything, they are attempting to play human's game as a last ditch effort to prevent another genocide, with all the saber rattling that often involves. glitchwraith fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 01:49
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glitchwraith posted:I was speaking specifically on Krakoa's use of economics as a soft power, not on it's status as an ethnostate. All I can say to that is that mutants have always been an imperfect metaphor. I agree, it seemed Hickman may have had more to say on that front before plans changed, and that it is a flaw of the era that the topic wasn't further explored. I diagree about them agreeing with the bigots that they are "alien" or unable to live with humanity. If anything, they are attempting to play human's game as a last ditch effort to prevent another genocide, with all the saber rattling that often involves. Agree to disagree. I think when you decide that an island ethnostate is the only way for your marginalized group to survive or thrive, then you are saying that yeah, coexistance is impossible. Plus, again, the explicit remarks they make. But yeah, just the mere fact Krakoa is presented as the necessary option, not "an" option or a nice idea. Krakoa is presented by/to Xavier and Magneto as the only hope for mutantkind. And like, yeah, you can take the cynical view that it's impossible for any society to be progressive enough to truly accept and embrace a minority group within it, but I mean that sort of view seems both at odds with the general liberal view of both Marvel Comics and mainstream Western society in general, and also is straight up what bigots believe. Like, again, I don't see how you can really look at what Hickman set up and not see the parallels. Orchis and Krakoa are both reacting to the same two flawed premises; that mutants and humans are other to each other and one will supplant the either or be destroyed, and that as a result coexistance in harmony is not possible. They both then go about trying to make sure their side comes out on top. Kraka knows it has time on its side and plans to outlast baseline humanity, Orchis knows they don't have time and plan to wipe out the mutants before they can win by default. Two fruits of the same poison tree. Also while they have always bounced around between whether or not mutants are a minority group of humanity or a genuine other species, I feel like the Krakoa arc has seen more mutants - and our heroic ones at that - openly identifying as non-human than before. Although that' obviously something the series has often struggled with and whatnot. But yeah, again, just my point that at every turn we are seeing that Moira's influence is effectively Xavier internalizing all the hatred and bigotry he has been fed over the years. Like she says, she has to kill his dream. What has Xavier's dream always been? Like I don't know how much clearer they could have made it that, yeah, Krakoa represents surrender to the idea of coexistence. Moira says she must kill Xavier's dream, Xavier tells the leaders of the world that mutants are the new masters of the Earth, and Magneto straight up says they are the new gods. Xavier shakes hands with Apocalypse who tells him that he has finally accepted and internalized Apocalypse's teachings. danbanana posted:When Scott asks “Did you honestly think we were going to sit around forever and just take it?” he's not talking about multiculturalism. Never said he was.
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Mar 20, 2024 02:58
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Imo Krakoa's isolationist mindset, while understandable, was kind of an undeniable problem that no one really examined very deeply. It's funny because the very first issue of HoXPoX had introduced Krakoa as various different locations all over the world that all individually make up Krakoa as a whole, and then immediately forgot about that except for the fact that the Summerses have a house on the moon and I guess they produce medicine in the Savage Land. Later it's suggested that it's actually probably more respectful to Krakoa if they own property that's not just Krakoa, which was also never followed up on. I think writers, including Hickman himself, simply defaulted a bit too readily to the "mutant island homeland" blueprint of previous runs, which was supposed to be just one small part of Krakoa, regardless of its general isolationism.
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Mar 20, 2024 03:04
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Xavier still says he wants co existence even early on. He’s just more capable of burying that side of himself. As the Hellfire Gala shows he would pick Humanity over Mutant Kind.
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Mar 20, 2024 03:11
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Agree to disagree. I think when you decide that an island ethnostate is the only way for your marginalized group to survive or thrive, then you are saying that yeah, coexistance is impossible. Yeah I also agree brexit was a mistake
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Mar 20, 2024 03:11
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Orchis and Krakoa are both reacting to the same two flawed premises; that mutants and humans are other to each other and one will supplant the either or be destroyed, and that as a result coexistance in harmony is not possible. Orchis is literally a pre-planned genocidal response to the growing global population mutantdom. They aren't reacting to a flawed premisis. They are a premisis: mutants do not deserve to live. This is not the same thing as Cyclops more vocally identifying as a mutant than a human or Magneto saying to world powers that they're going to use capitalism, too (while, I remind you, assassins were being sent to kill him). Like... Sorry Eric was mean to the Davos fuckers?
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Mar 20, 2024 03:23
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danbanana posted:Orchis is literally a pre-planned genocidal response to the growing global population mutantdom. They aren't reacting to a flawed premisis. They are a premisis: mutants do not deserve to live. From HoX #1.   Implicitly the belief that humans and mutant are two separate species locked in a zero sum evolutionary struggle, and explicitly the belief that if Orchis does not take action soon, humanity will lose that battle. Also it's worth noting that Orchis is mostly AIM and SHIELD, not Hydra. Orchis is explicitly presented in HoX as operating on effectively the same underlying reasoning as Krakoa. "If something radical is not done, our species will go extinct." Again; I am not saying Orchis are not the villains - they are. They are genocidal bigoted fucks. But I am saying that Krakoa is built upon the same flawed premises and Hickman goes out of his way to show it. Krakoa's foundations are the exact same hateful lies that Orchis uses to justify their evil. Like, again, people seem to keep saying I'm arguing for an equivalence when I'm not. Saying two groups of people are doing bad things for the same bad reasons are not saying they are equally bad. I've never once said Orchis was justified or that Krakoa was as bad. I'm saying that Krakoa is buying into Orchis' lies and the two are feeding into eachother. Again: two fruits off the same poisonous tree. One is worse than the other, but Krakoa was pretty clearly base on the same rotten foundation. Whether Moira was a fool or a villain is the question, but yeah. I don't know where Hickman wanted to go with that. But I think it's pretty clear that he understood what Krakoa represented and positioned Orchis as its nightmare reflection. EDIT: And just to further clarify my own personal stakes in this, yeah. I'm Jewish. I'm neurodivergant. I'm chronically ill. I know what it's like to live in a society where a sizable part of it wants you dead for the crime of existing. And that's part of why I find the idea of Krakoa so horrific. The surrender of the struggle. Maybe the Moiras of the world are right. Maybe there is no society on Earth that will ever tolerate a minority group within it. That's certainly possible. It's also horrifying. It's not the sort of thing I expect from a character I am supposed to consider a hero. Fascists and bigots should always be fought, both with fists and with words. I do not want to think that the fascists are right and, actually, the only way for me and people like me to ever live in safety is if we give up the fight, admit defeat, and gently caress off to our own private club. Xavier had a dream. Krakoa is a gilded nightmare. RoboChrist 9000 fucked around with this message at 03:42 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 03:35
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It's not really over yet. If the rest of the mutants make it out of the White Hot Room, it'll all be kind of worth it for getting all those mutants back from the dead.
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Mar 20, 2024 04:29
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i feel like people have forgotten over the years of people reinforcing "krakoa was a good idea, the whole time" in their brains that when HoX/PoX was happening one of the predominant talking points among fans was "That's not actually Professor X right, thats like the Maker or something and he's somehow brainwashed everyone into thinking this is a good idea because it's so immediately and obviously shady"
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Mar 20, 2024 11:23
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Not sure if it’s ok to post here if it isn’t essay length, but the X-Men 97 show is good. Looking forward to more.
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Mar 20, 2024 15:18
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Chip Zdarsky's newsletter has the inside dirt on how Ryan Stegman came to be the new X-Men artist:quote:Here at Casa de Zdarsky we stan Ryan Stegman. Oh wait, sorry, I meant we STAND Ryan Stegman, barely. But, he’s got a family with two growing boys (who can now both take their old man in a fight but kindly don’t) and so he needs money. Like, all the time.
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Mar 20, 2024 15:28
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"Foregrounds are just backgrounds with full rear end" will forever be seared into my memory. Zdarsky is the best menace.
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Mar 20, 2024 15:38
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Alaois posted:i feel like people have forgotten over the years of people reinforcing "krakoa was a good idea, the whole time" in their brains that when HoX/PoX was happening one of the predominant talking points among fans was "That's not actually Professor X right, thats like the Maker or something and he's somehow brainwashed everyone into thinking this is a good idea because it's so immediately and obviously shady" Because at the exact same time that Krakoa was being a supremacist ethnostate featuring naked suicide cults, it also depicted the story of mutantkind in a lot of ways that a lot of people found undeniably empowering, not least of which is the outlandish, preposterous power fantasy of an oppressed minority group who weren't constantly afraid of being killed and were, in fact, able to reach the heights they've always dreamed of reaching because they weren't constantly afraid of being killed. Sure, yeah, such a crazy notion, right? The wild fantasy of being powerful enough that bigots aren't going to able to kill you and those like you willy-nilly? Somehow that managed to resonate with one or two readers in this day and age, for some reason. The 80s Claremontian ideal of Xavier's dream is beautiful because deep down, at our cores, we all want to be peaceful and find peace with everyone else and be happy together peacefully. But the more recent focus on Magneto's dream is tempting because there has been a rage building within marginalized communities and their allies for years, decades even, and everyone is tired of how much worse things are getting and frustrated at being told that you're actually just as bad as your oppressors if you're angry that they're killing you. And as beautiful as Xavier's dream may be, is it any wonder that Krakoa sparked a desire in readers for the X-Men as a metaphor to evolve beyond that kind of assimilationist martyrdom, of being so nice to your oppressors that they'll finally cave in and deign to be nice in return?
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Mar 20, 2024 16:13
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...Which segues nicely into this next point that deserves its own post, which is that Resurrection of Magneto #3 is completely breathtaking and this is probably the single best page about Magneto that has ever been written. X-Men Forever was also pretty great, though it suffers a bit for pretty much just being a prologue to RotPoX. Hopefully the second issue rolls the plot along a bit more now that we're all caught up. I know Duggan's side of this story has been kinda wack, but I'm honestly still really invested in all the shenanigans that Gillen is doing and think that this whole thing with Enigma is the coolest plot these books have done for years.
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Mar 20, 2024 16:14
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I nearly didn't even bother glancing at Forever because I assumed it was another misguided Claremont production, but turns out it's Gillen continuing Immortal and explaining some of the missing backstory for the current event. And boy, does Gillen never miss. What an amazing issue.
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Mar 20, 2024 16:24
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BrianWilly posted:Because at the exact same time that Krakoa was being a supremacist ethnostate featuring naked suicide cults, it also depicted the story of mutantkind in a lot of ways that a lot of people found undeniably empowering what's the crossover between those people and the people who think Midsommar is an empowering girlboss movie
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Mar 20, 2024 16:39
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I like these pages and their implications from Rez 
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Mar 20, 2024 17:15
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Saoshyant posted:I nearly didn't even bother glancing at Forever because I assumed it was another misguided Claremont production, but turns out it's Gillen continuing Immortal and explaining some of the missing backstory for the current event. And boy, does Gillen never miss. What an amazing issue. Immortal was probably my favorite book from the era by a wide margin, and forever didn't disappoint. Gillen just writes sinister so drat well.
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Mar 20, 2024 18:05
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