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RBA Starblade posted:Armored Core has more immediately obvious themes. 4 and For Answer basically beat you over the head with what it's saying about corporations and climate change. DS1 and 2 have on their face something to say about kings and "chosen ones", 3 is strictly specifically about how much the devs want to not make Dark Souls anymore and almost nothing else. I don't think how obvious the themes are makes them better at exploring those things. The atmosphere of the souls games I feel capture well the feeling of being grinded to dust beneath the gears of an immoral system of perpetual (and cyclical) oppression. And if its something the souls games do well its atmosphere; sometimes storytelling in this fashion is not only non-obvious its also non-linear; it's environmental. If you want a game that's good at beating you over the head with its themes and are also well realized games in pursuit of those themes that's Final Fantasy 7 for you, but I'm not really suggesting games with the idea being they're the best at telling a certain kind of story. I think whats "on their face" about any game, isn't entirely relevant to acknowledging their themes or exploring deeper readings of the texts. On its "face" most games are just running around and doing things and I think that's an uncharitable way of reading the themes and storytelling; like that one DS2 reviewer who called the fateweaver "some old lady" and glossed over the cinematic language DS2 was using to tell its narrative. The "plot" involving things like being the Chosen Undead and your various quests are the plot but they aren't the whole sum of the story which likewise isn't the entirety of the narrative. Consider the way the games tell you one thing, you need to light the fire to extend the age of fire; but the of fire as we've seen has been burning up its fuel and has been running on fumes, on the sacrifices of heroes over and over again for who knows how long and for what? An age that has long since been hollowed (heh) out and is the shadow of what it once was, no one remembers anything, everyone is suffering. Then you got people telling you the age of Dark, that will follow the age of fire is well, dark and scary so don't do it! Anything but that! There's an very simple analogy there perhaps between people who argue for the status quo over more drastic changes despite how long everything has ceased to be functioning for so long; and then the games cleverly still give you the choice as to what to do and every bit of research and lore introspection just makes the hole deeper in terms of what's there to explore about the ramifications of these choices. Then there's I think the idea that maybe the age of fire and the age of dark have been trading places forever and ever, just switching one horrible status quo with another; that's powerful, I don't have the literary context to properly process it, but there's something there and its subtle and you got to figure it out for yourself.
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Nov 3, 2021 01:17
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Any social critique in Dark Souls is pretty allegorical, tbh. Dark Souls 3 is open to a meta interpretation of capitalism driving society to burning itself out rather than allowing things to end and proceed into natural fallow cycles, given that the subtext is "we would really like to not make dark souls anymore", and their subsequent failure to really escape the from it. Dark Souls 2 is extremely vague but centered around a generally Buddhist philosophical allegory of self-destruction via obsession and desire, and that if even if there's an escape from it (which is not a guarantee), there is no clear path. Social critiques can be drawn from this, but I don't think they're anything that couldn't be drawn from a cursory examination of Buddhism.
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Nov 3, 2021 01:24
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I think allegorical social critiques; meta-interpretations and so forth are pretty neat; there's even a thread over here by another goon in the LP forums that's likewise pretty neat as it does a lot of meta interpretations from the various Soulsborne games and its absolutely my jam. I'm kinda just confused by your last sentence, like I wouldn't be surprised that mythology would contain themes or readings that are widely applicable or are clearer in conveying a given message but I'm not sure how it quite relates to what I was talking about; like I agree and find it interesting to bring up buddhism to contextualize the narrative in DS2; but I'm not sure what it means for those themes to exist as a cursory reading somewhere else. Beyond being a many-thousands of years old philosophical tradition in use by millions of people; I don't think its meanings are more important than the reading in another different work that happen to share cursory readings? The bible and Tolkien's stuff share lots of stuff but I'm not picking up a bible for it; I'm picking up the Silmilirion. If I wanted to find the oldest, or most well known origin of certain themes, tropes, etc I think that would make sense to start with Buddhism, or the Epic of Gilgamesh etc but I don't think that's what I was aiming for? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 02:04 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 02:02
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My point is that dark souls as a series don't really spend much time portraying a society or even interpersonal relations, and as such any ideological messaging is going to be several steps removed from the text. In dark souls 2's case, the main character's journey is fundamentally personal journey to escape their personal samsara. There's some tidbits of social commentary here and there but it's not really a focus of the narrative.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:17
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fool of sound posted:My point is that dark souls as a series don't really spend much time portraying a society or even interpersonal relations, and as such any ideological messaging is going to be several steps removed from the text. In dark souls 2's case, the main character's journey is fundamentally personal journey to escape their personal samsara. There's some tidbits of social commentary here and there but it's not really a focus of the narrative. I don't know about that. I think the Dark Souls story is pretty explicitly ideological, it's literally all about kings and god-kings doing atrocities and how they justify them, all learned after the fact in a world that has gone to poo poo as a direct result of their actions.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:23
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Sanguinia posted:I don't know about that. I think the Dark Souls story is pretty explicitly ideological, it's literally all about kings and god-kings doing atrocities and how they justify them, all learned after the fact in a world that has gone to poo poo as a direct result of their actions. It's been a while but as I remember dark souls 2 the kings' downfalls are either the result of literal temptress demons manipulating them or because their kingdom happened to be on top of demon spawning hell portal. Like allegory and all that, given the overarching themes of self-destruction, but I feel like this interpretation is at least a little fraught, especially given that, again to my memory, the cycles of fire and dark are referred to an inescapable inevitably, rather than any given individual or group of individuals faults.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:37
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fool of sound posted:It's been a while but as I remember dark souls 2 the kings' downfalls are either the result of literal temptress demons manipulating them or because their kingdom happened to be on top of demon spawning hell portal. Like allegory and all that, given the overarching themes of self-destruction, but I feel like this interpretation is at least a little fraught, especially given that, again to my memory, the cycles of fire and dark are referred to an inescapable inevitably, rather than any given individual or group of individuals faults. Yeah, but the whole impetus for the story is that Gwynn doesn't accept that inevitability. Almost every bad thing in the Dark Souls universe traces back to Gwynn and the Gods fearing the Age of Dark and enacting a increasingly horrific series of schemes and deceits to prevent it. And for that matter to prevent alternative to their own rule, as seen in the story of the Demons. Heck, there's some implication that the war against the Stone Dragons Gwynn led in the first place was unjust and that's why his son (probably) fled to help their kind rebuild. The Undead Curse mark which is the franchise's icon is indeed a mark of humanity being enslaved by Fire to keep the Dark at bay, when Dark was actually their own birthright. This was The First Sin. Dark Souls III DLC reveals that this even goes back to when they first waged that Dragon War. Gwynn's "reward," to the Furtive Pygmy was to deny him and all his descendents future through the "gift," of his daughter and their city.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:47
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fool of sound posted:My point is that dark souls as a series don't really spend much time portraying a society or even interpersonal relations, I feel based off of my memories of DS1 and then extensive LP watch-alongs that this isn't right; there's a lot of side quests and NPC conversations and I do think the Souls series does a lot of world building and does spend time establishing a lot of this; its just a lot of it is also in item descriptions and the environment. fool of sound posted:and as such any ideological messaging is going to be several steps removed from the text. In dark souls 2's case, the main character's journey is fundamentally personal journey to escape their personal samsara. I only have some memory of it but large sections of DS2 involves things like exploring the conquest and enslavement/extermination of the Giants; the personal journey of the main character is in conjunction with the events of the story which explores the political circumstances and past decisions of the kingdom, like its even in the map, the way various locations are just built layered on top of each other which is clearly a metaphor for something involving the way Empires are just built atop of the graveyards of past Empires and so on. The political is the personal and this is more so since your characters questline is all about becoming the next King and part of your journey is to wonder if this realm is even worth saving given the amount of blood its built on top of. Hbomberguy has a whole video about Dark Souls 2 and why he thinks its a very underrated game and he explores some of these arguments more. fool of sound posted:There's some tidbits of social commentary here and there but it's not really a focus of the narrative. But why? I feel like we're talking past each other here; I don't think something has to be the focus for it to be interesting and worth discussing. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I find it offputting to be told the Simpsons did it first in response to bringing up something I found interesting on its own merits.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:47
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Raenir Salazar posted:But why? I feel like we're talking past each other here; I don't think something has to be the focus for it to be interesting and worth discussing. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I find it offputting to be told the Simpsons did it first in response to bringing up something I found interesting on its own merits. I think if you want to make an argument about the social commentary you should probably make it, rather than largely just alluding to them. Noting that a theme exists is not, itself, commentary. What specific bits of social commentary do you think the Dark Souls games are making and why are they interesting?
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Nov 3, 2021 02:51
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Sanguinia posted:Yeah, but the whole impetus for the story is that Gwynn doesn't accept that inevitability. Almost every bad thing in the Dark Souls universe traces back to Gwynn and the Gods fearing the Age of Dark and enacting a increasingly horrific series of schemes and deceits to prevent it. And for that matter to prevent alternative to their own rule, as seen in the story of the Demons. Heck, there's some implication that the war against the Stone Dragons Gwynn led in the first place was unjust and that's why his son (probably) fled to help their kind rebuild. The Undead Curse mark which is the franchise's icon is indeed a mark of humanity being enslaved by Fire to keep the Dark at bay, when Dark was actually their own birthright. This was The First Sin. Dark Souls III DLC reveals that this even goes back to when they first waged that Dragon War. Gwynn's "reward," to the Furtive Pygmy was to deny him and all his descendents future through the "gift," of his daughter and their city. I admit that the connections between Dark Souls 1 and 3 are kind of lost on me, because I played DS1 a very long time ago and never revisited it because I didn't really enjoy it the way I did later games, so I'll tkae your word on the narrative here but I have to ask: what is the commentary here? That the powerful will sacrifice themselves and others to maintain their grip on power? Sure, but is that particularly interesting commentary? That's why I said the games have tidbits of social commentary; those themes are referred to in the worldbuilding but not really examined, again to my memory.
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Nov 3, 2021 03:03
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fool of sound posted:I admit that the connections between Dark Souls 1 and 3 are kind of lost on me, because I played DS1 a very long time ago and never revisited it because I didn't really enjoy it the way I did later games, so I'll tkae your word on the narrative here but I have to ask: what is the commentary here? That the powerful will sacrifice themselves and others to maintain their grip on power? Sure, but is that particularly interesting commentary? That's why I said the games have tidbits of social commentary; those themes are referred to in the worldbuilding but not really examined, again to my memory. I guess that's fair to a point. But for my two cents the game, when you break it down to its core, is about you learning the world's secrets (or not) and deciding what you're going to do about it. In all three games you're the Chosen One, and when you get to the end you decide if you want to link the flame or let it die. In DS3 you get even more choices if you take certain paths. In fact, Dark Souls 2's ending not having a choice I think really underscores that the other two do. When the DS2 protag learns the full truth of his circumstances, he's left with the inevitable understanding that there is nothing to be done about it, but the DS1 and 3 protagonists are in different circumstances and learn different truths, and thus have the power to act on what they've discovered. If that's no a game about fundamentally about ideology, what is?
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Nov 3, 2021 03:18
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Sanguinia posted:In fact, Dark Souls 2's ending not having a choice I think really underscores that the other two do. When the DS2 protag learns the full truth of his circumstances, he's left with the inevitable understanding that there is nothing to be done about it, but the DS1 and 3 protagonists are in different circumstances and learn different truths, and thus have the power to act on what they've discovered. If that's no a game about fundamentally about ideology, what is? I think there's something interesting here actually: an interpretation of the games as an individual's interaction with the fallout of the ambitions of powerful people. Dark Souls 2 does actually have a choice with the DLC, though it's more of a true ending: the player character learns about the downfall of all four kings and, via their interactions with the scholar of the first sin, realizes that taking the throne for themselves will inevitably lead to their downfall, and thus sets out on an uncertain path to find another way. The game is somewhat dour on the possibility that another way even exists, but the ending narration still refers to this action as heroic. It's kind of hard to square this interpretation with the the sins of the DS2 kings being a product of their seduction by the forces of darkness, but I think there's something there at least.
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Nov 3, 2021 03:33
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fool of sound posted:I think if you want to make an argument about the social commentary you should probably make it, rather than largely just alluding to them. Noting that a theme exists is not, itself, commentary. What specific bits of social commentary do you think the Dark Souls games are making and why are they interesting? Seems like maybe I erroneously assumed it would be fine to point out works that appear to be the focus of a lot of analysis? So that being said I did write the post prior to this current post where I point out a couple of things. I also linked to Sibyl Disobedience's LP thread which delves into a meta-contextual LP and meta-analysis of the Soulsborne games as a whole. And here's a link to Hbomberguy's video that I alluded to; I don't have timestamps as to when and where discusses the themes of DS2 but the whole video is fun. There's also Steph Sterling of the Jimquisition as a video about the (politics) in Dark Souls, its a little tongue-in-cheek but I think its perfectly valid interpretation on its face that's worth taking seriously. For bloodborne I found SolePorpoise's video(s) to be interesting, especially one of his claims that Bloodborne basically improves on H.P Lovecraft's writings because through the mechanics also in this video I think?. Sole also puts a decent amount of thought into describing Dark Souls as being written and meant to be read as a myth as according to the writings of Joseph Cambell. I'm no expert but I find the video to be interesting and informs how I generally contextualize the Souls games and how I go about designing games. I also think that we can all look at a work and know, just know by looking at it, that something meaningful and deep is occurring here, but I/we just lack the requisite knowledge and context to process that meaning and intelligibly describe it but as you alluded to if all stories have commonality and kinda borrow from or reflect other older stories, folklore and myth than we're naturally since we're as human being intensely optimized for pattern recognition can tell that meaning is there the same way we can know that something is a bird and not a rock; we/I may not be able to identify the specific birb or describe why the beauty of the birb in flight is soothing, but that feeling definitely exists and is informed by substance. e: fool of sound posted:I admit that the connections between Dark Souls 1 and 3 are kind of lost on me, because I played DS1 a very long time ago and never revisited it because I didn't really enjoy it the way I did later games, so I'll tkae your word on the narrative here but I have to ask: what is the commentary here? That the powerful will sacrifice themselves and others to maintain their grip on power? Sure, but is that particularly interesting commentary? That's why I said the games have tidbits of social commentary; those themes are referred to in the worldbuilding but not really examined, again to my memory. As an aside, Hbomberguy I think in his bloodborne video describes a very interesting phenomena where people who went and played bloodborne, went back to DS1 and had more fun playing it in a more aggressive style of play with habits they learned/acquired from playing Bloodborne. So you might have fun going back and revisiting it. I ironically tricked myself into having a blast by playing a strategy I thought wouldn't at all work and would just be a gimmick but turns out to be the most fun way of playing the game, dual wielding swords and not using a shield at all. e2: Also gunna throw Jacob Geller's videos here too: Dark Souls 3 is Thinking of Ending Things and The Seductive Nightmare of Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons I particularly love this one comment: Even when we have discovered all there is to be discovered, the abyss calls out endlessly and we will find more regardless of whether or not there is any more. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 03:44
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fool of sound posted:I think there's something interesting here actually: an interpretation of the games as an individual's interaction with the fallout of the ambitions of powerful people. Dark Souls 2 does actually have a choice with the DLC, though it's more of a true ending: the player character learns about the downfall of all four kings and, via their interactions with the scholar of the first sin, realizes that taking the throne for themselves will inevitably lead to their downfall, and thus sets out on an uncertain path to find another way. The game is somewhat dour on the possibility that another way even exists, but the ending narration still refers to this action as heroic. It's been a hell of a long time since I looked at DS2 lore, but I have a vague recollection that there's a lot more to the Four King's downfalls than simply seduction by dark forces. Who those forces are, what motivated them, I remember it carrying a fair bit of intrigue. I should go back to Vaati's channel and look for some of those vids. I do remember really clearly that at least one of the King's Sins was basically rooted in learning about his queen's true nature as a dark being, and through her learning about all the corruption that was going on in other kingdoms, and thereby deciding to just try and protect her and his people as long as possible until they all fell because the situation was hopeless. Reminiscent of the original ending and the hero walking into the kiln for lack of other possibilities. I never actually played Scholar, so I didn't know about the alt ending where the hero just walks away from fate and determines to try and find a better way despite everything screaming that there isn't one. That's pretty neat.
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Nov 3, 2021 03:54
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The FROM games really do work better when you look at them as allegory or myth. They're not really creation myths, though the series deals with them a lot, and they're not really apocalyptic stories. I guess they're myths about decline, stories about the entropic forces that will bring us to an end if allowed. At least Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro. Eh, Sekiro is more about conflict and power, what it takes to hold it and what endless conflict does to people and how they will go to seek it out. I think all of those games have something to say about society too. Or at the least they all depict societies. You're moving through the bones of abandoned ones. In Bloodborne you're only given glimpses of the full society but you're in a specific place on a specific night.
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Nov 3, 2021 04:04
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Gumball Gumption posted:The FROM games really do work better when you look at them as allegory or myth. They're not really creation myths, though the series deals with them a lot, and they're not really apocalyptic stories. I guess they're myths about decline, stories about the entropic forces that will bring us to an end if allowed. At least Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro. Eh, Sekiro is more about conflict and power, what it takes to hold it and what endless conflict does to people and how they will go to seek it out. I prefer to think of the FROM games more as Legend than Myth or Allegory. The corruption of the king and the despoilment of the land stuff is very Arthurian, think Green Knight and Fisher King type stories, but still rooted in recognizable humanity and society.
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Nov 3, 2021 04:18
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Nix Panicus posted:Its also very funny, to me, that Afro-futuristic Wakanda was a hereditary absolute monarchy with a contested succession by mortal combat clause, and that everyone went along with the outcome of a genocidal outsider taking the throne because thats just how succession works. I get that its a Marvel movie but its still very funny that regressive Wakanda was hailed as some kind of utopia because the military backed homogenous oppressor class was black. I would love to see a movie or series set from Dr Doom's point of view, where he's desperately trying to spread his utopian society to other more impoverished cultures, and American jingoism and the so-called superheroes who prop it up are all that stands in the way.
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Nov 3, 2021 13:13
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selec posted:The ending of Black Panther was the most cynical deployment of identity politics in a long time in a movie. I feel this is a little unfair because this is a fundamental problem with superheroes and any sci-fi (Or "sci-fi") that is meant to be set in a world recognisable as our own. Superheroes present huge, world changing events - development of incredible technologies, it turns out magic is real, aliens exist and invade repeatedly, the entire world is almost destroyed over and over again - but also ordinary people live lives just like yours, and you can indulge in the fantasy that you might see one of your favourite heroes running, swinging or flying down your own street. So this means that actual, wide-scale societal change cannot be shown. Because people can relate to world where some crazy hosed up poo poo happened somewhere, but not to everyone. One can imagine that there might secretly be an African technological superpower off in a corner of Africa you've never heard of. But Wakanda cannot succeed in global black liberation because then that would mean that your life, personally, would likely be very different. This is something you see in Batman fiction a lot too. The idea that Batman is mocked because he has completely failed in reducing crime in Gotham, or even worse, actively caused it by bringing about an escalation of the scale of violence. I'm not saying that a masked billionaire personally beating up the underclass would be a good idea, but these criticisms don't come out of any real sociopolitical analysis of Batman. Batman continues to have to fight theatrical villains in Gotham because the stories would end otherwise. Just like Wakanda cannot liberate Africa and its diaspora, Batman cannot end crime in Gotham because they would create worlds that are no longer relatable. Obviously the MCU has significantly broken this rule now with the Snap, a traumatic event that effected everyone on the planet at once. But while those effects have been explored somewhat, they're already receding into the past and "normality" is reasserting. Other than a handful of throwaway mentions and some signs on walls, the Snap is irrelevant in Shang-Chi. This is pretty dangerous for the MCU as it means that stakes feel increasingly unreal - it's moving towards to tone of the comics where nothing is permanent, colossal disasters happen all the time, characters can die and come back with no problems, and no one can actually say for sure if any past event actually "really happened". People wonder all the time when the MCU bubble will burst and I'd say it's when this stuff overwhelms it and people lose interest.
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Nov 3, 2021 14:04
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Comrade Fakename posted:Obviously the MCU has significantly broken this rule now with the Snap, a traumatic event that effected everyone on the planet at once. But while those effects have been explored somewhat, they're already receding into the past and "normality" is reasserting. Other than a handful of throwaway mentions and some signs on walls, the Snap is irrelevant in Shang-Chi. This is pretty dangerous for the MCU as it means that stakes feel increasingly unreal - it's moving towards to tone of the comics where nothing is permanent, colossal disasters happen all the time, characters can die and come back with no problems, and no one can actually say for sure if any past event actually "really happened". People wonder all the time when the MCU bubble will burst and I'd say it's when this stuff overwhelms it and people lose interest. I am not sure how much it ultimately matters. The specific popularity of specific comics ebb and flow over time, but superman has been dying and undying since your great grandparents were kids. Like all the famous exasperated "not a dream, not a hoax" covers are over 60 years old now. And they do show that the public did start to get annoyed with overuse, it also shows that 60 years later "superman" and 'his girlfriend lois lane" are still major cultural icons.  I think comics specifically do burn out people's taste for that stuff, but when that happens comics just pump out new characters for a while, then circle back around. People do like the stories always vaguely taking place in their modern day more than they entirely like it being a 100 year long sci-fi speculation thing. So they do always snap back, and people do always get annoyed, but decades later it hardly sinks the characters in any long term way.
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Nov 3, 2021 15:28
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Nix Panicus posted:Its been forever since I read it, but I'm pretty sure Paul ends up blinding himself and wandering the desert and is never heard from again* because he can't bring himself to be the evil tyrant the universe needs to break itself of its infatuation with messiahs. Instead his kid has to become a monstrous tyrant who rules for millennia until humanity finally breaks itself free of prophecy and the desire for a strong daddy to take charge So what I'm getting from this is "white savior on a small scale is wrong, white savior on a cosmic scale is right".
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Nov 3, 2021 19:25
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Jaxyon posted:So what I'm getting from this is "white savior on a small scale is wrong, white savior on a cosmic scale is right". That's honestly exactly what dune is lol
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Nov 3, 2021 19:26
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Epic High Five posted:I can't speak for most any Marvel or superhero movie because usually I'll see one that seems promising, say "it's HOW long?!", and then be done with it, but it appears the two big factors in why they're so consistently ideologically incoherent is that 1) they get a lot asset access from the DoD on the condition that they don't cut against the grain of American Exceptionalism as personified in our armed forces and 2) it's just fundamental to the genre at this point. The whole thing kicked off with a movie, Watchmen, that almost everybody missed the point on and it's now spread even into writing rooms as you can see with stuff like Batman movie with Bane where they threw in a weird nuclear side plot because he was too popular with focus groups to be a villain even tho one of the best things about the franchise is having really interesting Dick Tracey villains Even the original comics themselves were often pretty pro-military. After all, the comics industry as we know it really took root in the Cold War. Portrayals of the big heroes have shifted over time, generally mirroring mainstream popular opinion, but several of them started out very pro-military and heavily influenced by the popular conception of the Red Menace. A number of early Iron Man stories were about Tony Stark needing to hunt down supervillain communist saboteurs in his weapons factories because they were slowing production enough that Congress was threatening to terminate his military contracts. Bruce Banner was a nuclear scientist dedicated to building a bigger and better nuke to use against the Soviets. Hawkeye started as a good-hearted circus performer who was seduced into evil by a Soviet secret agent. Even Thor's cosmic god adventures sent him to Vietnam for a few issues to clash with the villainous Viet Cong.
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Nov 3, 2021 21:54
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Something that I increasingly dislike is that sci-fi or fantasy fiction that wants to make some kind of social statement will use mutants/vampires/cyborgs as a stand-ins for real life minorities despite them being categorically different from and dangerous to regular people in a way that people with different skin tones obviously are not. The A and B plots of every X-men movie are some combination of "we need to stop this bigoted human who thinks mutants are dangerous" and "we need to stop this psychotic mutant from committing genocide on humans or taking over the world". If you take the fictional world at all seriously on it's own terms, then holy poo poo, of course the people who want to somehow regulate the unpredictable Demi-gods are in the right. It's always treated as some kind of damming revelation that SHIELD or whatever other agency wants to have the means to somehow combat superheros or whatever, but if I was a taxpayer in a world where poo poo like that was real, I would probably be pretty ok with that! The Black Mirror episode with the soldiers was I think the only one recently that did this kind of thing and got it right the mutants are just normal people, and the soldier's implants and bigotry prevent them from seeing that. I would like it a lot more if speculative fictions that wanted to address themes like this either fully thought through their metaphors like that, or just directly addressed the issue using actual people of different (could be still be fictional) ethnicities.
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Nov 4, 2021 01:49
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Jaxyon posted:So what I'm getting from this is "white savior on a small scale is wrong, white savior on a cosmic scale is right". I mean, if you take "things got so bad once the Cosmic White Savior was in charge long enough that humanity purged itself of all ills," as an endorsement of Cosmic White Savior I guess. I feel like the actual message is the opposite. Or an endorsement of accelerationism. Is it still accelerationism when its on a millennia scale by comparison to all human existence?
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Nov 4, 2021 02:33
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Sanguinia posted:I mean, if you take "things got so bad once the Cosmic White Savior was in charge long enough that humanity purged itself of all ills," as an endorsement of Cosmic White Savior I guess. I feel like the actual message is the opposite. Or an endorsement of accelerationism. As I've not read the series, it sounds like the Paul/Paul's son is a despot in order to force the galaxy to rise against him/them. So like the ultimate white saviorism. Which doesn't make it right. Alternately, is it just the story of white people being awful, and the author wants people to take away the fact that white saviors are awful? Because if so people are going to miss that point, as has already been stated. I already know putting white saviors in charge is bad. Is it a good read when it's couched in space empire poo poo? I don't need a thousand year empire and a trillion deaths to illustrate the issue with white saviors. The issue comes up that no matter how you try and make a statement, by making a movie about a thing you unavoidably promote the thing you hate. You make a movie about how "war is hell" and you unavoidably glorify war and soldiering.
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Nov 4, 2021 02:38
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Jaxyon posted:As I've not read the series, it sounds like the Paul/Paul's son is a despot in order to force the galaxy to rise against him/them. So like the ultimate white saviorism. Which doesn't make it right. Yeah. But American History X is still a really good movie.
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Nov 4, 2021 02:42
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IIRC I think what made Civil War interesting was that I largely agreed with Stark that regulation was necessary; I just didn't trust the US post-Hydra to be in that role. I think I'm not alone that a lot of the audience probably would sort themselves whichever way because it did provide a reasonable ideological conflict between Stark and Cap. I don't think the MCU in general takes a particular side, SWORD creating Not!Vision in WandaVision was bad not because they wanted to have a card up their sleeve in general; but because the commanding officer recklessly pursued that course of action despite the subject matter experts wanting more time for a peaceful resolution. In the first Avengers film with Loki I don't think it was particularly at the time revelatory that Shield was looking into making use of the Tesseract, some of the characters reacted that way for reasonable in universe reasons but everyone was under the influence of the scepter and our audience perspective was being deliberately warped by its effects. Fill Baptismal posted:I would probably be pretty ok with that! There is I feel, some nuance to this though. If its like My Hero Academia where to make use of your powers yeah you should probably be regulated and your powers acting in the interest of the public good; but if in practice it ended up just simply being oppressive beyond reason I think there's a line there, free willed sentient beings even if potentially dangerous through inherent metahuman abilities shouldn't have less rights. Like where do you draw the line? Consider Fantasy worlds where Magic exists and other sentient beings exist alongside regular humans. Jaxyon posted:As I've not read the series, it sounds like the Paul/Paul's son is a despot in order to force the galaxy to rise against him/them. So like the ultimate white saviorism. Which doesn't make it right. Counterpoint: Suppose you have a large multinational empire with a powerful aristocracy. You ascend the throne and want to make the nation a better place; but you have 100% certainty that none of your reforms will outlast you because the powerful interests of the aristocracy, capital, and the military-industrial complex will conspire to smother your reforms in their crib. There's basically kinda only one other option in such circumstances and that seems to be to me based on what I'm reading here, what Dune is about. What if the Russian Imperial family were good people with the ability to predict the future. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Nov 4, 2021 |
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Nov 4, 2021 02:43
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I'm not super into either comic books or the MCU so I might be missing some context but I think the basic structure of Civil War is pretty interesting, the movie makes a bunch of noise about Cap's dedication to freedom and non-intrusion and whatever, but I think the more interesting reading is that the former weapons contractor of course has no issue throwing the power of Avengers behind a national interest, while the former soldier does. Despite his origin story, Stark is and has always been insulated from the effects of the American foreign policy apparatus and war machine, while Captain America deliberately bore the brunt of it out of nationalistic pride and is cost him everything, and that directly informs their worldviews.
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Nov 4, 2021 02:54
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fool of sound posted:I'm not super into either comic books or the MCU so I might be missing some context but I think the basic structure of Civil War is pretty interesting, the movie makes a bunch of noise about Cap's dedication to freedom and non-intrusion and whatever, but I think the more interesting reading is that the former weapons contractor of course has no issue throwing the power of Avengers behind a national interest, while the former soldier does. Despite his origin story, Stark is and has always been insulated from the effects of the American foreign policy apparatus and war machine, while Captain America deliberately bore the brunt of it out of nationalistic pride and is cost him everything, and that directly informs their worldviews. Here's a link to the comics Civil War rundown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_(comics)
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Nov 4, 2021 02:59
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Fill Baptismal posted:Something that I increasingly dislike is that sci-fi or fantasy fiction that wants to make some kind of social statement will use mutants/vampires/cyborgs as a stand-ins for real life minorities despite them being categorically different from and dangerous to regular people in a way that people with different skin tones obviously are not. With X-Men itself it seemed that the original presentation and early stories felt a lot more like generic "special young people" coding for generic youthful rebellion. The old folks (except for some cool old guys) might distrust you or think you're going to destroy everything, and there are bad kids out there too, but you'll show everyone! Into the Clairmont era that really shaped what the X-Men became, it moved toward more and more explicit minority coding. Partly since that gave some easy plot hooks, partly since as it went on a lot of people found that to resonate, and on a more cynical side partly because that got the writing attention not as comic books but as literature. But it also led to the problem you mention, compounded by how often mutant-fueled world-ending threats happen as the big plot events. On top of that, there was the running, open editorial conceit for a long time (not sure if it's still there) that barring anything else happening mutants absolutely were going to replace, not coexist with, mainline humans. So it led to super awkward plots where if you actually followed the allegory past a surface level it was a story where the blacks/jews/gays/whatever really are by word of god gonna take over the world and eliminate everyone else, but the good ones will do it slower and with less bloodshed. In practice, X-Men comics plots with anti-mutant antagonists usually end up really going the extra mile to make it unambiguous that they're motivated by pure bigotry and hatred to a level that would make Red Skull blush, just because it would give such mixed signals if they didn't. But that sort of stuff is all over in comics. Like the bit touched on earlier where supers comics protagonists due to genre convention generally uphold the status quo so the world doesn't turn into something unrecognizable. And with some exceptions, they're often vigilantes not directly accountable to the public. So they have to write hard on being justice-oriented, socially inclusive, and strongly restrained in proactive involvement just to not go too overtly fascist. Honestly a lot of it would be less of an issue if American supers comics weren't totally structured around a massive shared universe with dozens of titles and hundreds of heroes who maintain continuity over decades of monthly installments. But that's not likely to change while the genre exists. fool of sound posted:I'm not super into either comic books or the MCU so I might be missing some context but I think the basic structure of Civil War is pretty interesting, the movie makes a bunch of noise about Cap's dedication to freedom and non-intrusion and whatever, but I think the more interesting reading is that the former weapons contractor of course has no issue throwing the power of Avengers behind a national interest, while the former soldier does. Despite his origin story, Stark is and has always been insulated from the effects of the American foreign policy apparatus and war machine, while Captain America deliberately bore the brunt of it out of nationalistic pride and is cost him everything, and that directly informs their worldviews. That is definitely a much more interesting reading than the moral question of whether there should be public oversight of vigilante brawlers or world-warping superpowers. Not least because it's not a question that also boils down to "Should the setting continue to exist in recognizable form? (Y/N)"
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Nov 4, 2021 03:02
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Fill Baptismal posted:Something that I increasingly dislike is that sci-fi or fantasy fiction that wants to make some kind of social statement will use mutants/vampires/cyborgs as a stand-ins for real life minorities despite them being categorically different from and dangerous to regular people in a way that people with different skin tones obviously are not. I'm not going to lie, I really hate when people make this criticism of X-Men and similar "non-human as allegory for race," stories. Like, Magneto is a threat to humanity because he's a Holocaust Survivor and he's seen what bigotry does when it thinks its righteous. Him just happening to have a power that could theoretically destroy the world isn't why he's dangerous. Like Professor X he could, should and HAS been one of Earth's greatest heroes. He's not because his lived experience tells him humanity can't ever be trusted. There are tons of mutants out there with virtually no powers, and they get the exact same treatment as the ones that are actually threatening. THAT'S the racism metaphor. You don't need to, as the first X-Men movie has Jean Grey point out to Senator Kelly "license people to live," to deal with dangerous mutants. People want to do it because they're afraid and hateful of the IDEA of mutants, much like they're hateful and afraid of the ideas created by bigoted stereotypes. "Oh, I'm a racist just because I crossed the street when I saw that mutant coming? He might have had a [dangerous power here]!" Governments wanting/having the means to combat superheroes isn't a bad thing. The danger comes when their methods of acquiring them and motivations for using them aren't rational because they're rooted in bigotry. That not only leaves those defenses inevitably pointed at innocent targets, but also serves as an exploitable weakness by bad actors. Watch the Cadmus arc of Justice League Unlimited sometime, it digs into this from a ton of different angles over the course of the story.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:03
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Oh hey, everyone should read Miracleman (aka Marvelman) if you like social critique in comic book form. Short version, it's basically "what if Superman [but even more powerful] tried to actually fix the world rather than just fight crime". Superfella has the power but isn't infallible, and there's the inevitable thing where ordinary people have a problem with the power dynamic of it even when he's unambiguously helping, and it's all a beautiful dark clusterfuck. It's also kind of like a precursor to Dr Manhattan, where when the guy with the power is more infallible, he's just like "gently caress it this is never gonna work" and doesn't bother.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:08
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roomforthetuna posted:Oh hey, everyone should read Miracleman (aka Marvelman) if you like social critique in comic book form. Short version, it's basically "what if Superman [but even more powerful] tried to actually fix the world rather than just fight crime". Superfella has the power but isn't infallible, and there's the inevitable thing where ordinary people have a problem with the power dynamic of it even when he's unambiguously helping, and it's all a beautiful dark clusterfuck. Injustice would be a fun version of this if it didn't weirdly and kind-of-misogynistically character assassinate Wonder Woman to facilitate it's plot.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:11
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Jaxyon posted:Here's a link to the comics Civil War rundown The MCU Civil War isn't the Comics version of Civil War I think. fool of sound posted:I'm not super into either comic books or the MCU so I might be missing some context but I think the basic structure of Civil War is pretty interesting, the movie makes a bunch of noise about Cap's dedication to freedom and non-intrusion and whatever, but I think the more interesting reading is that the former weapons contractor of course has no issue throwing the power of Avengers behind a national interest, while the former soldier does. Despite his origin story, Stark is and has always been insulated from the effects of the American foreign policy apparatus and war machine, while Captain America deliberately bore the brunt of it out of nationalistic pride and is cost him everything, and that directly informs their worldviews. I feel like fairness demands that we don't so easily set aside Stark's origin story; he clearly saw how his weapons were being used to harm people, Americans and non-Americans and decided the only way to morally move forward was for Stark Industries to entirely stop producing weapons and then personally attended to destroying his weapons that ended up in the hands of terrorists like the Fake 10 Rings. That also isn't quite the plot of Civil War; the Sokovia Accords are a UN/Multinational Treaty signed by every nation to put the Avengers and all Metahumans under oversight and supervision. He isn't going into Civil War fighting his friends because he wants the Avengers to act according to US interests; the Avengers post-Winter Soldier were largely operating on their own as a vigilante force separate from the US government (and this is reinforced in Falcon where he specifically outlines how the Avengers do business to Bad Guy Captain America). He wants the Avengers to abide by the Accords and whatever exceptions were carved out for specifically them so they can continue to do what they do but under international oversight. Thunderbolt Ross is their liason as he's currently the Secretary of State which affirms to me that this is more of a international framework. International treaties have the force of Law in the US so from the US point of view the Accords feel like the US doing stuff but its just the USA implementing the terms of the treaty.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:15
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Sanguinia posted:Injustice would be a fun version of this if it didn't weirdly and kind-of-misogynistically character assassinate Wonder Woman to facilitate it's plot.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:17
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Jaxyon posted:As I've not read the series, it sounds like the Paul/Paul's son is a despot in order to force the galaxy to rise against him/them. So like the ultimate white saviorism. Which doesn't make it right. Leto II, Paul's son, turns into a sandworm and contains all of the generic memories of every human who previously lived and is really a council of personalities from that genetic memory. He's doing all of this so that humans will spread out among the universe and not be in one place where they can be controlled by one ruler and be open to a possible future threat that could wipe out all of humanity. He also makes it so that humans can no longer use the spice to have the ability to see into the future because technically what you're doing is looking at all possible options with enough clarity that you actually know what might happen and what's the most likely thing to happen and this ability has trapped humans because of the elites attempts to make sure it all happens as they want The books are absolutely insane by the end. I honestly don't think I could summarize everything they're trying to say because it's a lot and it keeps getting crazier.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:18
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Sanguinia posted:Injustice would be a fun version of this if it didn't weirdly and kind-of-misogynistically character assassinate Wonder Woman to facilitate it's plot. I feel like Injustice's problem in general was that the writers didn't sit down and ask themselves "Who would willingly join evil Superman's regime and why?" when they really should have. Admittedly philosophizing on the nature of authoritarian regimes might have been beyond the scope of "Mortal Kombat with superheroes"
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Nov 4, 2021 03:25
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Raenir Salazar posted:The MCU Civil War isn't the Comics version of Civil War I think. To be fair, Steve's most explicit objection to the accords is specifically his worry about governmental interests binding the Avengers to act, or not act, against the objective good. It being the US or the UN doesn't really matter for the point. Steve's feelings about this are certainly informed by the revelations about Hydra controlling SHIELD and through it the US government, to the point that they almost enacted a plan to take over the world with those Insight Helicarriers. He's lost the ability to trust higher authorities and sees it as an abrogation of his personal responsibility to use the power he has for good ends. He has a point, in that Tony wants to sign up for the Accords because he wants to abrogate his personal responsibility. His baggage is Ultron. Iron Man was created so Tony could take personal responsibility for his failures by destroying his weapons with his own hands while he was also stopping those weapons from existing by changing Stark Industries away from Arms Manufacture. Ultron was the last stop of the road that started there, the notion that he could invent something that could protect the world in perpetuity. It backfired to the greatest degree possible, and he lost faith in his own decision making abilities to the point he was ready to let other people call his shots for him. The irony of Cap's position, of course, is that it mirrors American Exceptionalism/Interventionism perfectly, and is flawed for the same reason. Cap has power, and he doesn't trust anyone else to limit that power, and thus refuses to relinquish his power to act unilaterally and without international consent. This is the flip side of the coin, and where Tony's faction has a perfectly reasonable point - them acting unilaterally has saved the world, but it hasn't necessarily made the world safer. Vision is correct when he points out their existence invites challenge, and the less restrained they are the more those that see them as a threat must escalate.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:29
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DarklyDreaming posted:I feel like Injustice's problem in general was that the writers didn't sit down and ask themselves "Who would willingly join evil Superman's regime and why?" when they really should have. Admittedly philosophizing on the nature of authoritarian regimes might have been beyond the scope of "Mortal Kombat with superheroes" I find the DC movies can sometimes be surprising subversive. Like in Red Son you have Soviet Supes killing Stalin to end the gulags; this presents interesting questions and implications about the main timeline Supes and the US prison system. Then you have the recent Injustice movie where supes forcefully stops the War on Terror and forces Israel and Palestine to agree to a proper settlement. When the DCAU swings it swings pretty hard. Sanguinia posted:To be fair, Steve's most explicit objection to the accords is specifically his worry about governmental interests binding the Avengers to act, or not act, against the objective good. It being the US or the UN doesn't really matter for the point. Steve's feelings about this are certainly informed by the revelations about Hydra controlling SHIELD and through it the US government, to the point that they almost enacted a plan to take over the world with those Insight Helicarriers. He's lost the ability to trust higher authorities and sees it as an abrogation of his personal responsibility to use the power he has for good ends. Completely agreed.
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Nov 4, 2021 04:18
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Raenir Salazar posted:I find the DC movies can sometimes be surprising subversive. Like in Red Son you have Soviet Supes killing Stalin to end the gulags; this presents interesting questions and implications about the main timeline Supes and the US prison system. And the new Suicide Squad which is basically "The US did some hosed up poo poo in South America" for 132 minutes
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Nov 4, 2021 04:26
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