Rater's Ridiculously Rambunctious Random Ranter #229

[Rater202]

Being treated badly does not make one right on its own, and treating someone badly does not make one wrong on its own.

No, but when you say, get extorted into agreeing to an abusively strict and questionably legal probation becuase you ignored an order from someone who has no right to give you orders in the first place and in doing so delayed the literal end of the world by several days and gained information that these people need and demand of you in the process being the one to permanently save the world despite everyone treating them like crap for bad reasons makes for a satisfying story.

(We are literally told that the reason n they're being treated like crap is becuase the one guy is butthurt over being ignored, even though the protagonist was objectively right to ignore him and he had no right to tell them no in the first place.)

[Peelee]

as for The Boys.....well I guess if its mentioned so often I'll have to give the show a try myself, but not the comic.

Fair warning - it is very, very dark.

[Anonymouswizard]

Having read Watchmen, I don't think it was written by a man who hates superheroes. There's obviously a lot of love for superhero comics in there, and Alan Moore has written several definitive superhero comics.

What I suspect Moore dislikes is the current state of superhero comics. Or maybe he just dislikes superheroes now, no clue, he used to like them, and his opinions are his business.

[Peelee]

Having read Watchmen, I don't think it was written by a man who hates superheroes. There's obviously a lot of love for superhero comics in there, and Alan Moore has written several definitive superhero comics.

What I suspect Moore dislikes is the current state of superhero comics. Or maybe he just dislikes superheroes now, no clue, he used to like them, and his opinions are his business.

Further the movie and The Boys show both bring up a lot of issues about if superheroes were real, which I greatly enjoyed.

[Lord Raziere]

Having read Watchmen, I don't think it was written by a man who hates superheroes. There's obviously a lot of love for superhero comics in there, and Alan Moore has written several definitive superhero comics.

What I suspect Moore dislikes is the current state of superhero comics. Or maybe he just dislikes superheroes now, no clue, he used to like them, and his opinions are his business.

I mean, I've read the only Watchmen adaptation Alan Moore liked is Saturday Morning Watchmen, which parodies old superhero cartoons from whenever by making all the Watchmen characters incredibly OOC and upbeat so.....I don't know what that says, but its there.

[Tvtyrant]

Yeah I don't think anyone who dislikes superheroes would know them well enough to make those comic books. Good parody/deconstruction requires very intimate knowledge (for example Practical Guide to Evil's writer clearly loves fantasy, as does R. Scott Baker even though they both deconstruct it.)

[Peelee]

Yeah I don't think anyone who dislikes superheroes would know them well enough to make those comic books. Good parody/deconstruction requires very intimate knowledge (for example Practical Guide to Evil's writer clearly loves fantasy, as does R. Scott Baker even though they both deconstruct it.)

I believe Garth Ennis has openly said he disliked superheroes and when he wrote The Boys, but I also know that the show diverts from the comic severely, and I love the deconstruction in the show. And I think the direction it takes is much better than what I know of the book (again having not read the book).

[Rater202]

Talking about superheroes...

Screw it, I'm just gonna say it: I want a klyntar symbiote.

Slowed aging, healing, enhanced physical attributes, ad it's constantly getting stronger at a slow but steady rate. A Klyntar symbiote doesn't need to take sustenance from outside itself and can sustain its hosts, removing the need to eat or excrete: Essentially, if you are bound to a symbiote you don't have to eat except for pleasure and you don't suffer any consequences from it. The exception is if the symbiote is sick or damaged, but then you just need to get an EpiPen or binge on chocolate depending on which hormone it needs to heal itself.

Klyntar symbiotes have an infinite capacity to store both information and DNA absorbed from hosts as well as an infinite capacity to adapt and grow stronger: A Symbiote can potentially develop almost any superpower, given the right circumstances, and the famed weakness to heat and loud noises can be overcome by multiple methods.

Once the symbiote is bonded deeply enough, Mystique style shapeshifting becomes possible. It's technically a basic power that all symbiote have(the same "look like whatever clothes I'm thinking of" power that Venom had since it was "The Black Suit.")

Symbiotes are capable of rendering it so that a host doesn't have to breathe(though not every symbiote does this: Venom does, but it was implied that Carnage couldn't keep Cletus alive indefinitely and Scream seems to let her host's breath naturally considering that she filled Andi's lungs with a good that could extract oxygen from water as part of a set of aquatic adaptions) and can allow a host to survive indefinitely in a vacuum without consequences.

A symbiote's personality is defined y traits it's absorbed from it's hosts, so if I bond to basically any symbiote who isn't part of the symbiote Imperium who hasn't had too many prior hosts I'm basically getting a long term partner wh has values similar to mine.

[Tvtyrant]

I believe Garth Ennis has openly said he disliked superheroes and when he wrote The Boys, but I also know that the show diverts from the comic severely, and I love the deconstruction in the show. And I think the direction it takes is much better than what I know of the book (again having not read the book).

I don't know The Boys, I read Worm and Watchmen. The genre is pretty saturated at this point, so by the time The Boys came out I felt satiated. Wildcards and Steelheart get thrown into that mix, along with in DC and Marvel deconstructions.

[Peelee]

I don't know The Boys, I read Worm and Watchmen. The genre is pretty saturated at this point, so by the time The Boys came out I felt satiated. Wildcards and Steelheart get thrown into that mix, along with in DC and Marvel deconstructions.

The Boys largely takes aim at DC, having Superman, Wonder Woman, several Batman, Aquaman, etc expys. It's much more corporate-based, where the superheroes worry about their image in terms of marketability, as a quick example.

Spoiler

Show

In the comic, the titular Boys become super-powered themselves to take on the "supes", as they call them. The show has them remain non-superpowered, which given the themes I greatly prefer.

[Bartmanhomer]

The Boys is a great TV show. I never read the comic book, however.

[Xyril]

Being treated badly does not make one right on its own, and treating someone badly does not make one wrong on its own.

I second this. Just look at all of the great fictional villains who are compelling precisely because they were wronged, i.e. the recent Joker or comic Magneto. I think most readers can understand why Magneto ended up the way, even sympathize with him: Anybody who lived through a genocide understandably feels compelled to do something when it looks like history might repeat itself. Yet most, if not all, readers would agree that he was a villain because at least some of his actions were morally wrong. (Though there's probably a lot of reasonable debate on where he crossed that line.)

Having read Watchmen, I don't think it was written by a man who hates superheroes. There's obviously a lot of love for superhero comics in there, and Alan Moore has written several definitive superhero comics.

What I suspect Moore dislikes is the current state of superhero comics. Or maybe he just dislikes superheroes now, no clue, he used to like them, and his opinions are his business.

When folks cite Alan Moore "admitting his hatred for superheroes," they are technically stating an accurate fact, but omitting so much relevant context that it borders on dishonesty/bad faith.

I haven't read any superhero comics since I finished with Watchmen. I hate superheroes. I think they're abominations. They don't mean what they used to mean. They were originally in the hands of writers who would actively expand the imagination of their nine- to 13-year-old audience. That was completely what they were meant to do and they were doing it excellently. These days, superhero comics think the audience is certainly not nine to 13, it's nothing to do with them. It's an audience largely of 30-, 40-, 50-, 60-year old men, usually men. Someone came up with the term graphic novel. These readers latched on to it; they were simply interested in a way that could validate their continued love of Green Lantern or Spider-Man without appearing in some way emotionally subnormal. This is a significant rump of the superhero-addicted, mainstream-addicted audience.

He hasn't always hated superheroes--and even now, he doesn't hate what the superhero genre was--a great genre geared towards kids and teens. He hates what he sees as the dominant undercurrent of the genre today: escapist stories that have ramped up the sex, violence, and other "mature" content to appeal for a now largely adult audience, but have at their core failed to evolve to reflect a more emotionally mature audience.

Personally, I disagree with his views. The best superhero comics tackle complex issues and human relationships as well as, if not better than, the best exemplars of other genres, and escapism into a fantasy world of larger-than-life superheroes is no more and no less emotionally mature than escapism into speculative science fiction, or historical fiction, or contemporary fictional characters whose lives are completely realistic but nonetheless different from yours. However, to dismiss his works as an "angry screed" by someone who hates the genre is simply dishonest. Like you say, he clearly loves--or at least has loved--superheroes to be able to deconstruct them as well as he has. What he hates is the (supposed) fact that instead of the genre maturing with its aging audience, its audience has emotionally stagnated in order to stay connected with characters and stories that aren't meaningfully different from the ones they enjoyed as children.

Some folks see The Boys and Watchmen and view them as a repudiation of superheroes as childish and meaningless. To me, this doesn't seem like a reasonable interpretation because the very act of writing those works is proof that 'unrealistic superpowered guys in costumes' isn't inherently incompatible with tackling difficult or controversial themes. If anything, it's implicitly validating the basic premise of superpowers as a storytelling device because both of those works are sending the same general message: That the author sees mainstream superheroes as unrealistic not because Superman has nearly unlimited powers that break all the known laws of physics, but because of how human nature (and alien nature) responds given those premises. Kryptonian powers aren't the part that's hard to believe, but rather the fact that someone as powerful as a Kryptonian would grow up to be one of the "most human" members of the Justice League. The Avengers aren't unrealistic because of their powers, but rather because they are apparently immune to human fallibility and corruptibility the way any other large group of powerful humans(-ish) would be.

[LaZodiac]

Hasn't Moore also gone back to clarify that he doesn't hate Superheroes so much as, he hates what HE has done since it basically tainted the well, so to speak?

[Anonymouswizard]

My aunt put my hair up into a sort of ponytail with a hair tie, which made me look cute I think.

But then when I get home from work I had to spend an hour getting it out of my hair cause it got stuck in my hair which is... less cute.

Yeah, I actually love tying my hair back, and wish it was longer so I could braid it, but it does tend to knot around the hair tie.

[Rater202]

Magneto is a terrible example of someone who was wronged being wrong themselves.

Magneto's stated reason for wanting to take over the world and institute a mutant run government with baseline humans as a second class(though, per God Loves, Man Kills he means second class as in "not allowed to hold public office") is becuase he does not believe that humans and mutants can coexist peacefully and that, left unchecked, humans, or at least groups of humans, will inevitably act to enslave or exterminate mutants.

And then he was repeatedly proven right dozens of times over the next five real-life decades.

No matter how much good is done by mutants or how generally accepted they are, it only takes one mutant making a mess to undo all the progress and there's always gonna be people who want all mutants dead.

Though, as I've already said, in the PArahumans series this is a case of the kid being right, or at least making good points, being treated badly for no valid reason, especially inc comparison to other individuals doing the same or much worse things, and then being vindicated at the end of the story. Not a case of "I was wrong therefore I'm automatically right and you're jackasses for not bowing to my whims."

[Lord Raziere]

Hasn't Moore also gone back to clarify that he doesn't hate Superheroes so much as, he hates what HE has done since it basically tainted the well, so to speak?

Yeah, thats the impression I get from what I've heard about him. I think I get what he was trying to go for and what it ended up being and why he doesn't like how it ended up that way.

like I'm guessing he thought that it would just be some one off thing that might be somewhat successful, but then everyone would go back to normal stuff which to be fair is usually what happens in any given medium: most people go for light works where the heroes are clear and everything turns out fine and only read the dark stuff for a change of pace when they really want to challenge themselves, but instead we got the Iron Age of comics and all the stupidity that resulted from that like Youngblood, Rob Liefeld and his Crazy Steve Batman things like that, like Watchmen has thought to it and I like it but the things that tried to imitate it? thats the real badness.

[DataNinja]

My aunt put my hair up into a sort of ponytail with a hair tie, which made me look cute I think.

But then when I get home from work I had to spend an hour getting it out of my hair cause it got stuck in my hair which is... less cute.

Oh, nice for looking cute! That's always good.

...sucks about the getting stuck, though. You've got the opposite problem as I do. My hair hates staying in any shape, and just slips out of ties.

[LaZodiac]

Yeah, I actually love tying my hair back, and wish it was longer so I could braid it, but it does tend to knot around the hair tie.

I do too but I'm not capable of doing it with my own hands, and the tangling is too dangerous v_v

Magneto is a terrible example of someone who was wronged being wrong themselves.

Magneto is a very good example of how Western comics have a severe problem due to just having multiple writers. Because when Magneto is being written WELL, as in being written with nuance and care and understanding... he is CORRECT. He is still extreme, but he's irrevocably correct given everything that has happened.

when he is written bad it is INCREDIBLY bad, and that sucks.

Yeah, thats the impression I get from what I've heard about him. I think I get what he was trying to go for and what it ended up being and why he doesn't like how it ended up that way.

like I'm guessing he thought that it would just be some one off thing that might be somewhat successful, but then everyone would go back to normal stuff which to be fair is usually what happens in any given medium: most people go for light works where the heroes are clear and everything turns out fine and only read the dark stuff for a change of pace when they really want to challenge themselves, but instead we got the Iron Age of comics and all the stupidity that resulted from that like Youngblood, Rob Liefeld and his Crazy Steve Batman things like that, like Watchmen has thought to it and I like it but the things that tried to imitate it? thats the real badness.

Yeah. The things that happened in the wake of Watchman and stuff like that are the problem, not darker stories like Watchman itself. It's like the magical girl genre post Madoka Magica. A bunch of imitators that do not understand Why it was like how it was, they only see the superficial reasons.

[Rater202]

The only thing I've heard that Moore regrets is The Killing Joke.

Specifically, his treatment of Barbara Gordon.

So, Killing Joke was originally intended to be a non-canon story. So Moore was given a great deal of leeway with it, but still had to obey some "character image" things.

He asked if he could paralyze Batgirl... And was told to "cripple the bitch."

He states that he should have changed his plans then and there.

IIRC, the killing joke wasn't made a canonical Batman story until it'd been published, which is reflected in how...

Killing Joke is a great story... But the way Barbara was treated in it is disgusting and Moore admitted that later on.

Of course, Barbara snapped back from that disgusting treatment and a lot of good stories came from it, but...

[Xyril]

Magneto is a terrible example of someone who was wronged being wrong themselves.

Magneto's stated reason for wanting to take over the world and institute a mutant run government with baseline humans as a second class(though, per God Loves, Man Kills he means second class as in "not allowed to hold public office") is becuase he does not believe that humans and mutants can coexist peacefully and that, left unchecked, humans, or at least groups of humans, will inevitably act to enslave or exterminate mutants.

And then he was repeatedly proven right dozens of times over the next five real-life decades.

That's why he's the perfect example. From your prior posts, you seem to have a consequentialist view of morality--i.e., being right (correct) goes a long way to making you right (morally justified.) From that perspective in particular, it's easy to view Magneto as being morally justified because he's correct about human nature. However, that's predicated on the assumption that Magneto's extreme measures are the only possible solution to the problems he sees. Yes, humans tend to devolve towards petty tribalism--however, most of us want to do better, and historically, we have had periods of substantial progress in that respect. More importantly, in both history and the Marvel comic universe, whenever we have taken giant steps back, it's often provoked by people like Magneto--people who are perceptive enough to see human nature for what it is, but not quite self-aware enough to realize that their attempts to protect themselves from or to "solve" the problem are only making things worse.

More importantly, not everyone takes a utilitarian view of morality. Yes, especially from a child's perspective, it's nice to see the boy who cried wolf get vindicated when the the adults who failed to believe him are confronted with the truth. From another moral perspective, the adults were acting completely reasonably in ignoring him because it was his own fault for choosing to shred his own credibility for the sake of getting transient attention.

[Bartmanhomer]

Magneto is evil but he did redeem himself and turn out to be good in the movie.

[Peelee]

Magneto is a very good example of how Western comics have a severe problem due to just having multiple writers. Because when Magneto is being written WELL, as in being written with nuance and care and understanding... he is CORRECT. He is still extreme, but he's irrevocably correct given everything that has happened.

Magneto is correct in that there will be prejudice. That's not exactly a wild claim to make. He is also incredibly wrong while addressing his claims. In everything I've seen him in, he is always ultimately wrong. It doesn't matter how well you can pinpoint a problem if your solution is reprehensible.

Im with Xyril. Magneto is a great example.

[Tvtyrant]

That's why he's the perfect example. From your prior posts, you seem to have a consequentialist view of morality--i.e., being right (correct) goes a long way to making you right (morally justified.) From that perspective in particular, it's easy to view Magneto as being morally justified because he's correct about human nature. However, that's predicated on the assumption that Magneto's extreme measures are the only possible solution to the problems he sees. Yes, humans tend to devolve towards petty tribalism--however, most of us want to do better, and historically, we have had periods of substantial progress in that respect. More importantly, in both history and the Marvel comic universe, whenever we have taken giant steps back, it's often provoked by people like Magneto--people who are perceptive enough to see human nature for what it is, but not quite self-aware enough to realize that their attempts to protect themselves from or to "solve" the problem are only making things worse.

More importantly, not everyone takes a utilitarian view of morality. Yes, especially from a child's perspective, it's nice to see the boy who cried wolf get vindicated when the the adults who failed to believe him are confronted with the truth. From another moral perspective, the adults were acting completely reasonably in ignoring him because it was his own fault for choosing to shred his own credibility for the sake of getting transient attention.

Magneto is confirmed to be the Morality Monster of myth. He takes such pleasure in being self-righteous that his pleasure's utility outweighs the suffering of his victims.

Also Magneto is a walking ego that makes Lex Luthor look humble, and so selfish he makes Loki look altruistic. He sabotages every effort to make the world a better place because those plots don't stem from or revolve around him, and he is incapable of seeing any other perspective.

[Anonymouswizard]

I do too but I'm not capable of doing it with my own hands, and the tangling is too dangerous v_v

Considering I have dyspraxia and no manual dexterity the amount of manual dexterity I have is shocking (it seems to come from spending over half a decade painting minis). And yeah, tangling is a mess, although I'm not sure how much of my problem is my hair not having settled on a way to grow (I have a double crown and multiple cowslicks, and possibly other irregularities).

On the plus side my curls make all the ladies jealous, as well as half the men and most attack helicopters.

[Rater202]

Re: IT stops being prejudice when the Government passes legislation stating that your people legally aren't human, starts building sapient androids specifically to hunt down and kill you, and refers to one of these procedures as "Operation Zero Tolerance."

You could argue that Magneto was paranoid, but in his paranoia, he had a completely accurate vision of the future.

Edit: And that's just the Fictionalized United States. I want to know what Canada did to piss off Marvel Comics, becuase Marvel Canada has literal Nazi Style Death Camps for mutants during periods of time when the US is chill with mutants.

Between that and the Wendigoes... Did a Canadian piss in Stan Lee's cheerios or something?

[Lord Raziere]

Re: IT stops being prejudice when the Government passes legislation stating that your people legally aren't human, starts building sapient androids specifically to hunt down and kill you, and refers to one of these procedures as "Operation Zero Tolerance."

You could argue that Magneto was paranoid, but in his paranoia, he had a completely accurate vision of the future.

Eh, comics aren't known for subtlety, and they have a bias towards portraying these issues in a way that makes heroes punch the villain within the span of a short amount of time.

like marvel is like one of the oldest superhero universes out there and older superhero stuff tends to not have a lot of nuances in its storytelling. as well as repeating the same plot threads over and over again because they're basically cartoons before cartoons existed. I doubt you'd get the same quality of storytelling if you had ground rules like "no reboots, no recycling plots, no character resurrection, whatever is the end, is the end. no if ands or buts."

[LaZodiac]

Magneto is correct in that there will be prejudice. That's not exactly a wild claim to make. He is also incredibly wrong while addressing his claims. In everything I've seen him in, he is always ultimately wrong. It doesn't matter how well you can pinpoint a problem if your solution is reprehensible.

Im with Xyril. Magneto is a great example.

It depends on the story. I'm more familiar with a more reasonable Magneto who needs to chill a bit, than the psychopathic "In Chess, the pawns die first" from X3.

I'm going to drop this conversation now because there's no way this can continue without getting in trouble.

[Peelee]

Re: IT stops being prejudice when the Government passes legislation stating that your people legally aren't human, starts building sapient androids specifically to hunt down and kill you, and refers to one of these procedures as "Operation Zero Tolerance."

..... Nnnno, that's still prejudice. Like, that literally would not happen if it wasn't prejudice.

I think you define words differently than how they're commonly accepted.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think you define words differently than how they're commonly accepted.

Inconceivable!

[Peelee]

Inconceivable!

If you use that word more often than I could make a joke based on a famous movie.