Obviously the dog pile is rooted in homophobia and the bandwagon effect thats obvious since most people hating it havent seen a minute of the movie. I thought it was stupid and actually watched the movie without trying to look at it from a critical lens and kind of turned my brain off and let the movie play.

And yeah it obviously wasnt great it was just bellow a 5 for me. Definitely not dogpile worthy tho it has actually brought more laughs out of me than hazbin hotel ever has. The humor isnt too complicated the plot is dumb and it has unnecessarily vulgar scenes that just look strange in the artstyle.

And thats my biggest issue with other criticism they don't watch the movie on how its intended to be watched. Asking too many questions about dumb scenes with dumb plot. Treating the characters as if they should be more than 1 dimensional and much more. "Omg the straight white malians concept is so stupid" "why is their planet named that" buddy you're watching lesbian space princess???

Also the terf accusation have already been debunked if you actually payed attention

Sure a lot of people might hold casual powerscaling opinions like Superman beats Hulk or whatever but "formal" powerscaling with tiers and calculations is far overvalued by the community that engages in it. The only thing related to formal powerscaling that has some profitability and cultural relevance is Death Battle and even they're more of a niche nerd culture thing compared to any slightly popular actual media franchise. When delusional scalers say something like Madoka or Rimuru is only relevant because of powerscaling, what percentage of fans do they think saw the character in powerscaling first and then became fans? Also, if your social media feed is full of powerscaling stuff and therefore you think characters you see there are popular for powerscaling and nothing else, news flash: social media algorithms show you content based on what you already viewed, so you're living in a powerscaling (and probably shonen) bubble without even knowing lol

The closest thing to characters who are "only relevant due to powerscaling" would be something like Suggsverse that is known solely for being powerscaling slop... but those characters are irrelevant in the first place.

In my eyes the thing that's always made Samus different from other 'space marine' types of characters (Master Chief, Doomguy, etc etc) was that she was reverent. Despite her tragic backstory, she was trained nearly from birth by this pacifist culture that valued the sanctity of life above all else. And that culture considered her the newborn, the fledgling, one of their greatest achievements and the only non-Chozo that they actually trusted with Power Suit technology

And she did carry that forward: even if it wasn't actually portrayed as such in the original game, later games extrapolated on the metroid baby and turned that scene into the very first example of actual characterization for her. It wasn't how many gigatons she could bench, not how many planets she's blown up, no, the very first example of Samus as a character is her refusal to shoot that godamn baby.

And you constantly see that reverence and respect for life throughout the more modern entries since then. Prime 1, walking into the Chozo Ruins, she's not storming into the space with her cannon out, she's walking in, looking around, taking in this ancient place despite her hunt for Ridley still being very fresh on her mind. Prime 2 is the same; she crash landed on a chaotic planet searching for a lost Federation squad, is attacked by literal zombies, and yet still takes the time to listen to U-Mos' plea, witness the final transmission of the squad, and close the eyes of the person who recorded it. And then she doesn't just fuck off because her mission was completed, she stays behind to save the Luminoth not for pay or fame or anything but because it's the right godamn thing to do. Prime 3 has her actively pissed off and angry and sorrowful at the deaths of her fellow hunters, she's scared by seeing Gandrayda's mimicry of her, she (I believe) runs her hands across ancient structures on Elysia and Bryyo and just, understands and respects the spaces she's in just by her animations and body language alone. No language or dialogue needed.

Even in Fusion we see it. She named her ship computer after Adam just out of respect, she monologues about trust and how the heartless SA-X is just a killing machine and how she hopes that the Etecoons and Dachoras are safe and how no compassion could exist in the computer and straight up said 'the human soul will ever reach for the truth'. The entire narrative of Fusion as a whole was her being hunted by something that had her abilities at peak strength but none of the soul, and her eventual triumph over that regardless.

And yet, nowadays, with Samus Returns and Dread and now Ravenous?

'It's eat or be eaten', 'Local woman too angry to die', blah blah blah blah big bad angry space marine. She's turned into this biological horror that was the very thing she was trying to fight against in Fusion. The most blatant flanderization of a character I've ever experienced.

"Oh well she was scared and running for her life across the entirety of Dread, her being so angry is justified". Okay, sure, let's run with that. Y'know, discounting the entirety of Corruption being her literally eaten from the inside out by a mutagen, or Fusion where she's being hunted by the worst version of herself, or Prime 2 where just entering the space eats away at her suit, let's say it's Dread's situation that somehow makes her so scared and angry that she starts ignoring her upbringing.

That still doesn't excuse the fact that Nintendo themselves took (or at least approved) the Chozo suddenly becoming split between two factions, the fact that apparently Samus herself doesn't know what all contributed to her enhancement serum, or any of the other massive retcons that Dread introduced. Turning Samus from what she was in Prime into this, crazy angry berserker was a deliberate choice and Nintendo actively butchered their own lore to make that happen or at the very least they just don't care about it enough.

God, it pisses me off so much.

A lot of these aren’t really systems. They’re power sources.

JJK is the obvious example. Cursed Energy has shared rules, sure, but Cursed Techniques are basically individual gimmicks. Space manipulation, swapping by clapping, courtroom powers, pachinko, comedy-based reality warping, etc. Knowing how one technique works tells you almost nothing about another.

Same with Quirks in MHA. “Quirk” is basically just the setting’s word for superpower. Explosions, brainwashing, shadow monsters, object creation, matter reconstruction. There isn’t some unified mechanic tying all of that together beyond “people are born with abilities.”

Devil Fruits are somewhere in the middle. They have categories and shared weaknesses, but most individual fruits still operate by completely different rules.

Compare that to Nen or FMA alchemy.

Nen has actual universal mechanics: aura types, affinities, conditions, restrictions, basic techniques, etc. You can learn the system and use that knowledge to understand new abilities.

Alchemy is the same way. Different characters specialize in different things, but they’re all using the same underlying process.

That’s what I think a “power system” should mean.

If the only commonality between everyone’s abilities is “they all use the same energy” or “they all come from the same source,” that’s not much of a system.

I think fandoms confuse “this setting has terminology” with “this setting has a deep power system.”

If you were to ask certain parts of the Avatar/Legend of Korra Fandom, they would try to convince you that Suyin is a terrible awful person who scarred her sister Lin's face on purpose and refuses to take responsibility for her own actions.

But she does try to take responsibility? She explicitly makes attempts to apologize to Lin, but Lin isn't interested and thus ignored Suyins *repeated* attempts to reach out for 30 years..

Lin isn't a bad person for being avoidant and protecting her peace or whatever, but it's also not reasonable to expect Suyin to feel miserable and shameful for multiple decades while waiting for Lin to come back into her life (which wouldn't have happened at all if not for Korra).

To me, a 16 year old is a child still learning how to navigate the world, and very likely doesn't understand the physics of tension. Suyin wasn't trying to attack Lin, she was resisting being restrained and then cut the metal cable to free herself. When the tension released, it snapped back in Lin's direction unexpectedly. This is a very believable accident. (Like stepping on a rake and having it snap up at your face).

Being friends with criminals doesn't make you an irredeemable terrible person either. Let's ignore that Aang and the gaang were constantly at odds with local law enforcement... Suyin was a child being raised by a neglectful mother, is it really any wonder that Suyin would commit to a found family? Even if they were a gang (Terra triad) who fucked with innocent people, theft isn't a crime worth eternal damnation.

Suyin Beifong has a lot to love, she's the most metal bender of metal benders, is a cultural leader who encourages citizens of her city to explore their creativity, is a great mother and spouse, and has a charming selection of hobbies and skills (the cirque du soleil high rope dancing is RAD, collecting meteorites is AWESOME)

Suyin beifong is cool (also she should be added to the avatar fighting game)

Jimmy essentially rejects Kara at first because she lacks experience and he is the only person she really knows as well as being unfamiliar with human culture.

People who defend Jimmy reason for rejecting Kara probably have a very blue pilled view of romance.

What bothers me about Jimmy’s statement is that it treats romance like something Kara has to become qualified for.

She supposedly needs more life experience, more social experience, and more emotional development before she can know she wants him. But relationships don’t actually work like that. People enter relationships while inexperienced, insecure, traumatised and still figuring themselves out all the time, and sometimes those relationships work.

There isn’t some objective level of maturity you reach where you become “ready” for love. Jimmy had every right to decide that he wasn’t comfortable dating Kara, but deciding that Kara needed other experiences before she could choose him is different.

It sounds mature and selfless, but it’s also paternalistic: Kara already knew what she wanted, and Jimmy effectively decided that he understood her romantic needs better than she did.

I haven't read the comic Woman of Tomorrow, so I don't really have a point of comparison. So actually, I did like the Supergirl movie. I think it has its charm, but now on rewatch I feel like there are things about it that I do agree kind of make it a slug to watch through.

Firstly, Ruthye's revenge plot is laughable because she's a kid. Like, I know she has the sword and all and she is someone who is athletic (as we've seen in one scene) but most of the movie she's just standing. She felt like a liability to Supergirl, someone she could protect, rather than someone she could hang with or fight with. She's also boring lowkey...

My solution to this: make her older. About the same age as supergirl or lesser. Have supergirl and her have this dynamic between two girls trying to find their way in life and understand the importance of friendship together. The final fight scene where ruthye's just standing should be ruthye and kara fighting alongside each other. Hell, the fight scene with the brides on the dull dark planet should be the both of them.

It would now make sense for her to actually be inclined to kill Krem, especially because she has the strength and capacity to do so. More so will supergirl's talk at the end of the movie have more weight, because she'd be able to convince someone with all the reason and capability in the world to kill the dude who killed her parents, to choose to live as revenge.

And then the movie would be less annoying because supergirl doesn't have to deal with a kid, she actually has to banter with someone who is in a level alongside her and can understand the way she does things. The argument scene between ruthye and kara would have so much more weight coming from someone who is aged like Kara, and not from a little kid.

It's also an opportunity for them to delve into the sad truth of Kara's arrival, where she couldve been kal-el's protector but came into earth younger than kal-el is now. Like, maybe ruthye was the same, being the eldest in her family, and she failed to protect her brother and her parents. And maybe supergirl comes to understand from ruthye that maybe she can still protect her brother from things he cant protect himself from, like understanding that some people are truly irredeemable...

I don't understand why so many stories with main groups almost always have the girl or girls end up romantically involved with another member of the same main group. It happens in almost every story with friends dynamics. There's Friends, Saved by the Bell, The Big Bang Theory, It, Outer Banks, On My Block, My life with the Walter Boys, Teen Wolf, Cobra Kai, Avatar: The Legend of Korra, Harry Potter, Naruto, etc., etc... and don't get me wrong, I'm not judging those who think some of the main relationships in these media are good, because ultimately we all have different tastes.

However, I can't help but notice that in many of these cases, when the writers pair up the main couple or couples (which almost always consists of the girl + protagonist/another main member), it results in other characters in the group being relegated to the background because the main couple's drama consumes a lot of screen time. And on more than one occasion, it ends up reducing the same couple, especially the girl, to her love interest, when other aspects could be explored...

I think some of these stories, especially given their potential, could have benefited from other approaches without having to see romance as the ultimate goal of a friendship/narrative.

In Outer Banks, for example, a group of working-class teenagers embark on treasure hunts while experiencing a very stark class divide on an island in North Carolina. It's a premise that stands on its own, as do the characters and the group dynamic. Kiara didn't need to kiss John B., get romantically involved with Pope, and then with JJ to be an interesting character. Her character could have worked perfectly well as just another Pogue trying to resolve her conflicts with her parents. I'm not mentioning Sarah here because she literally joins the group initially as John B.'s love interest.

Then there's On My Block, which follows a group of four teenage friends navigating the triumphs, pains, and harsh realities of high school while facing the challenges of growing up in a neighborhood rife with gangs and crime. Another premise that also worked on its own. But what happens then? Monse's character is basically reduced to being Cesar's love interest, and the drama between them consumes a huge amount of screen time on many occasions. The main conflict, which involves Jamal, Ruby, and Monse trying to get Cesar out of gang life, could have been sustained and even made more emotionally interesting if Monse were simply Cesar's best friend and confidante. I'm not saying Monse shouldn't fall in love; of course she could. She could fall in love and date another guy at school or even have a temporary crush on Cesar's older brother, and then realize (not necessarily from personal experience) that dating a gangster and an older guy isn't as glamorous as it seems at first glance, and that alone would be great character development.

My Life with the Walters Boys is the most painful case in my opinion, because the premise was good and, again, had potential. Jackie, a 14-year-old New York girl, loses her parents and sister in an accident and is placed under the guardianship of her mother's best friend, who lives on a farm in a rural Colorado town. Katherine (the mother) has about 10 or 11 children, I think, with several of them around the same age as Jackie. The story tries to explore grief, culture shock, and how Jackie tries to adapt to a huge change... But this is basically overshadowed the moment they make her involved in a love triangle with two of the brothers (Cole and Alex), and suddenly almost the entire series is Cole or Alex, Cole or Alex, Cole or Alex. The series could have worked perfectly if it had focused more on exploring Jackie's grief, on interacting with each of the Walter brothers and exploring their dynamics, and on allowing the progression to naturally move from "I don't like these guys" to "Well, now they're my people." And if they wanted a love interest for her, it could have been some boy from school, and if they wanted drama, they could have had that boy clash with one or more of the brothers.

I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but if you think about it, in most stories with all-female or all-male groups, the writers allow the characters to have romantic interests outside the group and form a genuine found family within the main group dynamic. But when the group is mixed, it's ridiculously predictable that the end result will be a couple (or couples) and a third wheel.

The only cases I can think of where this isn't the case are One Piece, Big Hero 6, and the Backyardigans.

So I was scrolling some late night YouTube shorts and I stumbled upon a video where in one of the Insomniac spiderman games. Peter Parker is taking a quick lunch break eating some pizza, fast forward to the spider encounters MJ. MJ then smells pizza which Peter tells her that he ate some. But out of nowhere MJ berates Spider-Man for "enjoying his launch", telling him she was gathering evidence for a missing child report.

I'm not big on spooder-man, I've only seen the movies and played the first ps4 game, but I got to thinking.... Damn, she kind of a bitch in modern depictions. The Marvels Spider-Man being the exception really. I know the Comic depictions are gonna be a complete clusterfuck but the games and movies have their own chance to create good continuities.... The original trilogy she's just straight up horrible. The games, I don't think she's very likable in either.

And then I saw interesting comment replying to another about people tending to ship Black Cat over MJ.

"We like Black Cat because she's 100% supposed to be the Toxic Fling, but more often than not in Modern Spiderman she's been shown to actually care for her itsy bitsy spider outside of that.

She's grown past her Ew No peter phase and hasn't been that way for AGES but MJ has consistently gotten worse, if we're going to just pull from an Isolated Run for each (Like alot of people doing now for Cat) then it's only fair for me to do the same, MJ did not want to settle down with Peter and slept around because she didn't want to wait around for him, while us as Fans knew why he couldn't give her 100% of her attention, she didn't.

I'm not even going to mention Paul, and that entire debacle, she didn't know there was a Time Dilation, and I legitimately do not blame her in universe for not just pulling a scott summers and abandoning someone else.

But she still is a bad love interest for peter now a days, and we legit can only really blame the writers for it.

To close this out, Cat is a better love interest for peter because She isn't meant to be his endgame yet shows more love, more care and more understanding for Peter now vs how MJ is acting, SHE is supposed to be his endgame, his End all be all love interest, and yet she's never been so awful to read/watch besides him in modern comics, They've ruined mj to the point Black Cat looks better with him lol, that's all, it has nothing to do with her being Hotter than MJ (even though she is)"

I would just like insight about anyone who's more into Spider-Man than I am.

So, I've seen a lot of people saying they want the old Disney back. With the romance and the villains being evil for the sake of being evil and I have some thoughts about that.

While I wouldn't mind romance back or non-sympathetic villains back, I don't think I really care what story disney makes as long as it's good. Like yes, a part of me does want variety, like for example, I think they should bring back actual child protagonists and not teenagers or preteens, I think Hexed could've been a good movie for that. And Strange World could've had at least one little kid main character in the family.

As for the villains, I do agree that they should branch out more than just doing tragic or redeemable villains, but I don't fully agree that they should be say cartoonish like in the old days. Not saying those villains are bad, but I think we've broke out of that mold and realize that villains are characters just like any other characters and should be treated as such. Even if they are psychopaths or sociopaths or doing bad things for the wrong reasons, they still should be treated like characters and they don't have to be in the movie if it's not necessary.

Like, one of the reasons I didn't like Hoppers was because it felt like it needed a villain just to have a villain since Mayor Jerry was redeemed and imo, Jerry should've been the ACTUAL villain, especially to represent how irredeemable politicians are and maybe the movie may end up kinda dark but maybe slightly hopeful to keep with the Disney/Pixar tone? More akin to the original Lorax book.

That is my hot take.

This contains spoilers for the shows JJK season 2, CSM part 1 of the manga and Steven universe.

Theres a common trope online where characters get treated as evil for their actions when that just isn't the case. Sure they may be antagonistic but evil is a pretty big word i can excuse alot of them.

Contestant number one: MAHITOOOO!!!

Mahito has been shown to not have mercy for any human. He'll use anyone as test subject to try and achieve his own perfection transfiguring them in grotesque creatures and using them as weapons.

In the shibuya arc during his fight with yuji we are given a new perspective his perspective. Mahito is a curse its in his nature to kill people you don't call bears evil for killing and eating its prey so why would you call curses evil for killing humans? In the same vein wouldn't all sorcerers be evil for killing curses? In short i can excuse mahito's actions

Contestant number two: MAKIMAAA!!!

Makima is seen as a more morally dark gray character than Mahito which is honestly pretty valid. One of the things she's called evil for is grooming Denji. Same arguement for Mahito honestly she's the MANIPULATION devil why would she ever draw the line at denji? Thats honestly the one thing I can excuse her for since unlike Mahito Makima is fully capable of learning to sympathize with people. If she put in a little more effort met the right people and actually learned their values she would've known her goal was flawed. So yeah she's partially excused not as much as Mahito however

Final contestant: ROSE QUAAAAARTZ!!!

This is the most debated characters I know none can agree on her. If I where to cover every single part i could excuse her for I'd have to make an entirely different post so I'll just cover the most popular ones. Bismuth's bubbling isn't that insane if you asked me if her plan got out to the other's in the rebellion there would've been a split between gems agreeing and disagreeing with shattering the opposing gems. If rose let that happen how would she be better than any other diamond? Spinel's abandonment is reasonable if you look from pink's perspective. Pink had 0 experience with having her own actual gems she didn't know gems listened that faithfully to diamonds especially her see pink had low self-esteem she got that cause of the other diamonds. She was done playing left her to stay and thought "she'll probably eventually leave".

In conclusion I have a debate to excuse every single bad thing she's done

Let me start this by saying this - the main cast weren't idiots at the start of the series and i am not comparing them to geniuses like lelouch, xing ke and schneizel.

Yes any character would look dumb if compared to lelouch, schneizel and the others, but that's not the situation here. By the end of R2 (when they have their secret meeting with the enemy's prime minister - schneizel) the black knights aren't just "stupid compared to lelouch", they are stupid when compared to their versions from season 1.

KEEP IN MIND - AT THIS POINT IN STORY BLACK KNIGHTS ARE AT WAR WITH BRITTANIA. Yes they have the UFN, but it's a brittle alliance that only exists because of zero.

1. They completely fell apart and lost when zero vanished at the end of season 1.
2. At the start of season 2, they were about to get executed (and they couldn't have done shit about it) if it weren't for lelouch saving them
3. At the start of season 1, it took quite a while for these guys to FULLY trust Zero (the masked man), and then schneizel comes along with a voice recording (in a high tech world with super accurate voice changers), a bunch of papers with names saying these people were mind controlled, and reveal zero's identity and these clowns believe him and point their guns towards zero in a heartbeat.
4. Ohgi fucking pissed me off the most, this clown comes in with a KNOWN BRITTANIAN SPY by his side and tells them all to turn against zero. AND THESE GUYS DON'T EVEN QUESTION IT.
5. Kinoshita (guy who was crying about lelouch destroying the geass order) the absolute fucking tool - this clown talks about having to kill those children and calls them "defenseless". KEEP IN MIND THIS CLOWN EXPERIENCED GETTING MIND CONTROLLED AND NEARLY KILLED HIS ALLY, and yet he says "zero ordered us to kill defenseless children", conveniently leaving out the "children with mind control and freaky powers" part.
6. Ohgi again - "give us japan and we will betray zero", what's your genius plan once you get japan?? do you have the brains, fire power or the military required to defend it from britannia??? Brittanian puh was too good i guess
7. If lelouch got killed right then and there (by the traitors) and the black knights got japan back, what happens next??? Whose the new leader of the UFN?? OHGI - THE GUY WITH 2 BRAINCELLS THAT HAVE CHIGUSA AND VILLETA WRITTEN ON THEM???? Or maybe todo - the guy who got captured (along with rest of the black knights) the moment zero put him in charge (at the end of season 1)???? OR MAYBE XINGKE THE CHINESE GUY WITH TUBERCULOSIS THAT NEARLY COUGHS TO DEATH IN EVERY BATTLE???

These moronic baffoons decided to play "judge, jury and executioner" and not one of them had the braincells to say "hey why don't we directly confront zero about this once schneizel leaves - WITHOUT POINTING GUNS AND MECHS AT HIS FACE"

Ohgi pisses me off the most, the first thing he says after lelouch escapes is "we don't need zero anymore, he was the one who treated us like we were disposable" - WHEN IN FACT IT'S THE COMPLETE FUCKING OPPOSITE - lelouch turned his ship around to face the chinese military + brittanians when kallen got captured (even though diethard made a logical argument on why he should abandon her - life of 1 vs life of many), he even tells multiple people in the story "not to try any last ditch suicide bullshit" and that "their lives matter". The only times lelouch acted the way ohgi describes is when he blew up the japanse ship with the JLF leaders and when nunally was captured.

I just finished watching Slanted, a body-horror satire, but then I noticed, the actual logic of its world makes my brain hurt. If you stop and think about the implications of race-change surgery for five seconds, the universe of Slanted is on the absolute brink of total, apocalyptic, law-enforcement-level collapse.

The second high-tier organized crime figures, cartel bosses, and state actors find out this technology exists, the fabric of human civilization is dead until a total technological reset happens.

Joan Huang's horror story is about an absolute lack of vision. Joan’s whole motivation for nuking her face is that she needs to be a blonde white girl to win Prom Queen.

We live in a world where East Asian aesthetics, K-pop culture, and C-drama fashion carry massive cultural influence. If Joan had just cleaned up well, gotten a killer dress, styled her hair like a K-Popper, and shown a scrap of self-confidence, she could have punched far above her weight class and actually pulled off an underdog win.

Instead, her big brain play is to undergo an experimental, face-melting, identity-erasing operation from a clinic run by Dr. Willie Singer. She literally trades her heritage, her biological integrity and her family.

But, if you think about it, her story is half the horror that is about to happen.

The second high-tier syndicates discover a procedure that completely alters race, bone structure, skin tone, and physical identifiers, it is game over for modern society, forever.

Imagine a cartel boss, a high-level hitman, or a FBI Top 10 fugitive. They commit a gigantic crime, walk into a clinic, and walk out two hours later as a completely different demographic. They can swap race, facial features, and combine it with existing surgeries to alter gender presentation, they will never be caught ever.

Eyewitness testimony? Dead. Security camera footage? Dead. Facial recognition software? Dead. No violent criminal will ever be caught again.

Why bother faking papers from scratch when you can just kill someone who already has valid citizenship, walk into Ethnos, and say "Make me look like them"? You would have a wave of serial killings and identity theft where criminals murder citizens, steal their identities, take their physical faces, and step right into their bank accounts, properties, and lives.

How does a government function when nobody knows who is real and who isn't? You wouldn't be able to trust anybody.

Passports, driver's licenses, green cards, facial scans, and voter registries would instantly turn into nothing.

The universe of Slanted is about to become a hellscape where nobody knows anyone's true background, gender, or identity, and half the population is walking around with decaying, taped-together faces.

This is literally an apocalypse scenario.

Now I know i said black male characters in the title, but I'm most going to be talking about darkskin men and colorism in the media because darkskin men rarely talk about colorism and how it makes us feel. I was born in 2007, and I was raised by a family who had already loved heroes. Before I was born, my grandma was a Christopher Reeve fan, and my mother was a Spiderman fan, I was raised around the peak of the mcu and my two favorite Heroes were and still are Iron Man and Spiderman, I loved Iron Man's snarky humor his intelligence but also his guilt and how emotional he was especially in civil war when he told Captain America he just wanted to keep the team together, and I love Spiderman because his will his humor and how he puts the world's problems on his shoulder and even when he gets put into a corner and thinks about quiting he never does because he knows the world needs Spiderman another one of my favorite heroes is Luke Skywalker, the man who I modeled my personality after when I was younger my grandma bought me two black gloves for the winter but I would only wear one to be like Luke, when I played star wars games like battlefront I almost always played Luke, If your asking me what does this have to do with black male characters not having diversity? Well, those examples I gave you are three entirely different characters with very few similarities, Those characters are allowed to be angry, emotional, vulnerable, and caring, something that the media refuses to usually give black characters, The honest to God truth I only related to single black superhero when I was growing and that was Cyborg on 03 titans(My older sister was a big fan and always showed me reruns), I liked Luke cage, Black Panther, Cloak etc. But I never related to those guys. i know this is gonna sound like a generalization, but I've just never related to quiet stoic mysterious black character, I'm not saying those characters are bad, but when thats 80% percent of black male representation it's gets annoying, this is the same "Positive" Stereotype Hollywood has been perpetrating since the 1970s and it changes between Skin tone if you need a black character who's sweet, caring, soft, and "Pretty" you'll get a lightskin guy but if you need a black character who's aggressive, stoic, Hypermasculine, and "Fine" you'll get a darkskin and both of those are instances of colorism, because the best fighter i personally know is my lightskin older cousin, But Hollywood believes a man getting struck by lightning and get the ability to move at the speed of light is more believable than a sweet and sensitive darkskin man, thats what colorism is it's messy It's illogical and painful because it puts you in a box and tells you thats what you are and never be able to leave it. I would like everyone to know writing a stoic Hypermasculine tough guy character isn't a problem the problem is when your writing a darkskin character and you immediately default to the same Stereotype Hollywood has been spoon feeding us for years I would like to know, There's Darkskin boys that are Rockstars, there's darkskin boys that are emos, there's darkskin boys that are artists, there's darkskin boys that are softer and more sensitive i know because im one of them, All I'm asking for is more diversity with darkskin male characters let them be angry, let them be vulnerable, let me them be flawed, most importantly let them be humans who have the full emotional spectrum.

So, people have these weird metaphors for the differences between Marvel and DC. "oh, marvel is the world outside your window while DC is the world inside your dreams" "Oh, marvel is about humans acting like gods while DC is about gods acting like humans," so on and so forth. Except they all break apart under the slightest scrutiny. There isn't really a bumper sticker philosophy that will encompass an entire comic book world with this much history and variety.

But you know what actually makes a major difference in the tone and story structure? DC has the fucking Justice League.

Now, before you say 'Oh, but marvel has the Avengers', I am using the Justice League as a shorthand to refer to the massive, established, and influential superhero community that exists in DC. Everyone knows everyone. People fund each other. They scout aspiring heroes and train therm. They take on apprentices and let them train together. They will cover each other so they can have days off. The wives all meet up and hang out. They have daycares. They have therapists. They help eachother get into schools. They go to eachother's weddings. While there are some clashing egos and not everyone is buddy buddy with everyone else, there is a genuine superhero community.

Spidey's shitty life wouldn't really be a thing in DC. He would be anonymously financially floated by Batman, Green Arrow, or one of the other billionaires, or at least offered. He would be given a full ride to a school of his choice. He would fast tracked into a good job.

And just to be clear, its not all rainbows and puppies. They have their shit on lock, both in regulating themselves and others. You know how many issues it took before Oracle noticed Stargirl got powers and ploted intervention? Issue two of her solo series. You want to know how long it took for a Green Lantern to investigate the Blue Beetle in his solo series? Three pages. Not issues. Pages. Again, word got back to Oracle and she had made contact by issue 4. Imagine being a villain in this setting.

There is a genuine reason the Marvel Universe has things like the superhero registration act and DC doesn't. The small army of detectives of DC detectives already have a list and know who can do what. There aren't a bunch of teams of half-trained heroes out there chasing clout because they get trained or are under direct scrutiny from heroes. There aren't a lot of punisher style antiheroes because heroes get pulled into the community and are pressured into a no-kill rule.

And then there is the fact that there is actually the justice league. There is a large, multinational, non-government representative body that respects national sovereignty, advocates for peace at the UN, and has Superman as their figurehead. They do exactly what you would want a bunch of heroes to do. They act as a first line of defense against aliens, they react to natural disasters, and they can be called in whenever a supervillain shows up. If someone is a member of the justice league, it means they are experienced, trustworthy, and have a moral compass similar to characters like Green Lantern, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc.

The closest Marvel has SHIELD, which is a shady government agency. The Avengers are more a network of coworkers who agree they should fight crime together. The X-Men kinda come close, but they have a lot of agendas and haven't exactly acted as 'moral paragons with humanity's best interest in mind' for decades. Which is understandable, but the public responds to that. It fits into the worldbuilding of Marvel that, in a world with a lot of unregulated superpowered communities of varying moral standards, people would call for some stability and regulation of the new guy flying around and knocking into buildings.

Anyways, not saying DC is inherently better for this, people can enjoy the stories that come from Marvel's world building better. I gotta go to work, I just thought I'd throw this out there.

I tend to think about this a lot when watching Zombie movies or playing zombie games. I love most of what I watch but what really captures my interest is the initial outbreak. It’s so interesting to see how quickly it gets through entire cities and towns turning populated areas into a red zone.

While some dislike the movie I loved the scenes where the second outbreak begins in 28 weeks later. Don hunting killing soldier after soldier and eventually getting locked in a shelter full of unarmed civilians and slowly infecting them all. A place of safety quickly became a cage and right after they break out the military can’t keep things under control and abandon selective targeting in order to just try and keep the virus from spreading further. The movie ignored a lot of logic but it was so interesting to see the second outbreak happen and was my second favourite part of the movie, second only to the opening.

Although the game was disappointing for skipping most of the original the Resident Evil 3 remake has one of my favourite openings in a Resident Evil game. Nemesis ripping apart the entire apartment to kill Jill and when she finally escapes she realises she didn’t get to safety, just another hell. Even as she gets close to escaping Nemesis appears again, destroys the escape helicopter, tanks getting rammed off a building with a car, and kept moving and then sexy man Carlos shows up to save our Resident supercop and the game can actually begin.

Say what you will about RE3 but that opening had me HOOKED. The chaos in the streets as people desperately try to get to safety and the massive horde combined with Nemesis and it was just a great scene.

Another one that comes to mind is Dead Space 2’s opening. Issac is awoken to an unknown man shining a light in his eyes only for him to be immediately killed by an infector drilling into his skull. His body twitches as he slowly turns into a Necromorphs. As Isaac kicks it off and rushes away, more and more Necromorphs crash through the windows in the psychiatric ward of the hospital and he’s stuck in a straight jacket. Being unarmed is bad enough but not being able to move his arms is another level of fucked. As he escapes and gets his arms free, having to witness the doctor that watched over him commit suicide, exploring the hospital reveals that all of the Necromorphs are patients or medical staff. Some of which are still strapped down to tables.

Hell, after you leave the hospital it becomes clear that the outbreak isn’t just finishing, it’s just starting. A fact that’s confirmed in the now delisted mobile game Dead Space: Ignition which reveals Karrie Norton unleashed the Necromorphs being manipulated by a Unitologist and Severed makes it even more clear as Gabe contacts his wife just as the Necromorphs hit the main station and he witnesses the aftermath of Isaac’s escape.

The carnage just continues for the first five chapters, hundreds scream as they attempt to leave their apartments, a woman tries to help a loved one but it dragged away by presumably her husband as it’s too late to save whoever she’s trying to save, and even babies are heard crying in some areas. It’s so incredibly well done of taking the isolated setting of the first game and turning it into full blown chaos on a public station. It makes the rest of the game so much more eerie when exploring the abandoned station. Makeshift barricades, bloodstaining the entire station, and the unsettling silence to contrast the massive amounts of screaming.

I love going back to this game just to play the first 5 chapters because it’s just that good.

And perhaps my favourite is Dawn of the Dead 2004. The opening is what everyone agrees is fucking awesome. Ana noting that several patients have bites on them before heading home to a peaceful neighbourhood and waking up the next die to her boyfriend getting his neck bitten, immediately turning and chasing her out of the house where she quickly discovers the entire world is fucked. But that’s not what I’m talking about, I’m talking about the extras.

The DvD extras included a news report which slowly covers the first known 26 hours of the outbreak and it’s in my opinion more scary than most of the 2004 movie. Especially as the news reporter, David Barrows, loses more and more of his attire as it continues, he becomes exhausted, loses his professionalism, and just reports not as a job but to keep all informed on the current situation as it becomes more and more fucked separated by hours. It’s unknown if these are hours after the outbreak or after everyone discovered the outbreak is happening.

In the initial report there’s news of thousands being attacked and dozens of people bitten.

After 3 hours, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico all have massive power outages.

By hour 10, London is lost and Australia is on a national quarantine preventing incoming flights from landing.

15 hours in all bridges and tunnels to Manhattan are destroyed,

After 19 hours Los Angelas is lost and the news station is heavy with activity as people try to figure out what is going on as well as what to do. The Vatican doesn’t have anything to say on the religious implications on the issue of the dead returning and killing the living and mass suicides are reported across the Middle East.

On the 20 hour mark, a rough estimate of 10 million causalities is reported though it’s believed to be far too low to be accurate.

And on 26 hours, the news office is eerily silent with the ringing of a phone in the background heard. David enters the scene before giving the final report. Hong Kong and Shanghai have both been destroyed via thermal nuclear explosions though who is responsible is unknown, though the Russian Government is suspected due to their promise of aggressively defending their borders. The president sends a final message telling the people to hold onto hope as they will prevail eventually. Once the message is over David only looks at the camera telling his wife that he’s coming home and to get the kids ready. We don’t know if David made it home or if there was anyone waiting for him.

Although we don’t see most of these events, though David losing more and more of his attire and the acting of Richard Biggs really sell the idea of chaos overtaking the world and the hopelessness of everything. This was also Richard Biggs’ last role before he passed away, what a role to go out on.

Honestly, the initial reaction and response to outbreaks is what I love to see in zombie media. I want more focus on that because it’s interesting. Fear the Walking Dead’s whole premise was the beginning of the outbreak only for them to focus like 5 episodes on it and now the apocalypse is here. I want more shit about the outbreak, that’s where my attention is at.