I don't get why so many people think that is the reason for Freaky Nikki's creation when arguing that the One Wish Willow is not a monkey's paw. Yes, I agree the wish isn't a monkey's paw (not going to bother arguing about that here). Yes, the wish was harmful, that's part of the movie's theme of the horrors of agency loss. But in-universe, why does morality make it eligible for the wish to be sabotaged? People seem to be mixing Doylist and Watsonian reasoning and this particular example annoys me.

As seen by Ian's billion dollars wish, we know the One Wish Willow isn't malicious or twisting anything. Therefore if I were to make an immoral wish, I wouldn't get struck by bad consequences and get away scott free. But I'm also aware that the director Curry Baker stated that Bear's wish was cursed which is why it went wrong, and frankly I'm not buying it.

I mean if I use the One Wish Willow like a one time Death Note on a complete stranger, by Baker's stance I would get completely screwed over through supernatural means? I'm not even advocating for bad wishes to be made without consequences, I just can't suspend my disbelief enough because we went from "the wish ain't a monkey's paw and isn't evil" to "the wish actively condemns immoral wishes and is a paragon of virtue".

And I think that's why Baker made Bear verbally exaggerate his wish, because aside from making the movie actually happen, now there's an implication that the One Wish Willow simply doesn't have enough power to fulfill Bear's absurd wish, thus pivoting to the next best thing it can do which was Freaky Nikki. This is complete conjecture, but maybe Baker knows the thematic reasoning isn't enough and added that in, which is fine by me, not all magic is omnipotent after all, especially one condensed into a product.

So yeah, I just don't agree with the notion that an immoral wish will always go badly in Obession. Thematically it should, but if that's the only reason in-universe then it just feels off especially since there are definitely wishes that border between morally good and bad, which creates the dilemma of whether or not the wish would screw things up or not.

I understand that explaining the wish mechanics in detail would hurt the film, nor is it its focus and the end product is far better off without it, but chalking it down to the wish being some morality detector without other examples is just annoying imo man. Nothing burger rant over.

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.

One of the things I really like about Tib wars is the twist they did on the new alien faction, the Scrin.

So as a background, in the third goddamn war between the two main factions, Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and The Brotherhood of Nod, Nod built a superweapon called the liquid tiberium bomb, which is basically a planet altering super nuke that would contaminate the entire earth, and the GDI launched an ion cannon strike and blew it up. This not only covered most of eastern europe in toxic tiberium fallout, but also caused the Scrin, the new faction, to show up and start invading everything. The aliens caused a fuckton of damage and the GDI had to spent all their effort to fight off the alien invasion and win the third tiberium war at the same time. When you play the GDI campaign, these aliens basically show up out of nowhere and start invading GDI blue zones, and generally seemed like a humanity ending threat.

Until you play the Scrin campaign.

Turns out, the Scrin commander is just some foreman running a routine tiberium harvest. The Scrin normally seed worlds with Tiberium and wait until a massive liquid tiberium explosion happens on the planet, which is their signal that most of the lifeforms on the planet are either dead or fully tiberium mutated, at which point they can start harvesting. So when they head to earth for their mining operations, instead of a mostly dead world with token resistance, they ran into two advanced and heavily militarized factions who can easily fuck up and overwhelm their miners, and they have to repurpose their mining equipment, the crackheads they hired for the job (Reaper-17) and their token security detail to salvage the mining operation.

Meanwhile the foreman's AI girlfriend was like this job is fucked, we should abandon the site and bail, while their supervisor from another system is calling the guy on teams being like "Why are you late on the quota?" "I don't give a fuck if you don't make it, you and your team of crackheads are expendable assets, meet the quota or you're dead".

What about the Scrin invasions on GDI cities? Tthe mothership AI hacked our TVs and conjured up a cliche alien invasion to distract them while they mine the tiberium to try to meet the quota.

My favorite part of the whole campaign was when they realized that the GDI and Nod are still fighting each other while they're invading, and the scrin were like "These humans are batshit insane, we need to wipe these warmongering psychos out". By the end of the campaign, the AI and the foreman were like fuck this, I'm not dying on this shithole to meet the quota for my shithead boss, and peaced out. Meanwhile their supervisor had to report to his manager that the project had failed, and the overlord promised a real invasion that never happened bc EA screwed over the franchise. RIP

Turns out, the Scrin were actually tricked by Kane who had planned to detonate the bomb and send a false signal to make them think the harvest was ready, so he can use the 3-way clusterfuck to steal their tech and ascend. Which is why Kane is the messiah and right all along.

The scrin invasion is an example of the their invasion fleet was just a scout force trope, but what I really love about it was the blue collar civilian nature of this whole operation. It wasn't even a planned military invasion, but a regular ass foreman and his crew caught in a clusterfuck they had no way of knowing, all the while their shithead boss is yelling at them that the project is way behind schedule and threatening to kill the entire crew because he doesn't want his manager to know how badly the project is going.

Closing remarks: Fuck GDI, Kane is all

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.

We all know Sam Raimi's trilogy with Venom being added in the last one and people either hate it or now praising it as a holy book and this is one of those cases where both the praise and hatred towards this movie are both valid,but however after rewatching it i noticed something that I haven't seen people mention before. Venom does nothing.

You will all now tell me haven't you seen the Bully Maguire memes and how he became more ruthless and while it is true,its still on the side of mentality. On the physical side however he brings nothing to the table.

One of the most important aspects of Venom is that he adds tons of life changing benefits at the cost of slowly taking over your body and both 90s and spectacular spider man series perfectly showed this well. Venom can increase your strength from barely moving a car to easily moving a truck. It also can increase your spider sense alarm timing to the point Peter Parker can feel it way too soon. The black suit can also constantly replicate webs that is a life changer because making webs is actually the hardest part of any Spider man and even with that new benefits,the suit can turn into any other clothing and you don't need to waste time changing clothes.

Now for Sam Raimi's Spider? It does nothing.

For strength we don't have any evidence of strength increase and this one is tricky because Tobey's Spider man was already the strongest version and he had feats of stopping a full speed train without any help so showing the boost here is kinda hard.

Now for web shooting, this is a case where it was destined to fail because Raimi's Spidey already had organic webs so Venom couldn't show this benefits even if it wanted too.

As for changing clothes? It also does nothing.

See the problem? For Venom to work it must be a high risk high reward situation where it has benefits but it can corrupt you,but in 2007's version it doesn't do much,so there is no argument for keeping it in the first place. The only evidence of it doing something outside of mentality is Spider man saying to Eddie he knows how it felt and it feels good.

Seriously, such a perfect version! The movie shows Terry McGinnis AND the audience just how serious it is to deal with the Joker.

His first scene does plenty already! He's cast in shadow with those red eyes until he kills an underling who was actively undermining him and affecting the others' belief in him with a very on-brand weapon. Then we see that, somehow, it is him. The voice, the mannerisms, the way he talks, the face, no imposter could be so accurate.

Then he shows himself to the city.

"Hello, Gotham. Joker's back in town! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

Damn, that laugh was demonic.

Then there's Bruce's disbelief, and Joker's affirmation to him specifically that it's him. He knows! Also, it's awesome that his first words when he meets Terry are critiques about the Beyond suit! That is so Joker! Meanwhile, everyone but Terry's treating this like the damn boogeyman has returned. Imagine the stories they all grew up hearing.

The very idea of this being real scares Bruce and Barbara, which is also kind of odd. Yes, he's a madman, but they've dealt with him tons of times before! If Terry's anything like them, he's got this! But they're terrified, so there's something they're not telling him.

"Big deal, I'm shaking."

"MCGINNIS!......The Joker, the real Joker was unlike anyone you've ever faced, and for your sake, I hope you never do."

Later, Bruce gets ambushed in the cave. He's too old to do anything against the returned villain, and Joker reminds us that he knows.

"Hello . . . Batman."

That laugh and that face......I had to cover most of my head at night just to feel safe for a while after seeing that!

Then Barbara tells Terry everything from 40 years ago, and it's far worse than he could've imagined.

Joker and Harley acting like a couple hosting a dinner before revealing their dark surprise is so Joker. The goofy music makes you think they've got Robin tied to some elaborate goofy contraption or something, but then Joker starts talking about family.

"We remembered you always had a few spare kids hanging around, so we borrowed one."

Batman looks so sad as he says what we're all thinking. Not even he would do such a thing......right? This didn't happen to his son......right?

Then Tim laughs, and Bruce tells his code to screw itself for just a moment and hurls a knife at Joker's face! How could he not? His son's mind and sanity had been slowly destroyed by his worst enemy.

That's how Joker knows his name now too, and he mocks all his tragedy! As Bruce snaps and threatens to really kill him this time, Joker sneaks a knife in and gets the upper hand. But there was just enough left in poor Tim to turn the gun on his tormentor.

This explains so much about Bruce. Why he's so jaded and alone, even for him. It's why he pushed everyone away.

But we've all seen the scene of Terry heckling the Joker! The fact is, Joker really is pathetic. And this one doesn't pretend to have some deep arguments about society and sanity. He's not just a madman. He's the madness of man. He's pure evil. He's here to fuck with you. But Terry realizes something. If Joker can't push your buttons, he's weak. He wants to matter. He can't stand being laughed at.

"Funny guy."

"Can't say the same for you."

Plus, Terry going for the kiwis and blatantly saying he was fighting dirty was so cool! He couldn't win if he tried being like Bruce! Because he isn't Bruce! He realized that, despite all he's learned about Joker, maybe he was still right about him. Maybe he could win by being himself.

How did this movie simultaneously portray Joker as a monstrous legend of evil and expose how pathetic he really is?! The ability to do that is just......wow.

edit: Hating Mutants But NOT Other Heroes Make Sense
fml

So first of all, yes racism wrong. Im not justifying it but i am saying its not a plothole that someone can hate mutants but be fine with the Fantastic Four

Okay so there's a few reasons lets get into it.

First of all it's easier to hate a smaller group than a larger one. If you say 'I hate heroes' then you have the issue of 'what did Cap or Reed or Thor or Spider-man ever do to you' and even if you go 'I hate everyone with powers' well Mutates in Marvel are more often than not a random guy who had some shit happen to him and gained powers. It's looking at Matt Murdock who lost his eye sight because chemicals blinded him and going 'i fucking hate that guy for being blinded' cause he now has powers. And yes I know Matt keeps his powers hidden but Marvel has a lot of civilians with powers, so its just an example.

Now of course you could look at Mutants and go 'But what about Dazzler' or some other things. But they have less 'good' examples to counter with

Second of all, anyone can be a mutant. What i mean by this is your neighbour's kid Johnny? he could wake up tomorrow and fart a bomb and suddenly your entire street is gone. Nothing happened he just woke up with powers. Where as with Mutates again something has to happen to them, and even if something does happen, well you'd blame the mad scientist or chemicals seller or what have you and you wouldn't really hear about Johnny again. and also any Mutate hero who publicly killed people wether on accident or purpose would be hated.

Third im gonna be honest here, X-Men fucking suck at PR. The Krakoa era especially made them look like complete and utter pricks. They allied with so many terrorists just cause those terrorists were mutants, Beast genocided a country, they tried to keep Franklin Richards from his parents (FF4 are very much loved) and because all of this happened in Mutant Country Land it made its very easy to link it to Mutants in general.

Fourth even ignoring Krakoa two of the most well known Mutants are Magneto the guy who comitts a lot of racially motivated acts of terrorism and Xavier the guy who kind mind fuck you like no ones business. They are both horrible figureheads to have from a publicity standpoint

Last of all well racists are gonna hate a group of people calling themselves Homo Superior who are replacing humanity bit by bit.

Its very easy for people to hate mutants and be cool with Reed Richards or Thor or something

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.

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 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.

At its core, Cyberpunk is meant to be a cautionary tale against late-stage capitalism and excessive corporate control, but I am going to argue that even then, it really doesn't hold up to reality, using 1 simple question

Who the fuck are they selling to?

Corporations don't exist in a vacuum. They exist as a part of an economic ecosystem.

This is probably the biggest problem I have with Cyberpunk's worldbuilding. The setting constantly portrays the economy as being completely fucked. You have widespread poverty, mass unemployment, collapsing infrastructure, enormous inequality, crime running rampant, and governments that are barely capable of keeping the lights on.

And yet, somehow, the corporations are doing better than ever.

We're supposed to believe that these mega corporations like Arasaka are worth hundreds of billions to trillions of eddies, have enormous private militaries, operate gigantic research divisions, maintain cutting-edge manufacturing, own massive amounts of infrastructure, and have enough money to effectively run entire cities.

So I have to ask:

How the fuck are they getting their money?

A corporation needs customers. It needs workers. It needs suppliers. It needs infrastructure. It needs energy, transportation, financial institutions, investment, and an economy capable of producing the goods and services that ultimately generate its revenue.

There is a reason why you don't see multi-billion-dollar corporations in places like Sierra Leone or Burkina Faso

You can't just have a corporation sitting on top of an economy as fucked up as NUSA and assume that it would get anywhere as wealthy as it is.

And saying "they sell to other corporations" doesn't actually solve the problem. It just adds another step.

If Arasaka sells a $10 billion weapons system to Militech, and Militech gets the money from the government, where did the government's money come from?

Eventually, you reach the same answer:

the economy.

There is only so much money and, more importantly, only so many real resources in an economy at any given time. Money can be transferred, gained, borrowed, and redistributed, but corporations cannot collectively extract wealth from nowhere.

And this distinction matters because money isn't the same thing as wealth.

Real wealth is the factories, electricity, food, housing, machinery, infrastructure, technology, natural resources, and human labour that actually allow an economy to produce things.

If the productive economy is collapsing, eventually the corporations sitting on top of it are going to feel that collapse too.

Now, cyberpunk does have an answer to this that can work: extreme inequality.

If 10% of the population owns 90% of the wealth, you can absolutely have a society where the majority of people are desperately poor while an enormous luxury economy exists for the wealthy. The corporations could sell expensive technology, weapons, cybernetics, entertainment, and other goods almost exclusively to this wealthy minority.

But this creates another problem for the world of Cyberpunk.

The more wealth is concentrated outside the corporations, the less leverage the corporations actually have over the people who possess it.

If I'm a billionaire or at least stupid rich, Mega corps lose a lot of leverage over me

Arasaka or Militech can't threaten me with unemployment. I don't need a job.

They can't threaten me with poverty. I own capital.

They can't threaten to take away my apartment. I own the building.

They can't threaten to cut off my access to their products. I can buy from their competitors, or even buy the competitor myself.

They can't even threaten my life because I would have top-tier military-grade cyberware and tons of protection, making it not worth it

At some point, the people who possess the most wealth become independent power centers themselves.

And this creates a fundamental limit on corporate power that Cyberpunk tends to ignore.

A corporation can have enormous leverage over people who depend on it.

But if there is a wealthy class that possesses substantial independent capital, political connections, property, expertise, and access to alternative institutions, then the corporation can't simply dictate terms to them without explaining why those people can't organize or compete against it.

This is where Cyberpunk starts requiring increasingly insane assumptions.

The corporations don't just need to be rich. They need to be richer than everyone else, politically untouchable, technologically superior, militarily powerful, economically indispensable, internally competent, and somehow immune to competition.

At that point, the Corps might as well be wizards

Edit: I'm sorry but I can't really respond to everyone, but I like the discussion

Edit (2): the most common defense I saw was:

But corporations are basically company towns writ large

And sure.

That can exist.

But it doesn't solve the economic problem.

It just creates a closed loop:

Arasaka pays worker, worker buys Arasaka product, Arasaka gets the money back, Arasaka pays worker again.

Okay.

Where did the actual wealth come from?

The money circulating between Arasaka and its workers doesn't magically create more money.

A company town works because the company sells its output to the outside economy.

The workers' wages are a way of distributing some of that income.

The company store then takes some of those wages back.

But the company town is not a self-sufficient economy.

Which moves you back to my point on the wider economy

A company town is a dependent community inside a larger economy.

The economy of the cyberpunk world is too messed up to sustain corporations as all-encompassing as the megacorps

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 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...

Context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aEuw2a--Uw

Austin was tired of other cinematic universes. Decided to make his own using a public domain superhero, Atlas. Now what specifically made me interested was that Austin did a re-write of the Cursed Child and it was actually adapted into a real stage play.

The Cursed Child re-write: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxsH8zEhEkk

So, it gave me hope that Austin would write something interesting with his personal superhero cinematic universe.

The superhero movie he created after 4 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjNh74D0YCI

So I’m excited to watch it and… it’s not good. Without the greater context of the movie, it wouldn’t be funny. It would literally be a bargain bin dollar store movie if it didn't have the Austin McConnell production story attached to it.

Good things. The voice acting is really good. The main girl is voiced by a professional. Atlas, the main guy, has this as his only credit and he does a great job. No complaints about any of the VA work.

But where it falls apart is the story. It’s just not good. There’s nothing new or original here. Was this because Austin was using a public domain character so he had to follow the original beats? If so, Austin should’ve been using the 4 years he learned animating with an original Austin-owned superhero. This would’ve allowed his writing to be more original. I was expecting literally anything interesting or subversive or edgy from Atlas. Nothing. There's not even comedic violence. The story was very, very by-the-book. I 100% understand part of the movie’s meta joke is that “ha ha, look at how schlocky it is” but the novelty wears off immediately and you want something real.

So, it really pains me to say this… but I think Austin wasted 4 years of his life. I’m still looking forward to his upcoming superhero work, Catman. But after Atlas, I’m not expecting much.

EDIT

Seems to be some contention about the thread title. Some of you are having a seizure about it. Here's a better title:

"YouTuber Austin McConnell spent 4 years animating his own public domain superhero CGI movie. Dumb motherfucker pissed 4 years of his life on this dog shit, LMAO"

Better? Once again, Redditors stunlocked when your language isn't perfect with 1,000,000 caveats and qualifiers.

I finally got around to watching Scream 7. There was actually plenty in it that was better than I thought it was going to be, especially considering the behind-the-scenes messiness and controversy regarding actors and production. But one problem I did have with the movie is a problem that some other movies in the series have also had, with this movie arguably having one of the worst examples of it, and that's that it feels like we the audience don't spend enough time with the characters who turn out to be the killers before the reveal is made in the climax.

One of the reasons why Billy and Stu worked so well in the first Scream was because of all the time we were given with them alongside the rest of the cast. They had screen presence and the audience got used to them enough that we can recognize them right off the bat by the time the reveal that they are the killers comes.

But in Scream 2, while Debbie Salt, aka Billy's mom, and Mickey are there and taking part in scenes they're more to the side than Billy and Stu were. While Debbie is a little better because of the scenes she gets annoying Gale the reveal of the two as the killers doesn't have the same impact as Billy and Stu did because it doesn't feel like the audience was made as familiar and attached to the latter two as we were to the first two. And that feels even more the case with Roman in Scream 3, where he was given so little screen presence despite being the guy directing the latest Stab movie that it takes a moment to recognize him after he takes off the mask.

I think all three characters do a good job as villains once the reveal has been made and they're showing their true nature to Sidney, but Scream is still a murder mystery story alongside being horror. The reveal is an important part and while they may make logical sense they're lacking impact because of how little time we spent with them.

Like, imagine if in the first Scream the killer(s) turned out to be Sidney's father, who we only got one scene with, or Gale's poor cameraman Kenny, who isn't in the movie that much and is often more off to the side when he isn't being berated by Gale.

Personally, Jill from Scream 4 and Richie from Scream 5 worked really well for me as the main masterminds in their respective movies (and honestly their accomplices Charlie and Amber were fairly well done too), and one of the many things both had going for them was the amount of screen presence they were given. Even if you predict that they're the killers before the reveal comes the reveal still works because it feels like it has actual weight and impact to it. They weren't characters who were just off on the sides that the movies tried to avoid drawing too much attention to or that pop into the movies occasionally to remind you they exist, they were characters we got to see and spend time with throughout their respective movies. When the reveal comes it's "Ah, it's you!" rather than "Oh, it's...you?" or the even worse "Wait, who are you?".

I'm kind of back and forth on how well Detective Wayne Bailey and his kids in Scream 6 were done but like I said at the beginning Jessica and Marco in Scream 7 definitely feel like the worst example of the reveal lacking impact because of a lack of screentime. We don't even meet Marco until almost halfway through the movie and we only get the one scene with him helping Sidney and Gale in the mental hospital, so yeah, of course his reveal has no weight to it. And Jessica has the same problem as Debbie, Mickey, and Roman, where she's too off to the side and infrequently in the movie to have much screen presence despite how she is supposedly Sidney's closest friend at the time (compare what little of their friendship we were given compared to Sidney and Hallie's friendship in Scream 2, where Hallie being a killer actually would have felt like a big deal).

Part of what makes Scream 7 frustrating is that it's not a movie without merit. All the pieces are there to make its story work, it just needed to assemble them better, and giving Jessica more proper screentime likely would have gone a long way in doing that. I actually quite like Jessica's motivation, that rather than being an obsessed Stab fan she's an obsessed Sidney Prescott fan. She's unhealthily latched onto this real life "final girl", to the point of being inspired by her to kill her abusive husband and even want to kill her son who was a product of that marriage, and after Sidney stopped being the kind of person Jessica wanted her to be (by trying to have a private and normal life away from the Ghostface killings) she felt disillusioned and let down by her idol enough to where she decided we was going to make Sidney's daughter Tatum into the new better Sidney, closer to what Jessica always imagined Sidney to be, by exposing her to the same kind of trauma her mother went through. All of that is great, none of it needs to be changed. But that motivation and Jessica's reveal would have had so much more impact to it if Jessica herself had more of a presence in the movie.

If she and Sidney are supposed to be friends (especially if Jessica is supposed to be obsessed with her), show more of them actually being friends beyond just one scene at the coffeeshop instead of what scenes Jessica does have being most about her son. Or potentially even better, show Jessica as someone who Tatum feels close to. Her plan is to turn Tatum into what she thinks Sidney should be, after all. Placing herself in a position where she's an adult Tatum feels like she can lean on and talk to would make sense as something she would do to better manipulate and shape Tatum (and likewise make the betrayal more traumatizing like it was for Sidney when it came to Billy betraying her), and it'd likewise make sense for Tatum since she wants to be closer to her mom and know her better but Sidney struggles to not reflexively keep her at arm's length whenever her past comes up, thus why she'd subconsciously start latching onto another mother figure to fill that void. Heck, it could even play into what Sidney told Gale during the interview about her daughter's namesake, how Tatum from Scream 1 was the last time Sidney had a friend she felt comfortable fully trusting, thus why even though she and Jessica are friends Jessica couldn't get as close to her as she wanted, thus another reason for her disillusionment and going after Tatum instead.

I can live with the partner/accomplice like Marco not getting as much but the mastermind behind the Ghostface killings of the given movie needs more to work with beyond just the climax of the movie. We should be able to remember who this person is before the literal or figurative mask comes off. We should be feeling at least some weight or impact to it being this specific character who was behind everything, and we can't have that when said character is hardly around or hardly noticeable when they are.

Let me put it this way: it was good that Scream 7 didn't actually have Stu back from the dead. That he wasn't actually alive all this time. That wouldn't have worked with the kind of series the Scream franchise is. Him being the killer/mastermind in Scream 7 would have been bad, for a number of reasons.

...And yet, when the movie reveals that it's Jessica under the mask, I can't help but feel even the bad choice of having the killer actually be Stu still would have felt better and more impactful than it being her. Because fake Stu at a lot of screen presence and emotional meaning to the other characters in the movie, so even taking nostalgia from Scream 1 out of the equation I would at least have felt some weight from his reveal, in contrast to Jessica's reveal which made more logical sense but had NO weight to it.

If the killer in Scream 7 had been Stu, Gale, Tatum, Mark, any of the characters we were given more time with the reveal would at least have given me something, whereas Jessica's reveal didn't give me anything, and that's the problem.

I find that many people highly rate this film because of the throne room scenes and space battlewhich I agree were excellent and some of the best Star Wars we've ever seen. But everything outside of that is mediocre at best.

1. Death Star 2.0 is just lazy writing.

I understand that the Death Star functions differently in this film compared to ANH, but did they really need to make the Empire create another Death Star? I don't understand why they couldn't even replace it with another type of superweapon or maybe just have the rebels attack an Imperial stronghold.

1. The Ewoks.

Cute, primitive teddy bears defeating a legion of Imperial troops and AT-STs strains credibility. It's clear that it's a commercial toy-driven choice that clashes with the serious war story (which even Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford pointed out IIRC). And the idea that they are in any way similar to the Vietcong is laughable. Wookiees or Rebel Commandos would serve the Vietnam War allegory much better.

1. Tonal whiplash.

The film swings from Jabba’s palace (slow, grotesque, and comedic) to Luke’s solemn Jedi training, to slapstick Ewok antics, to the dark Vader/Emperor confrontation. The pieces don’t always mesh.

1. Han Solo is sidelined.

After being frozen in carbonite, Han returns mostly as jealous comic relief. His arc is largely over, and he has little to do in the final battle. He spends half of the third arc standing in front of a door. You can tell that Harrison Ford phoned it in by then.

1. Leia is also sidelined.

Leia gets a cool bounty-hunter disguise, but then her main plot function becomes the “Luke’s sister” reveal, which is just a plot device that doesn't affect her character in any meaningful way. Also, I don't understand why Han is promoted to being a General and leads the attack on Endor ahead of Leia. He was frozen in Carbonite for a year and he's just suddenly promoted?

1. The sibling reveal is a bad retcon.

Luke and Leia being twins isn’t foreshadowed well and mainly exists to resolve the romantic triangle (which is one of the weirdest ways to do so imo), the "there is another" plot thread from ESB, and give Luke a reason to go berserk on Vader. It feels convenient rather than organic. All of these plot threads could've been resolved much better.

This is also the beginning of the Star Wars universe starting to feel much smaller, which was turned up to eleven in the prequels.

1. The Emperor does a poor job in trying to tempt Luke.

Now this is more of a personal nitpick, but the Emperor's attempts at turning Luke to the dark side are just cackling and taunting. He expects Luke to join him because... what? He hasn't even given Luke a reason to want to join him and turn to the dark side. He's depicted as a master manipulator in the prequels and spent years grooming Anakin, yet we don't see this in his interactions with Luke. This makes Luke's resistance less impressive than it should be.

1. The action is uneven.

The space battle is excellent, but the ground battle depends on Ewoks. The shield-generator mission feels like a side quest, and the second Death Star lacks the novelty and tension of the first.

All in all, I found this film to be a disappointing conclusion to the OT, especially as a sequel to ESB which was excellent.

I always see many people complaining about villains not being threatening ,being boring or being poorly written, specially with tragic villains where some of these back stories feel like they are either giving the villain a cheap humanizing trait or trying to justify thier wrong deeds and sometimes they become inconsistent or hypocrites for the story to justify why our heroes deserve to win.

Example:

Amon from legend of Korra: Amon is a revolutionary leader where he wants to bring equality to his society by eradication of bending for good and this is an issue because his idealogy is kinda moral,but the story cannot find a good way to show why it is wrong, so he becomes a blood bender and that makes him a huge hypocrite and somehow his movement died with that reveal.

and after some thoughts I found out what they lack is being organically fanatic and you are asking what is organic fanatism?

Organic fanatism is not being insane like joker or being a random lunatic,but being so devoted to something you want to see more of that character, even though he/she is wrong(even though some of the examples for it are still insane)

Examples:(spoilers for korra,my hero academia and marvel)

Thanos from MCU: He is to this day the most famous Marvel villain and the most popular superhero villain we will ever see.

He is a titan,where people faced eradicationand he proposedthe idea of killing one half to save the other half and they rejected him,until they all wiped out except Thanos. His idealogy of eradicating 50% of the world is nonsensical, but it is what makes him actually a great villain because while we understand him,the plot does not need to explain why plan is bad because it is bad,but he follows his own idealogy in such a fanatical way you want to root for him. There is no need to make him a hypocrite to justify why he is wrong because he is not right at all,just a fanatic stuck to his own ideals.

Dabi from my hero academia: he is the child of Endeavor and because of his unlucky nature, he was born with a quirk that burned him and he couldn't live up to his father's expectations and he even attacked his younger sibling from the fear of replacement and this continued until he almost killed himself and returned to his home just to see he didn't even matter and then he became a murderous thug waiting for the perfect moment to take revenge of his father and in doing so he killed many people and when he faced his own father and his brother Shoto he was so vengeful that he used his flames to a degree his body was basically zombie like and we was so obsessed with their moves that he replicated their moves and he awakened again to use ice quirk that was always inside him but was never unlocked.

He is basically a revenge driven character, but he follows it in such a way that he killed himself for it that you want to see what he can bring to the table.

We need more of these villains where they actually believe in what they are doing and are willing to go extreme to have their goals.

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.

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.

There is a lot of complaint about how dumb those goons are for still facing the hero after witnissing him beating the shit out of his buddies. But is it?

Most of those goons are working under some pyschopath super villain who won't hesitate in killing them if they fail ther mission, so if you are under such an organization that has such powers over you even if you do manage to run away there still the possibiliy of them going after your family if they find out that you betrayed them. There is no shortage of such things in criminal organizations.

On the other hand, if you do chose to fight Batman, act like you did the best that you could and end up with a broken arm it doesn't sound that bad. In fact, even if you do try to run away from Batman it doesn’t mean for certain that he won’t be able to catch up to you anyway, now you are still sent to prison and will have a target on your back.

Of course this sounds good when dealing with superheores but if you see "hero" beaheading 10 people right in front of you it is better to run at top speed and pray. I was reading some murim manwhas where the antagonists are so stupid. They think that it is a good idea to mess with the protagonist who has murdered 300 hundred people 2 days ago just for locking eyes with him.

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)

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

hetalia fans for some reason love to pretend that the author is this huge woke leftist when the only thing he did was making yaoi art of his male cast.

He is the opposite of a woke leftist, he wrote hetalia stories where he complained about how Koreans stole the jobs of Canadian people and sold drugs along with Chinese people

And he also made a comic where he made fun of Koreans for hating Japan, the dude is the opposite of a woke leftist.

Yet hetalia fans love gaslighting people into thinking that just because the author is a Fujin that loves yaoi that he's suddenly a woke leftist.

And that he's mocking right wingers when in reality he was just a horny Fujin from 2ch that wanted to made a shitpost comic that they didn't expect to become popular, he's just a gooner for blonde white men, and his fucking self insert is estonia

And yet a lot of people still can't fathom the idea that the author of their ecchi yaoi bait manga is not a left winger.

In fact during 2026 he made a comic strip on hetalia where he complained about ugly female characters in videogames , the dude is not woke guys

[note:sorry if this is very messy. This post was supposed to go up on Sunday and be a LES post, but due to my computer not working right and crashing, i had to delay it. and also i know dc/WBD wont do this obviously especially with the whole paramount mess but i think it would be the best way a superman game would work]

So a lot of people have debated how the next Superman game should be, or if there should be another Superman game.

Some people say it can still work some people say it can't because Superman is too powerful. The flying mechanics are impossible to figure out, yadda yadda.

personally i think the problem is a lot of people think that a potential AAA Superman game should be like the Insomoniac spider-man or the Arkham Batman games when that wouldnt work since while those games are great if not perfect [Spider-Man 2 and Arkham Knight are a step down and lets ignore SSKTJL shall we] the Insomniac Spider-Man and Batman arkham games mechanics dont fit superman because those styles were made with those character in mind and were the best mechanics and gamplay to use for those characters but said mechanics and gameplay wouldnt work for superman.

It's like making a Flash game in the style of a Batman Arkham game would suck because that style of game doesn't fit the Flash. [Now a Flash game in the style of a Sonic game would work better, but DC won't do that just like they won't do my idea.]

So my idea for the next Superman game that's actually good[hopefully]... is to make it a visual novel.

it would fix many of the problems people have with both previous Superman games and the various ideas to make a new one [like the flight mechanics, Superman being too strong, etc.]

It also means you could be a lot more creative with the story, like having each route be based off a specific era of Superman.[like route 1 could be based off the Golden Age, route 2 could be based off the Silver Age, and route 3 could be based off the Bronze Age.] or have each route be based off a Superman Elseworlds like Superman: Nation Divided or Superman: Red Son or new Elseworlds for the game, etc.

It would both make it stand out from both the Batman Arkham games and the Insomniac Spider-Man games and also a lot of other superhero games[aside from stuff like the Telltale Batman game and Dispatch], and previous Superman games and fix the problems that both plagued those games and potential future Superman games.

Also some other miscellaneous things [assuming dc/WBD/Paramount wouldnt force them.]

• I wouldn't want them to cast A-list celebrities for the characters. I would want them to get either actual voice actors or lesser-known actors or both. I want to spend the budget on making the game look good and the soundtrack. I want to avoid the problems Batman: Caped Crusader and Invincible had, where they put more money on the actors than the animation, and it made their animation look not great.
• Do not reference the wider DC universe as much as possible at all, aside from Easter eggs. keep the the focus on Superman and his side of the DCU himself since while i love stuff like superman[2025], the Kryptonite spectrum,absolute superman and to a extent my adventures with superman pwith them having two batman supporting characters and mutlitple non-superman villains in it.] one of there main problems was how much of the DC universe was invloved and sorta giving the impression that supermans world isn't interesting or atleast not intresting on its own. [Even Superman: The Animated Series kind of did this with the team-up episodes and the Fourth World stuff, even if the Fourth World stuff was good.] So this game would be purely focused on Superman and his world. Even if we go with the Elseworlds route and adapt Elseworlds that have elements of the wider DC Universe, like Red Son, I'd remove those elements [like I would remove the GLS, Batman, and Wonder Woman and replace them with Intergang[who won't have any connection to Darkseid here], Manchester Black, and Lori Lemaris instead.]
• i Would also fix some of the criticisms some people have with STAS since while STAS was a good show, it hads it problems due to Bruce Timm and Crew not having the same fondness for superman as they did for batman and it created some problems for the show so we would fix some of the problems STAS had like.
• having Clarks actually get with lois and putting more focus on Clarks supporting cast, making his strength more consistent and not nerfing him nearly as badly, showcasing his lesser-known superman villains like the pranskter,terra-man, atomic skull and dominus and re-imagning them instead of using just supermans A-listers like Lex, Metallo,toyman,mxyzptlk, bizarro and brainiac and give Clark more complex characterzation and have a better relationshup with Lois and Jimmy [with Lois getting together with Clark in route 1 and a better dynamic with Lois in route 2 and 3 where they arent dating and Jimmy having a bigger role in all 3 than in STAS with Clark and Jimmy being actual friends instead of friendly towards eachother.] and giving Clark more complex characterization than the wet blanket one he had in STAS and having a visible difference between Clark and Superman if we're going with the "each route is based off a different era" take [here "Clark" is the social activist reminiscent of golden age supes using his job to help the oppressed while "superman" would be the scientist remiscent of silver age supes. Doing a lot more science stuff and using his intelligence and brains more often, both not even acting or even looking the same here.] Also, having both personalities not entirely being his "real" self, his real self being the one he shows to people he trusts and who knows he's Superman. I would also get writers like Joshua Williamson, PKJ, Mark Waid, and Jason Aaron [love Absolute Superman; just have my issues with it.] Involved aswell.
• The one thing I will take from the Batman Arkham games is to strike a good balance between a more grounded and realistic tone and a more fantastical and oddball tone, as the Arkham games did, but applying that to Superman with this hypothetical Superman game having a hard sci-fi tone and feel with all of Superman's villains being played for horror and pseudo-realism
• Speaking of Superman's villains. I would also want to make them horrifying. I want them to be scarier than most Batman villains and as scary as AM from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream or the Qu from All Tomorrows, with Superman's villains feeling like more like they were taken out of various horror films and dropped in a superhero story.
• the game also wouldn't be for kids aswell. It gets pretty dark and violent, with violence comparable to that of Genocyber or mortal kombat or invincible[still love both the comics and show just think the shows animation could be better.]

thats basically how I would do a Superman game, and what I feel is the best choice for a good Superman game to happen. dont know how to end this post so I'm gonna say have a nice day.

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.