#I am skipping over drawing the stories they tell due to the fact this arc is already really dragging | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

presiding · 4 months

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a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

#are you a dh1 enjoyer but less so a dh2 enjoyer?#have you ever wondered why you don't love dh2 as much?#here's 1.8k words that might articulate some of that.#light reading.i guess #this essay wasn't meant to cover everything - just the core of the plot and why its important to integrate story & gameplay #and to compare dh1 & 2 #dishonored #dishonored 2 #dishonored 2 spoilers #emily kaldwin #daud #corvo attano #this week i'm cracking things out of my drafts!#<333 don't get me started on doto.#some of this might be contentious. idk i try to live in a bubble #the meme version was easier to read i know i know #this essay would have been a lot longer had i integrated more references from the game #i know a few others have said this but imagine if they went a different way with emily #like she realises shes not fit for the job and maybe no one is and says fuck the system cause shes got a rebellious streak #and does a kickflip on the monarchy and institutes something else. i dont even care what. make it funny #and then for the sake of continuing the trend we spend dishonored 3 undoing the horrible leadership emily instates <3 #i think they really loved emily as a character. i FEEL the love i believe its there.but didn't think enough bout how she would be perceived #there's a good couple comments from baldur's gate 3 devs about how much work goes into writing women to account for sexism #there's more that i could have added to this essay but for brevity's (ha.ha) sake i'll leave it there #other textposts about this game that i see around tend to romanticise dishonoreds story a little more

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makeste · 3 years

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BnHA Chapter 294: A Half-Assed Escape

Previously on BnHA: Mirio was all “SURPRISE I’M BACK THANKS TO OUR RESIDENT SEVEN-YEAR-OLD WHO RECENTLY EARNED HER BACHELOR’S OF BEING A TOTAL BADASS.” Kacchan was all, “you know what, Dabi’s been trending long enough, time to remind the fandom what a real G looks like,” and he blasted his little bleeding body back into the fray and was all “FROM HERE ON OUT CALL ME DYNAMIGHT!!” Mirio was all, “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... oh, you’re serious,” and Kacchan was all “!!”, and so that’s the story of how my son got murdered twice in one day. Meanwhile in the Todoroki Drama Zone, Deku was all “STOP MURDERING MY FRIEND” and Dabi was all “THAT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS” and fandom had a whole big debate about Whether Or Not Dabi Trying To Murder Deku’s Friends And Mentors Is Any Of Deku’s Business, which went exactly how you think it went. Anyway, so then Deku yelled at Dabi, and Endeavor was all moved by his manly words and randomly went to go uppercut Machia in the chin. And, seeing as how the Momoserum finally chose that exact moment to kick in, Machia is now down for the count.

Today on BnHA: The Miriosquad handles the Nearly High End Noumus, freeing up Jeanist to jasphyxiate (okay that one doesn’t really work so well) the rest of the League. Compress is all “TIME FOR THIS MILD-MANNERED SIDE CHARACTER VILLAIN TO SHINE”, except that by “shine” what he actually means is “use his quirk to punch a literal hole right through his own ass to free himself.” The rest of the chapter is basically just a back and forth between him and Jeanist, with Jeanist trying to recapture him, and Compress repeatedly thwarting him by chopping more holes out of himself because HE’S FRESH OUT OF FUCKS, AND THE ONES AT THE STORE ARE ALL SOLD OUT, MOTHERFUCKERS. Anyway, so with Compress basically dying and all, Horikoshi is all “you know what that means”, and delivers a freshly-baked villain flashback revealing that Compress is a descendant of Harima Ouji, a.k.a. the Peerless Thief, a.k.a. some famous guy whom Gentle mentioned this one time for like two seconds back in the day. The chapter ends with Compress finally demasking himself and dumping Tomura back onto the ground, a.k.a. The Worst Possible Place For Tomura To Be. ( •﹏•)

WHY IS CRUST HERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD

-- OH WAIT, SHIT. OH

AIZAWAAAA you’re alive and receiving medical help thank GOD. HOW MANY EYES DO YOU HAVE. AND MIRKO!! HOW MANY LIMBS DO YOU HAVE, OMG

so is this Aizawa dreaming about Crust’s final moments, then?? jesus. with All Due Respect to Crust’s memory, does Aizawa not already have enough misplaced guilt on his conscience as it is?? “nope, we’re gonna keep piling it on. that’s all he is now. three limbs, an indeterminate number of eyes, sexy hair, and Guilt” well shit

motherfucker y’all really out here placing an oxygen mask on Gran Torino’s corpse. fucking shounen characters. each one comes with a lifetime warranty

DAMN YOU HORIKOSHI WHY DO YOU KEEP SHOWING THESE CLOSE-UPS OF HAWKS’S UNCONSCIOUS FACE ALL WHUMPED OUT AND EXHAUSTED. HOW MUCH MORE OF THIS ARE WE GOING TO GET. ARE YOU PLANNING ON KILLING ME WITH THE UPCOMING CONVALESCENCE ARC, BECAUSE IF SO, AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO TELL ME AHEAD OF TIME SO I CAN MAKE A WILL

for a moment I considered going back and checking my previous recaps to count how many times I’ve already made a joke about Dabi’s fire incinerating Hawks’s wings but not touching so much as a hair on his five o’clock shadow, so that I could calculate whether or not I could possibly get away with making that same joke one more time. but then I realized I could just do it in this kind of roundabout way I’m doing right now instead. so there you have it

FFFFFFFMT LADY AND MIDNIGHT NOOOOO

PLEASE BE ALIVE. PLEASE RESPECT THE SIGN ON THE FRONT OF THE BUILDING. THE ONE THAT SAYS “NO LADY CHARACTERS ALLOWED TO DIE”, WITH THE FINE PRINT AT THE BOTTOM “AT LEAST NOT UNTIL HORIKOSHI GIVES US LIKE TWENTY-SIX MORE OF THEM FIRST IF THAT’S THE WAY HE WANTS TO PLAY IT.” IT’S A GOOD SIGN, PLEASE RESPECT ITS WISHES!!

so anyway though, Jeanist is giving a speech about how god knows how many people all worked together to bring Machia down. and now RHA is getting in on those fabric puns too, I see. “A SINGLE STRAND MAY BE THIN BUT TOGETHER THEY FORM A STRONG ROPE” oh so you think you guys are funny eh? I’m a frayed knot

MEANWHILE EXCUSE ME BUT WHY ARE YOU FUCKING CRYING BLOOD, HOLY SHIT

fffffff. so much for him taking over as the Number One once all this is over. so let’s just recap real quick, because Horikoshi has long since made it clear that one of his plot goals for this arc is to wipe out every single member of the Billboard Top Ten. so how we doin?

Endeavor - was just figuratively eviscerated in front of the entire nation by his homicidal zombiepunk son. also burnt half to death and possibly down a lung. will almost certainly be forced to retire after this one way or the other

Hawks - lying prettily in a medical tent. wings status: gone. hair status: still perfect

Jeanist - WELL I THOUGHT HE WAS FINE BUT APPARENTLY HE’S OUT HERE DYING, JESUS CHRIST

Edgeshot - MIA, last seen fighting Re-Destro. I really want him to have kicked RD’s ass because fuck that guy, but realistically they probably fought to a draw at best

Mirko - alive but in critical condition and missing something like 1.5 limbs

Crust - dead, currently haunting Aizawa’s traumatized dreams. now he’s gonna be triggered the rest of his life by people giving him the thumbs up, THANKS A LOT

Kamui Woods - was set on fire which is His Weakness. thoughts and prayers

Wash - last seen floating hospital patients to safety as Tomura’s wave of decay descended towards him. probably dead ffff

Old Man Samurai - haven’t seen this fucker in a hot minute, who even knows where he’s wandered off to

Ryuukyuu - currently being treated for her wounds, looked pretty bad off. but it’s hard to tell how hurt she is since most of the injuries were acquired in her transformed state. SHE BETTER GET WELL SOON

anyways, so yeah. so much for the top ten. guess that’s another reason Horikoshi brought Mirio back now, huh

so there’s a big panel of everyone fighting the Noumu while Machia lies there all “blurgh.” good riddance my dude. it took like twenty chapters and a hundred people to stop this guy so I really fucking hope he stays down. you’ve had your fun

anyway so Jeanist is sending another steel thread towards Dabi! and he’s all “just a bit more!!” fklklj this is gonna go real well isn’t it

meanwhile Mirio’s fighting a Nearly High End with all of these weird rock formations jutting out of its skin. go on and kick his ass then, Mirio

“each of these guys is probably just as strong as the Noumu from Kyuushuu” hold on I thought Ujiko or Tomura or someone said that wasn’t the case? not that Mirio would know I suppose. anyways let’s just hope he’s wrong cuz if not these kids are probably screwed

kLSDKFHLSKHGLKLK OH MY GODDDD

IIDA FUCKING TENYA YOU’RE A PEACH. THINKS THE NAME IS OUTRAGEOUS, CHECK. USES IT ANYWAY, CHECK. “JUST BECAUSE I DON’T UNDERSTAND DOESN’T MEAN I CAN’T BE SUPPORTIVE.” WHAT A CLASS ACT

AND KACCHAN IS RESPONDING WITH AS MUCH DIGNITY AS HE CAN MUSTER

WOW, SON. IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH YOU HAVE A HOLE IN YOUR TORSO, OR SOMETHING!! although listen up, real talk, the fact that Kacchan of all people can’t muster the energy to yell at someone questioning his ability to kick ass is HIGHKEY troubling and we may be in need of an intervention here soon :/

now Jeanist is finally turning his attention to the League! was... was it not already on the League. omg

ACTUAL SCREAMING AHHHHHH FUCK FUCKLK LK AHHLKHKFFFF

hey so um. what the actual fucked up hell. my soul left my body. imagine if you saw the reflection of this panel on your bedroom window. you would never sleep again

OKAY RHA TRANSLATORS ARE YOU HAVING YOURSELF A LAUGH AGAIN

THIS CANNOT BE WHAT HE’S ACTUALLY SAYING RIGHT. BUT IT’S RIGHT IN THAT UNCANNY VALLEY OF NOT BEING QUITE SURE, THOUGH... (　ﾟдﾟ)

(ETA: just a next-day clarification here, apparently my sleep-deprived ADHD word-skipping brain completely skipped right over the “a” in that last panel, so what I read was, “and Shigaraki’s limp noodle.” so yeah, the moral of this story is always read the speech bubble carefully before you start making running jokes throughout the rest of your post, folks.)

oh wow he’s really freaking out lmao

to be fair though, I’d argue that Dabi has gotten pre-tty close at this point :’) thrilled for him, really I am

but anyway, well then figure something out you big dramatic robot-armed fiend. didn’t you just say you could touch your own ass? can you not just Compress yourself to break free?? does it not work on you? or would you be stuck afterwards lol

(ETA: I was picturing him compressing his entire body at once, not just chunks of it. ghhhlkh.)

holy shit Jeanist. are you stupidly trying to cut off their air, or are you going for more of a sleeper hold (jleeper hold??) thing instead. the latter would be way smarter and faster and probably safer as well just saying

but unless Spinner is just being super dramatic, it sure looks like he’s fucking strangling them djslkjlk. this will certainly cement his popularity among the villain stans. good thing you’re not running for office any time soon bud

anyway so I have no idea what these guys are trying to do now. what is this

do you even have till the count of 5 at this rate. I mean

OH MY GOODNESS

HE’S REALLY FUCKING DOING IT!! HE’S COMPRESSING HIS BUTT!! OMFG. TOMURA HIDE YOUR NOODLE!!!

WHAT THE FUCK

DID YOU COMPRESS A PIECE OF YOUR OWN ASS. FUCKING WHAT. PUT THIS MAN’S PICTURE IN THE DICTIONARY NEXT TO THE WORD “LOYALTY”, HOLY CRAP

HOLY SHIT COMPRESS

“HOLY SHIT DID THAT GUY JUST PUNCH A HOLE THROUGH HIS OWN ASS IN ORDER TO SAVE HIS VILLAIN PALS. FUCK IT, HE DESERVES TO ESCAPE”

jeez, talk about... A HALF-ASSED ESCAPE ATTEMPT :D :D :D hahaha. but real talk though, Horikoshi has clearly never tried to leap twelve feet straight up in the air multiple times in succession with only half his glutes though. everyone, I regret to inform you that this panel right here on the left may be slightly unrealistic

also where the hell is he going to go?? did you pack a jetpack away in one of those little marbles sir. and what about Dabi?? and Skeptic too, I guess, but we don’t really care about Skeptic

(ETA: at this point I had to stop reading for about two hours because I had to go out and take care of something; that’s also why this is being posted later than usual lol. anyways so where were we.)

oh my lord

the existence of a translator’s note here implies that the earlier line about Compress being able to reach Tomura’s junk was not, in fact, ad-libbed. hmm. hmmmmmmmm

anyway so now he’s grabbing Compress again because OF COURSE HE IS, so now we’re right back to square one! except now Tomura and Spinner are secured inside of little marbles, and presumably Compress is the only one who can release them

oh nevermind he’s just maiming himself again instead, SHEESH

Skeptic a man is dying please have some goddamn respect

so, uh. is he gonna die, though??

I really can’t tell wtf is going on here, this is the most confusing the art has been in a while. Horikoshi put all of his spoons into that creepyass close-up panel earlier, that bastard

OMG WHAT ARE YOU SERIOUS

DON’T FUCKING TELL ME THE “COMPRESS IS RELATED TO THIS THIEF GUY FROM OLDEN TIMES” THEORY IS ACTUALLY TRUE WHAAAAAAT. OH SHIT

so apparently Harima was a Robin Hood type guy who stole from... heroes?? wtf. are heroes the 1% in this scenario. y’all didn’t have any Fortune 500 CEOs to steal from?

THAT’S THE BLOOD THAT FLOWS THROUGH YOU, OH SHIT. and in a related oh shit, the fact that we are getting a Compress flashback now of all times doesn’t bode super well for him. ffff

MEANWHILE THE TODOROKIS ARE STILL TODOROKI-ING

listen here boy if you touch one freaking hair on Shouto’s candy cane head I swear to god --

WHAT DID I FUCKING SAY!!!

SHOUTO NOOOOOO. WTF YOU’RE LITERALLY THE ONE GUY WHOSE WEAKNESS IS ABSOLUTELY NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FIRE. DABI YOU SHIT, YOU BETTER WATCH YOURSELF!! I’M PRINTING OUT A COPY OF THAT COMPRESS PANEL!!! KEEP AN EYE OUT ON THAT BEDROOM WINDOW YOU PUNK!!!

SO NOW POOR SHOUTO IS UNCONSCIOUS AND FALLING!! SOMEONE SAVE HIM!! WHO CATCHES THE CATCHER

COMPRESS LITERALLY HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE RIGHT NOW, WHAT IS HAPPENING

PLEASE DON’T CALL TOMURA LEADER OF THE “PLF” YOU KNOW I CAN’T TAKE IT SERIOUSLY WHEN YOU DO THAT. ARE YOU DYING. ARE YOU JUST A FUCKING HEAD NOW WTF

(ETA: “masks are removable, makeste” you know what it’s been a long day okay lmao. or I suppose Compress is really the one who is lmao.)

GASPPPPPP

okay. okay. looooool okay then

WHY WERE YOU COVERING THIS SEXY MOP OF HAIR UNDER THAT HOOD YOU TOOL. IT WOULD HAVE LOOKED SO GOOD WITH THE TOP HAT. I’M SO MAD AT YOU RIGHT NOW

as if it wasn’t enough for him to demask himself, he also had to get all shirtless and then do this weird attempt at a sexypose too huh

hard to say exactly how much of his torso is currently missing, but safe to say that’s proooooooobably not good. :///// fuck

on the other hand, Kacchan also has a torso hole and he’s still flying around like he just drank a dozen red bulls, so

this man lost his ass and he’s still out here monologuing like it’s the last two minutes of The Prestige. one might say he is monologuing his ass off

so he let Spinner and Tomura free, but is Dabi still trapped in his marble?? wasn’t he all on fire and stuff?? hopefully he can still turn off his quirk in there because if not that’s a pretty fucked up way to die. somewhere out there Snatch’s ghost is all “YEAH I’LL SAY.” oh how the turntables

last but not least, sooooooo. Tomura. back on the ground. that’s. um. ...shiiiiiiiit

#bnha 294 #mr. compress #...and actually that's pretty much it lol #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #sorry this is up later than usual (and mostly unedited as well)#just one of those days

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starblaster · 3 years

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athenais lemaire :0

athenaïs lemaire (he/they/she) is something between a protagonist and narrative focus from a novel i workshopped about a year ago (and am presently in the process of turning into an audio drama podcast with the help of some friends because i think it would function really well and best serve its purpose as a story in the audio and transcript format)

to summarize, his story is inspired by. a lot of things. i took inspiration from pre-existing works like the little prince, doctor who, interstellar, the never-ending story (sort of), porco rosso (i’ll.. i can explain), orlando (the movie and book), and howl’s moving castle (just a little bit. for the vibes)... as well as things that weren’t really stories at all, but which my brain sort of took off and ran with like the voyager mission(s), the existence of the old ‘methuselah’ tree, the 52 hz whale, roy’s monologue from blade runner, a sort of ethereal humming sound that gives me frission chills (idk what else to call it—it can be heard in the first 33 seconds of “relic” by reeder... but honestly the entire album this song is found on has inspired me a lot as well), the hesitant feeling we all get when we have something precious and we don’t want to Use and Enjoy it because we fear we’ll ruin it or use it all up (a blank and brand new sketchbook or a vinyl record, for example).. and a question someone asked me once, when i was like 15 years old, what i would do if i got one chance to go back in time and change something that i thought might make the world a better place.. to which i answered: the burning of the library of alexandria.

his story is about accepting things that are temporary, embracing loss, and learning to live with a unique and cosmic loneliness that none of us could possibly imagine.

(i’m putting the rest of this under a readmore cut because it... got very long and wordy fjdklsf)

the story ‘begins’ chronologically in 1780s enlightenment-era france with athenaïs lemaire and two of their friends who have built a time machine. they are essentially anti-elitist outcasts from the academic community who have a lot to prove so they’ve decided they’re going to use this time machine (which is, due to the nature of its components, not really built to last and is absolutely going to be a one-time trip) to go back in time and save the library of alexandria. the mission can only take one person. they draw lots and athenaïs gets the shortest stick. he knows it’ll be a very arduous mission to take on but in his mind it’s worth so much more than just himself so he’s willing to risk. just about everything. to see that the library of alexandria is saved.

i won’t get into details because i don’t really have certain things about the logistics re: granular historical details figured out yet—it was in lots of my workshop notes because i skipped over it entirely and i just know i need to do some more research to get things squared away before i write the episodes that will be spent delving into athenaïs’ backstory—but, in short, it works! the plan really does work. he’s able to salvage a wealth of documents and artifacts from the would-be-torched library alexandria. but time freezes and everything stops; the entire universe pauses as minerva/athena (she specifies that she does not really have a name, but that is the name the greeks and romans have given her) tells athenaïs she can’t let that information stay on earth. it wasn’t meant to survive into the coming era.

but she cuts a deal with him and really sweetens the pot—tells him she’ll give ‘his’ ship (which jkfld he stole or ‘borrowed’ from a roman merchant depending on how you want to phrase it) some generous enchantments: flying power? check. breathable atmosphere on deck and in the rigging? check. tardis logic cargo hold that can store an almost endless number of things like a museum of infinity? check... and she will grant him ‘immortality’—aka a lifespan of suspended age (to help him travel light years) that is so exceedingly long that he will no doubt witness the heat death of the universe - and though he can still certainly sustain injuries, even extreme and otherwise fatal wounds, he will heal from them given enough time and rest and this is. sort of his curse. think like. jack harkness from doctor who... and he will be granted these two things if he agrees to live in exile from earth and never return. if he wants to save all that knowledge and information, he has to take it elsewhere. he has to go share it with other alien cultures and maybe, along the way, help some space aliens defend their right to universal knowledge on their own home worlds (kind of borrowing from the little prince with the episodic planet-to-planet kind of structure). and so he does that. he does that alone for a really, really long time.

and then a stowaway finds their way onboard the novice.. and i have yet to give the stowaway a name but also wonder.. if they need one? i think they will canonically have a name that is just. secret. the stowaway sort of becomes athenaïs’ gateway into lots of complex emotions regarding his immortality, the responsibility of duty he manufactured for himself to basically be a space-traveling curator/archivist of sorts. he’s not used to having friends (let alone friends that are as close as family) after centuries of loneliness wherein his only company was the ship (which is absolutely alive, in a way) like. a large part of his character arc is unlearning the nihilism with regards to himself and his immortal body that he's adopted over the centuries. like, sure, he has motive and drive to go around collecting artifacts and such to share cultural knowledge with the people of the universe but he’s never had a crew to speak of before now.

and i’m currently getting a little emotional over a conversation i write the "alien cleric” (still no name yet because i am a fool with nonsensical priorities when writing things lmao) as having with him (in summary) like, "yeah, captain, you're going to outlive us. you're going to outlive all of us, but that shouldn't mean that you turn the crew away out of fear. you've got to accept that nothing lasts forever. in fact, some things don't last very long at all. you can't preserve everything. they're not artifacts you just have to learn how to get the most out of their company and their love while they're here with us, and keep them in your memory long after they're gone." they spend so much of their immortal life just trying to save things and keep them safe forever. and they're often a little reckless because he knows he only really has to 'worry' about the novice (because the ship can absolutely still be damaged) but once other people start figuring into the equation it's like. ok now hold on, i have to take care of myself? because it will hurt these people—who have formed a bonded attachment to me—to see me in pain? oh no. oh lord. oh fuck.

athenaïs has had a very lonely life! he’s sort of a sisyphean archetype character but becomes less alone over the course of his whole story via found family. thinking about it in depth, though, makes him very tempted to push crew members away (because.. ouch! he's getting attached), or put mental ultimatums on when he should tell them to think about leaving his crew because he doesn't want to see himself outlive them. he wants to save them like he saves artifacts and manuscripts & like he rescues them from being lost or damaged or aging. but you can't preserve your friends like artifacts, athy </3 i'm sorry mate. he feels a sense of responsibility for what he's doing and believes he needs to keep doing it because he made a promise to himself and also to the literal goddess who gave him an immortal life long enough to survive near-endless light years’ worth of travel, etc, etc.... but also hates how much of a curse it is.

like it really tears athenaïs up inside thinking about how the plan he and his colleagues came up with worked and he was so close to making that dream of a better world into a reality. feeling like he wasted a perfectly good once-in-a-lifetime trip into the past to fix something. and how he simultaneously feels such regret because nothing will have changed on earth, he didn't really save anything for humanity's future, he just took it with him. feeling like he did it all for nothing but sometimes being reminded that he can still share the things he's collected from alien worlds and documented to spread to other alien worlds & share with the rest of the universe and that actually he is helping. he just. sometimes forgets this. forgets that earth wasn't capital-e Everything, just a small world in a really big universe that he happened to come from and can never return to. hell, by the time the stowaway has found themself aboard the novice, it already contains far more alien textbooks and manuscripts and artifacts than it does earth-things.

also hi if you read all this... 🤍 i hope you’re having a really fantastic day right now. thanks for sticking with me, i’m thinking constantly about this story right now because i’m in the process of turning it into an audio drama with the help of some friends, as i said at the beginning of this post, and i just love talking about it. i’m sad i can’t provide spoilers for some big plot-relevant things that have to do with athy’s character and his development but i’ll keep them to myself because i definitely don’t want to ruin any surprises :’)

#athenaïs tag #athenais tag #dairy.txt #long post #anons #ocs tag

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daresplaining · 5 years

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not sure if you have been asked this before but how would you rate the daredevil runs from miller to soule, and why?

It has taken literally a thousand years to answer this, and I apologize– it’s just a huge question, even skipping all of the pre-Frank Miller runs (thank you for that, by the way– maybe I’ll rank them in a separate post, because I love a lot of the pre-Miller stuff!). Every reread brings with it new insight, and so my preferences are ever-evolving. That said, here’s how I would rank the main Daredevil runs from Miller onward (I’m not including annuals, mini-series, or novels, and I’m skipping the really tiny one-or-two-issue runs for the sake of brevity):

1. Mark Waid Daredevil volumes 3 and 4 are, for me, a perfect encapsulation of everything that makes Daredevil great. It’s all there! Smirking, swashbuckly Matt pulling off badass feats to save the day? Check! Dark, emotionally turbulent Matt trying to cope as the world falls apart around him? Check! An excellent supporting cast? Check! Fantastic hypersensory moments? Check! Great stories? Stunning art? Stilt-Man? Check! Everyone needs to read this run. It’s pretty much perfect.

2. Brian Michael Bendis I’ve learned that my Daredevil preferences tend to lean light(er…), but dang, Bendis writes a heck of a noir comic. He balances intense crime drama with striking character moments, changes the status quo over and over again (in a good way), and gives Matt some of the best zingers he’s ever had. (Seriously. Bendis’s Matt is really funny.) He also gave us Milla Donovan and Angela Del Toro, and for that I am eternally grateful. And whooo, that Alex Maleev/Matt Hollingsworth art… This is a classic, enduring run for a very good reason.

3. Karl Kesel/Joe Kelly Okay, I’m cheating here. These are two separate runs. But they happened back-to-back, had the exact same tone, and were great for all of the same reasons, so I usually squash them together. If Karl Kesel and Joe Kelly have a problem with this, they can take it up with me (preferably in person– I have a lot of comics for them to sign.) These runs are fun. The Daredevil pendulum swings from light to dark and back again, and these guys landed on the upswing, after Matt had reconnected with his quippy, swashbuckly past. They feel old-fashioned, nostalgic in the best possible way, not afraid to be a little silly while still delivering solid, character-rooted stories. And it helps that the cast of characters is top-notch. Karen is around, trying to re-start her life while juggling humorous relationship issues with Matt. Foggy’s family drama is on full-force as Rosalind Sharpe and Candace come to town. Misty Knight stops by, as does Natasha Romanov. Kathy Malpher, one of my favorite minor DD characters ever, has lots of panel time. Deuce the Devil Dog is there. And it all ends with the breathtaking DD #375, which has got to be one of my top five favorite issues of all time. If you haven’t read these runs yet, go do that and thank me later.

4. Frank Miller Darkness is only effective when interspersed with some light, and lightness is only effective when injected with some darkness, and Frank Miller (pre-”Born Again”) hit that perfect balance. It’s noir. It’s deep. It’s intense. It’s also some of the funniest Daredevil material ever written. Please go back and read “Guts”, or “Hunters”, or the Power Man and Iron Fist crossover. Let me say it louder, because I feel like I’m alone here: I love Frank Miller’s Daredevil because it is FREAKING HILARIOUS! And it goes without saying that “Born Again” is also stunning– definitely one of my favorite DD stories. And he gave us Stick and the peerless Elektra Natchios (three different versions of her, in fact) and the world has never been the same.

5. Denny O’Neil Denny O’Neil had the misfortune of getting sandwiched between Frank Miller’s two runs, and I feel like that’s the reason he doesn’t get the attention he deserves for some truly fantastic comics. Uh… weird comics, in a lot of cases, but heck, I like well-done weirdness. O’Neil added an international angle to the comic. He sent Matt to Japan and Italy (and even- gasp- New Jersey) and brought in Glori O’Breen, a great character even with her slightly over-the-top accent. He reconnected Matt with Natasha Romanov for a few beautiful one-shot team-ups. He killed off Heather Glenn in a horrible way, but did it with such grace and style that it didn’t feel entirely gratuitous. And he’s responsible for “The Price”– one of my favorite stand-alone issues. Plus, the fact that he was working with David Mazzucchelli didn’t hurt either.

6. Ann Nocenti Superhero comics– superhero comics writing in particular– has been a white male-dominated profession for far too long, and there are far too few women who have written Daredevil. I hate to start a discussion of Nocenti’s run with “Look! A woman!” but it’s worth pointing out because look at this list. Seriously. (And for anyone unfamiliar with the pre-Miller runs, I assure you, it’s more of the same.) Ann Nocenti’s run is fantastic for the ways it really digs into the heart of the material. She took the post-“Born Again” landscape and ran with it. This was the period that tied Matt to Hell’s Kitchen, and Nocenti made that plot point stick by showing us the fabric of the neighborhood, bringing in characters like the Fat Boys, placing Matt and Karen within the community with the founding of Karen’s free clinic, and turning the Hell’s Kitchen of the Marvel universe into a living, breathing place. In contrast, she also took Matt out of the city, and in doing so, wrote some of my favorite Daredevil stories. She wasn’t afraid to address pressing social issues. She wasn’t afraid to tell stories that were just plain weird. And her run is utterly unique and complex as a result.

7. Ed Brubaker/D.G. Chichester Yeah, okay, this is really cheating. These are two completely different runs, but they are nevertheless tied because of the same factor: I adore some parts, and dislike other parts. “The Devil in Cell Block D” (the first arc of Brubaker’s run) is phenomenal. I re-read it a lot. So is “Last Rites” (by Chichester). Chichester wrote two of my favorite stand-alone issues: “34 Hours” (vol. 1 #304) and “Just One Good Story” (vol. 1 #380). Brubaker gifted us with the awesomeness that is Maki Matsumoto (A.K.A. Lady Bullseye), and Master Izo! Chichester gave us D.A. Kathy Malpher, one of my favorite DD characters ever (bring her back, Marvel! Where did she go?)! Also, his hypersensory writing is visceral verging on gross– which, for me, is ideal. However, Brubaker’s run went downhill a bit after the first arc. I mentioned the light/dark balance in regards to Frank Miller’s run, and Brubaker went all dark. (I consider it the darkest DD run yet.) It’s great storytelling, but not my style. And while I love his shorter arcs, Chichester’s longer work– “Fall From Grace” and “Tree of Knowledge” in particular– don’t do it for me. I find them overly convoluted and lacking substance. Also, while Scott McDaniel draws my favorite rendition of the radar sense, he’s my least favorite DD artist. D.G. Chichester + Lee Weeks 4ever.

8. David Mack I like “Vision Quest” a lot more than “Parts of a Hole”, though that’s somewhat due to the artist switch partway through the latter. “Parts of a Hole” did an excellent job of introducing Maya Lopez, and has a lot of great moments, but “Vision Quest” is practically a piece of fine art. It’s stunning, both narratively and visually. I consider it more of an Echo comic than a DD comic, but it still belongs on this list.

9. Charles Soule I haven’t had a chance to reread this run in its entirety, since it just ended, and I really need to do so because I’m having a hard time figuring out my feelings on it. There are aspects of Soule’s characterization of Matt that I disagree with. The sensory writing varied in quality, and we clearly have different perceptions of the radar sense. There was a distinct shortage of female characters– and, in fact, of side characters in general. And the mind wipe was a huge misstep, since it erased so many of Matt’s long-held friendships. In a comic that has traditionally drawn much of its power from its strong supporting casts and Matt’s dynamics with them, that decision has caused serious lasting damage. However, there’s also a lot I loved. Sam Chung, though (I feel) underused, is a great character in his own right, and he also provided the chance for us to see Matt in a long-term mentorship role– something I’ve wanted for a while now. Muse was a fascinating and terrifying antagonist. And Soule’s perspective as an actual lawyer added extra zip to many of his stories, whether it was putting Matt in the mayor’s office (finally!) or sending him to the Supreme Court in what may be my favorite law-centered DD story ever. But the real reason Soule’s name is this far up this list is because of the “Double Vision” arc (or, as I call it, “Mike Murdock Must Die 2.0″) which is sheer brilliance, and to my mind, one of the greatest Daredevil stories ever told.

10. Bob Gale “Playing to the Camera” does not get nearly as much credit as it deserves for being a genuinely hilarious superhero law-based comedy of errors, and a bright spot amid the angst-fest that is Daredevil volume 2. My major complaints are that it’s too short and I dislike the art.

11. Andy Diggle I don’t dislike “Shadowland”. I don’t love it, but it’s a cool story concept that suffered– as events often do– from storytelling spread too thin, across too many characters, in too short a timespan. (Though I need to know if he came up with the “Matt Murdock dared evil… and lost” tagline, because if so, that wordplay would rocket him right to the top of this list.) I prefer the lead-up to “Shadowland” to the event itself. But I love DD: Reborn (yes, I said I wasn’t going to cover mini-series, but it’s essentially part of the main comic because it bridges the gap between two volumes. I say it counts). I’ve always enjoyed stories that take Matt out of NYC, and Reborn is a fun adventure story that gets back to basics and serves as a great bookend for volume 2.

12. Scott Lobdell I like “Flying Blind”. It’s quirky and unusual (which I appreciate), and Matt is written very well. I just don’t love it. It’s one of those arcs that slides right to the back of the memory and only returns to the forefront when you’re reflecting on the first time Matt ever saw Foggy, or wondering if Matt’s bad French in Brubaker’s run is left over from his SHIELD-implanted fluency. It’s a neat idea, but could have been executed in a more engaging, lasting way.

13. Gregory Wright This short run went right out of my head the instant I finished it the first time, and upon rereading it has remained fairly unmemorable. The art is hit-and-miss, and the story– while perfectly fine– isn’t anything exciting or innovative. There are some great hypersensory moments, it’s worth reading, but I don’t have much to say about it beyond that.

14. Alan Smithee “Alan Smithee” is a pseudonym used in the entertainment industry by writers who don’t want to be associated with a certain project. The commentary on manwithoutfear.com states that this run was actually written by Chichester, who used the pen name as a way of protesting his abrupt firing from the comic. I treat it as a separate run, since that’s clearly what he wanted. I always tend to group the Wright and Smithee runs together in my mind because they take place one after the other, are both very short (only 5 issues each), and are very similar in both tone and quality. I like the art in Smithee’s run more, and the writing is solid. However, the whole thing is colored for me by the horrific and unnecessary death of Glorianna O’Breen, a character I love. I’m perfectly fine with characters dying if their deaths are well-written and impactful (heck, I’ll be honest– I love a good death), but Glori’s demise just seems gratuitous, and is therefore not appealing to me.

15. J.M. DeMatteis This run is super weird, but not in an interesting way. It leans toward the religious, which is not my thing, and it relies on the dead sex worker storyline from Man Without Fear, which is really not my thing and should have stayed out of the main continuity. It’s good to read, because it’s a major shift in Matt’s life and sets up the fabulous Kesel/Kelly runs, but… eh. That said, Matt battling his different identities in a graveyard while getting heckled by Stick, and yellow suit DD running around creating mayhem, are 100% my things… so credit where’s it’s due.

16. Kevin Smith You may have noticed that “Guardian Devil”, the first arc of Daredevil volume 2, the run that rescued the series after its cancellation and brought Matt Murdock to the forefront of the Marvel street-level universe once more…! …is rarely ever mentioned on this blog. That’s because I really don’t like it. At all. I’m grateful to Smith for bringing readers back to DD, but would be happy if he never wrote these characters again. His run is poorly paced, out-of-character, and covers themes/topics/etc. that I personally don’t enjoy. I forced myself through it because I’m a Daredevil completist, but I haven’t read it again. I probably will someday, just to make sure I remember all of the key plot points, but… not yet.

#Daredevil #Asks #Commentary #Recommendations List

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years

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Oh boy one of these again

“Even though both of these characters are awesome, fans can’t help but argue among themselves, so the question is simple: Who makes the better Spider-Man? Is it the new kid on the block who is winning new fans over left and right, or is it the classic Spidey that basically started it all?”

It’s Peter.

This isn’t even a debate.

One character is literally trying to be a replication of the other but throwing in some zigs where they zagged, whilst the other is the thing being replicated that also revolutionized comic books forever.

“As always, the answer to this question is: “it depends.” ”

Yes. It depends if you are a moronic clickbait author or not.

Do most Miles Morales fans even honestly argue that Miles is the best Spider-Man as opposed to just...great in his own way?

Like I’m pretty sure most Ben Reilly and Sam Wilson fans don’t try to honestly assert those guys are better than Peter or Steve.

“How do you even begin to measure something like this? ”

Who has had the biggest impact on the medium.

Who was most original.

Who has the most acclaimed stories.

Who has had the most comparatively unconvoluted narrative.

Who’s stories stick closest to the fundamental guiding ideas behind the core concept of Spider-Man and execute that the best.

Mystery solved.

20. MILES: BETTER ORIGIN

“The Peter Parker Spider-Man has an origin story that is downright iconic. There’s no denying that. However, if we’re being honest, then Miles Morales has a much better origin story. And it’s one that modern audiences will find a much easier time relating to.”

Hmm, a scientifically gifted teenager gets bitten by a super science spider and gains spider powers that he doesn’t commit to using altruistically for the wider community. Because of this he fails to intervene in a crime the results of which ultimately wind up killing a noble person he admired. From this he learned that his great powers should be used responsibily to help others and carried a burden of guilt around with him. o this end he dressed up in webbed spandex and became a crime fighter called Spider-Man.

Yeah...I can see how that is so much better and modern than Peter Parker’s origin...

This doesn’t even explain how or why the origin is better, it just says Peter’s origin is iconic but Miles is better and leaves it at that.

Surely if something is better than the iconic thing you’d have more to say about it.

“Miles, meanwhile, had to deal with his powers being stolen by an uncle (whom we saw briefly in Spider-Man: Homecoming) before Miles’ early exploits with Venom led to the loss of his mother.”

This isn’t part of his origin and therefore doesn’t belong in this section.

Moreover it’s asinine because it omits Peter’s early adventures to give the false impression Miles is better.

Let’s say Miles’ uncle stole his powers. Why is this somehow better than ‘My uncle is dead, I need to step up and replace him as the man of the house, also my aunt is chronically ill, I am cash strapped and I constantly get shit in both my identities’.

Call me crazy but wasn’t Spider-Man supposed to be ABOUT those normal life problems as opposed to the inherently fantastical problem of your magic science spider powers getting jacked?

Or your mother dying due to an ooze monster before she was literally resurrected like two years later negating all drama?

Even if his mother had remained dead, how does this make him better than Peter? His mother died. Wow. I’ve NEVER seen a superhero with a dead parent before. I’ve NEVER seen a female supporting character die in a superhero story before. Certainly not a Spider-man story. Certainly not a Spider-Man story that changed comic books forever before shallow repetitions like murdering the characters mother turned it into a mess of a cliché. A mess of a cliché that the same guy who did it reversed 2 years later.

“In this way, he feels a much keener guilt over the passing away of a family member than Peter Parker does”

**** please!

His mother came BACk to life two years later and it wasn’t like his ENTIRE motivation after she died was BUILT around his grief over her death.

Like Peter brings up Uncle Ben’s death so much that we needed to do a movie that SPECIFICALLY DOESN’T BRING IT UP!

And this isn’t even getting into how despite being a family member the best analogy for Rio within Peter’s story is Gwen NOT Uncle Ben.

And you cannot with a straight face tell any Spider-Man fan Gwen’s death was not AS keenly felt by Peter as Rio’s was for Miles.

Miles quit after Rio died and then an arc or two later after a time skip he was back in the saddle. Meanwhile literally 2 years worth of issues were devoted to depicting Peter’s grieiving of Gwen and then we also wouldn’t shut up about it for another 40 years!

“making him not only more motivated, but more sympathetic in the eyes of the readers.”

If Rio’s death made Miles more motivated than Peter...why did he literally quit being Spider-Man after she died?

This gets even dumber when you consider this article is drawing an analogy between Rio’s death and Uncle Ben.

RIO’s death motivated Miles to quit for A WHOLE YEAR!

Uncle Ben’s death motivated Peter to BE a superhero for *checks watch) 56 years and counting!

And what is this the tragedy Olympics? Miles deserves more sympathy because his mother died when he was fighting a villain than Peter does for when his father figure died due to someone he failed to stop?

At best BOTH things are equally tragic and worthy of sympathy.

At worst if you truly contextualize this, fuck no Miles doesn’t deserve more sympathy.

I’m not saying ‘screw him he deserved it’. I’m just saying of course Peter had it worse.

When Rio died that was the third major death in Miles’ life. His mother, his uncle and Ult Peter Parker.

Yeah, that’s 2 dead family members to Peter’s 1 circa Gwen’s death right?

Wrong. Peter lost his parents, his uncle which was his fault, George Stacy who was another father figure which he also felt guilty over and then also his girlfriend/practically his fiancé...which he also felt guilty over.

Then you’ve got the fact that Miles, whilst feeling guilty over Ult Peter’s death, didn’t actually know him personally. Peter knew all those people personally sans his parents, but they were still his parents.

And then he had to be the provider for May whilst having exactly zero emotional support from anyone other than her. Miles had Ganke through everything. Peter had jackshit and was also getting bullied and was also getting hated on by Jameson.

You can’t even say “Well Miles had it worse because he saw his mother die violently right in front of him.” Peter saw and CAUSED Gwen to die violently in front of him, he saw George Stacy die violently in front of him, he at least KNEW Uncle Ben died violenty and in his own home to boot.

And unlike Miles’ uncle or mother none of THOSE people came back to life!

19. PETER: CREATIVE USE OF POWERS

“Have you ever thought about how limited Peter Parker’s powers really are? No, seriously — he has spider-sense and super-strength, and he made himself some webs and that’s it”

-and, spider agility, and spider speed and you know wall-crawling the one thing his namesake, a spider, FAMOUSLY does!

“Seemingly every issue has him doing something new with his powers,”

Says someone who’s clearly not read much Spider-Man.

How the hell do you even begin to try and have him do something new in every issue across multiple monthly titles across 57 years my god!

18. MILES: COOLER COSTUME

“If you were trying to figure out what the most iconic comic book costume was, it may very well be Peter Parker’s Spider-Man costume. Those red and blue tights have inspired literally decades of comics fans, young and old. But we hate to break it to you: Miles Morales has the cooler costume.”

“The red and blue may be iconic, but it’s also difficult to translate into the real world, such as live action films.”

This is fucking moronic on four levels.

Level 1: It was a costume designed for a comic book which isn’t set in the real world or even in a live action medium so the point is fucking moot because the measure of a COMIC BOOK character’s costume is how well it works in a COMIC BOOK.

By this logic Batman’s costume sucks shit because it’s rarely translated well into live action and usually needed to be made all black.

By this logic ALL MANGA isn’t that great because none of it translates t the real world.

Level 2: If the thing is ICONIC then obviously is does effing work!

Level 3: Solid black with red patterning on top of it. Yes. I can see how this is very original and inherently better.

Level 4: The red and blue costume has literally been translated into film FOUR TIMES!

“Meanwhile, Miles’ black and red costume looks sleek and modern.”

Looking sleek and modern doesn’t counter ‘is difficult to translate to film’. Those are two separate things.

Moreover, it’s ‘modernity’ is afforded it by being again, mostly unoriginal.

Shit Spider-Man’s SECOND most iconic costume, which is also more iconic than Miles’, is even MORE sleek so does that make it more ‘modern’ too?

It’s the same nonsense as before, ‘it’s just better’. How and why!

“ It’s a perfect compromise between comic book sensibilities and real world aesthetics”

Which means it’s not as good in the medium it was designed for as another costume that was!

“and you can’t help but grin whenever you see it.”

That isn’t even a point, that’s barely even an individual opinion!

17. PETER: BETTER LOVE INTERESTS

“Sometimes, comparing Peter Parker and Miles Morales feels like comparing apples and oranges. ”

And reading this article comparing them feels like throwing up.

“That’s because there are some cool things that one hero has that the other doesn’t, meaning there’s no real comparison. ”

Okay like...first of all if the author actually believes that then what the fuck is the point of this list!

Second of all, the fact that they are comparing them means obviously they can be compared.

Thirdly the fact that they are literally both characters called Spider-Man, with spider powers, based in New York, who got their powers the same way, fight ostensibly the same villains and (allegedly) touch upon the same types of sub-genres and are both made by Marvel comics OBVIOUSLY MEANS THEY ARE COMPARABLE!

Like fuck dude, this isn’t like you are trying to compare Spider-Man to the Power Rangers!

“Peter Parker has had an epic romance with Mary Jane Watson, as well as dalliances with Felicia Hardy and Carlie Cooper.”

Really? You are going to list off a quick romantic history of Spider-Man and you mention MJ and Felicia and...Carlie Cooper.

A character not seen since 2014. A character who dated Spider-Man for like one year publishing time.

You will mention her but not, I dunno, Gwen effing Stacy?

16. MILES: MORE INFLUENTIAL

I’m face palming from just the title of this one.

“One reason that we think Miles Morales might be the better Spider-Man is because of how influential he is. And we’re not just talking about more and more fans discovering the character each year. A major bit of evidence is that his character highly influenced the insanely successful Spider-Man: Homecoming.”

Well I’m happy somebody is acknowledging Homecoming was basically a whitewashed Miles movie.

“An example of this is Peter’s friend in the movie, Ned Leeds. Longtime Spidey fans were surprised that he looked nothing like the Ned of the comics. That’s because his design and characterization was based on Miles’ friend, Ganke Lee. On top of that, we even see Miles’ uncle, Aaron Davis, played by Donald Glover. This gave many fans hope we’d see Miles Morales in the MCU!”

Just to be crystal clear here, this ‘article’ is asserting that Miles Morales, a character invented by Bendis and Pichelli less than 10 years ago, is more influential than the character that....literally every teenage super hero after 1962 was inspired by (including Miles himself)...who was created by one of the art Gods of all comics and the single most famous writer of comic books of all time.

And their ‘evidence’ for this was...one movie from last year...that he wasn’t even in...

15. PETER: FANTASTIC…FIVE?

There is nothing objectionable in this sans the fact that he joined the Future Foundation not the F4.

14. MILES: STEALTHY SPIDER

“We love Peter Parker’s abilities but if we’re being honest, they don’t always make a lot of sense. Detecting future danger and being super-strong is really neat, but it never exactly screamed “spider” to us.”

Spiders are very strong for their size. Hence ‘proportional strength of a spider’ as a commonly used phrase associated with the character.

The Spider Sense is more defencible as being ‘not a spider thing’, but there are still ways to explain it.

“It felt a bit like the writers were just making stuff up.”

...making stuff up is literally the definition of writing fiction...

“And if you’re going to make up some weird powers, we say “go big or go home.””

None of Peter’s powers sans his spider sense were even remotely weird if he was intended as a human spider.

“And that’s why we like Miles Morales’ cool stealth ability. His ability to blend into his surroundings creates some really fun stories, and adds a fun dose of Batman to the Spidey stories that we love.”

Not only is this dumb because being like another character is not a good thing (doesn’t it make you less unique), but worse it pretends like having stealth is something that’s even MORE insane for a spider than spider sense.

It’s not.

Spiders can camouflage into their surroundings like you know....shittons of animals people commonly know about.

13. PETER: AVENGERS MEMBER

Nothing that wrong here.

12. MILES: GALACTUS FIGHTER

“When fans argue about which characters are the best, there are plenty of different metrics. One of the biggest, though, is who the character has managed to fight. And if a hero is able to take on a villain well above their weight, it establishes just how serious they are.

So, how can you tell that Miles Morales is the best? He managed to take on Galactus. No, seriously — when Galactus threatened the universe, Miles Morales teamed up with resident big brain Reed Richards in order to get information and allies. While it was definitely a team effort, Miles should get credit for tackling a bigger foe than Peter Parker ever did.”

This is so fucked up it’s not even funny.

By this logic ANY TIME Peter contributed even a little to a team effort that ultimately led to beating someone it should count on his win record.

Okay then. In AvX he contributed to fighting the Phoenix, which is canonically MORE powerful than Galactus. He’s also contributed to fighting Galactus in Secret Wars. He contributed to fighting Onslaught who was approaching a Galactus level threat. He contributed towards defeating Scarlet Witch in House of M and restoring the 616 universe, Scarlet Witch also being even more powerful than Galactus in that story.

If you DIDN’T use this type of bullshit then Peter has taken on supremely more powerful foes than Miles.

Juggernaut, Hulk, Tri-Sentinel, Rhino. The entire X-Men.

Even the stuff that doesn’t make sense for either character put Peter ahead. Peter beat Firelord a Herald of Galactus, whilst Miles beat Blackheart, the son of Mephisto.

Let me remind you that Silver Surfer, also a Herald of Galactus, has beaten Mephisto himself.

Therefore Firelord is most likely put of Blackheart’s weight class.

11. PETER: CIA PARENTS

There is nothing incorrect in this but why is this a point in Peter’s favour? Spider-Man is supposed to be down to Earth so the more James Bond super spy craziness involved the more reductive it is.

Hell it doesn’t even make sense against Miles since Miles dad worked for SHIELD.

“We shouldn’t be surprised Peter is who he is when he had parents like this!”

Yeah or you know it could’ve been because of Uncle Ben as literally every version of Spider-Man spells out for us.

10. MILES: S.H.I.E.L.D. AGENT

“Just as you can judge a hero by who they fight, you can also judge them by who they fight alongside. When a character joins a team with a proud history and powerful members, it goes to show just how amazing that hero is. And this is why we love that Miles Morales is a member of S.H.I.E.L.D.

He was hand-picked as a hero with great potential and trained by the greatest secret agents on the planet and this is all the more impressive because he already has more training and experience at his young age than Peter had way back when.”

See what I said about about James Bond stuff in Spider-Man being a bad thing.

Also, if Miles is better because he fought alongside SHIELD, then by this logic Peter would be better because he was a member of the Avengers and FF...at the same time.

Moreover, whilst it’s true Miles has had more training than peter had, he hasn’t necessarily had as much experience.

And the point is moot if training and experience doesn’t translate into you being a better fighter, and at a comparable age, Peter definitely could’ve beaten Miles provided the writers didn’t cop out and have his Spider Sense not work so he can avoid Miles’ cheat code Venom blast.

9. PETER: CHEATING HIS DEMISE

“One time, Kraven filled Spider-Man with tranquilizer darts and left him to pass away, going so far as to bury him. Peter emerged alive, but he later “passed away” after fighting Morlun, only to be reborn with weird new spider-powers. It turns out you just can’t keep him down!”

Okay, but he also died in Secret Wars, Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity War (the comic, not the movie, or it might’ve been Infinity Crusade).

8. MILES: BETTER SUPPORTING CAST

Oooooooooooooooooooooh boy can’t wait for this!

“Sure, given enough time, you may be able to rattle off a few additional names when it comes to Peter Parker’s supporting cats.”

This is such BS because Felicia alone is a more memorable supporting cat than any of the felines in Miles’ series.

LEARN TO SPELL CHECK ON THE ARTICLE YOU’VE BEEN PAID FOR!

“But when pressed, most people will simply say “Aunt May and Mary Jane.””

No, most people would say Aunt May, Mary Jane, Harry Osborn, J. Jonah Jameson, Gwen Stacy and possibly now Ned Leeds due to Homecoming.

And that’s just for Joe Average on the street. Actual comic book fans would say all those people and also probably Black Cat, Betty Brant, Joe Robertson, Liz Allan, Flash Thompson and possibly Norman Osborn and Eddie Brock (the latter being a mistake due to adaptations but still, they’d mention him).

“And while we’re calling them a “supporting cast,” they often don’t play a major role in the story.”

Almost like they exist to...SUPPORT the main story isn’t it? Wheras being a MAJOR character would be different.

This is also a BS metric to use for Spider-Man. Spider-Man’s core concept involves him being a normal guy in his civilian life who is also a super hero, with those two sides impacting upon one another.

Since most stories are mostly about the hero stuff it means that to get the supporting cast involved in major stories would make them involved in the super hero stuff and therefore make Peter’s civilian life NOT normal.

“With Miles, he gets to have his spider-cake and eat it, too. He has a major supporting friend in the form of Ganke Lee, who provides insight into both the personal and the superhero life of Miles. And Miles has an extended supporting cast as part of all those team-ups: Avengers, Ultimates — if Miles needs help, some A-listers are just a dial away!”

First off, by this logic Mary Jane from like 1984 and Aunt May from 2001 would count as equally as Ganke.

Second of all Ganke is literally the ONLY supporting cast the folks with the most cursory knowledge of Miles could name. Even under CBR’s nonsensical logic of Aunt May and Mj being the ONLY people anyone would know from Peter’s cast, that’s still two vs. one. The author brought up a point against Peter and then failed to demonstrate how Miles is better in comparison, probably because he wasn’t.

Thirdly the Avengers and the Ultimates are NOT supporting cast members, they are team mates!

Fourthly, by that logic Peter again has the advantage since the Avengers, F4, the (Netflix) Defenders, the X-Men and literally everyone he ever teamed up with in Marvel Team up count as his supporting cast!

7. PETER: DEALING WITH THE DEVIL

Forget what I said earlier. Now THIS really should be good!

“We’re going to keep saying this over and over again, but the best way to judge a hero is to look at the villains they have gone up against. And in the case of Peter Parker, he’s actually survived the greatest villain in all of history in the devil himself or, as they call him in Marvel Comics, Mephisto.”

That is such insane broken and desperate logic I almost want to love this article for trying.

Peter is better than Miles BECAUSE of the worst Spider-man story of all time.

Wow. That’s beautifully bonkers.

But seriously, this is...just holy shit.

Peter did survive an encounter with Mephisto...but Mephisto was never trying to kill him. They never exchanged blows at all.

Saying Peter survived Mephisto is like saying Miles survived God Emperor Doom in Secret Wars, therefore he’s more awesome.

Then you have the fact that Mephisto really, really, really isn’t even the greatest villain in the marvel universe. I hate to invoke Quesada, but he isn’t even the ACTUAL devil. He’s not even the ACTUAL guy who rebelled against God and was damned to be the ruler of Hell. He’s one of the 4 rulers of Hell alongside Satan, Satannish and Lucifer, who is the ACTUAL Biblical devil. In fact one of them (Satannish) is himself the SON of the Dread Dormammu and supposed to be weaker than his old man IIRC.

DAFQ are you the greatest villain when the DAD of one of your peers is a bigger deal than you are?

And if we ignore morality for a moment and look at raw power, shittons of antagonists are much more powerful and dangerous than Mephisto or else have been capable at times of owning his red ass.

Thanos. Firelord. Hela. Galactus. Annihilus. Dark Phoenix. Arguably Apocalypse and Onslaught.

“Longtime fans don’t like to remember this because it is a highly controversial story. ”

Longtime fans? It was only 10 years ago!

And the sequel was only 8 years ago!

And it got referenced explicitely THIS YEAR!

“Spider-Man basically gets Mephisto to save Aunt May’s life, but Mephisto’s price is that he will rewrite reality so that Peter and Mary Jane never loved each other. ”

Holy shit that isn’t even an accurate summation of the most infamous story ever.

Mephisto rewrites their marriage, not their love. And Spidey gets him to do nothing, it was an offer Peter accepted.

“Is it the clumsiest reset button ever? Sure. But Peter still survived encountering the ultimate evil.”

He survived in so far as he didn’t die. He objectively lost though.

6. MILES: PLAYING WELL WITH OTHERS

“One of the weirder qualities of Peter Parker is how much he likes to keep to himself. ”

No one in the real world does that. And it isn’t like he has a rich friendship group or anything.

“Sure, he’s been on many teams (and that many more team-ups), but at the end of the day, he prefers to work alone.”

Except when he’s in Marvel Team up or with Black Cat.

“This isn’t the case for Miles Morales, which is why the young man has better allies than Peter does.”

Preferring to be a loner vs a team player doesn’t make you better or worse it’s just different. But even if it didn’t Peter has allies too. Most of Miles allies are also Peter’s and Peter has even more.

“Who are we talking about? Miles is both friends and allies with characters like Ms. Marvel, Nova, Amadeus Cho,”

And Peter is both friends and allies with characters like Captain Marvel (both female ones), the ORIGINAL more powerful Nova, and Bruce Banner, a.k.a. the original and holy fuck immeasurably stronger Hulk.

He’s also friends with Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine and most of the X-Men and Avengers and F4.

“He seemed to figure out something early on that eluded Peter Parker for many years: that it’s good to have a support system in place, especially as a superhero!”

And yet, Peter survivied on his own for years like a bad ass.

5. PETER: THE MAN, THE MYTH

“While the comic played coy and never confirmed this, it is strongly hinted that Peter Parker is part of centuries of “spider totems” that are chosen as champions. That means the spider that bit him was not powered by radiation: it had powers it wanted to give Peter, and only later passed away due to radiation. You may or may not believe it, but Peter quite likely has centuries of lineage fueling his powers!”

Again this isn’t necessarily a good thing.

4. MILES: BETTER VILLAINS

BWAHAHAHAHAHA...oh they’re serious...

Do you want to know the secret to nostalgia? Your brain only remembers the good parts of whatever you’re thinking about. Your buddy that loves ’80s music? Trust us when we say that he managed to brain wipe some pretty awful stuff — it’s a lot like that with Peter Parker’s rogues gallery.

Sure, there are some cool villains like Venom, Green Goblin, and Doctor Octopus, but there are also some real lame ones like the Shocker.

a) The author can go suck a dick, Shocker is awesome.

b) Yeah SOME cool villains like those 3 guys...and Carnage...and Kingpin...and Hobgoblin...and Rhino...and Scorpion...and Electro...and Vulture....and basically everyone under the Ditko run

c) By this logic Miles villains suck ass too because he’s fought many lame ones too

“Compared to this, Miles Morales has fewer villains, but that means fewer duds as well. ”

Super hero rogue’s galleries are not marked negatively.

It’s one thing if you have few good villains and most of the time you fight lame ones.

It’s entirely different if you have a lot of good villains, and way more disposable rarely seen lame ones. The lame ones don’t make the whole thing suck shit.

This is particularly asinine since most of Miles villains are either Peter’s villains or else the Ultimate versions of them.

What is worse is that by this logic BATMAN has a worse rogue’s gallery than Miles Morales!

“We’ll take cool villains like the resurrected Aaron Davis over Peter Parker’s C-list baddies any day!”

So would I probably but would you take him over Venom, Doc Ock or any of the Osborns!

3. PETER: ALIEN FIGHTER

I don’t even understand how this is a point in Peter’s favour

2. MILES: SPIDER-BITE

“As we said earlier, it often felt weird that Spider-Man wasn’t more like, well, a spider.”

He is like one the author is just a jackass.

“Which is one of the reasons we appreciate Miles Morales so much. In addition to having a cooler backstory”

A near identical backstory made cooler because the author said so...

“and a more realistic costume, ”

Which is bad because in a visual medium like comics where you aren’t bound by the constraints of reality (hence spandex looks awesome) ‘realism’ in your costume designs is not a good thing.

“Miles has more realistic spider-powers as well, including his “bite.””

...his what?

“With a simple touch, Miles Morales is able to incapacitate villains. Now, Spidey being Spidey, he still has to engage in some wild fisticuffs on more than one occasion, but it’s pretty cool to see that he can take down major bad guys with a spider-bite instead of just fists powered by “radioactive blood.””

Wow.

Lets unpack this.

First of all the author is such a dumbass they don’t even realize Miles’ Venom blast (not named because the author is a hack) is not a representation of a spider bite, but of a specific ability some species of spiders possess wherein they can paralyze foes with bio-electricity.

This is one of THE most well known things about Miles.

Second of all if this was analogous to a spider bite wouldn’t it i dunno involve his fucking TEETH!

Third of all this is Miles’ worst power. It sucks the drama out of action sequences because it’s an auto-win button which means he wins too easily or looks like a moron when he doesn’t just bust it out.

1. PETER: STOPPING THE UNSTOPPABLE

Again, there is nothing wrong in this, but like...how does this prove Peter is better.

This article made me ill

#spider-man #Miles Morales #Peter Parker #CBR #comic book resources #Ganke Lee #Rio Morales #SHIELD #Ultimate Spider-Man #SPider-Man: Homecoming

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wingheadshellhead · 7 years

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Hi, I love your blog! So I've been reading a lot of 616 stevetony lately, and I've noticed that in both canon and in a lot of fiction, Steve seems to really dislike Extremis (even before superior iron man). Why do you think that is? Even without looking at this with shipper goggles (which I always am), I think it's really strange that Steve has so much disdain for something that essentially saved one of his best friend's lives.

(THIS HAS TAKEN ME 5 BILLION YEARS BUT HERE IT IS FINALLY)

i used to be in the same boat and automatically assumed steve’s dislike of extremis was one of those fandom headcanon things that was so commonly accepted it’d basically become fact, but it’s really, actually, all 100% canon. but the comics that deal with it happen right before civil war so i think many ppl have simply forgotten or skipped over that part of tony’s timeline.

execute program is the 6-issue arc that comes right after extremis and it’s the main thing i tell everyone they have to read if they’re putting themselves thru the ringer that is 616′s civil war. it is so so important to understanding tony’s headspace and where he’s at before the events of civil war occur.

READ EXECUTE PROGRAM. a) bc it’s absolutely crucial to tony’s side of civil war, b) the follow-through from the extremis arc is just… amazing, virtuosic. i really genuinely think it is a fascinating, excellently-written arc, c) when it gets gay it gets very gay. truST ME you do not need your shipper goggles for this at all bc guess which of the following things are canon: the sound of steve saying his voice being the only thing that snaps tony out of (likely a dissociative episode) trying to murder a villain that nearly kills peter, dyeing his hair blond when he’s going on the run, tony stopping his heart to save steve’s life. all of them !!! all canon !!!!!!

extremis is, basically, terrifying. to the average human being, hell even the average superhuman. it’s p much unfathomable the sheer level/magnitude/scope of extremis. extremis allows tony to access and control any piece of technology on earth and even in earth’s atmosphere, he can hear satellites. it’s like having the singularity as a superpower.

so part 1, iron man vol. 4 #7 (2006), opening issue and we have tony stopping a villain with lethal force, all while counting down the milliseconds and bidding on priceless artefacts.

now, avengers don’t kill. and tony doesn’t, he stops the man’s heart, then restarts it, basically performing defibrillation.

and then we get this conversation:

and after tony jets off leaving the new avengers to sort out the aftermath, we get this disturbing reminder:

a proper reread might prove me wrong but i don’t think the writers ever clarify whether this transformation in tony’s personality is due to extremis or outside manipulation (which is the culmination of execute program’s arc as i’ll go into in a bit). but when your brain is literally a machine and you Have Become more machine than human, this is the natural progression of tony’s humanity – the aspects of compassion, empathy, etc. – fading into the background to accomodate for extremis.

extremis brings out everything about tony that steve (and possibly the world) fears most. it makes him cold and calculating, and with a brain like tony stark’s elevated by the superhuman capacity to think and react at the speed of a machine, he’s unstopppable.

part 2, iron man vol. 4 #8, we have tony nearly straight up burning a man alive for almost killing peter and laughing about it.

he’s so deep in Destroy Mode that he doesn’t even register steve’s warning, and here i think he acts entirely out of instinct –– like extremis is thinking for him rather than his brain prompting him to do this.

extremis is also the cause of tension between tony and the newly-formed new avengers (one of my favorite line-ups!!), he almost gets into a fight with logan and jessica has to break them up. it turns out tony is missing time in his memory, which is extremely worrying for someone w/ his level of power…

what’s so fascinating about extremis, and why we have so much to thank warren ellis for (the writer of the extremis arc), is that it is the perfect and the most logical climax of the modern iron man story. tony’s worst villain, as we’ve known since the very beginning really, has never been anyone else but himself. and in the case of extremis, it’s a highly technologically advanced version of himself that can do and be everything he’s ever dreamed of being able to achieve vs. him.

the question extremis asks is at what cost? at what cost does technological advancement, bleeding-edge breakthroughs, and the spirit of human innovation come at? how far would tony go to become the Ideal version of himself that he sees as superior in every way? what would he sacrifice for that?

extremis represents basically the pinnacle of sci-fi tech in iron man comics, it’s why even god awful superior iron man used a 3.0 version of it as the foundation for tony’s sins. it’s the farthest point he’s ever reached, and it’s also the lowest in terms of the damage and fallout that comes from it. because ofc, tony stark can’t have nice things like this, but also bc the hubris + nature of extremis allowing its host to play god can’t exist without there being negative consequences. really b ad consequences.

huge respect to danial & charles knauf, the authors of execute program, too, because they find a way to perfectly bring the arc full circle as ellis did with his extremis. the central villain plot revolves around ho yinsen’s son. the kid hacks extremis and uses it to control tony, sending him to subconsciously assassinate a bunch of people on his kill list, i.e. a list of all the men involved in yinsen’s death. i mean like, HOLY SHIT, an iron man plot where a literal ghost from tony’s past – a direct victim of events tony was involved in, the son of the man that sacrificed his life so iron man could be born and so tony stark could live – shows up, weaponises tony’s own body + technology and uses him to murder people who are scheduled to participate in a peace summit despite the blood on their hands and the human cost of their involvement in the weapons industry.

DRAWING PARALLELS BETWEEN YINSEN’S LIFE’S WORK AND TONY’S LIKE DEATH AND DYING WOULD BE KINDER. again bc of my memory or even regardless due to constant retcons + reruns of the iron man origin story, i don’t know if it’s ever been explicitly stated before that yinsen also got into the weapons industry in order to get the funding necessary to support his other revolutionary work. but his son literally conflates yinsen with tony here, blending them into one + the same with that final panel and it becomes very obvious that at least a small part of him blames father for entering into weapons design. if he hadn’t, he might never have been captured by the the terrorist group that wanted him and tony to build them missiles.

also, yinsen + villains involving yinsen are a recurring theme in iron man history but can we talk abt the fact that tony has never ever let himself forget the man bc jesus christ

yinsen’s kid is killed by a SHIELD sniper, activating the dead man’s switch and unleashing all the peackeeping units tony built that are now compromised. now, tony’s no jean grey or wanda maximoff but if this arc shows anything it’s not to underestimate him bc intentional or not (lmao) if he put his mind to it there’s literally no limit to the damage he could do.

we see various heroes fighting off the peacekeeping units, and the new avengers are at the peace summit fighting a hulkbuster.

and here it is people !!! the 23989485th time tony kills himself so steve can live.

JUST. THE LOOK ON HIS FACE. AND THEN THIS ABSOLUTE LACK OF HESITATION:

so, yes. extremis was traumatising for pretty much every single person involved. steve has extremely good reasons for HATING extremis, even in the early stages or even if a fic is taking place before the events of execute program.

if you read the full arc, you’ll see tony running himself into the ground with his new abilities (world’s greatest multitasker can now multitask 192483958 things at once? ofc he’s going to use and abuse and exploit that), you see him spiralling and losing his grip on reality (mainly because he’s actually having dissociative episodes and losing time due to being remotely controlled to assassinate ppl but also bc of the Effect extremis is having on him). i brought up wanda and jean earlier as a casual reference but like, to put it in that kind of perspective, people just weren’t made to have this much power.

on a smaller scale, apart from eating up all of tony’s time and attention and mental health in a really bad way, it just Distances him from everyone. especially from the team. it’s Isolating, having this much going on in his brain and no one else in the world to fully understand it.

and on steve’s side, you also have the fact that tony’s genius is both one of the things he loves and lowkey resents most about him. he has this deep-set anxiety about tony with all his brilliance and intelligence leaving him behind in the dust, or worse, laughing at him and how outdated and dim-witted he is in comparison. this is steve’s version of tony’s “i’m never going to be good enough for him”, a sentiment summed up in a quote from him as early as tales of suspense vol. 2 (1995): “yes, tony stark, a man of today and tomorrow is the man i’ll never be.” he’s so afraid of being abandoned + alienated by tony’s mind and the future that tony’s worked so tirelessly to build that might render him irrelevant. he’s scared of a future where he has no purpose, but more or just as importantly, he’s scared of becoming obsolete in tony’s life, of not being needed by tony anymore. one of the things that endeared him so much to tony, and which laid the foundations of their lifelong friendship, was the fact that from Day One (1), tony made him feel At Home. he never let him feel ashamed or isolated as The Man Out Of Time, he actively worked to make steve feel comfortable and to give him the things he needed to acclimatise and to fit himself into this brave new world.

extremis undoes all of that. it propels tony so far and so fast into the future that it makes tony untouchable to steve. all of the ‘i can hear satellites’ stuff renders steve helpless and even more out of his depth than usual. it presses all of steve’s secret buttons and then some.

to sum this all up, and to finish my extra rambling abt tony bc u asked me about extremis and i couldn’t not finish with this:

here we have, ladies and gentlemen, everything u need to understand abt tony going into civil war. and it’s not on any of the official civil war fucking reading lists which really pisses me off because whether or not they did it on purpose the knaufs basically wrote all of execute program as the perfect precursor and characterisation groundwork for an antebellum tony stark.

a tony stark who was just very recently manipulated against his will into assassinating people and causing a world-threatening incident that could have resulted in the deaths of thousands, including his own friends and teammates (and the love of his life), is a very different tony stark to the one ppl see in civil war #1.

what happens in stamford was an accident, too. no one meant for that to happen. tony knows first fucking hand what that means and what it feels like to carry that responsibility and guilt. his position in civil war supporting the SHRA is not only to protect the potential lives that could be lost in another stamford incident but also to protect superhumans and superheroes from ever being exploited against their will by villains to kill and hurt and destroy.

superheroes are inherently susceptible to being used, it’s just part of the narrative convention –– a superhero is brainwashed or mind controlled or otherwise forced against their will to do something awful. and even if it’s not their fault there needs to be accountability for the victims. both the victims that suffer directly because of superhuman incidents but also the superheroes that become victims of ppl who abuse their powers. it’s abt protecting superheroes not just from civilians but from themselves. and if u’ve read a single comic u kno that this kinda shit happens way too often and way too easily.

sO YE S T hIS iS W HY. AND IT Ex PL AINS SO MUC H AND i j UST WISH P PL WOULD GODDAMN REA D THIS. LIKE EVERYONE WHO EVER WANTS TO SAY ANOTHER A GODDAMN THING ABOUT TONY STARK IN CIVIL WAR NEEDS TO FIRST READ EXECUTE PROGRAM FIRST OR PAY ME $10

anyway…………… one last time, i’m so so so sorry this took forever to get to. hope the wait was worth it!

#mod: answer #averageapplepie #stevetony #stony #extremis #text: meta #universe: 616 #comic: iron man v4 #original: meta #i'm so sorry u had to wait so long like #i should warn ppl that ever ask me a meta question that i might take half a yr to reply #......not to deter u tho bc i promise that my answer will be as well thought-out and in-depth as i can make it

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