#hashtag war crimes

[vadergf]

I always read your blog desc as antiethical dream girl

That too...

#hashtag war crimes

[fury-brand]

i think if you aren't absolutely deranged about at least one (1) fictional woman you should go ahead and make that a personal project

#apologize for HER war crimes #SHE'S sad wet and pathetic #put HER in the cat carrier #hashtag feminist

[liesmyth]

would you be able to give examples/explain more about how race only impacts gideon in the tlt-universe? not being facetious or condescending, genuinely asking. thank you!

Hi anon! If you mean my tags to this post, I wrote

#earth conception of race doesn't impact any character in the series except the canonically brown main antagonist

By which I mean my Worstie and main antagonist of the series, John Gaius (PhD).

I don’t think TLT as a series engages with race in any especially meaningful ways. It’s set in a post-Earth society with entirely different social norms, and there’s no concept of race and ethnicity within the population of the Nine Houses. Physical descriptions of the characters are scarce to say the least, and they rarely spell out the kind of features that suggest specific racial connotations, because the POV characters don’t seem to think it’s something worth remarking upon. iirc, it takes until halfway through HtN for the narrative to confirm that Harrow has brown skin.

[See also Tamsyn’s GtN characters description post. It quotes passages from the book, and you can see how minimal the descriptions are, and she repeats several times that her characters’ appearances are up to the readers’ interpretations. It just doesn’t seem to be a big concern of hers]

Then there’s John, who grew up in twenty-first-century New Zealand and IS explicitly Māori in a way that absolutely impacted his character arc. It's not A major theme of his Nona chapters, but it’s there if you read between the lines. The boarding school he went to, which IRL had a high percentage of low-income Māori students on scholarship. The depth of his climate anxiety, his uncompromising “Nobody left behind” stance before the cryo project was halted, and his fervent hatred of ‘the trillionaires’ afterwards... these are all informed to some extent by his background as an indigenous man imo, and so was the global reaction to his developing powers. The “We were going to put you fellas in jail, weren’t we?” the way his initial attempts at publications are all flat-out ignored by the scientific community and dismissed as culty gimmicky faith healing until he leans into it.

John being Māori is just one of the many pieces of his backstory, and far from the most impactful to what eventually went down, but my point remains that he is the ONLY character in TLT whose racial background 1) affects his story arc and 2) is relatable to the audience. Everyone else is ten thousand years removed from Earth, and I’m just not very interested in using racial identifiers when exploring these characters and their dynamics, because the characters themselves don’t care and neither does the narrative.

#on a more hashtag meta level #John is why I’m personally uneasy about any analysis of the series that tries to interpret TLT through racial allegory lenses #especially when it’s weaponised for discourse purposes #You can write meta about John’s war crimes without comparing him to white imperialism #Or you can go ahead and do that anyway but I highkey disagree that it’s a fitting metaphor or in any way deliberate on Tamsyn’s part #and I think the implications are unfortunate to say the least #That said I AM extremely interested in the ways John relates to the culture he left behind #and why he made the choices he did when it came the moment to reshape humanity’s cultural consciousness after the Resurrection #but that’s on a character level! #I don’t think we can apply twenty-first-century social / identity labels to the series as a whole #especially a series where the author says 'I imagine X character as Y but it doesn't raelly matter' #and it doesn't influence the canon directly in any way #SORRY THIS IS LONG! #anonymous #ask #ejg #tlt thoughts #elle tlt posting #tlt

[yantekerlek]

Please support #GazaStarving hashtag on Twitter!

#free palestine #free gaza #genocide in gaza #stop genocide #genocide in palestine #stand with gaza #israel is a terrorist state #israel is committing genocide #israel is an apartheid state #israel is committing war crimes #twitter #hashtag #campaign

[raven-cat35]

Russians continue to kill our people, our artists, writers, athletes. They mutilate and destroy everyone and everything, so that later the world can invite a Russian director or a children's writer to the premiere. If ghosts were real, I'm sure that the murdered Ukrainian artists would stand by your beds forever and ask why they had to die so that you glorified Russian culture

#Yulia Zdanovska #Victoria Amelina #Volodymyr Vakulenko #Pavlo Lee #this is only a small part of the names #if I start I won't have enough hashtags #Ukraine #ukrainian culture #russia is a terrorist state #russian war crimes #support ukraine #cancel russian culture #Roman Ratushnyi

[wulfhalls]

why cant rhaenyra just be cunty why does she have to be moral

s2 is gonna hit u like a brick wall

#asks #hotd #i get that it has to be a progression towards hashtag war crime wife but. they could have made her a lil bit more deranged still

[mrfilippa]

Someone, please, take this poor mew mew out Villain Wiki! 😭

#villain wiki #punch out #meme #maybe I will add few hashtags later #there is a tw war crimes but it's full of real and serious stuff and I don't want to tag a stupid meme between them/srs

[way-too-cool-raybot]

Ppl will be like "I hc <not queer coded villain> as gay and I ship him with <man he manipulated and abused>" and then they don't understand why most of the fandom dislikes them

#Surprise this actually wasn't about b*rderl*nds but can also apply #you dont wanna know... you dont... #text #yes i dont post often hastag college but im still a hashtag hater #also you can hc villains as gay just dont do the other thing #or... you know... getting rid of their gf who is a POC....stop doing that. what did she do to you #girl is innocent. idc if she war crime

[moonlayl]

there's a certain amount of privilege and naivety that comes with the people who truly believe in the phrase "you can't fight violence with violence".

What exactly are the oppressed supposed to do to protect themselves and their families and their land that's acceptable for you?

Are they supposed to sit down and write love letters?

Are they supposed to sit down and wait for the world to pressure Israel into no longer oppressing them? I mean it's been more than 70 years, how much longer should they wait for nonexistent International aid?

How many more years of western media acting as though "those Arab terrorists" and one of the most advanced militaries in the world protected behind an iron dome funded by western nations are on the same level and that it's an equal conflict, are we supposed to witness?

How many international war crimes do Israel have to commit without facing a hint of consequences before it becomes clear that the majority of western nations do support Israel and do not want Palestine to be freed because it would be inconvenient for them?

How did you think we were gonna fight for Palestine?

by trending hashtags? by simply preaching "decolonisation" without physically doing anything? By voting? (lmao) be serious.

This is a war that's been going on for decades. Not some playground shit. Palestinians have been oppressed for decades. Hundreds of innocent Palestinians are murdered every year in cold blood. Hundreds are displaced. The people of Gaza have been trapped in one of the biggest open air tightly controlled prisons for a very long time.

Realistically speaking, this horror and this war is not gonna end by Palestinians sitting down, twiddling their thumbs and hoping the state that's shown no mercy and stopped at nothing to try and erase them will show them kindness and mercy all of a sudden.

This is the same state full of civilians that go around chanting "death to Arabs" on their own holiday. The same state who's soldiers and civilians make it a tradition to attack people simply praying every ramadan.

You think those people will stop trying to gain more land and wipe out Palestinians with treaties, kind words and gifts?

When will it be acceptable for Palestinians to defend themselves and for those in Gaza to try and break free from their prison?

What exactly were you expecting?

#gaza #palestine #free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #anti israel #anti israeli terrorism #anti idf

[intersectionalpraxis]

3 journalists have been killed in less than a day. As soon as I opened up X to check-in for more updates, I saw this. The IOF are evil and absolutely monstrous.

For those who aren't aware or if you heard about this, during the ICJ trials there is a Social Media Storm for Palestine:

Please fill* [post-edit me -I meant fill not film*] your queue and drafts with their hashtags during this time frame so IOF war crimes and crimes against humanity can continue to be exposed.

May Sherif rest in power and peace.

#feminist #feminism #social justice #free palestine #palestine #freepalastine🇵🇸 #free gaza #settler violence #settler colonialism #current events #palestinian journalists #war crimes #gazaunderfire #gaza under attack #gaza #gaza strip #gaza genocide #end the occupation #ceasefire now

[melaninnbarbie]

Sudan War

The Sudanese people are in need of your support!!!

The Sudanese people are still suffering and facing the most heinous crimes, violations, forced displacement, killings, and rapes by the Rapid Support Forces militia, which has been fighting against the army and Sudanese citizens for more than 240 days, over eight months. Every day, this militia expands and enjoys making the lives of Sudanese citizens a living hell. In the past 72 hours, this militia has expanded and reached the Gezira state, where millions of Sudanese have already been displaced, leaving the capital, Khartoum, to preserve what remains of their lives. However, they are also being pursued outside the capital. This militia is like cancer; wherever it touches, it kills.

Truly, the Sudanese people need your support and solidarity in their fight against this brutal, bloodthirsty, terrorist militia. The least you can do to support us is to convey our suffering and our voice to the entire world, so that the Rapid Support Forces militia can be classified as a terrorist organization and pursued through international criminal courts, exposing anyone who supports this terrorism and holding them accountable.

You can participate using the hashtag #KeepEyesOnSudan #Sudan_War_Updates #انقذوا_السودان

#keep eyes on sudan #انقذوا السودان #sudan war

[mariacallous]

(JTA) — Nearly 50 days after Hamas’ attack on Israel left 1,200 dead, and after weeks of criticism over its silence about allegations of sexual violence during the attack, the  women’s rights group UN Women issued a statement condemning the terror group on Friday.

Then it deleted the post.

“We condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on October 7 and continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” read the initial statement, posted on UN Women’s instagram page. It was soon replaced with a statement that dropped the condemnation of Hamas and only called for the release of the hostages.

Word spread quickly among Jewish women activists and Israelis, reigniting their contention that UN Women — an official arm of the United Nations focused on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment — holds a double standard when it comes to gender-based violence against Israeli women. Some of the critics — including Sheryl Sandberg, a former top Meta executive — have lobbied openly on the topic. Many have used the hashtag “#MeToo_UNless_UR_A_Jew.”

Reached for comment, UN Women told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Instagram post had been scheduled in advance and was deleted because the message in it no longer reflected where the organization wanted to put its main focus.

“In any social media team managing multiple campaigns and during a very busy time like the one we are now with 16 Days of Activism, mistakes can occur,” a representative for UN Women said in a statement sent to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

In particular, said the media specialist, the release of some hostages over the weekend as part of a temporary truce changed the organization’s priorities.

“UN Women social media team had pre-planned days in advance [of] this particular post, but then the news broke on the release of hostages and we really wanted to focus on that,” she said. “UN Women has condemned the attacks by Hamas and the deaths of Israeli civilians from the beginning as well as called for the release of hostages, and we will continue doing so until the conflict ends. We have also called for all allegations of gender-based violence to be rigorously investigated, prioritizing the rights, needs, and safety of those affected.”

In late October, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza but voted down a provision condemning the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. On Monday, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, held a session on crimes against humanity committed against women during the Oct. 7 massacre.

After an initial statement on Oct. 13 condemning the attacks on civilians in Israel, all of UN Women’s public comments about the war and its impact on women had centered only on Palestinians. Last week, Sima Bahous, the group’s executive director, called for an extension of the current temporary truce into a permanent ceasefire and for the release of all hostages.

The National Council for Jewish Women, which had previously criticized UN Women’s silence on sexual violence against Israeli women, said the group’s second statement last week was inadequate.

“The delayed issuance of a statement that fails to explicitly address the severity of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel — such as the brutal murder of over 1,200 people in Israel, torture, and rape of women, as well as the targeting of civilians and families — is equally reprehensible,” the statement said. “Immediate and unequivocal acknowledgment of these atrocities is imperative, given the blatant violation of international law.”

[duckiemimi]

South Africa is standing their ground right now. they’ve brought “israel” to the ICJ (click for the 3-hour playback of the first day of the public hearing or click for a summary), and now their lawyers want to start proceedings against the US government for being complicit in “israel’s” international crimes (click). while we’ve seen the ICJ’s track record (especially in the Bosnia v. Serbia case rulings—click for a more in depth thread), this is the first step.

this should be the first step to reviving faith in international law. this is where pacta sunt servanda comes into question. what are statutes and conventions for if continuously ignored? why is there room for impunity where there should be none? while “israeli” warplanes continue to target hospitals, and while the US and UK empires bomb Yemen’s capital because of their resistance, we wait and expect an interim measure to stop military operations. this is the first step.

today (or tomorrow in The Hague) is the second day of the ICJ public hearing. after yesterday, we know that archived evidence on the internet helps—do use the hashtag #EndIsraelsGenocide to increase support and visibility for South Africa’s case! (click).

and do tune into the hearing today (click to watch it live here). there is significance in a worldwide live broadcast—everyone shall bear witness to either the birth or the death of “justice.”

and if the ICJ fails us, then it’ll be the ICC’s turn. the ICC has set up a portal for any submission of evidence of “israeli” war crimes in Gaza. anyone can upload verified, factually correct videos and images. click here for the direct link to the portal, and click here for Karim Khan’s statement on it. if you have any saved pictures and videos, please do upload them.

#EndIsraelsGenocide #peace is not the answer; liberation is the answer #resources #gaza #palestine #south africa #watch the hearing today and keep talking! #i’ve mostly been sharing as much as i can on twt and on tiktok these days #but i’ll try posting more to tumblr too! #and remember to keep boycotting as per BDS’s guidelines!!

[swallowtail-ageha]

Scrolling through your asoiaf tag and you have such good and correct opinions like how can anyone love just Dany or just Sansa or just Arya like how can anyone not see the parallels between Dany and Sansa it makes me feel so crazy like why are there so few people who love all the girlies?? I genuinely love every single female POV character and can’t imagine hating any of them. I mean sure yeah Cersei is a villain but you’re telling me her tragedy doesn’t touch your heart? Watching this woman desperately try to avoid her prophecy as it unfolds before you doesn’t have you in a death grip? Or like are you unmoved by Sansa telling an annoying snotty little boy how brave he is because she wants him to feel better? Dany comforting Missandei when her brother dies? Arya getting to the house of the black and white and immediately thinning to being a man a cup of water (or at least what she thought was water)? How about Sansa telling Joffrey she hopes Robb cuts his head off? Dany sassing the man who wants to open the fighting pits? Arya telling Jaquen to kill himself? Like please come on. All three girls are obviously different but they share so many very endearing traits. I am fiercely holding tight to my delusion that Dany and Sansa will bond over stories and songs and Arya will teach Dany about all the flowers in Westeros and then Sansa will show them how to make flower crowns and embroider little emblems on Arya’s clothes

First of all tysm!!!!

The whole arya vs sansa vs dany fandom fight frustrates me to no end, mainly because all parties involved seem to have little to no empathy to the characters whose stans they oppose. It's all maliciously extrapolating some parts of the text to make them see worse than what they are (ex: daenerys' "if i look back i am lost" getting twisted from "dany knows that dwelling on what ifs and turning your back after you have taken a commitment will only damage you in the long term" in "dany doesn't want to reflect on her past mistakes and will go mad and get stabbed to death" or sansa getting frustrated at sweetrobin being a sign of her being ableist and classist while it's. Just a normal reaction of a stressed and traumatized 13 yo who is otherwise very sweet to her cousin)

For loving the female characters same! Even those who commit outwardly villainous acts do get lots of humanizing moments, Cersei, as awful as she is, is simply a product of the hyper misogynistic society she lives in plus years of parental and spousal abuse (and the doomed by prophecy vibes) and. I genuinely don't get how people can look at the walk of shame and say it's a fitting punishment to her crimes

Overall all the hate for female characters that are more complex or more driven or more morally ambiguous than what most female characters are presented as in other media in a fandom who (supposedly) prides itself in liking morally ambiguous characters is.. frustrating, really. I blame both fandom misogyny but also the GoT series, as it's outright changes in female character's actions and stories to make them look better or worse than what they originally were skewered the visions of almost everyone in the fandom (arya is an egregious victim of this. Scenes such as her caring for Weasel or her befriending sex workers in braavos don't exist and they added that "all girls are idiot" scene that i hate and they removed all her plan to free the northmen from harrenal and she got turned from traumatized child to hashtag no one super cool assassin and her character got straight up murdered in the tv series.)

Oh and also for kickstarting the whole jonsa vs jonerys thing which i'm pretty sure is the origin of the stupid dany vs sansa wars

And yes!! Dany Sansa and Arya should get to meet and reunite! While i do think that there will be some slight tensions between Sansa and Arya because they left on Not So Well terms, they have also matured a lot, so i do think they would have an heartfelt reunion. Meanwhile Dany and Arya could bond because of both their connection to Braavos and Arya's admiration for those who free slaves, and Dany would empathize (and feel a common ground) with Sansa for her being a child who had all her family die and got married extremely young while beeing creeped on by older men, while Sansa, who is shown to admire women like Margaery or Myranda, who are shown to be very keen regarding politics or social issues, something that Dany is

In the end, i genuinely hope that all three of these traumatized little girls get their happy ending and none of them dies, they all are interesting and complex characters that share parallels with each other, and it sucks that because of stupid ship wars or discussions on who would get the throne they get pitted against each other. THEY WOULD BE FRIENDS Y'ALL

#anyways i am holding onto the hope that ADoS ends with dany legalizing gay marriage and marrying sansa #sorry if it gets super rambly and incoherent anon because i always tend to do this when i get an ask #i just want to tell you that your ask made my day and it was all on point!!!! i hope you have a nice week month year life #asoiaf

[punkeropercyjackson]

Inspired by a post i just saw,here is the only correct take on a Batfam Atla au(Tw for things present in Atla canon such as racial and misogynistic violence)

@mayameanderings @desi-pluto

Duke is the Avatar-No ifs or buts,he's literally THE SIGNAL OF HOPE FOR GOTHAM

Jason is a Fire Nation commoner who got adopted by the Fire Lord after his parents' death

The Fire Lord is Black Mask and Talia is Ursa but it's not shipping because EW,she's got no positive relation to him and was instead Jason's firebending teacher he thought BM succeeded in killing in his rage after finding out she was trying to adopt him but she actually escaped and got amnesia and a matching burn scar to Jason's but only the opposite side because she's his other half his father burned the bridge to

You know the drill-Jason's sent to capture Avatar Duke,Duke redeems him with his little shit sunshine boy swag without even trying,they are hashtag brothers in every universe.Lil bit more on Duke is that he's actually a Fire Nation Avatar but of the black etchnic subgroup in the comics and his parents were driven mad by spirits sent as 'punishment' for their 'impurity' by General Joker and this is why he is a nomad at the beginning,having fled the Fire Nation because he was sick and tired of still being the problem child at school but getting no comfort this time

(Note:Jason is part of this subgroup and for self-indulgence,every other element has their own black etchnic variant too)

Stephanie is an Airbender-Air Nomads are objectively the best part of Atla so she deserves it.She's tibetan AN and black AN mixed and is pretty much an Aang and Ty Lee fusion-Both in design and personality.Her plot is getting tangled up with Duke and Cass as the og trio when they end up at her temples and she ends the series as the Earth King's consort(that king being Cass)and an ambassador but beforehand spends her time doing anti-imperialist war crimes

Cass is the daughter of the Cains,who lied to everyone about her being mute so they could train her to be the perfect submissive obidient daughter only for it to be blasted back in their face as she learned Earthbanding at the tutelage of badgermoles since they couldn't speak either and she became an underground pro-bender as 'The Silent Bandit' to make money for herself to run away from home and her first instinct when she made enough was to go to the Air Nomads for safety.This more or less worked in the end as she ended up getting crowned Earth King over the actual bloodheirs

Tim is a nonbender who knows chiblocking,the last skill Janet taught him before she died and he used it to avoid getting bullied but isolated himself from other kids as a result because they thought he was a freak.He accidentally joined the main gang when they visited his hometown in the Fire Nation and helped them blend in and they went on an adventure where they gave him honorary member status and he became an official one when they returned

Dick is a trans waterbender and she's their mentor who joined in on their travels because she wasn't about to let a bunch of kids run around fighting fascists without an adult around so they'd have backup and someone to take care of them.She herself was the leader of the Teen Titans,a resistance team,but retired after having her bending taken away and it's returned to her by Duke a bit into her time with them.She leaves Roy to take care of the tribe and when they reunite,he pulls her into a passionate kiss as a confession in front of the whole Duke's Court(their team name)and they have your typical grossed out kids reaction and after this he becomes the Team Dad to her Team Mom

Damian is also trans and named Yasmine and here comes the big previous Avatar plot twist:It was actually Talia,who is of arab and chinese Earth Kingdom descent and not Fire Nation!!Part of the BM tragedy is that she died during childbirth due to Fire Nation induced sickness and this manifested in a Spirit World fiasco that ended with her being ressurected but no longer the Avatar because her soul'd been passed onto Duke by then and she was given a new one and her being lied to about Yasmine being stillborn so she'd stay in the FN.Yasmine's a Talia Warrior and does her best to uphold her mother's legacy due to all the thing's she'd been told about her

She joins Duke's Court,they find Talia again,Duke learns how to cure his parents with Avatar powers and they live happily ever after despite the struggles,Jason gets Lightningbending and white fire as symbolism for healing his inner child and the ages are Duke and Damian-12,Stephanie and Tim-13,Cass-14,Jason-17,Dick and Roy-25 and Talia-40s

#batfam #atla geekery #the batkids #misc superfam #taliacorp #teen titans #duke thomas #jason todd #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #tim drake #talia al-ghul #dick grayson #roy harper #damian wayne #stephcass #dickroy #t4t stephcass #t4t dickroy #black jason todd #latino jason todd #afrolatino jason supremacy #blasian stephanie brown #black tim drake #navajo roy harper #dick grayson:trans woman extrodinare #yasmine wayne #reality warper duke #autistic 4 autistic found family realness #summerposting

[gothicprep]

so, apparently marvel is in disarray. ahead of the marvels coming out this weekend, variety dropped a bomb on the studio's somewhat dire state of affairs, as the franchise has hit its first real rough patch since the release of iron man 15 years ago. among the issues: jonathan majors, whose domestic violence arrest continues to hang over marvel's plans to make his character the thanos-like heavy for the next sequence of movies, the weak box office projections for the marvels (which some have said is tracking lower than recent bombs like the flash), the unending flood of hashtag content on disney plus which is overwhelming audiences who are finding it harder to keep up with the interlocking stories that have served marvel so well over the years, shoddy visual effects, spiraling budgets such as the reported $25mil an episode for she-hulk, a show that looked terrible because of the shoddy effects work aforementioned, behind the scenes chaos as kevin feige works to slash budgets and kill projects that aren't coming together. one movie at risk is the forthcoming blade reboot with mahershala ali, which has gone through rewrite after rewrite including reportedly one draft in which blade was the fourth lead in, quote, "a narrative led by women and filled with life lessons".

that last line has provided a lot of laughs for people like jay gothicprep, and critics who insist that marvel's efforts to diversify the lineup have led to much of this disaster, indicative of disney's overall failure with things like indiana jones and the dial of destiny or animated projects like strange world or lightyear. while this is potentially true (i guess, it's possible) it doesn't seem true because this certainly wasn't the case when black panther and captain marvel were both cracking the billion dollar mark a few years ago. rather it just seems, more simply, that marvel has run its course. marvel was hit by a double-whammy of endings. the thanos storyline that'd dominated the first ten or so years of the project came to an end. at the same time, the pandemic began and disney plus started flooding the zone with content, creating a natural break point for audiences that had no desire to watch hours of tv to understand 1.5 plot points in whatever the next movie that's coming out is.

this preamble is getting kind of long, and i have a lot more to say, so i'm going to continue to thought dump about this under a cut.

first of all, i'm still laughing like a week later at the women led life lessons description. no one has disputed that it happened. that description is the funniest thing i've ever read in a trade industry report possibly ever. what in the hell, my friends. did a writer even talk to a producer about what blade was? it's a movie about a guy with a sword who kills vampires! it's pretty straighforward! that sounds like something i want to see! there were three of them already, and two of them were pretty good!

anyway, i think you can take that incredibly ridiculous description of a draft that maybe wasn't the main draft – this movie has been through tons of writers and directors – and see some of the real problems with marvel's creative direction, which is that they've stopped making movies that highlight the core concepts of their characters. there are other problems as well, but when's the last time they put out a movie that was like, "iron man. he's a guy in a metal suit and he fights a bad guy." or "spider man. it's a guy in a spider suit with spider powers. he's got girlfriend problems and he fights crime around manhattan and maybe there's dr octopus." they don't do that. their recent stretch of movies have all been these impenetrable multiverse stuff with ties to tv series that you haven't seen and maybe won't ever see. there was a whole 25 minute section in black panther 2 that was setting up armor wars and ironheart. and like. who needs that sequence, which was boring and looked like total garbage? and now armor wars is being redeveloped lol. they've just departed from a lot of the core concepts that powered their earlier films.

they have some other problems. they've leaned into a slate of characters that is not all that well-known or inherently super popular, even for marvel being able to deliver on making billion dollar films out of guardians of the galaxy and such. maybe with the exception of spider man, which they don't get a full cut from because sony owns the actual movie rights. then there's the fact that the streaming series, by all accounts, aren't great but you *feel* like you need to have seen them. they're all real big problems. marvel needs to go back to making movies that are named after a character who's a superhero with a clear concept. guy with spider powers fights crime in his neighborhood. even though those movies got kind of repetitive, they did well enough because they didn't stray too far from the character concept.

i think, too, as a viewer, when you have a studio churning out so much stuff that's not good, you get the impression that the superhero industry feels entitled to your time and entitled to your money while not delivering.

this summer also represents an interesting counterpoint to what's happened with marvel and dc. the sheer amount of stuff that you devote every waking minute to keeping track of the damn things got exhausting and made movies stop feeling like events. this summer we've had barbenheimer and the eras tour, and those have been both big events and felt exciting. barbie was a chance to be campy, oppenheimer was a chance to see something serious and cinematic, the eras tour was exciting for fans of taylor swift who couldn't afford to spend $3k on taylor swift. and they felt this way because they were all unlike anything you'd seen at the movies in recent years. they had a high standard of quality, and going, it genuinely felt like people were there because they wanted to be, not because they were being force marched by a cultural behemoth to be there. you can't summon that same kind of energy for a marvel movie when it both feels obligatory and you expect it to be bad.

it also feels like there's a certain contempt for the audience where it concerns quality problems. i mean, i don't think that this is the intention. marvel isn't saying "we can deliver this stuff that's garbage and people will see it anyway". but one of the things i thought was the most damning about that variety story was the fact that, on some of the marvel tv shows, the final effects were inserted after the shows were released. so if you watched the show on opening night, you probably didn't see the final effects work. the arrogance involved in that is insane. it speaks to a total vanished pride in putting out a good product.

even some of marvel's better regarded films were heavily edited and heavily worked on right until the end, in part because kevin feige would come in and fix things, so stuff would have to get reworked. that's why effects deadlines were super tight and people were always crunching at the very end of this. there was that incredible quote from sam raimi from a couple months before the second doctor strange came out where he was like, "i think it's done but i'm not sure. marvel, they work on their movies until the very end." the director didn't even know if his own movie was locked or not because he clearly wasn't the one making the decisions about what the final print would look like.

that can work if you're making two movies a year and have a supervisor that comes in during the process and says, "i need you to redo this, in this way". but when you stretch that out to three movies a year, plus god knows how many episodes of television, there's no way to do that and make it a high quality product.

an instructive lesson comes from the book "disneywar", which chronicles michael eisner's time at disney. and one of the things in this book was the development and deployment of "who wants to be a millionaire" in america. bob iger is head of abc at this time. the guys making this show do it for a week. audiences love it. it's putting up huge numbers. everybody is excited. it's crushing it in the ratings. and the people who made it wanted to keep doing special week or two week long engagements that people would show up for. and iger was like, "no. i want this every week, three times a week, forever." and audiences got burnt out on it quickly, because it was something that only really worked as a special that ran for a week and disappeared for a few months. that's what the disney plus strategy feels like with marvel.

#i love watching movies with my friends