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goingrampant · 11 months

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The Boys #1 notes: cover to page 2

Alright, so The Boys was written by Garth Ennis, a man who hates genres and tries to end them with satirical fiction. The Boys is his attempt to end superhero comics. Alan Moore previously attempted that with Watchmen by portraying everything with deadly seriousness. Obviously, he failed and Watchmen was ultimately subsumed into the DC universe, but his effort shows genuine human empathy as comes from understanding the genre, recognizing how people actually behave, and presenting something people would develop a real emotional response to. Garth Ennis basically shits all over that and that's what The Boys is: Watchmen covered in shit. I don't usually get so graphic, but the sheer repugnance of The Boys demands a bit of rhetorical oomph.

Darick Robertson does the illustration. He also deserves some of the blame for making everything look like a fascist's satirical representation of degenerate art.

The first issue, released in October 2006, is given the appropriate title "This Is Going to Hurt".

Cover: Oooh, we're so edgy! Look at these tough guys and one girl ready to beat up the viewer in a bit of gangland violence. You'd have to be a reeeaaal tough guy to read it, right?!

Title page: A parody of Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia's depiction of Wonder Woman stepping on Batman's head, here distorted into a gross image of a boot (Butcher) stamping down on the face of a Captain America knockoff (Soldier Boy) and seriously mashing up his face in horrific gore. Like, this is completely unnecessary, just "Oooh, we're edgy!" to start off the edgelord book and let you know you're in for an edgy time.

Thematically, it nods to the communist idea of the working class rebelling against the oppressive capitalist class. Butcher's boot is the working class leather lace-up used as a symbol of the hard-working common man often seen in communist propaganda. However, it's also consistent with fascist art about a Volkish uprising against Jewish elites (national socialism borrowing various actual socialist concepts and grafting them to far-right antisemitism). A lot of stuff in The Boys feels fascist-friendly, if not centering them as the target demographic.

The title card tells us this arc is called "The Name of the Game: Part One".

Pages 1-2: We're introduced to Billy Butcher, an assholish looking black leather-clad man on a park bench with his bulldog named Terror. For some reason, female The Boys fans love this dog. Like, they love this dog. I guess he's kind of cute before Butcher reveals how he's trained him, but... I don't get it.

Butcher looks up at some superheroes flying overhead and pledges to get revenge on one of them (Homelander), calling him a "cunt". Now, the word "cunt" has different levels of obscenity in the U.S. vs. the U.K. In the U.K., it means something like "asshole" and is regularly used against men, while in the U.S., it's a misogynistic slur exclusively used against women with the connotation that they're only valuable for sex and shouldn't be considered real people. I think if a man were to call another man a "cunt" in the U.S., it might be taken as a rape threat because the concept of being used for penetration is bound up in it.

Butcher is a working class man from England, so he can use "cunt" in the freer way, but I really get the sense that Ennis (from the U.K. himself) specifically included a character from this demographic so that he could get away with plastering the pages with what American readers would read as a misogynistic slur. It's set in America and marketed to Americans. Ooh, edgy!

Now, what Butcher says is "I'm gonna fuckin' have you, you cunt." With the American connotation, that sounds like a rape threat. Our hero, everyone, starting things off with a rape threat.

Something I'm going to be saying a lot is "The show spins this progressively." The show is genius, finding the good parts in the dung heap. The "cunt" thing is spun in an interesting way commentating on American culture, challenging notions of obscenity, and fits into a pattern of musing on gender roles. Thank you, Rebecca Sonnenshine.

Next time... page 3!

#the boys notes #sexism #oooh edgy!#loose communist themes #sus fashy content #queue and i are one forever

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possibly-astraeus · 3 months

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You know what

Screw it

If this post gets 5k[edit, the new goal is 10k omg] notes before the end of January, I'll come out to my parents, get my hair cut, and ask parents for the things I need to pass as a boy.

Have fun

[Goal reached]

Thank you to everyone who took their time to reblog, like, and reply. I'm going to keep this promise and come out to my parents soon. I love you all, stay safe <3

#mask says stuff lol #transgender #notes #trans boy #trans masc #trans #lgbtq #lgbt #lgbtq+

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abracadaze · 2 years

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i feel so bad for nikola tesla like imagine spending years beefing with a guy who has conned the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and you end up dying broke and starving and alone and then 100 years later another guy cons the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and he's doing it all IN YOUR NAME. he must be rolling in his grave like a fucking rotisserie chicken

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stonefemblues · 7 months

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“pretty boy” is such a good and fun gender i’m a big fan

#THIS IS ABOUT DYKES NOT YOUR BLORBO MEN #or it can be about other gay/trans ppl that’s fine too #‘pretty boy gender’ =/= man that is pretty #notes #.

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fantastic-nonsense · 2 months

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"Damian should be a veterinarian when he grows up" this and "Damian should be a doctor" that….I think he should take advantage of his wealth and be an art major

#(this post now comes with an addition; see the notes!)#damian wayne #dc comics #batman #robin #Damian's been running full throttle since he was a toddler #that poor boy would burn out if he had to do an incredibly demanding full-time job as an adult #in addition to (or instead of) vigilantism #let him have fun!

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the-astro-ambassadors · 1 year

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discovered a dog called Sock today. short for Socrates. if you even care

update: here is the boy!

#i lost my mind i would die for this dog #THIS NEEDS TO BE SHARED WITH THE WORLD #a #nd im sleep deprived #sock (socrates)#update! there’s dozens more silly names and photos of the good boy in the notes

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nikkisticki · 10 months

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RULE

#rule #196 #Boy this is a lot of notes for something I DIDN'T MAKE #also if you know the sauce tell me plz #Btw ill be working on smut comics about robots fucking in the apocalypse #Other stuff too but thats up first #I promise I'll not let you down #If i see one more person respond to this with Disco Elysium im going to fuckin SNAP

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queerdraws · 2 months

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Fanart for a snippet of my most favorite heartbreaking moment from swordsmans's fic bone-breaker ospreys mate for life (rated E)

#zolu #luzo #one piece #comic #i love this fic i love this fic AAUUGHH!!!!#this scene exploded my heart #okay so artist note luffy only has forehead bandages in SOME panels in his post-raid outfit #he doesn't at the post-raid party itself but he does on the hillside spectating the momo / marine guy fight #so i guess he just got a knock on the head at the party or something??#his cheek bandage also switches sides between when he's recovering post-raid and the party #u never realize how impressionistic oda is w detail stuff until u gotta place patterns on clothing n bandages on boys #anyways very happy w how page 4 turned out #luffys autism stare n big big smile

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connorsok · 1 year

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before I played Disco Elysium, I thought Harry du Bois was a co-worker in the precinct you work at and, reading about him being such a fucked up guy, I was literally planning on avoiding him as much as possible in my playthrough... colour me surprised when I found the badge and found out the main character's name

#literally playing the game dreading when this fabled du bois character would pop up #then i find the badge.... see Harrier du Bois on screen #and i just go.... oh fuck... its me... im the problem guy #disco elysium #harry du bois #i love getting facts about media so incredibly messed up #it adds to the fun so much #1k #soy yo #disco elysium spoilers #rbs turned off cause im tired of seeing this in notes

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goingrampant · 10 months

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The Boys #1 notes: pages 17-19

Oh, don't mind me, I'm just SLOWLY GOING INSANE.

There's this CIA analyst named Kessler, who Butcher bullies for information. He's, basically, a loser beta male. He's a sexual degenerate who fails at traditional masculinity, so macho manly man Butcher is able to beat him up and make him do things for him. Get it? That's all it is, a stupid manly male fantasy for cavemen.

Butcher calls him Monkey. It's eventually indicated that he's called this because he was once raped by monkeys. (Holy shit, that's horrible, right?) But, here in issue #1, it's implied that he's called Monkey because he sort of looks like a monkey. He is also non-white. *strangled yell of rage*

He is a sexual degenerate because he has a fetish for paraplegic women, masturbates in his office, and has a pink lotion bottle. Like, we're supposed to hate this guy the first time we see him because he's unmanly enough to masturbate, unmanly enough to masturbate with pink lotion, and because he has a weird fetish considered gross to most of the readership. We're supposed to consider him basically less than human, just a complete slimeball in the shape of a human, and someone Butcher can dominate with his macho manliness because he's unmanly and a sexual degenerate. This comic is so fascist, you guys.

Due to the name Kessler, I think we can reasonably call this overt antisemitism. It's an Ashkenazic name, and it's a gentile German name. What it's not is an Arabian name, which is the ethnicity he's eventually pinned under. I think it's reasonable to presume that he's coded as Jewish in #1, with vague non-white features, curly hair, and the name.

I think it's somewhat reasonable to attribute the "monkey" thing to how George W. Bush was often compared to a monkey. There are various allusions to politics under the Bush era. Homelander basically causes 9/11 in a later issue; Butcher's dog being named Terror is an allusion to the War on Terror, and the president being called Dakota Bob alludes to Bush's reputation as the wacky Texan. Kessler looking like a monkey and being called monkey specifically recalls some of the Bush memes floating around at the time. However, it's not given to a Bush type, to Dakota Bob or another WASP; it's given to the vaguely non-white, probably Jewish guy. That makes it a racist manifestation of anti-Bush sentiment.

(The meme thing might have been translated to Stormfront's meme propaganda campaign on the show?)

There's a small joke that is actually inoffensive where Butcher can't get proper English tea in America. It is also unfunny, sandwiched inside all this fascist crap.

Kessler lets Butcher onto his computer, and he finds Wee Hughie to replace Mallory.

#the boys #the boys notes #the boys comics #racism #homophobia #toxic masculinity #sus fashy content #antisemitism #anti-bush #queue and i are one forever

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poorly-drawn-mdzs · 4 months

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