• AcidSmiley [she/her]
    ·
    2 months ago

    Or the Marco Inaros Faction in The Expanse, or Magneto in the old X-Men movies, and so on and so on. It's basically mandatory to have antogonists with a relatable agenda commit acts of cartoonish evil out of nowhere to make it clear that the only answer to injustice is incrementalist fuckery in aliance with macchiavellian ruling class ghouls.

    • Smeagolicious [they/them]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Marco Inaros

      Yessss... The belt had too many legitimate grievances and reasons to go to war, so Marco has to go full pride obsessed joker mode. At least Drummer, Ashford & co get a couple good belter pirate moments before they join a corporate alliance with empire.

      • AcidSmiley [she/her]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Which includes paling around with literal war criminal Avaserala who tells them how important tolerance is while she plans a counter revolution with Earthers and Martian and Belter collaborators who all hang out in the same luxurious lounge built by wealth pressed out of Belter workers who do not even own the air they breathe. She literally oversaw the torture of Belter PoWs personally in S1.

      • AcidSmiley [she/her]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Especially because Mystique in the movies had such a strong anti-assimilationist energy. Answering the question why she doesn't always look like a human with "because it shouldn't be necessary", having a literal shapeshifter refuse to obey passing dictates is fucking powerful for me as a trans woman.

        • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
          ·
          2 months ago

          I've never really considered it (probably because I'm not a trans woman) but now that you point it out it's hard not to see it.

          • AcidSmiley [she/her]
            ·
            2 months ago

            I didn't think of it that way when i originally saw the movie, i was still an egg back then, but nowadays, it fits so well. I doubt it's intentional given the time the movie was made in, but things can work as metaphors for topics the authors didn't have in mind at all.

      • Ericthescruffy [he/him]
        ·
        2 months ago

        Genuinely one of the most egregious and frustrating character assassinations I've ever seen in one of these things. I know on some level all of these stories are dependent on who is behind the typewriter so its impossible to say what a character actually would or wouldn't do but its just such a fucking infuriatingly simplistic view not just of the mutant civil rights allegory but also of how a character like magneto would perceive their struggle. Haven't finished X-men 97 yet but the plot point with what happens to Storm and his response feels like a direct fucking response to that scene in Last Stand TBH.

        • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
          ·
          2 months ago

          Yeah, that was a great moment. Rest of the series is just as good, 97 is just a great show. I'm sure there are flaws here and there that just aren't coming to mind but it's shockingly good for recent Marvel content made by Disney.

          Real shame about the show runner, I'm assuming s2 won't happen or will be worse.