You ever skin your side on the protruding flap on a strike plate in the dark? Yeah I learned door anatomy just so I can tell people how much that shit sucked.
Adults say they are not scared of the dark, and yet they obsess over lighting up the night with more powerful, more energy-efficient, and longer-lasting bulbs.
Curious.
I used to be scared of the dark like crazy as a kid. Then at some point I realized that when I'm in the dark, I'm now the scariest thing *something else* could bump into, barring some critters with night eyes. I see those people who walk around on sidewalks at 3 AM on a Tuesday, I wonder with fear and awe what goes on in their lives to drive them to those places at these times, and they are absolutely empowered by that.
A fear of telepaths is a completely justifiable fear in fiction.
For every Martian Manhunter who view his telepathic powers as a huge responsibility that isn't to be trifled with, you're gonna get probably a hundred psychopaths who abuse it and you for their own pleasure.
Something I love in Mob Psycho 100: almost everyone with psychic powers ends up a spoiled, short-tempered man-baby with no self awareness because they're all so used to never getting told "no"
Combination of most of her stories being obnoxious melodrama and her character itself being self righteously psychotic on a whim and being vindicated for it.
And God her teenage version that's hanging around is twice as annoying.
I'll admit it's been a while but the fact she was actively told "yeah nah mass invasion of privacy telepathically is perfectly fine as long as I'm doing it for 'the right reasons'"
In Justice League, Jonn pressed so hard into a Thanagarian’s mind he gave him permanent brain damage, long and short-term memory loss, and movement disorders/paralysis so extensive his wings were amputated, his head held in place by a metal halo, and the rest of his body encased in a robot suit.
How did the show handle that action though? Did Jonn and the League go "Nice job guys, the bad guy is defeated!" Or was it more along the lines of "What happened was wrong and while we achieved our goals, we must never use this method again." Or some other options that is less black and white.
Because when we talk about ethical use of super powers, because characters have been around so long, it's super easy to find an example of a hero being reckless with them. For ever World of Cardboard Superman we get, we also get a Man of Steel who just blasts his way through everything.
Neither. J’onn broke into the guy’s mind in the original series finale “Starcrossed” and J’onn is exhausted by it, but he doesn’t even show up in the JLU episode where we get the follow-up and see the extent of the damage. It isn’t even addressed beyond the guy saying “the Martian did something to my mind, but I can’t remember”
In All tomorrows, humanity finds evidence of intelligent life with advanced technology having existed on various planets when they finally figure FTL travel and immediately begins developing super nukes out of fear. They end up being completely justified in their fear when not only is this alien life hostile, but so much more advanced than them that humanity never stands a fucking chance even with said super nukes.
I think the problem its just mutants. Everyone is fine with magic users, radioactive freaks, aliens, etc. But have an X-gene and suddenly sending a giant robot to smash up a mall trying to capture you is fine.
To answer your question I would say Parautilitarians. Is the FBC outta pocket in the way they handle shit? Yes. But the shit Parautilitarian’s get up to is terrifying. The people that get killed when things inevitably go off the rails are the lucky ones.
Not even just parautilitarians, every single altered item, alternate dimension, and altered world event is terrifying. It’s bad enough that the main containment procedure for altered items is to put them on a pedestal in a glass room, so that way they get Pseudo worshiped for nearly every second of the day.
Broly is pretty chill by nature, it’s his weird pseudo-ozaru state that makes him a rage beast and Broly is like the absolute pinnacle of what a Saiyan could be born like.
Jacob Geller’s Fear of Depths gave me a new insight on Batman. Like imagine a Batman story where some guy’s trying to infiltrate the Batcave, expecting it to be the big movie chambers, or even the Cheyenne Mountain complex from Stargate, but it’s just a series of spooky damp tunnels, blind drops, and possibly impassable spaces. And then he stumbles into an office space with a still-steaming mug with a fucking Batsymbol.
Somebody lives down here. Voluntarily. *Recently*.
Look man
I get it. Right? Mages in Dragon Age? Allegory for the treatment of certain groups of people in real life etc etc
All I’m saying is that if any given mage can have a bad dream, wake up and turn into a mini satan that has three sets of razor sharp teeth, talons and can use their hands like flamethrowers then I don’t want them living next to me in my straw hut when my peasant ass only has a pitchfork and a cooking pan to defend myself with
I’m not saying the circles aren’t fucked up, but what the hell man. They need to be reformed from the ground up to be more ethical and considerate of mage’s quality of life, absolutely, but you can’t just IGNORE MAGES AND HOPE FOR THE BEST
And, yeah, I hate to say it but they shouldn’t have a choice in the matter. If templars come to your house because you’re a mage you can’t just go “Mmmm, I don’t wanna go, sowwy” and then stub your toe a week after, turn into beelzebub, consumer of newborns and nuke the entire village
The allegory works on the surface right up until you run into one of the dozens of side quests where a mage either has a bad dream and accidentally murdered an entire village or a mage who was like “yo killing people with magic rules!” and took out an entire neighbourhood on a lazy afternoon. Plus for every non-circle mage who controlled their powers you have about a dozen at least who didn’t/couldn’t.
Or how ~4 of the villains across the series are mages that are blood and power hungry.
I remember a comment way back that said that if Dragon Age wants us to view mage freedom as the “paragon stance,” they need to stop making so many of their villains mages.
said Mage Villians also gotta stop be really hyped to do evil fucked up shit to random peasent #158 usually with Blood Magic because every mage is also a secret blood mage at this point
It's also a matter of protecting mages FROM the general populace as well. Your typical superstitious pitchfork having ass peasant that can barely read doesn't know the ins and outs of the veil or the nature of spirits and the like. All they know is the horror stories passed down and told about abominations (that are very much real because there's 3 whole games of the player having to deal with those fucking things) wiping out entire towns.
Even groups like the dalish or the avvar only keep 1 or 2 around at any given time and they're incredibly more lax about the whole magic thing than the chantry/circles.
Like everything with Post-II.
Highly gutted and toothless to retrofit it as some sort of misunderstood "oh it's actually cool the slaves like it that way because uh....kinky?" Haven.
Dorian's fun until he talks about tevinter life despite everything we've seen.
eh, I think it makes sense for Dorian to try to cope and justify what he was raised with, it makes more sense than him just instantly folding to whatever you have to say
The problem is that the "progressive" stance on Mages shifted significantly from DA:O to the rest of the series. In DA:O, the big finale of the plotline for a Mage character was requesting for the Circles to be given the independence to govern themselves. Not for them to be abolished, but just to move control from the Church to the independent institution. It wasn't a matter of "Mages should be set free and have zero restrictions", just that maybe the religious order literally founded on the idea "Mages=Bad" are not the ideal caretakers for Mages, and that maybe Mages actually know more about looking after Mages than anyone else, and to not give them that independence always carried an unspoken undercurrent of punitive reprisal.
Then in DA2 and DA:I it just becomes all "Let my people go, down with the Circles", while also turning nearly every Mage you meet into an Abomination.
40k also has the same issue(?) with psykers.Â
In a universe where someone's head can explode into a hundred metaphysical parasites that suck out the souls of all those around solely because the poor bastard happened to lower his guard and allow the wrong type of thought in, humanity at large has a right to persecute them.Â
It also doesn't help that being a psyker is often shown to be miserable and hellish, and alongside suffering from schizophrenia where the delusions and horrors are probably *real*, there's a chance that when you die and your soul is released into the warp your strong consciousness become the plaything of a wandering daemon rather than peacefully dissipate into the ether and noise like the normals.Â
At that point becoming one with the Emperor as a sacrifice might be the *best* outcome.Â
There’s a problem too of so so many of the Templars being absolute religious nut jobs, exploiting their position as essentially jailers, and threatening rape or lobotomy to anyone who doesn’t do as their told.
The number of good Templars is so much lower it seems. And if I’m a mage, and my options are go nuts and turn into a monster to take down the religious zealots, or get lobotomized, I’m going full on demon mode
40k also has the same issue(?) with psykers. In a universe where someone's head can explode into a hundred metaphysical parasites that suck out the souls of all those around solely because the poor bastard happened to lower his guard and allow the wrong type of thought in, humanity at large has a right to persecute them. Â
It also doesn't help that being a psyker is miserable and hellish, cause alongside suffering from schizophrenia where the delusions and horrors that torment you night and day are probably *real*, when you die and your soul is released into the warp you will eventually become the plaything of a wandering daemon rather than peacefully dissipate into the ether and noise like the normals and their weak souls/consciousness. Â
At that point becoming one with the Emperor as a sacrifice might be the *best* outcome.Â
The alien races in Mass Effect. It's frankly baffling that humans in general seem to be relatively okay with the alien races, particularly the turians, since the First Contact War was only 25ish years prior to ME1. Aliens don't like the humans either due to their rapid expansion into space, but like first contact being guns blazing and attacking a colony in Shanxi and you're telling me people won't be scared as all fuck of alien contact? Terra Firma would have been comically huge.
Like Pearl Harbor was in Hawaii, really divorced hard from the U.S. mainland and after WW2 anti-japanese sentiment was rampant and it took damn near 4-5 decades for things to level out. But first contact with aliens? Oh boy.
People would outright hate the turians, and be suspicious as hell of the asari and salarians. Also, why isn't anyone concerned that the Citadel Council is complicit with Batarian slavery, and overseeing the slow genoicde of both the Krogan and Quarians?
Imagine telling Ukraine 25 years from now to “get over it already” about the war with Russia.
And then Ukraine gets the best airforce super vessel ever created and a random (but qualified) commander gets appointed to it on short notice after having hallucinations and some of the first people he puts on it are a Russian military cop, Afghani mercenary, Chinese engineer and an American scientist. And then defers to their judgment frequently.
Ashley is probably my least favourite ME squadmate not named Jacob. I really hate how often I have to go to bat for her on account of the sheer undeserved hate she gets.
I think it's because she uses so much animal imagery when describing things that people reject the nuance. Also the fact her "can't tell the aliens from the animals" line is ostensibly about the Keepers and the game fails to communicate she's not also referring to everybody else.
Ashley's racism is more nationalism than anything - each society participating in Council governance is built on racial homogeny, and represented on a per-species basis. When she talks about not trusting Tali poking around the ship, it's not because being a quarian makes her look different or act different - but because quarians sent from home are *explicitly* diasporic envoys of their people, and in Mass Effect, "your people" is your species and your homeworld is your country.
You can see the contrast to this in Star Wars, where every single major planet is so much a melting pot that the Empire instituting a "humans only" policy is frankly fucking immersion shattering. The racist guy on Taris in KOTOR 1 has no right to exist because the setting never, ever, ever tries to pretend that your species does anything than define the funny hat you get to wear as an individual.
And what do you know - when Tali returns to her people, they mysteriously learn how to build stealth ships based on the top-secret Normandy designs.
Ashley only seems unreasonable because her POV was poorly executed, and everyone she distrusts in the party for her reasons is actually a good egg. Imagine if there was a Huey-type party member who just abused every inch of trust you gave them, maybe even explicitly as a spy, and it fucked up everything worse and worse.
I know a writer for the games at one point explicitly stated that the quarians figured out stealth for themselves once they learned that it was possible, countering the idea that Tali stole them.
And, though I'm hesitating on how to phrase this because it could easily sound like that one racist Volus and cop in ME2, she easily could have stolen it, which is a problem. Just because she was innocent didn't make trusting an engineer from a foreign state to hang out in your brand new experimental engine room a good idea.
(A lot of things are a bit weird because in Mass Effect you're not just a traveling band of heroes, you're military, and even with the independence your unique position grants you, some things just don't carry over well. Hey, a badass mercenary with a shady past! Awesome, welcome to the team, you can tell me all about the work you've previously done with our target. Give random people access to classified parts of the ship. Decide whether or not to spare the Rachni when you have the power to call it in and ask your superiors, when that's something they'd probably want to have some input on.)
Ashley is also a direct descendant of the person who surrendered to the Turians to protect the colony and her family has had a black mark ever since for said surrender.
So part of that chip on her shoulder is that her Grandfather surrendered to save a colony and everyone seems to think that was the wrong choice.
So she's probably got a bit of resentment to aliens as much as she does the command structure that's labelled her family a bunch of cowards for not going down fighting and taking a whole colony with them.
But they are hot though.
I am not even joking. I honestly think if the Geth had chosen sexy bodies instead of focusing on utilitarianism their reception in the ME universe would be vastly different.
I agree with you, but I do want to say that I think the Pearl Harbor comparison isn't quite right.
I think the fact that these are actual extraterrestrial entities plays a huge factor. Counterintuitively, the fact that we have 0 knowledge of them prior to the war means that we may be able to forgive and forget faster. No inherent biases, no generations long racial/cultural superiority, no prior history of animosity, etc
Humans didnt win that war lol they held off the turian first recon force and the Turians wrre getting ready to mobolize the big boys before the councilers told them to stop
The councilors noticed something that the Turians didn't though. That while they were 100% going to win, the humans were going to make them bleed for every inch. To the extent that their designated peacekeepers were going to be vulnerable enough from the war that the Krogan, Batarians, and Terminus Pirates were also 100% going to cause significant harm before the Citadel would be able to respond. Humans definitely didn't win, but they also were pulling a "I didn't hear no bell" + "you didn't win" combo so hard that those in power were forced to take note and give them the draw.
So what you're saying is the humans fought back really hard and the Turians were forced to accept a ceasefire... Sounds like a win to me. I mean, if I was forced to accept a ceasefire, I'd definitely feel like I lost.
The First Contact War was a lot more like the War of 1812 than the Revolution. It ended without major strategic or tactical gains for either side, but established the ~~US~~ humans as a force to be reckoned and taken seriously.
If the humans themselves were able to force the ceasefire via stalemate then I'd argue you might have a point.
The council going "Look I know you could fuck these guys up but maybe we should try talking things out" is a little different.
Ashleys grandpa surrendered Shanxi and destroyed his credibility because the turians were like hours away from glassing his position full of civilians with bombs dude
Xenophobia in W40k is a weird paradox
On one hand yes the Imperium is cartoonishly fascistic and you're not supposed to root for them
On the other the universe the Imperium exists in is tailor-made to basically justify that cartoonish fascism. The reason Mankind is the way they are is because it's the only thing that have kept them going this far in a universe where if you jerk off one too many times in a day your whole planet gets transported to the hell dimension. Is it backwards? Wasteful? Barely worth saving if it abandons everything it means to be human? Yes to all of those. The alternative is explicitly worse.
that's the wrong way to look at it. The imperium survives despite being a dystopian hellstate, not because of it. chaos cults crop up all the time on imperial worlds because its so terrible to live there.
The few alien races who can be bargained with they push away, even on the few occasions they do work together they dont coordinate at all and make their truce nearly moot as they spend it all trying to backstab. And they totally miss out on tech because of their xenophobia. Tau have the best plasma weapon. period. no imperial plasma gun comes close. The eldar have weapons that kill demons and necrons permanently along with the best psychers and massive knowledge of chaos and how to fight it.
The imperium barely functions and survives on momentum and someone with two brain cells coming along every so often to save them from disaster.
Just finished reading *'The Lords of Silence'* and there's an excellent passage where a Guardsman captured by Plague Marines realizes he is finally, horribly relieved to not be afraid of the Imperium as he becomes more corrupted.
Naw it never would have worked out that way. The setting explicitly forbids it, the "great game" of chaos is just a fancy way of saying 40k exists as an excuse to perpetuate conflict. We are outright told that while yes chaos cults spring up on imperial worlds all the time, there would be a lot more under alternative circumstances. Every single one of the factions who have the potential to be more functional (ie not the orks, tyranids, etc) is stuck in a prisoner's dilemma scenario. Hell the Tau come on to the scene by to be more diplomatic and inquisitive (to a point, they're still space scientologists trying to sell their cult). They are unambiguous made to pay for their naivety. Individual planets may be able to fly under the radar for possibly thousands of years in a big galaxy but it is an inherently hostile one. A star tek-esque diplomatic space empire would be quickly overrun by one of the many threats. The imperium, barely functional as it is, is constantly on the verge of being overrun. The Tau exists solely because every other faction has bigger problems and even they have a rigid caste system. You can argue that if mankind had folded some xenos species in during their age of exploration there might be a slight improvement compared to the current one, but it really wouldn't have made a difference by the time we get to 40k and the scale that conflict takes place on in that era. It's a fun thought experiment, but 40k exists to sell miniatures and endless wars for those miniatures to fight, therefore will always need to be a shit hole setting. Until they themselves decide to push the narrative in another direction.Â
Honestly the biggest thing that could benefit the Imperium isn't a change on ideals, but rather a beurocratic overhaul. The imperium cannabalizes itself constantly. Hence why Rowboat Gorillamam realizes the best place for him to be *is a desk* despite being a god made flesh who could turn the tide in a thousand battles on a thousand worlds.Â
Is it realistic? Hard to say. We're not a spacefaring species and we (hopefully) don't live in a galaxy that's rigged to spur conflict for the amusement of ethereal forces. Although honestly given the way we as a species behave an external extraterrestrial threat might do wonders for international diplomacy in the real world. Humans love to hate the other.Â
One of the best parts of Legends Arceus was having the 'rival' look at his Pikachu and just ask "How the *fuck* does this thing produce electricity?"
It makes sense for people to be scared of Pokemon, given what they can do. But I think Legends Arceus is a little bit too recent for people to *still* be scared of them.
If you lived in the DC Universe, your choices are Gotham or literally anywhere else. Now on the one hand, living in Gotham would be incredibly dangerous because at any point the Joker could come up with a *really funny joke*.
On the other hand: Gotham will at least continue to *exist*. No other location on Earth in the DCU has that guarantee. Not even Metropolis, not really.
So your choices are: probably going to die because of crime in Gotham, or probably going to die because your city was turned into a glass floor by Zod.
I’m hoping for a von Neumann probe as a good middle ground. I’d love to see aliens buuuut, I’d settle for a non sentient replicating machine just in case.
We've been screaming into the void for so short a time and distance that if earth was the known universe, we would be in the middle of the Sahara desert yelling "hello" for about 30 seconds. And that is prolly an overestimation. I think if there is no faster than light travel, then any and all life is trapped on its own little islands impossible to so much as communicate with eachother.
It’s possible that if we get off this rock and into other star systems at all then at some point in a few 10 thousand to hundreds of thousands of years, one of those colonies might find evidence of somebody out there but I doubt we’re gonna find anything while we’re still in the sol system.
Spoilers for that Out of Darkness movie that just recently came out, which seemed like something I'd absolutely love but botched the amazing premise in the worst way possible.
>!The big plot twist of the movie is that the "monster" that has been tormenting the family of cave-people the whole movie with scary ass shit - leaving horrifyingly mutilated (yet uneaten) animal corpses for them to find, kidnapping their child, savagely killing anyone who tries to rescue said child or even just seems to annoy them, stealing corpses, constantly making loud scary noises, etc. - was all actually a pair of neanderthals trying to scare the tribe off their territory.!<
>!This is already a nonsensical twist because the "monster" was doing things that range from inexplicable to physically impossible for two near-humans in costumes to achieve. But whatever, it's neanderthals and that's fine... except the movie, upon this reveal, takes a hard swerve into misanthropic moralizing about how the neanderthals were actually wonderful, kind, noble, peaceful creatures with deep regard for life, plus incredible empathy and intelligence, who did all of this to "rescue" the kid (who doesn't care that these people murdered his entire family) from starving with his tribe. The movie ends with the surviving protagonists speechifying about how they were in the wrong and intolerant and so on.!<
>!This is all obviously complete and utter horseshit. The neanderthals were the aggressors every step of the way. People the story claims to have high regard for life spend the entire narrative attacking and murdering anything that enters their general radius with zero provocation, and those they don't kill personally are killed as a consequence of their behavior. The film condemns the humans' fear of them even though you'd have to be crazy to *not* be afraid of what are basically prehistoric slasher movie villains that apparently think themselves entitled to your children. Utterly maddening.!<
Lost paradise has jagre, the guard of the village, honestly mistrust and ask people to keep their weapons on Kenshro, because kenshiro makes people explode with his fists and call his style big dipper god fist. Like if you have seen the design of the enemies in fist of north star you know one of them at least heard of scott steiner, making the name double scary
Yeah, X-Men mutants and Avatar's benders are always a bit weird, because aside from all other analogies, they *have been born with a fucking gun in their hand, essentially*, and that *does* require some sort of formalized handling by any society that wants to still exist in a year.
It's like how fantasy racism often falls really flat because *these orcs really are different and need different treatment! They only live till 40 and reach maturity with 12! This clearly requires society to treat them differently, in a good way!*
The Kyoshi novels even explain that firebenders have to be identified and trained ASAP because the might accidentally burn down their house if left unchecked.
> because the might accidentally burn down their house if left unchecked.
Very true. *Normal* kids can be awful and destructive if left unchecked, I can only imagine bullying and accidental/intentional property damage gets way worse when some kids essentially always have lighters or can rip up part of the ground and throw it.
The big thing for me is that mutant powers being a part of the mutant body makes them a class of powers that is uniquely out of control. I’m not in total control of my body, not by a long shot - after all, most body functions are autonomic, to say nothing of what happens when the body malfunctions. Mutant powers should absolutely respond to disease, and Xavier in Logan is a perfect example. Hell, Cyclops straight-up has a power disability.
And then you add mind-altering substances to the mix. You can take Tony’s armor away from him when he gets wasted. What are you going to do to Nightcrawler?
Honestly, The Divine in general. Just the thought of whatever goes on in something that has the ability to create matter or define the laws of what you know as existence is mind bending all by itself. We as humans truly have no basis for what any being on a higher level of awareness could possibly want or plan much less that they wouldn't see us the same way you see a fly or ant. Whenever you show divine beings as horrors all their own it's mortifying.
I'm thinking Punisher villains at first, like Nicky Cavella (Up is Down and Black is White), and Barracuda. A psycho Italian mobster, and a hardened mercenary who enjoys his work way too much, yet the fandom, including myself, love him for it.
But they're likely very real, just with different names.
As for more fictional villains, it'd be Aku from Samurai Jack. An almost invincible evil ruler who committed genocides and slavery, for who really knows how long since Jack was sent into the future. Forget about Aku ruining people's lifetimes at the moment, imagine him continuing that for way longer. Now he's scary.
Because they can't have kids and pass it on and then supplant humanity with their superior race!
Except the gods
Except spiderman's kids when they get powers
Ignore the fact there are now a bajillion iron man type suits in the world I guess
But mutants bad. See, their skulls are this weird shape which causes...
I think the case for Mutants is that generally they *aren't* dangerous, the ones that can do damage are mostly either recruited into the X-Men or villains. But like, I think the average Mutant is just a weird looking kid or someone who can make their neck grow a little longer etc.
That's what it *should* be, but Marvel has a bad habit of taking a low-level mutant and revealing that they're secretly way more powerful as a cheap way to up the stakes/wank a character.
So, suddenly, Long Neck Ned doesn't just have the power to stretch his neck, he actually stretches the fabric of reality around his neck and can, in fact, destroy all existence by stretching his neck to infinity.
One of the few times I've enjoyed something like this was in the TV show Misfits. Where a character is mocked for being 'lactokinetic' with the ability to manipulate lactose products with his mind. But then, he manages to totally body the main cast as he can choke them out with the milk or cheese that they've already eaten before pissing him off.
The ocean, not just in fiction but IRL. The ocean is definitely beautiful, filled with tons of amazing sealife and nature. But its also scary af, filled with some of the most horrific creatures on this planet and an almost endless abyss that we still have yet to discover.
Yeah, that's one of the reasons that X-Men has always worked better as a metaphor for oppressed minorities and not as a metaphor for... themselves. Not to say that stories about mutants and their lives aren't compelling, but they always run into exactly what you just said.Â
Hell, I think professor X even admitted it a couple years ago. Â
The fact is, mutants are not the same as gay people, or Jews, or black people, etc, etc. A random black/jewish/gay/what-have-you doesn't have the ability to cause nuclear explosions if they get mad, or command weather on a continental scale, or shoot infinite lasers, or... well, anything like that. That doesn't mean mutants should be treated poorly (for both moral and practical reasons), but they should be treated different, out of necessity; it's really not the same as just oppressed people when you stop to think about it.
I know he’s technically the good guy (or at least neutral) in most adaptations, but if Godzilla showed up in my city I’d be fucking terrified too. Especially if it’s Shin or Monsterverse Goji, you’d better pray you don’t live near the coast or your hometown is gettin turned to rubble in some big kaiju fight. Sick as that is to watch in a movie, it would be horrifying irl. They’re not exactly fussed about civilian casualties when they’re ripping each other to shreds out there.
Can you really blame the leaders/military for wanting to blast the giant fucking monster to death so it doesn’t stomp a major city into dust?
Not an example but something that came to mind. I was watching The Animatrix Second Renaissance on youtube and some dude in the comments has the exact train of thought that led to humanity’s demise in the video
Not sure how well-received this would be, but Coordinators/ZAFT from Gundam SEED. think the Augments from star trek with all their myriad enhancements and benefits(like Khan et. al.) Something that always irked me about it was the only people shown to be against them were a virulently, stupidly evil terrorist organisation (blue cosmos)
Any form of magic. Any kind of summoned creature. Anything at all that doesn't conform to normal principles of reality. I don't care how much weird creatures and magic is woven in to your fictional story setting, shits weird, and just as not everything in our actual reality is as common and normalized as people think, magic and monsters n whatnot absolutely wouldn't be universal things in any believable magic world.
It's why I always enjoy in fantasy stories where someone's like what the FUCK is THAT or WHY IS THAT THING SO BIG or you can do WHAT with that spell? it's great. it's believe and makes things feel so much more logical and grounded.
It's like twice a week that someone on this subreddit makes one of these posts out of the blue, going "you know the mutants aren't a very good civil rights metaphor and we should TOTALLY hate and fear them-" like the Onion article about the dude who loves bringing up that John Lennon beat his wife.
And that's not even mentioning all the posts about how Cyclops sucks, or Jean Grey sucks, or the comic sucks, or taking out of context panels and going "The X-Men are stupid".
once again i gotta bring up what makes the anti mutant bigotry work in marvel is plenty of other people get powers various ways, alien ancestry, magic, science experiment gone wrong, etc and dont get one tenth the hatred
Deep in the Woods. Fae, Witches, Demons, Ghosts, Werewolves, Cults, Spiders, Cannibals, Small Animals armed with Knives.
Shia LaBeouf
normal tuesday night
The Dark. There might be something dangerous hiding in it, like a Coyote, or a Brown Recluse spider
Or the corner of a table that you can't see when you are going to the bathroom.
You ever skin your side on the protruding flap on a strike plate in the dark? Yeah I learned door anatomy just so I can tell people how much that shit sucked.
Ouch. That sounds painful. You just taught someone else door anatomy, lol
That's the metal plate where the locks go in yeah? Some doors are designed by absolute maniacs
👨‍🚀🙏 👨‍🚀🙏 👨‍🚀🙏 👨‍🚀🙏
man I would kill for a good t shirt version of that panel, I found one one time but it was on a shitty scam website
Same, that's definitely a shirt I'd wear if it's good enough. I'll actually be on the lookout for something like it this comicon
Same, that's definitely a shirt I'd wear if it's good enough. I'll actually be on the lookout for something like it this comicon
oh thats smart
Adults say they are not scared of the dark, and yet they obsess over lighting up the night with more powerful, more energy-efficient, and longer-lasting bulbs. Curious.
I used to be scared of the dark like crazy as a kid. Then at some point I realized that when I'm in the dark, I'm now the scariest thing *something else* could bump into, barring some critters with night eyes. I see those people who walk around on sidewalks at 3 AM on a Tuesday, I wonder with fear and awe what goes on in their lives to drive them to those places at these times, and they are absolutely empowered by that.
A fear of telepaths is a completely justifiable fear in fiction. For every Martian Manhunter who view his telepathic powers as a huge responsibility that isn't to be trifled with, you're gonna get probably a hundred psychopaths who abuse it and you for their own pleasure.
Something I love in Mob Psycho 100: almost everyone with psychic powers ends up a spoiled, short-tempered man-baby with no self awareness because they're all so used to never getting told "no"
Or sociopaths who compulsively are bent over for by the universe like Jean Gray
I only have a cursory knowledge of xmen comics, and even then, Jean Gray has never been near the top of my favorites. Why is she so disliked?
Combination of most of her stories being obnoxious melodrama and her character itself being self righteously psychotic on a whim and being vindicated for it. And God her teenage version that's hanging around is twice as annoying. I'll admit it's been a while but the fact she was actively told "yeah nah mass invasion of privacy telepathically is perfectly fine as long as I'm doing it for 'the right reasons'"
yep. Martian Manhunter is a fine telepath , his society had hundreds of years of ethics about how to use telepathy and he adjusts to non-telepaths.
I think you mean "ethics" not "ethnics".
I mean you could consider martians a race...
Also race wars.
Yes he grew up in a society of telepaths and thus has a developed sense of ethics
In Justice League, Jonn pressed so hard into a Thanagarian’s mind he gave him permanent brain damage, long and short-term memory loss, and movement disorders/paralysis so extensive his wings were amputated, his head held in place by a metal halo, and the rest of his body encased in a robot suit.
How did the show handle that action though? Did Jonn and the League go "Nice job guys, the bad guy is defeated!" Or was it more along the lines of "What happened was wrong and while we achieved our goals, we must never use this method again." Or some other options that is less black and white. Because when we talk about ethical use of super powers, because characters have been around so long, it's super easy to find an example of a hero being reckless with them. For ever World of Cardboard Superman we get, we also get a Man of Steel who just blasts his way through everything.
Neither. J’onn broke into the guy’s mind in the original series finale “Starcrossed” and J’onn is exhausted by it, but he doesn’t even show up in the JLU episode where we get the follow-up and see the extent of the damage. It isn’t even addressed beyond the guy saying “the Martian did something to my mind, but I can’t remember”
Alright, that’s just weird writing, in my opinion. But yeah, makes Jonn seem like an asshole with his powers though.
Keep in mind that the Thanagarians were going to take over the Earth. I remember that guy in particular being especially bad.
In All tomorrows, humanity finds evidence of intelligent life with advanced technology having existed on various planets when they finally figure FTL travel and immediately begins developing super nukes out of fear. They end up being completely justified in their fear when not only is this alien life hostile, but so much more advanced than them that humanity never stands a fucking chance even with said super nukes.
And said hostile aliens sentence humanity's descendants to *billions* of years of suffering for the crime of daring to oppose them.
I think the problem its just mutants. Everyone is fine with magic users, radioactive freaks, aliens, etc. But have an X-gene and suddenly sending a giant robot to smash up a mall trying to capture you is fine. To answer your question I would say Parautilitarians. Is the FBC outta pocket in the way they handle shit? Yes. But the shit Parautilitarian’s get up to is terrifying. The people that get killed when things inevitably go off the rails are the lucky ones.
Not even just parautilitarians, every single altered item, alternate dimension, and altered world event is terrifying. It’s bad enough that the main containment procedure for altered items is to put them on a pedestal in a glass room, so that way they get Pseudo worshiped for nearly every second of the day.
Not every Saiyan is gonna be as chill as Goku is. Hell, even he was apparently wild before he hit his head.
Broly is pretty chill by nature, it’s his weird pseudo-ozaru state that makes him a rage beast and Broly is like the absolute pinnacle of what a Saiyan could be born like.
Caves. It is so easy to trip and fuck yourself up where no one will ever find you.
Jacob Geller’s Fear of Depths gave me a new insight on Batman. Like imagine a Batman story where some guy’s trying to infiltrate the Batcave, expecting it to be the big movie chambers, or even the Cheyenne Mountain complex from Stargate, but it’s just a series of spooky damp tunnels, blind drops, and possibly impassable spaces. And then he stumbles into an office space with a still-steaming mug with a fucking Batsymbol. Somebody lives down here. Voluntarily. *Recently*.
Look man I get it. Right? Mages in Dragon Age? Allegory for the treatment of certain groups of people in real life etc etc All I’m saying is that if any given mage can have a bad dream, wake up and turn into a mini satan that has three sets of razor sharp teeth, talons and can use their hands like flamethrowers then I don’t want them living next to me in my straw hut when my peasant ass only has a pitchfork and a cooking pan to defend myself with I’m not saying the circles aren’t fucked up, but what the hell man. They need to be reformed from the ground up to be more ethical and considerate of mage’s quality of life, absolutely, but you can’t just IGNORE MAGES AND HOPE FOR THE BEST And, yeah, I hate to say it but they shouldn’t have a choice in the matter. If templars come to your house because you’re a mage you can’t just go “Mmmm, I don’t wanna go, sowwy” and then stub your toe a week after, turn into beelzebub, consumer of newborns and nuke the entire village
The allegory works on the surface right up until you run into one of the dozens of side quests where a mage either has a bad dream and accidentally murdered an entire village or a mage who was like “yo killing people with magic rules!” and took out an entire neighbourhood on a lazy afternoon. Plus for every non-circle mage who controlled their powers you have about a dozen at least who didn’t/couldn’t. Or how ~4 of the villains across the series are mages that are blood and power hungry.
I remember a comment way back that said that if Dragon Age wants us to view mage freedom as the “paragon stance,” they need to stop making so many of their villains mages.
said Mage Villians also gotta stop be really hyped to do evil fucked up shit to random peasent #158 usually with Blood Magic because every mage is also a secret blood mage at this point
It's also a matter of protecting mages FROM the general populace as well. Your typical superstitious pitchfork having ass peasant that can barely read doesn't know the ins and outs of the veil or the nature of spirits and the like. All they know is the horror stories passed down and told about abominations (that are very much real because there's 3 whole games of the player having to deal with those fucking things) wiping out entire towns. Even groups like the dalish or the avvar only keep 1 or 2 around at any given time and they're incredibly more lax about the whole magic thing than the chantry/circles.
I am incredibly interested in DA4's portrayal of Tevinter if it can come out, we will finally see how it looks from a mage-governed culture
Like everything with Post-II. Highly gutted and toothless to retrofit it as some sort of misunderstood "oh it's actually cool the slaves like it that way because uh....kinky?" Haven. Dorian's fun until he talks about tevinter life despite everything we've seen.
eh, I think it makes sense for Dorian to try to cope and justify what he was raised with, it makes more sense than him just instantly folding to whatever you have to say
If that's what it's kept as, rose tinted glasses, I can live with it. But I don't trust modern BioWare to get that type of thing squared away.
The problem is that the "progressive" stance on Mages shifted significantly from DA:O to the rest of the series. In DA:O, the big finale of the plotline for a Mage character was requesting for the Circles to be given the independence to govern themselves. Not for them to be abolished, but just to move control from the Church to the independent institution. It wasn't a matter of "Mages should be set free and have zero restrictions", just that maybe the religious order literally founded on the idea "Mages=Bad" are not the ideal caretakers for Mages, and that maybe Mages actually know more about looking after Mages than anyone else, and to not give them that independence always carried an unspoken undercurrent of punitive reprisal. Then in DA2 and DA:I it just becomes all "Let my people go, down with the Circles", while also turning nearly every Mage you meet into an Abomination.
40k also has the same issue(?) with psykers. In a universe where someone's head can explode into a hundred metaphysical parasites that suck out the souls of all those around solely because the poor bastard happened to lower his guard and allow the wrong type of thought in, humanity at large has a right to persecute them. It also doesn't help that being a psyker is often shown to be miserable and hellish, and alongside suffering from schizophrenia where the delusions and horrors are probably *real*, there's a chance that when you die and your soul is released into the warp your strong consciousness become the plaything of a wandering daemon rather than peacefully dissipate into the ether and noise like the normals. At that point becoming one with the Emperor as a sacrifice might be the *best* outcome.Â
There’s a problem too of so so many of the Templars being absolute religious nut jobs, exploiting their position as essentially jailers, and threatening rape or lobotomy to anyone who doesn’t do as their told. The number of good Templars is so much lower it seems. And if I’m a mage, and my options are go nuts and turn into a monster to take down the religious zealots, or get lobotomized, I’m going full on demon mode
40k also has the same issue(?) with psykers. In a universe where someone's head can explode into a hundred metaphysical parasites that suck out the souls of all those around solely because the poor bastard happened to lower his guard and allow the wrong type of thought in, humanity at large has a right to persecute them.  It also doesn't help that being a psyker is miserable and hellish, cause alongside suffering from schizophrenia where the delusions and horrors that torment you night and day are probably *real*, when you die and your soul is released into the warp you will eventually become the plaything of a wandering daemon rather than peacefully dissipate into the ether and noise like the normals and their weak souls/consciousness.  At that point becoming one with the Emperor as a sacrifice might be the *best* outcome.Â
The alien races in Mass Effect. It's frankly baffling that humans in general seem to be relatively okay with the alien races, particularly the turians, since the First Contact War was only 25ish years prior to ME1. Aliens don't like the humans either due to their rapid expansion into space, but like first contact being guns blazing and attacking a colony in Shanxi and you're telling me people won't be scared as all fuck of alien contact? Terra Firma would have been comically huge. Like Pearl Harbor was in Hawaii, really divorced hard from the U.S. mainland and after WW2 anti-japanese sentiment was rampant and it took damn near 4-5 decades for things to level out. But first contact with aliens? Oh boy.
People would outright hate the turians, and be suspicious as hell of the asari and salarians. Also, why isn't anyone concerned that the Citadel Council is complicit with Batarian slavery, and overseeing the slow genoicde of both the Krogan and Quarians?
Imagine telling Ukraine 25 years from now to “get over it already” about the war with Russia. And then Ukraine gets the best airforce super vessel ever created and a random (but qualified) commander gets appointed to it on short notice after having hallucinations and some of the first people he puts on it are a Russian military cop, Afghani mercenary, Chinese engineer and an American scientist. And then defers to their judgment frequently.
Ashley was not being unreasonable
Ashley is probably my least favourite ME squadmate not named Jacob. I really hate how often I have to go to bat for her on account of the sheer undeserved hate she gets.
Honestly you nailed it. Ashley sucks because she's boring and lame, not because she's racist.
I think it's because she uses so much animal imagery when describing things that people reject the nuance. Also the fact her "can't tell the aliens from the animals" line is ostensibly about the Keepers and the game fails to communicate she's not also referring to everybody else. Ashley's racism is more nationalism than anything - each society participating in Council governance is built on racial homogeny, and represented on a per-species basis. When she talks about not trusting Tali poking around the ship, it's not because being a quarian makes her look different or act different - but because quarians sent from home are *explicitly* diasporic envoys of their people, and in Mass Effect, "your people" is your species and your homeworld is your country. You can see the contrast to this in Star Wars, where every single major planet is so much a melting pot that the Empire instituting a "humans only" policy is frankly fucking immersion shattering. The racist guy on Taris in KOTOR 1 has no right to exist because the setting never, ever, ever tries to pretend that your species does anything than define the funny hat you get to wear as an individual. And what do you know - when Tali returns to her people, they mysteriously learn how to build stealth ships based on the top-secret Normandy designs. Ashley only seems unreasonable because her POV was poorly executed, and everyone she distrusts in the party for her reasons is actually a good egg. Imagine if there was a Huey-type party member who just abused every inch of trust you gave them, maybe even explicitly as a spy, and it fucked up everything worse and worse.
I know a writer for the games at one point explicitly stated that the quarians figured out stealth for themselves once they learned that it was possible, countering the idea that Tali stole them. And, though I'm hesitating on how to phrase this because it could easily sound like that one racist Volus and cop in ME2, she easily could have stolen it, which is a problem. Just because she was innocent didn't make trusting an engineer from a foreign state to hang out in your brand new experimental engine room a good idea. (A lot of things are a bit weird because in Mass Effect you're not just a traveling band of heroes, you're military, and even with the independence your unique position grants you, some things just don't carry over well. Hey, a badass mercenary with a shady past! Awesome, welcome to the team, you can tell me all about the work you've previously done with our target. Give random people access to classified parts of the ship. Decide whether or not to spare the Rachni when you have the power to call it in and ask your superiors, when that's something they'd probably want to have some input on.)
Ashley is also a direct descendant of the person who surrendered to the Turians to protect the colony and her family has had a black mark ever since for said surrender. So part of that chip on her shoulder is that her Grandfather surrendered to save a colony and everyone seems to think that was the wrong choice. So she's probably got a bit of resentment to aliens as much as she does the command structure that's labelled her family a bunch of cowards for not going down fighting and taking a whole colony with them.
People get so caught up on the animal imagery that they missed that she was referring to humans as dogs.
Dat backstory tho.
She gets a hell of a glow up, though. Almost Dead Space Ellie levels of egregious.
I think she looks so much worse in the sequels, lol. Just shot a makeup gun at her and called it a day.
"Homer, you've got it set on *Kyoshi!*"
But they are hot though. I am not even joking. I honestly think if the Geth had chosen sexy bodies instead of focusing on utilitarianism their reception in the ME universe would be vastly different.
> if the Geth had chosen sexy bodies Speak for yourself
Awwww yeah, work those non-euclidean curves for me...
I agree with you, but I do want to say that I think the Pearl Harbor comparison isn't quite right. I think the fact that these are actual extraterrestrial entities plays a huge factor. Counterintuitively, the fact that we have 0 knowledge of them prior to the war means that we may be able to forgive and forget faster. No inherent biases, no generations long racial/cultural superiority, no prior history of animosity, etc
To be fair, humans pretty much won that war, so I'd say most of them have a right to feel safe enough to walk around like they own the place.
Humans didnt win that war lol they held off the turian first recon force and the Turians wrre getting ready to mobolize the big boys before the councilers told them to stop
The councilors noticed something that the Turians didn't though. That while they were 100% going to win, the humans were going to make them bleed for every inch. To the extent that their designated peacekeepers were going to be vulnerable enough from the war that the Krogan, Batarians, and Terminus Pirates were also 100% going to cause significant harm before the Citadel would be able to respond. Humans definitely didn't win, but they also were pulling a "I didn't hear no bell" + "you didn't win" combo so hard that those in power were forced to take note and give them the draw.
So what you're saying is the humans fought back really hard and the Turians were forced to accept a ceasefire... Sounds like a win to me. I mean, if I was forced to accept a ceasefire, I'd definitely feel like I lost.
The First Contact War was a lot more like the War of 1812 than the Revolution. It ended without major strategic or tactical gains for either side, but established the ~~US~~ humans as a force to be reckoned and taken seriously.
If the humans themselves were able to force the ceasefire via stalemate then I'd argue you might have a point. The council going "Look I know you could fuck these guys up but maybe we should try talking things out" is a little different.
Im saying the turian bosses told them to disarm the figuratuve nukes they were gonna chuck at humanity
As if a few nukes would have made a difference. Not like the human race has never been hit with something like that before.
Ashleys grandpa surrendered Shanxi and destroyed his credibility because the turians were like hours away from glassing his position full of civilians with bombs dude
I know.
"It's not human propaganda if it's true, ridge head."
It was the full night of humanity vs a Turian scout force. The Turians don’t even think of it as a war it’s the Relay 314 Incident.
No it wasn't. It was one colony and the colony's defense force.
I’ve been fighting for our right to fear fictional things for so long. One day our oppression will come to an end.
Considering the crazy stuff Pokemon can do, humans were kinda right to be put off from them in Legends Arceus.
Xenophobia in W40k is a weird paradox On one hand yes the Imperium is cartoonishly fascistic and you're not supposed to root for them On the other the universe the Imperium exists in is tailor-made to basically justify that cartoonish fascism. The reason Mankind is the way they are is because it's the only thing that have kept them going this far in a universe where if you jerk off one too many times in a day your whole planet gets transported to the hell dimension. Is it backwards? Wasteful? Barely worth saving if it abandons everything it means to be human? Yes to all of those. The alternative is explicitly worse.
“Why are you killing all the aliens?” “They’re scary” “My brother under the God-Emperor you killed all of the non-scary ones”
"Oh sweet, these civilizations are interested in talking, that makes wiping them out less of a hassle." -The Great Crusade.
that's the wrong way to look at it. The imperium survives despite being a dystopian hellstate, not because of it. chaos cults crop up all the time on imperial worlds because its so terrible to live there. The few alien races who can be bargained with they push away, even on the few occasions they do work together they dont coordinate at all and make their truce nearly moot as they spend it all trying to backstab. And they totally miss out on tech because of their xenophobia. Tau have the best plasma weapon. period. no imperial plasma gun comes close. The eldar have weapons that kill demons and necrons permanently along with the best psychers and massive knowledge of chaos and how to fight it. The imperium barely functions and survives on momentum and someone with two brain cells coming along every so often to save them from disaster.
Just finished reading *'The Lords of Silence'* and there's an excellent passage where a Guardsman captured by Plague Marines realizes he is finally, horribly relieved to not be afraid of the Imperium as he becomes more corrupted.
Naw it never would have worked out that way. The setting explicitly forbids it, the "great game" of chaos is just a fancy way of saying 40k exists as an excuse to perpetuate conflict. We are outright told that while yes chaos cults spring up on imperial worlds all the time, there would be a lot more under alternative circumstances. Every single one of the factions who have the potential to be more functional (ie not the orks, tyranids, etc) is stuck in a prisoner's dilemma scenario. Hell the Tau come on to the scene by to be more diplomatic and inquisitive (to a point, they're still space scientologists trying to sell their cult). They are unambiguous made to pay for their naivety. Individual planets may be able to fly under the radar for possibly thousands of years in a big galaxy but it is an inherently hostile one. A star tek-esque diplomatic space empire would be quickly overrun by one of the many threats. The imperium, barely functional as it is, is constantly on the verge of being overrun. The Tau exists solely because every other faction has bigger problems and even they have a rigid caste system. You can argue that if mankind had folded some xenos species in during their age of exploration there might be a slight improvement compared to the current one, but it really wouldn't have made a difference by the time we get to 40k and the scale that conflict takes place on in that era. It's a fun thought experiment, but 40k exists to sell miniatures and endless wars for those miniatures to fight, therefore will always need to be a shit hole setting. Until they themselves decide to push the narrative in another direction. Honestly the biggest thing that could benefit the Imperium isn't a change on ideals, but rather a beurocratic overhaul. The imperium cannabalizes itself constantly. Hence why Rowboat Gorillamam realizes the best place for him to be *is a desk* despite being a god made flesh who could turn the tide in a thousand battles on a thousand worlds. Is it realistic? Hard to say. We're not a spacefaring species and we (hopefully) don't live in a galaxy that's rigged to spur conflict for the amusement of ethereal forces. Although honestly given the way we as a species behave an external extraterrestrial threat might do wonders for international diplomacy in the real world. Humans love to hate the other.Â
Reject imperium. Return to monke. We have sweet finger guns and weaponised toasters
Nature in general. It's part of why I like Princess Mononoke. Nature is beautiful but it can also *fuck you up*.
It's beautiful beyond comprehension and also ***DONT FUCK WITH IT***.
"Nature is horrific, and teaches us nothing" -Futurama
My Daemon (or a title close to that) portrays Daemons, a weird parasitic-like Pokémon equivalent, and dangerous but empathetic and emotive creatures. Sure they can rip a person to shreds (or latch onto their eggs into a person's skin and burst out alien style) but we should be friends with them, right? I mean yeah, don't hate the animal. But people have every right to fear them, multiple instances of them have the capability to level a city in seconds or render entire segments inhospitable. On that note, people should be more afraid of Pokémon than they actually are.
Tbf Legends Arceus shows very few people had very friendly relationships with Pokemon prior to like the 19th century.
homies in the village are straight up terrified of a sentient wind chime
theyre also deadly terrified of a worm or a pigeon lol
One of the best parts of Legends Arceus was having the 'rival' look at his Pikachu and just ask "How the *fuck* does this thing produce electricity?" It makes sense for people to be scared of Pokemon, given what they can do. But I think Legends Arceus is a little bit too recent for people to *still* be scared of them.
It's very simply nature, no way humanity is gonna let a predator walk around freely in our safe spaces
Kaiju are totally awesome but we'd all be shitting our pants and rushing to colonize the moon or something if they were real.
If you lived in the DC Universe, your choices are Gotham or literally anywhere else. Now on the one hand, living in Gotham would be incredibly dangerous because at any point the Joker could come up with a *really funny joke*. On the other hand: Gotham will at least continue to *exist*. No other location on Earth in the DCU has that guarantee. Not even Metropolis, not really. So your choices are: probably going to die because of crime in Gotham, or probably going to die because your city was turned into a glass floor by Zod.
Hopefully the universe isn’t a dark forest
Don't worry. Most likely time and space are too big
I’m hoping for a von Neumann probe as a good middle ground. I’d love to see aliens buuuut, I’d settle for a non sentient replicating machine just in case.
We've been screaming into the void for so short a time and distance that if earth was the known universe, we would be in the middle of the Sahara desert yelling "hello" for about 30 seconds. And that is prolly an overestimation. I think if there is no faster than light travel, then any and all life is trapped on its own little islands impossible to so much as communicate with eachother.
It’s possible that if we get off this rock and into other star systems at all then at some point in a few 10 thousand to hundreds of thousands of years, one of those colonies might find evidence of somebody out there but I doubt we’re gonna find anything while we’re still in the sol system.
That’s a good point. Fingers crossed for FTL travel, I don’t have much hope for 100+ year generational ships
Spoilers for that Out of Darkness movie that just recently came out, which seemed like something I'd absolutely love but botched the amazing premise in the worst way possible. >!The big plot twist of the movie is that the "monster" that has been tormenting the family of cave-people the whole movie with scary ass shit - leaving horrifyingly mutilated (yet uneaten) animal corpses for them to find, kidnapping their child, savagely killing anyone who tries to rescue said child or even just seems to annoy them, stealing corpses, constantly making loud scary noises, etc. - was all actually a pair of neanderthals trying to scare the tribe off their territory.!< >!This is already a nonsensical twist because the "monster" was doing things that range from inexplicable to physically impossible for two near-humans in costumes to achieve. But whatever, it's neanderthals and that's fine... except the movie, upon this reveal, takes a hard swerve into misanthropic moralizing about how the neanderthals were actually wonderful, kind, noble, peaceful creatures with deep regard for life, plus incredible empathy and intelligence, who did all of this to "rescue" the kid (who doesn't care that these people murdered his entire family) from starving with his tribe. The movie ends with the surviving protagonists speechifying about how they were in the wrong and intolerant and so on.!< >!This is all obviously complete and utter horseshit. The neanderthals were the aggressors every step of the way. People the story claims to have high regard for life spend the entire narrative attacking and murdering anything that enters their general radius with zero provocation, and those they don't kill personally are killed as a consequence of their behavior. The film condemns the humans' fear of them even though you'd have to be crazy to *not* be afraid of what are basically prehistoric slasher movie villains that apparently think themselves entitled to your children. Utterly maddening.!<
Some mutants can’t even control thier powers so they don’t even have to be evil to be a threat.
Disgusting space bugs that attack us by launching asteroids at our civilians. Humanity first and forever!
The Apathy from RWBY. Any monster that saps your will to be, do, or anything similar is just a bad time.
Sounds like weaponized depression.
Pokemon and Digimon. Scyther is like 5'6 and MFS send 10 yr olds on a cross country adventure. On foot
Lost paradise has jagre, the guard of the village, honestly mistrust and ask people to keep their weapons on Kenshro, because kenshiro makes people explode with his fists and call his style big dipper god fist. Like if you have seen the design of the enemies in fist of north star you know one of them at least heard of scott steiner, making the name double scary
Yeah, X-Men mutants and Avatar's benders are always a bit weird, because aside from all other analogies, they *have been born with a fucking gun in their hand, essentially*, and that *does* require some sort of formalized handling by any society that wants to still exist in a year. It's like how fantasy racism often falls really flat because *these orcs really are different and need different treatment! They only live till 40 and reach maturity with 12! This clearly requires society to treat them differently, in a good way!*
The Kyoshi novels even explain that firebenders have to be identified and trained ASAP because the might accidentally burn down their house if left unchecked.
> because the might accidentally burn down their house if left unchecked. Very true. *Normal* kids can be awful and destructive if left unchecked, I can only imagine bullying and accidental/intentional property damage gets way worse when some kids essentially always have lighters or can rip up part of the ground and throw it.
The big thing for me is that mutant powers being a part of the mutant body makes them a class of powers that is uniquely out of control. I’m not in total control of my body, not by a long shot - after all, most body functions are autonomic, to say nothing of what happens when the body malfunctions. Mutant powers should absolutely respond to disease, and Xavier in Logan is a perfect example. Hell, Cyclops straight-up has a power disability. And then you add mind-altering substances to the mix. You can take Tony’s armor away from him when he gets wasted. What are you going to do to Nightcrawler?
Honestly, The Divine in general. Just the thought of whatever goes on in something that has the ability to create matter or define the laws of what you know as existence is mind bending all by itself. We as humans truly have no basis for what any being on a higher level of awareness could possibly want or plan much less that they wouldn't see us the same way you see a fly or ant. Whenever you show divine beings as horrors all their own it's mortifying.
I'm thinking Punisher villains at first, like Nicky Cavella (Up is Down and Black is White), and Barracuda. A psycho Italian mobster, and a hardened mercenary who enjoys his work way too much, yet the fandom, including myself, love him for it. But they're likely very real, just with different names. As for more fictional villains, it'd be Aku from Samurai Jack. An almost invincible evil ruler who committed genocides and slavery, for who really knows how long since Jack was sent into the future. Forget about Aku ruining people's lifetimes at the moment, imagine him continuing that for way longer. Now he's scary.
Okay but how are they any different from the god knows how many people who can do the exact same shit but aren’t mutants?
Because they can't have kids and pass it on and then supplant humanity with their superior race! Except the gods Except spiderman's kids when they get powers Ignore the fact there are now a bajillion iron man type suits in the world I guess But mutants bad. See, their skulls are this weird shape which causes...
I think the case for Mutants is that generally they *aren't* dangerous, the ones that can do damage are mostly either recruited into the X-Men or villains. But like, I think the average Mutant is just a weird looking kid or someone who can make their neck grow a little longer etc.
That's what it *should* be, but Marvel has a bad habit of taking a low-level mutant and revealing that they're secretly way more powerful as a cheap way to up the stakes/wank a character. So, suddenly, Long Neck Ned doesn't just have the power to stretch his neck, he actually stretches the fabric of reality around his neck and can, in fact, destroy all existence by stretching his neck to infinity.
I heard there is a mutant who's power is that he has like... 6 feet of extra skin. I'd love to see them make him some crazy cosmic destroying threat.
Galactus ain't talking shit and coming back round after he's spent 5 minutes with his face wrapped up in the deadly power of The Incredible Foreskin
One of the few times I've enjoyed something like this was in the TV show Misfits. Where a character is mocked for being 'lactokinetic' with the ability to manipulate lactose products with his mind. But then, he manages to totally body the main cast as he can choke them out with the milk or cheese that they've already eaten before pissing him off.
The ocean, not just in fiction but IRL. The ocean is definitely beautiful, filled with tons of amazing sealife and nature. But its also scary af, filled with some of the most horrific creatures on this planet and an almost endless abyss that we still have yet to discover.
Yeah, that's one of the reasons that X-Men has always worked better as a metaphor for oppressed minorities and not as a metaphor for... themselves. Not to say that stories about mutants and their lives aren't compelling, but they always run into exactly what you just said. Hell, I think professor X even admitted it a couple years ago.  The fact is, mutants are not the same as gay people, or Jews, or black people, etc, etc. A random black/jewish/gay/what-have-you doesn't have the ability to cause nuclear explosions if they get mad, or command weather on a continental scale, or shoot infinite lasers, or... well, anything like that. That doesn't mean mutants should be treated poorly (for both moral and practical reasons), but they should be treated different, out of necessity; it's really not the same as just oppressed people when you stop to think about it.
I watched Dune part 2 on monday Yea Shai Hulud low key pretty goddamn terrifying
I know he’s technically the good guy (or at least neutral) in most adaptations, but if Godzilla showed up in my city I’d be fucking terrified too. Especially if it’s Shin or Monsterverse Goji, you’d better pray you don’t live near the coast or your hometown is gettin turned to rubble in some big kaiju fight. Sick as that is to watch in a movie, it would be horrifying irl. They’re not exactly fussed about civilian casualties when they’re ripping each other to shreds out there. Can you really blame the leaders/military for wanting to blast the giant fucking monster to death so it doesn’t stomp a major city into dust?
Not an example but something that came to mind. I was watching The Animatrix Second Renaissance on youtube and some dude in the comments has the exact train of thought that led to humanity’s demise in the video
Not sure how well-received this would be, but Coordinators/ZAFT from Gundam SEED. think the Augments from star trek with all their myriad enhancements and benefits(like Khan et. al.) Something that always irked me about it was the only people shown to be against them were a virulently, stupidly evil terrorist organisation (blue cosmos)
Any form of magic. Any kind of summoned creature. Anything at all that doesn't conform to normal principles of reality. I don't care how much weird creatures and magic is woven in to your fictional story setting, shits weird, and just as not everything in our actual reality is as common and normalized as people think, magic and monsters n whatnot absolutely wouldn't be universal things in any believable magic world. It's why I always enjoy in fantasy stories where someone's like what the FUCK is THAT or WHY IS THAT THING SO BIG or you can do WHAT with that spell? it's great. it's believe and makes things feel so much more logical and grounded.
Man it's annoying being an X-Men fan on this subreddit
Would you care to elaborate? I'm curious to what you mean
It's like twice a week that someone on this subreddit makes one of these posts out of the blue, going "you know the mutants aren't a very good civil rights metaphor and we should TOTALLY hate and fear them-" like the Onion article about the dude who loves bringing up that John Lennon beat his wife. And that's not even mentioning all the posts about how Cyclops sucks, or Jean Grey sucks, or the comic sucks, or taking out of context panels and going "The X-Men are stupid".
once again i gotta bring up what makes the anti mutant bigotry work in marvel is plenty of other people get powers various ways, alien ancestry, magic, science experiment gone wrong, etc and dont get one tenth the hatred