Since I buy comic books (dollar bin/back issues) I have them stacked and don't put them in a long box til I read them. Currently have about 300 to read. Today I was reading a Spectacular Spider-Man (in my opinion the most underrated comic book series ever and the first Spider-Man series I ever read) from 1977 and in the section where Stan Lee has his soapbox he was hyping an upcoming special comic book highlighting the female super-heroes of Marvel and he listed some of the big names that would be included in the comic.
Stuff like this along with the 80s/90s ads showing a group of boys along with one or two girls playing video games always annoy me because there seemed to be a modern day script where any female/minority in the gaming, comic book, or any other nerdy IP says that when they were growing up they didn't see anyone who looked like them or didn't feel "welcome" and they act like women/minorities have never been in anything until woke Hollywood came along. I call BS on that every time because while you may have someone be rude to you, 99 times out of 100 if you know your stuff or show a genuine interest in something nerds will welcome you with open arms. The vitriol over men (especially white men) enjoying a hobby is off the charts in the last decade especially.
Ironically a comic book company, gaming company, or any studio today would never hire a woman or a minority who actually is interested in the material. They would rather hire people who can't shut up about diversity.
I learned Spanish in high school and I went to a Summer Camp before senior year where you had to speak Spanish 24/7 and were kicked out if you were heard speaking English. As an adult I've had some jobs where I had to speak Spanish all or most of the time and on the way to becoming fluent I started listening to the music. One time I went to a spanish music store (was working in a heavy hispanic area) and the owner told me that there wasn't anything there I would like. I spoke to him in Spanish and explained I liked the music and he immediately started showing me what he had and what was on sale and I bought quite a few cds that day. Nobody in the store "looked like me" but that didn't stop me.
That's because you're participating in the hobby in good faith instead of trying of LARPing as a fan so you can shit it up for the real fans. No one who pushes idpol in a hobby gives a fuck about that hobby.
Honestly it seems like the people in charge of IPs now are the ones who mocked nerds growing and didn’t care until it became trendy. Anita Sarkessian seems to fit that description perfectly.
I guarantee you it is.
I think the most obvious example that has happened recently involves The Witcher on Netflix. We have learned from one of the show writers who left to go work on something else (X-Men '97, and he instituted a rule that you have to be a fan and/or respect the original for him to hire you), and indirectly through Henry Cavill, that the writers are exactly the nerd haters you grew up with. They hate Geralt, they wanted to make Yennifer into a Girl Boss even though Ciri is already a good "strong female character", and they thought it was hilarious in a condescending way that Henry kept trying to use the original works to tell them they were wrong in how they were making the show.
YaBoiZack has talk about this a lot on his Youtube channel where he discusses the modern comic industry as someone who has one foot in the door. The people writing not just comics, but a lot of entertainment, are broken people who for one reason or another never got past high school. So they still are obsessed with clichés (which of course means bullying the nerds), they still hate their dad, and they really hate that they have to pretend to be a nerd now for social clout. But they are miserable and made even more miserable by the fact that no one is really playing along with this (especially now that apathy is setting in and killing their careers), and they write that bitterness and hatred into their stories.
They are then shocked that normal people dont share that bitterness and hatred and think they need help. They dont need help! They used to be POPULAR damn it!!
And they would rather watch it all burn, and even pour kerosene to make it burn faster, than let go of the past and move on with their lives.
Amen! I subscribe to yaboizack but am behind on his videos. I plan on buying the Witcher books soon. You would think that the showrunner would love the fact that the lead actor is such a fan and has so much knowledge. I heard about the x-men 97 writer. So happy to see that. There were so many good female characters before and all they have done is make ppl less likely to watch something with a female lead now.
If only Ya Boi Zack hadn't been forced to delete some of his videos, including at least two on Kamala Khan.
Thanks a lot, Mark Waid. Jackass.
It was either Anita or John Flynt who whined about Buffy being ruined before needing to walk it back. Even the wokies don't like having their fandoms infected. They're all for DIE as long as it doesn't affect them personally.
Haha yeah, nobody seems to like it when THEIR sacred cow is taken to the slaughterhouse.
I say turnabout is fair play, and schadenfreude is quite amusing.
She complained about the race swap of Buffy. Annoyed me because she is the first to attack us when we want a character to look like they do in the source material. But it was nice to see her get upset when they crap on something she likes.
You're not the only one to make that observation. Check this out: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
Thanks!
Man I feel this post, especially the 80's and 90's ad part.
I've been watching some of the old movies from that time lately (movies that I saw as a kid), and you can definitly see the "proto woke" horseshit in quite a bit of the advertisements, TV shows, and movies from that era.
I can't really speak on comic books (never really was my jam), but look at the difference in Star Trek TOS versus Star Trek TNG (especially any of the Troi centric episodes, BLECH!). Not even going to get into STD or the other new show.
But yeah, these companies had better hope the ESG funds don't run out any time soon, as they are already creativly bankrupt and are going to run out of any remaining fan goodwill before too long.
I grew up in the same era. I haven’t seen any Nu Trek but it does suck how the TNG actors have lashed out at fans to support the crap being made now. In the past I’d be fine with a racism is bad message here and there or whatever message the “very special episode” had but now they define racism as something only white ppl are capable of and anything so many shows today push the ESG crap so like you I enjoy 80s and 90s movies.
100% agreed. If I get to those episodes in something I'm watching now, I just skip them. Don't care if it's a full-on "black people used to be discriminated against" like in DS9, or something more subtle with alien stand-ins -- not interested.
I was re-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm a while back and got maybe 2 seasons in when Larry David at one point is apologizing to some black people and says, "white people should apologize forever." Turned it off and didn't look back. Probably won't ever watch it again, and I was a huge fan of Larry David. Just completely soured me on it.
I really hate what these people have done over the last 10 years. The messaging has been around for a long time but now it's just omnipresent, overbearing, patronizing, and frankly, boring.
Yea and then they get mad when people aren’t interested in the 10000th show/movie that “examines race”. I tell people that I use the actual definition of racism and not the modern day wine version. The endless apologies are dumb. Granted I still love stuff like Blazing Saddles but you wouldn’t be able to have such racial humor now or the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder movies
I've only seen bits and pieces of the new Star Trek shows (not going to subscribe to anything to watch them, and from what I've seen they aren't even worth pirating), the thing that turns me off the most is how they don't even bother respecting established lore.
Yeah it sucks how screwed in the heads some of the ST TNG actors are. (Guess that applies to alot of shows though, like Stargate Sg1.)
I really wish I could permanently banish the grievance mongers to the world/alternate dimension that they want, maybe then we could get some decent media again.
Amen. I liked all trek up to enterprise. After that in my personal head canon there is no more trek. Plenty of Star Trek books to read as well.
Yeah I liked Enterprise and earlier as well (although Voyager was fairly weak, didn't care for it as much).
Used to read some of the Star Trek books, haven't in quite some time.
Still bummed that Prelude to Axanar is dead in the water, something that would have been REALLY cool to see, killed by greed.
Thankfully not as much of a Star Wars fan, they really have a reason to be upset.
Seriously Disney, how do you ruin Star Wars? It's like a license to print money.
Yea I love pre Disney Star Wars and still read those books that Disney wiped out. Prelude to Axanar is a fan film? I’ve seen some Star Trek fan stuff on YouTube like Phase 2 and I like it. It seems like they have much more passion for Trek thank Kurtzman and the worthless writers he has.
Yeah Prelude to Axanar is a fan film on youtube set in the time period of the Federation and Klingon war, a little over 15ish years before ST TOS, and right before the first Constitution class starships are completed. It kind of blends the Star Trek (2009) aesthetic to the TOS aesthetic.
Tony Todd, J.G. Hertzler, Kate Vernon, Gary Graham (Ambassador Soval from Enterprise), and Richard Hatch all had acting parts in it.
Without fail, every time I've heard someone say that they did not feel welcome someplace, because people didn't look like them, or act like them, or talk like them, it's because they were treated the same as anyone else, and they did not get special treatment.
They were also 'corrected' (told they were wrong about something they were not familiar with, like say, some D&D game rules, and someone told them how it really was) and this upset them.
It's not about you, it's about the group of people who treated you like someone was new and wanted in. There was no special treatment, so you got upset.
It's been that way every single time.
Add in the number times you see some women complain about gatekeeping and getting quizzed on obscure lore when most likely they had on an avengers shirt and some guy asked them what comics they read.
Exactly. Or look how true fans who don’t like a bastardized version of a story they enjoy.