So i just completed the full initial run of Ultimate Marvel, from Ultimate Spider Man #1 to Ultimate End. And ive got some thoughts.
First of all. I started collecting phsycially when i was a kid, around Death of Spiderman. The only ultimate comic i read was Ultimate Comics X-Men, which was one of those "your book got canceled heres this other one" for my X Men Legacy subscription. That quickly became my favorite book, despite hating Kitty, i really loved the reservation concept, the sentient seed. That whole piece, which makes it a crime that it really only lasted about 4 issues. Having read the entire series now. Hot damn were they obsessed with Kitty.
I wont go through the whole of Ultimate, other than that the transition from Vol 1 to Vol 2 of Ultimate spider man was horrible.
I will say, folks the cracks were there. All New Ultimates finished in 2014 and it is top 3 worst runs of any book ive ever read. Packed full of the "teenies angsting with shit art" the sitcom "oh hey im actually gay" lets break up for no reason oh were back togehter for no reason soap opera fest.
"Right wing" militia as a stomped villian that even the Scourge hates because "im not racist! I just kills criminals, and suggesting theres a demographic there is racist!"
The evil corporation is messing up the usually totally fine drug trade by POSIONING it. Yeah thats how you run a business, murder your customers.
I hate cloak and dagger, bombshell is the stupidest fuck after "black widow," and miles... it really shows you how much the writer matters. Miles' first run is as enjoyable as any other book ive ready. In All New Ultimates he reminds me why im racist.
I especially hate bombshells whiny drug dealer boyfriend drama. Its supposed to be totally radical, and its "real" in the sense thay yeah ive met people like her. But they were stupid retaded fucks, and i hated them too.
/rant
I think the idea of the 2014 rule isn't that anything before then isn't pozzed, but rather anything after is so likely to be a lost cause as to not warrant further investigation.
Fair enough.
I suppose I am more just surprised about how intense it was. It could have been written a week ago.
Yeah, and things really ramped up from 20% to 95% garbage over the whole 2006-2014 period.
Psych started out (mid-late '00s?) as a pretty decent whodunnit? with lots of variety in the villains and interesting characters.
It finished (mid-'10s) as a predictable "white guy did it, and all the other guest characters are super competent unless there's another white guy that is the misdirection."
Oh, and my favorite character Gus, went from a nerd with a lot of hobbies (who happened to be black) to blackity black black let's find a way to mention that he's black.
Psych was a rough one. Really hit its stride after season one, then torpedo’d hard down the stretch. As per usual, any resolution of sexual tension between romantic leads lets the air out of the whole show.
Y'all saved me a watch, thanks. Chuck is the only show I've seen that stuck the landing with the romantic leads (though the final episode slightly undermines that).
First couple of seasons are genuinely good, and it just kind of tapers off after that. If you like mysteries and semi-juvenile guy humor, I'd recommend watching at least seasons 1-2, and then as far after that as you can tolerate the downward spiral.
Leverage is another one that is pretty good. Reverse mystery. Figure out how the good guys did it. Slightly more 'mature' humor.
Yeah I just finished the first season of Leverage, it's pretty good so far. The interracial romance with Parker and Hardison irritates me a bit, but I can overlook it. I'll probably give Psych a try up to your specified point, thanks.
Most people really have no idea how far left the modern progressive has gone. They have gone so far left that even what used to be standard bearer progressive popular entertainment from 23 years ago would be denounced as far right now.
For example, tell a modern leftist a plot line of the Bartlett administration from the TV show West Wing, and see how they react. Use, as a case study, this scene, and the context thereof, to set up a Presidential ethics dilemma to a modern progressive. Leave out that it is the West Wing, make it about Biden, and see how a modern Democrat reacts.
They would hate the idea of the WH council demanding that the President appoint a fire breathing Republican as special council.
The Democrat administration shown in West Wing was ethical, valued the rule of law, valued dissenting opinions, and fired people for leaking to the press. The modern Democrat party does none of these things, and hasn't since LBJ, if not before.
I have the benefit of being politically aware for longer than many of you, and so, I can tell you that the 2014 rule should really be the 1960 rule, if not before. Activist and provocative content has been in popular entertainment for far longer than most of you realize.
No wonder it's fiction.
It’s how they see themselves, but only insofar as those behaviors are framed within the context of the show as righteous and good. The actions taken by the characters on the show don’t matter - those actions have no bearing on whether or not the characters (or the leftist viewers) are designation as good. The feeling of goodness comes first for liberals, and then they project their own chosen principles onto it.
It’s all backwards rationalizations is what I’m trying to say lol
Ah, the very final year of the blacklist. It had been crumbling a bit before that though, if they're willing to openly break it in 1960, seems like we ought to draw the line back a bit, maybe 50
It's always been infested though, they were just forced to hide it somewhat until the 60s.
There has been obvious communist infiltration dating back some 80 years. Hollywood was struggling with communist controlled unions back in the '40s. That is where the trope of Walt Disney being an antisemite comes from. There's so much one could write about it.
I will drop a link to Razorfist's video Hollywood Was Always Red https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOtinTlx7yo https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=ZOtinTlx7yo
I just realized that I assumed everyone who would watch that YT clip might not have seen the show. so, the context of the linked YT clip is:
President Bartlett, who has a form of Multiple Sclerosis, ran for president without disclosing that he had it, not even to most of his staff. People on his staff have figured it out, and the President realizes he won't be able to keep it a secret much longer, and that the Republicans in the Congress are going to hold hearings on it when they find out, so he asks the WH legal office what should he do.
I would agree that the rot began far earlier than we'd like to believe. But I think it's a function of human evil, rather than a concerted movement so to speak.
Leftism is the political and cultural manifestation of human evil. Envy, resentment, criminality, degeneracy, lethargy, gluttony, chaos - the dregs and freaks of society form a coalition with invading barbarian hordes in order to overthrow the prosperous preexisting nation. It happens when your elites become corrupt, selfish, criminal, and degenerate themselves - or are comprised of hostile foreigners.
I use the 204 rule but I’m aware things before were bad. I guess I see it as the likelihood the show/movie/book that was made pre 2014 vs the likelihood post 2014. I had the ultimate comics and the first app of Miles Morales but then sold most of my newer stuff. Stuff was there before but since I wasn’t beaten over the head with it I didn’t mind certain storylines
I suppose the difference is that back then things were bad on their own terms. A hack gets a gig or some executive shits his pants.
Now it's completely intentional
To me, Marvel's decline really started in the mid-nineties, when editors basicly threw continuity out the window. Horrible stories and constant retcons really diminished the authenticity of the stories. Things got a bit better in the late nineties, but by the mid-to-late 2000s things got really messy again (OMD probably being the best example). Writer were allowed to just run wild, but then reset everything to a status quo at some point, which really made the stories feel like nothing mattered. The wokeness element was just more fuel on the fire when it came about in the early 2010's. That's not to say that there hasn't been some good runs since, but the brand as a whole has never been as strong and cohesive. Past 2014 or so though, there is hardly anything good left.
I've always said the way to do it was to have broad continuity on the flagship titles (amazing, uncanny, adjectiveless, invincible etc.) And then have the ultimate universe which would have a mandatory reset every 5 years. Do "new stuff" and reimaginings as desired, knowing you're not ruining anything or writing yourself into a corner.
You can end the world as often as you want to scratch the cosmic itch. And do all your "What if Betty brant was iron man" stories too and nobody could get too mad.
We were blind to the bullshit back then, but it was still out there.
I'm not sure where the cutoff lies, or if wholesome non-woke media ever existed in my lifetime.
Not all of us were blind. I've been doing this shit since the 90s and was there to see Intersectionality born and morph into Wokeism.
Which makes it all the more frustrating to have people act like no one could see it coming when the majority of people trying to fight it now were happily on the other side calling us crazy and working to set this rot in motion.
While I doubt most people here were part of the "lite-Leftist" crowd even then, most places like KIA1 is nothing but people who gleefully supported all of this, despite the obvious consequences, until it came to fruition. And now they are over here desperately acting like no one could ever have seen this coming, denying any responsibility, and calling you names for still not trusting them now.
That's why you never trust a convert.
I woke up a couple years before gamergate. Dated a BPD girl, which was one of the worst experiences of my life. Proceeded to conduct some internet research in order to learn more about such women. Found a few of the better manosphere blogs and never looked back.
When gamergate happened, it was the first time on my life that I immediately saw and understood exactly what was happening. I saw leftist media and leftists in general for the liars and psychopaths they truly were. And it was only a small step to apply that new understanding to basically all of history.
So I guess it depends on the concert. Is he telling you what you want to hear in order to curry favor in a developing social space? Is it a suspiciously convenient play for attention and validation? Or is he fucking pissed about being lied to for his entire life? Does his new understanding more or less ruin his life? Because you can usually trust that.
Amusingly, my wake-up call came from the r/atheism sub. I read through it as catharsis and kept seeing these "Mens Rights" guys getting made fun of, and someone dropped a link to r/mensrights so I went to check it out thinking that it should be a bunch of idiots to dunk on.
Turned out they had legitimate points and the enlightened atheists were just a bunch of ignorant bigots. Then Elevatorgate happened and what little regard I had in my then-mostly-neutral stance on feminism was obliterated. Then Atheism+ pushed me into FTSU mode.
What's sad is the Men's Rights sub was so milquetoast and innocent that their reaction to it was a wake up on its own.
Those guys were basically a crumb of pussy away from going right back to the Left, and their rhetoric was mostly angry venting instead of a legitimate ideology.
The cultural rot really got started in the 60s via academia and entertainment. The 70s pissed off enough people to make way for the more conservative 80s, and then 90s mostly fended off political correctness outside of the universities.
00s was a strangely quiet decade after 9/11. Lots of bullshit wars, of course, and the intel community laying the groundwork for their coming rise to power. The 10s is when Obama and Holder fully weaponized the federal government against conservatives/whites, plus BLM and LGBT took off. That’s when we lost the west.
George Floyd plus covid tyranny cemented the left’s control. Now we’re just waiting around for the spark.
I saw the shift circa 2012 and called it out as such, aka nice try media, you can't make us out to be racists. But they did.