By David Futrelle
Browsing the Jordan Peterson subreddit today, I scrolled past the link to an article on a right-wing clickbait site asserting that “Hate Crime Hoaxes are More Common than You Think.”
I paused for a moment at a post denouncing “More State Enforced Cultural Marxism” — by which the OP meant programs to teach children that gay and trans people exist. I sighed a little at the post declaring that “It is time to talk about female privilege.” (Pretty sure it isn’t.)
But I stopped dead at this post:
Was this person reading the same subreddit I was? I scrolled up to the top of the page. Yep, I was remembering correctly: this was still the literal top unstickied post, with more than 200 upvotes, complaining about a joke on Twitter suggesting that perhaps it was a teensy bit silly for white dudes to get quite so bent out of shape about a woman playing Captain Marvel:
Huh, I wondered. Was it possible that perhaps the victimhood-lamenters of the Jordan Peterson subreddit kind of, sort of, like playing the victims themselves?
No, I thought, that couldn’t be true.That would be too hypocritical, even for them, I must be wrong.
I mean, it’s not like the Jordan Peterson subreddit is chock-full of whiny laments by white dudes convinced they’re being denied their rightful share of success by evil SJWs and unqualified people of color.
Oh wait.
It’s not like some of them have convinced themselves that “neo-Marxist” SJWs and uppity “Black Females” are conspiring to destroy their careers, deny them healthcare, and take away their right to vote.
It’s not like they’re furious that men might no longer be celebrated as the noble heroes responsible for every good thing accomplished in the history of Western Civilization — including all a dose paintings by da ottist youse all may know as da Vince!
It’s not like they’re furious at the SJW’s supposed anti-white-male-doctor agenda — whether the doctors in question are real or fictional.
In the comments to that post, one of the more reasonable Jordan Peterson fans concedes that maybe only “97-98 out of a 100” real-world heroes are men.
It must be hard for members of such a truly oppressed class to ward off the temptation to play the victim. I, for one, salute the denizens of the Jordan Peterson subreddit for their heroism in standing up against victimhood culture.
NOTE FOR EXTREMELY LITERAL-MINDED READERS: Post may contain sarcasm.
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Yeah to the Captain Marvelmovie and yeah to the Shazammovie (which trailer looks also good), Ms Marvel is a great character.
There is a conection to Monica Rambeau in the Captain Marvelmovie btw.
I like Warren Elis (writer of Nextwave) quite a bit.
Life is to short to see only the bad thinks.
THAT TWEET!!!!
Maybe it’ll preview…
https://twitter.com/JessicaValenti/status/1100100628473434112
It’s a little simpler.
Hrmmm… didn’t. It says:
Jessica Valenti is an international treasure.
@Who?:
Me too. I first heard about Laurie Penny from him. And he bought his daughter a pony with the money he got when they made Red into a film, which is some Top Dadding IMO.
(For anyone wanting to check out his work without stumping up for the price of a trade paperback, he did a free webcomic a few years ago with an artist called Paul Duffield called FreakAngels, the plot of which was: what if the kids from Village of the Damned grew up? The original site seems to have rotted but the Wayback Machine has it)
(Note: Not to be confused with the other Warren Ellis who is a violin player from Australia and plays in bands like the Bad Seeds, Grinderman and the Dirty Three. He’s awesome too, mind, just in an altogether different field of human endeavour. They have been mistaken for one another on occasion which has made for some spectacularly bonkers interviews… )
I’ve been long amused by the quip in her Twitter bio, “My bitch face never rests”. So I’ve been randomly thinking up other variations of the “resting bitch face” meme.
restless bitch face
well-rested bitch face
interesting bitch face
arresting bitch face
arresting stitch face
jesting bitch face
best-in bitch face
testing bitch face
besting bitch face
besting rich face
resting twitch face
restless itch face
testing bitch mace
testing glitch face
testing switch ace
and so on
@Phaos:
I have the same issue. If you can, now or at some time, afford it, it does make you a good candidate for laser hair removal. It’s a long but rewarding process.
@Nequam:
that tweet is everything. At least JBP didn’t name his daughter Steak I guess.
@everybody:
Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel is the best thing to happen to Marvel since the MCU.
@people talking about a Shazam movie:
I, too, wanted Shaquille O’Neal to play the genie in the live action Aladdin. /Joke
@Lumipuna
Personally my bitch face is ever vigilant.
That’s the one I make when I realized I misread the knitting pattern eight rows back, isn’t it?
Meanwhile “Best-in Bitch Face” is presumably the proud smile of a dog-show winner?
@Cat Mara
Wow; I haven’t thought about FreakAngels in years, but I still love it to tiny little bits. I was a bit disappointed when Ellis ended it (although I greatly respect how he ended it).
Arkady for the win, followed by Kait, because friendly-ish authoritarianism requires some interesting intellectual blind-spots (although honestly, Arkady is the only one of the lot who doesn’t have a metric crap-ton of blindspots, and that’s only because she’s cheerfully broken).
So, Shazam is basically the same as Bananaman, in that he’s a child who transforms into an adult superhero?
@Virgin Mary
Yeah basically. Shazam is one of DC stranger superheros. kind of like Marvels Squirrel girl. That was one super hero I never thought they make a serious film about. But I also though that about Aquaman and I loved that. Basically he defends his disabled foster brother who’s being physically attacked by some bullies and gets away from the bullies. A wizard named Shazam gives him the power to be a super hero. He’s still very much a kid when he turns into Shazam. His foster brother then tries to teach him how to be a superhero because he’s really into superheros. There is a scene where they save like a quick shop from being rob and instead of a money reward they ask the store for like candy and soda and such. From what I’ve seen from the trailer they do pretty well at showing that this is still like a 12- 14 year old boy and not an adult man.
@Gaebolga: Kait’s fetish for Quincy M.E. coming out of nowhere is hilarious though.
? I love the expression on Miki’s face in that panel ? And then it becomes a running gag in the rest of the comic…
By the way, if you think the history of the character of Shazam is complicated, it gets worse! Back when he was still known as Captain Marvel and published by Fawcett Comics, Fawcett licenced him to a British company called Miller & Son who reprinted his comics in the UK, where they sold quite well. Back in the US, DC sued Fawcett for the character’s similarity to Superman (the company that was to become Marvel Comics was not yet known by that name so there were no objections on that front… yet), so Fawcett stopped making Captain Marvel comics and terminated their licence agreement with Miller. Miller, faced with the loss of their cash cow, responded by creating their own superhero called Marvelman whose comics ran in the UK until the 60s.
Then, in the early 80s, an independent comics publisher in the UK called Dez Skinn secured (or believed he did: I told you it was complicated!) the rights to the old Marvelman character for a new anthology comic he was putting together called Warrior and got an up-and-coming young writer called Alan Moore to do a suitably 80s grimdark reboot of the character. Of course, when Marvel Comics, who had come into existence in the interim and for whom Moore was working on their Captain Britain strip, found out there was a character called Marvelman and their bloody star writer was writing it, well, to say they flipped their lid was putting it mildly. The strip got re-christened Miracleman for its American release but its ownership then and since has only grown more fraught. All of this is documented in a book aptly titled Poisoned Chalice by an Irish writer called Pádraig Ó Méalóid. It’s an extremely well-researched bit of comics history. It focuses on the Marvelman/ Miracleman business but its preliminary chapters show how messy the situation already was in the States before the UK angle.
And the rights to Miracleman today has Marvel (and there was a lawsuit with Image involved)
Was a bit bussy today, reading a few of the short-fiction nominews for the Nebula. Everyone who likes Fantasy or Science-Fiction should at last have a lock at 4 of them.
Links (to make it easy for David perhaps and mention that this links are of course completly legal) can be found at File 770.
@Cat Mara, Who?:
Elizabeth Sandifer (the person who wrote the ‘Guided by the Beauty of their Weapons’ article about the Rabid Puppies and the Hugo awards) did a whole series of articles called ‘The Last War in Albion’ about the British comic book industry and specifically about the mess between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Needless to say, there’s a good chunk of a chapter just on Marvelman/Miracleman, especially since Morrison actually did a short piece involving Kid Miracleman. Pádraig Ó Méalóid is listed as one of the main references.
See http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/and-so-it-begins-the-last-war-in-albion-part-87-october-incident-1966/ for the Morrison-written Marvelman/Miracleman bit.
One of the things I got from reading that is that Alan Moore is very much an example of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘unreasonable man’:
@Virgin Mary:
Bananaman!!! I haven’t thought of that in years.
@Jenora Feuer:
Someone else quoted Elizabeth Sandifer over on another thread at me! How spooky is that? I’m sure she’d get a kick out of that herself. I’ve been reading “The Last War In Albion” with interest as the chapters come out, it’s marvelous stuff.
Ó Méalóid has a quote from someone in the “Poisoned Chalice” book, something along the lines of, “in the future, we will have no bridges because Alan Moore will have burned them all”. Ouch. And it was said by one of Moore’s friends! Gives you a measure of the guy.
@Cat Mara:
Yeah, she probably would get a kick out of it. There’s definitely a good chunk of occultist in there as well.
“Alan Moore will have burned them all.” Ouch. And yet, this is the man who, in regards to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie, said pretty much ‘I got paid an obscene amount of money so they could use the name’, with the strong implication that they hadn’t used anything else. You can have some respect for a man who means exactly what he says and will stand up for it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to work with him.
Of course, part of the take of The Last War in Albion is that it’s a magical war, and Moore is known as ‘The Magus of Northampton’ for a reason. Then again, if you define ‘magus’ as ‘someone who manipulates symbols in a deliberate attempt at creating metaphorically corresponding changes to the world around them’, it fits without even needing anything outside the known laws of physics. Anybody who’s written a story as a way to change people’s minds or affect the culture in general qualifies.
To say nothing of anyone who’s programmed a computer …
I can actually think of three fantasy settings off the top of my head where computer programming can literally be magical.
@Dalillama
Warhammer 40k and Shadowrun come to mind immediately for me.
Ok, five. I was thinking of the Laundry files, S.A. Swann’s Broken Crescent, and a book I’ve just forgotten the title of from the early 80s, where someone learns that all the magic circles and stuff work, but only barely, and only if done exactly right. So they program a computer to draw them with perfect accuracy a thousand times a second, and boom: Magic.