Page 97 of 117 FirstFirst ... 478793949596979899100101107 ... LastLast
Results 1,441 to 1,455 of 1743
  1. #1441
    BANNED
    Join Date
    Apr 2017
    Location
    Pennsylvania
    Posts
    3,493

    Default

    They should invite the Avengers to the next crucible so we can watch the flatscans clutch their pearls.

  2. #1442
    BANNED
    Join Date
    Jan 2020
    Posts
    4,026

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Solitaryhawk View Post
    I just skimmed through the issue yesterday and I was horrified by the unnecessary brutality that Melody Guthrie went through. I'd embraced the technological marvels of Krakoa and was not assured that they seem to be adopting a Lord of the Flies approach among their own. For a group supposed to be the next step in evolution... THIS was what they came up with? This ritual was unsophisticated, violent, and entirely unnecessary. Moreover, it had a Roman gladiatorial vibe to it and I didn't like it. In my eye, the entire mutant sovereignty just took a step backwards in terms of evolution.
    Joaquin phoenix won an oscar watching over sometin like that, krakoa is all sorts of high up on the vintage revivals, there's levels to fabulous

  3. #1443
    Extraordinary Member BroHomo's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Da Souf
    Posts
    6,740

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Zelena View Post
    1st category: ecstatic reader
    2nd category: annoyed but interested enough to read
    3rd category: disgusted and bitching about Hickman's use of X-men

    Better like that?
    Ha! Yeah I got cha now!
    Quote Originally Posted by Ferro View Post
    It counts as like... a ritualistic battle with the intention of dying and be reborn... that you chose to do, i have no idea how to qualify it.
    the closest thing is a surgery: willingly submiting yourself to severe trauma with the intention of healing and recovery.
    it's such a non human concept I cant really say what it is lol.
    Tooootally dig the surgery vibe...thats a pretty accurate example of what the crucible represents to those with power. Also dig the fact that the books have elements, themes, concerns that arent just easily digestible human issues+mutant power
    Quote Originally Posted by Veitha View Post
    I really like the surgery comparison.

    Don't some coming of age rituals around the world involve fighting too?
    It did at my middle school in Alabama.
    lol but dang thats a good comparison as well
    Quote Originally Posted by Solitaryhawk View Post
    I just skimmed through the issue yesterday and I was horrified by the unnecessary brutality that Melody Guthrie went through. I'd embraced the technological marvels of Krakoa and was not assured that they seem to be adopting a Lord of the Flies approach among their own. For a group supposed to be the next step in evolution... THIS was what they came up with? This ritual was unsophisticated, violent, and entirely unnecessary. Moreover, it had a Roman gladiatorial vibe to it and I didn't like it. In my eye, the entire mutant sovereignty just took a step backwards in terms of evolution.
    Soooo you didnt read it....I guess itll be better to get treated by Western medicine....Well theres no hope of her having her powers so shell probably have to take anti-depressants which have had such a good track with teens and sadness
    GrindrStone(D)

  4. #1444
    Cosmic Sandwich Metal Sphere's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    New York City
    Posts
    303

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Su_Whisterfield View Post
    The public entertainment of watching a pretty young girl being slain in the arena was chilling, clearly meant to be so.
    The sight of Vulcan whispering in Charles’ ear was right out of the Roman gladiatorial games.

    This is all completely deliberate.
    Bingo. The presentation of the entire issue, Cyclops (of all people) being deeply uncomfortable with it. Wolverine (of all people who should be used to violence and gore) refusing to go. And Nightcrawler seeing it as yet another thing on Krakoa that's making him ask worrying questions. The horror movie moment with Doug, Krakoa and Warlock for example, was another thing going along with the general atmosphere of the issue. Despite Melody's rebirth and repowering being depicted in glorious shining rays, this issue was figuratively and literally shaded with some real heavy shadows.

    That we found it as fascinating and entertaining as it is is a testament to the team's skill.

  5. #1445
    Astonishing Member Zelena's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2019
    Posts
    4,522

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Ferro View Post
    It counts as like... a ritualistic battle with the intention of dying and be reborn... that you chose to do, i have no idea how to qualify it.
    the closest thing is a surgery: willingly submiting yourself to severe trauma with the intention of healing and recovery.
    it's such a non human concept I cant really say what it is lol.
    Looks more like a sectarian ritual: give up all what you were, your life, suffer and be reborn as a member of group without any individuality. She clearly stated 'to fight and to die for my people'. She died as a person and her new life belongs to her people.
    The ritual was clearly made to turn people into fanatics… the one who passes the test like the ones who watch it.
    “Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time.” Goethe

  6. #1446
    Spectacular Member Solitaryhawk's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Posts
    230

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Su_Whisterfield View Post
    The public entertainment of watching a pretty young girl being slain in the arena was chilling, clearly meant to be so.
    The sight of Vulcan whispering in Charles’ ear was right out of the Roman gladiatorial games.

    This is all completely deliberate.
    I could really see Shatterstar losing his **** over a spectacle like that. To run from Mojoworld and escape the Slaughter Games only to be a part of a populace that now embraces the same sport. Unbelievable.

  7. #1447
    Cosmic Sandwich Metal Sphere's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    New York City
    Posts
    303

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Solitaryhawk View Post
    I could really see Shatterstar losing his **** over a spectacle like that. To run from Mojoworld and escape the Slaughter Games only to be a part of a populace that now embraces the same sport. Unbelievable.
    Now that you mention it, where the hell is Shatterstar? Anyway, I don't know if Shatterstar would risk being ejected from Krakoa over it. He might just stay away like Wolverine.

  8. #1448
    Spectacular Member Solitaryhawk's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Posts
    230

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Metal Sphere View Post
    Now that you mention it, where the hell is Shatterstar? Anyway, I don't know if Shatterstar would risk being ejected from Krakoa over it. He might just stay away like Wolverine.
    Agreed. It would be interesting to see how outliers would view the direction that Krakoa is going. Star is half-human and landlord to a building of time displaced refugees that would be rejected by Krakoa, since they aren't mutants. We don't know where Longshot is or how he would view this "We Are Mutant Hear Me Roar" society considering how close he was to all the main players, either. I would like to see something from either of their perspective(s).

    Star had a cameo in X-Force #2 (the splash page where everyone was crowded around Xavier's corpse). The artist reverted him to his 90s style so I try not to think about it too much. He and Rictor were recently spotted in Marvel's Voices #1 in a wonderful short story by Luciano Vecchio.

    PANEL.jpg

  9. #1449
    Mighty Member zinderel's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    1,515

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Solitaryhawk View Post
    I could really see Shatterstar losing his **** over a spectacle like that. To run from Mojoworld and escape the Slaughter Games only to be a part of a populace that now embraces the same sport. Unbelievable.
    I think Gav would be fine with Crucible, personally. Crucible isn’t Slaughter Games for the entertainment of lazy masses, it’s trial by combat, which he has never shown any problems with.

    We have to remember, both in dealing with real life human cultures that are ‘alien’ to us, and when reading a sci-fi story about a culture that is almost-but-not-quite human, to not apply our own biases and morals to their rituals and beliefs. Does the ritual make sense within the context of mutant experience? Obviously it doesn’t to OUR experiential context. It’s brutal and scary, and why would anyone do this?!

    But then, looking at it within the context of what mutants, as a race, have been through? A literal lifetime of being hunted, tortured, experimented on, killed, forcibly depowered, vilified, demonized, distrusted by even other heroes. Mutant life on 616 Earth is hell. It’s is a Crucible in and of itself. The ritual of Crucible is the mutant struggle, writ small. “You say you are a mutant? Being a mutant is struggle. It is violence. It is death and rebirth. If you are a mutant, prove it.” Crucible isn’t a game for no reason other than the entertainment of spineless, useless overlords. It’s a ritual of combat and worthiness and reclaiming of power, both literal and metaphorical.

    Is it strange and scary and maybe even wrong to us? Sure.

    Might it become something more akin to gladiator games in the future? Oh, prolly, given human nature.

    Is it some world-ending, ‘OMG-mutants-are-a-Nazi-death-cult-now!!!!!’ Thing? No. Not even close.

    Mutants are born from humanity, but are not entirely human anymore. We cannot hold them to our standards, ESPECIALLY after the REPEATED mass traumas of the last few years. For us, the Legacy Virus, Genosha, M-Day, the massacre of formerly mutant students at the hands of Purifiers, Utopia, Schism, AvX, M-Pox, IvX, Rosenberg’s run...all took place over a couple decades. For the mutant race, though? All of that...all of it happened in the span of less than 5 years.

    Imagine for a moment being brutally victimized, to the point of almost dying. Most people, thankfully, make it through life relatively unfazed by real trauma, so this is hard, I know. But try to imagine how difficult it would be to go through that and get nothing but apathy at best, or outright hate at worst from the majority of the people you know. Now imagine that brutality happening over and over and over and over again, for YEARS, and never letting up. Imagine being blamed for your assaults, being told that they’re your fault. That you provoked your attacker. That you deserve what you get. That if you didn’t flaunt yourself so much, maybe people wouldn't hate you, and so on.

    And then imagine someone comes along and offers you a hand up, and says they understand, that you aren’t alone. Mutants are an entire race, traumatized. Of COURSE they are going to go to extremes when they finally get a place that feels safe, a secure way to explore their culture and what it all means to them and to each other and to the world. Of COURSE their rituals and guiding philosophies are going to have a morbid or troubling-to-non-trauma-survivor elements. If I told you the things my friends and I - all violent trauma survivors - joke about when things get bleak, you’d probably be horrified. The philosophical discussions at 2am, the hypotheticals regarding our abusers, the jokes we tell to lessen the constant pain of our traumas. The mornings we wake up, wishing we’d died in our sleep, but get up and force ourselves to carry on. The evenings spent crying and raging and asking ‘why?!?!’...

    I see ALL of that in the current state of Krakoa. It’s part of why I got so heated in the past over this, and why I defend it, despite its flaws.

    And of COURSE people are freaking out over it. There are clearly problems with Krakoa. No question. But ‘I recognize there are problems with Krakoa as it is being presented’ doesn’t equal ‘X-Men are Nazis/X-Men are a cult/X-Men are evil now’. Unfortunately, several posters here don’t seem to get that, and present their concerns with the more emphatic, ridiculous extremes that get disproven every week:

    - “Xavier never shows his face because he’s secretly Cassandra Nova/Sinister/some other evil.” Disproven. He’s Charles, for good or ill.

    - “Magneto said that mutants are gods, so that means Krakoa is a cult!” I have previously posted a list of ten signs that an organization may be a cult. Krakoa doesn’t fit any but POSSIBLY the very last two. Magneto has ALWAYS been dramatically mutant supremacist. Now that a Krakoa is a thing, he feels confident to voice it calmly, instead of as a threat to flatscans. Magneto saying mutants are new gods is completely in character for him, and not indicative of a cult.

    - “Humans aren’t allowed on Krakoa! That makes mutants racists!” Shogo lives on the island with Jubilee. At least, til he became a dragon. Aero - a former mutant made human, was on Krakoa. The majority of humanity in the 616 passivle stood by while a virulently awful minority did their level best - including mass-producing giant murderbots and allying with a techno-organic race of aliens intent on consuming ALL life on Earth as long as they consumed mutants first. They cheered the creation of a cure. They don’t ‘hate’ mutants, but wouldn’t want their kids to date one. Or heaven forbid, BE one. Most 616 humans are complacent, lazy trash, when not being flaming genocide monkeys. I don’t blame Krakoa for not being comfortable with just welcoming to Krakoa any human who says they wanna go. It’s like saying a battered women’s shelter should start allowing men, too. It’s completely dismissing the very real concerns abuse victims have in favor of performative ‘equality’, and I’m not here for it.

    - “Humans aren’t allowed on Krakoa, so any mutant who gets pregnant with a human baby will have to abort it!!!” ...Do I REALLY need to address how ridiculous THIS leap was...?

    - “Krakoa is accepting super villains! That means the X-Men are now super-villains!” No. As addressed in HoXPoX, this is the tenth go ‘round for Moira. This is the first time she has pushed for ALL mutants to come together as one for the survival of their species. Selene and Emplate are hardly likely to go around feasting on Krakoa children. They agreed to follow the rules of Krakoa and for now, we have no evidence that they are secretly eating babies, human or otherwise, so maybe put down the hysteria? Apocalypse is a villain, but only because he believes mutants are the new gods and should rise up and supplant the weak, pathetic humans. He only ever fought the X-Men because they defended the weak, or to make them prove themselves in combat (like a lot of mini-crucibles...). Sinister is, for me, the most problematic villain, but we have to believe Moira isn’t an idiot. She knows he’ll betray them. She likely has plans for when he does, and is willing to use him while he plays along.

    Anyway, literally every frenzied, performative complaint has been or is being addressed. Because that’s how comics work. I can only hope people come to realize that and stop going nuts at every little thing, and realize that this story too shall pass, and THEN we can decide if it’s Claremontian in relevance or if it’s...Carey-ian in its laughability. We haven’t even gotten through act one of the story yet, and we are being presented with cracks in the ‘perfect’ facade. Just like he did with F4 and Avengers, Hickman is going to lift the heroes up only to let them fall, and then rise from the ashes. We are on the initial lift. like a roller-coaster, we can’t judge the ride by the first bump. We have to get to the end to see if it was a good ride or not. For me, the ride is glorious, so far, in the way that scary/troubling sci-fi SHOULD be.
    Last edited by zinderel; 03-01-2020 at 03:20 PM.

  10. #1450
    Extraordinary Member BroHomo's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Da Souf
    Posts
    6,740

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Zelena View Post
    Looks more like a sectarian ritual: give up all what you were, your life, suffer and be reborn as a member of group without any individuality. She clearly stated 'to fight and to die for my people'. She died as a person and her new life belongs to her people.
    The ritual was clearly made to turn people into fanatics… the one who passes the test like the ones who watch it.
    lol sounds like the Military.........or the Avengers Initiative
    Quote Originally Posted by Solitaryhawk View Post
    I could really see Shatterstar losing his **** over a spectacle like that. To run from Mojoworld and escape the Slaughter Games only to be a part of a populace that now embraces the same sport. Unbelievable.
    lol this is nothing like whatever it is you're referring to. If anything it's probably the safest sport
    GrindrStone(D)

  11. #1451
    Astonishing Member LordUltimus's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Posts
    4,188

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by zinderel View Post
    We have to remember, both in dealing with real life human cultures that are ‘alien’ to us, and when reading a sci-fi story about a culture that is almost-but-not-quite human, to not apply our own biases and morals to their rituals and beliefs.
    Y'mean like the Inhumans?

  12. #1452
    Spectacular Member Solitaryhawk's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Posts
    230

    Default

    That was an amazing post, Zinderel. Thank you.

  13. #1453
    Ultimate Member Tycon's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2016
    Posts
    12,734

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by LordUltimus View Post
    Y'mean like the Inhumans?
    Mmmmmmmnnnnnnno.

    But then, looking at it within the context of what mutants, as a race, have been through? A literal lifetime of being hunted, tortured, experimented on, killed, forcibly depowered, vilified, demonized, distrusted by even other heroes. Mutant life on 616 Earth is hell. It’s is a Crucible in and of itself.

  14. #1454
    Cosmic Sandwich Metal Sphere's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    New York City
    Posts
    303

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Solitaryhawk View Post
    Agreed. It would be interesting to see how outliers would view the direction that Krakoa is going. Star is half-human and landlord to a building of time displaced refugees that would be rejected by Krakoa, since they aren't mutants. We don't know where Longshot is or how he would view this "We Are Mutant Hear Me Roar" society considering how close he was to all the main players, either. I would like to see something from either of their perspective(s).

    Star had a cameo in X-Force #2 (the splash page where everyone was crowded around Xavier's corpse). The artist reverted him to his 90s style so I try not to think about it too much. He and Rictor were recently spotted in Marvel's Voices #1 in a wonderful short story by Luciano Vecchio.
    Oh, well that answers that. Hopefully we get him in some X-books in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if Krakoa gives Shatterstar money much like they do to the Morlocks in Arizona. Also, I wonder if the thing that happens to Krakoa is much mundane than what everyone is thinking of. Maybe its form of government changes our heroes are simply voted out? They're still Krakoans but have little to no political or cultural power. Of course, that would be more politicking than fist throwing or beam firing, so I doubt it's that. For right now I'm enjoying the worldbuilding Hickman's engaged in. It's cool seeing a society of non-humans sloughing off human conventions, ideas, and morals ASAP. Now it makes me want an indepth look at Lemuria (that's the Deviants right?). We already got a good look at Attilan and that was a nasty one.

  15. #1455
    Mighty Member zinderel's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Posts
    1,515

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by LordUltimus View Post
    Y'mean like the Inhumans?
    Sure, though they hardly have the trauma conga line the Mutant race have had. I enjoyed the Inhumans for a long time, and only started having issues with them when their religious beliefs started costing mutant lives. Even today, after M-Pox/The Terrigen Clouds/IvX, I still enjoy an Inhuman story, as long as it’s not those specific ones. They are not human, and if I can wrap my mind around xenophobic tree-dweller with magic powers in Tolkien, or emotionally crippled, Green-blooded aliens whose culture is based on logic, illogically, on Star Trek, I can do it in comic books, too. I don’t have to agree with all aspects of a culture to enjoy reading about it.
    Last edited by zinderel; 03-01-2020 at 03:28 PM.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •