So as you see my pictures for this katsucon rolling in, keep in mind that I am one of /many/ people who are suffering and suffer all the time from invisible illnesses and /don’t/ put ourselves out…

I don’t know much about your health problems or what can be done for them, but I hope the pain is at the very least bearable and I wish it wasn’t there at all. Also, friendly reminder that I’m glad you exist. 🙂

I might not talk a lot about my health, because I don’t think it is all that interesting and is mostly depressing, but I friendly reminder that I am disabled and live in chronic pain and am having a…

feminspire:

Our stories and many others do not need to be monetized and capitalized on, they need to be showcased honestly, loved fervently, admired unabashedly, validated unapologeticly, and healed. Community needs to be built. Stories that go far and beyond tales of systemic and…

If it’s made properly, where the people behind it actually believe in it and the company publishing it actually gives it the marketing it deserves, then it will sell. You can’t have a team that thinks what they’re making is “politically correct trash,” otherwise they’ll expect it to suck and not even try to make it good. You also can’t have a publisher that thinks it’s going to fail at sales, otherwise they’ll withhold necessary funding to get it out there for people to see, or their marketing angle will be so terrible that it actually hurts the product’s sales.

However, even if it sells poorly at first, not giving up on it can turn it into a thing. RPGs had been around for a long time before FF7 made them popular for a while. If companies completely gave up on RPGs because they didn’t sell as well as platformers (the popular games of the NES and SNES eras), the RPG trend wouldn’t have come along and struck gold.

Games with a certain type of protagonist “don’t sell” only because companies decide in advance that they won’t sell. By doing this, they ignorantly sabotage their own products before they even go up for sale.

I Don’t Care if Media About Queer PoC “Won’t Sell” – We Need to Create it Anyway

catsbythegreat:

Thoughts on the final ANXF issue. SPOILERS ahead:

-too much plot crammed in (probably because of the sudden ending) and not enough exploration of character, even though some got in there

-Pietro’s leaving was pretty abrupt. What he says makes sense in his message, but I can tell that his leaving…

maximoffmartell:

Magneto #14:

• I fucking hate SHIELD. So is it satisfactory to see Magneto crushing them, and then certainly outsmarting them? Hell yeah. They’re pathetic.
• Plus, Magneto and Genosha feels. Also, I love how Bunn is choosing to ignore the paternity mess and pretend like it never happened, at…

I think it silently speaks volumes about how stupid and awful the Axis #7 retcon is that anyone other than Brevoort, Remender and the execs at Disney and Marvel is ignoring the retcon. Nothing explicit, but simply pretending it didn’t even happen.

In the case of at least Peter David, it was also a colossal dick move on the part of the Avengers books. Peter David said he was given no indication that there were plans for the retcon out of Axis, he spent all this time building up the family relations only for the Avengers books to stomp all over his work without a single considerate thought sent his way.

I know nothing about what Cullen Bunn does or doesn’t know in that regard, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happened to him. Whether it did or not, Bunn’s been keenly focused on the goal of telling a good story and making the most of what Magneto has to offer story-wise. My opinion is that he’s ignoring the retcon (at least for now) because the retcon would tarnish the story. Even with the crossover issues, Bunn’s done a great job of writing the issues in a manner that can stand the test of time on their own merits, not bogged down by bullshit Marvel office politics.

peppermonster:

salarta:

I’ve been busy. Haven’t been able to post some stuff because of more pressing matters. Now that I have time, it’s time for me to post something I’ve had on my mind for days.

Brevoort and Remender conducted this conference call on Monday. I didn’t read it. Based on the actions I’ve seen them…

What breaks my heart is I have been a fan of the Twins for decades, and Marvel shows blatant disrespect to the spirit of these characters over and over by writing Pietro out and everything Bendis did. But it was always fixable, redeemable. But now they are messing with the fundamentals. Their core. Change the context and meaning of every interaction they have ever had. The Twins had a retcon to their parentage, it was changed within five years because no one liked it! The magneto thing worked because it lasted 30 years! How is one failed story arc and one established parentage a case of “new parents every week”? How does one even jump to that conclusion? You,

brevoortformspring

are talking out your ass agin, which explains all the shit. And this has nothing to do with the movies? Right. Because having connected covers of all the Marvel teams heading to the cinema is in no way showing a connection to the films. Right. Right.

The thing is, I’ve seen companies pursue this kind of behavior repeatedly, and it never works out well for them.

Brevoort appears to have a lot of faulty assumptions in his head. Some of his ploys have worked only because it appears to take longer for issues to reach critical mass among comic book fans.

From what I’ve seen of him to date, I’m under the impression he operates on the following expectations. First, he thinks fandom and the way it operates hasn’t significantly changed since when he was younger and could count himself as just another fan. Second, he thinks outdated business tactics are still feasible, and there aren’t fans that are able to see through them and call them out for what they are. Third, he has the belief that readership is so low and post-film interest is so high that this scandal will just drive more people to read the comics.

He’s missing a lot of crucial details, and I’m not explicitly highlighting what they are because I know what he’d do with the information. If he came across as someone that meant well and would try to do right by fans, the story would be different. But when it’s someone that seems to have a goal of fulfilling his own interests at the expense of fans and the source material, I’m content to let those problems come to their inevitable conclusion.

zennistrad:

evilelitest:

I love this because it highlights everything I hate about Gamergate and Tumblr

What’s more hilarious is just how miserably this “operation” failed when they tried it.

The Firefly Papers – Pastebin.com

peppermonster:

frostbite883:

Nothing happened. Wanda’s spell didn’t work on him. While it’s true that Wanda called on the dark forces to help her kill Magneto/Erik, nevertheless, it didn’t do nothing to him. Wanda/Scarlet Witch/Crimson Witch figured that the reason her spell didn’t work is because Magneto’s not really her…

I bounced around with this thought.

There is also the possibility that the man in that scene we take as Magneto is not actually Magneto. Therefore the spell wouldn’t work. A LMD or Skrull (as examples) wouldn’t technically be blood related and therefore unaffected by the spell but would honestly believe themselves to be Magneto and therefore confused/shocked.

The number of times Erik has been cloned, de-aged, killed, reborn, replaced, and everything in between, there is a possibility he doesn’t have his original body anymore. The man should be over 85 years old, and clearly isn’t. Perhaps he has his mind in a younger body? A body that isn’t blood-tied to the twins at this point? He’s still technically the father, just not physically anymore?

But I feel like the point of this retcon was to sever ties the twins have to Erik, not just change in what way they are related to him.

I theorize they are actually the children of Magda and Chthon and so still semi-connected to Erik by being the children of his wife, this why Wanda looks just like Magda, and the twins would still be Jewish Romani.

We don’t have much time left to find out. February was the solicit that promised “foundation shaking revelations” so…count down to distress and depression in this fandom.

An alternative possible explanation, that a future writer can use to fix this mess I’m certain Brevoort, Remender and the Avengers books will refuse to fix, is Magneto’s use of MGH. While he had a chemist make MGH using his own DNA, I think (my memory’s shaky after a few months) Magneto used MGH made from another mutant earlier in the Magneto solo. If my memory isn’t playing tricks on me, then that means he has DNA from a different mutant still inside him, and that might have been enough to confuse Wanda’s spell.

I say this fully expecting that if Marvel gets wind of this explanation, they’ll rush to add an excuse for why MGH wasn’t the reason. I’m not too concerned if they do, because with a world like Marvel, there are an endless number of ways to canonically fix that mess. Doesn’t matter how many they seal off, a talented writer will find a way to make it work.

In Axis #7, Wanda Maximoff (influenced by the inversion spell) casted a spell on her father, Erik. The result?

brevoortformspring:

This time last year I was reading about ten books a month. Three of them were DC titles. Two of the DC’s books I was reading and enjoying had their writers quit due to issues with editorial in the middle of long running story arcs. As a result I dropped those books and…

Brevoort not just reading this, but actually posting it to show he read it, gives me a lot more respect for him than I was feeling up to this point.

I’ll be honest, it’s hard for me to figure out precisely where things stand with Brevoort on this specific issue. I don’t think Brevoort made the call. I think if it really was all his call, and he really always wanted to do this from the get-go, then all the Avengers-driven material that had the Magnus family sans Lorna on prominent display would never have happened. Children’s Crusade wouldn’t have happened, and there would not have been big moments in Avengers vs X-Men.

I also think that if he didn’t care about the Magnus family at all, then he would not have ignored Lorna being part of it in everything he oversaw, and he wouldn’t have tried to make excuses for why she shouldn’t be part of the family. It would be easy for me to spin him as not appreciating the family due to not appreciating Lorna, but the truth is that I think he just doesn’t see how good it is for all three of Magneto’s kids to be his kids, and I think he thinks Lorna “tarnishes” the family when she actually helps make it all the more exciting.

What’s hard for me to suss out here is whether retconning Wanda and Pietro out of the family was orders from above or a conscious choice he made himself. I can see Brevoort not wanting to do the retcon, but not fighting it because he doesn’t have enough pull with anyone to risk it. However, I can also see him deciding on this retcon not because he was told to do it, but because something in the corporate culture he’s part of made him think the change would look good to people above him.

I’ve been oscillating between the two, and most of the time I assume the latter. I’d like to assume the former, because I feel bad about expecting the worst out of people, but it’s hard for me to assume the former after some of the things he’s said in the past.

Overall, I really do hope this retcon is undone quickly (within a month or two), and we have all three of Magneto’s kids confirmed as his kids and doing stuff together.

Last note of my own. Looking at it purely as a story turn and character development, I didn’t mind Alex’s anti-mutant speech. Alex has a history of not appreciating his own heritage (e.g. when he left the X-Men for a “normal, civilian life” in the late 60s/early 70s), and it’s really not that farfetched for someone of a minority to not recognize or value his own minority’s culture. This is why I didn’t really go into outrage mode or start dropping films, games or comics over it. It only started to look like an issue to me in conjunction with many other elements that, when taken together, look nothing like unfortunate accidents and more like a deliberate trend for the worse.

Modern Marvel and the longtime reader