I'm just gonna say it again real quick:

Yes!! Iron Man is a tragedy! It has and always has been since the very first appearance in 1963 which describes itself, Tony's life, and legacy, as such.

Tony causes most of his issues himself, he is his biggest villain, a majority of his rogues gallery are caricatures of the worst versions of himself brought to life (when they're not just being racist cuz...60s...). The worst thing about being Tony Stark is that he can't stop being Tony Stark (he tried!!) That is the point.

The majority of pain Tony goes through, is pain he inflicts on himself, whether intentionally or inadvertently. That is the point.

He is not A villain (at least. Not usually. There are...some rough moments and arcs that are. Not great. As there is with any character as old as he is). But he is his own main antagonist.

Shutters, I was reading your review of King of the Kaiju, and I couldn't help but wonder what exactly you meant by The Marvel Formula™. I'm not exactly great with pattern recognition, but I am interested in reading your critique of certain parts of the formula of Marvel films.

There’s a lot to talk about with the Marvel formula, and it’s honestly too broad a topic to discuss in one post nor do I feel like I am qualified to give a complete breakdown of their adaptation process that has made them turn completely niche IPs like Iron Man and Thor into such mainstream successes.

I will say though, something that soon got grating for me was how many of their films implemented their action-comedy, especially during Phase 2 and part of Phase 3, when the Joss Whedon-infused script of the first Avengers movie proved to be such an astounding success.

Like, Taika Watiti knew how to do it right (not perfect, but right). There was a rhythm to how he weaved humor into the movie, a consistent beat that allowed the movie to breathe and tell its story when it needed to and tell jokes when it was the right time for it.

Like, you have Hela’s return to Asgard where they slip in a joke that literally nobody knows who she is and nobody listened to her villain speech. It looks like its interrupting her big villain introduction, but it actually prefaces it. It gives the audience a laugh, because the next scene has her slaughtering Asgard’s armies uninterrupted. On the other hand, if Thor Ragnarok came out during phase 2 and under a different director, I feel like they would have inserted a joke moment when Hela blasted the ceiling and revealed Asgard’s past as a kingdom born from conquest. That would have sucked.

The Marvel formula for action-comedy at its worst executed was so afraid of like, telling a story with difficult messages or even just having uncomfortable moments. It would insert jokes at every available opportunity to make sure the audience didn’t spend any decent amount of time in an introspective mood where they could feel bad about things. Hell, it’s why so many of these movies have this weird common thing among them where the plot essentially tells the hero “You were ALWAYS awesome, the way you were!” because requiring its heroes to change or grow would require previously said introspection and we can’t have the kids dealing with that!

This has led to a good portion of the Marvel movies feel very samey, even with their wildly different casts and directors. I remember Black Panther really stood out to me because not only was it not afraid to tell fewer jokes than its fellows, but it wasn’t afraid to be difficult. We saw T’Challa take a humiliating and crushing defeat. We saw Kilmonger directly confronting Wakanda about how it was content to sit in its ivory tower while its brothers and sisters across the globe suffered from war and poverty (holy shit it actually called out POC in privileged positions!) We were shown a glimpse of the kind of life he lived, a very real life for many underprivileged black boys, and how Wakanda turning away from this uncomfortable truth created the monster. 

Anyway, this isn’t really what I had in mind when I said King of the Monsters didn’t follow the Marvel Formula (I meant more of how it wore the cheesy, B-movie nature of the Showa era like a badge of pride rather than try to appeal to the mainstream with cooler, sleeker reimaginings of the source material and moving away from the weirder, cheesier stuff), but I’ve definitely been waiting to write out something like this. I’m very sorry!

Good day to you! As far as I can remember (though my memory might serve me wrong here), there are no more wars in DN universe. If Light's reign continued, what long-term consequences could it bear for politics and economy? If countries stopped wasting money on wars, wouldn't sciences have skyrocketed? What about borders, wouldn't there be less countries? I know this question is hardcore and requires a ton of expert's knowledge, but I'm very interested in what direction your thought goes. Thanks!

You did it, you sent me the one ask I have to admit defeat on.

I’ve been musing over this for the past few weeks, but ultimately I decided I don’t have that expert’s knowledge nor is it something I can really read up on quickly enough, sob. Plus DN universe moves in ways that aren’t entirely consistent with what might be realistic for our world right now - the reaction to Kira in DN universe that we are shown might not be the same as an economic and political hypothetical from our world would come up with. Adding that DN world didn’t have 9/11, so a lot of political stuff is different to start with....

Yeah, I’m not qualified to answer this question. I am but a measly language student, I don’t really have excessive amounts of economic and political knowledge, haha. I’m just a nerd under a rock.

So instead of speculating wildly and uninformedly on stuff I have no basis to talk about, I’ll just have to honestly apologize and say I can’t answer this.

I’m stumped.

But thank you so much for putting the faith into me that led to asking this!

Serious kinda question, feel free to delete if you don't wanna talk about this, but is it hard to be black and get into dog sports? Your one of the only black dogblr blogs I follow, and dog sports seem (imo) to be a really white dominated sport. I'm not saying like outright racist but in my experience white dominated spaces like that are just super uncomfortable and awkward for me (can I touch your hair q's, oh that's not proper grammar etc)

PT 2 I was wondering what your experience with being black and being in the like niche show/sport dog world was like? I want to break into this world but am a little apprehensive to join something that just seems to white dominated, it seems as if through all the awkwardness and subtle micro-aggressions it would take the fun out for me and my dog if we ever got competitive

It can really depend what crowd you run with, and you have to remember that people are multifaceted, complicated, and flawed by design. Also, it might just be because I’m not involved in that world, but weight pull seems black/latino dominated to me. My exposure to weight pull however has been from inner city programs to try an help adults and kids learn how to interact wth their dogs in a different manner other than fighting them, so that may simply be due to location/region.

But it can really go either way. Among my list of IPO friends there are a lot of Trump supporters, blue/all lives matter, vaguely racist/anti muslim/homophobic/transphobic, anti-millennial, conservatives. There are also a lot of vegan/vegetarian, liberal/far left, old hippy/protester, natural everything no chemicals anti vax, raw feeding tree huggers. There’s people who fall somewhere inbetween. It actually reminds me of a post last year from one of my FB friends asking liberals what their most conservative belief is, and conservatives what their most liberal belief is, and what was discovered was that the majority of her friends all believed in basically the same set of principles with wildly different reasons, opinions, and phrasing for such. I find that most of the tolerable people in the dog world fall into that category- decent human beings who just want the world to be a good and safe place, just that have many different ideas on what exactly that means.

(It’s kind of like dog sports itself in a way- I train with a bunch of Sit Means Sit guys and I don’t like how they treat their dogs and would personally not do such things myself, but I also rarely see anything that qualifies as actual abuse and when that does occur the mentor pulls them aside [or anyone else he catches doing such] and has a word with them on what he won’t allow in his field.)

If I went into this world being afraid of what it meant for me to be openly black, gay, and trans plus fairly liberal and agnostic, then I doubt I would have gotten this far. Head up, be you, and don’t apologize for being yourself. Don’t be afraid to say what you believe in, but keep yourself respectful and humble as well (since you’re a newcomer). There will be people who won’t even consider talking to you because you are black, or gay, or whatever, and those are people I don’t speak with. Case in point- the person who encouraged me heavily to get Creed is someone that I am avidly Not Friends (tm) with anymore after multiple racist anti-black posts from her during the upset in Ferguson. Actually, my FB cover is STILL the iconic “return to sender” image (of the guy with the American flag shirt tossing a tear gas canister fired by police) because of this. I’ve had a couple discussions with people who know for sure that certain unnamed breeders won’t even consider selling or speaking to a black buyer. People are racist. That’s how it is. You can’t change them, so you might as well just cross them off your list of “people I make nice with” and go about your day.

There are several racist undertones in the dog world. A lot of respectability politics, a lot of classism and sexism, and there’s even Nazism and KKK members lurking in some parts- obvious if you look hard enough for it, subtle enough to slip under folks with “I don’t see color” radar. 

Also, perhaps because I’m in dobes and dobe people know better than to approach/touch someone holding one of this breed without their consent, but I literally never get “can I touch your hair”. I do get the occasional sight of a thin blue line sticker or all lives matter shirt but then again I’ve never been overtly frowned at for wearing any of my black pride stuff either. I have seen someone get kicked out of an event for refusing to change his swastika shirt, though us folks with the German breeds working in German sports tend to have to deal with skinhead idiots the most often. There’s a lot of little things that would go over the heads of folks who’ve never lived the experience of not being white in this country, but once you point it out the good folks usually go #YIKES at it. For instance, when I pointed out the very racist KKK slogan being repurposed to albino dobermans (White is Right), most of the more decent folks on my friends list went “OH MY GOD I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE EW EW EW EW” and yes it could be performative allyship but I’d rather that than “why should I care” attitude.