#the bad guys really suffer in this series by the even badder guys | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

captainshadowgirllostfan · 2 years

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I don't understand people.

I'm looking at tumblr posts and everyone is like Season 1 and 2 is the best. But Season 3 is really great too! Everyone is complaining about too much characters. But here's something I'm noticing. Every season focuses on a different team, different characters. Hell if you ask me Season 2 focused too much and too many characters, but Season 3 sticks to pretty much the same characters, Bryon Markov AKA Geoforce, Violet Harper AKA Halo, and Forager. There's more focus on Dick as Nightwing with his new team that he made by accident and didn't really want.

Black Lightning. Artemis, Superboy and Miss Martian are more like support character but I still love Artemis and am currently tolerating Miss Martian and Superboy (even though I hate them as a couple). Garth AKA Beast Boy is getting more attention and I love how it's giving this sort of view of how artists/celebrities get depressed despite the popularity.

The dangers of social media and technology and how much it's controlling lives. There are really great themes being explored and the show really feels idk realistic in the sense when it shows us tv programs and new broadcasts, the show's universe's political debates...it's honestly a mirror of American politics (which I kinda don't like because I had started realizing American politics is in a bubble and most people abroad just don't get our politics. At times we seem stupid to them...and I kinda can understand. This is how DC politics and new broadcasts feels like too).

It's such a great show and yet everyone is focused on "friendships, teamwork and characters" and yet there's EXACTLY that in the show when you focus on Bryon, Halo, and Forager...well I'll admit there's also a lot of romances but I just ignore that...

I think people just don't like being introduced to new characters ever season...they want focus on the same characters every season so that they could see their "growth"...personally I prefer the introduction of characters I never even knew existed in DC and the focus on those characters. Before Season 3 Young Justice, I had never heard of GeoForce (or the fact that Tara had a brother...they focus so much on her betrayal of the Teen Titans, not anything about her family or that she has family members with powers too), Halo (who was actually a blonde girl but Young Justice turned her into a Quraci refugee), and Forager. There were a lot of characters I didn't know much about. Also I love the villains too, I mean they're complicated, devious and smart.

Granted I haven’t finished Season 3 of Young Justice but I am so hooked! How can anyone say that Young Justice has really started sucking. No offense but compared to how Season 2 and 3 is going, I personally feel Season 1 was boring. It was boring. It was a struggle to even care about this show and get through every episode but I did because I did like the characters enough to do that.

And Season 2 was the same but better than Season 1.

And Season 3 is better than Season 2 and 1.

It just keeps getting better and better!

Am I really the only one who thinks that about Young Justice? I seriously don’t get the complaints about this show. This show is badass!

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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Did MJ try to make Spidey retire?

Short answer: Never when she was in character and never unjustifiably!

The number of times I’ve heard people claim this is unbelievable. I’m going to settle this shit once and for all. Feel free to share this with anyone making these claims.

The simplest way to do this would be to run through things chronologically.

Unless anybody can bring up other examples, off the top of my head I can recall only three times before ‘One More Day’ where MJ floated the idea of Peter retiring.

The first time was in ASM #283. However the important context of this is that Peter himself has already resolved to quit as soon as he is done with his latest case involving his friend Flash Thompson.

However further important context is that Peter has resolved to retire even earlier in ASM #275 and in that issue it was MJ (after learning his origin story) who encouraged him to NOT quit.

An issue later she was back to being against his work as Spider-Man.

However, many issues around this era (which was before they got married!) depict MJ flip-flopping on her feelings and the reasons why boil down to her being concerned for Peter’s safety.

At which point why is MJ being out of order in desiring him to retire? She loves this man and doesn’t want him to be hurt but also understands why he does what he does and it’s that fundamental heroism that is a major reason for why she loves him. This is again summed up in Web of Spider-Man #6.

Next up we have an example of when MJ didn’t ask Peter to quit. But people always treat it as though she did so we’re going to address it anyway.

It stems from the clusterfuck that was ‘Maximum Carnage’.

Let’s give you that all-important context.

In Spider-Man Unlimited #1 Pete and MJ are attending Harry Osborn’s funeral. Harry died in chronologically the story right before ‘Maximum Carnage’ so this is a very fresh wound; he died merely days earlier.

Prior to his death, Harry had been waging months of psychological warfare on the Parkers and even tried to kill Peter. His attempt actually almost killed MJ and his own son Normie. During this whole time Harry’s wife (now widow) Liz Allan had been pushed to her wits end too.

As a result Mary Jane is reluctant to talk to Liz.

Also, for months now (starting with Carnage’s debut actually) MJ had taken up smoking to cope with the stress of their lives, chiefly her concern for Peter’s well-being. This topic and her behaviour at the funeral gets raised when they return home.

The talk zeroes in on the risks to Peter’s life and how he and MJ got lucky with Harry. MJ asks Peter to take a break for a week or two.

Not retire permanently.

Not take an indefinite hiatus.

Not even take a break for a month or definitely two weeks.

She literally asks for 7-14 Spider-Man free days so they can de-stress and catch their breaths in the wake of a serious crisis and loss.

Peter promises he will.

Unfortunately Carnage has just broken free of the authorities and formed a gang.

For the sake of argument let’s say MJ doesn’t know much about Carnage’s cronies. She just knows he has back up.

However, she absolutely knows about Carnage.

As his name implies, is an incredibly lethal foe. You know Venom, that guy who’s famous for being a bigger badder version of Spider-Man? Yeah Carnage is an even more powerful version of that guy. Spider-Man one-on-one is physically incapable to defeating him and had to team up with Venom to do it. Even then they actually weren’t strong enough to beat him physically because Carnage is stronger than the pair of them combined!

Making matters worse Carnage’s whole body is extremely durable to injury, with blunt force not being the most effective way of fighting him. His forte is being able to quickly generate a large arsenal of sharp edged weapons from his body; think the T-1000.

This skillset is appropriate given how Carnage prior to obtaining any of these super powers was already a highly violent and sadistic serial killer who killed purely for the pleasure of it. How violent and sadistic? 11 life sentences merely for hi known crimes. That’s how violent and sadistic. And again, this was when he was just a normal guy.

Oh, and on top of all that he doesn’t trigger Peter’s Spider Sense, making him immeasurably more vulnerable to an already overwhelming powerful foe.

He is possibly the single most physically dangerous Spider-Man villain of all!

This isn’t idle little trivia about the character by the way. It is key to his whole concept and was laid out explicitly in his original appearance. In fact, in that first appearance he was so powerful that Peter was helpless and forced to team up with Venom, who lived to kill him!

Even when backed up by Cloak and Dagger, Spider-Man’s ribs take a pounding from Carnage, Shriek and Doppelganger. It is in this injured state he returns home to a concerned and naturally upset Mary Jane.

She then begins an argument with Peter when he tells her he plans on going back out there.

Let’s sum up so far.

MJ has been stressed for months prior to this to the point where she’s started smoking.

Peter and her nearly died mere days ago because their friend went psycho.

Said friend died in front of them.

Their other friend, his wife (who MJ was naturally going to relate more to since they were both the wives of costumes folks) is now a grieving widow.

MJ’s husband promised her he’d take a break for a little while so they can recover a bit.

Her husband then almost immediately went back on that promise.

His risking his life again against a bad guy who’s all but guaranteed to kill him if he fights him alone.

Last time MJ’s husband beat this guy he did it with the help of a powerful nasty piece of work who wanted to kill him. Even then they only just won. That’s how dangerous Carnage is.

This time Peter is fighting him alone, whilst injured, and Carnage has two people backing him up.

So if it wasn’t a guarantee that Peter was dead meat before, now she might as well get ahead by planning the funeral.

THAT is the context behind MJ’s rage and desire for Peter to not be Spider-Man temporarily in this story.

However, noticeably by the end of the story she’s changed her mind!

We then jump forward to the ‘Clone Saga’, specifically a mini-series called Spider-Man: the Final Adventure.

The context behind this story was that Peter, upon believing he was a clone and that Ben Reilly was in truth the original Peter Parker, had decided to retire and support a pregnant Mary Jane.

To this end they had both left New York but due to a lab experiment involving Peter’s blood a serial killer had mutated into a spiderlike monster. With no other heroes around Peter suits up again as Spider-Man to the dismay of the heavily pregnant Mary Jane who wants him to NOT do that.

Is this MJ being not as understanding as she could be, maybe even selfish to some degree?

Sure.

Is it also Peter being in the wrong too?

Also yes, the story brilliantly points that out.

But more significantly prior to this story the Parkers had been through Hell.

In less than a year (in-universe):

Peter’s robot parents had turned up pretending to be the genuine articles

They’d betrayed Peter, breaking his heart

Their close friend Harry Osborn had gone mad

Harry and used his knowledge of Peter’s identity to torment the Parkers

Aunt May had gone into a coma

Peter had suffered a mental breakdown

Ben Reilly and other clones had shown up (including clones of Pter’s murdered lover Gwen Stacy)

Aunt May has passed away

Peter was framed for murder

MJ had been targeted for abduction more than once

They’d discovered MJ was pregnant and that the baby might have serious health issues due to Peter’s mutated DNA

Peter was revealed as a clone and had a second mental breakdown

During his mental distress Peter had accidentally smacked MJ across the room

The Jackal had nearly killed everyone on the planet

The Jackal mind controlled Peter into trying to murder MJ

MJ had nearly died due to complications with the pregnancy

That isn’t even everything but all that stuff had been happening across the previous three years of publication alone. And as I said in-universe it was less than a year.

So MJ and Peter had been through a LOT of horrible and stressful things that had put them both on the edge and sometimes over it. Most of that stuff was connected to Peter’s life as Spider-Man that MJ always had mixed feelings about at best. And now after Peter FINALLY retired and their lives were blissfully normal, allowing them to catch their breaths and do some much needed healing, Peter is coming out of retirement…When it isn’t 100% necessary for him to do so.

And all this is happening during MJ’s second or third trimester when she is very obviously heavily pregnant. This often can be a stressful time for pregnant people generally and of course sometimes mood swings occur due to hormones firing all over the place. And MJ is dealing with super powered spider hormones on top of all this. With a baby that is a total lottery because nobody on Earth has ever been pregnant with a half human/half spider powered baby before.

Given that she is dealing with ALL that is it really unreasonable for her to desire for Peter to simply continue to be retired.

She isn’t demanding he give up being a hero.

She is angry and demanding that Peter CONTINUE the choice he already made about giving up.

Which is not the same thing and she was okay with him going back into the hero game after he pregnancy concluded.

Finally we come to the Howard Macke/John Byrne run on Spider-Man where MJ again desired Peter’s retirement.

Here is the thing, MJ once again was desiring Peter STAY retired as opposed to demanding he outright quit.

Moreover the Mackie/Byrne era was a period where MJ, Peter and other characters were often written incredibly out of character practically systemically. For example Flash Thompson behind Peter’s back literally made fun of the fact that his girlfriend Gwen Stacy and his wife Mary Jane were dead (at the time MJ’s death was faked by a stalker).

Peter and MJ were actually written in this reductive way back during this run as part of an editorial policy to break up the marriage.

The thinking at the time was to make their relationship unlikable in order to make people glad for when they got rid of it via killing off Mary Jane and leaving Peter single.

So essentially not only was MJ and Peter out of character back during this era but they were literally being sabotaged so readers would hate them.

Between that and how OOC (out of character) the characterizations were back then this by rights should simply not count in any analysis of the characters.

Now, there have been instanced post-OMD of MJ clearly wanting, asking, demanding, etc. for Peter to quit.

But as with the Mackie/Byrne era (or Black Cat from 2009-2018) these are out of character and should not truly count.

So when written in character and when there are not extenuating circumstances (like pregnancies) involved, Mary Jane would actually not ask Peter to quit and never truly has.

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pyro-john · 7 years

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Welcome to the Hellmouth: Subverting Expectations

Season 1, Episode 1: Welcome to the Hellmouth. These are most likely going to be long form stream of consciousness posts. Watch the episodes and follow along with my rambling thoughts. (It’s on Netflix!)

Subverting expectations is the name of the game right out of the gate. It seems to me that the BtVS team wanted to shatter any preconceived notions on multiple fronts. This show came out in the era of 90210, and Dawson's Creek, right smack in the middle of the WB teen drama boom of the late 90s. BtVS needed to stand out from the watery gruel of its contemporaries, without falling into a niche of campy Goosebumps-esque fare. Welcome to the Hellmouth seems to have been set up to do just that.

The opening scene of this show is brilliant. The spooky shots of the school that will be the primary setting, two kids breaking in, a timid schoolgirl and an obvious badboy. The show tells us immediately that things aren't going to go the way you think when the girl vamps out and eats the guy. Darla’s a fascinating character, and I’ll touch on her more later.

The opening organ notes of the theme song always give me chills. Nerf Herder doesn’t get nearly enough credit.

The first shot we see of Buffy she’s lying in bed having nightmares. We get a ton of shots of some of the monsters Buffy will fight over the course of the season, which I kind of like. It’s a treat for people who really pay attention. Or for hopeless obsessives that have seen it 50 times. They kind of drop the whole Slyer prophecies thing as the show goes on, and I have mixed feeling on that. It’s a little clichéd, but there was a sense of macabre whimsy to it as well, especially when we get to some of the more abstract stuff later on.

When we get our first shots of Sunnydale High in the daytime, we're lulled back into thinking we know what's going on. We meet the gang, Xander the roguish dork (I can't believe he rides a skateboard), Willow the meek nerdy girl, and Jesse who is also there.

BtVS suffers a bit from late 90's fasion, which makes it feel a bit dated, but it's a pretty minor problem overall. It's more of an issue in early season 1 as the show gets its feet under it from a visual perspective. But oh man, Willow's checker dress and backpack.

In Buffy's meeting with Principle Flutie we get one of our few references to the Buffy Movie. Retconned so that instead of getting on a motorcycle and riding off with Luke Perry she just burned the motherfucker down. Not something you'd expect from a tiny cute blonde, (Flutie certainly doesn't seem to expect it) Seeing Buffy in class is weird. For a show set in a high school, relatively little education seems to happen. We meet Cordelia here too, in manner which suggests that she's going to be Buffy's new bff, (the little quiz Cordy gives Buffy dates the show a bit too. Hard to remember that James Spader was once a teen heartthrob) but almost immediately we see her viscous side when she snaps at Willow for using a water fountain that Cordelia doesn't even seem to want to use. Not all that glitters is gold.

Next we get to meet Giles. Anthony Stewart Head is far and away the best actor on this show. He acts with his whole body. You can see the shift from rigid indifference to near giddy excitement when he pull out that Vampyr book. (One of my favourite props. I love that thing). Again we're subverting expectations, of the characters as well as the audience. Buffy goes in to get a text book and is confronted with a tome of monster lore that seems to frighten her. It's great stuff. There aren't many scenes of students that aren't the core gang, unless something horrible is about to happen. Dead body on campus count: 1

The first scene with the core three (Buffy, Willow, and Xander) Cordelia, and Jesse, establishes so much of the early dynamic, it's really great to watch. I'll talk more about Jesse when I watch the Harvest, but his existence is another massive subversion. Here he's set up as a foil for both Xander and Cordelia, but the writers had something else in mind. Jesse is one of my favourite things about season 1.

Giles' exposition scenes are a core component of the series, especially early on. With the wrong delivery these scenes could be dry as dust, but Head makes each of them a joy to watch. There's an urgency and passion that makes you lean forward and really listen to what he's trying to tell you, even if Buffy doesn't. This one five minute scene lays out the whole premise of the show and you barely notice it happening. We learn how vampires turn people, what a Slayer is, what a Watcher is, that Sunnydale is monster central, that Giles is a huge dork, and that some mystical badness is gonna happen soon. Buffy tempts fate big time at the end of this scene. It's a bit cliched, but it sets up some great jokes way down the line. Buffy's mother, Joyce, is another unappreciated character. Depicting a single mother in the 90s was a bold move, and she pulls it off well. Just the right mix of trying to let her daughter have freedom while still indulging her helicopter mom instincts. The early BtVS villains don't get nearly enough love. Partly because there was half as much time to establish them as the later villains (season 1 was only 12 episodes), and artly because they get overshadowed by the more wacky season 1 baddies like Mantis Lady and Internet Demon. But Luke, the Master, Darla, they're all great.

Angel's introduction is just the right combination of intriguing and creepy. Introducing him as a cryptic informant, and showing that Buffy can physically overpower him immediatly quashes the idea that he'll need to come to her rescue lays so much groundwork for Angel's development and for their relationship. I love the cross necklace. Jewlery gets used a lot in BtVS for symbolism. That little cross holds so much emotional power as time goes on. Ahh the Bronze. So much happens in that little dingy club. Mostly murders. Lots and lots of murders. The scene in the Bronze pulls a huge amount of weight for character development. We get to see that Buffy is a dork, who really wants to have something normal. We see Willow eating raisins at a club, and find out about her conflicted Xander feelings. We learn what Giles considers partying (this was a year and a half before Google, how did American kids find out what the hell Bovril was?). We get Jesse seemingly stop pining after a chick who hates him, (much to his personal detriment), and we get to see Buffy's place in the social order cemented when she nearly stakes Cordelia. When we get to the graveyard, we have our first proper fight of the series, and we get to see Buffy in her element. The entire episode we see her timidly talking to teachers and students and her Mum, and even herself, trying to figure out what she's supposed to do and where she fits in. Here we see her immediately confident, her posture changes, she starts being snarky. This is where she belongs. In the fight. But again, this episode is about subversion. So halfway through the fight a bigger badder badguy shows up and she starts getting wrecked. This badass superchick can also be threatened. She isn't the strongest thing out there. Pilots are supposed to show both what the show is, and what it has the potential to become, and Welcome to the Hellmouth knocks it out of the park. It's not the greatest Buffy episode, not by a longshot, but it builds an unshakable foundation. Right away we know that this isn't just another teen drama. It's not just another vampire show. This is going to be something else entirely.

Favourite Quote: Willow: Well... when I'm with a boy I like, it's hard for me to say anything cool, or, or witty. Or at all. I-I can usually make a few vowel sounds, and then I have to go away.

#buffyslays20

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