Mickey-alves-camaroes - Nyuro-len

"The best thing we can do with power is give it away" - On the leftist critique of superhero narratives as authoritarian power fantasies:

The ongoing "Jason Todd is a cop" debate has reminded me of a brilliant brief image essay by Joey deVilla. [EDIT: I SCREWED UP! This was created in 2019 by the guy who runs the Midnighter-Core page on Facebook, and Joey just reposted it!]

So here it is, images first and the full essay text below:

"The Best Thing We Can Do With Power Is Give It Away" - On The Leftist Critique Of Superhero Narratives

"A common leftist critique of superhero comics is that they are inherently anti-collectivist, being about small groups of individuals who hold all the power, and the wisdom to wield that power. I don’t disagree with this reading. I don’t think it’s inaccurate. Superheroes are their own ruling class, the concept of the übermensch writ large. But it’s a sterile reading. It examines superhero comics as a cold text, and ignores something that I believe is fundamental, especially to superhero storytelling: the way people engage with text. Not what it says, but how it is read. The average comic reader doesn’t fantasize about being a civilian in a world of superheroes, they fantasize about being a superhero. One could charitably chalk this up to a lust for power, except for one fact… The fantasy is almost always the act of helping people. Helping the vulnerable, with no reward promised in return. Being a century into the genre, we’ve seen countless subversions and deconstructions of the story. But at its core, the superhero myth is about using the gifts you’ve been given to enrich the people around you, never asking for payment, never advancing an ulterior motive. We should (and do) spend time nitpicking these fantasies, examining their unintended consequences, their hypocrisies. But it’s worth acknowledging that the most eduring childhood fantasy of the last hundred years hasn’t been to become rich. Superheroes come from every class (don’t let the MCU fool you). The most enduring fantasy is to become powerful enough to take the weak under your own wing. To give, without needing to take. So yes, the superhero myth, as a text, isn’t collectivist. But that’s not why we keep coming back to it. That’s not why children read it. We keep coming back to it to learn one simple lesson… The best thing we can do with power IS GIVE IT AWAY." - Joey deVilla, 2021 https://www.joeydevilla.com/2021/07/04/happy-independence-day-superhero-style/

- Midnighter-Core, 2019

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0bU6TrKdX6QgMLnUFk64jResHMVwiSyENASvJk7efasgZ94G4c81XJCVgGcLFPgPsl&id=594855544368212&mibextid=Nif5oz

56K notes View Post

mickey-alves-camaroes

1 year ago

At it again, from another angle this time.

‘Old’ weapons. Or at least redundant, as a species traverses into space the new technology makes an old gun or even older sword/arrow/spear and so on useless and nearly powerless. The new weapons are ‘ray this’ and ‘beam that’ ‘plasma so and so’ .

Ofcourse this makes sense, the energy based weapons are far less wasteful and lighter, easier to carry and easier to handle. No need to sharpen weapons with a plasma blade and even then, why use close quarters weapons if you have access to stun, kill or poison rays and many more.

On top of that many civilisations prefer to forget their less then stellar past and make analog weapons obsolete. When the humans joined the council many expected them to do the same. They didn’t, production stopped yes, but interested people could still partake in lessons and the old fashioned ways were shown off in museums. Training to be part of a spaceship crew still included lessons in their old weapons as an opportunity to be prepared for going to “newer” worlds.

So with that in mind i have a few little vignettes ideas and for ease’ sake its gonna be on the same ship, the Serpentine.

Important crew:

Primoz, captain -Limoyh a four armed species-

Krag, second in command (brother of Primoz)

Kit, dokter -avian, bird like, she has feathers like a swallow-

Ortez, ASR (all species resources, human resources in space) -kiltak, insectoid species, think ants but exoskeleton-

Lugea, helmsperson (does the steering) -rock like alien-

Artex, engineer/mechanic 1 -also Kiltak-

And then our humans:

Kamari, navigator -Eritrean woman- (has cat named Sidra)

Markus, weapons expert (knows how to use them and upkeep, also shields) -Swedish man-

Petrus, mechanic/engineer 2 -Italian man-

Lilly, administrator/note keeper (learns languages for fun)-english woman-

Yes i know all of this could have also been accomplished by saying they are all from America… nope this is more fun. This is under the assumption that to get into the joint academy for space faring you need to be able to speak and write English.

Obviously there are more people on the ship but these are most important

~~~~~~~~

1. Sparring

Ortez was having a good day, the serpentine had left port and was making good progress toward their next destination on w-kl-18, referred to as deltax by it’s residents, for a routine drop off.

In port on Unity (the planet where the council resides and the universal court is) they picked up the final crew members among who a ‘team’ of humans. Pre bonded humans were supposed to be less chaos inducing and easier bonded with the rest of the crew. Ortez was rather happy the captain listened to him on this matter.

The humans had been more diverse than he expected and were currently what they called ‘settling in’. He was on his way to the rooms they had.

‘Stop it please we’ve been here less than 4 hours!’ The soft voice he recognises as Lilly’s is barely audible over the loud clanging sounds. Rounding the corner Ortez sees a terrifying scene. The two human males locked together with two sticks made of metal baring teeth at each other, with a push the olive skinned man, he remembers is called Petrus, breaks the hold and goes in low swiping at the tall mans legs making Markus fall over.

Ortez is about to intervene when without a sound the dark skinned leader of the group seemingly appears without a sound behind him and runs into the fray with a similar stick.

Whacking Petrus stick away from Markus’ throat she steps inbetween “stop it. You’re scaring our ASR. We want to make a good impression remember.” The men look right at him and both put down the sticks, Markus puts his hand up in a ‘wave’ “sorry about that, Ortez it was right? We were just sparring.’ Moving further into the room he uncurls his front two claws tapping at the metal poles “sparring with this? We usually only do body to body training, this seems rather old.” Petrus speaks up to that “ah yes those are old earth weapons, we like keeping up a bit of skill with several kinds as a side activity. Don’t worry tho, we train with blunt weapons.”

Not entirely appeased the insectoid looks to the imposing woman, who seems entirely at ease even though two people had been fighting. When she caught his eyes, she smiled that terrible toothy grin “truly don’t worry, like Petrus said they are blunt and it is a way for us to let of some steam and keep in shape. But next time we’ll do it in the training rooms… right boys?” Pinning the two men with withering stares they nodded quickly.

Ortez did not know humans released steam, but he felt right now was not the moment to go into that. Saying his goodbye he skittered to inform the captain.

This was bound to be interesting.

~~~~~~~~~~~

2. “The Roman empire”

“So you are telling me that at any given moment you could be thinking about a several thousand years old society that no longer exists and it would surprise nobody?” Artex was perplexed, when he and Petrus were working on the reactor core Lilly had wandered through and mentioned this old civilisation sparking heated debate. She thought the greeks were far more interesting but Petrus had been unmoved by her arguments. The other man speaks while pushing some buttons “well yea, the empire made great strides and amazing structures, Lilly just prefers the mythos of the greek while i enjoy the focus on millitary prowess.” Shrugging he looks up “don’t you guys have something like that?” Artex stretches his legs, all 6 of them in a wave like motion “not really, when change happened the history books were changed to make it seem like it was always that way” the human makes eye contact “wait so how do you know how to play -old civilisation- as a kid? We play fought with wooden sticks, wooden swords and branches we cut to look like guns…” that horrofied the insectoid, raised with violence like it was a normal thing.

Almost like they never left their dark ages

~~~~~~~~~~~~

3. Whats in a name (bit off topic but the idea just kinda happened)

Te very first time the humans were introduced to their new crew there was a bit of a hiccup. When Kamari introduced herself they looked up a bit confused but went further down the row. After Lilly they came back around and referred to Kamari as moon. Now Kamari recognised the strange look, they had translators that only had basic human translation, which means that her name “Kamari” which comes from Arabic and is a word for moon/soft glow of the moon, is translated fully but not as name so when they speak to her it translates out of their language to English which would be moon. This is luckily easily fixed with an update, but it was something that stil spoke of how new the human race was to the cosmos.

Her cat Sidra made them laugh as that means Star so she was the moon with her star.

(Random thought about how multiple human languages could screw with translations)

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Soooooo kinda had a 4th story that is pretty sad but also bad ass, but this is getting too long already

Imma write that in a new post over the coming days

Hopefully people like this, if you have prompts you’d like to see with this crew feel free to ask.

327 notes View Post

mickey-alves-camaroes

1 year ago

You know

I cant even imagine how feral the pop trolls must seem to everyone. I mean

Thay live in the woods