themeatbridge

Spider-Man (Peter Parker) is still white. Spider-Man (Miles Morales) has always been mixed race black and Puerto Rican. Spider-Man (Miguel O’Hara) will be Mexican-Irish. Spider-Man (Hobie Brown) is black, although he frequently goes by Spider-Punk. Spider-Man (Takuya Yamashir) and Spider-Man (Yu Komori) are Japanese, and have been around since the 70s. They are different people who exist in universes with Peter Parker. There are also universes where Peter Parker is Peni Parker (Japanese), Pavitr Prabhakar (Indian), and then there are all the other Spider girls, Spider demons and Spider monsters, not to mention all the Spider-adjacent clones, offspring, and villains who posed as Spider-Man while Parker was incapacitated (which happened twice).

Miles Morales isn’t race swapped, though. He’s a different character. But I do agree with your larger point that Rowling sucks as a writer and as a person, and that race swaps don’t matter if the characters are well written.

I’ve never been a fan of Rowling. It always bothered me how much of her writing was lifted from better sources, but I let it go because the movies were fun and it got kids into reading. Discovering that she has always been a bigot, and her insistence on actively promoting discrimination, just erases all the goodwill she built up.

Case in point, Snape is a shit character. Just awful. People coo at the “always” moment from the movie because it came with a glowing doe dancing around the room, but it wasn’t an interesting or poetic moment. First of all, it’s not something that Dumbledore didn’t already know. If Rowling was a better writer- You know what, no, that’s not the point of this rant, and I don’t have the time to enumerate all the shit great actors turned into gold.

But making Snape a black man puts a lot of story beats into a different context. Was James a racist? Were the other maurauders racist? Did Lily have feelings for Snape and suppressed them due to concerns about how an interracial relationship would affect her standing?

Changing the race of a character isn’t a big deal when the characters are well-written.

Yeah, the entire story follows the major beats of a group of people playing DND. Everything that happens would be familiar to a player. Your party always gets captured and thrown in a prison from where you must escape. Dungeon Masters (the people running the game) will frequently introduce an overpowered “helper” NPC to move the party along in the right direction, but that character won’t engage in the fights. Parties will find several puzzles that the DM has spent hours creating, only for the party to use some magic or tool in a creative way to bypass the entire puzzle.

To someone expecting standard fantasy storytelling, it’s jarring and weird. The anachronistic language, the character decisions that don’t make sense, the magic artifacts that seem to just happen to be exactly what the party needs in the moment, it’s all stuff that would happen around a table in someone’s basement. It helps to think of each character as a regular person you know today playing a game where they make all the decisions for the character. Convenient contrivances or frustrating failures are the DM having fun with the story. Sometimes the dice rolls 20 and you do something miraculous, and sometimes you roll a 1, trip over a pebble and stab yourself in the face.

You don’t have to be a dnd player to enjoy the movie, but you do need to understand the lens through which you’re watching it. Otherwise, the tone and pacing seem really strange.

Do you even hear yourself?

Germany is a real country though. Israel is a settler colony established through land theft.

Can you remind me why those Jewish immigrants had to move to Israel after WWII? Why they couldn’t just go back to their homes in Europe?

By saying Israel has no right to exist I mean the racist genocidal ethnostate called Israel needs to be dismantled and become a one state with equal rights for all. That is not a call for genocide. That is a call for humanity.

I’ll take you at your word that this is what you meant, but my point still stands because it does not come across that way at all. You may not be aware that there is an alarming resurgence of anti-Semitism globally (fueled in large part by the Israeli government engaging in the genocide of Palestinians). “Israel has no right to exist” is a common refrain among anti-Semites, and most of them do mean “Jewish people should not exist.”

If you’re not calling for a genocide, then you need to be clear when you’re critical of Israel. Because sounding like a nazi gives credibility to the defenders of Israel who claim that all critics are nazis.

For the record no country has a right to exist. They either do exist or they don’t.

Yes, and Israel exists.

dismantling the power of a geopolitical state in order to stop it from committing a genocide (which is what most people mean when they say “Israel doesn’t have a right to exist”)

I don’t believe that is what most people mean when they say that.

As for the Nazi comparison, there were a lot of people who would have preferred we kill all the Nazis, but only a relatively small percentage were tried and convicted. Germany did not forfeit their right to exist, and the German people (including most of the Nazis) were allowed to continue on with their lives.

As for Hitler, I do think a trial would have been better for the world and the development of humanity. But like most narcissists, he was a coward and chose to shoot himself rather than face consequences.

The logical conclusion of opposing a genocide is not more genocide.

Let’s be honest with ourselves, the world is a mess right now. There are no “good guys” coming to the rescue. There’s no political or military power that will fix the discord or stop the violence. In an ideal world, Netanyahu and his leadership would be tried and convicted of crimes against humanity. Given the current climate, I’d settle for an armistice to end the murdering of civilians and to allow for humanitarian aid to reach the people who need it. The threat of another elected despot is not an argument against deposing the current one.

You’re citing those polling numbers as evidence that I’m wrong? That we don’t have a problem with messaging? If your plan is to convince me that we need to stop a genocide with a genocide, then I have sorry news for you. Even if it was 100% of Israelis polled, I would still be opposed to genocide. Existence is never a crime. We are defined by our choices, not by the circumstances of our birth. When people communicate, there is always an opportunity for people to grow and learn. Communication is the only path to peace, and the people who need to hear you will not hear you while you’re saying they are monsters who do not deserve to live.

Yep, I’m one of them. Are we saying that the United States doesn’t have a right to exist? Canada and Mexico have their own skeletons in their closets, too. Which countries have a right to exist? The Palestinians were “displaced” by the British, who took control from the Ottomans, who conquered the land from the Egyptians, the Mongols, the Crusades… how far back are we going to go?

Or maybe we accept that a nation is constructed of modern people who are not responsible for the sins of their forebears. Maybe we can criticize genocidal tyrants and war criminals without dehumanizing an entire citizenry and calling for their extermination. Because if both sides are calling for the eradication of the other, then the historical claim to the territory is irrelevant. If both sides justify violence with divine provenance, then neither side maintaims the moral high ground.

Israel is engaged in a genocide. They should be stopped, with violence if necessary. But condemning the people’s right to exist blunts the criticism of genocide. It makes it appear to be a holy war between two violent terrorists, when that is far from the reality.

Ok. Can you point to anything I said that wasn’t true?

No actually I think I get it just fine.

Are you aware of the origins of North America and what was there pre colonization?

Nah, see, this is the rhetoric that compounds the problem. The Israeli government is currently run by ultranationalists who are engaged in a genocide. They need to be stopped. That’s an objective and reasonable statement, backed up by evidence and moral justification.

To say that the nation and its people are monsters who do not have a right to exist, that’s anti-Semitism.

I’m an American. Donald Trump is a criminal, and belongs in prison. He should be stopped. If you have a plan to stop him, I’ll probably support it (within reason). If you were to say, “America has no fucking right to exist. They are a colony of deprsved monsters,” I could understand why you think that given the actions we have directed or supported internationally, but I would have to disagree.

Israel is a nation of many people. Those people have a right to exist, just as Palestinians have a right to exist. Existence doesn’t have to be a zero sum game.

I graduated from college magna cum laud 20 years ago. This is the first time it has come up in any context since I graduated. I took it off my resume 15 years ago to make room for experiences.

I think we have enough money for both, and we don’t spend enough on either.

If this dopey motherfucker actually did this, I’d support it. Harvard can survive on less, and trade schools should be cheaper to encourage people learning trades.

But that’s not what’s happening, not even a little bit. The money isn’t being redirected to where it will do more good. It’s being withheld for corrupt personal reasons, and the “thought” of using it for so me thing productive is half-formed horseshit that is never going to materialize.

This is a technique Trump uses to deflect criticism, although I think it’s too stupid to have a name. Let’s call it the Ball Gargle. It’s an idea that, in retrospect, sounds like it might be a good idea, but it’s probably impossible and definitely never going to happen. So Trump does something obviously corrupt and deeply unpopular among people who aren’t total fucksticks. When the people who aren’t total fucksticks complain, Trump suggests ball gargling, and the fucksticks go “Yeah, see, that sounds good!” But Trump isn’t going to gargle any balls, and even if he tries it wouldn’t be any form of anything anyone anywhere wants.

Uber.

Scared because he was high? You shouldn’t drive while high.

I love seeing crossovers. The cool thing about comics is you could have someone show up in another book, and then you’re interested in that character so you go read those books. The movies and shows should be like that, relatively independent but with occasional references and cameos.

Like the way Matt Murdock appeared in She Hulk was enjoyable. As long as you were aware of the Netflix shows, you didn’t need to have watched all the Defenders episodes to understand it. But maybe seeing him in that show made you want to check out the Netflix series.

What I don’t want is like a full introduction every time a special guest character shows up. Like if Hawk Girl makes an appearance in Peacemaker Season 2, we don’t need a “Hi, I’m from the Justice League and I’m a reincarnated ancient alien wielding Nth Metal, how can I help you?” conversation.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

We could go several rounds on the nature of government and the human condition, but that would take time and effort. Instead, I’ll share a blind quote of dubious origin and hope you figure out the rest.

Meanwhile, some capitalist oligarch is paying a team of research psychologists to feed trillions of data points into a supercomputer to determine the exact font they need to use in their international astroturf advertising campaign designed to convince you that you already have the government you deserve.