• 0 Posts
  • 248 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 30th, 2023

help-circle

  • This has been a problem for far, far, longer than you think. The silver age definitely had it, the golden age probably did, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it cropped up in the proto-superhero stories, like Zorro. It’s a consequence of having a long-form story where the narrative’s status quo isn’t allowed to meaningfully change and characters either aren’t allowed to die or aren’t allowed to stay dead. Recurring antagonists also can have much richer characterization and more complex relationships with the protagonists, which makes writing stories about them more appealing the more often they appear.

    The usual trajectory for a new superhero or new incarnation of an existing superhero is to start off with street-level problems, then get a nemesis that has strong ties to those street level problems, then have the dynamic between the two grow in prominence to eclipse all other parts of the plot. The Joker, for instance, always starts off as either a mob boss with a gimmick or a serial killer with a gimmick, not far removed from the mundane crime Batman always starts with, but always winds up with a fixation on Batman and spawns stories designed as some commentary on Batman’s no-killing rule. Again and again and again, dozens of times over the decades.

    Why? Because the dynamic between the two characters tends to be fascinating and results in audience engagement.


  • Putin’s made it clear that Trump doesn’t call the shots in their relationship. Trump’s ego can’t handle that, so now Putin is his enemy. We’ve been seeing Trump slowly figure this out over the course of the year, starting from him saying he could end the war in, what did he say, a week? He clearly wasn’t let in on the invasion plan, either because he can’t keep his mouth shut or because Putin thought the war would be over before the election.

    Of course, with how senile he’s becoming and his probable recent stroke, it’s unclear if this will stick or he’ll forget about it in a day or two.


  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advice_to_a_Friend_on_Choosing_a_Mistress

    More seriously, some people just like older people better. Their interests or personality may make it harder to jibe with people in their own age group, but mesh well with people in another age group. Sometimes they’re ahead of the curve on mental maturity and their peers won’t catch up for a few more years, sometimes they just think they’re more mature than they really are, and sometimes they really would have fit in better if they had been born a couple decades earlier.

    Personally, when I was younger, I had a hard time relating to anyone around my age and generally fit in better in conversations with people my parents’ age. As a preteen in the early 2000s, I was reading things like Dune, watching things like Blade Runner, and my music tastes included the Rat Pack. The things the adults talked about were just more my speed. This got to be less and less of a problem as I got older and my current friend group is actually a few years younger than me on average, though I do still have the occasional ‘faux old man’ moments with them.