TheDarkness

Hope this helps. As far as the snopes end of the convo.
 
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/snopescom/

So, whose standard of evidence? You seem to be deciding that, but your standard, in one metric already, is not shared by most on either side of the political aisle, and is at odds with the actual facts and any definition of reasonable standards.
 
Perhaps if you don't like a topic, you could simply just not like the topic. This does not equate to an argument of such validity that the topic is decided, because it isn't.
 
It's easy to characterize something as 'over-emotional and accusational' to discount it. But you yourself responded to a statement that was, in essence, "alt-right, a movement founded by white nationalists for white nationalism, and whose arguments stem from white nationalism, is white nationalist, and Bannon, who provides their strongest media source, is either an opportunist, or shares views with white nationalists, and Trump, by making use of this, created a problem" into an over-emotional accusation that I was unfairly calling people racists, when, in fact, the above are actually statements of fact. You further used anecdotal evidence, you know some people who are alt-right and don't think they were racists, as your sole trump.
 
I clarified that I did not doubt that was true. Which does not change who founded alt-right, who it's main voices are, and that the very, very few of those voices who do not claim to be white nationalists are, in almost every case, putting forward the exact views of the white nationalists, minus outright stating they are white nationalists.
 
Any thorough search of alt-right sources, be it theirs or their critics, will confirm EVERY statement I just made.
 
If we can't call people who call themselves white nationalists, white nationalists, based solely on some anecdotal evidence of someone else having the bad judgment of associating themselves with a white nationalist movement, who can we call white nationalists?
 
I'm only reiterating this to point out that you are not in a place to be arbiter on discussions of race if you cannot allow even self-avowed white nationalists to be referred to as racists. A discourse on race that cannot address actual racists is not a sensible thing.

The running tactic is now to blame Obama. I've seen a number of people say, "Trump's not president yet, so how could it be his fault." Apparently none of us are responsible for our actions until we win the presidency.
 
I'm raiding the vending machine. Thanks, Obama!

Alt-right is white nationalist. The people who aren't are the fringe. This is fairly well established. Brietbart is the self proclaimed media for the alt-right.
 
Honestly, there is no going into alt-right venues without recognizing that all but the fringe are self-proclaimed white nationalists, and the fringe is apparently okay with that. Further, Trump was quoting white nationalists on Twitter. And never seemed to have any problem with a major part of his activities on twitter getting huge support from alt-right members who were not shy about their white nationalism.
 
Steven Bannon. who of course worked for Trump during the election, as head of brietbart, according to this article by someone that knew him, specifically courted the white nationalist alt-right and made brietbart its voice:
 
http://www.dailywire.com/news/8441/i-know-trumps-new-campaign-chairman-steve-bannon-ben-shapiro#
 
Now, the person who you say was 'dishonestly' painted as a white supremacist, I suspect you are talking about is Milo Yiannapoulis. One of the writers of this article:
 
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/
 
Large sections of that article, in which the authors are talking about what they consider true versus describing the alt-right movement, but why they think the alt-right movement is right, are flat out white nationalism. They go further to split hairs and subdivide the group in ways they are NOT subdivided in online environments at all. They go to great lengths to say, we think nazis are LARPers, while supporting every pro-white argument of nazis in the rest of the argument, saved dressing like them.
 
Here's what they have to say about 'natural conservatives', which, in the article, seems to be what he considers the best of the movement, the goal state almost like a 'clear' to a scientologist.
 
"Their goal is a new consensus, where liberals compromise or at least allow conservative areas of their countries to reject the status quo on race, immigration and gender."
 
Note the race in there? That IS the beginning, end, and middle of the charter of pretty much all white nationalist movements. They always say, hey, this other group can go to their own place, and we get our own place, really, it's only functionally the same as racism, it's not really racism.
 
He follows this by explaining that that's a reasonable request, and only if they DON'T get it, well then, the nazis can do it their way. Seriously, that's what the article says in this section, if(and only if, so nice of them) liberals and conservatives don't yield territory where the natural conservatives can then "reject the status quo on race, immigration, and gender", well then, only then do the nazis get to gas everyone.
 
This is the part of the group that he speaks most admiringly of, in his own words. He has been accused of being supportive of white nationalism, he denies it, but in that article, there's hardly an element of white nationalism that he doesn't defend as a natural state, even if he dances around it a lot by saying, look, it's not real racism(never mind the nazis in reserve, they're just larpers), they just want the choice to not have black people, or hispanics, or allow anyone to move into their community that doesn't somehow fit their standard.
 
He is part of the alternative right, and he does describe white nationalism as a natural state of things where white people are involved.
 
We need not even discuss the ties between gamergate and alt-right's rise.
 
I know several people who spent extended times researching the alt-right in many online environments. Probably more time than half the people writing articles about them. One of these people is conservative, and he is disgusted by that last article's attempt to whitewash the stock white nationalism that he observed.

As a movement, alt-right is a white nationalist movement. Most attempts to claim otherwise have failed, because the overwhelming trend of the movement is white nationalism.
 
Steven Bannon not only provides their media outlet, but meets with avowed white nationalist leaders.
 
Your argument is semantical and wrong. The reasons are simple. Let's use the 'teach the controversy' movement. In Kansas and other places, the movement ostensibly was about fairness in schooling, not about creationism. But, in reality, it was about creationism. It's members were creationists, and no amount of rebranding changes this.
 
Alt-right is about white nationalism. Further, their major leaders and voices all also declare that they are white nationalist. A google search will show this. So this:
 
"You have gone from claiming that his staff publicly call themselves "white nationalists" to saying they used some code-word that you perceive to mean the same thing."
 
Is factually incorrect. The major leaders, the voices they most often quote and repeat, DO call themselves white nationalists. AND call themselves alt-right.
 
Further, those Breitbart columnists they most often quote who don't call themselves white nationalists, often spout the exact tenets of white nationalism. Alt-right members hate coded racism, so they will not follow a columnist who does not come out and say what they also think.
 
Finally, I'm assuming you mean Bannon(in reference to his(Trump's) staff, as the Twitter people probably weren't staff, but Trump still managed to quote avowed white nationalists on his Twitter as well as reap the rewards of the alt-right's twitter support, which only the most naive would consider accidental since Bannon, the head of Breitbart AND the provider of the media outlet for the alt-right, was a key staff member).
 
Bannon provides the alt-right's media outlet, outright stated that that was his intention, meets with people who the alt-right movement follow and whose arguments and quotes form the basis of a lot of what they do, and those people he meets with not only refer to themselves as white nationalists, but lead other organizations that are openly white nationalist organizations, blatantly white nationalist.
 
Now, a guy meets with white nationalist leaders, runs a media outlet that he outright states is aimed at a group that mostly follows what those white nationalist leaders have to say, in short, his entire success is based on the previous two points, I'm going to say that that person is not a good person at all. At best, he's an opportunist of the lowest moral order, and very possibly a racist. He is still functionally a racist, as he furthers the cause of white nationalists BY CHOICE.
 
Of course, that person's wretched ethics don't worry me, until they get some more influence. Say, ties with a presidential candidate. Or a president.

I did not support all of Bush's initiatives, but I did not generally see him as evil. I hoped he was more like his father, and would recognize the dangers of giving his base too much, but he was not, and that did lead to a lot of the problems we see now.
 
Trump has made use of white nationalists. Unless he clips their wings fast, any compromise would merely be a convenience for me, given that I'm white, that others would be paying for who were not so lucky. That's not at all principled.
 
Now, if he clips their wings, then he's just more of the same, and that would be a relief.

White nationalists played an important role in his twitter campaign, and his staff included someone who provides the (by this staff member, self-professed) news outlet for the alt-right, all of whose major figures are likewise (self-professed) white nationalists. Trump's twitter account on multiple occasions tweeted messages that were quotes from white nationalists.
 
This would have, in every previous election in my life, been the end of his campaign.
 
It's kind of hard NOT to demonize such a brazen association with white nationalists. And it's kind of to be expected that people who might not be cozy with the historical implications of a president with overt ties to white nationalists might see 'hey, let's all get along' as either disingenuous or ill-informed.
 
Now, I do not rule out that Trump will dump those white nationalists now that he is president. But, unfortunately, he has already shown them that they have political power. That was not a good idea, and is, in my opinion, the biggest issue.

White nationalists played an important role in his twitter campaign, and his staff included someone who provides the (by this staff member, self-professed) news outlet for the alt-right, all of whose major figures are likewise (self-professed) white nationalists. Trump's twitter account on multiple occasions tweeted messages that were quotes from white nationalists.
 
This would have, in every previous election in my life, been the end of his campaign.
 
It's kind of hard NOT to demonize such a brazen association with white nationalists. And it's kind of to be expected that people who might not be cozy with the historical implications of a president with overt ties to white nationalists might see 'hey, let's all get along' as either disingenuous or ill-informed.
 
Now, I do not rule out that Trump will dump those white nationalists now that he is president. But, unfortunately, he has already shown them that they have political power. That was not a good idea, and is, in my opinion, the biggest issue.

White nationalists played an important role in his twitter campaign, and his staff included someone who provides the (by this staff member, self-professed) news outlet for the alt-right, all of whose major figures are likewise (self-professed) white nationalists. Trump's twitter account on multiple occasions tweeted messages that were quotes from white nationalists.
 
This would have, in every previous election in my life, been the end of his campaign.
 
It's kind of hard NOT to demonize such a brazen association with white nationalists. And it's kind of to be expected that people who might not be cozy with the historical implications of a president with overt ties to white nationalists might see 'hey, let's all get along' as either disingenuous or ill-informed.
 
Now, I do not rule out that Trump will dump those white nationalists now that he is president. But, unfortunately, he has already shown them that they have political power. That was not a good idea, and is, in my opinion, the biggest issue.

I think screwing up has many degrees before apocalyptic tragedy. That still doesn't make it the best course.

Also meant to comment on this after musing on it for a couple days. Seems there's several different factors going on here:
Folks who know the character know WW's whole shtick was originally to be an ambassador for women, so it makes sense to them. To those with only a casual familiarity with the character, it's just "Oh gawd not another damn superhero..." There's a legitimate complaint in there about not doing enough to recognize actual, real-life women doing good stuff, rather than focusing on fictional characters. Seriously, the UN doesn't have better things to do? And lastly, again for those only passingly familiar with the character, as one friend put it: "It's hard to take the character seriously as a strong female role model when the art screams Whack-Off Material For Dudes." (And yes, as a comics nerd I can go on at length about the historical context, and as a straight dude myself I don't exactly mind a little cheesecake. But let's not pretend it doesn't color other people's perceptions of the character, and of comics in general.)

(Comment: this may be tl;dr, but it is relevant to the post above.)
 
I have never understood why Twitter ever became popular, except for infantile posturing and harassment. It's just electronic tagging for dicks.
 
Current Internet phenomena are wantonly ignorant of history (especially Internet history), but Twitter is very little more than the instant messaging capacity that the old BITNET had back in the 1980s. Limited to text posts with a limited character count (something like 60 IIRC), went out in real time. It was pretty intrusive (frequently just called "BITNET Bombs"), in that the message just blasted out onto your terminal when it arrived. It didn't change the state of what you were trying to do, but if you were, e.g., editing a file, your screen no longer showed you what your file/edits looked like. Some editors etc. had a "redraw" function that blanked and redrew the state of the work, but not all of them did; those you had to get out of insert mode, save, exit, clear the screen, reopen the file. Pretty disruptive. And it was, of course, on by default; turning it off for yourself required consultation of a manual, or use of VMS's execrable on-line documentation. Concerning the latter, as the latter-day expression goes, good luck with that.
 
I believe the most famous BITNET messaging ever came during the 1987 NCAA Men's Division I basketball championship game, ultimately won by Indiana over Syracuse. (I know this story because I was at Indiana, in my first postdoc, at the time.)
 
My memory is fuzzy, but either shortly before, during, or shortly after that game, some random idiot male student was on his machine at Syracuse. He was able to find some random person on a BITNET-enabled machine at Indiana U. And he proceeded to bombard that person with harassing BITNET Bombs. This went on for some time, IIRC something like 15 minutes or so; it wasn't a couple of messages.
 
Turns out the random person he was bombing was, quite by accident (there was no way to know this with the limited technology), a woman, AND, more deliciously, Indiana U's head of BACS ("Bloomington Academic Computer Services"), in effect, VP for IT.
 
This episode happened around game time, which was, of course, during prime time in the evening, so reckoning had to wait about 12 hours. But first thing in the morning, that VP for IT got hold of her opposite number at Syracuse. Must have been an interesting conversation. Idiot male student was expelled.
 
Anyway, by its nature, this kind of tech really isn't good for anything except posturing and harassment, and THIS HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR DECADES. There is no good purpose to which this tech can be used that isn't done better, and less obtrusively, by other (less invasive!) means. I don't believe any thinking human being should touch it, ever.

Not to mention that a significant number of things termed "mental illness" actually have evolutionary purposes and may even provide advantages to the individual. Just not, generally, in the social sphere.
 
Eugenics would have happily wiped out those on the autistic spectrum. This would have a decidedly negative effect on the species.

The demands & publishing aims are different between a feature cinematic film and a monthly comic book. The film realistically will be produced a limited number of times, eg a trilogy. A monthly comic book needs 12 issues a year in perpetuity.
 
Thus: villains in a feature film can be killed off as another can take its place. The villains can be memorable. Trying to come up with 12 new villains each year to sustain publishing a comic book is a tough ask, eg over a decade that is 120 new villains. So writers "cheated" and let the villains "go" so they could return later, thus cutting down the burden of creating so many new villains for the heroes to defeat.
 
Basically the trope of returning villains was created as a necessity of publishing so many issues of a title with a feature character. Films don't have this issue (pardon the pun).

Okay, I'll bite.
 
So, the punch sends him back, he recovers. There is nothing in the way of this, and literally only one object on Earth, Superman himself, whom hitting will cause any damage, versus hitting the ground or some building or whatever else. And, considering that we have seen in this iteration of the character that sunlight seems to heal most damage, we can assume the hit may have initially had more impact, but quite rapidly was recovered from.
 
In the neckbreak, his body is against the one object that is, effectively, as irresistible as his. He is in a headlock. Therefore, since we know that entire upper body versus just neck is a no-brainer, the head will turn, but the body cannot, because it is fixed in place by the only other Kryptonian. So, neck break. We can assume that, once the spine is severed, sunlight does not help, since he dies.
 
Nobody's neck is strong compared to other areas. I'd imagine I'm one of the few people talking who was unfortunate enough to be present during the event of someone's neck breaking. It's not about the strength, it's about making a neck do what it's not designed to.
 
This is all ignoring the fact that the strength of a headlock is largely structural, versus tied to the musculature of the person applying it, once it's locked in. And, once it's locked in, the amount of neck strength that can be applied is greatly reduced.
 
Granted, movie neck breaks are another thing, but if we question it here, we might as well ditch every WWII movie ever made. And question the very existence of a futuristic race that never figured out that they could be near gods with a little yellow radiation, and instead depleted their world and died, except for one, plus a few others, and some variants, and cousins, and occasional dogs.

I find it interesting that some of the referenced movies are considered "epic failures."
 
DD had a budget of $78 million and an international box office of $179 million.
 
That doesn't include DVDs and other profit channels.
 
Man of Steel had a budget of $225 million and an international box office of $668 million.
 
Again, that doesn't include DVD and other profit channels.
 
Individual viewers, especially pollyanna fanboys, may regard these films as critical failures, but objectively?
 
They were solid commercial successes. 
 
So, how are we defining "epic failure?" In a fan-wank, anemic critical aesthete, or auteur's snoot terms?
 
Or as entertainment products?
 
Because, if its the latter, to quote Mickey Spillaine, "If it sells, its good."
 
If making 300% profit on a $225 million dollar investment is failure, count me in.

Am I correct that you'd get clowns for Batman's birthday party?

Are you calling us layabouts?

Totally good advice, and thanks.
 
I'll be clear, this is mostly just banter. For example, Old Man, totally reasonable individual and while I disagree with Old Man on MoS having at all an angsty characterization, it will not lessen my view of Old Man at all. He's one of my favorite members.
 
I actually don't think it's a great movie, I just think there's a different standard being applied to that movie than to pretty much all the other comic book movies by some people, but it's not a big deal. I'll debate that, but I certainly don't let it lessen my opinion of people.
 
I suppose what I'm passionate about is the freedom for writing to take the elements of a character to new places. That's where a lot of this is coming from on my part, I suppose.
 
That last post was the result of the THIRD time on this thread that someone suggested that people who don't agree with them on exactly how Superman should be depicted, those people are morally questionable or deficient in character. The first two times were quite specifically directed to me, while ignoring my whole point on why writing an ideal as a character has often lead to highly questionable moral content.
 
I can totally deal with the fact that as we argue on the internet, we might gloss over important points the other makes. Making declarations about each other's lack of morality is simply not something that any reasonable person is going to do when arguing the moral virtues of a particular character, so I, for my part, didn't enter into that pit of unchecked irony.
 
I basically ignored the first two. I allowed myself one response, it's now done.
 
I'll probably continue to point out scene by scene summaries of the marked absence of angst in MoS, etc.
 
So, to be clear, yes, they may feel passionate about this, but I haven't, one single time, suggested that anyone's morality is lacking for any reason, and most of those I've been arguing with have not done so either. Those who have, well, I'll just assume they had a bad day and move on.
 
Thanks for your reasonable response.

Are you calling us layabouts?

Here's the catch-22s for writers trying to write what would make certain fans happy:
 
1) There can be NO collateral damage
 
This one has three parts. First, Superman cannot be part of a harm, even if he's actually lessening the harm. Second, Superman cannot not care about the results, but cannot be shown to have an emotional response to them for fear of being 'angsty'. Third, Superman cannot be fighting villains so under his power level that he can dictate all the terms of combat, as this would not be exciting at all.
 
Therefore, all movie fights, to make certain fans happy, must take place in space, Pluto, or Indiana.
 
2) Superman cannot be shown to have learned morality
 
This is simple. To show his family teaching him, as was repeatedly done in MoS, would require him not knowing how to solve a situation himself and responding in an emotional way to it as a child, and that is emo. Therefore, the Kents are relegated to brief scenes of young Clark using his powers and exposition. No actually moral teaching can ever be shown that would suggest that Clark was not always perfect. Since these scenes in MoS were the vast majority of the scenes that could be described as brooding Clark or angsty Clark, even if the scenes end with him wiser, let's not make that mistake again.
 
3) Superman must always have a sense of humor, even if, from early on, this wasn't always the case
 
Remember, part of exceptionalism is not having to have a good reason.
 
4) No anger, even if every iteration of him had this, including all of the movies
 
5) No killing to a greater extent than in the comics, but occasional gratuitous hand crushing is fine, as long as he's got a good sense of humor about it
 
6) Perpetual application of the Comics Code, because really, that's where this came from
 
7) More fighting against villains who are stereotypes, like 'the Japs', so that we can be sure of the moral high ground that ALWAYS comes with ideals posited as positive characters
 
8) If anyone disagrees, suggest it is a failing of their morals, as nothing spells moral high ground more than attacking the morality of anyone who might disagree with you over Superman, even if they point out the moral pitfalls of the Comics Code and characters posited as ideals, do not address their points, just attack their morality
 
9) Reference to myths as simple and not gritty while ignoring that this only applies to comics. Important to not mention anything about Zeus, his lovers, Venus cheating on Vulcan, Hera's entire story, Loki, Baldur, Ragnarok, or the Rape of Persephone here. Also avoid Nezha. And anything that points out that the myths of older cultures invariably include more and more human characterization over time.
 
10) Once you manage to make this movie, just sit back and bask in the wealth that will surely come. And Indiana, this means you, too: soon, everyone will be coming to film their fights over the long stretches of your corn fields in order to avoid collateral damage, even if this will mean more CGI.
 
11) No CGI
 
CGI is evil. Whenever possible, use catapults.

A point I forgot to bring up, re: MoS
 
The only reason we see the two scenes most suitably called 'angsty', and the content of them:
 
Memory:  Him as a schoolboy freaking out because of his x-ray vision suddenly kicking in
Reason: He, as a man, is not dwelling on the angst at all, he is thinking of his mother's influence, as she ends up talking him through it
 
Memory: Him, as a teenager, having an argument because he wants to help people with his powers, not run the farm, which is his father's way of keeping him from revealing himself.
Reason: This is actually a scene done to avoid exposition. He is relating it to Lois, explaining that his father did not want him saving him because his father did not feel he should reveal himself. Again, not dwelling on the angst of that argument, but the memory of his father to explain to Lois why he doesn't want her to reveal his existence.
 
There is another memory about the bus, which, again, is him remembering his parents. And a memory about some bullies, which again, ends with it being really about his father.
 
In each, the memory does not end in angst, but in teaching from his parents. 'Learned morality from the Kents', but done as actual story telling, not stock exposition.
 
In essence, most of the first half of the movie is him saving people while remembering what his parents taught him. If he had simply ended the movie by getting Zod in the Phantom Zone and then destroying the Phantom Zone, thus killing Zod, this would probably be the most faithful canon representation of post-depression Superman ever put on film, with far more time put into showing, instead of telling, why he was good than in other movies.(Gonna skip over the collateral damage thing, because all of these movies have it, all of them deal with it the same way, and that way is equally annoying in all of them, Marvel or DC)
 
To be honest, the movies' 'present', the period that is actually occurring and is not flashback, has zero angsty or brooding Superman scenes. And that is most of the movie. And the context of the scenes with brooding had everything to do with how the Kents got him out of that state and shaped him, and nothing to do with 'let's make him brooding, the girls in the audience will love pouting petulant Kal El', he was mostly a grade schooler during the scenes that description might apply to.
 
Now, doing it all in flashback, not sure what I think of that. However, given how Captain America was viewed by many as too slow(whereas I strongly suspect that, over time, it will hold up better than the second movie), I'm not surprised that they didn't simply do a chronological telling.
 
The codex thing, I cannot find a good reason for. At all.

And that is why the whole genre is unwatchable. Conan for dad! 
 
Soar. 

I think the difference, for those examples, is that those were mostly plot changes, not changes in the characterization of a flagship character. Now, they did actually change the characterization of Bucky, but changing Bucky, who was gone for an extended period, is a lot different than changing Captain America, something they did change that actually stuck.
 
Superman, they've had very little success in adding compelling changes to that became canon.
 
Someone did make a great point about some comics where major characters had changes that stuck in the cases of comics like Flash and Wonder Woman because the comic previously had not been exactly vibrant in readership. I would say Miller's Daredevil is another example. Miller's Daredevil was really the first point in the comic where Daredevil became a character of his own, imo, and so it wasn't so much changes, as finally defined. And Miller's Bullseye, taking this kind of campy character and giving him real characterization, even if it was a psychotic hatred of Daredevil's mercy, made the whole thing more compelling.
 
This is sort of the advantage of a certain era, where there were some comics that had established branding of their main characters, but, because they had always been written for little kids(Flash is a good example), there had been less emphasis on writing and characterization, so there was room to move, as it were. That is less true now. Now, the characters who have never had strong writing are from the grimdark era, and it poses different problems for the writers, especially since everyone and their brother is a tough loner. I mean, how many years can Wolverine be an X-Man and claim to be a loner?
 
Actually, Wolverine is another good example of a character whose character doesn't really change. And the backstories they've added on to him don't help.

I find wish fulfillment to often become ugly without the need for deconstruction. That said, the darkness of Watchmen(the comic) was extremely well done and had a point. In the end, the grimdark of many comic book movies is more akin to Spawn(the comic or the movie), more about the style of the darkness, but empty of anything else.